At last one of the boys stepped forward, and the small crowd hushed. His face was fierce behind the war paint, and his skinny chest had been bared to the wind. He faced the statue and raised up his weapon—a bow—and then announced:
“My name is Piter. Five days ago I led a band down to the southern cities. We found a girl chained up by the Holies, and we set her free. We had to kill five men to do it. I want to thank you for helping us sneak up on them, because they were much bigger than we were and I don’t think we could have killed them without your help.” He reached out to the crowd, toward one small girl in particular. She was wearing a cotton shift, now torn and muddied, and her face was streaked with tears. “This is the girl,” he announced, as she made her way to the statue. “Her name is Bethie.” When she came up beside him, he indicated that she should lay her hands upon the statue. It was hard for her to reach, given the pile of stolen goods that surrounded it, but at last she did so. When he nodded that she could let go, she did so, and regained her balance.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“His name is Calesta.”
“Thank you, Calesta.”
The two of them returned to the circle. Another girl stepped out. She was tall and slender and carried a long spear, which she flourished as she spoke.
“My name is Merri. I went into the Protectorates, and found a baby being exposed. I know there were guards in those woods, but none of them saw me, and I took the baby. I want to thank you for your protection, and also for helping me find the baby. She can’t thank you yet, so I guess I have to do it for both of us.” She reached out and touched the black statue, slender fingers splayed across its icy flesh. It seemed to Damien that she trembled for an instant as contact was made, but he couldn’t be sure. He was too busy struggling with his bonds to concentrate on such tiny details.
Four other children followed. They, too, had tales to tell, but the endings were not nearly as triumphant. Two had discovered exposed infants too late to save them. One had gone to free a child chained by the Holies, but there were too many men guarding the girl for even a surprise attack; he had retreated. One brave girl had even ventured as far as the northern cities, but when the forest gave way to farmlands she had lost her nerve and come home again. All of them thanked Calesta for keeping them safe from their enemies. All of them touched the black statue as well, and it seemed to Damien that more than one of them flinched as they did so. What did they expect might happen?
Religious sacrifices. Adepts left to die. No wonder there’s power here
.
No wonder it’s so chaotic
. A tribe of rejected children, dedicated to rescuing other children from the abuses of eastern society. It made sense in a way. But why did it seem so unwholesome? Why did some of the children seem so ... well, so
odd
, as they approached the base of the great statue? Why was it that Damien couldn’t seem to focus on some of them?
He worked a loop of rope over one hand and paused to draw a deep breath. Once you had that much slack it was only a matter of time. He wanted to be free so badly he could taste it.
The children had begun to move now. All but one began to circle about the statue, beating their feet upon the earth. Some closed their eyes as they moved, lost in the rhythm of it. Some began to chant tunelessly, their voices rising and falling with the stamping of feet.
One boy faced the statue. He raised up his hands and addressed the black figure, one hand clasped about a crude stone ax. “You gave us safety,” he told it. His voice, though loud enough, barely carried over the noise that surrounded him. “We thank you with sacrifice. Tell us who you want. Tell us what to do.” Then he, too, joined the circling crowd. The children were moving faster and faster, gradually working themselves up to a frenzy. The chanting had become shouting, and children thrust at the air with their spears and knives.
Then one small child broke free of the ring and ran toward the statue. He was small enough that he had to scramble up on the offerings in order to reach the feet of the figure. Bits of gold and jewelry cascaded to the ground as he placed his hands on the statue’s feet. “My name’s Keven,” he told it. He kept his hands in place for perhaps a minute, then let go of the statue and slid back down to the ground. “Keven!” he screamed. He ran back to the others, repeating his name over and over again like some sacred mantra. It seemed to Damien that there was joy in his eyes, and something else also. Relief?
He turned his head to look at Jenseny. But she had turned away, hiding her eyes from the spectacle before them. He could see her shaking.
One more loop, now. The rope about his hands was loosening, almost enough that he could slip one hand out. Almost....
