Crown of Shadows - C. S. Friedman [41]
“Ciani’s gone,” he said quietly.
“But not dead, Reverend Vryce. And not unreachable.”
She would be in the rakhlands now, protected by un-scalable mountains on one side and an ocean on the other. The Canopy would be there, too, a wall of living fae that no human Working could cross. If not for that they might Send for her, using the fae to communicate across the miles that separated them. With it ...
“I don’t relish going back there,” he muttered.
“Nor I. If nothing else, it would mean our extended absence from Jaggonath, leaving Calesta free to do his worst here unopposed. I’m not sure we can afford that.”
Ciani. Even now, years later, the memory of her made Damien ache with regret. But it had been a doomed match from the start, he accepted that now. Or at least he tried to.
“She’s a loremaster,” he said at last. “They take a vow of neutrality, don’t they? Would she be willing to help us?”
“I don’t know. She certainly has no vested interest in the Church’s survival. She’d probably be more interested in chronicling its fall than in providing for its salvation. And then there are, as you say, the vows of her profession, which forbid her from taking sides in any fae-related conflict. The irony is, if it were anyone else, I could force her to serve us. But the lady Ciani ... to harm her in any way would be to give myself over to the ones I serve, in soul as well as aspect.” He laughed shortly, a forced sound. “And I suspect that they’re not in a forgiving mood these days.”
An unfamiliar emotion flickered in the back of those cold, clear eyes. Fear? “They haven’t done anything to you yet.”
“Not yet,” he agreed. “But for how long?” To Damien’s surprise he sighed heavily; the action was disturbingly human.
He walked the length of the room, then stopped; Damien thought he saw his shoulders tense. “Do you know, sometimes I pray to them? Not as a worshiper to a god, but as servant to an angry master. I try to make them understand that in seeking Calesta’s destruction I’m only ensuring my own survival, the better to serve them. If such an act happened to benefit the Church I founded, or humankind in general ... that would be an unfortunate side effect, nothing more.” He shook his head. “I wish I believed that myself.”
Damien chose his words carefully. “You think it isn’t true?”
The Hunter hesitated. “I was so sure of myself, once. I lived in a world without doubt, without any need for introspection. My soul was as pure in its darkness as the night-fae itself, which is banished by the merest hint of sunlight. Then you came into my life. You! With your questions and your warped logic and your bonds of mutual dependency and purpose ... and I changed. Slowly, but I did change. No human soul could fail to do so, under the circumstances—and the core of my soul is human, Vryce, despite what Karril would call its ”hellish trappings.“ That was both the source of my strength and my greatest weakness. In the end, thanks to you, it will be my destruction.” The sharp eyes narrowed. “But that was what you hoped for, wasn’t it? After all this is over, I could do you no better service than to die and be damned.”
“Gerald, please—”
He waved a hand, cutting short his protest. “I don’t blame you, Vryce. I blame myself for letting it happen. You did no more or less than your nature demanded. I only wonder what the price will be, when I’m finally called to answer for my actions.”
“Surely a few months of weakness won’t outweigh the record of nine hundred years.”
“The Unnamed has no compassion, and nothing to lose by injustice. Its judgment is as much the result of momentary structure as of logic. Divided into parts, it can be petty and fickle and unpredictable; unified, it’s the most ruthless evil this world has ever known. Thank God the latter state rarely endures for long.”
“What do you mean, divided? I don’t understand.”
The cold eyes fixed on him: black now, and empty as the true night. “Better that you don‘t,” he warned.
“That force has a habit of devouring