Gaelen vel Serranis paused just inside the lower bailey and let his gaze sweep across the restored estate. “Impressive.”
The sounds of industry filled the air as on every level of the city-fortress Fey toiled in the midmorning sun. All Fey with enough command of Earth to make themselves useful were once again busy replacing the remaining Spirit weave buildings with real mortar and stone, while Air masters assisted in shuttling loads of blocks and wood, and Fire masters forged metal for gates, door braces, and weaponry to aid in the defense of the city.
“Greetings, Uncle. You’ve been gone so long, I was beginning to think a lyrant made a meal of you.” Kieran made a tsking sound and shook his head. “Ah, well, hope springs eternal.”
Gaelen narrowed ice blue eyes at his sister Marissya’s son. “Still full of sass, puppy? Clearly, vel Jelani isn’t working you hard enough if you still have breath to jabber.”
“Ha. Where’ve you been?”
Gaelen reached out to ruffle the younger Fey’s head, a deliberately patronizing gesture that made Kieran scowl and jerk away. “Not your business, youngling.” It was Gaelen’s turn to grin, and he took pleasure in it. “Where is the Tairen Soul?”
When Kieran just glared and pressed his lips closed, Kiel rolled his eyes and answered in his stead. “On the third level with Lord Teleos, finishing what he can before he and the Feyreisa depart.”
“And the Feyreisa?”
“On the upper level, planting a memory garden for her mother with Marissya and the twins.”
Gaelen nodded, then glanced at Kieran and furrowed his brows. “What’s this mess?” He reached out to straighten the leather Fey’cha belts crisscrossing Kieran’s chest. “You call yourself a warrior? Sloppy, vel Solande. Very sloppy.”
Scowling, Kieran looked down to see what his uncle was talking about. The next thing he knew, he was flat on his back with his own Fey’cha pressed against his neck, and death was glaring down at him from the eyes of the man who’d little more than a week ago been the most dreaded and feared dahl’reisen who ever lived.
“Very sloppy indeed,” Gaelen repeated softly, his tone a cold wind, his eyes lethal shards of purest ice. “Are you so eager to die?”
Kieran froze. Part of him was sure this was yet another of Gaelen’s humiliatingly effective demonstrations of how little the current generation of Fey knew of true sword mastery. Vel Serranis had pulled one of the black-handled blades from Kieran’s chest straps rather than a lethal, poisoned red Fey’cha.
Another part of Kieran feared that maybe this wasn’t a lesson after all.
“Answer me, puppy,” Gaelen snapped. “Are you so eager to die?”
“Are you?” Kiel growled with low menace.
That was when Kieran noticed the Water master leaning over Gaelen, two red Fey’cha pressed against Gaelen’s neck and belly.
Gaelen spat out an oath, and the knife pressing against Kieran’s windpipe eased back. When Kiel’s blades withdrew as well, Gaelen rolled left, sprang to his feet, and glared at them both. “The Mages are at work in the north. A warrior has disappeared for days on end, and you do not know where he’s been. Yet you welcome him without suspicion? You stand there like a dull-witted fool while he strips you of your own blade and threatens you with it? I ask you again, are you so eager to die?”
He expanded his disparaging gaze to include Kiel and the dozen glowering Fey standing outside the blocking weave he’d woven when he’d lunged for Kieran. “And that goes for all of you as well. Not one of you even cleared steel from scabbard before I had a blade at your brother’s throat. Vel Tomar, at least, has tolerably swift reflexes…and good instincts.” The last he added with grudging approval. He nodded at the deadly red-hilted Fey’cha still gripped in each of Kiel’s hands. “Red is the right choice when you suspect the threat may be real.”
Gaelen dispersed his final shield, and the surrounding Fey muttered angrily and sheathed their weapons.
“That’s a good way to get yourself killed, vel Serranis,” someone called out.
“By you lot?” Gaelen scoffed. “Not flaming likely. I’d have to be sel’dor pierced, bound, and blinded before you had the advantage. Are you the best the Fading Lands can produce? Gods save us all.” Gaelen shook his head in disgust. “What is the Tairen Soul thinking to let his mate stay so long outside the Faering Mists with naught to keep her safe but a pack of untrained infants scarce weaned from the breast?”
