Fey 02 - Changeling (45 page)

"I was screaming?"
 
Gift pushed himself all the way up.
 
No wonder his throat was sore.

"Not really, I don't think," Coulter said.
 
"I don't know.
 
I heard you in my brain.
 
Then I came here.
 
You were dying, Gift."

Gift frowned.
 
He was sore, but other than that he felt all right.
 
"I'm all right now."

"I know," Coulter said.
 
"I came here and the closer I got to you, the more I could see what was happening to you.
 
You had ties to someone else --your real mom --and she was dying, and you were dying with her.
 
And everybody knew, and they were letting you die."

"Everybody?" Gift asked.
 
"Even my mom and dad?"

Coulter shook his head.
 
"Your dad went to get help.
 
All the Domestics and Healers were gone.
 
Even the Shaman was gone."

"Because they didn't want to help me?"

"Because they were helping your real mom.
 
And when I came in the door, I heard --through you --the Shaman saying she was too far away to help you."

Gift frowned.
 
He remembered that.
 
He remembered her standing beside him and saying that.
 
"Was my grandfather there?"

Coulter nodded.
 

Gift put the heel of his hand on his forehead.
 
This sounded so familiar.
 
He closed his eyes.
 
He could see his grandfather, demanding they save the boy, and when they did not, wanting that baby.

As if they were interchangeable.

"I don't understand."

"Me, neither," Coulter said.
 
"But I knew what to do.
 
It was like I knew it already, like it had been in my brain all along.
 
I cut that link you had with your mom, and I wrapped my light around you.
 
That's why you still have light now."

Gift looked at his hand.
 
If he concentrated, he could still see the light dripping off it.
 
No wonder he had thought Coulter was with him.
 
Coulter was.

"How long do I need this?" Gift asked.

"I don't know," Coulter grabbed Gift's hand.
 
Coulter's grip was tight, his skin clammy.
 

Gift didn't pull away, but he wanted to.
 

"I'm scared," Coulter whispered.
 
"Something happened to me, and what happened to you started it."

"Maybe," Gift said slowly, "when my grandfather gets back, we can talk to him."

"I thought you never liked your grandfather."

"I don't really," Gift said.
 
Then he told Coulter about the Vision.
 
"Grandpa knew what it was.
 
He said it would happen again, and that's where I was when you came here.
 
In that place, with those people."

Coulter let go of Gift's hand.
 
"Your grandfather scares me.
 
He doesn't look at people.
 
He looks through them."

Gift nodded.
 
He had seen that.
 
"He wanted to trade me," Gift said.
 
"For that baby.
 
When he thought I was dead.
 
He wanted that baby."

"Baby?" Coulter said.
 

"She was there, where my real mother was dying.
 
My grandfather wanted her if he couldn't have me."

Coulter bit his lower lip again.
 
Then he rubbed a fist against his cheek, leaving a smear of dirt.
 
He didn't really have parents.
 
Everyone at the Domicile watched him, and sometimes they let him go without a bath for a long, long time.
 

"Something's wrong," he said.
 
"I don't know what any of this means, Gift."

"Me either," Gift said.
 
He was more frightened now than he had been when he woke up.

"But I think we should be careful around your grandfather."
 

Gift nodded.
 
"Can I keep the light?"

Coulter grinned.
 
"Sure."
 
He got up.
 
"I'm glad you're all right."

"Me, too," Gift said, although he wasn't sure, after this conversation, if he was all right at all.

"Look," Coulter said.
 
"You and me, we're different.
 
Neither of us live with our real mom and dad.
 
And when you got in trouble, somehow I knew.
 
I think we should stick together."

Gift held up his hand, and watched the light drip from it.
 
"I don't think we got a choice," he said.

TWENTY-SIX

Matthias hadn't slept.
 
He sat on the kneeling cushion, which he had moved beneath the slitted windows in the 50th Rocaan's worship room.
 
The room smelled musty and damp.
 
Cobwebs hung from the ceiling and dust had gathered on the tiny altar.
 
The Sword, hanging from the wall beside the door, was covered in rust.

The 50th Rocaan had used the room to be closer to God.
 
Every morning, he had taken the back stairs to this tiny, unadorned place, and spent an hour listening for God's still small voice.
 
Toward the end, he had said he never heard it.
 
Matthias hadn't even believed it existed.
 
