«I need your strength to help me Change. It will be painful, and I will not be able to shield you from it.»All of his energy would have to be directed to completing the Change while thesel’dorshrapnel turned his own magic against him.
“Rain, stop talking. Do what you must. I’ll be fine.”
Pride surged through him. She was so fierce. She had become a warrior of the Fey…nei,a Tairen Soul, strong and brave.
«Ke vo san, kem’san.»He nuzzled her gently, rubbing his face against her, then stepped back.
He drew within himself, marshaling his strength and focusing his energies inward. Thesel’dorwas there, a distracting, discordant energy, but he did his best to block it.
He had Changed when riddled withsel’dorbarbs before, as had all of the Feyreisen during the Mage Wars. Most had survived. Some had not. When he Changed, thesel’dorwould not Change with him. It would remain in his flesh, at its current size and general location, but hopefully not piercing any vital organs.
He summoned his magic.
Instead of the usual, intense pleasure of the Change, thesel’dortwisted the sensations. His nerves registered the horrible agony of flesh tearing from bones and liquefying, skin splitting and burning, magic simultaneously crushing him and tearing him apart. Beside him, Ellysetta shrieked and fell to her knees in pain, and her torment nearly drove his tairen to madness.
He held the weave and fed it power, forcing his magic into the familiar lines it now rebelled against. The webs of his magic bucked and writhed, fighting their natural paths.
For one desperate, frightening moment, he thought he would fail, that he would die, and Ellysetta would be left alone and unprotected to face the approaching Eld.
But even as that unimaginable horror seized his mind, she crawled across the ground on her knees and reached a shaking hand out towards the wildly undulating cloud of gray mist swirling around him. She touched the mist. The bright strength of her power poured through him. He grasped her offering gratefully, weaving her strength to his own dwindling supply. She was there with him, in his consciousness, every thread of their nearly completed bond vibrating with harmonic energies. She was a bright, shining presence in his soul, a vast and endless warmth, stealing his fear and transforming it into confidence and strength enough to force the unruly weaves to his command and complete the Change.
The howling pain ofsel’dorquieted. The tairen shrank, folding in upon itself, condensing, until once again it was the invisible sentience mingled inside his body with his own soul.
Rain fell to his knees in the dirt, Fey once more and weak beyond belief, his body afire with the barbs ofsel’dorburied in his flesh. The ones so large they now protruded from his flesh, he plucked out. The others he left where they were. He would not completely heal, nor regain his full strength until thesel’dorin his body was removed. Until then, working magic would be painful at best, which gave the Eld a powerful advantage.
Breathing raggedly, Ellysetta knelt beside him and spun what healing she could as she grabbed his arm. “I’m sorry, Rain, I know you’re hurt, but we have to go. We have to go now.”
“Aiyah.”He forced himself to rise and swayed dizzily on his feet. One hand reached out, weaving a Spirit illusion, nothing particularly intricate or strong, but hopefully enough to fool the approaching Eld and give Ellysetta and him a brief head start. “Run. That way.” He pointed to the east.
The Eld would expect them to go south, towards the river and towards Celieria, but clearly one or more of the Border lords had either been overrun by the Eld or surrendered himself and his lands to their service.
Rain didn’t know how much of the borders had been compromised, but he couldn’t afford a river crossing into enemy territory any more than he could afford to take wing here in Eld. They’d have to backtrack towards Lord Barrial’s land and cross the river at nightfall. The moons were both on the wane, and for once, he hoped darkness would be their ally.
Eld ~ Boura Fell
Melliandra lay on her thin pallet in theumagiden. The sconce lights were low, as they always were, emitting the barest of orange glows. Just enough for eyes accustomed to the dark to navigate the rows of sleeping racks that lined the room from floor to ceiling.
Sleep, in Boura Fell, was a carefully rationed luxury… a brief respite in a lifetime of toil granted only becauseumagicouldn’t function without it. Eachskrantwas allowed only a few bells per day in a bunk shared in shifts by four otherumagi.There were no days and nights in Boura Fell. Only work and sleeping. And punishment when you slept too much or worked too little.
But even though sleeping bells were precious and few, Melliandra had been using most of hers to practice her newfound magic.
Every spare moment of the workday, she now spent haunting the Mage Halls, watching the novices practice, listening to them talk amongst themselves, picking up every small scrap of information so she could teach herself to use her newfound abilities. And each sleep shift, she brought what she learned back to the quiet dark of theumagidens to practice.
She closed her eyes, letting the darkness envelop her. She could hear the breathing of the otherumagi.The occasional cough and sniffle. The shifting of a body in its bunk. She tried to silence those small noises from her mind. From what she’d learned eavesdropping in the Mage Halls, all novice Mages learned to access their magic by first silencing their minds. It was only there, in the darkness and the silence, that a Mage and his magic first truly connected.
Not that she wanted to be a Mage. She didn’t. But she needed to know what Mages knew, to better defend herself and Shia’s son against them. Most importantly, she needed to know how Mages wove their wards—and how they unwove them—because that talent was the key to all her plans. With it, she could enter Vadim Maur’s treasure room where Lord Death’s magic crystal and weapons were stored—and with it, she could gain access to the nursery where Shia’s son and the other valuable infants of the Mage’s breeding program were kept.
Melliandra took deep, unhurried breaths, holding them, letting them out again in a slow, steady rhythm. She breathed in through her nose, held that breath for a count of five, then exhaled through her mouth to the same count. In through the nose and out through the mouth. Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Slowly, as the rhythm took over, her body began to relax, the world faded away.
And there, in the darkness, she found the silence, perfect and absolute. She’d never known absolute silence until this week. It was peaceful. She’d never known that either.
Her breathing continued, slow, steady, and in the silence, she initiated the next step all novices learned. Stretching out their senses, opening their minds to let magical receptors begin to absorb the subtleties of the world around them. In the Mage Halls, the novices had taken turns holding an object, with each novice trying to determine what the other was holding.
“Don’t influence, just observe,” instructed one of the apprentices who’d come to help them. “Let your partner’s senses become your own. If you do it properly, he won’t even know you’re there.”
Melliandra had been practicing that skill every waking bell these last days. What did thatumagihave in his pocket? What was thisumagihiding in the corner? What secret savory had the kitchen mistress tucked away for herself today? She was getting very adept at peering into the brains of theumagiaround her. Yesterday, she’d had a moment where she’d seen through the eyes of the kitchen mistress—which, she discovered, was a very disorienting practice when the kitchen mistress was walking one way down a hall, and Melliandra was walking the other.
She’d even practiced on the two Mages who’d tried to get into Vadim Maur’s office that day last week. She’d heard them talking about the High Mage, about how they’d known the Mage whose body Vadim Maur now inhabited. They’d been talking about how that Mage—Nour—while strong, hadn’t been as strong as either of them. There were other Mages, like them, who were growing dissatisfied with Vadim Maur, concerned that he’d lost focus, that his war against Celieria and the Fey was more about some secret personal goal than the triumph and glory of Eld.
