by C. L. Wilson
Bel and the rest of Ellie’s quintet had barely managed to make it to the Baristani home before pleading for Rain to release them from their duties. He did, of course. They would have been useless in the state they were in. They’d all five taken off walking towards Celieria’s brothel district, but by the time they reached the end of the block, they were running.
After leaving Ellysetta in Ravel’s care, he’d thrown himself into the sky and flown here, to the silver beaches of the southern coast, hoping to find some respite—or at the very least a lessening of the weave. He’d found none.
The gods alone knew how long the effect of her weave would last, but it was still going agonizingly strong three bells after its inception. Even with hundreds of miles separating himself and Ellysetta. Lying in the surf, Rain shrieked his fury to the open skies above and pounded his fists in the wet sand around him.
Torel paced restlessly as Sian attempted for the sixth time in the last two bells to contact Belliard vel Jelani and relate what they’d discovered.
“You still can’t reach him?” Torel asked in concern. He ran his hands through his dark hair and blew on his fingers. The woods seemed colder than they had just chimes ago.
Sian shook his head and dissolved his weaves.
“Try someone else.”
“I already have. I can’t reach Bel or any of the Feyreisa’s quintet, nor Dax, Lady Marissya, or any of her quintet. I even tried to contact the Feyreisen. None of them are answering me. They must still be at that palace dinner Bel mentioned earlier today. We dare not pass the information on to anyone else.”
Although Brind Palwyn had steadfastly insisted he knew nothing about a redheaded child, Sian had woven Spirit between them and retrieved the man’s memories. Those memories had contained exactly the information Sian and Torel had been sent to find, but not at all what they’d expected.
As a child of ten, Brind had seen his parents tortured and killed by an Elden Mage looking for an escaped slave and a flame-haired child. A child the Elden Mage had claimed was the stolen daughter of his master, the High Mage Vadim Maur.
Even now, Torel wanted to cry out that it wasn’t true, that it couldn’t be true. He’d seen the Feyreisa with his own eyes, seen her brightness. But Brind’s memories were so vivid, he couldn’t doubt they were real.
The Paldwyns had only offered a night’s shelter to the slave and the child, but afterwards, unbeknownst to his parents, Brind had agreed to hide the baby in the woods while the slave drew off her pursuers. That task had kept Brind from dying with his parents. The slave girl, he later discovered, had set her own body aflame and thrown herself off the cliffs of Norban’s quarry to avoid being tortured and questioned by the Mage. Brind had retrieved what little remained of her burned and broken body, and had buried it alongside his parents. As for the baby, Brind had followed a Celierian couple traveling through the woods and put the baby beneath a tree where they would find her. He’d stayed hidden until he was sure they would take the child, and then he’d spent the rest of his life trying to forget everything that had happened.
He’d been relatively successful, too, until recently. While searching Brind’s memories, Sian discovered another disturbing image of local villagers bringing treasured Fey-gifts passed down through generations into the town square to be destroyed in a huge bonfire, while a white-haired priest in a voluminous, hooded blue cloak stood by and collected shards of Tairen’s Eye crystal from the villagers. Brind had inquired about the bonfire later, but none of the villagers remembered anything about the Fey-gifts they’d thrown into the fire, or the Tairen’s Eye shards they’d given to the blue-cloaked priest. It was as if those memories had been wiped clean. But Brind, who’d watched from the woods rather than participating in the bonfire, remembered—and he’d suffered nightmares about his parents’ deaths ever since.
Sian had erased all memory of Mages, death and Ellysetta from Brind’s mind, then gave the poor man what he’d wanted his whole life: memories of a happy childhood, unmarred by tragedy, memories of parents who died happily in their sleep after a satisfying life. It wasn’t legal. It broke the Fey-Celierian treaty and several Fey laws, but Sian did it anyway and dared Torel to say a word.
Torel wouldn’t, of course. He’d still been young when the Mage Wars started. He hadn’t even completed his first level of the Dance of Knives. But he, too, had seen his parents slaughtered by the Eld, just as Sian and Brind had, and there were days Torel wished someone would weave Spirit to remove his memories of that horror.
