"We … did … it," Sebastian said.
"Well, we got across the river," Con said. "But I'm not sure how far these tunnels go. The Tabernacle isn't far from here. Where are your friends?"
"South," Sebastian said. He blinked a little, then added, "A … day's … walk … for … you."
"And what about for you?" Con asked, still wondering how Sebastian knew all of this if he had never been off the palace grounds. This borrowed memory thing was disturbing. But then everything about Sebastian was disturbing. Especially his needy affection. Con wished Sebastian would remove his hands, but didn't know how to ask without hurting Sebastian's feelings.
Slowly Sebastian removed his hands, as if he had read Con's thoughts. But he couldn't do that, could he? Con shuddered again. Maybe he could. Sebastian could do a lot of things that made Con uneasy.
"I … do … not … know," Sebastian said. He loomed large in the semidarkness. They were lucky to be able to stand here. Con's back hurt from crouching for so long.
Con thought. It had been a long time since he had been outside Jahn. Sebastian had explained to him how to reach the farm. In what Con was beginning to recognize as Sebastian's thoughtful, cautious manner, Sebastian explained the entire route in case they were separated. Sebastian had thought of everything. He wasn't slow-witted like they said, but he was slow at everything else: movement, speech, and action.
"Well," Con said, "I don't think we can hurry. We'll have to see where these tunnels lead us, and go as far as that. I don't want to go above ground too soon. The Fey are everywhere, and they'll want you."
"And … you," Sebastian said softly.
Con frowned. He wasn't sure about that. But he did know that the Fey feared the Rocaanists. He had gathered that much from the survivors on the other side of the river. They said the Fey believed the Rocaanists had more "magick" like holy water, and would find a way to destroy the Fey.
Con did have extra magick. He had the sword leaning against his leg. But it had nothing to do with the Rocaanists. He had found it in the palace. It made him wonder what else was there, right under the Black King's nose.
He grabbed the sword. "Let's go on," he said.
Sebastian nodded. Con let Sebastian get ahead of him. He didn't want to lose Sebastian in the dark.
The air smelled foul the farther along they went. The stench of stale smoke grew, and Con's eyes burned. The smoke smell was mixed with something else, something older and more primitive. It made the hair rise on the back of Con's neck.
Death.
It smelled like death down here.
He made himself swallow. Of course it did. There would have been bodies above, and some of that smell would have had to seep below. But even as he thought it, he knew the explanation was wrong.
"Stinks," Sebastian said.
"I know," Con said. They turned the only corner, and then Sebastian stopped. Con came up beside him. A body stretched across the passage. It was barely recognizable. It had rotted for two weeks.
"We have to go around it," Con said.
Sebastian grabbed his arm. "There … are … more … . I … can … smell … them."
"So can I," Con said. "But we have to try."
He stepped around the body, careful not to touch it with his feet. Sebastian did the same thing, leaning heavily on Con for balance. Con wished he had something to cover his nose. The stench was growing. He made himself breathe through his mouth. Then he clenched a fist and kept going.
Of course there were bodies. Of course. There had been a full-scale attack on the Tabernacle. The Elders in the cavern on the other side of the river had done a small ceremony for the desperately wounded and ill left behind. Once they saw that passage under the river, they had known that only the healthy ones could get through it. The others were supposed to go back and see if they could find another way to escape.
Obviously some didn't make it.
Con wasn't sure the group on the other side of the river would make it either. They were assuming that the Fey would leave Jahn eventually, and they were hoping that they could wait out the Fey.
Con didn't think the Fey would ever leave. They had Blue Isle now. Unless someone took it from them.
The only hope Con had was that the King was still alive. But that was a slim hope. What could one man do against the magickal Fey? What could any of them do?
Con put one hand over his nose. With his other hand, he grabbed Sebastian's. He had a hunch the next few yards of passageway would be ugly and difficult to traverse.
"Come on," he said to the King's son and the heir to Blue Isle. "We can get through this."
And he hoped he was right.
FOURTEEN
Boteen stood in the palace garden. It smelled of flowers and grass mingled with the charred scent that had hung in the air for a week. There had been no real wind to speak of in all that time, and the smoke from the fires had lingered, like a poison, in the air.
Rugad had neglected many things since his injury. He needed to give direction to the Weather Sprites. They weren't bright enough to think of wind on their own. They needed guidance or they would experiment with esoteric things like the difference between the purity content of a raindrop and the purity content of a snowflake. They were lazy, ineffective magicians unless they had guidance, and they would take none from Boteen.
Even if he was their better.
He straightened to his full height. He was the tallest Fey on record, and probably the thinnest, although that detail concerned him much less. He ate his fill, but he consumed enough energy that food scarcely seemed to sustain him. He was constantly honing his skills.
It frustrated him that an Enchanter's magick was limited. He could perform all spells with great power initially, but his reserves would deplete. And some of the more complex magicks were almost beyond him. He could perform them, yes, but not with the degree of competence that, say, a Weather Sprite might use in creating a hurricane. Boteen might create a bad windstorm or a hurricane that lasted only a few moments. He couldn't create the devastation needed to destroy an entire coastline, like the Sprites had done during one of the battles in Nye, no matter how hard he tried.
