CHAPTER SEVEN
Powerful, brave, graceful you stand
Deadly sword bright in hand
Eternal love protecting my heart
The two of us shall never part
For all time, ke vo san
My soulmate, my life, my shie’tan
My Shei’tan, a poem by Evia v’En Herran
?Rain!? Ellysetta cried his name as his tairen song broke off, but there was no response. ?Steli! Xisanna! Perahl! Rain has been infected by the potion. You must bring him down. We cannot let him fly!?
Confirmations roared across the sky in sparkling notes of tairen song as the three great cats raced across the darkened night to bring Rain down.
“Kaiven chakor.” She spun to face her primary quintet. “Help the pride. The tairen will bring him down. You five keep him there until I can figure out how to neutralize this potion.”
When they hesitated, clearly torn by their lute’asheiva vow to guard her life above all others, she spun buffeting weaves of Air and Spirit and shoved them towards the exit.
“Stop him. Nothing is more important. Stop him, or we all die.” She filled her voice with every ounce of compulsion she could muster.
She wasn’t shy Ellie begging them to help her please.
She was their queen, holder of their lute’asheiva bonds, commanding them to serve her. “Go!” she barked. They went.
Ellysetta closed her eyes for a brief moment. Gods help them all. Then she drew a deep breath, her eyes flashed open, and she turned the full force of her concentration and determination upon the ensorcelled man strapped to her table.
“Well, my friend,” she said grimly, “like it or not, you and I are going to figure out exactly what this is and exactly how to stop it.”
Rain howled and thrashed, fire blazing, jaws snapping. His tail lashed like a whip. If he’d been a female tairen, he would have impaled someone—preferably a great many someones—on his tail spike.
Three monsters held him pinned to the ground, their bodies perched on his wings, his back, his neck. Fangs had a grip on his throat and were squeezing just enough that his vision was starting to go dim.
A company of fiendish enemies approached, led by five foul wretches with ghoulish features and long, clawed hands.
Ropes of poisonous green magic oozed from their gnarled fingertips.
Something hard wrapped around his muzzle, sealing his mouth shut so he could not flame.
A hideous miasma enveloped him in choking fog.
He struggled, fighting the monsters on his back, fighting the magic swirling around him. Fighting. Fighting.
But the magic and the press of the fangs against his throat were too much. His vision dimmed. Consciousness fled.
Ellysetta reexamined the images and sensory perceptions from Rain’s tairen speech, fixing a keen shei’dalin’s eye on every tiny detail as she went over the information again and again.
The poison got into the blood, and it burned, he’d said.
Based on the information he’d sung to her, the burning sensation was localized to start with, but spread rapidly as the blood carried the poison to every part of the victim’s body.
Whatever was in the blood, however, wasn’t something obvious. She’d already checked the test subject’s blood and found nothing. Now, with Rain’s information and sensory perceptions fresh in her mind, she reexamined her patient, looking at his blood more closely to see what she had missed.
Nearly a full bell later, she finally found it.
She had to hand it to the Feraz. When it came to potions, their expertise was impressive.
The active ingredient in the potion wasn’t a foreign substance in the blood.
It was a slight excess of a naturally occurring element that caused the body chemistry to change and, in doing so, to give off a faint but distinctive scent.
That, in and of itself, was harmless, but the potion contained a second ingredient, a chemical that interacted with the sense of smell to alter the way the brain processed sensory inputs.
Anyone exuding the faint cinnamon spice scent was perceived as a friend, but everyone lacking the scent was interpreted by the infected brain as a monster and a threat that must be killed.
Once she understood how the potion worked, Ellysetta spent another half bell figuring out the best way to undo its effects and discovered that she could spin a basic Earth weave to extract the excess chemical in the blood and a slightly more complex weave of Earth and Spirit combined to reorient the brain’s sensory-processing abilities.
She tested her solution on the Celierian strapped to her table. Within a few chimes of receiving her healing weaves, he sat up, completely cured and back to his right mind.
Ellysetta didn’t pause to celebrate or even soothe the man’s confusion. ?This is the cure,? she called on the Warrior’s Path, sending images of her weave patterns. ?Every Earth and Spirit master needs to start weaving this now.? Then she ran for the exit.
