The Rival (47 page)

He peered at it.  The lamp was bright.  The souls inside were shining with a brilliance he hadn't seen in a long time. 

"Fey?" he asked.

The Foot Soldier shook his head. "Too dangerous," he said. "We've been taking only Islander souls."

"Good," Rugad said.  He didn't want any Failure Fey, not even those without bodies, anywhere near his people.

He took the lamp inside.  Four guards stood at the door of the tent, and three more sat on the rug inside.  Rugad snapped his fingers, and they all left.

Solanda stood in the center of the tent.  She wore a blouse and pants, both stained with blood.  Her tawny hair fell free.  She hadn't aged a day in those twenty years.  She still looked like a teenager, even though she was at least as old as Rugar had been, maybe older.

"I was told you murdered my son," Rugad said.

She lifted her chin.  Her birthmark was dark against her golden skin.  "He was disobeying the Shaman."

"Visionaries do not need to listen to Shamans."

"Liar," Solanda said.  "Visionaries need Shamans.  Even more so when they are Blind."

"Are you making my son's Blindness up as a justification of your actions?"

"Don't pretend with me, Rugad.  I have little to lose here.  I know you can extract information from me and kill me quite easily."

"So you should be kinder to me."

She snorted through her nose.  "Kindness has nothing to do with what's between us.  I have lived on this desolate place because you banished me here, because your son bound me to him, and because I had no way of returning home and regaining my honor.  I am tarnished with the same brush as all those Fey you slaughtered today, through no fault of my own."

"So tell me why you live."

She crossed her arms.  "Because you ran out of Doppelgängers."

"I have more here, in Shadowlands."

She nodded.  "But you want to hear me out first, to see what it is that I know and you don't."

"I suspect you know a lot that I don't."

"Stop playing games with me, Rugad.  You want your great-grandson."

"I understand I have two of them."

She paused, tilted her head as if she were listening to a faraway sound, and then she said, "Two great-grandsons?"

"Yes."

She laughed.  The sound was fluted, pleasant, and completely inappropriate.

Rugad pulled the flap behind him tighter.  The tent was theirs.  The light from the Fey lamp made everything golden.  Solanda's shadow fell on the tent's far wall, his on one of the sides.  They looked frozen there, trapped by her laugh and the knowledge it held.

He wasn't certain he was going to like what she had to say next.  Something in his assumptions was wrong, and he rarely made wrong assumptions.

"You have a great-grandson and his golem, Rugad," Solanda said.  "Your son stole your great-grandson and left a Changeling in his place, and your talented granddaughter never even suspected."

"She embodied the Changeling with life?"

Solanda shook her head.  "Your great-grandson did."

"I would have discovered the golem," he said. "They shatter under pressure."

"It's not the golem that concerns me," Solanda said.  "It will take care of itself, or die trying."

"And my great-grandson?"

"Is a talented Visionary, but I'm sure you already know that.  I'm sure that's why you're here."

"All of these certainties, Solanda, and none of them really wrong.  But you're not offering me anything new."

"Then let me," she said.  She put her hands on her hips and watched him as if he were the prisoner.  "There's a wild magick here."

"We've already discovered that, and we neutralized their poison."

"The poison is only one manifestation of it.  Your great-grandson is another.  He bred true, and had his first Vision by the age of three.  He built a Shadowlands that same year.  But he is not a warrior."

"How could he be, growing up here?"

"Already you make excuses for him, Rugad," Solanda said.  "Jewel's brothers must be hopeless."

"I would rather have let my son rule," he said.

Solanda smiled.  "Desperate and growing old.  Not  a good pattern for a Black King. Are you Blind?"

He didn't take offense at the question.  Her life already hung by a thread.  She was right; she had nothing to lose by being honest with him.

"No," he said.

"You lie.  Rugar was Blind.  You must be."

Rugad shook his head.  "I have had Visions, even on this Isle.  I have Seen my great-grandson, sailing for Leut.  I have Seen our victory, and I have Seen the death of their Rocaan.  I have Seen many things, Solanda, and I expect to continue for sometime to come."

"But you have not Seen the most important thing of all," she said.  "You have two great-grandchildren, Rugad."

