The Heir of Night (50 page)

Tarathan drew his knife and cut through the shadow bonds, unsure whether his action would have any effect on this side of the Gate. But the two Jaransors, it seemed, were close enough for that. He had to move quickly to ease the weightless body down onto the hillside, turning Kyr’s broken face to the sky.

“May you find peace with your Nine Derai gods,” the herald said, and turned away.

Two more armored warriors had fallen to Derai arrows on the edge of a small plateau where old ruins lay exposed to the sullen sky. A third was sprawled a little distance away beside another dead horse. It was clear that someone had been using the ruins to play a game of hide-and-seek that disadvantaged mounted pursuers—but they had caught her in the end.

She must have turned to fight at the last, Tarathan decided, for she lay on her back with a lance impaled through her stomach. It looked, from the limp twisted body, as though a horse or horses had trampled over her. He could see the shadow of her blood, pooled on the ground, and he thought how sharp and clear her image looked, almost substantial for the world of dreams. It was only when he knelt beside her that he realized that the guard called Lira was still alive.

Only just alive, Tarathan thought, looking at the slick
of almost black blood that trailed from the corner of her mouth, and the terrible wound in her stomach. He knew that there was nothing, either in Jaransor or beyond the Gate of Dreams, that could be done. But slowly, incredibly, her eyes opened; the herald watched them focus on his face. He was not surprised that she appeared able to see him, not only because they were in Jaransor, but because the Gate of Dreams was a spirit realm and Lira’s spirit was very nearly all that was left of her. Even so, he had to bend close to the shadow of her mouth in order to hear what she said.

“Malian … south …” It was barely a thread of sound. Lira’s eyes remained locked on his face as though to a lifeline and she struggled on, dragging each word out. “Save… Heir … ’ware … treachery … save …”

The thread of her voice died and her gaze lost focus, drifting beyond him. Tarathan covered the shadow of her hands with his own. “Be of good heart, Lira of the Derai,” he said. “We will do all in our power to find your Heir and save her.”

Her gaze returned to him, holding his eyes with painful intensity. “… your word… herald… give… your word…”

“You have my word,” he replied steadily, “so be at peace. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

The ghost of a smile caught at Lira’s lips, but he had to bend even closer now to hear her whisper. “… kiss … farewell …”

“I would be honored,” Tarathan replied softly, “to kiss one so valiant and so true.” The ghost smile deepened for a moment as he kissed her, very gently, on the shadow of her cold mouth. Her lips parted as though to speak again, but no more words came.

Tarathan reached out his hand and rested it briefly on the shadow hair. “Farewell, Lira of the Derai,” he said quietly. “You died well. Now I must honor my word and both find and save the Heir of Night—if I can.”

“Fear not,”
said Jehane Mor’s voice, clear in his mind.
“We will find them one way or the other, in life or in death.”

Tarathan swung around, but all he could see of her was the glow of the filament that joined them, fragile as a cobweb. He turned to follow it back, but the connection began to reel in far faster than he was expecting. The watchtowers rushed past below and Tarathan wondered whether it was the Gate of Dreams that was done with him for now, or Jaransor itself. He could feel the substance of Jehane Mor’s presence growing, grounding him—and almost missed the glimmer of power below, no more than a firefly spark in the vastness of the hills, before he stepped back into the anchor of his body.

He opened his eyes to a cloud-wracked sky and Jehane Mor’s quiet gaze. “I think I found them, there at the end.” He spoke aloud just to hear his own voice, and hers, after so long in silence. “It was just a flash, no more, but they are alive and closer to us than before.”

She nodded. “You were gone a long time, but we can make some of that up if we cross the river now and ride until either night or the weather stops us. Although the storm, I think, will not reach this far south until tomorrow.” Tarathan saw that she had already brought the horses close, ready to leave. He took the hand she held down to him and came swiftly to his feet, holding both the hand and her eyes with the question in his own.

