Black Sun Rising

by C. S. Friedman

  And for a moment he was so glad to be seeing normally again that he forgot the danger they were in, and how quickly they needed to get in control of things again. As Tarrant had suggested, this was the most effective moment for treachery on the captain’s part; if he meant to unencumber himself by casting them into the Serpent, he would do so while they were still partially incapacitated. He forced himself to open his eyes and look around—but it was like coming to a stop after spinning in circles. The world spun about him with dizzying speed, he found himself losing his balance . . . then his foot banged into a brass railing post, and he was falling. He hit the edge of the waist-high rail and was about to go over into the dark, churning water, when a warm weight fell on him, brought him back down inside the rail, bore him down to the wooden deck with force enough that the world about him settled, illusion driven from his mind by the presence of real and immediate pain, of his head striking the hard wooden planking.

  He dared to look up, saw a sky without stars. His head throbbed sharply. Ciani’s face came into focus, her expression taut with worry.

  “You almost went over,” she whispered.

  He twisted onto his side, searching for the captain. This time he found him. The man was in the back with one of his crewmen, checking on the turbine. Discussing in low tones whether the crossing had affected its mechanism. When he saw Damien looking at him, he grinned mischieviously and winked, as if he were aware of exactly what was going through the priest’s mind. As if the whole thing had been staged to amuse him.

  “Rough passage,” he called over to him. “Just about over. Sit tight.”

  Senzei staggered over to where they lay, and helped the two of them to their feet. That meant everyone was accounted for—except for one man.

  “Where’s the vulk’s Tarrant?” Damien muttered.

  Ciani hesitated. “He’ll be out,” she promised. But she sounded less than certain. She glanced at the cabin door and then away again, as if somehow her fear might adversely affect the adept. “Soon,” she whispered.

  “Land ho!” the captain called over to them. And he added: “Looks like your horses made it through.”

  Damien looked toward where the animals were bound. His practiced eyes found the man’s optimism a bit premature. One of the horses was covered in sweat, panting heavily, and another was clearly favoring a hind leg. But still, they were alive. They were here. It could have been worse, he told himself. Much worse.

  He looked to Ciani and saw her eye still fixed on the cabin door. She seemed to be shivering. He touched her cheek gently, felt her start at the contact.

  She’s afraid. Of him, or for him?

  He forced his voice to be gentle, his tone to be nonconfrontational. “Is he hurt?”

  She hesitated. “He could be,” she said at last. Lowering her eyes, as if somehow saying that was a betrayal. “He said the Canopy might kill him. He was willing to chance it, to help me. . . .”

  He was willing to chance it to save himself, he thought irritably. But he managed to keep his voice neutral. If Tarrant was dead, so be it. If he was alive—or whatever passed for alive, in his state—there was nothing to be gained by adding further tension to their already strained relationship. “Maybe you’d better check,” he suggested.

  It was then that the door opened. And Tarrant stepped forth, blinking as if the moonlight hurt his eyes. For a moment he just stood in the doorway, hands gripping the edges of its frame as though he required such support in order to stand. He looked terrible—which is to say, as he should have under normal circumstances: haggard, drawn, unnaturally pale. It occurred to Damien that for the first time since he had met the man, he genuinely looked undead. The thought was strangely unnerving.

  “You’re all right?” Ciani asked.

  It took him a moment to find his voice. “I’m alive,” he said hoarsely. “As much as that word can apply.” He started to say something else, then shook his head. His head dropped slightly, as if he barely had the strength to hold it up; his hands tightened on the doorframe. “That’s all that matters—eh, priest?”

  “You need help?” Damien asked quietly.

  “What would you do—Heal me? That kind of power would be more deadly than the Canopy, to my kind.”

  The adept looked to where the horses were milling nervously about their bonds. He seemed to flinch at the thought of having to Work them, but nontheless forced himself away from the doorframe. Slowly, somewhat unsteadily, he walked to where he might touch the animals. His movements were agile enough that they might have seemed natural in another man, but Damien had traveled with him long enough to see the awkwardness that haunted his gestures, to guess at the pain that shortened his steps, that made his footfall uncharacteristically heavy on the damp wooden planking.

