Crown of Shadows - C. S. Friedman [159]
Whispered:
Good luck.
Thirty-four
The creature called Amoril ran through the halls of the Hunter’s keep, howling out his frustration in a wild, inarticulate cry. Over the shapeless mounds of what had once been human flesh—the Hunter’s servants, now half-eaten and left to rot—past curtains soaked in blood and urine, past golden sconces which had once held torches but which now, in deference to Amoril’s new Master, held only darkness, he made his way to the Hunter’s chapel, where an even greater Darkness awaited.
“Not fair!” he screamed. The human words felt strange to him, tattered remnants of another life. But his anger couldn’t be vented without the proper words and so he remembered them, formed them, forced them out. “It’s not fair!” he howled to the black space surrounding him. The smell of blood was thick in the air, and he could see crusted stains on the altar, left over from his nightly human sacrifice. “We made a deal!”
For a moment it seemed that he was truly alone in the room. If so, it would hardly be the first time. The dark forces which he had courted back in his human past didn’t take an active role in his life; rather, having remade him so that he served their purpose, they preferred to sit back and feed in silence on the fruits of his labors. Now, however, something stirred. Its presence was pain and fear and insufferable hunger, and the thing called Amoril whimpered as it manifested itself.
Have patience, came the black whisper.
“You promised me the Forest,” he choked out. “You said it would be mine!”
It will, a thousand voices assured him. As soon as the Hunter is dead.
“You said you were going to kill him!”
We said that he would die, the voices corrected. And so he will, once the compact is broken. Soon.
“There are men in the Forest,” he growled. “Church men with weapons, coming here to the keep. The Forest should be stopping them, but it isn’t. He still controls it!” Phlegm clotted suddenly in his throat and he spat it out onto the floor, a thick black mass. “Why would he let them come here? Why won’t his Workings stop them?”
There was silence for a moment, such utter silence that for a moment he feared his Masters had deserted him. Then the voices returned, a sibilant whisper that filled the cold room.
The cause of that is irrelevant. Gerald Tarrant will be dead before the next sunrise, and the Forest will be freed from his control. You will have enough time to stop them.
“You said he would die before and he didn‘t,” he accused. “Why should I believe you now?”
The answer was pain. Black pain, cold pain, that wrenched at his limbs and sent needles of ice stabbing down into his flesh. With a cry of anguish he fell to the floor, his body contorting into shapes no human form should ever adopt, racked by the Unnamed’s punishment.
At last, whimpering, he lay on the floor like a beaten dog, echoes of the terrible pain scraping across his nerves like a rasp.
Your role is not to question, but to serve. The whispers had become one voice now, that filled the whole chamber with its venom. He trembled, knowing how merciless the owner of that voice could be. Tarrant will not fight this death. He embraces it willingly, for the power it will give him.
“Power?” he whispered weakly. Suddenly he was struck by a new and terrible fear: what if the Hunter, in his dying moment, struck out against the servant who had betrayed him? The man whose sacrifice had sent him to Hell? What then? He began to gasp out a question, but the sounds of it caught in his throat. What if the Unnamed perceived in that question further defiance? He whimpered softly and drew up his body into a tight ball, as if that simple posture could somehow save him. No. Better by far to say nothing. Better to bear this fear in silence.
But the voice must have heard his thoughts, for it answered him. The power he invokes will be directed at another, not you.
It took a minute for the words to sink in. “Thank you,” he whispered. “Thank you.”
But the voices were gone. He waited for a while longer in his huddled position,