Wood snapped behind him, and the faintest scent of smoke filled the air. He turned. The Aud was replacing the grate. Then he stood, wiped his hands on his robe, and bowed his head. “Anything else, Respected Sir?” he asked.
“Not in here,” Matthias said, hoping that the Aud heard his pointed reminder to remember the other chambers.
The Aud nodded again, then let himself out.
Once the door had clicked shut, Porciluna said, “All the little things seem to be coming apart.”
“They do, don’t they?” Matthias said. “Just another sign, I guess. Although”—he chose his words carefully—“these do not mean that the Rocaan is crazy.”
“He’s not thinking clearly,” Porciluna said. “He is tending to the wrong things.”
“The Rocaan is a man of faith.” Matthias stretched his legs and leaned back in his chair. The wood creaked from his weight. “There are times when he will not follow logic but that still, small voice within.”
“We are all men of faith,” Porciluna said.
“Are we?” Matthias raised his gaze to Porciluna’s face. Porciluna’s features looked soft, as if the candlelight had wiped any edges off.
Porciluna straightened, placing his hands on his knees. “If we weren’t, we wouldn’t be Elders.”
Matthias smiled. “Come now, Porciluna. Save that talk for the faithful. You know as well as I that many men are here because they have nowhere else to go, and that others are here because if they are sufficiently ambitious, they can live a life of luxury.”
“If you’re implying that I am here for such base reasons—”
“I’m not implying anything,” Matthias said. “But if we are going to have a true discussion about the future of the Tabernacle, we need to do so honestly. I have watched you, Porciluna, and I can predict your actions. If you were listening to a still, small voice, I would not be able to. You are an ambitious man who enjoys this life. I do not know if you believe in the Roca or in God.”
“All the men here are good,” Porciluna said.
Matthias studied him, knowing he would get no more out of Porciluna than that. “Yes,” he said after a moment. “They are. And there is a lot of wisdom in the Words Written and Unwritten.”
“But they say nothing about what to do with a Rocaan who is unfit,” Porciluna said. “I think we should call a meeting of the Elders. Take a vote, maybe remove him.”
Matthias folded his hands over his stomach. It was growling. He hadn’t eaten all day. “It’s unprecedented,” he said. “It might cause a schism in the Church that we don’t need.”
“It might save us.”
The words hung in the silence. The wood snapped again, an explosion in the quiet room. Then logs tumbled as the fire burned itself down.
Matthias pushed himself out of his chair, clasped his hands behind his back, and walked over to the fireplace. The Aud had built a lovely fire. The red and gold sparks flew up the chimney, and the fire itself burned tall and hot. “What bothers me,” he said, letting the warmth caress the front of his body, “is how do we judge? If you study the words, the Roca often seemed irrational. Perhaps true faith is a form of insanity.”
“It seems to me,” Porciluna said, “that he cannot reconcile what he knows of Rocaanism with the powers of holy water.”
“You mean, he cannot countenance the fact that it causes death?”
“Death in unbelievers.”
Matthias laughed. “If that were the case, then half the leaders of the Church would be dead. I have trouble with that property of holy water myself, and I have not the purity of spirit the Rocaan does.”
“So you do believe that the events have hurt his mind.”
“I think the events of the past year have changed all of us.” Matthias put one hand on the mantel. “But if they’ve hurt his mind, I don’t know. I do know that he has questioned his actions since that day. And I also know that, more than any of us, he listens for the still, small voice. Perhaps he is hearing it. How are we to tell?”
Porciluna stood. “I plan to call the meeting of the Elders.”
Matthias pushed away from the fireplace. His skin was hot in the front, but the rest of the room still felt cool. “If you say one word about removing him, I will fight you every step of the way.”
Porciluna frowned. “Why? You’re the logical choice to be the next Rocaan.”
“Inherit an office that your actions would rob of all its powers? I think not, Porciluna. The Rocaan shall remain until he dies in office. And when he does, the next Rocaan will be his choice for a successor, as it always has been.”
