Could you see the Rossin in the Young Pretender?
Shock froze Sorcha in midstride. The mocking tone, the female voice, all reminded her of the time in the Wrayth hive. The geistlord had spread itself over so many humans, taken them as slaves, and made them into a wasp nest for one purpose. Her mother, a raped and tortured prisoner of the Wrayth, had born her in the hive. Her father must have been one of the geistlord’s drones. She would probably never know his name.
Though she’d tried desperately not to think about the Wrayth and concentrate simply on using the abilities she’d been given, her heritage made her the only one capable of saving the remains of the Order. For months she’d been opening their portals and leading them from place to place; so fixed on escape that she’d been able to ignore those horrible facts. Now, Sorcha felt a fool. Could she have put the remains of the Order in danger just by being who she was?
“Come in.” The voice, actually spoken outside of her own head, made Sorcha flinch. “Shut the door.”
Her right hand prickled slightly and drifted to the hilt of her saber that hung at her side. Deacons were always armed, but it was not her greatest resource. Carefully, she reached out and flicked the door shut. The room was plunged into near total darkness, and Sorcha had the real sense that she was trapped in a room with a wild animal—one that she could not see.
Her Center was her only choice—but a very shabby one it was. She could make out the vague outline of the room’s walls, and warmth and life near the back of it. “Is this darkness really necessary?” she snapped. “It’s a little too theatrical for my tastes.”
The Patternmaker—it had to be him, surely—laughed; a strange echoing noise that seemed to come from much farther off than the rear of the room. He’s not a geist, Sorcha reminded herself, and strode deeper into the room.
But you are.
“Damn it!” Sorcha let her frustration escape her lips.
Something skittered in the shadows. It had to be a rat, even if she couldn’t see anything living apart from the hunched form of the Patternmaker. It was strange that this was the man that had helped them, and yet in this moment Sorcha felt more in danger than she had the previous night facing geists that had spilled over from the Otherside.
“Too many voices?” the Patternmaker hissed. “Now you live in my painful world.”
Another rattle of feet—this time to her right. Sorcha realized she was being encircled, yet it was ridiculous to feel this way, Sorcha reminded herself; he was an old man. Apart from that, she was in a citadel full of Deacons, and this was the man that had tattooed her skin with the runes, making it possible for them to fight geists and the Native Order.
Straightening, Sorcha stepped more boldly toward the form of the Patternmaker. “I have come—”
“I know why. The Otherside is closer, spilling over to your world.”
He spoke so clearly that she paused her approach. When last she had spoken to him, he had not been nearly this coherent. “How do you know that?” she asked and immediately understood it was a stupid, childish question to pose. The Patternmaker was attuned to the Otherside better than even a Deacon.
Now the skittering came closer, and she could have sworn something brushed her boot. She kicked out. That was impossible! She was not so blind with her Center that she would miss something coming that near. Was this how normal folk felt? She’d had a taste of this before and had liked it about just as much then.
“We feel it,” the old man’s voice slid out of the shadows.
You feel it too.
Sorcha grabbed her head, slapping her hands on each side of it like a child trying to deny reality. The same tiny primitive part of her brain wanted to turn and flee out of the room completely—however she had never really been anything but a Deacon, trained to be a truth seeker. She’d been taught to hold fast, but it felt like there was very little left to hold on to.
Feeling out with one hand, she clasped the wet, dank stone, and slid to her knees. In the deep dark of the room, the only light was now beginning to grow on her own arm. The runes that the Patternmaker had carved on her flesh were shifting and moving. The shapes of the runes—which she knew better than the shape of her own body—were making new forms; ones that she did not recognize.
“Everything is changing, Harbinger.” The Patternmaker’s voice wrapped itself around her, giving voice to her own terrors. “You are part of it, more deeply than any other person in this realm. You are woven into its warp and weft like a sharp Wrayth-made little thread.”
Sorcha’s eyes widened as she watched the patterns shift and dance. “What do I need to do?”
His voice hissed from the shadows and was echoed by those now bouncing around in her head. “The Harbinger makes the changes. Only you can decide what those are—that is the joy and the horror of your creation.”
That was when the Deacon froze. In her mind she heard again the mother she could not remember but had experienced in the Wrayth’s lair. They had been breeding the Deacons they had caught down there. Sorcha had so completely turned her mind away from the horror of that, she had neglected to consider what their goal had been.
In the depths the Patternmaker, Ratimana, laughed. “They made you, but they were not expecting you. They wanted a way to work the runes of the Deacons, without any of that pesky human will getting in the way.”
“How do you know all this? What are you?” Sorcha held her arms before her and stumbled forward like a blind person. She had to have those answers even if it meant tearing them from the twisted man with her bare hands.
Her fingers brushed against skin as soft and giving as boiled flesh. Despite her training, she flinched back. The runes on her own flesh sparked to light, casting an eerie glow on the face of the Patternmaker. He looked up at her, a broken and frail old man, but in the light of the runes his eyes burned. They flashed as the Rossin’s did.
Sorcha held her trembling arms, burning with light close to him, and realized the truth of it. The Patternmaker was a geistlord—as much as the Rossin was, as much as she was.
His unnerving grin flashed across his lips, exposing teeth that were now far too large. “I am like you, Wrayth. Another portion created as a scout, in the time of the Break, sent into this world to find flesh and home.”
Sorcha froze in place. She did not want to howl or move or show any form of weakness in front of this creature. Still her eyes wandered down to her own arm, which now felt like it belonged to someone else; an alien thing that shouldn’t have been attached to her body. The runes on it gleamed and twisted.
Sorcha’s breath jammed in her chest, as her thoughts bubbled up. She had brought the other Deacons to this place. They had carved the runes into themselves in the exact same way she had, because she had showed them the way and they had been desperate. Instead, she’d contaminated them. She’d made them like she was; filthy with Wrayth powers.
“What did you find?” Sorcha choked out, unable to voice the real questions crowded in her mind.
“I found freedom. I found I did not want to be part of any hive mind. I wanted to be myself and not part of them.”
Sorcha needed Merrick, but she was too ashamed to call for him. Without his better-trained Center she was struggling, but she knew he would have been able to get to the truth.
“This is the truth,” Ratimana went on. “The truth you have been trying to hide from. You and I are the same creatures. We are survivors.”
The sound of him coming closer was like a snake moving on stone, it made her skin crawl. “You hear them, just like I do—but the difference is . . . they will come for you. They still want you.”