King of Sword and Sky (42 page)

He stood beneath its flow until his body shone with the purified force of his considerable power, and then stepped out of the pool and dried himself with a swift weave of Air. Six steps brought him to the altar niche, where thirteen fresh, unlit candles in various shades of earth and sky had been laid out in a pattern of divine power. He passed his hand over the candles, loosing a faint weave of Fire as he spoke the name of each god or goddess. One by one, the wicks burst into pale yellow-orange flame, and a heady mélange of fragrances filled the air.

Rain knelt before the altar and sang the invocation of the Feyreisen. "Light of the world, shine your grace upon this Fey. Grant me the wisdom to guide my brothers in battle, the strength to drive back the enemy, and, if it is your will, the courage to die bravely and with honor. Light be victorious."

Last, he sent up silent a plea of his own,
If I fall, let my life be the sacrifice that frees Ellysetta from the Mages. If I fall, help her to lead our people with strength and wisdom so the Fading Lands may thrive once more.
And the hardest wish for any Fey who wanted his
shei'tani
bound to him and him alone…"If I fall… let her live to find love and joy with another."

The candles flickered, and with one final word of prayer and thanks, he blew them out and waved the aromatic smoke from the extinguished wicks over his face and bare skin, closing his eyes and filling his lungs with the warm fragrance.

He'd performed a similar ritual in his youth, before he'd marched out to war. Then, the smoke and
faerilas
had filled him with a sense of peace and purpose. He'd been so young back then, so unaware of the true horrors war could bring.

Now he knew better. Now he knew how damning even victory could be.

He approached the alcove that held the armor of the king, then stopped. The moment he donned the golden steel, the Fading Lands would be at war and there would be no turning back until the Eld surrendered or the light of the Fey was extinguished.

He could almost hear Johr's voice, full of hard edges and fierce challenge:
You think you have the right, Fey? Are you certain?

He recalled the day Johr had donned the armor. He'd summoned all the Tairen Souls of the Fading Lands into this room to bear witness. There were twenty of them then, ranging in age from Rain's own youthful two hundred years to Johr's almost sixteen hundred. Rain had stood in the same spot he was now, his body trembling with a mix of excitement, dread, and anticipation. Gaelen vel Serranis had just wreaked his dark vengeance upon the Eld, and the world had gone mad.

He and his brothers had watched Johr strip away his leathers and steel. They'd sung with him the songs of prayer and purification as he'd cleansed himself in the waters of the Source and lit the sacred candles as Rain had just done. Magic—Johr's own great tairen power—had swirled around him, draping his nakedness in great, blinding swaths of light as he stepped resolutely toward the alcove where the king's armor awaited.

"You think being king is about power?" Johr had asked them. He'd stood so tall, his shoulders broad, his face carved from stone. His eyes had whirled tairen-bright, pupil-less, their normal brown transformed to glowing amber that burned like molten steel. "Power is nothing. Kingship is about choices. Hard, bloody, damnable choices. One day, any one of you may be the Feyreisen. When the time comes for you to make those decisions, will you be wise enough to make the right one?" His searing eyes had scorched them. "Think long and hard, my brother-kin. We are creatures born for killing, but war is a poison draft. No matter why you drink it, the cup holds death—and not just for your enemies. So be sure—be soul-scorching sure of two things before you take the smallest sip: first, that you have no better alternative, and second…"

His voice had trailed off. He lowered his head as though the effort to keep himself standing tall was too great.

"And second?" asked one of the younger Tairen Souls, a Fey barely older than Rain.

Johr drew a breath. Slowly, he lifted his head and drew his shoulders back, square and strong once more. "And second, be sure that once you tilt the cup, you are Fey enough to drain it though its poison rots your flesh, lays waste your lands, and leaves everyone you love writhing in bitter anguish."

His power had blazed, and the armor in the alcove had dissolved, re-forming on the king's body, fitted to him as though the steel had been forged to his form. He'd stood there for one last, silent moment, a shining Fey prince clad in black, scarlet, and gold, his eyes as bleak and grim as Rain had ever seen them. "To war, my brothers." Johr lowered the battle helm upon his head. "To victory or death."

