Queen of Song and Souls (48 page)

Ellysetta frowned. "You're suggesting he planned everything that just happened down there? That he manipulated me into demanding the truth about my parents just so we'd go after them because he wants me to confront the High Mage?"

"You are still young,
ajiana.
Still trusting." Sadness and affection softened the ice blue of Gaelen's eyes. "I have been
dahl'reisen.
I learned long ago to trust no one. I also learned long ago that the world holds precious few surprises for an Elf. Do I think he manipulated us? Oh,
aiyah,
I think he did. I think the Lord of Valorian knew precisely what he was doing every step of the way. He wants us to go into Eld."

"Well, he can want all he likes," Rain snapped. "There's no way in the Seven Hells I would ever let Ellysetta set foot in that accursed land. Hawksheart surely knows that." He began to pace again.
"Nei.
No matter what your suspicion tells you, Hawksheart is not such a fool. Besides, you heard him. Ellysetta is the one born to defeat Shadow and secure this world for Light. He would not risk her life so stupidly."

"And how can she defeat Shadow if she never confronts it?" Gaelen countered. "Stop thinking like a Fey, Rain, and start thinking like an Elf. To them, no one life is more important than the outcome of the Dance. Hawksheart said Ellysetta was born to defeat Shadow, but did you even once hear him say she was supposed to survive her fate?"

Rain stopped in his tracks. His expression went blank. "I—"

"Nei,
you did not." Gaelen supplied the answer himself "Because he was very careful not to say it. Just as he was very careful to block Ellysetta's memories of what she saw, even though he would not let me erase the truth about Elfeya from Tajik's mind."

Silence fell over the chamber. Rain and the rest of Ellysetta's quintet shared troubled glances. They all clearly wanted to refute Gaelen's claims, yet they could not dismiss the former
dahl'reisen's
suspicions.

"Rain was the last Fey to call a Song in the Dance," Gaelen reminded them. "We all know how that turned out. If not for the tairen, he would not have survived."

An uncomfortable silence fell over the room. None of them could dismiss the possibility that Ellysetta's Song would end in devastation. They'd all seen the same dire prognostications in the Eye of Truth.

Bel cleared his throat. "Hawksheart can obfuscate and manipulate all he wants; it will get him nowhere. We may be the seven he chose to hear his revelations, but that doesn't mean we must act on them alone. Once we send word back to the Fading Lands, not even Tenn and his supporters will be able to stop the Fey from demanding that all the force of the Fading Lands be focused on rescuing Lord Shan and his mate.”

"Flames scorch that pointy-eared
rultshart
," Rain muttered beneath his breath. He scowled at them. "That's exactly what he was counting on, because he knows it's exactly what I cannot allow to happen." Rain shoved a hand through his hair. "I need the Fey protecting Celieria and the Fading Lands—not rushing into Eld to confront the Mages on their own ground. We're too few—and whatever the Mages used in Teleon and Orest to open those portals, they surely have seeded all over Eld. The moment we march deep enough into their forests, they'll simply surround and slaughter us." He spun on a heel and began to pace.

"
Nei
. We cannot let the truth about Lord Shan and his mate go any farther than the seven of us." His jaw hardened and his eyes went flinty. "And at this point, we must accept there is nothing we can do to save them. For now, they stay where they are."

Eld
~
Boura Fell

"Hurry," Melliandra ordered. She gave the chains that bound the beautiful black-haired woman a hard yank, and the prisoner stumbled forward. "Move your feet!" she snapped without pity. "Lives depend on it—including yours!"

The woman looked at her with dazed eyes, then quickly looked down and shuffled faster.
Sel'dor
chains rattled and clanked on the hard ground beneath the tattered remains of the woman's once beautiful red gown.

Stupid, stupid woman. She'd been too stubborn for her own good, spitting defiance at the High Mage and the
umagi
who served him when a wiser woman would have groveled and begged for mercy to appease them.

