“There will be no food,” he agreed. “Come,” He waved back the mildewed crowd, giving them room to move. Just in time, Damien reflected; the air had become nearly unbreathable. He kept a protective arm about Ciani as they fell in behind him, and a close eye on Hesseth.
“I gather you got the upper hand,” Ciani murmured to him, as they were led from the common chamber. “I don’t suppose you’d care to explain what that last little bit was about?”
He glanced back toward the vast cavern, towards its ornamented wells, and shivered. “Don’t ask,” he muttered. “Not till we’re out of here, at least.” Don’t ever ask, he pleaded silently.
And he remembered the polished bones that he had seen on the cavern wall, remnants of the Lost Ones’ meat-animals applied to decoration. Much as a man might make a rug from the hide of his kill, he thought, or hang its head on the wall. There had been hundreds of bones in that place, all of them smooth and gleaming, some of them carved in intricate patterns . . . and among them at least one hand, nearly human-sized, that was not from a beast. He remembered the fingers of that one—remembered them very clearly—slender bones with rakhene claws at the tip. The retractable talons of the plains-rakh, without doubt. Glued to the wall like some grizzly trophy, a momento of past feasts relished.
He hoped with all his heart that Hesseth hadn’t seen it. He wished with all his heart that he hadn’t, either.
“I didn’t think their food would agree with us,” he muttered.
Darkness. Closeness. The chill of stone, close about them. Packed earth, at their backs. In a sleeping-crevice so narrow that the three of them were forced to huddle together, like a family of Lost Ones might have done. It was not uncomforting, under the circumstances. But it was a bad position to be in, should they be attacked.
Damien cradled the clear vial of Fire against his chest, and let its light drive back the dark fae that even now was trying to reach them. As soon as the cave-rakh had left them, that dark force had begun to manifest their fears, with the result that several amorphous shapes were now lying in sliced-up bits around the party. But that was before. The golden light of the Fire was enough to keep it at bay, and Damien meant to keep it out until the Lost Ones returned to them. After one-sleep, they had said. Whatever the hell that meant.
Beside him, cradled against his chest, Ciani moaned softly, trapped in the grip of some nightmare. He nudged her gently, hoping to urge her out of the dream state without quite awakening her. On his other side Hesseth slept fitfully, deep growls and animal hisses punctuating the soft, whistling snore that counterpointed her slumber. And he . . . he needed sleep desperately, but didn’t dare succumb to it. There was too much here that was unknown—too much that was dangerous. If the Lost Ones considered their cousins to be food-animals, what would they make of the humans, who were even more unlike them? He was acutely aware of the stone shelf close overhead, of his inability to swing a sword without first climbing down from the sleeping-crevice. But to take up guard elsewhere meant that either he or his companions must be without the Firelight, and that was simply unacceptable; the dark fae was too responsive, their fearful imaginations too fertile. They would be overwhelmed in moments. So the best he could do for them was to remain where he was and doze as he had in the Dividers: mere moments of sleep, quickly claimed and quickly abandoned. Mere moments of darkness, punctuating long hours of alertness
Too many hours. Too long a vigil. But who could say how long the night took to pass, in a place where the whole world was darkness?
“There it is.”
They stood upon a ridge of naked granite which the wind had scrubbed clean of snow, and tried to adjust to the harsh morning light. In the distance, barely visible to the naked eye, the House of Storms rose from the ground like some sharp, malignant growth. All about it the land had been flattened, a no-man’s waste of barren ground that made their enemy’s tower all the more visible by contrast. Whatever defenses their enemy might value, invisibility was clearly not one of them.
“Don’t Work,” Damien warned Ciani. “Whatever you do, don’t Work to see it. Or for any other reason.” Not knowing how much she remembered—or, more accurately, how little—he explained, “Any channel we establish can be used against us, no matter what its purpose. We’re too close now to chance that.”
“And it would let him know we’ve arrived?”
“If he doesn’t already know,” he said grimly.
“What’s the chance of that?” Hesseth asked.
