King of Sword and Sky

by C. L. Wilson

  After several moments of silence, Venarra said, “Walk with me.” She led the way through a second, spiral-columned archway to a small, private garden. Abundant flowers and blossoming trees filled the air with perfume. Birds and butterflies flitted from branch and bloom. Faerilas burbled from wall fountains shaped like tairens’ heads.

  “As the Shei’dalin, it is my duty to see that you are properly trained in the shei’dalin arts. I had thought—given the words that passed between us yesterday—that you might prefer to have someone other than me instruct you, but Marissya tells me your power overwhelms even her.” She glanced at Ellysetta. “Marissya is our most gifted shei’dalin, but I am stronger at seeing past the strength of a weaver’s threads to the actual pattern of a weave. She believes I am the one best suited to train you and teach you the discipline you need to hold your power in check.”

  Venarra bent her head and paused to pluck a spray of honeyblossom. A tinge of rose touched her pale cheeks. “Her faith may be misplaced. As you saw yesterday, I am not always as disciplined as I should be.”

  Ellysetta wished she were less able to put herself in other people’s shoes. The cold anger she wanted to hug close was already melting in the face of Venarra’s slight blush and shamed admission. “You were afraid for your truemate.”

  “I still am. I don’t trust what is inside you. Some Mage-claimed are innocent—I know that—but it doesn’t stop the horrors they wreak in their master’s name.”

  Ellysetta bit her lip. “I know.”

  Venarra looked up. “I think perhaps Jisera would be the better shei’dalin to conduct your training. You restored her brother’s soul. Like Rain, she sees only the good in you, while I cannot look past the potential for evil. I cannot pretend otherwise, and you will not be able to open yourself to me as you must.”

  Before Ellysetta could answer, the sound of running feet grew near. “Venarra!” A trio of shei’dalins burst into the garden. “Shei’dalin, come quickly!”

  Venarra sprang towards them. “What is it? What’s happened?”

  Ellysetta ran close on their heels, following the four of them as they hurried to one of the healing rooms near the front of the hall. A warrior stood shaking by the door, his hands and chest streaked with blood, his face ashen.

  “She fell,” he wept. “She stumbled at the top of the century stairs. I didn’t know until it was too late.”

  A Fey woman—her skin entirely drained of its Fey luminescence—lay motionless on the healing table. Her hair was matted with blood, her neck and limbs twisted. Jisera and several shei’dalins were already with her, their hands splayed and glowing, but when Jisera looked up at Venarra her eyes were grim.

  At the look, the warrior began to weep. “Nei. Please…nei.”

  Venarra caught his face in her hands and forced him to look at her. “Las,” she said. The word tolled like a bell, and the warrior instantly calmed. “I will not let her die.”

  What followed was a healing like none Ellysetta had ever seen. Venarra leaned over the broken Fey woman and power gathered in her. The black eyes turned to molten amber, glowing like suns, and the fierce control that made her seem so cold fell away, revealing a face of such intense, overpowering love that Ellysetta wanted to weep. Venarra lit up bright as a Lightmaiden of Adelis, a golden-white aura swirling around her. She put her hands on the dying woman’s chest and sent that brightness into the limp body. Her eyes closed. “Stay, beloved,” she said, and her voice was a song, a prayer, an order, a plea, a command so strong even Ellysetta felt its compelling power. “Stay for your e’tan.”

  Two bells later, the Fey woman who had been teetering on the cusp of death walked out wrapped in the protective strength of her mate’s arms, and Venarra, exhausted and drained, slumped against the healing table. The other shei’dalins passed by her, touching her arm and sharing a bit of their own strength with her until the Shei’dalin’s pale skin began to glow with faint luminescence once more.

  “What just happened?” Ellysetta asked. “What did you do?” Venarra glanced up wearily, but Jisera answered for her.

  “She held Carina’s soul to the Light until the rest of us could heal her body.” Jisera laid a hand on Venarra’s shoulder and sent a soft pulse of golden light into the Shei’dalin.

  “She was too far gone for the rest of us to reach. Without you, my friend, she and Daran would both be dead.”

