Queen of Song and Souls (44 page)

Rain's grip tightened around Ellysetta's fingers. "Ellysetta?"

"She was his first success, though she did not come from his experimental bloodlines."

Tension fell over the room. Unguarded thoughts—mostly from Rain but from the others as well—whispered across her mind. Concern edging on fear pressed against her as the warriors digested Hawksheart's revelations. Rain and Ellysetta were the most powerful creatures they'd ever known. If the Mage had created something even stronger than they...

"There are others?" Tajik growled. "Like the Feyreisa?"

"There are others," Hawksheart confirmed. "But none yet who have successfully come into their full power."

"He must be stopped," Bel said.

"Bayas,"
Hawksheart agreed. "He must."

"And yet you and the Elves will not help us," Rain said in a hard, flat voice,

"We cannot."

"Convenient."

The Elf king's eyes flashed. "It is anything but." A muscle jumped in his jaw. "To know a future that you cannot change—that you must merely stand by and witness—to know what must happen and which people you love must suffer or die, and know you must not—you cannot—do anything to stop it... that is neither convenient nor easy, Worldscorcher. Foreknowledge is the gods' most excruciating form of torture."

"So you say," Gil sneered, "but which of your own loved ones have suffered lately?"

Hawksheart's expression became a mask that seemed carved of smooth, impermeable Sentinel wood; golden, silent, and emotionless. Except for the burning green fire of his eyes. His hand swung gracefully out, and the elegant, tapered fingers gestured. "These."

In the shimmering veil, a new image took shape. A pair of lovers cast in shadow, their skin glowing faintly silver in the darkness. The man tall, broad shouldered, the woman slender and elegant beside him, her hair a mass of gleaming curls that spilled down her back in fiery waves as his powerful arms clutched her tight. Ellysetta's heart skipped a beat as she recognized the couple from her dreams that night by the shores of the Bay of Flames.

Her parents. The tormented souls who had given her birth.

Darkness slashed across the image, and a new, grim picture of the man who was Ellysetta's sire replaced the other. He hung limp and bloodied from thick black metal chains. His head drooped on his chest, and the matted tangle of his black hair draped around his face like a ragged shroud...Slowly, he looked up, paralyzing her with the blazing green gaze that filled her vision .. . pupil-less, radiant green wells of power ... tairen's eyes.

Rain and every member of Ellysetta's quintet went still, and silence fell over the chamber. The only sound came from the low chant of Elvish words that seemed to rise from the wood of the chamber walls, as if the Grandfather Sentinel tree were alive and speaking in the low murmur of a host of voices.

To the right of the man, another scene took shape. Within a bright, well-lit room, the flame-haired Fey woman lay strapped to a birthing table. She was screaming, her beautiful face creased in anguish as a woman hurried away with a small, swaddled babe. Sensing his mate's grief, the chained man roared and lunged against his bonds in helpless fury.

"Blessed gods." Gaelen's stunned voice—barely more than a whisper—was the first to break the silence.

"But they died," Bel protested. "They were lost in the Wars."

"You know them?" Ellysetta flicked her quintet a quick glance and saw the stunned recognition on their faces. "Who are they?" She turned back to the images of the man and the woman—strangers, yet somehow so familiar—who had given her birth.

"The man is Shannisorran v’En Celay." Gaelen's voice was hoarse. "The fiercest warrior ever to walk the Fading Lands. He was my chatok in the Cha Baruk. The woman is his truemate. Her name is—"

"Elfeya." Tajik sank to his knees. His nails scored bloody lines down his face. "My sister." His hands, his face, his entire body was shaking, and power gathered around him in swirling waves. "The Mage has her? The Mage has my sister?" Slowly, fists clenched, he faced the Elf king. His eyes had turned to blue flame, and magic flared about him in a flash of near-blinding green light. The ground rumbled and shifted as Tajik's Earth magic shook the great Grandfather Sentinel to its deepest roots. "You knew," he snarled.

"Bayas,"
Hawksheart acknowledged without flinching. "I knew."

