“Did you track him with the fae?”
Damien’s face darkened in irritation. “Of course. And we found a trail leading to the edge of the forest. That ended there. Abruptly. As if—” He hesitated.
“Something had erased it,” the Hunter supplied.
Damien felt something cold stir inside him, that was half fear and half anger. “Possibly.”
“Did you search for him? Bodily?”
It was Ciani who spoke. “As much as we dared.” Hearing the tremor in her voice, Damien took her hand and squeezed it. Her flesh was nearly as cold as his own. He explained, “It meant dividing the party so that one of us would be alone. Or leaving the camp unguarded. We didn’t dare—”
“No,” the Hunter said shortly. “Because if something had waylaid Mer Reese for the express purpose of rendering you vulnerable, you would be playing right into its hands.” He glanced at the party’s mounts—packed and dressed and ready to go—and at the campsite, already scrubbed clean of any sign of human habitation. “Did you find—”
“Nothing,” Ciani whispered. She lowered her head. “No sign of him beyond that which led to the edge of the camp. No trail.”
“We could hardly scour the woods at random,” Damien said.
“You did exactly what you should have done, and—more important—you avoided doing those things which might have gotten you killed.” The silver eyes fixed on Damien and seemed to bore into him. “To feel any guilt over the matter—”
“That’s my business,” the priest said harshly. “And if I want to feel lousy because a friend of mine might have been in danger—dying, possibly—while I had to sit here and twiddle my thumbs until night fell ... you just stay out of it, all right? That’s part of being human.”
The breeze had shifted direction, bringing a gust of cold toward them from the east. Tarrant blinked a few times, as if something in the chill air had caught in his eyes. “As you wish,” he said quietly. “As for the trail, or lack thereof . . .” He turned to the rakh-woman. “Did you search with them?”
Her lips parted slightly, displaying sharpened teeth. “I packed the camp,” she told him.
“She hasn’t tracked in the woods before,” Damien said. “I asked. She wouldn’t know the kind of sign—”
“Maybe not. But there are senses which atrophied in humankind that may still function among the rakh. And if our enemy doesn’t yet know that a nonhuman travels with us, he might not have allowed for them.”
“You mean, that a trail might still exist for her.”
“Precisely. His attempts to obscure—”
He coughed suddenly, and brought his hand up to his mouth in unconscious reflex, to mask the rasping sound. Such behavior was so uncharacteristic for him that no one said anything, merely watched as he breathed once, heavily, as though testing the air. And then coughed again. When at last it seemed that the spasm had ended, he lowered his hand from his mouth and seemed about to speak. And then he looked down at his hand, and all speech left him. What little color he had faded into white—the hue of fragile vellum, of corpses. It made Damien’s blood run cold.
“Gerald?” It was Ciani. “What is it?”
Silently he opened his hand, and turned it so they could see. Moonlight illuminated a smear of deep carmine. Blood. His.
“Something’s very wrong,” he whispered. He looked up, and out into the night. His manner reminded Damien of a hunting dog, testing the air for a scent of its prey. Or perhaps of a deer, seeking the smell of predators.
At last he turned to the priest. His eyes were bloodshot, their pupils shrunk to mere pinpoints. His face was flushed, as if from fever. Or sunburn?
In a voice that was tense, he asked, “Where’s the Fire?”
It took Damien a moment to realize what he was asking, and why. When he did so, he reached to the pouch at his side and hefted it slightly in answer. But the weight that should have been in it wasn’t. He fumbled with the catch, finally got the small pouch open. The crystal vial was still intact, and it glowed with reassuring light—but the silver flask, its companion, was gone.
Gone.
He looked up at the Hunter. The man had one hand raised, while the other was shielding his eyes. It was clear that he was Working—or trying to. His breathing was labored, and obviously painful. After a moment, the wind shifted direction. After several moments, it held.
The Hunter lowered his hand from before his eyes—they were red, a terrible red, like balls of congealed blood—and asked, in a hoarse whisper, “Is it possible that Mer Reese would betray you?”
