Celia Friedman: Black Sun Rising

And then one of them fixed its eyes on Ciani and hissed softly, in pleasure. A sharp tongue tip stroked the points of its teeth, and Damien knew by the tremor that ran through her that this was the one, the demon who attacked her in Jaggonath. The one who contained her memories.

“Now,” the Hunter whispered.

The demons began to move.

He thrust. Up into the earth, deep into the fault he had located. The force of the coldfire-bound steel took root and expanded, exploding outward with all the force of a bomb. Dirt bits slammed into Damien and his companions, and the force of the compression struck them like a fist. For a moment there was nothing but a hailing of dirt and rocks, like shrapnel. And then: light. Blinding. The brilliance of the morning sun, to eyes that had spent days in darkness. He threw up his arm across his eyes, as the pain of it seared his vision. The whole world was white, formless, utterly blinding . . . he forced his arm down, remembered Tarrant’s last warning. Get away from here. Fast. Against the glare of sunlight he could barely make out shapes, now, hot white against the hotter white of the morning sky. He clambered toward one of them, felt a newly-formed wall of earth take shape beneath his fingertips. He pulled Ciani over to it and guided Hesseth to follow. “Climb!” he whispered fiercely. He could barely see the ground beneath him, but trusted his hands to guide him. The earth here sloped back in smoothly curved walls, like that of a meteoric crater; he tried not to think of Tarrant as he struggled up that slope, as he tried to gain solid purchase in the shifting, inconstant earth, helping the others to climb along with him—

Ciani screamed. It was a sound of pain and terror combined, so utterly chilling in its tenor that for a moment Damien froze, stunned by the sound. Then he saw her slipping as her body convulsed, and he grabbed out for her. Caught her by the sleeve of her shirt, and tried to keep her from sliding back down to the tunnel below.

“Can’t,” she gasped. “Gods, I can’t—”

“Help me!” he cried—and Hesseth reached out from the other side, grabbing Ciani’s arm. Together they held their ground as she shivered from the onslaught of her own forgotten memories, all the pain and fear of a lifetime compressed into one burning instant. Her skin was hot to the touch, but that might have been because of the sun. After weeks among the nonhuman and the semi-human, wounded and tired in cold, dark tunnels, Damien would be hard pressed to remember what normal body temperature felt like.

They began to drag her upward. Slowly. Afraid to move on the treacherous slope, but even more afraid to stay where they were. That Ciani’s assailant was now dead was all but certain. But how many others remained, who might find a short climb into sunlight an acceptable price for revenge? Inch by inch, carefully, the two of them worked their way up the earthen slope. Beneath them clods of earth broke loose and tumbled down into the crater’s depths. They fought not to tumble down with them. The slope grew steeper, and Damien had to drive his hands deep into the soil to get the support he needed. Ciani moaned softly, utterly limp beneath his grasp, and he could only hope that the climb was doing her no damage. He reached into the crumbling earth, and caught hold of something solid at last. A root. He looked up, and against the glare of the sun he could make out the form of trees, not far above them. With a prayer of thanksgiving on his lips he grabbed at the firm root, and used it to pull himself up the slope. Hesseth, on the other side of Ciani, saw what he was doing and followed suit. The soft earth gave way to a tangle of vegetation, gave way to the underearth limbs of mature trees . . .

And they were over. All three of them. Damien lay gasping on the ground for a moment, his legs still resting on the edge of Tarrant’s crater. Then, with effort, he forced himself to his feet. Ciani was utterly still, but the look on her face was one of peace; lowering his head to her chest, he could hear her measured breathing. He lifted her up into his arms, gently, and murmured, “She’s all right.” Cradling her, as one might a child. “She’s going to be all right.”

And the winter chill was nothing to them as they staggered away from the site of their recent trials. Because the sunlight was streaming down on them, and that was life itself.

The series of earthquakes which Tarrant had triggered continued for nearly three days, but none were as violent as those first few had been. Trees had been torn down, mountains reshaped, whole cavern systems refigured—but in the end the land survived, and that was all that really mattered.

They camped on the plains, on open ground, until the worst of the aftershocks had ended. Only then did Damien dare to climb back up, to that place where they had so recently escaped from the earth’s confines. The landmarks had all changed, and massive rockslides made climbing all but impossible . . . but in the end he found it, a circle of land devoid of trees, where the ground sloped down in a gentle arena of freshly-turned earth.

It had been filled in, almost to the brim. The repeated tremors must have done it, shaking the broken earth until it sought its own level, like water. Whatever Tarrant had done to the demons—and to himself—it was buried forever in the mountainside, along with the remains of his body.

He tried not to think of what that burning must have been like, as he knelt in the soft earth to pray. Tried not to remember the Hunter’s charred flesh as it had been in his hands, as he softly intoned the Prayer for the Dead. Pleading mercy for a soul that had never earned mercy, for a man who had so committed himself to hell that a thousand prayers a day, offered up for a thousand years, would not negate one instant of his suffering.

“Rest in peace, Prophet,” he whispered.

He hoped that someday it would be possible.

Winter had come early to the plains—but it was nothing compared to the frigid abuse of autumn in the mountains, and Damien was grateful for it. After nearly two hundred miles of travel it was good to be clean again and in fresh clothes, and knowing that he and Ciani were safe was a luxury he had begun to despair of ever experiencing. And if she had changed somewhat, if she was no longer the woman he had known . . . hadn’t he seen that coming, in the last few days? Hadn’t he seen it building in her, all the way back from the eastern range?

That doesn’t help, he told himself, bitterly. It doesn’t help at all.

He looked toward the center of the rakhene camp, where even now a celebration was taking place. The night was dark, almost moonless, but the jubilant rakh had set it alight with over a hundred torches, and their triumphal bonfire blazed like a sun in miniature from the center of their camp. And she danced among them—not like one of them, exactly, but not like a human woman, either. An adept who had chosen to suspend herself between two worlds, so that she might bridge the gap between them. A loremaster. He turned away, remembering the word. Resenting it. And hating himself, for the unfairness of his reaction.

She was never really yours. You never really knew her.

It didn’t help. Not a bit. But then, cold reason never did.

He felt restless. Confined, by the nearness of so many tents. So many rakh. The ranks of Hesseth’s tribe had been swelled by numerous visitors who had come to hear the tales and see the relics and gaze in fascination upon the hated, fearsome humans. He sensed power games going on all about him, on levels too complex for him to interpret, as tribes who normally avoided each other tried to sort themselves out into a new, all-inclusive order. Human society, he thought. We’ve planted the seeds. In time there would be nations, and treaties, and all the ills that came of such things . . . he didn’t know whether to feel glad or guilty, but he suspected the latter was more appropriate. God willing the Canopy would remain intact so that the rakh could make their own fate, in peace, before having to deal with humankind again. God willing.