"To victory or death!" they'd cried.

And so the Mage Wars had begun.

Now, standing alone in the king's armory on the brink of a second Mage War, Rain found Johr's ringed name symbol on one of the black leather plates. "If you can hear me, Johr Feyreisen," he murmured, rubbing a thumb across the sigil of the previous Fey king, "guide me now as you did when I first found my wings."

When Rain emerged from the king's armory and stepped into the Hall of Tairen, Bel and Gaelen were waiting. Bel glanced at Rain's plain black leathers and silvery steel, but all he said was, "The warriors have gathered."

Gaelen's ice blue eyes narrowed. "You still believe this can end in any way but one?"

Rain adjusted his
meicha
belts.
"Nei,
I am not so big a fool."

"Then why this?" Gaelen's hands spread to indicate Rain's old leathers.

"War is coming—I know that is as inevitable as it was a thousand years ago—but the moment the Eld see the Feyreisen's golden war steel on the ramparts of Orest, the first battle will begin. Let us position our men, secure our allies, and plan our defenses before throwing down the gauntlet." When Gaelen continued to look askance, he sighed. "If all I do is buy time for Ellysetta to save the tairen, that will be enough."

"Enough for what?"

Bel answered for him. "Hope."

All of Dharsa came out to see the warriors off, and tears mingled with the voices raised in exultant song. Though Rain wore no golden steel, no one in Dharsa believed the departing Fey would return before open war began. And most still remembered how few had returned the last time the Fey strode off to war.

Garbed in flowing purple silks and flanked by Bel, Gaelen, and Steli, Ellysetta stood on a garland-draped platform and watched the column of Fey warriors march past, Rain at the lead. She sang with the other Fey, her voice rising pure and sweet, and on a private weave of Spirit, she called, «
Be safe, kem'san. Come back to me.»

Just before he rounded the corner and marched out of view, he turned toward her. «
I will see you soon, shei'tani.»

Then he was gone. She remained standing on the platform, watching until the last Fey disappeared down the avenue of sentinel trees in Rain's wake.

When the street was empty and the city had fallen silent, she turned to Marissya and the
shei'dalins
standing nearby. "Well,
kem'fallas,
let's get back to work."

Rain and the Fey ran flat-out across the Plains of Corunn and the Eastern Desert, but once past the abandoned city of Sohta, the rocky rise and fall of the mountainous terrain slowed their land-eating run to a jog. At dawn of the fourth day, they reached the Faering Mists and the pass of Revan Oreth where the volcanic Feyls merged with the Rhakis mountains.

Though the Mists offered no resistance to Fey departing the Fading Lands, Revan Oreth was little more than a treacherous goat path winding through a canyon of razor-sharp rocks and crumbling cliffs. The Fey took each footstep with special care.

The pass opened into the turbulent heart of Kiyera's Veil, a gauntlet of mighty, three-hundred-foot waterfalls plunging down from opposing sides of the mountains. Magic teemed in the billowing mist and furious deluge, a powerful magic that flowed from Crystal Lake, the great mountain-born Source cradled at the intersection of the Rhakis, the Feyls, and the Mandolay ranges. Those waters, which then went on to feed the Heras River, burned Mage flesh the way
sel'dor
burned the Fey.

Rain and the Fey plunged into the cascades without hesitation. Though the pounding weight drenched them and nearly drove them to their knees, they slogged through the hammering gauntlet of the Veil.

Their reward, when they finally emerged on the other side, was to step into the closest thing the mortal world had to paradise.

Billowing clouds of spray rose up from the clash of falls, and grottoes of fern and moss clung to the steep mountainside, thriving in the cool moisture. Rivulets of condensed mist became small ribbons of water that spilled constantly down the craggy, moss-and-fern-carpeted cliffsides in a delicate web of secondary falls. Rainbows shimmered in every beam of light.

There, at the foot of the majestic torrent of waterfalls and nestled in the wide upper valley carved out of the mountains, Orest, the City of Mists, rose from the rainbows like a sprawling cathedral of black pearl, alabaster, and jade. Girded by steep, impenetrable battlements, the city's beautiful heart flourished in the sweet breath of the Veil, blooming with mossy tree-and-fern-filled gardens amidst graceful colonnaded walks and domed, glistening pearl gray buildings and bridges that spanned the headwaters of the Heras.

