“You hunger,” Tarrant commanded. Chanting the words: a mantra of possession. “For memory. For life. For fragments of the past, which you draw from the souls of others. The hunger is constant, all-consuming. It torments you. It strengthens you. It drives you to feed—and gives you the power to do so.” In his voice was promise, commiseration, a dark seduction that went beyond mere recitation of demonic qualities. How much of his own nature was he drawing on in order to establish this rapport? As he reached down to touch Ciani, to lay one slender hand over her heart, it struck Senzei for the first time just how like their enemy he was. The Hunter and Ciani’s tormentor might feed on different emotions, but they both served the same dark Pattern.
When Tarrant touched her, Ciani cried out—and then was suddenly still, so much so that Senzei feared for her. For a moment she lay like one dead, so utterly unmoving that Senzei found himself searching in vain for any sign of breathing, any tremor of a heartbeat. There was none. Then she trembled, and her eyes shot open. Black, utterly black, with no sign of iris or white. Pits of emptiness, which anything might fill.
“Who are you?” the Hunter demanded.
In a voice that was Ciani’s but not Ciani’s, she answered, “Essistat sa-Lema. Tehirra sa-Steyat. Ciani sa-Faraday. Others.” A ghastly sound escaped her lips, that might have been intended as laughter. “I don’t remember all the names.”
Tarrant looked up at Hesseth, who nodded shortly. Rakh names, the gesture indicated. For once, the khrast-woman seemed as tense as the human company.
The Hunter turned his attention back to Ciani. “Where are you?” he asked.
Again the ghostly laugh—then, in a cryptic tone, “Night’s turf. Hunter’s den. The basement of storms.”
“Where?” Tarrant pressed.
The thing that was Ciani shut her eyes. “In darkness,” she whispered at last. “Beneath the House of Storms.”
“In the earth?”
“No. Yes.”
“In caverns? Tunnels? Man-made structures?”
Her eyes shot open, fixed on him. “Rakh-made,” she corrected fiercely. “Where the Lost Ones dwelled until we drove them out. We fed on their memories, too—but those were narrow things, all tunnels and hunger and brainless mating. Not like the memories of the other rakh.” She closed her eyes, and a shudder passed through her frame; strangely sexual, like the first shiver of orgasm. “Not like with the humans,” she whispered. “Nothing like that.”
Again Tarrant glanced at Hesseth, and this time he mouthed the words. Lost Ones? Her brief nod sufficed to indicate that she knew the reference, would be willing to explain it later. Or so Senzei hoped.
Tarrant returned his attention to Ciani. The black depths of her eyes gleamed like obsidian as she watched him.
“Do you fear?” he asked her.
“Fear?”
“As the rakh do. As humans do.”
“Fear? As in ‘for my life’? No. Why should I?”
“You feel safe.”
“I am safe.”
“Protected,” the Hunter probed.
“Yes.”
“Efficiently.”
The empty eyes opened; a hint of violet light stirred in their depths. “Without question.”
“How?”
She seemed to hesitate. “Lema protects. The Keeper shields.”
“Against what?” When there was no answer, he pressed, “Against the rakh?”
“The humans,” she whispered. “They’re coming for us. That’s what Lema said. They’re coming, with a Fire that can burn away the night. Can burn us.”
“But you’re not afraid.”
“No.” The voice was a hiss. “Lema protects. The Keeper is thorough. Even now—”
She hesitated. Gasped suddenly, as if in pain. Tarrant said quickly, “It took a lot of planning.”
“Not much,” she answered. Her body seem to sag into the ground, as if in relief, and her voice was strong once more. Senzei sensed that some barrier had been not overcome, nor destroyed, but somehow sidestepped. “Only a misKnowing. The rest is up to us.”
Senzei saw something flicker in Tarrant’s eyes, too subtle and too quick for him to identify. Fear? Surprise?
“A misKnowing?” he whispered.
“Yes. The demon said that would be best. To turn their own Workings against them. To let them feel confident in their knowledge, while all the while they were walking into a trap. That’s the only way to take an adept, Calesta says. Trick them, using their own vision.”
