Black Sun Rising (18 page)

When he fell silent, Damien asked, “So what happened?”

The Patriarch bit his lip, considering the flask. And shrugged, wearily. “Who knows? No one ever returned from that expedition. In the battle that followed, our armies were slaughtered. The tide of the War turned against us.” He looked at the priest, his eyes feline-green in the golden light. “God alone knows what happened to the rest of it. This is all that remains.”

He turned the flask gently, and shards of light coursed the room. Eyes still fixed on it, he said quietly, “Your Order wasn’t founded to provide nursemaids for fledgling sorcerors, Reverend Vryce. It exists because violent times sometimes require violent acts. And because a single man can sometimes succeed where an army of men might fail.”

He lowered the cover of the case and set the flask on top of it. From the pocket of his robe he drew out a square of cloth—white silk, thickly woven—and this he wrapped about the precious bottle, until the light that came from it was no longer visible.

He held it out to Damien. And waited. The priest hesitated. Finally the Patriarch took his hand and placed the silken package in it. Not until Damien had folded his fingers securely over it did the Holy Father let go.

A faint hint of a smile crossed his face. “I thought you might have some need of this, where you’re going.”

Then he looked about the room, at the tattered remnants of his faith, and shook his head sadly.

“May you have better luck than its creators,” he whispered.

It was a chill, bleak morning when the last of the bags were finally packed and secured onto the horses. In the distance, stormclouds threatened; Senzei glanced at them uneasily and muttered the key to a Knowing, making sure that nothing had changed since his Divining that morning. But no, it still appeared that the worst of the storm would pass them by. And the rest of it—they had all agreed—was not worth delaying for.

“We should make Briand well before sunset,” Damien said. “As for whether we choose to put up there, or push on after nightfall....” He looked up at Ciani for a response. But although she was feeling somewhat better—almost in high spirits, compared to her previous state—she wasn’t about to bear the weight of such a decision.

And rightfully so,
he reminded himself.
She’s forgotten the very things that make such decisions important. Like what kind of creatures are out there, in the night.

Her appearance had changed. They had changed it. Not with the fae, but by simple cosmetic art. Looking at her now, Damien was pleased by their efforts. They had bleached her hair to a golden blonde and added an olive tint to her skin. Between the features which she had redrawn and the deep hollows that her suffering had added to her face, she looked as unlike her former self as was reasonably possible. Bulkier clothing and heeled boots had altered her size and stance as well, and Damien was reasonably sure that no one—not even her tormentors—would recognize her now. But just in case, he had added an Obscuring. To cover all bases.

Senzei was reading off the last few items on their checklist, crossing each off as he verified that it had indeed been packed. Anything of vital importance was with one of the three travelers; additional items—and duplicates—were secured to one of the three extra horses the small group was taking with them. The checklist was four pages long, in small print; Damien wondered what they had managed to forget, despite it. Senzei had accused him of packing everything but the kitchen sink. (
Did we forget that?
he’d asked), but Damien had learned from experience that it was better to pack too much than too little for a journey such as this. There’d be time enough later to strip down their outfits, and they could always sell off the extra horses and supplies if they needed to. He had been on too many journeys in which a missing item or a disabled horse had ground the whole expedition to a halt. When they needed to travel light, they would; until then, they were prepared for anything.

At last Senzei looked up. His eyes met Damien’s, and the priest thought he saw a flicker of pain in them. He’d been unusually quiet ever since they started packing—quiet and morose. Was it trouble with Allesha, perhaps? Damien didn’t know the man well enough to draw him out on it, much less to help him cope, but he knew from experience just how hard it was to establish a relationship that could weather such a departure. He’d never quite gotten the hang of it himself.

“That’s it,” Senzei told him. “It’s all here. We’re ready.”

Damien looked out into the early morning light—gray mists gathering to the north, stormclouds heavy and black in the east, western horizon still veiled in night’s darkness—and muttered, “All right. Let’s get moving.”

In the foothills of the Worldsend Mountains, a figure stood very still. She had been still like that for hours since the call had first come to her. Since her sleep had first been disturbed by human sorcery, in a manner unprecedented among her kind.

For hours now, she had studied the currents. She had watched as the ripples birthed by that alien call had dashed themselves against the stolid earth-fae of the mountains. Had watched while that alien message was absorbed into the fae-tides of early morning, to course outward again in delicately altered patterns. From such patterns, she could read much of the sorceror who had sent that call, and why he did so. She could also read what other patterns were moving to converge with his, and how her own presence might alter that balance. The situation was complicated. The danger was real. And as for traveling with humans ... she shuddered.

After several hours, she decided that she was more intrigued than wary. A very strange feeling.

She chose a path that would intersect with theirs, and began to hike along it.

Oh, the
joy of flying! Swimming through the air with long, sweeping motions—pulling himself through clouds, overtaking birds, thrilling to the sure caress of the wind upon his body. And underneath him, glimpsed through an occasional break in the cloud cover: Briand. Home. Only now it seemed different—a fairy place, made up of light and music and fine brush strokes of color. So delicately constructed that it seemed to him a strong rain might wash it all away. Houses dissolving into gray and ocher streams, trees bleeding green and umber into the muddy streets—even people dissolving into so much color, like a watercolor painting put under the faucet. His mother and father liquifying into streams of pink and brown and green, spiraling into the flood and down, down, down into the secret storm drain beneath the city that lay waiting for it all, ready to swallow up all those beautiful tones ... he could see Briand’s colors running down into the river now, to meet with the dilute hues of Kale and Seth, the harsh, bright tones of Jaggonath, the cold ashgray tones of the distant mountains. All swirling together, mixed by the river’s harsh current. What a glorious vision! And he with no concern but the moment’s pleasure, mated to the wind, flying high above the chromatic floodwaters, into—

Startled, he lost his rhythm. For a moment the winds had hold of him, and they were suddenly no longer the friendly breezes he had been riding, but the harsh staccato blasts of a storm front. He floundered. Ahead of him was that bit of burning blackness, no longer a mere speck amidst silver-gray clouds, but a full-fledged hole in the rapidly darkening sky. And inside it
—
or beyond it
—
lay something in waiting, whose thoughts were so loud that they screamed like thunder in his ears. He tried to fly away, but the winds had turned against him. Tried to slow his flight, but the blackness was like a vacuum, and it sucked him ever closer. At last, having exhausted all other means of escape, he tried to focus on the world he had left behind
—
that other world, the colorless one, the one that made him want to kill himself from boredom
—
because if he could remember it, he knew he would return to it. But the chemicals coursing in his bloodstream were too strong for that. He couldn’t go back. He was flying
—
had always flown
—
knew no reality, other than flying. And the blackness, which spread itself hungrily before him.