“What about the saddles?” Hesseth asked, and after a brief discussion they decided to bury them. It would hardly do to have some sportsman climb that slope and discover their equipment scattered along the ridge. Only when the equestrian gear was well underground, and the earth over it had been tamped down and camouflaged, did Hesseth draw out her linen coif once more and bind it over her head, hiding her tufted ears from sight. Time for disguises again, Damien thought darkly. For once he was glad that Tarrant wasn’t with them; one less person to hide. As for Jenseny ... they would have to leave her, down there. Somewhere in those cities. They would have to find her a home, or at least a means of survival, so that they could leave her safely behind when they moved into the enemy’s territory....
And what if she has information that we need? What if her power could help us? He shook his head, banishing the thought. Too many ifs. Too many unknowns. The walls of her trauma were high and strong, and if they’d had a long month to work on them in safety, perhaps they could have convinced the girl to open up, to share her precious knowledge with them ... but not in a week’s time, and not under these conditions. And there was no way that he would permit her to be broken, not by Tarrant’s power or his own careful lies.
Bound together by a length of rope, they descended. It was a tricky descent but not an impossible one, and the one time Jenseny slipped he managed to pull her up short by the rope before she had dropped more than a yard. That was the only mishap. Freshwater spray cast rainbows in the air about them as they sought out the dryer handholds, and by the time the Core rose over the eastern mountains they were standing on firm ground, the fertile southlands spread out before them. Golden light played over the slopes as they packed away their climbing gear, and the waterfall’s spray shivered into spectral drops as it fell. It was hard to connect such panoramic beauty with the places they had just been, hard to reconcile where they were today with the horrors of their communal yesterdays. Then he looked at Jenseny, sensing the aura of desolation that hung about her like a dank cloud, and he thought, Not so hard. Because they had brought a bit of the valley with them, in her eyes. A link to where they had come from, and where they were going. A reminder.
God grant that we never forget it, he thought grimly. As he coiled the last rope and fitted it into Tarrant’s pack. As he hoisted the black leather up on his shoulder, preparing to hike onward once more.
“Come on,” he muttered, as he urged his party forward. “Let’s get there.”
Jenseny tried hard not to be afraid.
Maybe if it was still night she could have managed it. She had gotten used to the night. When the Core was up, it meant that the whole world gleamed with golden highlights, as if some giant lamp had been lit, and the shadows were warm and gentle. The Core didn’t make noise like the sun did, and its light wasn’t nearly as piercing; if she closed her eyes and tried hard, she could almost imagine that she was back in her own rooms, the steady flame of an oil lamp her only illumination. And when the Core went away, it was even better. The night enfolded her with its darkness, making her feel that she was not out in the open but in some small enclosed space, safe and comfortable. Sometimes the moons would rise and they had their own sounds—a faint clatter from Domina, a dull buzz from Prima, a bare whisper of a hum from Casca—but their light didn’t fill the heavens like the sunlight did, and still she felt safe.
And then it was day.
And they came to the city.
It was a terrible place, a fearsome place, a place that made her feel dizzy and weak and terrified all at once. The houses were thick and tall and set so close together that as they walked down the street it seemed she was back in Devil’s Chasm, wending her way over rubble and across pits while praying that the earth wouldn’t suddenly shift beneath her feet. The houses had voices, too—loud voices—and though she tried not to hear them she couldn’t shut them out. Sometimes she would brush up against a wall accidentally and then the voices would become a scream, as if the whole history of the house had been compressed into one noisy instant. Contractor squabbles and rent wars and once the forcible eviction of a man who took up a sword and started hacking at his neighbors ... it was terrible, too terrible, and she couldn’t even stand before the force of it, much less hope to contain it. Once the passing crowd pressed her against the pillar of a butcher’s shop, and the sense of raw animal pain was so overwhelming that she fell sobbing to her knees, unable to go on. Damien picked her up then and carried her for a while, and she was content to lay huddled in his arms and drink in the comfort he was offering. Trying to shut out the terrible voices, and all the pain they embodied.
She had to be brave for them, she knew that. Though she didn’t understand the details of their journey she knew that these people had come here for a vital mission, and that her presence among them might threaten their success. She tried hard not to be a burden. But the crowds! The voices! The narrow streets seemed to focus the sunlight, magnifying its light and its sound until she almost couldn’t stand it. Sometimes she just couldn’t seem to make her legs move at all, but froze up in the middle of the street and shook while the hurrying crowds parted like a river around her. Then Hesseth would come and whisper words to her, rakhene words she couldn’t understand, but she knew that they were meant for children, that back in the rakhene homeland young girls like herself would be comforted with just such sounds. She loved those sounds. Sometimes when the Light was strong she would stop and just listen to them, not even try to go on walking, and it took the priest’s gentle touch on her shoulder to get her moving again. And even then the sounds stayed with her, like a whisper of rakh-children playing in the high grass. A comfort to both her fear and her loneliness. If she could have curled up in Hesseth’s arms forever, she would have been happy, just listening to those sounds. Shutting out the horror of the city that surrounded.
