Harbinger (A BOOK OF THE ORDER)

by Philippa Ballantine

  Yet, unlike the smells and visions he saw around the mayor, these did not fill him with fear. Instead, something like hope welled up in his chest.

  The mayor took a step back—so perhaps he did see what Eriloyn did. If that was true, he was a great deal less heartened by it. Still the darkness within him drove him on.

  “You are but one,” he hissed.

  “You do not see so well, geist,” the woman said calmly. “I am not alone. I am one of many, and many more to come. We will be the Enlightened who stand against you. I am merely the Harbinger of those to come.”

  Her words struck Eriloyn hard, and he looked around at those that filled the town square. They knew it too. They all did. This moment was important.

  “Harbinger?” The mayor’s face turned in on itself, revealing the undead thing beneath. A maw of teeth and coiled hatred wiped away any illusion of humanity. “I see what you are; a weapon left lying to rust. They should never have tried to make such an—”

  “An abomination?” The woman unhooked the clasp of her cloak and let it slide from her shoulders to the ground. Beneath she wore a simple pair of trousers, a thin sleeveless linen shirt and a wide leather belt. The light of the torches flared brighter, and they all saw what was carved on her arms. She laughed at the geist who wore the mayor like an overlarge robe. “A weapon may be created for one purpose, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be reforged into another.”

  Effortlessly, she raised both her hands and they flared to light; one was clenched on a shimmering globe of green energy, while the other ran with scarlet flames that danced up and down her outstretched hand.

  Eriloyn had not seen the Runes of Dominion for a long time—not since he was still a tiny child, clinging to his mother’s skirts—but they were his first real memory. Something had happened in his father’s barn, and Deacons had been fetched. He could not recall the faces of those who had come, but the recollection of the silvery blue fire they had summoned was as clear as the day he’d seen it.

  Now, here was a woman standing in his ruined city, facing the undead calmly, while the runes burned on her actual skin. This moment was not one he would ever forget either.

  His gaze traveled over the crowd, and now he could pick out others among the citizens; all wore simple black cloaks, and stood completely still in the sea of confusion. They were like rocks dropped into a churning stream and that made Eriloyn smile—though he did not understand why this woman called herself a Harbinger and not a Deacon.

  The mayor moved toward her and even his footsteps were no longer human. His gait was twisted and awkward as he neared her. The citizens of the city shrank back from him, so that the cloaked figures in their midst were revealed, as when the river dried up, making plain the rocks within it.

  The mayor’s head swung from side to side, and an ugly laugh welled up in him. “Is that all you bring, Harbinger?” His voice cut sharply on the title she’d given herself. “This is our city now, and even if you should drive me from this world, you will never triumph over the many to come.”

  Eriloyn’s heart began to race and that dreaded fear trickled over his skin once more. Even as other cloaked figures appeared out of the crowd and ran to free the line of chained children, he strained his head left and right to see what would happen next. His eyes were fixed as completely to the Harbinger as any rivet his father had ever secured.

  “So many?” The woman said with a note of sadness in her voice. She shook her head. “Yes, there had been so many of your kind unleashed here; so many folk who have been twisted by the undead and made into geists themselves. I can see them, feel them. More than that.” She raised her hands, still burning with red fire, and now Eriloyn gasped.

  Even as kindly hands undid the restraints on his injured ankle, he was entranced by what he saw. From all over the city they came; chill winds, spinning shapes of the undead, and lost souls still crying for their lives. They gathered in the town square, just as the rest of the citizens had, but bound together. In short order the air above the Harbinger looked like a shimmering spiderweb of geists. They darted about, and while Eriloyn was sure the survivors of Waikein could not see what he was seeing—else they would have fled in horror—they did appear to feel the presence. Some people shivered and clasped their coats and cloaks tighter, while an odd few bent over double, afflicted by nausea at the undeads’ presence.

  The mayor made a choking noise, dropped to his knees, and then to his elbows. Some kind of war seemed to be raging inside him, because he crawled forward, howling, and twisting—it was as if he were being dragged like a mad dog by some unseen leash.

  The Harbinger did not take any notice of any of these things. She was the calm center of this mad storm. However, when she spoke, her voice was heard all over the square. “I see you all—every one of you. I draw you together. You belong to me.”

  Eriloyn knew immediately she was talking about the strange, undead shapes wheeling above the humans. However, at the same time, the cloaked figures also came together behind the Harbinger and shed their cloaks.

  All of them wore their runes directly on their skin as she did. As one their hands clenched around the flames and claimed the eerie green glow. The light was so bright it eclipsed any meager lanterns that the citizens of Waikein had with them.

  The mayor howled, and his cry was echoed by the wind that whipped around the town square. The Enlightened—since that was what she had called them—raised their hands wreathed in the green, and it flowed out of them. It encompassed everything from air to cobbles.

  Eriloyn felt it wash over him and pass by. The mayor however was not left alone. To the boy’s ears it sounded as though something was being ripped free of him. The Enlightened seemed to straighten taller and, from his point of view, grow stronger as the light whipped around the square, turning back to them.

