Crown of Crystal Flame (58 page)

They had nearly reached the door when two men rounded the corner. Clad in black leather, and bristling with weapons, the men gripped unsheathed blades in their hands. Melliandra recognized the look in their icy eyes: the promise of death.

Before Melliandra could act, Nicolene gave a cry and flung out her hands. Green sparks shot from her fingertips. The room rocked and shuddered, and the ground beneath the two men gave way.
“Gana!
” she barked. Run!

Shock kept Melliandra frozen in place. She’d heard the
umagi
whisper about Nicolene’s fierceness, but she’d thought the Mages had raped and beaten it out of her.

Nicolene scowled.
“Va!
” she commanded. Go! And with a slash of her hand, an invisible force shoved Melliandra towards the escape route.
“Dai ema!
” Now!

“Kem’falla, parei!
” The men’s magic had stopped their fall. They soared up, out of the hole in the ground.
“Bas shabei mareskia. Bas veli ku’evarir.” Mareskia
was the word for friends. We are friends. We’ve come to rescue you.

“Fossia!
” Nicolene screamed.
“Dahl’reisen fossia!”
Lies!
Dahl’reisen
lies! She flung her hands towards the ceiling. More bright green magic shot from her fingers, plunging into the rock above the
dahl’reisen.
With a shriek, she yanked, and the ceiling came down on their heads.

Nicolene screamed and fell to her knees as if the ceiling had fallen on her as well as the warriors, but she managed to pull herself back to her feet and stumble towards Melliandra.

“Sal ne shabei desrali, to ke war desral,”
she cried, waving her hands in a frantic gesture.

Melliandra didn’t catch half the words, but it was something about the
dahl’reisen
not being dead.

Sure enough, the pile of rubble was already shifting, starting to bulge upwards as the buried
dahl’reisen
fought their way to the surface. Instinct kicked in. Melliandra bolted for the High Mage’s emergency exit, pausing only when the
shei’dalin
snatched the little solemn-eyed girl from her crib and shoved her into Melliandra’s hands.

“What are you doing? We agreed—“

“Seya veli eva bos! Ke nei suya heberi eva dahl’reisen.”
Melliandra’s mind filled with an image of the baby screaming in torment in the hands of
dahl’reisen.
The vision winked out. The
shei’dalin’s
jaw set, and she glared at Melliandra, daring her to object.

“All right!” Melliandra capitulated with a show of ill grace, even though she was secretly glad not to abandon the child with eyes the color of freedom. “Now, let’s go!
Veli!
And stay out of my mind, do you hear? “

Together, they raced into the narrow tunnel the High Mage had built as his secret escape route. Nicolene pulled the walls and ceiling down behind them as they went.

The last thing Melliandra saw before the cave-in blocked the path to the nursery was one of the
dahl’reisen
rising from the rubble, his eyes pinned on her. In that one moment, as their gazes clashed, a bolt of recognition shot through Melliandra, stabbing straight through to her heart.

His eyes. He had pale, brilliant ice blue eyes, ringed by cobalt. Just like the woman who had given Melliandra her name and her first taste of kindness and love.

Shia’s eyes.

Gaelen spat an oath and lunged towards the rubble-filled ruins of the caved-in passageway. Green Earth blazed in his hands as he began to form the weaves to clear the passage, but before he could release his weaves, another section of the ceiling caved in. He had to leap to one side to avoid being buried again.

Farel started to clear the fresh pile of rubble, but Gaelen waved him off. Bits of the ceiling overhead were already starting to crumble and float upwards.

“Leave it,” he said. “We’re out of time. Wherever Nicolene-
falla
has gone, she’ll have to look after herself until we can come back for her. We’ve got to get these children to safety.” He called for more of his men and reached for one of the toddlers standing in the cribs.

“Sieks’ta,
General,” Farel said as the others arrived and they began handing off children. “It’s my fault she ran. If I hadn’t been with you—“

Gaelen shook his head.
“Nei
, the fault is mine. I should have considered there might be a
fellana
inside.” He clapped Farel on the shoulder and handed him a small, unsmiling boy with dark brown eyes. “Quickly,
kem’maresk.
We need to go.” The room was very bright now, forested with shafts of light shining through the disintegrating ceiling overhead. He snatched the last child from the crib beside him and followed Farel and the others down the crumbling corridor.

