“I’m sorry, Mes.” He breathed the words, as though somehow her presence demanded silence. “I didn’t see you coming, was all. Can I ... can I help you?”
She looked out across the Serpent, as if searching for something. After a few seconds her gaze fixed on a distant point, and she extended her arm toward it. A question; a command.
He looked over his shoulder, toward where she was pointing. And laughed, somewhat nervously. “Morgot? Lady, that’s out.” The fingers of her glove were split, he noticed; thin curving claws, like those of a cat, gleamed in the slits. “That’s upstraits, crosscurrent . . . and bad luck, besides. You want that crossing, ferry over to Kale. They’ll take you, sure enough—if the price is right.”
She reached into a fold of fabric at her hip, brought out a small purse.
“Lady, it isn’t money. I value my neck. You understand? That’s a rough crossing. And I’m a coward.”
Slowly, she lowered her arm. And waited. He was about to speak again when he saw something move, up by the start of the pier. Not a person, this time. A . . . a. . . .
Gods of Earth n‘ Erna. A xandu?
It was horse-sized, and roughly horse-shaped, but there the similarity ended. Thick fur gleamed along its limbs, tufting thickly about its five-toed feet. It was pearl-gray, for the most part, but a mane of thick white hair adorned its chest and shoulders, and small white tufts marked the points of its ears. Its head was slender and pointed, its large eyes positioned in a manner that could have served it as predator or prey. And its horns . . . he had to fight not to reach out and touch them, not to put his hands on their cool, rainbow length and know for a fact that, yes, they were real. The creature was real. A true xandu, which mankind thought had been Worked into extinction, so many years ago. . . .
He looked at the woman—dark, her eyes were so dark, you could see neither iris nor white in them, only pupil—and said, in a voice that shook slightly, “You’ll trade him? I’ll take you, for that. Take you over. There’ll be mounts there, you understand? You can buy a mount on Morgot. I mean, you know where to get a xandu, right? So it’s not like I’d be taking anything you couldn’t replace.” He was fighting to speak coherently, while greed and wonder conspired within to rob him of speech. “I mean . . . I’d take the risk, for that.”
She looked at him—and at the xandu—and then back at him. Assessing. After a moment, she moved her head slightly. He thought it was a nod.
“We can go right now if you want.” He started to prepare to cast off, loosening the ropes he had only so recently tied. “It’s pretty safe, out on the water. Unless you’d rather wait for sunlight—”
Silently she stepped to the edge of the pier, her soft leather boots making no sound. For a moment he was close enough to see her face in detail—and it seemed that the golden surface was not skin, but close-lying fur. He shivered. Then she was past him, stepping into the boat. Tobi looked to where the xandu was waiting—and found it already beside him, ready to board. After a moment he stepped aside and let it do so.
Heart pounding—head spinning with thoughts of fame and wealth soon to come—he freed his boat from its mooring posts and set sail for the northern caldera.
Nineteen
Five days and nights now, in safety. Five daes that protected them from unknown demon-hunters—and from decisions.
Damien dreamed. At first only misty images, vignettes of dread mingled with bits of memory: a fear-mosaic. Then the dreams began to gain substance, and definition. Night after night he played the same saga out: their journey, their arrival, their final confrontation. And night after night, in every variation, he watched his companions die. And died himself, at the hands of a creature who squeezed the memories from him like pulpy juice from an overripe fruit, then cast the rind aside.
Again and again. With no hope of success. Because what they had wasn’t enough. They lacked the numbers they needed, and the knowledge. They lacked the power.
Evil is what you make of it, the Prophet had written. Bind it to a higher Purpose, and you will have altered its nature. And: We use what tools we must.
Damien wondered if—and how—Gerald Tarrant could be bound.
