“You don’t know what you’re doing to him,” she said fiercely. “It’s eating him up inside, taking on this role. It’s making him crazy. You want him to face that alone?”
“He has us,” he said coolly. “And he has his God.”
“That isn’t enough!” she retorted. “Your God doesn’t hold a man’s hand when he’s alone in the night. Your God won’t show up to comfort him when he’s scared. Your God doesn’t care if he hurts, as long as-” The words caught in her throat then, and she coughed heavily. He glanced back at her, just in time to see a white mask with frightened eyes scream as its throat was slashed, then fade into a mist of blood about her hair.
“I won’t get in your way,” she promised. Pleading now, all anger leached from her tone in a desperate bid to placate, to persuade. “I won’t say anything to offend anyone. I can even hold my own when we fight——”
She drew in a deep breath, and dark images fluttered about her head like bats. “And the Forest can’t hurt me. It’s a ... a kind of gift. Nothing that belongs to the Hunter will hurt me. I’d be safe.” She took a step closer to him; futures flickered in and out of existence with blinding speed as she moved. “Please,” she begged. “Let me go with him. He needs somebody.”
If you care so much, he wanted to say, then embrace his God. Join him in faith, and you can truly share in his enterprise. The words were forming, balanced on his lips—and then a new set of images took shape around her, a chaos of futures so vivid, so powerful, that the breath meant for words was expelled in a gasp, and it was all he could do to stand there and stare at them.
He saw this woman accompanying Andrys Tarrant into battle, and he saw her left behind. Those two futures divided once, twice, a hundred times each, until the whole room seemed filled with images, blood-filled and fearsome. It was far more intense than the kind of Divinings he had experienced before-save perhaps with Andrys Tarrant himself—and he struggled in vain to absorb it all without losing himself. A storm of images, a riot of raw potential, bits and pieces that flickered in and out of existence so quickly he could barely focus on them. Was this one decision really so important? Could it be that whole futures depended on whether or not this woman joined their effort? A chaos of answers assaulted his brain, and he struggled to sort them out. If she came with them, they might succeed, but the chances of that were slim. If, on the other hand, she stayed behind ... then there were a thousand new futures to choose from, and so many more of those led to success. He saw images of a white face grinning, of her slender throat being slashed, of ribbons of blood flowing down a wall of black glass ... he shivered to watch her die time and time again, to watch her not die, to watch the Forest triumph and wither and grow and burn——Enough! He took a step back from her and shut his eyes, shielding them with a trembling hand. Enough. It was too much for him to interpret, he knew that; if he tried to understand it all, he might lay waste to that fragile shell which was all that remained of his sanity. The pattern was clear enough, though painful to acknowledge. All his planning, all his hopes, all his faith ... without this woman it might all come to naught. Without her in her proper place, his chosen futures might fall to pieces, like the fabrics of the Great War which rotted far below him.
His head spinning, his mouth dry, he struggled to find his voice. Not to guide her now, or to comfort her, but to drive her away. Even as the words left his lips, he ached inside to be causing her pain, but he knew it was necessary. He had Seen.
“If that’s God’s will, so be it.” He tried to put scorn into his voice-just a little bit-so that his words would seem doubly callous. He could see futures dissolving as he did so, and others taking their place. “We’re all risking our lives here, and much more. Did you think it would be easy? Did you imagine that war could be waged without pain, without sacrifice?" Be careful, he warned himself, as some frightening new potentials began to take shape about her. In one of them he was callous enough that she devoted all her energy to convincing Andrys not to go to the Forest at all. “I’m sorry,” he said, and he kept his voice carefully neutral. “Genuinely sorry. But the answer has to be no.”
She seemed about to speak, but apparently words failed her. “You’ll kill him,” she whispered at last. Hoarsely pushing the words out one by one, wincing as they left her. “Maybe not in body, but in spirit. Don’t you care about that at all?”
He looked away, so that he need not see the thousand faeborn images that reflected her suffering. “I’m sorry,” he said. Quietly but firmly, finality in his voice. “I can’t allow it.”
For a moment there was silence. He dared not look back at her, for fear of what the fae would reveal. Finally he heard motion: footsteps on the rug, the click of a latch opening, the hard, cold sound of a door slamming shut. Gone. She was gone.
“Dear God,” he whispered. Feeling her pain as though it had somehow charged the air in the room, so that he drew it into his lungs with every breath. His legs felt weak beneath him and he permitted them to fold, his hand against the wall for support as he fell slowly to his knees.
Forgive me, Lord, for being the cause of pain in others. Forgive me for manipulating so many lives in ways that go against Your teachings. Forgive me.... And then the weight of his sorrow was too great even for prayer, and he wept.
29
They left the city right after sunset, as soon as Tarrant could tolerate the light. The Hunter had wrapped his cloak about his head and shoulders in a manner that made him seem more like a spectre than a man . . . which was wholly appropriate, Damien thought, given the nature of their business. Not until the Core had followed the sun into its westerly grave did he push back his improvised hood and breathe in deeply, testing the scents of the night.
“Nothing,” he said quietly, which might mean any number of things. Seemingly satisfied, he urged his mount forward. Marginally confident, Damien followed.
There were two routes available to them, and they had argued for over an hour about which one to take. One followed the west bank of the Stekkis River to Kale, along a road that catered to the needs of travelers. It offered supplies, shelter, and various other amenities that Damien found appealing. But it was also the road that the Church would take in its newly declared war against the Forest, and those troops would be leaving any day now. True, the odds of meeting up with them were small-hopefully they would be several days ahead of them at least-but Tarrant was loath to risk even those odds. And since, truth be told, there was nothing Damien would enjoy less than running into the Patriarch with the Hunter by his side, he had finally agreed to the eastern route, on the far side of the river.
He tried not to think about Calesta as they rode, but it was damned hard not to. Did the demon know about their mission, and was he even now making plans of his own to counter theirs? Tarrant had said that the Iezu could read the secrets in the hearts of men. How did you work up a defense against someone like that? Maybe the demon would be so busy with the Church and its campaign that Tarrant and he were safe for the moment. The Hunter had said that Calesta was involved in that enterprise, although he didn’t know exactly how. Maybe it would use up all the demon’s energies—