Black Sun Rising

by C. S. Friedman

  “Second, we discovered that during the time of our dispersal a large number of rakh were lost. They had chosen to settle in the mountains—these mountains—and had lived there during the early stages of their development. We found artifacts of their civilization—tools, trash heaps, broken ornaments—but never any hint of where they had gone. Legend says,”—and here she breathed in deeply—“that they went underground. That there was a time of terrible cold, when debris from an upland volcano cut us off from the sun’s warmth, and the mountains were covered in ice. Certainly, most rakh would rather seek shelter under their territory than abandon it utterly. If so, they never came out again. Only legends remain.”

  “And now this testimony,” Damien said. “Where the Lost Ones dwelled, until we drove them out. If we knew how long ago these demons moved into Lema—”

  “Three centuries,” Tarrant said coolly. “give or take a decade or two.”

  Damien stared at him in astonishment. “How do you know that?”

  “The rakh-girl from Lema. Remember? I . . . interrogated her.”

  For a moment, Damien was speechless. Then he hissed, “You bastard.”

  Tarrant shrugged. “We needed information. She had it.” His eyes glittered darkly. “I assure you, any interest in her emotional state was strictly . . . secondary.”

  Damien made as if to rise, but Ciani put a hand on his shoulder. Firmly. “It’s over,” she said. “You can’t help her now. We have to work together.”

  He forced himself to sit back; it clearly took effort.

  “Go on,” he growled.

  “Three centuries ago,” Tarrant repeated. “The Lost Ones were alive and thriving then, and they built their tunnels. Or adapted them from existing caves—our informant seemed to indicate both. Then came this foreign sorceror. Lema’s human Master, who built his citadel above their warren. And the demons who served him took refuge in the caves beneath, driving out their former inhabitants. So that they might be protected from sunlight.”

  “Three centuries,” Ciani mused. “The lost rakh might still be alive.”

  “Adapted to the darkness—and thus very photosensitive. I doubt that they care much for sunlight themselves—in fact, it stands to reason that their underground domiciles would be interlinked. So that they might go from one to the other without ever coming aboveground.”

  “Including—” Senzei began.

  Tarrant nodded. “That one.”

  “Underground access,” Damien whispered.

  “If their tunnels were rakh-made, no. The new tenants would have sealed those off, for defensive purposes. Or they’d have them guarded. But if we’re talking about natural caverns, with all their infinite variety . . . there’s a real possibility of finding some way in that our enemies don’t know about. Or creating one, through adjoining chambers.”

  “Coming in through the back door,” Senzei mused.

  “Just so.”

  Damien turned to the khrast-woman. “What’s the chance of finding these underground rakh? Of communicating with them, if we do?”

  “Who can say where they are—or even if they still exist? No one’s seen them for centuries. As for communication . . . they wouldn’t speak English, I’m sure; that was a later development. They might still speak fragments of the rakhene tongue . . . or they might not. Too much time has passed to be certain.”

  “But the tunnels will be there, regardless,” Tarrant said.

  Damien turned to him. “You think you can find them?”

  He chuckled. “Just what do you think I do every morning, when it comes time to find shelter? Locating caves is child’s play for anyone who can See the currents. It’s much the same skill that Senzei used, bringing us to shore. But locating the right caverns. . . .” He nodded thoughtfully. “That will take some effort.”

  “All right, then,” Damien said. “Let’s say that we may have a way to sneak up on them. And we have an effective weapon, if they’re sun-sensitive.” He patted the pouch at his hip. “There’s time enough ahead to decide how best to use it. As for our enemy’s ambush . . . now that we know what game he’s playing, we should be able to counter it. Which leaves us with only one question left—”

  “Where the hell we’re going,” Senzei supplied.

