The Rival (41 page)

She laughed, and raised a come-hither glance to the other Fey.

And Titus took advantage of that brief instant to launch himself backwards through the open window.

It was his only chance.

His feet hit the window ledge and thumped him against the stone side of the building, knocking the air from him.  He was falling straight down, head first, and as he passed the lower level windows, he knew he didn't have time to right himself.

The blanket was looming, but it wouldn't break his fall.  Nothing would break his fall.  He put his hands on top of his head, but it would do no good.

In his last moments of life, he knew a horror so profound he couldn't even scream.

He had not shared the Secrets.

He would die, and Rocaanism would die with him.

THE SEARCH

FORTY-FOUR

Rugad stepped through the open Circle Door.  The smell of smoke had been strong in the clearing; it was even stronger here.  Shadowlands' porous walls absorbed the smoke as they were designed to do, but they couldn't remove such a vast stench  —  at least not so quickly. 

Most of his troops were gone.  Those that remained were Infantry, Red Caps, and a few Foot Soldiers.  The rest had gone up Daisy Stream, to secure the villages along the stream bed.  He counted on the Dream Riders to do most of that.  After a few long nightmares, the Islanders upstream would awaken to an invasion force already in place.  If they tried to fight, they would die. 

Wisdom predicted they would lose half the villages.  Rugad thought that they would lose an eighth at most.  Islanders were not warriors.  If they held true to the behavior of their cousins to the south, a few would make a token resistance, and once they learned their precious holy water no longer worked, they would give in.

Rugad would have his land, and people to tend it.

But first, he had to deal with this place.

He had only seen one devastated Shadowlands.  When he was a boy, one of the Leaders, a kin to the Black Family, had made a Shadowlands in the middle of a Histle battlefield.  The Histle were fierce fighters; despite their small nation  —  or perhaps because of it  —  the Histle had warriors equal to the Fey's Infantry.  The battles, which should have taken a few days, had taken a few weeks.  And a Histle commander had seen the Fey disappear into Shadowlands one night.  He waited until they left in the morning, and then laid waste the tents inside.

The devastation had been minor, compared with this.

Ruined buildings still smoldered.  The largest, a pile of ash near the Circle Door, obviously took the brunt of the attack.  In all his years, Rugad had never seen a Shadowlands this big.  But then, they were always built as temporary housing during a campaign.  Never as permanent homes for a Fey troop.

Until his son's failure.  Until Rugar failed to take Blue Isle.

Even then, with Jewel's marriage and the Fey royal children, these Fey should have left Shadowlands, and made homes outside.  Their vast fear of the Islanders' poison was what made them failures in Rugad's eyes, not their thwarted invasion.  In some ways, the invasion had been successful.  The Black King's blood mixed with royal Islander blood, and the Islanders themselves had no idea how to fight Fey without their poison. 

But Rugad couldn't have Fey, as part of his troop, who had lived in fear for twenty years.  He would never know if he could trust them, whether or not they would flee again.

Besides, Fey did not live in peace unless ordered to by their ruler.  Rugad had ordered the Fey on Galinas to live in peace.  They needed to have children, needed to raise a new group of Infantry and magick users.   And the oldest generation needed to retire.  Fey had to learn calm as well as fury.

And they had.

But on Blue Isle, the Fey should have fought.  They should have fought until their last dying breath.  If they didn't have enough people to win a war, they should have fought a guerrilla campaign.  They could have scared the Islanders into capitulation.

Instead, the Fey gave up.

Partly he blamed his son.  Rugar was a great warrior whose Visions were always precise.  His interpretations of them were often difficult.  His last Vision had been of Jewel on this Isle.  When he had told Rugad about it, Rugad had said that the Fey would not win until the Black King arrived.

Rugar, his son, had refused to believe him.

All the failures resulted from that moment, from Rugar's decision to dismiss his father.

Rugad blinked.  His eyes were raw from the smoky smell.  He took a step in deeper, away from the smoldering ruins.  Near the far wall of the Shadowlands, Red Caps were stacking bodies.  Most of the Failures had no skin left  —  the Foot Soldiers had already gotten to them  —  but Rugad's Domestics could use the bones, and some of the Beast Riders might like the internal organs.  Their animal hosts found such things delicacies.

