The Black Queen (Book 6) (32 page)

He swallowed. “You didn’t want me to touch the Throne.”

The finger beneath his chin slid into a caress. “It’s voracious, Gift. It triggers dark magick. It will devour all that is good about the Fey, all that is good about the world.”

“Why didn’t it devour me?”

Her smile was small. “It tried. But you have your father within you. His strength. And he has none of the blackness that I brought to you. You are the first member of my family to resist the Throne. I’m proud of that.”

“I hear some reservations, though,” Gift said.

She nodded. “It couldn’t take you, and Arianna has the same strengths you do. So it released a Searchlight.”

“Which is what caught me? That light?”

“Yes,” she said. “It sought dark magick, or black blood that would fulfill the Throne’s mandate. It wants the Triangle, and then the world.”

“The Throne is a thing,” Gift said. “It can’t control the world.”

Her gaze flattened as if he had failed an important test. “It can control the person who controls the world,” she said. “That is the same thing.”

“But you already said it cannot control Arianna.”

“Not as she is,” his mother said. “But she is becoming what it needs.”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

His mother let her hand fall. Lines formed in the corner of her mouth. “She has been infected with dark magick.” She looked down the stairs, toward the burbling water. “And there is the possibility that you have too.”

“Possibility?” Gift asked. “You mean you don’t know?”

His mother shook her head. “Some things are hidden from me.”

“Why?”

She sighed, ran her hands along her face, then bowed her head. For a long moment, she didn’t answer him. It was as if she were trying to think of the proper way to respond. Finally she shook her head slightly as if rejecting the very thought she’d had, and then she said, “There are factions in the Powers. Some believe that the Throne will do what it will; others believe the light will prevail. They forbid the Mysteries from interfering in this battle. The Powers prefer to watch, to see how this all will unfold. Because they cannot agree, they prefer to let events take their course.”

Gift’s hands felt moist. He rubbed them on his robe. “Do the Powers usually interfere that much?”

“They guide,” she said. “They let us provide Visions and Warnings and they have their favorites. Sometimes they allow things to happen that shouldn’t, and sometimes they throw something new into the mix just to see what it will change.”

“You seem like you don’t approve.”

She shrugged. “I’m a lowly Mystery. I take myself out of the politics most of the time. There isn’t much I can do to change the Powers. So I enjoy what’s been given me, and I survive as best I can.”

“But you disobeyed them,” Gift said. “You tried to Warn me when I approached the Throne.”

“I should have been able to Warn you,” Jewel said. “The Black Palace is in this Place of Power. You should have been able to see me. The Powers blocked it. They let you make your choice.”

“And I chose wrong.”

She turned, her dark eyes flashing. “You let a Shaman trick you,” she said, and there was fire behind her words. “You, a Black Heir, let a Shaman treat you as if you were nothing, and you allowed it.”

“I was trying to become a Shaman.”

“That is a lowly aspiration for a man like you.”

“Is it?” Gift asked. “The Shaman control the Places of Power.”

“Do they?” Jewel asked. “They share the same skills as Visionaries.”

“They have other skills.”

“They have developed and trained the other skills. There is nothing to say that someone else with Vision can’t use the Places of Power. Your father, a man who lacks Vision, managed to use his to save Blue Isle.”

Gift hadn’t thought of that. He had been raised within the Fey traditions, and apparently he hadn’t thought outside of them. He shook his head slightly, frowned, felt the discomfort that an idea like that placed in him.

His parents had defied convention in so many ways: through their agreement, their marriage, their children. Gift had been raised by Wisps who believed in following rules and not asking questions. His grandfather, a man who had made the rules, had seemed terrifying, and his great-grandfather, a man who embodied the rules, even more so. Gift never thought of questioning them, never thought of defying the rules.

The only time he had ever disobeyed something important had been with the encouragement of his father. Gift hadn’t wanted the Black Throne. He hadn’t wanted to rule. And Arianna was better suited to it. No one seemed to care that she rule as long as Gift didn’t care. It didn’t feel so much like defiance as the right thing to do.

And the other right thing, it seemed, was to become a Shaman. The Shaman ran the Place of Power, and on Blue Isle, the Place of Power had once been controlled by the religious. It seemed the same thing to him. Now that both were in the Fey Empire, it seemed logical that the Shaman would control them, and what better place for him to be than among the Shaman?

“You have seen the Shaman now,” his mother said. “You know what they are. They have failings like the rest of us. You cannot let your memories of one guide your actions toward another.”

He nodded, but he wasn’t really listening, not to that part. He had already learned that. He had learned it all too well, in fact, and probably at great cost.

“You said something is happening to Ari.” He used his sister’s nickname on purpose, hoping that Pelô wouldn’t catch it, and even if he did, that he wouldn’t understand it.

Gift’s mother stood. She was wringing her hands together and her dark hair had turned half-silver. She looked as she would have looked now if she had lived: a woman in her fifties who had been through a lot.

She opened her mouth, faded until she was nearly invisible, and then reformed, her fist clenched. “This is what I cannot say. I am forbidden to say.”

Her voice sounded strangled.

Gift watched her. “It has something to do with the Searchlight I released from the Black Throne?”

“You did not release it,” his mother said. “It left after you rejected the Throne. You cannot take responsibility for that. It would have happened one day no matter what. You or your sister would have had the same reaction. The question was only in the timing.”

“What’s it doing?” Gift asked.

“I told you all I can,” his mother said.

“But what should I do?”