The port called Kale was as unlike Jaggonath as any place could possibly be. The city’s plan was a veritable maze of narrow, twisting streets, flanked by houses that had been hurriedly built and, for the most part, poorly maintained. Rich and poor were quartered side by side, laborers’ hovels leaning against the thick stone walls of a rich merchant’s estate—barbed iron spikes adorning the top, to discourage the curiosity of strangers—which was flanked in turn by the mildewed shells of workhouses, the miserly confines of tenement flats, the iron-clad husks of massive storage sheds. The streets themselves might once have been paved with stones, and occasionally a flat slab of shallite—deep green, or slate gray, or midnight black—would peek out from beneath the layers of mud and debris and animal droppings which seemed to coat everything in sight. The whole place smelled: of damp, of dung, of decay. But there was commerce here, enough to support thousands. And where trade flourished, humankind inevitably congregated.
They arrived shortly before dusk and wasted the next hour getting themselves thoroughly lost. As the sun sank slowly behind mildewed walls, the maze of streets became stiflingly close. At last Senzei grabbed hold of a passing youngster—a mud-caked ten-year-old who clearly had more time on his hands than he knew what to do with—and offered him a few coins to serve as guide. The boy glanced once at the darkening western sky, as if to point out the danger involved in taking on business at such a late hour—but when no more money was offered he coughed and nodded, and led them through the maze of tangled streets to a somewhat more promising sector.
The breeze shifted, coming in from over the straits: salt air, sharp with promise. Here, the River Stekkis emptied its fresh water and its mud into that precious conduit which connected Erna’s great oceans, dividing the human lands in two. Here, just beyond the whitewaters of Naigra Falls (named for a similar formation on Ancient Earth, or so it was said), goods from along the river were weighed and measured and packaged and assessed and taxed, to be shipped to the hundred-and-some-odd cities that flanked the length of the Serpent Straits. Golden figurines from Iyama rested in sealed crates, next to precious spices from Hade and spring wine from Merentha County. And traveling merchants gathered in lamplit taverns, drinking Kale beer with one hand while they outlined the financial future of nations with the other.
“Let’s get rooms and food,” Damien said. “And secure our things. After that . . . I think we need to take a good look around.”
Five days of travel along the trade roads of the east had come to an end at last—and not a moment too soon, for Damien’s taste. Five endless days spent covering the miles one by one, nights spent cowering in the daes like timid ground-skerrels that went to burrow at dusk, lest something that called the night its home should snatch them up. Five days of hiding from Tarrant, too—although they used other terms for that strategy—by making sure that each dae understood there was something out there desperate to get in, so that none would dare to open their doors. Was that necessary? Was it circumspect? Damien was no longer sure.
“He might not mean us any harm,” Ciani had said.
How could they be certain of that?
Kale. Damien breathed in its rich scents with relief, his heart pounding with newfound exhiliration. The miles before this had been necessary, but tedious. A road devoid of choices. Now . . . they could begin to plan in earnest. Could begin to weave the net that would eventually draw in their enemies, and free Ciani.
Her assailants would have come through here. Might even still be in the city. They might take this opportunity to feed, feeling themselves safe in such a murky, anonymous place. In that case . . . good. The battle could take place here, on human ground, and no one need ever go on to the rakhlands. Oh, the three of them might decide to go anyway, after it was all over—but that would be a choice, not a necessity. T
hey might choose to explore the lands that mankind had abandoned, as Ciani had once tried to do. Who knew what secrets might be waiting for them, in the shadow of the Worldsend Mountains?
Then he thought of Ciani, and her vulnerability, and he muttered, “We don’t leave her alone.” Senzei nodded and moved closer to Ciani. “Not until we know for a fact that those things aren’t here in town.”
“You want me to Divine that?” Senzei asked.
He thought about it. “Dinner first. Let’s find ourselves rooms and settle the horses. Then.”
By then it would be night. The demon/adept Tarrant (which was he? Damien wondered. Was it possible to be both?) had said that the creatures were best tracked at night. They’d give it a shot and see if he was right. One try. It would be worth the risk. Wouldn’t it?
We’ll have to face the night soon enough, anyway, he thought dryly. There are no top-rank hotels in the rakhlands.
