Scavenger, climbed the steep path, then paused and levered himself on the rock. He used his hands and arms to pull his entire body up, then sat for a moment, panting.
Coulter was ahead of him, scurrying along the path, trying to reach Gift.
Scavenger needed a moment to himself. No one had followed them. He doubted anyone had seen them leave the quarry.
He scooted back on the rock and looked away from the mountains.
The valley spread beneath him, the gray stone houses tucked against the mountain, the dirt roads leading into the town. His heart was pounding. He and Coulter had run once they left the quarry, and hadn't stopped until they reached the mountainside path leading to their camp.
He hadn't liked the place they camped. It was still farther up the path, in a natural alcove created by the rocks. It wasn't too far from the rock quarry, but it was some distance from town. Gift and Coulter had liked that.
Scavenger hadn't. Gift and Coulter hadn't studied the geography of Blue Isle like Scavenger had. They weren't learners. They were intuitive leaders, something that disturbed him somewhat. Perhaps all magickal people relied on themselves like that, but he didn't. Even though he was Fey, he had never had magick. He was one of the unlucky ones. In the Fey Empire, the short, magickless Fey were forced to work as Red Caps, doing the jobs that none of the other Fey would touch.
He hadn't done that work for twenty years.
He hadn't been part of the Empire that long.
He had lived alone for years, and then he found Adrian and Coulter as they escaped the Fey Shadowlands. He had helped them elude the Fey, and they, in turn, had given him a home on Blue Isle.
He owed them for the companionship and acceptance, for the warmth they had always shown him even when they doubted his word.
They didn't have reason to doubt now. His knowledge had proven valuable all along on this trip. He had studied Blue Isle when he decided to make it his home, just as he had studied magick when he realized he had to survive without it in the Fey Empire.
And his study of Blue Isle had him worried.
They had reached the northeastern end of the Isle. The Eyes of Roca, the mountain range that began long before the valley that housed Constant, was on the northernmost tip of the Island. The range ended in these tall mountains called the Cliffs of Blood.
If the town of Constant was as unfriendly as he feared, their little band would have only two choices: It would have to go into the mountains themselves and hope it could survive there, or it would have to go back south.
If they went south, Scavenger would want to hug the mountains all the way. Once they passed the Cliffs, they would reach the eastern end of the Cardidas River. Crossing it had been difficult earlier. At this part of the Isle it might be impossible.
And then there were the Slides of Death on the other side.The very name made him shudder. This mountain range was huge — the Cliffs were high and imposing — but he had heard that the Slides were even more dangerous, even more threatening than the Cliffs.
He didn't want to see that.
He didn't want to face it.
But he might have to. He was a Failure too, now that the Black King had arrived. If Gift was to be believed — and Scavenger had no real reason to doubt him — the entire troop of Fey who had brought him here all those years ago were dead. Killed by Rugad because he could not abide failure.
And because he did not want dissension in his ranks.
Sometimes Rugad outsmarted even himself.
Scavenger took a deep breath and stood. He wiped the dust off his pants and used a rock to brace himself as he climbed the rest of the way to the trail.
They had found this hiding spot after they had approached the rock quarry. Actually, Gift and Leen had found it when they learned they couldn't work. They had brought their meager food supplies here, and all his weapons. He had felt naked without them, but he knew he couldn't have them for work. He had hoped that Gift and Leen had brought weapons with them into town.
He also hoped they hadn't had to use them.
Coulter had initially wanted to find a place in the town to live, but Adrian wouldn't let them look. He was worried about precisely the problem that had appeared: fear of tall ones. Scavenger didn't entirely understand it — why would Islanders, who had never seen Fey, fear tall people? Because of magick? But that didn't make sense either, since Coulter had all the magick of an Enchanter without the height.
Scavenger believed, though, that they still needed to find a place to hide. He didn't like their current camp. They needed someplace better, somewhere that would give them time. He needed to train Gift how to think like a Fey.