“I heard what you said when Lira died. I thought that you stood at my side.”

Jehane Mor’s expression was thoughtful.
“It was some trick of the Gate, I think, or of Jaransor. I felt as though I walked with you, step for step, once you left the shelter of the watchtower. And I heard you pledge your word.”
She shook her head.
“I was
—
a little surprised. I felt a change then, too, in the pattern of events.”

His answering look was somber.
“She died hard, they both did. I did not think you would object.”

She smiled faintly.
“Would it matter if I did?”

Tarathan’s eyes did not leave hers.
“You know that it would. But we embarked on this path long ago. Pledging
my word to the dying only reinforces what we had already begun. As for a change in the pattern
—” He shrugged.
“With such power at play in there, how could it be otherwise? “

“Change lies at the heart of every pattern, in any case,”
Jehane Mor observed, her face calm, if not untroubled.
“And we are still one in this endeavor, as we have always been.”
She withdrew her hand and turned, stepping into the saddle.
“So now we must ride. I will do what I can to shield our passage into Jaransor, but I think our best hope now is speed if we are to find them before the storm breaks
—
or worse occurs.”

As if to second her words, her horse flung up its head and trumpeted a challenge to the sky. She spoke softly to it, soothing, steady. And then Tarathan, too, had mounted and brought his horse alongside hers, facing north toward the Telimbras and Jaransor. While she watched, he slid his horseman’s curved bow from its covering behind his saddle, strung it, and slid it across his back.
“Ready?”
he asked.

The gleam of her smile answered his, steel meeting steel.
“I ride in your shadow,”
she said, and both horses leapt forward as one, into the face of the wind.

30

S
now fell softly out of a shadowed sky, dusting the midnight world of Jaransor with white. It touched the still, upturned faces of Kyr and Lira where they lay, unmoving beneath the sky, and floated, delicate as lace, into a perfect circle around the hilltop where the broken watchtower stood. The snowflakes swirled more thickly around the jagged rim of the shorn-off tower, spiraling across its shadow, which stretched black and unbroken on the wintry ground. Hounds gave tongue, calling to each other in a wild baying that circled between earth and heaven.

Kalan tossed fitfully, half asleep, half waking, caught between the pain of his wound and a sense of danger pressing in. He was aware that the pearl on his hand was glowing and he heard the voice of the hounds again, belling through his dream and calling him to rouse himself, to take action. Slowly, he got to his feet, wincing at the pain beneath his arm—whether awake or asleep, that at least was real. A glance at Malian showed her sleeping where she sat, propped against the wall on the far side of the fire. But the glow of the ring tugged at his attention, drawing his eyes toward the tunnel. Kalan hesitated briefly, then followed its
pull, making his slow, determined way up the curving corridor, one hand against the wall for support.

He paused in the shadow of the arch and saw that the world was filled with softly falling white. There was something else out there, too, prowling beyond the perimeter of his shield ring, baffled still, but questing, seeking. Kalan could see the feral gleam of its eyes, like two viridian lanterns in the heart of a greater blackness. It did not call or make any sound, not yet, but he
knew
what that sound would be when it came—and the picture to match it was
there
in his mind as well, gleaned from one of the many Darkswarm bestiaries that he had pored over in the Temple quarter. “Night Mare,” Kalan whispered.

“Careful, boy!” A heavy hand rested on his shoulder. “Do not name such a creature aloud, lest the very act of naming bring it to your side.”

Kalan jumped violently and twisted round, staring up into the masked face. “You!” he exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”

“How could I not be here,” the Huntmaster inquired, “when you yourself observed that both I and the crow should be present? This is our place.”

“I saw the Hunt over the door,” said Kalan. His eyes slid to the crow, sitting on the black-cloaked shoulder. “I thought I was awake, but I’m not, am I? This is the world of dreams.”

