When True Night Falls Read online

  Suddenly she understood what had happened to the other children. And she envied them their utter withdrawal. Their peace.

  Take me, she begged her God. Take me away from this. I’ll do anything....

  No response. Not from Him. But overhead a dark shape eclipsed the moon briefly; she glanced up in time to see black wings outlined against Casca’s brilliance, talons that gleamed like rubies in the moonlight. Then, as if in response to her scrutiny, the dark thing which had been circling overhead began its descent. Sharp claws flexed in anticipation as the broad, night-black wings lowered it slowly to the ground. She was suddenly aware of how utterly still the night had become; even the faeborn demons who had been whispering in the shadows were silent now, as if they recognized something in this creature that even they feared. Then its eyes fixed on her—quicksilver, diamondine—and the hunger that was in them brought a soft moan to her lips. Of terror. Submission. Desire.

  The chain no longer chafed at her ankle. The cuts on her face no longer burned. There was nothing in her universe but those eyes, those terrible eyes, and the cold burning hunger behind them. As the great bird scanned the surrounding countryside once more—taking the measure of its enemies, it seemed—she knew with utter certainty that the men of her city were as frozen as she was. Mesmerized by the force of this demon’s presence.

  “Take me home,” she whispered. No longer certain who she was talking to. No longer sure what she wanted.

  Wingtips curled to catch the night air, it lowered itself with consummate grace to the boulder at the clearing’s center. She caught the flash of ruby talons closing about about the thick steel ring, silver eyes scanning the woods for enemies. Transfixing them? Then a chill light seemed to rise up from about its feet, so bright that she had to shield her eyes or be blinded; silver-blue flames, that licked about the creature’s flesh. She felt a thrill of pure terror as the mass that was within those flames melted, transformed, reshaped itself. Into—

  A man. Or rather, a demon in man’s form, whose flesh embodied the very chill of the night. The silver-blue power poured down from him like water, lapped at the base of the rock that supported him, ran outward in a thousand tiny rivulets that laced the ground like veins, until the whole of the clearing was caught up in the web of his power. The form he wore was breathtakingly beautiful, features as fine and as delicate as the numarble statues which flanked the great arch of the cathedral—but cold, as a statue’s substance is cold, and utterly unhuman. She shivered, knowing that her fear had summoned something as far beyond the mere beasts of the Dark as the angels were above mere men. Wondering if the Church’s hunters would dare to fire at such a creature.

  Apparently one of the men had found his courage, for a dark, slim shape shot forth from the darkness. The demon did not turn to confront his attacker, nor otherwise acknowledge the assault—but power, brilliant, laced up from the ground like lightning, and sizzled as it struck the blessed shaft. A moment later the quarrel reached the place where he stood, but its course had been altered so that it missed its intended object by inches and continued onward, into the thick darkness of the forest beyond.

  The clearing was silent now. Utterly silent. She could feel her heart pounding as the demon-man stepped down from his perch, coming toward her—and she knew that he could hear it, that its fevered rhythm drew him like sugar would draw an insect. Helpless, fascinated, she made no effort to flee, but lay frozen in a reverie that was as much yearning as it was pure terror.

  Then something stirred at the edge of the clearing—and she nearly cried out, recognizing its source. One of the men was going to try to save her. She knew in an instant that his sword would be as ineffectual as his quarrels, that by entering the clearing he was opening himself up to attack ... but her voice was frozen in her throat, and she lacked the power to warn him.

  The demon’s eyes never left hers, but they narrowed. Something in them flickered, and power shot up from the ground like lightning. It consumed the man in an instant, licking at his flesh like fire—and leaving frozen flesh in the place of ash, that shattered into a thousand glassy bits as he fell to the ground at the demon’s feet.

  All around her unnatural bonfires flared, leafless trees silhouetted against silver-blue unfire. She heard one of the men scream out, another trying to flee—but the demon’s power claimed them all, and at last there was nothing left of the Church’s special warriors but a silver flicker that played across the ground, outlining bodies as still as the earth itself.

  Then, slowly, he came toward her.

  His eyes were mirrors that reflected back at her all the terrors of her childhood. His essence was hunger that drank in her fear. His presence embodied the night, with all its special threats: The faespawned. The undying. The Dark. And something else, that she now hungered for as desperately as she had once hungered for freedom.

  Eyes shut, lips parted, she sank down into the sea of his hunger, and the bittersweet ecstacy of dying.

  Four

  Pounding. Rhythmic. Pervasive. It dissolved the dream from around Damien and substituted reality, in all its claustrophobic glory. The closeness of his cabin. The creaking of the deck. And a banging on his door, too forceful to ignore.

  “Time to get up, Rev!” Pounding. On the door, or in his head? The dream fog dissolved slowly. “Captain said to get you out here if I value my hide, so rise n‘ shine! Time to go to work!”

