“Shan. Don’t do it, kem’maresk.” My friend. The Drogon was speaking Feyan again. His voice was weak. Blood bubbled from the corner of his mouth. “Don’t let Malvern win. Fight him. Fight his spell. You are Shannisorran vel Celay, the greatest warrior in the Fading Lands. Don’t let Malvern make you dahl’reisen. That female isn’t your shei’tani, Shan. Think about it! Would your real shei’tani scream for you to spill blood? To kill? There is a truemate waiting for you, Shan. I know there is. If not in this life, then the next. Fight for her. Fight for her the way you have done for three thousand years. You are Fey. The most honorable one I’ve ever known. With a Light so bright not even three-thousand years of war could dim it. Use that Light now to break Malvern’s spell!”
Something in the words broke through the confused fog that had gripped Shan’s brain. The red Fey’cha at the Drogon’s throat was still glowing silver, but suddenly Shan recognized the source of the glow. Not magic. At least not woven magic. It was the silvery luminescence that shone from Fey skin.
Shan gripped his red Fey’cha in a white-knuckled fist and focused on the bright, fierce Light that shone within Sandar, as it did within every Fey, a light so bright that it manifested in the physical world as a silvery luminescence glowing from their flesh—visible for all to behold. Because they were born to stand against the Darkness, to fight it with their dying breath.
**No!** An enraged voice—Malvern’s voice—howled in Shan’s mind. Pressure slammed into him, directives that fought to control him. **You will kill him! You will kill him now!**
Agony tore through Shan’s veins as he threw off Malvern’s illusions and fought his vile commands. Roaring defiance, he plunged his Fey’cha into the right eye of the Drogon female clinging to his arm. As she shrieked and fell back, a howling Drogon warrior rushed him. Shan shoved Sandar out of the way of the oncoming attack, blocked the Drogon’s sel’dor blade with his sword, then stabbed a red, Fire-wrapped Fey’cha into the Drogon’s heart, sending more Fire roaring down the blade and into the monster’s chest. The Drogon screamed and burst into flame.
Malvern’s illusions had dropped completely now. The Fey were battling all around. Drogons were pouring out of the ground in the concubine’s sleeping chamber. Malvern had used the Fey’s unwillingness to harm women to his advantage, hiding his men in an underground chamber beneath the sleeping females until it was time to spring the trap.
Leaving the Fey to deal with them, Shan spun and rushed up the steps toward the Blood Lord’s tomb. Half a dozen enemy warriors dropped down from the ceiling to join the three females blocking the way to the tomb. Shan fought his way through them, shouting the Fey Warrior’s Creed as he went.
“I am the steel no enemy can shatter!” His Fey’cha flew left and right, finding one Drogon’s heart, piercing another’s eye, burying deep in the throat of a third. “I am the magic no dark power can defeat!” He flung up a five-fold shield to deflect a swarm of dragats, then wrapped the weave around the swarm, cut all threads but Air and Fire, then drew the weave tight to incinerate the creatures trapped within. “I am the rock upon which evil breaks like waves.” Three of the remaining females rushed him, claws out, fangs sharp, shrieking their rage and bloodlust. He cleaved them in two with Fire-wrapped mei’cha scimitars, and immolated them with jets of concentrated Fire.
He had reached Malvern’s tomb and shoved the heavy stone lid aside with a thrust of powerful magic. Within the tomb, surrounded by loamy soil, lay the Drogon Blood Lord Malvern. His skin was milky white, his long hair white as well. He wore sel’dor-plated armor, polished to a gleaming black shine that flashed and glittered with the reflected glow of magic from the battle raging below.
Shan drew his seyani longsword, spinning a dense weave of Fire down the blade as he positioned it over Malvern’s heart.
Malvern’s eyes popped open, blood red and blazing with fury. **Stop!** The force of his gaze slammed into Shan. Pain exploded across every nerve ending as Shan’s blood boiled and his muscles seized. The terrible force of Malvern’s will encased Shan’s body in fiery torment, immobilizing him.
