The Black King (Book 7) (18 page)

Coulter felt as if he could already see those changes. But he wasn’t sure if what he saw was because he expected a change, or because a change actually had occurred.

He put a hand on Matt’s back. “Are you ready to go inside?”

Matt nodded, his mouth a thin line. His chin trembled.

Leen looked at Coulter. She had become more reserved since Arianna’s arrival. “I’ll stay out here.”

“Thanks,” Coulter said.

Matt didn’t even seem to hear her. Coulter kept his hand on Matt’s back, guiding him around the swords as they walked to the mouth of the cave.

Matt hadn’t commented on anything yet, which Coulter found unusual. When he’d first come to the Place of Power, he’d seen the cave as a point of magick. At the time, he hadn’t been able to identify what that strangeness was, but he had found it compelling. Matt had grown up beside the Cliffs of Blood and probably accepted that feeling as normal. His father would have prevented him from going to the cave, and Matt probably didn’t think a thing of it.

But the compulsion to go inside grew as Coulter got closer to the cave. He had to think that it felt the same way to Matt, only Matt said nothing.

As they passed the last sword, Matt reached up and placed his hand on the jeweled hilt. A little shock ran through his back. Coulter knew this feeling too, the way the swords hummed with power. It was always unexpected to touch an inanimate object and realize that it felt alive.

He braced himself for Matt’s questions, but again Matt said nothing. Instead Matt let his hand fall and continued forward.

They stopped at the mouth of the cave. Heat radiated from the interior, a heat for which Coulter had never found the source. A pale pink light came with the heat. It looked as if a sun burned inside the cave. Once that light had been a brilliant white, but it was no longer.

Coulter felt his heart pound as he stepped inside.

The walls and ceiling were white as they had always been. But the floor had changed. The once-white surface had turned red. The redness flowed forward, dripping down the stairs that led to the fountain burbling below.

The fountain was the same. The water flowed into a basin and then disappeared again in the wall. The power in this place concentrated around that water.

Coulter had a theory about the fountain. He believed its water was the source of Islander magick, but he hadn’t discussed that with anyone else. It was one of the many reasons he guarded the mouth of the cave.

Matt was staring at the floor. He did know the story then: How his father and Nicholas, their hands joined, had dripped blood onto the floor, and that blood remained coloring everything. Matt crouched, touching the surface with a reverence that made Coulter slightly uncomfortable.

He let the boy alone, though. Matt had never had the chance to say a proper good-bye to his father. Perhaps he could do so here.

While he waited, Coulter focused on the walls. Behind him were swords. On another section were chalices. In a different area, vials of holy water. Toward the back were the tapestries that Adrian and Nicholas had used to determine how many of these items were used.

The balls that created the Lights of Midday were depleted, nearly used up in the battle against Rugad. Coulter doubted any of them would work again.

He remembered how those globes felt beneath his hands, smooth and hot. When he held them, light flared, a powerful killing light that seemed to touch the Fey in the heart of their magick. He had stood beside Nicholas, holding the globes, the light finding the jewels and focusing it on the army below.

How many people had died that day? He didn’t know. He had tried to back away from those globes, tried to stop when he realized that the screams from below had come from his magick—his hands—but Nicholas wouldn’t let him.

Coulter shook off the memory. He never wanted to touch those things again.

Matt stood. “Where are they?”

He meant the Soul Repositories. Coulter knew that there were dozens up here, along with the blood of the Roca, blood that Matt now assured him would attract any magickal soul into one of those Repositories.

That’s what they’re designed for,
Matt had said, his voice sounding more authoritative than usual.
They are designed to capture the soul of your enemy.

“They’re by the tapestries,” Coulter said.

Matt glanced down at the fountain. He’d already been instructed to stay away from it, but he wasn’t looking at it with longing. He was looking at it as if he heard something.

Then Coulter felt it: the presences he’d felt before. He knew that these were Mysteries or Powers. When Jewel had come to visit her family, he could never see her, but he could sense her, just like he had been able to sense all the Powers that were unleashed when Nicholas had drank the water.

“What is that?” Matt whispered.

Coulter waited a moment, sensing several different personalities coming up the stairs toward them. “Mysteries, probably,” he said. “They feel more like people than Powers do.”

