Nour’s silence made Vadim’s eyes narrow. “Nour?”
For the first time in the conversation, Nour looked nervous. “The Tairen Soul and his mate are already gone, Most High. They left the city shortly after dusk.”
“Gone.” His fingers clenched tight around the stone altar top. “They were there, in the city, and you just let them go? Did you even attempt to capture the girl?”
“There wasn’t time, Most High. They were not here for more than a few bells, and they brought several hundred Fey with them. Before I could make arrangements to separate her from her guard, it was too late. They must have used the same invisibility weave as the dahl’reisen to leave the city without being detected.”
The temperature of his spell room plummeted as Vadim’s ire rose. “You haven’t Marked the queen and now you tell me you let Ellysetta Baristani come and go without a single attempt to bring her to me?” Vadim’s teeth came together with a snap. Ellysetta Baristani should already be his, fully Marked and under his control, not running about the countryside eluding him and his Primages. “You do remember whom you replaced in Celieria and why you replaced him, do you not?”
Nour’s throat bobbed as he swallowed. “Yes, Master Maur.”
Sulimage Kolis Manza, who had been the High Mage’s agent in Celieria before Nour, had done a much better job infiltrating the queen’s inner circle and gaining her confidence. He’d done so well, in fact, that he’d turned her against her king and half her lords and used her as one of Vadim’s most powerful political pawns in Celieria’s royal court. Were it not for the fiasco he’d made of the attempt to capture Ellysetta Baristani, the young Sulimage would still be there.
“I will see to Ellysetta Baristani myself,” Vadim bit out. “As for you, I expect significant results with the queen before your next report. Since you can no longer Mark her without running the risk of discovery, you will have to find another way. I will have the hand of Eld guiding the Celierian throne before the month is out, or you will beg me to show you one tenth the mercy you offer your own umagi.” Even among the Eld, Nour’s brutality was legend. To Vadim’s grim satisfaction, the Primage went pale as milk beneath his Celierian tan. “We will speak again at this same time seven days hence. I will expect better news.”
“Of course, master. It shall be—” Nour’s muffled voice died abruptly as Vadim lifted the Drogan chalice and tossed its thickening contents down the spell room’s drain hole.
Bah. Sending Nour to Celieria had been a foolish decision. Vadim had hoped a more seasoned Primage would be better equipped to manipulate the mortals and their minds, but despite his substantive magical gifts, Nour lacked finesse. He was a sledgehammer in a situation that clearly required a chisel. Which just went to prove that power alone wasn’t the mea sure of a great Mage.
Well, Nour was one mistake Vadim would soon remedy.
For now, however, he had a Tairen Soul to trap.
After cleansing his spell room of the Drogan blood magic, he sent his consciousness to every umagi within four hundred miles of Celieria City. Whichever way the Fey had headed, if they dropped their invisibility weaves, he would know it. Finally, carefully, he sent a subtle seeking thread out into the darkness of night and settled in to wait with all the tireless patience of a spider in its web.
When Ellysetta Baristani lowered her defenses, he would be there.
CHAPTER TEN
Relentless warrior
Restless soul
Deadly defender
Daring foe
Fey’cha drawn
Fey magic surrounds
Battle ready
Bravery abounds
Fey Defender, a Fey warrior’s poem
Southeast Celieria
The Fey ran hard through the first silver bells of the night, stopping only once to rest, and then but briefly. Rain flew overhead, Ellysetta seated on his back. The stars scattered the sky like plentiful diamonds, shimmering silver-bright against their backdrop of cool, black velvet.
The twin moons of Eloran reached their apex in the sky, the Daughter still nearly full, the larger Mother a waning quarter. Fatigue weighted Ellysetta’s eyelids. Her lashes drooped, and she slumped in the saddle. The binding straps held her securely in place as she swayed in a boneless rocking motion to the rhythm of Rain’s flight, and her thoughts began to drift like weightless feathers floating upon the cool night wind.
