by C. L. Wilson
He closed his eyes, breathing hard as the faerilas seeped into his wounds. Its magic burned like cauterizing fire, healing and searing all at once. He bent his head to drink the restorative waters as his blade brothers tended his wounds.
“You should let Teleos’s hearth witches tend you,” Bel said. “Some of these wounds are deep.”
«There are others in greater need. I will be fit to fly again in half a bell, and the Change will heal my wounds. What news of Teleon?»
Bel’s eyes went dark as midnight. “Lost. Teleos got the word while we were in the Mists. The rasa are dead. More than a thousand of them. Teleon is destroyed again. Lord Darramon is slain and his wife missing. The Eld hold the Celierian side of the pass.”
«What of Ellysetta’s family? The shei’dalins?» “Gone,” Bel gave him the news bluntly. When it came to sorrow, warriors preferred their news served on a sharp blade. A clean cut hurt just a little less. “Kiel and Kieran, too. Dead or captured or lost in the Mists.”
Rain flung his head back and roared in anguish. The Change swirled around him, burning with pain as the sel’dor barbs still embedded in his flesh twisted magic to agony. He embraced the pain, welcoming the acid burn. The roar became a scream that tore his Fey throat raw.
Gods. Ellysetta could not lose her father and the twins. Not after everything else. “Has anyone told her?” He didn’t need to say her name.
“Nei.” Gaelen’s eyes were dry but haunted. “None of us had the courage to break her heart.”
They’d been waiting for him to do that. “How long ago were they lost? Could they still be in the Mists?”
“If they entered the Mists, it wasn’t through the Garreval,” Bel said. “One of the few survivors of the battle says he saw them running up the mountain, trying to escape Eld and darrokken.”
Hope left him on a low, pained groan. Traversing the Faering Mists was a journey fraught with danger even in the best of times. The Garreval was the preferred path because the pass was flat and wide, unlike the treacherous cliffs of Revan Oreth behind the Veil. Those caught by the illusions of the Mists were unlikely to fall down a cliff and break their necks in the Garreval. The Rhakis mountains, though, were precious little but cliffs.
“I will tell her. She deserves to know the fate of those she loves.” He swam to the shores of the lake and pulled himself out. He dried off with a simple weave of Fire and Water, and then there was nothing left to do but spin the news to Ellysetta across their bond threads.
She answered instantly, as if she’d been waiting for his call, but though Bel had served the news to him on a sharp knife, Rain could not bring himself to tell her so bluntly. Instead, he told her about Orest, about the battle and the never-ending supply of enemy troops.
«The Eld are here in force. More than I dreamed they would send. Orest and Teleon are just the beginning. Warn Marissya. Have her get word to Eimar and Loris. They will listen when Tenn and the others will not. The Fey must prepare for war.»
«They know, Rain. Sybharukai sent Xisanna and Perahl to fetch Marissya and Dax. Venarra controls the shei’dalins, but Marissya is going to Orest. The tairen are, too. Steli says the pride will reach Kiyera’s Veil within two bells. Wait for them.»
«I wish I could, kem’reisa, but the Eld will insist on making war.» He tried to infuse his words with dry amusement.
«Rain…» The warmth of her presence dimmed slightly as worry cast a chill shadow. «Have you news from Teleon?»
He hesitated. There was no putting it off. She had to know the truth. «There is word, beloved…but it is not good.» In a halting voice he told her. All of it. Everything, because she would want nothing less. Because despite the heart he could feel breaking in her chest, she was a strong, fierce, brave woman. A Tairen Soul.
«Lost?» Her voice trembled. «Papa and the twins? Kieran and Kiel?» Her voice caught on a sob, and silence fell between them. A moment later, in a firmer voice, she said, «Nei. Nei, if they were gone, I would know it. Half my heart would be dead, but it is not. They are not gone. They cannot be. I will not believe it. Nei.» He could almost see the tilt of her chin, the spark of defiance lighting her eyes. «Someone saw them running for the Mists. That’s where they must be. We just have to wait until they make it through, just as you and I did.»
If they found their way out at all. If they did not fall from a cliff and break their necks. If they weren’t already captives of the High Mage of Eld. He left the possibilities unspoken. What Fey would rob his mate of hope? «May the gods will it so, shei’tani.»
