“And you do, I suppose?”
The Hunter glared. “I was the youngest of nine sons, priest. My brothers took after their father, in form and spirit: a hulking, crude beast of a man, who believed that there wasn’t an enemy on Erna he couldn’t bring to his knees if only he swung his fist hard enough. I grew up among them, sole inheritor of our mother’s mien—and I didn’t come into my height until late, or my power. Now, you think about the cruelty of that kind—and of sibling youths, in general—and the brutality of my age, which was at the end of the Dark Ages—and then tell me how much I don’t understand.” He turned away. “I think I understand it very well.”
“They died,” Damien said. “Within five years of your disappearance. All of them.”
“It was the first thing I did, once I had gained the power—and the moral freedom—to work my will upon the world. And those eight murders are among my most pleasurable memories.” The cold eyes fixed on Damien, piercing him to the core. “What they were to me, you and I are to her. The whole world is that, to her: a thing to be mastered, defeated. Broken. Do you understand? Power has become an end unto itself; she feeds on it, demanding more and more . . . it’s like a drug that has slowly taken over her body. Until she lives only to assuage its demands, to do whatever will blunt the edge of that terrible hunger.” His brow was furrowed as if in pain. As if even the memories burned him. “And I’ll tell you something else, priest. I’ve seen that hunger before. Not in such a blind, unbalanced form . . . but it might have become that, in time. In fact, I believe that it would have become that, if not for Ciani’s influence.”
It took him a moment to realize what Tarrant meant. He felt something tighten inside, when he did. “You mean Senzei?”
Tarrant nodded. “I think so. I think this is what a man can become, when that kind of hunger goes unchecked—when it continues to grow, like some malignant cancer, until it devours the very soul that houses it. Until all that’s left is an addiction so terrible that the flesh lives only to serve it.”
“But that would imply that he . . . that she isn’t an adept.”
“I don’t believe she is,” Tarrant said quietly. “and I wonder if—” He swayed, and shut his eyes for a moment. “Not now,” he whispered. “Not here.” He looked up, as if seeking some opening in the water-etched ceiling. “Up on the surface, I could be sure. If there’s any Working in this region, it would be where the currents were strongest. I could read it there.”
“What are you thinking?”
He hesitated. “Something so insane that I wouldn’t even suggest it,” he whispered. “Except that I’ve seen with my own eyes just how insane she is. God in heaven, if she were that blind—but no. I shouldn’t talk about it until I can test my suspicions.” His silver eyes were ablaze with hatred—and he seemed to draw strength from the emotion. Slowly he released the slender column at his side, so that he stood unaided. And it seemed to Damien that he trembled only slightly as he did so.
“She was able to take us because she knew what we were,” Tarrant said. “She knew what the flaw was in each of us. And if I’m correct in what I’m thinking . . . then I may know hers, as well.” The pale eyes fixed on Damien, and in their depths was a flicker of power. Faint, weak, barely discernible—but it was there, and that was more than Damien had seen in him since the rescue.
“And I will be no less ruthless in exploiting it,” the Hunter promised.
The surface of the planet was bitterly cold, and windswept snowdrifts coursed down from the peaks like waves of sea froth, frozen in mid-motion. In the distance it was possible to see the enemy’s tower, a gleaming black chancre on the white landscape. Tarrant looked about, then pointed away from it. His eyes were narrowed, as if trying to focus on something in the distance. What? Domina’s light was strong enough that the dark fae would have withdrawn from the surface of the planet, and Damien’s Worked sight revealed no other special power. What had the adept’s vision uncovered, that merely human sight was incapable of making out?
They followed him, struggling across the snowbound landscape. Tarrant seemed somewhat stronger than before, but that could simply be the force of his hunger for revenge making itself felt. Damien wondered how long it would support him.
He led them through knee-high dunes and ice-clad gullies, hesitating after each obstacle was passed to study the lay of the land again, and perhaps shift their direction slightly. He gave no hint of what he was seeking or how long it might take them to reach it. Though Damien knew that the Hunter’s cold flesh thrived on the chill of the icy peaks, he nevertheless shivered as the wind whipped Tarrant’s thin shirt about his haggard frame. How much longer could the man go on, with no more than a single draft of blood to sustain him?
And then the Hunter stopped, and stiffened. His sudden alertness reminded Damien of an animal, ears pricked forward to catch the sound of danger. The adept began to walk forward, more quickly now, stumbling through the ankle-deep snow that cloaked this part of the mountain. And then he knelt and touched one hand to its whiteness. Again there was the sense of utter alertness. As if his whole body was tensed to respond to the slightest sound. Then he began to brush the snow away. After a moment, Damien knelt beside him and helped. He Worked his vision in the hope of catching some glimpse of what the adept had seen, but though the currents coursed clearly beneath the insulating snow—more and more visibly now, as they cleared away that obstacle—Damien was forced to admit that he could make out no sign of what was drawing his companion.
And then his fingers touched something which was neither earth nor stone nor frozen brush. “Here,” he muttered, and the Hunter’s efforts joined his own in clearing the snow from it. Slowly a disk came into view: black onyx, carved with an intricate motif. The snow which caught in its etchings made its pattern doubly visible, and Damien struggled to place the design in his memory.
