They were not alone. Eriloyn swallowed hard. He had not seen so many citizens of Waikein since before the geists came, and now they were all here. It should have gladdened his heart that so many of his living fellows were in one place, instead it only filled him with an abiding dread.
Once he pulled his gaze away from the assembly, it traveled naturally to the man that stood before them. He knew him, though he had seldom seen him this close. It was the mayor of Waikein. A tall man, still well dressed despite the situation, his red and silver hair immaculately styled as if barbers had somehow survived the chaos. The mayor stood on a raised platform, and from where he stood Eriloyn could see that he was smiling. However, it was not a smile that would soothe any fears. When he pulled back his lips, he revealed rows of sharp, pointed teeth—as if they had been filed to a predatory gleam.
The girl holding his hand squeezed it once more, her empty eyes following the mayor as he waved at the crowd. Eriloyn tugged at the chain, but it was tight and strong.
“Survivors of Waikein”—the mayor’s voice carried over the heads of the citizens and echoed off the hollow buildings that surrounded the square—“I am here to offer you salvation, and a way to keep yourselves alive.”
Eriloyn tilted his head; there was something strange about the air around the man’s head. It was bending slightly, and there was an odd smell coming off him, something sharp that hurt his nostrils.
“Do you smell that?” he whispered to the nameless girl, but she shook her head.
The odor overwhelmed him, and the boy gagged on it, not understanding how she could be so lost to the world as to not be affected by it.
No one else in the town square seemed able to smell it either, because they were actually drawing closer to the mayor as he spoke. Could they not see his teeth?
“We have to live with the geists now.” His voice was soothing and sounded reasonable. “The Order is all gone, and we must make our own way. All the undead want is small sacrifices, little offerings, and they will let us live in peace.”
Again Eriloyn knew that only a few weeks earlier would have made a world of difference; everyone knew that you didn’t make deals with geists. They always turned on the humans eventually—it was written in every legend and myth ever spoken to a child anywhere. Yet, these were people who had seen their loved ones ripped from them, who had lived in abject fear for weeks, and so were willing to reach out for any tiny sliver of hope.
When the mayor turned to look at the line of children ranked behind him, Eriloyn was not surprised to see that he had a long knife in his hands, and a weirstone gleaming in his fist. Blood magic and the gleaming orbs went together like snow and winter.
“Small sacrifices, that will take but an instant,” the mayor said. “If anyone objects, speak up now.”
He wanted their complicity—he needed it—Eriloyn realized. Gleaming in the mayor’s jovial eye was something undead, and it required something from the people assembled. The boy’s stomach twisted, and he bent over for a moment; fearful that he was going to throw up whatever little remained in his stomach. When he finally regained control, he stood up tall, and looked not at the mayor who was approaching, but at the girl who still held his hand.
“What is your name?” He whispered the question to her, suddenly consumed by the need to hear it, even as he was aware of death’s approach.
Deep down, there was a small spark in her. She hesitated only a moment. “Aloisa,” she replied, a tiny smile on her mouth.
The mayor’s shadow now blocked out the tiny lights that the people held—the people who were silently watching events unfold. No sound or protestations came from them.
Then, just as the mayor was coming into striking distance, a voice did rise from among the crowd. It was none that was familiar to Eriloyn, though he did recognize that it was a woman’s voice. Somehow it carried and caused even the mayor to pause. “You will want to be moving slowly, and carefully away from those children.”
From his vantage, the boy saw the thing behind the eyes of the man flicker. Was it possible it was recognition, or could it be panic? Everyone in the crowd strained this way and that to find who had spoken.
The children in the chained line shifted. Little sighs and sobs escaped them. Eriloyn shook his head, blinking; he could swear that the air around the crowd was moving to a strange pinkish hue. The boy wondered if fear was driving him mad.
These worrying thoughts were set aside however when she stepped out of the crowd. The boy found himself stumbling toward her but was caught up short by his restraints.
