The whole thing seemed very real. The crackle of the fire beside Gift echoed the large fire in the kitchen with the woman. But it wasn't real. He had seen these images in his dream: these and others, like the ones he had seen when his grandfather was here. This time the Vision had lasted forever, and it had made him cry.
He opened his eyes. His mother was watching him closely, as if she were afraid something was going to happen to him with his eyes closed. "I had that Vision thing again, didn't I?" he asked.
Her lips got tight, and she shrugged, a tiny movement he almost didn't see. Then the door opened, and he turned, thinking it would be his father. Instead, Coulter came in.
Coulter looked bigger somehow, older, not like his friend, but like a grown-up. Coulter's blue eyes seemed brighter than they had ever been before. Gift could feel him almost more than he could see him.
The light around Gift grew brighter, almost blinding. Coulter waved his arm over Gift, and the light dimmed. Gift could no longer see it, but he could feel it, encircling him like a warm hug.
"You woke up," Coulter said.
Gift nodded. "What happened?"
Coulter looked at Gift's mother. Gift recognized the look as one grownups gave each other. It sent some sort of secret signal. Gift's mother stood. She moved gingerly, as if her wings hurt her.
"You be careful," she said to Coulter. "I'll just be outside."
Coulter didn't answer her. Instead he waited until she left before he sat, crosslegged, beside Gift.
Gift had always liked Coulter. He looked funny — kind of like the yellow people in Gift's Vision — but he was big and friendly and had a sparkle that surrounded him. The sparkle had grown stronger all winter, and now it was as bright as the light had been around Gift. In fact, the light made him think of Coulter.
"You did something to me, didn't you?" Gift asked.
Coulter nodded. "I want you to think in your grown-up way before I talk to you."
Gift frowned. He hadn't told anyone except his mother about his grown-up think, and she hadn't believed him. He knew she hadn't told Coulter. Gift raised himself on his elbows. "Something awful happened, didn't it?"
"Do you remember how you came to this place?" Coulter asked.
Gift nodded. "My mother and her friends brought me here when I was very, very little."
"Solanda brought me," Coulter said. "I was a year old." He leaned forward, his arms resting on his thighs. "You and me, we aren't real Fey."
Gift frowned. He could see that about Coulter. Coulter didn't look like anybody else. His hair was yellow, his eyebrows were straight, and his eyes were round. But Gift had seen himself in a mirror. He had the eyebrows, his hair was dark, his features were swept up in proper Fey fashion. "I'm Fey," he said.
"No," Coulter said. "Part Fey. Your daddy is what they call Islander, like me."
The man who held the baby. That was Gift's father. He knew that as clearly as if he had been with the man every day of his life. "Then why am I here?"
"I don't know," Coulter said. He bit his lower lip, finally looking like a kid again. Gift wasn't sure he wanted to talk to a kid. Coulter glanced around as if he were making sure they were alone. "Yesterday, I heard you screaming. No one else seemed to. They all did the same stuff they always do. But I heard you. In my head. And it was like this door opened in my brain, and all this stuff I knew came to my mind."
"I was screaming?" Gift pushed himself all the way up. No wonder his throat was sore.
"Not really, I don't think," Coulter said. "I don't know. I heard you in my brain. Then I came here. You were dying, Gift."
Gift frowned. He was sore, but other than that he felt all right. "I'm all right now."
"I know," Coulter said. "I came here and the closer I got to you, the more I could see what was happening to you. You had ties to someone else --your real mom --and she was dying, and you were dying with her. And everybody knew, and they were letting you die."
"Everybody?" Gift asked. "Even my mom and dad?"
Coulter shook his head. "Your dad went to get help. All the Domestics and Healers were gone. Even the Shaman was gone."
"Because they didn't want to help me?"
"Because they were helping your real mom. And when I came in the door, I heard --through you --the Shaman saying she was too far away to help you."
Gift frowned. He remembered that. He remembered her standing beside him and saying that. "Was my grandfather there?"
Coulter nodded.
Gift put the heel of his hand on his forehead. This sounded so familiar. He closed his eyes. He could see his grandfather, demanding they save the boy, and when they did not, wanting that baby.
As if they were interchangeable.
"I don't understand."
"Me, neither," Coulter said. "But I knew what to do. It was like I knew it already, like it had been in my brain all along. I cut that link you had with your mom, and I wrapped my light around you. That's why you still have light now."
Gift looked at his hand. If he concentrated, he could still see the light dripping off it. No wonder he had thought Coulter was with him. Coulter was.
"How long do I need this?" Gift asked.
"I don't know," Coulter grabbed Gift's hand. Coulter's grip was tight, his skin clammy.
Gift didn't pull away, but he wanted to.
"I'm scared," Coulter whispered. "Something happened to me, and what happened to you started it."
"Maybe," Gift said slowly, "when my grandfather gets back, we can talk to him."
