His lips split in a cruel smile. “The Knot is tightening, and you may have slipped it twice, but it will find you again.” His Gauntlets were already on, but as she got closer he tied on his Strop as well. The tooled leather turned him from a maddened old man into an eerie creature whose eyes were replaced by runes. Sorcha hoped he was more exhausted by the summoning than he appeared; Hastler was more than her equal. By the Bones, she hoped he didn’t have it in him to open Teisyat.
She reached out along the Bond for Merrick, and it was like hitting a raw nerve. Merging had made the Bond as sensitive as a newly pulled tooth, but the world bloomed bright. Hastler was glowing in this world, but not as strongly as he normally would have. Blue tinges were emerging; he was reaching for Yevah. She had to act quickly—she summoned Seym. Her body filled with power.
Sorcha ran, and before Hastler could get his rune shield up, she was on him. When she wrapped her arms tight around him, she found him as cold as a piece of ice—dealing with the Otherside could do that to a person. A lesser Deacon would probably have died from such a summoning, but she had no time to compliment her superior on his fine achievement. Yevah was of no use to the Arch Abbot now—not while Sorcha was so close—but he still had plenty of reserves.
He’s reaching for Pyet, Merrick howled in the back of her head.
“By the Bones,” Sorcha grunted. For an old man, Hastler was strong and hard to get a handle on. She twisted and grabbed at his Gauntlets before he could bring the burning power of the rune to bear on her. She had no desire to find herself a piece of crumbling toast hanging on his back.
It felt wrong, and yet deeply good, to smash a fist into his face. Normally, punching an old man would have been the lowest of the low—but this was the man who had summoned the greatest danger to her city, made them outlaws and, above all, lied to her. But even as Sorcha tried to hold on, Hastler broke away from her; residual strength from the Murashev must have been aiding him. Once free, he turned the fire starter rune on her.
Try Shayst, Merrick hissed into her mind effortlessly—more an idea than words.
It was the rune that drew power from a geist, and as far as Sorcha knew it had never been used on a human before. But then, Hastler was only borderline human now, anyway. With a yell that contained all her rage and frustration, Sorcha summoned the rune of drawing and shoved her green-lit hands onto the Strop that girded the other’s eyes. The sensation was like fire pouring into her head. Dimly she was aware of screaming, and realized that it was coming from both of them.
Her body was flung aside. She slid across the floor and smashed into the far wall of bones, but she barely felt the impact. Weakly, she struggled up out of the debris of the dead to see Raed charge the Abbot. His first blow was only just caught by Hastler as the Abbot raised Yevah, the edge of the Pretender’s blade slicing through the top layer of the cloak that Hastler had no damn right to wear.
He seemed to have been slightly blinded by her drawing of his power; he clasped one Gauntlet to his Strop, and the delivery of the shield rune was awkward. Still, by the time Raed spun and made a second strike, the Arch Abbot had recovered enough to summon Deiyant. The Pretender was shoved backward as if caught by a great wind. Sorcha struggled to her feet, her head buzzing with an unfamiliar energy. Traditional weapons, then. She rolled to her feet, though every muscle screamed a protest, and ran toward the Abbot as he advanced on the stunned Pretender.
She had time to spare a glance back toward Nynnia and the Murashev. The women were now impossible to see, their blazing light a sun in the ossuary. Merrick was standing nearby and Sorcha could feel him feeding his energy to Nynnia—though it would not be as effective without a Bond. Still, he turned and looked at Sorcha. Their gaze, only a heartbeat long, pinned her with a realization.
She is losing. His mental voice was calm—much calmer than his physical one would have been. You must kill the Murashev’s foci!
By the Bones—he meant Hastler. It made sense; without a physical body capable of holding her, the 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.
She protected me. Merrick’s thoughts were like sharp pins in Sorcha’s head, full of loss and foolish hope. Carefully, she knelt down next to her partner. She didn’t need to ask why the creature had done what she had to save Merrick—in her eyes gleamed real triumph. Sorcha, however, still had questions that needed answers.
“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.