"But you said one is a golem."

"I said you have one great-grandson."

He set the Fey lamp down so that she couldn't see the surprise on his face.  He
had
missed that.  But that was the nature of Visions.  Only partial answers, partial surprises, partial revelations. 

Still, he would have thought that he would have Seen something as important as a great-granddaughter.

"A great-granddaughter," he said as he rose.  "How do you know this?"

"I was there when she was born.  I raised her."

He laughed.  It snuck out of him, a bark, almost.  He made no attempt to hide it. 

"You almost had me, Shifter," he said.  "But it is well known that Shifters do not raise children."

"That's right, they don't," Solanda said.  "except in one instance."

He froze.  Her voice had the ring of truth.  Besides, he knew that Jewel had died in childbirth shortly before Rugar had died.  But since Rugad never Saw the baby, he assumed it had died.

"She Shifts?" he asked.  "That's not possible.  Her mother was a Visionary, and her father has no magick."

"You forget."  Solanda smiled.  "This Isle has wild magick.  Her father is the direct descendent of the founder of their religion, and the religion developed the poison."

"She Shifts," he said, mostly to himself.

"Oh, but there is more," Solanda said.  She was bouncing on her toes, as if she couldn't contain her excitement.  "She has several Forms."

"How many?"

"I've seen two.  She claims more than that.  She doesn't know how many.  She says any time she practices a Form, she can Shift to it."

"That's not possible."

"Not to average Fey," Solanda said.  "But then neither is having a Vision at three.  Wild magick, Rugad."

He took a deep breath.  His heart was pounding.  "She's the younger?"

Solanda nodded.

"Why are you telling me about her?  To bargain for your own life?"

"In part.  And also because you need to know, Rugad.  She is your destiny."

"I have Seen her brother sailing to Leut."

"Don't let your Vision cloud your Sight. Rugar did that too much.  You need her, Rugad."

"She grew up in Shadowlands?"

"She grew up in the Islander palace.  She knows everything about Blue Isle."

"Then she is loyal to it,"

"Of course," Solanda said.  "You can use that."

Rugad laughed.  His great-granddaughter, raised by the soft Islanders.  As if she were something he could use.  "She won't listen to me."

"She will if I tell her to."

"Another ploy, Solanda?"

Solanda looked at him.  Her gaze was flat, measuring.  The stare of a cat that knew it was superior.  "I am the closest thing she has to a mother, Rugad.  She'll listen to me."

"A mother who betrays her daughter to the enemy?" Rugad asked.

"You are not the enemy," Solanda said.  "You are the Black King."

"And you killed my son," Rugad said.  "That can be construed as treason."

Solanda smiled.  "'Construed' is such a good word.  Yes, it can be construed as treason.  Or it can be construed as patriotism.  Perhaps I did you the favor you couldn't do yourself, Rugad."

"Perhaps," he said.  "But why would you give up the girl to me?"

"Because she is so much more than an Islander Princess.  She is more Fey than any Fey I have ever met.  She deserves the life that she was born into."

Rugad crossed his arms and smiled.  "You are fond of the girl.  I admire fondness, especially from a Shifter, but it does not sway me."

"It should," Solanda said.  She brushed her tawny hair from her face.  "You were angry at Rugar for taking Jewel.  You thought Jewel was the future of the Fey.  And you were right.  She was.  But she was the future because of the child she bore.  Not her son.  Her son has Vision, yes, but he cannot Shift.  The wild magick isn't as powerful in him."

"Flurry saw two boys.  One spoke Islander and the other Fey.  Both, he said, were intelligent."

"The Golem has elements of your great-grandson.  It is your great-grandson that gives him life."

"So Flurry saw the Golem and my great-grandson."

"It would seem so."

"And if my great-grandson gave a Golem life, kept a Shadowlands together, and had a Vision at age three, then he has wild magick."

"But it isn't as powerful as Arianna's."

"The girl's?"

Solanda nodded.

"Does the girl have Vision?"

"Not yet," Solanda said.  "But she is fifteen.  She came into her Shifting young.  She will have Vision, though.  She is the daughter of a Visionary."

"Her brother had Vision at three."

"Her brother only has that power.  She has two powers."

