The Black Queen (Book 6) (19 page)

“Yes.”

“And we know that the Mysteries are people who were murdered, as your mother was.”

“Yes.” Gift shifted slightly. Perdom had done this to him when he had first arrived, whenever Gift had made an assumption in the telling of the history of Blue Isle. Gift always felt dumb after these sessions as if he hadn’t understood his own life, his own history, his own feelings.

“So you do not know if the dead you Saw—”

“I did not See him in a Place of Power,” Gift said.

“Him?” Kerde asked.

But Perdom remained focused. “How do you know?”

“Water,” Gift said. “I knew I had fallen into the sea between Blue Isle and Leut.”

“And you Saw the dead there?” Perdom asked, his questioning now derailed.

“Yes,” Gift said.

Perdom and Kerde exchanged glances. Then Kerde said, “It does not matter. What matters is that you had seven Visions—”

“I’ve had more,” Gift said. “When my father attacked the Black King’s forces outside of the palace in Jahn—”

“Those were Visions given to you at a shift in possible futures,” Kerde said. “We are talking about Visions you received when you touched the Black Throne.”

“You had seven,” Perdom said.

“Yes,” Gift said. “What is this all about?”

“Your great-grandfather had five. At that moment in our history, he had the most Visions while touching the Black Throne.”

Gift swallowed. He had started to shake, and he wasn’t sure why. “I wasn’t touching the Throne any longer when the Visions came. I had them after I pulled away from the Throne.”

“Seven,” Perdom said as if he hadn’t heard.

“After,” Gift said.

“The light touched him,” Madot said, “and passed me. It went nowhere near me. And as he fell, I saw his eyes change, roll back into Vision. He is telling the truth.”

“Your sister,” Kerde said as if Madot hadn’t spoken. “Her Vision is not as great as yours.”

“It came later,” Gift said. “I had mine from childhood. She could Shift from childhood. Her Vision came when she was a teenager, like most Fey’s.”

“Yours is stronger.”

“We don’t know that.”

Perdom nodded. “We know. The gift that comes in childhood is always stronger.”

“Perhaps among your people,” Gift said, putting a sarcastic twist on the phrase they had been using against him. “But we don’t know what’s normal for Islanders. From what we can tell, Islander children get their powers in childhood. My friend Coulter had his when he was just a baby.”

There was a pause. Then Kerde said to Perdom: “He has a point.”

“I Saw my sister at the Black Throne,” Gift said. “It was one of my Visions.”

“But she would have no need if you took the Throne.”

Gift nodded. “I know. But I will not take the Throne.”

Perdom turned away from Gift and put his hands on Kerde’s shoulders. The movement made the two of them a unit, as if they were the only two in the room. Everyone else watched them.

“This is not as simple as it seems,” Perdom said to her. “The boy is right. We need to accept him as equal and tell him the things he wishes to know.”

“He cannot be a Shaman,” Kerde said. “He has blood on his hands.”

“I do not!” Gift said. This he had made certain of. He came forward, was about to touch Perdom’s arm, when Madot pulled him away. “I do not have blood on my hands. I saved lives. All my life, I have saved lives.”

Kerde slipped out of Perdom’s hold and took Gift’s hands. They glowed, and as they did, blood dripped off them. Tears formed in Gift’s eyes. “I haven’t taken a life,” he said. “I made certain—”

“On a hot afternoon fifteen years ago,” Kerde said, “you hid in a hay bale with a Fey who had not come into her magick—”

“Leen,” Gift said, not sure he wanted to remember that afternoon.

“—a Red Cap—”

“Scavenger.” He felt the blood flow out of him, dripping into a large puddle on the floor. He wanted to make it stop, but he couldn’t.

“—an Enchanter—”

“Coulter.”

“And a man with no power at all.”

“Adrian.” Gift swallowed. Adrian had had power. He had had warmth and love and affection. And courage. He had died protecting Gift and his family not long after.

“Your Enchanter started a fire in the bales after a Wisp found you. The Wisp grabbed you and you shoved it backwards—”

“Breaking its bones, I know,” Gift said. He could still hear the crunch of the fragile wings. Wisps had hollow bones, which was why they could fly. His adopted parents had been Wisps.

“And he could not fly. He could not rise. When the fire got too close, he could not escape it.”

Gift’s mouth dropped open. “No.”

“On that same afternoon, your Golem took Bird Riders that had attacked your family, injured Bird Riders, and dropped them from a tower in the Jahn palace. The Golem shares your nature.”

“Sebastian would never kill anything.”

“If it threatened him or his loved ones, he would. As you would. You are right; you are willing to make the supreme sacrifice. You will give your life for the things you believe. But you will also defend that life if you must. You showed that years ago, and the blood still drips from your hands.” She let his hands go. The dripping stopped.

There was no blood on the floor. There was nothing, except the feel, once again, of magick recently used. Had he been new to the Village, he would have thought this a simple trick, but he knew it was not. He had seen potential apprentices subjected to the same thing if their desire to become a Shaman was in doubt. Sometimes the blood did not drip. It flowed.

“If you knew this,” he said, “why did you let me live here for five years? Why did you give me hope that I could be a Shaman?”

“It took us a long time to find the source of your stain,” Perdom said. “We thought, perhaps, it was hereditary. Perhaps the Black Blood had so tainted you that its violence dripped out of you anyway, even though you had not killed.”

“Then we found it,” Kerde said. “Or Madot found it, one afternoon as she worked with you.”

“She felt the brush of pain, the remembered pain, and found the taint. It is yours, Gift. It is buried deep within you, but it is yours.”

