When True Night Falls (81 page)

“It’ll be okay,” she promised him. Echoing his earlier words, hoping they would comfort him. “We’ll get through it okay.”

You can’t be strong anymore, so I’ll have to be strong for both of us
.

She was hungry and she was thirsty and there was not much she could do about it. The soldiers had taken Damien’s pack and that was where all the food was. She could scoop up water in her hand if she stretched down as far as possible, but she was afraid of drinking too much and then having to go to the bathroom. That would be incredibly embarrassing. She had gotten used to slipping off behind a rock or a bush to do her stuff, but there were no rocks or bushes here and she figured the soldiers would be quick to anger if she fouled their boat. What did
they
do when nature called?

“Water,” the priest whispered, and she cupped her hands and scooped some up—almost falling out of the boat in the process—and brought it up to his lips. He sipped a little, then nodded for her to spill back the rest. Evidently he didn’t want to fill up his bladder too much either.

And then the three boats turned, bright oars managing the maneuver with practiced precision. That brought them into a cave that led from the river, and they were quickly swallowed up by its narrow confines. Lamplight glittered on a crystalline ceiling not ten feet from their heads; if one of the men had stood up, he could have reached up and touched it. She wondered what would happen if the river got higher. Maybe after a hard rain they couldn’t use this route at all.

After a time, the walls opened up. The ceiling gave way to darkness, then to stars. They floated on the surface of a lake so black that it could hardly be distinguished from the land surrounding it. And then before them....

They rose up from the ground suddenly, magnificently, their manifold facets reflecting the moonlight with solar brilliance, their myriad surfaces like mirrors. Vast towers of crystal that soared toward the heavens, their peaked tips sharp against Domina’s brilliance. Some were as wide as buildings and equally as solid; others were slender spines of glass, barely translucent, that jutted out from among their perpendicular brethren at sharp, arresting angles. Here and there a cluster of crystals, diamondlike, adhered to one of the mirror surfaces, or filled in the gap between two towers; here and there a spine had been broken by some mischance of nature and tiny crystals gathered in the wound like blood. It was a chaos of brilliance, of knife-sharp edges and night-black surfaces that flashed with light as the boats moved toward them, a field of living crystal so complex, so intertwined, that it was impossible to focus on any one form, or to trace a single outline to its end. Staring at it, Jenseny felt dizzy and breathless and afraid all at once, and at last she turned away from it.

“Rakhlands,” the priest whispered. No more than that.
Rakhlands.
She wished he had told her more about that journey, so that she could understand the reference.

Directly east of them, low on the horizon, the pale light of dawn was just beginning to compromise the night. Cool sparks played along the edges of the crystal towers where the newborn sunlight touched them, and one mirrored surface, angled perfectly to catch the dawn light, flashed a blue so bright that it hurt her eyes. Jenseny wondered what this place would look like in the sunlight. She wondered if they would live to see it.

The boats were brought to a gentle shore and there moored. Clearly the beach, like the lake it surrounded, had been deliberately sculpted; the land in this region was a wild mixture of swirling lava and crystalline growths, hardly suitable for a harbor. There were other boats nearby, Jenseny noted, some like the ones they were in and others much larger and much more complicated. None were tall, she noted. She guessed that was because of the cavern they had to sail through to get here.

When they had reached the beach, the soldiers at the front quickly disembarked, boots splashing in the water as they took up careful positions around their prisoners. They needn’t have bothered. It was clear that Damien could hardly stand, and as two of the soldiers helped him from the boat he went down on his knees, hard; it was clear that their firm grip on his upper arms was the only thing keeping him upright at all.

She stayed by his side, trying to help him. One of the soldiers tried to push her away, but she clung to the priest’s shirt, unwilling to leave his side for even an instant. From on shore the rakh captain snapped a sharp command, and the soldiers indulged her. Together, with effort, the men got Damien to shore. Together they forced him to his knees.

