The Deacon did a quick head count, and smiled. “I think I’ve found a new use for Aydien,” Sorcha coughed on her own pride. Every one of the crew members was there, alive. Perhaps not exactly undamaged—but still alive.
“No chance of the rooftop then,” Raed said, wiping dust out of his eyes. “So I guess we get to try this infernal tunnel instead.”
No sooner were the words out of his mouth than a low groan began to rumble out of the tunnels behind them. The peon level Wrayth were struggling to their feet, their naked bodies covered in the debris of the crash. Many of them sported far more horrific injuries than those that had taken the tumble with the riser.
“Aachon,” Sorcha whispered, as a peon with a large slice of metal buried in his shoulder began to orientate on them, “how quickly do you think you can activate the weirstones of the tunnel?”
The big man shook himself, and his eyes took a spell to focus on her. How long had the first mate been using the weirstone he had just lost, she wondered. Its loss could signal more damage than they could afford right now. However he still had far more experience with weirstones than she did—especially considering she couldn’t stand the things.
The vacant eyes of the peons were unnerving, especially as they came ambling toward them. The crew formed a rough circle around Aachon and Fraine, close to the tunnel. The Princess remained still, head bowed and her expression unreadable.
Raed, standing next to Sorcha, blade drawn, chuckled. In this dire situation he actually chuckled. “You know, my dear Deacon, one day I would like to court you properly. You know…without the geistlords, the angry goddess or the nest of hungry Wrayth.”
Sorcha considered what sort of strange world that would be. “Damnation, that sounds like a lovely dream, but I will take whatever I can get.”
The peons were assembling in a mob that would certainly overrun them eventually. She was reminded of the gathering outside Vermillion palace that she’d had to deal with. That had been the beginning of her journey of discovery. She hoped she didn’t have to kill any more folk than she had that day. It looked unlikely at this point.
Still, possessed by either geistlord or geist, the result would be the same. Briefly she considered doing what she had in Chioma, acting without Sight. But she was drained of her own strength now, and without the support of Aachon even worse than blind. Yet…all these people—including Raed—were relying on her…
“I can still use my Gauntlets,” she offered. “It’s just without Aachon and his weirstone…”
“No,” Raed replied firmly, “you can’t do that again. I saw it once. Not again, Sorcha.”
“We got plenty of blades,” Frith pointed out cheerfully. “No need to worry yourself.”
The peons surged forward. They might be naked and weaponless, but there were an overwhelming number of them. It seemed cruel, but Sorcha and the others had to protect themselves. She did not wince as her blade found flesh.
Small mercies meant there would at least be no shades made here today, since the peons had already succumbed to a geistlord. The crew all hacked and slashed, avoiding grasping hands, and charges by the thick mass of naked limbs and bodies. It was brutal butchery, but it was that or be pulled down into the chaos.
They managed to protect Aachon as he turned his back and tried to make sense of the tunnel that was their only chance of escape. Sorcha was no fool with a blade, but she was not as good as Merrick, and she found herself falling back step-by-step.
“Aachon,” Sorcha shouted over one shoulder, “we can’t keep this up all day.”
“I need you!” came his curt reply, and she stepped back to find out what was going on. His fingers were running over the weirstones, each about the size of an eyeball, embedded in the wall. “I cannot see how to open this.”
Sorcha tried to block out the sounds of battle at her back, and the imminent threat of becoming part of the Wrayth breeding program, and concentrate on what she was seeing. From time to time she wished she could go back to the novitiate and tell her younger self to study a little harder. Merrick would have, once again, been a welcome addition to this moment. How Aachon expected her to know any more about this was a mystery. He’d worked and examined weirstones more than she ever had, and it was specialist Deacons that tuned the stones for the Emperor and his military.
However useless it might be, Sorcha did at least try. She saw that it was not just weirstones, there were cantrips and things that might have been runes too. All of them were wrapped around each other, and the stones, like a braid. Whatever the Wrayth had done to create these things was complicated and required blood—probably their own.
The same blood as yours.
Sorcha jerked her head up as the words filled her mind. She couldn’t tell if they were from the Rossin, or from somewhere deeper; somewhere that she had just discovered.
“By the Blood,” she muttered, for the first time realizing the irony of that statement.
The sounds of battle behind her faded away, and she turned back to see if the crew had dispatched all the peons. What she in fact saw changed everything.
The peons had backed away from Raed and his people and parted to let others through. Tangyre Greene was striding a few paces behind the assembly of tall women and men. They had milky white complexions and dark eyes that the Deacon had seen before in the possessed. Though these walked with none of the clumsy, shattered gaits of the shambling mob she’d fought outside the gates of Vermillion. They were under far more severe control.
“Keep trying,” Sorcha hissed to Aachon. “I’ll see if I can gain us some time.”
The woman in front was a lovely thing, like a statue carved out of alabaster. She held lightly in her fingers a brass chain that ran down to, and was attached to, a collar. This was in turn tight around the neck of another woman. She had long blonde hair to cover her nakedness but that was all.
The Wrayth woman stopped short of the outstretched swords of the crew and examined them as if they were bugs beneath glass. “I am Iuhmee. Set down your weapons and you will be allowed to live.” Her gaze flickered to Raed. “Some of you may even find our company pleasurable.”
“I would rather die,” the Young Pretender growled. “Your women are not my type at all.”
The corner of one of her lips quirked at that. “Many say that…at first. Eventually they come around.” Her eyes flickered to Sorcha, and that calm mask of the Wrayth was broken for an instant. “What have we here?” It seemed like a genuine question.
A wave of sighs passed through the assembled peons, and two of the first women’s companions, those not on chains and with the same dark eyes, stepped up closer.
“A hybrid?” The tall, heavily muscled man among them tilted his head in an alien gesture that made Sorcha’s skin crawl.
“One of ours—but how?” the third commented, a note of excitement in her voice.
“Only one ever escaped.” Iuhmee grinned. It was a gesture that Sorcha was sure she was copying, rather than actually experiencing. It made the Deacon’s skin crawl. “We never knew what she made with us.”
The Deacon had quite enough of being talked about as if she were not there. She knew, just knew, deep in her bones that she was her own person, not some monstrous creature.
“My mother made me!” She shouted it so emphatically, that even the Wrayth stopped conferring among themselves. “I am what she was—a Deacon, and proud of it. I have sent thousands of your kind back to the Otherside. You will be no different.”
“Sorcha,” Raed murmured at her side, but she didn’t acknowledge him. She was busy facing the black eyes and cool regard of the geistlord that had forced her mother to bear her.
“So many of you Deacons have thought us that easy.” Iuhmee pointed at Raed. “Ask the Rossin how difficult we are to banish. We have found the perfect way to survive in this world. No one body holds us. The death of one of our number does not diminish us in the slightest. We are immortal and unstoppable.” She smiled, showing rows of perfect, sharp teeth all at once.