Black Sun Rising (68 page)

He shouldered his springbolt and aimed at the treetops ahead, watching for motion. But unlike the trees of the Forbidden Forest these had been stripped of their mass by the coming of winter; moonlight clearly illuminated a canopy bereft of life, that offered neither threat nor cover.

And then they came upon it. In a clearing, spacious and well-lit by moonlight. Damien heard his horse’s hooves break through ice as he approached, felt the cold spray of water about his ankles. A stream, frozen over by winter’s chill. He warned the others with a wave of his hand, heard them fording it carefully. The xandu was before him, and it snorted as if in rage—but its eyes were fixed on nothingness, its hot gaze utterly empty. It seemed to be struggling—but with what, Damien couldn’t say. It was almost as if some unseen rope was pulling it backward, while all its brute instinct urged it to flee; animal flesh versus some unseen power, with the latter slowly winning. There was foam on its lip, speckled with red, and when it struck the ground with its front feet Damien could see that it had sprained an ankle, or worse. He glanced back worriedly at the other xandu ... but whatever madness had claimed this one, it did not extend to the others. It was almost as if whatever power had focussed in on it was content to claim one animal and leave them the rest. A truly chilling concept.

Then the xandu staggered backward, and the ground gave way beneath its feet. First the area directly beneath it, then the ground surrounding—as if the earth itself had lost all support and was falling in on itself. It screamed and struck out blindly—but there was no solid footing, not within reach, and as the ground opened up it fell, limbs flailing, into the lightless hole beneath.

And then a scream pierced the night. One scream, utterly horrible. It was pain and fear and confusion combined, the dying scream of a soul drowning in terror. Damien’s skin crawled to hear it, and he had to pull back on his reins to hold his mount steady. Beside him he could hear the others doing likewise, and he glanced at them briefly to see how they were doing. Hesseth’s eyes were scanning the clearing with fevered urgency, her hand tight on the springbolt’s stock. Ciani’s face was white, but her sword was drawn; fear hadn’t immobilized her. Good.

And then: silence. Utter silence, unbroken by anything save the ragged breathing of their three mounts.

After a moment Damien slid from his saddle; his boots sank deeply into the snow as his horse snorted anxiously, concerned. Ciani’s eyes met his, and she seemed about to say something—and then simply nodded and took his reins from his hand.

He walked forward slowly, utterly cautious. Long sword probing the ground ahead, testing for weakness. The snow was deep here, which made for uncertain footing, but he made certain of each step before he committed himself to the next one; he couldn’t afford to be off-balance, not for a moment.

He could hear sound now, from the place where the xandu had fallen. A soft scraping sound, like that of cloth against snow. Or flesh? Something about it made his skin crawl. Inch by inch, he worked his way to the place where the earth had given way.

—And stared down into a massive pit, splattered with blood. There were wooden stakes set in the bottom, a good six feet long, perhaps two feet apart from each other. Easily as thick as a man’s arm, but narrowing to a slender point. The sharpened tips pointed upward, as neatly arrayed as soldiers in formation; waiting for some animal to fall through the earth and impale itself, with such utter finality that struggle was meaningless.

And in the center of the pit, their xandu. Or rather, the collection of meat and hide that had once been a xandu. Now, blood-splattered, it was barely the shell of its former self, a mere parody of life; its rainbow horns, coated with blood, were stripped not only of beauty but purpose, and its flesh was so ruptured by its brutal impalement that it was hard to imagine its owner running free on the ground above only moments before.

A hunting call, Damien thought. That’s what got it. Something needed food, and its hunger Worked the fae.
He stared down at the trap and corrected himself. Not
something
—
someone.

“Damien?” It was Ciani.

“Come look,” he murmured. “Carefully.”

Something was moving in the depths of the pit, between those sharpened stakes. Something that dipped in and out of shadow, its form utterly elusive. And then another one. They were clearly mammalian, though something about their skin reminded Damien of a slug. Then one of them looked up at him. He was dimly aware of details: a long tail, hairless, like a rat’s. Immense pale eyes, filmed with a thick mucus. Hands shaped like the human extremity, but with fingers that seemed stretched to twice their accustomed length, that twined like nervous serpents as their owner looked up at him.