  As he had done in Kale, Tarrant tried to Work the horses. But this wasn’t Kale, and he clearly wasn’t at full strength. Each Working seemed to cost him, in strength and energy; each effort was preceded by a moment of silence and a long, deeply drawn breath, and accompanied by an almost indiscernible shiver that might have been born of exhaustion, or pain.

  Damien walked to his side, watched as the horses lowered their heads one by one to graze on imaginary lush fields of grass. At last he said, conversationally, “Water’s deep, here. The fae must be hard to access.”

  For a moment the Hunter said nothing, merely stared out at the water. Finally he whispered, “That, too.”

  “You all right?”

  “I’m surprised you care.”

  “Ciani was concerned.”

  The Hunter’s eyes fixed on him, hollowed and bloodshot. “I’ve been through worse.” Then a faint smile touched his lips, a pale, sardonic shadow of humor that did little to soften his expression. “Not recently,” he amended.

  At the bow of the ship Senzei had begun to Work, his attention fixed on the water that flowed before them. The captain had brought them in to the east of the Achron’s mouth, which was the smoothest stretch of shoreline in this region—but even that was peppered with hundreds of unseen obstacles, pinnacles of rock that rose from the Serpent’s bottom, carved by the conflicting tides of Erna’s three-moon system and split into jagged shards by the tremors that repeatedly shook this region. Some were avoidable, most were not. But all were visible to a Worker’s Sight, by virtue of the earth-fae that clung to them. Shallow waters would glow with power, deeper recesses shadowed in insulating darkness. One by one Senzei noted the obstacles and pointed them out to the vessel’s pilot, who made subtle adjustments to his course to compensate. Under normal circumstances no ship of this size would brave such waters; that job would be left to the smaller canoes and rowboats—at most to tugs—whose safety lay in their maneuverability. But the party’s desire to bring their mounts to the rakhlands had made that option unviable; a horse could hardly be expected to balance itself in a canoe.

  Inch by inch, yard by yard, they approached the shore. The splashing of the twin paddlewheels had slackened to near-silence, and the boat drifted forward with agonizing slowness. The captain stood by Senzei’s side, nodding approval as each new instruction was passed on to his crew. And Ciani stood by his other side, her eyes fixed steadily upon the waves. To see her there like that nearly brought tears of pain to Damien’s eyes. How like a sorceror she stood at that moment!—how like a Worker she concentrated all her energy on studying the shallow waters, as if she might somehow See the fae-light that coursed beneath it. Like a blind man might stare at the sun, he thought—as if doing that might burn the darkness from out of his eyes.

  I can’t even imagine her pain, he thought. Can’t even pretend to understand what it means to her, to have lost what she had. But so help me God, we’ll get it back for her. I swear it.

  At last the captain seemed to see something promising in the distance; he pointed toward the east, and nodded for Senzei to take a look. The sorceror squinted, trying to focus—and then nodded, hesitantly at first but then with greater confidence as they drew nearer to
the point in question.

  “You ought to hire out,” the captain told him. “There’s good money for that kind of skill, around these parts.”

  “You found a place we can land?” Damien asked.

  “I found a place we can come in damned close without tearing the hull to bits . . . and that’s as good as we’re going to get in this region. Let’s hope it’s good enough.” He nodded toward the lifeboat. “I can give you that to take you in, with one of my men to bring her back. The horses will be a problem—”

  “They can swim,” Tarrant said coldly.

  “You sure of that?”

  The pale eyes fixed on him with clear, if tired, disdain. “You mean, am I sure they were born with that instinct? I made certain of it.”

  He left the captain standing there openmouthed—not unlike a beached fish—as he went to the bow to watch their progress. And Damien thought—somewhat guiltily—that it was nice to see Tarrant’s arrogance directed at someone else for a change.

