by C. L. Wilson
Familiar power swelled, and the sparkling mist of the Change billowed around Rain’s tairen form. Even before it cleared, Rain the Fey was striding across the sands of the lair to her side, his eyes glowing bright, his face pale and strained.
“Nei, shei’tani.” He dissolved the five-fold weave around her and grabbed her shoulders. Intense emotions barraged her senses. “Listen to me. Mage or demon, this thing never takes more than one kitling when it comes. That’s how it has always been. Let it have that life; then, when it is gone, you can resume the healing the Eye showed you.”
He was terrified beyond reason, else he would never consider the sacrifice of an innocent an acceptable price for victory. And that fear told her more than words ever could how deeply and desperately he loved her.
“Rain.” She caught his face in her hands. “I can’t. You know I can’t. If these were our children, would you stand by and watch one of them die so you could be assured of saving the others? Or would you move the very heavens and the earth to try to save them all?”
He brushed that argument aside with a growl. “I would face a thousand deaths to save them. But you’re not asking me to risk my own life. You’re asking me to risk yours.”
“Yes, I am.” She pressed her lips to his, kissing him, loving him. “You say you must become worthy of my bond. But if I let even one of these babies die without a fight, how will I ever become worthy of yours?”
“Do you think I care about our bond more than your life?” he countered. “I will gladly die if it means you may live.”
She clutched him to her, threading her fingers through his hair, holding him as if the sheer strength of her embrace could complete the merging of their souls. “And do you truly think there’s any hope for me if I lose you?” Gently, she pulled back to meet his gaze. “Without you, I will choose sheisan’dahlein just to be sure the prophecy of the Eye can never come true. I’ve already asked Steli to see to it.”
“Shei’tani…” His expression crumpled.
“I must do this, Rain. Tairen do not abandon their kits. Tairen defend the pride.”
Tears shimmered in his eyes. He closed them and touched his forehead to hers in defeat. “Aiyah.”
That one word of acquiescence, wrenched by love from a heart drowning in fear, made her love him more than she ever had. She smoothed her thumbs across the warm silk of his skin. “If love were power enough, shei’tan, our truemate bond would be complete a thousand times over.” Her lips curved in a trembling smile. “You bring pride to this Fey.”
His arms closed tight around her, and his mouth claimed hers in a final, passionate kiss. «Ver reisa ku’chae, Ellysetta. Kem surah.» When at last he let her go, he stepped back a pace, and grim determination settled over his features. “But if this must be done, shei’tani, we will do it together.” He removed the Soul Quest crystal from around his neck and settled it in place around hers. “You will use my strength and everything I can give you.”
“Rain, nei. If the High Mage can use me to Mark you—” He pressed a finger to her lips. “Then it will be no more than you accepted as the price to save the tairen. If you can live with three Marks, I can surely live with one.”
“Rain…”
“If these were our children, would you want me to stand by and do nothing while you risked your life to save them?”
She had no more defense against that argument than he had.
He turned to the pride’s makai. “Sybharukai, if anything happens to Ellysetta, promise you will not let me fly.” His lids narrowed over eyes gone abruptly savage. “And if this Mage succeeds in stealing the young, promise you will scorch Eld to a barren wasteland.”
The gray tairen growled her assent. «It will be done, Rainier-Eras.»
Eld ~ Boura Fell
Shan leaned his head back against the sel’dor-lined rock wall of his prison, welcoming the familiar searing burn. Over the years, the pain had become almost a comfort. His eyes closed. Weariness and despair crowded his heart. Hope was a thing long lost.
«He has Marked her, shei’tani. She is weaving Azrahn and he Marked her again.»
In the darkness behind his lids, he summoned the image of his beloved, the sweet fire of her hair, the shining brightness of her golden eyes, so that when her answer came it was as if she were here with him, standing before him, the only light left in his world.
«She spins the forbidden magic on purpose? The Fey would never allow it.»
