The Rival (6 page)

"No one will discuss this matter," Titus said.  "Reece and I will see what's happening with the holy water.  Call the Elders together, Rusel.  After Dimitri is fed and suitably clothed, I want him to tell the Elders everything he remembers.  That's every detail, son.  Can you do that?"

The boy nodded.  He was courageous, Titus had to give him that.  And young.

So very young.

"That's all," Titus said.  "Please take Dimitri to the kitchens.  He needs to eat.  Then make certain he is not injured before you bring him to the Elders."

Everyone looked at him.

"Please leave me," Titus said.  The boy stood, along with the Auds.  Titus put his hand on the boy's arm.  "You did well, son," he said.  "I'm pleased you came to us first."

A tear slid down the boy's newly scrubbed cheek.   "Where else would I go, Holy Sir?  I belong here."

"That you do," Titus said.  "I will see you shortly."  He nodded at the Auds, and they led the boy out of the room.  "Stay for a moment, Rusel."

Rusel glanced at his Danite, who bowed and left.  The two of them were alone in the room.  It seemed larger now that it was empty.  The stain Dimitri left on the rug gave off a muddy, iron smell.

"What do you think of his story?" Titus asked.

Rusel shook his head.  "It's too incredible to be true."

"I think he's telling the truth.  A young boy cannot fake that kind of deep fear."

"If he is, indeed, a young boy."

Titus smiled.  "We tested him with holy water."

"The water might be tainted."

"But the boy was the one who told us that."

Rusel's hands were gripping the side of the altar so tightly that his knuckles had turned white.  "The Fey are cunning, Holy Sir.  They might tell us the truth while concealing a greater lie."

"You think he's a Doppelgänger?"  Doppelgängers were Fey who picked a host, murdered it, and then duplicated its features exactly.  Titus had seen a Doppelgänger attack a host only once.  The Doppelgänger wrapped itself around the host's body, and sucked the very life out of it.  The host's bones had fallen to the floor, and the Doppelgänger landed, naked, looking exactly like the host.

It had been terrifying.

"Perhaps," Rusel said.  "It would explain many things."

"But why make up an attack that never happened?  It would be too easy to check."

"Still, Holy Sir, once Elder Reece has checked the holy water, I would like your permission to test the boy again."

"Granted," Titus said.  He leaned back, resting his elbows against the top step.  "What if the boy's story is true?  What if the Fey have taken over the Marshes?"

"I would wonder how they got to the Marshes.  The Mountains are impassable."

"The Fey are cunning," Titus said.  "You said so yourself."

"That does not convince me that they can achieve miracles," Rusel said.

"What if they left their Shadowlands months before, switched the holy water, and staged this attack to look as if they were coming from the mountains?"

"To what end, Holy Sir?"

"To send us in panic to the Kenniland Marshes.  The boy did not go to the palace.  He came here."

"And he said they were waiting in the kirk."

Titus nodded.  He no longer looked at Rusel.  He was staring at a pew.  It still bore faint scars from the attack so many years ago.  "They let him get away."

"You think the palace is behind this, Holy Sir?"

Titus shrugged.  "The Tabernacle has become quite a nuisance to them, has it not?"

"The King would never dare dispute the authority of the Rocaan."

"The King has done so many times.  Once he even toyed with declaring himself head of the Tabernacle."

"But that was under the Fifty-First Rocaan.  The Fifty-First Rocaan was crazed."

"Was he, Rusel?  He had never seemed crazed to me.  Merely tortured in body and spirit.  And he hated Fey, even more than the rest of us did."

"I cannot believe you're suggesting this, Holy Sir."

Titus turned, leaned on one elbow and looked up at Rusel.  The Officiate's face had gone from a stark white to a brilliant red.  His hands still gripped the side of the altar.  "Would you prefer the alternative?"

"That the boy is lying?  Yes, Holy Sir."

"And if he's not?  Would you still prefer the alternative?"

Rusel's adam's apple bobbed once as he swallowed nervously.  "That the Fey are doing this on their own?"

Titus nodded.

"They can't be, Holy Sir.  The holy water would have killed them."

"And what if they've found a way to survive it?  What if it no longer has any effect on them?"

