Breath ragged, water surging about his knees, Damien itched to reach for his sword. Not so much to bring it into play as to make sure it was still there; the harness was loose about his shoulders, clearly damaged from the fall, which meant that the river might well have disarmed him. He flexed his shoulders ever so slightly, trying to judge the weight—and a spear point bit into his flesh, deeply enough to draw blood. He checked his motion, glanced up at Tarrant. The man understood—and nodded carefully, an almost imperceptible gesture. Yes, it said, you’re armed. But the grim expression on his face told an additional story, and when Damien looked down he saw that the man’s Worked sword—and its scabbard, and the heavy belt that supported it—were gone. He must have taken it off before entrusting himself to the river. Shit! How good was the Hunter at hand-to-spear combat? With his sorcerous skills made off-limits by the earthquake—
A call sounded from the cliffs high above: half speech, half animal yowling. Damien’s captors tensed. The one holding a spear to Tarrant’s torso glanced up at the cliff just long enough to bark out an answer—and Damien could see the Hunter gathering himself, muscles tensing secretly in that precious, unguarded instant. But then he checked himself, and his mouth tightened in anger and frustration as the furred warrior turned back to him. Not moving. Not saying a word.
Because of us, Damien thought. He could have saved himself—but not Ciani. Not when the fae is still too hot to handle.
He could see dark figures gathering about the ex-adept, could see Senzei tense as if he were about to fight them. Not now, he begged silently. There are too many of them. Our position is too desperate. Even while he prayed, he saw the figure fall back. Saw the dark figures closing in on it. And he wondered at the man’s inner courage—or was it blind devotion to Ciani?—that would allow him to even consider resistance under such overwhelming circumstances.
There’s a strength in him that’s never really been tested, he thought grimly. And: God willing, that’ll never be necessary.
Something flew down the cliff wall toward them, and then snapped to a stop mere feet from the bottom. A rope, of sorts—more like a tapestry, or an intricate knotwork sampler. Mere seconds later a figure slipped over the edge and climbed rapidly down toward them, fingers—or claws?—slipping in between the knots and out again with fluid efficiency. It dropped the last few feet in silence, landing on the ledge above them. Smaller than its fellows, it was dressed in layers of patterned cloth that swathed its limbs tightly to the wrist and ankle. No place for a shoulder-mane beneath those garments, nor any need for it. What this rakh lacked in raw mass it made up for in feline agility. And as it shifted its weight in the moonlight, so that the shadows no longer obscured its form—female, undeniably female—Damien realized why this one seemed so familiar.
“Morgot,” he whispered. And the Hunter answered softly, “Just so.”
She called out toward them—and though the words were unintelligible to Damien, the sharpness of the sound made it clear that its message was either a warning or a command. Or both. The language the creature used was one of hissed consonants and sharp vowels, utterly foreign to Damien’s ears—and yet, without question, the cadence of it was familiar. Somewhere, sometime in the distant past, his own language had influenced this one.
They had no language when they left the human lands. That must have evolved here, in isolation. What else did they develop, that humankind knows nothing about?
One of their captors barked out a response, in tones so harsh that it was clear what manner of action he would prefer. Damien was aware of a cold wind blowing across his body, freezing his soaking clothes and hair until they felt like ice against his skin. A shivering had begun deep inside him, a last desperate attempt on the part of his body to generate warmth. The current that pushed at his legs was frigid, insistent. He was afraid—and also angry. At having to feel his life bleed away into the cold, when he could be spending his last moments in battle. Taking some of them with him.
If these bastards argue long enough, I’ll die of hypothermia. But he could do no more than fight to keep his teeth from chattering—they’d probably use the sound as an excuse to kill him—as they continued in their conversation. Because there was, as always, Ciani to consider. And if her presence had tied the Hunter’s hands in this situation, it did the same to Damien ten times over. He dared take no action that would bring rakhene wrath down on her head.
