Wrayth

FIFTEEN Finding a Cradle

She was lost and alone. Frightened. Pregnant. Caoirse curled up in the cell they had placed her in, and remained very, very quiet. It took every ounce of her self-control. As long as she didn’t cry out when the contractions came they would not know she was in labor. Not yet anyway.

The sweat was running down her back as she crouched in the corner, straining to both hold back her groans and give birth to her daughter. She knew it was a daughter. She’d heard her tiny thoughts; mostly thoughts of comfort, warmth and desire for life.

Her mother, long dead, had been a midwife in their village, and Caoirse was now grateful for all those births she’d witnessed, however unhappily, as a child. She’d never thought she would have to use the experience she had gained on herself, alone and in the shadows. However the daughter she’d never wanted to have was coming soon. As a Deacon, few expected to have children, but as a captive she’d had no choice.

No, she couldn’t afford to think of the drone who had taken her into the cell, his blank stare, his unnatural strength, and how she’d been unable to resist either. Not today. Caoirse couldn’t afford to think of anything but what lay ahead. Her plan.

Luckily it was night, and the Wrayth were elsewhere, terrorizing the population of their kingdom no doubt. Though which kingdom or province she was in she’d never found out; there was only so much she could get from the terrified women that occupied the other cells. All of them were Deacons, and all of them had similar experiences. Unfortunately the Wrayth were clever. The cells were carefully crafted with thick walls to keep the woman from touching and forming a Bond.

By the Blood, she missed the Bond. She missed her old life, and her partner—even if he’d been the lucky one.

She’d been in Sousah province in Delmaire, exploring a strange ancient temple with her partner. An earthquake had revealed a new section of tunnels beneath the temple, and they’d been sent to investigate it to see if there were any geists lurking there. Delmaire was mostly a tamed continent, but old places were still feared. Rightly so as it turned out. What they had found was a twisted creature of flesh, lurking in the water. The creatures that boiled out of the tunnel when they approached she had not been able to sense. They had killed Klanasta immediately—having no use for men. And they had taken her Strop. She was a Sensitive, alone in this place, with no Active to help.

Except the one she was birthing.

Caoirse breathed deeply but as quietly as she could, and pushed. Reaching down, she felt between her legs for her daughter’s head. It was there, but also a lot of blood. When she raised her hands, she could see it traveling between her fingers and gliding over the marks on her arm. Ink and blood. She had known they would be a powerful combination.

The engravings on her arm were an idea that had come to her in her sleep. If she believed in gods she might have thought it some kind of divine inspiration. Her plan had to work. The leather that the Gauntlets and Strop were made out of was essentially skin anyway, and it also pleased her that she would never be separated from the runes again. Not even the Wrayth could take them from her now.

She had hidden her plans so very well from her captors. Luckily they cared little for the Deacons once they were impregnated, and did not examine the women. In fact, they only ever came into the cells to deliver food. The blank stares of the peons were her protection. If any of the elder Wrayth had bothered to examine her, they would have seen the marks she had carved in herself. The quill and ink pot had been in her belt pouch, and she’d hidden them in her cell for months.

Caoirse knew all the runes, but she’d only been able to carve three into the skin on her arms before the ink ran out. Voishem, Seym and Pyet. It was probably best that she’d only managed those. Her Active power was minor, and she’d be acting as a conduit for Daughter’s.

Daughter. That was the only name she would give this little creature, until they were safe; until she could tell if the Wrayth had made something horrific or miraculous with her, and if either of them would survive. Naming things was of great importance, and something she dreamed of doing in the sunlight. She missed sunlight.

It was time to find out what Daughter was. Her body was telling her to move, to push and uncover the truth. Everything went still, perfect and still. She felt open and alive, poised for a perfect moment in this darkness. Caoirse pushed, feeling her whole body open, and bright white light flashed behind her eyes. Then Daughter lay in her hands, not twisted, not malformed. Beautiful. She stared up at Caoirse with tiny, bright blue eyes, while her new mother cleaned her with the least stained cloth she had in the cell. Daughter had a beautiful crop of reddish hair, and, as if knowing the situation they were in, didn’t cry.

