Spectyr to-2

by Philippa Ballantine

  “Don’t fret,” she replied softly, turning to the flat surface of the metal wall. “We have come to the end of our time. I do not expect the Ehtia can be saved by one man alone. It’s too late for that.”

  Before he could answer, a rattle of gears announced something working out of sight. The wall slid aside; Nynnia took his hand and led him through the opening.

  They went down a set of metallic stairs, which rang underfoot, and into a vast room of which there had been no sign aboveground. Merrick’s mind was now whirling faster. Nynnia on the Otherside had said she was sending him back to learn something and to plant a seed—whatever that meant. If he could only stop to take notes on the marvelous etched walls they were passing, or at least to copy the towering cogged wheels, then perhaps all would be well.

  Yet Nynnia was not slowing down. They passed a few other people who were of the same small stature as the woman at his side—but their skin coloring was as diverse as that in his own Empire.

  So many questions were bubbling in Merrick’s head, but he managed to hold his tongue. This was borrowed time. He shot Nynnia a look out of the corner of his eye—she seemed to be well aware of that.

  They reached yet another door. This one was wooden and, as with everything in this place, etched and carved with symbols. Nynnia flung it open with great vigor. Tugged after her, Merrick found himself in what appeared to be a war room.

  A long table ran the length of it, and seated around it were ten harried-looking individuals—well, at least nine harried-looking individuals. Merrick’s Sensitive training helped him take in the gray faces, the lost looks, and the air of despair. However, his immediate focus was on the one person he recognized in the room.

  Or rather he recognized the sparkling mask. Merrick stopped stock-still for a second drenched in a sudden chill, and then his logical brain caught up. The Prince of Chioma was indeed the only Prince who could be at such a meeting before the Break. It was one of the most powerful principalities in this time, so the man sitting before him must be Onika’s ancestor.

  Still, it was very eerie to be confronted with that strange swinging mask—the very one he had seen only a day earlier in the Hive City. The Deacon gave his head a little shake in an effort to clear it and turned to the person who Nynnia was introducing him to.

  Though this man was short in stature, he had an aura of instant command around him. His long salt-and-pepper beard was neatly trimmed, but the eyes above were deeply shadowed, even if their icy blueness conveyed a determination as steely as the walls they were surrounded by.

  “Mestari”—Nynnia gave a little bow—“this is Deacon Merrick Chambers.” And then, horrifyingly, she added, “From the future.”

  The older man did not call her a liar or even laugh—he merely nodded his head and then held out his hand.

  Merrick took it reflexively in a clasp of hands that even iis time must be a sign of friendship. Immediately his senses leapt, and the world blurred for a long, terrifying moment.

  For a Sensitive to be blind was a terrible nightmare of an idea, but before the Deacon had a chance to cry out, the sensation passed. Now the man Nynnia had named as Mestari was looking at him differently.

  “You have our blood in you, lad—but you have traveled so far to reach us. Truly amazing.”

  Rune Kebenar, Fourth of the Runes of Sight, allowed Sensitives to see the true nature of things—yet this man had done that without any visible sign of using it. Once again Merrick’s curiosity was piqued, and it was particularly difficult to hold his tongue.

  “The Otherside is capable of many things.” The Chioma Prince broke the silence. “Even time has only a tenuous grip upon it—and now my mother uses it against us.” The voice that came from behind the sparkling mask was smooth, powerful and—shockingly to the Deacon—familiar. Through his Center Merrick knew. This was no distant ancestor of the Prince he had met—it was the same man!

  Now his tongue would not be still. Merrick spun about and pointed most rudely at the seated form of Onika. “That . . . that is impossible!” For a little bit all other words failed to come.

  “Merrick!” Nynnia was horrified at her guest. “This is the Prince of Chioma, our greatest ally.”

  The rest of the table jerked to their feet. The more martial of the Ehtia grabbed their swords, worried no doubt that this newcomer was about to attack one of their number. Merrick was not moved to violence, even if the world had gone quite mad.

