When True Night Falls

by C. S. Friedman

  Moskovan had given the option of remaining below, but not one of them had taken him up on it. Now they watched as barren islands, knife-edged in the moonlight, passed mere yards away to port and starboard. They watched as the sea gathered itself into an impromptu whirlpool between two islands, then suddenly dispersed. As the Novatlantic Ocean poured over some unseen obstacle to create a waterfall not ten yards high, but nearly two miles in length. It was a wondrous and terrible sea, and Damien was grateful that the man Tarrant had found to take them across it seemed eminently capable of doing so. God alone knew how many ships had been lost in those rocky depths.

  If the Sea of Dreams seemed strange to the travelers, the sailors of the Desert Queen were even more so. Silent and somber, they maneuvered the sleek vessel through its passage with no more than short whistled signals passing between them. To Damien, who had grown accustomed to the shouts and banter of the Glory’s crew, their behavior seemed even stranger than the sea itself. But though there were at least a dozen questions he would have liked to ask Moskovan, the ship’s owner was not available for questioning. He might take on passengers for a price, but he clearly had no interest in catering to their curiosity.

  And then the last of the great islands fell behind the stern, swallowed up by mist and darkness. Ahead lay somewhat calmer water, and a promise of smoother sailing. Damien let loose of the rail he had been gripping, and as the blood rushed painfully back into his hands he acknowledged just how tightly he’d held it. God in Heaven, what he wouldn’t give to be back in Jaggonath right now! Or any inland city, for that matter.

  Moskovan had told them of a safer route, had even given them the option of choosing to take it. Nearly four times the length of this one, it involved sailing west into the Novatlantic, and circling wide round this turbulent sea. That course took longer but entailed little risk, and most black marketeers preferred it. As did he, Moskovan assured them. And then he looked pointedly at Damien and added: When I’m not being hunted.

  Whereupon Damien had made the only choice possible.

  He looked back the way they had come and tried to imagine one of the Matria’s ships making it through that maze of islands and whirlpools. No. The choice they’d made had been the right one, and if it cost them more money and rubbed their nerves raw, that was just the price of freedom. Money well spent, in his book.

  A firm hand on his shoulder startled him; he turned around to find one of the sailors beside him. The man stepped quickly back so as not to offend and muttered, “Captain said to stay with you.” A glance back to where Tarrant stood showed a sailor beside him also—though the adept’s response looked anything but cordial—but when Damien looked for Hesseth and Jenseny, he found them nowhere to be seen. One hand moved instinctively toward his sword as he demanded, “Where are my companions?” Suddenly aware that their greatest danger might not come from the sea.

  The sailor, who had turned away to regard the sea, didn’t respond. He repeated the question again, more loudly, and this time the man seemed to hear it. “Back in the cabin. Captain suggested. Not good waters for the young, you see? Verdate,” he added, for Damien’s benefit. Assuming him to be a northerner, no doubt.

  The priest was about to respond when something in the distance caught his eyes. Hard to say exactly what it was; it disappeared as soon as he looked directly at it, and thus was glimpsed more by memory than by sight. A glimmering, ever so faint, that seemed to shiver beneath the waves. He had barely drawn in a breath to question the sailor when another one flashed on the sea’s glassy surface—like a star this time, that glittered and bounced as it rode the waves, then disappeared from view.

  “What is it?” he demanded. The sailor didn’t answer, but his expression was grim. He held out something toward Damien, two small objects nestled in a weathered palm. Damien picked them up, holding them up to the moonlight so that he might see them better. Small rubber bits of irregular shape, their base perhaps as wide as his thumb. They looked like ... earplugs? He glanced up at the sailor, saw the dull sheen of similar bits resting in the man’s own ears. Yes. That explained the whistling, anyway. And the men’s silence. They must all be wearing them. But why? It seemed an inconvenient accoutrement for a voyage like this.

