Harbinger

by Philippa Ballantine

  TWENTY-TWO

  Coyote’s Call

  “Whatever gods you pray to, they are indeed mighty,” said a voice filled with infinite sarcasm.

  Merrick’s mind locked on it. Consciousness swam toward him, but there was icy-cold water filling his lungs. By the Bones, he was drowning!

  The Sensitive turned his head and coughed spurts of frigid river water onto the stony bank he was lying facedown on. Once he was able to suck in mouthfuls of air instead of liquid, his mind was able to focus on where he was and just who was talking to him. His complaining body, as it warmed, was telling him that he had been beaten like laundry on a stone.

  Carefully, Merrick slid his hands underneath his chest and with an effort of will rolled over. The sun was still high in the sky, so it could not have been long since he leapt into the void.

  “It must be nice to be able to be so idle while the world is ready to tear itself apart.” The voice came again, and just as cutting in its delivery.

  Merrick closed his eyes for a second, gathered his strength and craned his neck to see who was speaking so rudely to him. When he took it in, for a moment he wondered how badly he had been struck on the head.

  Upside down, it looked like a huge coyote was addressing him. He rolled over and managed to get to his knees.

  “I am afraid you have lost your weapon,” the Beast commented, as the Deacon’s numb hands fumbled at his waist for his saber.

  The Sensitive opened his Center and saw the unfortunately familiar silver blaze of a geistlord. Considering its shape he knew immediately who it was.

  “The Fensena,” he groaned, pulling himself to his feet. “The Broken Mirror, the Master of . . .”

  The coyote’s eyes narrowed. “Yes, yes . . . all that and also, since you were asking, your savior.” He shook himself, sending spray all over Merrick as if to make a point.

  “Thank you,” Merrick stammered. He felt he should be polite considering his predicament—even more so since his life might depend on it.

  As the weak sun’s rays warmed him a little, he was trying feverishly to recall what he knew about the Fensena. Apart from the fact he was a geistlord and not to be trusted, Merrick had never heard that the beast was a killer. He usually left his victims alive, though exhausted. Was this what the coyote was planning now?

  The geistlord bent his front paws in a strange copy of a human bow. “My Lord Ehtia, it was a pleasure.”

  “Ehtia?” Merrick asked, trying to surreptitiously locate where he might run. Above him on the cliffs, he could see the dark shapes of Melochi and Shedryi making their way down to him. Breed horses were especially loyal and intelligent, and luckily also remarkably unafraid of geists. However, they would not reach him before the Fensena could rip his throat out. “I am not Ehtia.”

  The coyote tilted his head and sat back on his haunches. He did not look worried about the approach of horses in the least. “Humans really are the most stupid creatures,” he remarked. “How do you think Nynnia of the mists found you? Do you think she can rip just anyone through time and space? Only blood will out.”

  Merrick’s attention snapped sharper all of a sudden. The fog of his descent lifted from his mind. “How do you—”

  “I am the Fensena.” The coyote’s pink tongue lolled out of his mouth before he licked his nose. “I gather secrets and knowledge. The Scavenger of Wisdom, the Order of the Golden Spider once called me. I don’t suppose you remember them?” He looked expectantly at Merrick.

  As he slowly shook his head, the Deacon tried to come to terms with the fact that a geistlord knew so many of his secrets.

  The Fensena let out a strangely human sigh. “It was a very small order that died out three hundred years ago in Delmaire, so I don’t suppose I should be surprised. Ehtia used to train their young better.”

  Merrick had grown up hearing rumors and gossip that there was Ancient blood in his family on his mother’s side, yet he’d always assumed it was just a way for them to make themselves seem important.

  “Is that why you saved me?” he asked cautiously.

  The Fensena made an odd yipping noise that Merrick though might be a kind of laughter. “The Ehtia brought us here with their meddling with weirstones . . . but that is because the Maker of Ways sent the weirstones in the first place. It knew that curious humans could not leave them alone. Yet still that is not the reason I saved you.”