  With a muttered curse he grabbed his blanket from off the bed and wrapped it around himself in an improvised toga. He’d just as soon answer the door stark naked—it’d serve the man right if it bothered him—but there were a few passengers on board who wouldn’t handle it well if they saw that, and diplomacy, as always, won out. Sunlight streamed through the porthole, piercing through the thick lawn curtain: early morning, he guessed, although he couldn’t have said whether it was the angle of the sunlight or its hue which gave that away. He’d been keeping Tarrant’s hours for long enough that even with the bastard gone he still missed the best of the daylight hours. That’s got to stop, he told himself firmly, blinking the sleep from his eyes. Soon.

  “Coming,” he muttered, even as he pulled the door open.

  The first mate was stopped in mid-motion, his fist raised high. “Good morn, Rev.” The fist opened slowly, as if only gradually becoming aware that the door was no longer within reach. He was wearing his uniform jacket, a stiff woolen shortcoat that smelled strongly of mothballs. And shoes. He was wearing shoes. Damien shook his head, trying to absorb that fact. When was the last time he’d seen the crew shod? “He said to wake you up as soon as we were sure, and it looks like we’re sure now, so you need to get on deck.”

  “Sure about what?”

  “Company.” A nervous grin betrayed two missing teeth. “Just come into sight half a hour ago, but the captain said to wait until we knew what it was for sure—”

  And suddenly it all made sense. The shoes, the uniform ... full port dress, the captain would have called it. But there couldn’t be a port on this stretch of coast, could there? If not ... then what?“

  “A ship?” he asked. Hearing the excitement in his own voice. And the tension. “Another fortress? What?”

  “Aye, all sails and steam and armed to the teeth. A ship, Rev,” he added, as though Damien hadn’t just figured that out. “You’d best come and look for yourself as soon as you’re decent. Captain’s wanting you now for sure. Up at the bow.” He nodded sharply toward the middeck. “I got to go.”

  A ship.

  God in heaven ... enemies, allies, what?

  He pulled on the nearest pair of breeches—yesterday’s, not really clean, but that couldn’t be helped—and a fresh linen shirt that he’d laid out the night before. Not fancy, but it would do for the moment. In deference to the morning’s style he pulled on a pair of soft boots as well, though he had long since adopted the crew’s custom of going barefoot on the rough wooden planks. Then the deck canted beneath his feet and for a moment he slid as the smooth
leather soles fought for purchase; it took him a minute to steady himself, and then a few minutes more to learn to walk steadily again without the reassuring grip of ten toes to anchor him. Stunned, he managed to make his way from the cabin.

  A ship!

  The other passengers were gathered at the port rail, grouped predictably. In the long months they’d spent together, Damien had learned to recognize all their little cliques, and to draw voyeuristic amusement from watching how each little outbreak of emotion—a lover’s spat, a partner’s suspicion, even the fallout from a particularly ruthless game of poker—reshuffled the forty of them into new configurations, each with its own special stresses. The pettiness of it all was part of the reason he’d preferred to keep Tarrant’s hours, feeding on the man’s special knowledge as surely as the adept fed upon his dreams. And it was addictive, there was no denying that. He would never have thought of knowledge in those terms before, but Tarrant had taught him otherwise. A dangerous addiction, all the more so because it seemed so benign....

  He wondered why all these men and women weren’t crowding at the front of the ship, since the object of their scrutiny clearly lay in that direction. Perhaps the captain had threatened them back from the bow, to reserve that space for himself. If so, it served them right. He had once likened the Golden Glory’s passengers to a passel of kittens, who tended to be underfoot no matter where you went. Overhead, Damien caught sight of the Glory’s few sailors scurrying about like so many spiders, their hands and feet grasping the knotted rigging only long enough to get their bearings, then scrambling free across the hempen webs again. A figure clung to the mast itself, fingers and toes gripping salt-cured wood without visible support. He grinned, noting that Hesseth had found herself the best vantage point of all. White sails snapped in the wind all about her as the complex winch-and-wire system that controlled their position began to draw them in, denying them a grasp on the westerly breeze. Also giving her a clearer view. At moments like these he envied her the claws and agility that gave her such freedom. How much simpler and safer would his life have been if he had been armed likewise?

  The captain was in uniform, and on him it seemed even more alien. Woolen jacket, black breeches, high leather boots; the clean, formal line of his garments did nothing to refine him, merely made him look coarser by contrast. And yet powerful, doubly powerful, with a raw, unfettered agression that was its own authority. Little wonder he had managed to scare the passengers back from the bow.

  “She’s armed,” he said, as Damien came to his side. “No doubt of it. Take a look.”

  Did you expect any different? he wondered, remembering the cannon they had seen a few days earlier. He raised his own telescope up to his eyes and scanned the sea before them. By now they must be within ... what, forty miles to the gateway of the inland sea? Fifty at the most. That made contact very likely. It surprised him, in a way, that it hadn’t occurred before.

  At last he found the object of the captain’s attentions and focused his own lenses upon it. And gazed upon the face of their welcoming committee.

  It was a ship, all right, and a damned big one. Even to his untrained eye it looked impressive; others would no doubt find it intimidating. He scanned its twenty-odd sails, wishing he knew enough of ship-lore to read meaning into their various shapes and settings. He studied the deck, looking for things that he could interpret. There were columns rising from the middeck that might lead down to a furnace: steam power for backup? Few cabins meant it wasn’t a passenger liner, which left at least a dozen possibilities. The smooth, sleek hull cut through the waves with fine precision, but was that any better or worse than his own ship’s performance? He couldn’t begin to judge. He had never liked sea travel, had assiduously avoided it most of his life; now he was paying the price for that.