As she drifted, the light of the stars dimmed, and the sparkling night sky became a lightless well, cold and dank and black as pitch. In the silence came the susurration of fabric dragging across stone, the soft pad of slippered feet. Her right palm twitched from the sensation of cool, damp stone abrading the sensitive pads of her fingertips.
She was in a dark cavern wandering through corridors carved out of the surrounding stone. Gradually, the darkness began to ease. Light flickered in the distance. The rough corridor opened to a smoother hallway whose walls were tiled in a mosaic pattern that made her bones tingle with recognition. What ever the pattern was, it was magic, and some part of her knew it. The flickering light came from the sconces installed along the length of the corridor. This was no simple cavern. This was a place of great power and magic. The same part of her that recognized the patterns of the tiles also recognized this place.
She turned down an adjacent hallway and walked to its end, where another two doorways offered the only possible exits. The first, directly in front of her, was a large wooden door with a golden knob. The second, to her right, was a seldor-clad door that shimmered with powerful magic wards. Both doorways drew her, but the pull from the doorway on the right was overwhelming.
She turned and laid her hand upon the tingling veil of magic. Words in a language she did not know spilled from her lips, and power flowed down her arms to her fingertips. The weave of magic protecting the doorway began to unravel. She reached out to turn the knob. The door swung open.
Inside, another well-lit corridor opened to a wide room. Several tables dominated the center of the room, each fitted with leather restraining straps. The tables were currently occupied by women in advanced stages of pregnancy. Their faces were flushed with exertion. Sweat beaded upon their brows, and it was obvious they were giving birth.
As she drew closer, she gasped in shock, recognizing several of the faces.
These were the Celierian noblewomen she had just visited this morning. The women pregnant because of her carnal weave.
Attendants scuttled around the room, moving with swift efficiency as they tended the laboring women. As Ellysetta watched, one of the women strapped to the tables gave a straining grunt that turned into a shrill wail. The attendant waiting between her spread knees lifted a squalling newborn in triumph. Two more attendants hurried over to swiftly cut the cord and carry the baby away to a nearby table, where they washed the child and swaddled it tight in white linen wraps. The woman lying on the table mumbled, “My baby…” but one of the attendants was already carrying the infant away to a connecting room. The mother began to weep and struggle weakly against her bonds.
The empathic part of Ellysetta’s soul seemed strangely distant, unmoved by the woman’s obvious distress. Instead, drawn by the same driving compulsion that had brought her to this room, she followed the attendant carrying the child. A short corridor led from the birthing room to a nursery. Inside, dozens of cradles lined the walls of the room, and in each lay a swaddled infant.
Now a sense of triumph filled the distant hollowness that seemed to have overtaken her senses. She looked about the room and her chest expanded on a swell of pride. She lifted her hands and summoned her power, and the infants burbled unintelligibly in response, waving their tiny fists in the air as if happy to see her. She walked from one cradle to the next, peering in at the tiny occupants. Each infant’s eyes shone up at her like gleaming black coins, and on each tiny, pale chest, a dark smudge lay like a spot of ink over the baby’s heart.
Without Rain, there would never be a child born of her body. But
that did not mean she would be childless. These infants were her offspring, souls summoned from the Well into bodies created by and infused with her magic. They might be flesh of another’s flesh, but she was the one who’d breathed life and magic into their bodies.
They were hers, and they were just the beginning.
Ellysetta returned to consciousness with a sudden gasp. Her eyes flashed open, and she straightened in the saddle abruptly. Her hands clutched at the leather pommel as she dragged breath into her lungs and tried to still her pounding heart.
«Shei’tani.» Rain’s tairen head turned, and one glowing purple eye fixed on her in concern. They were still in the air, and the sky was still dark.
Feeling hazy and disoriented, she peered down at the night-shadowed land below them. «Where are we?»
«About two hundred miles southeast of Celieria City.»
