Crown of Crystal Flame

by C. L. Wilson

  “Are you saying you want me to take you with me?”

  “Aiyah!“

  Melliandra held up her hands. “No. I’m not going anywhere, but even if I were, I wouldn’t take you with me. No. No!” She pushed the shei’dalin’s hand off her arm. “You’re mistaken. Wrong. Neida. Do you understand? Ve sha neida.”

  “Teska!” Though it must have hurt her terribly, the shei’dalin spun a Spirit weave showing Melliandra with a screaming baby, a sick baby, a hungry baby. Melliandra all alone, weeping beside a small mound of dirt. “Ke sha shei’dalin. Ke shaverr vo’vallaren.” I’m a shei’dalin. I can help you.

  The images horrified Melliandra as much as the idea of having a healer to help with Shia’s son appealed, but she wouldn’t be swayed. “No,” she said again. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m not taking you anywhere.” She turned to leave. She had to get out of here.

  “Wera!” Wait. “Teska, wera.”

  The desperation in the shei’dalin’s voice made Melliandra stop. The black-eyed shei’dalin had been battered and raped for weeks on end, and never sounded so frantic as she did now.

  Against her better judgment, Melliandra stood by the door and watched the shei’dalin kneel beside her bed. She lifted the edge of the pallet and reached inside a slit cut into the bottom of the pallet cover. A moment later she pulled out a small, bruised flower… actually, it was the whole flower plant: stem, leaves, roots as well as the distinctive, six-petaled bell-shaped starflowers.

  “De sha Amarynth. Ve am Amarynth?”

  “Yes,” Melliandra said, staring at the flower. “I know Amarynth.” She lifted her gaze to the shei’dalin with dawning comprehension “Are you telling me you’re going to have a baby?”

  “Aiyah.” The woman’s expression crumpled, and for a moment Melliandra thought she would break into tears, but this Fey woman was made of sterner stuff. She shook off the emotion and reached for Melliandra’s hand again. “Teska. Ve bos’jian valir eva vo. Ku te kem’behba.” She laid a palm on her still-flat belly.

  Melliandra closed her eyes. If there was one thing she understood, it was the driving need to free an innocent baby from this dark place. “All right. All right, you can come.” She thrust her chin out. “But the chime you fall behind, I leave you. Understand?”

  The woman nodded, the black tangles of her hair falling across her face. Tears glistened in her dark eyes. “Beylah vo. Beylah vo. Sallan’meilissis a vo.”

  “Yes, yes. I get it. You’re grateful. Now, stay here and don’t say anything to anyone. I’ll come get you when it’s time.” Melliandra turned back to the door. She’d been in here so long, any watching guard would get suspicious.

  “Ke sha Nicolene,” the shei’dalin said in a rush as Melliandra reached for the handle. The shei’dalin pressed her palm to her chest. “Nicolene. Ke sha Nicolene.”

  “Your name is Nicolene.” She nodded and pointed to Nicolene to indicate she understood.

  “Te ve?” Nicolene asked. “Arast sha ver mana?” What is your name?

  Since the day Shia had gifted a worthless umagi with a name, that umagi had never shared that name with another. Until now.

  “I am Melliandra.”

  Ellysetta lunged towards Rain, shrieking and writhing like a mad thing when her chains yanked her back. Her hands clawed at the air. Her eyes flamed as her tairen rose, deadly fierce and furious.

  She would kill Den and the Mage. She would shred them. She would snap their bones and rip their still-living flesh from their bodies while they screamed and begged for mercy.

  Power gathered in a wild, savage rush—only to slam her to the stone floor as her sel’dor bonds turned the fullness of her Rage back against her. She lay there, dazed, lungs wheezing, muscles convulsing as she struggled to stay conscious.

  The spray of Rain’s blood fell upon the faces of the twins, and to her horror the pair of them opened their mouths to catch the droplets on their tongues. Their frozen, doll-like expressions changed. Blood-reddened lips curled into macabre smiles.

  Black-eyed and laughing in delight, the twins began to dance in the shower of Rain’s blood just like the vision from the most frightening dream she’d ever had. Only now she knew it wasn’t their own evil that drove them. It was the Mage’s. He was controlling them like human puppets, watching her with his cold, merciless eyes as he did.

