Geist to-1

by Philippa Ballantine

  Raed, as he turned and raced after Sorcha, only wished that he could promise such a thing.

  After the strangeness of the last day, Sorcha had been reassured to see something familiar in Wailace’s eyes—at last, something normal. Relief. After she’d told him the story, he had willingly grasped it. Whatever the Priory had done, they had not quite eroded the built-in faith in the Order.

  This time, as she followed him into the town, there were even fewer signs of life.

  “Tell me when the first attacks came.” She actually had to tug the young man back to slow him down. “I need to have information if I am to help your sister.”

  He gulped a minute, clearing his throat and shaking his head. “They—they began slowly at first, a month ago. We thought our Deacons would protect us.”

  “A month.” Sorcha wished Merrick was here. He would perhaps see the significance of that more than she could.

  “Where are we going?” Raed had caught up with them at a jog, neither out of breath nor put off by the glare she shot him.

  She waved at Wailace to lead on, while whispering at the Pretender out of the corner of her mouth. It was never good to expose frailty in front of a distressed next of kin. “What are you doing here?”

  “You don’t have a partner at the moment”—he grinned—“so I am standing in for Merrick. He would want me to keep an eye on you.”

  “By the Bones,” Sorcha hissed, “you are more useless in this than a fifth leg on a dog.”

  “Now you’re just hurting my feelings.”

  The lilt of his voice, charming and roguish at the same time, should have irritated her, but instead her mind treated her to a recollection of his nakedness and the feeling of his mouth on hers. Ridiculous.

  “Since you insist on being here,” she asked as evenly as possible through gritted teeth, “may we just concentrate on helping this boy and his family?”

  He was mercifully silent for a bit, though she was still painfully aware of his presence. It was almost a relief to get to the grocer’s house.

  Wailace stood by the door, talking to a man who sat slumped on the ground, leaning against the wall of the house with his head in his hands. Sorcha walked up slowly and stopped to look down at him. His eyes were red-rimmed and haunted, his hand trembling. “Can you—” He cleared his throat. “Can you help my daughter?”

  She knew better than to offer any definitives. “I promise to try.”

  “She—” The father looked away, shame burning on his face. “She says things that . . .”

  Sorcha had seen plenty of distraught relatives who had been forced to do terrible things, so she was partly ready for what lay within. “I understand.” She gave his shoulder a light squeeze, and asked the one question she needed to have answered. “What’s her name?”

  “Anai,” he whispered, clutching his son’s hand.

  Sorcha let him nurse his shame and distress. It wasn’t her job to comfort the kin, and now at least she had a familiar task at hand.

  The door creaked open; the door always creaked. It was a given. Inside, there was an incredible plunge in temperature, enough to make her wish that she’d stopped to gather her cloak. Accompanying it was a smell, a pungent odor that assailed her mortal senses.

  “Ancients, what is that stench?” Raed, who had probably experienced plenty of vile odors in his time on board ship, held his arm up over his nose.

  It was certainly one of the stronger ones she’d encountered in her time in the Order. The unliving were fond of odor because it was one of the most evocative senses. This one was, appropriately enough, very like ripe fish heads—ones that had been out in the sun for a few days. But there was something else; the scent of shit—a sure sign of the unliving.

  Sorcha already knew what she would find when she followed her nose to the locked door leading down into a root cellar. She turned about and warned Raed. “Whatever you do, Pretender, keep quiet.”

  “Is there anything more useful I can do?” he gasped through his mouth.

  She gave a little shrug. She wasn’t about to tell him that she was grateful not to be alone. “You can watch my back, for what good it will do.”

  Sorcha knocked the lock open and stepped inside. It was as expected. The cellar had been cleared of everything; drag marks in the ground showed where the grocer’s stock had been quickly shifted. The small window at the far end had been barricaded from the outside, and the light was consequently gray and limited. Against the far wall was where they had chosen to shackle their daughter.

