Black Sun Rising (65 page)

Maps. Spread out in the sunlight, dappled leaf-shadows mottling their surface like lichen. The breeze stirred and their edges lifted, struggling against stone paperweights.

“These are all we have left,” Damien said grimly.

“Not the survey map.”

“No. He must have had that on him when ... whatever.” It was safest not to speak of what had happened. Speaking led to questioning, which led to wanting to Know. And Knowing was dangerous. Whatever force had bested Tarrant might be waiting for them to establish just such a channel, in order to take them all. They dared not risk it. Not even to lessen the sting of ignorance.

“I’ve copied the important information, so we can each have a copy. In case we get separated.” He saw the fear coalescing in Ciani’s eyes, reached out to squeeze her hand in reassurance. Her flesh was cold, her eyes red. Her face was dry with exhaustion; had she slept at all since Senzei’s death? It bothered him that he didn’t know.

“We have to plan for it,” he told her, gently. “We have to plan for everything. I don’t like that any more than you do, but it’s suicide to do otherwise. The enemy’s strategy is clear: pick us off one by one, before we can get to his stronghold.”
Leaving only the one he wants
, he thought. You. But he didn’t say that. “God alone knows how he got to Tarrant, but with Senzei we can venture a guess. And when you’ve got an enemy that can play on your weaknesses like that ... we’ve got to be prepared, Cee. For anything.”

“Do you still think there’s hope?” Her voice was a whisper, utterly desolate. “Even after all this?”

He met her eyes, and held them. Tried to will strength into his gaze, that she might draw on it for courage. “Very little,” he admitted. He wished he had the heart to lie to her. “But that’s as much as there ever was, on this trip. As for our chances now ... remember, we planned this journey before we even met Tarrant. We’ll manage without him.”

“And Zen?” she asked softly. “And the Fire?”

He looked away. Forced his voice to be steady. “Yes. Well. We’ll have to, won’t we?”

He pulled the nearest map toward him and studied it, hoping she would do the same. Hesseth was silent, but her alien eyes followed his every movement. Carefully, he circled a few vital landmarks. Sansha Crater. Northern Lema’s focus of power. The trigger-point that Tarrant had Worked, so that when they reached it their duplicates—their simulacra—would begin the hazardous journey into ambush. The taste of that plan was bitter, but there was no stopping it now. And part of him was grateful. God knows, they needed a good Obscuring now. More than ever. He hated himself for feeling such gratitude.

“According to this, we’ve reached the point Tarrant meant us to.” He looked eastward—as though somehow mere vision could pierce through rock and span the miles, so that he might see that doomed quintet of doppelgangers. Quartet? Trio? How many? “Which means that even now the simulacra are setting out, to take our place.”

“So the enemy will focus his attention on them.”

“We can only hope so.”

He couldn’t imagine Tarrant doing that. And if not, then the whole scheme was wasted: five innocent rakh were marching toward death for no purpose. Because the minute their enemy saw that the numbers didn’t match, he would know that something was wrong. The thought of it made Damien sick inside—and he tried not to think about whether it was the death of five innocents that bothered him most of all, or the failure of Tarrant’s deception.

Carefully, he folded the maps. “We go north,” he said. “Toward the House of Storms. And we try to make contact with the Lost Ones. If we’re lucky—and Tarrant’s Working is a good one—we won’t be watched on the way.”

“And if not?” the rakh-woman asked.

He looked at her. And cursed the alien nature of her face, which made it impossible to read. “You tell me.”

“Can you back it up?” Ciani asked. “Do an Obscuring independent of Tarrant’s, in case the simulacra ...” She hesitated.

“Don’t work?” he said gently.

She nodded.

“That would be very dangerous,” he said. Not meeting her eyes. “There was a ... a channel, between the Hunter and myself.”
Don’t ask me about it,
he begged silently.
Don’t ask me to explain.
“If I were to attempt such a Working, while the fragments of his own still clung to the party ... I could very well open up a clear channel between ourselves and the force that killed him.”
And anything that could take on the Hunter could probably destroy us without pausing for breath.

“So all we have is what he did,” she said quietly. Eyes downcast; voice trembling slightly.

“Maybe.”

She looked up at him.

“I
can’t do it. And neither can you. But that leaves one other person.” He looked at Hesseth meaningfully. “And I think she might have exactly the skill we need.”

The
khrast
-woman’s lips parted slightly; a soft hiss escaped between the sharp teeth. “I don’t do human sorcery.”

“But it wouldn’t be human sorcery, would it? And it wouldn’t involve the kind of fae that humans could manipulate. Would it?”

“The rakh don’t Work,” she said coldly.

“Don’t they?” He turned back to Ciani. “Let me tell you something I discovered about the rakh. I was going through Zen’s notes last night, you see, and I found a bit of early text he’d dredged up somewhere and copied. About the rakh’s ancestors. They were true carnivores, it seems. Unlike our own omnivorous ancestors, they were utterly dependent upon hunting for their foodstuffs. No agriculture for them, or the complex social interaction that farming inspires.” He glanced at the rakh-woman. “They were pack animals. As we were. But with a markedly different social structure. The males spent their lives in competition with each other, expending most of their energy in sexual display and combat. When they hunted they did so in large groups, and only went after dangerous game. The risk seemed to be much more important than the food, and their social hierarchy was reshuffled—or reinforced—with each hunt. What they killed they ate on the spot, or left to rot.”

“Sounds like some men I know,” Ciani said, and Damien thought he saw something that might be a smile flit across Hesseth’s face. Briefly. Then it was gone again, replaced by guarded hostility.