«She tries to save the tairen. The Mage is stealing their souls.» That much he’d gleaned from the link that had tied part of Shan’s soul to Ellysetta’s since before her birth. «She fights him now.»
«She cannot defeat him alone.»
«I know.»
«We must help her.»
«Maur is there in the Well. He will sense our presence, just as he did when we came to her aid before.» Shan’s bones were barely knitted from the price he’d paid for that effort, and Elfeya’s nightmares over what the Mage had done to her still woke both of them in a cold sweat each night.
«We still must help her.»
Shan hung his head, resting his chin on his chest. He had expected no other answer. «I know.»
«Then show me her weaves, shei’tan, and be my bridge to her soul.»
The Fading Lands ~ Fey’Bahren
Ellysetta gathered the strength of Rain and the tairen and fed their power into her weaves along with more power of her own. For a moment, the healing threads lit up like ropes of sunlight. For a moment, the darkness retreated. But then, just as quickly, the light was leached away.
The kitlings cried out in desperate fear, singing the bright word of her name like a talisman and a prayer. Their trust stabbed her heart as their frightened minds reached out to her the way a fearful child’s fingers clutched at his mother’s skirts.
With a sob, she sent another blast of power down her weaves, brightness to hold off the dark, but just as before, after a brief flaring moment of hope, shadow consumed the light.
The weaves the Eye had shown her were not powerful enough. She tried to strengthen them with song, pouring love into every word. She spun every healing weave she knew. And still nothing worked. Her Azrahn-enhanced weaves might have been enough to save the kits before the Mage loosed his soul-stealer upon them, but now the battle had changed. She wasn’t just trying to draw the kits from the Well, she was fighting to keep something from pulling them back in.
The kitlings were dying. Connected as she was with her weaves, she could feel them slipping away, not just one or two but all of them. Their bodies were perfectly healthy, yet slowly, their sweet voices and the brightness of their souls were fading.
You are a shei’dalin. Hold them to the Light.
The thought blossomed in her mind, filled with urgent conviction. She needed to spin a shei’dalin’s healing weave, the kind Venarra had used to hold that dying woman’s soul to life. Venarra hadn’t taught her the patterns yet, but her mind must have instinctively recorded them, because the knowledge was there, as if she’d spun those weaves a thousand times.
Adelis, Bright One, Lord of Light, please, teska, help me. Guide me. Do not let me fail. The gods had answered her prayers in the past, working their miracles through her instinctive, untutored magic. She prayed they would help her again now.
She forced herself to block out the pitiful cries of the baby tairen and surrendered to the crooning, powerful song of the tairen. It flowed over and through her, carrying away her fear and doubt. Her hands unclenched. Her muscles relaxed. Her breathing became deep and even. She was a well of calm, and into that well her consciousness dove deep.
The source of her power lay far within her, shining bright as the sun, more white than gold, dazzling with the strength of her shei’dalin’s love. She absorbed the power into her consciousness until every thought blazed with magical resonance. Then, when she could hold no more, she sent her spirit, the living essence of her soul, out of her own body and into the small bodies of the
tairen kitlings, just as the shei’dalins sent themselves into the body of another when they needed to perform great healing.
Follow your weaves into the Well.
As if guided by the invisible hands of the gods, she found the humming threads of her healing weaves inside the kits and followed them, leaving the gleaming radiance of the world and descending into the dark realm of souls.
Light was extinguished. The abrupt darkness alarmed her. Had she fallen for one of the Mage’s traps?
She reached instinctively for Rain across the threads of their bond. «Rain…»
«I am here, beloved.» His voice returned, a deep baritone, steady and reassuring. He was there with her in the darkness, just as he’d been with her in the blinding gray-white of the Mists. He would always be there with her.
The brief moment of doubt and fear passed, and her confidence surged anew. As long as Rain was with her, she was strong.
She traced the threads of her weave as a miner lost in the impenetrable blackness of a cave might follow a rope to guide himself back to the surface, only she followed to go deeper into the mine. Finally, after a seemingly endless plunge into dark, light reappeared. First came soft glimmers of red, then dim, faint glows of a brighter hue that, as she drew nearer, became small orbs of rainbow-hued light, flickering uncertainly. The kitlings.
