The Rival (17 page)

"And I'll pay because it will cut into your work on my time."

"You'll have nothing to say about it," Luke said. "I'm thirty-five, old enough to have my portion of this land deeded to me."

"It's deeded only when you have a family to pass it on to," Adrian said.

Then, in the darkness, Coulter stood.  He raised his arms above his head.  Light flashed from his fingertips, illuminating the night sky.  A tiny trail, like a road carved in air, glowed purple.

Adrian pushed away from the building, and hurried to Coulter's side.  Luke followed. 

It was cooler near the fields.  A slight breeze had come up, stirring the day's heat, moving it away from the ground.  Adrian stopped by Coulter, and looked up.

The purple trail seemed flatter from this angle, and no wider than his thumb.  It jagged and veered slightly, and dipped toward the barn, then rose again like a road carved in a mountainside.

"What is it?" Luke asked.

Coulter didn't answer.  His fingertips flashed again and the light rose like lightening traveling from the sky to the ground.  The purple trail grew brighter, littered with tiny flares and lights.

It ran south to the north, and disappeared into the darkness leading toward Jahn.

"Do you see another one?" Coulter asked.

Adrian scanned the sky.  It was as if Coulter had lit a thousand candles in one small spot, giving the brightness of day.  That purple trail looked as solid as a dirt road.  But Adrian saw no others, at least in the lit section of the sky.

"No," he said.

"Me, either," Luke said, but his voice trailed off at the end.

"Luke?" Coulter asked.

"Not up," Luke said.  "I don't see anything up."

Adrian looked at the ground.  So did Coulter.  It was criss-crossed with faint lines, most of them silver, and most of them leading to the house.

"No," Coulter said.  "I know those."

"What are they?" Adrian asked.

"Scavenger."

All the heat from the day left Adrian's body.  He understood the implication and didn't like it.  "Scavenger has no magick."

"Scavenger's Fey.  They all leave trails," Coulter said, as if that were the most obvious thing he'd ever said.

"You can see them?"

"Not normally.  They're like a marker of where a Fey's been and when he was there.  Most people can't see them."

But Coulter could.  Like he could find worms from above ground and stop lightning with his bare hands.

"All Fey have them?"  Luke's voice was shaking.  Adrian put a hand on his son's shoulder.

"All Fey," Coulter said.  "Scavenger's are silver.  I thought all Fey had silver markers until tonight."

Luke and Adrian looked up. The lights that Coulter created in the sky were fading, but the purple trail blazed forward.

"What left that?" Adrian asked, not sure he wanted to know.

Coulter put down his arms. The light disappeared.  The purple trail continued to glow.  "There was a wind from the south today, did you feel it?"

"Not much of one," Luke said.  Discussing the weather was reflex for farmers.  "It didn't do much about the heat."

"No, but it died about mid-day, and I felt something.  I looked up and saw a fire-fly."

"It was daylight," Adrian said.

"And too hot. They don't come out until it cools down," Luke said.

Coulter nodded.  "If I'd been thinking, I would have realized that.  But it wasn't until I saw the real fireflies at twilight that I knew."

Adrian's stomach was churning, and not because he was hungry.  "A Wisp?"

"I don't think it could have been anything else.  There are types of Fey I've never heard of, but they usually don't duplicate magick."  He ran a hand through his blond hair.  Coulter had grown tall, taller than any Islander Adrian had ever known.  He was whip-thin, too, and as powerful as Luke.  But his skin was pale, and his eyes were bright blue, and his features were round.  There wasn't any Fey blood in him.  His age said that, and his body confirmed it.  It was just that magick he had that seemed Fey-like and unexplained.

"Flying south to north," Luke said.  "I didn't think there were Fey in the south."

"All Fey trails were silver, until now," Coulter said.  "And the energy's changed.  It's like the wind has come up on a summer's day, bringing a storm.  There's a charge in the air.  Can you feel it?"

"No," Adrian said.  Sometimes he felt blind next to Coulter.

"And no one's left the Shadowlands except Gift and his guards," Coulter said, with that uncanny knowledge he seemed to have about the boy he saved.  Adrian never had a way of verifying the information, but he knew it to be true, nonetheless.