  Tarrant withdrew a sheet of vellum from his pocket; it had been folded so many times that it was barely as wide as two fingers, yet it opened up to display a sizable map of the area. “I sketched this from memory, soon after losing the original. I can’t guarantee its accuracy, but I believe that the general form is right.” He spread it out before them. It was a map of the rakhlands and its surrounding regions, superimposed over a webwork of jagged ink lines.

  “Fault lines,” Damien whispered.

  Tarrant nodded. “Missing a few minor ones, no doubt, but I believe the major plate boundaries are all in place.” This map, unlike the first, was labeled. Greater Novatlantic plate. Eastern Serpentine. Lesser Continental. He pointed to where those three plates met. “Here’s the single point of power for this region,” he mused. “I assumed he would have settled somewhat near it. According to our informant, however, he’s sitting right on top of it.”

  “I thought you said—” Damien began.

  “That only a fool would do that? I did. And I’ll stand by it. Don’t ask me how he’s kept his citadel standing, in a region this seismically active. Wards alone won’t do it. He must be counting on something else. Maybe luck. The girl said there hadn’t been a quake in this area for a long time. Years.”

  “That’s impossible,” Damien muttered.

  He nodded. “Certainly odd, to say the least. The small ones sometimes go unnoticed, of course . . . but even so, we’re talking about a considerable seismic gap in this region. I just hope it holds long enough for us to get where we’re going.”

  “Speaking of which,” Damien said, “is there any way to keep the Master of Lema from tracking us? He seemed to read through your Obscuring—”

  “You can’t blind a man to the obvious,” Tarrant said sharply. “But you can divert his focus. Last night I prepared a Working that should do that. It will take effect . . . here.” He indicated a point on the map some two days’ journey east of them. “We have to stay with the pass this far to get to Lema; he knows that. But once the five of us reach this point, I’ve arranged for simulacra to take our place. They will continue along this path,”—his finger traced a line through the mountains, into Lema, toward the place where the three plates met—“to here.” He indicated a point some twenty miles to the east of that place of power, and looked at the rakhene woman for confirmation.

  She reached out and moved his hand a few inches southward. And nodded. “The crater is there.” She looked up at him. “And the ambush.”

  “While they travel toward it, his Workings will be drawn to them. We will be all but invisible.”

  Damien stared at him. Something in his expression made Senzei’s skin crawl.

  “You used people,” he said quietly. “Rakh.”

  “A good simulacrum can’t be created out of thin air. Such an illusion wouldn’t fool an adept for an instant. There has to be enough substance that when one probes beneath the surface—”

  “Innocent rakh.”

  The Hunter’s expression darkened. “This is a war, priest—and in a war, there are casualties. The innocent are sometimes among them.”

  “You have no right!”

  “But I have the power. And that’s all there is to it. I won’t argue this point. Not when my own survival is at stake. I have far too much already invested in that, and one hell of a reception awaiting me if I die. The Working exists. I’ve already warded it. When you reach this point,” and he tapped the map aggressively, “five simulacra will leave for Sansha Crater. And because my Working was bound to living flesh they will be convincing, and our enemy will watch them, not us, until they die.” He shook his head slowly. “I don’t intend to perish here, priest. Certainly not for your morals. You’d
better come to terms with that.”

  Speechless, Damien turned to Ciani. “Cee—”

  “Please. Damien. He’s right.” She put a hand on his arm; he seemed to flinch at the contact. “We have no choice, don’t you see? We need this Working, or something like it. Otherwise, we might as well just give up now. And I can’t do that, Damien. Can’t give up. Can you?”

  Wordlessly, he pulled away from her. His expression was unreadable—but there was a coldness in it that made Senzei shiver.

  “You have me,” he muttered at last. “I won’t interfere. I can’t. But you’ll pay for those lives—in blood. I swear it.”

  The Hunter laughed softly; it was an ominous sound.

  “Those and a thousand others,” he agreed.

  Morning. Next day. She came to Senzei while he was gathering wood. And startled him so badly that he nearly dropped his bundle.

  “Ciani?”

