Part 31 (1/2)

The tunnel seemed to go on forever. Maybe it did, Damien thought. Maybe this was the true h.e.l.l, and they would spend the rest of eternity trudging through this stifling darkness, heading toward a destination that didn't even exist. If so, it would serve Tarrant right. seemed to go on forever. Maybe it did, Damien thought. Maybe this was the true h.e.l.l, and they would spend the rest of eternity trudging through this stifling darkness, heading toward a destination that didn't even exist. If so, it would serve Tarrant right.

But it was hard to be angry at a man who was so clearly having a hard time of it. His battered mortal flesh needed mortal things to heal itself-food and water in quant.i.ty, safety from stress, adequate sleep-and on this trip it wasn't likely to get any of them. He knew what the Hunter had been capable of, but what were the limits of this living man who walked by his side? He couldn't begin to guess. Yet despite the flush which bore witness to painful exertion, and the increasing stiffness of his stride, Tarrant refused to slow down for any reason. That was the old Hunter, Damien knew. He only hoped the new one was up to past standards.

When they slowed down for a moment to dig out a portion of their dwindling supplies, or stopped completely-miracle of miracles-to relieve themselves of meals long since processed, Damien took a moment to study his companion. Tarrant was limping now, and the manner in which he walked hinted at blisters near the breaking point, but despite that obvious pain his spirit was unflagging. Whatever the Iezu mother had taken from him, it wasn't affecting either courage or endurance. What kind of child had the Hunter's soul given birth to, that would now walk the land with a mind of its own and the ability to orchestrate detailed illusions? He kept looking for a sign of something missing in Tarrant, some facet of his personality that had been drained of substance, but thus far in their journey he had been unable to identify it. Perhaps he had been wrong about the process, and the conception of a new Iezu would cost its father nothing. G.o.d willing.

They had walked for hours now, too many to count, and when Damien raised up his lantern to look at Tarrant's face, he could see a brief flicker of pain tense across his brow with each step. It did no good to suggest that such pain would only intensify if he refused to pace himself properly. The one or two times that Damien even dared to hint at such a truth, Tarrant glared at him with a venom that would have done his old self proud, as if the suggestion that they take a few minutes to recoup were not only foolish, but deeply offensive.

”Look,” the ex-priest said at last, when they paused once more to eat a portion of his dwindling supplies. ”They can't find this secret place of yours, right? And they're not going to burn the Forest until they're safely out of it, which'll take days at best.” He leaned back against the cold stone wall, his muscles throbbing painfully as he s.h.i.+fted his weight. ”So we've got a little time to pace ourselves. We can spare a few minutes to rest. Just long enough to get a second wind.” And he added dryly, ”Living people do that kind of thing, you know.”

Tarrant stared at him for a long moment, then silently upended the canteen and swallowed one more precious bit of its contents. It was their last such container, Damien noted; somewhere they were going to have to find more water, and soon. Tarrant capped the canteen with meticulous care and hung its strap about his shoulder, for once not a.s.suming that Damien would carry it.

”They intend to blow up the keep,” he said. And he began to walk down the tunnel again with a quick, lop-sided stride.

”Blow up?” For a minute he was too shocked to move. Then he had to run a few steps to catch up to Tarrant, and for a moment that left him no breath for words. ”You mean, as in explosives?”

”That is the usual procedure.”

He grabbed Tarrant by the arm, jerking him to a stop. ”Are you telling me that while we're in there sorting through your notebooks the entire keep is going to come cras.h.i.+ng down on our heads?”

A faint ghost of a smile flitted across his face. ”I do hope our timing will be better than that.”

”These are books we're going after.” His voice was low but his tone was fierce. ”Books, Gerald! I appreciate how important they are, but that doesn't make them worth dying for. I don't mind risking my life to save a life-or even to preserve an ideal-but to risk something like that for a pile of books-” books-”

”Those books are a gateway to the future,” he said sharply. ”A dictionary of translation between our own species and that of the Iezu's maker, which will allow us take a step our Terran ancestors never even dreamed of. And if you're correct about the changes in the fae ... if, in fact, humans will not be able to Work to gain knowledge... then that gateway might never be accessible again. Ever. If we let those books be destroyed now, our descendants will be doomed to centuries of trial-and-error guesswork. And who can tell how much that will net them? The knowledge we sacrifice today may be lost forever-” he said sharply. ”A dictionary of translation between our own species and that of the Iezu's maker, which will allow us take a step our Terran ancestors never even dreamed of. And if you're correct about the changes in the fae ... if, in fact, humans will not be able to Work to gain knowledge... then that gateway might never be accessible again. Ever. If we let those books be destroyed now, our descendants will be doomed to centuries of trial-and-error guesswork. And who can tell how much that will net them? The knowledge we sacrifice today may be lost forever-”

”And you'd be willing to risk death for that?” he demanded. ”For knowledge?”

