“And take the crew with you,” Raed added. He turned and looked at each one in turn. “Your deaths with us would be needless. I have already had too many friends die for me. This is my last order: go live, be as safe and well as you can be.”
He shook each of their hands in turn, and then embraced them whispering a few words into each ear. Frith at first would not look at him, but eventually gave up with a sharp sob. Aleck looked as somber as a funeral mourner.
Aachon bowed slightly. “I know you will bring honor to the name of your family, my prince.”
Merrick sketched an elegant bow to the first mate, a strange gesture in such an ugly place. “My mother and young brother’s rooms are on the floor below del Rue’s rooms in the palace. I fear the Emperor might think to use them against me, or they might fall prey to a geist. I would owe you a great debt if you can get them to Widow Vashill’s where there is at least some chance of safety.”
Aachon studied the young man seriously, before giving an equally broad bow. “I give you my word on it.”
Raed then clapped his arms around Aachon, and the two men embraced while the Deacons watched impassively. Sorcha couldn’t say anything because there was a strange lump in her throat. Merrick was looking down at his shoes.
Then the crew members took their leave, and leapt through the portal, bouncing somewhat ridiculously on the bed. Aachon waited for Ratimana to go before him.
First the old man placed the board in Sorcha’s hands. The new Pattern. It was a flimsy thing, ripped from a crate discarded in someone’s cellar, yet it was now the most important thing to the Order. She held it in her hands and gazed upon it in wonder, mixed with a little fear.
“Remember which you are; the Eye or the Fist,” the old man cackled, before turning and leaping through the portal.
Aachon favored the remaining group with a piercing look, as if fixing them in his memory, before giving a curt bow to all of them in turn. He followed the Patternmaker through the tunnel.
Then it was just Raed and the Deacons in the chamber. The Young Pretender sighed and straightened as if a burden was settling on him. “Now what? There is no portal into the Mother Abbey I take it?”
“No.” Sorcha smiled, but did not touch him. Instead she ran her finger over the keystone. “Not yet.”
Naturally del Rue had not dared to make a portal into the Mother Abbey while all the Deacons had their runes. Nor did he probably wish to show his own power to the Emperor just yet, considering he was playing the wily advisor and Kaleva was enraged by the Order. It would not do to have the Emperor turn his wrath on him.
However, Sorcha was starting to understand the weirstone tunnels. Someone had to have made them, and every time she used them there was a feeling that something was also opening up inside herself. Her mother, after all, had given birth to her with this sole purpose in mind. If anything was engrained on her psyche it was the tunnels, since she’d only been a few moments old when her mother had taken her through one. Perhaps, she realized with a jolt, that was why she had always so disliked weirstones.
Cautiously, she placed her fingertips on the keystone once more and the image of the grand bed in the palace wavered and disappeared. She was going to change the place these weirstones knew with one she knew and remembered. In the darkness underneath the Mother Abbey, she, Merrick and Raed had found a world that had belonged to the Circle of Stars: a long stretch of tunnels and underground passages where they kept their darker creations. The possibility matrix and the tunnels that led to secret escape routes into the city had been destroyed—at least according to Arch Abbot Rictun. However she thought of the great room with the stalactites and the stalagmites. That had been there an eternity, and surely had not been easy to bring down.
Holding that image tight in her mind, she pressed forward into the weirstone. The images of her mother flashed again, what she had seen and felt. The Wrayth, the geistlord that had ridden in her biological father as he made her, was there too. She didn’t want to think about or acknowledge that part of her being, but it was there and allowing her to do this. She pushed harder into the borderlands of the Otherside itself. The realm of the geists knew nothing of time or space—Merrick had journeyed into the past with Nynnia’s help from there. It would take not much more than that to bend the Otherside toward the Mother Abbey.
It surprised her; the strength of her own will, and how pliable the stone was. The drawing of two points together felt suddenly easy. Behind her, Sorcha heard Merrick gasp and the whispers of her fellow Deacons echoed around the cellar.
With a shake of her head, she looked through the weirstone tunnel to the familiar underground chamber. She recognized that soft blue light. “These are tunnels under the Arch Abbot’s rooms at the Mother Abbey,” she explained. “Merrick and I found them a year or so ago. The secret door should hopefully still be there.”
Raed looked at her, and it was almost as if he was seeing her for the first time. “That’s quite something.”
She merely smiled, and then to demonstrate her faith in her own abilities stepped through the portal.
On the other side it was as chill and damp as she remembered, and lit by the same odd blue light from the moss that grew in the caverns. Before she could get too maudlin about the changes that had been wrought on her life since her last time down here, Merrick stepped through, followed by Raed and the rest of the Deacons.
Deacon Natylda looked about in amazement. “All this lying under the Abbey, and no one ever knew it was down here?”
“Well, some did,” Raed whispered. The place seemed to require whispers. “The Arch Abbots of your Order probably found it early on.”
Before anyone could comment further, Merrick spun about. “I have to check something,” he said, and darted away from them, deeper into the field of stalactites and stalagmites. Sorcha had a good idea what he was up to.
Raed opened his mouth to speak, but she forestalled him. “We’ll give him a moment.” While they waited, she decided that she had no desire for this del Rue, or any of the other Circle of Stars Deacons to come up behind them. It was surprisingly easy for her to wrap her fingertips around the keystone, and pull it loose. It was the most effective way to lock the tunnel. Raed was staring down the passage keeping an eye out for Merrick, so he wasn’t there to notice her slip it into her pocket.
Her partner didn’t take long to come back to them. A grin was on his face. “You might not like Rictun, Sorcha, but he did what he said. The possibility matrix and the tunnel to the outside canal are all gone. Looks like they pulled down part of the ceiling to block both.”
“I don’t think Rictun is working with them.” Raed drew his pistol and examined the powder for dampness. “Just that he is the wrong man for the job.”
Merrick’s mouth twisted, and along the still fragile Bond, Sorcha felt his rage like a streak of poison. “No, it has most certainly become clear that it is the case.”
“Regardless there is only one way out of here,” Sorcha said, turning toward the stairs. “Let’s not give the man any more time to destroy the Empire and the Order.”
She led the way, feeling the dampness under her boots, and slipping now and again on the stairs. It was, as Merrick said, apparent that no one had been down here for some time. They climbed for a little bit in utter silence, but the flickers of emotion around her were in chaos. It was hard to trust this new way of doing things, especially when crafted by a crazy, dirty old man. The new Pattern, tucked into the back of her pants, felt like ice pressed against her skin, and she was terrified of slipping and breaking the fragile piece of wood with her backside. That would be a graceful end for the Order right there and then.
Merrick, climbing behind her, chuckled—even though she had not said anything. Sorcha shot him an angry look over one shoulder, and it actually made her feel a little better. Things felt more real with their partnership intact. The Bond was still strong, even if the runes felt a little unstable.