Think what you’re doing, Lord Death. I am ancient. I have slain millions in my lifetime. Kill me, and Darkness will consume you. You will become dahl’reisen. There will be no truemate for you. Not in this life, not in the next. Every word that Malvern spoke was true. Shan had danced the razor’s edge of Shadow for a long time now. Taking a life as old and as evil as Malvern’s would surely push Shan past the tipping point. Once that happened, not even sheisan’dahlein, the honor death, could cleanse the stain upon his soul.
Shan shoved the despairing thought away. He was a warrior of the Fey. He’d been born to fight the enemies of Light, no matter the cost to himself. And if his last act in this life was to sacrifice any hope of happiness in the next, so be it.
He drew a harsh breath, wrested control of his body back from the Drogon, and said, “Then I will die dahl’reisen, but I will send you to the Seven Hells before I go.” And he drove his sword into the heart of the Blood Lord, blasting a master’s weave of sun-hot Fire down the blade.
Malvern’s body arched. His mouth opened, emitting a shriek that shattered stone and brought rocks and sand showering down from above. Shan’s Fire burst from the Blood Lord’s mouth, his eyes, his fingertips. His body writhed and convulsed wildly as the Fire consumed him from the inside out, turning flesh and bone to ash, melting sel’dor armor into puddles of red-hot metal, scorching the soil in which he lay.
The blackness of Malvern’s dying soul crashed over Shan like a great wave, driving him to his knees and tearing a raw scream of anguish from his throat. Gods… dear Gods… what had he done? Shan had slain monsters many times before but never one that felt like this. The brutal, horrific, agony of it was all-consuming, pushing Shan not just into Shadow but toward total Darkness.
**Nei.** A voice sounded in his mind. **You will not fall. I will not let you.**
Somehow that voice, filled with such fierce determination, stopped his spiraling descent.
**You are the greatest warrior in the Fading Lands. You are a Champion of Light. Fight for that Light now.**
The abyss yawned below him. He was clinging to a sheer stone cliff by the merest fraction of his fingernails. A ferocious wind was howling, whipping by him, trying its best to drag him down. And this voice was ordering him to not just to hold on, but to battle his way back to the top of the cliff.
And somehow—driven by the fierce command and unyielding conviction in that voice—he did. Chanting the Fey Warrior’s Creed, he forced himself to fight. Fraction by agonizing fraction. Then finger-length by agonizing finger-length. Then arm-length by agonizing arm-length, he clawed his way back from the very jaws of Darkness to embrace the weak flicker of Light inside him that refused to be extinguished.
“I am Fey,” he whispered as he reached the top of the cliff and the despairing howl of Darkness fell blessedly silent. The pain that still writhed in him defied description, but pain meant he could still feel. And feeling meant that for the moment, at least, he was still Fey. “I am Fey,” he repeated, his voice hoarse but stronger this time. “Warrior of Honor. Champion of Light.”
He opened his eyes to see Sandar staring fixedly at him. Sandar was lying on his side at the foot of the stairs, clutching a hand to the gaping hole in his chest that Shan’s sword had made. His lips were moving, chanting the words of the same Warrior’s Creed that had helped bring Shan back from the brink.
Shan took quick stock of the room. The Drogons were ash, their attack shattered by the abrupt termination of their hive bonds, making them much less formidable in the face of Fey might.
Commanding Andaxis to oversee all remaining cleanup, Shan crawled to his feet, muttered the word that brought all his blades back to their sheaths, then snatched up Sandar’s body and raced for the exit.
Somehow Sandar had saved him. How, Shan wasn’t entirely certain. He’d been so close to falling to complete Darkness. So close, that before
the sun rose again tomorrow, Shan would seek the sweet kiss of his red Fey’cha. But first, before Shan surrendered himself to the Fey honor death, he would see his beloved friend safely healed.
*
Outside, the sky was dusky, stars beginning to sparkle in the east as the Great Sun sank below the horizon in the west. Alerted by the call Shan had broadcast as he ran, Anaris Feyreisen was already there, great brown wings spread wide as he wheeled down from the sky to snatch up Shan and Sandar in his massive claws and speed them across the forest to the allied encampment. When they reached the camp, Shan didn’t wait for Anaris to land, he simply slid down a raft of Air and hit the ground running.
