by C. L. Wilson
Rain grew suddenly still. “That day in Tehlas, when you told my father I called a Song in the Dance, did you also know that I would have a truemate—and that she would be the one you’d been waiting for?”
The Elf’s expression grew shuttered, but he admitted the truth. “I Saw it before you were born.”
“You knew that I would scorch the world.”
“I knew. That Song was certain long before you were born.”
Anger simmered in his heart. “So you knew Sariel would die?”
“Your truemate could never have called your soul if you were still bound to Sariel.”
“And you just stood by and let it all happen?”
“Stood by?” For the first time, anger sparked in the Elf king’s eyes. “My people fought beside yours in every battle and died by the tens of thousands—many by your flame—which I and many of those who perished had Seen before it happened. Loved ones I had known for millennia surrendered their immortal lives to help the Fey hold the Shadow at bay, but some things, Rain Worldscorcher, we could not prevent. Some things had to unfold exactly as they did because the gods willed it so.”
“The gods,” Rain spat. “You mean that flaming Dance of yours.”
“Of course I mean the Dance!” Hawksheart exclaimed. “The Dance is the will of the gods, and our ability to See it was the gift entrusted to the first Elf, Taliesin Silvereye, when the gods fashioned our peoples from the stars. You Fey are the champions of Light, the chosen swords of the gods in the fight against the Dark. We Elves are the beacons, born to guide and aid you.”
“Guide us? If the Mage Wars were the outcome of your guidance, the Fey can scorching well do without it!”
“And yet, here you are, seeking my help and guidance.”
Rain opened his mouth, then snapped it shut. Damn the Elf. “Because I have no choice. Because my shei’tani needs answers only you can provide. And because I know we cannot win this war without your help—and you know it, too, yet still you refuse to provide it.”
“There is much you do not understand.”
“Because you refuse to tell me.”
“Because I cannot reveal the future I have Seen without changing what will happen!” Hawksheart snapped. “Too much is at stake, Tairen Soul. More than you can imagine. You distrust me, and I understand that. But I assure you, the Elves are in the service of the Light and always have been. My people left the Fading Lands when the Fey raised the Mists, but the moment you returned to the world, I sent my ambassador to you so that I could offer guidance and counsel as I have to every other Defender of the Fey who has ruled the Fading Lands. Your response,” he added pointedly, “was to send one I did not invite in your stead.”
Rain scowled. “I needed to get Ellysetta behind the Mists. Keeping her safe from the Mages was my first priority, and that took precedence over any desire of yours, Elf.” Violence simmered just beneath the surface of Rain’s skin. Already he could feel the tairen raking at its bonds, claws unsheathed and sharp as knives, the hunter’s growl rumbling deep within him.
Ellysetta put a hand over his. «He is not the enemy, shei’tan, and though he is definitely keeping something from us, he is sincere in his desire to help.» Aloud, to Hawksheart, she said, “Rain did what he thought best, Lord Galad, just as I’m sure you do. I will look into your mirror, but I want three things in return.” Her voice throbbed with low, persuasive shei’dalin tones.
Whether influenced by her push or not, Hawksheart bowed his head in agreement. “Name your price, Ellysetta Erimea. If I can give you what you request without endangering the outcome of your Song, I will.”
“First, I want your oath, sworn on all you hold dear, that you will do everything in your power to stop me from becoming the monster I saw in the Eye of Truth.”
The Elf king nodded. “This I am already sworn to do. If you fall to the Mages, Ellysetta, Light falls with you, and the Dance of this world dies. What else?”
“I want to know how to complete my truemate bond with Rain.”
Even before she finished speaking, Hawksheart was shaking his head. “Anio. That, I am afraid, I cannot tell you. That is a journey you and your mate must take together—without outside aid or interference.”
“But—”
“I am sorry,” he interrupted, his tone firm and uncompromising. “I cannot guide the journey your souls must take. Only the two of you can do that.”
“Will you at least tell us if we will complete our bond?” she persisted.
The Elf king hesitated, clearly reluctant, but after several moments, he admitted, “There are several variations of your Song that contain that verse.”
