The Rival (42 page)

The surface was cool and porous, almost like a hardened mist.  His fingers sank in partway, confirming his hopes.

This was a Black Family Shadowlands.  The Shaman hadn't tinkered at all.

Then he shoved his fingers deeper into the material, feeling it for the Links.  He found it and his body shook with Remembered Vision  —

Large thunderous cracks resounded through Shadowlands.  The ground was shaking.  Bits of the sky were falling, revealing a startling blueness above.  Fey were screaming.

Screaming.

The Warders cabin collapsed as the Warders ran outside.  The porch that he was standing on was coming apart.  Domestics poured out the door, running toward the Circle Door.

The buildings were collapsing.  The Domicile was one of the few that remained upright, but it wouldn't last long.  Already Fey were dying near the Circle Door.  Fey were dying under falling pieces of sky.  Fey were dying as they fell through the ground.

Shadowlands had to stay together.

He reached out with his mind and grabbed the corners of his world. He held them up with all the strength he could find.  His father was still shouting, people were still screaming, but the smacking thuds had stopped.

He closed his eyes and imagined Shadowlands as it was.  He rebuilt the holes in the walls, replaced pieces in the sky, and patched the chasms in the ground.  In his mind, he walked around and tested each part of the Shadowlands, making it stronger than it had ever been. 

The screaming stopped.

He opened his eyes.

There was carnage all around him.  People lying under slabs of gray matter, or large boards.  Bodies flattened.  Wounded moaning.  But the ground had stopped trembling.  The blue holes were gone from the sky, and a mist was rising.

It was his Shadowlands now.

 — His.

Rugad shook himself out of the Remembrance.  That had been a long time ago.  The hands he saw through the Remembered Vision were tiny, a child's hands.

Despite himself, excitement built.  His great-grandson had repaired Shadowlands when Rugar died.  No wonder it had the look of Rugar, but not the sense of him.

But it wasn't enough of Rugad's great-grandson's Shadowlands to have a sense of him as well. For that, Rugad would have to hunt the Links.

He removed his hand for a moment and flexed the fingers.  They were already sore from their contact with an unfamiliar Shadowlands.

The Foot Soldiers had left the small building in the center of Shadowlands, and many of the Infantry were gone.  Most of those who remained were Red Caps.  Two were still staggering under the weight of bodies.  A few were removing bodies from the rubble, charred bodies that obviously hadn't been rescued quickly enough to be useful.  The rest of the Caps were across Shadowlands from him, absorbed in their work. 

They weren't watching, which was good.  It was one thing to know that your Leader had Vision.  It was another to watch it.

He took a deep breath and shoved his finger back inside the wall.  This time, he kept his eyes open, but his vision turned inside.  The walls of Shadowlands had a dozen Links in them.  Most came from the care the place had received from other Fey, Domestics now dead.  Those Links were still bright, but their endings were gray, as if they were dying, slowly.

Then there was a black Link that ran all around Shadowlands, weaving through it like a thread.  The Link was flat and decayed, an empty husk of itself.

Rugar's Link, long dead, but not properly severed.  Apparently the boy, the great-grandson, had been too young.

A blue Link traveled through the middle of Shadowlands.  It was bright and strong and vibrant.  Rugad touched it ever so lightly with his index finger, and then jerked back.

The Shaman.

She was alive.

And she had built a protection around her ties to Shadowlands.  He couldn't get inside her Link.  He couldn't find her.

A fury ran through him, but he knew better than to try to beat a Protection.  She was supposed to have died. He had trained an entire team especially to kill her.  It took an elite squad to kill a Shaman, not because it was difficult, but because it was taboo.

They had failed.

But not because they lacked the courage to kill her.

They apparently hadn't found her yet.  She had known Rugad was coming.

And if she had known, his great-grandson had probably known.

He couldn't imagine what these Failures had told his great-grandson. That was, in fact, his greatest worry about the boy.  He wasn't certain if the boy could trust him, if the boy could work for any Fey goals because he had been raised among Failures.

