City of Night (52 page)

And there it was. Spoken by a stranger.

“He knew, as well, that you
would
cross it. He understood, in the end, the need, and understood that you would—against the bitter disappointment of his expectations—do what was necessary, at the right time. It had to be that ring. Because that ring, in the end, you would wear.” she added softly.

“You could both be so certain of that?” It was a bitter question.

“He was.”

Ararath looked at the stylized H, and remembered, briefly, the man who had worn it. And the boy who had watched him. Both were dead.

“I told him,” she continued quietly, “how you would die, both with and without his . . . intervention.”

He flinched. He had resigned himself to his fate. Once a night. Twice a night. On bad nights, several times in an hour. “And how,” he asked, forcing a lightness to his voice that he would never feel again, “will I die?”

“With or without the ring?”

“Without it. Let’s start with that.”

“The kin,” she replied.

“They have not managed to kill me yet.”

“No. But they will kill you, and you will not fight it. What they do before they kill you, however, we cannot afford.”

So. He sat heavily, and once again took to the quill.

“And the ring?”

Her robes suddenly twisted, tightening around her body until he could see the shape of her thighs. “It will grant you death,” she replied.

“A good death?”

“No.”

He frowned. “Why, then, would this be of use to me?”

“You have made yourself a target. Deliberately. You have aimed yourself at Terafin.”

“I have not—”

“And they desire Terafin. But you do not understand the kin; they are not mortal, and they are not all of one thing or all of another. Lord Cordufar is
not
mortal.”

Rath nodded.

“Nor is Sor Na Shannen. They serve Allasakar.”

The name fell like doom, and silence eddied around it. Not even the Priests of the gods and goddesses who could be worshiped across the breadth of the Empire spoke that name.

Yet she did, and she did not flinch.

“They will not simply kill you. They will not kill you at all.”

“How then could I be of use to them?”

“They will possess you, Ararath. A demon will be summoned, and he will have no flesh but yours. He will take your body, which is not a threat to any but The Terafin.”

Rath waited. This time, he won the round.

“If he takes your living body, they will have access to everything—everything—that you now know. They will know, not only about the undercity, but about Jewel Markess.”

He stiffened at her use of the name, half-rising from his chair.

But she lifted a hand. “I mean her no harm, Ararath. But I know of her, and I know what she is.”

He forced himself to return to his chair, to lift his quill. This woman had, through one of the most famous bards of Senniel College, returned the crest of Handernesse. She was not—could not—be normal.

“They will know about the letter you choose to leave her; they will know where you live, and when you hunt. They will know
all that you know,
and they will control what is left; you will be present, and you will see every action your body takes, without the ability to control—or stop—it.”

“If they can do this—”

“They cannot do it easily, and they cannot do it often. It is far better to take shape and form flesh; to hide behind illusion. But illusion will not give them what they need to know.”

 

He wrote a sentence, and then another, before he again looked up. “The ring,” he said, “will destroy me.”

She did not look away, and did not blink. “The magic is a Winter magic, Ararath. To use it, you bind your soul to the Winter road. It will devour you entirely. Some pieces of mind and memory will remain if you do not call it quickly. But you will die, and they will have shards, no more, on which to act.”

“And if I am dead?”

“They will have perhaps two days. The demon will still live within your flesh, and he will expend magics to ensure that that flesh does not wither or decay, but he will have a corpse, and not even preservation magics—and they are not adept at those—will disguise that fact for long. They will have to act, immediately, upon their desires. They will have to choose caution or boldness.”

“You favor bold.”

“They are becoming bold even as we speak. Yes.” She looked at the letter. “They will not be able to prevent the use of that ring. When they see it, and they detect the magics upon it, they will assume that you are the pawn of an ancient enemy; this will explain much to them, for that enemy will be in their minds. They will do what they can to prevent that enemy from seeing or knowing of their existence, and this close to Scarran, they can achieve that. It will be an expenditure of power that they feel they can afford, but it will hurt them.

“It will not occur to them until far too late that the ring is bound to you, and only to you. They may never realize the truth.”

“And your role, Lady?”

“To guide.” A flicker of expression crossed her face, as if it were a trick of the light.

“And when will you guide me to this death?”

“Tonight, Ararath. I would not have come, but you have stayed here these past four nights, writing and rewriting the same letter.” As she spoke, she drew from the folds of the midnight-blue robe a small sphere.

It was as if legends walked, in that small and dingy room with its lack of natural light. The globe shone more brightly than the magestone in its stand, but unlike the stone, with its flat, gray surface, the globe was almost alive. Clouds whirled in it, blown by some internal wind that could not be felt, and every swirl, every movement, was like the beat of a heart.

A seer’s crystal. A myth.

He wrote. Not of the crystal, and not of the seer; not, in the end, of the demons, or of the god they worshiped. Not of the hopes that he had for Jewel, in a future he would never see, not directly. But hope was there.

He set the quill down, but did not rise.

“It is almost too late.”

He glanced up at her face, and saw, in the violet of her eyes, some dark reflection that the moving roil of clouds hid from his view. “If you know the future,” he began, as he at last vacated his chair, “why did you not seek out someone with the power to prevent what has happened?”

Her expression stiffened, as if cold had leeched the warmth from muscle. He thought she would not answer, and he busied himself, curling the letter, which ran several pages, into a tube. This, he carried to the bedpost, and, after fussing with the top knob, inserted it into its hiding place.

“When you deal with gods, and you are not one, it is difficult.”

He raised a brow, exchanging one jacket for another.

“A better question would be: How is it that we can expect to have any hope at all of thwarting the will of a god?”

