And for a moment he stopped breathing, as he realized what they were. What they had to be.
Dear God. That’s it.
The captain turned to him. “You see something?”
He nodded. His heart was pounding so loudly from excitement he was amazed that the others couldn’t hear it. “There.” He directed the man’s gaze to the thing he had seen, then handed his own telescope to Rasya. Not wanting to say anything more until they had seen it for themselves. Until they had confirmed it.
The captain spotted it first, and swore softly. “Vulkin‘ ninth messiah. Stairs?”
“Barely footholds,” Rasya corrected. “Slope’s too steep for more than that.”
“Humans carved ‘em, though. That’s for sure.”
Humans, Damien thought, or something that looks human. Something that wears a human form and therefore uses human tools. Are we looking at the work of a possible ally ... or is this the mark of our enemy? The uncertainty made him cold inside. He tried to work a Knowing, to settle his doubts, but the power that clung to the planet’s surface was still too far below them. Inaccessible. Tarrant might be able to Work through this much water, but he sure as hell couldn’t.
“Ras?” the captain prompted.
“Be bad for a landing,” she said quietly, “even for a rowboat. And there’s no place nearby to harbor the Glory—at least not that we’ve seen yet. That means we’d have to leave you here and move on, maybe ten, maybe a hundred miles down the coast. Not good.”
“But if you want it, we’ll do it,” the captain assured Damien. “That was the deal. Set you down wherever you want ... even if it is in the middle of just about nowhere.”
“And against our better judgment,” Rasya added.
Damien studied the coast for a long minute, as if somehow that could settle his unease. “Can we wait here? Until the sun sets? That‘s—”
“Seven hours,” Rasya supplied, and the captain asked, “Because of his Lordship?”
“I’d like him to take a look at this. Before any decisions are made.”
“Can’t stay here,” Rasya warned. “Not unless you want to be a sitting duck for the next smasher. Look there: that shore’s been hit hard and often. Staying here is asking for trouble.” She ran a hand thoughtfully through her short hair. “We could head out to sea for a while instead, come back in with Domina’s tide ... risky at night, but if the wind holds steady I’d chance it.”
The captain looked to Damien for approval, then nodded. “All right. Do it.”
She nodded, laid down the slim black telescope, and left them to give the orders that would adjust their course. Damien moved to follow her. But the captain’s hand on his shoulder stopped him.
“Not yet,” he muttered. “Not just yet.”
He gestured for Damien to retrieve the telescope. He did so, and focused once more on the distant shoreline.
“By the top of the stairs,” the captain directed. His voice was tense. “About two hundred yards to the right. Back from the edge a bit.”
Shadows. Boulders. And a circular form that gleamed darkly in the sunlight, a ring of blue-black metal that looked out over the surf like a vast, nightbound eye. It was not hard to make out, once he had found it. It took him a while longer to make out the shape that was behind it. The long metal tube and its supporting frame, coarse timber fastened with heavy iron bolts. Iron balls beside it, stacked with geometric precision. Canisters.
He lowered the telescope. And swore softly.
“Now mind you,” the captain said, “I haven’t seen a lot of ‘em ... but that damn sure looks like a cannon to me.”
Night fell, but it brought no true darkness. The cloudless sky was still half-filled with stars, a thousand brilliant points of light that twinkled in the cobalt heavens like diamonds on jeweler’s velvet. Toward the west there were so many of them that their light ran together, pooling like molten gold along the horizon, crowning the sea with fire. Soon Erna’s second sun would set—a false sun, made up of a million stars—but until then the Ernan colonists need have no fear of darkness. Only the creatures who feared true sunlight would call this time night.
Tarrant stood at the bow of the ship, his pale eyes narrowed against the Corelight. His gloved hands were tight about the railing, and Damien was sure that if he could have seen his knuckles they would have been white with tension. The man’s whole body was rigid, his attention wholly fixed on the shore beyond. Trying to Know? At last he relaxed, and exhaled heavily. Frustrated.
