King of Sword and Sky (26 page)

"What does Forrahl like?"

Ellie smiled fondly. "Everything. When I sing to him, he purrs so loudly his egg shakes. Watch." She turned and began to sing a Celierian hymn, and sure enough, the egg beside her began to rock happily.

"You are a wonder, Feyreisa," Marissya murmured. "I don't think it's the song he enjoys half so much as the love you're weaving on him when you sing it." Still, gamely, she crouched beside the eggs closest to her. "So you two like lullabies, do you?" Tilting her head, she began to croon the tunes Feyan mothers sang to their children when they were small.

As they sang, Marissya reached out with her magic to check the kitlings. She kept her weaves featherlight and as unobtrusive as possible without sacrificing efficacy. The care slowed her down, but her results were conclusive. Just as Ellysetta had said, there was nothing physically wrong with the kitlings. Marissya could find no infection, no imperfections, weaknesses or blockages in their vital organs, no malignancies anywhere in their bodies. They weren't even tired anymore, thanks to the inadvertent healing Ellysetta was weaving on them as she sang.

And yet, without a doubt, they were dying.

Ellysetta hadn't been around enough death yet to recognize it, but Marissya had. She'd served too long in the healing tents during the Wars, knelt by the sides of too many mortally wounded Fey, Elves, and men. Death was here. She'd fought it so often, so desperately, it was as familiar to her as the sight of Dax's beloved face. A faint, cold shadow buried in the heart of the kitlings' warm brightness.

Marissya closed her eyes and summoned the
shei'dalin
power that could rip truths from even the most corrupted souls and anchor mortally wounded warriors to life while she healed them. She closed her senses to everything around her, condensing her awareness. Gently, carefully, she reached out to the kitling closest to her, the one named Sharra, and on a weave of intense Spirit, blazing golden white with the power of her considerable
shei'dalin
magic, she sent her consciousness into the egg.

The kitling's bright light abruptly winked out, and steely shackles clapped around Marissya's wrist, yanking her hand from the shell of the egg. Her eyes flew open in confusion. She blinked away her Fey vision and found Ellysetta beside her, holding her wrist in a bruising grip. The Feyreisa's eyes were glowing green and whirling with opalescent lights, and her pupils had completely disappeared.

"Whatever you're doing, Marissya, stop." A vibrating hum deepened Ellysetta's voice to a growl.

A louder, much more menacing growl sounded behind Ellysetta. Marissya looked up and her mouth went dry.

Sybharukai's pupil-less green eyes whirled faster and brighter than Ellysetta's, fixed on Marissya with such intensity, the
shei'dalin
couldn't move. Venom dripped from the tairen's exposed fangs, her poisonous tail spikes were completely extended, and she was whipping that tail through the air like a weapon.

Marissya released her magic. "I-I'm sorry." Once the first word escaped, the rest began tumbling out in a rush. "I didn't mean any harm. The kitlings aren't sick or injured, but they
are
dying. I was just trying to find out why. Rain…tell them." She turned to him, only to find that his eyes, too, had gone more tairen than Fey.

Her first instinct was to call Dax, but she didn't dare. If she called him, he would come for her. He would come and the tairen would kill him. Frightened, but desperately trying to keep that fear from spilling over across her truemate bond with Dax, Marissya slowly rose to her feet, careful not to make any sudden moves.

"What was that you were weaving?" Ellysetta asked, and a measure of Marissya's tension drained away when she turned and saw that the Feyreisa's eyes were slowly returning to normal. "It was Spirit."

"That didn't feel like any Spirit I've ever woven."

"The pattern was a
shei'dalins,
weave, Ellysetta. I was trying to merge with the kitlings, to see if I could sense what is killing them."

Ellysetta released her and gave a humorless laugh. "No offense, Marissya, but I suggest you not try to merge with any more tairen. Apparently they don't like it."

Marissya glanced back up at Sybharukai, who was still eyeing her as if she were a meal on the hoof. "So I see." She backed away from the eggs. "I'm sorry, Rain. Whatever's killing the kitlings, I don't think I'll be able to stop it."