“Beylah vo, Lord Galad.” She threaded her fingers through Rain’s. “That gives me a mea sure of hope, at least.” She took a deep breath. “Then I have one final request.”
“Which is?”
“I want to know the truth about myself. I want to know how I know the things I do. Why can I wield Fey’cha like a master when I’ve never touched one before? Why can I heal souls in ways no other shei’dalin can? Where did I come from and what was done to me—and can it be undone? I want to know who my birth parents were and if they’re still alive.”
Hawksheart bowed his head for a moment, and his eyes closed as if he were suddenly weary. “What was done cannot be undone, my child. The past can only be used to shape the future.”
“I understand that. But if I agree to look in your mirror, you must give me the truth about my past.” She took a step closer. “You do know it, don’t you? If I am the one you’ve been waiting for, surely you must have Seen it.”
He inhaled deeply and exhaled a heavy sigh. “Bayas,” he admitted. “I know your truth. If you are certain you wish to know it, too, then I will share it with you. You have Seen a part of it yourself already.”
“Thank you.” Ellysetta drew a deep breath. A sense of fatalistic calm suffused her. Not knowing was far worse than any unpleasant secret Hawksheart might reveal. She couldn’t change what she was or where she came from, but she could at least face the truth and find a way to make peace with it. She was tired of jumping at shadows and fearing what she was.
“Then we have a compact?”
Rain’s arm tightened around her waist. «Be very sure this is what you want, shei’tani,» he whispered. «Once you strike a bargain with an Elf, he will hold you to your word; and inevitably what you bargained for doesn’t turn out the way you expected.»
She patted the golden steel brace covering his forearm. «I need to do this, Rain. Mama always used to say it’s better to choke on a bitter truth than savor a honeycake lie. He has the answers I need, and this may be my only chance to discover them.» She stroked his hand, each touch a caress filled with love and understanding and pleading. After a few moments, his arm fell reluctantly away from her waist.
“Well?” Hawksheart prompted. “Do we have an agreement?” His piercing Elvish eyes never left her face.
Ellysetta swallowed a sudden stab of fear and nodded. “Aiyah.”
“The offer has been made and accepted. The bargain is Elf-struck.” He clapped his hands and sparks shot out in a blossom of gold and green fire to swirl in the air between them. A sudden electric tingle raced through her veins. When the sparks faded, the Elf king waved an arm towards the shining blue pool. “Kneel beside the mirror. I would first See your Song, and then I will give you the truth of your past.”
As Ellysetta moved towards the pool and knelt on the spongy moss at its bank, Hawksheart walked towards the edge of the dim chamber. He laid his hands upon the inner tree wall and murmured something in lyrical Elvish. A moment later, the chamber was flooded with a pleasant but rather overpowering woodsy aroma, sweet, earthy, and pungent.
Ellysetta swayed as dizziness overtook her.
Do not fear, and do not resist. Hawksheart’s voice rang in her head like the tolling of a bell, resonant and irresistible. Not Spirit but something else. Something deeper and more powerful. Grandfather mer
ely shares the scent of his liferings. It will help open your mind to the mirror. Breathe deeply. Take his scent into your lungs.
Without hesitation, Ellysetta breathed as deeply as her lungs would allow. The dim room took on a hazy cast, as if a mist had crept into the chamber to throw everything out of focus. Beside her, in the depths of the shimmering blue pool, colors began to gather and swirl.
Now hold your hands over the mirror. When I tell you, put your palms upon the surface of the water…but be very careful not to submerge them. The mirror is powerful magic, and you are not trained in its use.
Her hands moved of their own volition out over the water. The colors in the pool leaped and twirled towards them as if in greeting. Ellysetta watched with a dazed sense of detachment, as if those hands belonged to someone else.
«Shei’tani?» Rain’s thoughts pressed against hers. Some part of her was dimly aware of his concern, but she couldn’t seem to summon a response. Her lungs were filled with the overpowering fragrance of the Sentinel, and her mind felt muddled.
