Queen of Song and Souls (16 page)

Not that she truly trusted anyone except Dorian—and even that was questionable these days—but with most courtiers, Annoura knew what they were thinking even before they did. She could read them. She had a very good idea of how they would react in most important situations, and she knew how to keep one step ahead of them and manipulate them to achieve her own aims.

But this Bolor fellow... Annoura didn't know what he was thinking or how to control him. And that bothered her beyond measure. No matter how much Jiarine seemed to like him, Annoura had no intention of granting Bolor entrée to her inner circle.

And she certainly wasn't going to quaff down some potion the man had brewed up just because Jiarine—-clearly addled by the man's virile good looks—vouched for it.

"Your Majesty—"

"The answer is no. And if he's waiting outside my door, you can just send him away. Except for the king or the physician, no one sets foot in this room but you. Is that clear?"

Jiarine bobbed a brief, stiff curtsy. "Of course. Your Majesty. As you wish."

"Good. Go sit there, in that chair. There's a book on the stand beside it. You may read to me." Annoura dropped the compress back over her eyes. She heard Jiarine cross the room to the door, whisper something unintelligible to someone outside, then return and take a seat.

The lady's acquiescence pleased Annoura. Ill she might be, but some things the queen of Celieria could still control.

"If there's even a possibility the Mages have claimed your queen's soul, we need to know it," Rain declared after King Dorian spent several chimes detailing the troubled political situation in Celieria City.

Dorian flinched, and Ellysetta's heart ached for him. His deep and genuine love for his beautiful queen was well-known throughout Celieria—even a celebrated point of pride to its citizens—and fear for his wife must be eating at him night and day. «
Oh, Rain, no wonder he looks so weary.»
His country was at war, his nobles were infighting over the Fey, and now his wife might possibly have been corrupted by the Mages. Those were burdens enough to bring the strongest of men to his knees.

«He'll be ten times worse off if his wife truly is in the service of the Mages.» Rain glanced at Gaelen, who gave a slight nod. "As you know, we now have a way to detect Mage Marks. Gaelen showed us the weave this summer. While Ellysetta spins healing on the queen, Gaelen can check her for Mage Marks. Unless she possesses magic herself, she will not sense his weave."

Dorian looked up from his desk, his hands knotted before him. "You're asking me to let you spin forbidden black magic on my queen."

Rain's eyes narrowed. "I'm asking you to let us check your queen for Mage Marks. If she is Mage-claimed, you need to know. If she's not, it will set your mind at ease. If she bears only a few Marks, you need to know that, too, so you can take precautions to prevent further Marks."

As he spoke, an urgent thread of Spirit stabbed into Ellysetta's mind across the private communication pathway forged by their partially completed
shei’tanitsa
bond.
"Ellysetta, open
your
senses to Dorian and tell me what you find.. Quickly.»

"What's wrong?»
It was a measure of her trust in him that she didn't wait for his answer before tearing down the barriers that kept human thoughts and emotions from battering her empathic senses. With swift delicacy, she sent gossamer-fine threads of Spirit and
shei’dalin’s
love spinning out towards Dorian.

«I told Dorian this summer that the Fey had learned how to
detect Mage
Marks, but I never told him it required spinning Azrahn. So how did he find out?»

«You think the Mage has gotten to him?»

«J don't know, but he found out from somewhere. And it
wasn't from us.»

Her threads reached Dorian, only to encounter a powerful barrier that blocked her attempted probe. «
He has shielded
himself from me.»
She tested the perimeters of the shield lightly, not daring to press with any substantive power for fear that he would sense her presence. Celierian king or not, he was a descendant of the vol Serranis line, and not without magic of his own. When he frowned and waved a hand near his face as if to shoo away a buzzfly, she yanked her weave back. «
Sieks'ta, Rain. I can't get past his shields. If I try, he'll know.»