“Mysteries?”

“The Fey say that’s where Vision comes from. The Mysteries are the souls of people who’ve been murdered. They are visible to three people and three people only: the person they love the most, the person they hate the most—who is usually the person who killed them—and another person of their choosing.”

Matt backed up. He grabbed Coulter’s arm and tried to pull him toward the entrance.

“What are you doing?” Coulter asked.

“One of those things killed my father.”

Jewel. Matthias had murdered her, and she had sought revenge.

“You don’t know that,” Coulter said. “Your father probably died of exposure in the back corridors.”

He was sorry to speak so harshly, but he couldn’t let Matt leave, not now.

“My father said if he came into this place, he would die. The thing grabbed him by the throat and tried to choke the life from him once. Then he was ready for her the second time—”

“Using the Soul Repository.” Coulter had seen the first attack, and saw the Repository where Matthias had briefly imprisoned Jewel.

“Yes.” Matt was pulling on Coulter’s arm. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

Coulter put his hand over Matt’s. “They won’t harm you unless you’ve killed someone. They probably just want to see you.”

Matt had stopped moving but his body was rigid. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” Coulter said. “I’ve never been able to talk to one. But Gift tells me they’re just like regular people. They’re probably curious.”

Matt inclined his head backwards, then ducked behind Coulter. “Something’s touching me.”

“Let him alone,” Coulter said. “Please. He’s just a boy.”

He held Matt against him, as if he were defending him. Coulter had never been with anyone before who could feel the presences like he could. The presences crowded around them, but didn’t seem to move. After a moment, the feeling of them eased. They weren’t gone, but they weren’t close any longer.

“Are you sure they won’t hurt me?” Matt whispered.

“Have you harmed any Fey?” Coulter asked.

“No.”

“Then I’m sure they won’t hurt you.”

Matt let him go and stepped beside him. Matt’s face was flushed and his eyes were too bright. “Why Fey?”

“I don’t know,” Coulter said. “It’s just that I don’t know of any Islanders—” then he paused and corrected himself “—any modern Islanders who’ve become Mysteries.”

“There are ancient ones?”

Coulter looked at Matt sideways. “You tell me. You’re the one who’s absorbed the Words.”

Matt looked down. “The terms are different.”

“But the effect is the same,” Coulter said.

“There’ve been Islanders murdered since the Roca’s time.”

“Yes,” Coulter said. “But not by you, right?”

Matt smiled as if the idea of killing anyone was ridiculous to him. Coulter felt a slight twinge that he was sending an innocent to do a job no innocent should ever do.

“Not by me,” Matt said.

“Then you’ll be fine.” Coulter put his hand against Matt’s back again. “Come on. Let’s do this.”

Matt looked down the stairs, past the fountain to the darkness of the corridors beyond. “Do you think my father was one of those Mysteries?”

Coulter frowned. “I don’t know. I don’t know what the rules are for that. We’re not even sure how he died.”

Matt nodded, but didn’t look satisfied. “If I went down those corridors, do you think I could find him?”

Coulter pushed Matt farther forward. “You’re not going in one of those corridors.”

“Why not?”

“Because you can lose time in there. What feels like an hour can be a day. What feels like a day can be a week.”

“So my father could still be wandering down there?”

Coulter shivered. He couldn’t help himself. He didn’t want to think about Matthias alive. “I don’t pretend to understand this place.”

“But—”

“Matt.” There was more anger in Coulter’s voice than he had expected. “Don’t make me regret bringing you here.”

Matt’s lower lip trembled. “He’s my father.”

“I know,” Coulter said. “But you’re here against orders from King Nicholas, against Gift’s wishes. They never wanted anyone to come into this cave, and they certainly wouldn’t approve of a member of your family being here.”

“But Arianna said it was all right.”

“Yes. She believes in you and knows what’s at stake. Don’t destroy that trust.”

“My father—”

“Your father has been gone for six months. Even in the best of conditions, he could not be alive. We’ve always known that, Matt. Don’t let the magick in this place seduce you into believing otherwise.” Coulter put his hands on Matt’s shoulders and turned the boy toward him. “If you can’t withstand the magick here, you’ll never be able to face the Black King.”

