Geist

furnishings were nearly as sparse as a hermit’s. One niche contained two hard-backed chairs, a tapestry-covered stool and a carved wooden table; the other niche on the far side looked to serve as a sleeping area. Merrick was already there, standing above the rumpled blankets. It was obvious that the Arch Abbot wasn’t in.

Sorcha was frowning and turning about slowly, as if she expected the man to emerge out of the shadows —but there was no one else present. Nor were there any doors apart from the one they had come in through.

“Looks like he is not receiving guests right now,” Raed muttered, folding his arms and trying to calm the yammering of his chest; he knew it was related to the Beast’s desire for chaos.

Sorcha pushed back the thin blankets as if she expected to find him curled up in there somewhere. “Something must have happened to him,” she muttered with real concern in her tone.

“Not prone to nighttime wanderings, is he?” Raed couldn’t help the sharp tone in his voice. The Deacons had been so sure that coming here would solve everything.

“Not at all,” Merrick whispered, leaning back against the cool stone with a ragged sigh. “The Arch Abbot is always supposed to be available, should the realm ever need him.”

“Someone put that cantrip on the secretary,” Sorcha hissed back. “I think he’s been kidnapped.”

Raed was about to ask who would have the power to do such a thing, but then he thought of what they had faced back in Ulrich—and swallowed the question.

“What’s that?” Merrick raised himself off the wall by his elbows, his chin pointed up toward the ceiling. Raed strode over to stand next to him, determined not to be left out of any further discoveries—he had a real stake in all of this now. Sorcha and Merrick scrambled onto the Arch Abbot’s bed so that they could trace the strange shapes.

Indecipherable letters were scrawled on the ceiling of the alcove. Raed was no expert, but they did seem familiar. He’d spent many years in exile as a child, being schooled by the aristocrats who had chosen to go with their king, and he had learned many languages and many stories. These words seemed on the very edge of his understanding. They looked similar in construction to the Brytsling tribesmen’s language of the far north, but also similar to the Edgic letters of the warm swamps of the south. He was just beginning to figure out the pronunciation when Merrick, closer in years to his scholarship, whispered the sounds that had been forming in the Pretender’s mouth.

“Taouilt.” He blinked hard. “Isn’t that the word for—”

The grating of stone against stone bought the words to a halt in his mouth. The raised dais of the bed was beginning to shift. The two Deacons leapt down hastily.

“Hidden.” Merrick finished his sentence softly as the stairs leading downward slotted neatly into formation.

Sorcha grinned brightly. “Arch Abbot Hastler is trying to help us—he must have been able to scrawl that before they got him away.”

Raed ran his fingers across his beard and considered. He did not like the idea of blindly going down those stairs. They seemed a little too convenient for his liking. But they had come this far, and it wasn’t as though they could just go back the way they had passed. He would have said something but he knew it would matter little; if there was one person Sorcha Faris believed in, it was Arch Abbot Hastler. Instead he swallowed his suspicions and determined to be on his guard, even if his companions were not.

He placed his foot on the topmost step and turned to look back at the Deacons. “Well, let’s find the old man.”

He wanted to hold out his hand to Sorcha, and in fact half raised it toward her, but then remembered his anger. He tucked the hand instead into his belt as smoothly as possible. This was going to make a difficult situation even worse. Everything about this was wrong. He wasn’t meant to be on land. He wasn’t meant to be falling in love with a Deacon who had betrayed him. Vermillion should have been his city.

Raed let out a little sigh. They’d whispered that into his ear since his birth, but he’d never really believed in it. Still, others had, and he felt responsible for them and their hopes. What would happen if he died here, though? The vision of his green-eyed sister, so fragile and happy, flashed in his memory. He knew the answer—she would be the heir, and the Curse would fall on her.

Raed disliked the atmosphere. As they descended, it filled his lungs like buckets of ice. The steps were wetter the deeper they went, and in Vermillion they surely couldn’t go very far down. The lagoon couldn’t be too far below them. He wiped moisture off the back of his neck. The lantern Merrick had taken from above cast orange light about them as they reached the bottom.

If the Abbey above was huge, below was just as vast; it was a cathedral of the earth. Soaring limestone walls leapt above them to meet in smooth vaulted arches, while great caramel-colored decorations swooped down at some points, almost resembling gargoyles. Merrick’s small lantern was not the only light now. Vast patches of glowing blue lichens covered the swells of limestone like fine tapestries, filling the intricate crevices with a soft light. Everywhere was the sound of water and the feeling of moisture on the face. For a second, the Pretender stood still in the unexpected beauty of it. A secret world that a man of the sea could never have dreamed existed.

“Did you know this was down here?” Raed asked softly as they looked about.

“No.” Sorcha’s whispered reply did not go far, swallowed up by the vastness and not returned.

The more scholarly Merrick looked just as surprised. “I’ve never even heard a rumor of it, but this place must have been known by the native Order; the stair mechanism would never have been put in easily by the Arch Abbot. Not in complete secrecy.”

Somehow the way he said “native” sounded ominous to Raed’s ears. He knew as much, if not more, than they could know about the Order that had once occupied the halls above their heads. His family and Arkaym’s native Order had been as intertwined as two snakes, sometimes mating and other times fighting. Those Deacons had originally claimed to be benefiting the people of the continent, just like these new ones. However, they had fallen into corruption, and not all of it political.

It was true they had meddled in the affairs of his family—the royal line—but they had also wanted more than that. Few knew the truth of how far that native Order had fallen, yet he was wary of telling Sorcha and Merrick. Would it make any difference to them to know that their predecessors had reached for the ultimate power? Perhaps these newest Deacons were no different from the previous set.

While Raed was considering this, Sorcha was leading them farther in, her dark form visible only as an absence of light among the gleaming lichen. At his side, Merrick shuttered the lantern. “We will need to be quiet, I fear. If the Arch Abbot’s kidnappers hear—” Merrick did not finish the thought.

Raed was not entirely convinced about these “kidnappers.” He’d seen no sign of struggle above, and his gut told him it was nigh on impossible to spirit the most powerful Deacon on the continent away from his own Mother Abbey.

While the Deacons ahead of him quietly followed the damp path forward, his heart began to race with fear and excitement. The Rossin was very close to the surface now—not yet capable of emerging, but so close that he could do the one very disturbing thing Raed hated: he whispered into the Pretender’s mind.

We should kill her. Her blood would taste as sweet as her sweat did. She betrayed you.

The Rossin’s intense hatred for the Deacons engendered in Raed a physical reaction that was only a few steps away from desire. These primitive reflexes were the ones easiest for the Beast to reach. He tried to ignore the hardening in his breeches and the dark whisperings that went with them.

Tear her, play with her a little, perhaps, if we like. She deserves it, after all.

The images began, flashing in his head like vivid tapestries of what the Rossin would do. Suddenly, Raed’s skin burned like lava in the freezing cavern.

She will burn for real when you touch her this time. The Rossin laughed seductively, showing him an accompanying image that was both terrifying and erotic. Sorcha’s red hair would be made of flame as she caught alight with what was within him. When he entered her, she would scream . . .

“Raed?” He almost ran into Merrick, who had stopped, concerned, near an upward curve in the path. Merrick’s brow was furrowed and for an instant the Pretender was sure the Deacon could actually see the Rossin lurking nearby—after all, he was a Sensitive. He was surprised when Merrick glanced almost guiltily ahead toward Sorcha.