Black Sun Rising (58 page)

“And if you fail?” Damien challenged.

“If I fail?” He looked at Ciani—and she met his eyes boldly, a faint nod saying that yes, she knew the risk, and yes, she was willing to try it. But her hands were trembling violently, and Senzei thought he saw a tear glitter wetly in the corner of one eye.

“If I fail,” the Hunter said softly, “then there will be no point in continuing this expedition. Because he will have her. I will have given her to him.”

For a moment, there was nothing in the camp but stillness. The fire, dying, crackled in its embers and spewed forth a few meager sparks. The rakh-woman tensed as if in anticipation of combat, but there was no way to read her intentions. Damien looked toward Ciani—and read something in her eyes that made his expression darken, deep furrows across his brow giving silent voice to his misgivings.

“All right, then,” he said at last. “If Ciani’s willing. If there’s no better way.”

“I am,” she whispered.

And Tarrant assured them, “There isn’t.”

Dark fae. Strands of it, fine as spider’s silk, drifting out from the secret places in the earth. Deep violet power that twined like slender serpents out from the shadows, snaking along the ground in rhythmic patterns as primal—and as complex—as human brainwaves. Power so responsive that the mere act of watching it was enough to make it shiver in its course. Power so volatile that it could manifest human fears long after their original cause had faded from memory. Power so hungry that it fed on darkness, devouring the very essence of the night in order to reproduce itself over and over again, filling the night with its violent substance.

“Ready?” the Hunter whispered. His voice was little louder than the breeze, and as chill as the night which was swiftly descending on them. Senzei shivered as he watched him prepare to Work, and not merely because the air was cold.

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” Ciani murmured.

With care he bound her, wrists and ankles tightly affixed to stakes driven deep into the ground. Another rope, tightened across her chest, would keep her from rising up. Such preparation was necessary, Tarrant had explained, in case her attacker should gain control of her body—but it made Senzei queasy to see her like that. Damien had told him how the Neocount’s wife was bound, when they found her body. Too similar, he thought. It made his gut knot just to think of it.

“All right,” the Hunter said. He looked at each of them in turn—and though Damien managed to meet his gaze without flinching, Senzei couldn’t. It was as if something in those pale gray eyes had come to life, something dark and terrible. And hungry. “I need silence. Absolute. And you mustn’t interfere—no matter what happens. No matter what the cost may be of completing this Working. Because to interrupt it midway is to give her soul to the enemy. You all understand that?” His words might have been meant for all of them, but his eyes were fixed on Damien. After a moment the priest nodded stiffly and muttered, “Go on.”

No matter what happens.
Already Senzei could see forms taking shape about the circle of their campsite, the company’s fears given life and substance by the malignant fae of the sunless hours. Tarrant had assured them that nothing would approach—his own nature fed on the dark fae, and would devour any manifestation that made it past his wards—but even so Senzei shivered, as the legions of creatures that their fears had spawned flitted about the warded circle, seeking entrance. He was tempted to unWork his vision, to let that terrible vision fade ... but the alternative was far, far worse. This way at least there was light; the deep violet essence of true night’s power might not be wholesome illumination, but at least it was something. Without it, the autumn night would be utterly lightless: cave-black, cellar-dark, in which a man might raise his hand before his face without seeing it—in which the darkness seemed to close in until one could hardly breathe, until one wanted to run desperately for light, any light ... only this time, in this place, there was nowhere to run. And the darkness would last for hours. Even the minimal illumination of night’s special fae was preferable to that.

Slowly, like wisps of smoke, the fae began to gather about Ciani’s body. Senzei saw her shiver, though whether it was in pain or simply in dread he had no way to see. She certainly had cause enough for the latter. As she breathed in, thin violet strands caught hold of the breath and followed it into her lungs, her flesh; the air she breathed out was merely dark, liquid swirls of onyx blackness that had been leached of all power. She slowly closed her eyes, but even as she did so Senzei could see the violet light that shimmered in their depths, radiant as the green that would sometimes flash in a cat’s eyes at night. She had absorbed the dark fae.

“Submit to me,” the Hunter whispered. His voice was a chill caress, that made Senzei’s flesh crawl. “With every thought, in every cell of your being.” And then he added, in a tone that was almost tender, “You know I’d do nothing to hurt you.”

She nodded. Then a shudder seemed to pass through her body, and Senzei thought he heard a faint sound—a moan?—escape from her lips. Tarrant’s Worked fae was thickening about her, and he could see it connect to the wild fae beyond—creating what might be a lifeline, an umbilical cord. A connection that pulsed with its own special life, in time to some unheard heartbeat.

“You hunger,” Tarrant commanded. Chanting the words: a mantra of possession. “For memory. For life. For fragments of the past, which you draw from the souls of others. The hunger is constant, all-consuming. It torments you. It strengthens you. It drives you to feed—and gives you the power to do so.” In his voice was promise, commiseration, a dark seduction that went beyond mere recitation of demonic qualities. How much of his own nature was he drawing on in order to establish this rapport? As he reached down to touch Ciani, to lay one slender hand over her heart, it struck Senzei for the first time just how like their enemy he was. The Hunter and Ciani’s tormentor might feed on different emotions, but they both served the same dark Pattern.

When Tarrant touched her, Ciani cried out—and then was suddenly still, so much so that Senzei feared for her. For a moment she lay like one dead, so utterly unmoving that Senzei found himself searching in vain for any sign of breathing, any tremor of a heartbeat. There was none. Then she trembled, and her eyes shot open. Black, utterly black, with no sign of iris or white. Pits of emptiness, which anything might fill.

“Who are you?” the Hunter demanded.

