King of Sword and Sky (49 page)

"Everything Rain has done, he has done to save the Fading Lands!" she cried. "He is your king, and he would die to save his people!"

"Then he should have done so a thousand years ago!" spat Nurian, Sariel's cousin. "He is as much an abomination as you! A madman who inherited a throne he did not deserve because he did not die with his mate, as a bonded Fey should. Everything about his rise to power is as corrupt as his existence and his rule. I reject him as the rightful king of the Fey."

Ellysetta stared at him, aghast. "You hate him because Sariel died and he did not. Dear gods, all this time, he has held you in his heart, and you have wished him dead."

"Enough of this." Tenn held up his hand. "We owe you no explanation. We have come for answers, and you will give them to us, willingly or by Truthspeaking. You, Ellysetta of Celieria, stand accused of weaving the forbidden magic Azreisenahn, known as Azrahn. Do you confess to having freely and deliberately woven this magic?"

She glared at them and clamped her lips shut. «
They accuse me of weaving Azrahn,»
she told Rain. «
They say you are a madman, unfit to rule.»

To her surprise, he laughed. «
Well, you did weave Azrahn, and I am on occasion more than a little mad.»

She jerked her head around to glare at him. «
You think this is funny?»

His teeth flashed in a grin more savage than humorous. «
Nei, shei'tani. The fun is only about to begin. Look.»
He pointed skyward.

She looked up into the sky overhead, where Steli's white form shone like a pearl in the early morning light. Her wings were spread, and as she swooped down to get a closer look at the gathering on Su Reisu, her eyes blazed like blue stars. She gave a roar that made every Fey on the plateau jump and stare upward in fear. Steli gave another fearsome roar, a call to arms, and scorched the sky with an enormous jet of flame. «
Tairen! Defend the pride!»

Within a few chimes, the sky was filled with tairen, all of them roaring loud enough to shake down the mountainside. They dove for Su Reisu, flames searing the air, and the Fey scattered like mice. The tairen herded them together with flames and swooping attacks.

When the Fey were back on the plateau, ringed by a full dozen fierce, furious tairen, Steli
-chakai,
her fangs dripping venom, leaned her great head down and growled deep in her throat. In a pure, perfectly comprehensible Feyan, she commanded, «
Release our pride-kin from your magic, or die where you stand.»

Tenn, Yulan, even Venarra, all looked taken aback. And in an almost laughable display, they turned beseeching eyes to Ellysetta. "They would not dare…" Tenn said. "We are Fey. My brother was king!"

"Rain and I are tairen," Ellysetta replied coldly, "and he
is
king. I suggest you do as Steli
-chakai
commands. Quickly, before you rouse her protective instincts even further. There are four hungry kitlings in the lair tonight, and the pride considers all intruders a threat better left dead."

Glowering, Tenn nodded at the Fey, and the weaves around Rain, Bel, and Gaelen dissolved. The three warriors were at Ellysetta's side in an instant, shoving her back behind them, sandwiching her between their tall, protective bodies and the rumbling chests of Steli, Fahreeta, and Torasul.

«Shall we scorch the wingless ones?»
Steli sang in tairen song. Tairen did not play politics. To them, an enemy was a creature to be shredded and scorched.

Steli's offer tempted Rain, but after a brief consideration, he turned it down. «
Nei. They are Fey, my kin whether I like it or not. Reason may be enough.»

The white cat growled. «
Reason? The wingless ones have already reasoned themselves stronger than you, or they would not have issued Challenge. Show them fangs, not belly, Rainier-Eras,
and keep your claws sharp. Even Sybhamkai knows a bite on the neck will remind the unruly to show respect. Show the wingless ones who is makai of this pride.»

«Steli-chakai is as wise as she is fierce.»
He fixed his eyes on the Massan. "Explain your presence here, Tenn v'En Eilan. Explain to me why fifty warriors of the Fey, three of the Massan, and three
shei'dalins
have come to the foot of Fey'Bahren to imprison their king and accuse the Tairen Soul's mate of weaving the forbidden magic."