  Tarrant would have known. Wasn’t Merentha a port in his time? He probably has every fact we’d need, right at his fingertips.

  And then, scanning lower, he noticed the holes which pierced the ship’s side: perfectly square, evenly spaced. Distinctly ominous, even to his untrained eye. He felt something inside him tighten as he recognized the only thing they could possibly be, as he finally voiced the impossible.

  “Cannon,” he whispered. The word was cold on his tongue. Cannon, on a ship. “Is that it?”

  “Figure so,” the captain confirmed. “Never seen ‘em like that myself, but I imagine that’s how they’d be placed. If one was going to fight,” he added.

  Cannon on a ship. That one phrase embodied the impossible. Gunpowder might have limited use on land—mostly in the hands of those whose luck or power permitted them to control it—but it had no place on the open sea, not where a single mishap might doom a ship full of men and goods to a sudden watery grave. Misfires happened with the best of guns; the early wars had taught them that. Naval warfare had been rare and piracy all but unknown for how long now ... six hundred years? Eight hundred?

  But not here, Damien thought. An unaccustomed chill began to take root in his soul. Any culture that armed its ships Earth-style must be very foolhardy, or very confident ... or both. And deadly. That was without question. And it had enemies. Powerful enemies.

  He swung his sight upward, to the pennant that fluttered atop the mizzenmast, and waited for wind to favor him by stretching the fabric taut so he could see. The emblem of the foreign ship fluttered, folded ... and then snapped westward and held. Just long enough. His breath caught in his throat.

  “Reverend?”

  Two circles, interlocking. In one was a shape that might have been the Northamerican continent. An Earth-disk? In the other was a serpentine form that it took him a minute to identify. He struggled to remember the shapes on Tarrant’s map, and tried to reconcile the distortions of the space-born probe with the viewpoint of land-bound cartographers. Yes. That was it. Without a doubt. He recognized it now.

  This land. This continent. Bound to the Earth (if he read it right) by the same kind of symbol that his Church would use to signify the One God, the One Faith ... what else could that flag be, but a symbol of his calling?

  A fervent prayer echoed in his soul, one he had never dared voice in all the long months of their travel. Oh, God, let this land be Yours. Let its people be sanctified unto You, keepers of Your Law. Let them but serve the same dream that I do, and I know that we will prevail—we will triumph!—we will scour the evil from this planet so that Your followers may worship in peace and safety forever....

  “Father?”

  “Might be Church-sign,” he murmured. “Or might not.” Now that the first flush of optimism was fading, cold pragmatism took its place. Our enemy has tricked us before. What if this sign is but another example of his scheming? Or if (it is possible) you’re reading it wrong? Be careful, Damien. Don’t let your own hope make you careless. “Can’t be sure.” He looked up from the telescope, saw that Rasya had joined them. Against the deep blue of her pilot’s uniform her sun-bleached hair burned like fire.

  “It’s a coastline vessel,” she informed him. “Those sails’d give it good maneuverability, but it can’t net the ocean wind like this can.” She nodded back toward their own square sails, now tightly reefed to their spars. “Of course, here by the coast that’s to their advantage. No way we could outrun them. And if I’m right about the engine ...” She hesitated.

  “What?” Damien asked, and the captain prompted, “Go on.”

  She glanced back at their own midship section, where two slender columns would serve to vent the turbine’s smoke high above the deck. Only two columns. Slender. She gazed out at the alien ship, whose four thick columns seemed to dominate the entire deck. Was that fear in her eyes, or envy? “I’d guess that it’s more than a backup,” she said at last. “In fact, judging by the design ... I’d guess that sailpower is secondary.”

  “Gods‘v Earth,” the captain murmured. “A true steamship? She’s under sail now, sure enough—”

  “The wind’s with her,” Rasya supplied. “But I’d ventu
re a guess she doesn’t slow down when it turns. Wouldn’t have to.”

  “Gunpowder over water,” Damien murmured. “Dependable engines. Mechanized travel.” Tasting the words. Testing the concepts.

  “It’s like a different world,” Rasya agreed.

  “A world your people hoped to create—eh, Reverend?” The captain’s eyes, narrowed against the sun, were fixed on him. Tell me these are your people, they seemed to beg. Tell me you know how to talk to them.

  “I don’t know,” Damien whispered. Afraid to commit himself. Was it possible that in this isolated community the Church had finally achieved its goals, albeit on a limited scale? Or could their enemy fake those signs as well? “I just don’t know.”

  “We’re going to have to talk to them,” Rasya said quietly. “On their terms, I’d say.”

  The captain nodded. “No doubt about that.” With effort he looked away from the distant ship, and back at her. “How long ago were our signals standardized? Will they know our flags if they see ‘em?”

  “Not if they’re from the first two expeditions. Too early.” Her eyes were narrowed in thought as she fought to recall the fine points of naval history. “When did the third group set sail? Fifth century?”