Crown of Shadows

by C. S. Friedman

  Wearily he shut his eyes once more; his tired flesh seemed to sink back into the cushions, as though soon it would fade away entirely. “And I’m to give you all the answers? In one month? You should have just left me there.”

  “Maybe I should have,” he snapped, suddenly angry. “Maybe the man I went through Hell to rescue didn’t make it back. Oh, his flesh is alive enough—as much as it ever was—but where’s the spark that drove it? I must have lost track of it, somewhere on the way back.”

  “He’s a Iezu,” Tarrant whispered hoarsely. “We don’t even know what they are, much less how to fight them. If we had unlimited time to come up with new theories and test them, time to do research, then maybe, maybe, we’d have a chance. But one month? You’re going to figure out how to destroy the indestructible in one month? Not to mention,” he added hoarsely, “that if I don’t find another means of sustaining my life by the end of that time ...” He winced, and the shadow of remembered pain passed across his face. “Can’t be done,” he whispered. “Not like that.”

  With a snort Damien rose from his side and walked away, moving toward the door that Karril had used for his exit. Heavy planks banded with cast iron, now securely shut. He listened to see if any sound could make it through that barrier, and at last decided they were safe enough. Karril could hear them if he wanted to, he suspected, but he didn’t think that demon was the eavesdropping kind.

  “What would you think,” he said quietly, “if I told you that I knew how to kill a Iezu?”

  He heard the couch creak behind him, and guessed that Tarrant was struggling to a sitting position. Given the man’s condition, it was little wonder that long seconds passed before he finally managed, “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “How could you have gained knowledge like that? After all my research failed, and yours as well?”

  He glanced once more at the solid door, satisfying himself that it was fully shut, and then turned back to Tarrant. The Hunter looked ghastly even by comparison with his normal state.

  He said it simply, knowing the power that was in such a statement. “Karril told me.”

  “When?” he demanded.

  “Before we came after you. I went to his temple to ask for his help, and we argued. He told me then.”

  “Why?” he asked in amazement. “Oh, he might have rendered Calesta vulnerable, but also himself as well. He’s too practiced a survivor for that.”

  “Oh, I don’t think he was aware of doing it. Not in so many words.”

  The Hunter’s eyes were fixed on him now, and there was a brightness in their depths that Damien had feared he’d lost forever. A hunger, but not for triumph. Not even for survival. For knowledge.

  “Tell me,” he whispered.

  And he did. He told him what the Iezu had said to him, back when he’d first come to the temple. How he had expressed his own fear of what the journey might mean to him.

  The way is pain, and worse. I can’t endure it. Even if I wanted to, even if I were willing to risk her displeasure ... I’m not human. I can’t absorb emotions which run counter to my aspect. No Iezu could survive such an assault.

  “Well?” he said at last. “Does that mean what I think it does, or not?”

  The Hunter’s eyes were focused elsewhere, beyond Damien, as he digested the thought. “Yes,” he said at last. “You’re right. I’ve heard Iezu express similar fears before, but voiced as a question of discomfort, rather than survival. This would seem to imply there’s more to it.”

  “So there’s hope, then.”

  “A long shot at best. What runs counter to Calesta’s aspect? Perfectly counter, so that he can’t adapt? Karril can deal with pain if he must, so the matter’s not a simple one.”

  It came to him, then, from the fields of memory, so quickly and so clearly that he wondered if the fae weren’t responsible. “Apathy.”

  “What?”

  “Karril’s negative factor is apathy. The absence of all pleasure. The absence of ability to experience pleasure.”

  “Where the hell did you come up with that?”

  “He told us. Back at Senzei’s place, when Ciani was first attacked.” Good God! The memory seemed so distant now, half a lifetime away. He struggled to remember what the demon had said, at last had to resort to a Remembering. The fae took shape in response to his will, forming a misty simulacrum of Karril before them. There are few kinds of pain I can tolerate, it said, fewer still that I can feed on. But apathy is my true nemesis. It is anathema to my being: my negation, my opposite, my destruction. Then, its duty accomplished, the image faded. The room’s cool air was heavy with silence.

