Celia Friedman - When True Night Falls

When the screams at last subsided, he forced himself to move again. There was a low stone wall that guarded the cliff’s edge, and this he followed until he was far from the manor house and its crystal garden, until the darkness had swallowed up all signs of human habitation. Only then did he come to the place where the stone wall ended, and a steep staircase—no more than shallow rungs and handholds, painstakingly carved into the cliffs steep surface—provided access to the beach beneath.

He could hear them scrabbling up the granite incline, sharp claws scraping against the unyielding rock. For a moment he thought how easy it would be to send them plummeting to their deaths, one by one as they reached the top . . . and then the first set of hands came over the edge, and a sleek body followed—catlike, wary. And the moment was gone forever.

Chalk-white skin, eyes as black as jet. Hair that seemed more like tangled fur, a mouth that was hard and cruel, without any lips to speak of. Like its face its body was human in form, utterly inhuman in substance. This is the face of my treachery, he thought. This is what I’ve loosed upon the land. He felt sick inside.

The creature grinned; sharp teeth glinted in the moonlight. “You must be the Protector.” Its voice was a serpentine thing, sleek and sinuous. “What—no armies to guard you? No weapons at hand?”

“We made a bargain,” he said shortly. His heart was pounding. “I kept my end of it.” Another was climbing up now, sharp claws gripping the topmost step as it levered itself over the edge. Something thick and crimson dripped from the blade that it held between its teeth. Blood. Human blood. The blood of his men. “I was told you would keep yours.” What were these things, anyway?

The creature said nothing. For a moment it merely studied the Protector, its dark tongue stroking the razor-sharp teeth. Then it looked toward the manor house and its eyes narrowed, as if it had seen someone approaching.

The Protector looked back that way—and something struck him from behind as he did so, something sharp and hard, that drove him to his knees in a shower of pain. He put his hands up to his head to protect it from further assault, felt something warm and sticky clinging to his scalp. Matting his hair.

“So sorry about your bargain,” the invader hissed. “But there are things we need to do here, and leaving witnesses . . . ssssst!”

“My people,” he gasped. “You promised! They know nothing . . .”

He saw it through a mist of blood and pain: the creature was changing. Its thin body gained in height, took on new weight. Its pale skin darkened. Its features, almost human, took on a more familiar cast—and as he looked into its eyes, as he recognized its chosen form, the sickness of pure horror overwhelmed him. He tried to cry out in warning—to his retainers, his soldiers, anyone!—but another blow, even more brutal, drove him to the ground. His moan of pain was smothered by dirt and blood. His vision was drenched in red.

“So sorry,” the invader crooned. Using his accent. His voice. “But war is war, you understand. Of course you do, Protector. And as for your people . . .” The creature chuckled; its tone was horribly familiar. “I’m afraid we need them,” it whispered. His own voice. His own features. “I’m afraid we need them all.”

I’ve failed you, Mira. I’ve failed us all. May God have mercy on my soul . . .

It was the sound of his own laughter that drove him down into the final darkness.

Deep within the Protector’s keep, in a chamber with no windows, Jenseny played with the fringe of her gown and savored its rhythm with her fingers. She’d tried to explain that to her father once, how all the tiny threads hanging there together were a kind of music and how she could feel it through her fingers when she stroked them, but he didn’t understand. He couldn’t hear that and he couldn’t hear the other things: the fall of rain on waxy leaves, the screech of living fibers as they were ripped from the earth, the beat of the spindle and the soft shuffle of the loom as it wove, wove, wove . . . Some days when the Light was strong she thought she could hear the marketplace, too, old women squabbling over prices while her father’s hands stroked the soft cloth, drawing notes from it like it was a harp. She tried to share all that with him, but he couldn’t hear it. Just like he couldn’t hear so many things that were in her world.

Sometimes he would take her outside. Sometimes in the dead of night when his people were asleep he would come and wake her up and they would sneak outside, to stand in the moonlight with the soft wind blowing on their faces, listening to the music of the night. And he would tell her tales of the outside world, trying to draw pictures with his words so that she could see it all for herself. What he didn’t know was that sometimes his words would make the pictures real, so that she had to fight not to reach out and touch them. And then sometimes he was sad and she could see the sadness, too, a thick gray stuff that clung to him like mud. Or black, like when her mother died. Black, like on that terrible day . . .

Suddenly she heard footsteps, and her heart skipped a beat in excitement. It was that time of night when her father usually came to her, just before he went to bed. Maybe he was coming to her now. Maybe he would take her outside again, and let her look upon her mother’s world. She unwound her fingers from the silken fringe and made her hands lie still in her lap, paying no attention to the tinkling murmur of her dress as it fell back down to her knees. It upset him when she listened to things he couldn’t hear. He said it reminded him of why she was here, of how the Church would kill her if they found out he had been keeping her hidden away all these years, so that she could grow up secretly. As always, she felt a quiver in her stomach at the thought of her father—a quiver that was made up of love and awe and excitement and dread and a thousand other things combined. For him, and the world he represented. Because she feared the outside world as much as she hungered for it, and he was its representative.

And then the heavy door swung open and he was there. Face beaming with love and pride and paternal devotion, his joy at setting aside the day’s work so that they could have some time together at last. She ran to his arms and let him hold her tightly, the warmth of his body a shield against all danger. God, she loved him! She’d loved her mother, too, but now he was all she had left, and she hugged him for all she was worth. As if by doing so she was somehow hugging her mother, too.

But something was wrong tonight. She sensed it, without knowing how to define it. Suddenly his embrace seemed . . . wrong, somehow. As if he had suddenly become wrong.

Confused, she drew back from him. And then realized, It’s tonight. With a touch of fear in her heart: They must be here already.

“What’s the matter, pet? You all right?”

For a minute she just stared at him, not understanding the question. Did he think she wouldn’t understand the danger in what he was doing? Did he think such an understanding wouldn’t make her afraid?

She tried to make her voice strong with courage—like his always was—as she asked, “Did they come?” Voice trembling only slightly. Eyes wide, searching his face for unspoken clues as to what was going on. Because something was going on, she was sure of it. Then he turned away, denying her that access. He turned away! As if he was afraid to confide in her. As if he didn’t trust her. That thought hurt worse than any physical pain could. As if he hadn’t told her all about his treaty with the invaders. As if he wouldn’t trust her, his own flesh and blood, to keep such a secret!