“Still too deep,” he murmured. “I had hoped....” He shook his head.
“You can’t tell anything?”
The silver eyes flashed with irritation. “I didn’t say that.” He stared at the shoreline for a moment longer, nostrils distended as if to sift scents from the evening breeze. “Life,” he murmured at last. Hungrily. “There’s human life there, in quantity. The currents are full of it. Rich with fear....” His lips tensed slightly. A smile? “But that’s not your concern, is it?”
“What else?” Damien asked stiffly.
“Civilization. But you guessed that, of course—from the cannon. They’re organized enough to defend themselves, and disciplined enough to use gunpowder.”
“And they have something to defend themselves from.”
The pale eyes fixed on him, molten gold in the Corelight. “Yes. There is that.”
“Our enemy?”
“Perhaps. But who can say what form that evil has taken, here in its native land? I would be wary of anything—even civilization—until we discover its foundation.”
“You can’t tell?”
“All I can do now is look at the currents of power, and guess at the forces that molded them. If I could draw on the earth-fae, I might be able to conjure a more comprehensible image ... but as of now, those are my limits. One might look at a river current and guess at its origins, based upon the sediment it carries, but one could hardly tell from that what manner of boat last sailed in it. These currents are no different.”
“We’ll have to wait until we land, then. Damn.”
Tarrant glanced at him, then back out toward the shore. “Yes,” he said softly. “You will have to wait.”
Damien stiffened. He knew the Hunter well enough to become alert when his tone changed like that, and to listen very carefully to his exact choice of words. Five midmonths at sea had taught him a lot. “You’re leaving us?”
“That seems prudent,” he whispered.
“Not to me.”
“You need answers.” His voice was quiet, but hunger resonated in his tone. “I need ... food.”
He drew in a deep breath, slowly. Trying to sound calmer than he felt. “You’re going ashore to kill.”
The Hunter said nothing.
“Tarrant—”
“I am what I am,” he interrupted sharply. “You knew my nature when you invited me to join you. You knew that I would kill, and kill often. That I require killing in order to sustain my own life. You knew that, and still you chose to invite me. Don’t play at hypocrisy now,” he warned, shaking his head. “It doesn’t suit you.”
Damien’s hands clenched into fists at his sides. He tried to force his voice to be steady. “When?”
“As soon as we’re out of surveillance.” He nodded toward the distant cliffs. “They’re watching us, you know. They’ve been watching us since we first arrived. By now there will have been messengers sent, defenses mobilizing ... they will assume us to be a vanguard of their enemy, until proven otherwise.”
“All the more reason for us not to separate.”
“I’m no good to you here,” he said sharply. “If a war fleet surrounded us tomorrow, I could do nothing to save us. On land I can follow your progress, Know the enemy, utilize the power of the earth-fae—”
“And feed.”
The silver eyes fixed on him. Diamondine, piercing. “I am what I am,” he repeated. “That issue is not open to debate.” He turned from the bow. “And now, if you’l
l excuse me, there are things to be taken care of before I leave. I need to prepare.”
He bowed, a minimal gesture, and left Damien’s side. A short walk took him past the wheelhouse, to the recessed midship section. There were people there, crew and passengers both, and they parted like a magicked sea at his approach. Some gazed at him in awe as he passed; others superstitiously averted their eyes, as they might do for a passing demon. He ignored them all. They had feared him once, as men will always fear the demonic, and some had even muttered that the ship would be better off if they exposed him to the sun and then scattered his dust upon the waves. But his performance during the storm had changed all that. Four dozen men and women who might once have turned against the Hunter now regarded him with a reverence just short of worship, and any who found that mode distasteful had learned to keep their silence.
If this were a pagan mob, they’d have turned him into a god by now, Damien thought darkly. He wondered if the Hunter’s nature would allow him to accept that. Or did enough of the Church’s philosophy still cling to his soul that even power, in such a form, would be abhorrent? Thank God we’ll never find out.
He looked at the Hunter’s retreating form—at the worshipful faces that surrounded him—and corrected himself grimly.