At last some manner of conclusion seemed to have been reached. One of their captors barked out an order toward them and prodded Damien sharply in the chest. Blood began to spread from the point of contact, staining his jacket carmine. But if the wound was meant to anger him, to make him lose control, it accomplished just the opposite. He held himself utterly still—as much as was possible in the swift river current—as one of the rakh jerked his arms behind his back and bound them together, coarse rope biting into his wrists. A jerk to his harness strap from behind told him that he had also been disarmed. He saw Gerald Tarrant being bound in the same manner. The look in the adept’s eyes was one of pure murder—but he endured it, just as Damien did. There was no other choice.
In a nightmare journey they were forced upriver, back to where their companions waited. And then beyond that point, with Senzei and Ciani prodded forward on a course parallel to theirs, picking their way carefully along the broken ledge. Stumbling, often slipping, without their hands to steady themselves, the priest and the Hunter were forced to rely on their captors’ occasional supportive grasp to keep them on their feet. Often it came too late, and several times Damien fell to his knees, hard, water swirling cold about his chest. Once he lost his balance entirely, and it was a clawed, alien hand that pulled him out of the water, jerking him up by the neck of his jacket as though it were the scruff of a cub’s neck, meant for that purpose.
The look in Tarrant’s eyes was murderous. What must it be like, Damien wondered, to have a soul that could command the ages, trapped in a body that could be made so vulnerable? He imagined the force of the rage and fear that must be building inside the man—and was glad he wasn’t going to be at the receiving end of it when it broke. The man who killed sadistically for a hobby must be even more vicious when dealing with his enemies.
At last there was a shore, of sorts, and they were prodded toward it. The ledge which they had once traveled upon had dropped to nearly the level of the water, and widened also. Ciani and Senzei had been bound, he saw, and the two surviving horses were being led by rakhene warriors. Damien recognized Senzei’s mount and one of Tarrant’s animals. Which one of the true horses had they lost—and with it, which supplies? He thought of his own horse, fallen screaming to the rocks, and his gut tightened in anger. And sorrow. That animal had crossed through the Dividers with him, had seen vampires and smashers and an earthquake that leveled half a city, and come through it all unharmed. And now . . . the loss was an emptiness, an aching pain that stabbed at him even through the numbness of his frozen flesh.
Damn you! he thought, as a frigid wind gusted over him. As if somehow the horse could hear him. You picked a hell of a time to die, you know that?
They were forced up against the edge of the ridge, and then strong, clawed hands lifted them up onto it. Talons biting into cloth and flesh alike, like meat hooks digging into a fresh carcass. Damien saw Ciani’s face was white with shock, Senzei’s driven equally pale from fear. Hell, at least those two were dry. He felt like a fish on ice.
Then the rakh-woman was before them, alien eyes glaring out at them from a harsh, fur-sculpted visage. “You come,” she hissed, “or you die. Simple. You understand?”
He nodded stiffly, was aware of his companions doing the same. Then she pointed to the Hunter and snapped a sharp command in her own tongue. The rakh standing behind Tarrant pulled a strip of cloth from out of his belt—heavily decorated, some kind of ornament—and before the adept could respond, bound it across his eyes. Damien heard Tarrant draw in a sharp breath, saw the muscles in his shoulders tense as he
tested the ropes binding his arms, felt his rage engulf them all like a dark cloud—but whatever he might have tried to do to free himself, he didn’t manage it. The blindfold was fastened tightly about his head, denying him both his earthly vision and his Sight. Damien wondered if an adept could Work the fae without seeing it . . . and then realized what the answer had to be. The woman had seen him in Morgot, and knew his power. She had bound him well.
Grimmer and grimmer, Damien thought.
She turned, then, to guide them south. A rakh dug his claws into Tarrant’s collar and forced him forward; a sharp prod in the center of Damien’s back, that bit through cloth to break his flesh, forced the priest to do the same. Give me half a chance and you’ll eat that vulking spear, he promised silently. He could feel Ciani and Senzei behind him—the heat of their bodies, the sharp tang of their fear. They should never have come this way, should never have been so unguarded . . . but what choice had they had? They’d taken every possible precaution. In the end, the land itself had turned against them. How could a man defend against that?
