Chapter Fifteen #4
“The blade was numbed,” Marissya said. “Perhaps it was meant only to injure.”
“To injure?” he repeated. “For what purpose?” Gaelen had walked the earth for twenty-five hundred long years. More than half that time, he’d spent fighting Eld. He knew their ways. And he knew the Mages never acted without purpose.
The Fey’cha was meant to implicate him, obviously.
It was only a diversion, a false trail. But the attack itself .
. . a numbed blade not meant to kill. Was that a false trail, too?
Images whirled in his mind: the tortured woodsman, the two dead Fey, the Mage searching for a lost child who he claimed was the daughter of the High Mage of Eld.
Another image superseded the others: a great and legendary treasure bearing pestilence in its golden chalices.
Gaelen’s gaze swept across the room to fix on Ellysetta, and horror dug its talons deep in his belly. He’d come to kill her, and she’d saved his soul. She was innocent, as bright a soul as he’d ever seen. But what if there was darkness in her even she did not realize?
Conscious of Marissya’s hand on his skin, he clamped a fierce hold on his thoughts. His face went still as stone. “You said there’ve been several attacks on the Feyreisa,” he said to Rain. “What else has happened besides the stabbing?”
“She received an ensorceled gift,” Rain answered. “When she touched the thing, it summoned a demon and opened some kind of . . . rift behind her.”
“A rift?”
“Like the portals demons use to escape the Well of Souls, only much larger.”
“Did anything come through it?”
“Nei. But she was being directed towards it by a Spirit weave.”
The tension that gripped Gaelen abated slightly. If Ellysetta was indeed an unwitting agent of the High Mage, he would not set a trap to capture her.
Unless the demon attack was yet another false trail intended to speed her delivery to the Fading Lands. What better way to make the Fey rush her behind the safety of the Faering Mists than to make it seem as though her life were in danger?
No, no, he wouldn’t believe it. His suspicions sprang from the last thousand years of living as a dahl’reisen, which he’d survived by suspecting a trap in every gift and seeking the enemy in every shadow.
She’d restored his soul, and he was bloodsworn to her service, bound to protect her above all others in life and in death. She was an innocent, a miraculous gift from the gods.
?What’s wrong, Gaelen?? Marissya’s concern swept across him.
He secured his wayward thoughts and emotions behind the barriers of his mind, where she could not access them except through forceful Truthspeaking. ?I do not like the sound of these Eld attacks.? That was truth enough to reassure her.
“What is the Well of Souls?” Ellysetta asked.
“Celierians call it the Underworld,” Rain answered. “It’s the home of unborn souls and the dead who haven’t yet earned passage to the next world. It’s also the home of demons.”
“The Eld have long used Azrahn and selkahr crystals to summon demons from the Well,” Gaelen added, “but in the last few years, they’ve learned how to open a physical doorway between the Well of Souls and the living world.
” He felt the weight of every Fey’s sudden, penetrating stare.
They had not known about this new Eld accomplishment, then.
“They use it to travel, and they’re completely undetectable unless they use Azrahn to open the doorway.
If the rift that opened behind the Feyreisa was such a gateway, it’s possible the Spirit weave directing her could have guided her through the Well directly to the High Mage himself. ”
Rain dropped a hand to the hilt of the meicha at his hips. “Can they open a doorway anywhere? Into this room, for instance?”
“Nei. From what we’ve seen, either a third party must open the endpoint for them, or there must be a selkahr crystal bespelled to open the portal at a given time.
I tried once or twice to open a doorway on my own, so I could learn more about the process, but the results were .
. . rather alarming. What guards the Well of Souls doesn’t like to be disturbed. ”
“You think the Eld will use these . . . doorways . . . to attack us here in the city?”
“Wouldn’t you? Eld armies are massing along the border. If there are Mage-claimed in the city—and considering the attacks on the Feyreisa, there must be—the High Mage could use them to open enough portals to deliver an invasion force to Dorian’s doorstep without warning.”
“If that were the case, why wouldn’t he already have done so?” Ellysetta asked.
“Perhaps he was not yet ready, kem’falla. Perhaps discovering your presence here in Celieria City has prompted him to act sooner than he would like. Or perhaps he postponed his planned attack to give his envoys time to capture you.”
