The Black Queen (Book 6) (14 page)

“This afternoon,” Alex whispered.

Matt shot him a look. Matt had seen in him in the throes of one that morning. “You had two today?”

Alex seemed to wilt. “I’m going crazy.”

“No.” Coulter sounded reflective. He frowned, looking toward the ceiling as if he could see through it to the sky. “What was the hallucination about?”

“It was jumbled,” Alex said. “Like a dream. A really vivid dream.”

“Both hallucinations were like that?” Matt asked.

“They always are,” Alex said. “And when I come to, I sometimes can’t remember where I am.”

“Tell me what you remember,” Coulter said.

Alex licked his lips, and for a moment, Matt thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then he said, “I saw a throne made of darkness, and a Fey man with blue eyes touching it. Then the throne exploded in light.”

There was silence for a moment, then Coulter said, “That’s all?”

“No,” Alex said. “That was just the first one. Early this morning, before dawn.” He glanced at Matt. “I had three today, not two.”

“What else?” Coulter asked.

Alex moved away from Matt. He walked toward the fire. It created a halo of light around him that made him seem larger than he was, but thinner too, and somehow vulnerable. Matt wanted to go to him, but knew if he did, he might ruin the moment.

“A woman,” Alex said, slowly, almost brokenly. “A Fey woman, kissing an Islander.” He glanced over his shoulder at Coulter. “I think it was you.”

Coulter didn’t move. He hardly seemed to be breathing.

“A baby, a different Fey woman, crying as she held it, and it played with her face.” Alex looked away again. He clasped his hands behind his back. “Matt—real old—laughing, like Father does.”

Matt felt his stomach tightened. His father didn’t laugh. He cackled. Two days ago, he had come into the house, cackling.
The forces are gathering
, he had said.

“Me, surrounded by Fey. A woman, with an evil face, a Fey woman and a stone man who speaks with someone else’s voice.” Alex stopped, but sounded as if he had more to say.

“What else?” Coulter asked.

“My father—” Alex’s voice broke. “—searching for King Nicholas in the tunnels, and dying there. Without food. Without water. All alone.”

This time Matt did go to his brother and put his arm around him.

“These are Visions from the future,” Coulter said. “Sometimes they come true, sometimes we can avert them.”

“The future?” Alex slipped out of Matt’s grasp. “How do you know?”

“The Fey encourage such Visions. People with Vision become the Fey’s leaders.”

“Like the story,” Matt said. Alexander became the leader, the one who had the royal blood. Matthias was the one who went insane. “You saw me. I was like Father.”

“When you were very old,” Alex said, as if that made it any better. “Your friend says that may not happen.” But he didn’t give Coulter time to elaborate on that. Instead, he asked, “How come they come to me?”

Coulter shrugged. “That’s a philosophical question, not one I can give a real answer to. The Fey believe that you’re born with your magickal ability, like your blue eyes, and you get what you get. Some people get nothing, and some people, like me and your brother here, get too much.”

“Do you believe that?”

Coulter hesitated slightly, just enough so that he couldn’t hide his doubt. “I think magickal ability can also be found.”

“Found?”

Coulter shrugged. “I won’t say any more at the moment. I’m like Scavenger. I’ve spent the last fifteen years studying all I can about magick.” He waved a hand at all the books. “Unfortunately, the people who know the most about it, the Fey, never write anything down. I have to glean what I can from their stories, from things others have written, and from history.”

“History,” Matt said, thinking of his mother’s tears. Which brought him back to the reason for their visit. “Can you help Alex?”

Coulter sighed. “I don’t think I have a choice.”

“What does that mean?” Alex put his hands on his hips. It was a tough stance that somehow only made him look younger.

“It means I started this school to help people like you, people who have no where else to turn. I just wish you weren’t—” He stopped himself.

“What?” Alex asked. “You wish I wasn’t what?”

“Your father’s son,” Coulter said. “I guess we all have prejudices we have to overcome.”

Matt felt the words like blows. He had known that a lot of people didn’t like his father, but he had never realized that Coulter, a man Matt secretly admired, hated his father. Had his father done all those things? Was that why his mind had left him?

Coulter straightened, as if he were drawing strength from inside. “If you want my help, you have to do things my way.”

“What’s your way?” Alex asked, not changing his stance.

“You have to study here every day. You will arrive when you’re told and you will leave when you’re told. You will study with the Fey when I tell you that you must, and believe me, with your magick skills, the Fey will teach you more than I ever could.”

“No,” Alex said.

“All right, then.” Coulter turned away. “We’re done.”

“No,” Matt said. He went up to Coulter. “Please help him.”

“He doesn’t want my help.”

“He needs it.”

“He has to make that choice,” Coulter said. “A reluctant student doesn’t learn.”

“My father,” Alex said. His voice broke again. That fear. Matt wondered what, exactly was causing the fear. “Our father won’t approve of any of this.”

“Your father won’t even know,” Coulter said without turning around.

“You’re saying we should lie to him?” Alex asked.

“Your father’s mind is gone. He won’t remember who you are in a year or so. He probably has little idea now.”

“That will happen to us, won’t it?” Matt asked. “Me and Alex?”

At that, Coulter did turn. His face, in the light, didn’t have the anger that Matt expected. Instead it was even softer than it had been before. Compassionate. He raised a hand to Matt’s face, tucked a curl behind his ear like Matt’s father used to do when he was home more. When he was alive in his own eyes.

