Geist (42 page)

“Weak,” the Arch Abbot replied. “You always were a weakling with far too much power.”

“And you relied on that when you sent us north.” Sorcha’s ear was tuned to the raging battle between the Murashev and Nynnia. “You moved us like pieces on a board.”

His lips split in a cruel smile. “The Knot is tightening, and you may have slipped it twice, but it will find you again.” His Gauntlets were already on, but as she got closer he tied on his Strop as well. The tooled leather turned him from a maddened old man into an eerie creature whose eyes were replaced by runes. Sorcha hoped he was more exhausted by the summoning than he appeared; Hastler was more than her equal. By the Bones, she hoped he didn’t have it in him to open Teisyat.

She reached out along the Bond for Merrick, and it was like hitting a raw nerve. Merging had made the Bond as sensitive as a newly pulled tooth, but the world bloomed bright. Hastler was glowing in this world, but not as strongly as he normally would have. Blue tinges were emerging; he was reaching for Yevah. She had to act quickly—she summoned Seym. Her body filled with power.

Sorcha ran, and before Hastler could get his rune shield up, she was on him. When she wrapped her arms tight around him, she found him as cold as a piece of ice—dealing with the Otherside could do that to a person. A lesser Deacon would probably have died from such a summoning, but she had no time to compliment her superior on his fine achievement. Yevah was of no use to the Arch Abbot now—not while Sorcha was so close—but he still had plenty of reserves.

He’s reaching for Pyet,
Merrick howled in the back of her head.

“By the Bones,” Sorcha grunted. For an old man, Hastler was strong and hard to get a handle on. She twisted and grabbed at his Gauntlets before he could bring the burning power of the rune to bear on her. She had no desire to find herself a piece of crumbling toast hanging on his back.

It felt wrong, and yet deeply good, to smash a fist into his face. Normally, punching an old man would have been the lowest of the low—but this was the man who had summoned the greatest danger to her city, made them outlaws and, above all, lied to her. But even as Sorcha tried to hold on, Hastler broke away from her; residual strength from the Murashev must have been aiding him. Once free, he turned the fire starter rune on her.

Try Shayst,
Merrick hissed into her mind effortlessly—more an idea than words.

It was the rune that drew power from a geist, and as far as Sorcha knew it had never been used on a human before. But then, Hastler was only borderline human now, anyway. With a yell that contained all her rage and frustration, Sorcha summoned the rune of drawing and shoved her green-lit hands onto the Strop that girded the other’s eyes. The sensation was like fire pouring into her head. Dimly she was aware of screaming, and realized that it was coming from both of them.

Her body was flung aside. She slid across the floor and smashed into the far wall of bones, but she barely felt the impact. Weakly, she struggled up out of the debris of the dead to see Raed charge the Abbot. His first blow was only just caught by Hastler as the Abbot raised Yevah, the edge of the Pretender’s blade slicing through the top layer of the cloak that Hastler had no damn right to wear.

He seemed to have been slightly blinded by her drawing of his power; he clasped one Gauntlet to his Strop, and the delivery of the shield rune was awkward. Still, by the time Raed spun and made a second strike, the Arch Abbot had recovered enough to summon Deiyant. The Pretender was shoved backward as if caught by a great wind. Sorcha struggled to her feet, her head buzzing with an unfamiliar energy. Traditional weapons, then. She rolled to her feet, though every muscle screamed a protest, and ran toward the Abbot as he advanced on the stunned Pretender.

She had time to spare a glance back toward Nynnia and the Murashev. The women were now impossible to see, their blazing light a sun in the ossuary. Merrick was standing nearby and Sorcha could feel him feeding his energy to Nynnia—though it would not be as effective without a Bond. Still, he turned and looked at Sorcha. Their gaze, only a heartbeat long, pinned her with a realization.

She is losing.
His mental voice was calm—much calmer than his physical one would have been.
You must kill the Murashev’s foci!

By the Bones—he meant Hastler. It made sense; without a physical body capable of holding her, the creature would need some foothold in this realm, even after such a powerful summoning.

