The Black Queen (Book 6) (35 page)

“Maybe he knows stuff we don’t,” Matt said. “Stuff we can learn from.”

“He probably does,” Scavenger said. “But that doesn’t offset the dangers of having a Charmer in this place.”

He walked over to Wisdom and stood in front of him, his chest out, as if by doing that he could make himself taller.

“Promise you’ll leave and we’ll help you. Promise.”

“After we feed him,” Matt said.

“He’ll stay longer than a few hours,” Leen said. “I suspect the Healers will want to monitor his progress.”

“Promise,” Scavenger said.

Wisdom touched his mouth and shook his head. Then he walked past Leen and Scavenger, and went outside. Matt stared at all of them for a moment. They looked as surprised as he felt.

“Maybe he’s too scared to be fixed,” Matt said. “Maybe he doesn’t want it. Maybe he’s had other opportunities and he’s turned them down.”

“And maybe he’s playing with us,” Scavenger said.

“Why?” Matt asked. “He’s clearly starving.”

“He is that,” Leen said. “Go get him, Matt. We promised to feed him. It’s the least we can do.”

With an angry glance at Scavenger, Matt ran to the door. He pushed it open in time to see Wisdom hoist his canvas bag over his shoulder and start toward the path.

“Wait!” Matt shouted.

Wisdom stopped, but didn’t turn. Matt ran to him.

“We promised—I promised—to feed you, and we have your fish. You don’t have to do what we want. You don’t have to say a word. You can stay as long as you want. Scavenger’s just afraid of what you’ll do if you can talk.”

Wisdom bowed his head, but not before Matt saw a tiny, rueful smile. Was Scavenger the only one who was afraid of what Wisdom would do if he could talk? Or was Wisdom afraid of that too?

Matt took Wisdom’s arm. Wisdom looked down at him. “Come on,” Matt said.

Wisdom took a deep breath, looked at the path with a mixture of longing and regret, and then turned around. He put a hand on Matt’s shoulder as they walked.

It had been a long time since anyone had touched Matt in such a friendly way. Not even Coulter had done it. Coulter, who had left after promising Matt he would take care of him. Matt hoped that Leen would give him a special message from Coulter after she had told the others that he left.

But Matt doubted it. She could have done so already, but she had said nothing. Some things, apparently, were more important than Matt. He had learned that his whole life.

He straightened a little under Wisdom’s friendly touch. Coulter would be back soon. This was his school. It was his dream, his love. Scavenger was just being bitter because Scavenger was always bitter.

But, Matt knew, even when Scavenger was bitter, he always told the truth.

SEVENTEEN

“NO WAY,” his father mumbled. “No way for a man to live.”

Alex leaned against the stone altar. Golden light bathed the room. He was trying to concentrate on the Ancient Islander text. He could read it, but he certainly couldn’t understand it. He wished he had some sort of context to place this information in.

“No way,” his father said, voice rising. “Matt!”

“Alex,” Alex said, not letting go of the altar. The ability to tell the difference between his sons was one of the first skills his father lost.

Alex didn’t know exactly where his father was—he suspected he was beneath the table—but he didn’t want to look for him. His father had proven to be the most difficult part of Alex’s new resolution to use the old texts to discover how to control his own Visions. If, of course, Coulter was right.

What startled Alex was not the magickal instructions, but the way certain names kept recurring in this text. Alexander and Matthias were the original sons of the Roca, whose real name had been Coulter.

Maybe his father had been mad from the beginning. Maybe his father really saw himself as the Roca returned, as some people charged. Or maybe something else was going on. All this magick that everyone had been talking about, all of this energy that had taints and purities and light, maybe it recurred after a certain number of generations, and it took a specific kind of ability to set it right.

Maybe.

“Not living,” his father said. “Matt!”

“Alex,” Alex said between gritted teeth.

His father smelled bad and couldn’t be convinced to wash. He rarely ate, and he urinated into a jar. Sometimes he remembered to empty the jar outside, and sometimes he didn’t. The times he didn’t, he also forgot to clean up any spills.

Alex wished his old father would come back, the man who could answer any question about the history of Blue Isle. The man who claimed he didn’t believe in God, but that he should learn how. The man who said that God was visible in the mountains, in the magick, in the power he gave his people. The man who wondered what happened to that God long ago, and whether that God had been a man, just like the rest of them.

Alex remembered the questions. He just didn’t remember the answers. And he didn’t understand what he was studying. He knew the Words, the original Words that he was looking at, were a letter the Roca had written to his sons, Alexander and Matthias, after the Roca had been somehow reborn.

The Roca had been trapped in this cave, unable to leave, because the moment he stepped outside, he vanished. But he wrote this letter and sent copies of it to his sons, asking them to give up the magick he had discovered, the magick that grew in them like weeds in a flower garden, and telling them how they could control the magick that had slipped out of their grasp. He spent the rest of his days developing weapons that could destroy magick or capture it, and he filled the cavern with them.

In this part of the letter, the part Alex was trying to read, the Roca explained how the items were to be used. Something in the Words about aiming, about choosing a target, and unleashing. But he couldn’t concentrate, and the language was familiar enough to be confusing, unfamiliar enough to make understanding difficult.

“Matt!” his father yelled.

“Alex,” Alex said and closed his fist on the stone. The altar was the strangest thing of all. Whenever he touched it, it glowed. His father had laughed the first time he saw that, and said, “They hate it, those Wise Ones. We have the Roca running through our veins.”

