The Black Queen (Book 6) (51 page)

She glanced at the table across the room. She had brought some clay from the Isle and stone, in hopes of success. In her left hand, she held a stoppered glass jar, lined with blood she had taken from the store the Spell Warders kept. With the help of Red Caps, Warders maintained stores of magick supplies, including the blood of enemies, and blood tainted with old magick. She had lined the jar with both, knowing that blood attracted a wayward soul. She hoped it would do the same with a soul’s voice. The last time she had taken Rugad’s voice, she had done so with his permission. This time, she would have a fight on her hands.

“Hur-ry,” Sebastian said. “I…do…not…want…him…to…come …back.”

Sebastian had confirmed her earlier suspicions. Rugad had opened the Link between Sebastian and Arianna and was traveling back and forth. When Arianna had returned the last time, to tell Luke all she could, Rugad had been in Sebastian.

Soon, Seger knew, Rugad would become skilled enough to run both bodies at the same time. They were lucky that he wasn’t ready. If he had had another ten years, there would have been no defeating him.

She turned to Con. “Are you ready?”

He nodded. He clutched the sword so hard, his knuckles were white. His blue eyes were wide and frightened, but he didn’t move.

She admired that.

“Hur-ry,” Sebastian said again.

Seger nodded. “Remember to move quickly,” she said to Con. She didn’t want the voice to thread back through the stones.

“I will,” he said.

She put her hands on Sebastian’s cool skin. Thank the Powers that he was himself at the moment. She believed she would be able to tell if Rugad were inside him. She hoped. She and Coulter only had one chance at this, and if one of them failed, she didn’t know what they’d do.

She didn’t want to admit to herself that there might not be the possibility of success. The voice might be threaded too deeply within Sebastian’s stone, and the construct might have taken complete control of Arianna. If that were the case, both Seger and Coulter would be in trouble.

The entire world would be in trouble.

Rugad would go for the Triangle of Might, and nothing would be the same again.

Con stood, one hand clasping the hilt of his sword.

“Are you ready?” Seger asked Sebastian.

“Yes,” he said.

It all rested, ultimately, on Sebastian. He had to keep Rugad out, and he had to shatter at the right time.

“You’ll feel a tug,” Seger said. “The instant it becomes extreme is the moment you shatter.”

“What…if…Rugad…comes?”

She had already thought of this. “Shatter then and destroy your Link to Arianna.”

“Des-troy?” He sounded as if she had asked him to cut out his heart.

“Yes,” Seger said. “It’s critical. He needs to be trapped outside of you and Arianna.”

“He…will…use…me,” Sebastian said.

Seger shook her head. “If that happens, we won’t reassemble you until we find the construct.”

“And…if…you…do…not?”

She didn’t want to tell him what they would do. They would have to leave him disassembled forever. “I’ll leave that up to Arianna and Coulter. They’ll be able to handle the magick better than I will.”

“I…could…hold…him…and…shat-ter…a-gain.”

He could, she knew, if Rugad didn’t overtake him completely. But she had seen Rugad now, with a young man’s body and a young man’s strength, and the naked ambition still shining in his eyes. Sebastian had surprised Rugad years ago and gained advantage. She doubted Sebastian would surprise him again.

“If we reassemble you and he’s there, then that’s what you must do,” Seger said.

Sebastian nodded slowly. Con took a step closer.

“I think you want to stay back,” Seger said. “The shards could hurt you.”

“I’ll be all right,” Con said.

She met his gaze. He too cared about Sebastian, just as Arianna did. Amazing that a creature created out of stone could inspire such loyalty. Even she felt it, sometimes against her will.

Seger took a deep breath. She put the tips of the fingers on her right hand against Sebastian’s naked chest, and wrapped her left hand gently around his throat.

“Here goes,” she said.

TWENTY-NINE

THE VOICE was as familiar as her own, but Arianna couldn’t believe she was hearing it. Rugad was tormenting her, plucking her memories and playing them like strings. He had to be.

She was deep within herself, being held in place by a mental force beyond her capability. It felt—if feelings were the correct way to describe things that happened to a part of her that had no actual body—as if a giant hand were pressing on her, flattening her, keeping her in place. She had changed form countless times, from Fey to water to air, and still the pressure came.

Rugad was holding her back from inside the core of herself, using her own powers to contain her, and she had no idea how to fight him. He anticipated her every move, knew her every thought, and occasionally tortured her by giving her a small success and then quashing it.

An Islander who looks Fey
, Rugad said in both Islander and Fey. Arianna felt a jolt of surprise. That described Coulter’s vision of himself so perfectly. The first time she had seen him had been inside her own mind, when he had been perfect energy, represented as he imagined himself: a tall blond Islander boy with upswept eyes, high cheekbones, and pointed ears. She remembered thinking she had never seen anyone so handsome.

That thought hadn’t changed when she saw what he really looked like: short, blue-eyed, round-faced, and dear. So dear. He had left her after she had become Black Queen, promising to return one day, but he hadn’t come back, and she had been too proud to send for him.

Was he really here now?

He had to be. Rugad was still talking, and using a different tone than he had ever used with her. A mocking, challenging tone.

…It’s pathetic how much you want to be Fey. Is that why you’re in love with my great-granddaughter? Or is it because she’s the female version of my great-grandson, the one you’re Bound to?

My name is Coulter.

He was here. He was. He had come for her.

“Coulter!” she cried, but the hand pressed on her harder, making her words vanish.