  Rain’s glazing eyes met hers. His lips moved. Though Den’s knife had cut clear to Rain’s spine, severing his windpipe and making speech impossible, she read the words on Rain’s lips. Ke vo san, shei’tani.

  “Shei’tan,” she rasped in a broken whisper. “Stay with me. Stay with me, Rain!”

  She watched in horror as the light in Rain’s eyes began to dim, and with it dimmed the silver luminescence of his skin. With each drop of blood that flowed from his throat, more and more of his Light faded. His lashes fluttered closed.

  Forgive me, shei’tani. I have failed you. The words brushed across her mind, a whisper of regret sighed on the faltering threads of their bond.

  His hands, the hands that had caressed her a thousand times, so broad, so strong, twitched weakly, then went limp. His head fell forward onto his chest, and the long, straight strands of his silky black hair hung down over his face like a shroud.

  “Nei, Rain. Nei! Stay with me, shei’tan!” Tears flooded her eyes, blurring her vision. “Sterr eva ku!”

  But she had fought enough death to recognize it. His soul had slipped from his flesh and was beginning its descent into the Well. When he reached the Veil and passed through it, no shei’dalin in the world would be able to heal him. Not even her.

  “Rain!” The scream ripped from her throat.

  The Mage would not save him. Rain was more useful to him dead than alive, because without Rain, it was only a matter of time before she succumbed to the Mage’s sixth Mark.

  But if she spun Azrahn to hold Rain’s soul to the Light, the Mage would simply Mark her now.

  Either way, the Mage would own her, body and soul. And she would become the monster of Elvish prophecy. Ellysetta Erimea, Seledorn’s Dark Star, the Light Eater, Corrupter of Worlds.

  “Can you let him die?” the Mage had asked.

  As Rain’s soul fell deeper and deeper into the Well, and the threads of their incomplete truemate bond stretched thin, Ellysetta had her answer. No matter what fates lay in the balance, no matter the cost to her soul or all the souls in the world, when it came to Rain’s life, she was as vulnerable as every other truemate who’d ever come before her. Rain was her shei’tan, and she could not let him die.

  Spurred by Fey instinct, the desperate, driving need to save her mate, Ellysetta spun the only magic her sel’dor bonds would let her weave and plunged into the Well of Souls.

  «Rain!» Riding an icy wave of pure Azrahn, she dove after his fading Light.

  “Hurry,” Shan urged as the dahl’reisen Farel spun Azrahn to unravel the next layer of the wards securing the chamber against intrusion.

  Demonstrating a coordinated precision even Shan had to admire, the bloodsworn dahl’reisen and Fey warriors made quick work of dispatching the Elden guards and securing the level without raising an alarm. While the dahl’reisen and Shan worked to unravel the wards on this chamber—the only one that had been warded and under heavy guard—the other warriors checked the remaining rooms.

  “Nothing,” Gaelen announced as they returned. “If they’re here, they’re definitely in this room.”

  «Better hurry,» Kiel called from his lookout post near the stairs. «I hear shouting. I think our secret is out.»

  Swift as a serpent, the High Mage struck. The cold corruption of his magic pierced Ellysetta’s soul, its claws sinking deep. His triumph lashed at her mind as his power flooded through her body. His penetrating evil began eating like acid at the truemate threads tying her soul to Rain’s.

  Chained to the stone floor of Boura Fell, Ellysetta’s body thrashed. A howling roar—the cry of a dying tairen—ripped from her thro
at. Her back arched, and her body went stiff as the first bond thread connecting her to Rain sundered.

  “Got it!” Farel crowed. The wards securing the door fell apart.

  The chamber door shattered. An explosion of wood and metal shrapnel flew to the opposite side of the room as the Fey burst through. They took in the scene at a single glance: Rain, gutted, garroted, and hanging from the twin crescents like some macabre trophy, Ellysetta prone on the floor with the High Mage crouched over her, Lillis and Lorelle off to one side, and a stocky human standing by a table of bloody torture instruments.

  Kieran went left after the human. Kiel went right to get the girls, using his body to shield Elfeya as she raced towards Rain. The rest of them dove for Vadim Maur.

  Maur’s eyes were pits of darkness. A dark aura surrounded him and around the hand pressed over Ellysetta’s heart.

  “Maur!” Shan cried. “Get away from my daughter!”

