Matthias. Nicholas clenched a fist. He had wanted to kill Matthias that day, but killing him would have made Nicholas no better than Matthias was.
"It's not an acceptable risk, Arianna," Nicholas said. He put a hand over the Shaman's. His fingers were warmer than hers were. "I can't believe you don't understand that. I can't believe you don't understand the value of life."
"She is a Shifter raised by a Shifter," the Shaman said, and sighed. "If I had known that Solanda would rise above herself and remain with the child for life, then I would have intervened somehow. I thought your attitudes would form her, not attitudes of a pure Fey."
"Nothing's wrong with Solanda," Arianna said. Her voice rose. "She's been good for me."
And she's probably dead, Nicholas thought. "If Jewel had lived, Arianna would have been raised by a Fey."
"If Jewel had lived," the Shaman said, "Arianna would not. I would not have come, and Jewel was not equipped to handle such a powerful Shifter's birth."
Arianna's eyes narrowed. "You can stop talking about me like I'm not here," she said.
Nicholas shook his head. He would have to deal with his daughter later. The enormity of her callousness was more than he could handle at the moment.
And he had anointed her to follow him because he did not know his son Gift. Because he was afraid of this very thing, this Feyness, from his Fey-raised son.
"The Black King won't stop until I'm out of the way," Nicholas said, "And he has Arianna and Gift. Then he'll move on to Leut and continue his rampage through the countries of the world."
"It is what the Fey do," the Shaman said.
"Then why are you helping us?" Arianna asked.
"Because it must stop someday. The Fey Empire needs no more land. The men in your family — your Fey family — see the world as a toy, and conquering it as a game. It is a measure of your great-grandfather's prowess that he has expanded the empire so. Once conquering was a matter of Fey survival. We were a small race with little land and even less ability to provide for ourselves. Somewhere, we ceased seeking to improve ourselves. Somewhere we became blind and power-hungry and greedy. And it must stop before it reaches Leut. It can stop here. Nicholas and Jewel made it so. They gave us children who lead two races. Symbols of peace."
The Shaman emphasized those last three words, as if she were trying to drill them into Arianna's head.
Arianna's face flushed. "If you believe that, why don't you kill him?" she asked.
"Because I will lose my powers, child. And I think my counsel and my Vision are more important to you and your father than my death."
"Even if it means the Black King lives?" Arianna asked.
The Shaman squeezed Nicholas's arm and withdrew her hand. "Even if it means he lives," she said. "You are not ready to rule. You are too young, too impulsive, and you have no understanding of life outside your small sphere. The Black King will not move on until he has you or your brother. That gives us time."
"Time for what?" Arianna asked.
"Time to work with you," the Shaman said. "And time for you, Nicholas, to find someone who will destroy the Black King, without all the repercussions."
"I thought you said he shouldn't try killing the Black King," Arianna said.
"Not directly," the Shaman said.
"As if indirectly would work," Arianna said.
Nicholas felt his heart roll over. A possibility, and one that he could do. He believed in political assassination to stop a war. He knew that at times it was better to take one life than thousands. He just hadn't been sure he was capable of taking that life.
And he didn't know if the Fey magicks would let him.
"Indirectly does work, child," the Shaman said gently. "It is the favored method of assassination for people of Black Blood."
"What does that mean?" Arianna asked. "The favored method?"
"Exactly what it sounds like, child." The Shaman spoke softly, gently, as if she were imparting wisdom instead of tales of death. "Your great-grandfather killed your grandfather in just that way."
"I thought Solanda killed my grandfather," Arianna said.
"She did," the Shaman said, "but your great-grandfather had had a Vision, a Vision that your grandfather would fail here. And failure meant death."
"Because my great-grandfather could kill him then?" Arianna asked.
"No," the Shaman said. "Because losing a war usually means the commander dies. It is to Rugar's credit that he lasted as long as he did. And his invasion here was not a complete failure. It resulted in you and your brother, two of the most powerful Fey ever."
"I don't know what good it does me," Arianna said, "being powerful. I couldn't save Sebastian."
"Sebastian died," Nicholas said, his voice breaking, "trying to save me. It was my fault."
And something he would have to live with. He had grown to love that boy, even if the child had been made of stone instead of flesh, even if he wasn't really Nicholas's blood kin. Sebastian was his child and he had shattered trying to prevent the Black King's soldiers from killing Nicholas.
Then a thought struck him, a thought he didn't like. "Did your Mysteries take Sebastian because I tried to kill the Black King?" he asked the Shaman.
She shrugged. "I do not understand the Mysteries," she said. "None of us do. They are capricious, more powerful than anything we are familiar with, and they lead us in odd ways."
"So you don't know," Nicholas said.
"It's possible," she said. "As possible as it is impossible."
He glanced at Arianna. A tear ran down her cheek. She had loved Sebastian beyond reason, and she had barely spoken of his death. Perhaps Nicholas had judged her too harshly. Perhaps he had failed to take into account what she was going through. She had lost everything — her home, her land, and her beloved brother. She had gone from being a princess to living in a cave. She had discovered great power while experiencing great loss.
