Chapter Nine #4
“Once he has time to cool off and come to his senses, I’m sure he will beg my forgiveness. I’ll keep him under watch. He will not catch me off guard.” Forcing a smile, Dorian held out a hand. “Beylah vo for everything, Rainier Feyreisen. I am indebted to you.”
Rain clasped Dorian’s arm, feeling for the first time a genuine affinity for the mortal king.
Perhaps he had judged the man too harshly in the past. They were both kings leading countries divided in a time of war, struggling to do what was right for their people. Neither had an easy road before him.
“If it is within my power to convince Hawksheart and the Danae to aid us,” he vowed, “you have my oath I will. Farewell, Dorian vol Serranis Torreval. Until we meet again, may the gods Light your Path and keep you safe from harm.”
As night fell over the city, the Fey who had arrived without announcement left in secret. Impenetrable invisibility weaves surrounded all but the one hundred lu’tan left behind to aid in the defense of Celieria.
In the queen’s apartment, Annoura stood at the open glass doors that led to her private balcony.
A strong downdraft from the palace roof gusted through the door, setting rich draperies swirling and carrying with it the rich, earthy aroma of tairen.
Her fingers tightened on the door frame, and her free hand splayed across her belly.
So, the Tairen Soul and his witch queen had left.
She should have felt a measure of relief, but all she felt was agitation and a disturbing sour note of fear.
She and Dorian had been happy until Rain Tairen Soul and that girl had entered their lives.
And now here she was, her husband’s kingdom at war, pregnant with a child conceived through Fey magic—gods only knew what sort of monster it might turn out to be—and a husband who seemed determined to distance himself from her even when she needed him most.
A husband who’d suspected she might be in the service of the Mages.
After the Fey departed, Dorian had come to tell her about their suspicions of Mage-claiming in the palace.
He’d shared what they’d learned from the Elden Mage, and informed her she would govern Celieria City in his absence.
He’d also said she should trust only himself, Dori, and the lords of his war council, because only they had been checked and verified clear of Mage Marks.
The chime he’d said that, of course, she’d suspected the truth.
“My gods,” she’d breathed. “You had them check me, didn’t you?”
The guilt on his face gave her all the answer she required, and they’d had a row to end all rows. She’d screamed like a fishwife. He’d roared back like a surly bear. They’d said bitter things, angry things, ugly, hateful things. And he’d stormed out, slamming the door behind him.
He’d not come to visit her since. Not to apologize. Not to set things right between them. Not even just to sit beside her in silence and wait for her to unbend, as he often did after one of their arguments.
Three times, she’d started to send him a note, and three times pride kept her from it. He would come on his own, or not at all.
And so far, he’d chosen not at all.
Her hands tightened on the frame of the glass-paneled doors. All because of the Fey.
Silk rustled behind her. “You should close the door before you catch a chill, Your Majesty.”
Annoura turned to Jiarine Montevero. Dear Jiarine. Dorian had not come, but Jiarine had hardly left her side. “You are a good friend, Jiarine. The kind even a queen can confide in.”
Eld ~ Boura Fell
Vadim Maur peered into the shimmering dark red liquid that filled the wide, shallow bowl of a Drogan Blood Lord’s chalice.
The discarded, bloodless body of an infant lay at the bottom of a small refuse cart nearby, its tiny throat slit from ear to ear, its skin a pallid gray-white.
The rings of power on Vadim’s hands glittered with red lights as he passed his palms over the chalice and murmured, “Daggorra droga.” Around the mosaic-tiled confines of his private spell room, the sconces flared, and shadows danced like living silhouettes against the walls.
Within the rune-inscribed cup, the infant’s still-warm blood swirled with opalescent hues. Dark red became a shimmering silver. Shimmering silver changed to a shadowy translucence in which the wavering visage of Primage Gethen Nour slowly took shape.
Or, rather, the visage Primage Nour now wore. A mortal’s face—weak and without magic.
Oh, by Celierian standards, he looked fine and powerful enough.
As the newly invested Lord Bolor, he was the picture of a well-dressed, sharp-eyed nobleman: handsome, fit, and clearly secure in his wealth and power.
His brown hair had been powdered a deep, lustrous copper and pulled back in a queue at the nape of his neck, and his pale Mage skin had turned bronze, as if tanned by the sunlight he had rarely seen in all his centuries of life.
Though his eyes were the same hard green, they bore no hint of the dark Azrahn that would have alerted the Fey in Celieria City to his presence.
Vadim leaned over the chalice, careful to keep his disfigured face concealed in the shadowy folds of his hooded cloak. “Report,” he commanded his former apprentice.
Gethen’s image shimmered in the cup of blood.
The Primage’s lips moved and his voice emerged, liquid and distorted, but still intelligible.
“Our plans are progressing as scheduled, Great One. All the pamphleteers belong to us now, as do two of the more respectable news journals. One hundred lords and four of the Twenty belong to us, with another fifty lords and two Great Lords who have allied themselves with the ones we control. My umagi in the king’s army have assembled their teams and are ready to serve when you give the command. ”
Vadim nodded. “Excellent. And what progress have you made with the queen?”
A telling silence lasted for several moments before Nour said, “I have made every attempt to ingratiate myself, but she has been difficult to approach. I think her volatile temperament may have something to do with this morning’s revelation.
” Nour’s visage shimmered in the Drogan chalice.
“Celieria’s queen—and every other Lady of a noble House—is with child.
Even those who by age or physical infirmity should have been incapable of conception.
It seems there was a dinner this summer—”
As the Primage spoke, Vadim recalled Kolis’s report of a palace dinner where Ellysetta Baristani had spun a carnal weave so strong that every man and woman in the banquet hall had fallen upon one another in ravening lust. Apparently, that weave had contained much more than mere Spirit.