When he did, at last, he looked up at Tarrant. And said—not quite believing his own words—“A quake-ward?”
Ciani knelt down by his side; her fingers, cold-whitened, touched the etched surface delicately. “But what would it protect?” she whispered. “The citadel’s too far away.”
For a moment the Hunter just stared at it, as if not believing his own find. Then, slowly, he reached for his sword. And drew it. Coldfire blazed along its length, doubly bright against the whiteness of the snow. Damien remembered the last time he had seen that power used, and flinched. But Ciani was gazing at it—and the Hunter—with hunger.
“You had better all stand back,” Tarrant said quietly. “You might need to move rather quickly.”
“What are you going to do?” Ciani asked.
“See what this is linked to. See where it leads.” He touched a hand to the ward’s icy surface; snow clung to his fingertip, unmelting. “See what it’s warding,” he whispered.
They stood back. Too fascinated to feel the cold, or the bite of the wind on their faces. Damien heard Hesseth whispering explanations to the pierced one—but how much did she really understand herself? He watched as the Hunter took his sword in both hands, watched as he bound its power to his purpose, to trace the lines of Warding—
—and light shot out from it, brilliant and blinding. Pale blue fire, that blazed about the etched tile and then arced out from it, coursing over the surface of the earth like streamers of azure lightening. A branch of light struck the earth some distance from them, and snow shot up in a thick white plume, baring the ground beneath. When the air had cleared they could see the glint of moonlight on another ward-stone, its etched patterns filled with the gleaming coldfire. And south of that, yet another. Soon the land was alive with ward-fires, and the gleaming network of power that bound them together in purpose.
Damien looked at Tarrant, could see his haggard face rigid with strain as he fought to control the coldfire. The power may come from outside us, the priest thought, but the order we impose on it must come from within. And then, apparently, the strain was too much. The Hunter shut his ey
es and fell to his knees. The sword in his hand blazed bright as an unsun as it struck the earth, and all the power that had gone out from it slammed back into the Worked steel with a force that made the man reel visibly, trying to control it. Damien had to stop himself from moving forward to help, knowing the cold power would drain him of life before he could get close enough to touch the man. What had the Lost Ones called the blade—the Eater of Souls? He looked at Ciani, worried that she might move forward to help the Hunter without realizing how dangerous it was. But though her eyes were on him, she did not approach. Instead she reached into her jacket pocket as though seeking something. After a moment she pulled out two small items: a folded knife, and a piece of not paper. Damien recognized Senzei’s handwriting on the latter as she twisted it tightly with trembling fingers into a funnel formation. He started to object as he realized what she was doing—and stopped himself. And forced himself to take the paper cone from her hand, that she might be free to open the knife. To use it.
She sliced quickly across the ball of her thumb, a cut that slid just beneath the skin. Maximum blood, with minimum damage. He held the makeshift cup for her as she squeezed out a thin stream of red into it, and wondered that his own hand wasn’t shaking. Could one become so inured to the Hunter’s needs that they no longer seemed unreasonable?
When the cup was full, she took it from him and knelt by Tarrant’s side. His nostrils flared as he caught the scent of her offering, and hunger flashed in those silver eyes. Then he turned away, and whispered hoarsely, “Please don’t. I can’t.”
“The cut’s already been made,” she said quietly. “The blood’s already been shed. You wouldn’t be hurting me by taking it.” When he didn’t respond, she whispered, “Gerald. Please. There’d be no risk this way.” Blood dripped from her hand to the snow, staining it purple in the coldfire’s glare. “I need you.”
“Don’t you understand?” he gasped. “I gave my word. And keeping it is the only thing that keeps me from becoming like she is.” He nodded back toward the citadel, shivering. “Don’t you realize what an addiction power is? Any power? If you don’t impose some order on it, it consumes you—”
“Honor is one thing,” Damien told him. “Stupidity is another. Take the blood, man—or do I have to pour it down your goddamned throat?”
The pale eyes fixed on him. And the Hunter nodded slowly. “I believe you would,” he whispered.
“Take it.”
Slowly he raised one hand from the grip of the sword and closed it about Ciani’s. And raised the makeshift cup to his lips, and drank. Damien could see a tremor pass through him as he absorbed the precious fluid. Pleasure? Pain? Tarrant made no protest while she filled the cup again, and made no effort to resist the second offering. While he drank, Damien took out one of the cloth strips he had prepared for bandages, so many nights ago, and offered it to Ciani. She wound it tightly about her hand, forcing the wound closed.
Slowly, when he was done, the Hunter moved. With effort he managed at last to sheathe his sword, sliding it into the heavily Worked enclosure that would confine its power. And he sighed—in relief, it seemed—as the coldfire faded from sight.
“Now tell us: what was that all about?” Damien indicated the carved ward before them. “What are those things?”
The Hunter drew in a deep breath, then said, in a voice that shook slightly, “Our enemy has warded the crust of the planet.”
“To do what?” Ciani asked.
