There’s no going back, Senzei thought grimly. And this is the only way forward.
As if in answer to his thoughts, Damien slid from his mount’s back, to stand on the pebbled ground. He fumbled for a moment among the horse’s several packs, withdrew one, and strapped it to his own shoulder. And looked toward his companions. His expression was dark but determined, and in it Senzei read his absolute certainty that somehow, with or without a horse beside him, he was going to get himself up to that ridge. Were they with him? Senzei looked at Ciani, felt his heart lurch as he saw the determination in her eyes—and recognized its source. Not courage, or even resolution; she simply had nothing left to lose.
They dismounted. Tarrant had packed few special possessions for the journey, but his horse had been carrying a share of the camping equipment for the party; Damien removed those bags which were the most important and, without a word, shouldered them as well. Ciani’s horse reared back as it felt her weight leave its back—but a sharp word from Tarrant, that carried above the roar of the water, made it shudder into submission.
Leading the horses, they walked with care, blinking constantly against the force of the spray. They felt their way across the narrow bit of solid ground by touch even more than by sight. The roar of the water was like thunder, an utter cacophony that made speech impossible, thinking nearly so. Somehow, Senzei managed to keep his feet. Ciani stumbled once, but he managed to reach out and grab her by the arm, holding her steady until she managed to get her feet back under her. It amazed him that the horses were still with them, though the animals were clearly unhappy about their destination. Maybe Tarrant had helped with that, somehow; gods knew, they needed all the help they could get.
At last they were at the base of the cliff wall, as near as they could get to the break itself without swimming. Senzei saw Damien point upward, but he couldn’t make out what the priest was pointing at. Blindly, he followed. Stumbling up an incline made slippery by water and algae, trying to guide his mount to safe footing when he could scarcely find it himself. He could feel panic building in the animal, powerful enough to affect the fae and manifest before him: a cloud of equine fear that engulfed him as he tried to move forward, driving spears of animal terror into his own flesh. He stumbled, felt his ankle twist and nearly slide out from under him. Desperately, he tried to Work—there was solid ground under him, therefore there must be earth-fae accessible—and he managed the ghost of a Banishing, barely enough to dissipate the fear directly before him, not enough to keep its fringes from affecting the rest of his party. Not good enough. Gritting his teeth against the tides of fear that were rising within him—his own and the animal’s, and gods alone knew who else‘s—he threw all his will into his Working, every last bit of power that he could possibly manifest. And the dank cloud of terror wavered, thinned, and dispersed at last into the mist.
Exhausted, he climbed. And somehow managed to get both himself and the frightened horse up to the top of the incline, to a narrow ledge of rock that looked over the Achron. Damien grasped him by the arm and helped him along—was the man ever bothered by anything? —and then the spray was behind him, the thunder dimming to a mere roar, and smooth, solid ground was underfoot once more. He tightened his hand about his horse’s reins—and then doubled over and retched, helplessly, as though that might somehow cast the fear and the exhaustion out of him.
When he finally straightened up again he found his companions with him, as soaked and exhausted as he was but yes, every one of them had made it. Even the horses. He saw Damien strap his pack back onto his mount’s back, and managed weakly to grin in acknowledgment. They had made it. The worst part was over. This worst part, anyway.
Tarrant took some minutes to soothe the last of their mounts’ fears—perhaps blinding the animals to the dangers of their path, perhaps merely numbing their emotional response—and Ciani seemed as grateful for the break as Senzei was. She wrung the water from her hair and tried not to look down at the river beneath them. There, mere yards below their feet, the glassy current had already begun to froth, as if anticipating the drop soon to come.
Senzei looked out over the seething waterfall, toward the Serpent. He could see nothing but clouds—white clouds, silver clouds—rising like steam from the water’s surface. And perhaps, ever so elusive, sparks of liquid illusion that shimmered in the air like sea-spray. The Canopy. This close?
He turned back and found Damien watching him. When the priest saw that he was all right, the concern in his eyes gave way to wry humor; the grimace of tension softened to a smile.
