by C. L. Wilson
“Such a convincing liar. My dear, it really is an exceptional talent. I almost believe you myself.”
Jiarine froze. She knew that voice. She knew it as well as she knew her own. “M-master?”
The man in the corner threw back the hood of his cloak to reveal a face she knew. A face she had known and loved and hated since she was a foolish teenage girl who sold her soul to a handsome Mage in exchange for wealth and power.
Kolis Manza cocked his handsome face to one side and gave her the charming, slightly quizzical smile that had won her heart so long ago. “You know, I had almost forgotten how truly beautiful you are.”
“Master Manza! Thank the gods you are alive.”
His expression hardened instantly. “The gods had nothing to do with it, I promise you.” He took a breath and forced another small smile, but this time she realized there was something different about him. A coldness to his eyes that hadn’t existed before.
“M-master? Why are you here? Why did you have me brought here?”
“As it so happens, this is one of the few rooms in the prison with privacy wards woven into the stone. With a Mage on the loose, the Fey are scanning every fingerspan of the city, looking for magic that might give away Master Nour’s position. But thanks to the construction of this room, any magic woven in here is undetectable outside these walls.”
He sighed and walked towards her. “You see, Jiarine, in exposing himself, Nour has cast the light of suspicion upon you as well. Given our past association…and my upcoming return to court, this will not do. Your integrity must be beyond reproach so that no hint of suspicion should fall on me. Unfortunately, no matter how skilled a liar you are, there are ways to elicit the truth from you. Which is why, my sweet umagi, as much as I regret it, I must permanently erase from your memory every delectable moment we have spent together as our true selves.”
“Master?”
He leaned towards her. “Don’t worry, Jiarine. This won’t hurt.” He smiled coldly. “That part comes later.”
“Tortured?” Annoura stared in disbelief at the Dazzle kneeling before her. “You expect me to believe that Lady Montevero—a Favorite in my personal court—was tortured? You must be mistaken, Ser! She was simply taken for questioning, and to be detained until a Truthspeaker could arrive to verify her word.”
The Dazzle bowed deeply and kept his eyes lowered. “I went to visit her this morning, to bring her a few trinkets to help pass the time. There isn’t a fingerspan on her poor face that isn’t bruised and mottled…and her hands, her poor hands. All her fingers were broken. She was barely conscious. All she kept saying was, ‘I am innocent. Tell the queen I am innocent.’”
Annoura rose to her feet. She clenched her hands at her waist to keep them from shaking. “Get out. All of you. This instant!”
The courtiers knew that tone of voice. Every last one of them leapt to their feet and beat a hasty retreat.
Annoura began to pace, her mind a whirl. First, Master Fellows’s near death, then the revelation about Lord Bolor, then the manhunt across the city that still—even a full day later—had turned up nothing.
All that had been upsetting enough, but this news…this defied all belief.
After Master Fellows had named Lord Bolor as his attacker—and an Elden Mage to boot—she had, of course, wondered if Jiarine’s fervent attempts to insinuate him into Annoura’s presence were part of some plot. That was why she had not objected when Dori insisted on taking Lady Montevero to Old Castle for questioning.
But torture! She never would have approved that. Not for Jiarine. At least, not without some sort of proof, beyond baseless supposition and guilt by association! After their last months of friendship, Jiarine deserved that much, at least.
Annoura marched over to the wall and yanked on the bellpull. Her Master of Chambers arrived a few chimes later, just as she was pressing her royal seal at the bottom of a parchment. “Your Majesty?”
“Summon my son this instant. And send Lord Hewen and a carriage to Old Castle Prison with this.” She held out the sealed parchment. The ink was still damp, and the handwriting her own rather than the royal calligrapher’s flowing script, but that seal on the bottom made the document as legitimate and binding as any law of Celieria. “Have him deliver this royal writ of release to the prison master. I want Lady Montevero under this roof and in Lord Hewen’s care before dinner this evening.”
The Master of Chambers bowed. “Of course, Your Majesty. I will see to it personally.”
Three bells later, she and half the court stood waiting in the courtyard as the royal carriage carrying Lord Hewen and Lady Montevero rolled across the paving stones and came to a halt at the foot of the stairs.
