Harbinger

TEN On the Hunt

Sorcha sought out Merrick as the evening began to pull in, and even though they shared a connection, he was remarkably hard to find. Along the Bond she could feel his bitter frustrations and disappointments, which only magnified her own. She returned to the Great Hall and found him sitting alone in the chair by the window. He was wrapped in a luxurious fur cloak on which tiny beads of water from the falls had gathered like a scattering of diamonds. It had to be from the storerooms of the citadel; the lay Brothers were still finding all sorts of interesting items down there. The roar of the waterfall was slightly muffled by the stonework, but it still sounded like oncoming thunder.

Merrick’s face was set in still lines, and his eyes locked on the magnificent view, yet Sorcha could read him well enough to know that he was seeing none of it. He didn’t even acknowledge her presence.

“Merrick?” She finally had to speak and then again. “Merrick?”

He actually jumped a little.

“Is everything all right?” The words sounded ridiculous coming out of her mouth. They’d been attacked in their own halls and had a madman living over their heads—yet what Sorcha meant wasn’t any of that. She cleared her throat. “I mean are you all right?”

“I am . . .” He licked his lips and stared down at his folded hands on his lap. “I am here.”

Somehow Sorcha got the feeling that wasn’t completely true. “Did you examine the cantrips at all?” She didn’t add “as I asked,” since things were far too precarious right now for her to start throwing her metaphorical weight around.

He shook his head. “No, sorry. I was too deep in the future. The Conclave has only just gone downstairs for some sleep.”

The strains of Masa were not something Sorcha could comprehend, but she could see the exhaustion written in every move of her partner. She took hold of his elbow and pulled him to his feet. “And that is where you should be too.”

He made a weak gesture, attempting to stave her off. “We have to reach out with the weirstones every day, Sorcha. We have to search the future for a place to strike at Derodak. Choosing the wrong one could be disastrous.”

“Indeed it could,” she said, smoothly sliding her hand under Merrick’s elbow, “but you won’t be able to do that if you burn out like a candle.”

Giving in to the inevitable, he finally allowed himself to be led back down the stairs. With her hands on the soft fur cloak, his partner helped him to his room. Sorcha tucked him into bed and wrapped him in blankets to keep him warm. She’d been expecting some kind of further resistance, but as soon as his head touched the pillow Merrick’s eyes closed. For a moment she stood looking down at him, strangely maternal feelings welling up inside her.

Her partner was not quite young enough to be her child, but the emotions they shared veered everywhere. The relationship of Sensitive to Active was a complicated and unusual one. However, there was one thing Sorcha knew for certain: Merrick would strive until his body and mind broke. He had changed a great deal since their first meeting. His nerves back then had shown in the humor he tried to force. Now he barely had the energy for words of any kind.

“That lad looks like death warmed up,” a voice commented out of the half light of the corridor.

Sorcha turned to see Raed stepping out of the darkness and nodded her agreement. “He’s been pushing himself too hard.”

“I think Merrick would say there is nothing that’s too hard, love.” Raed took her hand in his, and his skin against hers was a comfort. “You didn’t come to bed last night, and the night before that you fought off a geist attack. You need your sleep. I hope you’re not tiring of me already, are you?”

She wanted to blurt out some of what the Patternmaker had said, but she was still digesting it herself. Additionally, she didn’t want him to know one more disturbing fact about herself: she was needing less and less sleep. She’d spent the night on the battlements of the citadel thinking hard on her time inside her mother’s head. Those thoughts that they’d shared might contain some way for her to defeat her heritage. Nothing however had come. All she’d done was recall the one who had birthed her, and the fear and desperation that had driven her right to the edge. Sorcha ended up worrying if she was coming close to that place herself.

“Don’t be foolish. I was just busy.” It was much easier to lie to Raed than it was to Merrick. The Bond between the Young Pretender and herself was strong, but did not communicate stray thoughts.

“But I am glad you are here,” she said, tugging him out of the room and quietly shutting the door behind them. “I need your help with something.”

He straightened slightly. “You just have to ask, you know that.”

She was playing on one of Raed’s principle concerns: not being of use. Her request might also serve to distract him a little, just in case he saw panic in his lover’s eyes. Sorcha knew what she had learned from the Patternmaker was nothing she could fix. She’d been born as part of the Wrayth, and if they came for her then she would have to deal with that. Right now however, there was something far more important.