She watched with a strange, detached disorientation as her hands lowered, palms down, fingers splayed, until at last the cool water of the mirror touched her skin. Her eyelashes fluttered, and she felt a strange, electric tug, as if the liquid in the pool were pure magic. Perhaps it was—and it was trying to draw her into its blue depths. She leaned forward.
Stop.
Hawksheart’s command froze her in place. Her hands barely kissed the still surface of the pool.
You know how to share your essence with a thing. Share it with the mirror now.
She drew a breath, closed her eyes, and summoned the brilliant rainbow-lit darkness of Fey vision. In that darkness the world around her was a bright weave of glowing magic: red Fire, green Earth, gleaming blue Water, silvery Air, and lavender Spirit. Here, in the heart of Grandfather, the colors were so dense the darkness was virtually impossible to see, and the water of the mirror shone a blinding blue-white. Into that dazzling brightness she poured a portion of the potent energy that was her essence, the living magic unique to her alone.
The pool flared. The colors of Grandfather flared as well, and the entire room went so magic-bright Ellysetta cried out and opened her eyes. Fey vision still overlapped natural sight, and what had been a dim, windowless hollow lit only by the glow of the mirror pool was now as bright as the Great Sun. She glanced over her shoulder. Rain and her quintet stood in a protective semicircle directly behind her, and though their silvery Fey luminescence was dazzling to her enhanced vision, each of the Fey appeared as dim shadows against Grandfather’s searing light.
Concentrate, Ellysetta Erimea. Find the essence of your Song.
Ellysetta turned towards Galad Hawksheart, but like the Sentinel tree and the mirror pool, the Elf king was so bright he made her eyes hurt. “The light is blinding. I can’t see.”
You do not need to see. You only need to think of your Song.
“But I don’t know my song. Even the tairen could not hear it.”
I do not speak of tairen song. You have not yet accepted that part of your soul, so of course you do not hear it. I speak of your life’s Song. Everyone has one. It is an individual life’s unique pattern, its joys and sorrows, its loves and fears, its memories and dreams. Think of those things. Summon your Song.
Faces flashed across her memory, vignettes of the happiest days of her life. Mama, Papa, the twins. Her fear and awe the day Rain Tairen Soul swooped down from the sky to claim her. Selianne Pyerson, laughing and giggling over some girlish fancy. Lillis and Lorelle squealing and dancing in circles, their mink brown curls bobbing against their slender shoulders. Rain gathering her into his arms, his eyes glowing stars that regarded her as if she were the sun around which all his world revolved.
Gradually, other not-so-happy memories emerged as well. Kelissande Minset’s sneering superiority. Queen Annoura’s scarcely veiled mockery as she assessed Ellysetta during her first appearance at court. The Church of Light priests in Hartslea who’d come to examine her for demon possession. Rain drawing back from her in horror as the black smudge of the Mage’s Mark bloomed like a dread flower over her heart.
Bayas. You are doing well. Keep concentrating. Let the memories come.
The memories turned darker still. Nightmares from her childhood. Dreams of blood and death and war. Screaming. The exorcists with their terrible needles. Pain! Oh, dear gods, such pain! Hot tears gathered in her eyes. The tairen dying. The High Mage, with his burning, ember-kissed eyes, laughing in triumph. You’ll kill them, girl. You’ll kill them all. It’s what you were born for. Mama dying in her arms. That horrible, unchangeable moment when a sel’dor blade had flashed and Mama’s head rolled away from her body.
Rage.
She cried out and started to pull her hands from the mirror’s surface, hoping that breaking the contact would stop the onslaught.
Anio! Hawksheart barked, his voice a hammer of command. No. You must continue.
“I don’t want to.” She whimpered like a child afraid to set foot into a dark room. Cold shivered down her limbs. She couldn’t feel her legs tucked beneath her, but her hands and arms had turned to lumps of ice, freezing and burning all at once.
You must. This is the price for the truth you asked of me.
“I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want it anymore.”
The bargain was Elf-struck. It cannot be undone.
