Sorcha exchanged a glance with Raed. Her face was flushed with anger, but her eyes were glassy with something that might have been a tear. “We shall make everything as it should be. That is what the Arch Abbot sent us here to do, and when I have my partner back, we can help.”
“How can you do anything against a Priory full of Deacons?” A sharp voice rang out from the huddle of the crowd, and Raed knew it for a very valid question. He was wondering the very same thing.
“There is one thing we have that they cannot stand against.” Raed felt her eyes focus once more on him; her expression was both calculating and sad.
Surely, she was mad. Surely she couldn’t possibly be contemplating what he imagined?
Sorcha made a slight gesture, asking for his silence for a moment. “Mayor Locke, could you send someone down to the Captain’s ship? Ask for Aachon, and get him to send up all those who are ready for a fight.”
A boy was dispatched, and Raed watched from the sidelines as Sorcha conversed with the Mayor and his councilors in a low voice. He didn’t take much notice of what they were saying, because his mind was spinning. He knew what she was going to say, so after a few minutes when she strode toward him, his jaw was clenched and he was ready to argue.
Behind her, the people of Ulrich were newly invigorated, snapping into action and organizing themselves into something resembling forms. Whatever she had said to them had brought positive results.
He glared at Sorcha, feeling every muscle in his body rigid with rage. It was much easier to be angry than to be scared.
“So you’ve guessed,” she began. “The only advantage we have right now is you, and the Rossin.”
“You cannot use the creature as a weapon!”
“Listen,” she hissed, shooting a glance over her shoulder at the townspeople, “they are right; there is no way I can possibly stand up against the dozen other Actives waiting for us in there.”
Raed shook his head. He didn’t want to hear anything, let alone something that might make sense.
“Aside from the fact these people need us”—she stepped closer to him, so close that he could feel her warmth—“we are trapped here, and I am sure that Aulis has a plan of her own. It won’t be good for us. I can tell you that now, for free.”
All of his choices were whittled away. Raed felt as trapped as sheep in a farmer’s pen, ready for the butcher’s knife. He took a slow deep breath; it never hurt to hear what people had to say. “All right—what do you propose? How can you possibly control the Rossin?”
Sorcha smiled, a flash of wry amusement. “Control him? I have no desire to control the Rossin. But I believe I can possibly give him something productive to do.”
The Priory looked as impregnable as any fortress he’d ever seen. He thought about surrendering to the Curse, about how he had feared it since his own mother’s blood had filled his mouth. It seemed unlikely that anything good could come from the Rossin. Then he thought of the children chained in their own homes, his own crew trapped on the ship, and the Deacon whom they’d unknowingly left to his fate.
Raed, the Young Pretender, cleared his throat. “If you think you can stop me from killing the innocent—if you can promise me that—then yes. Do it.”
Sorcha’s hands wrapped around his; soft, warm and strong, while her vivid blue eyes remained steady with his. “Trust me, Raed. I won’t let the Beast have you for any longer than necessary, or let you slay anyone needlessly.”
Aachon would have tried to talk him out of it, but something in Raed felt her honesty and strength. “There is no other way,” he found himself replying steadily, “and I trust you to do as you promise.”
“Good, then.” Sorcha held his hands a little longer than strictly necessary. “Because I make none I cannot keep.”
FOURTEEN
A Use for Blood and Bone
Aulis’ voice penetrated the fog that Merrick had fallen into—exhaustion and near death could do that to a person. He levered his eyes open. The woman who so falsely called herself Prior was again staring down at him as if he were a piece of meat, head on one side. He wondered what she was seeing with her obviously limited Sight. Trapped, he longed to be able to stretch forth his Center, but he’d learned from his earlier attempt. It would have to be reserved for the final moment of desperation.
“He’s ready. Bring him.” She gestured to the Actives lurking in the shadows. One of them brought forth a set of keys and unlocked the shackles around his wrists. Merrick left himself limp until they had unshackled all his limbs; then with a surge of energy he went at them. Unfortunately, after getting strangled into unconsciousness and spending many hours lying on the cold, damp floor, he was not in the best condition. Still, he surged up at them, swinging his arms, trying to remember all that he had been taught as a novice. He managed to get a few punches in, but his body felt sodden, wrung out. He was moving too slowly.