(Even as he thought that, he imagined Ciani’s voice—always tender, always teasing—as she challenged him, How do we know that?)
They took rooms in a cliffside inn that had gargoyles over every doorway—not Worked, Damien noted, but ugly enough to drive away any demon with aesthetic sensibilities—and crude iron grilles over the windows, twisted into some sort of sigil-sign. Again, not Worked. There was an absence of Working all over the city, Senzei pointed out, which was doubly jarring after the proliferation of wards in Jaggonath and the daes.
More like home, Damien thought. It was oddly comforting.
They ate. Strange shapes culled from the sea, inundated with local spices. Spongy tendrils of flesh in cream sauce, suckers sliced into delicate rings and fried, something small and spiderlike with its head and legs intact: pull the limbs of these little guys yourself, the menu urged. Kale was proud of its seafood.
And afterward, for dessert, a sense of anticipation so keen that the three could almost taste it. Mere sweets were bland by comparison, and one by one the travelers pushed them aside.
“It’s time,” Damien muttered. “Let’s go.”
They had chosen this particular hostel because of one very special facility: it had a flat, easily accessible roof. For a small bribe—“call it a damage deposit,” the manager had said—Damien had obtained the key. Now, in the darkening night, with only a few remaining stars and a single moon to light the sky, they let themselves out of the inn’s smoky confines, into the chill of evening.
The earth-fae would be weak up here—but that was good, Senzei had insisted. Good that the taint of the Forest would be thus diluted before he tried to Work it. Damien looked at his companion, saw the fear in his eyes. The excitement. He’s in his element, the priest thought. At last.
Damien loosened his sword in his scabbard—and then, as an afterthought, drew it free. There was no telling what manner of creature such a Working might call to them, or how quickly it might come. He made sure Ciani was safely on the other side of him before he nodded to Senzei: Yes. Go ahead.
The dark-haired Worker took a deep breath, steadied himself—and then began to weave a Seeing.
Power. A vast, unending seascape of power—swirls and eddies and cresting waves of it, earth-fae so fluid and deep that it laps up against the sides of the inn, and dashes a spray of limitless potential into the air before his eyes. Magnificent! For a moment Senzei can do no more than stare at it, drinking in the Sight. So much of it! So . . . raw. Chaotic. Potent. He considers the sterile city, its wardless walls and unWorked gates, and shakes his head in amazement. How can such a thing be? How can this kind of power exist, without men coming here to tame it? The city should be full of sorcerors—should cater to sorcerors—should be renowned among the faewise, as a focal point of power. So why isn’t it? What is there that his eyes can’t See, which has kept that from happening?
He opens himself up to the power, welcomes its wildness into the core of him. Not slowly, as he had meant to do. Not cautiously, as he knows it should be done. Joyfully—exuberantly—his soul’s barriers thrown wide open, the core of his being laid bare. And the fae pours into him. An ecstasy more intense than any sex suffuses his limbs: the taste of true power. Here, in this place, he might do anything. Do they want information? It is there for the Knowing, Do they need protection? Here, he might craft a Warding that would endure for ages. Had he envied the adepts of Jaggonath? For all their vision, they had never tasted this! He shivers in pleasure and awe as the power flows through him—wild power, wholly undisciplined, fae that lacks only his command to give it substance and purpose.
This is living, he thinks. This is what I was meant for!
In the far north, across the Serpent’s waist, a midnight sun is rising. Black sphere against ebony blackness, jet-pure; a thing that can only be Felt, not Seen. Into it all the light of the world is sucked, all the colors and textures that the fae contains: into the crystalline blackness, the Anti-Sun. He stares at it in adoration and horror and thinks: There, where all the power is concentrated, like matter in a black hole . . . there is the power we need for this quest. Power to shake the rakhlands and make our kill and move the earth besides!
