Wrayth (22 page)

She swiftly tied a thread she’d worked loose from the sheet about the umbilical cord, and sawed it free with a rock she had sharpened over long months for this particular purpose. Finally she waited for a time, until she had birthed the placenta.

Then she carefully wrapped Daughter up in her sheet. The little girl wriggled a little, but her eyes never left Caoirse’s. The once-Deacon had to smother back a sob. She took a moment to compose herself and to put all the pieces of her plan together one final time. So many things could go wrong—not just the Wrayth stopping her. A Sensitive using an Active power could burn out like a snuffed flame, or up like oil thrown on fire. She was not familiar with the runes, and they could turn and devour her.

Yet it was the only way. She had to warn the Order that this was happening; that not all their Deacons that went missing were killed. She could do this. One last time, Caoirse went over her plan.

First, Voishem to get her out of the cell, then Seym the Rune of Flesh to give her the strength to run. She’d race to the right, out of her cell; that was the direction all the women came from, and she remembered coming that way from the strange tunnel. The gleam of weirstones had been the last thing she recalled. If the tunnel had taken her far from Delmaire then it could take her back there. Then to the Abbey, if Seym would carry her that far. If any Wrayth got in the way or tried to stop her then she would use Pyet on them. She smiled grimly. Maybe she would use the cleansing flame on them anyway.

Gathering up Daughter, she called on the child’s power. It was so much more than she could have expected. The rune’s power scampered up the marks on her arms, and it was like pouring liquid lead into her veins. Her muscles
spasmed and it felt like her eyes would burn out of her head. So much pain, but she couldn’t afford the time to stop and feel it. For the Order’s sake. For Daughter’s sake.

Caoirse held up her hand, trembling and thin as it was. Voishem made the world pale and insubstantial. She liked that. Clutching Daughter in the crook of her arm, she stepped forward and out into the corridor.

Raed was watching Sorcha, who had only just placed her hand on the bloodstain, but he was also keeping an eye and an ear out for anything coming along the corridor. She’d said Aachon was near, but he heard no reassuring pistol shots or sounds of victory to tell him that this assertion was true. He wished Merrick were here to tell him what was going on with Sorcha, and perhaps to provide a little levelheaded sanity to this situation.

It couldn’t have been more than a minute since Sorcha touched the blood before she let out a tiny gasp and slumped back. It was only his hand on her shoulder that kept her from falling over completely.

Her fingers clutched onto him, and then, most remarkably of all, she buried her head against his chest. Just for a moment, even considering the dire place they were in, Raed spared time to cradle her head there, stroking her hair and making noises of comfort.

“She got away.” Sorcha pulled back, wiped tears from her eyes and looked up at him. He had never before seen that expression on the Deacon’s face; true wonder. He wanted to kiss her even more now; to make her eyes stop crying, and her chest stop struggling to find breath. This was not Sorcha—at least not the Sorcha he knew.

“Who got away?” he asked gently.

The Deacon gestured to the blood on the floor. “My mother. Caoirse. She was here, the Wrayth were breeding me from her. Just like those other poor women.” She swallowed
hard. “By the Blood, this was where I was made, in this horrible place!” She spun about abruptly and dry retched into the corner of the cell. It was a miserable sound, as if she were trying to purge her body and soul.

Raed sat back on his heels and rubbed her back softly. He knew better than to question what she had learned from the blood: the Order was the authority on such things.

Eventually, she collected herself, wiped her mouth on the back of her hand and glanced over her shoulder at him. Raed looked around.
So this was where you were born?
It hardly seemed like the place for a powerful Deacon to come into the world.

“That’s why I am powerful!” Sorcha shook her head, and seemed not to notice that he hadn’t spoken at all. It unnerved Raed no end, but he didn’t bring it up. The Deacon looked as though she was already tottering on the edge of complete collapse. She was so much thinner than last time he’d seen her, and the large circles under her eyes told him many more things than she would ever say.

He waited in silence for her to explain. The distress across the Bond was something he could feel, like a foreign substance in his body. Something about the Rossin being so close to the surface had made him aware of the connection like he had never been before. Raed was not entirely sure he liked being conscious of it, especially in this situation.