Pray God we never have to.
Tarrant’s cabin was belowdecks, in the dark and crowded space normally allotted to cargo, livestock, and machinery. It had been by his own preference. Damien had originally provided him with a cabin alongside his own, whose tiny windows had been carefully barricaded against the sunlight ... but Tarrant preferred a truly lightless demesne, where no living man might put his life in jeopardy by opening a single door. And Damien really couldn’t blame him. If anything, the incident drove home just how vulnerable the Hunter was during the daylight hours.
Now an alteroak door guarded the jerry-rigged sanctuary, reinforced with iron bands and—Damien had no doubt—as much dark fae as the coarse wood could absorb. That power would have been growing down here since the light of the sun was first shut out, seeded by the darkness in Tarrant’s own soul. Not a pretty thought.
He was bracing himself to knock when the heavy door swung open. The light of a single candle backlit the Hunter, its corona like a halo about his light brown hair. For a moment Damien thought he could feel the dark fae swirling about him, a hungry, malevolent power that drew its strength from darkness and isolation. Imagination, of course. He couldn’t See that power—or any other—without first adjusting his senses.
“Come in,” the Hunter bade him, and for the first time since the chamber had been sealed months ago the priest entered.
The hold of the Golden Glory was a stifling place, its still air thick with the reek of animal droppings, stale smoke, and oversalted fish. Damien knew that such a stink was unavoidable—you can only shovel shit so often, the captain had assured him—but he had often wondered how Gerald Tarrant, normally so fastidious, endured it. Now, as he passed over the Hunter’s threshold, he stepped into another world. Here, in this nightbound sanctuary, all was sterile. Here the power of the dark fae had been used to leach all the scents of life—and death—from the air. The Hunter might not have access to power that would serve him on the moonlit deck, but here in this carefully nurtured darkness he was lord and master of his own.
On the bed lay Hesseth, and the light of the single candle by her side was enough to illuminate a body rigid with tension, fur drawn erect like a cat’s. A thin membrane had drawn across the interior corner of each eye, giving her face a truly alien appearance. Long, tufted ears were flattened tight against her skull, in terror. Or hostility. Or both.
“You okay?” Damien asked softly. She nodded, and even managed something that might have been intended as a smile. Her sharp, carnivorous teeth made the expression particularly feral.
Tarrant pulled over a stool to the side of the bed, and motioned for the priest to sit. As he did so he noticed that Hesseth’s wrists had been tied to the sides of the bedframe. He looked up sharply at Tarrant.
“She has claws,” the adept reminded him. “I considered such precautions ... prudent.”
The slender furred hands were balled into fists, tightly clenched. He could see the muscles inside her arms tense as she tested the strength of the bonds. “You really think she’d strike at you?”
“I prefer to be prepared. For everything.” He glanced at Damien, and the priest sensed just how much was being left unsaid. Her species is still primitive. Still possessed of a bestial soul. Who can say whether instinct or intelligence will rule, when she perceives herself to be threatened? But there was more than that also: a darker undercurrent that flickered momentarily in the pale eyes, and then was carefully hidden again.
He still hates her, he thought. All her people. They bound him once, and he’ll never forget it.
God help her if he ever decides she’s expendable.
“Now,” the Hunter said softly. The familiar warning was all the more powerful for not being voiced: Don’t interfere.
Tarrant sat by her side on the narrow bed, and for a moment was still. Gathering himself. Then he reached out and placed his hands on her face, slender fingers splayed out across her features like the legs of a hungry spider. She stiffened and gasped and a soft moan of pain escaped her, but she made no struggle to escape. Not that it would have done her any good. The dark fae bound her now, more perfectly than mere ropes ever could. Damien was sickened, envisioning it.
“Now,” the Hunter whispered. Coaxing the power. Seducing it. Meticulously manicured fingers stroked the sleek fur of her face with what seemed like loving tenderness, but Damien had seen the man Work often enough to know his power for what it was. Killing, always killing. The object of his attention might be a lone, frightened woman or a swarm of bacteria—or the follicles on a rackhene woman’s face—but the pattern was always the same. The Hunter drew his power from Death.