  The mayor sagged, almost falling to the cobblestones that he was crawling on. Briefly, he managed to lever himself upright. His mouth worked on words that he would never say, because the other arm of the Harbinger came down, and this time the flame did not stay on her own flesh.

  Eriloyn did not look away as the mayor and the undead creature within him was consumed by flame. He made sure to take in the sound of flesh and clothing burning and inhaled the odor. He wanted to remember this.

  Around the Harbinger, the other Enlightened raised their hands into the air, and fire arched up into the sky. Some of the citizens looked away in fear, but many—if not most—watched the display of power above them.

  It kindled hope in Eriloyn and a sort of grim determination that survivors all shared. It shall not happen here again.

  Aloisa stood at his side, and her eyes were haunted but no longer empty. Long streaks of tears flowed from them, leaving paths in the dirt on her face.

  As the Enlightened fanned out through the crowd, moving to help the injured, and comfort the grief stricken, Eriloyn found himself staring at a figure just behind the Harbinger herself.

  The man’s eyes were locked with the boy’s, in a kind of shock. He was a tall man with dark curly hair and wide brown eyes. Something hung around his shoulders, a stain of power in the ether that might not have been as noticeable as around the Harbinger, but it still drew him.

  In the ether? The boy shook his head. What did that mean?

  The Harbinger was speaking to the crowd, but it was no longer she that was important—it was the man and those eyes that saw too much.

  Then the world was spinning, and Eriloyn was wrenched away.

  Merrick took a staggering step back and found he was staring at the boy with the haunted eyes; the one that he’d ridden in the head of. The runes that he had summoned had drawn him here, to this boy at the very edge of death. He’d been locked in the boy’s head for a week, so that they all might be drawn to the correct place and time. The rune Sielu had shown him this for a reason, brought him here for this moment. It was indeed the perfect place and time for Sorcha to reveal her plan.

  Eriloyn ha
d provided the information on the city the Deacons needed.

  Such an experience was one he would never forget. Merrick had never before considered how the geists would look to everyday folk, or indeed how the Order would. Now he knew. They were hope and salvation.

  He looked at his partner’s back, tall and straight before him, and knew she had done what she set out to. She was now the head of the Order that she’d given a new name: the Enlightened. The city of Waikein would be remembered for this moment—if any of them survived the coming destruction that was.

  The future and his vision had melded and caught up with each other. He wondered what else lay ahead and what the Wrayth power Sorcha had just unleashed could mean. Even he could not see that. They could only go forward as bravely as the boy had.

  FIFTEEN

  Uncertain Partners

  The people of the city were acting as if the fire that had cleansed the geists had also been lit beneath them. They surged into the town hall and set about reclaiming it with vigor that even the lay Brothers could not possibly contain. They grabbed up buckets and mops, began tossing ruined furniture into the streets, and pulled down the curtains to let light stream into the building.

  As Merrick stood in the receiving hall with Sorcha at his side, he felt like a rock in the middle of a maelstrom of released human activity. Brooms were being shoved around with tremendous vigor, blood scrubbed from walls, and everyone was darting up to the newly announced Harbinger for a piece of advice or commentary.

  Perhaps his own folded arms prevented them from involving him in this frenzy. Sorcha seemed calm, and even smiled when a lay Brother told her excitedly that another twenty former members of the Eye and the Fist had been found alive in the city. Apparently they would have their runes recarved as soon as the implements could be readied.

  Sorcha turned and looked him in the eye with a grin. “See, we are already stronger, and once word spreads of what we have done here—”

  Merrick could not let her get any further. Grabbing her arm unceremoniously, he dragged her into a side room and slammed the door shut behind them—thus forestalling at least a dozen more inquiries.

  “What are you doing?” He felt along the Bond, but her thoughts and moods were slippery like eels in the darkest part of the river, and he could not get ahold of them. That scared him more than anything else. Her blue eyes were too bright, her smile too fixed for him to like it.

  As Sorcha took in his stormy expression, the façade and the smile faded. She had finally taken a cloak, declaring that all could choose which color they would rather wear. Merrick found he preferred the thick fur one Raed had given him. Sorcha found a black one in the abandoned buildings of Waikein. Many of their colleagues had simply ripped the colors from their old cloaks and wore the reverse side of brown or black. It had been her first action as leader of the Enlightened, but he could hardly tell if it was a good one.

  The collar of the dark cloak that Sorcha had taken up obscured her eyes from him as she turned away. Merrick could only see her in profile. “I am protecting the people of Arkaym as I was taught to since childhood—just like we were all taught in the Order.”

  Merrick shook his head slowly. “But not as we were taught. Sorcha, you were inside the geists. You were almost part of them rather than destroying them.” He paused, took a deep breath and said the words that had been haunting him since he’d seen the display in the town square. “The rest did not see, but I felt it; you were like one of them.”

  “But I did destroy them.” Sorcha’s reply was so distant that he had to strain his ears to catch it. “You were right—this was the place we needed to be.”

  Another chill went up his spine. The curious double nature of the event, the way it had been twisted by the runes Masa and Sielu, set his teeth on edge. He disliked everything about it, and yet his partner seemed immune to his concerns.