It was hard for him to see any details of this woman. All he could make out was that she was not particularly tall and was wearing a plain black cloak. It was what his wavering eyes saw, though, that brought him almost to his knees. Whatever madness it was that had wrapped him up, he saw other things about her; silver threads swarmed around her, and they twisted themselves into patterns his eye could not follow.
Yet, unlike the smells and visions he saw around the mayor, these did not fill him with fear. Instead, something like hope welled up in his chest.
The mayor took a step back—so perhaps he did see what Eriloyn did. If that was true, he was a great deal less heartened by it. Still the darkness within him drove him on.
“You are but one,” he hissed.
“You do not see so well, geist,” the woman said calmly. “I am not alone. I am one of many, and many more to come. We will be the Enlightened who stand against you. I am merely the Harbinger of those to come.”
Her words struck Eriloyn hard, and he looked around at those that filled the town square. They knew it too. They all did. This moment was important.
“Harbinger?” The mayor’s face turned in on itself, revealing the undead thing beneath. A maw of teeth and coiled hatred wiped away any illusion of humanity. “I see what you are; a weapon left lying to rust. They should never have tried to make such an—”
“An abomination?” The woman unhooked the clasp of her cloak and let it slide from her shoulders to the ground. Beneath she wore a simple pair of trousers, a thin sleeveless linen shirt and a wide leather belt. The light of the torches flared brighter, and they all saw what was carved on her arms. She laughed at the geist who wore the mayor like an overlarge robe. “A weapon may be created for one purpose, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be reforged into another.”
Effortlessly, she raised both her hands and they flared to light; one was clenched on a shimmering globe of green energy, while the other ran with scarlet flames that danced up and down her outstretched hand.
Eriloyn had not seen the Runes of Dominion for a long time—not since he was still a tiny child, clinging to his mother’s skirts—but they were his first real memory. Something had happened in his father’s barn, and Deacons had been fetched. He could not recall the faces of those who had come, but the recollection of the silvery blue fire they had summoned was as clear as the day he’d seen it.
Now, here was a woman standing in his ruined city, facing the undead calmly, while the runes burned on her actual skin. This moment was not one he would ever forget either.
His gaze traveled over the crowd, and now he could pick out others among the citizens; all wore simple black cloaks, and stood completely still in the sea of confusion. They were like rocks dropped into a churning stream and that made Eriloyn smile—though he did not understand why this woman called herself a Harbinger and not a Deacon.
The mayor moved toward her and even his footsteps were no longer human. His gait was twisted and awkward as he neared her. The citizens of the city shrank back from him, so that the cloaked figures in their midst were revealed, as when the river dried up, making plain the rocks within it.
The mayor’s head swung from side to side, and an ugly laugh welled up in him. “Is that all you bring,
Harbinger
?” His voice cut sharply on the title she’d given herself. “This is our city now, and even if you should drive me from this world, you will never triumph over the many to come.”
Eriloyn’s heart began to race and that dreaded fear trickled over his skin once more. Even as other cloaked figures appeared out of the crowd and ran to free the line of chained children, he strained his head left and right to see what would happen next. His eyes were fixed as completely to the Harbinger as any rivet his father had ever secured.
“So many?” The woman said with a note of sadness in her voice. She shook her head. “Yes, there had been so many of your kind unleashed here; so many folk who have been twisted by the undead and made into geists themselves. I can see them, feel them. More than that.” She raised her hands, still burning with red fire, and now Eriloyn gasped.
Even as kindly hands undid the restraints on his injured ankle, he was entranced by what he saw. From all over the city they came; chill winds, spinning shapes of the undead, and lost souls still crying for their lives. They gathered in the town square, just as the rest of the citizens had, but bound together. In short order the air above the Harbinger looked like a shimmering spiderweb of geists. They darted about, and while Eriloyn was sure the survivors of Waikein could not see what he was seeing—else they would have fled in horror—they did appear to feel the presence. Some people shivered and clasped their coats and cloaks tighter, while an odd few bent over double, afflicted by nausea at the undeads’ presence.