  She could only have been about eight or nine years old, curled up on the bare floor sniffling to herself, her head hanging down with tangled copper hair obscuring her features. Her clothing was stained and torn, as if she had been at the center of some violent storm. It was a sight to soften the hardest heart.

  Sorcha, however, was not fooled, even though the few maternal instincts she possessed kicked in every time a child was involved. Instead, she jerked her head at Raed, indicating that he could come in. When he made to go to the girl, she stopped him with one hand on his chest; a silent gesture that reminded him to be quiet.

  The troublesome pirate frowned, but thankfully remained still by the door.

  Together they stood there for a few minutes, breathing in the fetid odor and waiting for the child to stop crying. Finally she drew in a ragged hiccupping breath and looked up at them. Her eyes gleamed like a cat’s in the dimness of the cellar, but the light they were reflecting was not from this world.

  Sorcha did not put on her Gauntlets, but instead went over to the girl and knelt down. The child’s lips drew back in a feral snarl while her head tilted at a knowing angle. The Deacon and the unliving creature inside the girl regarded each other; she with cool professionalism and it with undisguised hatred.

  Finally, the Pretender couldn’t contain himself any longer. “What is it?”

  The girl’s eye fell on Raed and she snarled, surging upward only to be brought back to the ground with a jerk as her chains snapped taut. It was good that her parents had been vigilant.

  “A poltern, I think.” Sorcha, having stepped back smartly, now sat down on the ground two feet away from the thrashing girl.

  “Then why . . .” He cleared his throat. “What about the Rossin?”

  “This particular geist is buried very deep inside, barely any of it is actually in this world. Very much like a parasitic worm. You should be safe enough.”

  He came to stand behind her, obviously taking her request to watch her back seriously. “And what about the girl?”

  Anai’s lips stretched wide, but no words came out; polterns were not the most verbose of the geists. Instead the air grew even colder, an attempt to drive them out without expending too much of its energy or giving away its location.

  The Deacon flicked a sharp gaze at Raed. “Remember the bit where I told you to be quiet?”

  He took the hint and stepped back into the shadows. She had to have the geist’s entire attention. Letting her Center drop away from her, she concentrated her vision on the creature. Seeing into a possessed being was hard. The geist could hide deep within the psyche of a person, and a child was more complicated still.

  The changing facets of a still-forming personality made an ideal hiding place, so children were favored victims of the poltern. Sorcha knew immediately that she was ill equipped to judge the strength of this one with her Sight. The hollow space where Merrick should have been felt even more gaping now.

  Finally, she retrieved her Center and sagged back with a sigh of annoyance. The geist, meanwhile, danced in the eyes of the child and looked smugger than a cat with a mouse in its mouth.

  “What’s the matter?” Raed was pacing, showing that being this close to a geist was unnerving him. Sorcha could understand that.

  Without stopping to explain, she got up and went out of the ripe cellar into the house; a welcome if slight respite from the strength of the odor. Everything lay in disorder out here. The family had been forc
ed to keep their supplies in the rooms where they lived. The mother was coping with a possessed child and a house she could barely move about in.

  Scrambling over boxes, Sorcha went into the kitchen to find something heavy but innocuous. The drawer of knives and cutlery was immediately discarded as something she didn’t want to arm a geist with. Anything breakable, like the stoneware dishes, could also be deadly, and they were not nearly heavy enough. Finally, she settled on an iron cooking pot that had probably been used for making jams in better times.

  Spotting Raed as he stood watching her made her chuckle. “Afraid to be alone with a little girl?” she asked, struggling with the cooking pot. It was big enough, even, to boil the child in it.

  “Not at all,” he replied. “I’m just enjoying watching you.” She gave him a look that could have melted lead, until he took the hint and strode over to help shift the large pot back into the cellar.

  The gleaming eyes of the poltern stared at them with visible delight. Nothing pleased a geist as much as the ability to stymie a Deacon.