Well, they'd taught her. After the beatings and the rapings had reduced her fiery defiance to shattered, dull-eyed submission, they'd bound her in manacles and chains. None of the thin, decorative
sel'dor
bands and earrings for this Fey
shei'dalin
. No. The thick, heavy
sel’dor
shackles usually reserved for
dahl'reisen
prisoners were clamped tight around her ankles and wrists, and the long, sharp spikes fitted along the interior of the shackles drove into the flesh and bone just above her joints to cause her constant, agonizing pain. A matching collar filled with a hundred tiny
sel'dor
needles bound her throat so tightly that every swallow and gasping breath forced the needles deeper into her flesh.

Melliandra hardened her heart. There was nothing to be done. She wasn't about to let those pain-dulled brown eyes draw her in like the tender blue eyes of the now dead Shia. Melliandra's life was already too dangerous and complicated, and if the High Mage ever discovered how she was working against him, death would be the least of her worries.

"Here." She threw a filthy woolen blanket at the woman. "Cover yourself. If the guards get one look at you, it won't go well for either of us."

The woman struggled with the cumbersome scrap of smelly fabric until Melliandra growled a foul curse and yanked the blanket out of the woman's hands and tugged it roughly into place herself. She draped the folds to cover the woman's silky hair, tattered gown, and the telltale shining skin of her manacled arms.

"There," she muttered when she was finished. Melliandra peered at her critically until she was satisfied not one flash of shining Fey skin was revealed. "That will have to do. Now come!" She grabbed a fistful of blanket and hidden chain and gave a yank. There's not much time."

She dragged the unresisting woman down the corridor. The stench of smoke and scorched flesh hung heavy in the air; and in the refuse pit two levels down, the
darrokken
were howling. Savage screams echoed the creatures' howls, and the sound sent chills up Melliandra's spine.

Death was no stranger to Boura Fell, but today its visit had been like none she'd ever witnessed, coming not at the hands of Mage Fire or Azrahn, nor at the untender hands of torture masters tike Goram and his hammer, but instead from tongues of flame, dancing on the lethal music of a magic beast's roar.

Wild, vengeful, hotter than the Seventh Hell, the clouds of boiling flame had blasted up the stairwells and the refuse shaft that ran from the uppermost level of Boura Fell to its darkest depths. The fire seared and scorched everything in its path, catching more than one unwitting Mage and
umagi
in its fiery jaws.

For one sweet, glorious moment of savage joy, she'd thought the Fey Lord had won his victory. She'd actually dared to hope Lord Death had slain the High Mage of Eld.

But abruptly, the Fire had died and the shattered screams of a man gone mad had replaced the roar of the beast and its flames.

And the six icy Marks on Melliandra's chest still remained.

Vadim Maur, father of the Dark bloodline from which she'd sprung, still lived. '

Lord Death was the one screaming now. His mate was the one dying now. And Melliandra's only hope was to save her.

Elvia ~ Navahele

"We cannot just leave Shan and Elfeya there!" Tajik cried.

"We don't even know where 'there' is," Gaelen pointed out.

"Then we find a way to locate them," Ellysetta announced. "And we put together a plan to rescue them." Her jaw firmed, and her chin lifted as she met Rain's gaze. "I'm sorry, Rain. I know there is far more at stake than just two lives, but we have to do this. I've already lost one mother to the Mages. I'm not about to lose another."

Rain crossed his arms and steeled himself for pain. Refusing to launch a rescue mission to save Shan and Elfeya was one of the hardest decisions he'd ever made. But he knew it was the right choice—the only choice.

"
Shei'tani
, I know you want this—I know you need this— but I cannot allow it. As your
shei'tan,
I would give anything— risk anything—to bring you peace. But I am the Feyreisen, Defender of the Fey, and we are at war. In this matter, I must put the needs of the Fey first."

"My parents are Fey!" she cried. "And they are clearly in need of defending!"

"Please...
teska...
try to understand. I must make my decision as the Tairen Soul who is their king—and I need you to make your decision as its queen. We must both put what's best for all our people above our own desires and consider all the lives at stake, not just these two—no matter who they are."

