Never Fear - The Tarot: Do You Really Want To Know?

by Heather Graham

  “Aiyah, Shan,” Sandar and Andaxis said.

  “Foolish Fey.” As the two commanders began assembling their troops, a deep, icy voice boomed from the darkness. It came from every direction at once, echoing off the stone walls, so that tracking the voice back to its source was impossible. “To invade a Blood Lord’s hive is to ask for death. Or did you think the risen sun would save you?”

  **Hold, Fey!** Shan stepped toward the center of the room. “Only a coward hides and shouts threats from the dark,” he challenged in a loud, clear voice. “You want to kill us? Then show yourself, Malvern.” He pulled two red Fey’cha from their sheaths. Fire danced up the steel, glowing red vines twining around the gleaming blades like the arms of a lover. “Come, Blood Lord. Dance with the tairen if you dare!”

  “Blood Lords don’t dance with their food, meat.”

  “And Fey don’t cower in the dark, hiding from their enemies, Drogon.”

  “Is an ant my enemy? You think too much of yourself, Fey. Or should I call you Lord Death?” A sneering laugh rang out as he spoke the name by which Shan was known among his enemies. “I will make of you a true Lord Death, Shannisorran vel Celay, First General of the Fading Lands. After my court and I dine on your delicious Fey blood, the drained corpses of you and the rest of your warriors will replace the Bloodreapers you destroyed. And then, with the greatest delight, I will send you into your camps to slaughter your allies.”

  **He is stalling, Shan,** Sandar murmured on the Warrior’s Path.

  **Aiyah. I know it. I just haven’t yet figured out why.** Where was Malvern? Down one of these three tunnels? Or had he tricked them all and secreted himself in one of the offshoots they’d already sealed?

  Shan raised a hand, about to issue the command to begin searching the tunnels, when his ears detected a faint susurration like the whisper of fabric rubbing against itself. The sound grew closer, louder.

  Not fabric. Wings. Thousands of wings.

  **Fey! Five-fold weaves! Quickly.** He muttered his return word and flung out now-empty hands, magic spinning from his fingertips in great, glowing ropes just as a black swarm of flying creatures burst out of the center tunnel and dove toward the Fey.

  Dragats. Small, flying vermin, with bodies no bigger than Shan’s hand and long thin wings edged with tiny black claws. Like birds but furred instead of feathered, and instead of a beak, they possessed mouths full of sharp white fangs. Shan got a good look at those fangs as the creatures dove, shrieking and spewing green acid flame, into his weaves. The impact shuddered down the threads of his magic, while the sonic disruption of their piercing shrieks and the acid fire of their flame ate away at the densely woven Fey shield.

  Many of the dragats burst into flame upon contact with the Fire threads in the five-fold weaves. The injured and broken ones dropped to the stone floor. The ones still capable of flight rolled to the side and flew away, leaving the path clear for the rest of the column, which arrowed full speed into precisely the same spot, again and again in a formation Shan recognized.

  “Tairen’s scorching fire,” he swore. Wall of Steel. The jaffing things were attacking with the same Wall of Steel formation Shan and his Fey had used against the Reapers. And the attack was working. Shan shored up the weakened spot in the dome, but as he did so, a second column of dragats slammed into another section of the dome. Then a third column, then a fourth and a fifth. The massive fountain chamber was now filled with a whirlwind of diving, shrieking dragats, all converging in a carefully coordinated pattern of concentrated attacks.

  The first of the dragats broke through, shrieking and spewing poison. Shan heard the grunts and the gasps of pain as the acid flame scored Fey skin and the shrieks burst unprotected ear drums. Shan sent a Fire-wrapped Fey’cha into one dragat’s tiny chest. The foul thing burst into flame and dropped to the floor. Shan stomped it with his boot.

  The small hole the dragats had bored through the shield grew wider. More dragats rushed in and began attacking the Fey.

  Shan turned to block a shrieking dragat diving at him from the right and felt a sting of razor-sharp claws score his left cheek. Three more wildly flapping vermin slammed into his chest, gripping his leathers with their taloned feet and ripping at the skin of his neck with fangs and clawed wings. He snatched them off, flinging the tiny, furred bodies away from him, flaming them as he did, but as quickly as he flung them away, others took their place, biting, scratching, clawing at him. Within moments, he was swarmed, hundreds of the creatures raking him with their claws and teeth. Blood was running freely now from his face, hands, and neck, anywhere his skin was not covered by protective black leather.

