The Black Queen (Book 6) (18 page)

“That is not true,” Kerde said. “The Throne has rejected members of the Black Family before as not worthy.”

“How do you know it will reject my sister?” Gift asked.

“It is too late,” Kerde said. “It wants you.”

He clenched his fist. “And if it cannot get me?”

“It will find someone else who will fulfill its mission.”

“The Throne has a mission?” He looked at the other Shaman. They did not seem startled by this. What did they know that they weren’t tell him, that they weren’t telling anyone?

The apprentices in the back were pushed as far against the wall as possible. They said nothing, but Gift could see their soft, furtive movements, the way they gathered themselves, and isolated themselves at the same time.

“The Throne seeks the Triangle. It is the way the world should be,” Kerde said.

Gift was frowning. He had not learned that. “If that’s the way the world should be,” he said, “then why haven’t the people near the other Places of Power tried? No one tried on Blue Isle, and there have to be people near the third Place of Power. Only the Fey use the Triangle as justification for their conquest.”

“Blue Isle is full of Deniers,” Kerde said.

“The Triangle will change the world. It may bring horrible magick on us.”

“That’s not what we have learned. It will
reform
the world,” Kerde said.

“And what does that mean? Your Place of Power reformed the Fey into the magickal creatures they are now. Did that make us better? Or simply more powerful?”

“The Triangle,” Kerde said softly, “could make us gods.”

“Or it could make us destroy the world we know.” Gift looked at the others. They were watching silently. He wished someone else would speak up.

“We conquer,” Kerde said. “We move toward the next place. The Triangle is within our grasp. We should take it.”

He hated hearing Shaman argue for war. “The Shaman—” he said, and then cursed silently. He had never learned the name of the woman who had been his Shaman for the first eighteen years of his life—“The Shaman Rugad sent with Rugar, the Shaman who became my father’s Shaman, she said the world needed peace, and the Fey needed to stop fighting.”

“She was young,” Kerde said.

Gift had never thought of her as young. “She died for that belief.”

“And in so dying, saved a life who then helped your father defeat Rugad. If she had not done so, the Fey would be going to Leut now. We would know where the last Place of Power is, instead of being blocked.”

“I agreed with my sister on that decision,” Gift said. He was shaking. Kerde hadn’t moved. She still stood before him, slightly ahead of Madot. “I would have done the same. The Fey Empire is big enough. We do not need to expand.”

“You learned that from your Shaman. She was wrong,” Kerde said.

“She said you guarded the Place of Power, and prevented the Black Family from using it.” Gift took a step forward. Some of the Shaman moved their hands to their knees, and clenched their fists. The movement was uniform, as if it were planned, as if he were threatening them in some way. “Is that why you oppose me and my desire to be a Shaman? Because I am a member of the Black Family? Well, I have renounced the Throne. I am not going to search for the third Place of Power, and I believe the Fey have no business gaining control of the world. Why doesn’t this reassure you?”

“Because it denies Fey magick,” Madot said.

Gift turned to her. Her eyes were soft and were looking at him with warmth. He had not imagined it, then, the affection she had felt for him. But he had expected too much from it. He had expected her to support him in all he did, as mentors should do with their apprentices.

“Fey magick,” she said, taking his silence as a lack of understanding, “revives and transforms when mixed with new blood. Your family—your sister and you—have proven this beyond our greatest expectations. On your Isle, the magick is growing stronger, better. We have more Enchanters than we have ever had. Young Visionaries who might become some of the great leaders among the countries. New magicks that we don’t even have names for yet.”

“And that’s enough,” Gift said.

She shook her head. “Some day, the fire between our lines will cool. The magicks will dwindle or die. Magick was tame in your Isle before the Fey.”

“No,” Gift said. “We had two Enchanters.”

“Two. And there are eight now, if we count the young children. The magick had dwindled. Most of your people had none, or had magick so small they did not notice it. Most of our people have some, and it has been that way as long as we have conquered other countries.”

“You don’t have to conquer people to form alliances with them.”

“Were your people willing to ally with the Fey?” Madot asked.

His people. How strange this was. On the Isle, pure Islanders who talked to him of his people meant the Fey. Among the Fey, anyone who used the term “his people” meant the Islanders. “Obviously,” he said, knowing this was not the answer she wanted, knowing that what he said was not entirely true. “If they didn’t Ari and I wouldn’t have been born.”

“Your father was always a special case.”

“My father was never given the chance to ally with the Fey the way he wanted because you people were bent on conquest. It was the Fey who interfered with the alliance, the Fey who refused to live up to their promises.”

“And so we always have,” Kerde said, “because peace is not in our nature.” She waved an arm around her. “Madot is right. Peace is contrary to Fey magick. Most of our magickal abilities enable us to make war.”

“Not the Domestics,” Gift said. He heard a desperation in his own voice. Something he had believed since he was a boy was being challenged. “Not the Shaman. You can’t kill. If you kill, you lose your powers.”

“Think of how war is made, child,” Kerde said. “It is all fighting and moving forward. There are defenses to be maintained, land to farm, people to heal. Our magicks split, over the centuries, so that those who killed were not those who healed. It is efficient. And it is the way of things.”

“The way of things can change,” Gift said.

“Some things, perhaps,” Kerde said. “But not all things.”

He swallowed. No one else in the room spoke. It was almost as if no one else dared to breathe. Madot was watching him, some kind of plea in her eyes. The incense was flowing thicker now, making a gray smoke that swirled around the ceiling. He resisted the urge to sneeze.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked finally. “Accept the Throne and overturn my sister?”

