He hadn't slept. He was tired and hungry and shivering, but he couldn't sleep. His mind was too busy.
And the Fey were above him. He could see their trails leading to that shimmer.
That place that Pausho had said the Roca had been.
He had died there.
He had been born there.
He had been reborn there.
Matthias, the greatest scholar of Rocaanism, had never heard of this. Nor had he heard that the Words still existed.
And he had studied here after he had left the Tabernacle. He had found old things, and dug through old records, never thinking of asking the Wise Ones. Never thinking of checking with the ones who had left him for dead.
For religious reasons, they said.
Ordered by the Roca.
He shook his head.
Thinking about this was no easier than thinking about the burning boy's accusation.
You are just like me.
Or the flame that had traveled from one finger to another.
He was just like the boy and just like the Roca.
Only the Roca's powers had come from God and Matthias's from the Evil One, at least according Pausho.
He never asked how she could tell.
Demon-spawn. Perhaps he truly was demon-spawn. She said he would find out.
If he went to that shimmer.
The place where the Roca had been reborn.
He gazed up at it. The shimmer continued, strong and silvery in the growing morning light. He could feel it calling him, feel the pressure it put upon his very soul.
He glanced over his shoulder, down the mountain toward Constant. Marly was there. She had made Denl and Jakib promise to bring him home safe. Despite his height, despite his ruined face, she cared about him.
Maybe, in time, it would grow to love.
He should probably just go down the mountain, hide in his small house, and find a way to survive the inevitable Fey invasion. He should live with Marly and her band of former thieves and try to have a normal life.
With flames that danced from his fingers.
He sighed.
He would never be able to let this go. Never. The mountain had always called to him, and he had thought it was part of his heritage, part of the fact that he had survived its cruelties. He had never thought of climbing it before.
Not until he saw the Fey trails, and knew he had to.
He still had to. He couldn't stop now.
And the boy had given him something. The boy had given him a way to harness his own powers.
Matthias held out his right hand, cupped it, and imagined a ball of flame in the center of his palm.
A small ball appeared, the fire gold blended with orange, the colors swirling against his pale skin.
He closed his hand, willing the ball away, and when he opened his fingers, there was nothing on his palm. No fire, no scorch marks.
No burns.
You are just like me.
You have a great magick, holy man.
A great magick.
What if Pausho was wrong? What if Matthias' magick was of the Roca? History traced the Roca's line through Nicholas and his half-breed children, but it did not trace what happened to the Roca's second son, the one who was the religious leader on Blue Isle. Did he father children? Was Matthias part of his line? Was that burning boy, that Coulter? Over the generations, the line would have thinned enough so that both of them could be part of the same line and not know it.
Maybe he shouldn't have listened to the others all that time. Maybe he should have realized that he had a gift no one else had.
Maybe the mountain had let him live for a reason.
And maybe he could see the shimmer above him for the same reason.
His shivering had stopped, but his back, pressed up against the boulder, had grown cold even through the clothes he was wearing.
His headache was going away, too.
The Fiftieth Rocaan, a deeply religious man who seemed to think he had heard God's still small voice, believed that the Fey were the Soldiers of the Enemy. He believed that the Rocaan's duty had been the Roca's duty, to clear Blue Isle of the Soldiers of the Enemy.
But the Fiftieth Rocaan, for all his belief, had not been a descendant of the Roca. The Fiftieth Rocaan had been merely a second son of a farming family, and while he led the religion, he did not have the powers of the religious leader.
What if Matthias did? What if his kind were the actual designated leaders of Rocaanism? What if they were the ones who had been thrown out in the schisms all those centuries ago?
Was that what the Wise Ones were guarding? But that made no sense. Because if Matthias was a direct descendant of the Roca, then the Wise Ones would have struggled to keep him alive, not kill him.
Wouldn't they?
He felt as if he had gone to sleep and awakened in a world he no longer recognized. When he was a young man, he had joined the Tabernacle because it had order. It also provided him an education, a way to live in his mind. Then, as he rose in its ranks, he discovered he had a specialty. His scholarship was unique, valued, important. He could do it while living within the orderliness that was the Tabernacle.
Day to day he knew how his life would be. Then he became an Elder, and reached the highest level he wanted to achieve in the Tabernacle.
He had never wanted to be Rocaan. He hated power, feared it within himself.
Because he was demon-spawn? Because he was raised believing he was unworthy?
Or because he truly was lacking belief, lacking the ingredients he admired in the Fiftieth Rocaan?
Who had seen something in him. Who had appointed Matthias to be his successor.
Matthias sighed. The world no longer was orderly. The Tabernacle was gone. He no longer understood his own place in the world, and each time he tried to figure it out, something came along to change his understanding.
He was not a dumb man. But he was flawed.
Pausho and her kind believed he had been flawed from birth.