The desire to nurse her was intense, but Caoirse resisted it. If she lay back and coddled Daughter there would be no going back. The Wrayth would find them both there, and take her baby away to whatever fate it had planned. Then there would be no escape for either of them, and what they would do with Daughter could only be a nightmare.

She swiftly tied a thread she’d worked loose from the sheet about the umbilical cord, and sawed it free with a rock she had sharpened over long months for this particular purpose. Finally she waited for a time, until she had birthed the placenta.

Then she carefully wrapped Daughter up in her sheet. The little girl wriggled a little, but her eyes never left Caoirse’s. The once-Deacon had to smother back a sob. She took a moment to compose herself and to put all the pieces of her plan together one final time. So many things could go wrong—not just the Wrayth stopping her. A Sensitive using an Active power could burn out like a snuffed flame, or up like oil thrown on fire. She was not familiar with the runes, and they could turn and devour her.

Yet it was the only way. She had to warn the Order that this was happening; that not all their Deacons that went missing were killed. She could do this. One last time, Caoirse went over her plan.

First, Voishem to get her out of the cell, then Seym the Rune of Flesh to give her the strength to run. She’d race to the right, out of her cell; that was the direction all the women came from, and she remembered coming that way from the strange tunnel. The gleam of weirstones had been the last thing she recalled. If the tunnel had taken her far from Delmaire then it could take her back there. Then to the Abbey, if Seym would carry her that far. If any Wrayth got in the way or tried to stop her then she would use Pyet on them. She smiled grimly. Maybe she would use the cleansing flame on them anyway.

Gathering up Daughter, she called on the child’s power. It was so much more than she could have expected. The rune’s power scampered up the marks on her arms, and it was like pouring liquid lead into her veins. Her muscles spasmed and it felt like her eyes would burn out of her head. So much pain, but she couldn’t afford the time to stop and feel it. For the Order’s sake. For Daughter’s sake.

Caoirse held up her hand, trembling and thin as it was. Voishem made the world pale and insubstantial. She liked that. Clutching Daughter in the crook of her arm, she stepped forward and out into the corridor.

Raed was watching Sorcha, who had only just placed her hand on the bloodstain, but he was also keeping an eye and an ear out for anything coming along the corridor. She’d said Aachon was near, but he heard no reassuring pistol shots or sounds of victory to tell him that this assertion was true. He wished Merrick were here to tell him what was going on with Sorcha, and perhaps to provide a little levelheaded sanity to this situation.

It couldn’t have been more than a minute since Sorcha touched the blood before she let out a tiny gasp and slumped back. It was only his hand on her shoulder that kept her from falling over completely.

Her fingers clutched onto him, and then, most remarkably of all, she buried her head against his chest. Just for a moment, even considering the dire place they were in, Raed spared time to cradle her head there, stroking her hair and making noises of comfort.

“She got away.” Sorcha pulled back, wiped tears from her eyes and looked up at him. He had never before seen that expression on the Deacon’s face; true wonder. He wanted to kiss her even more now; to make her eyes stop crying, and her chest stop struggling to find breath. This was not Sorcha—at least not the Sorcha he knew.

“Who got away?” he asked gently.

The Deacon gestured to the blood on the floor. “My mother. Caoirse. She was here, the Wrayth were breeding me from her. Just like those other poor women.” She swallowed hard. “By the Blood, this was where I was made, in this horrible place!” She spun about abruptly and dry retched into the corner of the cell. It was a miserable sound, as if she were trying to purge her body and soul.

Raed sat back on his heels and rubbed her back softly. He knew better than to question what she had learned from the blood: the Order was the authority on such things.

Eventually, she collected herself, wiped her mouth on the back of her hand and glanced over her shoulder at him. Raed looked around. So this was where you were born? It hardly seemed like the place for a powerful Deacon to come into the world.

“That’s why I am powerful!” Sorcha shook her head, and seemed not to notice that he hadn’t spoken at all. It unnerved Raed no end, but he didn’t bring it up. The Deacon looked as though she was already tottering on the edge of complete collapse. She was so much thinner than last time he’d seen her, and the large circles under her eyes told him many more things than she would ever say.

