At the side of this device stood a gray-bearded man wearing elaborate robes, with the symbol of Hatipai over the broad sash of a royal Chancellor. He looked remarkably well for a man that should have died back in the palace.
Sorcha wished Raed would turn and look, but his eyes were cast down. Only the training and discipline of a Deacon kept her from raising her Gauntlets right then. Instead, she lowered her head and began shoving and twisting her way toward the dais. She didn’t care how many toes she trod on or whose ribs got bruised in the process.
From her nearing vantage point Sorcha could now see the Grand Duchess Zofiya, but it took her a moment to recognize her. She was not in her usual dress uniform. Instead, she wore a thin white robe that left little to the imagination. In her hands, held stiffly out before her, was a sphere like the one the Prince had used. This one was larger but full of the same silver liquid. Zofiya’s face was as expressionless as a statue—very unlike her usual restless nature. This is where faith gets you, Sorcha thought.
Ahead, the golden, ethereal form was bending toward Onika, and her words were loud and echoed off the walls of her Temple. “So, you have returned, my wayward son, returned to take your place with me?”
Onika threw off his cloak, and his voice too was impossibly loud. “I’ve come to finish what I should have generations ago, Mother.” And then he swung down with the blade into the swirling mass of golden light.
Sorcha was now six rows of people away from reaching the theater of events, but she was blind without Merrick. The moment hung impossibly. Some of the people in the Temple began to wail and surge forward, carrying her with them. And then Hatipai’s laughter boomed over everything.
It was not the sound Sorcha or Onika had been expecting, and now the Deacon’s stomach clenched into a tight, painful knot. The crowd around her caught their goddess’ mood and began to laugh too. It didn’t make them any easier to get past.
Onika sank to his knees, his shoulders slumped.
“You really should not believe everything you read, my son.” The golden mist solidified, an echo of a grinning woman’s face.
The treacherous Chancellor laughed; his voice cracked like he’d been left too long in the desert heat. “We made the book, the prophecy, and you swallowed it down.”
Onika’s head sank to his chest as Hatipai enjoyed her moment. “You were always my backup plan, dear boy. The carrier of my flesh, should I lose it.”
“Mother.” His voice was angry, frustrated, lost. “Let her live . . . let my boy live.”
“Never!” Hatipai’s wings flew wide. “Every one of my flesh must die or be sacrificed—there will be no god or goddess but Hatipai!”
What else could he do? Sorcha felt herself on the edge of angry tears. The Prince was a pawn in this game but a good man despite everything. She threw herself toward them desperately. Now she was only two ranks of people away from breaking free, but this close, people were less likely to give way.
Hatipai looked at her son with a fierce look that hovered between rage and sorrow. “I knew you’d read the prophecy, and I knew you’d forget . . . a mother can always take back what she has given—if she has the will.”
The goddess moved, but the Prince made no move to try to escape—there was, after all, nowhere to go. Unlike a geist, a geistlord could indeed hurt. That beautiful face was ripped from him with a terrible sound that all could hear, and then blood poured down the steps. He stayed on his knees for a while as the mist drained him, and then his body toppled. It slid down the steps slowly and then to one side with an audible thump.
Finally Sorcha broke free of the crowd. Hatipai was spinning, a cloud that was now red and gold; she was forming a body from what she had taken from her own son. The Deacon knew that she only had a few moments before the geistlord turned to Raed to take the remainder of what she needed from the him and the Rossin. It was the nature of geistlords to devour one another. Then she would take the sphere, which looked like the one her son had given Sorcha, and become impossible to stop.
So the Deacon tightened the lacings on her Gauntlets, then dashed up the stairs and threw herself into the maelstrom. The gold light enveloped her, and everything else ceased to matter. Her Center was blinded and useless. All there was was Hatipai. The Bright One.
The geistlord tore at Sorcha with her forming hands, and the pain was exquisite. The Deacon screamed as the geistlord wrapped around her inside her. Yet Onika’s gift held her body against the onslaught.
Sorcha tried to think past the pain. Though her body could not be destroyed, her mind and soul could be, so she had to work quickly. Desperately she called runes from her Gauntlets; Chityre and Pyet. Lightning flickered and danced through the red and gold of Hatipai, while flame bloomed around them. It could not touch the geistlord though.
Her face in the flames was now smiling and beautiful. “You cannot hurt me, Deacon. I do not yet have a body.”
“But you can’t destroy me either,” Sorcha panted, her muscles screaming, “thanks to your son’s gift. I will hold you here forever if necessary.” She hoped her opponent could not read the lie from her mind. Sorcha had no idea how temporary her immunity was.
Dropping Chityre, she instead demanded the rune Yevah from her Gauntlets. The snap of the shield around them might offer some protection to the humans.
“Perhaps so.” Hatipai caressed the Deacon’s cheek, a line of fire following. “But I will eventually burn out your mind and then have my way.”
By the Bones, she was right. The image of the broken members of her Order had always haunted Sorcha. She was an idiot to think she could hold out indefinitely.
“So many fears, so many doubts.” The geistlord cooed into her ear. “We all have our secrets, don’t we, little human, and I know the dirty secret of your existence . . . ”
Sorcha didn’t know what the damned creature was talking about, too busy holding up multiple runes while drowning in pain. Through the flickering of the shield she could finally see Raed. Now he was looking at her, his face a mask of horror and frustration as he strained against his bonds. They seemed to always be getting their timing wrong, and now there would be no chance for more. She regretted that.
The followers. The voice in her head was not Merrick, not even Raed; it was the Rossin. Trapped and angry, the Beast reached out to her. The undead foci, they still follow her. Why? Why, you foolish mortal? Think!
The foci of any geist were a strength and a weakness. Sorcha’s streaming eyes flickered to those coalescing shades, and it was then she suddenly realized that most of them were spectyrs.
Yes, you see it. You finally see it. Vengeance.
Hatipai had lied to them, and they were not here at her bidding—they were here for her! They were out for vengeance, and it was the Deacon’s place to give it to them.
Dropping the runes she held, Sorcha called on another, Tryrei, the rune that created a tiny peephole to the Otherside.
Hatipai roared with laughter. “You cannot drag me back home with that.”
Sorcha, holding the rune, felt her strength begin to wane, but she would not let go. “The spectyrs can’t see you very well. I’m giving them a torch,” was all she managed to gasp out.
They had gathered together here to find answers to their ancient deaths. They knew they had been tricked by a geistlord and their faith had been misplaced.
The tiny hole to the Otherside got their attention, buried as it was in midst of Hatipai, the one who had fooled them. A terrible scream filled the Temple, the sound of a thousand souls in pain. They had lost everything to the geistlord: love, family, hope and life itself. The spectyrs flew re like an angry cloud of ravens. Sorcha bit her lip, clenched her muscles and concentrated on the rune as they tore away at Hatipai. She had to hold it for them.