“The drug will wear off soon,” the rakh informed him. Jenseny heard the rattle of chain behind her, twisted around just in time to see shackles being fastened about the priest’s ankles. A short length of chain connected them, enough to allow him to walk but not enough to run. Did they fear him that much? She looked up at the striped rakh, found his glistening green eyes fixed on her. They weren’t afraid of him, she realized. Not at all. They were just being careful.

“Let’s go,” he ordered, and the soldiers lifted Damien to his feet.

They were marched along a road of sorts, where the lava had been leveled and the crystals had been crushed and the result was a flat bed of black grit that crunched beneath their feet. Higher and higher the towers loomed as they approached, until the tallest of them seemed lost among the stars themselves. Would they be going inside them somehow? Jenseny wondered. Or was there some kind of space hidden in between them? As they passed into the shadow of the first of the great columns she saw Damien look up, not at the looming crystals but straight up at the sky—and she realized with a start that he was looking at the moon and the stars and the dawn because he thought that he might never see them again.

They passed between two crystal spires, into a space whose faceted walls reflected the soldiers’ lamplight in flashes of molten gold. It was hard for her to see where she was going, and more than once Damien stumbled; the reflected light, constantly shifting, made it seem like walls existed that weren’t really there, and once or twice a real wall was so shadowed that she nearly walked into it. The soldiers seemed to do well enough, but of course they were used to it; there was no doubt in her mind that a stranger would be trapped in this place like an insect in a spider’s web, unable to move more than ten feet without walking into something.

And then they were going downward. Down past the crystal, down into the earth, on stairs that had been crudely carved from the black rock itself. It was hard going even for her, and she could feel the tension in Damien’s body as he fought the length of chain about his ankles, struggling to descend safely. They seemed to go down forever, and only because she kept count of the lamps that the rakh captain lit as they passed did she have any idea of how far it was. Ten lamps, she counted. Probably ten turns on the rough stone staircase. Far enough that she didn’t look forward to climbing back up.

At the bottom was a large chamber with lamps along the nearer side. The rakh lit those also as Damien struggled to catch his breath. Was that the drug weakening him, or had he gotten sick from being cold and wet for so long? She hoped it was the drug. Hadn’t the rakh said that it would wear off soon?

Separating the two halves of the chamber was a wall of iron bars, the spaces between them narrow enough that not even Jenseny could squeeze through. With sudden panic she realized that they were going to lock them up down here and leave them. For how long? She would have begged them for an answer if she thought they would give her one. As it was, she had no choice but to allow herself to be maneuvered through the narrow gate, Damien right behind her. They unbound his hands, at least. Wasn’t there some comfort in that?

“His Highness has instructed me to apologize for the nature of your accommodations,” the rakh said to Damien. The heavy iron gate was being swung closed again, and its lock fastened securely shut. Jenseny felt panic rising up inside her; she struggled not to let it show. “But as a sorcerer yourself you understand the necessity for such an arrangement. We can hardly allow you free access to the earth-fae.”

With drug-dulled eyes Damien took in the details of their prison. Smooth floor, roughly carved walls, not much else. He seemed about to say something, but the words couldn’t make it past his lips. At last Jenseny, sensing his intentions, whispered, “We need water.”

There was silence. A long silence. Then, slowly, the rakh captain nodded. “I’ll have it brought.”

“And food,” she dared. “We need that, too.”

A couple of the soldiers seemed to stiffen at her audacity, but the rakh was unperturbed. “And food,” the rakh agreed.

“And blankets. We need blankets. And maybe ... if you have some kind of clothing. Anything dry. He needs it,” she said defiantly.

The green eyes were fixed on her—searching, weighing, warning. “Is that all?” he asked coldly.

“No,” she said. A little scared by her own defiance—but what choice did she have? She had to be brave enough for both of them now. “We need something to ... to go in,” she said clumsily. And then she added, to clarify, “Unless you want us to pee on the floor.”

For a minute the rakh said nothing. An expression, ever so minimal, softened the harsh lines of his face. It might have been a smile.

“No,” he said quietly. “We don’t want you to pee on the floor, do we? I’ll have something brought.”