  The Deacon reconsidered; he must have been mistaken. So he backtracked. “Forgive me, Majesty, it is just that in my time there is a Prince of Chioma, and he sounds exactly like you. Perhaps I should not tell you that one of your descendants—”

  “I have no sons, nor can I ever have,” the Prince replied and then he swept aside the curtain of beads.

  Over the many decades the mystery of the ruler of Chioma had been whispered about, discussed by scholars and rumormongers alike—so the sudden exposure of reality stunned Merrick.

  Onika, the Prince of Chioma, was a handsome man. His skin was smooth and dark, the color of the strong coffee of his kingdom. He had a powerful jaw and a narrow, tidy beard—what he also had were eyes that would suck out a person’s soul.

  Merrick forgot this mad situation. He lost the feeling of Nynnia’s hand on his shoulder. Everything faded to insignificance. In the eyes of the Prince, none of those mattered.

  He staggered, dropping to his knees, banging his shins on the table leg. Pain didn’t matter either. Onika was a bright star drawing him down—whatever the Prince needed Merrick would have given to him. If he had asked for his arm, his heart—even Nynnia—he would have given those to him.

  Then the Prince dropped his hand, and the shivering crystals fell back into place. The spell, or whatever it had been, also fell away. Merrick was left breathing heavily through his mouth, shaking and sweaty.

  When the Deacon finally recovered himself and climbed to his feet, his certainty in anything was rocked to its foundation. Nothing he had ever experienced, nothing he had ever read, explained what had just happened.

  Mestari pulled the chair he had just gotten out of over toward the Deacoand guided him into it. “Knocks you about, doesn’t it—no shame in it—everyone has the same reaction.”

  The Deacon struggled to find his Center, the one thing that he had been able to rely on. It took a long, terrible time for it to come back. Finally he was able to say in a shaky voice, “What . . . what, by the Bones, was that?”

  Nynnia took an empty seat by him and reached across to cradle his hands in hers. “You’ve never felt a touch of the gods before?”

  “Gods?” Merrick was far too shocked to hold his tongue any longer. “I have no truck with the little gods—they are the domain of the weak-willed and the desperate.” He spat the words out without a thought.

  Then he realized that everyone else looked as though he had slapped them in the face. “I mean . . . I don’t know . . .”

  “You’ve said enough,” Mestari growled through a choked throat. “To know that we succeed—even if they destroy what we have made—it is enough.”

  “We should ask no more of him.” The Prince of Chioma raised one perfectly manicured hand. “What he knows may affect how we act in these last days.”

  Nynnia squeezed the tips of Merrick’s fingers, making him warm instantly. “How can it? We have so very few choices before us . . . only one, in fact. And we made that long ago.”

  The Deacon’s insides clenched. He knew that the Ehtia ended up on the Otherside, but he was still not certain if they died or somehow managed to get there alive. Unbidden, he once more thought of his and Sorcha’s experience there.

  Most of the Ehtia in the room looked away, but one, a woman with a sharp bob cut, slammed her palm firmly down on the table with a clang. “Nynnia, may I remind you that this is our business alone. Even our allies”—she nodded to Onika—“cannot know all our secrets—let alone someone you have just met.”

  The Prince arose sm
oothly from his seat. “Then let me take the young man aside—I am sure he has questions.” He gave a little bow to the people. “We will leave you to make your arrangements.”

  Merrick kissed Nynnia lightly, without thinking about how it might seem to the others, and followed the elegant form of Onika out of the room. As a man alive in both times, the Deacon somehow felt he could trust the Prince—though he realized that this was perfectly ridiculous. The Prince would not know him for a thousand years—and he was not entirely human, either.

  They exited into the throbbing, vibrating metal room, and now that Merrick had recovered his composure a little, he could see how many of the Ehtia were scurrying about. The Prince stood still and watched, his hands folded in the small of his back, and the Deacon had the impression that behind that damned mask he would be frowning—though he would not ask to see.