Bel, Gaelen, and Dev were wolfing down a quick meal and poring over a map Dev had produced. The sounds of battle were growing louder and the calls across the Warriors’ Path more numerous. Without him in the sky, the Eld were on the march again, and gaining ground. «I must go.»
«Light keep you safe, shei’tan, and please…please, Rain…wait for the tairen. Give them two more bells.»
He would not make a vow he could not keep, so instead he gave her the vow he would never break. «Ver reisa ku’chae. Kem surah, shei’tani.»
By the time Rain and the others returned to the fight, Lower Orest was black with thousands of Eld troops. In just the brief half bell he’d taken to rest and restore his strength, trebuchets had been positioned in a semicircle around the lower levels of Maiden’s Gate, each protected by half a dozen bowcannon aimed at the sky. The Fey had thrown up five-fold shields to protect the defenders, but sel’dor rained down in a ceaseless barrage, and their shields had begun to fail. The trebuchets launched massive hunks of rock and exploding mortars into each breach.
Protected by airborne missiles and magic shields, an entire company of Mages lobbed sphere after enormous sphere of Mage Fire at the defenders. Hundreds vaporized in instants. Half of the first three levels simply disappeared, as if scooped out of the mountainside by the hand of a god.
«Fey!» Rain cried on the Warriors’ Path. «Twenty-five-fold weaves! Hold off that Mage Fire.»
He took to the air, twisting and turning as the air around him went black with sel’dor arrows and great barbed spears catapulted from the bowcannon. The arrows were a nuisance.
The massive spears, however, were tairen killers.
«Rain! Bank left! Left!» Bel’s scream tore through his mind. Instinctive trust in his oldest friend sent him rolling left, and the bowcannon spear that would have ripped through his chest tore a gaping hole in one wing instead. He barely made it back to Maiden’s Gate before his ripped wing gave out. He fell from the sky, crashing right into the center of an Eld attack force.
Fortunately, tairen didn’t need wings to breathe flame. The entire level went up in a boiling sea of fire. Screaming Eld leaped from the walls and fell, burning, to their deaths.
Rain Changed and finished off those left with his swords, fighting with delirious fury and roaring in triumph as blood filled the air like hot scarlet rain. His teeth flashed in a savage grin. Bloodlust rose high. Tairen Souls killed with fire at a distance. But this close, intimate dance of death brought the savage predator in him screaming to the surface.
Dead allies were scattered like leaves across the ruins of Orest. Too many of them wore Fey faces. Friends’ faces. This battle must stop. Here and now. No matter what.
He Changed again—his wings re-forming whole and untorn—and leapt back into the sky. This time when he dove for the Mages and sel’dor filled the air, he didn’t try to dodge the missiles. This time he simply Changed into formless mist and let the spears and arrows fly through him.
The burn still hurt. Some sentient part of Rain scattered to the rainbowed gray cloud of the Change felt the acid brush of sel’dor against each tiny droplet of his being, but the foul black metal passed through him without doing harm.
When it was gone, he Changed back into the midnight black tairen with death in his eyes, and dove towards the knot of Elden Mages, spewing a furious jet of flame that incinerated everything in its path. The Mages’ shields lasted a scant three chimes
before crumpling like seared kindling, leaving the hot, fierce licks of tairen fire to consume the vulnerable red- and blue-robed sorcerers beneath. He screamed in triumph, put on a burst of speed, and raced into the sky.
Rain used the same tactic to destroy three of the trebuchets and their flanking bowcannon, but when he swooped down upon the fourth, the Eld had adapted to his attack. Their sel’dor barrage came in a continuous stream rather than a single, dense burst, so that he emerged from the Change into a stream of arrows and took a dozen of the barbed missiles in one side. His flame burned the rest, but as he dove to set fire to the trebuchet, portals opened on every side, revealing bowcannon targeted directly at him.
His body twisted, and four sel’dor spears raked deep cuts in his side as he swept by. Sel’dor nets fired from another two portals, and the weighted wire mesh wrapped tight around him and dropped him to the ground. His attempt to Change to escape the net ended in writhing agony as dozens more sel’dor arrows thunked into his side.
Eld surrounded him, brandishing black metal pikes and barbed blades.
