Free The Black Queen (Book 6) by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

frowned. The light had a feeling. It drew and repelled him at the same time. And beneath that feeling was a vibration that echoed through him, making him realize how very small, how very frail he was. Something ancient flowed in that light, something that had great power and great history.
    It flew over him and along a trajectory that would take it over the Cliffs of Blood to the Infrin Sea. As the light passed, he got the sense that he knew it, or part of it. He had met it before, in a different form, a familiar form. A hated form? He wasn’t sure. All he knew was that even though he had never seen a light like this, he recognized it as something other than what it was.
    “Coulter?” Leen sounded concerned.
    He held up a hand. It wasn’t over. He felt a very strong magick behind him. He turned toward the cave, the entrance to the Place of Power. He sensed several beings standing in the cave’s mouth. This was a familiar sensation: he had felt it years ago when Gift’s dead mother Jewel had returned as a Mystery, a ghost-like creature that wasn’t alive but hadn’t ascended into the Powers either. Gift and his father Nicholas had been able to see her, but Coulter hadn’t. He had sensed her as solid person-shaped mass of magick.
    He hadn’t sensed her in a long, long time. Not since King Nicholas disappeared down a tunnel inside this very cave.
    Coulter walked toward the mouth of the cave. “Jewel?” he asked, knowing that she wouldn’t be able to answer him. But as he got closer, he realized that his first impression had been correct: there were several magickal shapes here. If he concentrated, he could separate them one from another. He counted seven at the edge of the cave door, and ten in a row behind it, and more behind them, more than he could count.
    All of the Mysteries? It wasn’t possible, was it? Had they been summoned by the light or were they drawn to it as he was? Or were they watching it for another reason?
    He wished he could talk with them. He didn’t entirely understand the Mysteries. They had been people once, all of them murdered, all of them after their death granted by the Powers the ability to affect a minimum of three people: the person they loved the most; the person they hated the most; and a third person of their choice. The Mysteries weren’t always benign. They were often as they had been in life: complex and difficult, with a mixture of good and bad.
    “Coulter?” Leen was beginning to sound worried.
    He took a step closer to the Mysteries, if indeed that was what he faced. He walked around the two outside swords, past the one that guarded the door to the cave. From his position, he could see the white marble stairs and the strange light that always bathed the place. He could hear the faint burble of the fountain far below. If he didn’t sense the magick, he would have thought he was completely alone.
    “Something happened,” he said to them. “Something important. Please help me, if you can. I need to know—”
    And then he got a sense of Arianna, as if he were with her, as if he were almost a part of her. She was in great pain, extreme pain, pain so severe it was ripping her from the inside out.
    He fell to his knees with the power of it. He wasn’t in pain—he knew it was her pain—but it felled him just the same. “Ari,” he whispered—
    And then the feeling was gone as if it had never been. He raised his head toward the sky. The light had passed. It was probably over the sea now on its way to Leut.
    Leen had come up behind him. She put her hands on his shoulders as if she wasn’t sure if she should comfort him or help him up.
    The presences were gone. A wind blew past him, into the cave, as if proving that nothing blocked its way.
    “Are you all right?” Leen asked.
    Coulter put a hand on hers. He had no words for what he had just felt. “I’m fine,” he said, “but something has changed.”
    “What?” she asked.
    “I don’t know,” he said. “But I