Fey 02 - Changeling (4 page)

Rugar had thought of the difficulties in telling the King and Prince apart, then decided that it didn't matter.
 
King or Prince, a death in the royal family would destroy the Islanders' spirit.

Alexander was almost within range.
 
Rugar mentally saluted him.
 
Alexander had proven a worthy adversary.
 
Rugar would mourn his loss.

The approaching force did not talk.
 
The dust cloud traveled with them, surrounding them, but obscuring nothing.
 
The horses' hooves clomped in unison, adding a comforting rhythm to the morning.
 
Rugar leaned forward just enough to make certain his target was within his sights.
 

One shot.

One chance.

Alexander's perfectly straight torso was within range.
 
Rugar pulled the bow even tighter.
 
He imagined Alexander's heart, beating constantly, rhythmically, pictured it as a target, and then released the bowstring. The snap sounded loud to him, but the arrow flew silently between two guards.
 
It pierced Alexander's breast.
 
He glanced up skyward, a quick moment of startlement, then toppled backwards off his horse.

Rugar didn't move.
 
It would be a matter of moments before they saw him.
 
He wanted to see their reaction before he disappeared into his own private Shadowlands.

The horses stopped.
 
The guards in the rear cried out. The guards up front continued forward another few paces.
 
Lord Stowe yelled his King's name, and Lord Enford was off his mount before the rest.
 
He ran back to the King, and touched him gently, then cradled his head.

Lord Stowe dismounted, as did the remaining guards.

"No need," Lord Enford said in Islander, his voice barely carrying over the marsh.
 
"He's dead."

Rugar smiled.
 
Success.
 
It had been so rare these last few years.
 
He reached up and stuck a finger in the circle of lights.
 
The circle grew large enough to accommodate his body.
 
As he stepped inside the swirling gray nothingness, he heard Stowe's voice, high and frightened but struggling for control.
 

"Where did the arrow come from?"

"I don't know," Enford said.

"That tree?" asked a new voice.

Then the Circle Door closed behind Rugar and he willed the points of light to become as small as they could.
 
He had made this Shadowlands very tiny, big enough to hold his sitting frame and his weapons and little more.
 
He brushed against the square walls, his head pressed against the smooth sides.
 

Shadowlands got its air from the outside because the walls were porous.
 
But it got nothing else.
 
He was surrounded by grayness. The Shadowlands was like a great box with nothing inside, but it did have a top, a bottom and walls.
 
They were barriers to the touch and felt solid, but had no visible form.

He could still create Shadowlands — the proper kind — the kind that hid a warrior anywhere on an open plain.
 
He still had some of his Visionary powers.
 
But he didn't need them to know what would happen next.
 

The Islanders would be in complete disarray.
 
If Jewel stepped into the void left by King Alexander's death, good.
 
But if not, Rugar would.
 
Step one was completed.
 
As soon as night fell, he would leave his tree and head back to Jahn.
 
Then he would implement Step Two.
 

Unlike his daughter and her friend Burden, Rugar remembered the mission.
 
Blue Isle would become a Fey stronghold.
 
The last five years would become a footnote — the first battle instead of the war.

THREE

Jewel stopped at the door of the palace nursery, her hand over her bulging stomach.
 
The baby was kicking — hard — and the sharpness, combined with the constant pain in her chest, made her slightly dizzy.
 
Coming into the nursery always upset her, though.
 
The room was dark and gloomy, no matter what she did to cheer it up.
 
The stone walls were as gray as Shadowlands, and the fireplace did little to heat the place.
 
Whenever she came in, she opened the tapestries and let in the fresh air and sunlight.
 
As soon as she left, the nurse closed the tapestries again.

Not that actions made much difference.
 
Sebastian had not moved from his play rug.
 
He sat, hands on his sturdy thighs, legs outstretched, staring into the fire, just as she had left him hours before.
 
The stuffed warriors the nurse had made him, the tiny carts on their sanded wheels, didn't interest him.
 
Nothing did.

The baby she was carrying kicked again.
 
She had said nothing to Nicholas about her fears for this child.
 
Sebastian had kicked this much when he was in the womb, perhaps more, and now he was a dull, listless child who took not the best traits of his parents, but the worst.
 
If anyone had told her that a
 
mingling of Fey and Islander would result in a child that lacked spark, she would never have made this match.

Or at least not in the same way.

She couldn't imagine life without Nicholas.
 
For all their differences, he was more her complement than any other man she had ever met.
 
She caressed the taut skin hiding their next child.
 
She had tried to prevent another pregnancy, though, using Fey charms and herbs.
 
One month, Nicholas's chamberlain had discovered them and removed them.
 

One month was all it took.

Still, she couldn't quite bring herself to get rid of the child.
 
She allowed herself the small hope that this baby would be different, that this child would receive all the good traits, Islander and Fey.
 