Sorcha gritted her teeth. Holding her palm outward, she opened Chityre. The ground beneath Hastler’s feet exploded. It wouldn’t get past his shield—but it got his attention. His grin was maniacal on a face that had always seemed serene. This had to be a terrible nightmare, Sorcha thought, as he turned Deiyant on her.

Her attempt to raise her own shield was not quick enough—even running on reduced strength, Hastler was still faster than she. The manipulation rune closed on her throat as effectively as a giant fist. Despite the fact that she knew it was pointless, Sorcha scrambled against nonexistent hands. Her vision dipped and spun. Her own power was subsiding, her Gauntlets dimming and waning as life drained from her.

She reached out for Merrick, but his power was twined with Nynnia’s and it was not enough. The Bond found her a replacement. The Rossin, injured and depleted though it was, reached out to her with a heady flow of power directly from the Otherside.

With a gasp, she managed to light her shield rune underneath his—an impressive feat. Hastler’s face twisted with rage as the recoil knocked him back a step or two. But when he righted himself, she knew just by the look on his face that he was going for Teisyat. The unknown quantity of what a door to the Otherside would do in the ossuary was enough to make her tremble with fear.

And then Raed struck, the curved scimitar smashing through ribs and back and emerging in a flow of blood that no cantrip could prevent. Hastler looked once at Sorcha in rage and astonishment. Raed twisted his sword and the old man crumpled. It was habit that drove her to his side—that was what she told herself.

The look on the face of the dying man, however, was not one of defeat. “You do not know it, but you are already caught,” he gasped. “It will be just as I saw.” His laughter was choked with blood, and he had a white-knuckle grip around a medallion that had fallen loose from under his shirt. Sorcha waited until he slumped back, finally dead, before prying it from his fingers. It was a knot of two snakes, twined around each other in a circle and eating each other’s tails. Nothing else remained to tell what it meant. She put it into her pocket quickly, just as Raed struggled to her side.

And then the world tipped. The trained part of her knew that the banishment of a Murashev would not be easy, but she could never have prepared for the cacophony of sound and light that swept around her. The howl as the creature was sucked back into the Otherside was terrible. Without corporeal body or foci, there was nothing to keep her in the human realm when confronted with the void.

When the survivors straightened, Merrick was standing in a hollow blasted clear of bones. Of the Murashev there was no sign, but the Deacon was holding the burnt and disfigured body of Nynnia in his arms.

She protected me.
Merrick’s thoughts were like sharp pins in Sorcha’s head, full of loss and foolish hope. Carefully, she knelt down next to her partner. She didn’t need to ask why the creature had done what she had to save Merrick—in her eyes gleamed real triumph. Sorcha, however, still had questions that needed answers.

“You are like the Murashev, aren’t you?” she whispered.

Merrick gave her a stern look, but the shattered remains of the beautiful Nynnia smiled. “Once again, you only see a part of the truth.” Her once-sweet lips twisted in pain. “Like, but not like. The same . . . The same creature, but not all our kind agreed with its course of action. My path, being born as a human, takes longer, limits us—but I was sent to stop this.”

“And you have,” Raed said softly, his hand resting on Sorcha’s shoulder.

Nynnia gasped, her body undoubtedly descending into shock. “Yes, I did. But I did not expect to find love here.” Nynnia’s smile was faint but victorious. “And neither did you, Deacon Faris.”

Sorcha gasped, her memory flashing back to those dreams she’d had while sharing a room with Nynnia. What had the creature done? What had been whispered into her head while she slept on unaware? Were the feelings she had for Raed only part of some Otherside plan?

“Hastler was not the only one who could see the future,” the dying girl whispered, “yet he could not include me in his calculations. I am not of your world, after all. My elders said I shouldn’t have been born, taken human form, but I have no regrets . . .” Her hand fluttered up to rest against Merrick’s lips. “None.”

Merrick brushed her hair from her face and her scorched lips as gently as he could. “We’re safe, thanks to you.” His tears poured out of his gentle eyes.

“No—not safe,” she gasped, lurching up in his arms, her fingers locking on his hand. “This will not be their last attempt!” Nynnia coughed and writhed in real mortal pain. “They will not stop.” Her eyes were losing their luster; the light of the Otherside dimming in them. One final breath rattled out of her broken body. Merrick held her close, but there was no way for even a Deacon to hold back death. Whatever the creature had been, she died as a mortal.

