Sacrifice: The First Book of the Fey

by Rusch, Kristine Kathryn

  “You have no right to threaten me, girl.”

  Jewel tilted her head back at him. “I have every right,” she said. “I am your better and always will be, even if we stay on Blue Isle forever. It would serve you well to remember that.”

  “And it would serve you well to remember that without Warders, you would have no idea how to use your powers at all.” Caseo flung open the door. Gray mist spilled in. The Weather Sprites must have been attempting to experiment with rain again. “You are a naive child, Jewel. Look around you. Fey do not make these kinds of mistakes unless their magick is dying. We are trapped by your father’s unwillingness to admit that he is losing his Vision.”

  “If I hear you attack my father one more time, I will take this to the Shaman myself. And you will run the risk of losing your position as head of the Warders.” Jewel backed him toward the door, pointing her finger at his chest.

  Caseo stopped in front of the door and glared down at her. “I need those prisoners.”

  “You will get what is left of them when I am through with them.” She put her hand in the middle of his chest and shoved. “Now get out and don’t bother me again.”

  He let himself be forced through the door. When he reached the porch, he tilted his head toward her, his eyes suddenly bright with an idea. “You have come into your own Visions, haven’t you? What are they telling you? Do you see the decay of Shadowlands? The rescue of our troop? A life forever on Blue Isle? Or do all of us die hideously because your unwillingness to help me allows the Islanders to poison us all?”

  “If I had my Visions,” she said, “if I have them, I would follow them. And if I saw the poison destroying us all, I would find a way to make certain you Warders were more efficient. Now, get out of here before my father comes back and I am forced to tell him of your lack of faith in him.”

  “Caseo believes in no one.” Her father’s voice echoed in the gray mist. “That is something you will have to learn about senior Spell Warders, daughter. They are so corrupted by their power that they forget others have powers too.”

  “Ah, Rugar,” Caseo said without turning around. “You have forgotten to teach your daughter to listen to her betters.”

  Rugar stepped out of the mist. His hair was damp, and he had circles under his eyes. “She listens to me and to her grandfather,” he said. “Now, what are you bothering my daughter about?”

  “I want those prisoners. I think they hold the secret to the poison.” This time Caseo did turn, but only halfway so that Jewel could still see his face.

  “And what did my daughter say?” Rugar asked.

  “That he can have what’s left of the prisoners when I am done with them,” Jewel said, hating to be discussed in the third person.

  Rugar shrugged. “Sounds fair enough, Caseo. I will make sure you receive them when she is through with them.”

  Caseo muttered a curse under his breath. He stalked down the steps without looking back at Jewel and disappeared into the mist. Rugar grabbed the railing and pulled himself up, his movement young and athletic even though he was three times Jewel’s age.

  “You angered him,” Rugar said, taking her arm and helping her inside. He closed the door after them.

  “I don’t care,” Jewel said, pulling her arm from his hand. “He’s an insufferable ass, and he thinks he can order me around.”

  “Technically,” Rugar said, “he can order all of us around, at least when it comes to magick. He is in charge of the spells, and he can change them at a moment’s notice.”

  “We don’t use spells.”

  “No,” Rugar said, “but it’s the Spell Warders who determined that Visionaries have a place in this culture. We used to be considered crazy until the Warders realized our Visions had truth, that we saw one possible future. Once we learned that, we became even stronger than we are.”

  “Ancient history, Father,” Jewel said. “It has nothing to do with Caseo.”

  “It has everything to do with Caseo,” Rugar said. “There is no such thing as ancient history for the Warders. Time is fluid for them. Some of them, it is said, can move backward or forward in time as they are needed. It is also said that a Warder never dies, but merely finds a new body to live in.”

  “I see no great ancient wisdom in Caseo,” Jewel said. “He is a pompous, insufferable man.”

  “Yes,” Rugar said. He cut himself a slice of bread and turned it over in his fingers. “But he is the best we have here, the best your grandfather allowed us, and we must make room for that. And we must cooperate with him as best we can so that we can change our fortunes here.”

  “I don’t believe he will discover the antidote to that poison.”

  Rugar looked up at her, then set the bread down. “If he doesn’t, Jewel, no one will. He is our only hope to solving the riddle of that odd magick.”

  “He won’t do so by bullying me,” Jewel said.

  “And you won’t help by fighting him.” Rugar leaned on the table, much as Jewel had earlier. “Sometimes, Jewel, part of ruling is dealing with people we don’t like because they are the ones in a position to help us.”

  “I know that,” she snapped. “I’m not a child. But I have not Seen any—I mean, I do not see any evidence of his ability to solve this riddle.”

  Rugar stepped toward her and took her elbow again, but this time his grip was firm, his fingers digging into her flesh. “You Saw something new, Jewel?”

  “No,” she said, unwilling to look at him. The change in him when she mentioned her own Visions unnerved her. Part of the problem with Caseo’s charges was that they felt too true. Why would her father treat her this way if his own Vision was working properly?

