King of Sword and Sky (12 page)

"You are lovely,
kem'falla,"
Bel said with a smile.

"Beylah vo,
Bel." While Rain had donned robes the color of dusk, he'd clad her in starlight. Her gown was sumptuous white silk beaded with thousands of tiny diamonds that shimmered as she moved. A wide, boat-shaped neckline and snug bodice gave way to full, flowing skirts that trailed behind her. A girdle of platinum links shaped like twining vines circled her waist and dripped graceful loops of
sorreisu kiyr,
the Soul Quest crystals of the Fey who'd died on her behalf in Celieria. Bel's and Gaelen's bloodsworn daggers hung sheathed at her hips. Her hair flowed unbound, curling in soft, thick spirals of flame down to her waist, and on her brow she wore a crown of stars—diamonds and Tairen's Eye crystals sparkling from the delicate platinum whorls and arches of the circlet nestled in her hair.

With Gaelen and Bel close behind, Rain escorted her to the head table, where Marissya and Dax were already waiting.

Ellysetta stopped at the sight of the five unfamiliar Fey women sitting with them. "Who are they?"

"Shei'dalins
from Dharsa," Rain answered. "They arrived earlier this evening while we were getting dressed, along with the warriors I promised King Dorian I'd send to help secure the Eld border."

"Shei'dalins?"
Ellysetta stiffened.

"Las, shei'tani,"
Rain soothed. She'd told him about the
shei'dalins
in the Mists who'd Truthspoken her. "I promised Great Lord Darramon the Fey would heal his dying wife if he brought her to Teleon. These five
shei'dalins
came to honor my oath. Come, meet them," he said, inviting her to follow him.

Ellysetta followed him reluctantly to greet the
shei'dalins
and murmur what she hoped were appropriate greetings. She tried not to let her distrust of them show, but she did not sit near them either.

The feast that followed was nothing like the studied artifice of Celieria's royal state dinners, but rather a true celebration. Safe behind the Faering Mists, stoic Fey expressions softened with smiles and laughter, transforming the fierce, deadly warriors into approachable men of uncommon beauty and warmth. Laughter rang out from every corner of the room. The tables overflowed with roasted meat and a variety of tempting delicacies: cool salads, steaming vegetable dishes, fresh and honey-glazed fruits, all accompanied by pale sweet wine and crisp, cool water that made her eyes widen in surprise when she sipped it.

"This is good." The water tasted like fresh-fallen snow and sunlight, cold, sweet, and pure, with an unexpected energy that radiated through her as she drank.

"I'm glad it pleases you." Rain drank from his own cup, then set it aside. "We call it
faerilas.
It is the water of the Source, the great fountain at the center of each of our largest cities." He smiled as he sliced a nearby round of cheese into thin layers and handed one to her. She took a tentative bite. The cheese was firm, with a creamy, nutty flavor that melted on her tongue. "You may have heard of the Source. Some mortals, who misunderstood the reason for Fey longevity, used to call it the Fount of Eternas."

"The Fountain of Eternal Youth?" Ellysetta paused before her next bite of cheese to examine the water in her goblet with greater interest.

He laughed.
"Las, shei'tani.
I said misguided mortals called it that, not that they were right."

"But there is magic in this
faerilas."
She took another sip to confirm it. "I can taste it." One sip and a tingling energy filled her with renewed strength.

"Aiyah,
but the magic will not make you young—nor keep you that way. The waters of the Source replenish magical energies and purify whatever they touch, but no more than that. The cleansing spell the Fey cast on the Velpin River does much the same, though in a less powerful way." He smiled at her disappointment and reached for a small, teardrop-shaped globe of bright green-and-scarlet fruit. "Here, taste this." He sliced the fruit with a few deft strokes of a Fey'cha blade and held out a small segment. "I think you will like it."

Ellysetta took the proffered morsel and bit into the firm, cool flesh. Sweet, tangy juice filled her mouth with bursting sweetness and trickled down the corners of her lips. Laughing, she lifted a hand to wipe away the dribbles. "It's very good. And very messy!"