At last, on Damien’s cue, they approached a stocky building and stopped. It was an old building, and though its owners had dressed it up in bright, gaudy colors, its paint was now chipping from its pillars and its front steps were sagging. She huddled close to Hesseth, trying hard not to hear the voices that were resident in that wood.
“You think?” the rakh-woman asked.
The priest nodded grimly. “Unpleasant enough, that’s for sure.” Then he raised up one hand and quickly sketched a shape in the air in front of him; Jenseny felt a shock, as if thousands of needles had all pricked her at the same time. Hesseth looked at her in concern.
“They’ll keep secrets,” Damien muttered. And he led them inside.
The big room inside the building was as worn and weathered as the outside. The rugs were painful to walk on, but though she would have preferred to go around them Jenseny didn’t want to leave the rakh-woman’s side. Once she stepped on a dark brown stain and was nearly overcome by a stabbing pain in her side; Hesseth’s arm held her upright. “Kasst,” the rakh-woman whispered, and she drank in comfort from the sound. One step after another, forced and hesitant. And then she was beyond the rugs and the floor was much better, it didn’t hold the pain so badly. She shivered as she stood, waiting while the priest negotiated with a stocky man. At last a few precious treasures changed hands: from the priest, a small handful of coins. From the other man, a pair of tarnished keys. The stocky man turned to go then, but Damien put a hand on his shoulder to stop him.
“No questions,” the priest said quietly, and Jenseny felt the needles prick her again. For a moment the man looked dazed, and then he nodded.
Worked, she thought. Tasting the alien word, struggling to understand it. He Worked him.
They went upstairs.
The hallways were grimy and narrow and close, but for Jenseny they were a welcome change. She huddled in the center of the corridor while Damien fumbled with the keys, testing them both. At last the door before him swung open, and he waved his companions inside.
Hesseth sighed as she let the heavy pack slide off her back. “Assst! I miss the horses.”
/> “Ditto,” he grumbled, as he did the same. “But there’s no way around it.”
Jenseny looked up at him. “Isn’t it bad for you to control people like that?”
For a moment there was silence. She heard him draw in a deep breath, slowly, and then he asked—ever so quietly—“What do you mean?”
She struggled to find words for what she wanted to say. The concepts were alien, and defied definition. “You told me that your God doesn’t want you to use the fae to control people, only ... to heal and such. But didn’t you control that man down there?” When he didn’t answer, she added in explanation, “When you told him ‘no questions.’ ”
For a moment he said nothing. But she could hear the words, as clearly as if he had spoken them. They were in his eyes, and his body, and the breath that he exhaled.
How did you know that?
After a moment he came to her, and crouched down before her so that he was at her level. It was good to look directly into his eyes like that. Brown eyes, so very warm. She could feel their heat on her face.
“What we’ve come here to do is very important,” he told her. His voice was soft and carefully controlled and he was choosing his words with obvious care. “If we don’t succeed, a lot of people will be hurt. Like your father. Remember? We came here to stop that kind of thing from happening again, so no one else is ever hurt like that again. And sometimes, to do this ... sometimes we have to do things we don’t like. Things we wouldn’t do at any other time.”
“Isn’t it still wrong?” she asked.
For a long, long moment he didn’t answer her. She could feel Hesseth’s eyes upon them both, the long ears pricked forward to catch his answer. Had she asked something bad? She just wanted to understand.
“My Church thinks it’s wrong,” he said at last. “Sometimes I’m not so sure.” He stood up slowly, one knee popping as he did so. “In the name of this quest we’ve done a lot of things we didn’t want to do, Jenseny, and I guess we’ll do a lot more. That’s how it goes, sometimes. You make the best choice you can.”
“Tarrant would be proud of that argument,” Hesseth said softly.
The priest looked over at her—and something passed between them that Jenseny couldn’t interpret, but it was sharp and was hot and it was filled with pain.
“Yeah,” the priest muttered. Turning away from them both. “Who the vulk do you think it was taught it to me?”
They were going to leave her here.
They didn’t say it. They didn’t have to. It had been clear enough on the journey here that they weren’t going to take her past the cities, and that didn’t leave a whole lot of options. Oh, they would try to provide for her, they would try to prepare her for it, maybe they would even try to find a home that would take her in ... but it all meant the same thing, in the end. They would leave her here. In this place. With the voices. Surrounded by buildings and people that virtually screamed with pain, abandoned to a life of such unremitting fear that they couldn’t begin to guess at it.
The rakhene children would be gone then. So would Hesseth. And so would Damien, and with him the last vestige of that fragile Peace which she had experienced in the forest. A Peace so sweet and so warm that she would give her very life to feel it again. Part of it was still here, inside him. She sensed it when he held her. And if he went away ... then she would lose that Peace. Forever.
Alone. She had been so alone before, so full of pain. Then these people had rescued her. She still mourned her father’s death, still woke in the night quaking from terrible nightmares of loss and desolation—but the priest and the rakh-woman had eased her suffering, and the Peace had numbed her grief. Now she would lose all that. It was more than she could stand to think about.
