“I have been thinking. The only people who could take the Arch Abbot”—Merrick pressed his lips together for a second before going on—“would be Deacons. And if they are that powerful—they could perhaps control the Rossin.”
The Beast was suddenly silent, turning inward and hiding its thoughts from its foci with uncharacteristic subtlety.
“And if she opened the Great Door?”
Merrick’s sharp look caught him by surprise, but then he realized—he had used the Rossin’s words. They’d just slipped out. The Deacon didn’t make any comment, though. Instead, his voice dropped lower. “She has opened Teisyat once before, and such things . . .” He paused and his expression hardened, making him look a lot older than his years. “They can affect a Deacon . . . weaken them.”
“So if it comes to a confrontation, what’s your suggestion?” Raed instinctively checked his saber in its sheath.
In a similar fashion, he noticed Merrick tuck his hand within his cloak, touching the one talisman that all Sensitives relied on. “I’ll take care of it, but you may have to restrain Sorcha. Stop her from going for the Gauntlets.”
“I can’t touch—”
“Thanks to the Bond . . . yes, you can,” Merrick said sternly, and then he turned and trotted after the very person they’d been discussing.
You can touch her. All of her, with fangs or hands or . . .
“Shut up,” Raed hissed, pulling his own cloak around him.
Up ahead, the blue light of the lichen was giving way to an orange glow that reminded him of a large fire. When he crested the rise, at first he didn’t know what to make of what he saw. Neither, apparently, did Sorcha, for she was still standing there, looking down into the odd grotto.
A great ceiling of daggerlike rocks hovered over what looked at first glance like a floor covered in tiny streams and honeycomb-shaped pools of water. The red light was coming from the rocks above, not from another form of lichen but a brighter, deeper light that seemed to well up from inside the stone itself.
The air was even colder here, penetrating through the Rossin-induced heat. He shivered wildly, trying not to let his teeth chatter. A quick glance at the others revealed that they were having the same problem. Raed closed his eyes and swayed slightly, feeling through the Bond. Apart from the usual surge of fear so close to the Change, he could sense other strengths. Merrick’s presence in his head was like a light seen through winter trees, cool but entrancing. Sorcha was a hot sun against his side, reminding him of their time aboard the airship.
Caught between these two presences, now fully aware of the Bond, the Rossin struggled briefly; but they were trained, and they held against him. They were, in fact, as deeply ingrained within the Young Pretender’s psyche as the Beast.
Damn crowded in here, Raed thought with little rancor. It was good to be sharing the load of the geistlord in his head. With a sigh, he opened his eyes. Sorcha’s bright blue gaze and Merrick’s steady brown one were only inches away; her hand wrapped around Raed’s waist, while the younger Deacon had one hand on her shoulder. It should have been uncomfortable, and he should have still been angry, but they had literally just saved his skin.
Instinctively, he felt for the Rossin. The Beast had gone deep, hidden further down so that it would be unable to speak directly into his head. Another relief.
“We have to go down there and see what that is,” Merrick finally said softly, though they were all feeling the same desire to run in the other direction.
Sorcha took a deep breath and nodded. “You tell us what to do. You lead us.”
The young Deacon turned his eyes toward the still-glowing red rocks. “The Otherside is near, but I think we should be all right as long as we don’t trigger anything.”
“Fine, then.” Raed clambered out of the stalactite grotto and made his way down the path toward the carpet of pools and rivulets, ignoring the urge in every fiber of his being to flee from it.
Each little depression was filled with water and interconnected to the others by a web of streams. It was a large area; he couldn’t actually see the end of it under the ruddy light cast by the rocks. What he did see gave him the shivers. Instead of reflecting the rough cave surface above them, each showed an image. The three of them stood and looked out over an ocean of possibilities.
He saw his own face: at the court of Felstaad; standing beside Aachon at the helm of Dominion; fishing out Merrick and the fiery Deacon. He recognized all those, but there were others, just as disturbing, nearby: the Rossin running, raging, through Felstaad’s mirrored halls, Corsair sailing with a possessed crew and chasing down Dominion, and finally the chilling image of himself, fishing out the dead body of a red-haired Deacon.
“By the Blood, what is it?”
“This,” Merrick said in a voice that verged on reverence, “is a Possibility Matrix.”
“A what?”
“The Scholar Abbot Horris, two generations back, speculated that some of the wild powers that crop up in Deacons, such as foresight, could be replicated by the physical construction—models to aid those without the gift.”
“What my learned friend is saying”—Sorcha tucked her hands into her belt—“is that this is why we have been dogged from the very beginning.”
Merrick, who only moments before had been pale with worry, was now scrambling around the edges of the cells and rivulets like a boy who had just discovered rock pools for the first time. He peered into them with great enthusiasm, and Sorcha shot Raed the ghost of a smile.
“Horris theorized the creation of a matrix, but he reckoned the background activity in the human world would make it far too difficult to accurately use it predict the future.” Merrick’s gesture swept out over the cavern floor. “I wonder—” He darted over to the edge where the cave wall began its impressive swoop upward. The young Deacon’s head cocked.
“Is he going to start writing his own thesis?” Raed asked, not feeling nearly the same level of excitement. In fact, the sooner they got out of here, the better he would feel.
“Give him a minute,” Sorcha said softly.
“It’s the rock itself,” Merrick called. Raed winced at the loudness of it. The echo seemed to go on forever, and the chances of hundreds of enraged Deacons descending on them seemed not too far off. But the young man came darting over to them, and his hands were covered in white dust from the rock.
“The natural color is white”—he rubbed it between his fingers—“but the glow is from another kind of lichen. Can you guess what it does?”
Raed opened his mouth for a rather snappy reply, but Sorcha tugged on his hand. “Haven’t a clue. Why don’t you tell us?” Surprisingly, there was not a trace of irony in her voice.
“It’s a barrier; a barrier against geist power.” He waved his hand excitedly. “It shields this place from detection. After all, we are sitting on the largest repository of Sensitives on the continent. Even if they were all part of a conspiracy to keep the matrix a secret . . .” Merrick paused to consider that dread statement. “Even if they are, I should have been able to sense something.”
“I’m feeling something myself now.” Raed was sure the shadows were deeper now. The spot between his shoulder blades was twitching.
Sorcha took a sample of the rock dust from her partner’s fingertips, ignoring the Pretender’s grumbles. “Well, that explains it . . . but that is an awful lot of trouble for just this matrix.” She dropped to her haunches and looked more closely at the pools.
Raed wanted nothing at all to do with them, but they had come this far. Sorcha was leaning so close to them that strands of her copper hair, which had come loose, almost threatened to break the tensioned surface.
“Careful!” Merrick crouched down next to her. “The power here is very finely balanced, and Horris never defined what would happen if it were broken.”