  “Tell me what is happening.” The Deacon stood to his full height.

  “You don’t know?”

  “Much is lost in the future—I didn’t even know the name of Nynnia’s people. We simply called them the Ancients.”

  “How very imaginative.” Onika chuckled, but there was a hint of bitterness in it. He walked over to another door and inclined his head. “Let me educate you a little.” The sharp gesture caused the crystals to sway, and for a second he caught a glimpse of those riveting, horrific eyes.

  The Deacon hato have the answers to all this—it was more than just his nature that demanded it—it was his training as a member of the Order that had to be satisfied.

  The Prince spun a narrow iron wheel set in the door, then he tugged it open. It swung noiselessly on its hinges—or at least Merrick assumed it was noiseless, since he could hear nothing at all above the sudden banging and clattering that issued from the room. It was the kind of cacophony that shook the whole body and made thinking impossible. The only comparable sound had been the stamping presses in his father’s mines. He’d only visited there once. That noise had also made quite the impression.

  Onika led the way into the room, and even he had to clamp his hands to his head. Apparently whatever he was, a pounding headache or a ruptured eardrum was still a risk. Merrick found it hard to concentrate on what he was seeing in this chamber with the ringing in his ears. The stink of oil here added an extra layer of delight to the experience, clogging his nostrils and making it difficult to breathe.

  It was a machine, the kind that would make the Master Tinkers of Vermillion weep with jealously. It filled the room, which might have been small in circumference but was now revealed to have massive height and depth. Merrick and the Prince of Chioma stood on a metal walkway and looked over the edge. The Deacon could not see the top or bottom, because it was filled with a thick mass of spinning cogs, wheels and driving pistons. The only thing he did recognize the purpose of was a great weirstone set not three feet from his hand—the largest he had ever seen in his life. If he stretched both his arms wide, he could barely touch each side of it. The blue surface was swirling madly, and the faint crackle of power in the air made him nervous.

  If only Sorcha was here with him, because even with the delight of finding Nynnia and the wonder of this great machine, he was beginning to feel the loss of his partner. Although an Active would never admit it, they knew full well that they were blind without their Sensitive. However, a Sensitive also needed his Active—Merrick was aware of that space where Sorcha’s power had resided, buoying him up. As well he sorely missed her physical presence.

  The Prince drew him on, and they passed through another door on the far side that opened in the same way as the other. Once beyond it, and with it secured at their backs, the sound of the massive machine was thankfully diminished.

  Merrick had thought the weirstone in the machine was impressive, but now he realized they were in a room filled with weirstones—many the same size as the one they had just seen.

  It was a magazine, much like the storage facilities on the Imperial Navy ships, and he knew he was holding his breath just as he would in those situations. Weirstones in the most trained hands were unpredictable, but the Prince of Chioma looked unconcerned and even leaned up against one very casually. Merrick winced. Only a Deacon should have been able to touch a weirstone without consequence.

  “You needn’t worry,” Onika said in a conversational tone. “The Ehtia are, among other things, masters of the weirstone. These are unkeyed. In point of fact, the Ehtia are the ones who made this for me.” He gestured to the shimmering strings of crystal that hid his face.

  “How could I not sense that?” Merrick blurted, aware of a faintly angry tone in his voice. “And I thought all weirstones are blue.”

  “Most are—but even those rules can be bent by the Ehtia.” The Prince sighed. “And you could not sense them because they are too smick blurte register in anything but True Sight.”

  Merrick frowned. The Prince must be speaking of some form of the Sight taught to Deacons—or rather that which would be taught to Deacons. He had indeed not opened his Center during the one interview with the Prince in his own time. He crossed his arms and stuck his hands under his cloak; the room was slightly chillier than the other Ehtia rooms. “And the machine? What does that do?”

