Queen of Song and Souls (43 page)

Rain bristled instantly. "You said nothing about Ellysetta's soul leaving her body when she touched the mirror." He knew that was what happened when she entered the Well of Souls to save a life. But he also knew she needed to anchor herself before attempting such a thing, and she had not anchored herself before touching the mirror.

"She was in no danger. I was with her."

Rain kept his gaze pinned on Hawksheart's face, but he sent a tender weave of Spirit to Ellysetta, warm with love and concern. «
Are you ail right, shei'tani
?» His hand lifted in silent invitation. She put her fingers in his and he pulled her to the protective safety of his side.

«
I am fine.»
she assured him.

He did not relax until he verified that for himself. His senses stroked hers like a dozen small caresses, probing for signs of distress. When he found none, the tension bristling through him eased a notch. "And did you find what you were looking for, Lord Galad?"

"Many things became clearer," the Elf king hedged. "Which verses of her Song will come to pass, I cannot say."

Rain had no patience for Elvish evasions. "What did you see,
shei'tani?"

“
I..." Ellysetta frowned- "I don't remember. A moment ago, I thought I did, but now ..."

Rain's temper soared. He turned narrowed eyes on the Elf king. "You stole her memories of what she Saw?"

"If I cannot tell you the future for fear of changing it, I certainly couldn't let her See it and remember."

«
I
hate the scorching Elves,»
Gil muttered darkly on the Warriors' Path.
«They may See a
million
futures, but they're
flaming useless in the present. They never give a straight
answer when a misdirection or evasion will do.»

Rain shared Gil's sentiments wholeheartedly. The Fey could dance the blade's edge of truth with the best of them, but that didn't mean they liked having the same done to them. Especially not by some two-legged, pointy-eared tree rat.

When buying
apples from an Elf, look carefully for the worms.
The caution his father had whispered to him more than once now made perfect sense. His mother had always had a soft spot for her Elvish friends, but his father had never viewed them so kindly.
Never trust an Elf, unless you have no choice. And even
then don't trust him much.

Hawksheart spread his hands. "If I could help you more, Tairen Soul, I would, but my hands are tied by the dictates of the Dance. What I Saw in your truemate's Song confirmed that my interference would upset the balance of what must be."

"How about I upset the balance of your scorching head by striking it from your neck," Gil snarled. His hand fell to the hilt of his
meicha
scimitar.

"But the Elves have helped the Fey before," Rain reminded Hawksheart. "You fought as our allies in the Mage Wars."

"And in the Demon Wars before that," Gaelen added.

"And, the Dance willing, we will fight beside you again before our time in this world is done," the Elf king assured them. "But for now, my friends, as daunting as it may be, you must face the Eld without the magic of Elvia to guide or aid you. No matter what the cost, no matter how I'd hoped it would be different, that is how this verse in Ellysetta's Song must play out."

Rain wanted to argue, but he knew it would be pointless. An Elf, once decided upon a course, was impossible to budge—especially when it came to the Dance. Hawksheart and every Elf in his kingdom would rush headlong to their deaths if that was what they believed the Dance demanded.

In that respect, though Rain hated to admit it, Elves were rather like the Fey. The only difference was, the Fey devoted their intensity to the protection of their women, not the dictates of some gods-forsaken prophecy.

"So you will not help us," Rain bit out. "I do not like it, but I do accept it. My
shei'tani
fulfilled her end of your bargain. Now you fulfill yours. Give her the truth of her past, as you vowed to do. And this time, Elf, we will all stand witness so you cannot erase her memories.

Hawksheart closed his eyes briefly, then nodded as if bowing to a fate he would rather avoid.
"Bayas.
The time has indeed come. Please approach the mirror. All of you," he added with a sigh. "Though I had hoped otherwise, you all must witness what the mirror has to show."

Together, the Fey approached the glowing blue pool.

Ellysetta started to kneel beside the mirror pool, but Hawksheart stopped her. "
Anio
, Ellysetta Erimea. This time do not touch the water at all. There is no need, and it could be... problematic." The Elf king didn't elucidate. Instead, he closed his eyes, lifted his hands palms up, and began to chant in the fluid, musical tones of the Elven tongue. Once again, the air filled with the intoxicating aroma of the Sentinel's liferings.

This time, however, the surface of the mirror pool did not remain flat. Instead, a mist of shining droplets rose up from the pool to form a shimmering veil that rose and expanded until it touched the ceiling above and stretched from one curved inner wall of the room to the other so that a great screen of water bisected the chamber.

In a voice resonating with power, Hawksheart said, "Behold the circumstances of your birth, Ellysetta Erimea."

The surface of the veil darkened and swirled with color as the mirror had done earlier, but this time the brilliant white light of Ellysetta's power did not turn the room bright as day. The Sentinel's inner chamber remained lit only by the glow of the pool. The images swirling in the veil came into focus, as crisp and clear as if Ellysetta were looking through glass into a scene unfolding in the room next door.

Flickering sconces cast a pale orange-yellow glow around a windowless chamber burrowed out of black stone. A large desk piled high with books, scrolls, and parchments dominated the chamber. Seated behind it was a man, white-haired yet somehow ageless, clad in purple velvet robes that looked almost black in the firelight. His head was bent, and he was scratching a quill across the pages of what looked like a record book of some kind. The man looked up, and Ellysetta's heart froze as familiar, icy silver eyes met hers and seared into her soul.

For a moment, she thought it was real—that the mirror truly was a clear glass portal into that dark room and the High Mage of Eld could see her as clearly as she could see him—but then he bent his head back to his book, dipped his quill in ink, and continued to write.

"That is him? The High Mage?" Rain asked quietly.