Beneath his fingers the fine fur was coming loose, and it fell from her cheeks in a fine cloud of gold as he ran his hands across her skin. It was clear that the process was painful; Hesseth hissed as he Worked, her long claws biting deeply into the wood of the bedframe. Once she cried out, a keening note of suffering more bestial than human—and Damien knew Gerald Tarrant well enough to see the distaste flicker in his eyes. But she offered no pleas, despite the pain, and was clearly doing her best not to draw back from him. She had asked for this, after all. It had been her idea. And—as much as Damien hated to admit it—it was a damned good one.
It’s not just fur she’s sacrificing, he reminded himself. It’s her heritage. Her people. Because they hate humans too much to take her back like this. It was, for her kind, the ultimate disfigurement. And he longed to take her hand, to squeeze it, to try to reassure her as he would reassure a human woman—but the inch-long claws that had already gouged deep furrows in the bed’s frame made such a gesture impossible. And would she accept such a gesture? She had kept to herself for most of the voyage, disdaining the company of humans—even her own traveling companions—for many long months at sea. Would an offer of human contact comfort her now, or merely insult her?
Slowly, carefully, Gerald Tarrant remade her face. Ignoring her soft moans of suffering, ignoring the cries that periodically emanated from her, like the yelp of a wounded animal, pausing only briefly when a spasm of pain wracked her body—and then only because the motion made it hard for him to work—he stripped her face of its natural covering and laid bare the tender skin beneath. Cheeks. Forehead. Eyelids. Nose. The fur fell from her in patches, as though she were being skinned alive. And yet she made no complaint, though her arms had spasmed against the coarse rope bonds often enough and hard enough to draw blood.
Is that a bestial nature, you bastard?
At last it seemed that Tarrant was finished. He brushed a few loose hairs from her face and sat back to regard his handiwork. Hesseth lay still, helpless and exhausted, panting like a winded animal. And her face....
Wa
s striking. Exotic. Beautiful. Tarrant had left behind thin lines of fur to serve as eyebrows and lashes, and they framed her eyes with graceful symmetry. The eyes were exotic, with a soft fold at the inner corner reminiscent of the human epicanthic. The hairline had been subtly graded, so that it appeared to give way not to fur but to long hair, thick and golden. The cheekbones were high and fine, the nose was more human than Damien would have thought possible, and the lips.... Tarrant had done something to contract the muscles above and below them, so that they were pulled back into a human fullness. The result was perfectly balanced, breathtakingly beautiful. And awesome, in that its perfection had been sculpted in blood and pain. Even in destruction the Hunter was aesthetic. It was easy to forget that side of him, Damien thought. Just like it was easy to forget that beneath that brutal exterior lived the creative genius who had breathed life into his faith. God of Earth, if only that facet of him could be brought back to life....
“The hands won’t pass,” Tarrant said shortly. “Not with claws instead of fingernails. Best to count on gloves for that, and leave the fur to soften the effect if they have to come off. But there is one more thing....”
He placed his fingers upon her eyes, touching the inner corners. Her cry of pain was short and ragged, and it seemed to burst loose some dam inside her. When he withdrew from her, there was blood in her eyes in the place of the inner membrane, and tears also. She began to shake uncontrollably.
“That’s all,” Tarrant assessed. Oblivious to her suffering. “If she’s careful she should pass.” He nodded, clearly pleased with his work. “You may release her now.”
Carefully, Damien loosened her bonds. Gently he folded her bruised wrists across her chest and gathered her up in his arms, as he would a child. She moaned softly and pressed her face against his chest, burying herself in his warmth. He wished he had a third hand, that he might stroke her with. He wished he had something to say that could ease the pain, or lessen the humiliation of her disfigurement. But all he could whisper was, “It’s all right.” All he could think to say was, “We’ll get him, Hesseth. We’ll kill the one who started all this. I swear it.”