Geist

THIRTEEN The Congregation Will Speak

If the sight of a poltern-possessed little girl had not sickened Raed enough, he was treated that very morning to a tour of Ulrich’s misery. The grocer and his lad had not seemed very surprised that Sorcha had been unable to save the girl. Apparently the Priory had fostered fairly low expectations among the population of the town.

Wailace showed them more; much more than Raed had wanted to see. It was no wonder that the townsfolk had assaulted the Priory. Twelve children were possessed by poltern in a similar manner to the first. Sorcha did not repeat her experiment with the pot again, but her face grew sterner with each visit. Raed did not get any more accustomed to the stench and the horror.

After the first five, he waited outside. Sorcha, however, insisted on seeing all of them. When she came out of the last house, she looked gray. Leaning against the wall, she wearily rubbed her face.

He knew enough about her to realize that she was craving a cigar and a quiet place to smoke it. If he’d had his choice, he would have sailed Dominion out of the cursed place. Since that wasn’t an option, he had to make do.

Raed was not used to following another’s lead; he’d always been the heir to his father’s Curse, and that meant he had a small retinue to obey his orders. When the time had come, it had been these soldiers whom he had led into battle. Then, after the first onset of the Curse, when he’d taken to the sea, he’d been captain of a whole crew.

Yet now he was watching this woman—this Deacon, what was more—and hoping that she had some answers. Apparently there wasn’t a worse place in the world for him and his Curse to be.

Sorcha pushed herself away from the wall and walked over to him. The moment of exhaustion had obviously passed, for there was a real spark in her eye.

“So.” He stroked his beard and glanced warily at her out of the corner of his eye. “Just how bad is it?”

The Deacon chewed on the edge of her lower lip, for a moment looking as though she might be choosing her words with care. “Let’s just say that I have been a working member of the Order for nearly twenty years, and this is the worst outbreak of poltern possession I have ever seen. Bar none.”

“And you can’t help any of these children?”

“Not without Merrick, and not without identifying the foci.” At his blank look she sighed.

Raed felt a little flare of resentment. “Look, I am not your partner—I know that—but I am the best resource you have right now. I’m sorry you have to explain things to me, but please do.”

She unfolded her arms. “For a cluster of attacks like this, something so consistent and so particular, there must be something holding a gateway open. Not a large opening, or we’d be seeing a full-on invasion of geists, but one concentrated on particular levels of the Otherside.”

“So, some sort of object?”

Sorcha nodded.

“And any idea what it would look like?”

The Deacon began tying back her bronze curls, reclaiming the severity that didn’t do her beauty justice. “That’s the bad news. It could look like anything.” She pushed one stubborn strand back out of her eyes.

“Then how are we expected to find it?”

The Deacon opened her mouth to reply, but all that came out was a strangled whimper. Grabbing her throat, she slumped backward, and only Raed flinging himself forward and catching her prevented her fall to the ground. A fine bead of sweat had broken out on her forehead while she clawed frantically at her neck.

He loosened her collar, wondering if she was choking on something or being strangled by some sort of invisible foe. After a second she let out a great gasp and stiffened in his arms, her blue eyes wide. Raed was sure she was dying, but then she shook herself like a cat emerging from a dunking.

Jerking free of him, Sorcha leapt to her feet. “Merrick—Holy Bones, something has happened to Merrick!” Her face was as pale as milk and her lips, drained of blood, were a straight line of anger.

Raed knew of the Bond between partners; the kind of connection that was both a strength and a weakness to the Deacons. Fearing that she would leap over the side and start racing back up toward the Priory, the Pretender put his hand on her shoulder; partly in reassurance, but also partly in restraint.

“Calm down,” he said as reasonably as possible. “He’s alive, isn’t he?”

She pressed a hand to her forehead, her breath still coming in little gasps. “Yes. He’s alive. You’ll have to excuse me, pirate Prince. This Bond Chambers and I share, well, it’s surprisingly strong. I have never felt anything like it before with any other partner.”

Was that a twinge of jealousy niggling at his core? Raed stuffed that strange emotion down as best he could, and tried instead to understand what Sorcha was going through. “Can you See where he is, what has happened?”

