The Black King (Book 7) (13 page)

The stone in this part of the corridor—and from now on—was the vibrant red of the mountain. Coulter said the mountain was alive. He said that through it came the magick that was bred into generations of Islanders.

Matt knew what Coulter was talking about. As a child, Matt—attracted by the color—had chipped away at a bit of the red stone, and a small chunk had fallen into his hand, already gray. The gray was the same kind of gray a body turned after a person had died. Ever since then, the gray stones of the village made Matt think of death.

The stone changed as the ground flattened. This was the oldest part of the cavern, not made of piled stones but literally carved out of the rock. He was in the cave, the one where the Roca had actually lived.

Matt braced himself, and went deeper. A few steps farther and he felt it: the song, as his father used to say. The call of the mountain. It was a lure, begging him to come closer, begging him to disappear deep into the mountain, just as his father had done. And, as his father had taught him when he was a little boy, he shook his head and willed the feeling to go away.

It didn’t, but it lost some of its power.

Maybe this was what his father had felt. Maybe this was what his father could no longer deny.

Matt turned a corner, and saw the door to the Vault. It was standing open, and a square of light from inside poured into the corridor.

His heartbeat increased even more. He was shaking. He made himself take a deep breath. Alex was probably inside. And Matt would have to face him. He couldn’t tell Alex the truth, and he didn’t have a lie prepared. Maybe he would tell him a partial truth, and that would be good enough.

Or maybe his brother wouldn’t care why Matt had come. Maybe he would just be happy that Matt was there. Maybe he would apologize and all would be right between them.

Matt stepped inside.

The room was warm, as usual, and smelled faintly of smoke. Torches burned in their holders. Furniture was scattered around, chairs, tables, a bed in the corner. In the last few years of his father’s life, the furniture had been ripped and overturned. The entire room stank. But none of that remained.

He set down the lamp and ran a hand through his curls. The door to the Vault was closed. It was a small wooden door, unpretentious, with a single handle. It hadn’t been closed in his father’s day. It was always open, the unnatural light from the Vault spilling into this room.

He made himself walk toward it, made himself grab the handle, made himself turn and pull it.

The door opened, and the light covered him.

It was a white light that seemed to come from the walls themselves. It was warm and friendly and it terrified him.

It always had.

He stepped inside, and looked at the stone altar in the middle of the room. No one stood behind it. That startled him. He had expected to see Alex there, watching him, but the room was empty.

Or, at least, it seemed empty. His brother might have gone down one of the corridors that branched off the back, the corridors their father had forbidden them to step into, the corridors their father had actually disappeared down the last day of his life.

A tear ran down Matt’s face. He wiped his cheek with the back of his hand, and took another deep, shuddery breath. There was no reason to mourn his father. His father hadn’t been a real father for years. He had been an embarrassment, to himself, his family, his sons.

He had had the deepest laugh Matt had ever heard.

Matt blinked hard and made himself concentrate. Nothing had changed. The beautiful tapestries still hung on the walls, depicting scenes from the Roca’s life. The table was still set up for the Feast of the Living, the silver bowls in the center of the table sparkling as if they had just been polished. Vials of holy water sat on free-standing shelves, and swords lay between them. Suspended from the ceiling in an arching pattern were the globes for the Lights of Midday.

The bottles lining the wall to his left glowed redly. Inside, he knew, was blood, supposedly the Blood of the Roca, stored for hundreds of years. Drums hung from one of the pillars. Skin, supposedly human skin, was pulled across them. As boys, he and Alex were forbidden to touch everything, and the only thing they didn’t want to touch was the drums.

Finally, he looked at the dolls. They were small, made of hand-blown glass. They seemed eerily alive, and always had. His father used to tell of the day when he took one of the dolls, placed drops of blood inside, and carried it into the cavern so that he could capture the soul of the Fey woman who had tried to kill him.

Now Coulter wanted Matt to do the same thing. To save that woman’s daughter.

Matt shuddered. It meant carrying the dolls. It meant getting close to the Black King, and actually using the weapon. It meant testing himself on levels he hadn’t even imagined before.

