C. S. Friedman - Coldfire 1 - Black Sun Rising

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2024-12-06 0 0 2.2MB 418 页 5.9玖币
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C. S. Friedman
Black Sun Rising
This book is for several very special readers:
Rick Umbaugh, who started it all; Kellie Owens, Linda Gilbert, Lori Cook, David
McDonald, and Joe and Regina Harley, who keep it going; and Betsy Wollheim,
whose criticism is, as always, worth its weight in gold.
The author would like to thank the following people for their insight, inspiration,
and/or vital emotional support during this novel’s formative period: Jeanne
Boyle, Adam Breslaw, Christian Cameron, Tom Deitz, Nancy Friedman, Bob
Green, John Happ, Delos Wheeler, Karen Martakos, Robin Mitchell, Steve
Rappaport, Vicki Sharp, Mike Stevens, Sarah Strickland, Mark Sunderlin, and
Glenn Zienowicz.
Prologue
She wondered why she was afraid to go home.
She was within sight of the castle now, and its proximity should have calmed
her. She loved the traditional building which her husband had designed, and all
the men and women who lived inside it. The seat of the Neocounty of Merentha
was a gleaming, ivory-colored monument to the Revivalist dream: all the
elements of Gothic perpendicular architecture that seemed so oppressive
elsewhere - at the royal seat, for instance - were here combined by that unerring
aesthetic sense that was her husband’s strongest attribute, to create a building
that was at once a soaring display of stone arches and finials, and a very real,
very comfortable home.
For a moment she reined up her unhorse, commanding it to stillness, and
tried to focus on the source of her anxiety. As ever, the effort was doomed to
failure. She wished she had her husband’s skill to name and analyze such
feelings. He would have taken one look at the building and said
there, you see?
The demonlings are out early tonight, it’s their presence you sense.
Or,
the
currents are unsteady tonight, of course you’re nervous.
Or some other
explanation, equally dependent upon his special vision, that would render up the
source of her discomfort in small, comprehensible packets of knowledge, so that
it might be dealt with and then discarded.
The sun had set. Maybe that was it. The piercing white sun which bathed the
land in sanity was gone, and the Core had followed it into its westerly grave.
Only a few stars remained, and soon they too would be swallowed up by
darkness. Things were abroad now that hid from the light of day, maverick
human fears that had taken on a life of their own and coursed the night in
search of a bodily home. She looked up at the sky and shivered.
Even Erna’s moons were missing now, two having already set and one, the
smallest, yet to rise. Soon there would be as much darkness as the Earthlike
world could ever know. A
true night,
her husband would have called it. A very
rare, very special occurrence, for a world near the heart of the galaxy.
A night of power.
She kneed her unhorse gently into motion again and tried to lose herself in
memories of her family, as a means of combatting the uneasiness that had been
growing in her since she left the Bellamy household nearly an hour earlier. Her
daughter Alix, barely five, had already mastered the rudiments of riding, and
delighted in bare-backing the castle’s miniature unhorses whenever her parents
would let her. Tory, nine, had clearly inherited his father’s insatiable curiosity,
and could be found at any given moment in the place he least belonged, doing
something that was only marginally allowable. Eric, the oldest, proud master of
eleven years of lifely experience, was already practicing his charm on all the
household staff. He alone had inherited his father’s manner, which would serve
him well when he received his lands and title; the Neocount had charmed many
an enemy into martial impotence with the force of his presence alone.
As for her husband, the Neocount himself . . . she loved him with a passion
that was sometimes near to pain, and adored him no less than did the people he
ruled. He was an idealist who had swept her off her feet, caught her up in his
dreams of Revival and then set her by his side while king and church jockeyed to
do him the greatest honor. A young genius, he had turned Gannon’s wars into
triumphs, thus abetting the unification of all the human lands. He had bred
unhorses from local stock that were almost indistinguishable from the true
equines of Earth, imposing his will on their very evolution with a force and
efficiency that others could only wonder at. Likewise his uncats chased the local
rodents with appropriate mock-feline fervor, ignoring the less harmful insects
which were their grandsires’ preferred prey; in two more generations he would
have the fur looking right - so he promised - and even the behavioral patterns
that accompanied their hunting.