  “Fire weaves, Fey!” Sandar shouted beside him. “Set the whole jaffing room on fire! Aben, Cato, Dariel! Ti’Chatokkai! Ti’Shan!” To the General! To Shan! “Get those things off him!” Sandar rushed to Shan’s aid, slapping and stabbing and scorching the dragats that had zeroed in on Shan with a single-mindedness that couldn’t possibly be random. The four of them spun a whirling vortex of red Fire and white Air around Shan, the rapid spinning of their weave impervious to the dragats’ diving attacks. Behind them, the rest of the Fey Fire masters sent a cloud of superheated flame roaring through the chamber and held it until it was clear the attack was over.

  This time when Shan ordered the Fey to tend their dead and wounded, and commanders to give their casualty counts, the news was grim. The dragats hadn’t only targeted Shan. They’d gone after Shan’s most powerful Fire masters. Two of them were dead. Hundreds more had been blinded, rendered deaf or had major arteries ripped open by fierce claws and teeth—the latter wounds great enough to take them out of the fight. The Reapers had tested the Fey to find out which of them packed the strongest punch. The Dragats had targeted those Fey and thinned their numbers.

  “Cleanse your wounds, and seal them, Fey,” Shan commanded. “Walking through a Drogon’s hive with blood on you is asking for trouble. Those of you with cuts deep enough to need a shei’dalin’s care, head out now. If you can get healed and back here within a bell or two, then come back; otherwise, you’re out of this fight.”

  “They were targeting you deliberately,” Sandar muttered as Shan spun his own weaves of Earth and Water to seal his numerous cuts and wash away every drop of blood.

  “So I noticed.”

  “What for, do you think? Surely Malvern didn’t think a horde of flying rats had a hope of killing Lord Death.” Shan possessed such a mastery of elemental magics that few in the Fading Lands could best him in any branch. His talent in Spirit was just a shade shy of a master’s level, too. With all that power combined, there were Tairen Souls who couldn’t best Shan in a fight without going furry.

  “I’d like to think he underestimated me that badly, but, nei, I don’t think he did.” Shan’s shoulder-length black hair had been torn from its bindings by the dragat attack. He pulled it back out of his face and fastened it at his nape with a leather tie, then regarded the Earth-fused cuts that scored the backs of his hands. “They cut me. Spilled my blood. I’m fairly certain that was no accident.”

  Sandar’s expression went stony. “You think Malvern’s planning to do something with your blood?”

  “He is a Blood Lord. We know he gains power over his victims by drinking their blood.”

  “Aiyah, but you’re talking about victims he personally bites.”

  “I don’t know that it makes a difference. For all our sakes, I have assume that if he set all those dragats on me, he did it to gain a tactical advantage greater than just keeping me occupied in this fight.” Shan grimaced at the rips and tears in his leathers and spun a quick Earth weave to mend them. “I was going to have you lead one of the groups down that left tunnel, but now I think I’d better keep you by my side. You know me better than any of the others. That makes you the best candidate to keep an eye on me.” Sandar was a thousand years younger than Shan, but they’d known each other—and fought side-by-side—for the better part of the last fifteen hundred years. He
was Shan’s oldest unmated friend still living. “If you see me acting strangely—if I do anything at all that gives you cause for concern—you take me down. No matter how you have to do it, don’t let me endanger the mission or our blade brothers.”

  “Shan—”

  “Promise me, Fey. Give me your oath.”

  Sandar glared at Shan, the muscles in his jaw working, but then he swore. “So be it. I swear to you Shan, I won’t let you harm our brothers or our mission, no matter what it takes.”

  “Beylah vo, kem’maresk.” Thank you, my friend. Shan knew what he was asking. He had come here to die, but not at a Fey’s hands—not at Sandar’s hands especially. If Sandar had to kill him, he’d become dahl’reisen, one of the lost souls who walked the Shadowed Path, exiled forever from the Fading Lands. That was the last thing Shan wanted for this friend who had become as beloved as a brother to him. But if Malvern could use Shan’s blood to turn him into some sort of puppet or weapon to use against the Fey, then as Chatokkai of the Fading Lands, it was his duty to makes sure that couldn’t—wouldn’t—happen.

