slap her in the face. She was thinking how good it would feel just to be held by him. One little goal at a time.
By the time they reached the narrow clearing around the fortress, every one of them was thoroughly sick of the jungle. They were all sweating like pigs, bitten by ravenous insects, and were covered in mud up to their thighs; not exactly the best-looking group of invaders.
Aachon wrapped his main weirstone in the sleeve of his jacket, and ordered all the lanterns they’d been using doused as they stepped from the trees onto the rocky ground. He still held the stone’s connection alive for Sorcha, and she was impressed at his casual control of it.
However the sharp tang of its power was making her head ache, and her eyes burn. Aachon might be able to hold his grip on the power for a long time, but she doubted she could.
Cautiously Sorcha put on her Gauntlets. “I hope you have control over that thing, Aachon. It would be a shame to recover from a coma just to fall into another one.”
“Yes,” he said, fixing her with a piercing look, “that would be most unfortunate. One can’t count on two miraculous recoveries.”
Serigala’s disappearance had raised some issues for the first mate—that much was certain—but Aachon’s connection to her was not as powerful as a Bond, and so he couldn’t possibly be able to read what had actually happened from her mind. He was most certainly not Merrick.
“What’s the plan, sir?” Naleni, short, bitter and utterly contemptuous of Sorcha, would not address the Deacon, and most certainly would not ask for directions from her.
Aachon jerked his head toward the place where the fortress, tall, black and imposing, met the scrubbed earth. “I don’t care what sort of creature you are, if you have flesh you have to deal with the effluent of living.” He pointed to where a small stream ran out of the base of the stones. “We’re going to follow that up into the fortress, find our Prince, and then get out.” He turned and smiled at them grimly. “I suggest you all learn to keep your mouths shut. It’s going to get messy, but we have Deacon Sorcha Faris on our side.”
The crew members shared worried looks, while others began tying back their hair shooting doubting glances toward the Deacon. Frith whispered something to Naleni under her breath that made the other woman shake her head emphatically.
They could look as skeptical as they like, Sorcha was busy being glad of the power that flowed through her. It gave her Center a wider reach than it would have otherwise. The Deacon closed her eyes, and dipped once more into the strength of the weirstone. It was unpleasant, but it meant she could see.
Sorcha reminded herself that, despite the fact that the vision provided by the weirstone was not as precise as it would have been with Merrick, she wasn’t looking for much, apart from Raed and keeping an eye out for this geistlord—in whatever form it might take. Taking a long, deep breath the Deacon now focused it on the fortress. Immediately, she could tell that Aachon’s hunch was unfortunately correct. The place reeked of geist activity, but of a kind she’d never seen before.
“It’s like the whole place is undead,” she whispered to herself. After opening her eyes, and flexing her head from side to side to relieve a little stiffness, Sorcha refocused. Nothing changed. No particular place in the fortress flickered with the telltale signature of the undead; the entire building did. It was entirely unprecedented. For a time she was quite dazzled by it; dazzled, confused and just a little bit frightened.
Aachon pulled Sorcha aside, his hand tight on her forearm. She flinched back in surprise as he barked at her. “Do you feel it? Can you hear the Rossin in there?”
He must be able to see the same thing she was seeing, but he said nothing about the all-encompassing geist presence. Aachon was nothing if not dedicated to his Prince, and he would ignore everything else until the Young Pretender was safe. Since he wasn’t going to bring it up, stubbornly Sorcha decided that she wouldn’t either. This close, she could feel Raed like a splinter under her skin; a constant distraction from reality. But more precisely, she could feel the Rossin, as Aachon could. The geistlord was there, right along with Raed.
He burned through her bones, and reminded her of the power that could be hers if she merely reached for it. She’d felt that before, but there was something else. The Rossin’s flame was far hotter than she ever recalled it being—even in Chioma, when faced with the geistlord Hatipai, the beast had not felt like this.
“Yes,” she finally nodded. “It has him, but it feels like the Rossin has been present for a long time.” She felt along the Bond. It remained intact, but the whisper of Raed was very faint.
“The Rossin has always abandoned my prince after it is sated,” Aachon said, glancing over his shoulder, “but if things have changed, then we cannot be sure we can get Raed out. Not without being killed by the creature, that is.”
Sorcha pressed her lips together, remembering the last devastating time she’d been face-to-face with the Rossin. It had begun with the death of two innocent women, and rapidly gone downhill from there. “What are you suggesting?”
“While we go in through the sewers, you use some of those runes of yours, phase through walls and get to the Rossin. Only you have any chance of pulling him back and reclaiming the Prince.”
Her desire to see Raed again, to hold him tight, even if just for a moment, was intense, but she had to be careful. She pushed her tangled and sweaty hair back from her eyes, and nodded tightly. “All right, but you better hold that connection open. I was lucky in Orinthal running through walls without Merrick. I don’t want to push the fates any further than I have to. Without you I could be some very pretty wall decoration.”
As expected Aachon did not laugh, instead he turned and bellowed at the crew; they were used to it. Only Arriann made any kind of grumble, the rest quickly scattered to their tasks.
Sorcha adjusted her blue cloak, one that she might not have a right to anymore, and ran toward the dreadful-looking fortress without looking back. She would have been far more grateful for a Hunter’s Moon than the gleam of a full one; it made her feel very much exposed over this open ground.
As she ran, stretching her legs to the greatest strain they had encountered in months, she thought,
Her body had made a remarkable recovery thus far, but she didn’t know if she trusted it enough to believe it wouldn’t fail her at an important moment. Her legs were shaky and her vision uncomfortably blurred in and out if she turned her head too fast. Sorcha couldn’t be sure it was the weirstone that was keeping her upright. She most certainly did not like relying on it.
Still, she was committed now, so raising her Gauntlet she summoned Voishem. The world shimmered and became a shadow of itself: unreal and sketchy. It resolved itself down to the basics: stone and gaps in stone. She staggered on through it, holding the rune before her like a talisman. Once the Deacon stumbled and fell to one knee awkwardly. She hadn’t tripped on anything, she couldn’t in phase, but it was confirmation her strength was limited. After taking a quick breath, she lurched to her feet and went on.
It was impossible to say how long Sorcha staggered toward the burning Rossin presence. It seemed like forever, and with every step she missed Merrick more and more—though he would have chided her for this rash dash.
However, finally she emerged gasping into the same space as the Rossin and was able to drop Voishem. It was like having a huge load removed from her shoulders.
For a long moment, Sorcha rested her hands on her knees, drawing her breath as slowly and evenly as she could and trying to control the spasms in her legs. If the Beast had wanted to devour her then, then he would have had no better time.
He did not. Slowly the Deacon raised her head, and took in the Rossin. Every time that she’d been near the great cat she’d been in awe of him. He’d demonstrated tremendous power and bloodlust whenever she had seen him. She’d been a witness to him ripping Deacons and citizens apart, and been a grateful observer to him destroying another geistlord. However now, he looked capable of none of those things.
The Rossin lay on the simple stone floor, his eyes half-lidded, his massive head propped up on his outstretched paws.
Sorcha was able to observe all this because she was jammed into the tiny cell with him and was only a couple of feet away from his heaving flank. He was hot—so hot that she could feel it on her exposed skin as if she stood near to a bonfire.
Despite everything she had seen the Rossin do, and people he had slain, she dropped to her knees and touched him with no thought to her own life. Aside from a flinching of the muscles beneath the skin, the creature did not acknowledge her presence. She slid around him, placing herself behind the great bulk of the geistlord, just in case his captors were nearby.