Her skin mottled, her blue eyes dazed with pain, Jiarine Montevero clung to Lord Hewen’s strong arm as she made her trembling descent from the carriage to the courtyard.
“Lady Montevero!” Annoura swept across the remaining distance, her arms outstretched. “You poor dear. I sent the release the moment I heard.” She had intended to clasp Jiarine’s hand, but seeing the mangled state of her fingers, Annoura chose to grip the lady’s face instead and deliver a light kiss upon her cheeks.
“Good gods!” a rich, masculine voice declared. “What’s happened to her?”
Annoura’s heart stilled for a moment. She turned her head to see the familiar, stunningly handsome nobleman standing beside the open door of a second coach she hadn’t noticed coming in after the first. Her eyes drank in the long-missed sight of his face, his eyes, the careless tousle of his hair as it fell across his brow.
“Your Majesty,” Lord Hewen murmured, “we need to get Lady Montevero inside. In her current weakened state, she could easily catch her death of cold.”
The admonishment snapped her back to her senses. “Of course.” Turning to the courtiers, she waved two of her current Favorites to her side. “Come quickly. Help Lady Montevero to her rooms. You there…” She caught sight of the dim-skull Dazzle. “Mairi, have the servants stoke the fire. Tell cook to send hot tea and keflee—and something warm and nourishing for the lady to eat. Quickly!”
As the courtiers carried Jiarine Montevero inside, Annoura turned to the unexpected new arrival to court, the handsome, too-long-absent Favorite who had occupied her thoughts far more than was prudent. “Ser Vale.” He still had the power to make her pulse pound when he fixed his gaze so intently upon her. He looked at her as if she were the center of his universe.
“Your Majesty.” He bowed deeply and lifted his eyes to smile in that slow, seductive way of his that made her heart leap into her throat. “Your beauty, my queen, still shines as brilliant as the sun, and I am but a poor, withered bloom too long absent from your radiance.”
From any other courtier, such effusive, overblown compliments would sound ridiculous. But Vale spoke with such a ring of sincerity, the words fell like beautiful poetry from his lips. It was all she could do to maintain her composure and say, “We are glad you are returned to us, Ser,” in a modulated voice when what she wanted to do was leap and shout for joy, as giddy as a schoolgirl deep in the throes of her first crush.
Vale was back.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Elvia ~ Deep Woods
Six days after leaving the Dreamer River, the Fey approached the heart of Deep Woods. Close-knit stands of trees vying for sunlight and rich soil gave way to fewer, much older trees, massive arboreal giants that soared so high Ellysetta thought their treetops might just pierce the clouds.
She glanced back at Rain as he rode through a shaft of sunlight, and for a moment, she saw him differently, as if a second image were superimposed atop him. Rain, but not Rain. His hair a deep bronze rather than black, his muscular body encased in gleaming silver armor, not golden war steel. The image reminded her of the man she’d seen in that strange vision she’d had in the Dreamer. The vision she and Rain had both shared.
Ellysetta was convinced they’d seen a glimpse of the life of Fellana the Bright—the t
airen who had transformed herself into a Fey woman to be with the Fey king she loved. But when she’d asked Fanor about it, all he’d said was that the Dreamer showed what it liked. The vision could have been the past or the future or possibly a vision born of their own dilemma that had never truly existed, nor ever would. The point was to find meaning in the vision that they could apply to their current situation.
She blinked, and the image of the bronze-haired Fey king disappeared. What meaning was she supposed to have gained? Was she supposed to accept that her tairen would never find its wings? That she and Rain had lived before—or would again? That love was a choice and she just needed to accept it to complete their bond?
Fanor had said the Dreamer River would enlighten them, but all it had done was confuse her more.
Ellysetta ducked her head to miss a low-hanging branch that was as big around as the trunk of a hundred-year-old fireoak. “These trees are incredible,” she said to Rain as they rode past the massive trunk of the colossus. “They remind me of the Sentinels outside of Dharsa, only much, much larger.” The Fey and the Elves were riding single file down a narrow trail that wound through the ferns carpeting the forest floor. Beams of sunlight filtered down from the canopy overhead, illuminating the rich, vivid green hues of the undergrowth and the golden tones of the smooth tree trunks so that the forest seemed to glow with radiant light.