“The queen carries in her womb an infant heir to the throne of Celieria, an umagi is her closest companion, yet still you have not claimed her?” Irritability made Maur’s voice crack like a whip. “Kolis would have had her bound and kneeling in service by now.”
Nour’s lip curled. “Kolis was the queen’s lapdog.”
“Then you’d best learn to wag your tail,” the High Mage snapped. “I didn’t send you to Celieria to bring me excuses. I sent you to bring me results.”
The Primage lifted his chin. “And results are what you shall have, Most High,” he said, “but as it happens, my delay in Marking the queen may actually have worked in our favor.”
“Oh?” Vadim crossed his arms and arched a skeptical brow. “And why is that?”
“Because Manza was right. The Fey have found a way to detect Mage Marks. And the king has allowed them to begin checking his nobles—including the queen.”
“The Fey? They are there in the city?”
“The Tairen Soul and his mate arrived this morning,” Nour explained.
“They were granted a private audience with the king, and shortly after, the king called a select group of lords into council. I regret to say none of my umagi were among them, and all have remained tight-lipped. I cannot tell you the specifics of what was discussed, but the king’s army is preparing for deployment within the week. ”
Vadim didn’t need specifics. He could well imagine what had been said at that meeting.
His enemies knew their messages were being intercepted—both the mortal couriers and the messages sent on the Fey Warriors’ Path.
No doubt Rain Tairen Soul and his mate had traveled to Celieria City to pass on the information they had extracted from Vadim’s old friend Zon.
No matter. When Vadim’s Army of Darkness swept across the land, even the most legendary of Fey warriors would find victory a fleeting dream.
“The Fey checked each member of Dorian’s war council for Mage Marks,” Nour continued, “and they checked the queen, too…without her knowledge. Needless to say, she was not pleased. So, you see, Great One, it’s fortunate that I haven’t been able to Mark her yet.
Our secret is still safe, and we can use the queen’s anger to our advantage. ”
Vadim waved an impatient hand. Celieria’s queen could wait.
She wasn’t half so important to Vadim as Ellysetta Baristani.
“How many Fey are guarding the Tairen Soul’s mate now?
” Pain spiked in his belly. His next incarnation was upon him, and the mere thought of claiming Ellysetta Baristani and her extraordinary gifts made his soul rage for release from the fragile bonds of its current, rotting form.
“Is the Tairen Soul with her? How many chemar have you managed to place near her?” He calculated rapidly.
It would take three hours to get an attack force through the Well of Souls, but if he sent one of the dahl’reisen with them to spin that very useful invisibility weave, they might yet achieve what Zon and his men had failed to accomplish in Orest.
Nour’s silence made Vadim’s eyes narrow. “Nour?”
For the first time in the conversation, Nour looked nervous. “The Tairen Soul and his mate are already gone, Most High. They left the city shortly after dusk.”
“Gone.” His fingers clenched tight around the stone altar top. “They were there, in the city, and you just let them go? Did you even attempt to capture the girl?”
“There wasn’t time, Most High. They were not here for more than a few bells, and they brought several hundred Fey with them.
Before I could make arrangements to separate her from her guard, it was too late.
They must have used the same invisibility weave as the dahl’reisen to leave the city without being detected. ”
The temperature of his spell room plummeted as Vadim’s ire rose.
“You haven’t Marked the queen and now you tell me you let Ellysetta Baristani come and go without a single attempt to bring her to me?
” Vadim’s teeth came together with a snap.
Ellysetta Baristani should already be his, fully Marked and under his control, not running about the countryside eluding him and his Primages.
“You do remember whom you replaced in Celieria and why you replaced him, do you not?”
Nour’s throat bobbed as he swallowed. “Yes, Master Maur.”
Sulimage Kolis Manza, who had been the High Mage’s agent in Celieria before Nour, had done a much better job infiltrating the queen’s inner circle and gaining her confidence.
He’d done so well, in fact, that he’d turned her against her king and half her lords and used her as one of Vadim’s most powerful political pawns in Celieria’s royal court.
Were it not for the fiasco he’d made of the attempt to capture Ellysetta Baristani, the young Sulimage would still be there.
“I will see to Ellysetta Baristani myself,” Vadim bit out.
“As for you, I expect significant results with the queen before your next report. Since you can no longer Mark her without running the risk of discovery, you will have to find another way. I will have the hand of Eld guiding the Celierian throne before the month is out, or you will beg me to show you one tenth the mercy you offer your own umagi.” Even among the Eld, Nour’s brutality was legend.
To Vadim’s grim satisfaction, the Primage went pale as milk beneath his Celierian tan.
“We will speak again at this same time seven days hence. I will expect better news.”
“Of course, master. It shall be—” Nour’s muffled voice died abruptly as Vadim lifted the Drogan chalice and tossed its thickening contents down the spell room’s drain hole.
Bah. Sending Nour to Celieria had been a foolish decision.
Vadim had hoped a more seasoned Primage would be better equipped to manipulate the mortals and their minds, but despite his substantive magical gifts, Nour lacked finesse.
He was a sledgehammer in a situation that clearly required a chisel.
Which just went to prove that power alone wasn’t the measure of a great Mage.
Well, Nour was one mistake Vadim would soon remedy.
For now, however, he had a Tairen Soul to trap.
After cleansing his spell room of the Drogan blood magic, he sent his consciousness to every umagi within four hundred miles of Celieria City.
Whichever way the Fey had headed, if they dropped their invisibility weaves, he would know it.
Finally, carefully, he sent a subtle seeking thread out into the darkness of night and settled in to wait with all the tireless patience of a spider in its web.
When Ellysetta Baristani lowered her defenses, he would be there.