Fey 02 - Changeling (39 page)

TWENTY-ONE

Gift was crying.
 
Niche flew out of the second room to find him on the carpet before the fire, clutching his forehead with one hand and convulsing, his eyes rolled into the back of his head.
 
The other hand was dangerously close to the low-burning flames.

"Gift!" she said.
 
"Gift!"

She held his shoulders, but she lacked the strength to hold him down.
 
She had seen this before.
 
She had seen it during the First Battle for Jahn when the Black Robes had poured poison on her friends.

But there was no smell. The room smelled of a wood fire, not burning flesh.
 
Beneath his hand, his skin looked fine.

"Wind!" She screamed for her mate.
 
He flew into the room, half changed, mostly wings and small male body.
 
As he landed he grew to his proper size.

"What happened?" he asked as he knelt beside Gift.
 

"I don't know," she said.
 
"I heard him crying and I came in here.
 
Please, go for the Shaman.
 
We need help.
 
We need it now."

He didn't need to be told twice.
 
With a snap of his fingers, he became no bigger than a spark.
 
But no spark ever flew that fast or with such direction.
 
He disappeared under the crack in the door, gone before Niche could say another sentence.

Gift was moaning.
 
Her beautiful, brilliant boy had drool running down his chin.
 
His hands were opening and closing, his heels pounding the floor.
 

"Hurry," Niche whispered.
 
"Someone please hurry."

He was supposed to be their salvation, their blessing, their gift.
 
Their reward for serving Rugar so well.
 
The child they could never have.
 
Wisp women were too fragile to have children.
  
Their hollow bones could not handle the weight of a child.
 
Wisps usually accepted this, but Niche wanted a child.
 
She wanted to raise a child with another Wisp.
 
Rugar gave her Gift.
 
He came with a price, but it was a price she had been willing to pay.

Until now.

He had been alone in the room.
 
She had been cooking their lunch and hadn't heard the door.
 
But something had happened.
 
Perhaps he had gotten into some poison, or someone had hurt him somehow.
 
But the room looked no different.
 
No spilled bottles, no water on the floor.
  
The fire crackled and spit as it always did.

Only her son was different.

"Maaaaaaaaaaa!" he cried, and the word broke her heart.

"I'm here, Gift."

He shook his head and thrashed against her hands, almost rising off the ground.
 
She couldn't hold him.
 
"Maaaa!"

Beside her the door opened.
 
She looked up, expecting the Shaman.
 
Instead, the horrible little boy that Gift sometimes played with stood at the door.

His name was Coulter, and Solanda had stolen him from the Islanders before Jewel left Shadowlands.
 
She claimed he had magic, but he looked like an Island child, with big blue eyes, brownish-blond hair, and square features.
 
He was small and solid.
 
Even though he was at least five years old, he looked like a child of three.

"Move," he said with a voice that had no childhood in it.

"What did you do to him?" Niche asked.

"Nothing," Coulter said.
 
"Now move."

Gift's thrashing had gotten worse.
 
Niche pushed down on his shoulders, trying to keep him stable, but she didn't have the strength or the weight.
 
"Go get the Shaman," Niche said.

"The Shaman's gone.
 
You only have me."

"Maaaaaaa!"
 
Gift's face was turning purple.

"Move!" Coulter said.
 
"Can't you see?
 
He's dying!"

"But you —"

Coulter came all the way into the cabin and, in one sudden movement, shoved her aside.
 
She fell back on her wings, the delicate bones in the tips snapping.
 
The pain brought tears to her eyes.
 
Coulter was leaning over the convulsing body of her son.

He stretched out his arms, then fell on Gift.
 
A bright light wrapped itself around both of them — and for a moment, Niche saw through it.
 
Two grown men, one slender and beautiful and dark, the other short and blonde and pale, standing near the Jahn Bridge on the Cardidas river.
 
Then the image faded.

Wind landed beside her.
 
He grew from a spark into a full grown man.
 
"The Shaman's gone."

Niche swallowed, unable to take her gaze off the boy holding her son.
 
"I know."

"So are the other healers.
 
We're alone here."

Niche nodded toward the boys.
 
"He came."

The light faded around Coulter, but remained around Gift.
 
