Harbinger (A BOOK OF THE ORDER)

by Philippa Ballantine

  Once Merrick had left, relief flooded Raed; he felt that he had done something good. The strange circumstances of the fur didn’t seem to matter and faded from his memory the more time passed since he had seen it.

  By the time he had climbed the steps to the wind-battered upper battlements, he had other concerns to occupy his mind. He knew he’d been pretty lucky to have gotten away with his midnight excursions this long. Sorcha and the rest of the Deacons had been working hard—both physically and mentally—and she’d come to bed late and exhausted. Otherwise he was sure she would have found out before now that he’d been absent from their bed on other nights as well.

  Now, with this attack last night, there was no way she would have been able to miss that he wasn’t there. When Raed reached the door to the battlements, he paused, took a deep breath, and then unlatched it.

  It was a relief to see they were alone, except for the view. The Native Order had chosen a magnificent spot on which to build their Priory. The citadel stood at the high end of a long river valley, with the waterfall slicing its way over the top of it but under the walls of the citadel. From these battlements Deacons would have been able to see anyone coming for miles, and the running water provided protection from geists. At least it had in the past.

  The sound of the waterfall’s descent masked his approach, and he was glad of that. Sorcha was leaning against the crenellations, her back turned to him, watching the smash of the water below.

  As Raed approached her, he observed the tiny water droplets that had caught in her flame-colored hair, the curl of smoke around her head, and the fact that she too was no longer wearing a cloak. She was smoking a cigarillo, and Raed knew Sorcha only did that when she needed to think, or was feeling particularly melancholy.

  He got within a few feet before Sorcha spun around. Given that she had to have discovered his secret outings, Raed expected anything but what happened next. Sorcha threw herself into his arms; clutching him to her tightly with one hand, while the other held the lit cigarillo. Her face and form pressing against him was a welcome distraction.

  She pulled back and kissed Raed. Her firm mouth against his tasted of smoke and salt. He wondered if all of the water on her face was from the waterfall’s embrace. It would be typical of Sorcha to come up here, where no one could tell, to let some of her pent-up frustrations and fear out.

  He decided not to mention it—instead he enjoyed the kiss. He clasped her close, feeling her greatly diminished form under her clothes. Sorcha had always been delightfully curvy, but the rigors of their constant flight had whittled her away—as it had all of them. Still, it just made him want to look after her more and feed her properly as soon as possible.

  Finally, even they had to admit defeat though. Sorcha pulled back, giving his bottom lip a final reminder of a nip.

  “What has your cigarillo done to deserve this?” Raed asked, gesturing to the sad, damp thing she held in her hand.

  Sorcha shrugged. “It was a bit wet already, and I needed it more than I can say.” She shot him a look with the faintest hint of a smile at the corner of her mouth. “Just like you.”

  Raed waited for the inevitable question. It didn’t come. Her blue eyes were locked with his, waiting for an explanation.

  The Young Pretender wanted to be perfect for her. He most certainly did not want to add to her already monumental list of problems, but neither could he lie to her face. She was the one person in the world he didn’t want to deceive.

  “The Rossin came,” he began, watching for any reaction from her. When Sorcha didn’t move, Raed went on. “He didn’t kill anyone. I think he just wanted to run, because when I woke there was no taste of blood in my mouth.” Something else had happened, but he couldn’t quite remember what. It couldn’t be that important.

  He cleared his throat. “The Rossin has been coming out these last couple of weeks. I can’t help it. I’m sorry—very sorry—that I didn’t tell you.”

  Sorcha nodded somberly, but her hands clasped his tightly. “We should have expected that I guess. The Otherside is so close now that the Rossin is much more powerful—all the geists are.”

  Raed had never heard Sorcha sound so defeated, and he did not like it one little bit. He wanted the fire and passion to kindle in her eyes again.

