Dominion (3 page)

He dismounted in a fluid gesture, the ends of his surcote rippling down over the flanks of the horse like silken waterfalls, and then, stepping back from the animal, he dispelled the Workings that had bound it to his service. Last to go was the Soothing itself, and as the shackles of unnatural calm fell away from the horse’s brain it reared up in terror, its hooves flailing as if striking out at some unseen assailant. Then it hit the ground running and began to gallop west as fast as its legs would carry it. The scent of fear lingered on the breeze in its wake, piquant and pleasing.

Tarrant watched after it for a few minutes, his delicate nostrils flaring as he savored the sweet perfume of its terror. Then he turned his attention to the Forest once more and began to walk toward the heart of the whirlpool.

*  *  *

She managed to find a stream bed at last, though it was currently empty of water. But she could tell from the pattern of detritus left behind which way water had flowed in the past, and that was good enough. All of the running water in the Forest emptied into the Serpent Straits sooner or later, so even if this path didn’t lead her directly to the river, it might still point to some way out of here.

Or so she told herself as she picked her way along the narrow strip of mud and rocks, wary of the slimy black algae that seemed to be everywhere. In the dim light it sometimes seemed to her that a patch of algae shifted its position as she approached, or that a mushroom-like growth by the side of the stream bed twitched when she passed by. She just shuddered and kept on going. Until the point when something actually reached out and grabbed her by the ankle she was not going to stop.

She had jury-rigged a small torch, binding dry brush with a strip of fabric torn from her tabard, and as the shadows about her began to darken she set fire to it. It gave off a foul smell as it burned, possibly from some unwholesome creature she’d failed to shake off when she had assembled the thing. But at least it enabled her to see where she was going.

To her frustration, the sun provided no sense of direction as it set, its low-angled light unable to pierce the tangled brush in enough quantity to cast meaningful shadows. The gloom in the Forest simply thickened little by little as the place began its slow descent into night, a dense soup of darkness that filled her lungs as she breathed it in, making her feel as if she were suffocating.

As darkness came, so did the faeborn. Whispers of fear flitted in the shadows on all sides of her, shards of human emotion that had survived the deaths of their human creators and taken refuge in this place. Her torch held most of them at bay, but the torch would not last all night.
She
would not last all night.

Don’t think like that. Just walk
.

The pain in her side was blinding now, but there was nothing she could do about it save grit her teeth and keep on going. She hadn’t started coughing up blood yet, which was a good sign, but she didn’t have any illusions about just how bad her condition was. She imagined she could feel bone grating on bone whenever she moved too quickly, and she knew she was lucky that her lung had not been pierced. Thus far she had managed to rise above the worst of the pain, but she feared that if her mental focus wavered for so much as an instant it would all crash down on her like a tidal wave and she might never get up again.

She’d had worse injuries than this, she told herself stubbornly. She’d survived them.

But never in a place like this.

Soon the stream bed began to widen out and a gap appeared in the canopy overhead, a tenuous sign of hope. Now she could see the stars for the first time, and the leading edge of a full moon cast thin blue light down onto the stream bed. The sight of it made a knot rise in her throat, and a whispered prayer crossed her lips without her conscious volition. She knew in her heart that merely seeing a glimpse of the open sky didn’t mean she was going to get out of the Forest alive, but the slender beam of moonlight was as refreshing as a spring rain upon her face, and she turned her head upward to let it wash over her, drawing strength from the utter normalcy of the act.

Suddenly a twig snapped behind her. She turned around quickly, seeking the source of the sound. But it had come from deep within the woods, and neither the thin stream of moonlight nor her makeshift torch had enough power to part those shadows. For a moment she held herself still as a statue, straining her sense of hearing to the utmost. But whatever was out there was silent now. Waiting. Even the normal chitterings and rustlings of the Forest had gone silent; a deathly silence reigned. Perhaps the denizens of this place were afraid of this new threat as well… or perhaps they had already fled the vicinity, leaving her alone to face whatever it was.

And then suddenly she heard another twig snap, this time directly behind her. She whirled about to face her unseen tracker, raising up her sword to the ready. The sudden movement sent spears of red-hot pain stabbing into her side, and she grit her teeth as she struggled to ignore them. But though she searched the shadows beyond the stream bed for any sign of movement, there was nothing to see. Whatever was making those noises was hidden in the inky depths of the Forest, and she was damned if she was going to plunge back into the depths of that foul brush to find it.

Maybe that’s what it wants,
she thought suddenly.
Maybe it’s trying to tempt me to leave the moonlight behind
. The idea made her blood run cold. Only a creature of the dark fae would care about something as inconsequential as moonlight. She stepped directly into a beam of light, wishing she could somehow absorb it into her flesh so that it would remain with her.

When it became clear that whatever was in the woods was not going to show itself, she started walking again. There was simply no other option. She flinched as she heard a rustling on one side of the stream bed, and then on the other, sure signs that more than one creature was now flanking her movements. But there was nothing she could do about it without leaving the relative safety of the stream bed, and she was determined not to do that. So she just kept on moving, her hand gripping her torch so tightly that she could feel the blood pound in her knuckles, pain throbbing in her side with every step.

And then something flashed in the darkness directly ahead or her, reflecting her torchlight back at her in twin crimson sparks.

Eyes.

She could see the bulk of some large four-legged creature standing in front of her, and she thought she could hear it panting: a rasping, tortured sound. Its malevolence swept over her like a foul wind, making the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. Only her faith and sheer stubbornness enabled her to stand her ground, with all the primitive instincts in her brain screaming out for her to flee. Or maybe she simply realized that there was nowhere to flee to.