The Huntmaster shook his head. “Do you know nothing of Jaransor, having walked into it so blithely? It is one of the few places on Haarth that exists simultaneously in both the waking world and the realm of dreams. This archway is one of the crossing points between the two, which is why I can come to you here unbidden. It is also the reason why you can perceive the demon that hunts for you on the physical plane, even though you stand within the Gate of Dreams. Your barrier,” he added dispassionately, “holds against the demon, for now.”

Kalan shivered. “I can feel it probing at the shield, but I don’t know what more I can do to stop it getting through.”

The black mask stared out through the lightly falling snow. “Probably very little, on your own. Its psychic power is considerable.” The hand on his shoulder tightened. “Yet you are the Token-bearer. You may summon the Hunt to your aid, so long as you are confident that your shield will contain it.”

Kalan stared at him. “But—isn’t that too dangerous? Whatever’s out there is on the physical plane, just like the siren worm in the keep. I thought you said that the Hunt had to be contained within the Gate of Dreams?”

The black mask looked back at him, inscrutable. “So it must. But your enemy is a psychic as well as a physical hunter and this is Jaransor, where you stand on a bridge between the two realms. Here, you will be able to call on the Hunt to act against the demon on the other side. And you can be sure of this, the demon
will
perceive the hounds.”

“So long,” Kalan whispered, “as they don’t break through into the everyday world.” He shivered again. “If Jaransor exists in both realms at once, then the barrier between the two must be very thin here.”

The smile beneath the mask was grim. “If the Hunt is roused, then the Huntmaster must master it. But only the Token-bearer may summon the milk-white hounds with their eyes of blood.”

Kalan hesitated, remembering the terror and power of the hounds—and what Yorindesarinen had said about the Hunt and its master being both an ancient force and a very strong one. He wondered, too, what the Huntmaster’s coming to him unbidden might signify. Like Jaransor, the Hunt was not a Derai power and that could mean there was some trick to this, some hidden purpose that Kalan could not see.

But, Kalan reminded himself, the Huntmaster did help save Malian from the siren worm.

He could feel the pressure of the Night Mare’s power building, icy cold and compelling, as it probed at his shield. The viridian eyes were brighter than before, and a great darkness bulked behind them. Soon, Kalan knew, he would
require all his strength to hold the demon at bay—and it would not be enough.

“Use the Token or be lost anyway.” The Huntmaster’s voice echoed his fear. “Trust in yourself, Kalan. Summon the Hunt!”

Letting go of his fear, Kalan found, was like stepping off a cliff with the ground rushing up to meet him. He could feel the wild beating of his heart, his eyes wide open as the air streamed past him, and he felt ill and exhilarated at the same time. The moonglow of the pearl flared into the snowy night and formed a perfect circle around the crown of the hill, ending at the outer edge of the mindshield he had built before he slept. The pack of huge, milk white hounds materialized inside it, lunging and fretting at the perimeter of the shield ring. They were even larger than Kalan remembered, their scarlet eyes burning like watch fires in the wintry night. He could feel their hunger, avid for the hunt and the kill, as well as their strength, sliding like a second shield between himself and the compelling force of the Night Mare.

The dark figure of the Huntmaster picked up his spear from where it rested against the shadowed archway and stepped forward, standing tall and straight before the entrance to the ruined tower. Kalan let his breath out slowly and steeled himself to confront the demon, but the Huntmaster extended an arm, holding him back.

“Do not step beyond the arch. You must not let your enemy see that it has tracked you here. Let it believe that it has triggered one of the ancient powers of this place.”

It was only afterward that Kalan realized that the Huntmaster had spoken into his mind. All the Night Mare would have seen or heard was the straining, snapping hounds and the silent, black-clad figure with the ruined tower behind it. But there was no time to think about that as a force like a black wind beat in against the edge of his shield barrier and tested it; the sweep of power was cold, malevolent, and hungry. The hounds howled their reply, and all along the boundary they leapt and snarled at whatever assailed them
from beyond the shield ring. The cold, deadly pressure lifted, drawing back.