TWENTY-TWO
The Last Time
Merrick pulled
himself to his feet, feeling the effects of Onika’s presence pass.
Barely had he finished his recovery, when the burrowing ship
lurched, knocking him off them again. The Prince caught him by the
elbow, and with an impressive display of catlike grace managed to
wedge both of them against the wall while the ship continued to
vibrate and strain. The weirstones in their cradles rolled like
children’s marbles, but thankfully none came loose.
Around them the metal
groaned like a sick person, and for an instant Merrick had the
image of it collapsing inward. He could almost taste the earth in
his mouth, and he immediately reacted how he’d been taught—he flung
his Center out. Instantly his senses were flooded with power—a
power that he recognized.
“A geistlord!” he
yelled, but Onika was not there to hear his pronouncements. He
snatched up a weirstone and bolted back through the hatchway they
had come through. All the way the ship shifted and bucked under
them, but there was a definite direction—up.
Once in the main
room, Merrick’s ears were assaulted by the clanging of the
machinery around him: gears spun and pistons pumped harder than
could be good. The Ehtia were everywhere, scrambling to keep their
ship from tearing itself apart, shouting orders at one another, and
wide-eyed with near panic.
Merrick lost sight of
Onika but spun about when Nynnia grabbed his arm. Her eyes were
dark pits in the strange green light of the ship. “We’re going to
have to surface—she’s found us!”
The young Deacon
could guess what kind of “she” she meant. He might be out of his
own time, but his training still held.
“We’ve surfaced!”
someone yelled, and now they were all running for the exit. Merrick
jerked away from Nynnia and joined those pounding through the
corridors and hatchways. This was not panic—this was the organized
pelt of warriors toward a battle. He had seen it before in
Vermillion, and as a trained Deacon the battle was where he had to
be—it didn’t matter what time in history it was or that it was not
his fight.
He burst through the
final hatch, with a press of people at his back, and the sudden
influx of light blinded him for an instant. A Sensitive without
Sight, he stumbled forward. The Ehtia, with their strange dark
clothing, spread out into the suddenly silent landscape. The
weapons they carried were gleaming brass crossbows and long, curved
sticks that he couldn’t identify. At their head stood Onika, a
weirstone clutched in one hand. The interior of the stone wirling
like a vortex, and it boded ill.
Merrick could smell
the arrival of the geistlord. It was sweet and pungent, very like
the thick perfumes found in the temples of the little gods. He
flinched when Nynnia touched his shoulder. Her face was set in
stern lines, and she flexed her fingers around one of the strange
sticks. “Now you will get to see our folly, Merrick Chambers.” She
looked so sad that he wanted to offer some comfort, but he didn’t
know what would work. “The weirstone-craft we thought we were so
clever to create”—Nynnia flicked him a bitter glance—“it brought
their attention to us from the Otherside.”
Merrick was about to
answer, when the earth twisted under him. It was not much, but a
shiver that foretold something more. He could feel all the animals
fleeing from where he and the Ehtia stood; the earthworms dug
deeper, the bugs that could fly caught the breeze as best they
could, and the furred beasts scampered in among the rocks. He
wished he could join them.
A woman appeared over
the rise of the hill, though it was hard to see her shape or form,
concealed as it was in darkness. Merrick drew in his breath and
felt primitive fear clutch his stomach.
Few Deacons had seen
a geistlord and lived to report back. The first Deacon sprang to
Merrick’s mind, the ancestor of Raed Rossin, and how he had made
the first bargain with the geistlord. As the woman drew nearer,
Merrick realized one thing—no one had spoken of their terrible
beauty.
Her dark hair tumbled
down flawless, naked skin. As his vision cleared he was entranced
by the glimpses of her body beyond her curls. She was perfectly
nude, and her soft feet landed on rock or moss without reaction—as
if pain was for smaller beings. Shadows cascaded from her shoulders
and circled her head. Thankfully he could not see into them fully .
. . and he knew why.
“Shades,” he
whispered, his Center revealing the captured souls that followed
her. He could not count the number of them—it had to be thousands.
Suddenly the horror of the Rossin did not seem so
great.