  “So very curious.” The Prince’s hand traced the surface of the weirstone he was almost reclining on. “You should take a care that you do not dig too deep. Even a time traveler can be caught out.”

  Merrick found being in this awkward position made him bold. “The machine,” he repeated obstinately. “What is its purpose?”

  Onika answered in an almost condescending fashion. “The machine is powering this transport, digging us through the ground in an attempt to escape her wrath.”

  The Deacon had been in some very strange situations and had used some advanced methods of travel in his short time with the Order—but a machine that burrowed underground like a mole was quite the concept. However, something else had caught his notice. “Her?” he asked, wondering why his throat was feeling dry and his heart was racing.

  The Prince of Chioma’s hand tightened, the sound of fingernails on the weirstone as pleasant as it would have been on a blackboard. “Yes, my mother.”

  The Deacon did not need to open his Center or call on any of his runes to know that he wasn’t going to like the answer to his next question—but he drove on regardless. “And who, by the Bones, is your mother?”

  A long pause followed, where in the eerie silence of the weirstone magazine, he could hear the Prince muttering something under his breath. It sounded almost like a prayer. When he spoke to the Deacon, his voice was resigned, heavy with regret.

  “She gave me these eyes but denied me everything I have ever wanted.” He swept back the curtain of bright weirstones, so that once again Merrick dropped to his knees. Even so, he heard what the great and magnificent Onika said next. “My mother is the goddess Hatipai.”

  Suddenly everything made sense. Merrick fell to the floor and wept with the joy of a believer who has found revelation in the unlikeliest of places.

  NINETEEN

  Looking Deep

  Sorcha opened her Center. Merrick had said something curious about the Young Pretender the first time they had met: “He blazes.”

  And he did. The whispers across the Bond, the ones he could not hear, gave her strength—helped her reorient in a world that felt like it was spiraling out of control.

  Find his sister. Find Merrick. Find a killer.

  As the door to the audience chamber swung shut behind them, the bang nearly made her jump. Raed was already moving, however. His companions Tangyre and Isseriah came to meet them.

  “Take this.” Raed thrust the Prince’s seal to the older woman. “I want you to go into the Prince’s harem and find if my sister is there. I suspect not, but I must be certain.”

  “We need that!” Sorcha blurted.

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  Holding her Center for so long was draining her, and she found she didn’t have the strength to argue.
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  “I suppose so.”

  “Now, Isseriah.” Raed took the young man by the elbow. “We discovered some tunnels last night. I want you to follow them and see where they lead. Take my crew with you, but be careful.”

  Sorcha listened while the Young Pretender gave instructions on how to find the tunnels where they had lost Merrick. She knew they would find no sign of her partner, but Raed was right; the attacker had used them last night, and they needed to know where they led.

  When he was done, his two companions barely stopped themselves from saluting. For a brief second the Deacon wondered what sort of Emperor Raed would have made—then she yanked her thoughts away. Such musings were not only foolish but also treasonous.

  “Let’s find this Chancellor’s chambers.” Raed turned them in the direction of the western wing of the palace.

  They hurried toward the part of the palace where all the bureaucrats labored. Raed’s nearness was distracting her, making her Center even harder to hold. Sorcha knew she was avoiding labeling her feelings for the man deliberately, but she couldn’t so easily ignore the strength of them. And it was quite typical of her life. Nothing was ever simple.

  When they reached the stairs leading up to the rooms of the most important councilors and bureaucrats in Chioma, Raed leaned into her side. “Brace yourself; we are about to enter a world where there is very little air—except of the hot kind.”

  Managing to keep a straight face, Sorcha flashed the gold of her Order badge at the guards at the bottom of the stairs. The Young Pretender was right—it was enough—they were let through with a wave.

  It was an effort of will not to race up the smooth, curving stairs to the Chancellor’s room on the top floor. It had his name on it and a guard posted outside. This time Sorcha didn’t even have to show her badge; the man outside unlocked the door and let them through with a bow.