When True Night Falls (76 page)

“I’m going to Work,” he warned them.

He turned to the east and braced himself. Maybe it was foolish to Work again, but the way he figured it the Prince already knew where they were and what they were doing here, so he wasn’t going to make matters worse by crafting a Knowing in their defense. He used a visual key, a linear pattern that he traced with his mind’s eye in order to focus his consciousness—

The Knowing took shape suddenly, brilliantly, before him. He saw a scaled animal, obsidian black, whose long, low body flowed over the ground with serpentine grace. The narrow head sported sharp white teeth that glinted in the sunlight as it opened its mouth to take in the smells of the region; its talons flexed on the hard black earth as it caught the scent of blood. In the distance similar creatures were moving silently, swiftly, their movements so perfectly coordinated that it seemed as if some single will might have organized them.
As well it might have
, Damien thought suddenly. How much sorcery would it take to reach out from the Black Lands and take control of these creatures? Very little, if they had been created for that purpose.

Suddenly cold, he turned to Hesseth. He didn’t have to say anything ; the look on his face said it all.

“Assst,”
she hissed. “A pack?”

“Maybe worse,” he told her. “Maybe a pack under somebody’s control.”

“How many?” she demanded

The vision was gone now; he shut his eyes and tried to resurrect it. “At least a dozen,” he said finally. “Maybe more.”

“Predators,” she mused. “But how? There’s no game here.”

“There’s us,” he reminded her. “And all the victims of the trees. Maybe the roots don’t use up all the meat. Maybe there’s enough left for scavengers.”
And sometimes living bodies, too, immobilized by the power of the tree.
He remembered the skeletons that had been torn apart, limbs and torso and head and tails each gone to provide an individual meal.
There would be other game, too, men and animals not yet claimed by the trees’ power but affected by it, who lacked the strength to run and the clarity of thought to defend themselves
....

Like we were last night. Like we might be again, once we leave this island
.

“We can’t defend ourselves here,” he heard himself saying. “Not if they surround us.” There were species that did that, he knew. Pack instinct. Those were the most deadly hunters of them all.

“Where can we go?”

He looked around helplessly, knowing what he would see. A grouping of trees here and there on the plain, one low dome of crusted lava. Otherwise: Flatness. Emptiness. A total and absolute lack of shelter, for God alone knew how many miles.

He felt panic rising inside him, drew in a deep breath as he struggled to fight it down. He had faced worse than this, hadn’t he? He’d done it and come out on top. He would come out on top of this one, too.

“Undying Prince be damned,” he muttered. The man had made a crucial mistake. By forcing them to Work to defend themselves he might have managed to locate them, but now that they had given themselves away they had no more reason not to Work the fae. He drew in another deep breath, reaching out to take hold of the earth-currents. Not a Knowing this time, but a Locating. Something focused on the concept of
defensive ground
, something that would help them find a place where they could put their backs to a wall—so to speak—and face their enemy together.

“South,” he whispered, as the information came. “Due south. Almost a mile.”

“What?”

“I don’t know.” The Locating had faded as soon as its mission was accomplished; he didn’t resurrect it. “Some place where the terrain will favor us. Some place we can defend.”

She looked into his eyes. Deep into his eyes. “That’s a hell of a walk, isn’t it?” And he knew what she meant. He knew what she was afraid of.

“The trees didn’t attack us until we tried to rest,” he said quietly. Feeling his own gut tighten up at the thought of braving the trees’ domain once more. “If we keep moving, we should be all right.”

“You sure of that?”

He hesitated. “We can’t stay here,” he said at last. “That means taking a chance. But it makes sense, doesn’t it? If their power lies in sleep-inducement, it stands to reason they would wait until their victim’s body had done half the work for them. Or at least given them some kind of opening.”

“Let’s hope so,” she muttered.

They gathered up their things as quickly as they could. Damien took special care to see that the first aid supplies were easily accessible; there was no telling when or how quickly they might need them. Jenseny wanted to shoulder part of the burden, but when she hoisted up a blanket roll to her tiny shoulders Damien took it from her, and added it to his own. She was too small and too weak and too badly shaken by her recent experience; if they needed those small legs to keep up with them at a run, they’d better make sure she wasn’t weighted down with anything.

“I can carry it,” she insisted, and he heard the fear in her voice. Not of the trees, he thought, or even of the Prince. Of her own uselessness, and the fact that it might cause her to be left behind.

“It’s all right,” he whispered hoarsely, and he patted her shoulder in reassurance. “You just keep up with us.”

They set out from the south end of the granite island, and if there was any difference between the hard gray rock they had rested on and the frozen lava beyond it, their feet couldn’t feel it. Nevertheless, it was one of the hardest single steps Damien had ever taken. He could feel his whole body bracing itself for the onslaught of the trees, and he had to fight to make it move forward, to place even one foot on the ground which harbored that deadly species. But then he made contact and there was no assault, and he knew that the power the trees had gained over him had faded in the night. Or else been banished, by Tarrant’s chill power and his own fledgeling efforts.

A mile. That would have meant maybe fifteen minutes for him alone, a little longer with Hesseth’s shorter legs setting the pace. He didn’t want to think about how long it would take with the small girl by their side. They pushed on as quickly as they dared. Sometimes when they walked too fast for her, Jenseny would break into a short run to try to keep up with them. That was all right. She could afford a brief jog here and there; they couldn’t. At the end of this mile they would have to defend themselves against a pack of the Prince’s pet killers, and if they didn’t have their breath and their energy and their wits about them, then they could all kiss it good-bye together.