  “Apathy,” the Hunter mused.

  “There’s got to be something like that for Calesta, right? Something similar, that we can use as a weapon.”

  The Hunter shook his head. “Karril was talking about trying to endure something, not having it forced upon him. How would you inundate a spirit with apathy? If it were deadly to him, he would surely flee from it, like any living creature. And apathy isn’t something you can nock to a bow, or insert into the wood of a quarrel. It can’t be made into a blade, to cut and pierce on its own.”

  “Not yet,” Damien agreed. “But that doesn’t mean there isn’t some way to use it. You and I just have to figure out how.”

  Exhaustion seemed to cloud the Hunter’s expression; he turned away and whispered, in a voice without emotion, “In a month?”

  “If that’s all we have.”

  Though the Remembering had faded from sight, some vestige of its power must still have remained in the room; Damien could see bits and pieces of the Hunter’s recollections taking form about his head. Images of pain and horror and terror beyond bearing, still as alive in his memory as they were in that dark place inside his soul. Hell was waiting for him. So was the Unnamed. Thirty-one days.

  “Not enough,” he whispered. “Not enough.”

  Anger welled up inside Damien with unexpected force. He walked to where the Hunter sat and dropped down beside him, grabbing his shoulders, pulling him around to face him. “I went to Hell and beyond to bring you back, and so help me God you’ll earn it. You understand? I don’t care how little time it seems to you, or how vulking depressed you get, or even whether or not you’re going to make it past that last day. What we’re talking about is the future of all of humankind, and that’s a hell of a lot more important than my fate, or even yours. Even yours.” He paused. “You understand me?”

  The Hunter glared at him. “Easy enough words, from your perspective.”

  “Damn you, Gerald! Why are you doing this?” He rose up from the couch and stepped away, afraid he would hit the man if he remained too close. “Do I have to tell you what the answer is? You’re a free agent for the first time in nine hundred years. Take advantage of that!”

  “I am what they made me to be,” he said bitterly. “None of that has been undone. Going against their will means going against my own nature—”

  “Damn it, man, no one said redemption would be easy! But isn’t it worth a try? Isn’t that better than handing yourself over to them in a longmonth, without so much as a whimper of protest?”

  “You don’t know,” he whispered. There was pain in his voice. “You can’t possibly understand.”

  “Try me.”

  The pale eyes narrowed; his expression was strained. “Those sins you saw,” he breathed. “Would you forgive them so quickly, if the matter were in your hands? Would you wipe clean a slate of nine hundred years, for one single month of good intentions? For a vow made in the shadow of such fear that its true motivation could never be judged?”

  “I wouldn‘t,” he said shortly. “God might. That’s the difference between us.”

  “Might is a hell of a thing to bet one’s eternity on.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “About as shaky as trying to stay alive forever. Only in the latter case, you know it has to end someday.” He paused. “You did know that, didn’t you? That
it had to end sometime. Today it’s Calesta and tomorrow it might be something else, but you can’t run forever.”

  The Hunter turned away from him. Though Damien waited, he said nothing.

  “All right,” the priest said at last. “You think about it. I’ll be back in my room if you decide you want my help. Karril has the address.”

  He turned toward the stairs and was about to leave, but a single sound, voiced quiet as a breeze, stopped him.

  “Damien.”

  He didn’t turn back, but he did stop. Waiting.

  “Thank you,” the Hunter whispered.

  For a moment longer he stood where he was. Then, without voicing a response, he climbed the short flight of stairs and pushed open the heavy door. The sounds and smells of Karril’s temple greeted him, unwelcome reminders of the world that surrounded. Millions upon millions of men and women and helpless children, whose futures were all at risk.

  I saved you, he thought bitterly to Tarrant. Now you do your job, and help me save them.

  Twenty-two

  Pleasure was to apathy as sadism was to ...

