She came, then, down a staircase that glittered like diamonds in the fractured moonlight. He couldn’t make out the edges of the stairs beneath her feet, but judged their size and shape by the action of her long robe upon their surface. Silk sliding over glass, a waterfall of color. Mesmerized, he watched until the delicate fabric was level with his own feet, until that signal informed him that the Keeper of Souls had entered the very chamber he was in.
A taloned hand forced him to his knees; he didn’t fight, but dropped down as though beaten. And watched her intently, as she approached.
She was not a young woman any more, though her skill with the fae had kept her from aging too badly. She might have been beautiful once, but decades of obsession and the relentless power of her addiction had robbed her face of whatever natural elegance it might once have possessed. Her eyes were deeply hollowed, underscored with carmine lines where the bone edges pressed against the sallow tissue. Her skin was dry and taut with the inelasticity of enforced youth. Her lips, once full, were textured with a webwork of fine lines, that left only a hint of what must have once been vital sensuality. Only her eyes blazed forth with life, and they were so filled with hunger—with raw, uncaring need—that despite all he had known of her nature, Damien shuddered as he met her gaze.
“So you’re the one,” she said shortly. Her eyes flickered up to meet those of her captors; it seemed to him that the Dark Ones flinched before her. “What were my orders?”
“To claim his memories, Keeper.”
She hooked a hand beneath Damien’s chin and forced his head upward, to face hers. Studied his eyes, and all that was behind them.
“You disobeyed me,” she said softly. “Is there a reason?”
“We couldn’t do it,” one of Damien’s captors rasped, and another offered, “There was a barrier. . . .”
“Ah.” The eyes pierced into him, burning his brain—then withdrew, and were merely eyes once more. “A Shielding. Very good. They have both intelligence and power.” She let go of his head. “But not enough.”
She stood back. “Get him up.”
Sharp claws bit into his upper arms as two of the creatures jerked him to his feet. He was careful to appear unsteady, as if from pain or weakness, but feared it would do little good. Carmine cloth swept from her shoulders to the floor, draped over an armature of padding that was clearly meant to lend aggressive mass to her frame. Even so, she was considerably smaller than he was, and he knew to his despair that no feigned emotions could counteract the sheer power of his bulk—or the threat she would read into it.
She nodded to one side, and the Dark Ones scurried to lay out Damien’s weapons before her. She waited until they were done and then said in a disdainful tone, “Is that all?” She reached down and took up a handful of amulets; thin gold chains slithered down between her fingers, like serpents. “Did you really think these would affect me?” She opened her hands and let the precious medallions slip through her fingers like so much refuse. “I think you underestimate me.” And a smile, faint and unpleasant, wrinkled her lips. “I know that he did.”
She came back to him and cupped a cold hand beneath his face. Sharpened nails bit into his skin, not unlike the talons of her servants. “I want him,” she said. “And I want the woman. Tell me where they are, and I’ll let you go.”
Elation filled him, at the realization that Hesseth’s efforts had paid off; the human sorceress couldn’t read through her tidal Workings. But he kept it carefully from his face as he said, in a tone edged with fear, “I won’t betray my friends.”
She smiled coldly. “Oh, you will do that. No question about it. All that’s at issue is how long it will take . . . and how much pain has to be applied in the process.” An odd hunger flickered in the depths of her eyes; her tongue tip touched her lips briefly, as if in anticipation. “Well? Will you answer me now? Or do I have to break you to get what I want?”
Damien’s heart was pounding so loudly he wondered that she couldn’t hear it. What was the safest way to answer? He had to goad her into specific action, without bringing down the full weight of her wrath upon his head. He tried to remember what Tarrant had told him, tried to weigh all his alternatives—and at last he gasped, in a tone that he hoped was more fearful than defiant, “I can’t. Please. Don’t ask that.”
