Crown of Shadows (60 page)

“Karril!”

Each child bred for a single purpose, focused and pure in its substance. One to read the stars and choose a course. One to gather up the thin energies of the void
and
make food from them. One to steer
and
one to record
and
one to dream
and one
—
more
precious than
any other
—
to
carry the patterns of inheritance of their race, so that when the time is right, a whole new world can be peopled with her children.

He had a spasm of coughing and for a moment the images scattered. His lungs were refusing to admit enough air. The images that reformed in his head when the spasm was done were swimming with black spots.

How fragile they
are,
her children, her crew! How they struggle to
adapt to
this new place, how they fight to serve
her . . . all
in vain. They were not made for this strange planet, where forces that have no name wreak havoc with every living process. First the seeker dies,
and
then the dreamer,
and
the gatherer,
and
so on through
all
their
number
Child
after
child submitting in his turn, either to
anatural
death or to such
muta
tion that she herself must kill them to keep the family pure.

The veil. It had fallen from his face, leaving him exposed to Shaitan’s poisons. With a shaking hand he pushed it back into place, praying that it would ease the constriction of his lungs as well as protecting him from fresh assault. And it seemed to. Thank God, it seemed to.

The death of the breeder is the most devastating loss
of all. Without his storehouse of reproductive patterns
she will live out eternity on this hostile planet without hope, without purpose, her only comfort the memories that slowly fade
as
year fades into
year,
century into century.
Periodically
she wonders if it might not be
more peaceful to follow them all into death, to end her
suffering
forever.
But though the fantasy of suicide is tempting, it
isn’t really a
choice for
her.
Like
all
her people she has been born for
a
purpose,
and
hers is to give life to others, not to take her own.

And then, when hope has been lost for so long that she’s all
but forgotten the flavor of it, she becomes
aware
of something new on the planet. Not
a
creature born to its hateful currents, but
a
stranger, like herself. A
traveler.
In joy she reaches out to it, to the thousands of individuals that make
up
its
racial
consciousness ...
and
comes
up
with silence. Painful, hateful silence! The newcomers can’t hear her. They
lack
the senses. The structure of their life is so different from her own that interface between them is
all
but impossible.
Sur
rounded by
a
host of creatures who would welcome her
as a fellow explorer on this hostile planet, she is more alone
than
ever.

The images were all over him. Not only before his eyes, but in his brain as well. Images so alien that at first he could hardly interpret them, but one by one they sorted themselves out so that he could understand. And he trembled inside, as that understanding came.

She will try one last time. In the period before she came to this planet she had given birth to children who would serve her needs: she will do the same here, in order to reach these people. She has to wait long years
for one to come close, for the place that best supports
her own life is hostile to theirs. But
at
last one comes,
and
she lifts the pattern of his soul from his flesh with a
mother’s
sure skill,
and
uses it to make
a
new kind of child.
Half-breed,
maverick, enough like her to
understand her need, enough like this new species to com
municate with it directly. Alas, though the theory is sound, the result is disappointing.
Her first
child is so like her that its father-species
can’t
even see it. The second is the same. The third is
apparent
to them, but can find no common
language
with which to communi
cate. Again and again she tries, using those creatures that approach her resting place as templates for her
experiments. She gives birth to children so like herself
that they share her own limitations, and to children so
like their fathers that they
lack
the
ability
to see her
at all,and
to dozens who have qualities of both, but never in the correct proportion. She gives them the
ability
to
alter
perception, so that they can bridge the
vast conceptual gap between their parent races, but the
ones who
are
strongest in that
area
have no
realun
derstanding of what
she
is, or why they have been
born. Still she tries, over and over, each time new material
makes its way to her domain, hoping
against
hope that someday the right combination will be found....

