Geist to-1

by Philippa Ballantine

Garil’s hands tightened on the arms of his chair convulsively, and his head, burdened with two Strops, flicked backward to connect sharply with the chair’s back. The runes in the topmost leather sparked with blue fire, tracing the shape of the rune—though which one it was, the Pretender could not have said.

  The cold was now a scent as well, harsh in his nostrils, as on the morning of a new snowfall, and every breath stung. Then, beneath his hands, Raed felt Sorcha’s body move. It felt nothing at all like the feeling of her body under him early today. It felt . . . inhuman. Her body rippled as if something was stirring. It elicited no desire in Raed—in fact, he wanted to leap up and flee the room. But when he looked across at Garil, he realized that he had the least of their problems.

  Sweat was running down from under the Strops, and the old man’s mouth was set in a mask of agony, the like of which even the battle-experienced Pretender had not seen before. Whatever power the Deacon was drawing was taking a lot from him. Merrick moved, but lethargically, as if waking from a relaxing nap. He turned his head and let out a long, soft breath.

  Beneath Raed, Sorcha was not so lucky. Abruptly she began jerking violently, almost catching the Pretender unaware. Her back arched and she twisted in his grip like a wild creature. He had to bend all of his strength to her, and give no heed to bruises he might inflict.

  “Hold her, tight,” the old Deacon by the fire nearly screamed, his fingers turning red where they were buried into the arm of the chair. “By the Bones, hold her tight.”

  It was like trying to restrain a thrashing snake of the Western Wilds. Sorcha’s skin was slick with sweat despite the fact that she was as cold as ice. Raed howled, determined to keep her from harm, leaning down as hard as he could, every muscle in his body straining against hers.

  Sorcha’s eyes flicked open, and they were no longer blue—they no longer had a color at all. Beyond those pits he could see the Otherside: a sucking maelstrom in which forms could be seen moving; the ultimate end for the spirit, and the most dangerous of realms. This was what Merrick and Sorcha had cast themselves into to avoid detection. That made them either heroes or fools. This close to the realm of its birth, the Rossin within him shifted, uncoiling to sniff the air.

  That would have been the ultimate nightmare. “Come back,” Raed screamed. “By the Blood—come back, Sorcha.”

  He didn’t know if his voice made any difference, but for a moment all was still. He was looking straight through into the Otherside and it was looking right back at him. Over there were spirits, geists and the geistlords—the ultimate answer to everything he had ever wondered. Raed had never been so frightened in his life, and yet he could not look away.

  And then . . . and then the cold blew away and Sorcha’s eyes reverted to blue, like a shade being pulled down on an awful scene. He scanned her face, desperate to see if any trace of the geist world remained, but when she smiled he knew it was her—undoubtedly, unequivocally, Deacon Sorcha Faris.

  “I’d love to have the time to enjoy this”—she laughed weakly—“but . . .” At her raised eyebrow, he let out a relieved laugh of his own, and got off her. At her side, Merrick was stretching. The look he shot Raed was confused, angry almost—but the Pretender couldn’t fathom why he would be deserving of that. He had done his job pretty damn well, as far as he could tell.

  “How was it?” Raed asked as he helped Sorcha to her feet.

  She looked at him askance. “How did it look?” Her voice was rough, as if she’d been screaming, even though he had heard no noise at all from her.

  “Bad.”

  “Then enough said.” Sorcha took Merrick’s arm and helped him up. Behind her, Garil was slowly removing the Strops, with the kind of care Raed had only seen a sapper use when handling gunpowder. He handed Merrick back his Strop and let out a long breath.

  Then the old Deacon smiled at Sorcha with real warmth, and they hugged tightly. When he pulled away after a lingering hug and looked straight into her eyes, his expression had changed. “Why did you come back, Little Red? Why, when there is only death here for you?” It was hardly the greeting Raed had expected, and the words stung him.

