The Fate of the Tala

by Jeffe Kennedy

  “Yes, well. A lot of pieces fall into place, knowing all that.” I contemplated that, smoothing my fingertips over Rayfe’s brows and cheekbones. He’d grown some stubble, too. Unusual for him. His puppet-master hadn’t been tending to him. No surprise, but I had to wrestle back the sudden burst of rage. “Perhaps this Ivariel is connected somehow, I don’t know. In the vision, when I saw her with her family and the—”

  “Family?” Harlan burst out, spinning away from Ursula, but retaining her hand.

  I blinked at him, reassessed my vision, and how much every detail meant to him. “Remember that I’m making assumptions. They spoke a language I don’t know, and I have only the context of what I saw and heard, but the man seemed to be a lover or husband, and there was a young woman who seemed to be her daughter.”

  “A husband and daughter,” he repeated reverently, seeming unaware of the tears tracking down his hard warrior’s face.

  “Possibly,” I warned him, but Ursula shook her head slightly, so I let it go. Clearly he had a great deal of old emotion tied up with this lost sister. “Anyway, when I saw her with her family,” I tipped my head at Harlan, “they were working with elephants, and the magic wave passed over.”

  “When the wave passed over last night with the barrier shift?” Ursula asked, frowning.

  Had that been only last night? It felt like ages ago. I traced the lines of Rayfe’s lips, so soft within the sharp stubble, wishing he’d wake. I glanced at Kelleah, all of us determinedly not hovering over her, all of us waiting for the verdict. “No, when we moved it the first time. It expanded to cover wherever they are. I couldn’t understand why those people and that place, of all the people and places affected by that first barrier shift, mattered all that much. But, this Ivariel, if she left Dasnaria a long time ago…” I left a pause for them to fill in.

  Ursula glanced at Harlan. “Twenty years ago,” he said.

  I nodded, paused midway. Oh. Oh. “This makes sense. This is what I saw from back then: in the wake of her departure, a casket arrived in the seraglio. There was a desiccated body inside. If we presume that it was the high priestess, then they brought her to the seraglio to absorb magic and awaken. It could be that the seraglio was first created as a reserve for magic, much like the Heart, and only later made into a dwelling.”

  “A prison,” Harlan corrected, voice hard, and Ursula dipped her chin in agreement. “Dasnarian legend says the seraglio existed first, and the palace was later built around it.”

  “Would it have been sunk under water?” I asked.

  He cocked his head, intensely curious, a bit taken aback. “Deep beneath a lake, yes.”

  That made sense. “Here’s the interesting part. If—”

  “We’re only just now getting to the interesting part?” Ursula said drily, but she finally released Harlan’s hand and picked up her sword, using the water and cloth beside me to clean it.

  “The timing,” I said to her. “If Ivariel left twenty years ago, I would’ve been about three years old, and Ami not yet born. Let’s figure it takes a couple of years for the high priestess to absorb enough magic to awake, then—”

  “Danu’s freezing tits!” Ursula snarled. “Our mother died right when the high priestess awoke?”

  “The timing is awfully coincidental,” I agreed.

  “Then maybe I’m not wholly at fault for her death?” Ami asked in a small voice.

  Ursula whirled and crossed to her in one great stride, crouching down and looking Ami in the eye. “You were never at fault for our mother’s death. Never. She loved you and she was so happy to bring you into the world.”

  Ami was weeping, but she smiled through the tears, holding Stella close. “I would give my life for Nilly and Willy…” Her luminous violet eyes strayed to where Kelleah finally straightened.

  “Thank Moranu we were so close to the Heart,” Kelleah said. “He’s fully healed.”

  A sigh of relief blew out of us, the shifting of a welcome breeze after the raging storm.

  “I’ll go triage our remaining wounded,” Harlan volunteered, and Kelleah nodded her gratitude. She lifted Astar, now in boy form, and brought him to Ami, who moved Stella over to make room.

  “Let me,” Ursula said gently, slipping Stella from Ami’s arms and cradling our niece in her own. Ami took Astar, running her hands over his smooth, healthy skin, marred only by blood and no wounds, but checking nevertheless.

  Unoffended—probably accustomed to mothers wanting to be sure for themselves—Kelleah turned to me and sank to her knees. “How is our king?” she asked gravely.