Scavenger was afraid the task was hopeless.
And then there was Coulter. The Islander was clearly an Enchanter, but he knew little about Enchanter's magick. Scavenger knew what sort of spells an Enchanter could do, but he did not know how to conjure them. All he could do was tell Coulter that such spells existed.
Still, Coulter would try them.
But there were so many and there was so little time, especially while the group was on the run.
And Scavenger didn't know how long that would last. He never doubted the Black King's abilities. Rugad wanted Gift, and he would do everything he could to find him, including using tricks that Scavenger — as a magickless Fey — simply didn't know.
He sighed and made his way down the trail. His heart was still pounding, but his breathing was coming regularly now. He was worried that Gift and Leen had never made it back from their task this morning, but that was a fear he had whenever the group separated.
To lose the boy, though, after all of this, would be a great tragedy. Especially if they lost him through error or carelessness. The trail was narrow, barely wide enough for his small feet, and Scavenger wondered, as he had when they first found it, if this was an actual trail used by Islanders or if some animal used it regularly instead.
He wasn't sure he wanted to see the animal that lived up here in the scraggly mountainside. It would take a tough and hardy creature to survive the winters here.
He didn't want to be one of them.
Then he rounded a corner, and saw the rock formation. The rocks jutted up from the ground like pillars, and above them was a flat ledge. It wasn't quite a roof, but it was close enough, if the five of them scuttled back against the rock wall. The space between the pillars was dirt and bits of rock. They had spent the first evening clearing out the large stuff and smoothing the dirt so that they could sleep easily. Scavenger's weapons were stored near that far wall.
Coulter was already inside the formation — Scavenger could see flashes of his yellow hair — and Leen was sitting on a boulder outside. She was at alert, her back straight, her knife near her hand. She looked tired.
"Where's Gift?" Scavenger asked.
"Inside," Leen said.
"Coulter say anything?"
"No," Leen said. "He needed water first. You two shouldn't have run like that in this dryness."
"Maybe not," Scavenger said. He wiped a hand over his mouth. He could use some water too, but he knew that Leen wouldn't offer it to him. She was still too Fey for that. She barely deigned to talk to him. "But something strange happened at the quarry."
"What happened?" Gift appeared between the pillars. He held a water skin. Coulter appeared behind him. Dirt ran along Coulter's face, and had streaked into his hair. He took the skin from Gift and handed it to Scavenger.
Scavenger drank. The water was gritty and warm but it tasted good. He hadn't realized how thirsty he was.
"What happened?" Gift repeated.
Coulter stared at Scavenger. Coulter and Gift still weren't speaking to each other except when necessary. Apparently Coulter didn't think this was one of those moments.
Scavenger removed the skin from his lips and let it dangle from his fingers. "A strange man showed up at the quarry. He seemed to be asking questions. Adrian stayed to find out what was going on."
"You d
idn't wait to see if this concerned us?" Leen asked, contempt in her voice.
Gift put a hand on her shoulder. "It did concern us. After this morning, it had to. They must be trying to find us."
Scavenger closed his eyes for just a second. It was as he feared. Something had happened when Gift and Leen went to the market.
"What happened this morning?" Coulter asked. Scavenger could hear the concern in his voice, even though he tried to hide it. He was standing slightly behind Gift, and his fair cheeks had reddened when Gift mentioned that something bad had happened.
"We went to the market, offered to spend coin there, and they reacted like we were — I don't know — evil, or something," Gift said.
Leen had turned slightly so that she faced Coulter not Scavenger. "It wasn't because we were Fey, either. I don't think they've seen Fey."
"It was because we were tall. I think Scavenger could go in there and no one would bother him."
Scavenger walked the rest of the way up the path, stopping beside Leen's rock, as much to annoy her as to get closer to the conversation.
"So what happened?" he asked.
"We left," Gift said.
"They made us leave," Leen said. "They held their hands up in fists and said "Begone. "We were Compelled."