  “What on earth is this for?” Raed grumbled as they positioned the pot to her liking, only a few feet away from the cellar’s occupant. “Planning to whip up some jam while we’re here?”

  “You’ll see.” She jerked her head toward the girl, hopefully reminding him that they were not alone.

  She slid on her Gauntlets, just in case this all went horribly wrong. For the sake of the girl and the structural integrity of the house, Sorcha hoped that everything would go smoothly. She prepared to use Aydien just in case.

  Unlike Merrick, her Sight was a blunt object. The Deacon had no way of judging the strength of the poltern, hiding within the girl as it was. It would be an important thing for her to know. If she tried to remove a powerful geist from within the soul of a child, she could rip the girl’s psyche into nothing, but if it was a small one, she might be able to manage it.

  First things first. “Whatever you do”—she glanced over her shoulder at the Pretender—“do not move unless something comes at you.”

  He opened his mouth, ready with some smart remark no doubt, but closed it when he saw her stern look. Sorcha flicked her head back and activated Shayst. At the flare of green fire, the girl’s eyes grew impossibly large in her head, glittering like dark jewels. Sorcha felt the Otherside’s presence as an ice-cold breeze on her skin.

  “Time for you to leave,” Sorcha growled between blue lips. The stench crashed about her, filling her nostrils and her enhanced senses in repulsive waves. At her back, she heard Raed choke back an oath. Every vile ounce of air was ordering her primitive brain to run, to flee before the horror of the geist. But training and experience were a stalwart defense against this assault.

  With a flick of her wrist she brought one Gauntlet, burning with barely contained green light, up in the direction of the girl. The reaction was instantaneous. Dust whirled up around them and the air was suddenly full of tiny spinning debris. Little pebbles bounced off her exposed skin, but there was nothing much else in the room for the geist to use as a weapon. Except for one thing.

  The huge cast iron pot wobbled in its place as the poltern screamed through the throat of the girl. The wind grew louder. The walls themselves seemed to swell like sails on a ship and the stench made Sorcha’s stomach churn like the worst kind of sea-sickness. And the pot, that pot that she and Raed had only been able to move together, swung upward in the grip of the geist. It flew at Sorcha, clanging and spinning, end over end.

  She’d hoped the poltern was a small one, but had been prepared for the worst. As the pot tumbled through the air toward her, she seamlessly closed her right fist around Shayst, and with the other hand summoned Aydien. The pot smashed into the blue shield she’d summoned and bounced off, like some toy thrown by a child in the grip of a tantrum. The warmth of the rune filled the room, momentarily driving off the freezing miasma surrounding the geist; the unliving creature she had now convincingly identified as at least a level six poltern.

  Little Anai was thrashing about in her chains like one dog being worried by another. Spittle and phlegm flew from her snarling mouth, while her eyes of reflecting darkness burned with utter hatred at Sorcha.

  The Deacon had no choice now. As quickly as possible, she closed her fist on Aydien and once more summoned Shayst, the green light flashing from her left hand. The ripping of power from the geist was abrupt and unforgiving, but if she did not deny the poltern its strength as quickly as she could, the geist would turn on its foci. The rush of the Otherside into her was heady and delightful as ever, sending her pulse racing and blood surging through her veins.

  “Ancients,” Raed whispered, going to where the thick cast iron pot lay upended on the floor. “It’s dented!”

  The state of the cookware was the least of Sorcha’s worries. Anai was slumped on her side, tangled copper hair falling over a face slackened by unconsciousness.

  “But you got the thing out of her?”

  Slowly the Deacon shook her head. “No. There is a good reason why we work in pairs. Without Merrick, that is quite impossible. I cannot see where it is hiding to root it out.”

  “Then it will be back?” The tone in the Pretender’s voice was sad. He could undoubtedly comprehend what the girl was going through.

  “Yes, I am afraid so.” Sorcha bent and with the corner of her shirt wiped the spittle from Anai’s mouth and pushed her hair back behind her ear. “She must be incredibly strong to hold out so long against such a powerful poltern. If she survives, she would make a fine Deacon.”