  Sunlight poured down through the half-stripped branches above them, illuminating her pallor. Her weakness. The possession of two nights before had taken more out of her than any of them wanted to admit.

  “I thought you might like company,” she offered.

  The words were out of him before he could stop them. “You shouldn’t have left camp.”

  She shrugged; the gesture, like all her gestures, was a mere shadow of her former state. Even her gaze seemed weakened. “You worry as much as he does.” She looked about for something to sit down on, settled on a broken stump. “Which is a little too much, sometimes.” She lowered herself onto it with a sigh. “Sometimes you have to get away . . . from fears, from people.” She met his eyes, held them. “You know what I mean?”

  He could feel the color come to his face; he fought the impulse to turn away from her. “It’s too dangerous, Cee. You shouldn’t be alone, not even for a few minutes.”

  “I know,” she told him. “And yet . . . it’s as if too much risk numbs the mind to danger. Is that possible? Sometimes I have to consciously remind myself how close we are to our enemy, how much power he has . . . but even then it’s distant, somehow. Unreal. As if I have to work to be afraid.”

  She looked down at her hands, as if studying them for answers. And at last said, quietly, “I never had a chance to tell you. About the memories. Just bits and pieces . . . but I had them again, for a time. During Gerald’s Working. As if, while that creature used my body, I could sense something of his. My memories, stored in his flesh.” She looked up at him; her brown eyes glistened in the sunlight. “I relived . . . when you came to me. Do you remember, Zen?”

  It had been so long ago—and was so much a part of a different world, to which he no longer belonged—that it took him a minute to recall it. To recall himself, at that age.

  “Yes,” he said softly. And he winced, remembering.

  “You were young. So young. Do you remember? That was the image I got when we made contact. Your face—what I saw in it—what I Knew of you. But what I remembered most of all was your youth. Gods, you were so young. . . .”

  “I’m only thirty-four now,” he said defensively.

  “Yes. Still young. Body not aging yet—not irrevocably, anyway. Still at an age where the fae can regenerate flesh. . . .” She let the thought trail off into silence. Let him finish it for himself. “Do you remember why you came to me? What you wanted?”

  The color was hot in his face now, and he did turn away. “Cee, please....”

  “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  He shook his head slowly, and bit his lower lip; it alarmed him that the memory could still awaken such pain. “It’s not shame, Cee. It’s . . . I didn’t understand. That’s all. I wanted the world to be something that it wasn’t.”

  “You came to me seeking vision,” she said softly. “Not power, not wealth, not even immortality . . . not any of the things that other men seek. Just the Sight.”

  He kept his voice even, but it took all his self-control; beneath that surface he could feel himself trembling, his whole soul shivering with humiliation. “And you explained the truth. That I couldn’t ever have it.”

  “Yes. I had to. Dedication like yours deserved honesty, no matter how much the truth might hurt. And maybe, if the knowledge hurt that much, it was in part because so many people had lied to you—had led you to believe that there was some kind of hope, when there wasn‘t—”

  “They weren’t adepts,” he said quickly. “They couldn’t know.”

  “It’s just—I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  He shut his eyes; his soul ached with regret, with the pain of shattered dreams. “You did what you had to.”

  “It was what I believed. What we all believed. That adeptitude was an inborn trait; one either had it or one didn’t. That no act of man, no manner of Working, might cause the Sight to exist in one who hadn’t been born with it.”

  He heard her draw in a deep breath. Gathering her courage? “I was wrong, Zen.”

  He turned to her. Not quite absorbing her words, or what they might mean. The shock was too great.

  “I believed what I told you,” she assured him. “And any adept would have said the same—any honest one. But that’s only because none of us had lived long enough to understand—”

  She stopped herself suddenly, as if her own confession distressed her. He could feel his hands shaking, with need and fear combined, and he felt as if he stood on the edge of a precipice. Balanced at the edge of a great yawning Pit, about to topple into it.

  “Long enough for what?” He could barely manage the words. “What are you saying, Cee?”