His jaw worked and he nodded. "I'll take you back to Dax, but I'd like you to stay the night, in case what hunts the kitlings returns. Perhaps when that happens, you'll be able to sense something you can't now."

She looked around the cavern at all the tairen crouched overhead.

"The choice is yours of course," Rain added. "As you just discovered, it's not a choice without risk."

"Of course I'll stay." With a smile that projected far more confidence than she was feeling, Marissya added, "After all, how many
shei'dalins
ever get the chance to save a tairen pride?"

Despite a night of waiting and watching, the thing that had killed Cahlah and her kit did not return, and by sunrise the next morning, four great tairen were winging across the Fading Lands. Rain carried Dax and Marissya on his back, while Steli carried Ellysetta. Sybharukai had sent the mate-pair Fahreeta and Torasul along as well to join Steli in singing pride greetings to Shei'Kess.

«Do you really think the Eye will tell us any more than it already has?»
Rain asked Steli as they flew. Tairen-made or not, the Eye had been perniciously silent for centuries, adamantly refusing to offer help or guidance to the Fey until Rain had forcibly wrested from it the clues that had sent him to Celieria City—and Ellysetta.

«The Eye sent you to Ellysetta-kitling. It knew you would bring her to back to the Fey-kin and to the pride. Now that she is here, Shei'Kess may have more to say.»

«Well, I hope singing to the Eye earns a more pleasant response than the one it gave me.»
The all-consuming pain that had ripped through him when he'd laid hands on the Eye was not something he would ever forget.

Steli chuffed. «
You issued Challenge. We are not so…»
She sang an image of a foolish tairen kit biting the tail of a grumpy elder.

Ellysetta laughed, then tried ineffectively to hide it from Rain's narrowing tairen eyes with a cough and a rapid change of subject. «
I still don't understand why the tairen haven't visited Dharsa since the Mage Wars. I thought the tairen considered the Fey kin.»

He allowed the insult of her laughter to pass with a disdainful sniff. «
They do, but the kinship doesn't extend to any particular affection or desire to socialize.»

«Why not?»

Rather than answer her himself, Rain directed the question to the tairen themselves. «
Ellysetta wants to know why the tairen of Fey'Bahren have not visited the Fey-kin city since the Mage Wars.»

«Why would the tairen go there?»
Steli sounded surprised by the question. «
You were not there, and the Fey-kin are not tairen.»

«They have no wings or beautiful fur,»
Fahreeta added, twirling her sleek body in graceful spinning rolls across the sunlit sky to show off her well-shaped wings and the pure golden color of her pelt. «
And they break too easily if you play with them.»

«They smell much like prey,»
Torasul agreed, «
but are not for eating. Is confusing. Makes a cat…»
Words gave way to a vivid image of a tairen snarling, his fangs dripping with venom and saliva.

«I… see…»
Ellysetta replied slowly.

Rain laughed. The sound came out as a series of amused chuffs. «
To the tairen, only the Tairen Souls are true kin. Other Fey are really only kin-by-proxy. Not prey, but not entirely part of the pride either. Wingless, fangless, furless, flightless, two-legged not-prey creatures who might, many millennia ago, have been something distantly related to tairen. In some respects, the tairen regard the Fey rather like that kitten your sisters gave Kieran.»

Her jaw dropped. «
They think of the Fey as pets?»

«More like distant relatives. More primitive, less powerful relatives.»

She paused to mull that over. «
Do the Fey know that? The warriors are always talking about "the tairen in them."»

«All Fey know where the line is drawn. Those who are not Tairen Souls admire the tairen, appreciate their power and beauty and magic, but they respect their fierceness as well. The Fey have a saying: "The slopes of Fey'Bahren run dark with the blood of enemies, fools, and prey." Which may have something to do with the fact that a tairen'
s
idea of negotiation is a warning growl before he rips and roasts you with fang and flame.»

«I know it must be true, but part of me finds it so hard to believe. Just look at Fahreeta.»
Ellysetta pointed to the sleek golden cat soaring and diving through the skies nearby. «
She seems so…sweet and playful, like a kitten.»