It had been a trade-off, one Rugad had pondered long and hard.  But he had to trust his Visions, and his Visions told him to wait until the boy was through his childhood years.  And those Visions were slowly being confirmed, one by one, as the days on Blue Isle went on.

He still held the Vision of that valley and the subsequent victories before him like a beacon.  Blue Isle would be his.  Then he would find his great-grandson, and together they would go to Leut.  Together they would conquer the next few nations, and when Rugad was ready to retire, his great-grandson would go on to conquer the continent.

That last was a mere hope.  But he did see the boy, in his mind's eye, on a ship for Leut.  And he did see his own victory on Blue Isle.

Everything else was speculation.  He wasn't even certain if he had seen his own death yet.  Perhaps it hadn't been determined.  Perhaps the defining moment was still waiting to happen.

But none of this mattered if he didn't find the boy.  His grandsons couldn't rule, and there was no other family.

Except the other boy.

But an Islander, no matter what his blood line, couldn't run the Fey.  It took someone raised in Fey warrior traditions, someone with the battlefield in his heart.

Jewel had had that.

Her brothers had not.

Rugad took a deep breath.  Going through the last Link would be a risk.  He would find his great-grandson, but his great-grandson would also find him.  And he didn't know yet how well that would sit with the boy.

This time Rugad closed his eyes.  He didn't want the boy to see the devastation of Shadowlands, at least not yet.  He wanted to be able to explain it to him, to let him know how necessary it was.  He would let the boy know the true meaning of Failure before explaining how it got punished, and why it was not allowed.

Rugad stuck his fingers back in the wall.  The material seemed to have cooled even more.  A shudder ran through him.  The last Link was bright, golden, and laced through everything like stitches on a hastily mended shirt.  The Link vibrated with life.

Rugad touched it gently.  It hummed.  Then he thrust his consciousness into it and traveled along the Link, his mind sliding along the pathway as if it had been designed for him. 

He landed inside a mass of anguish and loss, the body exhausted with tears and grief.  The eyes opened onto a field and an Islander looking at it with some concern.

"Gift?" the Islander said, and in that moment, Rugad learned his great-grandson's name.

FORTY-FIVE

His whole body was shaking.  Gift stood next to Leen, letting her rage wash over him.  She had lost her family too, and if she had been in Shadowlands, she would have died.

Died.

Everyone he knew was dead.

Everyone.

Except Leen, Coulter, and Sebastian.

It had been like the time Shadowlands exploded.

Only this time, he couldn't stop it.  He hadn't even known it was happening.  Wasn't he a Visionary?  Shouldn't he have known?

Coulter was talking to Leen, calming the rage that Gift had let her build.  It didn't matter.  It would fester in her now.  He would get his revenge.

What he didn't like was the way Adrian was watching him, and the way that clean Red Cap was looking at him.  As if they expected something from him.  Something he didn't like.

The sun had risen.  The morning's warmth was burning off the dew.  Steam was rising from the ground, and the corn still glistened in the bright air.  Amazing how such an unspeakable thing could happen on such a gorgeous day.

He would never look at sunlight the same way again.

His mother was dead.  Both of his mothers.  His real mother died when he was three and now Niche …

He swallowed hard and rubbed the bridge of his nose.  He had saved Shadowlands to save her life.  His grandfather had beaten her up so badly, she hadn't been able to escape when Shadowlands shattered.  Rather than let her die, Gift had repaired Shadowlands.

But it had done no good.  Now his great-grandfather had shown up and instead of rewarding her for raising his great-grandson, he murdered her.

And Gift's adoptive father.

And all the others whom he had lived with his entire life.

Coulter was still talking to Leen, but he was watching Gift.  Gift turned.  It was time to get Coulter away from her.  He didn't understand, Coulter didn't, what it meant.  He didn't know the depth of Gift's anger, the things they had to fight.

Then he felt something, a tendril of something, as if someone had opened a door in a long empty room.  Breeze came in, stirring up dust.  Gift shuddered.

