When True Night Falls (90 page)

“Karril,” he whispered. This was Tarrant’s lezu: the one who had healed Ciani, the one whom Senzei had consulted. Damien discovered to his surprise that the abhorrence he should feel for such a creature was absent. Had his recent experiences inured him to the concept of demonkind? Even the faeborn who did good deeds were still dangerous parasites.

“I came to warn you,” the demon said. As he stepped forward into the center of the room, the crystal walls lost their light, dimming to a comfortable glow. “You need to go home, Damien Vryce, and you need to do it fast.”

He ignored the advice for the moment, focusing on a more important message. “What did you mean, it isn’t over?”

The demon seemed to hesitate, and looked around the room as if he expected to find someone listening. “You’ll find out when you go north,” he said finally. “So I’m not telling you anything, really. Only what you would discover yourselves.”

“What is it?” Katassah demanded. His hand was on the brass grip of his pistol, a warning sign. “What’s happening?”

The demon turned to him. “Your Prince was a pawn, Captain, nothing more. And now Calesta’s game is played out. You forced his hand a hundred years early, but in the end that’ll make little difference. You won the battle, but the war has just begun.”

Something cold tightened around Damien’s heart. He had known that the death of the Prince was only the first step in healing this land, but something in the demon’s tone warned him that the issue went far beyond that. “Tell us what you mean,” he said sharply.

The demon looked pained. “I can’t. Not in detail. If I interfere in his affairs by helping you....” He drew in a deep breath and slowly exhaled it, trembling; the gesture was oddly melodramatic coming from a creature that didn’t have to breathe. “It’s forbidden,” he said at last. “But so is what he’s done. To tamper with mankind’s development ... that’s strictly forbidden. So which is the worse crime? Which is more likely to be punished?”

“Tamper how?” Katassah demanded, and Damien snapped, “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Go north,” the demon said. “You’ll see. He used the Prince, he used the rakh, and now ... I’m sorry,” he said to Katassah. “Genuinely sorry. But you see, he can’t feed on your people. So it really doesn’t matter to him whether they live or die.” He looked at Damien and then quickly away, as though he feared to meet his gaze. “Twelve centuries ago your ancestors came to this planet. There were only a few hundred of them then, few enough that when Casca made his grand sacrifice it shook this planet to its very roots. Now, with millions of humans on Erna, with thousands of them Working the fae, no one man can have that kind of influence. No single act can impress the fae so that its basic nature alters again. But a thousand men—a hundred thousand—might. A plan of action carried down through the centuries could.”

“That’s Church philosophy,” Damien said sharply.

“Yes. And Calesta watched your Church develop. He learned from it, and from its founder. He took the lessons your Prophet taught him and applied them here, as a sort of grand experiment.” He shook his head, his expression somber. “All too effectively, I’m afraid.”

“What is it he wants?” Katassah asked sharply. “What’s the goal?”

“A world that will respond to his hunger. A world with such an outpouring of the emotional energy he covets that the fae will absorb it, focus it, magnify it—until that in turn alters the very nature of humanity.”

“What does he feed on?” the priest demanded. He was trying to remember what Gerald Tarrant had told him about the Iezu. “What aspect of mankind? Tell us.”

The demon stiffened, and for a moment Damien thought he would refuse to answer. But at last he said, very quietly, “Calesta feeds on that spark of human life which delights in the pain of others. A universal sentiment, I’m afraid. Calesta grows stronger every time that spark is expressed.”

“It’s far from universal,” Damien objected.

“Is it? Can you show me one man or woman who has never, never wished hurt upon another? Not as a child fleeing from bullies, not as a lover wronged by his or her companion, not even as a righteous crusader setting out to save the world from those who would corrupt it? Have you never longed to see an enemy hurt, Reverend Vryce? Not the Prince, not Gerald Tarrant, not anyone?”

His lips tightened. He said nothing.

“Go home, the demon urged. ”As soon as you can. You can’t do anything to save this place—no one man can—but you can still save the people you love. Because he’ll strike at them, I’m sure of that. He knows it’ll be a year or more before you can get back to the west, and in that time he can do a lot to change things. If you stay away longer, if you give him that much more to work with ... then the world you return to may not be the same as the one you left. Trust me.“

“Vengeance,” Katassah muttered. “For interfering with his plans here.”

