Spectyr

by Philippa Ballantine

  “He’s gone.” Sorcha leaned down and called to Raed; her face was as hard and calm as stone. “I felt something as he fell. You can stop looking—you won’t find him.”

  Raed’s stomach clenched, and somewhere deep down the Rossin flipped over. “Why?” he asked, afraid he already knew the answer.

  “Because I felt the Otherside opening.” She said the words matter-of-factly and then held out her hand to Raed. When he had heaved himself back into the tunnel proper, he didn’t let go of her.

  Sorcha’s eyes were downcast as she stripped the Gauntlets off her hands. “I felt it—just for a moment—it opened. It opened, and it took him.”

  “What do we do to get him back?” Raed asked, and the blank, hopeless stare he received in return told him much.

  Down there in the depths of the Hive City, Sorcha let him hold her tight as she told him the truth. “I don’t know. I don’t have a clue.” And then she did something that frightened Raed. She cried.

  FIFTEEN

  Lost Loves

  Merrick fell into stars, and for a long moment he had no idea if he was awake or sleeping. This did feel very like his dreams—but he would not be a Sensitive if he could not tell the difference between those two states.

  No, he decided, he was not dreaming—and immediately after that he guessed what had happened. That tunnel under the Hive City was both incredibly distant and only a hairsbreadth away.

  He was on the Otherside. The chill in his lungs could have told him that, if nothing else did. Once, not many months ago, he and Sorcha had ventured into the home of the geists, just in spirit. Sorcha had been lucky—the Otherside and its memories had been wiped away when she returned to the human world. Merrick had not been so fortunate. It was a nightmare he would never shake—his naked soul flayed by the winds of the geist world. Sorcha and he trapped in flames, tortured by geists that had been waiting for their chance to torment Deacons. His bones had burned, and everywhere the runes that they’d trained so hard with were used against them.

  Now the Deacon stood in a great sea of stars, his body cold and very much present; his heart was racing like a galloping horse and his breath pumping in his lungs. It was far too close to the details of some of his recent dreams for his liking.

  Merrick was completely baffled how this had happened. Sorcha could open the gateway to the Otherside with the rune Teisyat, but he would have felt her use the most feared of the runes carved on the Gauntlet. Her partner was absolutely sure she had not done that.

  By the Bones, I am a fool, he thought angrily. The Bond.

  Sorcha was gone. The absence hit him harder than the sudden chill in his body—harder even than finding himself in the Otherside. Panic flooded him. Deacons worked in pairs, always, always. Now here he was, a Sensitive out on his own, trapped in the Otherside—

  But you are not alone. The voice whispered from among the stars. It was sharp and cruel and the one that had invaded his dreams. Mongrel homeless child that you are, inside there is still greatness. The Body. The Beast. The Blood.

  It was the chant, the purpose that had brought Sorcha, Raed and him together. He had heard that chant before, spoken in the sanctuary of the Mother Abbey where it had been frightening and disturbing enough. When whispered by someone or something within the vast void of the Otherside, it made Merrick’s blood, already icy, grow far colder. Nothing but the stars were around him, but the presence was close. He dared not stretch forth his Sight and attract the attention of geists.

  “Be gone, this is not your realm.” The voice was familiar, light, female, and suddenly the Otherside, the stars and the presence did not matter one little bit.

  Merrick turned, spinning in space as if he were swimming, and there she was.

  “Nynnia,” he whispered, and tears immediately sprang to his eyes, even as a smile spread across his face.

  She had died for him, died for the people of a world not her own—and he had never stopped miss her. Her dark hair and small frame were just as Merrick remembered, her eyes set in the sweetest face he had ever seen. The only difference was that she floated in the air, and he could see stars through her body. And he knew why that was—she had none.

  “Darling Merrick.” She moved closer, and he was so pleased to see she smiled just as much as he did. For an instant he was washed away by giddy elation. Everything had been gray since she had died, but now the world was bright again. Even if it was not Merrick’s world.

