As for Tarrant....
He came to the place where Damien was standing, late in the second night of the voyage. There were no other people nearby and the sea was smooth and quiet. It was the kind of night in which two men might stand together companionably and watch the waves, thinking of the lands ahead and the trials yet to come. The kind of night in which a priest might turn to his dark companion and ask softly, Why? and expect to be answered with honesty.
For a long while the Hunter watched the sea, and Damien knew better than to press him. “It was as I told you,” he said at last. “We had no chance. No chance at all. Not with a Iezu involved, and a sorcerer of that caliber. I perceived that the only way to get near enough to strike was to allow ourselves to be taken by him, and thus I designed my subterfuge. I wanted to tell you,” he said, and his tone was one of rare sincerity. “I wanted you to share in the choice. But it was already apparent to me that there was a real connection between the Prince and our adversary in the rakhlands, and I suspected their strategies would be the same. She Knew me, as you may recall, in order to determine what you would do; I guessed that he would proceed similarly. Which meant that you couldn’t know, Reverend Vryce. The whole plan hinged on your ignorance. I’m sorry,” he said softly. Facing the night. Addressing the waves. “I did try to make it easier on you. Tried to bring us in at Freeshore for an early capture, or arrange for a controlled ambush afterward. I wanted to spare you the hardships of the Wasting, but you fought me at every turn. I’m sorry.”
“That wasn’t what I meant,” Damien said quietly.
The Hunter blinked. “What then?”
“He offered you immortality. To use your own words, the real thing.” Damien shook his head. “I know you, Gerald. Pretty well, I like to think. And I know what death means to you. I know that avoiding it is the focus of your very existence, and that nothing—not family, not ethical obligations, not even fear of divine judgment—is allowed to threaten that focus.” He looked at Tarrant, meeting the pale gaze head-on. “So what happened? Why didn’t you sell out? I’m grateful for it, mind you, I always will be—but I don’t understand it. Not at all.”
Tarrant’s expression tightened; after a moment he turned away, as if he feared what Damien might read in it. “In my lifetime,” he said solemnly, “I created only one thing of lasting value. One thing of such beauty and promise that long after I had committed my soul to darkness I still reveled in watching it grow, in seeing what turns it would take and what new paths would open up for it. Your Church, Reverend Vryce. My most precious creation. The immortality the Prince offered me was based upon its corruption. He would have taken my work and twisted it—destroyed it—reduced it to some neo-pagan drivel in order to harness its power for his own ends. And I couldn’t stand by and let that happen. My vanity was too great in the end, my pride too all-conquering; to accept immortality on those terms. It would be like letting part of myself die in order that a lesser part might live. So you see,” he said quietly, “it was that very offer which turned me against him.”
He turned away then, and left his place at the rail; perhaps he felt that in the wake of such a confession it was best to leave. But as he walked away from Damien, his footsteps as silent as the breeze in the sails, the priest said, “Two things, Gerald.”
He turned back partway, startled. “What?”
“You said you gave us one thing of value. But there were two. Have you forgotten? The Church of the Unification ... and horses.” He smiled slightly. “I know some who would even argue that the second was the more important creation in the long run.”
“Pagans,” he retorted, dismissing the thought. But it seemed to Damien that he, too, was smiling, and as he left the priest’s company his step seemed lighter than it had in too many long, hard nights.
There’s hope for you yet, Hunter.
North. Into warmer seas, brighter skies.
Into nightmare.
The Prince had died, and along with him a network of Wardings that supported the rakhene invasion. Now all of that was gone. Now the invaders, stripped of their protective coloration, were revealed for what they were: brutal imposters who had terrorized the land, using the Prince’s illusions to mask their true identity while they put humanity to the sword.
No longer.
