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"There were more cauldrons than that," Rhys said.
Doyle pushed away from the glass enough to turn his head and look behind him
at the other men. I
stayed wrapped around his back. "Not real ones," Doyle said.
"They were real, Doyle, they just weren't given to us by the gods. Some among
us had the ability to make such things."
"They could not do what the great cauldrons could do," Doyle said.
"No, but they didn't disappear when the gods withdrew their favor, either."
Doyle turned, and I had to let him go so he could pace back toward Rhys. "They
did not withdraw their favor. We gave up the power to work directly with them.
We gave them up, they did not give us up."
Rhys held up his hands. "I don't want to have this argument, Doyle. I don't
think a few centuries will make the fight any more fun. Let's just agree to
disagree. All we know for certain is that one day the great relics began to
vanish. The things that the fey had made themselves, from their own magic,
remained behind."
"Until the second weirding magic," Frost said. It was the longest sentence I'd
gotten out of him since this afternoon. I'd tried to speak to him in the hall,
and he'd been curt and avoided me. I was the one who had nearly died, but he
was the one throwing the fit. Typical Frost.
"Yes," Nicca said in his soft voice, "and then the items we'd wrought
ourselves began to break, or just
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stopped working. It was as if the spell drained them."
I knew that Nicca was centuries old, but I kept forgetting until he said
something that forced me to remember.
"I don't think everyone would have agreed to the second weirding if they'd
known what would happen to our wands, our staffs." Nicca shook his head,
sending his deep brown hair glimmering in the lights. "I
wouldn't have agreed."
"Many of us would not have agreed," Doyle said.
"If that's true," I said, "then how did you all agree to the weirding that
made the Nameless? That was the third weirding, so you all knew what to
expect. You all knew how much you could lose."
"What choice did we have?" Rhys said. "It was either give up more of our power
or be exiles without a country."
"We could have stayed in Europe," Frost said.
"And what," Doyle said, "be forced out of our hollow hills to buy houses and
live next door to humans?
To be forced to intermarry with humans." He looked back at me and said, "I
don't mean to insult the princess, but a little mixed blood is one thing; to
be forced to marry humans is something else. Those who remained behind in
Europe had to sign treaties to give up their culture." He spread his arms and
hands wide. "Without their culture and belief a people do not exist."
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"That's why they did it," Rhys said. "It was a way of destroying us that
didn't smack of genocide."
"The humans were not strong enough to kill us all," Frost said.
"No," Rhys said, "but they were strong enough to bring us to the treaty table
and force a peace that more than half of every race of the fey thought was
unfair."
"I know the facts of what happened," I said, "but this is the first time I've
ever heard any of you talk about the exile with this much emotion."
"We left Europe to save what was left of faerie," Doyle said. "Now that cup
sits on the table, and it will all begin again."
"What will begin again?" I asked.
"The Goddess gave us her gifts, the Consort gave us his gifts, then one day
they were gone. How can we trust that whatever gift we are given will not
abandon us at our hour of need?" Pain, anger, frustration, hope, all fought
across the darkness of his face.
"I think you're borrowing trouble," I said. "I think that we should figure out
if the cauldron still does what it used to do before we worry about it
disappearing again."
Rhys shook his head. "It never worked just because we wanted it to. It feeds
us when we need to be fed. It heals when we need healing. The high holy relics
are not sideshow entertainment. They only work if there's need."
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"It's a matter of faith," Nicca said. "We have to have faith that it will help
us when we need it." He didn't sound happy about it when he said it.
"Faith," Rhys said, so full of emotion that his voice was lower than normal,
thick with things unsaid. "I
gave that up a long time ago, Nicca. I'm not sure I can pick it back up
again."
"I think we all believed we were truly gods," Doyle said, "equal to any. When
the first lessening happened, we learned different." He strode to the table
and looked almost as if he was going to pick up the cup, but he didn't. "We
learned the difference between playing gods and being gods." He shook his
head. "It is not a lesson I want to learn twice."
"Me, either," Rhys said.
"I was never more than I am right now," Frost said. "I learned different
lessons." He didn't sound any happier about his lessons than the rest did
about theirs.
My father had made sure I knew the cold facts of our history, but he'd never
complained, never spoke of the pain I was seeing now. I'd known intellectually
that the sidhe had lost much, but I hadn't really understood. I probably
didn't understand even now, but I would try. Goddess help me, I would try.
"Didn't the children of Dana demand that the goblins not be gods to the
humans?" Kitto asked. "Wasn't that your rule to the very first peace treaty
with us? Is it that much different from what the humans have done to all of
us?"
Rhys turned toward the smaller man. "How dare you compare  " He stopped in
midsentence and shook his head. He rubbed his free hand across his face as if
he was tired. "Kitto's right," he said.
The surprise showed on all our faces, even Doyle's. "Did you just agree with
Kitto?" Nicca asked.
Rhys nodded. "He's right. When we first landed, we were as arrogant, and as
determined to break the goblins' power, as the humans are of us."
"I'm not sure it's arrogance on the humans' part," I said. "I think it's
mostly fear that another fey-and-human war might decimate Europe."
"But it's still arrogance to think that they can dictate rules of conduct to a
civilization that existed millennia before their ancestors stopped living in
caves," Rhys said.
To that I could add nothing, so I didn't try. "I concede the point."
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He grinned at me. "You're not going to argue with me?"
I shrugged. "Why should I? You're right."
"You know, you have a mighty democratic way of thinking for the heir to a
throne." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]