“In human terms, yes. But my flurry had wanted me dead from the time I was born. Because my mother mated with a man that was…different. And something strange has happened in the flurry. A watcher has been born that has no attachment to me. She’s my aunt by human terms. But in fairy speak, she is nothing to me. She and my mother were born from the same…batch,” Nuashinah said, her eyes flitted nervously around the others, hoping they didn’t question her use of words. Because if she had to go into how fairies were born, things were going to become very difficult to explain.
“What is the role of the watcher?” Trikyia asked, seeming eager to learn as much as she could about Nuashinah. Nuashinah felt a connection to the young girl—her spirit—but thought best to let Trikyia come to her in time.
“A watcher stands apart from the other fairies and watches whatever happens,” she said.
“Like a record keeper?” Trikyia asked.
“Yes,” said Nuashinah. “I suppose that’s the closest comparison. I watched. I watched when you killed the wind witches and my fairy sisters. I saw it all, and even when I knew I should have reported all that I saw that night, I couldn’t. I couldn’t because I knew that you were a part of a whole, Trikyia.”
“The six-point star,” whispered Glywyn, as she walked to stand close to Faeswyn.
“Yes,” Nuashinah said, smiling. “You are all a part of a whole. A whole that will defeat all of this death and misery in Ai.”
Laeros and Kinsbithu started to walk out of the room. “Please don’t leave,” Nuashinah said to them.
“All of this doesn’t concern me,” Kinsbithu said.
“It doesn’t concern either of us,” said Laeros.
“Not now,” said Nuahsinah. “But you both will be needed in the future. You especially Laeros. I’m not sure how yet. It’s only something I know. Please stay and listen.”
Kinsbithu sat on the edge of one of the chairs. “Be a watcher?” she asked Nuashinah with a smile.
“Yes.” Nuashinah smiled back at her. She turned her attention back to the others and continued. “I failed to tell my sisters what I saw that night. My fairy sisters want me dead because of that. Fairies are all connected through telepathy. They knew what I was keeping from them. They wanted to kill me because of what I was trying to keep from them, and because of my difference. I didn’t think there was any way for me to escape them. I had resigned myself to death, but Thalutharoch gave me a chance to redeem myself to my sisters. When Tythahn absorbed you three into his self, I knew it, and because I knew it, eventually Thalutharoch knew it also. She told me to mind-touch you all, and drain your essence, killing Tythahn and all of you. But I saw a way out. I was only able to speak to him by blocking Thalutharoch. It’s another part of my powers that the fairies aren’t aware of. Tythahn was so large. Menacingly large and intimidating. I thought if I could convince him to attack me, my fairy sisters would be caught off guard. It was a remote chance. But fairies live for the fight. The chase. It worked. They were more concerned with chasing Tythahn than keeping an eye on me, which they’d done very diligently for several years.”
“Shit. You have all of these amazing powers,” Eielawyn said. “You can use them to kill Balaedras and be done with it all.”
Nuashinah’s gaze connected with Theoch, as Eielawyn and the other discussed how she could kill Balaedras. She gently touched his mind and spoke to him. “You know what is happening in Ai. You know about the fairy agreement and Queen Balaedras, but you haven’t told anyone what you’ve discovered in Morhais.” Theoch’s gaze was intense, as he slowly nodded to her from where he stood behind Glywyn. “You can speak to me through thought. You know about the connection between Balaedras and Thalutharoch. You know what it means.”
“I know that I won’t put my wife in danger because of a dream. I can’t. Humans will never be able to defeat Balaedras with the fairies behind her.”
“Not now, Theoch. But trust in what I say. They can in time. I’m here to tell you how. Please trust me.”
“She can’t,” Theoch said suddenly. Nuashinah nodded, slightly to him, as the rest of the group stared in his direction. “She’s safe here because of the moon mint. But if she were to leave Yaeltaran, her fairy sisters would be able to read every thought she’s ever realized or even those unknown to even her. She can’t leave here because they’ll know what she would do, and they would also know about all of us. She can block them during telepathic speech, but only for a short time. She came here for our protection, but also to protect us. She read Tythahn, and in the process was able to read the thoughts of Eielawyn, Kinsbithu, and Raenos. Because of that, if she ever leaves Yaeltaran, the fairies will know about us, about our daughter, Leiahrahwyn, and about everyone.”