  When Jisera and the others were gone, Ellysetta asked, “Can Jisera teach me to do what you just did?” She remembered her mother, remembered trying desperately to hold her to life even as Lauriana slipped farther and farther away. If she could have spun Venarra’s weave then, perhaps Mama would still be alive.

  “Eventually,” Venarra said. Already, she’d shaken off the soft edge of weariness, and her cool reserve had slipped back into place. “Assuming you learn to control your magic well enough.”

  “Can she teach me to do it as well as you?”

  Venarra raised a brow. “Why do you ask?”

  Instead of answering, Ellysetta said, “Marissya thinks you are the one who should teach me, correct? That you are the one most able to help me control my weaves?”

  “Aiyah,” the Shei’dalin agreed slowly.

  “Then if you are willing, I would like you to teach me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because when the war comes, I want to be the best shei’dalin I can be. If I can save even one life the way you just did, that matters more than any amount of personal distrust between us.”

  Venarra eyed her consideringly. “I am a harsh instructor. I expect perfection from my students.”

  Ellysetta squared her shoulders. “I will work until I give you that perfection.”

  A long silence stretched between them, and then Venarra nodded. “Very well. Come sit here beside me and give me your hands.” Venarra patted a spot on the table beside her. “The first lesson you must learn is how to open your mind to mine, and then I will show you how to anchor yourself so you don’t get lost in your healing.”

  Celieria City

  Gethen Nour stood over the body of the cook Lord Darramon had hired to accompany his traveling party west to the Garreval. “Come here, umagi,” he commanded, and Den Brodson stepped forward. Nour seized his skull and held him tight as the memories of the dead cook poured from Gethen’s mind into Brodson’s.

  When he was done, Brodson stood there, dazed and swaying. Powerful magic swirled in the Primage’s hands, and Brodson’s face began to shift like a lump of potter’s clay. The partially flattened nose was reshaped, the lips grew thinner, the jaw less square. Brodson’s brown hair grew long and straight and paled to yellow-blond. His stocky body shrank to wiry leanness. When Nour’s weave was complete, nothing remained of Den except his pale blue eyes staring out from the dead cook’s face. The cook’s eyes had been a different shade, but there was no help for that. Though the Elden transformation magic could change every other aspect of a person’s appearance, the eyes always stayed the same.

  “Here.” Nour handed Brodson an amber amulet. “Wear this. It will give you some protection against Fey mind weaves and allow me to hear your thoughts and observations so that I am kept apprised of your progress. Any other form of communication would be too risky. And here.” Nour pressed his index finger hard against Brodson’s left temple and murmured a Feraz witchspell that left the umagi trembling. “If you do run into the Fey, whisper the command I just gave you. It will wipe out your own memories for three bells, and leave only the cook’s.”

  Brodson nodded, lifting his new hands to his newly formed face.

  “Quickly,” Nour snapped. “Put on his clothes and get back to the caravan.”

  Den stripped the body, shivering at the bloodless wound that split the skin of the dead man’s chest. The Mage’s black blade had plunged into the cook’s heart, and not one drop of blood had spilled. The crystal in the pommel of Nour’s wavy black dagger was now shimmering with red lights.

  A bell later, clad i
n the dead man’s clothes, Den was in the back of the cook wagon, secreting the bag of chemar stones Master Nour had given him in the small trunk that held the cook’s personal belongings.

  When he stepped back, a loud screech and a scratch on his ankle made him curse. “Jaffing hells!” he yelped, and turned with a scowl to discover that he had stepped on the tail of a nursing mother cat, who was curled up in a nest of cloth with a litter of kittens. A memory floated to the surface of Den’s mind: the cat was the cook’s mouser, Florrie.

  Den’s eyes narrowed when Florrie hissed and took another swipe at his ankle. The kittens, as if sensing their mother’s distress, began mewing. Loudly. Den bent down, intending to grab the nest box and toss the cat and her kittens out the back of the wagon, when memories of his own flashed: his sister cooing like a daft looby over every fuzzy, big-eyed kitten she ever came across. He hesitated, struck by an idea.

  If Ellie Baristani’s sisters were anything like his own, what better lure to bring them close than a litter of kittens?

  “But you,” he warned, jabbing a finger at Florrie.

  “Scratch me again, and I’ll put you in a sack and drop you in the nearest river.”