Abruptly, Dorian pushed his chair away from the desk and stood. "Let us be frank, My Lord Feyreisen. I know about your banishment from the Fading Lands and the reason for it. A messenger arrived not three days ago from Tenn v'En Eilan, the leader of the Massan. He wrote to inform me that he is now the acting ruler of the Fading Lands and to warn me that you and the Feyreisa had been stripped of your crowns and banished for spinning Azrahn."

Ellysetta gasped. The faces of her quintet turned to stone.

Beside her, Rain curled his fingers around the hilts of the
meicha.
scimitars sheathed at his hips. "Is that so?"

The shutters on the windows overlooking the gardens trembled and the curtains flanking them fluttered as if from a breeze. Dorian's gaze flicked in that direction before returning to Rain, whose eyes had begun to glow as his tairen rose.

«
Three
days. The
messenger
arrived
three days
ago.» Anger vibrated in every shining thread of his Spirit voice. «
It takes
only a week at most for a
runner to reach Celieria City from
Dharsa
.»

Ellysetta processed the calculations quickly. The messenger had left Dharsa ten days ago, which meant—

«Tenn sent his message after he received the battle reports from Teleon and Orest—and after the tairen declared you the rightful Defender of the Fey. Oh, Rain.»

"What else did Tenn's note say?" Rain's voice lowered to a throaty growl.

Another man might well have fled in fear of Rain Tairen Soul's infamous Rage, but Dorian stood his ground with admirable calm. "Among other things, he warned me that your mate was Mage Marked and that your bond to her had clouded your judgment. And he vowed I'd receive no more support from the Fey as long as I continued to count you among my allies. Here." He pulled open his desk drawer and withdrew a scroll encased in a gilded wooden scroll cover. "Read it for yourself."

Rain snatched the scroll from Dorian's grip, removed the protective cover, and unfurled the parchment, Ellysetta looked over his arm as he scanned Tenn's message, and the vile, damning words, written in an elegant golden script, jumped out at her.

To the Most Honorable and Beloved Fey-kin, His Majesty Dorian vol Serranis Torreval, Dorian X, King of Celieria
,

It is with Heavy Heart and deep concern that I write....

...
Rainier Feyreisen has broken his Honor... confessed under Truthspeaking
...both he and his mate did with knowing and
willful deliberation weave the forbidden magic, Azreisenahn, also
called Azrahn, the soul magic....The Massan had no choice but to
declare them dahl’reisen
and cast them out of the Fading
Lands....

... Ellysetta Baristani’s soul is tainted with Shadow... Elden
Mages have begun the possession of her soul... How deeply she
is tainted, we do not know, but the danger cannot be ignored....
Already the insidious effects of her presence have divided the
Fading Lands... Honorable Fey have discarded their honor to
follow her into Shadow... Her influence drove our kin to dishonor....

...The Eye of Truth has foretold a grim future for Elly
setta Baristani, one that honor and duty to the Fading Lands w
ill not allow the Massan to overlook...She will bring destruction

...
If Celieria continues to consort with the dahl’reisen
Rain Tairen Soul and his Shadow-tainted mate, you may expect no furth
er aid from the Fading Lands....

Each damning declaration drove a spike into her heart. «
Dear gods, Rain,»
she breathed in horror.
«
Why would he send this?»

Rain tossed the scroll on Dorian's desk as if it were a polluted thing. His eyes had gone pure tairen, pupil-less and whirling with purple radiance. A muscle jumped in his tightly clenched jaw. "So you received this... message three days ago, and yet still you greeted us with open arms rather than drawn swords. Why?"

Dorian arched his brows. "You forget. My Lord Feyreisen, I am a king, born and raised. I don't take kindly to veiled threats from foreign powers." He picked up the scroll, glanced at it briefly, then rolled the parchment back onto the scroll rods and slid the cover into place. "Nor does the idea that a usurper could strip a sovereign of his crown sit well with me, for obvious reasons."