“Shei’dalins!” he cried as he ran, “I need a healer here!”
Four shei’dalins in flowing red gowns came rushing out to inspect Sandar’s wounds and direct Shan into the tents. “Set him down here,” one of the red-garbed Fey healers ordered him in a tone of command. She was already inspecting Sandar’s wounds as he did so. “Elfeya!” she called over her shoulder. “Come quickly. I may need your help with this one.”
“Of course.” A lush, feminine voice, that stirred memories of moonlight dancing on magical Elvian waters, made Shan look up sharply. His whole body started to tremble. Releasing Sandar, he circled round the healing cot to stand on unsteady legs before the red-haired shei’dalin who had just joined them.
Elfeya. The Elf-kin shei’dalin from Tehlas.
Light save him, she was the brightest, most beautiful thing he’d ever beheld. Her great, golden eyes reminded him of the Great Sun, shining with such Light that Shan knew even the Dark God Seledorn himself could never hope to dim it. She’d pulled her gleaming auburn hair back in some sort of plaited knot at the back of her head, but strands had escaped to curl around her face in soft, unruly waves. He drank her in, already loving everything about her: the curve of her full mouth, the pulse fluttering in her slender neck, the deep breath she drew as every part of her beautiful, already-beloved soul reached out to his in recognition and communion. In that instant, he could feel the promise of their union as the dark places inside him grew lighter and the torment of centuries of aloneness and growing despair began to ease. No illusion this time. This was real. She was real.
She had come at last.
“Ver reisa ku’chae. Kem surah, shei’tani,” Shannisorran vel Celay told the truemate he had awaited for three thousand years. Your soul calls out. Mine answers, beloved.
Everyone in the tent froze, looking toward Shan and Elfeya with naked surprise. Fey warriors were famous for their stony, impenetrable visages. Elfeya’s—though far less stony—gave just as little away. Her eyes, great and golden, had that same unsettling, piercing quality possessed by so many Elves—as if she could see a person right through to the deepest, darkest secrets of his soul. Shan stood beneath that gaze, feeling stripped bare and vulnerable in a way he’d never known before.
Sandar gave a groan, pulling Elfeya’s attention from Shan to him. “Las, Fey.” Peace. “I am here.” She knelt by Sandar’s side, the golden healing magic known as shei’dalin’s love already spinning in dazzling threads from her fingertips. “You will be fine. I won’t let you die.”
The fierce note in her voice—the relentless conviction—stunned Shan anew. “It was you,” he breathed. “It was you who held me to the Light.”
Her shoulders stiffened slightly. “We can talk later,” she said, neither confirming nor denying the truth. “Go now, so I can work on your friend. I will save him for you, but it will take all my attention.” A swift glance flicked back toward him, shining gold beneath a veil of dark red lashes. In a soft voice, she added, “Shei’tan.”
Truemate, she called him. Beloved. Hers.
Shan forced his trembling muscles to obey. He walked out of the healing tents into the night and stared up at Eloran’s two full moons shining bright in the evening sky. Light in the darkness. Shan closed his eyes and let the cool night air caress his skin.
He’d been wrong this morning, thinking this was a good day to die.
Today was most definitely the best and most wonderful day to live.
Feyan Dictionary
Aiyah – yes
Beylah vo - thank you
Dahl’reisen - a lost soul, a Fey who has fallen down the Shadowed Path. He has lost his ability to feel remorse for his kills and no longer adheres to the laws of Fey honor. Dahl’reisen are banished from the Fading Lands.
Fey’cha - Fey throwing dagger
Jaff / Jaffed / Jaffing - To jaff something is to have intercourse with it. Screwed / Fucked.
Maresk / Kem’maresk - Friend / my friend
Mei’cha - Fey scimitar
Nei - no
Shei’dalin - Truthspeaker. A greatly empathic Fey woman who is both a powerful healer and capable of detecting truth from lies.
Sheisan’dahlein - the Fey honor death. Fey warriors close to becoming dahl’reisen usually choose sheisan’dahlein, so they die with their soul unstained by Darkness, thus making it more likely they will find their truemate in the next life.
