Lord of the Fading Lands (43 page)

They were in the glade overlooking Great Bay. Soft, cushioning grass lay beneath her back. The warmth of Rain's body pressed against her. His lips tracked down her throat, leaving a path of fire in their wake.
"Ku'shalah aiyah to nei.”

"Aiyah,"
she breathed. Her fingers threaded through the silky thickness of his hair as his head lowered. Cool air rushed across her breasts. She gasped, then arched her back as his mouth closed around her. "Rain," she cried.

He laughed softly against her skin. "You are so sweet," he murmured, "so very, very sweet." His teeth nipped at her with just enough force to make her gasp in surprise and shiver from the resulting tumult of sensation. His hand slid down her side, found the hem of her skirt, and ducked beneath. His fingers swept up her leg, towards the tight ache burning inside her.

Alarmed and shocked, she caught his hand. For the first time ever in his company, a feeling of wrongness came over her. "Rain?" She shivered again, but this time from cold, not pleasure. The night air had grown chill and biting. Rain's body no longer offered the warmth it had only moments ago.

He acted as though he had not heard her. His fingers dug into the soft skin of her thigh. "Give yourself to me. Open up and let me in, my sweet.”

"No," she said, pushing at him. The arms that had held her close now seemed like shackles, imprisoning rather than embracing her. "No, this is wrong. You promised my father ...”

He laughed again, but the sound was ugly this time, mocking. "You think any oath to a mortal could ever keep a Fey from taking what he wants?" He lifted his head, and ice rushed through her veins. His eyes! Instead of the glowing lavender eyes she'd come to love, there were only pits of blackness, flickering with malevolent red lights.

She screamed and shoved him away.

Mocking laughter rang in her ears, and Rain disappeared in a swirl of black smoke. The twinkling glow of the fairy flies was extinguished, plunging her into darkness.

"Bright Lord protect me," she whispered. She knew where she was, knew what was happening. This was a place she'd been many times before. This was the malignant womb from which all her nightmares sprang, the dark home of monstrous horrors and unspeakable evil.

This was the pit where the Shadow Man dwelled. Haunting her. Hunting her.

Hide deep and well. Never let him find you. If you reveal yourself to him, all will be lost.
The urgent directive that had guided her from her earliest memories now shrieked from the depths of her soul.
Hide, child! Hide now!

It was already too late.

She tried to flee, as she'd fled so many times in the past, but something held her fast, trapping her in the dark nexus. Panic rose, swift and sharp. Unable to escape, she tried to make herself small and invisible and tried to direct her consciousness, her thoughts, her entire being inward—hoping silence could conceal her. But she could feel him coming closer.

Cold enveloped her. Terror choked her. Each beat of her heart became a painful blow, as if someone were hammering spikes of ice into her chest.

Whispers snaked around her, the sibilant voice ancient and sinister and harrowingly familiar. "Girl ... I know you're here ... I can taste your nearness ... Show yourself”

Something brushed against her, something small and furry with
sharp little claws. A rat running across her hand. She bit back a scream, knowing the Shadow Man would hear. Knowing, somehow, it was what he wanted. If she made a sound—even the tiniest whimper—she would seal her doom.

The rat brushed against her again. Its sharp claws scratched her skin. The long, naked tail slithered across her hand, twitching back and forth like some hideous pendulum as its pointed snout poked and sniffed at her. She squeezed her eyes shut, shrieking in silent horror and revulsion as the verminous creature crawled over her. She didn't dare move, didn't dare fling the filthy thing away.

Something else brushed her hip. Another rat had joined the first. A third climbed over her leg, then a fourth brushed her foot. Soon there were dozens, circling around her, crawling over her skirts and up her arms, growing bolder as she offered no resistance.

"I sense your fear. Have
my
little friends found you?" When she didn't respond, his voice hardened, "Come, now. Show yourself. I can use much more unpleasant methods to get what I want.”

Sharp teeth sank into her finger as the first rat closed its jaws and bit. Agony lanced up her arm. Another rat bit, then another. Oh, gods! The silent scream ripped through her soul. She was being eaten alive!

