Wrayth

NINETEEN Loyalty and Challenge

The crew formed up behind their captain with grim faces and primed pistols. Sorcha and Aachon took the front positions. Surprise was the only advantage they had, and she was going to use it the best she could. Standing by the door in the dark chamber, the Deacon could hear the footsteps of the approaching people they had just listened in on. Sorcha took a long, steady breath.

The tang of the weirstone’s power was the only thing keeping her upright and functioning, but it tasted flat, coppery and chill compared with Merrick. She was pining for his strength and good sense, and as soon as she could, she was going to drag Raed back to Vermillion to find him. If they survived of course.

With that thought, Sorcha took a step into the corridor and spread her Gauntlets wide before her. She only had a brief instant to take in the people before her. Tangyre was there, her arm guiding a shorter, younger, blonder woman before her, and Sorcha thought Fraine looked very little like her brother. Behind were three more women, but with bone-white hair and skin. In them, the Deacon could feel the flicker of the Wrayth, lying just under their skin like a serpent.

They glanced up, and it was not her imagination, something in their eyes told her they recognized what she was.

If they saw anything about Caoirse in her, she was pleased. Like her mother she would teach them a thing or two about Deacons. She didn’t spare them a word as she darted forward, slipped between Tangyre, who was now reaching for her sword, and Fraine. She made no introductions. Instead she kicked out hard with her left leg, connecting with the younger woman’s knee; she sent her sprawling to the ground with a surprised grunt.

Then Sorcha summoned the rune Deiyant. It blazed like white lightning on her palm as she pushed forward toward the line of women. The power of the Gauntlet filled the confined space of the hallway with a massive explosion of air. Like a geist moving furniture, Sorcha used Deiyant to toss the bodies of all before her. They were chaff in her way. As a Deacon she’d never done such a thing to humans before and wasn’t sure she dare examine too closely how good it felt.

Raed and his crew sprang from the shadows and scooped up the stunned Fraine before anyone could scramble up off the floor. She screamed and kicked furiously, but Raed disarmed her, and there were more of them than one outraged Princess could manage. Sorcha saw the cold light in Raed’s eyes as he grabbed her by the shoulders and jerked her to her feet. He bound her hands before her with sharp efficiency.

Aachon and Sorcha took up the rear while the rest of the crew bundled their captive away with them, back the way they had come, toward the riser.

It seemed like a dangerous apparatus to make their escape, but it was all they had. They would have to trust it since Sorcha could not phase all of them through the walls.

“Nicely done,” Aachon commented as the riser continued its ascent. “We should be able to summon Captain Lepzig with the weirstone to pick us up from the roof.”

“You’re all dead,” Fraine spat, straining against Arriann who had taken stern control of her. “I’ll have the Wrayth slit your throats just like I ordered done to your crew members in Chioma.”

The men and women who heard this glanced at Raed in undisguised shock. This was news to every one of them, including Sorcha. If what the Princess said was true, the Deacon could understand why the Young Pretender would keep it from them at least until they were beyond the nest.

Aachon drew back his hand, as if to slap the Princess stupid, but then at the last moment held his blow. “They died for their captain as we all would. He’s earned our respect over many years. How many can you say would do that for you?” His voice was wracked with choked-back rage. It was the most emotional the Deacon had ever seen him.

Sorcha could understand; broken loyalties and conspiracies had almost destroyed her beloved Order. She touched his shoulder. “She isn’t worth it.”

Raed stepped between his sister and his first mate. “Enough, Fraine. I don’t know what you gave up to the Wrayth, but this isn’t the way to revenge yourself on me—bringing a whole Empire to the very brink of civil war.”

“Brink?” Her smile was chill. “Brother, it has already begun.”

The truthfulness of that statement could not be tested right then, because no sooner were the words out of her mouth than shots rang out above them. Many shots.

Instinctively everyone ducked down, but the bullets were not aimed at the people. They rained down against the top of the riser like hailstones.

Aachon grabbed Sorcha’s hand. “Guards above are trying to shoot out the mechanism for the machine. We have to stop them!”

