Crown of Crystal Flame

by C. L. Wilson

  A section of the roof caved in over Gaelen’s head, and only Bel’s diving lunge saved the former dahl’reisen from being flattened like a journeycake.

  “You’re welcome.” Bel grinned, gave Gaelen’s lean cheek a slap and hopped to his feet. “We’ve got to find those women and go, kem’jeto,” he added as he extended a helping hand to his friend. “This place is coming down around our ears.”

  “Guess we’d best hurry then.”

  Bel signaled to the Fey behind them. “You six, take that hallway down there.” He pointed several tairen lengths down the hall, where a shadowy corridor headed off from the one they were in. “The rest of you come with Gaelen and me to clear the end of this corridor.”

  Gaelen was already running towards the end of the hall, leaping chunks of debris like a pronghorn bounding over fallen trees in the forest. “If we’re not back in ten chimes, go on without us,” he called over his shoulder.

  “Ten more chimes, and we’ll none of us make it out alive,” Bel muttered when he caught up with Gaelen.

  White teeth flashed a sel’dor-dust-coated face. “Care to make a wager on that?”

  Bel laughed in spite of himself. “Ninnywit.” They had reached the offshooting hallway. A glance down the sconcelit corridor revealed only two doors. “You take those. I’ll take the doors on the right and work my way back around to you.”

  Gaelen sped down the corridor. The first door was heavily warded, but one at the end of the short hallway was not. If there had ever been any guards, they had already fled their posts. He flung open the unwarded door and stopped dead in his tracks, shocked by the bright, sunlit beauty of the room. An unexpected paradise in the heart of darkness. More astounding still was the group of weeping, naked women huddled beneath the rocking “sun” suspended from the ceiling painted to look like a sky overhead. The ground beneath his feet was carpeted with small, fragrant white flowers, the blooms’ six starry petals shaped like tender bells. Most of the flowers had been crushed by booted feet, but they were still fragrant and still valiantly, stubbornly, clinging to life.

  Amarynth. The Fey flower of life, which bloomed only in the steps of a Fey woman carrying an unborn child.

  Amarynth. An abundance of it, blooming here in this evil place.

  His eyes narrowed at the sight of two blue-robed Primages and several umagi trying to force dozens of women into an open portal to the Well of Souls.

  «Fey!» he cried on the path the warriors had forged amongst themselves. «Ti’Gaelen! There are fellanas here!» Red Fey’cha flew in a lightning-swift strike. The umagi dropped like stones, freeing the women who ran, weeping, towards the knot of fellow captives.

  Mage Fire blasted towards him. He dodged to one side, flinging up a swift five-fold weave to meet the lethal Fire and launching half a dozen more Fey’cha in rapid succession. One Primage caught a glancing blow on his upper arm. A look of dismay flashed across his face. A moment later, convulsions racked his body and he collapsed, dead before he hit the floor. The other Mage shot more Mage Fire Gaelen’s way and made a threatening move towards the women, but when he saw the reinforcements running into the chamber, he spun around and leapt into the Well of Souls instead. The doorway closed behind him, and Gaelen’s last volley of Fey’cha spun harmlessly through the now-empty stretch of air to bury themselves in the trunks of a small grove of trees.

  The warriors gathered around the women, Earth masters spinning swiftly to cover them in warm robes. There were thirty or more women in the strange chamber, mostly Celierians, but a dozen or more bore a visible glow of magic in their skins. At least half of the women—including most of the luminous ones—were with child.

  Two women, in particular, made the Fey send up prayers of thanks to the gods, while the dahl’reisen among them backed swiftly away. Shei’dalins, pale and dull-eyed, shackled in sel’dor. Two of the three who’d been captured at the battle of Teleon in the fall.

  “Nicolene-falla,” one of them murmured as Gaelen wrapped a cloak around her shoulders. “They took her.”

  “Into the Well?” Gaelen asked quickly. Nicolene vol Oros was one of the Fading Lands’ most powerful healers, captured along with these two shei’dalins, in the battle of Teleon.

  “Nei, away somewhere else in this place. She would not obey, even to save herself, and they took her away. What they did to her…” The shei’dalin’s voice trailed off and her pale face went even paler. “We felt her pain.”

