“And I’m lunch. Thanks. Thanks a lot.”
“We’ll protect you,” she promised. Smiling just a little.
He looked at her, then at Tarrant. Surely it was his own imagination that perceived an expression of smugness on that aristocratic visage. Or was it challenge?“
“I don’t know.” He directed his words at Tarrant. “The last time I made a decision like this I wound up getting stuck with you.”
With a sigh he hooked his foot into the stirrup and hoisted himself onto the horse’s back. Already the saddle felt natural to him, as if he had spent the last half-year riding, not sailing. A marked improvement.
“What the hell,” he muttered. “I was getting bored anyway. Let’s do it.”
Nineteen
The figure coalesced out of the midnight air, drawing its very substance from the darkness. All about it crystal tinkled, the delicate wrought-glass leaves of Miranda Kierstaad’s last creation. The figure heard nothing. In the west, where it gazed, Domina’s slim crescent was being swallowed by an ink-black roofline; stone crenellations cut into the lunar brilliance like a hundred tiny bitemarks. The figure saw nothing. Inside the keep there was commotion now, as the guard who had first seen the apparition searched hastily for his master. The figure knew nothing. Nor did it stir when the mock-Kierstaad entered the crystalline garden, for its maker had not known which of the many males it sent out would achieve supremacy by invasion time, and therefore could not tailor its Sending to respond to a particular presence. It only waited long enough, in its maker’s opinion, for whoever ran the Kierstaad Protectorate to make his way to the crystalline garden. And then a few minutes more, just to make sure.
Suddenly the figure seemed no longer a simple image, but a living man. Blue eyes looked about the garden, then fixed on the invader standing closest. It was difficult for the mock-Kierstaad to make formal obeisance—he now lacked most of the parts that needed to be smoothed, or flattened, or drooped—but he did the best he could with his inadequate human flesh. It would have to be enough.
The Prince’s image had aged, he noted. The pale skin was no longer perfectly smooth, its blush no longer resonant with perfect health. There was a streak of white in the yellow hair, and lines where no lines had ever been. That was the way of it, he recalled. The chosen flesh of the Undying Prince remained youthful for decades, but once it began to age its decay was swift and dramatic. The soul inside that slender, graceful body would be preparing itself for Rebirth now, and neither man nor rakh could hope to predict what form the Prince would take next time, nor even what gender he might adopt.
Briefly, the mock-Kierstaad wondered what the Prince’s first flesh had looked like. Briefly. He was a rakhene warrior, bred for the Prince’s purposes, and as such did not have either the capacity or the inclination to philosophize at length.
The figure drew in a deep breath and spoke. “Word reaches me that two of the Protectorates have fallen. You are to be commended. I hear of no outcry from the humans, so clearly you managed to keep your presence in the north a secret from them. Excellent. I know that this job is difficult for you, that you would far rather kill than hide, far rather take vengeance upon your human enemies than pretend to be one of them ... but have patience. That time will come. I promise it.
“Remember: strike now, and a handful of humans will fall. Strike later, in force, and you may cleanse the entire region of their stink forever.
“On to other matters: You know that the foreigners we seek may now be traveling through your lands. No doubt you’ve sent out teams to search for them, in accordance with the Matria’s request, and established watch posts at the most likely points of passage in your realm. All very good. But the Matrias don’t know who and what these people are, and therefore their instructions were limited. So listen closely, and act upon my words; the fate of our entire project—as well as your own life—may well depend upon it.
“Of the three humans who are traveling south, at least two—the males—are sorcerors. What this means is that if you try to entrap them they’ll probably see it coming, and the power that they wield may well give them the advantage in battle even if your people outnumber them. But though they are powerful they are also human, and human power is bound to the earth. When the earth shakes and for a brief time afterward, the fae they rely upon will be too hot to handle. Only then can you strike at them. Only then will they be helpless.
