Lady of Light and Shadows

by C. L. Wilson

  The only unpleasantness in what would otherwise have been halcyon days were the continued unrest in the city and Mama’s increasingly open bitterness towards the Fey.

  Just yesterday, news of another dahl’reisen attack in the north had worked a mob of Celierians and Brethren of Radiance followers into near hysteria. They’d marched on the palace and gathered outside the gates to demand the expulsion of all Fey from the city. “Bride stealers!” they had shrieked. “Child killers! Servants of Shadow!” The hostility was so strong and virulent that even Lady Marissya’s attempt to weave peace on the crowds had failed. In the end, a full complement of King’s Guards rode out to arrest the more violent protestors and disperse the crowds.

  The unrest had left many of the noble lords skittish. Even with the support that Lords Teleos and Barrial had helped assemble, Rain was finding it difficult to garner the final votes they needed to ensure the Eld borders would remain closed.

  The ceiling creaked as feet trod the floorboards in her parents’ room above. Ellysetta glanced up, frowning. Mama was almost as bad as the rabble-rousers. In the last few days, her previous grudging acceptance of Ellysetta’s pending marriage had changed to suspicion and even outright hostility.

  Ellie told herself the proximity of so many Fey was simply taking its toll on her mother’s nerves—she’d never trusted magic or those who wielded it—but her reaction seemed stronger than that, almost as if something was amplifying her fears.

  Shoving the grim thoughts aside, Ellysetta flipped the corncakes onto a serving plate, set them and the rest of the food on the table, then stepped back to admire her handiwork. Everything was ready and very nearly perfect. The eggs and corncakes were steaming, the bacon crisp and fragrant. The flowers she’d arranged for the centerpiece were bright and colorful, though perhaps the tiniest bit droopy.

  She bit her lip. Rain had already taught her how to ask living things to share their essence. Yesterday he’d also taught her how to share a little of her own back. After a quick glance around to make sure she was alone, she closed her eyes to gather her thoughts, then, concentrating, passed a hand over the flowers. The stems straightened and the petals perked up.

  Smiling, pleased with herself, Ellie turned to grab the salt and pepper off the stove—and froze. Her mother was standing in the doorway, staring at her. Ellie’s heart skipped a beat.

  “M-Mama. I didn’t see you there!” Had her mother seen her fix the flowers? Deciding to brazen it out, she forced a bright smile. “You were still sleeping when I woke, so I made breakfast.” She waved a hand at the table.

  “I haven’t been sleeping well,” her mother murmured, still staring. She glanced from Ellie to the table and back again, her eyes dark and watchful. “Ellie, kitling…is there anything you’d like to tell me?”

  Ellie’s eyes widened. She blinked once, twice, and swallowed the sudden dry lump in her throat. “Uh…no. Nothing.” That was no lie. The last thing in the world she wanted to do was tell her mother Rain was teaching her magic. There were some things her mother was just better off not knowing.

  She cleared her throat. “Have a seat, Mama. Everything’s ready. I was just about to call everyone to eat.” She turned back to the stove and fumbled with refilling the salt and pepper shakers, taking that brief moment to marshal her composure.

  She heard her mother pull out a chair and take a seat. Thank you, Bright One, she whispered silently, giving a brief, grateful look skyward. She set the shakers on the table near her mother’s place and jumped when Lauriana’s hand closed around her wrist.

  “I love you, Ellie. You know I only want what’s best for you, don’t you?”

  Ellysetta wanted to weep. She knew. She could feel her mother’s desperate worry and deep love as strongly as she sensed Rain’s emotions when she touched him. But she also knew how appalled Mama would be if she discovered Ellie had been practicing magic.

  “I know, Mama.” She bent down to kiss her mother’s cheek and hug her. “I love you too. More than I can ever say.”

  “You’d tell me if you were in trouble, wouldn’t you? Or if the Fey encouraged you to do something you knew was wrong?”

  Ellysetta pulled back. “I’m not in trouble, Mama, and I’m not doing anything wrong. Please, stop worrying—and be happy for me. I’ve dreamed of Rain Tairen Soul since I was a little girl, you know that.”