"I thought you never liked your grandfather."
"I don't really," Gift said. Then he told Coulter about the Vision. "Grandpa knew what it was. He said it would happen again, and that's where I was when you came here. In that place, with those people."
Coulter let go of Gift's hand. "Your grandfather scares me. He doesn't look at people. He looks through them."
Gift nodded. He had seen that. "He wanted to trade me," Gift said. "For that baby. When he thought I was dead. He wanted that baby."
"Baby?" Coulter said.
"She was there, where my real mother was dying. My grandfather wanted her if he couldn't have me."
Coulter bit his lower lip again. Then he rubbed a fist against his cheek, leaving a smear of dirt. He didn't really have parents. Everyone at the Domicile watched him, and sometimes they let him go without a bath for a long, long time.
"Something's wrong," he said. "I don't know what any of this means, Gift."
"Me either," Gift said. He was more frightened now than he had been when he woke up.
"But I think we should be careful around your grandfather."
Gift nodded. "Can I keep the light?"
Coulter grinned. "Sure." He got up. "I'm glad you're all right."
"Me, too," Gift said, although he wasn't sure, after this conversation, if he was all right at all.
"Look," Coulter said. "You and me, we're different. Neither of us live with our real mom and dad. And when you got in trouble, somehow I knew. I think we should stick together."
Gift held up his hand, and watched the light drip from it. "I don't think we got a choice," he said.
TWENTY-SIX
Matthias hadn't slept. He sat on the kneeling cushion, which he had moved beneath the slitted windows in the 50th Rocaan's worship room. The room smelled musty and damp. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling and dust had gathered on the tiny altar. The Sword, hanging from the wall beside the door, was covered in rust.
The 50th Rocaan had used the room to be closer to God. Every morning, he had taken the back stairs to this tiny, unadorned place, and spent an hour listening for God's still small voice. Toward the end, he had said he never heard it. Matthias hadn't even believed it existed. Yet he found himself walking the cramped steps himself during the night, searching for some kind of solace.
The Tabernacle had once been a small saint's cottage filled with an incense burner, an altar, and a kneeling cushion so that the itinerant worshiper could feel
closer to his God. The original stone room remained, although three centuries earlier, the 35th Rocaan added a window, covered by tapestries. The window became an arrow slit, which he used to attack assailants who were trying to eject him from the Tabernacle.
The light coming through the window was just enough to allow Matthias to blow out the candles he had brought. From here he had a view of the river, and when the sky was clear, a view of the palace.
He leaned his head against the damp stone wall. Nicholas had sent a page over in the middle of the night with a message. Two words.
Jewel's dead.
He still remembered Nicholas's face. The Fey held his pregnant daughter close, and Nicholas followed, already looking bereft. You are committing murder, holy man. But it wouldn't be the first time, would it?
Nicholas didn't understand. He had never understood. As a boy, he had shirked his duties and tried to avoid his religious studies. As a man, he had fought Matthias each and every step along the way.
He did not understand what they were facing.
No one did.
But the answer lay in holy water.
The Roca had used the holy water to clean his sword before he allowed the Soldiers of the Enemy to run him through. The Words Written and Unwritten said that at that moment, the Roca was Absorbed to the Hand of God. Rocaanist tradition said that Roca's actions provided a sacrifice which saved his people from the Soldiers of the Enemy. Nothing in the Words or in the traditions said that holy water had murderous properties.
The 50th Rocaan had decided that they had misused the holy water. He thought perhaps the Fey were the new Soldiers of the Enemy, and he agreed to meet with Rugar, Jewel's father, in the hope that he could drive the Fey back by himself.
It was a vain and arrogant hope. The Rocaan was putting himself in the position of the Roca, thinking that if the Fey ran him through, he would be Absorbed, and the Fey would leave Blue Isle forever.
The Fey had killed him, using their magic, and nothing had changed. Instead Nicholas had married a Fey and an uneasy truce was born.
But the holy water had its effect on the Fey for a reason. No one else suffered so at its touch. All the others on the Isle took part in the Sacraments, and they touched the holy water daily. The worst that had happened to an Islander was a small rash. People born near the Cliffs of Blood wore gloves during Midnight Sacrament to prevent the allergic reaction. But even if the holy water touched them, it did not kill them.
The sun sparkled on the river water below. The Cardidas was wide, the ports empty now except for fishing vessels. Jahn's wealth was slowly disappearing. All because of the Fey. Even Nicholas's marriage hadn't allowed trade to reopen. Both Nicholas and Alexander were afraid to let the Fey off the Isle, afraid they would send holy water back to their Black King, and his magicians would find a way around it.
But what if the Fey couldn't find a way around it? What if the Islanders had holy water for a reason, and that reason was to stop the Fey?
Six years ago, Matthias would never have believed this. But, as the Words said, The belief of cowards was assured. As time passed, he believed more and more.
