But give him time, he thought dryly. He’s working on it.
They ate a somber breakfast, a porridge of grain and local roots that Hesseth had concocted. There had been no game for many days now, which was just as well; he wasn’t all that anxious to have her leave the camp in order to hunt. Fortunately he had purchased an assemblage of pills in Esperanova that should keep them nutritionally fit; he doled them as the tea brewed, vitamins and minerals and amino acids in thin gelatinous shells that should supplement the nutritive limitations, if not the boredom, of their fare. Hesseth made a face as she swallowed hers, as if to imply that her rakhene biology should be above such things. Jenseny watched her, then bravely gulped hers down.
All right, he thought. Nobody’s starving, anyway.
“Let’s see the maps,” he said.
Hesseth rummaged through her pack until she found the one they had consulted before, a crudely drawn rendering of the Prince’s whole continent. The upper edge of the land mass, a ragged coast, was dotted with cities and towns whose names evoked a time of persecution and conflict. Misery. Warsmith. Hellsport. Farther south the names grew gentler, but the land was equally harsh, and most of the populated centers seemed to be on or near the coast. That was good news. He had cursed the emptiness of this land more than once in the last few days, but there was no denying the part it had played in helping them to travel undetected. As for the desert they were about to enter . . .
It stretched across the bulk of the continent, dividing the Prince’s land cleanly in two. To its west a line of mountains served as stark sentinels of its border, denying access to the coast by any landbound route. To its east were more of the same, scattered mountains which coalesced into a vast continental spine, which continued down the eastern coast for hundreds of miles until at last it met and merged with the tip of the Antarctic land mass. Below the desert was a vast region with no cities marked, no roads, no borders: the rakhene sub-nation, shrouded in cartographic mystery. He frowned at that, knowing that it would make things all the harder for them once they got there.
One thing at a time, Vryce. First the Wasting. Then the rakh.
It was a vast area, nearly five hundred miles from east to west and two hundred across at its widest point. The western part, nearest the coast, was labeled The Black Lands; the rest was simply Wasting. There was no clear indication of where one region became the other, or what sort of barrier might divide them. Nor was there any indication of where the Prince’s stronghold might be located. He stared at the map for some time, memorizing its details. At last he looked up at Jenseny.
“Your father went to the Black Lands.”
She nodded.
“Do you know how he got there?”
The tiny brow furrowed as she struggled to remember. “He said . . . he took a boat to somewhere on the coast. Then the Prince’s men picked him up in a different boat, and took him up the river.”
“Into the Black Lands?”
She nodded.
He studied the map again. There was indeed one path through the western mountains, a narrow river that wound its way down from the desert plateau through nearly seventy miles of rocky territory before at last reaching the coast. He noted the port where it met the sea: Freeshore. That must have been where the Protector met his guides.
And where Tarrant wanted us to go, he remembered. He was suddenly very glad that he had nixed that plan.
“His stronghold, whatever it is, will be located on or near the river. That’s good for him, since it guarantees both water and transportation. Not so good for us.”
“In what way?” Hesseth asked him.
He pointed to the northernmost tributary, a thin line of water that flowed through part of the Wasting. “Normally we’d make for here; that would guarantee a source of water and maybe fresh food about two-thirds of the way through. But if the river’s his main highway, it’s a hell of a risk.”
“Tarrant will want to go that way,” she said quietly.
He felt something inside his gut knot up when she said that, something hard and tight and angry. Because she was right, God damn it. Even as his mouth opened to protest the thought, he knew she was right. Every time Tarrant had made a suggestion it had pointed in that direction, from his intended landing in Freeshore to a dozen tense discussions they’d had since. It was as if Tarrant wanted to bring them as close as possible to the Prince’s territories—no, Damien thought, as if he was drawn to it, in much the same way that an insect might be drawn to a candleflame.
And suddenly it all came together, and he understood.
The Prince is a sorcerer of his own dark caliber. His equal, perhaps, or maybe even his better. When’s the last time there was someone like that in his world? Was there ever?
He doesn’t know how to deal with it. He’s afraid and, at the same time, fascinated. He knows we can’t afford a direct confrontation, yet he hungers for knowledge of the enemy. The concept was both reassuring and unnerving. Reassuring because it offered an explanation for the Hunter’s bizarre behavior. Unnerving because it implied that Tarrant had lost his objectivity without even realizing it.
I wonder how much he’s aware of the struggle going on inside him. How much of it is conscious, and how much is masked by his unwillingness to look too deeply into his own soul.
“We’ll take the safest route,” he promised Hesseth. Suddenly realizing that if the Hunter’s judgment was impaired, the determination of what was safe and unsafe lay entirely in his hands. Hesseth didn’t know enough of human sorcery to make the crucial judgments. The child didn’t know enough of life.
Dear God, please help me. Not for my own sake, but for all the generations who have been and will be corrupted by the Wasting’s creator. For the rakh and for the humans here, and for whatever future they might share. Help me to cleanse this land of his corrupt power forever, so that mankind may achieve its true potential without his interference.
He lowered his eyes. The heat of the fire warmed his face.
And help Tarrant get his shit together, he added. For all our sakes.
Night fell. Tarrant returned. He must have taken shelter not far from them, for the faeborn denizens of this desolate region had barely begun to gather about the campfire before he arrived; his presence, as usual, drove them off, or dissolved their wraithly essence, or maybe just absorbed their demonic substance into his own. Damien had never questioned the mechanics of it, was merely grateful to have the demonlings dispersed. One less threat to deal with.
They brought out the map again, and studied it together. Damien watched Tarrant closely as he considered the various options, and wished more than ever that he had some way of reading the man. But the pale face was stone-steady, impassive, and even when Tarrant looked up and met Damien’s eyes, there was a mask in place that no mere human skill could penetrate.
“The river lies east, near the Black Lands.” he said, “Going that way would mean added danger. But it also would provide a source of water, which might be scarce otherwise.”