“But he has already made the choice,” Porciluna said.
“Oh, no.” Matthias turned back to the fire. The flames had died down but were still burning more blue than red. He could not see anything reflected in them. “He taught me the secrets of holy water so that he would not have to bear the responsibilities of its use alone. Never once did he say anything about my succeeding him. I think the lesson was more my punishment for forcing him into taking action.”
“We could hold the meeting without you,” Porciluna said.
“But you won’t,” Matthias said. “You can’t get rid of the Rocaan without my help. You’ll have no one to take his place. And I will not replace him without his blessing.” He turned and faced Porciluna. “Do I make myself clear?”
“Clear enough,” Porciluna said. His tone made Matthias cringe.
“Don’t make a mockery of this,” Matthias said. “Right now we need to be unified.”
Porciluna pursed his lips. “All right. We’ll be unified. For now. But I warn you, Matthias, if the Rocaan gets worse, we’ll have to take action.”
“I’ll let you know when he’s worse,” Matthias said. “I’ll let you know when to take action.”
“Always in charge, eh, Matthias?” Porciluna bowed slightly, just as the Aud had done, but unlike the Aud, Porciluna’s expression was mocking. “I’ll let myself out. Good night.”
Matthias didn’t answer him. Once Porciluna disappeared through the door, Matthias locked the door after him. Then he leaned on it.
A revolution in the Church couldn’t come at a worse time. He hoped he had staved it off. For if he hadn’t, more than the fate of Rocaanism was at stake. The fate of the entire Isle was.
FORTY-ONE
He was cold, and he hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep since they had left the ships. Scavenger curled up behind a pile of wood, near the back of Shadowlands. He no longer kept night or day hours. He paid attention to the niceties of time only when his services were needed. Until then he slept when he felt like sleeping, and ate when he felt like eating.
As if he had that kind of choice.
He pulled his coat over his short legs and patted a pile of empty pouches together as his pillow. The gray mist that formed the base of Shadowlands had a chill to it, even though Rugar denied it. And the ground beneath the mist, the invisible ground that no one could see, felt like the flat end of a sword blade. Cool and smooth and completely lacking in warmth.
A year they had been in Shadowlands, and no one had seen fit to give the Red Caps somewhere to sleep. He had spoken to Tazy, the head of the Foot Soldiers, several times about this, and Tazy promised each time to do something.
He had done nothing.
Scavenger even thought of speaking to the Warders, but he lacked the courage. And he certainly didn’t have the courage to speak to Rugar. Rugar would probably ignore him anyway.
Scavenger curled against the wood. It felt damp. He shivered, wishing for something more comfortable to lie on, and closed his eyes. Everything looked gray. He was so tired of gray. He had even sneaked out one day and wandered through the forest, and when he had returned—in full view of Rugar’s daughter and her Infantry companions—no one had said a word. It was as if he didn’t exist.
He had never existed for them. He was a tool, as their swords were tools, to be used only during warfare, only at the right time. It galle
d him that he had no recourse. As a young man he used to dream of growing into his magickal powers late—very late—and becoming a Shaman or an Enchanter, who could twist them all. At the very least he hoped he would become a Dream Rider, so that he could control their subconsciouses while they slept.
But he had grown no magick, just as he had failed to grow tall, and so those dreams had become nothing more than fantasies of revenge, fantasies he could never complete.
Now that Silence was gone, doing his duty somewhere in the city, no one spoke to Scavenger, no one except the other Red Caps. They discussed the best places to sleep or the places to steal food outside Shadowlands. Nothing terribly illuminating.
“Boy!” A foot prodded his back.
Scavenger kept his eyes closed. He didn’t move. He had learned long ago that if he ignored people who sought him out, they often went away.
“Boy!” The prodding became almost a kick. A sharp pain ran up Scavenger’s spine.
