Conclave worked in a small room off the Great Hall, Sorcha found herself on the battlements, freezing cold, with a contingent of Brothers skilled in the art of weirstone.
“How does it go?” Raed asked as he carried up the last of the weirstone supply. He’d committed himself to splitting his time acting as general dogsbody for the searchers, and working to get the infirmary and its patients ready to move. Given the choice Sorcha knew which task she would have preferred. The infirmary was at least warm and not lashed by the chill winds that howled regularly down the valley.
She gestured to the line of Brothers, sitting cross-legged, with their various cloaks wrapped around them, clutching weirstones. “As you can see, hard at work, but it is a strain to keep searching. I have to make sure the Brothers don’t fall at their posts from exhaustion.”
Raed cocked an eyebrow at her. “Not using the weirstones yourself?”
“Believe it or not, there is a skill to it,” she shot back, knowing full well he’d heard her complain about the stones before. “Besides, I have another mission.”
Leading him away from the line of concentrating Deacons, she took him around the corner where Deacon Troupe sat at her work. Raed’s eyes took in the swirling weirstone at her lap and widened slightly. Troupe was too deep in study to notice either of them.
“What is she doing?” he asked Sorcha in a whisper.
“Tracking the portals,” she replied. “I finally managed to key a weirstone to their power, and Melisande and I have been watching where they are going. It should give us some warning if Derodak tries to make a portal to the citadel. Even though we’ve repaired the cantrip on the foundations, they could still appear in the valley somewhere.”
“Good idea,” Raed said, shooting her a sideways look. “I’m sorry, I heard Mournling passed away last night.”
Sorcha looked down at her world-weary boots. “He was a good man and a good Presbyter. He tried to hold on to see us through our task, but perhaps it is better he didn’t.” Mournling had been in the Order longer than she could remember. His passing was rather like losing an aloof grandfather. “He lived long enough to pass the torch to Merrick as the strongest Sensitive, and he will feel his passing most strongly.”
Raed opened his mouth to say something, but just at that moment Melisande jerked backward and dropped the weirstone onto her lap as if it were burning hot. She looked around and for a moment her eyes weren’t focused on them. The Young Pretender offered her his hand, and clasping the weirstone she rose to her feet.
“How are things, Presbyter?” Sorcha said, wondering at the other woman’s wide eyes.
Her pretty pink mouth twisted. “Nothing coming our way, but I detected a lot of activity to the west of Vermillion. I could feel people moving to and from there. I couldn’t tell if any of them were Derodak or the Circle of Stars.”
Sorcha’s mind raced. Could it be that there was some kind of assault on Vermillion planned? Or perhaps it was Derodak’s base? He must be working from someplace.
Just as that was all sinking in, the door to the inside of the citadel opened, and Merrick stepped through— though a more apt description might have been staggered. However, there was such a look of triumph on his face that Sorcha held back on admonishing him for driving himself too hard.
“I know the place!” Merrick said, his voice cracking as he stood there trembling in the cold air. He pulled the thick fur cloak tighter about himself, and the Bond between he and Sorcha fairly sizzled with delight.
Along it, she saw a devastated wreck of a town.
“You have a target?” Raed asked, glancing at the Deacons. Once again he was excluded from their sharing.
“Waikein,” Merrick spoke for his benefit. “All the paths of the future start there, and it is where we must strike our first blow if we are to have any chance.”
Melisande’s white blonde hair was tossed by the wind as she whispered, “A town to the west of Vermillion. Within a short distance.” She shared a questioning look with Sorcha as if wondering how much she was willing to bet on Merrick’s sight.
The answer was of course, everything.
“I will send word then,” Sorcha said, already turning toward the line of weirstone wielders. “All Deacons who can manage it will meet us in Waikein at the full moon. It’s only a week away, but . . .” She paused and turned on Merrick. “How much do we know about this place?”
His smile was victorious. “I can tell you a great deal about Waikein. You see, I have a friend on the inside.”
Her smile broadened. “That’s why I love you, Merrick. You make friends wherever you go, and many places you have not.”
FOURTEEN
A Waking Dream
The Emperor had come in his airships and nothing was the same. Eriloyn stood in the shadow of the building where he had once apprenticed a blacksmith. The roof, along with the blacksmith, had been destroyed the day of the attack. Coincidentally, that had also been the last time Eriloyn had seen food.
He’d always been a tall, strong boy, but since the destruction of Waikein he’d been whittled away to painful thinness. His stomach had ceased to bother him, but his brain had been enveloped in a fog that was just as dangerous. In this state, he knew he could easily make mistakes, but he was desperate. Only the day before he’d been drinking from a dirty puddle of water in the street, mad for some kind of moisture, and had nearly been run over by a carriage.
Some small instinct of self-preservation had jerked him back out of the way, and the dark shape had rattled and bounced past him. He’d only caught a glimpse of the crest on the door; the mayor of Waikein’s pair of crows holding a massive yellow wedge of cheese. It seemed cruel with the current state of affairs.
Even now, Eriloyn’s mouth watered at the recollection, his tongue circling around the cavity that felt as dry as wool. The image of his mother knitting by the fire drifted up from his memory, and along with it the recollection of the warm milk and honey bread she brought to him when he was ill. It was a cruel jab from his own treacherous brain, because it drove his stomach, which had been silent for so long, into a knot of wrenching hunger. That was why he had followed the carriage and now stood huddled in the gently falling rain, looking toward the town hall across the square. The mayor had to have food.
The boy glanced up and down the street, searching for any movement, human or otherwise. Nothing stirred—as it had not for days. The terror of the geists had sent many running for the hills, while others had taken their own lives or fallen into madness from it all. Those that remained kept themselves hidden—which was the sensible thing to do.
Except now that the wind changed, Eriloyn’s senses brought another terrible blow. It was the smell of baking. It pierced the boy through and made any sensible thoughts impossible. The primitive needs of the body overrode anything else.
Wrapping his arms around his middle, the boy darted across the road, borne aloft by the tempting smell that promised food of unparalleled delight, scuttling from spot to spot like a rat that dared not be caught in the light. His first sanctuary was an overturned cart near the edge of the town square. It was not a food stall, but rather a toy display. Broken wooden dolls lay scattered about where citizens had trodden on them in their mad dash to escape some horror.
The second refuge he scampered to was the remains of a carriage. Once it must have been very grand, because the cerulean paint on the side was a sign of nobility—his mother had taught him that much. The boy dared a peek inside, and had the ravages of the geists not already beaten him into a wreck he would have screamed. The perfectly preserved head of a woman was turned to him from her seat within the carriage. Whatever geist had come upon these travelers had turned their flesh to the consistency of jerked meat. The shriveled eyeballs of the woman seemed to regard Eriloyn with disdain.