  Before her mother could reply, the twins trailed in, squabbling over which of them would get to wear the pink hair ribbons today. Papa followed close behind, and the Baristanis bent their heads to say grace and eat. When they were done, Mama took the girls down to a neighbor’s house for lessons while Papa headed off to his shop.

  Never, Ellysetta promised herself as she watched her mother walk down the street and disappear around the corner. Never again would she practice even the smallest form of magic within a mile of her mother.

  Feeling as though she’d dodged a mortal blow, she turned her attention to her morning lessons with the Fey. Adrial and Rowan had resumed their places in her quintet, and this morning they led the session with an introduction to the legendary Warrior’s Academy in Dharsa and the centuries of training and testing a Fey warrior had to complete before he could serve on a shei’dalin’s quintet.

  “Sel’dor is a black metal that disrupts Fey magic,” Adrial was saying. “Our enemies know this. That’s why the Eld use barbed sel’dor arrows and blades designed to break off in our flesh. And we, of course, know that. So Fey warriors are trained from youth to fight through what would otherwise be debilitating pain, and to be an effective and lethal fighting force even wounded and without magic. It is a slow process. One that takes centuries to master, and we continue to perfect it all the years of our lives.”

  The prickle of hay straw stabbed and itched Gaelen unmercifully, the irritation amplified by the endless jostle of wagon wheels bumping over the rutted country highway. He stifled a groan as the wagon hit a particularly deep rut and bounced him hard against the unforgiving edges of a nearby crate. The sel’dor shrapnel peppering his back and arms shifted, shredding new muscle as it dug deeper, but he clung to his weak invisibility weave with dogged determination.

  For three days and nights he’d made miserably slow but determined progress towards Celieria City. He’d lost countless bells to unconsciousness when exhaustion, pain, and blood loss took their inevitable toll, but he’d persevered. Running when he could, walking and even crawling when that was all he could manage, he’d pushed on. Last night, when he’d grown too weak to continue, he’d hitched a ride with an unsuspecting farmer heading south to deliver crates of canned goods and fresh produce to Vrest. The ride had been hard, his sleep sporadic, but at least he’d gotten a little rest without losing all forward progress.

  The wagon slowed, and the sounds of distant activity reached Gaelen’s ears. He forced open bleary eyes and dragged himself to peer over the edge of the wagon. Up ahead, he could see the clustered buildings that formed the outskirts of Vrest.

  Time to abandon his ride. He’d barely managed to hold the simple invisibility weave with the amount of sel’dor still in him, and though it had worked to hide him from a farmer preoccupied with driving his team, he couldn’t risk having sharper-eyed citizens of Vrest detect him. A wounded Fey with a telltale scar across his brow would draw too much unwanted attention, and if news of his approach reached Celieria City before he did, the Tairen Soul might well flee with his soul-cursed, Mage-sired mate before Gaelen could get close enough to kill her.

  Slowly, each motion an agonizing exercise in discipline and determination, Gaelen lifted his body up and straddled the sides of the wagon. As the cart neared a small, bridged creek bed, he pushed himself off and went tumbling down the embankment. Each bump and hard jostle sent agony ripping through him. His invisibility weave failed, and he dragged himself to cover beneath the bridge and wedged himself up high to avoid detection.

  Gods, that had all but slain him. He flopped back against the shadowed embankment and d
rew breath in short, sharp gasps. Beneath his skin, lumps of sel’dor burned like acid.

  He fumbled for one of the black Fey’cha strapped across his chest. Two hundred miles still lay between Gaelen and his prey in Celieria City. Healthy, he could have run it in less than ten bells, but in his current condition, he’d be lucky to make it in ten days.

  Time to lose a little more of the black metal the Eld had dispersed so freely. When he reached Celieria City, he’d give the High Mage’s get a little red Fey metal in return.

  Vadim Maur’s flowing purple robes whispered in the tomblike silence as he descended to the deepest level of Boura Fell. His hair, long and bone white, shone bright in the flickering lamplight of the dark corridor, a beacon for the two men and the leashed flame-haired woman, Elfeya, who walked silently behind him.