“These are Sentinels,” Rain said. “The ones in Dharsa came from the Elves, a gift long ago, when our two races lived as one. But these are much older even than those.” His body swayed to the leisurely walking pace of his ba’houda mount.
“They are the watchers of the wood,” Fanor said. “Nothing escapes their notice—or their memory—and they live for a very long time.”
“How long?” Ellysetta asked.
“Longer than any Elf or Fey.” The Elf leaned left in his saddle and patted a nearby tree whose trunk was at least a full tairen length wide. He murmured a stream of lyrical Elvish to it, and the tree’s branches fluttered in response. “This Sentinel, for instance, has lived since the dawn of the Third Age. He is a fine young tree.”
Ellysetta laughed. “Young? The Third Age began at least a hundred thousand years ago.”
Fanor smiled. “It’s young for a Sentinel. In Navahele, the oldest of the ancients there put down his roots in the Time Before Memory, before the First Age.”
Her jaw dropped. “But that was over a million years ago.”
“Bayas, so it was. He and the other ancients of Navahele hold in their life rings many memories long since forgotten by the rest of the world.”
“Do they share those memories?” Rain asked.
“Not with me.” Fanor ducked his head to miss a low-hanging branch. “The ancients speak only to the king and queen of Elvia, Lord Galad and his sister Ilona Brighthand, the Lady of Silvermist.”
As they rode up the crest of a hill, Fanor’s face brightened. “We are here.” He spurred his mount faster, and the ba’houda took off. When they reached the top of the crest, Fanor reined his mount to a halt and waited for the others to catch up.
“Behold,” he said when they drew near, “Navahele. City of the ancients.” A smile of joy and pride spread across his face and made his skin glow with a soft golden aura.
Ellysetta drew back on her mount’s reins, pulling the mare to a halt at the top of the hill. She stared down into the valley below with dawning wonder. What ever she’d been expecting, it wasn’t this.
There were no buildings.
Navahele wasn’t just a city in the trees; it was a city of the trees. Rings of Sentinels nearly twice the size of any they’d seen so far were twined together in overlapping harmony. Their glossy golden trunks and branches had grown into living cathedrals in which the Elves dwelled. Stairs circled massive trunks, and bridges crisscrossed the air above, all formed from branches, vines, and other symbiotic vegetation that grew along the great Sentinels’ trunks and branches. Columns and elegant latticework of supporting roots grew in graceful splendor beneath the heaviest branches in a manner similar to bania trees. Leaf-and flower-covered vines hung from the canopy like ribbons around which birds and a dazzling array of butterflies fluttered like flying jewels.
“Come,” Fanor said. He touched his heels to his mount’s side, spurring the horse down the trail towards the stunning city of trees. “My people are expecting us.”
Leaving their mounts at the bottom of the hill, the Fey followed Fanor as he led the way through the central grove of colossal, ancient trees. Thick, spongy moss, soft as eiderdown, carpeted the ground below the great branches. Each step was like walking on clouds.
Ellysetta couldn’t stop herself from craning her neck and gawking like an awestruck child as, behind every tree, she found a scene of utter pastoral tranquillity. Clear streams burbled over rounded stones, and lacy waterfalls tumbled in musical white waves down moss-covered boulders. Everywhere, creatures of myth and legend abounded—animals and birds that had long since disappeared from the mortal world.
“Is that a…Shadar?” she whispered to Fanor when she caught sight of a trio of Elf maids weaving flower garlands into the long, lustrous mane and tail of an enormous white stallion with a single, spiraling horn sprouting from its forehead. The stallion turned its proud head in Ellysetta’s direction, then whickered and pawed the mossy ground with gleaming silver hooves. The soft laughter of the Elf maidens fell silent as they watched Ellysetta and the Fey pass.
“It is,” Fanor said.
“I didn’t know they still existed—or ever truly did, for that matter.”
“Mortals hunted them nearly to extinction for their magic—the Aquilines as well.” Aquilines were fierce, winged chargers who were said to spawn thunder with the beat of their wings and lightning with the strike of their golden hooves. “But both still thrive in Elvia.”