In every village where the Silver Siren stopped, in every city, in every Protectorate, the spirit of vengeance held sway. The luckiest rakh were simply slaughtered, their throats cut or their bodies gutted as hordes of humans descended on their strongholds. They had nowhere to run to, no way to hide. The Prince, being dead, could no longer protect them with his sorcery; Katassah, not knowing of their plight, could not send reinforcements. Quickly the humans learned their weaknesses, and the rakh who had once terrorized small human villages now cringed in terror as their victims rose up, their souls filled with fury, their hearts set on vengeance. And all the while Calesta fed, Calesta inspired, Calesta rejoiced, as a holocaust of epic proportions took root in the Church’s most blessed lands.
Nightmare:
Rakhene bodies in Especia, flayed alive and staked out for the sun to torment. Rakhene heads adorning the gates of Tranquila. Rakhene claws worn as common adornment in Shalona. Everywhere there was rakhene suffering, rakhene pain ... and more than that. Horribly, terribly more than that. Drunk with hatred, high on vengeance, the human mobs lost that fine sense of discretion which separated righteous indignation from blind destructiveness. In Infinita a human child who was sensitive to sunlight had been taken up and tortured to death; in Verdaza an adult suspected of sorcery had suffered a similar fate. Every man was suspect; every woman was vulnerable. Rumors circulated of impossible couplings, resulting in offspring which looked truly human but were loyal in spirit to their rakhene heritage. Children were torn from their parents and slaughtered for seeming rakhlike in their play; others were orphaned when a word or a sign hinted that their parents had tasted forbidden pleasures. All to cleanse the world of brutality, the killers claimed; all to make God’s most favored land safe for human habitation.
No one man can save this place, Karril had said. Sick with horror at what he had witnessed, Damien found it easy to believe that. The very foundations of human society were beginning to crumble, and it wouldn’t be long before such damage was done here that no one generation might save it. Did they understand what was happening to them? Did anyone even suspect? If so, that would probably be seen as a mark of the enemy’s power. No doubt any churchman who tried to warn his fellows of the danger inherent in this course would be cut down in mid-speech, damned along with those he meant to save. In a time like this, who would dare to speak out?
In the Kierstaad Protectorate, where the rakh had razed whole villages, the cleansing had been thorough indeed. The once proud keep had been set afire so that only its stones remained, mute witness to the slaughter that had taken place within. Charred bones lay throughout the chambers and corridors, some skeletons missing hands or feet or even larger appendages; they had probably been crippled and left to die while the fire closed in on them. One balcony which overlooked the sea was carpeted in shards of glass, as though some fragile and beautiful thing had been systematically smashed; Damien remembered Jenseny’s description of her mother’s crystal garden and mourned for its loss.
They had brought her body with them, preserved by Tarrant’s frigid power, to lay it in the ground of her homeland. But Damien couldn’t leave her there, not in the midst of all that evil. So they went a mile or more down the coast, to a place where the trees were green and the ground cover was lush and no blood had been shed in recent history. And they laid her there, with a piece of her mother’s crystal beside her and her father’s gemstone in her hand. He said a prayer aloud over her grave, though no one else in the ship’s small company shared his faith; let them see that his God was gentle at heart, that he cared about the welfare of a child’s soul. It wasn’t much in the face of all this horror, but right now it was the best he could do.
> Rest in peace, precious child. God spared you sight of this slaughter, for which I will always be grateful. God spared you the knowledge of what kind of ugliness lies waiting in the human soul, wanting only the proper catalyst to bring it to life.
A familiar hand clasped his shoulder, strong and cold. In comfort? In warning? He nodded, and allowed himself to be led away. Toward the ship which would take them north. Toward the capital of this shadowed empire, and the men who might save it. If they could. If any men could.
Toward Mercia.
Sunset: the sky red and orange, with deep purple clouds hanging heavy at the horizon’s edge. Overhead the Core, outlining shapes in molten gold. On the field of green a platform, lined in stone. On that platform, bound to a stake, a body.
Burning.
There were nearly fifty thousand people in the great square of Mercia, and only Tarrant’s power made it possible for him and Damien to approach the platform unhindered. The breeze was blowing westward, but every so often it shifted and passed over them, carrying the sharp smell of burning, the pungent aroma of roasting flesh. Even Tarrant seemed sickened by it, or at least by its implications.
