“Yes,” the adept mused distantly. “There is, of course, that.”
“And Jenseny’s special vision,” he said, and he squeezed the girl’s hand. To his surprise—and relief—he found that she wasn’t trembling. Did she trust in them that much? Did she think they could protect her?
We don’t know even what we’re facing, he thought grimly. We can hardly begin to prepare.
But what the hell. He’d faced faeborn dangers before. Once with no more than a naked sword and a pair of socks.
From somewhere he managed to dredge up a smile.
“We’ll make it,” he promised them.
Thirty-six
In the realm of black ash
In the citadel of black crystal
Beneath skies that burned crimson at the edges
The Prince waited.
Through the walls he could feel the messenger’s approach. Softer than sound, subtler than vision, the man’s movement was no more than a faint tinkling in the ancient rock. But that tinkling was magnified as it passed from column to column, from spire to spire, and by the time it reached the Prince’s senses it was a clear message, replete with information.
He was, therefore, not surprised when at last it was not the messenger himself who approached him, but the captain of his guard. Like all his guards this man was rakh, and he served the Prince with a ferocity normally reserved for his own kind. That pleased the Undying. It also pleased him that in a realm where he ruled both humans and rakh, both species should be personally bound to his service. Oh, it hadn’t been easy at first. Even before they had learned to hate humankind like their western brethren, these rakh had been loath to accept domination by an outsider. That was simple species survival instinct at play. But he had fought that battle on their own terms, and at last—on their own terms—won it. Now it was no longer necessary for him to adopt rakhene flesh in order to prove himself. And once the rakh had learned to accept his status as alpha male—regardless of the flesh he adopted, its species or its gender—they made excellent servants.
The captain bowed deeply. “Highness.”
“You have news. From Moskovan?”
If the rakh was surprised by the Prince’s knowledge, he gave no sign of it. “The storm forced him into port by the cape.”
Ah, yes. The storm. That had been a surprise. He had Known it when it was still a fledgling squall way out in the ocean, and had been confident that it would never disturb his lands. He had even given his western ports some vague assurance to that effect. It had been distinctly irritating, therefore, to have the thing come to shore after all. But that was the way of weather-Working, and every adept understood it. You played your best cards out, and then Nature reshuffled the deck. Weather could be seduced, cajoled, even prodded
.. but never controlled. Never completely.
“His ship landed at Freeshore two days behind schedule,” the captain informed him. “He apologizes that it did so without passengers. Apparently they chose to disembark at Hellsport.”
“Ah.” Briefly he considered his last communication with Gerald Tarrant, and wondered if he should have trusted in it. But no, there was no evidence of betrayal here. The company of travelers now moving through his lands consisted of four people, each with his own will and purpose. It was little surprise that in the face of such a tempest they’d had second thoughts and decided to travel over land. For Gerald Tarrant to defy such a consensus would only have focussed suspicion on him. No. It was better this way.
“Do you want me to dispatch some men to Hellsport?” the captain asked.
He shook his head sharply. “By the time our men could reach Hellsport from here, they’ll have been long gone. It would be a wasted effort.”
The current was in their favor, he reminded himself. He was experienced enough to understand what that meant. The minute he made a move it would be echoed by the earth-fae, whose ripples and signs would be carried swiftly north. He could Obscure such a trace, but not completely; if the travelers knew what to look for—and he strongly suspected they did—they could Know his every move.
“No,” he told the captain. “Let them make their move. When they decide what they’re going to do ... then we’ll deal with them.”
There’ll be time enough, he thought. Since Gerald Tarrant will give us warning.
It was a pleasing thought.
Thirty-seven
When night fell they started off due south, toward the narrowest part of the Wasting. Soon the damp woods surrounding Hellsport gave way to a land bereft of trees or comfort, a rocky plain so cold and hostile that only a few scraggly bushes had managed to take root there. The animals which scurried quickly out of their way were tiny things, thin and nervous, that offered no threat to their supplies or to themselves. They hiked as long as they could and then camped for the day; a chill wind that swept in from the west was a solemn reminder that although they were not in the mountains proper, the land they were passing through was high enough in elevation that spring was unlikely to warm them.