“Come on, then,” Torel said, clapping his friend on the back. “With a little effort, we might just make Celieria City by moonset tomorrow.”
“Do you think it’s true?” Sian didn’t elaborate, but he didn’t have to.
Torel didn’t want to believe it, but Fey didn’t lie, so instead, he forced a chiding look on his face and said, “She made Bel’s heart weep again. Do you think she could have done that if even the smallest part of her were tainted by Elden evil?”
“Of course. You’re right.” Sian nodded and stared at his booted toes.
“Silly pacheeta.” Torel grabbed his friend around the throat and scrubbed his knuckles against Sian’s skull through his wavy brown hair. “Come on, then. All doubts are forgotten. Let’s get back to our brothers.”
They were still smiling when the sel’dor shrapnel ripped through them.
Sian and Torel staggered, fell, then leapt back to their feet with red Fey’cha steel bared, automatically assuming the slightly crouched battle stance of a Fey warrior. Only then did they detect the reek of Azrahn and see the red-black glow of it around them. Only then did they see the shadowed mob of attackers lying in wait for them.
There were fifty or more, Torel estimated. Too many to beat. He and Sian were already surrounded, so there was nowhere to run. It was a fight to the death, then, his and Sian’s.
“Where did they come from, Torel?” Hands moving at incredible speed, Sian fired red Fey’cha into the surrounding mob with deadly accuracy.
“Scorched if I know. Guard my back.” Torel cursed as a barbed sel’dor arrow pierced his thigh, then gritted his teeth and sent four of his own red Fey’cha whirling into the shadows that surrounded him. Muffled shrieks, quickly silenced as tairen venom did its job, made him grin with savage victory. He would take as many with him as he could before he died.
Though he had yet to see the face of a single attacker, Torel was certain they were Eld. The sickly sweet reek of Azrahn was too strong for them to be anything else. He and Sian should have sensed them miles away—if only through their Fey instinct for danger—yet neither of them had detected the Eld even when standing virtually on top of them.
The sel’dor piercing their flesh prevented Torel and Sian from summoning magic to their defense. The black metal of Eld burned Fey flesh like acid and twisted even the weakest weave into agony. They could not weave Spirit to cry out a warning to the Fey warriors in Celieria.
But they could fight. With naked steel, deadly skill, and grim determination, Torel and Sian fought like the Fey warriors they were.
Within mere chimes, dozens of their attackers lay dead about them, and more fell dead each moment. It wasn’t enough. Torel and Sian were bleeding heavily, both from the hundreds of tiny shrapnel wounds and the numerous arrows bristling from their bodies like quills.
Torel heard his cradle-friend grunt in pain as another of their attackers’ arrows pierced his body. Sian fell heavily to one knee.
«I hear the tairen calling, Torel.» Sian’s breath wheezed out of lungs rapidly filling with blood. His hands, though, still fired Fey’cha daggers with the fierce precision perfected over a thousand years as a warrior.
«I know, my brother,» Torel replied. Even the small thread of Spirit required to mindspeak over the short distance between them caused agony to rip through him as each tiny piece of sel’dor shrapnel in his body twisted his Spirit weave into pain.
It would all be over soon. When Sian fell, To
rel’s back would be open to attack.
And they had not even had a chance to let Belliard vel Jelani know what they had found.
«It’s beautiful, Torel. So beautiful.» The sending was a whisper of sound.
«Save a piece of the sky for me, Sian. I’ll fly with you soon.» Torel heard the rattle of his cradle-friend’s last breath followed by the low, heavy thud of his lifeless body falling to the ground. A tear slid from Torel’s eye. Over a thousand years they had known each other. Soar, Sian. Soar high and laugh on the wind.
Dark, shadowy figures moved closer, circling.
Torel pulled his two seyani longswords free of their scabbards. “Come, then!” he shouted. “Come dance with the tairen, if you dare! Miora felah ti’Feyreisa! Joy to the Feyreisa! And death to you all!”