He placed the scroll back into his desk drawer and closed it away. Tenn v’En Eilan is a stranger to me. I know nothing of him. But I have spent time with you, and with your Celierian-born truemate. Given the long history between our two countries, and my aunt's personal regard and affection for you, I thought it best to withhold judgment until I heard the truth from your own lips."

Rain's expression seemed carved from diamondine granite. "I wish I could tell you that what is written there is false, but Fey do not lie. Not even Tenn." He reached for Ellysetta's hand. "Ellysetta and I did both spin Azrahn. Tenn and three other members of the Massan declared us
dahl'reisen
and banished us from the Fading Lands because of it."

Ellysetta sensed Dorian's instinctive recoil and hurried to reassure him. "What we did wasn't as evil as Tenn's message makes it seem. I wove Azrahn to save four tairen killings from death, and Rain spun it to save me. The High Mage of Eld was stealing the souls of unborn tairen, and we had to stop him." Quickly, she told him about how the High Mage had been working to breed his own Tairen Soul.

"If Rain and I had not acted, the tairen would have perished with this generation. Tenn knows that, but it doesn't matter to him that we saved the tairen, or that Rain led Lord Teleos's forces to defeat the Eld at Orest, or even that the tairen brought Rain the golden war steel of the Fey king and declared him the rightful ruler of the Fading Lands. All Tenn sees are my Mage Marks, the vision in the Eye of Truth, and the admission that Rain and I wove Azrahn."

"Which facts, you must admit, are troubling," Dorian replied.

Rain took a half step forward, only to freeze when Ellysetta caught his wrist. "We do not deny it. The path the gods have laid out before us is by no means an easy one." Her eyes flashed as she lifted her chin and fixed an unwavering gaze upon the king. "But make no mistake, King Dorian: Azrahn or not, banished or not. Rain is the true king of the Fading Lands and Defender of the Fey. The tairen follow him, as do all Fey who remember that they were born to champion the Light."

Dorian regarded her in silent contemplation for several long moments. "You have changed a great deal from that shy young woman I first met three months ago."

"For the better, I hope."

"That remains to be seen."

"Enough." Rain crossed his arms. "We're wasting time. We came with important news, Dorian, and delayed an even more important visit of our own to do so. But given the unrest in your court and your concerns about your mate, it seems prudent that we share what we know only with those free of Mage Marks. Starting with you."

"
What
?" Dorian regarded him with fresh affront. "You're saying you want to weave the forbidden magic on
me
now?"

"Aiyali,"
Rain confirmed. "On you and everyone else who will be privy to the information we bring. We cannot risk revealing what we know to anyone who might be Mage-claimed, lest word get back to the Eld. That is why we came in person to deliver our news."

"I am not Mage-claimed, I can assure you."

"No disrespect, but your assurances aren't enough. You could bear Marks and not know it, just as Ellysetta did. Gaelen's Azrahn weave is the only way to be sure."

"Rain, please.»
Ellysetta laid a hand on his arm. His brusqueness was only making Dorian dig in his heels. Kings didn't take commands from others well. Aloud, to Dorian, she said, "Your Majesty, my best friend's mother sent her daughter and bond son to their deaths because the Mages owned her soul.
Teska,
please, the weave won't harm you, but not knowing could kill us all. I'll even have Gaelen spin the weave on me, so you can see for yourself. She turned to motion the former
dahl’reisen
to her side..

"With your permission,
kem’jita’taikonos?"
Gaelen said with a bow to his twin sister Marikah's royal descendant.

"Either you trust us or you don't," Rain snapped when Dorian didn't respond. "Make up your mind."

The king closed his eyes and splayed one hand across his forehead in a gesture of weary despair. A moment later, he muttered, "Gods save us all," then opened his eyes and nodded. "Fine. Do it. If you've fallen to Darkness, the rest of us are as good as dead anyway."

Rain gestured and the quintet leapt into action, spinning a ten-fold weave around the room to keep the distinctive magical signature of Azrahn from escaping the room. No need to either alarm Adrial and Rowan, who were still hiding in the city, or tip their hand to any Mages who might be nearby.