Chapter Seventeen #2
and shortly after that a small knot of scarlet-clad, heavily veiled shei’dalins entered the room in the company of a dozen stone-faced Fey warriors who bristled with steel and leashed menace as they stationed
themselves in protective positions throughout the room.
The shei’dalins examined Lady Darramon, then informed her husband that—while the malignancy was indeed draining her life—her current distress
rose from a different source.
“Pregnant?” Lord Darramon stared at the five veiled shei’dalins in shock. “My wife is pregnant? B-but how? She’s been so ill I haven’t . . . we haven’t . . .” His voice trailed off. Shock
shifted to suspicion, then hardened to certainty. “That night. That thrice-damned night at the palace, when the Tairen Soul
spun his weave.” His voice choked off in sudden silence as his jaw snapped shut. Then, between gritted teeth, he demanded,
“What effect will this have on my wife’s healing? You’ll still be able to help her, won’t you?”
“There is some risk,” one of the shei’dalins said. “We’ll need to go more slowly to avoid harming the child, but no matter what precautions we take, our weaves will be
powerful and we will be spinning them in the baby’s earliest days of life. Our magic will imprint on the child.”
Darramon’s spine stiffened. “Imprint how? Will the child be deformed?” He was an old-school lord, born and raised in a harsh
part of Celieria, where even now the common fate of children born with physical deformities was to be abandoned on a hillside,
left to the animals and the elements. Winding, they called it. As if the winds plucked the child from the earth and carried
it off to some happier clime. Romantic tripe meant to soothe the aching hearts of mothers who had their newborns ripped from
their arms. Basha would never allow it. She’d tear the manor down with her own frail hands before allowing anyone to wind
her child away. Even if the thing were a damned two-headed monster.
“Nei.” Another of the shei’dalins spoke, her veils fluttering gently. There was something ineffably calming about her voice. Despite himself, Lord Darramon
felt the edge of his temper and his nerves begin to settle. “We are healers,” the shei’dalin continued, “not Mages. Our weaves carry no possibility of harm. What my sister means is that if we expose the child to such
strong magic at such an early stage in her development, some remnant of our abilities will take root. She will most likely
manifest her own magical traits once she is born.”
“She? The child is a girl?” Lord Darramon’s facial muscles went lax, and his voice cracked on the last word. “Basha always
wanted a girl. Our six are all boys—men now.” A girl. A little daughter with Basha’s big blue eyes, a daughter to pamper and
love, who would wrap him as firmly around her tiny finger as her mother had wrapped him around her heart. It was the secret
dream he’d always harbored but never voiced aloud.
He caught himself before the fantasy took too strong a hold on his heart. His jaw grew firm again. “You didn’t answer my question. Will you still be able to heal my wife even though she’s pregnant? I won’t risk Basha—not even for a daughter.”
“Las, Lord Darramon.” The first shei’dalin spoke again. “We are five, and our weaves are strong. We will heal your wife of the malignancy that drains her life, if that
remains your wish.”
“But be warned, my lord,” a third shei’dalin said. “Your child will be born with magic. How strong a gift we cannot say, but her life in your world will be difficult.”
Darramon took a deep breath. He was no youngling to mistake the seriousness of their warning, and he knew better than many
a lord exactly what difficulties might lie ahead. His lands lay along the Eld border, with Cann Barrial’s holding to his east,
Griffet Polwyr’s and Teleon’s to his west. The dark Verlaine Forest, home to lyrant and all manner of other fell creatures,
shadowed his southern flank.
His estates had been among the hardest hit in all Celieria during the Mage Wars. The bones and ashes of Drogans, Feraz witches,
Elves, Danae, Eld, and Fey rotted beneath the black soil of Darramon, and to this day, there remained many a bleak place where
naught but the unholy thrived. For centuries, Darramon’s villages had produced hearth witches and hedge wizards by the dozen,
and even now, his villagers winded scores of peasant children each year—some because they were born with hideous deformities,
but most because they manifested dangerous magical gifts.
Ta, he knew what the shei’dalins’ warning meant. He knew exactly. And he had only one possible response.
Lord Darramon stroked the frail hand cradled so gently in his own, and gave the shei’dalins his answer. “Save my wife and our child.”
The Fading Lands ~ Dharsa
Rain and Ellysetta flew west and north, following the River Faer that flowed from Dharsa to the Bay of Flame, stopping twice to rest, eat, and refresh themselves in the magic-infused waters of the river.
Unlike the eastern half of the Fading Lands, the west was still heavily forested.
