Queen of Song and Souls (42 page)

The pool flared. The colors of Grandfather flared as well, and the entire room went so magic-bright Ellysetta cried out and opened her eyes. Fey vision still overlapped natural sight, and what had been a dim, windowless hollow lit only by the glow of the mirror pool was now as bright as the Great Sun. She glanced over her shoulder. Rain and her quintet stood in a protective semicircle directly behind her, and though their silvery Fey luminescence was dazzling to her enhanced vision, each of the Fey appeared as dim shadows against Grandfather's searing light.

Concentrate, Ellysetta Erimea. Find the essence of your Song.

Ellysetta turned towards Galad Hawksheart, but like the Sentinel tree and the mirror pool, the Elf king was so bright he made her eyes hurt. "The light is blinding. I can't see."

You do not need to see. You only need to think of your Song
.

"But I don't know my song. Even the tairen could not hear it."

I do not speak of tairen song. You have not yet accepted that
part of your soul, so of course you do
not hear it. I speak of your
life's Song. Everyone has one. It is an individual life's unique
pat
tern, its joys and sorrows, its loves and fears, its memories and dreams. Think of those things. Summon your Song
.

Faces flashed across her memory, vignettes of the happiest days of her life. Mama, Papa, the twins. Her fear and awe the day Rain Tairen Soul swooped down from the sky to claim her. Selianne Pyerson, laughing and giggling over some girlish fancy. Lillis and Lorelle squealing and dancing in circles, their mink brown curls bobbing against their slender shoulders. Rain gathering her into his arms, his eyes glowing stars that regarded her as if she were the sun around which all his world revolved.

Gradually, other not-so-happy memories emerged as well. Kelissande Minset's sneering superiority. Queen Annoura's scarcely veiled mockery as she assessed Ellysetta during her first appearance at court. The Church of Light priests in Hartslea who'd come to examine her for demon possession. Rain drawing back from her in horror as the black smudge of the Mage's Mark bloomed like a dread flower over her heart.

Bayas. You are.
doing well. Keep concentrating. Let the memories come.

The memories turned darker still. Nightmares from her childhood. Dreams of blood and death and war. Screaming. The exorcists with their terrible needles. Pain! Oh, dear gods, such pain! Hot tears gathered in her eyes. The tairen dying. The High Mage, with his burning, ember-kissed eyes, laughing in triumph.
You’ll kill them, girl. You'll kill them all. It's what you were born for.
Mama dying in her arms. That horrible, unchangeable moment when a
sel'dor
blade had flashed and Mama's head rolled away from her body.

Rage.

She cried out and started to pull her hands from the mirror's surface, hoping that breaking the contact would stop the onslaught.

Anio
! Hawksheart barked, his voice a hammer of command.
No. You must continue
.

"I don't want to." She whimpered like a child afraid to set foot into a dark room. Cold shivered down her limbs. She couldn't feel her legs tucked beneath her, but her hands and arms had turned to lumps of ice, freezing and burning all at once.

You must. This is the price for the truth you asked of me.

"I've changed my mind. I don't want it anymore."

The bargain was
Elf-struck. It cannot be undone.

The images of her life began to flash faster as the events became more recent. The Massan. Venarra holding the soul of a dying Fey woman to life while other
shei'dalins
worked frantically to heal her broken body. The death of the tairen kitling Forrahl. Ellysetta's descent into the Well of Souls to save the other kitlings. The terrible piercing anguish of two more Mage Marks, and Rain's own daring plunge into the Well to rescue her. The battle of Orest. Rain emerging from Veil Lake, wreathed in blinding magic as he donned the golden war steel of the Feyreisen. Saving Aartys and Truthspeaking the Mage. The dark voices whispering in her mind. The Azrahn-gifted children conceived as a result of her weave. Rain's Rage during the Eld attack. The way Fey'cha fit so comfortably in her hands. The moment she made her bargain with the Elf king.

The images came faster and faster as the scenes they depicted grew closer to the present. When they reached this moment, Ellysetta cried out and her spine went rigid. The flashing images became a blur, yet she could see them with vivid clarity.

War. Armies stretched as far as she could see. Dharsa in smoldering ruins. Rain, in tairen form, roaring in pain as a
sel'dor
bowcannon bolt ripped through his chest and sent him tumbling from the sky. Rain and Ellysetta, captured by the Eld and draped in
sel'dor
chains as black-armored soldiers and a blue-robed Primage prodded them towards a great gaping black maw.

In slow motion, so that each moment seemed to last a lifetime, Ellysetta saw a red Fey'cha plunge into Rain's back, saw Rain's eyes widen in surprise and pain. He fell dead at her feet, his limbs shaking with tremors as the lethal venom from the blade raced through his body. She saw herself standing over his body. Her eyes were black as night, sparkling with malevolent red stars, as she raised the bloody Fey'cha over her head and laughed.

"
No
!'" Ellysetta shrieked the denial and tried to pull her hands from the mirror, but something held them in place. She could not free herself, and the visions continued to flash in the bright light of the pool, each more awful than the previous. The worst visions from every nightmare she'd ever harbored. A future so grim she could not bear it.

The world in flames. Millions slaughtered. Celierians, Fey, and Elves in chains. Fey'Bahren a scorched boneyard baking in a merciless sun, while overhead winged monsters that once had been tairen dominated the sky, their hides as bare and scabrous as those of the foul darrokken. Acid dripped from their fangs, leaving smoldering pits in the monsters’ wakes.

Lillis and Lorelle not dead, but worse: dark-eyed imps of evil, Laughing and dancing in showers of blood while they played Stones with the skulls of slaughtered children. And watching them fondly, from a diseased throne of death: herself, the Queen of Darkness.