  Shan squared his shoulders. **Change of plans, Fey. Andaxis, take twenty-five quintets and clear out the right tunnel. Vendarion, you take another twenty-five quintets and clear out the left. The rest of you, with me. Time to put an end to this Blood Lord once and for all! Miora felah, kem’jetos! Joyful life to us all, my brothers!**

  The Fey gave a triumphant roar and raced into the tunnels.

  Chapter Three

  Several bells and countless traps, delays, and ferocious battles later, Shan and his men reached a large, ornate door that opened to a Drogon sleeping chamber. He recognized the chamber’s purpose from the other hives they’d destroyed in the war. Here, instead of solid rock, the floor was covered with loose, freshly tilled soil, rich and loamy and several feet deep. Malvern had tried to blind the Fey to what lay beneath by mixing copious amount of sel’dor dust into the soil and scattering another layer of sel’dor dust over the surface, but despite those measures, Shan could make out the glowing webs of magic generated by the dozen supine figures sleeping in the soil. Slender, curvy figures, each one lying on what appeared to be cushioned slabs of sel’dor ore.

  They had found Malvern’s females.

  On the opposite side of the chamber stood another door even larger and more ornate that this one. The door to Malvern’s private lair.

  **You mean to tell me that rultshart Malvern uses his sleeping women as a shield?** Sandar exclaimed in outrage. **The jaffing coward. He so deserves to die.**

  **And so he will.** Shan shared Sandar’s outrage. Any Fey worth his steel would condemn his own soul before putting even one of their females in danger to save himself. Using twelve, vulnerable, sleeping females—mates, no less—as a shield against attack would be unthinkable. If Shan had a mate, he would let an enemy eviscerate him, pound his bones to dust, visit the torments of the damned upon him for a thousand years, rather than risk her safety in the smallest way.

  Sandar eyed the loamy soil. **Do you think we can reach Malvern’s chamber and dispatch him without waking the females? I know they’re Drogon, but still... ** Fey didn’t hurt women—not even evil ones, if they could help it.

  **Maybe, but we can’t risk letting them rise.** Shan didn’t want to harm the sleeping females any more than Sandar did. If they attacked, he’d slaughter them all—striking each killing blow himself if his Fey hesitated—but so long as they made no move against him, he would leave them be. The mortals and Elves could decide their fate. A mistake, quite possibly—Drogon females were dangerous creatures—but such was the Fey way. “Let’s get five quintets in here to spin a twenty-five-fold weave. That should hold the females. The rest of us will go for Malvern as soon as the others arrive.” Upon finding this chamber, Shan had immediately sent word to Andaxis and Vendarion, both of whom had already cleared their tunnels and were already heading back to join the main group.

  Five quintets spread around the concubine’s sleeping chamber and begin spinning dense weaves of magic across the room. If Malvern’s females woke, they’d have trouble breaching the twenty-five-fold weave that was now taking shape over their resting place. Shan propelled himself across the room on a cushion of Air, careful to avoid disturbing the soil or the weaves being spun. He landed lightly on the other side of the room. Sandar followed a few moments later.

  **Shan.** Sandar’s voice sounded wary. He lifted a hand to the Fey’cha belts crisscrossing his chest. **Your face is bleeding.**

  Shan touched the side of his face and brought away fingertips smeared in blood. The dragat wounds, which should have healed by now, had broken open. He must have been idly scratching at them. Shan never did anything idly. Due to the nature of who and what he was and how close he was to slipping down the Shadowed Path, he’d been carefully controlling his every thought, word, and action for centuries.

  He spun a weave to cleanse and reseal the cuts. **Stay close, Sandar. And you’d better keep a full quintet nearby, too. Just in case.** If Malvern could influence Shan to unwittingly open up his wounds in the heart of a Drogon hive, there was no telling what else he could make Shan do.

  While they waited for Andaxis and Vendarion, Shan tried to scan Malvern’s sleeping chamber, but the Drogon had prepared every part of this hive for a Fey invasion. The walls and wooden doors were lined with thick sel’dor plate, the chamber an impenetrable box to Fey vision. There was no telling what would be waiting for them on the other side, but every one of Shan’s instincts was screaming, “Danger! Danger!”

  He had learned, over the millennia, to listen to his instincts.

  The sun would be setting soon. The younger Drogons had already begun rising. Shan and his Fey had already battled through several groups of them, taking heavy losses as they did. Malvern and the most ancient of his hive shouldn’t be able to rise until nightfall, but this deep in the earth, maybe the timing was different.