The demon nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

“Why are you telling us this?” Damien asked suddenly. “If you’re not allowed to interfere with him, then why come here at all? What’s in it for you?”

“I like humanity,” the demon told him. Smiling slightly. “With all its quirks and its foibles and its insecurities intact. I enjoy them. Oh, I’d survive the change if Calesta had his way. Sadism is a form of pleasure, after all. But it wouldn’t be nearly the same. Food without entertainment is nearly as bad as no food at all.” His expression darkened slightly, though the smile remained. “Of course, I may yet pay for this indulgence. Who knows which transgressions the mother of the Iezu will tolerate, and which she’ll punish? No one’s ever dared to test her before now.” He shrugged, somewhat stiffly. “I expect we’ll know soon enough.”

With a formal bow he said to the rakh. “I’m afraid your people have a long, hard battle ahead of them, Mer Captain. The Prince used his power to evolve your species to suit Calesta’s need, and it will be a long time before those weaknesses breed out. But they will in time, if no human interferes. I’m sorry I can’t help you more.”

“You’ve done enough by explaining things,” Katassah said tightly. “Thank you.”

The demon turned back to Damien. His flesh was starting to fade, solid cells giving way to a more shadowy substance. The flicker of a lamp behind him could be seen through his black-robed torso. “My family are symbiotes, not parasites,” he told the priest. “And some of us are proud of that distinction. Be careful, Reverend Vryce. Be wary. Travel fast.” He was little more than than a veil of color now, fading out around the edges. “—And take care of Gerald Tarrant, will you? He seems to be getting himself into a lot of trouble these days.”

“I’ll try,” the priest promised. A tight smile softened the lines of his face.

As they watched, the demon dissolved completely, his color and form fading into the very air that surrounded him. When he was finally gone, the illusion of darkness faded also, and the room was restored to its former painful brightness. Damien stared at the spot where he had been for a long time in silence, the demon’s words echoing in his brain.

“Well,
shit,”
he said at last. “That’s just great.”

They left from Freeshore, on a merchant ship bribed to ply the northern seas for their purpose. It was Katassah who had paid for the journey, dispensing royal gold as if it was his own. Which it was, in a way. His men had seen the Prince take over his body, and until he informed them of the new state of things—or until he made some vital mistake that caused them to guess at it—the throne and the power were his for the asking. It would cost him dearly in the end, Damien knew. As the lights of Freeshore faded behind them and the gentle swells of the Novatlantic drew them northward, he remembered the rakhene captain as he had been at their departure: studiously proud, carefully arrogant, imitating with perfection the man whom he had served for half a lifetime. It was a masquerade that couldn’t last, of course, no matter how well he played at it; in time his lack of sorcery would give him away, and the game would disintegrate from there. They would turn on him then, all the men and women who had served the Prince. He knew it would happen. And yet he wore the royal robes over his rakhene uniform and placed the Prince’s crown on his head, risking that fate. Because—he explained—with Calesta’s dark plan coming to fruition, he dared not leave his people leaderless.

There’s the soul of a born ruler, Damien thought. If only it could have been expressed under happier circumstances
.

They had taken a case of homing birds with them, and Damien released the first after a day at sea.
Found passage with the
Silver Siren, it said.
Proceeding as planned.
The rest of the birds would be saved for when they reached the northern kingdom, when they learned what havoc Calesta had wreaked there.

How isolated Katassah must feel, how very helpless, now that the Prince’s power no longer served as a link between his people and their northern contacts! The crystalline palace was no longer the nerve center of an empire, but a tiny island of hope and fear nearly lost in the vastness of the black lava desert. Damien wished him well with all his heart, and prayed feverishly that his self-sacrifice would serve its intended purpose: to stabilize his divided nation against the threat of war, so that when the truth was at last made known the country might adapt and thrive, rather than dissolving into chaos.

The girl Sisa had come with them. When she had first shown up with her few belongings as the boats were loading, Damien had been aghast—no, furious—and he raged at Tarrant, declaring in no uncertain terms that he would not permit the man to bring her along for the sole purpose of feeding on her terror. To which the Hunter had replied, quite calmly, “I must have food, Vryce, and you can’t supply it any more. We’ve discussed that. As for the woman’s motives ... I suggest that you ask her yourself.”

