Lord of the Fading Lands

by C. L. Wilson

  “I am standing still,” Ellie replied through clenched teeth. An awful, squeezing pressure had begun building in her head earlier, as if her skull were caught in a tightening vise. The voices around her formed a merciless, pounding drum, echoing inside her head, beating at the shreds of her control.

  «Las, Ellysetta.» Bel’s cool voice sounded in her mind.

  Peace? Peace, he said? Over the top of the opaque curtain of Spirit the Fey had woven to protect her modesty, Ellie sent Bel a glare so scorching, his leathers nearly caught on fire. The fierce warrior blinked in surprise and wisely retreated.

  “Ellie.” Oblivious to the brewing tempest, Lauriana approached with a selection of flowers in her hands. “For your bridal wreath, which roses do you prefer? Maiden’s Blush, Sweet Kaidra, or Gentle Dawn?” She held up one of each velvety bloom, faint pink, creamy ivory, and pale yellow edged with the barest hint of orange.

  “I don’t care, Mama.” Ellie tried desperately to hold on to her temper. “You choose.”

  «Ellysetta.» Rain called to her in a voice of insufferable calm. But, of course, he would be calm. He’d been gone this whole wretched morning. She ignored him.

  “Hmm. I like Maiden’s Blush, but the pink might clash with your hair. Sweet Kaidra is lovely, of course, but it may be a little too bland. Gentle Dawn…well, there’s something about yellow roses that I’ve always liked and the orange is a shade that will suit you, I think. Come now, kit, give me your honest opinion.”

  “Whichever you choose will be fine, Mama.” Ellie could feel her jaw muscles locking in place. Days from now, she was sure they would find her, dead from this wedding torture, her lips still frozen and her teeth bared in a grim parody of a polite smile.

  “All right, Ellie,” Lauriana replied evenly. “I’ll make the decision, since you don’t care to. Gentle Dawn it is.” Her skirts swished with violent little movements as she stalked away.

  Ellie scowled, angry at her mother for getting upset, angry at herself for being the one to upset her. The anger was unsettling. Ellie wasn’t a volatile person. She worked hard at keeping her emotions in check. Bad things happened when she didn’t. Yet the anger was there. And growing. The pain in her head increased.

  «Ellysetta.» Rain’s voice sounded again, a bit more insistent this time. She continued to ignore him. She’d wanted a simple wedding. Flowers, perhaps, and a priest. But, no. The mighty Rain Tairen Soul mandated a huge court affair. And then conveniently absented himself from the resulting madness. Ellysetta’s anger grew some more.

  “Mistress Baristani?” A man’s nasal voice sounded to her left.

  “What?” Ellie barked and turned towards the voice.

  The cobbler held up several pairs of shoes. “You’ve selected your footwear for your wedding, but you still need to select slippers for your ball gowns and a pair of boots for your day dresses. Something—if I may be so bold—a bit more elegant than your current footwear?”

  “There is nothing wrong with my current footwear,” she snapped. “It is the perfect footwear for a girl like me.”

  “Of course, Mistress Baristani.” The cobbler gave a small, condescending smile and bowed. “But I’m referring to the new you.”

  Her anger flared higher. “There is no new me. I am the same me that I have always been. I will be the same me tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that.”

  “My lady, please, stand still just a few chimes more,” the seamstress pleaded.

  Ellie scowled down at her. “I am standing still!”

  «Ellysetta, you will speak to me.»

  He wanted her to speak? «GET OUT OF MY MIND!» She felt his jagged burst of pain as her angry response blasted between them, and the ache between her eyes became sharp, gouging daggers thrusting into her brain. Dizziness assailed her, but she fought it back.

  “I apologize if my choice of words has offended you, Mistress Baristani,” the cobbler said. “I merely meant that in your new position, you will require a different form of attire.”

  “I am very aware of what you meant, ser. But I am now and always will be a woodcarver’s daughter. No amount of fancy new clothes—or elegant footwear—will ever change that.” Ellie raised a hand to her head and began to rub her temple.

  “Please, Lady Ellysetta, put your arm back down and hold still,” the seamstress begged.

  Irritation shrieked through Ellie, but she lowered her arm.

