Black Sun Rising

by C. S. Friedman

  “None whatsoever,” Damien assured him.

  And he wondered: What the hell’s eating him?

  The hill was some distance from town, and not easy to climb. Which was why it was empty of tourists, despite its position overlooking the water. It took her some time to reach the top, and when at last she did she rested for a moment, trying to catch her breath.

  He stood at the crest, utterly still. Dark cloak rippling slowly in the night breeze, pale eyes fixed on a point somewhere across the water. Or perhaps on nothing. Coming closer, she saw no other motion about him, nothing that hinted at life. Not even breathing. Did he need to breathe, she wondered, when he wasn’t speaking? Exactly where was he balanced, in that dark gulf between life and unlife?

  And then he turned and saw her. Surprise glittered briefly in his eyes—then there was only control once more, and his expression was unreadable. “Lady.” He bowed. “Alone?”

  “You said it was safe here.”

  “I said your enemies were gone. There are still the assorted muggers, rapists ... etcetera. It is a city,” he reminded her.

  “I’m city born and bred,” she told him. “And well armed, as you may recall. Even without the fae, I think I could give a mugger a run for his money.”

  He studied her for a moment; something that was almost a smile softened the corners of his mouth. “Yes. I believe you could.”

  Then he looked out over the water again, and the softness fled from his expression. His nostrils flared, as if testing the air.

  “You came to find me,” he challenged her.

  She nodded.

  “They let you come here?”

  “They don’t know.”

  He looked surprised. “They think I’m in my room,” she said defiantly. As though daring him to criticize her. “You said I was safe.”

  For a moment he said nothing. Then, very quietly, he told her, “You understand that it’s somewhat jarring for me to hear a woman refer to my presence as safe.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “For you? Absolutely. But your men don’t seem too certain of that.”

  “They haven’t seen inside you. I have.”

  He stiffened, turned away from her. Gazed out across the water. “How did you find me?”

  “It wasn’t hard. There aren’t many places in this region where one can be alone . . . and an adept would want a view of the Canopy. I asked the same questions I thought you would have, to find such a place. They brought me here.” She followed his gaze across the water, to the blackness of the nightbound horizon. “What do you See?”

  He hesitated—then answered, “Nothing.”

  “Maybe when we get closer—”

  He shook his head. “You misunderstand me. I can see the Canopy quite clearly from here. There’s no mistaking it. It’s as if the world ends suddenly at that point, as if there’s a line beyond which nothing exists. Oh, I can see the water beyond, and mountains in the distance . . . but those forces which are visible only to the adept’s eye come to a halt in midair, and beyond it is—nothing. Absolute nothingness. A wall of nonexistence, beneath which the water flows.” “And you think it’ll kill you.”

  He stiffened. She saw him about to respond in his usual manner—eloquent and misleading, dryly evasive—but then, his voice strained, he answered simply. “It may. I don’t know. I can’t read into it at all. If no fae can be Worked in that zone . . . then the power which keeps me alive may well be inaccessible there.” He shrugged; it was a stiff gesture, clearly forced. “Your priest knows this? Your sorceror friend?”

  “They might have guessed. I didn’t tell them.”

  “Please don’t.”

  She nodded.

  “Is that what you came to find out?”

  Instead of answering him, she asked, “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  He looked at her, and she could sense him trying to read her. Trying to keep himself from using the fae to do it. “Just keep them away from me,” he said at last. “The boat has a secure cabin, and I have the key. It was one of the requirements. But who can say what damage they might do if they tried to interfere? Even if they meant to help.” He laughed; it was a mirthless sound. “Unlikely as that is.”

  “I’ll try,” she promised. And she nodded, gently, “That’s what I came to find out.”

  She turned from him, then, and began to make her way down the rocky slope, heading back toward the city.

  “Lady.”

  She stopped where she was, and turned to him.

  “You could have the fae back.”

