He wanted to argue with her. He wanted to beg her to stay, to tell her that soon he would be back again soon, they could start all over—he would change, she would see!—but the words caught in his throat and he just couldn’t voice them. Because she was right, and he knew it. He could make all the promises he wanted, and it wouldn’t change a thing. The hunger was first in his life, had always been. Would always be. Mere words couldn’t alter that. And if it wasn’t enough for her that he tried not to express that, that he worked to repress that terrible yearning while they were together, tried to hide it . . . then there was nothing he could do to fix things. Nothing at all.
“I’m sorry,” he gasped. Sensing clearly the vast gulf that had formed between them, not knowing how to reach across it. Feeling lost, as though suddenly he were surrounded by strangers. “I’m so sorry....”
“I just hope you find what you want,” she murmured. “Or make some kind of peace with yourself, at least. If there was anything I could do to help . . . I would. You know that.”
“I know it,” he whispered.
She came to where he stood, and kissed him gently. He put his arms around her and held her tightly. As if somehow that could make the problems go away. As if a mere demonstration of affection could make everything better. But they had passed that stage, long ago, while his attention was elsewhere. While he devoted the core of his attention to the fae, failing to see that all about him the pieces of his life were slowly dissolving. Withering, like houseplants that had been starved of water. While he failed to see their need.
Numbly he watched as she put the thin gold ring down on the kitchen table; it made a small puddle, mirror bright, with the water that dripped from her fingers.
“I’ll keep the house,” she said gently. “Take care of it, until you come back. So you don’t have to worry about your things . . . while you’re gone.” She looked toward the remaining dishes, then away from them. Away from him. “I’m sorry, Zen.” She whispered it, in a voice that echoed with fresh tears. “So sorry. . . .”
She ran from the room. He moved as though to follow her—and then checked himself, with painful effort. What was he going to say to her? Where was he going to find the magic words to make it all better, so that somehow they might pretend it had never happened? So that somehow he could pretend that she wasn’t right, that he hadn’t failed her, that when he came back from the rakhlands everything would go back to normal?
He sat in the kitchen chair heavily. And fingered the thin gold ring, with its delicately engraved sigils of love.
And he wept.
Thirteen
“Holiness.”
The Patriarch closed the heavy volume before him and pushed it to one side. “Come in, Reverend Vryce.” He pointed to a cushioned chair set opposite the desk. “Have a seat.”
Damien tried to bring himself to sit, but couldn’t. His soul was wound too tight with tension; he felt that if he tried to bend his body, to relax in any way, something inside him would snap. “Holy Father. I . . . need to make a request.”
It could still go wrong here. It could all fall apart.
The Patriarch looked him over, from his rumpled hair and sleepless eyes to the simple beige shirt and brown woolen pants he had worn for the audience. And nodded, slowly. “Go on.”
“I need . . . that is, something has come up. . . .” He heard the tremor in his voice, took a deep breath, and tried to steady himself. It’s not just that you’re afraid he’ll refuse you, remember that. It’s the way the fae responds to him. He started to speak again, but the Partiarch waved him to silence.
“Sit down, Reverend Vryce.” His voice was quiet but dominant; authority flowed forth from him, thickening the fae between them. “That’s an order.”
Damien forced himself to sit. He started to speak again, but again the Patriarch shushed him. He passed a goblet across the desk to him, scarlet glass with a darker liquid within. Damien took it and drank: sweet red wine, freshly chilled. With effort, he forced himself to relax. Took another drink. After a few minutes, the pounding of his heart subsided to a somewhat more normal rythm.
“Now,” the Patriarch said, when he had set the glass aside. “Tell me.”
He did. Not the presentation he had planned, with its careful interweaving of truth and half-truth and insinuation, designed to manipulate the Patriarch into making the decision he required. Something in the Holy Father’s manner inspired him to do otherwise. Maybe it was the fae, communicating between them on levels Damien could hardly sense. Or maybe simply human instinct, which said that the Holy Father was ready to hear—and deserved to be told—the truth.
He told it all. The Holy Father interrupted once or twice, to request that a point be clarified, but otherwise he offered no response. His expression gave no hint of either sympathy or hostility, or of any wariness on his part. Any of the things that Damien might have expected.
“The end result,” he concluded—and he took a deep breath to steady himself—“is that I must request permission to leave my duties here in order to go east. A leave of absence, your Holiness. I believe that the situation merits it.”
For a long time the Patriarch looked at him, clear blue eyes taking the measure of his soul. Or so it seemed. At last he said, “If I refuse you?”
Damien stiffened. “This isn’t merely a personal concern. If these demons are able to leave the rakhlands—”
“Answer the question, please.”
He met those eyes—so hard, so cold—and answered in the only way possible. Though it tore him apart inside to do it. “I swore an oath, your Holiness. To give the Prophet’s dream precedence over my own life. To serve the patterns which he declared were necessary . . . including the hierarchy of my Church. If you’re asking me if I understand my duty, that’s my answer. If you mean to use this situation to test me. . . .” He felt his hands tighten on the chair’s wooden arms, forced them to relax. Forced the anger out of his voice. It is his right. In some ways, his duty. “Please don’t. I implore you. As a man, and as your servant.”