  The shoreline passed by in jagged bits. Repeated tremors had split the cliff walls in at least a dozen places, and the cascades of sharp-edged boulders that had fallen to the earth blurred the borderline between water and shore until distinguishing between the two was all but impossible. Not a hospitable place, Damien thought. And it was probably worse when the tide was out. How many dangers were passing submerged beneath their feet, that another few hours might uncover?

  The Captain knew what he was doing, when he scheduled us to come in during syzygy. In that it reflected on the man’s general competence, it was a reassuring thought.

  What the captain had spotted, and Senzei had confirmed, was a ledge of rock that stretched out into the water, a diagonal shelf flat enough to be safe and just deep enough to suit their purposes. The water over it was relatively still, without the whitewater eddies that dominated so much of the shoreline. As they came in closer the captain nodded his approval, and exchanged a few words with Senzei that seemed to satisfy him further. Seeing the relative calm on the man’s face—knowing just how worried he had been about this part of the journey, Damien thought, We’re going to make it. And then added, somewhat more soberly, This far, anyway.

  It was about time something went right.

  Suddenly something brilliant flashed from a clifftop, a brief glint of light that was gone almost before he noticed it. He turned toward where he thought it had been and scanned the cliff with wary eyes—but he could see nothing other than jagged rock walls and the trees that clung to them, their roots trailing down to the water like thirsty serpents. He Worked his sight, carefully. It was hard to contact the earth-fae through the water, but with effort he managed it. And Knew—

  Metal ornaments—light glinting off glass beads—human eyes that mirrored nonhuman thoughts, and the acrid smell of hatred—

  He shivered, and broke off the contact before the creature he saw could Work it against him. Clearly, their efforts were being observed. By what he couldn’t say—the contact had been too brief, his touch too wary—but it wasn’t human, and he didn’t think that it was friendly. After a moment he steeled himself, and dared to Know again. But the watcher was already gone, and any fae-mark he might have left behind was too far away, or else too weak for Damien to identify.

  He was suddenly very glad that they’d gotten a good night’s sleep in Sattin. He suspected they weren’t going to get one again for some time to come.

  “Something wrong?” It was Tarrant.

  He nodded toward the cliff wall, looming tall in the double moonlight. “Some sort of lookout, I think. Not human.”

  “Rakh,” the Hunter whispered.

  Damien looked at him sharply. “You Know that? Or are you guessing?”

  “Who else would guard these cliffs so carefully? Who else would know the very spot where a safe landing might be made, and set a sentry to watch over it?” He paused, considering the site in question. “This land is the rakh’s last refuge, priest—I would be very surprised if under those circumstances they didn’t at least set a watch over it. And defend it with vigor, against man’s intrusion.”

  “You think they’ll attack us?”

  “I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. Our only question is when.”

  “You can’t Divine that?”

  “If you mean read the future, no one can do that. And as for reading the present clearly enough to make a reliable prediction . . . not now. That takes strength, clarity of mind. . . .” His voice trailed off into the darkness, his silence proclaiming his weakness more eloquently than any words could. Damien looked at him, wished he had some scale against which to judge his condition. How long did it take the undead to heal themselves? For as long as Tarrant was incapacitated, the danger to all of them was increased.

  “Coming in!” the captain called; the tone of relief in his voice reassured Damien. The man watched while his crew prepared to disengage the turbine and drop anchor, and then, when he was satisfied that all was going well, came to where the priest and the Hunter stood. And looked out at the shoreline flanking them, whose deepening shadows might hide any number of dangers.

  “This is safe as it gets,” he assured them. “You could practically walk in from here. Wish I could take you in closer—but if I run aground in this tide, I won’t get off till doomsday.”

  “You did well,” Tarrant said quietly. He took a small leather purse from his pocket and held it out to him; if the coins inside were of gold, there was an impressive amount of them. He offered it to the man. It was a gratuity, Damien knew. Tarrant had paid for the trip in advance.

