Black Sun Rising (9 page)

Every few earthquakes some tormented soul took that chance, and added his dying scream to the siren’s din. Ciani couldn’t understand why—but Senzei could, all too well. He understood the hunger that consumed such people, the need that coursed through them like blood, until every living cell was saturated with it.
Desire.
For the one thing on Erna that Senzei might never have. The one precious thing that Nature had denied him.

In the other room another bit of crystal fell, and shattered noisily against the floor.

He wept.

Not until the sunlight was wholly gone and the worst of the tremors had subsided—the immediate tremors, at any rate—did the stranger come up out of his subterranean shelter. The fae still vibrated with tectonic echoes; it was the work of mere moments to read them, determine their origin, and speculate upon the implications.

The Forest will shake,
he decided.
Soon. Too big a seismic gap there to ignore. And the rakhlands....
But there was no way to know that, for sure. No news had come out of the rakhlands for generations, of earthquakes or lack of them—or anything else, for that matter. He could do no more then speculate that the plate boundaries there would be stressed past endurance ... but he had speculated that many times before, with no way of ever confirming his hypothesis. In a world where Nature’s law was not
absolute,
but rather
reactive,
one could never be certain.

Then he squatted down close to the earth and touched one gloved finger to its surface. Watching the earth-fae as it flowed about that obstacle, tasting its tenor through the contact.

The current had changed.

For a moment he simply watched it, aware that he might have erred. Then he sat back on his heels and looked off into the distance, watching the flow of his taint upon the current. And yes, it was different. A minute change, but it was noticeable.

He watched it for a moment more, then corrected himself:
Improbable. But true.
Any bit of the fae contaminated by his person
should
have scurried off toward the Forest, subject to that whirlpool of malignant power. It took effort for him not to travel there himself, not to unconsciously prefer that direction every time he made a decision to move. That the taint of his personal malevolence was being channeled elsewhere meant that some new factor was involved. A Working or a being—more likely the latter—headed in this direction. Focused upon Jaggonath in both its malevolence and its hunger.

It would have to be very focused, to come here against the current. And nasty as hell, to have the effect it did.

The stranger laughed, softly.

If not for the siren—
the damned warning the damned
, he thought—Jaggonath’s Patriarch might never have known there was an earthquake. That, and the sloshing of tee over the side of his cup. He picked up the delicate porcelain piece and sipped it thoughtfully. While the siren screamed. And some damned fool of a sorceror screamed, too—but that served him right. There was no free ride in this world, least of all with the fae. It was time they learned that, all of them.

It occurred to him briefly that he should have warned his visitor about that particular danger. Coming from the westlands, where quakes were less frequent and far less severe, he might not be aware of it. Might even try to harness that surging flow, to bend it to his sorcerous will.

Then there would be justice
, he mused.
And I would be free of this burden. But for how long? They would just send someone else. And I would have to start all over again.

He put his cup down carefully, watched for a moment to see that it didn’t slide, and then walked to the window. The floor trembled beneath his feet, and a low rumbling sound filled the air, but except for that there was little evidence of any disturbance. There never was, in Jaggonath’s great cathedral. The faith of thousands, year after year, had reinforced the ancient stonework with more power than any sorceror could have harnessed. No wards guarded its doorways, no demonic fire would flash from its pinnacles and spires at the peak of seismic activity—but the building would stand, nonetheless. And those thousands of people who had gathered in Jaggonath’s central plaza would see it stand, an island of calm in a city gone mad. And a precious few would wander through the cathedral’s doors, and devote their lives to the faith that had made it possible.

The whole planet could be like this
, he thought.
Will be like this, one day.

He had to believe that. Had to maintain that belief, though sometimes his ministry seemed about to be swallowed up by the great maw of Erna’s cynicism. Had to remember, always, that the dream which he served would not be fulfilled in one lifetime, or five, or even a dozen. The damage which man had done here was too great to be corrected in a single generation ... and it was still going on. Even now the wild fae, loosed in hideous quantity by the earthquake, would be gravitating toward the minds that could manifest it. A child’s brain, dreaming of monsters. A malicious adult, envisioning vengeance. A thousand and one hates and fears and paranoid visualizations, plucked from the human mind, that would all be given flesh before morning. His stomach turned at the thought. What could he say that would make them understand, that every day the odds against man’s survival increased geometrically? A single man could dream into being a
thousand
such monsters in a lifetime—and all those things would feed on man, because he was their source. Could any one sorceror’s service, no matter how well-intended, compensate for such numbers?

