He turned to look at the river by his side, whose chill water rippled and foamed as it gushed over the edge. It gave Damien a rare moment in which to study the man unobserved. There had been a change in him recently, and not for the better. Damien would have been hard-pressed to capture it in words, but he could sense it clearly enough. Maybe it’s hunger, he thought. He thought of the cities before them, nestled in the lower valley, and shuddered. He considered how many nights had passed since they’d left the Terata camp, long nights spent traveling in an empty land. Though Tarrant hadn’t talked about his needs, it was clear what the cities must mean to him. Fresh food. Rejuvenation. Maybe even—with the right luck—a hunt.
Damien felt sick inside, and turned away. You never get used to it. Not ever. You never learn to accept it.
God help me if I ever do.
In recent nights Tarrant had avoided Jenseny, and the rest of the party as well. He no longer rode with them but flew overhead as they traveled, keeping pace with them far above the thick canopy of treetops. Which was just as well, Damien mused. God alone knew how he would have reacted if they’d asked him to ride double with someone, or how Hesseth’s mare would have handled it if they tried to put three people on her back. There was a limit to what even strong horses could handle. No, it was best that they travel as they did. He just wished he didn’t feel in his gut that this was just another facet of the strange darkness which now hung about the man like a shroud, which seemed to grow as the long days of travel progressed.
He stood in the presence of God, he reminded himself, and was rejected. He’s faced the truth of his own damnation head on. Wouldn’t that change a man? Shouldn’t that change a man?
Repentance meant death, the Neocount had told him. And death, in his philosophy, meant eternal judgment. Was there any way out of that intellectual trap which the sorcerer had crafted for himself? Was there any path he would accept? The thought of saving that twisted soul instead of destroying it was a heady concept, and not one that he had considered before. He wasn’t yet sure it was possible.
“We’ll need to get rid of the horses,” the Hunter announced.
“What?” It took a second for him to get his conversational bearings. “Why?”
“Because they’ll give us away. There’s no creature native to the east that’s even remotely like them, and the Matrias know that. If they’ve sent any warning to these people, it’ll include a description of our mounts. In the mountains we could hide them, but down there?” He gestured toward the city lights below them.
Damien considered it. He hardly relished the thought of traveling south without the beasts, particularly in the unknown lands of their enemy . . . but the Hunter was right. Even if they could hide the animals in the midst of a city—a dubious enterprise at best—they could hardly book sea passage without revealing their existence. And if the Matrias had indeed alerted this region, they might as well emblazon their coats with bright red targets as go down to the coast with two horses in tow.
Damn the luck. Damn it to hell.
“What’s the alternative?” he asked gruffly.
“Kill them,” he said easily. “Or set them free here, before we descend.”
“That would just be a slower death, wouldn’t it?”
A faint smile curled the Hunter’s thin lips. “Mine’s a resourceful beast, Reverend; he’ll survive well enough. And Hesseth’s mare might choose to stay with him, which would give her a better chance.”
“Yeah. What are the odds of that?”
“The ancient xandu mated for life. Some of that instinct no doubt still remains in their descendants. I’m sure that between your skills and mine we would have no trouble reawakening it.”
Damien stared at him, incredulous. “Haven’t you forgotten something?” When the Hunter didn’t respond, he pressed, “What about the mating part? Isn’t that kind of important?”
“My horse wasn’t gelded,” he pointed out.
“Sure. He isn’t exactly a raging stallion either. If he was, don’t you think with a mare present—”
“I didn’t say he wasn’t altered, Reverend Vryce. I stopped up the flow of certain hormones to render him tractable in mixed company. That can be undone easily enough. Given a few months of normalcy . . .” He shrugged. “I imagine the old patterns would reassert themselves soon enough.”
“In which case . . .” He looked back at the horses. “They might breed.”
He sensed, rather than saw, the Hunter’s smile. “Very probably.”
“How successfully?”
“It’s hardly an ideal gene pool, but I’d say they stand a chance. Certainly more than they would if we took them with us.”
Wild horses. Not xandu. Not some tamed equivalent. A truly wild gene pool, adapting itself to this hardy terrain. The concept was intriguing, he decided. God knows, this valley needed some new input.
And then another thought struck him, and he looked sharply at Tarrant. “Are you doing this for their good, or for yours?”
He shrugged. “The species was wild once, and might be wild again. How much of its survival instinct survived the process of forced evolution? I would be lying if I said that the experiment didn’t appeal to me.”
And that’s the heart of it, Damien thought. Once you’ve started a project, you can’t let go of it. This whole planet is no more than a vast experimental laboratory for you, a testing ground for your pet theories. And nothing else really matters to you, does it? Ten thousand men might be slaughtered in front of you and you wouldn’t bat an eyelash, but if anyone threatened one of your precious experiments you’d move heaven and earth to destroy him. What manner of dark vanity could produce such a finely honed selfishness? It was almost beyond his comprehension.
“Well?” the Hunter pressed. “What’s your judgment on the matter? Since I’m so biased,” he added dryly.
Damien resisted the temptation to glare at him. Narrowly. “Don’t you think we ought to ask Hesseth what she thinks? There are three of us,” he reminded him.
Only there were four of them now, he realized with a start, not three. How long would the girl stay with them? He had given passing thought to the concept of finding her a home in one of the coastal cities, but how likely was that? And what about the information she had hinted at, but never dared reveal?
“Let’s ask Hesseth,” he repeated quietly.
He didn’t just mean the horses.
What made you want to be a priest? the girl had asked him.
So hard to answer. So difficult to choose the right words. So hard to explain to this child what the Church was to him—what God was to him—when he knew that in the back of her mind were all the atrocities the Holies had committed. All the years she had spent locked away from light and life, for fear of his God.
And yet she asked him. Eyes wide and bright, with only a flicker of fear in their depths. Compelling an answer.
What made you want to be a priest?
Was there a moment of revelation he could share with her, one single instant which turned him away from secular courses and fixed his heart on this most difficult of paths? It seemed he had always been a priest, had always wanted to be a priest. But the decision had to come sometime, didn’t it? Certainly he hadn’t been born to the priesthood.