Wrayth

TWENTY-FOUR Coming Home

Sorcha was glad to be the first to go under the Patternmaker’s hand—one that she noticed shook just a fraction. She wanted to make sure that this would work, or at least not kill her before any of the other Deacons tried it. The perils of coming up with the idea herself—or at least stealing it from her own mother. The image of her carving the runes into her flesh was now about to become very real.

The Patternmaker had no ink, no time to get any, and so he had used what was to hand. It seemed appropriate that the scrolls and turns of the runes were painted on her in dirt and her own blood. As Ratimana worked on her, Sorcha thought of her mother. Had it been childbirth in that dire place that had killed her, or had it been the runes themselves? Perhaps her daughter was about to find out firsthand.

Raed, Aachon and the remains of the Dominion’s crew stood to one side and watched. The Young Pretender had his hand covering his mouth, and in the dimness of the cellar his hazel eyes were dark, with only a fleck of gold gleaming in them. Sorcha did not speak to him however. As the Patternmaker carved into her arm, the pain swelled, so she concentrated on the Young Pretender. The ease with which he flickered between Raed and Rossin was alarming, and she knew he was hiding something from her. Something had changed.

By the Bones, if they survived this, there would be a conversation between them that would not be gentle. If they survived.

As the Patternmaker finished her right arm, and moved on to her left, she looked across at Merrick.

The Sensitives would also have to bear their runes on their arms, but in addition Ratimana would have to sketch the third eye and their sigil between their eyebrows. It would be a disturbing effect.

Ratimana’s breathing came harder as he worked the final marks on her forearm: the design of Deiyant the half moon, bisected by two horizontal lines. It took something from the old man, and his strength, to do this, she now realized. Yet all concern for him was washed away as he drew the final Rune of Dominion on her arm, Teisyat. Abruptly she was suddenly aware of the Bond again.

Sorcha gasped, squeezing her eyes shut before tears could escape her and she was embarrassed. Merrick was there, in her head, a warm, calm influence that felt like a lodestone in a world of turmoil. Even if he couldn’t feel it yet.

Then she perceived Raed. He had never been able to feel their Bond as the Deacons experienced it, but his head came up now with dawning comprehension.

He had indeed been hiding something. Fire burned in him. Before, when she had looked at Raed through her Center the Young Pretender had blazed sliver bright in the ether. Now however, he was red-hot, like a bubbling cyst of lava that should not be in this world. His ease with the Rossin had been bought at a great price.

Sorcha swallowed back her outrage and her despair. This man had somehow claimed a slice of her soul, and yet he had done something that endangered his own. All the other Deacons’ eyes were on her. Soon enough they would see what she saw, though they wouldn’t be able to understand it as she did—or quite so intimately.

The fact was they needed the Rossin and couldn’t afford to question his, or his host’s, motives. Sorcha sighed. The fact was, they might all be dead soon anyway.

“Quickly,” she gestured to the Patternmaker. “We all need this.”

The Deacons lined up, excitement and trepidation etched on their faces. Sorcha stood by and watched grim-faced as he worked. Despite the shaking of his hand, he knew what he was doing and was efficient at it.

When he was done with the Actives, he moved swiftly on to their partners. The runes carved on their faces gave the Sensitives an appearance of rage that she’d never seen on their usually calm countenances. On Merrick it made him appear wrathful and older than his years.

Now, finally he was able to feel what she had. The Bond flared fully alive between them. They didn’t touch, but they grasped each other’s minds across the distance.

“These will fade.” The Patternmaker slumped back on his heels and glared up at them. “Proper ink will make proper patterns. Dirt is not enough.”

“If we ever have time,” Sorcha assured him, “we will get you proper tools. For now this will have to do.” She stared at him a moment, realizing what he had given back to them all. “Thank you,” she added finally.

She’d made up her mind about one thing however: the Order would not die in this stinking cellar. Walking over to the weirstone portal, she laid her hand on what she’d come to think of as the keystone at the top of the circle. It flared to life, and there they were looking at del Rue’s bed in the palace.

“Aachon,” she said, folding her newly dyed hands before her so as not to smear the designs, “I want you to take the Patternmaker to safety. Get out of the palace and go to Widow Vashill’s house. If we do not return, the future of the Order—if there is any—is in your hands.” To the old man she said, “Carve their skin too, properly. Make of them the semblance of an Order again.”