The Deacon looked at him as if he were mad. She understood the risk, but she had no way of targeting anyone. Her Sight was not that accurate without Merrick and she had more chance of killing them all with a misplaced blast of Pyet, than she did of halting the assault on their transportation.

Apparently the Wrayth had what they needed from Fraine, because they were showing scant regard for her safety. Tangyre must have had no say in the matter either. However, Raed, perhaps out of habit, had covered his sister’s body with his own. Not that it mattered.

For just then, the shots had their intended effect. The riser lurched from side to side like a ball on a string, and the sound of groaning metal filled their ears. The passengers had nowhere to jump to escape, and Sorcha could think of only one mad chance. Spreading herself on the floor she shouted, “Hold on,” to the crew.

It was perhaps an unnecessary piece of advice. The chain above finally snapped under the assault, and the riser began to do quite the opposite; it began to fall like a lead weight back the way they had come. The sensation of her stomach trying to force its way into her throat was a new one to Sorcha, and it was accompanied by a feeling that she was almost without any weight. In other circumstances that might have been enjoyable, but since she knew they were all about to be crushed to death at the bottom of the fortress it took away much of the fun.

She had enough time to glance sideways at Aachon, and scream, “Everything! Now!”

The weirstone flooded her with power and then shattered. It filled the inside of the riser with tiny crystal shards, and the sound of Aachon’s wail of outrage. However, since everyone else was screaming it was lost in the din.

Pressing her Gauntlets down on the floor, Sorcha summoned Aydien, the Rune of Repulsion. Now the riser was filled with screams, broken shards of weirstone and a flood of blue light. The Deacon added her own howl to the mix, just for good measure.

Her eyes blurred as she held on. The rune had never been used for this, that she’d heard, but she could think of nothing else. Everyone screamed as the riser bounced against the sides of the shaft. Its descent seemed relentless and to go on for the longest time.

Then blue fire exploded around them, wiping out—for a moment at least—thought, consciousness and hope. Sorcha felt, rather than heard, the riser shatter all about them. It broke and flew into as many shards as Aachon’s weirstone.

That seemed to be it.

Then reality found her again; found her shaking her head free of weirstone shards, and tossed not too far from the bottom of the shaft. Staggering to her feet, Sorcha yanked off her Gauntlets and tucked them with numb fingers into her belt. There would be no use for them now.

It took another few moments before she found Raed, climbing to his knees. In celebration, she planted a kiss on his lips, while he was still looking around bemused.

“Are we all getting that treatment?” Balis was pulling a dazed-looking Fraine to her feet, a trickle of blood from a cut on his head staining his cheek. The sharp thought that if the young Rossin had died in the accident things might have been easier, passed through Sorcha’s head. Immediately she felt terrible for such callousness.

Aachon climbed out of the shaft, over the remains of the riser. His glove was covered in the dust of the lost weirstone and his expression pained. Still he was moving, and Sorcha took that as a very fine thing.

The Deacon did a quick head count, and smiled. “I think I’ve found a new use for Aydien,” Sorcha coughed on her own pride. Every one of the crew members was there, alive. Perhaps not exactly undamaged—but still alive.

“No chance of the rooftop then,” Raed said, wiping dust out of his eyes. “So I guess we get to try this infernal tunnel instead.”

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than a low groan began to rumble out of the tunnels behind them. The peon level Wrayth were struggling to their feet, their naked bodies covered in the debris of the crash. Many of them sported far more horrific injuries than those that had taken the tumble with the riser.

“Aachon,” Sorcha whispered, as a peon with a large slice of metal buried in his shoulder began to orientate on them, “how quickly do you think you can activate the weirstones of the tunnel?”

The big man shook himself, and his eyes took a spell to focus on her. How long had the first mate been using the weirstone he had just lost, she wondered. Its loss could signal more damage than they could afford right now. However he still had far more experience with weirstones than she did—especially considering she couldn’t stand the things.

The vacant eyes of the peons were unnerving, especially as they came ambling toward them. The crew formed a rough circle around Aachon and Fraine, close to the tunnel. The Princess remained still, head bowed and her expression unreadable.

