But to his surprise, he met resistance: a wall of fae, tightly woven, that forced him to keep his distance. Unusual. He probed at it, trying to find its weak spot. Trying to channel through. But the barrier was remarkably balanced in structure—remarkably unlike the boy himself, or anything such a youth might have conjured. Resilient, it gave just enough to diffuse his aggressive energies; he couldn’t seem to pierce it, no matter how he tried.
He added prayer to his efforts. Unlike most pagan faiths, his Church didn’t believe in a God who made personal appearances on demand; nevertheless, prayer was a powerful focus for any Working. Strangely—and inexplicably—the resistance seemed to grow even stronger as he did so. As if something in his prayer had added its strength to that seemingly impenetrable barrier.
That’s impossible, he thought darkly. Patently impossible. Even if a priest had Worked the damned thing in the first place . . . I’d be able to read that. Or some kind of personal signature, at least.
Who would do such a thing? What purpose would it served?
Frustrated, he turned his attention to the boy’s corporeal shell. But every aspect of the body was just as it should be, save for its comatose state. He spent a long time studying the boy’s flesh, on every level possible, and at last had to concede defeat. There was no apparent biological damage. And as for the boy’s soul . . . that was unreachable. Unless he could come up with some new plan of attack. Hit it from a different angle.
Ciani could have handled this. Ciani could have dispelled such a barrier in half the time it took me just to recognize it. Damn those creatures, and their hellbound hunger! Even without the fae she could have told us who might have set up such a thing. Because it isn’t the boy who’s behind this. It can’t be the boy. But then who? Or what? And, most important: Why?
“Is it your son?” he asked gently.
“My firstborn,” she whispered. “I . . .” She blinked back tears. Couldn’t speak for a moment. Then: “Can you help him, Father? Is there any hope at all?”
He let the last of his Knowing fade; his head was pounding from the strain of his efforts, and from the unaccustomed taste of failure. He managed to keep his voice steady as he told the woman, “There’s nothing my skills can do. That doesn’t mean the doctors won’t be able to help.” He could hear the exhaustion in his voice, but managed somehow to keep it sounding strong. She needed his strength. “I’m sorry, my child. I wish it could be otherwise.”
She wept in his arms for a long, long time.
Sitting in the darkest corner of the common room, the three travelers went unnoticed. Nearly two dozen guests had taken shelter in the dae’s protective confines before the gates were shut at sunset, but for the most part they were a travel-weary, introverted lot, who offered no threat to the small company’s privacy. One particularly large group of men had been drinking since dusk, and occasionally a voice would rise from among them to dominate all others in the common room, underscoring some vital point in their debate—but in general they were a tight, self-contained social unit, who might acknowledge a comely waitress or two but who otherwise had no interest in the people surrounding them. The other guests had collected in couples and trios and were far more interested in the central fire and its warmth than in the three travelers who had chosen to isolate themselves in the shadows of a far corner.
“It didn’t go well?” Senzei asked quietly.
“It didn’t go at all.” Damien took a deep drink from the tankard before him. Briand ale; not the best, but any alcohol was welcome. “There was some sort of barrier . . . I’ve never Seen anything like it before. Couldn’t get through it, no matter what I did.” He took another drink and sighed. “It seemed deliberate; a Worked obstruction. That was the oddest thing. I mean, who would have set it up? And why? The boy didn’t have that kind of skill, I’m sure of it. But who would? And why?” He took another deep drink of the ale, winced at the bitterness. “If we assume that his problem wasn’t just a medical one—that something faeborn hurt the boy—the question is, what sort of demon would do that and then bother to cover its tracks? And do it so vulking well!”
“Careful,” Senzei warned—meaning his volume, his anger, his profanity. “You did what you could. That’s all any of us can do.”
