Do not fear, and do not resist.Hawksheart’s voice rang in her head like the tolling of a bell, resonant and irresistible. Not Spirit but something else. Something deeper and more powerful.Grandfather merely shares the scent of his liferings. It will help open your mind to the mirror. Breathe deeply. Take his scent into your lungs.
Without hesitation, Ellysetta breathed as deeply as her lungs would allow. The dim room took on a hazy cast, as if a mist had crept into the chamber to throw everything out of focus. Beside her, in the depths of the shimmering blue pool, colors began to gather and swirl.
Now hold your hands over the mirror. When I tell you, put your palms upon the surface of the water…but be very careful not to submerge them. The mirror is powerful magic, and you are not trained in its use.
Her hands moved of their own volition out over the water. The colors in the pool leaped and twirled towards them as if in greeting. Ellysetta watched with a dazed sense of detachment, as if those hands belonged to someone else.
«Shei’tani?» Rain’s thoughts pressed against hers. Some part of her was dimly aware of his concern, but she couldn’t seem to summon a response. Her lungs were filled with the overpowering fragrance of the Sentinel, and her mind felt muddled.
She watched with a strange, detached disorientation as her hands lowered, palms down, fingers splayed, until at last the cool water of the mirror touched her skin. Her eyelashes fluttered, and she felt a strange, electric tug, as if the liquid in the pool were pure magic. Perhaps it was—and it was trying to draw her into its blue depths. She leaned forward.
Stop.
Hawksheart’s command froze her in place. Her hands barely kissed the still surface of the pool.
You know how to share your essence with a thing. Share it with the mirror now.
She drew a breath, closed her eyes, and summoned the brilliant rainbow-lit darkness of Fey vision. In that darkness the world around her was a bright weave of glowing magic: red Fire, green Earth, gleaming blue Water, silvery Air, and lavender Spirit. Here, in the heart of Grandfather, the colors were so dense the darkness was virtually impossible to see, and the water of the mirror shone a blinding blue-white. Into that dazzling brightness she poured a portion of the potent energy that was her essence, the living magic unique to her alone.
The pool flared. The colors of Grandfather flared as well, and the entire room went so magic-bright Ellysetta cried out and opened her eyes. Fey vision still overlapped natural sight, and what had been a dim, windowless hollow lit only by the glow of the mirror pool was now as bright as the Great Sun. She glanced over her shoulder. Rain and her quintet stood in a protective semicircle directly behind her, and though their silvery Fey luminescence was dazzling to her enhanced vision, each of the Fey appeared as dim shadows against Grandfather’s searing light.
Concentrate, Ellysetta Erimea. Find the essence of your Song.
Ellysetta turned towards Galad Hawksheart, but like the Sentinel tree and the mirror pool, the Elf king was so bright he made her eyes hurt. “The light is blinding. I can’t see.”
You do not need to see. You only need to think of your Song.
“But I don’t know my song. Even the tairen could not hear it.”
I do not speak of tairen song. You have not yet accepted that part of your soul, so of course you do not hear it. I speak of your life’s Song. Everyone has one. It is an individual life’s unique pattern, its joys and sorrows, its loves and fears, its memories and dreams. Think of those things. Summon your Song.
Faces flashed across her memory, vignettes of the happiest days of her life. Mama, Papa, the twins. Her fear and awe the day Rain Tairen Soul swooped down from the sky to claim her. Selianne Pyerson, laughing and giggling over some girlish fancy. Lillis and Lorelle squealing and dancing in circles, their mink brown curls bobbing against their slender shoulders. Rain gathering her into his arms, his eyes glowing stars that regarded her as if she were the sun around which all his world revolved.
Gradually, other not-so-happy memories emerged as well. Kelissande Minset’s sneering superiority. Queen Annoura’s scarcely veiled mockery as she assessed Ellysetta during her first appearance at court. The Church of Light priests in Hartslea who’d come to examine her for demon possession. Rain drawing back from her in horror as the black smudge of the Mage’s Mark bloomed like a dread flower over her heart.
Bayas. You are doing well. Keep concentrating. Let the memories come.
The memories turned darker still. Nightmares from her childhood. Dreams of blood and death and war. Screaming. The exorcists with their terrible needles. Pain! Oh, dear gods, such pain! Hot tears gathered in her eyes. The tairen dying. The High Mage, with his burning, ember-kissed eyes, laughing in triumph.You’ll kill them, girl. You’ll kill them all. It’s what you were born for.Mama dying in her arms. That horrible, unchangeable moment when asel’dorblade had flashed and Mama’s head rolled away from her body.
Rage.
She cried out and started to pull her hands from the mirror’s surface, hoping that breaking the contact would stop the onslaught.
Anio!Hawksheart barked, his voice a hammer of command.No. You must continue.
“I don’t want to.” She whimpered like a child afraid to set foot into a dark room. Cold shivered down her limbs. She couldn’t feel her legs tucked beneath her, but her hands and arms had turned to lumps of ice, freezing and burning all at once.
You must. This is the price for the truth you asked of me.
“I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want it anymore.”
The bargain was Elf-struck. It cannot be undone.
The images of her life began to flash faster as the events became more recent. The Massan. Venarra holding the soul of a dying Fey woman to life while othershei’dalinsworked frantically to heal her broken body. The death of the tairen kitling Forrahl. Ellysetta’s descent into the Well of Souls to save the other kitlings. The terrible piercing anguish of two more Mage Marks, and Rain’s own daring plunge into the Well to rescue her. The battle of Orest. Rain emerging from Veil Lake, wreathed in blinding magic as he donned the golden war steel of the Feyreisen. Saving Aartys and Truthspeaking the Mage. The dark voices whispering in her mind. The Azrahn-gifted children conceived as a result of her weave. Rain’s Rage during the Eld attack. The way Fey’cha fit so comfortably in her hands. The moment she made her bargain with the Elf king.
The images came faster and faster as the scenes they depicted grew closer to the present. When they reached this moment, Ellysetta cried out and her spine went rigid. The flashing images became a blur, yet she could see them with vivid clarity.
War. Armies stretched as far as she could see. Dharsa in smoldering ruins. Rain, in tairen form, roaring in pain as asel’dorbowcannon bolt ripped through his chest and sent him tumbling from the sky. Rain and Ellysetta, captured by the Eld and draped insel’dorchains as black-armored soldiers and a blue-robed Primage prodded them towards a great gaping black maw.