  TWENTY

  Accepting Kenosis

  The memory of the Otherside was fading, even as Sorcha felt warmth return to her fingertips. She had, mercifully, not felt a thing after the initial flash of white. Her throat was raw as though she’d been howling, but whatever pain she’d encountered on the brief trip into the world of the geist, she couldn’t remember. As far as she was concerned, if she couldn’t remember it, then it didn’t matter. For Merrick it would be very, very different.

  The Bond sang with his distress. Only his strength had held them back from real death; quivering on the very edge of falling over and into the Otherside. It was the kind of trick that only partners of many years would have usually dared. Sorcha grinned at him with lips that were rough. “You were brilliant, Merrick—just bloody brilliant.”

  The young man let out a ragged sigh and staggered. Raed took his elbow and led him over to the chair on the left hand side of the fireplace. “Thank you, Sorcha,” he managed with a gasp. “Glad you approve. But if Deacon Reeceson had not been able to call us back—”

  “But he did.” Raed squeezed Merrick’s shoulder, his eyes locking with Sorcha’s. “He did.”

  “Enough of this,” Garil barked, his voice now sharp with an edge she had seldom heard. “There are far more important things to consider.”

  Some things were never spoken of in the Order, certain gifts that fell outside the comfortable bounds set by the Mother Abbey. As Sorcha stood, still reeling from her icy trip to the Otherside, she looked into Garil’s eyes and saw that he was finally ready to acknowledge his gift.

  She’d had hints of Garil’s abilities, but had never talked of them with him. Whatever glimpses he got into the future always seemed to frighten him—even if they had been useful in their work.

  “What did you see?” she murmured under her breath, though there was no way Merrick and Raed could avoid hearing what she was saying. She caught at her old partner’s hand as he sat shaking in the chair by the fire. “Was this what you wanted to talk to me about before?”

  She knew her fingers were icy, but his were just as cold. “What did you see on the Otherside, Sorcha?” he asked wearily.

  “Nothing.” She gave a laugh, even though her stomach was suddenly full of bile.

  “What about you, young Deacon?” The piercing gray eyes of the elder swung toward Merrick. “You must have Seen!”

  Her partner turned his head away, and the Bond flooded with real fear—not the kind of fear that she might expect from a trained Deacon, one who had proven himself up to any task. It was the fear of a child; unreasoning fear that clawed its way up from the most primitive part of his subconscious.

  Sorcha could still remember her own flood of this kind of panic. Just a lonely child left in the care of the Order, she could have been no more than five, and yet the memory was as fresh to her as any other. Pareth, the Presbyter of the Young, a beautiful dark-haired woman who smelled of honey and warmth, was the only person she had ever known as a mother. Early one morning, Sorcha had overheard two novices in the garden talking about the Otherside, death and geists. Though she had been seeing shades all her life, she had never connected them with death before. When she slept that night, the realization had crept up on her—of her own mortality, and that of her caretaker. She’d woken screaming and had rushed to Pareth, seated at a fire much like this one. Sorcha had sobbed into her skirts, begging her to deny the existence of death; deny that one day, both of them would be no more. All Pareth had been able to say was, “Not yet, Sorcha. Not for a long time.”

  That ultimate realization haunted every living thing. She let her thoughts play out along the Bond, letting Merrick into that terrible memory, reaching out to him.

  Slowly, he turned his head and looked at her, his back straightening. “I saw you that time, the time you went to the Castle Starlyche. Y
ou fought the five-clawed geist on the stairs.”

  Now he was opening the Bond to his own memories in return. The image flashed against the back of her eye, a curious double recollection of what he had seen and what she had. He had been the child hiding and observing when he should not. She had been the young novice still hitting her stride, but asked to do the impossible when other older heads were unavailable. It was the nightmare that chased her harder than any other.

  Lord Starlyche had been a good man, and she had been unable to save him. Her breath seemed frozen in her chest as she recalled the creature she had glimpsed briefly on the stairs of the castle; a vast five-clawed hand reaching out from the Otherside, awash in a tide of swirling geists like moths clustered around a bright flame. Starlyche had been the foci of the attack, but even so, she could have saved him. Her inexperience had caught up with her, reaching for the wrong rune, just a heartbeat mistake, and the backlash had alerted the creature to her attack. In its fury it had tried to reach her through any means possible, and had killed its physical link in the process. The Lord had died, and not quickly or cleanly.

