to feel this way, Sorcha reminded herself; he was an old man. Apart from that, she was in a citadel full of Deacons, and this was the man that had tattooed her skin with the runes, making it possible for them to fight geists and the Native Order.
Straightening, Sorcha stepped more boldly toward the form of the Patternmaker. “I have come—”
“I know why. The Otherside is closer, spilling over to your world.”
He spoke so clearly that she paused her approach. When last she had spoken to him, he had not been nearly this coherent. “How do you know that?” she asked and immediately understood it was a stupid, childish question to pose. The Patternmaker was attuned to the Otherside better than even a Deacon.
Now the skittering came closer, and she could have sworn something brushed her boot. She kicked out. That was impossible! She was not so blind with her Center that she would miss something coming that near. Was this how normal folk felt? She’d had a taste of this before and had liked it about just as much then.
“We feel it,” the old man’s voice slid out of the shadows.
Sorcha grabbed her head, slapping her hands on each side of it like a child trying to deny reality. The same tiny primitive part of her brain wanted to turn and flee out of the room completely—however she had never really been anything but a Deacon, trained to be a truth seeker. She’d been taught to hold fast, but it felt like there was very little left to hold on to.
Feeling out with one hand, she clasped the wet, dank stone, and slid to her knees. In the deep dark of the room, the only light was now beginning to grow on her own arm. The runes that the Patternmaker had carved on her flesh were shifting and moving. The shapes of the runes—which she knew better than the shape of her own body—were making new forms; ones that she did not recognize.
“Everything is changing, Harbinger.” The Patternmaker’s voice wrapped itself around her, giving voice to her own terrors. “You are part of it, more deeply than any other person in this realm. You are woven into its warp and weft like a sharp Wrayth-made little thread.”
Sorcha’s eyes widened as she watched the patterns shift and dance. “What do I need to do?”
His voice hissed from the shadows and was echoed by those now bouncing around in her head. “The Harbinger makes the changes. Only you can decide what those are—that is the joy and the horror of your creation.”
That was when the Deacon froze. In her mind she heard again the mother she could not remember but had experienced in the Wrayth’s lair. They had been breeding the Deacons they had caught down there. Sorcha had so completely turned her mind away from the horror of that, she had neglected to consider what their goal had been.
In the depths the Patternmaker, Ratimana, laughed. “They made you, but they were not expecting you. They wanted a way to work the runes of the Deacons, without any of that pesky human will getting in the way.”
“How do you know all this? What are you?” Sorcha held her arms before her and stumbled forward like a blind person. She had to have those answers even if it meant tearing them from the twisted man with her bare hands.
Her fingers brushed against skin as soft and giving as boiled flesh. Despite her training, she flinched back. The runes on her own flesh sparked to light, casting an eerie glow on the face of the Patternmaker. He looked up at her, a broken and frail old man, but in the light of the runes his eyes burned. They flashed as the Rossin’s did.
Sorcha held her trembling arms, burning with light close to him, and realized the truth of it. The Patternmaker was a geistlord—as much as the Rossin was, as much as she was.
His unnerving grin flashed across his lips, exposing teeth that were now far too large. “I am like you, Wrayth. Another portion created as a scout, in the time of the Break, sent into this world to find flesh and home.”
Sorcha froze in place. She did not want to howl or move or show any form of weakness in front of this creature. Still her eyes wandered down to her own arm, which now felt like it belonged to someone else; an alien thing that shouldn’t have been attached to her body. The runes on it gleamed and twisted.
Sorcha’s breath jammed in her chest, as her thoughts bubbled up. She had brought the other Deacons to this place. They had carved the runes into themselves in the exact same way she had, because she had showed them the way and they had been desperate. Instead, she’d contaminated them. She’d made them like she was; filthy with Wrayth powers.
“What did you find?” Sorcha choked out, unable to voice the real questions crowded in her mind.
“I found freedom. I found I did not want to be part of any hive mind. I wanted to be myself and not part of them.”
Sorcha needed Merrick, but she was too ashamed to call for him. Without his better-trained Center she was struggling, but she knew he would have been able to get to the truth.
“This is the truth,” Ratimana went on. “The truth you have been trying to hide from. You and I are the same creatures. We are survivors.”
The sound of him coming closer was like a snake moving on stone, it made her skin crawl. “You hear them, just like I do—but the difference is . . . they will come for you. They still want you.”
Sorcha stared down into his inhuman eyes and was lost for words. She had come here for reassurance and instead had found horror. Her jaw tightened as she looked at the Patternmaker. If she couldn’t find her bravery soon, then she would just have to fake it. “Not if I find them first,” she replied, clenching her hand, burning with light, tightly closed.
NINE
An Old Love
A Conclave was a tricky thing; it was easy to lose oneself in the soft morass of the group-mind. A hundred worries, dreams, feelings and sensations wrapped themselves around Merrick. Suseli’s fears from last night’s horrific dream screamed in his ear, while Heroon’s idle thoughts about whether his lover was really the one he wanted were distracting. The tangle of so many muttering voices was a trap for the inexperienced Sensitive, and Merrick had not been that long out of the novitiate—in reality it was only a year and a half since he had left the security of training. However, anyone working with Sorcha got more experience than they had bargained for.
Now, Merrick put that experience to use. He imagined the strands of the different people in the Conclave threading between his fingers, like brightly colored tendrils of wool. He held them apart from each other and more importantly from his own self. He used his will to sort the tangle out, and was surprised by his own dexterity. The Presbyter of the Sensitives, Yvril Mournling, who had trained Merrick in the novitiate, would have been impressed—if he’d been able to move from his deathbed that was. Few remained with the skill to hold a Conclave together, and so there was no one around to pat Merrick on the back. He sorely missed the community of Sensitives he had taken for granted in the Mother Abbey.
With this sad little thought, Merrick began to weave the threads back together. He took the powers of the Sensitives and formed them into a pattern. Their Centers bloomed around him, and he was awash with that combined power. Now he could see so much more than even his powerful Center could bring him.
His Sight soared over the citadel, out over the gravel-strewn valley, and washed farther away into the mountains. He could pick out scattered people and animals with the accuracy that even a great eagle could not have.
It was a heady, deadly situation. Sensitives liked to imagine that it was Actives that were full of hubris and overconfidence; but they were just as susceptible. If Merrick looked too long into the sun of the Conclave mind, it would have the same effect, and then all would be lost.
He turned his Center away from the endless possibilities of this power, and dove forward into the unknown. Masa, the Third Rune of Sight, was slippery. He’d been taught in the first classes as a young boy that it was not to be relied on. Looking forward into the future was somewhat of an art—compared to the other runes that could be mastered with training.
Sorcha was asking a great deal of him sending him in this direction, and it was a measure of her