And he became a whirling blur of motion—black leather, shining steel, red blood—spinning in the moonlight, delivering death to all he touched until he moved no more.
It was time. Dawn was only a few bells away and the Daughter moon had nearly set. The sky was as dark as it would become tonight.
Vadim Maur entered his spell room. Rings gleamed on three fingers of each hand: five colored cabochon stones and one gleaming black selkahr, each surrounded by a rainbow of smaller cabochon stones in repeating six-color patterns. Rings of power, worn in the most powerful configuration possible: Earth, Water, and Spirit on his left hand, mated by Air, Fire, and Azrahn on his right. On each wrist, he wore thick gold bands that held dark, gleaming selkahr crystals—Tairen’s Eye altered by Azrahn to unleash its vast, dark power. He carried Kolis’s Mage blade, placed it on the stone table, and began the cleansing ritual.
When he was finished, he plunged the Mage blade into the clear water in the offering bowl and murmured the spell to release the rich blood stored in the dark Eld metal. Streamers of red billowed out from the blade, tinting the water. He added a fresh vial of blood from his prisoner in the levels below and submerged the Tairen’s Eye crystal to complete the spell. When the water cleared after his last incantation, he dipped his cup and drank.
Magic flowed over him in a rush of near-sexual pleasure, making his eyes flutter half closed. She was powerful. With just that little bit of her blood to strengthen the spell, he could feel the promise of her power coursing through his veins.
He summoned his own magic, wove the camouflaged rope of Azrahn, and sent it spiraling upwards through the pipe and into the world.
“Girl,” he whispered in the darkness. He sensed her frightened flinch, felt the brief twinge of his own muscles as her blood reacted in his veins. Oh, yes, she was there, and still trying to hide from him. She would not be able to hide any longer.
A smile widened on his rapidly chilling lips.
Rain swam down to the deepest depths of Great Bay’s main channel, where the water was only a few degrees above freezing. Even that did not cool the need that had driven him for nearly seven full bells now. Giving up, he swam back to the surface and made his way to shore.
He was close to the city, less than twenty miles away, and desperate to keep that distance. Already he’d let the tairen draw him back towards Ellysetta. Control was but a ragged illusion, a bare thread he clung to with desperate hope.
If the weave didn’t end soon, gods help him. He had no more strength to resist.
Ellysetta dreamed of heat. Rain was with her, eyes glowing like lavender suns, arms holding her close. His hands and Spirit weaves played over her skin in endless, breathtaking torment. Dear gods, she wanted…so badly. What she wanted, she didn’t know, but the need for it burned inside her, hungry and yearning, desperate for fulfillment.
They were in the glade overlooking Great Bay. Soft, cushioning grass lay beneath her back. The warmth of Rain’s body pressed against her. His lips tracked down her throat, leaving a path of fire in their wake. “Ku’shalah aiyah to nei.”
“Aiyah,” she breathed. Her fingers threaded through the silky thickness of his hair as his head lowered. Cool air rushed across her breasts. She gasped, then arched her back as his mouth closed around her. “Rain,” she cried.
He laughed softly against her skin. “You are so sweet,” he murmured, “so very, very sweet.” His teeth nipped at her with just enough force to make her gasp in surprise and shiver from the resulting tumult of sensation. His hand slid down her side, found the hem of her skirt, and ducked beneath. His fingers swept up her leg, towards the tight ache burning inside her.
Alarmed and shocked, she caught his hand. For the first time ever in his company, a feeling of wrongness came over her. “Rain?” She shivered again, but this time from cold, not pleasure. The night air had grown chill and biting. Rain’s body no longer offered the warmth it had only moments ago.
He acted as though he had not heard her. His fingers dug into the soft skin of her thigh. “Give yourself to me. Open up and let me in, my sweet.”
