"Thank you." Ellysetta drew a deep breath, A sense of fatalistic calm suffused her. Not knowing was far worse than any unpleasant secret Hawksheart might reveal. She couldn't change what she was or where she came from, but she could at least face the truth and find a way to make peace with it. She was tired of jumping at shadows and fearing what she was.

"Then we have a compact?"

Rain's arm tightened around her waist. «Be very sure this is what you want, shei'tani,» he whispered. «Once you strike a bargain with an Elf, he will hold you to your word; and inevitably what you bargained for doesn't turn out the way you expected.»

She patted the golden steel brace covering his forearm. «I need to do this, Rain. Mama always used to say it's better to choke on a bitter truth than savor a honeycake lie. He has the answers I need, and this may be my only chance to discover them.» She stroked his hand, each touch a caress filled with love and understanding and pleading. After a few moments, his arm fell reluctantly away from her waist.

"Well?" Hawksheart prompted. "Do we have an agreement?" His piercing Elvish eyes never left her face.

Ellysetta swallowed a sudden stab of fear and nodded. "Aiyah."

“The offer has been made and accepted. The bargain is Elf-struck.'' He clapped his hands and sparks shot out in a blossom of gold and green fire to swirl in the air between them. A sudden electric tingle raced through her veins. When the sparks faded, the Elf king waved an arm towards the shining blue pool. "Kneel beside the mirror. I would first See your Song, and then I will give you the truth of your past."

As Ellysetta moved towards the pool and knelt on the spongy moss at its bank, Hawksheart walked towards the edge of the dim chamber. He laid his hands upon the inner tree wall and murmured something in lyrical Elvish. A moment later, the chamber was flooded with a pleasant but rather overpowering woodsy aroma, sweet, earthy, and pungent.

Ellysetta swayed as dizziness overtook her.

Do not fear, and do not resist. Hawksheart's voice rang in her head like the tolling of a bell, resonant and irresistible. Not Spirit but something else. Something deeper and more powerful. Grandfather merely shares the scent of his liferings. It will help open your mind to the mirror. Breathe deeply. Take his scent into your lungs.

Without hesitation, Ellysetta breathed as deeply as her lungs would allow. The dim room took on a hazy cast, as if a mist had crept into the chamber to throw everything out of focus. Beside her, in the depths of the shimmering blue pool, colors began to gather and swirl.

Now hold your hands over the mirror. When I tell you, put your palms upon the surface of the water . . . but be very careful not to submerge them. The mirror is powerful magic, and you are not trained in its use.

Her hands moved of their own volition out over the water. The colors in the pool leaped and twirled towards them as if in greeting. Ellysetta watched with a dazed sense of detachment, as if those hands belonged to someone else.

«Shei'tani?» Rain's thoughts pressed against hers. Some part of her was dimly aware of his concern, but she couldn’t seem to summon a response. Her lungs were filled with the overpowering fragrance of the Sentinel, and her mind felt muddled.

She watched with a strange, detached disorientation as her hands lowered, palms down, fingers splayed, until at last the cool water of the mirror touched her skin. Her eyelashes fluttered, and she felt a strange, electric tug, as if the liquid in the pool were pure magic. Perhaps it was—and it was trying to draw her into its blue depths. She leaned forward.

Stop.

Hawksheart's command froze her in place. Her hands barely kissed the still surface of the pool.

You know how to share your essence with a thing. Share it with the mirror now.

She drew a breath, closed her eyes, and summoned the brilliant rainbow-lit darkness of Fey vision. In that darkness the world around her was a bright weave of glowing magic: red Fire, green Earth, gleaming blue Water, silvery Air, and lavender Spirit. Here, in the heart of Grandfather, the colors were so dense the darkness was virtually impossible to see, and the water of the mirror shone a blinding blue-white. Into that dazzling brightness she poured a portion of the potent energy that was her essence, the living magic unique to her alone.

The pool flared. The colors of Grandfather flared as well, and the entire room went so magic-bright Ellysetta cried out and opened her eyes. Fey vision still overlapped natural sight, and what had been a dim, windowless hollow lit only by the glow of the mirror pool was now as bright as the Great Sun. She glanced over her shoulder. Rain and her quintet stood in a protective semicircle directly behind her, and though their silvery Fey luminescence was dazzling to her enhanced vision, each of the Fey appeared as dim shadows against Grandfather's searing light.

Concentrate, Ellysetta Erimea. Find the essence of your Song.

Ellysetta turned towards Galad Hawksheart, but like the Sentinel tree and the mirror pool, the Elf king was so bright he made her eyes hurt. "The light is blinding. I can't see."

You do not need to see. You only need to think of your Song.

"But I don't know my song. Even the tairen could not hear it."

I do not speak of tairen song. You have not yet accepted that part of your soul, so of course you do not hear it. I speak of your life's Song. Everyone has one. It is an individual life's unique pattern, its joys and sorrows, its loves and fears, its memories and dreams. Think of those things. Summon your Song.

Faces flashed across her memory, vignettes of the happiest days of her life. Mama, Papa, the twins. Her fear and awe the day Rain Tairen Soul swooped down from the sky to claim her. Selianne Pyerson, laughing and giggling over some girlish fancy. Lillis and Lorelle squealing and dancing in circles, their mink brown curls bobbing against their slender shoulders. Rain gathering her into his arms, his eyes glowing stars that regarded her as if she were the sun around which all his world revolved.