Geist (2 page)

With so many geist-possessed advancing on her, Sorcha decided to draw more power away from the vortex and hopefully release a few of them. With her second Gauntlet she called on Shayst once more.

She bucked backward as the power slammed into her spread hands and raced up her arms. Biting down an involuntary groan of pleasure, the Deacon tried to get past the intoxicating sensation. It was like the euphoria of being slightly drunk without the lack of coordination. Her vision sharpened while her limbs filled with strength. Nothing seemed impossible. It was this rush of confidence that could bring down an inexperienced Deacon.

Sorcha held the power lightly, letting it wash over her but never take control. Shayst had drawn a lot of energy, but the vortex was still growing. And the air was getting colder around her, so cold that her face was numb and her teeth ached. It was impressive that she could be aware of such sensations, wrapped as she was in geist-power.

“Unholy Bones,” she swore and, unlike Kolya, she drew her saber. The possessed were now only ten feet away. They had nearly the whole Square to themselves. Gent’s men had done their job. In the time it had taken them to clear the crowd, however, another dozen had been touched by the geist. Still, it could have been worse. A crowd of five hundred controlled by the unliving didn’t bear thinking about.

Her husband’s Sensitivity held her to the ground, sharpened her vision and senses enough to make the right choices. Without him she would be blind.

At this thought her husband smiled slightly; certainly there had been precious few kindly words spoken in recent months. He opened his Center wider so that she could now see right into the swirling mass of the geist. The vortex was large, but she could make out its tail, apparently rooted to one spot on the ground.

Sorcha barely had time to register this odd feature among odd features before the geist shifted its attention. The possessed raised their heads, eyes now gleaming pits of blackness. She could have almost thought there were sly smiles on their slack faces. Then the expanded funnel of power rushed out once more—but not toward Sorcha.

Without him she would be blind.
She blinked in astonishment, her throat abruptly dry and raw.

Geists were mindless things. They were intent on their own purposes, which generally involved wreaking havoc on the real world. They reacted only to Actives, never Sensitives, because Actives engaged them. A Sensitive remained almost invisible unless he did something foolish, like trying to use his lesser Active power. Kolya was too well seasoned for that.

Certainly he had seen the geist turn on him, but he must have not quite believed it. Sorcha shot him a warning as well, but there was nothing in the training of a Deacon for this eventuality. In three hundred years of the Order, no Sensitive had ever been attacked. Even in the battle for the Heights of Mathris, when Sorcha had been just newly ordained, there had never been such an event.

She couldn’t reach him. Desperation and helplessness welled up inside her. The possessed were pressing in on her; hands grasping, mouths-turned-weapons stretched wide to bite. The geist filled them with as much strength as Sorcha had received, yet she could not afford to spill their blood. Instead she deflected their blows, sliding out of the way of their attacks in the fluid Abbey style of defense. Rolling away as best she could, she felt their fingernails rake her face and hands. Her mind was full of Kolya. She could not see him beyond the ruckus of the possessed, but in horror she realized that he had gone Active. Her heart hammered while her mind shot desperate queries across their bond. A Sensitive relying on their lesser power was like a fine swordsman resorting to clumsily wielding an ax.

Unlike her husband’s Sensitivity, her Active power could not be shared with him to boost his own. That was another thing Sensitives accused her kind of: selfishness. At this point, she couldn’t help but agree.

Unholy Bones, he wasn’t answering. Gent’s men would still be busy with the people—besides, she had warned them about bloodshed. Blood and souls would only feed the geist. The soldiers would be standing well back with their hands full of a terrified crowd.

Her own smaller mob had reoriented itself on her. Catching one of the possessed old women in a shoulder lock, Sorcha managed to pitch her backward into the swarm. This brief respite allowed her to catch a glimpse of her husband.

The vortex was around Kolya. He was turning blue with the inhuman cold, and she could feel a great weight on him. The geist was crushing him like a bug against a window.

Her professional veneer cracked; Sorcha screamed in rage. The world abruptly snapped back to color, leaving her reeling. The Bond was broken, and she was suddenly the sole Deacon standing—yet completely blinded.