“Hard to say. We’ve had nothing happen since Tarrant’s death, to further thin the ranks of our party . . . but that could just mean that he considers us sufficiently weakened already.”
“Or that his attention’s fixed on the simulacra instead.”
He hesitated. All his gut instinct warned him not to bank his hopes on that one deception—never count on anything you can’t See yourself, his master had cautioned him—but to deny Ciani such a small hope now was little less than cruelty. “Let’s hope so,” he muttered. And he raised the small farseer to his eye.
The fortress seemed to leap toward him: slowly he coaxed it into focus. And drew in his breath sharply as its bizarre design gradually became clear.
“Damien?”
“No windows,” he muttered. “No windows at all.” But even those words couldn’t capture the oddity of it. The utterly alien quality of its design. “He’s a paranoid bastard, that’s for sure.”
What rose up from the distant ground was a polished obelisk of native stone, whose slick surface betrayed no hint of doorway, viewport, or any structural joining. It was as if it had not been raised up from the earth, but rather carved from the mountainside itself. A massive sculpture of cold, unliving stone that required no petty adornments—such as entrances or windows—to proclaim its purpose. He studied its surface for many long minutes, and had to bite back on his urge to Work his sight further. That would be too dangerous. He sought mortar lines, the thin shadows of juncture, any hint that mere mortals might have erected that eerie sculpture, but there were none. Not a single crack in the polished surface, that might serve as handhold to an invader. Not even a tiny viewport, through which weapons or gas might enter. Or an agile invader, he thought. Fear of attack was written across every inch of the structure.
“Utterly defensive,” he muttered. “To say the least.” He handed the farseer to Ciani, heard her gasp as she brought the strange edifice into focus. For a moment he looked at her, concerned; was it possible that old memories were surfacing, this close to her tormentor’s fortress? Her hands shook slightly as she held the farseer, and she drew in a long, ragged breath as she stared through it. But no, that was impossible. Her memories weren’t buried, but wholly absent. Taken from her. And if he made the same mistake Senzei had—of confusing absence with suppression—he might well be courting a similar fate.
“Cee?”
“I’m all right. It’s just that it’s so . . .” She fumbled for an adjective, shivering. “That’s it, isn’t it? Where we’re going.”
“That, or somewhere beneath it.” He took the farseer back from her and handed it to Hesseth. Who looked it over with catlike curiosity before finally raising it to her eye to look through it.
Naked stone, polished to an ice-slick surface. A six-sided tower that rose up from the earth like a basalt column, as though Erna herself had vomited it up from the volcanic depths of her core. A structure that widened as it rose so that the walls were forced outward, doubly discouraging anyone who might try to scale it.
It was structurally impossible, plain and simple. Earthquakes might not strike here, but the sun still shone and the seasons still progressed, as in any normal place. And any mass that huge, that solid, was bound to develop flaws as Nature went through her paces. Uneven expansion and contractions, the erosion of wind and ice, the deforming pressure of its own top-heavy mass . . . such a monument could not exist and therefore it did not, simple as that. Not even a Warding would hold it together, against
such complex forces. Which meant that something else was involved.
“Illusion?” he mused aloud.
The women looked at him. “You think?” Ciani asked.
“ ‘When one is in the presence of the seemingly impossible, that which is merely unlikely becomes more plausible by contrast.’ That’s a quote, you know, from—” He stopped suddenly, even as the words came to his lips. And forced himself to voice them. “The Prophet,” he told them. “His writings.”
“Gerald,” Ciani whispered.
He said nothing.
“He’s in there, isn’t he?” Her voice was low and even, but in it was such yearning, such hurting, that it made his soul ache to hear it. “Trapped in there.”
“That’s likely,” he agreed. Knowing, even as he spoke, that it was more than likely. It was certain. He could feel that in his bones, as if his link to the Hunter had allowed knowledge to take root there, without his even knowing it. “Whatever’s left of him,” he said quietly. “Remember the dreams of fire.”
She nodded, remembering. More than mere dreams, but less than true Knowings. How much could they trust such visions?