Coulter had told him that he didn’t have to do this. But Matt had thought of Arianna, whom he liked. She wasn’t evil, like her mother had been. She was a good woman who meant a lot to the country. Who meant a lot to him.

He shook himself slightly and crossed to the altar. The stones embedded in the white floor glowed as his boots touched them: ruby, emerald, sapphire, diamond, and then the two his father had no name for, the black stone and the gray stone, both with the brilliance of jewels.

Matt reached the altar, but didn’t touch it. He knew the gold veins running through it would glow when he did, the acknowledgement of a heritage that descended directly from the Roca. Meaning that Matt was distantly related to Queen Arianna. She was the descendant of the Roca’s eldest son. He was a descendent of the younger.

He’d always thought that strange. The blood still told, all these centuries later.

The Words were open before him, the handmade paper as new as if it had just been finished. The ink on its surface seemed barely dried, even though the Roca had written the letter a thousand years before.

In ancient Islander.

Matt had forgotten that. He knew the language, but poorly. His father had insisted on teaching them how to read it, and like everything to do with this abominable religion, Matt had learned just enough to get by, but that was not going to be good enough now. The Secrets he needed were outlined in these Words, and he couldn’t read them well enough to understand them.

“It’s easier to read the Words if you place your hands on the altar.”

Matt looked up. His brother stood in the doorway. Matt no longer felt as if his brother were a mirror image of himself. Alex wore a robe, like his father used to. He had gotten taller, his curly hair long. He was thinner than he had ever been, almost as if he forgotten to eat, and his eyes, once a clear blue, were hooded and dark.

“I didn’t think you were here,” Matt said.

“I come every day.” There was an accusation in those words, although Matt wasn’t exactly certain what it was. “Are you here to steal the Words? Or have you finally come to your senses and left your Fey friends?”

Matt stayed behind the altar. It felt like protection. “Actually, I’m here to learn more about the religion.”

“So that you can learn how to protect your friends from it?” Alex crossed his arms.

Bile rose in Matt’s throat. “Why do you hate me so much?”

“I don’t hate you,” Alex said. “I hate the company you keep.”

“Why?” Matt asked. “They’re good people. They’ve helped me. They wanted to help you.”

“They’re turning you into an abomination.”

“How do you know? You haven’t seen me in months.”

“I’ve been waiting for you to come home.”

“You kicked me out of the house.”

“You left on your own.”

“After you and Mother made it clear I was no longer wanted.”

Alex’s eyes glinted. “You’re still angry about the day Father died? Mother and I both told you that there was no time to get you. She went all the way to the horrible place you’re living just to talk to you.”

“She talked,” Matt said. “She didn’t apologize.”

“There was nothing to apologize for. If anyone needed to apologize, it was you. You left her when she needed you the most. And if you’d been here more often in Father’s last year, you would have known how sick he was. How unhappy.”

Matt stared at his brother. Once they had been so close they seemed to know each other’s thoughts.

That had been a long time ago.

“What do you want?” Alex asked.

“An apology,” Matt said. “An attempt at understanding me.”

“I understand,” Alex said. “You’re on a path that will lead you to the same madness that took our father.”

“You’ve Seen that?”

“Yes.”

“With Vision, like the Fey have.”

Alex’s lips pursed. “It was a divine message.”

So that was the explanation now. “A message from God?”

Alex shrugged. “Mother says I lead the religion now. Father wanted me to do that.”

“Father was crazy.”

“Not at the end.”

“So you say.”

“If you’re not going to steal the Words, what are you here for?”

“Answers,” Matt said softly.

Alex’s eyes narrowed. “Answers about what?”

“I need to know how these things work. I want to do what the Roca said, take some power away from those who misuse it.”

“You’re going to attack the Fey?”

Matt nodded.

Alex took a step closer. His right foot brushed the ruby, sending a red glow throughout the room.

“You’d betray your friends?”

“Not all Fey are bad,” Matt said.

“Just the ones your friends point to.”

Matt swallowed again, trying to keep the bile down. “Please, I can’t tell you any more.”