He stopped every few minutes to work an Obscuring; not because he thought that he could turn the hunters aside, but because he hoped that maybe he could slow them down. Maybe by casting out a false lead into the desert he could distract them from the true trail for a short time, and maybe—just maybe—it would take them a while to work their way back again. He could only hope. He had even tried to Work an illusion back on the granite isle, to make it seem as if they had never left, but he knew how hard it was to create an image so complete that an animal would believe it. And besides, when the beasts finally attacked, they would know the illusion for what it was and its power would fade instantly. Tarrant had the kind of skill it took to create an illusion that smelled right and tasted right and struggled properly as it died ... but he would have needed a living creature to bind it to, in order to make that work. And Damien had seen enough simulacra die on their behalf that he couldn’t have stomached another one. Not even to save their lives.

As for Hesseth, she made no offer to reinforce his Working with her own, by which he judged that the tidal power was simply not available. He deeply regretted that. As fleeting and unreliable as the tidal fae was, it was a type of power the Prince would have no experience with; Damien would have given anything to have it Obscuring them now. Perhaps it would become available later. He didn’t imagine Hesseth would have any trouble Working it on their behalf this time. Though normally she could only protect her own family, he had traveled with her long enough and under intimate enough conditions that he might as well be her blood-kin. And as for the girl ... he remembered a conversation he had half-heard one morning, as he rose up slowly from the depths of sleep to full consciousness.

Do you have any children
? Jenseny had asked her.

It had taken her a long time to answer; when at last she did, her voice was strained.
I had one child
, she told her.
She was five years old when I first went into the human lands. I left her with my kin for a longmonth, so that I might go
.

What happened
?

There was ... an accident. During an earthquake. It happens sometimes
. A pause.
I didn’t even know until I got home
.
They didn’t know how to tell me
.... Her voice trailed off, thick with sorrow.

In a hushed whisper:
Will you have more children someday
?

There was a long silence before she answered. From the halting quality in her speech it was evident that she was struggling to find the right words, words that Jenseny would understand.
When the women of my species are ready to have children
...
it’s different than with humans. They can’t think of anything else, they can’t do anything else ... and humans would notice that. So when the khrast women want to leave the plains, they have to give that up. Forever. That’s what I did
.

No, kasa. Not ever
. And she added, in a whisper,
But I have you.

He had felt shamed, that morning. Shamed for having traveled with her so far, for knowing her so well, yet for never having asked such a basic question. Perhaps he had felt that if she had wanted to share her private life with him she would have, and it was not his place to pry. Of perhaps—more honestly—the memory of seeing a rakhene woman in heat still made him uncomfortable, and he had avoided any subject which might link such a display to his traveling companion. An unfair prejudice, perhaps, but a human one.

Periodically he turned back the way they had come and worked a quick Knowing. It was hard to manage against the current, and he could get only snippets of information. The animals had followed the false trail. They had abandoned it. They had found the true trail again and were tracking along it, losing time here and there to circumvent his Distractings, but always returning to the trail in the end. Clearly there was no hope of shaking this pursuit, and Damien prayed that he and his companions would reach their defensive post in time. If they were caught out in the open, they wouldn’t stand a chance.

And then they came to a place where the ground fell away before their feet, into a chasm so deep and so shadowed that it was impossible to see the bottom of it. The walls of it were lined with black crystals, their edges gleaming like knives in the sunlight.

Twelve feet across, he judged. Too far to jump with any surety; certainly too far for Jenseny to leap across.

“Is this what you Located?” Hesseth asked sharply.

“Looks like it. Damn.” He shook his head as he gazed down into the depths of the abyss. “Not what I would have preferred, that’s for sure.”

“But better than open ground. Isn’t it?”

Is it
? “Yeah.” He forced the words out. “A little.”

Think, Vryce, think
.
There’s got to be a way out of this mess
.

“Can we get across?” Jenseny asked.

“Can’t jump,” he muttered.

“What about the trees?” Hesseth asked. Pointing to one particularly stout specimen that was rooted several feet back from the chasm’s lip.

He saw what she was driving at, and he didn’t like it. He didn’t like the thought of even going near one of those things again, much less cutting it down and manhandling it into position, and then trusting his life to it as they inched along its twisted trunk, over God alone knew how much empty space ... but it might work. God damn it. It might save them, if they could get across before the animals reached them and then cast off their makeshift bridge, down into the chasm’s depths.

He took a deep breath—a very deep breath—and started off toward the stocky tree. As he took his first step, a noise sounded to the north of them: a thin, wailing shriek that might have been the wind. Or a scream of pain. Or a hunting cry, voiced by an animal that had finally sighted its prey.

God
, he prayed,
just give us time. That’s all I ask. A few extra minutes to work with, so we can get ourselves out of here. Please, God. Just that
.

The tree Hesseth had spotted was tall and straight and its base was nearly as thick around as his thigh. He tried not to think about what manner of victim had nurtured it into such healthy growth, tried not to look for the bones that must surely be scattered about its base. Those things were irrelevant now. He reached for a nearby branch and bent it down, fighting the sickness that welled up inside him at the mere thought of touching the thing. But it might have been a normal tree for all that it affected him now, and the resiliency he noted as he tested its branch spoke well for the strength of its wood. Which was a damned good thing, he thought. Because twenty feet up it wasn’t all that thick around, and he’d hate for it to break beneath their weight just when safety was within sight.

“All right!” he called back. “We’ll try it.”

He could hear the baying of the beasts now, the triumphant howls of hunters who were closing in on their prey. With a pounding heart he knelt down by the base of the tree and prepared himself for Working. No time for finesse now, or the delicate manipulations of a Knowing; he needed brute force, wielded with the Hunter’s killing power. And he would summon that force for them here and now, if he had to draw on Tarrant’s own power to do it.