Chapter Twenty-Four #2
Two black-leather-clad shapes leapt off Rain’s back and landed near Tajik, blades unsheathed and magic blazing. Bel and Gaelen
ran to his side, grinning like fiends.
“You’re getting slow, my brother.” Bel smirked. “The darrodogs almost had you.”
Tajik dusted himself off and tossed back his braids. “Me? Ha! You’re the ones late to the fight.” His cocky grin melted to
a sincere welcome as he clasped their forearms in a tight grip. “Meivelei, Fey. You’re a happy sight. But come, let’s hurry. Teleos has called retreat to Maiden’s Gate.”
“We arrived just in time, then.” Gaelen brandished his steel. “I wouldn’t want you to have all the fun.”
The three of them ran for the western city, weaves blazing and swords flashing as they protected the flanks of the retreating
allies. Behind them, Rain swooped across the ruins of Lower Orest, plowing the enemy lines with row after row of incinerating
flame.
The battle of Lower Orest continued to rage. Rain’s flame granted cover to the wounded and trapped allies struggling to reach
the safety of Maiden’s Gate. He flew as he had not flown since the Mage Wars, diving, soaring, twisting his lithe tairen’s
body through the sky with the sinuous ease of a sylph.
His nostrils filled with the scent and heat of his flame, the smell of roasting flesh and magic. Rage was there, pounding
beneath the fury of his flame. Memories flooded him. Memories of the Wars, of Eadmond’s Field. The voices of the dead grew
loud once more, battering his mind with the fresh screams and bitter death of every Eld who fell to his flame.
But despite the wildness that hovered so near, a sense of peace he’d never known before anchored him to sanity. Ellysetta.
Their bond was not yet complete, yet she was there, singing across its threads.
Weaving her love, her faith in him, across the distance.
?I am here, beloved. I am with you. Together we are strong.
? Her song was a shining light in his soul, a brilliant golden-white sun that warmed the icy grip of his ancient demons and
cooled the heat of his Rage. The beacon that kept his soul from plunging towards Darkness. ?Fly, shei’tan. Fly for us both.?
And he did.
Again and again he swooped and he soared. Again and again his roar ripped the skies over Orest, mighty, triumphant.
His presence gave hope to Orest’s champions. From the ramparts of Maiden’s Gate, archers fired flaming arrows whose hollow
shafts were filled with intensely flammable, sticky fluid that burned hot enough to melt leather and skin. Along the last
inner walls of Lower Orest, Water masters continued to funnel the waters of the Heras towards every spark of Mage Fire, while
Fire masters amplified each blast of Rain’s tairen flame and the archer’s fire arrows, incinerating rock and stone, flesh
and bone. Earth masters, shouting with effort, ripped great ravines across the ravaged sections of the city, swallowing entire
legions of Eld before closing up again.
But for every portal Rain seared shut, another four opened. He couldn’t understand it. There couldn’t possibly have been that
many selkahr crystals buried in Orest undetected. Yet portal after portal opened, and legion after legion poured out of them.
Sel’dor arrows filled the sky like swarms of locusts. His swooping attacks drew more of the enemy’s fire with each pass, and despite
Air masters’ spinning whirlwinds and sharp downdrafts to knock the arrows from the sky, scores of acid black metal shafts
pricked the membranes of Rain’s wings like the thorns of a kaddah.
Exhaustion, blood loss, and pain finally drove him from the sky to the shelter of Upper Orest. He landed in Veil Lake with
a clumsy splash. Panting, exhausted, he lay there, letting the faerilas wash over him, too tired to swim ashore.
Bel, Gaelen, and Dev simply plunged in and swam to his side to hack the barbs off the sel’dor arrows that pierced him and cut the poisonous black metal shafts from his hide.
Freed from sel’dor, his wounds turned the waters around him red.
He closed his eyes, breathing hard as the faerilas seeped into his wounds. Its magic burned like cauterizing fire, healing and searing all at once. He bent his head to drink
the restorative waters as his blade brothers tended his wounds.
“You should let Teleos’s hearth witches tend you,” Bel said. “Some of these wounds are deep.”
?There are others in greater need. I will be fit to fly again in half a bell, and the Change will heal my wounds. What news
of Teleon??
Bel’s eyes went dark as midnight. “Lost. Teleos got the word while we were in the Mists. The rasa are dead. More than a thousand of them. Teleon is destroyed again. Lord Darramon is slain and his wife missing. The Eld hold
the Celierian side of the pass.”
?What of Ellysetta’s family? The shei’dalins??