The images of her life began to flash faster as the events became more recent. The Massan. Venarra holding the soul of a dying Fey woman to life while other shei’dalins worked frantically to heal her broken body. The death of the tairen kitling Forrahl. Ellysetta’s descent into the Well of Souls to save the other kitlings. The terrible piercing anguish of two more Mage Marks, and Rain’s own daring plunge into the Well to rescue her. The battle of Orest. Rain emerging from Veil Lake, wreathed in blinding magic as he donned the golden war steel of the Feyreisen. Saving Aartys and Truthspeaking the Mage. The dark voices whispering in her mind. The Azrahn-gifted children conceived as a result of her weave. Rain’s Rage during the Eld attack. The way Fey’cha fit so comfortably in her hands. The moment she made her bargain with the Elf king.
The images came faster and faster as the scenes they depicted grew closer to the present. When they reached this moment, Ellysetta cried out and her spine went rigid. The flashing images became a blur, yet she could see them with vivid clarity.
War. Armies stretched as far as she could see. Dharsa in smoldering ruins. Rain, in tairen form, roaring in pain as a sel’dor bowcannon bolt ripped through his chest and sent him tumbling from the sky. Rain and Ellysetta, captured by the Eld and draped in sel’dor chains as black-armored soldiers and a blue-robed Primage prodded them towards a great gaping black maw.
In slow motion, so that each moment seemed to last a lifetime, Ellysetta saw a red Fey’cha plunge into Rain’s back, saw Rain’s eyes widen in surprise and pain. He fell dead at her feet, his limbs shaking with tremors as the lethal venom from the blade raced through his body. She saw herself standing over his body. Her eyes were black as night, sparkling with malevolent red stars, as she raised the bloody Fey’cha over her head and laughed.
“No!” Ellysetta shrieked the denial and tried to pull her hands from the mirror, but something held them in place. She could not free herself, and the visions continued to flash in the bright light of the pool, each more awful than the previous. The worst visions from every nightmare she’d ever harbored. A future so grim she could not bear it.
The world in flames. Millions slaughtered. Celierians, Fey, and Elves in chains. Fey’Bahren a scorched boneyard baking in a merciless sun, while overhead winged monsters that once had been tairen dominated the sky, their hides as bare and scabrous as those of the foul darrokken. Acid dripped from their fangs, leaving smoldering pits in the monsters’ wakes.
Lillis and Lorelle not dead, but worse: dark-eyed imps of evil, laughing and dancing in showers of blood while they played Stones with the
skulls of slaughtered children. And watching them fondly, from a diseased throne of death: herself, the Queen of Darkness.
“Stop!” Ellysetta cried. “Did you bring me here only to torture me? You said there was still hope! Where is the hope in this?” She writhed and yanked at her hands, fighting the unseen power that kept her chained to the mirror pool, but she could not free herself. «Rain! Help me!» she called on the bond threads that tied part of his soul to hers.
He didn’t answer.
Fear hollowed her out and left her shaking. “Where’s Rain? What have you done with him?” She tried to see him but both her Fey vision and her physical sight were now completely blinded by the blazing magic that filled the chamber. All she could see was burning, blinding, dazzling white light.
Calm yourself, Ellysetta Erimea, Hawksheart chided. Your fears are groundless. Your mate is safe, and exactly where you left him. Be calm.
Calm? She was blind and trapped and couldn’t reach Rain, and this stranger whom Rain didn’t trust wanted her to be calm?
“Then why can’t I hear him? Why can’t I see him? Why are you holding me against my will?”
She heard something that sounded like a sigh. You cannot leave because our bargain was Elf-struck. Your own magic binds you until the price you agreed to is paid. The harder you struggle, the more powerful the bonds become. You cannot see because the magic that blinds you is a reflection of your own power. The more magic you expend trying to free yourself, the more blinding the light becomes. If you calm yourself and cease your struggle, the light will begin to fade.
“Why didn’t you tell me this before I touched the mirror?”
I had not believed it necessary, but you are much stronger than I Saw. He sounded slightly embarrassed and not quite as sure of himself as he had seemed at their meeting. And much brighter.