In a voice that was Ciani’s but not Ciani’s, she answered, “Essistat sa-Lema. Tehirra sa-Steyat. Ciani sa-Faraday. Others.” A ghastly sound escaped her lips, that might have been intended as laughter. “I don’t remember all the names.”

Tarrant looked up at Hesseth, who nodded shortly.
Rakh names,
the gesture indicated. For once, the
khrast
-woman seemed as tense as the human company.

The Hunter turned his attention back to Ciani. “
Where
are you?” he asked.

Again the ghostly laugh—then, in a cryptic tone, “Night’s turf. Hunter’s den. The basement of storms.”

“Where?” Tarrant pressed.

The thing that was Ciani shut her eyes. “In darkness,” she whispered at last. “Beneath the House of Storms.”

“In the earth?”

“No. Yes.”

“In caverns? Tunnels? Man-made structures?”

Her eyes shot open, fixed on him. “
Rakh
-made,” she corrected fiercely. “Where the Lost Ones dwelled until we drove them out. We fed on their memories, too—but those were narrow things, all tunnels and hunger and brainless mating. Not like the memories of the other rakh.” She closed her eyes, and a shudder passed through her frame; strangely sexual, like the first shiver of orgasm. “Not like with the humans,” she whispered. “Nothing like that.”

Again Tarrant glanced at Hesseth, and this time he mouthed the words.
Lost Ones?
Her brief nod sufficed to indicate that she knew the reference, would be willing to explain it later. Or so Senzei hoped.

Tarrant returned his attention to Ciani. The black depths of her eyes gleamed like obsidian as she watched him.

“Do you fear?” he asked her.

“Fear?”

“As the rakh do. As humans do.”

“Fear? As in ‘for my life’? No. Why should I?”

“You feel safe.”

“I
am
safe.”

“Protected,” the Hunter probed.

“Yes.”

“Efficiently.”

The empty eyes opened; a hint of violet light stirred in their depths. “Without question.”

“How?”

She seemed to hesitate. “Lema protects. The Keeper shields.”

“Against what?” When there was no answer, he pressed, “Against the rakh?”

“The humans,” she whispered. “They’re coming for us. That’s what Lema said. They’re coming, with a Fire that can burn away the night. Can burn us.”

“But you’re not afraid.”

“No.” The voice was a hiss. “Lema protects. The Keeper is thorough. Even now—”

She hesitated. Gasped suddenly, as if in pain. Tarrant said quickly, “It took a lot of planning.”

“Not much,” she answered. Her body seem to sag into the ground, as if in relief, and her voice was strong once more. Senzei sensed that some barrier had been not overcome, nor destroyed, but somehow sidestepped. “Only a misKnowing. The rest is up to us.”

Senzei saw something flicker in Tarrant’s eyes, too subtle and too quick for him to identify. Fear? Surprise?

“A misKnowing?” he whispered.

“Yes. The demon said that would be best. To turn their own Workings against them. To let them feel confident in their knowledge, while all the while they were walking into a trap. That’s the only way to take an adept, Calesta says. Trick them, using their own vision.”

For a moment, there was silence. Shadows of forms began to shiver into existence about the Hunter’s body, bits of misgivings seeping out from his soul, given shape by the night. A death-mask. A spear. A drop of fire. In another time and place such images might have gained real substance, but his hungry nature swallowed them up again as quickly as they were formed. Only a brief afterimage remained, black against black in the night.

“Tell me,” he whispered tightly. “The misKnowing. What is it?”

Ciani seemed about to speak, then hesitated.

She gasped soundlessly, like a fish out of water. Seemed incapable of making the words come.

He reached forward and grasped her by the upper arms; his power flowed into her like a torrent, purple fae marked with his hunger, his purpose. “Tell me!” he demanded. She tried to resist, tried to pull away—and then cried out, as the cold power wrapped itself around her soul. Senzei saw Damien start forward, then force himself back. Because she might die if he interfered. Only because of that. But there was murder in his eyes.

“Tell me,” the Hunter commanded—and Senzei could feel him using the dark fae to squeeze the information out of her, like juice from a pulped fruit.

“Sansha Crater!” she gasped. There were tears running down her face, and she was shaking violently in his grip. Information began to pour out as if it had a life of its own, words and concepts struggling to get free. “The humans’ Knowings will lead them there in search of us. They’ll believe that our stronghold is there, beneath the House of Storms. Most important,
he
will believe it—their adept—because Calesta took the image from his mind. When he looked at his maps and said
this is where the enemy will be
, the Hungry One noted it. And the Keeper will let them think that he was right, warp his Knowings to serve that end ... and the adept’s own Workings will lead them into ambush.”

For a moment Tarrant was still, and utterly silent. The look in his eyes was terrible—shame and fury and blind, raw hatred, intermingled with even less pleasant emotions that Senzei didn’t dare identify—but Ciani, or whatever manner of creature now inhabited her body, seemed oblivious to it. Had his own word not bound him to protect her, Senzei was pretty sure the Hunter would have struck out at the body before him, Working the dark fae so that it would transmit the damage to Ciani’s possessor; but he
was
bound, and by his own will, and so his rage went unexpressed.

“Where is the House of Storms?” he hissed. Dark purple tendrils swirled about his rage, dissolved into the night. “Where is your people’s stronghold?” When she didn’t answer him his eyes narrowed coldly, and she gasped; Senzei could see the last of her resistance crumble.

“On the point of power,” she whispered. “Where the earth-fae flows in torrents, hungry for taming. Where the plates sing in pain as they crush the power out. Where the Keeper—”

Ciani’s body went rigid. She mouthed a few words, soundlessly—and then a spasm of pain racked her body, traveling from head to foot like a wave. “No!” she cried out—Ciani’s voice, Ciani’s pain. She pulled against her bonds with a force that almost dragged the tent pegs from the earth. “Gerald!” But the adept did nothing to help her.