“What . . .” He stopped, cleared his throat. “What favor did you ask in payment?”
The Fensena tilted his head, his ears twisting this way and that. “I have not yet asked my boon, but remember I could just have easily left her there. I think you are starting to understand the position she was in. No partner. No Young Pretender. Just me.”
Merrick’s head jerked up, and he threw his Center wide in a mad attempt to feel out Raed Syndar Rossin. He could not. He too was gone from the immediate area.
The Sensitive swallowed hard. He could sense no deceit from the geistlord, but then one of his names was Oath Bender. The uncomfortable truth was that he was alone.
“It is hard,” Merrick spoke softly, “to believe in gods at all, when I am left at the end of the world with only a geistlord for company.”
The weight of despair was pressing down on Merrick. Though it had been with him in their months of flight, at this moment it felt crippling. Merrick Chambers bowed his head and wondered if it were best just to lie down and give in to it.
The wetness of a damp nose was pressed into the palm of his hanging hand. Everything that the Deacon had been taught should have made him jerk his arm away, but for some reason he did not.
When he glanced up, the Fensena was holding him pinned with those golden discs of eyes. “There remains some time, human, and the blood of the Ehtia still flows in you.”
“Will they come? The Ehtia?” Merrick asked in a rush, suddenly wanting to see Nynnia more desperately than he had in a long time.
“Do not look for their help,” the Fensena said, with a low growl in his voice. “The Ehtia have spent their power on surviving the Otherside, and not all of them are as caring as the one you loved. You however have more than enough strength to do this. Let me show you.”
The coyote led him away from the water, to the cliff edge where there was a fine view of the distant mountains. For a moment Merrick wondered if the geistlord meant to knock him over the edge to his death.
“Use Mennyt,” the Fensena said, sitting down. “Look to the sky for your answer.”
The Deacon hesitated; the last time he had looked into the Otherside the parade of geists waiting to enter had given him nightmares. Nothing could have changed since that time.
The Fensena said nothing more, merely looking at him steadily with those eerie gold eyes. So Merrick reached up and traced the Pattern of his Third Eye that was carved into his skin. The world of Arkaym grayed away. The rush of power made him giddy for an instant, because now when he called on Mennyt it filled all of him. The loss of the Strop had not been a bad thing.
The landscape below faded and was overlaid with the dark symphony of the Otherside. It was as Merrick expected; many of the geists were close enough that he felt as if he reached out he would touch them. It was a sight to send him tumbling back into despair.
Then the Fensena’s voice reached him. “Your scholars were right; there is an ebb and a flow to the Otherside. Our worlds perform an odd dance, and the perihelion of that dance is coming . . . but it is not yet. Look to the distance.”
Dragging his attention away from the frightening closeness of the geists, Merrick did as bid. He tore his gaze away, up to the mountains, and a frown formed under his Third Eye. A faint silver light was leaking from them, as if a tear had been made in the fabric of reality. He had never heard or read of such a thing . . . except in the descriptions of the Break. The first time the geists came.
Merrick’s heart began to race and his throat seized up. “Is it coming already?” he croaked out.
“It is near”—the Fensena’s voice now seemed almost soothing—“but it is not yet here. The timing is important, and as predictable as this world’s seasons. Derodak has been waiting in the shadows for this for a thousand years. His one moment when he may gain control of all the geists.”
Merrick cleared his suddenly barren throat. “How long do we have?”
“One cycle of the moon, and then we must be there to stop it.” The Fensena turned and angled himself back in the direction of the city. “You do not have long to prepare.”
“What of Sorcha and Raed?” Merrick asked, letting Mennyt slip from his grasp.
“Derodak will not kill them . . . not yet at least. He will hope to harness their blood for the opening, so he does not have to risk his own life.” The coyote was now standing close to the Breed horses, which they did not like in the least. “Every moment you waste is a moment you give him advantage. You will need every Deacon and every weirstone you can gather in that time.”
Merrick realized what the geistlord was saying: he was not really alone. He had lost Sorcha and Raed, at least for now, but he was the First Presbyter of the Enlightened. It had only been birthed the night before, but it was the only and best chance of stopping Derodak. If he did not take the reins now, it would all fall apart. The Deacon did not consider himself particularly brave, but he had training and experience to assist him.
Quickly he climbed onto Melochi and took up Shedryi’s reins. Once there, he looked down at the Fensena. They called the geistlord many things—one of them was Widow Maker. It seemed a fragile thing to trust him, and undoubtedly there were more motives at play than were immediately apparent, but one thing was clear: he was all the guidance Merrick would have.
However, there was one thing that the geistlord did not need to tell the Sensitive: where they had to be when the barrier was thinnest. The capital of Vermillion, where the Break had been and where it would come again. Merrick might not believe in fate, but there was a certain tidiness to events.
As the great coyote looked up at him, Merrick felt the weight of that settle on him in almost a comfortable fashion. “A fine fur cloak you wear, young Presbyter. Let us see if you are worthy of it—and the name of your new Order.”
Before Merrick could ask him anything further, the Fensena broke into a trot, forcing the human to follow in his wake.
TWENTY-THREE
Ending Loyalty
The unnerving thing about the sky was that it was so quiet. As the Summer Hawk rose through the air like a cork released from the bottom of a lake, they quickly left the screaming and noise behind. The wet kiss of the clouds on Zofiya’s face almost convinced her that everything was going to be all right. Perhaps it would have, had she been a different person.
She stood at the gunwales, while sailors scurried around and Deacon Petav consulted with his weirstone. The Grand Duchess, in this moment of peace she knew couldn’t last for long, found her thoughts strangely drifting to her father.
Her mother had been the thirteenth wife of the King of Delmaire. An inconsequential nobody, who had been swallowed by the harem of wives and had never played any part in the life of the Princess she had birthed. Her father however loomed large; always ready with the harsh counsel and harsher punishments. He looked on Arkaym as the hellhole of the world; the place where geists had come from and still controlled. It contained no civilization and no worth—that was why he had happily sent his leftover Prince and Princess to it.
However, as she stood on the precipice of horror, Grand Duchess Zofiya thought of some of the lessons that he had thrashed into his multitude of sons and daughters. With her eyes closed she could see him sitting on the throne of jade, addressing them all with a riding crop tucked under one arm.
“A leader must always be ready to spill blood—no matter whose it is—there are no loyalties or boundaries when you sit on a throne.”
That day when Zofiya knelt on the floor with all her brothers and sisters, it was Kaleva’s little hand that had stolen into hers. Tears squeezed themselves out of the corners of her eyes, and she tried to tell herself that it was the wind that was doing it.