The Black King (Book 7) (61 page)

The light had stopped only a moment before. The guard was kneeling beside the body, hands above it as if he didn’t know what to do.

Touch me,
Arianna said.

At first, Lyndred didn’t understand what she was saying. Then Arianna sent her a picture. Lyndred nodded, and reached down, touching the body’s hands.

They felt lifeless.

Hurry!
Arianna said.

I’m touching her,
Lyndred thought.

There should be a Link here. You said you had a Link!

I said I
thought
I had a Link,
Lyndred thought defensively.

“What are you doing?” DiPalmet said to her.

“I’m trying to save her.”

“How can you do that? You’re a Visionary.”

Find me the Link!
Arianna said.

Lyndred closed her eyes, saw those few moments when Arianna—the person she had thought was Arianna—had looked at her with amusement or compassion. And a small door formed at the edge of Lyndred’s mind.

Arianna—the real Arianna—ran for that door and pulled it open before Lyndred could stop her.

Then hands grabbed Lyndred’s shoulder and yanked her back. “You can’t touch her.” It was the guard’s voice. “You killed her.”

Lyndred opened her eyes. Nothing had moved in the body in front of her. Nothing had changed.

“You saw me,” Lyndred said. “I didn’t send that light. It’s not within my powers. You know that. You both know that.”

“Then what were you trying to do?” DiPalmet said.

“I’m trying to Link with her,” Lyndred said.

The body still hadn’t moved, and Arianna wasn’t talking to her inside her own mind. Had Arianna vanished then? Lyndred couldn’t tell.

Was it the wrong Link that Arianna went through?

Lyndred couldn’t tell that either.

“What would Linking with her do?” DiPalmet asked.

“It would save her. You have to let me go!”

“How did you know this would happen?” The guard asked.

“You know how,” Lyndred snapped. “I told you. I told you I knew what Gift was going to do to her.”

They both recoiled as if she had struck them.

“Now let me help her before she dies!”

DiPalmet studied her. “What were you saying about Rugad?”

“I don’t have time to explain,” Lyndred said. “Either help me or get out of my way.”

DiPalmet moved. “I’m sorry.”

“Save it,” Lyndred said. “You’ll be more than sorry if something happens to her because of your stupidity.”

Then she took Arianna’s hand back in her own. The hand was actually clammy. And it still felt lifeless. Lyndred wondered if there would be a heartbeat. She didn’t want to try to find one.

She closed her eyes again.

Arianna?
She thought.
Are you still here?

Arianna was gone and the door was still open. Lyndred was alone in her own mind. She walked up to the Link door and looked through it.

And saw nothing except light.

SEVENTY-TWO

ARIANNA STEPPED INTO her own mind and closed the door behind her.

It was dark inside her brain and it smelled faintly of burned flesh. Black ropes, crisped and burned to nearly nothing, hung around her, and on all sides, she saw blasted areas where walls had once been.

Rugad. He had been threaded all through her.

She touched one of the destroyed walls. Behind some of the blackness was pink flesh. Hers.

It was as if she were in a house in which all the contents had burned, even the tapestries on the walls, but the walls remained. Damaged, but they were there.

Still, she moved slowly. She knew that this part of his construct was gone, but she wasn’t sure if the rest was left. She followed the burned out trail deeper into herself, down to the core.

Years ago, she had taken a small baby into that core, and built a room for him so that he could grow. She was afraid to go there, afraid to see what he had done.

The deeper she went inside herself, the more she could feel him. There was residue of pain here. The stench of burning flesh grew worse, and the ropy blackness had a viscous quality that felt like blood.

Had they, in saving her, destroyed her body? Was she, except for this essential part of herself, dead? Would she have to live forever inside that Golem’s body, unable to be the woman she had once been? She wouldn’t be able to tell until she reached that center, and reintegrated with herself.

If she could.

She closed her eyes and sent herself to the very center of herself. Then she opened her eyes, and saw the room where she once lived.

It had been torn apart. All her secret things, her dreams and wishes and memories, had been thrown in a corner. She couldn’t tell what Rugad had done to the rest of the room because the inner wall had exploded outward.

She stepped over the rubble and looked inside. The inner room was the one she had made for the baby. It was the one that had become Rugad’s. It was now a large crater, as if a giant fireball had been tossed inside it.

There was nothing left of Rugad. Nothing at all.

There was barely anything left of her.

She would have to rebuild everything, reorder everything, repair all parts of herself. And she wasn’t sure where she could start.

Arianna?

The voice was faint, so faint she could barely hear it, yet it sounded like someone shouting. Rugad? Please, no, it couldn’t be Rugad.

Arianna, are you still alive? Please answer me, Arianna.

It was Lyndred.

I’m fine,
Arianna sent.

No, you’re not. I think your body is dying.

In this kind of shape, with all of these problems, that was possible. She was going to have to reintegrate herself without repairing anything.

Or she was going to have to let this body die.

Arianna? Arianna, please hurry.

She stared at the destruction, the ropy bloody mess, then she walked over to the corner where Rugad had tossed everything that belonged to her. She picked up a painting of Coulter—not as he really looked, but as he saw himself, a tall Fey with blond hair and blue eyes. She ran her finger across the surface, tracing the brushstrokes. He was beautiful either way.

Then she set the painting aside and found the portrait of her father. His beloved, lost face, smiling at her as he often had when he approved of her.

Arianna?

She missed him so much. She missed his advice and counsel. And if she left this body, she might not have this portrait. She might lose some of her memories.

She would lose even more of herself.

Please hurry.

Then she looked at the ruined walls. But it would be so painful. She wasn’t sure she was ready for this kind of pain. But it was the only choice. Best to get it over with.

