The Black Queen (Book 6) (16 page)

It felt cool to the touch. He loved the red in the stone, the way it looked hot and actually felt cold. This part of the corridor had once been polished by Islanders, but it hadn’t been built by them. This was part of the mountain itself, the opening of a cave deep within the bowels of the mountain, a place that had been here before Islanders ever appeared in the area.

He loved the age, the history. He loved the way it felt here. He even loved the tug he had to struggle against, the way he had to resist the call of the mountain.

Finally, he rounded a corner. Before him was the large stone door. It had been carved of a single block of stone, and made to fit the area. Someone had left it open, the wooden bar that locked it, leaning up against the wall, the padlock on the ground beside it.

Keep this locked at all times,
his father used to say.
You never know who might try to steal the Secrets.

Alex sighed softly, then went through the door. It was dark in the main room. “Father?” he yelled again.

He thought he hear rustling, and despite himself, his heart started to race. Those Fey rats held his imagination, even now.

“Father?”

The rustling stopped. He suppressed a sigh. He turned to the side of the door, and used his torch to light the one on the left, then one on the right. The light flared off the deep red walls, illuminating the room.

As usual, it was hot down here. The chairs were askew and the table covered with the remains of a meal. The bed looked as if it had been slept in and not made. A faint odor, one that Alex hadn’t smelled here before, floated on the air.

The smell of neglect.

Maybe his mother hadn’t been down here in a long time. Usually, if his father disappeared for more than a day or two, his mother would come down here with a lot of food. She would clean the place, make sure his father ate, and then come home again, her lips in a tight line, her eyes sad.

Sometimes she sent the boys. But it had never been this bad, not when Alex had come. How long had his father been here this time? He couldn’t remember. His father’s erratic schedule had long since stopped being something Alex paid attention to.

Blankets were strewn over the couches as if a lot of people had slept in the room. It was large enough to hold several, although Alex didn’t know anyone who came down here beside his family. Everyone else seemed to have forgotten about this place. Some people were actually afraid of it. Alex’s father had once invited the Queen here, and she had refused, saying such a place was dangerous for one such as her.

His father had known that. He had laughed and said that she wasn’t worthy of the throne.

A robe lay across one of the chairs. In the old days, before the Fey, the Wise Ones used to use this room for study. Now it had become his father’s unofficial home away from home.

Near the bed, the small wooden door was also open, and light spilled out of the Vault. Alex sighed. His father had to be in there, waiting, wondering what was coming down here, what was going to get him this time.

Alex walked across the room. He put his torch in an empty holder. He knew he wouldn’t need it in the Vault itself. Then he ducked through the door.

The light caught him, as always, the brightness of a room which should have been in complete darkness. The glow came from the white floor, the white walls, the white ceiling. It was an internal glow, almost as if someone had laid marble on a continual fire.

Alex blinked, waiting for his eyes to adjust. He could never get used to this room. It wasn’t vast, even though it felt vast. The tapestries on the walls were askew. He checked the urge to straighten them. There would be time later, after he found his father. But Alex couldn’t resist a glance at them.

He had always loved the tapestries. The strange light made the fabrics shine. The golds seemed golder, the reds vibrant, the greens as brilliant as damp grass on a sunny day. That had been his father’s phrase, and Alex thought it accurate. The tapestries were hung evenly, like curtains, around the room, and ending only where the room branched off into a series of corridors.

Down one of those corridors, he felt the pull.

He ignored it, as he always did.

He glanced at the stone altar, rising out of the floor, the Words on top of it, the leather cover closed. He had half expected to see his father standing there, pondering the Words as he had done so many times, but he wasn’t there. Although he was in the room. Alex could hear him breathe.

But Alex didn’t step toward the altar, not yet. If he did so, he would ignite the jewels, and then the gold flare, and he wasn’t ready to do that. His father, no matter how unbalanced he was, always responded when the jewels were ignited, and sometimes he responded as if the person who ignited them was a threat.

Instead, Alex checked the rest of the room, and was surprised to find it tidy. The table was still set up for the Feast of the Living, the silver bowls in the center of the table sparkling as if they had just been polished. Vials of holy water sat on free-standing shelves, and swords lay between them. Suspended from the ceiling in an arching pattern were the globes for the Lights of Midday. He felt as if he touched one, it would flare into light.

Not that it had to.

He and Matt had been admonished all their lives not to touch these things, and they hadn’t—or at least, Alex hadn’t. Sometimes he wondered about his brother. Matt had been keeping secrets from him for a long time. At least, that was what Alex thought now. Now that he had seen his brother treat Fey as if he had spoken to them every day.

Several small dolls, made of hand-blown glass, sat on tiny chairs. Bottles lined one wall, and glowed redly as he looked at them. Skin drums hung from one pillar and Alex shuddered as he usually did when he looked at them. His father said the Wise Ones had believed the skin on the drums had been the skin of the Roca and the bones crossed in front of it, his bones. His father hadn’t believed that, but he had forbidden them from touching the drums as well. Those were the only things in the room that Alex had never wanted to touch, so he hadn’t minded that rule at all.

It relieved him, somehow, that all the Secrets hidden in the Vault were still in order. Perhaps that meant his father hadn’t deteriorated as far as others had said. Alex always feared that his father would someday smash the dolls—the Soul Repositories, they were called—and pour the blood out of the bottles. Alex had no idea what would happen then, as the Secrets mixed on the white floor of the Vault, but he had a hunch it would be bad.

“Father?” he asked softly. He heard the rustling again. It came from behind the altar. He sighed yet again. If his father were leaning on the altar it would be glowing gold. So his father had to be hiding behind it, careful not to touch it. Thinking, perhaps, that Alex was the enemy.

