Was she overreacting?
Was
she being unreasonable? Gresham had said it so often that now she was beginning to doubt herself. Did she really have any concrete evidence that the risk to her was greater than that facing other women—which is to say, that a female should always be careful and keep moving, but most survived the night?
As she passed by the silversmith’s shop she stopped, long enough to catch sight of her reflection in the smooth glass storefront. Thick hair, onyx-black; smooth white skin, now flushed pink from the cold; lashes as thick as velvet, framing eyes nearly as dark. She was delicate and lovely, as a flower is lovely, and fragile as a porcelain doll. It was a face mortal women envied, men would die for, and one—neither man nor mortal, but an evil thing, Erna’s darkness made incarnate—would destroy, with relish.
Shivering, she hurried onward. The faster she went, the sooner she would get home. In the inner streets of Jaggonath there were still people about, crowds enough that she could imagine herself lost among them. But they thinned as she left the commercial districts, leaving her feeling naked in the night. She had to keep moving. Her parents must be worried sick by now—and with good reason. She looked about herself nervously, noting the abandoned streets of Jaggonath’s western district, the tiny houses set farther and farther apart. The road had turned to mud beneath her feet, cold enough to chill her through the soles of her shoes but not yet frozen enough to be solid; her feet made rythmic sucking noises, painfully conspicuous, as she walked. She felt like a walking target.
The Hunter. That was what they called him. She wondered what he was, what he had once been. A man? That was what the tavern girls whispered, between giggles and mugs of warm beer, in the safety of their well-lit workplace. Once a man, they said, and now something else. But with a man’s lust still, corrupted though it might be. Why else were all his victims female, young, and inevitably attractive? Why would he have such a marked taste for beauty—and for delicate beauty, most of all—if some sort of male hunger didn’t still cling to his soul?
Stop it!
she commanded herself. She shook her head rapidly, as if that could cast out the unwanted thoughts. The fear.
Don’t!
She would make it home all right, and everybody would be very relieved, and that was that. Her parents would be furious at Gresham for keeping her after dark and they would write him an angry letter, which he would promptly ignore—and then it would be over. Forever. No more than a memory. And she could say to her children that yes, she had been out after dark, and they would ask her what it was like, and she would tell them. A fireside story like any other. Right?
But you are what he wants,
a voice whispered inside her.
Exactly. You are what he sends his minions into Jaggonath to find.
“Damn you!” she cried suddenly—meaning her parents, her fears, the night itself. And her own looks, for that matter. Gods above, what might her life have been like if she were unattractive, or merely plain, or even of a sturdier type than she was? Might she have been allowed to play outside after sunset, as some other children were? Might she have grown accustomed to the night, ranking its terrors alongside other childhood fears, dealing with them simply and rationally?
Come home on time,
her parents would have cautioned.
Don’t talk to strangers. Raise up a ward if some demon appears.
And then they would have let her go out. Gods of Ema, what freedom, what freedom!
She reached up to wipe a tear, half frozen, from her cheek, and then stopped walking in order to dislodge a bit of mud that had oozed its way into her shoe. And as she did so, she became intensely aware of the silence that surrounded her. No other footsteps sounded in the night, though the road on all sides of her had been heavily trod. No birds sang, no insects chittered, no children cried in the distance. Nothing. It was as if the whole world had died, suddenly—as if she were the only creature left on Erna, and this section of road the last spot where life might exist, in the whole of creation.
Then a sound behind her made her start suddenly. Almost silent, a mere hint of movement, but set against the night’s backdrop of utter soundlessness it had the power of a scream. She whirled about, staring back the way she had come.
At a man.
“Forgive me.” His voice was smooth, his carriage elegant. He bowed, soft brown hair catching the moonlight as he moved. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“You didn’t,” she lied. Another bit of mud was trickling coldly into her shoe, but she didn’t want to take her eyes from him to dislodge it; she shifted her weight a bit, and almost fell as a result. Gods, was she that unsteady? She didn’t dare look as afraid as she felt. The Hunter was attracted to fear. “It just seemed so ... quiet.”
