by C. L. Wilson
The tairen cocked her head. «The pride sang greetings before, in the nesting lair.»
His lips twitched. “Aiyah, but Ellysetta-Feyreisa was raised among the mortals…the two-legs who mate only in private. She needs time to become accustomed to the ways of the pride.”
Steli looked at Ellysetta, who still held a death grip on the covers. The tairen’s ears and tail twitched; then she snorted again. «What is “private”?»
Rain laughed. “Private means that Steli-chakai should not enter this sleeping lair unless Ellysetta-Feyreisa or Rainier-Eras says you may.”
Steli’s ears went back. «Steli does not like private.» She growled. «Or knocking.» Fur ruffled, clearly offended, she twisted her sinuous body and headed back out to the ledge where she must have come from. «The Fey-kin are here. They wait on Su Reisu.» She sniffed as she left.
“Steli, wait!” Ellysetta ran after the white tairen and caught up with her on the ledge outside. There was enough irritation still whirling in Steli’s eyes that Ellysetta stopped short of coming within claw reach of the white tairen.
“Sieks’ta. I’m sorry. I did not mean to hurt your feelings. I am not used to pride ways—and you surprised me. Please, teska, forgive me.”
The supplication seemed to soothe the white tairen’s injured pride. She swished her tail, then wrinkled her nose and sniffed again for good measure before saying, «Steli forgives.»
Ellysetta flung her arms around the cat’s neck. “Beylah vo, Steli-chakai.”
«Ellysetta-kitling did not hatch in Fey’Bahren. She was not raised in the ways of the pride.» Steli began to purr and gave the side of Ellysetta’s face a warm, maternal lick. «Steli will teach.» The white tairen sounded alarmingly pleased by the prospect.
Pride appeased, Steli flew down with Rain and Ellysetta to Su Reisu, the low, flat-topped plateau at the base of Fey’Bahren where Marissya and Dax were waiting. After an initial threatening growl at the truemates, the white tairen settled into a protective crouch behind Ellysetta, and other than an occasional warning rumble if the newcomers moved too close, she left the Fey to exchange greetings.
Ellysetta explained her findings to Marissya. “There are five eggs left. I tried to look for the source of their illness, as you taught me. Maybe it’s my own inexperience, but other than the kitlings being tired and frightened and very weak, I couldn’t find anything wrong.”
“She sang love and strength on them,” Rain added. Ellysetta grimaced. “Without realizing it, of course.” Marissya started to pat her hand, then glanced at the blue-eyed tairen and changed her mind. “You just need practice, Ellysetta. It’s not lack of ability, but lack of confidence that holds you back.”
Ellysetta glanced over at Rain, who arched a speaking brow. “Rain said much the same thing last night. He wants me to train with the Academy’s chatok as well as with the shei’dalins when we reach Dharsa.”
Marissya’s eyes widened. “Does he?”
“She is a Tairen Soul,” Rain said. “There are skills she must learn that the shei’dalins cannot teach.”
“The Massan will not approve.”
“The Massan have no say in the training of young feyreisen.”
Steli growled and crept closer, poking her head around Ellysetta to fix whirling blue eyes on Marissya. The edge of her mouth lifted up, baring fangs, and her nostrils flared, sniffing the air as if scenting for potential threats—or prey.
“Perhaps not, but tread lightly with them, Rain.” Marissya frowned at the white tairen and edged back, reaching for Dax’s hand. “They deserve your respect.”
“And they have it. But that does not mean this king must seek their approval for his decisions.”
“Change takes time.”
“Time is a luxury I do not have.” Rain’s eyes flashed lavender sparks. “War is coming, and my bond with Ellysetta is not complete. I must do what I feel is necessary. I allowed Ellysetta to heal the rasa because I need blades to fight. Ellysetta must be trained as both a shei’dalin and a Tairen Soul, because both are the gifts the gods gave her. If she cannot accept the entirety of herself, what hope is there for the completion of our bond?”
Before Marissya could answer, Steli pushed her nose against Marissya’s brown leathers and sniffed again. «This one has strong pride scent for a Fey-kin.»
“Marissya?” Rain eyed the tairen in confusion. “She is of the vel Serranis line. Many feyreisen were born to her family in the past. Perhaps that is what you sense?”