The feeling was inside him, and he didn't know where the door was.  He turned his attention inward.  Coulter came over to Gift, but Gift didn't look at him.

Then Gift felt another presence, whole and complete, crossing a Link Gift hadn't known he had.  A powerful presence, old and complex, and strong.  Stronger than Gift was.  Maybe stronger than he would ever be.

The presence shoved Gift aside and peered out of Gift's eyes.  Now  —  finally  —  Gift knew how Sebastian had felt all those years before Gift knew Sebastian existed, when Gift would come into Sebastian's body.

The presence stood where Gift usually stood, saw what Gift usually saw, felt what Gift usually felt.  Gift felt as if he were stuffed into a corner of his own body and held there by an unseen hand.

Dimly, he heard Coulter say, "Gift?"

But Gift's body didn't answer.  The presence filled it, startled and pleased at its discovery, studying the area around it.

Gift pushed at the presence, trying to move it aside, but it wouldn't budge.

The presence felt familiar and alien at the same time.  It was male, a man, an old presence, but it had a young Image.  In his youth, the man had looked like Gift, only with dark skin and dark eyes.  Dark, dark, dark.  There were choices inside this presence, choices that made Gift quake.  Son or granddaughter?  Mother or brother?

Gift didn't know what the questions meant, and he wasn't certain he wanted to find out.

All he knew was that he couldn't budge the presence.  It wouldn't move.

It wanted him.

Then a second presence appeared inside Gift.  It had traveled across a different Link, and this presence Gift recognized.  It was Coulter, bathed in white light.  Coulter saw the dark presence and wrapped it in light, then shoved it back through its Link and slammed the door.  Then Coulter moved through Gift's self, closing doors, locking them, and wrapping them with Coulter's light.

 — What are you doing? Gift asked.

 — Protecting you, Coulter said, and then he disappeared back down his Link. 

Gift stepped back into his own place within himself.  The dark presence had left a residue, but it wasn't of evil or threat as Gift had expected.

It was of curiosity and a longing that Gift couldn't identify.  Gift gathered the threads of the remaining presence and held them for a moment, feeling an odd sort of sympathy at the loneliness that fed them.

Then he dropped them as if they burned him.

That had been his great-grandfather.  The man who had killed his adoptive parents and all his friends.  The man who successfully destroyed Gift's home.

Gift kicked the threads and they disappeared into a darkness within him.  He never wanted to see them again.

Then he felt a hand on his shoulder.

He looked out of his own eyes, and felt himself come back to his body.  Coulter was holding his shoulder.  The Red Cap was standing in front of him and Leen was standing alone, arms crossed, a look of terror on her face.

"I said," Coulter asked slowly, "are you all right?"

Gift nodded.  He felt odd, not quite himself.  There was a residue of another person inside of him, and  …  emptiness.  When Coulter had put guards on Gift's interior doors, he had closed things that had never been closed before.

"Who was that?" Coulter asked.

"You don't know?" Gift was startled.  He thought Coulter would know everything.  He had, after all, touched the presence.

Coulter shook his head.  "I was too busy blocking you off."

"It was Rugad," the Red Cap said. 

Gift looked at the little man.  So did everyone else.  "How did you know?"

"I recognized him," the Red Cap said.  "No one else has that force in his personality.  No one."

Gift shuddered.  He had felt that, that presence so much stronger than his own. 

"So he found you," Adrian said.  "That was easy."

"But it won't be from now on," Coulter said.  "I shut him out."

"For good?" Gift asked.

"Let's hope so," Coulter said.

FORTY-SIX

Rugad slowly withdrew his hand from the wall of Shadowlands.  His fingers burned and his eyes ached, even though he hadn't used them at all.  The grayness of Shadowlands looked even duller after the brightness that had chased him out of his Link.  He was dizzy.  He sat on a pile of cut logs near the wall and rubbed his eyes with his uninjured fist.

He had never felt anything like that.  The force that had come into his great-grandson and literally chased Rugad out.  That force had not been part of his grandson.  Visionaries did not have light and binding abilities.  That had been an Enchanter.