The mayor made a choking noise, dropped to his knees, and then to his elbows. Some kind of war seemed to be raging inside him, because he crawled forward, howling, and twisting—it was as if he were being dragged like a mad dog by some unseen leash.
The Harbinger did not take any notice of any of these things. She was the calm center of this mad storm. However, when she spoke, her voice was heard all over the square. “I see you all—every
one
of you. I draw you together. You belong to me.”
Eriloyn knew immediately she was talking about the strange, undead shapes wheeling above the humans. However, at the same time, the cloaked figures also came together behind the Harbinger and shed their cloaks.
All of them wore their runes directly on their skin as she did. As one their hands clenched around the flames and claimed the eerie green glow. The light was so bright it eclipsed any meager lanterns that the citizens of Waikein had with them.
The mayor howled, and his cry was echoed by the wind that whipped around the town square. The Enlightened—since that was what she had called them—raised their hands wreathed in the green, and it flowed out of them. It encompassed everything from air to cobbles.
Eriloyn felt it wash over him and pass by. The mayor however was not left alone. To the boy’s ears it sounded as though something was being ripped free of him. The Enlightened seemed to straighten taller and, from his point of view, grow stronger as the light whipped around the square, turning back to them.
The mayor sagged, almost falling to the cobblestones that he was crawling on. Briefly, he managed to lever himself upright. His mouth worked on words that he would never say, because the other arm of the Harbinger came down, and this time the flame did not stay on her own flesh.
Eriloyn did not look away as the mayor and the undead creature within him was consumed by flame. He made sure to take in the sound of flesh and clothing burning and inhaled the odor. He wanted to remember this.
Around the Harbinger, the other Enlightened raised their hands into the air, and fire arched up into the sky. Some of the citizens looked away in fear, but many—if not most—watched the display of power above them.
It kindled hope in Eriloyn and a sort of grim determination that survivors all shared. It shall not happen here again.
Aloisa stood at his side, and her eyes were haunted but no longer empty. Long streaks of tears flowed from them, leaving paths in the dirt on her face.
As the Enlightened fanned out through the crowd, moving to help the injured, and comfort the grief stricken, Eriloyn found himself staring at a figure just behind the Harbinger herself.
The man’s eyes were locked with the boy’s, in a kind of shock. He was a tall man with dark curly hair and wide brown eyes. Something hung around his shoulders, a stain of power in the ether that might not have been as noticeable as around the Harbinger, but it still drew him.
In the ether?
The boy shook his head.
What did that mean?
The Harbinger was speaking to the crowd, but it was no longer she that was important—it was the man and those eyes that saw too much.
Then the world was spinning, and Eriloyn was wrenched away.
Merrick took a staggering step back and found he was staring at the boy with the haunted eyes; the one that he’d ridden in the head of. The runes that he had summoned had drawn him here, to this boy at the very edge of death. He’d been locked in the boy’s head for a week, so that they all might be drawn to the correct place and time. The rune Sielu had shown him this for a reason, brought him here for this moment. It was indeed the perfect place and time for Sorcha to reveal her plan.
Eriloyn had provided the information on the city the Deacons needed.
Such an experience was one he would never forget. Merrick had never before considered how the geists would look to everyday folk, or indeed how the Order would. Now he knew. They were hope and salvation.
He looked at his partner’s back, tall and straight before him, and knew she had done what she set out to. She was now the head of the Order that she’d given a new name: the Enlightened. The city of Waikein would be remembered for this moment—if any of them survived the coming destruction that was.
The future and his vision had melded and caught up with each other. He wondered what else lay ahead and what the Wrayth power Sorcha had just unleashed could mean. Even he could not see that. They could only go forward as bravely as the boy had.