A deafening roar drowned out the cacophony of battle. Bright, boiling clouds of flame burst from the Faering Mists, heralding the arrival of eight great tairen. With screams of fury, they dove towards the battlefield of Lower Orest. Steli led the way, white and fierce, and on her back she carried a slender, shining figure clad in studded scarlet leathers.
Flaming cyclones of Air and Fire shot from Ellysetta’s fingertips, driving back the Eld circled around her mate.
Rain closed his eyes as tairen flame poured over him in searing jets. The heat and fire enveloped him, burning the sel’dor net and barbed ends of the arrows from his body without raising so much as a blister on his tairen hide. Moments later, he sprang into the sky. «You should not be here, Ellysetta,» he chided as he circled close to Steli’s fierce form.
«Where else do I belong if not by your side?» Ellysetta tossed her head and gave him a blinding smile. «Tairen do not abandon their mates. Tairen defend the pride.»
He gave a snort and blew smoke. Stubborn woman. Headstrong woman.
His woman.
And he would have her no other way.
«You bring pride to this Fey.» He set every thread of their bond singing with the vastness of his love. «In truth, I can use your help at the Veil. There are wounded in need of a shei’dalin’s care.»
She didn’t hesitate or argue. «I will go.» Her eyes narrowed on the blood-soaked arrows quilling his side. «Finish this, and join me, shei’tan. I will be waiting for you.» She stroked a hand down Steli’s neck, and the white tairen wheeled towards Upper Orest.
«What shall we do with the Eld?» asked Pella, one of the other seven tairen, as Steli winged towards the mountain city.
Rain glanced down at the battlefield where so many had been lost. From this height, the Eld looked like nothing but ants scurrying across an anthill. «Burn them,» he commanded. «Burn the Eld and scorch the ground. Leave no finger span unscathed.»
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
With the reenergized Fey forces keeping the bowcannons, archers, and Mages busy, the nine tairen made short work of scorching Lower Orest.
Most of the Eld broke ranks and ran for the nearest portal when the pride fired the battlefield. Those who did not died ablaze and screaming. To Rain’s great relief, blanketing the entire battlefield in tairen flame seemed to destroy both the portals and whatever had enabled them to open. No more gaping holes in space opened. No more foul armies of the Eld poured out. Lower Orest was left a barren, smoking wasteland, as was the fortified Eld village across the river, but he and the pride did not stop burning until they’d scorched every last remnant of the Eld army from the soil.
Rain sang the same instructions to Fahreeta and Torasul in Teleon, and they burned the Garreval, and the mountainsides, and the valley around Teleon to the edge of the Mists.
When they were done, the Fey in both Orest and the Garreval walked the smoking battlefields to collect the sorreisu kiyr of their fallen brothers. Many had been stripped and stolen by the Eld during the battle, but the rest were gathered, to be sent back to the families and loved ones left behind. Among them were dozens of kiyr from sixty lu’tans who had died defending Orest. Ellysetta packed their sorreisu kiyr in a silk-lined pouch and asked the tairen to take them back to Fey’Bahren, to be placed with honor alongside the kiyranis of the pride.
Leaving Rain and the Celierians to begin the process of cleaning and repairing the city, Ellysetta spun healing on the wounded. Sadly, there weren’t nearly as many as she’d expected. Mage Fire, like demon touch, killed rather than maimed. She spun shei’dalin healing on those in direst need, and by the time Marissya and Dax arrived on the back of Xisanna, most of the remaining wounded needed little more than rest and a hearth witch’s care.
To Rain and Ellysetta’s surprise, Marissya and Dax had not come alone, nor empty-handed. Xisanna’s mate, Perahl, bore the Massan Air master Eimar and his mate, Jisera, on his back, and Dax had strapped a large trunk behind Xisanna’s saddle.
Dax slid to the ground on a cushion of Air and set the trunk on the ground.
“I don’t understand,” Rain said as Dax lifted the trunk’s heavy lid to reveal the shining golden armor of the Fey king. “The Massan banished me for weaving Azrahn. I am dahl’reisen. I no longer have the right to wear that armor or lead the Fading Lands in war.”
“Apparently, you do, my friend,” Dax said with a smile. He nodded to the white tairen crouched at Ellysetta’s side.
“Talk to her.”