“Welcome to the rakhlands,” he told him.
The Achron had carved its meandering path through the rakhlands over the course of eons, and now was seated in a twisting, steep-walled canyon, whose eroded strata made for narrow ledges that flanked the water like roads. They followed one, single file, until at last it widened to a more hospitable proportion. Then, when they could move about without the constant fear of falling into the swift current beneath them, they finally stopped to catch their breath. Ciani was pale, and her body shook as she lowered herself to sit on the ground, legs unsteady beneath her. Senzei felt little better. Even the tireless Damien Vryce looked exhausted, wrung out by hours of fighting the cold waves and the treacherous rocks, and the fears that had crowded about them like specters ever since nightfall.
“That,” he gasped, “was one hell of a climb.”
“We should build a fire,” Ciani said.
“Dry out,” Senzei agreed.
“Find shelter,” Tarrant said quietly—and something in his tone drew their attention to him, so that their eyes followed his up the rock wall beside them, to a point some twenty yards above their heads.
“We’re being watched?” Damien whispered tensely.
The Hunter shook his head. “Not now. But the trace is there.” He narrowed his eyes in concentration, then murmured, “The same trace. But old.”
“How old?” Damien demanded.
“One day. Maybe two. I would guess it was part of the same watch system that spotted us when we landed; perhaps even the same individual, riding from one post to another. The impression is very similar.”
“But not identifiable?” Damien pressed.
The Hunter looked at him. His expression was unreadable.
“Not human,” he said quietly. “Isn’t that enough?”
Damien stared up at the sheer wall and cursed softly. “They set the watch right here,” he muttered darkly. “It’s the first place any traveler could rest in safety, after getting to the canyon.”
“Our enemy chose his vantage points well,” the Hunter agreed. “I only wish. . . .”
His voice trailed off into darkness.
“What?” the priest demanded.
Tarrant seemed to hesitate. “In another place, I might . . . but not here. Not with the fae this weak.”
“See, you mean?”
“That, too. I meant reconnaissance. But the point is moot,” he said quickly, waving short Damien’s response. “I can’t do it. And certainly none of you can.”
“I can’t make it much further,” Ciani whispered.
“And neither can the horses,” Tarrant agreed. “I’ve been supplementing their strength up until now . . . but my own has its limits, as you know.” And he looked at Damien—very strangely, Senzei thought—as if reminding him of some secret knowledge that the two of them alone shared.
“We’ll camp as soon as we can,” the priest told them.
Somehow, they managed to get to their feet. Managed to move again, though all their flesh screamed in protest of further exertion. As they progressed, the walls of the canyon grew closer overhead, the river deeper. Mica glistened erratically in the stratified rock, like spirits trying to manifest upon its surface. Already the moons had dropped low enough that no light shone directly into the canyon; the lanterns they had lit might banish mere darkness, but it was hardly enough to dispel the dark fae that was slowly gathering about them. Once Sen
zei thought he saw a face begin to form on a glistening outcropping of rock—but he quickly muttered the key to a Banishing, and the face disappeared. Once or twice he heard Damien whisper a word that might been meant to key a Working, and his stomach lurched in fear as he envisioned what manner of things might manifest in such a place as this. He even thought he heard a whisper of Working from Ciani—but that just said how frightened he was, how potentially irrational. How could Ciani be Working? Only Tarrant was silent, clearly at peace with the night and its darkness. And why not? Half the things that might hunger for their life, that might take on familiar form to gain access to their blood and their vitality, were kin to him. What did he have to fear?
As if in answer, Tarrant reigned up his horse. Peering, and then pointing, into the darkness ahead.
“There’s shelter, of sorts.” He looked up at the cliff wall that towered over them, as if searching for something. A hint of daylight? “The sun will be up soon.”
Damien peered ahead into the darkness ahead of them, saw nothing. “Your eyes are better than mine, Hunter.”