Her flesh was on fire. Though her eyes were blind in the utter darkness, she could feel each tiny scrape and bite, the pierce of long sharp teeth, the agony of skin peeling back from bone in bloody shreds.

With frantic urgency, she began to whisper the Bright Lord's devotion in her mind, reciting the words again and again.
Holy Adelis, Lord of Light, shine your brightness upon me. Glorious Father, Sun of my Soul, grant me strength to stand against darkness. Adelis, Bright One, Lord of my Heart, bless me and keep me always in the Light.
The devotion offered only a fraction of the peace it usually did, but even that little bit she grasped with desperate gratitude.

Again and again, she repeated the devotion, and with each repetition, the pain in her flesh grew slightly more distant. Still there, still agonizing, but muted. As if she'd managed to push it into a small corner of her mind and lock it there.

Time crawled by. Moments stretched out for what seemed like bells. She clung to her silence with ragged determination. No matter what he did to her, she mustn't reveal herself.

"You are stronger than I believed." The Shadow Man sounded triumphant, almost ... proud. `But your efforts are in vain. You will reveal yourself to me." His voice became a cold whip of compulsion, battering at her mind, eating away at her defenses as relentlessly as his vermin gnawed at her flesh. "You
want
to reveal yourself to me. You can feel the darkness within you, demanding release.”

She closed her eyes and swallowed a silent cry, trying to block out the sound of his voice, the insidious words worming past her defenses. She wanted to scream out that he was wrong, that she wasn't dark, that she didn't feel the evil inside her. But she couldn't. Such a claim would be a lie. Deep, deep inside, in a place she had long ago refused to look—in a place so terrifying she'd never spoken of it to anyone, not even her father—something monstrous lived. An evil thing she'd always feared, a terror that dreamed of rending flesh with fangs and drinking blood rain from the sky.

It shifted inside her now, restless and hungry, its rage growing by the moment. Her skin felt stretched. Her hands clenched in fists. She mustn't let that thing out. Not now. Not ever. The world would fall to darkness if she ever set it free.

"You think the Fey can protect you. But who will protect them from you? Shall I show you what you will do to them?”

Around her, the pure, blind blackness began to lighten. Shadow became gray fog, swirling in eddies. Smells rose up, thick and overpowering: smoke, scorched flesh, blood, death. Gradually the mists began to clear, enough to see the aftermath of a terrible battle stretched out before her.

She was standing in a field of corpses. Shattered swords lay useless in dead, decaying hands. Torn pennants of a once proud army fluttered on broken shafts. Blood soaked the ground and congealed in dark pools. The stench of death filled the air, so thick each breath made her gag.

Horror mounted as she realized all the bodies strewn around her were either Fey or Celierian. King Dorian, Queen Annoura, Lady Marissya, Lord Dax, Bel, Kieran, Kiel: faces she knew, and thousands more that she didn't. Flies filled the air in swarms so thick they darkened the sky. Rats and crows flowed over the bodies like hideous rivers, feasting on the dead.

"Do you think it's only the Fey who will suffer on your behalf?”

A loud caw drew her attention. Atop a piled mound of bodies, a pair of crows were fighting over something long and pink, tugging it between their beaks and flapping their wings angrily. Their clawed feet hopped back and forth over a tangle of bloodless limbs.

Ellysetta's heart clenched with dread as she saw a child's hand. The fingers were still plump with youth, the lifeless grip clutching a small Stone painted in a pattern she recognized. Oh, gods, please, please no. Her gaze climbed up, following the slender child's arm to the tangle of mink-brown curls. Lillis lay dead upon the pile of bodies, Lorelle beside her. Mama and Papa lay close by, faces etched with expressions of horror, dead arms still reaching protectively towards their children.

Ellysetta wept with voiceless grief and denial. Although some part of her knew this was just another of the Shadow Man's tricks to force her to reveal herself, the sight of her parents dead before her, of Lillis and Lorelle's small bodies being ripped apart and fought over by carrion birds, was more than she could bear. She tried to close her eyes against the hideous vision, but even that escape was denied her. The scene played relentlessly against the backs of her eyelids, refusing to be shut out.