Steli sniffed and ruffled her wings. «The golden steel does not belong to the Fey-kin, Rainier-Eras,» she said in Feyan. Her blue eyes scanned the gathered Fey as if in Challenge, and a low growl rumbled in her throat. «It is not theirs to give or take. The golden steel is pride-made. It belongs to the Tairen Soul.»
“But I am no longer the Tairen Soul, Steli-chakai,” Rain said. “The Massan stripped me of my crown when they made me dahl’reisen.”
The white cat snorted. «Fey-kin do not choose the Tairen Soul. Only the pride can choose.»
“The pride never chose me,” he reminded her gently. “I was Tairen Soul because I was the only one left.”
Steli lowered her head and fixed him with her great, whirling blue eyes. Wisdom swirled there. Much more wisdom than most Fey realized. «We chose, Rainier-Eras. We chose a thousand years ago, when we would not let you die.»
Silence fell over Upper Orest. Even the thunder of the Veil seemed to hush.
“What Tenn did will not stand, Rain.” The Massan’s Air master, Eimar v’En Arran, stepped forward to stand at Steli’s side. The chimes in his hair tinkled in the breeze off the Veil, and his wintry eyes were hard and steady. “No Fey ever swore allegiance to the Massan,” he added. “But we did swear allegiance to the Fading Lands and to our king, Rain Tairen Soul. You have my oath that Loris and I will see this set right. Until then, know that we stand where we always have: at the side of our king.” He bowed low. “Miora felah ti’Feyreisen.”
Rain looked into the faces of the gathered Fey, seeing the same acceptance, the same belief. In him.
He turned to Ellysetta and saw the pride shining in her eyes. And this time, for the first time, the Fey he saw shining back at him was the Fey he knew he was.
“Will you wear the armor, Rain?” Bel asked. “Will you be our king?”
There was only one possible answer. Only one true answer.
“Aiyah.”
Eld ~ Boura Fell
Vadim Maur sat in silence. Frost crackled on every surface of the Mage Council’s war room. The room was so cold his breath should have formed vaporous clouds around him, but the chill of his fury was too deep, freezing him from the inside out.
Victory in Teleon and Orest had been snatched from his grasp. Lord Teleos, the strongest ally of the Fey in Celieria, still lived, and both passes into the Fading Lands remained in Teleos’s control. He and the Fey would move quickly to rebuild
his defenses, and the Fey would continue to move freely in and out of the Mists and interfere in Vadim’s plans for Celieria.
Today’s unexpected defeats had been a costly miscalculation. Already, he knew, the whispers had begun in the Mage Council.
He would now need a victory, swift and complete, to silence the enemies in his ranks. Celieria must be turned, the Fey’s main supporters slaughtered or silenced, and then he must find a way to bring down the Faering Mists and beard the tairen in their lair.
He brought up the display of Celieria and began to plan his next move.
Celieria ~ Upper Orest
The roar of Kiyera’s Veil drowned out all other sound, and torches burned bright around the lake, turning the billowing mist off the falls to clouds of red-orange flame and illuminating the faces of the tairen and the Fey who had gathered as Rain’s witnesses.
Wearing her studded scarlet leathers, the Fey’cha belts full of bloodsworn blades criss-crossing her chest, Ellysetta stood straight and proud and watched with unblinking eyes as her shei’tan shed his leathers and steel. Her bloodsworn quintet surrounded her, and Steli crouched behind them, wings spread in a show of protection and might.
The air was chill against Rain’s skin, the magic of the waters of the Heras strong. Each breath drew clouds of magic-laden mist into his lungs, making his power hum. Naked, he turned and walked down the slope to the lake and waded in.
The current was swift, and fought his progress as he swam towards the base of the falls and plunged into the torrential downpour of Kiyera’s Veil. The water was icy from snowmelt and rich with potent magic from the ancient Source at Crystal Lake.
He turned his face up, letting the water pound down upon him. Invigorating magic engulfed him in clouds of billowing mist, and the icy streams of water cleansed him like the sharp, ruthless edge of a knife, stripping away the shadows of fear and doubt.
He stood there beneath the flow until the Veil had filled and scoured him, until every powerful branch of his magic awoke and surged up with desperate force, straining against the bonds of his control, fighting for release. His Fey skin grew brighter and brighter, and the water cascading down the Veil shimmered into mist and swirled around him in a silvery-white aura, like light from a star.