When True Night Falls (73 page)

He had slept.

He had slept!

What the hell had happened?

He forced his eyes open and got to his feet, his hand already reaching for his sword. Or so he intended. But though his eyes did open and his right arm twitched, the rest of his body did not move. It was as if some vital link between mind and flesh had been severed, and his limbs would no longer respond to him.

He remembered his dream of the Black Lands, the terrible fear that had consumed him. It was nothing compared to what he felt now, the hot panic that blazed in his gut as he realized the full extent of his helplessness. Neither nature nor sorcery acted without a purpose, he reminded himself, which meant that if he was helpless there was something that
wanted
him to be helpless, something that would perhaps feed on his helplessness. Or on him.

Trapped in the confines of a crippled brain, Damien struggled to make his flesh respond to him. Each attempt was a trial, each thought a torment. It would be so much easier to give in, to rest, to let the shadows have him ... but there was no question of his giving in to that, none at all. He had done too much and seen too much for the concept even to tempt him. Thought by thought he forced his will out into the shell of his flesh, demanding that it respond to him. Thought by thought his demands dissipated into the shadows of his mind. He could feel his body trembling, feverish as he tried to work his will on an arm, a leg,
anything.
And that gave him hope. If he could feel his flesh, then surely he could control it! But effort after effort resulted in failure—devastating failure—and at last he lay panting, exhausted, caged within himself, unable to fight any more.

The fae.

Using it meant risk. Accessing it meant that the enemy might See them, might get a fix on them, might know how to reach them ... but did he have a choice? It was that or die, he realized suddenly. Because whatever had taken control of him wasn’t going to let go. And if he didn’t Work soon, while he still had the strength, he might never get the chance to do so.

He envisioned the patterns of a Healing in his brain, felt the power coalesce in response. He didn’t know if such a Working would help him, but it seemed the most likely course—and it was the strongest Working in his repertoire, which made it doubly appealing. The short prayer which he used to focus his intentions was normally muttered out of ritualistic habit, one part of a complex formula; this time he prayed it with all his soul, begging for response.
Give me the strength, God, to use this power. Guide me in my handling of it, so that my every use may be concurrent with Your Will.

The power surged within him and he rode it down the avenues of thought, seeking the damage within him. There, a shadow; he burned it away, reveling in the smell of heat and ash which his senses supplied. There, bright thoughts mired in a bog; he set them free with a thrust of power, tasting their sharpness as he did so. Again and again he burned, cleansed, opened, freed—and each time he did so his thoughts came faster, his purpose was clearer, the power was easier to wield.

At last he felt that it was time. Eyes open, body braced, he tried to move an arm. For an instant his flesh failed to respond and he felt despair flood his soul—and then the flesh stirred, first faintly and then distinctly, as fingers, hand, and forearm came under his control. He used the arm to rise up, to support the weight of his torso as he forced that solid mass to respond to him as well. Pain lanced through him as his body left the ground, but he refused to relinquish his advantage. His legs were moving now, he had them under him, he was sitting upright and then rising, then standing unsteadily on the hard black earth—

He swayed and gasped for breath, reaching out to one of the white trees for support as he struggled to get his bearings. There was no enemy visible, thank God, although that didn’t mean that none was around. Hesseth was sleeping soundly some ten yards away, Jenseny curled up against her side like a slumbering kitten. They both looked peaceful enough, but was that the result of true sleep or of drugged immobility? Try as he might, Damien could see nothing nearby that would account for his strange weakness, though even now he could feel the drag of it on his thoughts, the numbness of it in his body. There was no question in his mind that the minute he ceased to struggle the strange malaise would come upon him again, and this time it would consume him utterly.

He let go of the tree and headed toward Hesseth and the girl. Or tried to. But his body was weak, or else his control was lacking; he fell to the ground, hard, scraping his hands and bruising his knees on the black rock, his vision swimming as he focused downward on the place where he had been lying—

And for a moment he stopped breathing. Was still. Tried to focus on the ground before him, on the black expanse that had once been smooth and unbroken, which he had chosen for his watch-site.

It had changed.