Armored guards clad in the gold, white, and crimson tabards of House Teleos stood at attention on every corner, bridge, and tower wall, guarding Orest like the treasure she was. Before Rain had even stepped outside the misty cloud of spray from the Veil, he was surrounded by a hundred soldiers—all jabbing the business end of their spears his way.

As score after score of drenched Fey warriors emerged from the deluge of the Veil, Orest's guardsmen found themselves backing up, but before the Fey outnumbered them, a shout brought reinforcements running. Overhead, rising from the rocks and crevices of the sheer cliffs, archers took careful aim at the Fey newcomers.

Rain, unoffended by the Celierians' fierce defense, held out his hands in the universally recognized gesture of peace. "Inform Lord Teleos the Tairen Soul has arrived."

"You should have sent word," Teleos chided as he ushered Rain, Tajik, Rijonn, and Gil into a warm, dry conservatory whose glassed walls and ceilings provided an unimpeded view of the Veil and the verdant splendor of Upper Orest. "If I'd known you were coming through the Veil, my men would have given you a much more gracious greeting."

"The greeting was as gracious as a stranger should expect," Rain said mildly. "My compliments to your men for their swift action. Considering that none have passed through the Veil for a thousand years, I half expected your men to have let down their guard."

"They are well trained for mortals," Tajik agreed. "They bring you pride."

"Beylah vo."
Dev nodded his thanks. "The Veil may be quiet, but the greatest threat to the mortal world lives but an arrow's flight across the Heras. And we guard the only bridge from here to the Pereline Ocean." He walked towards the east-facing side of the room, where they could look out over the city.

At the base of Orest's great wall, the mountains dropped away again, and the Heras River plunged down a second broad waterfall called Maiden's Gate before winding eastward across the continent, a wide, dark ribbon that traveled well over a thousand miles to the sea. In all that distance, not a single stone nor strand of ferry rope bridged the wide, dark waters that separated Eld and Celieria. All that had existed were destroyed during the Mage Wars and never rebuilt.

"I think you'll find the bridges of Orest less valued by the Eld than once they were," Rain remarked. "The Well of Souls is all the bridge they now need."

He ran a critical eye over the admittedly imposing defenses of the middle and lower city. Middle Orest—called Maiden's Gate after the falls it flanked—stair-stepped down the steep cliffs of the river's southern bank in a series of well-fortified terraces. The bottom terrace of Maiden's Gate opened to the wide, walled city of Lower Orest. Like the fortress battlements of the upper city, thick walls of pearlescent gray stone ringed the lower city and loomed four tairen lengths high over the wide, dark waters of the mighty Heras. Steel-shuttered portals for bowcannon and archers dotted the solid walls, and the steel-enforced frames of heavy catapults crouched on broad platforms every tairen length along the crenellated battlements. Behind the massive outer wall, a secondary wall loomed higher, its ramparts studded with slender towers where war wizards conjured their spells during battle.

"When the Eld come," he advised, "don't rely on the lessons of the past to guide you. Their attack may come from anywhere, with little or no warning. Possibly even from within the city itself." He didn't have to explain. Lord Teleos had been in Celieria City when the Eld launched their attack at the Grand Cathedral of Light.

"The Fey who accompanied me from Teleon have already taken that into account," Dev replied. "They've already evaluated the city's defenses and spun protection weaves over everything. If the Eld open a portal anywhere in Orest, we'll know about it."

"Kabei."
He'd already received the same report from his men, but Orest belonged to Devron Teleos. He eyed the shining Fey steel Dev wore and saw the familiar name-marks on the pommels. "Shanis would be proud to have you wear his blades, Dev." He clapped a hand on his friend's shoulder. "Now we'll teach you how to use them. I know I promised you safe escort to the Academy in Dharsa, but circumstances being what they are, I've instead brought the Academy to you. Tajik, Rijonn, and Gil will train you and your men in the basic forms of the Cha Baruk. How many Orestians wield magic?"