Of Absence, Darkness, page 1
Of Absence, Darkness
Death’s Lady #2
Rachel Neumeier
Copyright © 2021 Rachel Neumeier
Table of Contents
Copyright Page
Acknowledgments
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Endnotes
As Shadow, A Light | Available Now | -1-
Copyrights & Credits | Death’s Lady: Of Absence, Darkness | Rachel Neumeier
Also by Rachel Neumeier
Acknowledgments
Kristi Thompson, Elaine Thompson, and especially Kim Aippersbach provided enormously helpful critiques of this story. Linda Shiffer and Dolores Neumeier caught innumerable typos. Thank you all!
-1-
Daniel's first impression of Tenai’s world was of darkness.
They had been at Jenna’s college graduation, he and Tenai. Jenna had wanted Tenai to come, of course, so she had taken a day off from her job—easily, now that she was Brian McKenna’s full partner and the senior master at his third martial arts dojo. Tenai had been gravely interested in the graduation ceremony, as she was still interested in new things she encountered in her life. She had been smiling a little, pleased by the happiness of the young graduates. She knew a handful of them, of course: some of Jenna’s college friends, like Jenna herself, were habitués of her dojo. But nothing could make Tenai look like an ordinary parent or friend.
Daniel had been conscious of the sidelong glances Tenai attracted—tall, with that unusual bone structure; carrying herself with an absolute physical confidence that was clearly out of the ordinary. No doubt some of the attendees thought he and Tenai were a couple and were wondering how a man like him had attracted a woman like her. The thought hadn’t bothered him: anybody with an ounce of discernment was going to be struck by Tenai. Even sixteen years after having built a normal life for herself, she still stopped the eye.
As far as he could tell, Tenai hadn’t even noticed the reactions she engendered. Well, she was no doubt used to double takes, and she was focused on Jenna anyway, rising to greet her when the young woman tossed her cap into the air and ran back to them, the sun no brighter than her happiness.
They had been heading back toward the car after the ceremony. Jenna had grabbed his hand and then Tenai’s. She had pulled them, linked hand-in-hand-in-hand, into nearly a run. They had been laughing, pleasantly guilty because they were skipping out on the reception. Even Tenai had been laughing.
And now they were elsewhere. The change was jarring, like missing an unexpected stair, only more so. Daniel had been holding Jenna’s hand, but his daughter’s slim hand was no longer linked to his own: they’d both stumbled hard and lost their mutual grip. He knew he yelped, and heard a shocked little cry of surprise from Jenna. There was ground underfoot, not pavement; he had fallen and caught himself on one knee and the palms of his hands, and it was earth and grass under his hands, not blacktop. The very air had changed: much more humid, warm with a moist heaviness not at all like May. It smelled of growing things. He could not see anything.
A long hand reached out of the darkness, closed on his elbow, lifted him back to his feet, and let him go again. From quite near, Jenna's voice, sounding very young in the dark, a child again instead of her almost-twenty-two, said, “Daddy?” in a tentative tone.
“Jenna?” he said quickly. “Tenai?” He took a step, and stumbled again over the uneven ground. It was not completely dark, he found. It was the contrast between the place they had been and the place they now were that blinded. Overhead, a half-moon rode through torn fragments of cloud.
“Daddy?” Jenna said again, frightened.
“Hush,” said another voice, velvet and dark as the night. Tenai's voice, but her slight accent had taken on a less familiar edge in this place, unutterably more foreign. “Hush, child. There is no danger for you here. See, here is your father.” Faintly visible as their eyes adjusted, Tenai led them together.
Even in the dark, even through his own shock and fear, Daniel felt her anger, burning across the surface of his skin as though he stood too close to a fire. He hadn’t felt that for a long time. He said, “Tenai?” again, and his voice shook.
“I am well enough, Daniel,” answered that velvet voice. Pale moonlight slid down Tenai's cheek as she turned her face toward him. “I am angry, yes, but I have reason for my anger. I am my own master. Do not be afraid.”