  The captain made no move to take the purse—but he bowed ever so slightly, acknowledging the offer. “Tell the Hunter I served him.”

  “When I return, I’ll do that. Until then. . . .” He took the man’s hand in his own and turned it palm up, then placed the small purse in his palm and closed his fingers over it. “Say that he is pleased with your service.”

  The man bowed deeply—a formal gesture that his sincerity made graceful—and then took his leave, to oversee the last moments of their journey.

  When he was safely out of hearing, Damien said to Tarrant, “I know heads of state who would give their lives to have half your influence.”

  The Hunter smiled—and for the first time since the Canopy there was life in his eyes, and a hint of genuine humor.

  “If they truly gave their lives,” he said, “they might have it all.”

  The disembarkation went no worse than they had anticipated—which was to say that it was tense and strenuous and very, very difficult, but they finally made it ashore. So did the horses. Tarrant had Worked them again, and though his strength was clearly waning—or perhaps the fae was harder to access here, it was hard to be certain—he did manage to get them off the ship and into the water. By the time they had been driven ashore the horses had managed to get everyone thoroughly soaked, but that was a small inconvenience when weighed against their need for having mounts for the long journey ahead.

  They stood on the shore and watched as the small ship withdrew, watched until the night swallowed it once more and the moons shone on nothing but the Serpent’s froth. And Damien thought, We’re here. Praise God—we made it. They were wet and they were tired and they were freezing cold, but they were inside the Canopy at last, and that was all that mattered.

  He turned back to study the cliffs again—to see if their watcher had returned, or if some other danger had taken its place—but before he could complete the motion a terrified screech from one of the horses forced his attention back to the shoreline once more. It was Ciani’s horse, a magnificent black animal that had so far come through the journey unscathed. Something had shifted underfoot as it waded through the shallows and it was down, thrashing at the water as it tried in vain to stand up again. From the sharp angle of its forward leg Damien judged that the bone had broken, and badly. In pain and fear it lashed out at Senzei, who fell back just in time to keep his face from being crushed by its f
lailing hooves.

  Tarrant and Ciani were there in an instant. She helped Senzei out of the water, safely away from the terrified animal. Between the horse’s dark coat and the water it was impossible to see the extent of the wound, but Damien thought he smelled blood. He started into the water himself, to try to reach the beast, but Tarrant’s hand held him back.

  “Wait.”

  The adept’s brow was furrowed in tension as he tried to Work the earth-fae at their feet so that it would serve his will above the surface of the water. Not an easy task under any circumstances, and the Hunter was clearly not in the best of shape. Damien heard the sharp intake of breath, almost a gasp of pain, but the adept’s attention never wavered. The horse’s body jerked spasmodically, as if from seizure, and then stiffened. Froze, as though its skeleton had locked in place. Damien could see its forelimbs trembling, the gleam of terror in its eyes.

  “Go,” the Hunter whispered.

  He waded to the animal’s side, cold water chilling his flesh anew. The leg in question was underwater. He looked back at Tarrant, who nodded slowly, his eyes narrow with the force of his effort. Damien grasped the damaged leg. The horse shuddered and snorted once, but otherwise seemed incapable of motion. He moved the leg gently, to bring the break above the water’s surface. It was bad: a compound fracture that had broken through the skin in two places. Probably worsened by the horse’s own fear, Damien thought; the fae could do that.

  Carefully, he began to Work. It was difficult reaching down through the water to tap the earth-fae, unlike anything he had never experienced before. And even allowing for the interference of the water—which clung to the fae like glue, making it almost impossible to manipulate the stuff—the current itself seemed weak. Insubstantial. As though somehow the earth-fae had been drained from this place, leaving little more than a shadow of what had once been.

  As for Tarrant’s holding the horse steady for him . . . he tried not to think about that. Tried not to think how much was riding on that man’s power right now—his power, and his “honor.” Tried not to think about how easy it would be for him to ease up just a little—just for an instant—and let fate take care of the only member of his party who seemed willing to challenge him.