King of Sword and Sky

by C. L. Wilson

  The scent of Fey’Bahren filled her nostrils, rich, earthy, magical. With pride-song ringing in her ears, she could discern particular scents within the whole, like bright threads shining in a darker weave, each so distinct and vivid the scent became a picture: calm, majestic Sybharukai, fierce Steli, wise warrior Corus, playful, pretty Fahreeta.

  The Eye began to gleam with inner radiance, turning the opaque globe into a glowing orb of deepest red. Small rainbows sparked and swirled within the Eye’s crystalline center. Slowly, gradually, the darkness lightened. The cloudy depths of the Eye became a window to a time when the Fading Lands were green and lush and rich with life. Water ran in abundant rivers through forests and flowering meadows and snaked across a wide, grassy plain that led to a towering range of volcanic mountains. Smoke and clouds wreathed the majestic peaks, and soaring high above, too numerous to count, tairen filled the air. Their roars rang like thunder claps, and fire shot from their muzzles like flashes of lightning in a distant cloudbank.

  «So many,» Rain breathed on Spirit as his voice continued to sing. «There were never so many in all my lifetime. Nor my father’s. Nor his father’s before him.»

  Fey’Bahren wasn’t the only lair in the Feyls. Other tairen could be seen emerging from caves in peaks both near and far, leaping into the sky to join their pride-mates, swooping low to hunt the scattering herds grazing on the plains below.

  «Do you think the Eye is showing us the time when it was a tairen?» Ellysetta asked.

  «I do not know, shei’tani. The Eye has been in Dharsa since before the dawn of the First Age.»

  In the forests below, tiny figures crept along the banks of a stream. A dozen, clad in cloaks, tunics, and leggings that blended well with the surrounding woods. Hunters. Half had quivers strapped to their backs, arrows notched and bowstrings drawn. The other half glowed with silvery luminescence and clutched curving steel in their hands. Slowly, quietly, they crept forward. Ahead, their prey, a small herd of pronghorns, was grazing and drinking by the riverbank.

  The vision swooped close with abrupt swiftness. A tairen-shaped shadow darkened the ground. The pronghorns lifted their heads in fear, caught sight of the predator overhead, then sprang from the riverbank and bounded into the thick brush of the forest. The hunters looked up, and Ellysetta caught a glimpse of pointed ears in silken hair, and faces of stunning beauty, some laughing, others shaking fists in mock anger. Elves and Fey, hunting together, clearly friends, and there were at least two women in the group, one Elf, one Fey, both armed with bow and blades. The leader gestured, and the hunters raced after their prey, disappearing beneath the forest canopy.

  When the pride-song ended, and the images faded. The Eye dimmed, but the rainbow lights continued to sparkle in its depths. It was almost as if the tairen song had awakened the oracle and roused a once-living being’s ancient memories.

  Ellysetta’s hand went to the large Tairen’s Eye crystal on her wrist, the sorreisu kiyr of Rajahl vel’En Daris, Rain’s father. She remembered the faint tingling harmonic in the stone when she’d first put it on, and the way Bel’s crystal reacted similarly. And she remembered those steaming, glittering crystals lying in the dark nesting sands of Fey’Bahren: all that remained of the tairen Cahlah and her mate.

  Perhaps the pride-song had awakened an ancient’s memories: the memories of the once-living tairen whose body had been transformed by the Fire Song into the great Tairen’s Eye crystal now called the Eye of Truth.

  After a brief lull of silence, Steli started singing a new verse. Not pride-song, but a greeting of a different sort. A greeting and a plea, from creatures Ellysetta had thought possessed no humility. The others’ voices dropped back to sing harmonies and croon melodic echoes of Steli’s words.

  «The tairen of Fey’Bahren sing pride-greetings for the unborn kitling Keralas and for Ellysetta-Feyreisa, the one you commanded Rainier-Eras to bring. She has come, as you desired. Her song is silent, but Sybharukai, makai of the Fey’Bahren pride, offers you our pride-song in its stead. Know that Ellysetta-Feyreisa is a tairen of the Fey’Bahren pride. Help her, as you would help those with whom you once flew. Teach her as once you taught the pride. Guide her to hunt the enemy we cannot see so that she may save our kitlings dying in the egg. Share what knowledge you possess, so our pride may live and grow strong once more and our song will not fall silent in this world.»

