Black Sun Rising (72 page)

“Illusion?” he mused aloud.

The women looked at him. “You think?” Ciani asked.

“‘When one is in the presence of the seemingly impossible, that which is merely unlikely becomes more plausible by contrast.’ That’s a quote, you know, from—” He stopped suddenly, even as the words came to his lips. And forced himself to voice them. “The Prophet,” he told them. “His writings.”

“Gerald,” Ciani whispered.

He said nothing.

“He’s in there, isn’t he?” Her voice was low and even, but in it was such yearning, such hurting, that it made his soul ache to hear it. “Trapped in there.”

“That’s likely,” he agreed. Knowing, even as he spoke, that it was more than likely. It was certain. He could feel that in his bones, as if his link to the Hunter had allowed knowledge to take root there, without his even knowing it. “Whatever’s left of him,” he said quietly. “Remember the dreams of fire.”

She nodded, remembering. More than mere dreams, but less than true Knowings. How much could they trust such visions?

She stared at the distant citadel, and whispered, “He’s in pain.”

“Yeah.” He forced himself to look away, toward the citadel in the distance. “So are a lot of other people, whose lives he destroyed. Not to mention the hundreds he’s killed.”

“Damien—”

“Ciani. Please.” He knew what was coming, and dreaded it. “He took his chances. If he‘s—”

“We have to help him,” she whispered.

He could feel his chest tighten—in anguish, in fury. But before he could speak she added quickly, “It’s not just because he needs help. That wouldn’t be enough for you, I understand that. It’s because we need him.” With slender hands she turned him to face her, so that his eyes were forced to meet hers. “In that citadel—or beneath it—are three things. A human sorceror, who’s already proven himself capable of killing our best. A high-order demon who may be defended by dozens—if not hundreds—of his kind. And a single man who can wield more power than you and I could ever dream of—and will wield it, in our defense, if he’s free to do so. Don’t you see?” She shook her head tensely, her bright eyes fixed on him. There was wetness gathering in the outer corner of one of them. “It’s not a matter of sentiment, Damien, or even ethical judgment. It’s the odds against us, plain and simple. Gods, I want to come out of this alive. I want to come out of this
whole.
And now, with your Fire gone, Senzei murdered ... don’t we stand a better chance of success, with Tarrant’s power on our side?”

“I would sooner walk through the gates of hell,” he told her, “than loose that man on the world again. Do you realize what he is? Do you realize what he
does?
The hundreds of people who will suffer because of him—the thousands!—because we set him free?”

“You had an agreement with him. You said that for as long as we were traveling together—”

“And I damned well stood by that agreement, though every minute I encouraged him rather than cutting him down will count against me at my day of judgment. No, I wouldn’t have made a move against him while we were traveling together—but God in heaven, Cee, am I supposed to go in after him now that someone else has? Risk my life to save him?”

“He’s trapped in there because of
me
—”

“He’s in there because he values his own vulking life more than fifty of yours—and mine—combined! Because some little footnote in his survival contract dictated that he come here in order to safeguard his own existence. Nothing more than that—nothing, Cee! The man’s a monster—even worse than that, a monster who once was human. That’s far more dangerous than your average demonkind. Do you think he really cares for you? Do you think he cares for anything, other than his own continued existence? He’d sacrifice you in a minute if you stood in his way.” The words were pouring from him like a flood tide, and with it poured all his anger. All his hatred for the man and what he represented. Everything he had been suppressing for weeks. “Do you know what he did to his wife, his family? Do you imagine you’d rate any better, if he thought that it would profit him to kill you? Do you think he values you more than he valued those of his own blood? He would kill you without a second thought—and worse, if he stood to gain from it.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” she said quietly. “I have no illusions about his nature. I think maybe I even understand him a little better than you can”—and her eyes narrowed—“seeing as I’m not half-blinded by theological prejudice. Let me tell
you
what he is. Strip away the sword and the collar, and all the accoutrements of his evil ... and what you come up with is an adept, plain and simple.
What I was.”
She just stared at him for a moment, giving the words time to sink in. “We’re the same,” she whispered, “he and I.”

“Cee, you’re not—”

“Listen to me.
Try to understand. It’s not what you want to hear, I know that. Why do you think I never said it before? For all our closeness, there’s a part of me you never really knew. A part you didn’t
want
to know. A part no nonadept could ever understand ... except maybe Zen. I think, sometimes, that he did.”

She put a hand on his arm—but the contact felt cold, and strangely distant. Uncomforting. “We were born the same way, Gerald Tarrant and I. Not like your kind, in the midst of a comprehensible world, born to parents who could foresee your troubles and prepare for them. Most born adepts don’t make it past infancy. Or if they grow up, they grow up insane. The infant brain just can’t handle that kind of input—it’s too much, too chaotic, they can’t sort it out. We spend our lives trying to adapt, fighting to impose some kind of order on the universe. He did it. So did I. Different paths, but the end goal was the same: stability. Of ourselves, and of our world.”

“And now, suddenly, you remember all this?” he asked sharply. He hated himself the minute the words left his mouth, for how they might hurt her. But it was as if the hatred had opened a floodgate; he could do nothing to stop the words from coming.

“I Shared his memories. He offered,” she said quickly. “And why not? It’s a means of learning, isn’t it? They weren’t memories from the ... not from the time after he changed. Not that, oh no. But from his human years. And gods, the richness of them, the depth....”

