“I can’t think of any, but—” She stopped suddenly, as she made the connection. “You mean not a geist…a geistlord?”
Aachon nodded somberly.
“But this is the capital of the province? A geistlord for a Prince?”
“A Princess in fact,” Aachon corrected her. The first mate turned and raised one eyebrow in her direction. “From your experience in Chioma is that so hard to believe?”
The recollection of the Prince, willing to die for his people, yet part geistlord, gave her a pang. She had been struck by him and his tragic fate. “He was not a geistlord,” she snapped.
“As near as makes no good.”
Sorcha swallowed a response and wished once again Merrick was at her side. She began wondering about the Abbey here in Phia. It certainly couldn’t survive with a geistlord so near—not unless it was corrupt. She’d seen far too many of those kind of outposts of the Order lately, when even just a year ago she’d wouldn’t have thought there was one.
“I am beginning to wonder what the Arch Abbot was thinking coming to Arkaym,” she said, pressing the back of her hand to her forehead.
Aachon did not reply to that, but she already knew the answer; the Order was dedicated to rooting out unliving in all the places it had grabbed a hold. It didn’t matter if it was geist or geistlord, they were set against. Even if Sorcha was uncertain of her status in the Order, she’d dedicated her life to the same goal.
The buzzing of insects and the slap of damp foliage kept them all busy for the next hour—far too busy to bother with words. Animals moved in the jungle around them, but luckily they were all moving away from them. Still it was hard not to imagine that the whole native world of Ensomn was against them.
Sorcha felt as though at any moment she might collapse in a damp bundle on the jungle floor, but she called on all her reserves to keep putting one foot in front of the other. She reminded herself that with each step she was getting nearer to Raed.
“I won’t let him get away this time,” she muttered, batting aside an umbrella-sized leaf that threatened to slap her in the face. She was thinking how good it would feel just to be held by him. One little goal at a time.
By the time they reached the narrow clearing around the fortress, every one of them was thoroughly sick of the jungle. They were all sweating like pigs, bitten by ravenous insects, and were covered in mud up to their thighs; not exactly the best-looking group of invaders.
Aachon wrapped his main weirstone in the sleeve of his jacket, and ordered all the lanterns they’d been using doused as they stepped from the trees onto the rocky ground. He still held the stone’s connection alive for Sorcha, and she was impressed at his casual control of it.
However the sharp tang of its power was making her head ache, and her eyes burn. Aachon might be able to hold his grip on the power for a long time, but she doubted she could.
Cautiously Sorcha put on her Gauntlets. “I hope you have control over that thing, Aachon. It would be a shame to recover from a coma just to fall into another one.”
“Yes,” he said, fixing her with a piercing look, “that would be most unfortunate. One can’t count on two miraculous recoveries.”
Serigala’s disappearance had raised some issues for the first mate—that much was certain—but Aachon’s connection to her was not as powerful as a Bond, and so he couldn’t possibly be able to read what had actually happened from her mind. He was most certainly not Merrick.
“What’s the plan, sir?” Naleni, short, bitter and utterly contemptuous of Sorcha, would not address the Deacon, and most certainly would not ask for directions from her.
Aachon jerked his head toward the place where the fortress, tall, black and imposing, met the scrubbed earth. “I don’t care what sort of creature you are, if you have flesh you have to deal with the effluent of living.” He pointed to where a small stream ran out of the base of the stones. “We’re going to follow that up into the fortress, find our Prince, and then get out.” He turned and smiled at them grimly. “I suggest you all learn to keep your mouths shut. It’s going to get messy, but we have Deacon Sorcha Faris on our side.”
The crew members shared worried looks, while others began tying back their hair shooting doubting glances toward the Deacon. Frith whispered something to Naleni under her breath that made the other woman shake her head emphatically.
They could look as skeptical as they like, Sorcha was busy being glad of the power that flowed through her. It gave her Center a wider reach than it would have otherwise. The Deacon closed her eyes, and dipped once more into the strength of the weirstone. It was unpleasant, but it meant she could see.
Sorcha reminded herself that, despite the fact that the vision provided by the weirstone was not as precise as it would have been with Merrick, she wasn’t looking for much, apart from Raed and keeping an eye out for this geistlord—in whatever form it might take. Taking a long, deep breath the Deacon now focused it on the fortress. Immediately, she could tell that Aachon’s hunch was unfortunately correct. The place reeked of geist activity, but of a kind she’d never seen before.
“It’s like the whole place is undead,” she whispered to herself. After opening her eyes, and flexing her head from side to side to relieve a little stiffness, Sorcha refocused. Nothing changed. No particular place in the fortress flickered with the telltale signature of the undead; the entire building did. It was entirely unprecedented. For a time she was quite dazzled by it; dazzled, confused and just a little bit frightened.
Aachon pulled Sorcha aside, his hand tight on her forearm. She flinched back in surprise as he barked at her. “Do you feel it? Can you hear the Rossin in there?”
He must be able to see the same thing she was seeing, but he said nothing about the all-encompassing geist presence. Aachon was nothing if not dedicated to his Prince, and he would ignore everything else until the Young Pretender was safe. Since he wasn’t going to bring it up, stubbornly Sorcha decided that she wouldn’t either. This close, she could feel Raed like a splinter under her skin; a constant distraction from reality. But more precisely, she could feel the Rossin, as Aachon could. The geistlord was there, right along with Raed.
He burned through her bones, and reminded her of the power that could be hers if she merely reached for it. She’d felt that before, but there was something else. The Rossin’s flame was far hotter than she ever recalled it being—even in Chioma, when faced with the geistlord Hatipai, the beast had not felt like this.
“Yes,” she finally nodded. “It has him, but it feels like the Rossin has been present for a long time.” She felt along the Bond. It remained intact, but the whisper of Raed was very faint.
“The Rossin has always abandoned my prince after it is sated,” Aachon said, glancing over his shoulder, “but if things have changed, then we cannot be sure we can get Raed out. Not without being killed by the creature, that is.”
Sorcha pressed her lips together, remembering the last devastating time she’d been face-to-face with the Rossin. It had begun with the death of two innocent women, and rapidly gone downhill from there. “What are you suggesting?”
“While we go in through the sewers, you use some of those runes of yours, phase through walls and get to the Rossin. Only you have any chance of pulling him back and reclaiming the Prince.”
Her desire to see Raed again, to hold him tight, even if just for a moment, was intense, but she had to be careful. She pushed her tangled and sweaty hair back from her eyes, and nodded tightly. “All right, but you better hold that connection open. I was lucky in Orinthal running through walls without Merrick. I don’t want to push the fates any further than I have to. Without you I could be some very pretty wall decoration.”