“The females hunted for the rest of the pack,” he explained. “And fed them, in accordance with the local hierarchy. Dominant males first, then children, then themselves. With scraps for the lesser males, if any remained. Mammalian social order at its finest.”

He leaned forward tensely. “Do you see it?
The females did the hunting.
Not for show, but for sustenance. Not to display their animal machismo, but to feed their young. And the fae would have responded to their need, as it does with all native species. And what two skills does that kind of hunter need the most? Location and obscuring. The ability to find one’s prey, and the capacity to sneak up on it unobserved.” He looked to the rakh-woman, met her eyes. There was challenge in his tone. “If a rakh female were to Work the fae, wouldn’t those be the two areas in which her skills would be strongest? The two very skills we need so desperately right now.”

The
khrast
-woman’s voice was quiet but tense. “The rakh don’t
Work.”

“Not like we do. Not with keys, pictures and phrases and all the other hardware of the imagination. They don’t need that, any more than a human adept does.” He paused, watching her. “But it isn’t wholly unconscious anymore. Is it? Somewhere along the line your people ceased to take the fae for granted and began to manipulate it. Improved intellect demands improved control. Maybe on a day-today basis the old ways were enough ... but I know what I saw in Morgot,” he told her. “And that was deliberate, precise, and damned powerful. A true Working, in every sense of the word.” When she said nothing he pressed, “Do you deny it?”

“No,” she said quietly. “As you define your terms ... no.”

“Hesseth.” It was Ciani. “If you could work an Obscuring—”

Her eyes narrowed. “That’s a sorceror’s concept, I can‘t—”

“Call it whatever you like,” Damien interrupted. “We’ll find a rakhene word for it, if that makes you happy. Or make one up. Damn it, can’t you see how much is riding on this?”
Careful, Damien. Calm down. Don’t alienate her.
He forced himself to draw in a deep breath, slowly. “Tarrant’s gone,” he said quietly. “So’s Senzei. Even if I could Work this myself, my skills in this area are limited; sneaking up on enemies isn’t a regular part of Church service. Whatever cover the Hunter Worked for us is going to fade away now that he’s dead—if our enemy doesn’t Banish it outright.”

“Could
you help us?” Ciani asked her. “If you wanted to? Could you keep the enemy from finding us?”

She looked them over, one after the other. Reviewing her natural hostility to their kind, perhaps, and seeing how far it would give.

She picked her words carefully. “If you were my kin,” she told them. “My blood-kin. Then I could protect you.”

“Not otherwise?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“Would you, if you could?” Damien challenged her.

She looked at him.
Into
him: past the surface, past his social conscience, into the heart of his soul. The animal part of him, primitive and pure. Something unfamiliar licked at his consciousness, warm and curious. Tidal fae?

“Yes,” she said at last. “If that comforts you. But you’re not my blood-kin. You’re not even rakh. The fae that answers to me wouldn’t even acknowledge your existence.”

“Then force it to,” Damien told her.

She shook her head. “Not possible.”

“Why?”

“The tidal fae never has—”

“—and never will? I don’t buy that kind of reasoning.” He leaned forward, hands tense on his knees. “Listen to me. I know what the rakh were, when humans first came here. I understand that those animal roots are still a part of you.
Have
to be a part of you. But you’re also an intelligent, self-aware being. You can override those instincts.”

“Like the humans do?”

“Yes. Like the humans do. How else do you think we got here, ten thousand light-years from our native planet? Of all the species of Earth, we alone learned to override our animal instinct. Oh, it wasn’t easy, and it isn’t always reliable. I don’t have to tell you what a jerry-rigged mess the human brain is, as a result. But if there’s any one definition of humanity, that’s it: the triumph of intelligence over an animal heritage. And you inherited our intellect! Your people could be everything to this planet that we were to ours. All you have to do is learn to cast off the limitations of a more primitive time—

“And look where that got you!” she said scornfully. “Is this supposed to be our goal? To have our souls divided, with each part pulling in a different direction? Like yours? Vampires don’t haunt us in the night; ghosts don’t disturb our sleep. Those things are humanity’s creation—the echoes of that part of you which you’ve buried. Denied. The ‘animal instinct’ which screams for freedom, locked in the lightless depths of your unconscious mind.” She shook her head; there was pity in her eyes. “We live at peace with this world and with ourselves. You don’t. That’s our definition of humanity.”

She stood. The motion was smooth and unhuman, silken as a cat’s. “I’ll do what I can—on my own terms.
Rakh
terms. And if the fae will respond to me ... then I guarantee you, no human sorceror will read through it.”

“And if it doesn’t?” he asked quietly.

She looked northward, towards the point of power still far in the distance. Observing the currents? Or imagining the House of Storms, and its human master?

“Then your own Workings had better be good,” she said. “Damned good. Or we’ll be walking right into his hands.”

Power. Hot power, rising up from the foundations of the earth. Sweet power, filtered through the terror of an adept’s soul. Raw power, that reverberated with pain and fear and priceless agony of utter helplessness. The taste of it was ecstacy. Almost beyond bearing.

The demon asked: “It pleases?”

“Oh, yes.” A whisper of delight, borne on the winds of pain. That delicious pain. “Will it last, Calesta? Can you make it last?”

The faceted eyes blinked slowly; in the dim lamplight they looked like blood. “A thousand times longer than any other.” His voice was the screech of metal on glass, the slow scraping of a rust-edged knife against a window. “His fear and the pain are perfectly balanced. The earth itself supplies the fuel. It could last ... indefinitely.”