Fey 02 - Changeling (95 page)

Touched agreed with that, but didn't know how to answer Rugar's comment.
 
Rugar might take his agreement as a criticism.
 
And as much as Touched found to criticize about Rugar, Touched was still aware that Rugar was the Black King's son, and the Leader of this band of Fey.

"Actually," Touched said cautiously, "I think we need to find him for another reason."

"What's that?" Rugar said.

"The poison."
 
Touched licked his lips.
 
He hadn't told anyone what he was about to tell Rugar.
 
"When Caseo was still alive, I thought of an Enchanter's spell to get rid of the poison.
 
But Caseo rejected it because we didn't have an Enchanter in camp."

Suddenly Rugar's entire being looked alive.
 
He moved forward until his face was inches from Touched's.
 
"You have a spell?" he asked.
 
"A spell that will counteract the poison?"

"I thought I'd lost it," Touched said.
 
"But as I was roaming the woods last night, I remembered all of it."

"And it'll work?" Rugar asked.

"Perfectly," Touched said.

"It's an antidote?' Rugar asked.

Touched shook his head.
 
"Actually, it would turn the poison back on them.
 
That's what stalled us.
 
We needed an Enchanter spell from the beginning."

"An Enchanter spell," Rugar murmured.
 
Then he clapped Touched on the arm.
 
"You'll get your Gull Rider, and any other Beast Rider we can find.
 
We have to locate this boy."

"I know," Touched said.

"No, you don't know," Rugar said.
 
"We have to find him soon.
 
If he realizes he's Islander, he'll never help us.
 
We have to find him while he still thinks of himself as Fey."

FIFTY-TWO

Adrian awoke to the sound of birds chirping.
 
He lay on the thick mattress, breathing shallowly, listening to something he had
 
thought he would never hear again.
 

The sunlight, filtered through the trees, came in the windows and warmed him.
 
Scavenger's cabin, built over many years, was divided into several sections.
 
He called this the Recovery From Shadowlands section.
 
It had windows cut into two walls, windows without glass, so the floor was littered with dirt and leaves.
 
But it also smelled of pine trees, the river, and grass, scents that Adrian adored.
 
A lilac bush was blooming outside the nearest window and the overpowering smell filled the room.

Coulter huddled against him, face buried against his side.
 
The boy grew calmer when they got inside the cabin, as Scavenger predicted he would.
 
Coulter was used to wood walls, floors and ceilings.
 
It was the brightness he had trouble with.

And the sounds.

And the smells.

The cabin was long and narrow.
 
It wound around the trees, and branches rested on the roof.
 
Adrian had glanced at it the night before, noted the strangeness, but waited for Scavenger to tell him about it.

Scavenger did not.

But it was clear whoever had built the cabin had gained skills as time progressed.
 
The Recovery From Shadowlands room had boards nailed every which way.
 
Some of the boards had knots in them that opened to the outside.
 
But the room farthest in the back, Scavenger's private room which he promised he would only show them once, had even boards and no windows.
 
It was clean to the point of immaculate, and nothing got in.

Nothing at all.

Adrian stretched.
 
He felt a joy he hadn't felt since his son was born.
 
The simple things made him happy.
 
He hadn't known that, wouldn't have known that until someone took the outdoors away from him, with its weather and flowers and mud.
 

Coulter was another problem.

The boy was almost gibbering by the time he got into the cabin.
 
Scavenger had said such a reaction was normal for someone imprisoned in Shadowlands, maybe a bit extreme, but what did Adrian expect?
 
The boy thought the world was gray, not alive with color and beings.
 
It would take time and patience to get him to accept the difference.

The problem was that Adrian had neither.
 
Now that he was outside Shadowlands, he wanted to get as far from it as he could.

He wanted to see Luke.

He wanted to see the rest of his family and the farm and the river in the daylight and Jahn and the bridge and —

And everything.
 
Everything he had missed for so very long.

Scavenger unnerved him a bit, too.
 
The Red Cap had given his history, including his own escape from Shadowlands after killing Caseo, but he hadn't said much about what he had been doing since he left.
 
Adrian could guess.
 
An undisguised Fey couldn't be too welcome in any Islander communities.
 
Scavenger had probably spent the intervening years alone.

No wonder he was happy to have them here.

Adrian pulled the blanket over Coulter, then adjusted his own pillow so that Coulter would still have something to shield his eyes.
 