  Nynnia’s expression, though, faded suddenly to terribly sad. “I am sorry I had to bring you here.” Her voice was swallowed slightly by the great void that surrounded them.

  “Don’t be.” He held out his arms to her. “Whatever the explanation—I don’t care—really, I don’t.”

  Her eyes flicked to his open embrace, and then when she moved forward, he began to understand her sorrow. Her gleaming form slipped through his with not a single sensation of warmth and contact reaching him. Merrick’s stomach knotted with frustration, and his anger at her death flared anew.

  As if sensing it, Nynnia pulled back and cupped her ethereal hand lightly and exactly around the line of his face—careful not to again break the illusion that she could touch him. “You cannot stay here long, my love.” She pointed down, and Merrick followed her gesture.

  Below, the Otherside was stretched out before him like a vision of nightmares. Everything of his spiritual journey here came racing back. The chaos of geists and human souls moved under him, a terrifying vista that spread from horizon to distant horizon. And it was not silent—there were screams, howls and panic below.

  Yet he floated above it, safe in the painted panoply of stars. “You . . . ” He cleared his throat. “You are holding me above all that?”

  The smile on her face was slightly amused. “I couldn’t let you down—not when I meant to save you.” Her body shimmered, becoming nothing but silver light, wrapping itself around and through him.

  And then Merrick flew. There was no feeling of air flowing over his body, but it was still an amazing thing. The stars blurred and the vast nightmare landscape passed beneath him. Despite the danger of being on the Otherside, he wanted to whoop and crow as he hadn’t since before his father’s death—since he had been a child.

  A mountain loomed on the horizon before a golden sky. He could discern a stream of human shapes making their way toward it.

  “If they get to the mountain”—Nynnia’s voice was warm in his ear—“they are in our domain.”

  And he saw what she meant. A giant fortress was built into the rock, gleaming with that same golden light. Suddenly he was able to think beyond the joy of knowing Nynnia was not lost. The Deacon realized that he was seeing what so many scholars of the Order had theorized and argued about for hundreds of years. Some of their ideas on what lay on the Otherside were extreme and rather bizarre—but none of them could compare with this.

  The warmth of Nynnia wrapped about him, and her voice whispered in his ear, “This is my home, Merrick. The place I left to go to your world. Does anything look familiar about it?”

  Baffled, he attempted to orient his mind. He tried to look at the sprawling fortress and focus his logical senses on it. The long walls were carved with incredible friezes depicting all the life in Arkaym. The towers were topped with strange ornate cupolas that gleamed and reflected the light of the mad horizon. It was like nothing he had ever seen—except for the once.

  He remembered as a child going with his parents to his grandfather’s house. The young Merrick had followed them out into the garden, where a great head lay toppled and covered in ivy. When he had shrieked, his father had scooped him aloft and tossed him up, until his tears turned into giggles. Then the older man had carried him into the broken remains of the Ancients’ temple—the place where his grandfather’s castle had been built.

  Even as a child Merrick had found the deeply and intricately carved ruins amazing. “No one knows much of the Ancients,” his father had told him as he sat atop his shoulders, b
ut the touch of reverence was strange in a man so proud of his aristocracy. “But look, Ales—what they did, what they built, is still unmatched after all these centuries.”

  And now, in the depths of the Otherside, Merrick saw the very same finesse and craft that his father had admired. He couldn’t have been more shocked if Nynnia had hit him between the eyes.

  For generations scholars had argued about what had happened to the Ancients and their wisdom. They had vanished, and all they built had been left lying empty. Other nations had gradually taken apart the buildings to use the fine stone for their own edifices. The Break, when the Otherside had finally spilled into Arkaym, had swallowed much knowledge.

  “You see”—Nynnia’s voice in his ear was so soft that for a minute he thought it might actually be inside his head—“you know what I am—what we are.”