“Never!” Ciani cried, and Damien muttered, “No. Not that.”
“Are you sure?” He looked at each of them in turn, fixing them with his bloodshot gaze. “So very sure? What if our enemy offered him what he wanted most of all—an adept’s vision, in return for one simple betrayal of trust? Wouldn’t that tempt him?”
Damien shook his head—but something in him tightened, something cold and uncertain. “Tempt him, maybe. Seduce him, no. Not Senzei.” His voice was firm, as if he was trying to convince not only Tarrant but himself. Was he? “Not like that.”
Ciani offered, “He might have gone off alone if he thought there was something he could do that way, to help—”
“He didn’t have that kind of courage,” the Hunter said harshly.
“He had courage enough to put his life on the line for a friend,” Damien said sharply. “That counts in my book.”
“Can you find him?” Ciani asked. “Can you use the Fire?”
He turned his eyes on her; already the redness was receding, but he was still a terrible sight. “I can’t, in any form, shape, or manner, use the Fire. But we do have a direction in which to search, now.” He looked eastward, toward the source of the Fire-laden breeze. “With that, and Hesseth’s senses, we may succeed in picking up his trail.” He looked at the rakh-woman; she nodded. “Only one thing worries me—”
“That the wind was no accident,” Damien supplied.
He looked at him sharply. “You felt that?”
Damien shook his head. “Call it good guesswork.”
“There’s the touch of a foreign hand on the weather patterns. Fleeting, evasive . . . and the Fire burns too brightly. I can’t read its origin. But it’s a good bet that someone—or something—wants us to go after him.”
The priest walked to where his horse was tethered and patted it once on the neck. He removed the springbolt from its pack, and pulled back on it hard, to load. “Then we go armed,” he said. “And we go damned carefully. Right?”
For once, they all agreed.
They found him in a small clearing perhaps a mile from the camp. Hesseth had picked out the smell of death and led them toward it, so they already knew what they might find. Nevertheless it was a shock to see him lying there—lifeless, so utterly, obviously lifeless—that for a moment no one could say anything, only stare at the corpse of their companion in terrible, mute silence, as the magnitude of the loss only slowly hit home.
Senzei was dead. And he had not died easily; that much was clear from the condition of his corpse. His mouth was open, as if in a scream. The eyes were wide, and rolled up into his head so that the pupils—mere pinpoints, hardly visible—lay at their upper edge, against the lid. Every muscle of his body was rigid, as if death had merely frozen him in his suffering; his muscles stood out like gnarled ropes along his neck, wrists, and face, giving his skin the striated texture of a mummy. His body was arched back in the manner of corpses left in the sun to dry, and his fingers were splayed apart in a grotesque mockery of a Working-sign.
“He died in terror,” the Hunter told them. “Or perhaps, of terror.”
Damien approached. Behind him, he heard the soft scrunch of grass as Ciani did the same. She went to the body. He went to the place some feet distant from it, where a single glint of silver in the moonlight hinted at an even more terrible loss.
It was there, lying on a bed of browning leaves. The silver f
lask, unstoppered. Open. Empty. There was still a faint shimmer about the ground where it had fallen, but the light was so dim compared to the Fire itself that it was clear the thirsty earth had drawn the water down, deep down, where no simple act of man might retrieve it. What little had remained for the air to claim had been carried to them on the wind, and was now dissipated. The Fire was gone.
He picked up the emptied container, and its metal was cold to the touch. Almost as cold as his flesh. Inside him was a bleak and terrible emptiness, as if all the accustomed warmth of his soul had deserted him. Sorrow took its place. And in its wake, shame.
He turned back to the body. Ciani was kneeling by its side, clasping Senzei’s hand in hers as though somehow the contact could bring him back to life. But the emptiness in her eyes told a different story.
“He’s gone,” she whispered. Her voice, shaking, was barely audible. Her hands tightened about Senzei’s. “I did . . . I can’t . . .” She looked up at him; her eyes were wet with tears. “For me,” she whispered. “He died because of me.”
