When True Night Falls

  “You can come,” the rakh told her. “But you have to wear this.” He held out something toward her, that shone in the lamplight. A metal band, half an inch in width and maybe ten, twelve inches around. There was a seal inscribed in a metal disk that hung from it; Damien couldn’t make out the markings.

  “What is it?” the priest asked.

  “If you behave as you should, then it’s merely a piece of jewelry. But if your behavior should in some way compromise the Prince’s well-being ... then let us say, the child would share his discomfort.” He gave Damien a few seconds for the implications of that to sink in, then asked, “You understand?”

  “Yeah,” he muttered. You bastard.

  Jenseny was waiting for some kind of guidance from Damien; her eyes were wide and frightened. Did he have any right to involve her like this? he wondered desperately. He was probably going to get killed sometime soon. If he was lucky—very lucky—he might manage to take the Prince with him. Now, with this ward on Jenseny ... killing the Prince would mean killing her.

  Dear God, guide me. I have made the choice to sacrifice my own life, if necessary. Do I have the right to sacrifice hers?

  At last he said, ever so gently, “I don’t think they’ll let you come without it.” Guilt was a cold knot inside him, but there was nothing more he could say without giving himself away. Did she understand what it was she’d be agreeing to?

  “Okay.” Her voice was barely a whisper. A guard took her by the arm and led her from the cell—a bit roughly, Damien thought—and then the rakh came over to her and fit the band around her neck. It snapped shut with a metallic click.

  That done, the rakh ordered, “Bring him out.”

  They led Damien out of the cell, to where the rakh stood. Despite the chains binding his arms and his legs they held on to him while their leader studied him; Damien wondered just what it was they considered him capable of doing.

  “You understand,” the rakh told him, “that my orders are to kill you the instant you try anything. Not to wait, not to question, not to assess your true intentions ... just to kill you.”

  He looked into those eyes, so green, so cold, and wondered what secrets they housed. What was it that the Protector had seen in this man, that he had considered him a possible ally? Whatever it was, Damien sure as hell couldn’t make it out.

  Kierstaad was an honored guest. That’s a hell of a different vantage point than what I’ve got.

  “You understand?” the rakh captain prompted.

  “Yeah.” He nodded. “I understand.”

  “All right.” He turned to his men and signaled. “Let’s go.”

  They were pushed toward the stairs and then up them. One of the men had grabbed hold of Jenseny’s arm, but she wriggled free somehow and came running over to Damien; the rakh let her stay. He could feel her warmth by his side as he struggled to make the endless climb, and he wished he had some hope to offer her.

  I haven’t done you any great favor by bringing you here, he thought to her. You would have been better off among the Terata. But then he thought of how she was when they found her—filthy and frightened and living like an animal in the Terata’s dungeon. Now she’s just filthy and frightened, he thought wryly. Feeling the crust of sweat and dirt and dried blood flake from his own body as he walked. I must smell like hell. Bet the rakh loves it. It gave him a dry pleasure to think that the enemy—at least one of the enemy—was being made miserable by his presence. Not that this rakh—or any rakh—would ever admit that.

  Halfway up he fell, his feet tangling in the short chain as he tried to go from one step to the next. He went down fast and hard and his knee hit the stair with a force that was audible. Pain lanced through his leg and he would have gone sliding downward if not for the grip of an alert guard on his arm. Another grabbed him from the opposite side and together they managed to get him back on his feet; he swayed as he stood between them, wincing from the pain.

  The rakh came over to where they were and studied him, first his expression and then his feet. “Take it off,” he said at last. Damien felt the shackles pull against his ankles as someone behind him unlocked them, and then he was free and the weight was gone and he could take a full step again. Thank God.

  One down, he thought, as he started to climb again. His knee hurt like hell and he knew he could well have done it serious damage in his fall, but his gamble had proved worth the risk. The leg irons were off now, and while it was a small triumph it was nevertheless his first one in this place. And he had learned long ago that when things were really bad, so bad that it was all you could do to not think about the thousands of things that were going wrong, the best way to cope was to take one problem at a time and try to chip away at it. And so: one down.