The idiot would kick him to death if he didn’t respond. Scavenger opened his eyes. One of the tall Infantry boys stood over him. He spent most of his time with Rugar’s daughter. Scavenger remembered thinking the boy’s name was appropriate.
“Boy!” the boy said as he kicked him.
Scavenger rolled away. Burden. That was what the child was called. Burden, because his parents thought he would come to nothing. They suspected he would be a Red Cap, but he grew too tall, too graceful, too beautiful. A Fey as tall as that would come to his magick eventually.
“What?” Scavenger said, careful not to let resentment into his tone. If he complained about each time he was called “boy” by someone younger than he was, he would have been killed by now.
“We need this wood. You’ll have to move.”
Scavenger sighed, grabbed his cloak and pouches, and sat up. His back would be bruised where the boy had kicked it. The spot had been a good one for a few days. Now maybe he could steal Vulture’s place under the Domicile stairs.
“Oh, and boy?”
Scavenger looked up at this Burden. The boy’s mouth was set in a thin line.
“Don’t sleep in public places anymore. It’s not seemly.”
Scavenger clenched his teeth, but he couldn’t hold back the words. “Do you have a better idea?”
The boy raised his chin as if Scavenger had slapped him. “Excuse me?”
“I was wondering if you knew somewhere else I could sleep. No one seems to want Red Caps in their cabins.”
Burden shook his head slightly, as if he couldn’t believe what Scavenger had said. “We all build our homes, Cap. I suggest you do the same.”
“You have the help of Domestics. They won’t even talk to me.”
Burden shrugged. “Haven’t you a leader? Go talk to him.”
Scavenger stared at the boy for a moment, unable to believe what he had heard. Of course Red Caps did not have a leader. Foot Soldiers ordered Red Caps about, as did Warders, but no one organized them. Red Caps were forbidden by the Black King to organize. If more than two were seen together in a public place, they could be arrested, even killed.
“There’s no one,” Scavenger said. “If you don’t want me sleeping near your precious wood, I would suggest you talk to someone.”
“Has anyone ever told you that you should be more cautious about how you talk to your betters?”
Scavenger swallowed his first response. “I am in a dilemma, sir. You tell me not to sleep in public, but no one has helped me make a private place. You tell me to talk to the leader of my unit, but I have no unit and no leader. I simply want to do what you tell me.”
Burden shook his head. “I didn’t mean for this to be such a production,” he said. “Look, boy. Just sleep somewhere out of the way. Figure we need the wood and water.” He pointed to an empty gray patch near the very edge of the Shadowlands. “Sleep somewhere like that, a space no one will ever use.”
For a moment Scavenger pictured his hands wrapped around Burden’s neck, his little fingers choking the air from Burden’s lungs. But Burden was Infantry. He was trained to be strong, even if he had no magick. He would be able to overpower Scavenger in a moment, and then Scavenger would have to face the Warders or Rugar for punishment.
Scavenger tucked his pouches under his arm, grabbed his cloak, and stood. “Sorry, sir. I’m glad you told me what to do. I will move out of your way now. Thank you for the help.”
“Certainly,” Burden said. He turned his back on Scavenger and began lifting pieces of wood to carry them somewhere else.
Scavenger stood for a moment and watched the boy’s easy strength. Such grace, such confidence even though he was still Infantry. It was as if he knew he would get his magick someday.
And he would. Fey who grew tall and willowy grew into their magick. A Fey who stopped growing at child height, as Scavenger had, would never get magick at all.
But they all treated him as if his brain had stopped growing as well. And it hadn’t. The boy didn’t even recognize the sarcasm Scavenger had used in speaking to him. The boy probably thought Scavenger wasn’t capable of such an advanced way of speaking, just as the boy didn’t realize that Red Caps needed comfort too.
Scavenger sighed. He would go to the Domicile and see if he could beg some food from the Domestics. Then he would scout the Shadowlands for a new place to sleep.