He closed his eyes, understanding at last. The darkness within her. The taint he had sensed, without knowing how to define it. Tarrant had poured his soul into her, to fill the empty places in hers. And in the short term it had probably assuaged her pain, somewhat. It had certainly given her a knowledge base to replace what she had lost, something to draw on. But in the long run ... he had to turn away from her, lest she see the rage in his eyes. The hate. And the mourning....

She would be unable to leave him behind. Physically unable, due to his influence. Period. No matter what he said or did, it could be no other way.

“As for what he is, that’s just his adaptation,” she said. “Don’t you see? To you it means something else, it’s all tied up with questions of faith and honor—but to me it’s just that. A terrible adaptation, it’s true—I don’t deny that—but does that make it any less of an accomplishment? He’s
alive
. He’s
sane
. Not many of our kind can lay claim to that much.”

“I wonder about the sanity,” he muttered, bitterly.

“Damien.” She said it softly, her tone so gentle that it awakened memories of other places, better times. She touched the side of his face with a soft hand, chilled by the morning breezes. “Don’t you want him on our side? Don’t you want that kind of
power
on our side?”

And live with that, all the rest of my life?
He shuddered at the thought.
The knowledge that I was the one who made it possible for the Hunter to feed again. All the hundreds he would torment, feast upon, kill
...
their deaths would be on my head, all of them. A multitude of innocents who would have been alive, but for me.

“I can’t,” he whispered. “I can’t do it.”

For a moment there was silence. Then a hand touched his arm. Strong, and with sharp nails that pierced through his sleeve. Not Ciani.

He opened his eyes, and saw Hesseth standing before him.

“Listen to me,” she said softly. Her voice a half-whisper, half-hissing. “It’s not just your species at risk here, remember? I was sent with you because rakh are dying, in every part of this region. People every bit as real and as ‘innocent’ as the humans you ache so to protect. Suffering, no less than the victims of your Hunter. Are all those lives worth nothing to you?” She glanced back at Ciani. “I despise your killer companion. I sympathize with your hatred of him. But I also tell you this: Our chances of success in this are next to nothing without him.” She bared her teeth, an expression of warning. “You tell me to bury my primitive instincts, act with my head. Now it’s time for you to do that. Because if we fail here, we doom my people to more and more attacks like the ones that take place in Lema now. Maybe even outside the Canopy, later, among your own people. Is that what you want? To waste all our effort? She growled softly. ”I say we go to this place and see what our options are. If we have a clear shot at our enemy, we use it. But if not, and we think we can liberate this Hunter of yours ... then we’d be fools not to, priest, and that’s the simple truth. And I have no tolerance for foolishness when it threatens my life.“

For a moment he couldn’t answer. For a moment the words were all bottled up inside him, like a wine under pressure. Waiting to explode. And then he exhaled slowly, slowly; an exercise in self-control. Two breaths. Another. At last he spoke, in the low monotone of one who has choked back so hard on his feelings that nothing, not even normal emotions, can surface in his speech.

“All right,” he said. “As you say. We’ll see what the situation is, first, and then decide. The three of us.” He felt somehow polluted, shamed by his betrayal of ... what? His people? The rakh? The matter was too complex for simple answers, and he knew it. But he felt as though he had betrayed his faith—himself—and the shame of that burned like fire. He turned away from them both, lest they see the hot reddening of his cheeks. Lest they guess at his shame. Lest they realize that beneath his bitter hatred of Tarrant there ran an undercurrent of something else. A sharp sense of relief, that when they finally went into battle they might have Tarrant’s power backing them. And that shamed him more than anything.

“All right,” he whispered. Hoarsely, as though the words hurt his throat. “Let’s do it.”

Caverns. Not like the tunnels of the Lost Ones, which had been carved and plastered and buttressed and adorned for rakhene convenience; these were empty spaces, utterly lifeless, whose silence was broken only by the slow drip of water as it wended its way down from the surface, chamber by chamber. Tunnels that were comfortably six feet in height would shrink to a mere crawlspace yards later. Room-sized chambers that accommodated four people would be reduced to mere crevices at their farther end, requiring a painstaking divestment of all supply packs before the party could pass through. Steep inclines dead-ended against blank walls and pits dropped down into seeming nothingness, while shallow lakes, mirror-surfaced, made it all but impossible to guess at the hazards that lay underneath.

Under the best of circumstances, progress would have been slow. With what they had to deal with—inadequate lighting, lack of proper tools, and an enemy who might turn their own Workings against them—it was maddeningly frustrating. Though they knew that they were only a short distance from their objective, it was impossible to travel a straight line in the torturous underground system. Sometimes the most promising route would double back on itself, returning them to a point they had passed by hours ago. The pierced one was doing what he could to guide them, but even his rakhene sense of direction could do them little good in such a place. They could only fight their way forward step by step, chamber by chamber, and hope that
ground gained exceeded ground lost
in the long run.

What kept them going was the knowledge that there was, for them, no other way. Unless they were ready to break into the citadel itself, this was the only known entrance to the labyrinth beneath it. And so they fought on, and kept their weapons tightly in hand as they wended their way through the underearth—ever aware that if the demons attacked them, it would be without light, without warning, and without mercy.

At last, wary of the weakness that exhaustion would conjure, they found themselves a chamber more defensible than most and slept. Briefly. Having no knowledge of how many hours had passed since they had first entered the random tunnels, or whether sunlight or darkness reigned in the world above. They stood guard in teams, as they had above ground, but silently Damien questioned the efficacy of such an arrangement. If the demons they sought could shed their human form, then there was no truly defensible place; the earth was too full of mysterious cracks and crevices, and dark pits that extended to other levels of the labyrinth. So he made sure that his sword was close at hand and napped in a sitting position, springbolt braced against his knees.