The Black Queen (Book 6) (50 page)

He shut his eyes, and used his second sight. There were a lot of disconnected Links floating about her, none of them tying to the others. There was also a blackness threading through her entire body, and a golden light that seemed to envelop her. Neither of those looked familiar. They were magicks he had never seen before.

He put his other forefinger on her right temple and his thumbs brushed on her chin. That would hold them together, no matter what.

He touched one active Link before he realized it was not the one that connected her to him. Then he found his own Link to her, closed off on his side, the door slammed the day he walked out of the garden. He opened the door, and stepped into the light.

The light extended the short distance between them, existing only in the air beyond their physical bodies. The doors that Coulter saw actually existed inside their minds, but the Link was an actual road of light that connected them.

As he stepped out, he saw, as he had hoped, an open door. He slipped inside and he was inside her mind.

He had been here before, years ago, when she had been lost and he had had to find her. Then it had been a wild, unformed place, damaged by the recent fight. Now it was rigidly divided, and he had no sense of her at all.

But he should. He should feel her in here. Her presence should be all around them. He walked through a narrow pathway, lined with black—all the walls and paths were lined with black—and went to her eyes. They were closed. If he tried, he could feel his own fingers against her temple. The birthmark throbbed beneath his thumbs, but he couldn’t feel the throbbing from in here, and it should be a dominant feeling.

“An Islander who looks Fey,” said a male voice. It echoed around him and spoke in both Fey and Islander at the same time.

Coulter felt himself grow cold, even though he had no body in here. Only an imaginary body, the body he envisioned within himself. It manifested as a tall Islander, with blond hair, blue eyes that slanted up, blond eyebrows, and slanted ears. An Islander who looked Fey.

Slowly he turned away from Arianna’s shuttered eyes. Coulter took his time, assessing what he had heard. Someone who had enough mastery to speak two languages at once, to know such a thing was possible within this place, and then to use it.

What he saw surprised him: a teenage Fey boy with Gift’s face. No. The face was slightly wrong. It was too narrow, and the eyes were so brown they seemed black. But the expression of wry amusement was Gift’s and so were the set of the chin, the way the brows moved when he spoke, the slight upturned edges of the mouth.

The boy was lanky with the suggestion of great strength to come in the shoulders and legs.

“I don’t believe we’ve met,” the boy said in both languages. “I’m Rugad.”

Coulter felt that chill again, in his non-existent body. He hadn’t expected a young Rugad, and he hadn’t expected the young Rugad to look so much like Gift at the same age.

“And you’re the Islander Enchanter, the one I searched for, the one my son raised from an infant. It’s pathetic how much you want to be Fey. Is that why you’re in love with my great-granddaughter? Or is it because she’s the female version of my great-grandson, the one you’re Bound to?”

The words were intended to make Coulter mad. He knew that. And they worked. But he held back. He wouldn’t lose his temper here. He had Arianna to think of.

“My name is Coulter.” He made sure he spoke Islander and Fey as well.

“Coulter.” Rugad spoke softly. “Coulter. You have come to save your precious Arianna. But it’s too late. I’ve already built my encampment here.”

“I see that,” Coulter said.

“It’s permanent.”

“Really?” Coulter asked. “Then why aren’t you in control of her body yet?”

A violent shudder nearly knocked him off his feet. The shudder came from Arianna’s body. He didn’t know if she intended it, or if Rugad had done it to throw him off.

Coulter had to remember that nothing he felt in here was real. Nothing could hurt him. To remind himself, he floated a few feet off the surface he had been standing on.

“I shut the door to the Link,” Rugad said, “and we’re both trapped in here.”

“I don’t think you want to keep it closed,” Coulter said. “You’d be stuck with me, and I’d side with Arianna.”

“You’d die without your body.”

“You didn’t,” Coulter said. “And I learn quickly.”

“It’s not part of your magick.”

“Everything is part of my magick.” As he spoke, Coulter realized he was making a mistake. Rugad was trying to distract him. Nothing was as it seemed here. The rules did not apply in the same way. Just as Coulter could speak two languages at the same time, he could be in more than one place at once.

He split part of himself off, made it invisible, and sent it in search of Arianna. As it floated away, he felt something niggle at him from Rugad’s words.

“Then I could go to your body,” Rugad said. He clearly didn’t know that Coulter had separated part of himself. “Imagine what I could do with an Enchanter’s powers.”

“Nothing,” Coulter said. “You wouldn’t know how to use them.”

The second part of himself saw lines and walls and divisions everywhere. They were all established by Rugad. Arianna did not like or believe in walls. They were all threaded with black, and they looked like as unnatural as buildings erected in a cave. He did not see or feel Arianna in any of them.

“Ah, but I would figure it out,” Rugad said.

He was still trying to distract Coulter. Why? There was something he didn’t want Coulter to see. It had something to do with a mention Rugad had made earlier.

“Where’s Arianna?” Coulter asked.

“Here, of course,” Rugad said. “Did you think I’d harm her?”

“You can’t harm her,” Coulter said. “If you did, she’d die and then you’d have no body.”

That was it. The body and the Links. Rugad had said he could go to Coulter’s body. Seger had said she had conversed with Rugad in Sebastian’s body. Sebastian and Arianna were Linked.

“Are you so sure that her death wouldn’t mean that I controlled this body?” Rugad asked.

Coulter was sure. That was one bit of magick that Coulter did understand. It was common to all constructs. They needed a form maintained by someone else in order to survive. That was why golems were so perfect. The form was created by someone else, and could be maintained by the construct.

But Coulter decided to play along. “You couldn’t,” he said, making himself sound panicked. “You’d do that blood thing.”

