Crown of Crystal Flame (29 page)

“Calm yourself. She’s been unconscious almost the entire time. Even if the Mage was watching through her eyes, he couldn’t have seen much.”

“Farel will still want to know.”

“And I will tell him,” Sheyl assured her. “Now finish drying them, and have the men carry them to the top room. Tell Imrion and his brothers to spin a weave around the cabin to block what they can of the
dahl’reisen’s
pain from the Feyreisa. Shutter the windows and post guards at the door. I will take their armor and leathers to be cleaned and mended.” She gathered up the discarded pile of golden armor and studded red leather and let herself out of the cabin.

Farel was waiting for her across the yard. His face was as blank as hers. She wasn’t ready to face him yet, so she turned away and carried the armor and leathers to a small cabin farther down the main village thoroughfare. She gave them to another of the village women and stayed to chat. He waited, patient as time itself, until she abandoned her attempt at procrastination and went to him.

When she reached his side, he held out his hand, uncurling his fingers to reveal a black Fey’cha.

“When we recovered the Tairen Soul’s steel from the Eld, Rythiel found this.” In a swift, practiced motion, Farel flipped the blade to show her the Fey markings emblazoned in the pommel.

Sheyl recognized the name symbol instantly. “That’s Gaelen’s mark.”

“I found it with several others, all bloodsworn. They are hers. The Tairen Soul allowed a
dahl’reisen
—and not just any
dahl’reisen
but Gaelen vel Serranis—to bloodswear to his truemate. How can that be, Sheyl?”

“Have you asked Gaelen?”

“He will not answer. I told him they were safe, that I had brought them here as he commanded. All he would say was that we must protect her from the Eld even if it costs the life of every man, woman, and child in this village.”

Because of that, she almost didn’t tell him about the Mage Marks on Ellysetta’s chest. Though she had loved him all her life and told him more than she ever revealed to another living being, there were still many things she kept from him. Some things no person should have to know. But another woman had seen the Marks first, and Sheyl knew it would not remain secret for long.

“She bears Mage Marks.”

Farel was rarely caught off guard, but this time his mouth almost fell open. “What?” “Four of them.”

His brows snapped together. “Then why would Gaelen command us to bring her here? Her mere presence endangers us all.”

“I don’t know.”

Did the Tairen Soul know about his mate’s Marks? Was that why he allowed a
dahl’reisen
to bloodswear himself to the Feyreisa? Did he perhaps think Gaelen, who was at least a fourth-level talent in Azrahn, could use his forbidden skills to help protect the Feyreisa from Eld Mages? Sheyl’s mind whirled with questions and possibilities, but she cut them off quickly. If she allowed her mind to ask the questions, her second talent might provide the answer, and she could not do what she must in the coming days if the outcome would be in vain.

Her second talent was premonition. Unfortunately, she always saw true, and it was rarely something pleasant. The gods had not given her the vision of possibilities, only of unalterable destiny.

“At least she can’t have seen much,” Sheyl said to ease the guilt and recrimination she knew Farel was feeling for having brought such a danger into their village. “You told me she was unconscious most of the way.”

“She was.”

“Then I’m right. She can’t have seen much—which means the Mages can’t have either. I’ve put them in the top room, shuttered the windows, and posted guards. They will both sleep until dawn.”

He began to pace, a sure sign of overwhelming agitation and distress. “They can’t stay here.”

“Nei,”
she agreed. “You must take them away tomorrow, at first light.”

“We should kill them both now, while they sleep.”

She shook her head. “Don’t talk foolishness. Any
dahl’reisen
who killed her would become Mharog.”

He whirled on her. A muscle ticked in his clenched jaw. “Then we get one of the mortals to do it—one of the old men—and we feed him to the
lyrant
when it’s done so the Dark deed dies with him.”

“Nei.”
Sheyl’s voice was calm and even but as unyielding as stone. “You will not harm her. You will take her away in the morning. And you will grant her and the Tairen Soul safe passage out of the Verlaine.”

“Sheyl—“

“Nei. Dahl’reisen
you may be, but your soul remembers what it is to be Fey—even when it is inconvenient. She is a
shei’dalin,
and you are pledged to protect her from harm. And he is the last Tairen Soul. If you kill him, the Eld win, and you know it. Now, it is late, and I am tired. Come, take me to bed.”

