King of Sword and Sky
Page 65

It was only as Rain escorted her out that she saw the series of reliefs retelling the fateful day when all the world had changed. She stopped in her tracks, her fingers trembling as she reached out to touch the image of a man's face carved with raw, untutored starkness in an expression of eternal anguish.
"Oh, Rain…" Beside that single, heart-stopping image were others, more crudely made, of a tairen blasting a battlefield of tiny soldiers, of a woman crying out as a robed man brought a blade slicing down towards her neck, of a barren, desolate wasteland empty of all but the broken skeletons of dead trees and a tiny kneeling man lifting his arms in grief to the heavens.
"I lacked the artistic skills of those who carved the walls before me," Rain said softly.
"You carved these yourself, without magic," Ellie murmured. She could feel the embedded memory of his ancient torment locked within the very stone itself, captured for all time as the images were carved. Rage and pain and grief beyond reckoning. She pulled her hand away. "You channeled your sorrow into the stone."
"Did I?" He sounded surprised. "I didn't realize. I knew only that working here, carving my own story into the stone, was the one thing that gave me some small measure of peace."
He had suffered so much…and now, all his suffering, all the sacrifices he had made to save the Fey, were threatened by the nameless power that was slowly eradicating the tairen. For a thousand years, he had lived in torment, fighting for sanity and for release from the mad grief that consumed him, fighting to live because the Fey needed him to survive.
Rain said he didn't hold her responsible for saving the tairen, but that did not absolve her. She had sensed something in Fey'Bahren that neither Rain nor any of the tairen had ever felt. Something evil and gloating. It wasn't the familiar malevolence of the High Mage or the nightmares that had haunted her all her life, but it was just as frightening.
She touched the carved image of Rain's face, absorbing the echoes of his torment and his desperate resolve to live when all he wanted was to die. Had she ever been so selfless? So brave?
No, she'd been frightened all her life, running from her nightmares, her enemies, her magic. She was tired of being afraid. And she was definitely through with running.
"Would you take me back to the hatching grounds? I don't know if there is anything I can do to help, but I'd like to start trying."
The tairen had all returned from the lake and were perched on the ledges of the large cavern when Ellysetta stepped out onto the nesting sands and approached the still-buried tairen eggs. Steli glided down and flapped her white wings to blow away most of the black sand covering them before leaping back to her ledge.
The five remaining mottled gray eggs were nearly as big as Ellysetta was tall, reaching up to her shoulders. She laid her hand on the snub, bluntly rounded top of one of them. The outer shell was a tough, leathery, pebbled substance, neither as hard nor as brittle as the eggs of birds. She gave a gentle, experimental squeeze and jumped as the egg twitched in seeming response.
Yanking back her hand, she turned nervously to Rain. "Can the baby tairen feel when I touch it?"
He nodded. "The tairen are sentient even in the womb, though until the eggs are actually laid on the sands, their sentience is mostly limited to emotion and sensory impressions rather than actual thoughts, much the same as what we receive from an unborn child of our own species." A shadow darkened his eyes. "Sybharukai says there are still three fertile females in this clutch. The one tairen last night was male." A muscle ticked in his jaw. "I suppose we should be grateful for that."
On her ledge above him, Sybharukai growled softly. Ellie glanced up at the tairen. Fourteen pairs of eyes watched from their ledges, gleaming in the red-orange glow of the nesting lair. Fourteen. All that remained of the once-thriving prides. And if these unhatched female kits died, the pride would end with this generation.
She laid her hand on the nearest egg and concentrated, cautiously lowering her internal barriers and stretching out her senses as Marissya had taught her to do in their lessons together. Las, Ellysetta. Find the stillness inside you. Don't try to rule your magic. Let it flow freely. Let it fill you, become you. She closed her eyes and tried to find the tranquil silence in her mind, where the world was glimmering light. Relax. Breathe. All living things are made of Air, Water, Fire, Earth, and Spirit. Do not seek their essence; let their essence come to you.
Gradually, the sounds and scents of the world faded, and the shimmering darkness sprang to glowing life behind her eyes. Threads of magic—silvery Air, red Fire, green Earth, lavender Spirit, blue Water—all gleamed and shimmered, some threads radiant, others barely more than a subtle glow. The tairen were so bright they nearly blinded her. So much magic, so brilliant and untamed. Their light hummed with music: the beautiful, bold, colorful notes of tairen song, gleaming just beneath the surface, singing even when they were silent.
Beside them, Rain's colors were slightly dimmer, as if covered by a thin layer of shadow. She'd noticed that about him once before, that veil of darkness, as if the weight of all the souls he carried dimmed the brightness of his own soul.
When she turned to the eggs, the shimmering lights winked out. She could see Rain beside her, the tairen around her, but where the kitling in the egg should have been, there was only darkness and silence.
"What is it?" Rain asked.
She frowned. "I'm not sure. I think I'm doing what Marissya showed me, but I can't sense the kitlings at all. It's as if there's nothing but a blank void inside the eggs."