The Rival (38 page)

"The Rocaan wishes to welcome you and to ask you the purpose of your visit."

"He could have done that himself from his balcony."  She looked up, and then she waved.

Reece looked up as well.  Titus stood on his balcony, Hume beside him.  The other balconies were empty.

"The circumstance is a bit unusual, ma'am," Reece said.  "We thought it best  — "

"To spare your Rocaan in case we decided to eat his messenger?"

A shiver ran down Reece's spine.  Another reference to food.  He didn't like this.

Reece swallowed before replying.  "It  —  is our custom, ma'am, to have any guest brought to the Rocaan."

The little Fey smiled.  "We are not any guests."

"Indeed," Reece said.  "We have never had a grouping quite like this one."

"I would think not." 

Another growl sounded from behind Onha.  This one made Reece's head come up in alarm.  He had never heard such a large sound from an animal before.

"Ah, the Bear Riders," Onha said, her voice as calm as it had been a moment before.  "They are so hard to control."

"Bear?" Reece asked, then wished he hadn't.

The little Fey's smile grew.  "That's right.  You have no large predators on Blue Isle, do you?"

"Predators?"  Reece was repeating after her, but he couldn't help himself.

"Predators," Onha said.  She leaned back, revealing small breasts. All the little Fey were nude.   "Bears.  Tigers. Lions.  Creatures whose prey includes man."

Another shiver ran through Reece.  He had to break out of this.  He wouldn't be helping the Tabernacle, the Isle, if he lost control now.  Even though the Fey were trying to make him do just that.

"The Rocaan will see you," Reece said, standing as straight as he could.  He let his voice rise just a little.  "But he would prefer to see you one at a time."

"He will see us, will he?" Onha said.  "Why do that when he can make a speech from his balcony?"

"It would be his last," a male voice growled behind Reece.

Reece drew in breath, held it, and slowly released it before responding.  "You came to see us," he said, feeling helpless. 

"No."  Onha took one hand off the dog's ruff and wiped her own hair out of her face.  "We did not come to see you."

"Then why are you here?"

"You are the famed Black Robes, are you not?" she asked.

Black Robes was the Fey's term for the Tabernacle.  It was a derogatory term, and one they had used from the beginning.  Reece did not answer.

"You are the ones so powerful that you can stop Fey."

"We have a truce," Reece said.  "We live together on the Isle now."

"You have a truce."  Onha's voice was mocking.  "A truce enforced by your magick water and our people's cowardice."

Reece held out his hands.  "I am unarmed.  I came to see you in good faith."

"Good faith.  Such a religious term," Onha said.  "Of course your faith is good, Black Robe.  You have controlled this situation from the beginning."

Reece licked his lips, then looked at all the animals. They were still watching him, their bodies perfectly still.  One of the large upright animals (bears?) had its snout open, its stubby teeth visible.

"If you were going to attack us, I assume you would do so the Fey way," Reece said.  "You would have done so with surprise.  So you want something else.  What is it?"

The dog sat down, its tail wrapping around its haunches.  The Fey on its back leaned forward, as if she had legs to slide along the dog's side, to make her balance even better.

"You assume incorrectly, Black Robe," she said.  "My orders were to wait until you noticed us and, failing that, to wait until midday when the Foot Soldiers were due to arrive."

Reece frowned.  He didn't understand.  Or maybe he was afraid he did.

"We're willing to talk with you.  The Rocaan will see you all," Reece said.  "I don't understand  — "

"You need to know what kills you, Black Robe," Onha said.  "You need to know that your puny powers are no match for the Black King."

"The Black King?"  Reece swallowed.  "But we have a truce."

"You have a truce with Failures," Onha said. 

The growling behind her grew.

The animals surged forward.

Reece had barely time to ask the Roca's forgiveness before he died.

FORTY

The screaming brought Adrian into the clearing.  Male screaming, low and pain-filled.  Adrian ran as quickly as he could, the Fey woman at his side, each thinking the opposite of the other: Adrian was afraid that Gift had finally attacked Coulter, and the Fey woman was obviously afraid that Coulter had hurt Gift.

But they both stopped when they reached Coulter's usual place.  Both young men were enveloped in light.  Gift had his hands around his head.  He was screaming, and Adrian could finally make out the words.

