Black Sun Rising (27 page)

He turned away as if to leave—and then looked back at Damien. “We don’t leave until dusk, of course. I prefer not to travel in sunlight. But you guessed that, didn’t you? You guessed so very much.” He smiled, and bowed his head ever so slightly. “Until tomorrow, Reverend Vryce.”

Speechless, Damien watched while Tarrant strode the length of the pier, disappearing at last into the shadows that lay along the shore. The priest’s hands clenched into fists slowly, then unclenched, then repeated the pattern. Trying to bleed off some of the tension, so that the night wouldn’t throw his own fears back at him. The last thing he needed now was a battle with brainless demonlings. He needed to think.

There was a stirring inside the boat’s small cabin, as if in response to the sudden silence without. After a moment the mariner peeked out; when he saw that Damien was still there, he began to withdraw.

“He’s gone,” the priest said quickly. “But I do need to talk to you.”

The man hesitated, then came out onto the deck. “Mer?”

“The trip tomorrow.” He felt himself stiffen, fought to keep the tension out of his voice. “We won’t be able to leave until after dusk.”

The man just stared at him. “I figured,” he said at last. “You travel with that kind, those are the hours.”

He started to turn away, but Damien indicated with a gesture that he wasn’t done with him.

“Mer?”

“What was the medallion he showed you?” the priest asked tightly. “What did it mean?”

The man hesitated; for a minute, it looked like he wished he were somewhere else. Anywhere else. Damien just waited. And finally the man muttered, “The Forest. The Hunter. His servants wear that sigil.” He looked up at Damien; his expression was a warning. “We don’t anger that kind. I suggest you don’t either. Not in this region, anyway.”
Maybe nowhere at all
, his gaze seemed to say. “They take care of their own. Their enemies die. No exception.—You understand?”

“I understand,” Damien said quietly. Hearing his own thoughts echo within him, like that of a stranger.

“Damn it!” he hissed angrily, when the man was out of hearing.

It was a long while before he started back.

The sun was still shining brightly when Tobi Zendel’s steam-driven boat approached the Morgot docks. With care, he brought it in safely at the far end of the harbor. There were few people about. Which meant few police and few inspectors. That was intentional. With the xandu on board—and a damned strange passenger to boot—he was anxious to avoid anyone in uniform.

“This is it,” he told her. He looped a mooring line over a convenient post, then leapt up onto the pier to secure it. The boat rubbed up gently against the cold, swollen wood. “Sorry I can’t take you closer in by boat, but ... well, hey.” He offered her a hand to help her onto the pier but she looked right through him, as if it were beneath her pride to notice. After a moment his hand withdrew. She stepped up easily onto the boat’s polished edge, and from there continued without hesitation or slippage to step across the water to the more stable surface of the pier.

“You got your sea legs fast, that’s for sure.” He grabbed at another rope from the back end of the boat and affixed that, too; then he tested them both. “Tell you what. I need to arrange for some fuel before I start back. You come with me, I’ll show you the way up to the travelers’ facilities. Okay?” She said nothing. He patted the last of his mooring lines affectionately, then looked back uneasily at the boat. “Think I ought to secure him? I mean, I left him inside and all ... but those are damned flimsy walls, you know what I mean? Not meant to do much more than keep out the rain.” He glanced at her. Her expression was unreadable. “Think so?” Still nothing. At last he shrugged and climbed back down onto the slowly shifting deck.

She waited.

After a moment, there was a noise from inside the cabin. Some quick movement, and one sharp impact against the wall. Then silence.

She waited.

The xandu climbed out of the cabin and shook itself quickly, like a cat shedding water. It looked at her, at the well-worn pier, and the distance between them. And then, in one powerful leap, it bypassed all the obstacles. Its feet landed heavily on the thick planks by her side, toenails digging into the soft wood for balance.

Wordlessly, she took a small bit of cloth from out of her right hip pocket. And wiped its two horns dry, of blood and sea-spray both.

They walked to where the trees began, and made sure they were well out of sight before she mounted.

Gerald Tarrant arrived promptly at sunset. His height and his bearing made him stand out from the locals, even at a distance: long, easy stride contrasted with their short-legged hustling, fluid grace set against their unrefined simplicity.
Aristocratic,
Damien thought. In the Revivalist sense of the word. He wondered why the adjective hadn’t occurred to him before.

The horses had been on edge since being lowered like cargo from the eastern cliff wall; now, as Tarrant approached, they grew even more agitated. Damien moved closer to his mount and put his hand on its shoulder. Through the contact he could feel the animal’s fear, a primal response to dangers sensed but not yet comprehended.

“I know just how you feel,” he muttered, stroking it.

Gerald Tarrant was all politeness, as always. And as always, there was a dark undercurrent not quite concealed by his genteel facade. Stronger than before, Damien noticed. Or perhaps simply more obvious. Was that in response to the local fae, which would tend to intensify any malevolence? Or was it simply that the mask of good nature he normally assumed was allowed to slip a bit, now that he was close to home?

Or your own fertile imagination working overtime,
he cautioned himself.
Senzei and Ciani aren’t having any problem with him.

