Caine's Law (46 page)

Five primals up on the gallery, two males, two females, and one don’t-make-me-pick. The Mithondionne is easy to spot; not only is he the tallest of them, his waist-length gleaming platinum fall of hair has one black swipe thick as my thumb that runs from his backswept widow’s peak down over the front of his left shoulder, and ends exactly at the filigreed basket-hilt of his rapier.

Your name
. He doesn’t pretend he’s actually speaking; his bloodless lips stay tight-drawn in a grim flat line, and the words have the dry-leaf rattle of that Whisper Kierendal favors.

“Dominic Shade.”

Is not your name, feral
. A flicker of annoyance from the Ravenlock at the other male—the “voice” is the same, but it’s a good bet it’s coming from the other guy.
Twist your heart and knot your will, your lips each dark truth bespill—

“Yeah, keep trying.” Already with the spells. So much for awe and reverence and shit. “Like I explained to that Quelliar guy, I’m not feral. I’m from the Quiet Land. And my name is whatever I say it is.”

All of a sudden there’s so much rustling it sounds like a burst of static
inside my skull. The Ravenlock takes a step forward and cuts them off with an abrupt slice of one hand. He says aloud, “Speak to us of our son, and their brother.”

His voice is dark and clear and inhumanly pure as the toll of an obsidian bell, and I can feel it clutch at my will—no subtlety there, a straightforward Dominate. I show him my teeth. “Ask me nicely.”

His face goes even tighter. “The tricks you use to resist us? I myself taught those to your Ironhand half a millennium gone, friar. We have powers no Monastic Discipline can counter.”

“First, I’m retired. Second, thanks for reminding me why I hate you fuckers. I came here to
help
you, goddammit. At considerable expense, and risk of my mortal fucking life, I found your son, and that was just to buy a chance to
talk
to you, because I know you arrogant shit-humping cunts treat humans like we’re rats in your fucking bedrooms. And third—”

I spread my hands. “You want to do this with me? Make a move, elf-king. I’ve got powers of my own.”

Before he can decide how much I might be bluffing, the taller of the two females steps up to his side and puts a hand on his elbow. “Peace, my lord,” she says. “Humanity has done yeoman’s service for House Mithondionne in former days. Presume, if you will, that this mortal may be himself an inheritor of the debt we owe the Ironhand and the Godslaughterer.”

“Yeah, funny that you mention those guys—”

She turns her gaze on me, and some blinding grief behind her eyes cuts me off like a slap in the mouth. “If it please you, my lord Dominic Shade, share with me the news you have of my son.”

“I’m no lord, and—” Oh, crap. Fuck me inside out. “
Your
son?”

“Two and a half centuries have passed since I last had word of my Torronell; I have mourned in private the death of my son, and carry that grief to this day. Lift it from my heart, and you will have the friendship of House Mithondionne as long as I yet walk the glades of day.”

Which won’t be as long as she thinks, but let that go. “I apologize, my lady. I … lost my own mother many years ago. Somehow it’s always kind of a surprise that other people have mothers at all.”

Which also leaves me completely unprepared to look Torronell’s mother in the eye and say,
Oh, sure, your youngest son’s a junkie rough trade cock-whore fucking humans in Ankhana
.

“Torronell is the leafmaster for a very exclusive entertainment establishment in a human city. He has a sterling professional reputation and a considerable following. I wouldn’t call him happy, but he takes justifiable pride in his widely acknowledged expertise.”

She inclines her head fractionally. “And if I ‘ask you nicely’ to share the rest of what you still conceal—?”

“I will respectfully decline, my lady.”

“Will you—” She folds her hands and lowers her head. “Will you tell me where he is? How he can be found?”

“I won’t. And before you start looking for him—if you send someone for him, or go yourself—you should probably first ask yourself how much truth you can bear to know.”

Her eyes drift shut. “Ah.”

“And, y’know, how much truth
he
can bear for you to know.”

“Yes.” Her voice has gone hushed, crumpled like a wad of paper. “Can you take a message to him?”

“No.”

Her head comes up sharply. “You will not?”

“I’m in the middle of something.”

Her lips peel back, and something sparks in her eyes that hints where Torronell gets his ferocious temper. “What business can a feral have more important than the life and honor of a prince of the First Folk?”

