Crown of Shadows (25 page)

He’d have to be crazy, he thought.
And if he wasn’t crazy to start with, he sure as hell would
be
by the time it was over.

With a sigh, he forced himself to lay back down. What were the odds that someone like that could be found, even if he existed? A million to one, if that. It was a dream, nothing more. Not a vision this time. Just a dream, like other men had. Just that.

But the image wouldn’t leave him. And even when he forced himself to shut his eyes—even as sleep shuttered his restless brain once more—he couldn’t help but imagine what it might mean to his Church if this dream, like so many others, proved true.

He ate
a big meal at the end of the day, just as Karril had advised. It was hard for him. His appetite had faded long ago, and it went against all his best instincts to load himself up just at the moment when danger was beckoning most strongly. But if he couldn’t trust Karril then he figured the whole game was lost anyway, so what the hell.

He rented a small room in one of the poorer neighborhoods, using Church credit for the deposit. Having given the better part of his remaining cash to his previous landlady, he had no other option. He winced at the thought of the Patriarch hearing about it, but then, if the Holy Father heard about this incident at all, Damien would be in such deep shit anyway that a little bit of cash more or less would hardly matter. If the Patriarch found out that he was traveling with demons now, and knew what he planned to do ... he didn’t like to think about that possibility.

In the small, dingy room, by the light of a single lamp, he lay back on the worn coverlet of the bed and tried to relax. Beside him lay his sword, its leather-wrapped grip reassuringly familiar in the gloom. Outside the window Casca was setting, and the Core had yet to rise. True night would come soon, whether he was ready or not. He dreaded what kind of power Karril might be conjuring, that required such a forum. Or was it Tarrant’s own nature that gave the true night special power over his affairs?

He lay still for a few minutes, and then it occurred to him that the lamplight, dim though it was, might hinder whatever process Karril meant to initiate. He turned the wick down nearly all the way and closed the hood tightly, leaving the room in nearly perfect darkness.
Good time for demonlings to strike,
he thought grimly, resting one hand upon the grip of his sword. God, what he wouldn’t give to be back in the days when the worst of his worries was that some hungry brainless thing would try to snatch a bite of his flesh while he slept! That seemed like heaven, compared to the dangers he was courting now. He could hear little things scrabbling under the bed and for a moment he tensed, but then he realized they were probably no worse than bugs and rodents, arguing over some choice bit of refuse a previous occupant had left behind.

Damn it all, I hate waiting.
He trained his vision on where the ceiling must be, darkness within darkness within darkness. There was no longer moonlight coming into the room, or any other light that could help him. His hand closed reflexively about the hilt of his sword as the thick, surreal blackness of the true night closed in around him. Now what? Was he supposed to change, or the room, or ... what? He listened to the scrabbling for another few minutes, until he thought he would go insane from doing nothing. Maybe Karril had chickened out, he thought; given the demon’s state of mind, that was a real possibility. If so, what was his next step? He tried to work out some kind of plan in his mind, but the close-lying darkness made organized thought difficult and, besides, he had already exhausted every plan he could think of. If Karril failed him now, then Tarrant was gone for good. In which case Calesta might as well chow down on the whole western continent, because there was nothing Damien could do to stop him.

He sensed several hungry things flitting outside the window, no doubt spawned by the brief bout of true darkness. Fortunately for them, none mistook him for prey and tried to enter. He almost regretted it. It would feel good to cut something to pieces—anything—for the sheer physical relief of such action.

Then, slowly, it dawned on him that he could see again. A rectangle of dull light where the window had been. A shadow in place of the back of a chair. With a muttered curse he rose up to a sitting position, and

Stopped moving. Stopped breathing. Stared.

The walls were gone now, and in their place was something far less substantial, through which he could see the lights of the town beyond. The floor of his room was still dark, but beneath it—
through
it—he could see currents of fae-light coursing like water over the ground, sparkling here and there with silver and silver-blue highlights. The rest of his room was gone, simply gone—all the furniture, the rug, even the sad little picture that hung crookedly on the far wall—and only shadows of those things remained, some clear to his eye, others barely discernible.

“Ready to go?”

He started to hear Karril’s voice from right beside him, and grabbed reflexively for his sword as he turned to acknowledge him. The demon had exchanged his velvet robes for a tight-fitting jacket and breeches not unlike Damien’s own; a short cloak was clasped to his shoulders by jeweled brooches the size of a man’s fist. He seemed unarmed, but who was Damien to judge the nature of a demon’s arsenal? He also seemed tense, which was so uncharacteristic that it heightened Damien’s own sense of impending danger.

“Where?”

“Following the path Gerald Tarrant left for us. Or for you, more specifically. It’s the channel between you two that gives us any hope of finding him.” A dark smile crossed his face, a bleak attempt at humor. “Not exactly a road your Church would approve of, but it’s the one you ordered.”

Damien stood. The action was surprisingly difficult, as though something were being wrenched from his flesh as he moved. He swayed a bit afterward, made vertiginous by the sight of the earth-fae less than a yard beneath his feet. Was that dim shadow the floor? He tried to focus on it, to gain a sense of solidity.

“Don’t look down,” the demon instructed. “Follow me, and trust your footing. It’s solid enough.”

“Where are we?”

“Exactly where we were. But you’re seeing it like I do now ... and like your enemy does. Don’t stare at the floor,” he said sharply, as Damien stumbled over some shadowy obstacle “Look at me. Only me.”