  And her partner that day—he had seen it too. Probably more.

  “Garil?” Her voice broke, as if she were once more standing on the stairs, covered in the blood of the man she’d been sent to save. The remembered taste of iron and bile flooded into her mouth.

  “It waits.” The old man would not meet her gaze, instead staring into the fire, his expression like soft clay. She recognized it too—somehow the old man’s talents had extended beyond the strictures of the Order and were now venturing into the future. “It and many like it have been growing in the depths of the Otherside. So alone, and ready to return. They hunger for the light.” He turned and looked at all three of them through eyes that burned white. “And they need you. Together.”

  “The Body.” His finger lanced out in her direction.

  “The Beast”—toward Raed now.

  “The Blood.” Merrick flinched as if he’d been struck.

  The image of her partner strapped to the draining table flashed in her memory. Sorcha began to feel sweat on her brow, a sick knot clenching deep in her belly. “Holy Bones!” She clapped a hand to her mouth. “What have I done?” she muttered past her fingers.

  Realization was sliding into place, the pieces tumbling into recognizable shapes in her head. The Bond she’d forged with all three of them—she’d thought it had been her idea, a convenience to harness the power of the Rossin.

  “Sorcha”—Merrick’s face was bone pale—“you gave them what they wanted.”

  “Would you both have a conversation normal people can follow?” Raed, leaning against the mantel, was not Deacon-trained; he could no more feel the Bond she had woven around him than he could feel moonlight on his skin. She hadn’t thought it would matter; Sorcha could dismiss it quickly enough once he no longer needed to fear the Curse. He would never need to know. How many times had she said that to herself?

  “Tell him!” Merrick rose to his feet, a deep frown etched on skin that had seldom known such an expression. “By the Bones, Sorcha!” He seldom cursed either.

  She struggled. Raed was looking between the Deacons, puzzled but not yet angry—there was still time for that. The Bond was still fresh. It could be undone, and then everything would be all right. Reaching out, she clasped Raed’s hand as if in a loving gesture, but at the same time desperately reached for the tendrils of the Bond. It should be easy to dispel a Bond formed only days ago—a simple matter that he wouldn’t even feel.

  Her power yanked at the strands of empathy and awareness, and Raed fell to the floor howling in agony. Dropping to her knees beside the writhing Pretender, Sorcha knew that there was no chance he was still ignorant, but the Bond—she had to get rid of the Bond or he would never forgive her. She pulled harder at the coil of connection between them.

  It was now hurting her. Thousands of little flames burst to life in her muscle and sinew as her body reacted to the power. It was like having barbed wire wrapped around her bones, and pulling. Dimly, Sorcha heard Merrick’s indrawn breath as it burned him too. But Raed would never understand; he would never . . .

  The icy thrust of Merrick’s control stopped her like a slap to the face. Stop it—stop it now! You’re ripping us apart! His voice—his actual voice—thrust into her mind like a knife of steel.

  She fell back with a yelp. Sorcha might have thought that was the worst of it, Merrick yelling directly into her mind like a man possessed, but it wasn’t. The worst was the look on Raed’s face.

  It should not have mattered. The look of betrayal in his eyes, hard and glittering like a dread stone, should have made not one iota of difference to a Deacon. She’d used plenty of people before—the Order’s work sometimes required toughness. However, this was different. Her breath caught in her dry throat and her hands clenched tight. Raed, tell me I have not ruined what we have.

  “What we had?” he snapped, giving his head a firm shake and glaring at all of the Deacons with equal vigor. “What have you done to me?”

  “It is the Bond,” Merrick answered for Sorcha, who could not find the words. “She managed to forge a Bond with you as well as with any Deacon. It should not be possible with a normal person, but you are hardly normal—”

  Sorcha fell back on her defenses, and sharply cut in, “You wanted the Rossin controlled. He is controlled.”