Not skin, no. Fur, short and close-lying. Ears flattened down against the skull, but a small tuft was still visible at their tips. And in those eyes ... a hint of amber?

He looked up as Ciani and Hesseth came up beside him, their horses tethered to trees far behind them. “What is it?” Ciani asked, as she came to the edge of the pit. But his eyes were on the
khrast-
woman. She came to where the earth had caved in, and gazed at the tableau below—and then drew back, hissing, her claws unsheathing as she braced herself for conflict. Her ears had flattened, in self-defense, and there was no mistaking the shape. Or the resemblance.

“It’s the rakh,” he told her. “The Lost Ones.”

There were five of the creatures in all. The sight of their dead-white eyes and altered limbs made Damien’s skin crawl, but he managed to bury his revulsion deep inside him. Jelly eyes, tentacle fingers ... he looked at Hesseth, saw her body go taut with hostility. A reaction to the scent of the strangers, no doubt—an instinctive response to the right-but-not-right odor of their presence.

“Hesseth.” He hissed the name softly, and as a result it sounded truly rakhene. He waited until she looked at him before he spoke again. “You can’t follow your instinct here. You
can’t.
It’s fine for territorial conflict, but it won’t get us where we’re going.” The eyes were gleaming with feral hostility. “Hesseth. You understand me?”

After a moment, she nodded. Stiffly. A shudder seemed to pass through her flesh, as though pain had suddenly racked it. Her lips drew back from her teeth and she hissed: a warning. But then her ears seem to relax somewhat, and they lifted slightly. The fire in her eyes became a mere smolder. Her claws sheathed—halfway.

“Human tricks,” she hissed.

He nodded grimly. “It’s the name of the game right now.”

Beneath them, four of the five misshapen rakh crouched tensely, waiting for them to make a move. The fifth had gone forward to the xandu carcass, and was beginning to carve it up into manageable chunks with a crude obsidian blade; but even she was wary, and she cast frequent glances at the travelers standing above her to make sure that they were keeping their distance.

She. Four of them were female. The fifth was male, but nearly as slight of build as his companions. A lesser male, Damien guessed, who had adopted a female role in order to get access to food. He hoped for all their sakes that the male was firmly ensconced in his new role; that way, they might get through this meeting with no need for macho heroics.

“Talk to them,” he urged Hesseth. “See if they understand you.”

For a moment, she seemed incapable of speaking. Then, quickly, she barked out a few sharp phonemes. It was obviously taking great effort for her to speak at all, much less in a civil manner. The lone male looked up at her, his alien face utterly unreadable. After a moment he stepped back to where his companions stood, his tentacular fingers wrapped tightly about the base of his blade.

“Try
hello,”
Damien prompted.

She shot him a searing glance, then turned back to the Lost Ones. And rasped out some other sounds, that sounded like a cross between a command and an invective.

This time they reacted. The male glanced at his companions, then handed his knife to one of them. And dropped back into the shadows that veiled the back of the pit, and from there into darkness.

“Not good,” Damien muttered. “Gone back for reinforcements?”

“How bad can it be?” Ciani asked. “We’re armed, and it would take them time to climb from the pit—”

“No need to. You saw what they did to the xandu.” His expression was grim. “Their enemies come to them.”

Ciani turned to Hesseth. “What did you say to them?”

“What had to be said,” she answered sharply. “With words, since they lack all the other signs.”

Damien looked down at the agitated foursome and realized, suddenly, just how much of a barrier there was to communication. Their alien physique would certainly alter their body language, and it was clear that they lacked the right scents ... that left only words, and words were a poor second in rakhene communication. No wonder Hesseth was edgy.

They waited. In silence, the nervous pawing and snorting of their mounts the only sound within hearing. Damien shifted his weight cautiously, as the wet snow began to invade one boot; otherwise, there was no movement.

