“Earthquake?” he whispered. Aghast—and awed—by the revelation.
“Come on,” she answered. And dragged him forward.
They ran until they reached the north end of the street, where it widened into a sizable shopping plaza. She stopped there, breathless, and bade him do the same. There were already several hundred people gathered in the small cobblestoned square, and more were arriving each minute. The horses that were tethered there pulled nervously at their reins, nostrils twitching as if trying to catch the scent of danger. Even as Damien and Ciani entered the tiny square the hanging signs of several shops began to swing, and a crash of glass sounded through one open doorway. Shopkeepers exited the buildings hurriedly with precious items clutched in their arms—crystal, porcelain, delicate sculptures—as the signs above them swung even more wildly, and the panicked animals fought for their freedom.
“You had warning,” he whispered. What an incredible concept! He was accustomed to regarding Ernan history as a series of failures and losses—but here was real triumph, and over Nature herself! Their ancestors on Earth had had no way of knowing exactly when an earthquake would strike—when the concentrated pressure that had built up over months or years would suddenly burst into movement, breaking apart mountains and rerouting rivers before man even knew what had hit him—but here, on Erna, they had warning sirens. Warning sirens! And not on all of Erna, he reminded himself. Only in the east. Not in his homeland. Ganji had nothing to rival this.
He was about to speak—to share his awe with Ciani—when a sound even more terrible than the siren split the night. It took him a few seconds to realize that its source was human; it was a voice racked by such pain, warped by such terror, that Damien barely recognized it as such. Instinctively he turned toward its source, his free hand already grabbing for a weapon . . . but Ciani grabbed him by the arm and stopped him. “No, Damien. There’s nothing you can do. Let it be.”
The scream peaked suddenly, a sound so horrible it made his skin crawl—then, as suddenly as it had begun, it was cut short. Damien had fought some grotesque things in his life, and some of them had been long in dying, but nothing in his experience had ever made a sound like that.
“Someone Working when it hit,” she muttered. “Gods help him.”
“Shouldn’t we—”
“It’s too late to help. Stay here.” She grasped his arm tightly, as if afraid he would leave despite her warning. “The siren went off in plenty of time. He had his warning. That’s why we run the damn thing. But there’s always some poor fool who tries to tap into the earth-fae when it begins to surge. . . .”
She didn’t finish.
“And they die? Like that?”
“They fry. Without exception. No human being can channel that kind of energy. Not even an adept. He must have wagered that the quake would be small, that he could control a small bit of what it released and dodge the rest. Or maybe he was drunk, and impaired in judgment. Or just stupid.” She shook her head. “I don’t understand. Only an idiot would bet his life against an earthquake. No one ever wins that game—no one. Why do they insist on trying? What can they possibly gain?” Something in his manner made her look up at him suddenly, and she asked, “You were warned about that in the west. Weren’t you?”
“In general terms.” His stomach tightened as his mind replayed that terrible scream. “We were warned. But not quite so ... graphically.”
He was about to say something more when she squeezed his arm. “It’s starting. Watch.”
She pointed across the plaza, to a tailor’s shop that faced them. Sunken into the lintel of its arched doorway was a sizable ward, made up of intricate knotwork patterns etched into a bronze plate. The whole of it was glowing now, with a cold blue light that silhouetted its edge like the corona of an eclipsed sun. Even as he watched the display it increased in intensity, until cold blue fire burned the pattern of its warding sigil into his eyes and his brain.
“Quake wards,” she told him. “They’re dormant until the fae intensifies . . . then they tap into it, use it to reinforce the buildings they guard. But if it’s a big one, there’s more than they can handle. What you’re seeing is the excess energy bleeding off into the visible spectrum.”
On every building surrounding the plaza, similar wards were now firing. Awed, he watched as tendrils of silver fire shot across doorways, about windows, over walls, until the man-made structures were wholly enveloped in a shivering web of cold silver flame. And though the force of the earthquake was enough to make brickwork tremble, no buildings toppled. No windows shattered. Furniture crashed to the floor within one shop, glass shattered noisily inside another, but the buildings themselves—reinforced with that delicate, burning web—weathered the seismic storm.
“You’ve warded the whole city?” he whispered. Stunned by the scale of it.
She hesitated. “Mostly. Not all of it’s as well done as this. Sorcerors vary, as does their skill . . . and some people simply can’t afford the protection.” As if in illustration, a roar of falling brick sounded to the south of them. Dust and a cloud of silver-blue sparks mushroomed thickly over the rooftops. Damien could feel the ground tremble beneath his feet, could see brick- and stone-work shiver all about him as the force of the earthquake fought to bring the man-made structures down—and the Workings of man fought to keep it all intact. The smell of ozone filled the air, and a sharp undercurrent: sulfur? The smell of battle, between Nature and man’s will.
Our ancestors had nothing like this. Nothing! Venerate them we might, but in this one arena we have surpassed them. All the objective science on Earth could never have managed this. . . .
Incredible, he thought. He must have voiced that, for she murmured, “You approve?”
He looked into her eyes and read the real question there, behind her words. “The Church should be using this, not fighting it.” The ground was singing to him, a deep, rumbling sound that he felt through his bones. “And I’ll see to it they do,” he promised.
