King of Sword and Sky (23 page)

"Sulimage
Manza will not be returning. I am Primage Nour, the new holder of your leash. Now get on your knees and show me the proper respect."

The pillow fell from her hands. She dropped to her knees and bent forward, touching her forehead to the floor near his feet. Her breasts swung free, the rouged tips rubbing the carpet, but she didn't dare move to tuck them back into the confines of her corset.

The hard leather sole of the Mage's boot pressed against the back of her neck, driving her face into the carpet until she could hardly breathe. Fighting the instinctive urge to stiffen her spine and push back against the pressure, she forced her body to go limp.

The submission seemed to please her new master. After a moment, the foot on her neck lifted.

She stayed where she was, not daring to do more than take short, shallow breaths. He had not told her to move.

For nearly a chime she stayed there, prone and silent, waiting. Then, at last, the cold command: "You may rise."

She pushed herself up on her palms and rose to her feet, keeping her arms at her sides, her eyes downcast.

"Raise your eyes,
umagi."

She lifted her lashes, fixing her gaze straight ahead as Vale had taught her four years ago, when she was an ambitious seventeen-year-old girl willfully making her Dark bargain. She'd not realized the true price, but he'd taught her. For six months, he'd led her farther into the shadows of his service, each week claiming a little more than she'd originally thought to give, coaxing her into surrendering the next bit of her soul. Slowly, methodically, he'd seduced her, broken her, subjugated her to his will. He'd trained her to obey him without question and serve him in any capacity he desired. And she'd come to do so willingly, even eagerly at times.

Now he was gone, but the invisible collar of enslavement he'd settled around her neck remained firmly clasped in place. She had a feeling its weight under Nour's hand would not be half so light as it had been under Master Manza's.

Master Nour lifted her chin and inspected her face with cold eyes. She was careful not to let her eyes meet his. Master Manza had allowed her certain liberties, but Master Nour did not seem so accommodating. From the corner of her eye, she saw the barrel-chested man staring at her exposed breasts. Master Nour didn't even glance at them.

The Primage's expression gave no hint of his thoughts, and when he concluded his inspection all he said was, "Manza always did have an eye for the pretty ones."

Master Nour turned away, and Jiarine allowed herself one deep breath. The movement made the stocky man lick his thick lips. She knew right then, he was no Mage. He could not possess the rigorous discipline Master Manza had told her was required for Magecraft yet still be so easily distracted by a pair of plump tits. An
umagi,
then, like her. She flashed him a glare and knew she'd guessed right when all he did was curl up the corner of his mouth in a leering grin.

"Manza claimed you were quite useful to him," Master Nour said, and both Jiarine and the stocky
umagi
snapped back into expressionless statues. "I hope I will find you so. Your first task is to arrange an entrée for me into the queen's court. I will be Lord Geris Bolor, from a small estate near Sebourne's lands in the north."

Jiarine took a breath. "Master, may I speak?"

"What is it,
umagi?"

"Great Lord Sebourne is a regular at court. Your identity will be too easily discredited." The words came in a rush. She wasn't certain how this new Mage would react to an
umagi
daring to give him advice, but if she didn't speak and his plans failed, he would blame her. She would rather take the punishment for impertinence than the punishment for failure. "A landless Ser or bastard son of a nobleman would be a better choice, less likely to be questioned by the members of the court."

"But I will not be a Ser,
umagi.
Manza went that route and it did not serve him nearly well enough. Lords have opportunities and influences mere Sers do not. Beside, though the news has not yet had time to reach the court, the real Lord Bolor has just met an untimely end, and I am his long-lost son and heir from a secret elopement. I have brought the marriage certificate and birth records and, if necessary, can produce the witnessing priest to prove it."

The current diBolor was a lord whom Jiarine had met before. He had a wife and two small children. If all that happened to him was disinheritance and reclassification in the Book of Lords as a bastard rather than a legitimate son of title, both he and his young family would be lucky. Somehow, she doubted that would be the case. Most obstacles in a Mage's path had a way of ending up dead or vanished. She dismissed the innocent man and his family's fate without a qualm. Better them than her.

"As you will, my Lord Bolor. But if I may be so bold, while you may pass for a lord of title, your
umagi
here will not." She cast a haughty glance at the stocky man. "He does not have the look of nobility about him. The wharf seems more likely."

