King of Sword and Sky (47 page)

The Fading Lands
~
Fey'Bahren

Ellysetta lost track of time. Enveloped in a cocoon of swirling magic, she sent wave after wave of healing and strength down the silk-thin threads of Azrahn into the Well of Souls, feeding that power to the kitlings' souls.

Their initial, whimpering fear had faded when they'd realized Ellysetta's magic was not the dark evil that hunted and hurt them. As she'd continued to spin and sing to them, they'd begun to sing back.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the kitlings' faint voices grew stronger.

Sybharukai crooned encouragement. Steli purred and nudged Ellysetta's body with her head. «
Your magic is working, kitling.»

Eld
~
Boura Fell

The four pregnant woman were strapped, unconscious, to the birthing tables. Vadim had not planned to attempt soul-binding Tailinn's child until the Mother went new again and his powers reached their next peak, but he could not afford to wait. Nor had he ever attempted to bind more than one soul in a night, but he'd be damned before he'd let Ellysetta Baristani rob him of the great prizes he'd spent months preparing to harvest.

Vadim snapped his fingers, and one of the servants offered him a crystal goblet. He lifted the cup and drained it dry. The dark red potion carried the metallic tang of blood from Tailinn and the other women, mixed with a heavy dose of several magical herbs, and powdered
selkhar
crystal.

When the tingle of the potent blood magic spread through his system, he raised his beringed hands and began the invocation of his most useful and grudging servant. "Choutarre, Soul Taker, in the name of Seledorn, Prince of Shadows, I summon thee. Choutarre, Soul Taker, in the name of Seledorn, Lord of Demons, I bind thee. Choutarre, Soul Taker, in the name of Seledorn, God of Darkness, I command thee to serve as hand of my power and executor of my will."

An icy breeze swirled through the chamber, blowing back Vadim's hair and the folds of his purple velvet robes. A voice like bones grating on stone hissed, «
How shall I serve thee?»

Vadim shaped his command in flows of dark, ineluctable power. "Bring me the souls I seek."

The Fading Lands ~ Fey'Bahren

The kitlings fell silent.

Concerned, Ellysetta summoned Fey vision to examine the eggs. Concern spiked to alarm. The shining light of the kitlings, so bright just moments before, had gone out. The eggs appeared empty, with naught but a blank void inside each shell, just as they had the first time she'd come and again the night Forrahl had died.

Then she heard the whispers, the voices.

"Oh, no. Not now.
Teska, sallan,
don't let this happen." Desperately, she sent a bolus of power down her weaves, hoping she could hurry the healing.

The tairen began to growl. Sybharukai's tail spikes extended in unspoken menace.

«He's coming for the kits.»
Rain's Spirit voice was heavy with certainty.

"Aiyah."
Fear made her concentration wobble as something cold and dark brushed against her weaves. The tairen kitlings began to whimper anew. She shivered, and her knees went weak. She clutched the nearest egg to keep herself upright. "But it's not him. It's the other thing…whatever he's using to steal their souls. A demon of some kind, or a soul doing his bidding. I don't know."

She flinched as the thing brushed against her weaves again. The sensation was too vivid, too reminiscent of the horrifying nightmares she'd suffered all her life. Like rats sliding past her ankles or ice spiders crawling up her spine. Her tairen began to growl and claw at its bindings.

«Ellysetta, come away. Do not endanger yourself any further.»

"I can't leave the kitlings to die." Whatever it was, the thing had negated the power of her healing weaves. Worse, she could feel it draining the kitlings' strength, ruining the hard-won progress of the last bells. "I've got to do this, Rain. There is no one else who can. This is why the Eye sent you to find me."

«Was this part of what the Eye said you must do?»

She bit her lip. There'd been nothing in the Eye's vision beyond the weaves she'd already spun. Now she must fight without any idea of what pattern to weave.
"Nei,
but it makes no difference. If I don't stop this attack, the kitlings will die. I will have let the Mage Mark me for nothing."

Familiar power swelled, and the sparkling mist of the Change billowed around Rain's tairen form. Even before it cleared, Rain the Fey was striding across the sands of the lair to her side, his eyes glowing bright, his face pale and strained.

"Nei, shei'tani."
He dissolved the five-fold weave around her and grabbed her shoulders. Intense emotions barraged her senses. "Listen to me. Mage or demon, this thing never takes more than one kitling when it comes. That's how it has always been. Let it have that life; then, when it is gone, you can resume the healing the Eye showed you."

He was terrified beyond reason, else he would never consider the sacrifice of an innocent an acceptable price for victory. And that fear told her more than words ever could how deeply and desperately he loved her.

"Rain." She caught his face in her hands. "I can't. You know I can't. If these were our children, would you stand by and watch one of them die so you could be assured of saving the others? Or would you move the very heavens and the earth to try to save them all?"

He brushed that argument aside with a growl. "I would face a thousand deaths to save them. But you're not asking me to risk my own life. You're asking me to risk yours."

"Yes, I am." She pressed her lips to his, kissing him, loving him. "You say you must become worthy of my bond. But if I let even one of these babies die without a fight, how will
I
ever become worthy of
yours?"

"Do you think I care about our bond more than your life?" he countered. "I will gladly die if it means you may live."

She clutched him to her, threading her fingers through his hair, holding him as if the sheer strength of her embrace could complete the merging of their souls. "And do you truly think there's any hope for me if I lose you?" Gently, she pulled back to meet his gaze. "Without you, I will choose
sheisan'dahlein
just to be sure the prophecy of the Eye can never come true. I've already asked Steli to see to it."

"Shei'tani
…" His expression crumpled.

"I must do this, Rain. Tairen do not abandon their kits. Tairen defend the pride."

