He nearly had. The Fey had attacked him in the river, in the Cardidas, and as he sank, blood pooling around him, he had heard a voice.
A voice of one of the Fey he had killed.
You have a great magick, holy man.
A great magick. Those words had echoed in his head for fifteen years, terrifying him. Yet he could not forget them. They often came to him, unbidden, as if the Fey he had killed had somehow put those words inside his head.
Matthias had once spoken to his predecessor, the Fiftieth Rocaan, about the beliefs of the Wise Ones, here in Constant — The ones who believed Matthias to be demon-spawn, who said that tall people from Constant had to die because of their special powers. The Fiftieth Rocaan, the man Matthias succeeded, said such powers came from God. Matthias wanted to believe that, just as he wanted to believe in God. But if God existed, He existed in distant form.
The more Matthias studied, the more he realized that God had given man the tools and then backed away. The secret was finding the tools and using them properly.
"Ye seem far away," Marly said.
"Just thinking," Matthias said. He put a hand on her for balance. She let him. She was a tall woman, and her reddish hair showed her Cliffs of Blood origin as clearly as her height. Her features were small and delicate, her eyes a sharp green that saw too much.
She had become dear to him in the short time he had known her. He tried to tell himself that was because she had healed him, tended him, touched him. No one had treated him with such kindness in a long, long time.
He told himself that, but he didn't completely believe it.
He would have smiled at her, but the memory of pain from the last time he had smiled stopped him. Instead he caressed her cheek with his free hand.
"Shall we go in?" he asked.
She leaned into his touch. "Aye," she said. "Tis na much we can do out here."
"Yet," he said, then glanced at the mountains. He had come home for a reason, a reason deeper than the simple one of owning a house here.
The mountains had brought him back. He had answered their call, and he would learn why soon.
He could feel it.
THREE
Gift stood beside Leen in the center of Constant, clutching several gold coins in his hand. The city, if it could be called that, was tucked against the mountains. From a distance, it looked as if it were part of those mountains. The buildings were small and rounded, built from the same gray rock that littered the mountain's base. It was the roads that gave the city away. They were brown and straight, and they looked man-made.
The buildings were dwellings mostly, although there was a large town gathering place near the base of the mountains. There were a few businesses, a smithy, several mining companies — most closed now — and the ubiquitous kirk. This one seemed small and unused, but it still filled Gift with dread.
The entire place made him nervous. He hadn't felt like himself since he had seen the tall peaks of the Cliffs of Blood. Something shimmered in the center of one of the mountains, and when it did, he could feel it, as if the shimmer happened inside him.
No one else seemed to feel it. He had asked Leen on the way to the city if she thought the mountains were odd, and she had looked at him as if he were.
Still, he had welcomed the chance to come into the city, to get out of the mountains, to see if the feeling he had made it all the way to the valley floor. It lessened a bit, but he didn't know if that was because his nervousness had risen.
The coins bit into his palm. He hadn't come into the city before. The others had: Coulter, Adrian, and even Scavenger. But Coulter and Adrian were Islanders. They were short and blond and looked like they belonged. Scavenger too was accepted here. His Fey features seemed to mean nothing. And his magickless, unclean status, the fact that he was a Red Cap, clearly meant nothing at all.
These people had never seen Fey before. None of the first Fey invasion force had traveled this far on the Isle. Rugad's second invasion force hadn't made it this far either.
But it was only a matter of time.
Gift shuddered, an involuntary movement he made each time he thought of his great-grandfather. His great-grandfather had invaded Gift's head less than a week before. He had traveled along the Link Gift had with Shadowlands, and he had arrived inside Gift, shoving Gift aside and looking out his eyes.
Each person was Linked through invisible threads to each person he loved, to each thing he created. Visionaries and Enchanters could see the Links, and their consciousness could travel across those Links.
Gift understood the procedure. He had traveled the Link between himself and Sebastian, shoving Sebastian aside countless times before he realizing that within that stone changeling body was a personality, one that felt and loved and thought just as clearly as Gift had. After that, Gift traveled the Link to talk with Sebastian. They hid in a corner of that stone body and shared information, shared lives. It was the only way Gift had ever seen his father, the first way that Gift had seen his sister, Arianna. And whenever he thought of them, he felt an echo of Sebastian's feelings, an echo of Sebastian's love.
Sebastian. Gift closed his eyes. Sebastian was dead. Gift felt as if a part of his own self had died with him.
Leen stirred beside him. She still acted as his bodyguard, even though their positions were equal now. Their families were dead — his adopted parents and her real ones — along with the rest of the Fey in Shadowlands. The Black King, Gift's great-grandfather, had killed them.
His great-grandfather had a lot to pay for.
But Gift couldn't be the one to exact the vengeance.
That would be Black Blood against Black Blood.
Stout people walked past them, their reddish blond hair reflecting the color of the sky above the mountains. It was just dawn, even though the sun hadn't come over the cliffs, and the city was bathed in a red-gold light.
He had never seen mornings like this before. But he hadn't been outside much until now. As a Fey from Shadowlands, his only sojourns outside were through the Links, to Sebastian.