For a long time the Patriarch was silent. Damien met his gaze for as long as he could, but at last turned away. He felt helpless, not being able to Work the fae to his advantage. Doubly helpless—because the Patriarch, just by existing, did.
“Come,” the Holy Father said at last. He stood. “I want to show you something.”
He led Damien through the western wing in silence, the whispering of his hem against the smooth mosaic floors the only sound to accompany their footsteps down the long, vaulted corridors. Soon they came to a heavily barred door, whose steel lock was inscribed with passages from the Book of Law. A thick tapestry ribbon depended from the ceiling, and this the Patriarch pulled. They waited. Soon, hurried footsteps could be heard coming from down the hall, and the tinkling of metal upon metal. A priest appeared, still shuffling through the key ring that depended from a gold chain around his neck. He bowed his obeisance to the Patriarch even as he managed to single out the key he wanted. Damien turned toward his Holiness—and saw a similar key cradled in his hand, its grip made of fine gold filigree, fragments of bloodstone set in a spiral pattern.
Together, synchronized, they unlocked the heavy door. The Patriarch nodded for Damien to pass through, then took down a lamp that hung by the threshold and followed. The door was then shut behind them and locked.
“This way,” he said.
Down stairs. Into the depths of the building, into the very foundation of the structure—into the earth itself—until they were far enough beneath Erna’s surface that the earth-fae grew thin and feeble. Damien cautiously worked a Seeing, could barely see it clinging to the rock that surrounded them. Curiously—or perhaps ominously—there was no dark fae present. There should have been in such a place, this far beneath the prayers that safeguarded Church property. Was there some sort of Warding here? Or . . . something else?
At last they came to another door, with a single keyhole. A sigil was inscribed in the aged woo
d, and Damien thought, A ward? Is that possible? The floor creaked as they approached, and Damien heard machinery shift behind the walls; an alarm system of some kind. He imagined a thief being trapped in this place; it wasn’t a pretty picture.
The Patriarch touched the engraved sign with reverence, then carefully unlocked the door. Despite its weight, he pulled it open without assistance—
—and power washed over them like a tidal wave, tamed fae in such concentration that it was impossible not to feel it, even without a Working; impossible not to see it, a light that glistened like molten gold sprayed into the air, a fine mist of luminescence that glittered like the stars of the outer Core, making the flame of the Patriarch’s lamp seem dull and dark by comparison.
“Relics of the Holy War,” he said quietly. He set the lamp on a table by the door and stepped aside, nodding for Damien to enter. “Take a look. See, if you need to.”
He did so. Carefully. Despite the relative lack of earth-fae underground, his vision burst into full being the moment he Worked it. And suddenly he could barely see the objects that surrounded him, so bright was their power; the intensity of it brought tears to his eyes. After a moment he was forced to desist, and let the Working fade. The world returned—very slowly—to normal.
“Light was, of course, their primary weapon. Their tool of invasion. There are other things bound into each item here . . . but always light. They thought they could conquer the Forest with it.” The Patriarch reached out to the wall beside him, fingered the edge of a rotting tapestry. “Sometimes, I think, that’s what was responsible for our defeat. When we play by the rules of the enemy, we inherit his weaknesses.
“Go ahead,” he urged. “Look around.”
The chamber was large, its high, vaulted ceiling more reminiscent of the cathedral that towered high above it than the rough stone tunnels which led to its entrance. Niches had been carved into the walls and sealed with glass; the more delicate relics had been protected thus, safe from the moisture that might otherwise damage them. Most of these were mere fragments—a scrap of cloth, a few golden threads, a bit of rusted metal—but power poured forth from all of them equally, as if the fae that had been bound to them in the days of their use was unaffected by their material state. On the walls, warded shields bore mute witness to the desperate fervor of those days, in which priests served as sorcerors and soldiers simultaneously—and eventually, as martyrs. For the Forest had triumphed. The creatures which humanity had given birth to in its violent years had accumulated far more power than a single army of sorceror-priests could hope to conjure.
At the far end of the room, in a gilt-edged case, a crystal flask filled with golden liquid glowed richly with internal light. The Patriarch walked to it, gestured for Damien to follow. “Solar fae,” he explained. “Bound well enough to survive even in this place, where no sun ever shines. No single adept could have managed it; only the prayer of thousands has that kind of power. Imagine a time when that kind of unity was possible. . . .” His voice trailed off into silence, but Damien continued the thought: When our dream was that close to completion. When consummation of our Purpose was still within sight.
Then the Patriarch reached out and opened the case, and lifted the flask up from its velveteen bed. “They bound it to water. Such a simple substance . . . they reasoned that since all living things consume water, and ultimately incorporate it into their physical being, this would be the perfect tool of invasion.” He held it up so that the crystalline facets caught the lamplight, reflecting it back in a thousand scintillating fragments. “In here is all the power of sunlight. All the force of that heavenly warmth. Whatever it is in the solar fae that weakens night’s power, this fluid contains it. If a thing runs from light, this will hurt it. If it can’t bear the heat of life, this will burn it. All this . . . bound to the most common substance on Erna.” He turned the flask slowly, watched the light revolve around it. “They meant to seed the Forest with it. They meant to give it to the ground and let every living thing that took root there suck it up for nourishment. In time, it would have infected the entire ecosystem. In time, it might have defeated even that great Darkness.”