His father appeared in the doorway, his hair matted and tangled, his face dirty. His robe was ripped and stained, but he wouldn’t take it off to put on the new robe that Alex had brought for him that morning. In his left hand, he clutched a necklace, a filigree sword. The sword used to be the symbol of Rocaanism. His father had wanted to change that; when he developed New Rocaanism, he wanted the symbol to be something that didn’t suggest war. Only he couldn’t think of anything.

“Matt?” he asked softly.

“Alex.” This time Alex spoke firmly. “I’m Alex.”

His father frowned. “You should be Matt.”

“Sorry,” Alex said.

His father’s eyes seemed clear. A frown made all the lines on his face deeper. “The second son takes to religion.”

“Not in this family,” Alex said. “The second son learns magick from the Fey.”

His father closed his eyes and leaned his head against the wall. Then he slammed his skull against the stone so hard that the sound echoed.

“Dad!” Alex said. “Stop!”

His father opened his eyes. They still seemed clear. “How long?” he asked.

“How long has Matt been studying with the Fey?”

“How long since the last time I spoke with you?”

“You’ve been talking off and on for days, Dad.”

“No.” His father’s voice shook. “Since you came here, speaking of Visions.”

His father was back, if only for a brief time. Somehow that made Alex sad. “A week.”

“Has your mother been here?”

“Every day,” Alex said. “She made me bring you a new robe.”

His father took the skirts of the robe and looked at it, brushing his fingers along the stains.

“You wouldn’t put it on.”

His father raised his head. “This is no way for a man to live,” he said.”

“No,” Alex said. “It isn’t. You should go home.”

“I keep waiting for her to come and take me.”

“She’s been here every day. You won’t go.”

“Not your mother.” His father’s voice was harsh. “
Her
.”

“Who, Father?” Alex asked, but his father didn’t seem to hear him. He was looking at the carved ceiling of the vault as if he hadn’t seen it before.

“I always thought she should be able to come here. The Roca could be visible here. Why couldn’t she? Or did she show respect? I kept expecting her to take me.”

“Who, Dad?”

His father looked at him, eyes still clear. “Get your mother for me.”

“Are you going to go home with her?”

His father shook his head. “I need to speak with her, now, while I still can. Hurry.”

His father had tried this before and it hadn’t worked. The last time, Matt had been the one to run for their mother. When they got back, Alex’s father had been sobbing in a corner, and completely unable to speak. He hadn’t asked for anyone since.

Alex almost reminded him of that time, then realized it would do no good. The only thing he could do was what his father asked of him.

Alex closed the Words, then left the altar. He walked through the Vault—it was such a place of reverence, he didn’t feel as if he could hurry, and then, when he got to the outer room, he ran.

The outer corridor felt strange to him. He had never run through it before. He noticed how it curved and went uphill, his feet slipping beneath him as he tried to go faster. He reached the steps quicker than he ever thought possible, and as he started up them, the door above opened.

His mother stared down at him.

“Mom!” he shouted, excited now. “Dad’s calling for you. He’s himself! Hurry!”

She came down the stairs faster than he’d ever seen her move. She had a basket over her arm that she dropped at the foot of the stairs. Then she took his hand and together they ran back the way he had come.

The doors were still open, and the faint smell of sweat and urine filled the hall. But as they came in, Alex was startled to see the father he remembered, not the one he had just left.

His father was wearing the new robe, and he had used the water that Alex had been bringing to clean his face and wet his hair. He seemed older, but his eyes had life in them for the first time in a long, long time.

His mother made a small cry and let go of Alex’s hand. She ran to his father, and wrapped her arms around him, holding him tight. Alex had never seen her do that. Until that moment, he hadn’t realized how hard it was on his mother, seeing his father that way. He wished Matt were here, so that he could be part of this, but Matt was probably with his Fey friends. Alex knew there was no time to find him.

After a moment, his father pulled out of the embrace. He stroked his mother’s hair, and then kissed her. It seemed like such a private moment that Alex looked away.

When he looked back it seemed as if they had forgotten him. They were staring into each other’s eyes with so much intensity that Alex finally understood how such different people as his parents had gotten together. Finally, his father kissed his mother’s forehead, and said, “It’s time, Marly.”

“No,” she said. “Ye come home with me. Twill be all right, I’ll make sure a that.”

He shook his head. “I was hoping that if I stayed here, I’d find a magick to reverse this. But the curse the Roca saw really does exist. I’m not going to get better. If Alex is to be believed, I’m worse. I certainly looked worse. If I don’t take care of things now, I’ll be less than a child by the end of the year.”

“Matthias—”

He put a finger on her lips. “Marly, please, I don’t know how long this clarity will last. Let me say my bit.”

Alex was biting his own lip, waiting. He could barely remember when his father was in this much control. Usually the clarity flashed in and out, and then disappeared at the very last moment.

“I figured if I couldn’t cure myself here, maybe Jewel would come for me. But she hasn’t. I’m not sure she can get into this part of the Roca’s Cave, and even if she could, I’m not sure she will. The soul repositories—”

“Ye dinna need her. She’ll kill you, Matthias. Ye know that. Come home.” His mother sounded almost desperate. “Please. The boys and I, we need ye. More than anything here ever could.”

He kissed her again. Alex was twisting his own hands together, half wishing, half praying this father would stay, and knowing, deep down, that he could not.

“I know she’ll kill me, Marly,” his father said. He was holding her by the shoulders as if to make sure she wouldn’t break away from him. “I know. I want her to.”

“No. Tis na right n ye know it. Come home, Matthias.”

“It is right,” Matthias said. “We have an old score. And besides, maybe she’ll leave after she takes care of me. Then the boys are free to live the life that we planned for them. Take care of them, Marly. They need you.”