Raed, standing next to Sorcha, blade drawn, chuckled. In this dire situation he actually chuckled. “You know, my dear Deacon, one day I would like to court you properly. You know…without the geistlords, the angry goddess or the nest of hungry Wrayth.”

Sorcha considered what sort of strange world that would be. “Damnation, that sounds like a lovely dream, but I will take whatever I can get.”

The peons were assembling in a mob that would certainly overrun them eventually. She was reminded of the gathering outside Vermillion palace that she’d had to deal with. That had been the beginning of her journey of discovery. She hoped she didn’t have to kill any more folk than she had that day. It looked unlikely at this point.

Still, possessed by either geistlord or geist, the result would be the same. Briefly she considered doing what she had in Chioma, acting without Sight. But she was drained of her own strength now, and without the support of Aachon even worse than blind. Yet…all these people—including Raed—were relying on her…

“I can still use my Gauntlets,” she offered. “It’s just without Aachon and his weirstone…”

“No,” Raed replied firmly, “you can’t do that again. I saw it once. Not again, Sorcha.”

“We got plenty of blades,” Frith pointed out cheerfully. “No need to worry yourself.”

The peons surged forward. They might be naked and weaponless, but there were an overwhelming number of them. It seemed cruel, but Sorcha and the others had to protect themselves. She did not wince as her blade found flesh.

Small mercies meant there would at least be no shades made here today, since the peons had already succumbed to a geistlord. The crew all hacked and slashed, avoiding grasping hands, and charges by the thick mass of naked limbs and bodies. It was brutal butchery, but it was that or be pulled down into the chaos.

They managed to protect Aachon as he turned his back and tried to make sense of the tunnel that was their only chance of escape. Sorcha was no fool with a blade, but she was not as good as Merrick, and she found herself falling back step-by-step.

“Aachon,” Sorcha shouted over one shoulder, “we can’t keep this up all day.”

“I need you!” came his curt reply, and she stepped back to find out what was going on. His fingers were running over the weirstones, each about the size of an eyeball, embedded in the wall. “I cannot see how to open this.”

Sorcha tried to block out the sounds of battle at her back, and the imminent threat of becoming part of the Wrayth breeding program, and concentrate on what she was seeing. From time to time she wished she could go back to the novitiate and tell her younger self to study a little harder. Merrick would have, once again, been a welcome addition to this moment. How Aachon expected her to know any more about this was a mystery. He’d worked and examined weirstones more than she ever had, and it was specialist Deacons that tuned the stones for the Emperor and his military.

However useless it might be, Sorcha did at least try. She saw that it was not just weirstones, there were cantrips and things that might have been runes too. All of them were wrapped around each other, and the stones, like a braid. Whatever the Wrayth had done to create these things was complicated and required blood—probably their own.

The same blood as yours.

Sorcha jerked her head up as the words filled her mind. She couldn’t tell if they were from the Rossin, or from somewhere deeper; somewhere that she had just discovered.

“By the Blood,” she muttered, for the first time realizing the irony of that statement.

The sounds of battle behind her faded away, and she turned back to see if the crew had dispatched all the peons. What she in fact saw changed everything.

The peons had backed away from Raed and his people and parted to let others through. Tangyre Greene was striding a few paces behind the assembly of tall women and men. They had milky white complexions and dark eyes that the Deacon had seen before in the possessed. Though these walked with none of the clumsy, shattered gaits of the shambling mob she’d fought outside the gates of Vermillion. They were under far more severe control.

“Keep trying,” Sorcha hissed to Aachon. “I’ll see if I can gain us some time.”

The woman in front was a lovely thing, like a statue carved out of alabaster. She held lightly in her fingers a brass chain that ran down to, and was attached to, a collar. This was in turn tight around the neck of another woman. She had long blonde hair to cover her nakedness but that was all.

The Wrayth woman stopped short of the outstretched swords of the crew and examined them as if they were bugs beneath glass. “I am Iuhmee. Set down your weapons and you will be allowed to live.” Her gaze flickered to Raed. “Some of you may even find our company pleasurable.”

