The Black Queen (Book 6) (17 page)

“But Coulter says it ate you because you repressed it.”

His father shook his head. “Because I used it. Because I used all of it, until I was drained to nothing. It is in the Words. The Wise Ones misunderstood the Words. They thought the Words meant to kill those with magick, but that’s wrong. The Roca wanted the magick suppressed, not used. That’s why the tools hide in here, and in the Roca’s cave, so that they are
not
used. That’s why they became Secrets. But the key to the Secrets must not be lost entirely. For if it is, someone will use them wrong and harm us all.”

His father was ranting again. Alex tried to wrench his face away. His father moved closer. He didn’t look as if he were gone. His eyes flashed like they used to.

“Remember,” his father said. “A man with Vision and the Roca’s blood has charisma, the ability to lead and to make others follow. It is a gift, my son. And you must use it. Become a Rocaan in the New Rocaanism. Set up the church in opposition to the evilness that the Fey have brought us. Do not let them control the power that is in this mountain. I have failed, but you cannot. Read the Words. Study the tapestries. Find someone who knows the old stories. It is all here.”

“You know the old stories,” Alex said.

His father’s smile was sad. “Tomorrow I may not know who I am. I am lost, Alex, but you are not.”

“Matt’s gone to the Fey for help.”

“Then you must bring him back,” his father said. “They will teach him to use his magick, and he will become like me. Only you can prevent that. Only you.”

Then his father released his face, and blinked, as if he hadn’t known what he was doing. Alex had a sense, an odd sense that his father had used energy from the golden light to give him clarity, and now the energy was gone.

“Father?” Alex asked.

His father shook his head. “I am a second son,” he said. “I cannot have children. My life has been given to the Tabernacle.”

He was gone. But he had been there for a brief moment, the moment Alex needed him. Alex brushed a hand over his father’s face in affection, wishing he could do something and knowing he could not.

“I’ll send Mother,” he said softly.

“She does not deserve me,” his father said with perfect lucidity, then moaned and lay on the floor again. And no matter what Alex could do, he could not rouse him.

Finally Alex rocked back on his heels. He was hot, shaken, and terrified. The image of his brother’s face, as mad as his father’s could be, was lodged in his mind.

Only you can prevent that
, his father had said.
Only you.

Was this why a man was given Vision? To prevent awful things from happening?

Alex didn’t know. After a time, he stood, turned, and put his hand on the leather cover of the Words. He stared at it for a moment.

He had to lead now, whether he was ready or not. His father couldn’t do it, and he knew it. His father was gone, his brother, misguided, and his mother panicked. It was all up to Alex, and the only help he had was in this strange room.

He opened the cover, and stared at the cramped handwriting, at the Ancient Islander which his father had taught him to read along with Islander itself. Then Alex took a deep breath, and began his study of the Words.

EMERGENCE

(One Week Later)

SEVEN

IT TOOK GIFT A WEEK of argument to get the Shaman to give him a hearing. After he returned to Protectors Village from the Black Throne, no one would speak to him. The Shaman were having not-so-secret meetings, and he suspected that they were trying to decide whether or not to stop his apprentice training.

He went through his days tending the garden and staring at the mountain itself. His hand ached from its contact with the Black Throne, and at night he had dreams about the light.

The dreams unnerved him. The light had a seeking quality, a quality that he remembered vaguely from his youth. Every being, he learned as a child, was Linked to others, through love, through family ties, through some strengthening and binding experience. Enchanters, Visionaries and Shaman could actually see those Links as golden ties connecting people. Sometimes those connections went from heart to heart, sometimes from mind to mind, and sometimes from heart and mind to heart and mind. But no matter how far apart the Linked couple’s actual bodies were, the Link tied them together.

Enchanters, Visionaries and Shaman could become beings of light, and travel across a Link. Their consciousness could enter someone else’s mind. Gift had traveled the Links before he even knew what he was doing, and at the end of his travels, he had found Sebastian. They used to meet in Sebastian’s mind when they were children, and Gift was able to watch his family—his real family—as if he were living with them.

But the most frightening experience he had ever had with his Links was the time his great-grandfather had discovered a Link that led him to Gift. His great-grandfather had entered Gift’s mind, shoved Gift aside, and peered out through his eyes. In that moment, Gift had felt his great-grandfather’s true self, old and complex and extremely strong.

Gift had never felt anything like it again until he touched the Black Throne.

Since touching the throne, he hadn’t been able to speak to anyone about it. Madot had forbidden him to. After they had left the throne room, she had told him to remain quiet. He had agreed—only if he could meet with the other Shaman and the apprentices so that they could all compare Visions.

He had a feeling something profound had happened that day, and he wanted their help in discovering what it was.

But no one would speak to him. Not even the other apprentices. It was as if the light from the Throne had encapsulated him, made him even different than he had been before.

And now, Madot told him to report to the Hall of Gathering at twilight. The others, she had said, would be willing to grant his wish.

As he walked through the Protector’s Village, he noted that no one else seemed to be moving about. If they were to meet him, they were already inside the Hall of Gathering. He felt a little prickle down his spine. He had spent the day in the garden, nursing the new young shoots, pulling weeds, and preparing the soil for the main planting. He hadn’t watched any of the other Shaman; in fact, he had made certain that he would not look for anyone else. He didn’t want to know what they were planning, what they were doing. He didn’t trust this meeting. Since he had come back from the throne, he felt as if he trusted nothing at all.