“I can’t leave here,” Nuashinah said. “I knew by coming here I could hopefully gain protection, but it’s also because of what I need to tell you.”
“And what is that?” Eielawyn asked.
Nuashinah took a deep breath. “That you can never defeat Balaedras.”
“Great,” Naihr said. “Fantastic. She continues to kill off entire towns until she swallows all of Ai whole. Wonderful. Makes me wish for the good old days of King Gaeldos.”
“She can never be defeated now,” Nuashinah said. “The only ones that can are the women of the six-point star. The maidens. They are the ones that hold the power, but that power hasn’t been cultivated to be what is needed yet.”
“You’re talking about us, aren’t you?” said Eielawyn. “The three of us.”
“I’m talking about the six of you,” Nuashinah said. “Four of you are here. Glywyn,” she said, gazing at her, as Draedon and Theoch came to stand by her side. Draeis and Naihr did the same for Faeswyn. “Faeswyn. Eielawyn.” Raenos took hold of her hand. “Trikyia.”
“What?” Trikyia exclaimed. “Me? I’m not a maiden. I’m just a kid. I admit that now.”
Nuashinah smiled sweetly at Trikyia. “I only know what I know. There is another that isn’t known, but will be. And the sixth will come to be through a miraculous transformation.”
“A miraculous transformation,” Eielawyn repeated. “Okay, Nuashinah, I believe you about the way you came to be here. I believe the fact that you helped Tythahn, and that you’re one of the good fairies.” Trikyia laughed at Eielawyn’s use of words, as she pointed at her. “Yeah, it sounds all storybook-like,” Eielawyn continued. “But we’re just women. Vaedra, sure. But still we’re just women. Our skills are pretty cool. Okay. We’re vaedra. We can’t help that. But I don’t know about all of this other shit. Six-point star, and two women that aren’t even known yet? Seriously?”
“I know how it sounds,” said Nuashinah. “I’m fairy, and I’m more. I can speak to people through their minds. I can taste storms coming on the winds with a flick of my tongue. I can speak all of the languages of Oaes. Unless I’m killed, I’ll live for two or three thousand years. I can entrance a man to do whatever I want. I don’t, because it’s creepy and wrong. My form can change from this into something I don’t want to show anyone, let alone those that have opened their trust to me. I’m different. What that part of the difference is, I don’t know. But I know what I know. And you women here are part of the six-point star told in the ancients. Sure, I hold fairy blood in me, but then so do most of you.”
“What?” Glywyn said, suddenly standing up.
“You’re wrong!” Faeswyn said.
Nuashinah’s gaze went from one of them to the other. “You don’t know that?”
“You’re wrong,” Faeswyn said again. “I’m not fairy.”
“Can everyone just calm down,” Trikyia said. “I want to hear what she has to say. I think we all should.” The voice of reason came from the youngest of them in the room. Nuashinah looked at Trikyia and felt that bond that she knew would grow in time. It would all come to be, in time.
Chapter Twenty
There was chaos in the room. Faeswyn was almost in tears, and Eielawyn knew how she felt. At a young age
, sometimes at birth, Mocmoran parents knew whether or not their daughter would be vaedra. Then, when that daughter experienced her first sexual act, that vaedra was awakened. All vaedra shared similar awakenings. It was drummed into their heads. They were vaedra. Men coveted them. They were the sensual, sexual, women of men’s dreams. Being a vaedra was something she could, and had dealt with. But having fairy blood in her veins? Hell, no.
“Why are you saying we all have fairy blood in us? Why would you say that?” Eielawyn asked.
Nuashinah looked around at them all, until she found Theoch. “Please tell me you among all of the others know. You’re a mist walker. You have to know the history.”
Theoch shook his head. “I don’t. I’m as shocked as the rest of them are. What do you mean we all have fairy blood in us?”
“Fairies have walked Oaes since the dawn of time. Some say before,” Nuashinah said. “No being of Oaes—no human or similar—is free from a connection to the fairies. It’s why you’re a mist walker, Theoch. Somewhere in your lineage, an ancestor mated with a fairy. In times before, many humans raised fairy children without knowing. It would be a child that fairies thought was deformed or deemed less. They would leave these infants with humans. That power that the fairy infant possessed was then passed down. Maybe it never manifested itself for several generations until—”
“Mist walkers,” Theoch said.