She flinched and he hated himself for it. His admonition was more than a little unfair. She had always put the needs of others before her own. And now this thing she needed so much, he had to refuse.

An angry, mutinous light sparked in her eyes, "How many does it take. Rain? How many people must suffer for how many years before their lives become important enough to save?"

It was Rain's turn to flinch. "You know that's not what I'm saying."

"Then explain it to me."

Irritation spiked within him. Did she think he liked making this choice? Did she honestly think he would make it if there were any other solution available to him? "Whom should we send, Ellysetta? Your quintet? And leave you unprotected and vulnerable here, outside the Fading Lands, when we all know the High Mage is waiting for just such an opportunity? Should I go myself? The Eld bowcannons nearly killed me in Orest, but I'm sure I could fly straight into the heart of enemy territory undetected, locate your parents in a Mage stronghold, and rescue them without aid."

Color flooded her cheeks and she drew back in affront. "Now who's being ridiculous?"

"Am I?" he countered. "If not me or your quintet, who else should go? Shall I pull warriors off the Celierian borders? The battles have already begun, and we're already seriously outnumbered, but I'm sure Dorian would understand our need to pull back a few of our troops. How many should I withdraw, do you think?"

"I'm not suggesting you pull men off the borders."

"Then whom does that leave, Ellysetta? The
lu'tan
? Their oaths to you supersede any loyalty to me or the Fading Lands. If you ask, they will joyfully die by your command. Are you ready to send them to their deaths? Because, of a certainty, if you direct them to blunder blindly through Eld in the hopes of finding where the Mage is holding your parents, they
will
die."

"Of course I don't mean that!" she exclaimed. "You're twisting my words. You're not being fair."

"Fair.'" He swooped on the word like a tairen on its prey. "This is life, Ellysetta, a Fey's life. It's almost never
fair.
It's hard. It's thankless. We take what joy we find and treasure it so dearly because we know how rare such blessings are. Every Fey warrior and
shei'dalin
born in the Fading Lands learns very early in life that, like it or not—fair or not—there will be many days when they must decide between a bad choice and a worse one. Today is such a day."

He crossed his arms and leveled a hard look upon his
shei'tani
and her quintet. "I will not send a single blade brother into Eld without some idea of where he's going and what he can expect to find when he gets there. Do you hear me?
I will not issue such a command
. There are too few Fey left in this world to risk a single precious life for such madness."

"So we do nothing?" Tajik cried. "We just leave my sister there to suffer?" His hands were clenched, and his lean, muscular body was trembling with scarcely contained fury.

Gaelen was right, Rain realized. They should have taken Tajik's memories. The warrior was teetering on the brink of full-fledged Rage, and that did not bode well for any of them.

"Calm yourself—and I mean now, Fey," he snapped, hoping a little brisk, plain speaking would pull Taj back from his Rage.

"We're at war, and I need cool heads and clear thinking—not warriors Raging out of control. You're a general of the Fading Lands. Start acting like one,"

Tajik's head snapped back as if he'd been slapped.

"Your first duty is your bloodsworn bond to protect Ellysetta, followed by your general's duty to protect the Fading Lands. If we don't defeat the Eld, every
fellana
—every sister, mother, daughter,
shei'tani,
and e'tani—
everyone
will suffer the same fate as Elfeya. Do you think for one moment that she and Shan would want that? Do you think they would want you to abandon your
lute'asheiva
bond and leave Ellysetta unprotected while you go after them?"

Tajik's nostrils flared and color rose and fell in his face, but he couldn't hold Rain's gaze. With a bitter, snarled oath, he pivoted on one heel and stalked to the far side of the room. Jaw set, mouth grim, Rain seared each of the other warriors with a burning look. "We must win this war, no matter the cost. And you must protect Ellysetta with your lives until we do. When we defeat the Mages, we will find Shan and Elfeya and set them free. Until then, this subject is closed." His hand sliced across the air and he leveled a stony, unequivocal glare upon the six warriors. "Is that clear?"