  “And you’ve been pulling away from me.” Sorcha touched his face, a look of fear flickering across her own. “Don’t do that. I need you.” That those words came out of the Deacon was a precious thing. He most certainly would not have ever imagined them appearing from the woman he had first met, soggy, and trembling with outrage after being fished out of the ocean. He loved that she finally had let him see her softness—though she would never do it in public.

  He picked up her hand and kissed its palm. Her flesh felt good against his lips. “What’s happened?” he murmured into it, before guiding her away from the edge of the battlements. The sound of the waterfall was a little less loud to the cliff face, and if anyone came through the door as he had they wouldn’t be able to see them immediately.

  Raed held her against him as he leaned against the wall of the citadel, and she leaned back so that only their lower torsos were touching. It was comforting, but not so distracting that either of them couldn’t think.

  Sorcha closed her eyes for a moment, raised the pitiful cigarillo to her mouth, pulled the smoke into her, and then exhaled it away from him. She spoke softly. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to us . . . to the Order . . . or whatever we are now.”

  They had been running, in danger for their lives from both the Imperial army and the Native Order for months, but he’d never seen her so concerned as she was right now. He squeezed her just a fraction. “With you able to open the Wrayth portals, we can go anywhere we like. We can rebuild the Order with time . . .”

  Her full lips twisted. “That is what we don’t have, my love. Last night’s attack drove home that point very well. The barrier between this world and the Otherside is incredibly weak now. Derodak has done something—something awful—while we have been running, and soon it will reach a tipping point.” Raed felt a long-held-in sigh ripple through her body. “Merrick is in a Conclave with some of the other Sensitives right now. They are trying to use runes to see which way forward we must go. I don’t like relying on foresight—but what other option do we have?” Her eyes held his, and Raed realized she was actually asking him about the future of the Order.

  He’d been at this point much earlier in his own life. Shortly after the Rossin had killed his mother he’d been swept away on a tide of depression and entropy; unable to decide what to do since all options looked equally dire. He’d relied on his role as son to the Unsung Pretender to the throne of Arkaym as much as Sorcha had relied on hers as a Deacon of the Order of the Eye and the Fist.

  “You do what you do best,” Raed said, cupping one hand against her cheek. “You make something out of nothing. Isn’t that what wielding the runes is all about? You use your own strength to make things happen. You see the path with an enlightened eye that Merrick and you share. You defend, just as you always have. Just because the Mother Abbey is gone, and everything torn apart, that doesn’t change who you are.”

  Sorcha swallowed hard then leaned into him. They embraced in the moist air, with the sound of the waterfall at their backs. It was the kind of embrace that said this was all of the world—even if for just an instant. It hurt to stop holding her.

  After she had squeezed Raed, Sorcha pulled back a fraction. “You’re right, but that doesn’t change anything much—we can’t go back to what we were.” She took a final draft of the cigarillo, before dropping it to the ground and grinding it with her heel. “We must make ourselves anew and become something else. The Order of the Eye and the Fist is dead, and we can’t pretend differently. We can’t shackle ourselves to what was.”

  “Why do I get the feeling I just said what you were already halfway to deciding anyway?” Raed said, with an uncertain smile.

  “M
aybe because I am inside your head?” Sorcha leaned over, tapped his forehead, then kissed him lightly on the lips. “I have an appointment. One I’ve been avoiding for quite a while.”

  He watched her stride over to the door, as straight backed and determined as on the first day he’d met her. Raed was just thinking that nothing much had changed, when she proved him wrong.

  Hand on the door handle, she paused and looked back at him. “Is everything all right with the Rossin, Raed? You have him under control, right?”

  By the small gods, Raed hadn’t wanted her to ask that particular question, but there it was. He smiled and replied, “Everything is under control.”

  Sorcha nodded and left the battlements. It was indeed a sign that things were turning dramatically toward the worse—she hadn’t heard his thoughts. The Bond that connected Raed, Sorcha and Merrick had once been so strong that he’d been unable to hide anything from them. Now however, with the combined problems of lost foci, new runic tattoos, and the closeness of the Otherside, it appeared Raed could get away with disassembling.

