"How far do we have to go?"
"Not far," Coulter said.
Adrian was glad. He was exhausted. Between the work he had done during the day and the tension he had felt on the mountainside, he wasn't sure how far he could go without either food or sleep. He was learning to get by with less of both, but he wasn't a boy any longer. His recuperative powers weren't what they had once been.
He thought of what Coulter had told him, and shuddered. The Rocaan, the former Rocaan, with Coulter's powers. Did that mean all Rocaan, had such powers? And if so, why hadn't they used them before?
What had the Rocaan said to Coulter?
You're trying to make me into something I'm not.
And Coulter had said, It worked, too.
It worked, too.
Adrian tripped over a small rock, righted himself and kept going.
"What were you doing when I found you?" Adrian asked. "Why were you attacking him?"
Coulter didn't stop. "His friends came after me."
"But it sounded like you were forcing him to do something."
"I was." Coulter's voice had gotten soft. "I was forcing him to use his magick."
"Why?" Adrian asked.
"Because I thought he'd work with us. We needed him to know what he could do."
Adrian felt the hair rise on the back of his neck. "You mean he didn't know how before?"
"No," Coulter said. "I'm sure he did things, but not consciously."
"And you made it conscious."
Coulter scrambled over another boulder, then glanced up as if he could see where they were going.
"Coulter?" Adrian asked. "Did you make him conscious of his magick?"
"I don't know how he couldn't have been," Coulter said. He wouldn't look at Adrian.
Adrian climbed over the boulder as well. The rock was cool on the sides but still warm on top from the day's sun.
"But he wasn't, was he?" Adrian asked as he got to the other side. "He didn't know what he could do."
"No," Coulter said. "He didn't know."
"And you showed him." Adrian let out a slight breath. He didn't know how to feel about this. Matthias had killed Jewel. He would go after all Fey.
But that also meant he would go after Gift.
"I showed him," Coulter said. And then he stopped, put a hand to his head, and shook it. Just once. "But I might have done something worse."
"Worse?" Adrian asked, not quite understanding.
"Yes," Coulter said.
"What could be worse than learning how to use magick you didn't know you had?" Adrian asked.
Coulter brought his hand down. His eyes glittered in the darkness. "Learning how to control it," he said.
FORTY-FIVE
The fireballs were burning out. But they still cast an eerie light over the mountainside. The stone columns looked like they were man-made, and the flat rock on top appeared to be a roof. Denl and Jakib went into the structure to investigate, but Matthias remained outside. He sat on a boulder, one hand on his skull, wishing the pain would go away. Pausho and the other woman were watching him, almost as if they were afraid of him.
Almost as if they were waiting for him to dismiss them.
"Are we going after them?" Tri asked. He meant that boy and his friend. They had disappeared up the mountain, looking for their Fey friends.
Matthias nodded. He didn't move. He wasn't ready to. He didn't quite know how to proceed.
There was no doubt he had created that small barrier. There was no doubt that he had done so before. Or that he had created the blood rope that he had used to get out of the river the night he nearly drowned.
No doubt that flame had just licked his fingers. Flame he had created.
He held up his hand. It looked like his. The fingers were long and supple, their shape familiar. They didn't seem like they could do anything different.
But they had.
He had magick.
Just like the Fey.
God, his head hurt. He raised it slowly and looked at Pausho.
"You tell me," he said, deciding to use her fear against her. "You tell me what you know."
"There's too much," she said.
He made himself smile. The movement tugged on the wounds on his face. "I don't care."
"It would take all night."
"You're making excuses. You don't want me to know everything, do you?" he asked. "Then you would lose your power."
She crossed her arms. She was old, but she had the look of strength to her. "The mountain returned you. I must live with that. But that doesn't mean I have to tell you anything."
"How many babies have you brought up here over the years?"
"Not many," she said softly.
"Compared to what?" Tri asked. He had moved to Matthias's side. Matthias couldn't tell, but it seemed, in the grayish orange light of the dying fires, that Tri was paler than usual. How much had he done as a Wise One? Had he brought a newborn up this mountainside too?
"Compared to before." She pursed her lips, as if she wanted to say more, but couldn't.
"Before?" Matthias asked.
She nodded.
"Before what?"
"When the Roca ordered it," she said.
He spun away from her, turning his back rapidly. Whatever his beliefs had been, however he had felt about the existence of God or lack thereof, the depth of his own faith or lack thereof, he had a respect for the religion.
And she clearly had not.
The Roca he knew, the Roca he studied, would never have behaved that way.
"You justify murder so easily," he said.
"The Roca was the Beloved of God," she said from behind him. Her voice remained strong. As if she believed every word she said.
"Are you saying that putting babies on mountainsides is a religious act?"
She didn't answer him. He turned. She was watching him. He had seen that look before. The old Danite who had taught him the Words Written and Unwritten used to look at him that way when he missed the point of something.
When it was obvious.
She did believe it was a religious act.