In truth, she believed there was nothing he couldn’t do, once he set his mind
to it . . . and perhaps that was what frightened her.
The castle courtyard was empty when she entered, which was far from
reassuring. She was accustomed to returning home at dusk, and her children
were accustomed to meeting her. Pouring forth from the house like a litter of
overexcited unkittens, plying her with a thousand questions and needs and
“look-sees” before she could even dismount. Today they were absent - a discon-
certing change - and as she gave her reins over to the groom she asked him,
with feigned nonchalance, where they were.
“With their father, Excellency.” He held the unhorse steady while she
dismounted. “Belowground, I believe.”
Belowground. She tried not to let him see how much that word chilled her,
as she walked through the evening shadows to the main door of the keep.
Belowground . . . there was only his library there, she told herself, and his
collection of Earth artifacts, and the workroom in which he studied the contents
of both. Nothing more. And if the children were with him . . . that was odd, but
not unreasonable. Eventually they would inherit the castle and all that was in it.
Shouldn’t they be familiar with its workings?
Nevertheless she was chilled to the bone as she entered the cold stone keep,
and only her knowledge that the chill was rooted deep inside, in the heart of her
fear, caused her to give over her cloak and surcoat to the servant who waited
within.
“Here’s a message for you,” the old woman said. She handed her an
envelope of thick vellum, addressed in the Neocount’s neat and elegant hand.
“His Excellency said to see you got it, as soon as you arrived.”
With a hand that was trembling only slightly she took it from her, and
thanked her.
I
won’t read it here,
she told herself. There was an antechamber
nearby that would give her more privacy. Not until she was well inside it, with
the heavy alteroak door firmly shut behind her, did she remove the folded sheet
from its vellum envelope and read the words her husband had written.
Please come to me,
it said,
at your earliest convenience. The workshop
below.
There was little more than that - his family crest imprinted above, the
swirl of his initials below - but she knew as she read it that there was a volume
of meaning between the lines . . . and that she lacked the resources to read
what they said, and thus must descend to him uninformed.
She glanced into the huge glass mirror that dominated the low-ceilinged
room, and briefly wondered if she should change her clothes before joining him.
Her gown, true to Revivalist style, had dragged in the dust all day; its warm
cream color was nearly rust about the hem, stained dark by the red clay of the
region. But elsewhere it was clean, its soft woolen nap protected by the heavy
surcoat she had worn. She pulled the few pins out of her hair, and let red-gold
curls pour down about her shoulder and back. He loved her hair, and this style of
gown; he loved
her,
she told herself, and would never let her come to harm. She
settled for fluffing the curls to more volume and using a dampened cloth to wipe
the dust from her eyes and off her face. That would be enough. That had to be
enough, if he wanted her to come to him quickly.
Filled with more than a little misgiving, she descended the winding staircase
that led down to the belowground rooms.
The library was empty, and lit only by a single candle.
Kindled long ago,
she
thought, noting its length; he must have been down here most of the day. Its
four walls were lined with books, a history of man from the time of First Sacrifice
to the current day - scribbled in tight, fearful letters, by the settlers of the
Landing, printed in the heavy ink of Erna’s first mass-production presses, or
painstakingly copied from holy scriptures, with letter forms and illuminatory
styles that harkened back to nearly-forgotten ages back on the mother planet.
She recognized the leather bindings of his own twelve-volume treatise on the
arts of war, and less formal notebooks, on mastering magic. Only . . .
Don’t call it magic,
he would have said to her.
It isn’t that. The foe is as
natural to this world as water and air were to our ancestors’ planet, and not until
we rid ourselves of our inherited preconceptions are we going to learn to
understand it, and control it.
And next to those books, the handbooks of the Church.
They caused this,
she thought.
They caused it all, when they rejected him. Hypocritical bastards!
Half their foundations were of his philosophy, the genius of his ordered mind
giving their religious dreams substance, transforming a church of mere faith into
something that might last - and command - the ages. Something that might
tame the fae at last, and bring peace to a planet that had rarely known anything
but chaos. But their dreams and his had diverged in substance, and recently they
had come but one word short of damning him outright.