Yet he found himself walking the cramped steps himself during the night, searching for some kind of solace.
 

The Tabernacle had once been a small saint's cottage filled with an incense burner, an altar, and a kneeling cushion so that the itinerant worshiper could feel closer to his God.
 
The original stone room remained, although three centuries earlier, the 35th Rocaan added a window, covered by tapestries.
 
The window became an arrow slit, which he used to attack assailants who were trying to eject him from the Tabernacle.

The light coming through the window was just enough to allow Matthias to blow out the candles he had brought.
 
From here he had a view of the river, and when the sky was clear, a view of the palace.
 

He leaned his head against the damp stone wall.
 
Nicholas had sent a page over in the middle of the night with a message.
 
Two words.

Jewel's dead.

He still remembered Nicholas's face.
 
The Fey held his pregnant daughter close, and Nicholas followed, already looking bereft.
 
You are committing murder, holy man.
 
But it wouldn't be the first time, would it?

Nicholas didn't understand.
 
He had never understood.
 
As a boy, he had shirked his duties and tried to avoid his religious studies.
 
As a man, he had fought Matthias each and every step along the way.

He did not understand what they were facing.

No one did.

But the answer lay in holy water.

The Roca had used the holy water to clean his sword before he allowed the Soldiers of the Enemy to run him through.
 
The Words Written and Unwritten said that at that moment, the Roca was Absorbed to the Hand of God.
 
Rocaanist tradition said that Roca's actions provided a sacrifice which saved his people from the Soldiers of the Enemy.
 
Nothing in the Words or in the traditions said that holy water had murderous properties.

The 50th Rocaan had decided that they had misused the holy water.
 
He thought perhaps the Fey were the new Soldiers of the Enemy, and he agreed to meet with Rugar, Jewel's father, in the hope that he could drive the Fey back by himself.

It was a vain and arrogant hope.
 
The Rocaan was putting himself in the position of the Roca, thinking that if the Fey ran him through, he would be Absorbed, and the Fey would leave Blue Isle forever.

The Fey had killed him, using their magic, and nothing had
 
changed.
 
Instead Nicholas had married a Fey and an uneasy truce was born.

But the holy water had its effect on the Fey for a reason.
 
No one else suffered so at its touch.
 
All the others on the Isle took part in the Sacraments, and they touched the holy water daily.
 
The worst that had happened to an Islander was a small rash.
 
People born near the Cliffs of Blood wore gloves during Midnight Sacrament to prevent the allergic reaction.
 
But even if the holy water touched them, it did not kill them.

The sun sparkled on the river water below.
 
The Cardidas was wide, the ports empty now except for fishing vessels.
 
Jahn's wealth was slowly disappearing.
 
All because of the Fey.
 
Even Nicholas's marriage hadn't allowed trade to reopen.
 
Both Nicholas
 
and Alexander were afraid to let the Fey off the Isle, afraid they would send holy water back to their Black King, and his magicians would find a way around it.

But what if the Fey couldn't find a way around it?
 
What if the Islanders had holy water for a reason, and that reason was to stop the Fey?

Six years ago, Matthias would never have believed this.
 
But, as the Words said,
The belief of cowards was assured
.
 
As time passed, he believed more and more.

It was almost as if the fact that holy water could be used against the Fey proved God provided for the Islanders.
 
The old Rocaan would have called — and once did call — that idea blasphemy.
 
But it was no more blasphemy than thinking a man 50 generations removed could take the place of the Roca.

Matthias leaned his head against the cold stone wall.
 
The slight breeze blowing in the window off the river was warmer than the stone.
 
But he didn't mind the chill.
 
He needed it to remind him of what had happened.

He had tried to warn Nicholas.
 
When Nicholas had asked that Jewel not feel the touch of holy water during the marriage ceremony, Matthias had agreed.
 
He wanted to wait and see what would happen.
 
His role as Rocaan was still too new.
 
Perhaps he was wrong.
 
Besides, he thought there would be a number of options.
 
If the marriage did not work out, Nicholas could have set Jewel aside.

Then the baby was born, and again Nicholas asked that Jewel and her son not feel the touch of holy water.
 
It soon became clear that God was not with the boy.
 
He had no brain to speak of.
 
He moved slowly, acted slowly, and even slept slowly.
 
Alexander had worried that the child would not be able to rule.
 
Matthias worried that the child was such an abomination that God might not want it to live.