“Sheyl, every moment she spends in this village puts all our lives in danger. You think I can just forget that and go to bed?”

“Aiyah,
you can. We are safe enough for now. They will leave tomorrow. You and the
dahl’reisen
will go with them. I want tonight.” She took his hand and tugged him towards their cabin.

“The Tairen Soul is healed. He would never allow
dahl’reisen
to escort his
shei
—” He broke off, eyes narrowing slightly. “You’ve seen this? That they would leave, and I would accompany them?”

“Aiyah,”
she lied. He’d not been in her vision, and that meant there was a chance to save him. “Now come, Farel vel Torras. Your hearth witch needs your attention.”

He allowed her to pull him towards their cabin. And when the doors closed behind them, her hands helped him to shed his weapons and leathers.

Eld ~ Boura Fell

Steel clattered outside the High Mage’s library door, the sound reverberating in the stone chasm of his chambers. Vadim glanced up.

“Come in,” he commanded. “And refrain from terrifying my soldiers.”

Six tall, dark figures entered on booted feet that made no sound as they walked, and with them they brought an icy chill that prickled even the High Mage’s flesh. Behind them, the Eld soldiers who had accompanied them were trembling so hard their armor rattled.

With a wave of his hand, Vadim dismissed the soldiers and turned his attention to the six creatures standing before him. They had been Fey once, then
dahl’reisen.
He had captured them centuries ago, and unlike so many of their brethren who had died in his untender care, they had crossed that final bridge, leaving the Shadowed Path and descending into total Darkness.

They were the Mharog, Fey who had given themselves utterly to evil. Immensely powerful. Utterly merciless. With skin as pale as snow and pure black eyes like bottomless chasms, they were frightening creatures, and even Vadim Maur, who owned their souls, harbored a carefully hidden terror of them.

“You summoned us to serve?” The tallest of the six asked the question. His voice was a whispered song of power, mesmerizing and deadly. Azurel he was called now, though once he’d claimed another name that had been celebrated in the Fading Lands.

“Your old friend Rain Tairen Soul has a truemate.”

A dangerous light sparked in Azurel’s black eyes. During the Mage Wars, he’d been sent by Rain Tairen Soul to fight in the desperate, bloody battle that had delivered him into Mage hands and ultimately drove him down the Dark Path. Over the centuries, Vadim had used that event to batter down the
dahl’reisen’s
defenses and breed hatred in his heart for the Fey and for Rain Tairen Soul in particular.

“One of my Mages had captured them, but the
dahl’reisen
who’ve harried us for so many years along the borders rescued them. The
dahl’reisen
harbor them now.” He’d never sent a force capable of defeating the
dahl’reisen
into Celieria before, afraid of tipping his hand, but the need for discretion was over. It was time to release the hunters and let them pursue their prey. “You will track them down, destroy the
dahl’reisen
village, and bring the girl and any survivors to me. The Tairen Soul is yours to kill.”

He gestured to a shadowy corner of his office, where a hard-eyed Mage in rich blue robes stood in silence. A sash heavily laden with jewels of achievement circled his waist several times and hung down to the floor. “This is Primage Dur. He will accompany you, along with two hundred of my Mages and a garrison of my best men into Celieria.”

“Your men will hinder us.”

“Don’t be a fool and don’t take me for one,” Vadim snapped. “Six Mharog, even ones as powerful as you, aren’t strong enough to confront the Tairen Soul and hundreds of
dahl’reisen
on your own. Besides, the Feyreisen’s mate is Fey born. Your touch would kill her. My men accompany you so that she will be returned to me alive. If she is not, rest assured you will continue your service to me in demon form.”

Azurel hesitated long enough to make Vadim gather his power, then he gave a lingeringly insolent bow. “It will be as you command.”

As silently as they had entered, the Mharog slipped away. Vadim sat as his desk for several long chimes, his fingers steepled.

Celieria ~ The Dahl’reisen Village 8
^th
day of Seledos

Dawn broke over a beautiful land of lush forests. As the sun rose, pastel morning skies became vivid cerulean, bright and cloudless over a verdant countryside. Shining lakes and rivers teemed with fish. Flocks of birds soared above herds of pronghorns bounding through thick forests. Silver-horned Shadars thundered across open plains, while winged Aquilines danced over glassy mountain lakes, touching golden hooves and feathered wingtips lightly on the water’s surface in a show of aerial mastery.

