“I would like to see him confront the Terata,” the Prince mused. “It would be interesting to see if he makes it to my realm, and in what condition. In fact . . .” His piercing gaze wandered to Karril. Fixed there. “I’m thinking he might be put to a better use than a target for Iezu vengeance.”
Calesta hissed.
“Think. How many men are there of that caliber? Perhaps one a generation is born with that ability, and so many die, so many make fatal mistakes . . . Here is one who’s survived the centuries—the most challenging art of all—and crossed land and sea against all odds . . . and come here. Why waste that power? Why discard that unique intellect? Between us we could tame a planet.”
He turned to Calesta. “Lift the illusion.”
“But my Lord—”
“Lift it.”
The demon took a step backward; anger flashed in his mirror-bright eyes.
“I’m not one of your mindless puppets, Calesta. Remember that. And I’m not that woman in the rakhlands, whom you twisted over the decades. I know your power and I know your limits and I won’t hesitate to use that knowledge. Those are the terms of your service here. I’ve never seen fit to interfere in your hobbies before—not even when you took that woman from my lands, along with half an army—but this time there’s something I want, and I’ll damn well have it. Lift the illusion. Now. Let the Hunter see what kind of power he’s dealing with.”
The demon’s glassy form blazed in the lamplight. “You command this?” he demanded.
“I do.”
The tendrils of smoke agitated about him, forming a thick black cloud. “I’ll give him the eyes to see through it,” he hissed. “No more. The others will just have to suffer.”
“The others aren’t my concern.” The Prince turned to Karril. “Is that sufficient?”
Karril managed to nod.
“There’s a service you’ll do for me in exchange. Tarrant’s too far away for me to contact him directly against his will. You’ll take him a message. Ask him to receive it.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
The blue eyes glittered. “That’s his choice. But he might regret it later, I think. Mention that.”
“I won’t do anything that causes him to be hurt.”
The Prince chuckled softly. “Loyalty in a Iezu is so refreshing. Isn’t it, Calesta?” He waved expansively. “It’ll be no more than a message. You can view it yourself if you like. He won’t even have to open a channel to me to listen to it . . . although he might choose to do that, in time. Yes. I think that he will.”
He turned and left then, as silently as he had come. Not until he was gone—and safely out of hearing—did Karril whisper, “Strange game you’re playing here, Calesta.”
The black face cracked; the foggy tendrils twisted. It might have been a smile.
“Not strange at all,” Calesta assured him. “Merely complex. So stay out of my way, will you? Because as you said, the price of open conflict would be high.”
And his faceted eyes glittered as he added sweetly, “Brother.”
27
The one thing he wanted almost as much as freedom, Damien decided, was a bath.
Morning light illuminated all too clearly their current state. Hesseth was clean enough, having started the previous day in fresh clothes, and while rakhene fur had its own distinctive odor it lacked the foulness of stale human sweat. Damien had supplied the latter in abundance. It was hard enough trying to keep clean with only one set of clothes to his name—the rest having been lost a small eternity ago, back at the gap—but when the only available river was seeded with nasty carnivores, and then their juvenile captors decided that the only water necessary was a single cupful for the three of them to pass around . . . he wanted a bath. Badly. And he suspected that his cellmates wanted him to have one.
They were all covered in mud, of course. And God alone knew what else that mud contained. Thus far his only need for biological relief had been satisfied by urinating into a corner, but it occurred to him that if they stayed here much longer they’d be adding more solid substance to the mucky chamber as well. And what about the girl? He got the impression she had been here some time already. Did they let her out for a toilet break now and then, or had she grown adept at hiding her own waste beneath the muddy cover? His nose was so numbed by the reek of mold and rotted meat which seemed to hang about the Terata island that he could no longer sort through the foul odors surrounding him to analyze their source. Hesseth must be suffering quite a bit, though. Thank God his sense of smell was only human.
The girl. What was she? When he awakened in the gray light of dawn—surprised to find that he’d fallen asleep at all in this dismal place—he found the Fire by his side, set one end upright in the mud. Sometime during the night the girl had crept back to her tiny hole and curled up there like an animal, head tucked down by her knees. After a moment he took the vial up and put it back in its protective pouch. What had she been doing with it? Why the strange reaction? And come to think of it, how the hell had she known that he was a priest? Without his sword there was no obvious sign of his profession, and he hardly looked like a clergyman.
A priest of swamps, he thought, rubbing a coating of grime from his chin. Stubble raked his hand. Serving a god of mud.
Gently, very gently, he worked a Knowing. He didn’t know how sensitive she was—or even what form her sensitivity would take—but he did his best not to wake her. The currents were sluggish, but at last they responded. He felt Hesseth drawing near beside him as the pictures formed, ghostly tableaux that were nearly as confusing as the girl herself. Could the rakh-woman see his Knowing for what it was, or did she merely sense the flow of power? He had never thought to ask.
Images misted through the gray morning light, fading one into the other like fae-wraiths. Contrasting images that seemed to come from different worlds, even different realities. Warm scenes from a secure home. A garden of crystal leaves, shimmering in the moonlight. A coat drenched in blood. The darkness of a cavern. A young girl running. The face of a priest contorted in hatred, the downstab of a ritual sword . . . he felt her almost awaken as that image formed, and had to dim down his Knowing until sleep once more claimed her. Then: Religious images, drenched in blood. A mother’s smile. A predator’s grin. A woman so twisted by age and neglect that her joints had thickened like tumors, her eyes tearing blood and pus. Malformations. Unhealed wounds. And running, always running; that image surrounded all the others, flanking them, creating a fragile web of unity that bound them all together.
Terror. That’s what all those pictures were born of, he thought, as he let the Knowing fade. He had no way of guessing how many of the images were real, and how many were the result of terror feeding on itself. Imagination could do terrible things in a place like this, especially to a young mind. Especially to one so infinitely vulnerable as this.
He longed to go to her. He hungered to comfort her. It went against all his training—against his very nature—to see such suffering and not move to heal it. But the priest’s face that he had seen in his Knowing loomed large in his mind, radiating a hate that was almost palpable. Real or not, it was real to her, and that was all that mattered. Maybe that was the face she saw when she looked at him. Maybe it was what she had learned to expect from his kind.
He prayed for her quietly. And mourned within, that he could not conjure a balm for her soul half so easily as he could Heal her flesh. Was that not the ultimate irony of his calling?
Food. It was brought to them in small bundles, inexpertly cooked. He tasted his dubiously, then downed a small bit of it. Hesseth studied hers, then decided against it; perhaps its mildly sour smell warned her of contents that her rakhene stomach couldn’t assimilate. His own body had fought off food poisoning often enough that he thought he must have calluses on his stomach lining by now, but even so he ate little. Just enough to keep up his strength. Weakness could be as dangerous as food poisoning in a place like this.