Rune Kebenar, Fourth of the Runes of Sight, allowed Sensitives to see the true nature of things—yet this man had done that without any visible sign of using it. Once again Merrick’s curiosity was piqued, and it was particularly difficult to hold his tongue.
“The Otherside is capable of many things.” The Chioma Prince broke the silence. “Even time has only a tenuous grip upon it—and now my mother uses it against us.” The voice that came from behind the sparkling mask was smooth, powerful and—shockingly to the Deacon—familiar. Through his Center Merrick knew. This was no distant ancestor of the Prince he had met—it was the same man!
Now his tongue would not be still. Merrick spun about and pointed most rudely at the seated form of Onika. “That . . . that is impossible!” For a little bit all other words failed to come.
“Merrick!” Nynnia was horrified at her guest. “This is the Prince of Chioma, our greatest ally.”
The rest of the table jerked to their feet. The more martial of the Ehtia grabbed their swords, worried no doubt that this newcomer was about to attack one of their number. Merrick was not moved to violence, even if the world had gone quite mad.
The Deacon reconsidered; he must have been mistaken. So he backtracked. “Forgive me, Majesty, it is just that in my time there is a Prince of Chioma, and he sounds exactly like you. Perhaps I should not tell you that one of your descendants—”
“I have no sons, nor can I ever have,” the Prince replied and then he swept aside the curtain of beads.
Over the many decades the mystery of the ruler of Chioma had been whispered about, discussed by scholars and rumormongers alike—so the sudden exposure of reality stunned Merrick.
Onika, the Prince of Chioma, was a handsome man. His skin was smooth and dark, the color of the strong coffee of his kingdom. He had a powerful jaw and a narrow, tidy beard—what he also had were eyes that would suck out a person’s soul.
Merrick forgot this mad situation. He lost the feeling of Nynnia’s hand on his shoulder. Everything faded to insignificance. In the eyes of the Prince, none of those mattered.
He staggered, dropping to his knees, banging his shins on the table leg. Pain didn’t matter either. Onika was a bright star drawing him down—whatever the Prince needed Merrick would have given to him. If he had asked for his arm, his heart—even Nynnia—he would have given those to him.
Then the Prince dropped his hand, and the shivering crystals fell back into place. The spell, or whatever it had been, also fell away. Merrick was left breathing heavily through his mouth, shaking and sweaty.
When the Deacon finally recovered himself and climbed to his feet, his certainty in anything was rocked to its foundation. Nothing he had ever experienced, nothing he had ever read, explained what had just happened.
Mestari pulled the chair he had just gotten out of over toward the Deacoand guided him into it. “Knocks you about, doesn’t it—no shame in it—everyone has the same reaction.”
The Deacon struggled to find his Center, the one thing that he had been able to rely on. It took a long, terrible time for it to come back. Finally he was able to say in a shaky voice, “What . . . what, by the Bones, was that?”
Nynnia took an empty seat by him and reached across to cradle his hands in hers. “You’ve never felt a touch of the gods before?”
“Gods?” Merrick was far too shocked to hold his tongue any longer. “I have no truck with the little gods—they are the domain of the weak-willed and the desperate.” He spat the words out without a thought.
Then he realized that everyone else looked as though he had slapped them in the face. “I mean . . . I don’t know . . .”
“You’ve said enough,” Mestari growled through a choked throat. “To know that we succeed—even if they destroy what we have made—it is enough.”
“We should ask no more of him.” The Prince of Chioma raised one perfectly manicured hand. “What he knows may affect how we act in these last days.”
Nynnia squeezed the tips of Merrick’s fingers, making him warm instantly. “How can it? We have so very few choices before us . . . only one, in fact. And we made that long ago.”
The Deacon’s insides clenched. He knew that the Ehtia ended up on the Otherside, but he was still not certain if they died or somehow managed to get there alive. Unbidden, he once more thought of his and Sorcha’s experience there.
Most of the Ehtia in the room looked away, but one, a woman with a sharp bob cut, slammed her palm firmly down on the table with a clang. “Nynnia, may I remind you that this is our business alone. Even our allies”—she nodded to Onika—“cannot know all our secrets—let alone someone you have just met.”
The Prince arose smoothly from his seat. “Then let me take the young man aside—I am sure he has questions.” He gave a little bow to the people. “We will leave you to make your arrangements.”
Merrick kissed Nynnia lightly, without thinking about how it might seem to the others, and followed the elegant form of Onika out of the room. As a man alive in both times, the Deacon somehow felt he could trust the Prince—though he realized that this was perfectly ridiculous. The Prince would not know him for a thousand years—and he was not entirely human, either.
They exited into the throbbing, vibrating metal room, and now that Merrick had recovered his composure a little, he could see how many of the Ehtia were scurrying about. The Prince stood still and watched, his hands folded in the small of his back, and the Deacon had the impression that behind that damned mask he would be frowning—though he would not ask to see.
“Tell me what is happening.” The Deacon stood to his full height.
“You don’t know?”
“Much is lost in the future—I didn’t even know the name of Nynnia’s people. We simply called them the Ancients.”
“How very imaginative.” Onika chuckled, but there was a hint of bitterness in it. He walked over to another door and inclined his head. “Let me educate you a little.” The sharp gesture caused the crystals to sway, and for a second he caught a glimpse of those riveting, horrific eyes.
The Deacon hato have the answers to all this—it was more than just his nature that demanded it—it was his training as a member of the Order that had to be satisfied.
The Prince spun a narrow iron wheel set in the door, then he tugged it open. It swung noiselessly on its hinges—or at least Merrick assumed it was noiseless, since he could hear nothing at all above the sudden banging and clattering that issued from the room. It was the kind of cacophony that shook the whole body and made thinking impossible. The only comparable sound had been the stamping presses in his father’s mines. He’d only visited there once. That noise had also made quite the impression.
Onika led the way into the room, and even he had to clamp his hands to his head. Apparently whatever he was, a pounding headache or a ruptured eardrum was still a risk. Merrick found it hard to concentrate on what he was seeing in this chamber with the ringing in his ears. The stink of oil here added an extra layer of delight to the experience, clogging his nostrils and making it difficult to breathe.
It was a machine, the kind that would make the Master Tinkers of Vermillion weep with jealously. It filled the room, which might have been small in circumference but was now revealed to have massive height and depth. Merrick and the Prince of Chioma stood on a metal walkway and looked over the edge. The Deacon could not see the top or bottom, because it was filled with a thick mass of spinning cogs, wheels and driving pistons. The only thing he did recognize the purpose of was a great weirstone set not three feet from his hand—the largest he had ever seen in his life. If he stretched both his arms wide, he could barely touch each side of it. The blue surface was swirling madly, and the faint crackle of power in the air made him nervous.
If only Sorcha was here with him, because even with the delight of finding Nynnia and the wonder of this great machine, he was beginning to feel the loss of his partner. Although an Active would never admit it, they knew full well that they were blind without their Sensitive. However, a Sensitive also needed his Active—Merrick was aware of that space where Sorcha’s power had resided, buoying him up. As well he sorely missed her physical presence.