  What?

  The analogy ran through Damien’s head obsessively, forever uncompleted. And though he tried to satisfy the pattern with over a dozen words, none of them were quite right. The answer continued to elude him, and only the knowledge that it must surely exist gave him the strength to rise above his frustration and keep searching.

  The key to it all was the insight that Karril had given them, regarding his own counter-aspect. Pleasure was the opposite of pain, and yet a man’s soul could be filled with both things at once. Apathy was Karril’s true nemesis, the absence of any strong feeling, a state in which pleasure could not even be experienced. Yet it wasn’t an opposite exactly, or a compliment, or any other type of thing which Damien’s language had a name for. That made dictionaries all but useless, and even more sophisticated linguistic tools confusing at best.

  It didn’t help to know that Tarrant had indeed confronted the Patriarch. Even after the Hunter had finally admitted that fact, even after the emotional storm that was inevitable had played itself out and subsided to a sullen resentment, Damien couldn’t stop thinking about the incident long enough to focus clearly on anything else. What had the Hunter said to the Patriarch, and how had the Patriarch reacted? Tarrant would say only that he had offered the Holy Father knowledge, and that whether or not the man chose to use it was his own concern. Damien could only guess at the torment such an offer would cause. Worst of all was the guilt in the priest’s own heart, the certain knowledge that if he had only come up with some better plan, if only he had initiated some milder contact on his own ... then what? What could he have said or done that the Patriarch would accept? The man’s heart was so set against Damien that maybe the Hunter, with his ages of experience, stood a better chance with him. Maybe this was, in its own painful way, a more merciful form of disclosure.

  He struggled to believe that, as he applied himself to the challenge at hand. He had to believe it, if he was to think about anything else.

  Thirty days left now. He had no doubt that the hours were counting down inside Tarrant’s skull, in much the same way that he had counted seconds when traversing Tarrant’s Hell. And for much the same reason, he thought. It was all too easy to let such small units of time slip by one after the other, until suddenly they were all gone.

  Thirty days.

  Help him, God, he begged. If he is to die, help him to make the best of that. Now that the last barrier is being removed, help him rediscover his humanity. But though he wished for the best for his dark companion, he knew Gerald Tarrant’s stubbornness well enough to guess that such a prayer was futile. The habit of nine hundred years was not a thing to be discarded lightly. And the Unnamed had indeed remade him to suit its own special hunger; the Hunter still required blood and cruelty to live, every bit as much as Damien required food and water. How did you fight a thing like that? How did you win redemption against such odds?

  I’ll get you through this, he promised silently. Somehow.

  He prayed there would be a way.

  “He’ll see you now, Reverend Vryce.”

  A servant in Church livery opened the door of the Patriarch’s study as he approached; another stood at attention by the outer door, prepared to serve the Holy Father’s every whim. In the distance Damien could hear the cathedral bells signaling the call to evening service. It all seemed normal, so utterly normal ... but it wasn’t. He knew that. The rules had changed, and while the men and women who served the Patriarch might not yet be aware of it, it made his own game doubly dangerous.

  What did Tarrant do? he thought desperately. As he walked across the polished threshold, he felt his stomach tighten in dread, and as the door shut softly behind him, he was aware that his body had gone rigid as if expecting some physical punishment. That wasn’t good at all. Even the old Patriarch would have noticed such a thing, and as for the new one.... He tried to relax, or at least mimic relaxation, and then dared to look up at the man. His superior. God’s servant.

  A sorcerer?

  The Patriarch was dressed in his accustomed robes, but they hung about his lean form in deeper folds than before, accentuating his thinness. His face was ashen and drawn, and the circles under his eyes spoke eloquently of sleepless nights. Whatever change Tarrant had wrought, it had clearly not been an easy one for the Holy Father. But he had survived. In their bed of wrinkled flesh the man’s clear blue eyes stood out like jewels, and they fixed on Damien with a strange, calm sort of power. It wasn’t at all what the priest had expected, and therefore it was doubly unnerving.

