Hesseth looked pointedly at Tarrant. The tall man nodded slowly, his expression grim. “No,” he said. “There’s no other way that presents itself here.” His tone was strange, but Damien chalked that up to the subject matter. Starting a war was no small thing.
“All right,” Damien said. “But I want this understood. We’ll go to the rakh cities, we’ll find this Katassah, and we’ll see if he wants to work with us. Agreed? And then we’ll discuss what our options are. But I’m not agreeing to use him as a sacrificial cover. Ever. If we ally with him, then we ally. Period. All cards on the table.” He glared at Tarrant. “Understood?”
The adept’s voice was quiet, but his eyes were burning frost. “You would doom us all for the sake of some abstract morality.”
“Maybe. We’ll see. In the meantime, those are the conditions.” When Tarrant did not respond, again he pressed, “Well? Agreed?”
“Your quest,” the Neocount said quietly. Very quietly. It was hard to say just where in his words the disdain was so evident, but it was. In his tone, perhaps. Or maybe in his expression. “You call the shots.”
“Fine. That’s it, then. On those terms.” He glanced out the window, at the darkness beyond. “We’ll wait another day to let the ground dry out a bit; if the weather stays this cold, that could make a big difference. I imagine in the Wasting it’ll be even harder, with no real shelter—”
“And we don’t know what traps that place will contain,”
Tarrant reminded him. “I don’t imagine black land and ghostly trees will be the whole of it.”
“No.” A chill ran up Damien’s spine, just thinking of the place. “But we have my experience and Hesseth’s senses, not to mention your own considerable power.”
“Yes,” the adept mused distantly. “There is, of course, that.”
“And Jenseny’s special vision,” he said, and he squeezed the girl’s hand. To his surprise—and relief—he found that she wasn’t trembling. Did she trust in them that much? Did she think they could protect her?
We don’t know even what we’re facing, he thought grimly. We can hardly begin to prepare.
But what the hell. He’d faced faeborn dangers before. Once with no more than a naked sword and a pair of socks.
From somewhere he managed to dredge up a smile.
“We’ll make it,” he promised them.
36
In the realm of black ash,
In the citadel of black crystal,
Beneath skies that burned crimson at the edges,
The Prince waited.
Through the walls he could feel the messenger’s approach. Softer than sound, subtler than vision, the man’s movement was no more than a faint tinkling in the ancient rock. But that tinkling was magnified as it passed from column to column, from spire to spire, and by the time it reached the Prince’s senses it was a clear message, replete with information.
He was, therefore, not surprised when at last it was not the messenger himself who approached him, but the captain of his guard. Like all his guards this man was rakh, and he served the Prince with a ferocity normally reserved for his own kind. That pleased the Undying. It also pleased him that in a realm where he ruled both humans and rakh, both species should be personally bound to his service. Oh, it hadn’t been easy at first. Even before they had learned to hate humankind like their western brethren, these rakh had been loath to accept domination by an outsider. That was simple species survival instinct at play. But he had fought that battle on their own terms, and at last—on their own terms—won it. Now it was no longer necessary for him to adopt rakhene flesh in order to prove himself. And once the rakh had learned to accept his status as alpha male—regardless of the flesh he adopted, its species or its gender—they made excellent servants.
The captain bowed deeply. “Highness.”
“You have news. From Moskovan?”
If the rakh was surprised by the Prince’s knowledge, he gave no sign of it. “The storm forced him into port by the cape.”
Ah, yes. The storm. That had been a surprise. He had Known it when it was still a fledgling squall way out in the ocean, and had been confident that it would never disturb his lands. He had even given his western ports some vague assurance to that effect. It had been distinctly irritating, therefore, to have the thing come to shore after all. But that was the way of weather-Working, and every adept understood it. You played your best cards out, and then Nature reshuffled the deck. Weather could be seduced, cajoled, even prodded . . . but never controlled. Never completely.
“His ship landed at Freeshore two days behind schedule,” the captain informed him. “He apologizes that it did so without passengers. Apparently they chose to disembark at Hellsport.”
“Ah.” Briefly he considered his last communication with Gerald Tarrant, and wondered if he should have trusted in it. But no, there was no evidence of betrayal here. The company of travelers now moving through his lands consisted of four people, each with his own will and purpose. It was little surprise that in the face of such a tempest they’d had second thoughts and decided to travel over land. For Gerald Tarrant to defy such a consensus would only have focussed suspicion on him. No. It was better this way.
“Do you want me to dispatch some men to Hellsport?” the captain asked.
He shook his head sharply. “By the time our men could reach Hellsport from here, they’ll have been long gone. It would be a wasted effort.”
The current was in their favor, he reminded himself. He was experienced enough to understand what that meant. The minute he made a move it would be echoed by the earth-fae, whose ripples and signs would be carried swiftly north. He could Obscure such a trace, but not completely; if the travelers knew what to look for—and he strongly suspected they did—they could Know his every move.
“No,” he told the captain. “Let them make their move. When they decide what they’re going to do . . . then we’ll deal with them.”
There’ll be time enough, he thought. Since Gerald Tarrant will give us warning.
It was a pleasing thought.
37
When night fell they started off due south, toward the narrowest part of the Wasting. Soon the damp woods surrounding Hellsport gave way to a land bereft of trees or comfort, a rocky plain so cold and hostile that only a few scraggly bushes had managed to take root there. The animals which scurried quickly out of their way were tiny things, thin and nervous, that offered no threat to their supplies or to themselves. They hiked as long as they could and then camped for the day; a chill wind that swept in from the west was a solemn reminder that although they were not in the mountains proper, the land they were passing through was high enough in elevation that spring was unlikely to warm them.
It beats the rakhlands, Damien reminded himself. He remembered that icebound journey, and the unholy fire that awaited them at the end of it. God willing there would be no similar reception at the end of this one.
They took up their packs again promptly at sunset, waiting only for Tarrant to rejoin them before they resumed the long trek south. It was hard traveling—harder, in a way, than any which Damien had done before. The joint strains of looking after Jenseny and worrying about Tarrant—not to mention waiting for Tarrant to blow up because he was looking after Jenseny—frayed at his nerves constantly. So did the very real difficulties involved in bringing a small child with them. She could not match their pace. She could not equal their endurance. She could not do as they did, force their bodies to push on long after exhaustion had set in, because they had not yet found a site defensible enough to serve as a resting place. And yet she struggled to keep up with them and bore all her pains in silence, even when the blisters on her feet broke open along one particularly rough stretch of ground. If not for Tarrant’s special senses, preternaturally attuned to the smell of human blood, they might never have known that anything was wrong at all.