When True Night Falls

by C. S. Friedman

  Fear took hold of him as he recognized the ritual. “Holy Father, no—”

  “In their name I now declare you cast out from the society of priests, and from the Orders that initiated you—”

  “Don‘t—”

  The Patriarch reached forward too quickly for Damien to respond, and his hand closed tightly about the golden collar. “—Damien Kilcannon Vryce, I hereby dismiss you from our Church and from all its Orders, now and forever.” And he pulled back, hard, with the kind of strength that only rage could conjure. Metal cut into the back of Damien’s neck as the decorative links strained to part, drawing blood as they finally gave way. The Patriarch pulled the heavy collar from him. “You are unfit for our society.” He threw the collar to the floor, and ground his foot into the delicate metalwork. “If not for any human society,” he added venomously.

  For a moment Damien just stared at the Patriarch, unable to respond. Despair overwhelmed him, and a sense of utter helplessness. What could he say now that would make a difference? The Patriarch’s authority was absolute. Even the Holy Mother, Matriarch of the west-lands, would respect and honor such a dismissal. Which meant that he was no longer a priest. Which meant in turn that he was ... nothing. Because he suddenly realized that he had no identity that was not Church-born; there was no fragment of his psyche that did not define itself according to the Prophet’s dream, the Prophet’s hierarchy.

  What could he do now? What could he be? The walls seemed to be closing in around him; the air was hard to breathe. Blood dripped from the wounds on his neck, staining his white robe crimson as it seeped down about his shoulders. It gathered in a stain that mimicked the spread of his collar. Why had he worn it here, this emblem that he so rarely donned? What had moved him to make such a gesture? Usually he scorned such regalia....

  Usually ...

  His thoughts were a whirlwind. He struggled to think clearly.

  It’s wrong. Somehow. Wrong.... He tried to remember how this meeting had come about, but he couldn’t. His past was a void. His present was a sea of despair. He couldn’t focus.

  How did I get here? Why did I come?

  Things began to swim in his vision: the collar. The Patriarch. The gleaming white robes he never wore. And some fact that lay hidden among those things, something he could sense but not define....

  It’s wrong, he thought. All of it.

  And the room began to fade. Slowly at first, like a tapestry that was frayed at the edges. Then more rapidly. The collar shimmered where it lay, then vanished. The Patriarch’s ivory silk became a curtain of light, then nothing. The chamber ...

  ... became a room on a ship. His ship. The Golden Glory.

  “Oh, my God,” he whispered. His heart was pounding with the force of a timpani; his throat still tight with fear. He lay there for a moment in utter silence, shaking, letting the real world seep in, waiting for it to banish the terror. Listening for sounds that would link him to the present: the creak of tarred timbers, the soft splash of ocean waves against the prow, the snap of sails in the wind. Comforting, familiar sounds. They had roused him from similar nightmares before, on similar nights. But this time it didn’t seem to help. This time the fear that had hold of him wouldn’t go away. The trembling wouldn’t stop.

  Because it hit too close to home, he thought. Because this nightmare might yet come true. What did the Patriarch really think when he read Damien’s report? Did he take it at face value, or did he discern the subtle subterfuge with which it had been crafted? What kind of welcome would await Damien when at last he returned to Jaggonath?

  I shouldn’t have risked it. Shouldn’t have dissembled. If he ever finds out....

  Fear lay heavy on his chest, a thick, suffocating darkness. He tried to reason it away—as he had done so many times before, night after night on this endless journey—but reason alone wasn’t enough this time. Because this fear had real substance. This nightmare might yet come to pass.

  After a while he gave up, exhausted. And sank back into his fear, letting it possess him utterly. It was a gift to the one who traveled with him, whose hunger licked at the borders of his soul even now. The one who had inspired his dream, and therefore deserved to benefit from it.

  Damn you, Tarrant.

  Quiet night. Domina bright overhead, waves washing softly against the alteroak hull. Peace—outside, if not within him.