“I told you: I’m from the Quiet Land. We call it Earth.” I nod at the Ravenlock. “When your father Bound the
dil T’llan
, there were a few hundred million humans in the Quiet Land. Right now there’s almost thirteen
billion
. More every day. Not long ago, we figured out how to get to this world without using the
dillin
at all. The
dil T’llan
is useless. We’re here, and it’ll get worse. Within fifty years, your kingdom will be dust, and your people extinct.”

Now all five of them might as well have been carved from alabaster.

“While I’m here, I should also mention that I know about Pirichanthe. I know the shit you tried to make sure nobody would ever learn. All of it.”

The Ravenlock steps forward and the temperature in the Heartwood Hall drops twenty degrees. “This is impossible.”

“Yeah, so am I.”

He just looks blank.

“I’m only mostly human,” I tell him. “Pirichanthe goes tits up a little less than fifty years from now. Which means various gods are busily back-chaining causality until pretty soon they’re gonna unhappen the Deomachy.”

“It cannot be done.”

“Just trying will probably destroy the world.”

“And what are you, that you know so much of what has not yet happened? A prophet? Some furtive godling escaped from beyond the walls of time?”

“I’m an angel.”

I guess we’re past the whole filthy human stuff, because they’re all too polite to laugh in my face.

“Technically, I’m the theophanic fetch of a man who’ll be born a little more than a year from now, in the Quiet Land. When he grows up, he’s gonna be … well, involved … in the destruction of the Covenant. That’s how I know all this shit. He’s gonna make a deal with one of the gods to try and limit the damage. That god created me a couple of months ago, local time. He created me specifically to come here and see you, and tell you this.”

“And why did this god not simply appear to me himself in a blare of celestial trumpets and a pillar of fire reaching to the stars themselves?”

“What part of
limit the damage
do you not understand? The god trusts me to do shit back here because I—well, him, the guy I look like—we have a couple of useful traits. You must have noticed my Shell.”

His eyes narrow warily. “It’s … unusual.”

“Black, right? The only Flow that goes into or out of me is black. Remind you of anybody?”

He takes his time answering. Finally, all I get out of him is, “Yes. I knew him.”

“Your Dominates and Charms and all the rest, I don’t need Control Disciplines to break them. Not really. Read my mind. Try. Truthsense, divination, magickal detection, none of that shit works on me when I don’t want it to. Not anymore.”

“The Godslaughterer was thus,” the Ravenlock admits. “But you are no Jereth.”

“Believe it.” I shrug at him. “I’m here because we know what you did. The whole story: the
dil T’llan
, the Butcher’s Fist, and the Sword of Man.”

“What you know is not remotely the whole story.”

“Okay. But there’s a part of the story I know that you don’t. There’s a fix. A little tricky, but you can do it.”

“Fix the Covenant? Save Pirichanthe?”

“No. That’s time-bound, and can’t be changed. What we can do, though, is make it break the way
we
want it to, you follow? Like I said before: limit the damage.”

“And how do you and your god suggest this be accomplished?”

“Bind a different Power. Pirichanthe is … kind of a blunt instrument, right? If Pirichanthe could have done what you needed it to do, the First Folk would still rule the planet. Instead, what’s left of you is hiding out here in the woods.”

“What sort of different power?”

“Back in the Quiet Land, there was a guy named Alexander Pope who wrote, ‘An honest man is the noblest work of God.’ And there was another guy a hundred years later, by the name of Robert Ingersoll, who had a better idea. He wrote, ‘An honest god is the noblest work of man.’ ”

He stares in frank disbelief. “You want me to
create
a
god
?”

“All I need is a place for it to live. And I need it to be able to open or close the
dillin
. That’s all.”

“Do you have any conception of the magnitude of what you’re asking?”

“And there’s one more problem. It can’t actually happen until fifty years from now.”

“This is completely preposterous.”

“I wouldn’t believe it either, except for one thing.”

“Which is?”

I shrug. “The god you’ll make it for? He’s the one I made the deal with.”