  I’d been keeping myself together fairly well until she asked that. In the face of her sympathy, I crumpled. “I’m not sure. He’s very deep inside. If only he’d wake, he could shift and then—”

  Her warm, moss green eyes held sympathy. “I’m low on healing energy and there are others wounded I should see to before I have to sleep this off. What if you and I together wake him? I can use small amounts of healing as the tool, if you can power it, then you force him to shift.”

  “I don’t have that ability.” The high priestess did, and I’d already crossed so many ethical lines. If I pushed Rayfe to shift, then all that remained would be for me to resurrect the dead by enslaving their spirits to my will.

  “The king and queen have that ability,” Kelleah was assuring me, “so you have it within you.”

  “But I’m not a real queen, because—”

  “Nonsense.” She gave me an impatient look worthy of Ursula. “You are Queen of Annfwn, daughter of a long line of queens and sorceresses. Stop whining and act like it.”

  I gaped at her, and I thought I heard a snorting sound from Ursula, but when I gave her a narrow look, she seemed intent on cuddling Stella.

  Kelleah gazed back with a long, expectant stare, not without compassion. “Sorceress Andromeda, remember that you are also the hand of Moranu, of the many faces. What is in Her is in you.”

  Whether you want that or not, she didn’t have to say aloud. I looked down at Rayfe, his face so bloodless and still that he might be a corpse. If not for him, then…

  “All right,” I conceded with a sigh. “Though I worry about his state of mind when he awakes.” Again, I looked to Ursula.

  This time she gazed back, Danu’s clear light in her eyes. “Whatever it is,” she said, “we’ll handle it. Take care of Rayfe, and we’ll go from there.”

  Kelleah lifted my hand and laid it over Rayfe’s heart, placing both of hers on top of it. Her green healing light grew slowly, and I pulled on the Heart to augment her power. She hummed in gratitude, the light strengthening. “Lead the way, my queen,” she murmured.

  I slid into Rayfe’s mind, the pathway as familiar as a kiss, leading Kelleah with a mental hand. She reacted with some shock when she encountered the Deyrr residue I hadn’t yet cleansed, like discovering the rotting remnants of a flood in a closed closet. Where we passed, I cleansed it, having gotten rather proficient at the skill.

  Deeper and deeper we passed, through levels of his wounded mind. I saw myself in there, and others. Longings and memories, anger and love. Bitter betrayal and doubt. Kelleah would see it all, too, and I tried to let that go. Would she see how bad things had gotten between us? Not that she’d ever violate confidentiality by saying so, but I found myself ashamed and exposed.

  Nothing like Rayfe was, though, so I made myself stop being selfish and let it go.

  We found him, the wolf sleeping in a deep cave, secure in his den. Kelleah hung back and let me go forward. Hesitantly—honestly afraid he might bite me, either because he didn’t know me, or because he did and hated me for what I’d done—I brushed my mental fingers through his fur.

  “Call him.” Kelleah’s mind voice whispered in echoes.

  “Rayfe,” I called. “My king. My love.” I bent and pressed a kiss to his wolf’s muzzle, the metaphysical fur silky under my lips. “Come back to me. Please.”

  His eyes popped open, wolf bright, snarl ris
ing—and I nearly flinched. Then stopped myself. This was Rayfe, and from the very beginning he’d promised never to hurt me.

  “Time to wake up, my love,” I told him. And he calmed.

  In the outside world, Rayfe stirred under my hands. My heart leapt with joy—and trepidation. He moaned deep in his throat, and I soothed him, feathering my fingers over his brow, taking care to avoid the angry furrows left by Stella’s claws. Kelleah nodded at me, then abandoned me to go treat her many other patients.

  I was on my own.

  “Andromeda?” Rayfe gazed up at me, confused, and in pain. But him. Sounding dazed and uncertain, but at least all himself. “I’m hurt.”

  “Yes. You need to shift.”

  He frowned, then winced. “It’s not there.”

  “It is,” I soothed him, desperately covering my fear that he might never be the same again. “You’re just a little weak is all. Shift and all will be well.”

  Lifting a hand, weakly, but enough to reach a trailing lock of my hair, he wound his fingers in it. “Why do you weep, my queen?”

