When True Night Falls (93 page)

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Authors: C.S. Friedman

BOOK: When True Night Falls
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Betrayed
Compact
Good service
Hunger
Blood
Betrayed
Promises
Life
Unlife
Betrayed
Betrayed
Betrayed
Vengeance?
Hunger
They began to coalesce once more, and a new thought took root.
This Iezu
, a voice mused,
does not know what he truly is
.
No
, another voice agreed.
None of the Iezu do
.
Help him?
Destroy him?
Ignore him?
Wait
, a deep voice recommended.
Watch. See if his own kind supports him. See if she takes sides
.
And Tarrant?
Something new stirred in the everlasting darkness. Something so powerful that the blackness became a fierce whirlpool, into which all the other voices were suddenly sucked. Something so malevolent, so utterly hostile, that the petty hates and envies of humankind were lost inside it, swallowed up by an Evil so vast that it fed on the very essence of life itself. It existed for only an instant, this Power, and then it began to break up again into its disparate elements. But the instant was long enough.
Tarrant
, said the Devourer,
will have to answer to Me
.
A voracious reader from her earliest days, Celia S. Friedman discovered science fiction at the age of ten and instantly recognized it to be the ultimate form of literature in the universe. When not reading or writing, she teaches Costume Design at a private university in northern Virginia and designs period dress patterns for a historical supply company. At the time this book is being printed she is off doing research for the concluding volume of her Coldfire trilogy, checking out live volcanoes in the South Pacific. Her cats (two Maine Coons and a stray) are home guarding the computer.

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