“Where are we? Where are we?” Jenna's teeth chattered despite the warmth of the air, and Daniel put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. He was terrified himself, and fighting it. It was hard to believe that this was real, and for a moment Daniel even thought that maybe it wasn’t real, that this was a weird and complicated hallucination; probably they were all still running over the sunlit parking lot, with the car just a few yards away—they would bang into it any minute, and that would jar them out of it—jar him out it, probably no one else was hallucinating this way, that’d be a mass hallucination, and too strange for belief –
The night was quiet around them, all of them, Jenna and Tenai and himself. The warm, humid air was unstirred by any breeze. It carried living country scents that had nothing to do with a large city.
“Where we should never have come,” Tenai answered, speaking to Jenna. “Not even I, and certainly not you. This is my world, and I am sorry that it is unlikely to offer you a fine welcome, child.”
“You brought us here?” Daniel asked, leaving aside for the moment other questions, like, You mean this place is real? You mean that everything you told me was true? Incredulity ran through him like a tide, and certainty, as strong, that it was true. He stood still, caught for a trembling instant between convictions. At the same time, all the stories Tenai had told him of her long, long life in this world crowded at once into his memory, and for a moment he was so frightened he was close to throwing up.
Jenna broke the moment, by asking in her clear, trusting voice, “But where is this place? Your world? Tenai, what do you mean?”
“The land is called Talasayan,” Tenai answered her. “Once, it was my home.”
She was angry, angry, angry. That was unmistakable. Daniel heard other emotions in her voice as well: grief and loss and something very like joy, in a complex tangle. He asked her again, “Did you bring us here, Tenai?”
For a moment, he thought she would not answer. She walked away a little distance, far enough to be lost in the night, but then she came back, her arms full of branches. She dropped them on the ground and a moment later, fire caught in the center of the pile, golden and homey as any other campfire, utterly welcome despite the smothering warmth of this night. The fire blazed up. The crackle it made against the too-silent dark was comforting as a blanket. Its light showed Tenai's face more clearly, fine-planed and foreign and not comforting at all. She said, “Not I, Daniel. This was never my intention nor my action.”
“Then whose?” Jenna asked. She was still shivering, but not so much now, in the light of the fire. She held out her hands to the warmth as though it offered hope of safety.
Tenai glanced at her, a glance so filled with impassioned anger that Jenna blinked and stared and even took an involuntary step back; probably, Daniel thought, without even knowing she had done so. “Not my friends,” Tenai said, and turned away to gather another armful of wood.
“Your—enemies?”
“This is my expectation, Jenna, yes.” Tenai stirred the fire with her foot. Sparks flared and floated up into the darkness. She spoke without looking at Jenna, at either of them. “This should not have occurred. I did not imagine it could occur. Someone has done this, and because you were holding my hands, this person has done this to you as well as to me. Now you are here. I am very sorry.”
“You’re serious? I mean, this is a ... a different world? For real?” Jenna turned in a circle, gazing out into the darkness. “I mean ... for real?”
“Can we just ... go back?” Daniel asked.
“Wait, you want to just go home? Without even looking around? Seriously?”
“Jenna ...” Daniel let his voice trail off. He had no idea how to say, This isn’t a fantasy movie. Terrible things happened here. Tenai suffered terrible things here—Tenai did terrible things here. He didn’t know how to say any of that without frightening his daughter. He said instead, “Tenai, can’t we just go home?”
Tenai was gazing at him. Very likely she knew exactly what he was thinking. She said, her voice soft, “At midwinter. At midwinter I will be able to tear open the veil. I am sorry, Daniel. There are ways to open the veil, but it is not so easily done out of season. It would take great power to tear it open now.”
“Someone did,” Daniel pointed out.