“You and I,” Coulter said. “You and I run that risk much more than Alex does. We have the same kind of wild magick. The Fey call us Enchanters. We have the most powerful magick of all. But we’re denied Vision, and without it, we cannot lead. And the price we pay for that magick, for that power, is that someday, we lose our minds.”

“You haven’t.”

“Not yet.” Coulter let his hand drop. “The Fey had Enchanters that lived for almost two hundred years before their minds went. How old is your father? Sixty?”

“I don’t know,” Matt said.

“Sixty-seven,” Alex said.

“Too young, I think, to lose his mind so soon.”

“Islanders don’t live as long as Fey,” Alex said.

“No,” Coulter said. “But a two-hundred year old Fey is a very, very old Fey. Like a hundred year-old Islander. It’s only at the very end of their life that Fey Enchanters go mad. Your father could live another forty years like that.”

Matt shuddered. He couldn’t help himself.

“What’s your point?” Alex asked.

Coulter looked at him as if he really didn’t belong in this part of the conversation. “My point is simple. Fey Enchanters have been trained. They know how to control their magick. Your father didn’t. Some of the damage he caused was because his magick leaked in ways that magick shouldn’t be allowed to leak. I want to help you, Matt. If we train you, we might prevent the insanity that has gripped your father.”

“What about me?” Alex asked.

“You turned down my help.”

“You want me to train with Fey.”

“You have Visions about them,” Coulter said. “You might as well find out what those Visions mean.”

“My father—” Alex started.

“Your mother allowed you to come here,” Coulter said. “She has to know your father’s opinions. She has to know what it means to have you here. Doesn’t that sway you in any way?”

Matt held his breath. Alex looked at both of them. “I don’t want to train with Fey,” Alex said at last.

“Then you are not welcome here,” Coulter said. “Good luck with your life and your future. You’ll need it. Now leave me with your brother. I want to talk with him for a moment.”

Alex opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again. “I’ll be outside,” he said to Matt.

“No,” Coulter said. “Go home. I don’t want you near this place.”

Alex waited, apparently for Matt to defend him. Matt didn’t know what to say. He had seen a side of his brother that completely shocked him, a side he hadn’t realized existed. He thought his brother would get past his feelings toward the Fey, just as Matt had. But Alex didn’t even try.

“I guess I’ll see you at home, then, Matt,” Alex said. He waited again, but Matt didn’t turn. And finally, Alex left.

Coulter was watching Matt closely. “I didn’t mean to cause a rift between you, but he worries me. I’ve seen that attitude toward Fey before, and it’s always dangerous.”

Matt wasn’t going to talk to Coulter about his brother. “Why’d you want me to wait?”

“I want you to study with me.”

“I have been,” Matt said.

“I know,” Coulter said, “but not in the all-involving way that most of my students do. I couldn’t allow that, not without your parents’ permission. I take your mother sending you here as tacit approval of the way I’m doing things. And I want to take advantage of that. I want to help you.”

“Why?” Matt asked. He knew he was being sullen, but things hadn’t worked out the way he had thought. He wasn’t sure what was going to happen now.

“Because, Matt, you are a rare creature. There are very few Enchanters. There are three more on Blue Isle, besides you, me, and your father, and one or two in the rest of the Empire. That’s it. With training—”

“I can be of use to the Fey?”

“No,” Coulter said. “There’s more to it than that. Every Visionary needs an Enchanter at his side. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the two of you were born into the same family.”

“You think I can help Alex?”

“And in helping Alex, maybe help the rest of us.”

Matt felt dizzy. He sat in one of the wooden chairs. The wood was polished and warm, not rough like the wood in his home. “But I wouldn’t be able to help him for years.”

“It doesn’t matter, as long as he gets help.”

“He’ll go to Father.”

“I thought that’s what you feared. I thought that’s why you brought him here.”

It was, but Matt no longer wanted to address that. “If I could help him, why didn’t you? He would have worked with you.”

“He needs a Shaman, not me. And the only Shaman are Fey. Most Visionaries are Fey. I believe in having my students trained by the best.”

Matt nodded, not completely understanding. But Alex wasn’t really the point any more. If what his mother had said was true, if that old story was true, if what was happening to his father was a part of the kind of magick that Matt had, then he really had no choice. He had to get help. It was the only way to prevent that Vision his brother had.

“I’ll let you train me,” he said.

“The conditions will still apply,” Coulter said.

“I don’t care about the conditions,” Matt said. And he didn’t. What he cared about was Alex.

And Alex was gone.

SIX

ALEX GOT LOST in the corridors, wandering through the maze Matt called a school. There were Fey in the halls. They watched Alex as if they’d never seen anything like him, and when he wouldn’t meet their gaze, he could still feel them staring at him, as if they would do something to him.

How could Matt believe these people could help him? How could Matt give up so easily? Their father had fought the Fey. He had helped the Queen to the throne because he knew she was at least part Islander, the lesser of two evils, not because he believed that her Fey ways would make Blue Isle better. His father had believed Blue Isle lost, and the only way to save it was to make some sort of peace with these people.

The fact that they shared powers, his father used to say, didn’t make them like the Fey. It made them better than the Fey. The Islanders had always denied their powers, controlled them, held them in check. The Fey had used those powers to kill people and conquer half the world.

Now Matt, Alex’s twin brother, the person he was closest to in the world, wanted him to be taught by Fey.

Finally Alex found that dining area. The two Fey girls that his brother had talked to were long gone, and the tables were now clean and polished. A lone torch still burned, as if left to give enough light for a transition from one room to the next.

Alex felt tension in his shoulders. That strange little Fey would be in the kitchen, and Alex didn’t know any other way out. He would have to talk to the man.