The Black King (Book 7) (3 page)

Most of the time, though, she found herself on this bench, staring at the Cardidas. It was hard for her to believe that this river bisected all of Blue Isle. Yet right now the river seemed to be the only constant in her life.

And somehow, every time she sat here, she felt threatened. She knew that the capitol city of Jahn lay only a few days from here by ship. She and Coulter, in making their escape from the palace, had left an easy-to-follow trail. Sometimes she thought Coulter did it on purpose. She thought Coulter wanted to lure Rugad to the Place of Power in the Cliffs of Blood and either kill him or trap him there.

Arianna wasn’t so sure it would be that easy, but she was surprised that Rugad hadn’t come. For all his power madness, Rugad believed in the Fey way. And the most important tenet of Fey Leadership was Vision. Arianna had it, and so did her brother Gift. That was how they were able to create and sustain Golems, how they were able to move their consciousness across Links between people, and how they were able to survive outside of their own bodies as long as their consciousness had a place to reside.

Rugad had had Vision when he was alive, but the bit he had left inside Arianna had none. He had told her, while they were sharing her brain, that he would force her to use her Vision to help him lead. Only she wasn’t there any more, and he was leading Blind. She couldn’t believe that was something he would do for long. He had to find another Visionary or else come after her.

Maybe he had been sitting in Jahn for six months planning his attack. After all, he had waited twenty years after his son’s defeat on Blue Isle before trying to take over the Isle himself. Rugad was known for his strategy, his cunning, and his patience.

She shuddered—or at least, she thought a shudder. All of Rugad’s schemes looked at the long term. He had back-up plan after back-up plan. Rugad acted and schemed and took his time until he got things right.

Arianna had not planned anything in her life. Her decision to become Black Queen had been impulsive. She had even governed with short term goals. First she had gotten the Fey Empire to accept a half Fey half Islander queen. Then she had gotten them accustomed to peace. Then she had gotten them to develop the resources they already owned instead of conquering new ones.

She hadn’t foreseen the problems that policy would bring, but she would wager that Rugad would have analyzed every aspect of it, from the results of success to the reactions of his own people. And he would have known the price of failure.

It was ironic that in many ways she had been reduced to little more than a brain. She was the one who was always active, physically as well as emotionally. She always made the final decision—weighing options, examining cost—but she left the actual work of analysis to someone else.

Rugad never had. And right now, he stood poised to rule the Fey Empire for the next hundred years.

“There you are.”

She didn’t turn. Turning would have taken too much effort. She recognized Coulter’s voice.

He sat down beside her. She envied his graceful movements, his unconscious fluidity. He was thoroughly Islander—short, round featured, blue eyed—and yet he was the strongest Enchanter she had ever encountered. In the fifteen years they had spent apart, he had learned how to control that magick and how to make it work.

He folded his hands together and studied the river. “Thinking of jumping in?”

He’d asked her that the first time he found her here, months ago. She smiled and said what she had said back then. “I’d sink, but I wouldn’t drown.”

That was the nice thing about Golems. They couldn’t really be killed.

He smiled at her. Whenever he looked at her, his expression was filled with a love so strong that she could feel it. Sometimes she wondered why he was still interested. She clearly wasn’t the woman she had been.

Then his smile faded. “You’re spending a lot of time here lately.”

“I’m trying to learn how to think.”

“You’ve always had an agile mind.”

“Maybe. But now I need more than that.” She leaned against the back of the bench and heard the grating as stone met stone. She winced, but Coulter didn’t seem to notice. “Why do you think Rugad hasn’t come for me?”

Coulter brought his legs up and wrapped his arms around them. He rested his chin on his knees. “I’ve been wondering that same thing for some time now.”

“And you haven’t come up with an answer?”

“Oh, I have.” He continued to stare at the water. Sunlight reflected off of it, creating diamonds of red light that played across his pale skin.

“Then why you haven’t told me?”

He shrugged.

“Coulter,” she said. “I could cross our Link and find out anyway.”

