He remembered that. He remembered the feel of her small feet in his hands, hot and swollen and sticky with blood. He remembered thinking that he was going to have to Heal her despite the risk or she simply couldn’t go on, and he had expected Tarrant to argue with him. But when he had looked up at the Hunter, the man had simply nodded, his brow already furrowed in the concentration that presaged his Working. And while Tarrant Obscured, Damien Healed. Hopefully the Prince hadn’t noticed it. Hopefully it hadn’t served as a beacon to his power, giving away their position and their destination and—worst of all—their weakness.
But neither soldiers nor sorcery accosted them as they made their way through the Prince’s lands, which meant that even if the Undying knew they had arrived, he did not yet know their exact position. Thank God for that. Or rather, more accurately, thank Tarrant for that. Without his constant Obscurings Damien had no doubt that the Prince would be breathing down their necks right now. He prayed that the adept’s power would hold, and that the seismic tremors which occasionally interrupted his Workings would prove as much of a hindrance to the Prince’s power as it did to his.
Day bled into day, night into night. The rocky wasteland gave way to broken hills, and that, in turn, to a damp, chill forest. There the leaves overhead shut out even the moonlight, so that they were forced to travel single file through tunnels of darkness with their lanterns held aloft, much as they had in the Terata’s lands. Only here, of course, there were no horses. As he collapsed upon the chill earth at the end of one particularly hard night’s hiking, Damien reflected that he had never appreciated that species quite so much as now. Or ever wanted to obtain a member of it quite so badly.
And then they came to it, and they saw it, and they felt its power.
The Wasting.
It was vast. It was lifeless. It was utterly dark. A land as black as the thick night which enshrouded it, all but invisible from their vantage point. Valley bled into mountains bled into the night sky, and even the illumination of Prima’s slender crescent failed to distinguish between them. In such a darkness it was impossible to make out any details of the land before them, or to estimate its dangers. It was there, black and forbidding; that was the sum total of their knowledge.
It had taken them more than an hour to get to where they might see even that much, climbing up a loose slope of broken rock and gravel that threatened to give way with every step. Hesseth had taken a bad fall near the top and, but for Damien’s intervention, might have gone into a headlong tumble down the treacherous slope. Now, as she crouched upon the summit and studied the land before them, mouth parted slightly in rakhene fashion to drink in its scents, she said nothing of pain and asked for no Healing, though surely Damien’s skills could have afforded her relief. Now, more than ever, they needed to refrain from casual Workings.
Damien stared down upon the night-shrouded land for a long time in silence, but if he had hoped that sheer persistence would render the region more visible he was clearly in for a disappointment; his merely human eyes were incapable of piercing its cover. At last, frustrated, he turned to Tarrant. The adept’s eyes, dilated to absorb the night, shone like black jewels against the ivory pallor of his skin as he stared out at the land before them. Loath to interrupt him, Damien waited. Once he thought he saw a deep violet flame spark in those depths, a glimmering of dark fae kindled by sheer force of will. It must pain him to conjure such a power in the moonlight, the priest reflected; that he did so meant that he was as uneasy as they about the nature of land before them.
At last the Hunter turned to acknowledge him; the violet sparks shivered into darkness, the darkness fading to a familiar silver scrutiny. He drew in a breath, as if preparing to speak, then hesitated. Choosing his words? At last he said quietly, “No.” Only that.
“No what?” Hesseth demanded.
“No sorcery.” He turned to gaze upon the land again, his pale brow furrowing in perplexity. Silver eyes scanned an unseen horizon. “No Workings, no Wardings . . . nothing.”
“Is that possible?”
The Hunter shook his head. Clearly this was not what he had expected.
“What about the Prince?” Hesseth asked. “Is there any sign of his Working?”
“There wouldn’t be,” Damien told her. “Not unless he’d set some kind of trap.” He looked at Tarrant as he said that, but the adept made no response. “Or unless he had managed to Know us. But he hasn’t done that, has he?”
“Not to my knowledge,” the adept said quietly.
No sorcery. It seemed so unlikely that Damien could hardly credit it. Why would a sorcerer of the Prince’s caliber go to all the work of setting up a buffer zone between two warring peoples and then not use his power to reinforce it? The thought was so incredible that Damien almost Worked his own sight then and there, to See the truth for himself. Maybe Tarrant had missed something, or misinterpreted a key element. That was possible, wasn’t it? But even as he considered the move he knew it wasn’t worth the risk. If there really was no active sorcery in this realm, then even a simple Working would stand out like a blazing beacon in the darkness. He couldn’t even Work his vision without giving them all away.
“All right,” he said at last. Accepting the concept—for now. “If there’s no sorcery, at least that’s one thing less to worry about.”
“Is it?” The Hunter asked sharply. “A simple Warding would have left its mark on the currents here, or even an Obscuring. But there are other Workings that might not be as visible.” He turned back to Damien. “You saw my Forest. I evolved each species in it with painstaking care, and set them loose in an environment which my power had nurtured. Generations later, when those altered creatures had hunted and mated and born their own young in a wholly natural manner, would my sorcerous mark still have been visible on them? I think not. And yet, they still served my purpose.” He nodded toward the black plain that awaited them. “Knowing what we do of the Prince’s power, I would suspect his techniques are . . . similar.”
“So, in other words, the fact that you can’t see any sign of sorcery here doesn’t mean that sorcery isn’t involved.”
Tarrant nodded. “Just so.”
“Well, that’s just great.” He was remembering the Hunter’s Forest and its warped inhabitants. It wasn’t a pleasant memory. “So much for an easy hike.” He turned to Hesseth. The rakh-woman’s fur had risen along the back of her neck and her ears were flattened tightly against her head. “You picking up anything?” he asked her.
She hesitated. “A smell,” she said at last. “Very faint. I’m not even sure of it.”
“What is it?”
She exhaled noisily and stood. Her ears were more erect now, but her expression was strained; it was clear that what she had smelled worried her. “Dried blood,” she told them. “Sun-bleached bone. Subtle scents, very faint . . . the kind of smells you would never notice if there were other scents to mask them, other living things surrounding—”
“Only here there aren’t.”
She nodded.
He looked over at Jenseny. The girl sat hunched by Hesseth’s side, thin arms clasped about her knees. Her wide, dark eyes were glazed with fear and exhaustion, but when she looked up at him there was something else there, too. Something so utterly trusting that his heart clenched in a knot just to see it.
Dear God, what have we brought her to? What are we doing here, all of us?
In a voice that was as steady as he could possibly make it, he said, “All right. The night’s still young. We can make good distance before dawn, then work out—”