He did. And though she had claimed that she wanted to come with them, that Tarrant had in no way coerced her to make the trip, he found it hard to believe. Each time she glanced at the Hunter she trembled; each time conversation turned toward the Hunter and his needs she grew visibly paler. Had Tarrant found himself the perfect masochist, a woman who delighted in suffering? Damien doubted it. Not because such people couldn’t exist—he had no doubt that they did—but because he couldn’t imagine Tarrant taking any real pleasure in torturing one of them.

Why are you here?
he asked her later that night, when chance left them alone together.
Why do you want to be with him?

He thought for a moment that she wouldn’t answer him. But though her eyes were cast low, there was fear in her voice, it was clear when she spoke that she trusted him. Slowly, hesitantly, she told him of the night that Tarrant had hunted her in the Black Lands, the night she had run like an animal in the desert night, fully expecting to die. But instead of killing her when he finally ran her down, the monster had offered her an alternative fate:
Survive my hunger, he said, and I will free you. Keep me alive for the months it will take us to reach my homeland, and I’ll set you up as a rich woman in a land with no princes, no religious wars, no slavery
. And she had accepted. The challenge was all that was keeping her sane now, and the dream of success kept her going. So that she might suffer all the more, Damien thought. So that she might feed him. Like the women who ran from him in the Forest, convinced that three days of successful flight would buy them a lifetime of safety. How utterly consistent Tarrant was in his sadism, how perfectly ordered! Damien wondered if this woman would survive the test that so many had failed. He prayed for her sake that she would.

As for Tarrant....

He came to the place where Damien was standing, late in the second night of the voyage. There were no other people nearby and the sea was smooth and quiet. It was the kind of night in which two men might stand together companionably and watch the waves, thinking of the lands ahead and the trials yet to come. The kind of night in which a priest might turn to his dark companion and ask softly, Why? and expect to be answered with honesty.

For a long while the Hunter watched the sea, and Damien knew better than to press him. “It was as I told you,” he said at last. “We had no chance. No chance at all. Not with a Iezu involved, and a sorcerer of that caliber. I perceived that the only way to get near enough to strike was to allow ourselves to be taken by him, and thus I designed my subterfuge. I wanted to tell you,” he said, and his tone was one of rare sincerity. “I wanted you to share in the choice. But it was already apparent to me that there was a real connection between the Prince and our adversary in the rakhlands, and I suspected their strategies would be the same. She Knew me, as you may recall, in order to determine what you would do; I guessed that he would proceed similarly. Which meant that you
couldn’t
know, Reverend Vryce. The whole plan hinged on your ignorance. I’m sorry,” he said softly. Facing the night. Addressing the waves. “I did try to make it easier on you. Tried to bring us in at Freeshore for an early capture, or arrange for a controlled ambush afterward. I wanted to spare you the hardships of the Wasting, but you fought me at every turn. I’m sorry.”

“That wasn’t what I meant,” Damien said quietly.

The Hunter blinked. “What then?”

“He offered you immortality. To use your own words,
the real thing.”
Damien shook his head. “I know you, Gerald. Pretty well, I like to think. And I know what death means to you. I know that avoiding it is the focus of your very existence, and that nothing—not family, not ethical obligations, not even fear of divine judgment—is allowed to threaten that focus.” He looked at Tarrant, meeting the pale gaze head-on. “So what happened? Why
didn’t
you sell out? I’m grateful for it, mind you, I always will be—but I don’t understand it. Not at all.”

Tarrant’s expression tightened; after a moment he turned away, as if he feared what Damien might read in it. “In my lifetime,” he said solemnly, “I created only one thing of lasting value. One thing of such beauty and promise that long after I had committed my soul to darkness I still reveled in watching it grow, in seeing what turns it would take and what new paths would open up for it. Your Church, Reverend Vryce. My most precious creation. The immortality the Prince offered me was based upon its corruption. He would have taken my work and twisted it—destroyed it—reduced it to some neo-pagan drivel in order to harness its power for his own ends. And I couldn’t stand by and let that happen. My vanity was too great in the end, my pride too all-conquering; to accept immortality on those terms. It would be like letting part of myself die in order that a lesser part might live. So you see,” he said quietly, “it was that very offer which turned me against him.”