Queen of Song and Souls (46 page)

—
Rage.

It came from nowhere and filled him in an instant. Violent fury. Bloodlust. Savage, vengeful ferocity so vast it made the earth tremble.

Goram fell to his knees, and his master staggered back against the rough, carved-out walls of the cell. Maur's hood fell back, revealing the rotting ruins of his face—the skin drooping like melted tallow, patched with oozing sores where his flesh had begun to putrefy.

"You
...
will
...
not
...
touch . . . him!"

The guttural roar of command came from Shan's own throat—but the fierce, rumbling voice was not his.

Concentrated power filled him—searing him from the inside out, all but boiling the blood in his veins. It was as if the Bright Lord himself had poured all the vast energy of the Great Sun into Shan's soul on a bolt of divine lightning.

With the power came a presence—feminine and familiar— and Shan wasn't the only one who sensed it.

Silver eyes fixed on Shan. "You!" he exclaimed, and silver irises darkened to the lurid black of Azrahn.

Shan roared a warning to the daughter he had never seen—the precious, beloved child he and Elfeya had conceived in a world of endless horror. The same child they had risked their lives to save, and now willingly suffered every torment to protect.

The Rage—hers and his combined—exploded, flooding him with fury.
Sel'dor
manacles disintegrated. Agony ripped through him as his body flash-boiled into a cloud of flaming mist and his mind into a fearsome, savage haze.

Burn Him! Shred him! Feast on his roasted bones!

The cry howled in his mind, but the fierce battle cry turned to a shriek of pain as the mist he had become resolidified. Limbs formed, but they were twisted and misshapen, half tairen, half Fey, as if man and beast had been fused together in some monstrous amalgamation. Enormous muscles rippled and bulged beneath a patchwork hide, silvery Fey skin covered by broad tracts of black fur. A man's bony hands, larger than serving platters, ripped at the air with a beast's razored claws.

The creature reared back on bulging hind legs and opened its fanged maw. Searing fire spewed forth in an incinerating jet.

Goram screamed as his body turned to lifeless char, and beside him, the hammer he'd wielded with such malevolent enthusiasm melted into a puddle of harmless slag.

The High Mage shifted his initial weave into a powerful shield that withstood the first blast of fire—then he struck. His skeletal arms shoved forward, purple velvet sleeves falling back to reveal clawed hands holding globes of Azrahn that he hurled with a strength far exceeding his frail, wasted appearance.

The dark, corruptive magic splashed against the enormous, furred chest, and the creature that was part Shan, part tairen reared back, roaring with a mix of rage, pain, and fear. Cramped wings beat at the rough rock of the ceiling. Mid-span claws gouged deep furrows into the
sel'dor
ore.

The monster howled as sel'dor rubble rained searing acid across its back and the burning ice of the Mage's Azrahn spread across its chest.

Flame exploded from the beast's muzzle.

Vadim Maur dove through the cell door and rolled to the left. His bones bounced painfully across the unyielding stone floor, but neither the jolts nor even the snap of a breaking finger unraveled his concentration.

Pain was the price of great magic, and he had long ago accepted that penalty.

Vast and devastating, his power surged in answer to his call. Blazing, multi-ply threads burst from his hands in dense shield patterns as clouds of intense flame boiled out of the cell to fill the corridor. The guards by the door—unprotected by similar shields— lit up like matchsticks. They didn't even have time to scream before the ash that had been their living bodies scattered on the searing winds of the maelstrom.

Perspiration broke out on Vadim's skin, then evaporated as the hairs on his arms crackled and his skin turned bright red. He poured more magic into his weaves, but the destructive force of the fire was too great. A six-fold weave—no matter how powerful—had no chance of standing against tairen flame for long. His shields were failing. He was roasting.

Desperate, he arrowed a command to his
umagi
guarding the cell two levels above. «
Go
to the
shei'dalin Elfeya now.
Kill her
!»

Elvia ~ Navahele

Bel groaned and held his hands to his ringing ears. His head felt like that Eld
rultshart
had applied his hammer to Bel's skull. Someone was screaming.

