Queen of Song and Souls (8 page)

That tiny space had grown over the last few months and more thoughts had crowded into it. Hopes had blossomed, and her first timid wish for freedom had evolved into dreams so vivid she could not help pursuing them.

A nameless, worthless
umagi
had no thought, took no breath, envisioned no future that was not allowed by her Mage master... but Melliandra did.

Within the body of a slave, the dreams of a free soul had taken root. One day, she would make those dreams come true.

Chapter four

Shadow Man

Magic Mages

Lift Your hand

Weave your spells

Rising Darkness

Evil Rages

Throughout the land

Azrahn dwells

Shadow Magic, a Fey child’s poem of Eld.

Celieria ~ Orest

“He doesn’t look anything like I imagined.”

Ellysetta stared at the blue-robed man lying unconscious on the floor in the center of a large, windowless room carved into the mountain. The Fey had brought their prisoner to Upper Orest to await the arrival of the
shei’dalins
, and they were taking no chances that he might escape. In addition to the chains that bound his hands and ankles, a ring of grim-eyed Fey surrounded the Mage, feeding power into the blazing twenty-five-fold weave that secured him, while another twenty-five Fey had spun a protection weave around the room.

Looking at the Mage, Ellysetta couldn't help thinking that she had expected a Primage of Eld to look more sinister... more openly evil and depraved. The Fey warriors guarding him looked more dangerous than he. This Mage had the face of a handsome young man in his early twenties. "He looks so... innocent."

"Don't believe it for an instant," Rain growled. "The boy born into that body might have been innocent, but the Mage that boy has become is anything but. Come away. It's against my better judgment that you're even close enough to look upon him." Despite the twenty-five-fold weave around the Mage, the twenty-five grim-eyed Fey holding the weaves, and the added protection of her own bloodsworn quintet hovering nearby, Rain was clearly on edge at having Ellysetta in such close proximity to a Mage.

Flashing sparks of unsettled magic swirled around Rain like agitated fairy flies. He hadn't wanted to bring her here—he'd even suggested she leave the city entirely—but she had insisted on coming. She'd wanted to put a face to the evil that had haunted her entire life.

Was it odd to feel so... disappointed? She'd prepared herself for horror, for a monstrous face from her worst nightmares. Not a handsome youth who would make girls sigh as he walked by. Maybe the twenty-five-fold shields were to blame, but she couldn't sense the slightest hint of danger about him. Nothing. If she'd met him on the street, she would have smiled and offered him greeting. Upon better acquaintance, she might even have welcomed him into her home.

"Do you think Mages ever regret what they are?"

Rain turned to her in surprise—and no little concern.
"Nei,"
he said flatly, his tone certain and unyielding. "Regret requires a conscience, and Mages have none."

"But—"

"Nei.
But nothing." His eyes narrowed. "I know what you're thinking. You look at this Mage and you see a young boy, and you want to save him. Put that thought out of your head this instant. This Mage is no boy. He's probably older than I am. In fact, he's probably destroyed more lives than I have—yet given none of them a second thought."

"Why would anyone ever choose to live such an evil life?”

Rain put a hand on her back, guiding her away from the Mage. "Who knows, Ellysetta? Lust for power. Something broken in the soul. Or perhaps all it takes is being born into a culture that celebrates death and the enslavement of the soul over life and freedom." Shadows darkened his eyes, turning lavender to moody violet. "Does it matter? The Eld have always served the Dark, and we have always been their enemy."

"But... don't you think if we killed the Mages, the Eld from non-Mage families would want to be free?" She thought of her best childhood friend, Selianne, and Selianne's mother, who had been born in Eld and soul-claimed by the Mages. They'd both been loving, caring people. And they'd both died at Mage hands.

"If that was their desire, they had their chance to take it after the Mage Wars. They chose not to."