“I realize that the motion of the earth cannot be predicted, which makes it hard for you to plan. Nevertheless, the advantage of such a move is worth the inconvenience. Your region is seismically active, and rarely does a week pass without a handful of tremors. Be patient. Be careful. Wait for Erna to give you your cue, and the enemies of our purpose may be dispatched to the hell of their own creation. I myself will launch a Working that should distract them; you may use that cover to move in silence and safety.
“I am confident in your ability to make this kill and safeguard our great project. Surely the scent of triumph will be strong upon you, so that when you return home your women will be aroused by its power.”
The apparition faded. Eyes first, dissolving into pools of blackness, and then the rest of the figure. For a moment Kierstaad’s conqueror stood very still, absorbing the essence of the message. He hadn’t ever thought in terms of what this project would do for his mating precedence. That was a concept worth savoring.
But he hadn’t come to a position of power through hormone balance alone—though that was certainly part of it—and even as he turned back to the keep he was mentally scouring the lands in his Protectorate, searching for a way to prepare a mobile ambush.
The travelers would have to avoid the villages there, and also there ... the closeness of the mountains meant there was only one safe path open to them, so they must take that ... they would make choices based on secrecy at every point, so their route could be predicted ... yes. He began to visualize the emplacements, the preparations. Yes. It could be done. Wait for the earth to move, wait for the humans to be helpless, then attack....
He could almost smell the triumph on his fur.
Twenty
It would have been easy back home to watch for an ambush. In Jaggonath a simple Knowing would have been enough to untangle the secretive patterns of the fae, to reveal where and when the subtle malevolence of entrapment had made its mark. Tarrant could have done it with little effort, maintaining such a Working for hours at a time. Even Damien could have kept it up for a reasonably long stretch of time, providing he kept repeating the mental patterns which sustained his Sight. But here, where repeated earthquakes made any long-term Working perilous, where the surge of earth-fae that accompanied all such tremors would burn his mind or Tarrant’s to a crisp before they had time to cry out a warning, such a sustained Knowing was out of the question. And so they had to rely upon intermittent Workings, short little bursts of information that they plucked from the fae whenever the currents looked safe.
It clearly distressed the Hunter to restrain himself this way, and Damien could understand why. As an adept Tarrant had lived immersed in the earth-fae since his first conscious moments; to grasp hold of that power and mold it to his will was as natural to him as breathing was to Damien. It took effort for him to keep himself from Working the fae, an effort that was clearly taking its toll on him. Periodically the priest would see the man stiffen in his saddle, or mutter angrily to himself, as if he had just restrained himself from some unconscious act of Knowing.
How could he have coped as a child, if he’d been born in this region? Damien suspected he wouldn’t have made it past adolescence, if that long. Little wonder there were no adepts here, nor anyone capable of a real Working....
And then he remembered the real reason for that, and his face flushed hot with shame and fury as he kneed his horse to a faster pace. If he was driven onward in this quest for no other reason, it was to avenge all those children. Generation after generation of helpless, innocent souls, sacrificed on the altar of intolerance ...
and they were all guilty of it, he thought. Every human being who participated—by cutting a tiny throat, by staking a frightened child out as bait for demons, or even just by sitting back and making no protest while others did the dirty work—every one of them was guilty, every one of them would answer before God for all those terrible deaths. And he, Damien Kilcannon Vryce, would see to it that the monster responsible for causing it all would burn in Hell forever. If he did nothing else of value in his life, that alone would be sufficient service to his God.
When dawn came and Tarrant left them, Damien and Hesseth made camp, but they lit no fire and raised no tents. They took the supplies they needed from their saddlebags and then refastened the leather packs; they fed and watered the horses and brushed them vigorously, then resaddled them. Though neither of them voiced their concern, it was clear that both of them wanted to be ready to move on a moment’s notice. Even the horses seemed to sense their inner tension, and made no protest when the bulky saddles were returned to their backs. Maybe danger was in the air. Maybe they could smell it.