  And then one of the silvery lights came near the ship and took up station there. Perhaps five yards from the Desert Queen’s hull, just below the surface of the water. Another joined it. It was hard to make out their shapes through the water, hard to see them past the sheen of moonlight on the rippling surface. At times they seemed almost human in form, at others almost eellike. Their images shivered through the water like quicksilver, defying his interpretation.

  “What are they?” he whispered. Forgetting that the sailor couldn’t hear anything less than a shout. Two more creatures joined the first, and the four spaced themselves out along the hull with silent and perfect precision. More were coming. He could see their strange light glittering along the waves as they made their way toward the ship, eerie and beautiful beneath the glassy surface. Fascinated, Damien worked a Knowing—and only then remembered where he was. There was no earth-fae accessible here, not for him and not for them. Which meant that whatever they were, they must be wholly natural.

  Incredible.

  One of the creatures rose up through the water then, its silvery head rising above the glassy surface, strands of hair coiling about the waves as it rode. How bizarre, Damien thought, as it turned its face toward him. And how exquisitely beautiful. It had eyes and lips and cheekbones and nose all of a human cast, but made of a substance that rippled like mercury in the moonlight. Its eyes glistened like diamonds and strands of its long hair, cast loose upon the waves, rippled with eerie phosphorescence. They were all rising up now, some two dozen of the creatures—and perhaps there were more on the port side of the ship, who could say?—and their faces were wondrous things, delicate human sculptings that were sometimes female, sometimes male, sometimes magically androgynous. Breathtaking, all of them. Utterly mesmerizing.

  They began to sing. Not with mere voices, as humans might do, but with their bodies. With their flesh. Chimes flowed from the silver skin, jarringly discordant, strangely beautiful. The thin floating hairs quivered like harp strings, and each stroke of the creatures’ arms and legs—or fins?—added one more glissando to the weird harmony. Though he was dimly aware that this must be the danger the sailors were guarding against, Damien found himself unable to put the plugs in his ears to shut the sound out. It was too beautiful. Too ... compelling.

  Visions began to dance before his eyes. Wispy images at first, which became more solid as the strange music took hold in his brain. Slowly they became faces he knew, visions from his past. His mother. His brother. His Matriarch. His first lover. Ciani of Faraday, humor sparkling in her bright eyes. The khrast-woman Hesseth, hostile and proud. Images that had once seemed commonplace to him, but now were infused with a rare and perfect beauty. The strange sounds swam in his head, awakening his most precious memories, granting them new and vital substance within his soul.

  Come to us, the voices sang. Inhuman, but somehow comprehensible to him. Come to us, and we will give you more.

  Ciani reached out to him. Not the Ciani he had left in the rakhlands, proud and hungry and distant. The Ciani he had known and loved in Jaggonath, filtered through the veil of his longings, needing him in a way the new Ciani never would. “Come to me,” she whispered. Suspended in the air just beyond the deck, but he knew that the air would support him, too. Knew that in this place, in this time, he was no more solid than she. “Join us,” she whispered. And he felt his feet moving forward moving, his fears giving way....

  The sailor grabbed him, jerking him back. It shouldn’t have been necessary. He knew how to guard against a demon’s wiles, had been drilled in the proper defensive Workings so often they should have come as second nature. Only there are no Workings here, he realized suddenly. The sailor was helping him put the plugs in his ears, which was good; his arms so heavy
that he could hardly move them. “Come to me,” Ciani whispered. “Let me show you what I’ve found...” When the rubber bits were finally in place, the strange music faded abruptly, and along with it the dreamlike images. No Workings, therefore no defense. He wondered how Tarrant had fared. Could one demon seduce another? He glanced toward the bow, saw the Hunter standing rigid with his sword half-drawn; icicles hung from the railing before him as the coldfire glow of a recent Working faded into the night. Which meant that he had felt the music’s power. Which meant that he had feared it. Which meant that there was still enough humanity about him that some demons might consider him fair game. That was an interesting thought—and a frightening one. It certainly didn’t bode well for their mission.