He waited in silence for her to explain. The distress across the Bond was something he could feel, like a foreign substance in his body. Something about the Rossin being so close to the surface had made him aware of the connection like he had never been before. Raed was not entirely sure he liked being conscious of it, especially in this situation.

Sorcha clenched her hands on the folds of the cloak he wore. “It’s why the Bond is so strong between the three of us, don’t you see? Even what happened with the Prince of Chioma’s gift. It’s because I am partly made of them.” She stared at her hands with such fixation and such fury that he was worried she might start tearing at her very flesh. “I am part of their bloody breeding program—whatever they were trying to make, they made me along the way!”

He was familiar with her despair and rage. Far too familiar. The Young Pretender had gone through all those emotions himself when he first realized he was cursed. He knew how deeply destructive thoughts like that could become.

Carefully, Raed laid his hands on hers, swallowing them up. “They might have made you, but you are not their creature. Your mother gave birth to you, she loved you enough to get you out of this place. You are hers too. Don’t forget that.”

It was a lesson Aachon had often repeated to him when he feared there was nothing but the Rossin in him.

Sorcha held his gaze for a moment, and he tried his very best to project safety, kindness and understanding across the Bond. He wasn’t sure if he was doing it right, or even doing it at all, but after a second or two, she nodded.

“You’re right.”

“Say it again.” He smiled softly. “I love it when you say that.”

Her short laugh was brittle, but at least sounded like her. “Don’t get cocky, Your Majesty. I’ll hold myself together until we get out of here, then fall apart in a heap you can enjoy picking up.”

Getting out of here. Raed let out a slow sigh. “And we must stop Fraine too,” he reminded her as gently as he could.

Sorcha met his gaze. “We will—but first let’s get to Aachon. His head will implode if I don’t bring you directly to him.”

They went out into the hallway once more, and Sorcha slipped her hand into his. They were both fragile and weak right now, but even if that had not been the case Raed would still have enjoyed that little gesture. She had said she would not leave him again, and the Young Pretender appreciated that. As they left the cells and moved deeper into the nest, he felt very vulnerable.

“I confess,” he whispered into Sorcha’s ear, “I wish I was not doing this naked. That’s the real problem with the Rossin, I never have any cursed pants or boots.”

She turned and kissed him, lightly at first, and then more passionately, clutching him for a moment tight against her. She was smiling against his mouth a second before they parted.

“It is good to see you, Raed,” she muttered, “and I don’t care how few clothes you wear.” She was trying to hold off what was going on around her, and what she had learned, and yet she was still aware of him. The prickly Deacon he had pulled out of the ocean the previous year had not escaped unscathed from all they had been through. But then, none of them had.

“Take me somewhere you and I can explore that further.” It was a boastful thing to say, because the Rossin inhabiting his body for nearly a week had eaten away any strength he’d had before. Raed thought it was perhaps only pride and stubbornness keeping him on his feet and moving. If there was any fighting or running ahead, he didn’t know what he would do—probably just lie down and try and gain Sorcha some time.

The Deacon up ahead was peering around a corner. Her head whipped around, and she fixed him with a baleful glare. “Don’t you even think about doing any such thing!”

That damned Bond was going to take quite some getting used to—and he had no time to learn the skills to hide his thoughts. “Chivalry used to be all the rage,” he grumbled.

Sorcha poked him with her finger, then pulled him close so that they could both peer around the corner of the hallway. It made quite the impression. With the new closeness of the Rossin, Raed felt more and saw more through the Beast’s eyes, but there was a difference. The geistlord did not linger overly on visual details; he was always more concerned about the sounds and smells.

What to him had only been a pile of stinking, yammering humanity looked quite different to Raed with his own eyes. It looked, to put it bluntly, like an orgy. He’d never been to one himself, but there had been plenty of books in his father’s library on many subjects that an impressionable boy probably should not have gotten hold of.