Tajik snatched two red Fey'cha from their sheaths and whipped his hands back to throw.

"Tajik,
nei!"
Gil cried.

Before the Fey'cha could leave Tajik's hand, Gaelen drove a fist into the side of the Fire master's head. The red-haired Fey dropped like a stone.

Ellysetta cried out and ran to kneel at Tajik's side. After checking to verify that the warrior was unharmed, merely unconscious, she cast Gaelen a reproachful look.

The former dahl'reisen met the gazes of his shocked friends with a grim, set jaw and wintry eyes. He snapped a hard glance at Rain. "We should take his memory before he wakes."

"Take his memory?" Bel protested. "This is his sister you're talking about. He has a right to know—"

'To know what?" Gaelen whirled on Bel. "That she's been a captive of the High Mage of Eld for the last thousand years? Tortured, raped, forced to endure and serve gods only know what sort of evil?" His lips curled back, "I know what a powerful Fey can do to avenge his sister. Marikah at least died quick. If she had suffered the same fate as Elfeya, and I knew of it, I would have laid such waste to Eld, not even the gods themselves would have been able to redeem my soul. Dahl'reisen? Bah! I would willingly have become the blackest soul of the Mharog and gorged myself on blood and death."

Violence raged just below Gaelen's surface—not hot, as Rain's Rage was, but deadly, icily cold. Only his will kept the power of that Rage from spilling over in a freezing wave.

"Tajik is almost as powerful as I am. If he wakes remembering that the Eld took his sister, all the magic in the world won't keep him from trying to reach her—or seeking his vengeance for what's been done to her. I may not like vel Sibboreh very much, but I've no mind to see him walk the path I tread. Do you?" He looked around. No one could hold his challenging gaze without looking away. "Take his memory. One day, he will thank you for it."

"He is right," Gil said.

Rain's jaw tightened.
"Aiyah."

"
Anio
."

Five warriors whipped their heads around and bared their teeth in a snarl at the Elf king. "Stay out of this, Elf," Rain bit out. "You have done enough."

"This is his verse in the Dance," Hawksheart insisted. "Elfeya is my kin, and more beloved to me than you know, but what has happened—no matter how brutal—was her verse. Her captivity had to happen just as it did. And her brother must have that knowledge."

"Scorch your flaming Dance," Gaelen growled, "For a thousand years, you've watched the torment of your own cousin and done nothing to help her—even knowing her
shei'dalin
powers made her helpless to defend herself. There are not words enough to describe the contempt I feel for you."

Hawksheart lifted his chin. "I understand your feelings."

"Well, I don't understand yours." Bel's voice was colder than Ellysetta had heard it in months. He sounded like the
rasa
he'd been when she'd first met him; dead to emotion, perfectly capable of murdering without a qualm. Perfectly capable of slaughtering Hawksheart right now. "How could any man who claims to be dedicated to Light willingly surrender his own cousin to the Dark as you have done? You let her be taken, and did nothing to save her."

"You think I am a monster, but what happened to Elfeya had to happen."

"Why!"
Gil snarled.

Hawksheart clamped his lips shut and did not answer. His piercing eyes turned to mirrored stones, hard and aloof. But one betraying flicker in Ellysetta's direction—one fleeting glimpse of searing, all-revealing agony—made her heart rise up in her throat.

And then she knew. She knew why Elfeya and Shannisorran v'En Celay—her birth parents—had been left to suffer the Mage's torments for the last thousand years. She knew why Hawksheart had stood by and let it happen, though he'd internalized his cousin's torment and made it his own, suffering each day as if he were the one imprisoned.

"Because of me," Ellysetta whispered.

"What?" Rain turned to her, outraged. "Do not even suggest such a thing. You have nothing to do with this. You weren't even born!"

"And if my parents had not been captured by the High Mage of Eld, I never would have been. At least, not as I am. Not as the Dance needed me to be." Her voice was soft but sure, her unwavering gaze pinned on Lord Galad's face. The sorrowed closing of his brilliant, haunted eyes confirmed her suspicions. "I wouldn't have been a Tairen Soul. I wouldn't have been your truemate."