They were burning—had burned—their Matria.
It had happened in other cities, Damien knew. They had heard of it as they traveled up the shore, and once they had seen its gruesome aftermath. But never this. Never these thousands of people, so hungry for suffering. Never this palpable sense of corruption, so powerful that he could feel it Working the fae around him. So overwhelming that at times he felt he would surely choke on it.
A sudden movement by the platform caught his attention; beside him he felt Tarrant stiffen as a mounted figure robed in white and gold rode up to smoldering ashes. He was tall and regal and the horse he rode was one of Mels Lester’s finest, a broad-shouldered stallion with a champagne coat whose glossy white mane and elegant tail rippled in the wind as it moved. It rode up to where the crumbled body smoked and then turned to face the crowd; the man on its back saluted the assembled with a motion that was half-religious, half-military in nature.
Toshida.
His power was tangible, his presence overwhelming. In a land where chaos and violence now held sway, he clearly controlled the reins of his city as surely and as firmly as he did the reins of his lustrous mount—and the crowd responded to him as obediently as that beast did. When he gestured for silence, they subsided; when he commanded attention, they listened; when he proclaimed Mercia’s triumph over its adversaries, they cheered with a passion that was near hysteria in its intensity. The energy was the same as in the other cities, Damien noted, and every bit as volatile. But here it had a focus, a control. Here the hatred had been channeled, refined ... used.
The spectacle was over at last. Slowly the crowd dispersed, as firemen saw to the safe removal of the still-smoldering debris. There would be parties aplenty tonight, as Mercia celebrated her freedom. None would question the fact that the Matria’s death had freed them from rakhene domination. None would stop to consider that in dozens of cities up and down the coast, this burning would not have been a triumphal end but a dark beginning.
Damien looked at Tarrant; the Hunter said nothing, but nodded ever so slightly. As the crowd thinned out about them, they began to walk northward, and as they moved, the Hunter conjured an Obscuring that kept the masses looking elsewhere, moving elsewhere—in other words, out of their way. It took them little time to reach the Regent’s Manor—or was it now the Patriarch’s Manor?—and they had no trouble with the guards. The few who were allowed to notice them were carefully controlled, smoothly manipulated. Thus the two gained access to the building, the upper floors, Toshida’s private wing. Thus they gained audience to the Patriarch himself.
“Your Holiness.” It was Tarrant who bowed first, a deep obeisance that acknowledged and glorified Toshida’s new status. Damien followed suit. He could see the man’s eyes glitter with pleasure as he accepted the offering. How long had he been waiting for this? Damien wondered. How great had his hunger become?
“I thought you might come here,” he said to Damien. “Verdate. Although I will admit I expected you to travel with members of your expedition,” he nodded toward Tarrant, “not locals.”
Tarrant smiled coldly. “I came east on the Golden Glory along with Reverend Vryce. However, as I chose to disembark before the ship reached Mercia, I regret we haven’t met yet. Ser Gerald Tarrant, Neocount of Merentha.” And again he bowed.
“Ah. No doubt you are the western sorcerer the Matrias warned us against.” He smiled tightly. “I think I can say with some certainty that any enemy of theirs is welcome in my city.”
“Are all the Matrias dead?” Damien asked.
“Not quite all. Some have fled for the mountains, and will have to be tracked down. And they have their own citadel in the far north, where they train more of their kind; that has yet to be stormed. But give us time, Reverend Vryce. Only recently did we learn what the true situation was; day by day our knowledge grows. Give us time, verdate, and soon all the human lands will be cleansed of their taint.”
Damien tried hard not to let that phrase turn his stomach; given what he had seen in the past weeks, it took considerable effort. “We were hoping you could tell us what happened to the ship that brought us here.”
Toshida hesitated. There was something in his expression that warned Damien all was not well, so that when at last he said, “The Golden Glory is gone,” it came as no real surprise.
“Left?” he asked. Knowing the real answer even as he asked.
