I touched that hunger for life. I embraced the pain of the light. I moved deeper into the fire. In the heart of the fires of creation, I drank in the light to slake a thirst for living. As I moved toward the center of the conflagration the light changed, sharpening to a diamond purity, until it became a clear, white light the color of the first instant of creation. The pain became something more, swelling to a vast ache for the beauty of creation and a terrible sorrow for all that we had made of the possibilities we had been given.
My will clenched like a fist as I entered the heart of the flames. I hardened myself against even that pain. Pure power, greedy for definition, rose around me. I understood then that the power of the Nephilim had no nature and no definition. It was the raw stuff of creation.
I wrestled the flames into submission. I rebuilt my body out of the light. As I fashioned myself out of will into a thing of flesh and blood and bone, I drew on the hunger and drank of the essence of the power flaring around me as everything else within me fought and screamed and gave itself to survival. I drank of the clean fury of it to cleanse the memory of everything I had done, and all I had become. I drank to go through to the other side of mystery, and discover all I would find there. I drank until the light fell in around me, and the comet itself guttered and fell screaming to be swallowed into the darkness. I drank of the wellspring of the power of the Nephilim until it too failed. And my hunger spread out through the shadow and all that dwelt there, seeking more to fill its endless desire.
I had brought a thing none of the other sorcerers had to the Rites. I had brought the hunger of the Shadow Hound, a power not dependent on a Legion, but one I had taken for my own. I had given the lives of the failed, bound sorcerers to pay my price of admission to the Rites. I had, in the end, become something more and less than those that had gone before. I had tapped into that hunger that had set me on the Road from Greece and kept me alive for many mortal lifetimes, and through that hunger I had drunk the well dry.
At last all became quiet. I opened my eyes and looked around me, into the darkness. I saw the heart of stone lying near my feet. I stood in the bottom of a round bowl, a dry well marking all that remained where the fires of the Nephilim had once raged. I picked up the heart, and crushed it in my fist. The powdered remains trickled through my fingers like sand.
No Nephilim would be made after me. My endless hunger had swallowed the fires of creation. And I, I had become something other than the makers of this place had intended. I had become something for which there was no name.
When I rose up and left that place, no light remained. Within me, the hunger of the shadow had vanished, burned away in the pit. Darkness did dwell within me, but the fires of the Nephilim had tempered it into something vastly different than what it had once been. No longer a remnant of the Shadow Hound, the darkness within had expanded to encompass my own hunger for life. At the same time I had tapped into primal darkness—that first velvety black that was the root of all shadow.
I walked back through the crevice and up the length of the valley. Only one soul remained, still trapped. Only the singer still made music. All the rest had ceased to speak. I had taken them as my hunger had spread to swallow all light. The singer had been untouched, even by the hunger of that raging darkness.
She stood, wrapped in her shroud of stone, singing in a voice as pure and sweet as innocence itself. I closed her eyes with a soft touch of shadow. I took nothing from her. I released her soul to fly away from the prison of stony flesh that had bound her for time out of mind. As she left that place behind, echoes of the music remained, filling the valley, and all the places of darkness that dwelt under the empty sky.
I stayed there, in the darkness, listening to the echoes of that sweet music. It took great effort to shake myself free and turn my attention to other things. My need for vengeance had faded. I no longer held firm to the same passions that once had gripped me. And yet some distant part of me could not let go of everything. I needed confirmation, more than anything else, of who had killed my old master and why. I had firm ideas, but not the whole picture.
I had to face Titania.
With that music still shivering through my soul, I reached through the darkness and betook myself to NightTown. Of all the places I knew, that came to me most naturally. I opened the Way to a familiar estate, my mind on Eliza Drake. Perhaps she could help me understand what I had done, and what I had become.
CHAPTER XXVIII
I STEPPED from darkness into light. The gibbous moon shone down over the charred remains of Eliza Drake’s forest. Smoke curled in gray wisps from the ground and from the blackened hulks of the trees. The air weighed heavy with the bitter taste of burnt wood and worse. A bare, cracked ravine of shattered rock snaked down the length of the slope. It took me a moment to recognize it as the stream where Eliza Drake and I had bathed. The vanished flames had eaten every trace of the mossy bed where we had slept.
I walked slowly through the blasted landscape, wondering how Eliza could have allowed this to happen. Her power in her own places had always been nearly absolute.
I understood when I reached the site of her manor.
The flames had raged so hot there that brick and mortar had slumped to shapelessness. The wood had all been consumed. But this fire had been particular. The grove that had surrounded her manor had been left more intact. The flames there had only stripped bark and limbs from the trunks of the trees. The trunks themselves remained.
Eliza and her retainers hung from them.
Someone had nailed them to the trees, using spikes now blackened by the fire. I knew them by their number, for they were unrecognizable, their limbs no more than twisted stumps of charcoal, their heads made featureless by the fury of the conflagration.
I stumbled through the grove, counting the bodies, searching for some sign to identify them. On all of them, long teeth gleamed dully in the moonlight, sullied but not entirely charred by the fire.
