CHAPTER NINE #3
Every spare moment of the workday, she now spent haunting the Mage Halls, watching the novices practice, listening to them talk amongst themselves, picking up every small scrap of information so she could teach herself to use her newfound abilities.
And each sleep shift, she brought what she learned back to the quiet dark of the umagi dens to practice.
She closed her eyes, letting the darkness envelop her.
She could hear the breathing of the other umagi.
The occasional cough and sniffle. The shifting of a body in its bunk.
She tried to silence those small noises from her mind.
From what she’d learned eavesdropping in the Mage Halls, all novice Mages learned to access their magic by first silencing their minds.
It was only there, in the darkness and the silence, that a Mage and his magic first truly connected.
Not that she wanted to be a Mage. She didn’t.
But she needed to know what Mages knew, to better defend herself and Shia’s son against them.
Most importantly, she needed to know how Mages wove their wards—and how they unwove them—because that talent was the key to all her plans.
With it, she could enter Vadim Maur’s treasure room where Lord Death’s magic crystal and weapons were stored—and with it, she could gain access to the nursery where Shia’s son and the other valuable infants of the Mage’s breeding program were kept.
Melliandra took deep, unhurried breaths, holding them, letting them out again in a slow, steady rhythm.
She breathed in through her nose, held that breath for a count of five, then exhaled through her mouth to the same count.
In through the nose and out through the mouth.
Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Slowly, as the rhythm took over, her body began to relax, the world faded away.
And there, in the darkness, she found the silence, perfect and absolute. She’d never known absolute silence until this week. It was peaceful. She’d never known that either.
Her breathing continued, slow, steady, and in the silence, she initiated the next step all novices learned.
Stretching out their senses, opening their minds to let magical receptors begin to absorb the subtleties of the world around them.
In the Mage Halls, the novices had taken turns holding an object, with each novice trying to determine what the other was holding.
“Don’t influence, just observe,” instructed one of the apprentices who’d come to help them. “Let your partner’s senses become your own. If you do it properly, he won’t even know you’re there.”
Melliandra had been practicing that skill every waking bell these last days.
What did that umagi have in his pocket? What was this umagi hiding in the corner?
What secret savory had the kitchen mistress tucked away for herself today?
She was getting very adept at peering into the brains of the umagi around her.
Yesterday, she’d had a moment where she’d seen through the eyes of the kitchen mistress—which, she discovered, was a very disorienting practice when the kitchen mistress was walking one way down a hall, and Melliandra was walking the other.
She’d even practiced on the two Mages who’d tried to get into Vadim Maur’s office that day last week.
She’d heard them talking about the High Mage, about how they’d known the Mage whose body Vadim Maur now inhabited.
They’d been talking about how that Mage—Nour—while strong, hadn’t been as strong as either of them.
There were other Mages, like them, who were growing dissatisfied with Vadim Maur, concerned that he’d lost focus, that his war against Celieria and the Fey was more about some secret personal goal than the triumph and glory of Eld.
It wasn’t until this morning, when she’d gone back to listen in on the novices practice again, that she’d heard the apprentice warning the novices not to get too bold with their attempts at eavesdropping.
“Don’t try this on a Mage, greenies,” he’d warned. “Unless you’re more powerful than he is, he’s going to know you’re there, and he won’t be pleased.”
And yet she’d tried it on those two Mages—the ones who claimed they were more powerful than the High Mage was now—and neither of them had detected her presence.
Just to be sure her success was no fluke, she’d eavesdropped on several other Mages throughout the course of the workday.
Not one of them had noticed her in their minds.
Her success gave her courage. And this time, as Melliandra stretched out her senses, she directed them in search of a specific mind, a specific pair of eyes.
It was, surprisingly, much easier than she expected, perhaps because the cool, dark path to that mind already existed inside her, forged when she was very young.
In the silence of her mind, unnoticed by her host, Melliandra looked out through the eyes of Vadim Maur.
The Faering Mists
Kieran knelt beside Lillis’s body and prayed while the shei’dalins worked frantically to save her. Behind him, Lorelle clung to her father and Kiel with desperate fear.
The shei’dalins, surrounded by a thinner mist and a golden light, had been the first of the lost party Kieran and Kiel located.
Both of the women had already healed each other’s wounds from the falling mountain, and rather than heading off blindly into the Mists, they’d decided to wait and send questing calls of Spirit out in every direction.
Kiel had stumbled across one of those Spirit threads, and the two of them followed it to its origin.
Together, the four Fey began combing the rubble in search of the Baristani family.
Many bells later, they found Lorelle and Sol, both completely covered by a fall of rocks that hid them from view.
How they’d found them, Kieran wasn’t entirely sure, but he’d followed a sudden feeling that had taken him off in the right direction.
Lorelle and Sol were both barely alive—hardly more than a few heartbeats from death, actually—and as the shei’dalins healed them, they said that someone or something in the Mists had been holding them to the Light.
It was by tracking the flickering remnants of that Light and the growing sense of urgency pulling at him like a lodestone that Kieran had found Lillis, buried under a pile of rubble, her body shattered, dying. She had been the one holding her family to the Light.
There was hardly a bone in her body left unbroken, hardly a fingerspan of skin not horribly bruised and scratched. A large tree limb had impaled her left leg. Sharp rocks had all but sliced off her right arm. Her back was broken in three places.
There was no reason she should still be alive at all—especially after feeding so much of her strength to her sister and father. And yet she was.
The shei’dalins couldn’t explain how she had survived, and Kieran didn’t care to try. He only cared that she was alive, and the shei’dalins were here to heal her, and he was with her. Nothing else mattered.
