When True Night Falls (68 page)

“No sneaking up on that bastard,” Damien muttered. Force of habit, assessing the enemy. The last thing he wanted to do this time around was go calling on the enemy face-to-face. Luck had been with them in Lema—not to mention forested mountains and a rakhene guide—but here, out on that open plain ... they wouldn’t stand a chance.

A man doesn’t get that lucky twice,
he thought grimly.

“Go on,” Hesseth urged.

“He said ... the Prince lives in crystal. But not like a jewel, not like in his ring. He said that crystals can grow just like plants, and in the Black Lands there’s a forest of them. That’s where he lives. That’s where he rules from.”

She looked up at him hopefully. Obviously she wasn’t all that sure that the information she was providing was what they wanted. “You’re doing fine,” Damien told her, and he took one of her hands in his own and squeezed it. “Go on.”

There was a flash of images in front of her: white trees, black earth, a strange knotted tube that turned inside out as they watched it. It took Damien a second to realize that the last was one of her puzzles.

“There’s the Wasting,” she told them. Her voice was slowly growing stronger as she gained confidence in her narrative. “The Prince put it between where humans live and where the rakh live, so that if one side gets angry it won’t kill the other. He said he had to put it there because humans and rakh don’t get along, and they always want to fight. But now it’s hard for them to start a war, because no one can get through the Wasting without the Prince’s help.”

“Why not?” Damien asked.

She said it with the simple candor of childhood. “They die.”

“How?” Hesseth asked her.

The young brow furrowed tightly. At last she shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t think he knew. He just said that all things die in the Wasting, except things that normally live there. And ... he said he saw it from a distance once and it was really weird, all black like the Prince’s lands but it had white trees, only they had no leaves and he couldn’t see anything else alive there....” She shook her head sharply, frustrated. “I don’t think the Prince told him anything about how it works.”

“Of course not,” Damien muttered. “As far as he knew, the Protector might still turn against him. Why give a potential enemy more information than you have to?”

“It sounds pretty grim” Hesseth muttered.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “It does at that.”

“But necessary. I wondered how humans and rakh could live together—”

“And now we know. They don’t.”

“They do in the Prince’s house,” the girl told them. “Humans and rakh work together there, and even though they don’t like each other everybody behaves. Because the Prince is a human now, but he was rakh one time, so they don’t fight because of him.” Her eyes, previously unfocused with the effort of remembering, fixed on them: first Damien, then Hesseth. “Does that make sense?” she begged. “I think that’s what he said.”

Damien drew in a deep breath. “Apparently the Prince ...
transforms
, somehow. It must happen when he becomes young again; he can change his species or gender when he rejuvenates.”

“That’s a strange kind of sorcery,” Hesseth mused.

“Not for one who rules in a place like this. Think about it. Is there any other way that a human could have earned the loyalty of a whole rakhene nation? Enough to keep them from tearing out the throats of their human neighbors?”

She snorted. “Not likely.”

“My dad said the Prince is getting old now,” Jenseny offered. “He said that means he’s going to have to change soon.”

“So he does nothing to alter the aging process itself,” Damien mused. “Just one gala transformation at the end of it.”

“Conserves energy,” Hesseth noted.

“But it’s risky. Men have died playing that game,”

“Do other people do things like that?” Jenseny demanded. Damien sighed. When he spoke at last, he chose his words with care. “Lots of people would like to stay young,” he told her.
Or stay alive—like Tarrant—at any price.
“Some people are skilled enough that they can manage it for a time.” He remembered Ciani, so very youthful at seventy years of age. Could she stay that way forever?

“Are you going to do that?” the child asked him.

“No,” he said softly. “No. I’m not.”

“Why not?”

He shut his eyes for a moment, trying to come up with the proper words. How did one explain to a child what death was on this world, or what it would mean to his Church when he chose to die at his appointed time? “Because we try not to use the fae just for ourselves,” he said finally. “We only use it when it helps us to serve God.”

“Like back in the hotel?” she demanded.

Suddenly he felt very tired. Very old. He pressed her hand tightly in his, wishing that he had some better words to offer. “Yes, Jenseny. Like back at the hotel. I believed that I was serving God by keeping us safe long enough to do His work here. And believe me, if I weren’t convinced that there was some terrible evil here and that only we could fight it ... then I never would have done what I did. Even if it meant that I might get hurt.”

He didn’t dare look at Hesseth, but kept his eyes fixed on the girl. Despite his best efforts he could imagine the rakh-woman’s expression: taut, disapproving. But much to his surprise she reached out across the table and placed her hand briefly atop his own, a gesture of reassurance if not approval.

“Your god demands a lot,” she said quietly.

From somewhere he managed to dredge up a smile. “I never said it was easy.”

Afternoon watch: the girl and the
khrast
were asleep, curled up together on one of the cots. A bracing pot of tee, double-strength, hung over the fire. The rain outside was dying down, but the sky was still overcast.

