Harbinger

NINETEEN The Touch of the Sea

Raed woke with a pounding headache that threatened to blind him before he had even opened his eyes. He lay still on the ground for a moment, using the tactics he had come to rely on when dealing with the Rossin: sit still, take in details and assess the situation.

The ground underneath his hands was smooth, and when he dared to crack an eye open he realized that they were tiles, beautifully crafted and decorated tiles. Then his nose brought him a very strange scent, and one that was totally unexpected but very familiar; it was the salt of the sea.

Raed ran his hands over the tiles for a moment, then he shook his head, and levered himself upright. If they were near the ocean, then maybe things were not that bad; Mother Sea had always looked after him.

The only days of his life that had been any good—at least before he found Sorcha—had been accompanied by the rocking of the waves. He held on to that knowledge until his eyes were able to adjust and focus. The room was dimly lit but startling. He was once more in a cavern, but where exactly that cavern might be was the real question.

As he looked around and made out what was lighting the space, his mind did a quick turnaround. He saw windows, thick gleaming windows in the cavern, made of something that he suspected was weirstone, since it shone and occasionally shot through with blue, as those dangerous stones were wont to do. However, they were opaque enough to make him realize where the smell of salt water was coming from. Beyond the glass were floating strands of seaweed, thick castles of coral and shoals of brightly colored fish. This then wasn’t merely an underground cavern where secret doings were accomplished, but an underwater cavern.

As Raed leaned on his knees, all thoughts of his own danger were washed away by this amazing sight. He had always loved the sea, but had never had the pleasure of observing it like this. He leaned closer. Truly it was a wonder.

After a moment, though, someone breathing and moving fractionally in the dark made Raed aware that he was not alone. The figure that finally emerged from the shadows was not unfamiliar to him either. Derodak, the Arch Abbot of the Circle of Stars, stepped toward him with a disconcerting smile on his lips. “Welcome, Young Prince. I hope your journey didn’t leave you feeling too unwell?”

The effects of traveling through a weirstone portal were unpleasant, but livable—but it seemed that they were compounded when forced to do so with extra weirstones touching his skin.

In what he hoped was an insulting gesture, Raed remained seated on the floor and looked up at his captor. From what Zofiya had told them of her imprisonment by this man, he was both unpleasant and quite happy to apply pain when it was needed. However soldierly the Grand Duchess was, Raed had endured more pain and torment than she could imagine in his role as host to the Rossin. It gave him a shot of confidence.

So he got to his feet and dusted himself off. “I’ve felt worse after a hard night out with my crew members. How are you feeling? The mad Emperor and Deacon Sorcha Faris are people I wouldn’t want to have at my back . . .”

His eyes darted around the rest of the room; he saw nothing that he could use as a weapon. In fact, the room was entirely barren—just the eerie light of the weirstones spread out over the floor.

Derodak drew closer, and Raed observed that the man was wearing a cloak very much like Sorcha’s, but it was held closed by a jeweled circle of stars brooch. The material was also far finer than any he’d ever seen the Order of the Eye and the Fist wearing. It shifted and gleamed like some exotic fish skin with all the colors of the rainbow. It reminded Raed of the way the people of his father’s small Court dressed like peacocks. It was desperate and flashy.

His jailor came close, but not too close. He ended up perching himself on the edge of the weirstone window. The strange blue glow illuminated him well enough, but revealed nothing of his emotions or plans.

The man looked to be in his later years, with gray staining his dark beard, but his eyes gleamed with vigor and arrogance. Raed had seen that look many times when he was growing up. His father, the Unsung Pretender, had plenty of it—though he had never done anything about pursuing his claim to the Imperial throne. He generally assumed that the Princes of the Empire would come crawling back to him, howling that they needed him. Now the Unsung was more irrelevant than ever in this warring world.

Perhaps his father and this man shared more than just arrogance. After all, Derodak had exposed the everyday citizens to the predations of the geists. Raed guessed soon he would sweep down and show them how he had the undead under control. Naturally, many would die in the process, but he would be able to play the role of savior.

