Geist

The Bond sang with his distress. Only his strength had held them back from real death; quivering on the very edge of falling over and into the Otherside. It was the kind of trick that only partners of many years would have usually dared. Sorcha grinned at him with lips that were rough. “You were brilliant, Merrick—just bloody brilliant.”

The young man let out a ragged sigh and staggered. Raed took his elbow and led him over to the chair on the left hand side of the fireplace. “Thank you, Sorcha,” he managed with a gasp. “Glad you approve. But if Deacon Reeceson had not been able to call us back—”

“But he did.” Raed squeezed Merrick’s shoulder, his eyes locking with Sorcha’s. “He did.”

“Enough of this,” Garil barked, his voice now sharp with an edge she had seldom heard. “There are far more important things to consider.”

Some things were never spoken of in the Order, certain gifts that fell outside the comfortable bounds set by the Mother Abbey. As Sorcha stood, still reeling from her icy trip to the Otherside, she looked into Garil’s eyes and saw that he was finally ready to acknowledge his gift.

She’d had hints of Garil’s abilities, but had never talked of them with him. Whatever glimpses he got into the future always seemed to frighten him—even if they had been useful in their work.

“What did you see?” she murmured under her breath, though there was no way Merrick and Raed could avoid hearing what she was saying. She caught at her old partner’s hand as he sat shaking in the chair by the fire. “Was this what you wanted to talk to me about before?”

She knew her fingers were icy, but his were just as cold. “What did you see on the Otherside, Sorcha?” he asked wearily.

“Nothing.” She gave a laugh, even though her stomach was suddenly full of bile.

“What about you, young Deacon?” The piercing gray eyes of the elder swung toward Merrick. “You must have Seen!”

Her partner turned his head away, and the Bond flooded with real fear—not the kind of fear that she might expect from a trained Deacon, one who had proven himself up to any task. It was the fear of a child; unreasoning fear that clawed its way up from the most primitive part of his subconscious.

Sorcha could still remember her own flood of this kind of panic. Just a lonely child left in the care of the Order, she could have been no more than five, and yet the memory was as fresh to her as any other. Pareth, the Presbyter of the Young, a beautiful dark-haired woman who smelled of honey and warmth, was the only person she had ever known as a mother. Early one morning, Sorcha had overheard two novices in the garden talking about the Otherside, death and geists. Though she had been seeing shades all her life, she had never connected them with death before. When she slept that night, the realization had crept up on her—of her own mortality, and that of her caretaker. She’d woken screaming and had rushed to Pareth, seated at a fire much like this one. Sorcha had sobbed into her skirts, begging her to deny the existence of death; deny that one day, both of them would be no more. All Pareth had been able to say was, “Not yet, Sorcha. Not for a long time.”

That ultimate realization haunted every living thing. She let her thoughts play out along the Bond, letting Merrick into that terrible memory, reaching out to him.

Slowly, he turned his head and looked at her, his back straightening. “I saw you that time, the time you went to the Castle Starlyche. You fought the five-clawed geist on the stairs.”

Now he was opening the Bond to his own memories in return. The image flashed against the back of her eye, a curious double recollection of what he had seen and what she had. He had been the child hiding and observing when he should not. She had been the young novice still hitting her stride, but asked to do the impossible when other older heads were unavailable. It was the nightmare that chased her harder than any other.

Lord Starlyche had been a good man, and she had been unable to save him. Her breath seemed frozen in her chest as she recalled the creature she had glimpsed briefly on the stairs of the castle; a vast five-clawed hand reaching out from the Otherside, awash in a tide of swirling geists like moths clustered around a bright flame. Starlyche had been the foci of the attack, but even so, she could have saved him. Her inexperience had caught up with her, reaching for the wrong rune, just a heartbeat mistake, and the backlash had alerted the creature to her attack. In its fury it had tried to reach her through any means possible, and had killed its physical link in the process. The Lord had died, and not quickly or cleanly.

And her partner that day—he had seen it too. Probably more.

“Garil?” Her voice broke, as if she were once more standing on the stairs, covered in the blood of the man she’d been sent to save. The remembered taste of iron and bile flooded into her mouth.

“It waits.” The old man would not meet her gaze, instead staring into the fire, his expression like soft clay. She recognized it too—somehow the old man’s talents had extended beyond the strictures of the Order and were now venturing into the future. “It and many like it have been growing in the depths of the Otherside. So alone, and ready to return. They hunger for the light.” He turned and looked at all three of them through eyes that burned white. “And they need you. Together.”

“The Body.” His finger lanced out in her direction.

“The Beast”—toward Raed now.

“The Blood.” Merrick flinched as if he’d been struck.

The image of her partner strapped to the draining table flashed in her memory. Sorcha began to feel sweat on her brow, a sick knot clenching deep in her belly. “Holy Bones!” She clapped a hand to her mouth. “What have I done?” she muttered past her fingers.

Realization was sliding into place, the pieces tumbling into recognizable shapes in her head. The Bond she’d forged with all three of them—she’d thought it had been her idea, a convenience to harness the power of the Rossin.

“Sorcha”—Merrick’s face was bone pale—“you gave them what they wanted.”

“Would you both have a conversation normal people can follow?” Raed, leaning against the mantel, was not Deacon-trained; he could no more feel the Bond she had woven around him than he could feel moonlight on his skin. She hadn’t thought it would matter; Sorcha could dismiss it quickly enough once he no longer needed to fear the Curse. He would never need to know. How many times had she said that to herself?

“Tell him!” Merrick rose to his feet, a deep frown etched on skin that had seldom known such an expression. “By the Bones, Sorcha!” He seldom cursed either.

She struggled. Raed was looking between the Deacons, puzzled but not yet angry—there was still time for that. The Bond was still fresh. It could be undone, and then everything would be all right. Reaching out, she clasped Raed’s hand as if in a loving gesture, but at the same time desperately reached for the tendrils of the Bond. It should be easy to dispel a Bond formed only days ago—a simple matter that he wouldn’t even feel.

Her power yanked at the strands of empathy and awareness, and Raed fell to the floor howling in agony. Dropping to her knees beside the writhing Pretender, Sorcha knew that there was no chance he was still ignorant, but the Bond—she had to get rid of the Bond or he would never forgive her. She pulled harder at the coil of connection between them.

It was now hurting her. Thousands of little flames burst to life in her muscle and sinew as her body reacted to the power. It was like having barbed wire wrapped around her bones, and pulling. Dimly, Sorcha heard Merrick’s indrawn breath as it burned him too. But Raed would never understand; he would never . . .

The icy thrust of Merrick’s control stopped her like a slap to the face. Stop it—stop it now! You’re ripping us apart! His voice—his actual voice—thrust into her mind like a knife of steel.

She fell back with a yelp. Sorcha might have thought that was the worst of it, Merrick yelling directly into her mind like a man possessed, but it wasn’t. The worst was the look on Raed’s face.

It should not have mattered. The look of betrayal in his eyes, hard and glittering like a dread stone, should have made not one iota of difference to a Deacon. She’d used plenty of people before—the Order’s work sometimes required toughness. However, this was different. Her breath caught in her dry throat and her hands clenched tight. Raed, tell me I have not ruined what we have.

“What we had?” he snapped, giving his head a firm shake and glaring at all of the Deacons with equal vigor. “What have you done to me?”

“It is the Bond,” Merrick answered for Sorcha, who could not find the words. “She managed to forge a Bond with you as well as with any Deacon. It should not be possible with a normal person, but you are hardly normal