The mayor moved toward her and even his footsteps were no longer human. His gait was twisted and awkward as he neared her. The citizens of the city shrank back from him, so that the cloaked figures in their midst were revealed, as when the river dried up, making plain the rocks within it.
The mayor’s head swung from side to side, and an ugly laugh welled up in him. “Is that all you bring, Harbinger?” His voice cut sharply on the title she’d given herself. “This is our city now, and even if you should drive me from this world, you will never triumph over the many to come.”
Eriloyn’s heart began to race and that dreaded fear trickled over his skin once more. Even as other cloaked figures appeared out of the crowd and ran to free the line of chained children, he strained his head left and right to see what would happen next. His eyes were fixed as completely to the Harbinger as any rivet his father had ever secured.
“So many?” The woman said with a note of sadness in her voice. She shook her head. “Yes, there had been so many of your kind unleashed here; so many folk who have been twisted by the undead and made into geists themselves. I can see them, feel them. More than that.” She raised her hands, still burning with red fire, and now Eriloyn gasped.
Even as kindly hands undid the restraints on his injured ankle, he was entranced by what he saw. From all over the city they came; chill winds, spinning shapes of the undead, and lost souls still crying for their lives. They gathered in the town square, just as the rest of the citizens had, but bound together. In short order the air above the Harbinger looked like a shimmering spiderweb of geists. They darted about, and while Eriloyn was sure the survivors of Waikein could not see what he was seeing—else they would have fled in horror—they did appear to feel the presence. Some people shivered and clasped their coats and cloaks tighter, while an odd few bent over double, afflicted by nausea at the undeads’ presence.
The mayor made a choking noise, dropped to his knees, and then to his elbows. Some kind of war seemed to be raging inside him, because he crawled forward, howling, and twisting—it was as if he were being dragged like a mad dog by some unseen leash.
The Harbinger did not take any notice of any of these things. She was the calm center of this mad storm. However, when she spoke, her voice was heard all over the square. “I see you all—every one of you. I draw you together. You belong to me.”
Eriloyn knew immediately she was talking about the strange, undead shapes wheeling above the humans. However, at the same time, the cloaked figures also came together behind the Harbinger and shed their cloaks.
All of them wore their runes directly on their skin as she did. As one their hands clenched around the flames and claimed the eerie green glow. The light was so bright it eclipsed any meager lanterns that the citizens of Waikein had with them.
The mayor howled, and his cry was echoed by the wind that whipped around the town square. The Enlightened—since that was what she had called them—raised their hands wreathed in the green, and it flowed out of them. It encompassed everything from air to cobbles.
Eriloyn felt it wash over him and pass by. The mayor however was not left alone. To the boy’s ears it sounded as though something was being ripped free of him. The Enlightened seemed to straighten taller and, from his point of view, grow stronger as the light whipped around the square, turning back to them.
The mayor sagged, almost falling to the cobblestones that he was crawling on. Briefly, he managed to lever himself upright. His mouth worked on words that he would never say, because the other arm of the Harbinger came down, and this time the flame did not stay on her own flesh.
Eriloyn did not look away as the mayor and the undead creature within him was consumed by flame. He made sure to take in the sound of flesh and clothing burning and inhaled the odor. He wanted to remember this.
Around the Harbinger, the other Enlightened raised their hands into the air, and fire arched up into the sky. Some of the citizens looked away in fear, but many—if not most—watched the display of power above them.
It kindled hope in Eriloyn and a sort of grim determination that survivors all shared. It shall not happen here again.
Aloisa stood at his side, and her eyes were haunted but no longer empty. Long streaks of tears flowed from them, leaving paths in the dirt on her face.
As the Enlightened fanned out through the crowd, moving to help the injured, and comfort the grief stricken, Eriloyn found himself staring at a figure just behind the Harbinger herself.
The man’s eyes were locked with the boy’s, in a kind of shock. He was a tall man with dark curly hair and wide brown eyes. Something hung around his shoulders, a stain of power in the ether that might not have been as noticeable as around the Harbinger, but it still drew him.
In the ether? The boy shook his head. What did that mean?
The Harbinger was speaking to the crowd, but it was no longer she that was important—it was the man and those eyes that saw too much.
Then the world was spinning, and Eriloyn was wrenched away.
Merrick took a staggering step back and found he was staring at the boy with the haunted eyes; the one that he’d ridden in the head of. The runes that he had summoned had drawn him here, to this boy at the very edge of death. He’d been locked in the boy’s head for a week, so that they all might be drawn to the correct place and time. The rune Sielu had shown him this for a reason, brought him here for this moment. It was indeed the perfect place and time for Sorcha to reveal her plan.
Eriloyn had provided the information on the city the Deacons needed.
Such an experience was one he would never forget. Merrick had never before considered how the geists would look to everyday folk, or indeed how the Order would. Now he knew. They were hope and salvation.
He looked at his partner’s back, tall and straight before him, and knew she had done what she set out to. She was now the head of the Order that she’d given a new name: the Enlightened. The city of Waikein would be remembered for this moment—if any of them survived the coming destruction that was.
The future and his vision had melded and caught up with each other. He wondered what else lay ahead and what the Wrayth power Sorcha had just unleashed could mean. Even he could not see that. They could only go forward as bravely as the boy had.
FIFTEEN
Uncertain Partners
The people of the city were acting as if the fire that had cleansed the geists had also been lit beneath them. They surged into the town hall and set about reclaiming it with vigor that even the lay Brothers could not possibly contain. They grabbed up buckets and mops, began tossing ruined furniture into the streets, and pulled down the curtains to let light stream into the building.
As Merrick stood in the receiving hall with Sorcha at his side, he felt like a rock in the middle of a maelstrom of released human activity. Brooms were being shoved around with tremendous vigor, blood scrubbed from walls, and everyone was darting up to the newly announced Harbinger for a piece of advice or commentary.
Perhaps his own folded arms prevented them from involving him in this frenzy. Sorcha seemed calm, and even smiled when a lay Brother told her excitedly that another twenty former members of the Eye and the Fist had been found alive in the city. Apparently they would have their runes recarved as soon as the implements could be readied.
Sorcha turned and looked him in the eye with a grin. “See, we are already stronger, and once word spreads of what we have done here—”
Merrick could not let her get any further. Grabbing her arm unceremoniously, he dragged her into a side room and slammed the door shut behind them—thus forestalling at least a dozen more inquiries.