  He tried not to think about Tarrant’s knife as they climbed the endless staircase. He tried not to feel its weight on his arm, its blade against his flesh. The guards hadn’t seen it when they’d bound him, nor felt its stiffness when they grabbed his arms; was that due to Tarrant’s Working, or the skill with which he had concealed it within his shirt sleeve? He wished he knew what the man had done to it. In truth, he couldn’t feel it even when he tried, and he suspected that even if it cut his arm open to the bone he wouldn’t be aware of it. It seemed to be protected by a strange kind of Obscuring, that allowed the eyes to see it but blocked all other senses. He wondered if he would be able to take hold of it when he needed to. Had Tarrant thought of that?

  At last the stairs ended and they were standing in a gleaming crystal chamber. On all sides of them faceted walls glimmered and shone, their surfaces mercurial as they reflected light from some unseen source. He recognized the style, of course, and it chilled him in much the same way that the Prince’s presence had. Because the Master of Lema’s architecture might have been less grand, less magical, but it was inspired by the same design. Perhaps she had been attempting to copy the grandeur of this place, as she had copied the Prince’s clothing. If so, she had fallen short. He had to half-shut his eyes as the guards led him forward, to close out the illusions that danced about him as he walked. Glittering walls like diamonds, waterfalls of light. How did they find their way around in this place? Was it some kind of Working they used, or were they just more accustomed to it?

  I could never get used to it, he thought, as they led him through a sea of crystalline chaos. Jenseny kept a hand on his arm, and he could feel her trembling. Had her father described this place to her also? Or had he lacked the words to capture it?

  And then the walls before them parted—or seemed to part—and they were standing in a vast room whose ceiling flickered with reflected lamplight, whose walls were spectral panels of shifting color. The room was filled with people—mostly guards—but it was the two figures seated directly opposite him that commanded Damien’s attention. A perfectly matched pair, regal and arrogant.

  The Undying Prince sat to the right, and his long fingers stroked the carved animal head of his chair’s gilded arm as he studied Damien. Two guards stood behind him, and their manner made it clear that they were ready to move at a moment’s notice to safeguard their lord and master. It seemed to Damien that the man was older than when last they met—had it been only a day ago?—but that must have been a trick of the light, or the shadow that his princely crown now cast across his face. He was wearing red again, and the thick silk robe spilled like blood over the arms of his chair. So like the Master of Lema, he thought. It was an unnerving comparison.

  To the left sat Gerald Tarrant, who sipped casually from a silver goblet as he studied Damien and Jenseny. This was not the dusty traveler who had ridden several hundred miles and then walked half that many, but a nobleman who had at last taken his place among his own kind. His outer robe was silk velvet, midnight blue in color, and the black tunic beneath was richly embroidered in gold. A coronet had been placed on his head so as to catch back his shoulder-length hair, and it made his eyes seem twice as bright, his gaze twice as piercing. By his side was the woma
n Damien had seen before, kneeling on the floor beside his chair; as the Hunter studied Damien he stroked a finger down the length of her hair, and though the priest saw her shiver she made no move to escape him.

  “Reverend Vryce.” The Prince raised up a goblet as he spoke, as if toasting the priest’s arrival. “You claim to be a man of justice. Tell me, then: what judgment should I render to a man who has interfered with my army, disrupted my most vital project, invaded my lands, and plotted the overthrow of my government?”

  Damien shrugged. “How about some clean clothes and a bath?”

  For a second the Prince’s expression seemed to darken; then he glanced over at Tarrant and asked, “Was he always like this?”

  It seemed to Damien that the Hunter smiled slightly. “Unfortunately.” He stroke the woman’s hair absently as he drank from the cup and she shivered audibly with each new contact: a purring of terror. Her eyes were glazed and her lips slightly parted, and Damien knew that even as she sat there part of her was still in the Black Lands, running from a man so ruthless and so cruel that he would not even allow her the privacy of her own thoughts.