  “Ah, Duanniza Baristani,” Duan Parlo Vincenze, the elegant Capellan chef who catered to the cream of Celierian society, gestured extravagantly with a lace-festooned handkerchief. “I have sketched the perfect bridal cake for you. Tall. Elegant. Simple but boi mezza, very pretty.” He held up the sketch of a towering wedding cake. “You like, eh?”

  Ellie stared at the sketch in horror. Layer after angular layer of plain square cakes perched on tall, gawky columns. The cake was stark in its plainness, except for gargantuan bunches of dramatically sketched flowers that dripped down the columns. She supposed the chef meant the flowers to complement the minimalist appearance of the cake, but to her they looked like monstrous weedy growths run amok. Ill-fitting, ridiculous attempts to make something pitifully plain look attractive and feminine.

  “No. I don’t like.” Her chest felt tight. The room was too small, too crowded. Her mind whirled. The pain in her head was staggering. The anger seemed to be consuming her, stealing the very breath from her lungs.

  With a gasp of offended pride, the chef whipped his lacy handkerchief through the air like a sword. “But, Duanniza, it is perfect for you.”

  “You must at least select a pair of slippers for the ball. Lady Marissya insisted.”

  “My lady, please stand still. Pella needs to repin the waist of this gown.”

  “The cake is hideous! I don’t care about the flaming slippers! And for the last time, I am standing still!” Gods, she needed air. She was going mad. She couldn’t breathe. Her vision began to blur.

  “Ellysetta.” Rain stood in the doorway, and there was no mistaking the whip of command in his voice.

  “WHAT?” Anger roared to blazing life. This was all his fault! She whirled to face him. Pain stabbed into her waist as she impaled herself on the long, wickedly sharp tailor’s pin held in the seamstress Pella’s hand.

  Ellie screamed.

  Every window in the Baristani house exploded in a cloud of shattered fragments.

  Rain leapt forward, power bursting around him, his teeth bared in savage fury.

  “Get back!” he roared. Most of the people in the room were too stunned to move, but a punishing thrust of Air flung their bodies out of his path. Rain destroyed Bel’s opaque weave of Spirit with a single thought. Seamstresses shrieked and fled like mice as the Tairen Soul reached for his mate.

  Across the street, as the screams of the milling crowd still echoed in the aftermath of the exploding windows, Kolis Manza cursed and turned away. So close. He’d been so close.

  Magic had definitely been released. Elemental Air magic and a masterful burst of it. But just before the burst of Air, the Tairen Soul had arrived, power radiating from him in a huge, shining, barely controlled aura that had distorted Kolis’s view. And when the Tairen Soul had released blasting weaves of his own, he’d wiped away all hope of tracing the first weave to its source.

  The magic had been hers. Kolis knew it had been hers.

  But because he hadn’t witnessed the source of the magic with his own senses, he couldn’t be sure. He had to be sure. The High Mage wasn’t forgiving of mistakes.

  Kolis crushed the now-drained Feraz talis in his hand and threw it down a sewer grate. The small piece of beeswax, wrapped tight with a single flame-colored strand of hair, made a tiny, distant splash as it hit the water below and was carried away.

  “I’m sorry I acted so badly,” Ellie whispered for the thousandth time. “I don’t know what came over me. I’m not like that. I don’t get angry. I don’t treat people rudely.”

  “Shh,” Rain so
othed. “Las, shei’tani.” He stroked her hair and held her close as they sat together on the narrow bed in her room.

  After catching Ellie in his arms, Rain had carried her upstairs to her bedroom and then refused to leave her. Lauriana had strenuously objected to his presence on her daughter’s bed, but a hot, dangerous look and a snarling command to hold her tongue or risk having it silenced shut her up. Not the most diplomatic of solutions. She’d turned right around and would have marched out of the house to fetch her husband had not Bel hurried after her to soothe the worst of her maternal outrage. They were still downstairs, Lauriana subjecting Bel to a furious tirade recounting every indignity and offense the Fey had visited upon her family and their good name, but at least she’d left Rain in peace to tend his truemate.

  “I didn’t mean to yell at you,” Ellie said again. “I don’t understand why I let them upset me so badly. It was as if there was some terrible, angry force inside me, and it kept growing stronger and stronger, and I kept getting madder and madder.”