Her expression hardened. She reached out to him again, and took his face in her hands. Gripped him tightly, so that his blood pounded beneath her fingers. So that he was incapable of looking away. “You’ll serve me,” she told him. “Like it or not, you will.” She willed him to look up at her, into her eyes; fae wrapped about him like a vice, forcing obedience. “I need to know where they are and what they’re doing. You’re going to tell me that.” Hot thoughts slithered into his mind, wrapping about his brainstem like serpents. Stroking the centers of pleasure and pain within him as she practiced her control. “Submit to me,” she whispered. He shut his eyes, tried to fight her off—but she was inside him, her hunger filling his flesh, her thoughts stabbing into his brain. Where the hell was Tarrant’s barrier now? He tried with all his will to force her out of his mind—to sever her control—but without a Working to focus his efforts he didn’t have a prayer. And he didn’t dare Work, not now.
Amused by his struggles, she stroked his brain anew; waves of sensation, shamefully erotic, reverberated through his body, followed by a pain so intense that it would have doubled him over if not for the fae that bound him upright. She was playing his flesh like an instrument, there was no place he could hide, no way he could stop it . . . but knew that if he gave in, even for a moment, if he let his human intellect be swept away by the tide of her madness, that he was lost forever. Her hunger knew no middle ground.
And then, suddenly, the sea turned cold. The lust became darkness, and ice shot through his veins. His body shook as the essence of the Hunter filled him—unclean, inhuman, but oh, so welcome!—forcing out the foreign influence, chilling his burning flesh. His stomach spasmed as the force of Tarrant’s unlife filled it and he vomited suddenly, as if by casting out the bitter liquids within him he might also cast out that influence. Never before was the Hunter’s essence so alien, so physically intolerable. And never before was it so welcome.
When he came to himself he saw her standing back from him, rage burning like wildfire in her eyes. Somewhere in the back of his numbed brain he remembered something about a signal, his link to Gerald Tarrant . . . what was it? He grasped at the fact, used it as a lifeline to restore his reason. Something about a sign, and the wards . . . that was it. This was what they’d set up, as the trigger: their enemy, trying to break through Tarrant’s barrier. The Hunter would have sensed that and taken it for his starting sign. Even now, the quake-wards were being broken.
Which left very little time. Minutes, perhaps. Or so he hoped. He tried to focus on what he needed to do and how fast he needed to do it, tried not to think about what might happen if the earth failed to respond to its newfound freedom. Because that possibility was enough to chill him to the bone. The longer it took, the less was the likelihood that this woman would be Working when the wave hit—and for him to be here, bound and helpless, with her still alive and whole, and knowing what they had intended . . . it was unthinkable. She would destroy him. She would destroy them all.
“You’re a fool,” she said angrily. “Do you really think your precious adept can protect you? After I broke him? He couldn’t even save himself—how on Erna is he going to help you?” The voice became seductive, cloying. “Tell me what I want to know, and you can go free. Isn’t that the easiest way? Or else . . . I might have to dissect your mind, thought by thought, until I find what I need. Until there’s nothing left in you, but that one bit of information and enough strength to voice it. Not a pleasant prospect.” Her eyes narrowed to slits, her expression drawn. “The choice is yours, priest.”
And he took his chance. Daring her rage. Daring her hatred. Because it was her obsession he wanted, and that must be directed
at him. Quickly, before the quake-wards failed.
“Go to hell,” he spat.
He was struck from behind on the head, hard enough to draw blood. He allowed the blow to drive him to his knees, gasping audibly as a thin, warm trickle began to seep down the back of his collar. Defiance, laced with weakness: that was the winning formula. Play it right, and he would goad her into Working him without doing him permanent harm. Play it wrong . . . he shuddered. She was perfectly capable of maiming him—or worse. He had put himself in her power. If she had been sane he would have been confident, but she wasn‘t—and the victims of addiction, any addiction, were notoriously unstable.
The taloned fingers caught in his hair and jerked his head up, so that he was forced to meet her eyes. Hatred was hot in her gaze, and a disdain so absolute that he knew for a fact she would never see the blow coming. Not if he could get her Working. Not if he could keep her involved.
