Chapter Sixteen #3
be misplaced. As you saw yesterday, I am not always as disciplined as I should be.”
Ellysetta wished she were less able to put herself in other people’s shoes. The cold anger she wanted to hug close was already
melting in the face of Venarra’s slight blush and shamed admission. “You were afraid for your truemate.”
“I still am. I don’t trust what is inside you. Some Mage-claimed are innocent—I know that—but it doesn’t stop the horrors
they wreak in their master’s name.”
Ellysetta bit her lip. “I know.”
Venarra looked up. “I think perhaps Jisera would be the better shei’dalin to conduct your training.
You restored her brother’s soul. Like Rain, she sees only the good in you, while I cannot look past the potential for evil.
I cannot pretend otherwise, and you will not be able to open yourself to me as you must.”
Before Ellysetta could answer, the sound of running feet grew near. “Venarra!” A trio of shei’dalins burst into the garden. “Shei’dalin, come quickly!”
Venarra sprang towards them. “What is it? What’s happened?”
Ellysetta ran close on their heels, following the four of them as they hurried to one of the healing rooms near the front
of the hall. A warrior stood shaking by the door, his hands and chest streaked with blood, his face ashen.
“She fell,” he wept. “She stumbled at the top of the century stairs. I didn’t know until it was too late.”
A Fey woman—her skin entirely drained of its Fey luminescence—lay motionless on the healing table. Her hair was matted with
blood, her neck and limbs twisted. Jisera and several shei’dalins were already with her, their hands splayed and glowing, but when Jisera looked up at Venarra her eyes were grim.
At the look, the warrior began to weep. “Nei. Please . . . nei.”
Venarra caught his face in her hands and forced him to look at her. “Las,” she said. The word tolled like a bell, and the warrior instantly calmed. “I will not let her die.”
What followed was a healing like none Ellysetta had ever seen. Venarra leaned over the broken Fey woman and power gathered
in her. The black eyes turned to molten amber, glowing like suns, and the fierce control that made her seem so cold fell away,
revealing a face of such intense, overpowering love that Ellysetta wanted to weep. Venarra lit up bright as a Lightmaiden
of Adelis, a golden-white aura swirling around her. She put her hands on the dying woman’s chest and sent that brightness
into the limp body. Her eyes closed. “Stay, beloved,” she said, and her voice was a song, a prayer, an order, a plea, a command
so strong even Ellysetta felt its compelling power. “Stay for your e’tan.”
Two bells later, the Fey woman who had been teetering on the cusp of death walked out wrapped in the protective strength of her mate’s arms, and Venarra, exhausted and drained, slumped against the healing table.
The other shei’dalins passed by her, touching her arm and sharing a bit of their own strength with her until the Shei’dalin’s pale skin began to glow with faint luminescence once more.
“What just happened?” Ellysetta asked. “What did you do?”
Venarra glanced up wearily, but Jisera answered for her. “She held Carina’s soul to the Light until the rest of us could heal
her body.” Jisera laid a hand on Venarra’s shoulder and sent a soft pulse of golden light into the Shei’dalin. “She was too far gone for the rest of us to reach. Without you, my friend, she and Daran would both be dead.”
When Jisera and the others were gone, Ellysetta asked, “Can Jisera teach me to do what you just did?” She remembered her mother,
remembered trying desperately to hold her to life even as Lauriana slipped farther and farther away. If she could have spun
Venarra’s weave then, perhaps Mama would still be alive.
“Eventually,” Venarra said. Already, she’d shaken off the soft edge of weariness, and her cool reserve had slipped back into
place. “Assuming you learn to control your magic well enough.”
“Can she teach me to do it as well as you?”
Venarra raised a brow. “Why do you ask?”
Instead of answering, Ellysetta said, “Marissya thinks you are the one who should teach me, correct? That you are the one
most able to help me control my weaves?”
“Aiyah,” the Shei’dalin agreed slowly.
“Then if you are willing, I would like you to teach me.”
“Why?”
“Because when the war comes, I want to be the best shei’dalin I can be. If I can save even one life the way you just did, that matters more than any amount of personal distrust between
us.”
Venarra eyed her consideringly. “I am a harsh instructor. I expect perfection from my students.”
Ellysetta squared her shoulders. “I will work until I give you that perfection.”
A long silence stretched between them, and then Venarra nodded. “Very well. Come sit here beside me and give me your hands.”
Venarra patted a spot on the table beside her. “The first lesson you must learn is how to open your mind to mine, and then
I will show you how to anchor yourself so you don’t get lost in your healing.”
