Geist

by Philippa Ballantine

  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.”

  TWO

  Pleading Kyrie

  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.”

  “Fueled no doubt by a desperate need to remain faster than the Imperial Fleet?” The old man grinned thinly. The joke was in poor taste, but unfortunately very close to the mark. The bounty on his head fluctuated with the times, but it remained somewhat of a problem. Raed smiled smoothly rather than deny it.

  “I know that your familial association with my family has cost you dearly in the past, but all I ask is a little time. Your court is far from the Vermillion Palace . . .” It had been years since he’d been in a princely court and yet he could hear himself dipping once more into the language and cadence of its speech. Raed hated that.

  Felstaad’s eyes narrowed only slightly. “But the new Emperor’s reach is long. Brought up in that sweltering court of his father’s, he is always looking for the knife lurking behind the curtain. None of us can afford to be complacent.”

  Raed took a breath, letting his eye wander over the audience chamber. Felstaad was indeed far from the glittering center of the Empire, yet around him he saw signs of opulence; a jeweled clock here and a very fine portrait there.

  Such little clues made the Pretender consider the uncomfortable possibility that this prince was doing more than making gestures of obedience to the Emperor; he could be in his employ. To be certain, the bounty on Raed’s head was lower this year than last, but perhaps the Prince needed to buy a new toy for his mistress. Anything was possible, yet he had no choice but to take the chance.

  Raed gestured to the side, a little away from prying ears. Felstaad paused a second and then joined him in his walk to the window. The Prince was not quite as tall as the Pretender, and off his dais he was forced to look up a little to meet the other’s steady hazel eyes. Raed enjoyed that little moment.

  “Lord Prince,” he whispered under his breath. “The Empire is still new, the usurper on my father’s throne still struggles with the Assembly, and all I am asking is a small harbor in one of your out-of-the-way villages to make repairs.” He fixed Felstaad with a calm look. The Unsung might never leave his island of exile, but Raed wanted the Prince to know that was not true of himself; he would not be so easily dismissed.

  His host was a political beast and a fence sitter by his very nature. Those sharp eyes measured the ill-dressed man before him; Raed hoped they saw more than his clothes. The Prince smoothed back his small mustache carefully before answering the request. “In the far north there is a fine little town called Ulrich, with a good-sized fishing fleet. The place itself is inhospitable to any but the locals and perchance there you could make good your repairs.” He shrugged. “It is also too small a place for me to keep a representative, so I am unlikely to hear of any unusual visits until well into the spring . . . if at all.”

  It wasn’t the answer that Raed had been seeking. He knew of Ulrich only by reputation. Other trading vessels avoided it, as the waters were rough in winter and the harbor was not an important one for fishermen. It was also near the Imperial Dirigible way station, one of the new Emperor’s experiments to bridge the vast distances of the continent. Raed had been hoping for a warm-water port in the very south of Felstaad’s dominion; his crew deserved it. Yet, by the look on his host’s face, this was going to be the only deal on offer.

  Repressing a sigh or indeed any sign of his disappointment, Raed nodded. It was nearing late autumn. Snow was already on the ground in most places that got it. If he wanted to make Ulrich before winter truly set in, there was no time to waste.

  Felstaad was about to return to his courtiers when he raised one finger to his lips and spun back to Raed. The nasty smile he wore boded ill. “I do hope,” he half whispered in a slightly exaggerated fashion, “that this little stay on dry land will not prove inconvenient . . . considering your unfortunate condition?”

  Raed’s back stiffened, but out of long practice, distaste did not reach his face. The Prince had heard the rumors and wanted confirmation: Raed would give him none. “I can assure you, Felstaad, that my health is not your concern. I shall manage as I always have.”

  The Prince’s jaw clenched a little on such an abrupt dismissal. It was something he was not used to, but what he was referring to went beyond the bounds of good taste and he knew it. The lingering possibility that Raed might one day be a force to be reckoned with held back any
further questions. It usually did with these petty princes.

  Moving back to his courtiers, Felstaad brushed his coat as if some of Raed’s presence had caught on it. “I am sorry that I cannot help,” he said somewhat loudly for their audience’s benefit.

  Such a shoddy dismissal made the Young Pretender want to slap the ignoble Prince right in the face. In the old days, before the foolishness of his grandfather, such an insult would have been met with steel. But those days were well gone, and Raed had to live in these new ones.

  He did not bow as he left the perfumed audience chamber. He did, however, wink at the prettiest of the young ladies-in-waiting, the one who had called him “almost handsome.” If he ever managed to return in splendor and with the right clothes on his back, he might just change her mind on that particular score.

  “Can I get you anything, Deacon Faris?” Arch Abbot Hastler, despite his rank, always asked that question of those who were lucky enough to gain an audience with him.

  Lucky was not something Sorcha was feeling right now. She looked up blankly from the embroidered stool on which she sat in the Abbot’s inner chamber. “Sweet tea if you have any, Reverend Father.”

  He nodded and gestured for the waiting novice to fetch some from the kitchens. It didn’t take long. Soon warm liquid was poured into tiny white china bowls, emulating a quaint, friendly domestic scene that was at odds with the dire circumstances of the moment. Steam chugged out of the pot and collected on the lavender-colored stained glass window, making intricate and tiny wet patterns. The scent of sugar and roses should have calmed Sorcha, but it instead disturbed her, coming on the heels of yesterday’s madness.

  After he had poured them each a bowl, the Abbot sat opposite her and they drank in silence. Sorcha felt at any moment she might drop the fine china from her bandaged hands. His chain of office, with each link bearing one of the ten Runes of Dominion and seven Runes of Sight, reflected the weak sunlight into her eyes, occasionally blinding her. His Gauntlets and his Strop rested on a velvet stand atop the marble mantelpiece. He was the only member of the Order allowed to practice both disciplines—even the members of the Circle of Abbots could have only one. It took quite a man to handle that sort of power.