  I hadn’t realized I was. “Happy tears, my wolf.”

  He blinked at the blood in his eyes. Stella had gotten them, after all, the blue marred and leaking. “I can’t see very well.”

  “A minor injury. Just shift into First Form, and you’ll be fine.”

  “If you say.” He stilled. Frowned. “I can’t. I must be badly hurt, but I don’t remember…”

  “You can remember later. Try one more time, and if you can’t shift, I’ll call Kelleah to heal you.”

  “No, Queen Andromeda,” Kelleah called out from another part of the cavern. “Handle it.”

  I caught Ursula’s grimly amused expression when I lifted my head to deliver a scathing command to our recalcitrant healer.

  “You have your marching orders, Your Highness,” Ursula said.

  “Someday you’ll have to teach me how you make your subjects actually follow your orders instead of issuing them.”

  She snorted. “When I figure that out, I’ll be sure to let you know the trick. In the meantime, quit stalling.”

  All right. I could do this. Surely I could. I slipped into Rayfe’s mind again, looking for the wolf. He paced eagerly now in the more surface levels, greeting me with lavish affection that made me want to weep again—or more—even as it gladdened my heart. How to do this?

  I hesitated to use what I knew of shifting, since I’d always been so backward and amateurish with it. So hopelessly mossback. But… that was all I knew.

  And my mother had made me who I was. Moranu, too. I clung to that belief.

  Concentrate. Focus.

  Coaxing the wolf along, I pulled him through. Rayfe shivered under my hands.

  And became the wolf.

  ~ 19 ~

  “Well done, sorceress,” Ursula said gravely.

  Rayfe, now a massive black wolf, leapt to his feet and shook his coat vigorously. He regarded us with intact, sapphire blue eyes, then lifted his nose, taking in the scent of all the violence around us.

  “I think he did it on his own,” I replied, shaken by how easy it had been—and by the heady rush of power it brought. Deep in the dark of my mind, I thought I heard a murmur of the goddess laughing at me.

  Ursula rolled her eyes, and Ami—apparently satisfied with Astar’s health—gave me a stern look. “Give yourself credit, Andi. You’re an amazing sorceress. Better than our mother was.”

  I opened my mouth to protest… Then closed it again. I didn’t know how I compared to Salena. But I did know that comparisons are invidious. Time to stop thinking about what my mother could have, or would have done. She was gone. Maybe the high priestess had a hand in her death, which would absolve our father of that crime, at least.

  In that case, avenging her would be up to me, among vengeance for so much else. That bitch had a lot to answer for.

  Rayfe padded over to me. Then became the man—fully healed, wearing fighting leathers in glossy black, his hair tumbling wildly around his gorgeous face. His fulgent eyes shone sharp with sane intelligence, and I went boneless with relief at the sight. He held a long-fingered hand down to me and I took it, leaning on his strength as I rose. His winged black brows spiked as he looked me over.

  “You are covered in blood, my queen,” he said hoarsely, then pulled me into his arms, holding me in a fierce embrace. “Dare I ask how much is yours?”

  “Some,” I answered honestly, very much feeling the injuries and blood loss—and that I’d never lie to him ever again.

  “Why has no one tended you?” he demanded, turning the frown on Ursula.

  “Don’t start on her,” I cut in. “There were people worse off, including you.”

  He turned back to me, expression intense as he cupped my face in his hands. “I felt you in my mind.”

  “I know,” I whispered, too wracked with guilt to say the words any louder. “I’m so sorry. I had to.”

  “You misunderstand, Andromeda,” he replied with a soft smile, so full of love my heart tripped over it. “I was drowning and yours was the hand that pulled me from the deeps. Like Moranu Herself, you lit up my night and brought me home. I know we’ve been… I don’t know what we’ve been, except that I’ve failed you in so many ways.” He frowned, lines of pain around his eyes.

  “No,” I insisted. “You never once failed me.”

  “I know I did. I can’t remember it all, but I hurt you. I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be. There’s nothing to be sorry for.”

  “You came for me,” he said, talking over my words. “That gives me hope that, somewhere in your heart, you might find a way to love me again.”

  “Oh, my wolf,” I breathed, my voice as ragged as my heart. “I never stopped loving you. Not once.”