The sound of many booted feet coming down the adjoining corridor made Ellysetta swallow her next remark and turn towards the door. A score of warriors—
lu'tans
who had blood-sworn themselves to protecting her—-entered the room. Behind them, garbed from head to toe in brilliant scarlet and surrounded by ten unfamiliar warriors, two Fey
shei'dalins
followed, while another score of
lu'tans
brought up the rear. The large room seemed suddenly much smaller with close to ninety Fey crowded around its perimeter.

The
shei'dalins
walked towards the Mage without fear or hesitation, throwing back the veils covering their faces.

Narena and Faerah vol Oros were stunning even by Fey standards, with clouds of thick, curling black hair framing alabaster faces dominated by full red lips and large, thickly lashed black eyes.

But it was the look in those eyes—a pitiless, unyielding purpose—that made Ellysetta catch her breath and move instinctively closer to Rain. The vol Oros sisters were not gentle empaths suffused with the customary warmth of
shei'dalin
kindness and compassion. The expression in those searing eyes made it clear they were powerful, confident immortals come to rip truth from an enemy's mind.

Ellysetta's hand crept into Rain's and squeezed tight. The vol Oros sisters reminded her all too vividly of her first passage through the Faering Mists, when a band of ghostly, Mist-spawned
shei'dalins
had trapped and forcibly Truthspoken her, diving into her mind, ripping at the protective barriers that had shielded her all her life, nearly unleashing the wild, violent thing that lived inside her.

«Las, shei’tani."
Rain whispered on the private path they had forged between themselves.
«Narena and Faerah mean you no harm.»

His voice rang with certainty, but Ellysetta still flinched as the
shei'dalins
drew close and gathered their considerable power. No matter how warmly the
shei'dalins
would have welcomed any other mate of their king, Ellysetta bore four Mage Marks. That changed everything.

But the vol Oros sisters barely even flicked a glance in her direction. Their attention was entirely focused on the Mage.

"We need to know what the Eld are planning and where they will strike next," Rain told the
shei'dalins.
"And get the size of their forces, too, if he knows it."

One of the two nodded curtly, and without a word, they walked around the Mage and knelt on the ground near his head, their eyes never leaving his face. The two quintets who had accompanied them from the Fading Lands knelt around the Mage's body. Each of the warriors pulled razor-sharp red Fey'cha from their sheaths and held them over the Mage's body. Twenty blades were poised over vital arteries and organs neck, heart, belly, thighs, arms. If the Mage so much as lifted a finger against the
shei'dalins,
he would be dead in an instant. Ellysetta shivered at the thought.

"Let's go,
shei'tani,"
Rain whispered. "There's no need for you to be here."

"There's every need," she said. "I've never seen anyone Truthspeak a Mage. It's a talent that could come in handy, don't you think?”

He scowled, "Not for you. If you think I'd ever let you put your hands on a Mage ..."

"Once our bond is complete, no Mage can soul-claim me," she reminded him. "Let me stay, Rain. Let me watch ... and learn."

He surrendered with ill grace, but insisted she remain securely at his side. On that, he would not budge.

When the vol Oros sisters were ready to begin, they nodded to the warriors holding the twenty-five-fold weave around the Mage. Ellysetta expected the warriors to disperse their weave slowly, cautiously, but instead, one of the Fey cried, "Now!" and each Fey dissolved his thread in the weave.

The instant the weave vanished, the two sisters leaned in and gripped the Mage's head in their hands. Power exploded in a bright, golden-white light around them.

Ellysetta's belly coiled tight as she watched the
shei’dalins
spin their weaves. She'd seen Truthspeaking before . .. but never like this. The threads were sun-bright, blazing with such concentrated power she could taste the snap of it in her mouth, feel the shocking tingle race over her skin. It reminded her of the burst of power that billowed around Rain every time he summoned the Change.

She kept her eyes on the
shei'dalins,
summoning Fey vision in an attempt to see the patterns of their weave. The threads were so bright, they would have blinded a lesser
shei'dalin,
but Ellysetta saw the pattern—or, rather, sensed it somehow—and her mind worked to commit it to memory. Spirit and
shei'dalins
love ... not soft, not soothing, but hard and sharp as a knife. It stabbed deep into the mind of the unconscious Mage.

