Crown of Shadows (4 page)

“Shit,” Damien muttered. “Can’t send that.” He read the paragraph over again, then balled it up in his fist and threw it aside. It landed in a pile of similar dis cardings, now littering the floor of his cabin. He lowered his head to his hands and tried to think.

“Hell.” He stared at the last sentence for a long minute, then scratched it out with a sigh. “Can’t tell him that, can I?”

He sat back, trying not to think of those days. The fear. The suspicion. If he had known then what he knew now—that Tarrant had sold them out in order to get them closer to the enemy, close enough to strike—would it have made a difference? The enemy had offered Gerald Tarrant true immortality. Could Damien have ever felt confident that the Hunter would refuse it?

Probably not,
he reflected. Who could have foreseen that in the end the Hunter’s vanity would prove more powerful than his lust for immortality? That the thought of seeing his proudest creation destroyed was as abhorrent to him as seeing his family line extinguished? Both were his children, were they not? The last remains of his life-blood on Erna. Was it any wonder that he loved the Church as much as he hated it, and had crafted a false treachery to entrap the man who stood poised to destroy it?

Immortality.
Life as a god, unthreatened by any fear of divine retribution. Damien could never look at the Hunter again without remembering that choice. He could never again pretend that he understood Gerald Tarrant, or the balance of forces which moved him. Not after that.

With a sigh he took up his pen again, and started to write.

“Another report-in-absence?”

It was Tarrant, standing in the doorway of his cabin. Damien glared at him, a look meant to communicate that he needed no reminder about his last letter to the Patriarch, or the trouble it might get him into. He had sent it as a substitute for a personal audience, and when the Holy Father finally got hold of him, there was going to be hell to pay for that.

“Not this time,” he said shortly. He finished the letter, signed it quickly, and put it aside. There was no denying that he deserved the Patriarch’s wrath. The only question was how long it would last, and what form it would take. And whether or not the Holy Father would understand that their entire world was at risk now, and personal venom must take second place to martial expediency if the Church was to triumph.

“You’re delivering it yourself, then?”

“No real alternative, is there?” There was an edge to his voice that he couldn’t disguise. “I have to go back. You know that.”

Go home,
the demon Karril had urged.
Go home as soon as you can. If you stay away, if you give Calesta time to work ... then the world you return to may not be the same as the one you left.

That was over a year ago. What if it was too late already?

“You’re afraid,” the Hunter mused.

Anger welled up inside him suddenly, a rage that was ten months in the making. “Damn right!” he spat. “And there you are right on schedule to revel in it.” The pent-up fury of a whole voyage was pouring out of him, and he had no way to stop it. “What makes you better than this Iezu we’re fighting? What makes you more worthy of life than he is? I can’t seem to remember just now.”

If his challenge angered the Hunter—or awakened any other emotion within him—the man damn well didn’t show it. “Random invective doesn’t suit you, Vryce.” His tone was cool, maddeningly controlled. “If the girl’s death bothers you that much, then say so.”

He drew in a sharp breath. “You
killed
her.”

“I offered her a bargain which she chose to accept. It was her own choice, from start to finish. You seem to forget that. I never interfered with her freedom of will, or made any attempt to coerce her into service. You know that. She knew what my needs were and she agreed to meet them. If she had survived this trip, she would have been well rewarded for her efforts. The fact that she chose to end our contract—”

“To kill herself! To take her own life! Those are the words,” he choked out, “—not some vapid euphemism. You killed that girl as surely as if you cut her throat with your own hands.
You.”

“She knew what I was,” he said quietly. “As do you. And I suggest you come to terms with that knowledge before we reach port, Reverend Vryce. Our enemy is dangerous enough as it is; if we allow ourselves to be divided, what chance do we have to defeat him?”

He started to respond—and then forced the anger back, forced it out of his mind. Along with the hatred. Along with the disgust. Because Tarrant was right, damn him. They couldn’t afford to be divided. Not now.

“All right,” he muttered. “So what chance
do
we have? Tell me that.”

His only answer was silence. The silver eyes were mirrors that reflected Damien’s own misgivings back at him.
So little chance,
they seemed to say.
Why measure it in words?
At last the priest turned away, and he cursed softly under his breath.

“I have never lied to you,” the Hunter said.

“No.” He drew in a deep breath, and tried to relax his hands; they had curled into fists of their own volition. “No, you never have.” After a small eternity he managed to add, “Will you be all right?”

It took Tarrant a minute to realize what he was asking. “You mean without the girl.”

He nodded stiffly.

“Ah.” A pause. “I had hoped she’d last longer—”

“Just answer the question,” he snapped.

“Will I live to see port? Yes. Will I be in prime condition to rejoin battle with the enemy when we get there? Not if I go hungry for a month, Reverend Vryce.” He paused. “But you knew that when you asked, didn’t you?”

He shut his eyes and exhaled noisily. “Yeah. I knew.”

“Shall I take that as an offer?”

He remembered their voyage to the east, and the nightmares that Tarrant had placed in his mind so that he might harvest Damien’s fear for nourishment. It was not an experience the priest was anxious to repeat, but what was the alternative? Let Tarrant become so weakened by hunger that when they arrived in Faraday he was all but useless? Encourage him to feed on the rest of the crew?

With a heavy sigh Damien nodded, wincing. “Yeah,” he muttered. “It’s an offer. Whatever you need—”

“And no more than that,” the Neocount finished smoothly. “I understand.”

God. Those dreams. A month of them and a man could go mad. Could the Hunter perhaps drink his blood instead? There was enough of the vampire still in the man that sometimes that was possible. Was temporary physical weakness preferable to mental torture?

He looked up at the Hunter again and tried to gauge the hunger in those pale, cold eyes. It amazed him sometimes how human the man could appear, when the hunger inside him was anything but.

“No dreams of the Patriarch,” he told him. “Nor of the Church. Not in any form or manner. Agreed?”

A faint smile tightened the corners of Tarrant’s lips; the pale eyes sparkled. “No dreams of the Patriarch,” he agreed. “Not of my devising, anyway.”

“Yeah.” He turned away, refusing to look at Tarrant. Or at the letter. “I can manage those nightmares on my own, can’t I?”

Faraday: jewel of the east, heart of all commerce, haven par excellence for all the merchant ships that plied the eastern waters. Unlike the other great ports of Erna this city had not relied upon Nature for its security, but had crafted its own safety with walls and locks and measures and men, creating a complex alarm system which rendered the great harbor as safe as any coastal region could ever be.

Faraday: devastated.

They saw it from a distance at first, then assessed it in greater detail as they approached. The great sea wall which towered thirty feet above the water’s surface, protecting the harbor beyond, was now ragged along its top. There were broken spars that jutted out from its surface, wooden shards driven deep between the rocks as a memorial to whatever ship the sea had caught up and heaved against its unyielding surface. Mast-bits floated in a muddy sea, rail-bits, scraps of sail. Something that might have been a chunk of flesh was caught up in their wake, but the scavenger fish had so worried it that there was too little left to identify.