When he fell silent, Damien asked, “So what happened?”
The Patriarch bit his lip, considering the flask. And shrugged, wearily. “Who knows? No one ever returned from that expedition. In the battle that followed, our armies were slaughtered. The tide of the War turned against us.” He looked at the priest, his eyes feline-green in the golden light. “God alone knows what happened to the rest of it. This is all that remains.”
He turned the flask gently, and shards of light coursed the room. Eyes still fixed on it, he said quietly, “Your Order wasn’t founded to provide nursemaids for fledgling sorcerors, Reverend Vryce. It exists because violent times sometimes require violent acts. And because a single man can sometimes succeed where an army of men might fail.”
He lowered the cover of the case and set the flask on top of it. From the pocket of his robe he drew out a square of cloth—white silk, thickly woven—and this he wrapped about the precious bottle, until the light that came from it was no longer visible.
He held it out to Damien. And waited. The priest hesitated. Finally the Patriarch took his hand and placed the silken package in it. Not until Damien had folded his fingers securely over it did the Holy Father let go.
A faint hint of a smile crossed his face. “I thought you might have some need of this, where you’re going.”
Then he looked about the room, at the tattered remnants of his faith, and shook his head sadly.
“May you have better luck than its creators,” he whispered.
Fourteen
It was a chill, bleak morning when the last of the bags were finally packed and secured onto the horses. In the distance, stormclouds threatened; Senzei glanced at them uneasily and muttered the key to a Knowing, making sure that nothing had changed since his Divining that morning. But no, it still appeared that the worst of the storm would pass them by. And the rest of it—they had all agreed—was not worth delaying for.
“We should make Briand well before sunset,” Damien said. “As for whether we choose to put up there, or push on after nightfall. . . .” He looked up at Ciani for a response. But although she was feeling somewhat better—almost in high spirits, compared to her previous state—she wasn’t about to bear the weight of such a decision.
And rightfully so, he reminded himself. She’s forgotten the very things that make such decisions important. Like what kind of creatures are out there, in the night.
We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
Her appearance had changed. They had changed it. Not with the fae, but by simple cosmetic art. Looking at her now, Damien was pleased by their efforts. They had bleached her hair to a golden blonde and added an olive tint to her skin. Between the features which she had redrawn and the deep hollows that her suffering had added to her face, she looked as unlike her former self as was reasonably possible. Bulkier clothing and heeled boots had altered her size and stance as well, and Damien was reasonably sure that no one—not even her tormentors—would recognize her now. But just in case, he had added an Obscuring. To cover all bases.
The Canopy will probably cancel it out. But until then, every little bit helps.
Senzei was reading off the last few items on their checklist, crossing each off as he verified that it had indeed been packed. Anything of vital importance was with one of the three travelers; additional items—and duplicates—were secured to one of the three extra horses the small group was taking with them. The checklist was four pages long, in small print; Damien wondered what they had managed to forget, despite it. Senzei had accused him of packing everything but the kitchen sink. (Did we forget that? he’d asked), but Damien had learned from experience that it was better to pack too much than too little for a journey such as this. There’d be time enough later to strip down their outfits, and they could always sell off the extra horses and supplies if
they needed to. He had been on too many journeys in which a missing item or a disabled horse had ground the whole expedition to a halt. When they needed to travel light, they would; until then, they were prepared for anything.
At last Senzei looked up. His eyes met Damien’s, and the priest thought he saw a flicker of pain in them. He’d been unusually quiet ever since they started packing—quiet and morose. Was it trouble with Allesha, perhaps? Damien didn’t know the man well enough to draw him out on it, much less to help him cope, but he knew from experience just how hard it was to establish a relationship that could weather such a departure. He’d never quite gotten the hang of it himself.
“That’s it,” Senzei told him. “It’s all here. We’re ready.”
Damien looked out into the early morning light—gray mists gathering to the north, stormclouds heavy and black in the east, western horizon still veiled in night’s darkness—and muttered, “All right. Let’s get moving.”
The sooner we get where we’re going, the sooner those bastards die.
In the foothills of the Worldsend Mountains, a figure stood very still. She had been still like that for hours since the call had first come to her. Since her sleep had first been disturbed by human sorcery, in a manner unprecedented among her kind.
For hours now, she had studied the currents. She had watched as the ripples birthed by that alien call had dashed themselves against the stolid earth-fae of the mountains. Had watched while that alien message was absorbed into the fae-tides of early morning, to course outward again in delicately altered patterns. From such patterns, she could read much of the sorceror who had sent that call, and why he did so. She could also read what other patterns were moving to converge with his, and how her own presence might alter that balance. The situation was complicated. The danger was real. And as for traveling with humans . . . she shuddered.