“They are not here,” he replied. “And they care little for what occurs upon this plane.”

“You don’t believe that.”

He shrugged. “You don’t. Or perhaps you do. What I know is this: If you are to be believed—and I believe you—you spoke to my grandfather and he gave you the symbol of his
House
. If you could convince my grandfather of the truth of this, you could convince anyone. You could bespeak the Kings themselves, and they would listen. You could intercede with The Ten—” He paused, and grimaced. “Perhaps that is stretching things too far; The Ten are fractious and very little occurs that is not to the benefit of one or another member.”

“I could,” she agreed. “If I were given that choice.”

He frowned. “And you are not?”

The bitterness of her expression robbed her face of years. He revised his estimate of her age down, for in the elderly, expressions of this nature often added them.

“I cannot speak of it,” she said at length, “but the answer is no. I walk where I walk, but between one moment and another, I am not certain where I will appear, or who I will see when I do. I did not know for certain that I would speak with you this eve.”

“You suspected you might.”

She nodded.

“And if it were your choice?”

“Were it my choice, Ararath Handernesse, I would not be here at all. It is not a great pleasure to lead men to their deaths, however necessary those deaths might be.” She stopped speaking a moment, and when she resumed, her voice was softer, her expression more careworn. “And that is unfair. I understand that in your fashion you gift me with your reserve. You do not burden me with your fear or your desperation, and you do not plead with me to change what I cannot change.”

“I do not waste words,” he said, “when it serves no purpose. If I did those things, it would not change anything.”

“It would hurt me,” she replied, in a tone of voice that made her seem invulnerable to the pain she described.

“And that would avail me nothing.” He set aside all but the oldest of his daggers; those and the ones that had come from Sigurne. He whispered the light to shadow, but before it dimmed entirely, he turned to face her, and he smiled. “But I would ask a boon, if you could grant it.”

“Ask. But be aware that I can grant little.”

“I will ask much. Are we walking?”

She nodded.

“Through the undercity, Lady, or upon the open streets?”

She hesitated, at that. “The undercity, as you call it, is not safe. Not this eve.”

“Safety is, it appears, beyond me.”

She nodded.

“It is not—yet—beyond the ken of those who live, work, and walk in the streets above.”

“No.”

“Then if there is to be death, let us avoid bringing it to those who are innocent. In a manner of speaking. When the kin hunt, men and women die. Children die,” he added, bitterly. “If it might protect them, we will take the safer route.”

She shook her head. “They will face far worse than this before the end. But you are right. Let them face it later, rather than sooner.”

 

“Why did you not just tell them where I live? I understand that you have said you cannot choose where you arrive, but as you are now
here,
would it not have been a simple matter of a message?”

“I have no manner of sending them such a message, or I might have.”

He raised a brow. “I would appreciate it if you did not attempt to lie to me in my own home.” He was surprised at the slight blush in her cheeks; he would have thought her beyond it.

But he would have thought himself far beyond anything that had happened in his home this eve. He led her to the supply room, and to the basement, but he did not lower ladder or shoulder the backpack with the rope that the undercity often required. He began to, and she gestured; light filled the darkness. It was magelight, but it was not contained by something as small and simple as a stone.

“We descend?” she asked.

He nodded, although he thought it obvious, and she gestured again. Midnight blue billowed at her back, and her hood rose slightly, as if at a strong wind. He felt his feet leave the flooring, and drew one sharp breath as she carried them both to the ground below, light surrounding her as if she were stone. But once they landed, she waited, and he took the lead.

“Jewel,” he said, as he walked, his hand tracing the gradual changes of the tunnel wall as if they were all the map he needed.

She said nothing.

“You mentioned Jewel Markess.”

“I did.”

“Tell me, will she receive the letter that I’ve labored over for such an unseemly length of time?” He struggled for, and abandoned casual; the words were right, the tone was wrong.

Evayne hesitated for long enough that Rath turned. But the hesitation was linguistic; her expression was seamless, shuttered. “She will find it.”

“Will she take it where it needs to be taken?”

“She will.”

He nodded, and continued to walk. “Have you been here before?”

“Yes.” The word was like a wall. Tonight, however, walls didn’t matter.

She fell in beside him, light following her. He almost told her to dampen it, because he was unaccustomed to walking with so much illumination among these broken cloisters and sunless galleries. The stone walls, height to floor, broken and cracked faces, were almost white; light made them unfamiliar. “What was this place?”

“It was called Vexusa, before its fall.”

Vexusa.
The word felt vaguely familiar, but the memory evaded him, like the flicker of dim starlight, glimpsed out of the corner of an eye, that cannot be clearly seen when confronted.

“It was like, and unlike, the Cities of Man.” Her voice was soft enough that he slowed to catch it, and as he did, he noticed that she looked to the heights; what she saw, he could only guess. “But there was power here, and it did not hide itself. We will never see the like of such a city again.”

“If we’re lucky?”

She grimaced then. “I speak, often, to myself,” she told him, with just the vague hint of embarrassment. “But yes; there is beauty in power. There has always been beauty in it, but it is not a delicate beauty, and it leaves room for very little else.”

“What follows in the wake of power,” he replied, thinking briefly of a single dance in a mansion that seemed a world away, “is often ugly.”

“By our standards, yes. But by theirs? No. It’s just another facet of power, the shadows beauty casts. Power doesn’t exist in isolation; it exists in a hierarchy.”

“A point. This way.”

She frowned, but the frown cleared.

“Will Jewel survive?”

“Ararath, I am not a device to be pointed.”

“No, Lady. But she is much in my thoughts.”

Silence, and then, “Yes, she would be. But it is not fear for her own survival which drives her.”