  Magic and Fey’cha flew as Shan, Farel, and the quintet attacked. The Mage didn’t even have time to react before Shan’s red Fey’cha plowed hilt deep into his chest. Six more followed an instant later, and Shan’s meicha sliced Maur’s head from his body.

  On the far end of the room, Kieran exclaimed “You!” in surprise as he recognized the blood-spattered human responsible for Rain’s torture.

  Den Brodson grabbed a pair of bloody knives and raised them threateningly.

  Kieran’s eyes narrowed. A cold, killing rage iced over his Fey heart, sealing his compassion behind a thick layer of frost.

  “Little sausage, you’ve made your last mistake.” In the blink of an eye, four black Fey’cha flew through the air, sinking into Brodson’s body with enough force to send him careening back into the wall. A fifth buried hilt deep in his crotch. Kieran leapt across the distance and grabbed the screaming Celierian by the throat.

  “That was for the Feyreisa. This is for Rain.” He drove another black Fey’cha into Brodson’s belly and ripped it upwards, gutting him like a slaughtered pig. “And this… this is for Lillis and Lorelle, you stinking pile of pig krekk.” His meicha swung, metal sparking as it scraped against stone, and Den Brodson’s head flew from his shoulders.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t admit it, but that felt scorching good!” Kieran turned to see how his blade brothers had fared, and his satisfaction over dispatching Brodson to the Seventh Hell turned to dust. “Krekk.”

  Shannisorran v’En Celay held Ellysetta cradled against his chest, her body limp, her head draped over his arm. Her eyes were open but sightless. They had turned completely black, looking like pits of endless darkness in the stark whiteness of her face.

  Gaelen knelt beside her. A spiral of Azrahn twirled in his palm, but no shadow darkened the flesh over Ellysetta’s heart.

  “I don’t understand,” Gaelen said. “We killed the Mage. Her Marks are gone, just as the Elves said they would be. She should be free.”

  “Mages incarnate their souls into other bodies.” Shan smoothed a hand over his daughter’s hair and looked up at the lu’tan ringed around him. “He must have transferred some part of his soul into hers before he died. That part of him is inside her now, fighting for dominance. Elfeya says her Light is failing.”

  “What can we do?”

  “Call to her. Help her hold to the Light. I’m going to give what strength I can to Rain. If anyone can help her, he can.”

  * * *

  Darkness surrounded Ellysetta like a suffocating blanket. The aching emptiness where Rain’s Light had lived inside her was now a drowning abyss.

  She could hear voices calling her name in the distance, but the words did not penetrate the thick fog of despair. She’d failed. She’d failed Rain. She’d failed her sisters. Her parents. Steli. The pride. She’d failed the world.

  “You thought we were so different, you and I, but you felt the Darkness awaken inside you. You tasted its power. You liked it.” Twined around her, like a serpent wrapped around its prey, the dark sentience of Vadim Maur taunted her.

  She wanted to block his voice from her mind, but she could not. She wanted to deny his vile claims, but gods help her, she could not do that either. He was right. There was Darkness inside her. She’d been fighting to hide it, to deny its existence all her life, but it was there. Not just the power to enslave, to destroy, to dominate, but the desire to do so. Control—the godlike power to shape the world, and everyone in it, even against their will—that was the true, irresistible seduction of Azrahn.

  The Mage drew upon her fears, her moments of rage and savagery, showing them to her, forcing her to relive them. Reminding her of the terrible things she was capable of doing—of the things she had done. Despair swamped her. He was right.

  «Nei, shei’tani,» Rain’s voice sounded in the Well, much stronger than it had before. «Do not listen to him. You are bright and shining. What you do, you do for love, to protect the ones you love. That is not evil. And you are loved in return, so very much. Can’t you hear them all calling? Can’t you feel their love? They know who you are. They know what you can do. And they love you, as I do.»

  The muffled voices became clearer. She heard her parents, calling to her. Her quintet. Kieran and Kiel. Lorelle. Lillis was sobbing, and crying, «Mama said let love be your guide, Ellie, not fear. Love, Ellie, not fear! All magic comes from the gods.»

  «Listen to them, shei’tani. Fight for them, for yourself. Fight for me. Live for me, beloved. I thought my soul was darkened beyond redemption, but you proved to me that was not so. Let me do the same for you. Ver reisa ku’chae. Kem surah, shei’tani. Remember what the Elf queen said. You are leinah thaniel. You choose your fate. Choose me, shei’tani. Love me enough to let go of your fear.»

