“So.” He stroked his beard and glanced warily at her out of the corner of his eye. “Just how bad is it?”
The Deacon chewed on the edge of her lower lip, for a moment looking as though she might be choosing her words with care. “Let’s just say that I have been a working member of the Order for nearly twenty years, and this is the worst outbreak of poltern possession I have ever seen. Bar none.”
“And you can’t help any of these children?”
“Not without Merrick, and not without identifying the foci.” At his blank look she sighed.
Raed felt a little flare of resentment. “Look, I am not your partner—I know that—but I am the best resource you have right now. I’m sorry you have to explain things to me, but please do.”
She unfolded her arms. “For a cluster of attacks like this, something so consistent and so particular, there must be something holding a gateway open. Not a large opening, or we’d be seeing a full-on invasion of geists, but one concentrated on particular levels of the Otherside.”
“So, some sort of object?”
Sorcha nodded.
“And any idea what it would look like?”
The Deacon began tying back her bronze curls, reclaiming the severity that didn’t do her beauty justice. “That’s the bad news. It could look like anything.” She pushed one stubborn strand back out of her eyes.
“Then how are we expected to find it?”
The Deacon opened her mouth to reply, but all that came out was a strangled whimper. Grabbing her throat, she slumped backward, and only Raed flinging himself forward and catching her prevented her fall to the ground. A fine bead of sweat had broken out on her forehead while she clawed frantically at her neck.
He loosened her collar, wondering if she was choking on something or being strangled by some sort of invisible foe. After a second she let out a great gasp and stiffened in his arms, her blue eyes wide. Raed was sure she was dying, but then she shook herself like a cat emerging from a dunking.
Jerking free of him, Sorcha leapt to her feet. “Merrick—Holy Bones, something has happened to Merrick!” Her face was as pale as milk and her lips, drained of blood, were a straight line of anger.
Raed knew of the Bond between partners; the kind of connection that was both a strength and a weakness to the Deacons. Fearing that she would leap over the side and start racing back up toward the Priory, the Pretender put his hand on her shoulder; partly in reassurance, but also partly in restraint.
“Calm down,” he said as reasonably as possible. “He’s alive, isn’t he?”
She pressed a hand to her forehead, her breath still coming in little gasps. “Yes. He’s alive. You’ll have to excuse me, pirate Prince. This Bond Chambers and I share, well, it’s surprisingly strong. I have never felt anything like it before with any other partner.”
Was that a twinge of jealousy niggling at his core? Raed stuffed that strange emotion down as best he could, and tried instead to understand what Sorcha was going through. “Can you See where he is, what has happened?”
She gave him a quizzical look, as if he were a child. “The Bond does not allow me to See through his eyes. I heard his voice, like a muttering in another room. I could hear his tone, but not the words.”
“And then?”
She pulled out her Gauntlets and stared down at them in some concentration. “I recognized something, the taste of . . .” She shook her head. “No. No, that is impossible!”
“What is it?” Raed watched her fist clench tightly on the Gauntlets. “Come on, Deacon, we’re all in this nasty little affair together—like it or not.”
“Unholy, cursed Bones.” She spun away, pushing her hands through her hair. When she turned back, he could see the rage in her eyes. “I recognized Deiyant, the ninth rune.” She waved her Gauntlets at him. “Do you understand? A rune from these!”
Saying, “I told you so,” at this point would probably have earned him more than a slap. He was not that foolish, but he had to mention the thoughts that had been running through his sleepless mind. “They meant to kill you.”
The anger drained out of her face and now she looked very vulnerable. Having people that you trusted turn on you—he could sympathize with that easily enough; he and his family had been living with the consequences of that for years.
“Do you think so?” She remained staring at her Gauntlets as if they had the answers. “Unholy and damned Bones, I think you’re right.”
“What now, then?” He put a hand on her shoulder.
“Now?” Sorcha said, not shaking off his touch. “We go and get my partner back—by whatever means it takes.”
Together they glanced up the hill to where the Priory dominated the ridgeline. She smiled at him, a weary, bitter little smile that brought no warmth with it.
Merrick awoke adrift in his own Center, falling into it rather than letting it go ahead of him. All of his normal sensations were denied him, and now vibrant hues of his Sight were all he could see. The Prior and her Actives burned like recently raked fires as they clustered around him. He couldn’t hear what they were saying—yet the ether was turning a distinctly indigo shade and the smell of burning invaded his brain.
They were going to do something terrible to him, and it would not just involve death. His senses let him drift higher, and from his height he could make out the faint blue glow of a Sensitive below—it was his own body.
Around it he could see flickering designs that he recognized from his training—the training that had warned of dark things that could be done with cantrips. If he’d been capable of it, he would have recoiled.
A hissing roar enveloped Merrick, a pulling tug that he did not want to give in to. The Center was a more pleasant place, and now he wanted to stay—down below, pain waited for him. The Deacon struggled, but he could feel awareness of his body coming back to him. It was reeling him in, and despite his training, he couldn’t resist.
The first sensation to return was a bruised and sore windpipe. The Actives had surely been within moments of killing him. He retched and gagged on the sharp taste in his mouth. So far, Aulis had not noticed he was conscious again, so he took the chance to try to see exactly what they had done to him.
The smell of damp earth filled his nostrils, so he knew he was somewhere underground—maybe another cellar. He was pinned to the bare earth, his arms and legs spread.
Merrick tried to reach out along the Bond; the powerful nature of their partnership, unexpected and annoying as it had been up until this point, might prove to be useful. The pain that flared through his body gave Merrick a more complete understanding of Aulis’ methods. It was impossible to break a Bond, but it could be rendered poisonous to a Sensitive by overloading his talent.
The ragged scream he let out alerted them to his consciousness. When the blaze of agony subsided, he opened his eyes to see Aulis crouching over him. Her face had become positively evil.
“By all means, test the limits.” She smiled. “Our use for you does not require you to be awake.”
“What are you planning, Traitor?” he croaked through his damaged throat.
Her eyes gleamed in the dim light, but she ignored his question. “You know you only have your partner to blame for this pain. We planned to have her here, not you.”
“She’s going to come back, and then you’ll be—”
“Sorry?” She smiled again. “One Deacon is of no consequence to us.” She waved her hand as if batting a midge, then stood up again and pointed above him to the ceiling. “Perhaps you have missed that.”
With a chill, Merrick followed where she was pointing. The floor might have been dirt, but someone had taken a lot of time with the ceiling. The curve of the brickwork had been whitewashed and decorated with the swirls of more cantrips than he had ever seen in one place. He did indeed recognize many of them, but there was one whose swoops and spirals occupied the middle of the circle and hovered directly over the center of his body.
It was written in the language of the Ancients; a language that had been dead a thousand years. Only Deacons ever bothered to learn it, and they did so only because Ancients had been the first experts on the Otherside and the unliving. He had never seen the swirling script used in a cantrip, but there it was; a huge scarlet letter that could only have been made in blood, and outlined in something he instinctively knew was the charcoal remains of the Sensitives. The word was “First.” Why exactly it would be written so large and importantly above
