The Rival (67 page)

Nicholas was going to be very careful.

EIGHTY-THREE

Con swung his sword madly.  And each time it connected, it sliced through something.  Hands, fingers, arms, littered the ground around him.  It got so that he didn't even want to look.

But he had to.  The Fey were relentless. They kept coming at him, not stopping, showing no fear of his new-found power.  Fifty, a hundred, he wasn't sure how many there were, only that he had to fight them, and he didn't dare move.

He didn't dare uncover his back.

And then a bang echoed through the Hall.

Everything stopped. 

Fey in the corridor cried out, and then a horse appeared.  It looked like no horse that Con had ever seen before.  It was shorter than most, but still had the long slender legs.  Its skin was brown, but its mane was deep black.  It had blue eyes that whirled wildly in its angular head, and at the base of its muzzle was a shock of white hair.

The man on its back looked incredibly familiar.  Only Con had never seen him out of ceremonial dress.  The King rode bare-back, his hands gripping the long black mane.  He was leaning forward and shouting at the horse as if it understood him.

Con saw all of that in a moment. Fey were shouting around him.  He couldn't tell most of it  —  his own understanding of their language was limited  —  but he got some of it.

They were saying that Nicholas killed the Black King.

Most of the Fey around Con were wounded. They were on their knees in the blood, tending their wounds. 

The Fey that had been in the corridor were shouting, swirling toward the audience room, searching for the dead Black King.  None were following the horse.

Con thought that odd enough.  He expected them to do something, to chase after the King, to call in reinforcements, something.  But they didn't.  And that didn't even answer how the horse had gotten into the palace in the first place.

Obviously someone had decided to rescue the King.  And they succeeded.  The horse made it through the Great Hall, into the corridor and out the open front doors.  For the moment, no one followed.

The Fey were in complete disarray.  They were screaming at each other, wondering what to do about the Black King.  It was as if they couldn't function without him.

Those that had been fighting Con moved away from him, headed toward the corridor, toward the Audience Room, fear on their faces.

Con moved along the wall, away from the carnage he'd caused.  His feet were soaked with blood and his arm tingled.  He wasn't tired, though.  The exhaustion he had felt earlier was completely gone.

He reached the edges of the arching double doors and leaned sideways enough to monitor both the Hall and the corridor. The Fey in the corridor were looking in the Audience room.  Then they parted to let several Fey out.  Those Fey carried a body on their shoulders.

The body was that of a large Fey man.  His eyes were closed, and he had a sword protruding from his neck.

A Fey sword.

Maybe the cries had been right.

Maybe the Black King was dead.

The crowd of Fey followed their king, leaving the door open and the Audience room empty.  The other Fey were tending the wounded behind Con.

It was his only chance to escape, and the wounded Fey were blocking his escape route.  If he followed the horse out the door, he might lead them to the King.

He would hide.

And what better place to do that than in the room they had just taken the Black King from?  They wouldn't go back in there, not for some time.

He rounded the corner, slipped off his sandals and wiped his bloody feet on his robe so that he wouldn't leave any prints.  Then he crossed the hall, ducked into the room, and closed the door.

The room was bigger than he had expected.  There were spears on the sides and chairs as well.  A throne sat on the dais and behind it the crest of the royal family.  Blood stained a portion of the floor in the center.  The rest of the floor was littered with rocks. 

The whole room tingled, like his arm did.

He set the sword down across a pile of stones and reached up to bar the door. 

Instantly the room spun.  It felt as if all the air had been sucked out of the area.  Con slid backwards, and slammed against an invisible wall.  Thunder boomed.  He fell forwards and landed near the bloody patch.

The air came back.  He could breathe.

But the tingling sensation was gone.

And so were the rocks.

Con pushed himself up on his hands and turned around.

A boy, not much older than himself, sat in the center of the room.  He was nude.  His body was grayish brown and webbed with lines.  They looked like cracks.  The sword was beneath him, its blade resting against his bare heels.