  “Reverend Vryce.” The Patriarch bowed his head ever so slightly, a formal greeting. It was a far more mild reception than Damien had expected, and he tried not to look flustered as he returned the gesture. What was going on here? “Have a seat.” The Patriarch indicated a tufted chair set opposite his desk. Damien hesitated, then moved forward and sat as directed. Was this some other creature that had taken over the Holy Father’s body? In that moment it seemed that anything was possible.

  Then the blue eyes fixed on him, and the fae stirred between them, and he saw what was truly behind that measured gaze: not calm, nor any other kind of human peace, but a pain so intense that it hovered near the brink of madness. And he knew in that moment that he had seen it because the Patriarch had wanted him to see it, that the man’s natural power would have masked such a weakness from Damien’s sight unless he willed it otherwise.

  He began to shiver, deep inside, without quite knowing why. He had prepared himself for the Patriarch’s rage, or worse; how was he supposed to deal with this stranger?

  The Holy Father sat down opposite him, behind the broad mahogova desk, and for a moment said nothing. Damien was intensely aware of that stem gaze fixed on him, studying him, assessing him. At last the Patriarch said quietly, “I believe we have some things to discuss.”

  Damien nodded stiffly, but said nothing.

  “Your recent activities.” He paused, perhaps waiting for a response, but Damien didn’t dare commit himself without first knowing how much the Patriarch had discovered. “Your journey of a night ago,” he prompted. Damien felt his throat tighten in dread but he said nothing. At last the Patriarch leaned forward and accused, “A trip through Hell, Reverend Vryce, to rescue its darkest prince.”

  “How do you know that?” The words were out of him before he could stop them. That would never have happened with the old Patriarch, but this man unnerved him in ways his former self never had. “Where do you get such information?”

  The Patriarch leaned back in his chair. There was an infinite weariness about the movement that made him seem suddenly fragile, as though a strong word might cause him to shatter into a thousand fragments. “I have dreams,” he said quietly. “Visions of the truth, that take place in real time. I thought once that they were clairvoyancies. I thought that God had blessed me with a gift—or perhaps cursed me—so that I might serve my
people better. Now ...” He paused; a muscle tensed along the line of his jaw. “Now I know them for what they are. Visions crafted by a demon, to herd me along his chosen path. He thought me blinded by my faith, and thus never tried to hide his marks. Only now ... I see them. Now I know.”

  “And you trust these dreams?”

  He had expected anger in response—at least a hint of it—but the hollowed face was maddeningly calm, perfectly controlled. Whatever terror raged inside the Patriarch as a result of the changes Tarrant had wrought, he kept it well hidden. “Thus far all his visions have been true, at least as far as I can test them. But that could change at any moment. Perhaps it has now.” He leaned forward and placed his arms upon the desk. “I saw you call a demon for a guide and then walk through Hell, all to save the soul of a man that God himself reviles. Was that a true vision, Reverend Vryce, or a demon’s lie? You tell me.”

  For a brief instant he considered lying. Then, an instant later, his face flushed hot with shame. A year ago he would never have considered lying to the Patriarch, not for any reason. That he had done so now, for no better cause than to evade just punishment, was a jarring reminder of how much the last year had changed him. He had been ready to cast aside his vows of obedience for no more than a moment’s comfort; how much else might he be willing to sacrifice, if the moment’s temptation were right? For the first time he saw himself through the Patriarch’s eyes, and realized just how far he had fallen. He couldn’t meet his gaze, but looked away. “It’s true,” he whispered. “All true.”

  For a moment the Patriarch just stared at him; Damien could feel the scrutiny as if it were a physical assault. “Such an incredible dream,” he mused aloud. “I didn’t want to believe it. I told myself, this time the demon has gone too far. This is beyond the scope of Vryce’s transgressions.” A pause. “I prayed, Reverend Vryce. I asked to be shown that the vision was a lie. For your sake.”