  He went to where the washbucket lay and splashed his face with the cool desalinized water, washing the sweat of his fear from his skin. His shirt was damp against his body and the night wind quickly chilled him; he took down a woolen blanket from a masthook and wrapped it about his shoulders, shivering.

  Drenched in Domina’s light, the deck glittered with ocean spray. Overhead the sails stirred slightly, responding to a shifting breeze. For a moment Damien just stared out across the sea, breathing deeply. Waves black as ink rippled across the water, peaceful and predictable. He tried to Work his Sight, and—as usual—failed. There was no earth-fae on the ocean’s surface for him to tap into.

  We could be on Earth now, he thought. For all this lack of power ... would we even know the difference? But the comparison was flawed and he knew it. On Earth they would be speeding across the water, abetted by the kind of technology that this planet would never support. Blind technology, mysterious power. Here on Erna it would have doomed them long before they left port, when the doubts and fears of the passengers first seeped into the waterproofed hull and began their disruptive influence. Long before they set sail the fae would have worked its first subtle distortions, affecting the friction of various parts, the microfine clearance of others. On Earth that kind of psychic debris had no power. Here, it would have doomed them before they even left port.

  Wrapping the blanket closer about his shoulders, he headed toward the prow of the ship. He had no doubt that the Hunter was there, just as he had no doubt that the man was trying—yet again—to find some hint of earth-fae beneath the ink-black waves. The channel between them had become so strong that at times it was almost like telepathy. And though the Hunter had assured him that it would subside again in time—that it was their isolation from the earth-currents which made any hint of power seem a thousand times more powerful—Damien nursed a private nightmare in which the man’s malignance clung to him with parasitic vigor for the rest of his life.

  I volunteered for it, he reminded himself.

  Not that there was any real choice.

  Tarrant stood at the prow of the ship, a proud and elegant figure-head. Even after five midmonths of travel he looked as clean and as freshly pressed as he had on the night they set out from Faraday. Which was no small thing in a realm without earth-fae, Damien reflected. How many precious bits of power had the Hunter budgeted himself for maintaining that fastidious image? As he came to the prow he saw that Tarrant had drawn his sword, and one hand grasped it about the coldfire blade. Absorbing its Worked fae into himself, to support his unnatural life. Even from across the deck Damien could see that the malevolent light, once blinding, had been reduced to a hazy glow, and he managed to come within three feet of Tarrant before he felt its chill power freeze the spray on his hands. Whatever store of malevolent energy that thing had once contained, it was now nearly empty.

  Tarrant turned to him, and for a moment his expression was unguarded: hunger whirlpooled in his eyes, black and malevolent. Then it was gone—the polished mask was back in place—and with a brief nod of acknowledgment the Hunter slid the length of Worked steel back into its warded sheath, dousing its light. In the moonlight it was possible to see just how much this trip had drained him, of color and energy both. Or was that ghastly tint his normal hue? Damien found he couldn’t remember.

  He took up a place beside the man, leaning against the waist-high railing. Staring out at the ocean in mute companionship. At last he muttered, “That was a bad one.”

  “You know that I require fear.”

  “Worse than most.”

  The Hunter chuckled softly. �
�You’ve grown immune to most of my tricks, Reverend Vryce. In the beginning it was enough to plant suggestions in your mind and let them blossom into nightmares on their own. Now if I mean to make you afraid—and keep you dreambound long enough for that fear to strengthen me—I must be more ... creative.”

  “Yeah. I know.” He sighed heavily. “I just wish you didn’t enjoy it so goddamned much.”

  Below them the ocean was smooth and calm; only a gentle swell and a hint of foam marked the place where the prow of the Golden Glory sliced through it. The Hunter turned back to study the water, searching for some hint of power.

  “See anything?” Damien asked at last.

  Tarrant hesitated. “A light so faint that it might be no more than my imagination. Or perhaps the first glimpse of a foreign current, rising to the surface. If I had to hazard a guess, I would say that we are now above the continental shelf, where the waters are shallower. Not shallow enough for Working,” he added. “Not even for me.”

  “But soon.”