For a moment, there was silence. Shadows of forms began to shiver into existence about the Hunter’s body, bits of misgivings seeping out from his soul, given shape by the night. A death-mask. A spear. A drop of fire. In another time and place such images might have gained real substance, but his hungry nature swallowed them up again as quickly as they were formed. Only a brief afterimage remained, black against black in the night.
“Tell me,” he whispered tightly. “The misKnowing. What is it?”
Ciani seemed about to speak, then hesitated.
“Tell me.”
She gasped soundlessly, like a fish out of water. Seemed incapable of making the words come.
He reached forward and grasped her by the upper arms; his power flowed into her like a torrent, purple fae marked with his hunger, his purpose. “Tell me!” he demanded. She tried to resist, tried to pull away—and then cried out, as the cold power wrapped itself around her soul. Senzei saw Damien start forward, then force himself back. Because she might die if he interfered. Only because of that. But there was murder in his eyes.
“Tell me,” the Hunter commanded—and Senzei could feel him using the dark fae to squeeze the information out of her, like juice from a pulped fruit.
“Sansha Crater!” she gasped. There were tears running down her face, and she was shaking violently in his grip. Information began to pour out as if it had a life of its own, words and concepts struggling to get free. “The humans’ Knowings will lead them there in search of us. They’ll believe that our stronghold is there, beneath the House of Storms. Most important, he will believe it—their adept—because Calesta took the image from his mind. When he looked at his maps and said this is where the enemy will be, the Hungry One noted it. And the Keeper will let them think that he was right, warp his Knowings to serve that end . . . and the adept’s own Workings will lead them into ambush.”
For a moment Tarrant was still, and utterly silent. The look in his eyes was terrible—shame and fury and blind, raw hatred, intermingled with even less pleasant emotions that Senzei didn’t dare identify—but Ciani, or whatever manner of creature now inhabited her body, seemed oblivious to it. Had his own word not bound him to protect her, Senzei was pretty sure the Hunter would have struck out at the body before him, Working the dark fae so that it would transmit the damage to Ciani’s possessor; but he was bound, and by his own will, and so his rage went unexpressed.
“Where is the House of Storms?” he hissed. Dark purple tendrils swirled about his rage, dissolved into the night. “Where is your people’s stronghold?” When she didn’t answer him his eyes narrowed coldly, and she gasped; Senzei could see the last of her resistance crumble.
“On the point of power,” she whispered. “Where the earth-fae flows in torrents, hungry for taming. Where the plates sing in pain as they crush the power out. Where the Keeper—”
Ciani’s body went rigid. She mouthed a few words, soundlessly—and then a spasm of pain racked her body, traveling from head to foot like a wave. “No!” she cried out—Ciani’s voice, Ciani’s pain. She pulled against her bonds with a force that almost dragged the tent pegs from the earth. “Gerald!” But the adept did nothing to help her.
“Stop it!” Damien hissed. He started forward—and then forced himself to halt, though his fists were clenched in fury. To interrupt this Working is to give her soul to the enemy. “Stop it, damn you! She can’t take any more!” As if in answer to him, blood trickled from Ciani’s mouth. And Tarrant
did move, at last. He put his hands to the sides of her face—and she tried to bite him, wild as a wounded animal—but he grasped her firmly and held her head back against the earth, while her body struggled against its bonds. Fixing his eyes on hers, pinioning her to the ground by the power of his gaze. A power that Senzei could see, a vivid purple that vibrated with the force of his hatred.
“Let go,” he whispered fiercely. “This is not your flesh, not your place. Obey me!” She struggled in his grasp—helplessly, like an infant. Blood poured down her cheek and smeared on his hand, deep purple in the fae-light. It dripped to the ground. He took no notice of it. “Obey me,” he whispered. And the power that flowed from him was so bright, so blinding, that Senzei had to turn away.
For a brief moment, the whole of Ciani’s body went rigid; her bonds creaked as she strained against them. Then, suddenly, all the strength went out of her. She lay on the bloodied earth like a shattered doll, her intermittent gasping for breath the only sign of her survival. After a moment, Tarrant released her. Her eyes—now human, heavily bloodshot—shut. She shivered, as if from cold.
“Take out the Fire,” the Hunter said quietly to Damien.
