Harbinger

by Philippa Ballantine

  His last thought before passing the doorway was how ironic it was that the Rossin had been brought low by children.

  SEVENTEEN

  Alone with the Whispers

  Sorcha sat in the dark, on a splendid chair that was not hers, and listened to the voices. Much as she disliked it, she had very little choice in the matter, since they had grown so much stronger. Awakening her Wrayth powers to use on the mayor and his fellow geists had apparently opened a door she couldn’t shut.

  Merrick was about the work of organizing those that had come forward to take up the mantle of the Enlightened—including the rather surprising addition of Aachon.

  The Harbinger of the Enlightened sounded rather grand when shouted to a crowd while wielding runes. Now, sitting alone in the room that had once belonged to the mayor, it felt like a cloak made of gold—a beautiful but terrible burden. The worst of it was the words she had spoken had not been her own; someone else had forced them from her lips.

  Harbinger, the voices had whispered into her mind, and at the same time the words had escaped her. She had not shared that particular fact with Merrick, and the knowledge that he had not found that out only compounded her fear. They had once been as close as two Deacons could be. Now—though she had called him her anchor—she could feel him drifting away from her.

  Come to us, and all fear will be assuaged, the little voices, layered upon each other, repeated.

  In her sleep they called her “beloved” and “special.” They sang to her to return to the hive mind where all was safe and all wrongs would be made right. Her mother had taken her from her proper home, and she need only return to make everything as it should be.

  Sorcha’s hands tightened on the carved arms of the chair, and her teeth pressed together. She knew what Merrick was afraid of, and it tormented her too. She was fully aware that she was teetering on the edge of a vast abyss, and feared if she even moved an inch she would go over.

  Her thoughts darted toward Arch Abbot Rictun. It was strange how she had not thought of him for many, many months and now his face came back to her in the darkness. He had always been at her shoulder when they were growing up, not as a friend, but as a pair of eyes to spot weakness in her. He’d reported Sorcha to the Presbyter of the Young more times than she could count. She’d always thought it was jealousy, but now that the Wrayth had released her memories, she knew that was not what had driven the Arch Abbot.

  She recalled a day when the foundlings of the Order, still too young yet for the novitiate, had been set loose to play in the herb garden. It was one of those stifling summer afternoons where the air was heavy with moisture. The more sensible adults had long since retired to the shade and cool of the Abbey’s stone buildings. Sorcha had been eight years old. Her long dark red hair had come loose from her ponytail and was sticking damply to her neck. She was playing chase with all the other children, glad to be free of the hawklike watch of all the grown-ups. For once they were able to be young.

  She hid behind a tall stand of lavender, stifling her giggles as three other foundlings ran past, oblivious to her absence. When one of the older boys came close, she clambered into the garden bed and, despite the bees, crouched down among the long purple flowers. The smell was overwhelming, and after a moment the heat and the sweet scent overcame her.

  She rolled back until she was lying on the bare earth and just staring up at the bright blue sky. The warmth of the day wrapped around her, and the sound of the lazily buzzing bees put her into a half-awake, half-asleep state. It was this that the older Sorcha knew was very close to the state of reaching for her Center. The smells, the sights and the sounds were acting on her like one of the lay Brother’s drugs.

  As the young Sorcha lay back in the garden, she began to notice that the cloudless sky was not entirely cloudless. Tufts of white, like glimpses of smoke, flickered and danced across the perfect deep blue. She watched them idly, but as she did so they began to form into something that was not so formless. She could make out faces, some long and stretched out, others coming very close to being familiar. One even seemed to look like her own face, but older.

  In this drowsy state, the young Sorcha did not panic, because she did not know—did not have the training to know—that what she was seeing was not just idle imaginings. The older Sorcha, sitting in the darkness of the broken and desecrated hall, bit her lip as the memory unrolled.

  Now the sound of the bees was not just some chaotic, soft rumble, it too began to take shape. The buzzing began to form words. They were voices calling her. They spoke of a warm welcome. They whispered that she did not belong with the Order. She had to leave. Pareth didn’t want her. Pareth was in danger every moment she was in the Abbey.

