Chapter Five #3
He had promised Elfeya and her mate torment beyond imagining for their part in hiding the truth of their daughter’s magic
from him and for trying to help her escape the trap he’d set for her during the Bride’s Blessing. True to Vadim’s word, Lord
v’En Celay now lay in the depths of Boura Fell, little more than a bloody heap of shredded skin and shattered bones.
Elfeya’s punishment wasn’t quite as bloody—he needed her body whole enough to work the healing magic that was so useful to
him—but torture wore a million faces. He sat on the edge of the bed and cupped the soft globe of her naked breast. One long,
cold thumb brushed across the still-raw bruises and lash marks marring the perfection of her luminous skin.
She flinched and glared at him, her golden eyes afire with loathing.
“Your mate has had a very bad day,” he murmured.
“Much worse than your last night.” His thumb dug into her soft flesh, his sharpened nail drawing a thin line of sweet, scarlet blood.
“His tomorrow will be much worse yet if you don’t heal me very well tonight.
Do you understand?” He bent his head and licked the blood from her skin, savoring the tingle of powerful magic that infused it.
“I can be quite cruel to pets who displease me.”
Several floors below the Fey shei’dalin’s cell, two stocky umagi hauled away the bloody remains of the last pet to displease one of the Mages of Boura Fell. A ragged young girl with a mop
of tangled black hair held the refuse cart steady as her companions dumped the limp body inside. Shattered limbs flopped like
wilted flower stalks, the man’s bones little more than pulverized dust within a bloody bag of flesh.
“Well, he didn’t last long,” one of the men muttered.
“Most don’t once Goram gets his hammer out.” The second man jerked his chin toward a door at the shadowy end of the corridor.
“’Cept for him. Never seen any creature, mortal or magic, survive what he does. It’s like Death himself fears to claim him.”
The first man shuddered. “That’s what they called him, you know. Desriel, Lord Death. Deadliest Fey ever to walk the earth . . .
killed near as many as the Tairen Soul did when he scorched the world . . . only Lord Death did it with nothing but blades
and magic. Even Master Maur fears him—I thought he was going to wet himself two weeks ago when all the sel’dor that one wears came off.”
“Watch your tongue, Durm. There’s ears here.” The second man jerked his head towards the girl holding the cart. He cuffed
her on the side of the head. “Go on. Dump this lump of flesh in the pit. Master Maur’s pets are hungry. Then get up to the
next level. There’s more work for you there.”
Cold silver eyes regarded him from beneath strings of tangled hair. Without a word, the girl pushed the heavy cart towards
the refuse chute at the opposite end of the corridor. The body didn’t have far to fall when she dumped it. This was the lowest
level of Boura Fell, and the pit was only a few manlengths deeper.
The boneless body hit the bottom of the pit with a dull thud. Mad barking, snarling, and the scrabble of racing feet followed instantly.
The girl peered into the chute, silver eyes observing with cold interest as the pack of leather-hided, wolflike darrokken ripped into their newest feast. One of the beasts glanced up, its red eyes glowing in the darkness of the pit, jagged yellow
fangs bared. It saw her peering down and raced for the walls of the pit, leaping and snapping barely a manlength below her.
The girl drew back quickly, covering her mouth as the foul reek of the darrokken wafted up.
The two umagi had already finished and were heading upstairs. As she put her foot on the bottom stair to follow, she cast one last considering
glance towards the guarded cell door at the end of the corridor. Desriel. Lord Death. She whispered the names under her breath,
and ran up the steps.
The Fading Lands ~ Chatok
Midway through the meal, Marissya leaned towards Rain and murmured, “Has Tajik had a chance to speak with you?”
“No,” he said. “I haven’t seen him since we came through the Mists. Why?”
“Apparently the Massan convened in our absence.”
Rain’s hands tightened briefly on his silverware.
“What is the Massan?” Ellysetta asked.
“Not what,” Dax murmured. “Who. The Massan are the five Fey lords who work with Marissya and Rain to govern the Fading Lands.”
“You mean like the Twenty?” Celieria’s twenty great lords, the nation’s largest landholders, were the most influential men
in Celieria after King Dorian, and they voted on all important matters of state.
“More like his personal council of advisers.” With a slender, two-tined fork, Dax speared a slice of one of the crunchy, slightly sweet root vegetables Ellysetta had tried earlier and bit into it. “There are five Fey lords of the Massan, each mated, and each a master of the magic he represents.”
“It sounds like a quintet.”
“Aiyah, only they do not defend a single shei’dalin. They protect the Fading Lands.”