Gaelen turned back to Rain. “If the Eld sent a demon for the Feyreisa, they’ll be back, and most likely in force.
The High Mage doesn’t tip his hand so boldly.
He doesn’t want to remind anyone what the Eld are capable of.
He’s been very careful to keep the Mages quiet, to project a friendly face to the world.
And all the while, he’s been rebuilding Eld power since the Mage Wars.
He has spies and emissaries in every king’s court around the world. ”
“And how do you know that?”
“Because I have spies and emissaries in every king’s court as well.
While the Fey have spent the last thousand years hiding behind the Faering Mists, licking their wounds from the Mage Wars, the rest of the world has taken the opportunity to rebuild, to grow strong again, to forge alliances that don’t include the Fey. ”
Rain’s lips thinned. “If you’re trying to tell me I’ve been a bad king, save your breath. I know it all too well.”
“That’s not true,” Marissya objected. “You’ve no right to judge him, Gaelen.
You know nothing of what it’s been like, of what he’s been through, of what a triumph it was just to reach the first day when he could cling to sanity without the help of every shei’dalin in the Fading Lands.
We haven’t hidden behind the Faering Mists only to lick our wounds.
We caged ourselves there to protect the world, too. ”
“Marissya, the Fey are weak. Their enemies are strong. The reasons don’t matter. A wounded champion and an unarmed boy die just the same when the blade falls on their necks.”
“Setah,” Rain snapped. “We return to the Fading Lands tomorrow. Ellysetta and I speak our Celierian marriage vows after the Council vote. You will come with us, Gaelen. I want to know everything you know about the Eld and their plans. It is time for the Defender of the Fey to actually start defending them again. Until then, Ellysetta must stay here, safe in the palace under constant guard.” Rain nodded to Marissya, and her hand dropped back to her side.
“Is that it?” Kieran demanded incredulously.
“The questioning is over?” He pointed a shaking finger at his infamous uncle.
“Before you grant him passage through the Faering Mists and celebrate his return in the streets of Dharsa, won’t you at least make him tell you whether or not he and his ‘Brotherhood’ have been murdering Celierians? ”
“Kieran,” Marissya murmured, frowning at her son.
“No, Mother. He needs to answer. Our alliance with Celieria is in danger of destruction thanks to rumors of dahl’reisen murdering villagers in the north. We need to know whether he did it or not.”
“Kieran is right,” Rain agreed. He nodded, and with obvious reluctance, Marissya put her hand back on her brother. “Answer his question, Gaelen.”
The former dahl’reisen hesitated, as if weighing his words, then shrugged. “Aiyah, the Brotherhood and I have executed a number of Celierians.”
Marissya stifled a gasp. “Truth. Oh, Gaelen. Why?”
“They were Mage-claimed. We could not let them live to spread their evil.”
“How could you know they were Mage-claimed?” Kieran challenged. “Did you personally see these peasants in the company of Mages, carrying out their will? Because we all know there’s no way to tell who is in the service of the Mages until they act.”
“That’s not entirely true, young jita’nos.”
“Your dahl’reisen have found a way to detect Mage-claiming?” Rain queried sharply. The secret, invisible power of Mage-claiming was one of the Eld’s most deadly weapons.
“We have. Mage-claiming leaves marks on the claimed ones. These marks are invisible to the naked eye, even invisible to Fey vision, but they appear in the presence of Azrahn, like black shadows on the flesh over the claimed one’s heart.”
“Azrahn again,” Kieran spat.
“Azrahn is just magic, boy. A mystic like Spirit. Despite what all Fey have been raised to believe, it isn’t evil, and weaving it won’t turn you into a servant of the Dark so long as you wield it wisely and with caution.
” He glanced at Ellysetta and knew he must learn the truth, if only to determine how best to protect her.
“Look.” Before the others could react, a small, shadowy spiral sprang to life in his palm, and a chill, sickly sweet aroma wafted through the room.
Marissya cried out and fell back away from her brother. Ellysetta cried out too, as much in warning as in fear.
Twelve red Fey’cha flew fast and true.
Not quickly enough to penetrate the rapid weave that surrounded Gaelen and stopped the Fey’cha in mid-flight.
Ellysetta clutched a hand over her chest where the shock of his sudden action had made her heart all but leap out of her chest. A cold, dull ache throbbed in her left breast. Her skin tingled from lack of oxygen and the sudden rush of fear, and her teeth began to chatter.
