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

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  “I don’t think it would be reason. I think God will help us.” The Rocaan slipped a hand out from under the blanket. “Hear me out.”

  Matthias’s mouth was dry. A bead of sweat ran down the side of his face and dripped onto his robe. The chamber had become stifling. “All right,” he said.

  “We already know that God is with us, or He would not have provided us with the holy water and its unique properties. It has taken me a year to be reconciled to these properties, to see the Fey as inhuman creatures from the netherworld who are trying to take over this one. But in all of this time, I have seen no goodness in them. The longer that we wait to fight them, the more vicious they become. Defiling the Tabernacle is merely one step. Soon they will get rid of the holy water altogether.”

  “But if God is with us, He wouldn’t allow that,” Matthias said.

  “God has given us tools, Matthias, but we must use them. You were right about that. And forgive me for my arrogance. I was wrong.”

  Matthias brushed more sweat off his forehead. The fire crackled beside him, sending a wave of sparks into the chimney. “You were wrong about holy water?”

  The Rocaan nodded. “Your instincts were right, but you acted for the wrong reason. You acted out of fear and justified it using the Words. Somehow, though, the Holy One guided you and gave you the correct solution. I have been studying this for the last year and have come to a similar conclusion, but for many different reasons.”

  The heat was making Matthias light-headed. He was having trouble concentrating. “Mind if I open a window?” he asked.

  The Rocaan’s smile was rueful. “I get cold when I do not get enough sleep,” he said, and it sounded like an apology. “Go ahead, but please get me another blanket.”

  Matthias stood and pulled the tapestry from the nearest window. Then he took a throw off the nearest chair and brought it to the Rocaan. A cool breeze blew in from the window, freshening the air and taking the staleness from the room.

  The Rocaan wrapped the throw around his legs. “The Words Written make mention of the Enemy, but never explain who it is. The Words Unwritten tell early stories of the Enemy stealing hardy souls from God and the Roca. Then the Roca fights the Soldiers of the Enemy. I have spoken to Elder Eirman, and he says that several old stories of various regions say the Enemy created a netherworld and kept the souls inside it. Other stories say that the Enemy killed those souls, while still others say that the Enemy took the life from the souls so that they could not return to Blue Isle in the form of children. None of these are mentioned in the Words.”

  “You think the Fey are that Enemy?” Matthias asked.

  The Rocaan shook his head. “I am not as simple as all that. But I think they are Soldiers of the Enemy, just as there have been Soldiers of the Enemy in the past.”

  “The ones mentioned in the Words,” Matthias said. The temperature in the room was easing. He was finally getting comfortable.

  “I believe there have been others, some we can recognize and some we can’t. During the Peasant Uprising,” the Rocaan said, “there had to be Soldiers of the Enemy, only the Church did not recognize them, and the Rocaan did not act properly.”

  “We’ve had this discussion before,” Matthias said. “I thought it had come to nothing.”

  “No,” the Rocaan said. “For once I did the study, not you. And the conclusion I have come to is this: the Roca gave us the way to defeat the Soldiers of the Enemy time and time again. The ritual we perform each day once saved the lives of his people.”

  “We don’t know that,” Matthias said. “There is no evidence for that.”

  “Ah, but there is,” the Rocaan said. “And it is the most obvious evidence of all.”

  Matthias suppressed a sigh. He hated these kinds of games.

  The Rocaan didn’t wait for Matthias to ask. “We’re here. The religion is here, and Blue Isle is in our domination. If the Soldiers of the Enemy had won, we would not worship the way we do.”

  A thread of excitement wound through Matthias’s stomach. The Rocaan was right. It was so obvious that everyone had missed it. Of course they had won. That was why they revered the Roca.

  But Matthias didn’t like where the conversation was heading. “So you want to meet the Fey leaders in a little kirk near Daisy Stream to reenact the ceremony?”

  The Rocaan nodded. “It will defeat them.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  “Have faith, Matthias.”

  Matthias shook his head. “It is not my function to have faith. It is my duty to question. And I question this. What if we lose?”