“You’re sure—”
“Take it out!”
He stood as the priest complied with his command, and put a few hurried steps between himself and the rest of the party. Nevertheless, he was clearly loath to go too far from Ciani; he remained close enough that when the Fire was uncovered its light burned a swath across his face that blistered an angry red as he watched her.
For a moment, Senzei could see nothing: the Fire’s light was brilliant, blinding. He felt his Seeing fade, knew that it would be long minutes before he could conjure such vision again. But there was no need for it. The dark fae was gone, consumed in an instant by the force of that Church-spawned blaze. And with it, whatever remnants of the night’s power that had clung to Ciani. She whimpered softly as Damien went to her, clung to him as he severed her bonds and gathered her up in his arms, the light of the Fire pressed into her back.
“She’ll be all right,” the Hunter promised. “Keep the Fire out until Casca rises. No. Until the sun comes up. She’ll be safe, once she’s exposed to true sunlight; neither his power nor mine can cling to her then.”
“But if you—” Damien began.
“You’ll have to function without me,” he said sharply. “There are several things that want looking into, and I can handle them best alone.”
“Not to mention the Fire,” Damien said queitly.
Tarrant turned toward him, slowly, and let him watch as the sanctified light spread across his features. The skin of his face and hands reddened, tightened, began to peel—but his cold eyes gazed steadily at Damien, and there was no hint in his manner of any pain or hesitancy.
“Don’t underestimate me,” he warned. Blood pooled in the corner of one eye, and he blinked it free; it traveled down the side of his face like a tear. Still he did not turn away, nor shield himself from the Fire’s light. “Don’t ever underestimate me.”
“I’m sorry,” Damien said at last.
“You should be,” he agreed. And he bowed to Ciani—a minimal gesture, hurried but graceful. “It’s vital that you don’t discuss what happened here tonight—any of it—until the sun rises. Otherwise your attacker might learn . . . too much. Lady?”
She whispered it. “I understand.”
He stepped—and was gone, more quickly than the eye could follow. Reddened flesh fading into blackness, burnt skin swallowed up by darkness. Salved, by the true night’s special power.
“The Fire didn’t hurt him,” Senzei whispered, “Not like it should have.”
“Of course it hurt him,” Damien said sharply. “And it would have killed him if he’d stayed here long enough.”
“But he didn’t seem—”
“No, he didn’t, did he? And what gets to me is that he would have stayed there, endured the pain—till the Fire fried him to a crisp, if that’s what it took. Just to prove a point.”
He drew in a ragged breath, and closed his arms tightly about Ciani.
“That’s what makes him so vulking dangerous,” he muttered.
Rain fell. Not the gentle rain of days before, a chill but tolerable mist that wet the land without truly soaking it, but a downpour that swept in from the East, borne on winds that had coursed over thousands of miles of open sea, scooping up foam and spray and converting them into thick, black storm clouds. If Casca rose, they never saw it. Water fell in sheets, interspersed with bits of hail and clumps of crystal, as if it couldn’t decide what form it wanted to take—but it was all cold, and dark, and drenching.
They huddled inside the rakhene tent, thick hides stretched across hollow poles to form a cone-shaped shelter. The women, that was. Senzei and Damien stayed outside long enough to fashion a primitive shelter for their animals. Already the real horses were straining at their tethers, and the xandu, unbound, milled nervously about the campsite as if they were beginning to regret their faebound allegiance to the rakh-woman and her companions. But the two men managed to find a granite overhang near the camp, and jam enough branches into a crevice above it that when soaking leaves were stuffed in between them they stayed in place. The downpour became a trickle within the shelter, a turbulent sheet at its edge. Good enough, Damien indicated. They led the drenched animals inside, the light of the Fire casting harsh shadows across jagged granite walls, and saw that they were safely settled there before returning to the camp.
Tarrant, perhaps predictably, did not return. Damien muttered something about him not wanting to get his hair wet, which Senzei assumed was facetious. The men wrung out their clothing as well as they could, exchanging their soaked cloth for cold but dryer garments. In the tent’s narrow interior comfort was difficult, privacy impossible—but four warm living bodies in that narrow space slowly warmed it until the air was tolerable, and by the time dawn came at last Senzei discovered that he had fallen asleep sometime in that interminable darkness.
