“Unholy Bones,” she growled as the massive bulk of the Rossin dwindled and fractured into the male form of the sea captain. She threw her cloak once more about the shivering naked Raed and slid the pack from her back, dropping it at his feet. They were better prepared this time.
Her heart was hammering in her chest like a jackrabbit’s, and her whole body tingled. Taming the Rossin had been exhilarating and mad; every moment a victory against destruction and death. The beast was magnificent, a force of nature that none of the rogue Deacons had been able to stand against. She knew of no Deacon who could claim to have stared into the eyes of the Rossin and lived.
It was ironic, then, that by the looks of things, she was instead going to be killed by two of her own. Aulis held the bloodstained bowl in one hand and grinned maniacally. All semblance of sanity had vanished; the cool Prior had been replaced by a scarlet-robed madwoman.
“Thank you for bringing us what we wanted,” she hissed, flinging the bowl into the far corner of the room. “The Pretender’s blood will finish the summoning.” An odd triangular stone hung about her neck, and Sorcha knew it immediately for a foci—the one that was drawing the polterns. It was going to be tricky to get it away from Aulis.
The Deacon judged the odds. To her left, Raed was struggling to his feet, shaking his head like a man concussed. Behind Aulis, Merrick looked gray. Though he was not quite dead, he was near enough to it as to make no difference. Nynnia, the fool with the wide doe eyes, could be seen peeking around the draining slab. No help there. And now, advancing on Sorcha, two remaining Actives. If all this wasn’t enough, the air was alive, humming with power that made her skin tingle and the hair on her head leap away from her skull. A summoning; one hell of a summoning was under way.
Sorcha took a careful step backward, watching the Actives advance on her while darting a glance upward. There, in the vaulted ceiling, she could see the Otherside pulling closer to the living world; she could feel it like an angry dog preparing to spring. A gathering storm was being born. And for it, they needed Raed, the Young Pretender. Deacon Faris had fought many battles for souls, yet this one was the first one where she doubted victory.
Perhaps sensing her hesitation, the enemies clustering around them straightened and smiled to one another. However, they did not summon any runes. Instead they drew their swords, and she understood why. The atmosphere here was very finely balanced. Whatever they were doing was dangerous and delicate work. One rune, one summoning of the wrong sort of power, and there would be consequences. Sorcha didn’t think that killing everyone in the room was a good idea just yet, so she was prepared to follow their lead. The sound of her own blade being drawn was like a snake hiss.
Obviously, with the amount of blood they had taken from her partner, the usual injunctions against spilling it were not in force. It remained to be seen how much of what was about to flow would belong to her and the Young Pretender. Raed, who had recovered from the change far more quickly than Sorcha could have hoped, drew his saber and staggered upright at her side; a noble and impressive gesture, considering he was nearly naked.
“So”—his breathing was ragged, yet his usual bravado was still in place—“are we going to die?”
The cocky tone in his voice, despite this rather awkward situation, made Sorcha smile wryly. “I don’t know—I think they just want a gallon or so of your blood.”
“Well, that is damned unfriendly,” he replied, and then, in between his gasps, the Actives attacked.
Sorcha was under no illusions about her sword-fighting skill; it was what might be called adequate. Raed Rossin, on the other hand, was a master. While she hacked and parried as best she could, the Captain was a flurry of speed and sweet footwork. Despite the rigors of the Change, he was beating his opponents while she struggled to hold her own. It irked Sorcha to know that. Some competitive streak in her flared at the realization. Her eyes narrowed and she concentrated on her attacks, hearing the Pretender’s grunts of exertion as her admonishment to do better.
If she survived today, she promised herself more time in the practice yards—that was for certain. For now, she wished she had a pistol instead of a blade. Or a dozen loyal Deacons at her back.
Her attacker was grinning, his crooked teeth flashing in the half-light; damn it, he knew he was winning. With a half growl, she caught a riposte aimed at her head just in time. An edge of steel sliced through her guard and nicked the shoulder of her armor. That hadn’t happened. It had been a while since Sorcha had been forced to resort to hand-to-hand, not since the bad old days of the Order’s first landing with the Emperor.
While the swordfight raged, there was no one to stop Aulis. She held her arms spread in the universal gesture of supplication, and the seven weirstones flared. Warmth beat down on the top of Sorcha’s head as she struggled to hold her own. She couldn’t afford to look up to see the cause, yet it made her opponent laugh. That could not be a good thing.
To her right, a man grunted, followed by the clatter of a body falling to the ground. A quick glance ascertained that it had not been Raed. He was turning to aid her, but suddenly Sorcha had a more pressing concern. Her eyes were drawn to the writhing space above them.
Something was now rending apart the very air. Her attacker, and indeed everyone capable of movement in the Hall, clapped their hands to their ears. The noise was visceral, felt more than heard, echoing all the way down to the bone. It set muscles to twitching and eyes to watering. Somewhere deep inside Deacon Sorcha Faris, fear bloomed.
Sorcha had felt this once before, on a staircase in an ancient castle. That memory was one she seldom touched—yet now it reached for her with a great five-clawed hand. Through streaming eyes, she looked up. Aulis was also standing with her hands to her ears, but her face was stretched in a grimace of delight. It was bound to be a short-lived victory—nothing good ever came through from the land of the dead. The rogue Deacons had reached far indeed. No Active had a rune to stop it.
Sorcha reached out and grabbed hold of Raed. It was an instinctual gesture—a final one. A need to feel human skin one final time.
Merrick was wide-open to the Otherside. Having slipped loose of his body, he was perilously close to losing sight of it altogether. He had to be near death—surely he had been drained of enough blood for that. None of the books had ever covered what would happen when a Sensitive wearing the Strop stepped out of life—none had ever made one of his kind such a target before. In the calm of his Center, he could feel the bonds of flesh and bone still tying him to something. Could it be the Strop that held him in place?
He heard the Rossin smash through the keep doors, witnessed the mysterious retreat of the geistlord. Then he saw Sorcha, not as blazing as the Pretender Raed, but still gloriously beautiful through the Strop.
The books spoke of detachment at the very edge of death. Yet one thing penetrated his calm: a heat from above. It could not have been purely physical; he was beyond the physical now. Merrick did not want to look up. He did not want to see what was coming; what his blood had helped allow through.
See deep; fear nothing. A voice, light and near, repeated the Sensitives’ mantra, reminding him of his purpose. Even as he was dying he clung to it. It had to be Sorcha. Their Bond, their inconvenient connection, leapt into life.
Through the Runes of Sight, Merrick tilted his vision upward. Cantrips, weirstones, blood and runes; all the power of this world had been turned to one purpose—to reach deep into the Otherside. He did not know which level Aulis had tapped into, but one glance at the huge five-taloned hand ripping itself into the real world told him all he needed to know.