“Yes.” Tenai looked into the sky, at the broken clouds. “Someone made a great sacrifice tonight. A sorcerer poured the blood of that sacrifice out upon the earth for this. I have such skill, but whom should I kill, to gather so much power into my own hands?”
“It takes human sacrifice to do this?” Daniel demanded, shaken.
Jenna, shocked, said, “You do human sacrifice here? You don’t, really?”
“Such a sacrifice was made tonight,” Tenai answered. “That is the only way to open the veil, save at mid
Daniel touched Jenna's hand; reassurance for them both.
Tenai went on in the same soft voice. “I think it unwise to linger here. I do not trust the intention of anyone who would reach across the veil to bring me back into this world. That there is no one here to meet me suggests either that my enemies did not know precisely where I would be when I came back across the veil, or that they did not care where I would be. I think they did not care. I think they believe my presence will serve their purpose no matter what I choose to do now that I am here. But I may be mistaken. I think it best to walk away from this place, lest someone searches through this night to find me.”
Daniel cleared his throat. “Ah. Ah, won't the fire draw searchers, if there are any?”
“Let it draw all eyes.” Tenai’s beautiful voice was in that moment chillingly angry, a tone Daniel had not heard for more than a decade. “Nothing would please me more,” said Tenai, still in that savage tone. “Let the one who called me know that I am here.”
Stooping, she buried her hand in the heart of the fire and came up again, holding a handful of flame in her naked hand. It blazed up in her palm, bright and eager and far too real for something that should have been a special effect. Tenai threw her head back and said harshly, “Let the taste of my blood wake the fire from its rest! Let the smoke of this burning carry my name on the wind, to the terror of my enemies!”
Jenna made a small wordless sound, and Daniel hugged her hard. He found he was holding his breath.
Tenai stopped, and drew a sharp breath, and went on in an easier tone, “The feel of the wind, the sense of the night, these tell me no one is very close. We will go at once. We will not be here to meet anyone who comes.” She had opened her hand, letting the fire drip back down among the branches and burn in a more natural way. Her hand seemed unmarked.
“Can you ... do magic, Tenai?” Jenna asked, voice high and startled and yet somehow fearless. The shock, Daniel could see, was already leaving his daughter. She liked the idea, he understood. She didn’t really believe that anyone could have killed someone to do magic—or she was thinking that most magic couldn’t be dark and bloody. The sense of unreality was already leaving her. It still held Daniel, typical of a sudden shocking occurrence, of course, victims of car accidents almost universally reported that it took long, long minutes to believe that the accident had happened to them. So this was what that felt like.
But Tenai half-smiled, attitude easing a little more as she answered Jenna. “Sometimes,” she said. “Depending on what you would call ‘magic.’”
“Damn,” Jenna breathed. With clear enthusiasm.
Daniel, more wary than his daughter and hearing the hidden constraint in Tenai's voice with an experienced ear, chose not to question any of that, not yet, not now. He asked only, “Do we have a place to go?”
Tenai tilted her head back, looking at the sky. They were in the midst of an open, rocky meadow, with scattered trees visible as lacy shadows against a slightly lighter sky. She was silent for a moment, in apparent reverie, but said at last, “The taste of the air, the pattern of the stars, the shape of the mountains against the sky, all these things tell me where we are. We are far north, near Kandun, hard against the heels of the mountains. Chaisa is not very near here, but neither is it so very far away. We will go there.” She offered Daniel and Jeanna each a hand, guiding them to turn away from the fire. To walk away, leaving it burning behind them.
“Chaisa is still your land? After so long?” Daniel thought again of the brutality this world could hold, and shuddered, trying not to let Jenna see that.
“Always mine,” Tenai said, sharp and definite. “No one will have laid hand to it. There is safety there. I will protect you, I promise you. And that is no careless promise, Daniel.”
Daniel found he believed this. He let his breath out and nodded.