The scene assembles itself from smoke, dust, and stars. Deep in an aspen grove, embers of a campfire banked with earth. A lean- to built of hide and bones bleached pale by the crescent moon. A shelter, round like a tepee, except with vertical walls six or seven feet high—I disremember what it’s called. Not wigwam. Dad would know. Hell, he probably built this one.

Pacing a wide, slow circle around the little camp, Angvasse keeps watch.

Jesus. No wonder she drinks. How uptight do you have to be before you can’t relax even in your dreams?

I close my eyes. When I open them again, I’m sitting beside the fire. “Angvasse.”

Blue witchfire limns a girl-shaped shadow that moves warily toward me. “How did you get here?”

“I’m not here. Neither are you, really. We need to talk.”

“Where did you come from?”

“Outside your head.”

She stops. “I don’t understand.”

“You’re asleep.”

“This is a dream?”

“An altered state of consciousness. The First Folk call it the Meld.”

“This is being
done
to me? By
elves
?”

“Done with you. Nothing will happen to you here that you don’t consent to.” My wave takes in the camp and the trees and the night around.
“This is all just, like, a frame of reference. I’m still in Mithondion. With the Ravenlock. He wants to meet you. He wants to talk with us. Together.”

“To what end?”

“He needs to figure out if what we’re asking him to do is even possible.”

“What?”

“He says that without the Butcher’s Fist and the Sword of Man, it can’t be done.”

“The Accursèd Blade and the Hand of Peace—”

“Whatever.”

“—are in Purthin’s Ford. What will be Purthin’s Ford. In that place you call the
dil T’llan
.”

“He says they’re not. He’s says they
can’t
be. Creating the Covenant of Pirichanthe unmade them both.”

“Yet they exist. The Blade, at least. Did you not tell him?”

“I told him everything.”

A flicker of worry rumples her forehead. “Everything? Including—”

“He needs to know.”

“Aren’t you afraid that giving him knowledge of what is to come might change the future?”

“I’m afraid we
won’t
change the future. All I could tell him is how things will go if we fail here.” I spread my hands. “He found it pretty persuasive.”

She considers this with a sober nod. “Yet if the Hand and the Blade are destroyed—”

“Not destroyed. Unmade. Or, like, un-Bound.”

“There’s a distinction?”

“He seems to think so.” I beckon. “Come over here and close your eyes.”

She does. I close mine too. “Okay, open them again.”

When we do, the Ravenlock is with us.

He floats in the darkness, shining with power brighter than the moon. Huh—reminds me of how Kris used to talk about the
lios alfar
. His arms extend before him, fingers questing, eyes closed, on his face transcendent serenity. The light from his body pulses like a living thing and gathers itself upon Angvasse’s brow into a halo of grace.

He’s reading her. Whatever he finds, I hope he likes it.

She turns to him with grave dignity. “I give you greeting, good fey. I am honored by your presence. Are you to be addressed as Your Majesty?”

His eyes open, the light fades, and he settles silently to earth. “Your Ladyship may address me as Ravenlock.”

She may? Son of a bitch.

“Your Majesty does me too much honor.”

“On the contrary. May I call you Angvasse?”

What the hell is going on here?

She inclines her head fractionally. “Of course, Ravenlock. I am glad of this meeting, though I would have chosen to meet under less dire circumstance, had such a choice been offered. Please excuse the state of my garments, and please take no offense from my standing in your presence.”

“You are well-spoken, for a Khryllian.”

“Your Majesty is very kind to say so. You’ve had experience with the Order of Khryl?”

Jesus Christ. Get a fucking room.

“I’ve had experience of Khryl,” he says softly. “I knew him well, and was proud to name him friend.”

Okay, now that’s interesting.

Angvasse stops, blinking. A frown gathers on her forehead. “Again, I apologize for my inattention, but I thought I heard you say you
knew
Our Lord of Battle?”

“I know your Lord of Battle only by His reputation—which among the First Folk is sadly unsavory, as one might imagine. But I did know Khryl, and admired him. You resemble him a great deal, did you know that?”

“I—” She sways, just a little. “May I sit?”

“Of course.” He gestures, and out of the night coalesce three comfortable-looking armchairs, already arranged around the campfire. The Ravenlock takes the big one, and we settle in and the chairs are as comfortable as they look and if I think about this too much I’ll probably fall right through the seat.