Rugad laughed. “Black Blood against Black Blood? It only refers to physical blood. It’s very literal. And you’ve even seen how the blood creates itself.”

He had? He decided not to think on that now. His second self still hadn’t found Arianna. And he needed a third self.

“Are you sure?” Coulter asked. “If you’re wrong, you destroy everything.”

“I’m sure,” Rugad said. “As long as I don’t cause death to the physical body.”

Slowly, gently, Coulter separated half of his remaining self, and made sure it too was invisible. Then he sent it toward his own Link door. If Arianna kept her Links like Gift kept his, all the doors would be in one place.

“But,” Coulter said. “If you destroy her soul, her body will die.”

“Not if someone else controls it, keeps the heart beating, the blood pumping and the air moving.”

That sounded right. The panic Coulter feigned filled him briefly. He pushed it away.

“You forget,” Rugad said. “I am not an invader like you. She took me into herself. I am part of her now.”

Coulter’s third self had found the Link doors. All of them were closed except his. He was about to turn away when he saw—

“I own her,” Rugad said.

—a door slightly open. He went to it, and touched the Link, and felt a presence as cold as stone, yet with a warmth that was sweet and innocent. He recognized it immediately.

Sebastian.

Suddenly he felt a presence beside him. Rugad somehow knew what he was doing. Coulter slammed the Sebastian door closed, and locked it with one of his own locks. A personal lock could only be broken by the person who established it.

Rugad grabbed Coulter’s third self and slammed him against the door, trying to shove him toward his own Link and out. Coulter fought hard, but Rugad was three times stronger than he was, and younger—

—and a construct who knew he had no physical presence. Coulter turned himself into water and slipped away, then called back his missing parts. He hurried to his own Link door, and locked it.

“I’m not leaving here until I find Arianna,” he said.

Rugad laughed. The sound was a live thing all around him. “Then you’re not leaving,” he said.

“As long as I’m here,” Coulter said, leaning on his door, “you’ll never get to exercise any power. You’ll have to fight me for the rest of your life.”

“The rest of
my
life?” Rugad rose up, crossed his legs and arms, and floated. He looked very relaxed. “Actually, I’ll only have to fight you for the rest of yours.”

Coulter suppressed a curse. Rugad was right, of course. Rugad was a construct, with no body. He was designed for this. Coulter had his own body that, in days, would fade away and die. He had to be in it to get it to eat and drink. Without either food or water, he wouldn’t live long. He doubted Seger would be able to help him. His time in here was limited, whether he liked it or not. And he had to consider that, because if he left when his body was too badly weakened, he wouldn’t be able to help Arianna.

“Hadn’t thought of that, had you?” Rugad asked. “I have all the time in the world. I will eventually become this body. You are the intruder here, not me.”

“We both are,” Coulter said.

“I was welcomed.” Rugad spread out his arms. “And I must say, this is a fantastic body. It has powers that I never did have.”

Coulter had to separate again, had to start searching for Arianna, but he was reluctant. He didn’t know what Rugad would do, and now that he was here, he wasn’t sure how to fight him. Arianna had to know that Coulter was here. She had to hear their voices, feel the doors close, know that something was going on.

She had to.

Or was she near death already?

“You have no Vision here,” Coulter said. “That magick belongs to Arianna, and you have no body of your own. You can’t appropriate her Sight.”

Rugad’s arms dropped and his dark gaze grew cool. So that was the problem, the problem that Rugad had thought he would solve before taking over. If he never solved it—and being awakened early, as Seger said, may have interfered with that—he would need Arianna for the rest of her life.

That, at least, was good news.

“I don’t have to appropriate her Sight,” Rugad said. “She shares it with me. She shares everything with me. Are you jealous of that, Islander?”

She shared everything, and not willingly. No wonder she couldn’t fight him. If he could hear her thoughts, she couldn’t plan. She couldn’t do anything.

Coulter had hoped that, once he found her, he would have her help. But that wouldn’t work. Rugad would then know what they were going to do.

Coulter had to take care of Rugad himself, and then he had to find Arianna. Two different tasks. And the first one was the hardest because Coulter had no idea what to do.

TWENTY-EIGHT

SEBASTIAN STOOD near the closed window, just as Seger instructed him to. His arms were at his side, his gray eyes staring straight ahead. He wore only a cloth wrapped around his middle. Seger would have preferred him nude, but Sebastian insisted. He was modest on top of everything else. That was the only one of her instructions he did not follow. Otherwise he did everything else she asked. He had an amazing ability to stand immobile, and it made him look like a cracked and ruined statute of Gift.

Con sat on the edge of the bed. He was wearing Fey clothes, but the small filigree sword he wore around his neck rested on top of his jerkin. His real sword, the one that they needed, lay across his thighs. The sword was old and battered, with dried blood from other battles on its blade. Con had told Seger he was afraid to clean the blade, afraid he would hurt himself, and afraid he would destroy the sword’s power.

She wasn’t going to touch it. She remembered how badly it had injured Fey, years ago, when Con and the sword had fought their way through more than twenty more experienced warriors. She had cleaned the wounds of the warriors who had survived, and she had seen how cleanly the sword had cut through them, as if they were made of butter instead of flesh and bone.

Con was so much older now, his adult face covered with care lines, the boyishness gone. When he had come in, he had hugged Sebastian, and Sebastian had returned the hug, as slowly as Sebastian always did.

That was how Seger knew that Rugad was no longer in Sebastian’s body.

Her heart was pounding and her fingers were shaking. They didn’t have a lot of time. The moment Rugad discovered what they were doing, he would try to stop it. Somehow. Some way.

She hoped Coulter was having good luck.