  Regally arrogant, the prince rose from his golden chair and came toward Damien. As he did so, the priest slid one hand slowly up his sleeve, struggling to keep the rest of his body as still as possible while he did so. Thank God there were no guards directly behind him; he could only hope that the ones at his sides didn’t notice the motion of his hands. In moments the Prince was close enough that Damien could see his face clearly and yes, he was older than before. Much older. There were lines on his face that hadn’t been there the night before, and patches of skin that were just now discoloring. It took effort for Damien not to stare at the man, not to become so fascinated by the change in him that other concerns—like the knife—were forgotten.

  Damn the knife! He couldn’t feel it, not even by pressing down where the blade should be, risking a cut to his own skin. Whatever Tarrant had done to the thing to keep the Prince from sensing its presence, it was making it all but impossible for Damien to locate it.

  He jerked back as the Prince drew up before him, trying to look fearful enough that the man would attribute his motion to a memory of what had been done to him the other night. In fact, it was meant to cover up the sound of his wrist chain as he slid one hand far up his other arm, scraping desperate fingers along the surface of his skin where he knew the knife should be, must be. And at last he found it. Not by feeling it between his fingers, like any normal instrument. He located it by the space that was left when his fingers closed, the gap between them which seemed to contain no more than air. That had to be it. He stepped back again as he pulled the slender instrument out from under its wrappings—or tried to, who could tell what was happening in that unfelt, unseen space?—and he saw one of the guards step forward, another take up his gun. That was it, then. That was as far as they would allow him to go.

  “How old are you?” the Undying Prince asked him.

  The question startled him so badly that he nearly lost hold of the knife. “What?”

  “I asked how old you were.”

  For a moment he couldn’t think, couldn’t remember. The Prince waited. “Thirty-four,” he said at last. Was he really that old? The number seemed too high, the age unreal. “Why?” he demanded.

  The Prince smiled; it was a strangely chilling expression. “The Neocount has told me of your exploits. Tales of your strength, your endurance, your vitality ... I wondered how much of that was left to you. Such qualities fade quickly once youth begins to wane.”

  He had the knife free of its wrappings now, its grip firmly grasped in his right hand. “I expect it’ll fade rather fast sometime in the next few days,” he said dryly. His heart pounding as he fought to keep his voice steady.

  The Prince nodded. “I expect so.”

  If he could have wished any one change into his life, he would have transformed the steel on his wrists to rope right then and there. just that. But the substance which bound him wasn’t anything that a mere knife could sever, and he could only pray that the power Tarrant had bound to the blade was sufficient to render the steel links brittle, as he had seen the coldfire do many times in the past. If not ... then this was the end of it for both of them. Because the minute they moved him they’d see what he had in his hand, and it would take little Work for the Prince to decipher both its nature and its source.

  He could feel Tarrant’s eyes upon him, the silver gaze intense. He risked it all, he thought. Everything, just to give me this one chance. He flinched dramatically as the Prince drew closer to him, using the sound of his chains to cover his motion as he slipped the Worked blade between the links. Let the monarch think that he was responding to the threat inherent in his closeness; that excuse was as good as any.

  Playing for time, he nodded toward Tarrant and asked harshly, “What did you pay him for this?” Was that a chill creeping up along the steel links, toward his skin? Or simply wishful thinking?

  The Prince turned halfway toward the Hunter, acknowledging him with a nod. “His Excellency and I have an understanding. Among men of power such things are not a question of purchase, so much as mutual convenience.”

  Time. He needed time. He forced himself to look at Tarrant, to make his voice into an instrument of venom and hate and spit out at the man, “You killed Hesseth, you bastard! As surely as if you’d cut her throat with your own hands.”

  Cold. He could feel it now. Cold on his wrists, where the thick steel pressed against his flesh. Ice on his fingertips, where the coldfire licked as it worked. How long would it take to complete the job? How would he know when to chance movement? He’d only have one opportunity, and if he misjudged the timing ... that didn’t bear thinking about.

  “Mes Hesseth forfeited her life when she committed herself to this journey,” Tarrant said coolly. He sipped from the goblet in his hand; another precious second passed. “The mission was a mistake from start to finish, as you both should have realized.”