“If only—” But he stopped himself. Just in time. If only Ciani’s skills were whole, he wanted to say. She could have read that boy like a book. She could have fixed him up in half the time it took me to confirm the problem. He ached for her loss—and for their loss, having to travel without her skills to protect them. God in heaven, everything would be so much easier if she were whole . . . but then again, if she were whole, they would still be in Jaggonath. They could make love in her Gees Street apartment with no more thought for the future than a passing concern over whether they had enough food for breakfast in the morning.
I think I was falling in love with you. In a way that I haven’t experienced before. Why couldn’t we have had just a little more time to see where it was headed before this happened?
He started to turn to Senzei—to ask him for advice on the boy’s condition—when a noise from the far end of the room caught his attention. He turned toward the door—and stiffened as he saw it opening. As he heard the creaking of its thick metal hinges and the jangling of its disengaged lock.
“Don’t the daes—” he whispered.
“Yes.” Senzei nodded sharply. “The doors are locked after sunset. An exception would be . . . unusual.”
One of the night guards had squeezed inside, and he traded hurried words with the dae’s keeper. Mes Kanadee hesitated, then nodded; the door swung fully open. Darkness poured in—and with it a man whose movement was so fluid, so graceful, that it was hard to believe he couldn’t have simply flowed in through cracks in the door, had he wanted to.
All heads in the place were turned toward him, all eyes assessing this man for whom the rules of the dae had been broken. But the Keeper stared back at them as if daring her guests to protest. One by one they turned away and went back to their former conversations. Just a man, her gaze seemed to say. What business is it of yours, anyway? Damien whispered the key to an Obscuring under his breath, so that her eyes passed over his table as though it were empty; he had no intention of confronting her, nor did he intend to relinquish his right to study the stranger in secret.
The newcomer was a tall man, slender, who carried himself with easy elegance. Handsome, refined—attractive to women, Damien decided—he moved with a grace that seemed to come naturally to him. His clothes were simple but well made, unadorned but clearly expensive. A calf-length tunic of fine silk brushed the top of glove-soft boots, accentuating his height and rippling with his every movement. Midnight blue, the color of evening. His hair was soft and simply dressed, not in the complex cut and curls of modern fashion but caught back in a simple clip at the nape of his neck. Save for that one piece, there was no gold visible on him, nor jewelry of any kind. Or any other thing of obvious value, other than a slender sword with a heavily embroidered sheath that swung at his side . . . and the pistol tucked into his belt.
Damien worked a minor Knowing—and hissed in surprise. In disbelief.
“UnWorked,” he whispered.
Senzei nodded. “I know.”
That means. . . .
They looked at each other.
“I’ll check,” Senzei muttered, and as soon as he was sure that the stranger wouldn’t see him, he slipped away to go to their rooms. Damien turned back—and saw Ciani’s eyes on him. Curious. Suffering. Anxious to know.
He tried to explain to her. About firearms, and how dangerous they were. About technology in general, and the power of human fear, and how sometimes when there was a physical process that a man couldn’t watch happen—because it was too small, or happened too fast, or was simply out of his sight—his fears could foul it up, and cause it to backfire. So that such a gun might well blow up in its owner’s hand at the moment he most needed it to function. Which meant that
no man would carry such a thing, unless he’d had it Worked for safety. Or unless he was a total fool, who thrived on senseless risk. Or unless. . . .
Unless he was an adept.
He stiffened at the thought. Eager and wary, in equal measure. He had a nose for suspicious coincidence, and this man’s arrival stank of it.
The odds against one of that kind just happening to walk in here are . . . incredible. So either he isn’t what he seems to be, or there’s some reason he showed up tonight. And I can’t think of one that I’d like to hear.
Senzei slid back into his seat, a small black notebook clutched in one hand. “Nothing,” he whispered. “None of the descriptions match. If he’s an adept, he isn’t from this region. Or else we just didn’t know about him. . . .”
“Unlikely,” Damien muttered. That kind of skill was hard to hide, especially in the childhood years. And news of adeptitude traveled fast. If the man wasn’t described in Ciani’s notes, he wasn’t from this area.