  For a moment she just stared at him. Then, in a voice that trembled slightly, she asked, “How?”

  “Not as an adept—even I can’t give you that. But you could still learn to Work, as sorcerors do. It wouldn’t be the same as before. It wouldn’t restore your Vision. It would require keys and symbols, volumes of catch-phrases and mental exercises—”

  “Are you offering to teach me?” she breathed.

  His pale eyes burned like coldfire in the moonlight; it hurt to look directly at them. “And what if I were?”

  She met his eyes—and drank in the pain, the power, all of it. “What would you say,” she asked him, “if, when you were dying, someone offered you life? Would you question the terms—or simply grasp at the bargain with all your strength, and live each moment as it came?”

  “That’s a loaded simile,” he warned her. “And I don’t think I have to tell you what my own answer would be. What it was, when I had to make that choice.”

  “Then you know my response.”

  He held out his hand. Without hesitation, she took it. The chill of his touch shocked her flesh, but the cold of it was pleasure—promise—and she smiled as it filled her.

  “When can we start?” she whispered.

  They left for the rakhlands as soon as the sun set. Their captain grumbled about the time of their departure, and about the horses, and the weather, and a thousand other things that weren’t exactly as they should be ... and then Gerald Tarrant came to where he stood and simply looked at him, as eloquent in his silence as a snake about to strike. The complaints quickly ceased.

  But there were some very real problems, with no easy solutions. The matter of the horses, for example. This boat was smaller than the one that had taken them across to Morgot, and its shallow draft and simpler deck meant that there was really no place to stand where one was not acutely aware of the water just underfoot, and no place to safely shelter the animals. Damien found himself wishing for a deeper vessel with more enclosed cargo space, even though he knew damned well that such a boat couldn’t navigate the treacherous shallows of the rakhland shore. Tarrant couldn’t even Work to calm the animals, as he had done before, without risking that his efforts would be negated—or even worse, reversed—as their ship passed under the Canopy. There were drugs made that could render the animals more tractable, and the party had discussed the possibility of using them, but that entailed its own special risk; their landing might prove dangerous, and any drug-induced lethargy on the part of the animals might cost them dearly. So they had settled for blindfolding them according to the captain’s instructions, in preparation for crossing the Canopy, and binding them as securely as they could, in a place where they would hurt no one if they tried to break free.

  We have to be prepared to lose them, Damien told himself. In anticipation of which they had already taken their most precious possessions from the horses’ packs and affixed them to their own bodies, feeling more in control that way. But how much good would that do if they had to swim? Given the choice between approaching their enemy unarmed and trying to avoid drowning with two heavy weapons strapped to his back, Damien would be hard put to choose the better course.

  The situation’s bad. There’s no way around that. We’ll do the best we can.—And pray for luck, he added.

  For now, things seemed to be going well enough. Despite the captain’s muttered complaints the Serpent was reassuringly calm
, and it gleamed like quicksilver in Domina’s light. In the east Prima had already risen, and her quick pace rapidly consumed the degrees of the sky that stood between her and her more massive sister. Syzygy would occur at midnight, or thereabouts: Erna’s two larger moons would pull at the tides in conjunction, deepening the Serpent until the worst hazards of the rakhland coast were buried under several feet of water. Or so they hoped. It was all a matter of degree, and inches might well mean the difference between safety and disaster. Damien hoped that their captain knew the deadly coastline as well as he claimed. And that it hadn’t changed too much; in this geologically active zone, no feature was permanent.

  And then, looking out over the water, he thought he saw something. A wisp of fae-light, rising from the surface. He tried to focus on it, to make out what it was, but its form eluded him. Each time he tried to fix his gaze on it his eyes would start to wander, or—when he managed to hold them still—his mind.