“We have to find how the geists got inside the citadel’s cantrips and runes,” Sorcha said as she led him away from Merrick’s room and down the steps deeper into the bones of the building. “Even with this weakening of the veil, they should have provided some protection. The citadel is hundreds and hundreds of years old, and has been layered with barriers by every generation of Deacons. I asked Merrick to look into it but . . .” She shrugged.

“How can I help with that?” he asked. “I’m no Merrick that can—”

“You have him.” Sorcha cut him short and pressed her hand against his chest. “You have the Rossin, the master of breaching barriers, and . . .” She smiled.” . . . I could do with your company, plus I have something that I want to talk to you about.”

“I am afraid marriage is quite out of the question without you asking my father first.” She caught a glimpse of his white teeth gleaming in the fading light of distant torches.

Sorcha wasn’t sure if she should smile back. She settled for a short laugh, and then called on Yevah, just a little. The red fire ran through the designs on her arm, providing a useful if slightly strange light as they descended deep into the roots of the citadel.

The question Sorcha was burning to ask Raed was weighing her down, and it was harder to get out than she had expected. She found her mouth was a little dry since she’d not revealed to anyone—not even Merrick—how the Wrayth had been whispering to her of late. Finally, she choked out, “I need to know what it feels like to have the Rossin inside you . . .”

For a moment there was only the sound of their boots on the stone, and Sorcha worried that Raed was too stunned by her question to reply. She wheeled around in the narrow confines of the corridor and held her arm, burning with red fire, up slightly so she could see his face.

It was not fear or disgust she saw there, though his brows were drawn together and his jaw was tight. Raed’s voice, when it came out, was hoarse and strained. “You know, no one has ever asked me that.” He swallowed. “It has become . . . easier . . . if that is the right word for it.”

Neither of them was happy with this conversation—Sorcha didn’t need to be a Sensitive to figure that out—yet she pressed on. “Does he . . . does he speak to you?”

“Sometimes,” Raed confessed. “Usually when he is trying to get me to do things, or when there is some immediate danger that he doesn’t want his body involved in. Since Fraine’s death he’s been more interested in keeping me alive.”

Sorcha clenched her jaw hard and turned away before whatever feeling was bubbling up could show itself on her face, but Raed’s hand pressed against her shoulder. “Is there a reason you are asking, love?” he asked softly.

She didn’t want the Patternmaker to be the only one who knew . . . just in case something happened later on. “It has to be the weakening of the barrier,” she stumbled out. “The Wrayth like every other geist are gaining power . . . and I am starting to hear them . . . just now and then . . . sometimes . . .”

If the fledgling Council she was creating got wind of this, the remains of the Order would fall apart completely. Merrick in good conscience couldn’t keep it from them, and by not revealing her Wrayth heritage he was already lying to them. Raed at least had none of those allegiances.

The Young Pretender stared down at her, his fingers still grasping her shoulder. “Have they asked you to do anything . . . anything that you feel compelled to do?”

She shook her head while choking back the desire to throw herself into his arms. It was an unfortunate truth that she cared too much what he thought of her to break down—but it would have been nice.

“Then you can live with it,” Raed said, his breath making tiny white clouds in the cold air around them as he leaned closer to her. “The Wrayth is probably just trying to unnerve you and sway you from your course. The Rossin does it all the time to me, but neither of us needs to listen.”

They were the very words Sorcha needed to hear. Her lack of sleep had to be caused by the extreme stress of these last few months. A long-held-in breath escaped her. “Right, then,” she said, “let’s see what is going on down here.”

Holding her arm in front of them, she took his hand with her left. It felt good to be able to do that since they were down where no one could see. It was almost as if there was no one in the world but the two of them.

Soon, the light around them was coming not just from Sorcha’s rune. Other twinkling colored lights began to appear on the face of the rock tunnel.

“Cantrips?” Raed breathed. “I’ve never seen so many.”

Sorcha glanced up at the complex patterns. “I have heard tell the roots of the palace at Vermillion are also very complex, but I don’t think there is a Deacon alive that has seen them.”

“Except maybe for Derodak,” Raed breathed.