Carefully, Damien worked a Knowing. Very carefully. The stranger might take it in his stride that other Workers would wish to identify him ... or he might consider it an invasion of his privacy and exact revenge. Adepts were a touchy lot.
He relaxed the Obscuring that protected the three of them, just enough to Work through it. Then he reached out, ever so delicately, meaning to brush the stranger with a Knowing. Even if the man felt so delicate a touch, he might consider it no more than it was—a polite inquiry—and let it pass unnoticed.
Breathing deeply in concentration, Damien felt the Working build, spanning the room between them. It gave order to the fae along its path, like a magnet would organize iron filings. Soon a single shining filament of purpose stretched from Damien’s table to the one where the stranger now sat—fine as spider’s silk, luminous as crystal—allowing him to extend his senses into the stranger’s personal space and touch the man’s essence with his own.
And he encountered a surface like polished glass. Smooth—reflective—impenetrable. His Knowing brushed up against it; there was a brief moment when it seemed he was touching not glass, but ice; and then it was gone, all contact between them broken. His Working had simply vanished—the thread was dissolved, into thin air—as though it had never been. As though he had never even tried.
A Shielding, he thought. He was awed by its execution. An adept’s work, without question. And even by that standard, magnificently done. There was no doubting the man’s power—or his skill in applying it.
Slowly, calmly, in response to Damien’s fleeting touch, the stranger turned toward him. Across the length of the common room their eyes met. The man’s clear, steady gaze was more informative than any Working could have been—and much more discerning. Damien felt his own space invaded, the chill touch of a strange mind sorting out who and what he was—and then as quickly it was gone, and the space between them was impenetrable once more.
A faint smile crossed the stranger’s face. Then, clearly satisfied with whatever information he had garnered, he turned away again. A stemmed goblet had been placed before him and he sipped from it, delicately, while he watched the fire dance in its stone enclosure. Utterly calm, he seemed unconcerned with Damien’s presence, or with the Working that had so briefly disturbed his peace. Or with anyone else in the room, for that matter.
“Damned sure of himself,” Senzei muttered.
Damien noticed the edge in the man’s voice, felt it echo in his own thoughts. How much of our reaction is jealousy? he wondered. How can a man experience that kind of power and not want to control is?
And especially Senzei, he reminded himself. Ciani had told him that. The man hungered for Sight like a starving man hungered for food; what did it mean to him, to see that kind of power displayed so openly?
“You think he’s an adept,” Ciani breathed.
Damien looked at her. Measured his words. “It’s possible,” he said at last.
She leaned forward slightly; her eyes were gleaming. “You think he could help us?”
For some reason, he was chilled by the mere thought. “That would be very dangerous. We know nothing about him. Nothing. Even if he would be willing to join us, can we afford to take on a total unknown?” Who arrived at just the right moment, he added silently. Too right. I don’t trust it.
He suddenly looked back at the man, and wondered how much of his response was rational, and how much of it was the result of growing tension over other matters. Like having to sit here in this overfortified inn while the creatures they sought after were probably getting farther and farther away with each passing minute. Like his problems with the boy, the unaccustomed taste of a failure. With an adept’s power to back him. . . .
No. Unthinkable. The risk simply wasn’t worth it.
“To involve a stranger in our personal business—knowing absolutely nothing of his power or his purpose—that would be incredibly dangerous. How could we risk it?”
“The problem is our ignorance?”
He looked at her sharply; there was a note in her voice he couldn’t quite read. “That’s a good part of it, yes.”
She hesitated only an instant, then pushed her chair back and stood.
“What are you doing?” he hissed.
“Knowing,” she said tightly. “In the old Earth sense.” And she smiled, albeit nervously, for the first time since leaving Jaggonath. “Someone has to do it, don’t you think?”
