Spectyr

TWENTY-TWO The Last Time

Merrick pulled himself to his feet, feeling the effects of Onika’s presence pass. Barely had he finished his recovery, when the burrowing ship lurched, knocking him off them again. The Prince caught him by the elbow, and with an impressive display of catlike grace managed to wedge both of them against the wall while the ship continued to vibrate and strain. The weirstones in their cradles rolled like children’s marbles, but thankfully none came loose.

Around them the metal groaned like a sick person, and for an instant Merrick had the image of it collapsing inward. He could almost taste the earth in his mouth, and he immediately reacted how he’d been taught—he flung his Center out. Instantly his senses were flooded with power—a power that he recognized.

“A geistlord!” he yelled, but Onika was not there to hear his pronouncements. He snatched up a weirstone and bolted back through the hatchway they had come through. All the way the ship shifted and bucked under them, but there was a definite direction—up.

Once in the main room, Merrick’s ears were assaulted by the clanging of the machinery around him: gears spun and pistons pumped harder than could be good. The Ehtia were everywhere, scrambling to keep their ship from tearing itself apart, shouting orders at one another, and wide-eyed with near panic.

Merrick lost sight of Onika but spun about when Nynnia grabbed his arm. Her eyes were dark pits in the strange green light of the ship. “We’re going to have to surface—she’s found us!”

The young Deacon could guess what kind of “she” she meant. He might be out of his own time, but his training still held.

“We’ve surfaced!” someone yelled, and now they were all running for the exit. Merrick jerked away from Nynnia and joined those pounding through the corridors and hatchways. This was not panic—this was the organized pelt of warriors toward a battle. He had seen it before in Vermillion, and as a trained Deacon the battle was where he had to be—it didn’t matter what time in history it was or that it was not his fight.

He burst through the final hatch, with a press of people at his back, and the sudden influx of light blinded him for an instant. A Sensitive without Sight, he stumbled forward. The Ehtia, with their strange dark clothing, spread out into the suddenly silent landscape. The weapons they carried were gleaming brass crossbows and long, curved sticks that he couldn’t identify. At their head stood Onika, a weirstone clutched in one hand. The interior of the stone wirling like a vortex, and it boded ill.

Merrick could smell the arrival of the geistlord. It was sweet and pungent, very like the thick perfumes found in the temples of the little gods. He flinched when Nynnia touched his shoulder. Her face was set in stern lines, and she flexed her fingers around one of the strange sticks. “Now you will get to see our folly, Merrick Chambers.” She looked so sad that he wanted to offer some comfort, but he didn’t know what would work. “The weirstone-craft we thought we were so clever to create”—Nynnia flicked him a bitter glance—“it brought their attention to us from the Otherside.”

Merrick was about to answer, when the earth twisted under him. It was not much, but a shiver that foretold something more. He could feel all the animals fleeing from where he and the Ehtia stood; the earthworms dug deeper, the bugs that could fly caught the breeze as best they could, and the furred beasts scampered in among the rocks. He wished he could join them.

A woman appeared over the rise of the hill, though it was hard to see her shape or form, concealed as it was in darkness. Merrick drew in his breath and felt primitive fear clutch his stomach.

Few Deacons had seen a geistlord and lived to report back. The first Deacon sprang to Merrick’s mind, the ancestor of Raed Rossin, and how he had made the first bargain with the geistlord. As the woman drew nearer, Merrick realized one thing—no one had spoken of their terrible beauty.

Her dark hair tumbled down flawless, naked skin. As his vision cleared he was entranced by the glimpses of her body beyond her curls. She was perfectly nude, and her soft feet landed on rock or moss without reaction—as if pain was for smaller beings. Shadows cascaded from her shoulders and circled her head. Thankfully he could not see into them fully . . . and he knew why.

“Shades,” he whispered, his Center revealing the captured souls that followed her. He could not count the number of them—it had to be thousands. Suddenly the horror of the Rossin did not seem so great.