As if sensing eyes upon her, Fahreeta gave a series of purring roars and flew in dizzying circles around her mate, Torasul. The great male just eyed his cavorting mate with a long-suffering eye and kept flying. She flew too close once, and he swatted out with one large paw, catching the tip of her right wing. With a yelp, the playful golden beauty went tumbling. She broke her fall and righted herself easily, but the tumble left her fur ruffled and her green eyes shooting sparks. Torasul gave chuffing huffs of tairen laughter and blew smoke.

Fahreeta's muzzle drew back, baring a mouthful of gleaming white, razor-sharp fangs. She gave a snarl. Her tail whipped through the air like a giant lash. Large, curving claws sprang from her forepaws. She pumped her wings and, with a scream of fury, shot across the sky towards her mate.

Ellysetta gasped and clutched fistfuls of Steli's white hair, but Torasul only gave his mate an indolent look. Then, with a speed that made Ellysetta gasp again, he folded his wings and drop-rolled straight into his mate's oncoming attack. Torasul's wings spread at the last moment to stop his fall before he crashed into Fahreeta, and the two cats came together in a roar of fury, ivory fangs and curved, razor-sharp claws. Limbs tangled. Each tairen's massive jaw grabbed the other's neck in a deadly grip. Wings batted the air with ferocious speed, then folded tight. They spun together, dropping through the sky, wings and tails twining together.

"Rain!" Ellysetta cried, terrified the pair would kill each other right before her eyes. "Stop them."

Steli glanced down at the tumbling pair and sniffed. «
Juveniles.»

Just when it looked as though both Torasul and Fahreeta would crash into the earth below, the pair spread their wings and broke apart, soaring in opposite directions, then circling around. They flew upwards, gaining altitude and speed until both were flying alongside Rain and Steli once more.

Fahreeta resumed her purring and prancing through the sky, taking every occasion to rub wing and fur against her mate. Torasul rumbled happily, then returned to his stoic, unflappable calm and kept his wings pumping in steady flight.

«Oh, aiyah,»
Rain sang in tones laden with irony. «
Sweet and playful. Very like a kitten.»

Celieria
~
Teleon

"Good morning, my sweet kitlings." Sol Baristani beamed at his young twin daughters as they skipped into the sunny breakfast room in Teleon's main tower. "Don't you both look bright as a summer sky?"

Lillis and Lorelle were both wearing cerulean blue frocks covered with white lace pinafores that tied in big bows at the back of their waists. Their mink brown hair bounced in curling ringlets around their shoulders, and circlets of beautiful, aromatic white bellflowers crowned their heads.

"Good morning, Papa!" Lillis sang. "Look what we found!" She held up a bouquet of the same flowers she and Lorelle wore in their hair. "Aren't they pretty? They bloomed last night all over the garden we planted with Ellie and Lady Marissya."

Sol made a show of inspecting the delicate white bell-flowers. The blooms, each about the size of a baby's fist, nodded on the half dozen slender green stems clutched in Lillis's hand. Each deep bloom boasted six starry petals curled back from a pale pink center accented with shimmering, opalescent veins and deep pink stamens. The flowers were stunning, their aroma an entrancing mix of freshness and heady fragrance, like jasmine drenched in a cool spring rain. Laurie would have loved them.

"Those are beautiful, kitling," Sol agreed, his voice going gruff. "We'll just put them here in this glass, eh?" He poured water into an empty glass and held it out to Lillis so she could put the flowers in it. He set the makeshift vase in the center of the table. "Very pretty. Now, both of you come sit down and eat before your breakfast gets cold." As the girls danced past to take their seats, Sol's eyes widened in dismay. They'd left a crumbling trail of muddy footprints in their wake.

"Girls!" He scowled. "Did you go to the gardens to pick flowers or dance in the mud? Look at the mess you've made!"

The twins glanced back. Lillis's mouth formed an O, but Lorelle only gave a careless shrug. "It's just dirt, Papa. Kieran can clean it up in half a chime."

"Oh, can he?" Sol put his hands on his hips. "Kieran may be able to clean with just a weave of magic, but there's plenty of work for him to do around here without your making more for him. Both of you, take those shoes off at once. Lillis, get a broom and start sweeping. Lorelle, you fetch the mop. And just for your sass, you can clean the breakfast dishes this morning as well."