  Rugar let go of her arm. “It seems to me, daughter, that you more than anyone have a stake in helping Caseo determine the root of that poison.”

  Involuntarily she touched her forehead. She could almost remember pain she hadn’t felt yet. She hadn’t thought of the Vision in terms of something that would happen, but in terms of something that had happened. Even though she knew that Visions were preventable, she hadn’t thought of it with this one. It was her first Vision, her badge of adulthood, and she was clinging to it as that and nothing more.

  She sank into a chair. The remembered pain made her forehead tingle. “What should I do?”

  Her father smiled and crouched beside her like a supplicant. He took her hand. His was warm and rough from the work he had been doing in Shadowlands. “We don’t always know what we can do,” he said. “Sometimes we don’t discover how to change the Vision until too late. And sometimes we misunderstand the Vision. That’s why we usually ask for interpretations. Maybe we should take this Vision of yours to the Shaman.”

  She shook her head. If she could avoid the Shaman, she would. “It seems straightforward.”

  “So did my Vision of you in the Isle palace, walking through it as if you own it. But taking that Vision into account along with yours gives it a whole new meaning.”

  Jewel frowned. She squeezed his fingers. “What do you mean?”

  “Are you in the palace because of the young Prince?” Rugar asks. “Or because they injure you and you cannot leave?”

  “Was I injured in your Vision?”

  He shook his head. “You looked like your mother, regal and lovely.”

  She shrugged. “Then how can our Visions be related? Or if they are, then we did discover an antidote to the poison.”

  “Perhaps,” Rugar said. “But I am not as trusting as I once was of the simplicity of these things.”

  Jewel let that sink in. Then she bowed her head. “Did Grandfather ever have a Vision about this place?”

  Rugar dropped her hand and stood up. “Your grandfather has reached the end of his Vision.”

  “He’s Blind?” Jewel asked.

  Rugar picked up the poker, moved the grate, and rolled a log over so that the fire could get some air. The flames spouted as he put another log on top.

  “You left him knowing he
was Blind?” Jewel asked. “You left him to rule without Vision?”

  “Most Black Kings have no Vision at the end of their reign.” Rugar slid the grate back into place.

  “Is that why he opposed this mission, because he needed your Eye?”

  Rugar laughed. “No, child. He has other Eyes, lesser Visionaries. He knows, like I do, that a man must follow his own Vision or change it. His Vision led him to Nye. Mine led me here.”

  “But if he can’t See—”

  “He can still rule. A man does not rule by Vision alone. He leads, he directs with Vision. Once he has achieved that Vision, he maintains. If my father does nothing else in his life, he will be remembered as one of the most successful Black Kings. He conquered the rest of Galinas for us. He gave us control over half the world.” Rugar stood and leaned against the stone fireplace.

  Jewel looked down at her hands with their short, stubby nails and calluses. “Are you losing your Vision?” she asked softly.

  “What makes you ask that?” His voice had a harshness to it she heard him use only with the troops.

  She didn’t want to tell him about Caseo. She wasn’t sure why. She certainly had no reason to protect him. But it felt as if she were protecting all of them by not saying who had planted the idea in her mind. “It stands to reason that if Grandfather has lost his Vision, you might too.”

  “Not all Visionaries go Blind,” Rugar said. “Nor do all of them reach the end of their Vision.”

  “I have heard that some have false Visions, and that it leads to craziness.” She spoke that last softly. She had heard it in the schoolroom from one of her many teachers when she’d been a girl. When another teacher had overheard the exchange, Jewel’s teacher had been dismissed. Jewel never saw her again. She couldn’t even remember her name.

  The color in Rugar’s cheeks was high. “I have seen Spell Warders reduced to gibbering fools by a single mistake. I have seen Beast Riders get stuck in their animal and die because of the change. I have seen Shape-Shifter babies die because their caregiver left them alone too long and a Shift came unbidden. I have never seen a Visionary lose his mind. Ever.”

  Jewel nodded. The force with which her father spoke had some fear behind it. “But have you ever heard of it?”

  He picked up the poker and pushed at the grate, closed his eyes and sighed. Then he rubbed his left hand over his eyes, opened them, and put the poker away. “It is said that after the Fey started spreading away from the Eccrasian Mountains, the Black King lost his Vision. He was a young man and had not yet fathered children. He had false Visions and led the Fey in circles. The Shaman tried to depose him, but there was no procedure for that. The Warders refused to develop new spells, and the Fey refused to follow him. They camped at the base of the mountains for almost a generation while he followed his false Vision, then went Blind. With his Blindness came a deep despair, and gradually he lost his mind, memory by memory, until he was little more than a child. The Warders and the Shaman met and tested Visionaries until they found one who could see beyond the next battle. She became the first Black Queen, and her line was long-lived and strong. They ruled well until the entire family was murdered hundreds of years later.”