The shorter man's brows drew together in a scowl. Master Nour just glanced back at him and then, surprisingly, laughed. "The wharf, eh? I suppose he does look a bit of the roustabout."

"I suggest you garb him as your servant. But keep him close by. The lords will assume he is your bully boy, and those fists are large enough that they might think twice before challenging your presence."

Nour's lips pursed, and he eyed her with new interest. "Perhaps you are more than just another of Manza's pretty faces after all, Jiarine."

"Thank you, my lord." Relief made her spine start to wilt. She squared her shoulders quickly. "Will there be anything else, Master Nour?"

"Yes, there will." Over his shoulder he barked, "Brodson, leave us. Close the door behind you. Have the maid send word to the queen that Lady Montevero is feeling indisposed this morning."

The click of the door latch falling into place rang like the toll of doom in the silent chamber.

The Primage took a step closer. "I think, pet, I should like you to show me how well my friend Kolis trained you to serve him."

Jiarine risked a glance at the Mage's face. Then she wished she hadn't.

For the first time since entering her room, Gethen Nour was smiling, and the sight shot terror through her heart.

Eld
~
Boura Fell

Pain enveloped Shan like a blanket. Every nerve ending burned and throbbed. Elfeya huddled on the periphery of his consciousness, singing his favorite Feyan and Elvish tunes from their long-ago life in the Fading Lands. Her voice helped keep the worst of the pain at bay as they waited for Maur to finish toying with them and let Elfeya heal him.

A sound at the door of his cell drew his attention. Elfeya stopped singing.

«He returns?»
There was such dread in her voice. If Maur were back, they both knew the last thousand years of captivity would soon be at an end. In his current condition, there was no way Shan could survive more torture.

Voices murmured in the hall outside, too muffled for him to make out the words. The cell door swung open. Shan started to tense, then hissed as the tug of tightening muscles shifted the fragments of shattered bone in his flesh. He could not move except to tilt his head back in an attempt to see who came in.

There was another low murmur of voices; then the broad shape of the guard stepped outside. Shan caught a hazy glimpse of the newcomer—a slight figure whose face was still cloaked in shadow. The scent of food teased his nostrils, and Shan closed his eyes. Not Maur but an
umagi,
with food for the High Mage's favorite toy. The end of his torment wasn't near after all.

Soft footsteps carried the
umagi
towards the barbed
sel'dor
bars of Shan's cage. Cloth whispered against stone, followed by the scrape of metal as the
umagi
set a platter on the floor.

"I cannot move to feed myself," Shan told his visitor. "Your master enjoyed his work too well."

To his surprise, a morsel of food touched his lips. He opened his eyes, saw the thin arm stretched through the bars of the cage, holding the food to his mouth.

"Eat," a soft voice commanded. A female voice. Young. A child's voice. "Even the strongest Fey needs food."

Warm, flavorful liquid touched the tip of his tongue. Juice from the small piece of cooked meat. How long since he'd had cooked meat? Shan licked his lips. The taste was extraordinary. It occurred to him that the meat could be poisoned or drugged in some manner, but he was beyond caring. The smell of the food was making him ravenous. He opened his mouth and took the bit of meat, forcing himself to chew slowly to savor its flavor and warmth and texture. Another piece brushed his lips before he was finished with the first, and he ate that too.

"Why do you still live?" the child whispered as he ate. "He shatters your bones, peels the flesh from your body, yet still you cling to life. Why?"

Shan just closed his eyes and kept chewing without answer. Apparently the food did not contain any drugs to loosen his tongue, because silence was all too easy.

The child held the next morsel of food away from his mouth, then sighed and gave it to him. "You are wary. I understand. They say you have been here a thousand years."

So long…half his years with Elfeya had been spent here, in darkness and torment. «
Ah, shei'tani, sieks'ta. Our bond has been more curse than gift.»

"Nei,"
she answered instantly. Love, deep and endless, poured across the unbreakable threads of their truemate bond, and with the love came her unshakable certainty, her pure and shining truth. Long ago she'd made her choice and bound her soul wholly and without reservation to his, and nothing—not even the living hell of their last thousand years—would make her regret it. «
I would not trade even these centuries of torment if it meant one less day with you. You are all the joy I need. So long as we life, we have hope.»

