Harbinger

by Philippa Ballantine

  Sorcha considered his question. It could not be one of the lesser ones like a rei, but she did not want a geistlord either. Finally, she settled on one. “A revenant would be ideal, but if you could manage . . .”

  As Merrick abruptly opened his Center and shared it with her, her words dried in her mouth. Every time he did so she was reminded how lucky she was to have been partnered with him. The hills and grassland that had seemed pretty enough suddenly exploded into life. It would have been overwhelming in the hands of a lesser Sensitive, but Merrick balanced it so effortlessly that the only information she got was the important facts.

  Like the blur of red and gold along the ridgeline; a twining undead power that flickered in and out with tormented faces in its midst. A revenant—a geistlord that gathered the tormented souls of humans as they died, and trapped them within—just as she had asked for. Perhaps her luck was going to hold out.

  “Well done, Merrick,” she said, digging her heels into her stallion’s sides, “you have found our informant.” A wicked and dangerous grin spread on her lips. Perhaps as Harbinger she was going to have different luck than when she’d been merely a Deacon.

  EIGHTEEN

  Sensitive and Wrayth

  “Right back where we started,” Merrick found himself muttering under his breath, but it was not with any true distress. The few times that he and Sorcha had hunted geist on the way to Ulrich had been invigorating. It was, after all, what Deacons were trained to do, and when they did engage with each other to exercise their abilities it was a glorious thing.

  The sly smile that his partner shot him now suggested that she felt the very same way. Along the Bond the whispering of the Wrayth seemed to subside, or maybe it was the sheer power of the moment that simply drowned them out.

  Both Deacons slid from their mounts and walked together up the hill. The earth was springy underfoot. Now, the revenant would usually have tried to escape them, seeing as they were its natural enemy, but lately the undead had learned more than a little bravery. The weakening of the barrier between the human realm and the Otherside was giving them much greater strength.

  Merrick caught the subtle gesture of Sorcha flicking back her cloak. It would have been the moment when she went to pull her Gauntlets from her belt, but of course they were no longer there. A gesture learned over a lifetime could not so easily be put aside. Realizing her mistake, Sorcha cleared her throat and instead pushed her sleeves up, flexing her fingers. That particular gesture worked just as well without Gauntlets as it had with.

  The runes trickled and ran through the marks the Patternmaker had carved, and Merrick marveled how she didn’t even seem to need to think the words for the runes before they were there. Blue fire filled the lines and flooded down toward her fingertips.

  Merrick’s own power was just as second nature as his partner’s. His Sight filled the landscape around them with life and death; but he narrowed it in on the revenant that had just begun to whirl about on itself.

  “You really expect to get information from a geist?” he asked as they neared the undead and tried to sound more positive than he felt.

  Sorcha shrugged. “Well, if there is anyone more likely to know when and where the barrier will be torn I cannot think of it right now.” She spun on her heel and stared at him hard.

  He hated it when she was like this . . . bad and dangerous things happened when his partner threw her hands up in the air and just decided to try some madcap scheme. She might have put on a good show in the town square last night, but she was not fooling him. She was still the same Active that had so casually created a strong, maddening Bond between them.

  Sorcha’s lips curled at the corners, but there was a hint of sadness in her face. “Oh, so now you are regretting being my Sensitive, are you?”

  “I . . . I . . .” Merrick opened his mouth, and then shut it with a snap. Just get on with this. He pushed his words along the Bond.

  They had both come to rely on the link between them and, in fact, with its recent weakening, he had begun to miss it. Still, they remained partners, and Merrick would cling onto that fact until he was spent and done with life.

  The revenant was dancing toward them, twirling and strangely confident. It looked like it had captured quite a number of torn souls, thanks to the devastation of the city. Merrick’s stomach turned over in a sick knot. No one had ever discovered the true extent of a revenant’s power, and it had been speculated that there could be no limit to it. If the geist could find enough souls, it could possibly rival a geistlord.

  Sorcha had to feel his concern, but it did not stop her. She stepped lightly over the ground toward it, as if they were two dancers—and only they could hear the music.

  Merrick strained his senses, both ethereal and physical, but it appeared that they were the only living things of any consequence nearby. By the time he looked up, Sorcha’s whole arms were glowing red with the flame of Pyet, just as the snapping skeletal heads of the revenant spun and threw themselves down on her.

  The swell of voices filled Merrick’s head, but he knew they were actually coming from his partner. The Wrayth was never too far away from her now, and the Bond suddenly felt very, very frail. Merrick wrapped himself around it, like a sailor holding on to the rigging, praying for it not to break.

  If he was, as she had said, her anchor, then he was damned well going to act like it. She seemed to have even less regard for her own safety than she had when Merrick first met her. He knew what had done it. Sorcha didn’t need to smoke those damn cigarillos to tell him that she didn’t expect to live much longer. In fact, she seemed like she was rushing toward extinction with both arms spread wide.

  “Not today,” Merrick muttered to himself. The Third Eye, carved in the middle of his forehead, began to glow white hot and burn on his skin. It was usually reserved for the last few runes in a Sensitive’s arsenal, but something about this revenant was bringing it out far more quickly.

