When True Night Falls (78 page)

After a time the girl’s struggles weakened, and she fell sobbing to her knees. He drew her to him then, gently, into his arms. She resisted at first, then clutched at him desperately, burying her face in his bloodied shirt and sobbing uncontrollably. Did she smell faintly of Hesseth? Was that possible? He lowered his face to her hair and for a long time just held her. The two of them alone in the Wasting.

In the end it was the pain in his shoulder and the hot cuts across his stomach that reminded him they needed to move. Softly, ever so softly, he whispered, “Jenseny. We can’t stay here.”

She drew back from him; her expression was fierce. “We can’t leave her!”

“Jenseny, please—”

“We can’t leave her here!”

He held her out at arm’s length, so that she was forced to look at him. “Jenseny, listen to me. Hesseth is gone now.” He said it as gently as he could but, oh, how the words hurt! He could see her flinch as he voiced them and she shook her head wildly as if somehow that would make the fact untrue ... but she knew. She knew. “Her soul is free. All that’s down there is empty flesh. The part you loved, the part that loved you ... she’s back with her people now. What you saw down there was just a ... a container. She doesn’t need it anymore.”

“She left,” the girl gasped hoarsely. “She left us.”

“Oh, God.” He drew her to him and held her tightly, so tightly that there would be no room for grief or loneliness or any other source of darkness in that tiny, frightened soul. “She didn’t want to go, Jenseny. She was trying to protect us. She didn’t want anything to hurt you, not for all the world.” He blinked fresh tears from his eyes as he stroked her hair gently, softly. “She loved you so much,” he whispered.

Suddenly faintness welled up inside him. He forced himself to push the girl away and for a moment just sat there, trying not to lose consciousness. Then, when the world seemed steady once more, he pulled open his shirt front. Bloody strips parted to reveal a torso that had been ripped and torn in at least a dozen places; his chest and stomach were coated with blood, and his pants were soaked with it. As if in confirmation of the sight a fresh wave of pain washed over him, and its force was such that he nearly doubled over and vomited onto the lava.

“God.” He tried to work a Healing to close up the wounds, but the fae was slippery, blood-slick, and it defied him. He drew in a shaky breath and tried it again—and this time there was a response, he could feel the earth-power pricking his skin as the torn cells healed, the gashes filled in, the pain receded. When he was done, all that was left was an ache in his chest, a faint echo of the pain that had been. And an emptiness inside him that no mere Working could heal.

She was watching him with wide, frightened eyes. Calm at last, as if the sight of his wounds had scared her back to sanity.
She could have lost us both
, he thought.
Maybe that just hit her
.

“Come on,” he whispered. “We have to get moving.”

He tried not to think about Hesseth as he helped the child to her feet. Tried not think about how vital and alive she had been a mere hour ago. How much she had gone through to come to this place only to be killed by beasts—by beasts!—at the very threshold of victory. He tried not to think about all those things, because when he did his eyes filled with tears and his throat grew tight and he found it hard to walk. And they had to keep walking no matter what, he and the child both. Otherwise the trees would have them.

Miles. Hours. He worked a Locating to find them another island, but no Working could bring it closer to them. Step by step he forced himself to keep moving, and when the girl grew too tired or frightened or numb with grief to walk they took a brief rest—never too long, lest the trees reach out to them—and they drank sparingly from their dwindling supply of water, and swallowed a few mouthfuls of dry food. It had no taste. The fact of Hesseth’s death had leached all color from the world, all smells, all flavor. They marched on a black plain into a gray sky, and even when the tidal fae gathered around Jenseny to sketch a fleeting image of the rakh-woman before her eyes, its work was rendered in shades of slate and granite and mist.

It was well past noon when they reached their haven. This island was a sharp slab that thrust up through the lava flow at such a steep angle that they had to circle nearly all the way around it before they found a place where they could climb. On its south side the slab had shattered and fallen, leaving a pile of rubble that could serve as a functional, if precarious, staircase.