She gave him a quizzical look, as if he were a child. “The Bond does not allow me to See through his eyes. I heard his voice, like a muttering in another room. I could hear his tone, but not the words.”

“And then?”

She pulled out her Gauntlets and stared down at them in some concentration. “I recognized something, the taste of . . .” She shook her head. “No. No, that is impossible!”

“What is it?” Raed watched her fist clench tightly on the Gauntlets. “Come on, Deacon, we’re all in this nasty little affair together—like it or not.”

“Unholy, cursed Bones.” She spun away, pushing her hands through her hair. When she turned back, he could see the rage in her eyes. “I recognized Deiyant, the ninth rune.” She waved her Gauntlets at him. “Do you understand? A rune from these!”

Saying, “I told you so,” at this point would probably have earned him more than a slap. He was not that foolish, but he had to mention the thoughts that had been running through his sleepless mind. “They meant to kill you.”

The anger drained out of her face and now she looked very vulnerable. Having people that you trusted turn on you—he could sympathize with that easily enough; he and his family had been living with the consequences of that for years.

“Do you think so?” She remained staring at her Gauntlets as if they had the answers. “Unholy and damned Bones, I think you’re right.”

“What now, then?” He put a hand on her shoulder.

“Now?” Sorcha said, not shaking off his touch. “We go and get my partner back—by whatever means it takes.”

Together they glanced up the hill to where the Priory dominated the ridgeline. She smiled at him, a weary, bitter little smile that brought no warmth with it.

Merrick awoke adrift in his own Center, falling into it rather than letting it go ahead of him. All of his normal sensations were denied him, and now vibrant hues of his Sight were all he could see. The Prior and her Actives burned like recently raked fires as they clustered around him. He couldn’t hear what they were saying—yet the ether was turning a distinctly indigo shade and the smell of burning invaded his brain.

They were going to do something terrible to him, and it would not just involve death. His senses let him drift higher, and from his height he could make out the faint blue glow of a Sensitive below—it was his own body.

Around it he could see flickering designs that he recognized from his training—the training that had warned of dark things that could be done with cantrips. If he’d been capable of it, he would have recoiled.

A hissing roar enveloped Merrick, a pulling tug that he did not want to give in to. The Center was a more pleasant place, and now he wanted to stay—down below, pain waited for him. The Deacon struggled, but he could feel awareness of his body coming back to him. It was reeling him in, and despite his training, he couldn’t resist.

The first sensation to return was a bruised and sore windpipe. The Actives had surely been within moments of killing him. He retched and gagged on the sharp taste in his mouth. So far, Aulis had not noticed he was conscious again, so he took the chance to try to see exactly what they had done to him.

The smell of damp earth filled his nostrils, so he knew he was somewhere underground—maybe another cellar. He was pinned to the bare earth, his arms and legs spread.

Merrick tried to reach out along the Bond; the powerful nature of their partnership, unexpected and annoying as it had been up until this point, might prove to be useful. The pain that flared through his body gave Merrick a more complete understanding of Aulis’ methods. It was impossible to break a Bond, but it could be rendered poisonous to a Sensitive by overloading his talent.

The ragged scream he let out alerted them to his consciousness. When the blaze of agony subsided, he opened his eyes to see Aulis crouching over him. Her face had become positively evil.

“By all means, test the limits.” She smiled. “Our use for you does not require you to be awake.”

“What are you planning, Traitor?” he croaked through his damaged throat.

Her eyes gleamed in the dim light, but she ignored his question. “You know you only have your partner to blame for this pain. We planned to have her here, not you.”

“She’s going to come back, and then you’ll be—”

“Sorry?” She smiled again. “One Deacon is of no consequence to us.” She waved her hand as if batting a midge, then stood up again and pointed above him to the ceiling. “Perhaps you have missed that.”

With a chill, Merrick followed where she was pointing. The floor might have been dirt, but someone had taken a lot of time with the ceiling. The curve of the brickwork had been whitewashed and decorated with the swirls of more cantrips than he had ever seen in one place. He did indeed recognize many of them, but there was one whose swoops and spirals occupied the middle of the circle and hovered directly over the center of his body.

