King of Sword and Sky

by C. L. Wilson

  «You will see them again, shei’tani,» Rain assured her. Would she? Ellysetta cast one final glance back at the shrinking silvery blue towers and ramparts of Teleon. Then why did she have such a terrible, sinking feeling that this was the last time she and her family would ever be together?

  Rain circled on an updraft as the Fey below approached the Faering Mists. With growing concern, Ellysetta regarded the bright glow of magic that danced in undulating flows along the mountaintops and filled the pass between the Rhakis and Silvermist ranges.

  «I thought we might be able to fly over the Mists,» she said.

  His wings dipped and he circled in the opposite direction. «Nei, the Fey who made the Mists safeguarded against that. If you wish to enter the Fading Lands, there is no way to bypass the Mists, no matter how high you fly or how deep you tunnel.»

  «So we have no choice but to go through.»

  «Aiyah.»

  «What’s it like?»

  «I don’t know. I’ve only passed through it myself once, to come to Celieria to find you. The magic of the Mists cares only who enters the Fading Lands, not who leaves.»

  «Celierians tell tales about hunters and shepherds who wandered into them on a foggy day and disappeared, only to reappear months or even years later carrying tales about meeting the Shining Folk inside the Mists. Are those tales true?» There were hundreds of such stories, each one more fantastical than the last. Some adventurers claimed to have joined ancient Fey in a wild hunt through misty forests; others spoke of sharing an intoxicating meal in a crystalline hall filled with music and Fey maidens so beautiful even the stoniest heart would break to cast eyes upon them. To accept such invitations, folk claimed, was to bid farewell to the life one knew, for time passed at a different pace for those feted by the Fey, and the deeper in the mist one wandered, the swifter time passed in the world.

  «I suspect there may be some truth to those tales,» Rain answered. «The ones who built the Mists would not have wanted to hurt innocents—but neither would they have wanted to allow those innocents to be used against the Fey.»

  But what of not-so-innocents? Shepherds and hunters might escape with lost time the only price for their transgression, but others were not so fortunate. She’d heard of entire armies that had disappeared into the Mists, never to be seen again.

  Below, the marching Fey narrowed to a column ten abreast, and the first rows of warriors plunged without hesitation into the shining mist. Another few chimes and it would be Rain and Ellie’s turn.

  Her heart beat faster as anxiety bloomed in her belly.

  «How do you think the Mists will react to my Mage Marks?»

  Rain hesitated, then said, «You are the Feyreisa and a Tairen Soul. The Mists will realize that.»

  Her stomach lurched. She heard the evasion in his voice.

  «But you aren’t certain, are you?»

  His ears twitched, and a small jet of flame seared the air before them. «That is why we are flying through rather than walking. Just hold tight to the saddle. I will get us through as quickly as I can.»

  The last of the Fey below disappeared into the Faering Mist.

  Rain banked a final time, then flew directly towards the shimmering veil of magic. Anything else Ellysetta might have said caught in her throat. The thick fog of the Mists dominated her visual field, endless white, ever-shifting, glimmering with rainbow lights.

  She leaned over the front of the saddle and threaded her hands deep into Rain’s tairen pelt, clutching tightly, needing the contact. «Rain.»

  «I am with you, Ellysetta.»

  She had one last split second, time enough only for a swift, frightened gasp of air, and then they plunged into the Mists.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A hidden land, forbidden land, beyond the Faering Mists.

  A people gone except in song, beyond the Faering Mists.

  Where magic’s spun and great work’s done, beyond the Faering Mists.

  Where Fey still dwell behind the spell that is the Faering Mists.

  “Beyond the Faering Mists,” from the collection Laments for the Fey, by Avian of Celieria

  The Faering Mists were not what Gaelen expected. Over the years, when he’d been dahl’reisen, he’d come to the Garreval on several occasions, intending to close his eyes, walk in, and let the Mists do what they would to him, but he’d never actually been able to bring himself to dip so much as the toe of his boot in. He didn’t know whether it was cowardice or pride that kept him from it, and he’d never cared to examine his reasons too closely, half-afraid of the answer he might find.