Tears shimmered in his eyes. He closed them and touched his forehead to hers in defeat.
"Aiyah."

That one word of acquiescence, wrenched by love from a heart drowning in fear, made her love him more than she ever had. She smoothed her thumbs across the warm silk of his skin. "If love were power enough,
shei'tan,
our truemate bond would be complete a thousand times over." Her lips curved in a trembling smile. "You bring pride to this Fey."

His arms closed tight around her, and his mouth claimed hers in a final, passionate kiss. «
Ver reisa
ku'chae, Ellysetta. Kem surah.»
When at last he let her go, he stepped back a pace, and grim determination settled over his features. "But if this must be done,
shei'tani,
we will do it together." He removed the Soul Quest crystal from around his neck and settled it in place around hers. "You will use my strength and everything I can give you."

"Rain,
nei.
If the High Mage can use me to Mark you—"

He pressed a finger to her lips. "Then it will be no more than you accepted as the price to save the tairen. If you can live with three Marks, I can surely live with one."

"Rain…"

"If these were our children, would you want me to stand by and do nothing while you risked your life to save them?"

She had no more defense against that argument than he had.

He turned to the pride's
makai.
"Sybharukai, if anything happens to Ellysetta, promise you will not let me fly." His lids narrowed over eyes gone abruptly savage. "And if this Mage succeeds in stealing the young, promise you will scorch Eld to a barren wasteland."

The gray tairen growled her assent. «
It will be done, Rainier-Eras.»

Eld ~ Boura Fell

Shan leaned his head back against the
sel'dor-
lined rock wall of his prison, welcoming the familiar searing burn. Over the years, the pain had become almost a comfort. His eyes closed. Weariness and despair crowded his heart. Hope was a thing long lost.

«He has Marked her, shei'tani. She is weaving Azrahn and he Marked her again.»

In the darkness behind his lids, he summoned the image of his beloved, the sweet fire of her hair, the shining brightness of her golden eyes, so that when her answer came it was as if she were here with him, standing before him, the only light left in his world.

«She spins the forbidden magic on purpose? The Fey would never allow it.»

«She tries to save the tairen. The Mage is stealing their souls.»
That much he'd gleaned from the link that had tied part of Shan's soul to Ellysetta's since before her birth. «
She fights him now."

"She cannot defeat him alone.»

«I know.»

«We must help her.»

«Maur is there in the Well. He will sense our presence, just as he did when we came to her aid before.»
Shan's bones were barely knitted from the price he'd paid for that effort, and Elfeya's nightmares over what the Mage had done to her still woke both of them in a cold sweat each night.

«We still must help her.»

Shan hung his head, resting his chin on his chest. He had expected no other answer. «
I know.»

«Then show me her weaves, shei'tan, and be my bridge to her soul.»

The Fading Lands ~ Fey'Bahren

Ellysetta gathered the strength of Rain and the tairen and fed their power into her weaves along with more power of her own. For a moment, the healing threads lit up like ropes of sunlight. For a moment, the darkness retreated. But then, just as quickly, the light was leached away.

The kitlings cried out in desperate fear, singing the bright word of her name like a talisman and a prayer. Their trust stabbed her heart as their frightened minds reached out to her the way a fearful child's fingers clutched at his mother's skirts.

With a sob, she sent another blast of power down her weaves, brightness to hold off the dark, but just as before, after a brief flaring moment of hope, shadow consumed the light.

The weaves the Eye had shown her were not powerful enough. She tried to strengthen them with song, pouring love into every word. She spun every healing weave she knew. And still nothing worked. Her Azrahn-enhanced weaves might have been enough to save the kits before the Mage loosed his soul-stealer upon them, but now the battle had changed. She wasn't just trying to draw the kits from the Well, she was fighting to keep something from pulling them back in.

The kitlings were dying. Connected as she was with her weaves, she could feel them slipping away, not just one or two but all of them. Their bodies were perfectly healthy, yet slowly, their sweet voices and the brightness of their souls were fading.

You are a
shei'dalin.
Hold them to the Light.

The thought blossomed in her mind, filled with urgent conviction. She needed to spin a
shei'dalin's
healing weave, the kind Venarra had used to hold that dying woman's soul to life. Venarra hadn't taught her the patterns yet, but her mind must have instinctively recorded them, because the knowledge was there, as if she'd spun those weaves a thousand times.

Adelis, Bright One, Lord of Light, please,
teska,
help me. Guide me. Do not let me fail.
The gods had answered her prayers in the past, working their miracles through her instinctive, untutored magic. She prayed they would help her again now.

She forced herself to block out the pitiful cries of the baby tairen and surrendered to the crooning, powerful song of the tairen. It flowed over and through her, carrying away her fear and doubt. Her hands unclenched. Her muscles relaxed. Her breathing became deep and even. She was a well of calm, and into that well her consciousness dove deep.

The source of her power lay far within her, shining bright as the sun, more white than gold, dazzling with the strength of her
shei'dalin's
love. She absorbed the power into her consciousness until every thought blazed with magical resonance. Then, when she could hold no more, she sent her spirit, the living essence of her soul, out of her own body and into the small bodies of the tairen kitlings, just as the
shei'dalins
sent themselves into the body of another when they needed to perform great healing.

Follow your weaves into the Well.

As if guided by the invisible hands of the gods, she found the humming threads of her healing weaves inside the kits and followed them, leaving the gleaming radiance of the world and descending into the dark realm of souls.

Light was extinguished. The abrupt darkness alarmed her. Had she fallen for one of the Mage's traps?

She reached instinctively for Rain across the threads of their bond. «
Rain
… »

«I am here, beloved.»
His voice returned, a deep baritone, steady and reassuring. He was there with her in the darkness, just as he'd been with her in the blinding gray-white of the Mists. He would always be there with her.