And it has been found, but not as she had imagined
Not in the soul of one child but in the presence of
many,
each one interpreting for the brothers most like
him, taking her memories and her hopes andher fears and
clothing them in
a
framework of
alienunderstanding—of human understanding
—
untilat last, in
the brain of
a
dying sorcerer, they
aretranslated
so that men might comprehend them—

He pushed himself up onto his elbows and stared toward Shaitan’s peak. The mother of the Iezu had completely enveloped Gerald Tarrant’s body. Images played along her surface and throughout her substance, human and alien both. Stars, faces, mists and darkness, color and light and a thousand shapes without form or name. An attempt at some kind of visual language? Or perhaps simply the reflections of all the humans she had courted, as she plucked from each a single strand of consciousness to guide her procreative efforts.

He looked at Karril, kneeling by his side, and saw in the Iezu’s expression such unadulterated shock that only one interpretation was possible. He
didn‘t
know. None of them
knew

“You’re human,” Damien whispered. The words made his throat burn.

The Iezu nodded slowly. “Half,” he agreed, in a voice that trembled with awe. “And half...” He looked up at the mother. “Something else.”

And then suddenly, with frightening clarity, Damien saw the last image again. This time the detail that had almost escaped him didn’t.

... in the brain of
a
dying sorcerer ...

He struggled to his knees; the motion set off a fit of coughing so violent that it almost knocked him down again. But that wasn’t going to stop him. The living circuit the Iezu mother had described was clearly using a man’s brain for its receiver, and since that wasn’t him and there was only one other man present—

“He’s alive?” He struggled to his feet as he gasped the question, and started to stagger toward Tarrant. “I felt him die!”

A hand grabbed his arm and pulled him back, roughly enough that he nearly fell. “And so he did. Does your kind never start up a man’s heart once again, after it falters? Is the brink of death such an absolute place that no human soul is ever rescued from it?” Damien tried to pull loose from him, but the demon (no, not a demon, something strange and alien and terrible and wonderful, but not a demon) wouldn’t let go. “Don‘t,” Karril warned. “She saved him for her purposes, not yours. If you get in her way now, there’s no telling what she’ll do.”

“So she can use him as a translating device? Is that her purpose?”

The Iezu shook his head. “She doesn’t need him for that. Now that she understands the pattern, and her children know how to help her, any human will do.”

“What, then?” He stared up at the mother’s fluid form, trying to catch some glimpse of the man inside it. “What does she want him for?”

The Iezu turned his attention to the creature as well, and for a long moment said nothing. Damien saw that many of the other Iezu had gathered near the mother, as if to intensify their bond.

“She says that he killed her child.” Karril found the words with effort; clearly the Iezu bond was less than a perfect translator. “She says that the right to do so is hers and hers alone, and not even an alien may take it from her.”

“So she’s punishing him? Is that it?”

But the Iezu shook his head. “Not punishing, exactly. More like... using him.”

“For what?”

Karril hesitated. Damien could see his brow furrow in concentration as he struggled to find the proper words. “To replace what was destroyed,” he said at last. “To make her family whole again.”

To replace—?

Oh, my God.

Hundreds of men and women had come into this valley in past centuries, courting the wild power of Shaitan. From each she had taken one seed, one spark of consciousness, never realizing that a man was made up of a thousand such elements and her Iezu children inherited only one. What happened to those men? he wondered suddenly. Did Karril’s human father leave this place in the same condition he had come to it, or did he leave behind him that capacity for pleasure which made human existence bearable? What would be left of Gerald Tarrant when the process of replacement was over?

As if in answer, the mother of the Iezu rose from Tarrant’s body and withdrew to the lip of the crater. Damien had no eye for her, but made his way as quickly as he could to where the Hunter lay. “Dying” was the image the mother had chosen. Not
“alive,
” but
“dying.
” That meant the man wasn’t out of danger yet. Damien put a hand to Tarrant’s face, and even through the silk veil he could feel its uncommon heat. Its human heat. If he did die, even for
an
instant, then his compact is broken. He’s free. He put his hand above the man’s mouth and felt, even though the silk, a thin stirring of breath. “You son of a bitch,” he whispered hoarsely, “you’re alive!”