They’d traveled at least one hundred miles since last she remembered. «I think we need to stop,» she said. «I fell asleep, and I was dreaming again.» She couldn’t keep the tremor out of her Spirit voice. The gloating triumph in her dream had felt all too real, and she knew that if the Mage succeeded in incarnating into her body and claiming her magic for his own, he would use that magic to build an army of Azrahn-gifted children who would be bound to him, serving only him. He and they would rule the world of Eloran like gods.
Without another word, Rain tucked in his wings and dove for the earth, spreading them wide again just in time to break his fall. He landed with smooth grace in a grassy field, back claws digging into the earth for balance as he settled. He set Ellysetta on her feet in the center of her quintet and Changed.
“Bel, bas paravei taris,” he told his second in command. We stop here. Ellysetta needs to sleep.
Bel gave a swift nod and gestured to the gathering lu’tan. Protective twenty-five-fold shields sprang up in an instant, and the quintet added a smaller six-fold weave around Rain and Ellysetta for added protection.
Rain spun a bower for them from tender grass and divested himself of armor and steel before gathering her in his arms. He didn’t ask about her dream. He didn’t pry. He simply held her close, resting his head against hers and stroking one hand along her spine. “Ke sha taris, shei’tani,” he said. “I am here if you need to talk.”
She closed her eyes. She hadn’t told him about her visits to the pregnant noblewomen and the magic their children possessed. He was so preoccupied with worries about the war and fear that he wouldn’t be able to gather allies powerful or numerous enough to turn back the Eld, she hadn’t wanted to add another burden. But now, she could keep silent no longer.
“Annoura’s baby isn’t the only one with magic,” she confessed. “They all have it—and they all wield Azrahn. I’m to blame, Rain. I gave them magic—or the Mage did through me. There’s no other possible explanation.” Quickly, before she lost her courage, she told him about her dream.
He heard her out, but his only reaction was one of concern, not fear or horror. “I will have Bel contact the lu’tan and bid them guard those women. The Mage can’t do anything to their children if he can’t get his hands on them.” He pulled back to look into her eyes. “And you need to stop blaming yourself for everything. You didn’t mean to spin that weave. You certainly didn’t mean for those women to become pregnant or for their children to be magical.”
“But I did…and they are.”
“You gave them a gift, Ellysetta. A great and wondrous gift. What comes of that has yet to be seen, but I will not be so quick to assume the worst. No matter what the Mage may have done to you before you were born, I will not believe you are anything less than the gods intended you to be.”
“But—”
“Shh. You are my shei’tani and my truest love, and all that you are is bright and shining. I know this, even if you do not. And that means what ever gift you gave these children came from the Light, not the Dark.” He spun a small Earth weave to free her hair from its plait and ran his fingers through the spiraling curls before nudging her back into his arms with a gentle push of Air. “Liath dai taris. Sleep now. And do not fear to dream. I am with you.”
She closed her eyes and settled against him. In his arms, protected by the six-fold weave of her quintet, the twenty-five-fold weaves of her lu’tan, and the unwavering warmth of Rain’s love, she slept.
She woke to the oppressive weight of evil. The night was eerilly still. Moonlight shone down upon the encampment, illuminating the forms of Rain and the other warriors lying motionless on the ground around her, and everywhere the bright scarlet of blood lay upon them.
Panic seized her by the throat.
They were dead and she was sitting in a field of corpses.
But then she saw movement out of the corner of her eye and turned to find one of her lu’tan, his Fey skin shining faintly silver in the night, walking along the perimeter of the encampment. He paused to speak with another warrior seated on a tree stump and what ever they were saying made them laugh softly.
Ellysetta blinked and the wash of red disappeared. She looked at Rain more closely and noted the faint glow of his skin and the rise and fall of his chest. The air left her lungs on a relieved breath. Not dead, thanks the gods. Only sleeping.
Gods save her. She scrubbed her hands over her face. She’d had so little sleep this last week, her mind was playing tricks on her. She could have sworn that when she first looked at them, she’d seen them all dead. She’d been sure of it.
Even now, she could still smell the bitter stench of death in the air, taste it with each breath she dragged into her lungs. Evil crouched in the darkness, reeking of malevolence. The sensation was so real, so vivid, every muscle in her body drew tight. Her skin throbbed with revulsion and stabbing pain.