Her heart leapt in her chest, but the Emperor had run mad and was no longer her concern—though she feared for the people of the capital.

Her lover cleared his throat, and tried to change the subject as quickly as he could. “So, what are we looking for?”

“Changes in the pattern,” she said, pointing to the concentric rings that rose from the floor upward. “The lower-down ones are the more ancient, and they get newer the higher they get.”

He frowned as his eyes focused on the tiny inscriptions. “I feel like I might need eyeglasses for this task, love. How on earth do you read . . .”

Sorcha wasn’t quite sure how to tell him what he was really here for, but it wasn’t as if she could put it off any longer. “I read them, Raed. You touch them.”

The Rossin was not active in him and thus was not going to be affected by the cantrips; however, direct contact to his flesh should be the only experiment that needed to be conducted. It couldn’t be the first time that he’d felt the sting of a cantrip.

“I see . . . it is not just my charm and good looks you were after,” he replied with the faintest hint of a sigh. “Very well.” He bent down, and touched the first ring of cantrips. The snap of blue power struck his finger.

The Young Pretender leapt back. “By the Blood!” He stared at Sorcha, and she—only just managing to conceal her smile—gestured to the next line of cantrips carved into the root of the citadel.

With a slow shake of his head, he obediently touched the next one. It went on for another hour, as they circled the foundations, testing the lines of cantrips.

“I think you are starting to enjoy this,” Raed grumbled in a slightly overly hurt tone.

“Starting?” Sorcha shot back, but applied a kiss to the end of his fingertips. “I promise I will make it up to you somehow . . .”

He stared down at her, those hazel eyes locked with hers, and the shiver that ran up her spine was not at all related to the chill in the foundations. Raed must have felt it too, because he smiled slightly before turning back to his task. “How many more to do?”

Sorcha flicked her eyes up. “I think we should go upstairs. I don’t know how the cantrips were breached; perhaps there is something Derodak can do that we don’t know about, something not written in any book.” That idea had been haunting her thoughts since the attack.

“Perhaps you’re right, I can think of—” Raed stopped suddenly, and squeezing past Sorcha in the tight confines of the tunnel walked to where it finished abruptly. The glimmer of the cantrips danced over his skin as he reached out to touch one that gleamed pale green. Nothing happened.

Sorcha hurried to his side, as Raed repeatedly touched the line. Still nothing.

They shared a look, and she dropped into a crouch to examine the cantrips more closely. “It looks like some kind of fissure opened up here,” she muttered, running her fingers over the surface of the rock, and feeling a sliver of a gap. “The cantrips here were added fairly recently to seal it, but . . .”

She stopped, suddenly, as her touch found a dip in the rock.

Raed swiftly joined her, leaning down on all fours to see what she had found. He brushed away a layer of gravel and rock that had been piled up along the edge between wall and floor. “Looks like a chisel has been used to knock the last few cantrips out and the damage was covered by loose earth. I would say rather recently.”

Sorcha sank back on her heels as the realization washed over her. “Someone in the citadel is a traitor . . .”

With everything else they had to deal with, now they had to watch their backs. She’d thought everyone she’d saved and led through endless portals to this place had shared her determination to preserve something from the shards of the Order.

It was possible here to let her feelings out. Sorcha leaned against Raed. “I don’t know what to do,” she whispered. “We have to find Derodak and the rest of our Brothers. We don’t have the time to ferret out a traitor. Besides, if they can hide from our Sensitives, then how do we even . . .”

“This is a distraction,” Raed replied, giving her a squeeze. “Derodak wants to harry you to a standstill. You mustn’t let him.”

They both stared down at the disturbed earth, which signified yet another problem. Sorcha relaxed into his embrace for a moment, letting the calming sound of his heartbeat become hers.

Then with a jerk, she got to her feet. “You’re right. Onward is the only direction we have.”

As they turned and walked back the way they had come, she slipped her hand into his. “Just don’t tell anyone, Raed. We can’t afford to start doubting each other now.”

“I know,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t keep an eye out.” He touched her shoulder lightly, almost a stroke. “Don’t forget I have more than one set of eyes.”

It was a strange world indeed where an allusion to the Rossin served as comfort—yet oddly enough it did make Sorcha feel better.