Then there were only the three of them, staring into one another and surrounded only by bones and death.

Merrick held to his training—it was all he had left. He gathered up Nynnia, knowing she deserved proper ceremony. She felt so light, as if her departed soul had been the heaviest thing about her—if she had possessed a soul at all.

Through his numbness, the logical part of him was still working. “We have to take Hastler’s body too,” he mumbled. “There will have to be an Episcopal inquiry. The Presbyters will need to see it, much as it should stay here to rot.”

Sorcha’s blue eyes, dark pits in the dimness of the ossuary, flicked to Raed. “Can you carry him?” She did not complain, but the way she held herself spoke of at least a broken rib. Wordlessly, Raed slung the remains of Hastler over his shoulder.

As they scrambled mournfully up into the light, around him Merrick could hear the creaks and groans of the White Palace, as if they were buried within an arthritic body. The ossuary was sliding back underground; drawn up by geist-power, it was returning to its natural place.

None of these facts made any impact on him. They were distant details to the cooling form in his arms. Perhaps he had been a fool to love Nynnia so quickly, and with so little thought, but he wasn’t going to wish it had never happened. She had not told him what she was, but her actions spoke of a bright being that he would miss. Some inherent Sensitive part remembered her words and knew that in the shadows to come, they would need all the help they could get.

The blazing light of the sun made him blink through eyes still burning with tears and scarred from the light of the Otherside. The people were emerging from their houses—frightened, yes, but aching to see what had happened. Their faces, covered in dust, looked so alien that for a moment Merrick feared that Nynnia’s sacrifice had not been enough; that they were surrounded by damned souls staring at the body of their Arch Abbot tossed so casually over one shoulder of the Pretender to the throne. His mind raced—something was very wrong in a day that had seen enough wrong—yet his mind was too numbed to make hasty connections.

Then the Order arrived. The trio was surrounded by the emerald and blue cloaks of Merrick’s fellow Deacons, like ornamented crows. They moved swiftly between the survivors, shielding them from the view of Imperial troops and commoners. They took Hastler from Raed, and Sorcha disappeared from sight altogether. A knot of panic clenched in Merrick, and he knew it was not an entirely unreasonable reaction.

Their own Arch Abbot had been conspiring with creatures of the Otherside—who knew if this was an aberration or a new policy? Only his awareness of the Bond kept the young Deacon sane. He might not be able to see the others, but he could feel them. Sorcha was as numb as he was, while Raed felt resigned; he would not be able to escape from the Order now.

When kind hands tried to take Nynnia from him, though, Merrick stood tall, clasping her close. “I will carry her,” he said, his voice cracking a little.

It was an uneasy return to the Mother Abbey, flanked by Deacons none of them knew if they could trust. He resisted the urge to fall gratefully into their arms. A lot had happened in a few weeks and he was not the green boy who had ridden out that day.

They took Sorcha and Raed to the infirmary, but Merrick they left alone in the mortuary to lay Nynnia out. He straightened her limbs, cleaned her face and carefully cut away her dress. It was burnt to her skin in many places, but he was able to remove enough to put her in a decent replacement.

He heard Presbyter Rictun come in, but did not acknowledge his superior until he was done. Turning around, he locked eyes with the man who was now, effectively, one of the heads of the Order in the Empire. With Hastler dead, the five Presbyters would speak for the Mother Abbey; and yet Merrick didn’t know if they were as corrupt as the Arch Abbot had been.

It took the young Deacon a moment to recognize at the Presbyter’s back were five others from the Order—a quickly assembled Conclave. Their linked minds were probing his, weighing every word for truth. Well, they were not the only ones who could do that.

Merrick’s eyes narrowed. The woman he had been growing to love had died, the world had teetered on the edge of doom, and the man they had all trusted to lead them had proven false. Before they could stop him, Merrick thrust with his Sensitive power, which had never failed him in the ossuary, even for a moment. Indeed, it seemed to have grown stronger, and he slipped easily within the Presbyter’s mind.