  “Soon,” he agreed. “And if there are people here—” He left the thought unfinished. But hunger echoed in his voice.

  You’ll feed, Damien supplied silently. Torturing and killing women here, as you once did in the Forest. How many innocents will suffer because I brought you here? Because I convinced you to come?

  But for once the guilt echoed emptily inside him, without its accustomed force. Because when he looked at the Hunter now, he saw not only a creature who fed on the fear of the living, but a sorcerer who had committed himself body and soul to a dangerous undertaking. And he remembered the storm that had overtaken them in mid-joumey—hearing its winds lash the decks anew, seeing the storm-driven waves curl over the prow, angry froth cascading down forty, fifty, sixty feet to smash onto the deck with a tsunami’s force—and he remembered thinking then that it was all over, that they had taken one chance too many, that this monster of the equatorial regions would surely devour them before nightfall. And then Tarrant had emerged. Daring the unnatural darkness of the storm, his skin reddened by the few spears of sunlight that managed to pierce the cloudcover. Fine silks whipped and torn by the wind, long fingers tangled in the rigging for support. And then his sword was drawn—that sword—and a Working born of pure coldfire blazed upward, into the heart of the storm. The next wave that struck the ship became a wall of sleet as it slammed into the deck, coating the planks with ice as it withdrew. Overhead a rope cracked with a sound like a gunshot, and fragments of it fell to the deck like shattered glass. To the Hunter they were mere distractions. Frost rimmed his hair like a halo as he forced the Worked fae upward, higher and higher, into the heart of the storm—seeking that one weak spot in its pattern which would allow him to turn it aside, or to otherwise lessen its fury. It was an almost impossible feat, Damien knew—but if anyone could do it, Tarrant could.

  And slowly, incredibly, the storm abated. Not banished, by any means—a storm of such ferocity could hardly be unmade by a single Working—but altered in its course, so that the worst of it passed to the north of them. Icy waves no longer broke over the deck. Torn rigging hung limply, rather than whipping about in the wind. And Tarrant—

  —Fell as the cloudcover overhead gave way at last, seared by a sudden shaft of sunlight. Damien struggled to his side, half-running, half-sliding on the treacherous ice. He used his body to shield Tarrant from the sunlight while he fought to disentangle his hand from the rigging. But the man’s grip was like steel, and in the end Damien had to draw out his knife and slice through the precious ropes to free him. He dragged the adept belowdecks as quickly as he could, while overhead the sky slowly brightened with killing light....

  He remembered that day now as he looked at Tarrant, and he thought, But for you we would all be dead. Four dozen bodies rotting at the bottom of the sea, our mission in ruins. And our enemy would be unopposed, free to work his will upon the world. Isn’t that worth the sacrifice of a life or two? And he despaired, Where is the balance in it? How do you judge such a thing?

  The pale eyes were fixed on him. Cold, so cold. Testing his limits. Weighing his soul.

  “I knew what the price was when I brought you here,” he said at last. As the waves lapped softly at the hull beneath them.

  God willing, I can come to terms with it.

  Two

  Land. It rose from the sea with volcanic splendor, sharp peaks crowned in bald granite, tangles of vegetation cascading down the lower slopes like a verdant waterfall. There was no beach, nor any other gentle margin that the travelers might discern: sheer cliffs met the ocean in a sharp, jagged line, softened only by the spray of foam as waves dashed themselves against the rocks. Inhospitable to say the least ... but that was hardly a surprise. Erna was not known for gentle beaches.

  Land. Even at this distance it filled the air with scent, with sound: evergreens preparing their seeds, spring’s first flowers budding, the cries of seabirds as they circled overhead, seeking a moment of liquid respite in which to dive for food. The passengers of the Golden Glory were gathered at the bow, some forty or more of them, and they squinted eagerly into the morning glare as they studied the features of the promised land. A few of them cradled the slender telescopes which Tarrant had supplied for the journey—and they handled them like priceless relics, if not out of reverence for the Old Science which created them, then out of fear of Tarrant. Their farseers had failed them months ago, along with many other ship’s instruments; the lack of earth-power on the high seas had drained everything dry. It had surprised—and frightened—everyone but the Hunter.