Geists fed on the
souls of humans for the most part—but it was not all that could
sustain them. Emotions like rage and love often drew them, so what
greater sustenance could there be for a geistlord than adoration?
These shades suggested this one had fed well.
“Mother,” Onika spoke
clearly to the advancing woman, “you are not welcome
here.”
Merrick shook his
head—for a moment pulling the two difficult facts together. That
Hatipai was a goddess, he was sure. But that was not all he saw
when he looked at her. She was also a geist.
Though he was
horrified, it made sense. Scholars had always just assumed that the
population had turned away from the gods because they had been
unable to protect them from the arrival of the Otherside—but if any
of them had suspected they were in fact geistlords, then denying
their deities was just retribution.
“Son,” the woman
spoke, and it was like sweet honey. A sound to make men weep with
lust and women commit suicide in despair. “Come to me, and all will
be forgiven—even trying to turn my faithful against
me.”
Onika straightened.
“I could not do it.”
“No.” The goddess
laughed. “Not for lack of trying, though. They would have none of
it. Foolish boy.”
Though there was no
expression visible under the mask, the Prince’s weight of sadness
was reflected in the set of his shoulders. He certainly did no
appear to enjoy his godhood.
She stepped closer,
and even the Ehtia drew back as her presence threatened to wash
over them. “I made you for a purpose, Onika: to protect my realm
and all the people in it. So long as you live—and I made you to
live forever, dearest—Chioma will endure.”
Onika’s laugh was low
and bitter. “Yet what is the point of eternal life without love?
And you made sure that there will never be love or an heir for
me.”
His voice was so sad
that it instantly brought Merrick back to the moment where his
mother was sitting next to him on the bed, smiling, with her hand
resting on her full stomach. I don’t know how
he heard of me, she had said.
Suddenly the future
opened up before him, and he heard Nynnia’s words. Plant the seed, she had said. His mother had smiled
and glowed with such happiness. It had been true love in her eyes,
not the mad, hopeless faith of one trapped by the demigod beneath
the mask, but real love, as unexpected, delicious and treasured as
that could be. Merrick knew what Nynnia wanted and why she had sent
him here.
He almost blurted it
out, but then Hatipai was speaking. “You alone can hold Chioma—you
must live.”
Onika was her focus.
The Order’s training made this blatantly obvious. Just as the
Rossin had invested in the Imperial family, Hatipai had made her
own anchor to this world—similar but different ways of surviving
the perils of the real world.
“Let these people
pass,” Onika growled.
“Your allies?” The
shadows began to race counterclockwise around the face of the
geistlord. “They practically invited us into this world, and now
when they betray us, you would protect them?” The shades darted
apart, and her face was revealed.
Merrick’s senses
betrayed him. He dimly heard the Ehtia around him also fall to
their knees, but nothing mattered apart from the glory of Hatipai.
None of them were worthy of it. When her gaze fell on him, he
wanted to slit his own throat lest he insult her with his own
pitiful nature. He rolled onto his back, his hands grasping
desperately for his knife.
To his right, he
caught a glimpse of the vile woman Nynnia fumbling with her stick.
She did not seem to have quite as an appropriate reaction to the
glory of Hatipai.
From the ground he
also saw the heretic Onika raising the weirstone. His glory was
nothing compared to his mother’s. But somehow in his fitful
delight, Merrick saw a parting of the shades, a gap in her armor of
souls. And he reached deep for his training—throwing his mind into
the puzzles and recitations he’d studied for years. In there he
found a moment of respite.
“There.” His voice
cracked. “Onika, there!”
He had no Bond with
the Prince as he had with Sorcha, but his voice was just loud
enough to hear. Onika said a bright, hot word and threw the
weirstone into the shadows and the gap that the Deacon had
spotted.
Hatipai screamed, a
sound that went deeper than bone, and the shadows flew high.
Shades, those mindless, repetitive remains of souls, broke from her
like a cloud of scattering crows. Merrick saw them escape the pull
of the geistlord and was glad, though everything was mad and dead
to him in that moment. Then the world was swallowed by
darkness.
When consciousness
found him again, his head was cradled in Nynnia’s lap. Her fingers
gently stroked his hair, calling him back to reality. It was a
lovely ment, but eventually he found his feet.