One by one the children did as Keven had done. Some approached the statue quietly and reverently; others shrieked and laughed and danced their way to its base, scattering the offerings in their utter abandon as they reached up to clasp the feet of the statue. The whole inner circle was littered with bits of food and pillaged treasure, and the air inside the fogbound clearing was stiflingly hot, and rang with the frenzied screams of the children as they danced in faster and faster circles.
And then, just as Damien managed to get his hands free, the children stopped. Not all at once, but in a wave, as if each took the cue from his neighbor. Within a minute the screaming circle was silent, and all eyes were fixed on the child in its center.
It was a girl. Screaming. She must have just had her hands on the statue, for even now they gripped the edge of its base. “No!” she screamed. “Not me! Not me!” A strange rippling seemed to course though her flesh, something Damien felt more than saw; her outline became fuzzy, difficult to focus upon. “Not me!” she begged, as she tumbled to a heap amidst the scattered offerings. “Please, no!”
She was beginning to change. It was hard to make out the details as she thrashed about in her terror, but Damien thought that her body was growing longer. Bending. The spine hunched up behind her shoulder blades, and twisted in its lower portion so that her hips were wildly canted. Her arms and legs grew longer and then thinned, the flesh drawing tight about her bones until she looked like a living skeleton. Her eyes had sunk deep into her skull, and the screaming mouth was no more than a gash in a creased-parchment face, her white skin mottled by brown spots that ranged from the size of freckles to the livid swell of a fertile tumor just beneath her jaw. Another tumor just beneath it had broken open, and dark fluid glistened in its surface.
And then the children moved. Yelling and screaming they fell upon her, their weapons raised. He could no longer hear her cries at all, nor see her, but as the weapons were thrust downward one after the other he could imagine her pain. Her terror. For a moment he was frozen, as the full horror of the situation struck him like a blow to the face; then, more desperate than ever, he slipped himself free of the restraining rope. Spear after spear was thrust down into that trembling, magicked flesh as he freed himself from the noose about his neck; he tried not to think about her, but it was impossible. What had Calesta done? Aged her? His brain felt numb as he ran to where Hesseth stood, and slipped the noose up over her head. Too much horror. Too many questions. He had to get them both free before the children turned on them. He had seen killing frenzies before, knew just how dangerous such a mob could be. Even children, he thought, as he worked loose the knots that bound her hands. No;
especially
children.
Then at last they were both free to move, and just in time. The tallest of the children had broken free of the group, and as he scanned his tribe his eyes fell upon the visitors. A shout brought several of the other children around, though most were far too involved with their grisly slaughter to acknowledge any stimulus outside their own circle. The gray fog drew in close, like a cocoon, as face after bloody face turned toward Damien and Hesseth. Spears were lowered; knives were flourished. For a split second Damien wondered if it might not be better to stay and fight than to run—which was their only other option as he saw it—but he never had time to make a decision. Even as the children began to move, a cold wind swept down on them. The mist itself seemed to darken over their heads, like a stormcloud about to deluge the earth with rain. Bloodthirsty children looked up from their kill, small eyes wide with fear, faces streaked with blood.
And then it came. Not a fae-wraith, though at first it seemed to be. Broad white wings beat back the mist, fanning it into fevered twisters about the border of the clearing. Diamondine claws reached for the statue’s shoulder, then shut closed about it; obsidian crumbled like ash at the contact. It was an immense creature, and though it wore a bird’s form it was clearly much more than a bird. Its white feathers smoked as it sat on the statue, their tips turning black and then crumbling to ash as it fanned the gray mist with its wings. At times Damien thought he could see the faint spark of golden flames between the snow-white layers.
And maybe that was what gave it away. Maybe it was the image of burning, so deeply rooted in his memory, that awakened him to who and what the great bird was.
“Tarrant,” he whispered. Gazing at him in awe. He couldn’t even imagine what kind of courage it must take for the Hunter to leave his shelter while the sun was still high in the sky. The mist might help, but it was only temporary; a few gusts of wind from the right direction and the Neocount would be totally exposed.