  He could no longer hear the silver swimmers, but now he could see them clearly. What he had taken for arms and legs were slender tentacles, serpentine fins; they mimicked the rhythm of human movement in much the same way that a bit of flesh on the lip of a clam might mimic the movements of a fish. Their phosphorescence filled the water as they gathered close about the hull, frustrated and angry now that their pet enchantment had failed. Their faces, upraised, were anything but human, and their expressions were far from amiable.

  He felt the footsteps without hearing them, and turned instinctively; it was Ran Moskovan, with a heavy package hoisted up onto one shoulder. The sailor who had saved Damien moved to help him, and together they lowered the bulky burden and unwrapped it. Red meat, not altogether fresh; its odor drifted to Damien on the breeze and soured his stomach as he breathed it in. Hard to say what the cut was, or what animal it had come from. But given the size and the shape of it—

  “Human?” he whispered.

  Artificially deafened, the two neither heard nor answered him. Together they hefted the dead weight up to the railing—and yes, it could have been a human torso once, a body that someone had sliced and gutted and then sewn shut again—and without ceremony they shoved it over into the water. It hit with a splash, and the sea-demons gave it no chance to sink. In an instant all twenty of them converged on it, and the water became a bloody, foaming mass as they ripped it to shreds. More creatures were coming now, from the far side of the ship, and fights ensued as the newcomers demanded their share. As the ship began to pull away from the seaborn battle, Damien thought he saw silver flesh being torn as well, and a dark fluid that was not human blood stained the froth in the Desert Queen’s wake.

  They watched the fight for some minutes, until it was clear that all of the creatures were involved. Then and only then did Moskovan and his man remove their earplugs, and signal that it was safe for Damien to do the same.

  “That’ll hold them for a while,” Moskovan told him. “Maybe long enough for us to make deep water.”

  “What were they?” he demanded.

  Moskovan shrugged. “Who really knows? They call them sirens, after some singing demons on Earth. I call them a pain in the ass. Plugs are all right for a while, but sooner or later the music gets through. You want to keep your crew intact, the only way is to feed them.” He saw Damien’s expression go dark, and easily guessed at its cause. “Medical school leftovers,” he told him, nodding toward the spot where the meat had been thrown overboard. “Costs a pretty penny—and it’s damned hard to get hold of between semesters—but there’s no other way to do it. Fish’ll eat anything, but the faeborn’ll only eat humans. That’s a fact.”

  “How can they be faeborn?” he demanded. “How can anything faeborn live here?”

  “Water’s shallow in spots. Shallow enough that the power comes through—and where there’s power there’s demons. First law of Erna.” He gestured toward the plugs in Damien’s hand. “Next time you see the lights, you get those in fast. Or go inside and let my men lock you in. Understand?”

  “No problem,” he assured him. Wondering what kind of visions the little girl had seen. Wondering if Hesseth had been affected. Wishing he had the nerve to go up to where Tarrant stood—still and silent, utterly alone—and ask what visions the sirens had awakened in him. As if the Hunter would confide in him ... or in any man.

  He sighed, and turned back to study the water. Dark now, and cleansed of blood. Cleansed—temporarily—of enchantment.

  The Sea of Dreams, he mused. Apt name.

  He’d be glad as hell when they were out of it.

  The galley was narrow and low-ceilinged, which meant that for a man of Damien’s size—not to mention Tarrant’s height—it was markedly claustrophobic. But it had the amenities they needed: a place to sit, a modicum of privacy, and heat. In the far corner a wood stove with one burner drove back the worst of the sea’s chills, and the coffeepot set atop it promised a more direct application of warmth. The coffee was bad, very bad, but at least it was hot. Damien was on his third cup.

  He was seated by the stove alongside Hesseth; Gerald Tarrant stood opposite, as if disdaining their need for heat. Jenseny was at the table playing with toys the Neocount had given her: a set of playing cards with heavily decorated face cards—not Jack, Queen and King, Damien noted, but Protector, Regent, and Matria—and a small pile of twisted metal bits, each one a puzzle requiring her to join or unjoin their knotted elements. Tarrant had apparently purchased them in Esperanova for the purpose of keeping her young mind occupied, and in that way they had succeeded admirably. Damien was torn between being grateful to him for thinking of such a thing and feeling vaguely shamed that the Hunter had shown more proper paternal instinct than he had. Never mind that the Neocount had once been a family man. It was still embarrassing.