It beats the rakhlands, Damien reminded himself. He remembered that icebound journey, and the unholy fire that awaited them at the end of it. God willing there would be no similar reception at the end of this one.
They took up their packs again promptly at sunset, waiting only for Tarrant to rejoin them before they resumed the long trek south. It was hard traveling—harder, in a way, than any which Damien had done before. The joint strains of looking after Jenseny and worrying about Tarrant—not to mention waiting for Tarrant to blow up because he was looking after Jenseny—frayed at his nerves constantly. So did the very real difficulties involved in bringing a small child with them. She could not match their pace. She could not equal their endurance. She could not do as they did, force their bodies to push on long after exhaustion had set in, because they had not yet found a site defensible enough to serve as a resting place. And yet she struggled to keep up with them and bore all her pains in silence, even when the blisters on her feet broke open along one particularly rough stretch of ground. If not for Tarrant’s special senses, preternaturally attuned to the smell of human blood, they might never have known that anything was wrong at all.
He remembered that. He remembered the feel of her small feet in his hands, hot and swollen and sticky with blood. He remembered thinking that he was going to have to Heal her despite the risk or she simply couldn’t go on, and he had expected Tarrant to argue with him. But when he had looked up at the Hunter, the man had simply nodded, his brow already furrowed in the concentration that presaged his Working. And while Tarrant Obscured, Damien Healed. Hopefully the Prince hadn’t noticed it. Hopefully it hadn’t served as a beacon to his power, giving away their position and their destination and—worst of all—their weakness.
But neither soldiers nor sorcery accosted them as they made their way through the Prince’s lands, which meant that even if the Undying knew they had arrived, he did not yet know their exact position. Thank God for that. Or rather, more accurately, thank Tarrant for that. Without his constant Obscurings Damien had no doubt that the Prince would be breathing down their necks right now. He prayed that the adept’s power would hold, and that the seismic tremors which occasionally interrupted his Workings would prove as much of a hindrance to the Prince’s power as it did to his.
Day bled into day, night into night. The rocky wasteland gave way to broken hills, and that, in turn, to a damp, chill forest. There the leaves overhead shut out even the moonlight, so that they were forced to travel single file through tunnels of darkness with their lanterns held aloft, much as they had in the Terata’s lands. Only here, of course, there were no horses. As he collapsed upon the chill earth at the end of one particularly hard night’s hiking, Damien reflected that he had never appreciated that species quite so much as now. Or ever wanted to obtain a member of it quite so badly.
And then they came to it, and they saw it, and they felt its power.
The Wasting.
It was vas
t. It was lifeless. It was utterly dark. A land as black as the thick night which enshrouded it, all but invisible from their vantage point. Valley bled into mountains bled into the night sky, and even the illumination of Prima’s slender crescent failed to distinguish between them. In such a darkness it was impossible to make out any details of the land before them, or to estimate its dangers. It was there, black and forbidding; that was the sum total of their knowledge.
It had taken them more than an hour to get to where they might see even that much, climbing up a loose slope of broken rock and gravel that threatened to give way with every step. Hesseth had taken a bad fall near the top and, but for Damien’s intervention, might have gone into a headlong tumble down the treacherous slope. Now, as she crouched upon the summit and studied the land before them, mouth parted slightly in rakhene fashion to drink in its scents, she said nothing of pain and asked for no Healing, though surely Damien’s skills could have afforded her relief. Now, more than ever, they needed to refrain from casual Workings.
Damien stared down upon the night-shrouded land for a long time in silence, but if he had hoped that sheer persistence would render the region more visible he was clearly in for disappointment; his merely human eyes were incapable of piercing its cover. At last, frustrated, he turned to Tarrant. The adept’s eyes, dilated to absorb the night, shone like black jewels against the ivory pallor of his skin as he stared out at the land before them. Loath to interrupt him, Damien waited. Once he thought he saw a deep violet flame spark in those depths, a glimmering of dark fae kindled by sheer force of will. It must pain him to conjure such a power in the moonlight, the priest reflected; that he did so meant that he was as uneasy as they about the nature of land before them.