Men and women, covered in the mud and dust of their shadowy nest, were piled in the great room. All were naked, all were touching, writhing. Many of the females looked to be in various stages of pregnancy, but that apparently did not stop them. Men, women, all in one groping, licking, grinding mass. However none of their eyes were focused on each other, but rather at some distant unseen point.

“What are they doing?” Sorcha shook her head as a frown deepened on her forehead.

“You don’t know?”

“Raed, I know what they are physically doing,” she replied with an arched eyebrow. “However I studied as long and as hard as any Active, particularly when it came to the kinds of geists I might run into. This makes no sense.”

A thought scuttled across the surface of his mind; one that was not his own. This part of the Wrayth mind is solely consumed with pleasure. It doesn’t have a higher function.

“I can see that,” Sorcha rubbed her temples. “So you are saying that the Wrayth functions like a beehive, with different parts doing things? Like some parts of it working the limbs, remembering to breathe, while other bits plot and scheme?”

You’re getting it now.

It was hard for Raed to decide which was the more unnerving; that Sorcha was plucking thoughts from him, or that those thoughts were in fact the Rossin’s. Strangely enough it appeared when the Beast was actively thinking his own thoughts it went unnoticed by Sorcha; she just assumed they were the Young Pretender’s thoughts. It was all a nasty muddle.

“Seems a little too much like pleasuring yourself,” he added, more to have something to distract her than anything. “It gets so dull after a while. Maybe that is why they brought in the female Deacons.”

“Oh no, these bits of the Wrayth had nothing to do with that. That was a real plan, with a purpose—we just don’t know what that is…at least yet.” She pointed to the far side of the wide room. “Aachon and your crew are coming up through the drain over there. We should help them. I don’t think this part of the brain is conscious enough to be bothered with us.”

Carefully picking their way across the rocky floor, but still sticking to the edges of the room, they reached the grate. It was, like everything else here, made of stone, but Sorcha used her long knife to lever it open. Both of them had to yank it away however.

Aachon and the dozen Dominion crew who emerged from inside the pipe were a sight for sore eyes. Mud and other unmentionable filth were caked all over them. They stood blinking, wiping the muck out of their eyes, and taking in the undulating bodies of the Wrayth mind with more than a little slack-jawed incredulity.

“I am sure,” Sorcha said, trying to draw away their attention, “you wish at least one of you had taken me up on my offer.”

Aleck, the tallest of the crew members, was rubbing the small of his back. Crawling and crab-walking through the muck of the Wrayth fortress could not have been fun for him in particular. “Remind me of that next time.”

Aachon insisted on flicking as much filth off himself as he could, before embracing Raed. It had been months since the Young Pretender had seen his first mate, and he was damned if he was going to stand on ceremony. He grabbed him roughly and hugged him, quite lost for words.

“My prince,” Aachon stumbled out, “it is good to see you alive and well—though somewhat lacking in the clothing department.” Then he swung a rucksack off his back, and proceeded to pull out pants, boots, shirt, a pistol and most remarkably a stout leather tricorne hat. He had even thought to bring a second sword.

“Familiarity certainly doesn’t breed contempt in your case,” Raed exclaimed, and clasped his friend’s arm. “It only makes you much better prepared.” The rest of the crew members let him dress before roughly shaking his hand and slapping him on the back.

After so long apart, Raed felt like he was back among family again. Yes, family—the only real one he’d ever had.

“I am sorry to do this to you, old friend,” he said, breaking into their moment of congratulations, “but we cannot leave just yet—though I do yearn to climb into a sewage pipe with you. Fraine and Tangyre are here, and we must get my sister away before she creates bloodshed in the Empire.”

Aachon and Sorcha exchanged a puzzled look. “Are you suggesting,” the first mate growled, “that the Wrayth have them prisoner?”

By the Blood, it was hard to have to say the words, but they all deserved to know, and more importantly they couldn’t go charging around the Wrayth nest not knowing who their enemies were. “No, I am not. They are here of their own free will.” He clamped his hand on Aachon’s upper arm. “Tangyre Greene has been poisoning Fraine’s mind for years. My sister is trying to drag Arkaym into civil war to gain the throne for herself.”