  Suddenly the feelings seemed very wrong. Pareth was the only one who loved Sorcha. She knew that!

  The young girl clawed frantically at the side of the trance the sensations had brought her to. It was like being trapped in an awful dream that was struggling to hold on to her.

  “Sorcha?” Ernst Rictun’s face, handsome but concerned, appeared in her line of sight. He pushed his shaggy golden hair out of his eyes and then offered her his hand. Sorcha was gagging and screaming on the inside as the voices pounded inside her head. She had to get away from them.

  Green flame flared at the tips of her fingers as she lurched upright and snatched at Ernst’s wrist. The moment her skin made contact with his, she felt some of his strength flow into her. It let her pull free of the soporific effect of the bees, the sky and the scent of the lavender.

  The boy that would grow up to be Arch Abbot of the Order in far-off Arkaym was not so lucky. He must have felt the energy being sucked away and out of his body. He let out a muffled yelp that would have become a scream—had it not been for a hand that wrapped firmly around his mouth.

  Pareth, the Presbyter of the Young, yanked him close, even as Sorcha lurched up from the warm earth. She was gasping as if she had just dived too deep, and she was too young and inexperienced to realize the terrible thing that Pareth did next.

  Older Sorcha did however—and was horrified. The woman she had idolized and loved above all others in her life had broken every rule of the Order just to protect one little girl. She also did something that Sorcha hadn’t even known Sensitives could do.

  Sielu, the First Rune of Sight, was meant to see from another’s eyes, but somehow Pareth corrupted it. She bent the rune opposite to what it was supposed to do. She forced a new vision on Ernst Rictun, one that didn’t involve a young and inexperienced Sorcha using something close to the rune Shayst on him. When he staggered away, there was a look of confusion on his face.

  “Get inside, Ernst,” Pareth barked, and the young boy rubbing at his face in dazed bewilderment did so.

  The young Sorcha looked up at her heroine but couldn’t find any words. Pareth grabbed her fiercely, and hugged her until the youngster thought her ribs would crack.

  Dimly she heard the Presbyter mutter, “We’ll have to get you into the novitiate immediately . . . no time to waste . . . none at all.”

  The older Sorcha shook herself free of the memory with as much difficulty as she had escaped her first experience with her own Center. She licked her dry lips and eased herself back into the chair slowly. It had been a very bad day for Rictun, and she certainly felt sorry for him—something she never would have believed possible. That buried memory explained much.

  She wondered where he was now. Was he even alive for her to apologize to? The old Sorcha, the one who had stood before Merrick and scoffed at his age and inexperience, would never have contemplated doing such a thing. Now, she realized she had, by accident, done something terrible, but Pareth had done something even worse—deliberately.

  So will you, the Wrayth crooned. You will go back to Vermillion.

  The geistlord within her was yearning for the Maker of Ways to tear open reality, to allow the geists full access to the human realm. And once the geists started pouring into this world, the Wrayth could
draw them into its hive mind. It wanted her to stitch them into itself, making it more powerful than any other geistlord.

  While Sorcha shivered at the prospect, the busy little mind of her father’s master delighted in it.

  For a long moment she imagined what their world would be like. The Circle of Stars, the geistlords and the Wrayth would fight for control of the ravaged human population. The people left alive would be just farmed animals for all of them. It was the grand catastrophe that the Ehtia had feared so much they had sacrificed their own lives in the human realm. They had fled in the face of it.

  Sorcha smiled grimly. Derodak’s followers in the Circle of Stars could not imagine the horror it would unleash and how unlikely it was that they could control it. Derodak had spent centuries growing arrogant and more self-assured—it would all come undone when he finally experienced a breach in the worlds.

  So all that stands against it is you and your little band? the Wrayth voices, dry and hurtful, murmured. You can’t even control yourself, how can you possibly imagine stopping all this?