“No,” she said, pushing at him. The arms that had held her close now seemed like shackles, imprisoning rather than embracing her. “No, this is wrong. You promised my father…”
He laughed again, but the sound was ugly this time, mocking. “You think any oath to a mortal could ever keep a Fey from taking what he wants?” He lifted his head, and ice rushed through her veins. His eyes! Instead of the glowing lavender eyes she’d come to love, there were only pits of blackness, flickering with malevolent red lights.
She screamed and shoved him away.
Mocking laughter rang in her ears, and Rain disappeared in a swirl of black smoke. The twinkling glow of the fairy flies was extinguished, plunging her into darkness.
“Bright Lord protect me,” she whispered. She knew where she was, knew what was happening. This was a place she’d been many times before. This was the malignant womb from which all her nightmares sprang, the dark home of monstrous horrors and unspeakable evil.
This was the pit where the Shadow Man dwelled. Haunting her. Hunting her.
Hide deep and well. Never let him find you. If you reveal yourself to him, all will be lost. The urgent directive that had guided her from her earliest memories now shrieked from the depths of her soul. Hide, child! Hide now!
It was already too late.
She tried to flee, as she’d fled so many times in the past, but something held her fast, trapping her in the dark nexus. Panic rose, swift and sharp. Unable to escape, she tried to make herself small and invisible and tried to direct her consciousness, her thoughts, her entire being inward—hoping silence could conceal her. But she could feel him coming closer.
Cold enveloped her. Terror choked her. Each beat of her heart became a painful blow, as if someone were hammering spikes of ice into her chest.
Whispers snaked around her, the sibilant voice ancient and sinister and harrowingly familiar. “Girl…I know you’re here…I can taste your nearness…Show yourself.”
Something brushed against her, something small and furry with sharp little claws. A rat running across her hand. She bit back a scream, knowing the Shadow Man would hear. Knowing, somehow, it was what he wanted. If she made a sound—even the tiniest whimper—she would seal her doom.
The rat brushed against her again. Its sharp claws scratched her skin. The long, naked tail slithered across her hand, twitching back and forth like some hideous pendulum as its pointed snout poked and sniffed at her. She squeezed her eyes shut, shrieking in silent horror and revulsion as the verminous creature crawled over her. She didn’t dare move, didn’t dare fling the filthy thing away.
Something else brushed her hip. Another rat had joined the first. A third climbed over her leg, then a fourth brushed her foot. Soon there were dozens, circling around her, crawling over her skirts and up her arms, growing bolder as she offered no resistance.
“I sense your fear. Have my little friends found you?” When she didn’t respond, his voice hardened, “Come, now. Show yourself. I can use much more unpleasant methods to get what I want.”
Sharp teeth sank into her finger as the first rat c
losed its jaws and bit. Agony lanced up her arm. Another rat bit, then another. Oh, gods! The silent scream ripped through her soul. She was being eaten alive!
Her flesh was on fire. Though her eyes were blind in the utter darkness, she could feel each tiny scrape and bite, the pierce of long sharp teeth, the agony of skin peeling back from bone in bloody shreds.
With frantic urgency, she began to whisper the Bright Lord’s devotion in her mind, reciting the words again and again. Holy Adelis, Lord of Light, shine your brightness upon me. Glorious Father, Sun of my Soul, grant me strength to stand against darkness. Adelis, Bright One, Lord of my Heart, bless me and keep me always in the Light. The devotion offered only a fraction of the peace it usually did, but even that little bit she grasped with desperate gratitude.
Again and again, she repeated the devotion, and with each repetition, the pain in her flesh grew slightly more distant. Still there, still agonizing, but muted. As if she’d managed to push it into a small corner of her mind and lock it there.
Time crawled by. Moments stretched out for what seemed like bells. She clung to her silence with ragged determination. No matter what he did to her, she mustn’t reveal herself.
“You are stronger than I believed.” The Shadow Man sounded triumphant, almost…proud. “But your efforts are in vain. You will reveal yourself to me.” His voice became a cold whip of compulsion, battering at her mind, eating away at her defenses as relentlessly as his vermin gnawed at her flesh. “You want to reveal yourself to me. You can feel the darkness within you, demanding release.”