  The thought did not fill him with joy—only dread. He hadn’t exactly lied to her; everything was under control. Unfortunately, Raed had the sinking feeling it was not he that had the control, but instead it belonged to the other darker, more primal creature that lurked within him.

  EIGHT

  Tracing the Thread

  Walking away from Raed was more difficult than Sorcha could have possibly communicated; when he held her, she just wanted to disappear into that embrace. She had clenched her fingers into the palms of her hands hard, because she dared not hold on to Raed too long or lose her will to step away.

  With what had gone on the previous night, Sorcha had known there was no other choice; she had to visit the Patternmaker. She’d just wanted to think by herself for a moment—just her and her cigarillo and the roar of the waterfall. Raed’s arrival had not been unwelcome, since it had put off the inevitable.

  However, she hadn’t told him where she was going, or what she was planning to do; he’d have wanted to go along with her. This was her burden to bear. She was the one that had taken the Patternmaker’s bargain.

  As she walked slowly up the steps, she felt tentatively along the Bond. Merrick was there, but there was no support to be had from him; his presence was like the whispering of many distant voices. That was better too. He had enough to worry about, hunting out the future.

  The closer Sorcha got to the high, isolated room that the Patternmaker had taken for his own, the more the smell of death reached her nostrils. Her breath colored the air in front of her white, and despite all that she had seen in her time as a Deacon, she was a little nervous.

  In the tumult of the foci that had once contained the runes being taken from them, and the Mother Abbey burning, Sorcha knew they had all grasped whatever hope had been laid before them. They had been desperate for it. Even the ravings of a madman had seemed sensible in those times, but now given a little more space to look around, she and many others had begun to wonder who they had allied themselves with.

  That was why it was a relief that the Patternmaker had claimed a room in the highest portion of the citadel. Very few went there, even the well-meaning lay Brothers could not find it in themselves to climb the steps she was climbing.

  The Patternmaker was something more than human, but not geist—at least that was what the Sensitives had said. However, the days of Sorcha trusting what she had once taken as fact were long gone. She had to find the answers for herself.

  Finally, she reached the door and stood there for a moment, like a nervous initiate lingering on the threshold of her Arch Abbot’s doorway. She strained her ears to hear what was going on behind that door.

  The Patternmaker was talking. It was a language, she was sure of that, but unlike any that she knew of in the Empire or in Delmaire.

  Her stomach clenched, and the runes on her arms tingled as if they were on fire. She hovered there, caught between the desire to kick the door in, and the strange urge to knock politely.

  In the end, Sorcha compromised, and edged the door open a fraction and peered in. The rank odor of unwashed human was hardly what one might have expected from a holy man, but as a Deacon, Sorcha had met more than her fair share of filthy madmen who had claimed that title; she had just never imagined one being part of any Order.

  If they were still an Order.

  Words in her head. Sorcha froze in the act of entering the room. It was not Merrick’s voice, nor the rumble of the Rossin. She did, however, recognize the tone. The Wrayth. A chill rush went through her.

  Blindly, Sorcha opened her Center. All Deacons had some ability in Sight and Activity, but her Sensitivity was minimal. Still she tried her best to feel any trace of the Wrayth about her. Nothing.

  It was a relief though to feel that Merrick’s mind was still murmuring into the void, and giving no indication he had been disturbed by another voice in their Bond.

  Sorcha looked up through the gap in the doorway. What was the Patternmaker doing? Curiosity and fear warred within her. The Deacon glanced down at her hands and the swirling shapes of the runes that he had carved into her skin. It was done. They had taken his help, and now she would have to find out the cost of it.

  With her knee she nudged the door open wider and stepped boldly inside. As the top room in the citadel was buried mostly in the cliff itself, there was only one window, and the Patternmaker had covered that with a blanket. The inside was gray, and the far walls impossible to see. The smell fulfilled the promise it had made outside, and she raised her hand to her mouth to try and muffle it. Only training kept her from throwing up.