Shei’tan / Shei’tani - Beloved, Truemate. The most powerful and complete Fey matebond. When completed, the Fey truemate bond combines two separate, equally powerful souls into one, never to be unjoined. Due to the power of this bond, truemates will never fall to Shadow.
Sel’dor - Black metal that disrupts Fey magic and burns like acid on Fey skin.
Seyani - Fey longsword.
Ver reisa ku’chae. Kem surah, shei’tani - Your soul calls out. Mine answers, beloved. The declaration a Fey warrior makes when finding and claiming his truemate.
27
bONUS STORY
ace of wands
JANE BELMONT
Upright:Creation, invention, enterprise, principle, beginning, source, birth, family, origin, money, fortune, inheritance
Reversed:Fall, decadence, ruin, perdition, to perish, clouded joy
Brian Sanders looked out the car window at the trees dotting the sides of the deep ravine. Varying shades of green, punctuated by the first of the fall colors, orange, red, and yellow, lit up by the setting sun. A creek ran along the bottom but the angle of the car obstructed his view. How many times had he sped past it, heading south down the Thruway to yet another work meeting in the city? He closed his eyes and let the breeze from the open windows wave across his face.
He didn’t think it would take this long. He needed it to be over quickly now that there was no going back. Eighteen months of hell brought to an abrupt stop. Luckily there’d be no one left behind stuck cleaning up his mess except the lawyers. Brian glanced in the rearview mirror. They were still there, accusatory stares locked on him despite his decision to make amends the only way he knew how. The old woman haunted him the most. Her eyes were filled with sorrow, not the hatred he deserved.
“What else do you want from me?” he screamed.
Seconds later the car hit the bottom of the ravine, the impact crushing Brian’s body inside a glass and steel coffin.
*
Peter Clarke peeled off his blue vinyl gloves, tossed them in the trash then ran his sweaty hands under cold water. It felt good after six straight hours of prepping slides but didn’t balance out the disappointment of the latest test results. Nine years of trial and error and dead ends with nothing to show for it except eye strain from examining set after set of results. He copied them to a flash drive, knowing that a few more hours of analysis wasn’t going to change anything. He just wasn’t willing to take a chance that he may have missed even the slightest sign that his team was on the right track.
He came home to an empty house. Kyle Hansen, his roommate and research partner, had left a note on the refrigerator door letting him know that a package had been delivered for him. They’d met in college, both bio-chemistry majors. Peter, the dedicated student, spent hours in the library after class, nights and weekends. Kyle never seemed to put in much effort but easily passed all his classes. Peter was secretly jealous, bu
t Kyle didn’t take himself too seriously so he’d never held it against him.
During their Master’s program they collaborated on a high-profile research project that brought them to the attention of Piedmont Biomedical and landed them jobs after graduation. Peter’s mother died of leukemia when he was in high school. Kyle’s sister died of the same disease two days after her sixteenth birthday. There was an immediate consensus to choose a subject inspired by their mutual loss. Peter was intrigued by a relatively new method of battling cancer, laboratory-created antibodies custom designed to treat specific types of cancer. Once injected into a patient’s bloodstream, it would trigger the patient’s immune system to destroy the cancer cells or stop them from spreading. Early attempts had limited success, often with side effects. Peter proposed that their project focus on creating more effective antibodies targeting acute types of leukemia. Kyle enthusiastically agreed.
Piedmont was taking full advantage of the latest technological advances in laboratory antibody design. Multiple teams of research scientists were working to create new antibodies while simultaneously limiting potential side effects. Peter and Kyle joined their ranks as the co-heads of their own team and hit the ground running. It was exciting at first, their long hours buoyed by enthusiasm. Lately he’d begun doubting Kyle’s commitment to the project. Kyle hadn’t put in any overtime for the past few weeks. It wasn’t mandatory, but Peter was convinced they were close to a breakthrough. For Peter, Kyle’s lack of effort was affecting their working relationship.
Never Fear - The Tarot: Do You Really Want To Know? Page 51