The Fey word for "no."

Coulter's face had an expression of complete panic.  His hands were moving quickly, weaving, mending, reforming the strings of light which bound them both together.  The strings were shattering.  Each time Coulter sent out a new one, it broke as if it were brittle.

"Stop it!" the Fey woman yelled.  She started forward, but Adrian grabbed her arm.  She shook at him.  "That Islander will kill him."

"Coulter saved his life once," Adrian said.  "He'll do it again if he has to."

She pulled her arm from Adrian's grip, but didn't try to go forward again. 

The two boys were locked in light.  The strings binding them glowed.  Each time the strings snapped, sparks would fly out of the circle and land on the ground around them.  The sparks left tiny burn marks in the grass.

"No!" Gift was screaming in Fey.

Coulter wasn't saying anything.  He was moving closer to Gift, repairing the strings as he went, creating new ones that would then snap.  Adrian's heart was pounding.  He had seen them both wrapped in light before  —  the day he and Coulter left Shadowlands.  Then Gift had cried "no" too, but years later, Coulter had told Adrian that Gift had done so because he hadn't wanted Coulter to leave.

Now something different was happening.

"We can't just let this continue," the woman said.

Adrian tightened the grip on her arm.  He had learned to trust Coulter despite his strange powers.  He knew that Coulter could handle this.

He had to.  Adrian certainly didn't have the skills to do so, and neither did the woman.  From the look of her, she was Infantry, too young to have come into her magick.

Coulter stepped closer to Gift, reached out, and grabbed his shoulder.  The light around them flared so brightly that Adrian and the woman covered their eyes.  Gift's screaming stopped.

All sound stopped.

Adrian uncovered his eyes, blinked and frowned.  Before him, someone had cut a hole in the air.  Through that hole, he could see the Cardidas river and Jahn on the other side, looking empty and abandoned.  The Tabernacle was barely within his sight, the white walls singed.  Coulter and Gift stood on a barge.  Coulter was pointing toward the Tabernacle, but Gift was looking straight ahead, at the bridge.

He looked frightened.

Then the image faded, as did all the lights.  Coulter was holding Gift, and Gift was sobbing.

"Did you see that?" the Fey woman asked.

Adrian nodded, not certain what to make of it.

"I don't like the looks of it," said a voice from behind him.  Adrian turned.  Scavenger stood there, with Luke at his side.  Scavenger was a Red Cap, the lowest of all Fey.  He was short, squat and the only thing that identified him as Fey were his dark skin, dark hair, and upswept features. 

Luke looked sheepish.  "He made me bring him here.  I know Coulter won't like it."

Adrian shrugged.  What Coulter did and didn't like was of no concern at the moment.  He was still tending Gift, who was trying to shove him away.

The Fey woman had her arms crossed.  "You're an Outsider," she said.

"I, my dear," Scavenger said, "am the original Outsider.  And you are too tall to be my friend."

"Don't judge on appearances," Luke said.  His relationship with Scavenger had somehow developed into this chiding warmth.  He wasn't really looking at Scavenger though.  He was looking at the Fey woman with interest.  He had never looked at any of the local women with interest.

Adrian didn't like that.  "You saw that image too?" he asked Scavenger.

"Open Vision," Scavenger said.  "It's an Open Vision.  They're extremely rare.  They occur with firm destinies, when the parties are tied together by an event of such importance the fate of the world rests on it."

"The world?" the Fey woman asked.  Her sarcasm grew.

"The world," Scavenger said.  He wasn't looking at her.  He was watching Coulter and Gift.  Gift had leaned into Coulter's embrace, and his entire body was shaking, as if he were sobbing.

"You Outsiders make the most interesting things up," she said.

"I'm not making this up," Scavenger said.  "You're a child, raised improperly.  You know nothing of Fey magick.  You probably won't even know when you come into your own powers."

"Scavenger," Adrian warned.  He wasn't certain he wanted to anger this young woman.

"You are just a deformed Red Cap," the woman said.  "It doesn't matter how clean you are.  The stink of your pitiful life follows you everywhere."

Adrian tightened his grip on her arm.  "He's my friend," Adrian said.  "You'll not say such things to him on my land."

