Lord of the Fading Lands

by C. L. Wilson

  “Nei, Rain!” the Truthspeaker protested. Her voice wasn’t calm now. It was afraid. “Nei, shei’tan!” Then in Celierian, “I didn’t mean to frighten you. Please, forgive me! Calm yourself. Guard your feelings.”

  It took a startled moment for Ellie to realize the Truthspeaker was addressing her. “Me?”

  “Yes! Can you not see he is protecting you?” Even as she spoke to the girl, Marissya sent a silent plea to Rain. «I’m sorry, Rain. I didn’t mean to frighten her. Please. She is unhurt. See for yourself. Be calm. You must be calm. It is you who frighten her now.» And to her truemate, whose thoughts and feelings she sensed as her own, «Dax, shei’tan, I am not hurt. She only surprised me. It is my fault. I should not have probed her. She felt it and was frightened. Rain responds to her fear, to protect her, as you protect me. Please, let go before someone gets hurt.»

  Neither Rain nor Dax relaxed his grip on his power or his rage. It wasn’t surprising. A Fey Lord reacted violently to even the smallest perceived threat to his mate.

  «Please, Rain. She needs you strong for her, in control of yourself. You must control the tairen in you. She was hurt, and you came. You protected her. She is safe.»

  «She fears you.» Blazing, half-mad lavender eyes pinned her. «I will not permit it.»

  «I’m sorry. I—» The weave of Fire and Air appeared without warning. With incredible speed and dexterity, Rain had rewoven the protective cone of magic, shutting Marissya and Dax out, closing himself and the Celierian girl within.

  It took Rain several chimes to beat back the tairen’s fury, to shove it into a small corner of his mind and keep it there. Only then did he turn to face the woman whose emotions ripped at his sanity. Her fear—of him, he knew, despite his wanting to blame Marissya—tore at him in ways he’d never known. The web of Spirit he’d woven around her winked out as he released his power back to the elements. Still, she cowered from him. Rain would have torn out the heart of any other man who dared to frighten her this badly, yet he would not—could not—leave her.

  “Come.” His tone was imperious, yet the hand he held out trembled. “I could never harm you, shei’tani.” His Celierian was rusty, deeply accented with Fey tones, and his attempt to appear nonthreatening was equally out of practice. The tairen in him still clawed at the edges of his control, all fiery passion, possessiveness, and primitive instinct. “I am called Rainier.”

  “I know.” Her eyes were huge in the too-thin oval of her face. Twin pools of verdant green, they stared at him as if he were a monster. “You scorched the world once. It’s in all the history books.”

  “That was a very long time ago.” He tried to summon a smile, but the muscles in his face couldn’t seem to remember how to form one. “I promise you are safe with me.” His fingers beckoned her. “Come. Give me your hand.”

  The exotic flares of her brows drew together in a suspicious frown. “Why? So you can try to invade my thoughts like the Truthspeaker?” Rain could see she was still afraid, very afraid, yet she was working hard to master her fear.

  “I…apologize for Marissya. She had no right.”

  “Then why did she do it?”

  “She was…curious about you.” She had done it to find answers, of course. Answers to the questions of how a Celierian child-woman could wield the power he had felt, and more importantly, how she could possibly be Rain’s shei’tani.

  “Did she never think to just ask?” The asperity in her voice was unmistakable. The delicate, frightened shei’tani had steel in her spine after all.

  “She will now. Believe me.” The tairen in him was slowly subsiding. It had ceased pounding the door of its cage and was now pacing restlessly within, edgy but contained. For the moment. But it, like him, had a great need to touch this woman. Once more he held out his hand. “Come. Give me your hand. Please.” The last was more a genuine plea than an afterthought. “I would give my life before allowing harm to come to you.”

  Ellie stared at the outstretched hand in stunned silence. Was Rainier vel’En Daris, King of the Fey, truly standing before her, vowing to sacrifice his immortal life to protect her? Her, Ellie Baristani, the woodcarver’s odd, unattractive, and embarrassingly unwed adoptive daughter? Surely she was dreaming.

