Wrayth (29 page)

The crew formed up behind their captain with grim faces and primed pistols. Sorcha and Aachon took the front positions. Surprise was the only advantage they had, and she was going to use it the best she could. Standing by the door in the dark chamber, the Deacon could hear the footsteps of the approaching people they had just listened in on. Sorcha took a long, steady breath.

The tang of the weirstone’s power was the only thing keeping her upright and functioning, but it tasted flat, coppery and chill compared with Merrick. She was pining for his strength and good sense, and as soon as she could, she was going to drag Raed back to Vermillion to find him. If they survived of course.

With that thought, Sorcha took a step into the corridor and spread her Gauntlets wide before her. She only had a brief instant to take in the people before her. Tangyre was there, her arm guiding a shorter, younger, blonder woman before her, and Sorcha thought Fraine looked very little like her brother. Behind were three more women, but with bone-white hair and skin. In them, the Deacon could feel the flicker of the Wrayth, lying just under their skin like a serpent.

They glanced up, and it was not her imagination, something in their eyes told her they recognized what she was.

If they saw anything about Caoirse in her, she was pleased. Like her mother she would teach them a thing or two about Deacons. She didn’t spare them a word as she darted forward, slipped between Tangyre, who was now reaching for her sword, and Fraine. She made no introductions. Instead she kicked out hard with her left leg, connecting with the younger woman’s knee; she sent her sprawling to the ground with a surprised grunt.

Then Sorcha summoned the rune Deiyant. It blazed like white lightning on her palm as she pushed forward toward the line of women. The power of the Gauntlet filled the confined space of the hallway with a massive explosion of air. Like a geist moving furniture, Sorcha used Deiyant to toss the bodies of all before her. They were chaff in her way. As a Deacon she’d never done such a thing to humans before and wasn’t sure she dare examine too closely how good it felt.

Raed and his crew sprang from the shadows and scooped up the stunned Fraine before anyone could scramble up off the floor. She screamed and kicked furiously, but Raed disarmed her, and there were more of them than one outraged Princess could manage. Sorcha saw the cold light in Raed’s eyes as he grabbed her by the shoulders and jerked her to her feet. He bound her hands before her with sharp efficiency.

Aachon and Sorcha took up the rear while the rest of the crew bundled their captive away with them, back the way they had come, toward the riser.

It seemed like a dangerous apparatus to make their escape, but it was all they had. They would have to trust it since Sorcha could not phase all of them through the walls.

“Nicely done,” Aachon commented as the riser continued its ascent. “We should be able to summon Captain Lepzig with the weirstone to pick us up from the roof.”

“You’re all dead,” Fraine spat, straining against Arriann who had taken stern control of her. “I’ll have the Wrayth slit your throats just like I ordered done to your crew members in Chioma.”

The men and women who heard this glanced at Raed in undisguised shock. This was news to every one of them, including Sorcha. If what the Princess said was true, the Deacon could understand why the Young Pretender would keep it from them at least until they were beyond the nest.

Aachon drew back his hand, as if to slap the Princess stupid, but then at the last moment held his blow. “They died for their captain as we all would. He’s earned our respect over many years. How many can you say would do that for you?” His voice was wracked with choked-back rage. It was the most emotional the Deacon had ever seen him.

Sorcha could understand; broken loyalties and conspiracies had almost destroyed her beloved Order. She touched his shoulder. “She isn’t worth it.”

Raed stepped between his sister and his first mate. “Enough, Fraine. I don’t know what you gave up to the Wrayth, but this isn’t the way to revenge yourself on me—bringing a whole Empire to the very brink of civil war.”

“Brink?” Her smile was chill. “Brother, it has already begun.”

The truthfulness of that statement could not be tested right then, because no sooner were the words out of her mouth than shots rang out above them. Many shots.

Instinctively everyone ducked down, but the bullets were not aimed at the people. They rained down against the top of the riser like hailstones.

Aachon grabbed Sorcha’s hand. “Guards above are trying to shoot out the mechanism for the machine. We have to stop them!”