“You made a fatal error,” she informed him. “Not just in coming here, but in guarding yourself against my pets. That interrogation would have been far more merciful than this one will be.”
—And her power hit him, full in the face, a wall of searing force that drove the breath from his body and left him stunned, half-blinded. The fire of her addiction focused in on him, became a red-hot spearpoint that probed deep inside his flesh, testing for weaknesses. If she had used a real blade, she couldn’t have made the pain any greater; his nerves rang out as though scraped by sharpened steel, his body shaking uncontrollably as pain consumed his universe.
He struggled not to fight back. That was harder than all the rest combined: forcing himself not to respond, as she played his body like some terrible instrument. It went against every instinct in him, against all his years of learning and experience. But any Working now might mean death, if luck and Erna turned against him. And so he swallowed back on all the ingrained keys that might unlock his defenses, and banished the images that floated in front of his eyes, before they could Work the fae to save him. And he drank in the bitter draught of utter defenselessness as her will probed sharp within him.
And then—an eternity later—she released him. He would have fallen, but clawed hands had taken hold of his shoulders and they held him upright. The woman’s face was a mask of rage and indignation—How dare you defy me!—with a desperate edge that might well blossom into something more dangerous.
“Please,” he whispered. Daring a subterfuge. “I can’t. Don’t you understand? I can’t!”
The burning eyes narrowed suspiciously. She turned to regard a figure who stood just behind her left shoulder—he had not been there before, Damien was certain of that—and demanded, “Well?”
Faceted eyes in an ink-black face. Glassy surface that refracted the light, like chipped obsidian. Damien had seen figures in his nightmares that looked more forbidding—but not many. And not often.
“The adept has Worked a barrier,” the surreal figure rasped. The quality of his voice—like sandpaper on an open wound—made Damien’s skin crawl. “And he’s Warded it into this man’s flesh, so that it requires no sustaining power. In fact, you empower it every time you try to break through it.” The glistening eyes fixed on Damien, and seemed to pierce through him. What was that creature? What if it could read the truth in him? “Well Worked,” the dark figure rasped.
“Spare me your admiration,” she snapped, “just tell me how to break it.”
“You can’t. Not directly. Its power feeds off yours. The more force you use, the stronger it gets.”
“You’re telling me I can’t get inside him?”
“I’m telling you that mere force won’t succeed here. You’ll have to dismantle it, step by step. Reversing the process he used to erect it in the first place. Assuming you can,” he added.
“I can do anything,” she said acidly.
She took hold of Damien again, sharpened nails tangling in his sweat-soaked hair. “You’ll regret the day you decided to serve him,” she promised the priest.
“—Or of course,” the black figure interjected, “there’s always physical torture.”
She looked back sharply at him. And Damien could barely hear her words, so loud was the pounding of his heart. “Would that work?” she demanded. Hunger echoed in her voice.
“Who can say? It would certainly be . . . interesting.”
“I can’t,” Damien whispered. Trying to will as much fear into his voice as he could muster. In the face of possible torture, it wasn’t hard. “He said the barrier wouldn’t permit it. Said that his blockage was absolute, from both directions. . . .”
“So that you can’t betray him,” she concluded. “Not even to save yourself from pain.” Disappointment flashed briefly in those hollow eyes. “A shame.” Then her expression hardened once more; the grip on his hair tightened, pulling his head back. “Not that it will help you,” she whispered.
He shut his eyes this time, so that he didn’t have to see the inhuman depths in hers. There was something in her so blindly ravenous that the mere thought of contact with her made his stomach tighten in dread. This wasn’t just a hunger for vision, like Senzei had known, or even an obsession with power. It had gone beyond that—far beyond that—into realms so utterly corrupted that barely a fragment of her human soul remained, clinging to the flesh that housed it as if somehow the two could be reunited. Could mere hunger do that to a woman? Or would it take something more—some outside influence, that fed on the soul’s dissolution? He thought of the obsidian figure standing beside her and wondered at its source. At their relationship.