The Actives laughed, their voices grating on ears that felt raw. Merrick shook his head and swayed while they yanked his arms behind his back and tied them firmly. As they pushed him ahead of them, he tried one last time to reach Aulis.
“Think of your vows.” His voice sounded slurred even to his own ears, his tongue too large for his mouth. Yet he had to try. “Think of all the Order stands for!”
Her graying eyebrows drew together in a sharp line. “Oh, but I am thinking of it, young fool. You should have studied history more closely.”
The Actives dragged him upstairs, and he realized he had no chance of calling on their compassion. Yet, he tried.
The one to the right, with deep-set eyes, looked as though he must have been with the Order a long time. “You can still stop this,” Merrick managed to whisper out of the corner of his mouth, though his lips had gone slightly slack. He could only hope it was some effect of lying under those cantrips for hours and not some kind of palsy.
The man snorted his derision.
“Surely your partner who died—surely they . . .” Merrick called on the one thing that all Deacons shared.
“There are no Bonds that mean anything between us and the Sensitives,” the younger-looking Active to his left growled. “They are sheep and we are wolves.”
“Shut up, Falkirk,” the other snapped. “Let’s just get him upstairs as ordered.”
Merrick was not capable of any more questions anyway; shock had driven him to silence. The Bond between partners was the most sacred thing to any Deacon. It was not to be mocked and used so callously. Even if Actives and Sensitives did rib each other in the confines of the Abbey, they would never say such terrible things as had just issued from the mouths of these men.
Whatever this place called itself, it was not a Priory. They might wear cloaks the same color as Deacons, but they were not of the Order.
Any further contemplation was cut short when they reached the ground level of the keep. The numbness in Merrick’s body turned suddenly to ice. They were once more in the main Hall. It had, however, been cleansed. The charcoal patch was scrubbed clean; the benches were pushed to the outer edges, and when he managed to turn his eyes upward he also saw that they had somehow repaired the scorches in the ceiling. The Rossin was there, glaring down at him.
The Beast was not just some fanciful myth Raed’s family had decided to use for their family crest. It was tied to the land here; a geist of the highest order, around which legends had been built. It had never truly been tamed; its submission had been the result of a negotiation between it and the greatest Deacon in the mythology of the Order. Myrilian, who had been able to use his Active and Sensitive powers jointly—a feat never since achieved. It was this Deacon who was Raed’s ancestor.
All these thoughts ran through Merrick’s fevered head as he was dragged on his heels to the front of the Hall. They’d given up all pretense of interest in him. Merrick scrambled weakly, unable to find any power in his own legs.
A stone had been set in the spot where the lectern had once stood. Merrick shook his head groggily as he suddenly recognized the device from books—a draining board. They shoved him back roughly against it, the lines of razors slicing into his back. He lurched forward with a howl, but the two men were already lashing him against the device with merciless efficiency.
His mind scurried to make sense of it, trying to call on his memory and his training. Blood, bone and flesh made any summoning stronger. The blood of a Deacon already steeped in the midst of the Otherside would be best of all: it would be not only his power that could be drawn, but that of his partner, as well. Sorcha Faris, the strongest of the Actives.
To his right, Aulis appeared once more. She had discarded the blue cloak of an Active and was dressed in bright red robes. He’d never seen or heard of the like among the Order. The sleeves were embroidered with symbols and cantrips. “You see, young Deacon? All your training, all your talent—they shall not go to waste.”
Merrick turned his head away with a sick realization burning in his head. They had weakened him enough to enter his mind; normally, of course, a Sensitive was too powerful to be broken into in such a way.
Aulis leaned in close to him, so that he could smell sage and a whiff of smoke in her hair. “Thank you for your donation to our cause.”
The sharp little knives dug deeper into his body with every breath. The blood slid down the channels into the brass bowl the woman bent and placed at the base of the rock. They were draining him of life, as if he were an especially ripe fruit.
At Aulis’ gesture, the two Actives who had brought him in loomed into view. “We are nearly ready. Go and get the royal. He is right outside the gates.” She glanced upward once at the image of the Rossin on the ceiling, and her smile was dreadful and happy.
