The Rival (54 page)

He put his hand on the doorknob and turned it slowly.

"Now!" he said.

He yanked open the door and jumped down the steps.  Men surged past him, running toward the birds. When they reached a bird, they would grab its Fey head and slice it off.  A single, quick movement, like wringing the neck of a chicken.

Monte was in the middle of it, sword drawn, running for the birds.  The tiny Fey heads turned, but the bird heads squawked and wings fluttered.  Birds rose in the air like a real flock, surging away in terrified surprise.

At first the attack happened in silence, but then the men started to yell.  Nicholas had thought of that: the guards doing the Fey battle cry, startling the birds even more.

The movement on the end of the bird line startled the birds on the front of the line.  They flew forward too, slamming into each other in mid-air.  Feathers fell around them.  Some of the guards moved fast, catching birds with their swords, slicing the feathered bodies in half. 

The cries were deafening, the roar of wings exhilarating.  Monte surged into the middle of the group, swinging his sword above his head like a mace, chopping and slashing and cutting at birds.  The sky was black with them.

And the ground was empty.

The ground was empty.

A few of the guards were spilling holy water on the bird bodies, but it did nothing.  The Fey hadn't lied.  They found an antidote.

Some of the birds swung around and were coming back. The guards were ready.  They stabbed and fought and smashed.  The birds stood no chance. 

The rout was working.

It would buy time.

Monte only hoped it would be enough.

SIXTY-TWO

Rugad gripped the strings of his harness, careful not to pull on them.  He swung in the afternoon air, his feet dangling over the road below.  The twenty-five Hawk Riders flapped their wings above him, hawk faces intent on the city ahead of them, the tiny Fey Riders clinging to their backs.  There was no laughter this time, no soft conversation back and forth.  Before they had been invading, investigating, and now they were fighting.

And they had the most precious cargo of all.

The Black King.

Rugad hadn't expected to use his harness this much in the Blue Isle campaign.  He had thought that he would use it only to get onto the Isle proper.  But so far he had used it twice over the ocean, once to get to his great-grandson's Shadowlands and now he was using it to get to Jahn quickly.

Normally he would have marched with his troops, but he had a sense that time was of the essence in this campaign.  He was worried that the Islanders, given enough warning, would find another method of defeating the Fey.  Even though he might believe their holy poison a fluke, he couldn't act upon it.

The news of the Islander Enchanter worried him.  Solanda's passion for her ward worried him as well.  He had gone to see her body after the Foot Soldiers were through with her.  Only the bones were left, tiny bones, the bones of a cat.

She had tried to bargain for the girl, claiming wild magick.

If Rugad's great-grandchildren were examples of wild magick, and the holy water was an example of wild magick, perhaps the Islander Enchanter was too.  Perhaps there would be others.

He had to plan for more surprises.  And the only way he could do that was to subdue the Islanders so quickly, so effectively, that they wouldn't know what hit them until it was too late.

The sky was gray with smoke.  He had made the decision to burn Jahn after he had arrived on the Isle and seen the poverty in the outlying areas.  The fields and farms had the wealth he sought.  They simply funneled it into the city, where that wealth was used to maintain the lords and the merchants.  Without international trade, the outlying villages had stagnated.

But Jahn hadn't.

Rugad had no need for a small city's wealth.  As soon as he owned Blue Isle, he could reestablish international trade, and the wealth would reappear.  He needed the farms, and the millers and the Islander bodies.  Workers to turn the entire Isle into one big grain basket for the rest of the world.

The city was merely taking up valuable farmland.  By burning it, he was doing several things: he was taking out the wealthy class; he was destroying morale; and he was preparing the land for next spring's planting.

Simple, effective, and swift.  The watchwords of any successful campaign.

The very next thing he had to do was take the palace.  He needed the Islander King for his children, and for his ability to control the morale of the country.  The man had an arrogance that Rugad didn't like.  Rugad would probably have to kill him, but before he did so, he wanted to see if the man could be broken and molded.