Nothing dark remained
on the blasted cliff top—only the Ehtia, their machine and Onika.
“What happened?” The young Deacon turned to Nynnia, but it was the
Prince who replied.
“She is gone . . .
for now.” His shoulders slumped. “I have bought you enough time to
escape. The path is free for you to reach Mount Sytha, my friends.”
He sounded desperately alone. “She and I will continue our tussle
once you are gone.”
Nynnia grabbed him in
a tight embrace. “You will find other allies, Onika. She is not as
all-powerful as she thinks.”
Then the Ehtia
surrounded him, hugging him, whispering thanks in his ear—while
Nynnia and Merrick stepped back.
The weight of sorrow
pressed on the Deacon—especially as he knew how many lonely years
Onika would have to endure. As the crew of the ship began to
clamber back into the hatches, Merrick squeezed Nynnia’s hand and
went to speak to the Prince. “Thank you for what you are doing,
Your Highness. The people of Chioma might not know what you
sacrificed to keep them safe, but others do.”
“I have to be a
hero,” Onika muttered, “or become like her.”
“Then I hope you
remember this—” Merrick paused, caught by the circular nature of
this weird logic, before plunging on. “In the time of an Emperor
called Kaleva, seek out a woman known as the flower of Da
Nanth.”
“Da
Nanth?”
Naturally he wouldn’t
know of the principality—because it had not yet been created. It
almost hurt his head to think about it, so he merely smiled. “Trust
me, it is a place—though not yet.”
The Prince frowned,
but a spark of something that felt like hope lurked in his
expression. “Thank you, my friend.”
“Do not thank
me”—Merrick clapped him on the shoulder—“thank
Nynnia.”
The Prince smiled
uncertainly and embraced the woman. “Go safe into that place, old
friend—part of me wishes I could come with you.” He kissed the top
of her head.
She laid her hands
over his for an instant. “You have your people to take care of,
Onika—and where we go, you cannot.”
The Prince turned and
sketched a little bow in Merrick’s direction, the beaded mask
swaying. Onika’s voice was smooth, strong and just as it would be
when next they encountered each other in throne room in the Hive
City. “I find myself looking forward to meeting you again, Merrick
Chambers.”
As the Prince of
Chioma left, the Deacon recalled his first meeting with the Prince.
Looking back on it, he presumed Onika had recognized him. That damn
mask always concealed so much—it was hardly a surprise that the
ruler had developed a reputation as a mystery.
“Why can he not go
with you?” Merrick found himself whispering to Nynnia.
She sighed and tapped
him lightly on the arm, as if a teacher correcting a pupil who
should have known better. “Think of it: a half human/half geist in
that place. He would be torn apart by the geistlords shackled as he
is with a mortal frame. They feed on the energy of their own kind
there.”
The Deacon shivered
as he recalled the landscape of that dread place.
“Still, Onika made
quite the impression on you, didn’t he?” Nynnia’s eyebrow crooked,
and a slight smile lurked and her delectable lips.
“He certainly is . .
. different.” Merrick wrapped his arm around her waist. “Though my
Emperor is a fine person, still some part of me is always surprised
that anyone in power can be good—let alone the son of a ‘goddess.’
”
She nodded
thoughtfully and then led him back into the tunneling machine. “I
confess, we did not believe Onika when he first offered us his
help. Many doubted that he would turn against his mother—but he
proved himself.” She took his hand and pulled him along a long
corridor.
“Where are we going?”
His stomach clenched as the machine began once again to
descend—this time with no terrifying rolling.
“As Onika
said”—Nynnia squeezed his fingers—“Mount Sytha. All of our people
are gathering there to perform the ceremony.”
The Nynnia on the
Otherside had said there was a reason for her to send him here, and
then she would bring him back to his own time. Merrick didn’t want
to go back—even if this world was falling apart. This was where
Nynnia was still alive.
He knew that Sorcha
was back in his own time, his mother too—and both Merrick knew were
in deadly peril. The Deacon found himself torn between duty and
happiness.
“And then what?” he
asked, terribly afraid of the answer.
