“The tairen are dying and the Fey, with all your vast powers, can’t find a way to save them—but you thinkIcan?” Stunned, Ellie slumped back against the thick, knobby trunk of the fireoak behind her. Her fingers dug deep into the hard furrows of the bark. She stared at Rain in utter shock. Whatever she’d been expecting him to say, it hadn’t been that. “How can you possibly believe such a thing?”
“It isn’t as farfetched as it seems,” he replied. “What’s killing the tairen attacks only kitlings in the egg. None but tairen can enter the nesting lair, so I am the only Fey to set foot in Fey’Bahren since the Mage Wars. You, however, are my truemate, and the tairen will welcome you as kin. You can get close to the eggs, as none of ourshei’dalinshave been permitted to do.”
“And what good will that do? I’m noshei’dalin.”
“Ellysetta, you healed Bel’s soul with a touch. You mitigated my own torment with a simple embrace. Marissya is our most powerful livingshei’dalin, yet in a thousand years she’s never achieved so much. And you did it without even trying—and with no training of any kind. There’s no doubt in my mind that if anyone has the power to save the tairen, you do.”
She stared at him, aghast. “I can’t even get through a state dinner without mucking it up. Instead of saving the tairen, it’s more likely I’d doom them to a speedier extinction!”
“You just need to learn control,shei’tani. I can help teach you that.”
Bright Lord save her. “I really don’t think that sounds like a good idea. Isn’t there some other way? Maybe you could go back to this Eye of Truth and tell it you want another answer.”
Rain gave a wry laugh. “Nei. Even if the world itself hung in the balance, I doubt I could summon the courage to ask the Eye for another seeing. It wasn’t pleased with me the last time, and the Eye has a very... effective way of making its displeasure known.”
A vision of Rain screaming in torment flashed through Ellysetta’s mind. A muted memory of pain stung her senses. Her hands curled instinctively into fists and her spine went stiff. “This Eye... ithurtyou when you asked it for help?” Her voice was low, almost a growl.
The humor dancing at the edges of Rain’s mouth deepened to satisfaction, and his eyes began to glow. He closed the distance between them. “I did not ask. I demanded. Quite rudely. The Eye punished me for my arrogance, as was its right.” He brought her fists to his lips and kissed the clenched fingers. “Look at you, ready to fight the Eye of Truth, one of the Fading Lands’ greatest powers, for the harm you think it did me. And you still believe you are a coward?” He smiled and shook his head. “It may take more to rouse the tairen in you,shei’tani, but never doubt it lives in your soul, and it is fierce indeed.”
Pride and approval radiated from him, wrapping her in warmth and soothing away her fierce reaction to the Eye’s rough treatment of him. But even his approval could not soothe the choking tightness in her chest. The fates of both the tairen and the Fey rested on her shoulders, and he expected her to somehow miraculously save them.
“You do not stand alone in this, Ellysetta,” Rain said, clearly sensing the emotions swirling about her like a fearful cloud. “This task belongs to both of us. All I ask is that you help me find a way to save my people.”
She looked up into his beloved face, so beautiful, so sincere. All her life she’d dreamed of him, all her life she’d wept for the sorrows he’d endured and prayed that the gods would give his soul peace. And now here he was, standing before her, asking for her help.
How could she possibly deny him?
She drew a deep breath, wrapped what little courage she possessed tight around her like a warming shawl, and nodded. “I’ll do everything I can, Rain, though I’m not at all sure what help that will be.”
“Approaching the line is the first victory of battle,shei’tani. Learn to celebrate your small braveries. They light the way to greater courage.” He raised her hands to his lips. “It is my honor to be yourchatok, your mentor, in this first dance.”
Despite her knocking knees, she firmed her jaw and lifted her chin. “So where do we start,chatok?”
His low laugh rippled across her senses. “As with all adventures, we start with the first step. Something small, something simple. Before you can truly control magic, you must first learn its patterns. We’ll start with the commonest patterns of all: the inherent magic that exists in all living things.”
Her brows rose. “You believe all living things possess magic?”
He smiled. “Of course, Ellysetta. Life is the magic. It is Fire, Earth, Air, Water, Spirit, and Azrahn combined. Energy, substance, consciousness, and soul.”
“This tree”—she pointed to the broad trunk of the fireoak behind her—“is conscious?”
“Not as you and I would know it, butaiyah, it is. Do not all trees know to send their roots towards the best source of water? Do they not all bend their branches to find sunlight?”
“That’s just the natural way of things. Branches grow where there is more sunlight because they cannot survive without it, not because they want to.”
“Have you never touched a thing and felt its magic?”
“No.”
“I have. When I was a boy, just before my Soul Quest, when my own magic was awakening within me, I spent bell after bell walking the streets of Dharsa and the Plains of Corunn, touching all manner of things to see if I could detect the magic within them, to see if I could make them respond to my presence.”
She tried to imagine Rain Tairen Soul as a boy, but couldn’t. “Did they respond?”
“Aiyah.” He smiled, a tiny echo of a long-ago boy’s satisfaction. “Even then, before I had tapped the wellspring of the Tairen Soul power within me, they knew and welcomed me. The trees would rustle their leaves. The grass would bend towards me.”
“It could have been the wind.”
He gave her a disgusted look. “How can you be such a devotee of Fey tales yet still be such a nonbeliever? It was not the wind, I assure you. Here. I will demonstrate.” He moved around her in one graceful motion and laid a hand on the rough trunk of the fireoak. His eyes didn’t glow the slightest bit to indicate he was working magic, but as Ellie watched, the thick canopy of branches bent slowly downward, towards him. All the other trees continued to rustle in the wind. “You see?”
