CHAPTER SEVEN #2
Her fingers clenched in fists at her side.
She could feel magic rushing towards her, as if she were a vortex, pulling every bit of energy into herself, feeding off it, growing stronger.
The Mages tried to call their magic, but she drew it out of them and poured it into herself.
She saw their eyes widen and realized they were afraid, and that made her laugh with savage joy.
The fury inside her roared for release, for justice, for blood. Her mind shot out across the battlefield, throughout Kreppes, finding every Eld, every Feraz, every host of Darkness. And she seized them by the throats with invisible hands, lifting them up off the ground, dangling them in the air.
She lifted her shaking fists. The bodies hanging in the air began to twitch and shake.
Gurgling noises escaped from throats as the convulsions grew stronger.
Terrified eyes bulged and rolled in purpling faces.
Billowing clouds of red mist filled the air as hearts exploded from Eld chests and burst into flame.
“Ellysetta!”
The sound of Rain’s voice snapped her out of the strange furor that gripped her. A loud crack—the sound of thousands of necks breaking in unison—sounded across the strangely silent battlefield. Then came the thuds as the corpses fell from the air.
Ellysetta turned to her shei’tan. “Rain, I—” Her voice broke off as her knees buckled. All the energy she’d gathered left her in a whoosh, and darkness filled the vacuum left behind. Senseless, she toppled into his arms.
2nd day of Seledos
The sun shone down upon Kreppes. Its golden light illuminated the devastation of the night’s brutal battle.
Swords, which Ellysetta had always found such elegant weapons when displayed in the Cha Baruk, were in reality little more than butchers’ cleavers.
Severed limbs scattered the field. Hands.
Feet. Heads. Bodies sliced open like haunches of beef.
She’d never seen so much blood. The field was soaked in it.
Alongside the dead killed by the enemy and by the ensorcelled allies lay the scattered remains of all those she had slaughtered.
“Come away, Ellysetta,” Rain said. “It’s time to Fire the field.”
“Nei,” she said. “I will watch.” She wasn’t just a shei’dalin.
She was a Tairen Soul. War, and its ugly consequences, was her purview now.
She could not let Rain and her quintet continue to shelter her, no matter how much they wished to.
She was, after all, responsible for hundreds of the bodies lying on the battlefield.
Her gaze skimmed the edges of the battlefield, pausing at the sight of Cannevar Barrial standing beside the empty bier where the bodies of his three sons, Parsis, Severn, and Luce had been sent back to the elements.
Deep lines etched Cann’s graven face and threads of white now streaked his dark hair.
He had aged decades in a single night. Four of Cann’s five children had perished in the span of a week.
Almost his entire family gone. Just like that.
Worse, Cann suspected his son Severn had died by Cann’s own hand when the Feraz magic had consumed him.
Ellysetta had tried to offer what peace she could, but nothing she said or did helped him. Cann was a hollow shell, an automaton driven by a single, searing flame that burned in his dead eyes: the need for vengeance.
She dragged her gaze away from Cann and the pain she could not heal and tried to distance herself from her emotions, like most of the warriors had done.
“Has anyone sent word to Prince Dorian and the queen?” she asked, as the Fire masters walked out among the dead.
Rain nodded. “Bel sent a Spirit weave a few chimes ago.”
The Fire masters summoned their magic, gathering the bright orange weaves of their Fire, then spilling it out upon the ground.
The Fire burned bright and hot, consuming the bodies of the slain, but there was so much sel’dor on the field that their Fire did not consume everything.
When they were done, the bones of the dead remained, not scorched by the Fire but bleached white, as if by the Great Sun.
Ellysetta’s mouth went dry. Feeling dazed, she stepped away from Rain and walked slowly onto the Fire-cleansed battlefield.
She stood there, a shei’dalin draped in scarlet, standing in a bleached white field of bones, the remains of thousands of slain, most of whom had died either by her hand or because she’d not been quick enough to find the cure to the Feraz potion.
Her dream had come true.
Celieria ~ Celieria City
“Noooooo!”
The scream ripped through the marbled halls of Celieria’s royal palace, punctuated by a series of shattering crashes and sobbing wails.
Courtiers stopped in their tracks, gossiping tongues frozen midwag.
They turned towards the queen’s apartments for a single, hushed moment, then the whispering recommenced, setting the palace hallways abuzz.