“I’m here, ajiana,” he whispered, stroking her hair. “I’m here with you. Your papa is fine. Lorelle is fine. You need to stay with us now.” Tears gathered on his lashes and dropped onto her cheek, making little paths through the layer of grime coating her skin.
Her eyes fluttered. Dazed eyes found his face. Her cracked lips parted in a faint smile. “I knew you were alive,” she whispered. “I knew you would come.”
He blinked back more tears and brushed his hand across her hair. “Always, ajiana. Whenever you need me, I’ll always find a way to reach you. No matter what.”
The Forests of Eld
Together, Rain and Ellysetta sprinted through the tall, dense trees of Eld’s old forest. Thick, soft moss, layered with fallen leaves and shed needles, carpeted the forest floor.
Undergrowth was sparse, but Rain used Earth to thicken the occasional stands of small evergreen shrubs and thin saplings to provide cover from their pursuers.
He had to use a light hand. Too much thickening of the brush, and he might as well blazon their path in sun-bright colors.
Ellysetta ran beside him, her footfalls Fey-silent despite the limp in her gait. She more than kept up his pace, but they still weren’t running even half Rain’s normal speed.
They ran for bells, stopping to rest only when their legs wouldn’t carry them another step. Rain wasn’t certain how far they had run. Forty miles. Maybe sixty. Still nowhere near close enough to expect rescue from the lu’tan.
Rain threw small obstacles behind them. Spirit weaves to confuse and mislead their pursuers: muffled voices to draw Eld attention in a different direction, a flash of Ellie’s bright hair to draw their eyes, splashes of blood leading away to the west.
Within his body, the remaining sel’dor barbs shifted continually, tearing muscle and flesh, burning, making his every weave a painful exercise. Each time the pain grew too sharp, Ellysetta touched him and stole away the worst of it.
Afternoon turned to evening. They came upon a narrow dirt road that cut a swath through the forest and very nearly stumbled into the path of an oncoming squad of Elden soldiers. Rain grabbed Ellysetta’s arm and hauled her back, and they ducked into the shadows of a small rocky outcropping.
?Do you think they saw me?? she asked.
?Nei.? He cursed softly to himself. ?But they’re definitely looking for us. See how they’re scanning the forest as they march??
One of the soldiers stopped to nail something to a tree.
?What are they doing?? Ellysetta asked.
?I don’t know.? Rain narrowed his eyes. The man had hammered what looked like a round moonstone on the tree trunk. While farther down, another soldier hung a similar stone on the opposite side of the road. ?Whatever it is, I don’t like the looks of it.?
They ducked back into a small crevice in the rocks as the soldiers drew closer.
He spun the barest hint of Spirit to veil the pair of them and make them appear to be part of the stone itself.
The weave would not hold up to close inspection, but unless the Eld stood within a few armlengths of them, it should suffice.
He held himself still, hands clenched, as the Eld approached. Rage, his old familiar friend, burned deep within him, hungering for blood and vengeance.
Ellysetta laid a hand on his face, her touch cool and calming.
Rain covered her hand with his. ?I will do nothing to endanger us, shei’tani.?
?I know you will not.? Her trust in him was simple—and absolute.
He swallowed his hatred, tamping it down as, behind them, the Eld stopped beside the rocky outcropping. Part of him—perhaps the still sane part—didn’t believe her trust was warranted, but he prayed to the gods he would not fail her.
“Here as well,” one of the soldiers announced in an authoritative voice.
There was a bit of grumbling. “The Tairen Soul himself gets shot down, and Primage Keldo has us hanging jaffing rocks on trees.”
“We all do our part, corporal. If it bothers you, perhaps you’d like to discuss it with the Primage yourself?” There was a snap to the squad leader’s voice.
“No, sergeant,” the corporal replied sullenly.
“Good. Then hang the chemar every hundred paces, as the honored Primage has ordered. If the Tairen Soul passes this way, we’ll have been the ones to set the trap.”
The squad of soldiers moved away, leaving the grumbling corporal behind to finish his task. “Perhaps you’d like to discuss it with the Primage yourself?” he sneered under his breath. “Scorching brown-nose. Bet you wear a dress and bend over any time the Primage gets a stiff one.”
From the sack at his waist, the corporal yanked out a small round stone set in what looked like some sort of pendant, then he pulled hammer and nails from another pouch.
He slapped the stone against the tree trunk at shoulder height, pinned the nail through the bale loop at the top of the stone, and swung his hammer.
His foot slipped on a pile of slick leaves, and the hammer slammed down on his thumb instead of the nail head.
“Krekk!” The white stone fell to the ground and skidded across the slick blanket of fallen leaves, down an incline. The Eld soldier loosed a stream of colorful swearing and shook his smashed thumb.
“Son of a pole-shriveling bone-hag. Miserable cherviljaffing, krekk-gobbling rultshart.” The corporal stuck his thumb in his mouth and sucked on it as he stomped after the fallen stone, which had come to rest near a small rocky outcropping.
“I’ll bet they’ve already found him. I’ll bet they’re roasting his Hells-flamed Fey changeling ass over Mage Fire right this very moment, and I’m missing out on the lot of it. ” He snatched up the fallen stone.
He stopped short, his gaze freezing on the shadowed outline of two pairs of booted feet visible within a translucent gray veil of stone. “What the… ?” He squinted and stepped closer. The boots were connected to legs and whole bodies. It looked as if two people had been entombed in the stone.
Understanding, unfortunately late, bloomed in the young man’s brain as he looked up, straight through the weak Spirit weave into Rain Tairen Soul’s glowing eyes.
The chemar dropped from the corporal’s nerveless fingers.
“Krekk.”