  Den crawled out of the wagon and circled ’round to climb up to the driver’s box, waving at the members of Darramon’s party who called greetings to him. Not one of them seemed to realize he was not the cook, and twenty chimes later, reins in hand, Den was driving along the cobbled roads, following Lord Darramon’s caravan as it headed west out of Celieria City.

  The Fading Lands ~ Dharsa

  The next weeks passed in a blur. Gaelen and the other chatok spent the first five days evaluating the skills of every warrior, pressing them beyond the challenges of Ro Faer and Ro Chakai. The tests continued day and night, as each warrior demonstrated his sword mastery, his power and skill in each branch of magic, even his knowledge of military strategy and tactics. The strongest Fey in each field of expertise became the chadins Gaelen taught personally.

  Gaelen’s tests were often brutal. Some of the physical combat maneuvers and swordplay resulted in broken bones and bloody wounds, particularly in the first few days of training on a new move. The warriors checked their red Fey’cha in the Academy’s weapons room before assembling in the training ground each day, but apart from that they fought with bare blades, and plenty of them.

  “Do you think the Eld fight with sticks?” Gaelen snapped when anyone complained. “Be grateful there are no sel’dor arrows in the Fading Lands. I’d shoot you full of them, then demand you fight with the barbs in your flesh, just so you wouldn’t be caught unprepared in a real fight.”

  When their efforts did not meet his exacting standards, he would grab the offending warriors by their tunics, thrust his face right into theirs, and snarl, “Why do you think there’s no banishment for blood spilled on Academy grounds? Fight like you mean it, Fey. Fight like your life depends on it, because when you face the Eld in battle, I assure you, it will.”

  More than one Fey gave back as good as—and occasionally better than—they got, and Gaelen spent as much time on his back, bruised and bloody, as he did on his feet ordering the Fey to prove their mettle. He took the battering without complaint, allowing the shei’dalins to heal him only when his wounds were so grievous they impeded his ability to fight.

  “It is no less than I expected, and much less than I deserve,” he told Ellysetta quietly after the shei’dalins healed four broken ribs, a shattered collarbone, and a sword thrust that had gone completely through the muscles of his thigh.

  “I walked the Shadowed Path. I betrayed my honor and my oath as a warrior of the Fey. Let them punish me for my shame. As long as they keep learning so they can better protect you and Marissya, I can bear what price they would have me pay.”

  Gil, Tajik, Rijonn, and Bel assisted him in those first training lessons, and despite their initial misgivings, the Academy’s chatok observed with an interest that soon developed into active participation. Before the end of the second week, the chatok had mastered Gaelen’s invisibility weaves and several of his other techniques, and began assisting in training the others.

  Much to the disgruntlement of the Massan, Eimar v’En Arran joined the warriors training at the Academy and turned himself over to Gaelen’s tutelage.

  “If another Mage War is indeed on our doorstep,” the Air master said with calm pragmatism, “all Fey may be called to defend the Fading Lands. I am not too proud to learn what I can to ensure the safety of my mate…even if that means learning from a chatok who once walked the Shadowed Path.”

  Eimar’s participation encouraged more of the Fey to join as well. Rain’s meetings with the Massan became tense, curt skirmishes, and Gaelen’s grueling training classes at the Academy filled to capacity. Soon, they even spilled over into the Academy’s surrounding fields and buildings to accommodate the increasing number of chadins who came to learn the new skills their brothers had shown them. Even Tenn’s cousin Tael showed up to learn Gaelen’s magic Spirit weave.

  As Rain and the warriors prepared for war, Marissya and Dax walked the hills of Dharsa to sow Amarynth and weave blessings of fertility on the Fey. Ellysetta concentrated on her magic studies and continued searching the Hall of Scrolls for information that might help her save the tairen kitlings. Most nights she and Rain would fly back to Fey’Bahren, so she could sing love and healing on the kits and begin to learn the ways of the pride.

  Despite her rocky start with the Massan, Ellysetta began to make friends among the men and women of the Fey. Hardly a day went by without half a dozen couples coming to her for a fertility weave, and at least a score of beaming Fey maidens and former rasa had asked her to bless their e’tanitsa union. Though war was on the horizon, hope was blooming in Dharsa as quickly and abundantly as the tracts of Amarynth dotting the hillsides.