After using him to fight
their wars!
she thought angrily. To establish their church throughout the human
lands, and firmly fix their power in the realm of human imagination . . . she
shuddered with the force of her anger. It was they who changed him, slowly but
surely - they who had planted the first seeds of darkness in him, even while they
robed him in titles and honor. Knight of the Realm. Premier of the Order of the
Golden Flame. Prophet of the Law.
And damned as a sorcerer,
she thought bitterly.
Condemned to hell
-
or just
short of it
-
because he wants to control the very force that has bested us all
these years. The force that cost us our heritage, that slaughtered our colonial
ancestors . . . is that a sin, you self-righteous bastards? Enough of a sin that it’s
worth alienating one of your own prophets for it?
She took a deep breath and tried to steady herself. She had to be strong
enough for both of them now. Strong enough to lead him back from his fears of
hell and worse, if they had overwhelmed him. He might have gone on for years,
bitterly cursing the new Church doctrine but otherwise unconcerned with it, had
his body not failed him one late spring night and left him lying helpless on the
ground, bands of invisible steel squeezing the breath from his flesh as his
damaged heart labored to save itself. Later he could say, with false calm,
this
was the reason. Here was the cause of damage, which I inherited. Not yet
repairable, by my skills, but I will find a way.
But she knew that the damage had
been done. At twenty-nine he had seen the face of Death, and been changed
forever. So much promise in a single man, now so darkened by the shadow of
mortality . . .
The door opened before she could touch it. Backlit by lamplight, her husband
stood before her. He was wearing a long gown of midnight blue silk, slit up the
sides to reveal gray leggings and soft leather boots. His face was, as always,
serene and beautiful. His features were elegant, delicately crafted, and in
another man might have seemed unduly effeminate; that was his mother’s
beauty, she knew, and in its male manifestation it gave him an almost surreal
beauty, a quality of angelic calm that belied any storm his soul might harbor. He
kissed her gently, ever the devoted husband, but she sensed a sudden distance
between them; as he stepped aside to allow her to enter she looked deep into
his eyes, and saw with sudden clarity what she had feared the most. There was
something in him beyond all saving, now. Something even she could not touch,
walled away behind fear-born defenses that no mere woman could breach.
“The children,” she whispered. The chamber was dark, and seemed to
demand whispering. “Where are the children?”
“I’ll take you there,” he promised her. Something flickered in his eyes that
might have been pain, or love - but then it was gone, and only a distant cold
remained. He picked up a lamp from the corner of a desk and bid her, “Come.”
She came. Through the door which he opened at the rear of the chamber,
leading into an inner workroom. Artifacts from the Landing caught his lamplight
as they passed by, twinkling like captive stars in their leaded glass enclosures.
Fragments of unknown substances which once had served some unknown
purpose . . . there was the soft silver disk that tradition said was a book,
although how it could be such - and how it might be read - was a mystery her
husband had not yet solved. Fragments of encasements, the largest barely as
broad as her palm, that were said to have contained an entire library. A small
metal webwork, the size of her thumbnail, that had once served as a substitute
for human reasoning.
Then he opened a door in the workroom’s far wall, and she felt a chill breeze
blow over her. Her eyes met his and found only cold there, lightless unwarmth
that was frightening, sterile. And she knew with dread certainty that some
nameless, intangible line had finally been crossed; that he was gazing at her
from across an abyss so dark and so desolate that the bulk of his humanity was
lost in its depths.
“Come,” he whispered. She could feel the force of the fae about her, bound
by his need, urging her forward. She followed him. Through a door that must
have been hidden from her sight before, for she had never noticed it. Into a
natural cavern that water had eroded from the rock of the castle’s foundation,
leaving only a narrow bridge of glistening stone to vault across its depths. This
they followed, his muttered words binding sufficient fae to steady their feet as
they crossed. Beneath them - far beneath, in the lightless depths - she sensed
water, and occasionally a drop could be heard as it fell from the ceiling to that
unseen lake far, far below.
Give it up, my husband! Throw the darkness off and come back to us
-
your
wife, the children, your church. Take up your dreams again, and the sword of
your faith, and come back into the light of day . . .
But true night reigned below,
as it did above; the shadows of the underworld gave way only grudgingly to the
light of the Neocount’s lamp, and closed behind them as soon as they had
passed.