He felt tired. He felt old. He was becoming aware, for the first time in his life, of a hope that had lived in him since his first moments in the Church: a desperate hope that the change would come
now,
in his lifetime. Not all of it—that was too much to ask for—but enough that he could see it started. Enough that he could know he had made a difference. To live as he had, to serve without question, then to die without knowing if there was a point to any of it ... his hands clenched at his sides as he looked out over the blazing city. He wished there were truly no other choice. He wished the fae could
not
be used to maintain youth, and thus to prolong life. He wished he didn’t have to face that terrible decision every minute of his life: commitment to his faith versus the chance to court the fae, extend his life, and see what effect that faith would have upon future generations. Death itself was not nearly so daunting as the prospect of dying in ignorance.

Thus the Prophet was tempted,
he thought darkly.

As for that blustering fool of a priest ... his stomach tightened in anger at the thought of him. How easy it was, for him and his kind! How seemingly effortless, to take a piece of sharpened steel from the armory and simply go hack up the product of man’s indulgence.
This is my faith,
such a man could say, pointing to a heap of dismembered vampire-kin.
Here is my service to God
. An easier faith than the one the Patriarch had embraced, for sure. A faith that was continually reinforced by the adrenaline rush of violence, the thrill of daring. A faith that could be reckoned in numbers:
Ghouls killed. Demons dispatched. Converts made.
So that when his time of reckoning came such a man might say: This is how the world was bettered by my presence. Not through moral influence, or by teaching, but in these human nightmares which I have dispatched.

And I envy him that,
the Patriarch thought bitterly.

When the
Neoqueen Matilla
finally pulled into harbor, it took two men to hold Yiles Jarrom back long enough for it to dock. And strong men, at that.

“Vulkin‘ assholes!” he muttered—with venom enough that the two men backed off a bit, though they still held onto him. “I’ll teach’em what it means, to break contract with me!”

The two men—dockhands, recruited by the Port Authority in order to avoid outright murder on the piers—held tightly to his arms, while the shallow-hulled shipping vessel that was the subject of his invectives settled itself into position. A bevy of dockworkers moved in quickly and made her fast in record time. And then the gangplank was set in place and the ship’s first mate, a young and rather lanky man, trekked the length of the pier toward where they stood. And the men let Jarrom go, which was good for them. Because in another few minutes he would surely have spouted fire and burned his way free of them, if they’d continued to hold onto him.

“Vulkin‘ bastards!” His face was red with rage, his shaking hands clenched into fists. “Vulkin’ incompetants! Where you been, with my cargo? Where’s your coward-ass captain, who lied to make contract?”

The first mate didn’t look directly at him, but at his own feet. “Give me a minute, sir, and I’ll try to explain—”

Jarrom snorted derisively. “Give you a minute? I’ll give you my fist! I don’t have to waste my precious time talking to a lackey! Where’s your captain, boy? Or that damned best-eye-in-the-eastrealm pilot he’s so vulkin‘ proud of? Bring those men out, and then we’ll talk!” When the young man didn’t answer him immediately, he added, “Two of Prima’s months, boy—that’s how long he said it would take. Two lesser months, come hell or white water or smashers from Novatlantis. And how long has it been, I ask you? A good three shortmonths, going on four—and my buyers threatening to blow my whole business to hell—so where the vulk have you
been?”

In a carefully measured voice, the young man said, “It’s a dangerous route, Mer Jarrom. You know that. Orrin’s a damned good captain, and Jafe was as good a pilot as Erna’s ever seen. It’s still a nightmare of a trip, and you knew that when you hired us. Knew we might not make it at all, contract or no contract.” His voice faded away to a whisper. “Almost didn’t. Gods help us.”

“That’s through no fault of mine—eh? No big storms this way, no smashers out of the east, a small quake down south but that’d barely shake the waters, so what—” It struck him suddenly what the first mate had said. “What the hell do you mean,
was?
You lose a pilot, boy? Is that your excuse? Jafe Saccharat die on route?”

The first mate raised his head, and met Jarrom’s eyes at last. And Jarrom nearly took a step backward from the force of that gaze. He was a strong man, to be sure, and brave in the way that the strong can afford to be brave; he had seen his share of dockside violence and come out on top of most of it, had even wrestled a succubus once and not had his life sucked out in the process—which was as close to victory as anyone ever got with that kind. But though none of those situations had ever made him really afraid, the look in the boy’s eyes was enough to make his blood run cold. Bloodshot orbs stared out from a pale, hollowed face, underscored by purple crescents dark enough that they might have been bruises ... but that wasn’t what shook him up so. A dozen men a day looked that bad, dockside, and Jarrom neither pitied nor feared them. No. It was something else that took him off guard, which he’d never seen before, not in man or demonling, or even dockhand. Not something in the first mate’s eyes, exactly. Perhaps ... something absent?