  “The Canopy’s edge,” Tarrant said from behind him. For once, he didn’t start to find the man so close; it made sense that the adept would be here, eyes as still and as glisteningly cold as the water they gazed out upon. After a moment Ciani touched Damien’s arm lightly, letting him know she had also come up beside him. To her left was Senzei, face flushed pink from his recent Healing, hands resting lightly on the thick brass railing that guarded the vessel’s bow.

  “Don’t try to See,” the Hunter warned. Softly, as if cautioning a child. For some reason Damien had the impression that his words weren’t meant for him and Senzei, but for Ciani. He looked up sharply at the adept, meaning to question him—but before he could speak the Hunter stiffened, like a wolf catching the scent of prey. His eyes narrowed, and his hands clenched at his sides. In fear? Was that possible? Or was Damien reading his own unease into the adept’s manner, injecting a dose of human emotion into a man who had left his humanity behind long ago?

  He looked out toward the south, following the Hunter’s gaze. And the Canopy was there, or at least its leading edge; clearly visible, even to their unWorked sight. Not as a physical object would be visible, nor even something so substantial as a cloud. It wasn’t so much a thing as an impression, that touched the brain quickly and then fled, leaving a bright afterimage etched into one’s mind. Wisps of it danced about the surface of the water, and Damien was reminded of the mirrored surface of lake water, when seen from underneath: crystal clear, gently rippling, a fluid, fickle reflector. Like the stars at the border of the galaxy, they sparkled in and out of sight, teasing the edges of his vision. If one looked closely enough, it was possible to make out more solid images in the distance, viewed through that glittering filer: the rakhland’s shoreline, jagged rocks and looming cliffs edged in double moonlight, and the whitewater surf of its shallows. For a moment it was reassuring, to see anything so solid. But then, as Damien watched, even the outlines of the cliffs seemed to alter—as though the shoreline itself were transforming, as if the rocks were no more solid than the veil of rakh-fae that hung before his eyes. Illusion, he told himself, The thought was cold, fear-filled. If the Canopy could affect their vision across miles of open water, how were they to navigate? How were they to land? It would be impossible, he realized. They would have to reach the other side of this barrier before trying to wend their way through the shallows, or else there was no way on Erna they could manage it. He tried to remember what the Canopy’s parameters were in this region: its width, its rhythm of fluctuation, its average distance from shore. But the knowledge wouldn’t come. He turned to Tarrant, certain that the adept would know—he seemed to collect all manner of arcane knowledge, why not that?—but when he looked back to where the Hunter had been, he found only undisturbed air. Neither shadow nor chill to witness that the man (if man he could be called) had ever stood there, or to explain why he had left.

  The captain joined them where they stood. He was grinning. “It’s said that when fish swim from one side to the other, they come out different from what they started,” He wiped his hands one against the other, smearing streaks of dark oil on both. He seemed about to say something else—equally reassuring, no doubt—but Damien interrupted him.

  “Where’s Mer Tarrant?”

  “You mean his Lordship?” He nodded sharply toward the center of the vessel, where a locked door guarded his own private cabin. “He’s just taking a rest, of sorts. You don’t go bothering him now, see? That’s the deal.”

  Damien glared, and began to move toward the cabin. Ciani grabbed his arm and held it.

  “Let him be,” she said quietly.

  “What’s he pulling now—”

  “Please, Damien. Just stay here. He’ll be all right.”

  He stared at her for a moment, not comprehending. And then it all came together for him. The Canopy. The Hunter. The constant Working that must be required, to maintain that unnatural life. What the Canopy would do to such a Working, and to the man who required it-

  He must have started to move again; Ciani’s grip tightened on his arm, and kept him from leaving her.

  “Let him be,” she insisted. Quietly, but firmly. “Please. There’s nothing we can do except make it worse.”

  “How bad?” he said hoarsely. God in Heaven, he had just come to terms with that man’s presence. How like Tarrant it would be, to leave them just when he was becoming useful. . . .