He did as he was told and fixed his eyes on the demon. Even by this light he could see how nervous Karril was, how agitated. If he took time to think about the implications of that, it would probably scare the hell out of him. Drawing in a deep breath, he forced himself to place one foot ahead of the other without looking down. It seemed to him that some kind of power was prying at the edges of his brain, trying to get in. In answer to his unspoken question the demon nodded slightly, and Damien tried to relax and let it happen. He had committed himself to this alliance back in the temple; there was no point in holding back now. God alone knew what kind of power the demon had to apply to bring a living man into this surreal place.

Walking as if in a dream, he followed Karril out onto the street. Only this wasn’t the real street, the one he had seen on his way to the lodging house. This was a place of dreamlike images, where silver earth-fae lapped up against walls of misty shadow in forms that implied houses, wagons, storefronts. Bright power swirled up about his legs and he could feel the current pulling him forward as he walked, stunned, past buildings with walls of smoke and crystal, through which ghostly interiors might be glimpsed. There was light in some places, lamps and hearthfires glowing with a brightness that shone through the nearer walls. The view made for an eerie sense of dizziness, and he had to shut his eyes for a moment to regain his sense of balance.

“What is this?” he whispered. A wave of earth-fae crested near his knee, sending a cascade of shimmering sparks up his thigh. He looked down at his body, expecting to find it also changed, but to his surprise his flesh was wholly normal; except for the droplets of power that clung to his legs, he looked as if he had just come in from a mundane walk in the park. “What’s going on?”

“This is the world the Iezu inhabit.” The demon’s voice was surprisingly real, a lifeline of sound in a domain of dreams. “Defined not by boundaries of matter but by human perception.” He brushed his hand against a nearby wall as he walked; the ghostly substance gave way like water to his flesh, and ripples coursed outward to the edges of the structure. “This is how the Iezu see.”

Despite his tension, Damien was fascinated. “Is that why you take on human form? So you can see the world as we do?”

“We never see as you do. At best we glimpse reflections of the material universe, filtered through your minds. Some of us learn to interpret these forms and can then interact with your kind. Some never gain that skill, and your world remains a mystery to them.”

He looked from the misty walls to the demon’s rather solid form. “Your body seems real enough,” he challenged.

“Merely illusion, produced for your benefit. Like your own body. Figments I plucked from your imagination, to clothe you in comfort while you brave the nether regions. Humans,” he said dryly, “require such things.”

His mind raced as he considered the implications of that. “Then if this body is hurt—”

“The wounds won’t translate, no. Your real flesh is still in that bed,” he nodded back the way they had come, toward the boarding house, “with just enough spirit remaining to keep it alive. But that doesn’t make the danger any less real,” he warned.

“Why? If I can’t be hurt in any permanent sense, what’s the risk? No more than in a dream, I’d think.”

“Don’t kid yourself.” The glowing fae whirlpooled around the demon’s feet, then settled back into its natural current. “First of all, any pain you experience in this form will be real enough as far as your brain is concerned. And if your spirit expires in this place, your body will never reanimate. Death is death, Reverend Vryce. Here and everywhere else.” They passed what must have been a tree, a shadowy shape which glowed with a soft light where lover’s initials had been carved into it: human perception, leaving its trace upon the Iezu’s reality. All about them the world was a fairy landscape, with objects and buildings and even living creatures more or less visible as humans accorded them focus. And through it all flowed the fae, more clearly visible than Damien had ever seen it before. Far more powerful. Was this what Tarrant saw, when he viewed the world through an adept’s eyes? It was wonderful, but also terrifying.

“And,” the demon added, “there is one other very real danger.”

He made the mistake of looking down, and stumbled.
The ground is solid only when I perceive it to be.
He forced himself to look ahead, to take his footing for granted. It took enough effort that for long minutes he could not respond to the demon’s warning, could only concentrate on his immediate physical need. When at last he felt sure of his balance once more, he asked him, “What?”

“Time is your enemy,” the demon warned him. “In the shadow of the real world its passage is easy enough to define; we still have the sun and the fae-tides to go by, as well as the actions of living creatures surrounding us. But what happens when we leave those things behind?” Even as he spoke, the walls about them seemed to grow mistier, less substantial, as if responding to his words. “Your perception will be our only timepiece, my friend. And human perception is notoriously subjective.”

“So what? Say my time-sense gets stretched out for a while, or whatever. What difference does that—”

And then he knew. He realized what the demon meant. The knowledge was a cold knot inside him, that clenched even tighter as he contemplated how easy it would be to fail in this arena, and what the cost would be.

His body still lay on the bed, helpless now that he had abandoned it. It would require certain things to maintain its viability, so that he might return to it. Air and energy, food and water ... how long could a body survive without some kind of liquid? It seemed to him that three days was the maximum, but perhaps that was only when it exerted itself. Was there a wider margin when flesh was thus suspended, requiring little maintenance to keep its minimal processes working?

Three days. Not measured by a clock, but by his own internal sense. Three days in the real world might seem to be minutes here, or an eternity. And once that time had passed, his body would wither and die, and the soul that it anchored would follow.

“I see you understand,” Karril said quietly.

“Yeah.” He grimaced. “I’m afraid so.” They were moving through a different kind of neighborhood now; the shadow houses were farther apart, the sinewy tree shapes more common. “So what should I do?”

“Only be careful. That’s all I know how to tell you. No other human has willingly gone where I’m about to take you. And those who went unwillingly ...” he shrugged stiffly. “They had other problems.”