Spectyr

ideas on what lay on the Otherside were extreme and rather bizarre—but none of them could compare with this.

The warmth of Nynnia wrapped about him, and her voice whispered in his ear, “This is my home, Merrick. The place I left to go to your world. Does anything look familiar about it?”

Baffled, he attempted to orient his mind. He tried to look at the sprawling fortress and focus his logical senses on it. The long walls were carved with incredible friezes depicting all the life in Arkaym. The towers were topped with strange ornate cupolas that gleamed and reflected the light of the mad horizon. It was like nothing he had ever seen—except for the once.

He remembered as a child going with his parents to his grandfather’s house. The young Merrick had followed them out into the garden, where a great head lay toppled and covered in ivy. When he had shrieked, his father had scooped him aloft and tossed him up, until his tears turned into giggles. Then the older man had carried him into the broken remains of the Ancients’ temple—the place where his grandfather’s castle had been built.

Even as a child Merrick had found the deeply and intricately carved ruins amazing. “No one knows much of the Ancients,” his father had told him as he sat atop his shoulders, but the touch of reverence was strange in a man so proud of his aristocracy. “But look, Ales—what they did, what they built, is still unmatched after all these centuries.”

And now, in the depths of the Otherside, Merrick saw the very same finesse and craft that his father had admired. He couldn’t have been more shocked if Nynnia had hit him between the eyes.

For generations scholars had argued about what had happened to the Ancients and their wisdom. They had vanished, and all they built had been left lying empty. Other nations had gradually taken apart the buildings to use the fine stone for their own edifices. The Break, when the Otherside had finally spilled into Arkaym, had swallowed much knowledge.

“You see”—Nynnia’s voice in his ear was so soft that for a minute he thought it might actually be inside his head—“you know what I am—what we are.”

“The Ancients . . . ”

Her laugh was so beautiful that he felt tears spring to his eyes. “No more ancient than you, dear, sweet Merrick—and when we walked the world, we had our own name for ourselves.”

“But how . . . ” He cleared his throat, watching the light run in rivulets over the beautiful white fortress. “How did you end up here, on the Otherside?”

A cool shiver ran over his skin, more an absence of warmth than any ethereal wind. “We had to go—or the world would have been wide-open to the Otherside.”

“But . . . ”

“There is no time,” Nynnia said, just as prickles of hotness now ran up Merrick’s spine. “This place was not made for living beings—you should remember that from last time. Even with the protection of your body, your time is short.”

He opened his mouth, but the fire up his spine was now a burning that brought a gasp to his lips. Nynnia’s presence undulated over him, relieving the pain for at least a moment.

Nynnia slipped away from him, her form resolving into the one achingly familiar to him from her time in his world. “I cannot protect your body, my love, but I can send you to a place where you can help your cause.”

“Cause?”

“Your fight against the goddess.” Her gaze tightened on him, until Merrick could actually feel it. Those eyes, now as back then, saw so much. “And the stars—the voices, my love.”

He was not so foolish as to be blind to the meaning of the stars that had haunted his dreams. Even if Merrick had been just a normal citizen of the Empire, he would still have known the Circle of Stars was the symbol of the old Native Order. The one that had supposedly died out at least eighty years before his Emperor was summoned from across the water. “So they are not dead.” He did not frame it as a question.

“Many were killed, but others were driven underground. The Order of the Circle of Stars is still very much alive.”

Merrick clenched his jaw as fresh pain exploded through him. He was left gasping, reeling. Nynnia’s image swam before his eyes, while his breath came in short, hard gasps.

She held out her hand to him, as if she still did not quite understand that they could not touch. “They are trying to reach this place, Merrick—trying to harness what was never meant to be harnessed. To stop them this time you must go back.”

It was hard to concentrate on her words past the terrible slow pace of his heartbeat in his ears. Merrick didn’t need her to tell him he was dying. “Back?” the words came grating out of his struggling throat.

Nynnia’s voice by comparison was very light and very far away. “Time has little meaning to us here, Merrick. I will send you back to her. You must plant the seed.”

Her? What did she mean?

He was now beyond speech, and the Otherside before his eyes was tearing apart—but he couldn’t tell if it was his perception or reality—all he knew was that it hurt.

Nynnia. Despite the pain, he didn’t want to leave her, but Merrick didn’t have any way to hold on. He was falling, spinning like a leaf into a well of shadows. No air in his lungs meant he could not scream.

And then reality grabbed him hard, yanking back into the world he’d been born into. Now the pain was deep and real, in muscle and bone and sinew.

Merrick shook his head, finally realizing that he was lying on something hard and very much like stone. After a moment of contemplation, he was able to wrench his eyes open.

She had not left. Nynnia was leaning over him, but it was the real Nynnia. The smile on her face was confused rather than welcoming, but he didn’t care. The weight of her hand on his chest and the gleam of late evening sun on her hair all told him instantly she was a living, breathing woman.

It didn’t matter how it had been done. Merrick lurched upright against a wave of pain and clasped her to him. Her small form was as solid and warm as it had been cold and unmoving when last Merrick had felt it against him. “Oh love,” he laughed, “by the Bones—you’re here, you’re all right!”

The hand around his throat was abrupt, sobering and tight. The words he had been meaning to whisper in her ear died in his windpipe. She was a small woman, and yet she was holding him as lightly as a feather above her head. It felt as though a giant had him just under the jaw.

Nynnia’s eyes were as cold as steel. “Tell me who you are and why I should not break your neck for such impudence?”

Merrick’s vision wavered, and he had no way of crying out—something that this confused and martial Nynnia had obviously not taken into account. The young Deacon would have found the whole situation amusing, but the stern gaze of his beloved did not offer any humor.

He had just seen her—but she had no body. Now a very real, physical Nynnia appeared not to recognize him at all. Merrick had been tossed around like a rag doll—and now it appeared his love would kill him. If it was his love. His fingers locked around hers, desperate to break her hold, but he might as well have been trying to beand of a granite statue.

The world dimmed, colors drained away and shapes wavered. Whatever the reasoning for sending him here, Merrick was now sure this was not what his Nynnia meant to have happen.

It was the last thought in his head before blackness wrapped around him and sucked him down into another void—one in which no geists awaited.

SIXTEEN Taking the Reins

Sorcha swallowed hard on the lump in her throat as the words of Rictun came back to her. You really know how to go through those partners of yours. At the time she’d thought it merely another attack by a man who had always despised her. Now, however, she was wondering if there wasn’t a grain of truth to it.

Slowly, Sorcha got to her feet. Raed was waiting in the shadows of the corridor, waiting for her to speak,