Matt’s eyes filled with tears.

Coulter pulled him close. Matt’s entire body was shuddering. He rested his head against Coulter’s shoulder, and Coulter realized he hadn’t really held the boy since his father’s death.

Matt snuffled for a moment, then backed out of the embrace. He wiped his face with the back of his hand, then used the sleeve of his jacket.

“I tried to talk to Alex about my father,” Matt said. “He wouldn’t listen. He thinks I’m betraying my father’s memory.”

Coulter brushed one of Matt’s curls off his forehead. “Your father came here where he wasn’t wanted, and helped Nicholas kill Rugad. His biggest accomplishment was to protect his home from Rugad’s ambitions.”

“I know.” Matt’s voice sounded choked.

“If you get the Repository and go to the palace, if you defeat Rugad once and for all, you’ll have done more for your father than Alex ever could.”

Matt looked at Coulter, and for the first time there was hope in Matt’s eyes. “You think?”

Coulter’s heart ached. He was manipulating this boy by telling him the truth. “Yes.”

Matt blinked twice, a single tear running from the corner of his left eye. He brushed at his cheek impatiently. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. But you’re right. My father said getting rid of the Black King was the best thing he’d done after marrying my mother.”

And fathering his sons fell beneath that. Coulter mentally cursed Matthias. The man had done so much to hurt his boys, and almost all of it through carelessness.

But was that worse that what Coulter was doing? He was sending Matt into danger. Matt, with his pure heart.

Coulter put his hand on Matt’s arm and said softly, “You don’t have to go through with this, you know. We can come up with some other plan.”

Matt frowned, as if he hadn’t expected the change in direction. “No. I’ve come this far. I can do this, Coulter. Do you think I can’t?”

“I know you can,” Coulter lied. “I just want to make sure you do it for your reasons, not mine.”

Matt ran a thumb beneath his eyelid and sighed. “If I stayed here, knowing what I know, I’d never respect myself again. My only choice is to go forward.”

Coulter understood that too well. He had backed off at the wrong moment and had berated himself for years. That was why Arianna had to push him to act this time. And deep down, he was afraid he had waited too long.

“Then let’s do this,” he said.

Matt shot one more uncertain glance at the fountain, then walked to the corner where the dolls rested. They were made of hand-blown glass and seemed amazingly life-like. Matt was staring at them as if he had never seen anything like them. And that was impossible, since he had seen the dolls in the Vault. He had said so.

“What’s wrong?” Coulter asked.

“They’re full,” Matt said. “There are souls in them.”

In spite of himself, Coulter shuddered. Years ago, when they were trying to figure out the cave, Adrian and Nicholas had opened one of these and released the soul of an Ancient Islander. But they did not try to open the rest. Coulter had always believed that to be a sign.

“How can you tell?” Coulter asked.

“I don’t know.” Matt crouched beside him. “They just seem different.”

Coulter glanced at him from the corner of his eye. Was this one of the things that Matt had absorbed from the Words? Coulter wasn’t going to ask. Not yet.

“Are all of them full?”

“I can’t tell.” Matt was biting his lower lip.

“Then I guess we need to find out. We only need one of these.”

“And the vials of blood.” Matt looked at them. The old blood glinted redly inside the glass vials. That was supposed to be the Roca’s blood, although Coulter wasn’t sure he believed it. Still, anything was possible up here.

“We’ll get those last.” Coulter reached for the dolls. They were very small, about the size of his hand. He saw at least twenty in front and more behind.

Matt hadn’t moved.

“If you’re going to do this,” Coulter said, “you’re going to have to help me.”

Matt grimaced. It was almost as if he didn’t want to touch a full repository. But Coulter wasn’t going to wait for Matt to get over his squeamishness. Coulter grabbed the nearest doll by the arm, surprised at the smoothness of the glass. He couldn’t tell if the doll was supposed to be male or female, but it was very delicate.

The doll stirred as he touched it. Its eyes opened, and its face, which had been clear glass a moment before, was light gold. Its lips pinkened as he watched, and its cheeks flushed with color. Then its eyes became a hard, focused blue.