And with them, the enemy she’d come to fight.
A nearly invisible, shifting darkness that merged into the surrounding black of the Well. Nothing as substantial as smoke, but rather an oily void that moved as if it were alive. From it flowed countless tiny threads, like black spider silk, attached to the kitlings’ souls, sucking at them like so many leeches, draining away their brightness.
She lashed at the dark threads, tearing them away from the unwilling hosts.
«Get away from them! Leave them alone.»
The threads reared back, writhing blindly. A handful of them latched onto her. She ripped them away, only to find a dozen more reaching out to replace them. Everywhere they touched, her brightness dimmed, as if the hungry mouths were draining her soul too.
«Ellysetta!» Rain cried. A surge of power raced through her, filling her with the bright, powerful, blazing light of his love.
The black thing shrank back, its silken threads releasing her as if burned.
Yes. Yes, that’s it, ajiana. No darkness, no matter how deep, holds dominion over Light. Shine your Light, Ellysetta. Weave your love.
The voice spoke with quiet certainty, reaffirming her strength. She could do this. She had the power. The gods had chosen her to do it.
She drew upon her magic, upon Rain’s fiercely shining brightness, upon the strength of the tairen concentrated in the crystals she held and the song that swirled around her. It still wasn’t enough. Too much of her own strength was tethered to that safety anchor she’d prepared, and the magic she needed to weave now demanded everything she had to give.
She released her anchor, gathering that magic into herself as well, summoning every bit of power from every source she could find. She spun it into threads, glowing, golden-white shei’dalin’s love, burning bright as the Great Sun, and with it shadowy Azrahn, dark as the ember of a dead star. The new pattern both fed strength into the kits and began to shear away those feeding mouths from the Well.
As each dark strand withered and fell away, the kitlings’ light shone brighter.
She kept feeding power into her weave, drawing upon Rain, the tairen, and the seemingly limitless source of confidence and love she’d found so unexpectedly here in the Well. Her Azrahn and shei’dalin’s love were so tightly interwoven, the threads became a single melded rope. Light and dark strobed in rhythm like blood flowing through the life-giving arteries of a god. The light was stronger than the dark. Its radiant glow brightened the shadows, each pulse more brilliant than the last, until no hint of red-tinged black nor even sickly gray shone in the incandescent threads of her weave.
She spun that life, that love, and that fierce strength into the kits’ souls, pouring it out upon them as the Source of Dharsa poured its waters upon the fountains and streams of the city, giving them everything, holding back nothing for herself.
The kitlings’ voices grew louder, surer. The timid, hesitant glimmers of their song became shining stars of gold and silver light, a river of sparkling brightness that illuminated the Well as it spiraled upwards.
«Go, dearlings,» Ellysetta urged. «Go.» She gave them each a gentle nudge with sun-bright hands. The shining orbs that were the kitlings’ souls shifted, spreading, stretching out small limbs and wings to become small, dazzling glows of tairen-shaped light. They soared upwards, following the river of song out of the Well.
Vadim Maur roared as he felt the bright souls of the tairen escaping from Choutarre’s grip. Bitter rage and reckless fury warred inside him. He plunged the exorcism needle filled with Ellysetta’s blood into his own vein and whispered the release spell. The searing rush of her powerful blood mingled with his own. His senses and his connection to her sharpened.
For the second time that night, he struck.
Ellysetta shrieked as the Mage’s dark power drove a new blade of ice into her heart.
Her light shattered, and the Well was plunged into darkness.
Dimly she heard Rain calling her name, but the sound was muffled and so far away. Weariness enveloped her. She was so tired, her strength depleted. She’d given everything she had to the kitlings, keeping precious little for herself, and the fourth Mark that now bloomed on her breast had drained what Light yet remained.
