When he was done, Brodson stood there, dazed and swaying. Powerful magic swirled in the Primage’s hands, and Brodson’s face began to shift like a lump of potter’s clay. The partially flattened nose was reshaped, the lips grew thinner, the jaw less square. Brodson’s brown hair grew long and straight and paled to yellow-blond. His stocky body shrank to wiry leanness. When Nour’s weave was complete, nothing remained of Den except his pale blue eyes staring out from the dead cook’s face. The cook’s eyes had been a different shade, but there was no help for that. Though the Elden transformation magic could change every other aspect of a person’s appearance, the eyes always stayed the same.
“Here.” Nour handed Brodson an amber amulet. “Wear this. It will give you some protection against Fey mind weaves and allow me to hear your thoughts and observations so that I am kept apprised of your progress. Any other form of communication would be too risky. And here.” Nour pressed his index finger hard against Brodson’s left temple and murmured a Feraz witchspell that left theumagitrembling. “If you do run into the Fey, whisper thecommand I just gave you. It will wipe out your own memories for three bells, and leave only the cook’s.”
Brodson nodded, lifting his new hands to his newly formed face.
“Quickly,” Nour snapped. “Put on his clothes and get back to the caravan.”
Den stripped the body, shivering at the bloodless wound that split the skin of the dead man’s chest. The Mage’s black blade had plunged into the cook’s heart, and not one drop of blood had spilled. The crystal in the pommel of Nour’s wavy black dagger was now shimmering with red lights.
A bell later, clad in the dead man’s clothes, Den was in the back of the cook wagon, secreting the bag ofchemarstones Master Nour had given him in the small trunk that held the cook’s personal belongings.
When he stepped back, a loud screech and a scratch on his ankle made him curse. “Jaffing hells!” he yelped, and turned with a scowl to discover that he had stepped on the tail of a nursing mother cat, who was curled up in a nest of cloth with a litter of kittens. A memory floated to the surface of Den’s mind: the cat was the cook’s mouser, Florrie.
Den’s eyes narrowed when Florrie hissed and took another swipe at his ankle. The kittens, as if sensing their mother’s distress, began mewing. Loudly. Den bent down, intending to grab the nest box and toss the cat and her kittens out the back of the wagon, when memories of his own flashed: his sister cooing like a daft looby over every fuzzy, big-eyed kitten she ever came across. He hesitated, struck by an idea.
If Ellie Baristani’s sisters were anything like his own, what better lure to bring them close than a litter of kittens?
“But you,” he warned, jabbing a finger at Florrie. “Scratch me again, and I’ll put you in a sack and drop you in the nearest river.”
Den crawled out of the wagon and circled ’round to climb up tothe driver’s box, waving at the members of Darramon’s party who called greetings to him. Not one of them seemed to realize he was not the cook, and twenty chimes later, reins in hand, Den was driving along the cobbled roads, following Lord Darramon’s caravan as it headed west out of Celieria City.
The Fading Lands ~ Dharsa
The next weeks passed in a blur. Gaelen and the otherchatokspent the first five days evaluating the skills of every warrior, pressing them beyond the challenges ofRo FaerandRo Chakai. The tests continued day and night, as each warrior demonstrated his sword mastery, his power and skill in each branch of magic, even his knowledge of military strategy and tactics. The strongest Fey in each field of expertise became thechadinsGaelen taught personally.
Gaelen’s tests were often brutal. Some of the physical combat maneuvers and swordplay resulted in broken bones and bloody wounds, particularly in the first few days of training on a new move. The warriors checked their red Fey’cha in the Academy’s weapons room before assembling in the training ground each day, but apart from that they fought with bare blades, and plenty of them.
“Do you think the Eld fight with sticks?” Gaelen snapped when anyone complained. “Be grateful there are nosel’dorarrows in the Fading Lands. I’d shoot you full of them, then demand you fight with the barbs in your flesh, just so you wouldn’t be caught unprepared in a real fight.”
When their efforts did not meet his exacting standards, he would grab the offending warriors by their tunics, thrust his face right into theirs, and snarl, “Why do you think there’s no banishment for blood spilled on Academy grounds? Fight like you mean it, Fey. Fight like your life depends on it, because when you face the Eld in battle, I assure you, it will.”
More than one Fey gave back as good as—and occasionally better than—they got, and Gaelen spent as much time on his back, bruised and bloody, as he did on his feet ordering the Fey to prove their mettle. He took the battering without complaint, allowing theshei’dalinsto heal him only when his wounds were so grievous they impeded his ability to fight.
