The Rival (24 page)

Flurry flew through the crack in the main doors and into the night air.  He executed a small circle in the courtyard, buzzing a dog sleeping near the stables, then rose toward the moon, chuckling as he went.

It had been easy, so easy.  He hadn't expected to find the great-grandson at the King's side.  And no one would have trouble recognizing Rugad's Blood in the boy.  He had the look of his grandfather along his narrow chin and in his high cheekbones.  He was pale for a Fey, but Islanders were pale.  The odd thing was his eyes:  they were a strange blue.  He found them unnerving.  In the right light, they seemed to disappear in the boy's face.

Flurry flew higher and followed the main road.  Near the river, a rank mist rose off the bridge.  He sneezed and veered away, shivering in disgust.  The Nye always used their waterways as garbage dumps; perhaps the Islanders did as well, although he had never heard of it in all his studies of them.

The night was clear, and the city appeared mostly empty.  He was tired but had to continue forward.  Rugad would want to know what happened here.  Even though he predicted they would not surrender, he hadn't predicted that the Islander King would want a meeting.

A meeting.  As if they were all bankers on Nye.

Flurry chuckled and flew on.  He sneezed again.  That stench had been incredible, like something off a battlefield.  Rotting flesh and burning skin mixed into a fog.  Garbage didn't smell like that.

He paused, wings fluttering, keeping him aloft.  Then he veered back, toward the bridge. 

The fog had risen like a cloud against the moon.  He peered up at it, a sickly green color against the moon's brightness.  The cloud was an isolated thing.  It seemed to come from nowhere.  The river was clear, although a slick ran down its center.

The slick looked like blood.

A battlefield?  In the middle of a city that claimed to have achieved peace?

He lowered himself slowly, then saw movement in the reeds on the north side.  He flew toward it, and watched as a wounded Islander crawled through the grass.  The Islander was mumbling to himself about disproving magick.  He was leaving a small blood trail, and his skin looked fish-white in the moonlight.  Wounds gaped in his upper arms and on the side of his face.

He had been stabbed repeatedly. 

Flurry floated higher and saw no one else.  Some sort of Islander murder, caused by a robbery, perhaps, or a personal grievance.

Or magick.

Only those with magick had no need of knives, and Foot Soldiers, who cut the skin with their fingers, flayed it off, leaving gouges, not cuts.

Magick.

He flew back to the bridge.  Only the memory of the stink remained in the moonlight.  He sneezed again, knowing the sound would be so tiny as to be inaudible to full sized ears, and slowly lowered himself.

There was a lump on the bridge, and a water trail that ran off down the south side.

He descended, feet first, wings fluttering to keep himself balanced and landed on the stone walls.  A moth landed beside him, attracted by his small light.  The moth was large and ugly, its eyes empty holes in the darkness. 

"Shoo," he said, and shoved the moth with both hands.  Its wings flapped, nearly knocking him down, and then it flew away.

He walked to the edge of the stone and peered down.  The lump was large and round.  It was the source of the smell, and it still stank.  He would have gone down to investigate if a moonbeam hadn't caught one detail.

An ear.

A slightly pointed, dark-skinned ear protruding from the lump.

And, on the far side, a hand clutching at nothing.

He flew upward in surprise, hands over his mouth.  That had been a Fey below him.  The stories he heard about the poison then were true.  They could dissolve a Fey as if he were made of sugar.  He brushed off his wings, his feet, his legs, anything that might have touched the poison.  Although he had been told by the same source who had told him about the melting, that the effect was instantaneous.

If he had touched the stuff, he would have melted already.

At least he had an antidote.  That poor Fey on the Bridge hadn't.  That Fey could not have been one of Rugad's troup.  That Fey had been one of the Failures.  They had no way to fight the poison.

Flurry shuddered and flew along the road.  His physical exhaustion was gone now; adrenaline raced through him.  Things were not as peaceful as the good Islander King made it seem.  The only Fey at the banquet was his own son.  And a Fey had been murdered on the main bridge.