  His first few steps into the Mists were as bold as any he’d ever taken, and it would have surprised most of the Fey to know how much it cost him to keep that facade of bravado intact. His nerves were shaking so badly, his guts felt like quivering jelly. To his undying shame, his sister sensed his fear. Just before she and Dax plunged into the Mists, Marissya turned her head to smile back at him and whisper on a private thread, «Do not fear, kem’jeto. A lost son of the Fey has returned. The Mists will welcome you and rejoice.»

  Then the Mists had swallowed her up, and it was his turn to take the plunge. Walking next to him, Belliard vel Jelani had looked every bit as grim as Gaelen felt. The Fey’s face had gone stony, and his eyes were dark, burning cobalt stars. Vel Jelani was no untried chadin fresh from his first levels in the Cha Baruk. Gaelen girded himself for terror.

  To his surprise, the terror never came. Instead, as he took the first dozen blind steps into the mist-filled pass, a sense of overwhelming peace suffused him. It wrapped him in a shining cocoon of warm whiteness, soft and fragrant, as if he were a child once more and his long-dead mother, Briessa v’En Serranis, held him cradled in her arms.

  “Mela?” he whispered, lifting his face to the whiteness.

  “Are you here?” Logically, he knew it couldn’t be true. His parents had died one hundred years before the Mage Wars began, slain by Feraz as they returned to the Fading Lands after visiting Marikah and the first King Dorian to celebrate the birth of their son.

  Was this how the Mists led intruders astray? Not through terror but through wistful memories of better times? The lure was a strong one. Long had it been since Gaelen last knew peace. He shook off the beckoning warmth and forced himself to concentrate.

  Picture our home as you remember it, Marissya had advised him. You cannot trust your senses in the Mists, so let that memory be your guide.

  He thought of the gleaming white towers and golden spires of Dharsa, of the great, towering volcanoes of the Feyls, of the waving golden grasses of the Plains of Corunn. The home he’d always loved, lost to him these last thousand years. Mela, your son returns.

  He walked. He did not know for how long, but gradually, the dense fog began to thin. A light shone before him, bright and beckoning, and he could make out the figures of Marissya and Dax striding across the ground at a confident pace. Marissya’s presence was like a shining beacon, and all around her, the thick vapors were naught but barest wisps of white mist, as if the magic knew and welcomed her. Gaelen glanced to his side. He could see Bel now, walking beside him just an arm’s length away.

  The grim look on Bel’s face was gone, replaced by astonishment. Catching Gaelen’s eyes on him, Bel shook his head and said, “It has never been so easy to cross the Mists before.”

  “We are through?”

  “Through the worst of it, aiyah. This lighter mist will fade in less than a tairen length.”

  “I was expecting something far different,” Gaelen said.

  “As was I,” Bel echoed. “Usually when the Mists spit me out on the other side, Marissya must come to my aid.” Even as he spoke, they heard a sharp cry, quickly muffled, from somewhere in the dense fog behind them.

  Gaelen cast a glance over his shoulder and saw a line of ten Fey emerge from the thicker whiteness. Each one of them looked shaken, and two were trembling so much their brothers had to help steady them.

  “I don’t und
erstand,” Gaelen said. “Why them and not me?”

  Bel gave a soft, wondering laugh. “The Feyreisa. She restored our souls.”

  Gaelen only half heard him. The mist was clearing, and before him lay a sight he’d thought he would never see again in this lifetime: the golden blaze of the Great Sun shining on the great twin war castles of the Fading Lands, Chatok and Chakai, the Mentor and the Champion, eternal guardians of the Garreval.

  They had not changed in all this time. Jutting from the western foot of the Rhakis mountains, just beyond the last tendrils of the Mists, the great fortress of Chatok still stood, as proud and fierce and defiant as ever. Perfect and unchanged from his memory. Massive, hewn boulders of silver-blue granite formed concentric rings of crenellated walls and battlements surrounding a host of soaring central towers topped by gleaming steel-roofed turrets. To the south, the matching silvery white fortress of Chakai jutted out from the hewn cliffs of the Silvermist range. The mile-wide pass between the two fortresses, guarded by the great stone Warriors’ Wall, was named Miora te Baloth’Liera, the Field of Joy and Sorrow, but most warriors called it by another name: Taloth’Liera, the killing field.