“I would rather die,” the Young Pretender growled. “Your women are not my type at all.”

The corner of one of her lips quirked at that. “Many say that…at first. Eventually they come around.” Her eyes flickered to Sorcha, and that calm mask of the Wrayth was broken for an instant. “What have we here?” It seemed like a genuine question.

A wave of sighs passed through the assembled peons, and two of the first women’s companions, those not on chains and with the same dark eyes, stepped up closer.

“A hybrid?” The tall, heavily muscled man among them tilted his head in an alien gesture that made Sorcha’s skin crawl.

“One of ours—but how?” the third commented, a note of excitement in her voice.

“Only one ever escaped.” Iuhmee grinned. It was a gesture that Sorcha was sure she was copying, rather than actually experiencing. It made the Deacon’s skin crawl. “We never knew what she made with us.”

The Deacon had quite enough of being talked about as if she were not there. She knew, just knew, deep in her bones that she was her own person, not some monstrous creature.

“My mother made me!” She shouted it so emphatically, that even the Wrayth stopped conferring among themselves. “I am what she was—a Deacon, and proud of it. I have sent thousands of your kind back to the Otherside. You will be no different.”

“Sorcha,” Raed murmured at her side, but she didn’t acknowledge him. She was busy facing the black eyes and cool regard of the geistlord that had forced her mother to bear her.

“So many of you Deacons have thought us that easy.” Iuhmee pointed at Raed. “Ask the Rossin how difficult we are to banish. We have found the perfect way to survive in this world. No one body holds us. The death of one of our number does not diminish us in the slightest. We are immortal and unstoppable.” She smiled, showing rows of perfect, sharp teeth all at once.

Sorcha felt her fingers grow numb, while her vision blurred. She would much rather have been having this conversation with Merrick at her side, and after a couple of weeks to regain her strength. However, it was what it was, and she had never backed down in the face of a geist before.

“Give us back Fraine!” Tangyre had apparently had enough talk. She pushed forward from the back of the press of Wrayth. “You had no right to take her.” Her face was set in a red mask of anger—such as a mother might when her child had been snatched away.

However her rage was nothing next to Raed’s. As Sorcha melted back to the tunnel entrance to examine it as quickly as she could, he stepped forward, bloodied blade held before him. “You poisoned her and forged her into your own cursed weapon! I won’t let you use my sister to destroy thousands upon thousands of lives. I won’t.”

That’s good, Sorcha thought as her fingers darted over the braid of weirstones and cantrips. Behind her, dimly, she could hear Raed and Tangyre yelling at each other, but all of the Deacon’s focus was in front of her. Somehow her own mother had figured this out—else Sorcha would have been born in the Wrayth nest. An image flashed in her mind; her own tiny infant hand pressed against the stone by her mother’s. The Wrayth within her responded.

No sooner had she remembered that than one of the weirstones shifted under her fingertips. For a second the stone was not hard and resistant, but smooth like water. Sorcha glanced at Aachon, but he merely shrugged, distracted by the continuing arguing over Fraine.

So Sorcha was on her own. Concentrating, she pressed harder on the stone, and closed her eyes. A memory darted up, like a fish from the depths of her unconscious. She had done this before. Her own hand, so very tiny, held against the stone by her mother. A child only a few moments old, she had moved these stones before.

Now, behind her lids she could see a town built in a mountain of gray stone. Shelton. It was a city to the northeast of Vermillion. Lovely people with the most atrocious thick accent. She’d dined on land crab there, steamed over an open fire. She could almost taste them now.

Ripping her fingers free of the stone, she found another. Lisle, a dreary little town of the Apotol desert inland. Kubmagahwe, a city built on the confluence of three rivers, in the southeast of Arkaym. Andis-Most-High, the capital city of Delmaire, where she had studied in the novitiate. She could hear the great bells in the town squares and smell the ocean.

