The words struck him so deeply that for a moment he couldn’t reply. Looking deeply into Sorcha’s eyes, he realized that she meant what she said; she had wrapped her sense of self tightly around him. His partner was relying on him to keep her from slipping completely into whatever geist heritage the Wrayth had given her.
Merrick looked back at her and replied as calmly as he could. “What if I am not enough, Sorcha? I’m not as strong as you think I am . . . not like the Wrayth is. It is Ancient, whereas I am . . .”
Her fingers tightened on his shoulder, her gaze going glassy and distant, but when it returned to him, she shook her head. “You are the Sensitive who traveled to the Otherside, who stood before the leader of the Circle of Stars and retrieved your mother from his grip. You have never really acknowledged your own strength, Merrick.”
He swallowed on that. All that she said was true enough—he was proud of those accomplishments in his own way—but he was not sure any of that had any bearing on this situation. Still, he knew this conversation was best abandoned—at least for now. They had a city to reclaim and not long to do it.
“Very well,” Merrick said, turning toward the door and breaking the gaze with his partner, “I will send word to Raed it is safe to enter the city.” They had not thought it a good idea to bring the Young Pretender into a city occupied with geists. Even if the Rossin had been very quiet in the last few days, they could not risk him running riot among the traumatized survivors.
Sorcha sunk into a chair, as if the strength had suddenly gone out of all her limbs. “Once you have done that, come back here. I have an idea for our next move.”
Merrick did not dare ask her further questions. His partner had been working without sleep for two days, and considering her recent performance, he just wanted her to get an hour’s rest.
The mold was cast, and they were well on the path now. Still, despite her exhaustion, Merrick had one final thing to ask. He had not forgotten the visceral fear of the lad whose head he had ridden in.
“Eriloyn,” he said firmly, “the boy who brought us to this place; he had the gift of a Sensitive in him. I will send Melisande to find him. Many of the survivors have the latent gifts, which make them excellent candidates for us to swell the ranks of our Deacons.”
She nodded. “I was thinking the very same thing.”
“Then I will get those who can test moving among them.” Merrick’s hand was on the door handle, when he turned back. “The Enlightened, Sorcha? The Harbinger? Where did they come from?” She had mentioned nothing of her decisions to rename the Order to him—or to take up a new title.
She stood a little straighter, and against the rising light of dawn coming in through the window her hair seemed as red as fire. “We must be more than the Order, Merrick. Better. We have to share what we know, because ignorance has not helped one citizen of the Empire. Things will be different if we survive all this.”
She did not explain her choice of Harbinger however, and she didn’t need to; the intent was written on her face. As Merrick set off about his tasks, the understanding settled in his belly like a heavy stone. Sorcha was indeed what she had named herself: the herald of things to come.
The Orders throughout history had many schisms and changes, and he just had to hope that Sorcha knew what she was about. History was also littered with the broken remains of Deacons whose reach had far exceeded their grasp.
SIXTEEN
The Lost Prince
From the outskirts of the city, Raed saw the lights in the sky, and deep in his belly he felt the pull of the geists. Aachon, who stood at his side, rested one hand on his shoulder and let out a long sigh.
Raed shot him a look out of the corner of his eye. His first mate—even though they had abandoned the Dominion on a lonely eastern beach, he still thought of him as that—had something on his mind. The Young Pretender knew the signs and wondered what was holding him back from speaking his mind. Usually it was he, not Aachon that tried to keep his thoughts to himself. It had always been Raed that had the problems; always Raed that had been worried, running, afraid.
It hurt a little—even in their current predicament—that Aachon felt he could not unburden himself.
“My friend,” the Young Pretender finally spoke up, finally unable to take the silence between them, “we are surely heading toward a conflict we have little chance of living through. Even Sorcha”—he gestured futilely to where the horizon streamed with green and red light—“realizes this. I know something has been weighing on your mind since we left the citadel. I really need to know exactly what it is.”
Aachon looked at him with dark eyes from under his furrowed brows, and his hands flexed around something that had not been there for some time: a weirstone. “My prince,” he finally spoke after a few heartbeats, and his voice was heavy with guilt, “I fear I must break my oath; the one that I made before your father, so many years ago.”
Raed would have had to be a fool not to hear the pain and effort it took to wrench out those words. “You mean the oath to protect me?”
A muscle flexed in his friend’s jaw. “Yes, that is the very one. It has become obvious that if every man, woman and child with an ounce of ability does not take up the runes, this realm and all that live in it will be lost.”
Deep within Raed the Rossin stirred, listening with real interest, Raed knew, to the next words. “Go on,” the Young Pretender urged.
Aachon held up his hands, looked at them for a long moment and then held them before Raed as if they were sacrificial offerings. “I have that ability, my prince. I am in fact fully trained in its use, so I am asking your permission to join Sorcha’s Deacons.”
Raed blinked at him. Ever since he had known Aachon he had heard nothing but how corrupt and blinkered the Order of the Eye and the Fist was. His friend had even finally revealed why and how he had been turned away from them, for his love of Garil and the weirstone power. Now, here he was standing before him, asking for Raed’s blessing to go back and serve. Things were in a pretty state indeed if it had come to this. The Young Pretender was at a loss as to what to say.
Aachon must have taken it as a slight. He cleared his throat. “You, more than anyone, know what the geists will do if the way to the Otherside is opened. You have faced the Murashev, the Wrayth and Hatipai. The Beast inside you still gnaws at your soul, my prince, I know that.”
Raed raised his hand and shook his head a fraction. “I am sorry, Aachon. Please—my silence is not a judgment on your decision. I am just . . . surprised . . . but you are right. Sorcha will need every person that can wield a rune in the coming days.”
Aachon opened his mouth, as if to say something, then closed it with a snap. He looked once more over the devastated streets, to where the red and blue lights had now subsided. “I will go to her then, ask to be marked and take my place among them. It is time to forget old grudges.”
Now it was Raed that clapped him on the back. “I feel the geists lifting from the city, but I must wait until they are all clear. Still, go with my blessing.” His eyes drifted to the flaring lights on the horizon. “I don’t know how she did it, but there you are. Perhaps we have some hope after all.”
“Indeed, it is a strange world in which I find hope in the Deacons,” Aachon commented. “I will see you there, my prince . . . and thank you.” They clasped each other’s forearms, and then Aachon began to pick his way down the hillside to the road.
The Young Pretender watched and felt a heaviness descending over him. Aachon had always been there, always watched over him, and now he too must be lost to Raed. Just like Snook. Just like Fraine.