The tremors were increasing in violence, and the wards—fighting to establish some sort of balance—filled the plaza with silver-blue light, as nearly bright as Corelight. Some of them began to fire skyward, releasing their pent-up energy in spurts of blue-white lightning, that leapt from rooftop to rooftop and then shot heavenward, splitting the night into a thousand burning fragments. Nearby a tree, unwarded, gave way to the tremors; a heavy branch crashed to the ground beside them, barely missing several townspeople. It seemed second nature for him to put his arm around Ciani, to protect her by drawing her against him. And it likewise seemed wholly natural that she lean against him, wordlessly, until her hip brushed against his groin and a fire took root there, every bit as intense as the faeborn flame which surrounded them.
He ran his hand down over the curve of her hip and whispered in her ear, “Is it safe to make love to a woman during an earthquake?”
She turned in his arms until she faced him, until he could feel the soft press of her breasts against his chest, the lingering play of her fingers against the back of his neck. Her heat against the ache in his loins.
“It’s never safe to make love to a woman,” she whispered.
She took him by the hand, and led him into the conflagration.
Senzei Reese thought: That was close.
Behind him, some precious bit of crystal that Allesha had collected—in deliberate defiance of earthquakes, it seemed to him—shivered off its perch and smashed noisily on the hardwood floor. One more treasured piece gone. He wondered why she would never let him bind them in place, with the same sort of Warding that reinforced their building. Wondered if her “mixed feelings” about using the fae might not translate into “mixed feelings” about him.
Don’t think about that.
Power: He could feel it all about him. Power thick enough to drown in, power like a raging fire that sucked the oxygen right out of his lungs, leaving him dizzy—breathless—trembling with hunger. For a moment it had nearly been visi
ble—a sheer wall of earth-force, a tidal wave of liquid fire—but he had forced himself to cut the vision short, and now he was as fae-blind as Allesha herself. Only Ciani and her kind could maintain their fae-sight without a deliberate Working—and a Working, under these circumstances, meant certain death.
But what a way to go!
He had almost done it this time. Even knowing the risk, he had almost chanced it. Almost gritted his teeth against the bone-jarring pain of the warning siren and continued with his Work as if nothing was happening. What a moment that would have been, when the wild fae surged into Jaggonath—into him—burning down all the barriers that kept him from sharing Ciani’s skill, Ciani’s vision ... the barriers that kept him human. Merely human.
Every few earthquakes some tormented soul took that chance, and added his dying scream to the siren’s din. Ciani couldn’t understand why—but Senzei could, all too well. He understood the hunger that consumed such people, the need that coursed through them like blood, until every living cell was saturated with it. Desire. For the one thing on Erna that Senzei might never have. The one precious thing that Nature had denied him.
In the other room another bit of crystal fell, and shattered noisily against the floor.
He wept.
Not until the sunlight was wholly gone and the worst of the tremors had subsided—the immediate tremors, at any rate—did the stranger come up out of his subterranean shelter. The fae still vibrated with tectonic echoes; it was the work of mere moments to read them, determine their origin, and speculate upon the implications.
The Forest will shake, he decided. Soon. Too big a seismic gap there to ignore. And the rakhlands. . . . But there was no way to know that, for sure. No news had come out of the rakhlands for generations, of earthquakes or lack of them—or anything else, for that matter. He could do no more then speculate that the plate boundaries there would be stressed past endurance . . . but he had speculated that many times before, with no way of ever confirming his hypothesis. In a world where Nature’s law was not absolute, but rather reactive, one could never be certain.
Then he squatted down close to the earth and touched one gloved finger to its surface. Watching the earth-fae as it flowed about that obstacle, tasting its tenor through the contact.
The current had changed.
Impossible.
For a moment he simply watched it, aware that he might have erred. Then he sat back on his heels and looked off into the distance, watching the flow of his taint upon the current. And yes, it was different. A minute change, but it was noticeable.
He watched it for a moment more, then corrected himself: Improbable. But true. Any bit of the fae contaminated by his person should have scurried off toward the Forest, subject to that whirlpool of malignant power. It took effort for him not to travel there himself, not to unconsciously prefer that direction every time he made a decision to move. That the taint of his personal malevolence was being channeled elsewhere meant that some new factor was involved. A Working or a being—more likely the latter—headed in this direction. Focused upon Jaggonath in both its malevolence and its hunger.
It would have to be very focused, to come here against the current. And nasty as hell, to have the effect it did.
Nastier than the Hunter, perhaps?
The stranger laughed, softly.
If not for the siren—the damned warning the damned, he thought—Jaggonath’s Patriarch might never have known there was an earthquake. That, and the sloshing of tee over the side of his cup. He picked up the delicate porcelain piece and sipped it thoughtfully. While the siren screamed. And some damned fool of a sorceror screamed, too—but that served him right. There was no free ride in this world, least of all with the fae. It was time they learned that, all of them.
It occurred to him briefly that he should have warned his visitor about that particular danger. Coming from the westlands, where quakes were less frequent and far less severe, he might not be aware of it. Might even try to harness that surging flow, to bend it to his sorcerous will.