Kieran slapped the dust off his leathers and, scowling, caught the black Fey’cha Gaelen tossed back to him. “He was thinking to protect her family on their journey to their new home—and to give the Feyreisa as much time with them as he could before she passes through the Mists. Our scouts have been securing our path five miles in every direction. And, for your information, there have been no attacks—nor any sign of danger.”
“Have there not? How lucky for you.”
The sarcasm rubbed Kieran the wrong way. “Is this how you honor your oath to the Feyreisa?” he snapped. “‘Learn to get along,’ she said, yet here you are again, taunting and attacking us. After she told you to stop.”
Gaelen’s mouth opened…then shut. His eyes narrowed, and he bowed his head to acknowledge the point scored. “Sieks’ta, kem’jita’nos. You are right. She would not be pleased.” His gaze became pointed. “That you started it is no excuse.”
Kieran’s face froze in midsmirk.
Kiel coughed into his hand. “He’s got you there, Kieran,” he muttered, which earned him a frigid glare from his friend. “Well, you did,” he said, then turned to Gaelen. “Since you find our warrior skills so lacking, perhaps you could help us improve them?”
Several of the other Fey stiffened in outrage. “Are you asking me to be your chatok?” A mocking lift of one black brow accompanied the question.
Kieran snorted, thinking Kiel was making a joke. Only warriors of the greatest skill and most unbesmirched honor became chatok, highly regarded mentors of warriors. Gaelen vel Serranis, the rebel warrior who’d willingly thrown himself down the Dark Path to avenge his twin sister Marikah’s murder, was the last Fey who would ever qualify for such an esteemed position.
Kiel wasn’t joking. “We lost too many masters in the Wars, and of those who survived, the greatest and most experienced gave their lives to build the Mists. War will soon be upon us again, and we cannot afford to be ill-prepared. You have skills we all need.” The Water master shrugged, the gesture a graceful ripple. “So, aiyah, Gaelen, I am asking you to be my chatok for whatever levels of the Cha Baruk you think I have not truly mastered. Will you grant me this honor?”
Gaelen was openly taken aback. “That was sarcasm, vel Tomar, not a serious offer. I have been dahl’reisen. I chose the Shadowed Path. I walked its bitter trails for a thousand years rather than ending my life in honor, as a worthy Fey would have done.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that you have skills we all need. Even the Feyreisa advised us to learn from you.”
“So she did.” Gaelen’s lips pressed tight together. “And as I promised her, I will teach you what I know, but only as a brother Fey. I will not dishonor the chatok who mentored me by pretending I have the right to stand among their honored company.”
“Then I will accept your instruction, and I thank you for your willingness to share your knowledge and warrior’s skills with me.” Kiel bowed smoothly, his waist-length, blond hair spilling forward like gleaming falls of sunlight.
Gaelen was silent for a moment, his black brows drawn slightly together as he regarded the other man. “You are surprising, vel Tomar. And I thought the world held no more surprises for me.”
Kiel smiled, his eyes as blue and guileless as a calm sea. “I am a Water master, Gaelen. There is always much more to us than shows on the surface.”
Gaelen laughed. “That I will grant you.” He glanced at Kieran. “And you, puppy, are clearly an Earth master. Head hard as a rock. Will stubborn as stone. And so resistant to change, it will take an ea
rthquake to move you once you’ve settled into place. Just like your father.” When Kieran scowled, Gaelen grinned. “Ah, the Feyreisa will have to forgive me. Pricking that pride of yours is too much fun to give up altogether.”
Kieran snarled.
Gaelen just laughed again and glanced at Kiel. “Where’s vel Jelani?”
Kiel pointed towards a small copse of white-trunked, golden-leafed Shimmering Lady trees on the uppermost level. “Up there, with the Feyreisa and her sisters.”
“Beylah vo, vel Tomar.”
“Sha vel’mei,” Kiel replied as the infamous older warrior raced off towards the shimmering trees.
Kieran punched Kiel in the arm. Hard. “Ow!” Kiel rubbed his biceps. “What was that for?”
“‘Be my chatok’?” Kieran exclaimed. “‘Teach me what you know’? Tairen’s scorching fire! What the Seven jaffing Hells are you thinking? You’re my blade brother, and you’re taking sides with the enemy?”