At the opening to the short hallway, Gaelen paused for a final look back at the blocked passage where the girl accompanying Nicolene vol Oros had stood. Who was she? Not Fey or Elvish. Not Celierian, either, with that milky white skin that had clearly never seen the sun. And those eyes. Huge silver coins, framed by sooty lashes. They unsettled him in a way he could not explain.

With a rumbling crack the rest of the nursery ceiling dissolved. Blinding light filled the room. Gaelen flung up a hand to shield his eyes.

“General!”

Farel’s shout spurred him to action. Whoever or whatever Nicolene vol Oros’s disconcerting companion might be made no difference now. Gaelen spun on his heel, hunched his body to protect the child in his arms from falling debris, and raced after his fellow
lu’tan.

The
dahl’reisen
guarding the gateway to the Well of Souls began herding all the rescued captives and refugees into the portal. “Into the Well!” they cried. “Everyone into the Well now!”

“But the wounded,” one of the
shei’dalins
exclaimed.

“Seal what you can’t heal! We’re out of time! Go! Go! Go!”

Vadim Maur’s escape tunnel led up and away from Boura Fell. Melliandra and Nicolene ran as quickly as they could, the
shei’dalin
pausing every few seconds to bring down the ceiling behind them. Each time they came to a fork in the tunnel, Melliandra and Nicolene followed whichever path led up, towards the surface of Eld. Up was where the sky was. Up was where the Mages were least likely to be. And so, up they went.

At last they arrived, out of breath, legs burning from the uphill run, at a winding stair that led to a closed door. Melliandra turned the knob and carefully pushed the door slightly ajar.

She braced herself for a flood of bright white light coming from the burning ball called the Great Sun that traveled across the sky. Sunlight, Shia had called it. But there was no burning ball of light. And the roof of the world—the thing Shia called the sky—was not the bright, beautiful blue Shia had described. It was black and scattered with tiny silver flecks—like
sel’dor
ore sprinkled with tiny crystals of mirror stone.

Melliandra’s hand began to shake, and her stomach did flips inside her belly.

“Arast sha neida?
” What’s wrong?

The sound of the
shei’dalin
Nicolene’s voice made Melliandra jump.
“Neitha,”
she answered brusquely. Nothing. Maybe this was just another big room, like the garden room, and they were still inside Boura Fell. But when she forced herself to shove open the door and saw the immensity of the alien landscape stretched out before her, she knew the truth.

This—this dark place—was the world. Tall, soaring spires of things Shia had called trees surrounded the doorway, but something was wrong with them. Half of the trees were gray, barren bones, like the skeletons of trees. At her feet, what should have been the soft, slender blades of the ground cover called grass were brown, brittle stalks that crackled when she poked them with a tentative toe.

This world above was dead. And
cold
—as cold as when Mages spun their dark magic. Despair swamped her. Where was the warm, bright, green-and-blue world Shia had sung of? Had the Mages destroyed it?

She turned to Nicolene. “I’m sorry,” she said. “This was a mistake. This is not what she told me it would be. The sun is gone. The world is dead. I think the Mages killed it.” To Melliandra’s horror, tears sprang to her eyes, and her voice cracked. She hugged Shia’s son to her chest. What were they going to do now?

Nicolene smiled, but there was such compassion in her eyes, Melliandra couldn’t take offense.
“Nei, kaishena,”
the
shei’dalin
soothed.
“Nei desrali. Nei Magia. De sha eilissei.”
Not dead. Not Mages. It is
eilissei.

“I don’t know
‘eilissei.’
“

“Sa Dol liath.”
Nicolene tilted her head to one side with her hands beneath her cheek and pretended to sleep.
“Cordai Sa Dol liath, de sha eilissei.”

The Great Sun is sleeping, she’d said. When the Great Sun sleeps, it is
eilissei.
Melliandra hadn’t known that the Great Sun needed to sleep, but a little of her tension faded away. Although the world was so different than Shia had described, it was clear Nicolene was not alarmed—not by the dead trees nor the dark nor the coldness of this place.