As Raed examined Derodak, he was in turn being examined. Finally, it was the older man that broke the silence. “Quite a disappointment,” he said, adjusting his odd cloak around himself. “Generations of breeding, and yet so very little of me in there.”

Raed clenched his jaw and only just managed to hold back retaliation. He wanted to smack that self-satisfied smile from his face, but years of dealing with the fear and the dangers of the Rossin had taught the Young Pretender restraint.

“I hardly think after all these generations there can be much of you left in my blood,” Raed returned. “It is the mark of a desperate man to think—”

“Yes, that would be the case,” Derodak said, inclining his head, “except of course, every now and then I just popped back to keep it topped up.”

The Young Pretender closed his mouth with a snap as a shudder ran through his body. He had a horrible vision of the first Emperor sneaking into the bed of his female ancestors. He would bet good money that they hadn’t known or had a choice about it.

“Yes, I believe it was your grandmother that spread her legs for me . . . of course she thought I was your grandfather.” Derodak’s eyes never left Raed’s face. “And like a good gardener I came back now and then to do a little pruning. I couldn’t let the family tree grow too large and thin the bloodline.”

Raed began to understand what Zofiya had said about this man. His joy in applying pain . . . it obviously included emotional torture.

“By the Blood . . .” Raed swore and then stopped. He said that so often that he hadn’t really thought about what it meant. The Blood. His blood. The Young Pretender took several unwitting steps away from him. “You sick twisted bastard!”

“Perhaps by your mortal standards.” Derodak stood and tucked his hands behind his back. “But I am far from mortal. The rules do not apply. When my people fled to the Otherside, only I was brave enough to come back. I saw another way that they did not agree with.”

He swiftly covered the distance between them, until he was only a foot away from Raed. His eyes darted over the Young Pretender’s face, still searching for something. “Your father was a mistake in the line, and your grandfather a traitor to it, but you may be useful.”

Where was the Rossin? Raed tried to plumb the depths of his soul, screaming for the Beast to rise and slice this evil thing that wore a human face from throat to crotch. Yet there was no answer; nothing seemed to be there but a distant memory of power.

“I won’t help you,” he gasped out, desperate to gain some time.

His captor laughed, as if they were discussing a change in the weather. “That is what that impostor of a Grand Duchess said to me, and you saw how well that worked out for her. And don’t think the Rossin will help you. I have many, many centuries of experience handling that particular geistlord.”

He poked Raed’s shoulder with one finger and let out a small laugh. “I took care of everything. I made your line, and I made Vermillion itself. It was a hill, but I brought the water, and wound it around, making the canals and rivers to protect it from the geists. And what thanks do I get? They throw down my Order. Your own grandfather helped them . . . but he learned humility . . .”

He was so smug, so sure of himself, that Raed couldn’t take it. He lunged forward and grabbed Derodak by the collar of his cloak. The fabric was slick under his fingers, but he had enough of a grip to swing him about. He connected with the rough stone wall with a satisfying smack, but his expression didn’t change. Raed punched with his left fist, aiming to connect to his chin, but his opponent’s hand moved quickly, blocking the strike, and then bringing his right around. When it connected with his jaw, the Young Pretender felt as though an anvil had hit him.

He staggered back, the room dipping in and out of focus. He found himself on his knees. At this stage even staying upright was an achievement. How could he be this strong? Dimly he saw the gray shadow of Derodak move closer.

“You don’t see what he is doing, do you? You really have been blinded . . .”

His voice came from a long way off, and the sense of it was hard to grasp.

Derodak leaned down and whispered into his ear. “The great pard is looking for his freedom, and he is ever so close. You and I know that will never do . . .”

He was making no sense whatsoever. Raed reached out and grabbed hold of his ancestor’s cloak. “You . . . you . . .” he muttered, “it was you that shackled him to my family. It is your fault.”

“I did need him at first,” Derodak conceded. “When I was first born into this world, I was not as I am now, and I feared death. I wanted to create a family to take my seed into the future. The Rossin’s power promised that. It was also a way to control them if necessary—as it happened they turned on me, and you have had to bear the brunt of that.”

