Lord of the Fading Lands (44 page)

"What have you done to her?" Lauriana burst out. "What have you done that sleep would bring such torments?”

"Laurie, shh." Sol tried to calm his wife, but she batted him away.

"No, Sol! I won't hush. I've held my silence too long already! I told you this was a mistake. We were meant to protect her from magic, and instead we've flung her back into its teeth! Her nightmares have returned, Sol. Because of
them.”

She jabbed an accusing finger in Rain and Ravel's direction. "You can't deny it any longer! And you know where it's going to lead!”

Ignoring her, Rain knelt on the floor beside Ellysetta and laid his hand on her shoulder. She cried out and tried to fling herself away, but he caught her and held tight as she struggled against him. Her skin was cold as ice.
"Shei'tani.
Ellysetta.
Las, las, kem'san. Ke sha taris. Ke sha avel vo.
I am here. I am with you." He held her close, rocking her, whispering a soothing litany of words into her ears while in silence his heart swore bitter vengeance against the monster who had visited this torment upon her.

The convulsive shudders racking her slender form gradually diminished. "Rain?" Her eyes opened, then flooded with tears when she saw him. She flung her arms round his body to clutch him tight and buried her face against the bare skin of his throat. "Oh, Rain. You're alive. Oh, thank the gods." Wrenching sobs shook her.

Though her grief tore at his heart, his eyes closed with relief. She was safe and unharmed. She was whole and in his arms, where she belonged. "I'm here,
shei'tani.”

"Hold me," she whispered. "Hold me and don't let me go. I'm cold, so cold.”

His arms tightened, pulling her closer, wrapping around her as if with his body alone he could shield her from whatever evil hunted her.

"Ellie!" Lauriana rushed forward, hands outstretched, but as she neared, Ellysetta flinched away, burrowing deeper into Rain's arms. Desperation flooded his senses.

«Rain, tell her to go. Tell them all to go. I can't bear for anyone to touch me right now. No one but you.»

"Leave us, all of you," Rain barked.
«Ravel, get everyone out.»

The Fey nodded and tried to usher the Baristanis out the bedroom door. Lauriana resisted the eviction. "Don't you dare touch me! I'm not leaving my child here with you, not after this! I won't do it anymore!”

Sol flung out an arm towards Rain and Ellysetta. "Can't you see Ellie doesn't want either of us here right now? He's the only one who's even been able to get near her. Clearly, he's what she needs now, not us. For the gods' sake, Laurie, if he can bring her peace, let him do it.”

"He can't bring her peace, Sol. He's only brought all her old torments back, worse than they ever were before. How can you not see that?”

"Mama." Lauriana and Sol both turned. Ellysetta was still in Rain's arms, but she had lifted her head. Her face was pale and drawn, her eyes as bleak as Lauriana had ever seen them. "Please go. You can't help me. I'm not sure anyone can help me anymore.”

"Ellie …" Lauriana started forward, arms outstretched, tears in her eyes. "Killing.”

Ellysetta flinched away. "Don't touch me. Just go. I need you to go.”

Weeping, broken by her daughter's plea in a way no angry words could have done, Lauriana left. Sol and the Fey followed her out, closing the door behind them.

"What happened, Ellysetta?" Rain asked when they were finally alone.

"It was a dream," she whispered. "A very, very bad dream."

"Will you tell me?”

In a slow, halting voice, she did. She stumbled over the part where he'd tried to coax her into mating with him and the horrible way he'd laughed, and her voice cracked when she told him about the bodies shredded into bloody meat, rats and crows flowing like a river of disease all around her. She broke into helpless tears once more when she told him about finding him dead at her feet, carrion for the crows. "Oh, Rain, gods save me, I was the one who'd led the army to destroy you. I saw myself there, leading them. I looked into my own face—and knew what I had done. And my eyes—oh, gods, my eyes—it was like looking into the fire pits of the Seventh Hell. It was … pure evil." A fresh bout of shuddering shook her. Nothing could block the memory of those dark, burning eyes.

"Is this what you saw?" He spun Spirit in the air between them, weaving an image of a pale face dominated by dead black wells where the eyes should have been.