"We call it
tamaris.
It is a cousin to the
komarind,
which is more beautiful to look at but no good for eating."

Her tongue was tingling. "There's magic in the
tamaris
too."

The corners of his eyes crinkled. "Magic is everywhere in the Fading Lands. Legend claims it was the great tairen Lissallukai who sang magic into this world, but after countless millennia, the
faer
—the magic of the tairen and the Fey—has become a part of this land, and we a part of it."

She took another bite and more juice spurted against her skin, but this time Rain reached over and caught the runnel of juice before she could. His finger stroked upward, scooping the nectar from her skin, then painting it across her lips with one burning stroke of his hand. His eyes were glowing.

Her laughter fell silent. Everything in the Fading Lands brimmed with magic: the Fey, the tairen, even the waters and the fruits of the fields. But for her, the greatest
magic
of all was Rain and what he made her feel. "Will it always be like this?"

"Like what?"

"Like magic, between us."

His eyes flared bright for a brief instant.
"Aiyah,
Ellysetta, it will.
Shei'tanitsa
bonds, once forged, will never wane. What exists between us will last to the end of time."

Eld ~ Boura Fell

Vadim Maur made his way through the sconce-lit stairways and corridors of Boura Fell to the hall that housed Elfeya v'En Celay's bedchamber-prison. As the earlier episode by the Well had proven, the weakness in his arm required immediate tending. Clearly, the powerful
shei'dalin
had not been doing her best to keep him strong and healthy. That was going to change.

He unlocked and cleared a heavily warded door. It swung inward, and he smiled at the sight of the flame-haired Fey woman chained naked to the bed within.

He had promised Elfeya and her mate torment beyond imagining for their part in hiding the truth of their daughter's magic from him and for trying to help her escape the trap he'd set for her during the Bride's Blessing. True to Vadim's word, Lord v'En Celay now lay in the depths of Boura Fell, little more than a bloody heap of shredded skin and shattered bones.

Elfeya's punishment wasn't quite as bloody—he needed her body whole enough to work the healing magic that was so useful to him—but torture wore a million faces. He sat on the edge of the bed and cupped the soft globe of her naked breast. One long, cold thumb brushed across the still-raw bruises and lash marks marring the perfection of her luminous skin.

She flinched and glared at him, her golden eyes afire with loathing.

"Your mate has had a very bad day," he murmured. "Much worse than your last night." His thumb dug into her soft flesh, his sharpened nail drawing a thin line of sweet, scarlet blood. "His tomorrow will be much worse yet if you don't heal me very well tonight. Do you understand?" He bent his head and licked the blood from her skin, savoring the tingle of powerful magic that infused it. "I can be quite cruel to pets who displease me."

Several floors below the Fey
shei'dalin's
cell, two stocky
umagi
hauled away the bloody remains of the last pet to displease one of the Mages of Boura Fell. A ragged young girl with a mop of tangled black hair held the refuse cart steady as her companions dumped the limp body inside. Shattered limbs flopped like wilted flower stalks, the man's bones little more than pulverized dust within a bloody bag of flesh.

"Well, he didn't last long," one of the men muttered.

"Most don't once Goram gets his hammer out." The second man jerked his chin toward a door at the shadowy end of the corridor. " 'Cept for him. Never seen any creature, mortal or magic, survive what he does. It's like Death himself fears to claim him."

The first man shuddered. "That's what they called him, you know. Desriel, Lord Death. Deadliest Fey ever to walk the earth…killed near as many as the Tairen Soul did when he scorched the world…only Lord Death did it with nothing but blades and magic. Even Master Maur fears him—I thought he was going to wet himself two weeks ago when all the
sel'dor
that one wears came off."

"Watch your tongue, Durm. There's ears here." The second man jerked his head towards the girl holding the cart. He cuffed her on the side of the head. "Go on. Dump this lump of flesh in the pit. Master Maur's pets are hungry. Then get up to the next level. There's more work for you there."