Damien sat by the fire, nursing a cup of the hot, bitter liquid. The girl’s questions had disturbed him deeply. Not because of what she said, or even how she said it. But the questions she asked struck deep at the root of who and what he was, a foundation already riddled with doubt.

Long ago, on a dark grassy plain, the Hunter had told him what effect his presence would have on the priest.
For you I’ve become the most subtle creature of all: a civilized evil, genteel and seductive. An evil you endure because you need its service
—
even though that endurance plucks loose the underpinnings of your morality. An evil that causes you to question the very definitions of your identity, that blurs the line between dark and light until you’re no longer sure which is which, or how the two are divided.
Had he done that? Had the Hunter’s unquestioning acceptance of sorcery as a tool desensitized him to its dangers?

The issue was not one Working, he reminded himself, or even the sorcerous manipulation of another human being for a holy purpose. Every time that a man Worked the fae for his own private benefit it was another nail in humanity’s coffin, a reinforcement of the patterns which were destroying them all. Where did you draw the line? When was
survival
a personal concern, and when was it service to God?

Once he had been sure. Now he was far less certain. And it had taken no more than a child’s questioning to break down the barriers he had erected around his soul, forcing him to face his own doubts head-on. Forcing him to address his conscience.

He put his cup aside, setting it on the thick wooden tabletop. And stared into the flames as if they could provide some answer. Golden fire, hot and clean. How long had it been since he’d felt truly clean? How long had it been since he’d felt sure of himself?

He closed his eyes slowly and sighed. The fire crackled softly before him.

“Fact:” Tarrant pronounced. “The Undying Prince appears to be the only figure in this region capable of altering the rakh the way we know they have altered. Fact: It was he who launched the invasion which resulted in the death of Protector Kierstaad, and the subsequent destruction of several villages.” Damien looked up sharply at that, but Tarrant refused to meet his eyes. How many scenes of brutal destruction had he visited when the Hunter left their company to feed in the Protectorates? They had never thought to ask him. Maybe they should have.

“Clearly,” he continued, “Inasmuch as we have one enemy, the Undying Prince is it.”

“What about Calesta?” Damien asked him.

“No doubt the demon is allied to him, and serves his purpose. Which would make any direct assault exceedingly dangerous.”

“Downright impossible,”
Damien reminded him. “That’s what you said before.”

The Hunter shrugged.

“What are our options?” Hesseth asked.

“For a band of four attacking an established monarch? Very limited.” He leaned back in his chair, steepling slender fingers before him. “Assassination is the simplest solution, and it has distinct advantages. But with a Iezu for a bodyguard, he’s not likely to give us an opening.”

“What else?” Damien demanded.

“Short of raising an army of our own—and Conjuring our own demonic patronage—we must work with what this country has to offer.”

“You mean look for someone local who can do the job.”

“Or help us to do it. Yes.”

“But if this Iezu is protecting him,” Hesseth pointed out, “surely even a local couldn’t get through.”

“Ideally, Calesta wouldn’t recognize our agent as an enemy. But I wasn’t even thinking of assassination. The Prince himself is a sorcerer of considerable power, and very probably an adept as well. Such men always incite envy, and they must be prepared for the violence that attends it.”

It took Damien a minute to realize what he was driving at. “You’re talking about an insurrection.”

The Hunter nodded. “Just so.”

“A revolution?” Hesseth’s tone was frankly incredulous. “According to you, this country has been ruled by one man for centuries—”

“And there are always those who are restless, Mes rakh, and who await only the right opportunity to take the reins of power in their own hands. That’s the human pattern. The more powerful a ruler is, the more likely it is that the seeds of his downfall are already taking root around him. We have only to find those seeds and nourish them.”

“If his enemies have been secretive all this time, they’re hardly likely to come out in the open just because we need them.”

“Any sane man is secretive when he plans to overthrow a sorcerer,” Tarrant said evenly. “And he would remain so despite our best arguments ... unless he had a sorcerer of equal skill for an ally.”

“You mean you.”

The Hunter bowed his head in assent.

“But that still leaves Calesta,” Hesseth reminded them. “Surely once an inusurrection begins he’ll use his power in the Prince’s behalf—and these people will be no more immune to his illusions than you are. So what does that leave us? A whole army doomed to failure, instead of just us.”

“Precisely.” The Hunter’s silver eyes glittered coldly. “A whole army doomed to failure, instead of us.”

Damien breathed in sharply. “A decoy.”

“I prefer to call it a distraction.”

“So that the Prince and his demons are watching them and not us,” Hesseth mused.

Damien’s voice was very cold and tightly controlled. “You’re talking about
killing
these people. Sending them off to a war they can’t win with the promise of your support—and then leaving them to die, while you attack another front.”

“If they want to free their land of its current ruler,” Tarrant responded coolly, “then this would accomplish it. Many of these men are no doubt prepared to die in order to achieve that. Why should it matter how and when it happens, if in the end their goal is achieved?” When Damien said nothing, he added, “Sometimes war requires a sacrifice.”