around him was beginning to turn into a veritable soup of them. The geistlord twisted and twisted on himself, trying to cut a way free.
However, the tentacles, large and small, were guiding him closer to the dark center of the monster. Now he caught a glimpse of the beak of the thing: curved and pale, it was three times longer than his body. Tentacles curled and flung around him, cutting off escape routes and shepherding him toward doom. That beak would snap him like a twig.
Raed Syndar Rossin and he would share the same broken fate. The line would die with him, and he would even miss the Maker of Ways. His last thought was how bitter it was that Derodak had won.
TWENTY
The Blood Will Out
Sorcha dreamed that her mother was holding her. She cradled her daughter, pressing her head in tight against her shoulder. Sorcha felt warm, safe and happy. Her nostrils were full of her mother’s scent; roses and strength. She planted the lightest of kisses on her daughter’s head and whispered, “Remember who you are.”
Sorcha held tight to that gentle admonishment.
“Mother,” she murmured into the thick dark hair, “why did you leave me?”
It was a foolish question, but it came right from the heart of the little girl lost in the Order, whose sole loved one had been the Presbyter of the Young. She’d only been able to give Sorcha so much attention and care. In the lonely times in the Abbey’s garden, before she’d been taken into the novitiate for training, she had whiled away long afternoons wondering what her mother was like. Did they look the same? Sound the same? Did she miss her?
Sorcha did not need to wonder any longer. She was safe, missed, loved.
Just as she pulled that truth close, her mother pushed back from her. Sorcha screamed in horror. It was not the face she had seen in the vision in the Wrayth hive—it was the Wrayth itself. The thing that was holding her was a bubbling mass of faces, all screaming for mercy and release. The form of the Wrayth held them bound and pressed together.
“I never left you,” the creature growled, its hands tightening on her. “I have always been right here with you.”
Eventually Sorcha’s screams woke her, and she almost immediately wished they had not. Imprisonment of another kind waited.
Sorcha did not recognize the woman peering down at her, but she did recognize the type; long pale hair, and eyes that gleamed with something unnatural. The Wrayth was in the waking world too and looking out at Sorcha. She was being examined exactly as someone might when choosing a puppy from a litter.
The Wrayth woman straightened up, and Sorcha finally noticed that she was tied to a table—one that seemed to come very close to being like the draining table in Ulrich. Luckily, it did not have the spikes, but Sorcha was held at a tilted angle; not quite on her feet, not quite on her back.
At least they would have been unable to take her runes from her. Glancing down at her shackles she called on Seym, to fill her body with strength. Nothing happened.
Her captor let out a soft chuckle. “Do you really think that we have not mastered how to keep Deacons quiet, even if,” she said, gesturing to the marks on Sorcha’s flesh, “you have found a remarkable way to ingrain runes on yourself.”
A cold, hard realization came over Sorcha. She was right where her mother had been. The dire feeling of helplessness was the very same as her mother must have felt when she’d been snatched all those years ago. Sorcha, just like her own mother had been, was not used to the sensation. She was a Deacon—no, more than that, she was the Harbinger. They couldn’t do this to her!
However, that didn’t seem to matter. The Wrayth woman pressed a hand on Sorcha’s head and stared into her eyes. The voices in her mind grew more insistent now, clamoring for something. Sorcha tried to not listen, but one voice grew louder and louder the longer the hand remained there. It was screaming over and over,
Apparently this was not the result that the Wrayth woman had been hoping for. She flicked Sorcha’s head to one side with an impatient growl and walked away. The Deacon dared not consider what this might mean—that was until the Wrayth spoke.
“You are a deep disappointment, Sorcha Faris.” Her voice was sharp and laden with venom. “You are so very close to our goal, and yet you fall short.” Her hands clenched together while her eyes darted left and right. The Deacon had no doubt that the screaming voice was totally in control and letting out its frustration and anger inside that human skull.
“Really?” she gasped, licking her lips in an attempt to make her voice not come out as a dire croak. “You cannot know how much that pleases me.”
The Wrayth seemed not to hear her, as she began to pace back and forth. “You have all the makings of the final weapon, and yet you remain aloof from us. We cannot connect with you.” She stopped pacing and stared at Sorcha. “The fault lies not with your father, so it has to have been your mother who—”
“It is too late for recriminations now,” a familiar voice spoke. He had stood out of Sorcha’s line of sight, concealed behind the table she was strapped to. As he walked around into view, Sorcha felt her anger begin to boil, rising over the dull ache of helplessness.
Derodak, Arch Abbot of the Circle of Stars, stood next to the Wrayth and watched Sorcha rage. She strained against the bonds, calling out a stream of profanities that would have earned her stern retribution in the Order.
He was the maker of all Arkaym’s misery . . . all this death and destruction. He had brought down the Order of the Eye and the Fist, the only protection for the people of Arkaym. He had caused the Empire to fall into civil war, and now Sorcha saw that he was working with the Wrayth. All these things he had done for his own profit, so that he might rule the world as his Ehtia race once had.
He waited until she was done before turning to the Wrayth. “So, since she is of no use to you, I take it our agreement still stands?”
The pale woman raked her eyes up and down Derodak, her face now devoid of any emotion. “If there was time, we would try again by breeding off her . . .”
Derodak raised a finger and wiggled it at her as if the Wrayth were a recalcitrant child. “Now, now, we all know there is no time for that. You have failed to make your weapon, so our original agreement remains; I shall give you the west to do with as you please. Raise the humans as cows for all I care, but this thing you made is now mine.”
The woman’s eyes said she would have murdered him if she had the chance, but eventually she nodded.
Sorcha tried to think of anything to say to stop what she was witness to, but what could be said to two immortal geistlords intent on the destruction of her whole world? He would enslave the geists that came through from the Otherside and rule the humans, while the Wrayth would have the western edge of the Empire to harvest.
Instead, Sorcha tugged on her bonds for a time, and offered no words for them to enjoy. Even the Bond was a dark, empty thread; nothing came along it to comfort her. She was alone again.
Yet her whole life she had tried not to be alone. In the embrace of the Order, she had found peace, purpose and friendship. Her partners and her colleagues had filled her life. Her mission to help those endangered by geists had given her something worthwhile to strive for. Now, she was watching the destruction of all of that from captivity. It was enough to break her. Hopelessness rushed in, and she had no Merrick to save her from its icy grip.
The Wrayth woman left the room, head held high, not acknowledging Derodak or Sorcha again. Now it was just the two of them in the room.
Sorcha turned her head away. She had no desire to see the triumph on his face. Could it really be just
