Crown of Shadows (42 page)

Don’t think about it,
Damien warned himself, as the Hunter shouldered his supplies and slipped down into the darkness of his subterranean shelter.
The misery that this world will suffer if Calesta succeeds in his plans is a thousand times worse than anything the Hunter could devise.

He wished he could be sure of that. He wished he were sure of anything.

Twenty-eight days left.

What will happen to the Church’s troops if they do make it through?
Damien had asked Tarrant.
If your creations let them pass and they reach the keep. What then?

Then their fate will be in Amoril’s hands,
he responded.
And as for what Amoril is capable of . . .
He shook his head grimly.
The Forest is still mine, and will be until my death. He may tap into its power, but he can never fully control it.

For a long time the Hunter didn’t answer. It was a long enough delay that Damien began to wonder if he had heard him at all, and was about to repeat the question when the Hunter said, very quietly,
The price for that kind of success would be high. I wonder if your Patriarch is willing to pay it.

It took them three days to reach the northern coast. Each night as Tarrant arose, Damien could see him stop and gaze northward toward their distant goal, and he could almost hear him counting down the days that were left to him. Twenty-seven. Twenty-six. Twenty-five. It was enough time to do what they had to, Damien told himself. It had to be. Shaitan wasn’t all that far away, so if the journey didn’t kill them outright, they should make it with at least a week to spare. Right?

Calesta had still made no move against them. Rather than reassuring Damien, that fact made him doubly nervous. Despite Tarrant’s insistence that the Iezu would make no direct attempt to kill them, Damien wasn’t so sure. Tarrant had said that the laws of the Iezu forbid them from interfering in human development, and Calesta was doing that already, wasn’t he? God only knew what the demon was planning for them, but it was damned likely not to be pleasant. Maybe he would wait until they got to Shaitan, Damien thought. Maybe this first part of the journey would be relatively easy, as they all prepared for a confrontation on the Iezu’s home turf. Maybe—

He sighed, and shifted his position in the saddle so that his legs ached a little less.

They came within sight of Seth shortly after midnight on the fourth night of travel. It was a small town by Jaggonath’s standards but adequate for their purposes, with the kind of harbor that should host at least one vessel willing to carry them. Damien saw Tarrant fingering the neck of his tunic as they approached the southern gate, and wondered if he had replaced the Forest medallion Ciani had torn from his neck so very, very long ago. It had made negotiations easier once before, but he wondered if wielding it now would be such a good idea.

As if in answer to his thoughts, Tarrant dismounted and motioned for him to do the same. “Try not to Work here,” he warned, as he wrapped the horses’ reins about a nearby tree limb for security. “The currents this close to the Forest may well overwhelm you.” Damien nodded that yes, he understood. Senzei Reese had almost been swallowed up by the fierce currents in Kale, and that city was just across the river from them. He wasn’t anxious to test himself against a similar power.

For a moment Tarrant stood still, gathering himself for a Working. It must be of considerable complexity, Damien noted; the Hunter rarely required such mental preparation. Then Tarrant reached out toward him; Damien could almost feel a gust of power whip about him like a whirlwind. For a moment he couldn’t see, and then vision returned to him, and the wind died down. His flesh tingled as if it had just been scraped with a rasp.

“What the hell—”

“An Obscuring,” the Hunter said evenly. “Not for the flesh, but for identity.”

“You think that’s necessary?”

“I think it’s wise. Calesta’s known our path for several days now. Why make ourselves more vulnerable than we have to be?” He took up his horse’s reins again and remounted. “The fact that our enemy can be subtle makes him doubly dangerous,” he warned, and he urged his horse into motion once more.

“I know—I agree—it’s just—damn!” He mounted his own horse and urged it to a trot, to catch up with Tarrant’s own. “You could have warned me.”

He couldn’t see Tarrant’s face, but he suspected he was smiling.

Another half mile brought them to the edge of town. There was a guard stationed on the road there, which was something of a surprise; Damien wouldn’t have thought that this small town, off the beaten track from anywhere, would require such security. Two men in armor hailed them as they approached, and gestured for them to dismount. Who were they? the guards asked. Why were they here, and why were they entering the town so late? Damien let Tarrant speak for them both, improvising false names and enough details of their supposed travels that the guards would be satisfied.
He was right,
the ex-priest thought, as he listened to the exchange.
Calesta
could well
have arranged for a welcoming committee, and we would never have seen it coming.
If so, that would certainly explain why the demon hadn’t made a move against them before. It explained it so well, in fact, that as Damien remounted to follow Tarrant into the town itself he felt a knot of dread form in the pit of his stomach.

Calesta wouldn’t kill them himself, Tarrant had said. Those were the rules that his kind lived by.

Tarrant led the way to the harbor, following directions that the guards had supplied. The narrow streets were all but silent and the hoofbeats of their horses echoed back at them emptily, as if they were riding in a cavern. It had rained recently, and a thin film of water over the cobblestones made them glimmer like glass in the moonlight. Black glass. Polished obsidian. Bricks like those of the Hunter’s keep, toward which even now the Patriarch and his chosen few were riding. He tried not to think about where the Church’s army was now, or whether or not he hoped they would succeed. Right now they had enough troubles of their own.