Limbs nearly frozen, he staggered onward. To the left of them the river gradually widened, until it formed a small lake between the steep canyon walls. From ahead came the sound of water falling, and Damien pictured the first tributary marked on Gerald Tarrant’s map. A sheer drop from the surface of the plateau to the Achron, he guessed. No way up, then, for horses or men. How long would they have had to continue on, without ever gaining the plateau?
But as they came around one final bend, a new landscape revealed itself. A portion of the canyon wall had split off and fallen into the river, and on the resulting slope of rubble a crude road had been built. No, hardly a road; a slender path, that wound its way through hairpin turns on the side of the towering cliff wall, just barely wide enough for a horse to travel. Damien glanced behind him once as they ascended, to where an impatient rakh forced the blinded Hunter forward. A good thing the adept didn’t know just how narrow the path was. Damien thought. It was a bad enough climb with one’s eyes open—the thought of having to thrust one’s enemies to guide one along it was enough to make his stomach turn. He managed to make fleeting eye contact with Senzei, who nodded stiffly in grim encouragement, but Ciani’s eyes were fixed on the hazardous road ahead of them. He thought he could see her trembling.
At last they reached the top, and the humans were allowed a few brief seconds to catch their breath. Damien was shivering violently, knew he wouldn’t last much longer if he didn’t get his body temperature up. Did he dare Work, this soon after a quake? How long did the earth-fae take to subside in this place? Damn it, he needed Tarrant’s Sight.... With a muttered curse, he decided to wait. At least a short while longer. Every second that passed made it safer.
There were beasts waiting for them at the top of their climb, horselike in general form, but as unlike true horses in the finer details of their anatomy as the rakh warriors were unlike men. They tossed their heads impatiently as the party approached: silk-fine fur rippled in the cold autumn breeze, pearlescent horns gleaming with reflected moonlight. Xandu, he thought, awed by their wild beauty. They shied away from Tarrant distastefully, as if somehow they could sense what role he had played in their history. And sniffed at the humans’ horses with gentler mien, as if pitying them for the grandeur they had lost.
Roughly, Damien was jostled toward one of the horses. He wasn’t sure whether they meant for him to mount it as he was—a dubious endeavor—or whether they intended to unbind him temporarily. He never found out. Because in that moment, Tarrant moved. Blue flame flickered first at the edges of his blindfold, then consumed the fabric utterly. An unearthly chill swept through Damien, as if somehow all remaining warmth had been leached from the air around him; when he breathed, his breath turned to white fog that misted toward Tarrant. Then the adept stepped away from the rest of the company, and as he did so the blue fire died—and the blindfold shattered like glass and fell to the cold earth around him in a thousand tiny slivers.
Cold silver eyes regarded the rakh, and Damien knew from experience just how much power was behind them. Half of him was jubilant to see a member of his party freed—and the other half of him shuddered at the thought of the slaughter that might take place if Tarrant’s fury was fully unleashed. Was there any way to stop that from happening? Did he have any right to stop it from happening? Coldfire flashed again, and coarse rope snapped into a thousand brittle fragments: Tarrant’s hands were freed. One of the rakh began to move toward him, spear raised into an aggressive position; Tarrant’s eyes narrowed and he dropped the spear with a sudden cry of fear and pain. There was flesh adhering to it, frozen to its surface; from his hand, dark blood dripped slowly.
Tarrant turned to the rakh-woman; his expression was dark. “If you meant to kill us, you waited too long. If you have any other intention, now’s the time to make it known. I find myself short of patience.”
One of the other warriors started to move forward, but she warned him back with a quick gesture. “You live because you saved his life.” She nodded sharply toward Damien. “Because somewhere in that wretched thing you call a soul, that much of value still exists.” She looked at them all, with varying degrees of disapproval. “My people are torn between wanting to know why you came here, and wanting your heads for souvenirs. I’ve convinced them to swallow their death-hunger long enough for you to answer questions. That’s why the rest of you have been spared. Whether you remain alive after they have their answers . . . is up to you.”
