Ellysetta shook her head. “I feel the serious injuries—the worst of them I sense like a stabbing pain in my chest or my belly—but the rest”—she shrugged—“nei. I’m aware of the pain, but I don’t…feel it. Does that make sense?”
“Aiyah, of course. That’s what my barriers do for me, though mine are clearly nowhere near as strong as yours, and apparently you don’t need to constantly reinforce them like the rest of us do.” Tealah uncorked the flask of faerilas she’d brought with her and took a sip. After her third visit to the Academy, she’d begun bringing a bottle of water from the Source, using it to restore the magical energies she expended maintaining her shields so she could stay more than a bell or two at a time.
Ellysetta crossed her arms over her knees. “If being here on the training ground is so difficult for Fey women, how do you manage to serve in the healing tents during war?”
“Only the shei’dalins serve in war—well, except the Mage Wars. But those were such desperate days. Any Fey beyond the first blush of childhood served in some capacity.”
“But I thought all Fey women were shei’dalins.”
Tealah laughed. “No doubt that’s because the only Fey woman Celierians have known in a thousand years is Marissya. Nei, many of us—most of us, these days, in fact—aren’t shei’dalins. Or at least not shei’dalin enough to matter. We’re all empaths, of course, and all healers—some stronger than others—but only the strongest of us can Truthspeak. That’s what shei’dalin means: speaker of truth. With that gift comes the ability to withstand considerably more pain than other empaths can bear.”
“But you’re a shei’dalin?” She’d seen Tealah a number of times in the Hall of Truth and Healing.
Tealah nodded. “A minor one, though. Not nearly as strong as Venarra or Marissya.”
“That explains why you can stay here, near the training ground, longer than the others who came.”
“That,” she agreed, then shook her faerilas flask, “and this. Nalia, Venarra, and Marissya could stay much longer than I—and without rejuvenation—but I doubt any of them could come and sit all day, day after day, as you do.” She cocked her head to one side, her teal blue eyes considering.
“There’s even a sense of energy about you when you’re here that you don’t have when you’re in the Hall of Scrolls or even in the Hall of Truth and Healing.”
“Is there?”
“Mmm. You shine brighter here, and not because your shields are stronger. It’s almost as if some part of you thrives on the violence.”
Ellysetta drew back in horror. “You think I enjoy seeing them hurt one another?”
Tealah clapped a hand over her cheeks. “I’m sorry. That came out wrong. Of course, I don’t mean you take pleasure in their pain. No shei’dalin, no matter how strong, would ever do so. I only meant…” Her voice trailed off. She shook her head and bit her lip. “Do not listen to my babblings. I am a fool. I don’t know what I was thinking. Of course you shine brighter here. Your truemate is here. It must be his presence that affects you.”
Despite Tealah’s belated reassurances, her comment about Ellysetta seeming to thrive on the violence of the warriors echoed in Ellysetta’s mind throughout the rest of the day. Later that night, after she and Rain had retired to their rooms, she posed the question to him.
“What does it mean, Rain, that I can watch you and all the warriors batter yourselves senseless and not feel horrified?”
They had bathed in the Feyreisen’s enormous silverstone tub—which involved more laughter, splashing, and love play than cleaning—and were now lying naked amid the softly billowing silken sheers hanging about their bed, nibbling on a bowl of succulent redberries and enjoying the cool jasmine- and honeyblossom-scented breeze blowing in through the balcony arches. The remains of their private repast lay discarded on a nearby table, beside an uncorked bottle of blue Celierian pinalle on ice and a steaming pot of keflee, which Rain had once again been trying unsuccessfully to convince Ellysetta to share with him—for the benefit of all those Fey couples hoping for the blessings of fertility, of course.
Freshly washed and freshly healed by Ellysetta’s warm hands, Rain drizzled a trail of sticky redberry juice up the soft, flat plane of her belly from her navel to the tip of one small, round breast, then followed the trail with lips and tongue until she shuddered with a mix of pleasure and irritation.