They had originally designed the Golem as a place for her to go and be private. But Coulter had assumed, and perhaps she had as well, that she would keep up her residence in the corner of his mind he had set aside for her.

She couldn’t tell him that she found it claustrophobic. Much as she cared for him, she became nothing when she was inside him. She had no control, no body, no freedom at all. At least in the Golem she was half a person.

“I wouldn’t mind if you crossed it,” he said, so softly that she almost didn’t hear him.

She took his hand in her own, wishing she could feel more than the pressure of his fingers. “Why do you think Rugad hasn’t come?”

Coulter closed his eyes, briefly enough to seem like a long blink, but Arianna knew better. “I think he no longer perceives us to be a threat.”

The words hurt. “I hadn’t thought of it that way, but you could be right.”

Coulter didn’t respond. That seemed to be his way of dealing with the topic of Rugad. Saying nothing. Letting time handle it.

She stood slowly, so that she didn’t overbalance and fall into the water below.

Coulter opened his eyes and looked up at her.

“I think we have to act before Rugad does,” Arianna said, “and we have to be smart about it. We have to have a plan and a backup plan, and another plan after that. Fifteen years ago, we defeated him mostly with surprise. We can’t do that anymore. He knows what the Isle is capable of. He knows what I’m capable of. Now’s the time to be smarter than he is.”

Coulter made a small snorting sound. “He’s the greatest tactician your people have ever known and you believe that we can best him?”

“I do. My father beat him. We can do it if we need to. We can’t hide here anymore.”

“We can wait for him,” Coulter said.

“How long? Months? Years? Until he finally decides to come to us?” She shook her head once. “I can’t live like this that long, Coulter. He has conquered
me.
”

“No, he hasn’t. You’re right here.”

“I’m more than just my mind, Coulter. In my own body, I can feel things. I can change form. I—.” She stopped herself. She had almost said that she had a place of her own. She had said that to him once before, and he hadn’t understood. He had thought the Golem was enough.

“We can’t rush into this,” Coulter said.

This time she did turn, and as she did, her foot slipped on the bank. She tried to catch herself, but the body didn’t respond fast enough. She slid along the grasses and would have gone into the water if Coulter hadn’t caught her.

She let him pull her back up. He cradled her against him.

“I can’t even feel you touch me,” she whispered.

“Sure you can,” he said. “I’ve touched you from the back, and you felt it.”

“Not like skin against skin. Not in any meaningful way.” She sat up, making him release her. She brushed the dirt off her legs and back. Even that took longer than it should have.

When she finished, the words she’d been holding back for months finally came out. “When did you stop believing you could make a difference?”

He turned away, but not before she saw the look of pain cross his face. He stood up and ran his hands through his blond hair.

“I do make a difference,” he said. “I teach children how to control their magick. Sometimes I’m the only parent they have.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about.”

He didn’t answer her. He stood with his back to her, his head bowed.

“It must have taken something pretty powerful to convince you to leave here, to come to Jahn and confront Rugad.”

“That worked well,” he said sarcastically.

“It did.” She spoke quietly. “You saved my life.”

Coulter shook his head. “He’d have let you live.”

“While he controlled me. I couldn’t break free of him. You got me out.”

“And now he controls the Empire.”

“As he would have whether or not you came. At least this way, he does it without my help. Without my Vision.”

“Yet you want to go back there.” Coulter spoke just as softly as she had.

“I don’t want him to win.”

“He did rule the Fey for seventy years, Arianna.”

“He was a ruthless man who sacrificed thousands of lives, maybe millions, for a glory that no one needed.”

“I’ve heard some of the Fey around here,” Coulter said. “They want to go back to fighting. They think that peace robs them of their identity.”

She clenched a fist. “And most of them, like Seger, are happy the generations of war are over. Why are you arguing for Rugad? Have you forgotten what he is?”

“I haven’t forgotten,” Coulter said.

“Then why?”

“Because—” Coulter’s voice broke. “That way you stay here. You stay safe.”

She felt the breath catch in her throat. Coulter had stayed safe ever since she had become Black Queen. What had he said to her then?

