She smiled. You are now.
She could get a sense of her father about him, but it was as if he were wearing her father's coat. She understood now why he said his time was limited.
She could feel a pull from that coat.
How far do we have to go to get out of here?
It's like a maze, he said. The distance is short, but the trail is long.
How did you find me?
We all leave small trails. Yours was nearly invisible. You must have come through here fast.
I barely remember it, she said.
He nodded and held out his hand. The moment of truth, the moment when she discovered if he was real or not.
If he was real as anything could be here.
She let her fingers touch his. He was real. The power of him, the essence of him ran through her. It left her imaginary skin tingling. She had never felt such magick all in one place. And a bit of darkness, toward the back of his skull, as if it were a dot that he were unaware of.
Yet there was such warmth in him, such light.
She let him pull her forward.
Let's bring you back to yourself, he said. He tucked her hand under his arm. She looked down at herself. She was glowing, too. His light had extended to her, illuminating the way.
Why did you come for me? she asked.
I was helping your family, he said. I was a bit worried about it at first, but now I'm glad I did. He cradled her closer. He was so warm. She hadn't realized how cold she had been, how cold and alone.
And frightened.
The fear was easing now.
They were climbing uphill. Every few steps they made a turn. She understood now why she had gotten lost. It was amazing she had gone as far back as she had.
Finally they reached a plateau, and she recognized the place where she had fought her great-grandfather. Her real eyes were just below that, and the light they received poured in, nearly blinding her.
She felt so much relief that she staggered against Coulter.
It's all right, he said. You'll be all right now.
He stroked her hair away from her face, then he held it between his hands. She let him. He felt so good, so familiar. So strong.
He was taller than she was. He had to look down on her. She had never been near a man who was taller, Sebastian had been the same height, and so had her brother.
The thought of him made her shudder.
Her brother and the Black King. They were as tall as she was.
Not taller.
Coulter's gaze dropped to her lips, then met her eyes again. He wanted to kiss her. She leaned into him, letting him. He bent down, touched his imaginary lips to hers, and that feeling — that stunning sense of him — ran through her again.
When he pulled back, she whispered, Thank you.
But not for the kiss. For rescuing her.
He seemed to understand that.
He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. I have one more thing to do, he said. And you need to watch me, so you can do it when I'm gone.
You're leaving? she asked, feeling a sudden loss at his absence.
I have to. I can't stay here long. He ran his fingers along the side of her face. Your great-grandfather traveled a Link to get here. I can close your Links, all but the one I took. You have to close that yourself.
She remembered Sebastian when his Link to his brother closed. He claimed he was all alone. She had never traveled a Link, at least not to anywhere in particular. It had been in exploring a Link that she had gotten into trouble. She didn't mind closing the Links. She probably wouldn't miss them.
But Coulter misunderstood her silence. You'll feel alone, but you won't be. If you want, I'll close the Links so that you can reopen them yourself.
She heard something else in his voice, something that made it seem as if that weren't a good idea.
Do it the way you think best, she said.
He smiled, and it felt as if the sun had come through very dark clouds. Why was she so drawn to him? Because he had rescued her? Because he was here, in her mind? Her great-grandfather had come uninvited and she hadn't felt drawn to him. And then Sebastian had appeared and she had felt the same old love for him she always had. Did this place merely reflect already existing feelings?
Or possible ones?
She didn't know.
I only have a few more moments, he said, letting her go. He walked back toward the darkness and touched it lightly. The doors she had seen earlier reappeared. He touched the first one.
This is your Link to Sebastian, he said. He put a lock on the door, turned the key, then he held the key up to her. Do you want it?
She did, suddenly. She didn't want someone else that she barely knew, someone she would not recognize outside herself, holding an important piece of herself.
Yes, she said.
Only open this when your great-grandfather is dead, he said as he gave her the key. Please. You don't know how dangerous he is.
Oh, she thought she did. But she said nothing.
Coulter went to other doors, some large, and some small, some belonging to people she hadn't thought of in a long time. The last belonged to Solanda.
He sighed, and when he looked at her his eyes were filled with sadness. It doesn't matter if I close this or not, he said. Did you know?
A chill ran through her. Know what?
That there no longer is someone on the other end of this Link?
No. She hadn't known it. But she had suspected it.
No one can travel this, he said to her silence. Let's just leave it open.
She nodded, once, then sighed. So much had happened, so much had changed, that she didn't have the energy to feel Solanda's death.
He went to the final door. This Link is between you and your father. I traveled on it. I have to go through the door to leave. Then you must lock it behind me. Please do. If the Black King captures your father, he can use this Link to get to you. Anyone with the powers of a Visionary or an Enchanter can. Right now, you're vulnerable. Please. Lock it after me.
He didn't need to emphasize this so hard. She remembered the invasive feeling her great-grandfather had caused. She would never forget it.
I will, she said. I will lock it.