«Perhaps.» Steli growled noncommittally. She sniffed some more, nudging Marissya with her nose, then sat back on her haunches. «This one can help Ellysetta-kitling heal our young?»
“We believe so.”
The chakai thumped her tail. «Sybharukai says this one may enter the lair.»
Leaving Rain staring at her in astonishment, the fierce white tairen leapt into the sky and flew towards the wide mouth of the cave that led to the interior of Fey’Bahren.
“What is it?” Marissya asked when the tairen were gone.
“What did she say?”
Rain gave her a look of sheer disbelief. “She said you may enter the nesting lair.”
The shei’dalin’s jaw dropped open. “I don’t understand. I’ve been here before, and the tairen never let me set foot beyond Su Reisu.”
“Marissya, I’m as confused as you. Steli said you bear pride-scent. Maybe while you’ve been teaching Ellysetta, some trace of her scent was transferred to you. Does it really matter?”
Marissya shook her head emphatically. “Good. Then let’s go. You can check the kitlings yourself and tell us definitively whether shei’dalin skills can heal them.”
Marissya started forward, then stopped. “Wait. What about Dax?”
“He stays behind,” Rain answered without hesitation.
“There are eggs in the lair, and three tairen died last night. The pride would kill him before his foot touched the nesting sands.”
“But he is my shei’tan. The tairen have always welcomed the mates of those they welcome into the pride.”
“You were not welcomed into the pride, Marissya. Sybharukai merely said you could enter Fey’Bahren to help Ellysetta save the kitlings.” He glanced at Dax. “I don’t know how long we’ll be, but you have my oath I will protect your mate as if she were my own.”
“I know you will.” Dax waved them off. “Go.”
Rain flew Marissya and Ellysetta up to the main entrance of the lair. Together, with Rain in the lead, they walked down the winding tunnel towards the nesting sands.
Marissya’s eyes were wide with wonder, peering down every tunnel and drinking in the mysteries of Fey’Bahren as they descended towards the volcano’s heart.
“When we enter the nesting lair,” Rain instructed, “we will all walk slowly across the sands to the eggs. Marissya, if at any time tonight the tairen seem agitated, stop whatever you’re doing.”
«Would the pride really kill Dax if he entered the lair?» Ellysetta asked the question on a private weave, troubled by the possibility. The tairen were intelligent and powerful beings, not mere animals. She found it difficult to reconcile the warm welcome she’d received from the pride with the mindless, wild savagery Rain seemed so certain they would exhibit.
«Survival is a tairen’s strongest instinct, and this is where tairen hatch their young,» he answered. «Any intruder is considered a threat. When it comes to the safety of their young, tairen will kill anything and anyone that threatens them. Don’t ever doubt that.»
They reached the bottom of the tunnel, and hard stone gave way to a thick carpet of fine, dark black sand. Inside the nesting lair, the tairen had returned to their ledges except for Sybharukai, who lay curled around the eggs, crooning songs of tairen strength and ferocity to the kitlings.
The tairen closest to the tunnel mouth growled and fluttered their wings when they saw Marissya, but a roar from Sybharukai kept them in place. Her eyes whirled bright and green in the smoky grey of her face,
and she remained curled around the eggs, her tail thumping the sand.
«The Fey-kin may approach the eggs, but if she wounds the kitlings, her blood will soak the sands.»
One of Marissya’s hands rose to her throat; the other held Ellysetta’s in a crushing grip. Sybharukai had spoken in very distinct Feyan, on the common path.
“I…I have no intention of harming them, wise one,” Marissya assured the tairen. “I am here only to offer what help I can to the Feyreisa.”
«The Fey-kin is warned.» With that, Sybharukai rose up on her paws and backed up three steps to grant Ellysetta and Marissya access to the eggs. In a show of silent menace, the great cat extended the long, ivory spikes in her tail and stabbed them into the sand.
Ellysetta led the way, moving towards the center of the clutch of eggs. She laid a hand on each and crooned a quiet song of greeting. “They like when you sing to them. This is Miauren.” She stroked the closest egg. “He is a fine, brave tairen. And this is Hallah, who I think will be fierce and beautiful like Steli-chakai. And these little ones are Letah, Sharra, and Forrahl.”