  Three days had passed since he’d last called the Celierian girl. He’d found her, but she’d managed to rebuff him and lock her mind away from him. For the last three nights he hadn’t even managed to locate her, let alone call her. The failure infuriated him.

  Kolis’s ensorcelled gift hadn’t worked either. The cursed spell still hadn’t even been activated! Vadim’s plan to capture the girl during the Bride’s Blessing was looking more promising by the day. Fortunately, he’d had already put those plans in motion. He wasn’t a Mage who believed in leaving things to chance.

  Victory came to those who planned for it.

  And punishment—swift and severe—came to anyone who stood in his way.

  At the end of the level’s longest corridor, two burly men stood guard by a large sel’dor-plated door. They held barbed sel’dor spears in their meaty hands.

  “Open it,” the High Mage ordered.

  One of the guards grabbed the key ring at his waist and unlocked the door, swinging it open and standing aside to allow the Mage and his followers to enter.

  The room was dark. Vadim lifted a hand, and Fire ignited the sconces throughout the room. Light blazed, illuminating a huge, cavernous space hewn from the black rock of Eld. Veins of sel’dor ran through the rock, a natural damper for the magic released here. The room was a scientist’s delight, a laboratory stocked with a vast array of implements and pharmacopoeia to aid in the High Mage’s centuries-old quest for knowledge. In the center of the room a wide table, fitted with sel’dor-barbed restraining straps, was bolted to the floor.

  So much had been tried. So much had been learned. Almost enough, but not quite.

  A large sel’dor cage sat against the far wall. Within it, a naked man cringed at the sudden brightness of the room.

  Beside the High Mage, Elfeya made a soft, quickly muffled sound. A sob. The Mage smiled with pride. Even after a thousand years, Elfeya still had the ability to weep. It was a testament to his careful handling of her, the great care he had taken with both his pets. So many other Mages had lost their captives to madness, broken them with frivolous torture, but Vadim Maur had yet again succeeded where others failed.

  The man in the cage went still. His head came up, nostrils flaring. His leaf-green eyes were drawn to the woman. Elongated pupils narrowed to slits, then opened wide like a hunting cat’s. His eyes glowed for the briefest of moments, a predictable flare of power that made him gasp when the sel’dor manacles piercing his wrists and ankles twisted the power into agonizing pain.

  Elfeya cried out and flinched even as he did.

  The man launched himself at the barbed bars of his cage. His fingers wrapped around them, heedless of the sharp, jagged metal slicing into his flesh. He shook the bars violently in a grip that still retained incredible strength even after so many centuries of imprisonment. Even though the bars were made of barbed sel’dor, if the man’s wrists and ankles had not been sel’dor pierced—and deeply—nothing could have held him in the cage.

  He bared his teeth. He howled his rage. He howled his desire.

  The woman trembled.

  Vadim Maur laughed. Really, they were endlessly entertaining. And so easy to control, once you knew the trick of it.

  “Come here, my pet.” The Mage held out a hand, and although Elfeya’s golden eyes blazed hatred—that had not dimmed in the last thousand years either—she came to him. She didn’t flinch as he put the razor-sharp sel’dor blade to her throat. The black jewel in the pommel of the dagger began to glow with subtle red lights. It had tasted her blood before.

  “Take him to the table,” the Mage commanded, and the two servants he’d brought with him moved reluctantly to the sel’dor cage and the mad creature within.

  As they unlocked the cage door, the prisoner sprang towards them, only to stop abruptly with a harsh cry.

  The sel’dor blade had sliced into the woman’s throat, just deep enough to cause pain. The High Mage smiled as he watched her golden eyes beg the manacled prisoner for death, laughed as the prisoner gave her a tortured look from eyes that now held despairing sanity. Subdued without a hand or a hint of magic laid on him, the prisoner allowed himself to be led to the table, and the servants strapped him down.

  The Mage could have restrained the man with any number of weaves, but this way was so much more satisfying.