He put out his hand to her, and she came to him. He hugged her close, feeling the bones of her shoulder blades against his palms. She was thinner and she was fragile, and the Shaman was right; Arianna was not ready to make decisions. Not for herself, or for her family or for her country.
Not yet.
He had a daughter to raise, and to keep safe. Right now, she was too easily corruptible. Part of that was his fault: he had kept her sheltered. He hadn't given her a chance to know anyone outside the palace. He hadn't allowed her to live, because he had been too afraid to lose her.
And now he was faced with losing her heart and soul.
He was right and the Shaman was right. The Black King had to die, but not by Nicholas's hand. The method had to be indirect and unexpected. And it would require some thought.
"What are we going to do?" Arianna said against him. She was probably speaking of Sebastian, but there was nothing they could do about that now. The boy was dead. They had to move on.
"We're going to find your brother," Nicholas said before he had a chance to consider the decision. "Your real brother."
Arianna pulled back. She held him at arm's length. The Shaman was staring at him, as if he had startled her.
Nicholas looked at both of them. "The Black King came here for his great-grandchild. Both of his great-grandchildren are Visionaries. He may not come for Arianna. He might search for young Gift. And it won't matter which one he finds. He'll mold that person to him. We have to find my son before the Black King does."
"And do what?" Arianna asked.
"Protect him," Nicholas said. "Just as we're protecting you."
EIGHT
Pausho was the first to reach the Meeting Hall. The large stone building was empty and dark despite the early morning light. She opened the doors, pulled the curtains away from the windows, and set her basket on the table. The other Wise Leaders from Constant would be here shortly. They would have to send for the rest.Her heart was pounding. The sight of that tall thin creature in the market was almost too much for her aging heart. She had remembered the
Incantation, though, had remembered more than the gesture, and that had united the people enough to drive it and its tall thin woman away.
This time.
Her mouth was dry. She was nearly seventy, a keeper of the ancient wisdom, who never believed she would do more with it than keep the Blooders pure. Even at that she had failed. Of all the babies condemned to the mountain, over two dozen had survived. Some due to the misguided kindness of childless women, others due to the young Auds who had come here from other places. Those religious children knew nothing of their heritage. They did not know that the compassionate drivel in the last chapters of the Words Written were added generations after the death of the Roca.
The original Words were kept in a stone box, in a stone vault, beneath this very hall. She had studied them, as had the other Wise Leaders, and they knew, unlike the Tabernacle, what had been added over the generations and what had been taken away.
She took a deep breath and put a hand over her heart. The scratchy wool of her sweater tugged at her palms. She was dressed for early morning: sweaters, heavy skirt with leggings beneath, and boots. She would be too hot by the time the meeting ended. But it was too late to run home now. Too late to change clothes. Too late to warn her husband of the meeting. Too late to bring food.
The emergency was upon them, and she needed to act quickly.
They all did.
"Tall ones."
She whirled. Zak was behind her. He was older than she was, his red hair gone yellow with age. The lines on his face were deep; sorrow lines. He had once said to her that a man could not condemn babies, however evil, without the torment showing up on his face.
"I saw them," she said. "In the market."
"I heard." His voice was deep, warm, compassionate. He leaned on his cane as he hobbled to the table. "I heard you drove them away."
She nodded. "We Incanted."
"It was good you were there." He spoke softly. His words hung between them. The entire city could have been lost if someone had so much as taken a coin from the tall one. It had been bad enough to allow Matthias back, all those years ago. As if the Wise Leaders could have kept him away. He had a place in Constant the day Elda had misguidedly rescued him from the mountain.
The traditions were quite specific on that: anyone the mountain spat back deserved to live.
But strangers, tall strangers who came from outside, were pure evil. They had to be driven away, and if they could not be, they had to die.
"The tall ones were seen two days ago," Zak said, "trying to find work in the quarry, but no one reported it until now."
She sighed. So many were raised without proper respect for the traditions now. She blamed the Auds for that. The Auds and the encroaching Tabernacle, who believed its version of the past was the only one.
At least there were no Auds in the kirk at the moment. She had managed to keep the last Aud's death hidden from the Tabernacle.
A stair creaked. Tri stood outside, his long red hair flowing about his face like a cloud. At forty, he was the youngest of the Wise Leaders, brought into the traditions when his father died, only one year before.
"They say the legends are coming true," he said. His voice quavered, and Pausho heard his disbelief. She had thought it a mistake to bring him into the leadership. He had been raised in Rocaanism, named Dimitri for a King of Blue Isle, and listened more to his religious mother than his wise father. Still, tradition demanded approval from only three Wise Leaders, and all had supported him. All except her.
"There were tall ones in the market today," she said. "I saw them."
"Strangers?" The disbelief still hadn't left his voice.
She nodded.
He came in, but he did not meet her gaze. Instead he went to Zak, pulled out a chair, and helped Zak down. She watched Tri, but he gave no more indication that he was upset, no indication that this meeting was anything more than an inconvenience, a way to take away the business at his forge.
"Have the others been sent for?" Tri asked.