They turned down a side street, narrower than before, which curved to the north. They were close enough to the water now that they could smell the rank perfume of the Serpent, salt and seaweed and decay all blended together into a dank miasma. The harbor must be close by.

They came to another intersection and were about to ride through it, when suddenly the Hunter reined up to a stop.

“What is it?”

Tarrant looked down the three roads available, then back the way they had come. Damien followed his gaze. There was an open-air market to the left of them, its wooden tables now empty until the morning. Some kind of factory stood to the right, its windows dark, its doors securely locked against the night. Up and down the street and to both sides of them it was the same: no signs of human habitation, or of any business that might be active after dark.

He watched as Tarrant worked a Locating, and breathed in sharply as the image took focus. The road to the harbor was wide and paved with flagstone, and even at this hour it was not wholly deserted. Not like this road that they had been sent to, which might have been in the midst of a desert for all the human life it contained. They had been sent in the wrong direction ... and that could only mean one thing.

With a sharp curse Tarrant wheeled his horse about, and the Locating shattered like glass as he passed through it. Listening carefully, Damien could hear a faint noise approaching from the way they had come. Voices? There was a similar sound to the west of them, and the clear echo of hurried footsteps. No safety there, either. Damien was willing to bet that the other two roads were similarly guarded, or had been closed off.

“You said they wouldn’t know who we were,” he whispered fiercely.

“I worked an Obscuring,” Tarrant snapped. “Either they’re hunting mere strangers ...” He didn’t finish the thought, but Damien could finish it for him.
Or Calesta gave them a vision of who we really were. An illusion of his own, to take the place of the one you conjured.
Shit. If that’s what had happened, then they were in real trouble—and not only here, but anywhere that men could be gathered together for action.

“That way will be a dead end,” Tarrant declared, indicating the direction they had been riding. “And that way, too, most likely.” He gestured toward the silent street to the right of them. “With an ambush waiting, no doubt.” He studied the road down which they had come; Damien saw his nostrils flare, as if sifting the scent of the road for more information. “Calesta will have known that our destination is the harbor. Therefore they will have turned us away from it.”

“So we go back?”

“That, or drive the horses forward and go elsewhere ourselves. Maybe the sound of their flight would detract attention for just long enough ... we could take to the rooftops.” He nodded toward the wooden awning that had been erected over the market area, and the buildings that abutted it. “They wouldn’t think to look up there, at least not until they learned that the horses were riderless.”

The sounds were getting closer now, and were loud enough that Damien could guess at the size of the approaching mob. If it was a large enough crowd, then the horses would never be able to break through it. On the other hand, trying to make it to the harbor and beyond without swift mounts to carry them was not an appealing alternative. “What’s your preference?” he demanded.

Tarrant stared back down the way they had come, studying the currents that flowed along the street. “Calesta can point people to the roof as easily as he can control their vision. And then what would we have? In this district, where there are no homes to put in jeopardy ...” He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t have to. Damien could picture the district burning up all by himself, along with the refugees who clung to its rooftops.

“All right, then.” Tarrant steadied his horse with one hand and drew his sword with the other. The coldfire blade blazed in the darkened street with an almost hungry brilliance. “Let’s do it.”

“Gerald.”

The Hunter looked back at him. The silver eyes were black as jet, and it seemed to Damien that something red and hungry had sparked to life in their depths.

“You can shapeshift,” the ex-priest reminded him. “Fly out of here and reach Shaitan that way.”

“Yes,” he said shortly. “But you can’t.”

And he kicked his horse into sudden motion, forcing Damien to follow suit.

It was an eerie ride, back down those deserted streets. Tarrant had wrapped some fae about the horses’ hooves that kept their footfall from being heard, but there was no way to tell if Calesta was circumventing that Working as well.
If so,
Damien thought grimly,
they’ll be ready for us
. He had his own sword out, flame-embossed grip settled firmly in his palm. The sword of his Order, the Golden Flame, of which Gerald Tarrant had once been Knight Premier. And he still claimed that title, Damien knew. Assuming Tarrant dead, the Church had never bothered to throw him out. For some reason, in this dark moment, the thought pleased him immensely.

They could hear distinct voices up ahead, and see the glittering of lanterns. Not far now. With a sinking heart Damien realized just how many men had come to seal the trap, and he knew that there would be no way through them save on a road paved with blood.

“Jump,” Tarrant muttered fiercely. Damien glanced over at him and saw a strange double image flickering about the head of his horse, as though there were two animals sharing the same space. A quick glance at his own revealed a similar situation. Teeth gritted, sword raised high in preparation for combat, he forced himself to ignore Tarrant’s Working—whatever the hell it was—as he signaled his mount to leap. His old horse would have done it—his old horse would have followed him to Hell and back and not complained—but who could tell what this new mount would do? Ten feet closer to the crowd, now twenty. He could make out individual faces, torches and lamps, swords and spears. There was a rage in those faces burning so hot that several were flushed red with the force of it, and as he and Tarrant came into range, curses were wielded along with sharp steel. What the hell had Calesta told these people—or showed them—to merit such hostility? There were spears being leveled in their direction, and Damien knew that if his horse failed to jump, they would be skewered within seconds.