He wondered if the others could.
The others. He took a deep breath and clenched his fists. Enchanters were rare things. He was the only one who traveled with Rugad, indeed, the only one known among the Fey from Nye to L'Nacin. He suspected an Enchanter had been born to the Fey remaining in the Eccrasian Mountains, but he had nothing more than a sense, on a particularly stormy night, of a child's birth and its flare of magick.
Since the flare had come from the Mountains, he had felt no concern. It did not jeopardize his position.
But the two Enchanters here, on Blue Isle, did. Rugad claimed to have encountered one. That Enchanter protected Gift, the great-grandson. He was, they say, an Islander, blond and round and short as the rest of them. But Boteen wasn't certain. Expert Enchanters could Shape-Shift. They could do so only for brief periods of time and at great personal risk, but they could do so. Perhaps this Enchanter had.
Although that did not explain the stories that had come from the Failures in Shadowlands. They claimed to have among them an Island-born blond boy whose Enchanting talents had gone unknown by all the but the Shifter Solanda. When he had finally been discovered, Gift — as a young boy — had saved him, and got him out of Shadowlands.
Now Gift was traveling with him, or so Boteen assumed. It would seem logical. Find the Enchanter and find the boy.
Although it would not be easy. Rugad had said the boy had closed off Gift's Links. The Enchanter would have closed his own as well, and perhaps disguised his trail.
If he were sophisticated enough.
But it did not answer the question of the other Enchanter. No one claimed to have seen him. Not the Failures, not the tortured Islanders, not anyone.
Yet Boteen could feel him.
He had felt him from the moment he had touched the cliffs to the south, a g
reat reservoir of power, untapped and leaking. This Enchanter did not know how to use his power, and that made him dangerous.
That made him invisible.
That made him deadly.
Boteen clenched his fists. He was here on Rugad's command. Rugad wanted the boy. He believed that Boteen could track the Enchanter. Boteen could, up to a point. It wasn't as easy as Rugad thought. Nothing was, really.
But Rugad didn't care. He wanted results, not complaints.
Boteen glanced at the sky. The sun had come up, but the smoke and ash in the air made the sky gray. His task would be easier if he could get the Sprites to make a wind. But he didn't want to usurp Rugad's authority. Rugad had no tolerance for it. He would kill a trusted advisor — he would destroy his only Enchanter — before he would tolerate any appearance of sharing power.
He had always made that clear.
It had become clearer when he sent his son Rugar here. When Rugar had died, Rugad had shown no grief, no remorse. Only relief.
Black Blood could not turn on itself — overtly. But the wise leaders, the ones who ascended to and kept the Black Throne, had found ways around that conundrum the Powers had sent centuries before.
Rugad was only maintaining an ancient tradition.
Boteen took a deep breath, hating the burning sensation that filled his lungs. He had no Link to the other Enchanter. So far as he knew, no one did. But there had to be trails. Trails etched in the ground, in the very air he breathed, in everything he touched.
Trails were different than feelings. Trails were simply paths that the Enchanter had once walked. All things left them. All things magick left obvious trails that faded with time.
Boteen could track anyone as long as there was a trail.
And there was an Enchanter's trail in this city. But only one. It was as if the second Enchanter had never been here. The question was, which one protected Black Blood?
He could only guess. And he would guess that the one that protected Black Blood had once lived in this city for a long time and had been gone almost as long. The trail was very old and had almost faded. It was so old that it had lost much of its form. He couldn't see its color anymore, or its essence. He could barely feel that it had belonged to an Enchanter.
The trail dated from the days of Jewel, when the Failures had first lost Blue Isle. The Enchanter had not been in the garden, but he had been in the palace many times, and his trail went from here to the streets to the river.
His essence was strong in the river, almost as if he had lost part of himself there.
Boteen smiled. He would study the trail. He would learn its scent, its form, its basic nature.
And then he would follow it, silently tracking, until he found the Enchanter.
Until he found both Enchanters.
And until he found Rugad's great-grandson.
Gift.
FIFTEEN
Rugad touched his neck. The still-vivid wound was ridged under his fingers. It would remain there, a blazing scar testifying to the strength of the King whose place Rugad now inhabited.
He was standing near the balcony door. Seger, the Healer, was still on the balcony, collecting her things. She was gaunt, and had the leathery look of a Weather Sprite who had been too long in the sun. The last few weeks had taken their toll on all the healers. They had all lost weight. A few had begged him for a day's respite so that they could allow their powers a rest. Healers believed, some said rightly, that a Fey could diminish his powers to nothing.
Rugad had never seen it, but then his magick was never in such constant use. Healers could work for days, weeks, without getting sleep, without stopping to replenish themselves both physically and mentally.
That last series of Visions Rugad had had, the ones that had appeared to him in a rout that King Nicholas had engineered, had left Rugad exhausted. He just hadn't been able to show it.
Seger came in the balcony door, carrying her herb pouches and the blanket she had placed around his neck She clutched a small jar in her fingers. She claimed the jar, which looked empty, held his real voice.