“That goes without saying.” He pointed slightly ahead and to the left. “That crevice, there.”
Squinting into the darkness, Senzei could barely make out the form of a cleft in the rock. It was narrow, but passable, and might open into a larger space within.
“You think it’s safe?” he asked.
“I think nothing here is safe,” he said shortly. “But to continue onward in your current condition avails us nothing—except greater risk. Our enemy is waiting for us. The sun is about to rise. And I, for one, have no intention of confronting either at this time. You may do as you will.”
He dismounted and walked toward the opening. His horse was either too well-trained or too numb from exhaustion to do anything other than stand there and wait for him; he made no attempt to secure it. Senzei watched with growing despair as Tarrant approached the dark crevice, studied it, and then slipped within. It was as if he could feel the jaws of a trap closing about them, the eyes of an unseen watcher fixed on their backs as they went about securing shelter, hordes of unseen warrior-creatures awaiting only a word to strike ... he shivered, from cold and misgivings both, and wrapped his arms tightly around himself. As if that could somehow still the tide of fear inside him.
Think rationally, Zen. Like the enemy does. They knew where we would stop to rest—but they weren’t there when we arrived, were they? They don’t know that we have to travel only at night, therefore they can’t second-guess our schedule. And they also don’t know that we need an absolute shelter from the sun, that a cavern would draw us in like honey in an insect trap. . . . The words sounded good, but they did little to quell the fear inside him.
Suddenly a snarl sounded from beyond the cavern’s mouth, followed by a wild, bestial howling that made his skin crawl in horror. He saw Damien start forward, then stop himself, forcibly. The priest’s expression was grim. The howling rose in pitch, a war cry of pain and terror and territorial urges—all cut short, suddenly. Sucked up into the utter silence of the night.
Tarrant reappeared. Brushing lightly at one shoulder, he dislodged a bit of cave-dirt that had stuck to his clothing. “Shelter enough for one day,” he announced—and it might have been Senzei’s imagination, but it seemed there was a glint of red about his teeth as he spoke.
“Unoccupied?” Damien asked.
Tarrant’s eyes glistened coldly. “It is now. You may help yourself to . . . dinner, if you like. There’s meat for it.” And he added, with an ominous smile, “I’ve already dined.”
They stared at him for a moment, all three of them. No one more anxious than any other to see what manner of place he had found for them, or what manner of carrion it now harborerd.
Then: “What the hells,” Ciani muttered. She slid from her horse’s back, and somehow managed to stand steadily despite the obvious weakness in her legs. Gods, they were all near collapse.
“As long as it’s dry,” she said.
There was something going on between them, Damien decided—something happening between Ciani and Gerald Tarrant that he didn’t like at all. He couldn’t quite identify what it was—but it was there, without doubt. Like a channel had been established between them. He could almost See it.
As they made their preparations for the day’s encampment, he kept half an eye on each of them. Tarrant explored the back recesses of the narrow cavern, making certain there were no hidden dangers there—and Ciani accompanied him. Tarrant took it upon himself in the last hour of relative darkness to see that the horses were rubbed dry and calmed, and tethered within reach of edible brush—and Ciani, who had little experience with such duties, went to help him. Damien was aware of whispers passing between them, things more felt than heard: a subvocal purring of conspiracy, of coalition. But what purpose could it possibly serve? Without knowing, he told himself, he had no right to interfere. Ciani had every reason to be curious about the adept, and if Tarrant was answering her questions, the more power to her. And if that was all it was, Damien had no right to interfere. But what if it wasn’t? Did Ciani really understand how dangerous the Hunter was—how utterly corrupt a soul must be, to sink from the Prophet’s heights to such a murdering, parasitic existence? The thought of prolonged contact between the two of them made Damien’s stomach turn, and he watched them carefully. Trying to stay within hearing distance. Hoping for any excuse he might reasonably use to keep her away from their deadly companion.