She crouched beside him. The web of fine lines on her face made her seem wiser than she ever had. And sadder. “Guard your Place of Power,” she said. And then she touched his face. “And make an heir to the Throne—both thrones—as quickly as you can. Bring a child untouched by the past into this mix. It is the only way.”

“What about going to Jahn?” he asked, a quick glance at Pelô to see if he was listening. Pelô stood in the same position beside the mouth. Gift couldn’t tell if he was listening or not.

His mother caught that glance, seemed to understand Gift’s caution. “I fear for you if you go there,” she said. “Sometimes dark magick triggers other dark magick.”

“But Ari needs my support,” Gift said.

“It will take you months to reach her.” His mother’s voice was sad. “And by then she will be gone.”

“Dead?” Gift asked.

His mother’s gaze met his. “I chose my words carefully, Gift. I have to now.”

He felt cold, despite the warmth of the stone floor. “So you’re saying that I should avoid the palace? But if I do, and something happens, who will have the Throne?”

At that, Pelô did turn. Gift’s mother sighed. She kissed Gift lightly on the head, and then held his cheeks with her hands. “I cannot tell you any more. I have to go.”

“But if Ari’s gone,” Gift said, “then who—?”

His mother put a finger against his lips. “All I can tell you is this: You must be vigilant. You must do all you can to avoid Blood against Blood.”

Then she pulled him up and hugged him. He hugged her back, startled, as always at her solidness. She seemed like a living person to him, even though others couldn’t see her. Even though to everyone else except Gift’s father and Matthias, she was dead.

“Remember the children, Gift,” she said. “They are your future.”

And then she disappeared.

He staggered forward, hating that. He had always hated that, the way she could just vanish as if she had never been. It made him feel as alone as he had before he met her, before he realized that he was special to someone.

Pelô watched him as if Gift had suddenly lost his mind. Gift stopped moving and forced himself to sit. Pelô wouldn’t know that she was gone. He would think Gift was still conferring with her.

And Gift needed time to recover. His mother had said many things he didn’t completely understand—dark magick, rules among the Powers—but the one thing he had understood chilled him completely.

Arianna was in trouble. By the time he got back, she might be gone. Not dead, necessarily. Gone. The distinction chilled him and his mother’s concern for the future chilled him as well. It was as if she had already given up on Gift and Arianna. Something had tainted them, something had made them unworthy of his parents’ goals, and the only way to set everything right was to have children, new heirs.

That would take a minimum of fifteen years, probably more. Did that mean he gave up on his sister until then?

Guard Blue Isle’s Place of Power, his mother had said, and avoid Arianna. Dark magick might be catching. But he might already have it.

He had to leave, just as he had realized earlier. He had to leave, but he wasn’t sure where he would go. Home. That much was certain. He would return to the Isle. But he wanted to go to Arianna’s side, and his mother said that was the worst thing he could do.

He ran a hand through his hair. Of the seven Visions he had had when he touched the Black Throne, three had been of his sister. And they had run in a progression. If he closed his eyes, he could still See them:

Arianna was standing before the Black Throne, looking at it with such longing that it frightened him. He wanted to warn her, to tell her to stand back, but it was almost as if he didn’t recognize her or the look on her face. He took a step toward her—

Arianna, her face gone as if someone had drawn it and then wiped it away, calling his name—

Arianna, screaming—

How could he abandon her to that, no matter what the risk? He shivered once, felt a coldness run through him that had more to do with the future than with anything else. His future. His choices had just narrowed. Some of the dreams he’d had for himself, he had to now put away. He needed to do things that were right for generations to come.

He had to assume the mantle of a leadership he didn’t want, a leadership he might not take, but one he had to protect at all costs. He had tried to run away from it, he had refused it, and still it kept coming to him. His mother had said this was inevitable, and he was beginning to realize that she was right.

Sometimes choice was an illusion. Sometimes it was a dangerous illusion, one that other people could take advantage of, one that could keep a man blind to the realities around him.

He bowed his head. His eyes were open now, his future set. He could accept it, fight it, or make the best of it.

And all the while he would hope that his mother was wrong.

SIXTEEN

BREAKFAST WAS two slices of yesterday’s bread, a bit of cheese left over from the wheel his mother had bought a month before, and some root tea. Matt ate it slowly, feeling conspicuously alone at the table. His mother was still asleep, sprawled across the bed as if she had fallen there in exhaustion, her clothes and boots still on.

Alex hadn’t come home last night, just as he hadn’t come home either of the two nights before that. He had said he was with their father, but Matt wasn’t sure that was all Alex was doing. Alex wasn’t saying how he spent his days.

He wasn’t saying much to Matt at all any more.

Matt broke off a hunk of bread, and ate it, letting its heavy texture fill his mouth. His family had been precarious for a long time, but he didn’t know how it had managed to fall apart so badly in the last week. No matter what he did, no matter what he said, Alex would no longer talk to him. Sometimes Alex looked at him with cold eyes, as if Matt had been the one who had done something wrong.

All Matt had done was try to help them both.

Coulter, at least, provided warmth and help. Coulter was beginning to explain the types of magick that the Islanders and the Fey knew about, and in that explanation, Matt had learned some important things.

He had learned that magick drains its user. He had learned that magick always exacts a price. He also learned that someone who had an abundance of magick must use his powers to benefit those who have none.

Those were rules he could understand. They made sense. But the one he did not understand, the one that frightened him, was the one that Scavenger believed Matt should have been thrilled about.