Aachon’s brow furrowed as he shot a glance at the still crouching, still foul-smelling old man. “Where my prince goes I go. I cannot—”

“Dear friend,” Raed broke in, his mouth twisting into a bittersweet smile, “there is nothing more you can do for me, but you can do so much for the Order. They protect the people of Arkaym so much better than I do, and all my family has ever been in recent times is trouble.”

The first mate shifted from foot to foot, trapped by old loyalties and realities. “If you died, my prince, I would have failed.”

Raed’s laugh was short and pained. “If I die in service of the Empire and its people, then that is my fate. I would rather that than live this life of running and losing. You know how ill it has suited me of late.”

Aachon’s hand clenched a few times, as if he would be glad of a weirstone and a reason to wield one at the side of his Prince—but eventually he nodded.

“And take the crew with you,” Raed added. He turned and looked at each one in turn. “Your deaths with us would be needless. I have already had too many friends die for me. This is my last order: go live, be as safe and well as you can be.”

He shook each of their hands in turn, and then embraced them whispering a few words into each ear. Frith at first would not look at him, but eventually gave up with a sharp sob. Aleck looked as somber as a funeral mourner.

Aachon bowed slightly. “I know you will bring honor to the name of your family, my prince.”

Merrick sketched an elegant bow to the first mate, a strange gesture in such an ugly place. “My mother and young brother’s rooms are on the floor below del Rue’s rooms in the palace. I fear the Emperor might think to use them against me, or they might fall prey to a geist. I would owe you a great debt if you can get them to Widow Vashill’s where there is at least some chance of safety.”

Aachon studied the young man seriously, before giving an equally broad bow. “I give you my word on it.”

Raed then clapped his arms around Aachon, and the two men embraced while the Deacons watched impassively. Sorcha couldn’t say anything because there was a strange lump in her throat. Merrick was looking down at his shoes.

Then the crew members took their leave, and leapt through the portal, bouncing somewhat ridiculously on the bed. Aachon waited for Ratimana to go before him.

First the old man placed the board in Sorcha’s hands. The new Pattern. It was a flimsy thing, ripped from a crate discarded in someone’s cellar, yet it was now the most important thing to the Order. She held it in her hands and gazed upon it in wonder, mixed with a little fear.

“Remember which you are; the Eye or the Fist,” the old man cackled, before turning and leaping through the portal.

Aachon favored the remaining group with a piercing look, as if fixing them in his memory, before giving a curt bow to all of them in turn. He followed the Patternmaker through the tunnel.

Then it was just Raed and the Deacons in the chamber. The Young Pretender sighed and straightened as if a burden was settling on him. “Now what? There is no portal into the Mother Abbey I take it?”

“No.” Sorcha smiled, but did not touch him. Instead she ran her finger over the keystone. “Not yet.”

Naturally del Rue had not dared to make a portal into the Mother Abbey while all the Deacons had their runes. Nor did he probably wish to show his own power to the Emperor just yet, considering he was playing the wily advisor and Kaleva was enraged by the Order. It would not do to have the Emperor turn his wrath on him.

However, Sorcha was starting to understand the weirstone tunnels. Someone had to have made them, and every time she used them there was a feeling that something was also opening up inside herself. Her mother, after all, had given birth to her with this sole purpose in mind. If anything was engrained on her psyche it was the tunnels, since she’d only been a few moments old when her mother had taken her through one. Perhaps, she realized with a jolt, that was why she had always so disliked weirstones.

Cautiously, she placed her fingertips on the keystone once more and the image of the grand bed in the palace wavered and disappeared. She was going to change the place these weirstones knew with one she knew and remembered. In the darkness underneath the Mother Abbey, she, Merrick and Raed had found a world that had belonged to the Circle of Stars: a long stretch of tunnels and underground passages where they kept their darker creations. The possibility matrix and the tunnels that led to secret escape routes into the city had been destroyed—at least according to Arch Abbot Rictun. However she thought of the great room with the stalactites and the stalagmites. That had been there an eternity, and surely had not been easy to bring down.

Holding that image tight in her mind, she pressed forward into the weirstone. The images of her mother flashed again, what she had seen and felt. The Wrayth, the geistlord that had ridden in her biological father as he made her, was there too. She didn’t want to think about or acknowledge that part of her being, but it was there and allowing her to do this. She pushed harder into the borderlands of the Otherside itself. The realm of the geists knew nothing of time or space—Merrick had journeyed into the past with Nynnia’s help from there. It would take not much more than that to bend the Otherside toward the Mother Abbey.

