Lady of Light and Shadows (37 page)

"Ridiculous fear mongering," Sebourne sneered. "Fabrications void of any hope of reliable proof. You lied about Gaelen vel Serranis. You lied about the murders in the north. You're lying about this as well. Your motive is obvious. Celieria has grown independent in your absence. We've become powerful in our own right. Your baseless claims and scare tactics are part of a pathetically transparent scheme to keep Celieria subservient to Fey power.”

Teleos surged to his feet. "You fool!" he cried. "Have you not listened to a word he's said? We are in danger! The Fey do not lie! The enemy is at the gate, sharpening his blades!”

"The enemy," Sebourne replied sharply, pointing a finger at Rain, "is right there! This Tairen Soul has already shown himself willing to break Celierian treaties, manipulate Celierian minds, and murder his allies.”

"Here, here, Sebourne," Morvel applauded. "Celierian won't cower in fear from Fey tales and bogey stories.”

Rain stared in disbelief at the men leading the opposition. Had they forgotten so much? Had the last few centuries of peace erased the hard-taught lessons of the past from mortal memory? Fire sparked in his eyes. "I stand before you, a living witness to the Mage Wars and to the vast, unrepentant evil of Eld, and you call me a liar and dismiss my warnings as Fey tales and bogey stories?”

Show them,
Ellysetta had urged.
Make them see Mage evil for themselves.

His fingers curled tight. He'd already failed her once. He would not fail her again. Magic gathered in a painful rush, burning his veins with its intensity. "Since I cannot make you listen, perhaps I can make you see. Behold! This is the past I remember, the past I lived.”

Rain swept out his hands. Light shot from his fingertips, undulating beams that formed a glowing, expanding mass. The sounds of battle rose. The smell of burnt flesh, fresh blood, magic, and human sweat. Long-dead men and women-Fey, Celierian, Elf, Danae-unfolded in vivid, masterfully created life.
Shei'dalins
in flowing red veils worked beneath bright tents to save the wounded and weave peace upon the dying.

He could have simply immersed them all in the past, but he let his weave move slowly across the Council Chamber, enveloping the Celierian lords one by one until each of them stood on that ancient battlefield, every sight, smell, taste, touch, and sound re-created with breathtaking clarity. And as the Spirit weave took each lord, he poured into the man's mind vivid memories of all the events leading up to Mage Wars: the Eld machinations, the subtle corruptions, all culminating in the shocking brutality of a royal assassination, Gaelen's vengeance, and finally the ravaging ferocity of open war.

A blast of Mage Fire shook the earth. A score of pampered lordlings cringed in fear.

A fierce battle was under way. Several thousand Eld soldiers and two dozen Mages were defending a captured Celierian keep. Thick flows of dreadful magic rolled over the castle walls, forming a toxic, deadly mist that oozed across the battlefield towards the approaching army. Celierian soldiers shrieked as the mist enveloped them and their flesh literally fell from their bones. Armor tumbled in clattering heaps as the oozing, bloody bones of what had been men took one final, staggering step before crumpling in puddles of stinking slime. Not even the hungry demons howling across the battlefield would touch the foul soup that remained.

Fey, Elves, and Danae warriors raced towards the front line, magic sparking around them as they blew the acid mist back towards the keep and its surrounding dark armies. A hail of arrows dropped half the reinforcements as they bravely stood on the field and spun their defensive weaves. Demons consumed another two dozen in mere instants. On the ridge, trebuchets flung fiery missiles over the castle walls, and several hundred Elvish archers launched their own deadly accurate volley of arrows into the black-armored enemy ranks.

A deep, terrible roar sounded overhead. A shadow swooped over the warriors, bringing a hot, dark rush of air that carried the scent of tairen and fire and magic. Immense wings, spread wide as a city block, swept low over the battlefield as the giant winged cat dove in for his attack.

Rolling clouds of flame spewed from the tairen's great black muzzle, engulfing the line of robe-clad Mages. Shields sprang up around the Mages, but high-pitched screams erupted from the unfortunate unshielded soldiers nearby as flame clung to flesh and consumed with voracious appetite. Wings pumped, and the great cat reared back, holding the roaring jet of fire on the knot of shielded Mages.