It was written in the language of the Ancients; a language that had been dead a thousand years. Only Deacons ever bothered to learn it, and they did so only because Ancients had been the first experts on the Otherside and the unliving. He had never seen the swirling script used in a cantrip, but there it was; a huge scarlet letter that could only have been made in blood, and outlined in something he instinctively knew was the charcoal remains of the Sensitives. The word was “First.” Why exactly it would be written so large and importantly above him, he had no idea; however, he imagined that it meant nothing good.

Merrick struggled against his bonds, but they were iron, solid and tight. Desperately he reached for his Active strength, a feat that he had not attempted in years. The flame burned all the way down every nerve and muscle. Thought blew away in the searing agony. He thrashed about, more terribly aware of his body than he had ever been in his life.

“Foolish, but amusing.” When he finally was able to think enough to let go of his attempt at Activity, Aulis was above him once more. Her grin was a sickening parody of grandmotherly concern. “Every time you reach for your power, no matter which one, the fire will enter you. Open yourself wide enough, and it will burn out your eyes and your mind. Go ahead—neither is what we require.”

She turned back to her Actives, having apparently gotten her fill of amusement from Merrick’s pain. “The Pretender must be found before tomorrow evening and the Third Pass.”

They bowed, tucked their hands into their sleeves and left the room. The Third Pass. Merrick’s head swam, but he had heard correctly.

“You can’t be serious,” he managed to say, his voice sounding a dry squeak in his own ears. “The theory of pass was discounted three centuries ago; there are no cycles to the closeness of the Otherside.”

“Oh, really?” Aulis’ curiously green eyes hardened beneath the line of her gray hair.

Merrick blinked, trying hard to focus his eyes.

“The theory did not fall accidentally from grace. It was discredited for fear that common folk would make use of it. Just like the use of weirstones. The Order has always tried to smother the use of power. They seek to control the knowledge of the unliving and keep it all for themselves.”

Good: he had her talking. He might be powerless at this instant, but maybe there would be an instant when he would not be. Knowledge was the only thing he could gather at this moment.

“But you’re one of us,” he gasped. “A Prior, a confidant of the Arch Abbot . . .”

Her smile showed a lot of yellow, sharp teeth. “I am so much more than that, lad, and tomorrow night all shall be revealed.”

The cold knot in the pit of his stomach began to resolve itself into boulder-sized apprehension. She did not linger to elaborate. He was left alone, manacled to the floor and looking up at that word hanging ominously above him. The Deacon couldn’t tell how long he lay there with his own bitter thoughts.

“Merrick.” The familiar voice to his left made him both incredibly glad and incredibly worried.

“Nynnia.” He lifted his head off the ground and flicked it from side to side, trying to find her. Finally, he saw her standing in the dancing shadows cast by the torches on the wall. Her sweet face was pale and folded in concern, but she did not come closer. She was looking up at the cantrips above him.

“It’s all right,” he whispered, terrified that Aulis and her Actives would return. “They are only meant to hold me here and stifle the Bond between Faris and myself. Maybe you can find the key for the manacles?”

She stayed where she was, huddled next to a pillar, and her brown eyes focused upward with the sort of dread horror he would have thought reserved for geists or murderers. “I . . . I can’t.” Her voice was very soft, so soft, in fact, that he almost feared that he was hallucinating and she was only a wishful figment of his brain.

“Please, you have to help, Nynnia. They’re going to kill Sorcha and do something worse to Captain Rossin.” He hated to put her in danger, but what other choice did he have? It wasn’t just his life at risk. Every person in Ulrich was in danger—or maybe even further. Aulis had a plan, and lordship of one remote township didn’t seem worth the risk of bringing the Arch Abbey down on herself.

“I wish I could.” She paused, and he could hear the honesty in her voice. It sounded as though she was really torn. “My father, Merrick . . . What will they do to him if I help you?” Nynnia still did not come out of the shadows.

He slumped back against the floor with a sigh, and gradually it dawned on him; there was only one real choice. He stared up at the cantrips for a minute, and then spoke. “What about my Strop, Nynnia? Did you see where they took that?”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her give a quick nod.