Perhaps the Islander King was right.  Perhaps these were a people to be wary of.  He would mention that to Rugad.  In fact, he would stress it.  Rugar, the Black King's son, would never listen to reason, but Rugad would.  Rugad always did.

Flurry flew on, so fast and so hard that he nearly missed the only people on the road.  A couple walking side by side, heads down as they passed the Islander Tabernacle, intent, as if they didn't want to be seen.

He glanced at the Tabernacle himself.  It was a large building, much as the Nye described it, more like a palace than the palace.  It had ornate swords carved into its outside walls, and tapestries on every window, lights on every floor.  Such extravagant waste of resources on such a meaningless pursuit. 

As he flew by, though, he shuddered.  The Tabernacle had an air of power.  He had encountered such places before, and he learned to never underestimate them. 

The couple was tall for Islanders.  They wore shirts, breeches, and boots that had the softness of Fey design.  He swooped lower and stopped in surprise.

The King's son was here.  The boy he had seen in the palace.  Only this boy had a thinner face, rounder eyes, and a look of complete exhaustion.  The girl beside him hadn't reached her magic yet.  She wore Rugar's infantry colors, and she had a knife hilt on one side, a sword on the other.

She had stabbed the Islander climbing out of the bushes.  Had the Islander murdered the Fey?

But that didn't make any sense.  If the girl had stabbed the Islander after he murdered the Fey, it would have taken time.  How had the boy managed to change his clothing, get down here from the palace, and accompany the girl this far?

If he had a flying magic, why was he wasting effort  —  and taking so much risk  —  in walking past the Islander Tabernacle?

Flurry licked his lips nervously.  Rugad would want to know what happened here.  He would chastise Flurry if he didn't discover all he could.

But Flurry wasn't certain he wanted to talk with them.  The girl was clearly a Failure, and Rugad didn't want the Failures to know that he had arrived.  The boy, if indeed it was the same boy, had been extremely hostile in the banquet hall.  Outside of it, he might have no qualms in using his position to attack Flurry.

Flurry did not want to pit himself against anyone of Black Blood.

He would report on what he saw.  If Rugad wanted a deeper understanding, he could send someone else.

Flurry hesitated above them for a moment.  They weren't speaking.  They were walking with purpose, even though no Islanders were near them.  They were the only ones on the road.

And if the girl was raised with the Fey, she would know what Flurry was.

If he wasn't careful.

He would only have one chance.  He would have to make the best of it.

He flew ahead of them and stopped near a bush.  He was lucky that the moon was full; it gave him a clear vision of the two behind him.  It camouflaged him well.  He crouched among the leaves, trying to block his own small light.  If he grew to full size, his light would wink out, but he couldn't risk that either.

Instead he watched as they approached, hoping his tiny light would be unnoticeable.  He stared at them, ignoring the girl for the boy beside her.

He was tall, like most Fey, only his skin was nearly two shades lighter than the girl's.  His hair was so dark that it reflected the moonlight in a single sheen.  His eyes were that same electric blue.  But his chin was different, rounder, without the slight cleft that Flurry had noticed on the other boy.  His hair was longer, too, worn down his back in the traditional Fey military manner.  His clothing looked as if it had been slept in.  It was certainly still wet from an encounter with the river.

The differences were subtle, but they existed.  That and the timeline meant that something was afoot.

Why would the son of the King be wandering the streets like a common criminal?  Why would his only protection be a girl too young to come into her magick?  And why wasn't he at the banquet?

Flurry had to take one more risk.  The boy at the banquet had spoken Islander.  Quickly and naturally, as if it were his tongue of preference.  Flurry couldn't quiz this boy, but he could discover if the differences extended farther than the physical.

Flurry climbed out of the bush, careful to be as silent as he could.  He floated upward on the wind, like a spark would do.  When he was directly above the boy, he dove, heading for the boy's face.  Flurry crashed into the boy's nose and kicked off it, heading upward again.

"Hey!" the boy said in Fey.

"What is it?" the girl responded in the same language.

"Something hit me in the face.  It looked like a Wisp."

"Was it Wind?"

"No."  The boy sounded perplexed.  "He knows how much this trip means to me.  He'd be beside me, not running into me."