Unable to feel if Kolya was alive or dead, or indeed what the geist was now doing, she stumbled backward. Her scrambled brain searched through all her training for a solution. What it came up with was unpleasant: she had only one choice. Deacon Sorcha Faris activated Teisyat, the tenth Rune of Dominion.

Far off in the Abbey, heads would raise from their daily work and turn in the direction of the palace. A Conclave of Deacons would be sent rushing to her position. It would be too late.

Teisyat had that effect. Teisyat needed an Episcopal inquiry afterward, followed by months of investigation and “recommended counseling.” Teisyat was so dangerous that only the highest-level Actives had it engraved on their Gauntlets, and only after many tests. Even with all Sorcha’s years in the Abbey, only two had passed since this last rune had been carved into her Gauntlets.

None of that mattered to Sorcha. Kolya needed her.

A window opened between the Otherside and the real world—it was no tiny pinprick like that brought by Tryrei. Her Gauntlets burned red like lava now, describing the dimensions of a gateway that Gent could have marched his men through side by side. The ground beneath the Square shook. All these things, Sorcha could observe even without her husband because they were happening in her world. Right before the Emperor’s walls, the Otherside was making its presence felt.

All other concerns were of secondary importance to Deacon Sorcha Faris. She was deeply occupied in holding that presence back as best she could. The Abbey had good reason to fear the last rune. Teisyat opened the gates to the Otherside, and once they were open, anything could come through.

The gaping void, white and hungry, was sucking at the real world. Only Sorcha was stopping it from letting forth its nightmares.

She stood right at the edge of the gateway and screamed into it. The Otherside was howling back, loud and hungry. It burned her eyes and tore her hair loose. Her skin felt flayed while her voice was ripped away in the rushing winds.

Yet she held on. Her training and talent diverted the power away from the real world toward the geist. While she acted as the shield, the Otherside demanded something for being summoned. Through streaming eyes Sorcha watched as the possessed were ripped away from all around her. A glimpse of slack faces tumbling into nothingness should have caused her a twinge of remorse, but holding out against the pull of the void was all she could manage.

The physical pain stole the breath from her body, but it was the mind that the Otherside attacked the most terribly. Every fear, every terrible moment in her life was brought bubbling to the surface and thrown against her like a missile.

It wanted her to crack and allow it in. Breaking Sorcha was its path into the real world, so it threw all it could against her. Mistakes she had almost managed to forget resurfaced, and dark thoughts she’d suppressed barraged her brain until she could have shattered.
Why did you marry him?
a voice asked, as sharp as a blade against the most unexplored parts of her consciousness.

Sorcha held out her Gauntlets with Teisyat burning like red anger on them. Without Kolya she couldn’t tell if the geist had succumbed to the Otherside or not. Yet she couldn’t hold out against its pull for much longer. Summoning the last of her energy, she closed her fist around the rune and bent all of her talent to closing the gate.

The Otherside struggled against her, twisting away like a fish on a line, yearning to be free. For an instant Sorcha felt it slipping, evading her strength. Then her deepest training kicked in. The mind puzzles and control exercises, the ones she had thought boring while a novice, the ones that had been repeated until they seemed foolish, were now her final outpost.

Repeating the phrases, following the numeric puzzles, tangled the Otherside’s attempts to pull her mind down. It was just enough time for Sorcha to close Teisyat. The Otherside howled, like a great beast finally brought down, and then closed.

Sorcha found herself on her knees. Her hands, wrapped around the flagstones, were aching as though a horse had stood on them. Inside the Gauntlets, blood was beginning to seep. She didn’t dare pull them off. Instead she staggered to her feet and toward where Kolya lay crumpled on the ground.

Numbed inside and out, Sorcha rolled him over, her bloodied Gauntlets staining his emerald cloak. Hers was not the only blood. Plenty of his was pooling among the white snow, shocking in its contrast.

The geist had wrought terrible vengeance on her husband and partner. He was broken, bleeding and lying like a cast-off doll in the spot where he’d been thrown. He was her Sensitive, her responsibility, and this was her fault. She should have protected him. She should have been at his side. Had she made this happen?

