Read Online The Black King (Book 7) by Kristine Kathryn Rusch - Free Book Online

said.
    “Were?” Gift asked.
    Ace nodded. “They were Islanders.”
    That surprised Gift. “Did they know who we were?”
    “Yes.” Ace’s response was curt. “They were trying to kill you.”
    “Me?” That made no sense. He was an Islander. His father had been a beloved king.
    “They think you’re bringing in a new invasion force. They think you’re going to kill all the pure Islanders and cover the Isle with Fey.”
    “Where would they get that idea?” Gift asked.
    Ace shrugged.
    “How did they know we were coming?” Skya asked. “Have you sent messages, Gift?”
    “No.” Gift ran a hand through his wet hair. “Were they working alone?”
    “There’s a group of them. I couldn’t find out how many. They weren’t that forthcoming, and they died faster than I expected.”
    That last sent a slight shiver through Gift.
    “But they did say that there are more archers waiting along the river.”
    “Wonderful,” Gift said.
    “It’s good to know,” Skya said. “At least now we’ll be ready for them.”
    “The river narrows farther ahead. We’ll be easier targets.”
    “I don’t think the two sent any messages off before we killed them,” Ace said.
    “Good.” Skya put a hand on his arm. “Then the others won’t know we’re coming. We can get them before they get us.”
    “Maybe along the river,” Gift said. “But we need to find the source of this rumor, find out how fast it’s spread, and what we can do about it. I’m not walking through my home, watching my back.”
    “I think you’re going to have to do that anyway,” Skya said. “Obviously some people don’t want you here.”
    Gift frowned and looked at the cliffs. “Ace, get the Bird Riders together and scout the cliffsides. We need to know whether there are any more archers ahead.”
    Ace nodded, and shifted back to his gull state. Then he took a run along the deck, and flew off.
    “You should have let him rest,” Skya said.
    “I don’t think we’re going to get a chance to rest,” Gift said. “I think it’s going to take everything we have to survive.”

 
     
     
     
    SIX
     
     
    COULTER’S STOMACH was churning as he walked back to his school. The building had once been a single stone house, but over the years he’d added rooms. Now it looked like several stone houses pushed together, with a dirt magick yard that in any other place would be a garden or a playground in the very center.
    He’d left Arianna at the river. For the first time, he was glad she was no longer residing in his head. He didn’t want her to know how upset she had made him.
    He understood her points. In fact, he knew she was right. But to do what she wanted meant he had to ask people he cared about to risk their lives, to follow a plan that probably wouldn’t succeed.
    But he had known, deep down, that waiting was wrong. That Rugad was too smart to return here, the place where he had died. He would know that inside the Roca’s Cave, the place the Fey called the Place of Power, he would probably die again.
    There were all sorts of magicks inside that cave, all developed by Rocaanists to get rid of magickal beings. It was a strange tautology: magick, which helped form the religion, became its anathema. But in order to wipe out the magick, the religious had to use magick.
    Coulter could only think of one tool in the Roca’s Cave—or at least, the one tool he understood—that would get Rugad out of Arianna’s body, and that was the Soul Repository. Somehow, Matthias, the Fifty-First Rocaan, had used one of those dolls to trap Jewel’s soul. Coulter wasn’t sure how he did it, but he knew there was a magick—or a religious ritual—that provided for it.
    Matthias’s son, also named Matthias, was an Enchanter like his father had been. But unlike his father, young Matt was receiving training so that he could learn how to control his magickal abilities. Control was the essence of all magick, Fey and Islander. Without control, the most