His heart spasmed. The deaths of his parents and all the others he had known since childhood on had, after the initial shock, numbed him. But the death of Sebastian was a raw wound, as if someone had taken a part of himself and shattered it.
"I don't see any market," Leen said. She stood as close to him as she dared, her long black braid trailing down her back, her clothes travel-stained but brushed clean of dirt. She wore an Infantry uniform, even though it no longer applied. She was no more part of the Fey army than he was. The only difference between them now was that he had come into his magick — indeed, he had had it since he was young — and she hadn't.
"Adrian said it was in the center of town," Gift said.
"Whereever that is," she said. She looked around, and Gift did too. People flowed around them as if they weren't there. Every once in a while, someone would glance at them and then look away, as if they were seeing something forbidden.
No one spoke to them. No one even tried.
But then, Gift hadn't tried either.
"We could ask," he said.
She sighed. "I doubt most of these people would help us."
She was right. The people who passed them went out of their way to avoid being on the same side of the street. Ever since Gift and Leen had stopped, the people going by had given them sideways glances and had whispered with something like fear.
Adrian had warned Gift about this. Islanders, particularly Islanders from the north, didn't like tall people. That was why Adrian, Coulter, and Scavenger had done most of their dealings with townsfolk. At first, Coulter had spelled everyone so that even the Fey looked like Islanders, but that hadn't worked long. The spells didn't affect things like height, and they had taxed Coulter's waning strength. All the magick he had used in the last ten days had left him pale and thin, his eyes empty and his features gaunt.
If Gift weren't so angry at him, he would have felt some compassion. But Coulter h
adn't understood the troubles he'd caused. Or if he had, he hadn't cared.
"Adrian and Coulter should have come down," Leen said, echoing Gift's thoughts.
"They couldn't," he said. "By the time they're done in the quarry, the market will be closed."
Adrian, Coulter, and Scavenger had gotten pickup work in a nearby rock quarry. The work went to whomever showed up each day. They had worked there for the last two, and had received the coins that Gift now held in his hand. Gift and Leen had tried to apply as well, but were turned away at the gate.
They needed the money and the legitimate work because they planned to stay in this area until Coulter got his strength back. Adrian thought they might have to stay longer. He felt that this was the best place to hide Gift until they had a real plan. Gift didn't want to wait too long. The mountain made him nervous, but it was more than that. Each day that went by was a day that his great-grandfather solidified his position on the Isle. The Isle was Gift's home; and he didn't want that murderer in charge.
Still, they all seemed to assume that Scavenger's plan was best. Scavenger wanted to hide Gift until they could make Gift the equal of the Black King — the equal of a man who had ruled the Fey for generations and who killed without a qualm. Gift wasn't sure he could ever be like that.
Leen had moved down the street and peered between two of the buildings. The sun had risen higher, cresting the edge of the mountains and increasing the light.
"Hey," she said, "I think I've found it."
Gift took a deep breath. He had felt nervous standing still like that. Adrian and Scavenger had determined that the Blooders, as the people from this area called themselves, had no prejudices against Fey, didn't really care if the Fey were among them or not. They wouldn't try, as other Islanders might, to kill Fey in their midst. At worst, they ignored the differences.
Except height.
Gift would see how far that prejudice extended on this day.
He crossed the road and stopped at her side. The alley between the buildings here was paved with the same stone the buildings were made of. On the other side of the buildings, the stone continued, forming a flat plaza. On the plaza, several booths were built in. More stone. Behind those booths were people, laying out wares and talking with each other. Women, carrying baskets, were already making their way through the stalls, picking up fruits and vegetables and then setting them down again, or purchasing them with the same sort of coin that Gift held.
"Let's go," he said to Leen.
They made their way through the alley, and into the market itself. The conversations halted as they approached. Gift felt a flush warm his skin.
"We just came to buy food," he said.
Three women clenched fists at him. Another merchant did the same.
"Away with ye, demon-spawn," said a man near the front.
Gift held up a coin. "We can pay," he said.
"We dasn't take the money of demons," another man said.
And they came down from the mountaintops, said an elderly woman, obviously quoting something, with their gold and their beauty and their winning ways. 'We only want to buy,' they said, and came forward. When a merchant took the coin, his soul left through his eyes, hovering between them, before vanishing into the strangers' mouths.
She clenched her fists at him. "Begone, demon-spawn."
Gift was confused. He'd never heard anything like that before. "I'm not from here," he said. "Please. My friend and I would like to buy food.
The Blooders crowded forward, raising their fists one by one. Their eyes glittered with fear. Leen took his arm.
"It's no use, Gift," she said. "Let's go."
"I don't understand," he said. "It's money, same as what you pay. I'm no demon-spawn."
"The tall ones have returned," the elderly woman said, "just as the legends said they would."
"Begone," the crowd chanted together. "Begone."
"Gift," Leen said, tugging on him.
The hair had risen on the back of his neck. These people had no weapons and no obvious magick, and yet they had a collective energy that felt like magick. But he wouldn't show fear. He couldn't. Not now. It would give them too much power.