Kiel glanced at Gaelen’s retreating form, then back at Kieran. “He’s your uncle, not the enemy. Besides, the Feyreisa told us to learn from him.”
“He’s a dahl’reisen.”
“Former dahl’reisen,” Kiel corrected.
“Where do you think he’s been this past week? Praying in the Bright Lord’s church? He’s been with them, the ones who walk the Shadowed Path.”
Kiel’s brows rose over eyes as deep and blue as the Lysande Ocean. “What difference does it make if he has? He is lu’tan to the Feyreisa. In life and in death, he is bloodsworn to protect her.”
“You’re too trusting, Kiel.”
Kiel’s blond brows shot up. “Me? I wasn’t the one who stood there while he stripped my blade and used it against me.”
Kieran’s back teeth ground together. “He’s insufferable.”
“Admit it,” Kiel said, “insufferable may be exactly what some of the masters at the Academy need to shake them up and challenge their methods, to get them thinking about new ways to train our warriors. And,” he added with a smirk and a sidelong glance, “exactly what some rock-headed Earth masters I know might need as well.”
“Get scorched.”
Near the copse of Shimmering Lady trees that overlooked the Garreval, Marissya, Ellysetta, and the twins planted a freshly tilled flower bed with the rosebushes and flowers Lauriana Baristani had loved most. Rain’s task at the Lake of Glass had given Ellysetta the idea of creating a small memorial garden: a little something of Mama to leave behind for Papa and the twins, here where Papa could sit and look out over Celieria while the twins played Stones on the lawn nearby.
Ellysetta hummed under her breath as she dug her spade into rich, dark soil and made a hole to receive the last of the fragrant pink Heartsease Lorelle was waiting to deposit. Beside her, Marissya patted into place the last of Love’s Promise, the exquisitely perfumed red rose that had been Mama’s favorite.
Ellie sat back on her heels to survey the work. “I think we’re ready for the statue,” she told Bel as the twins picked up two full watering pots and enthusiastically irrigated the new plantings. “Gently, kitlings,” she advised as mud splattered on their dresses. The two looked up innocently, and she bit her lip to keep from laughing at the thick layers of dirt smeared across their small faces. Lillis and Lorelle had yet to discover the gardener’s art of brushing back wayward strands of hair with a forearm rather than soil-begrimed hands. “All right, that’s water enough. Come away, girls, and let Bel set the statue.”
The twins stepped back from the flower bed, and Bel hefted the heavy white marble statue of a winged Lightmaiden and set it down with a grunt and a thunk at the center of the semicircular garden. Though Ellysetta had allowed Kieran to carve the marble statue using Earth weaves, she had insisted that all other preparations for the garden be done entirely by hand, as her mother would have wanted.
“What do you think, girls?” Ellysetta asked as they all stood back to regard their accomplishment. A brilliant semicircle of pink and red roses hugged the slender white trunks of the Shimmering Lady trees, and a colorful selection of fragrant blossoms and herbs filled the ground around the statue. The base of the statue was inscribed with Lauriana’s name and her favorite verse from the Book of Light: “May the Light always shine on your path and shelter you from harm.”
“It’s beautiful, Ellie.” Lillis and Lorelle sighed. “Papa will love it.”
“I think so, too.”
“I think vel Jelani set the statue crooked,” a male voice declared. “You should make him redo it.”
“Gaelen!” Marissya turned with a happy smile and rushed to fling her arms around her brother. “You’re back.” When she released him, she turned to the garden with a frown.
“Do you really think the statue is crooked?”
He smiled with a tenderness reserved exclusively for his only living sister. “Nei, ajiana. I was teasing. I thought it might be fun to see vel Jelani heave the thing about some more.”
Bel gave the former dahl’reisen a baleful cobalt glare while Marissya only laughed, hugged him again, and declared, “Meiruvelei, kem’jeto. Welcome back, my brother. I’ve missed you.”
“I’m glad you have returned to us, Gaelen.” Ellysetta reached out to take Gaelen’s hands in greeting. “How are Selianne’s children?” He had left Celieria City with her best friend’s orphaned babies in his care, promising to take them someplace where they would be safe from the Mage Mark placed upon them.
