creature would need some foothold in this realm, even after such a powerful summoning.
Sorcha gritted her teeth. Holding her palm outward, she opened Chityre. The ground beneath Hastler’s feet exploded. It wouldn’t get past his shield—but it got his attention. His grin was maniacal on a face that had always seemed serene. This had to be a terrible nightmare, Sorcha thought, as he turned Deiyant on her.
Her attempt to raise her own shield was not quick enough—even running on reduced strength, Hastler was still faster than she. The manipulation rune closed on her throat as effectively as a giant fist. Despite the fact that she knew it was pointless, Sorcha scrambled against nonexistent hands. Her vision dipped and spun. Her own power was subsiding, her Gauntlets dimming and waning as life drained from her.
She reached out for Merrick, but his power was twined with Nynnia’s and it was not enough. The Bond found her a replacement. The Rossin, injured and depleted though it was, reached out to her with a heady flow of power directly from the Otherside.
With a gasp, she managed to light her shield rune underneath his—an impressive feat. Hastler’s face twisted with rage as the recoil knocked him back a step or two. But when he righted himself, she knew just by the look on his face that he was going for Teisyat. The unknown quantity of what a door to the Otherside would do in the ossuary was enough to make her tremble with fear.
And then Raed struck, the curved scimitar smashing through ribs and back and emerging in a flow of blood that no cantrip could prevent. Hastler looked once at Sorcha in rage and astonishment. Raed twisted his sword and the old man crumpled. It was habit that drove her to his side—that was what she told herself.
The look on the face of the dying man, however, was not one of defeat. “You do not know it, but you are already caught,” he gasped. “It will be just as I saw.” His laughter was choked with blood, and he had a white- knuckle grip around a medallion that had fallen loose from under his shirt. Sorcha waited until he slumped back, finally dead, before prying it from his fingers. It was a knot of two snakes, twined around each other in a circle and eating each other’s tails. Nothing else remained to tell what it meant. She put it into her pocket quickly, just as Raed struggled to her side.
And then the world tipped. The trained part of her knew that the banishment of a Murashev would not be easy, but she could never have prepared for the cacophony of sound and light that swept around her. The howl as the creature was sucked back into the Otherside was terrible. Without corporeal body or foci, there was nothing to keep her in the human realm when confronted with the void.
When the survivors straightened, Merrick was standing in a hollow blasted clear of bones. Of the Murashev there was no sign, but the Deacon was holding the burnt and disfigured body of Nynnia in his arms.
“You are like the Murashev, aren’t you?” she whispered.
Merrick gave her a stern look, but the shattered remains of the beautiful Nynnia smiled. “Once again, you only see a part of the truth.” Her once-sweet lips twisted in pain. “Like, but not like. The same . . . The same creature, but not all our kind agreed with its course of action. My path, being born as a human, takes longer, limits us—but I was sent to stop this.”
“And you have,” Raed said softly, his hand resting on Sorcha’s shoulder.
Nynnia gasped, her body undoubtedly descending into shock. “Yes, I did. But I did not expect to find love here.” Nynnia’s smile was faint but victorious. “And neither did you, Deacon Faris.”
Sorcha gasped, her memory flashing back to those dreams she’d had while sharing a room with Nynnia. What had the creature done? What had been whispered into her head while she slept on unaware? Were the feelings she had for Raed only part of some Otherside plan?
“Hastler was not the only one who could see the future,” the dying girl whispered, “yet he could not include me in his calculations. I am not of your world, after all. My elders said I shouldn’t have been born, taken human form, but I have no regrets . . .” Her hand fluttered up to rest against Merrick’s lips. “None.”
Merrick brushed her hair from her face and her scorched lips as gently as he could. “We’re safe, thanks to you.” His tears poured out of his gentle eyes.
“No—not safe,” she gasped, lurching up in his arms, her fingers locking on his hand. “This will not be their last attempt!” Nynnia coughed and writhed in real mortal pain. “They will not stop.” Her eyes were losing their luster; the light of the Otherside dimming in them. One final breath rattled out of her broken body. Merrick held her close, but there was no way for even a Deacon to hold back death. Whatever the creature had been, she died as a mortal.
Then there were only the three of them, staring into one another and surrounded only by bones and death.
TWENTY-FOUR
Into Apostasy
Merrick held to his training—it was all he had left. He gathered up Nynnia, knowing she deserved proper ceremony. She felt so light, as if her departed soul had been the heaviest thing about her—if she had possessed a soul at all.
Through his numbness, the logical part of him was still working. “We have to take Hastler’s body too,” he mumbled. “There will have to be an Episcopal inquiry. The Presbyters will need to see it, much as it should stay here to rot.”
Sorcha’s blue eyes, dark pits in the dimness of the ossuary, flicked to Raed. “Can you carry him?” She did not complain, but the way she held herself spoke of at least a broken rib. Wordlessly, Raed slung the remains of Hastler over his shoulder.
As they scrambled mournfully up into the light, around him Merrick could hear the creaks and groans of the White Palace, as if they were buried within an arthritic body. The ossuary was sliding back underground; drawn up by geist-power, it was returning to its natural place.
None of these facts made any impact on him. They were distant details to the cooling form in his arms. Perhaps he had been a fool to love Nynnia so quickly, and with so little thought, but he wasn’t going to wish it had never happened. She had not told him what she was, but her actions spoke of a bright being that he would miss. Some inherent Sensitive part remembered her words and knew that in the shadows to come, they would need all the help they could get.
The blazing light of the sun made him blink through eyes still burning with tears and scarred from the light of the Otherside. The people were emerging from their houses—frightened, yes, but aching to see what had happened. Their faces, covered in dust, looked so alien that for a moment Merrick feared that Nynnia’s sacrifice had not been enough; that they were surrounded by damned souls staring at the body of their Arch Abbot tossed so casually over one shoulder of the Pretender to the throne. His mind raced—something was very wrong in a day that had seen enough wrong—yet his mind was too numbed to make hasty connections.
Then the Order arrived. The trio was surrounded by the emerald and blue cloaks of Merrick’s fellow Deacons, like ornamented crows. They moved swiftly between the survivors, shielding them from the view of Imperial troops and commoners. They took Hastler from Raed, and Sorcha disappeared from sight altogether. A knot of panic clenched in Merrick, and he knew it was not an entirely unreasonable reaction.
Their own Arch Abbot had been conspiring with creatures of the Otherside—who knew if this was an aberration or a new policy? Only his awareness of the Bond kept the young Deacon sane. He might not be able to see the others, but he could feel them. Sorcha was as numb as he was, while Raed felt resigned; he would not be able to escape from the Order now.
When kind hands tried to take Nynnia from him, though, Merrick stood tall, clasping her close. “I will carry her,” he said, his voice cracking a little.
It was an uneasy return to the Mother Abbey, flanked by Deacons none of them knew if they could trust. He resisted the urge to fall gratefully into their arms. A lot had happened in a few weeks and he was not the green boy who had ridden out that day.