The air was cool as the sun set. Shadows spread through the valley, the huts huddled in the darkness. The Hall of Gathering was a traditional Fey structure, not a hut at all. Shaped like a “U,” it had many rooms, some of which the apprentices were not allowed into. It was the oldest building in the Village, made of a spelled wood no long found in these parts. Some said it dated from the days the Fey had lived here, before they had begun their world conquest, and Gift believed that. Something about the Hall made him think of the Domicile in the place where he had grown up. The Domicile had been a long narrow building, filled with tiny rooms, mostly for the Domestics. But in one of the rooms lived the Shaman who had influenced his life. He had memories of going to see her when he was so tiny he could barely walk.

Those memories gave him comfort every time he walked into the Hall of Gathering. It smelled and looked different, of course, but it had a similar feeling, the feeling of magick just used for a good reason. It tingled in the air like a favorite scent just fading, and it always warmed him.

This time, as he pushed open the gray-brown door, he felt the same warmth, but with it, a trace of nerves that he knew were his. This meeting would be important. It might influence the rest of his life.

He was alone in the main hall. Fey lamps burned, the souls pressed against the glass, watching him. The wooden chairs, as old as the building, had been pushed against the wall and covered with Domestic-spelled woolen blankets. He could feel their comfort from here, along with the way they beckoned him to come, relax, rest. They promised to calm him before he went to his meeting.

He wondered if they had been set there as a distraction. He realized then that he had reverted to the way he had been during the Black King’s invasion of Blue Isle: he trusted no one but himself.

Something had caused that reversion. He wasn’t sure if it was actually touching the throne, or because of the way Madot had treated him. She had been his mentor, and he had thought she had helped him because she trusted him. Then he learned it was because of a Vision, and she had been testing him all along.

The favor with which he had once viewed the Village, looking at it as the most peaceful place in the Fey Empire, had changed at that moment. The interplay of personalities here was as important, if not more important, than anywhere else in the Empire.

And he had thought he was escaping all the politics by becoming a Shaman.

The Fey lamps illuminated the hallway to his left. The lamps hung on one side of the wall, and doors lined the other. He walked past all the closed doors, wondering if he should knock, and then finally, saw one that was open.

It led into a room he had never seen before. The room was lit by candles not Fey lamps, and smelled faintly of incense made by the Domestics to aid in Vision and Truth. There were no chairs. Instead, pillows covered the floor, and on each pillow sat a Shaman. The seven apprentices stood in the back, looking terrified and uncomfortable.

Madot sat in the middle. She rose when she saw him. “Gift,” she said, extending her hands.

He didn’t take them. He felt warmth suffuse his face. All of this attention on him. He hadn’t expected it. He hadn’t expected anything like this.

“Is this my meeting to discuss Visions?” he asked, “Or is it something else?”

Madot looked over her shoulder. Kerde, the Shaman who ran Protectors Village, stood. Her robe fell softly about her shoulders, shimmering in a way that no other Shaman’s robe did. Her hair was so white that it was almost translucent. She was very, very old, and had been running Protectors Village as long as all the other Shaman could remember. She would not divulge her real age, but it was rumored among the apprentices that she had lived twice as long as any other Fey. Some said she had been here since the Shaman were assigned to protect the Place of Power, and they said she could not die.

Madot let her hands fall to her side. Her dark eyes had a look of disappointment in them, whether for Gift’s rebuke or something else he could not tell.

“It was foreseen long ago,” Kerde said, more to the others than to him, “that the Black Family would reject the Black Throne.”

Gift inhaled, caught by surprise. Was this all a test? Had they allowed him to come here so that they could test him and his heritage?

His great-grandfather’s advisers had told him not to trust the Shaman, and his mother had once said the same thing.

“My family hasn’t rejected it,” he said. “My sister—”

“Is not the one the Throne accepted,” Kerde said.

Gift looked at the others. In the semi-darkness, he could only see only part of their faces, making them look like people he had never met. “She has never had a chance,” Gift said. “She didn’t even know to come here.”

“She was not raised Fey.”

“I was,” Gift said. “And I didn’t know.”

Kerde tilted her head. The thin light from the candles glistened through her thin hair. “That is because of the way the transfer happened. Information about the Throne was not passed from Rugad to his heir. Your family took control.”

“I come from the Black Family,” Gift said. He was getting angry now. They had no right to treat him this way. The future had been decided, and they were changing it. “
We
have been in control for hundreds of years.”

“You come from the Black Family, yes,” Kerde said. “And you come from the heirs to a wild magick.”

“The Deniers,” said a voice near the back. A male voice that Gift recognized but couldn’t place. “They denied their magick, and believed denial gave them strength.”

Kerde held up her hand for silence. “You have seen two Places of Power. It is your job, as Black King, to help us find the third.”

“No,” Gift said. “We will not locate the third Place of Power. My sister has decreed that conquest is over. We can live without the Triangle and whatever changes it will bring. We have so far.”

“It is your job, as Black King,” Kerde said.

“I am not the Black King,” Gift said, the hair rising on the back of his neck. “I will not accept the throne. Bring my sister here. She will take the Black Throne.”

“It is too late,” Kerde said. “She does not rule as a Fey. She has not even left her Island.”

“She rules as a Fey. You say that because she is different, because you don’t like her.”

“The Throne wants you.”

“The Throne would take whatever member of the Black Family stood before it.” Gift was breathing hard. The incense disturbed him, make him slightly dizzy. He hated this. He hated the way they were trying to alter the way things had been for the past fifteen years.