  Once before, in Elvia, as she lay in Rain’s arms, she’d had the strange feeling that Rain—even unarmed and un-armored—was her living shield against the Dark. Not her lu’tan, not Hawksheart’s Sentinel blooms, not Rain’s steel or even the devastating power of his tairen flame. Rain, himself.

  Now she realized how right she’d been. He was her armor. He was her Light. Just as she was his. With him by her side, his soul joined with hers, no force in the heavens or the earth or even the darkest depths of the Seven Hells was stronger. With him, through him, she was the being the Elves called her: Erimea, Hope’s Light, the power that shone brightest when Darkness reached its peak.

  The High Mage of Eld might have made her what she was, but that did not mean she had to fulfill his purpose.

  Desperately, she reached for every ounce of power she could summon—not just from the vast Source that welled inside her, but from every loved one, every lu’tan, every person with whom she shared a connection. She channeled that power, not through the body chained in the physical world but through her soul deep within the Well.

  There was Darkness in her. She could not deny it. But there was Darkness in Rain, too, and it didn’t make him evil. It didn’t make him less worthy of love. All magic comes from the gods.

  She let the Light fill her and released her fear. For Rain’s sake, she forced herself to face everything in her own soul, the gentleness of the shei’dalin, the savagery of the tairen, the Light and the Darkness. She confronted it, accepted it. And then she threw open her soul to Rain and let him in without shame, without reservation, without fear. «I do choose you, shei’tan. In this life and every life to come. Ver reisa ku’chae. Kem surah, shei’tan.»

  And the blazing strength that was Rain and his love, filled her, tearing through the shadows of her fear. She heard the shrill cry as the darkness that was Vadim Maur lost its grip on her soul.

  The broken bond renewed, and with it came a new thread, stronger than all the rest, a bond thread forged of Azrahn and shei’dalin’s love, strength and gentleness, plaited tight together, blazing with power and strength.

  Their joined souls, Light and Dark, soared out of the Well, and in the heart of Boura Fell, their bodies lit up like candle lamps. Their friends and family stepped back as the light grew brigh
ter and brighter, suffusing them with more power than even a Fey body could contain. Their eyes opened, blazing like stars.

  «Go, friends. Free the others. Go quickly.»

  A golden gray mist surrounded Rain and Ellysetta both, enveloping their bodies in magic, saturating their skin, their breath, their bones… filling them until the vast magic already brimming in every cell of their bodies overflowed and merged. Their forms dissolved on an explosion of pain and bliss. Together, the powerful force that was Rain and the brilliant energy that was Ellysetta Changed.

  What emerged from the transforming mist, however, was not two tairen but one. A creature of pure Light, as blinding as the Great Sun.

  The great tairen’s roar was a thunderclap that rocked the whole of Boura Fell.

  “Hear us, Mages of Eld!” it cried, and its voice was male and female, tairen and Fey, Rain and Ellysetta, inextricably and forever intertwined, singing a Song so bright the notes illuminated the darkest corners of Boura Fell. “For all those defenseless before your evil, we have come. We are Wrath, the Rage of the living. We are Vengeance, the fury of the dead. We are the Light that will stand forever against your Darkness!” Blazing tairen wings spread wide. “We are Freedom, the hammer that breaks all chains!”

  The creature’s massive head drew back, jaws agape as fire like the bursting of a giant star spewed from its throat. Rivers of Light swirled around the tairen, spinning faster and faster as the tairen grew ever brighter. The Light expanded in a fiery ball, searing the darkness of Boura Fell, burning away the millennia of pain and evil and anguish. Sel’dor melted. Walls and floors turned to brittle char and blew away in the hot, fiery wind of the Light tairen’s breath.

  Scores of Mages tried to rally a defense, casting Mage Fire and rapid spells at the blazing tairen, but their Fire and their magic and then their bodies dissolved into the consuming expanse of Light.

  In the middle levels of Boura Fell, the walls trembled. Choking dust filled the hallways, and chunks of raw sel’dor ore fell from the rapidly disintegrating ceilings as Ellysetta’s rescuers raced through the bottommost corridors, breaking down cell doors and herding released prisoners towards the Fey waiting to usher them towards the exit through the Well of Souls.