Rain drew back in horror and muttered an instinctive
shei'dalin's
denial. "Of course you would have. Our bond was created by the gods, not some Elden Mage."

"But without the Mage, I wouldn't have a tairen's soul tied to mine. That part of my soul wouldn't exist, and that part of your soul would have no mate." She glanced back at Hawksheart.

“What will I do that is so important to the Dance that so many people had to suffer so much?"

"I've already told you. You were born to decide the fate of this world—to secure it for the Light or plunge it into eternal Darkness."

"But if I hadn't been born, I wouldn't be a threat. You could have stopped my birth simply by preventing Shan and Elfeya from being captured and tormented for a thousand years. Why didn't you end it then?"

"You don't understand. You are not the threat, Ellysetta Erimea. You are the gift the gods sent to combat it. A powerful Light born of terrible Darkness. You are the sword that cuts both ways, forged in a crucible of pain and suffering, hammered on the anvil of dark magic, and tempered by the love and sacrifice of both mortal and immortal parents, of your
shei'tan,
and every child of Light offered the chance to serve and protect you. If they prove worthy, you will not fall to Darkness. That is the test of this world—and specifically of the Fey—and that is the price the gods demanded for your birth,"

Hawksheart met the hostile gazes of the Fey warriors gathered protectively around her. His eyes burned like green flames in the graven image of his face. "You think I am a monster to have allowed this. Perhaps I am, but I assure you it was no easy thing to stand by and watch one I love suffer as Elfeya has. To know that if I tried to help her, I would condemn the world to Darkness."

"Some things should never be sacrificed, no matter what the risk," Rain interjected. "If you had told us, Elf, every man, woman, and child in the Fading Lands would have fought to the death before allowing a single Fey woman to suffer at the hands of the Mages as Elfeya has done."

"That is exactly why I said nothing." Hawksheart glared at Rain. "If your truemate had never been born, there would have been no hope for this world. That was a truth I Saw plain as the Light of the Great Sun two thousand years ago. The Fey are the gods' chosen champions of Light, yet your race has been in decline much longer than you ever suspected. Ellysetta was born to save the Fey, and by saving them, to save this world."

"She has already saved us," Rain said. The tairen kitlings are hatched and half a dozen Fey women are with child for the first time in over a thousand years."

"A temporary reprieve only."

"Then what is left to do!" Ellysetta asked. "If saving the tairen and bringing fertility back to the Fey is not enough, what more must I do?"

The Elf's shapely lips compressed. "That, I do not know. No matter how deeply I look, that answer is hidden from me. Even Grandfather—if he knows—will not speak of it. I know only that the future of this world hangs in the balance, and you will tip the scales one way or the other."

In Ellysetta's arms, Tajik began to stir. Instantly solicitous, she bent over his prone form and ran a hand lightly over the bleeding tracks he'd raked in his own cheeks and the swelling lump where Gaelen had hit him. Warm healing magic spilled from her fingertips and sank into his skin, eradicating all signs of the wounds and the blow.

Tajik's eyes fluttered open, hazy at first, then sharpening to full alertness as he focused on her face. Blue as the sky and filled with wonder, those eyes gazed up at her. His hand lifted to her face, but stopped a scant fingerspan from touching her. "
Kem'jita'nessa
. My sister's daughter. How could I not have known?”

Tears gathered at the edges of Ellysetta's lashes and a smile trembled on her lips. She caught his hand and pressed a kiss into the palm before holding it against her cheek. "How are you feeling . .. Uncle?"

Tajik's blue eyes went cloudy, then cold as he rose to his feet and turned a wintry gaze on his cousin, Galad Hawksheart. "I will not rest until I see you dead. This I do swear on—"

"Parei!"
Ellysetta leapt to her feet and pressed her hand over Tajik's mouth, silencing the vow before he could complete it. "You will not swear vengeance against him. I forbid it."

Tajik gently removed himself from her grip.
"Ajiana,
you are my beloved sister's child and holder of my
lute'asheiva
bond, but this does not concern you."