  Through his Center he watched as Sorcha wrapped her arms around the snarling faces of those who had been prematurely wrenched from life. They were so angry that it felt as though they might rip her skin right off.

  Why are you not doing anything? He screamed along the Bond because it was true. Sorcha was merely standing there, not using a single of her Runes of Dominion—even though they were nearly bursting out of her skin.

  A flash of insight burned like lightning in his brain. He suddenly understood what she was doing. The powers of the Wrayth had been proven useful last night, and she was endeavoring to use them in more subtle ways. By twining herself into the fabric of the revenant she was hoping to see what it saw—to understand what it wanted and what was coming.

  Merrick felt like a total fool. He had thought she would trap the revenant with the runes, drain it of its power, and demand it show her what she wanted to know. It was yet another mark of the weakening of the Bond that she had been able to conceal her true intentions from him.

  The trouble was in the nature of this geist. It, like the Wrayth, was a creature of twined souls, but the revenant contained no single core of intelligence. It was as mindless and muddled a creature as could be imagined. Sorcha was letting it wrap itself around her, and Merrick knew that she would be lost in that chaos very quickly. Revenants were responsible for more Deacons with permanent addled brains than any other kind of geist. Sorcha knew that just as well as he did, but she had become a little too sure of her own power. Lost in it almost.

  Merrick raced forward, ready to attempt to pull her bodily from the revenant’s embrace, but the Wrayth and the revenant turned on him. He heard a scream that threatened to cut through his bones and was actually shoved physically backward. The breath was knocked out of his lungs, and he could hear Sorcha’s howls only dimly. Her mind was unreachable.

  The barrier was so thin at the moment that this tumult could draw other geists from the Otherside. A new invasion could begin here and undo all the good work they had done last night.

  Yes, th
e barrier is very thin. Merrick shook his head. He heard the words against his skin; a physical presence of one he knew was not in the human realm—one that had given up her body to save the world once already.

  Yet when he saw her form, smoky and gleaming as it was, his heart gave a little jump. Nynnia was here with him now. Until this moment he’d not considered all the implications of the thinning of the veil. It was not just geists who lived on the other side of it; the Ehtia and their Ancient knowledge resided there too. He had loved one of the Ehtia—probably still did if he cared to admit it. Despite Zofiya, that ember still burned.

  He caught himself speculating. They were in a war for survival, and that meant there was a real likelihood that he would join Nynnia on the Otherside for a brief moment, before being swept away to whatever awaited a Deacon beyond.

  Merrick! Sorcha’s voice jerked his attention and his Center back toward her. She was standing within the revenant. Two skeleton heads were clamped on each of her arms, and her pain was burning along the fragile Bond. He had to concentrate . . . but it was very hard with the image of Nynnia drawing nearer—and there was something different about his lost love. He tried to split his attention as best he could.

  The geist that was bearing down on Sorcha was stronger than any revenant they’d encountered, but it was as he had warned her; the closeness of the Otherside was giving them more strength and power. He was terrified of his partner burning away under the strain.

  Don’t be. Nynnia was now at his shoulder. He could tell because the smell of summer roses came with her, along with a comforting warmth. Sorcha has also become stronger; the Wrayth has at least given her that.

  The image of his Active wrestling with the Wrayth seemed to retreat a little, as if he were watching it through a spyglass. He could see her nature now. Long, spiraling, blue white connections ran from her and into the geist twisting above her. Pulses of power ran down these connections, but he could not tell in which direction they were going. He was frightened of the implications.

  If any of their Sensitives, old or their newly made ones, saw this, they would be terrified. In the old Order they had a name for it: contamination. At the very least Sorcha would have been confined to the infirmary—at worst she would have been put down like a rabid dog.

  The final rune. It had been created for a situation like this and kept secret from the Sensitives. The one secret they never shared with their partners.

  When it comes to it, will you have the strength to do what is necessary? Nynnia looked at him with infinite kindness. She knew what Sorcha was to him and how deep their Bond was.

  Merrick shook his head, and for the first time felt real, deep anger toward the formless woman. “She is all we have! She just pulled off the greatest feat of geist exorcism that has ever been seen. Even the First Deacon could not have done what she did.”

  Nynnia seemed to blow back and forth. And you know there is only one way that is possible. She is becoming one of them. Her humanity is weakening . . .

  Merrick didn’t know what to say to that. Sorcha had experienced her own mother’s final breakout of the Wrayth’s prison. He knew she had been tormented when she saw that, and by finding out her father had been one of the Wrayth. He also knew that she was deeply afraid of becoming one of them.

  However, right now, with her arms outstretched, channeling or destroying the revenant, she was magnificent—and definitely not tormented.

  Nynnia looked at him, and he felt stripped bare under that gaze. Remember your vows, my love. That is all . . . remember why you became a Deacon. Your father died at their hands, and—

  “Merrick!” Sorcha’s call snapped her partner’s head around. She was calling him, and despite everything he followed his training.

  “Your Center,” she cried, as the revenant bent toward her. He had pulled back his connection to her, and now it was barely discernable. She could see no way to hold and bind the creature without his Sight.