Sometimes when she thought about her father she got angry, and that frightened her. Why? she demanded of him. Why did you leave me? Even as the words came, she was shamed by them, but they flowed from the heart of her too fast and too hard to stop. Why didn’t you protect me better? Why did you go and die and leave me alone? What am I supposed to do now that you’re gone? She felt that by blaming him she was somehow betraying him, but the anger was too real and too intense for her to stop it. Where are you, now that I need you? Didn’t you know this would happen?
Tears pouring down her cheeks—body trembling with fear and shame—Jenseny gazed out through the grimy window at the crowds and the sunlight and tried hard not to think about her future.
Thirty
The church was small, and the strip of land that surrounded it was narrow and muddy. Houses and storefronts crowded close about its walls on all four sides, casting its thin strip of lawn into shadow, robbing it of vitality. If not for a low wrought-iron fence—more show than substance, as its height was easily scaled by any thief—and that narrow band of green and brown, the church might well have shared its very walls with the businesses that clustered claustrophobically in the city’s low-rent district, so well did its facade of faded brick and mildewed mortar match their own.
No doubt there were finer churches in the better neighborhoods, and perhaps a great cathedral or two in the city’s center. Perhaps, as in Mercia, city life revolved around a central cathedral, and rich lawns and costly ornaments framed a building whose gilded arches gleamed in the Corelight, drawing the faithful like flies. Such a building would be beautiful, breathtaking in both its scope and its upkeep. It would also—Damien was willing to bet—be heavily guarded.
A wagon rattled to the left of him as he approached the rusted iron fence, drawn by the short, stocky animals that this region used as beasts of burden. There was a sharp cry off to his right, followed by the crash of glass; a domestic dispute, he guessed, spawned by the humid closeness of this district. He took advantage of the double light—a rosy mauve from the early sunset, Core-gold from the galaxy overhead—to study the sanctified building. A modest church to start with, it had clearly seen better days. Its few stained-glass windows were protected by thick wire mesh, and bars reinforced those on the lower floors. But despite its humble design and defensive hardware, the small church was clearly used, and used often. The steps were well-worn, the brass-fitted doors polished to a bright finish by the caress of a thousand passing hands. Even as Damien watched, more than a dozen men and women traversed the broad stone stairs, some in pairs or chatting groups, one or two alone. And their faith would have left its mark. The prayers of thousands, day after day, would have seeped into the ancient stonework and the deeply carved wood, leaving their mark upon the building’s substance as clear and as readable as any bars or iron deadbolts. The faith of these people, and all that it implied. Which meant that whatever corruption the Matrias had engendered here, that, too, would would cling to this building. Easy to read, for one who had the Sight. Or at least so he hoped.
He braced himself to Work ... and then hesitated. It wasn’t that he was afraid of being found out. He had come to this dismal corner of the city precisely for that reason, afraid that if the servants of the local Matria were watching for his arrival they might well have staked out the better-known cathedrals. There was anonymity in these garbage-strewn streets, and with his travel-stained and clumsily repaired clothing he was perfectly suited to take advantage of it. No, no one would notice him here. And in this land, so utterly bereft of human sorcery, it was unlikely that the Matrias or their servants would think to focus in on his Working to locate him, or would even know how to do so. He was as safe here as he was going to get in this warped and corrupted land, and it wasn’t the thought of capture which made him tremble in the church’s dusky shadow. Not exactly. It was more like ... like ...
I’m afraid to Know, he thought. Fear wrapped cold tendrils around his heart. Afraid to See. Afraid to know the corruption for what it truly is, and to witnesse how far it’s progressed.
He hadn’t been near a church since their flight from Mercia. Which meant that up until now he’d had no chance to See for himself what changes had been worked among these people, to anal
yze what effects the secret rakhene matriarchy had had upon their faith. Not yet. And as he stood beyond the gates of the modest church, as the inhabitants of the city shuffled and clattered past him, he realized that he didn’t want to see. Didn’t want to know. Not ever.
His hands closed tightly about the cast iron bars, squeezing them until his knuckles went white. Knowledge is power, he told himself. You need it. You can’t fight the enemy without it. Doubts assailed him, made doubly powerful by the force of his fear. He had thought that if he Worked his sight near a church he might see the corruption here for what it was, might be able to read some pattern into the degradation of his faith, some purpose ... but what if he couldn’t? And what if he succeeded in conjuring such a vision, only to find that he couldn’t bear to absorb its message? The corruption of this region struck at the very heart of who and what he was; did he dare experience it directly?
I have to, he thought feverishly. That’s all there is to it. And he braced himself for Working. Wishing that it were as easy to brace himself for revelation. Wishing that his heart could be made invulnerable, just for an instant.
With care he reached out and touched the foreign currents—they were rich and strong, all that a sorcerer could ask for—and he tapped into the earth-power to remake his sight, so that it would respond to the fae’s special wavelengths. For a moment he didn’t dare look at the church, but fixed his eyes upon the ground. Silver-blue fae rippled across the rutted concrete in patterns of moire complexity, obscuring the muddy cracks beneath. Then, slowly, he raised up his eyes.