His hand clenched around Raed’s jaw and squeezed. The Young Pretender struggled for breath, clawing at the fingers that threatened to destroy him. He might as well have been pounding on a statue with bare fists.

Still however Derodak talked on; apparently quite happy to converse after so long in the shadows. “So I started another family, and this time I spread my seed a little farther afield. I made my own army over the generations.”

As Raed’s vision trembled on the edge of vanishing, his eyes locked on the brooch around the cloak. The circle of stars gleamed so brightly, and he understood. All those Deacons were his—and not just in the normal way of an Arch Abbot and his Order. They were as much his children as the Rossins were. Apparently there was no end to his craziness or his fecundity.

“Still, your blood will be of use. The last of the Imperial line will help summon the Maker of Ways—after I have killed just the right one, he will come.” Just like at the White Palace, Raed realized.

Desperate, Raed reached out and grasped the brooch with both hands, tearing it from the cloak. The diamonds in it cut into his hands and the pin pierced the palm of it deep. The pain was intense, and it felt as though he had hit a bone with it. Blood squirted out from the wound.

Now it was Derodak’s turn to curse.

The grip around Raed’s throat loosened, and he found himself abruptly dropped to the ground. The sudden flood of air into his body was a blessing, though the pain he had caused was not the only consequence. Blood. It was always about blood. The deepest and oldest magic that Ehtia and geist used in combination with cantrips, runes and weirstones. In the end, it was blood.

Deep within Raed, the Rossin finally stirred. The Beast was uncurling and unfurling, enraged by the presence of Derodak as he had not been by anything else for a very long time. Blood summoned him from the torpor that their enemy had put him in.

Surging upright, Raed dealt an uppercut to the surprised Derodak. Something about the bloodletting had given the Young Pretender a tiny advantage, and he had to take it. Everything slowed, and even Raed’s heartbeat felt labored.

Unlike Sorcha’s Deacons, he had no access to cantrips or runes—but there were the stones. While Derodak was momentarily distracted, Raed ran forward and slammed his injured hands against the weirstone windows. He had no idea if it would do any good, but he was rewarded when the clear blue stone flared bright enough to burn eyes.

“Fool!” was the only word his captor had time to voice, before the Rossin flooded upward.

He took Raed over in an instant, but they shared the blood this time. Raed had called on him, and there was nothing else to be done. His mind was locked with the Beast’s, and he had no chance of escaping the events that would unfurl after that. Actually, Raed found that he didn’t want to miss a moment of this.

The Rossin ripped clothing as he molded flesh into his cat shape, but it was only a momentary change. The pard struck the weirstones that the first Emperor had molded with all the impact of a charging warhorse—and something else. It was always about blood, and blood powered something deeper. The weirstone took the geistlord’s rage and magnified it.

The stone screamed and shattered around him. The ocean roared like another, even greater beast, and thrust itself through the breaks; finding the weakest points unerringly and pushing the Rossin-shaped hole even bigger. The ocean thrust itself deep and invaded Derodak’s kingdom easily. If the Rossin was lucky, the water would carry the infestation of the Circle of Stars away altogether.

The abrupt change to water made necessary another transformation. The Rossin bent the flesh once more, pressing it into one more of his forms: the mer-lion. It was the shape he wore in his depictions on all the Rossin flags that had once flown so proudly over the palace at Vermillion.

The back legs of the pard merged and formed a thick powerful tail, while webbing sprang into being between the toes on his front paws. He still had the claws within though. Now the cold water that entered his body was expelled through gills on the side of his neck, which had also become thicker and more muscular.

He swam with as much ease as he had once leapt—though his roar was now silent in the murky depths. The water around the Rossin brought him information, just as the air did in his favored form.

They were not that far from shore; the ocean here tasted of river water and dirt. It was a taste he knew well; the Vermillion estuary that ebbed and flowed through the capital was not far off.

The ocean here was very deep though. Below, he could not see any rocks, only the untouched blackness of an endless trench. Derodak had made his foul lair on an underwater cliff that dropped away very suddenly. Moving water had helped keep him hidden from the Order of the Eye and the Fist, as well as protecting him from interference from the Otherside.