Then: Her hunger enveloped him. Dark, unwholesome, utterly revolting—and focused, this time, in a way it hadn’t been before. He felt her mental fingers prying at the edges of Tarrant’s barrier, trying to Work it loose from his flesh. Though he didn’t doubt the Hunter’s skill, he knew that her tenacity went far beyond anything a sane mind might conjure—and he shivered to think of what would become of him if she managed to dismantle Tarrant’s Warding before the fae-surge struck her.
Where’s your earthquake, Hunter? He imagined all the things that might have gone wrong—Gerald Tarrant too weak to Work, the quake-wards too strong to be broken, some secondary defense system, hitherto unnoticed, coming into play—but nothing frightened him more than the simple fact that the earth might not move. Period. Even if all their planning had been perfect, even if Tarrant had succeeded in all he set out to do . . . the nature of seismic activity was random, and all the Workings in the world wouldn’t make it otherwise. The odds had been in their favor, true—but what if odds weren’t enough? What if the earth betrayed them, and took its sweet time in responding?
Then I’m dead, he thought darkly. Behind his back, his fingers played with the edges of his bracers. Thick leather, but soft; he unsnapped them. The Keeper’s thoughts burrowed inside his mind—like so many worms—but her attention was fixed on Tarrant’s Warding.
Keep Working, he begged her silently. just keep Working. It seemed that time had slowed down for him, that something in the enemy’s assault had altered his temporal functioning; he was aware of long minutes passing as he pushed at the forward edge of his bracers, forcing the leather back through the ropes that bound his wrists. Buying himself additional slack, through that action. He told himself that he had to be ready, in case their plan failed. Had to be ready to free himself and move quickly. He tucked one thumb against his palm and tested his hand against his rope, seeing if he had gained enough slack to force his hand through. Coarse rope bit into his skin, but the fit was promising. One good jerk—and the loss of some skin—and he might be free. He gauged the distance between himself and the woman, reached out with his senses to Know the whereabouts of her servants—and then stopped himself, sickened by his carelessness, and forced himself not to Work. Not to Work at all. It seemed to him that hours had passed, that while he had been lost in the mechanics of bodily defense she had launched whole offensives against the structure of Tarrant’s Warding. And still the eart
h hadn’t moved. Had Tarrant managed to dispel the quake-wards, or was he still struggling with them? Was there still some hope that the adept might succeed, and trigger the surge they required?
And then she drew back from him, and the world spiraled out into her eyes. And he saw the anger there, and knew with dread certainty that she had sensed some hidden purpose in the barrier. Enough to stop her from Working.
Which meant that it was over. It was all over . . . and they had lost.
“I think,” she said coldly, “we may try torture after all.”
He looked about himself, desperately, as his hands prepared to pull loose from their bonds. As he steeled himself to move, and move quickly, in a sudden bid for freedom. But then his eyes fell on the eastern wall, at the soft glow rising up from its base—and he flinched, as the meaning of that became clear. As the full measure of his vulnerability hit home.
Light. Gray light, rising in the east.
Dawn.
He was suddenly aware that the Dark Ones had left them, no doubt withdrawing to some protective recess deep within the earth. Tarrant was powerless now. If he hadn’t broken the quake-wards yet, he wasn’t going to. Not in time to help Damien. The priest’s last hope had died with the night.
“What is it?” she demanded. Sensing that something was amiss with him, not knowing what. She turned toward the eastern wall, back to Damien. “What new trick . . .” Her eyes grew hard, and he heard her mutter something; a key? He felt a Knowing taking shape around him, felt it working to squeeze the information out of him, examining his link to the dawn, to Tarrant—
And then it struck. He saw it, for an instant, through her eyes—for one terrible instant, in which the whole world was ablaze. Power surged through the crystalline walls, dashed against the mirrored steps, cycloned fiercely about them. Earth-fae fresh from the depths of Erna, hot as the magma that spawned it. She screamed as it struck her, screamed in terror as it blasted its way into her, its power filling and then bursting each cell in her brain.
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