"If no one's left Shadowlands, that trail can't be Fey," Luke said.  "You think an Islander did that?"

Coulter shook his head.  He looked at Adrian, as he often did when he was about to make a point.  Their time in Shadowlands together had left a bond that Luke could never penetrate.  Coulter always thought that Luke didn't understand, that Luke couldn't understand.  Luke, for his part, often didn't want to understand.

"Gift's coming," Coulter said.  "With a Vision he can't explain, and a Fey in it he's never seen before.  The energy's changed, and the trail is purple.  And instead of two of us here, there are three."

"Of course there are three," Luke said.  "You, me, and  — "

"No," Coulter said before Adrian could shush his son.  "It's all energy.  It's like Links or trails.  The energy holds things together too.  I can feel it, like you can feel sunlight."

Adrian tightened his grip on Luke's shoulder.  "Three what?"

"I can feel the Isle," Coulter said.  "There's always been me, and someone else like me."

"Who?" Adrian said.

Coulter shrugged, his shoulders moving against the night sky.  "I don't know.  Someone far from here."

"And now there's a third?" Luke asked.

Coulter nodded.  "To the south.  Where the Wisp came from."

"What does it mean?" Luke asked.

But Adrian knew.  It was all the Fey ever really talked about, all they thought about.  The reinforcements had finally come, and somehow they had breached the mountains in the south. 

With an Enchanter.

What had Rugar called Enchanters?

The most powerful of all Fey.

"They'll kill us now, won't they?" Adrian asked.

Luke started, but Coulter shook his head. "We're incidental," he said.  "If they're here, the Isle is as good as conquered.  No.  They've come for Gift."

"And you had him come here?" Luke asked, the fear evident in the rigidity of his shoulders, his back.

"If he gets here, he'll be safe," Coulter said.  "I can protect him."

Adrian looked up.  The purple trail was no longer visible against the night sky.  "If he gets here," he said.

EIGHTEEN

She had nowhere to go.  For the first time in her life, she belonged to no one and had no responsibilities.

She was free.

Solanda veered off the road outside of Jahn.  She was in her Fey form.  She hadn't changed since she left the palace, but she did take the time to pack her Domestic-made blankets, and her clothing.  She had left the palace in a blind run, and had taken the only route she knew.

To Shadowlands.

But she never stayed in Shadowlands.  She hated the grayness and the lack of life.  And she really didn't like the Fey who lived there.  Cowards, most of them, who could no longer face the real world.

She wasn't any fonder of the Fey who lived outside Shadowlands.  They were less than Fey, conquered people living in a conquered land, content with the scraps the Islanders threw them.

Nicholas would have let her stay in the palace.  It was the only place befitting a Shape-Shifter.

But she couldn't look at Arianna.  The girl had taken her heart and shattered it. 

Solanda walked across the cool grass into a clearing.  The night air felt good.  The air in the palace was always stifling.  She liked having the stars above her.

The river wound below her.  She could hear its gurgle. Sometimes, when the palace got too much for her, she went to the river in Jahn.  She had to go as a cat, and it wasn't the same as being here, in the countryside.  Someone always disturbed her, wanting to pet her or shoo her away.

But she could remain here as long as she liked.  The Islanders seemed to hate the outdoors.  Most of them avoided it.  She had heard about Islanders who stayed outdoors much of the time, but they didn't live in Jahn.

Neither did she, any more.

She tossed her bag on the grass, then lay down, tucking the bag under her head like a pillow.  The moon was bright, and the stars twinkled.  The river was soothing.  She hadn't spent a night outdoors since Arianna was born.

Arianna.

The ache in Solanda's chest grew.  The Fey always said that Shape-Shifters couldn't have children, that their bodies couldn't carry a pregnancy to term, and if it did, the Shifter couldn't love.  A Shifter never accepted responsibility, a Shifter always thought only of herself, a Shifter was unreliable, untrustworthy, and unwise.

Solanda had known some of those statements to be lies.  She had learned early that Shifters could get pregnant.  Shifters took responsibility, they just did so in ways other Fey never recognized. 