  This time however, the Eye did not answer. It chose, instead, to remain silent and dark.

  «Sing to it, kitling,» Steli urged. «It listens. It will hear. Sing to it. Ask for the knowledge you seek.»

  Ellysetta glanced around the circle of tairen and Fey. Marissya nodded encouragingly. Rain and the tairen merely watched her intently, no expression on their faces, waiting.

  The song she sang was Fey, selected not so much by conscious thought as by instinct. The notes spilled from her lips, the words bubbling up like water from a spring. It was the song of Fellana the Bright, the tairen who had fallen in love with a Fey king and surrendered her wings and a portion of her soul to the Elden Mages to be with him.

  As the chorus built to its crescendo, the Eye began to shimmer. The whirling rainbows in its center started spinning faster, their light becoming a pale blur and spreading until it seemed the interior of the Eye was clouded with mist. Ellysetta lifted her voice, hitting the refrain on a crystalline note that shimmered in the air like starlight, white and pure.

  As the last note died away, the misty center of Shei’Kess began to clear, and a light flared in the crystal’s untouched depths.

  The light pierced Ellysetta, sinking deep into her soul. She gasped at the searing energy of it. So much power…so ancient…so ruthless. The Eye’s magic held her in an iron grip while it tore through her memories and ripped open the locked places where she hid her most horrifying nightmares and desperate fears.

  The Eye filled with images of war and devastation. The Fading Lands in smoldering ruin. The white beauty of Dharsa scorched and ravaged, its golden spires melted, its soaring towers fallen and crumbled, a wasteland of ashes and shattered beauty.

  Atop the blackened hilltop, where the Hall of Tairen stood, the soaring white walls had been seared black, the golden spires transformed to great, threatening spikes of sel’dor that stabbed the sky like spearheads. The water of the Source ran red, a thick, scarlet river pouring down the mountainside like blood gushing from a mortal wound. All along the mount, beside gardens turned into grim orchards of impaled and rotting corpses, the High Mage’s legions gathered, a grim, malignant shadow on the land.

  Inside the palace, beside a dark and twisted mockery of what had been the Tairen Throne, stood the figure from Ellysetta’s dreams: herself, clad in dark red armor the color of blood. A goddess of destruction, beautiful and fell, whose hand poured poison upon the earth, whose kiss blew death on all who dared oppose her.

  Her face was death white, hair flame red, and her eyes were twin bottomless black pits sparkling with red lights. She wore a full complement of Fey blades made of sel’dor instead of shining steel. Rain’s Tairen Crown rested upon her brow, but its six gleaming globes of Tairen’s Eye crystal had been turned to black selkahr glinting with malevolent flashes of scarlet.

  Before her stood a dark congregation cheering her name, but this time they were not Eld and their corrupt allies. This time they were faces she recognized.

  Gaelen. Bel. Tajik. Gil. Rijonn. Each and every one of the lu’tans who’d bloodsworn themselves to her service. Their faces pale as corpse flesh, their eyes black, soulless chasms.

  Ellysetta’s hands rose to her face, fingers curved into claws. The horror left her breathless. She’d restored their souls. She’d meant to save them. And they, who’d sworn to serve and protect her in this life and the next, had fulfilled their oaths.

  When the Feyreisa they had proclaimed to be their Light fell into darkness, they had followed.

  The dark Ellysetta looked up, her hideous gaze pinning the real Ellysetta where she stood.
A cruel, mocking smile curved her lips.

  Fury, hot and searing, burst in Ellysetta’s chest. The tairen rose with shocking swiftness, wild with rage. Power, vast and deadly, rose with it. They hurt us! the tairen howled. We will scorch their souls!

  “Ellysetta!” Marissya gasped.

  “Shei’tani, nei!” Rain cried.

  The doors to the Hall of Tairen burst open. Ellysetta’s quintet raced in, swords and magic blazing. The lords of the Massan followed swift on their heels, five-fold weaves spinning with vibrant power.

  All of them stopped in their tracks, stunned at the sight that met their horrified eyes. Ellysetta crouched before the Eye of Truth, her mouth pulled back in a snarl of fury, her fingers curved into claws. Above and behind her loomed a great, shadowy black tairen formed entirely of swirling, ember-kissed Azrahn.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  A sword in the sheath is safe, but that’s not what Fey steel was made for.

