Sacrifice: The First Book of the Fey (The Fey Series)

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  The hair stood up on the back of Theron’s neck. He hated changes and misinformation. It made him nervous. If Monte hadn’t made it clear that this plan was the King’s, Theron would have stopped right there and turned the troop around.

  The moonlight in the Ground Circle seemed brighter than anywhere else in the forest. It was almost as if someone had taken a lamp and hung it from a tree so that the light would spill into that one patch of ground. But there were no tree branches above it.

  Theron swallowed. He scanned for the Circle of Light, wondering how he would see it in the bright moonlight. The sky was an odd blue-gray there, also tainted by the moon.

  No animals rustled. The troop was alone in the woods.

  A hand grabbed his shoulder, and it took all of Theron’s discipline to keep from crying out. He glanced over. Kondros, his round face clearly visible in the light, then nodded toward the clearing. Theron shook his head. Kondros pointed. Theron followed the direction indicated by Kondros’s finger.

  There, just above the circle on the ground, was a matching circle in the air. Only this circle was composed of flickering lights. He stared at the lights, thinking they were somehow familiar. Then he realized they mimicked the will-o’-the-wisps he had seen near the Daisy Stream at night when he’d been a boy. But they weren’t will-o’-the-wisps. They had a regular pulse and a different shape. He almost believed that if he touched one, it would speak to him.

  Kondros’s grip remained tight on Theron’s shoulder. Theron had taken a step into the clearing without realizing it. He glanced at his friend.

  The Circle was bigger than he expected. They would have no trouble going through it.

  Theron put his hand on Kondros’s. Kondros nodded and let go. Theron turned to the group and help up three fingers. The gesture was repeated by the men in the front so that the men in the back could see.

  He was thankful he had described four different plans with them. The third was the most cautious method of attack.

  The group fanned out around the clearing, staying away from the Circle itself. The first squad of four—Cyta, Adrian, Ort, and a young recruit named Luke, whom Theron suspected to be too young even to serve with the guards—opened the pouches on their hips and pulled out the holy water. Someone in the guard unit a few months back had modified the containers. Instead of the religious vials, the men now carried goat bladders with spouts on the top: a quick squeeze, and water streamed from the spouts. In this new form the water had twice the distance of a splash tossed from a bottle. A fighter could actually aim the spout, squeeze the bladder, and shoot an arc of liquid two body lengths with accuracy. The containers created a new weapon, one that kept the fighters away from the Fey and their strange powers.

  The remaining group placed their already tainted arrows into bows, waiting for Fey to appear. They stood in firing position around the edge of the clearing, knowing that they would have to be vigilant.

  Theron tensed. He was the only one who had not drawn his bow. Instead, he clutched a knife and his own container of holy water. The others could shoot. If he saw a Fey, he would kill it with his own two hands.

  The four leads crouched as they crossed the clearing. Cyta was the small unit’s leader. He paused with a movement of his hand when they reached the outside of the drawn circle. Then he shot a bit of holy water inside. Nothing screamed, and nothing disappeared. The light remained bright, the clearing empty.

  Cyta stepped over the dirt line. His skin turned silver in the light. Adrian followed, as did Ort. Luke hesitated before stepping across. He was the only one who looked back to see if someone—or something—was behind him.

  Theron’s grip on his water container tightened. His entire being was on alert. Kondros’s breathing suddenly seemed very loud. The faint shuffling of feet, the slight movements the other men made, put Theron’s nerves on edge.

  Cyta walked toward the Circle of Light. His expression was rapt. He held his container before him like a shield. His three companions followed. Cyta stopped in front of the flickering Circle. Slowly he put his free hand forward. It went past the lights and looked as if it were eaten by blackness. Then his entire body shook, and he flew backward, landing outside the circle on the ground, and near the trees.

  The others shot their holy water at the center of the Circle of Light. The stream of water hit something solid in the middle and doused them instead. They turned and tried to run, but slammed against the edge of the drawn circle as if they were encased in glass.

  The light in the clearing grew brighter, as if someone had added extra candles to the moon. The men remained frozen, as if they couldn’t believe what they were seeing.

  Suddenly Fey appeared behind the men, across the clearing. Theron opened his mouth to shout a warning when hands gripped him around the waist, spinning him around. By instinct he squeezed the container and shoved his knife forward at the same time. The knife went into the Fey’s stomach and, as he started to scream, water hit him in the face. But the others were not prepared. Bows went flying, and men screamed as Fey swords ran them through.

  Theron stepped away from the melting Fey and sprayed his water at the Fey around him. They screamed and fell back, clawing at their faces, their chests, their arms. Kondros, bleeding from the side, pulled out his own holy water and sent great jutting arcs of it in all directions. Theron ran after the Fey still stabbing at his men, spraying and missing.

  The Fey ran for the Circle. Theron, Kondros, and several others followed, the holy water like streams in the air. The water sparkled as it flew, still falling short of the moving Fey. They jumped over the dirt circle and disappeared into the Circle of Light.

  The three Islanders were still inside, struggling to get out. Six of the Fey women grabbed them and dragged them through the light circle.