  But this all seemed so real. And he was so beautiful. Beautifully and fearfully wrought. Her dazed mind supplied the quote from Avian’s classic epic poem, “Rainier’s Song.” Avian, she now knew, had barely got the half of it. She had dreamed of Rain Tairen Soul all her life, and here he was. She felt herself moving towards him, her hand reaching out. He had asked, and she had to touch him. If only to be sure he was real.

  Her fingers trembled as they slid into his. She trembled as his hand closed about hers. Warmth, like the spring heat of the Great Sun, spread through her body, and a sense of peace unlike anything she’d ever felt came over her. She heard him inhale deeply, watched his eyes flutter closed. A nameless expression, an unsettling mix of joy and pain, crossed his face.

  He drew her closer, and she went without protest, dazed with wonder as his arms, so lean and strong, wrapped her in a close embrace. Her ear pressed against his chest. She felt the unyielding bristle of the countless sheathed knives strapped over his chest, heard the beat of his heart, and was oddly reassured. There was safety here as no other place on earth.

  She felt him bow his head to rest his jaw on her hair, the touch feather light. Tears beaded in her lashes at the simple beauty of it.

  “Ver reisa ku’chae. Kem surah, shei’tani.” He whispered the words against her hair.

  “You said that before,” she murmured. “What does it mean?” It sounded familiar, like something she had heard or read somewhere. She felt the stillness in him, the hesitation, and she pulled back to look up into his eyes.

  His gaze moved slowly over her face as if he were committing her likeness to memory for all time. “I don’t even know your name.”

  She blinked in surprise. Since the moment she had put her hand in his and he had pulled her into his arms, she felt as if he knew everything there was to know about her. It was surprising and disconcerting to realize that, in fact, they knew each other not at all. “Ellie,” she told him solemnly. “My name is Ellysetta Baristani.”

  “Ellie.” Liquid Fey accents savored the syllables of her simple name, making it something beautiful and exotic. “Ellysetta.” His pale, supple hand brushed the mass of her hair. His gaze followed the path of his fingers as they delved deep into the untamable coils. “Ellysetta with hair like tairen flame and eyes the green color of spring. I’ve seen the mist of your reflection in The Eye of Truth.” His gaze returned to hers, filled with wonder and regret. “Ver reisa ku’chae. Kem surah, shei’tani. Your soul calls out. Mine answers, beloved.”

  At last Ellie remembered why the Fey words seemed so familiar. She’d read them before in a slim volume of translated Fey poetry. It was the greeting a Fey man spoke to a woman when recognizing and claiming her as his truemate.

  The strange buzzing in her ears was all the warning Ellie received before her knees buckled.

  Rain caught the girl as her legs gave way and held her tight to his chest, even as his own legs trembled beneath him. She was not the only one stunned by his claim.

  Never in recorded history had a Tairen Soul claimed a truemate.

  That was the price of the Tairen Soul, one he had accepted eleven hundred and eighty-seven years ago when his adolescent Soul Quest had shown him flame and fang. And on the day of his First Change, when all the tairen and Tairen Souls of the Fading Lands gathered in Fey’Bahren to guide him through his first transformation, he had trembled with fear and exaltation—but no regret—as his Fey form dissolved and re-formed as a massive, black-furred tairen who rode the winds on mighty wings. He had known then that he was destined for loneliness. Never to find a truemate, the one who was his other half. Never to bear a daughter of his loins. Never to know relief from the souls that darkened his own.

  Sariel had joined her life with
his, even knowing their souls would never follow where their hearts had led. Then she had died, and he had survived her death. Ah, gods, how he had railed against that. If Sariel had been his truemate, the mate of his soul rather than simply the mate of his heart, nothing could have chained him to life after her death. But he was a Tairen Soul, and Tairen Souls did not have truemates.

  Until now.

  Rain shook his head in disbelief. This girl in his arms was the first truemate to be claimed in a thousand years. The first truemate ever to be claimed by a Tairen Soul. Among the many wonders of the shei’tanitsa bonding, not the least of its benefits was the guarantee of fertility and the continuation of the strongest magics of the Fey.

  There was no doubt in his mind that she was the reason the Eye had sent him to Celieria.

  Somehow, for some reason beyond his understanding, the gods had granted this slender Celierian girl—scarcely more than a child—the power to save the tairen and the Fey.