  “The Ancients . . . ”

  Her laugh was so beautiful that he felt tears spring to his eyes. “No more ancient than you, dear, sweet Merrick—and when we walked the world, we had our own name for ourselves.”

  “But how . . . ” He cleared his throat, watching the light run in rivulets over the beautiful white fortress. “How did you end up here, on the Otherside?”

  A cool shiver ran over his skin, more an absence of warmth than any ethereal wind. “We had to go—or the world would have been wide-open to the Otherside.”

  “But . . . ”

  “There is no time,” Nynnia said, just as prickles of hotness now ran up Merrick’s spine. “This place was not made for living beings—you should remember that from last time. Even with the protection of your body, your time is short.”

  He opened his mouth, but the fire up his spine was now a burning that brought a gasp to his lips. Nynnia’s presence undulated over him, relieving the pain for at least a moment.

  Nynnia slipped away from him, her form resolving into the one achingly familiar to him from her time in his world. “I cannot protect your body, my love, but I can send you to a place where you can help your cause.”

  “Cause?”

  “Your fight against the goddess.” Her gaze tightened on him, until Merrick could actually feel it. Those eyes, now as back then, saw so much. “And the stars—the voices, my love.”

  He was not so foolish as to be blind to the meaning of the stars that had haunted his dreams. Even if Merrick had been just a normal citizen of the Empire, he would still have known the Circle of Stars was the symbol of the old Native Order. The one that had supposedly died out at least eighty years before his Emperor was summoned from across the water. “So they are not dead.” He did not frame it as a question.

  “Many were killed, but others were driven underground. The Order of the Circle of Stars is still very much alive.”

  Merrick clenched his jaw as fresh pain exploded through him. He was left gasping, reeling. Nynnia’s image swam before his eyes, while his breath came in short, hard gasps.

  She held out her hand to him, as if she still did not quite understand that they could not touch. “They are trying to reach this place, Merrick—trying to harness what was never meant to be harnessed. To stop them this time you must go back.”

  It was hard to concentrate on her words past the terrible slow pace of his heartbeat in his ears. Merrick didn’t need her to tell him he was dying. “Back?” the words came grating out of his struggling throat.

  Nynnia’s voice by comparison was very light and very far away. “Time has little meaning to us here, Merrick. I will send you back to her. You must plant the seed.”

  Her? What did she mean?

  He was now beyond speech, and the Otherside before his eyes was tearing apart—but he couldn’t tell if it was his perception or reality—all he knew was that it hurt.

  Nynnia. Despite the pain, he didn’t want to leave her, but Merrick didn’t have any way to hold on. He was falling, spinning like a leaf into a well of shadows. No air in his lungs meant he could not scream.

  And then reality grabbed him hard, yanking back into the world he’d been born into. Now the pain was deep and real, in muscle and bone and sinew.

  Merrick shook his head, finally realizing that he was lying on something hard and very much like stone. After a moment of contemplation, he was able to wrench his eyes open.

  She had not left. Nynnia was leaning over him, but it was the real Nynnia. The smile on her face was confused rather than welcoming, but he didn’t care. The weight of her hand on his chest and the gleam of late evening sun on her hair all told him instantly she was a living, breathing woman.

  It didn’t matter how it had been done. Merrick lurched upright against a wave of pain and clasped her to him. Her small form was as solid and warm as it had been cold and unmoving when last Merrick had felt it against him. “Oh love,” he laughed, “by the Bones—you’re here, you’re all right!”

  The hand around his throat was abrupt, sobering and tight. The words he had been meaning to whisper in her ear died in his windpipe. She was a small woman, and yet she was holding him as lightly as a feather above her head. It felt as though a giant had him just under the jaw.

  Nynnia’s eyes were as cold as steel. “Tell me who you are and why I should not break your neck for such impudence?”

  Merrick’s vision wavered, and he had no way of crying out—something that this confused and martial Nynnia had obviously not taken into account. The young Deacon would have found the whole situation amusing, but the stern gaze of his beloved did not offer any humor.