“He did what he felt he had to.” The words of comfort came automatically, dredged up from some distant storehouse of priestly wisdom. “That’s all any of us can do, Cee. You can’t blame yourself.”
“The Fire’s gone?” It was the Hunter.
He shut his eyes, felt the shame rising again. Damn you, Tarrant. Damn you. “Yes,” he said quietly. “The Fire’s gone.” He looked at Ciani, felt a wetness on his cheeks to match her own. “We’ll bury him,” he said softly.
It was the Hunter who responded. “There’s no soul here to do honor to—surely we all know that. To waste time administering to empty flesh—”
“Burial isn’t for the dead.” He looked up at Tarrant, found the man’s eyes and skin already healing. He wondered if the wounds in his own soul would heal as fast. “It’s for the living,” he whispered. “Part of the healing.”
“Even so, we can‘t—”
“Hunter!” He could feel the coldness come into his own gaze, like ice, could hear it in his voice. “You don’t understand. You can’t understand. That part of you’s been dead for so long you couldn’t remember it if you tried. And you don’t want it back,” he whispered hoarsely. “You willed it to die. All right. You succeeded. The living have their needs. You have yours. So just go, and leave us alone. Stand guard if you want—or go kill something if it makes you happy. Anything. Just leave. You have no place here.”
Tarrant’s expression was unreadable—and for once, Damien had no desire for insight. Then he turned, and with a swirl of his cloak disappeared into the deepening shadows. The depths of the forest hid him from sight.
A soft noise from Hesseth caused him to look in her direction. The rakh-woman had taken out a small shovel from among their camping supplies, and was offering it to him. Wordlessly, he took it. And began to dig.
And he prayed: Forgive me, God. Forgive me, for my human weaknesses. Forgive me, for my failure to rise above the distractions of day-to-day life, and keep my spirit fixed on Your higher ideals. Forgive me, that in that moment of shock I forgot Your most important lesson: that a lost object might be replaced, a lost work recreated, a lost battle rejoined . . . but a human life, once lost, can never be restored. Forgive me, that I forgot that primal truth. Forgive me that when I came here my first thought was for the Fire—a mere object!—and not for the loss of a human life, or the sorrow of the living.
He dug his blade deep into the chill earth, pressed onto it with a booted foot to drive it even deeper.
And help me to forgive myself, he pleaded.
Thirty-five
Gerald Tarrant thought: It has to be here. Somewhere.
Beneath his wings the vast expanse of the eastern divide rippled with the currents of fae pouring over rocks: brilliant blue earth-power, the rainbow flicker of tidal forces, strands of vibrant purple that licked forth from the deepest shadows as if testing the air for sunlight. To the east of him the sky was already lightening, midnight black and navy blue giving way to a sullen gray, first harbinger of the dawn. He should be in hiding by now. He should have found some place deep beneath the earth and already be settling himself into it. So that the powers that hid from sunlight might wrap him in their soothing chill, and renew his failing strength.
But not yet. Another few minutes, another few miles. It must be here, somewhere. . . .
In the east, slowly, deep gray gave way to a sickly green; he winced as the light burned his feathers but kept on flying. He had chosen a white form, and that should protect him for a while; nothing short of direct sunlight would make it past that reflective coat. Nevertheless, his eyes felt hot and tender, and his talons throbbed painfully in time with each wingbeat. Time to land, soon. Time to take shelter. How many minutes left till sunrise? He was cutting it damned close, that was certain.
Taking chances, Hunter! Not like you.
Hell. This whole damned trip isn’t like you.
With careful eyes he scanned the ground beneath him, searching for ... what? What shape would the Lost Ones’ caverns take, that would be reflected in the currents above? What kind of sign would there be, and would he know how to read it? Most important of all—would he find such a sign before the sun’s hateful light drove him underground once more, so that he might return to his companions with some measure of hope?
Damn them all, he thought darkly. And: Damn the fate that brought me to this place.