  When the man was cuffed to the table, Vadim ran a finger over Elfeya’s wound to close it. He touched the sel’dor rings that pierced her ears. Ten rings in each ear, set with tiny bells so she never forgot they were there or who had pierced her. Matching belled manacles lined with sharp spurs to dig into her flesh circled her ankles, and masterfully crafted sel’dor bands of surprising delicacy and beauty clasped her upper arms with hundreds of deeply piercing teeth.

  She was the only woman in his care ever to need such extensive binding. Her power was that great. But the strongest, most unbreakable bond Vadim used to control her was the man lying on the table.

  Three burly servants and a small, ragged girl entered the room carrying a large basin, several buckets of hot water, soap, and a cloth. The servants lowered the basin to the floor and filled it with the buckets of water. The girl stood there, holding the soap and the cloth, her eyes lowered. She was dark-haired, no older than ten or eleven. There was something familiar about her, though the High Mage couldn’t have said what it was.

  “What are you waiting for?” Vadim snapped at the child. “Bathe him.”

  The girl raised her head and looked at him. Large, startling silver eyes surrounded by a fringe of black lashes stared at him from beneath slashing dark brows and unkempt hair. Cold eyes, ancient eyes—his eyes.

  Then he realized who she was. The granddaughter of his great-grandson, or something like that. One of his numerous progeny. Vadim couldn’t remember her name, but it didn’t matter. She had been born utterly without magic. A worthless lump of flesh, good for nothing but serving her betters.

  His hand shot out and smacked across the face with a sharp crack, enough force behind the blow to knock the child to her knees. “Insolence is not tolerated, umagi. Lift your eyes to me again and I’ll pluck them from your head.”

  Without a sound, the girl picked herself up off the floor. Eyes lowered with appropriate submissiveness, she stepped towards the chained Fey, dipped her cloth and soap in the basin, and began to bathe the years of grime off the prisoner’s skin. The three burly servants who had accompanied the girl into the room unshackled one of the prisoner’s wrists and feet at a time so the child could reach his back.

  When she was finished, the servants lifted the basin of water and emptied it on the man strapped to the table. He gasped for air and shook his head to clear the water from his eyes. Water and grimy suds streamed off the table and ran in soapy rivulets towards the drain in the center of the room. The girl toweled most of the moisture from the man’s body and the table; then she and her fellow servants gathered the buckets, bowed to Vadim Maur, and left.

  The High Mage ran a hand through Elfeya’s silky curls. Such bright, distinctive hair. She really was an incredibly beautiful woman. He’d not brought her to him for several years now because she’d been so fragile and had n
eeded time to recover her physical and mental strength. She was stronger now—his visit to her earlier this week had proved that. His fingers stroked her neck. She didn’t glance at him, didn’t shiver, didn’t even catch her breath. She merely stood there and endured, her eyes locked with the eyes of the man on the table.

  “You may go to him now,” the Mage told her, knowing that everything in her body, everything in her soul was drawing her to that man, even as her brain—educated by centuries of torment—screamed for her not to give in to her desires.

  Torture was so much more excruciating when the memories of pleasure were fresh in one’s mind. Fear was so much stronger when one remembered what, exactly, one stood to lose. If these two had robbed him of his greatest triumph all those years ago, as he suspected they had, their punishment would be worse than anything they had yet endured in his keeping. And they would have this time together, this small bit of happiness, to make the pain all the more exquisite.

  “Touch him.” The High Mage bent close to her ear and whispered, “I know you want to. How long has it been? Three years? Five?” And he knew she would know exactly how many years, months, days, bells, even instants had passed since last she’d touched this particular man. “Look at him. Look how his body begs you to touch him.” The man on the table was fully, helplessly aroused, no more able to fight his body’s instincts than she was. “Go to him. Touch him. Mate with him as you are aching to do.”

  With a low cry, the sound of a soul in torment, Elfeya flung herself forward, racing across the room to the imprisoned man. She grabbed his face between hands that trembled. Tears rained down her face, falling upon his lean cheeks and merging with the answering tears that streamed from the corners of his eyes. Her flame-colored hair spilled across his chest like liquid fire. She kissed him with frantic, helpless need and sobbed into his mouth, “Ver reisa ku’chae. Kem surah, shei’tan. Kem surah.”