The water-carved bridge ended in a broad ledge of rock. There he stepped
aside and indicated that she should precede him, through a narrow archway
barely wide enough to let her pass. She did so, trembling. Whatever he had
found in these depths, it was here. Waiting for her. That knowledge must have
been faeborn, it was so absolute.
And then he entered, bearing the lamp, and she saw.
“Oh, my God! . . . Tory? . . . Alix?”
They were huddled against the far wall, behind the bulk of a rough stone
slab that dominated the small cavern’s interior. Both of them, pale as ice, glassy
eyes staring into nothingness. She walked slowly to where they lay, not wanting
to believe.
Wake me up,
she begged silently,
make it all be a dream, stop this
from happening . . .
Her children. Dead.
His
children. She looked up at him, into
eyes so cold that she wondered if they had ever been human.
She could barely find her voice, but at last whispered, “Why?”
“I need time,” he told her. There was pain in his voice-deep-rooted pain, and
possibly fear. But no doubt, she noted. And no regret. None of the things that
her former husband would have felt, standing in this cold stranger’s shoes.
“Time, Almea. And there’s no other way to have it.”
“You loved them!”
He nodded slowly, and shut his eyes. For an instant - just an instant - the
ghost of his former self seemed to hover about him. “I loved them,” he agreed.
“As I love you.” He opened his eyes again, and the ghost vanished. Looked at
her. “If I didn’t, this would have no power.”
She wanted to scream, but the sound was trapped within her.
A nightmare,
she begged herself.
That’s all it is, so wake up. Wake up! Wake up . . .
He handled her gently but forcefully, sitting her down on the rough stone
slab. Lowering her slowly down onto it, until she lay full length upon its abrasive
surface. Numb with shock, she felt him bind her limbs down tightly, until it was
impossible for her to move. Protests arose within her - promises, reasoning,
desperate pleas - but her voice was somehow lost to her. She could only stare at
him in horror as he shut his eyes, could only watch in utter silence as he worked
to bind the wild fae to his purpose . . . in preparation for the primal Pattern of
Erna. Sacrifice.
At last his eyes opened. They glistened wetly as he looked at her; she
wondered if there were tears.
“I love you,” he told her. “More than everything, save life itself. And I would
have surrendered even that for you, in its proper time. But not now. Not when
they’ve opened hell beneath me, and bound me to it by the very power I taught
them how to use . . . Too many prayers, Almea! Too many minds condemning
my work. This planet is fickle, and responds to such things. I need time,” he
repeated, as though that explained everything. As though that justified killing
their children.
He raised a long knife into her field of vision, even as his slender hand
stroked the hair gently out of her eyes. “You go to a far gentler afterlife than I
will ever know,” he said softly. “I apologize for the pain I must use to send you
there. That’s a necessary part of the process.” The hand dropped back from her
forehead, and the glittering blade was before her eyes.
“The sacrifice is not of your body,” he explained. His voice was cold in the
darkness. “It is . . . of my humanity.”
Then the knife lowered, and she found her voice. And screamed - his name,
protests of her love, a hundred supplications . . . but it was too late, by that
point. Had been too late, since true night fell.
There was no one listening.
CITY OF SHADOWS
One
Damien Kilcannon Vryce looked like he was fully capable of handling
trouble, for which reason trouble generally gave him a wide berth. His thick-set
body was hard with muscle, his hands textured with calluses that spoke of
fighting often, and well. His shoulders bore the weight of a sizable sword in a
thick leather harness with no sign of strain, despite the fact that the dust stains
on his woolen shirt and the mud which caked his riding boots said that he had
been traveling long and hard, and ought to be tired. His skin had tanned and
scarred and peeled and tanned again, over and over again with such constancy
that it now gave the impression of roughly tanned leather. His hands, curled
lightly about the thick leather reins, were still reddened from exposure to the
dry, cold wind of the Divider Mountains. All in all a man to be reckoned with . . .
and since the thieves and bravos of Jaggonath’s outskirts preferred less
challenging prey, he passed unmolested through the crowded western districts,
and entered the heart of the city.
Jaggonath. He breathed in its dusty air, the sound of its name, the fact of its
existence. He was here. At last. After so many days on the road that he had
almost forgotten he had a goal at all, that there was anything else but traveling .