Coulter smiled at her. He opened the door and stepped through it.
Wait! she said. Will I see you again?
When you open your eyes, he said. I'll be right there.
He smiled at her, blew her a kiss, then disappeared into the light, pulling the door closed behind him. She leaned against the door for a moment, wondering at the strangeness of it all, and then she put a lock on it, turned the key, and placed the key on the ring with all the others.
Amazing how things just appeared here, when she thought of them.
Then she sighed, the relief returning, and headed toward the center of herself.
As she did, she heard crying.
She didn't feel like crying.
How odd.
She turned toward the sound, and saw a tiny baby, barely outside the darkness. She didn't know how she and Coulter had missed it. She crouched beside the child, and looked down.
It was Fey. It was pure Fey, and it was a little boy. She imagined a blanket, and then she had one. She wrapped him in it.
He couldn't have been more than a few hours old.
She had a sense that she knew this child, and knew him well.
Sebastian? she whispered.
But of course, he couldn't answer. He didn't have the gift of language yet
She carried him with her as she returned to the center of herself. Then she reconnected with her body. She felt her own hands — her real hands — move. She felt her legs, her torso, even the place where her Shifting was located.
Her body felt odd, as if she hadn't reassembled it properly, and she made a few adjustments. She wondered if she had Shifted while she was lost.
Then she stepped behind her eyes and opened them. For a moment, she felt a dislocation �
�� her small self looking out large windows — and then she reconnected completely, forgetting how tiny she could be inside herself.
She was back.
She looked up and saw her father's face.
There were tears in his eyes.
"Arianna," he said with so much love, so much fear, so much relief, she could feel it as if it were her own.
He put his arms around her and cradled her close, and she felt safe, truly safe, all of her, for the first time in a long time.
"Daddy," she said, and felt as if she had come home.
SEVENTY-NINE
Rugad made the Horse Riders stop the carriage on the bridge over the Cardidas River. The sun glinted off the brown water, making it beautiful, making the area brilliant. There were no Fey lined up on the bridge, and he could sit.
He did just that; he sat in his carriage and surveyed the entire city.
To the south, he saw nothing but ashes and burned-out buildings. He could still smell the faint whiff of smoke in the air. His own people worked in the rubble, rebuilding some sites, cleaning up the remaining bodies, clearing the land for eventual farming. Others worked near the water's edge, rebuilding warehouses. The southern side of Jahn would become fields and storage. When Rugad restored trade with Nye, the entire area would come alive again.
The ruins of the Tabernacle still stood. If he squinted, he could almost see the building as it once was — the towers rising out of the ground, the swords painted on the sides. But if he truly looked at it, he could see it for what it was: a hollow wreck. The towers remained, but the center parts of the building had been burned out. On one floor a charred blanket drifted from an open window — obviously someone had used it in an attempted escape.
The entire place spoke of destruction and death.
He would leave it standing, even though the land would be useful as farmland. He wanted to remind the Islanders of what they had, what they lost, and who had taken it from them.
He wanted them to remain in line.
Not that there were any Islanders to see it. Those that had survived had fled into the countryside. He would bring them back as he needed them, and convince them that he was not a bad leader. He had already convinced places like the Kenniland Marshes in the south that he was a better leader than Nicholas, better than all the Kings that had ruled Blue Isle before him.
Nicholas had never visited the south. He had done nothing to alleviate the poverty of the region. Rugad already had. He had his Domestics train the marshlanders in the growing of rice and other crops that benefited from damp land. He would make that section of Blue Isle one of the wealthiest, one of the most important, simply through the crops it grew.
They were seeing the changes already.
He turned and looked behind him.
The palace dominated the view behind him, untouched and proud in the early morning sky. Around it, several other buildings remained standing; indeed, whole sections of the town were still intact. The Fey had shooed most of the Islanders out of there, as per his orders, and were using the empty buildings as their own. As he rebuilt, he would make this part of Jahn into the whole city itself, and he would make it uniquely Fey, something he hadn't done in all the years he had conquered countries.
He had never rebuilt a city before. He had always torn them down.
But he had the opportunity now. Blue Isle's culture had to be subjugated to the Fey culture. Jewel had determined that when she had married an Islander. The cultures couldn't merge — the Fey never did that — so one culture had to become dominant. When Rugad's great-grandchildren ruled, they would do so as Fey.
He would see to that.
He looked ahead again, and clucked to the Horse Riders. They continued at a good clip. The bridge was long and well built, a triumph of engineering that didn't seem much in evidence in other parts of the Isle. He wondered who had ordered it and how it had come into being.
And why the tunnels had been built beneath the road, connecting both sides of the city.
The Horse Riders slowed as they came to the end of the bridge. Fey lined up three deep to see him. The numbers in which they appeared continued to impress him. He had made the right choice: the entire army had been worried about him. The rumors must have been out of control. He would spend the next few days putting them to rest, and then building success stories to counter them.