Geists fed on the souls of humans for the most part—but it was not all that could sustain them. Emotions like rage and love often drew them, so what greater sustenance could there be for a geistlord than adoration? These shades suggested this one had fed well.

“Mother,” Onika spoke clearly to the advancing woman, “you are not welcome here.”

Merrick shook his head—for a moment pulling the two difficult facts together. That Hatipai was a goddess, he was sure. But that was not all he saw when he looked at her. She was also a geist.

Though he was horrified, it made sense. Scholars had always just assumed that the population had turned away from the gods because they had been unable to protect them from the arrival of the Otherside—but if any of them had suspected they were in fact geistlords, then denying their deities was just retribution.

“Son,” the woman spoke, and it was like sweet honey. A sound to make men weep with lust and women commit suicide in despair. “Come to me, and all will be forgiven—even trying to turn my faithful against me.”

Onika straightened. “I could not do it.”

“No.” The goddess laughed. “Not for lack of trying, though. They would have none of it. Foolish boy.”

Though there was no expression visible under the mask, the Prince’s weight of sadness was reflected in the set of his shoulders. He certainly did no appear to enjoy his godhood.

She stepped closer, and even the Ehtia drew back as her presence threatened to wash over them. “I made you for a purpose, Onika: to protect my realm and all the people in it. So long as you live—and I made you to live forever, dearest—Chioma will endure.”

Onika’s laugh was low and bitter. “Yet what is the point of eternal life without love? And you made sure that there will never be love or an heir for me.”

His voice was so sad that it instantly brought Merrick back to the moment where his mother was sitting next to him on the bed, smiling, with her hand resting on her full stomach. I don’t know how he heard of me, she had said.

Suddenly the future opened up before him, and he heard Nynnia’s words. Plant the seed, she had said. His mother had smiled and glowed with such happiness. It had been true love in her eyes, not the mad, hopeless faith of one trapped by the demigod beneath the mask, but real love, as unexpected, delicious and treasured as that could be. Merrick knew what Nynnia wanted and why she had sent him here.

He almost blurted it out, but then Hatipai was speaking. “You alone can hold Chioma—you must live.”

Onika was her focus. The Order’s training made this blatantly obvious. Just as the Rossin had invested in the Imperial family, Hatipai had made her own anchor to this world—similar but different ways of surviving the perils of the real world.

“Let these people pass,” Onika growled.

“Your allies?” The shadows began to race counterclockwise around the face of the geistlord. “They practically invited us into this world, and now when they betray us, you would protect them?” The shades darted apart, and her face was revealed.

Merrick’s senses betrayed him. He dimly heard the Ehtia around him also fall to their knees, but nothing mattered apart from the glory of Hatipai. None of them were worthy of it. When her gaze fell on him, he wanted to slit his own throat lest he insult her with his own pitiful nature. He rolled onto his back, his hands grasping desperately for his knife.

To his right, he caught a glimpse of the vile woman Nynnia fumbling with her stick. She did not seem to have quite as an appropriate reaction to the glory of Hatipai.

From the ground he also saw the heretic Onika raising the weirstone. His glory was nothing compared to his mother’s. But somehow in his fitful delight, Merrick saw a parting of the shades, a gap in her armor of souls. And he reached deep for his training—throwing his mind into the puzzles and recitations he’d studied for years. In there he found a moment of respite.

“There.” His voice cracked. “Onika, there!”

He had no Bond with the Prince as he had with Sorcha, but his voice was just loud enough to hear. Onika said a bright, hot word and threw the weirstone into the shadows and the gap that the Deacon had spotted.

Hatipai screamed, a sound that went deeper than bone, and the shadows flew high. Shades, those mindless, repetitive remains of souls, broke from her like a cloud of scattering crows. Merrick saw them escape the pull of the geistlord and was glad, though everything was mad and dead to him in that moment. Then the world was swallowed by darkness.

