Chapter Twelve #2
Rain flew Marissya and Ellysetta up to the main entrance of the lair. Together, with Rain in the lead, they walked down the
winding tunnel towards the nesting sands.
Marissya’s eyes were wide with wonder, peering down every tunnel and drinking in the mysteries of Fey’Bahren as they descended
towards the volcano’s heart.
“When we enter the nesting lair,” Rain instructed, “we will all walk slowly across the sands to the eggs. Marissya, if at
any time tonight the tairen seem agitated, stop whatever you’re doing.”
?Would the pride really kill Dax if he entered the lair?
? Ellysetta asked the question on a private weave, troubled by the possibility.
The tairen were intelligent and powerful beings, not mere animals.
She found it difficult to reconcile the warm welcome she’d received from the pride with the mindless, wild savagery Rain seemed so certain they would exhibit.
?Survival is a tairen’s strongest instinct, and this is where tairen hatch their young,? he answered. ?Any intruder is considered a threat. When it comes to the safety of their young, tairen will kill anything and anyone that
threatens them. Don’t ever doubt that.?
They reached the bottom of the tunnel, and hard stone gave way to a thick carpet of fine, dark black sand. Inside the nesting
lair, the tairen had returned to their ledges except for Sybharukai, who lay curled around the eggs, crooning songs of tairen
strength and ferocity to the kitlings.
The tairen closest to the tunnel mouth growled and fluttered their wings when they saw Marissya, but a roar from Sybharukai
kept them in place. Her eyes whirled bright and green in the smoky gray of her face, and she remained curled around the eggs,
her tail thumping the sand.
?The Fey-kin may approach the eggs, but if she wounds the kitlings, her blood will soak the sands.?
One of Marissya’s hands rose to her throat; the other held Ellysetta’s in a crushing grip. Sybharukai had spoken in very distinct
Feyan, on the common path.
“I . . . I have no intention of harming them, wise one,” Marissya assured the tairen. “I am here only to offer what help I
can to the Feyreisa.”
?The Fey-kin is warned.? With that, Sybharukai rose up on her paws and backed up three steps to grant Ellysetta and Marissya access to the eggs. In
a show of silent menace, the great cat extended the long, ivory spikes in her tail and stabbed them into the sand.
Ellysetta led the way, moving towards the center of the clutch of eggs.
She laid a hand on each and crooned a quiet song of greeting.
“They like when you sing to them. This is Miauren.” She stroked the closest egg.
“He is a fine, brave tairen. And this is Hallah, who I think will be fierce and beautiful like Steli-chakai. And these little ones are Letah, Sharra, and Forrahl.”
“You picked fine tairen names for them,” Marissya said, cautiously stepping closer.
“I didn’t pick them. The kitlings told me their names when I sang to them earlier today.” Ellysetta smiled at the shei’dalin’s surprise. “Rain tells me tairen kitlings are sentient even in their mother’s womb, months before she lays the eggs in the
nest. Here, come lay your hand on Hallah’s shell and sing to her.” She moved aside so Marissya could step in beside her. “She
likes warriors’ songs. Letah and Sharra prefer lullabies.”
“What does Forrahl like?”
Ellie smiled fondly. “Everything. When I sing to him, he purrs so loudly his egg shakes. Watch.” She turned and began to sing
a Celierian hymn, and sure enough, the egg beside her began to rock happily.
“You are a wonder, Feyreisa,” Marissya murmured. “I don’t think it’s the song he enjoys half so much as the love you’re weaving
on him when you sing it.” Still, gamely, she crouched beside the eggs closest to her. “So you two like lullabies, do you?”
Tilting her head, she began to croon the tunes Feyan mothers sang to their children when they were small.
As they sang, Marissya reached out with her magic to check the kitlings. She kept her weaves featherlight and as unobtrusive
as possible without sacrificing efficacy. The care slowed her down, but her results were conclusive. Just as Ellysetta had
said, there was nothing physically wrong with the kitlings. Marissya could find no infection, no imperfections, weaknesses
or blockages in their vital organs, no malignancies anywhere in their bodies. They weren’t even tired anymore, thanks to the
inadvertent healing Ellysetta was weaving on them as she sang.
And yet, without a doubt, they were dying.
Ellysetta hadn’t been around enough death yet to recognize it, but Marissya had. She’d served too long in the healing tents
during the Wars, knelt by the sides of too many mortally wounded Fey, Elves, and men. Death was here. She’d fought it so often,
so desperately, it was as familiar to her as the sight of Dax’s beloved face. A faint, cold shadow buried in the heart of
the kitlings’ warm brightness.
