Lord of the Fading Lands (11 page)

"But—”

"Nei!
You are my truemate. Harm to you is harm to me. The Eld know this, and that puts you in great danger, Ellysetta. The world is no longer a safe place for you.”

His eyes were starting to glow again, and she could feel his anger beating at her. She should just meekly agree and go home. That was the smart thing to do. He was a powerful Fey who'd already lost control of his wild magic once before. Only a fool would actually
argue
with him.

And yet … something would not let her just meekly murmur her obedience and allow the Fey to lead her home like a prize dog on a leash. "I realize your concern is genuine, my lord Feyreisen, but even if Eld Mages really are hiding in the city, plotting evil, they have no reason to harm me. I am betrothed to another man.”

"Bel told me of the butcher's offspring. His desires neither hold sway over our bond nor protect you from the Eld. Your soul called out, Ellysetta Baristani, and mine answered. That one moment made you a prize the Eld would kill to claim. Nothing can change that. And that means you must never again attempt to wander the streets alone.”

"But—”

"No buts." His hands seized hers in a tight grip. "If you will not consider your own safety, consider the safety of others. Sariel was my mate. I should not have survived her death. But I did, and you know the results." He gestured to the fiery, violent paintings surrounding them. "Whether you want it or not, you are my truemate. Even though our bond is not yet complete, if the Eld managed to kill you, I should not survive it." Sudden intensity burned in his eyes, and his voice dropped to a low whisper. "
But what if I did?"
Ellie's mouth went dry. Her skin burned where Rain's hands gripped hers as images and emotions flooded into her. The blinding grief of Sariel's death. The hot, wild rush of rage, driving him to rain fire and death upon the world. The haunting screams and terror of those who died in the face of his madness.

She yanked free of his grip, and the onslaught ceased.

She pressed one shaking hand to her mouth and the other to her belly. "What was that?”

"A tiny fraction of what I live with, Ellysetta, every day since I scorched the world.”

"I'm going to be sick" She spun on her heel and raced for the nearest waste bin, barely making it before the contents of her stomach heaved out of her.

When she was done, he was there beside her, a glass of cold water in his hand. She could have cried with humiliation. Instead, she took the glass, rinsed her mouth, and spat. Not meeting his eyes, she handed the glass back to him. It melted into nothing. All signs of her brief, violent sickness vanished as well.

She stared at the empty space and couldn't even summon surprise. Of course the Fey could make vomit vanish. All that power had to have its practical uses. She forced a laugh. "Where were you when Lillis and Lorelle had the stomach ague last year?”

He didn't laugh or even smile at her weak joke.
"Sieks'ta.
I should not have shared that with you. I have shamed myself. Not even fear for your safety excuses me." He gestured, and Bel stepped closer. "Your quintet will take you home. As I've just demonstrated, my control is not yet what it should be." He bowed, his face a frozen mask.

If he'd meant to impress upon her the gravity of her situation, he'd succeeded. His tactics might have been brutal, but they were effective. She couldn't even summon any anger. How could she blame him for wanting to avoid reliving the horror he'd just shared with her?

She started to reach out to him, but caution made her drawback before touching him. One taste of his torment was enough. "I won't leave the house without escort again," she promised.

As Bel led her away, she paused at the entrance of the Fey wing and glanced back. Rain stood looking up at Chelan's painting of Sariel's death, his face pale and drawn.

The young boy darted silently through the shadows of the West End's quiet merchant district. A block ahead, the pretty blond girl he'd followed from the museum turned down a narrow cobbled lane that led to a modest residential district. The boy smiled. He could practically feel the gold sovereign warm between his fingers.

Follow her,
Master Manza had ordered when he'd realized the blonde was Ellysetta Baristani's friend.
Find out where she lives. She may prove useful.

Rain remained in the museum for almost a full bell after Ellysetta's departure, sitting on the bench in the middle of the room, staring up at the countless images and remembering.