She shrank back in sudden fear.

Rain's mouth tightened. The nightmarish image dissolved. "Powerful magic always reveals itself. When someone weaves Azrahn, their eyes turn black and flicker with red lights, like the dying embers of a fire. Ellysetta, I doubt the dream was your own—or anything even remotely resembling truth. The purpose could be many things: an attempt to sow doubt between us where none can exist, an attempt to use my face to spring some sort of trap. Bel told me you've had other nightmares. Were they like this?”

She closed her eyes. The time for hiding the truth was past. "I've had nightmares all my life, some worse than others. Even when I was small, I saw horrible things no child should ever see. Wars, murder, people dying. I don't know why I dream what I dream, but I've always known he was searching for me. And that if he found me, something terrible would happen.”

"He who?”

"The Shadow Man. He's there in the darkness when I sleep. He was gone for years, but he came back again about a week before you arrived in Celieria. He's been searching for me, calling to me in my sleep, urging me to show myself." She wrapped her arms around herself, chafing her hands on her cold skin. "It's one of the reasons I've always feared and denied my own magic, Rain. I was afraid if I used it, he would find me. And now, I think he has." Her throat closed up. Tears welled in her eyes. "I tried to stay hidden, but he knew I was there. He wouldn't stop tormenting me until I showed myself. Everyone was dead: Bel, Kieran, all the Fey, Mama, Papa, the twins. And you—at my feet and the crows were .. . were … oh, Rain, I couldn't bear any more! I screamed at him to stop. I revealed myself to him, and now he knows how to find me. And I think he intends to use me to kill the people I love.”

His arms tightened around her. One hand cupped her chin and urged her to look up at him. "I will permit no one to harm you or the people you love, Ellysetta. And if this Shadow Man thinks to try, I promise you he will regret it" The look in his eyes was lethal. This was the man who'd once scorched the world, and for the first time she realized he was fully capable of scorching it again on her behalf. Would scorch it again, if the evil that stalked her laid claim to her soul. "I make you fear me," he said. The fire faded from his eyes. He pulled her tight against his chest and held her close. "Do not fear me.”

"It's not you I'm afraid of, Rain." She had to tell him about the exorcism, about the demons the priests said haunted her soul. Now that the Shadow Man had found her, she couldn't afford secrets. Whatever evil lived inside her, he might find a way to use it against Rain and the Fey. "It's not even the Shadow Man. Not really." She blurted out the truth before fear could silence her. "It's me.”

He drew back and stared into her face. "What do you mean?”

She tried to speak, but the words caught in her throat. Would he revile her? She pulled herself out of his arms and huddled closer to the wall, needing to put some distance between them.

"Ellysetta ... “

"No. Listen to me. I've been afraid to tell you, but you need to know" She took a deep, shuddering breath. She could do this. She could. She
must.
"He told me I was evil. He said he knew I felt darkness calling me. And he was right." The admission came hard, each word forced out of her through sheer will, but once the first secret found freedom, the rest followed in a rush. "From the time I was very small, I've had … seizures. There's nothing particular that makes them happen. They just do. An unbearable pain engulfs me, and all I can do is fall to the floor, screaming. Sometimes it can go on for days.”

Memories, long buried, swirled in her mind, as vivid and terrifying as they had been the day she lived them. The
echoes
of her own wild screams rang in her ears. Her vision turned red as if veiled in blood. She pressed the palms of her hands to her eyes and whimpered.

Rain's hand covered hers, offering strength and comfort. She clutched it tight and held on until the worst of the memories faded and she could speak again.

"When I was little, the seizures came every few months, sometimes more often. They frightened Mama and Papa. They didn't know what to do. The doctors didn't know what to make of it. They said it was demon possession, something wrong in my soul. Mama brought in the exorcists from the Church of Light. I was very young … but I remember ..." She bent her head, and her hair fell forward to veil her face. She remembered the candles and the chanting and the fierce eyes of the exorcists as she screamed and her small body convulsed.