“Ellysetta!” Her lu’tan cried in alarm as she burst through the protective hundred-fold weave and onto the unshielded battlefield outside.
Inside the healing tent, behind the protection of the hundred-fold weave, the pain and torment of this battle had been muted. The moment she stepped outside those weaves, a wave of agony slammed into her empathic senses. The breath left her lungs on a shocked gasp, and she dropped to her knees.
“Bright Lord save me,” she gasped, hunching over, her arms wrapped around her belly.
She thought she knew the pain of battle, of death.
But now she realized just how much Rain and her quintet had been protecting her from.
There were scores of new dahl’reisen, and the unchecked pain of their lost souls spilled out in shrieking waves.
Men, maimed, dying in horrible pain, were screaming.
Men were burning. Their pain, their torment, their fear bombarded her senses.
She’d never really wondered what the Seventh Hell was like, but now she knew. It was like this.
And still, the battle raged.
The Earth and Spirit masters were weaving.
Allied combatants were beginning to come back to their senses.
That should have been a good thing, but their horror, their self-loathing when they realized what they’d done…
the friends they’d slaughtered. Men and Fey fell to their knees, clawing at their own eyes and faces, consumed by guilt and grief.
A powerful five-fold weave enveloped her, muting the naked suffering of the battlefield. “Kem’falla.” Her secondary quintet ringed around her. “Come back inside the healing tent.”
“Nei.” She let them help her to her feet, then shrugged them off. “Take me to Rain. I need Rain.”
Primage Soros saw the slender figure in red run out from the hundred-fold weave and fall to her knees.
He saw the Fey gather around her quickly, but instead of returning to the protection of the hundred-fold weave, all six of them began to run across the perimeter of the battlefield.
He scanned the area and saw the Tairen Soul in the distance—still lying bound and unconscious, protected by the other three tairen and five Fey.
Now was his chance.
He summoned his Mages and gave the order. The Eld and Feraz moved swiftly to block her path, while four other groups converged upon her.
As Ellysetta and her lu’tan raced across the battlefield, they passed one horrific scene after another.
The agony of shattered bodies and shattered minds battered her in endless waves.
She could feel her soul separating. Part of her was going numb.
Another part of her was writhing and screaming.
But a third part, a very scary part, was growing angry.
These were her friends, her people, her countrymen, both Fey and Celierian, and they were being slaughtered all around her. Worse, they were being manipulated by magic into slaughtering their own friends, their own countrymen, their own blade brothers. Their howls of anguish fed her anger.
Something vast and dark was bubbling inside her. She ran faster. She needed Rain beside her, his arms around her.
She didn’t see the Eld closing in. One moment, she and her lu’tan were running.
The next, her spine went icy cold, and her legs went weak.
She stumbled and fell. When she crawled back to her feet, a portal to the Well of Souls had opened to her right and left. Mages, Eld, and Feraz were pouring out.
Everything seemed to suddenly slow, as if time had grown weary. Blooms of Mage Fire exploded all around her. Sel’dor arrows pierced her lu’tan, toppling them.
Someone was shouting, “Fey ti’Feyreisa! Ti’Feyreisa!“
A sel’dor blade slashed. The Spirit master of her secondary quintet spun, blood from his severed throat splashing across her face. Her Water master’s mouth went wide. His hands reached for the place where his abdomen had been before the bubble of Mage Fire cut him in two.
“Ellysetta! Down!”
She dropped to her knees as Rowan vel Arquinas leapt over her, his hands a blur, red Fey’cha flying at incredible speed. But there were too many of them and no lu’tan left alive around her to protect his back.
Three sel’dor arrows caught him in the back. He stumbled towards the gaping Well of Souls, Fey’cha still flying from his fingertips. Mages and Eld dropped by the dozens. A fourth arrow slammed into Rowan’s shoulder, spinning him around to face her. His eyes met hers for an instant.
His mouth moved. “Ellysetta, I—“
A fifth arrow buried itself in his chest. He staggered back and toppled into the Well.
Something snapped inside her. The great, dark anger took hold. Her skin flashed hot, then cold, and she began to shake.
This was too much. Too many friends dead. Too much grief and pain and suffering. No more. Not here. Not this day.