Merrick’s vision was darkening around the edges, shadows creeping in from around the lit torches to feast on his fear; shades and memory. The only mercy was that he felt so little pain, but he was sure that this was not a deliberate kindness. The Otherside was pulling at him—he knew the symptoms. Aulis and her Actives needed his blood for something, and he would probably never live to see it.
Don’t give up . . . Hold on.
“Sorcha?” he whispered, shaking his head, trying to clear it. Reaching desperately for the Bond, he tried to open his mind to his partner.
And then he felt soft fingertips on his forehead. He had to be dreaming, for now he heard Nynnia’s whisper. “I can’t get these shackles off.” The tiniest tug on them awakened coils of pain through his back. Merrick managed not to moan.
He licked his lips, desperate for moisture to make his mouth work. “Don’t . . . They’ll hear.”
At the far end of the Hall, they were still waiting for his blood to drain out of him, chatting among themselves as calmly as if this were a marketplace. He surely couldn’t be far from passing out. “Have you got it, Nynnia?”
His own heartbeat was slowing in his ears. The room began to waver. She had to be careful handling the Strop.
“Yes.” Her voice was muffled and distant, but he felt the smooth warmth of the talisman glide over his eyes. Suddenly everything was clear, and Merrick Chambers slipped into the Otherside.
The pain in Sorcha’s head was not going away—a hollow space in her mind where awareness of Merrick should have been. Her protective instincts told her to race up the hill back to the Priory, blast the doors off with Chityre and demand her partner back. However, she had not reached seniority in the Order by giving in to pure impulse.
Sorcha could feel Aachon’s glare like a knife in her back. She didn’t turn about until she had explained the last of her plan to the Mayor and the citizens of Ulrich. She kept it simple; the fewer people running about with complicated instructions, the better.
“As soon as you see the light, retreat back as quickly as you can. Aachon will do the rest.” Only when the crowd had nodded and shuffled away with something that looked like hope in their eyes did she turn around to face the wrath of the first mate.
Raed was enjoying this moment; he had a grin that threatened to split his face. If he was afraid of her plan, there was no sign of it.
Sorcha gave him a glare, but wasn’t about to get into a fight. Over the Pretender’s shoulder, the sun was sinking into the sea. The days here were incredibly short and they had little time to pull this off.
Taking out her Gauntlets, she thrust them onto her hands in a couple of short gestures. “Aachon, you understand how important timing is? You must choose your moment and wait until the Actives are on the wall—all of them.”
The man’s brow furrowed and he glanced down into his right hand, tightly clenched around the weirstone. “It feels wrong . . .”
“That’s because it
is
wrong,” Sorcha snapped. “Imagine how it is for me—this goes against everything a Deacon is ever taught!” She readjusted the slim pack on her back and watched him out of the corner of her eye.
Perhaps those had not been the right words, for he actually flinched as if struck. The native Order had fallen apart under the weight of the politics of so many fractured kingdoms. That they had rejected a man with such excellent Sensitive potential was only a symptom of that internal rot.
“Old friend,” Raed broke the stalemate, “we are all risking much here, but I know this is the right thing. I cannot always be hiding, and this is what a proper prince would do for his people.”
Aachon glanced down at the brilliant blue orb in his hand, staring into its depths as if the answer could be found there. Finally when he spoke, his deep voice vibrated with emotion. “I was given care of you by the Unsung, but you are my leader, my prince. I know you are also a good man, and if you say this is the way—then this is the way.”
With that, he took his place among the crew and waited for the sun to finish sinking. Sorcha led Raed away, far enough so that they could choose their moment, concealed among the rubble of rock to the right of the road. A quick glance at the Pretender brought her some reassurance; despite their plan hinging on releasing his inner beast,
Dominion
’s captain looked remarkably calm. His eyes darted to where his crew stood loading their weapons and preparing to assist the citizens. Two rickety old rifles wouldn’t bring every heretic Deacon to the wall, hence the full firepower of his crew. By the slight frown on his forehead, she knew his concern was all for them. Good; she didn’t want him thinking too much on his part in this hasty plan.