When True Night Falls (6 page)

“See anything?” Damien asked at last.

Tarrant hesitated. “A light so faint that it might be no more than my imagination. Or perhaps the first glimpse of a foreign current, rising to the surface. If I had to hazard a guess, I would say that we are now above the continental shelf, where the waters are shallower. Not shallow enough for Working,” he added. “Not even for me.”

“But soon.”

“Soon,” he agreed. “And if there are people here—” He left the thought unfinished. But hunger echoed in his voice.

You’ll feed
, Damien supplied silently.
Torturing and killing women here, as you once did in the Forest. How many innocents will suffer because I brought you here? Because I convinced you to come?

But for once the guilt echoed emptily inside him, without its accustomed force. Because when he looked at the Hunter now, he saw not only a creature who fed on the fear of the living, but a sorcerer who had committed himself body and soul to a dangerous undertaking. And he remembered the storm that had overtaken them in mid-joumey—hearing its winds lash the decks anew, seeing the storm-driven waves curl over the prow, angry froth cascading down forty, fifty, sixty feet to smash onto the deck with a tsunami’s force—and he remembered thinking then that it was all over, that they had taken one chance too many, that this monster of the equatorial regions would surely devour them before nightfall. And then Tarrant had emerged. Daring the unnatural darkness of the storm, his skin reddened by the few spears of sunlight that managed to pierce the cloudcover. Fine silks whipped and torn by the wind, long fingers tangled in the rigging for support. And then his sword was drawn—
that
sword—and a Working born of pure coldfire blazed upward, into the heart of the storm. The next wave that struck the ship became a wall of sleet as it slammed into the deck, coating the planks with ice as it withdrew. Overhead a rope cracked with a sound like a gunshot, and fragments of it fell to the deck like shattered glass. To the Hunter they were mere distractions. Frost rimmed his hair like a halo as he forced the Worked fae upward, higher and higher, into the heart of the storm—seeking that one weak spot in its pattern which would allow him to turn it aside, or to otherwise lessen its fury. It was an almost impossible feat, Damien knew—but if anyone could do it, Tarrant could.

And slowly, incredibly, the storm abated. Not banished, by any means—a storm of such ferocity could hardly be unmade by a single Working—but altered in its course, so that the worst of it passed to the north of them. Icy waves no longer broke over the deck. Torn rigging hung limply, rather than whipping about in the wind. And Tarrant—

—Fell as the cloudcover overhead gave way at last, seared by a sudden shaft of sunlight. Damien struggled to his side, half-running, half-sliding on the treacherous ice. He used his body to shield Tarrant from the sunlight while he fought to disentangle his hand from the rigging. But the man’s grip was like steel, and in the end Damien had to draw out his knife and slice through the precious ropes to free him. He dragged the adept belowdecks as quickly as he could, while overhead the sky slowly brightened with killing light....

He remembered that day now as he looked at Tarrant, and he thought,
But for you we would all be dead. Four dozen bodies rotting at the bottom of the sea, our mission in ruins. And our enemy would be unopposed, free to work his will upon the world. Isn’t that worth the sacrifice of a life or two?
And he despaired,
Where is the balance in it? How do you judge such a thing?

The pale eyes were fixed on him. Cold, so cold. Testing his limits. Weighing his soul.

“I knew what the price was when I brought you here,” he said at last. As the waves lapped softly at the hull beneath them.

Land. It rose from the sea with volcanic splendor, sharp peaks crowned in bald granite, tangles of vegetation cascading down the lower slopes like a verdant waterfall. There was no beach, nor any other gentle margin that the travelers might discern: sheer cliffs met the ocean in a sharp, jagged line, softened only by the spray of foam as waves dashed themselves against the rocks. Inhospitable to say the least ... but that was hardly a surprise. Erna was not known for gentle beaches.

Land. Even at this distance it filled the air with scent, with sound: evergreens preparing their seeds, spring’s first flowers budding, the cries of seabirds as they circled overhead, seeking a moment of liquid respite in which to dive for food. The passengers of the
Golden Glory
were gathered at the bow, some forty or more of them, and they squinted eagerly into the morning glare as they studied the features of the promised land. A few of them cradled the slender telescopes which Tarrant had supplied for the journey—and they handled them like priceless relics, if not out of reverence for the Old Science which created them, then out of fear of Tarrant. Their farseers had failed them months ago, along with many other ship’s instruments; the lack of earth-power on the high seas had drained everything dry. It had surprised—and frightened—everyone but the Hunter.

How terrifying that must have been for the first explorers,
Damien thought.
They’d have thought that because they disdained sorcery, their tools would function even here. Not realizing that even unconscious thought affects the earth-fae ... and therefore no tool that man makes on land can be wholly free of its taint
. Was that why none of those ships were ever heard from again? Had they lost their way in mid-ocean, when their instruments failed them? Or staggered into some port by blind guesswork, perhaps, knowing that a return journey would be next to impossible? He hungered to know. Five expeditions, hundreds of men and women ... and something had spawned an Evil here, more deadly and more subtle than anything the west had produced. He hungered to uncover it. He ached to destroy it.

Soon,
he promised himself.
Soon. One step at a time.

He stood in the wheelhouse of the
Golden Glory
, Tarrant’s own telescope in hand. Beside him was a table overlaid with maps, the topmost a copy of one of the Hunter’s. It showed the eastern continent as viewed from above, with elevations clearly marked in the neat mechanical printing of the colony’s founders. A survey map, no doubt—or more likely a copy of one. Tarrant had lost enough things of value on the last trip to be wary of traveling with originals. On top of it were scattered the instruments which the pilot had used to establish their position, and Damien watched as she pushed aside a polished brass astrolabe in order to scrutinize a new section of coast. It said a lot about her current state of mind that she had chosen that tool over the more sophisticated instruments available; when Rasya was tense, she liked her tools primitive and simple.