The Wrayth had indeed mapped out many places all over the world. They had only seconds to escape, yet she did not want to be stuck in a distant city that could take weeks to get away from. So she searched on. There it was! Vermillion, the city of the Emperor and the Mother Abbey. The taste of the roasted chestnuts, and the sound of the tide pulling on the lagoon. She had not been gone that long, but she swore she was homesick.

“Raed.” She spun around, and only then realized her mistake. She had called attention to herself and what she was doing. The Wrayth had been watching the verbal sparring between the two captains with some amusement: the kind an owner of a dog pit might have while watching two puppies preparing to fight.

Their dark eyes flicked up. The Wrayth might be proud of the invulnerability that they had achieved by spreading their power among so many hosts, but it had been bought at a cost. Unlike the Rossin, or any other geist Sorcha had ever fought, they were not sensitive to what was happening in the ether. They were blinded by looking out so many human eyes and ears.

It was a handy thing to realize.

“Stop them,” Iuhmee hissed, shooting out her hand. The peons were fast, but Tangyre was faster. She drew her sword and charged at Raed.

Sorcha slammed her hand down on the stone for Vermillion, and slid it upward, away from the clutter of other stones at the side of the tunnel entrance. It moved smoothly toward where the great eye stood at the very top of the curve, and then clicked into place. The darkness the braiding encompassed resolved itself from oily barrier to the simple shadows of a corridor lined with bricks.

“Get Fraine through,” was all that Raed had time to shout before Tangyre reached him. Aachon scooped up the screaming, howling Princess and shoved her into the corridor. The line the crew held buckled and bent under the now-coordinated surge of the peons. They turned back to their Prince, but he was no longer there.

As Tangyre, her scream of outrage rising above the chaos of the Wrayth, leapt through the press of peons, Raed shimmered. Flesh twisted and turned, bent and was made anew, as the Rossin thrust himself out into the world. Blood was in the offering, and he was there to claim it.

Raed’s clothes were torn from him and his sword dropped heedlessly away.

“Get through,” Sorcha bellowed to the stunned crew members, and in the face of the Rossin they obeyed her without question. The heat of the great cat filled the room as he spun and ripped peons down with tooth and claw. The Deacon scrambled and grabbed up her lover’s tossed-away sword, catching a glimpse of Tangyre Greene’s face.

It had gone from savagery to horror in an instant, but it was too late to turn back. The Rossin, his jaws and teeth already stained with blood, snarled at her, then let forth a great booming roar that reached even the primitive brains of the peons in the thrall of the Wrayth. They scuttled back in terror. Sorcha watched transfixed as he bunched himself and sprang at Tangyre. It was terrible and mesmerizing at the same time.

Her sword flashed, cutting across the chest of the cat, but it was a glancing blow that only served to enrage him further. He twisted and landed atop her with both paws. The sound of breaking bones rose above the cacophony of howls from the Wrayth. It was hard to say if she was still alive when the Rossin bent and engulfed her head with his jaws. Sorcha still watched, even when they closed with a snap and ripped it free. He chewed, cracking the skull of Tangyre Greene once contemptuously, before spitting out the remains.

“By the Bones,” Aachon breathed behind her, his voice tinged with awe. He must have seen the Beast many times before, but there was something about its strength in the sea of Wrayth chaos that demanded reverence.

As if in acknowledgement, the Rossin let out a roar that pumped up from his huge chest, echoed out of his jaws and filled the nest of the Wrayth completely.

Sorcha could barely feel her heart beating in her chest, but she had the sense that her mouth was dry. She was aware that she stood on the other side of the tunnel, one hand on the stone that was the connection to the fortress. She needed to shut the passage down, but Raed was there, somewhere within the pumping heart of the Rossin.

The huge feline head turned toward her.

Wait.

Sorcha had spent all of her remembered life fighting the geists, but when this one asked her to hold, she did just that. The peons and higher slaves of the Wrayth scattered as the Rossin leapt toward her. Vaguely she could hear the people behind her, including Aachon and Fraine, scrambling backward in a vain attempt to get out of the way.

Sorcha remained transfixed.