She nodded, but didn't pull her eyes off the man in the mirror's shining veil. Though she'd never seen him clearly in her dreams, she recognized him instantly. The invisible Mage Marks that formed a four-pointed ring over her heart went cold, and her stomach tightened with dread. When a knock sounded at the door, and the Mage called, "Enter," her heart slammed in her chest and suspicion hardened to icy certainty.

The man she might never have seen, but his voice was etched eternally in her mind, never to be forgotten. This was the High Mage who had tormented her all her life. The man responsible for her mother's death and all the lives lost on the battlefields of Orest and Teleon. The man who had stolen the souls and lives of young tairen in the egg and used them for his evil experiments.

Deep within, her tairen begin to growl and rake its claws across her nerves.

Rain's hand slipped into hers, and his broad, warm fingers curled tight, offering protection and reassurance. «
I am with you, shei'tani. And this is just an image from the past. He cannot hurt you.»

He thought she was afraid of the Mage.

Perhaps she should be. But her only real fear was of the hatred bubbling in her veins like fire. If she were wearing her tairen's true form, her fangs would be dripping venom, ravenous with bloodlust. The urge to kill, to rend and maim— to devour — was so fierce it shook her to her core.

Within the mirror's veil, the scene Hawksheart had summoned continued to play out. The knock on the door was a servant calling the Mage to some appointment. The white-haired High Mage exited his office to walk down a series of dark corridors tunneled out of black rock. Black metal-clad doors lined both sides of the corridor, and muscular guards gripping evil-looking barbed
sel'dor
pikes stood watch beside a number of them.

"Those walls look like they contain
sel'dor
ore," Gil muttered.

"A cave of some kind?" Bel suggested. "Perhaps burrowed into a
sel'dor
mine? It would explain why the Fey never sensed the Mages gathering their power."

"And why the
dahl'reisen
could never track them back to their lair," Gaelen agreed.

"Where are the largest
sel'dor
mines in Eld?" Tajik asked. "If that's where he is, then those are the first places we should start looking."

One of the doors opened, and the Mage entered. Inside was an observation room with a window that looked into an adjoining chamber where a young brunette woman lay chained to a flat table. Her eyes were half-closed, and her head lolled on her shoulders in what appeared to be a drugged stupor.

Another door opened on the far side of the room, and four burly guards, their meaty fists clenched around chains, dragged a snarling, naked man into the room by the
sel'dor
collar clamped around his neck and the manacles that shackled his wrists and ankles. His pale skin shone with a faint luminescence. Dark blond hair hung about his shoulders and face in matted tangles. The moment he caught sight of the woman on the table, his body went still as stone. His head came up sharply, whipping the hair back away from his face to reveal black Azrahn-filled eyes and a scar that tracked from the corner of his mouth to his left ear. His nostrils flared like those of a wolf scenting its prey.

Beside Ellysetta, Gaelen stiffened and drew in a hissing breath.

"You know him?" Rain asked.

"Korren vel Dahn. One of the Brotherhood. Six hundred years ago, I sent him into Eld to find the Mages' lair, but he never returned."

"Well, looks like he found it," Gil muttered.

In the scene unfolding in the mirror's mist, Korren lunged for the woman on the table. His body had reacted to her presence with unmistakable intent. Ellysetta gasped and turned her eyes away as the
dahl'reisen
fell upon the barely conscious woman. Rain's hand tightened on hers, and she felt the disgust and shame roiling through him as he forced himself to watch the creature who had once been an honorable warrior of the Fey commit his unspeakable act.

"May his soul burn in the Seventh Hell for all eternity," Bel whispered in horror.

"Do not judge him so harshly," Hawksheart said quietly. "It took two hundred years to break him, and madness can turn even the best of men into beasts. He wasn't the first and he was far from the last."

Hawksheart's soft-spoken words made Rain flinch and tighten his grip on Ellysetta. With her face pressed to his throat, she could feel his recoiling horror as clearly as her own.
«You could never do such a
thing
,
shei'tani,»
she assured him.

«
I
could no longer,
it's true
,» he answered «
But
before your
soul coiled mine? I
slaughtered
millions
without remorse. What
would one more foul crime have mattered?»

«
It
would have mattered, and you would not have done it.»

His lips touched her brow in a tender caress. «
Korren's deed
is
done. You can look
again
.»

Ellysetta turned back in time to see the woman Korren had raped walking with blank-eyed docility behind several servants. Ellysetta scowled at Hawksheart. "Why are you showing us this? That poor creature is not the woman who gave me birth; nor is Korren vel Dahn my sire." She'd seen the two shadowy figures of her parents in a dream beside the Bay of Flames a month ago, and neither the unconscious woman nor her rapist could have been one of the couple revealed to her.

"
Anio
, they are not. She and vel Dahn were but two of many unfortunate souls imprisoned by the High Mage of Eld."

The scene in the veil of water swirled out of focus. When it cleared again, they saw the same woman strapped to a birthing table, her face flushed with recent exertions, while the white-haired High Mage of Eld held her newborn son in his arms and spun a swirl of Azrahn-laced magic that drew faint sparkles of answering magic to the surface of the baby's eyes.

"We already know he's been trying to breed a Tairen Soul," Rain said.

"Look more closely," Hawksheart advised. The screen shimmered and the woman on the birthing table became a different woman, this one a blond, green-eyed Elf, and the child in the High Mage's hands became a smaller boy crowned with a shock of thick black hair. A moment later, a black-haired woman with deep blue eyes wept as she reached for her son. That mother and child became another, then another and another.

“Not all of the individuals you see are Fey. He's been breeding you, yes, but he's been crossing other magical bloodlines as well. Elvish, Fey, Feraz, Eld."

"Why?"

To create something stronger ... something deadlier than even you, Worldscorcher."