The Rival (7 page)

The city?

Gift could feel the child-like excitement rising around them.  Sebastian had only made a few trips into the city, and he had loved all of them.  His family hadn't loved it though, and the taunts that Sebastian had received had broken Gift's heart.

My home.  You want to come to my home?  It's where you were born.

And you were born here.

Gift smiled. 
That's right.  Then they switched us.

Sebastian smiled back.  They were on familiar territory now.  They had told this story to each other many times. 
Can Arianna come?

Not right now,
Gift said. 
Maybe later.

And my father?

He has to stay here.  He's in charge here.

He won't like it if I leave.

He won't like it if you die.

Sebastian's gaze flickered and before them appeared the slender form of Gift's mother, supine, her head melting from the holy water.  Sebastian had cried for her for months.  Gift's father stood beside her, looking lost.

Then the image disappeared.

Will I die like that?
Sebastian asked, a shiver running through his real body and shaking them like the wind would shake a leaf.

Gift shook his head and thought of the Vision.  The image of Sebastian on the floor, a knife in his back,  filled the space between them.

That's me?
Sebastian asked, his voice small.

If you don't come with me.

Who are those people?

I don't know,
Gift said. 
They look like Fey, but they aren't any Fey I know.

I don't know any Fey.

Except Solanda.

She calls me lump.  Fey are mean people.

We're part Fey,
Gift said. 
Your mother was Fey
.

Gift's mother's face rose between them.  She was peering at them, her narrow features beautiful in the half light. 
He's smiling,
  she said.  
I love it when he smiles.

You look funny,
Sebastian said softly. 
I didn't think you were real like everybody else.  I thought you were like me.

I am like you,
Gift said.  He was still staring at his mother's image, floating behind him.  She looked young, but ferocious somehow.  Her Fey features were pronounced.  Her entire face was upswept  —  her eyes, her cheekbones, even the edges of her mouth.  She had been a mother to Sebastian.  She hadn't even known Gift was alive.

You have your own body,
Sebastian said.  He leaned against his mother's image, as if needing her support. 
If you have your own, how come you need mine?

I
don't need yours, Sebastian,
Gift said, feeling desperate.  He wanted to go to Sebastian's eyes and see the room.  Any moment now someone would come looking for Sebastian. The ceremony had to start soon. 
I visit yours because we're Linked.

Then how come I can't visit yours?
  Sebastian had his tiny ghostly arms crossed.  Gift had seen this stubbornness before.  If he didn't answer it, they would never leave.

It's a Link,
Gift said. 
You should be able to visit my body.  You just didn't know I had one until now.

So why can't I stay here and Link to you?  They'd hurt my body but not me.

Gift shook his head. 
That might shatter the Link and kill both of us, he said.  It's better that you come with me.

Can I tell my Dad?
Sebastian asked.

After we leave,
Gift said. 
I'm afraid if we don't go soon, something will happen to both of us.

I don't want to go,
Sebastian said.

I know,
Gift said,
but I think we have no choice.  I love you, Sebastian.  I don't want anything to happen to you.

Sebastian got up and put his arms around Gift.  The ghostly arms felt light and not quite solid. 
I love you too, Gift.

Then come with me.

Sebastian nodded against Gift's chest.  Bring
me home quick, though.

As quickly as I can,
Gift said.  He took Sebastian's tiny shoulders and moved away from him. 
I'm going to break the Link now.  Then I'll take your hand, and we'll leave together.  We're going to go out the window.  You have to climb like I taught you, all right?

Sebastian nodded.  He was biting his lower lip.  Those climbs out the window had been precarious, and Sebastian had never done one on his own.

All right,
Gift said. 
The next time you see me, I'll be in my own body.

Sebastian nodded again.  Gift slid along the Link and arrived in his own body with a jolt.  His hand was still over Sebastian's mouth, and his head was still turned toward the door.  He brought his hand down.  Sebastian closed his mouth.

"It's me," Gift said.  "Just like I told you."