“You picked fine tairen names for them,” Marissya said, cautiously stepping closer.
“I didn’t pick them. The kitlings told me their names when I sang to them earlier today.” Ellysetta smiled at the shei’dalin’s surprise. “Rain tells me tairen kitlings are sentient even in their mother’s womb, months before she lays the eggs in the nest. Here, come lay your hand on Hallah’s shell and sing to her.” She moved aside so Marissya could step in beside her. “She likes warriors’ songs. Letah and Sharra prefer lullabies.”
“What does Forrahl like?”
Ellie smiled fondly. “Everything. When I sing to him, he purrs so loudly his egg shakes. Watch.” She turned and began to sing a Celierian hymn, and sure enough, the egg beside her began to rock happily.
“You are a wonder, Feyreisa,” Marissya murmured. “I don’t think it’s the song he enjoys half so much as the love you’re weaving on him when you sing it.” Still, gamely, she crouched beside the eggs closest to her. “So you two like lullabies, do you?” Tilting her head, she began to croon the tunes Feyan mothers sang to their children when they were small.
As they sang, Marissya reached out with her magic to check the kitlings. She kept her weaves featherlight and as unobtrusive as possible without sacrificing efficacy. The care slowed her down, but her results were conclusive. Just as Ellysetta had said, there was nothing physically wrong with the kitlings. Marissya could find no infection, no imperfections, weaknesses or blockages in their vital organs, no malignancies anywhere in their bodies. They weren’t even tired anymore, thanks to the inadvertent healing Ellysetta was weaving on them as she sang.
And yet, without a doubt, they were dying.
Ellysetta hadn’t been around enough death yet to recognize it, but Marissya had. She’d served too long in the healing tents during the Wars, knelt by the sides of too many mortally wounded Fey, Elves, and men. Death was here. She’d fought it so often, so desperately, it was as familiar to her as the sight of Dax’s beloved face. A faint, cold shadow buried in the heart of the kitlings’ warm brightness.
Marissya closed her eyes and summoned the shei’dalin power that could rip truths from even the most corrupted souls and anchor mortally wounded warriors to life while she healed them. She closed her senses to everything around her, condensing her awareness. Gently, carefully, she reached out to the kitling closest to her, the one named Sharra, and on a weave of intense Spirit, blazing golden white with the power of her considerable shei’dalin magic, she sent her consciousness into the egg.
The kitling’s bright light abruptly winked out, and steely shackles clapped around Marissya’s wrist, yanking her hand from the shell of the egg. Her eyes flew open in confusion. She blinked away her Fey vision and found Ellysetta beside her, holding her wrist in a bruising grip. The Feyreisa’s eyes were glowing green and whirling with opalescent lights, and her pupils had completely disappeared.
“Whatever you’re doing, Marissya, stop.” A vibrating hum deepened Ellysetta’s voice to a growl.
A louder, much more menacing growl sounded behind Ellysetta. Marissya looked up and her mouth went dry.
Sybharukai’s pupil-less green eyes whirled faster and brighter than Ellysetta’s, fixed on Marissya with such intensity, the shei’dalin couldn’t move. Venom dripped from the tairen’s exposed fangs, her poisonous tail spikes were completely extended, and she was whipping that tail through the air like a weapon.
Marissya released her magic. “I-I’m sorry.” Once the first word escaped, the rest began tumbling out in a rush. “I didn’t mean any harm. The kitlings aren’t sick or injured, but they are dying. I was just trying to find out why. Rain…tell them.” She turned to him, only to find that his eyes, too, had gone more tairen than Fey.
Her first instinct was to call Dax, but she didn’t dare. If she called him, he would come for her. He would come and the tairen would kill him. Frightened, but desperately trying to keep that fear from spilling over across her truemate bond with Dax, Marissya slowly rose to her feet, careful not to make any sudden moves.
“What was that you were weaving?” Ellysetta asked, and a measure of Marissya’s tension drained away when she turned and saw that the Feyreisa’s eyes were slowly returning to normal.
“It was Spirit.”
“That didn’t feel like any Spirit I’ve ever woven.”
“The pattern was a shei’dalin’s weave, Ellysetta. I was trying to merge with the kitlings, to see if I could sense what is killing them.”