He would be hard put to say exactly what drove him to continue, as dawn’s increasing light made each wingstroke harder to manage, each rational thought that much harder to muster. He had already found two caverns that would have been more than adequate shelter for the coming day, but had entered neither of them. Instead he had turned toward the north and begun to search for some sign of the Lost Ones, some gesture of hope that he might bring back to his grieving party. And even while he searched, it irritated him that he cared enough to bother. Cared enough to risk the pain of sunlight in service to their cause. That was dangerous. That was human. But the feeling was there, too strong to ignore. Not born of sympathy, however, but of anger.
My failure, he thought grimly, recalling Senzei’s body. It wasn’t the man’s death that bothered him so much; that life was as valueless as any other, and in another place and time he might have snuffed it out himself, with no more passing thought than one gave to the squashing of an insect. No—what bothered him was simply the fact that he, Gerald Tarrant, had been bested. Tricked. His own Working had been turned against him, without him even sensing it. That burned him, more than Domina’s light and the coming dawn combined.
You’re going to die, my enemy, and not pleasantly. I promise you that.
He searched the land with an adept’s eye, reading the currents that coursed beneath him. It was no hard task to locate mere caverns; the eddies that formed above them made them as visible as rocks in running water, and he easily assigned to each a location, size, and probable shape. But he was looking for something different this time. A smoother flow, perhaps, or staccato burst of turbulence; something that would indicate a cave-but-not-cave, an underground structure that rakh, not nature, had created.
And then, just as the sky turned a forbidding gold at its lower edge—just as he knew that he must take shelter immediately, with or without reaching his goal—he saw it. His attention fixed wholly on the ground ahead of him, he banked to a lower altitude. And studied the area closely. Yes. There.
A unique pattern of earth-fae marked the western slope of the mountain beneath him, a succession of whorls and eddies too uniform to be wholly natural. The ground above tunnels might look like that, if the tunnels were uniform enough. He looked about, saw other slopes with the same pattern; the whole area must be riddled with tunnels. He fought the urge to explore further and dropped down to the earth, seeking shelter. His muscles burned from the light of dawn; overhead, the stars of the Rim were already fading from sight. He searched the ground about him quickly, looking for som
e sign of the enemy’s presence; there was none. At last, satisfied that he was safe—for the moment—he let the current take him. Let his flesh dissolve, so that no more than his faith remained to maintain the spark of his life. It was terrifying, never ceased to be terrifying, not in all the years he had practiced it. And it was made no easier by the rakhland’s currents, which were barely strong enough to support a simple Working, much less one of such vital complexity. But one did what one had to, in the name of survival. There was no other option.
The changing drained him of the last of his strength, and because the humans weren’t present he allowed himself to be drained, to take a precious second and indulge in the sheer exhaustion of it. He had been growing weaker nightly, forced to rely upon primitive rakh and sometimes even more primitive animals for his sustenance. If the fae had to come from within him instead of being garnered from without, he would have been forced to stop Working long ago. The humans had no idea how much this trip was draining him—and they damned well weren’t going to find out, either. It wasn’t that he was afraid, exactly. Certainly not of that brash, swaggering fool of a priest. It was more a question of . . . pride. Stubbornness. And of course, self-defense.
Fat lot of good that’ll do you if you stay outside past dawn.
He searched for the patterns of earth-fae that would indicate some sort of entrance. This was where the tunnels began, so didn’t it stand to reason that there was some kind of opening here? He searched for long minutes, using all his skill and all his strength, and at last he found it. Barely in time. Already the rising sun had cast its first blazing spears across the sky, to light up the western peaks in warning. Even that much reflected light was enough to burn him, and he felt his exposed skin redden and peel as he tore away the tangled brush that hid the entrance to the rakhene tunnels. Barely in time, he crept inside. And worked his way to where a large protruding rock cast shadows of true darkness beyond. There he rested, while dawn slowly claimed the valley he had just left, and the mouth of the tunnel behind him.