Jaggonath, Year 1256 A.S.
five years after the Forest burned
There was joy mixed up in his reaction. Damien had to acknowledge that. He'd never been a man given to self-delusion; it was what had allowed him to survive, soul intact, through years travelling with the Hunter. And merely seeing him again, merely knowing that he was alive and well - that alone was enough to make something in Damien feel light, almost exhilarated, as if an impossible burden he hadn't known he was carrying had suddenly been lifted.
But the joy was quickly drowned out by dread. Damien put away the last of the folders and papers and sat back in his chair in the library's reading room, lowering his face into his hands. A picture was emerging, and it wasn't pleasant.
He'd heard, of course, of Narilka's marriage to Andrys Tarrant, Gerald's descendant. He'd also heard of Andrys's death less than two years later, though he'd paid little attention.
What he hadn't heard of - had not cared to pay attention to - had been Narilka Tarrant's remarriage to a man called Gerald Silva. He'd taken her name - and he'd become father to the child she bore. Damien had, increasingly frantically, searched through newspaper clippings until he'd finally come across an image. He stared, eyes burning, at the blonde girl who resembled neither of her dark-haired parents, neither in colouring nor in facial structure. Allowing for a toddler's pudginess, she was the spitting image of ...
Of the man Gerald had been, for nine hundred years. Of the Hunter. And therefore of Andrys, whose uncanny resemblance to his distant ancestor had set the crusade against the Forest in motion, six years ago.
That day in the Forest, it had looked as if Andrys had killed the Hunter. Damien remembered vividly the severed head, and shuddered. But Gerald had survived; had Worked one last sacrifice - had given his body, his very identity, for another chance at life. Or so the young man who most emphatically wasn't Gerald Tarrant had explained to Damien, afterwards, before he'd disappeared from his life for good.
Except that he'd broken the rules. Instant death should have followed any attempt to reclaim his past identity. Gerald had been quite clear on that fact, that day on the hillside. But here he was, his name returned to him through marriage; the castle of Merentha his home again; raising the last child of his own line. What dark Working could have undone the sacrifice that had saved him, and left him living? What terrible choice had Gerald, once again, made?
Please, no. Let this not be what Gerald had done. Please, God, Damien prayed. Let him not have fallen to darkness again.
This was, after all, the man who had, a thousand years ago, murdered his whole family for survival. For the chance to see what his mortal work would come to.
It couldn't be. Gerald had changed; Damien had been sure of that. Gerald had, up there on the volcano, given more than his life - had been willing to give himself over to eternal damnation, the one thing he'd feared worse than death itself, for the protection of mankind. True selflessness. And it had been genuine - couldn't have been anything less, or it would never have held the power to Bind the demon Calesta. Damien had been sure Gerald had earned his chance at redemption.
And after all, as the Prophet himself had written, The nature of the One God is mercy.
And now, this. What had Gerald done?