  Somehow, though he did not want it, they had granted her the power to save him.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Ellie woke wrapped in warm strength, the music of a steady heartbeat sounding in her ear. His strength. His heartbeat. Rainier vel’En Daris Feyreisen. Rain Tairen Soul. The man who had claimed her as his truemate, the missing half of his soul.

  “I’m all right,” she murmured, pulling away to stare up into the watchful lavender gaze of the stranger who named her his beloved. “I just got a little dizzy for a moment.” Something warm and hungry unfurled within her as their eyes met. She backed away from him, hoping he had not noticed. “Why did you…say what you did?”

  “That you are my shei’tani?” he growled. “Because it is the truth. Because I must.” A muscle flexed in his jaw. She was suddenly aware of a sense of driving need, of a hunger not warm like hers but hot and demanding; then the feelings faded as Rainier vel’En Daris turned his back to her and took several deep breaths. “We must go,” he said abruptly. “Your countrymen grow restless and too bold by half. The girl children who were with you are worried.”

  Her hands clapped over her cheeks. “Lillis! Lorelle!” How could she have forgotten about them? She spun around, only to find her wrist clasped in his hand.

  “Stay close to me, Ellysetta Baristani. I can allow no harm to befall you.” He gestured. The cone of magic surrounding them disappeared, revealing them both to the swarming crowds jamming the streets. The throngs were so thick, with more bodies pushing into the area by the second, that Celierians dared to crowd within five feet of the small, lethal army of Fey warriors. There was a dull roar of sound—thousands of bodies shifting restlessly, voices murmuring—but all fell silent when Ellysetta and Rainier appeared.

  “Wait here a moment, shei’tani.” A bubble of multicolored magic enveloped her as Rain Tairen Soul walked several paces away to speak with the shei’dalin and her truemate.

  “Ellie!” The high-pitched shrieks heralded the twins’ arrival as they raced towards her. Their faces were splotched with tears, their dresses torn, their lovely curls disheveled. Two Fey warriors, looking much worse for wear than the girls, hurried close on their heels.

  “Nei, little Fey’cha.” One of the Fey, a tall young man with silvery blond hair, a swollen eye, and a set of four bleeding scratches down the side of his face, snatched up Lorelle just as she would have flung herself into Ellie’s arms. Lorelle immediately convulsed into a howling, screaming fit, her little fingers curved into claws, which explained the battle wounds on the man’s face. He subdued her, admonishing in a gentle, genuinely concerned voice, “Nei, nei. Do not touch the Feyreisa when the bright light surrounds her. It would do you much harm.”

  Lillis stopped a few feet away, her lower lip trembling, tears pouring from her eyes. She looked so pitiful, so woefully in need of a hug that Ellie instinctively stepped towards her. When the warrior behind Lillis grabbed her up, Ellie froze in her tracks.

  A lump rose in her throat. She turned towards the Feyreisen. “Please,” she called out. She pushed at the light surrounding her, but it merely flowed around her hands. “Release me from this thing.”

  The look he turned upon her was once again the cold, frightening Tairen Soul’s gaze. With no expression on his face, he scanned the crowd for several long moments, then dissipated her shield without a word.

  As soon as it was gone, she lurched forward to snatch Lillis and Lorelle into her arms, hugging them close as they wrapped their little bodies around her and cried into her neck. “Shh, kitlings. Shh. It’s all right. I’m safe.” She showered kisses upon their curly heads. “I’m so sorry you were frightened. Hush, now. Please don’t cry.”

  “What’s going on, Ellie?” Lorelle asked once she had calmed down enough to speak. “Why did the tairen-man attack you, then put you in the fire cage?”

  “It’s all very confusing,” Ellie told them. “And it must have looked very frightening.” It certainly had scared the wits out of her. “But the Feyreisen didn’t attack me. He knew I was hurt and came to my rescue.”

  “Why wouldn’t the Fey let us come to you?” Lillis asked. “We cried and cried, but they wouldn’t let you out of the cage and they wouldn’t let us in!” Lillis wasn’t used to her tears being so ineffective. She glared at the brown-haired, blue-eyed Fey who had kept her from going to Ellie. He only grinned back at her and bowed.