Nynnia stood poised
with one hand on a door handle, her brow furrowed. “We have to
atone for our crimes: swear off the use of weirstones and runes.
Give up our bodies.”
“You’re leaving this
world,” Merrick whispered. “Traveling to the
Otherside.”
A muscle in her jaw
twitched as she gave a sharp nod. “If we stay, Hatipai and the
other geists will tear this world apart hunting us. We will go to
the one place she dares not follow. Having anchored herself into
this world with a focus, she can no longer go back to the
Otherside—nor would she want to—the human meat here is so much
sweeter. So, with our knowledge, we can build a place there—and
maybe one day come home when it is safe.”
Merrick pressed his
lips together and closed his eyes—remembering the tales of that
Dark Time. The suffering the people of this time were about to
endure would be terrible. Yet from that maelstrom would arise the
Order, the Rossin dynasty, and eventually the Empire. It would take
hundreds of years, but they would conqueror the geistlords, even
Hatipai, and learn to contain the lesser geists.
Nothing he could do
would change that. Nor should it.
Nynnia pushed open
the door, and he saw that it led into a small bedchamber with a
reasonably sized bed bolted to the wall. A luxurious cerulean
quilted blanket brightened what would otherwise have been rather
bleak accommodations. He drew in his breath and shot the woman at
his side a confused look. “Nynnia, I—”
She stopped his words
most effectively by pulling his mouth down to hers. The kiss was
long, desperate and sweet. When she finally let him go, her brown
eyes were wide and her smile crooked. “When we leave this world,
Merrick Chambers, we Ehtia will abandon our bodies—become part of
the Otherside. I intend to give mine a proper
send-off.”
The Deacon’s blood
raced. Merrick wanted to grab what time there was that remained,
but his gentlemanly sensibilities wouldn’t let him take total
advantage. “You hardly know me.”
The pad of her thumb
brushed his mouth. “But I know you love me, and sime in the future,
however that may happen, I will love you. When we next meet, I
would have one of us remember these moments.”
The Deacon’s mind did
another flip. It was all too complicated and painful.
“We will love each
other,” Merrick replied and let himself be led into her bedroom. He
said nothing of them losing each other again. That pain could
wait.
Once the door was
shut, nothing outside mattered. The Deacon did not care to think
that this would be the one and only time for them—he pushed that
realization as far back as he could. He would have her find nothing
bitter in his mind.
Instead, Merrick took
his time undressing Nynnia, even as she raced to strip him of his
cloak, shirt and breeches.
“So young,” she
breathed, looking up at him. The comment was soft and almost sadly
said.
Nynnia would in fact
have taken a step back, but Merrick paused unbuttoning her blouse
and captured her hand, pressing it firmly against his bare chest.
“You will be young again someday—the very one we
meet.”
She frowned, shook
her head, laughed and then leaned forward to kiss him. Perhaps
there wasn’t as much meaning for her as there was for him, yet it
was still precious. Merrick delighted in her unashamed trust, when
he released the last of her rather intricately tied trousers and
she stepped back to allow him to look at her.
“You are beautiful,
Nynnia,” he said through a voice grown abruptly rough with desire.
It was no lie; she was. However in the future she regained her
youth, for right now, she had a lithe, muscular body, only slightly
touched by age. He thought it ripe like a fruit brought to sugar
and fullness.
Merrick ran his hand
down her right arm and felt the ridges of five wide scars that
streaked from shoulder to elbow. As he slid his palm around her, he
was able to make out that they in fact took in half her
back.
Nynnia looked at him
so very earnestly. “Very few escape the geistlords without some
sort of mark. I hope they don’t put you off—”
When he bent and ran
the sweep of his tongue against the ridges, she stopped
mid-sentence and let out a low groan. Then Merrick pulled her with
him as he flopped back on the bed. The sensation of the full length
of their bodies pressed against each other with no unnatural
hindrance was bliss.
Please let this go on forever. Merrick’s head was
spinning. The Nynnia he had met in his own time had loved him, but
they had never been able to find a time to consummate those
feelings. He had wanted to badly, and yet he’d been so wrapped up
in being a Deacon, he’d missed the chance.