"They say he's never broken you in all that time," the child said. "You must be very strong…and how your defiance must vex him." Dark glee curled like an invisible smile in the girl's voice. "They all fear you, you know. Even him. I can smell it on them when they set foot down here."

Despite himself, Shan's curiosity was roused. Who was this child? Why was she here?

He took a slow, deep breath and embraced the burn of broken ribs as his lungs expanded. "What do you want?" he growled.

"Your help."

"My
help?"
He gave a soft, hoarse laugh. "Have you looked at me, girl? What help could I give in this state?"

"You will heal," she answered. "They say you always do, no matter what he does to you. What's important is you are not Marked. You can do what none of the rest of us can."

"And what's that?"

The child leaned forward, pressing her face to the
sel'dor
bars and lowering her voice to a whisper so soft he had to strain his ears to hear it.

"Kill him."

The Fading Lands ~ Fey'Bahren

"You should have warned me."

Rain smiled. "You should have known. It was the obvious outcome."

Swimming was over, and Steli, who seemed to have adopted Ellysetta as her own kit, now held Ellysetta firmly between her forepaws and, like tairen mothers throughout the ages, was diligently licking her kitling dry. The tairen's deep blue eyes gleamed happily, though Rain thought he detected a hint of mischief mixed in with the happiness.

Ellysetta accepted the maternal attention with patience and good grace, once she recovered from her initial shock. By the time Steli finished and blew puffs of warm air to complete the drying, Ellysetta was nearly purring. She leaned against Steli's neck and stroked the tairen's soft white fur. "Thank you, Steli."

Around them, tairen lay basking on the broad, flat drying rocks that encircled the lake. The slow flap of drying wings sent warm breezes circulating through the chamber and rippled the lake's glassy surface. The familiar warm scent of tairen filled Rain's nostrils. It wasn't the clean, light fragrance of the Fey, but something deeper and more complex. Fey smelled of blossom-filled meadows and spring breezes. Tairen smelled of the earth, rich and full of life.

Steli rose to stretch and yawn before settling back down and lifting her own wings to dry. Ellysetta ran her hands through her hair and winced as her fingers snagged on a tangle.

"If you come here, I will brush it for you," Rain offered.

She glanced up, startled, then smiled when she saw a brush appear in his hand. "Magic can be convenient." She walked over to sit beside him.

"Rain?" she asked as he methodically worked the brush through her curls. "What do you think I heard during the Fire Song?"

He paused in midstroke. "I don't know,
shei'tani.
Sybharukai says you have the scent of old magic about you. Perhaps that allows you to sense what the rest of us cannot."

She turned around. "What's 'old magic'?"

He sighed. "I don't know that either.
Sieks'ta.
I should have answers, but all I have are the same questions as you. Sybharukai says the tairen will follow us to Dharsa and sing pride-greetings to the Eye of Truth in the hope it will give us more information than it has in the past. The Eye is tairen-made. Perhaps the pride can convince it to cooperate."

"If that's the case, why didn't they do the convincing last time, when you asked it for help and it sent you to me?" There was a fierce light in her eyes. She hadn't forgotten that the Eye of Truth had hurt him. Now he realized he probably should have kept that information to himself.

"Apparently, it wasn't the right time." The tairen were like that—mysterious and unpredictable—and Sybharukai often knew much more than she let on.

"But this
is
the right time?"

"So it would seem."

Ellysetta's lips pursed, but she nodded and turned back around. He plied the brush again.

"Rain?"

"Aiyah?"

"What happens if I can't do what everyone thinks I can? What if the kitlings still perish, the Fey remain barren, and the magic continues to die in the Fading Lands?"

"I have faith in you,
shei'tani."

"But what if your faith is wrong?" she persisted. "What if I fail?"

"You ask that as if you expect me to revile you." He set the brush aside and moved in front of her to grip her shoulders and look her steadily in the eye. "Listen to me, Ellysetta. I vowed the night of our wedding that I would never turn from you again, and I will not—no matter what miracles you do or do not bring about, no matter what sort of magic you possess, no matter even if you never accept my bond. I am yours, utterly and completely, from now until the end of time."