  Tevan Fire Eyes, first Feyreisen of the Fading Lands

  The Fading Lands ~ Dharsa

  “You knew what she was, knew what taint lay upon her, yet still you brought her.” Tenn paced the Hall of Tairen. The soles of his deep red leather boots slapped the marble tiles in an agitated rhythm.

  “What would you have done? Left her there, among the mortals, for the Eld to take at their whim?” Rain glared at the leader of the Massan. He’d given them the truth, about Ellysetta and the Marks she bore, about the High Mage’s interest in her. There hadn’t been much point in hiding it after Gaelen leapt forward crying, “Quickly, Fey! Five-fold weaves around her before the Mage traces that Azrahn back to her!” Apparently, their quick action succeeded. Ellysetta—who had been escorted back to Rain’s suite by her quintet—said she hadn’t received a third Mark, but damage of a different sort was unavoidable.

  “She wove Azrahn!” Yulan, the Earth master, accused.

  “It is a banishing offense.”

  Rain’s spine went straight as seyani steel, and magic surged in an instinctive rush, ready to fly in defense of his mate. “Only an intentional use of the forbidden magic is cause for banishment, and Ellysetta wove it by accident. Aiyah, she weilds Azrahn. All of us do to some extent—just as all of us weave Spirit—but she does not yet control her power. Her tairen perceived what she saw in the Eye as a threat and tried to defend herself against it.”

  “She is Mage-claimed!” Tenn snarled. “She is a threat to the safety of the Fey.”

  “She is my truemate! The first truemate to a Tairen Soul the world has ever seen.”

  “Even more cause for grave concern!”

  Rain’s face went blank as stone. “What is that supposed to mean?” His voice was soft as silk, but the last word ended on a faint, throaty growl.

  The leader of the Massan continued to pace, either not hearing the telltale rumble of sound, or not recognizing it for what it was: a tairen’s hunting purr. “A Mage-claimed, Azrahn-wielding female of questionable parentage and incredible power appears out of nowhere—and she just happens to truemate the only Tairen Soul still living after the Mage Wars?”

  Rain leaned forward. “I do not like what you imply, v’En Eilan. Do you truly believe the Eld could have found a way to create a woman who appears Fey in all ways, truemates a Tairen Soul, and houses a tairen in her own soul?”

  “It’s no less incredible than the idea that a Fey lord would keep his shei’tani outside the Fading Lands, unprotected and away from her kin, for a thousand years after the Mage Wars.”

  “There’s a possibility her parents may not have been from the Fading Lands,” Rain said.

  “Impossible!” Yulan v’En Belos snorted.

  “So we have always believed,” Rain agreed, “and so it has always been. Yet less than two weeks after I found Ellysetta, Adrial vel Arquinas truemated a mortal-born woman. Her father bears both Fey and High Elvish blood in his ancestry, but his matebond was a purely mortal one. He didn’t even know his daughter possessed magic until her soul called Adrial’s.” He glanced around the room, seeing Yulan’s sudden consternation echoed in the expressions of others. “We must at least consider the possibility that something we’ve never seen before is happening along the borders. So much magic was released there in the Mage Wars. Who knows what the effects of that might be? Ellysetta’s adoptive mother spoke of mortal children born with magic.”

  “Yet another cause for concern,” Tenn interrupted. “We all know what sort of creatures the remnant magic has spawned: lyrant, shadow snakes, blood vines, and bone wraiths. Fell, evil creatures all. Nei, what Eld magic touches, it corrupts. That has always been true, never more so than now. You all saw the same vision I did.” He cast a steely glance around the room, meeting each Fey lord’s eyes in turn. “Those rasa you allowed to bloodswear themselves to her will become her personal army, as foul and corrupt as she will be.”

  “When it comes to the future, the Eye shows only possibilities, and you know it,” Rain snapped. “Do not dare suggest that what you saw is certainty.”

  “Neither is it an impossibility,” Tenn bit back. “The Eye does not lie.”

  “For all our sakes, we’d best pray to the gods that she is not the Elden Mages’ creature,” Loris, the Water master, interrupted. “And if she is, we’re better served finding a way to free her of their taint rather than wasting time condemning her for it.”