  **Prepare to go in fighting, Fey. Air masters, go up. Fire masters, you take the lead. Spin five fold Fire weaves, minimum. They’ve secured this hive with sel’dor, and that room’s not going to be any different. Ready? Let’s go!**

  He flung the door open and rushed inside, magic swirling around him and the red Fey’cha he held his fists.

  He didn’t know what to expect. What he found was large, empty stone room inhabited by a trio of beautiful Fey shei’dalins, dark-haired and glossy-eyed, standing on the steps of what looked like a stone tomb. “Help us,” they said. “You must help us. They’re coming!”

  Shan stopped, confused. “What are you doing here, kem’fallas?”

  “The Blood Lord. He took us from the healing tents on the coast. Oh, please, you must protect us.”

  Shan stayed where he was, shaking his head against the fog that seemed to be slowing his ability to process. It didn’t make sense that the shei’dalins would be here. None were missing from camp, and Malvern couldn’t have come out in broad daylight to steal them away.

  A fourth shei’dalin emerged from the shadows. This one had hair the color of honey and eyes that gleamed like sapphires. She held out a slender hand. “Shei’tan,” she said. Truemate. Beloved.

  He walked toward her in a stunned daze, his heart swelling with wonder, but before he could reach her, her gaze fixed on a point beyond his shoulder, and she flinched back. “They’re here!” she cried. “They’ll kill us all! Protect us, shei’tan! Don’t let them kill us!”

  He spun around. An army of Drogons had somehow entered the room and engaged the Fey in combat. Drogons threatening the shei’dalins. Threatening his truemate! One of them was practically on his heels. He roared, unsheathing a mei’cha scimitar with his right hand, pulling a red Fey’cha with his left, and attacked!

  The Drogon fought back, dodging his blows and blocking them, but strangely not striking back. “Parei!” the Drogon cried in Feyan. Stop!

  There was something about his voice. Something familiar. Shan hesitated.

  “Save me
, shei’tan!” His truemate was behind him, frightened. In danger. He had to save her. He leapt on the Drogon. The enemy warrior managed to knock Shan’s red Fey’cha aside, but he couldn’t escape the thrust of Shan’s sword.

  The Drogon screamed, but instead of falling back, he lunged forward, driving Shan’s sword through his own body. He grabbed Shan’s left wrist and drove a black Fey’cha into Shan’s right shoulder. Shan stared at the black hilt of the dagger in confusion. Black Fey’cha weren’t poisoned with tairen venom. Only the red ones were. Even Drogons knew that. So why would a Drogon warrior grab a black Fey’cha to stab Shan with when the red ones were just as easy to reach?

  “Shan! Wake up, scorch you!” the Drogon impaled on Shan’s sword snarled. “I don’t want either of us to die a jaffing dahl’reisen!” As Shan stared at him stupidly, the Drogon drew back a fist and punched Shan in the side of the head.

  The blow snapped Shan’s head around and made his ears ring. He shook his head, trying to clear it. As he did, the beautiful truemate at his side wavered like a reflection rippling in a puddle. One moment she was standing there, blond-haired, blue-eyed, everything beautiful, then next moment, there was red-eyed Drogon female in her place, digging her claws in his arm and shrieking, “Kill him! Kill him now!”

  And instead of a Drogon impaled on his sword, it was Sandar. Pale, bleeding badly, mortally wounded by Shan’s own hand. Gripping Shan’s mail, impaled on Shan’s sword, twisting the black Fey’cha in Shan’s shoulder and shouting, “Shan! It’s me! Snap out of it, Fey! It’s a spell! Malvern’s got your blood! Wake up, damn you!”

  Then Sandar morphed into the enemy again. A growling Drogon, roaring and gnashing his fangs.

  Shan’s shei’tani clung to his arm. “You must kill him, beloved. Quickly! It’s the only way to protect me!”

  Of course, he had to protect her. He’d finally found her. He couldn’t let anyone harm her.

  Shan pulled a red Fey’cha from his belts and put it to the Drogon’s throat. He frowned. The blade at the Drogon’s throat was shining. Shan hadn’t spun Fire around it yet, but there was a definite glow along the blade. Not the red glow of Fire magic, not Air either, even though the glow was distinctively silvery in appearance.