The Red Caps were already going to work.  A dozen of them crowded the body stack, pouches beside them.  The short, squat Caps were anathema to most Fey, but Rugad had a fondness for them.  He had seen Fey armies without Red Caps, bodies rotting in the sun, all that blood and flesh gone to waste.  Ever since then, he always made certain he had an abundance of Red Caps on his campaigns.

Rugad clasped his hands behind his back and stepped deeper in the Shadowlands.  He had left the Shadowlands standing because he believed his great-grandson had designed it.  But standing inside it startled Rugad.  The design bore his son's mark, Rugar's mark, in the perfect box-like shape, the unimaginative air, the additional space.  Rugar rarely liked to make anything small.

But he had been dead a long time.  And still the Shadowlands stood.  Perhaps his great-grandson had designed the Shadowlands on Rugar's model.  Or perhaps the boy had found a way to save the Shadowlands when Rugar died.  That had been tried several times, but never accomplished.

If Rugad's great-grandson had achieved that, he was more powerful than Rugad had initially thought.

The details didn't matter, though.  What did matter was that this Shadowlands was somehow tied to his great-grandson.  For that reason, Rugad had ordered his troop to leave the Shadowlands standing.  Otherwise he would have had a Shaman with the troop and she would have shattered the Shadowlands from within.

He was afraid, though, that if he did that, he would destroy the very person he had come to get.

His great-grandson.

And now, they told him, he had two.  Odd that he had never Seen it.  When the invasion was over, he would call his Shamans together, and see if their Visions matched his, or if they could add information to that story of two children.

If so, he had to modify his plans.

His plans were elaborate.  He had deliberately waited until his great-grandson had reached full adulthood, the full extent of his powers, before coming to the Isle.  The boy had been corrupted from birth; training him then or training him now would make no difference.  Rugad made better use of the time consolidating his hold on Nye and the entire Galinas continent.  That way, when he left, he was assured that, despite his grandsons' incompetence, the Fey would continue to rule Galinas.

Rugad always knew he would conquer Blue Isle, and he knew the boy would be his.  He had simply waited for the best time to come, the time when the Islanders had forgotten how to fight, when the Warders had discovered the best antidote to the poison, and when the boy had reached his maturity.

When the boy realized that Rugad controlled the Isle, the boy would work with his great-grandfather.  The boy was brilliant.  He would understand that he had no choice.

Fey passed Rugad, some salvaging magick items.  The Infantry were carrying out pouches that appeared to date from Rugar's invasion.  A pile of pouches stood in one of the other corners of Shadowlands  —  ruined pouches.  Several other Infantry were carrying Domestic tools, needles, cloth, and spinning wheels.  He was glad they had had the foresight to remove the items for salvage before the destruction was complete.

Only one building remained standing in Shadowlands.  It was a small shack with no windows, in the very center of the devastation.  Four Foot Soldiers stood guard around it.

They had a prisoner. 

He had ordered that only one person be taken prisoner  —  his great-grandson.  Yet he couldn't feel the presence of another Visionary here.  It was odd, and he wasn't certain he liked odd.

Odd always made him nervous.

He strode toward the Foot Soldiers.  The man in front of the door surprised him.  Gelô led the Foot Soldier troop.  He should have been with his soldiers on the trip up Daisy Stream.  He certainly shouldn't have been guarding a small building in the center of Shadowlands.

"Gelô," Rugad said.  He kept his tone wary but courteous, so that Gelô knew he wasn't in trouble yet, but he could be.

"We have a situation," Gelô said.

"I am beginning to understand that," Rugad said.

Gelô nodded to other Foot Soldiers, then grabbed Rugad's arm and stepped away from his post.  "I have Solanda inside."

"Solanda!" Rugad had forgotten about her.  She was Rugar's pet Shape-Shifter.  Rugad had sent her along on the trip to Blue Isle without a second thought. 

He did, however, expect her to be dead.

He waited.

