"Exactly," Reece said.
Titus shook his head, suddenly confused. Exactly what? They were dismissing him as if he were a child. He wasn't a child. "I think we should get the Rocaan. I think we should face what's coming for us as a unified body. If our leader believes that the Fey are threats to us and to God, then we should listen to him."
"We don't have a leader," Porciluna said.
"We did just a few moments ago," Titus said. "Send some Auds for him. Bring him back."
Reece glanced down the hall, and closed the door. Then he came over and took Titus's arm. "You're frightened, aren't you?" he asked.
Titus shook his arm away. He didn't want this fake compassion. He had decisions to make, a church to save, ideals to hold. Some of those decisions had to be made now, before the Rocaan was gone for good. "I just think we should be certain of our choices," he said.
"The Rocaan made his choice," Porciluna said.
"Based on politics and fear, not on belief!"
"How do you know that?" Reece said. "How do you know what's in a man's heart?"
They reversed the argument on him, and he had no answer for that. None at all. Titus shook his head. "I just think we should get him."
"And save you the embarrassment of sharing the Secrets with one of us?" Porciluna asked.
Titus swallowed. He was frightened. But he suspected the fear was healthy. "What if the Elders don't decide on a new Rocaan? What then?"
"We'll decide," Porciluna said.
"No," Reece said softly. "We have to address this. It's a valid fear. We're already in trouble since none of us has the Secrets."
"I have the Secrets," Titus said.
Reece started, his thin body shaking with the violence of his reaction. "You —?"
"That's why he's here," Porciluna said. "Matthias wanted to be sure I knew who kept the Secrets, and that I should leave the boy alone."
"I thought you had them," Reece said. He put a hand to his face and rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. "This changes things."
"It changes nothing," Porciluna said.
"No," Reece said. "It makes sense of the boy's question." He brought his hand down, his faded blue eyes seeking Titus's. "If we can't agree on a Rocaan in the Council of Elders, son, then you become Rocaan by default."
"There's nothing in the traditions for that," Porciluna said.
Reece nodded. "But it's true. If we can't decide, then the boy has to make holy water and take care of the rest of the Secrets. That's how it will work."
Porciluna waved a hand dismissively. "We'll choose a Rocaan."
Titus was cold, even though his face was flushed. They would choose a Rocaan, and he would give that man the Secrets. Even a man like Porciluna who also had no faith. Who was willing to lie to the people in order to save his own skin. Who was willing the jeopardize the church with no thought at all.
"And what happens if I refuse to give the Secrets to the new Rocaan?" Titus asked.
Porciluna swiveled until he faced Titus. "You have to." Porciluna's voice quivered as if the idea had never occurred to him before.
"Do I?" Titus said. "Is that in the traditions? I know this isn't provided for in the Words. And it was my understanding that the person who possessed the Secrets is the Rocaan."
"You aren't ready to be Rocaan," Reece said gently.
"I know," Titus said. "So let's bring the Rocaan back."
"He resigned," Porciluna said.
"But there's no provision for that either," Titus said. He smiled. "See? It works out just fine. You allow him to break traditions of the church, so you'll have to allow me to do the same."
"This is blackmail," Porciluna said.
"No," Titus said. "It's sense. You cannot have things the way you want them. They have to go according to our understanding of God's will."
"We never understand God's will," Porciluna said.
"The Words, the traditions, and the still small voice are all designed to help us understand, however imperfectly," Reece said.
"You're on his side?"
Reece shook his head. "There are no sides here. Only a complicated issue that won't be solved simply." He turned to Titus. "We won't look for Matthias."
Titus started to object, but Reece held up his hand.
"He is the representative of God, and he has chosen to resign. Traditions start this way. Perhaps if I had been here, I would have discovered what he thought his action was based on. Matthias is a scholar. He knows what he is doing."
"But he was never a believer."
Reece looked pointedly at Titus's unshod feet. "He was never an obvious believer. But the Tabernacle was important to him. He served it as best he could."
"Matthias said he did not believe just a few moments ago," Porciluna said.
"And he said that was one reason he was stepping down," Titus said, not sure why the sentence had come from him with such obvious anger. He had known that the Rocaan had trouble with his faith, but he hadn't realized that the other Elders did too. The Auds he had grown up with, the ones who questioned everything about the church and the religion weren't that unusual. They were, in fact, able to rise in the hierarchy of the church.
A blasphemy.
"Matthias was always honest about his lack of belief," Reece said. "I often thought that made him more valuable than the rigid believers. Or the liars."