“It’s true. It must be true. The king is dead.”
In her chambers, Annoura swept her arms across another elegant desk, sending crystal candle lamps, books, and statuary crashing to the floor.
She shrieked in wild, mad grief and flung herself at her bed hangings, snatching great handfuls of sumptuous fabric and ripping it free of its mooring hooks.
Plaster rained down upon her and the puddles of velvet she threw to the floor.
“Your Majesty, calm yourself!” pleaded the minister who had brought her the news of Dorian’s death. “Your Majesty, please. You’ll make yourself ill. Think of the child!”
“Get out! Get out!” She grabbed part of the broken vase from the floor and heaved it at him, narrowly missing his head.
One of the delicate, carved chairs from her vanity followed the first missile.
The minister dove out of the way a split second before the chair crashed against the wall where he’d been standing and broke into splinters.
“I’ll fetch Lord Hewen,” he quavered, and pelted out the door.
With the minister gone, Annoura spun on the Ladies-in-Waiting who were huddled in the corner of the room, some weeping, some gaping in shock at their queen’s utter loss of control.
“You too!” she shrieked. “All of you, get out! Get out, damn you!” She grabbed the broken candle-lamp stand from the bedside and advanced upon them, jabbing and swinging the lamp stand like a halberd.
Squealing, the ladies fled. An antique porcelain teapot exploded across the gilded door as it closed behind them, drenching the wood, walls, and plush carpet near the threshold with steaming tea and filling the room with the scent of jasmine.
Annoura went through her apartment like a cyclone of destructive grief, shrieking Dorian’s name, smashing and rending everything she touched.
She ripped pages from books, shattered perfume bottles, tore curtains from windows, smashed mirrors, and slashed paintings.
Not a single moveable or breakable object escaped her fury of grief.
When there was nothing left to destroy, nothing more whole than the shattered pieces of her heart, she curled in the ruins of her destroyed bed and wept.
Ser Vale hurried down a servants’ stairway to the under-palace, where an entire invisible city worked industriously to keep the palace operating smoothly and Their Majesties’ courtiers well served and sated.
Lord Hewen, the royal physician, had been in to see the queen.
Vale’s informants told him she was sleeping fitfully.
There were no obvious signs of distress with the child, though Lord Hewen had not performed more than a cursory visual examination for fear of waking the queen.
The ministers wouldn’t even allow a single servant in to tidy the mess Annoura had made of her apartments for the same reason.
Vale was perhaps the only person in the court for whom the news of the king’s death was neither surprising nor unwelcome. He expected similar news to arrive any day from Great Bay, and once it did, Vale’s star in the Celierian court would go sharply on the rise.
It was time to tie up loose ends.
Celieria ~ Kreppes
5th day of Seledos
“I’m worried, Rain.”
Ellysetta paced the floor of her room in Kreppes Castle. Ever since she’d stood on the Fired battlefield outside Kreppes and realized that one of her dreams had come true, fear had been a constant companion, eating away at her peace of mind, tormenting her as fiercely as any nightmare ever had.
She’d kept the fear to herself these last days.
Rain had been so busy. He and Lord Barrial had spent most of their time scouting Great Lord Sebourne’s lands in search of Mages, and at Gaelen’s suggestion, Cann had summoned his dahl’reisen friends and asked them to check all the remaining Sebourne inhabitants for Mage Marks.
In the meantime, armies from the surrounding border estates were sending troops to secure the lands until the new King Dorian could decide what to do with them.
But Moreland was secure now, and Rain was back. Ellysetta couldn’t keep quiet any longer.
“I’m worried that if that dream came true, some of my others might, too.” Like the dream she’d had last month about Rain dying by Ellysetta’s hand while Mage-claimed Lillis and Lorelle danced in a shower of his blood. “I’m worried about all those people I killed and how I felt when I killed them.”
Ellysetta dragged her palms over her face and eyes, as if that simple gesture could shut out the world. But shutting out the world—pretending it wasn’t there—never solved anything. If she’d learned nothing else, she’d learned that. Hiding from the monsters only made them stronger.
“Hawksheart said I was the double-edged sword. He warned you that I have just as much capacity for evil as I do for good. I believe him, Rain. And I’m so afraid—so terribly frightened—that the evil is winning.”
“Shei’tani…”