Murder as a religious act.
And that was an abomination.
Are you telling me you killed my wife on purpose? Nicholas had asked him the last time they met.
No, Matthias had said. It was God's will.
It was God's will.
He shook his head, as if to get his own words out of it. In the past fifteen years, he had done nothing wrong. He still wasn't sure if killing Jewel was wrong.
Or Burden?
Killing Burden had not been a religious act. Matthias had flung holy water on a defenseless man, a man behind bars, a man who couldn't touch him.
A Fey.
Who might have had enough magick to attack him, even with the bars between them.
If you thought of God, Nicholas had said, you wouldn't use him as an excuse for murder.
An excuse for murder.
For murder.
Matthias put his hands back to his skull. It hurt so bad that he thought it was going to explode.
"When did the Roca tell you that?" he asked. "When did he tell the people of Constant to kill their babies? He ordered his sons to split the rule just before he was Absorbed. How could he have ordered such an abomination during that small bit of time? And how could it have been followed?"
"You are the Rocaan, and you do not know the history of your own religion?" she asked.
She smiled at him, as if he were crazy. He winced at the pain in his head. It throbbed with each beat of his heart.
"I know everything the Tabernacle taught," he said, "And more. I know many of the old stories."
"But you never saw the original Words," she said.
He frowned. "They were destroyed in one of the schisms."
She shook her head. "They've been here all along."
"They still exist," Tri said. He had been watching this closely, but he had remained near Matthias. As if he were protecting Mat
thias. As if Matthias needed protection.
"You've seen them?" Matthias asked him.
"I was supposed to read them as a Wise One. I never got around to it."
Matthias swallowed. The light from the fires was fading into a soft orange. The smoke was clearing a bit. The wind had picked up.
"You had an opportunity to read a historic document and you never got around to it?"
Tri shrugged. Matthias frowned at him. Could Tri read? Was that what stopped him?
It didn't matter. What mattered was settling his swinging emotions, clearing the headache, and getting up that mountainside.
"The Words you studied are incomplete," she said. "We have all of them. The Roca was Absorbed. But twenty years later, he returned."
Then Matthias laughed. She had played with him after all.
She didn't move. Her look returned to the one the old Danite used to give him. Mixed with another — the one that his history instructor used to give in the special school the Tabernacle had sent him to.
The school where he had met Nicholas's father, Alexander. It had been attached to the Tabernacle, and there he and Alexander had become friends.
Good friends.
The Fey had murdered Alexander, too.
"The Roca returned," she repeated.
"A dead man does not return," Matthias said.
"The Roca did. He came to the place of his birth and instructed the people of Constant. That's when he wrote the Words."
A chill ran up Matthias's back, although the mountainside was warm from the fires. That had been one of the questions that had plagued his scholarship. He had always wondered who wrote down the Words.
And why.
"You lie," he whispered. "You lie to confuse me. You lie because you've always hated me."
"I do not hate you, Matthias," she said. "I believe you are evil. And I believe it is part of your nature. It is the magick that burning boy tried to call up in you. It corrupts. You are corrupted."
"But you said the Roca had these powers. That means he was evil, too," Matthias said.
"He was sent from God," she said.
"But I have the same powers, you said." Matthias was not understanding her. Was it his headache? "If I do, then you're saying I was sent from God also."
"There was the Roca," she said in a singsong teaching voice. She had clearly said this a thousand times before, but to whom he did not know. "There were the Soldiers of the Enemy. And then, when they were gone, there was the Enemy from Within. It pretended to be of God, but it was not of God. It used the powers of God's Beloved for evil. You descend from the Enemy from Within, Matthias."
"How do you know that?" he asked.
"Because you are tall," she whispered.
Matthias's headache grew. He pressed against the sides of his head. He wasn't ready for this argument. He couldn't think about what she was saying.
What the boy had said.
Matthias turned away from all of them, cupped his right hand against his chest and thought about fire sparking from one finger to another.
A tiny flame flared at the end of his thumb, just as if it were a candle that someone had lit. Cradling his hand closer to his chest, he touched his thumb to his forefinger.
The flame moved.
Just as he imagined it would.
Then it leapt from his forefinger to his middle finger, from his middle finger to his ring finger, from his ring finger to his little finger.
He crushed the flame with his left hand.
No one else was here who could do this.
No one knew he had thought of it.
Pausho was afraid of the magick.
The boy — Coulter — was long gone.
Matthias's mouth was dry. He could barely breathe. His headache was growing worse.
"Holy Sir?" Denl was in front of him. How had Denl gotten there? Matthias hadn't seen him come up. "Are ye all right?"
"Fine," Matthias said.
"For a moment twas flame I thought I saw on ye."
Matthias swallowed. It was hard against the dryness of his throat. "A reflection. I thought I saw the same thing, and realized it was a reflection." And then he smiled.
Denl smiled back at him. "Twas nothing inside. But they did camp there, twould seem."