  Merrick had seen the Ehtia fleeing when he’d been transported to the past by Nynnia. They had told him about the weirstones—but to find out they had been tricked cut deep. He wondered if Nynnia knew. Something told him that they had discovered this fact when they reached the Otherside; it would certainly explain why Nynnia always looked so melancholy.

  Merrick sat back on a large riverbed stone and took in a long, deep breath before asking, “So what is the real reason?”

  “You have a purpose.” The Fensena’s gold eyes flickered, as if he too were examining Merrick with his Center.

  “I don’t believe in the little gods or fate, geistlord. I find it strange that you do.”

  “I do not, but I do believe there is only one person in this realm who can help Sorcha Faris halt the Maker of Ways and stop this world being ripped apart.” The coyote twitched his tail sharply.

  Merrick stood and began wringing out his silver fur cloak. It seemed to be water-repellant, but still he didn’t want it ruined. His suspicions were up, but through the lens of his Center he could see no suggestion of deception in the geistlord. It was certainly an unusual situation for a Deacon to be in. He could not recall many conversations between his kind and the Fensena’s. Usually there were runes, fire and screaming. If he had not just seen his partner ripped away by another geistlord, he might have been interested in discussing many, many things with the Fensena.

  However, he had just lost Sorcha, his friend, and his Bond. He could feel a faint flicker of her life in his perception, but it was receding.

  “Then help me find her,” Merrick asked, desperately. “I almost lost her once to the Wrayth without even knowing it. I can’t let them have her.” Sorcha’s fear of the voices in her head and the image of what her mother had endured filled his mind. He could only imagine what a nightmare she had been taken into. They could not want to breed off her; there was no time with the Maker of Ways coming soon.

  “It is too late to stop that,” the coyote said, getting to his feet, his brindle fur gleaming with droplets of water. “We must rely on her strength or all is lost. Do you think she has enough within her?” Those golden eyes pierced him through.

  “Yes.” He answered without contemplating for a moment.

  “Then we must assume that she will be where she needs to be.” The Fensena rose to his feet, so Merrick scrambled to his. The horses had nearly reached them, and Shedryi was already tossing his head in dismay at the smell of a geistlord.

  “We need you to be where you need to be,” the Fensena said, showing absolutely no fear of the large stallion trotting menacingly in his direction.

  Merrick staggered over and grabbed hold of Shedryi’s bridle. He calmed the horse as best he could, and it gave him an excuse to gather his own scrambled thoughts. A geistlord wanting to help was a curious thing. “Why should I trust you?” he muttered softly.

  The Fensena however had the best and sharpest ears. “Because Sorcha Faris does.” When Merrick spun around in shock, he found his gaze locked with the gold eyes of the coyote.

  “Use your little rune Aiemm, if you must,” the Fensena said mildly, “but it was I that took away the curse of immortality that Hatipai’s foolish son gave her.”

  It was such an outrageous claim that Merrick had to know; the swirling lines of Aiemm flared and ran like silver across Merrick’s forehead. He saw Sorcha’s face, her blue eyes gleaming with despair, and felt her words in his mouth. “You will take this mantle of impermeability from me as a favor?”

  His partner had made a deal with a geistlord. The world had become a mad place
, so he was not shocked by that, it was the fact she had not told him about it. At the time of their reunion, they had been without the Bond, and after, with all the confusion of the breaking of the Order, she had never mentioned it again. All those months between had been full of simply trying to stay alive. Merrick tried to justify Sorcha’s actions in his head before he spoke.

  “What . . .” He stopped, cleared his throat. “What favor did you ask in payment?”

  The Fensena tilted his head, his ears twisting this way and that. “I have not yet asked my boon, but remember I could just have easily left her there. I think you are starting to understand the position she was in. No partner. No Young Pretender. Just me.”

  Merrick’s head jerked up, and he threw his Center wide in a mad attempt to feel out Raed Syndar Rossin. He could not. He too was gone from the immediate area.