At last the Hunter turned to acknowledge him; the violet sparks shivered into darkness, the darkness fading to a familiar silver scrutiny. He drew in a breath, as if preparing to speak, then hesitated. Choosing his words? At last he said quietly, “No.” Only that.
“No what?” Hesseth demanded.
“No sorcery.” He turned to gaze upon the land again, his pale brow furrowing in perplexity. Silver eyes scanned an unseen horizon. “No Workings, no Wardings ... nothing.”
“Is that possible?”
The Hunter shook his head. Clearly this was not what he had expected.
“What about the Prince?” Hesseth asked. “Is there any sign of his Working?”
“There wouldn’t be,” Damien told her. “Not unless he’d set some kind of trap.” He looked at Tarrant as he said that, but the adept made no response. “Or unless he had managed to Know us. But he hasn’t done that, has he?”
“Not to my knowledge,” the adept said quietly.
No sorcery. It seemed so unlikely that Damien could hardly credit it. Why would a sorcerer of the Prince’s caliber go to all the work of setting up a buffer zone between two warring peoples and then not use his power to reinforce it? The thought was so incredible that Damien almost Worked his own sight then and there, to See the truth for himself. Maybe Tarrant had missed something, or misinterpreted a key element. That was possible, wasn’t it? But even as he considered the move he knew it wasn’t worth the risk. If there really was no active sorcery in this realm, then even a simple Working would stand out like a blazing beacon in the darkness. He couldn’t even Work his vision without giving them all away.
“All right,” he said at last. Accepting the concept—for now. “If there’s no sorcery, at least that’s one thing less to worry about.”
“Is it?” The Hunter asked sharply. “A simple Warding would have left its mark on the currents here, or even an Obscuring. But there are other Workings that might not be as visible.” He turned back to Damien. “You saw my Forest. I evolved each species in it with painstaking care, and set them loose in an environment which my power had nurtured. Generations later, when those altered creatures had hunted and mated and born their own young in a wholly natural manner, would my sorcerous mark still have been visible on them? I think not. And yet, they still served my purpose.” He nodded toward the black plain that awaited them. “Knowing what we do of the Prince’s power, I would suspect his techniques are ... similar.”
“So, in other words, the fact that you can’t see any sign of sorcery here doesn’t mean that sorcery isn’t involved.”
Tarrant nodded. “Just so.”
“Well, that’s just great.” He was remembering the Hunter’s Forest and its warped inhabitants. It wasn’t a pleasant memory. “So much for an easy hike.” He turned to Hesseth. The rakh-woman’s fur had risen along the back of her neck and her ears were flattened tightly against her head. “You picking up anything?” he asked her.
She hesitated. “A smell,” she said at last. “Very faint. I’m not even sure of it.”
“What is it?”
She exhaled noisily and stood. Her ears were more erect now, but her expression was strained; it was clear that what she had smelled worried her. “Dried blood,” she told them. “Sun-bleached bone. Subtle scents, very faint ... the kind of smells you would never notice if there were other scents to mask them, other living things surrounding—”
“Only here there aren’t.”
She nodded.
He looked over at Jenseny. The girl sat hunched by Hesseth’s side, thin arms clasped about her knees. Her wide, dark eyes were glazed with fear and exhaustion, but when she looked up at him there was something else there, too. Something so utterly trusting that his heart clenched in a knot just to see it.
Dear God, what have we brought her to? What are we doing here, all of us?
In a voice that was as steady as he could possibly make it, he said, “All right. The night’s still young. We can make good distance before dawn, then work out—”
“In the dark?” Jenseny demanded.