A familiar roar sounded, and Ellysetta turned to see a pride of tairen race across the sky, fur shining in the sunlight. Dozens of juveniles flew with the pride, some engaging in mock battles, while others tested their wings for the first time beneath the watchful eyes of their elders. Attentive adults flew below and behind the smallest of the kitlings, ready to break an infant’s fall or snatch a weary kit from the sky.

The tairen flew north, towards the jagged volcanic peaks of the Feyls, where Ellysetta could see hundreds more tairen circling the updrafts around the smoking peaks and launching themselves into the sky from the labyrinth of caverns riddling the range.

She turned her eyes west, and there was Dharsa, a shining jewel of white stone and golden spires rising from the forested hills like a crown. Moored boats bobbed in the harbor, while others sailed up and down the River Faer. The city streets were busier than she’d ever seen them, thronged with thousands of Fey, Elves, and other races.

And there were children. Hundreds of children. Infants cradled in their mothers’ arms. Toddlers playing in orchards and gardens overflowing with starry white Amarynth. Fey youths gathered in the Warrior’s Academy and the walled courtyards of the Hall of Truth and Healing as robed elders instructed them in the ways of magic and Light.

The Feyreisen’s palace rose from the city’s central hill, and there in the courtyard outside the Hall of Tairen, stood Marissya and Dax and with them a tall warrior in black leathers who was idly scratching the ear of the brown tairen kitling at his side. Three other kitlings played in the Source-fed fountain while an adult tairen Ellysetta did not recognize perched on the golden roof overlooking the courtyard. As if sensing her presence, the young warrior looked up. Eyes like blue stars—whirling with the opalescent radiance of the tairen—met hers.

«Keralas,»
she whispered, and the warrior—Marissya and Dax’s as yet unborn Tairen Soul son—smiled.

The whirling radiance of his eyes flashed, a blue star-burst that intensified to dazzling white light that blotted out her vision.

When she could see again, she was no longer in Dharsa. She was, instead, at Orest, and a Dark army stretched across the land like a blanket of death. Hundreds of thousands. Millions. Armed and armored, man and monster standing side by side, their eyes pitiless chasms of malice. At the head of the army stood the personal guard of the Dark Queen, thousands of once-Fey warriors, faces scarred, eyes black and merciless, their once-shining skins now a lurid, corpse white, utterly devoid of the warm silvery Light that had once suffused them. They looked the perfect vision of the unspeakable evil they had become.

The Dark Queen stood in the center of her guard, her scarlet hair piled high and threaded with ropes of black, selkahr jewels, her lips bloodred, her eyes death black, her skin white as milk. Her fell beauty dazzled the senses, an enthralling illusion that drew men to their deaths and masked the true horror of her Lightless soul. She was the Corrupter, the Light Eater, the Consumer of Souls, and in her wake red flowers bloomed like a trail of blood. Selgoroth, the flower of death, antithesis of the starry white Amarynth that bloomed in the steps of Fey women bearing young. Clusters of poison thorns hid amidst the Selgoroth’s scarlet petals, and the flowers’ black hearts exuded a noxious miasma of decay. Where Selgoroth bloomed, all other life withered and died.

Before the Dark Army, the last defenders of Light had assembled. Elves and Fey, shining silver and gold. With them stood the few mortals who still remained unenslaved—those who possessed enough immortal blood in their veins to resist the deadly pull of the Dark Queen’s consuming power. The shimmering amber and green and silvery blue bodies of Danae forest and water sprites. Aquilines and Shadar. And the last pride of the tairen—Steli and Sybharukai, Corus, Fahreeta, and Torasul, even the kitlings, so young their pelts were still plump with the soft, fluffy down of their hatching-fur.

The Dark Queen raised her arms and shouted a command that boomed like thunder across the field. Her army gave an echoing cry, and the earth trembled as they began to march.

The Queen spread her arms wide and leapt into the sky, shifting into a cloud of boiling black mist from which emerged a nightmarish creature. A tairen, or rather what should have been a tairen—just as a darrokken should have been a wolf. Furless, scabrous skin the color of dried blood stretched across the creature’s massive form. Eyes of whirling flame glared over a snarling muzzle, and black acid dripped from its razor-sharp fangs.