  Sorcha should have been able to sense how much time he had lost and the walking dream he’d been tangled in. Obviously, she had not.

  The Bond that had carried them through so much was unraveling and could no longer be trusted. Merrick felt afloat in a dark sea, and he did the only thing he could: he reached out and took Sorcha’s hand. Maybe the physical connection would reignite the Bond.

  Her fingers were chill, and she looked up at him with the kind of expression he had seen many times on the faces of those who had escaped possession by a geist: shock and distance. Sorcha was coming back to the world, but she was not the Deacon she had been. When she glanced down at his hand holding hers, it was with the detachment of someone who did not fully comprehend her own body.

  Merrick squeezed her fingers, as if by that he could pull her back. “Yes, you destroyed them. Yes, you made the population believe—but at what cost to yourself?”

  Sorcha swallowed, and her blue eyes, for the first time since her demonstration of power, met his. “They are inside me, Merrick. The Wrayth made me, and I was foolish to think that they would let me go so easily.” Her voice making this confession was that of a frightened child, and the flood of her memory ran along the Bond. For a moment he was swept away by it.

  Sorcha stood at the gates to the Mother Abbey in Delmaire, the warmth of the summer sun on her back. Her hands were pressed against the ironbound wood, and they were the chubby, soft ones of a child who could be no more than two. To her eyes the cantrips and runes carved there were complex scribblings that meant nothing. However, there was someone whispering to her; a voice, faint and far off. The child could discern no words, but there was an infinite kindness to the voice that promised cuddles and love.

  “Sorcha!” Another voice, this one much closer and louder, caught the girl’s attention. She looked up into a beautiful face with a smile on it; a familiar face. The Presbyter of the Young, Pareth, with deep gray eyes, and a fine spider’s web of lines around her eyes and lips. She always smiled and always hugged Sorcha when not so many of her fellow Deacons did.

  Sorcha didn’t see it as a child, but Merrick discerned concern in those eyes. Even secondhand, he noticed how her gaze lifted quickly left and right, trying to see if anyone was observing them. “Let’s go back to the garden, sweetling.”

  Her hand on the girl’s shoulder guided her around, away from the door that had so raptly held her attention. The voices faded somewhat when in the presence of the Presbyter, and Sorcha lost interest in them, instead staring up at Pareth in adoration. She had a love in her that she needed to expend on a mother.

  “Mother,” Pareth said, squeezing Sorcha’s little hand just a fraction. “Yes, your mother.” She paused and looked down at the girl at her side. “She was a good friend to me, your mother. We grew up in Jhou together, though I don’t suppose you can understand that yet.” Her frown made Sorcha fear that all was not well.

  Pareth bent and kissed her face. “I risked much to get you into the Order, but you are worth it, sweetling.” Merrick understood then, how Sorcha had passed the deep search the Order had done into her past—the one that should have rooted out any taint of geist. As Presbyter of the Young, Pareth must have conducted such an investigation and distracted others from looking deeply.

  Sorcha’s mouth puckered up, and she would have cried if Pareth had not swept her up hastily into her arms. The Presbyter bounced Sorcha high into the air, making her cry transform into a giggle of delight. The blue sky above seemed full of infinite possibilities—and all of them happy ones.

  Pareth held the girl aloft there for a moment in her outstretched arms. Sorcha felt like she was flying, and she stared down at the Presbyter, full of love and joy.

  “You are so like her,” Pareth whispered to her friend’s daughter. “Please hold on to that for as long as you can. By all the small gods, may none of your father ever touch you . . .”

  With a jerk and a gasp, Merrick pulled free of the Bond. Sorcha’s blue eyes still bored into his.

  “You see,” she murmured to her partner, “I could not remember anything from my childhood when yo
u met me, but since I went into the Wrayth hive, everything has been coming back. They shook something free inside of me, and worse, I think they want me to know what I am. They want me to fear it.”

  If he had not been her partner, Merrick would have attempted a lie—it would have been the kindest thing. He swallowed hard. “Yet, Sorcha, you would never be able to do what you just did without your Wrayth heritage.”

  He observed her flinch and understood. The concept that a Deacon would have anything to do with being geist was an anathema—they had both been taught that. In the Order of the Eye and the Fist, such a Deacon would have been at best locked away in the infirmary, but it was far more likely they would have been given a swift death.

  Merrick locked his hand around her elbow, holding her face-to-face with him when she might have turned away. “You are still yourself, and you can use what they have given you.”

  She shook her head. “You don’t understand, dear Merrick.” Sorcha had never called him such a thing before, and it terrified him to hear her use it in this bleak moment. “I’ve been listening to their voices, and I understand now. The Wrayth were looking for a weapon—one that would link all geists together and then pull them into the mind of the hive. They realized that the powers that the Deacons control could be the bridge—that is why they started their damn breeding program.”

  Now along the Bond Merrick saw the many despairing faces of the female Deacons who the Wrayth had taken and forced to be brood mares for their experiment. He was glad not to have seen that firsthand, but tasting Sorcha’s horror now gave the memory a particular sting.

  “Never fear,” Sorcha whispered, placing her hand on his shoulder, “I have you as my anchor. We have done great things before, and I trust you.”