  “It’s all right, Ellysetta. Those people are gone.” He stroked her cheek. “They won’t be back, except by appointment, and I will be with you when they come.”

  Despite the worry and fear coloring her emotions, she smiled against his hand. “So you can explode all the windows again if they bother me? Maybe we’d better not have them come to the house. Mama might get tired of cleaning up the glass.”

  Rain stilled.

  Ellysetta scooted back so she could look at him. “What?”

  He met her gaze. “It was not I who destroyed the windows, Ellysetta.”

  She blinked. “It wasn’t? Then Bel did it?” She gave a small laugh and shook her head. “I wouldn’t have thought he was the type for such a display.”

  “Nei. It was not Bel, nor any other of the Fey.”

  Ellysetta’s smooth forehead wrinkled in a confused frown. “Then…who?”

  Rain gazed at her steadily, saying nothing.

  “No,” she said. “It wasn’t me.”

  “You used Air. An incredibly fine yet powerful weave that struck only the windows. Every window.” He saw her glance at the perfectly intact bedroom window. “The warriors repaired them while you were unconscious. But they were all destroyed. Reduced to dust.”

  “It wasn’t me,” she insisted. “You must be mistaken.”

  “I am not mistaken. There is power in you, Ellysetta. Great power.”

  “No.” She dragged her fingers through her hair, tangling the wild curls.

  “Why do you fear what is inside you?”

  “Why do you keep insisting that I’m magic?”

  “Because you are. I’ve seen evidence of it several times now. On the day you called me out of the sky, you used Earth. Not much. It was only a small healing weave, but both Marissya and I sensed it. The night of our betrothal, you wove Spirit on your mother with so much power packed in so fine a weave that even most Fey would not have known they were being influenced, or been able to resist. Today, you used Air in a very concentrated and powerful weave. All the Fey sensed it this time.”

  “Maybe it was someone else who destroyed the windows,” she suggested. “You think there are Elden Mages in Celieria. Maybe it was one of them.”

  His shei’tani was grasping at straws, so eager to deny her power. He still did not understand why she would fear it so. Lauriana’s explanation of all Celierians’ fear of magic-blighted forests didn’t ring true. Ellysetta wasn’t afraid of all magic like her mother; only her own magic truly frightened her. And Rain could not imagine why that would be so.

  “This was no Mage, Ellysetta. I saw the weaves with my own Fey eyes, and they came from you.”

  “Must we talk about this now?”

  Rain sighed. “Of course not.” He rose, held out a hand, and helped her to her feet. She looked so…lost, so worried. He brushed thick spirals of hair away from her face. “It will be all right, Ellysetta.” And then, because he couldn’t bear not to, he kissed her.

  His mouth slanted over hers softly at first. A kiss of reassurance and the gentler side of shei’tanitsa. But as her warm breath mingled with his, and the honeyed sweetness of her mouth opened to his, tenderness blossomed into desire. He groaned deep in his throat, a rumbling sound of restraint and longing, and his kiss grew firmer.

  Rain’s fingers delved into the bright silk of her hair, curving around to the back of her head and holding her fast. All softness fled his body, only a remnant of it remaining in his kiss, but that too burned away the instant Ellysetta’s arms wrapped around him and her hands pulled him closer with surprising strength.

  The tairen stirred, and Ellie flinched. Rain clamped a ruthless hold on the beast within him. Not this time. The tairen would not rob him of this wonderful moment.

  His hands pulled free of her hair, and he trailed them down her back, fretting at the layers of cloth that separated her skin from his. With just a small weave of Earth, he could banish those annoying layers. Rain summoned power to his fingertips.

  «Rain.» Bel’s warning sounded.

  Someone cleared a throat loudly from the doorway.

  Rain released his power and tore his lips from Ellysetta’s. A blistering torrent of curses battled on the tip of his tongue, held back only with great effort.

  He dragged in a breath and turned to face Lauriana Baristani.

  Color stained the woman’s cheeks, but her accompanying narrow-eyed look made it clear the flush did not come from embarrassment at having interrupted an intimate embrace.

