Black Sun Rising (45 page)

“Shall I send the Dark Ones after them?” The demon’s voice was something more felt than heard: a whisper of fingernails against a dry slateboard, the feel of teeth scaping on chalk.

“Worthless fools!” the sorceror spat. “What good are they? I gave them the richness of an adept’s soul to feed on and they acted like children at a banquet—dropping their food as soon as there was some new game afoot! No. This time
you’ll
do it, Calesta. First find out who they are. Where they’re going. Tell me that. Then we can make our plans.”

The One Who Binds tasted the current again. And shivered as the anticipation of conquest, like a newly-injected drug, prompted a torrent of adrenaline within.

“The adepts are
mine
,” the Master whispered.

Dusk. A
swollen, sallow sunset. Dust strewn across a barren landscape, naked hills swelling lifeless in the distance. Sharp cracks that split the air: rhythmic, like a drumbeat. Death.

Shaken, he looks over the battlefield. To the south of him black earth spouts upward suddenly, accompanied by the thunderclap of explosives. He tries to Work his sight, to See what the currents are like here
—
the place is strange, unfamiliar to him, maybe the patterns of the fae need to be interpreted before they can be Worked
—
but he sees no fae, he Works no vision, there are only the dead and the dying about him. Nothing that speaks to him of power
—
or hope.

With effort, he forces himself to his feet again, and staggers over to the next body. A man, with his left hand blown off. Thousands of small wounds pepper his body, sharp metal shards still lodged in some of them. He touches the tender flesh and wills all the power to come and serve him, using all the skill that the years have given him. He focuses on his own hunger to Work and the need to Heal—the desperate need to Heal
—
and the faith that has sustained him past pain, past death, into realms where only the holy may enter
—

And nothing responds. Absolutely nothing. The planet is dead, unresponsive to his will. He feels the first cold bite of despair, then, a kind of fear he’s never experienced before. Danger he can deal with, death he’s confronted on least a dozen occasions, but there’s never been anything like this before
—
never such absolute helplessness in the face of human suffering, such sudden awareness that his will doesn’t matter, he doesn’t matter, he has no more power to affect the patterns of fate than the dismembered limbs on this field, or the cooling blood that turns the dry earth to mud under his feet.

For the first time in his life, he knows the rank taste of terror. Not the quantifiable fear of assessed risk, but the unbounded horror of total immersion in the unknown. Guns fire once more in the distance, and for the first time since coming here he realizes why they can function with such regularity. Man’s will has no power here
—
not to kill and not to heal, not to alter the world and not to adapt to it. The whole of this world is dead to man, dead to his dreams, impassive to his needs and his pleas and even his fears. The concept is awesome, terrifying. He feels himself falling to his knees, muttering a key as he tries once more to Work the fae, to find some point of stability in this alien universe. Anything. But there is no response. No fae that he might use, to bind his will to the rest of the universe. The world is closing in around him, like a dead hand closing about his flesh. The claustrophobia of total despair chokes him. He cannot breathe. He
—

Woke. Gasping for breath, shivering. Cold sweat beaded his forehead, and his heart pounded like that distantly remembered gunfire. It took him a moment to remember where he was. Another long, painful moment to realize what had happened.

“Zen?” His voice was hoarse. “Cee?”

There was no response. He looked about, saw their bedrolls neatly bundled by the cavern’s entrance. There was little light, which meant the sun was setting—had set?—which meant, in turn, that he had slept for hours. Too many hours. Despite the fact that he had retired from his last watch well before noon, he felt as though he had never closed his eyes. As though he had spent his daylight hours in constant battle, his muscles and his soul still aching from the effort.

He forced himself to his feet and stood with one hand against the cavern wall until the worst of the shaking subsided and he felt he could walk again. As the Hunter had instructed, he had told Ciani and Zen that he should be allowed to sleep until he awakened naturally. He had never thought that it would take so long.

They must be worried as hell
. How much should he tell them of what had passed between the Hunter and himself? On the one hand, it would upset them to no purpose—and on the other, if some kind of permanent channel had been established, didn’t they have the right to know? His head swam with trying to decide.

His will gripping his unsteady legs like a vice, he sought the cavern’s entrance. There, sheltered beneath a lip of granite, Gerald Tarrant sat—eyes shut, utterly relaxed, breathing steadily in contentment. From further down on the beach (if
beach
it could be called) a tiny cookfire flickered, a dark figure huddled over it. Ciani, he guessed. Senzei would be on watch.

He looked down at the Hunter, found that the man’s obvious contentment grated on his nerves more than all his nightmares combined. “I hope you’re satisfied,” he whispered hoarsely.