“Or vaedra,” Nuashinah said.
“Or baenthahndorse?” Tythahn asked.
“Perhaps,” she said. “Our history goes back to before the time of man. To when there were only non-human beings and creatures in Ai that are only mentioned in stories or myths now.”
“Shit,” Eielawyn said, looking at Glywyn and Faeswyn. “No one ever told me about how a vaedra came to be. All they ever said was what it meant to be a vaedra, and that it’s passed down maternally. This explains a lot, guys.”
“Can that be said about the women of Calthafahr?” Trikyia asked.
“It’s not only said,” said Nuashinah. “It can be traced.”
“Does that mean the fairies can track us or something?” Eielawyn wanted to know.
Nuashinah shook her head. “No. You aren’t fairy. But the gifts you have come from that fairy line. But you have to train them. You’ve never used them properly. You didn’t know you had them until recently. And you all have to come into your powers, strengthen them, in order to do what must be done.”
“So, we get better at using our…powers,” Eielawyn said, nodding to the others. “And then we can take on Balaedras?”
Eielawyn saw the look on Nuashinah’s face. She turned to see her gazing at Theoch. “What isn’t she saying, Theoch?”
Theoch took a deep breath, coming to sit on the arm of the chair where Glywyn was sitting. “What she’s not saying is that it isn’t Balaedras that you have to kill.”
“Yes, it is,” said Glywyn. “Balaedras is the one that sent the fairies to Drisa. She’s the one that’s been razing the towns, and imprisoning the people.”
“If they’re lucky,” Draedon said.
Eielawyn was still staring at Theoch. She felt a rock in the pit of her stomach. Something told her she didn’t want to know what they were reluctant to say. But she pressed on. “Just tell us. If it isn’t Balaedras, who is it?”
“It’s the reason I was in Zinvia, and in some of the other kingdoms recently,” Theoch said.
“He’s been meeting with me and some of the others on the royal council,” Laeros said. “We knew that Balaedras had allied herself with the fairies. We saw that in Drisa. But we’ve recently learned that she’s going to put a fairy on her royal council. With Theoch’s help, I was trying to keep my mother from heading into an alliance with Balaedras because of what we’ve learned.”
There was suddenly more pandemonium in the room, but Eielawyn sat calm, staring at Nuashinah and the tenseness she saw on her face. Nuashinah’s gaze settled on her, and Eielawyn knew who it was they would have to kill.
“We can’t let the fairies take control,” Eielawyn said loudly. “That’s it, isn’t it? We have to band together, strengthen our powers to defeat the fairy queen, not Balaedras.”
“Yes,” Nuashinah said. “But it’s more than that. Balaedras can’t be killed as long as Thalutharoch lives. She’s merged herself with Balaedras. She has a plan. Balaedras agreed to have her on the council so that Thalutharoch will gain credibility with the Jahlmerikahl fairies. A fairy that is on a royal human council will be seen as trustworthy to them. Thalutharoch will gain their trust, and insidiously take over the Jahlmerikahl fairies. Then she will have the power and the numbers to—”
Eielawyn, Glywyn, Trikyia, and Faeswyn all gasped out loud. “Oh shit! Oh shit! She’s going to have the power of fairy to take over all of Oaes. All of it!” said Eielawyn.
Nuashinah nodded slowly. “It’s what Thalutharoch has always wanted. A world ruled by fairies. A world where she is queen over all. A world like there was before man. A world of fairy, and creatures, and beings as there were before time began. And man would be their slaves and their food. Shahlmach was content to rule the fairies here in Ai. She hated the Jahlmerikahl fairies, and wanted to keep the two factions separate. But Thalutharoch has always been greedy for power. And while Shahlmach used men for food, she knew they were needed to keep a balance in Ai. Hell, in Oaes. Not so for Thalutharoch. If men were eradicated from all of Oaes, she would have supreme power, and what she sees as perfection.”
Kinsbithu spoke for the first time since Nuashinah asked her to stay. “A world ruled and filled with fairies? That’s something of a nightmare you could never wake from. I’d rather kill myself than live in a world like that.”
