Sorcha felt her fingers grow numb, while her vision blurred. She would much rather have been having this conversation with Merrick at her side, and after a couple of weeks to regain her strength. However, it was what it was, and she had never backed down in the face of a geist before.
“Give us back Fraine!” Tangyre had apparently had enough talk. She pushed forward from the back of the press of Wrayth. “You had no right to take her.” Her face was set in a red mask of anger—such as a mother might when her child had been snatched away.
However her rage was nothing next to Raed’s. As Sorcha melted back to the tunnel entrance to examine it as quickly as she could, he stepped forward, bloodied blade held before him. “You poisoned her and forged her into your own cursed weapon! I won’t let you use my sister to destroy thousands upon thousands of lives. I won’t.”
That’s good, Sorcha thought as her fingers darted over the braid of weirstones and cantrips. Behind her, dimly, she could hear Raed and Tangyre yelling at each other, but all of the Deacon’s focus was in front of her. Somehow her own mother had figured this out—else Sorcha would have been born in the Wrayth nest. An image flashed in her mind; her own tiny infant hand pressed against the stone by her mother’s. The Wrayth within her responded.
No sooner had she remembered that than one of the weirstones shifted under her fingertips. For a second the stone was not hard and resistant, but smooth like water. Sorcha glanced at Aachon, but he merely shrugged, distracted by the continuing arguing over Fraine.
So Sorcha was on her own. Concentrating, she pressed harder on the stone, and closed her eyes. A memory darted up, like a fish from the depths of her unconscious. She had done this before. Her own hand, so very tiny, held against the stone by her mother. A child only a few moments old, she had moved these stones before.
Now, behind her lids she could see a town built in a mountain of gray stone. Shelton. It was a city to the northeast of Vermillion. Lovely people with the most atrocious thick accent. She’d dined on land crab there, steamed over an open fire. She could almost taste them now.
Ripping her fingers free of the stone, she found another. Lisle, a dreary little town of the Apotol desert inland. Kubmagahwe, a city built on the confluence of three rivers, in the southeast of Arkaym. Andis-Most-High, the capital city of Delmaire, where she had studied in the novitiate. She could hear the great bells in the town squares and smell the ocean.
The Wrayth had indeed mapped out many places all over the world. They had only seconds to escape, yet she did not want to be stuck in a distant city that could take weeks to get away from. So she searched on. There it was! Vermillion, the city of the Emperor and the Mother Abbey. The taste of the roasted chestnuts, and the sound of the tide pulling on the lagoon. She had not been gone that long, but she swore she was homesick.
“Raed.” She spun around, and only then realized her mistake. She had called attention to herself and what she was doing. The Wrayth had been watching the verbal sparring between the two captains with some amusement: the kind an owner of a dog pit might have while watching two puppies preparing to fight.
Their dark eyes flicked up. The Wrayth might be proud of the invulnerability that they had achieved by spreading their power among so many hosts, but it had been bought at a cost. Unlike the Rossin, or any other geist Sorcha had ever fought, they were not sensitive to what was happening in the ether. They were blinded by looking out so many human eyes and ears.
It was a handy thing to realize.
“Stop them,” Iuhmee hissed, shooting out her hand. The peons were fast, but Tangyre was faster. She drew her sword and charged at Raed.
Sorcha slammed her hand down on the stone for Vermillion, and slid it upward, away from the clutter of other stones at the side of the tunnel entrance. It moved smoothly toward where the great eye stood at the very top of the curve, and then clicked into place. The darkness the braiding encompassed resolved itself from oily barrier to the simple shadows of a corridor lined with bricks.
“Get Fraine through,” was all that Raed had time to shout before Tangyre reached him. Aachon scooped up the screaming, howling Princess and shoved her into the corridor. The line the crew held buckled and bent under the now-coordinated surge of the peons. They turned back to their Prince, but he was no longer there.
As Tangyre, her scream of outrage rising above the chaos of the Wrayth, leapt through the press of peons, Raed shimmered. Flesh twisted and turned, bent and was made anew, as the Rossin thrust himself out into the world. Blood was in the offering, and he was there to claim it.
Raed’s clothes were torn from him and his sword dropped heedlessly away.
“Get through,” Sorcha bellowed to the stunned crew members, and in the face of the Rossin they obeyed her without question. The heat of the great cat filled the room as he spun and ripped peons down with tooth and claw. The Deacon scrambled and grabbed up her lover’s tossed-away sword, catching a glimpse of Tangyre Greene’s face.
It had gone from savagery to horror in an instant, but it was too late to turn back. The Rossin, his jaws and teeth already stained with blood, snarled at her, then let forth a great booming roar that reached even the primitive brains of the peons in the thrall of the Wrayth. They scuttled back in terror. Sorcha watched transfixed as he bunched himself and sprang at Tangyre. It was terrible and mesmerizing at the same time.
Her sword flashed, cutting across the chest of the cat, but it was a glancing blow that only served to enrage him further. He twisted and landed atop her with both paws. The sound of breaking bones rose above the cacophony of howls from the Wrayth. It was hard to say if she was still alive when the Rossin bent and engulfed her head with his jaws. Sorcha still watched, even when they closed with a snap and ripped it free. He chewed, cracking the skull of Tangyre Greene once contemptuously, before spitting out the remains.
“By the Bones,” Aachon breathed behind her, his voice tinged with awe. He must have seen the Beast many times before, but there was something about its strength in the sea of Wrayth chaos that demanded reverence.
As if in acknowledgement, the Rossin let out a roar that pumped up from his huge chest, echoed out of his jaws and filled the nest of the Wrayth completely.
Sorcha could barely feel her heart beating in her chest, but she had the sense that her mouth was dry. She was aware that she stood on the other side of the tunnel, one hand on the stone that was the connection to the fortress. She needed to shut the passage down, but Raed was there, somewhere within the pumping heart of the Rossin.
The huge feline head turned toward her.
Wait.
Sorcha had spent all of her remembered life fighting the geists, but when this one asked her to hold, she did just that. The peons and higher slaves of the Wrayth scattered as the Rossin leapt toward her. Vaguely she could hear the people behind her, including Aachon and Fraine, scrambling backward in a vain attempt to get out of the way.
Sorcha remained transfixed.
The Beast passed through the portal to the other side. The Deacon closed her eyes. He smelled of warm fur and blood, and his muscular flank pressed against her. In a half daze she moved the Phia stone out of position in the braid, and then, wrapping her fingers about it, plucked it from the wall entirely. No more Wrayth would be coming through this entrance.
For a moment no one moved or spoke. The only sound was the low rumble deep in the chest of the Beast that filled the tunnel with his bulk. Without Merrick at her side, she knew she had no chance of holding the geistlord back. If she was to die, then Sorcha would at least feel that which would take her. Under her hand the fur was warm and thick, the kind of coat that a rich lord would have loved to decorate the floor before his fireplace with. Sorcha buried her fingers deeper within it.