Wind.  Flurry remembered him.  One of Rugar's favorite Wisps who had come along on that futile mission, thinking it was the trip of the future.

The girl looked up.  She pointed.  "I see it!" she said.

Flurry flew directly upward until he was out of their sight.  He was trembling, but exhilarated.  Apparently the boy did not have the right kind of magick to bring Flurry down. 

Which was good.  He had wasted enough time.  He had to report to Rugad.

And his report would be interesting.  Rugad had two great-grandchildren on Blue Isle.  One raised by the Islander King, and the other raised by Fey.  There was no telling who the first-born was, but it didn't matter.

Two mixed children of Black Blood made this trip doubly worthwhile.

Rugad would be pleased.

TWENTY-FIVE

Solanda stopped in the clearing and stared at the dirt circle.  It had been years since she had been inside Shadowlands.  She hated it so much that she often forced the Domestics to meet her outside.  They had done so in exchange for food.  There were still some basic items that they couldn't grow themselves.

The clearing had once been part of a forest, but over the years, the Domestics had turned it into a garden.  The land sloped toward the river, and they used it to funnel water to the crops.  The winters on Blue Isle were temperate enough to allow some growth all year round, if one knew what kinds of things to plant.

Solanda did not.  She only ate greens when she was starving, or when her stomach was upset.  If she wasn't careful, vegetables made her puke.

The neat rows stood alongside the dirt circle, a calling card to any who were looking for the Fey.  But the Islanders had left them alone for over a decade now, believing that the Fey could remain in their own prison.  Solanda had heard that the Outsiders were not as lucky; that they had to face the verbal assaults and physical blows of Islanders who feared them.

She had lived through none of that, except for that brief period when Alexander had banned cats.  She never would live through any of it again.

A small circle of lights rotated in the air above the dirt circle.  For most Shadowlands, the circle of lights was the only indication that a Shadowlands existed.  There were no gardens or dirt circles.  But no Fey had ever lived in a Shadowlands for longer than the duration of a single campaign before.  None had ever retreated into one.

Solanda spat on the ground, showing her disgust.  Rugar should be forever cursed for leading his once proud people into a place like this.

Then she stepped into the dirt circle, reached up, and stuck her hand in the Circle Door.  The lights rotated harder and grew until the circle was large enough for her to step through.

She did, and shivered as the opaque world of the Shadowlands enveloped her.

It had changed over the years.  The Domicile had been rebuilt into a U-shaped building.  The Domestics kept the water and food supplies on one side of the U, had the infirmary in the center, and provided room for the Domestic magicks on the other side.  It had taken the place of the Meeting Block as the center to Shadowlands. 

Gift and his Wisp family had taken over Rugar's quarters, the second largest building in Shadowlands.  No one had objected.  Gift had saved most of their lives when he held Shadowlands together.  While none of the Fey really trusted him as a leader, they knew that they owed him that much.

The other buildings were beginning to look old.  They had been built as temporary homes nearly twenty years before.  Even though they hadn't felt the effects of weather, they had seen the ravages of time.  Some were leaning a bit.  Others were missing boards. 

Surprisingly, though, some were looking homey.  A few Fey had painted flowers on the sides of the wood, and a few others had painted the wood themselves.  Some were Domestic-spelled, looking new and clean and inviting.

They had created a small Fey community in the land of eternal grayness.

Solanda shuddered.  At least the Weather Sprites had long ago stopped trying to make weather inside Shadowlands.  In those days, Shadowlands always had a gray fog, because no matter what the Sprites tried, it always became a fog.  She had heard that most of the Sprites had become Outsiders, which made sense, considering their penchant for being outdoors.

She smoothed her hair with one hand, and patted her clothes, the closest her Fey form came to grooming.  She knew she looked a fright.  Part of her didn't care.  Another part, though, didn't want Gift to know the distress she was in.  None them needed to know that.

Most of the Fey were asleep.  Even in Shadowlands, they kept a regular schedule: sleeping when the outside lands were dark, and awake when the lands were light.  The light in Shadowlands itself never changed, but the schedule kept the Fey from going insane.