Ellysetta drew her hands slowly from her face and strained her eyes to pierce the darkness beyond the borders of the camp. Neither physical eyes nor Fey vision could detect anything amiss, but she knew something was wrong. Something was very wrong, and it wasn’t her imagination.
“Rain.” She reached for his shoulder, keeping her movements small. «Shei’tan, wake up. I think we’re in trouble.»
His breathing stilled. He went motionless as stone; then his eyes opened.
«There’s something out there.» She touched her fingers to the skin of his neck so he could feel the sick horror coiling inside her.
«Demon.» His eyes glowed and their focus went slightly hazy. Around them, she sensed as much as saw the change in her quintet as each warrior woke, and their hands crept towards their steel.
A split second later, the two guards laughing softly by the perimeter of the camp fell abruptly silent. She turned to see them fall to the ground, bodies limp, throats gaping. There was no sign of what ever had killed them.
«Stay close to your quintet.» That was all Rain said to her before his shout ripped the stillness of the night. “Fey! Bote cha!” Blades at the ready! “Lu’tan, ti’Feyreisa!”
Warriors leapt to their feet, magic blazing. Fey’cha flew into the darkness. Her quintet closed ranks around her as Rain shot skyward on a jet of Air, summoning the great magic of the Change.
What ever was out there still did not show itself, but from all around them came a strange whirring thrum, like a thousand cats purring.
“Shields!” Gaelen cried.
“Air masters, deflect missiles!” Bel shouted alongside him.
Bowstrings, Ellysetta realized. The purring sound was bowstrings, hundreds of them, released in near-perfect unison from a close distance. Her quintet ringed close, spinning a canopy of steel and magic over her head. The rest of the lu’tan hefted steel war shields high while Air masters spun a whirlwind to disperse the incoming arrows. The sel’dor missiles were too numerous. A dozen lu’tan fell to the enemy’s fire, and scores more flinched as barbed sel’dor shafts sank deep in their flesh. Overhead, Rain’s vertical ascent ended abruptly as black shafts, far thicker than standard arrows, slammed into his golden war steel, piercing his
chest, hip, and thigh.
“Rain!” she cried as he dropped from the sky. Instinctively, she lurched towards him.
«Stay with your quintet!» he commanded. His Spirit voice throbbed with pain.
He landed hard, but leapt to his feet in an instant. With both hands, he griped the thick sel’dor shaft protruding from his chest and yanked it free. Ellysetta cried out as pain seared her senses, but Rain just set his jaw and pulled the second missile free from his hip, then the third from his thigh. He dropped them on the ground at his feet and spun a small weave of Earth and Fire to stop his wounds from bleeding.
Ellysetta wept. The need to go to him was overpowering, but he was already wading into battle, blades drawn, teeth bared in a snarl. Red Fey’cha flew from his hands into the darkness.
Something else rained down along with the arrows, and the cold, sickly sweet stench of Azrahn filled the air. Black shadows rose up from within the circle of gathered Fey, as if night itself were attacking. All around, lu’tan went gray, their glowing essence siphoned away in an instant. Lifeless, their bodies dropped to the ground without a sound.
“Demons!” Warriors near the fallen men shouted the warning. “Five-fold weaves, Fey!” Powerful weaves flared to life, but between the demons, their invisible attackers, and the hail of sel’dor arrows raining down, Fey were dropping at alarming rates.
“Where are they?” someone cried. “Flames scorch it, I can’t see anything!”
“They’re using the Brotherhood’s invisibility weaves, like they did in Orest,” Gaelen shouted over the din. “If we can find the ones spinning the weaves, we can bring them down.”
“Fat lot of use that is,” Tajik snarled. “If we can’t find the rultsharts shooting those jaffing arrows, how the scorching Hells are we going to find the bogrots spinning those weaves?”
“Well, we’d better do something, and fast,” Bel snapped in reply. “Because they’re slaughtering us like sheep in a pen.”