"It was a Chant," Scavenger whispered, and for the first time, Leen really looked at him.
"Yes," she said. "It was."
"And these were Islanders?" Coulter asked. He leaned against one of the pillars and put a hand to his head.
"Yes," Gift said. "It was odd, too, because it felt as if we were pushed backwards. Leen reacted more strongly than I did, but we both felt it."
"Islanders," Coulter said again, as if in contemplation.
Scavenger was watching him. The boy was beginning to learn that he was not unique. Was it a revelation for him? Or was it relief?
Scavenger braced one hand on the rock and peered toward the valley. It looked no different than it had the day before, but his perception of it had shifted, suddenly, as if the world had moved slightly to the left.
The Fey had come out of the mountains too, centuries ago. The Eccrasian Mountains. The peoples nearby had no magick, but the Fey, the original mountain dwellers, had.
"You're sure it was because you were tall?" Scavenger asked again.
"They called us tall ones," Leen said.
Scavenger's gaze met Gift's. "Tall ones have magick," Scavenger said.
"Not on Blue Isle," Gift said. "Look at Coulter."
Yet, from what Scavenger had seen, Coulter was just a bit taller than the locals. Sometimes a bit was all it took.
"Maybe he's tall enough," Scavenger said.
"You can't put a Fey interpretation on Islander responses," Coulter snapped. He dropped his hands. His blue eyes were blazing, almost as if they were lit from within.
"No, I can't," Scavenger said. "But it was the first thing that came to mind." He took a deep breath. "It's only Domestics who use Chants among the Fey. They use it as a secondary defense system, and only when they're terrified."
"These people were terrified," Leen said.
"But they didn't kill you," Scavenger said more to himself than to anyone else.
"Obviously," she said.
"Interesting," he said. Among many of the Domestics, deliberate killing of any kind destroyed their magick abilities. Healing magicks did not tolerate deliberate violence to the body, unlike the dark magicks. But the Fey had cultivated the dark magicks. It served war so much better. The healing magicks were often forgotten.
But that was Fey. Fey. He had to remind himself of that. This was Islander magick, and it might be very different.
"Did they follow you?" Scavenger asked.
Gift shook his head. "We watched. No one followed us."
"But they're searching for you," Scavenger said, and he was not asking a question.
"We don't know that," Coulter said. "That man could have come to the quarry for any reason."
"He could have," Scavenger said. "Or he could have been coming to ask about tall ones. Remember the comments made when Gift and Leen were there yesterday?"
"We should wait for Adrian. He'll know," Coulter said.
"Yes, he will," Scavenger said. "If he finds us in time."
"Why wouldn't he?" Coulter asked.
"Because they fear tall ones. They know that Gift and Leen are nearby. They're searching." Scavenger felt a shiver run through him. He'd had enough war to last him a lifetime. He really didn't want to fight again.
"But how could they find us here?" Leen asked.
"This is their mountain," Scavenger said. "They have Chant. Maybe they have other magicks as well."
"But if they're afraid of tall ones, then wouldn't they be afraid of magick?" Coulter asked.
"You can't put a Fey response on Islanders," Scavenger snapped.
Coulter nodded once, as if in acknowledgment.
"But we might have to," Gift said softly. "We might have to put a Fey response on them. We don't know what they can do. We should expect the worst."
"The worst is they find us, capture us, and kill us," Scavenger said.
"So we need to find a better place to hide," Leen said.
"Do you have any suggestions?" Scavenger asked. "We are at the very end of this island."
Gift looked up at the side of the mountain, near the top. "I have an idea," he said.
Coulter put a hand on his arm. "I don't think it's a good one."
Gift shook him off. "Can you feel it?" he asked Scavenger and Leen. "Can you feel the power of the mountain itself?"
Scavenger peered at Gift. He didn't like how this was going. "A mountain is a mountain is a mountain," he said.
"If that were true," Gift said, "why is this one red? Why does it feel different?"