“Parei. I mean it.” She grabbed his hands. “I’m worried, Rain. You’ve all said I’m a shei’dalin. Shouldn’t I be…oh, I don’t know…weeping and wailing over the warriors’ pain when they injure themselves?”
“Weeping? And wailing?” Rain’s brows shot up. “Poor Marissya, is that what you think she does?”
Ellysetta gave him a shove. “You know very well that’s not what I meant. Be serious.” She dragged a sheet over her body. “I’m truly worried. Tealah said something about my thriving on the violence of the training battles, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. What if she’s right? And what if that’s some sign of the Mage’s power growing stronger?”
The teasing humor on Rain’s face faded in an instant. “Nei,” he said flatly. “It’s true you are more at ease within the walls of the Academy than any other shei’dalin, but that has nothing to do with the Mage’s power. You are a Tairen Soul, Ellysetta. And tairen are fierce, not frightened…predators, not prey. Challenge is play to us.”
“Yes, but—”
“Ask any warrior out there on the training field if he is enjoying himself. Hard and painful as the training may be, every one of them will tell you aiyah. We all feel the same rush of energy—of power and magic and life—when we match blades with one another. It is the tairen rising. The tairen rises in you, too, kem’reisa. That is what you feel, not the Mage.”
She frowned at him. “What if you’re wrong and I’m not really a Tairen Soul? What if the High Mage only manipulated my soul to make me seem like one so you would bring me back to the Fading Lands—and that’s the real reason the tairen can’t hear my song? What if I really am what Gaelen first thought and the Massan now fear: a creature the High Mage of Eld created to destroy the Fading Lands from the inside out?”
“You’re forgetting one very important fact, Ellysetta. Your soul called out to mine.” He caught her hands in his.
“You are my truemate. No matter what part of you the High Mage may have manipulated, shei’tanitsa is a bond of infinite love and unconditional trust. That is a power the Mages could never understand—and certainly never create with their corrupt magic.”
Sincerity, unwavering and absolute, flowed from his fingertips to hers. She could not doubt him. The problem was, she had little but doubts about herself. “I’m afraid of what I am, Rain. I always have been. Even here, I’m still different, still the odd one, the dangerous one. The one people look at with suspicion. You can say they don’t, but I know they do. Venarra, Tenn, some of the others. I hear it in their stray thoughts, sense it in their emotions.”
“Perhaps they fear because you do,” he suggested. “You live among powerful empaths now, not mortals. They can sense your self-doubt.”
“So how do I stop being afraid?”
He sighed and enfolded her in his arms. “When we discover that, shei’tani, I think we will have discovered the key to completing our bond.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Fading Lands ~ Dharsa
By month’s end, the number of warriors training at the Academy had increased to sixteen thousand. The Spirit masters among them could weave invisibility without a trace and extend the weave to mask a full quintet from detection. Certain of those Fey had also discovered the near-unlimited potential true invisibility offered to the practical jokers amongst them. They and their traps for the unwary popped in and out of sight with gleeful abandon until Gaelen threatened to skewer the next idiot who annoyed him. (That didn’t stop their pranks; the culprits just became more selective of their victims.)
Spirit masters weren’t the
only ones to benefit from Gaelen’s experience. The Earth masters had learned a little trick that, while not effective for long, could block an oncoming rush of sel’dor missiles or blade strikes. All the warriors could fire the Fey’cha in their chest straps half a chime faster than before, and Gaelen promised that with additional practice, their speed would increase even more.
All told, Gaelen’s training was a resounding success. And though Loris had sent word from Elvia that an emergency in South Elvia had prevented him from even meeting with the Elf King yet, Rain was pleased with the month’s progress. The warriors were ready and spirits were high.
Ellysetta wished she could say the same for herself. Each passing day brought Rain’s departure nearer, but she was no closer to discovering what was killing the tairen.