He'd loved Sariel. With all the unfettered, consuming passion of youth, he'd loved her. He'd been a young Tairen Soul, full of the power of his gift and the promise of endless skies, and she'd been a beautiful Fey healer, not as powerful as Marissya, and no match to his own strength, but so gentle and compassionate there were none who did not love her.

She'd been first in his heart since boyhood. He'd never wanted another.

And now he did.

It felt like betrayal. As if his own body, his own soul, had betrayed his heart.

Spirit swirled around his fingertips. Swaths of mystic magic poured out in a sparkling cloud that slowly began to spin. He watched it, guided it, as the magic condensed and took shape. Long, straight strands of silky black hair blew back from a luminous oval face of stunning beauty. Full, red lips smiled at him with exquisite tenderness, while eyes like blue forget- me-nots watched him with endless patience and love.

"Sariel," Rain whispered sadly. He'd woven the memories many times. He was a master of Spirit. To any other onlooker, Sariel would have seemed whole and alive and real, but Rain held the weave, and he knew—he always knew—she was an illusion. He'd managed to pretend otherwise, but no longer. The slender arms that rose to embrace him seemed hollow and faded, and when he reached out to her, his hand passed through the weave.

He would have wept if he still had tears within him. "I don't want to lose you,
e'tani.”

Sariel smiled and shook her head. She bent to kiss him, but when he tilted back his head to meet her lips, the Spirit weave dissolved. Sariel faded into mist. Rain groaned and buried his face in his hands. Not even with a kiss to a phantom love could he betray his
shei'tani.

"Your magic knows you belong to another, even if your heart still rebels.”

Rain lifted his head. Marissya stood at the entrance to the chamber. Dax was at her side, while her quintet stood guard a bit further away. Marissya was watching Rain with a strange mix of compassion and irritation. The truemate in her disliked that he'd even attempted to betray his bond with a kiss to his lost love, while the empath in her understood why he did.

"We all loved Sariel, Rain," Marissya continued, "but you must let her go. Your
shei'tani
will never accept you so long as you cling to the memory of another.”

"I know that without your scolding." Her reprimand stung, even more because it was deserved. He rose to his feet.

"I am glad to hear it. I wasn't certain you were thinking clearly. Kieran told me you shared your torment with your
shei'tani.”

Kieran had a flapping tongue. "She tried to leave her home unescorted. Truemated to the Tairen Soul, and she tried to wander Celierian streets alone—at night! She even refused to believe her life might be in danger. Did Kieran tell you that, too?”

One cool brown brow rose. "He merely suggested you might need my help weaving control over your emotions. It appears he was right.”

Rain's lips compressed. To argue would only prove her point.

Marissya sighed, and her expression softened. "The gods weave as the gods will, Rain. And even though it may not be apparent at first, they do weave purpose into all things. Even terrible things. Sariel's death was a devastating loss, but all this time I believed it was the price the gods demanded for the end of the Wars. That was the only pattern I saw in the weave … until today, when a Celierian girl called a tairen from the sky.”

"What are you suggesting?”

"The tairen and the Fey are dying. You are the last bridge between our two species. You told me the Eye of Truth sent you here, to Celieria, to find our salvation. We both know it can be no coincidence that Ellysetta is your truemate. Somehow, she is the key to saving us all. Though we've yet to see her power, it must be vast. She could never have called your soul if she were not your equal in every way. We also both know she could never have called you if you were still bound to another—even if that bond was only
e'tanitsa,
as it was between you and Sariel." Her hands closed over his, and cool, calming threads of empathy and healing stroked across his battered emotions. "You've seen the pattern, too, Rain. No matter how badly you want to deny it. Sariel had to die so Ellysetta could be born to save us.”

Rain pulled free of her grasp and turned away.