  He had just seen her—but she had no body. Now a very real, physical Nynnia appeared not to recognize him at all. Merrick had been tossed around like a rag doll—and now it appeared his love would kill him. If it was his love. His fingers locked around hers, desperate to break her hold, but he might as well have been trying to beand of a granite statue.

  The world dimmed, colors drained away and shapes wavered. Whatever the reasoning for sending him here, Merrick was now sure this was not what his Nynnia meant to have happen.

  It was the last thought in his head before blackness wrapped around him and sucked him down into another void—one in which no geists awaited.

  SIXTEEN

  Taking the Reins

  Sorcha swallowed hard on the lump in her throat as the words of Rictun came back to her. You really know how to go through those partners of yours. At the time she’d thought it merely another attack by a man who had always despised her. Now, however, she was wondering if there wasn’t a grain of truth to it.

  Slowly, Sorcha got to her feet. Raed was waiting in the shadows of the corridor, waiting for her to speak, waiting for her to tell him just how bad things were. And she knew the huge question weighing on his mind.

  “Ask it.” Her voice was flat and distant, but she needed someone else to do it.

  He rubbed his red gold beard, tilted his head and spoke under his breath. “Is Merrick dead?”

  Unholy Bones, it hurt to hear it, though. Sorcha’s hands tightened into fists, but she had to revert to her training and not let emotions overrule her. Considering, she leaned back against the cool wall of the tunnel and stared down into the blackness where they’d last seen Merrick.

  This was not the first instance where Sorcha had lost a partner, and that alone was the only reason she was able to stave off panic. Her recollection of those times had been nothing but pain, the disconcerting loss of Center and finally the weighty sensation of severance. It had, in short, felt as though a part of herself had been amputated.

  Sorcha was almost afraid to try, but she closed her eyes and felt out along the Bond, like someone who had been burned in the past and feared being scorched again.

  It took her a moment to reach the place where Merrick should have been. It was empty, but not in the aching void way that was caused by death. Her partner was not there, but the Bond remained as it had been.

  “I don’t think he is dead,” Sorcha murmured, hesitant to appear as if she had only wishful thinking in mind, “but he is not in this w
orld.”

  “The Otherside? Surely he cannot survive there?” Raed reached out and took her hand.

  The Young Pretender was definitely more aware of the nature of the Otherside than any other normal person in the Empire, but every child in the Empire knew that only spirits and geists could survive there. Flesh was not meant to exist in a place made of void and soul. Sorcha let out a long breath, fully tasting the bitter bile of helplessness.

  She had to hold on to her belief in her partner. “You know Merrick as well as I do, Raed. He is a remarkable young man—and if anyone can survive—it is he.” In the back of her mind there were two little nuggets that she did not share with her lover. The first was, as insane as it sounded, they had some allies on the Otherside. The second was the existence of some kind of wild talent in Merrick.

  “And we do still have a murderer out there and your sister to find—let’s concentrate on that. We can’t do anything to help Merrick right now.”

  “You could open a doorway yourself . . . ” Raed ventured.

  She shook her head slowly. “It is not something to be done lightly—and even if I went through, without Merrick I would be blind.”

  Raed pressed his hand over his own eyes and rubbed them wearily.

  “As you can imagine,” Sorcha whispered, “a blinded Deacon in a world of angry, vengeful geists would not be very sensible. We should focus on what we can do.” It sounded so very sensible—very orderly—and almost like she was at peace with the idea. It was very far from the truth.

  “And what exactly can we do, Deacon Faris?” Raed looked at her so sternly that she was reminded of Merrick.

  Sorcha tucked her Gauntlets back into her belt. “I am getting the feeling that the Prince of Chioma wanted Merrick and me to stay for some other reason than finding out about the Emperor. I suggest we ask him what that is.”

  Raed’s eyebrow shot up. “Interrogate the highest royal in this kingdom? It’s that easy, is it?”