  “Then we die,” the Rocaan said.

  “And the secret to holy water dies with us. That is not smart, Holy Sir. We can at least defend our people with holy water.”

  The Rocaan shot him a sideways look. “I did not say we would both be going. I am bringing only men of faith, Matthias.”

  Matthias sat back as if he had been slapped. He clasped his hands in his lap. “If you die, I would have to become Rocaan. I am the only one who knows the secret.”

  “To holy water. There are other secrets as well, Matthias. I would prepare my successor carefully.”

  Matthias felt a surge of disappointment, then flushed. He didn’t want to covet the job of Rocaan, but apparently he did on some deep level. “Whoever you choose would have to stay behind.”

  “I know,” the Rocaan said. “Which is why I am choosing you. You have no faith, but the Holy One guides you, and such a thing is of equal value.”

  Matthias froze. “How do you know that’s of equal value?”

  “The Holy One pointed to you, by giving you the knowledge of the hidden powers of holy water. And then you forced me to use those powers. Sometimes faith is not enough. Sometimes faith dies. But guidance from the Holy One is rare, and I’m sure it will never forsake you.”

  Matthias shook his head. This made no sense. “I threw the holy water at the Fey because I was frightened of them and had no other weapon, not because I heard a still, small voice. Forgive me, Holy Sir. I would love to be Rocaan—for probably all the wrong reasons—but I think I would be a poor choice. Pick someone else and let me advise him. It would be safer all around.”

  The Rocaan slid a hand out from under his wad of blankets and patted Matthias’s knee. “You are my choice, Matthias.”

  “You expect to die on this trip, don’t you?”

  The Rocaan snaked his hand back under the blankets. He frowned. “I don’t know. We have only the very old stories. I may not come back. I may not be successful. If I fail, though, I expect I will return. Not even the Fey would murder a very old man.”

  Matthias rubbed his clasped hands together. All of this made a perverse kind of sense, and if he let it happen, there was a good chance he would be Rocaan. But he couldn’t let it happen this way. “If you leave me here, I will have to inform the King.”

  The Rocaan frowned at him. “Matthias, haven’t you always wanted to be Rocaan?”

  “Of course,” Matthias said. “I think any Elder who tells you otherwise is lying, no matter how pure his faith. But I will not have it happen by letting you commit suicide in a particularly noble fashion, just because you feel guilty about this entire war.”

  The Rocaan leaned back in his chair. He seemed to have shrunk. “Is that what you think I’m doing?”

  “There is no other explanation,” Matthias said. “You are not the Roca. He did not face those soldiers expecting to be a martyr. You are. And that’s wrong. That’s as arrogant as my letting you go so that I can be Rocaan.”

  The Rocaan closed his eyes. For a moment Matthias thought he had passed out. Then the Rocaan said, “You know, I have held this position so long I no longer think of myself as anything other than Rocaan. If you asked me my given name, I would tell you I’m the Rocaan before I would tell you who I am.” His voice sounded thin, reedy.

  Matthias sat very still. Perhaps the Rocaan was going to back down now.

  “I have
thought about this many times. What is better than being Rocaan? Being the second Roca of course. Saving my people. Perhaps I am being arrogant. Perhaps I am.” He opened his eyes and focused on Matthias.

  Matthias didn’t move. If he could talk the Rocaan out of this idea, then they would all be better off.

  “But what happens if I am so afraid of being arrogant that I fail to do the right thing? What happens if, in my quest to be completely humble, I fail to do the very thing that I am supposed to do?”

  Matthias had no answer to that. The dilemma of the faithful. He cleared his throat. “The still, small voice is supposed—”

  “The still, small voice. The still, small voice hasn’t spoken in generations!” The Rocaan sat forward. Now he looked fierce. The blanket fell away from his shoulders. They were small and bony, certainly not shoulders that could hold up an entire people. “And perhaps it hasn’t spoken because the Rocaans have failed to do as they should. Perhaps we are all supposed to be martyrs in our own way and in our own time.”

