Merrick knew how he was feeling. “Not an image of a loved one,” Merrick agreed, “any letters, or even any kind of distinguishing clothing.” He tossed the piles of folded white shirts onto the floor.
“It’s like he doesn’t live here at all,” Sorcha grumbled, throwing herself backward onto the bed in a curiously childish manner.
“Almost like one of our cells back at the Mother Abbey,” Sibuse mused. He pressed his dark hand over his eyes as if to wipe away the whole situation.
“That would make sense,” Merrick began, “as he is—”
“Merrick!” Sorcha half sat up on the bed. “Merrick, do you remember the marks on the Priory ceiling in Ulrich?”
The cantrips, incantations and curses had hung over him for a long time, so he’d had plenty of opportunity to study them. Quickly, the young Deacon took up a place on the bed next to his partner. It was such a wide piece of furniture that Aachon was able to do the same. The crew and remaining Deacons had to make do with craning their necks. Even the Rossin padded to the bed, sat down and peered upward.
“Truly beautiful,” Merrick breathed, for a moment in awe of the artistry.
Most ceilings in the palace were painted, with landscapes or scenes from history, and this one was as well. It showed the first Deacon, Saint Crispin, making the original bargain with the geistlord—the very one that sat like an immense house cat at the foot of the bed. Merrick wondered what the Rossin would make of the depiction he was looking at. It was impossible to tell through those great yellow eyes.
The first Deacon was shown as a handsome hero, golden hair flying in the wind along with his green and blue cloak. The Rossin was a hovering black shadow, having not yet taken full form, though he had gleaming red eyes and ethereal, shadowy arms, which were reaching out toward Crispin. Merrick tilted his head. It was strange, but in the streaming depictions of wind and smoke there appeared to be another figure, lightly sketched, but definite, there behind the Rossin.
“I hardly think it is coincidence that del Rue picked this room for his own.” Sorcha glanced across at her partner. “Do you?”
Merrick wriggled uncomfortably. “Maybe there was something he found comforting about it.”
He was so busy examining the image that he almost missed the one thing they were looking for, and when he did see it, he felt an utter fool.
The medallion directly above the bed was indeed decorated with weirstones and cantrips. It looked new. It looked handmade.
He pointed to it, “Sorcha, is that—”
No sooner had he done so than his partner was leaping up.
“Get off the bed,” she barked, shooing Merrick and Aachon off the bed and the others away, like a child scattering chickens. Briskly she ordered them to help her swing a chest of drawers onto the bed, which gave her enough room to climb up and touch the ceiling.
Merrick shivered as she pressed the stones. Sorcha had always been very loud in her dislike of weirstones and those that meddled with them.
“Sorcha,” he cautioned, “that stone-and-cantrip mix looks dangerous. You shouldn’t be…” His voice trailed off as he observed her eyes go suddenly blank, and he had the feeling she was somewhere very distant that he did not like. However, just as he was about to pull her down and damn the consequences, the stones under her fingertips became suddenly fluid. As they all watched, she shifted them around.
Her voice was slurred slightly when she spoke. “I see a tunnel to a great castle.” She paused and moved the stones. “Now a boat by a beach, but this one is not used very often.” Now she frowned. “This one…this one very much more so.”
They all watched, even the Rossin, as she pushed one of the stones around to lie on some other portion of the frame. The space described by the circle shifted, becoming a soft, gray section of wall, rather than a painting. It looked remarkably like a group of shades shifting and dancing with each other. Then it resolved itself into a dark corridor; disturbingly commonplace, though in an incredibly odd place. Sorcha looked down at Merrick, and he almost swore in shock at the blank, eerie look on her face. For a moment, she was an utter stranger.
Sorcha cleared her throat and that woman thankfully washed away. “This leads to a dark cellar.” She held out her hand to no one in particular, and it was Tighon who took it.
Merrick took it from him and pressed his hand briefly over hers, and then turned back to the rest of the group. He also despised giving his partner so little of his attention, but he only had a little to give.
In his heart of hearts, Merrick knew he should have pushed her, demanded to hear every detail of what she had discovered about herself, but she had been right—it was not the time to examine too closely what they had in the here and now. There was very little of it to look at, and under close scrutiny it might evaporate.
He replicated Sorcha, and climbed up on the dresser. “I have to say, this hardly seems the best way to enter a portal.”
It was Aachon who had the answers. “Cantrips, weirstones…who knows what the Circle of Stars has at its disposal. I can’t see this del Rue climbing on furniture either.”
Sorcha jumped up to join him. “Looks like we’ll have to lever ourselves in there.” She reached upward.
She didn’t get far; without any warning the Rossin suddenly sprang from the bed and into the maw Sorcha had opened.
Both Deacons cried out as the great cat knocked them flying. Merrick tumbled backward while Frith somewhat awkwardly caught Sorcha before she fell off the bed altogether.
For a moment it was all a confused tangle of arms and legs. When Merrick finally had helped Frith and Sorcha disengage, the Rossin was long gone.
“The portal works,” Aachon commented dryly, as he examined the space the geistlord had disappeared into. Then he climbed up their makeshift ladder and toward the portal. The burly first mate had no problem pulling himself up and into the portal. The weird moment when he switched from vertical movement to standing in a horizontal corridor was abrupt. Merrick and the other Deacons had seen many odd things, but the crew members whispered among themselves.
When Sorcha went to take her turn, Merrick jerked her back. She shot him a look that could have melted metal, but he hissed under his breath, “Wait a second.”
The crew and Deacons, in various states of eagerness, clambered up, and helped each other through the most unusual portal. Then it was just Merrick and Sorcha alone in the room.
Able to speak his mind for the first time since reuniting with his partner, the younger Deacon knew he still only had a few moments. “Do you know how far away this is taking us?” he jerked his head toward the portal.
She shrugged. “I cannot tell that…it could be somewhere in Vermillion or somewhere even in Delmaire.”
Merrick swallowed. It wasn’t as if they could rely on the Order for support, so moving far from the Mother Abbey should not have bothered him…yet it did. He thought of the tunnel he’d last encountered the Circle of Stars in and it did not provide any comfort.
“Just don’t get too far away from me,” he said, squeezing her shoulder.
Her eyes surveyed him, but she nodded without challenging him about this sudden clinginess. “I will try.”
“And be careful,” he added. “I can’t feel you through the Bond right now, and I hate that. Just know I am a person that cares about you, and we all need to come out of this alive.”
Her hard expression softened to one of vague amusement, and she cupped her hand around his cheek. “These are not the times any of us can take care, but I will do my best not to implode before we get the Grand Duchess and the Pattern back.”
Her partner sketched a bow before her, gesturing toward the portal. “I will take that. Now up you go.”
He watched her go, saw her arrive, and then knew that this was his turn.
Wrapping his hands about the lip of the dark portal, Merrick pulled himself up and into the unknown.
TWENTY-THREE
Between the Jaws