  «Vel Jelani!» Gaelen relayed the information quickly. «Nicolene vol Oros is here in this fortress.»

  «Understood. I haven’t found her yet.»

  “What about Lady Darramon?” Gaelen asked the shei’dalins. The fragile Great Lady Basha Darramon had been captured with these women at Teleon.

  The shei’dalin shook her head. “Dead.”

  The ceiling overhead cracked. A massive chunk of rock plummeted from the roof of the cavern and landed in the small lake at the chamber’s center with a great splash. Beams of light, far brighter than the false sun that had lit the room, shone through the gaping hole overhead.

  Gaelen covered his eyes and looked up, near blinded by the brightness. The hole in the ceiling widened as the sel’dor ore simply… disintegrated and floated up, towards the light. “Kem’falla,” he breathed. He could feel her presence, taste her brightness with every shortened breath. She was the Light. She and Rain. And they were… glorious.

  Their power pulsed in the air, showered his every cell with dazzling brightness and searing, electric heat. He could feel himself being pulled towards that brightness, wanting to join with it, to surrender up his essence, to be Unmade and transformed, as they had been.

  The ceiling overhead dissolved. The blazing tairen bent its mighty head, and from the great, blinding suns of its eyes, a shaft of searing light fell upon him. «Go, ajian. Go now to the Well.»

  Command and comprehension filled him with equal measure, and his body moved without conscious thought, backing away from the Light, backing towards the Fey and the women they’d come to rescue.

  Rain and Ellysetta were glorious, all right. Glorious and unstoppable. What they had begun, they would not—could not—halt.

  «Bel, we’re out of time. We have to go.» He turned to the dahl’reisen, who had retreated towards the door. “Go help General vel Jelani. Fellanas or not, grab every woman you find and get her out of here.” On the path forged between all the warriors who’d come on this mission, Gaelen cried, «Time to leave, kem’jetos! Head for the Well now!»

  * * *

  The power of the great Light tairen had grown to fill four levels of Boura Fell. Tendrils of light spun clockwise around the glowing mass of its center like the whirling silk scarves of Feraz veil dancers. As Mages died and the umagi bound by them were freed, the brilliant notes of the Light tairen’s Song directed the innocent to the Well of Souls. Those who had willingly embraced the Dark and gorged their souls on evil, however, did not hear the shining notes of the tairen’s Song; all they heard was a deafening roar as Light consumed Darkness.

  Everywhere the tairen’s Light touched, mass dissolved. Steel, sel’dor, rock, wood, Mages, and servants of the Dark: everything and everyone who did not flee before the growing brightness burned away as the Light touched them. Glowing sparks—the remnants of their existence—floated up, some small, sparkling white globes, like fairy flies rising from an evening glade, but most were darker red sparks, like the embers that rose on the heat of a bonfire. The sparks floated towards the mass of energy that was Rain and Ellysetta, joining their Light, feeding it. Just as Ellysetta could siphon the energy of those around her and channel it through herself, now she and Rain together absorbed all the evil that was Boura Fell, Unmaking the Darkness and channeling its power into Light.

  Their brightness grew brighter. Layer after layer of Boura Fell disintegrated, consumed by their fiery radiance.

  The Fey ran through the crumbling corridors of the dissolving Eld fortress, guiding the captive women toward
s the promise of freedom. The stairwell leading to the level housing the open Gateway to the Well was still intact, and they leaped up the stairs by threes and fours, Air masters helping those who could not manage the stairs themselves.

  Gaelen was the last to leave the chamber where the women had been held. Parts of the ceiling of this level were disintegrating. Walls were crumbling. The second door in the short corridor—the one he had not checked because it was closed and warded—now lay in the center of the hallway amid a pile of rubble. As he ran by, a noise made his heart rise up in his throat. A tiny cry. The squall of an infant.

  All but a handful of warriors had already left. Only the dahl’reisen remained, deliberately hanging back to spare empathic Fey women the pain of their presence.