  Ellysetta began to make significant progress with her magic. Though she still couldn’t summon the trust necessary to throw open her mind to Venarra, she did manage enough of a connection to let the shei’dalin correct imperfections in her weaves and guide her in the summoning and control of her magic. Ellysetta’s resulting weaves were reliable enough that Venarra had begun to allow her to heal the wounded chadin under her supervision.

  Trust was much easier when practicing warriors’ weaves with Jaren v’En Harad, whose affection for Rain Ellysetta could sense every time he took her hands to lead her through her next lesson. In truth, she owed much of her increasing discipline and control to his kind but strict guidance. The most difficult thing he required of her was spinning the weaves exactly as he showed her—without the golden glow of her shei’dalin’s love coloring the threads—because he feared that allowing shei’dalin’s love in her weaves might leave her open to the same empathic death other shei’dalins suffered when they spun killing weaves. Determined not to disappoint Rain’s mentor, Ellysetta struggled tirelessly to eliminate the golden tint from her warriors’ weaves while still infusing it in her healing patterns.

  After each morning’s magic lessons, she returned to the Hall of Scrolls to continue combing through the texts, looking for any clues that would help her solve the mystery of what was killing the tairen. The texts from her initial search hadn’t turned up anything useful, so she began searching for everything related to the tairen, past sicknesses or mysterious deaths among the prides, and even demon lore, hoping something would lead her in the right direction.

  Ellysetta learned how to ask the Mirror to lead her to a particular book, and began exploring even the tightly packed lower levels. The tomblike silence of the hall began to make her restless, so she had the Mirror make copies of the texts and began packing a bag of documents each day and carrying them to the Academy. She read while she watched her lu’tans and the other willing Fey master the skills Gaelen had to teach them.

  At first some of the Fey worried that the violence of Gaelen’s training methods would torment her empathic senses. But surprisingly, though the soul pain of the rasa h
ad driven her nearly to madness with the ceaseless need to ease their suffering, the bruises, blood, and even broken bones of the warriors on the training field didn’t cause the smallest twinge. Even the rare handful of times one of the Fey suffered a truly life-threatening injury, her alarm sprang more from concern for the warrior’s life than empathic distress.

  Until the day Rain suffered a serious wound.

  One of the warriors sparring near Rain rushed in for an attack, stumbled, and sent his seyani plunging into Rain’s unprotected back. The sight of a Fey blade protruding from Rain’s chest, glistening scarlet with his blood, brought Ellysetta out of her chair, power crackling so furiously that her hair rose up in a fiery nimbus around her head. She was across the field, at his side, in an instant, not even aware of the warning growl rumbling from her throat or the blaze in her eyes that sent the warriors stumbling back in alarm.

  Forgetting all the lessons of control and moderation Venarra and Jaren had taught her, Ellysetta healed Rain with an instinctive, searing blast of power. As was typical with her magical outbursts, she healed him so swiftly and so well that when he came up off the ground, his eyes were blazing bright as stars, and his own power was rising as quick and hot as his blood. He carted her off the field to the nearest room with a door—an armory, as it happened—and they proceeded to rattle every shield and scrap of armor off the shelves. When they returned, Rain was smiling, the lu’tans and even the other warriors were grinning, and Ellysetta’s cheeks stayed red as apples the rest of the day.

  After that, the lu’tans began boasting of her tairen fierceness and calling her Ellysetta-makai instead of Feyreisa.

  A few of the other Fey women, drawn by the admiring stories of Ellysetta-makai’s courage and strength, began to pay afternoon visits to the training grounds too, but none of them could stay more than a few bells before the constant thud of flesh on flesh and the occasional sprays of scarlet blood sent them fleeing for more peaceful venues.

  “I don’t know how you can stand it,” Tealah told Ellysetta after her fifth valiant attempt to sit with Ellysetta at the training grounds. Venarra’s assistant had turned out to be a friendly woman, curious, bright, and much more willing than the hall’s keeper to accept Ellysetta as a sister instead of a potentially dangerous interloper in need of constant watching. “If I don’t keep my barriers at full strength, I feel each blow as if it were striking my own flesh. Don’t you?”