She had to reach him somehow. He had to be able to find her. If he found her, together they could defeat Rugad.

“No, you can’t.”

It felt as if Rugad’s voice were a part of her. For a brief moment, she had forgotten that he could hear her thoughts. But he was speaking to her and Coulter at the same time. He had never done anything like that before.

“It takes 92 years of living before you can do anything like that,” he said, but the thoughts were still bleeding both ways. Rugad was lying. All it took was practice.

And misdirection. She had to get him to think of something else.

“Like your precious Enchanter?”

His words to her overlay the words he was speaking to Coulter.

You have come to save your precious Arianna. But it’s too late. I’ve already built my encampment here.

“But he’s not done!” she shouted.

“He can’t hear you,” Rugad said. “No one can hear you. Your voice is mine now.”

Her voice was his. And his hers? His power had to be less if he were dividing it between two places. She concentrated, tried to dislodge him, and felt her physical body shudder.

Rugad cursed her.

I shut the door to the Link,
he was saying to Coulter to try and cover the shudder,
and we’re both trapped in here.

She shoved on the hand, shoved with all of her strength. It moved slightly. She shoved again, and it moved some more.

She could hear Coulter speaking to Rugad, but couldn’t concentrate on the words. She needed to ooze out, needed to—

And then she realized what she had been doing wrong. If Rugad could divide himself, she could too. He had been lying about the time it took to learn these things. Lying.

The hand slammed her harder and she separated into two pieces. The hand moved through her, and she was on either side of it. She decided to put most of herself into the silent part of her, and to use the other part to distract Rugad.

“Coulter!” the smaller part of her shouted. “Coulter! I’m here.”

The hand caught that part of her, pushed it so hard she thought she was going to get squashed. She divided the silent part of her into two pieces and sent one toward the voices.

Where’s Arianna
? Coulter asked. She could sense him. Part of him was close to her, and it wasn’t the part that was speaking. Had he separated as well? She couldn’t see him and she didn’t want to risk shouting for him.

“Hiding from me will do you no good,” Rugad said to her. “You have nowhere to go.”

He couldn’t find her, and with other parts of her floating about and thinking as well, he wouldn’t know where to look. She still felt the hand on the smallest part of herself and she made that part scream. It became one long, drawn out, loud scream that hurt her own ears—all six of them.

Did you think I’d harm her
? Rugad was saying to Coulter.

You can’t harm her
, Coulter said.
If you did, she’d die and then you’d have no body.

Ah, Coulter. That was wrong. Rugad could kill her, and would as soon as he figured out how to resurrect his own Vision.

The sense of Coulter was even closer. She didn’t know how to measure distance in here, but it seemed as if he were around a corner, a corner she couldn’t see.

Her third self edged closer to the conversation. She saw the physical manifestation of Rugad standing with his feet apart, military style. Coulter—the one she had first seen, the Islander Fey, but so much older and sadder—was floating, his feet hovering just above the surface of her mind.

You couldn’t
. Coulter sounded panicked. What had Rugad said? She hadn’t been paying attention.
You’d do that blood thing
.

Rugad laughed.
Black Blood against Black Blood? It only refers to physical blood. It’s very literal. And you’ve even seen how the blood creates itself
.

Her second self was hurrying toward that corner, following the sense of Coulter. Her third self was gasping for non-existent air. You can scream forever, she reminded herself. Scream. The hand was crushing her, destroying her, but she wouldn’t allow herself to get pulled into that third self. Not when she was so close. Not when Rugad didn’t know where parts of her were. He was too distracted.

Coulter had provided her the first opportunity she had had since the headaches began. She had to make the most of this.

“Will you stop screaming?” Rugad’s voice, the one he was using with her, was coming from far away. How far had she come from her third self?

Instead of answering him, she screamed louder. There were no limits to the volume she could use on her voice, not here. She could deafen them all.

Even though Coulter didn’t seem to be hearing her.

You forget
, Rugad was saying to Coulter.
I am not an invader like you.

Arianna had almost reached that corner. The sense she had of Coulter was so strong she wanted to cry out. But she kept this part of herself silent.

I own her
.

Then she saw Coulter, a ghost of him, like an outline against the blackness of her mind. She had to touch him, so that she didn’t speak to him but so that he felt her.

Her second self saw Rugad stop speaking and look suddenly angry. Then he vanished. Coulter didn’t seem to notice.

She reached for Coulter’s ghost self, her fingers nearly touching him, when he too vanished. And then Coulter’s larger self, the one that had been talking to Rugad, disappeared as well.

The corridor she was in, blocked on all sides by Rugad’s walls, felt empty. The space where Rugad and Coulter were speaking felt empty as well.

All she could feel was that hand crushing her third self. And then that disappeared.

What was happening?

She coalesced into one self, felt in the remains of her mind, and saw them fighting at her Link doors. Coulter broke free, and locked his door. The door to Sebastian, the one Rugad had opened without her permission, was shut and locked.

She floated toward them, silently. They appeared to be talking. She separated a tiny part of herself and left it where the hand had been so that Rugad would look there first, he would find her, as he expected. She made that part lie down and feign defeat.

You have no Vision here
, Coulter was saying.
That magick belongs to Arianna, and you have no body of your own. You can’t appropriate her Sight
.

So he did understand at least parts of this. She made herself ghostlike, even more invisible than Coulter’s ghost self had been. Then she snuck behind Rugad, containing herself like a person trying not to breathe. She hoped that if he sensed her, he would think that the normal consequence of being inside her mind.