When at last they reached a resting spot—a wide ledge some ten feet down from the island’s highest point—Damien felt the raw grief of the day’s experience finally overwhelm him. He let it. The girl collapsed on the granite shelf—safely back from the edge, he saw to that—and sobbed wildly, giving vent to all the misery and the fear that she had been fighting for hours. He let her. He had seen enough grief in his time to know that this, too, was part of the healing. No wound could close until it had been properly drained.

At last, softly, he spoke her name.

At first she didn’t seem to hear him. Then, seconds after he had spoken, she looked up at him. Her eyes were red and swollen and her whole face was wet with tears. Shaking, she wiped a sleeve across her nose as she looked at him, waiting to hear what he had to say.

“I’m going to say a prayer for Hesseth,” he told her. “It’s a very special prayer that we say when someone dies. Normally—” The words caught in his throat suddenly and for a moment he couldn’t speak. “Normally we say it when we bury people, but sometimes the people we love die when they’re far away, or something happens to a body so that we can’t get to it ... like with Hesseth. So we just say it when we can, because God will hear it anywhere.” He gave that a minute to sink in, then told her, very softly, “I’d like you to do it with me.”

For a moment she didn’t answer. Then, in a hoarse whisper, she asked him, “What is it?”

He drew in a deep breath, “We tell God how much we loved Hesseth, and how sorry we are that she’s gone. And then we talk about the good things she did, and how much she cared for all of us, and we ask God to please take care of her, and see that she gets back to her people, and to see that her soul is surrounded by the souls of those she loved.... That’s all,” he said hoarsely. “It’s just a ... a way of saying good-bye.” He held out a hand to her. “Come on. I’ll lead you through it.”

She didn’t move at first. The look in her eyes was strange, and at first Damien attributed it to her fear of his Church. For a brief moment he wondered if he had chosen badly, if the offer of healing he had intended might not hurt her more.

But then she whispered, with tears in her voice, “After we do it for Hesseth, then we ... can we please ... say one for my father?”

“Oh, my God.” He pulled her to him, oh so gently, wary lest she reject the contact. But she came to him and she put her arms around him and she sobbed into the fabric of his shirt, shedding tears that had been kept inside for so long that they must have burned like fire as they flowed. “Of course, Jen. Of course.” He kissed the top of her head. “God forgive me for not having thought of it sooner. Of course we can.”

In the desert night, by the light of a single moon, they prayed for the souls of their loved ones.

The river was swollen fat from the spring tides, and its icy current easily submerged the various rocks and promontories which might be hazards in another season. The three boats slid over its surface with ease, reflections shimmering in the Corelight as the oars dipped quietly in unison, drew free of the water, dipped again.

They were using no steam tonight, nor any form of power that might make noise. If their quarry had been merely human, the captain might have chanced it, but one of the travelers was rakhene—and that kind could pick out the mechanical sound of a steam engine down a hundred miles of canyon, if they knew that their lives depended on it.

It was rare that he got to hunt his own kind. It was ... intriguing.

They came to where the canyon turned, and then he signaled the three boats ashore. The thin leather gloves he wore made his hand seem almost human as it executed the command gesture, and the irony of it was not lost on him.

They dragged the boats ashore, beyond the reach of a sudden spring swell, and gathered about the captain. With minimal words and gestures he described the situation, their position, their intention.

One of them asked, “Alive?”

“If possible,” he responded.

He opened the hood that protected his head and face from the sun and let it fall back on his shoulders. A cool breeze ruffled his mane and he breathed it in deeply, sifting it for scents. Nothing useful.

“Are you sure they’ll land here?” one of the humans demanded. “Shouldn’t we have some kind of backup?”

He turned to face the man. There was no need to hiss a warning; his expression was enough. The man’s color, already light in tint, went two shades paler.

“His Highness
says they’ll land here.” There was scorn in the captain’s voice, and the absolute authority of one who has earned his position not only through civilized human channels, but by blood and by claw. “Do you have a problem with that?”