A shrouded figure stood on the hillside. Behind the figure, black- armored soldiers stretched out towards the horizon like a stain upon the earth. The Shadow Man's army. The dark promise of what was yet to come.

"You'll kill them, girl. You'll kill them all. It's what you were born for.”

Something brushed against her ankle. She looked down and found Rain lying on the ground at her feet, his throat and chest slashed open, his eyes milky and dead. A crow perched on his head. The dark wings flapped and covered his face like some hideous shroud, brushing against her ankle again as the bird bent to peck at one dead eye.

It was too much.

The scream ripped from her, the sound a shriek of anguish and despair.

"Get away from him! Don't touch him!" She flung herself at Rain's body, tearing in hysterical revulsion at the birds and vermin feasting on him. Fury gathered inside her and pulsed in a
_.
fierce, hot blast of rage. The rats and crows burst into flame. "Liar! Foul, evil liar! I'd die before hurting the people I love!”

A hand clamped hard around her throat. The Shadow Man who had been on the hillside just a moment ago now stood before her, shrouded in black, his face hidden by the deep hood of his cloak. Ice froze her blood in her veins.

"Bright Lord save me," she whispered, more from instinct than hope, knowing it was already much too late. She'd given herself away, revealed herself to him.

Worse, she'd revealed her magic.

The Shadow Man laughed, the sound triumphant. "The Bright Lord doesn't live here, girl. And he wouldn't save you even if he did." Her tormentor threw back his hood, and Ellysetta cried out in denial. Instead of the monstrous visage she'd always expected, her own face stared back at her, pale and ravaged, with twin black pits— bottomless and flickering with red lights—where her eyes should have been.

"I see you ... Ellysetta." The voice came out of her own mouth, but the sound was a familiar, malevolent hiss. "You can't hide from me any longer" The cloaked Ellysetta lifted a wavy black blade and sent it plunging towards her heart.

"No!" She shrieked and threw her hands up. The savage thing inside her howled with wrath. Fire boiled from her hands in voracious incendiary clouds. The cloaked Ellysetta shrieked in agony as the flames enveloped her.

Hot wind blew across Rain's face. He stared with dazed incomprehension at the flames leaping all around him as pella trees crackled and burned. The sand at his feet smoked and shattered as a wave tumbled over molten glass. Some small part of his mind registered the memory of furious heat rolling through him, but all that remained now was fear.

"Ellysetta" Oh, gods.
«Ellysetta!»

No answer.

«Ravel! Fey! Ti'Feyreisa! Ti'Feyreisa!»
Rain sprang into the sky, shooting high over the trees in a stream of sparkling gray mist that solidified instantly in tairen form. Air- powered wind filled his wings. He wheeled west towards the glow of Celieria City in the distance. A command barked on a dagger of Spirit sent the Fey rushing to reinforce the protective weaves around Ellysetta's home, and check on his truemate. Something had attacked her, but none of them had sensed it.

«She is here. She is unharmed,»
Ravel called back,
«but hurry.”

Rain streaked across the sky, covering the miles in a handful of chimes. He reached the Baristani house and arrowed out of the sky, Changing as he descended. The Fey hurried to pull down their weaves to grant him access, but those threads they didn't have time to unmake shredded before him, curling back from the buffeting force of his power as he streamed through Ellysetta's bedroom window and reclaimed Fey form at her side.

She sat huddled on her bed, pressed into the corner, eyes squeezed shut, her body racked with violent shudders. Her fists were clenched, her arms crossed protectively over her head and chest as if to ward off an attack. Ravel and her parents stood beside her, distraught and helpless. Her room was a shambles, her mirror shattered and smoking, the walls shredded as if great razor-sharp claws had sliced through the wood and plaster in a rage and scorched as if by sudden searing flame.

"She was like this when I came in," Ravel said. "She won't let any of us near her.”