"Do you deny our accusations?" Tenn retorted instead. "Your mate has already woven Azrahn once, and we had very good reason to believe she was bringing Gaelen vel Serranis here with the deliberate intent of weaving it again."

Rain's jaw worked. "How long did it take you to run here from Dharsa?"

The question took Tenn aback. "Eighteen bells. What has that got to do with—"

"Eighteen bells. Eighteen bells ago, you set out for Fey'Bahren because you believed my mate was planning to weave a magic that could corrupt her soul and endanger the Fading Lands." His lips drew back in a snarl. "And yet not once in all that time did I receive a single word of warning from you or any of your fellow Massan that my mate was endangering herself. Why is that, Tenn?"

The Fire master clenched his jaw and did not answer.

Yulan leapt to his friend's defense. "We are not the ones who have done wrong!"

"Are you not?" Sparks began to fly around Rain as magic and fury bubbled up inside him. "Every warrior of the Fey swears on his honor and his life to protect the women of the Fading Lands from harm. Any one of you could have sent me a warning. I could have arrived in time to stop her. But you didn't. Which leads me to only one conclusion: You meant her to weave Azrahn. You hoped she would. Because that would give you the opportunity to banish her from the Fading Lands."

He seared each of the Massan with a glare so hot, it was a wonder they did not burst into flame where they stood. "You dishonor your names and your steel."

Venarra stepped closer to her mate.
"Aiyah,
we allowed her the opportunity to weave Azrahn," she said, "but we did not make her do it. She knew the danger. She knows the law. Yet still she chose to put the Fading Lands at risk. We all saw what will happen if we allow her to continue leading honorable Fey down the Shadowed Path. She is the Eld's creature, sent here to destroy us, and it is our duty to stop her." Venarra's traveling leathers became scarlet
shei'dalin
silks, and a scarlet veil covered her face. "Rainier vel'En Daris, your mate stands accused of weaving the forbidden magic. She will confess or be Truthspoken."

Even before he sensed Ellysetta's instinctive, horrified recoil, Rain's hands moved in a blur. Four red Fey'cha thunked hilt-deep in the dirt a finger span from the boots of the three Massan and the
Shei'dalin
Venarra. The other Fey's answering blades froze in midair—caught by the swift, masterful weaves of icy-eyed Gaelen and Bel.

"Touch her and you die," Rain stated coldly. "Consider warning given."

"She has bewitched you!" Tenn accused.

"She has led me back from death to life and opened my eyes to truth. She has saved us all and risked her soul to do it. If that is bewitchment, then the gods themselves are the sorcerers who taught her the spells."

"Rainier Feyreisen." Venarra seized his wrist and spoke, her voice laden with the resonant, irrefutable command of a
shei'dalin's
compulsion weave. "Did your mate Ellysetta weave the forbidden magic?"

He could not resist, so he spat the truth defiantly.
"Aiyah,
she did and so did I!
And I would do it again."

Silence fell over the plateau. The eyes of the Massan and the
Shei'dalin
went hazy as private Spirit weaves passed between them. A moment later, Tenn turned back to Rain and Ellysetta, his face a mask of unflinching stone.

"Ellysetta Baristani and Rainier vel'En Daris, you are guilty of weaving the forbidden magic, Azrahn. For your crime, the Massan declares that you both shall be stripped of your steel and banished for all eternity from the Fading Lands."

Rain laughed without humor. "Banish us? You overstep yourself, Tenn. The Tairen Soul does not answer to the Massan, and the Massan's will does not trump the Tairen Soul's."

"You are mistaken, Rain. The Fey vested the Massan with the power to override your will a thousand years ago to ensure that you, in your madness, did not lead us astray, as you are doing now."

The words struck Rain like a mortal blow. He turned in stunned disbelief towards Bel, and the knife slid deeper into his heart when his best friend looked away. All this time … all this time the Massan had not simply been wielding power in his name. They'd been wielding power
over him.

And not even Marissya had ever told him.

Not even Bel.