  “Well?” Damien prompted. “What next?”

  “We land in the south,” Hesseth offered. Ever the practical one. “We settle in, take our time and do some research, find out where the enemy is.”

  “And what he is,” Damien reminded her. “Not to mention what his connection is with the Iezu.”

  Tarrant said nothing.

  Quietly, setting down the coffee cup before he rose, Damien went over to where Jenseny was and sat down beside her. If he had been watching only her face, he would have thought she didn’t notice him. But he was watching her hands, and he saw them tremble.

  “Jenseny.” He said it gently, willing all the softness into his voice that it could possibly contain. Praying that it would be enough. “You said you knew something about the Prince, and about the Black Lands. We need to know about those things. Will you tell us?”

  She said nothing. Her hands, shaking, closed into fists. Her eyes shut tightly, as if in pain.

  “Kastareth.” Hesseth voiced the rakhene endearment gently as she moved to join them. “You’re part of our team now, remember? We need your help.” Her gloved hand reached out and touched Jenseny’s; a graceful gesture, delicate as a butterfly landing on a flower petal. “Please, kasa. Help us. We need you.”

  The child looked up at her, and Damien could almost feel her drawing strength from the rakh-woman’s soul. Then she looked at Damien, her dark eyes searching his face for some quality he couldn’t begin to define. Then, last of all, she turned to Tarrant. For once the sorcerer refrained from making an inflammatory comment. God bless him for it.

  “Jenseny.” Hesseth’s tone was liquid, soothing. Was there tidal power woven into those words, lending them subtle force? Damien wouldn’t have been surprised if there were. “What did your father tell you about the south? What did he see there?”

  The girl blinked heavily; something that might have been a tear glittered on her lashes. “He didn’t want to hurt anyone,” she whispered. “He thought he was doing good.”

  “We know that,” Damien said gently, and Hesseth said, “We understand.”

  “He said that they’d attack the north sooner or later, and if it didn’t happen for a long time, then there would be too many of them, and we wouldn’t be ready, and no one would be able to stop them.” She drew in a long breath, shaking. A tear shivered free at last, and wended its way down her cheek as she spoke. “He said the way things were going
they would just take over and we wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. And they would hurt us, because of how much they hated us.”

  Damien asked quietly, “And was he going to change that?”

  The dark eyes fixed on him. So very frightened, Damien thought. Of their rejection, as much as of the enemy. It pained him deeply to see her like that. It pained him deeply to see any child hurting that much.

  “He said,” she whispered slowly, “that if a few of them came north—only a few—that maybe the Matrias would get scared. Maybe they would see how much danger there was and do something about it.”

  “Controlled invasion,” Tarrant said quietly. “He must have gambled that an attack on his Protectorate would motivate the northern cities into providing a more stalwart defense. Or perhaps even an offense. Perhaps he wanted to force a true war here and now, before the south was ready for it.”

  “Either way he failed,” Damien said bitterly. “How could he know that his country was already controlled by the enemy? All they needed was a place to start the invasion proper ... and he provided that.”

  “He didn’t want to hurt anyone,” the girl whispered. Hesseth moved closer to her, and with a gentle arm drew her close. “He said he had made a good deal with the Prince, and everything was going to be all right....”

  “As it should have been,” Damien assured her. “But evidently our enemy doesn’t keep to his bargains.” He reached out gently and took one of the child’s hands in his. Her skin was damp, and cool to the touch. “We understand what your father was trying to do. And it wasn’t his fault that it didn’t work, Jenseny. We’re not blaming him for what happened.” He wished that the fae was Workable here so that he might give the words extra weight, extra power. As it was, he had only his voice for a tool, and limited physical contact. “He went south, didn’t he, Jenseny? He went and met with the Prince to arrange all this. Did he tell you about that? Did he tell you what he saw there?”