Cold silver eyes regarded him from beneath strings of tangled hair. Without a word, the girl pushed the heavy cart towards the refuse chute at the opposite end of the corridor. The body didn't have far to fall when she dumped it. This was the lowest level of Boura Fell, and the pit was only a few manlengths deeper.

The boneless body hit the bottom of the pit with a dull thud. Mad barking, snarling, and the scrabble of racing feet followed instantly.

The girl peered into the chute, silver eyes observing with cold interest as the pack of leather-hided, wolflike
darrokken
ripped into their newest feast. One of the beasts glanced up, its red eyes glowing in the darkness of the pit, jagged yellow fangs bared. It saw her peering down and raced for the walls of the pit, leaping and snapping barely a manlength below her. The girl drew back quickly, covering her mouth as the foul reek of the
darrokken
wafted up.

The two
umagi
had already finished and were heading upstairs. As she put her foot on the bottom stair to follow, she cast one last considering glance towards the guarded cell door at the end of the corridor. Desriel. Lord Death. She whispered the names under her breath, and ran up the steps.

The Fading Lands
~
Chatok

Midway through the meal, Marissya leaned towards Rain and murmured, "Has Tajik had a chance to speak with you?"

"No," he said. "I haven't seen him since we came through the Mists. Why?"

"Apparently the Massan convened in our absence."

Rain's hands tightened briefly on his silverware.

"What is the Massan?" Ellysetta asked.

"Not what," Dax murmured. "Who. The Massan are the five Fey lords who work with Marissya and Rain to govern the Fading Lands."

"You mean like the Twenty?" Celieria's twenty great lords, the nation's largest landholders, were the most influential men in Celieria after King Dorian, and they voted on all important matters of state.

"More like his personal council of advisers." With a slender, two-tined fork, Dax speared a slice of one of the crunchy, slightly sweet root vegetables Ellysetta had tried earlier and bit into it. "There are five Fey lords of the Massan, each mated, and each a master of the magic he represents."

"It sounds like a quintet."

"Aiyah,
only they do not defend a single
shei'dalin.
They protect the Fading Lands."

"From what?"

Rain gave a short laugh. "For the last thousand years? From me. Or so it always seems," he added when she frowned in concern and Marissya gave him a chiding look. "We do not often see eye to eye. If not for Marissya, we would have been at one another's throats on more than one occasion."

Ellysetta glanced at Dax's mate. "Marissya serves on the Massan council too?"

"She is not just a
shei'dalin"
Dax said. "She is
the Shei'dalin,
the leader of all Truthspeakers and healers of the Fey." When Ellysetta still looked confused, he explained. "In the Fading Lands, all authority ultimately rests with the Defender of the Fey. But the
Shei'dalin"
—he indicated his mate, Marissya, with a wave of the speared vegetable—"and the Massan assist in the administration of the Fading Lands and oversee all tasks of governance that do not require the Tairen Soul's attention."

"What does it mean that they're meeting without Rain and Marissya?"

"It means there is trouble brewing in Dharsa," Rain said bluntly.

"I'm sure it's nothing," Marissya said at the same time.

Ellysetta looked between the two of them. "So which is it: trouble or nothing?"

Rain sighed. "I may have been the Feyreisen for the last thousand years, but Marissya and the Massan have been the ones leading the country since the Wars. First because of my madness, and then because I devoted all my attention to completing my Cha Baruk. The
chatok
thought the discipline of the training would help me to rebuild and strengthen my internal barriers and keep my madness in check. They were right, but the training didn't leave me much time to be the king of the Fey."

"You think some of the Massan grew too accustomed to wielding the power of the Tairen Throne themselves." Ellysetta pressed a hand against her stomach. Having only just left the political turmoil of Celieria, she'd been hoping to find a measure of peace in the Fading Lands. A fool's hope, perhaps, given that war was imminent and the tairen were dying, but still…

"Nei,
Rain, do not alarm the Feyreisa," Marissya said, frowning at him. "You know it's nothing like that. Hunger for political power is a mortal affliction. The Fey have no such desires."