“Are you—” Nynnia’s
gaze narrowed, even as her breath began to come in shallow pants
that were echoed by his own. “Are you a virgin?”
Sometimes telepathy
was a double-edged sword—but Merrick had only become used to it
between Sorcha and himself. Whatever gifts the Ehtia had meant that
very few of his surface thoughts were sacrosanct.
Nynnia blushed. “I am
sorry—you are broadcasting so loudly.”
A chuckle rolled
through his body. “Well, it is at the top of my concerns right now.
I don’t have much experience, but I am not quite a virgin. I just
don’t want to disappoint you.”
Her teeth nibbled
along the line of his neck, rising toward his ear, and suddenly
those concerns melted away. Nynnia puled back and licked her lips.
“A handsome young man, travels back through time to find me, and
beds me on my last day in this realm? How could you disappoint me?”
Her voice was low, husky and laced with raw desire.
Warmth was stealing
through Merrick, warmth that needed to be fulfilled, yet he
couldn’t help it. One tiny thought ran like a dark streak through
this moment of utter bliss. “I want more. I want the woman I love
forever.”
She could have
replied something trite. She could have leapt off him, offended.
Instead, Nynnia only smiled sadly and kissed him.
Yes, Merrick
realized, he might only have this moment with her, but only a few
hours of his time before this, she had been dead. It would be
churlish to diminish the delight of finding her alive and in his
embrace. He would not sully this gift.
Deacon Chambers put
aside all those nagging fears and doubts and plunged into the
moment. Soon enough she would be gone. Soon enough they would all
be gone.
The Rossin’s roar
faded even as Sorcha screamed after him—a sound that echoed the
pain inside her—a confused mix of loss and anger. The geistlord was
still as he had been when first she had encountered him, and even
worse, she remembered how it had felt to be him.
As she ran to the
window and watched the elegant, massive creature bound off the edge
of the terrace, she nearly forgot to snuff out the rune burning on
her Gauntlet.
The great lion was
beautiful, terrifying, destructive, and it had just carried Raed
away. Yet, for an instant she stood there, quite forgetting the
mess that the geistlord had just made.
By the Bones, she
thought to herself, I am not pining
after the Rossin. Her hands clenched on the broken window, the
glass crunching under her Gauntlet.
A burbling cry behind
her made the Deacon spin on her heel. Lady Lisah was sobbing,
spluttering, her eyes wide as blood trickled from her mouth—scarlet
red against her pale skin. Unable to speak, her hand was spread and
stretched toward Sorcha. Only minutes before they had been
adversaries—now they were just people.
The Deacon dropped to
her knees, stripped off her Gauntlets, and clenched the dying
woman’s hand tightly in her own fist; that which had been so
beautiful, flawless and cosseted was torn and gaping. Too much was
now outside that should be inside.
Sorcha didn’t know
how powerful the healers were here in Chioma—so perhaps there was
still hope. Blood bubbled and ran through her fingers as Sorcha
pressed down on the wound, trying to stop it from gushing. It was
warm and sticky, but the worst of it was the desperate look in
Lisah’s eyes—as if the Deacon could save her.
Sorcha whispered to
her—foolish, impossible things that were becoming more so. It had
been a long time since she’d comforted the dying. That first year
when the Emperor landed at Arkaym she had experienced it quite
enough. And now, looking down at this beautiful woman whom she had
so easily judged as vapid, Sorcha thought of those young Initiates
they had lost. Certainly she had hoped to never be in this position
again.
Desperately she
pushed down harder. “Listen, Lisah. Help will be here soon—don’t
give up.” The younger woman’s mouth worked as her face grew paler.
She was trying to say something, but there was no air in her
lungs—only blood.
Then she spasmed,
gouts of her life pumping over Sorcha’s hand. Lisah’s gaze went
from full of life lazed and empty in a split second—so quick that
Sorcha could not have said when it was she had gone. Her beautiful
bright blue eyes were now surround by scarlet drops she coughed
up.