  “You twist the logic,” Matthias said. “We don’t know what happened to the Soldiers of the Enemy after the Roca died. We don’t know. Maybe his own people got so angry that they drove the soldiers from the Isle. Maybe there was nothing in this from God at all.”

  The Rocaan turned white. “That’s blasphemy,” he whispered.

  “Well, if it is, you need to hear it now,” Matthias said. “And you need to keep me from succeeding you. Because I will wonder about that until we find the answer. Yes, you’re right. The Soldiers of the Enemy probably left Blue Isle somehow. The Roca’s people were successful somehow. But we don’t know if in their stories they glorified a man who gave them courage and little more. We don’t know, Holy Sir.”

  The Rocaan stared at Matthias for a moment, his eyes small and beady. “If we knew,” the Rocaan said softly. “If we knew, Matthias, there would be no reason for faith. We wouldn’t have to believe. We would know. God asks more of us. And I think He is asking more of me. I know He will ask a lot of you if you become Rocaan. But I think you are the best choice we have.”

  Matthias wasn’t certain if he should be grateful or not. The idea of becoming Rocaan had its benefits, but he wasn’t certain he was the best one to lead the others. “I have never had faith,” he said softly. “I came into this profession like a man goes into the guard, because my family wanted it.”

  “I know,” the Rocaan said. “We can’t help how we are chosen. The fact is that you are here now.”

  Matthias licked his lips. “Am I to be your permanent successor? Or will I just hold that position while you are in Daisy Stream?”

  “You are my choice, Matthias. I toyed with Andre for a while—he certainly has the most faith of any of the Elders—but he lacks the strength you have. And a Rocaan needs strength and a certain love of knowledge. You have both of those.”

  “I would want the Church to be led by someone who believes,” Matthias said.

  “Why?” the Rocaan asked. “You don’t believe yourself. What should it matter to you?”

  Matthias couldn’t express the disquiet he was feeling. He stood and smoothed his robe, then walked over to the window. The breeze had become chill. Twilight had fallen, putting the courtyard below in shadows.

  “I have always thought that my failure to believe was my failure,” Matthias said. “Having a Rocaan who believes, being surrounded by those who believe, reinforces that feeling. But if the Rocaan doesn’t believe either, that makes Rocaanism a hollow shell. An institution with no heart, a hypocritical place that pretends to provide comfort and answers and in truth can provide nothing.”

  “There have been disbelieving Rocaans in the past.”

  Matthias nodded. “Yes, and one was assassinated, and another nearly brought the Church down with him. I don’t want to be that kind of man, Holy Sir. I can’t be.”

  “You won’t be,” the Rocaan said.

  “But I will. If you make me Rocaan, you won’t be able to make me believe. And I will make this a hollow, empty place like those other men did.”

  “They did not destroy the Church.”

  Matthias unhooked the edge of the tapestry and covered the window. The scene was a familiar one: the building of the courtyard and the Blessing of the workers. “You just told me they might have,” he said. “You said they failed to act when needed. No Rocaan has followed the path set by the Roca. No Rocaan. How could an unbeliever do it?”

  “You won’t have to,” the Rocaan said. “I will.”

  “And if you fail—“ Matthias thumbed the edge of the tapestry, unwilling to look at the Rocaan. “If you fail, I will not even have the hope of belief. There will be nothing left in this place.”

  “I will not fail,” the Rocaan said.

  SEVENTY-THREE

  Scavenger shoved his hands into his pockets as he walked, feeling lighter than he should have been feeling. No pouches, no equipment, no blood. He had been clean for almost a week—longer than he had ever been in his adult life.

  The road was quiet. The trees draped over it like a canopy, and the shadows carried a chill. Sunlight didn’t make it through that canopy, except in small dappled specks. Birds chirped overhead, and occasionally something crashed in the underbrush. He concentrated, though, on each and every sound. He didn’t want to be caught, a lone Fey, walking calmly down a road outside the city of Jahn. But he couldn’t hurry back as the Islander King had wanted him to. He needed to think.

