When True Night Falls (69 page)

“Yeah,” he muttered. “I know. I still don’t like it.”

“If we were to do that,” Hesseth asked him, “how would we start? How would we go about finding a group like that?”

“Ah,” he said softly. “That is the sticking point.”

“Come on,” Damien snapped. “With one Knowing—”

“I could interpret the tides of revolution in this land—and also announce our presence to the Prince like a thousand trumpets heralding an army. No, Reverend Vryce. We need to be circumspect in using the fae here. Any fae,” he added, and he looked pointedly at Jenseny.

The girl didn’t quail as his cold gaze met hers, not in body nor in spirit. For all that the outside world still frightened her, she had come to terms with Tarrant’s particular emanations. In that, Damien thought, she’d done better than most adults could dream of. Better than himself, sometimes.

“Jen.” Hesseth stroked her hand gently. “Can you tell us anything? Something your father said, maybe, or something he showed you?”

She hesitated. “Like what?”

“About people who weren’t happy with the Prince. About places where the Prince might be in trouble.”

“Do you really expect her to know that?” Tarrant asked sharply.

“Her father came here because he was the Prince’s enemy,” Damien reminded him. “Whatever other reasons he might have given for the journey, basically he came here to scout out the Prince’s situation—including possible weaknesses.” He reached out and squeezed Jenseny’s shoulder in reassurance. “Since he seems to have told his daughter everything else, why not that?”

“I think...” she said slowly. The words faded into silence as she struggled to remember. “I think he said there were rakh who weren’t happy.”

Hesseth exhaled noisily. “I can believe that.”

“He said it was hard for them, because the Prince was like one of their kind. But also he wasn’t.”

“Species bonding instinct at war with intellect,” Tarrant observed. Hesseth hissed softly.

“Do you know any names?” Damien asked softly. “Did he ever talk about anyone in particular?”

“He saw a rakh city,” Jenseny said. Her eyes were unfocused, as if struggling to see something far, far away. “The Prince took him on a tour. He said that he wanted to impress him with how good everything was. But my dad said that some of it wasn’t good. He said he thought some of the rakh were angry, and they really wanted their own country. But they would never dare say anything.”

“Names,” Damien urged. “Do you know any names?”

She bit her lower lip, concentrating. “Tak,” she said at last. “The city was Tak. And there was a guide, a rakh-woman ... Suka, I think her name was. Suka ... there was another part.”

“We need—” Damien began

“Shh.” It was Tarrant. “Let her talk.”

“Suka ... I can’t remember.” Her hand, still covered by Hesseth’s, had balled into a fist with the strain of remembering. “And then there was another. Somebody important.” Damien could feel himself tense as she said that; it took effort not to press her for details, but to wait until she chose to offer them. “He was strong, and really important. The way rakh-men are important, and women aren’t.”

“Alpha male,” Tarrant provided.

Hesseth shot him a look that could kill. “Prime male,” she corrected him. Insisting on the title that her own people used, instead of the one that humans had created for studying animal behavior. And she was right, Damien mused. A people capable of overriding their inherited instincts deserved something better than a term used to describe dogs and horses.

“I think ... his name was Kata something. Katas ...
Katassah.”
Her hands unclenched as the memory came to her at last. “That was it. Katassah.”

“A prime male,” Damien said softly.

“Which means that the others will obey him.”

“Which means that the others
might,”
Hesseth corrected.

“Tell us about this Katassah,” Damien urged.

The girl hesitated. “My dad said that he was tall and strong and he liked to fight. All the rakh-men like to fight.”

“Assst!” Hesseth hissed. “Tell me about it.”

“He acted like he liked the Prince, and maybe he really did, but my dad didn’t think so. He didn’t think any of the rakh really liked the Prince. He said that if there was a chance for the Prince to be overthrown, some rakh might go for it.”

“Including this Katassah?”

“I think so,” she said. “But he wasn’t really sure. It was something he said he just sensed, but he couldn’t talk about it with anyone. Just a guess.”

There was silence about the small table. A sharp silence, heavy-laden with thought. At last it was Hesseth who spoke what they all were thinking.

“Dealing with the rakh,” she said quietly, “means crossing the Wasting.”