This had been no holy excursion. Whoever had killed them had destroyed the lands thoroughly, but limited the flames around the trees to make Eliza and her retainers suffer longer.
I could not tell the bartender from Teila, nor could I isolate Eliza Drake from the group. I searched, but I could not identify her. The long night had at last claimed them all.
The music that had been with me since the valley of the Nephilim faded, leaving only a wrenching emptiness in its place.
I pulled them down as gently as I could. I built a cairn of stone over the bodies. Had I loved Eliza Drake? Our relationship had been both more and less complicated than that. We had filled an emptiness in one another, if only for a while. So many connections were severed by those who chose to make their home in CrossTown. Long associations were rare enough to occupy that space usually reserved for family. Had Eliza and Teila and the rest deserved the torment of their final hours?
Possibly. None of us were innocent.
I stayed in that place for a while, remembering, giving them their due. They had been predators of humanity. Their kind was considered a scourge by all of the righteous.
They had killed to live. We all killed to live.
Shock faded slowly. The cool, gritty substance of the rock under my hand brought my focus back to the moment. Of all I might have anticipated, I had not anticipated what I had found. Why had they died? Who had killed them? Had this been unrelated to my troubles, or had I brought death down upon them by taking even momentary refuge with Eliza Drake? I needed to know the answers to those questions. If I owned any responsibility for their deaths, then I would always carry some burden for what I had done, though that burden could perhaps be lessened with the blood of their killers. Their deaths cried out for vengeance. I needed to discover who had done this thing and why. I needed a release for the bitterness in my soul.
I turned my attention toward the ruler of NightTown. Nothing happened in NightTown without the Master’s knowledge. I left that place behind me, and set out through the darkness for Night
Town’s center.
NightTown’s center ran up a long slope of saw-backed foothills to a mountain peak dominated by a sprawling keep. Ruins dripped off those slopes like blood from a knife. Small villages and patches of wild wood threaded throughout the ruins like mildew through a decaying patchwork quilt. Most of Night-Town’s citizens dwelt in the ruins or the wilds. The villages occupied a niche more akin to a larder than anything else in the NightTown scheme of things.
I took the main Road that swarmed up the crooks of the ridgebacks, though I traveled more swiftly through the darkness than would be considered natural. Eyes glittered in the shadows at the edges of the stone Road. The soft rustle of padding feet escorted me, but not one dweller in the darkness moved against me. Perhaps they realized that the darkness held no secrets from me. Perhaps they could sense that I was no common game.
Nightmarish forms, toothy shapes with twisted limbs, and those who held their most fundamentally alien qualities beneath a mask of humanity were all more evident to me as they lurked in the shadows than when they stood naked in the light of day. The fact that those predators took to the shadows as a shield only placed them more deeply within my place of power. Not one of them gave me cause to move against them, so I wasted my time with none.
I had considered stepping directly into the keep at the top of the mountain, where the Master kept his seat. But Vlad Tepesh had a certain sensitivity in regard to what he considered invaders, and he’d always defined that in the loosest terms possible.
I’m sure he found things more convenient that way.
Since I wanted to save my energy for whoever had burned Eliza and her holdings, I took the less direct path. That Road took me a bit longer, but allowed the word of my arrival to run ahead of me. If the Master decided not to see me, then I supposed I would have the chance to test my new strength against his. I had no intention of being denied.
I passed up the ridges until the slopes flattened to a high plain. Long poles marched across the plain like a denuded forest. Black stains crusted the lengths of the poles and fed the thick beds of moss that humped over the base of the ancient wood. NightTown scavengers had removed all of the larger traces of the Master’s cruel entertainment. I saw no sign of the banquet table I had heard that he would set up so that he could feast during the mass impalements and enjoy the music and the dancing his victims provided himself and his court. Perhaps the rumors were exaggerated. Perhaps he had the table in storage, the settings and cloths out for cleaning.
I crossed out of the plain and came at last to the entrance of the keep. The drawbridge lay across an apparently bottomless chasm in the rock. The darkness there, more transparent than any glass to my new senses, held a great deal of empty space, and a myriad of patient lurkers. The lurkers did double duty. The mainstay of their diet undoubtedly fell from the middens of the keep. I felt certain that those lurkers would have regarded any available flesh, living or dead, as a bonus.
A huge figure stood guard at the drawbridge. The tips of his tufted ears passed the eight foot mark. Lips curled back from an impressive mouthful of fangs. Golden eyes glowed in his massive, wolfish head. Thick fur covered his almost manlike body. At an estimated weight in the neighborhood of four hundred pounds, he was the largest wolfbreed I’d ever seen, aside from the Watcher of the silver stair, who wasn’t a wolfbreed except in the loosest sense. “Zethus,” he said. “Looks like times have been hard. You’re a mess.”
I shrugged. I hadn’t been thinking a great deal about my appearance, but he undoubtedly had the right of it. When I had rebuilt myself in the flames of the Nephilim, I had fashioned my clothes and my body as they had been. I’d been through heavy wear. It showed in how I’d reconstructed myself. “I want to speak with your master,” I said mildly.