The Beast passed through the portal to the other side. The Deacon closed her eyes. He smelled of warm fur and blood, and his muscular flank pressed against her. In a half daze she moved the Phia stone out of position in the braid, and then, wrapping her fingers about it, plucked it from the wall entirely. No more Wrayth would be coming through this entrance.

For a moment no one moved or spoke. The only sound was the low rumble deep in the chest of the Beast that filled the tunnel with his bulk. Without Merrick at her side, she knew she had no chance of holding the geistlord back. If she was to die, then Sorcha would at least feel that which would take her. Under her hand the fur was warm and thick, the kind of coat that a rich lord would have loved to decorate the floor before his fireplace with. Sorcha buried her fingers deeper within it.

The Rossin swung his head around, those golden-flecked eyes fixed on her with an intensity that held her still. She knew what a mouse felt like when pinned to the spot by a house cat.

This means nothing. You are still nothing.

Then the muscles under her hand began to shift and move with the powerful magic of the geistlord. Within a heartbeat she was standing with her palm against Raed’s chest. He was breathing rapidly, staring at her, completely naked. More for her own sensibilities than his, Sorcha took off her cloak and, for the second time that day, draped it around him. Neither of them could speak for a while.

“Welcome back my prince,” Aachon said, giving voice to the horrified faces of the crew, but Sorcha saw that his hands were trembling where they were clenched on his jacket.

Raed glanced back at the tunnel, worked his mouth once, before managing to get out, “Where are we?”

“Vermillion,” Sorcha breathed. “Back to the capital.”

“I couldn’t even move them,” Aachon whispered in a tone that approached awe as he indicated the weirstones in the tunnel. “How did you do that?”

Her mother. The Wrayth. All the answers clamored in her head, but she let none of them out. Instead she shrugged and tried to divert his attention. “Lucky I guess. Let’s get to the Mother Abbey as soon as we can. I can protect Raed from—”

And then the world was ripped away from under her feet. Every nerve ending sprang alive, and she cried out. Sorcha didn’t feel the ground come up and hit her, but she found herself lying on the floor, staring at the feet of everyone else. Her mind felt scrambled and madness seemed to be the best course. Her breath struggled in her throat, and she felt the Bonds, all her Bonds to the Order spin away from her.

“Sorcha!” Raed was on his knees, helping her up. His grip on her felt like it was happening to another person. “What’s happening? Are you all right?”

She didn’t answer him, but brushed him aside so that she could get to her Gauntlets. Pulling them onto her lap, she stared at them, unbelieving, uncomprehending. Yet, there it was.

No power flowed through the leathers, and the runes were broken and blasted. Devastated. The Gauntlets that she had worked with so much care and precision were ruined. She could vividly remember sitting in the sun in the courtyard of the Mother Abbey of Delmaire, etching the first rune, Aydien, into the leather with great care. It had been her proudest moment—and now it was gone.

She looked about, searching for answers in the walls, in the air, in the fabric of reality. Finally, she turned to Aachon. “What can it mean?”

The first mate stared at the Gauntlets, and shook his head. “I really don’t know.”

On the floor, Fraine began to laugh. Soon she was gasping for breath. Apparently she was enjoying Sorcha’s horror just a little too much. “The Deacons of your Order are done for.”

Before Raed could stop her, Sorcha threw herself atop his sister and shook her by the shoulders. “What do you know? Tell me, or by the Bones I’ll smash it out of you.”

It took Raed and two crew members to pull her off Fraine. “Sorcha!” Raed grabbed her hands. “Sorcha! She’s just goading you. Shouldn’t we go to the Mother Abbey and get help from there? Surely they know what’s happening.”

Sorcha swallowed hard, and then closed her eyes. It was hard to focus, impossible to find her Center. Garil was back at the Mother Abbey; he had sent her away because he had known that she would heal if the Fensena could find her. Had he seen this too?

She nodded. “I’m sorry. Yes, you’re right, Raed.”

He put her arm around him and led her along the tunnel. The others followed in their wake, carrying the still-giggling Fraine along with them. Despite her mirth, it was a somber procession.