  “Have any other Visionaries lost their minds?”

  Rugar nodded. “A few. But none were in power like that. They were always removed, or sent away quietly, or made into regents. It is not something we talk about much.”

  Jewel was breathing heavily, as if she had been involved in quick swordplay. “Why don’t we talk about it?”

  “Because,” he said, his eyes full of the same fear she felt, “if most of our people knew about it, they would doubt all Visionaries. How can we tell a true Vision from a false one? And how do we know when a Vision has been averted? Or when it is one that was never meant to happen at all? How do we tell a mental breakdown from a successful use of foreknowledge? We can’t, Jewel. We have only our minds and our reality to rely upon. We must trust in ourselves completely.”

  Her forehead still tingled. Remembered pain that never happened. Visions and insanity. She hadn’t really linked them, not even when she had seen her father get the Look or fall into one of his Visions as he had in the middle of the Nye campaign. That was the way things were. All Fey knew that Visionaries sometimes acted strangely, just as they knew Red Caps stank of offal and blood.

  Caseo. Caseo was an evil man who wanted to get his way and would use any method to do so, even by undermining her faith in her own father. “You weren’t going to tell me about this, were you?”

  Rugar shook his head. “You need complete confidence in your Visions. One way to achieve that is to believe that they will always come true unless your actions change the future.”

  “Is there history of craziness in our line?” she asked softly.

  “No,” Rugar said. “But in the last three hundred years, several of our ancestors have reached the end of their Vision. Some died before that end could be achieved, but anyone who has lived to your grandfather’s age has become Blind.”

  She made herself swallow. Her mouth was dry, and it felt as if she were swallowing air. She grabbed her cup of tea and drank it, even though it had got cold. When she was finished, she set the cup down. It rang softly on the wooden tabletop. “That’s why you wanted to come here, isn’t it?” she asked. “You wanted to get to the end of your Vision.”

  He set the poker down and wiped his hands on his pants. He looked older than he had when he had emerged from the mist not an hour earlier. “If your grandfather dies when the seers say he will, I will be an old man. I will never be a Visionary Black King. Just a placeholder for you or your brothers. I will be Blind. I owe it to myself, to our people, to follow my Vision as far as it will lead. And if I never become Black King, so be it. I will enable you to be a better Black Queen.”

  “You’re afraid to be King without Vision.”

  He ran a hand through his hair, a gesture he rarely used because it gave away his discomfort. She had seen it only a few times in his life, always when he was under great stress. “It is one thing to rule with Vision and to have lost the Vision. It is another altogether never to rule with Vision. We hold our power through Vision, strength, and political skill. I have never been much of a politician. I am a wonderful Visionary, but that will go someday. And my strength will go with it. I would bring nothing to the throne and jeopardize my family’s place if I was to believe otherwise.”

  Jewel blinked, feeling disoriented. “Why can’t I see beyond the single Vision, Father? Why don’t I See myself as Black Queen?”

  “Sometimes,” he said softly, “a single Vision is so strong that it overpowers all the others until it happens. And sometimes a single Vision is all that we get of our lives.”

  “How do I know that I will See more than that?”

  “Because your mother and I both had Vision. It should be very strong in our children,” Rugar said.

  “Should be,” Jewel said. “But what if it isn’t?”

  “It will be,” Rugar said. “I watched you have a Vision. It commands all of you. Sometimes Visions come to people in dreams or in flashes, but when the Vision is strong, it takes over the entire person, as it did you.”

  She swallowed, wishing for another cup of tea, but not willing to make it. “My Vision has us with the Islanders, and yours has me in their palace. What if fighting them is wrong, Father? What if our destiny is something else entirely?”

  He stared at her as if he didn’t recognize her. “We fight, Jewel. That is what we do.”

  She pulled her braid forward and fiddled with the end. She had been thinking this for some time, but she hadn’t known how to approach him. Even now she wasn’t sure if this was the correct method. “I know,” she said. “But what happens if this place is different? We can’t seem to conquer it by force. Perhaps we’re here to learn something new. Perhaps that is what our Visions mean.”

  His expression hadn’t changed. He crossed his arms over his chest, much as Cas
eo had done. “I’m listening,” he said.

  “We have many powers,” she said. “We can enchant and beguile. We seem to use those skills only when we have conquered a people, but what about before? In my Vision the Prince cares for me. It is very, very clear. And if the Prince cares for me as strongly as he seems to, then perhaps we have another way into their world, another way to take control of this place.”

  “Jewel, you’re talking about methods that take years. We don’t have years.”

  “We have already spent a year here, Father, and all we have to show for it is this gray temporary home in the woods outside their city. We have lost half our people, and we are no closer to finding a solution. The Black King won’t save us, and we can’t find a way out of this place without risking even more lives. It seems that years spent conquering these people subtly are years better spent than hiding in the Shadowlands.”