The Rival (46 page)

"Would have?"

Gift nodded.  "Would have."

Coulter took a step back.  His eyes were wide and shocked.  "I did it for you," he said.

"No," Gift said.  "You're doing it for you.  I'm old enough and strong enough to decide my own fate.  I don't need you to do so."

"What happens if I don't open the Link?"

"Then I close ours," Gift said.  "And we cease being friends."

"You can't severe ours.  You don't know what it will do."  There was panic in Coulter's voice.

"Close it, as you closed mine with Sebastian."

Coulter swallowed so hard his adam's apple bobbed.  For a moment, he looked like the lonely abandoned boy that Gift had known when they were young.  "I can't open that Link.  It's too dangerous."

"Fine," Gift said.  He went inside himself and slammed shut the final door, the one Linking him and Coulter. Around it he envisioned Shadowlands after Shadowlands, a locked series of mazes that would entrap or repel anyone who tried to break through.

When Gift returned to himself, Coulter was still watching him.  "Don't do that," Coulter whispered.  "You need me."

The plea didn't move Gift as it once would have.  "No," he said.  "I don't need you.  I don't need anyone."

He looked at Leen.  Her eyes were big, her skin blotchy, and her lip bruised.  "Are you going to come?"

She nodded.

"All right then."  Gift turned and walked out of the field.  He didn't wait to see if Leen followed.

"Gift!" Coulter was calling after him.  "Gift, wait!"

The terror in Coulter's voice made the hair on the back of Gift's neck rise.  But he didn't stop.  He didn't wait.  If he had to meet with his great-grandfather, so be it.  But he wouldn't let anything happen to Sebastian.

Sebastian was all he had left.

FIFTY

Arianna hopped on the tiny ledge.  It was filthy.  Dust and bird droppings littered the sill, just as they littered the crawlspace under the roof.  This part of the north tower hadn't been touched for a long time.  She wasn't certain if anyone else knew about the crawlspace.

She had found it as a young girl.  Birds nested in the roof itself.  Mice had made their home on the floor.  The whole area smelled musty.  But she didn't care.  She had left an old robe on the floor, and Shifted.

The ledge was a small hole in the stonework.  It was hidden by the edge of the roof.  More than once she had escaped other birds by flying here.  The hole wasn't visible unless one was right near it.  Most birds didn't have the intelligence to look for such a place.

These birds would.

She was facing a different sort of foe now.

She was back in her robin guise.  There were a few robins below, not enough to notice her.  She hoped the Fey would think she really was a bird.  That required a bit of planning on her part.  If she flew directly out of the palace, someone might suspect  —  not that she was a Shifter, necessarily, but that she was somehow tied to the palace.  Solanda had told her that some cultures used birds as couriers, training them to fly to certain places with messages wrapped around one thin leg.

If Solanda believed such things happened, the other Fey would too.

Arianna peered below.  She was too high to determine where the other birds were looking.  She knew better than to assume that just because she couldn't see them, they couldn't see her. 

The city stretched out before her.  From the west, large clouds of black smoke stained the sky.  Tendrils of smoke rose from the south.  She was afraid that smoke was coming from the area of the Tabernacle.  People were moving in the street, but the city was oddly silent.  She could hear no shouting or screaming or even the clanging of weapons.

She didn't like it.  Somehow she had imagined war to be noisy.

She eased toward the center of the tiny ledge.  The key was to fly straight, as if she were flying over the palace, instead of coming out of it.  She had only done this a few times.  It required her to be at top speed the moment she hit the air, and to maintain that speed as if nothing bothered her.

There were no real birds.  That fact bothered her. She didn't know if they were staying away because of the Fey or if the Fey had chased them away.

She unfolded her wings.  A slight breeze swirled around the side of the building, ruffling her feathers.  The breeze would make this take-off even more difficult.  She would have to give one hundred percent right at the very start.  No faltering, no failing.

She waited until the wind eased, then leapt off the ledge and flapped her wings languidly.  She dipped a little, and turned to the left, flying away from the smoke, and away from the Fey.  She knew birds well enough to know that none of them would willingly fly into danger.