Startled, he looked out at the enemy’s terrain and reconsidered. In his months with the Hunter he had grown accustomed to traveling in near darkness, to stumbling his way over roots and rocks with nothing more than a single lantern to guide him ... but this place was different. What if darkness was part of this land’s special power, and once they were within its grasp.... He shuddered. No. Not this time. The child was right. This time they would wait for the daylight, so that they could at least see what they were walking into. They needed that much.
As if sensing his thoughts, the Hunter warned, “You’re talking about considerable delay.”
He nodded.
“If the Prince has figured out where we are—”
“Then we’d be his prisoners by now, and you know it. At the pace we’ve been forced to travel—” He stopped himself from going on, but it was already too late. The girl had turned away from him, and he thought he saw her trembling. Blaming herself for their delay, no doubt. Hating herself on their behalf. Damn his lack of diplomacy! Stiffly, awkwardly, he continued, “Either your Obscurings worked and he isn’t sure where we are, or else he’s made other plans for dealing with us. Either way, I don’t think a few hours here will hurt us.” Defiantly he added, “I want to see this place.”
For a moment—a brief moment—he thought the Hunter was going to argue with him. But all he said was, “As you wish, then.” Just that. Damien was struck with a sudden urge to strike him, to grab him by the shoulders and shake him, to shout at the top of his lungs, Argue with me, dammit! Tell me I’m wrong! Tell me that I don’t understand the dynamics of this place, or that my vision is too limited, or that we need to keep moving ... anything! He wanted the old Gerald Tarrant back, the one he understood. The arrogant, exasperating Neocount who had saved his life in the rakhlands even while threatening to destroy him. That Tarrant he knew how to deal with. That Tarrant he trusted.
What had changed the man? What could change such a man? He couldn’t begin to fathom an answer.
“All right,” he muttered. Turning away, so that he need not meet Gerald Tarrant’s eyes. “We’ll camp back there by the stream we passed—” and he pointed to the north, the wa
y they had come, “—for the rest of the night. When the sun rises, we can take a look at what we’re heading into. All right?”
He didn’t wait for the Hunter’s assent. He didn’t dare meet his eyes. He began the treacherous descent with no further word, knowing that his companions would follow him. Hesseth, because she believed in him. Jenseny, because she needed them both. And Tarrant....
Tarrant....
Tarrant for his own reasons, he told himself. As always.
In this place, the thought seemed particularly chilling.
The dawn shed crimson light on the Prince’s buffer zone, and the details that it illuminated were far from reassuring. Before them lay a twisted land, its hard black earth rippled and coiled like some swirling mudbath, its surface glistening in the harsh morning sunlight. Here and there a finger of rock jutted up from the ground, or a sun-baked dome blistered its surface, or a jagged crack, earthquake-born, reminded the viewer that even here, in this desolate place, greater destruction was always possible. It was jarring, forbidding, desolate. A sampler of distortion.
It was their destination.
In the distance were Jenseny’s trees, strange jagged blades of sun-bleached white that thrust their way up through the earth all along the blackened plain. Some grew in clusters, twining about each other with serpentine complexity. Others jutted up spear-straight from the dark earth, their slender trunks brilliant against the unbroken black of their surroundings. There was no sign of any leaf on them, or any flower, or any other sign of vegetative normalcy. With their bleached white trunks and their slender, twisted limbs they seemed almost skeletal in aspect, hands and arms and fingers reaching up from the black earth as if struggling toward the sun. It was a markedly unpleasant image, and one perfectly complemented by the aspect of the ground itself. In the distance the ripples of black earth appeared smooth, almost liquid, but where it lapped against the foot of their hill they could see that its surface was wrinkled and pitted, scored with a network of tiny faults in much the way that an aged human face might be riddled by tiny wrinkles. In places these gave the mad swirlings an aspect not unlike that of living flesh: a serpent’s coils resting in the sun, a tangle of intestines drying in the breeze. The combination of images gave Damien a sick, vertiginous feeling, and at last he turned away, to give his stomach a chance to settle.