”I did once before,” he pointed out. ”Perhaps the second time is easier.”

He smoothed the fabric of his sleeve where Damien had crushed it, but bound no fae with the gesture; the wrinkles remained. ”Stay here, if you like. The way out will be safe soon enough.” He dropped the canteen strap off his shoulder and let the metal container fall to the floor; in the smooth-walled tunnel the impact echoed like a gunshot. ”I'll go alone.”

”Like h.e.l.l you will.” Damien reached down to catch up the canteen. Tarrant was moving quickly; he had to jog to catch up with him. ”Who'll get you out of trouble next time if I'm not there?”

The Hunter made no answer.

The tunnel began to slope upward at last, hinting at an end. Damien's legs hurt so badly as he forced himself up the angled floor that he feared they would lock up from exhaustion and refuse to carry him; he didn't even want to think about what Tarrant was feeling. How long had they been walking now-one day? Two? If they did get blown up they'd have a chance to rest, at least. It didn't sound all that bad right now.

At last, just when it seemed that neither of them could manage another step, they came to the base of a staircase carved into the mountain's stone. Without even pausing for breath, the Hunter began to ascend. Damien saw him stagger once and he braced himself to catch him from behind, but the Hunter put out a hand against the wall of the tunnel for balance, paused long enough to draw in one long, shaky breath, and began to climb once more. The man's determination was inhuman, Damien observed as he climbed unsteadily behind him. And why should that surprise him? This was a man who had once bested Death by sheer force of will; why should a little detail like physical pain slow him down?

They climbed two flights' worth of stairs, maybe more. At the top there was a small landing where they paused to catch their breath, and a heavy alteroak door barring the way beyond. Thick iron braces were clearly meant to hold a wooden bar that would lock it from this side, but-thank G.o.d-that wasn't in place. Damien wasn't sure he could have lifted it. Without asking for help, Tarrant grabbed hold of the nearer brace and began to pull; when it was clear that his effort wasn't enough, Damien grabbed hold of the other one and added his strength to the effort. Together, inch by inch, they pulled the ma.s.sive door open. Its hinges made a creaking sound loud enough that Damien flinched, and a foul smell gusted through the opening, right into his face. It was an odor of rotting meat and bodily waste and at least a dozen other things that he didn't care to identify, and for a minute or two it was all he could do not to vomit. What the h.e.l.l was going on here?

If Tarrant noted the smell, he made no mention of it. When the door was open far enough to admit a man, he slipped through, and Damien followed. As he did so, he turned up the wick of his lantern a bit so that they could see the s.p.a.ce they were entering. It was a small chamber, crudely carved, with little in the way of comfort or decoration. There was a large slab table in its center, carved whole from the same gray stone, and his lantern's dim light picked out several objects that lay upon its surface. Damien took a few steps closer, trying to make out what they were. Chains. Manacles. Feces of some sort, possibly human, that had been smeared across the table's surface. The latter smelled pungently recent.

”Do I want to know what this place is?”

”No,” Tarrant stared at the mess on the table for a few seconds, his eyes narrowed to slits. G.o.d alone knew what he was thinking. ”Suffice it to say that I kept it somewhat cleaner.”

He moved to the far corner of the room, where a lighter door swung open easily at his touch. As they pa.s.sed through this one, Damien could hear faint sounds from above, murmurs and impacts transmitted down through the layers of rock. The soldiers of the Church must be very close.

”My wards will hold,” the Hunter said quietly, as if sensing his thoughts. As they walked on blistered feet through the fetid darkness, Damien wondered which of them he was trying to convince. Then suddenly the Hunter drew himself up, as if alerted to a hostile presence. Damien stiffened and drew his sword, ready for action. But Tarrant's eyes were fixed upon the ground, where the earth-fae would be bright and rich with meaning; it was knowledge that had alerted him, not some foreign presence.

At last Tarrant said, in a voice that was still and cold, ”He's dead.”

”Who?”

”Amoril. My apprentice.” The pale eyes narrowed. ”My betrayer.”

”Are you sure?”