She stared at the distant citadel, and whispered, “He’s in pain.”
“Yeah.” He forced himself to look away, toward the citadel in the distance. “So are a lot of other people, whose lives he destroyed. Not to mention the hundreds he’s killed.”
“Damien—”
“Ciani. Please.” He knew what was coming, and dreaded it. “He took his chances. If he‘s—”
“We have to help him,” she whispered.
He could feel his chest tighten—in anguish, in fury. But before he could speak she added quickly, “It’s not just because he needs help. That wouldn’t be enough for you, I understand that. It’s because we need him.” With slender hands she turned him to face her, so that his eyes were forced to meet hers. “In that citadel—or beneath it—are three things. A human sorceror, who’s already proven himself capable of killing our best. A high-order demon who may be defended by dozens—if not hundreds—of his kind. And a single man who can wield more power than you and I could ever dream of—and will wield it, in our defense, if he’s free to do so. Don’t you see?” She shook her head tensely, her bright eyes fixed on him. There was wetness gathering in the outer corner of one of them. “It’s not a matter of sentiment, Damien, or even ethical judgment. It’s the odds against us, plain and simple. Gods, I want to come out of this alive. I want to come out of this whole. And now, with your Fire gone, Senzei murdered . . . don’t we stand a better chance of success, with Tarrant’s power on our side?”
“I would sooner walk through the gates of hell,” he told her, “than loose that man on the world again. Do you realize what he is? Do you realize what he does? The hundreds of people who will suffer because of him—the thousands!—because we set him free?”
“You had an agreement with him. You said that for as long as we were traveling together—”
“And I damned well stood by that agreement, though every minute I encouraged him rather than cutting him down will count against me at my day of judgment. No, I wouldn’t have made a move against him while we were traveling together—but God in heaven, Cee, am I supposed to go in after him now that someone else has? Risk my life to save him?”
“He’s trapped in there because of me—”
“He’s in there because he values his own vulking life more than fifty of yours—and mine—combined! Because some little footnote in his survival contract dictated that he come here in order to safeguard his own existence. Nothing more than that—nothing, Cee! The man’s a monster—even worse than that, a monster who once was human. That’s far more dangerous than your average demonkind. Do you think he really cares for you? Do you think he cares for anything, other than his own continued existence? He’d sacrifice you in a minute if you stood in his way.” The words were pouring from him like a flood tide, and with it poured all his anger. All his hatred for the man and what he represented. Everything he had been suppressing for weeks. “Do you know what he did to his wife, his family? Do you imagine you’d rate any better, if he thought that it would profit him to kill you? Do you think he values you more than he valued those of his own blood? He would kill you without a second thought—and worse, if he stood to gain from it.”
“Don’t get me wrong,” she said quietly. “I have no illusions about his nature. I think maybe I even understand him a little better than you can”—and her eyes narrowed—“seeing as I’m not half-blinded by theological prejudice. Let me tell you what he is. Strip away the sword and the collar, and all the accoutrements of his evil . . . and what you come up with is an adept, plain and simple. What I was.” She just stared at him for a moment, giving the words time to sink in. “We’re the same,” she whispered, “he and I.”
“Cee, you’re not—”
“Listen to me. Try to understand. It’s not what you want to hear, I know that. Why do you think I never said it before? For all our closeness, there’s a part of me you never really knew. A part you didn’t want to know. A part no nonadept could ever understand . . . except maybe Zen. I think, sometimes, that he did.”
She put a hand on his arm—but the contact felt cold, and strangely distant. Uncomforting. “We were born the same way, Gerald Tarrant and I. Not like your kind, in the midst of a comprehensible world, born to parents who could foresee your troubles and prepare for them. Most born adepts don’t make it past infancy. Or if they grow up, they grow up insane. The infant brain just can’t handle that kind of input—it’s too much, too chaotic, they can’t sort it out. We spend our lives trying to adapt, fighting to impose some kind of order on the universe. He did it. So did I. Different paths, but the end goal was the same: stability. Of ourselves, and of our world.”