“The night can be like that.” He walked toward her slowly, casually, his languid grace mesmeric in the moonlight. A tall man, lean, with delicate features, arresting eyes. Unadorned, save for a thin gold band that held back his hair from his face, the latter cut shoulder-length in a style several years out of date. His eyes were pale gray flecked with silver, and in the moonlight they flashed like diamonds. She sensed a cold amusement lurking just beneath his surface. “Forgive me,” he repeated, “but a young woman out alone? It seemed unusual. Are you all right?”
It occurred to her that she hadn’t heard him approach, that in the midst of all this sticky mud she should have had some warning— but then his eyes caught hers, held hers, and suddenly she couldn’t remember why that bothered her.
“Yes,” she stammered. “That is—I think so.” She felt breathless, as if she had been running instead of walking. She tried to step back, but her body wouldn’t obey. What kind of Working had he used to bind her?
But though he came close—too close—it was only to touch her chin with the tip of a well-manicured finger, turning her face up toward him. “So fragile,” he murmured. “So fine. And alone in the night. Not wise. Would you like an escort?”
She whispered it. “Please.”
He offered his arm. After a moment, she took it. An antiquated gesture, straight out of the Revival period. Her hand shook slightly as it came to rest on the wool of his sleeve. No warmth came from the arm beneath, or any other part of him; he was cold—he radiated cold—like the night itself. Just as she, despite her best intentions, radiated fear.
Gods above,
she prayed,
just get me home. I’ll be more careful in the future, I swear it. Just get me home tonight.
It seemed to her he smiled. “You’re afraid, child.”
She didn’t dare respond.
Just let me get through tonight. Please.
“Of what? The darkness? The night itself?”
She knew she shouldn’t speak of such things, but she couldn’t hold back; his voice compelled response. “The creatures that hunt in it,” she whispered.
“Ah.” He laughed softly. “And for good reason. They do value your kind, child, that feed on the living. But these—” and he touched the wards embroidered on her sleeve, the warding clasps that held back her hair “—don’t they bind enough fae to guard you?”
Enough to keep away demons
, she thought. Or so it should have been. But now, suddenly, she wasn’t sure.
He put his hand beneath her chin, turning her gently to face him. Where his fingers touched her flesh there was cold, but not merely a human chill; it burned her, as a spark of fire might, and left her skin tingling as it faded. She felt strangely disassociated from the world around her, as if all of it was a dream. All of it except for him.
“Do I read you correctly?” he asked. “Have you never seen the night before?”
“It’s dangerous,” she whispered.
“And very beautiful.”
His eyes were pools of silver, molten, that drew her in. She shivered. “My parents thought it best.”
“Never been outside, when sun and Core had set. Never! I wasn’t aware the fear had reached such an extreme here. Even now ... you don’t look. You won’t see.”
“See what?” she managed.
“The night. The beauty of it. The
power.
The so-called dark fae, a force so fragile that even the moonlight weakens it—and so strong in the darkness that death itself falls back before it. The tides of night, each with its own color and music. An entire world, child!—filled with things that can’t exist when the light in the heavens is too strong.”
“Things which the sun destroys.”
He smiled, but his eyes remained cold. “Just so.”
“I’ve never—been allowed.”
“Then look now,” he whispered. “And
see.”
She did—in his eyes, which had gone from pale gray to black, and from black to dizzying emptiness. Stars swirled about her, in a dance so complex that no human science could have explained it—but she felt the rhythms of it echo in her soul, in the pattern of mud beneath her feet, in the agitated pounding of her heart. All the same dance, earth and stars alike.
This is Earth science,
she thought with wonder.