  Sorcha closed her eyes, hearing the voices but trying not to listen. Instead she summoned up the memories of her mother—scant as they were—to give her strength. Still, what little she had been able to see when she shared her mother’s mind, she used as a goad on herself. Sorcha’s hands clenched on the arms of the chair, and the wood ground into her flesh. If she did not pull this new Order together, then that would be all humanity’s fate: nothing but breeders and food for the undead.

  She had to find out what the Circle of Stars were doing. Their hunt for the Patternmaker of the Native Order had come to nothing. None of the runes seemed able to pierce that particular mystery. Merrick’s prescience might be terrifying, but not exactly helpful when it came to specifics. His use of runes had brought them to the right place to make a spectacle, but that could not be relied on in the next step.

  Sorcha Faris, Harbinger of the Enlightened surged to her feet. It was time for a hunt.

  She shoved the doors of the mayor’s office open. They swung far easier than she had thought and slammed into the walls on either side with a tremendous crash. The people who had been bustling to and fro in the hallway jumped. Sorcha saw not just respect in their eyes but a little fear as well. Deacons and folk she had known for years now looked at her differently. The new title she had chosen had not apparently been a reassuring one.

  Merrick, who had been sitting across from the mayor’s office, got abruptly to his feet. He pulled his silver fur cloak around himself and walked over to where she stood. His brown eyes were troubled, but his mind, which she felt along the Bond, was as stalwart as ever.

  “We need to find a geist,” Sorcha said, taking him by the elbow and guiding him down the hallway and toward the front door—not allowing him to argue in front of everyone. Perhaps pulling her partner out the door wasn’t good for their new image, but after the night before’s display, Sorcha thought she had some leeway on that.

  “Very inconvenient then,” Merrick said, shooting her a thin smile, “considering that you just destroyed all of the ones in the city.”

  “Yes, well, I didn’t have much time to stop and think.” The blur of the confrontation outside the town hall was something that she still had to sort through. Reaching out to the geists had seemed so very easy. Like a sword removed from its sheath, she had known just what to do.

  Sorcha cleared her throat, and jerked her mind away from contemplating that at present. “But nevertheless, we need a geist.”

  They stepped out into the sunshine and blinked at its brightness. Sorcha even tilted her head back and enjoyed the feel of it on her face. The damage to the city was intense; everywhere broken buildings poked from among the untouched like scorched trees in the forest. While the smell of death would take much time to clear, it still smelled better than it had yesterday. A kindly wind had wafted away much of the stench.

  “You and I need to travel,” Sorcha said, as firmly as she could manage. Now it was his turn to lead her.

  Somehow, remarkably the public stables had survived, and it was here that the Order had brought the Breed horses. When they entered, Sorcha’s gaze traveled over the remains of that bright creation of the Order of the Eye and the Fist. Seven stallions and twenty-three mares were all that remained. Much like the Deacons, they had been badly damaged.

  Still, her heart lifted a bit when a familiar long nose poked over the stall door and snuffled at her cloak. Shedryi, the tall black stallion, as old as he was, had come away from the scourging of the Mother Abbey with not a scratch on him. A young lay Brother had ridden him out before the flames reached the stables. Melochi, the mare that Merrick favored, was in the stall next to him.

  Merrick fished out a sugar cube and fed it to her. That simple pleasure of a horse’s gentle mouth on his open palm made him smile. Her young partner had precious few reasons to really smile of late.

  Shedryi turned one accusing dark eye on Sorcha, since she had brought no treat. “Here,” Merrick said, reaching across and dropping one into her hand. “I found a few down in the kitchens.”

  Shedryi gobbled his treat and then threw his head up with a snort. “Yes, indeed, we are going on a little ride, you wicked boy,” Sorcha said, rubbing his smooth neck. Glancing across at Merrick she asked, “Any sign of Raed yet?”

  Taking a bridle down from the wall, Merrick shook his head. “Aachon said he wanted to be sure all the geists had gone before he came back. He should turn up soon.”