“Then can you get it—can you bring it to me?” Stripped of his Sight and afraid, it was very hard for Merrick to judge anything. The rapid trip of her pulse in her throat indicated she was indeed frightened, yet her expression was hard to fathom.

“I can try.” She sounded like she was very close to tears. “I will try, Merrick. But I am afraid of the Actives. If they could do this to you . . .”

He knew was asking a lot of the young woman, but if she didn’t bring him what he needed, Sorcha would be only the first to die. He didn’t need to know the Prior’s plan to be sure of that.

Merrick tried to keep his voice low and even, like he was talking to a very nervous animal. “Just the Strop, Nynnia. Just bring me the Strop and I will do the rest.” His next words remained locked inside him . . . If I have the courage for it.

As they climbed the rise for the second time in as many days, Raed noticed that she tested the pull of her sword in its scabbard. Deacons seldom bothered with physical weapons, but he heard they trained hard with them. The Pretender had no need to check his saber.

As they neared the top, almost within sight of where they knew the townspeople were gathered, she stopped him with a hand on the crook of his elbow. “Your crew, Captain Rossin—how many of them know how to fight?”

Perhaps he should have said something like, “It won’t come to that,” or, “You’re not making cannon fodder out of my men,” but one look at her deadly serious face and he knew that more was at stake than she would admit to him. He guessed that it was not just about a dozen possessed children, but something much darker. Anything that could scare a Deacon, let alone this one, was not something he could ignore. If he was honest with himself, he considered this still his kingdom.

“About half are well-seasoned warriors,” he replied. “The others are brave enough but have not trained. We tend to avoid conflict rather than take it on full tilt.”

Her nod was thoughtful, as if she was quietly making the mental calculations of what was stacked against them. Her head jerked up, and those sharp blue eyes met his. “We’d best see what other resources we have available, then.” With that, she turned and strode in the direction of the encampment.

Raed wondered how the citizens of Ulrich would respond to being described in such a way.

It was certainly a good thing that Sorcha was not wearing the immediately recognizable cloak of an Active, because they would probably have been peppered with gunfire before they got within thirty yards of the group. It helped that the citizens were all watching the Priory rather than the approach from the town.

Even if they’d not just come through the empty streets of Ulrich, it would have been apparent that this was nearly the entire population. The crowd included men and women, all carrying makeshift weapons; fishermen with long gaffes, farmers with their scythes and pitchforks, and bakers with their long wooden paddles. Everyone was focused on the grim building that hung over their town. After doing a quick head count, Raed judged there to be more than a hundred people, all waiting for something to happen on the ridge.

He pointed to the middle of a group on the left. “There’s the mayor—see his chain of office?” It was a small insignia, to go with a small town, but he’d caught a glint off it from the noon sun.

Sorcha straightened her Order badge on her left shoulder and indicated he should go first. If she had expected that the Young Pretender would get a better reception here than she would, she was sadly mistaken.

The Mayor turned to Raed and gave him a somewhat withering look; either he recognized him and was not impressed, or he didn’t and was annoyed at the interruption. His face was young but his eyes were hard in their sockets and his face was grim. Raed knew the look. Very well, he judged, a man who appreciates straight talk.

He held out his hand. “I am Captain Raed Rossin, of the ship Dominion. I’ve come to offer my assistance.”

“I am Mayor Erasmus Locke.” The Mayor’s face relaxed slightly, but then his gaze drifted to the woman who stood behind the Pretender. His eyes dropped to the sigil she had replaced on her chest and his mouth flew open in shock. Raed decided quick action was called for, before either the Mayor or, indeed, Sorcha could say anything.

“This is Deacon Faris, whom I myself transported on my ship, and who was sent by the Arch Abbot to aid you against these transgressors.”

The Mayor’s gaze flitted between the two of them. His voice was gruff, almost that of an old man. “We have no need of more Deacons here.”

Raed took hold of Sorcha’s arm, giving it a slight squeeze as he drew her forward. She glared at him, but leapt into the breach he had created. “I can assure you that I am no friend of the woman calling herself Prior—in fact, she is holding my partner prisoner.”

Mayor Locke’s lips twisted. “And now I suppose you want our help to get him back?” The tone of his voice was bitter. The citizens around him shifted, muttering to themselves.