The Rossin swam with ease, but did not go too close to the room he had burst from. He had enough experience with the first Emperor to know that even in the direst circumstances, he could still be trusted to pull off some daring escape. Only when his head was removed from his body would the Rossin believe he was dead.

The truth was uncomfortable: Derodak still had enough power to overcome the Rossin. The pact they had made together all those hundreds of years before still held. It stung to admit that, and Raed, floating somewhere near the conscious world, was horrified.

In response, the Rossin circled angrily, scaring off a group of gray sharks that had come down to investigate what was going on. Much as it irked him, he knew that the Deacons were the answer to Derodak. Combined they might have the power to stand a chance, but then there was the Circle of Stars to consider.

The geistlord’s baleful eye fixed on the cliff face. He could sense them in there . . . the children of Derodak’s depravity. Each one of them touched by his blood, and each one of them looking up to him like he was a god. They fed Derodak, much like the Wrayth’s various human additions did. Maybe he had even gotten the idea from that vile geistlord.

Just as the Rossin was readying to swim to the surface and see which shore he had been flung to, he felt something stirring below him. His sensitive skin tingled as pressure reached it, pressure that indicated something was rising from below.

Images of the last monster from the deep Raed had encountered flashed across the gap to the Rossin. His host had seen a whole ship destroyed by it; summoned by Derodak to kill Nynnia. It was a blunt weapon, but Derodak had never had much finesse with these things.

Peering down into the darkness, even the Rossin’s sharp eyes could not quite make out what was rising toward him. His geistlord’s pride wouldn’t allow him to flee without at least seeing what he was facing, even though Raed was howling at him to get moving. It was an odd turnabout indeed.

The darkness at the bottom of the trench twisted, and tendrils of shadows clutched at the rock walls. Water was now rushing past the Rossin’s streamlined form. Bubbles and fleeing fish raced by him as he struggled to remain upright and not be swept away by this unnatural current.

A sound made its way through the water, a keening, high-pitched noise that struck him almost like a blade. Baleful eyes suddenly appeared in the gloom, slitted and gleaming orange. Now the tendrils of shadows were not merely shadows . . . they were tentacles, pulling and wrapping around the stonework, as the massive body they were attached to rose nearer and nearer.

For a brief moment the Rossin was struck motionless; thinking this was it, the arrival of the Maker of Ways. The realm would be torn and geists of all shapes and kinds would come pouring in. Then, however, he could finally make out the body. It was long and tubular, and had a waving frill around the edges that might have been beautiful if it wasn’t so huge. The tentacles were far thicker than the geistlord’s body, and they were reaching out to him.

Now he understood fear. It did not matter if he were geistlord or Young Pretender, this thing had been brought out of the depths for the specific purpose of hunting both of them. Derodak had certainly developed an inflated dramatic flair over the centuries. The Rossin wondered if he should be flattered.

The sea beast was not fast, but then it did not have to be. The tentacles shot out for him—and there were many of them.

With a flex of his tail, the geistlord darted away, weaving this way and that as a forest of them descended in his direction. Up close he observed there were large and small ones, and it was the thinner ones that were harder to get away from. They flung themselves at him like a series of slimy pink nets. As a few touched him along his back, his flesh burned with sharp stings.

Pain was not a sensation that the Rossin had much time for, but he was getting a full taste of it now. He roared—though the ocean swallowed much of the effect—and batted at them. Many he cut free, but the water around him was beginning to turn into a veritable soup of them. The geistlord twisted and twisted on himself, trying to cut a way free.

However, the tentacles, large and small, were guiding him closer to the dark center of the monster. Now he caught a glimpse of the beak of the thing: curved and pale, it was three times longer than his body. Tentacles curled and flung around him, cutting off escape routes and shepherding him toward doom. That beak would snap him like a twig.

Raed Syndar Rossin and he would share the same broken fate. The line would die with him, and he would even miss the Maker of Ways. His last thought was how bitter it was that Derodak had won.