"But—"

"We are both beings of great power, but we are not gods. You are not to blame for our troubles, nor will you be to blame if you cannot solve them." His thumbs traced the soft fullness of her lower lip, then brushed the creamy silk of her cheeks. "Just do the best you can,
shei'tani.
That's all anyone can ask of themselves." He lifted her hand and pressed a kiss to her palm, then another to the fragile pulse point at her wrist, and gave her a reassuring smile. "Enough of this dire talk. Come with me, and let me show you the wonders of Fey'Bahren."

The caverns of Fey'Bahren were wondrous indeed, an entire city of tunnels and chambers hollowed out beneath the volcano. The tunnels, Rain told Ellysetta, extended beyond Fey'Bahren itself to the jagged peaks of the surrounding Feyls, a reminder of the days when the tairen had not teetered on the brink of extinction.

Rain showed her the crystal-lined caverns at the mountain's deepest heart, where veins of gemstones and precious metals colored the walls with glittering mosaics, and a stunning, mist-filled chamber where the still-warm waters of the bathing lake merged with the cool silver ribbon of an underground river and plummeted down a sheer cliff face. At the base of the waterfall, another smaller lake formed and spilled over into a stream that disappeared from sight.

Ellie's favorite was a chamber Rain called the Cavern of Memory, whose entrance was guarded by a pair of exquisitely carved stone tairen with diamond claws and glittering Tairen's Eye crystal eyes. Within, every wall was covered with etched reliefs that depicted the countless past ages of tairen and Fey. The scenes, Rain told her, had been carved by artistically inclined Feyreisen over the millennia. Ellie recognized familiar Fey-tales in some of the carvings, famous battles in others, but most were of scenes that the mortal world had long ago forgotten. Ellie could have stayed in that chamber for months, years even, absorbing the amazing visual documentary of ages past without ever losing interest.

It was only as Rain escorted her out that she saw the series of reliefs retelling the fateful day when all the world had changed. She stopped in her tracks, her fingers trembling as she reached out to touch the image of a man's face carved with raw, untutored starkness in an expression of eternal anguish.

"Oh, Rain…" Beside that single, heart-stopping image were others, more crudely made, of a tairen blasting a battlefield of tiny soldiers, of a woman crying out as a robed man brought a blade slicing down towards her neck, of a barren, desolate wasteland empty of all but the broken skeletons of dead trees and a tiny kneeling man lifting his arms in grief to the heavens.

"I lacked the artistic skills of those who carved the walls before me," Rain said softly.

"You carved these yourself, without magic," Ellie murmured. She could feel the embedded memory of his ancient torment locked within the very stone itself, captured for all time as the images were carved. Rage and pain and grief beyond reckoning. She pulled her hand away. "You channeled your sorrow into the stone."

"Did I?" He sounded surprised. "I didn't realize. I knew only that working here, carving my own story into the stone, was the one thing that gave me some small measure of peace."

He had suffered so much…and now, all his suffering, all the sacrifices he had made to save the Fey, were threatened by the nameless power that was slowly eradicating the tairen. For a thousand years, he had lived in torment, fighting for sanity and for release from the mad grief that consumed him, fighting to live because the Fey needed him to survive.

Rain said he didn't hold her responsible for saving the tairen, but that did not absolve her. She had sensed something in Fey'Bahren that neither Rain nor any of the tairen had ever felt. Something evil and gloating. It wasn't the familiar malevolence of the High Mage or the nightmares that had haunted her all her life, but it was just as frightening.

She touched the carved image of Rain's face, absorbing the echoes of his torment and his desperate resolve to live when all he wanted was to die. Had she ever been so selfless? So brave?

No, she'd been frightened all her life, running from her nightmares, her enemies, her magic. She was tired of being afraid. And she was definitely through with running.

"Would you take me back to the hatching grounds? I don't know if there is anything I can do to help, but I'd like to start trying."

The tairen had all returned from the lake and were perched on the ledges of the large cavern when Ellysetta stepped out onto the nesting sands and approached the still-buried tairen eggs. Steli glided down and flapped her white wings to blow away most of the black sand covering them before leaping back to her ledge.

The five remaining mottled gray eggs were nearly as big as Ellysetta was tall, reaching up to her shoulders. She laid her hand on the snub, bluntly rounded top of one of them. The outer shell was a tough, leathery, pebbled substance, neither as hard nor as brittle as the eggs of birds. She gave a gentle, experimental squeeze and jumped as the egg twitched in seeming response.