"That's not possible," Rusel said. 

"It's always been a fear, that they would learn a way around holy water," Titus said.

"If they have … " Rusel said, his voice trailing off.

"We'll die," Titus finished for him.  "We'll all die."

SIX

Gift slipped behind a column on the fourth floor.  Finally, he was on familiar ground.  Sebastian's suite was nearby.  Sebastian rarely went anywhere other than his suite, his sister's rooms, and the garden.   Sometimes, Gift knew, Sebastian ate in the royal dining chamber or used the audience room, but Gift was never with him at those times.  Gift had only been to the suites and the garden. The rest of the palace was a mystery to him.

Getting inside had been amazingly easy.  He had imitated Sebastian's halting gait and kept his eyes averted.  His body, even though it looked like Sebastian's, wanted to move quickly, and he knew he had the gait wrong.  But no one noticed.  In fact, the few servants who saw him had bowed or courtesied.  Gift ignored them, as he knew Sebastian would have.

To do something out of the ordinary took additional energy for Sebastian.

But now Gift was at the tricky part.  He had to be careful to avoid the servants, and even more careful to avoid seeing Sebastian in the hallway.  No one outside of Shadowlands (except Solanda) knew that Gift was really the child of Nicholas and Jewel.  They all thought Sebastian was a living being instead of a golem.  He was a special golem, but a golem all the same.

The corridor was empty.  It smelled stuffy, as if it wasn't used much.  The columns were placed in the center of the corridor, one past each major doorway.  Eventually the corridor widened into a gallery.  Portraits of the royal children hung along the wall.  Dozens of the portraits were artificially posed scenes: two or three children cuddling a dog, or holding extremely large flowers.  None of the children looked happy.

Gift and Sebastian had studied all of these portraits.  The later ones had more life to them as the art of portraiture improved.  Gift's father, an only child, had the best portrait.  He sat at the edge of a brook, knees drawn to his chest, staring pensively into the water.  Gift didn't know if the portrait caught the essence of his father  —  he had only seen the man a few times  —  but it did make him look the most relaxed, the most real, of all of them.

The portrait of Arianna and Sebastian hung at the top of a flight of stairs.  Sebastian sat on a stone stairway, so motionless he looked like stone himself.  Arianna stood above him, her hair flying behind her as if she were caught, alone, in a breeze.  The artist had captured the essence of both of them: Sebastian's innocence and uncanny ability to be still; Arianna's brilliance and constant motion.  Gift loved the portrait as it was.  Sebastian told him, in his slow stilted manner, that he wished Gift could be in the portrait as well.

The gallery was empty.  The windows at the far end stood open, letting sunlight fill the hall.  Sebastian's door was also open, and Gift heard nothing from inside.  Sebastian had to be dressed and ready then.  Otherwise Gift would have heard a gaggle of servant voices, and the nurse who seemed to grow more commanding each year that her "precious boy" did not make significant improvements.

Gift sprinted across the hall, past the railings over the stairwell, and slipped inside Sebastian's door. 

The suite felt as familiar as home.  This was the only place Gift had ever been that was filled with light and color.  It had prevented him from suffering the Overs as Coulter did when he left Shadowlands, a strange paralyzing fear that came from living his entire life without stimulation.

The Fey weren't meant to live in Shadowlands.  Visionaries created Shadowlands as places to sleep during battles, as places to store weapons or to protect leaders.  Shadowlands was a box built with the mind of the Visionary, and linked to that Visionary like a body was linked to a mind.  Gift's grandfather built the Shadowlands Gift had grown up in, and when his grandfather died, Gift had held the Shadowlands together.  If Gift hadn't been there, Shadowlands would have been destroyed, killing all inside. 

Because Shadowlands wasn't a natural place, nothing could grow inside.  The walls, floor, and ceiling of the box felt solid, but were invisible.  The lack of light made Shadowlands a place of gray, a colorless domain.  Air could seep through the walls of Shadowlands but nothing else.  Gift grew up in an opaque mist that leached the color from even the most brilliant things.  He wouldn't even have known what color was if it weren't for his Links with Sebastian.

