Rain gestured to a beautiful rose-stone building on the left where graceful, columned arches led to a brightly tiled inner courtyard. “Shei’tani, you and Marissya can wait there while Dax and I hunt. That building holds a few rooms still kept up for travelers. I’ll fill the fountain so you will have water to wash and drink.” He turned to the tairen fountain and spun a cool, blue weave of Water magic. Moments later, clear water spouted from the mouths of the stone tairen and rapidly began to fill the fountain’s large pool.
Ellysetta frowned in bewilderment. His weave had not been powerful enough to create that much water from nothing. He’d merely summoned it from beneath the sands. “I don’t understand. If there’s still water here, why did the city die?”
Rain didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he gathered a handful of sand, spun it into a small cup, and filled it from one of the streams pouring out of the tairen mouth. He handed the cup to Ellysetta. “Taste it.”
She took a tentative sip. Cool, sweet water touched her tongue. “It’s just water.”
“Precisely.” Rain spun another cup for Marissya as Ellysetta quenched her thirst. “It’s just water. But this fountain is—or was—Lissilin’s Source.”
Her eyes widened. She looked at the tairen fountain with dawning dismay. There was no crisp tingle offaerilasmagic in the water pouring from those stone mouths. There was nothing but... water.
“It isn’t lack of water that made the city die, Ellysetta. The magic of Lissilin died too.”
For the first time she began to truly understand just how desperate the plight of the Fey really was. They were living in theshadow of extinction in every possible way. The death of the tairen, the decline of their numbers, even the slow eradication of their magic.
“Do you think everything could somehow be related?”
Rain took a drink of the magicless water, then poured the rest out onto the sand. “The tairen are sickening in the egg, the Fey are childless, and the magic of the Fading Lands is slowly dying. Do I think they’re all related?Aiyah. I am certain of it. But what’s causing it all is the question we have yet to answer.”
Eld ~ Boura Fell
Accompanied by half a dozen servants, Vadim Maur walked down the corridor that housed the luxurious cells reserved for his most magically gifted female captives.
For many years, Elfeya v’En Celay had resided here, garbed in delicate silks and left to await his pleasure as he sought to mate his great mastery of Elden magic with her countless Fey gifts. That attempt had come to naught, except that he’d discovered truemated Fey did not breed with any but their bound mates.
That limitation was not true for unmated Fey. Though the unmated Fey females he’d captured during the Wars had been too fragile to survive more than a few decades in captivity, the males were both hardy and fertile. Over the centuries, his captive Fey anddahl’reisenmales had successfully impregnated thousands of Celierian and Elden females, and in an effort to bring additional magic into the bloodlines, he’d even released a number of their offspring back into the Celierian populations in the magic-infused lands near the borders.
All along the borders, the unwitting descendants of Vadim Maur’s centuries-old breeding program lived their lives, Celierian and Eld mortals crossbred with a mix of Fey, Elvish, and Mage bloodlines, propagating amongst themselves with the genetic drives he had manipulated into their flesh, building the pool of increasingly gifted prospective breeders, females for hisdahl’reisenstuds, males for those rare females whose genetic makeup had left them too gifted to tolerate the touch ofdahl’reisenflesh. In his office, entire volumes of books documented the specifics of the bloodlines he had bred and crossbred over the centuries.
Three of this generation’s strongest females were just entering the last quarter of their yearlong pregnancies. The fetuses in their wombs were powerfully gifted, showing signs they possessed each of the five Fey magics. And that meant it was time for Vadim to work the miracle of soul manipulation once again.
He stopped before one of several gilt-chased doors. The guards on either side hurried to unlock it for him, and with a wave of his hand the heavy door swung inward, revealing the lush wonderland inside. In what had once been an enormous cavern carved out of the rock, live trees and grasses grew along gentle hillocks bordering a stone pathway. Sun-bright Fire burned in sconces overhead that traveled the domed ceiling daily in an imitation of the Great Sun’s daily trek across the heavens. A soothing breeze rustled through the trees, and in the distance, water fell gently into a clear pond.
He had discovered long ago that serenity improved the number of live births amongst his breeding females, while privation resulted in a higher level of miscarriages and stillbirths. So he had learned to provide serenity through pleasant surroundings and a strong Mage spell that erased all memories of his prisoners’ previous lives and supplanted them with the desire to enjoy their tiny slice of paradise, please the High Mage above all others, and willingly mate as directed.
Vadim followed the path to the tree-shaded pool, where he knew he would find the three women he had come for. A young black-haired child clothed in servant’s rags was with them. A tray of food on the grass nearby explained her presence, but he was not pleased to find her sitting beside them, her eyes closed as one of the pregnant women sang and ran a comb through the girl’s dark hair.
A leaf crackled beneath his feet. The servant girl’s eyes flew open, and he saw a glint of familiar silver before she scrambled to her feet. That child again. The affront to his bloodlines. Sired by one of his own descendants—those silver eyes made the shameful truth undeniable—but born utterly without magic.
“What do you think you’re up to, girl?” he snapped.
“Forgive me, Master Maur. They always seem happier when they have someone to take care of. I didn’t think anyone would mind.” The words were submissive, those telltale eyes downcast, but there was a tone in her voice that raised his hackles. Just her presence raised his hackles.
“Youthought?” His lip curled. “When I want thoughts from you, I’ll put them in your worthless skull myself.” He grabbed her chin, pinching her face between his fingers. Her silver eyes flashed up—just for an instant, but that was long enough for him to see the hard glitter of hatred. His nostrils flared. He summoned power and stabbed it into her with merciless force. She gave a choked cry and dropped to her knees. “Slaves do not think. They serve. Silent and unseen. And don’t dare to think those eyes of yours grant you any special worth in Boura Fell. Magic is the sole coin of this realm, and you have none. Now get out. If I find you in here again, you’ll be the next sacrifice to the Guardians of the Well.”
He waited until she was gone, then turned back to the women gathered by the pond. They had huddled together and were clutching one another, weeping in fear and confusion.
“Shia, Tailinn, Fania, come here.” They didn’t immediately obey, which only infuriated him more. With a muttered oath, he summoned a rush of Azrahn, only instead of stabbing it into the women as he had the girl, he spun a powerful compulsion weave. Their lovely faces became expressionless, their eyes going flat and vacant.
“Come here,” he repeated, and all three women came to his side with silent, blank-eyed obedience.
He placed his hands on their naked, heavily pregnant belliesand sent his Mage senses inward to test the health and readiness of the fetuses. All three of the pregnancies were proceeding exactly as he’d planned, and all three of the unborn responded to his presence with little cracks of power that made their mothers flinch.
Vadim selected Shia, the Celierian-born woman with the long black hair and pale blue eyes who had been singing and brushing the girl’s hair when he came in. Descended of the vel Serranis line and Vadim’s own Mage blood, Shia was among this generation’s most promising females, so sensitive to thedahl’reisenthat Vadim had been forced to render her unconscious before releasing the stud to mate with her. Even then, Shia had nearly roused, whimpering, as thedahl’reisenpumped his seed into her prepared body.
The High Mage snapped his fingers and pointed, and four servants rushed forward with robes and gold silk slippers to clothe Shia. Vadim drew an empty vial and lancet from one pocket and made a tiny cut on her arm. Bright scarlet blood welled out. He filled the vial, capped it, then closed the small wound with a swift weave of Earth.
“Take her to the birthing room and prepare her.”
