Black Sun Rising (78 page)

“What is it?” the priest asked quietly.

He turned down the lantern’s wick again, to save the last of the oil. Then he put one hand against the gnarled formation: his fingers, like the rest of him, were lean and wasted. “See these ridges,” he whispered. “Each of these is where the column cracked when the earth shifted beneath it. Slowly new minerals would seep in and fill the cracks ... but they left scars. Thousands of scars.” He gestured with the lantern, toward formations Damien had never noticed before. Fallen stalactites. Severed columns. Jagged shapes, all of them, that defied the normal pattern. “Do you see?” the Hunter whispered. He turned the lantern until its light shone on a slender column nearby; looking closely, Damien could see that it had been split cleanly through the middle, and its upper and lower halves no longer lined up with each other. “This isn’t the result of secondary vibration. We must be right in the fault zone. The earth is deforming right here, all about us, and the cave formations reflect it. Lateral movement along a major fault line. To be reflected in the stone....” His hand closed about the narrow column as if he needed it for support. Damien had to fight the urge to reach out and hold him upright.

“There’s nothing recent,” the adept whispered. “Nothing at all. Not here, not in any place I could look ... and that’s just not possible. Not possible! But all the fractures have been filled in, and that takes centuries....” He shook his head in amazement. “Am I to believe there’s been no movement here? For that long? That defies all science.”

“The rakh said there have been no earthquakes here. Not for a century, at least.”

“That’s not what I mean. Not at all. What’s an earthquake? A series of vibrations that informs us the crust of the planet has shifted beneath our feet. We measure it by how much it inconveniences us— how much we’re aware of it. The earth could move so slowly that all our instruments would never detect it—and it would still add up to the same motion, in the end. The crust of the planet acts in response to the currents of Erna’s core. How could that simply cease? And cease only in one place, while all surrounding areas continued on as normal? Because they do, I know that; I monitor these things. The land all about here is normal, utterly normal. Except in this one place. How?”

“Our enemy built his citadel right on the fault line,” Damien pointed out. “You said only a fool would do that. But if he wanted the power of this place at his disposal, and could keep the earth from shaking ...”

For a moment the adept looked at him strangely. “No one man could ever bind the earth like that,” he said. “No one man could ever hope to conjure enough power to offset the pressures of the planet’s core. And besides ...”

He turned away. And shut his eyes. And whispered, “The Master of Lema is a woman.”

“What?”

“The Keeper of Souls is a woman,” he breathed. “Our enemy. My torturer. The architect of the House of Storms. A
woman.”

For a moment Damien couldn’t respond. Then, with effort, he managed to get out, “That doesn’t make a difference.”

The Hunter turned on him angrily; his eyes were red-rimmed, bloodshot. “Don’t be a fool,” he snapped. “Of
course
it makes a difference. Not because of gender, but because of
power
. Raw physicality. What can you know of it—you, who were born with the size and the strength to defend yourself from any physical threat? What can you know of the mind-set of the weak, whose lives are centered around vulnerability? When you hear footsteps behind you in a darkened street, do you fear being kidnapped? Raped? Overcome by the sheer physical strength of your attackers? Or do you feel confident that with firm ground and a reliable weapon in your hands you could hold your own against any reasonable threat? How can you possibly understand what it means to lack that confidence—or what it can drive a human to do, to try to gain it?”

“And you do, I suppose?”

The Hunter glared. “I was the youngest of nine sons, priest. My brothers took after their father, in form and spirit: a hulking, crude beast of a man, who believed that there wasn’t an enemy on Erna he couldn’t bring to his knees if only he swung his fist hard enough. I grew up among them, sole inheritor of our mother’s mien—and I didn’t come into my height until late, or my power. Now, you think about the cruelty of that kind—and of sibling youths, in general—and the brutality of my age, which was at the end of the Dark Ages—and then tell me how much I don’t understand.” He turned away. “I think I understand it very well.”

“They died,” Damien said. “Within five years of your disappearance. All of them.”

“It was the first thing I did, once I had gained the power—and the moral freedom—to work my will upon the world. And those eight murders are among my most pleasurable memories.” The cold eyes fixed on Damien, piercing him to the core. “What they were to me, you and I are to her. The whole world is that, to her: a thing to be mastered, defeated. Broken. Do you understand? Power has become an end unto itself; she feeds on it, demanding more and more ... it’s like a drug that has slowly taken over her body. Until she lives only to assuage its demands, to do whatever will blunt the edge of that terrible hunger.” His brow was furrowed as if in pain. As if even the memories burned him. “And I’ll tell you something else, priest. I’ve seen that hunger before. Not in such a blind, unbalanced form ... but it might have become that, in time. In fact, I believe that it would have become that, if not for Ciani’s influence.”

It took him a moment to realize what Tarrant meant. He felt something tighten inside, when he did. “You mean Senzei?”

Tarrant nodded. “I think so. I think this is what a man can become, when that kind of hunger goes unchecked—when it continues to grow, like some malignant cancer, until it devours the very soul that houses it. Until all that’s left is an addiction so terrible that the flesh lives only to serve it.”

“But that would imply that he ... that
she
isn’t an adept.”

“I don’t believe she is,” Tarrant said quietly. “and I wonder if—” He swayed, and shut his eyes for a moment. “Not now,” he whispered. “Not here.” He looked up, as if seeking some opening in the water-etched ceiling. “Up on the surface, I could be sure. If there’s any Working in this region, it would be where the currents were strongest. I could read it there.”

“What are you thinking?”