Gift loved this suite.  The sitting room had become the nursery when Arianna was old enough to walk.  The distance between the nursery and the stairs was longer here than it had been in the official nursery, giving the nurse a chance to catch her, something that hadn't been possible before.

Gift slid inside the doorway and carefully, quietly pulled the door closed.  He couldn't see Sebastian yet, but that didn't worry him.  The servants had probably helped Sebastian dress and then had given him orders not to move until someone came to get him.  That was the way these events worked in the past.  No sense in believing they would change the pattern now.

Gift peered around the corner into the dressing room.  No Sebastian.  He hurried through the dressing room into the bedroom.  This too felt familiar.  The bed was a large soft four poster with several thick blankets.  Sebastian was constantly cold, and piled the blankets on, even in the summer.  When Gift was visiting along the Link, he often had to pull the covers off.

The room was built on a turret that extended over the garden.  Two windows, one on either side, looked down on the blooms.  Their tapestries were up, letting strong breeze flow through.  Sebastian stood beside the window to Gift's left.   He stared straight ahead, at the blue sky, and the circling birds as if he wanted to be part of them.  His arms hung at his sides, looking useless even though they weren't.

Gift had never seen this changeling, this golem, this creature he loved like a brother, in the flesh.  The Link was like a string that attached them, a string Gift's consciousness could ride across, but Sebastian could not.  They had learned, as children, that Sebastian owed his own consciousness to Gift.  Every time Gift visited Sebastian's body, Gift left a tiny part of himself.  Those parts gained a life of their own.  Sebastian thought for himself, and saw himself as a separate being from the moment Gift's mother held him.  He used to hide that conscious self from Gift, thinking Gift would take over his body permanently.  When Gift discovered that, the boys were five, and Gift corrected that idea.  From that moment on, they were fast friends, and close confidants.

Brothers.

Or perhaps more.  Two parts of the same whole.

But they had never seen each other face to face.

Gift had warned Sebastian that he was coming, but that hadn't really impressed Sebastian. Sometimes actions were the only things that were clear to Sebastian.

Sebastian hadn't heard him come in.  Gift took a moment to orient himself.  Sebastian was as tall as he was, more solid than Gift was, and seemed steadier.

He was also wearing a long, embroidered white robe, which would make the afternoon very difficult

"Sebastian?" Gift said.

Sebastian tottered, then turned awkwardly, moving his feet in tiny intervals.  It was Sebastian's equivalent of a whirl, and it often made his more mobile sister laugh.  Finally he faced Gift, and his eyes widened.

His mouth opened, and Gift knew what would come out.

A scream.

Gift was across the room in a heartbeat, and placed his hand over Sebastian's mouth.  The scream started a second after, a raspy grinding sound that sent shivers through Gift.  His hand muffled most of it.

"It's me," he said.  "Gift."

Sebastian shook his head slowly, but with such strength it threatened  to dislodge Gift's fingers.

"Gift," he said again.  "I'm Gift."

Sebastian kept shaking his head, his eyes rolling with fear.  Sebastian had never thought of Gift as anything but a second self, not as a separate being.  Because Gift could travel along their Link, but Sebastian couldn't.  Sebastian was rooted to his own body.  Gift knew that, but he thought he had explained all of this to Sebastian.

Apparently he hadn't explained well enough.

Gift glanced at the open doors, hoped no one had heard the raspy muffled scream, and closed his eyes.  He reached for the Link, a pattern that was as old as Gift himself. Then he slid along it, startled at the shortness of the trip.  One moment he had been in his own body, the next he was in Sebastian's.

From the inside, Sebastian's body seemed huge.  They always met behind the eyes.  Sebastian's inner self was a partially formed child with a ghostly pale body and haunted eyes.  Gift crouched beside him, this more familiar form of his friend and companion.

It's me,
he said, gesturing at the view through Sebastian's eyes. 
The man there.  That's me.

Sebastian shook his head  —  he could move rapidly outside of his stone body  —  and buried his eyes in his hands.  Gift touched the ghostly, childlike chin and raised Sebastian's face to his own.

Remember what I told you, about the danger?

Yes.
  Sebastian's voice had grown deeper with the years.  It sounded like a man's voice coming from a child.

I had to come to you in my body.  I have to take you out of here.