His eyes narrowed, but his tone remained civil. “Fortunately, this is the Season of Judgment. Any in the Master’s demesne may petition him for a hearing.”
I smiled without humor. “Good. I’m sure he’ll hardly notice me in the press.” I stepped past him. One massive hand fell to my shoulder, claws extended. I looked up at him without speaking.
“You would do well,” he said softly, “to show more respect.”
Shadows of emotion stirred in my soul. Power roused. The mask slipped. His hand fell away from my shoulder and he dropped his gaze. I turned from him and continued across the drawbridge. The heavy wood ate the sound of my footfalls. Raw stone rose around me as I entered the mouth of the keep. A deep chill entered my surroundings, my breath fogging the air. Cold flowed soundlessly out from the mouth of the keep like the breath of a dying man. Two more massive wolfbreeds waited just inside the raised portcullis. I passed them in silence. They remained at their stations, only their yellow eyes moving as they watched me walk by.
Rats, beetles, and other carrion eaters of all shapes and sizes swarmed through the passages of the keep, acting as the eyes and ears of their master. The darkness around me literally crawled with life, every tiny spark of vitality a single note in the Master’s personal symphony.
Torches burned at distant intervals along the hallway, a consideration of the Master to mark my path. Shadows clustered thickly around the torchlight, fighting to eat the light. Shadow muted the glow of the torches down to a pale, tired glimmer that faded quickly before the power of the full darkness. The darkness in that place had a rich texture, a sleek taste of silky strength. It moved easily to the touch of my casual awareness. The shadows there had been unchallenged by the light for so long that light itself faltered before the hungry darkness.
I stepped out of the long hallway into a great room. Rich tapestries hung from the walls, depicting scenes of hunts and battles and death. The game in the hunts ran on two legs. A great fire burned in a fireplace that gaped like a hungry mouth. The fire burned without heat, the chill in that place thick enough to layer the walls and floor with a fine coating of hoarfrost. Frozen rushes crackled under my boots as I made my way into the room. Icicles would have hung from every fixture, I felt sure, had the air not been so devoid of moisture.
No other noise rose to meet me as I walked down the length of the great room toward the high seat that faced me from the other end. More wolfbreeds lined the walls of the audience chamber. I envied them their fur. Others stood silently in the darkness, watching me pass. None of them betrayed any signs of normal humanity, other than to the most casual of observers.
The Master had been holding court.
As I walked abreast of the fire, one of the courtiers ahead of me drifted into motion. He came to stand across my path at the edge of the firelight. Scars webbed his face, breaking his heavy features into something like a Cubist interpretation of a mass murderer. “Sorcerer.” Jagged fangs glinted at me as he spoke in the cultured tenor of an Anglican choirmaster. “You look as if hard times have found you. What do you want?”
I cocked my head. “I didn’t come here to speak with you, Carnifex. I came to speak with your master. Don’t waste my time.”
“In this place, he is your master as well, human. As are we all. I no longer smell the taint of the Tindalans on you. And the bounty on your head is rich.” Cold hunger touched his voice with ice.
My eyes narrowed. The burden of Eliza’s death shifted to feed a growing pressure. That pressure was looking for an outlet. Carnifex didn’t know it, but with his attitude he might as well have been wearing a placard that read, “Use Me for Emotional Relief.” The rage I had been holding in abeyance strained at its bonds. Had Eliza been tortured for information regarding my location? Had I brought her killer down on her? “You haven’t been keeping track of current events,” I told Carnifex. “The Whitesnakes are no longer in any shape to pay bounties. The cult and their demon god have fallen on hard times. Take the hint.”
He took a step closer. “Where is the Key, sorcerer?”
I locked gazes with him. I distantly felt him trying to twist my will. His attempt slid off my mind like raindrops sliding down a window pane. “I came to investig
ate a death, Carnifex,” I said. “You know what I’m talking about? Were you involved?”
He sneered. “That bitch is burned. She’s not feeling any pain. Worry about yourself.”
As he finished his first sentence, all that I had been holding back exploded into full fury. Transparent power blossomed, searching for an outlet. I fed that power into the fire already burning, bound it and shaped it to my will. Carnifex sensed rousing power and lunged for me. He moved with inhuman speed. The power moved faster. A sudden furnace blast of heat broke the cold like a hammer smashing through a sheet of glass. Shadows died as light flared through the room. A rope of bright flame thicker than a man’s waist exploded from the fireplace, swallowed Carnifex, and sucked him back into the suddenly raging inferno like a chameleon devouring a fly.
The courtiers flinched away from the blaze of light and heat. I approached the fireplace, picked up a poker, and turned the embers idly. The great logs had fallen away to almost nothing in an instant. No trace remained of Carnifex. The low flamelets that remained to dance sinuously over the embers were beautiful.
“So you opened the door.” The Master rose from his seat and descended the steps to stand at the edge of the light. The mask of his humanity was almost complete: only the insatiable hunger of his eyes penetrated the façade.
I straightened, replaced the poker, and turned to meet his gaze. “The Key is gone. The prize is gone.”
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