"Yes," she said, wondering if he thought her a fool. She knew how to call a meeting, even though it was never done. The Leaders met only on the day of the full moon, and only for a very short time.
But she knew the procedures. She knew that the sighting of a tall one required a meeting, just as a demon birth did.
At that moment, Fyr entered. She was out of breath. She carried a basket on her thick arm, and she too wore her early-morning clothes. She was fifteen years older than Tri, and she had just become a Wise Leader a year before he had.
Pausho longed for her old group, the ones she had served with most of her career. The ones who approved a removal to the mountain without all the debate, who believed in the traditions and the legends without the corruption of outside stories, who knew the necessity of acting quickly and without thought.
"I saw Rin," Fyr said. "She's coming now."
Rin was the fifth and last of the Wise Leaders of Constant. She had been brought in just after Pausho, and they were so close it sometimes felt as if they were sisters.
Rin came through the door. She was out of breath, her round face flushed. She looked as if she had come a long way.
"Tall ones," she said, and in her voice, Pausho heard a terror matching her own. They were the old leaders of the Wise Ones now. It seemed like only weeks before they had been the youngest, looking to people decades older than they were for guidance.
Decades older, and now dead.
"Tall ones," Pausho said. "Please close the door."
Rin did. She was short and round and her curly brownish gray hair hadn't even been combed. Her clothing was mismatched and barely fastened. Someone had awakened her, and she had clearly dressed quickly and come.
"We need to send for the other Wise Leaders," Zak said.
He meant the leaders of the other villages, the leaders who represented the small enclaves throughout the mountains, and the leaders who represented only their families, living in isolation near the Slides of Death.
"We will," Pausho said. She had become, in the last year, the head of this group, a position she still was not comfortable with. Zak was the oldest, but he had no desire, indeed no ability, to lead. He merely suggested. She enforced. "But first we must warn our people. We must prevent the tall ones from doing commerce in this place, from touching our children, and from seducing our young people."
Tri sighed. "I think we're overreacting. We have no idea who these people are or what they want. And now they probably think we're a superstitious backwater."
"Does that matter?" Fyr asked quietly. "Do we care what others think?"
Tri shrugged. "I do. If they rode in, their horses may need shoeing. Perhaps they have weapons that need repair. I can always use new business in my forge. By Pausho's own statement, they had come to the market. They were going to spend coin. That's good for us —
"Good?" Rin sat down in one of the chairs. Her twisted fingers were working the buttons on her sweater, attempting to fasten it better. "You are a Wise One and you do not know the stories?"
"Tall," Tri said. Then he stood. He was Pausho's height, Rin's height. Zak's height. Most of the people in the Cliffs of Blood grew no taller. They had purged the tall ones from their lines years ago. Only a handful got through.
A handful that survived the mountain.
"Tall," Tri said. "I am tall to our children. Does that make me evil? And what is tall? Perhaps the old stories don't mean men of Matthias's height. Perhaps they mean giants. The legends speak of creatures who scale the mountains. Does that mean creatures who can climb the mountains? Or creatures who in some way compare in height to the mountains? We don't know. We're dealing with stories passed down from generation to generation. Just because Pausho believes these people were tall does not mean that they were the tall ones of legend."
Pausho crossed her arms. "You have no place here," she said.
Tri raised an eyebrow. "Because I question you? Because I'm not comfortable with the tasks of
the Wise Ones? Because I refuse to condemn people to death without asking a few questions first?"
"Because you don't understand," she said quietly.
"Then make me," he said. "Make me understand. Tell me what would happen to all of us if these tall ones' spent their coin in our town. Matthias spends his coin here. You put him on the mountain, and when he survived, you reversed yourselves, saying that survivors belong like the rest of us."
"Matthias is no longer in Constant," Fyr said.
"Matthias returned last night, along with several other people," Tri said.
"Perhaps it was these tall ones you saw," Zak said.
"It was Matthias," Tri said. "His house is next to mine. I watched them all enter. Strangers, every last one of them."
"Were the tall ones with him?" Pausho asked. Her heart was beating hard. She had not known, all those years ago when she became a Wise One, what it meant to hold the life and death of others in her hands. She had not realized that she would never get used to it, never completely shake the feelings that Tri argued with now, the feeling that she had no right to make these decisions, that she was as confused as the rest of them.
"There was a woman who was of his height," Tri said. "Red-haired also. But I had never seen her before."
"The tall woman I saw was dark," Pausho said. "Dark hair, dark skin, dark eyes. She had a look that made her not of here. The man did too."
Zak put a hand on her arm. "Was it night when he returned?"
Tri nodded.
"Then you cannot know if these tall ones were with him."
"I know these tall ones were in the quarry two days ago. They were searching for work," Zak said.
"And there is a strange man in the quarry now," Fyr said. "He is not tall, but he is dark, just as you described. He is not from here."
"Could Matthias have returned a few days ago, but not gone home?" Rin asked.
"Why?" Tri said. "Why would he stay away from his own shelter?"
The Resistance: The Fourth Book of the Fey (Fey Series) Page 5