She slipped her hand into the wall behind the memories, and then she slid back into herself.

Her brain hurt. Her body ached. Her lungs were on fire. She hadn’t had a breath in a long time. She took in a mouthful of air, and then opened her eyes.

Lyndred was looking down on her. The girl was a fright, dried blood matting her hair, mud all over her face. DiPalmet was behind her, looking terrified, and the guard was behind him, seeming overwhelmed.

“Arianna?” Lyndred asked. “Are you all right?”

No, she wanted to say. She had never been in this kind of pain in her life. It hurt to think, and the logical connections, the way she used to get from one part of her brain to another, weren’t working right.

Still, she had to find the way to control everything. If only she were able to fight the pain.

“Arianna?”

“Bring in the army.” Her voice was a whisper. The words were in Islander, but they were drawn out. Her tongue was having difficulty moving; her lips were not working properly. “Call off the attack on Gift.”

“But, Arianna—” DiPalmet started.

“Now!” She tried to yell, but she spoke no louder than she had originally.

“Yes, ma’am.” He stood.

“Get me a Healer,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And when my brother comes here, let him and Coulter in to see me.” Each word was an effort.

“But, Arianna, he tried to kill you.”

She made herself look at Lyndred, praying Lyndred would understand what she was trying to do. “Was it Gift who held that light?”

“Of course not,” Lyndred said. “You—”

“See?” Arianna said to DiPalmet. “Let him up here. This family can’t fight each other. We don’t dare fight.”

He stared at her for a long moment, and then he turned around and left.

“See that he does what I asked,” she said to Lyndred.

“Yes, I will.” Lyndred squeezed her hand. “I’m so glad...“

But Arianna missed the rest of it. She closed her eyes and let the pain take her away.

SEVENTY-THREE

THE
TASHKA
WAS GONE, taking the fog with it. The fighting had stopped long before the order to cease had come via a Wisp, who told Xihu, Nandar, and the other Leaders. The little war was over, as strangely as it had begun.

Xihu stood at the water’s edge. She knew that something momentous had happened here, something she hadn’t understood. The Wisp had no answers except to say that Arianna had called off the fight and wanted to see her brother. Xihu had asked if Arianna planned to kill Gift herself, and the Wisp had given her a strange look.

She’s too weak,
the Wisp had said.
She might have died.

So the light was an attack against her, but what kind of attack? And how had it changed her mind?

Xihu was sure she would find out when she went back to the palace. All that mattered was that war had been averted. The Blood against Blood had stopped.

The sun was out, thin and cold. She had never been so happy to see the sun in her entire life. The fog had been thick and unnatural. It had hidden the fighting from view, in some ways making the hideous even uglier by keeping it out of sight.

But the remains of it were in front of her, the arrows on the surface, the bodies floating on the water, the charred bits of flesh on the crest of a wave.

And then she focussed on the Cardidas. It was red. It was always red. But not like this.

There was blood floating on top of it. A slick of blood, still fresh, from all the shattered bodies, all the destroyed lives. The blood frothed as tiny waves created by the wind beat their way toward shore.

This was Gift’s Open Vision. This was the blood she had seen, flowing beneath everything.

She stared at the blood, and thought of all the sacrifices, and was glad that things hadn’t been worse.

THE BLACK KING

(One Week Later)

SEVENTY-FOUR

COULTER HAD TO HELP Arianna into the Roca’s Cave. She hadn’t been inside the cave in fifteen years, not since the day she had become Black Queen.

The cave looked different than she remembered. It was smaller, the red floor still startling, even though she knew how the change had happened. The cave was warmer than she remembered too, and the white ceiling even brighter.

The entire cave smelled of fresh water. She had forgotten that too, along with the soothing sound of the burbling fountain below.

“Are you all right?” Coulter asked.

He wanted to know if she was comfortable being inside the cave. She didn’t answer him. Being comfortable or not wasn’t relevant. What really mattered was that she was here, and that they were going to try.

There had been so much to do after they took the palace back. So many dead and wounded, so many lives shattered. Gift had lost a lot of blood, but it became clear very fast that he would live.

Arianna wanted the Healers to concentrate on the injured Fey, but they focused on her first. She couldn’t stop them.

They said that no magick would heal the damage the Lights of Midday had caused the inside of her brain. Rugad had woven his personality all through her, like a black thread in the middle of an all-white skein. In order to remove the black, the Lights had to destroy the skein.

Now she had no magick of her own—except Vision, which was somehow tied to her and not to her body. Her ability to Shift was gone, but so were some of her non-magickal abilities, like her ability to walk. She would have to relearn everything, like a baby.

It was only her own determination, the Healers told her, that had enabled her to speak, that same determination that had allowed her to speak rapidly as a golem instead of slowly the way Sebastian did.

Gift had suggested that she assume her Golem’s body again at least until they figured out a way to repair this one. She had rejected that idea. Much as she hated the way this body had been injured, she still preferred it to skin of stone. She could feel Coulter’s strong arm against her back—the pressure of it, the texture of his skin against the fabric of her gown, the heat from his body beside hers.

When he kissed her—and he had kissed her when he found her alive and in her own body again—she could taste him. She liked the feeling of air in her lungs and the way her heartbeat felt within her chest. All of the sensations of being alive belonged to this body, not the Golem’s body. If she ever had to return to that, she would see it as a defeat.

She suspected she could repair her mind, bit by tiny bit, with years of concentrated work. But that would mean neglecting her duties as a ruler, and she couldn’t do that. She had to try something else.

“Do you still want to do this?” Coulter asked. “It’s a great risk.”