Nightfall gave Genevra’s fingers a comforting squeeze, though it served only to clinch her grip tighter in response.
"Then I saw him."
"The sorcerer?" Nightfall guessed.
Genevra continued, letting the story serve answer. "He crouched over the man in pain, doing something, I never saw what. There was blood everywhere and… the pain and… and then he looked at me. Those eyes…” The Healer fell silent, attempting to gather enough composure to put words together in sequence. "The eyes seemed to flay me open, and he was smiling, like he enjoyed the agony he caused. And he knew… I know he knew. He touched my birth-gift, caressed it like a rapist, and I felt violated.” Genevra started crying now, violent with anguish. She caught at Nightfall, and he held her despite the guards’ glares.
Though young and beautiful, Genevra and her closeness brought Nightfall more discomfort than pleasure. Her description raised fear even in the hell-born demon he had come to believe himself to be. Her touch reminded him of Kelryn’s false love and the tears of his mother’s temporarily sincere apologies.
"I ran," Genevra managed to say at length. "I didn’t stop till I reached the innocence of a farm town." She gestured at random. "And I made my deal with the over-lord." Genevra pushed free of Nightfall’s hold, her crying already lessening to sniffles. Though her dress had scarcely wrinkled, she brushed at it in grand gestures and placed her hands gently against Nightfall’s wounded thigh. The healing process started again, but Genevra finished her story. “There was nothing I could have done for the man. If I’d stayed, I just would have given the sorcerer my power as well."
Nightfall nodded, hiding his own uneasiness behind concern for Genevra. "Sounds horrible. You poor thing."
"I was lucky." Genevra continued her work. "Whatever that man had must have been more important to the sorcerer than healing. He could have gone after me first. Or I might have blacked out instead of run."
Nightfall could not assess the truth of the comment. He knew nothing but rumors about how sorcerers claimed their victim’s natal gifts. "Is it true what they say? Did he eat the man’s beating heart?"
Genevra shuddered; this time, her healing did not falter. "I don’t know. I didn’t stay to see." She fell into a silence punctuated only by her own sighing breaths in the wake of her frenzy of grief over the memory.
Nightfall kept his head low, respecting her need for quiet. The guards relaxed a bit, clearly more comfortable with the hush than the conversation they could not fathom and gestures they could not fully read.
At length, Genevra took her hands away. “Finished," she said, but her manner betrayed a need.
"Thank you," Nightfall said, examining his leg. A jagged scar puckered the skin, and only movement would tell if it had left him with a limp. Still, though he wanted to stand and test the healing, he waited for Genevra to speak her request. When, after several moments, she did not, Nightfall prompted. "You want me to chase down this sorcerer, don’t you?" Nightfall had no intention of complying, but it cost him nothing to claim that he would.
"Oh, no." Genevra still seemed paralyzed by the memory. "I wouldn’t wish my worst enemy to face off with raw evil. I just thought well maybe if you’re headed that way…?" She looked up, judging his reaction.
Nightfall returned her gaze with feigned affection and tenderness. "We’re going south, yes.”
Encouraged, Genevra finished. "Would you check on the dancer whose room I went to? Someone told me she never made it back to Nemix. I felt so guilty leaving her trapped with a sorcerer, but I was too panicked to try to save her, too. Now, I feel awful for my cowardice. I know she’s probably dead, too; but I can’t help hoping for her. If you find her, tell her I’m all right. And I wanted to help."
"I’ll tell her." Nightfall agreed with sincerity. Delivering such a message could only gain more information and goodwill, though he doubted he could possibly find the Nemixian dancer alive. "What’s her name?"
"Kelryn." Genevra launched into a description that Nightfall knew by rote.
Kelryn. Thoughts descended upon Nightfall in a storm. He would find her alive, he felt certain of it. The evil he had projected upon her intensified a hundredfold. She had not only betrayed him; apparently, she made a career of turning over the natally gifted to sorcerers. She sold me and my love for a sorcerer’s money. He no longer doubted that Gilleran knew precisely what he was, and the realization sent a shiver of fury through him. For Kelryn’s crime, she must pay with more than her life. He would find a way to inflict the pain that she had intended him and caused at least one other. “I’ll find her," Nightfall promised, hiding his determination behind a practiced mask of candor. "You can depend on it."
Chapter 8
Those who brave the night will find
Horror, dread, and demon kind.
He slays them all and rends their soul Darkness comes where Nightfall goes.
– "The Legend of Nightfall"
An evening spent landing the Healer slipped into a fitful night of plotting and rage. Kelryn’s scheme appalled even Nightfall; beguiling innocents to an agony beyond death seemed leagues more evil than all his crimes together. He had stolen to survive and murdered from necessity, and every kingdom reviled him as a hellish and remorseless demon. Yet, Kelryn continued her dance, seducing young men as fodder for hunters who preyed on pain and souls. Women like Genevra appreciated her gentle sweetness and men her grace, never knowing that both hid a cruelty that revolted Nightfall himself. And even I fell for her act.
The latter thought intrigued as well as sickened. Nightfall had always prided himself on reading others motivations and seeing through their chosen shrouds. Yet he could not deny that he had bought into Kelryn’s tender concern for him as completely and easily as any of her lambish victims. He had approached the relationship as he did all others, with paranoid caution. She had won him over with a candor and intimate sincerity that had penetrated defenses more solid and sturdy than any fortress. Even now, knowing what he did, Nightfall could not shake memories of her smile and the glitter in her dark eyes that told him she truly loved him, without conditions, and that her devotion would outlast eternity. Now Nightfall wondered how many others that game of hers had snared.
Nightfall rolled silently, his caution more habit than necessity. Prince Edward’s snores had continued uninterrupted even through the clatter of a stack of dinner dishes dropped in the common room below and a heated argument between a serving woman and a cleaning boy over a copper piece. Nightfall’s anger degenerated into sorrow. Me in love. The idea seemed more ludicrous than the rumor that he heard all pleas for murder whispered on the wind. That alone should have cued me to her deceit. A few women had sought out Nightfall in the darkest, ugliest corners of the universe. These, he discovered, wanted notoriety after finding no glory of their own. Somehow, sleeping with the demon or, better, carrying his baby would bring them the attention they craved and change, if not raise, their station. He had never raped a woman, nor even slept with one in Nightfall’s guise, yet at least three claimed their offspring as his. But love? Never. How could any woman love what even my mother could not?
Undoing the past had become an unproductive pastime that Nightfall believed he had long abandoned. He pushed away thoughts of his shortcomings as a child, the common sense that had failed him when it came to what his mother had called "following gods" instead of falling prey to the "demon’s influence." In the end, the demon had done him better. Nightfall stared at the Delforian wall, the wood scarred by gouges and dents from carelessly flung gear. He had worked with many thieves, informants, and killers without so much as a twinge of conscience; and he wondered why Kelryn’s scam bothered him so much. A good swindler, when cheated by a better one, soon learned to turn his thoughts toward education rather than vengeance. He understood that women used flirtation as a weapon because few things disarmed a man more completely. But there were unwritten laws even among killers and thieves, ones that the sane fell into without need for understanding them or even knowing of their existence. A competent hoax relied on the greed of its victim. Thieves gravitated to the rich who could better afford their crime; it made little sense to risk freedom or life for a single worn copper. No assassin Nightfall knew chose victims indiscriminately. Usually, they found themselves hunting others of their ilk, slayers on either side of the law. And therein lay the root of Nightfall’s aversion. Kelryn sacrificed innocents to creatures more terrible than any mythical demon, committing them to an eternal torment that made the gods’ hell seem benign.