“Gent,” she bellowed across the suddenly quiet Square. “Gent! Summon the physician. Now!”

Kolya was still breathing; broken and pained though it sounded, he was breathing. Sorcha held him as gently as she could, but knew there was no rune of healing in the Gauntlets. Deacons were not meant for anything but battle. “Hang on,” she whispered to him. “Hang on, you foolish man.”

Raed, the Young Pretender.
He heard the courtiers whisper it behind their enameled fans. It was not warm in the castle of Prince Felstaad, so the ladies of his court only used their fans to muffle their gossip; not very effectively, as it turned out. Raed could feel their appraising gazes all over him like warm, wet hands.

Pretender he might be, but he was conscious of his battered clothes in the finery of the castle. It was certainly not the Vermillion Palace, but it was still far more civilized than he was used to. One of the younger ladies giggled, “He’s almost handsome,” before she was hushed by her elders.

Raed smiled wryly and rubbed his neatly trimmed beard; this had been his one attempt at civilizing himself. Perhaps he should have docked in the town farther down the coast and sent the crew ashore to shop, but part of him bridled at being forced to bow so low before someone like Felstaad. He might not be handsome by fashionable standards—standards that had apparently strayed toward fey, willowy men, if this court was anything to go by—but his blood was still more royal than that of any here.

The seneschal, who had been watching him out of the corner of one disapproving eye, nodded slightly in his direction. Taking his cue, Raed stood up, straightened his frock coat and strode to the towering gilt and oak doors.

Footmen on each side swung them open as he was announced. “His Highness, Lord Raed Syndar Rossin, Second Vetch of Ostan and Heir of the Unsung.”

He was impressed with the seneschal’s boldness. The island of Ostan had been reclaimed by the waves in his grandfather’s time, so was inoffensive, but to add mention of his exiled father verged on the daring; the man had not set foot in the kingdoms since Raed was a babe. Raed’s heart lightened; perhaps his mission here was not so improbable.

Prince Felstaad’s court was smaller than those impressive doors suggested, but it was bright with decoration and beautiful ladies. The Prince himself was dressed in charcoal gray, a tall esotericlooking man among so many fluttering birds. It was undoubtedly an affect that was well studied. This prince had a reputation for calculation, and when he turned his bright eyes in the direction of the Young Pretender, Raed remembered it was well deserved.

A chain of office glittered around Felstaad’s neck. The chain, Raed knew, had been presented to Felstaad’s father by Raed’s own grandfather. It was the Prince’s only ornamentation and no doubt had been chosen with care. Raed would have to tread with caution.

Still, he couldn’t quite bring himself to give a low bow. After all, he outranked a mere minor prince, even if his current home was a ramshackle ship and his subjects a collection of the continent’s castoffs. Raed therefore inclined his head, with no sign of bent knee or flourish.

Felstaad was too much of a master at the art of politics to let any expression darken his face. The correct form would have been to bow, but he made no indication of giving one of those.

All right, then.
Raed filed away that pointed insult.

“Lord Raed.” Felstaad smiled in an almost kindly way. “Your presence once again brightens our court. What boon do you come to ask of us this time?”

Evil old bugger. It had been four years since he’d last been here, and it had been no boon he’d been asking. Raed had been requested by a neighboring prince to mediate a border dispute. That particular incident, like so many others, had ended in a stalemate, and merely eight months later the Assembly of Princes had agreed to ask Magnhild, King of Delmaire, to send his second son to be their Emperor. They had considered calling back Raed’s father, the Unsung, from his island exile, but in the end he was considered too divisive.

Raed knew that factions within the Assembly had worked against his father. In the end it was purely the fact that they knew nothing of then-Prince Kaleva, whereas the Unsung was of a line of kings who had riled and annoyed generations of those warring rulers.

The Prince’s attitude grated on him, but he spread his hands and tried to look as inoffensive as possible. “I need a safe harbor, Prince Felstaad. My crew must have fresh supplies. My ship requires urgent careening and repairs.”