"Oh, let her," Scavenger said. "It's no worse than what they'd say behind my back.  That's why I left you people, because of the way you treat us."

Gift was sitting up now, wiping his face with the back of his hand.

"You didn't tell me that Coulter was bound to the Black King's great-grandson," Scavenger said to Adrian, voice low.  "You never told me."

"I didn't see how it would matter."

"It matters," Scavenger's voice was low.  "That's a powerful binding.  It's a life binding.  One of them would not be alive without the other."

"Coulter saved Gift's life."

Scavenger closed his eyes. 

The Fey woman wrenched her arm from Adrian.  "Why do you listen to him?  Red Caps don't know anything."

"People who deny other people's knowledge often don't know anything either," Adrian said.

"Pa," Luke said.  "She's entitled to her opinion."

"It's not based on fact," Adrian said.  "Scavenger made a study of Fey magicks to see why he didn't have any.  He probably knows more about them than most magickal Fey.  I listen to him, and more than once, his knowledge has saved my life."

Gift was wiping his face with the back of his hand.  His skin was ashen, and he was shaking.  Coulter was speaking softly to him.  Adrian couldn't make out the words.

"I don't like this," Scavenger said.  "A life binding and an Open Vision."

"It can't be all that bad," Luke said.

Scavenger frowned at him.  "You have no idea what bad really is," he said.  "The Fey were easy on Blue Isle.  You should have seen what happened to the Nyeians." 

He shuddered.  He had been in the position to know, of course.  He'd been the one to dispose of the bodies.

"Things change," the woman said.

"Who
are
you?" Scavenger asked.

"My name is Leen," she said.

"Born to whom?"

"Dello and Frill," she said.

Scavenger rolled his eyes.  "A Domestic and a Spy.  What hope have you of real magick?"

Leen opened her mouth, but at the moment, Coulter said, "Adrian, could you come here?  Alone?"

Adrian put a hand on Scavenger's shoulder, hoping that would calm him for a moment, then went to Coulter.  Coulter's eyes had deep circles under them, and his mouth was pinched together.  He looked as if he had aged years in a matter of moments.

Coulter waved him down.  Adrian sat in the dew-damp grass. 

"You can trust him," Coulter said to Gift.

Gift's eyes, which had been clear a few moments before, were clouded and red with tears.  His lower lip trembled.  "I — can't," he said.

Coulter nodded.  "Mind if I do?"

Gift shook his head.  He averted his gaze from Adrian's.  The power of Gift's emotions filled the air.  Adrian could almost see them.  He had never felt turmoil that strong, not even in himself.

"Shadowlands is gone," Coulter said.

"What?" Adrian asked.  Shadowlands was tied to its maker.  Gift had reconstructed Shadowlands after Rugar's death caused it to explode.  Coulter had once said it would work the same in reverse.  If the Shadowlands were destroyed, its maker would be too.  Adrian glanced at Gift, who, aside from his gray features, looked fine.  "How is that possible?"

"The walls are still standing," Coulter said.  "But everyone inside is dead."

"Everyone?" Adrian felt as if the bottom of his stomach had fallen out.  He had lived there for a long time and, although he had made few friends, he had known the Fey who lived inside.

It was Gift who answered him.  "Everyone," he said.  "My parents, too."

By that, he meant his adoptive parents, Niche and Wind.  They had raised him from his fifth day of life.  No wonder he had gone so crazy.  No wonder he was barely hanging on.

Without thinking, Adrian took Gift's hand.  He knew what it was like to lose family.  He had lost a lot during the invasion, and then he had lost Luke for several years.

Gift looked down at the touch, but didn't take his hand away.  "I should have been there," he said.

Adrian ignored that.  If Gift had been there, he would have died.  "What happened?" he asked.

"The Black King," Coulter said. "He decided to get rid of the Fey first."

Adrian shook his head.  Even after decades of knowing them, he found the Fey a mystery.  "Why?  Wouldn't they  — ?"

"Failures," Gift said, his voice thick.  "He considered them Failures.  He could have come in  —  they thought he was going to come in  —  and use them as an advance team.  But I guess he didn't want any of their help.  I guess he didn't think they were worth saving.  I guess … "

His voice broke on the last word and then he rubbed his hand with his face.  "They're dead," he said.  "And I was sworn to protect them."