“Yeah,” Damien muttered. It was not a concept he relished.

“Are we so sure they’d be willing to ally with us?” Tarrant challenged. “A rakhene warrior who’s dedicated himself to the overthrow of a human master is hardly going to welcome allies from that species.”

Damien looked at Hesseth, who reminded him, “I’m not human.”

“What I meant—”

“You forget why I’m here,” she said evenly. Her voice was calm, but her eyes glittered darkly with remembered hatred. “This man—this Prince—is transforming my people into demons. Worse: he’s transforming them into monsters who
think
they’re demons, who hunt and feed like the lowest of the faeborn, even to the extent of surrendering their lives to the sun.” She looked at Jenseny. “Did these rakh go out in the sun? Did your father say?”

For a minute the girl was silent. “He said they don’t like the sun,” she said at last. “But I don’t think it hurts them. Not a lot.”

Hesseth hissed. “So. What was finished in the west is only half-begun here. Maybe it’s harder to alter a nation of a hundred thousand than it is a tribe of several dozen. Or maybe the woman who ruled there was more determined to make the transformation complete. Either way ... what we saw there was a sign of things to come for these people. Why else would they be turning into ... what Jenseny saw?” She turned to Tarrant, amber eyes flashing in the firelight. “Do you think there is a rakh who wouldn’t join us, once he understood that? Do you think any rakh would continue to serve the Prince once they saw where his power was leading?”

“I think there are always men who will serve a tyrant,” Tarrant said dryly, “and your species is no exception. But the point is well taken.”

Silence fell once more, amid the golden flickering of flames. Amid thoughts of the Wasting, and its ruthless monarch.

“I don’t see an alternative,” Damien said at last. “Does anyone else?”

Hesseth looked pointedly at Tarrant. The tall man nodded slowly, his expression grim. “No,” he said. “There’s no other way that presents itself here.” His tone was strange, but Damien chalked that up to the subject matter. Starting a war was no small thing.

“All right,” Damien said. “But I want this understood. We’ll go to the rakh cities, we’ll find this Katassah, and we’ll see if he wants to work with us. Agreed? And then we’ll discuss what our options are. But I’m not agreeing to use him as a sacrificial cover.
Ever.
If we ally with him, then we ally. Period. All cards on the table.” He glared at Tarrant. “Understood?”

The adept’s voice was quiet, but his eyes were burning frost. “You would doom us all for the sake of some abstract morality.”

“Maybe. We’ll see. In the meantime, those are the conditions.” When Tarrant did not respond, again he pressed, “Well? Agreed?”

“Your quest,” the Neocount said quietly. Very quietly. It was hard to say just where in his words the disdain was so evident, but it was. In his tone, perhaps. Or maybe in his expression. “You call the shots.”

“Fine. That’s it, then. On those terms.” He glanced out the window, at the darkness beyond. “We’ll wait another day to let the ground dry out a bit; if the weather stays this cold, that could make a big difference. I imagine in the Wasting it’ll be even harder, with no real shelter—”

“And we don’t know what traps that place will contain,” Tarrant reminded him. “I don’t imagine black land and ghostly trees will be the whole of it.”

“No.” A chill ran up Damien’s spine, just thinking of the place. “But we have my experience and Hesseth’s senses, not to mention your own considerable power.”

“Yes,” the adept mused distantly. “There is, of course, that.”

“And Jenseny’s special vision,” he said, and he squeezed the girl’s hand. To his surprise—and relief—he found that she wasn’t trembling. Did she trust in them that much? Did she think they could protect her?

We don’t know even what we’re facing,
he thought grimly.
We can hardly begin to prepare.

But what the hell. He’d faced faeborn dangers before. Once with no more than a naked sword and a pair of socks.

From somewhere he managed to dredge up a smile.

“We’ll make it,” he promised them.

In the realm of black ash

In the citadel of black crystal

Beneath skies that burned crimson at the edges

The Prince waited.

Through the walls he could feel the messenger’s approach. Softer than sound, subtler than vision, the man’s movement was no more than a faint tinkling in the ancient rock. But that tinkling was magnified as it passed from column to column, from spire to spire, and by the time it reached the Prince’s senses it was a clear message, replete with information.