The moment hung on a knife’s edge. Raed wondered if they might not have to make a run for it, but once again Sorcha surprised him. “I have examined your children and I know you have good reason to be angry.” She ducked her head and then glanced up at the Mayor with a grim smile. “However, I am here to set things right.” Her bright blue eyes sparkled with determination through the strands of her copper hair.

The Pretender realized that Sorcha was not beyond using her beauty to manipulate those around her if necessary. It might not be her weapon of preference, but she was aware of it—and Erasmus Locke was not immune. His shoulders relaxed. The people, those who should have been Raed’s people, had learned to trust the Deacons in the last years, and it was easy to fall back into that habit under the steady stare of Sorcha Faris.

“We can’t get in.” A tall woman tightened her grip on a baling spike and shook it in the direction of the locked Priory. “They stood and did nothing while my Lyith suffered.” Her voice cracked. “They actually turned us away.”

Sorcha exchanged a glance with Raed. Her face was flushed with anger, but her eyes were glassy with something that might have been a tear. “We shall make everything as it should be. That is what the Arch Abbot sent us here to do, and when I have my partner back, we can help.”

“How can you do anything against a Priory full of Deacons?” A sharp voice rang out from the huddle of the crowd, and Raed knew it for a very valid question. He was wondering the very same thing.

“There is one thing we have that they cannot stand against.” Raed felt her eyes focus once more on him; her expression was both calculating and sad.

Surely, she was mad. Surely she couldn’t possibly be contemplating what he imagined?

Sorcha made a slight gesture, asking for his silence for a moment. “Mayor Locke, could you send someone down to the Captain’s ship? Ask for Aachon, and get him to send up all those who are ready for a fight.”

A boy was dispatched, and Raed watched from the sidelines as Sorcha conversed with the Mayor and his councilors in a low voice. He didn’t take much notice of what they were saying, because his mind was spinning. He knew what she was going to say, so after a few minutes when she strode toward him, his jaw was clenched and he was ready to argue.

Behind her, the people of Ulrich were newly invigorated, snapping into action and organizing themselves into something resembling forms. Whatever she had said to them had brought positive results.

He glared at Sorcha, feeling every muscle in his body rigid with rage. It was much easier to be angry than to be scared.

“So you’ve guessed,” she began. “The only advantage we have right now is you, and the Rossin.”

“You cannot use the creature as a weapon!”

“Listen,” she hissed, shooting a glance over her shoulder at the townspeople, “they are right; there is no way I can possibly stand up against the dozen other Actives waiting for us in there.”

Raed shook his head. He didn’t want to hear anything, let alone something that might make sense.

“Aside from the fact these people need us”—she stepped closer to him, so close that he could feel her warmth—“we are trapped here, and I am sure that Aulis has a plan of her own. It won’t be good for us. I can tell you that now, for free.”

All of his choices were whittled away. Raed felt as trapped as sheep in a farmer’s pen, ready for the butcher’s knife. He took a slow deep breath; it never hurt to hear what people had to say. “All right—what do you propose? How can you possibly control the Rossin?”

Sorcha smiled, a flash of wry amusement. “Control him? I have no desire to control the Rossin. But I believe I can possibly give him something productive to do.”

The Priory looked as impregnable as any fortress he’d ever seen. He thought about surrendering to the Curse, about how he had feared it since his own mother’s blood had filled his mouth. It seemed unlikely that anything good could come from the Rossin. Then he thought of the children chained in their own homes, his own crew trapped on the ship, and the Deacon whom they’d unknowingly left to his fate.

Raed, the Young Pretender, cleared his throat. “If you think you can stop me from killing the innocent—if you can promise me that—then yes. Do it.”

Sorcha’s hands wrapped around his; soft, warm and strong, while her vivid blue eyes remained steady with his. “Trust me, Raed. I won’t let the Beast have you for any longer than necessary, or let you slay anyone needlessly.”

Aachon would have tried to talk him out of it, but something in Raed felt her honesty and strength. “There is no other way,” he found himself replying steadily, “and I trust you to do as you promise.”

“Good, then.” Sorcha held his hands a little longer than strictly necessary. “Because I make none I cannot keep.”