It was almost as if the fact that holy water could be used against the Fey proved God provided for the Islanders. The old Rocaan would have called — and once did call — that idea blasphemy. But it was no more blasphemy than thinking a man 50 generations removed could take the place of the Roca.
Matthias leaned his head against the cold stone wall. The slight breeze blowing in the window off the river was warmer than the stone. But he didn't mind the chill. He needed it to remind him of what had happened.
He had tried to warn Nicholas. When Nicholas had asked that Jewel not feel the touch of holy water during the marriage ceremony, Matthias had agreed. He wanted to wait and see what would happen. His role as Rocaan was still too new. Perhaps he was wrong. Besides, he thought there would be a number of options. If the marriage did not work out, Nicholas could have set Jewel aside.
Then the baby was born, and again Nicholas asked that Jewel and her son not feel the touch of holy water. It soon became clear that God was not with the boy. He had no brain to speak of. He moved slowly, acted slowly, and even slept slowly. Alexander had worried that the child would not be able to rule. Matthias worried that the child was such an abomination that God might not want it to live.
From that point on, he had tried to talk to Nicholas, but Nicholas would hear nothing of it. Other families had problem children, he would say. Matthias would point out that those families were often in Godless areas, like the Marshes or the Snow Mountains, but Nicholas would point to the few who had made their way to Jahn.
When the new pregnancy happened, Matthias became desperate. He did not want Jewel to solidify the marriage. Nor did he want another half-formed child that close to the Roca's throne. Nicholas did not believe, and because he did not believe, he did not understand that he was polluting the Roca's blood with that of the Soldiers of the Enemy.
Tiny figures crossed the Jahn bridge. Matthias twisted on the cushion so that he could see better. No horses. No one from the palace.
Yet.
Matthias was accused of not believing — and he had told the 50th Rocaan that he hadn't believed — but what he had meant by that was that he didn't believe in the miracles. He still felt that if he studied enough, he would learn the secret behind the Absorption. Perhaps it was a simple trick designed to scare the Soldiers of the Enemy. He felt that the Rocaanists honored a man. A great man to be sure, but a man just the same.
That the Roca had lived and influenced life on Blue Isle, Matthias had no doubt. That the Roca had powers from God, Matthias did doubt. Still, the systems established after the Roca's death had served the Isle for generations. And one of those systems including passing the Roca's blood through the King's line, unbroken, from the days of the Roca's sons.
Nicholas had polluted that blood. The pollution produced an abomination like Sebastian. For the sake of the Isle, for the sake of Rocaanism, for the sake of Nicholas himself, Matthias had to stop that.
He had thought a simple test would have been enough. The cloth had not been dipped in holy water. It had been stored with holy water. That way, if God had intended the water to touch Jewel, it would have. God prevented the abominations from continuing, not Matthias.
Matthias had simply been God's instrument.
If that is the case, Matthias, why can't you sleep?
He sat up and glanced around the small room. The door was still closed. He was alone.
He had come here to hear the 50th Rocaan's voice, but not with words from his conscience, speaking inside his head.
Matthias had not been able to sleep the night of the Invasion either. Whenever he closed his eyes, he had seen Fey melting, grasping at their featureless faces, suffocating before him. It had taken him weeks to get beyond that.
And he still saw the face of their leader, asking What have you done? in accented Nye, as Matthias poured holy water on his face.
Matthias shuddered.
Even when faced with an Enemy seeking to destroy everything a man held dear, that man still had twinges of conscience.
Conscience that spoke with the voice of a former friend and mentor.
Matthias sighed. He had told the Rocaan it was wrong to appoint him to take his place. But the Rocaan hadn't listened.
— You are my choice, Matthias. A Rocaan needs strength and a certain love of knowledge. You have both of those.
— I would want the church to be led by someone who believes.
— Why? You don't believe yourself. What should it matter to you?
— I have always thought that my failure to believe was my failure. Having a Rocaan who believes, being surrounded by those who believe, reinforces that feeling. But if the Rocaan doesn't believe either, that makes Rocaanism a hollow shell. An institution with no heart, a hypocritical place that pretends to provide comfort and answers and in truth can provide nothing.
— There have been disbelieving Rocaans in the past.
— Yes, and one was assassinated, and another nearly brought the church down with him. I don't want to be that kind of man, Holy Sir. I can't be.
— You won't be.
The Rocaan had been so certain that day. Yet that certainty had never made its way to Matthias. The Rocaan had said, just before he died, that he hadn't heard the still small voice in years. He believed it hadn't spoken in generations, leaving the Rocaans to discover truth on their own. He had said he thought such a discovery the only way to continue faith.
Matthias had discovered truth. Nicholas simply hadn't wanted to hear it. He would be grateful, though, one day, when his real son and heir, born of Nicholas and an appropriate Island woman, would be born.
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