"At first they just prayed and rubbed me with sago flowers. But the seizures began to grow worse, and they decided they must do something more … aggressive … to draw the demons out. They had a little box filled with needles ..." Long, shining needles lying on a bed of red satin. Needles to pierce her so the demon could escape her body, each topped with a tiny, dark crystal bead the exorcists claimed would draw the demon out.

"They thought that if they drove those needles into me, they could trap the demon." Ellie rubbed her arms as the memories washed over her. She was screaming … screaming as the needle sank into her flesh.

"Ellysetta ... " Rain pulled her closer, his body so warm against her chilled skin.

"They put one needle through my shoulder and another through my leg before Papa made them stop.”

Papa, so fierce, snatching her up and shouting, "Are you mad? You torture her more? She's only a child! Get out of my house!" How she'd loved him in that moment. He'd pulled the needles out of her body and flung them away as if they were polluted things. He'd held her close, rocking her and weeping. "Papa's sorry, precious kitling. They'll never come back, sweetheart. Papa won't ever let them hurt you again.”

Never again did he allow them to enter his house, never again did he allow Mama to speak of the exorcists, not even when seizures flung Ellysetta howling to the floor. Thereafter only Papa could get near her when the seizures came, and he would hold her and rock her as every muscle in her body clenched in agonizing pain. He would sing to her, softly, his tears spilling on her skin, his love wrapping around her. And she would cling to him, finding refuge in his unwavering love, anchoring herself to him until the torturous seizures passed.

"He is a good man, your father," Rain murmured.

"Yes. The best I've ever known." But she knew … she'd always known … that as much as Papa loved her, he also feared the thing that lived inside her.

And she knew he was right to fear it.

"Rain, if he hadn't stopped the exorcists, I don't know what would have happened, but it would have been bad. Very bad.”

"What do you mean?”

"I wanted to kill them, the men who drove those needles into me. I was only a child, but I'd already seen death through my nightmares. I saw it again then, in my mind, but this was different. It wasn't a nightmare. It was what I
wanted
to happen, what I wanted to do to them. I saw those men torn apart, screaming as their limbs were ripped from their bodies. I saw myself laughing, dancing in a shower of their blood, drinking it like a child drinks rain as it falls from the sky." She pressed her hands to her cheeks. "Oh, Rain, what kind of monster am I?”

She waited for his horror or revulsion, but it never came. Instead his arms enfolded her and pulled her close against his chest. "Ellysetta …
Shei'tani …
You are not evil to have wished those exorcists dead for torturing you as they did. And do not believe you could have killed them, even though you dreamed of it. Fey women cannot kill, not even to defend their own lives. Their natural empathy prevents it."

"But Rain—”

"Shh. Hear me out. Even though your physical appearance seems mortal, there is little doubt in my mind that your blood is Fey. Who your parents are and why they did not return to the Fading Lands before your birth, I cannot say, but your soul shines too brightly and your magic is too strong for me to believe you are anything else.

"When those men hurt you, adding more pain on top of that you were already suffering, your Fey heritage must have stirred in anger against the crimes done against you. The tairen lives in us all, and it is not a tame creature." He smoothed her hair back from her face and stared earnestly into her eyes. "Do you think Marissya has never wished death upon another?
Nei,
Fey women are not so timid as that. They are gentle,
aiyah,
and compassionate, but even they feel the tairen rouse when pushed hard enough.”

Hope flickered in Ellysetta's heart. "Do you really think that's what it was?”

"I have no doubt" The unwavering certainty in his eyes made her consider, for the first time in her life, that perhaps the dark, dangerous thing inside her wasn't evil after all.

"But … even if that's true, it doesn't explain why all my life I've suffered those horrible seizures and nightmares.”

"That is a separate matter." Cold anger flickered in his eyes, making them glow. "If I am right, this Shadow Man of yours is a Mage, and he's been hunting you all your life. Definitely in your dreams. Night is the time when Azrahn grows strongest, and dreams are one realm where Azrahn lives in us all. I suspect your nightmares, your seizures, and probably those wandering souls, those ghosts you feel walking across your grave, are all connected, and all in some way spawned by the Mages." He stroked her hair.