He suspected the secret to that was to go after the children.  Rugad could not kill them, but he didn't have to.  Some things, such as loss of loyalty, could be a lot more devastating than a child's death.  He simply had to play it right.

He still hadn't figured out what he would do with the Golem.  The creature's existence both excited him and worried him.  It excited him because it meant that Gift had extraordinary powers.  It worried him because he did not know why the Changeling had lasted so long, what purpose it served.

Constructed magick, with long life, often had hidden powers of its own.  It was said, by the older Shamans, that such constructs were actually tools of the Powers themselves.  The Shamans always refused to study the constructs as well, saying they were part of the Mysteries, and were not meant to be understood.

Rugad had seen enough of the Mysteries to know how dangerous they could be.  And all his life he had been at the mercy of the Powers.  He believed them to be the source of the Black Family's Visions.  The Powers were capricious guardians of the future.  If they controlled the Golem, they held more than its fate in their imaginary hands.

He shivered, even though it was warm.  The heat of the day rose from below, mixing with the heat of the fires now burning out of control in the row houses on the edge of Jahn.  Bits of ash floated around him, and sparks mingled with the debris.  The air felt thin and his heart beat hard to compensate for the shallow breaths he took.  He raised one arm and signaled the lead Hawk Rider to go faster.

The sooner he reached the palace, the happier he would be.

The heat was intense.  Some of the fires were dangerously close to out of control.  He needed to send Red Caps to quench those fires.  He made a mental note to do so when he landed.

The palace was ahead, an island of calm in the middle of Fey fury.  From this distance, and with the clarity of height, he could see his Bird Riders, surrounding the place.  Apparently King Nicholas had been smart.  There was no sign of attack, no sign of battle.

Only the birds, waiting.

Nicholas was such a fool.  For all his pretense, and despite his Fey marriage, he did not gain Fey wisdom.  He still waited for Rugad to negotiate with him.  Rugad had thought this would happen: he had hoped that Nicholas would think the Bird Riders were there to guard the palace until Rugad arrived.  But he had hoped that Nicholas had been worthy of Jewel, that he hadn't fallen for this trick, and that he would be harder to defeat than the rulers on Galinas.

Cowards, all.

Rugad had hated fighting them, had hated the way they had stuck their soldiers into battle, and fled when it was time to fight themselves.  He had slaughtered a number of those rulers with his bare hands, not because he had to assert his own leadership, but because he was so disgusted with theirs.

Wisdom had always warned him against that, citing how dangerous it was for a Visionary to go into battle.  Rugad usually agreed, but in those cases, he felt it necessary.  They needed to learn, even if it was in their dying moments, what true leadership meant.

He was nearly above his Bird Riders when movement behind them caught his eye.

Islanders, dressed in tan and black, swarmed out of buildings and over the fence, hundreds of them, swords drawn. They seemed to move with an incredible silence.  When they reached the first of the Bird Riders, they sliced off the birds' head, then ripped the Fey off the backs.  Then they yelled, a horrible imitation of the Fey warrior cry.  The sound of it rose all over the city.

The smaller birds rippled and flew away  —  instinct kicking in on the bird selves, the Fey on their backs shouting and trying to force their bird bodies down.  When the smaller birds flew, they startled the larger birds and they took off too  —  black dots against the grayish-yellow sky. 

Suddenly the battle on the ground was more evenly matched.  The birds that remained were the large ones, the macaws and the parrots, pecking and stabbing, and screaming and honking.

The terrified birds, rising, brushed against Rugad's perch.  He held on, trying not to tug on the strings, as the Riders shouted apologies into the air.   The Hawk Riders took Rugad up with the breeze, away from the panicked birds gathering around them. 

He could no longer see below.  He leaned forward, shouting, "Go back! Go back! I order you to go back!"

The Fey were shouting back at him, screaming that they were trying.  But this was the hazard of Beast Riders: sometimes the beast took over.  And the birds, terrified, were acting like birds and flying away.

