Spectyr by Philippa Ballantine

Author:Philippa Ballantine [Ballantine, Philippa]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Romance, Fiction, Fantasy
ISBN: 9780441020515
Publisher: Ace
Published: 2011-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

SEVENTEEN

Out of Time

Merrick knew he had to be dreaming. Yet, as he sat up, his headache was disturbingly real, pounding in the rear of h of his kull with a strength that he had never felt before.

Cautiously he looked around. Under his legs was a floor of white marble, smooth and cool. Disoriented as he was, for an instant he worried he was still strapped to the draining table in Ulrich. Blood, they had wanted his blood—but Nynnia had sent him here for a reason—and he trusted her.

Perhaps he had just been traumatized by the sudden departure from the Otherside. Perhaps he had not really seen what he had seen. A strange scraping rattle caught his attention, and the young Deacon lurched to his feet.

Not three yards away Nynnia was hard at work. He noted her back stiffen, so she was aware of his presence, but she did not turn to face him—too busy in her task. She was standing next to a machine that was about the size of a saddle but made of gleaming brass rather than leather. At the front it had a layer of spinning cutting wheels that were busy desecrating the carvings on the stone pillar. The Deacon looked around wildly and saw that all of the pillars, bar this one and one other, had already been given this terrible treatment.

Merrick was on his feet and lurching toward Nynnia without even thinking. “Stop!” For he recognized these pillars—though when he had seen them last they had been covered in dirt and moss, having been recently dug from the earth.

She spun to face him, and Merrick felt immediately the dissonance. This was Arkaym, yet it was not. Nynnia was herself, yet not. He stopped in his tracks.

She was older. Lines of silver in her long dark hair gleamed in the morning sun, and a tiny landscape of wrinkles caused by laughter and frowns decorated her face. It did nothing to hide her beauty. Merrick felt as though he were sitting on a shifting ice floe, unsure which direction was safe.

“‘ Stop’ ? ” Her voice was the same. “What do you know about what I am doing? What do you care?” Behind her the machine continued its work, grinding its way up the pillar with amazing speed and efficiency—destroying as it went.

Merrick examined the towering, curved ceiling above them. It was similar to the Mother Abbey—but so much grander. Curls of carved words ran up the dozens of pillars—those that had not already been destroyed. Merrick’s world reorientated itself, and though it was disturbing, at least now he could understand it.

His breath came faster as he walked to them. “I know that these pillars are priceless treasures. They contain so much knowledge.” He held his hand out like that of a blind man looking to touch a face. The markings on the pillar were written in Ancient script, the one he had learned so easily while in the novitiate.

In the future. Merrick felt the whirling of

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