  How terrifying that must have been for the first explorers, Damien thought. They’d have thought that because they disdained sorcery, their tools would function even here. Not realizing that even unconscious thought affects the earth-fae ... and therefore no tool that man makes on land can be wholly free of its taint. Was that why none of those ships were ever heard from again? Had they lost their way in mid-ocean, when their instruments failed them? Or staggered into some port by blind guesswork, perhaps, knowing that a return journey would be next to impossible? He hungered to know. Five expeditions, hundreds of men and women ... and something had spawned an Evil here, more deadly and more subtle than anything the west had produced. He hungered to uncover it. He ached to destroy it.

  Soon, he promised himself. Soon. One step at a time.

  He stood in the wheelhouse of the Golden Glory, Tarrant’s own telescope in hand. Beside him was a table overlaid with maps, the topmost a copy of one of the Hunter’s. It showed the eastern continent as viewed from above, with elevations clearly marked in the neat mechanical printing of the colony’s founders. A survey map, no doubt—or more likely a copy of one. Tarrant had lost enough things of value on the last trip to be wary of traveling with originals. On top of it were scattered the instruments which the pilot had used to establish their position, and Damien watched as she pushed aside a polished brass astrolabe in order to scrutinize a new section of coast. It said a lot about her current state of mind that she had chosen that tool over the more sophisticated instruments available; when Rasya was tense, she liked her tools primitive and simple.

  At last she said, “If we’re where I think we are, then there’s an island missing.”

  “Ocean’s risen,” the captain reminded her. His own eye remained fixed on the distant cliffs. “Figure a lot’ll be missing, from the time that map was made. Don’t sweat it.”

  “Thanks,” she said dryly. “You’re not the one whose job it is to see that we don’t run aground.”

  They were a study in opposites—so much so that it was hard to imagine them getting along, much less working together as closely and as efficiently as they did. Rasya Maradez was tall and lean, with clear blue eyes, sun-bronzed skin, and short hair bleached platinum by the unremitting sun. Smooth muscles played along her slender limbs as she moved, obscured only by a pair of cut-off breeches and an improvised halter top. Irresistible, if you liked the athletic type. Damien did. The capta
in, by contrast, was a swarthy man, dark-skinned and dark-featured, solid enough in his massive frame to act as a back-up anchor if they needed it. His face and hands were battlescarred—from street brawls, Damien suspected—and though he handled his own gold-chased instrument with obvious reverence, his tough, lined fingers seemed more suited to a brigand than the person of an officer. Their temperaments were likewise mismatched but surprisingly compatible, resulting in a tense but efficient partnership that had successfully tamed Erna’s most dangerous waters.

  The captain turned slowly, scanning the length and breadth of the shoreline through his own instrument. Between his fingers delicately engraved figures adorned the golden barrel, studded with precious gems. Tarrant had given it to him as a gift when they first left port, and Damien remembered wondering at its design. He shouldn’t have. Its message of value, tasteless but eloquent, had won the captain over in an instant. What good will the Hunter could not inspire in this crew, he clearly intended to purchase.

  Carefully Damien studied the lay of the land beyond, breakwater and cliff face and an occasional rocky slope that might through some stretch of the imagination be termed a beach ... he scanned the salt-frothed shoreline, wishing he had Tarrant’s Sight. By now the Hunter would have analyzed every current in the region and picked them apart for the messages they carried. Yes, he would have said, there’s human life, just south of here. Unaware of our presence. Sail on with the wind....

  And then Damien drew in a sharp breath, as he caught sight of a pattern that wasn’t wholly natural. It took him a moment to focus on it: a pale line, mostly straight, that wound upward from the base of the cliff to its summit several hundred feet above. Artificial, he thought. Without a doubt. His fingers tightened about the slender tube as he focused in on the line itself, on the rhythm of tiny shadows that peppered its length. Trying to identify them.