He glanced at the shimmer again. He could go to it, and face the future, the uncertain future which the Fey had brought with them, see what other darkness lived within himself, or he could go back down the hill, down to Marly, and hope he survived.
He was never very good at hope.
He got up, brushed himself off, then went to Tri, and shook him awake. Tri opened his eyes slowly, awareness a few moments behind.
"I must have fallen asleep," he said. "Who'd have thought I could after this night."
"We're going up the mountain," Matthias said.
Tri nodded. "I knew we would. You can't keep away from a puzzle."
"You think this is a puzzle?"
"It's something Pausho knows that you don't," Tri said.
"Do you?"
Tri shook his head. "I was a bad Wise One. I didn't do any of the study I was supposed to, and I associated with people like you."
Matthias let himself smile. The movement tugged on his still-healing wounds. He patted Tri on the back and went to Denl and Jakib. They were leaning on each other beneath the stone roof. The place the burning boy had found to camp was a cozy one, despite its location.
"We're going up the mountain," Matthias said.
Denl opened his eyes quickly, as if he had only been dozing. "Wouldn't it be best if we got help afore we went? Weapons n such?"
Matthias clenched his fists, remembering the feel of the fire above his skin. "We'll be all right."
"I promised Marly that ye'd come back," Jakib said. He had a hand to his head, and he was looking groggy.
"I will," Matthias said.
"What do ye think is up there?" Denl asked.
"The Fey," Matthias said. And something else. Something that called to him. Something that drew him like nothing ever had before.
He stood and gazed at the shimmer.
He would learn much this day.
If the mountain let him.
If the mountain helped him surv
ive.
Again.
SIXTY-EIGHT
His daughter was heavy.
Nicholas had shifted her position. He had been cradling her in his arms. Now he carried her over his shoulder. Her arms dangled against his back, her chin banged into his spine, and her feet bounced against his legs. He hadn't realized how long she was or how big. That tall, slender girl carried a lot of weight, and right now it was dead weight. It almost felt as if he were carrying a body instead of a living creature.
At least she still breathed on her own. And as long as he had his hands on her, the Shaman said, she wouldn't Shift. As long as he imagined her as Arianna and not as something else.
Although he found himself wishing she had remained in her lizard form. He could have cradled that in the palm of his hand and still negotiated this trail.
If he wanted to call it a trail.
The sun had come up on his section of the mountain now. The ground was red, the rocks were red, and he was covered in red dust. The air was cold, though, and on the rocks above him, he could see snow.
The Shaman had some water, which she was giving to him regularly, and he ate part of their stash of tak as he walked. The Shaman scurried before him, her robes catching on the spindly plants that grew in this strange environment. She carried their bundles and Arianna's boots. Farther up, before the snow started, there were no plants at all. Only rocks and dirt and signs of slides.
Slides. He didn't want to think about them. The ground had shifted beneath his feet more than once already. He had one arm wrapped around Arianna's hips, and he used the other for balance. He wasn't certain he'd be able to catch himself if he fell.
And he wasn't certain what would happen to Arianna.
When they left the place where Arianna had been attacked, the Shaman had scurried around Nicholas and had led them along an upper path. There was a lower path that he could see if he glanced down, winding its way around the sides of the mountain, wider and more traveled than this path. But the Shaman was avoiding it purposefully.
She seemed to know where she was going.
And she was moving as fast as he had ever seen her move.
The worry that had been in the pit of his stomach since he fled the palace had grown worse. He just might lose his daughter on this mountainside, lose her to her great-grandfather.
If her great-grandfather's invasion of her mind — and that's what it sounded like to him, no matter how the Shaman explained it — killed Arianna, would that trigger the curse they had always warned him of? The Black Blood against the Black Blood?
Wouldn't the Black King have known of that risk? Wouldn't he have cared?
Or was that something else the Shaman had made up to scare Nicholas?
As they had walked on this trail, his mind was going over each conversation he had had with her. She had often been obtuse, sometimes purposefully so. She had implied that Sebastian was not his child — but she had never told him of Gift.
She had done many things, always, he thought, to save him.
But what if she had had another motive, one he wasn't sure of?
It couldn't be a Fey motive, could it?
She couldn't still be working for the Empire?
But she too was a Visionary, and she could travel across these Links. Sebastian had claimed that he and Gift had spoken all the time through their link. Was the Shaman communicating with the Black King?
But if she was, then why would she have urged Nicholas to kill him?
Unless it was a ploy to cause Arianna's death.
He shook his head. It made no sense. None of it made any sense. Why would the Shaman risk everything to attend Arianna's birth when she would later urge Arianna's death? And why would she have told Nicholas all these things about the Fey when she had not supported the Islanders after all? And why would she have claimed to be his friend?
He stumbled on a narrow section of trail and caught himself with his free hand. Arianna bumped against his back so hard that the air almost left his body.