You can’t have everything you want, Ari. Sometimes it’s better to wait.

“See?” she said. “Safety. You said it again. If I listen to you, I give Rugad control over two Places of Power, the one in the Eccrasian Mountains and one in the Roca’s Cave. He’ll find the third. He’ll own the Triangle of Might, and if the Fey are right—if the world reforms when someone creates that Triangle—then it’ll be created in
his
image. Do you want that?”

Coulter’s head was down. “We’ll guard this place. Maybe he’ll come here, and we’ll can get him then.”

“Maybe. Or maybe he’ll go to the Eccrasian Mountains, get someone to murder Gift, and send someone else here. We’ll lose everything that way, Coulter. Because you’re being cautious.”

He didn’t answer her. She could hear his breathing, rapid and fast as if he had been running. The river seemed faint behind it. Finally he sat on the bench. “Is this why you come here? To plan revenge against Rugad?”

“Revenge?” Arianna asked. “Against a man who violated me and who now threats the entire world? That’s not revenge, Coulter. That’s survival.”

Coulter’s head was still bowed. He was silent for a long time.

Finally, she said softly, “Why won’t you even try, Coulter?”

He ran his hands over his face. His entire body seemed to fold in on itself, and she saw, perhaps for the first time, how he must have looked as a child. Frail and vulnerable and unloved, a captive of the Fey, a curiosity that they held onto because he was Islander and had magick.

“Because I’ll fail, Ari,” he said.

The comment startled a laugh out of her. “You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do.” His hands dropped from his face. He clutched his knees, staring down as he did so. “The first time I ever fought with my magick, I killed a hundred people to save five. And they didn’t die fast either. I didn’t do the spell right—”

“You didn’t know how.” Gift had told her this. He had thought Coulter a hero.

“—and they all died horribly. Then I helped your father attack Rugad’s army with that beam of light, and he turned it back on us, and Adrian, the only father I ever had, died. I saw the light come back and I didn’t stop it. I didn’t do anything until he was already dead.”

“He knew the risks, Coulter. He was fighting just like we were.”

Coulter still didn’t look at her. “And the spell that could still hurt us—the one that could ruin everything—is the one I did first.”

She frowned, waiting.

“When your mother died, her Link to Gift hadn’t been severed and he nearly died. I saved him, and wrapped us up together. We’re Bound.”

“I know,” she said. “You’ve told me.”

“But you don’t seem to know what it means.” Finally he looked at her. His cheeks were still red, his lower lip trembling so slightly that she almost didn’t notice it. “It means that if I die, Gift will too. And if you happen to be inside my head at the same time, all of us will die. I’ll kill you and Gift, and where will Blue Isle be then?”

Where would the Empire be then? she thought. Strange that he only mentioned the Isle.

“You’re frightened,” she said.

“Of course. Who wouldn’t be?”

“You’re frightened of yourself.” She sat beside him on the bench. “You tell all the children who come to your school to trust their own abilities, to believe in themselves. You tell them that if their magick frightens them it will eat them alive, and yet you do none of those things.”

“How do you think I understand them?”

She let out a long breath of air. She had let his fear infect her. Or perhaps the fact that they had shared his mind had made his emotions bleed into hers. For six months, she had been idle because she had listened to Coulter. For six months, she had let Rugad gain control of her Isle, her Empire. Her body.

It was time to fight back.

“I’m going after Rugad,” she said, “and I want you beside me.”

Coulter shook his head. “It’s a risk…”

“We need to take risks.”

“Some risks aren’t worth it.”

She stiffened. “Maybe not to you, but this is my life we’re dealing with. My identity. My entire world. I have to fight for it. Whether or not you’ll be beside me is up to you.”

He didn’t say anything. He turned back toward the river. The diamonds of light continued to play on his face.

“Fifteen years ago, you said you loved me. I’ve been inside your mind. I know it’s true.”

“Don’t,” he whispered.

“Would you ask me to sacrifice everything to stay beside you? Because you’re afraid? Well, I can’t, Coulter. And besides, you made me a promise in the palace garden the day you left me. Do you remember it?”