Then Adrian rolled off the mattress.
 
Scavenger could not have made this mattress.
 
He had to have stolen it from one of the Islander communities nearby.
 
It was too soft, the stitches too perfect, the stuffing too even to be made out of twigs and brambles and leaves.
 
Besides, Scavenger had no weaving equipment or sewing tools anywhere in the cabin.

The soft mattress after Adrian's run had left him stiff.
 
He stood and stretched again, thankful that he even had the chance to exercise.
 
Scavenger had not turned them into the Fey, and had promised to protect them, a promise that Adrian would hold him to.
 

His stomach rumbled.
 
He had to get breakfast for himself and Coulter, and then decide what his next step would be.
 
He opened the door at the far side of the room, and left the door open.

Scavenger sat at his table, several pastries on a small plate before him.
 
In the one of the back rooms, he had built himself a clay oven.
 
In order to bake, he had to be awake most of the night.

Adrian was obscurely touched.
 
No one had thought of him as an individual in years.
 
Not even Mend.
 
She had felt sorry for him, felt attracted to him, but she had not treated him as a person with his own feelings, his own beliefs, and his own joys.

"Good morning," he said as he slid into a chair.
 

Scavenger grinned at him and pushed the plate of pastries forward.
 
"Thought you might want real food.
 
Can't tell you how long it took me to learn to cook.
 
But I'm glad I did."

Adrian picked up one of the pastries.
 
It was round and flat and soft.
  
He took a bite.
 
The center was still warm.
 
"So am I," he said around the food.

He had never really talked with a Red Cap before.
 
He had always avoided them as the Fey did.
 
But he had done so for a different reason.
 
He had avoided them because he was partially afraid of them.
 
They never bathed, and worked with the dead, and seemed to be a bit dead themselves.
 
The Fey avoided them because they had no magic, and so were not considered real Fey.

But here was a Red Cap who had stood up for himself, had killed because he hadn't wanted to die, and had created a life for himself away from the death and the stink.
 
He had learned trades that most Fey believed beneath them, and had made himself comfortable.

"You live alone here?" Adrian asked.

Scavenger had two pastries on his plate. He fingered one of them.
 
"Who would live with me?" he asked.
 
"You're the first Islanders I've seen since I left Jahn, and the Fey — well, you know how they are."

Adrian did know.
 
He knew very well.

"I hope you realize that you have a unique problem here," Scavenger said.
 
"They're searching for you right now.
 
They don't like it when people escape."

"Did they search for you?" Adrian asked.

Scavenger shrugged.
 
"A little, probably. But I wasn't important.
 
It would have taken them a long time to discover which Red Cap had killed Caseo, and then they would have sent out the searchers.
 
I already had a place to hide by then, and a plan.
 
You don't seem to have a plan."

"And they know who we are."

Scavenger took a bit from a pastry.
 
"Islanders in Shadowlands are hard to miss."

Adrian smiled.
 
The man had a wry sense of humor.
 
He liked that.
 

He finished the pastry.
 
It tasted wonderful, light and flaky and warm.
 
Even the food tasted better outside of Shadowlands, as if the grayness had affected everything.

"Adrian?"

Coulter, crying for him.

"In here," Adrian said.

"Adrian!"
 
Coulter's voice grew louder, more terrified.
 
He was waking up.

"Better go to him," Scavenger said.
 
"He has the Overs real bad."

Adrian didn't wait for a definition of the word.
 
He had a hunch about what it meant.
 
He pushed away from the roughly hewn table and went through the door.

Coulter was wrapped in a small ball, the pillow shoved against his face, his body as far away from the light as it could be.
 
Adrian sat on the mattress and held a hand over the boy, but didn't touch him.

"Coulter?" he said.
 
"It's me."

Coulter didn't move.
 
Adrian put his hand on Coulter's back.
 
Coulter started.
 
Then Adrian gathered him close.
 
"It's all right," Adrian said.

Coulter shook his head, the movement small and frightened against Adrian's chest.
 
Adrian put a hand under Coulter's chin and brought his head up.
 
"Coulter," he said.
 
"This is what the world looks like.
 
You lived in a created environment.
 
It was fake, like a building is fake."

Coulter's eyes were wide.
 
He wasn't saying anything.
 
Adrian stuck a hand into the sunlight.
 
Coulter jerked.