The boy lifted his head.  His features were striking, Fey and not Fey.  His eyes were filled with tears.

" … My … family … ," he said, his voice halting and slow, not at all a match for those haunting eyes.  " … Where … are … they?"

Con squinted at the boy.  Beneath the cracks, he looked familiar.  Con stifled a gasp as the realization hit him.

The King's son.

Sebastian.

"Your father rode out of here on a horse," Con said.  He didn't understand this. Where had the boy come from?  The room had been empty a moment before.

Sebastian closed his eyes.  A tear hung on one lid, then dropped on his cheek and slipped into a crack.  He didn't appear to be breathing.

"What are you?" Con asked.

" … Nothing … " Sebastian said slowly, " … without … them."

THE RIVAL

[THREE DAYS LATER]

EIGHTY-FOUR

Gift had never been so exhausted in his life.  It had been five days since he'd had more than a few hours' sleep.  The pace Scavenger insisted on was nearly impossible.  They had covered more terrain, and walked farther than Gift had ever done before.  They were still walking, along a narrow brown path that wound along the top of a rise.  The valley below them was covered with a haze of fog.  The mountains ahead of them were covered with yellow light, as the setting sun shone its rays on their western face.

The others in his group looked ragged as well.  Leen hadn't had any real sleep either.  Her face was ash-gray, the circles under her eyes so big that they made her look as if her skin had sunken inward.  She had found them a cache of something Adrian called tak in an abandoned cabin, and that had helped a little.  But not even the food was helping all the way.  Nothing was.

Adrian, Coulter, and Scavenger had had more sleep.  But they looked exhausted as well.  Adrian had seemed so terrified when he faced Fey imprisonment; he had clearly vowed never to be taken again.  He constantly worried about his son, Luke, who was still on the farm.  But he kept saying that Luke would be fine, as if he were trying to convince himself.

Scavenger would have died before rejoining the Fey.   He continually checked behind and above them, to make certain they weren't being followed.  He also insisted that Gift check within himself daily, to make certain no one had silently broken the seals on his Links.

Coulter was the one that Gift worried about.  Since saving their lives, Coulter hadn't spoken more than a few words  —  and those had been in response to questions, or giving his opinion on the direction they should go.

Coulter not only looked tired, he looked haunted.

Gift wasn't certain how he would feel, with all of those deaths on his shoulders.

The group had finally reached the eastern edge of Blue Isle.  The terrain was rocky here and covered with scraggly pine.  The air was colder, even though it was summer, and Scavenger said they had been walking on a slow incline.  Gift hadn't believed him until they reached the edge of a road, and an entire valley spread before them, barely visible below the clouds. 

They were following the Cardidas, watching it wind its way through the valleys, to the eastern edge of the Isle.  And as they got closer, they could see the Snow Mountains to the south, and the Eyes of Roca to the north.  The Eyes of Roca were nearly twice as tall, jagged and bald on top.  The Snow Mountains looked like hills in comparison, even though they were too tall to scale.

Or at least, they had been until his great-grandfather arrived.

Gift had only heard about this part of the Isle.  He wasn't sure he wanted to see the part of the Eyes of Roca that drifted into the Cardidas, the part called the Cliffs of Blood.  Nor was he sure he wanted to see the Cardidas end of the Snow Mountains either.  Those rock formations were called the Slides of Death.

He hoped the group stopped before it went that far.

They really didn't have a plan, though.  They knew they would have to find a place to hide.  They had avoided villages, and had ducked from any travelers on the road.  So far, Scavenger believed that no one had seen them.

Gift hoped he was right.  They needed food, rest, and time to recuperate.

Suddenly Scavenger stopped ahead.  He held out his arms across the path so that the others had to stop too. 

"Decision time," he said as Gift, who was bringing up the rear, finally reached the group.  "This is our last valley.  Either we descend and take risks with the villagers or we find a place in the mountains."

"How do you know this?" Adrian asked.  He had never been this far east, and had said so a number of times.  His lack of knowledge about the terrain seemed to bother him.