  “Farel!” Gaelen called. “With me!” He pivoted sharply and dove for the hole where the door had been. The opening led to a hallway. Its ceiling—much lower than the cavernous garden room where they’d discovered the women—was still intact, though not for much longer.

  The squall of a child sounded again, followed by anxious shushing and soothing murmurs. A woman. Speaking the Elden tongue, telling the child to be quiet, hissing at someone else, “Hurry! Before someone comes!” Gaelen exchanged the red Fey’cha in his hand for black. Fey did not kill women, not if they had any other choice, but he would be spitted and scorched before he let any Eld—woman or not—run off with an innocent child.

  He glanced back to see the hard glitter in Farel’s eyes… and the white-knuckled fingers clenched around a black Fey’cha.

  Together, they ran in swift silence down the corridor.

  The infant lay in a sling around Melliandra’s chest, his brilliant blue eyes watching her with solemn calm as she tied the final knot in the sling holding another baby strapped to the shei’dalin Nicolene’s chest. The pair of them each carried two infants strapped in crisscrossing slings across their chests. The four infants were the youngest of the children from the High Mage’s secret nursery, all blue-eyed, all young enough to be Shia’s child. Which child had actually been born to the gentle, loving woman who’d given Melliandra her name, Melliandra didn’t exactly know.

  It didn’t matter. To her, they were all Shia’s child, and she was determined to save them.

  An explosion rocked the nursery. A fine shower of grit rained down from the ceiling. Time was running out. The battle that had killed the High Mage was still raging—and drawing closer.

  Melliandra tried not to look at the other children in the nursery as she and Nicolene gathered their bags of supplies and prepared to depart with their precious burdens.

  Four infants. They could save only four. Twenty more children of varying ages lay in cradles or stood clutching the bars of their cribs. She and Nicolene had agreed they would take only as many babies as they could comfortably carry, but one child in particular—a little girl with a cap of wavy brown hair and solemn eyes—made Melliandra ache to change that plan. That child didn’t cry or reach for them, as some of the others did. She just stood in her crib, small, baby-plump hands holding the rails, watching them with those unblinking blue eyes—not the pale brilliant blue Shia’s eyes had been but a deeper, richer blue, like the sky Melliandra imagined each night in her dreams. Blue sky eyes, the color of freedom.

  She couldn’t take her, of course. The toddler was too old, too heavy. They couldn’t carry the infants and her as well. And if they let her walk, she would slow them down so much, recapture would be all but certain.

  Melliandra hardened her heart. She’d known she couldn’t save them all. Save as many as she could but leave the rest: That was the plan. It was a good plan, but she hadn’t known how hard it would be. Leaving these children here to die—or worse, to live as slaves of the Mages—hurt more than any wound ever had. The children—their eyes so old in faces so young—deserved so much better.

  “I’m sorry,” she told them. “I’m so sorry.”

  As if they understood, several of the children began to cry. The sound alarmed Melliandra. This place had been one of the High Mage’s most closely guarded secrets. Boura Fell might be falling down around their ears, but other Mages, seeking power of their own, would want to take his treasures for themselves. The crying would lead those Mages straight to them.

  “Ssh,” she whispered. “Hush, babies. Hush.”

  “Las, ajianas, las,” Nicolene of the Fey soothed.

  “We need to go,” Melliandra said. “Now.” Before the crying brought someone to investigate.

  A whiff of an unfamiliar scent raised the hairs on the back of Melliandra’s neck. She froze, falling silent. Ears strained. There, beneath the squall of the children, she heard it: a whisper of sound, footsteps in the hall leading to this room.

  Someone was coming.

  She grabbed the shei’dalin’s wrist in a steely grip, but the other woman had already sensed something, too. Nicolene pressed a hand to her heart, her face pale as milk. The girl child began to whimper.

  “Dahl’reisen,” the Fey breathed.

  The dread in the woman’s eyes told Melliandra all she needed to know. Whoever was approaching was foe, not friend. A threat to their plans of escape. She jerked her head towards the door at the back of the room, the High Mage’s secret escape route the shei’dalin had pulled from the umagi attendant’s mind.

  They had nearly reached the door when two men rounded the corner. Clad in black leather, and bristling with weapons, the men gripped unsheathed blades in their hands. Melliandra recognized the look in their icy eyes: the promise of death.