It surprised her; the strength of her own will, and how pliable the stone was. The drawing of two points together felt suddenly easy. Behind her, Sorcha heard Merrick gasp and the whispers of her fellow Deacons echoed around the cellar.

With a shake of her head, she looked through the weirstone tunnel to the familiar underground chamber. She recognized that soft blue light. “These are tunnels under the Arch Abbot’s rooms at the Mother Abbey,” she explained. “Merrick and I found them a year or so ago. The secret door should hopefully still be there.”

Raed looked at her, and it was almost as if he was seeing her for the first time. “That’s quite something.”

She merely smiled, and then to demonstrate her faith in her own abilities stepped through the portal.

On the other side it was as chill and damp as she remembered, and lit by the same odd blue light from the moss that grew in the caverns. Before she could get too maudlin about the changes that had been wrought on her life since her last time down here, Merrick stepped through, followed by Raed and the rest of the Deacons.

Deacon Natylda looked about in amazement. “All this lying under the Abbey, and no one ever knew it was down here?”

“Well, some did,” Raed whispered. The place seemed to require whispers. “The Arch Abbots of your Order probably found it early on.”

Before anyone could comment further, Merrick spun about. “I have to check something,” he said, and darted away from them, deeper into the field of stalactites and stalagmites. Sorcha had a good idea what he was up to.

Raed opened his mouth to speak, but she forestalled him. “We’ll give him a moment.” While they waited, she decided that she had no desire for this del Rue, or any of the other Circle of Stars Deacons to come up behind them. It was surprisingly easy for her to wrap her fingertips around the keystone, and pull it loose. It was the most effective way to lock the tunnel. Raed was staring down the passage keeping an eye out for Merrick, so he wasn’t there to notice her slip it into her pocket.

Her partner didn’t take long to come back to them. A grin was on his face. “You might not like Rictun, Sorcha, but he did what he said. The possibility matrix and the tunnel to the outside canal are all gone. Looks like they pulled down part of the ceiling to block both.”

“I don’t think Rictun is working with them.” Raed drew his pistol and examined the powder for dampness. “Just that he is the wrong man for the job.”

Merrick’s mouth twisted, and along the still fragile Bond, Sorcha felt his rage like a streak of poison. “No, it has most certainly become clear that it is the case.”

“Regardless there is only one way out of here,” Sorcha said, turning toward the stairs. “Let’s not give the man any more time to destroy the Empire and the Order.”

She led the way, feeling the dampness under her boots, and slipping now and again on the stairs. It was, as Merrick said, apparent that no one had been down here for some time. They climbed for a little bit in utter silence, but the flickers of emotion around her were in chaos. It was hard to trust this new way of doing things, especially when crafted by a crazy, dirty old man. The new Pattern, tucked into the back of her pants, felt like ice pressed against her skin, and she was terrified of slipping and breaking the fragile piece of wood with her backside. That would be a graceful end for the Order right there and then.

Merrick, climbing behind her, chuckled—even though she had not said anything. Sorcha shot him an angry look over one shoulder, and it actually made her feel a little better. Things felt more real with their partnership intact. The Bond was still strong, even if the runes felt a little unstable.

Finally they reached the last stair, and above Sorcha’s head was the closed circle of stone that should lead into Rictun’s chamber. She turned back to Merrick, and caught the faint impression of Raed’s face behind him. “Here’s hoping the Arch Abbot is not asleep right now. Merrick, you did this last time.”

Her partner smiled, then pressed his hand against the smooth surface and whispered one word in Ancient, “Taouilt.”

“You always were the better scholar than I,” she murmured into his ear, as she watched the stone begin to move. They had to go back up a little as the stone steps slid out from the wall. Sorcha led the way into the Arch Abbot’s private bedchamber.

She let out a little sigh of relief. Rictun was not at home, though five small oil lamps were burning in his chamber. She padded around the room investigating while the others clambered out of the tunnel. The last time she had been there, it had been Hastler’s room, and as sparse as a hermit’s abode. Now it was cluttered with all kinds of little gleaming objects. She couldn’t help but grimace as she saw a Harthian coil of gold made into a representation of the little snake god Histo. Such things had no place in any Abbey, since the Order had given up religions nearly a thousand years ago. Also the lush wall hangings were displays of wealth she did not care to see from her Abbot.

Merrick stood at her side and looked at what she was eyeballing so angrily. “It’s not a crime, Sorcha. He is still allowed some possessions of his own.”

She hated it when Merrick reminded her of the truth. So Sorcha grinned rather grimly. “You might be right, but let’s say we try and find him instead of his possessions.”