Sebastian's eyes were wide, but he brought his head up and down once.  He looked terrified and lost. 

"All right," Gift said.  He took Sebastian's hand.  "We'll go now."

"I … can't … get … the … robe … dir-ty."  Sebastian spoke as fast as he could, which was still slow by most standards.  His mouth didn't form the words well, and he had trouble creating sound in his throat.  The problem got worse as he had gotten older, not better. Gift suspected it had something to do with Sebastian's size, and the fact that a golem wasn't supposed to live this long, or grow this big.  The strain on the magick was simply too much.

"Tell them it's my fault," Gift said.  He tugged on Sebastian's arm.  Sebastian took one step toward Gift and then stopped.

Gift turned.

Arianna stood in the doorway, her dressing robe wrapped tightly around her, her hair messed and tangled.

"Who are you?" she asked, a small tremble in her voice revealing her surprise.  "And what are you doing to my brother?"

SEVEN

Matthias stood, shirtless, in the door of the smithy.  The furnace roared behind him, making the open room unbearable in the afternoon heat.  Sweat poured down his back.  His breeches were damp, and his bare feet left prints on the straw-covered dirt. 

The moment of truth had arrived: Yeon had finished forging the sword.  Now he was about to plunge it into the cool water bath.  The last five times he had done this, the sword had shattered.

Matthias stepped closer.  Yeon's broad, muscular torso glinted with sweat, and was covered with black grime from the fire behind him.  He used clippers to plunge the hot sword in water.   Hissing started immediately, and steam rose, blinding both of them, and making the area even hotter.

Yeon glanced at him, eyes nearly hidden in his filthy face.  Matthias said nothing, just watched the steaming trough.  If Yeon could stand the increased heat, Matthias could too.  Yeon was doing this at Matthias's suggestion.  It was long, hard, hot work, but they had made some progress. 

At first, Yeon had thought the strange metal from the Cliffs of Blood was unforgeable.  It had taken them nearly a month to find the right combination of heat and tension to make the metal into a sword in the first place.

But they had done it.  They simply hadn't been able to finish the process.

Matthias discovered the metal, called varin, during his long sojourn in the Cliffs of Blood.  After he resigned from his position as the Fifty-First Rocaan, he ran home, to the Cliffs.  He had no family left.  He hadn't even been back in decades, but the villages looked the same, nestled near Blue Isle's northeastern most mountains.  The Cliffs of Blood were tall and imposing; the jagged blood red stones lining the peaks gave the cliffs their name.  They were actually part of the northern range, the Eyes of Roca, taller than the Snow Mountains to the south, and much more deadly. 

The people up there had a hard edge to them, a lack of belief in anything, including Rocaanism.  It had been a perfect respite for him, after a life in the Tabernacle.

But he had continued his scholarship.  It had been more of a religion to him than the real religion anyway.  And he had learned some things that would surprise the true believers.  Things that had surprised him.

The steam kept rising from the bath.  Matthias leaned closer.  The stench of Yeon's body rivaled his own.  They had been at this too long.  Fortunately the smithy stood at the edge of a dead-end street, in the farthest reaches of Jahn.  Auds rarely came here, and lords never did.  This was the poorest section, the kind of place forgotten now that the Fiftieth Rocaan  —  with his focus on the less fortunate  —  was long dead.

Matthias had been here for two months, unnoticed and unrecognized.  Fifteen years had changed more about him than his appearance.  Then he had been a high-ranking Elder, and finally appointed (unwillingly) to Rocaan.  His finery and the status of his office gave him his identity.  Now he was like all the rest in the kingdom, with rough fingers from hard labor, and a face lined from too much time in harsh weather.  His clothes were still fine  —  the followers near the Cliffs had some excellent seamstresses  —  but grimy with use.

"Back!" Yeon shouted, and with a meaty arm, shoved Matthias toward a pile of straw. 

Matthias let himself tumble backward and covered his head with his arms.  Yeon landed with a grunt behind him, and then the sword exploded.