Eld
~
Boura Fell

Elfeya lay panting on the stone floor, every finger span of her body bruised and bloodied. She sensed the instant Shan regained consciousness, and she reached out to him on the threads of their bond, desperate to give him what information she could before her tormentors began again. «
Orest and Teleon, beloved. They strike at Orest and Teleon.»
That much she'd been able to pull from the High Mage's mind as she'd healed him. «
Tell her, Shan.»

«Elfeya
…»

«Tell her to warn them.»

She cried out as hands seized fistfuls of her hair and hauled her to her feet. Rough hands slammed her hard against the stone walls of the cell, knocking the breath from her lungs. Glowing, red-hot metal filled her vision. She tried desperately to close her bonds to Shan before the scream was ripped from her lungs and the smell of sizzling flesh assaulted her nose, but she wasn't fast enough.

A terrible, wild roaring filled her dazed mind…her screams and Shan's mingling in an agony of madness and pain as again and again and again the Eld seared and scorched her.

The Fading Lands
~
Fey'Bahren

Fey and tairen stood in a tense ring, violence simmering beneath the surface. Rain struggled to gather his thoughts and find the breath Tenn's revelation had knocked out of him.

«Rain…»
Bel's expression was desolate. «
Sieks'ta, kem'maresk. I should have told you, but once you came back to us, I never thought there would be cause. I never thought they would be so bold.»

"You would banish the Defender of the Fey when the Fading Lands stand on the brink of a second Mage War?" Gaelen challenged with cold fury. "You would banish the woman who brought life back to the tairen and the Fey? You would cast them out when the only reason they wove Azrahn was to save your miserable lives?"

"The reasons do not matter," Tenn said. "The law is clear. Those who weave the forbidden magic must be banished or slain. These are the ways of honor. These are the ways of the Fey."

"These are the ways of death and idiocy," Gaelen snapped.

"Feel free to join them in their exile,
dahl'reisen"
Yulan spat.

Steli growled. «
What is 'banish'?»

Rain answered, speaking aloud for the benefit of the Fey. "Banishment, Steli
-chakai,
means these Fey say I am no longer the Tairen Soul. It means they intend to drive me and Ellysetta-Feyreisa from the lair and from all lands of the Fey."

Every tairen on Su Reisu roared. Flames shot from snarling muzzles, searing the morning sky, wings spread wide in a show of fearsome might.

Protective shields sprang up around the gathered Fey. Dozens of hands reached for red Fey'cha.

Rain flung shields around Ellysetta but none around himself. He glared at the gathered warriors. "And you call
me
mad? You would pull red against the pride?" He raised his hands to the tairen. «
Steli-chakai, my pride-kin, stop.»
To all of them, he said, "We have enemies enough without turning upon one another. Stand down, Fey." When they did not move, his voice dropped an octave and boomed across the plateau.
"I said stand down!"

Behind him, Ellysetta gave a choked cry, and an icy chill washed over him.

He whirled around and all the blood drained from his face.

She was shaking, every muscle clenched, every tendon pulled taut beneath her skin. Her hands were clawed and her eyes were endless black pits awash in whirling red lights, like a dead sky filled with bloody stars.

She threw back her head, her throat convulsing.
"Sal veli! Piersan veli ti'Teleon
te Orest! Sala talothi!"
They're coming! The enemy comes to Teleon and Orest! Kill them!

The voice from her mouth was not her own. Low and throbbing, as if ripped from the throat of death itself, the sound scraped across Rain's senses like a serrated blade.

The Azrahn-filled gaze pinned him, and in a guttural voice, she cried, "Feyreisen! Defend the pride!"

Her legs folded, and she collapsed into his arms, and in her own voice, urgent and agitated, she whispered, "Orest and Teleon. They are in danger. He's coming. You must warn them. Warn them,
shei'tan.
Let them know…"

Rain clutched her to his chest and raised stricken eyes to the others. "We must warn Orest and Teleon."

"Are you mad? Did you see her eyes?" Tenn pointed a finger. "She's Mage-claimed! The Mages are using her to draw us into a trap!"

"How can they be drawing us into a trap?" Rain snapped. "Our brothers are already there."