  She whispered it—furtively, as if afraid that some other might hear. “No act of man could do it, I told you. No act of man could wield enough power to break down the soul’s own barriers . . . no act of a single man,” she stressed. “But what if hundreds of sorcerors were to combine their skills—what if thousands were to pour all their vital energy, all their hopes and dreams, into one all-powerful Working—wouldn’t that be enough? Couldn’t the laws of Erna be altered with such a force as that?”

  He stared at her in disbelief, could find no words to say.

  “Gerald made me aware of the pattern. Showed me what to look for. He was around when that kind of power was first conjured, saw with his own eyes what it could do . . . but I don’t think even he thought of this. Or would have told you, if he did.” She leaned forward, hands on her knees. Her voice was couched low, but there was fever in her tone. “The Fire, Zen. That’s what it is. The power of thousands, concentrated in that one tiny flask. Tamed, to serve man’s will.” She paused, giving the words time to sink in. Their meaning burned like flame. “I believe it could free you. I believe it could give you what you want.”

  She rose from where she sat and came to him; not close enough to touch, but nearly. “I don’t have all my old knowledge,” she told him. “I can’t know for sure that it’ll work. But the more Gerald tells me about the kind of power that was wielded in the days of the Holy Wars, the more I think . . .” She drew in a deep breath. “It could change you, Senzei. Give you what you dreamed of, in those days. You still want it, don’t you?”

  “Gods, yes. . . .” Was it really possible? He had worked so hard to bury that hope, so that he might not destroy his life with it. Now, to consider it again, after all those years. . . . For a moment he could hardly speak in answer. He was afraid that in the place of words might come something less dignified, like tears, or gasping, or simply speechless trembling. The emotion was almost too much to bear.

  “Does he know?” he managed. “Damien. Did you tell him?”

  “How could I?” she said gently. “He’d never let you have it. Such a use would be . . . blasphemy, to him.”

  “Then isn’t this—your being here—isn’t that a kind of betrayal?”

  “I don’t share his faith,” she reminded him.

  “But doesn’t that mean—I mean, Damien—”

  “Don’t mistake me. I care for him, deeply. But philosophically
. . .” She seemed to hesitate. “We’re from different worlds, it seems sometimes. The faith he serves . . .” She shook her head. “It’s not that I don’t respect it, or him. But gods! They’re living in a dreamworld, filled with misty hopes and misguided passions . . . and I’m simply a pragmatist. A realist. This is my world. I accept it. I live in it. And if you give me a source of power, I’ll use it—as the gods intended.”

  She touched a hand to his cheek, gently; the storm of emotion inside him made the contact seem an almost alien thing, oddly distant from him. “Romance between man and woman is such a fleeting thing,” she said softly. “You of all people should know that. But the devotion of a true friend . . . that endures forever. My loyalties are just what they should be, Zen. And I’ll stand by them to my grave.”

  He should have had so many misgivings, so many fears—but the pounding of his heart drowned them all out, until it was hard to focus on any one thought. Feebly—mechanically—he protested, “It’s his weapon. Our weapon.”

  “And do you think this will lessen it? Would the whole pint of Fire be so diminished by a few drops? He spared that much to Work his weapons, back in Mordreth. And again in the rakhene camp.” Her voice was a whisper, barely audible above the sound of the breeze stirring the leaves—but he heard every word as though it were a shout, felt her meaning etched in fire upon his soul. “One drop, maybe two,” she whispered. “That’s all it would take. I know it. And think, Zen, if it worked . . . then you’d be our weapon. You’d be able to use everything that’s inside you, instead of keeping it all pent up in your brain. Take the hunger of all those years and turn it into power . . . and he’d still have nearly a pint left. He’d never even know it was gone! And Zen . . . you’d be able to help us, like you never could before. Wouldn’t that be a fair trade? If you could only manage that, then we wouldn’t have to rely so much on—”