Black Sun Rising (38 page)

They came for him at sunset, as soon as it began to grow dark. They gave him time to see that Senzei was well, to affirm that the Healing he had done at midday hadn’t been banished by the coming of night—and then they directed him to follow them, through the castle’s upper corridors. For once, he was not afraid to leave his companion behind. It seemed unlikely that the Hunter would have invested so much effort in saving Senzei’s life if he was only waiting for Damien’s absence in order to kill him.

Food and rest had done much to renew his confidence—not to mention a much-needed bath and a timely shave. His face was raw but no longer stubble-covered, and his skin had been rubbed clean of both Forest grime and caked blood. He had even toweled down Senzei, scraping off the residue of gore that encrusted him to find clean, pink flesh beneath, rapidly healing. The latter was a monument to the Forest’s earth-fae, which, once tamed, intensified each Working a thousandfold. He wondered if it was just his room that had been guarded from the ferocity of the currents, or the entire castle; if the latter, it meant that he and the Hunter were on much more equal ground.

Then they took him into the guestroom where the Hunter was waiting—and where Ciani lay, as still and white as Senzei had been.

He ignored the adept and hurried to her side. Her flesh was cool to the touch, but the pulse that throbbed beneath his fingertips was regular. No sooner had he acertained that than her eyes fluttered open—and she was in his arms, shivering in a mixture of fear and relief, her tears soaking the wool of his shirt as he held her.

“You see,” the Hunter said quietly. “As I promised.”

“Her memory is back?”

“All that I took.” The adept seemed to hesitate. “Perhaps ... more.”

Damien looked up at him, sharply. In his arms, Ciani trembled.

“This reunion will be managed better without my presence,” the Hunter said shortly. “You should know that these are her first waking moments since Morgot—she knows nothing of what you’ve done, or what has passed between us. You’ll need to bring her up to date. When you’re done here, have my servants bring you to the observatory. We have plans to discuss.”

And he left, without further word. Not until the heavy door had closed behind him did Ciani draw back from Damien. Her eyes were red, her breathing unsteady. “Tarrant....”

“Is the Hunter,” he said quietly. And he told her—what they knew, what they suspected, what they feared. She drank it all in hungrily, as though somewhere in that sea of knowledge the key to life was hidden. And it was, for her. Even in such a state, that much remained true.

In time, she grew calm. In time, he was convinced that what the Hunter had said was true: her memories were intact, back to the day of the attack in Jaggonath. He had returned them.

“It hurt him,” she whispered. “I think ... I think it almost killed him, to absorb so much of my psyche. As if the sheer
humanity
of my memories was somehow a threat to him. I sensed that. Without knowing where I was, or what was happening.” She shivered. “I sensed it ... as though his thoughts were my own.”

“Anything else?”

“He was furious with you. For entering the Forest. Furious because he would now have to deal with you, instead of just settling things with me. Any entanglement with the living is a threat to him ... as if it somehow could cost him his life, I don’t understand it exactly. He blames you for that.”

Damien’s eyes narrowed. “That’s fair enough. I blame him for a lot.”

A hint of a smile crossed her face; the old Ciani, showing through. “What did he mean, we have plans to discuss?”

“He says he’s going with us.”

There was fear in her eyes—but only for an instant, and then it was subsumed by something far stronger: her curiosity. “It’s what we wanted, isn’t it?”

“It’s what you wanted,” he reminded her. “But now there’s no way to avoid it. I don’t believe we can get out of here without his help, and he’s raised questions....” He hesitated. He didn’t want to bring that up, not now; Ciani had enough to deal with without facing the fact that her assailants were perhaps merely tools for some much darker, much more powerful force. “If this honor really binds him, as he insists, we may be safe enough.”

“It does.” Her eyes stared out into empty space, as if looking out upon a remembered landscape. “It’s the glue that holds it all together for him. The last living fragment of his human identity. If he lets that go ... he’ll be no more than a mindless demon. Dead, to all intents and purposes. A tool of your hell, without any will of his own.”

“Not a pretty concept.”

“He’s very proud, and very determined. His will to live is so strong that every other force in his life, every other concern, is subordinated to it. That’s what’s kept him alive all these years.” She shuddered. “If he didn’t feel that the question of honor was so linked to his personal survival—”

“Then we would all be dead,” he finished for her. “That explains a lot. What I don’t understand is that he’s returned the memories to you—along with a few of his own, I gather—and now we’re all here together, restored as a group. He’s undone the damage he caused. So why is it so necessary for him to come along? How does Revivalist honor play a part in that?”

Her eyes were wide, her voice solemn. “He promised someone,” she whispered. “Just that. He promised someone he would never hurt me ... and then he did. He betrayed himself. The force of his self-hatred....” She looked away. “You can’t imagine it,” she breathed. “But I remember it, as though it were my own. And ... there aren’t words....” She clutched herself, as though by doing so she could keep his memories from coming to her. “He perceives himself as balanced on a very fine line, with death on both sides of him. And if at any moment he fails to choose the course that will maintain his balance—”

“He dies,” Damien muttered.

“Or worse,” she told him. “There are far, far worse things than mere death that lie in wait for him now.”

Yes,
Damien thought,
there would be. A thousand years or more of hell in the making, with new devils spawned by each sinner. And all of them gunning for him, the one arrogant adept who escaped their clutches....

He kissed her on the forehead. “You’ve earned your keep,” he told her. And despite all his fears, and the long hours of despair behind him, he smiled. “Lucky for us that when he returned your memories he did so this imperfectly; the information you picked up from him may give us enough control over the situation to make traveling with him viable—”

“As he probably intended,” she whispered.