"You can't be certain," Rugad said.  He wasn't certain he wanted to believe in this girl, this all-powerful child who carried his blood. 

"You said that about Jewel," Solanda said.  "She hadn't come into her Visions yet when you sent her with Rugar.  You thought she never would.  She was eighteen.  Three years older than Arianna.  You were wrong."

He let his arms fall.  He had been wrong.  That, he felt, had been the greatest mistake of his life.  The only moment when Rugar had the upper hand.  Rugar had taken Jewel, the future of the Fey, to prevent his own father from turning on him.

It had failed.  Jewel had not helped Rugar conquer the Isle, at least not the way he wanted, and Rugad had remained in Nye, Watching from afar, hoping that his granddaughter would save them all.  When she did not, when she died, he had turned to his grandsons, the hopeless Bridge, and the others, thinking that maybe they could evolve into something better.  Their Visions were tiny, and their intelligence even tinier.  He could do nothing to change that.  He could do nothing to make them great leaders.

Only the Vision of his great-grandson sustained him.

His great-grandson had brought him here.  Solanda was right.  Rugad was a desperate man.  For his entire life, he had looked toward the future, and until he had a successor, the future looked bleak.

"I'm right, aren't I?" Solanda asked.

He let go of the lamp, but didn't turn to face her.  He couldn't.  Not yet.

"You said the Isle has a wild magick.  She might never come into her Vision."

"That's right, she might not," Solanda said.  "I don't think it matters."

This time he did turn.  The tent had grown hot.  It wasn't designed for the flap to be down so hard, so long.  She had her hands on her hips, a debater's stance.

"Because you have two great-grandchildren, one with Vision and one that Shifts.  Think if they shared power."

"They can't share power," Rugad said.  "The Black Throne has room for one."

Solanda shook her head.  "You don't know that.  There have never been two worthy candidates born into a Black Family before."

"Yes, there has," Rugad said.  "In Ycyno, the Black Queen took power because she was the eldest.  But when she died childless, her brother took the throne.  There have been other instances of that, but never of anyone sharing."

Solanda smiled.  "If there are two worthy candidates, let them battle it out."

"I don't like it when you smile, Solanda."

She shrugged.  "Young Gift was raised by Failures.  He is no match for Arianna."

"They cannot fight.  You know that."

"Just like you couldn't kill your unworthy son," Solanda said.

Rugad took a deep breath.  He didn't like this woman's intelligence.  It was rare he met a mind as powerful as his.  He didn't like being on the other side of that.

"Your charge was raised by a Failure too," he said.  "And she lived among the enemy."

"I am a warrior, Rugad, not a Failure,"  Solanda said.  "And Arianna knows more about the Fey than her brother does.  She is the warrior.  He is not.  She'll do as I tell her."

"Will she?" Rugad asked.  He moved the light a little closer, setting it on the floor between them.  "Then why were you in Shadowlands without her?"

Solanda's gaze flickered away, then back to him, the movement so small that most wouldn't have noticed.  But Rugad did.  It was all he needed to know.

"I am not tied to the palace," Solanda said.  "I am free to go where I please."

"Were," Rugad said softly.  "You were free to go where you pleased."

Her mouth dropped open, and her eyes went momentarily blank before they filled with panic.  He liked intelligence.  It made explanations unnecessary.

"You need me, Rugad."

"Do I?" he asked.  Her panic, carefully masked now, made him cold inside.  She should have known better.  Her fear for her own life covered her intelligence, made her lose the edge she had had a moment before.

"She'll listen to me."

"I'm sure she'll listen to a Doppelgänger too.  If she was raised among the Islanders, she's probably never seen one."

"Don't do that," Solanda said.  She stood very still.  "Two Shifters on your side could be very valuable."

"I didn't know I had a side," Rugad said.  "By tomorrow, I will own this Isle, and then my great-grandchildren and I will move on to Leut."

"She won't leave."

Rugad shrugged.  "I have two great-grandchildren.  I don't need them both."

Solanda licked her lips.  "You're making a mistake, Rugad."

"No," he said quietly.  "You're making the mistake, Solanda.  The girl will be useful, but she does nothing to negate your Failure."