  “I know,” Ellie soothed. “I’m sorry. But I’m here now and we’re together again and safe.”

  “I want to go home.” Lorelle’s brows drew together in a scowl.

  “Me too, kitling.” Ellie murmured. “Me too.”

  A few feet away, Rain watched the reunion. Her love for the children was obvious, as was theirs for her. He had known love once, but it had died along with all his gentler feelings at the Battle of Eadmond’s Field, where Sariel had breathed her last. That day had changed him forever, stripping him of kindness and compassion, leaving him with sorrow, anger, duty, and the stain of millions of lives darkening his soul. Had he not been the last Feyreisen, he would have been cast out by the Fey for the blood on his hands and the taint on his soul.

  Yet now, in a fit of wicked humor, the gods had thrust Ellysetta Baristani in his path and decreed he must mate, binding the darkness of his ancient soul to the shining innocence of hers. He didn’t want it. The responsibility for her safety and happiness was yet another burden, the reawakening of violent tairen-passions a potential danger to them all. But he was the Feyreisen, the last Tairen Soul, repository of all the ancient Fey magics and the only remaining Fey capable of entering the tairen’s lair, Fey’Bahren. He had lost the freedom of choice with the death of all the other Tairen Souls. What remained was his duty to protect the Fey. To live when he would rather die. To mate when he would rather remain alone.

  The tairen in him roared again. The Fey in him roared back. The tairen hungered for his mate, was furious at the delay, while Rain, the beloved of Sariel, didn’t want to let another in his heart, as he must in order to fulfill the matebond.

  «Rain, be calm,» Marissya warned.

  «I am calm,» he snapped back, but he grabbed the unraveling threads of his emotions and pulled them tight. “Celieria unsettles me.” There were too many memories here, of Sariel and happier days, of death and war. “My shei’tani is not safe here. She must return with me to the Fading Lands. The courtship will take place there.”

  “You cannot just abduct her, no matter how much you worry about her safety. She has parents, a family. Do you think she will accept you if you take her from everything she knows?”

  “I will permit her family to enter the Fading Lands. They can remain until the matebond is complete.” That was fair. More than fair. No one but Fey had been allowed to enter the Fading Lands since the Mage Wars. “She will accept me.”

  “Don’t be so sure you know a shei’tani’s heart,” Marissya warned him. “She may be young, but she would never be your truemate if she weren’t very strong.”

  “Marissya is right,
Rain,” Dax agreed. “She doesn’t trust any of us. If you take her from her home, you may never win her. And where will that leave the Fey? We can’t afford to risk losing you any more than you can afford to lose her.”

  Rain knew they were right. If Ellysetta Baristani didn’t accept him, he would die. No gift from the gods ever came without a price, and that was the price Fey warriors paid for the truemate bond. He had recognized her as his mate. His soul, for good or ill, was already bound to hers. She, on the other hand, had yet to accept him, and he was ancient enough, powerful enough, that the debilitating effects of an unfulfilled matebond would begin to take their toll on him quickly. Madness first, then death, either at his own hands or the hands of his people.

  “My Lord Feyreisen.”

  Ellysetta stood beside him, holding tight to the children with the lovely hair. He could feel her fear, and her determination not to be cowed by it. She didn’t trust him, even though she felt the pull of his soul—or perhaps because of that—and she definitely didn’t trust Marissya or Dax. The tairen within pushed against its cage, sensing its mate, seeking release.

  “My Lord Feyreisen,” she repeated. “My sisters and I must return home.”

  Logic evaporated. Cold fury took its place. She thought to leave him? “Nei.”

  Ellysetta’s jaw went slack.

  “What Rain means is that you are welcome to walk with us,” Marissya hurried to explain. «Rain! Do you want to drive her away?» She held out a hand. “I would be honored if you would join me.”

  “No!” Ellysetta all but leapt back to avoid Marissya’s outstretched hand. “I mean, no, thank you. We’ve had enough excitement for one day. I’m sure you understand.” Her eyes turned back to Rain and she said slowly, as if he were thick in the head, “My parents will be worried if we don’t come home.”

  “Your sisters may go,” Rain told her. “You stay with me.”

  “I can’t send them home alone!” she exclaimed. “They’re just children!”