When consciousness found him again, his head was cradled in Nynnia’s lap. Her fingers gently stroked his hair, calling him back to reality. It was a lovely ment, but eventually he found his feet.

Nothing dark remained on the blasted cliff top—only the Ehtia, their machine and Onika. “What happened?” The young Deacon turned to Nynnia, but it was the Prince who replied.

“She is gone . . . for now.” His shoulders slumped. “I have bought you enough time to escape. The path is free for you to reach Mount Sytha, my friends.” He sounded desperately alone. “She and I will continue our tussle once you are gone.”

Nynnia grabbed him in a tight embrace. “You will find other allies, Onika. She is not as all-powerful as she thinks.”

Then the Ehtia surrounded him, hugging him, whispering thanks in his ear—while Nynnia and Merrick stepped back.

The weight of sorrow pressed on the Deacon—especially as he knew how many lonely years Onika would have to endure. As the crew of the ship began to clamber back into the hatches, Merrick squeezed Nynnia’s hand and went to speak to the Prince. “Thank you for what you are doing, Your Highness. The people of Chioma might not know what you sacrificed to keep them safe, but others do.”

“I have to be a hero,” Onika muttered, “or become like her.”

“Then I hope you remember this—” Merrick paused, caught by the circular nature of this weird logic, before plunging on. “In the time of an Emperor called Kaleva, seek out a woman known as the flower of Da Nanth.”

“Da Nanth?”

Naturally he wouldn’t know of the principality—because it had not yet been created. It almost hurt his head to think about it, so he merely smiled. “Trust me, it is a place—though not yet.”

The Prince frowned, but a spark of something that felt like hope lurked in his expression. “Thank you, my friend.”

“Do not thank me”—Merrick clapped him on the shoulder—“thank Nynnia.”

The Prince smiled uncertainly and embraced the woman. “Go safe into that place, old friend—part of me wishes I could come with you.” He kissed the top of her head.

She laid her hands over his for an instant. “You have your people to take care of, Onika—and where we go, you cannot.”

The Prince turned and sketched a little bow in Merrick’s direction, the beaded mask swaying. Onika’s voice was smooth, strong and just as it would be when next they encountered each other in throne room in the Hive City. “I find myself looking forward to meeting you again, Merrick Chambers.”

As the Prince of Chioma left, the Deacon recalled his first meeting with the Prince. Looking back on it, he presumed Onika had recognized him. That damn mask always concealed so much—it was hardly a surprise that the ruler had developed a reputation as a mystery.

“Why can he not go with you?” Merrick found himself whispering to Nynnia.

She sighed and tapped him lightly on the arm, as if a teacher correcting a pupil who should have known better. “Think of it: a half human/half geist in that place. He would be torn apart by the geistlords shackled as he is with a mortal frame. They feed on the energy of their own kind there.”

The Deacon shivered as he recalled the landscape of that dread place.

“Still, Onika made quite the impression on you, didn’t he?” Nynnia’s eyebrow crooked, and a slight smile lurked and her delectable lips.

“He certainly is . . . different.” Merrick wrapped his arm around her waist. “Though my Emperor is a fine person, still some part of me is always surprised that anyone in power can be good—let alone the son of a ‘goddess.’ ”

She nodded thoughtfully and then led him back into the tunneling machine. “I confess, we did not believe Onika when he first offered us his help. Many doubted that he would turn against his mother—but he proved himself.” She took his hand and pulled him along a long corridor.

“Where are we going?” His stomach clenched as the machine began once again to descend—this time with no terrifying rolling.

“As Onika said”—Nynnia squeezed his fingers—“Mount Sytha. All of our people are gathering there to perform the ceremony.”

The Nynnia on the Otherside had said there was a reason for her to send him here, and then she would bring him back to his own time. Merrick didn’t want to go back—even if this world was falling apart. This was where Nynnia was still alive.

He knew that Sorcha was back in his own time, his mother too—and both Merrick knew were in deadly peril. The Deacon found himself torn between duty and happiness.

“And then what?” he asked, terribly afraid of the answer.

