The travelers would have to avoid the villages there, and also there . . . the closeness of the mountains meant there was only one safe path open to them, so they must take that . . . they would make choices based on secrecy at every point, so their route could be predicted . . . yes. He began to visualize the emplacements, the preparations. Yes. It could be done. Wait for the earth to move, wait for the humans to be helpless, then attack . . .
He could almost smell the triumph on his fur.
20
It would have been easy back home to watch for an ambush. In Jaggonath a simple Knowing would have been enough to untangle the secretive patterns of the fae, to reveal where and when the subtle malevolence of entrapment had made its mark. Tarrant could have done it with little effort, maintaining such a Working for hours at a time. Even Damien could have kept it up for a reasonably long stretch of time, providing he kept repeating the mental patterns which sustained his Sight. But here, where repeated earthquakes made any long-term Working perilous, where the surge of earth-fae that accompanied all such tremors would burn his mind or Tarrant’s to a crisp before they had time to cry out a warning, such a sustained Knowing was out of the question. And so they had to rely upon intermittent Workings, short little bursts of information that they plucked from the fae whenever the currents looked safe.
It clearly distressed the Hunter to restrain himself this way, and Damien could understand why. As an adept Tarrant had lived immersed in the earth-fae since his first conscious moments; to grasp hold of that power and mold it to his will was as natural to him as breathing was to Damien. It took effort for him to keep himself from Working the fae, an effort that was clearly taking its toll on him. Periodically the priest would see the man stiffen in his saddle, or mutter angrily to himself, as if he had just restrained himself from some unconscious act of Knowing.
How could he have coped as a child, if he’d been born in this region? Damien suspected he wouldn’t have made it past adolescence, if that long. Little wonder there were no adepts here, nor anyone capable of a real Working . . .
And then he remembered the real reason for that, and his face flushed hot with shame and fury as he kneed his horse to a faster pace. If he was driven onward in this quest for no other reason, it was to avenge all those children. Generation after generation of helpless, innocent souls, sacrificed on the altar of intolerance . . . and they were all guilty of it, he thought. Every human being who participated—by cutting a tiny throat, by staking a frightened child out as bait for demons, or even just by sitting back and making no protest while others did the dirty work—every one of them was guilty, every one of them would answer before God for all those terrible deaths. And he, Damien Kilcannon Vryce, would see to it that the monster responsible for causing it all would burn in Hell forever. If he did nothing else of value in his life, that alone would be sufficient service to his God.
When dawn came and Tarrant left them, Damien and Hesseth made camp, but they lit no fire and raised no tents. They took the supplies they needed from their saddlebags and then refastened the leather packs; they fed and watered the horses and brushed them vigorously, then resaddled them. Though neither of them voiced their concern, it was clear that both of them wanted to be ready to move on a moment’s notice. Even the horses seemed to sense their inner tension, and made no protest when the bulky saddles were returned to their backs. Maybe danger was in the air. Maybe they could smell it.
They slept restlessly in turn, the slightest sound out of the ordinary rousing them in an instant. How much sleep Damien lost to the chattering of birds and the twigs broken by foraging rodents he didn’t want to know. But though his nerves were wound up tighter than a watch spring, he neither saw nor heard anything to indicate that trouble was coming, and when he dared to look at the currents he likewise perceived no immediate threat. Good enough for now. There was a strange flavor to the earth-power, he thought, but it was so faint that he couldn’t focus on it for a Knowing; they would have to wait for Tarrant to return before they could determine its source.
They had found a good campsite—close by the river but not visible from it, on firm rocky ground that hid the horses’ tracks, easily defended—and decided to stay where they were until nightfall. Damien was loath to risk travel again without Tarrant by his side, and though Hesseth wasn’t about to admit to such a sentiment, he suspected she felt the same way. Whatever personal revulsion she felt for the Hunter, it was, like his own, overweighed by a pragmatic appreciation of the man’s power.
God knows, if they’re on our trail, we need all the help we can get.
Promptly at sunset the Hunter rejoined them. His transformation was quick and businesslike, and as soon as the coldfire had faded from his flesh he dropped to one knee and placed the flat of his hand against the ground, as if testing the temperature of the earth. The delicate nostrils flared like a cat’s. After a moment he stood again, but his eyes were still fixed on the ground before him.
“The currents are very strange,” he muttered. “I noticed it when I awoke, and hoped it was no more than a passing anomaly . . . but it appears not.” He looked at Damien. “Did you sense it?”
“I sensed something,” the priest answered. “I couldn’t identify it.”
“Almost as if there were a foreign presence in the current . . . yet nothing so precise as that. I worked a Knowing when I first noticed it, but I couldn’t get a fix on it. That might mean that it’s nothing important, some natural occurrence which has no deeper meaning . . .”
“Or that something’s been Obscured from us,” Damien said grimly.
“Just so,” he agreed.
Tarrant held his hand up for silence. The pale eyes narrowed in concentration once more, and Damien could almost feel the raw power coalesce about him. The priest Worked his own vision, and he watched in awe as the silver-blue ripples of earth-fae gathered about the Hunter’s feet, in a pool so deep and so intense that he could no longer see the ground through its light. The very power of the earth obeyed the Hunter like a household pet, coming to heel upon command. And yet even that was not enough to serve his need. Tarrant reached out his hands as the power thickened, intensified, rose about his legs until waves of raw power, blue-burning, lapped at his knees. And then came the Knowing. Damien could see it taking shape, ghostlike, between his outstretched arms. A hint of form. A shadow of meaning. And then . . . nothing. The wraithlike image collapsed, its substance rejoining the pool of power at his feet. Then even that faded, until the earth-fae that attended Tarrant was no more brilliant than any other. The eddies and ripples which made up the current drew back from the Hunter and returned to their regular course. And Tarrant shook his head in frustration, acknowledging to himself—and to his traveling companions—that he had failed.
“If something was Obscured from us, it was well done.” Damien could hear the frustration in his voice, and something else. Fear? If something had been Obscured so well that even the Hunter couldn’t make it out, didn’t that imply a Working of tremendous power? Didn’t it speak of an enemy at least as powerful as Tarrant himself?
Not a nice thought. Not a nice thought at all.
“Well?” Hesseth demanded. “What do we do now?”
For a moment Tarrant said nothing. Damien could guess what was going through his mind. Enemies behind them, and now this foreign trace ahead . . . Even the Hunter, for all his arrogant confidence, had to be less than happy about their situation. Had to be considering their alternatives.