Startled, Damien fell silent. Long enough to consider what he knew of the man—and just how hard it would have been for the Hunter to discuss such things openly. To bare his soul as it must be bared, lest the group refuse to travel with him. In which case it would mean that his honor couldn’t be vindicated. In which case—

“Yes,” he said quietly. “In control, as always.” He glanced at the door, felt his arm about Ciani tighten protectively. “Even when he’s not here.”

He got up from the bed, and helped her to do the same.

“Come on,” he said. “I think it’s time we had a little talk with our host.”

The observatory had been established on the roof of the castle’s highest tower, surrounded by a low crenellated wall and a panoramic view of the Forest far below. A number of farseers had been set about the edge, alongside more arcane machinery whose form gave no hint as to its purpose. Far below, white mist veiled the Forest’s canopy, and the distant mountains jutted through it like islands rising from a foamy sea.

In the center of the roof was an unusually large farseer with an intricate viewpiece. Surrounding it, carved into the black stone surface of the tower, was a circle of arcane symbols, precisely aligned. It struck Damien as odd that an adept should require such things. Generally it was only the unschooled who relied so heavily on symbology.

Gerald Tarrant was busy adjusting the largest farseer when they arrived, but he quickly looked up from the faceted eyepiece to acknowledge them. He bowed formally to Ciani—the gesture of another time, another world. He might have been born of a different race entirely, so much had Erna changed since he had last lived in it.

“You have decided,” he said. A question.

Before Ciani could answer, Damien snapped, “I don’t see that we have much choice.”

“Just so,” he agreed. He turned from them to gaze out into the night, as if reading meaning into its darkness. “It might interest you to know that your enemies have staked out the road to Sheva as your most likely point of departure from the Forest.”

“They won’t enter the woods, then?” Ciani asked.

“If they did, it might save you all some trouble; nothing within my borders can withstand me.”

“How many are there?”

“Six. A formidable company. They’ve established a false trail leading to the Serpent, meant to convince you that they departed for home ... but their presence is like a cancer at the edge of my realm. It would be impossible for me to miss it.” His gaze came to rest on Ciani, lingered there. “I regret, my lady, that your own assailant no longer seems to be among them; apparently he left soon after the incident in Morgot. Perhaps they sensed that if he were with them, we need only destroy that small company to see that your faculties were returned to you.”

Damien’s tone was bitter. “As it is ...”

“We must do what you originally planned, and enter the rakhlands to hunt him down. Only now you must travel at night.”

Damien refused to rise to the bait. “I take it we avoid Sheva?”

“And have them on our tail all the way? No.” The Hunter smiled. “I have other plans.”

When he said nothing more, Damien prompted, “Share them with us?”

“Not yet. When the preparation is complete. Have patience, priest.”

Overhead, the clouds shifted. From Prima’s disk, now visible, silver light spilled across the landscape. Tarrant’s eyes flickered toward the moon, and his hand tightened on the body of the farseer.

“Stargazing?” Damien asked.

“Call it an ancient science.” He studied the pair of them as though considering how much to tell them. Then he stepped back and gestured toward the heavy black machine. “Take a look.”

Damien glanced at Ciani; she nodded. Somewhat warily, he stepped into the warded circle. If the ancient symbols focused any Working on him, he didn’t feel it. He lowered his right eye to the viewpiece, saw Prima leap forward from the darkness to confront him. The leading edge of Magra Crater was a fine line on the silver horizon, and just below were five long channels, stretching like fingers across the face of the globe.

When he had seen his fill of the familiar lunar features he stood up again. “Seems like a lot of excess bulk for that kind of magnification.”

“Is it?” the Hunter asked softly. “Work your Sight, and you may think otherwise.”

“In this place? The current would—”

“I insulated your rooms, so that you could Heal there. What I did here was ... similar. You’re quite safe where you stand. Go ahead,” he urged. “The view will educate you.”

Damien hesitated; the degree to which the man knew exactly how to bait him was beginning to get on his nerves. But at last curiosity won out over caution. “All right.” He envisioned the first key of a Seeing in his mind, let it mold the earth-fae to his will—

And nothing happened.

Nothing at all.

He tried to Work his other senses. The result was the same. The totality of his failure was staggering. It was as if the fae had somehow become ... unworkable. As if all the rules he had come to take for granted had suddenly been unwritten.

“Inside that circle,” Tarrant said quietly, “there is no fae.”

He heard Ciani gasp, almost did so himself. “How is that possible?”

“Never mind that,” the Hunter put his hand on the barrel of the farseer. “Look now.”

Damien lowered his eye to the viewpiece—and saw the surface of Prima, just as before. Magnified exactly as it had been, with the farseer still fixed on the features he had chosen.

He stood, but said nothing. Words had failed him.

“Damien?” It was Ciani.

“The same,” he managed. “It’s still ... the same.” The truth was almost too fantastic. “It’s not a farseer.”

Tarrant shook his head. “The old Earth word was
telescope.
He stroked the black tube proudly, possessively. ”Crystal lenses, ground to precise specifications. Distanced apart at intervals determined by Earth-science. And it works. Every time. No matter who uses it, no matter what they expect, or what they might hope for, or fear ... it works.“ There was something in his voice that Damien had never heard there before. Awe? ”Imagine a whole world like that. A world of unalterable physical laws, where the will of the living has no power over inanimate objects. A world in which the same experiment, performed at a thousand different sites by a thousand different men, would have exactly the same result each time. That is our heritage, Reverend Vryce. Which this world denied us.“