  Sorcha shrugged. She was not worried about her lover, he was no dog on a leash, and besides any who threatened him would feel the wrath of the Rossin. She understood that sometimes the Young Pretender needed his space—he too had dark shadows to wrestle with.

  Unlike in the Mother Abbey, the Deacons saddled up their own mounts—lay Brothers were far too busy to tend to the whims of the Active or Sensitive. Sorcha didn’t mind. In fact, she thought this new Order of Enlightenment would be better served if the Deacons of it knew a little of what the Brothers of the gray cloaks went through.

  Merrick mounted up with alacrity, once again making Sorcha’s bones feel very old. “So, where to?” he asked.

  Her partner looked positively elated to be on horseback again, so he was not going to like her reply. “Any direction . . . we just have to get out of the city to find a geist. It shouldn’t take long or far.”

  Merrick rode Melochi out into the yard, while Sorcha saddled the stallion. Shedryi turned and tried to nip at her as she tightened the cinch on him—however when she slapped him on the rump, he settled down. Soon she too was mounted, and with a little nudge of the stirrups, they trotted out of the stable and into the city.

  In the dark of the previous night, Sorcha had been given precious little time to examine the city of Waikein they were saving. It was dreadful now to ride through it, but the people that they met along the way seemed positively happy. They looked up at the passing Deacons with soot-stained faces, grinned and waved. They were clearing the streets, gathering up the unburied corpses for proper ceremonies, and repairing those houses that could be salvaged.

  “You would hardly know them as the same people from last night,” Merrick commented, pushing the reluctant Melochi past lines of smashed barricades.

  Sorcha nodded but kept her eyes averted from the gaze of the grateful citizens. She was afraid she had given them false hope. The geists were not beaten back. Countless numbers of them still waited.

  Sensing her tumult, Merrick reached across and squeezed her hand. “It was a demonstration, Sorcha. It had to be done, and word of it will already be spreading throughout the Empire.”

  “Not that there is much of an Empire anymore,” she muttered in reply.

  “Zofiya will be helping with that,” he shot back, and then effectively ended the conversation by urging his mare into a quick trot.

  Sorcha needed to feel the wind in her hair and grab a little joy too. She kicked Shedryi into a gallop in response, and soo
n they had caught up and passed him.

  The two of them were quickly out of the city and on their way to the rolling hills that bordered it. It was a wonderful thing to be beyond the stench of death and destruction. They rode the horses up through the velvet green hills punctuated by pale gray rocks, and along the banks of the river. Merrick was being sensible, though, keeping his Center open as they went. All the time they felt no geist presence.

  Sorcha knew that most of the undead in the area would have been drawn to the city to feed on the concentration of humanity there.

  She took a long deep breath. At this stage the natural world was still untouched; she saw rabbits moving on the hills, and a flock of birds overhead against the bright blue sky. However, should the Circle of Stars achieve their aim then eventually that too would be ravaged.

  Shedryi snorted and tossed his head, but that was only when a fox darted across their path. He was a small one, and definitely not a coyote, but Sorcha nonetheless shivered; it reminded her too much of the Fensena. She knew he and his favor were waiting somewhere for her—as if she didn’t have enough to worry about.

  They came to a looming series of waterfalls, sliding their way down from the mountains to the east, and the partners began picking their way up the side of the cliffs through a series of goat tracks. The roar of the water and the cloud of spray around them was deeply refreshing. Sorcha took the chance to wipe her face in the chill dew and rub her neck with it. She’d learned to take enjoyment in whatever moment they could.

  With that thought, she turned Shedryi around and waited for Merrick to reach her. He kneed Melochi up the rise and then pulled her to a stop next to his partner. He looked out over the beautiful scene of nature’s power, and then also tilted his face into the sun. A few of the shadows gathered in the corner of his eyes seemed to lift slightly. “This was a fine idea, Harbinger.” The way his mouth formed that title said that he was still not happy with it. “But which sort of geist do we need?”