  The Prince was turning away from him. Maybe it was only to give an order to one of his men; maybe it was to dismiss Damien from his presence. He would never get closer than this, Damien realized, or have a better shot at the man; it was now or never.

  He pulled against his chains, hard. Praying as he had never prayed before, that the coldfire had done its work and the steel was brittle and it would give way before the violence of his motion. He saw the rakh starting forward, alerted by the motion, and the Prince was turning back toward him—

  And there was a sound like breaking glass and then his hands were free, pain shooting up his arms as he brought them around, frozen shrapnel scattering across the silken carpet as the rakh lunged forward, the Prince fell back, the knife was an arc of silver fire as he brought it up toward the only possible target, the one single inch that he absolutely must strike—

  Steel met flesh with a shower of icy sparks. Damien’s momentum was such that even though the Prince brought up an arm in time to block his blow, it could not stop him; the point of the knife cut into the skin of the man’s neck and through his flesh and deep into the artery that carried blood and life to his brain. Scarlet gushed hotly out of the wound as Damien ripped the blade back, and he prayed that in his last few seconds the Prince would be too shaken to Work the fae. Because if he wasn’t, if he managed to close up the wound with his power ... then they were all dead, he and Tarrant and Jenseny and all the millions up north who had been earmarked for destruction. The Prince would see to that.

  The monarch’s body jerked back suddenly, the motion knocking the knife out of Damien’s hand. He saw it skitter across the rug as the Prince fell to his knees, lost sight of it against the fine silk pattern. No matter. He followed the bleeding monarch to the ground as he fell, prepared to tear out his throat with his bare hands if need be, the minute it looked like that ravaged skin was closing itself up. He heard voices, movements, weapons being drawn. Any moment now the men standing around might kill him, and t
he thought of death didn’t upset him half as much as the fact that he might die with his work unfinished.

  The scarlet stream was thinning now, and the Prince’s face was a pasty white. Only seconds now, and the sorcerer would be beyond all savings. Only seconds.

  It was then that Jenseny screamed.

  Grief and horror and a terrible, numbing guilt all flooded Damien’s soul, but he dared not turn back toward her. If the Prince healed himself in that one unguarded instant, then not only would she die but all that she’d helped them fight to accomplish would be lost forever. He couldn’t let that happen. “Forgive me,” he whispered, as he watched the last blood pulse out of the Prince’s body. Knowing that even if she did forgive him, he could never forgive himself.

  And then it was over.

  And the room was silent.

  And there was something so terribly wrong that he could taste it.

  Why hadn’t the guards moved? Why wasn’t anyone doing anything? He dared a glance back toward where Jenseny was and saw her standing frozen with fear—not hurt, not dead, but utterly paralyzed by terror—her gaze fixed upon a figure who even now was approaching the corpse of the Prince, his shadow darkening the rivers of royal blood that played out along the carpet.

  Katassah.

  Damien stepped back quickly, expecting some kind of attack. There was none.

  “You’re a fool,” the rakh rasped.

  His voice was different. His eyes had changed. They were still rakhene, still green ... but there was something new in their depths that chilled Damien to the bone. Something all too familiar.

  “And you,” the rakh said, turning to Tarrant, “are a traitor.”

  Comprehension flashed in the Hunter’s eyes, and he moved quickly to draw his sword, to use the power stored within it. He wasn’t fast enough. Even as the Worked steel cleared its sheath the rakh raised one hand in a Working gesture—and light blazed forth from all the walls, from the ceiling and floor, from every facet of every crystal in that vast room. Light as brilliant as sunlight, reflected and refracted a thousand times over until it filled the space with all the force of a new dawn. With a cry Tarrant fell back, stumbling over the chair behind him; the sword crashed to the floor by its arm. Damien started toward him, but the rakh grabbed him roughly by the arm and twisted it, forcing him down. By the time he could begin to rise up again, the Hunter had collapsed, beaten down by the raw power of the conjured light; his Worked blade smoked where it lay on the carpet, and it seemed that his skin was smoking as well. Strangely, madly, the woman he’d been torturing was trying to help him; in the end one of the guards had to pull her back so that the Hunter might be fully exposed to the killing light.