He hesitated. “Something so insane that I wouldn’t even suggest it,” he whispered. “Except that I’ve seen with my own eyes just how insane she is. God in heaven, if she were that blind—but no. I shouldn’t talk about it until I can test my suspicions.” His silver eyes were ablaze with hatred—and he seemed to draw strength from the emotion. Slowly he released the slender column at his side, so that he stood unaided. And it seemed to Damien that he trembled only slightly as he did so.

“She was able to take us because she knew what we were,” Tarrant said. “She knew what the flaw was in each of us. And if I’m correct in what I’m thinking ... then I may know hers, as well.” The pale eyes fixed on Damien, and in their depths was a flicker of power. Faint, weak, barely discernible—but it was there, and that was more than Damien had seen in him since the rescue.

“And I will be no less ruthless in exploiting it,” the Hunter promised.

The surface of the planet was bitterly cold, and windswept snowdrifts coursed down from the peaks like waves of sea froth, frozen in mid-motion. In the distance it was possible to see the enemy’s tower, a gleaming black chancre on the white landscape. Tarrant looked about, then pointed away from it. His eyes were narrowed, as if trying to focus on something in the distance. What? Domina’s light was strong enough that the dark fae would have withdrawn from the surface of the planet, and Damien’s Worked sight revealed no other special power. What had the adept’s vision uncovered, that merely human sight was incapable of making out?

They followed him, struggling across the snowbound landscape. Tarrant seemed somewhat stronger than before, but that could simply be the force of his hunger for revenge making itself felt. Damien wondered how long it would support him.

He led them through knee-high dunes and ice-clad gullies, hesitating after each obstacle was passed to study the lay of the land again, and perhaps shift their direction slightly. He gave no hint of what he was seeking or how long it might take them to reach it. Though Damien knew that the Hunter’s cold flesh thrived on the chill of the icy peaks, he nevertheless shivered as the wind whipped Tarrant’s thin shirt about his haggard frame. How much longer could the man go on, with no more than a single draft of blood to sustain him?

And then the Hunter stopped, and stiffened. His sudden alertness reminded Damien of an animal, ears pricked forward to catch the sound of danger. The adept began to walk forward, more quickly now, stumbling through the ankle-deep snow that cloaked this part of the mountain. And then he knelt and touched one hand to its whiteness. Again there was the sense of utter alertness. As if his whole body was tensed to respond to the slightest sound. Then he began to brush the snow away. After a moment, Damien knelt beside him and helped. He Worked his vision in the hope of catching some glimpse of what the adept had seen, but though the currents coursed clearly beneath the insulating snow—more and more visibly now, as they cleared away that obstacle—Damien was forced to admit that he could make out no sign of what was drawing his companion.

And then his fingers touched something which was neither earth nor stone nor frozen brush. “Here,” he muttered, and the Hunter’s efforts joined his own in clearing the snow from it. Slowly a disk came into view: black onyx, carved with an intricate motif. The snow which caught in its etchings made its pattern doubly visible, and Damien struggled to place the design in his memory.

When he did, at last, he looked up at Tarrant. And said—not quite believing his own words—“A quake-ward?”

Ciani knelt down by his side; her fingers, cold-whitened, touched the etched surface delicately. “But what would it protect?” she whispered. “The citadel’s too far away.”

For a moment the Hunter just stared at it, as if not believing his own find. Then, slowly, he reached for his sword. And drew it. Coldfire blazed along its length, doubly bright against the whiteness of the snow. Damien remembered the last time he had seen that power used, and flinched. But Ciani was gazing at it—and the Hunter—with hunger.

“You had better all stand back,” Tarrant said quietly. “You might need to move rather quickly.”

“What are you going to do?” Ciani asked.

“See what this is linked to. See where it leads.” He touched a hand to the ward’s icy surface; snow clung to his fingertip, unmelting. “See what it’s warding,” he whispered.

They stood back. Too fascinated to feel the cold, or the bite of the wind on their faces. Damien heard Hesseth whispering explanations to the pierced one—but how much did she really understand herself? He watched as the Hunter took his sword in both hands, watched as he bound its power to his purpose, to trace the lines of Warding—

—and light shot out from it, brilliant and blinding. Pale blue fire, that blazed about the etched tile and then arced out from it, coursing over the surface of the earth like streamers of azure lightening. A branch of light struck the earth some distance from them, and snow shot up in a thick white plume, baring the ground beneath. When the air had cleared they could see the glint of moonlight on another ward-stone, its etched patterns filled with the gleaming coldfire. And south of that, yet another. Soon the land was alive with ward-fires, and the gleaming network of power that bound them together in purpose.

Damien looked at Tarrant, could see his haggard face rigid with strain as he fought to control the coldfire.
The power may come from outside us,
the priest thought,
but the order we impose on it must come from within
. And then, apparently, the strain was too much. The Hunter shut his eyes and fell to his knees. The sword in his hand blazed bright as an unsun as it struck the earth, and all the power that had gone out from it slammed back into the Worked steel with a force that made the man reel visibly, trying to control it. Damien had to stop himself from moving forward to help, knowing the cold power would drain him of life before he could get close enough to touch the man. What had the Lost Ones called the blade—the Eater of Souls? He looked at Ciani, worried that she might move forward to help the Hunter without realizing how dangerous it was. But though her eyes were on him, she did not approach. Instead she reached into her jacket pocket as though seeking something. After a moment she pulled out two small items: a folded knife, and a piece of not paper. Damien recognized Senzei’s handwriting on the latter as she twisted it tightly with trembling fingers into a funnel formation. He started to object as he realized what she was doing—and stopped himself. And forced himself to take the paper cone from her hand, that she might be free to open the knife. To use it.