Nynnia stood poised with one hand on a door handle, her brow furrowed. “We have to atone for our crimes: swear off the use of weirstones and runes. Give up our bodies.”

“You’re leaving this world,” Merrick whispered. “Traveling to the Otherside.”

A muscle in her jaw twitched as she gave a sharp nod. “If we stay, Hatipai and the other geists will tear this world apart hunting us. We will go to the one place she dares not follow. Having anchored herself into this world with a focus, she can no longer go back to the Otherside—nor would she want to—the human meat here is so much sweeter. So, with our knowledge, we can build a place there—and maybe one day come home when it is safe.”

Merrick pressed his lips together and closed his eyes—remembering the tales of that Dark Time. The suffering the people of this time were about to endure would be terrible. Yet from that maelstrom would arise the Order, the Rossin dynasty, and eventually the Empire. It would take hundreds of years, but they would conqueror the geistlords, even Hatipai, and learn to contain the lesser geists.

Nothing he could do would change that. Nor should it.

Nynnia pushed open the door, and he saw that it led into a small bedchamber with a reasonably sized bed bolted to the wall. A luxurious cerulean quilted blanket brightened what would otherwise have been rather bleak accommodations. He drew in his breath and shot the woman at his side a confused look. “Nynnia, I—”

She stopped his words most effectively by pulling his mouth down to hers. The kiss was long, desperate and sweet. When she finally let him go, her brown eyes were wide and her smile crooked. “When we leave this world, Merrick Chambers, we Ehtia will abandon our bodies—become part of the Otherside. I intend to give mine a proper send-off.”

The Deacon’s blood raced. Merrick wanted to grab what time there was that remained, but his gentlemanly sensibilities wouldn’t let him take total advantage. “You hardly know me.”

The pad of her thumb brushed his mouth. “But I know you love me, and sime in the future, however that may happen, I will love you. When we next meet, I would have one of us remember these moments.”

The Deacon’s mind did another flip. It was all too complicated and painful.

“We will love each other,” Merrick replied and let himself be led into her bedroom. He said nothing of them losing each other again. That pain could wait.

Once the door was shut, nothing outside mattered. The Deacon did not care to think that this would be the one and only time for them—he pushed that realization as far back as he could. He would have her find nothing bitter in his mind.

Instead, Merrick took his time undressing Nynnia, even as she raced to strip him of his cloak, shirt and breeches.

“So young,” she breathed, looking up at him. The comment was soft and almost sadly said.

Nynnia would in fact have taken a step back, but Merrick paused unbuttoning her blouse and captured her hand, pressing it firmly against his bare chest. “You will be young again someday—the very one we meet.”

She frowned, shook her head, laughed and then leaned forward to kiss him. Perhaps there wasn’t as much meaning for her as there was for him, yet it was still precious. Merrick delighted in her unashamed trust, when he released the last of her rather intricately tied trousers and she stepped back to allow him to look at her.

“You are beautiful, Nynnia,” he said through a voice grown abruptly rough with desire. It was no lie; she was. However in the future she regained her youth, for right now, she had a lithe, muscular body, only slightly touched by age. He thought it ripe like a fruit brought to sugar and fullness.

Merrick ran his hand down her right arm and felt the ridges of five wide scars that streaked from shoulder to elbow. As he slid his palm around her, he was able to make out that they in fact took in half her back.

Nynnia looked at him so very earnestly. “Very few escape the geistlords without some sort of mark. I hope they don’t put you off—”

When he bent and ran the sweep of his tongue against the ridges, she stopped mid-sentence and let out a low groan. Then Merrick pulled her with him as he flopped back on the bed. The sensation of the full length of their bodies pressed against each other with no unnatural hindrance was bliss.

Please let this go on forever. Merrick’s head was spinning. The Nynnia he had met in his own time had loved him, but they had never been able to find a time to consummate those feelings. He had wanted to badly, and yet he’d been so wrapped up in being a Deacon, he’d missed the chance.