“It will be civil war,” Aachon whispered. “Thousands will be killed. Thousands of innocents.”

“Not if we get her away from here.” Raed glanced back at the writhing human bodies behind them, full with the influence of the Wrayth, now part of its twisted mind. “We can’t let her be used.”

“I agree, my prince, we cannot.”

Raed appreciated Sorcha was quiet at his side. He ploughed on. “I last saw Fraine up in the top levels. I think that is where the higher-functioning parts of the Wrayth mind are. They were drinking blood, and my sister was making some kind of pact with them.”

A mutter ran through the assembled crew members—it was not something that anyone would expect of their royals—but they hefted their weapons to show that they weren’t about to back down either.

His first mate nodded, his hand clenching around his weirstone. Then as his eyes fell on the wall behind the mass of fornicating Wrayth, they widened. “Look at that, my prince. Most interesting don’t you think?”

It was a formation of weirstones set in the wall. It described a circle just a fraction taller than a man, and inside the circle it was completely dark. Sorcha jerked back from it, and even the crew members jostled sideways when they saw it. Aachon was the only one that seemed fascinated by whatever it was. “It appears to be some kind of transportation device, by the cantrips worked in with the stones. But I can’t quite understand—”

“Don’t!” Sorcha yanked the first mate’s hand back before he could touch the blackness. “Merrick encountered something like this underneath Chioma. There is no way of knowing where it might take you.”

She glanced at Raed. “This is what my mother used to escape once she got out of the cells.”

“Mother?” Aachon’s interest was now obviously piqued.

Raed knew they couldn’t stand around arguing; at any moment the Wrayth could become aware of their presence, and then there would be no chance to stop Fraine. He threw his hands up in the air. “We’ll talk about that later. For now let’s concentrate on finding my sister and getting out of this damned hive. This weirstone device isn’t going to help us do that.”

“I could have the answer, Captain.” Jocryn called them over to the wall a little farther on. “Look at this.”

It was the shaft that the Rossin had fallen down. Naturally the Beast had not taken much notice of the thing the man was pointing out, for it was a set of pulleys and gears made of wood and brass, and anything without flesh was of no use to him. However, the first mate smiled broadly.

“This is quite ingenious.” Aachon was pointing to a switch on the wall, a kind of small brass lever. It was set into the wall, and although currently in the middle of a vertical groove, looked like it could be slid, up or down. Waving his hand like he were some kind of magician, Aachon moved it into the up position.

They all leapt when a jangle of chain and a rattle of gears started. Raed stuck his head farther into the shaft and observed something descending toward them. Hastily he pulled back. Within a few more moments the large box had descended. The side of the box facing into the room was open, and the interior was large enough for at least ten people to stand comfortably in it.

“With a fortress this large, and levels extending both above and below ground it makes sense,” Aachon explained, seemingly quite pleased with himself. “I have heard the tinkers of Supo have been working on such a thing. I believe they call it a riser.”

Sorcha shook her head. “Geistlords working with weirstones and tinkers? Whatever next? I lie down for a little bit and the whole world goes mad.”

“We can use this to get up to the top levels?” Raed asked, and when Aachon nodded, he felt their chances improve a little more. “But how will we find Fraine? As I already discovered, this place is huge. They took my map and it’s not particularly easy to navigate.”

His first mate pulled out his weirstone and peered into its blue surface. “I know you will find it hard to believe my prince, but you still share a bond with your sister. A bond of blood is a powerful thing.”

“I know that myself,” Sorcha muttered, glancing back down toward the cells.

Raed squeezed her fingers lightly. He knew she was going to struggle with what she had discovered here, but he was impressed she was not falling apart. Deacon training still held firm apparently.

“Fraine has forsaken the bond of family,” he muttered, “but it is nice to know it will still be of some use.” Raed was the first to step into the riser. “Now, let’s go stop a civil war while we can.”

Sorcha, Aachon and the rest of the crew followed him in. Tangyre was going to have a very nasty shock, and he was going to enjoy seeing her expression a great deal.