  Raed swore and turned away to glare into the fire. “He may be, for the moment, but if you think he can be used as your weapon, you may find him more wily than you think. I have lived with him inside me . . . I know him better than you.”

  His voice was full of such contempt, Sorcha had to try to reach him. “You don’t understand. They manipulated me to do this,” she replied desperately. “I think the whole situation was all about getting you there; the sea monster, the Priory, even the possession of the children.”

  “Then why did they try and kill us in the tunnel?”

  “I think they hoped it would drive me to make the Bond—and they were right.”

  “But the Rossin could have killed you.” Raed looked at her from under drawn brows. “How could they know you would do any such thing?”

  Her natural instincts were to hug him, kiss him—but they were long past that point. She stiffened. “They must have studied me.” She shook her head. “I don’t know how else . . .”

  “You have no idea what you are dealing with, Little Red,” Garil whispered, “but young Merrick does. He knows, like I do—like all Sensitives do . . .”

  This was what Actives whispered about Sensitives. When Actives went off to learn of their runes, they wondered what the Sensitives were learning of theirs. While everyone could see exactly what the ten Active runes were, the Sensitives kept theirs to themselves, never discussing them—even with their partners. Most Actives dismissed whatever their partners could do as merely different versions of their own lesser Sight, but Sorcha had always been curious about the Strop. It was much more seldom used than the Gauntlets. Unlike her gloves, it was dangerous for anyone but another Sensitive to touch a Strop while its user was still alive.

  “Do you know why they want us Bonded, Merrick?” she asked quietly.

  His jaw clenched and he looked up at her through his brown hair, almost feral for an instant. “Yes.”

  Across the Bond she felt nothing but blankness, as if he had slammed a door shut on her. She needed a smoke. She needed a strong drink. What she didn’t need was to find this out just when the Murashev was looming on the horizon.

  She wanted to smash something, hurt someone, let some of this building frustration and upset out. Unfortunately, Garil’s retired quarters were only lightly furnished; she kicked the fire grate instead, sending burning wood embers scattering along the length of the fireplace and bouncing logs out of their orderly stack.

  “Everything since that damn geist in the mob has been madness.” Her mind suddenly knew that too had been planned, to get Kolya out of t
he way and make room for Merrick.

  “Are you going to finish what you started, or have yourself a temper tantrum on the floor?” Garil asked mildly. “Merrick is no more able to tell you these things than you can tell us how to control the Gauntlets. He is not the one who can explain.”

  “The Arch Abbot,” Raed growled. “It’s about time we went and got some bloody answers—and he must have them if anybody does!”

  With a start, Sorcha realized a tremble was growing in her hands. She had known Hastler all her life, traveled with him from Delmaire hot with the fervor of her convictions. To all of the Deacons, he had been a hero, someone ready to lead them to glory and victory. She recalled him serving her hot tea, the calm smile on his face—she’d thought it meant he knew something she did not. She hoped it was not true in the worst sense.

  Straightening, she looked at Garil, who was watching her with hooded eyes. “If you cannot tell us what lies ahead, what is the use of your gift?”

  His old eyes watered slightly. “I have often asked myself that question. I can only see pathways, Little Red—possibilities. If you get your answers from the Arch Abbot, then I may be able to point you in a direction. However”—he reached out and grabbed her hand—“I can tell you one thing: I am not the only one with these gifts.”

  She chewed the inside of her cheek, her lips yearning to be clamped around a cigar. “Come on, then . . . We came here for a reason. Let’s go get this whole mess sorted out.” The clench of her innards, however, told her she might not like the answers when they finally came.

  Merrick watched Sorcha slide on her Gauntlets, and then shot a glance across at Garil. The older man would not meet his eyes. All Sensitives prepared for the day when their final training might be needed—and every one of them hoped never to use it.

  Raed wouldn’t look at anyone either. The Pretender stood glaring into the fire, his fists clenched on the mantel.

  “She meant well,” Merrick muttered to the other man. “She meant to protect you from the Rossin.”