  Smell was one of the senses that heralded a geist attack—though what that could mean she didn’t want to think too hard on. The Patternmaker was not a geist; she held on to that fact as best she could.

  Could you see the Rossin in the Young Pretender?

  Shock froze Sorcha in midstride. The mocking tone, the female voice, all reminded her of the time in the Wrayth hive. The geistlord had spread itself over so many humans, taken them as slaves, and made them into a wasp nest for one purpose. Her mother, a raped and tortured prisoner of the Wrayth, had born her in the hive. Her father must have been one of the geistlord’s drones. She would probably never know his name.

  Though she’d tried desperately not to think about the Wrayth and concentrate simply on using the abilities she’d been given, her heritage made her the only one capable of saving the remains of the Order. For months she’d been opening their portals and leading them from place to place; so fixed on escape that she’d been able to ignore those horrible facts. Now, Sorcha felt a fool. Could she have put the remains of the Order in danger just by being who she was?

  “Come in.” The voice, actually spoken outside of her own head, made Sorcha flinch. “Shut the door.”

  Her right hand prickled slightly and drifted to the hilt of her saber that hung at her side. Deacons were always armed, but it was not her greatest resource. Carefully, she reached out and flicked the door shut. The room was plunged into near total darkness, and Sorcha had the real sense that she was trapped in a room with a wild animal—one that she could not see.

  Her Center was her only choice—but a very shabby one it was. She could make out the vague outline of the room’s walls, and warmth and life near the back of it. “Is this darkness really necessary?” she snapped. “It’s a little too theatrical for my tastes.”

  The Patternmaker—it had to be him, surely—laughed; a strange echoing noise that seemed to come from much farther off than the rear of the room. He’s not a geist, Sorcha reminded herself, and strode deeper into the room.

  But you are.

  “Damn it!” Sorcha let her frustration escape her lips.

  Something skittered in the shadows. It had to be a rat, even if she couldn’t see anything living apart from the hunched form of the Patternmaker. It was strange that this was the man that had helped them, and yet in this moment
Sorcha felt more in danger than she had the previous night facing geists that had spilled over from the Otherside.

  “Too many voices?” the Patternmaker hissed. “Now you live in my painful world.”

  Another rattle of feet—this time to her right. Sorcha realized she was being encircled, yet it was ridiculous to feel this way, Sorcha reminded herself; he was an old man. Apart from that, she was in a citadel full of Deacons, and this was the man that had tattooed her skin with the runes, making it possible for them to fight geists and the Native Order.

  Straightening, Sorcha stepped more boldly toward the form of the Patternmaker. “I have come—”

  “I know why. The Otherside is closer, spilling over to your world.”

  He spoke so clearly that she paused her approach. When last she had spoken to him, he had not been nearly this coherent. “How do you know that?” she asked and immediately understood it was a stupid, childish question to pose. The Patternmaker was attuned to the Otherside better than even a Deacon.

  Now the skittering came closer, and she could have sworn something brushed her boot. She kicked out. That was impossible! She was not so blind with her Center that she would miss something coming that near. Was this how normal folk felt? She’d had a taste of this before and had liked it about just as much then.

  “We feel it,” the old man’s voice slid out of the shadows.

  You feel it too.

  Sorcha grabbed her head, slapping her hands on each side of it like a child trying to deny reality. The same tiny primitive part of her brain wanted to turn and flee out of the room completely—however she had never really been anything but a Deacon, trained to be a truth seeker. She’d been taught to hold fast, but it felt like there was very little left to hold on to.

  Feeling out with one hand, she clasped the wet, dank stone, and slid to her knees. In the deep dark of the room, the only light was now beginning to grow on her own arm. The runes that the Patternmaker had carved on her flesh were shifting and moving. The shapes of the runes—which she knew better than the shape of her own body—were making new forms; ones that she did not recognize.