This child would be what other Fey half-breeds had always been: the most powerful of all.

Fey lore had always said that, in addition to the lands, the Fey needed new blood to keep the magick alive.
 
New blood added freshness, gave the magic room to grow.
 
Fey to Fey matches created magic-filled children, but as the generations progressed, the magick diminished, weakened by too much closeness.
 
Mingling with new races always brought changes to the magick, always strengthened it, and sometimes even created new magickal forms.
 
Lore said that the Fey didn't have Visionaries until they descended from the Eccrasian Mountains.

The dizziness was passing.
 
She took a deep breath and entered the nursery.
 
The nurse was knitting in her chair near the fireplace.
 
Jewel didn't know how the woman sat so close to the heat.
 
The room was already twice as hot as it should be.

The nurse smiled and nodded at her.
 
Jewel nodded back.
 
Carefully, because of her bulk, she moved around the toys, chairs, and tables to her son.
 
Using a chair to brace herself, she sank down beside him and took his tiny hand in her own.

His skin was cold.

And hard.
 
She had always thought a child's skin should be soft.
 
The lack of sunlight in his life — and his mixed parentage — had left his skin a muted gray.
 
Slowly he turned his head toward her.
 
He had the solemnity of a man of eight decades.

"Moth-er," he said in Islander, drawing the word out, speaking one of the few words he had mastered.

"Hello, baby," she said, running a hand along his hard, smooth cheek.
 
Just once she wished he would lean into the caress, acknowledge the warmth that a child should feel for his parent.
 
But if she ever had to confess, her warmth for him had faded with his odd behavior.
 
She went through the motions, but the love, once so much a part of her, had disappeared deep inside.
 
"What have you been doing?"

He shrugged, a movement as slow as all his others.
 
No grace for him, no childlike impulsiveness, no curiosity, no quickness.
 
Nicholas never even came into the nursery any more.
 
He couldn't stand looking at Sebastian, knowing that this child would one day lead the Kingdom.

"How's the heart today, Mistress?" the nurse asked.

Jewel brought her right hand up to the space between her left breast and her rounded stomach.
 
"It still aches," she said.

For the last few days, Jewel felt as if her heart were hollow.
 
The Islander healers blamed the constant ache on her pregnancy, but she believed something else caused it.
 
She had felt a sharp piercing pain three mornings ago, so sharp that it had driven her to her knees and sent Nicholas's counselors scurrying for the Islander healers.
 
Then, as suddenly as it arrived, the pain faded, leaving the dull ache.

The Islander healers thought the ache meant she was ill and ordered her to bedrest.
 
But she had never rested in her life.
 
The Islanders had no concept of Fey.
 
Fey women kept moving until the child was born, and often went to war with infants strapped on their backs.
 
Just because she was living in the Islander stronghold did not mean that Jewel would act like a weak Islander woman.

"Perhaps you should rest," the nurse said gently.

Jewel didn't respond.
 
Instead, she squeezed Sebastian's hand.
 
His return squeeze, when it came, was strong and almost painful.
 
"Did he show any change at all this morning?"

"None, Mistress."
 
They had been having this conversation for three years, ever since his naming day.
 
Her father, Rugar, had warned her that giving a child an Islander name might rob him of his power.
 
But she had made a deal with Nicholas.
 
If Nicholas could show that the ancestral bearers of Sebastian's name were great men, then he would win the fight for the name.
 
All the previous Sebastians were great kings.
 
She wanted no less for her own child.
 
She had agreed.

And since that day, Sebastian had shown no interest in the world.
 
He went from a bright-eyed, grasping infant to a listless, lethargic one in the space of a day.
 
In desperation, she had taken him to Burden's colony in Jahn.
  
Burden had formed a Fey Settlement in the city just after her marriage.
 
Many Fey had been disillusioned by her father's rule and hoped that Jewel's marriage to Nicholas would improve their lot.
 
But the Settlement was as much a prison as the Shadowlands had been, just in a different way.

Burden had not taken many Fey with Domestic powers with him when he left Shadowlands, and the ones he had were not great Healers.
 
They had looked at her with pity as if she had failed to understand something, and then they had said that Sebastian was not a natural child, a fact she had already knew.
 
They said they could do nothing if she remained outside of Shadowlands.

Her pride kept her from Shadowlands, kept her from asking her father's help.
 
She would go, however, if this new child showed the same lack as Sebastian.

Asking for help would be difficult.
 
Fey did not give help readily, unlike Islanders.
 
The Fey believed that if a person could not figure out something on her own, she lacked insight and intelligence.
 
In seeking help for her children, she would diminish her position with her own people.

She leaned over, kissed Sebastian, and smoothed the thin coarse hair over his forehead.
 
He tilted his head toward her, moving so slowly that the movement was almost imperceptible, and then he smiled.