Chapter Fourteen #2
a window to a time when the Fading Lands were green and lush and rich with life. Water ran in abundant rivers through forests
and flowering meadows and snaked across a wide, grassy plain that led to a towering range of volcanic mountains. Smoke and
clouds wreathed the majestic peaks, and soaring high above, too numerous to count, tairen filled the air. Their roars rang
like thunder claps, and fire shot from their muzzles like flashes of lightning in a distant cloudbank.
?So many,? Rain breathed on Spirit as his voice continued to sing. ?There were never so many in all my lifetime. Nor my father’s. Nor his father’s before him.?
Fey’Bahren wasn’t the only lair in the Feyls. Other tairen could be seen emerging from caves in peaks both near and far, leaping
into the sky to join their pride-mates, swooping low to hunt the scattering herds grazing on the plains below.
?Do you think the Eye is showing us the time when it was a tairen?? Ellysetta asked.
?I do not know, shei’tani. The Eye has been in Dharsa since before the dawn of the First Age.?
In the forests below, tiny figures crept along the banks of a stream.
A dozen, clad in cloaks, tunics, and leggings that blended well with the surrounding woods.
Hunters. Half had quivers strapped to their backs, arrows notched and bowstrings drawn.
The other half glowed with silvery luminescence and clutched curving steel in their hands.
Slowly, quietly, they crept forward. Ahead, their prey, a small herd of pronghorns, was grazing and drinking by the riverbank.
The vision swooped close with abrupt swiftness. A tairen-shaped shadow darkened the ground. The pronghorns lifted their heads
in fear, caught sight of the predator overhead, then sprang from the riverbank and bounded into the thick brush of the forest.
The hunters looked up, and Ellysetta caught a glimpse of pointed ears in silken hair, and faces of stunning beauty, some laughing,
others shaking fists in mock anger. Elves and Fey, hunting together, clearly friends, and there were at least two women in
the group, one Elf, one Fey, both armed with bow and blades. The leader gestured, and the hunters raced after their prey,
disappearing beneath the forest canopy.
When the pride-song ended, the images faded. The Eye dimmed, but the rainbow lights continued to sparkle in its depths. It
was almost as if the tairen song had awakened the oracle and roused a once-living being’s ancient memories.
Ellysetta’s hand went to the large Tairen’s Eye crystal on her wrist, the sorreisu kiyr of Rajahl vel’En Daris, Rain’s father. She remembered the faint tingling harmonic in the stone when she’d first put it on,
and the way Bel’s crystal reacted similarly. And she remembered those steaming, glittering crystals lying in the dark nesting
sands of Fey’Bahren: all that remained of the tairen Cahlah and her mate.
Perhaps the pride-song had awakened an ancient’s memories: the memories of the once-living tairen whose body had been transformed by the Fire Song into
the great Tairen’s Eye crystal now called the Eye of Truth.
After a brief lull of silence, Steli started singing a new verse. Not pride-song, but a greeting of a different sort. A greeting and a plea, from creatures Ellysetta had thought possessed no humility. The others’ voices dropped back to sing harmonies and croon melodic echoes of Steli’s words.
?The tairen of Fey’Bahren sing pride-greetings for the unborn kitling Keralas and for Ellysetta-Feyreisa, the one you commanded
Rainier-Eras to bring. She has come, as you desired. Her song is silent, but Sybharukai, makai of the Fey’Bahren pride, offers
you our pride-song in its stead. Know that Ellysetta-Feyreisa is a tairen of the Fey’Bahren pride. Help her, as you would
help those with whom you once flew. Teach her as once you taught the pride. Guide her to hunt the enemy we cannot see so that
she may save our kitlings dying in the egg. Share what knowledge you possess, so our pride may live and grow strong once more
and our song will not fall silent in this world.?
This time however, the Eye did not answer. It chose, instead, to remain silent and dark.
?Sing to it, kitling,? Steli urged. ?It listens. It will hear. Sing to it. Ask for the knowledge you seek.?