Somehow she knew Gaelen meant no harm with his weave, but her terror didn’t abate.
“Stop it, Gaelen,” she commanded. “Stop it now.” She pressed the palm of her hand hard over the fluttering wildness of her heart.
His eyes narrowed slightly. “As you wish, kem’falla.” The former dahl’reisen bowed, and his Azrahn weave winked out.
“The rest of you, put your weapons away.” Ellysetta’s voice shook. By some miracle, her knocking knees did not collapse beneath her.
Slowly, with hissing reluctance, the Fey sheathed their second round of blades. A moment later, Gaelen’s shields fell and the twelve red Fey’cha trapped by his weave clattered harmlessly to the floor.
As fast as Gaelen had moved a moment before, Rain moved now. In a blur of speed he was at Gaelen’s throat, his long fingers wrapped tight around the other’s windpipe. “What was the meaning of that display, dahl’reisen?” Rain demanded. “Is it death you seek after all?”
“If I’d meant harm, you’d all be dead already,” Gaelen answered. “I only meant to prove a point.”
“By weaving the forbidden magic?”
“I wove Azrahn. Did I summon demons? Mages? Have I lost my soul again? Nei, none of those dire predictions came true. Because the magic itself is not evil.”
“It is forbidden! It is the magic never to be called!”
“Only because ancient Fey who lived and died so long ago we hold no memory of them or their reasoning said it should be so,” Gaelen shot back.
“Dahl’reisen don’t have the benefit of hiding behind protective barriers and indulging ourselves with self-righteous adherence to laws long past their use.
We survive by wit and speed and will. And we’ve learned that to defeat our greatest enemy, we must understand that enemy’s most powerful weapon. ”
With a growl, Rain released his grip on Gaelen’s throat and thrust the older Fey away from him. “In the Fading Lands, we hold true to our honor and our laws. If you intend to live among us, you will do the same.”
“And if you refuse to consider change, don’t expect to survive the coming war,” Gaelen countered.
Muttering a curse, he spun on one heel and started to pace.
Halfway across the room, he stopped and cast a hard, searching glance Ellysetta’s way.
His shoulders slumped a little, then straightened.
“I didn’t summon Azrahn a moment ago just to prove a point.
I did it for a different reason. Because there was something I had to know. ”
“Something like what, vel Serranis?” Rain growled. “Whether or not we could cut you with red before you raised your shields?”
“Nei, that was not it.” He smiled faintly.
“But it is good to know you can’t.” Sobering, he crossed the short distance to Ellysetta and went to one knee before her.
He clasped her hands in his. “Kem’falla, know that I am yours.
I will never betray you. I will defend you beyond death itself.
I would walk the Seven Hells if you asked it of me. ”
Ellysetta didn’t know what to say. “Beylah vo, Gaelen. I am grateful for your kindness.”
“Then forgive me, ki’falla’sheisan.”
“Forgive you for what?” She frowned in confusion as Gaelen rose once more and took a step back.
“Vel Serranis?” Wary of the Fey’s suspicious behavior, Rain stepped in front of Ellysetta and guided her back, away from the former dahl’reisen.
“The Eld who killed the woodsman and your Fey wasn’t looking for just any red-haired child,” Gaelen told the room. His eyes never left Ellysetta’s. “And I did not come to Celieria City just to warn you of Eld troop movements along the border.”
“I knew it!” Kieran muttered. “I told you we couldn’t trust him.”
“Las, Kieran,” Bel hissed. “Let him speak.”
Rain held up a hand to silence them both. “Why, then, did you come, vel Serranis?”
“In a moment. First let me say I no longer believe what I thought was true. And let me remind you all—you especially, Tairen Soul—that no great gift from the gods comes without an equally great danger. The price of the gift is the willingness and courage to embrace the danger. If you cannot accept the one, you are not worthy of the other.”
“I need no lecture on the price the gods demand for their blessings. I have lived with those prices all my life,” Rain said.
Gaelen bowed his head in acknowledgment. His expression grew still, becoming the blank, impenetrable stone mask of the Fey. “The Eld were searching for the lost daughter of the High Mage,” he said baldly. He met Ellysetta’s gaze. “And I came to kill her.”