"And why do the stones lose their redness when they're broken from the mountain itself?" Coulter asked.
"I thought you didn't like his idea," Scavenger said.
"He hasn't heard it," Gift said.
"He doesn't have to," Coulter said. "I feel the mountain, and I don't like it. And I don't think you should either."
Scavenger sighed and closed his eyes. They were fighting again. He hated that. Hated that they couldn't settle this difference between them.
He slipped off the rock and walked to the edge, looking at the valley. So far he saw no one. He would wait for Adrian. Once Adrian came back, they would have a rational voice.
And then they could make a decision about their future.
He only hoped it wouldn't be too late.
EIGHTEEN
They came out of the snow faster than she expected. Arianna stopped on the narrow path and sat on a boulder. The mountainside continued down, disappearing into a layer of trees. Behind her, there was only snow, below her, trees, and beside her, the narrow rock crevice that provided the path she, her father, and the Shaman walked on.
Her father and the Shaman didn't see her sit. They continued, making a perilous way along the trail. Her father carried a makeshift bundle on his back. It was large and bulky and held the supplies the Shaman had hidden in the cave. Arianna had a similar bundle on her back, only hers was smaller. The Shaman wore pouches on her belt. They carried herbs essential to her magick.
Arianna brushed the snow off her boots. It had been wispy for the last way down. Now there were only traces of it on the path ahead. Maybe the three of them wouldn't have to be as cautious. The Shaman had been warning them about the dangers of disturbing this loosely packed snow; how, on steep mountainsides, it could slide, killing them all.
The rock was cold through her thin pants. Her soft boots were wet. That was partly because they didn't fit properly. She had stolen her clothes — and her father's as well — before the two of them had gone up the mountain with the Shaman, and nothing fit exactly. She could grow her feet to fit better in the boots, but it seemed like too much effort.
Everything seemed like too much effort these days.
> Her father and the Shaman were already farther ahead of her on the path. She watched them go. Maybe she would Shift and catch up to them.
And maybe she wouldn't.
Shifting had gotten harder too. The Shaman had said it was because Arianna had exercised her magick so much in the last few weeks. Her body needed time to rest and replenish itself.
They had gone only another few feet when they realized she wasn't with them.
"Ari!" her father called.
"I need to rest!" she yelled back. Her voice was rusty with disuse. She hadn't said anything when they decided to leave the cave, even though it was one of the hardest things she had ever done. It had become a safe place in her mind, the only safe place she could find. It was home, in a strange way, home after all the turmoil.
After losing Sebastian.
She missed him. She missed him beside her. She missed his cool hands and his cracked smile and his soft, halting voice. She had never experienced life without him. One of her earliest memories was of him staring at her over the railing of her cradle, staring at her and smiling.
Her father made his way back to her. "The Shaman says there's a ledge just around those rocks over there," he said, pointing. "It would be a good place to rest and have a bit of food."
Arianna wasn't sure she could make it to the ledge. "She knows everything, doesn't she?" Arianna asked, letting her bitterness show. "She knows where this Gift is, she knows where the next stop is, she probably knows if we're going to succeed or not and is just unwilling to tell us."
"She's walked this way before," her father said, his voice soft, compassionate. He'd been looking at Arianna with a mixture of perplexity and concern ever since they'd left the palace.
Ever since everything had changed.
"Aren't you worried?" she blurted. "I mean, giving up everything for this Gift?"
He smiled. It was a tired smile, and it didn't quite reach his eyes. "What everything, darling? We woke up in a cave this morning."
"At least it was safe there," she said, and to her surprise, tears burned in her eyes. She blinked hard, holding them back.
Her father sat beside her on the boulder and took her in his arms. She hadn't realized how much she needed to be held. Her breath hitched. She promised herself she wouldn't cry. She didn't need to. She could make it through this. She knew it.
The Resistance: The Fourth Book of the Fey (Fey Series) Page 12