  The Sensitive swallowed hard. He could sense no deceit from the geistlord, but then one of his names was Oath Bender. The uncomfortable truth was that he was alone.

  “It is hard,” Merrick spoke softly, “to believe in gods at all, when I am left at the end of the world with only a geistlord for company.”

  The weight of despair was pressing down on Merrick. Though it had been with him in their months of flight, at this moment it felt crippling. Merrick Chambers bowed his head and wondered if it were best just to lie down and give in to it.

  The wetness of a damp nose was pressed into the palm of his hanging hand. Everything that the Deacon had been taught should have made him jerk his arm away, but for some reason he did not.

  When he glanced up, the Fensena was holding him pinned with those golden discs of eyes. “There remains some time, human, and the blood of the Ehtia still flows in you.”

  “Will they come? The Ehtia?” Merrick asked in a rush, suddenly wanting to see Nynnia more desperately than he had in a long time.

  “Do not look for their help,” the Fensena said, with a low growl in his voice. “The Ehtia have spent their power on surviving the Otherside, and not all of them are as caring as the one you loved. You however have more than enough strength to do this. Let me show you.”

  The coyote led him away from the water, to the cliff edge where there was a fine view of the distant mountains. For a moment Merrick wondered if the geistlord meant to knock him over the edge to his death.

  “Use Mennyt,” the Fensena said, sitting down. “Look to the sky for your answer.”

  The Deacon hesitated; the last time he had looked into the Otherside the parade of geists waiting to enter had given him nightmares. Nothing could have changed since that time.

  The Fensena said nothing more, merely looking at him steadily with those eerie gold eyes. So Merrick reached up and traced the Pattern of his Third Eye that was carved into his skin. The world of Arkaym grayed away. The rush of power made him giddy for an instant, because now when he called on Mennyt it filled all of him. The loss of the Strop had not been a bad thing.

  The landscape below faded and was overlaid with the dark symphony of the Otherside. It was as Merrick expected; many of the geists were close enough that he felt as if he reached out he would touch them. It was a sight to send him tumbling back into despair.

  Then the Fensena’s voice reached him. “Your scholars were right; there is an ebb and a flow to the Otherside. Our worlds perform an odd dance, and the perihelion of that dance is coming . . . but it is not yet. Look to the distance.”

  Dragging his attention away from the frightening closeness of the geists, Merrick did as bid. He tore his gaze away, up to the mountains, and a frown formed under his Third Eye. A faint silver light was leaking from them, as if a tear had been made in the fabric of reality. He had never heard or read of such a thing . . . except in the descriptions of the Break. The first time the geists came.

  Merrick’s heart began to race and his throat seized up. “Is it coming already?” he croaked out.

  “It is near”—the Fensena’s voice now seemed almost soothing—“but it is not yet here. The timing is important, and as predictable as this world’s seasons. Derodak has been waiting in the shadows for this for a thousand years. His one moment when he may gain control of all the geists.”

  Merrick cleared his suddenly barren throat. “How long do we have?”

  “One cycle of the moon, and then we must be there to stop it.” The Fensena turned and angled himself back in the direction of the city. “You do not have long to prepare.”

  “What of Sorcha and Raed?” Merrick asked, letting Mennyt slip from his grasp.

  “Derodak will not kill them . . . not yet at least. He will hope to harness their blood for the opening, so he does not have to risk his own life.” The coyote was now standing close to the Breed horses, which they did not like in the least. “Every moment you waste is a moment you give him advantage. You will need every Deacon and every weirstone you can gather in that time.”

  Merrick realized what the geistlord was saying: he was not really alone. He had lost Sorcha and Raed, at least for now, but he was the First Presbyter of the Enlightened. It had only been birthed the night before, but it was the only and best chance of stopping Derodak. If he did not take the reins now, it would all fall apart. The Deacon did not consider himself particularly brave, but he had training and experience to assist him.

  Quickly he climbed onto Melochi and took up Shedryi’s reins. Once there, he looked down at the Fensena. They called the geistlord many things—one of them was Widow Maker. It seemed a fragile thing to trust him, and undoubtedly there were more motives at play than were immediately apparent, but one thing was clear: he was all the guidance Merrick would have.