  “The only way the Fey have ever destroyed Eld evil is to burn it out of existence,” Tenn snapped.

  Rain’s tense muscles drew even tighter, and his body dropped into a slight crouch, like a cat preparing to spring. “Harm Ellysetta, v’En Eilan, and no place on earth will shelter you from my wrath.”

  A loud growl from overhead made all the Fey look up. Steli crouched on the wide ledge rimming the domed Hall of Tairen, her pupil-less eyes bright with whirling blue radiance. White wings unfolded and flapped, sending powerful downdrafts gusting into the main portion of the hall. The Massan clutched at whirling robes and stepped aside as the white tairen touched down in their midst.

  «This pride does not welcome Ellysetta-kitling. Steli-chakai growls mother-warning.» The great cat lowered her massive white head and bared her fangs. A low, loud, warning growl rumbled from her chest and throat, making the bells in Eimar v’En Arran’s hair chime.

  With a warning scream, Fahreeta leapt down to join her, Torasul close behind. The pair of them flanked the Massan, growling and hissing and herding the Fey leaders back towards the center of the room. All five Fey lords put their hands on their blades, though not one of them dared pull steel on the tairen. «Warning, Fey-kin. Steli-chakai growls mother-warning. Fahreeta and Torasul growl pride-warning.»

  «Ellysetta-kitling is Fey’Bahren pride.» The white head thrust forward, and she bared her fangs at each of the Massan. «Be warned, Fey-kin. Rainier-Eras claims mate rights, but Steli-chakai claims mother rights. Steli-chakai is fiercest of the Fey’Bahren pride.»

  Tenn shot Rain a furious glare. “What are they saying, Feyreisen?” The Massan could not hear the tairen’s song. All they heard were rumbling growls, hisses, and muted roars.

  “They say Ellysetta is part of their pride, but you are not.” The answer did not come from Rain, but from Marissya, who had returned from tending Ellysetta and now stood beside Dax in the doorway, her hands clutched over her still-flat belly. “Steli, the white tairen, is the First Blade of the Fey’Bahren pride. She advises you to treat Ellysetta—whom she has adopted as her own kitling—with caution and respect. The others, Fahreeta and Torasul, suggest the same.” She let a long, commanding look settle over the Massan. “I suggest you heed them.”

  Loris spread his palms in a calming gesture. “Las, my friends. We all know Tenn. He occasionally falls prey to the hotheaded tendencies that afflict so many Fire masters, but he would never suggest harm to another Fey’s mate. Would you, Tenn?”

  He settled an unblinking violet-blue gaze on the leader of the Massan until the glaring Fire master muttered, “Nei, of cour
se not,” then stalked to the far side of the room.

  “There. You see?” Loris turned back to his fellow Massan. “It doesn’t matter where she came from or even what blood runs in her veins. She is Rain’s shei’tani, which means we have no choice but to free her—or at least shield her—from whatever Eld taint lies upon her so that she and Rain can complete their bond.”

  “What if the taint on her corrupts the bond—and Rain through it?” Yulan interjected.

  “Then we are doomed,” Tenn said.

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Eimar’s hair chimes sang as he glanced around to frown at Tenn. “I’ve never heard of any Mage powerful enough to corrupt a completed shei’tanitsa bond.”

  “I’ve never heard of a Mage-claimed woman completing the bond either,” Yulan retorted.

  “Shei’Kess sent me to find Ellysetta,” Rain reminded Yulan sharply. “I will not believe its purpose was to cement the destruction of the Fey. Nei. There is no doubt in my mind that she holds the power to save us. Our task must be to help her find it.”

  Tenn sighed and rubbed his face wearily. “You may not wish to hear it, Rain, but you need to consider the possibility that perhaps your shei’tani has already done all she was meant to do.” His expression grew sympathetic. “The Amarynth blooms for Marissya, and the pride has said her child is a Tairen Soul. You told us last night it was Ellysetta’s weave that was responsible. Could that not be the role Ellysetta was destined to fulfill?”

  A chill worked down Rain’s spine. That possibility had never occurred to him, not even when the Mists had Challenged Ellysetta and him so fiercely. “She is a Tairen Soul,” he countered. “The first female Tairen Soul in recorded history—and the first shei’dalin ever to be able to heal the souls of Fey warriors other than her own shei’tan.”