  “I came to check on Ellysetta,” Lauriana said. “As she is most definitely awake, there’s no need for either of you to remain in her bedchamber.”

  Ellysetta blushed. “Yes, Mama.”

  Lauriana gestured for Rain and Ellie to precede her downstairs—so he couldn’t steal another kiss, Rain surmised, cursing Celierians and their restrictive customs. As he entered the small home’s main room, Rain met Bel’s gaze and wasn’t pleased to see amusement lurking in his friend’s eyes beside the apologetic sympathy.

  «I’m sorry, Rain.»

  «So I see.»

  «Nei, truly.» But Bel’s laughter broke free across their link.

  Rain scowled and turned his attention back to his shei’tani, who was staring at a wall heaped with packages.

  “More gifts?” Ellysetta asked her mother. “Who are these from?”

  “The gods only know. Simple-gentry trying to ingratiate themselves with the Feyreisen. Wealthy merchants attempting the same. Friends. Neighbors. Complete strangers.” Lauriana shrugged. “I gave up inspecting whom they’re from and just starting stacking them. The parlor is already full.”

  Ellysetta shook her head. “Amazing.” Then the expression on her face grew somber and she put her arm around her mother’s shoulders. “I’m sorry for upsetting you earlier, Mama. I know everything’s in turmoil, and it’s my fault. There’s so much to do in so little time, and—”

  “Shh.” Lauriana put a finger on her daughter’s lips. “I know, kit. And I’m sorry, too, for snapping at you. It was a madhouse here this morning. There was too much going on all at once. I must admit I’m grateful your betrothed sent them all packing, though I don’t much approve of his methods.” Lauriana cast a dark look Rain’s way. “Exploding windows and flying bodies only added to the madness.”

  Rain bowed low. “I shall endeavor to show restraint in future.” Ellysetta gave him a startled glance. «Say nothing, shei’tani. It is best that all believe I am responsible for the windows.» After a moment, she nodded.

  “I have several errands to run,” Lauriana said. “Why don’t the two of you open the wedding gifts in the parlor, so we can clear some space.”

  What? Rain opened his mouth to object, but before he could say a word, he heard his shei’tani doom them both.

  “Yes, Mama.”

  Rain closed his mouth and carefully blanked his face.

  “There’s a book in the secretary. Be sure you write down who gave you
what, so I have some hope of sending appropriate gratitudes.”

  “Yes, Mama.”

  “Well, then, I’d best be going. I’ve got a hundred things to do. Don’t forget that Master Fellows, the queen’s Master of Graces, is coming here at fourteen bells to begin your instruction in the noble graces. Be sure to tidy up before he arrives—both the house and your own appearance. You don’t want to make a bad first impression.”

  “Yes, Mama.” As Lauriana bustled off, Ellysetta glanced at Rain uncertainly. “Do you mind about opening the gifts?”

  He did, of course. Opening gifts from Celierians he neither knew nor cared about was not how he would choose to spend his courtship bells. He answered diplomatically. “My time is yours, Ellysetta. If this is how you choose to spend it, then so it shall be spent.”

  She bit her lip. “It’s just that Mama’s already done so much, and I’ve done so little. And it’s my wedding. Our wedding.”

  “I understand, shei’tani.”

  “Do kings even open their own gifts?” she asked as they walked down the short hallway to the parlor.

  “Apparently this one does.” The grumble in his voice made her smile, as he’d hoped it would. But when they reached the parlor and Rain saw the gifts, crammed into every inch of space and stacked to the ceiling, he called for reinforcements. Ellysetta’s quintet came running in response to their king’s summons, though when they heard what he wanted of them, their faces went predictably blank.

  “It won’t be that bad,” Ellysetta promised, “especially with all of you helping.”

  “They live to serve you, shei’tani,” Rain assured her. After serving as a source of amusement to these Fey over the last few days, it gave Rain great pleasure to turn the tables.

  Rain watched as his five best warriors squeezed into the tiny parlor, picked their way through the jungle of wedding gifts as if tiptoeing through a nest of Drogan sand vipers, and settled down with stone-faced stoicism to proceed with the humiliatingly un-warrior-like task of opening presents.

  «You bring pride to this Fey,» Rain sent on their common path, and his tone rang with amusement.