He glanced at Porciluna as he said that last. Porciluna did not look away.
"If you're not going to go after him, what are you going to do?" Titus asked.
"Follow his instructions," Reece said. "We're going to choose a new Rocaan."
"We can't," Porciluna said, "as long as this boy controls the Secrets."
"Of course we can," Reece said. "This is how Matthias planned it."
Porciluna's small eyes got even smaller. "No. Matthias planned this to insult us all. He knew that child wouldn't give up his power."
"I'm not a child," Titus said.
"You're not an Elder either."
Porciluna's words hung in the room. Titus shivered. Porciluna was right and wrong at the same time. The Rocaan had given Titus the Secrets for a reason. The reason had to be stronger than one of revenge and a manipulation of political power.
The Old Rocaan thought I had God's Ear.
Maybe Rocaan Matthias had always had God's Ear. Maybe the Old Rocaan had been right. Maybe this change was the best for the Tabernacle. Maybe he had given Titus the Secrets for a religious reason.
Believing oneself to be Chosen is the way of folly, his old Danite instructor used to tell them.
But what if one was really Chosen? How could he tell?
Titus nodded. "I'm not an Elder. That's right. But I do hold the Secrets."
"We'll relieve you of that burden as soon as we can," Reece said. "Let's call a meeting of the Elders."
"And quickly," Porciluna said with his gaze on Titus. In their own ways, both men had made it clear that they believed Titus would destroy the Tabernacle.
He glanced at them, with their political concerns and their ties to this world. They seemed to have forgotten God, forgotten the Roca, forgotten the reasons they were here in the first place.
Perhaps the Rocaan had given Titus the Secrets because he believed Titus could save the Tabernacle.
Perhaps the Rocaan was right.
FIFTY-NINE
Touched sat on the Warder's table, examining the blasted and burnt pieces of skin that had fallen when Coulter escaped. Some of the flesh hadn't been touched. It had decayed as it should have, leaving a slight odor of rotting flesh in the room. Rotin claimed the odor sickened her, and she left to conduct her own experiments.
Probably with herbs.
The other Warders were still working with the Domestics. Touched was in no hurry to bring them into the cabin. He wanted to examine this material all by himself.
The burnt skin had been over the bubble where the light had seared it. Those bits of flesh were blackened and cha
rred, some falling apart in his fingers as he picked them up. Little flakes of ash covered the table's surface, suggesting that even more strips of flesh had been burned beyond recognition.
The light hadn't felt that hot, but it had to have been to sear through that much flesh. The moment had been startling and almost terrifying. Touched had believed that he had captured Coulter, that the boy was incapable of saving himself. But something about the Islander Adrian had allowed the boy to break free.
Touched didn't believe that Adrian had any magic. If he had, he would have used it against Jewel and the others when he was first captured. This was a man who had loved his son so much that he had sacrificed his own life to save him. He would have used any magic he had at that point.
He wouldn't have used it to save Coulter.
Unless he had learned it in Shadowlands.
But how was magic learned? Touched had never heard of that. Fey either had it or they didn't have it. He suspected Islanders were the same way.
Although Caseo would have argued with him about that. Caseo believed that assumptions were the killers of knowledge, that they blinded people who really wanted to learn.
That had been one of Caseo's assumptions.
And it had probably been right.
Touched sighed. The most interesting bits of skin were the ones that had side holes punched through them. Tiny charred areas that didn't seem to affect the rest of the strip. Either the light had shredded somewhere or something else had hit these pieces.
As he looked at the skin, he stretched out the pieces on the table top, hoping to reconstruct them into the wall of the bubble. That was probably fruitless, but if he could do so, he might learn something about the nature of Coulter's powers.
Or perhaps about what triggered his ability to rescue himself.
A knock on the door made him jump. He resisted the urge to gather all the skin strips and hide them. He was a Warder now. In truth, he was the head Warder, although Rotin hadn't acknowledged that yet. No one could do anything to him.
"Come," he said, making certain his voice sounded calm.
Tazy slid around the door. He was a stocky Fey, but strong. He ran the Foot Soldiers as if they were children. Touched had put Tazy in charge of the search for Coulter.
He pushed the door closed with one foot, took off his beret, and turned it around and around in his hands. His nose wrinkled at the stench in the room, but he said nothing.
A Foot Soldier could say nothing. They collected most of the strips.
From live victims.
"Well?" Touched asked.
Tazy shook his head.