Yanking back her hand, she turned nervously to Rain. "Can the baby tairen feel when I touch it?"

He nodded. "The tairen are sentient even in the womb, though until the eggs are actually laid on the sands, their sentience is mostly limited to emotion and sensory impressions rather than actual thoughts, much the same as what we receive from an unborn child of our own species." A shadow darkened his eyes. "Sybharukai says there are still three fertile females in this clutch. The one tairen last night was male." A muscle ticked in his jaw. "I suppose we should be grateful for that."

On her ledge above him, Sybharukai growled softly. Ellie glanced up at the tairen. Fourteen pairs of eyes watched from their ledges, gleaming in the red-orange glow of the nesting lair. Fourteen. All that remained of the once-thriving prides. And if these unhatched female kits died, the pride would end with this generation.

She laid her hand on the nearest egg and concentrated, cautiously lowering her internal barriers and stretching out her senses as Marissya had taught her to do in their lessons together. Las,
Ellysetta. Find the stillness inside you. Don't try to rule your magic. Let it flow freely. Let it fill you, become you.
She closed her eyes and tried to find the tranquil silence in her mind, where the world was glimmering light.
Relax. Breathe. All living things are made of Air, Water, Fire, Earth, and Spirit. Do not seek their essence; let their essence come to you.

Gradually, the sounds and scents of the world faded, and the shimmering darkness sprang to glowing life behind her eyes. Threads of magic—silvery Air, red Fire, green Earth, lavender Spirit, blue Water—all gleamed and shimmered, some threads radiant, others barely more than a subtle glow. The tairen were so bright they nearly blinded her. So much magic, so brilliant and untamed. Their light hummed with music: the beautiful, bold, colorful notes of tairen song, gleaming just beneath the surface, singing even when they were silent.

Beside them, Rain's colors were slightly dimmer, as if covered by a thin layer of shadow. She'd noticed that about him once before, that veil of darkness, as if the weight of all the souls he carried dimmed the brightness of his own soul.

When she turned to the eggs, the shimmering lights winked out. She could see Rain beside her, the tairen around her, but where the kitling in the egg should have been, there was only darkness and silence.

"What is it?" Rain asked.

She frowned. "I'm not sure. I think I'm doing what Marissya showed me, but I can't sense the kitlings at all. It's as if there's nothing but a blank void inside the eggs."

«They are afraid.»
Sybharukai's bright voice flared across Ellysetta's open senses. «
They know Cahlah, Merdrahl, and one
of their nestmates are gone. They shield themselves just as kits hatched outside the lair did long ago to hide from hunters.»
Along with the words flowed the image of a mounded nest covered with sand, baking in the sun rather than in the dark protection of a volcanic cave. A predator pawed and nosed at the sand around the nest.

Ellysetta's spine straightened. Of course the kitlings were afraid. They were babies who'd just been attacked and terrified, who'd just felt their parents die. A fresh surge of confidence filled her. Magic might still be mostly a mystery to her, but soothing frightened children was something she'd always been good at.

She knelt beside the egg and did her best to cradle it as if it were a child. So many times, she'd rocked Lillis and Lorelle, holding their small bodies close to hers and singing to them until whatever sadness or fear they suffered melted away. Remembering those times, she rocked against the egg and stroked the nubby shell as if it were a baby's soft cheek. Quietly at first, and then with growing assurance, she began to croon the melodies and lullabies she'd sung to her sisters.

At first the kitlings remained stubbornly silent, their light utterly hidden, but gradually, as she continued to sing, faint colors began to swirl in the dark centers of the eggs.

Something fluttered at the edge of her consciousness, hesitant, weak, but curious. She turned her attention towards it. Tiny, frightened, so tired. She probed gently, stretching out towards the sensation, and blinked back tears as a thready, shimmering song played weakly in her mind. She huddled closer to the egg, stroking its surface with encouragement. «
Hello, there, little kit. Can you hear me? My name is Ellysetta, and I've come to help you.»

Celieria City ~ The Royal Palace

Gethen Nour buttoned the flap of his silk trousers, straightened his jacket, and toed the trembling woman curled on the floor at his feet. "You may get dressed now, pet. I'll have Brodson send in your maid."