  For a week he had not felt like himself. He had been someone important, someone a King spent time listening to. At nights, when the King was gone and only the guards remained, Scavenger dreamed of his own people: Caseo threatening to kill him, Rugar looking through him, Solanda calling him a troll. They had no concept of how important he could be. Just because he lacked magick didn’t mean that he lacked intelligence.

  And now he needed that intelligence more than ever, because he wasn’t quite sure how he would explain his absence, especially if some of the other Red Caps had seen him fighting with the Islanders. If he claimed he had been captured, he would die. Returned prisoners were not celebrated; they were murdered as potential spies. It didn’t matter that the Islanders were not sophisticated enough to think of that themselves. The Fey were, and that would be enough.

  He needed a story, and it had to be a good one. It also had to be as close to the truth as he could make it, because he was a terrible liar.

  The edge of his foot caught a rock, and he nearly stumbled. He stuck out one arm for balance and then continued. He had only one thing he could say. He would say that he ran away because he was frightened of Caseo. Then he found two Islanders in the woods—no, he couldn’t say that. Because if he killed them, then where was the skin? And if he didn’t, he was back to the first problem. Everyone would think he had been captured and polluted. It would take so little for them to turn on him. He had no value there.

  The big tree that led into the clearing was just ahead. He would say he ran away from Caseo, but he wouldn’t say anything more. If someone had seen him with the Islanders, then he would make up a story, but the less he said, the better off he would be. Besides, it wouldn’t matter for long. When he killed Rugar, no, one would care where he had been. They would worry only about themselves.

  He stopped by the tree to catch his breath. Of course, he had yet to figure out how to kill Rugar. That thought had haunted him since the King had brought it up. Rugar was a leader, a Visionary. He had guards around him at all times.

  Except in the Shadowlands.

  Even then, though, his daughter was around, and more than Rugar, Scavenger was afraid of Jewel. He had seen her in battle. She was fierce. He didn’t want her to catch him.

  And that was the crux of it, really—being caught. He could kill Rugar. Killing any Fey was not difficult. They bled just like everyone else. The problem was not to let the powerful ones understand they were under attack, so that they could attack first.

  Scavenger stepped into
the clearing, bracing himself for the stench of bodies. But the air was fresh there, and except for some bloodstains and scuff marks on the ground, there was no sign that any battle had taken place. They had managed to get everything cleaned up since he had gone.

  A path had been worn to the Ground Circle marking the Circle Door. A lot of traffic lately. He was about to cross into the Ground Circle when he heard voices.

  “. . . don’t know why he wants bones.”

  “And all broken up. I wish we could just toss ‘em like we usually do.”

  “I think he’s going crazy.”

  “No sleep they say since he started working on the poison.”

  They were talking about Caseo. And he recognized the voices. Vulture and Uences, two of the Red Caps. Vulture worked often. Uences was older and preferred to work only during battle. It must have taken a lot of effort to get her out of the Shadowlands.

  He braced himself for the recriminations about his absence. He still didn’t have a complete story, but he had enough. He rounded the Ground Circle and followed the sound of voices.

  “No sleep can destroy anyone’s mind.”

  “Wonder what happens to a Warder when he goes crazy?”

  “Becomes Caseo.”

  “He’s just ambitious. Thinks he’s the Black King.”

  “He’s scary.”

  “No scarier than the rest of them.”

  Vulture and Uences were standing near a pile of skeletons just inside the woods. The flesh was gone, and so were the organs. If Scavenger hadn’t known better, he would have thought the bodies had been there a long time.

  He cleared his throat.

  Both Vulture and Uences looked up guiltily. Vulture was covered with brown stains, his clothing filthy, his hair standing on end. Uences looked cleaner—she had obviously not been pulling the flesh off bodies—but patches of sweat stained her shirt under her arms and down her back.

  “About time,” Uences said. “Do you know how long we’ve been waiting for someone to relieve us?”

  “They promised somebody at dawn. We haven’t seen anyone except that Domestic they have doing the running.” Vulture held a tibia. He used his knife and sliced the edge of the bone away as he would whittle on a piece of wood, putting the shavings into his pouch.