The Deacon looked at him as if he were mad. She
understood the risk, but she had no way of targeting anyone. Her Sight was not that accurate without Merrick and she had more chance of killing them all with a misplaced blast of Pyet, than she did of halting the assault on their transportation.

Apparently the Wrayth had what they needed from Fraine, because they were showing scant regard for her safety. Tangyre must have had no say in the matter either. However, Raed, perhaps out of habit, had covered his sister’s body with his own. Not that it mattered.

For just then, the shots had their intended effect. The riser lurched from side to side like a ball on a string, and the sound of groaning metal filled their ears. The passengers had nowhere to jump to escape, and Sorcha could think of only one mad chance. Spreading herself on the floor she shouted, “Hold on,” to the crew.

It was perhaps an unnecessary piece of advice. The chain above finally snapped under the assault, and the riser began to do quite the opposite; it began to fall like a lead weight back the way they had come. The sensation of her stomach trying to force its way into her throat was a new one to Sorcha, and it was accompanied by a feeling that she was almost without any weight. In other circumstances that might have been enjoyable, but since she knew they were all about to be crushed to death at the bottom of the fortress it took away much of the fun.

She had enough time to glance sideways at Aachon, and scream, “Everything! Now!”

The weirstone flooded her with power and then shattered. It filled the inside of the riser with tiny crystal shards, and the sound of Aachon’s wail of outrage. However, since everyone else was screaming it was lost in the din.

Pressing her Gauntlets down on the floor, Sorcha summoned Aydien, the Rune of Repulsion. Now the riser was filled with screams, broken shards of weirstone and a flood of blue light. The Deacon added her own howl to the mix, just for good measure.

Her eyes blurred as she held on. The rune had never been used for this, that she’d heard, but she could think of nothing else. Everyone screamed as the riser bounced against the sides of the shaft. Its descent seemed relentless and to go on for the longest time.

Then blue fire exploded around them, wiping out—for a moment at least—thought, consciousness and hope. Sorcha felt, rather than heard, the riser shatter all about them. It broke and flew into as many shards as Aachon’s weirstone.

That seemed to be it.

Then reality found her again; found her shaking her head free of weirstone shards, and tossed not too far from the bottom of the shaft. Staggering to her feet, Sorcha yanked off her Gauntlets and tucked them with numb fingers into her belt. There would be no use for them now.

It took another few moments before she found Raed, climbing to his knees. In celebration, she planted a kiss on his lips, while he was still looking around bemused.

“Are we all getting that treatment?” Balis was pulling a dazed-looking Fraine to her feet, a trickle of blood from a cut on his head staining his cheek. The sharp thought that if the young Rossin had died in the accident things might have been easier, passed through Sorcha’s head. Immediately she felt terrible for such callousness.

Aachon climbed out of the shaft, over the remains of the riser. His glove was covered in the dust of the lost weirstone and his expression pained. Still he was moving, and Sorcha took that as a very fine thing.

The Deacon did a quick head count, and smiled. “I think I’ve found a new use for Aydien,” Sorcha coughed on her own pride. Every one of the crew members was there, alive. Perhaps not exactly undamaged—but still alive.

“No chance of the rooftop then,” Raed said, wiping dust out of his eyes. “So I guess we get to try this infernal tunnel instead.”

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than a low groan began to rumble out of the tunnels behind them. The
peon level Wrayth were struggling to their feet, their naked bodies covered in the debris of the crash. Many of them sported far more horrific injuries than those that had taken the tumble with the riser.

“Aachon,” Sorcha whispered, as a peon with a large slice of metal buried in his shoulder began to orientate on them, “how quickly do you think you can activate the weirstones of the tunnel?”

The big man shook himself, and his eyes took a spell to focus on her. How long had the first mate been using the weirstone he had just lost, she wondered. Its loss could signal more damage than they could afford right now. However he still had far more experience with weirstones than she did—especially considering she couldn’t stand the things.

The vacant eyes of the peons were unnerving, especially as they came ambling toward them. The crew formed a rough circle around Aachon and Fraine, close to the tunnel. The Princess remained still, head bowed and her expression unreadable.