Jakib approached, more slowly. He had an odd expression on his face. Had he been watching?
If he had seen anything, had he understood it?
"Are we goin ta go up the mountainside now or wait until dawn?"
The tall ones. That boy. The Fey.
So much to think about.
So much had changed within the last few hours.
And yet nothing had. If the boy was right (and how could he be? — how could he not be?), then Matthias had had these powers all along.
All along.
That night, the night the Fey had covered his face and given him nightmares. The night that he had nearly died in the Tabernacle, the night they had caught Burden, Matthias had awakened from that Fey spell. He had broken out of it.
Burden had been shocked.
Only magickal beings can break a Dream Rider's spell, he had said.
Only magickal beings.
"Holy Sir?"
"I really don't want you to call me that," Matthias said. He didn't even have to think about the response. It emerged from him, as part of him. Denying he was the Rocaan, even though he had been, because — why?
Because he had killed someone?
Because he had lacked belief?
Or because he had been called demon-spawn all his life, and he had been raised Islander: taught to believe that demons could not serve God?
But maybe they could.
Pausho had said the Roca himself had the same powers.
Matthias turned to her. He felt detached from himself, his headache the only live thing inside his body.
"What's up there?" he asked.
She frowned at him, clearly not understanding.
He waved a hand toward the trail where the boy and his friend had disappeared. "What's up there?"
"Look for yourself," she said.
He turned his head before he realized what she meant: She meant him to go up there. Which meant that there probably was a trap.
But as he gazed at the mountainside, he saw a shimmer against the darkness, as if the darkness itself had turned silver. Like moonlight on water.
Like fog rising against the lights of a house on a dark night.
He could feel it, faint and shimmering inside him. He had always felt it near these mountains. Like he had felt sunlight on his skin.
Only he was used to it. He rarely thought about it. It had just been part of the world for him.
But he hadn't known where it had come from before. He hadn't seen it.
Seeing it made it feel stronger.
"What is that?" he asked again, almost to himself. He felt as if the answer were inside himself.
Then he turned back to Pausho. He had seen a lot of Fey magick. He knew this wasn't theirs. But he also knew the Fey had gone up there. Had they known something he hadn't?
"Tell me what it is."
"Go see for yourself."
"I will," he said. "But I want to know first. I want to know what I'm walking into so that they can't trap me."
"They won't trap you," she said. "They'll be too busy."
"With what?" he asked.
"The icons," she said.
He frowned.
She sighed. "The Tabernacle lost everything, didn't it?" she asked. "All knowledge, gone."
"I know of nothing up on that mountainside," Matthias said. "And I was one of the Tabernacle's greatest scholars."
She raised her chin. "It is the holiest place on Blue Isle. Some say the Roca was born there. Some say he died there. But the Wise Ones know he was reborn there. He came back through the cave, and gave us the Words there."
"It's a cave?" Matthias asked.
"It's a holy place. It is filled with the Spirit of t
he Holy One."
"N the Roca came from there?" Denl asked. "Are ye sure?"
"According to the Words," Pausho said. "And if you go inside, you'll understand."
"But the Fey—
"If the tall ones are there, they're busy," Pausho said. "There is much to see. There is much to learn."
"Have you been there?" Matthias asked.
"Once," she said. She looked down as she spoke. "I was a girl."
She swallowed and he thought she wasn't going to say any more.
"Because of that, I was designated a Wise One. I became one, when one of the older ones died. Because of that place."
"And you never went back?" Tri asked.
"I didn't want to," she said.
"What happened there?" Matthias asked. "What could happen in that place to make you become a Wise One?"
She shook her head, then raised it, the woman he had known — and hated — once more. "I vowed never to speak of it."
"I don't care," Matthias said. "I want to know what I'm going to see."
"I don't know what you'll see," she said. "But you were once Beloved by God. Surely you of all people can see the holiest spot on the Isle."
"You call me demon-spawn," he said.
"You're that too." She smiled. "I suspect your visit will be very unusual. Very unusual indeed."
"Should he stay away?" Jakib asked.
"You're asking her?" Matthias asked. "The woman who tried to kill me when I was a few hours old?"
But she was looking beyond him at the shimmer on the mountainside. And when she spoke, her voice was dreamy.
"I discourage no one," she said, "from touching the Hand of God."
FORTY-SIX
God was punishing him.
Someone was punishing him for failing his Charge.
For letting them capture Sebastian.
For failing to tell the King that the Fey had arrived.
Con sat in the darkness near the opening to the bridge tunnel, his arms wrapped around his knees. His robe was filthy, his hands were still covered in stuff he couldn't identify, and he smelled so bad that he could no longer smell himself. He was bruised from his fall, and the side of his leg was raw where the sword kept brushing against it.
He had made it through the bridge. He was on the other side, and now, things were even worse.
The Fey had murdered everyone.
The Resistance: The Fourth Book of the Fey (Fey Series) Page 30