  Theron ran after them, Kondros at his heels. The silent clearing was now full of screaming and the stench of burning flesh. As he reached the Circle, Theron shot the holy water. It arced toward the odd light but splashed against the air as if it were hitting glass. It ran down the sides, creating a visible barrier that seemed to have grown from the dirt line itself.

  Kondros passed him and pounded on the barrier where the water had made it visible. Cyta joined him, then Theron. Their fists hit a substance as smooth as ice, as strong as metal. The door into the Circle of Light was open, and inside they saw a white light, and no floor. The three Islanders inside were floating with the Fey toward houses built in the light. Then darkness shrouded it all again.

  Theron fell forward into the circle, landing face first in the damp grass. A grunt beside him told him that Kondros had fallen as well. Cyta crouched above them.

  “They controlled this,” he said. “They knew.”

  They knew. And they had planned it for prisoners. Prisoners with holy water. Perhaps the three could escape. But if Theron had been taking prisoners, he would have separated the weapons from the warriors immediately.

  “They wanted to capture some holy water,” he said. “And we let them.”

  “We didn’t know,” Kondros said.

  “I knew.” Theron’s voice was soft. “The plan had no strength. That was why I took such odd precautions. It was almost as if the King planned to sacrifice us. If he was going to attack their stronghold, why so few men? Isn’t that relying too much on a weapon?”

  “It should have worked,” Cyta said. “You saw how it affects their bodies.”

  “Yes,” Theron said. “And fire destroys wood. It destroys our bodies. But it forges iron.”

  “We have to get out of here,” Kondros said.

  Theron pushed himself off the ground. He wiped the dirt from his face. How many dead? How many wounded? He had always vowed to die with his men if they were attacked. How could he live?

  “There’s no great hurry,” Cyta said. “If they wanted us all to die, they would have killed us.” He took Kondros’s hand and pulled him to his feet. “No. They want us to go back and report on this.”

 
“They know that capturing the holy water will scare everyone,” Theron said.

  “They want us to know who is in charge,” Kondros said.

  Theron ignored Cyta’s offer of a hand. He got to his feet on his own. “They’re not in charge. They have a fortress that we can’t get into, but the fortress is on our land. They’re trapped here. We can kill them all if we like. We’re not going to scare that easily.”

  He hoped. He sighed and left the other two standing outside the Circle. He went back into the woods to see if anyone else had survived.

  FORTY-THREE

  Solanda hurried down the darkened street, the cobblestone cold and hard against her paws. Even this far from the docks, the smell of fish was almost overpowering. She swallowed the excess saliva in her mouth, promising herself that she would indulge in an entire salmon when this mission was over.

  The houses were still dark and quiet. Most of the people slept. A few had got up to man the boats, but she had avoided them. Islanders had a fondness for cats, calling her and offering her food whenever they saw her. She could resist the calls, but not the food. One woman had offered her chicken livers, petted her, and then taken her into the house and wouldn’t let her out. Solanda had had to wait until night, change to her human form, and then open the door herself to get away. She didn’t want that to happen again.

  Especially tonight. Rugar had sent her from the Shadowlands when the moon had been at its highest. She had gone quietly through the woods, glad she had changed inside Shadowlands when she’d seen the party of Islanders approach. A battle just outside the Circle. These Islanders didn’t know what they were getting into.

  She was sorry that she had to miss it. She missed victory. At night she lay on the mattress she had stolen from one of the hovels—stolen and repaired, on her own, since the Domestics were overworked—and recounted the successful campaigns she had been in. Sometimes she remembered how it felt to be a victor, to take over entire cultures, to keep what one liked about them, and to change everything else. Once they conquered an area, the Fey set up governors whose job was to keep the area producing, to keep the populace under control, and to change as little as possible. Certainly the laws were different: the Fey brought their own legal system, their own government, but art, language, custom remained the same.

  Here things were still in flux. Here she felt out of control. She hated living in the Shadowlands, hated having to do as Rugar told her. He feared for her and would not let her loose in the city as was her wont, because she was the only Shape-Shifter on this trip, and he was afraid to lose her.

  This fear would make him lose his advantage. A Shape-Shifter was no good if she was used only for petty errands. A Shape-Shifter worked best as a spy, deep under cover in the new land, learning secrets from the natives. Shape-Shifters had won some of the longer campaigns for the Fey.

  She raised her head, followed the faint scent of unfamiliar urine along the curb. She stopped, sniffed, noted that two male cats were debating the territory. The street was empty except for her, and for the dark buildings on the side. She ran down the cobblestone, not wanting to get involved in a petty turf war. It had happened to her before, and she had gone back to the Shadowlands scratched and bleeding because she hadn’t acted like a normal female cat.

  The wall around the palace had been poorly repaired. The Islanders had done a hasty job: nailing wood over the holes, using broken boards to cover destroyed areas, trying to use the same gate with new boards placed haphazardly over the shattered center. She slipped through the bottom of the gate, under a broken board, careful to avoid the shards of wood—she hated getting slivers in her coat—and she pranced along the path, carefully avoiding the puddles of horse urine and the big patch of horse dung. The smells inside the palace always assaulted her—too many people in too close an area; animals loose in the back part of the yard; an oversize vegetable and herb garden tended the old-fashioned way with old-fashioned fertilizer.