Then there would be justice, he mused. And I would be free of this burden. But for how long? They would just send someone else. And I would have to start all over again.
He put his cup down carefully, watched for a moment to see that it didn’t slide, and then walked to the window. The floor trembled beneath his feet, and a low rumbling sound filled the air, but except for that there was little evidence of any disturbance. There never was, in Jaggonath’s great cathedral. The faith of thousands, year after year, had reinforced the ancient stonework with more power than any sorceror could have harnessed. No wards guarded its doorways, no demonic fire would flash from its pinnacles and spires at the peak of seismic activity—but the building would stand, nonetheless. And those thousands of people who had gathered in Jaggonath’s central plaza would see it stand, an island of calm in a city gone mad. And a precious few would wander through the cathedral’s doors, and devote their lives to the faith that had made it possible.
The whole planet could be like this, he thought. Will be like this, one day.
He had to believe that. Had to maintain that belief, though sometimes his ministry seemed about to be swallowed up by the great maw of Erna’s cynicism. Had to remember, always, that the dream which he served would not be fulfilled in one lifetime, or five, or even a dozen. The damage which man had done here was too great to be corrected in a single generation . . . and it was still going on. Even now the wild fae, loosed in hideous quantity by the earthquake, would be gravitating toward the minds that could manifest it. A child’s brain, dreaming of monsters. A malicious adult, envisioning vengeance. A thousand and one hates and fears and paranoid visualizations, plucked from the human mind, that would all be given flesh before morning. His stomach turned at the thought. What could he say that would make them understand, that every day the odds against man’s survival increased geometrically? A single man could dream into being a thousand such monsters in a lifetime—and all those things would feed on man, because he was their source. Could any one sorceror’s service, no matter how well-intended, compensate for such numbers?
He felt tired. He felt old. He was becoming aware, for the first time in his life, of a hope that had lived in him since his first moments in the Church: a desperate hope that the change would come now, in his lifetime. Not all of it—that was too much to ask for—but enough that he could see it started. Enough that he could know he had made a difference. To live as he had, to serve without question, then to die without knowing if there was a point to any of it . . . his hands clenched at his sides as he looked out over the blazing city. He wished there were truly no other choice. He wished the fae could not be used to maintain youth, and thus to prolong life. He wished he didn’t have to face that terrible decision every minute of his life: commitment to his faith versus the chance to court the fae, extend his life, and see what effect that faith would have upon future generations. Death itself was not nearly so daunting as the prospect of dying in ignorance.
Thus the Prophet was tempted, he thought darkly.
As for that blustering fool of a priest . . . his stomach tightened in anger at the thought of him. How easy it was, for him and his kind! How seemingly effortless, to take a piece of sharpened steel from the armory and simply go hack up the product of man’s indulgence. This is my faith, such a man could say, pointing to a heap of dismembered vampire-kin. Here is my service to God. An easier faith than the one the Patriarch had embraced, for sure. A faith that was continually reinforced by the adrenaline rush of violence, the thrill of daring. A faith that could be reckoned in numbers: Ghouls killed. Demons dispatched. Converts made. So that when his time of reckoning came such a man might say: This is how the world was bettered by my presence. Not through moral influence, or by teaching, but in these human nightmares which I have dispatched.
And I envy him that, the Patriarch thought bitterly.
Six
When the Neoqueen Matilla finally pulled into harbor,
it took two men to hold Yiles Jarrom back long enough for it to dock. And strong men, at that.
“Vulkin‘ assholes!” he muttered—with venom enough that the two men backed off a bit, though they still held onto him. “I’ll teach’em what it means, to break contract with me!”
The two men—dockhands, recruited by the Port Authority in order to avoid outright murder on the piers—held tightly to his arms, while the shallow-hulled shipping vessel that was the subject of his invectives settled itself into position. A bevy of dockworkers moved in quickly and made her fast in record time. And then the gangplank was set in place and the ship’s first mate, a young and rather lanky man, trekked the length of the pier toward where they stood. And the men let Jarrom go, which was good for them. Because in another few minutes he would surely have spouted fire and burned his way free of them, if they’d continued to hold onto him.
“Vulkin‘ bastards!” His face was red with rage, his shaking hands clenched into fists. “Vulkin’ incompetants! Where you been, with my cargo? Where’s your coward-ass captain, who lied to make contract?”
The first mate didn’t look directly at him, but at his own feet. “Give me a minute, sir, and I’ll try to explain—”
Jarrom snorted derisively. “Give you a minute? I’ll give you my fist! I don’t have to waste my precious time talking to a lackey! Where’s your captain, boy? Or that damned best-eye-in-the-eastrealm pilot he’s so vulkin‘ proud of? Bring those men out, and then we’ll talk!” When the young man didn’t answer him immediately, he added, “Two of Prima’s months, boy—that’s how long he said it would take. Two lesser months, come hell or white water or smashers from Novatlantis. And how long has it been, I ask you? A good three shortmonths, going on four—and my buyers threatening to blow my whole business to hell—so where the vulk have you been?”
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