“Are you—” Nynnia’s gaze narrowed, even as her breath began to come in shallow pants that were echoed by his own. “Are you a virgin?”

Sometimes telepathy was a double-edged sword—but Merrick had only become used to it between Sorcha and himself. Whatever gifts the Ehtia had meant that very few of his surface thoughts were sacrosanct.

Nynnia blushed. “I am sorry—you are broadcasting so loudly.”

A chuckle rolled through his body. “Well, it is at the top of my concerns right now. I don’t have much experience, but I am not quite a virgin. I just don’t want to disappoint you.”

Her teeth nibbled along the line of his neck, rising toward his ear, and suddenly those concerns melted away. Nynnia puled back and licked her lips. “A handsome young man, travels back through time to find me, and beds me on my last day in this realm? How could you disappoint me?” Her voice was low, husky and laced with raw desire.

Warmth was stealing through Merrick, warmth that needed to be fulfilled, yet he couldn’t help it. One tiny thought ran like a dark streak through this moment of utter bliss. “I want more. I want the woman I love forever.”

She could have replied something trite. She could have leapt off him, offended. Instead, Nynnia only smiled sadly and kissed him.

Yes, Merrick realized, he might only have this moment with her, but only a few hours of his time before this, she had been dead. It would be churlish to diminish the delight of finding her alive and in his embrace. He would not sully this gift.

Deacon Chambers put aside all those nagging fears and doubts and plunged into the moment. Soon enough she would be gone. Soon enough they would all be gone.

The Rossin’s roar faded even as Sorcha screamed after him—a sound that echoed the pain inside her—a confused mix of loss and anger. The geistlord was still as he had been when first she had encountered him, and even worse, she remembered how it had felt to be him.

As she ran to the window and watched the elegant, massive creature bound off the edge of the terrace, she nearly forgot to snuff out the rune burning on her Gauntlet.

The great lion was beautiful, terrifying, destructive, and it had just carried Raed away. Yet, for an instant she stood there, quite forgetting the mess that the geistlord had just made.

By the Bones, she thought to herself, I am not pining after the Rossin. Her hands clenched on the broken window, the glass crunching under her Gauntlet.

A burbling cry behind her made the Deacon spin on her heel. Lady Lisah was sobbing, spluttering, her eyes wide as blood trickled from her mouth—scarlet red against her pale skin. Unable to speak, her hand was spread and stretched toward Sorcha. Only minutes before they had been adversaries—now they were just people.

The Deacon dropped to her knees, stripped off her Gauntlets, and clenched the dying woman’s hand tightly in her own fist; that which had been so beautiful, flawless and cosseted was torn and gaping. Too much was now outside that should be inside.

Sorcha didn’t know how powerful the healers were here in Chioma—so perhaps there was still hope. Blood bubbled and ran through her fingers as Sorcha pressed down on the wound, trying to stop it from gushing. It was warm and sticky, but the worst of it was the desperate look in Lisah’s eyes—as if the Deacon could save her.

Sorcha whispered to her—foolish, impossible things that were becoming more so. It had been a long time since she’d comforted the dying. That first year when the Emperor landed at Arkaym she had experienced it quite enough. And now, looking down at this beautiful woman whom she had so easily judged as vapid, Sorcha thought of those young Initiates they had lost. Certainly she had hoped to never be in this position again.

Desperately she pushed down harder. “Listen, Lisah. Help will be here soon—don’t give up.” The younger woman’s mouth worked as her face grew paler. She was trying to say something, but there was no air in her lungs—only blood.

Then she spasmed, gouts of her life pumping over Sorcha’s hand. Lisah’s gaze went from full of life lazed and empty in a split second—so quick that Sorcha could not have said when it was she had gone. Her beautiful bright blue eyes were now surround by scarlet drops she coughed up.