He ushered the soldiers from the room. It seemed to Jenseny that they were less than thrilled about the prospect of climbing up all those stairs, but none of them complained. When the last of them had left the chamber, the rakh turned to Jenseny again, and nodded toward Damien. “When the drug wears off, you may tell him that the Prince will deal with him tomorrow night. As soon as he has met with his
other
guest.”

He left them then, alone with the lamps and the bars and the chill of the underearth. Damien had collapsed onto the smooth stone floor and she knelt down by his side, wishing she knew how to help him. He was breathing heavily, hoarsely, and his forehead was flushed. There was a little bit of light in the chamber, so she could see just how bad he looked.

“Don’t worry,” she whispered. Her small hand trembled as she stroked back his hair from his face, just like Hesseth used to do with her. “We’ll be okay. We will. I promise.”

Sunset. Slabs of crimson light flashing across crystal spires, deep purple clouds drifting like wraiths down glassy walls, stars reflected a thousand times over as the night unsheathed their brilliance. The Core’s light, only half-swallowed by the distant mountains, adding the gold of fire to the tips of the towers, like a thousand glass candles all set alight in an instant. And with each moment, change. Darkness where there was brilliance. Blood-red light where there was shadow. The light of the heavens reflected, refracted, filtered, divided. A symphony of fire, now dying as night’s embrace beckoned.

Tarrant watched it for a long time, though the sunlight made his eyes burn. How odd, that even after sunset it might still affect him so. There must be some special property to the crystal that enabled the solar fae to cling to its substance long after its carrier, mere light, had faded. How curious. He had never experimented with crystal himself, prefering the storage capacity of ice and silver and finely honed steel, but he knew there were those who swore by it. Even Erna’s settlers had used tiny crystals in connection with their power sources ... or so it was said. Who knew for sure?

When the last of the gold had faded, when there was nothing reflecting from the glistening towers but stars and a single sliver of moonlight, the Neocount of Merentha moved toward the citadel. Though there were no signs to direct him, nor servants to guide him, he had no trouble picking his way through the forest of false walls and faceted illusions that hid the entranceway to the Prince’s palace. He saw by the light of the earth-fae, and that power did not cling to illusion; therefore the false walls were no more than ghosts, and the columns and spires that might otherwise cause him to be distracted were dismissed with no more attention than one might give to an errant wraith. At one point he even considered Banishing them just for the exercise, but that seemed poor etiquette for a guest of his stature, and so he let them stand.

Inside the citadel itself there were guards, but they let him pass without word. There were servants also, and perhaps they would have attended him had he required them to, but he chose instead to wrap himself in a Distracting so that they were not even aware of his passage. Voices shivered in the crystalline halls, reflecting down the labyrinthine hallways, and occasionally the sound of human laughter accompanied them, but he met no other people in the mazelike corridors. Whether in response to his will or that of the Prince—or both—the illusory walls proved more than efficient in isolating him from the inhabitants of the strange citadel.

Alone, unannounced, he at last reached what he presumed to be an audience chamber. Vast, multifaceted, it glimmered with falsehoods and illusions in an ever-changing array, ghostly columns winking in and out of sight as he gazed about its walls. There were rugs cast down on the floor, and they lent that surface a stability rare in this place; as he walked to the edge of the nearest, he noted threads of gold and silver and half a dozen other fine metals worked into its surface, along with a dusting of what might well be gemstones. Or were there crystal threads as well, nature’s bounty drawn out and made flexible so that a man might walk upon them? As he set down his foot upon its thick pile, the nearest illusions faded, and a room took shape before him. Furniture in dark wood inlaid with gold, ivory fastenings, scarlet tassels. Silken cushions in the colors of the sunset. Gold silk spilled across a table, with polished silver goblets on its surface.

And two men.

One was a rakh, though not like any rakh that Tarrant had ever seen. His uniform and manner proclaimed him to be a guard of some kind, and Tarrant ignored him. The other was human, and familiar to him. He seemed older now than he had in his Sending, but perhaps that was just the inaccuracy of the fae interfering; it was hard for even an adept to send a perfect image across such distances.