  He saw the concern in her eyes, the unvoiced fear. Not just for a faceless adept, an ancient evil, but a man. Jealousy flared in him—and he bit back on it, hard. No place for that now. No time for it, not for days to come. Better get used to that right now.

  And then the Canopy touched them. Gently at first, disarmingly, like a breeze that whispered at the leading edge of a hurricane. He saw Ciani’s face waver in his vision, no longer the solid, dependable picture he had grown accustomed to, but a foggy duplicate that wavered as the night air passed through it and grew thin upon the breeze until it was possible to see through the back of her eyes, to the shoreline in the distance. He drew in a breath—and the air was fluid, molten, stinging his lungs as it passed into his body, igniting his blood as he absorbed it. There was a music in the air, it seemed, but even that was inconstant: subtle one moment, complex and cacophonous the next, passing from delicate chimes in perfect harmony to a brassy, earsplitting screech, like that of an orchestra attempting a crescendo with all its instruments warped out of tune. Damien found himself shaking, more from confusion than discomfort. Behind him one of the horses whinnied, its voice pitched high in panic, and hooves struck noisily against the varnished wood of the deck. And that, too, became a sort of music, and the glittering fae struck up a harmony, as if zoofuls of animals had begun screaming in sympathy. The gravity beneath Damien’s feet began to shift, so that it pulled at him from beyond the bow, from out in the depth’s of the Canopy’s power; it took effort for him to stay where he was, to resist its strange siren song of weight and stability. It was no longer possible to see anything clearly, least of all Ciani. He was no longer certain if her hand—or both her hands, or perhaps more than two of them—still rested on his arm. He reached out for the ship’s railing, found it shifting lithely beneath his hand, like the body of a snake in motion. Behind him a horse screamed in terror, another in pain as the first struck out blindly about him. He thought he felt Ciani fall into his arms—or was that a wisp of fog, taking her shape?—and suddenly he was no longer even certain that she was with him, or that the deck of the boat was underfoot. Something coursed about his feet, chill as the Serpent’s waters, and began pull at him. Sweet-smelling, sweet-sounding, seductive as a woman’s embrace. He had to fight to maintain his grip on reality—limited as that had become—and remain firmly rooted on the boat’s deck where he belonged. As the Canopy thickened, it became harder and harder. His survival instinct said he should Work to save himself—but he knew that would be dangerous and might well cost him his life. At best, the Canopy would simply negate his efforts; at worst, it would turn them against him. He closed his e
yes, trying to close out the chaos that surrounded him—how lucky the horses were, to enter this region blindfolded!—but he saw through the lids of his eyes as though they were glass, as a storm of discordant colors descended on the small ship. No! He forced himself to close his eyes, inside and out. Forced himself to believe that he had closed them. He worked to remember darkness, how it felt and tasted and what the smell of it was, the feel of it against his skin; he recreated it within his brain until it began to seep outward from him, conquering the intrusive vision. And at last darkness came, responding to his summons: cool as night, it soothed his fevered brain. Never had he thought it would be so welcome.

  After what seemed like an eternity—and it might have been, who could say how time progressed in such a place?—the deck began to grow solid again beneath his feet. With tortuous slowness, gravity resumed its natural balance and its accustomed force. The fog by Damien’s side became more solid, and took on a familiar form and scent: Ciani. The strange lights faded. Music withered. The fear which had gripped him loosened its hold, enough that he could breathe again. He closed an arm about Ciani, protectively, and felt no more than the flesh of a woman, her heat and her trembling. She whimpered softly, and he whispered, “Shhh”—gently, meaning to comfort her. But the sound came out a hiss, distorted by the power of the Canopy’s fringe; she tensed in his embrace. By the cabin he could make out a form that might be Senzei, but the visual distortion engendered by the Canopy made it impossible to be sure. It might as easily be the captain—or something wholly fantastic, which the wild fae had conjured.

  Just wait it out, he thought. There’s nothing you can do to hurry it along. The worst is over. Just wait.