His eyes snapped open and he rolled into a crouch.

Two man lengths away, held captive by some invisible force, Ellysetta stood glued to the shimmering veil of water. Her head was flung back, her spine was arched in visible agony, and she was screaming as if her very soul were being torn asunder.

"Get her away from the mirror!" Hawksheart cried. "She cannot free herself!"

Bel sprang into action. With no hint of his usual devoted care, he launched his body through the air, slammed into Ellysetta's slender form, and tackled her to the ground.

They landed with a teeth-rattling jolt on the floor of the hollow, and Bel's only concession to a
lu'tan's
regard was a last-moment twist of his body so that he—not she—took the brunt of their hard landing.

The instant they hit, Ellysetta went wild. Screaming and roaring, she struck at him with clawed hands, raking burning furrows across his face, ripping through his leathers to score his chest. He tried to block her blows and fend off her attacks without hurting her, but that care was his undoing.

Fast-growing roots shot up from the floor of the Sentinel's hollow and lashed Bel's arms and legs into place, pinning him to the floor. He spun Fire to burn the roots and free himself, but the threads of his magic dissolved the instant they formed, absorbed into the fierce aura of power surrounding Ellysetta.

"Ellysetta!" he protested. Streamers of ice raced through his veins, and a sudden, drugging weakness sapped his strength and left him light-headed.

Ellysetta reared back and Bel got his first glimpse of her face. Her eyes were pure black, lit by lurid red stars, her teeth bared in a snarl of primal savagery. The aura of magic about her was like none he'd ever seen. Like the Great Sun in full eclipse, a dark shadow surrounded her, its edges rimmed by an undulating ring of bright, golden light.

She passed a hand across her leathers, and her palm blazed with green Earth. One of the steel studs in her armor melted and re-formed as a razor-sharp black Fey'cha that she slammed towards him.

Rooted to the ground, his power pouring into her like light feeding the endless hunger of a dark star, he couldn't lift a finger in his defense. He couldn't even move to dodge the blow.

He could only whisper, "Ellysetta,
nei
!" as the knife plunged towards his chest.

Deep in the black heart of Boura Fell, Shan howled as the feel of a knife sinking into an unprotected chest reverberated through his soul.

The connection with his daughter shattered.

Elvia
~
Navahele

Ellysetta watched Bel's eyes go wide and heard his breath leave his lungs on a stunned gasp.

The face before her had been Vadim Maur's. She was certain of it. Only it had changed at the last moment to Bel's.

She shrieked in horror and denial, feeling the dagger tear through skin and bone to pierce the beating heart beneath as if the blade had ripped through her own chest.

In the same instant, a wall of heat and stone slammed into her side and swept her off her feet. The black Fey'cha flew from her hand and went skittering across the glossy, timeworn surface of the chamber floor. Behind her, the veil of suspended water abruptly splashed back into the mirror pool like a lead curtain suddenly released from its anchors. The spray of chilly droplets spattered across Ellysetta's face.

She was screaming ... screaming ... screaming. Death crouched at the periphery of her senses, grinning with malice while voices howled in a savage chorus of fear and agony.

Burn! Destroy! Scorch the world! Flame them all!

Yes! Yes!
A terrible, dark, hungry part of Ellysetta's soul howled with dreadful eagerness. She'd killed before. She knew the taste of blood and death, remembered the searing thrill of slaughtering a hated enemy. When Mama died, the ones who'd killed her had paid in blood and screams, and their dying wails had sung through Ellysetta's veins like a visceral symphony.

Something held her captive, pinned to the floor. Her arms flailed, fingers curving into claws. The power rose inside her with wild demand, burning, boiling, tearing at her body with brutal hands until she shrieked with pain and madness.

Ellysetta
!

The force inside her was too great for her body to contain. The need to rend and destroy clamored for freedom. Why else had she been born with such power if not to rain death and destruction upon the ones who'd hurt those she loved?