“Wrecked. Off the shore of Almarand, in a squall. Most of the crew made it safely ashore, but the ship itself was destroyed, along with the cargo it was carrying. I’m sorry,” he said, and there seemed to be genuine regret in his voice.
“Captain Rozca? Pilot Maradez?”
A muscle along his jawline tensed. “The captain is in Penitencia, negotiating for a replacement vessel. Rasya....”
Damien’s heart sank. “Drowned?”
He shook his head stiffly; his expression was strained. “She made it ashore. Spent a week in Almarand, studying their old sea charts. Then she set off for Lural Protectorate, seeking some old log book that supposedly was stored there. An expeditional relic, I believe.”
“And?”
Toshida turned away. “She was a stranger,” he said quietly. “This is a bad time for strangers.”
Oh, my God. He pictured Rasya lost in an angry crowd, her height and her coloring and her accent branding her as an outsider, an unknown, a threat ... he pictured her falling victim to one of the crowds he had seen and he trembled inside. Not that. Please, God. Not her.
“It happens,” Toshida said. Though he might have meant the words to be comforting, to Damien they sounded harsh. Inhuman. “The price we pay, Reverend.”
“For what?”
“For freedom. For an end to tyranny. The land must be cleansed, and if in the end that cleansing causes pain—”
“God in heaven!” Damien exploded. “Do you really buy that crap? I would have expected more of you than that, Patriarch.”
Toshida’s expression darkened. “Who are you to judge our ways? If the people need violence to heal, then let them have it. You can’t expect emotion like that to stay bottled up forever; sooner or later it must express itself, and if that expression is uncontrolled—”
“And is this controlled? Is that what you call it?”
“They’re killing rakh. I call that justice.”
“They killed Rasya!” His voice was shaking—with rage, with grief, with incredulity. “And hundreds of others. Thousands of others. Anyone who gets in their way, or disagrees with their cause, or just plain isn’t lucky—”
“That’s the price we must pay, Reverend Vryce. Verda ben.”
“For what?”
“For unity.” His expression was hard. “Or have you forgotten? The great tenet of the Church we both serve. Unity of faith. Unity of purpose. Unity of fate, at any cost—??
?
“No,” Tarrant interrupted. “Not at any cost.”
Toshida turned on him. “Will you teach me my own religion now? I was raised in the Church; I think I know the Prophet’s teachings well enough.”
“You may know them,” Tarrant said coldly. “But you clearly don’t understand them.”
Toshida’s eyes blazed with rage; his skin blushed copper with fury. “How dare you! As if any outsider can ever understand the world we’ve built here, or what it takes to maintain it—”
“You want to see what it is you’ve built here?” The Hunter’s anger was filling the room, chilling the air within it. Rage-wraiths flitted about his head, trembling in time to his speech. “You want to see the precious world your religion of hate will foster? I’ll show you!”
The room became a whirlpool of color, into which Toshida and Damien were sucked. The walls lost their substance, and the floors and ceiling also. Even gravity lost its hold; everything was sucked toward the center of the whirlwind, all matter and thought, all flesh and spirit, all hopes and fears and dreams—
And the future unfolded before them. Not one single timeline, pristine in its certainty. A wild, unfettered morass of futures, a chaos of raw possibility. Damien saw worlds in which Calesta’s holocaust had swallowed up whole cities, whole regions, setting brother against brother in a war whose only purpose was to destroy life. He saw worlds in which the Church had become a tool of control, a vehicle of tyranny, and the Prophet’s dream had been smothered in ritual brutality. World after world passed before his eyes, bloody and violent and hopeless and corrupt. He could see the corruption spreading out like waves, from the populace to the Church to the fae itself, until pollution flowed like a tide about the planet, fouling every soul it touched. Calesta’s dream; Calesta’s hunger. And in the midst of it all there was only one world with hope, only one vista in which any light shone. Only one world in which a man stood strong against the tide, a single man of vision and determination who could turn back the flood of corruption if he chose to, who could set his city on a new path, and through that city, his world. One new-made Patriarch, dark-skinned, triumphant—