CHAPTER ELEVEN
Soul stained black by darkness
I’ve been banished to this half life.
All I have left is remembered honor
And for this I now must fight.
I’ll protect those that I left behind
So they’ll never feel this sorrow.
I’ll hold the line day and night
So my Fey brethren will not follow.
Dahl’reisen’s Lament, by Varian vel Chera
The Forests of Eld ~ North of the Heras River
Before the sole of Rain’s boot touched the ground in his third step towards the Well, the world went mad.
A shadowed blur whooshed past his ear. The expertly thrown red Fey’cha buried itself in the chest of one of the apprentice Mages holding open the gateway to the Well of Souls. Red blood blossomed. The Mage’s mouth opened in a soundless scream.
Blackness came rushing out of the Well. Demon!
Rain tightened his grip on Ellysetta and shoved away from the Well, propelling them both backward as the formless dark mass enveloped the Mage.
He caught a brief glimpse of the demon’s snapping teeth and bloodred eyes.
Then the air turned scarlet as the Mage’s body shredded.
Long strips of flesh peeled away from bones; blood sprayed in a fine mist that never made it to the ground, bones pulverized into powder.
In an instant, he was gone—utterly consumed.
The red Fey’cha that had initiated the Mage’s death fell to the forest floor only to disappear before it hit the ground.
A savage grin curled the edges of Rain’s mouth. He didn’t know how in the Seven Hells Bel had done it, but he’d somehow managed to reach them in record time. “Fey!” he cried, “Ti‘Feyreisa! Ti’Feyreisa! “
The whistling whoosh sounded again, this time in force as scores of Fey’cha rained down upon the Eld. Half the Mages died before they had time to raise their shields. Demons howled and rushed out of the Well, driven to frenzy by the sudden rush of rich, red blood.
The Fey must have been using Gaelen’s invisibility weave, because Rain didn’t catch a single glimpse of black-clad warriors or even the slightest purple glow of a Spirit weave. But their steel flew with blinding speed and deadly accuracy, and that was all he cared about.
As swift and merciless as the demons that consumed the dead, the Fey rained down slaughter on the enemy.
Eld screamed and scattered in fear as invisible foes ripped open Eld throats and chests, parted heads from shoulders, and cleaved mailed soldiers in two.
Only the Fey’cha were visible, flying without cease, outpacing Eld arrows four to one.
Without the dead Mage’s Azrahn to keep it open, one side of the Well doorway began to collapse.
The apprentice Mage holding open on the other side gurgled as a red Fey’cha buried itself in his throat.
He toppled over and was shredded and consumed before he could hit the ground.
The doorway fell in upon itself, closing rapidly.
Primage Keldo leapt forward and channeled a concentrated burst of Azrahn to keep the Well open. Even as he did so, he flung a shield around himself and fired deadly globes of Mage Fire at the unseen attackers. “Get the girl into the Well!” he shouted. Fey’cha bounced harmlessly off his shields.
A dozen Eld converged on Rain and Ellysetta—and died. Their bodies dropped like autumn leaves.
Rain hauled Ellysetta into his arms and bolted away from the Well.
Huge, furious balls of Mage Fire rolled past Rain on either side.
He smelled the stench of seared flesh and heard the thud of ruined bodies falling to the ground as some of the Mage’s shots hit the invisible rescuers.
Rain kept running. His seldor-bound magic was useless, and Ellysetta’s life was in danger.
He had to trust the Fey to do their job.
“Fey, ti’Feyreisa!” he shouted. “Fey, to the Feyreisa! Protect her! Shields up!”
A fiery hammerblow punched Rain in the back of one leg, sending him sprawling.
The smell of scorched ozone filled his nostrils.
He fell to his knees, and his elbows slammed so hard into the ground that his teeth rattled.
He’d been struck by Mage Fire, and only the power of his golden war steel had saved him the loss of a leg.
He released Ellysetta and rolled to his feet in time to see another of the Primages advancing on him, more Mage Fire blazing.
Half a dozen Fey materialized directly in the Primage’s path.
Another half dozen shimmered into visibility in a loose ring around Rain and Ellysetta.
Mage Fire roared towards them. In the hands of the Fey, magic blazed to life, huge, powerful ropes of it forming a five-fold weave. Earth. Air. Water. Fire. Spirit.
A sixth, dark rope joined the rest.
Azrahn.
Rain’s gut clenched. He spun instinctively towards Ellysetta, saw the six-fold weave surrounding her unconscious form, saw the scars on the faces of the Fey surrounding her.