Ellysetta released her and gave a humorless laugh. “No offense, Marissya, but I suggest you not try to merge with any more tairen. Apparently they don’t like it.”
Marissya glanced back up at Sybharukai, who was still eyeing her as if she were a meal on the hoof. “So I see.” She backed away from the eggs. “I’m sorry, Rain. Whatever’s killing the kitlings, I don’t think I’ll be able to stop it.”
His jaw worked and he nodded. “I’ll take you back to Dax, but I’d like you to stay the night, in case what hunts the kitlings returns. Perhaps when that happens, you’ll be able to sense something you can’t now.”
She looked around the cavern at all the tairen crouched overhead.
“The choice is yours of course,” Rain added. “As you just discovered, it’s not a choice without risk.”
“Of course I’ll stay.” With a smile that projected far more confidence than she was feeling, Marissya added, “After all, how many shei’dalins ever get the chance to save a tairen pride?”
Despite a night of waiting and watching, the thing that had killed Cahlah and her kit did not return, and by sunrise the next morning, four great tairen were winging across the Fading Lands. Rain carried Dax and Marissya on his back, while Steli carried Ellysetta. Sybharukai had sent the matepair Fahreeta and Torasul along as well to join Steli in singing pride greetings to Shei’Kess.
«Do you really think the Eye will tell us any more than it already has?» Rain asked Steli as they flew. Tairen-made or not, the Eye had been perniciously silent for centuries, adamantly refusing to offer help or guidance to the Fey until Rain had forcibly wrested from it the clues that had sent him to Celieria City—and Ellysetta.
«The Eye sent you to Ellysetta-kitling. It knew you would bring her to back to the Fey-kin and to the pride. Now that she is here, Shei’Kess may have more to say.»
«Well, I hope singing to the Eye earns a more pleasant response than the one it gave me.» The all-consuming pain that had ripped through him when he’d laid hands on the Eye was not something he would ever forget.
Steli chuffed. «You issued Challenge. We are not so…» She sang an image of a foolish tairen kit biting the tail of a grumpy elder.
Ellysetta laughed, then tried in effective ly to hide it from Rain’s narrowing tairen eyes with a cough and a rapid change of subject. «I still don’t understand why the tairen haven’t visited Dharsa since the Ma
ge Wars. I thought the tairen considered the Fey kin.»
He allowed the insult of her laughter to pass with a disdainful sniff. «They do, but the kinship doesn’t extend to any particular affection or desire to socialize.»
«Why not?»
Rather than answer her himself, Rain directed the question to the tairen themselves. «Ellysetta wants to know why the tairen of Fey’Bahren have not visited the Fey-kin city since the Mage Wars.»
«Why would the tairen go there?» Steli sounded surprised by the question. «You were not there, and the Fey-kin are not tairen.»
«They have no wings or beautiful fur,» Fahreeta added, twirling her sleek body in graceful spinning rolls across the sunlit sky to show off her well-shaped wings and the pure golden color of her pelt. «And they break too easily if you play with them.»
«They smell much like prey,» Torasul agreed, «but are not for eating. Is confusing. Makes a cat…» Words gave way to a vivid image of a tairen snarling, his fangs dripping with venom and saliva.
«I…see…» Ellysetta replied slowly.
Rain laughed. The sound came out as a series of amused chuffs. «To the tairen, only the Tairen Souls are true kin. Other Fey are really only kin-by-proxy. Not prey, but not entirely part of the pride either. Wingless, fangless, furless, flightless, two-legged not-prey creatures who might, many millennia ago, have been something distantly related to tairen. In some respects, the tairen regard the Fey rather like that kitten your sisters gave Kieran.»
Her jaw dropped. «They think of the Fey as pets?»
«More like distant relatives. More primitive, less powerful relatives.»
She paused to mull that over. «Do the Fey know that? The warriors are always talking about “the tairen in them.”»
«All Fey know where the line is drawn. Those who are not Tairen Souls admire the tairen, appreciate their power and beauty and magic, but they respect their fierceness as well. The Fey have a saying: “The slopes of Fey’Bahren run dark with the blood of enemies, fools, and prey.” Which may have something to do with the fact that a tairen’s idea of negotiation is a warning growl before he rips and roasts you with fang and flame.»