Unable to save the
poor woman, Sorcha opened her Center and waited. She might have
failed to protect the innocent women of the harem, but she watched
as their shades gathered and made sure no geist took them on this
side. Their souls swirled, confused by the abrupt severance from
their bodies—and that was why most shades stayed in the human
world. Sorcha would not let these women suffer that
fate.
Slipping her
Gauntlets over her blood-drenched hands, she pressed them down
against the cooling flesh of Lisah. The rune-clad leather would not
hold the blood, and without Merrick, the added presence of it would
help make the connection easier.
“I’m sorry,” Sorcha
whispered as she opened Tryrei, the peephole to the Otherside. What
they would find there she could not say, but it was the way souls
had to pass for any chance of peace. The tiny gold light pierced
reality, and the souls drifted toward it.
Maybe there were gods
waiting for them as some said—she wished she could believe that.
Maybe it was a place of trial before they could be reborn. It
wasn’t her place to say, but at least the slain women would not be
condemned to walk the earth repeating the moments of their
death.
Sorcha watched them
go and then closed her fist around the rune. These were not the
first people she had been unable to save—and would likely not be
the last, either.
With a soft sigh the
Deacon leaned over and closed Lisah’s eyes, smearing blood on her
face but at least giving her an illusion of peace.
It was at that moment
that the eunuch guards shoved open the door. For a minute Sorcha
stared at them as they took in the room. Books scattered around the
room, shelves pushed over, three women’s bodies dismembered, and
there she was sitting in the middle of it all—covered in blood and
gore.
Deacons were
considered necessary—yet it was not unheard of for them to go
suddenly and spectacularly mad. The hospital at the Mother Abbey
had a whole ward devoted to the care and restriction of such poor
creatures. In all the Empire there was no more dangerous madman
than a Deacon.
Then Sorcha realized
how it looked to these new arrivals. She had asked to see these
women; she had demanded they be alone. The Chiomese guards might
have respect for the Deacons of their own realm, but she was a
stranger—a stranger wearing her gauntlets and bathed in the blood
of the Prince’s women.
The rifles in the
guards’ hands spun and were quickly raised to their shoulders. The
tallest eunuch, the one who had brought in the women to see her,
bared his teeth at her, his brow darkening like a thundercloud.
These women were his charges, so she knew he was not going to stop
and ask questions.
These men had been
bearing the shame of deaths all around them for weeks—and now they
had a very convenient target to blame. One dead Deacon would make a
handy scapegoat to drag before their Prince. Dead would be
preferable to alive.
Without a single word
of protest, Sorcha sprang to her feet, leapt over Lisah’s body, and
ran toward the inner wall. Unlike the Rossin, she couldn’t survive
a jump through the window—but fleeing into the city was a very good
idea. She was not about to take her chances with the guards or even
the Prince—who surely, with the deaths of his women, would be
considerably less gracious.
“Fire!” the chief
eunuch bellowed, and the Deacon dived as bullets spat over the
chaotic scene. Luckily, the opportunities for these guards to shoot
at anything must have been few.
With her Gauntlet
outspread and Voishem blazing on its palm before her, Sorcha leapt
through the wall. It was a most inelegant use of her
training.
The sound of bullets
spitting against the hardened mud was the last thing she heard as
she phased through the wall and tumbled onto the other side. In
this situation she had no time to find somewhere to wash off the
blood and think. Sorcha knew she had to keep using Voishem until
she was beyond the palace and into the city.
The Deacon dared not
stop running, knowing that soon enough the whole city would be in
an uproar, looking for the stranger who had gone mad and slain
women of the Prince’s harem. Already she could faintly hear the
palace alarm bell ringing. While in the grasp of Voishem,
everything was dim and out of sync with her eyes. People were
reduced to gray shadows, and the palace itself looked more like an
artist’s sketch than something real.
Sorcha knew she had
to find the Rossin and stop his rampage at all costs—there simply
was no one else who had a chance of controlling the Beast. So she
dashed through the palace, hearing screams echo softly in her wake,
and the rune she dared not release drained her strength. She was
running blind without Merrick’s power to help her and would have to
take a gamble.
Wherever you are, Merrick—come back soon. I need
you.
And with that final
thought, Sorcha passed through the thick mud walls of the palace
and out into the chaos of the city itself.