Dawn. They assumed it came, because the sky grew slowly lighter. But the sun was hidden by deep gray storm clouds, and its light was filtered through sheets of rain. Several times Senzei saw Damien hunch over toward the tent’s small opening, studying the sky with narrowed eyes. Waiting for sunlight to break through the cloudcover. Because until Ciani was exposed to the sun’s cleansing power, none of them dared talk about what they had seen, or heard, or feared in the night. Nor could they make plans.
It was the longest day they had ever spent together.
Toward sunset, a break came at last. A glimmer of light in the distance, that broke up the downpour into a thousand glittering jewels. A break in the clouds that showed first the sun, then the Core. White light commingled with gold warmed the frozen land slowly, and broke up the rain into a fine silver mist. Soon a patch of clear sky passed overhead, and then another; nevertheless, it was many long hours before Ciani could stand in the full light of day, shivering in pain as the solar fae burned the last vestiges of true night’s Working from her flesh.
Gerald Tarrant returned at sunset. By then they had reclaimed their mounts—the animals were skittish and hungry, but otherwise unharmed by the downpour—and found enough dry twigs beneath the tent, and in other places, to kindle a feeble fire. The four of them sat about it, silent, while Tarrant reestablished his wards. Guarding against eavesdroppers, Senzei guessed. At last he seemed satisfied, and lowered himself to a place by the fire. His hair, Senzei noted, was not only dry but perfectly groomed.
“I had hoped for several more nights of travel before certain decisions were necessary,” he told the group. “We need more information than we have, and I’d hoped to find it in Lema. But I think it’s clear we’ve run out of time. Our enemy has anticipated us, and the result is that we nearly walked right into his hands. So we have to decide a few things here and now—what we’re doing, and how we mean to do it—so that we can set everything in motion now, before our enemy realizes that
we’re on to him.”
“Without knowing the land we’re traveling to?” Senzei asked.
“One doesn’t win a war by letting one’s enemy write the rules. And he’s trying to do just that. We need to plan—quickly, and thoroughly. Otherwise we may as well march into Sansha Crater and deliver the lady to him ourselves.”
“What are the chances he’s aware of what you did last night?” Damien asked.
Tarrant hesitated. “In a general sense, that’s unavoidable. No sorceror could miss it. In a specific sense . . . I was very, very careful. And the dark fae is my element, remember; its manipulation is as natural to me as breathing is to you. If he investigates the matter, he’ll discover that we tried to use the link between Ciani and himself to facilitate a direct assault. And failed. Not that information flowed in the opposite direction, toward us.” He turned to the rakh-woman. “There are some facts we need, before we make any decisions. He mentioned some names that were unfamiliar to me. They may be crucial. And you seemed to recognize them.”
“The Lost Ones.”
“And Calesta.”
She shook her head. “That name is unfamiliar to me. But the Lost Ones . . . that’s a rakhene term for a tribe of our people that disappeared back in the years of the Changing. You understand, we had no language then, and our form was still unstable; each generation differed from the last, making social continuity nearly impossible. We have only oral records from those times, and even those are uncertain. Bear that in mind as I speak.
“The rakh who came here—the ones who survived the Worldsend crossing—spread out across the land, each group establishing its own territory. They weren’t even tribes then, more like . . . extended families. Many settled in the plains because that land was so hospitable. Others went south, into the swamplands. Or east. Our ancestors were territorial creatures, who needed their own space as much as your people need food and water; it was humanity’s intrusion into our lands in the first place that caused—” She drew herself up sharply, inhaled through gritted teeth. “That’s dead and gone, now. Our people spread out. They changed. We gained language. Sophistication. Civilization. Eventually the plains rakh began to travel, to see what our world had become, and learn more of yours—thus the khrast tradition—and slowly, warily, the scattered tribes made contact once again. We discovered two things: that even though man’s Impression still dictated our general evolution, we had adapted to our chosen lands. The rakh who hunt for sustenance in the southern swamplands bear little resemblance to my people, or any other tribe; in some cases the differences are so great as to preclude intermating, implying—according to your science—that we have become several species.