The air was full of flapping wings, feathers, and ash.  He could hear screaming below, mixed with cawing.  The Hawk Riders were taking him even higher, trying to protect him  —  he thought  —  until he looked up. Then he saw the bird faces, straining forward, terror in the black eyes. The Fey on the hawk's backs were yelling and beating on the side of the hawks' necks. 

The hawks were panicked and out of control. So were the other birds. His harness tilted precariously.  He was in more danger than he had ever been, and he was more vulnerable than he had been in a long, long time.

He shouted  —

 — and the world tilted.  He was sinking into a Vision.

"No!" he cried, but he couldn't stop it.  He was trapped within the Mystery of the Powers and they had him and suddenly  —

 —  He was in a room in the Islander palace, looking at his great-grandson.  The boy had lighter skin and more rounded features, but his eyebrows swooped upward properly and his ears were pointed.  He had the look of Jewel to him, despite his pale eyes.  He was about to speak when another Fey ran into the room and stabbed the boy in the back.  He gargled, blood gushing from his mouth, and then he fell forward.  Rugad got up  —

 —  and nearly tilted the boat.  They were on the open sea, and his great-grandson was in the water.  Arms flapping, head dipping below the surface, no one to save him but Rugad.  Rugad leaned forward, reaching out with an oar, but the boy didn't see it.  He slipped below the surface and  —

 —  then he stood in the burned out ruin of their holy building, a girl protectively behind his back.  She clung to him.  He held a sword out, its tip against Rugad's stomach.  
I will kill you,
the boy said. 
You can't,
Rugad said. 
Oh,
the boy said, smiling,
but I can.

 — Rugad started to speak, but other images swirled around him, faster and faster, too fast for him to make much sense of.  All of them included the boy.  In some of them, he was quick and lithe, and in others he looked fragile.  He died in some, Rugad died in others, and a blond boy watched from the back, his eyes narrowed.  A girl stood to the side, and a blond man held a knife  —  or was it a sword?  Then a blade came out of nowhere, and Rugad felt a jolt of impact against his neck that became excruciating pain as the blade went deeper.  How long did it take a man to die after his head had been cut off?  He didn't know.

Then, suddenly, he was surrounded by birds and bird wings.  Drool covered his chin and chest.  Sparrow Riders held him upright, their claws hooked in his shirt.  They smelled of musty bird and smoke.  The Hawk Riders were still out of control, flapping him away from the palace instead of toward it.  Hundreds of Bird Riders surrounded him.  He couldn't see the ground below.

It was a rout. 

It was a rout.

Nicholas had somehow routed his Riders, and there was nothing Rugad could do about it.

At least, not yet.

SIXTY-THREE

The rising flock of birds startled her.  Arianna stepped back from the windows, only to collide with her father.  He put his arms around her and held her as they watched.  Sebastian breathed a sigh of awe.

The birds rose quickly, filling the sky with their wings and feathers and panic.  The Fey on their backs were shouting, their little mouths opening and closing, their arms flapping as if they could counteract their bird selves.

Arianna could understand their feelings.  Many times, after she had Shifted, her animal nature took over, and she had done things her human self had been ashamed of.  Even now she didn't want to think about them.

There were remarkably few cries from below.  Her father had apparently ordered the guards to attack in silence, and they had.  Most of the noise came from the Bird Riders  —  birds squawking and cawing and whistling their fears, the stupendous snapping sounds of a thousand wings flapping at once.  Her heart rose with them.  What had seemed so hopeless only a moment before now seemed to turn toward them.  They could survive this.  They could.

Then a shout started below.  A shout she'd never heard before.  A warbling cry that seemed to come from one mouth and a hundred mouths all at once.

"It's the guards," her father said.  He sounded pleased.

Some of the birds flapped against the windows, their claws tapping the warped glass.  The Riders on the backs were looking in, trying to control their birds and getting nowhere.  Sebastian had stepped away from the window.  Arianna's father's grip tightened.  She was about to tell him to move back when  —

 — everything shifted.  She felt dizzy, like she sometimes did when she Shifted from a small body to a large one.  She blinked once, twice, three times  —