“Safe and well and with those who will love them as you requested, kem’falla,” he answered with a bow. When he straightened, he frowned. “But I am not pleased to find you still here, outside the protection of the Fading Lands. Your mate is unwise.”
“We leave in three bells, as soon as he and Lord Teleos have finished their discussions.”
“You should not even be here. If Rain had flown you as swiftly as he could, you would already be five days past the Faering Mists.”
“Setah.” She held up a hand. “Do not scold.” She reached out to pull her twin sisters close and drop kisses on their mink brown curls. “Run fetch Papa, girls. Let’s show him Mama’s garden.” When they were gone, she told Gaelen, “The delay was on my account, because Rain knew I could not bear to be parted from my family so soon after Mama’s death.”
“The reason doesn’t matter. You should be behind the Mists. Safe. And so should Marissya.” He ran frustrated hands through sheaves of straight black hair. “I thought vel’En Daris had more sense than to keep you here in Celieria.”
“I’m fine, Gaelen,” she insisted. “Nothing has—”
The seizure came without warning.
One moment she was about to chide Gaelen for his pessimism; the next she was writhing on the flagstones, shrieking in agony.
The pain was instant and all-encompassing and hideously familiar. Her spine arched, spasming in red-hot pain as her hands clawed at the rock beneath her. The tendons in her body stood out like ropes of steel, and her muscles clenched so tightly they became torturous, burning bricks beneath her skin.
«Rain! Dax! Ti’Feyreisa! Fey! Ti’Feyreisa!» Dimly, she heard Marissya send the frantic cry for help racing across the common Fey path.
Ellysetta saw her reach out, her shei’dalin hands already glowing bright with healing weaves of gold-tinted Earth and Spirit. She heard Gaelen shout a warning, but it was too late.
The moment Marissya laid hands upon Ellysetta, agony enveloped her. It didn’t rush out of Ellysetta. It simply expanded to sink its venomous fangs into Marissya, filling the shei’dalin’s empathic senses with savage, brutal, shattering pain, as if every bone in her body were splintering, every muscle shredding, and her soul were burning in the fires of the Seven Hells. Marissya screamed and fell back, yanking her hands off Ellysetta’s body in instinctive self-preservation.
“Marissya!” Gaelen grabbed her by the arms and all but flung her across the walk into the middle of the adjacent lawn, well out of reach of whatever held Ellysetta in its grip. r />
“Light save me.” Marissya wept, her voice shaking as helplessly as her limbs. She raised horrified eyes to her brother.
“Dear gods, Gaelen, I’ve never felt anything like that. Never.” She had served on the bloodiest battlefields of the Mage Wars, Truthspoken the souls of mortals who had perpetrated acts so vile they’d made her ill to touch them, yet never felt the kind of soul-deep agony now racking Ellysetta’s slender form.
“Bel, take Marissya to safety,” Gaelen commanded. “I will tend the Feyreisa.”
“Nei, I am her lu’tan. I will not leave her any more than you.” Bel dropped to his knees beside Ellysetta’s rigid body, careful not to touch her as he sent a questing filament of Spirit into her mind. He backed out again just as quickly when the wild, enraged power of her tairen sensed his intrusion and responded with a scream of fury and a flare of searing magic. Whatever was attacking her, he couldn’t get close enough to examine it. «Rain? Where are you?»
“I am here.” Rain shot over the edge of the terrace and slid down a column of Air just as Ellysetta’s body flung itself into a fresh series of violent convulsions. Gaelen and Bel both leapt to catch and hold him when he lunged for Ellysetta.
“Do not,” Bel hissed. “You are truemates. Touch her, and even without a completed bond, you’ll feel it as strongly as she does.”
A tortured scream tore from her throat, ending on a groaning rattle as the convulsions worsened, then blessedly tapered off. Ellysetta collapsed against the flagstones, trembling and gasping for air. Rain broke free of Bel’s and Gaelen’s grips and dropped to his knees beside her, scooping her limp body up in his arms. “Shei’tani.”
Her head rolled back in the crook of his arm. Her eyes opened, the pupils lengthened to catlike slits, the green irises radiant and glowing. “Rain.” Her hand clutched his arm and then began to shove at him in frantic desperation as she tried to wriggle free of his hold. “Let me go. Quickly, before it starts again.”