“From what?”
Rain gave a short laugh. “For the last thousand years? From me. Or so it always seems,” he added when she frowned in concern
and Marissya gave him a chiding look. “We do not often see eye to eye. If not for Marissya, we would have been at one another’s
throats on more than one occasion.”
Ellysetta glanced at Dax’s mate. “Marissya serves on the Massan council too?”
“She is not just a shei’dalin,” Dax said. “She is the Shei’dalin, the leader of all Truthspeakers and healers of the Fey.” When Ellysetta still looked confused, he explained. “In the Fading
Lands, all authority ultimately rests with the Defender of the Fey. But the Shei’dalin”—he indicated his mate, Marissya, with a wave of the speared vegetable—“and the Massan assist in the administration of the
Fading Lands and oversee all tasks of governance that do not require the Tairen Soul’s attention.”
“What does it mean that they’re meeting without Rain and Marissya?”
“It means there is trouble brewing in Dharsa,” Rain said bluntly.
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Marissya said at the same time.
Ellysetta looked between the two of them. “So which is it: trouble or nothing?”
Rain sighed. “I may have been the Feyreisen for the last thousand years, but Marissya and the Massan have been the ones leading
the country since the Wars. First because of my madness, and then because I devoted all my attention to completing my Cha
Baruk. The chatok thought the discipline of the training would help me to rebuild and strengthen my internal barriers and keep my madness in check. They were right, but the training didn’t leave me much time to be the king of the Fey.”
“You think some of the Massan grew too accustomed to wielding the power of the Tairen Throne themselves.” Ellysetta pressed
a hand against her stomach. Having only just left the political turmoil of Celieria, she’d been hoping to find a measure of
peace in the Fading Lands. A fool’s hope, perhaps, given that war was imminent and the tairen were dying, but still . . .
“Nei, Rain, do not alarm the Feyreisa,” Marissya said, frowning at him. “You know it’s nothing like that. Hunger for political
power is a mortal affliction. The Fey have no such desires.”
“The tairen do not hunger for political power either, Marissya, but that does not stop the members of the pride from issuing
Challenge if they think the makai leading them is weak. The strongest leads; the rest follow. That is the law of the pride.” There was a grim set to his jaw,
and when Ellysetta feathered a hand across his, an unsettling mix of emotions roiled through her senses: tension, anger, and
something that felt strangely like . . . shame.
Rain pulled his hand away to reach for his wineglass.
“The lords of the Massan are honorable Fey whose sole interest is the protection and welfare of the Fading Lands,” Marissya
insisted. “They would never betray the Feyreisen.”
“Marissya, the lords of the Massan are warriors, first and foremost. I do not doubt their honor, but there’s not a Fey warrior
born who is not tairen enough to issue Challenge if he believes the situation warrants it.”
“A meeting is not a Challenge, Rain, and I’m certain the Massan would not even have done that much unless something had them
deeply concerned.”
Dax leaned forward, arching a brow. “Something like—oh, I don’t know—your dahl’reisen brother, the Dark Lord, passing through the Mists, perhaps?”
“Former dahl’reisen.” Marissya sniffed. “And sarcasm does not become you, shei’tan.
” Then she grimaced and admitted to Rain, “But Dax is right. That is why I think they met. And that’s why I think Gaelen and Bel should start for Dharsa first thing tomorrow.
Once the Massan meet Gaelen face-to-face they will realize there is nothing to fear. ”
Dax bent towards Rain to mutter, “Nothing to fear, but plenty not to like.”
Marissya glared at her truemate. “Dax!”
Despite the seriousness of the conversation, Rain smothered a laugh, but his expression flashed quickly to sobriety when Marissya
turned her glare on him. He cleared his throat, tossed back the rest of his wine, and said, “Your idea is a good one, but
I don’t want Gaelen confronting the Massan without us. The four of us will leave for Fey’Bahren at first light tomorrow. Have
Bel, Gaelen, and the returning warriors meet us by the Sentinels outside of Dharsa in four days. That should give us enough
time to reach Fey’Bahren, let Ellysetta spin her healing weave on the kits, and then fly to Dharsa.”
“Dax and I had planned to leave for Elvia after assisting Ellysetta at Fey’Bahren.”
Rain twisted the empty wine goblet in his hand and shook his head. “There’s no sense in negotiating with Elves before sorting
out the Massan. Hawksheart will sense the disunity among us and hesitate to commit the troops we need. We’ll see to the tairen
first, then the Massan, and then Elvia.”