  Once the Fey took over, they would change some of the unsanitary practices of this little backward community.

  If they took over.

  She leaped onto a rock outside the kitchen and made herself catch her breath. Almost unbidden, one paw came up. She licked it, then wiped it over her face, washing off the residue of the odors and the night’s march. She hated these doubts that crept into her mind. Rugar had inspired them. He wasn’t taking the kind of leadership role that he should. He should come out of hiding in the Shadowlands. He should take advantage of the special talents of his people, and he should assassinate these Islanders as they slept.

  But he was afraid they slept with poison beside their beds. He was afraid that he would lose his entire force and be left with nothing.

  And he did have a point. Of the six Doppelgängers they had brought, they had lost two, both in the Tabernacle. The first had died during the First Battle for Jahn, and the second had mistakenly touched something he had thought filled with regular water and discovered their poison instead. She never would have found out what had happened to him if she hadn’t been on the prowl a few days later and overheard two of the Black Robes discussing how one of the brazen Fey had tried to sneak into the Tabernacle, and died by his own hand.

  Now she was supposed to send two more into that evil place. The Spell Warders were having no luck deciphering the secret to the potion. Doppelgängers in the right position should be able to learn it on their own.

  The kitchen door opened and the cook looked out. His face was already red from the heat of the fireplace. Beads of sweat stood on his forehead, and the back of his white uniform was pasted to his back. The sweat stench was almost as overpowering as the smell of food coming from inside. Her stomach rumbled. She put her paw down, looked up at him, and meowed.

  When he saw her, he smiled. “Yer early this day, little miss. Trying to sneak ahead of the others, are ye?”

  She meowed again, then jumped off the rock and rubbed against his leg. He ran a large hand over her fur. His skin smelled of freshly dead chicken, spices, and wood. She licked the fat of his palm and tasted salt.

  “Wait, little miss. I got a treat for ye from the butcher. I’ll get it before yer little friends come, and ye’ll have it all to yerself”

  She sank back on her haunches and watched as he closed the door. Voices echoed through the courtyard as the servants began their day. A horse neighed. The sky was turning pink. It would be a beautiful day.

  He opened the door and set a plate of chopped chicken liver before her. One liver, but more than enough to sate her small appetite. She wound through his legs, contemplating a run through the kitchen, but the liver won. She went to the dish, eating so fast she could barely taste the food. When she was a cat, she ate like a cat—quickly, sometimes so quickly that the food came back up—all taste and sensation and desire. The liver was gone in a moment.

  She sat back and licked her whiskers. He was still watching, a fond smile on his face. The door to the kitchen was open, and the heat from the fireplace was palpable.

  He saw where she was looking and stepped outside, closing the door behind him. He crouched and held out his hand. She sniffed it to see if he held any more food.

  “Ye canna go through there, little miss. They’d have me head for sure. But ye come back in the mornings, and I’ll make sure ye get something special.”

  She let him pet her, both as a reward for the information about the kitchen, and as thanks for the chicken. The liver left her thirsty, and she would need to get a drink of something. She took one more wistful glance at the empty bowl, then stalked into the yard, licking her whiskers as she walked.

  Rugar had told her not to bother Silence. The information he brought from the King himself was perfect. Tel, on the other hand, had spent the last year in the stables, and the information he had heard wasn’t as valuable as Rugar had expected. In Nye, and in L’Nacin, the stable masters were privy to most knowledge because the leaders used the horses so much. But on Blue Isle apparently only the young P
rince used the horses and then rarely talked about affairs of state.

  She hated the stables. More than once she had spooked a horse and nearly been trampled. She sat, finished washing her face, then searched for a puddle of rainwater, putting off the mission as long as she could. The only untainted puddle she found was in a mud hole near the stables. She took a quick drink, then winced at the grittiness of the water. It would do. For now.

  The stables housed only fifteen horses. They were separated by large stalls, and the clean floor was covered with fresh hay. She sneezed as she entered, more from the pungent smell of the horses than from anything else. The front of the stables was empty except for the tack and several bales of hay. She jumped on top of one of the bales, waiting until she saw Tel.

  She had seen him twice since his change, both times in a designated meeting spot. He wouldn’t be expecting her now. She wasn’t sure how she would contact him. Both times she had seen him, she had been in her Fey form.

  A stable boy came from the back, leading a black stallion. The horse was prancing. Solanda slipped even farther back on the bale, hoping the horse wouldn’t see her. It didn’t. The boy led the horse outside.

  Someone else was whistling by the stalls. She craned her neck and tried to see past the beams and bales into the back. But she couldn’t. She wouldn’t go down that hall and risk getting trampled.

  Two more stable boys passed with horses before she saw the man she wanted. Tel was dressed as a groom now, and ordering the others about. She waited until the two were gone before she walked on the wooden railing of an empty stall.

  His human form was broad-shouldered and muscular. None of the Blue Islanders seemed very tall, however, and Tel’s host was no exception. His hair was brown, and nothing in his face revealed Tel’s presence.