“Then I can’t help you.” Alex’s face looked odd in the red light. “If you decide you want to leave them, I’ll do everything I can for you.”

“Alex.” Matt put his hands on the sides of the altar. Golden light flared like a thousand candles. “The world isn’t as black and white as you make it out to be. Come meet some of my friends. Get to know a few Fey. Please learn how some Islanders can hurt people, and some Fey would never think of it. Come experience more of life than this tiny room.”

“It’s not tiny,” Alex said. “The whole world exists in here.”

Matt closed his eyes. It didn’t help. He still felt as if something were breaking inside him.

When he opened his eyes, he saw Alex peering at him. There was a familiar gentleness in the look.

“What do you need to know?” Alex asked.

“How the Soul Repositories work,” Matt said before he could stop himself.

“Why?”

Matt couldn’t answer, at least not directly. “Our father used them.”

“Yes,” Alex said. “He told us about them.”

“But not about anything else.” Matt waved a hand toward the pillar. “What do the drums do? The Lights of Midday? The vials of holy water?”

“Your friends know. Coulter was present when our father killed the Black King. Or doesn’t he remember?”

“He knows some of it,” Matt said.

“Why does he need to know the rest?”

Matt licked his lips. “Alex, please—”

“He needs the help of a religion he despises?”

“He doesn’t despise the religion,” Matt said.

“He doesn’t practice it.”

“No one does,” Matt said.

“Because the Fey killed all the leaders.”

Matt shook his head. “They didn’t kill Father. He was the one who said the religion had to change.”

“He said I was the one to do it. I won’t do it by helping Fey.”

“I’m not Fey,” Matt said.

Alex’s eyes darkened. “But you’re trying to be.”

Matt shook his head. “I’m trying to discover how to use my gifts. You could do the same thing. The Visions you have, there are ways of making them clearer, of making them work for you.”

“Fey ways.”

“Alex.”

“I will do things as I see fit.” His brother sounded just like their father. Matt remembered those words from arguments with their mother, back when Matt was little.

“And somehow you can’t even see your way toward helping me.”

“What do you want me to do?” Alex asked. “Read the Words to you? Or have you finally learned how to decipher Ancient Islander?”

Matt flushed. “I can read it.”

“Enough to misunderstand it,” Alex said.

“If you tell me what I need. It’ll help all of us.”

“So you say.”

“Yes.” Matt’s voice had an edge to it that he hadn’t even realized was there. “So I say. Trust me, Alex. We used to be more than brothers. We used to be friends.”

Alex nodded. He took another step closer, his foot landing on an emerald, sending a green light up his leg, making his face sickly pale.

“Yes,” Alex said. “We used to be friends. Now it’s you who doesn’t trust me. I know what it’s like when you’re lying, Matt. You won’t tell me what you’re going to do, and it’s big, isn’t it? It would have to be to bring you here.”

“I can’t tell you. I can’t tell anyone. I promised.”

“Who?” Alex asked. “Your Fey friends? Coulter?”

Matt nodded his head once.

“A promise made to the ungodly is no promise at all.”

“Really?” Matt asked. “Does it say that in the Words or is this wisdom according to Alex?”

Alex let out a small groan. “I thought we were actually talking.”

“We were, until your ignorance got in the way.”

“My ignorance? I’m not the one who can’t read his people’s original language.”

“I’m not the one who claims to be a man of God, and yet manages to hate everyone around him.”

They were both breathing hard, each breath in rhythm. They used to do that as little boys when they fought.

“Get out,” Alex said. “You’re not welcome here.”

“I need the information, Alex. It’ll benefit all of us.”

“Get out.” Alex’s inflections remained the same. Flat. Toneless, as if he were feeling nothing.

“Our father wouldn’t want me to be kicked out.”

“Our father is dead. You didn’t even love him enough to visit him in his last two weeks of life.”

“He would have wanted me to complete this mission.”

“He would have wanted you to stay away from the Fey.” Alex took another step forward. His boot brushed the sapphire and the light turned blue. “In fact, he forbade us from going anywhere near that place where you live.”