“It is no less than I expected, and much less than I deserve,” he told Ellysetta quietly after theshei’dalinshealed four broken ribs, a shattered collarbone, and a sword thrust that had gone completely through the muscles of his thigh. “I walked the Shadowed Path. I betrayed my honor and my oath as a warrior of the Fey. Let them punish me for my shame. As long as they keep learning so they can better protect you and Marissya, I can bear what price they would have me pay.”
Gil, Tajik, Rijonn, and Bel assisted him in those first training lessons, and despite their initial misgivings, the Academy’schatokobserved with an interest that soon developed into active participation. Before the end of the second week, thechatokhad mastered Gaelen’s invisibility weaves and several of his other techniques, and began assisting in training the others.
Much to the disgruntlement of the Massan, Eimar v’En Arran joined the warriors training at the Academy and turned himself over to Gaelen’s tutelage.
“If another Mage War is indeed on our doorstep,” the Air master said with calm pragmatism, “all Fey may be called to defend the Fading Lands. I am not too proud to learn what I can to ensure the safety of my mate... even if that means learning from achatokwho once walked the Shadowed Path.”
Eimar’s participation encouraged more of the Fey to join as well. Rain’s meetings with the Massan became tense, curt skirmishes, and Gaelen’s grueling training classes at the Academy filled to capacity. Soon, they even spilled over into the Academy’s surrounding fields and buildings to accommodate the increasing number ofchadinswho came to learn the new skills their brothershad shown them. Even Tenn’s cousin Tael showed up to learn Gaelen’s magic Spirit weave.
As Rain and the warriors prepared for war, Marissya and Dax walked the hills of Dharsa to sow Amarynth and weave blessings of fertility on the Fey. Ellysetta concentrated on her magic studies and continued searching the Hall of Scrolls for information that might help her save the tairen kitlings. Most nights she and Rain would fly back to Fey’Bahren, so she could sing love and healing on the kits and begin to learn the ways of the pride.
Despite her rocky start with the Massan, Ellysetta began to make friends among the men and women of the Fey. Hardly a day went by without half a dozen couples coming to her for a fertility weave, and at least a score of beaming Fey maidens and formerrasahad asked her to bless theire’tanitsaunion. Though war was on the horizon, hope was blooming in Dharsa as quickly and abundantly as the tracts of Amarynth dotting the hillsides.
Ellysetta began to make significant progress with her magic. Though she still couldn’t summon the trust necessary to throw open her mind to Venarra, she did manage enough of a connection to let theshei’dalincorrect imperfections in her weaves and guide her in the summoning and control of her magic. Ellysetta’s resulting weaves were reliable enough that Venarra had begun to allow her to heal the woundedchadinunder her supervision.
Trust was much easier when practicing warriors’ weaves with Jaren v’En Harad, whose affection for Rain Ellysetta could sense every time he took her hands to lead her through her next lesson. In truth, she owed much of her increasing discipline and control to his kind but strict guidance. The most difficult thing he required of her was spinning the weaves exactly as he showed her—without the golden glow of hershei’dalin’s love coloring the threads—because he feared that allowingshei’dalin’s love in her weaves might leave her open to the same empathic death othershei’dalinssuffered when they spun killing weaves. Determined not to disappoint Rain’s mentor, Ellysetta struggled tirelessly to eliminate thegolden tint from her warriors’ weaves while still infusing it in her healing patterns.
After each morning’s magic lessons, she returned to the Hall of Scrolls to continue combing through the texts, looking for any clues that would help her solve the mystery of what was killing the tairen. The texts from her initial search hadn’t turned up anything useful, so she began searching for everything related to the tairen, past sicknesses or mysterious deaths among the prides, and even demon lore, hoping something would lead her in the right direction.
Ellysetta learned how to ask the Mirror to lead her to a particular book, and began exploring even the tightly packed lower levels. The tomblike silence of the hall began to make her restless, so she had the Mirror make copies of the texts and began packing a bag of documents each day and carrying them to the Academy. She read while she watched herlu’tansand the other willing Fey master the skills Gaelen had to teach them.
At first some of the Fey worried that the violence of Gaelen’s training methods would torment her empathic senses. But surprisingly, though the soul pain of therasahad driven her nearly to madness with the ceaseless need to ease their suffering, the bruises, blood, and even broken bones of the warriors on the training field didn’t cause the smallest twinge. Even the rare handful of times one of the Fey suffered a truly life-threatening injury, her alarm sprang more from concern for the warrior’s life than empathic distress.
Until the day Rain suffered a serious wound.