It took all of her strength to keep herself from glancing at the Fey.  She would know soon enough if they followed her.  She also knew what she would do.  She would partially Shift, and explain who she was.  If they wanted to capture her, they would have to catch her, and she even figured she knew ways around that.

She was alone in this part of the sky. 

She flew higher.  The Beast Riders surrounded the palace, and they were all birds.  They also sat in lines twenty deep.

They were the only Fey not fighting.

Fey were dragging Islanders out of houses on the east side of Jahn.  They were killing the Islanders slowly, peeling off their skin.  The screaming that Arianna hadn't heard at the palace was horrible here.  She couldn't tell the sound of one voice from another.  They all mingled into one great cry of pain.

She turned right and headed toward the Cardidas.  The river was empty.  No ships.  The Fey had come some other way.  The bridges across the river were empty as well.

And so were the streets.

Except near the Tabernacle.  Another large concentration of Fey forces surrounded, enveloped, and combed the Tabernacle.  The wisps of white smoke she had seen rose from the Tabernacle's lower levels.  The fire had apparently grown more serious, because the smoke from below was no longer white.  It was inky black and smelled of human flesh.

Her stomach churned.  Auds were running outside, being chased by Fey.  All manner of animals filled the courtyard.  They were ripping and clawing and eating the bodies of the dead Islanders.  People were scattered all over the holy ground, and so were their parts: half-eaten heads, severed hands, and mangled limbs.

Bile rose in her throat.  She swallowed it down.  She had never vomited through her beak before.  She wasn't going to start, no matter what she saw. 

There was no silence here either.  The Beast Fey were growling and yowling and grunting.  The Islanders were screaming, and the flames crackled.  She flew past it, back across the river, and headed west, where the worst of the smoke rose.

When she got close, she gasped in horror.  Row after row of houses had been leveled.  They were gaping smoking ruins, charred bodies lying on the streets.  No Fey were around  —  they had already moved on.  No Islanders were either, at least not alive.  A few animals fled the rubble, confused, as if they didn't know how to get out of the streets.

She had never seen so many dead in her life.

How did this happen so quickly?  The Fey had only announced their presence the night before.  How could so many have appeared without anyone realizing it?

She swooped down, as close as she could get to the still smoldering remains.  It looked as if people ran out of their homes, as if the fires started before they were awake.  What had Solanda told her?  The secret to wars was to take the victim by complete surprise.

Complete surprise.

While she and her father argued in Sebastian's room, while her father met with his nobles, while she fussed over Solanda's absence, the Fey were attacking.  Quietly.  Like their arrival around the palace had been.

The birds had been silent.  Birds were never silent.  She knew that, but she hadn't thought of it.  Birds in repose sang and cooed and chirruped.  These sat and waited.

As if waiting for an order.

The stench of burning flesh was so strong that it seeped inside her, through her nose and her throat and into her stomach.  She doubted she would ever get it out.

Her city would never be the same.

Her home would never be the same.

Just a few days before, she had worried about her birthmark and her looks and the fact that people stared at her.  Now none of that mattered.  Many of the people who had stared were probably dead.  And her birthmark, the sign of her Shifting, might save the rest, if she let it.

If she didn't hide as her father wanted her too.

Entire columns of Fey moved from the near west side toward the Jahn Bridge.  They were going to the Tabernacle.  Smart, her great-grandfather.  Very smart.  The Tabernacle had destroyed the first force, so he would neutralize the Tabernacle's threat before the Islanders even realized he had arrived.

The Fey didn't negotiate, as her father had wanted. They would only take.  They meant to conquer.

Which meant that her family had to fight back, somehow.  They were suddenly the weaker force, with no holy water and no surprise.  They had to retake the advantage for themselves.

She swung back north, to the palace.  Another column of troops were marching through the streets of Jahn rousting people from their homes.  She swooped again, then caught herself.  She couldn't fight that troop.  She was one person and she couldn't save all the others below.  All she could do was report to her father, and not give up.