  “What?”

  “The poltern are attracted to those children with talent. If the Order find such little ones, they are often brought into the Abbey for protection—most later become Deacons.” She glanced up at him in the half-light, and despite herself her voice was a little shaky. “It was how I became a member of the Order.”

  “But if she is so powerful, why did the Prior not take her in?” His question was deliberately pointed.

  “I think Aulis had other plans for her, or even”—Sorcha paused before being able to give voice to her darker fears—“or may have even caused this to happen.” She stood up and looked down at the girl. “Please do not give Aulis the title she doesn’t deserve. She is no Prior of the Order.”

  “And the girl . . . Can you do anything for her?”

  She was sick of feeling powerless; it was not the natural state for a Deacon. “No. She will wake with the poltern still in control. I have only given her some rest—hopefully enough to hold out a little longer.”

  As Merrick descended the steps beneath the Priory, he felt the cold envelop him, banishing the warmth that had flooded him when he was near Nynnia. Writing decorated the walls to each side of him. Taking a deep breath, Merrick stopped at the last step to look at the scrawls. It was a protection cantrip, one that Sensitives were taught in those final months of training, and it was made in blood. This explained the blind spot in his awareness.

  Once beyond the ring of the cantrip’s protection, his Sight flickered down the corridors, and it didn’t take long to find the body. The cellar was at the end of the corridor. The Deacon jogged toward it, his throat already dry. The door was locked, but Merrick carried his tiny toolkit everywhere out of habit so it took only a few moments with the brass implements to flick the mechanism open. The Sensitive must have been truly terrified because she had also barricaded herself in.

  Merrick had to shove hard against it to get past the barrels she’d used. He knew that she was dead long before he actually saw her. Yet, the moment he burst in, for a blink of an eye, he considered that he’d been wrong. A pale shape flickered in the corner, the face turned toward Merrick in abject misery. The glimpse of her shade lasted only a moment, a full apparition that blinked back to the Otherside as soon as she had been seen. Whatever her name, she’d waited to be discovered.

  The young Deacon was curled up in the dusty corner of the cellar. One of her hands, lying limp and red by her side, sh
owed where she’d taken her own blood to write the cantrip. Her eyes were wide and bulging under cropped blond hair, while the Strop she’d been using hung slack and askew around her neck. It was charred as if it had been held over a flame.

  Merrick shifted aside his cloak and glanced down at his own Strop, still firmly in its case. Until now there had been no call to use it, but as this whole mess was unraveling he was certain that would change.

  Kneeling next to her, Merrick carefully slid her eyelids shut, avoiding touching the Strop. Only an Abbot could touch another’s talisman without repercussions. His attempt at dignity made no difference to a corpse, but not having to look into her ruined eyes made him feel a little more comfortable. He examined the scene as his training had taught him. She was wearing the emerald cloak, but underneath she was dressed in a light shift, the kind of thing a Deacon might well sleep in. Therefore she’d obviously got up hurriedly, stopping only to grab her cloak and Strop.

  Cautiously he opened her curled, bloody left hand. The tips of four fingers were sliced almost down the bone in ragged cuts that indicated she’d been in a hurry—desperate for her own blood to save her. A small knife was discarded only a few feet away, its dull blade darkened with blood. It was not much of a weapon, more like something used at the dinner table than for eldritch spells. He could see no other wounds immediately visible.

  Merrick pressed his own finger to her flesh. She was cold, but it was clear she hadn’t died in the initial attack. She could have come upstairs at any time for help—and yet she hadn’t.

  Sitting back on his heels, the living Deacon ran his eyes once more over the scene to seek out anything he may have missed, but the body before him seemed to have already revealed all it could. The Strop was another matter. Such an intimate item, so personally connected with another Sensitive, and she had actually died wearing it. Merrick was not foolish enough to pick it up, even though it looked destroyed.