The cavern which Tarrant had found them—little more than a cleft in the cliff wall, six feet wide at its broadest point and considerably less than that as it angled back into the stratified rock—had clearly been occupied, and for some time. It reeked of generations of animal occupancy: the oils of mating, the exudations of birth, the pungent spray of territorial markings. Not to mention the carrion that Tarrant had provided, a tangle of bloody fur and moist meat that still stank of animal terror. But it was dry and safe, and the floor was layered in insulting dirt, and at this point that was all any of them wanted. They unpacked their bedrolls along its length, rendered Tarrant’s kill down for its edible portions and threw the rest into the Achron, and laid their wet clothing—which was most of what they owned—out on the ledge by the cavern’s mouth, to be dried by the rising sun. Watches were scheduled. A minimal fire was kindled. The cave’s former occupant became a satisfying, if somewhat gamy, repast. And they waited for the sun to rise, knowing that only for a few hours would it shine directly down into the gorge which the Achron’s current had scoured into the land—waiting to see what manner of place they had come to, what patterns of promise and danger the light of day might reveal.
Once, when his watch had ended, Damien made his way to the rear of the cavern, where Tarrant had isolated himself, to see how the adept was doing. A slab of rock that had fallen from the ceiling in some past earthquake concealed the back recesses of their shelter from immediate view; when he made his way past it, he found that a wall of coldfire had been erected in the lightless recess. Utterly frigid. Utterly impassable.
“Well, fine,” he muttered. “Just fine.”
And then—hoping the Hunter could hear him—he added, “I trust you, too.”
The land through which the Achron coursed was a rich, three-dimensional tapestry of geological history, whose cross-section had been revealed by the cutting action of the river’s progress. From a layer of granite through which the water coursed, up through layers of black basalt and alluvial sediment and compressed volcanic ash, it was possible to read the history of this region in the patterns that decorated the cliff walls—volcanic eruption and glacial invasion and always, as elsewhere, the violent geo-signatures of earthquakes. Where the narrow strata had once comprised an ordered map of geo-history, it had now been split by successive upheavals into a jagged mosaic that lined the walls of the gorge like some immense, grotesquely abstract artwork. Winds had grooved the junctures of strata, widened fissures, and eroded away the underpinning of
various out-croppings, so that ragged columns and angular arches loomed overhead, a giant surreal sculpture that had been abandoned to the elements. Vegetation had taken root wherever it could, but for the most part the upper reaches of the walls were utterly lifeless: a bit of lichen, a patch of coarse grass, perhaps a few dried roots to mark the place where a desperate tree had once tried to grasp hold. No more than that. Unclimbable, at any rate. Which meant that they were doomed to traverse the river’s bed until some variation in the canyon’s structure allowed them to ascend to the rich lands surrounding it.
At sunset they moved again, Senzei concluding the last watch of the day as they urged their horses back onto the narrow path. There was still no sight of the watcher, or any other attempt at surveillance. Damien was beginning to think that maybe something positive might be read into that. Maybe whoever had seen them land was merely an independent observer who had chanced upon the spot, with no lasting interest in what became of them, no dangerous allies to mobilize—
Right. Damned likely. Dream on, priest.
They rode. The horses were clearly less than thrilled about their chosen road, but a good day’s rest in a relatively dry place—not to mention fresh food and water—had given them back something of their accustomed spirit. Damien had little trouble convincing his mount to lead the way along the narrow ledge, and the struggles of the previous night receded into hazy memory as the rhythm of travel engulfed them all.
When Casca’s three-quarter face cleared the western wall, they stopped for a short while. In the shadow of the grotesque natural sculptures they nibbled at bits of meat and cake and discussed, in guarded murmurs, the possibility of finding a way out of the canyon in the nights to come. Tarrant took out his maps again and located several points of possible egress: tributary junctions in the Achron’s course, which might or might not involve some variation in the canyon’s structure. He seemed to feel that the odds were good—and since it was the first real optimism the man had expressed about this journey, Damien found it doubly comforting. For once, things seemed to be going their way.