As if in answer to his thoughts the great bird screeched out its challenge, and more of Calesta’s statue crumbled beneath his grip. Coldfire began to pour down the black surface, spurts of unflame that fell from its shoulders like tears. The children began to draw back, and Damien could just make out the form of their prey on the ground. A shapeless mass of flesh, now, with half a dozen spears embedded in it. The coldfire reached the corpse, sizzling as it consumed both flesh and blood. A few of the children started to move away. One of them turned to run. Damien himself took a step back, and saw that Hesseth moved with him. Whatever power Tarrant was conjuring here, it was nothing he wanted to mess with.
—And then the silver-blue power shot out like a tongue of flame, licking at the face of one of the children. Whatever scream the girl might have voiced was frozen in her throat as she went down, and she died in eerie silence. The unflames licked at another, then another, and bodies began to fall about the circle. Some children screamed. Some turned to run. Damien wanted to turn his eyes and look away, but his conscience wouldn’t permit him to do it. You
brought this man here,
he told himself harshly. Forcing himself to watch.
Never forget what he is. Never forget what he can and will do
. As all about them children screamed, children ran, children tripped over piles of bodies and struggled for balance as the silver-blue flames licked out at them, consuming the very heat of their lives in an instant. All about lay the dead, the fallen, their lips a cold blue, their eyes frozen and empty.
Then the last of the living children had fled, and the circle was lifeless. With a vast stroke of its wings the great bird came down to land. No sooner had it touched down than the coldfire flared up and consumed it, but the power was far from pure; looking closely, Damien could see the sparkle of golden flames—true fire—polluting its substance.
Damn. That must hurt.
When the Hunter was human once more, he quickly drew a fold of his cloak over his head like a hood, but not before Damien caught a glimpse of what the filtered sunlight had done to him.
“You know where the horses are?” Tarrant demanded. Scanning the clearing as he approached them. Studying the dead.
It was Hesseth who answered him. “No.”
He was still for a moment, then he pointed. The finger that poked out from under the cloak was sun-reddened and peeling; it seemed to Damien that its condition worsened even as the motion was completed. “That way. Get them and then keep going, to the end of the island. I’ll meet you there.”
Then it seemed from his posture that his eyes fell on something behind them. Damien whirled about, only to find that the girl from their prison was still with them. Too frozen with fear to move, she was cowering behind the inadequate shelter of a tree trunk, her dark eyes wide with terror. Even without Working the fae Damien could sense her slipping under, giving way at last to a barrage of fear too terrible for a mere child to resist.
It was Hesseth who moved first, covering the ground between them even as Tarrant began to react. “No!” she cried. She pulled the child to her and wrapped her arms about her. “Not this one! Not like that.”
For a moment it seemed that the Hunter would move against her anyway, with or without Hesseth in the way. But at last he turned back to Damien, and in a hoarse voice whispered, “I haven’t the strength to argue now. Take the horses. Meet me where I said. I’ll be there as soon as I’ve finished things.”
He turned to go. Damien grabbed his arm through the cloak. “It’s finished. Let them go. They’re just children, Hunter. They won‘t—”
“Children?” he snapped. “Is that what you think they are? You fool!” A hand shot free of the protective cloak and closed about the back of his neck; the Hunter’s skin was hot against his own. “Look at your precious children now. Share my vision and See!”
The power struck him like a hot iron, driving the breath from his body. For a moment he could see nothing but the hot sun, the blazing sun, whose killing light penetrated the fog and reflected from every surface. Then, element by element, he began to pick out details of the carnage. Bodies of children, wracked by coldfire. Only....
Only they weren’t really children.
He staggered toward the nearest clump of bodies, aware that Tarrant was moving with him. Heat lanced up through his arches as he walked on the sunlit ground, and it felt like his head was on fire. He knelt down by one of the bodies and stared at it in horror and amazement. What had seemed the body of a child was transformed through Tarrant’s vision into something twisted, something grotesque, a creature whom the years had tortured even while it played at childish games and believed itself to be truly young. The limbs were skeleton-thin, the torso so emaciated that ribs could be counted. Its joints were swollen with thick calcium deposits that must have made each movement a torment, and a yellow discoloration had begun to envelop one arm.