Geists fed on the souls of humans for the most part—but it was not all that could sustain them. Emotions like rage and love often drew them, so what greater sustenance could there be for a geistlord than adoration? These shades suggested this one had fed well.
“Mother,” Onika spoke clearly to the advancing woman, “you are not welcome here.”
Merrick shook his head—for a moment pulling the two difficult facts together. That Hatipai was a goddess, he was sure. But that was not all he saw when he looked at her. She was also a geist.
Though he was horrified, it made sense. Scholars had always just assumed that the population had turned away from the gods because they had been unable to protect them from the arrival of the Otherside—but if any of them had suspected they were in fact geistlords, then denying their deities was just retribution.
“Son,” the woman spoke, and it was like sweet honey. A sound to make men weep with lust and women commit suicide in despair. “Come to me, and all will be forgiven—even trying to turn my faithful against me.”
Onika straightened. “I could not do it.”
“No.” The goddess laughed. “Not for lack of trying, though. They would have none of it. Foolish boy.”
Though there was no expression visible under the mask, the Prince’s weight of sadness was reflected in the set of his shoulders. He certainly did no appear to enjoy his godhood.
She stepped closer, and even the Ehtia drew back as her presence threatened to wash over them. “I made you for a purpose, Onika: to protect my realm and all the people in it. So long as you live—and I made you to live forever, dearest—Chioma will endure.”
Onika’s laugh was low and bitter. “Yet what is the point of eternal life without love? And you made sure that there will never be love or an heir for me.”
His voice was so sad that it instantly brought Merrick back to the moment where his mother was sitting next to him on the bed, smiling, with her hand resting on her full stomach.
I don’t know how he heard of me,
she had said.
Suddenly the future opened up before him, and he heard Nynnia’s words.
Plant the seed,
she had said. His mother had smiled and glowed with such happiness. It had been true love in her eyes, not the mad, hopeless faith of one trapped by the demigod beneath the mask, but real love, as unexpected, delicious and treasured as that could be. Merrick knew what Nynnia wanted and why she had sent him here.
He almost blurted it out, but then Hatipai was speaking. “You alone can hold Chioma—you must live.”
Onika was her focus. The Order’s training made this blatantly obvious. Just as the Rossin had invested in the Imperial family, Hatipai had made her own anchor to this world—similar but different ways of surviving the perils of the real world.
“Let these people pass,” Onika growled.
“Your allies?” The shadows began to race counterclockwise around the face of the geistlord. “They practically invited us into this world, and now when they betray us, you would protect them?” The shades darted apart, and her face was revealed.
Merrick’s senses betrayed him. He dimly heard the Ehtia around him also fall to their knees, but nothing mattered apart from the glory of Hatipai. None of them were worthy of it. When her gaze fell on him, he wanted to slit his own throat lest he insult her with his own pitiful nature. He rolled onto his back, his hands grasping desperately for his knife.
To his right, he caught a glimpse of the vile woman Nynnia fumbling with her stick. She did not seem to have quite as an appropriate reaction to the glory of Hatipai.
From the ground he also saw the heretic Onika raising the weirstone. His glory was nothing compared to his mother’s. But somehow in his fitful delight, Merrick saw a parting of the shades, a gap in her armor of souls. And he reached deep for his training—throwing his mind into the puzzles and recitations he’d studied for years. In there he found a moment of respite.
“There.” His voice cracked. “Onika, there!”
He had no Bond with the Prince as he had with Sorcha, but his voice was just loud enough to hear. Onika said a bright, hot word and threw the weirstone into the shadows and the gap that the Deacon had spotted.
Hatipai screamed, a sound that went deeper than bone, and the shadows flew high. Shades, those mindless, repetitive remains of souls, broke from her like a cloud of scattering crows. Merrick saw them escape the pull of the geistlord and was glad, though everything was mad and dead to him in that moment. Then the world was swallowed by darkness.
When consciousness found him again, his head was cradled in Nynnia’s lap. Her fingers gently stroked his hair, calling him back to reality. It was a lovely ment, but eventually he found his feet.
Nothing dark remained on the blasted cliff top—only the Ehtia, their machine and Onika. “What happened?” The young Deacon turned to Nynnia, but it was the Prince who replied.
“She is gone . . . for now.” His shoulders slumped. “I have bought you enough time to escape. The path is free for you to reach Mount Sytha, my friends.” He sounded desperately alone. “She and I will continue our tussle once you are gone.”
Nynnia grabbed him in a tight embrace. “You will find other allies, Onika. She is not as all-powerful as she thinks.”
Then the Ehtia surrounded him, hugging him, whispering thanks in his ear—while Nynnia and Merrick stepped back.
The weight of sorrow pressed on the Deacon—especially as he knew how many lonely years Onika would have to endure. As the crew of the ship began to clamber back into the hatches, Merrick squeezed Nynnia’s hand and went to speak to the Prince. “Thank you for what you are doing, Your Highness. The people of Chioma might not know what you sacrificed to keep them safe, but others do.”
“I have to be a hero,” Onika muttered, “or become like her.”
“Then I hope you remember this—” Merrick paused, caught by the circular nature of this weird logic, before plunging on. “In the time of an Emperor called Kaleva, seek out a woman known as the flower of Da Nanth.”
“Da Nanth?”
Naturally he wouldn’t know of the principality—because it had not yet been created. It almost hurt his head to think about it, so he merely smiled. “Trust me, it is a place—though not yet.”
The Prince frowned, but a spark of something that felt like hope lurked in his expression. “Thank you, my friend.”
“Do not thank me”—Merrick clapped him on the shoulder—“thank Nynnia.”