  He smiled, a quirk of his sensuous mouth, and bent his head, bringing his mouth to mine. The brush of his lips and breath were bare whispers of contact, until I breached the distance, flinging myself against him, deepening the kiss and drinking him in. He responded with fervor, hands bold on my body, a possessive growl in his throat, consuming and treasuring me. Our tongues, thoughts and emotions twined, desire blooming like blossoms on old wood thought dead. Life remained inside the husk, ever ready to be brought to new growth with a bit of nurturing.

  Someone cleared their throat pointedly, and I became aware of our surroundings again. So did Rayfe, and he broke the kiss with a laugh, leaning his forehead against mine. “What did you say about us never being alone?”

  A rush of gladness filled me that he remembered that conversation. At least his memories from when he’d been himself were intact. He seemed sane enough. “When this war is done,” I replied, “you and I are going away somewhere, just the two of us.”

  “Or three,” he answered, pulling back to search my face. “Yes?”

  “Yes,” I agreed with fervor, gripping his hands before turning to face our audience.

  “Sorry to interrupt that touching reunion,” Ursula said, her tone acerbic, her gaze soft with emotion. “But Nilly here is waking and we weren’t sure if we needed to be prepared for anything.”

  Like the high priestess in her mind. That was all we needed. “Good thinking.”

  Rayfe looked around, perplexed. “Why are we in the tunnels? What’s going on?”

  I grimaced, not at all looking forward to telling him that he’d betrayed his own people. I should be the one to tell him, but as I was learning the hard way, with every passing moment, I couldn’t do everything. No one else could look into Stella’s mind, but someone else could tell Rayfe about our current predicament. I wasn’t being a coward by delegating that uncomfortable task. At least, that’s what I told myself.

  “Harlan?” I called, and the big Dasnarian entered our circle of light. “Would you catch Rayfe up on our current circumstances? I need to tend to Nilly.”

  “What’s wrong with Stella?” Rayfe asked, not letting me go.

  “Harlan will fill you in,” I s
aid. “Trust me?”

  He cupped my cheek, stroking in a subtle, sensual caress. “Always.”

  Moranu take me, I nearly wept—again—at that. I smiled and turned my face to kiss his palm. “Thank you.” Hopefully he’d still feel that way about me once he learned what had happened—and what I’d done.

  “But you’re getting healed next,” he reminded me.

  “I will,” I promised, if only to make him smile at me one more time.

  I went to Ursula and Harlan stepped up, gripped Rayfe by the shoulder. “Good to see you in fine form, Your Highness,” Harlan said. “Let’s walk over here and I’ll explain.” Harlan tipped his head at me reassuringly, and I knew he’d feel his way gently around the holes in Rayfe’s memory.

  I sat next to Ursula, Stella blinking sleepily in her arms, sucking on a thumb as she hadn’t done in some time. “Should we call Kelleah to heal you?” Ursula asked.

  “No.” I shook my head in emphasis, and immediately regretted it when dizziness swamped me. “I’m all right for now. You’re wise to consider we need to clear Nilly here first. Hi, baby girl, want to come cuddle with Auntie Andi?”

  She looked from Ursula to me. Then held out her arms. I brought her into my lap, her little body so soft and warm, her silky curls tumbling over my arm.

  “I’ll go help Harlan explain to Rayfe,” Ursula said, standing and brushing herself off, sheathing her sword. “We have things to sort anyway.”

  Hopefully the swords would stay sheathed, but I said nothing. I needed to focus on my niece.

  “Is my Nilly all right?” Ami asked anxiously. Astar sprawled over her lap in boneless abandon. With his rose-gold curls and lavish lashes on his round-cheeked face, he looked like a painting of one of Glorianna’s baby angels.

  “Of course she’s all right,” I replied firmly, coaxing Stella to sit up more. “Isn’t that so, Nilly?”

  She gazed at me soberly, so much more subdued than when I saw her on arrival. I scanned her for traces of Deyrr, but with so many Deyrr creatures all around—and having waded through so much of the residue in Rayfe’s mind—it had become levels more difficult to detect subtle taints. Stella popped her thumb out of her mouth and I braced myself. If she began spewing with the high priestess’s vitriol, I’d have to mute her fast, or Ami would go Glorianna as vengeful mother in a heartbeat.