“Yeah. Same here.”
“You believe that Calesta has made contact with the Patriarch?”
He gazed into Tarrant’s eyes. Cold, so cold. Pits of anti-life. How could he have imagined that the
Patriarch resembled him? Or any living man, for that matter?
“He knew,” he said bitterly. "Everything. Details he couldn’t possibly have learned from any other source.” He met that inhuman gaze head-on, drawing strength from its cold inner fire. This is my ally. My support. He wished the thought felt more uncomfortable than it did. Had he changed so much in the last two years? “He knows I fed you my blood,” he said quietly. “He knows about the channel between us. Do you realize how that damns me, in the Church’s eyes? There’s nothing I can say now to save myself. Nothing I can do, except avoid the source of corruption from now on.”
“Is that what you want?” Tarrant demanded. “If it truly is, then I’ll leave you. If you value your precious peace of mind more than our mission. Maybe Calesta will even forgive you in time, learn to leave you alone, once you’ve ceased to be—”
“Don’t be a fool, Gerald.” He reached for a bottle of ale he had left on the table earlier in the day; it was warm now, but what the hell. “Neither one of us is safe until Calesta’s dead and gone. Hell, the whole vulking world isn’t safe anymore.” He drank deeply of the warm ale, wincing as its spices bit into his tongue. “Look what happened in the east. Look at how many lives would have been sacrificed to one demon’s hunger, if you hadn’t—”
The Hunter’s expression darkened. Damien let the words trail off into silence.
“Sorry,” he said at last. “I shouldn’t remind you.” Tarrant turned away, toward the window. “At any rate, we don’t stand a chance singly and you know it. Like it or not, we’re stuck with each other." We may not even stand a chance together, he thought grimly as he took another swig of the warm ale. The alcohol was slowly loosening a knot in his belly the size of Jaggonath. Well worth the lousy taste. “So how did your research go?”
Tarrant shook his head sharply in frustration. “Volumes of notes, centuries of study, and not one useful bit of information. Oh, I can recite you the names of over a hundred Iezu, complete with their aspects, preferred forms, and habitats, but according to Karril none of his family will get involved in this, not even to the extent of pointing us toward more useful information. Their progenitor’s code is apparently enforced with vigor. Thank God for that, anyway.”
“Thank God for it?” He raised an eyebrow. “That code seems to be our greatest impediment right now.”
“Their progenitor also forbids the Iezu from killing humans, at least directly. Which is the only reason you and I are still alive.”
“You said they have no power but illusion. Surely that—”
“How little work would it take to make me stay out past dawn, believing that the sun hadn’t yet begun to rise? How little work to arrange an accident for you, how small an illusion to make you misjudge the edge of a pier or a cliff, or mistake the flow of traffic in the streets? No man can stay on his guard against such tricks forever, Reverend Vryce. No, if Calesta meant to kill us, then we would both have died long ago. As it is, I’m sure he’s planned something far more ... unpleasant.”
He turned away again, and gazed out the window. Perhaps he was studying the flow of fae in the streets below, analyzing it for data. Perhaps he was only thinking.
“He’s attacking the Church,” Damien said quietly. “I thought he might,” he said, without turning back. “Tell me the details.”
“Outbursts of violence all over town. Bands of the faithful desecrating pagan shrines, beating priests, destroying property. One group was just about to lynch a priestess for crimes against the One God when the police arrived, just in time. And such outbursts are more and more frequent. The Patriarch himself had to step in the last time, and even so there was a lot of damage done.” He put the empty bottle down on the table again and wiped his mouth with a shirt sleeve. “The Temple of Bakshi is suing the Church for half a million in damages to person and property. If they win——”
“Then there’ll be more to follow.” He snorted. “That goes without saying, doesn’t it?” The Hunter nodded slowly. “He’s subtle, our enemy, and all too clever. Multiple lawsuits could bring the Church to its knees faster than any direct Working. And the public humiliation involved would certainly affect the fae, weakening the Church’s effect on local currents. Negating the very power which the Church was designed to wield. And after Jaggonath, others will follow. Until such momentum is gained that it no longer requires his direct interference.”
He turned back to face Damien again; his silver eyes were blazing. “He means to destroy my greatest work. Morally, socially, financially ... if that lawsuit goes through, then he’s already won the first battle. How many more campaigns has he set in motion, which will remain secret until their culmination? Nine hundred years, Vryce! You perceive that I abandoned it years ago, but I tell you the Church is still my passion. My child. Nine hundred years of carefully crafted development, and this demonic filth will send it all spiraling down into Hell in a single generation!”
“There has to be a way to stop it. There has to be a way to nullify the effect—”
“We must kill him,” Tarrant interrupted. “There is no other way.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.” His voice was tight with frustration. “But there has to be a way.” He thought for a moment, then added, “Their progenitor can kill them. So obviously the means exists. And I got the distinct impression that whatever technique he or she uses, the Iezu would be helpless to fight back.”
“You think he could be convinced to help us?”
“To kill his own creations? Not likely. But there might be others who are privy to his secrets.”
“Such as?”
“Maybe demons. Some other class, whom we can still coerce by simple means. Or maybe even adepts.
Someone close to the Iezu, who might invite their confidence.” He paused. “Maybe Ciani.”
Ciani. Even after two years the memory was sharp and painful. Ciani of the quick wit and ready laughter, whom he had loved. Ciani the adept, whom a Iezu had saved. Ciani the loremaster, who valued knowledge more than any mere love affair and had gone to live among the rakh in order to study them more closely. Ciani, whom he had left behind. “Ciani’s gone,” he said quietly. “But not dead, Reverend Vryce. And not unreachable.”
She would be in the rakhlands now, protected by unscalable mountains on one side and an ocean on the other. The Canopy would be there, too, a wall of living fae that no human Working could cross. If not for that they might Send for her, using the fae to communicate across the miles that separated them. With it ... “I don’t relish going back there,” he muttered. “Nor I. If nothing else, it would mean our extended absence from Jaggonath, leaving Calesta free to do his worst here unopposed. I’m not sure we can afford that.”
Ciani. Even now, years later, the memory of her made Damien ache with regret. But it had been a doomed match from the start, he accepted that now. Or at least he tried to.
“She’s a loremaster,” he said at last. “They take a vow of neutrality, don’t they? Would she be willing to help us?”
“I don’t know. She certainly has no vested interest in the Church’s survival. She’d probably be more interested in chronicling its fall than in providing for its salvation. And then there are, as you say, the vows of her profession, which forbid her from taking sides in any fae-related conflict. The irony is, if it were anyone else, I could force her to serve us. But the lady Ciani ... to harm her in any way would be to give myself over to the ones I serve, in soul as well as aspect.” He laughed shortly, a forced sound. “And I suspect that they’re not in a forgiving mood these days.”