They slept restlessly in turn, the slightest sound out of the ordinary rousing them in an instant. How much sleep Damien lost to the chattering of birds and the twigs broken by foraging rodents he didn’t want to know. But though his nerves were wound up tighter than a watch spring, he neither saw nor heard anything to indicate that trouble was coming, and when he dared to look at the currents he likewise perceived no immediate threat. Good enough for now. There was a strange flavor to the earth-power, he thought, but it was so faint that he couldn’t focus on it for a Knowing; they would have to wait for Tarrant to return before they could determine its source.
They had found a good campsite—close by the river but not visible from it, on firm rocky ground that hid the horses’ tracks, easily defended—and decided to stay where they were until nightfall. Damien was loath to risk travel again without Tarrant by his side, and though Hesseth wasn’t about to admit to such a sentiment, he suspected she felt the same way. Whatever personal revulsion she felt for the Hunter, it was, like his own, overweighed by a pragmatic appreciation of the man’s power.
God knows, if they’re on our trail, we need all the help we can get.
Promptly at sunset the Hunter rejoined them. His transformation was quick and businesslike, and as soon as the coldfire had faded from his flesh he dropped to one knee and placed the flat of his hand against the ground, as if testing the temperature of the earth. The delicate nostrils flared like a cat’s. After a moment he stood again, but his eyes were still fixed on the ground before him.
“The currents are very strange,” he muttered. “I noticed it when I awoke, and hoped it was no more than a passing anomoly ... but it appears not.” He looked at Damien. “Did you sense it?”
“I sensed something,” the priest answered. “I couldn’t identify it.”
“Almost as if there were a foreign presence in the current ... yet nothing so precise as that. I worked a Knowing when I first noticed it, but I couldn’t get a fix on it. That might mean that it’s nothing important, some natural occurrence which has no deeper meaning....”
“Or that something’s been Obscured from us,” Damien said grimly.
“Just so,” he agreed.
Tarrant held his hand up for silence. The pale eyes narrowed in concentration once more, and Damien could almost feel the raw power coalesce about him. The priest Worked his own vision, and he watched in awe as the silver-blue ripples of earth-fae gathered about the Hunter’s feet, in a pool so deep and so intense that he could no longer see the ground through its light. The very power of the earth obeyed the Hunter like a household pet, coming to heel upon command. And yet even that was not enough to serve his need. Tarrant reached out his hands as the power thickened, intensified, rose about his legs until waves of raw power, blue-burning, lapped at his knees. And then came the Knowing. Damien could see it taking shape, ghostlike, between his outstretched arms. A hint of form. A shadow of meaning. And then ... nothing. The wraithlike image collapsed, its substance rejoining the pool of power at his feet. Then even that faded, until the earth-fae that attended Tarrant was no more brilliant than any other. The eddies and ripples which made up the current drew back from the Hunter and returned to their regular course. And Tarrant shook his head in frustration, acknowledging to himself—and to his traveling companions—that he had failed.
“If something was Obscured from us, it was well done.” Damien could hear the frustration in his voice, and something else. Fear? If something had been Obscured so well that even the Hunter couldn’t make it out, didn’t that imply a Working of tremendous power? Didn’t it speak of an enemy at least as powerful as Tarrant himself?
Not a nice thought. Not a nice thought at all.
“Well?” Hesseth demanded. “What do we do now?”
For a moment Tarrant said nothing. Damien could guess what was going through his mind. Enemies behind them, and now this foreign trace ahead.... Even the Hunter, for all his arrogant confidence, had to be less than happy about their situation. Had to be considering their alternatives.
Only there weren’t any. That was the problem.
“It could be someone trying to Know us against the current,” he said at last. “Someone reaching out to establish an initial link with us. If so, I’ve turned it aside.” For now. He didn’t say it, but Damien could hear the words. This one time.
