The Black Queen (Book 6) (23 page)

“Because,” she snapped, “he sent me back here to consult with the Powers about my behavior.”

“Did you?”

“Of course not,” she said. “That’s not how the relationship works. But Rugad claimed that his five Visions when he touched the Black Throne made him the most powerful Visionary in all the Fey. He believed that gave him a reason to discount my interpretations.”

Gift frowned. “Weren’t you to compare Visions?”

“They were often the same,” she said. “I believed they meant one thing, he another.”

“But he was the Leader of the Fey. Wasn’t it ultimately his decision?” Gift asked.

“You are as arrogant as he was,” Kerde said.

Gift stiffened. The Shaman who was tapping the lamps stopped on the next-to-last one and looked at Kerde with surprise.

“I was asking for clarification,” Gift said. “As you mentioned earlier, no one in my branch of the family received instruction from the previous Black Ruler.”

Kerde did not answer him. Apparently she still didn’t like having her opinion challenged.

The Shaman tapping the lamps finished the last one, and snuck around the back of the room to return to his seat. The souls in the lights were come to the glass for a moment, press their see-through hands against the barrier, watch, and then exchange places with another soul in the lamp, who would then light up and go through the entire process. Gift watched that as everything else went on around him, realizing that in all the years of his life, he had never seen the souls in the Fey lamps behave like that.

“Most Black Rulers,” Perdom said into the silence, “consulted and acted upon the advice they received from their Shaman.”

But Rugad hadn’t. And he had become the greatest warrior the Fey had ever known. Under his rule, the Fey conquered more territory than under the previous Black Rulers combined. Was that because the Shaman kept a clamp on the destruction? Limiting it, preventing too much, preventing precisely the revolt that Chadn, the Shaman he had known, had instigated?

Even though Gift thought about that, he said nothing. He didn’t want to give anything to Kerde. Considering the mood that she was in, she might remember who she was and stop this proceeding at any time.

“So no one has governed from the Black Throne itself in a thousand years,” Gift said.

“If they did before,” Perdom said. “Just because something exists doesn’t mean it is used in the way one would expect.”

He didn’t look at Gift as he said that last, and several of the souls in the lamps turned away as he spoke. The light in the room dimmed another notch.

A lie? Gift wasn’t sure. If so, why would Perdom lie? Did sitting on the actual Throne do something, change something? Did ruling from that Throne mean more than ruling from any other Throne? Was that why the Shaman protected it?

They protected the Place of Power from the very leaders they had chosen. They were afraid of something, something they weren’t telling him.

“All right,” he said. “Now tell me the legends.”

Madot stepped forward. She had said nothing so far. “Gift,” she said. “It would be best to discuss Visions and then have you leave this place.”

“Perhaps,” he said. “For you.”

Kerde shook her head and walked to the wall. She leaned on it like an apprentice, taking herself out of the conversation.

Perdom watched her. “No one can agree on the legends,” he finally said.

“So let me into the argument,” Gift said.

The other Shaman did not move. They were eerily silent. If it weren’t for their breathing, Gift wouldn’t have even known they were there. The apprentices, on the other hand, squirmed and shifted and one of them slid down the wall to sit on the floor.

Perdom cleared his throat. “The only legend of the Black Throne that has survived unchanged through all the centuries is this: when the first Fey found the Place of Power, she stumbled into what is now the Black Palace. The Throne rose from the floor, created itself for her, and beckoned her. She went to it, sat and was comfortable. Already changed by the Place of Power, she also gained the Throne’s darkness so that she could rule the Fey.”

“The Throne’s darkness?” Gift asked.

Perdom looked at the others, but no one moved to help him. He sighed. “This is where the disputes begin. The Fey quest for blood, some say—”

“Who?” Gift asked.

Perdom again looked at the others. Finally Xihu stood. She was one of the younger Shaman, her skin not as lined, her body a bit sturdier than most. She worked with a group of Shaman who studied the Place of Power. Gift had been warned, along with the other apprentices, not to approach those Shaman or question them about anything. He wasn’t even sure he had heard her speak.

“We believe,” she said, her throat husky, “that the Black Throne taints the magick from the Place of Power. There is a thirst for blood within the Throne itself, a thirst that becomes unquenchable in those of Black Blood. It is what leads what them to conquer. That is why Chadn was allowed to join your mother when she left Nye on the warships for Blue Isle. Chadn had seen a Vision, confirmed by others in my sect, that the next great Black Ruler would be born on that Isle, and that Black Ruler would be untainted by the Throne.”

Gift’s eyes narrowed.

“But,” Perdom said, “there are others who believe that once a bloodline has touched the Throne, it doesn’t matter how many generations are removed from it. They will all be influenced by the Throne itself.”

“So the Black Family has been corrupted by the Throne?” Gift asked. He clenched his fists so that his hands would not shake.

“About half of us believe that,” Madot said. “The rest do not. We believe that the Throne is a necessary part of the magick provided by the mountain, the Powers, and the Mysteries, just as the Place of Power is.”

“The belief we all hold in common is this,” Perdom said. “We would not be Fey without the Throne.”

“We would be like your pathetic people,” Kerde said from her wall. “Island-bound, denying our magick, living a life that—”

“You have never been to Blue Isle, and you have no idea what kind of life existed there before the Fey arrived.” Gift ran a hand through his dark hair. “Not even I know that. It’s lost to all of us. We have no idea if it’s better, worse, or simply different. I will wager that when we find the third Place of Power, the country that holds it will have completely different customs concerning its magick, no better and no worse than our own.”

“The third Place of Power,” Kerde said. “So you do intend to seek it.”