  Before the Mists had been created, more than one terrible battle had watered the soil of Taloth’Liera with the blood of armies foolish enough to try invading the Fading Lands. Gaelen himself had wet his blades in this pass on three separate occasions.

  His breath caught in his throat on a sudden surge of emotion. There, on Chatok’s great forward tower called Lute’cha, Gaelen’s cradle friend Lothien vel Din had died in his arms during their first battle together, pierced through the heart by a Merellian demon prince’s poison spear. And there, on Chakai’s ramparts, his beloved blade brother, Eilon vel Hantor, had shoved Gaelen out of the path of an Irdrhi axman’s deathblow, only to fall, his spine cleaved in two, in Gaelen’s stead.

  And finally there, less than three tairen lengths from where he stood now—just beyond the massive steel gates at the center of the crenellated mile-long stone wall connecting Chatok to Chakai—Gaelen and six thousand of his brothers had thrust red Fey’cha in the bloody soil of Taloth’Liera and cried, “Bas desrali lor bas tirei!” We die where we stand! And to a Fey, they had stood and fought and held the pass when even stone walls and steel gates failed beneath the enemy’s onslaught.

  Those shining gates of the Fading Lands still stood, vast and glorious, tall as twenty Fey, and a tairen length wide. And now, as Gaelen and the others approached, the massive, gleaming panels moved slowly inward, parting to reveal a land he had dreamed of for a thousand years. The land he had forsaken. The land he had spent these last long centuries protecting, even though he believed he would die without ever catching a glimpse of her beloved paradise again.

  The Fading Lands, home of the Fey.

  His home.

  He took one step past the towers flanking the gate, a second through the broad, graceful stone arch overhead. He looked up, into the faces of a dozen Fey warriors standing on the ramparts above, half expecting red Fey’cha to come showering down, knowing he would not summon even the thinnest shield if they did.

  But death did not come.

  Two more steps took him past the gate, and for the first time in a thousand years, Gaelen vel Serranis set down his booted foot on the soil of his homeland.

  He had faced, unflinching, the countless battles of far too many bloody wars. He’d confronted terrifying magic, fearsome enemies, and even stood firm while forces that outnumbered his, hundreds to one, charged his position. Yet with that one step, as the sole of his boot made its first slight contact with Fey soil, his battle-hardened warrior’s body began to tremble. His legs shook, his shoulders quaked, and all strength fled him.

  With a cry of surrender, Gaelen vel Serranis fell to his knees on the land of his forefathers.

  Marissya turned, her shei’dalin’s radiance fully unshielded and glowing bright as a star. Love and joy and serenity caressed Gaelen’s senses in lapping waves, and her smile was a balm on his soul. “Ke tamiora,” she said. “Kem’jeto ruvel.” I rejoice. My brother returns.

  A hand touched his shoulder. He looked up to find Belliard vel Jelani at his side.

  “Welcome home, Gaelen,” he said softly.

  “Beylah vo, my brother,” he rasped, his voice thick with emotion. Tears welled in his eyes. He didn’t try to wipe them away. He simply let them fall, and the soil of Miora te Baloth’Liera drank them up, just as it had drunk the blood he’d shed here so many times in the past.

  Standing at Gaelen’s side, Bel understood what the older Fey was feeling. When Bel had left this last time to accompany Rain and Marissya to Celieria City, he had been so close to becoming dahl’reisen himself that he truly had not known whether he would ever see the Fading Lands again. The Shadows had been so near, the weight of even a few more deaths on his soul could have tipped the balance and sent him plunging down the Dark Path or seeking the desperate solace of sheisan’dahlein, the honor death.

  But Ellysetta had restored his soul, almost as completely as she’d restored Gaelen’s.

  The clatter of boot heels on stone made him look up. Two dozen warriors were rushing down the tower steps, blades drawn, their faces etched in stone.

  “Hold!” Bel snapped. “Stay your blades.”

  “Your time in the world of mortals has addled your wits, vel Jelani.” With blue eyes as cold as a winter dawn and a voice to match, Tajik vel Sibboreh, the auburn-haired general of the Fey’s eastern armies, approached. “He is the Dark Lord.”

  “He was,” Bel answered. “But now he is Fey once more, and he is welcome. He has passed through the Mists, and you will greet him as the brother he is.”