FORTY-TWO
A full moon gave the woods a silvery glow. Theron led his party quietly down the path. Twenty fighters, even armed as heavily as they were with holy water, seemed hardly enough to take on the entire Fey army. Still, the plan made a lot of sense. If the Fey could be destroyed with a touch of the liquid, perhaps their secret hiding place could be destroyed as well.
He just hated being the leader of the team that launched the attack.
The group following him moved more silently than he’d expected they would. He had grown up in the woods—one of the reasons Monte had chosen him for the job—but except for his friends, the rest were city boys who had shown a particular aptitude for fighting. Theron hadn’t expected them to be so calm nor so quiet.
The full moon helped. The woods weren’t as dark as he had seen them. It was almost like daylight out there, a thin, silver daylight, but daylight just the same. The air smelled of pine and the Cardidas, which flowed a mile away. The rustling of animals had spooked the troop a few times, but he recognized the sounds. A deer rooting, a hawk hunting, a tsia baying for its mate.
It had rained just a bit as the force was setting out, and that, too, had been in their favor. Theron saw the prints of another person on the path, just ahead of them, and he knew that someone had been there before. The prints probably had no relation to the attack, but he couldn’t be too sure. He had warned the others to be prepared, that the Fey might have advance warning.
The goal, as Monte had explained it to him, was to get as much holy water through the Circle of Light as possible. If the attack force could get through that Circle as well, so much the better. What Monte hadn’t said—and hadn’t needed to say—was that the force probably would not come back.
The Fey were smart, Theron had to give them that. When Monte had described the location of the hiding place, it had not surprised Theron. In fact, it made him realize again just how smart they were. He knew the area. Most of the hovels had been abandoned years ago. One was owned by a childless couple who were probably elderly or dead by now. The only true cabin had been the site of a spectacular murder on the day of the invasion—the Fey obviously making plans that early for a base in the region.
The woods there were tamed, but empty of Islander life. Too close to Jahn for some, too far for others. No stream that fed off the Cardidas, and the Cardidas itself a bit wild at that point. No one had thought to start a village there. That part of the forest was too hard for conventional living.
Finally he reached the double oaks mentioned in Monte’s description. The sight of the two trees, their roots almost blocking the path, soothed him. When he had seen
Monte read the instructions off a sheet, he had wondered how many hands the instructions had gone through. Theron was terrified they would find themselves in the woods completely lost, advantage lost, and the Fey finally warned of their arrival.
The slaughter would be horrible.
The slaughter was always horrible when the Fey had the element of surprise. They killed quickly, ruthlessly, and viciously. A party of twenty would be dead even before the leader had realized the Fey were nearby.
Theron stopped at the double oaks and put a finger to his lips. The others stopped too. He could barely make out the faces in the weird silver light: Kondros, Matio, and Adrian, Theron’s friends since they were boys; Bendre, Cyta, and Lysis, the only volunteers for this campaign; Ure, Surl, and Ort, members of the King’s guard; and the others, stretching back into the dark. They all watched him silently. He couldn’t even hear their breathing.
He pointed toward the Cardidas. They had all known that they would leave the path eventually. He waited until they were together before showing them the way they would have to go. Theron put a finger to his lips and slipped off the path.
The ground was damp from the rain, and the air had an earthy smell. The landmarks were as Monte had told him: a large rock to the left, a slender deer trail through the weeds, a dead tree pale and thin in the moonlight. When Theron reached the spot where the Circle of Light should be, he stopped again. Monte had not mentioned the most obvious landmark of all.
A circle in the ground large enough to fit several people inside comfortably. There was no fire hole inside the circle, nor did there appear to be any trampled grass. The circle itself was made of dirt. Grass poked through, as did tiny flowers. This circle stood in the middle of the clearing where Monte had said they would find a Circle of Light in the air.
Sacrifice: The First Book of the Fey (The Fey Series) Page 28