Melliandra’s visit to the High Mage’s breeding females wasn’t as great a pleasure as she’d hoped, nor particularly informative. She felt Shia’s absence too strongly, and the new women—three shining folk, and one mortal—had shied away from her when she’d approached. She’d tried to speak with them, but either their memories had been completely wiped or they simply had not trusted her enough to converse.
A disappointing half a bell after her arrival, she departed again, but instead of heading to her next workstation, she stopped by the door to Master Maur’s nursery and examined the glowing threads of the ward spells protecting the locked door against intruders. The wards allowed only Master Maur’s most trustedumagithrough, and even then only once per week at a time known to no one but Master Maur.
The key to the door Melliandra could likely get, but getting past the wards was a different matter. For that, she needed magical help.
The next morning, when the call came to tend the High Mage’s prisoners on the lowest level of Boura Fell, it was all she could do to conceal her eagerness behind a mask of sullen apathy. A bell later, she was standing, tray in hand, before the shadow-cloaked last door on the lowest level of Boura Fell.
“Food for the prisoner.” Melliandra kept her gaze fixed on the timeworn smoothness of the black stone floor as the guards standing watch outside the cell inspected the unappealing tray of congealed fat and cooked grain.
“Fit for maggots, that is,” one of the guards muttered. His ring of keys rattled and clanked as he unlocked the door and shoved it open. “Go on. Deliver that slop and be quick about it.”
She ducked through the doorway and hurried across the dank, unlit room. The shaft of light from the open doorway illuminated a portion of the seemingly empty barbedsel’dorcage built into the far wall.
“Back again?” a voice, pitched so low as to be barely audible, growled from the shadows.
She turned her head in the direction of the voice and squinted as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. There. Now she could see the faint, almost imperceptible glow of the prisoner sprawled on the floor in the corner.
“Can you feed yourself?” Shannisorran v’En Celay’s silvery light was so dim, she knew the Mage’s brutes had been at him again, and sometimes, after they finished, nearly every bone in his body was shattered.
“Aiyah. Can’t walk or sit, but they left me my arms this time.”
She reached into the pocket sewn within the folds of her ragged skirt and pulled out a small cloth bundle. “Good.” With swift furtiveness, she unwrapped the cloth and dropped its contents into the bowl of gruel before pushing the food through the barbed bars of the cell. “There’s a little cold meat and cheese, wrapped in bread. Take it quickly, before the guards see.”
“Why do you bother? As soon as I heal, they just break me again.” Even as he asked, his fingers reached for the bowl of food and closed around the plump wad of meat, cheese, and bread. He tore off a small bite with his teeth and chewed.
“I bother because I need you to fulfill our bargain, and when the chance comes, you must be ready.” Not long after the High Mage had begun torturing Lord Death’s mate, the Fey warrior had agreed to do what neither she nor any otherumagicould: kill the High Mage of Eld. That was the only way she and Shia’s child could ever be free, so she needed to keep Lord Death alive and as healthy as possible until he had the opportunity to prove worthy of his name. She glanced over her shoulder to check on the guards by the door, then lowered her voice even further. “Do you have a hiding spot in there?”
“What would be the point?” His tone was flat. “It’s not as if Maur ever leaves me anything to hide.”
Her eyes narrowed. It was said Fey could not lie, but he hadn’t said no. And he’d been in this same cell for a thousand years. “I was hoping to bring a few things you might find useful. But if you have no place to hide them…” She let her voice trail off.
“What sort of things?” Wariness had crept into his voice. Oh, yes, he had managed to carve out some sort of hiding place in his cell.
“Things you will require to fulfill your bargain. A blade. A Fey crystal.” She knew from eavesdropping on conversations between novice and apprentice Mages that the Fey crystals contained powerful magic. Lord Death would need every advantage if he were to succeed.
Pale hands shot out to grab the cell bars, despite the barbs that dug into his palms, and Lord Death dragged himself over to her. Matted black hair fell into eyes that had begun to glow green as his magic rose. “Mysorreisu kiyr? You know where it is?”
“A…sorai zukeer? Is that what you call the Fey crystals?” She filed the piece of information away. “No, not yours. Everything of yours the Mage keeps close to him or locked away in a place only he knows. But you are not the only Fey warrior ever to be a guest in this place, and some of the other Mages are not as careful with their secrets.” She frowned. “You can still use it even though it belonged to another, can’t you?”
“Aiyah, but my own would be better.”
“I can’t get yours. You’ll have to make do with what I can bring,” she told him. No matter how much better his own crystal might be, stealing from the High Mage was suicide. Only a fool would even attempt it, and Melliandra was no fool. Laying hands on one of the other Mages’ crystals was already risky enough. “There’s something else I need you to do as well.”
“What?”
She took a breath, then plunged onward. “If I showed you one of the Mage’s wards…could you figure out how to undo it?”
“It wouldn’t do you any good. It takes magic to undo magic.”
“But could you?”
He shrugged. “Perhaps. I’d have to see the weave first to know.”
“Hurry up in there!” one of the guards called from the door. “What’s taking so long?”
Melliandra turned halfway towards the door. “He’s weak. I practically have to feed him myself.” To the Fey, she hissed, “Save the bread and meat, but eat the rest quickly. If you don’t, they’ll be suspicious.” She waited for him to scoop the cold, fatted porridge from the bowl with his fingers and force it down. When he was done, she snatched the bowl back and clambered to her feet. “I’ve got to go. I’ll be back when I can.”
Celieria