Just looking at the Shadar made her almost giddy. “Is it true what the legends say about the power of a Shadar’s horn being able to nullify any poison and purify any foulness?”
Fanor’s white teeth flashed in an indulgent smile. “Aiyah. Shadar horn is a curative like no other, which is why mortals hunted them so exhaustively. They could touch Shadar horn to a poisoned well, and the waters would be instantly purified. ’Tis said the touch of a Shadar horn can even save a man poisoned by tairen venom.”
Rain snorted. “Now, that is myth. Not even our strongest shei’dalins can counteract tairen venom.”
The Elf shrugged. “Well, that’s what Elvish lore claims. I don’t know of anyone who’s ever tested to see if it’s true.”
Tajik snorted and cast a speculative look Gaelen’s way. “Perhaps vel Serranis could give it a try while we’re here. Purely in the interest of science, of course.”
Bel rolled his eyes. Gil and Rijonn sniggered. Gaelen just lifted a fist with his thumb tucked between his index and middle finger in a crude gesture. Tajik grinned and smacked a sarcastic kiss in his direction.
They stopped before a beautiful vine-covered arbor that curled up the trunk of one of the great Sentinels. A dozen Elves, golden skinned and beautiful, stood waiting at the base of the tree.
“Go with them, please,” Fanor said. “Lord Galad bids you rest and refresh yourselves. At sunset, we hold a dinner to honor your arrival. He will see you after that.”
The Elves led the Fey to individual guest chambers formed from spacious hollows that appeared to have been purposely grown into the Sentinel tree’s massive trunk. Rain inspected the chamber he and Ellysetta had been escorted to and could find no hint of tool mark on any part of the smooth, seamless golden surface of the floor, walls, or ceiling.
Light inside the chamber was provided by a silver chandelier shaped like drapes of flowing vines, only instead of holding candles, the chandelier was covered in phosphorescent butterflies whose bodies gave off a gentle, silvery blue light as they slowly fanned their jeweled wings.
“When you wish to sleep, simply open the window and the damia will leave
,” said the Elf maiden who had escorted them to their chamber. “To call them back again, pour a few drops of this honeywater into the bellflowers.” She held up a crystal flacon and pointed to the upturned tube-shaped silver flowers at the end of each of the chandelier’s vines. “Refreshment and a change of clothing have been provided. There is a bathing pool at the base of the tree. The banquet to honor your arrival will be held on the terrace overlooking the pools that surround Grandfather’s island. Make yourselves comfortable until then.”
“Talaneth, elfania,” Rain said with a bow of his head.
The Elf, a beautiful woman with hair like nightfall and eyes as gold as sunrise, returned the bow. “Blessings of the day,” she murmured, and departed with silent grace.
“What now?” Ellysetta asked, when they were alone.
“Now we relax as much as we can, and wait for sunset.” Rain smiled at Ellysetta’s disgruntled expression. After the long days of riding, she’d expected her waiting to be over once they reached Navahele. “In Elvia, all things come in their own time.”
They helped themselves to the fruits and delicate pastries provided for them and availed themselves of the bathing pool. When it came time to dress, however, Rain left the Elvish clothing in a neat, untouched pile. As long as the Fading Lands were at war, the golden war steel of the Fey king would be his only garb. He cleansed the dust and grime of travel from the armor with a weave and polished the black and gold plates until they shone.
While Rain dressed, Ellysetta transformed her studded leathers into a silver-and-scarlet gown ornate enough for an introduction to an immortal royal. She left her hair down, flowing in thick ringlets to her waist, and settled a crown made of woven platinum, diamond, and Tairen’s Eye crystal on her head.
“Well,” she said, when they’d both finished their preparations. “Shall we go?” Her heart was thumping in her chest, and bands of nervous tension were drawing tight around it.
“You shine bright as the Great Sun, shei’tani,” Rain said with a smile. “Aiyah, let us go. And don’t worry. Hawksheart is bound by the laws of Elvish hospitality. We are here by his invitation, as his guests. By that law, we’re safer here than we would be anywhere else in the world.”