“We have to stop her now!” Eielawyn said as she stood and began to pace around the room. “My life has just begun. I’ve finally found my happily ever after. I found Raenos,” she said, as Raenos came to wrap his arms around her. “I won’t let all of that be taken by some deluded fairy queen and her human queen crony!”
“Then we practice our skills daily,” Glywyn said, walking over to her and taking hold of Eielawyn’s hands in her own. “We practice, and we find the other vaedra, and…” Glywyn frowned as she turned her attention back to Nuashinah. “Who is the other point? You said one was not known, and the other will go through a miraculous transformation. Who is she?”
“Your daughter, Leiahrahwyn,” Nuashinah said calmly.
“Are you fuckin’ nuts?” Theoch roared. “She’s a baby.”
“You can’t be serious,” Trikyia said. “We’re supposed to take an infant with us to kill a fairy queen. Count me out.”
“Over my dead body,” Draedon said, his jaw tense with rage.
“I said she is the sixth point,” said Nuashinah. “I didn’t say that it would happen now. It was to happen after seven years. The time it takes for the fairy offspring to mature. You know about Balaedras’ agreement with Shahlmach to increase the fairy population, don’t you?”
Everyone but Theoch and Laeros shook their heads. Eielawyn stared at Theoch. “This, too? You both knew about this, too?”
“We’ve been meeting with some of our intelligence—” Laeros began to say.
“Spies,” said Eielawyn.
“Yes,” said Theoch. “Spies. We’ve been meeting with them after this latest information came to light. It’s why I’ve been in meetings, and why Laeros has had to go back to Zinvia so often.”
“You have six years left,” Nuashinah said. “Thalutharoch’s agreement with Balaedras was for seven years. One year has passed. It’s the time she is going to use to take over the fairies of Jahlmerikahl. Then, she’ll come back to Ai and plan her attack on man. But before she does that, she’ll meet with Balaedras at the palace in Morhais, and they’ll announce what they’ll call a treaty with the fairies. It’ll be the lie they’ll tell to ease the fears of the population. And then they will strike.”
“Leiahrahwyn will still only be a child,” Eielawyn said. “May
be fairies use children to fight, but humans don’t do shit like that.”
“Not a child,” Nuashinah said. “Not an infant. You will have five years from this day to perfect the skills you have been given. You will have one year after that to gather forces needed and plan. Thalutharoch will set a day for an announcement of her intentions. A day when all of the remaining rulers of the surrounding kingdoms will be in one place. That meeting in Morhais. She’s connected to Balaedras. Kill Thalutharoch and you will then be able to kill Balaedras. That instance will have to be kept from being noticed by her. None of you have the powers that will be needed for that. But perhaps the others will.”
“I will kill Balaedras!” Trikyia said, standing up from her seat. “Her life is mine to end.”
“It won’t be easy,” Nuashinah said. “You will all need to work together to kill Thalutharoch. Then you may have your vengeance, Trikyia.”
“This is all well and good,” Glywyn said. “But that still only leaves five of us, because there is no way on Oaes I’m going to let my baby anywhere near the fairy queen or Balaedras. Never! She’s only a baby, dammit!”
A scream was heard in the other room, and the nurse came running in looking like she’d seen a ghost. They all ran from the room, and into the other where the nurse had kept Leiahrahwyn. Glywyn was the one that screamed then, along with Faeswyn. But Eielawyn kept her calm. She understood then. She understood it all.
The chubby-faced toddler that had amused them that morning, walking to her daddies to stuff biscuits into their mouths, was sitting naked on the floor. But she was no longer a chubby fifteen-month-old. A six-year-old little girl sat on the carpet with the same auburn curls and bright blue eyes.
Eielawyn turned to see Nuashinah walk into the room. Their eyes connected, as Eielawyn stared back at the girl on the carpet. “The sixth point.”
“She will age once again,” said Nuashinah. “The ancients have a plan. And apparently, they need to catch up on some time.”
The girl looked up at her parents with a smile. “Hi, Mommy. Hi, Daddies.”
Eielawyn [The Maidens of Mocmoran 3] (Siren Publishing Classic) Page 20