“What in the name of all the gods made me believe I could find answers that have eluded Fey who’ve been searching for a thousand years?” she groused to Rain after reading what seemed the millionth scroll. They were sitting on the chairs overlooking the Academy’s training grounds, the remains of their midday meal sitting nearby.
“I don’t even know what I’m trying to find. For all I know, the answer could have stared me in the face a hundred times and I’m just too blind to see it.”
She slumped in her chair in dispirited frustration. “I haven’t found any answers. I haven’t found my tairen song, and I don’t even know how to complete our bond.” She covered her face in her hands. “Maybe Tenn and Venarra are right. Maybe I have already done all I was meant to do.”
Rain’s hands closed around hers in a firm grip. Emotion flooded her senses: trust, belief, reassurance, all riding on a rumbling undercurrent of irritation. “Venarra should never have shared that with you. All it did was make you doubt yourself even more than you already do.” His lips thinned. “Sieks’ta, shei’tani. I have been too preoccupied to look after you as I should. I have not even been courting you properly since we reached Dharsa.”
Ellie sighed and leaned against him. “You’ve been busy. We both have.” She had a growing collection of courtship gifts tucked away in glass cases in their room, but once their training had begun, the only real time they’d spent alone was when they flew to and from Fey’Bahren to tend the kits, or the few bells of restless sleep they snatched each night.
“A Fey should never be so busy he cannot see to his mate.” He rose and pulled her to her feet. “Come with me.”
“Where are we going?”
“Somewhere I should have taken you weeks ago.” Rain tracked down Gaelen and informed him that the Feyreisen and the Feyreisa would be leaving Dharsa for a few days.
Gaelen eyed the pair of them, smirked, and said, “About time, Feyreisen.”
Rain’s response was to shoot back a string of Feyan words Ellysetta had never heard before, but several of the warriors nearby laughed and cheered their king so robustly she was certain whatever he’d said didn’t bear repeating amongst the women. Gaelen whirled on the chadins and barked with such ferocity they snapped back to instant, stone-faced order. Leaving the Fey to Gaelen’s gleefully merciless instruction, Rain cleared a spot to Change, and a few chimes later, he and Ellysetta were winging west, away from Dharsa.
Celieria ~ Teleon
«Lord Darramon has arrived.»
Leaning against the stone wall of Teleon’s highest guard tower, Kieran sent the message arrowing into the Mists to the warriors and shei’dalins waiting in the war castles of Chatok and Chakai. To the west, a caravan of carriages, wagons, and mounted riders crossed the hilltop and started down the sloping grade.
«We come.» The voice of the returning weave was distorted by the energy of the Mists.
“He took his time, considering he’s here to have his wife cured of a deadly illness,” Kiel murmured. “I was beginning to think he wouldn’t show.”
“Those mounts are mortal-bred, not ba’houda.” Kieran counted three dozen outriders and two more wagons carrying servants and provisions. “I doubt they’ve been on the road less than three weeks.”
“Shall we head down to meet them?”
Kieran straightened up from the wall. “Aiyah, but let’s stay clear of the Stones grid.” Lillis and Lorelle were playing Stones with the quintet assigned to guard them today—and soundly beating them, by all accounts Kieran had been receiving throughout the morning. «Ravel.» He spun a quick Spirit weave to the leader of the quintet currently watching over the twins. «Lord Darramon has arrived. Kiel and I are going down to greet them. Keep the girls out of sight.»
Though the twins understood how vital it was that they remain within the Spirit-weave-concealed confines of Teleon, lately they’d been showing signs of boredom, which translated into a proportionally increased propensity for wandering. Only yesterday, Kieran had found them playing Princess in the Tower in the lower-level guard towers, and he’d barely caught them before they climbed down the knotted bedsheet they’d thrown over the ramparts. Had he arrived even a few chimes later, they’d have landed on unprotected land and been visible to any passersby.
«Understood.» Ravel’s weave sounded harried, as if the twins had been running him ragged.
Kieran swallowed a quick grin. They probably had. Lillis and Lorelle had energy to spare.