  “Dahl’reisen are no brothers of mine.” In a flash, Tajik pulled a red-hilted Fey’cha and pressed the razor edge of the poison blade to Gaelen’s neck.

  Just as quickly, Bel pulled red on Tajik. Tajik’s men drew their own blades in an instant, training the deadly points on Bel. Bel ignored them. “Nei, my friend,” he advised softly, holding Tajik’s gaze, “you will not do this. He is my blade brother, and we are both bloodsworn to the Feyreisa. She restored his soul. His dahl’reisen scar is gone. Even Marissya has laid hands upon him and declared him bright and shining.”

  Tajik’s gaze flickered to Marissya. “Kem’falla? Is it true?” Marissya nodded. “Everything is true, dear friend. Sheathe your steel. There is no evil here. Only cause for joy and celebration. My brother has returned, and Rain has found his truemate—in Celieria, of all places—and she has restored Gaelen’s soul.”

  Tajik remained still for a long moment, absorbing Marissya’s words. Then, with a final dark look for Gaelen, he sheathed his blade and stepped back. Around him, his men followed suit.

  “Gaelen vel Serranis,” he said, “the gods have shown you more mercy than you deserve. No matter how it grieves me to grant you passage into the Fading Lands, I will not stand in your way.” His face hardened to a cold, stony mask. “But be warned: You chose the Shadowed Path before. You won’t have that choice again. If you break our laws this time, I will personally escort you into your next life.” His thumb caressed the scarlet hilt of his sheathed Fey’cha.

  Gaelen rose to his feet. For once, there was no hint of his habitual, cocky assurance, only sober acknowledgment. “Accepted, Fey.”

  Tajik’s cold eyes swept over Gaelen from head to toe, taking his measure. When he was finished, he grunted and turned to Bel. “Who is this Feyreisa that she should restore a dahl’reisen’s soul?”

  Bel smiled. “Don’t be so suspicious. She is bright and shining like nothing you’ve ever seen before. And she is a Tairen Soul.”

  “I don’t like it,” Tajik muttered.

  “You don’t like any change, my old friend.”

  Tajik grunted again. “Not all change is good. No matter how appealing it may seem at first glance.” On a private Spirit weave, he added, «And I’m not the only one who feels that way. Rumors have been flying since we
received word that vel Serranis was returning with you. The Massan gathered in Dharsa this morning.»

  Bel’s brows shot up. «Without Marissya or Rain?» The Massan, the council of five powerful Fey statesmen who over-saw the domestic governance of the Fading Lands, did not convene without the Shei’dalin and the Feyreisen except in times of extreme need. For them to convene now—knowing Rain was on his way—was akin to declaring a lack of confidence in the Tairen Soul’s leadership.

  «Aiyah, without them. So you see, I am not the only one to fear this change.» The faintest hint of warmth softened Tajik’s stern face. “Bel, you and I are cradle friends. I trust you as I trust no other. Tell me you have no concerns—tell me there is nothing to fear—and I will believe you.”

  Bel had been anticipating such questions. He knew his old friend Tajik too well. The problem was that Ellysetta bore two Mage Marks. To claim no concern would be a lie, and no Fey worthy of his steel would ever lie—but neither was Bel willing to cement Tajik’s doubts and fears by refusing to answer.

  “Tajik, my brother, I will not give you a truth you will be able to judge for yourself when you meet her,” he replied. The evasion was smooth and perfectly reasonable. “One look upon her face and you will know as I do—without a single doubt—that she is everything all Fey warriors have sworn to protect. You cannot help but love her.”

  The general of the eastern Fey army drew in a breath, then let it out with a nod of acceptance. “Bas’ka, Belliard. As you say, so shall it be. Where is this paragon of all things bright and good?”

  Bel clapped his friend on the shoulder. “Rain brought up the rear, and she is with him.”

  Tajik grunted. “So we wait.”

  “Aiyah.” Bel saw Marissya break from Dax’s side and hurry towards the Mists as one of the Fey emerging took three steps and fell to his knees. Now the hard part began: the waiting. For each, the journey through the Mists was different, and the passage could last anywhere from several chimes to several bells. Those on the Fading Lands side of the Garreval could only sit and wait as their brethren navigated whatever tests the shifting clouds held in store for them.