Not quite true. Senzei was polite, but Damien knew him well enough to read the added tension in his manner. The revelation of Tarrant’s origin hadn’t pleased him any more than it did Damien. But Ciani—

With consummate grace, Tarrant walked to where she stood, took her hand in his, and bowed gallantly. Gritting his teeth, Damien was forced to acknowledge the man’s charm.

“Watch her,” he muttered, and Senzei nodded. Tarrant’s ties to the Hunter should have been enough to make Ciani keep her distance—except that she was Ciani, and even before the accident she had loved knowledge for its own sake, without the “taint” of moral judgment. With a sinking feeling Damien realized just how drawn she would be to the Hunter, and to the mystery that he represented. It would mean little to her that he tortured human women as a pasttime, save as one more fact for her to devour. For the first time it occurred to him just what a loremaster’s neutrality meant, and it made his stomach turn. He had never considered it in quite that way before.

Tarrant came over to where he stood beside the horses; instinctively he moved closer to his own mount, protecting it. Tarrant regarded the animals for a moment, nostrils flaring slightly as he tested their scent. Then he touched them lightly, one after the other. Just that. As contact was made with each animal it calmed, and when it was broken each lowered its nose to the planks of the deck, as if imagining that it was not at sea, but somewhere on its favorite grazing ground.

“Not mine,” Damien warned him.

“As you wish.” They were being approached by the boat’s captain and owner; the grubby mariner of the day before had been transformed by a shave and a change of clothing into something marginally neater, but no less obsequious. He clearly considered Tarrant the master of this expedition.

“Welcome on board, your lordship.”

“The wind is adequate?” Tarrant asked.

“Excellent, your lordship. Of course.”

“It will hold until we reach Morgot,” he promised.

“Thank you, your lordship.”

Tarrant glanced about the deck, taking in all of it: the travelers, their luggage, the newly docile mounts. And Damien, with his own horse nervously pawing the deck. He spared an amused, indulgent nod for the pair of them, then told the man briskly, “All’s in order. Take us out.”

“Yes, your lordship.”

Mooring lines were cast off, sails were raised to catch the wind, and they began to move. The piers gave way to open harbor, and then to the sea. Dark waves capped by moonlight, and a wake of blue-white foam behind them. When the ride was smooth enough for study, Senzei took out his maps again and began to go over them with Ciani. Trying to inspire her enthusiasm? Damien winced at the memory of how lively she had been only a handful of days ago. And he ached anew, for the loss of the woman he had come to know so well.

After a time he moved to the bow of the small ship, and tried to make out the shape of what would be Morgot. But the island was too dark, or too small, or else too far away. For a moment he thought he saw mountains in the distance—but no, those must be low-lying clouds that fooled his eye. The northern mountains were too far away to be glimpsed from here.

“You’re apprehensive.”

He whipped about, a combat-trained reaction. How did the man manage to come up so close behind him without him being aware of it?

“Shouldn’t I be?” he retorted stiffly.

Gerald Tarrant chuckled. “Here, where no rakh-born demon can reach you? Remember the power of deep water, priest. They can’t even sense your trail, over this.”

He moved so that he could look out over the waves without quite losing sight of Tarrant. Miles upon miles of water surrounded them, flowing over earth and earth-fae alike. Far beneath them, hidden from sight, the currents still flowed northward, but they clung to the surface of the earth’s crust. Here, above the waves, such power was all but inaccessible. Faeborn creatures usually avoided crossing bodies of water for that reason; shallow waters might rob them of their special powers, and deep enough waters might cost them their life.

He wondered if the creature called the Hunter could survive such a crossing. Was that why he sent out his minions, his constructs, but never left the Forest himself? Or was his form simply so
unhuman
that the men who plied the straits for a living would respond poorly to his overtures—unlike their response to the elegant, courteous Gerald Tarrant?

Black water, pale blue moons. Domina overhead, rising as they sailed northwards, and the whiter crescent of Casca counter-rising in the west: a heavenly counterpoint. For an instant he sensed a greater Pattern forming between them, as if the tides of light and gravity were cojoined with the rhythms of lunar rotation in a delicate, ever-shifting web of power. Then the moment was gone, and the night was merely dark.

“Yes,” Tarrant whispered. “That was it.”

Damien looked up at him.

“Tidal fae. The most tenuous of all powers—and the most potent.” The silver eyes looked down on him, reflecting the cool blue of moonlight. “You’re a very fortunate man, Reverend Vryce. Few men ever see such a thing.”

“It was beautiful.”

“Yes,” Tarrant agreed. There was a strange hush to his voice. “The tidal power is that.”

“Can it be worked?”

“Not by such as you or I,” he responded. “Sometimes women can See it—very rarely—but no human I know of has ever mastered it. Too variable a power. Very dangerous.”

Damien looked up at him. “You’ve tried,” he said quietly.

“In my youth,” he agreed. “I tried everything. That particular experiment nearly killed me.” The pale eyes sparkled with some secret amusement. “Does it comfort you, to imagine I could die?”