Boiling water fell on them like rain.  Mixed with the droplets were hardened bits of varin.  Matthias kept his face covered and protected the most vulnerable areas of his body.  The varin pellets had hit him before and left welts the size of fists along his back.  He would get welts again.

Yeon was cursing, his words muffled by his position under the straw.  Matthias knew what the smithy was saying; he was casting aspersions on the Roca's parentage, on the Tabernacle's holiness, and on the King's love of the Fey.  A hissing echoed behind them as the bulk of the water fell toward the furnace.  It would take some cleaning before the smithy was ready for use again.

And then it was over.  Matthias raised his head.  He had small burns along his right arm, where the water hit, and a lump was already forming on the back of his left hand.  Despite the pain from the welts, they pleased him.  It meant that people had the same reaction to forged varin as some had to holy water.

The Fey's reaction might be even stronger.

He pushed the straw off Yeon.

"I don't know why I let you talk me into this," Yeon said.  "It's a fool's project, and it will never ever work.  No one can make varin into a sword.  No one can make varin into anything."

"That's why Old Lady Fice had varin tools in her stable," Matthias said.  He had shown Yeon the varin tools over a year ago, when they had first discussed this project.

"Find her smithy and have him make the sword for you."

"Her smithy is dead, and I have you."

"I'm a scholar just like you, holy man.  My smithing days are long gone."

Matthias smiled.  "They were long gone.  But you've had six months of practice now."

"Six months of exploding metal."  Yeon picked straw off his skin.  He had welts too.  He wiped an arm over his face, leaving a long black streak on his forehead.  "Most metals don't explode."

"I suspect that's what makes this one so special."  Matthias picked some straw off his stomach.  He was in the middle of the straw pile on the outside of the smithy.  The water had exploded backwards, into the smithy, putting out the forge fire, but leaving the furnace running.  Steam and smoke still poured out.

They would have quite a mess to clean up.

"I think you're chasing your tail," Yeon said, as he pushed himself to his feet.  "I really do."

"Maybe," Matthias said, "but if I am, you're chasing with me."

Yeon grunted, put a hand over his mouth, and went inside.

Sometimes it did feel as if they were chasing a dream.  But Matthias's scholarship had turned up interesting changes in Rocaanism over the centuries.  The Fiftieth Rocaan had pointed the way by resurrecting the original recipe for holy water.  Once he put in an ingredient missing from the common recipe, some people started to have skin reactions.  Elder Reece had the worst one, and it was his lack of a reaction that led the Fiftieth Rocaan to know that a Fey had tampered with the holy water in the Tabernacle.

The reactions intrigued Matthias.  What if the Islanders' reactions were merely a mild form of the melting the Fey suffered?  If that were the case, then perhaps there were other ways of attacking the Fey, ways forgotten or not yet discovered.

He brushed the last of the straw off himself.  He had started pursuing this theory when he couldn't get that Fey's voice out of his head.  Burden, the Fey he"d murdered, had said Matthias had Fey-like magick, and that he had used that magick to create the poisonous qualities of holy water. 

You changed the water's properties,
Burden had said. 
Your magic is now part of the mix, and that is a sign of a very powerful magic maker.

His voice mingled with the voices of so many others. 

Demon spawn.

They had called Matthias that from childhood because of his unusual height.  That had been one of the reasons he'd decided to join the Tabernacle.

You're tall,
Burden had said. 
Islanders usually aren't tall.  Height seems to go with the magick for reasons we don't understand.

Matthias had killed him for saying that.  Or at least, the Fey had tried to make Matthias believe he had killed Burden.  There had been another Fey in the room, a spark of light known as a Wisp, and it had flown into Matthias's face before Burden's death. Who knew what kind of magick the Wisp had imparted? Who knew how they had tried to warp his mind? 

He had resigned as Rocaan.  He hadn't been able to continue anyway, not after Jewel's death.  But he hadn't lost his interest in the history of the Tabernacle.  And that interest had gone from the history of the Tabernacle to the history of the Secrets.