His eyes flew open, filled with shock. His lips parted in a soundless gasp. No other part of his body so much as twitched, because the Fey had spun a paralysis weave on him as soon as the shield weave had dissolved.

Ellysetta heard a voice—a wail. The Mage's wail. His mind rejecting the invasion of his thoughts. On the heels of his cry came a powerful intonation, two female voices, each vibrating with compulsion so strong, a chill shuddered up Ellysetta's spine.

«Open your mind, son of Eld. Let us in. We can feel how it
hurts you to keep secrets from us. Don't torment yourself this way.
The
knowledge you hold is a knife in your belly, twisting deeper
with every moment you delay. Let go of the pain, son of Eld. Open
your mind, set free your burdens, and let us bring you peace.»

Ellysetta's nails dug into Rain's wrist. The Mage was screaming now—a silent scream that ripped through his soul. The
shei'dalins
were not spinning pain upon him; he was doing it himself, thanks to the compulsion woven into their voices. Still, he fought to hold his barriers in place and resist the invasion of his mind. He wanted to whisper the death spell, the one that would free him from this torment and keep what he knew safe, but he couldn't remember the word, and his tongue couldn't move to form it.

"Torvan …»
The
shei'dalins
had pierced the outer layer of his mind and discovered the Mage's name and a memory from his childhood—a memory of a time when he'd been young and still innocent, a powerful child already slated for greatness. He had a mother, a Primage's favored concubine, a beauty with brown eyes and raven hair. She had loved him—at least as much as a woman of Eld dared to love her child.

«Torvan … »
Narena and Faerah had now tapped the memories of that mother, the feelings the boy Mage had reciprocated until he grew old enough to know that one day he would be her master. Using those memories, the
shei'dalins
spun a vivid illusion of the boy's mother, the sound of her voice, the sweet smell of her skin, the soft warmth of her embrace in those too-brief moments when she was allowed to hold her child. «
Torvan
,
dear one,"
the boy's mother pleaded
«Please tell us what we need to know. Please, my son. Trust us.»

Ellysetta swayed. It was almost as if she were there in the weave with the
shei'dalins
and the Mage and the Mage's memories. She knew the instant the crack into the Mage's mind opened a little further, gasped as the
shei’dalins
plunged deeper.

«Tell
us
what
you know, Torvan. Tell us.
You cannot
hold
back. You don't want to hold back. The need
to speak, to confess what you know, is too strong to resist.»

The
shei'dalins'
fingers tightened on the Mage's face, and another wail was wrung from his soul as a surge of fresh power bolstered their weave,

They had tapped other memories of his youth. Rain was wrong: Mages weren't born evil. They weren't born without a conscience. They were a product of their upbringing and the dark weaves of Azrahn that they were taught to spin when they were too young to know the danger. That sort of power was a heady drug for anyone, let alone a child.

Once Torvan donned the green robes of a novice Mage, earning the approval of his teachers and masters became the goal of his daily existence. That desire soon grew into a personal need to excel... to be better, stronger, more capable than his fellow novices. But it was only at age ten, when he watched his master force an
umagi
to commit unspeakable acts, that the true hunger for power over others blossomed in his Azrahn-darkened heart.

Cruelty came soon after, born from a mix of boredom and a driving urge to destroy every hint of weakness and emotion in his soul. Weak souls were slaves. Strong souls were masters. And it was much, much better to be a master than a slave.

Soon he moved from novice green to apprentice yellow, then Sulimage red. His rapid rise in rank and exponentially increasing talents caught the eye of a daring young Primage who had just ascended to the blue. Together with a handful of like-thinking Mages, they spoke in hushed whispers and thoughts stored in the small, private area of their minds that every Mage learned to create—the area that, in fact, separated Mages from
umagi
, though only a truly powerful Mage could keep even a small portion of his mind secure against the master who had claimed his soul as a child.