He had stopped struggling.
 
Sweat glued his hair to his head, but he had stopped drooling.
 
His hands were at his sides, his feet relaxed, his eyes closed.
 
He looked as if he were sleeping.
 
Bands of light flowed around him like string, binding him together and protecting him from the air.

Young Coulter's hands were shaking as he brushed bangs off his flat forehead. "Who is the dying woman?" he asked Niche.

She frowned and shook her head.
 
"There's no woman here."

"The woman the Shaman is tending.
 
The woman who wears strange clothing, but has the look of a Fey."

"Jewel," Wind breathed.
 
He glanced at Niche as if he didn't understand.
 
But she did.

The dying woman.
 
Jewel was too young to die on her own.
 
"She's his real mother."

"Ah," Coulter said.
 
He brought his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them.
 
If it weren't for the ancient wisdom in his eyes, he would have looked like any small, inquisitive boy.
 
"You realize no one severed the ties between Gift and his mother."

Niche's wings throbbed.
 
"Severed the —?"

"She was tended by Islanders during his birth, remember?" Wind said.

"She came to him through their Link," Coulter said.
 
Niche wondered how he knew this, but he spoke as if it were all natural.
 
"She tried to save him as she died.
 
But she thought him the wrong child, and by the time she knew he was her son, she was gone."

Niche looked at Gift.
 
His body shone in the bands of light.
 
"So he's dead?" she whispered.

Coulter smiled.
 
"I severed the ties.
 
He's safe now."

"He was dying because she was dying?" Niche asked.

Coulter nodded.
 
"But he'll live."
 
Coulter stood and brushed off the seat of his pants.
 
"As long as I do."

TWENTY-TWO

More Fey hurried into the kitchen.
 
Jewel's grip on Nicholas's hand was loosening.
 
Her hand was turning cold, and he wasn't sure if she was breathing.
 
The Shaman had ceased touching Jewel's face and instead had a hand on her stomach.
 
A small light glowed around the Shaman's fingers.

The kitchen staff kept a respectable distance.
 
Rugar had sunk to his knees beside Jewel, but the Shaman wouldn't let him touch her.
 
Nicholas said nothing, but tried to send his love through his fingers into Jewel's hand.

She had to live.

She had to.

He couldn't survive without her.

The wound on her forehead had spread across her eyebrows.
 
She was still melting, like the Fey did when touched with holy water, but the process was slower than usual.

He wasn't sure how Matthias had done it.
 
He must have touched her with a tainted finger, or splashed her as he placed the crown on her head.
 
But it didn't matter.
 
Nicholas had insisted that she be beside him in a religious ceremony.
 
The responsibility was his.

"Come back to me, Jewel," he said.

All the Fey surrounding Jewel were huddled over her stomach.
 
A golden cat sat near the fire, licking its front paws and wiping them over its face.
 
The room was too hot, and smelled of pheasant.
 

Sebastian had stopped crying.

No one spoke.
 
The only sounds in the large room were the crackle of wood in the hearth fire, and the small rustles that people made when they were trying to be quiet.
 

The silence was eerie.
 
Nicholas wanted to look at his son, but he didn't dare.
 
If he had to choose a life, he would choose Jewel's.
 
He begged the Roca for forgiveness, but his son was a shell, an empty thing instead of a child, and his wife —

His wife was everything.

Her stomach was no longer high and firm.
 
It was rolling like waves on a sea.
  
The small glow from the Shaman's hand extended over the entire womb, showing layers beneath the skin:
 
the blood flowing, the water around the baby, and the baby itself.

Its body was flat.
 
Flat.
 
And its eyes were square, and appeared, even to him, frightened.

"My God," he said.
 
"The baby's melting too."

"No," the Shaman said.
 
She looked at the Fey around her.
 
Women all, with hair braided and wrapped around their skulls like coronets.
 
Most of them had black hair, but in some braids, silver shone.
 
"She won't be able to help us.
 
We'll have to do it on our own."

The cat stood up and walked beside the Shaman.
 
Then it sat, front paws neatly placed before it, and stared at Jewel's womb as if it held a mouse.

"What are you going to do?" Nicholas asked.