The smoking, snowcapped peaks of the Feyls dominated the northern horizon, and to the west, the rolling hills Rain called the Vanyas followed the western coast of the Fading Lands, which they reached late that afternoon.
Beyond lay the endless blue of the Lysande Ocean, and from inside the Fading Lands, the western Mists appeared no more than a gleaming shimmer that turned sparkling waves and blue skies into radiant, opalescent vistas.
The northern tip of the Vanyas ended on a curving spit of land capped by a walled city built of gray stone. Across a wide
channel that fed an enormous bay, the mighty Feyls came to an abrupt end at the ocean’s edge. Waterfalls plummeted down sheer
black cliffs and tumbled into the crashing waves below.
?The fortress is Blade’s Point, the northernmost city of the Fey, and the source of all Fey steel,? Rain said as they flew closer. ?And that is the Bay of Flame, where legend says the great tairen Lissallukai first sang magic into the world.?
A small group of fifty Fey clad in shimmering robes greeted them when they landed. They were led by a Fey lord who introduced
himself as Eren v’En Thoress, lord keeper of Blade’s Point.
“Meivelei ti’Cha’Rik, Ellysetta Feyreisa,” the Fey lord greeted her. “Welcome to Blade’s Point.” And to Rain, he bowed and said softly, “Meiruvelei, Rain. My heart is glad to see you here again. Too long has it been since your last visit.”
“Too long has it been since I wished to hear what the night might have to say,” Rain replied.
“Well, you are here again now. That is what matters.” With a warm smile for Ellysetta, Eren said, “Come, Feyreisa, meet my
shei’tani and the Fey who keep Blade’s Point.”
After Eren made the introductions, one of the Fey women led the way to a private room where Rain and Ellysetta could refresh themselves.
Fresh silver and twilight-blue robes that smelled of honeyblossoms and spring rain had been laid out on a velvet chaise, and a bath scented with rose petals had been drawn in an open-air marble tub that overlooked the city’s sheltered harbor and the Bay of Flame.
“They were expecting us?” Ellysetta asked as she and Rain bathed and dressed in the clothes laid out for them.
“I sent word ahead.” He had set aside his steel, retaining only a single black Fey’cha, which he sheathed and tucked into
the pewter-gray silk band cinched at his waist. Ellysetta followed his lead, leaving behind all her bloodsworn blades except
the ones belonging to her quintet.
Outside, the Fey who had greeted them earlier had prepared a meal for Rain and Ellysetta. In addition to the robed lords and
ladies of the Fey, twenty warriors in black leather and steel joined them. Conversation was pleasant for all that it revolved
around the Fading Lands’ preparations for war and the armaments the master smiths here had been making for Celieria.
After the meal, all the Blade’s Point Fey requested Ellysetta’s blessing, which to her great relief she spun without any unruly
or embarrassing flares of power.
“I think I owe Venarra an apology,” she murmured to Rain afterwards as they walked through the quiet, well-tended gardens
of the fort. “I’ve been thinking uncharitable thoughts about her, but that was the first time my magic has ever come so easily
when I called it and still done only what I meant it to do.”
A stone stair led up to the ramparts overlooking the Lysande Ocean. Rain stepped aside to let Ellysetta precede him. “I think
sometimes, even among shei’dalins, chadins learn more from hard challenge than they do from kind instruction,” he said as he followed her up. “Marissya is a much stronger
empath than Venarra, and although she is an excellent teacher, she sometimes has difficulty separating herself from the emotions
of those she instructs. Venarra does not. In that regard, she reminds me of Gaelen. She is a hard taskmistress, but her weaves
are always impeccably precise.”
“Oh, yes,” Ellysetta agreed with an eye roll. “Venarra is very precise.”
Rain laughed softly. How many times as a young chadin had he bemoaned his own chatok in just such a voice?
“Even though you may not appreciate it at the moment, precision is what you want in a chatok. It makes learning more straightforward and instills the discipline necessary to master great power.”
At the top of the stair, Rain gave her hand a tug. “Come. I want to check the city’s defenses, and we have only a little more
than a bell to do it.”
“What’s the rush?”
“You will see.” Her sulky scowl made him want to laugh. Ellysetta did not like secrets. At least, not those kept by others.
The crenellated ramparts ran along the hilltop, the stone surface wide enough for defenders to stand four deep and still leave
plenty of room for maneuvering men and weaponry and for evacuating the wounded. Every two tairen lengths, the outer wall curved