Getting down there was another matter. As they rode along the upper edge of the valley wall—hundreds of feet above the valley floor—Damien realized that descent might well prove impossible. The steep slope was mostly rock, which offered no sure footing for man or horse. Occasionally there were sections that sloped down more gently, or hills that abutted the valley wall from below, but none of those extended more than half the distance they needed, and all of them ended in steep granite inclines that would have been a challenge to a skilled mountain climber. Not to mention a skilled mountain climber with a horse.
But there had to be a way. The maps convinced him of that. The gap they had ridden through was labeled a pass, and what was a pass but a way through the mountains? If this course was useless, if it truly dead-ended, then no one would have assigned it that designation. Right? Logic said there had to be a way through, close enough that they could find it. Right?
He worked hard on believing that. It gave his mind something to focus on besides the terrain, which offered an unpleasant choice between heavily wooded slopes and sheer granite flats. More often than not they chose the latter, which meant riding dangerously close to the edge of that vast chasm. The horses seemed to prefer it to the woods, though, and Damien decided to indulge them. Trust the animals to know their own capacity.
At last, in the late afternoon, they found what looked like a moderately safe descent. Crumbled earth and fragmented granite offered a slope that was daunting but not downright suicidal, and they decided to try it. Half-sliding, the horses struggled for balance as they negotiated the treacherous slope. Their movement set rockfalls in motion that sculpted the mountainside anew even as they descended, and more than once the animals nearly went down. At one point the black horse began to limp and Damien had to stop to Heal it, knitting its damaged tendon together while gravel trickled past him like a river. All in all, he thought, the only thing worse than trying to descend this slope would be trying to climb it. Thank God that whatever happened they would not be coming back this way.
It took them more than an hour to reach the halfway point. By then the sun was already sinking below the crest of the western mountain, and the Core was right behind it. At least there would be stars for a while to guide them. By the light of the galaxy they fought for their descent, sometimes riding the horses and sometimes leading them. Finally, exhausted, they came to solid ground at last. By then even the Core had set, and Damien breathed deeply as he cast a last glance back toward the deadly slope, now cloaked in deepening shadow.
Tarrant was waiting for them.
Wordlessly Damien dismounted and handed him the reins of the Forest steed. He glanced up at Hesseth to see if there was any need to explain the arrangements—or to argue them—but clearly she had come to the same decision that he had. He swung up behind her with considerably more care than he had with Tarrant. She was small and fit easily in the slope of the saddle before him. There was a scent about her fur that was musky and warm and not unpleasant; he hoped that she found his own human odor at least tolerable. Between her acute sense of smell and his own semiclean state he had his doubts—he had done the best he could under the circumstances, but it was hard to stay truly clean when your changes of clothing were buried in a saddlepack more than fifty miles back—but in the name of diplomacy she made no comment about it. God bless her for that.
Silently, filled with foreboding, they descended the last mossy slope and entered the misty forest.
The valley mist wasn’t as bad as it might have been, thanks to Tarrant, but combined with the midnight’s darkness it had the effect of isolating them from the world outside. The few stars which were left were hidden from sight, and even the treetops overhead were thoroughly obscured by the drifting shroud of fog. Damien lit a lantern, which illuminated the ground about their feet but also the mist itself, so that it was impossible to see more than twenty or thirty feet in any direction. It was as if a shell had been erected around them, a perfect sphere of translucent substance that glimmered pale amber, reflecting the lamplight. It was uncomfortably claustrophobic, and dangerously limiting.
And if it’s this bad now, he thought as they rode, just wait till Tarrant’s conjured weather passes. This is probably heaven by contrast.
In silence they made their way, slowly and ever so carefully. Though normally Damien didn’t worry about mere predators—most larger animals shied away from humans, unless hunger made them desperate—their lack of visibility made him feel particularly helpless. He noticed that Hesseth was tense between his arms, and her ears pricked forward at the slightest sound, their tufted tips scanning the path ahead, beside, behind them. Only Tarrant seemed to be taking it all in his stride, but Damien knew him well enough now to guess at the tension that lay coiled tight inside him. The Hunter hated what he couldn’t control.
At last Tarrant signaled for them to stop. When Hesseth’s horse had pulled up alongside his own he dismounted, then knelt to touch the ground with one slender finger. Testing the currents. Tasting the earth-fae. Damien Worked his own sight and saw a powerful northerly flow, sparkling with alien secrets. He didn’t attempt a Knowing, but drank in the vision in its pure, uninterpreted form. Was this how adepts saw the world? Or was the richness of abstract power somehow translated into meaningful form in their brains, so that no formal Knowing was necessary?
“Odd.” Tarrant stood; his eyes were still fixed on the ground. “Very odd.”
“I’m not sure I like the sound of that.”
“I’m not sure you should.” The Neocount bit his lip as he studied the currents; Damien could see his pale eyes tracing the earth-fae’s motion, again and again. “There’s something there. Sorcery, I think. The trace is very faint; I can hardly make it out. And yet . . .”
When he didn’t finish the thought, Damien prompted him, “What?”
“By sorcery I mean that someone is consciously altering the fae. And yet, the patterns are not what I would associate with Working.” He looked up at Damien. “Not with a normal Working.”
“Rakh?” Hesseth demanded.
He shook his head. “No. The flavor of it is decidedly human.”
“Or demonic,” Damien said quietly.
“Yes,” the Hunter whispered. “That is the other possibility.”
“I don’t understand,” Hesseth protested.
Tarrant studied the currents again as he spoke; it was almost as if he were addressing the earth-fae, not her. “Demons are born of humankind. They feed on humans, they manipulate human fantasies, some even define themselves in human terms. Their fae-signature is therefore very similar to that of humans . . . sometimes so much so that it’s hard to tell the two apart.”
“But demons don’t do sorcery, do they?” Damien struggled to remember exactly what the textbooks said. “They don’t Work the fae like we do. Right? So their signature would have to differ in that respect.”
For a moment the Hunter said nothing. Then he said, very quietly, “There is one kind that does. I think. The trace might look like that, if one of them were active here.”
“One of who?”
The Hunter seemed about to speak, then shook his head instead. “Not until I know for sure. But if it is that . . .” There was an odd tone to his voice, that Damien was hard put to identify. “It would . . . complicate things.”