He was, therefore, not surprised when at last it was not the messenger himself who approached him, but the captain of his guard. Like all his guards this man was rakh, and he served the Prince with a ferocity normally reserved for his own kind. That pleased the Undying. It also pleased him that in a realm where he ruled both humans and rakh, both species should be personally bound to his service. Oh, it hadn’t been easy at first. Even before they had learned to hate humankind like their western brethren, these rakh had been loath to accept domination by an outsider. That was simple species survival instinct at play. But he had fought that battle on their own terms, and at last—on their own terms—won it. Now it was no longer necessary for him to adopt rakhene flesh in order to prove himself. And once the rakh had learned to accept his status as alpha male—regardless of the flesh he adopted, its species or its gender—they made excellent servants.

The captain bowed deeply. “Highness.”

“You have news. From Moskovan?”

If the rakh was surprised by the Prince’s knowledge, he gave no sign of it. “The storm forced him into port by the cape.”

Ah, yes. The storm. That had been a surprise. He had Known it when it was still a fledgling squall way out in the ocean, and had been confident that it would never disturb his lands. He had even given his western ports some vague assurance to that effect. It had been distinctly irritating, therefore, to have the thing come to shore after all. But that was the way of weather-Working, and every adept understood it. You played your best cards out, and then Nature reshuffled the deck. Weather could be seduced, cajoled, even prodded

.. but never controlled. Never completely.

“His ship landed at Freeshore two days behind schedule,” the captain informed him. “He apologizes that it did so without passengers. Apparently they chose to disembark at Hellsport.”

“Ah.” Briefly he considered his last communication with Gerald Tarrant, and wondered if he should have trusted in it. But no, there was no evidence of betrayal here. The company of travelers now moving through his lands consisted of four people, each with his own will and purpose. It was little surprise that in the face of such a tempest they’d had second thoughts and decided to travel over land. For Gerald Tarrant to defy such a consensus would only have focussed suspicion on him. No. It was better this way.

“Do you want me to dispatch some men to Hellsport?” the captain asked.

He shook his head sharply. “By the time our men could reach Hellsport from here, they’ll have been long gone. It would be a wasted effort.”

The current was in their favor, he reminded himself. He was experienced enough to understand what that meant. The minute he made a move it would be echoed by the earth-fae, whose ripples and signs would be carried swiftly north. He could Obscure such a trace, but not completely; if the travelers knew what to look for—and he strongly suspected they did—they could Know his every move.

“No,” he told the captain. “Let them make their move. When they decide what they’re going to do ... then we’ll deal with them.”

There’ll be time enough,
he thought.
Since Gerald Tarrant will give us warning.

It was a pleasing thought.

When night fell they started off due south, toward the narrowest part of the Wasting. Soon the damp woods surrounding Hellsport gave way to a land bereft of trees or comfort, a rocky plain so cold and hostile that only a few scraggly bushes had managed to take root there. The animals which scurried quickly out of their way were tiny things, thin and nervous, that offered no threat to their supplies or to themselves. They hiked as long as they could and then camped for the day; a chill wind that swept in from the west was a solemn reminder that although they were not in the mountains proper, the land they were passing through was high enough in elevation that spring was unlikely to warm them.

It beats the rakhlands,
Damien reminded himself. He remembered that icebound journey, and the unholy fire that awaited them at the end of it. God willing there would be no similar reception at the end of this one.

They took up their packs again promptly at sunset, waiting only for Tarrant to rejoin them before they resumed the long trek south. It was hard traveling—harder, in a way, than any which Damien had done before. The joint strains of looking after Jenseny and worrying about Tarrant—not to mention waiting for Tarrant to blow up
because
he was looking after Jenseny—frayed at his nerves constantly. So did the very real difficulties involved in bringing a small child with them. She could not match their pace. She could not equal their endurance. She could not do as they did, force their bodies to push on long after exhaustion had set in, because they had not yet found a site defensible enough to serve as a resting place. And yet she struggled to keep up with them and bore all her pains in silence, even when the blisters on her feet broke open along one particularly rough stretch of ground. If not for Tarrant’s special senses, preternaturally attuned to the smell of human blood, they might never have known that anything was wrong at all.