Marissya closed her eyes and summoned the shei’dalin power that could rip truths from even the most corrupted souls and anchor mortally wounded warriors to life while she healed
them. She closed her senses to everything around her, condensing her awareness. Gently, carefully, she reached out to the
kitling closest to her, the one named Sharra, and on a weave of intense Spirit, blazing golden white with the power of her
considerable shei’dalin magic, she sent her consciousness into the egg.
The kitling’s bright light abruptly winked out, and steely shackles clapped around Marissya’s wrist, yanking her hand from
the shell of the egg. Her eyes flew open in confusion. She blinked away her Fey vision and found Ellysetta beside her, holding
her wrist in a bruising grip. The Feyreisa’s eyes were glowing green and whirling with opalescent lights, and her pupils had
completely disappeared.
“Whatever you’re doing, Marissya, stop.” A vibrating hum deepened Ellysetta’s voice to a growl.
A louder, much more menacing growl sounded behind Ellysetta. Marissya looked up and her mouth went dry.
Sybharukai’s pupil-less green eyes whirled faster and brighter than Ellysetta’s, fixed on Marissya with such intensity, the
shei’dalin couldn’t move. Venom dripped from the tairen’s exposed fangs, her poisonous tail spikes were completely extended, and she
was whipping that tail through the air like a weapon.
Marissya released her magic. “I-I’m sorry.
” Once the first word escaped, the rest began tumbling out in a rush.
“I didn’t mean any harm. The kitlings aren’t sick or injured, but they are dying.
I was just trying to find out why. Rain .
. . tell them.” She turned to him, only to find that his eyes, too, had
gone more tairen than Fey.
Her first instinct was to call Dax, but she didn’t dare. If she called him, he would come for her. He would come and the tairen
would kill him. Frightened, but desperately trying to keep that fear from spilling over across her truemate bond with Dax,
Marissya slowly rose to her feet, careful not to make any sudden moves.
“What was that you were weaving?” Ellysetta asked, and a measure of Marissya’s tension drained away when she turned and saw
that the Feyreisa’s eyes were slowly returning to normal.
“It was Spirit.”
“That didn’t feel like any Spirit I’ve ever woven.”
“The pattern was a shei’dalin’s weave, Ellysetta. I was trying to merge with the kitlings, to see if I could sense what is killing them.”
Ellysetta released her and gave a humorless laugh. “No offense, Marissya, but I suggest you not try to merge with any more
tairen. Apparently they don’t like it.”
Marissya glanced back up at Sybharukai, who was still eyeing her as if she were a meal on the hoof. “So I see.” She backed
away from the eggs. “I’m sorry, Rain. Whatever’s killing the kitlings, I don’t think I’ll be able to stop it.”
His jaw worked and he nodded. “I’ll take you back to Dax, but I’d like you to stay the night, in case what hunts the kitlings
returns. Perhaps when that happens, you’ll be able to sense something you can’t now.”
She looked around the cavern at all the tairen crouched overhead.
“The choice is yours of course,” Rain added. “As you just discovered, it’s not a choice without risk.”
“Of course I’ll stay.” With a smile that projected far more confidence than she was feeling, Marissya added, “After all, how many shei’dalins ever get the chance to save a tairen pride?”
Despite a night of waiting and watching, the thing that had killed Cahlah and her kit did not return, and by sunrise the next
morning, four great tairen were winging across the Fading Lands. Rain carried Dax and Marissya on his back, while Steli carried
Ellysetta. Sybharukai had sent the matepair Fahreeta and Torasul along as well to join Steli in singing pride greetings to
Shei’Kess.
?Do you really think the Eye will tell us any more than it already has?? Rain asked Steli as they flew. Tairen-made or not, the Eye had been perniciously silent for centuries, adamantly refusing
to offer help or guidance to the Fey until Rain had forcibly wrested from it the clues that had sent him to Celieria City—and
Ellysetta.
?The Eye sent you to Ellysetta-kitling. It knew you would bring her to back to the Fey-kin and to the pride. Now that she
is here, Shei’Kess may have more to say.?
?Well, I hope singing to the Eye earns a more pleasant response than the one it gave me.? The all-consuming pain that had ripped through him when he’d laid hands on the Eye was not something he would ever forget.
Steli chuffed. ?You issued Challenge. We are not so . . . ? She sang an image of a foolish tairen kit biting the tail of a grumpy elder.
Ellysetta laughed, then tried ineffectively to hide it from Rain’s narrowing tairen eyes with a cough and a rapid change of
subject. ?I still don’t understand why the tairen haven’t visited Dharsa since the Mage Wars. I thought the tairen considered the Fey
kin.?