And she was gone. Before Damien could protest. Before Senzei, reaching out, could stop her. The two men watched, aghast, as she wended her way across the dimly lit room. As she waited for the stranger’s attention to fix on her, and then began to speak to him. After a few seemingly pleasant words, he offered her a seat at his table. She took it.
“Damn her,” Damien muttered.
“And women in general,” Senzei growled.
“That, too.”
The stranger called a waitress over. It was the same girl who had served Damien and Senzei, but now her blouse was tucked down tightly into her belt, outlining breasts that she was clearly proud to display to him. Whatever charisma the stranger possessed, it seemed to work tenfold on women. For some reason, that was more irritating than all the rest combined.
“You think she’s safe?” Damien whispered.
Senzei considered. And nodded, slowly. “I think maybe she’s in her element.”
He looked at Senzei, surprised.
“Watch her,” the sorceror whispered. There was a kind of love in his voice that Damien had never heard him express before. For the first time he sensed the true depth of their friendship—and he reflected sadly upon the fact that he had never heard such a note in Senzei’s voice when he spoke of his fiancée.
She must have realized that. And it must have hurt like hell.
Ciani was indeed in her element—tense, wary, but more alive than she had been in days. And why not? Whatever it was that had caused her to devote her life to the acquisition of knowledge, that instinct was still intact and thriving. They had taken the facts from her mind, but they couldn’t change what she was.
Seeing that the stranger was responding well to her advances—and that she herself was slowly becoming more comfortable with him—Damien relaxed. Or rather, tried to. But there was another kind of tension within him, and that was growing. Not concern for her, exactly. Rather, more like. . . .
Jealousy. Simple-minded, ego-centered, masculine jealousy. Well, grow up, Damien. You don’t own her. And just because he has a pretty face and some new stories to tell doesn’t mean that he does, either.
“They’re coming,” Senzei whispered.
He must have been watching them on other levels, because it was several minutes before Ciani and the stranger actually got up. He first, rising effortlessly, then stepping behind her chair to help pull it out for her. The custom of another time, another culture. When she turned in their direction, she no longer seemed afraid; her eyes were sparkling with newfound animation. Not for the man, Damien reminded h
imself. For the mystery that he represents.
As if that made it any easier.
If the stranger bore them any ill will for their previous invasion of his privacy, he didn’t show it. He bowed politely as Ciani introduced them but offered no hand for them to clasp. The social patterns of a bygone age—or a paranoid adept. Damien suspected the latter.
“This is Gerald Tarrant,” Ciani announced. “Originally from Aramanth, more recently from Sheva.” Damien couldn’t identify the place name exactly, but like all cities near the Forbidden Forest it had been named for an Earth-god of death or destruction. He was from the north, then. That was ominous. Generally anyone with the Sight steered clear of that region—for good reason. The Forest had a history of corrupting anyone who could respond to it.
“Please join us,” Senzei said, and Damien nodded.
The newcomer pulled up chairs for the two of them, helped Ciani into hers before sitting down himself. “I was hardly expecting company,” he said pleasantly. “Arriving at such an hour, one often receives a less than enthusiastic welcome.”
“What brings you to Briand?” Damien asked shortly.
The pale eyes sparkled—and for a moment, just a moment, they seemed to be reaching into Damien’s soul, weighing it. “Sport,” he said at last. With a half-smile that said he knew just how uninformative that was. “Call it pursuit of a hobby.” He offered no more on that subject, and his manner didn’t invite continued questioning. “Yourselves?”
“Business. In Kale. Family shipping, for Fray—and for us, a chance to get away from town. An excuse to travel.”
The stranger nodded; Damien had the disquieting feeling that he knew just how much wasn’t being said. “It’s dangerous traveling at night,” he challenged the man. “Especially in this region.”
The stranger nodded. “Would that all our pursuits could be completed in neat little packets of time during the day, and we need never stir between dusk and dawn.” He sipped from the goblet in his hand. “But if that were the case, Ernan history would be quite a different thing than it is, don’t you think?”
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