  Before Melliandra could act, Nicolene gave a cry and flung out her hands. Green sparks shot from her fingertips. The room rocked and shuddered, and the ground beneath the two men gave way. “Gana!” she barked. Run!

  Shock kept Melliandra frozen in place. She’d heard the umagi whisper about Nicolene’s fierceness, but she’d thought the Mages had raped and beaten it out of her.

  Nicolene scowled. “Va!” she commanded. Go! And with a slash of her hand, an invisible force shoved Melliandra towards the escape route. “Dai ema!” Now!

  “Kem’falla, parei!” The men’s magic had stopped their fall. They soared up, out of the hole in the ground. “Bas shabei mareskia. Bas veli ku’evarir.” Mareskia was the word for friends. We are friends. We’ve come to rescue you.

  “Fossia!” Nicolene screamed. “Dahl’reisen fossia!” Lies! Dahl’reisen lies! She flung her hands towards the ceiling. More bright green magic shot from her fingers, plunging into the rock above the dahl’reisen. With a shriek, she yanked, and the ceiling came down on their heads.

  Nicolene screamed and fell to her knees as if the ceiling had fallen on her as well as the warriors, but she managed to pull herself back to her feet and stumble towards Melliandra.

  “Sal ne shabei desrali, to ke war desral,” she cried, waving her hands in a frantic gesture.

  Melliandra didn’t catch half the words, but it was something about the dahl’reisen not being dead.

  Sure enough, the pile of rubble was already shifting, starting to bulge upwards as the buried dahl’reisen fought their way to the surface. Instinct kicked in. Melliandra bolted for the High Mage’s emergency exit, pausing only when the shei’dalin snatched the little solemn-eyed girl from her crib and shoved her into Melliandra’s hands.

  “What are you doing? We agreed—“

  “Seya veli eva bos! Ke nei suya heberi eva dahl’reisen.” Melliandra’s mind filled with an image of the baby screaming in torment in the hands of dahl’reisen. The vision winked out. The shei’dalin’s jaw set, and she glared at Melliandra, daring her to object.

  “All right!” Melliandra capitulated with a show of ill grace, even though she was secretly glad not to abandon the child with eyes the color of freedom. “Now, let’s go! Veli! And stay out of my mind, do you hear? “

  Together, they raced into the narrow tunnel the High Mage had built as his secret escape route. Nicolene pulled the walls and ceiling down behind them as they we
nt.

  The last thing Melliandra saw before the cave-in blocked the path to the nursery was one of the dahl’reisen rising from the rubble, his eyes pinned on her. In that one moment, as their gazes clashed, a bolt of recognition shot through Melliandra, stabbing straight through to her heart.

  His eyes. He had pale, brilliant ice blue eyes, ringed by cobalt. Just like the woman who had given Melliandra her name and her first taste of kindness and love.

  Shia’s eyes.

  Gaelen spat an oath and lunged towards the rubble-filled ruins of the caved-in passageway. Green Earth blazed in his hands as he began to form the weaves to clear the passage, but before he could release his weaves, another section of the ceiling caved in. He had to leap to one side to avoid being buried again.

  Farel started to clear the fresh pile of rubble, but Gaelen waved him off. Bits of the ceiling overhead were already starting to crumble and float upwards.

  “Leave it,” he said. “We’re out of time. Wherever Nicolene-falla has gone, she’ll have to look after herself until we can come back for her. We’ve got to get these children to safety.” He called for more of his men and reached for one of the toddlers standing in the cribs.

  “Sieks’ta, General,” Farel said as the others arrived and they began handing off children. “It’s my fault she ran. If I hadn’t been with you—“

  Gaelen shook his head. “Nei, the fault is mine. I should have considered there might be a fellana inside.” He clapped Farel on the shoulder and handed him a small, unsmiling boy with dark brown eyes. “Quickly, kem’maresk. We need to go.” The room was very bright now, forested with shafts of light shining through the disintegrating ceiling overhead. He snatched the last child from the crib beside him and followed Farel and the others down the crumbling corridor.