“No, sir.” He shook his head vigorously. “Of course not, sir.”

Deliberately, the captain turned away from him. “All right,” he said. “You know the plans. Take up your positions and be ready. Stay quiet. And remember: they have sorcery. Don’t take chances.”

“Sir?”

Humans. It never ceased to amaze him how they needed everything spelled out for them.

“If they look like they’re about to Work,” he told them, “then kill them.”

And he added, just because they were human, “Any questions?”

This time, there were none

There was an earthquake soon after sunset. By the light of the Core they could see the twisted land rippling as the shock waves passed through it, the black earth heaving like a storm-tossed sea. And then, at last, all was quiet. New cracks surrounded the base of their island, but there was nothing they couldn’t get across if they had to.

“Is he coming soon?” the girl asked.

Tarrant.

In Hesseth’s absence he was their anchor, their key. Damien’s Workings might net them a few helpful tips about dealing with their immediate environment, but it would take a man of Tarrant’s power and experience to obtain what they must have now: exhaustive knowledge about a land few humans had ever seen, and a safe means of approaching a species hostile to their own. With Hesseth gone, he was their only hope.

“Soon,” Damien promised.

The local faeborn were beginning to gather about their mount, but they were few in number and lacked strength; evidently the more enterprising wraiths had made their bid for nourishment the night before. Unable to Banish them because of the earthquake-hot currents, Damien held the child close to him and watched as they flitted about the camp. Ghostlings, bloodsuckers, a single succubus. He watched the latter for a few seconds, marveling at the way she—it—responded to his scrutiny. Slowly the foggy form adopted all the features that he found desirable in women, and if he had responded even for a moment it would have taken that as an opening and attached itself to him faster than he could draw in a breath. But he knew all too well what it was and what it could do, and far from arousing his sexual interest it repelled him so thoroughly that at last the thing screeched in frustration and darted off into the night, no doubt to seek more cooperative prey. The rest kept their distance, circling warily about the ledge. Damien kept his hand on his sword, ready to deal with the more solid manifestations, and prayed that the subtler demonlings would make no move until the fae cooled off. Wouldn’t that be the ultimate waste, to come all this way and fight so hard to get here, only to fry himself to a crisp in a single careless gesture—

Oh, my God
.

For a moment he was unable to move, and barely able to think; if one of the ghostlings had attacked him then and there, that would have been it for him. Because a thought had just occurred to him that was so terrible, so absolutely devastating in its implications, that his mind could barely touch on it without opening a gateway to utter panic.

Tarrant.

Had awakened at sunset.

Had transformed himself in order to return to them.

Had
Worked?

He remembered the earthquake which had so recently shaken their granite mount, rock shards tumbling down on them as the ground convulsed from horizon to horizon. And yet that physical upheaval was nothing compared to what preceded it. To the surge of earth-fae which flowed just ahead of it, swallowing everything in its path....

How alert was the Hunter when he first awoke? How careful? Did the deathlike trance release him so suddenly when sunset came that his mind was alert and functioning mere seconds later? Or was there, as with the living, a short period of dullness in which the brain struggled to throw off the bonds of sleep and get on with the business of living? Was that precisely disciplined soul so perfectly oriented that he would never think of transforming his flesh without first checking the currents for an earthquake’s subtle warning signs? Or had he Worked his own flesh so many nights now, so fearlessly, that a glance at the earth-fae would seem enough? A token gesture without real concentration behind it—

“What is it?” Jenseny demanded. “What’s wrong?”

Shaking, he wrapped his arms around his chest and tried to believe that everything was all right. Because if Tarrant was gone, then there really was no hope for them. They might get through the desert, they might even find a willing ear or two among the rakh, but without Tarrant’s power to back them up there was no way they could defeat a man like the Prince. Not a sorcerer who was so deeply entrenched here that even the plants served his will.