Such dangerous thoughts were interrupted when Merrick called her name—both into her head and out into the night. One of the cracks was spreading. Whatever was strongest was coming through.
Twice before, Sorcha had faced a geistlord; the Murashev and Hatipai. The first time they had relied on the strength of the Rossin to give them a chance. The second, without Merrick at her side, Sorcha had won, but had been thrown into the terrible living death of a coma. Now, they stood alone, on the balcony.
Where is Raed? Sorcha thought to herself in an off– hand sort of way. Her lover had still not made an appearance, and she could not feel him in the citadel. She felt along the Bond that tangled her, Merrick and the Young Pretender together. The connection was still there, but nothing else. It was as if the awareness of Raed was wreathed in dark smoke.
She glanced across at Merrick. Under the tattoos of the runes, his brown eyes were troubled. His words, when they entered her mind, confirmed that. I can’t see him.
Few words could have chilled her more than those. Merrick was not just her Sensitive—he was the best she had ever worked with. The Bond they shared the strongest. If he could not see the Rossin, then she had real cause to worry.
However, now was not the appropriate time. Thinking of her missing lover while the world was splitting before them would have been beyond foolish. It was almost suicidal.
Concentrating on survival meant concentrating on what was before her. Blinding red cracks were now growing bigger, signaling that whatever was ready to come through was near the end of its journey. The similarity to watching a chicken hatch only went so far. This was going to be much more than a giant angry rooster.
Such a stray, comical thought at this moment was not something Sorcha was used to. Discipline and training had been hammered into her, ever since she was a child, and as she had recently found out, she was also the daughter of a powerful Sensitive.
And the daughter of something else too, a small voice whispered in the back of her head.
Sorcha’s gaze jerked away from the spreading gaps in reality, toward Merrick. He however was concentrating on seeing more of the situation. He had not spoken into her mind.
Just as Merrick turned his own head toward her, Sorcha had straightened. With careful and precise determination she managed to shift her thoughts away from the momentary terror and concern of what exactly that voice had been, and once more onto the horror that was coming. Sensitive and Active Deacons were tightly bound together in a partnership that had few secrets, but there were ways to hide some little things from one another. Sorcha was not yet prepared to share her darker, creeping fears with Merrick.
First, they had to survive this. Through her partner’s Center she could sense more Deacons nearing their position. Once they reached Merrick and herself, they could form a Conclave and then they would have the superior strength.
However, a Conclave relied on physical proximity.
No sooner had that thought escaped Sorcha, than a cold, stinging wind blew fiercely off the chasm. It raced around both she and Merrick. Its scream was nothing that a normal gale could have produced, and it was full of teeth and bitterness. It swirled around them, blowing their capes around them like shrouds, before racing into the Great Hall.
Sorcha heard the sounds of the heavy wooden shutters slamming shut, and if that was not enough to assure the Deacons that this was deliberate, it was soon accompanied by the racket of furniture suddenly being thrown up against the doors. Heavy wooden tables, chairs and their packs acted as most effective barricades against Sorcha and Merrick leaving, or anyone else reaching them.
The rune Voishem that would have allowed the Deacons to shift and phase through the walls had not yet been mastered by the recently tattooed of their colleges. They would hesitate to use it. No one wanted to be stranded half in and half out of an object. Instead, the sounds of shoulders being applied to doors could be vaguely discerned.
“So that’s the way it shall be,” Sorcha muttered through ice-cold lips, and her words froze in the air. She turned back to the now foot-wide gap and rolled up her sleeves as high as they would go.
Merrick took a step nearer to her, so that he stood in her shadow, which streamed backward into the Great Hall. The light coming from the gap in reality was that bright.
Everything was absolutely still for a moment; even the roar of the waterfall seemed distant. Their shared Center was tightly focused on the long thin figure that was pushing its way through the gap in the world. It slipped free with a sucking pop—but its place was immediately taken by another that was its exact replica.
They were not geistlords, which was an immediate relief, but neither Deacon had a chance to enjoy that, because they identified what had escaped instead.
Wari were greater than the average geist, and known for appearing just before geistlords. Some called them the “heralds,” but they carried more than trumpets and banners. A wari could rip a soul from a human body like a man might tear a bone from well-cooked chicken. They were incredibly uncommon, and yet now a third was squeezing its way through the gap.
One would not have been a problem, but as the knife-sharp shapes began to circle toward them, Sorcha raised her hands. Confidence was what she was trained to project, but along the Bond she shared her worries with Merrick. The runes on her flesh did not feel as comfortable as when they had been on her now-destroyed Gauntlets. They were as slippery as fish, and so she hesitated to act.
Through the shared Center the wari gleamed like silver scintillating clouds. Their long arms were formed into claws perfectly shaped for their purpose.
Sorcha. For a moment she didn’t realize it was Merrick’s voice in her head. Sorcha, he repeated. They are flanking us. We have to move before they do.
The Active felt a little annoyed at his goad—but damned if he wasn’t right. She was moving as slow as an old man first thing in the morning. The warm shapes of the other Deacons beyond the door wouldn’t get in quickly enough. She and Merrick would be soulless shells before then.
Sorcha wrapped her mind around Pyet, the Fifth Rune of Dominion. It felt like it wriggled to elude her, but she bore down on it. The experience of summoning a rune from her flesh rather than from tanned leather was excruciating. Something about the Gauntlet had stood between her and the raw power. Now it felt as though her skin were being flayed as Pyet illuminated and ran down the patterns carved there. It was a stream of molten metal that she had to release.
With a howl of frustration and rage, Sorcha spread her fingers wide on her left hand, braced it with her right, and let the flame boil out of her. Her control was not what it had been, and Merrick had to duck wildly out of the way as fire roared from his partner and scattered all over the Great Hall. He tackled her around the middle, holding her up where she might have fallen. Her eyelids were heavy, and rather than the usual euphoria that enveloped her when channeling the runes, she felt as if she might be blown away on the swirling winds.
“Let it go,” Merrick screamed in her ear. “You can’t hold it steady and the wari aren’t even there.”
With his mind and body for support Sorcha was able to close the rune. The wari had been scared off for only a moment. They dropped down from the ceiling to the floor and advanced once more. The heat of Pyet was soon forgotten as the geists’ freezing presence enveloped them.
Sorcha was used to pain; what she was not used to was not knowing what to do. The wari were closing in, but Merrick—still holding her upright—unrolled Kebenar, the Fourth Rune of Sight around them.