She had promised the Shaman that she wouldn't touch her great-grandfather  —  and she wouldn't. 

But she had made no such promise about his troops.

This was her island, and he had no right to demolish it.

No right at all.

FIFTY-ONE

Rugad strode into his own Shadowlands.  This was the second large Shadowlands he had built on Blue Isle.  He built it between his son's old Shadowlands and the city of Jahn, the perfect place for a bivouac.   He hadn't realized how uncomfortable he had been in the ruined Shadowlands until he came into this one.

This was how a military Shadowlands should be.  Tents were pitched along the walls.  Several more were pitched in the center, forming long straight rows.  There was space to walk between them, but that was all. The tents were for privacy only.  They were made of special material he discovered in Nye; material that fought back the grays of Shadowlands, and brought color to the drab interior.  Reds still showed as faint rose, bright green as a faint gray-green, but the colors spruced up the place and added to the morale. 

Each warrior was responsible for his own food, and his own care.  The population of Shadowlands shifted as the battles shifted.  Sometimes Leaders slept here.  Sometimes Infantry. 

But no one hid.  Despite his son's treatment of Shadowlands, that wasn't what they were for.

At the moment, most of the warriors who had destroyed Rugar's Shadowlands were in Rugad's.  They were resting before they went on to join the fighting in Jahn.  The Fey had learned, long ago, that winning wars meant having enough manpower to allow for some to be attacking while others were resting.  Well rested troops made no mistakes.  Well rested troops killed only the enemy, never themselves.

Rugad couldn't remember how many times he had seen exhausted troops on the enemy line see movement, fire, and accidentally kill one of their own.

The folks who had fought that last battle looked exhausted.  It was, he knew, an exhaustion of the spirit as well as of the body.  It took a lot of discipline to kill other Fey, and that discipline never prevented the thought: what if it had been me?

He scanned the muted color tents for Gelô.  The Foot Soldier wasn't visible, but in the search, Rugad found the prison tent.  It had several Infantry guards around it, as well as a few Foot Soldiers.  Very few prisoners were kept in Shadowlands.  Usually only the important ones, or the ones who would have some bearing on the campaign itself.

As Rugad walked through the tents, he saw Wisdom.  Wisdom wore a military tunic that left his arms bare, showing their scarification.  His braids ran down his back, brushing the edges of his dark pants.  He had seen Rugad and was watching him approach.

Without preamble, Rugad said, "I need a small troop to go back to the farmlands in the center of the Isle.  I have reason to believe my great-grandson is hiding there."

"Perhaps a larger troop would be better then," Wisdom said.

Rugad shook his head.  "I don't want our people seen.  I want to surprise the boy, if I can.  He may be expecting me."

"Very well," Wisdom said.

"And Wisdom, let the troop know who they're looking for.  I want no mistakes, and I want him taken alive and unharmed."

"Yes, sir," Wisdom said. 

"The quicker we can do this the better," Rugad said.  "I would recommend sending a bird rider to the nearest garrison."

"Many of those troops have gone onto Jahn."

"But not all," Rugad said.  Then his gaze met Wisdom's.  "Right?"

"Yes, sir.  I will take care of this, sir."  He bowed his head slightly, then added, "Ghost needs to see you."

"Have him wait in my tent.  I have one other piece of business to attend to first."

Wisdom looked over his shoulder toward the prison tent.  "She's angry at her treatment."

"She'll be angrier if she doesn't cooperate.  She's only alive because we ran out of Doppelgängers."

Wisdom smiled, a little.  "Don't underestimate her, sir."

"She's a Shifter," Rugad said.  "I never underestimate them."

"She also, according to reports, murdered your son."

Rugad nodded as the information went in.  It wasn't as detrimental as the other Fey thought.  If she had killed Rugar, then she had done Rugad a favor.

He made his way to the prison tent.  The flap was pulled across, and tied with a Spelled rope.  This tent was gray, and its interior dark.  A Foot Soldier handed Rugad a Fey lamp before he went in.