The Prince smiled uncertainly and embraced the woman. “Go safe into that place, old friend—part of me wishes I could come with you.” He kissed the top of her head.
She laid her hands over his for an instant. “You have your people to take care of, Onika—and where we go, you cannot.”
The Prince turned and sketched a little bow in Merrick’s direction, the beaded mask swaying. Onika’s voice was smooth, strong and just as it would be when next they encountered each other in throne room in the Hive City. “I find myself looking forward to meeting you again, Merrick Chambers.”
As the Prince of Chioma left, the Deacon recalled his first meeting with the Prince. Looking back on it, he presumed Onika had recognized him. That damn mask always concealed so much—it was hardly a surprise that the ruler had developed a reputation as a mystery.
“Why can he not go with you?” Merrick found himself whispering to Nynnia.
She sighed and tapped him lightly on the arm, as if a teacher correcting a pupil who should have known better. “Think of it: a half human/half geist in that place. He would be torn apart by the geistlords shackled as he is with a mortal frame. They feed on the energy of their own kind there.”
The Deacon shivered as he recalled the landscape of that dread place.
“Still, Onika made quite the impression on you, didn’t he?” Nynnia’s eyebrow crooked, and a slight smile lurked and her delectable lips.
“He certainly is . . . different.” Merrick wrapped his arm around her waist. “Though my Emperor is a fine person, still some part of me is always surprised that anyone in power can be good—let alone the son of a ‘goddess.’ ”
She nodded thoughtfully and then led him back into the tunneling machine. “I confess, we did not believe Onika when he first offered us his help. Many doubted that he would turn against his mother—but he proved himself.” She took his hand and pulled him along a long corridor.
“Where are we going?” His stomach clenched as the machine began once again to descend—this time with no terrifying rolling.
“As Onika said”—Nynnia squeezed his fingers—“Mount Sytha. All of our people are gathering there to perform the ceremony.”
The Nynnia on the Otherside had said there was a reason for her to send him here, and then she would bring him back to his own time. Merrick didn’t want to go back—even if this world was falling apart. This was where Nynnia was still alive.
He knew that Sorcha was back in his own time, his mother too—and both Merrick knew were in deadly peril. The Deacon found himself torn between duty and happiness.
“And then what?” he asked, terribly afraid of the answer.
Nynnia stood poised with one hand on a door handle, her brow furrowed. “We have to atone for our crimes: swear off the use of weirstones and runes. Give up our bodies.”
“You’re leaving this world,” Merrick whispered. “Traveling to the Otherside.”
A muscle in her jaw twitched as she gave a sharp nod. “If we stay, Hatipai and the other geists will tear this world apart hunting us. We will go to the one place she dares not follow. Having anchored herself into this world with a focus, she can no longer go back to the Otherside—nor would she want to—the human meat here is so much sweeter. So, with our knowledge, we can build a place there—and maybe one day come home when it is safe.”
Merrick pressed his lips together and closed his eyes—remembering the tales of that Dark Time. The suffering the people of this time were about to endure would be terrible. Yet from that maelstrom would arise the Order, the Rossin dynasty, and eventually the Empire. It would take hundreds of years, but they would conqueror the geistlords, even Hatipai, and learn to contain the lesser geists.
Nothing he could do would change that. Nor should it.
Nynnia pushed open the door, and he saw that it led into a small bedchamber with a reasonably sized bed bolted to the wall. A luxurious cerulean quilted blanket brightened what would otherwise have been rather bleak accommodations. He drew in his breath and shot the woman at his side a confused look. “Nynnia, I—”
She stopped his words most effectively by pulling his mouth down to hers. The kiss was long, desperate and sweet. When she finally let him go, her brown eyes were wide and her smile crooked. “When we leave this world, Merrick Chambers, we Ehtia will abandon our bodies—become part of the Otherside. I intend to give mine a proper send-off.”
The Deacon’s blood raced. Merrick wanted to grab what time there was that remained, but his gentlemanly sensibilities wouldn’t let him take total advantage. “You hardly know me.”
The pad of her thumb brushed his mouth. “But I know you love me, and sime in the future, however that may happen, I will love you. When we next meet, I would have one of us remember these moments.”
The Deacon’s mind did another flip. It was all too complicated and painful.
“We will love each other,” Merrick replied and let himself be led into her bedroom. He said nothing of them losing each other again. That pain could wait.
Once the door was shut, nothing outside mattered. The Deacon did not care to think that this would be the one and only time for them—he pushed that realization as far back as he could. He would have her find nothing bitter in his mind.
Instead, Merrick took his time undressing Nynnia, even as she raced to strip him of his cloak, shirt and breeches.
“So young,” she breathed, looking up at him. The comment was soft and almost sadly said.
Nynnia would in fact have taken a step back, but Merrick paused unbuttoning her blouse and captured her hand, pressing it firmly against his bare chest. “You will be young again someday—the very one we meet.”
She frowned, shook her head, laughed and then leaned forward to kiss him. Perhaps there wasn’t as much meaning for her as there was for him, yet it was still precious. Merrick delighted in her unashamed trust, when he released the last of her rather intricately tied trousers and she stepped back to allow him to look at her.
“You are beautiful, Nynnia,” he said through a voice grown abruptly rough with desire. It was no lie; she was. However in the future she regained her youth, for right now, she had a lithe, muscular body, only slightly touched by age. He thought it ripe like a fruit brought to sugar and fullness.
Merrick ran his hand down her right arm and felt the ridges of five wide scars that streaked from shoulder to elbow. As he slid his palm around her, he was able to make out that they in fact took in half her back.
Nynnia looked at him so very earnestly. “Very few escape the geistlords without some sort of mark. I hope they don’t put you off—”