“That wasn’t what I meant,” Damien said quietly.
The Hunter blinked. “What then?”
“He offered you immortality. To use your own words, the real thing.” Damien shook his head. “I know you, Gerald. Pretty well, I like to think. And I know what death means to you. I know that avoiding it is the focus of your very existence, and that nothing—not family, not ethical obligations, not even fear of divine judgment—is allowed to threaten that focus.” He looked at Tarrant, meeting the pale gaze head-on. “So what happened? Why didn’t you sell out? I’m grateful for it, mind you, I always will be—but I don’t understand it. Not at all.”
Tarrant’s expression tightened; after a moment he turned away, as if he feared what Damien might read in it. “In my lifetime,” he said solemnly, “I created only one thing of lasting value. One thing of such beauty and promise that long after I had committed my soul to darkness I still reveled in watching it grow, in seeing what turns it would take and what new paths would open up for it. Your Church, Reverend Vryce. My most precious creation. The immortality the Prince offered me was based upon its corruption. He would have taken my work and twisted it—destroyed it—reduced it to some neo-pagan drivel in order to harness its power for his own ends. And I couldn’t stand by and let that happen. My vanity was too great in the end, my pride too all-conquering; to accept immortality on those terms. It would be like letting part of myself die in order that a lesser part might live. So you see,” he said quietly, “it was that very offer which turned me against him.”
He turned away then, and left his place at the rail; perhaps he felt that in the wake of such a confession it was best to leave. But as he walked away from Damien, his footsteps as silent as the breeze in the sails, the priest said, “Two things, Gerald.”
He turned back partway, startled. “What?”
“You said you gave us one thing of value. But there were two. Have you forgotten? The Church of the Unification . . . and horses.” He smiled slightly. “I know some who would even argue that the second was the more important creation in the long run.”
“Pagans,” he retorted, dismissing the thought. But it seemed to Damien that he, too, was smiling, and as he left the priest’s company his step seemed lighter than it had in too many long, hard nights.
There’s hope for you yet, Hunter.
North. Into warmer seas, brighter skies.
Into nightmare.
The Prince had died, and along with him a network of Wardings that supported the rakhene invasion. Now all of that was gone. Now the invaders, stripped of their protective coloration, were revealed for what they were: brutal imposters who had terrorized the land, using the Prince’s illusions to mask their true identity while they put humanity to the sword.
No longer.
In every village where the Silver Siren stopped, in every city, in every Protectorate, the spirit of vengeance held sway. The luckiest rakh were simply slaughtered, their throats cut or their bodies gutted as hordes of humans descended on their strongholds. They had nowhere to run to, no way to hide. The Prince, being dead, could no longer protect them with his sorcery; Katassah, not knowing of their plight, could not send reinforcements. Quickly the humans learned their weaknesses, and the rakh who had once terrorized small human villages now cringed in terror as their victims rose up, their souls filled with fury, their hearts set on vengeance. And all the while Calesta fed, Calesta inspired, Calesta rejoiced, as a holocaust of epic proportions took root in the Church’s most blessed lands.
Nightmare:
Rakhene bodies in Especia, flayed alive and staked out for the sun to torment. Rakhene heads adorning the gates of Tranquila. Rakhene claws worn as common adornment in Shalona. Everywhere there was rakhene suffering, rakhene pain . . . and more than that. Horribly, terribly more than that. Drunk with hatred, high on vengeance, the human mobs lost that fine sense of discretion which separated righteous indignation from blind destructiveness. In Infinita a human child who was sensitive to sunlight had been taken up and tortured to death; in Verdaza an adult suspected of sorcery had suffered a similar fate. Every man was suspect; every woman was vulnerable. Rumors circulated of impossible couplings, resulting in offspring which looked truly human but were loyal in spirit to their rakhene heritage. Children were torn from their parents and slaughtered for seeming rakhlike in their play; others were orphaned when a word or a sign hinted that their parents had tasted forbidden pleasures. All to cleanse the world of brutality, the killers claimed; all to make God’s most favored land safe for human habitation.
No one man can save this place, Karril had said. Sick with horror at what he had witnessed, Damien found it easy to believe that. The very foundations of human society were beginning to crumble, and it wouldn’t be long before such damage was done here that no one generation might save it. Did they understand what was happening to them? Did anyone even suspect? If so, that would probably be seen as a mark of the enemy’s power. No doubt any churchman who tried to warn his fellows of the danger inherent in this course would be cut down in mid-speech, damned along with those he meant to save. In a time like this, who would dare to speak out?
In the Kierstaad Protectorate, where the rakh had razed whole villages, the cleansing had been thorough indeed. The once proud keep had been set afire so that only its stones remained, mute witness to the slaughter that had taken place within. Charred bones lay throughout the chambers and corridors, some skeletons missing hands or feet or even larger appendages; they had probably been crippled and left to die while the fire closed in on them. One balcony which overlooked the sea was carpeted in shards of glass, as though some fragile and beautiful thing had been systematically smashed; Damien remembered Jenseny’s description of her mother’s crystal garden and mourned for its loss.
They had brought her body with them, preserved by Tarrant’s frigid power, to lay it in the ground of her homeland. But Damien couldn’t leave her there, not in the midst of all that evil. So they went a mile or more down the coast, to a place where the trees were green and the ground cover was lush and no blood had been shed in recent history. And they laid her there, with a piece of her mother’s crystal beside her and her father’s gemstone in her hand. He said a prayer aloud over her grave, though no one else in the ship’s small company shared his faith; let them see that his God was gentle at heart, that He cared about the welfare of a child’s soul. It wasn’t much in the face of all this horror, but right now it was the best he could do.
Rest in peace, precious child. God spared you sight of this slaughter, for which I will always be grateful. God spared you the knowledge of what kind of ugliness lies waiting in the human soul, wanting only the proper catalyst to bring it to life.
A familiar hand clasped his shoulder, strong and cold. In comfort? In warning? He nodded, and allowed himself to be led away. Toward the ship which would take them north. Toward the capital of this shadowed empire, and the men who might save it. If they could. If any men could.
Toward Mercia.
Sunset: the sky red and orange, with deep purple clouds hanging heavy at the horizon’s edge. Overhead the Core, outlining shapes in molten gold. On the field of green a platform, lined in stone. On that platform, bound to a stake, a body.
Burning.
There were nearly fifty thousand people in the great square of Mercia, and only Tarrant’s power made it possible for him and Damien to approach the platform unhindered. The breeze was blowing westward, but every so often it shifted and passed over them, carrying the sharp smell of burning, the pungent aroma of roasting flesh. Even Tarrant seemed sickened by it, or at least by its implications.