She handed it to him. The glass was warm to the touch. "Where do you want this?" she asked. "I don't dare keep it. If it got out, then you would take my head." He smiled. She knew him well. He set the jar on one of the occasional tables that dotted the room. He would put the jar away after she left, when he was alone. No one else would know where it was, nor how to use it.
"I'm going to tell you this one more time," she said. "If you want to have me restore your real voice when your throat is completely healed, then do not use this false one much. Otherwise, you will be stuck with this false voice for the rest of your days."
"A ruler without a voice has no power," Rugad said. His new voice was a mixture of breath and depth. Seger had spelled the muscles in his throat to allow them to reverberate, to create some sort of noise. It sounded nothing like him, and the pain that shot from his mouth to his chest was staggering.
"Your false voice will never have more power than it does right now," she said.
He took a deep breath. "What of the pain?"
"You either have pain or silence," she said. She stood in front of him, showing no fear. She did not seem in awe of him, and for once, he was grateful.
"Forever?" he asked.
"As long as you use that voice." She smiled. "That should be incentive enough to get your old voice back."
"I do not have the luxury of waiting," he said. "I have waited too long already."
"As you wish," she said, sounding doubtful. She nodded once, then carried her things out the door, leaving him alone.
He picked up the small jar and held it to the light streaming in from the balcony. He could see nothing inside nor did he entirely understand the reason for removing it.
A man cannot have two voices, Seger had told him. He must speak with one, and use its authority only. The other voice would only confuse matters, and would, eventually, cause harm.
He did know enough about healing magick to know that his old voice could be inserted into something — or someone — else. That was why she wouldn't let it fly on the winds. Someone might see it, capture it, and then speak with his voice.
Whoever had his voice had his authority.
He took the jar and carried it with him into the large bedroom he had been using. He took a pouch from his stack of clothes, and placed the jar inside. Then he tied the pouch to his waist. He too was going to be cautious with the voice. He would guard it as if it were still part of him.
No one would ever speak for him, especially not using the voice he had used so well for ninety-two years.
Rugad touched his neck again. Damn Nicholas. And damn Jewel for marrying him. This small Isle should have been an easy conquest, a mere boot stomp on the way to Leut.
Not a barrier. And certainly not the kind of barrier it had become.
He made his way back into the main room. He had warned himself when he arrived not to underestimate these Islanders, and then he had.
And nearly died.
He put his hands on the back of one of the ornate chairs, letting the curved wood cut into his palms. This place had been designed for comfort, not war. The hints of war were merely that: hints. When he had arrived, he mistook the easy conquest of the Islanders to the south as an inability to fight. He was more willing to believe in his son's incompetence than in the Islanders.
He should have trusted Jewel. Jewel had been extremely competent, and she had seen no way out. She had married Nicholas, given him children, and conquered the Isle the old-fashioned way. Comingling blood.
And then she had been murdered.
Rugad's great-grandson had been raised by Failures.
His great-granddaughter had been raised by Islanders.
Neither of them knew the Fey ways. And the only way he could teach them was to win them over first.
To have them at his side.
And for that, he needed to find them.
A knock at his
door startled him. Then, without waiting for a response, the door opened.
"I can speak now," Rugad said, pain piercing his throat.
Wisdom slipped in the door and closed it behind him. "I'm sorry, sir," he said. "I hadn't realized that Seger had left."
"You will never enter again unbidden," Rugad said. He still hadn't decided how to deal with Wisdom. His inclination was to wait until Wisdom was particularly vulnerable and then to strike.
But reducing Wisdom's power bit by bit might be more onerous to the man. Rugad would have to decide which was the better course.
"Forgive me," Wisdom said, bowing a little. "I have news."
Rugad clasped his hands behind his back and waited.
Wisdom blinked once in surprise, and then continued. "One of the Wisps you had sent into the tunnels has returned, quite agitated. He claims to have found your great-grandson."
Rugad let out a breath. "Send him in," he said, moving toward the door.
Wisdom pulled the door open and beckoned someone to enter. A Wisp came through. He was slender — too slender, as many of Rugad's hardworking troops were these days — and his wings were pressed flat against his back. His dark hair was cut short in the Nye tradition, and plastered against his head by sweat. He was covered with cobwebs, dust, and dirt.
"Forgive my appearance," he said. "I came as quickly as I could."
Rugad held up a hand. "Leave us, Wisdom," he said.
"But, sir—
"Now." The pressure that Rugad put on his voice made it feel as if his throat were about to split open.
"Yes, sir," Wisdom shot a worried glance at him, then spun and let himself out the door.
"Come," Rugad said to the Wisp, and led him onto the balcony. The breeze fluttered the Wisp's wings, and toyed with Rugad's hair. Rugad closed the balcony doors. He didn't want Wisdom to be privy to this, and if he were listening at the hallway door, he would not be able to hear.
"Your name?" Rugad asked. He had once known the names of all his troops, but had stopped long ago wasting precious memory with such trivial details. Now the only names he remembered belonged to people who had made an impression on him, good or bad.
The Resistance: The Fourth Book of the Fey (Fey Series) Page 10