A strange look came into the Neocount’s eyes. “I don’t think that would be wise,” he said quietly.
“Yeah,” Damien agreed. “And it won’t be pleasant, that’s for sure. But I don’t see an alternative. Do you?” His expression dared the Hunter to state the obvious: that by killing the girl here and now they would be saved the necessity of such a trial.
But Tarrant, for once, did not rise to the bait. His lips tightened ever so slightly. A muscle tensed along the line of his jaw. He said nothing.
“Well?”
“I think it would be unwise,” he repeated.
Anger surged up in him, hot and sharp. “Look. I won’t kill her. I won’t leave her behind. And I can’t carry her for another day. That means she has to be healed, right? And if you can’t do it alone and I can’t do it alone, then we have to do it together, right?”
The Hunter turned away. Said nothing.
“Is it the act of Healing? Is that it? Are you afraid—”
“I would be killing a plant,” he said brusquely. “Nothing more. The healing itself would be in your hands.”
“Then what’s the problem? There’s already a channel between us. Are you afraid of using it? Afraid that I might see something inside you so terrible—”
He stopped suddenly. He had seen the Hunter stiffen, and suddenly, with all the force of a thunderbolt, he understood. And the understanding left him speechless.
You’re afraid, he thought. Afraid I’ll see something inside you that I shouldn’t. Something you don’t want me to know about. The concept seemed incredible. They had experienced close contact before, once when the channel between them was first established and then later in the rakhlands, when the Hunter’s soul took control of his. And Tarrant had fed on him for more than five midmonths on board Golden Glory, which was as intimate a contact as you could get. So what was he afraid of now? What new element was alive inside that dark and deranged soul that he didn’t want Damien to see?
He looked at the Hunter standing there, so still, so alone, and he thought, I don’t know this man any more.
“Look,” he said quietly. “You do what you can. I’ll move in and Heal her as soon as you’re finished. If we’re lucky, if we’re fast . . .” Then she won’t bleed to death before I can fix her up, he thought. “All right?”
The Hunter nodded.
It was a nightmare Healing, and not one he would ever care to repeat. The network of fibers had invaded a good part of her body, and was still growing even as Tarrant focused his power on it. Damien Worked his sight so that he could watch the operation, but otherwise kept a respectful distance. He watched as the Hunter destroyed the network, strangling its life branch by branch, fiber by fiber. Watched as he degraded its substance, so that it might be broken down and absorbed by the fluids of the young girl’s body. Watched as the slender branches dissolved into fluid, leaving pockmarks and scars wherever they had touched her flesh-
And he was Working then, quickly, before her flesh had a chance to react to those wounds. Closing up the wall of her heart where it had been ruptured, repairing the torn tissue in her lungs, sealing and cleansing and forcing cells to replicate themselves with feverish haste, before her fragile life could seep away. It seemed to him in that moment that he had never Healed so fast or so hard in all his experience.
When it was all over—at last—he sat back and drew in a deep breath, shaking. The girl was still asleep, but she seemed to be all right now. Physically, at least. God alone knew if that fragile spirit would respond to his ministrations and find its way back to the flesh that had housed it . . . but he had done what he could. The rest was in her hands.
“It would have been a mercy to leave her here,” the Hunter said quietly. “To let her die.”
For once, Damien didn’t respond in anger. Wiping the sweat from his brow with an unsteady hand, he gazed out at the desert before them. Miles upon miles of broken black landscape, that stood between them and their destination. Thousands upon thousands of deadly trees, and who knew how few islands like this one? Maybe a hundred such granite havens. Maybe a handful. Maybe only this one.
“Yeah,” he whispered. “Maybe it would have been.” He looked up at Tarrant. “How far did we get?”
“In miles traveled, a considerable distance. That’s why it took me so long to find you. The distance is a monument to your stamina.”
“More like our desperation,” Hesseth muttered. She had the girl’s head in her lap and was stroking her hair gently, oh so gently. Damien wondered if the child was even aware of it.
“On the other hand,” Tarrant continued, “you hardly kept to a direct route.”
“There were a few minor obstacles-” Damien snapped.
“I wasn’t criticizing. I was merely pointing out that in terms of passage south, you are hardly farther along now than you were when I left you at daybreak. Though considerably farther west.”
Damien lowered his head in exhaustion. For a moment it seemed like the whole of the desert was closing in on him, black and dry and deadly. For a moment he could hardly speak. Then: “All right. We knew it wouldn’t be easy.”
“There’s an understatement,” Hesseth muttered.
“Clearly you can’t travel tonight,” Tarrant observed.
He looked at the girl, at the rakh-woman. Considered his own state, drained and battered. “No,” he muttered. “Not tonight.”
“Which means waiting until dusk tomorrow, if you want me with you. Do you have enough water for that?”
He tried to remember how much they had drunk on that terrible journey. How much they had consumed at the end of it, half dead and not thinking straight. Too much, he thought grimly. “We’ll make it. If there are no more surprises.”
“Do you want to count on that?”
Damien sighed heavily. “You know an alternative?”
“There’s always the river.”
He said it so calmly that for a minute Damien was at a loss to respond. Hadn’t he said once that they shouldn’t go to the river? For a moment he couldn’t remember why.
At last it was Hesseth who protested, “That means going farther west. Almost to the Black Lands themselves.”
“You asked me if there was an alternative,” he pointed out. “Not how safe it was.”
“He knows where we are now,” Damien said. “No way he could miss us, with all the Working we’ve done. What’s the chance that your Obscurings will work for us now that his attention’s fixed on us?”
“Practically none,” the Hunter admitted. “That’s in the nature of the art.”
“Great,” he muttered. “Just great.”
He walked to the edge of the granite mound; lava coiled in ropy whorls near his feet. God, it was hard to think clearly.
“How about a misKnowing?” he asked at last.
The Hunter considered. “Feed him the wrong information?”
“Would it work?”
“Possibly.” Not saying what they both were thinking: that it had been used against them in the rakhlands, and had almost cost them their lives. “There are no guarantees, of course.”
There never are, Damien thought darkly.
He rubbed his head and tried to think. Was the power of the trees still affecting him, or was he just that tired? “All right,” he said at last. “It’s our only chance. Let’s do it.”
“You want me to lead him to believe that you’re not going to the river?”
He closed his eyes. His head throbbed painfully. “He won’t believe that. Not if he knows what happened today. He’ll know we’ve got to go for water . . . but that doesn’t mean he has to know where we’re coming in.” He looked up at Tarrant; in the moonlight the man’s skin looked almost as pale as the trees. “Would that work?”
“Perhaps.”
“No better than that?”
“The Prince isn’t an amateur,” he said quietly. “Any Working can be seen through, if one knows how to look.”