He looked at his hands. They were dry now, as if nothing had happened. He hadn’t remembered that. He had put it all out of his mind. It had happened so quickly. He and Coulter, Scavenger, Leen, and Adrian had been running for their lives. They had left that farm and Coulter had had to use his powers to slaughter an entire army of Fey. It had nearly destroyed him. In the trauma of that, Gift had forgotten the swift push, the sound of breaking bones, the knowledge that he had harmed that Wisp. He remember the fire, the smoke, the screams—

He closed his eyes and sank to the floor. “Now what becomes of me?” he asked, more to himself than to them.

“The Black Throne—” Madot started.

“I do not want the Black Throne.”

“What you want and what you must do are different things,” Kerde said. “In the beginning, no one wants the Black Throne.”

Gift shook his head. “I will not take it from my sister, no matter what you do to me. Even if you leave me with no choices, as you have done now.”

“Then you will be a Leader with no followers, a threat to your sister’s throne.”

“Or a supporter of it.” He rose slowly, and dusted himself off. His heart ached. He wanted to be part of this place, to practice, as the Shaman did, the art of peace.

Or so he had thought. But apparently he had been wrong. He hadn’t known all the stories.

He hadn’t realized that in guarding the first Place of Power, they also guarded the Black Throne. He hadn’t really understood that they had chosen two Black Families based on the power of their Vision and their need for conquest.

A need the Shaman said he had. A need he was denying.

They were watching him. All eyes, brown and intense, were staring at him with slightly veiled antipathy. He had not done as they wished. All along, he hadn’t been what they wanted. And because of it, they wouldn’t do what he wanted.

But he knew that wasn’t entirely true. They wouldn’t do what he wanted because they couldn’t. Not under Fey magick. His hands were stained with blood.

He shuddered, once, and then squared his shoulders. “I want to compare Visions. I want to learn the legacy of the Throne. I want you to tell me the Prophecies as you know them, and I want to know the history of the Throne itself.”

“Some of this is not for the Black Family,” Kerde said.

He no longer had anything to lose. He took a step toward her, then another, using his body to intimidate as he had once watched his grandfather do.

She backed away.

“You will tell me,” he said. “You will tell me all. Or I will see to it that you are forced to leave this place.”

“You cannot do that.”

“No,” he said. “But my sister can.”

Kerde’s eyes narrowed. She suddenly held her ground. “We will not go.”

“You will fight the Black Family against all strictures?”

“It’s been done before.”

“It is the beginning of the chaos,” Perdom said, taking Kerde’s arm. “You cannot. It will not hurt to tell him.”

“We have not told in the past.”

“This is not the past. The light—”

She turned. The look she gave him was an order even Gift understood. It was an order to be silent.

“The light?” Gift asked.

“You have no right to know these things,” Kerde said.

“And you have no reason to hide them.” Gift hadn’t moved from his position. “Things are different now. You said so yourself.”

Kerde bowed her head. Perdom put a hand on her shoulder. “The Throne already knows it’s been rejected,” he said. “The light seeks another. We are in a new place with new rules. The boy is right.”

“And so ends a thousand years of orderly Fey rule,” Kerde murmured.

“We do not know that,” Madot said.

“We know,” Kerde said. “The stories have always said the magick would seek its own.”

“What does that mean?” Gift asked.

“It means that before we controlled the magick.” Kerde leaned against Perdom as if she needed his support. “From now on, it will control us.”

EIGHT

ARIANNA CAME TO HERSELF in the North tower. She was standing before the windows facing north, looking over the rebuilt city of Jahn toward the mountains named the Eyes of the Roca. She had hidden in those mountains once, when the Black King controlled this palace. They were tall, taller than the mountains that ringed the rest of the Isle, and they had a power to them that still unnerved her.

She had no idea what she was doing here, what she was looking for, or why she was thinking of her past.

Her hands were clasped behind her back, her feet shoulder-width apart, her chin up, as if she were pausing the middle of a discussion with her generals.

Her generals? She frowned. She had generals, but she had no need of discussions with them. She hadn’t for years.

A shiver ran down her spine. Slowly she turned. The long gown she wore felt unfamiliar. Where were her pants? Her jerkin?

She shook the thought away. She hadn’t worn pants during her official duties in a long, long time. The Islanders preferred traditional clothes, and the Fey didn’t care what she wore. She took a deep breath, making herself pause.

The room had been restored over the past decade: the broken windows repaired; the chairs pushed against the wall once more; the shattered furniture gone. The tower was as it had once been, but she never came here. There were too many bad memories, too many fears, hidden in this room.

When she needed a tower to overlook her Isle, she went to one of the other two, and used the windows there.

This room had a slightly musty smell. It wasn’t dirty—no place in the palace was—yet it had the feeling of neglect. Sunlight shone in the floor-to-ceiling windows that made it feel as if she were standing outside, and from here, she could see for miles.

Arianna put a hand to her head. What was happening to her?

She turned slightly, and saw Luke, the captain of her guards. He stood with his back against the door, as if he didn’t want to be here, but had to be. He had been at her side, by Seger’s orders, since that awful headache the week before, and Arianna had felt comforted by his presence.

But she had forgotten him too, until now.

He was watching her, his face impassive. Luke’s face was rarely this guarded. He had round, open features of Islanders from the center of the country, and, even though he was short, he was broad and muscular. He wore the light browns she had ordered for her Islander guards, a color that did not set off their fair skin and hair, and enabled them to have camouflage if they needed it, both within the city and without.

She had made that order fifteen years ago, and had almost forgotten the reason for it. There had been no war here, no battles, in all that time.