The carriage's wheels clattered onto the road. All around him, Fey nodded and half smiled at him in acknowledgment. He gazed on as many of them in turn as he could, and still evaluated the devastation that was this side of the river.
Then a spark flew before his eye. There were no active fires any longer, so he had to have seen a Wisp. The spark flew back, landed in the seat opposite him, and transformed into a slender woman with delicate wings.
He recognized her. It was Gauze. He had sent her with Boteen.
"Turn the carriage into the Tabernacle's gate and stop it," Rugad said. He would talk with her there, while it seemed to his people that he was viewing the ultimate destruction of the Black Robes.
The carriage turned and the Fey blocking the gate parted as if they had known the carriage was going to come their way.
The Tabernacle looked even worse up close. The towers had crumpled inward. Only the outer shells, facing the river, remained. The remaining walls had tumbled. The smell of blood and death still lingered in this place, and he wondered if all of the bodies had been located, or if the Red Caps had left this place for last.
The carriage stopped.
He said to the Horse Riders, "Please detach yourselves and go to the gate. I need to talk with Gauze alone."
The Fey part of the Riders unhitched their horse parts, and trotted to the gate. The carriage shook with their passage.
"Well?" Rugad asked.
"Boteen assures you that our party is fine," she said, and Rugad suppressed a smile. Of course he would do that. He knew how Rugad thought.
She looked exhausted, but she did not look as if she had come from a battlefield.
"He wants you to know that there are strange magicks to the north. The air is full of them, and in fact, I rode a current of one halfway here or I would not have arrived yet."
She wiped a damp strand of hair from her face.
Rugad tensed. He knew that Boteen hadn't sent her all this way for strange magicks.
"He also wanted me to tell you what I saw. Boteen had me investigate a cave in the mountainside. In it, I saw your great-grandson, and overheard him talking with his companions: one Fey, a clean Red Cap, and two Islanders. He was expecting the arrival of his sister and his father at any moment."
"You did not wait for them to arrive?"
"No, sir. I was to report what I saw immediately to Boteen. He told me to come to you."
So Boteen was alone with his great-grandchildren.
"I am also to tell you that we had not yet reached the cave. It is considerably high up a mountainside. It will take our party some time, maybe a day or more to reach it."
Rugad's mouth went dry. If he assembled enough Bird Riders and his chair, he could be there in a day.
"Boteen says also to tell you that the Islanders in the area have some of that strange magick and they are hostile. We have Infantry moving in, but he believes you should send troops."
"I already have," Rugad said, remembering his own order from the contact with his great-granddaughter. Troops were on the way. Now he just had to direct them to the right place. "Does he believe my great-grandchildren are going to move?"
Something passed across her face then, something so brief that he almost didn't see it. But it had been there. "They won't move," she said.
"How do you know?" he asked.
The look again. A cross between fear and panic, and something else, something softer. Memory? Fond memory?
"What aren't you telling me?" he asked before she could answer his first question.
"I have told you all of Boteen's message," she said.
"But th
ere's more, isn't there?" he asked.
She nodded.
"Something to do with the special magick you mentioned."
She nodded again.
"Does Boteen want to tell me, or is he keeping this for himself?" Rugad asked.
"Neither," she said, then bit her lower lip. She had realized that she had admitted something.
"Go on," Rugad said.
She sighed. "I think he wants to confirm before coming to you."
"But it has to do with the special magicks," Rugad said. "There is a reason my great-grandchildren and their father are meeting in this place, isn't there?".
"Boteen thinks so," she said.
"But he doesn't know."
"No," she whispered.
"When did he send you?"
"At dawn, sir."
She had come rapidly. As rapidly as she said. And Boteen could have sent the Scribe or a Gull Rider. He sent a Wisp. The fastest Fey he had with him.
Rugad let the mystery go for a moment. He would verify what the strange magick was.
His great-grandchildren and their father in a cave on the mountainside.
Excellent.
He nodded to Gauze."You have done well, my child," he said. "Go back to the palace and rest. When I return, you will show me where my great-grandchildren are."
"Yes, sir." She shrank and flew away, as if she were happy to be gone, as if she had gotten away with something.
It didn't matter. He would discover what it was.
After he killed Blue Isle's King.
Publicly.
For daring to lay a sword on the Black King of the Fey.
And then he would work on his great-grandchildren, and he would secure Blue Isle.
He smiled.
Finally, victory was within reach.
EIGHTY
Nicholas held his daughter in his arms. She was alive. She was all right. She had smiled at him and looked like his Arianna.
He had been so terrified of losing her. More terrified than he cared to admit.
It felt so different from holding the Shaman's lifeless body, or Arianna's body just a moment earlier. She stirred slightly, moved a little, as she always had.
The Resistance: The Fourth Book of the Fey (Fey Series) Page 50