Suddenly there was a noise behind her. She twisted about partway, not wanting to turn her back on the first creature entirely—but pain shot through her torso at the motion, with such force that it left her gasping for breath. For a moment she could not see anything but black sparks swirling about her. Waving the torch wildly around her to fend off attack from all directions, she reached out for some trees that she remembered being off to her left, a thicket of close-set trunks with a wall of tangled brush between them. It was the best cover she was going to get. She managed to get over to them somehow, and she placed her back to the natural barrier as she struggled to get in enough air to think clearly. The strange creatures moved closer, but they did not attack. She could make out their general shapes now, and as her eyes finally came back into focus, and could pick out a few details. They looked somewhat like wolves, though with chests more massive than any wolf God had ever created, and there was an oddness to the proportion of their limbs that made her skin crawl. She could have defended herself from both of them at once if she’d been in sound shape, but in her current condition she wasn’t all that confident. Still, there were only two of them, and if they were afraid of fire, as most animals were—or afraid of the faith that was bound to her sword—she should be able to handle them.

But then another creature moved out into the stream bed, beside the first, and her heart sank.

Another followed.

Despair welled up inside her as she watched more and more of the strange beasts come out of the forest, taking up positions in the open space surrounding her. Soon there were nearly two dozen of them, ranged in a semi-circle just beyond her torchlight. Their eyes glittered with blood-red sparks, and when one of them walked into a beam of moonlight she could see just how unnatural its limbs were. The muscles in its stocky legs appeared more human than bestial, and where paws should have been there were hands instead—or things that had once been hands, before the fae had deformed them.

Were the creatures fleshborn or faeborn? If they were merely animals that the dark fae had misshapen, they would be relatively easy to kill. But if they were true faeborn creatures, birthed by this planet’s malevolent power rather than by living animals, there was no telling what it would take to dispatch them. Some faeborn manifestations took on physical forms so real that they became dependent upon their flesh, and they died like true living creatures if their bodies were destroyed. Others flitted about the night in dreamlike wisps, the nightmare energies of their creation providing the illusion of flesh but not its substance. Against the latter species there was little defense but faith.

They all fed on man. That was the one terrible constant of Erna: all the creatures that drew their life from the consciousness of man had to feed on him in order to survive. But exactly what manner of sustenance a particular manifestation would require was anyone’s guess. Faith had seen some gruesome things in her life, in the aftermath of faeborn feeding, but she also knew that there were creatures who sipped from the emotional exudates of a man’s sleeping mind as delicately as a socialite sipped fine wine, their only spoor a shimmer of darkness at the border of his dreams.

Gazing into the crimson eyes of these beasts, she suspected they were not the delicate sort.

If they all rushed her at once the sheer weight of their bodies would bring her down, she knew; there was no way she could defend herself against so many. A cold sweat trickled down her neck as she prepared herself for the onslaught.
At least I will go down fighting,
she thought, her hand tightening about her sword.
And I will take as many of these creatures down with me as God allows
.

Then a new one stepped out from the shadows. It was taller than the others, but also thinner, and its proportions were disturbingly human. Its coat was not a mottled grey, but white—sickly white, crusted yellow about the edges—and its fur was stained with mud and worse. Its paws splayed out upon the ground like human hands, stunted and twisted but with recognizable fingers and even fingernails. And as she looked into the creature’s eyes she saw madness in their depths. Not some simple bestial madness, the rabid insanity of an animal brain pushed to the breaking point by having to live in this terrible environment. This was something darker. More frightening.

More
human
.

The others moved out of its way as it came toward her. Was this one their alpha, or something even more than that? Suddenly the beasts nearest Faith began to edge toward her, bringing her attention back to them; she swung her sword fiercely in their direction, trying to frighten them back. And indeed there was a spark of fear in their eyes as they backed off a bit, suddenly uncertain. But not in the eyes of the white one. The madness in that one’s eyes was a burning ember that did not waver even when the blessed steel sliced through the air right before its face. Could it not see the blessings that guarded her blade? Or did it just not care about such things? The latter would suggest that it was a fleshborn creature, despite its ghastly form. Which meant that it would be vulnerable to a simple physical assault.

She moved quickly—so quickly!—stepping into their ranks before any of them had a chance to respond. With one hand she swept her torch about her in wide, aggressive arcs, driving the nearer ones back from her, while her other hand tightened its grip about the blessed sword, preparing for a single blow. She knew that one was all she would get before the pack found its courage again and attacked her. She had to make it count.

A dark mass hurtled toward her from one side. She thrust her torch into the face of the wolf just before it hit her; it howled in pain as its jaws snapped shut about the burning brand instead of her flesh. But its body slammed into her with stunning force, driving her down to one knee; her ribs exploded in red-hot shards of pain. As she struggled to her feet again, the powerful jaws of another wolf closed about her left calf. She thrust the torch down in its direction, heedless of the flames that flared up around her own body as she did so. But this beast was not to be frightened away so easily. It locked its teeth tightly about her leg, and although it could not bite through the polished steel of her greave, its dead weight meant she could no longer maneuver freely.

Suddenly they were all rushing toward her, and if the ones in the front ranks had second thoughts about facing either her fire or her blade, the ones in the back ranks were not allowing them to hesitate. For an instant she was overcome by a terrible sense of déjà vu, remembering the sheer mass of the peasant mob that had overwhelmed her companions. And she remembered the blow that had skewed her own aim just as she had moved to strike at the demon; whatever happened to her in this battle, she could not allow herself to fail like that again.