Ellysetta glanced around the circle of tairen and Fey. Marissya nodded encouragingly. Rain and the tairen merely watched her
intently, no expression on their faces, waiting.
The song she sang was Fey, selected not so much by conscious thought as by instinct. The notes spilled from her lips, the
words bubbling up like water from a spring. It was the song of Fellana the Bright, the tairen who had fallen in love with
a Fey king and surrendered her wings and a portion of her soul to the Elden Mages to be with him.
As the chorus built to its crescendo, the Eye began to shimmer. The whirling rainbows in its center started spinning faster,
their light becoming a pale blur and spreading until it seemed the interior of the Eye was clouded with mist. Ellysetta lifted
her voice, hitting the refrain on a crystalline note that shimmered in the air like starlight, white and pure.
As the last note died away, the misty center of Shei’Kess began to clear, and a light flared in the crystal’s untouched depths.
The light pierced Ellysetta, sinking deep into her soul.
She gasped at the searing energy of it. So much power .
. . so ancient . . . so ruthless. The Eye’s magic held her in an iron grip while it tore through her memories and ripped open the locked places where she hid her most horrifying nightmares and desperate fears.
The Eye filled with images of war and devastation. The Fading Lands in smoldering ruin. The white beauty of Dharsa scorched
and ravaged, its golden spires melted, its soaring towers fallen and crumbled, a wasteland of ashes and shattered beauty.
Atop the blackened hilltop, where the Hall of Tairen stood, the soaring white walls had been seared black, the golden spires
transformed to great, threatening spikes of sel’dor that stabbed the sky like spearheads. The water of the Source ran red, a thick, scarlet river pouring down the mountainside
like blood gushing from a mortal wound. All along the mount, beside gardens turned into grim orchards of impaled and rotting
corpses, the High Mage’s legions gathered, a grim, malignant shadow on the land.
Inside the palace, beside a dark and twisted mockery of what had been the Tairen Throne, stood the figure from Ellysetta’s
dreams: herself, clad in dark red armor the color of blood. A goddess of destruction, beautiful and fell, whose hand poured
poison upon the earth, whose kiss blew death on all who dared oppose her.
Her face was death white, hair flame red, and her eyes were twin bottomless black pits sparkling with red lights. She wore
a full complement of Fey blades made of sel’dor instead of shining steel. Rain’s Tairen Crown rested upon her brow, but its six gleaming globes of Tairen’s Eye crystal had
been turned to black selkahr glinting with malevolent flashes of scarlet.
Before her stood a dark congregation cheering her name, but this time they were not Eld and their corrupt allies. This time
they were faces she recognized.
Gaelen. Bel. Tajik. Gil. Rijonn. Each and every one of the lu’tans who’d bloodsworn themselves to her service. Their faces pale as corpse flesh, their eyes black, soulless chasms.
Ellysetta’s hands rose to her face, fingers curved into claws. The horror left her breathless. She’d restored their souls.
She’d meant to save them. And they, who’d sworn to serve and protect her in this life and the next, had fulfilled their oaths.
When the Feyreisa they had proclaimed to be their Light fell into darkness, they had followed.
The dark Ellysetta looked up, her hideous gaze pinning the real Ellysetta where she stood. A cruel, mocking smile curved her
lips.
Fury, hot and searing, burst in Ellysetta’s chest. The tairen rose with shocking swiftness, wild with rage. Power, vast and
deadly, rose with it. They hurt us! the tairen howled. We will scorch their souls!
“Ellysetta!” Marissya gasped.
“Shei’tani, nei!” Rain cried.
The doors to the Hall of Tairen burst open. Ellysetta’s quintet raced in, swords and magic blazing. The lords of the Massan
followed swift on their heels, five-fold weaves spinning with vibrant power.
All of them stopped in their tracks, stunned at the sight that met their horrified eyes. Ellysetta crouched before the Eye
of Truth, her mouth pulled back in a snarl of fury, her fingers curved into claws. Above and behind her loomed a great, shadowy
black tairen formed entirely of swirling, ember-kissed Azrahn.