He poked Raed’s shoulder with one finger and let out a small laugh. “I took care of everything. I made your line, and I made Vermillion itself. It was a hill, but I brought the water, and wound it around, making the canals and rivers to protect it from the geists. And what thanks do I get? They throw down my Order. Your own grandfather helped them . . . but he learned humility . . .”
He was so smug, so sure of himself, that Raed couldn’t take it. He lunged forward and grabbed Derodak by the collar of his cloak. The fabric was slick under his fingers, but he had enough of a grip to swing him about. He connected with the rough stone wall with a satisfying smack, but his expression didn’t change. Raed punched with his left fist, aiming to connect to his chin, but his opponent’s hand moved quickly, blocking the strike, and then bringing his right around. When it connected with his jaw, the Young Pretender felt as though an anvil had hit him.
He staggered back, the room dipping in and out of focus. He found himself on his knees. At this stage even staying upright was an achievement. How could he be this strong? Dimly he saw the gray shadow of Derodak move closer.
“You don’t see what he is doing, do you? You really have been blinded . . .”
His voice came from a long way off, and the sense of it was hard to grasp.
Derodak leaned down and whispered into his ear. “The great pard is looking for his freedom, and he is ever so close. You and I know that will never do . . .”
He was making no sense whatsoever. Raed reached out and grabbed hold of his ancestor’s cloak. “You . . . you . . .” he muttered, “it was you that shackled him to my family. It is your fault.”
“I did need him at first,” Derodak conceded. “When I was first born into this world, I was not as I am now, and I feared death. I wanted to create a family to take my seed into the future. The Rossin’s power promised that. It was also a way to control them if necessary—as it happened they turned on me, and you have had to bear the brunt of that.”
His hand clenched around Raed’s jaw and squeezed. The Young Pretender struggled for breath, clawing at the fingers that threatened to destroy him. He might as well have been pounding on a statue with bare fists.
Still however Derodak talked on; apparently quite happy to converse after so long in the shadows. “So I started another family, and this time I spread my seed a little farther afield. I made my own army over the generations.”
As Raed’s vision trembled on the edge of vanishing, his eyes locked on the brooch around the cloak. The circle of stars gleamed so brightly, and he understood. All those Deacons were his—and not just in the normal way of an Arch Abbot and his Order. They were as much his children as the Rossins were. Apparently there was no end to his craziness or his fecundity.
“Still, your blood will be of use. The last of the Imperial line will help summon the Maker of Ways—after I have killed just the right one, he will come.” Just like at the White Palace, Raed realized.
Desperate, Raed reached out and grasped the brooch with both hands, tearing it from the cloak. The diamonds in it cut into his hands and the pin pierced the palm of it deep. The pain was intense, and it felt as though he had hit a bone with it. Blood squirted out from the wound.
Now it was Derodak’s turn to curse.
The grip around Raed’s throat loosened, and he found himself abruptly dropped to the ground. The sudden flood of air into his body was a blessing, though the pain he had caused was not the only consequence. Blood. It was always about blood. The deepest and oldest magic that Ehtia and geist used in combination with cantrips, runes and weirstones. In the end, it was blood.
Deep within Raed, the Rossin finally stirred. The Beast was uncurling and unfurling, enraged by the presence of Derodak as he had not been by anything else for a very long time. Blood summoned him from the torpor that their enemy had put him in.
Surging upright, Raed dealt an uppercut to the surprised Derodak. Something about the bloodletting had given the Young Pretender a tiny advantage, and he had to take it. Everything slowed, and even Raed’s heartbeat felt labored.
Unlike Sorcha’s Deacons, he had no access to cantrips or runes—but there were the stones. While Derodak was momentarily distracted, Raed ran forward and slammed his injured hands against the weirstone windows. He had no idea if it would do any good, but he was rewarded when the clear blue stone flared bright enough to burn eyes.
“Fool!” was the only word his captor had time to voice, before the Rossin flooded upward.
He took Raed over in an instant, but they shared the blood this time. Raed had called on him, and there was nothing else to be done. His mind was locked with the Beast’s, and he had no chance of escaping the events that would unfurl after that. Actually, Raed found that he didn’t want to miss a moment of this.
The Rossin ripped clothing as he molded flesh into his cat shape, but it was only a momentary change. The pard struck the weirstones that the first Emperor had molded with all the impact of a charging warhorse—and something else. It was always about blood, and blood powered something deeper. The weirstone took the geistlord’s rage and magnified it.
The stone screamed and shattered around him. The ocean roared like another, even greater beast, and thrust itself through the breaks; finding the weakest points unerringly and pushing the Rossin-shaped hole even bigger. The ocean thrust itself deep and invaded Derodak’s kingdom easily. If the Rossin was lucky, the water would carry the infestation of the Circle of Stars away altogether.
The abrupt change to water made necessary another transformation. The Rossin bent the flesh once more, pressing it into one more of his forms: the mer-lion. It was the shape he wore in his depictions on all the Rossin flags that had once flown so proudly over the palace at Vermillion.
The back legs of the pard merged and formed a thick powerful tail, while webbing sprang into being between the toes on his front paws. He still had the claws within though. Now the cold water that entered his body was expelled through gills on the side of his neck, which had also become thicker and more muscular.
He swam with as much ease as he had once leapt—though his roar was now silent in the murky depths. The water around the Rossin brought him information, just as the air did in his favored form.
They were not that far from shore; the ocean here tasted of river water and dirt. It was a taste he knew well; the Vermillion estuary that ebbed and flowed through the capital was not far off.
The ocean here was very deep though. Below, he could not see any rocks, only the untouched blackness of an endless trench. Derodak had made his foul lair on an underwater cliff that dropped away very suddenly. Moving water had helped keep him hidden from the Order of the Eye and the Fist, as well as protecting him from interference from the Otherside.
The Rossin swam with ease, but did not go too close to the room he had burst from. He had enough experience with the first Emperor to know that even in the direst circumstances, he could still be trusted to pull off some daring escape. Only when his head was removed from his body would the Rossin believe he was dead.
The truth was uncomfortable: Derodak still had enough power to overcome the Rossin. The pact they had made together all those hundreds of years before still held. It stung to admit that, and Raed, floating somewhere near the conscious world, was horrified.
In response, the Rossin circled angrily, scaring off a group of gray sharks that had come down to investigate what was going on. Much as it irked him, he knew that the Deacons were the answer to Derodak. Combined they might have the power to stand a chance, but then there was the Circle of Stars to consider.