“To Bind the fault, I assume.” His voice was a whisper. “To freeze the earth in its motion.”
“I thought you said that wasn’t possible.”
“It isn’t, in the long run. But if one’s vision were limited enough—or blinded, by dreams of power. . . .” He looked out across the snow-clad mountains, where a vast webwork of coldfire had so recently burned. Where a vast network of wards had been revealed, that stretched across miles of earth in perfect alignment. A thousand or more quiescent Workings that waited to tap the energy of the earth itself, when the tides of the planet’s core released it. “I said she was insane,” he whispered. “I meant it. But insanity on such a scale . . . my God. When it fails—and it must fail, some day—what does she think will happen? To her, and to everything she’s built here?”
“You mean the wards won’t hold.”
“How can they? The power of the fae is constant. The pressure along the fault is building. There must have been enough fae in the beginning to make such a Binding possible in the first place . . . but now? After pressure has been building up here for a century, unrelieved? It would require more and more fae just to maintain the status quo—and you see how weak the currents are in this region. Where is the power to come from if the earth isn’t moving?”
Damien looked at Hesseth. “What was it your people said? That the storms here were constant, when the Master of Lema first came. And then, after a time, there were fewer.” He turned to the Hunter. “The reference was to lightning, apparently. Ward-lightning. Overload.”
“There would have been more than enough fae at first for her purposes,” he murmured. “When the earth began to shift, the wild power would have surged . . . and then her wards would Bind it, and the excess fae would bleed off into the sky. What remained would be safely tamed. Consumable.”
“But why?” Ciani asked. “What purpose did it serve?”
The silver eyes fixed on her. “Why did Senzei steal the Fire? Why does any non-adept take in a power wild enough to kill him, if not to satisfy that most primal of all hungers? Every time a quake strikes Jaggonath there’s someone fool enough to try to Work it. Here’s a woman who tamed the earth itself so that she could drink in its power in safety. But only for as long as her wards hold; that’s the catch. Remember what the rakh said? The storms are fewer, now. Not because there’s less power, but because more and more of it is required to maintain the Binding. And as pressure continues to build within the earth, that imbalance will increase geometrically, until one day soon mere wards will no longer be sufficient. . . .”
Slowly, he got to his feet. “We are standing on a time bomb,” he whispered. “Of such immense proportion that it defies description. And if what the rakh say is true . . . then it’s very near to going off.”
“You’re thinking you can trigger it,” Damien said quietly.
He looked out over the snow-shrouded earth, at the places where the quake-wards lay.
“It’s a simple series,” he said at last. “Break one, and the rest would go. But would the earth respond immediately? There are so many variables....”
“But the odds are high.”
“Oh, yes. The odds are very high. Higher than they could ever get without man’s interference.” He shook his head in amazement. “Only someone with a complete disregard for seismic law would dare something so intrinsically stupid as this. . . .”
“Or someone so addicted to the rush of power that she can’t think clearly any more. Isn’t that what we’re dealing with?”
“She fed on me,” he whispered. Wrapping his arms about himself, as if that could protect him from the memory. “She used my pain as a filter, to tame the raw earth-fae. That’s what she wants Ciani for. As a living refinery for the kind of power she lusts after. As if by using us in this manner she can somehow break through the barriers inside herself, give herself an adept’s capacity. . . .”
“I thought that wasn’t possible,” Damien challenged.
“It isn’t. But it’s a powerful fantasy, nonetheless. Man has always been loath to accept his limitations. How much easier it is to deny the truth altogether—to imagine that Nature has given us all the same potential, and that a single act of will can suddenly cause all limitations to vanish.” He laughed bitterly. “As if Nature were just. As if evolution hadn’t designed us to compete with each other, so that only the strong would survive.”
“What about the Dark Ones?” Ciani asked. “Where do they fit in?”
“Servants. Symbiotes. She has to remain a
t the heart of her web in order to maintain its power. They serve as her eyes and ears and hands, to scour the land in search of what she needs . . . and in return they have her protection. Which is no small thing, in a land with no other human sorcery.” His eyes narrowed, and a new edge of coldness entered his voice. “If we mean to destroy one of her creatures, then we must deal with her first. That, or have her strike us from behind at a crucial moment.”
“If we could release the earth from her Binding, would that do it?”
He hesitated. “There were wards in her citadel. I remember seeing them when I was brought in. But I have no way of knowing what they were, exactly. Quake-wards? If so, the building might endure for a time. Only a few minutes, at most—but that would be enough. Because she’d have warning, remember. The surge of earth-fae that precedes an earthquake would have reached her minutes before, with all its power intact. She would have known then that her precious system had failed her, and if she could get away from the citadel in time—”
Then he stopped. And said, very quietly, “Unless she was Working when it happened. In that case, there would be no escape.”
“Can we force that?” Damien asked. “Set her up, so that she doesn’t see it coming?”
“How?” the Hunter whispered.
“Some sort of attack. Something she would have to defend against—”
Tarrant shook his head, sharply. “That would require an active assault, which would mean that when the surge hit . . . it would be fatal for both parties. No, she would have to be the only one Working, and I don’t see how. . . .”