He seemed to hesitate. Were the messages of the fae less clear to him now that he had no Working to interpret them? ”Yes,” he said at last. ”He lived-and ruled here-long enough to leave his mark upon the currents. That stink is his as well, no doubt... or that of his animal familiars. He never was fastidious.” The thin mouth curled in distaste. ”That he's gone now is equally clear, and there's only one way to explain that.” He looked at Damien; his expression was grim. ”If they've truly killed him, then we have very little time left.”

They moved on, through a s.p.a.ce that was more cavern than tunnel, in whose distant recesses water dripped with agonizing slowness. Now and then a noise would drift down to them, echoing through some flaw in the stone overhead. Soldiers' voices, issuing orders. Animals' howls, the cries of the dying. It was good that they could hear such things, Damien told himself. It was when the noises stopped that they would be in real trouble.

They came to another door, this one so finely worked that it seemed out of place in the rough stone corridor. Tarrant touched a ward at its center, which may have been meant to unlock it; the polished wood pushed easily inward, and the two men moved into the room beyond. Damien's lantern light revealed a modest chamber, shelf-lined, which might have been a library in another age. Tarrant's workshop, no doubt.

Utterly devastated.

He could feel the sight of the destruction strike Tarrant like a physical blow, and he flinched himself as he gazed about the room. Books had been hurled down from the shelves and mangled. Ma.n.u.scripts had been shredded and wadded up like garbage. Leather covers, ripped from their volumes and scored with claw marks, reeked of urine and decay. He could hear the Hunter's indrawn breath as he gazed upon the wreckage of his storehouse of knowledge, and he sensed that in some bizarre way this pained him more than Amoril's other betrayals, or even the loss of the Forest itself.

You believed that knowledge like this would be sacred, he thought. You thought that even the Evil One, being man-made, would respect its value. He shook his head sadly. Welcome to the real world, Gerald.

There was a large trestle table in the center of the room, now overturned. Silently Tarrant moved to one end and reached down for a handhold; Damien put down his lantern and hurried to the other end to do the same.

”At least your people hate fire,” he offered, as they righted it. ”If they'd burned the place there'd be nothing left at all.”

Tarrant made no comment. Reaching down into the mess that was under his feet, he brought up a single page, torn and crumpled and crusted with something brown. For a long time he stared at it, and Damien sensed that he was watching how the fae clung to the paper, how the current responded to the words that were on its surface. Then his hand clenched tightly, crus.h.i.+ng it.

”We'll never find the right pages in time,” he muttered. Damien could hear the exhaustion in his voice. ”Not without a Locating.”

”Of course we will. We have to, right?” He spotted several whole notebooks on one of the shelves and pulled them out. ”h.e.l.l, my desk in Ganji looked worse than this.”

For a moment Tarrant's eyes met his. For a moment he could sense the utter despair welling up inside the man, not a product of this one moment or even of several moments past, but of everything he had experienced since they'd started on this G.o.d-forsaken mission. Even the Hunter's indomitable spirit had its limits, he realized. And there was no sorcery left to sustain him now.

In the distance there was a louder sound; voices arguing, it seemed to Damien, and the impact of metal on stone. It seemed uncomfortably close.

”Come on,” he urged. He put the notebooks down on the table and began to search for more. ”We've got a lot to go through here.”

He didn't look at Tarrant again, but focused on the shelves surrounding him. Whoever had ravaged the hidden library might have worked with enthusiasm, but he lacked efficiency; there were several dozen volumes still intact, and he pulled them free and shook them off and brought them to the table. There Tarrant searched through them page by page, sorting through the diaries of his undead centuries to find the notes he needed. G.o.d willing, Damien thought, they'd be somewhere in these intact volumes. Otherwise... he looked at the mess on the floor and shook his head, trying not to think about what that search would be like. Or how d.a.m.ned long it would take.

There were voices even closer now. Too close. He looked at Tarrant.

”My wards will admit no one but myself or Amoril to this chamber,” he said, responding to Damien's unspoken question. ”And Amoril being dead-”

”What if they carry his body with them?”

”Even if they think to do that-and I doubt they have so much insight-it won't work. The wards respond to a man's vital essence, not to dead flesh.” But despite his a.s.surance it seemed to Damien that he turned the pages faster than before, and his eyes darted up occasionally to ascertain that the door to the library was indeed still shut.

Then footsteps resounded, heavy and purposeful and clearly headed in their direction. ”s.h.i.+t,” Damien muttered, putting down the book he held in order to draw his sword. The Hunter rose, swaying slightly as he did so; clearly his exhausted muscles were less than enthusiastic about the concept of a fresh workout. Damien's own muscles ached like h.e.l.l, but that didn't matter now. Whatever had gotten past the Hunter's wards was d.a.m.ned likely not to be friendly.