Merrick’s eyes slid away from her, and she sighed just a little as he shared his Sight with her. By the Bones, she had missed it. He offered his Center and she took it. The world unfurled before her, like an unrolled map, and her senses were flooded with light; every sound filled her ears, from the ants scurrying on the floor, to the cooing of the doves sleeping in their nests under the roof. Without her partner as her anchor she would have been swept away.

Every creature that lived came alive in her mind, and so it didn’t take much to find the other Deacons. They were all in the Devotional, and such a gathering burned as bright as ten signal fires in her vision. They were all there; every single one of them, even the lay Brothers.

That cannot be good. Merrick’s voice in her head was sweet, even when it carried bitter words.

And the Emperor? she responded.

Look, he’s there too. And more. His Center directed her attention. Yes, there was the Emperor, the dull red pulse of command running through him, but there, to his right, was someone else. For some reason it was hard for Merrick to concentrate on the person. The color of his presence kept changing from gray to a flickering gold, and then to something else, something woven and dangerous.

That’s him. Del Rue. Merrick’s outrage flooded her. He has almost given up hiding his true nature. Deceiver. Conspirator. And look he has her.

Yes, Zofiya was there, but her etheric appearance was dire and strange. Like her brother, the shreds of power clung to her, but they were run through with a gleam of gold. It was impossible to taste her emotion among all that confusion.

Merrick brought her back to reality with a jolt, by the simple method of hauling back his Center. He looked around at the three other pairs, and his voice was grim. “We must form a Conclave to stand any chance against del Rue.”

“Sounds impressive,” Raed muttered.

The others were struck dumb for a moment, but Deacon Lujia voiced their concerns adequately enough. “A Conclave can only be made by the Presbyterial Council. None of us have any experience with forming one and…”

Her voice trailed off, and Sorcha jerked around, in something verging on horror. She’d just caught the tail edge of it; Merrick’s wild talent working on her fellow Deacons. Despite everything that they had been through together, she never would have thought he was capable of doing such a thing to members of their own Order.

Her eyes locked with his, while Raed stood by, completely unaware. She should have said something—reprimanded him at the very least—but then she saw the effect on the others. Calmness washed over them, and all doubt and fear drained from their faces. Although she didn’t know much about Conclaves, she knew one important thing—they forged Deacons into one unit with one purpose. Merrick was doing that very thing.

“I know how to do it,” her partner said softly. “The Conclave will be strong, and we will prevail.”

The look he turned on her was harder and darker than any she’d seen on his face before. She did not like it. Thus a unit is made, came his reply.

Many times Sorcha had wished that her young partner would grow up a little, but now that he was doing it, she found it deeply disturbing. She knew he was right, that things were dangerous, and that they had to work together, but to twist their own brothers in such ways felt wrong.

Some things you couldn’t walk away from unscarred. Some things there was no going back from. The chill of the Pattern against her back grew deeper and more profound.

Merrick was no fool; he knew about consequences and had decided to take them on. So Sorcha stepped back to observe what he would do next.

He did it all far too easily. He held the rune Kebenar before him, the one that showed the truth of a situation, and wove it between them. Something else was in there though, the strand of his wild talent binding them, calm and determined, to him.

It was similar to creating a Bond, but he was a Sensitive, not an Active. Yet there he was combining their powers, their runes and their spirits together. It was a beautiful and terrifying thing to watch her young partner create a Conclave.

When he was done, Merrick turned to her. His shoulders sagged a little, and she could feel the darkness in his soul was a little deeper than before. Sorcha couldn’t untangle her feelings of pride and fear however. He was much changed from the raw recruit of last year, full of hope and honest dreams. She would have seen him keep some of that in his life—but it was obviously not to be.

“It wears us all down in the end,” Raed muttered, though she could not tell if it was in response to her thoughts. “This has to be a fool’s errand. What can we accomplish by facing this del Rue?”

Merrick’s smile was bright.

“Everything,” he replied. “Del Rue is dangling us all like puppets from the shadows. He moves us about to achieve his aims. So tonight we drag him kicking and screaming into the light and expose him for what he truly is. Everyone in Arkaym should know the danger, and that the Order of the Circle of Stars has returned. The time for subterfuge is over.”

Raed held his gaze for a spell and then dipped his head in consent. “As always you show your elders the truth of things, Merrick.” He went to the door. “Shall we be about it then?”

The Deacons, as one, nodded. Sorcha opened the door, and gestured Merrick out into the light.