  However, there was one thing that the geistlord did not need to tell the Sensitive: where they had to be when the barrier was thinnest. The capital of Vermillion, where the Break had been and where it would come again. Merrick might not believe in fate, but there was a certain tidiness to events.

  As the great coyote looked up at him, Merrick felt the weight of that settle on him in almost a comfortable fashion. “A fine fur cloak you wear, young Presbyter. Let us see if you are worthy of it—and the name of your new Order.”

  Before Merrick could ask him anything further, the Fensena broke into a trot, forcing the human to follow in his wake.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Ending Loyalty

  The unnerving thing about the sky was that it was so quiet. As the Summer Hawk rose through the air like a cork released from the bottom of a lake, they quickly left the screaming and noise behind. The wet kiss of the clouds on Zofiya’s face almost convinced her that everything was going to be all right. Perhaps it would have, had she been a different person.

  She stood at the gunwales, while sailors scurried around and Deacon Petav consulted with his weirstone. The Grand Duchess, in this moment of peace she knew couldn’t last for long, found her thoughts strangely drifting to her father.

  Her mother had been the thirteenth wife of the King of Delmaire. An inconsequential nobody, who had been swallowed by the harem of wives and had never played any part in the life of the Princess she had birthed. Her father however loomed large; always ready with the harsh counsel and harsher punishments. He looked on Arkaym as the hellhole of the world; the place where geists had come from and still controlled. It contained no civilization and no worth—that was why he had happily sent his leftover Prince and Princess to it.

  However, as she stood on the precipice of horror, Grand Duchess Zofiya thought of some of the lessons that he had thrashed into his multitude of sons and daughters. With her eyes closed she could see him sitting on the throne of jade, addressing them all with a riding crop tucked under one arm.

  “A leader must always be ready to spill blood—no matter whose it is—there are no loyalties or boundaries when you sit on a throne.”

  That day when Zofiya knelt on the floor with all her brothers and sisters, it was Kaleva’s little hand that had stolen into hers. Tears squeezed themselves out of the corners of her eye
s, and she tried to tell herself that it was the wind that was doing it.

  Captain Revele cleared her throat, and Zofiya dashed them away while her back was turned. “Yes, Captain?”

  The master of the Summer Hawk showed no sign that she had seen anything like weakness in the regent. “I thought you should know, Imperial Highness, I’ve had word from the rest of our fleet. Your brother’s ships are pursuing us and not engaging them. Rather than a battle he seems intent on capturing you above everything else. Should I send word for them to engage?”

  Zofiya thought about it for an instant. It was not that she had any wish to die, but she also could not afford to lose those precious airships either. “Tell them to hang back. Deacon Petav says he has an idea.”

  The captain raised one eyebrow but did not question. She moved sharply back to the bridge. The Summer Hawk was flying in the clouds now, but this would only be protection for a while. They had Deacons who could see well enough, but her brother’s fleet was not without its own resources. They had navigational weirstones and the wherewithal to use them.

  Petav was coming toward her holding out the weirstone as if it contained the answers. When he stopped before Zofiya, a slight smile lurked on his lips. “I have made contact with the others of my Order.”

  “Can they come pull us out of this cloud? Perhaps give my brother back his reason?” Zofiya found she was snapping just a little. The truth was, she was heartily sick of promises and hope. She needed real help. In a voice laden with sarcasm, she snapped, “Can they magically transport themselves onto a moving airship?”

  Petav’s smile faded a little, but he did not back down. “I thought I recognized the man on the ship, the one standing by the machines. Vashill is his name, once a tinker of Vermillion.” He paused, and the creak of the airship was the only sound.

  Zofiya hated people who grew silent merely to increase their own importance. “Well?”

  “His mother helped the remains of the Order escape Vermillion, and she has been traveling with us. I was able to speak to her, and give her a description of what her son has created.”