“It would be best,” Kerde said.

“What of Blood against Blood?”

“Your sister would defer to you.”

They didn’t know Arianna. She didn’t defer to anyone. But she probably would give in to him, if she felt the choice were to let him have the Throne or create the chaos from the Blood against Blood.

“I cannot be a warrior leader,” Gift said softly. “I cannot, and I will not. My sister is doing what I would do. I said that to Madot, and now I say it to you.”

Kerde crossed her arms. “You don’t know what you do.”

“Do you?” he asked. “I asked Madot a week ago if we could have a meeting, all of us, to discuss Visions, prophecies and legends about the Black Throne. I come here, and you act as if I’ve done something wrong in acting my conscience. You act as if you know what is best for the Fey, for the Empire.”

“We are the keepers of history. You should listen to us.”

Gift crossed the room, and pinched out the incense. Then he walked back to the door and opened it, letting the air move. “I asked to come here in good faith, as an apprentice, to train to be a Shaman. I have the right tools, and I have the best skills in generations. You took me, but you never planned to let me become a Shaman, did you?”

“Madot has told you her Vision,” Kerde said.

“Is that a yes?” he asked.

Kerde inclined her head forward, like a queen granting a reluctant wish.

Gift clenched his hands so hard his knuckles hurt. “You cannot force me to lead.”

“Shaman are leaders.”

“You cannot force me,” he said slowly, “to sit on the Black Throne.”

“The Black Family cannot have access to the Place of Power. It is decreed,” Kerde said.

Gift took a step forward. “Then why,” he asked, “is the Black Throne here? That was clearly a palace that Madot took me into. The Black Family was here once. Madot said my great-grandfather visited here.”

“And your grandfather,” Kerde said. “The Throne rejected him.”

She was changing the subject. “You haven’t answered my question,” he said.

“It was not your family’s palace,” she said. “It belonged to a Black line now gone.”

“The Black King who went Blind?” he asked.

“You’ve heard of him?”

Gift made himself take a calming breath. “I was raised Fey.”

All Fey Visionaries knew the story. It was a cautionary tale in some ways, a warning in others. After the Fey started spreading away from the Ecrrasian Mountains, the Black King lost his Vision. He was a young man and had not yet fathered any children. He had false Visions, and led the Fey in circles. The Shaman tried to depose him, but there was no procedure for that. The Warders refused to develop new spells, and the Fey refused to follow him. They camped at the base of the Mountains for almost a generation while he followed his false Vision, then went Blind. With his Blindness came a deep despair, and gradually he lost his mind, memory by memory until he was little more than a child.

“After him,” said Kerde, “the Shaman and Warders tested the Visionaries—”

“I know,” Gift said. “They tested the Visionaries until they found one who could see beyond the next battle. She became the first Black Queen, the one whose family was slaughtered a hundred years later and introduced us all to the power of Blood against Blood.”

“After that,” Kerde said, “the remaining Shaman and Warders, the survivors, again tested the Visionaries, and this time, they found your family. You are not of the direct line, Gift. You are from a branch of a branch of a branch.”

“More than that,” someone said in the back.

He waited. His throat was dry. It had to be the incense. He resisted the urge to lick his lips.

“The Shaman and the Warders tested, Gift. In us lies the power of the future,” Kerde said.

“I see no Spell Warders here.” Gift knew that the Spell Warders were not welcome in Protectors Village. The Warders were the only Fey, besides Enchanters, who had the power to do all Fey magicks. Only with Warders, the power was very limited. It allowed them to test and develop new spells, but that was all. The nearest enclave of Warders was in Ghitlus, several days from the Village.

“You did not ask how we tested the Visionaries,” Kerde said as if he were a student in private lecture.

“It was never part of the story.”

“The parts left out are often the ones most important,” she said. She tilted her head slightly. “Warders used to live in the Village.”

“I thought they weren’t allowed here.”

“They aren’t, not any longer. They attempted to expand their own powers. They tried to make the Place of Power their own.”

He narrowed his eyes. He hadn’t heard that. “They failed.”

“The Mysteries caused them to fail. It is a story that we do not tell unless you have become a Shaman.” She ran a hand through her thin hair. “There are many such stories.”

“And how you test Visionaries is one of those stories?”

“You had a Vision when you touched the Throne, did you not?” she asked.

He was beginning to understand her answer to the question she wanted him to ask, the question about testing. “Several. You know that. I wanted to compare.”

“And so you shall, in a moment.” She glanced at the others. Perdom, the main historian, stood.

He was thinner than most, and almost as old as Kerde. He rarely spoke, but he listened often. The newest apprentices were assigned to him when they arrived in the village, and he made them spend their time talking about the history of their land, their people, their family. Gift spent an unusual amount of time with Perdom because he was the first from Blue Isle to come to the Eccrasian Mountains. Everything Gift knew about Blue Isle’s history—which wasn’t nearly as much as his sister knew—he told to Perdom.

“How many Visions?” Perdom’s voice was as thin as he was. It sounded like a voice that was rarely used. But Gift knew that sound was deceptive. When he wanted to, Perdom could make his voice reverberate around the Village, and fill it with the stories of old.

Gift shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“I don’t ask idly, boy.”

Gift swallowed, concentrated. “Seven,” he said at last. “But I’ve had more Visions than that at one time. And some of these were things I’ve Seen before, things that are not possible.”

“You do not know what is possible.”

“They involve the dead,” Gift said.

There was a momentary silence, then Perdom said, “Your mother is dead, is she not?”

“Yes,” Gift said.

“Yet you have seen her, and spoken to her.”