“And now, suddenly, you remember all this?” he asked sharply. He hated himself the minute the words left his mouth, for how they might hurt her. But it was as if the hatred had opened a floodgate; he could do nothing to stop the words from coming.
“I Shared his memories. He offered,” she said quickly. “And why not? It’s a means of learning, isn’t it? They weren’t memories from the . . . not from the time after he changed. Not that, oh no. But from his human years. And gods, the richness of them, the depth. . . .”
He closed his eyes, understanding at last. The darkness within her. The taint he had sensed, without knowing how to define it. Tarrant had poured his soul into her, to fill the empty places in hers. And in the short term it had probably assuaged her pain, somewhat. It had certainly given her a knowledge base to replace what she had lost, something to draw on. But in the long run . . . he had to turn away from her, lest she see the rage in his eyes. The hate. And the mourning....
She would be unable to leave him behind. Physically unable, due to his influence. Period. No matter what he said or did, it could be no other way.
“As for what he is, that’s just his adaptation,” she said. “Don’t you see? To you it means something else, it’s all tied up with questions of faith and honor—but to me it’s just that. A terrible adaptation, it’s true—I don’t deny that—but does that make it any less of an accomplishment? He’s alive. He’s sane. Not many of our kind can lay claim to that much.”
“I wonder about the sanity,” he muttered, bitterly.
“Damien.” She said it softly, her tone so gentle that it awakened memories of other places, better times. She touched the side of his face with a soft hand, chilled by the morning breezes. “Don’t you want him on our side? Don’t you want that kind of power on our side?”
And live with that, all the rest of my life? He shuddered at the thought. The knowledge that I was the one who made it possible for the Hunter to feed again. All the hundreds he would torment, feast upon, kill . . . their deaths would be on my head, all of them. A multitude of innocents who would have been alive, but for me.
“I can’t,” he whispered. “I can’t do it.”
Fo
r a moment there was silence. Then a hand touched his arm. Strong, and with sharp nails that pierced through his sleeve. Not Ciani.
He opened his eyes, and saw Hesseth standing before him.
“Listen to me,” she said softly. Her voice a half-whisper, half-hissing. “It’s not just your species at risk here, remember? I was sent with you because rakh are dying, in every part of this region. People every bit as real and as ‘innocent’ as the humans you ache so to protect. Suffering, no less than the victims of your Hunter. Are all those lives worth nothing to you?” She glanced back at Ciani. “I despise your killer companion. I sympathize with your hatred of him. But I also tell you this: Our chances of success in this are next to nothing without him.” She bared her teeth, an expression of warning. “You tell me to bury my primitive instincts, act with my head. Now it’s time for you to do that. Because if we fail here, we doom my people to more and more attacks like the ones that take place in Lema now. Maybe even outside the Canopy, later, among your own people. Is that what you want? To waste all our effort? She growled softly. ”I say we go to this place and see what our options are. If we have a clear shot at our enemy, we use it. But if not, and we think we can liberate this Hunter of yours . . . then we’d be fools not to, priest, and that’s the simple truth. And I have no tolerance for foolishness when it threatens my life.“
For a moment he couldn’t answer. For a moment the words were all bottled up inside him, like a wine under pressure. Waiting to explode. And then he exhaled slowly, slowly; an exercise in self-control. Two breaths. Another. At last he spoke, in the low monotone of one who has choked back so hard on his feelings that nothing, not even normal emotions, can surface in his speech.
“All right,” he said. “As you say. We’ll see what the situation is, first, and then decide. The three of us.” He felt somehow polluted, shamed by his betrayal of . . . what? His people? The rakh? The matter was too complex for simple answers, and he knew it. But he felt as though he had betrayed his faith—himself—and the shame of that burned like fire. He turned away from them both, lest they see the hot reddening of his cheeks. Lest they guess at his shame. Lest they realize that beneath his bitter hatred of Tarrant there ran an undercurrent of something else. A sharp sense of relief, that when they finally went into battle they might have Tarrant’s power backing them. And that shamed him more than anything.