  When he shot a glance over his shoulder again, Nynnia was gone.

  “Merrick!”

  The Sensitive stumbled as he turned and ran to his Active’s side. For a moment Merrick could not discern who was feeding off whom.

  Neither can I. Now Sorcha’s voice in his head was small and frightened. Nothing showed on her expression, but within he could hear the voices of the Wrayth beginning to rise out of the darkness. He didn’t know how to combat them, since they were inside his partner—much as the Rossin was inside Raed.

  We will deal with it, he replied to her. They are not as strong as us. Nothing is as strong as us.

  It was a bold claim.

  A Sensitive must always hold up their Active; he had been taught that in the novitiate. His instructor’s voice, Deacon Rueng, came back to him on the winds of memory. It is they that will stand in the center of the storm, and they will feel unequal to the task. We are the anchor that gives them the strength to hold against it.

  Merrick ran and stood beside Sorcha. Physical presence did not really matter; as long as they could see each other, the Bond should be strong enough. Yet part of Merrick wanted to stand at her side, share in the danger.

  “It is too much,” Sorcha screamed. She was holding the shield of the fire rune, Yevah, in one hand, with the green flicker of Shayst ready in the other fist. Merrick immediately saw the problem. If she used the active rune to draw away power while she was still entangled with it, then she could end up killing herself.

  Surely there was some way to free herself from the geist? Merrick’s mind started to race over the possibilities, to offer something to his partner.

  Sorcha sank to one knee as the shield of fire was thrust downward. Parts of the revenant were traveling along their connection, piercing the shield.

  “Whenever you are ready,” the Active howled, turning her face, white with shock, toward him.

  Thinking! he shot back through the Bond. This was no normal case. No Deacon he had ever heard of had linked herself with a geist and still remained sane. Yes, she was still sane.

  As sane as ever. She gasped as a tendril of the revenant reached into her body. The sensation of ice-cold flooding communicated itself very well along the Bond and Merrick cried out too.

  Faster, he had to think faster. So it was not a case of a functioning Deacon . . . how about a case of an injured one? He had to think like a lay Brother—those that tended to the ill. He had to contemplate what they dealt with: the geiststruck, the contaminated, those that had delved too deep and been lost within the undead’s embrace. All of the initiates were taught something of the work of the lay Brothers, the better to appreciate it . . . however most paid little attention.

  Merrick was digging deep now. He’d stood in the back row, the infirmary had been hot, and the drone of the lay Brother had put many of his fellow students to sleep on their feet. However, Merrick was not one of them.

  “You are very lucky I was such a damn good student.” He grinned at Sorcha. She simply stared back at him in stunned disbelief.

  Now is not the time. And remember we want to capture this geist, not destroy it. We have to keep some small connection to it.

  She loved piling on the problems, that was for certain. He opened his Center wide. The geiststruck were often able to be pulled back by repetition and reminders of their past. So he dived down deep into Sorcha’s memory and plucked out something that would remind her of her humanity. A face was staring back at him; very like that of his partner but with long dark hair.

  Her mother. Merrick knew that instantly. She looked at him with an expression of such sorrow that he distantly felt a tear break free from his own eyes.

  She’d been a Sensitive like he was, and she had given her life to get the child forced upon her out of the grasp of the Wrayth. That was the ultimate blood pact, and the Bond that was formed by it was strong and deep.

  Sorcha feared what she was, but she was part of this woman too. A powerful Deacon had birthed her, and Merrick thrust that reality toward his partn
er. It cut her deep, slid between the tangled connection of revenant and Deacon.

  Sorcha let out a scream that almost sounded like a laugh. The rune Shayst flared green along her arms, yanking the power of the geist into her core. Then, flush with it, she turned the Yevah around. The shield of fire bent and flexed as Merrick had never seen it do before.

  His breath caught in his throat, and he watched as she wrapped Yevah around the geist. It was drained, exhausted, and hovered within the bubble of flame like a child’s decoration.

  Merrick couldn’t help the first thought that popped into his head, nor could he stop it racing along the Bond he had with Sorcha. This must be what Derodak wants to do to geists.

  Sorcha winced, as if he had struck her, and her blue eyes closed for a second. However, she didn’t make any comment—instead ignoring his unfiltered words.

  “We have our informant,” she said, and despite the circumstances there was a note of triumph in her voice. Sorcha had done what many said was impossible.

  She began to stride down toward her partner, and the trapped revenant, still surrounded by flame, bobbed along behind her. The flicker of power ran along her arms, casting her face in odd colors. Merrick felt his stomach clench with sudden pain, as pride, with a healthy dose of fear, washed over him. He mounted back on his horse and thought about how quickly they could get their prisoner back to the city.

  Sorcha was smiling. It was going to be all right—until the moment that everything flipped on its head. Merrick had only an instant to cry out.

  He saw the side of the hill, right next to where she was standing, ripple and fall away. He recognized it in an instant; one of the Wrayth’s portals. The opening appeared not a foot away from her. Merrick opened his Center desperately, clinging to the Bond so that she might draw strength from it.

  She only had enough time to release the revenant from her activity, and then the Wrayth were upon her; or rather in her.