"Asked questions," Scavenger said.

"When?"

"For fifteen years.  A man never stops worrying that the Fey will find him."

"Is there any place in the mountains?" Gift asked. 

"Not in the Slides of Death," Scavenger said.  "I've heard there's lots of places in the Cliffs of Blood, but we'll have to cross the Cardidas."

"I can't manufacture a ship," Coulter said.  "Someone will have to see us."

"Either way, they'll have to see us, looks like," Adrian said.

"And how will they react to three Fey and two Islanders?" Gift asked.

"They won't," Scavenger said.  "They'll take five Islanders across, no questions asked.  Adrian will hire them."

"With what?" Adrian asked.

"We have more than enough barter," Scavenger said.  "Any one of my weapons should do."

"And let's say that works," Leen said.  "How're you going to turn us into Islanders."

"I'm not," Scavenger said.  "He is."  He pointed at Coulter.

Coulter shook his head.  "My powers aren't endless," he said.

"You're an Enchanter, aren't you?" Scavenger said.

"That's what you people call it," Coulter said.

Scavenger shrugged.  "Then we don't have a problem."

Coulter shook his head as if Scavenger were daft.  Gift frowned at them both. 

"If your plan includes Coulter," Gift said, "the two of you should agree on it."

Scavenger sighed.  "Your training is limited."

"My training doesn't exist.  You know that."  Coulter's fists were clenched.  He was so on edge that Gift grabbed his hands, not certain what Coulter would do.

"An Enchanter," Scavenger said, "can do his own spells, like the one you used back there.  He can also do, in a limited fashion, anything most Fey can do.  Spies can alter their features to look like Islanders.  You can do that too."

"But he can't do that to others," Gift said.  He knew about Spies.  Their powers were limited to themselves.

"Sure he can," Scavenger said.  "A Spy spell is simply a mask spell.  He needs to build one on all of us, and then stay close."

"You must think I'm God," Coulter said.

"I don't think you're God," Scavenger said.  "I think you're someone who's lucky enough to have the kind of power I've always wanted."

Coulter threw him a look of such contempt that Gift felt it too, as though it were a physical blow.  "If I could give it to you," Coulter said, "you'd have it."  Then he sat down, brought his knees up to his chest and hid his face.  Adrian looked at the others, then went to Coulter, sat beside him, and put his arm around him.

Gift pulled Scavenger a bit farther forward on the path.  The mist below them cleared, showing the green tops of trees and a handful of cottages beneath them.

"You need to leave him alone," Gift said.  "He's near the edge already."

"I would if I could," Scavenger said, "but he's all we got."

Gift frowned.  "What about me?"

"Your fighting skills are poor, your leadership abilities small, and you have no magick," Scavenger said.

"I have Vision."

Scavenger nodded.  "And look what good it's done us.  You can't even tell us if your great-grandfather is alive."

"What does it matter if he is?" Gift asked, not certain he wanted to talk to this arrogant Red Cap any more.

"Then you have a problem.  But if he isn't, you can rule the Fey, at least on Blue Isle."

"You just said my leadership skills were weak."  Gift crossed his arms, and took a step forward. The mist was back over the valley, and a chill rose off it as darkness started to fall.  "Besides, the Fey would never accept me as their leader."

"They will when I get through with you."

Gift shook his head.  The Cap was full of odd notions.  "What do you know about leadership?"

"More than you do," Scavenger said.  "I got us here, didn't I?"

"Leading five people is different from running an Empire."

"Maybe," Scavenger said.  "Maybe not.  But I think you should trust me.  Because if you don't, I can't guarantee that you'll live much longer."

"My great-grandfather can't kill me."

"But he can find someone who would.  It's simple enough. He doesn't even have to give a direct order."

A chill ran from the base of Gift's neck to his tailbone.  He couldn't repress the shudder.  "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying that it's you against him now.  You have to face that."

"But you think he's dead."