"You must not blame Ellysetta," Marissya continued. "She is an innocent. She is the soul the gods shaped to save the tairen and the Fey" She circled round him, relentless. "And you, Rain, are the soul the gods shaped to protect her and bring her safely back to us so she can fulfill her purpose. You cannot shirk your duty, not to the tairen, not to the Fey, and definitely not to your truemate. Set aside your longings for what used to be. Embrace Ellysetta in your heart as well as your soul so you can win her trust and her bond and help her discover her strength. Because, Rain, one other thing seems certain to me." The
shei'dalin's
eyes grew dark with portent. "Whatever task the gods have set before Ellysetta Baristani, it is fearfully dangerous. Else she'd not need a tairen to protect her soul."

Far away to the northeast in the heart of the Elden wilderness, the subterranean palace of Boura Fell, seat of the High Mage Vadim Maur, lay buried deep in the earth, masterfully shielded from Fey senses and Fey magic by rock, soil, and wards worked from the darkest Elden wizardry. The massive complex stretched for miles beneath the surface, one of many similar fortresses hidden throughout Eld. For nearly a thousand years, the network of underground palaces had survived, thrived even, undetected and steadily growing in strength and number, like a cancer quietly spreading its deadly tentacles beneath the skin of a seemingly healthy man.

High Mage Vadim Maur, leader of the High Council of Mages and uncrowned ruler of Eld, sat at his massive desk and pondered the news from his apprentice in Celieria. Around him, sconces flickered with Fire, lighting the dark, windowless cavern of his study with a pale yellow glow, illuminating the numerous bookcases that held priceless ancient texts and centuries' worth of notes on his experiments.

Rain Tairen Soul had a truemate. A truemate with red hair and green eyes, so suspiciously like the child stolen years ago.

Vadim sat back in his chair and steepled his hands beneath his chin. Suspicion was not certainty, and not enough to make him tip his hand. Not yet, at least. There were two hundred Fey in Celieria City … too many to confront lightly even without the substantial added might of the Tairen Soul. Vadim had not won and held his grip on the High Council of Mages through the blundering application of brute force. He was a man who believed in choosing his battles … and in preparing his battlefield.

He'd already dispatched a handful of spies to northern Celieria in case his search party had missed something so many years ago. Meanwhile, his apprentice Kolis Manza would continue his work in Celieria and learn what he could about the girl without rousing suspicions.

Vadim rose from his desk. His rich, gold-embroidered, purple velvet robes whispered around him as he crossed the room to approach a carefully warded black metal door. He dissolved the wards, placed his hand in the hollow etched deep into the door's center panel, and uttered,
"Gaz vegoth.”

The ancient Feraz witchwords sent magic swirling. Metal groaned as the unseen bolts securing the door slid free from their anchors in the stone. The door opened inward to reveal the small round antechamber that served as Vadim Maur's private spell room.

Fire flared to life in three golden sconces as the High Mage stepped through the door, and in the flickering light, figures seemed to move and sway across the intricate patterns of the mosaic tiles that covered every fingerspan of wall, ceiling, and floor in the room. A carved black stone altar occupied the center of the room; a bowl and goblet of hammered gold rested atop it. Opposite the door, pure, cool water poured from the carved mouth of a snarling dragon's head into a rune-etched catch-basin below.

Vadim moved around the room, murmuring a cleansing spell. When he was finished and satisfied that the room held no residue of previous spells, he grasped the small golden ewer that rested on the wide lip of the catch-basin, and filled it. "Water pure, the path to cleanse," he murmured as he poured the water into the altar bowl.

From a deep left-hand pocket of his Mage robe, he withdrew a tiny vial filled with still-warm blood he had recently taken from a particular guest of his lowermost dungeon and uncorked it. "Blood to bindings call." He dribbled a thin stream of the dark red liquid into the bowl. As it broke the water's surface, the blood diluted rapidly, tiny red streamers shooting through the clear water until the bowl was filled with cloudy pinkness. With a razor-sharp black dagger, he slit the palm of his hand and added his own blood to the mix. His Mage senses grew sharp and he felt the dark, binding threads of magic that tied him to the blooded captive.