The Iezu nodded slowly. “Half,” he agreed, in a voice that trembled with awe. “And half . . .” He looked up at the mother. “Something else.”
And then suddenly, with frightening clarity, Damien saw the last image again. This time the detail that had almost escaped him didn’t:
... in the brain of a dying sorcerer ...
He struggled to his knees; the motion set off a fit of coughing so violent that it almost knocked him down again. But that wasn’t going to stop him. The living circuit the Iezu mother had described was clearly using a man’s brain for its receiver, and since that wasn’t him and there was only one other man present—
“He’s alive?” He struggled to his feet as he gasped the question, and started to stagger toward Tarrant. “I felt him die!”
A hand grabbed his arm and pulled him back, roughly enough that he nearly fell. “And so he did. Does your kind never start up a man’s heart once again, after it falters? Is the brink of death such an absolute place that no human soul is ever rescued from it?” Damien tried to pull loose from him, but the demon (no, not a demon, something strange and alien and terrible and wonderful, but not a demon) wouldn’t let go. “Don’t,” Karril warned. “She saved him for her purposes, not yours. If you get in her way now, there’s no telling what she’ll do.”
“So she can use him as a translating device? Is that her purpose?”
The Iezu shook his head. “She doesn’t need him for that. Now that she understands the pattern, and her children know how to help her, any human will do.”
“What, then?” He stared up at the mother’s fluid form, trying to catch some glimpse of the man inside it. “What does she want him for?”
The Iezu turned his attention to the creature as well, and for a long moment said nothing. Damien saw that many of the other Iezu had gathered near the mother, as if to intensify their bond.
“She says that he killed her child.” Karril found the words with effort; clearly the Iezu bond was less than a perfect translator. “She says that the right to do so is hers and hers alone, and not even an alien may take it from her.”
“So she’s punishing him? Is that it?”
But the Iezu shook his head. “Not punishing, exactly. More like ... using him.”
“For what?”
Karril hesitated. Damien could see his brow furrow in concentration as he struggled to find the proper words. “To replace what was destroyed,” he said at last. “To make her family whole again.”
To replace-?
Oh, my God.
Hundreds of men and women had come into this valley in past centuries, courting the wild power of Shaitan. From each she had taken one seed, one spark of consciousness, never realizing that a man was made up of a thousand such elements and her Iezu children inherited only one. What happened to those men? he wondered suddenly. Did Kami’s human father leave this place in the same condition he had come to it, or did he leave behind him that capacity for pleasure which made human existence bearable? What would be left of Gerald Tarrant when the process of replacement was over?
As if in answer, the mother of the Iezu rose from Tarrant’s body and withdrew to the lip of the crater. Damien had no eye for her, but made his way as quickly as he could to where the Hunter lay. "Dying" was the image the mother had chosen. Not "alive," but "dying." That meant the man wasn’t out of danger yet. Damien put a hand to Tarrant’s face, and even through the silk veil he could feel its uncommon heat. Its human heat. If he did die, even for an instant, then his compact is broken. He’s free. He put his hand above the man’s mouth and felt, even though the silk, a thin stirring of breath. “You son” of a bitch,” he whispered hoarsely, “you’re alive!”
The Hunter’s eyes fluttered weakly open, and for a moment it looked as if he was going to say something typically dry in response. But then the strength left him and he shuddered and closed his eyes, never having made a sound.
“Karril!” He hauled Tarrant up by the shoulders until he was sitting upright, then wrapped one arm about him. Cinders that had fallen in his hair began to smoke as he cried out, “Help me get him out of here!”
For a moment Karril hesitated, and Damien wondered if he hadn’t perhaps asked for more help than the Iezu could give. How solid was the body he wore, constructed of fae for convenience’s sake and clad in an illusion of humanity? But then the Iezu began to climb, and when he reached Tarrant he went around to his other side, wrapping his arm about the man’s torso so that together they could lift him. Clearly whatever served him for flesh was solid enough to function. Cinders smoked in their clothes and their hair as they struggled to carry the Hunter down from the deadly peak. Once Damien had to stop to beat out a burning spark that had taken hold of a fold of his shirt sleeve, and another time Karril called a halt in order to brush red-hot cinders from the Hunter’s hair. Tarrant tried to help them by supporting his own weight, but the simple fact was that he was too weak to walk unaided.
At last, after a nightmare descent, they found shelter beside a cooled lava dome, a blister of rock whose position on the slope would protect them from the worst of the wind-borne ash. With a groan Damien lowered Tarrant to the ground so that his back was supported by the rocky protrusion, and then let go. The earth was trembling here, but it wasn’t too warm, which was as good an omen as they were likely to get. There was, of course, no telling where Shaitan’s fury would erupt next, and it could well be right beneath their feet ... but that was such a mundane terror after all they had experienced that it had been strangely leached of power. With a sigh Damien lowered himself beside the Hunter, his legs throbbing with exhaustion as he stretched them out. How long had they been going without a real break now, ten hours, twelve? He rubbed a knot that was forming in his thigh, wincing as the tender flesh recoiled from the pressure. He wasn’t going to make it much longer, that was certain. He squinted over toward the sun to get a sense of its position, then out at the Ridge. It seemed much closer to them than it had been before; Almea must have led them partway around the volcano’s peak. Now they faced south, and the knife-edged mountain chain was close enough for him to make out details on its flank.
“There,” he said, and he pointed in a direction where the ground seemed smooth and solid, where a clear path between the meandering acid streams could be determined. “We’ll go that way.”
“I don’t think he’s in shape to move.”
Damien looked down at Tarrant, and for a moment was so lost in wonder that he could hardly concentrate on the issue at hand. There was sunlight falling across his face-sunlight!-seeping through the silk in bands of white to illuminate a face that had been in darkness for nearly a millennium. Sunlight glistened on the fine beads of sweat that were gathering on his forehead, and the skin beneath them was flushed with a hint of red, just like a living man’s should be.
It hit him then, perhaps for the first time, just what had happened. He had known the words before, but he hadn’t felt their impact. Now he did.
God has given you a second chance, he thought in wonder, as he touched trembling fingers to the silk veil that protected Tarrant’s face. After so many centuries of evil that your soul must surely be black as jet. He remembered the Binding that Tarrant had worked on Calesta, the horrific images of bloodlust and sadism that had risen up from the Hunter’s core to overwhelm them both. That was all still inside the man, and it would take more than a single dose of sunlight to exorcise it. But now, for the first time, he was free to fight it. Now he was free to struggle against the accumulated corruption of his last nine hundred years, and reclaim his human soul. God has given you a chance to redeem yourself. A second beginning. “Don’t you waste it,” he whispered. The Hunter’s eyes flickered open briefly, but he saw no comprehension in them. Finally he forced his gaze away, back to the path before them. “We can’t stay here.”