Touched waited, but Tazy said no more. "A simple shake of the head will do you no good," Touched said. "Tell me."
Tazy's hat was tattered, the material full of tiny holes. His skin had scrapes and bruises and there were grass stains on his knees.
"We saw no one," he said.
Touched set the last piece of skin down carefully so that he wouldn't rip it. Then he clenched his fists and rested them on his thighs. "I trust you looked."
Tazy brought his head up. "You sent us."'
"I sent you to find the boy, not to come back without him."
"Then send a Gull Rider. We saw nothing."
Touched nodded once. "Nothing?"
Tazy poked a finger through one of the holes in his cap. Even though he was twice Touched's age, he looked younger like he had never left childhood. Hard to believe those fingers had the power and precision to flay skin a layer at a time.
"They didn't take the path —"
"I know that," Touched said.
"— and they didn't go to Daisy Stream that we can see."
"I already sent teams to those places. Have you anyone in Jahn?"
Tazy licked his lips. His finger had burrowed a large hole in the cap. "No one would go."
"No one would go?" Touched kept his voice calm. "Even though ordered by a Warder?"
"Your orders weren't that specific —"
"My orders were precise," Touched said. "I told you to keep your people out there until they found that boy."
Tazy turned his hat inside out, then stuffed it in the pocket of his jerkin. "My people are still out there. But they're not going to find anything. That boy vanished."
"No one vanishes," Touched said. "Everyone from Doppelgängers to Shape-Shifters leaves a trail. You just have to know how to find it."
"That's why I think you should send a Rider. They might see him from above."
"Or perhaps I should tell Rugar to get someone else to lead the Foot Soldiers. Obviously you're not suited to the task any more."
"I do fine," Tazy said. "This boy is unusual. We haven't lost anyone like this before."
"Did you see anything?" Touched asked.
"Broken branches leading to the river. Then nothing."
"So what, do you think he drowned?"
"It's possible," Tazy said.
"Possible? Possible? How possible is it that someone who has lived in Shadowlands his entire life would approach a running body of water? How possible is it that a boy who has never been in the woods could outwit two dozen Fey?"
"It happened," Tazy said.
"Because you let it happen." Touched was shaking. The fools. "Do you realize what you did?"
Tazy shook his head. He wasn't a dumb man. He knew better than to cross a Warder.
"You let our best hope for the future disappear. He Enchants, that boy."
"He's Islander."
"He's magic," Touched said. "And I have an Enchanter spell that will neutralize their poison. But we need an Enchanter. He's the only one we've got."
"If you had told me that before —"
"Before? Before what? Would you have worked harder? Is that what you're saying? Are you glad that the Islander child is gone? You disobeyed my orders because of your dislike of Islanders?"
"I didn't know he had magic."
"Neither did I until a few days ago. I still need him."
Tazy took his hat out of his pocket and twirled it. "We could keep looking," he said.
"That you could," Touched said.
"But I think the trail's cold. We didn't find the broken branches until yesterday. They only went to the river."
"Did anyone check the other side? Did anyone go farther downstream to see if the boy waded a few feet to throw you off the trail? Did any of you think at all?" Touched was having trouble keeping his voice down. He had sent the Soldiers because he believed they would do better than he and Rotin would. They had done worse.
Much worse.
Tazy shook his head. "The river's deep in that spot and the current is dangerous."
"I don't want excuses," Touched said.
"It's not," Tazy said. "If you knew tracking you would know that the boy couldn't have crossed there. Not alone."
"He was with another Islander," Touched said. "Or have you forgotten?"
Tazy shook his head. "We need a Gull Rider."
"Rugar approved one," Touched said. "He should have joined you this morning."
"We haven't seen one," Tazy said. "If we had, maybe we would have something by now."
"Probably the Gull Rider decided to stay away from you people. He probably thought he had a better chance on his own."
"But you haven't heard anything from him either, have you?"
Touched sighed. He hadn't heard a thing. The Enchanter and his protector had disappeared.
"I thought you haven't," Tazy said. "We're not incompetent, you know. You should have let us know how important this was."
"You should have figured this out," Touched said. "It would seem obvious that if we were going to use so many people to find someone that it was important."
Tazy shrugged. "I just thought it was Rugar going off the deep end again. He hates losing prisoners."
"It's happened before?"
"In Nye once. He went crazy."
"He's not very pleased now. But I'm less pleased," Touched said. "Organize y
our teams. I want you to look under every leaf, through every drop of water, in every tree for that boy. Understand?"
Fey 02 - Changeling Page 59