But she had always believed the one about love.

She had never found anyone worthy of her love.

Until she saw that square flat body being pulled out of Jewel's womb.

Arianna was Solanda's child, not Nicholas's.  Arianna was a child of the heart, a sister under the skin, a responsibility that Solanda gladly accepted.

And one she had somehow failed.

A mother would go back.  But a mother belonged.  Solanda didn't, and she wouldn't beg.  She was a Shifter, and Shifters never begged.

As if pride would get her anywhere.  Arianna had outgrown her, simple as that.

I don't need anyone, especially you.
  Solanda had said that to her guardian so many years ago.  And then she had gotten in trouble, and was saved by Rugar, not realizing at the time that he had manipulated the whole thing to have a hold over her.

A hold that lasted until the day he died.

Solanda sighed.  She scrunched up her bag and put her arms under her head.  She wouldn't go back, at least right away.  She would give Arianna a chance to realize how much she needed Solanda.  And a chance to forgive Solanda for keeping the truth about Sebeastian to herself all these years.

She wasn't sure why she hadn't told Arianna about her real brother.  Fear, she supposed.  Arianna already loved Sebastian beyond all bounds.  Solanda didn't want to share Arianna's love with a real person.

With another Fey.

Such mistakes she had made.  Mistakes she would have to unmake someday.  After she had given Arianna her time alone.

But that didn't mean Solanda had to stay uninvolved.  Arianna was her child, her sister under the skin.  Solanda had an obligation, one that Arianna might not recognize, but Solanda did.

She had vowed to take care of the child whether anyone wanted her to or not.  Before Nicholas had wanted her to.  Then Arianna had.

But now Nicholas thought Arianna could take care of herself, and Arianna pretended she needed no one.

Neither of them realized that a fifteen-year-old Shape-Shifter was still a child, still capable of making those horrible errors that ruined a life forever.

Arianna had nearly made one today by attacking her own brother.  Her real brother. 

Who didn't belong near the palace.

Who shouldn't even have known about Arianna, but he ran from her as if he understood the terror, as if he knew what her attack would do to both of them.  To the Fey.  To the world.

He had known.

And he had been the one to breathe life into the Changeling.

He knew a lot more than he should have.

He apparently had lived in Shadowlands and the palace.

And he had come to "save" Sebastian.

Creator saving the created?  Or something more than that?

It was supposed to be Sebastian's coming of age ceremony, after all.  And Gift, who had access to his golem's mind, would know that.  If he had stood in for Sebastian, would that have convinced the palace that Gift needed to rule?

Was this some sort of Fey trick as Arianna had surmised, or was it innocent as the lump had claimed?

Gift had access to Sebastian's mind, but Sebastian also had access to Gift's.

And Arianna had said Sebastian was smart, just physically unable to move quickly.

Solanda shook her head.  There were too many variables.  Too much to consider on her own.

And one thing bothered her:  Gift had risked a lot to come into the palace.  Whatever he had been after had been important.

Solanda made a satisfied grunt.  She had a path now.

Arianna didn't need Solanda at the palace.  But Arianna still needed Solanda.

Solanda would discover what Arianna's brother was about, and if it was no good, she would stop him.

She wasn't of the Black King's family.  She had no consequences.

She had learned that before.

When she had murdered the Black King's son.

NINETEEN

Sebastian had finally stopped crying.  Nicholas still held him, not wanting to let him go.  Sebastian rested his head against Nicholas's shoulder, and clung tightly.  Nicholas had his cheek pressed against the boy's cool skin. 

Not his son.

He and Jewel had had a talented child, a magick child, a gifted child, just as Jewel had said they would.

For some reason, the thought made him sad, and, beneath the sadness, he found a deep anger.   Rugar, Jewel's father, had done so much to ruin all their lives.  He would have done more if he'd been able to take Arianna.  Nicholas wouldn't have raised any of his children.

He didn't know how he felt about Sebastian.

The love and affection was still there.  He would fulfill his obligations to the boy, but something had changed in their relationship already.  Not in his heart.  He had always known on some deep level that Sebastian wasn't right.  He just hadn't known what was wrong.