“Bas arrisi atha legan.”
Green Earth spun in powerful waves that sent tingles across Melliandra’s skin, and the tattered threadbare rags of her clothes thickened to dense, warm fabric, so plush she could barely feel the cold. Something equally warm encased her bare feet and ankles. Shoes. The first she’d ever worn. When the green weave faded, all seven of them, Melliandra, Nicolene, the four babies, and the little girl, were bundled warmly against the cold.

The
shei’dalin
gave a gentle push.
“Va, kaishena. Nei siad.”
Go, young one. Don’t be afraid.

With Shia’s child and one other cradled against her chest and a little girl with eyes the color of a not
-eilissei
sky clinging tight to her hand, Melliandra Maureva, descendant and slave of the High Mage of Eld, drew a shaky breath and took her first, hesitant step into freedom.

As Nicolene and Melliandra began their trek towards the Mandolay Mountains in the north and the refugees from Boura Fell made their way through the Well of Souls, the ground over Boura Fell began to shift and bulge. It rose upward, slowly swelling into a large dome of earth and rock and toppling forest.

Then, abruptly, the dome burst, and a brilliant tower of white light shot into the sky.

All across Eld, the tattered remnants of Vadim Maur’s great Army of Darkness turned in surprise as the sky over the dark forests of Eld flared ultrabright. Hundreds of miles away, on the battlements of Orest, and all along the mighty Heras River and the northern provinces of Celieria, the world fell into awed silence. All activity ceased. Fey, Celierian, and Elvish faces alike turned to the north.

The tower of light burned for a full chime, turning darkest night to brilliant day, before it collapsed in upon itself with a soundless boom that shook the core Eld. In the wake of that brightness, a great, glowing light shot up and streaked westward across the Elden sky.

From a distance, the streak of light looked like a giant shooting star racing across the night sky. But for years to come, those close enough to see what lay at the heart of the brightness would speak of a magnificent tairen made completely of light that flew across the skies of Eld. It dipped down and breathed the fire of the gods upon Koderas and Boura Maur, turning both into smoking craters, before continuing westward to disappear high in the Rhakis mountains. What became of that Light tairen, none could say, but soon after its disappearance into the Rhakis, the waters of the Heras once more ran rich with the magical power of
faerilas.

And in the place that had been Boura Fell, where the Light tairen first appeared, what remained was a great monument of shining crystal, shaped like a enormous, six-pointed crown—a beacon of Light in the dark heart of Eld. And within the haven of the crystal crown’s radiant golden white light, no Darkness would ever again endure.

19
^th
day of Seledos

The Fading Lands ~ Wingshadow,
Shellabah of the Daris Line

Purple silk caressed creamy marble columns, fluttering on a gentle breeze redolent with the aromas of burning fireoak and cinnabar. Outside, a light snow blanketed the northern fields of the Fading Lands, but within the magic-warmed luxury of Rain’s palatial
shellabah,
the only chill came from the cone of packed snow melting down Ellysetta’s naked stomach.

She closed her eyes and stretched like a cat as the heat of Rain’s tongue followed the path of the ice, drowning in sensation as Rain’s lips and hands slid across her skin, stroking, caressing, worshipping with humbling reverence. There was nothing like this feeling, this wholeness. This completeness. His mind and hers, one. He touched her, and she felt the caress with both her senses and his. An overload of emotion, of sensation. A harmonic that built upon itself again and again with each shift of his silken skin, each flex of corded muscle, each warm breath and stir of flesh.

Her hands tightened, fingers digging into the hard blades of his shoulders, holding him close.

He lifted his head, burning lavender eyes gleaming through a tangle of silky black hair. His mouth curved, and he held her gaze as he licked and kissed his way down her body.

She was him, all burning stone and heady desire, on fire with want, dizzy with the sweet aroma of her scent and the taste of her flesh on his tongue. She knew what he saw, what he felt, when he held her, when he kissed and caressed her.

She arched her back, thrusting her breasts upwards, glorying in the hot rush that consumed him at the sight. Everything about her gave him pleasure. Her helpless abandon to his tender assault made the blood pound in his veins and the tairen in his soul roar with possession and triumph.