A massive ball of Mage Fire shot towards the black tairen from his left flank.

"Rain! Behind you!" The shout came from several men all at once, Celierian and Fey, fighting together near the front of one allied line.

A second black tairen as large as Rain Tairen Soul swooped down, and a blast of tairen fire consumed the deadly Mage Fire before it reached Rain. The magnificent creature joined Rain, adding its powerful flame to the attack. Moments later, the Mage shields gave way, and half a dozen burning figures raced in frantic, futile madness from the inferno.

Eld horns sounded the call to retreat. Enemy soldiers poured over the keep walls and fled in chaotic disarray. A dozen tairen flew after the remaining Mages, flames licking at enemy heels, while Celierian and Danae infantry pursued the fleeing soldiers. From the surrounding forest, a hail of Elvish arrows filled the sky, raining down upon the fleeing troops. A black and silver line of Fey warriors blocked off the only remaining avenue of escape.

Scarcely a chime or two later, it was over.

In the ensuing silence, mortal, Fey, Elf, and Danae walked the battlefield, gathering fallen friends and comrades. They helped the wounded to the healing tents, and laid the dead in neat lines at the edge of the forest.

The two black tairen swooped down from the sky, metamorphosing at the last moment into tall, black-haired Fey warriors. Rain Tairen Soul and his father, Rajahl.

A Celierian wearing gold-chased silver armor wiped the blood off his sword with the hem of his blue cape and sheathed the blade at his side. Every Celierian in the Council Chamber recognized the crossed blades and crowned hawk of the Torreval royal family crest.

"My Lord Rajahl. My Lord Rain." Dorian II reached out to clasp arms with the two Fey. "Well fought, my lords.”

Half a dozen mounted, mail-clad Celierian soldiers galloped in from the battlefield. One of the riders broke off from the group, guiding his horse towards the king and the two Tairen Souls. He pulled back on the reins and slid from the saddle with lithe, almost inhuman agility. His chest plate bore the Teleos family crest, a golden tairen rampant on the white field of a rising sun, honoring both their blood ties to the Fey and their devotion to the Church of Light.

"Your Majesty." The rider, Shanis Teleos, approached his king. He removed his helm, revealing Fey eyes of vivid green, shining bright in a face dark with blood and grime. Shanis dropped briefly to one knee in a swift, smooth bow "The enemy is routed, sire." He straightened and turned to the Tairen Souls. "My Lord Rajahl, Rain." A smile flashed in his battle-grimed face as he and Rain exchanged handclasps. "My thanks for your help. We could not have claimed victory without you. Give us a quarter bell to recover our dead and wounded from the field before you burn the Eld.”

"Be quick, my friend," Rain said. "An Elf scout spotted a suspicious caravan not two leagues from here. If there's a Primage or a Demon Prince among them, they'll soon be close enough to summon the souls of the dead. We don't have enough warriors to fight this army again in demon form. A quarter bell, and we fire the field.”

"Understood.”

"Sire!”

Dorian turned, a smile breaking over his face as he caught sight of the approaching knight. "Pellas! Cousin! I am glad to see you well and unhurt.”

Lord Pellas, the king's cousin, didn't return his royal kin's smile. "I'm unhurt, yes, but our uncle's son Theron wasn't so fortunate. Come quick, sire. He lies near death. The
shei'dalin
does not think she can save him.”

Dorian began to run.

As Dorian neared his waiting cousin, Lord Pellas's eyes darkened and the hand at his side curled tight around the long dagger at his hip, yanking it from its sheath.

"Sire! Beware!" Shanis cried the warning and leapt towards the king's cousin, blades flashing. He separated the assassin's head from his shoulders even as Rain and Rajahl's red Fey'cha thunked home with deadly accuracy in the man's chest.

"Pellas?" The king stared in horrified disbelief at the still-twitching, headless corpse of his cousin and at the blade still clutched in the dead man's hand.

"Did you not see his eyes just as he started to strike?" Shanis said. "They went black as night. I don't know how the Mages managed to turn him, sire, but he was Mage-claimed.”

