Tawny Xisanna and auburn Perahl sniffed Ellysetta experimentally as, behind them, more tairen leapt and glided down from the ledges to the cavern floor.
“Greetings, Lady Xisanna, Lord Perahl.” She jumped as the two tairen, having finished sniffing her, licked her face, then moved off to let the others approach.
Alone and in pairs, more than a dozen tairen inspected her before granting her their lick of approval and welcome. Fahreeta, Torasul, and Steli returned from outside and came forward to add their greetings.
The dead tairen’s mate gave a mournful cry, the sound so full of pain that tears filled Ellysetta’s eyes. She made an instinctive step towards him, but Rain held her back. “Nei, shei’tani.The tairen and I will see to him.”
Even as he spoke, Sybharukai rose to her feet and padded across the black sands to where Cahlah’s body lay. The other tairen followed close on her heels.
“It is time, Ellysetta.” Rain lifted her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss on her fingers. “Merdrahl agreed to wait for me, but he cannot stand to wait any longer. There are steps carved into the wall behind us. Climb to at least the fourth ledge, and do not come down until I tell you.”
Worry gripped her. “Rain?”
“I will be safe, Ellysetta, as will you, but you must do as I say. Hurry, please.”
The sense of urgency in his voice made her turn and run across the sands to the wide, flat steps hewn into the side of the cavern. Magic swelled as Rain summoned the Change, and when she glanced back over her shoulder, he was loping across the lair in tairen form to join the rest of the pride.
Ellysetta made her way to the second ledge high above the cavern floor. Below, several of the tairen took all but one of the eggsin their mouths and carried them to the other side of the lair. They deposited the eggs in a far corner and buried them in a heap of dark sand before returning to join the others, where they formed a ring around Merdrahl and the dead Cahlah.
All the tairen began to growl, the sound a single deep, throaty note that made the hairs on Ellie’s arms stand up.
«Higher, shei’tani.»
Rain’s silent urging sent her scrambling up another flight of steps. As she reached the third landing, the growling reached a higher pitch. The tairen circling Merdrahl and Cahlah rose to their hind legs, and their wings began to unfurl. Opalescent tairen eyes glowed bright with magic. Merdrahl released a haunting cry and laid his body over his dead mate’s motionless form. The mountain itself began to tremble as the voices of the tairen filled the lair, reverberating in the massive cavern. Several of the tairen stretched back their heads and roared. Gouts of fire escaped from their throats, and then she knew.
She scrambled up yet a fourth flight of steps. The palms of her hands scraped against the rock, but she paid no heed to the pain. A sense of urgency had gripped her, spawned by a fierce, unshakable certainty.
Fire was coming, hot and glorious. Tairen’s fire to cleanse and purify. Tairen’s fire to slay and transform. Tairen’s fire, deep and deadly magic.
How she knew it, she could not guess, but she was certain. Her skin felt hot and full and tight, as if the fire were already inside her, fighting for release. Perspiration dewed her skin, and her breath came in ragged gasps. She stopped on the fourth ledge, unable to force herself higher. What was coming alarmed her, but now it also drew her, calling to her like a beloved friend.
Below her, the ring of tairen were all standing on their hind legs. Their wings were fully extended, the furless undersides glistening as though paved with diamond dust. Tairen song played in her mind, pure, endless notes that grew stronger and deeper, building to a crescendo, flooding her with emotions. Aching sadness, vast love, an agony of loneliness, the promise of peace. Tears spilled from her eyes. Merdrahl had lost his mate, and his suffering was unendurable. The tairen, his family, would release him.
The visceral notes of gleaming gold and silver music flashed and trembled in the air, resonance so pure and intense it assumed visual form. The music filled Ellie’s ears and mind and went deeper still to invade her blood, flesh, and bones, sinking into the very fabric of her being. Deep within, her own tairen shifted with unease. Feral, frightened, it hissed a warning even as desperate yearning filled her, an aching void, a soul-deep pain. It wanted... needed...what?
When the song reached its apex, the tairen on the lair floor flung back their heads and roared. With wings flung wide, fully extended and trembling, their massive chests expanded on a single, communal inhalation. In the center of the ring, Merdrahl bared his deadly fangs and screamed a final, fierce, earthshaking roar of love and sorrow, pleading and command.
Fire exploded from the throats of the surrounding tairen, enormous, unstoppable jets of consuming flame. A fiery furnace raged where Merdrahl and Cahlah had been. Ellysetta raised a hand to shield her eyes from the blinding inferno, yet she could not look away. Tairen wings pumped like bellows. Great clouds of flame and smoke billowed outward, flooding the cavern floor. Heat blasted upwards, flinging Ellysetta off her feet.
She rolled over on her hands and knees and started to rise, but a familiar cold tingling, like the bite of an ice spider, washed over her, sapping her legs of strength. The sensation grew stronger, shooting up her spine, making her every muscle tremble. Fear clutched at her throat.
«Rain... »
Her hesitant call went unanswered. She crawled to the edge of her perch. The cavern floor was completely submerged beneath a deep, raging ocean of fire that buffeted the ledge just below hers.No part of the tairen was visible, yet she knew they were there, at the center of the inferno, unharmed and feeding the flames. She could hear them singing, a single, sustained note resonating in her mind.
She crouched on the ledge, shivering despite the heat. Her flesh trembled as though it would dissolve off her very bones. Beneath the pure, endless aria of the tairen, she could now hear whispers. Insidious, frightening. Voices beckoning, hissing, pleading. Wordless commands that pulled at her and shot terror through her heart.
And then she heard the sound of her name, spoken as if from some nameless monster of the dark.Ellysssettttttaaaaaa.
Gasping, she flung herself back from the edge, scrambling for something, anything to hold on to. As if what called her name could reach out and grab her. She found a small boulder and clutched it with frantic strength, squeezing her eyes shut.
“Rain!” She screamed his name aloud, shrieking it into the fiery wind. Then again, in Spirit and along their bondthreads, like a talisman against the summoning darkness.«Rain!»
Across the room, the tairens’ single, sustained note ended, and a gentler melody ensued, tender and sad, but with a light, hopeful chord running through it. As quickly as they had come, the whispering voices were gone, and with them the disturbing chill that had crawled across her skin like ice spiders. The tairen’s roar quieted, and through her tightly shut eyelids she could see the brightness of their flames dimming until the lair was once again shrouded in shadow.
Rain found her clinging to a small boulder. Her eyes were squeezed shut, and even in the dim light he could see the pulse pounding in her throat and hear her shallow, gasping breaths.
“Ellysetta?”