Alex braced himself, then took a step forward. As he expected, his boot hit a ruby and it ignited all the jewels around him. The floor, which had been white, was now covered with jewels set about a foot apart from each other, and all the same size. To his right was an emerald that seemed to have a green glow as he looked at it. Beyond that, a sapphire, and farther along, a diamond that seemed like a clear hole in the floor. The jewels continued to form a large ring around the alter. To his left there were two stones he had no name for: a black stone that had a diamond-like brilliance and clarity, and a gray stone that also had a gem’s brilliance. Then there was another diamond, and the pattern continued: ruby, emerald, sapphire, diamond, gray stone, black stone.

He took another step forward, and more jewels revealed themselves. Only the pattern had shifted slightly. This jewel, smaller and rounder, was an emerald. The ruby was to his left, the sapphire to his right. Another step, this time igniting a sapphire. The jewels that appeared closer and closer to the alter were smaller and smaller.

Everything worked its way out from the alter at the center.

He stepped on the black jewel, and then the gray jewel, and then he was at the altar itself. He peered behind it. Sure enough, his father was sprawled there, hands over his head. His hair was matted, and his fingernails were encrusted with dirt. Alex could smell his father from here, and it wasn’t a pleasant odor: an unwashed body mixed with the stink of fear.

“Father,” he said again.

“Demon spawn,” his father whispered.

Alex hated this. He knew what his father referred to: the Wise Ones of Constant used to call anyone who was tall demon spawn because great height was usually—although not always—a sign of great magick. They had called his father this from the time he was a boy.

“Father,” Alex said again. He walked around the altar and crouched beside his father, putting his hand gingerly on his father’s back. His father’s robe had a greasy feel, and Alex felt a sudden flare of anger at his mother who let his father go like this. “It’s Alex.”

“Alexander is dead,” his father moaned. “Murdered by the heathen Fey.”

“Not King Alexander,” Alex said. “I’m your son. Alex. My mother’s name is Marly.”

As usual, the mention of his mother’s name caught his father’s attention. His head rose slowly, his twisted face looking hopeful. The scar’s pucker seemed even worse than it had before, or perhaps that was the effect of the strange light and the dirt encrusting the old wound.

“Marly?” his father whispered.

“I can take you home to her,” Alex said.

His father sat up and rubbed his eyes like a baby. Then he reached for Alex, catching his arm in a vise grip. “You don’t belong here,” his father said.

“You’re the one who first brought me here.”

His father shook his head. “The forces are gathering. They saw us today. You cannot hide here.”

“You do.”

“I am lost.” The words were plaintive, almost as if, in his madness, his father understood what was happening to him. “But you are not.”

“I came to get guidance from the Words.”

“They are a lie,” his father whispered.

Alex had heard this before. “The real Words.”

“They are not what I expected,” his father said. “They are a letter. We have failed the Roca, and now evil is loosed upon the world. He brought it to us, and asked us to deny it, to keep it from spreading. But I have it. And I have given it to my children.”

Alex’s heart ached. He was beginning to wish this day would end. “I am your child,” he said. “I came to you for help. I’m having Visions.”

His father looked at him with the clarity that Alex had hoped for. It was as if his father were seeing him for the first time in a year.

“No, Alex,” he whispered. “No.”

“Mother cried when she heard,” Alex said. “Matt took me to Coulter for help. But I wanted to come to you.”

“I am lost,” his father said.

“You can help me.”

His father shook his head, the clarity gone.

“Please,” Alex said. “Father, I came to you.”

His father closed his eyes. His mouth moved as if in prayer. When he opened his eyes, that clarity was back, terrible somehow in its lucidness.

“Now I understand,” he muttered, more to himself than to Alex, “how Nicholas felt. You protect your children no matter what they are.”

Then, before Alex had a chance to move, his father grabbed his hand and shoved it against the altar. The stone was hot against his flesh, nearly burning it. Gold flared from him, enveloping them, wrapping them in its light. Alex felt blinded and warmed at the same time. He tried to struggle out of his father’s grip. His father had warned them never to touch the altar and now he was forcing Alex to do so, and they would drown in the light—

“Your Visions are true ones,” his father said, and he sounded sad. “The Roca’s blood flows through you just as it flows through me. Perhaps stronger. Because of Marly.”

The words echoed within the light, as if it trapped the sound and sent it back. Alex continued to struggle, but his father’s grip simply grew tighter. Alex would be bruised if this continued.

Then his father let go. Alex leaned forward, nearly falling over. His father had tears in his eyes.

“I am lost,” he said, but the clarity was still there. “My mind—it travels along the lines and corridors and boundaries of light, not of this world. I have few moments here any longer. The Roca was like this: that was why his own children refused to believe him when he returned. But he did return, in an attempt to save them.”

His father leaned forward, so that their faces were only inches apart. His father’s breath was sour with the smell of rotting teeth, the smell of a man who hadn’t eaten in a long time. Alex tried to turn away, but his father grabbed his face, held it, so that Alex had to look him in the eye.

“The Roca’s sons did not listen to him,” his father said again, “but you must listen to me. You are so young…”

His voice trailed off, and for a moment, Alex thought he had lost him. Then his father blinked and said as if he were arguing with himself, “But Nicholas’s children were young. And so was Nicholas. Youth sometimes cannot be enjoyed.”

“Father, please,” Alex said. It felt as if his cheeks were being pushed into his face. His father’s filthy fingernails were scratching his skin.

His father nodded, as if Alex’s plea was not for release but for more advice. “You are the one who can save us. You must read the Words, study the old religion. Learn the tapestries. You must take the foundation I have built, teach the Islanders and their half-breed children to repress the magick before it eats them as it has eaten me.”