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Now everything was laid bare to her. The wari were more than just three entities. Sorcha pushed her hair out of her eyes and got her feet under her. Not for the first time she wondered how she had managed without Merrick at her back.

They are a net, sent to take us back. The idea of that was worse than if they had been trying to kill or destroy their souls. To be wrenched through to the Otherside and pulled apart by geists was the most terrible fate imaginable.

A bright memory flashed across the Bond, one from her partner. Floating in a sea of stars, with the indistinct face of Nynnia hovering nearby. Such a feeling of peace and joy filled Sorcha that she began to understand what misery Merrick had been in. No one forgets his first love, and Nynnia, Ancient, sent through time, had been that to Sorcha’s Sensitive.

This time however, it would not be Nynnia bringing them to the Otherside—and the geists would have far less generous ways of handling them. As the wari charged, Sorcha reflexively threw up her left hand and summoned Yevah from her skin.

A gleaming scarlet flaming dome leapt to life between the geists and the Deacons. For a moment the cold lifted slightly. It should have been a deep relief, but Sorcha was still frozen down to her bones.

The hand she was holding the shield rune up with had her full attention. The spiderweb Pattern of the rune on her arms was running flame red, gleaming on her skin like colored fire, but now she saw something else entirely.

The light coming from the crack was illuminating something she had never seen before. Now standing before the shimmering gap into the Otherside, she saw the tendril of the rune gleaming on her flesh, and disappearing into it through the space to the realm of the undead.

It makes sense. Merrick’s whisper into her mind was like a trickle of cold water over her stunned conscience. The runes are powers from the Otherside, and it seems the Order stole them from there.

He was so calm, and yet what he was saying was not in their teachings. In the novitiate they were taught that the runes came from humanity’s own psyche; ripped from their souls in order to fight the geists. It was so relentlessly drummed into them that Sorcha had never thought to question it.

The Sensitives . . . had they known? How could they not know? A little worm of distrust bit her deep down. No, not Merrick. He can’t have known.

Sorcha! His voice battered the inside of her skull as hard as a hammer blow. Her distraction had however been enough.

The three wari were inside the shield. Their long stretched faces charged at the two Deacons while their claws flashed back, ready to strike. Sorcha heard Merrick shout over her right shoulder, but there was nothing to be done, and what could a Sensitive do in any case? She caught a glimpse of the long, sharp faces, the mouths curved open in something that might have been undead delight; macabre joy that surely meant the end for the pair of Deacons.

Sorcha had a moment to contemplate how foolish and weak she had been. Her soul was about to be ripped from her body, and there was nothing at all she could do to prevent it. The three assailants moved. The cold tips of the geists’ fingers touched her, and the pain of those touches penetrating her skin was enough to have broken a normal human. However, the claws did not drive deeper to separate soul from body.

Three sets of empty, dark eyes locked on her, and the words that formed in her mind were like pools of ice. Mistress . . . apologies . . . we did not know . . .

Unbelievably, she was hearing the geists in her mind as clearly as she heard Merrick. Just when she’d thought that the world could not get any more broken and strange.

Merrick was there, though, and louder than the undead could ever hope to be. Shayst! Now!

It was beaten into her to obey her Sensitive when he called. His judgment was not be to questioned. She thrust out her right arm, and the green light of the sixth rune ran widdershins up it. The pain of the wari and the rune combined until it felt like her head was about to turn itself inside out.

The geists were all connected to her; their bodies were inside her, and they had no time to escape the ravages of Shayst as it reached into their very being. They had come from the Otherside to rip her soul free, and instead it was she doing the ripping. Sorcha tore their very substance apart. She did it quickly so that there was no way that they could poison her mind with more terrifying words.

The two Deacons stood there a moment, panting slightly, their minds and Sight tangled together. Sorcha was not sure how much her partner had seen of those moments of chaos, but she hoped he had not caught any of it. She didn’t know what they meant and she didn’t want to hear—at least straight away—what he might think had happened.

Merrick straightened and pulled back his Center. For some reason, this time she felt bereft. Her partner didn’t say anything to her, but strode off the balcony, back into the Great Hall, and began throwing the heavy furniture away from the door. After taking a deep breath, Sorcha went to help him.

The flood of angry and worried Deacons surged into the room. They looked about them, and Sorcha did not need to share Merrick’s Sight to know they were horrified. The scene was a little dramatic; blood, bodies and the dissipating fetid smell of the Otherside.

“It is lucky that we hadn’t decorated the citadel yet,” Sorcha said, motioning to the burned stone and pools of blood drying on the floor.

Then, pushing aside the dark thoughts that had been born in the carnage, she began helping them tidy up. In this new world, they couldn’t afford to merely let the lay Brothers clean up the mess. Now, they all had to pitch in.

THREE

The Beast Walks

Raed fled the citadel, holding the Rossin off by only the scantest breath. His throat was choked, so that as he ran up to the sentry at the entrance, he could only manage a few garbled words before shoving his way past him and into the night. Luckily, the man had instructions to keep watch for dangers without—not within. He bowed, and stepped aside as the Young Pretender ran out into the rock-filled valley that was one of only two entrances into the citadel.

Staggering, Raed sprinted as fast as he could, the image of the Rossin running amok in the confines of the fortress burning in the back of his brain. He would not do that to Sorcha. She had worked so hard to bring them to this place of refuge that he could not allow it to become a one of slaughter.

The night was cold and as desolate as his thoughts. His breath, which came in ragged gasps, froze before his straining eyes. None of that registered, though, as he stumbled on, catching his feet in the cracks and fissures of the scree slope.

It didn’t matter. What mattered was what was going on inside him. The Rossin, that great cursed Beast that had taken up residence within him, was laughing. At least that was what it felt like.

He had, months before, made a pact with the creature. It was one born out of survival, and a desire to save a sister, now lost to him anyway. The geistlord had given him control over the change, in return for the Beast living closer to the surface. It was an arrangement that had allowed him to pass through some of the most hostile environments in Arkaym, and track his sister to the farthest ends of the Empire.

It had been a ruse by the Beast.

Raed clutched at his throat. It felt as though the Rossin were clawing its way up from down there, an image of ferocious rage that almost dropped him to his knees.

Once, the Beast had been confined deeper in his consciousness and only risen to the surface when the presence of other geists had given him power. Now, it seemed the Beast would have its way whenever it wanted.