Sorcha clenched her hands on the folds of the cloak he wore. “It’s why the Bond is so strong between the three of us, don’t you see? Even what happened with the Prince of Chioma’s gift. It’s because I am partly made of them.” She stared at her hands with such fixation and such fury that he was worried she might start tearing at her very flesh. “I am part of their bloody breeding program—whatever they were trying to make, they made me along the way!”

He was familiar with her despair and rage. Far too familiar. The Young Pretender had gone through all those
emotions himself when he first realized he was cursed. He knew how deeply destructive thoughts like that could become.

Carefully, Raed laid his hands on hers, swallowing them up. “They might have made you, but you are not their creature. Your mother gave birth to you, she loved you enough to get you out of this place. You are hers too. Don’t forget that.”

It was a lesson Aachon had often repeated to him when he feared there was nothing but the Rossin in him.

Sorcha held his gaze for a moment, and he tried his very best to project safety, kindness and understanding across the Bond. He wasn’t sure if he was doing it right, or even doing it at all, but after a second or two, she nodded.

“You’re right.”

“Say it again.” He smiled softly. “I love it when you say that.”

Her short laugh was brittle, but at least sounded like her. “Don’t get cocky, Your Majesty. I’ll hold myself together until we get out of here, then fall apart in a heap you can enjoy picking up.”

Getting out of here. Raed let out a slow sigh. “And we must stop Fraine too,” he reminded her as gently as he could.

Sorcha met his gaze. “We will—but first let’s get to Aachon. His head will implode if I don’t bring you directly to him.”

They went out into the hallway once more, and Sorcha slipped her hand into his. They were both fragile and weak right now, but even if that had not been the case Raed would still have enjoyed that little gesture. She had said she would not leave him again, and the Young Pretender appreciated that. As they left the cells and moved deeper into the nest, he felt very vulnerable.

“I confess,” he whispered into Sorcha’s ear, “I wish I was not doing this naked. That’s the real problem with the Rossin, I never have any cursed pants or boots.”

She turned and kissed him, lightly at first, and then more passionately, clutching him for a moment tight against her. She was smiling against his mouth a second before they parted.

“It is good to see you, Raed,” she muttered, “and I don’t care how few clothes you wear.” She was trying to hold off what was going on around her, and what she had learned, and yet she was still aware of him. The prickly Deacon he had pulled out of the ocean the previous year had not escaped unscathed from all they had been through. But then, none of them had.

“Take me somewhere you and I can explore that further.” It was a boastful thing to say, because the Rossin inhabiting his body for nearly a week had eaten away any strength he’d had before. Raed thought it was perhaps only pride and stubbornness keeping him on his feet and moving. If there was any fighting or running ahead, he didn’t know what he would do—probably just lie down and try and gain Sorcha some time.

The Deacon up ahead was peering around a corner. Her head whipped around, and she fixed him with a baleful glare. “Don’t you even
think
about doing any such thing!”

That damned Bond was going to take quite some getting used to—and he had no time to learn the skills to hide his thoughts. “Chivalry used to be all the rage,” he grumbled.

Sorcha poked him with her finger, then pulled him close so that they could both peer around the corner of the hallway. It made quite the impression. With the new closeness of the Rossin, Raed felt more and saw more through the Beast’s eyes, but there was a difference. The geistlord did not linger overly on visual details; he was always more concerned about the sounds and smells.

What to him had only been a pile of stinking, yammering humanity looked quite different to Raed with his own eyes. It looked, to put it bluntly, like an orgy. He’d never been to one himself, but there had been plenty of books in
his father’s library on many subjects that an impressionable boy probably should not have gotten hold of.

Men and women, covered in the mud and dust of their shadowy nest, were piled in the great room. All were naked, all were touching, writhing. Many of the females looked to be in various stages of pregnancy, but that apparently did not stop them. Men, women, all in one groping, licking, grinding mass. However none of their eyes were focused on each other, but rather at some distant unseen point.

“What are they doing?” Sorcha shook her head as a frown deepened on her forehead.