. . and then the city had appeared about him, first the timber houses of the outer
districts, and then the brick structures and narrow cobbled streets of the inner
city, rising up like stone crops to greet the dusty sunlight. It was almost enough
to make him forget what it took to get here, or why they had chosen him and no
one else to make this particular crossing.
Hell,
he thought dryly,
no one else was fool enough to try.
He tried to picture
one of the Ganji elders making the long trek from westlands to east - crossing
the most treacherous of all mountain ranges, fighting off the nightmare beasts
that made those cold peaks their home, braving the wild fae and all that it chose
to manifest, their own souls’ nightmares given substance - but the diverse parts
of such a picture, like the facets of a badly-worked Healing, wouldn’t come
together. Oh, they might have agreed to come, provided they could use the sea
for transport . . . but that had its own special risks, and Damien preferred the
lesser terrors of things he could do battle with to the unalterable destructive
power of Erna’s frequent tsunami.
He prodded his horse through the city streets with an easy touch, content to
take his time, eager to see what manner of place he had come to. Though night
was already falling, the city was as crowded as a Ganji marketplace at high
noon. Strange habits indeed, he mused, for people who lived so near a focal
point of malevolence. Back in Ganji, shopkeepers would already be shuttering
their windows against the fall of night, and making ward-signs against the
merest thought of Coreset. Already the season had hosted nights when no more
light than that of a single moon shone down to the needy earth, and the first
true night was soon to come; all the creatures that thrived on darkness would be
most active in this season, seeking blood or sin or semen or despair or whatever
special substance they required to sustain themselves, and seeking it with vigor.
Only a fool would walk the night unarmed at such a time - or perhaps, Damien
reflected, one who lived so close to the heart of that darkness that constant
exposure had dulled all sense of danger.
Or was it that there was simply safety in numbers, in a city so large that no
matter how many were taken in the night, the odds were good that it wouldn’t
be you?
Then something caught his eye; he reined up suddenly, and his three-toed
mount snorted with concern. Laughing softly, he patted it on the neck. “No
danger here, old friend.” Then he considered, and added, “Not yet, anyway.”
He dismounted and led the dappled creature across the street, to the place
that had caught his eye. It was a small shop, with a warded canopy set to guard
the walkway just outside, and a marquee that caught the dying sunlight like
drops of fire.
Fae Shoppe
it said, in gleaming gold letters.
Resident loremaster.
All hours.
He looked back over his shoulder, to the gradually darkening street. Night
was coming on with vigor, and God alone knew what that would mean. The
sensible thing to do would be to find an inn and drop off his things, get his
mount under guard, and affix a few wards to his luggage . . . but when had he
ever done the sensible thing, when curiosity was driving him? He took a moment
to remove his most valuable bag from the horse’s back - his only valuable bag, in
fact - locked the beast’s lead chain to a hitching rack, and went inside.
Into another world. The dying sunlight gave way to orange and amber, the
flickering light of tinted lamps. Warm-toned wood added to the sense of
harmony, possibly aided by a ward or two; he could feel his travel-weary
muscles relax as he entered, but the Working that made them do so was too
subtle to define.
All about him were
things.
Marvelous objects, no two of them alike, which
filled to overflowing the multitude of shelves, display cases, and braces that lined
the interior of the shop. Some were familiar to him, in form if not in detail.
Weapons, for instance: his practiced eye took in everything from blades to
pistols, from the simple swords of his own martial preference to the more
complicated marvels that applied gunpowder in measured doses - and just as
often misapplied it. Household items, of every kind imaginable. Books and
bookmarks and bookstands, pen and paper. And some objects that were clearly
Worked: talismans etched with ancient Earth symbols, intricately knotted wards,
herbs and spices and perfumes and oils, and all the equipment necessary to
maximize their effect.
A bizzarre sort of gift shop, or general grocery? He read some of the labels,
摘要：

C.S.FriedmanBlackSunRisingThisbookisforseveralveryspecialreaders:RickUmbaugh,whostarteditall;KellieOwens,LindaGilbert,LoriCook,DavidMcDonald,andJoeandReginaHarley,whokeepitgoing;andBetsyWollheim,whosecriticismis,asalways,worthitsweightingold.Theauthorwouldliketothankthefollowingpeoplefortheirinsigh...

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