"I don't believe it. He's close as a brother to me.”

Shanis pried the blade out of the dead man's hand. "This is a Feraz assassin's knife, sire. There is a hollow, poison-filled vein down the center of the blade. The tip is designed to break off inside the victim to release the poison." He planted a boot heel on the knife and snapped it in two. Three small drops of green liquid spilled onto the ground. The soil sizzled, wisps of smoke rising. Several handspans of trampled grass around the spot turned rapidly brown, then black.

"But ... how is it possible? How could I not have known?"
"Do not torment yourself, King Dorian," Rajahl said. "'Tis likely the Mages stole his memories so he was not even aware himself. There is no warning of who is Mage-claimed, until they strike.”

The Spirit weave faded. The ancient lords of Celieria melted into mist, and Rain turned once more to the nobles gathered in Dorian's Council Chamber.

"The Mages have returned. How many of them, I do not know But I do know this: Where there are Mages, there are Mage-claimed. They could live among you, break bread with you, celebrate the marriage of your children, and share the most intimate moments of your life. And the instant the Mages call upon them, they will murder every member of your family while you sleep-slit the throats of the smallest sleeping babes-to please their masters.

"The Fey do not hunger for power-we never have-but the Mages do. Do not open the borders to Eld. To do so is to usher in your own destruction."

Ellysetta crouched, panting. The fiery burn of
sel'dor
made every muscle tremble, but she forced her pain-wracked hands to move, fingers fumbling beneath her long skirts for the two bloodsworn Fey'cha blades strapped to her calves.

Her fingers closed round the hilts of both knives and she yanked them free.

"'Ware!" one of the exorcists cried. "She's got blades!" He kicked out, catching her manacled hands with the toe of his boot. The two Fey'cha flew out of her hands and skittered across the room.

Ellysetta scrambled back away from him, her skirts tangling around her legs, hiding her calves and the thin, parallel cuts oozing beads of red blood.

Bel stood outside the Great Cathedral's Solarus door with the seemingly effortless stillness of a Fey warrior. Only his eyes moved, scanning the cathedral for the slightest hint of trouble. Beside him, Gaelen vel Serranis did the same.

At Bel's back, the utter silence emanating from the Solarus should have reassured him, but instead the tension humming through him intensified. He would have felt considerably better had Ellysetta sent him an occasional thought, just as the quintets stationed around the small island sent an update to him every ten chimes.

Suddenly every muscle in Bel's body stiffened. Beside him, Gaelen flinched as well.

Their eyes met in a fierce look, Fey First Blade to
dahl'reisen
leader, for once perfectly in accord. They turned in unison, hands raised, magic blazing to life, and loosed a joint five-fold weave powerful enough to turn the door into molten slag.

A concussion wave blasted back, flinging both of them and the rest of the quintet off their feet and smashing half a dozen pews into sawdust.

A soundless boom shook the Solarus, making the crystal chandeliers overhead shiver with a series of melodious, tinkling notes. Lauriana cried out in nervous fear.

The archbishop grabbed the edge of the altar to steady himself. "What was that?”

Father Bellamy cast a look at the Solarus door. "If I were to guess, I would say the Fey have realized what's going on in here and are trying to break in.”

The archbishop blanched and took a nervous step away from the Solarus door. He cast an accusing gaze at Bellamy. "I thought you said they wouldn't be able to detect the exorcism!”

"They should not have. But either someone betrayed our plans or this young woman has found a way to breach the holy wards of the Solarus and alert her Fey friends to our presence.”

The exorcist who'd kicked the Fey'cha out of Ellysetta's hand flipped back her skirt, baring the shallow, bleeding cuts on her leg. "The blades must have been bloodsworn," he spat. He shoved back his hood to reveal white-blond hair. "When she cut herself, she sent a call to the Fey who gave them to her.”

"Let me go," Ellie urged in a shaking voice. "They'll kill you all for this. Let me go now, before anyone gets hurt." She stared hard into her mother's gaze. "Mama, I know you mean well, but this is wrong. I'm Fey. That's where my magic comes from, not from demons. I'm not evil. My magic isn't evil. Please, let me go before something terrible happens.”