“You don’t know?”

“Raed, I know what they are physically doing,” she replied with an arched eyebrow. “However I studied as long and as hard as any Active, particularly when it came to the kinds of geists I might run into. This makes no sense.”

A thought scuttled across the surface of his mind; one that was not his own.
This part of the Wrayth mind is solely consumed with pleasure. It doesn’t have a higher function.

“I can see that,” Sorcha rubbed her temples. “So you are saying that the Wrayth functions like a beehive, with different parts doing things? Like some parts of it working the limbs, remembering to breathe, while other bits plot and scheme?”

You’re getting it now.

It was hard for Raed to decide which was the more unnerving; that Sorcha was plucking thoughts from him, or that those thoughts were in fact the Rossin’s. Strangely enough it appeared when the Beast was actively thinking his own thoughts it went unnoticed by Sorcha; she just assumed they were the Young Pretender’s thoughts. It was all a nasty muddle.

“Seems a little too much like pleasuring yourself,” he added, more to have something to distract her than anything.
“It gets so dull after a while. Maybe that is why they brought in the female Deacons.”

“Oh no, these bits of the Wrayth had nothing to do with that. That was a real plan, with a purpose—we just don’t know what that is…at least yet.” She pointed to the far side of the wide room. “Aachon and your crew are coming up through the drain over there. We should help them. I don’t think this part of the brain is conscious enough to be bothered with us.”

Carefully picking their way across the rocky floor, but still sticking to the edges of the room, they reached the grate. It was, like everything else here, made of stone, but Sorcha used her long knife to lever it open. Both of them had to yank it away however.

Aachon and the dozen
Dominion
crew who emerged from inside the pipe were a sight for sore eyes. Mud and other unmentionable filth were caked all over them. They stood blinking, wiping the muck out of their eyes, and taking in the undulating bodies of the Wrayth mind with more than a little slack-jawed incredulity.

“I am sure,” Sorcha said, trying to draw away their attention, “you wish at least one of you had taken me up on my offer.”

Aleck, the tallest of the crew members, was rubbing the small of his back. Crawling and crab-walking through the muck of the Wrayth fortress could not have been fun for him in particular. “Remind me of that next time.”

Aachon insisted on flicking as much filth off himself as he could, before embracing Raed. It had been months since the Young Pretender had seen his first mate, and he was damned if he was going to stand on ceremony. He grabbed him roughly and hugged him, quite lost for words.

“My prince,” Aachon stumbled out, “it is good to see you alive and well—though somewhat lacking in the clothing department.” Then he swung a rucksack off his back, and proceeded to pull out pants, boots, shirt, a pistol and
most remarkably a stout leather tricorne hat. He had even thought to bring a second sword.

“Familiarity certainly doesn’t breed contempt in your case,” Raed exclaimed, and clasped his friend’s arm. “It only makes you much better prepared.” The rest of the crew members let him dress before roughly shaking his hand and slapping him on the back.

After so long apart, Raed felt like he was back among family again. Yes, family—the only real one he’d ever had.

“I am sorry to do this to you, old friend,” he said, breaking into their moment of congratulations, “but we cannot leave just yet—though I do yearn to climb into a sewage pipe with you. Fraine and Tangyre are here, and we must get my sister away before she creates bloodshed in the Empire.”

Aachon and Sorcha exchanged a puzzled look. “Are you suggesting,” the first mate growled, “that the Wrayth have them prisoner?”

By the Blood, it was hard to have to say the words, but they all deserved to know, and more importantly they couldn’t go charging around the Wrayth nest not knowing who their enemies were. “No, I am not. They are here of their own free will.” He clamped his hand on Aachon’s upper arm. “Tangyre Greene has been poisoning Fraine’s mind for years. My sister is trying to drag Arkaym into civil war to gain the throne for herself.”

“It will be civil war,” Aachon whispered. “Thousands will be killed. Thousands of innocents.”

“Not if we get her away from here.” Raed glanced back at the writhing human bodies behind them, full with the influence of the Wrayth, now part of its twisted mind. “We can’t let her be used.”