“Our enemy?” she asked.
He hesitated. Damien imagined he was thinking of the hundreds of miles between them and the supposed home site of their enemy, of the mountains and the cities and God alone knew what else that divided them, all of which would wreak havoc with such a Working. A Knowing worked across such a distance, across myriad obstacles and against the current, was almost doomed to failure.
“If so,” he said at last, “he has phenomenal power.”
“So what do we do?” Damien asked. Not liking the darkness in his tone at all.
The Hunter looked south. What did those eyes see, which were always focused on the earth-power? For once Damien didn’t envy him his special Sight. “We go on. It’s all we can do. Perhaps once we cross the mountains we’ll be beyond his scrutiny ... perhaps.”
They mounted up once more and continued south along the bank of the river. The ground was becoming more and more rocky, which helped to obscure their trail, but it was bad for the horses’ footing. More than once, Damien had to dismount to dig out a sharp rock from his horse’s hoof, and once they had to stop long enough for him to Heal the sole of Hesseth’s mount, where a stone chip had gashed deeply into the tender flesh behind the toe-guards. Several times they had to lead the animals down to the river—no easy task in itself—and make their way warily through shallow water that ran black as ink, obscuring any dangers that might lie underneath. Their fear of earthquakes meant that Damien dared not use Senzei’s trick, using the glow of the earth-fae through the water to detect irregularities beneath the surface, but Tarrant led them forward with his own special Sight and thus they proceeded without mishap.
Periodically Tarrant would signal for them to stop, and he would study the earth-power anew. Not just for signs of ambush now, although that was still a concern. The foreign trace he had failed to interpret clearly worried him, and he began to stop more and more frequently in an attempt to fix on it. Damien wondered if he had ever before been so completely frustrated in his attempt to Know something.
“Is it getting stronger?” he asked him once. The Hunter’s expression grew grim, but he said nothing. Which was in itself a kind of affirmation.
“Let’s say I don’t like the feel of things,” he muttered at last. “Not at all.”
“What about our pursuers?” Hesseth asked him.
He looked about, studying the earth-fae carefully. “Those who follow are still some distance behind us,” he said at last. “But those who lie in wait are closer than I would like. And it’s strange ...” He bit his lower lip, considering. “In the other Protec
torates I had the distinct impression that there were men scouring the woods for us, a general but unfocused effort ... but here the feeling is different. Much more focused.” He looked back at them. “I think it’s crucial for you two to get safely across to the east before the sun rises. That’ll put you in a different current, safe from whoever’s trying to reach us.”
“Is there something specific you’re afraid of?” Damien asked him.
The Hunter’s expression darkened. “I’m wary of anything that has the power to defy me.” For a moment he sounded tired; it was a strangely human attribute. “The foreign trace muddies the current enough that it’s hard for me to tell just how far ahead our enemies are. I don’t like that. And I don’t like the thought that it might get worse as we continue going south.”
“You think it’s some kind of attack?”
“I don’t know what it is. I’d prefer not to have to find out.” He pulled his horse about so that it faced to the south once more, and urged it into motion.
“Let’s just hope the pass comes up soon,” he muttered.
It was more a gap than a pass proper, more a wound in the earth’s rocky flesh than anything which Nature had intended. Some quake in ages past had split through the mountainside, and centuries of wind, water, and ice had worried at the resulting crack until it was wide enough—barely—for a mounted man to pass through at the bottom. Its walls were riddled with parallel faults that slashed diagonally through the rock, and erosion had worn at the varying layers until the whole of it looked like a bricklayer’s nightmare. It was easier to imagine that vast, trapezoidal slabs of stone had been affixed to the walls of the gap, and that the mortar between them had been washed away, than it was to envision the whole as one solid piece which time and the elements had carved up so drastically.
They stared at it for some time in silence, each traveler cocooned in his own misgivings. At last Damien gave vent to their joint response.
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