The air felt thinner here, anyway. It seemed harder to fill his lungs, but he didn't know if that was due to his own exertion or not. He wasn't used to this much exercise any more, all the walking and climbing he was doing. Wasn't used to it at his own weight, let alone carrying a daughter who was taller and who might even weigh more than he did.
He couldn't lose her. That was the thing he kept coming back to. He couldn't bear to lose her. He had lost everyone else.
Jewel.
His father.
So many friends.
Even Sebastian was gone, and Nicholas didn't know his real son.
And in its own way, he had lost his home. The Isle wasn't his any more. Even if he recovered it, it would be different.
The Fey had left their mark on it. He would never be able to change that.
The Shaman scrambled over a series of boulders. Nicholas stopped to catch his breath.
The trail had disappeared. They seemed to be following her instincts now.
"Wait!" he called.
His voice echoed down the mountain.
Wait.
wait
wait
She stopped.
"Where are we going?" he asked.
She pointed. She was breathing hard, too. He could see it, even from this distance. She still had a wild look about her, a look that made her seem like a completely different person.
Her white hair frizzed around her face. Her dark eyes flashed in the sunlight. Her nut brown skin seemed even more wrinkled than it had before. She had always seemed so serene to him, and now the serenity was gone.
He wondered what had taken it.
"Isn't there a path?" he asked.
She ran a hand through her wild hair. "There are others on that path, Nicholas. We have to go this way."
He stared at the boulders, wondering how he would carry Arianna over them. His strength had limits. And he was reaching them.
"How much farther?" he asked.
"Not much," she said. "Please, Nicholas, we haven't much time."
Why not? Because of Arianna? Or because of something else?
"Will Arianna die if we don't make it soon?"
The Shaman glanced over her shoulder as if she expected to see someone. Their voices were echoing down the mountain. If there were others on the trail, he wondered if those people could hear them.
"I need to have time to help her, Nicholas. I need to get there first."
"I understand that," he said. "But I'm not sure I can climb this."
"You have to," she said. "And you don't understand. I have to arrive before the others."
"What others?" he asked.
She said nothing more, just turned her back on him and started climbing again.
You have to.
The implication was that he would have to climb this mountainside if he wanted Arianna to live. He tentatively took his hand off her hips and leaned forward. Her weight seemed to keep her in place.
"Come on, baby girl," he whispered. "We're going to make this."
And then he started to climb.
SIXTY-NINE
Boteen paced. Gauze had been gone much longer than he'd expected. Had the magick currents she'd been talking about done something to her? Had she encountered something she should not have?
He didn't know.
All he knew was that the siren song of the mountain was growing stronger. He felt it even if he didn't look at it. The buzz had left his ears and the nausea was gone from his stomach — those things had disappeared as the riders got farther away — but the feeling that he needed to climb up that mountainside had grown stronger and stronger with each passing moment.
The Gull Rider let the wind ruffle her feathers. She raised her wings slightly as if she were contemplating flight, and then lowered them again. The Horse Riders stood patiently, although Boteen knew it was not their nature to do so.
Ay'Le kept watching him through the corner of her eye. She seemed to think he
didn't notice, or maybe she didn't care. She had sent the other Gull Rider for the Infantry, and then she had started pacing.
She hadn't liked the waiting, and she wouldn't like it if Boteen decided to go up that mountain.
Not that it mattered. She was a third-rate Charmer, no matter what Rugad said. She was more interested in her own power than in the work she had to do.
Although he had noticed that was common among Charmers.
The sun had risen far enough above the mountains to shed a warm light on this section of the road. It sparkled on the blood red water below them, making it look as if rubies floated on the surface of the water. There was a sort of drama here, an expectation in the very build of the mountains that something spectacular was going to happen.
Or perhaps it already had.
He liked the magickal feel of the place. Most of the countries he had traveled to on the Galinas continent had the charm of age, the fascination he always found in a new culture, and nothing more. Not this sense of challenge that he felt here, not the sense that he had come home.
He stopped moving at that last thought.
Home.
What had made him think that? He had been born on the road, the son of a Spy and a Domestic whose lust hadn't lasted beyond his childhood. Neither of them knew how to raise him. They had turned him over to Rugad's Spell Warders at a very young age, and he became the tester for many of their spells. It enabled him to learn all the magicks of the Fey — even the handful he could not perform, like Shifting — but it had also ensured that he would never have a permanent residence. He had been part of Rugad's troop since he was three years old, part of his parents' strange traveling household before that.
He had never had a home. So where was this feeling coming from?
But he knew. It was coming from the mountains. And the magick in the air.
It was coming from the very wildness of this place.
He had to be prepared, prepared to let Rugad know exactly what was going on.
"Get the Scribe," he said to Ay'Le.
She frowned at him, then knocked on the door of the other carriage. The Scribe was like all of his kind, a rather dull fellow who seemed frightened by anything out of routine. He had disappeared into the carriage when the Islanders rode up.
The Resistance: The Fourth Book of the Fey (Fey Series) Page 44