In the darkness and silence, she could hear the voices, the whispers, calling her name as they had at the peak of the Fire Song. The urge to let go was nearly overpowering. She was so tired, and somehow the voices didn’t seem so frightening anymore. Now, they seemed only welcoming.
«Ellysetta!» Rain’s voice boomed in the silence of the Well. The threads of their bond blazed with sudden incandescence as the vast, immeasurable force of his power sizzled down them, as strong and vibrant as faerilas from Dharsa’s Source, shocking her back to alertness.
Rain, her mate. Rain, her love.
Rain, who was weaving black Azrahn in a desperate bid to free her from the Well.
A sudden surge of dark power exploded in the Well. The High Mage, who had baited his trap and waited, now struck in earnest. His magic plunged like a dagger into Rain’s weave.
“No!” she screamed in horror. “Shei’tan!”
The next thing Ellysetta knew, she was lying on the hot sands of the nesting lair, staring up into the savage blaze of lavender eyes. Rain snatched her up, hauling her into his arms, holding her so tight she could scarcely breathe.
“Beylah sallan. Beylah sallan.” His voice cracked. “I thought I’d lost you, shei’tani.”
Terrified on his behalf, she pushed against him and tore open his tunic with a sharp weave of Earth, baring the smooth paleness of his chest. She summoned a flicker of Azrahn, then promptly extinguished it after a brief gasp of disbelief. Rain’s chest was luminous and Fey pale, without the slightest smudge of a Mage Mark upon it.
“I don’t understand.” Her shaking fingers trembled against his flesh. “You wove Azrahn. I saw him strike you. I felt it. Yet you are unmarked.”
Rain clasped her hand to his breast and gave a sound that was half laugh, half sob. “How could he lay claim to a soul that already belongs utterly to you? There is nothing I would not give, no part of me I would not sacrifice, no law I would not break if it meant keeping you from harm. Kem’reisa sha ver. My soul is yours. Do with it what you will.”
She felt her own soul unfurl like a flower blossoming in the sun as a brilliant new bond thread spun from her deepest being to his. Glorious and golden-white, a thread of purest shei’dalin’s love, a bond of truth and trust she knew would never be broken. She flung her arms around his neck, pulling him close. She wept as her lips found his, claiming his mouth as she had claimed his heart and soul.
Beh
ind them, around them, the pride began to hum, and a rich, bright melody of tairen song flowed out into the nesting lair.
Ellysetta and Rain turned. The four eggs were rocking, tears appearing in the hardened leathery hides as razor-sharp claws poked through. Tiny muzzles, filled with egg teeth, poked through the holes, gnawing at the edges to make them larger.
Four damp, fuzzy little heads poked through, glowing, jewel-toned eyes whirling star-bright. The leathery eggs stretched and shredded. Wriggling and squirming, the kitlings clawed their way to freedom, until all four small bodies tumbled out and lay panting on the sands, mewing, trembling with exhaustion. Their damp wings fluttered.
Sybharukai bent her head to lick each of the kitlings dry, purring deep in her throat. The kitlings closed their eyes in bliss and tilted up their small heads, bodies quivering with their happy, answering purrs.
“Oh, Rain.” Ellysetta held him tight, her eyes filled with happy tears.
“You did it, shei’tani.”
She shook her head. “Nei. We did it, shei’tan. You and I.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I san, sheisan, te Liss!
For love, honor, and Light!
Fey Battle Cry
Eld ~ Boura Fell
Vadim Maur knew from his umagis’ wide eyes and frightened silence that this trip to the Well and his reckless, overreaching attempt to deliver three Mage Marks in one night had cost him dearly. He knew it even before enough sensation returned to his body that he could feel how his legs had turned to rubber beneath him. The bony hands clutching the sides of the birthing table had turned bloodless white, the tissue beneath his yellowed nails had gone a dark, bruised purple.
“Help me to a chair.” His words sounded garbled, and his tongue felt thick in his mouth.
Two of the umagi rushed forward to put their shoulders beneath his arms, carrying his weight as his feet half shuffled, half dragged across the floor to a chaise in an adjoining room.