The Old Knowledge
. Tendrils of fae seeped from the darkness to wind themselves about her, delicate strands of velvet purple that were drawn to her warmth like moths to flame. She shivered as they brushed against her, sensing the wild power within them. All about her the land was alive, with a thousand dark hues that the night had made its own: fragile fae, as he had said, nearly invisible in the moonlight—but strong in the shadows, and hauntingly beautiful. She tried to move toward it, to come closer to a tangle of those delicate, almost unseeable threads, but his hand on her arm stopped her, and a single word bound her.
Dangerous,
he cautioned; language without sound. For you.
“Yes,” she whispered. “But oh, please....”
Music filled the cool night air, and she shut her eyes in order to savor it. A music unlike any other she had ever heard, delicate as the fae itself, formless as the night that bound it. Jeweled notes that entered her not through her ears, as human music might, but through her hair and her skin and even her clothing; music that she took into her lungs with every breath, breathing out her own silver notes to add to their harmony.
Is this what the night is?
she wondered.
Truly?
She felt, rather than saw, a faint smile cross his face. “For those who know how to look.”
I want to stay here.
He laughed, softly.
You can’t.
Why?
she demanded.
Child of the sunlight! Heir to life and all that it implies. There’s beauty in that world, too, although of a cruder sort. Are you really ready to give all that up? To give up the light? Forever?
The darkness withdrew into two obsidian pinpoints, surrounded by fields of cracked ice. His eyes. The dark fae was alive in there, too, and a music that was far more ominous—and darkly seductive. She nearly cried out, for wanting it.
“Quiet, child.” His voice was nearly human again. “The cost of that’s too high, for you. But I know the temptation well.”
“It’s gone....”
“It’ll never be gone for you. Not entirely. Look.”
And though the night was dark again, and silent, she was aware of something more. A tremor of deepest purple, at the edges of her vision. Faint echoes of a music that came and went with the breeze. “So beautiful....”
“You avoided it.”
“I was afraid.”
“Of the darkness? Of its creatures? Such beings aren’t kept at bay by a simple closed door, child, or by lamplight. If they want to know of you, they do, and if they want to have you, they certainly will. Your charmed wards are enough to keep lesser demons at bay, and against the greater ones mere lamplight and human company won’t help you at all. So what’s the point in locking yourself away from half the wonders of the world?”
“None,” she breathed, and she knew it to be the truth.
He took her arm and applied gentle pressure, forward. It took her a moment to realize what he meant by it, and even then the gesture seemed strange. Too human, for this extrahuman night. In silence she let him walk her toward her home, his footsteps utterly silent beside her own. What else did she expect? All about them shadows danced, alien shapes given life by the moonlight. She shivered with pleasure, watching them. Was this hers forever now, this marvelous vision? Would it stay when he was gone—his gift to her, in this unearthly night?
At last, eons later, they came to the last rise before her house. And stood on it, silently, gazing upon the all-too-human abode. There, in the light, the music would fade. The fae would be gone. Bright sanity, in all its dull glory, would reign supreme.
His nostrils flared as he studied the small house, as if testing the breeze that came from it. “They’re afraid,” he observed.
“They expected me home before dark.”
“They had good reason to fear.” He said it quietly, but she sensed the threat behind his words. “You know that.”
She looked into his eyes and saw in them such a mixture of coldness and power that she turned away, trembling.
It was worth it,
she thought.
Worth it to see the night like that. To have such vision, if only once.
Then the touch of his finger, cold against her skin, brought her back to face him.
“I won’t hurt you,” he promised. And a hint of a smile crossed his face—as if his own benevolence amused him. “As for what you do to yourself, for having known me ... that’s in your own hands. Now, I think, you’d better go home.”
She stepped back, suddenly uncertain. Dazed, as the fae that had bound her will dissolved into the night. He laughed softly, a sound that was disconcertingly intimate; she sensed a glimmer of darkness behind it, and for a moment she could see all too clearly what was in his eyes. Black fae, utterly lightless. A silence that drank in all music. An unearthly chill, that hungered to consume living heat.
She took a step backward in sudden panic, felt the wet grass bunch beneath her feet.