Unable to save the poor woman, Sorcha opened her Center and waited. She might have failed to protect the innocent women of the harem, but she watched as their shades gathered and made sure no geist took them on this side. Their souls swirled, confused by the abrupt severance from their bodies—and that was why most shades stayed in the human world. Sorcha would not let these women suffer that fate.

Slipping her Gauntlets over her blood-drenched hands, she pressed them down against the cooling flesh of Lisah. The rune-clad leather would not hold the blood, and without Merrick, the added presence of it would help make the connection easier.

“I’m sorry,” Sorcha whispered as she opened Tryrei, the peephole to the Otherside. What they would find there she could not say, but it was the way souls had to pass for any chance of peace. The tiny gold light pierced reality, and the souls drifted toward it.

Maybe there were gods waiting for them as some said—she wished she could believe that. Maybe it was a place of trial before they could be reborn. It wasn’t her place to say, but at least the slain women would not be condemned to walk the earth repeating the moments of their death.

Sorcha watched them go and then closed her fist around the rune. These were not the first people she had been unable to save—and would likely not be the last, either.

With a soft sigh the Deacon leaned over and closed Lisah’s eyes, smearing blood on her face but at least giving her an illusion of peace.

It was at that moment that the eunuch guards shoved open the door. For a minute Sorcha stared at them as they took in the room. Books scattered around the room, shelves pushed over, three women’s bodies dismembered, and there she was sitting in the middle of it all—covered in blood and gore.

Deacons were considered necessary—yet it was not unheard of for them to go suddenly and spectacularly mad. The hospital at the Mother Abbey had a whole ward devoted to the care and restriction of such poor creatures. In all the Empire there was no more dangerous madman than a Deacon.

Then Sorcha realized how it looked to these new arrivals. She had asked to see these women; she had demanded they be alone. The Chiomese guards might have respect for the Deacons of their own realm, but she was a stranger—a stranger wearing her gauntlets and bathed in the blood of the Prince’s women.

The rifles in the guards’ hands spun and were quickly raised to their shoulders. The tallest eunuch, the one who had brought in the women to see her, bared his teeth at her, his brow darkening like a thundercloud. These women were his charges, so she knew he was not going to stop and ask questions.

These men had been bearing the shame of deaths all around them for weeks—and now they had a very convenient target to blame. One dead Deacon would make a handy scapegoat to drag before their Prince. Dead would be preferable to alive.

Without a single word of protest, Sorcha sprang to her feet, leapt over Lisah’s body, and ran toward the inner wall. Unlike the Rossin, she couldn’t survive a jump through the window—but fleeing into the city was a very good idea. She was not about to take her chances with the guards or even the Prince—who surely, with the deaths of his women, would be considerably less gracious.

“Fire!” the chief eunuch bellowed, and the Deacon dived as bullets spat over the chaotic scene. Luckily, the opportunities for these guards to shoot at anything must have been few.

With her Gauntlet outspread and Voishem blazing on its palm before her, Sorcha leapt through the wall. It was a most inelegant use of her training.

The sound of bullets spitting against the hardened mud was the last thing she heard as she phased through the wall and tumbled onto the other side. In this situation she had no time to find somewhere to wash off the blood and think. Sorcha knew she had to keep using Voishem until she was beyond the palace and into the city.

The Deacon dared not stop running, knowing that soon enough the whole city would be in an uproar, looking for the stranger who had gone mad and slain women of the Prince’s harem. Already she could faintly hear the palace alarm bell ringing. While in the grasp of Voishem, everything was dim and out of sync with her eyes. People were reduced to gray shadows, and the palace itself looked more like an artist’s sketch than something real.

Sorcha knew she had to find the Rossin and stop his rampage at all costs—there simply was no one else who had a chance of controlling the Beast. So she dashed through the palace, hearing screams echo softly in her wake, and the rune she dared not release drained her strength. She was running blind without Merrick’s power to help her and would have to take a gamble.

Wherever you are, Merrick—come back soon. I need you.

And with that final thought, Sorcha passed through the thick mud walls of the palace and out into the chaos of the city itself.