“Untie my companions,” Tarrant said quietly.
She made no response, other than to step back a bit. Giving him room.
After a moment the Hunter stepped forward and applied himself to Damien’s bonds. The priest’s flesh was so numb from the cold that he couldn’t even feel it when his hands were at last freed, but observed them as they swung down by his sides as though they were strange to him, the limbs of some other creature. He forced himself to acknowledge them, to use one to try to rub warmth into the other, as Tarrant untied the two other humans.
Then the adept turned, and faced the rakh-woman again. Even soaking wet—his hair plastered messily to the side of his face, his clothing torn in a dozen places by the application of claws and spearpoint—he was possessed of a regality that commanded a power all its own. A dark charisma, which even the rakh must respond to.
“You touch my companions again,” he warned—and his eyes scanned the warriors as he spoke—“and you die. Instantly.” His eyes fixed on the rakh-woman. “Tell them,” he commanded.
For a moment the woman just stared at him. Then, without answering, she walked to where her xandu stood. With a motion as fluid and unpredictable as a cat pouncing suddenly on its prey, she gained its back. And twisted one hand into its mane, sharp claws entangled in gleaming silk.
“They understand you,” she told the Hunter.
And she smiled coldly, displaying pointed teeth. “They understand more than you think.”
The xandu rode like the wind. The horses rode like overtired, overwrought horses, who’d had enough of earthquakes and waterfalls and long rides without rest, and who hadn’t collapsed before now only because no one had let them stand still long enough to do so. It didn’t help that Senzei and Ciani were sharing a mount, or that Damien—a heavy man to start with—was carrying twice his weight in waterlogged clothing. But at least they’d been spared a fourth rider.
Damien looked up at the sky, at the great white predatory bird that soared high above their company, and felt a cold, unaccustomed awe fill him. Shapechanging wasn’t supposed to be possible, at least not for the flesh-bom—but he had seen it done, and the memory chilled his blood more than weather and river-water combined. Against his will, he recalled it: a budden burst of coldfire brilliance, so frigid that it blinded, human flesh dissolving as if in an acid bath, features running together like water in a whirlpool—and then, in that last instant, white wings rising up out of the conflagration, bearing the Hunter’s
new body into a moonlit sky. But it wasn’t the transformation itself that made Damien’s blood turn to ice in his veins, or even the memory of human flesh dissolving before his eyes. It was the look on Tarrant’s face, in that last moment before he entrusted his life to the earth-fae. Utter discipline, total submission—and an echo of pain and fear so intense that Damien, remembering the man’s expression, still shivered before the force of it.
I couldn’t have managed it, he thought. Not for all the power in the world. No sane man could.
Unsane, unconquerable, the Hunter soared high above them. Periodically a rakhene warrior would glance up at him, and the fur-bordered eyes would narrow. In defiance? In fear? It wasn’t unreasonable to hope for the latter. Damien’s small party needed every advantage it could get in dealing with these creatures—and if the rakh decided that Tarrant was a man to be feared, so much the better.
He’d feed on that, too. Draw strength from it.
He nodded grimly, and thought, Good for him.
Miles passed beneath the pounding hooves, flat land layered in thick black soil and the dying remnants of summer’s bounty. In places the browning grass was so deep that the horses’ legs sank into it a foot or more, before withdrawing; In other places it was so sparse that a shoulder of granite might be seen, forcing its way through the moist black cover of the earth. Damien wrapped himself as tightly as he could in the thick woolen blanket he had taken from their stores, which did little to raise his body temperature but at least kept the wind off his soaked hair and clothing. Just a little bit farther, he promised himself. Body heat is an easy thing to conjure, once you’re standing still. No damage has been done that you can’t undo, if they’ll just leave you alone to Work. But the likelihood of them doing that was very small indeed, and the dry clothing he would have liked to change into must be halfway down the Achron by now, still strapped to his horse’s corpse.
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