And then the shadows in the back of the pit stirred to life, and several figures emerged from it. The lesser male. Two others, like him. And a figure nearly twice their height, a male who was clearly decades past his prime. His fur hung in patches on wrinkled skin, folds of loose flesh hanging from his bones like an oversized tunic. His skin was pierced: not merely in one place, or a dozen, but all over the surface of his body. Thorns, sharpened twigs, thin blades whittled from bone, pins carved from precious stone, all those had been thrust through the soft folds of skin to serve as a gruesome adornment. A thin shaft of shell, clearly precious, had been thrust through one cheek, and tiny beads dangled from its larger end; delicate needles of carved jet had been passed through the skin of his penis. It made Damien’s skin itch just to look at him.

The pierced male addressed them—and there was no mistaking his authority, even without a common tongue between them. It surrounded him like an aura; it seeped forth from him, like blood from his manifold wounds.

Without consulting the humans, Hesseth answered. She had no time to translate before the next question came, or the one after that; the ghastly figure voiced his challenges too quickly, and she dared not hesitate in answering. But though he understood none of the words and even less of the kinesthetics, Damien grasped what was happening.
Who are you?
the pierced rakh was asking.
What are you? Why are you here?
He wondered what Hesseth considered suitable answers to be—and wished that it were possible for her to confer with him before she answered.

Watch
it, he told himself.
She’s smarter than you give her credit for, and she knows her people better than you ever will
. He studied the pierced rakh as he spoke, and he shivered in sympathy. What was his position in the social hierarchy, and why was he ... like that? Damien had seen no equivalent among the plains rakh that he might compare it to. He envied his ancestors, whose knowledge-base had encompassed an entire planet with thousands of diverse cultures; how much easier this would have been for them, with so many different examples of primitive behavior to draw on!

At last the pierced one gestured shortly. There was a scurrying sound behind him, in the shadows. Then footsteps. Then the slow scraping of metal on rock as something was dragged out of the shadows. And into the open, where they might see it.

Tarrant’s sword.

It was every bit as brilliant as he remembered it, and every bit as malevolent. Its vivid unlight filled the pit’s interior with disarming color, turning human skin a pasty white and the Lost One’s skin an even less wholesome color—and yet it did nothing to dispel the shadows that ranged close behind it, or to otherwise illuminate the scene. The darkness that had gathered beneath the lip of the pit seemed to draw fresh life from the sword’s presence and became even blacker. The shadows became sharper-edged, unyielding. A cold wind swept upward from where the Lost Ones stood, and Damien shivered as it touched him—not wholly because of the temperature.

The pierced one spoke to them. It was a short question, harshly voiced. Hesseth turned to them to translate.

“He asks, is this yours?”

Damien drew in a deep breath, glanced toward Ciani. But her eyes—and her attention—were fixed on the sword. On what it meant, that the sword was here.

“Tell him ... that it belongs to one of my people. One of my blood-kin,” he chanced.

He thought he saw her nod slightly in approval as she translated. It was clear that the Lost Ones’ dialect differed greatly from her own—which was only to be expected, given their isolation—but there seemed to be enough common ground that the pierced one understood her.

“Ask him where he found it,” Damien said quietly.

She did.

“He says, far south of here. Many one-walks. His people ...
sensed
that it was there and went to investigate.” She hesitated. “The language is very different, I’m not sure of that one. Perhaps, heard it?”

“Ask if there was a body nearby when they found it.”

It all centered on that. He wished he knew what answer it was that he wanted to hear.

“He says, no.”

Beside him, he felt Ciani stiffen. He forced himself to speak again, to keep his voice even.

“Or anywhere near it?”

She asked, and the pierced one answered. “No.”

“Did you find any part of a body? Or ... personal equipment?”

She conversed at length with the pierced rakh; it seemed they were defining terms. At last she turned back to Damien, and told him, “Nothing. Only the sword. No a sign of how it had gotten there.”