At last she said, “If we’re where I think we are, then there’s an island missing.”

“Ocean’s risen,” the captain reminded her. His own eye remained fixed on the distant cliffs. “Figure a lot’ll be missing, from the time that map was made. Don’t sweat it.”

“Thanks,” she said dryly. “You’re not the one whose job it is to see that we don’t run aground.”

They were a study in opposites—so much so that it was hard to imagine them getting along, much less working together as closely and as efficiently as they did. Rasya Maradez was tall and lean, with clear blue eyes, sun-bronzed skin, and short hair bleached platinum by the unremitting sun. Smooth muscles played along her slender limbs as she moved, obscured only by a pair of cut-off breeches and an improvised halter top. Irresistible, if you liked the athletic type. Damien did. The captain, by contrast, was a swarthy man, dark-skinned and dark-featured, solid enough in his massive frame to act as a back-up anchor if they needed it. His face and hands were battlescarred—from street brawls, Damien suspected—and though he handled his own gold-chased instrument with obvious reverence, his tough, lined fingers seemed more suited to a brigand than the person of an officer. Their temperaments were likewise mismatched but surprisingly compatible, resulting in a tense but efficient partnership that had successfully tamed Erna’s most dangerous waters.

The captain turned slowly, scanning the length and breadth of the shoreline through his own instrument. Between his fingers delicately engraved figures adorned the golden barrel, studded with precious gems. Tarrant had given it to him as a gift when they first left port, and Damien remembered wondering at its design. He shouldn’t have. Its message of value, tasteless but eloquent, had won the captain over in an instant. What good will the Hunter could not inspire in this crew, he clearly intended to purchase.

Carefully Damien studied the lay of the land beyond, breakwater and cliff face and an occasional rocky slope that might through some stretch of the imagination be termed a
beach ...
he scanned the salt-frothed shoreline, wishing he had Tarrant’s Sight. By now the Hunter would have analyzed every current in the region and picked them apart for the messages they carried.
Yes,
he would have said,
there’s human life, just south of here. Unaware of our presence. Sail on with the wind....

And then Damien drew in a sharp breath, as he caught sight of a pattern that wasn’t wholly natural. It took him a moment to focus on it: a pale line, mostly straight, that wound upward from the base of the cliff to its summit several hundred feet above.
Artificial,
he thought.
Without a doubt
. His fingers tightened about the slender tube as he focused in on the line itself, on the rhythm of tiny shadows that peppered its length. Trying to identify them.

And for a moment he stopped breathing, as he realized what they were. What they had to be.

The captain turned to him. “You see something?”

He nodded. His heart was pounding so loudly from excitement he was amazed that the others couldn’t hear it. “There.” He directed the man’s gaze to the thing he had seen, then handed his own telescope to Rasya. Not wanting to say anything more until they had seen it for themselves. Until they had confirmed it.

The captain spotted it first, and swore softly. “Vulkin‘ ninth messiah. Stairs?”

“Barely footholds,” Rasya corrected. “Slope’s too steep for more than that.”

“Humans carved ‘em, though. That’s for sure.”

Humans,
Damien thought,
or something that looks human. Something that wears a human form and therefore uses human tools. Are we looking at the work of a possible ally ... or is this the mark of our enemy?
The uncertainty made him cold inside. He tried to work a Knowing, to settle his doubts, but the power that clung to the planet’s surface was still too far below them. Inaccessible. Tarrant might be able to Work through this much water, but he sure as hell couldn’t.

“Ras?” the captain prompted.

“Be bad for a landing,” she said quietly, “even for a rowboat. And there’s no place nearby to harbor the
Glory
—at least not that we’ve seen yet. That means we’d have to leave you here and move on, maybe ten, maybe a hundred miles down the coast. Not good.”

“But if you want it, we’ll do it,” the captain assured Damien. “That was the deal. Set you down wherever you want ... even if it is in the middle of just about nowhere.”

“And against our better judgment,” Rasya added.

Damien studied the coast for a long minute, as if somehow that could settle his unease. “Can we wait here? Until the sun sets? That‘s—”

“Seven hours,” Rasya supplied, and the captain asked, “Because of his Lordship?”

“I’d like him to take a look at this. Before any decisions are made.”

“Can’t stay here,” Rasya warned. “Not unless you want to be a sitting duck for the next smasher. Look there: that shore’s been hit hard and often. Staying here is asking for trouble.” She ran a hand thoughtfully through her short hair. “We could head out to sea for a while instead, come back in with Domina’s tide ... risky at night, but if the wind holds steady I’d chance it.”

The captain looked to Damien for approval, then nodded. “All right. Do it.”

She nodded, laid down the slim black telescope, and left them to give the orders that would adjust their course. Damien moved to follow her. But the captain’s hand on his shoulder stopped him.

“Not yet,” he muttered. “Not just yet.”

He gestured for Damien to retrieve the telescope. He did so, and focused once more on the distant shoreline.

“By the top of the stairs,” the captain directed. His voice was tense. “About two hundred yards to the right. Back from the edge a bit.”

Shadows. Boulders. And a circular form that gleamed darkly in the sunlight, a ring of blue-black metal that looked out over the surf like a vast, nightbound eye. It was not hard to make out, once he had found it. It took him a while longer to make out the shape that was behind it. The long metal tube and its supporting frame, coarse timber fastened with heavy iron bolts. Iron balls beside it, stacked with geometric precision. Canisters.

He lowered the telescope. And swore softly.

“Now mind you,” the captain said, “I haven’t seen a lot of ‘em ... but that damn sure looks like a cannon to me.”