Gelô swallowed.  "She claims she raised your family on Blue Isle."

"And you believe her?  She's a Shifter.  They don't raise children."

"No."  Gelô lowered his voice.  "But Double confirms her story."

"How would Double know?" Rugad asked softly.

"Double took over one of the Wisps who raised your great-grandson in Shadowlands.  He took over the male Wisp, Wind.  The female was badly injured."  Gelô shuddered.  "Her wings were ruined."

"Where is Double?"

"Heading back to your encampment as you ordered," Gelô said.  "All four of the Doppelgängers made successful transitions, although two of them say the information from their hosts is useless."

"Which two can we use?"

"Double, who became Wind, and Ghost, who became Touched."

"Touched?" Rugad did not remember anyone named Touched sent on this journey.

"A Spell Warder.  He was a boy when he came here."

Then Rugad remembered.  He had thought the boy would come to nothing. 

"Ghost says he needs to see you as soon as you are done here.  He says you'll need to know what that Warder knew."

"All right.  Then we should hurry.  Tell me why you let the Shifter live."

Gelô swallowed.  He obviously knew that he had disobeyed a direct order, and he clearly hoped that his reasons were good enough.  "The Doppelgängers were used up," he said, "and she had information.  I thought it was better if you got it from her.  Then you could make the decision to kill her or to let her live."

"You don't think this was a ploy for survival?"

"I'm sure it is," Gelô said, "but I think there's more.  And with Double's confirmation, I am convinced of it."

Rugad took a deep breath and considered.  The killing of a Shifter was a major event, not taken lightly in most circumstances.  To kill a Shifter who might have valuable information would be more of a breach than not to do so.

He nodded.  "Take her to my headquarters.  Use a large guard.  She has been here for twenty years, and most without guidance.  We don't know where her loyalties are."

Gelô clicked his heels together.  "Yes, sir." He went back to his post, then sent one of his men to get Infantry.  They would take Solanda to Rugad's new Shadowlands under heavy guard.

But she was a peripheral issue.  He had come into this gruesome place to find his great-grandson, or to find the Shaman.  Whoever held this Shadowlands together had to answer to him.

He walked toward the far wall.  Several Red Caps were working behind the remains of a building.  A dozen bodies had been brought out.  They had bruises on the sides of their faces, their features in repose, and holes through their hearts.  Dream Riders had held them in sweet dreams while Infantry had stabbed them through.

Amazing how even Fey could fall prey to such an easy death.

The Caps were lifting the bodies to move them to the cleaning site.  The female Cap nearest Rugad staggered under the weight of the body she was carrying.  Another Cap slung a dead child over his shoulder.  There were a number of children among the bodies.  Apparently the troop had felt safe enough here to raise families.

The idea made Rugad shudder.  He had always thought the Fey were above becoming prisoners of the mind.  Always.  The fact that these weren't, that his own son's hand-picked troops had decided not to fight for their own freedom, disgusted him.

Disturbed him.

He had to make certain that this large group of Failures did not demoralize his own troops.  Somehow he had to make them realize that this group, picked by Rugar, were inferior to other Fey.  He would have to do it subtly, since some of his troop had known people here.  He would have to be careful.

Bits of shredded skin littered the gray floor of Shadowlands.  Apparently a number of Failures had died in this spot, so many that the Foot Soldiers hadn't picked up all the pieces  —  or the Red Caps had been too busy to do so.

He brushed the skin aside with his boot.  No blood on the floor, though.  The Caps and the Soldiers both had been efficient about that.  Which was good, since Fey blood would help his Warders more than anything else taken from these Failures.  Fey blood conducted magick well, and the Warders needed it for their experiments.

His nostrils had apparently grown used to the smoky stench.  It seemed less than it had only a few moments earlier.  The smells were all leaching out of Shadowlands, to float away in the outside air.  He crossed the last pile of rubble, and stood beside the opaque wall.

His hand trembled.

He rubbed his thumbs over his forefingers, clearing them of any debris.  Then he glanced around once, to make certain all the live Fey inside this Shadowlands were his. They were.  Then he closed his eyes and put his fingertips on the wall.