With a trembling hand he reached out to touch the thing he had seen, to test its reality. His fingers made contact with a network of fibers that must have sprouted from the ground while he slept, root-like in form, their casing as hard and as white as the trees at his back.

The trees.

His heart pounding wildly, he struggled to his feet. He was seeing in his mind’s eye the piles of bones they had passed, not sheltered by the bleached white trunks like he had thought but wrapped around them,
invaded by
them. And he knew what kind of creature would need to immobilize its prey, first lulling it to sleep and then invading its dreams, its mind, and at last its very flesh....

He fell to his knees by Hesseth’s side, oblivious to the pain as his bruises hit the earth. He grabbed her by the shoulder and shook her violently, willing her to come awake. But for all his effort it was long seconds before her eyelids fluttered open, and even then the spark that was in them was dim and confused.

“You have to get up,” he told her. “Our lives are in danger, Hesseth!” He shook her again, harder. Slowly her eyes came into focus, and she managed to nod. Thank God; whatever had gotten hold of him hadn’t fully gotten control of her yet. As he helped her sit up, then helped her stand, he could sense the presence of the trees at his back. Hungry, so hungry. How long did they normally have to wait before some prey blundered by, some animal who had happened upon the black lava desert and then lost its way, until sleep—and death—at last claimed it? He tried not to think about it as he helped Hesseth get her balance, then looked at Jenseny. The girl hadn’t moved in all this time, which was a dangerous sign; she had been shaken and jostled enough times by now to wake her ten times over.

It was Hesseth who took the girl by the shoulder and shook her—gently at first, then with greater and greater vigor as she failed to respond. “Kasa!” she hissed. But the girl was unresponsive. Hesseth tried to pull her upright, but the girl’s body wouldn’t move that far. The rakh-woman looked at him, terrified. Damien grabbed the girl by the shoulders and pulled her toward him, but though she was limp enough and light enough, there was a point beyond which she would not move.

His heart cold with a sudden certainty of what he would find, he held her against him as he leaned down over her body, peering into the shadowed recess between flesh and blankets, a mere four inches of space. And yes, there it was. It had grown through the blankets and then into her flesh, rooting her to the ground. Feeding on her vitality, no doubt. Little wonder she hadn’t woken up, despite all their efforts. If he didn’t free her from the tree’s embrace, she might never awaken again.

“Damien?”

He didn’t answer. It was still hard to think clearly, and he needed all his strength to focus on the girl. Still holding her, he fashioned a Knowing, focusing it on the tangle of roots before him. His vision was augmented by the fae so that he could see it all: a network of roots that had insinuated itself throughout the lava, so fine that in places they were no more than threads. A network that waited, somnolent, until it sensed prey on the ground above. He traced it with his Sight as it passed through the earth, above the earth, into her flesh, saw it growing even as he watched—

And he cut it. Pulled forth his knife and severed the fine white threads, so that they no longer bound her to the earth. She cried out as he did so, and he had no doubt that it hurt like hell—but it would have hurt her even more had he delayed, he was sure of that. Quickly he rose, noting with horror that the fine white roots had pierced the blanket in more than one place; the whole ground beneath them must be coming alive even as they stood there.

“We have to get out of here,” he told Hesseth. Cradling the girl’s limp body in his arms. Was that stuff still growing inside her, still feeding? Had it gotten inside him? “Fast.”

She nodded her understanding. Her eyes were fixed upon the blanket’s surface, and her expression was one of horror; she had figured it out, then. Good. She would know to watch for the roots while she gathered up their supplies, to leave behind anything that had been contaminated. God alone knew what these things required in order to reproduce, but he was willing to bet that a small clump of fibers, even one detached from its main body, could become a tree in time. Would become a tree in time, if it was rooted in something that would nourish it.

Like the fibers inside the girl?

He tried not to think about that. Tried not to think about the fact that the fibers might be inside him as well, and inside his rakhene companion. They didn’t dare stop to check. It was too important that they get away from this area before the trees’ influence grew stronger, before the unnatural exhaustion that still dogged their steps overcame their will and their survival instinct and turned them into sleeping foodstuffs for the hungry plants.

