Crown of Shadows - C. S. Friedman [104]
“What would you think,” he said quietly, “if I told you that I knew how to kill a Iezu?”
He heard the couch creak behind him, and guessed that Tarrant was struggling to a sitting position. Given the man’s condition, it was little wonder that long seconds passed before he finally managed, “What?”
“You heard me.”
“How could you have gained knowledge like that? After all my research failed, and yours as well?”
He glanced once more at the solid door, satisfying himself that it was fully shut, and then turned back to Tarrant. The Hunter looked ghastly even by comparison with his normal state.
He said it simply, knowing the power that was in such a statement. “Karril told me.”
“When?” he demanded.
“Before we came after you. I went to his temple to ask for his help, and we argued. He told me then.”
“Why?” he asked in amazement. “Oh, he might have rendered Calesta vulnerable, but also himself as well. He’s too practiced a survivor for that.”
“Oh, I don’t think he was aware of doing it. Not in so many words.”
The Hunter’s eyes were fixed on him now, and there was a brightness in their depths that Damien had feared he’d lost forever. A hunger, but not for triumph. Not even for survival. For knowledge.
“Tell me,” he whispered.
And he did. He told him what the Iezu had said to him, back when he’d first come to the temple. How he had expressed his own fear of what the journey might mean to him.
The way is pain, and worse. I can’t endure it. Even if I wanted to, even if I were willing to risk her displeasure ... I’m not human. I can’t absorb emotions which run counter to my aspect. No Iezu could survive such an assault.
“Well?” he said at last. “Does that mean what I think it does, or not?”
The Hunter’s eyes were focused elsewhere, beyond Damien, as he digested the thought. “Yes,” he said at last. “You’re right. I’ve heard Iezu express similar fears before, but voiced as a question of discomfort, rather than survival. This would seem to imply there’s more to it.”
“So there’s hope, then.”
“A long shot at best. What runs counter to Calesta’s aspect? Perfectly counter, so that he can’t adapt? Karril can deal with pain if he must, so the matter’s not a simple one.”
It came to him, then, from the fields of memory, so quickly and so clearly that he wondered if the fae weren’t responsible. “Apathy.”
“What?”
“Karril’s negative factor is apathy. The absence of all pleasure. The absence of ability to experience pleasure.”
“Where the hell did you come up with that?”
“He told us. Back at Senzei’s place, when Ciani was first attacked.” Good God! The memory seemed so distant now, half a lifetime away. He struggled to remember what the demon had said, at last had to resort to a Remembering. The fae took shape in response to his will, forming a misty simulacrum of Karril before them. There are few kinds of pain I can tolerate, it said, fewer still that I can feed on. But apathy is my true nemesis. It is anathema to my being: my negation, my opposite, my destruction. Then, its duty accomplished, the image faded. The room’s cool air was heavy with silence.
“Apathy,” the Hunter mused.
“There’s got to be something like that for Calesta, right? Something similar, that we can use as a weapon.”
The Hunter shook his head. “Karril was talking about trying to endure something, not having it forced upon him. How would you inundate a spirit with apathy? If it were deadly to him, he would surely flee from it, like any living creature. And apathy isn’t something you can nock to a bow, or insert into the wood of a quarrel. It can’t be made into a blade, to cut and pierce on its own.”
“Not yet,” Damien agreed. “But that doesn’t mean there isn’t some way to use it. You and I just have to figure out how.”
Exhaustion seemed to cloud the Hunter’s expression; he turned away and whispered, in a voice without emotion, “In a month?”
“If that’s all we have.”
Though the Remembering had faded from