Philippa Ballantine - Wrayth

“Only if we are discovered,” Raed said as he stood tall by the lake edge. “Then you may have at it, and see how the dice roll—but if you break our agreement, back into the depths you go, and I will never call you out again. It is as we agreed.”

Something about the pact they had made bound this creature of death and mayhem. Raed was not going to question how it worked—but perhaps a Deacon would know more of it than he did.

Previously, whenever the geistlord had taken control, the Young Pretender was always subsumed. He awoke from the Rossin’s rampages with only a scattering of memory, the taste of blood in his mouth and terrible guilt. However, since he had drawn the beast into his own consciousness—they shared an awareness. This was, Raed reasoned, a fair cost for the Rossin’s help. Just how much control he had over his passenger in this state, he had never tested. Sooner or later he knew he would have to.

Pain. That was another change. He felt a deeper pain as the Rossin bent and twisted his flesh to make its own shape. Bones snapped and were remade. Every nerve and sinew was severed and spun by the geistlord’s will. He wanted to scream to release some of the agony, but even his throat would no longer obey. He had nowhere to hide from the agony.

The Rossin took his flesh and snarled in hunger. The head of its aerial form was that of a great eagle, while the body remained feline and huge. A pair of long feathered wings snapped angrily in the air. The beak was curved and wicked and could carve human flesh as readily as the teeth of its other forms. The Rossin was beautiful and deadly. Magnificent—if you were anyone else but the Young Pretender. He was carried along like an unwilling rider on a runaway mount.

After snatching up the bag in its beak, the beast leapt into the air. Flying was something that many people dreamed of; being carried aloft, leaving the world below, and touching the ultimate freedom. As the Rossin sprang into the air, Raed felt elation, but he tried to repress the emotion. It was wrong to find any enjoyment in anything the geistlord did.

Lying in his arms, Sorcha had spoken of the giddy rush of power a Deacon felt when wielding the Gauntlets, and how she had to fight it; how it was a constant struggle and a deadly temptation. He now understood what she had meant.

Deacons should be destroyed, not loved. They are liars and manipulators. We should kill them all.

The Rossin naturally loathed the Deacons; not only did it hate the first one that had traded with the geistlord, but Sorcha, who had put controls on him with the Bond. The beast did not like restrictions of any kind.

Raed wanted to think about Sorcha some more, but he dare not. The geistlord hated her so, and she was a complication in his already broken life. He didn’t expect to see her again. He didn’t expect to live very much longer.

The air was cold up here, in the clouds, but the heat of the Rossin was greater. Birds scattered from the great shape, like pebbles thrown across the sky. The natural world was always so much better at sensing the unliving than humans.

It was not far to the stronghold of the Shin, but the Rossin wheeled above it, careful to keep himself low and away from the sliver of the waxing moon. It was a good night for dark deeds. The feathers that lined the wings of the Rossin were like owls’, soft and silent. In all his forms the creature was a predator. His eyes were sharp too. He could make out details of the fortress and its defenses; a collection of low, curved roofs capped the towers that jutted sharply out into the clouds. All in all a very unwelcoming sight.

As the Rossin turned and banked away he could make out a handful of human shapes moving atop the curved roofline. They smelled of steel and gunpowder, but now they were fodder for the geistlord. Folding his wings, the Rossin dropped down from the dark skies and aimed for a guard leaning against his polearm and looking down toward the city. He never saw his end coming, until it was upon him. The Rossin knocked him to the ground, wrapping his wings around the guard, and plunging his beak into the man’s unprotected throat. The taste of blood flowered in Raed’s mouth; thick, rich and terrifyingly satisfying. To his horror he found he was enjoying it.

The geistlord fed on flesh, blood and bone until he was sated. Having gorged on the bounty hunter only a few days ago it did not take long. As the geistlord sucked down the last of the blood, Raed reasserted control. Its hunger satisfied, the beast gave way without any hesitation and retreated into the depths of the Young Pretender’s soul, much as he used to before they had made their new pact. Then he was on the ground, covered in blood and with the foul taste of it stuck to the back of his throat. Raed lay there for a moment, steeling himself to get up and do what needed to be done. He rolled over, opened the bag, pulled out his clothes, and slid them onto his stained and fouled body.

Every part of the Young Pretender ached, like he’d been trampled by a horse, but Fraine was close now—closer than she had been since their meeting in the desert. She had led him into a trap, sold him out to a geistlord masquerading as a goddess, and killed five of his crew members in cold blood.

Raed could understand why Fraine had turned on him—her childhood had been marred by the death of her mother in the jaws of the Rossin. What, if any, affection she had retained for Raed after that had then been twisted by Tangyre Greene’s lies. That did not mean he would let her rip the Empire apart. Whatever feelings he had for his sister, guilt, love and anger, didn’t really matter. The entire Empire was at stake.

The map, obtained at so much risk in the city, was still not complete—it showed only the upper and outer levels of the fortress that was constructed like some elaborate puzzle box. At least that was how it looked on his first examination of the map. The mapmaker had even struggled to draw it, but had settled on three layers, like a peeling away of an onion.

Raed strapped on his pistols and sword and went to the first door. Opening it, and stepping inside, he immediately understood the mapmaker’s dilemma. Everything inside the fortress was designed to confuse the eye and befuddle the brain. The corridor he walked down was tilted at an odd angle, and wound its way deeper in the fortress. Along the way, there were doors that opened straight outside again. Others were set in the ceiling, or half-buried, and only passable by a child.

The map saved him from going mad in the first instance, as Raed quickly lost his bearings. He found a shaft indicated in red, and by virtue of wedging his legs against one side and his back against another, shimmied down through it and to the next level. This all seemed a very useful way to hold off intruders and stymie assassins, but he couldn’t help but wonder how on earth the Shin traversed their own fortress in any comfort at all. Even if they memorized the passages and odd doorways, it would not have been comfortable. On the first level he had not seen a single guard, and he understood why—surely they would have been driven mad by the illogical and crazy layout.

Raed’s feet touched down in a new, deeper layer of the fortress, and for a moment he stood there swaying. This looked like any number of corridors in any number of palaces he had visited: stone walls, lined with tapestries. However there was a deeper hush on this place than anywhere else he’d ever been. He stood there contemplating which way to go and examining the map. It had marked out a straight path to the right and then deeper.

As he walked the corridors Raed contemplated how much better this would be if Sorcha and Merrick were with him. A couple of Deacons would have been most useful at this point. But that wasn’t all. This was the first long stretch of time he’d been alone in his entire life. As a Prince and then as a captain, he’d been surrounded by servants, soldiers, crew and friends. Though he had been the one to make decisions, he’d always had someone else to confer with.