Raed felt his mouth grow dry; he knew that voice. He had not heard it a great deal, but the one time he had, it had made quite the impression. Derodak, the apparently immortal leader of the Circle of Stars, had stood in the Mother Abbey and commanded attention.
The Rossin stirred slightly, but did not urge him to stop, and the itch of curiosity gripped Raed. He did not turn back. Derodak had fully shown his ability to escape at a moment’s notice, so this could be his only chance to observe him and learn what he was up to.
Still, the voice sounded strange. “We will protect you as the great chaos begins. When the veil to the Otherside is finally torn down, this place will give you protection. The Circle of Stars will wrap around you, as it was always meant to be.”
He had to ignore those words and see what was going on in there. Raed climbed higher, glad of the soft boots he’d managed to find only a few days before in the citadel’s stores. Ahead, he saw the stairs finished, and there was a wide landing lit by larger torches. The floor he observed was covered in dust and rocks from the bombardment, but showed signs of very recent and frequent passage of feet.
Derodak’s voice continued, and now it sounded even stranger—as if echoing off a distant mountain. Raed frowned. How could that be? They were in a confined space. Ducking his head, he put one foot on the landing and, keeping himself tight against the wall, slid up next to the open doorway.
“You are the chosen ones, the faithful who have never forgotten your true protectors, and it is you who will reap the rewards.”
Raed, keeping his head low, dared a look around the corner of the door. What he saw made him quite confused for a moment. The small guardroom was full of people, some seated on the floor, others lined up around the walls. He found that he had been wrong; there was not a single Deacon among them. They were cloaked sure enough, but none of them were green, blue—or even gray. These folk looked like normal citizens, from elderly to small children on their mothers’ hips. Certainly there was no chance that any of them were going to notice the Young Pretender stealing a glance, for all of them had their eyes fixed on the device in the middle of the floor.
Derodak had spoken true—it looked as though the Circle of Stars had been most productive during their time out of the sun. The device on the floor was a work of art; brass like an open basket held a weirstone aloft as if it were an egg in its nest, while beneath spun a collection of gears and cogs that snickered to themselves.
The Order of the Eye and the Fist had thought themselves the masters of weirstone power, keeping it from the general population and setting it to work for their Emperor. However, it appeared they were rank amateurs compared to their predecessors.
The image of Derodak was hovering in the air a foot above the machine. It was the very same as he had appeared at the Mother Abbey, but only three feet high, and curiously flat. Raed was reminded of the shadow puppets the people of Irisil loved so much. They used a flat, pale piece of cloth to act out their local legends, and entertain their children. This device of the Circle’s was something far more complex. It didn’t need anywhere to project the image.
Raed Syndar Rossin, as displaced heir to the Empire of Arkaym, had been given an extensive education by many of the greatest minds to be found anywhere, yet he had never seen or read of such a thing. However, much had been lost since the time of the Ancients—the ones that Merrick now called the Ehtia, after his little sojourn into the past.
Emboldened by the fact that the leader of the Native Order was not physically present, and that there were no other Deacons, Raed crept closer while Derodak rattled on, edging his way into the group as the person he had followed here had obviously done.
This was the kind of information that Sorcha had not been able to discover. No matter how her Sensitive Deacons had searched and searched, they had been unable to use any of the Runes of Sight to spy on what the Circle of Stars had been doing. How they had been able to conceal themselves was a real mystery.
The idea that he might be able to find out some things that none of Sorcha’s colleagues had been able to excited Raed. He would put whatever he could find out before her and finally feel better about being with them. He’d be back to being a useful member of the community his lover was constructing.
He had already learned many interesting things, but perhaps this was the greatest one: the Circle of Stars was trying to build a base of adoring public. They had learned from history; when they had fallen it was because they had been toppled by angry and fearful citizens.
“Sar,” a grizzled old man said, raising his hand as if he were still in school, “the Heretic who calls herself the Harbinger has taken the town hall, and her Sensitives are already spreading through the city . . .” The man paused, and stared down at his feet.
Even as a projection, Derodak demanded respect and could instill fear over distance. “Do you think we do not know that? Do you think we would abandon you?”
Though he offered no violence, the target of his outrage dropped to one knee and bent his head. “No, Sar. We know you keep your lambs safe over all comers.”
Derodak turned in midair, his image flickering only slightly. “You will come to us, and join the rest of our beloved followers.” He raised his hand and pointed. The people who had been standing against the wall in the spot he was gesturing to scattered like fish when an eagle dived. When he saw what was revealed, Raed’s heart raced. He recognized the circle of cantrips and runes; the portal device that Sorcha was the mistress of—the only one of her Deacons that could use them. Even Merrick, when he had tried, had been baffled by it.
The space described by the circle flickered and changed; now it was a corridor, and where exactly it was, no one said. It could be anywhere in Arkaym, or even Delmaire. That was what made the Circle of Stars so very dangerous.
The people in the room—including Raed—got to their feet and began to line up to pass through the doorway. They did indeed resemble gray sheep. The Young Pretender was just considering if he should and could shuffle unobtrusively out of the room, or if he should actually pass through with them and find out more.
Before he could come to any real decision, it was made for him. He found that he was surrounded by children, and they did not appear to be normal children. Their eyes when they looked up at him were curiously blank, and it felt as though there was something else looking out from them. It was just a split-second realization, but he didn’t have time to act. Even the Rossin, swimming so deep in his unconscious, could not reach the surface quickly enough to stop what happened next.
The children threw themselves at Raed, but this was no sudden rush of infant glee. Their hands wrapped around him, and those little hands were not empty; they carried weirstones. They jammed them hard into his skin, just before he could contemplate how to fight back against children. Where the dark weirstones touched, they burned like lava.
The Rossin howled in pain and outrage as the agony reached him. Rendered mindless, the Beast dove deep, prevented from being able to reach Raed in time. That problem taken care of, the adults rushed Raed and knocked him to the floor.
While his mind reeled at this attack, they bound him tightly, keeping the weirstones still pressed against his skin. The pain rendered him both speechless and immobile.
Dimly, he heard a heavily pregnant woman yell at one of the men finishing tying his feet. “Quickly, before the Heathen feels this and comes for him.”