Celieria City
Gethen Nour stood over the body of the cook Lord Darramon had hired to accompany his traveling party west to the Garreval.
“Come here, umagi,” he commanded, and Den Brodson stepped forward. Nour seized his skull and held him tight as the memories of the dead cook
poured from Gethen’s mind into Brodson’s.
When he was done, Brodson stood there, dazed and swaying. Powerful magic swirled in the Primage’s hands, and Brodson’s face
began to shift like a lump of potter’s clay. The partially flattened nose was reshaped, the lips grew thinner, the jaw less
square. Brodson’s brown hair grew long and straight and paled to yellow-blond. His stocky body shrank to wiry leanness. When
Nour’s weave was complete, nothing remained of Den except his pale blue eyes staring out from the dead cook’s face. The cook’s
eyes had been a different shade, but there was no help for that. Though the Elden transformation magic could change every
other aspect of a person’s appearance, the eyes always stayed the same.
“Here.” Nour handed Brodson an amber amulet. “Wear this. It will give you some protection against Fey mind weaves and allow
me to hear your thoughts and observations so that I am kept apprised of your progress. Any other form of communication would
be too risky. And here.” Nour pressed his index finger hard against Brodson’s left temple and murmured a Feraz witchspell
that left the umagi trembling. “If you do run into the Fey, whisper the command I just gave you. It will wipe out your own memories for three bells, and leave only the cook’s.”
Brodson nodded, lifting his new hands to his newly formed face.
“Quickly,” Nour snapped. “Put on his clothes and get back to the caravan.”
Den stripped the body, shivering at the bloodless wound that split the skin of the dead man’s chest. The Mage’s black blade
had plunged into the cook’s heart, and not one drop of blood had spilled. The crystal in the pommel of Nour’s wavy black dagger
was now shimmering with red lights.
A bell later, clad in the dead man’s clothes, Den was in the back of the cook wagon, secreting the bag of chemar stones Master Nour had given him in the small trunk that held the cook’s personal belongings.
When he stepped back, a loud screech and a scratch on his ankle made him curse. “Jaffing hells!” he yelped, and turned with
a scowl to discover that he had stepped on the tail of a nursing mother cat, who was curled up in a nest of cloth with a litter
of kittens. A memory floated to the surface of Den’s mind: the cat was the cook’s mouser, Florrie.
Den’s eyes narrowed when Florrie hissed and took another swipe at his ankle. The kittens, as if sensing their mother’s distress,
began mewing. Loudly. Den bent down, intending to grab the nest box and toss the cat and her kittens out the back of the wagon,
when memories of his own flashed: his sister cooing like a daft looby over every fuzzy, big-eyed kitten she ever came across.
He hesitated, struck by an idea.
If Ellie Baristani’s sisters were anything like his own, what better lure to bring them close than a litter of kittens?
“But you,” he warned, jabbing a finger at Florrie. “Scratch me again, and I’ll put you in a sack and drop you in the nearest
river.”
Den crawled out of the wagon and circled ’round to climb up to the driver’s box, waving at the members of Darramon’s party who called greetings to him.
Not one of them seemed to realize he was not the cook, and twenty chimes later, reins in hand, Den was driving along the cobbled roads, following Lord Darramon’s caravan as it headed west out of Celieria City.
The Fading Lands ~ Dharsa
The next weeks passed in a blur. Gaelen and the other chatok spent the first five days evaluating the skills of every warrior, pressing them beyond the challenges of Ro Faer and Ro Chakai.
The tests continued day and night, as each warrior demonstrated his sword mastery, his power and skill in each branch of
magic, even his knowledge of military strategy and tactics. The strongest Fey in each field of expertise became the chadins Gaelen taught personally.
Gaelen’s tests were often brutal. Some of the physical combat maneuvers and swordplay resulted in broken bones and bloody
wounds, particularly in the first few days of training on a new move. The warriors checked their red Fey’cha in the Academy’s
weapons room before assembling in the training ground each day, but apart from that they fought with bare blades, and plenty
of them.
“Do you think the Eld fight with sticks?” Gaelen snapped when anyone complained. “Be grateful there are no sel’dor arrows in the Fading Lands. I’d shoot you full of them, then demand you fight with the barbs in your flesh, just so you wouldn’t
be caught unprepared in a real fight.”
When their efforts did not meet his exacting standards, he would grab the offending warriors by their tunics, thrust his face