And one thing is as certain as the night sky above him, the broad disk of Domina looming overhead: he alone can channel this power, can make it serve their purpose. Who else? Certainly not Ciani, whose skill was excised from her. Nor Damien, whose priestly Workings are too entangled with intellect, with questions of morality and correctness and Revivalist philosophy . . . no, of all of them only he can master this terrible force and make it serve their will.
It seems to Senzei that his life was spent preparing for this, making him ready for this single moment. He reaches out toward the source of the power—meaning to take it, to shape it, to let it shape him—but something grabs at him from behind, forcing him back. He struggles against it wildly, like an animal caught in a net. There, in the distance—there is freedom, there is power! He feels himself forced back one step, then another—and his soul screams out in anguish, as he is forced farther and farther away from the blackening dawn. Farther away from the only thing that can give him the power he hungers for, the only thing that can give him peace. The fae surges forward about him, mindless of his suffering; he grabs wildly at the rising tide, tries to link himself to it so that it will carry him with it, toward that point of Power . . . but something is in his way, something that drives the breath from his body in a sudden burst of pain, until he reels from the force of it and falls—his head striking hard against the ground, or is it the roof?—his senses caving in one by one as the ebony sun fades, the whole of his Vision fades. . . .
Light. Real light. Moonlight, falling across the tarpaper roof. Senzei moaned, turning away from it. Searching for shadows. Anywhere.
Then, slowly, other things came into focus. People. Ciani’s beloved face, contorted with worry. Damien’s eyes, blazing with . . . what? His head ached; he couldn’t read it. His stomach ached, too, with a throbbing hurt that spoke of real bodily damage. He put a hand to his abdomen and winced. Tender, very tender.
“What . . . what happened?”
“You tried to walk off the roof,” Damien said quietly. “Ciani tried to stop you. I helped as soon as I could.” A brief nod indicated the deep purple fluid on his blade, the dark shapes that lay huddled and bleeding on all sides of them. Pain pounded in Senzei’s temples. “I’ve never seen anything manifest so fast,” Damien said. There was an odd tone in his voice which Senzei couldn’t identify. “Or in such quantity. You all right?”
He looked out over the roof’s low edge toward the north. Toward where the earth-fae still flowed, now invisible to his unWorked senses. Moisture gathered in the corners of his eyes; he blinked it free, felt it work its way slowly down his face.
“Yes,” he whispered. “I think so. It was. . . .” He shivered. “Incredible.”
“Untamable, more likely. We should have known that. Should have guessed it when we saw the town.” Damien took out a handkerchief and wiped his sword clean. “I
think it’s safe to say that now we know why there are so few Workings in Kale, yes? We’ll have to avoid that angle ourselves—at least until we get out of range of that.” He nodded toward the north as he resheathed his sword. Then he offered his hand to Senzei. “Can you stand?”
After a moment, he nodded. It took several tries, but at last the two of them managed to get him to his feet. He felt as though his limbs were made of gel, barely able to support him.
“It would have drawn you in,” the priest said quietly. A question.
Senzei hesitated. Considered it. “Yes. I think. I wanted to go to it. I wanted for it . . . to devour me. So I could be part of it. You . . . you can’t know.” He choked on the words, and a sense of terrible loss filled him. And fear. He could do no more than mutely shake his head. “Thank you. Thank you.”
“Come on.” It was Ciani, slipping underneath one arm to help him walk. “Let’s get inside. We can talk about it later.”
“An adept,” Senzei muttered. “Can you imagine? To live with that vision, endlessly . . . one would drown in it. . . .”
“Which is why there are no adepts in Kale,” Damien reminded him. “Remember your notes?”
Unless there is now, Senzei thought. Unless Tarrant followed us.
At the door that led into the building, Damien paused. He looked out over the tarpaper expanse of the roof’s surface, at the dozen or so newborn demonlings that were slowly bleeding out their substance in the moonlight.
“Damn it,” he muttered. “It’ll cost us good money to have this cleaned up.”
Always practical, Senzei thought dryly. Who else would care?