"Stop!" Ellysetta cried. "Did you bring me here only to torture me? You said there was still hope! Where is the hope in this?" She writhed and yanked at her hands, fighting the unseen power that kept her chained to the mirror pool, but she could not free herself. «
Rain
.
Help me!»
she called on the bond threads that tied part of his soul to hers.

He didn’t answer.

Fear hollowed her out and left her shaking. "Where's Rain? What have you done with him?" She tried to see him but both her Fey vision and her physical sight were now completely blinded by the blazing magic that filled the chamber. All she could see was burning, blinding, dazzling white light.

Calm yourself, Ellysetta Erimea,
Hawksheart chided.
Your
fears are
groundless. Your mate is safe, and exactly where you left
him. Be calm.

Calm? She was blind and trapped and couldn't reach Rain, and this stranger whom Rain didn't trust wanted her to be calm?

"Then why can't I hear him? Why can't I see him? Why are you holding me against my will?"

She heard something that sounded like a sigh.
You cannot
leave because our bargain was Elf-struck. Your own
magic binds
you
until the price you agreed to is paid. The harder you struggle, the more powerful the bonds become. You cannot see because the magic that blinds you is a reflection of your own power. The more
magic you expend trying to free yourself,
the more blinding the light becomes. If you calm yourself and cease your struggle, the light will
begin to fade.

"Why didn't you tell me this before I touched the mirror?"

I had not believed it necessary, but you are much
stronger
than
I Saw.
He sounded slightly embarrassed and not quite as sure of himself as he had seemed at their meeting.
And much br
ighter.

Ellysetta wasn't sure if he was telling the truth, but as she stopped fighting to free herself, the blinding whiteness around her began to dim. Not much, but once again she could make out the faint shadows of her truemate and her quintet standing nearby.

Her head drooped in relief. Her hands remained touching the cool, motionless surface of the pool, but she was afraid to look again, afraid of what else it would show. "You told us there was still hope, yet every future the mirror has shown me so far is evil. I saw Rain murdered—and I was the one wielding the blade."

Bayas, but you looked into the mirror with fear, and so the mir
ror reflected the thing you fear most. I looked with a different heart,
and I saw other
paths . . . several not so bleak
. The Elfs voice softened with compassion.
Hope remains, faint though it may be.
Look
again, child. But this time, let love, not fear, guide your Song.

If only it were so easy. "I don't think I know how to stop being afraid. It's been such a part of me my whole life."

There are some fears, young Ellysetta, that can never be con
quered. Sometimes, all you can do is acknowledge your fear, then
act in spite of
it. Look again, Ellysetta, but fill your mind with
hope.

Hope. The word made her want to weep. When had she ever truly known hope? Her nightmares, her seizures, the fears of demon possession: Evil had haunted her all her life, tainted every happiness with shadow. Most of the few people she'd allowed herself to love had died or been lost because of her: Selianne, Mama, Papa, and the twins. She loved Rain, but all she'd brought him was banishment from the Fading Lands and the threat of certain death.

Somewhere deep inside, some part of her knew their truemate bond would never be complete. Rain would die because of her. Whether battling the Eld or from bond madness, it made no difference. In the end, she would kill him as surely as she killed him in her nightmares. As surely as she had caused the death of Mama and Selianne.

"He'll die because of me," she wept.

He
will most certainty die if you do nothing. But more than
that, all the Light of this world will die as well. Is that what you want, Ellysetta?

"No, of course not!"

Then look in the mirror, child.
The gods sent you to fight the
Dark, Ellysetta Erimea. Do not fear what you were born to do.

If it were only her life at stake, she could not have made herself look in the mirror again to see what other horrors would be revealed. But hers was not the only life at risk.

She knew the face of evil. She'd seen it in her dreams, and too often, lately, it had worn her own features. It must be stopped. There was no other option. Because, as Rain had once told her, when evil came calling, you couldn't reason with it. You couldn't bargain with it or strike terms of peace. You couldn't hide behind a locked door and hope that it would go away. Evil had no mercy. Evil didn't value life. It nursed its children on blood and hate. It celebrated death and hailed murder in the name of its Dark God.

She could not fail. No matter the cost to herself. For reasons she would never understand, the gods had apparently chosen her, Ellysetta Baristani, to be the hinge on which the fate of the world turned. And if there was anything in Hawksheart's mirror that would help her defeat the Shadow threatening all she held dear, she needed to find it.

Ellysetta lifted her head and looked back into the mirror.

chapter. eighteen

My love, my mate, my shei’tani

My life in this cage of pain, my soul’s other half

I am not free to touch her, to protect her

Though we are one

My love, my child, my daughter

My gift to the world, my gift from the gods

I am not free to hold her, to know her

Though she is the one to save my people

To end my torment

The Torment of Lord Death,

by Shannisorran v'En Celay

"What's wrong?” Rain frowned at Ellysetta as she rose to her feet and stepped away from the blue phosphorescent glow of the mirror pool. "Have you changed your mind about trying to See your Song in the pool after all?"

She stopped in surprise, "But... I already did." She looked to Hawksheart, then back at Rain. "We've been at it for bells."

Rain's brows shot up to his hairline.
"Nei,
you knelt at the water's edge, touched the surface for no more than a moment or two, and stood up again." Behind him, her quintet nodded in agreement.

All eyes turned to Hawksheart.

The Elf spread his hands. "You both are correct. Your truemate and I did, in fact, journey long and far, through a thousand different variations of her Song, though to you, our travels would have passed in the blink of an eye."

"I don't understand."

"The mirror is Elvish magic. Like the Faering Mists, what happens within the mirror exists outside of time. The only difference is that with the mirror, the Seer's body remains in this world and only the Seer's soul takes the journey."