The Change swirled about Rain, and the sudden burst of magic made Tajik fall instinctively into a warrior’s slightly crouched attack stance, his hands on red steel.
Ellysetta’s head jerked around, her eyes blazing at the perceived threat, and Tajik’s body went rigid, his spine poker straight. A fierce consciousness invaded his own, spearing past all his shields straight to his core.
«Aiyah, you should fear us. We are fierce.»The voice, so soft, rang in his mind with the force of a gong, leaving him trembling in its wake.«Do not threaten us.»
She released him from his stunned paralysis, turning to face the tall, black-haired Fey beside her. Rain’s eyes were blazing, power sparking around him like fairy-flies. His arms caught her around the waist, and his mouth swooped down to capture hers. Unmindful of the gathered Fey looking on, he kissed her with a passion that nearly set their onlookers aflame.
«Shei’tani... Ellysetta... »His voice sang to hers in vibrant tones, shimmering down the threads of their bond and the new, fiercely blazing connection between them that hummed with wild, raw power.
Rain did not know what had happened to them in the Mists, nor at the moment could he bring himself to care. Whatever the Mists had done, whatever their reasons for it, they had brought both his tairen and hers to savage life, and in that moment of primitive wildness, when her soul and her tairen had screamed in rage and reached for him and his, the power and fury of their tairen had arced between them like searing flames shot straight from the heart of the Great Sun. Or, rather, like savage jets of tairen flame, the fire that burned all things. That thread of pure, intense power had pierced the wildest depths of his soul and anchored there.
The fiery bond thread was still there, neither extinguished nor dimmed, untamed by the others, yet braided so tight the three had nearly become one.
When the fierce radiance of their power and the wild fury of their tairen at last began to subside, the Feyreisa released her mateand turned to face the Fey. Tajik’s breath caught in his throat once more. The menace of the tairen was gone, leaving only luminous, golden beauty. To look upon the unveiled countenance of anyshei’dalinwas to know the face of love, but with the Feyreisa, the effect was overwhelming. When her gaze fell upon him, her eyes like radiant suns, it was as if the gods themselves shone a light straight into his heart.
“She is... is...” He swallowed hard. “I have no words.”
Bel clapped a sympathetic hand on his cradle friend’s shoulder. “I told you she was bright.”
Tajik took two trembling steps forward and fell to one knee, bowing his head. When he rose again, he fixed glowing eyes on the Feyreisa’s face and gave the greeting he should have offered her from the start. “Meiveli, kem’Feyreisa.Welcome to the Fading Lands.”
Chapter Five
Eld ~ Boura Fell
Vadim Maur’s left hand was trembling.
The High Mage glared at the betraying tremors, then curled his fingers in a fist until the shaking stopped. His visit to Shannisorran v’En Celay’s cell earlier today had wearied him far more than it should have. If not for the war hammer slamming into the Fey lord’s skull, the blast of power that had surged from him would have caught Vadim full bore rather than glancing off his left arm. The weak shield he’d thrown up had not been enough to rob the blast of its impact, and his hand had been twitching ever since.
He should have known better than to go to v’En Celay’s cell weary. And the last six days he’d spent claiming the Celierian Den Brodson’s soulhadwearied him. Most Mages who did not have the standard six years to claim a soul settled for a weaker hold on theirumagi, but Vadim had never done things by halves. He’d taken the full power of a claiming normally spread out across six years and concentrated it into six days.
Such a reckless expense of power was not his wisest decision, but losing Ellysetta Baristani when she’d been all but his had driven him into a fury. He’d wanted a productive outlet for his rage, and Brodson’s screams had been a balm to his soul. He’d also wanted complete and irrevocable control over the Celierian before using him, and since Kolis had tipped his hand in Celieria, time was quickly becoming a luxury rather than a tool at his disposal.
A knock sounded on his office door. “Enter,” he called.
The door swung inward, revealing anumagi, who bowed and said, “Fezaiina Zebah Rael has arrived, great one.”
“Send her in.”
Moments later, his office filled with rich, warm, seductive scents as the beautiful, bronze-skinned Feraz witch swept inside in a flurry of colorful silken veils. “Fezai Madia sends you greetings, Chazah Maur.” Zebah’s red lips curved in a sultry smile as she approached his desk, but her sloe eyes were filled with an intelligence far sharper than the lush curves of her enticingly clad body would lead a foolish man to believe. Those eyes were scanning everything, missing nothing. She was the envoy of the most powerful witch in Feraz—Fezai Madia Shah, high priestess of the Blood Chalice—and Vadim knew better than to underestimate her.
“You look weary, great one,” she murmured. The smooth, potent magic of her voice burned across his skin. Feraz women, particularly among the witchfolk, were a dangerous combination of exotic beauty and compelling natural sexual power. Fierce and bloodthirsty as Feraz men might be, their women held the true power.
Vadim eyed the witch coldly, ignoring the tug of her magic, and kept his still-trembling hands out of sight beneath the desk. “I am neither weary nor weak, Fezaiina, and you are wasting your time testing your power on me. As your Fezai learned long ago, I am immune to such persuasions, no matter how attractive the lure.” Sex, though satisfying in many ways and useful under the right circumstances, was a distraction from the one true passion of his life: his quest for magical supremacy.
“In her last communication, the Fezai said she’d made a breakthrough that would please me,” he prompted. Vadim’s long association with the witches of Feraz had proven mutually beneficial in many ways, most especially in the unique spells and powers they had discovered by combining their powers, their bloodlines, and their knowledge of magic.
“Zim.”The Fezaiina left off her attempts to ensnare his senses and produced a black velvet pouch from the folds of herjiba, the wrap she wore loosely draped around her smooth curves in whispering flows of brightly colored silk. “The Fezai sends you this great gift, Chazah Maur.” She opened the drawstring at the top of the bag and drew out a small, pearlescent stone, which she laid upon the parchment-cluttered surface of his desk.
Vadim leaned forward and inspected the stone visually before reaching for it. White, oval, and smoothly rounded, it was roughly the size of a peach pit and the shape of a child’s skipping stone.
“And this is...?”
“Magic, Chazah. Great and powerful magic.”
“What sort of magic?” He cupped his hands around the stone and summoned a brief spell, but nothing in the stone responded to his flare of power. “I sense none.”
“Precisely.”