"I'm sorry," he said, wondering at the vehemence, at the strength behind their fear. "I am not from your mountains. I do not mean you harm."
Begone, they said again, moving closer.
He let Leen pull him into the alley. They walked backwards until they reached the dirt street, and then they turned and ran.
It wasn't until they reached the outskirts of town that they stopped. Gift was breathing hard. The fear that they had aroused in him had made little goosebumps on his arms. Leen had gone gray.
"That was a Chant," she said. "We were Compelled. Me more than you. But we were still Compelled."
Gift frowned at her. They had stopped over a small rise. The city lay below them, the stone houses glistening in the early morning sunshine.
"Impossible," he said. "They're Islanders."
"So is Coulter," Leen said. She shivered, visibly. "Maybe he isn't as unusual as we thought."
Gift looked down at the city. His people would have known. The Fey would have known if there was other magick on Blue Isle, more magick than the wild magick that had created him, his sister, and Coulter. They would have known.
They would have known and they would have told him.
Wouldn't they?
But no Fey had ever been here before. In this place, where the mountains shimmered and were the color of blood.
What had kept his grandfather away?
What had kept his great-grandfather away?
Distance?
Or something else, something less visible?
Like a barrier.
Like a Chant.
FOUR
A moan woke Nicholas. He turned on his side and looked at his daughter. Her hair was tangled around her face, one arm flung above her head. She was too thin, and she had deep shadows under her eyes, despite the four days of rest.
The cave was surprisingly warm. Sometime during the night he had kicked off his blankets. The fire that the Shaman tended still burned at the mouth of the cave, but she was gone. Outside, a thin golden light let him know that it was nearly dawn.
He thought he heard the moan again, but Arianna hadn't moved. He was worried about her. The Shaman said her exhaustion came from Shifting too many times in such a short period, but Nicholas wondered if it weren't more.
If it weren't the loss of her home, her city, and her beloved Sebastian.
Sebastian wasn't really her brother — something Nicholas had learned only two weeks before. He was a changeling, left by Jewel's father when he stole Nicholas's real son, Gift. Gift had been raised by the Fey, and Nicholas had raised what he thought was a child — a slow, sweet-tempered boy — who in fact turned out to be made of stone.
That stone had shattered a week ago, when Sebastian had protected Nicholas from the swords of the Black King's guards. Sebastian had exploded in a blaze of light. His loss had hurt Nicholas, but it had devastated Arianna.
She had loved him above all else.
But if the moan hadn't come from Arianna, then it had come from outside.
From the Shaman.
Nicholas stood, and wiped the sleep from his eyes. The Shaman had continually surprised him, taking his side against the Fey not once but a number of times. She had saved Arianna's life when Jewel died in childbirth, and she had given him advice when no one else would. Sometimes, it seemed, she was the only one who still believed in the vision that he and Jewel had shared: that in combining their people, the Islanders and the Fey, they would be able to defeat the Black King and to leave Blue Isle intact.
But Blue Isle was no longer intact. Its king lived in a cave. Its major city had burned, and many of its people were dead. The Black King lived in the palace now, but he was not well. Nicholas had nearly killed him during their one and only meeting.
And lost Sebastian in the process.
When he reached the outside of the cave, he saw that the Shaman was sitting on her favorite rock. If she had had trouble a moment before, he couldn't see evidence of it now.
Except.
Except the snow was churned up near her feet.
Had she had another Vision? If so, she would tell him when the time came.
He had come to trust that too.
He pulled on his boots, and set Arianna's near her when she awoke. She had a Shape-Shifter's abhorrence of all things binding: shoes, clothing, rules. He often found that exasperating, especially these last few days, when he had been so worried about her health.
She still didn't stir, but her chest rose up and down as she breathed heavily in sleep. He didn't want to disturb her. Not yet. Besides, he had made some decisions, and he wanted to discuss them with the Shaman before Arianna awoke.
For three days after his arrival here, he hadn't been able to sleep. He knew he had to find a way to get the Black King off Blue Isle. He thought of raising armies, of fighting the Fey in their own way.
That wouldn't work. His people had some experience defending their homeland from the first invasion, but they were not a military people.
He could come up with only one solution, and he didn't like it.
He hoped the Shaman would have another.
He put the cape Arianna had stolen for him over the pants and shirt that she had also found, then went outside the cave and scrubbed his face in the snow. He had felt unclean for days, and he longed, more than he wanted to admit, for the comforts of the palace in Jahn.
"There is root tea and meal mush on the fire," the Shaman said without turning around. She had been cooking nourishing meals for them. He had worried about her food supplies, but she had merely smiled at him. When he queried some more, she said that all she had to do was go down the mountain, past the tree line, and she would find enough plants to keep her fed for months.
"Thanks," he said. He grabbed their only cup and spoon, filled the cup with mush, and then ate. When he finished, he melted snow in the second pan and cleaned the spoon, leaving it on its rock, where Arianna could find it. He rinsed out the cup, poured some root tea, and drank.
The Resistance: The Fourth Book of the Fey (Fey Series) Page 2