“Gone,” Bel gave him the news bluntly. When it came to sorrow, warriors preferred their news served on a sharp blade. A clean
cut hurt just a little less. “Kiel and Kieran, too. Dead or captured or lost in the Mists.”
Rain flung his head back and roared in anguish. The Change swirled around him, burning with pain as the sel’dor barbs still embedded in his flesh twisted magic to agony. He embraced the pain, welcoming the acid burn. The roar became
a scream that tore his Fey throat raw.
Gods. Ellysetta could not lose her father and the twins. Not after everything else. “Has anyone told her?” He didn’t need to say
her name.
“Nei.” Gaelen’s eyes were dry but haunted. “None of us had the courage to break her heart.”
They’d been waiting for him to do that. “How long ago were they lost? Could they still be in the Mists?”
“If they entered the Mists, it wasn’t through the Garreval,” Bel said. “One of the few survivors of the battle says he saw them running up the mountain, trying to escape Eld and darrokken.”
Hope left him on a low, pained groan. Traversing the Faering Mists was a journey fraught with danger even in the best of times.
The Garreval was the preferred path because the pass was flat and wide, unlike the treacherous cliffs of Revan Oreth behind
the Veil. Those caught by the illusions of the Mists were unlikely to fall down a cliff and break their necks in the Garreval.
The Rhakis mountains, though, were precious little but cliffs.
“I will tell her. She deserves to know the fate of those she loves.” He swam to the shores of the lake and pulled himself
out. He dried off with a simple weave of Fire and Water, and then there was nothing left to do but spin the news to Ellysetta
across their bond threads.
She answered instantly, as if she’d been waiting for his call, but though Bel had served the news to him on a sharp knife,
Rain could not bring himself to tell her so bluntly. Instead, he told her about Orest, about the battle and the never-ending
supply of enemy troops.
?The Eld are here in force. More than I dreamed they would send. Orest and Teleon are just the beginning. Warn Marissya. Have
her get word to Eimar and Loris. They will listen when Tenn and the others will not. The Fey must prepare for war.?
?They know, Rain. Sybharukai sent Xisanna and Perahl to fetch Marissya and Dax. Venarra controls the shei’dalins, but Marissya
is going to Orest. The tairen are, too. Steli says the pride will reach Kiyera’s Veil within two bells. Wait for them.?
?I wish I could, kem’reisa, but the Eld will insist on making war.? He tried to infuse his words with dry amusement.
?Rain . . . ? The warmth of her presence dimmed slightly as worry cast a chill shadow. ?Have you news from Teleon??
He hesitated. There was no putting it off.
She had to know the truth. ?There is word, beloved .
. . but it is not good.? In a halting voice he told her.
All of it. Everything, because she would want nothing less.
Because despite the heart he could feel breaking in her chest, she was a strong, fierce, brave woman. A Tairen Soul.
?Lost?? Her voice trembled. ?Papa and the twins? Kieran and Kiel?? Her voice caught on a sob, and silence fell between them. A moment later, in a firmer voice, she said, ?Nei. Nei, if they were gone, I would know it. Half my heart would be dead, but it is not. They are not gone. They cannot
be. I will not believe it. Nei.? He could almost see the tilt of her chin, the spark of defiance lighting her eyes. ?Someone saw them running for the Mists. That’s where they must be. We just have to wait until they make it through, just
as you and I did.?
If they found their way out at all. If they did not fall from a cliff and break their necks. If they weren’t already captives
of the High Mage of Eld. He left the possibilities unspoken. What Fey would rob his mate of hope? ?May the gods will it so, shei’tani.?
Bel, Gaelen, and Dev were wolfing down a quick meal and poring over a map Dev had produced. The sounds of battle were growing
louder and the calls across the Warriors’ Path more numerous. Without him in the sky, the Eld were on the march again, and
gaining ground. ?I must go.?
?Light keep you safe, shei’tan, and please . . . please, Rain . . . wait for the tairen. Give them two more bells.?
He would not make a vow he could not keep, so instead he gave her the vow he would never break. ?Ver reisa ku’chae. Kem surah, shei’tani.?
By the time Rain and the others returned to the fight, Lower Orest was black with thousands of Eld troops. In just the brief
half bell he’d taken to rest and restore his strength, trebuchets had been positioned in a semicircle around the lower levels
of Maiden’s Gate, each protected by half a dozen bowcannon aimed at the sky. The Fey had thrown up five-fold shields to protect
the defenders, but sel’dor rained down in a ceaseless barrage, and their shields had begun to fail. The trebuchets launched massive hunks of rock and exploding mortars into each breach.