When she spoke that softly and with such bitterness, he realized he had made a mistake. He swallowed, and considered his words carefully before he spoke.

“I believe,” he said slowly, “that someday we will discover the Third Place of Power. I also will do everything I can to prevent that day from happening. I don’t believe we’re ready to view the Triangle of Might. I don’t believe we’re good enough people to have that kind of power.”

The souls in the lamps were coming forward again, their light getting brighter. Gift glanced at them. Finally, he couldn’t take it any longer.

“What are they doing?” he asked.

Xihu was the one who followed his gaze. “Most of them guarded the Place of Power, and begged to live in the lamps after their bodies moved on. Some of us think that those in the lamps—those who volunteer to go—will have a place in the hierarchy of the afterlife. So what you say here, what you do about the Place of Power—what we all decide—has a bearing on their future as well. Only they can no longer speak to that future. They can only trust us to do what is best for them. For all of us.”

The explanation made a shiver run down Gift’s back. He hadn’t expected that answer. He knew that the Islanders who had been placed in Fey lamps—murdered or newly dead and captured by Lamplighter Fey—sometimes did not know that their bodies had died. These Fey, these Shaman, knew it; they had a belief he did not understand, a sense of sacrifice alien to all that he had been taught by the Fey warriors who raised him.

He turned away from the lamps. “Tell me the other legends about the Throne.”

Perdom glanced at Xihu. She opened her palms as if to say that he was the one who could tell the stories; she would be the one to correct him. Perdom shook his head slightly, then turned to Gift.

“One of the legends,” Perdom said, “tells the story of a group of Shaman who tried to destroy the Throne after the Black Blood turned upon itself. They hit it with rocks, they got an powerful Enchanter to use all of his spells, they had the Warders devise method after method for destroying the Throne. But none succeeded. The stones broke, the spells were absorbed into the Throne itself, and many of the Warders died.”

Gift threaded his fingers together. He thought of the fountain in the Place of Power on Blue Isle. The fountain grew out of the rock and seemed to be completely indestructible. But the Throne had a different sense to it: It seemed more like the giant swords that now blocked the entrance to Blue Isle’s Place of Power. Each Place had symbols that were incorporated into the lives and the culture of the people who found the magickal cave.

“That is why,” Xihu said, “some believe the Throne is evil. It will kill to save itself.”

“As will most creatures,” Gift said.

Kerde made a soft sound of disgust from her place against the wall. She bowed her head as if Gift were not understanding what they were saying. He understood it; he just found the interpretation questionable.

Perhaps he was exhibiting the same arrogance that his great-grandfather had. Perhaps. But Gift’s experience was different than most people’s—Fey or Islander—and he knew some things that they did not. He knew that the symbols in Blue Isle’s Place of Power, the swords, were not as they appeared. If used correctly, they provided the focus for all magick—all of Blue Isle’s magick—and were quite powerful, and quite deadly.

But he had never thought of them as evil. Good or evil, those were choices made by the people who used the magick, not the magick itself.

“Have Shaman ever tried to sit on the Black Throne?”

Kerde’s eyes narrowed. The souls in the lamp above her looked down as if they were waiting for her response. Instead, Xihu said, “According to one legend, they did.”

“And?” Gift asked.

“They died.”

“They weren’t rejected?”

“A few,” said Perdom. “But a Shaman who sits in the Black Throne runs the risk of being absorbed into the Throne.”

“Like the souls in the Fey Lamp?” Gift asked.

“Only it seems—seemed,” Perdom blinked as he stumbled over the word, glanced quickly at Kerde, and then continued, “it seemed as if the Shaman who were absorbed into the Throne were in a lot of pain.”

“But they did it without the aid of someone like a Lamplighter, right?” Gift asked. Lamplighters collected the spirit of a person from the area in which it died, or they eased the movement from the body to the lamp. “There was no magickal intermediary.”

“None,” Xihu said. “And we have never developed any. Perhaps because the magick is painful.”

“The Fey have developed painful magick before,” Gift said.

“But not of a kind used on Fey,” Perdom said.

“Is there any reason you are defending the Throne?” Kerde’s voice sounded powerful. She raised her head. Her dark eyes were flashing in the light.

“Is there any reason you take offense at an alternate interpretation?” Gift asked.

“We tell you how it is. You question. You should believe us.”

“Maybe,” Gift said. “But you told me at the beginning of this meeting that you have been leading me on for five years. Why should I trust anything you say?”

“If that’s how you feel,” Madot said from her place near the other Shaman, “then why ask the questions?”

“Because I don’t want the magick to control us. I don’t believe in listening to Kerde’s pessimism. I believe that something about the Throne terrifies her, and because of that—and because she somehow failed my great-grandfather—she is unwilling to help the Fey or the Black Family.” Gift turned to Kerde. “Am I wrong?”

“Of course,” she said. “I have been around the Throne for centuries. You have just come here. You believe you know what is happening. You do not.”

“Then tell me,” he said. “Don’t make me pry the information out of you.”

Kerde rose slowly. The closer her thin hair got to the light, the more it seemed to glow. Her entire face had light on it, making her seem unreal somehow, as if she were something sent by the Powers instead of a living, breathing Shaman.

“The prophecies say the Black Family will reject the Black Throne. The Throne will then seek its new master, someone who will take it toward the Triangle of Might. Magick will guide us, instead of us guiding the magick.”

“You already told me that,” Gift said.

“The prophecies also say that the light the Throne sends, a band of light threaded in black, will revive all that should have been left dormant.”

“What does that mean?” Gift asked.

“We have had scholars debate the prophecies for generations,” Xihu said. “I believe—”

“We believe,” Perdom said.

“—that we will not know what the prophecies mean until they come true.”