Raed, standing next to Sorcha, blade drawn, chuckled. In this dire situation he actually chuckled. “You know, my dear Deacon, one day I would like to court you properly. You know…without the geistlords, the angry goddess or the nest of hungry Wrayth.”

Sorcha considered what sort of strange world that would be. “Damnation, that sounds like a lovely dream, but I will take whatever I can get.”

The peons were assembling in a mob that would certainly overrun them eventually. She was reminded of the gathering outside Vermillion palace that she’d had to deal with. That had been the beginning of her journey of discovery. She hoped she didn’t have to kill any more folk than she had that day. It looked unlikely at this point.

Still, possessed by either geistlord or geist, the result would be the same. Briefly she considered doing what she had in Chioma, acting without Sight. But she was drained
of her own strength now, and without the support of Aachon even worse than blind. Yet…all these people—including Raed—were relying on her…

“I can still use my Gauntlets,” she offered. “It’s just without Aachon and his weirstone…”

“No,” Raed replied firmly, “you can’t do that again. I saw it once. Not again, Sorcha.”

“We got plenty of blades,” Frith pointed out cheerfully. “No need to worry yourself.”

The peons surged forward. They might be naked and weaponless, but there were an overwhelming number of them. It seemed cruel, but Sorcha and the others had to protect themselves. She did not wince as her blade found flesh.

Small mercies meant there would at least be no shades made here today, since the peons had already succumbed to a geistlord. The crew all hacked and slashed, avoiding grasping hands, and charges by the thick mass of naked limbs and bodies. It was brutal butchery, but it was that or be pulled down into the chaos.

They managed to protect Aachon as he turned his back and tried to make sense of the tunnel that was their only chance of escape. Sorcha was no fool with a blade, but she was not as good as Merrick, and she found herself falling back step-by-step.

“Aachon,” Sorcha shouted over one shoulder, “we can’t keep this up all day.”

“I need you!” came his curt reply, and she stepped back to find out what was going on. His fingers were running over the weirstones, each about the size of an eyeball, embedded in the wall. “I cannot see how to open this.”

Sorcha tried to block out the sounds of battle at her back, and the imminent threat of becoming part of the Wrayth breeding program, and concentrate on what she was seeing. From time to time she wished she could go back to the novitiate and tell her younger self to study a little harder. Merrick would have, once again, been a
welcome addition to this moment. How Aachon expected her to know any more about this was a mystery. He’d worked and examined weirstones more than she ever had, and it was specialist Deacons that tuned the stones for the Emperor and his military.

However useless it might be, Sorcha did at least try. She saw that it was not just weirstones, there were cantrips and things that might have been runes too. All of them were wrapped around each other, and the stones, like a braid. Whatever the Wrayth had done to create these things was complicated and required blood—probably their own.

The same blood as yours.

Sorcha jerked her head up as the words filled her mind. She couldn’t tell if they were from the Rossin, or from somewhere deeper; somewhere that she had just discovered.

“By the Blood,” she muttered, for the first time realizing the irony of that statement.

The sounds of battle behind her faded away, and she turned back to see if the crew had dispatched all the peons. What she in fact saw changed everything.

The peons had backed away from Raed and his people and parted to let others through. Tangyre Greene was striding a few paces behind the assembly of tall women and men. They had milky white complexions and dark eyes that the Deacon had seen before in the possessed. Though these walked with none of the clumsy, shattered gaits of the shambling mob she’d fought outside the gates of Vermillion. They were under far more severe control.

“Keep trying,” Sorcha hissed to Aachon. “I’ll see if I can gain us some time.”

The woman in front was a lovely thing, like a statue carved out of alabaster. She held lightly in her fingers a brass chain that ran down to, and was attached to, a collar. This was in turn tight around the neck of another woman. She had long blonde hair to cover her nakedness but that was all.

The Wrayth woman stopped short of the outstretched swords of the crew and examined them as if they were bugs beneath glass. “I am Iuhmee. Set down your weapons and you will be allowed to live.” Her gaze flickered to Raed. “Some of you may even find our company pleasurable.”