“It was adequate.” Tarrant turned to him, pale eyes brimming with languid malevolence. Damien was reminded of a sated predator, lazily contemplating his prey. “You seem surprised, priest. That I could inspire such fear in you? If so, you fail to give yourself credit. That was my seventh attempt, and by far the most complex. My victims are usually more ... vulnerable.” Then his voice dropped to a whisper and he added, with soft intensity, “That was Earth, you know.”

“Your vision of it.”

“It’s the dream you serve. A future the Church hopes to make possible. A land in which the fae has no power, to alter fate or man ... how do you like the taste of it, priest? The special savor of Terran impotence.”

“They got to the stars,” he retorted. “In less than twelve centuries, our Terran ancestors went from barbarism to galactic colonization. And what have we done in that much time? Settled two continents on a single planet—and barely that. And you dare to ask me if it’s worth a price to regain our lost heritage? Any price, Hunter.
Anything
.”

“Your faith is strong,” he mused.

“Damned right. Your legacy, Neocount. Your dream. Some of us were foolish enough to stick with it. Now, are you feeling better, or was all that effort wasted?”

“It wasn’t wasted,” the Hunter said softly. “Given three more nights and total control over your environment I could have managed better ... but for what it was, it served well enough.”

“You can Work now?”

“If the currents allow. The fae was fairly weak as I recall—or at least it seemed so when we landed. I wasn’t in the best of shape then.”

“But you’re all right now.”

“Yes.” For a moment he seemed to hesitate. Searching for the right words? How many centuries had it been, since he had last been indebted to a mere human being?

“Thank you,” he whispered at last. The words clearly came hard to him. “I am ... very grateful.”

Somehow, Damien managed to shrug.

“All in a day’s work,” he assured him.

The watcher hadn’t come back. That was the first piece of news that greeted them when they made their way down from their protective niche in the cliff wall. Whatever manner of creature had watched them as they made their way to shore, it had not returned. Damien wished he could read something optimistic into that, but it was still too early to judge. And optimism could be dangerous, when it was founded on mere guesswork.

While they ate—a haphazard stew of dried rations and the meat of some reptilian creature Senzei had managed to shoot during his first watch—Gerald Tarrant withdrew, ostensibly to test the currents. When he returned to them, his expression was grim. Yes, he said, the earth-fae was sparse here, and the currents that governed its motion weak and insubstantial. Which made no sense, he told them. No sense at all. He seemed almost angry, as though the fae were somehow consciously plotting to frustrate him. When Senzei started to question him further, he went wordlessly to where their packs were stored and withdrew a thick tube of maps from among his own possessions. The heavy vellum sheets had come through undamaged, rolled tightly inside waterproof, wax-sealed containers.

“Here,” he said, and he unrolled one of the precious maps before them. Firelight flickered on its surface as he weighted its corners down with stones. “See for yourselves.”

The map—undeniably ancient, certainly from the time before the Canopy had been raised—depicted local currents in the region they were now traversing. They could see rich currents of earth-fae flowing along the fault lines, eddies of power that swirled about the foothills of the Worldsend Mountains and the eastern range, just as it should be. Tarrant stared at the maps, as though trying to reconcile them with the reality he himself had observed, and at last shook his head in frustration.

“The fae here is weaker than it should be,” he said finally. “There’s no natural law I know of that would account for its being so—but it is. Unquestionably. Which means that all our Workings—including my own—will be that much less effective.”

“What about our enemy?” Senzei asked.

“Probably the same for him. But I wouldn’t bet my survival on that,” he warned.

“You don’t think this could have occurred naturally?”

“The earth-fae is, and always has been, a predictable, ordered force. Faithful to its own laws of motion and power which, when understood, can be manipulated. Or have you forgotten your Prophet’s teachings?” he asked dryly.

“Excuse me for challenging your canon.”

His pale eyes glittered with amusement.

“What about its reactive power?” Ciani asked him. “That’s not predictable, is it?”

He hesitated—as if a dry, mocking answer was ready upon his lips, about to be launched into their company. Then he swallowed that, with effort, and said simply, “It is. Utterly predictable. The complication with man’s Working it is that there are too many levels to human consciousness, and the earth-fae doesn’t distinguish between them. If man’s fears resound louder than his prayers, the former is what will manifest results. The fault lies within ourselves, lady—not with the fae.” He looked down at the ground beside him and touched slender finger to it: observing the current, Damien decided. Using his adept’s sight to determine its strength. “With every new seismic event, earth-fae rises to the surface of the planet. Eventually it congregates, in pools and eddies and currents that we can map. Except that here those aren’t what they should be. Not at all.” He paused, and looked at each of them in turn—studying them for reaction? “To my mind, that hints at outside interference.”