“How far is it?” Jenna asked. She had pulled off her graduation gown and bundled that under her arm; beneath that, she was wearing decent slacks and a dark gold blouse—not entirely suitable hiking attire, but at least she’d chosen flats rather than heels for the ceremony. Daniel’s clothing was no more suited for walking a long way across country. He hoped Chaisa was not that far.
“A little way. A hundred and fifty miles, more or less, I think it would be.”
“A hundred fifty miles!”
Tenai slanted a quick smile at her. “We will do well enough, Jenna. Your cars make it seem a long distance to walk. It is not so far, although a lot of the road is through the mountains. Soldiers would walk that far in seven days. Fewer, perhaps, if the road were good. I would like to find the road, the broad road that lies between the source of the Barun river and the Gos, although I am not certain we should walk openly on so well-traveled a road. Still, we shall see. There will be smaller roads through the mountains that we may find and use more safely.”
*
There was a road, later. Dirt, but rutted with the evidence of wheeled traffic. Jenna swung along with a long, free stride, but Daniel, already breathing hard and wishing he’d worn more comfortable shoes, was wondering whether he was going to make it a hundred and fifty miles. Go on without me, he imagined himself saying plaintively, collapsed in the road. He imagined Tenai’s nonplused look and almost managed a smile.
At last they built another fire in a sheltered spot a little way from the road, this one far more discreet than the first. There was even breakfast as the sun came up: a rabbit Tenai had knocked over with a well-thrown stone and gutted with a delicate little pocketknife Daniel had not known she carried. Tenai cleaned the knife on the grass. She did not re-fold it and put it away, but laid it aside by her knee.
Jenna shifted a little closer to the fire. “It smells good.”
“Your people are right to say that hunger is the best spice. Rest while the meat cooks. We will walk again after we eat.”
Daniel stifled a groan.
Tenai slid a glance his way. “You are not so tired that you cannot go on.”
Forcing a smile, Daniel said, “I guess not, Tenai. Jenna, are you all right?”
Jenna looked up with a quick frown. “Sure.”
“Of course,” Tenai agreed, with a hint of humor. “Certainly you will be able to walk your poor father into the ground with your young vigor. I shall try not to exhaust either of you.”
“Jen’ll be fine,” Daniel said. “I’m the one who’s going to have a coronary on one of those uphill stretches.” He smiled at his daughter and Jenna smiled back. Her smile was a little stiff. She was worried about him, Daniel guessed, and assured her, “I’m just kidding. I’m not that out of shape.” He felt that out of shape, but he was trying not to show it.
He found Tenai's eyes on his face. She did not speak, but met his eyes when he looked up, with a wry half-smile and a small nod. Feeling obscurely reassured, Daniel leaned back against the bole of a tree and relaxed, muscle by muscle. It was almost impossible to believe that just hours before they had been sitting on hard-backed school chairs, watching young people file decorously up to a stage to receive their diplomas, and now they were sitting on the ground in a different, God help them, world, watching a rabbit sizzle over a campfire.
Taking the rabbit’s liver, Tenai impaled it on a separate sharpened stick and put that over the fire as well. “Enchantment is like ash,” she said. Although she was not looking at either of them particularly, Daniel thought she was speaking especially to Jenna.
Taking up her tiny knife, Tenai flicked the blade against the ball of her thumb. Blood welled from the slight cut, vivid crimson drops. Tenai held her hand out over the fire, letting several drops of blood fall into the flames and onto the sizzling liver. The fire blazed up, but died back down before anyone could recoil.
“Fire and smoking blood,” Tenai said, “and the will of the sorcerer, imposed on the world: a power bought with pain and sacrifice—the sorcerer’s own, or that of another. No magic is without price, and it is all, like ash, bitter on the tongue.” She slipped the cooked liver off the skewer, dusted it with ash from the fire, sliced it into two portions, and held it out, flat on her palm. “Liver, which is the seat of memory,” she said. “Fire, for thought, and blood, to seal the spell and set my will upon it.”