«Fey, ti’bor,» he sent on the common path, calling the other warriors to join him at the outpost’s front gate. He and Kiel ran along the main road that zigzagged down the mountainside to the outpost, cutting corners by making use of several stairways and a few quick Air slides. Behind them, four dozen warriors followed their lead. They stepped through Teleon’s Spirit weave and into the mortal-built outpost at the bottom of the mountains before the first of Lord Darramon’s outriders reached the main gate.
With a salute to the guardsmen manning the gate towers, the Fey passed beneath the raised portcullis and gathered on opposite sides of the open gates to await the approaching caravan. Each warrior kept nimble fingers within easy reach of his red Fey’cha blades.
«Your uncle would come in quite handy right about now,» Kiel remarked silently. «A quick weave of Azrahn and we’d know if there was any killing to be done.»
Kieran shot him a sour look. «Not funny, Kiel.» He regarded the approaching party. «Fey have survived for millennia without weaving the forbidden magic. And so will we. Just keep a steady hand and a sharp eye.»
The first dozen riders to reach the outpost were coated in travel dust and clearly saddle-worn, but Kieran couldn’t detect anything suspicious about them. He exchanged brief introductions with the lead rider, a Captain Waters, who had a steady, no-nonsense gaze that any Fey could appreciate.
“The caravan will not enter until I give the all-clear, Ser vel Solande,” Captain Waters said. His horse whinnied and pranced nervously in Kieran’s and Kiel’s presence, sensing the latent predator in the two Fey. “I’m sure you understand. These are unsettled times.”
“Of course,” Kieran answered easily. “Make your inspection. The stable master’s boys will tend your horses when you’re done.” He pointed through the gate to the stable on the right side. “Our barracks are full, but you may make camp along the south wall after we inspect your party and their belongings.”
With a nod and a tip of his brimmed hat, Captain Waters spurred his nervous mount forward, past Kieran and Kiel. Once within the walls, the Celierian captain’s eyes scanned the interior of the fortress in quick, assessing sweeps.
Kieran watched the man from the corner of his eye, wondering if he was checking for traps or looking for weaknesses in the fort’s defenses. Despite the prohibition against reading Celierian minds, he sent a quick Spirit weave brushing against the captain’s consciousness. Outright burrowing in a mortal’s mind for information was a breach of the Fey-Celierian alliance, but skimming the thoughts of a potential enemy to ensure the protection of Fey women was not. The captain’s mind was guarded, but devoid of suspicious thoughts.
A few chimes later, Captain Waters rode back through the front gate a
nd signaled to the waiting caravan. Drivers clucked and slapped the reins, and the carriages and wagons resumed their forward motion.
While the wagons and servants’ carriage peeled off towards the open field along the south wall, Lord Darramon’s carriage drove straight to the outpost’s gate. Its lacquered sides were coated in thick layers of dust, the shiny yellow-painted wheels chipped and cracked along the edges from weeks of travel over rutted, unpaved roads and rough terrain. At Kiel’s signal, the coachman drew the horses to a halt.
The carriage door swung open even before Kiel came within reach. Lord Darramon leaned out, his hair mussed, his face pale and strained and pinched around the mouth. “Are they here, the shei’dalins?”
“They come, my lord.”
“Tell them to hurry. My wife has lost consciousness. I think she may be dying.”
Within chimes of their arrival, Lady Darramon was lying on the freshly laundered sheets of the garrison commander’s own bed, and shortly after that a small knot of scarlet-clad, heavily veiled shei’dalins entered the room in the company of a dozen stone-faced Fey warriors who bristled with steel and leashed menace as they stationed themselves in protective positions throughout the room.
The shei’dalins examined Lady Darramon, then informed her husband that—while the malignancy was indeed draining her life—her current distress rose from a different source.
“Pregnant?” Lord Darramon stared at the five veiled shei’dalins in shock. “My wife is pregnant? B-but how? She’s been so ill I haven’t…we haven’t…” His voice trailed off. Shock shifted to suspicion, then hardened to certainty.