"Ellysetta!"
«
Shei’tani
» In voice and in Spirit and through the powerful bond threads that even now tied so much of her soul to Rain's, the sound of his call broke through her madness.

Those were his arms wrapped around her, his body pressed tight against hers, pinning her to the ground, yes, but covering her with a mate's protective care as well. His hair, smelling like spring rain and shared secrets, fell across her face in warm, silky streamers as his cheek pressed against hers and his lips murmured entreaties of peace and love against her skin.

Sanity returned in a rush. Her eyes flew open and she dragged air into her lungs on a sob.

"Rain?" Shaking hands traced the familiar curve of his head and spine. Fingers dug into the beloved bulwark of strong shoulders, clinging with desperate fear. "Oh, Rain." Tears gathered, hot and burning, and her throat closed up as if clutched in the strangling grip of a tight fist
. «Oh, Rain . . .
What have I done? Bel
...»

"Shh...
las, kem’reisa
... he is unharmed."

«I stabbed him. I stabbed him through the heart. I felt it.»

«Nei,» he soothed. «I reached you in time. You didn't hurt
him.
Your blade didn't even break his skin.»

Her eyes closed and tears of relief spilled down her cheeks. Though the sensation of her knife plunging into Bel's chest and piercing his heart had been so vivid. Rain would never lie. Especially not to her. Bel was unhurt. She hadn't slain him after all.

"Beylah sallan. Beylah sallan."
She wept. Her arms curled tight around Rain's neck, and she burrowed close. The frightened, timid Ellie-the-woodcarver's-daughter part of her soul yearned to dive inside his skin and live there, surrounded by him, part of him, kept safe from the world and the world kept safe from her; but after a few moments of comfort, the fiercer instincts of Ellysetta Feyreisa surged to the fore and forced her to pull away from the comfort of Rain's embrace, forced her to make sense of what had just happened.

The moment she lifted her head, Gaelen was there, hand outstretched, to help her to her feet.

Bel, visibly shaken but otherwise unharmed, was half a step behind him.

Ellysetta took one look at Bel, flung her arms around him, and burst into fresh tears. "
Sieks’ta
,
kem'maresk.
Forgive me. I don't know what happened. I would never hurt you."

He pulled back and met her eyes soberly. There is nothing to forgive,
kem'falla.
My life is yours. My death is yours, too, should you ever require it."

His simple, unequivocal acceptance nearly broke her heart.

"What happened?" Gaelen interrupted. "When you touched the mirror, what happened to you? To Lord Shan?"

"I..." She glanced back at Rain and reached for his hand instinctively. The warm strength of his fingers closed around hers, and fresh vitality infused her flagging courage. "I don't know. I can't explain it. It's as if the moment I touched the mirror, I was suddenly there, with my... with Lord v'En Celay ... as if I were a part of him."

“You were.”

The Fey all turned towards Hawksheart.

The Elf king regarded Ellysetta with an inscrutable expression. "The mirror is a viewing portal—but it is also a transport of sorts. You have not been trained in its proper use, so without me to guide you this time, when you touched the water, a part of your soul and your consciousness traveled through the mirror and entered Shan's body."

"Oh, gods." She put a hand to her mouth. "Was it my fault he turned into that.. . thing? Did I do that to him?"

"
Anio
," Hawksheart said instantly. "Don't let such a fear even cross your mind. As I showed you earlier, you were not the first of the High Mage's experiments. In his earliest attempts, he used adult hosts to house the soul of the tairen."

"Blessed gods," Rain breathed. "He tied a tairen's soul to Lord Shan. That's why Shan's eyes were tairen."

"He was one of many captive warriors of the Fey," Hawksheart confirmed, "but the others did not have the anchor of a truemate, as Shan does. When the Mage grafted a tairen's soul to theirs, they all went mad and died. Shan was the only one of those early experiments to survive. And he has thus far been the only one of the High Mage's experiments powerful enough to summon the Change—though, as you witnessed, he has never managed to successfully complete it."