Hurriedly they gathered up their things, packing them hastily into bundles wrapped in spare clothing, bound in belts and scarves. Hesseth had to do most of the work herself; Damien was afraid to put the girl down for even a minute, afraid that once she made contact with the earth it would claim her again, maybe this time for good.
If it hasn’t already,
he thought grimly, shouldering the dead weight of her unconscious form. Maybe it was his imagination, but it seemed to him that there were more and more white filaments rising up through the ground each moment that they delayed. He could feel the power of the trees beating against his brain, and once he nearly fell as a result of it. But the sheer horror of touching that ground, of lying down upon it again, was enough to keep him upright. He was acutely aware that if his nightmares had not awakened him when they did, they might all be plant food by now.

At last Hesseth was finished, and without a word he began walking quickly south. He was still too dazed to think about direction, and for now it didn’t matter; the most important thing was to get away from this tree cluster, fast. Dimly he was aware of all the items they were leaving behind, blankets and clothing and some of their foodstuffs. Organic matter, all of it. No doubt it would serve as food for the hungry plants, allowing them to grow and spawn and spread ... and hunt.

They walked. In the heat of the morning sun, which blazed livid orange to the east of them. Dry, exhausted, afraid to stop for either water or rest, they continued onward, struggling to make every footfall steady enough to bear their weight. Within minutes their camp and the trees that surrounded it were left behind, but the dark malaise that gripped their limbs refused to relinquish its hold on them; once or twice when they stopped to catch their breath, or when Damien paused to shift the weight of the girl on his shoulder so that he might bear her more easily, he felt that deadly sleepiness stir within him again, and he knew that if he stopped to rest for more than a minute he would drift away into sleep, long enough and deep enough for the local plant life to sense his presence and respond to it.

“Where?” Hesseth hissed. She looked out toward the horizon, where endless miles of basalt faded into the hot morning sky without visible juncture, a mirage of brilliance. “Should we turn back?”

He thought of all the miles behind them, of how much ground they had covered the night before. “Can’t,” he whispered hoarsely. They would never make it, not in their current state. And if they did, what then? Their only chance of long-term survival lay in reaching the rakhene lands and making their case with that people. If they went back to the human lands—assuming they got there at all—they would spend their last days waiting for the Prince to find them. That land would not shelter them forever, nor would it support their mission.

“We go on,” he told her, and though fear flashed deep in her eyes she nodded, understanding.
We go on—because there is no other choice.

Mile after mile the black desert stretched out before them; hour after hour they forced themselves to keep moving, keep moving, keep moving at any cost. Once when they stopped for a moment, to drink from their precious stores, Damien dared to sit down on a jagged outcropping of rock—and almost immediately he felt the trees’ mind-numbing power engulf him, so suddenly and so forcefully that the cup he was drinking from dropped from his hand and the precious water spilled out upon the earth. It was a wonder he didn’t drop Jenseny as he struggled to his feet, or when he turned to look back at the rock he had been sitting on. No white strands there, not yet. But he had no doubt that they were present, buried deep within the porous rock, wanting only the prolonged heat of his flesh or the spark of his life to start growing toward the surface.

Water. Walking. Food without taste, hurredly swallowed. More walking. The child was a hot weight on his shoulder, and his whole body ached from supporting her. Once or twice he shifted position, trying to find a more comfortable means of carrying her. Once Hesseth moved toward him as if she meant to take the child, but he waved her away. He gave himself reasons for that, like the fact that he was stronger and taller and more capable of bearing her for long periods of time ... but he didn’t really know the limits of either rakhene strength or rakhene endurance, and was aware that the two might well surpass his own. The truth was that as he walked he imagined he could sense the roots within her, still growing, and while he trusted himself to put up a good fight if they came through the surface of her flesh and tried to link up with his, he didn’t know if Hesseth could handle it. And so he carried the girl through the endless miles, until his back and his legs and his feet burned with the pain of it, and tried not to think about what it would feel like when the slender roots invaded his flesh, tried not to think about how peaceful it would be when their power wrapped itself around his brain and cushioned him down in deep, numbing sleep....