The Hunter’s eyes fluttered weakly open, and for a moment it looked as if he was going to say something typically dry in response. But then the strength left him and he shuddered and closed his eyes, never having made a sound.

“Karril!” He hauled Tarrant up by the shoulders until he was sitting upright, then wrapped one arm about him. Cinders that had fallen in his hair began to smoke as he cried out, “Help me get him out of here!”

For a moment Karril hesitated, and Damien wondered if he hadn’t perhaps asked for more help than the Iezu could give. How solid was the body he wore, constructed of fae for convenience’s sake and clad in an illusion of humanity? But then the Iezu began to climb, and when he reached Tarrant he went around to his other side, wrapping his arm about the man’s torso so that together they could lift him. Clearly whatever served him for flesh was solid enough to function. Cinders smoked in their clothes and their hair as they struggled to carry the Hunter down from the deadly peak. Once Damien had to stop to beat out a burning spark that had taken hold of a fold of his shirt sleeve, and another time Karril called a halt in order to brush red-hot cinders from the Hunter’s hair. Tarrant tried to help them by supporting his own weight, but the simple fact was that he was too weak to walk unaided.

At last, after a nightmare descent, they found shelter beside a cooled lava dome, a blister of rock whose position on the slope would protect them from the worst of the wind-borne ash. With a groan Damien lowered Tarrant to the ground so that his back was supported by the rocky protrusion, and then let go. The earth was trembling here, but it wasn’t too warm, which was as good an omen as they were likely to get. There was, of course, no telling where Shaitan’s fury would erupt next, and it could well be right beneath their feet... but that was such a mundane terror after all they had experienced that it had been strangely leached of power. With a sigh Damien lowered himself beside the Hunter, his legs throbbing with exhaustion as he stretched them out. How long had they been going without a real break now, ten hours, twelve? He rubbed a knot that was forming in his thigh, wincing as the tender flesh recoiled from the pressure. He wasn’t going to make it much longer, that was certain. He squinted over toward the sun to get a sense of its position, then out at the Ridge. It seemed much closer to them than it had been before; Almea must have led them partway around the volcano’s peak. Now they faced south, and the knife-edged mountain chain was close enough for him to make out details on its flank.

“There,” he said, and he pointed in a direction where the ground seemed smooth and solid, where a clear path between the meandering acid streams could be determined. “We’ll go that way.”

“I don’t think he’s in shape to move.”

Damien looked down at Tarrant, and for a moment was so lost in wonder that he could hardly concentrate on the issue at hand. There was sunlight falling across his face—sunlight!—seeping through the silk in bands of white to illuminate a face that had been in darkness for nearly a millennium. Sunlight glistened on the fine beads of sweat that were gathering on his forehead, and the skin beneath them was flushed with a hint of red, just like a living man’s should be.

It hit him then, perhaps for the first time, just what had happened. He had known the words before, but he hadn’t felt their impact. Now he did.

God has given you
a
second chance, he thought in wonder, as he touched trembling fingers to the silk veil that protected Tarrant’s face. After so many centuries of evil that your soul must surely be black
as
jet. He remembered the Binding that Tarrant had worked on Calesta, the horrific images of bloodlust and sadism that had risen up from the Hunter’s core to overwhelm them both. That was all still inside the man, and it would take more than a single dose of sunlight to exorcise it. But now, for the first time, he was free to fight it. Now he was free to struggle against the accumulated corruption of his last nine hundred years, and reclaim his human soul. God has given you
a
chance to redeem yourself. A second
beginning.
“Don’t you waste it,” he whispered. The Hunter’s eyes flickered open briefly, but he saw no comprehension in them. Finally he forced his gaze away, back to the path before them. “We can’t stay here.”