It wasn’t Bel who’d come to their rescue.
It was dahl’reisen.
His hand instinctively reached for his Fey’cha belts, but his steel still lay in a heap on the ground near the portal to the Well of Souls.
Before he could make a move to recover his blades, a massive concussion shook the ground.
Rain dropped to his knees as Mage Fire exploded harmlessly against one of the six-fold weaves.
More dahl’reisen added their weaves to the others.
Power swelled until the very air crackled.
Clouds boiled in the sky. Rain glanced back in time to see the Primage feed power into his shields in a desperate, doomed attempt to save himself as thirty-six dahl’reisen interwove their magic into a single, enormous rope of energy.
It blasted through his shields like fire through paper, incinerating him in a single fiery flash.
The doorway to the Well of Souls collapsed. The feeding demons howled in fury as the closing door sucked them back into their world.
Abrupt silence fell over the Eld forest.
The dahl’reisen paused briefly to gauge the remaining number of enemy, then continued methodically exterminating the Eld.
They made short work of those who fled and the few who remained to fight, and slit the throats of the still-groaning Eld wounded as they began dragging Eld bodies into a large pile and retrieving Fey’cha.
“Fire the bodies quickly.” The order came from behind Rain’s back.
The speaker’s voice was harsh and gravelly, and it held the unmistakable ring of command.
“Jaren, you and your men send our fallen brothers back to the elements. Others will come. We must leave.” The dahl’reisen obeyed without hesitation.
The pile of Eld corpses burst into flames.
The half dozen dead dahl’reisen who’d not been consumed by Mage Fire were gathered and laid out in a line.
Six-fold weaves enveloped the bodies, then blazed bright.
When the magic died down, the bodies of the slain dahl’reisen were gone.
Rain turned to the speaker, a tall dark-haired warrior with a thick scar that curved across his throat up to his left cheek. Rain did not recognize him, but that wasn’t so surprising. Before the Wars, Fey had numbered in the hundreds of thousands.
“You will come with us,” the dahl’reisen told Rain.
Rain glanced at the dahl’reisen still ringing around Ellysetta. Had these men who walked the Shadowed Path rescued them only to turn around and imprison them again?
“The woman and I are heading for Orest,” Rain told him, then cursed himself for the useless attempt to hide Ellysetta’s identity. He’d already shouted it to them all. Fey, to the Feyreisa! Protect her!
One of the dahl’reisen’s dark brown brows lifted in a mocking gesture almost identical to the one Gaelen so enjoyed using. “Your sense of direction is somewhat lacking, Tairen Soul. This is Eld.”
“We were… diverted.”
“You are both wounded, and I imagine you would like to be rid of that Eld jewelry before continuing your journey.” The dahl’reisen’s nose wrinkled with distaste as he touched the sel’dor manacles welded in place around Rain’s wrists.
Rain met his gaze steadily. “You know I cannot allow any of you to touch her.”
The mocking brow arched again. “You believe you could stop us if we were determined to do so? Sel’dor-pierced and shackled?”
“I would die trying.”
“Still so noble. Still so bloodthirsty. How many souls weigh on your own, Rainier vel’En Daris?”
“Millions,” Rain answered flatly. “And you?”
“Not so many as that. But enough to leave me with this.” He touched the scar on his neck and cheek. “Strange, is it not, that I should be the one banished.”
“We suffer and survive our sufferings as the gods see fit.”
“Ah, of course. The will of the gods.” He tired of pricking Rain’s honor.
“You will tend your mate, Feyreisen. We who are the Brotherhood of Shadows do not touch Fey women. She will be safe enough, but with your permission we will weave Spirit upon her to keep her from waking. In her current condition, our proximity would be too harsh a torment for her to bear.”
Knowing he had little chance, Rain agreed, and one of the dahl’reisen spun a dense Spirit weave over Ellysetta. Rain watched closely to be sure there was nothing in the weave but patterns to make her sleep.
“Once we reach our village, we will remove your shackles,” the dahl’reisen leader said as the other man finished the weave and stepped away.
“There are women with healing talent who will see to you both. We will—” His voice broke off.
He lifted his head with sudden alertness, his shadowed green eyes growing darker.
“More Mages have arrived. Blue robes, by the feel of them—and many of them. We must cross the river quickly.”
Only then did Rain scent Azrahn on the wind, so faint he might never have detected it without the dahl’reisen’s drawing attention to it.
“The Eld are using the Well of Souls to travel,” Rain told the dahl’reisen leader. “They’ve planted white stones throughout these woods to open portals to the Well at will.”