Crown of Crystal Flame (15 page)

«Dahl’reisen!»
he cried.
“Dahl’reisen
are among the attackers! Fey! Fall back. Bonn, tell your men to get out of there now!”

“Dahl’reisen?
” Tajik turned to Gaelen. “That’s three times now we’ve found your friends in league with the Eld.”

“Not every
dahl’reisen
joins the Brotherhood, nor does every one who joins stay,” Gaelen answered with a scowl. “Whoever these
dahl’reisen
are, I doubt they’re acting in the name of the Brotherhood.”

“You doubt?” Tajik pounced on the opening. “Which is another way of saying you hope it’s not them, but you aren’t really sure, isn’t it?”

“They are
dahl’reisen,
Tajik. The Dark Path’s call can be very strong.”

“Quiet!” Bel snapped. His eyes were hazy, his mind traveling on weaves of lavender light, probing the minds of the warriors engaged in the melee.

“Bel, something is wrong.” Ellysetta walked into the command tent. “No one from this new battle in the encampment is being brought to me. Surely there must be wounded? “

“There are wounded.” His eyes narrowed and began to glow as he sent his senses out, away from the protected healing enclave. “They do not come.”

“Why?”

“They don’t believe themselves badly injured. They are determined not to give up.” He blinked, and his eyes lost the soft haze of magic, becoming twin cobalt diamonds glittering beneath ebony brows. “All they’re thinking of is fighting, of dying, if necessary, to protect king and country.”

“Krekk,”
Gaelen said.

“What is it?” Ellysetta asked.

“It’s a rare mortal who, when faced with his own death, thinks only of king and country. Mortals may believe in the Bright Lord and his promises of a next life, but every one of them I’ve ever fought beside has clung to this life with his last dying breath.”

“Are they Mage-claimed?”

“I doubt it. I checked many of them personally,” Gaelen said. “So many would not fall so quickly. And even if it were possible, directing so many Mage-claimed all at once would raise such a stink of Azrahn that every Fey for forty miles would come running.”

“Could the
dahl’reisen
be controlling them with a Spirit weave?” Gil asked.

Bel shook his head. “I already checked. It’s not Spirit. I don’t think it’s a weave at all—or if it is, it’s nothing I can detect.”

Gaelen turned slowly. Thin, questing tendrils of his magic spun out in every direction, and with each quarter turn, the frown on his face deepened. “It must be a spell of some kind. But I can’t sense what it is or where it’s coming from or how it’s controlling them.”

“Whatever it is,” Tajik interrupted, “it’s not affecting only Bonn’s men anymore. I’m getting reports from all over the encampment. Our own men are turning on each other. Fey included.”

“Scorching Hells!” Rain and the Fey fired Fey’cha without cease to cover their retreat, but the attackers only seemed to be multiplying—and determined to kill them.

“Watch out, Feyreisen!” Powerful air weaves swirled around Rain, batting down a red Fey’cha that had been flying towards him. At the same time, five
lu’tan
loosed their own red daggers. They screamed and fell to their knees in agony as the
dahl’reisen
attacker clutched his pierced chest and collapsed in death.

“Feyreisen,
I know that
dahl’reisen.”
One of the Fey commanders pointed to the body. “He’s Paris vel Mirothel, an Earth master who came with us from Dharsa. He’s one of our own.”

“Rasa?
” Rain asked.

“Nei.
Not even close. He was only a boy during the Mage Wars.”

Rain’s mouth went grim. If Paris hadn’t been
rasa,
slaughtering a thousand mortals should not have tipped him into Shadow… and yet clearly something had. That could only mean one thing. Paris had either slain one of the
dahl’reisen
or one of his own blade brothers—and then come after the rest of his blade brothers.

“Whatever this is,” the Fey commander said, “it’s too dangerous to risk its spreading further. Fey are killing Fey. You should have the tairen fire the field.”

“Fire the field?” Bonn echoed. “You can’t be serious. These are our own men—including some of my oldest and most loyal friends.”

“As your Avis just proved, those friends would kill you if they could,” Rain reminded him.

“Isn’t there some other way to neutralize them until we can figure out a way to undo whatever has taken over their minds? “

A Tairen Soul’s first instinct when threatened was to attack, to kill to protect the pride. Even now, he could feel his tairen Eras hissing, growling, unsheathing his claws in preparation for attack. Tairen did not trouble themselves with morality. To them, there was only survival or death. So when a threat arose, they eliminated it—swiftly and conclusively. There was no word in tairen speech for remorse, nor any word for mercy. There was only strength and weakness, predator and prey, survival or death.

But as Rain looked out over the turbulent—and growing—knot of attackers who wore the faces of his allies, he thought of Cann, standing on the ramparts of Kreppes, Elfbow drawn and aimed at Rain, trying to kill him.

A tairen’s first instinct might be to kill, but Rain was more than tairen—and these people were friends. Some of them were Fey, blade brothers. No matter how fiercely his tairen half urged him to scorch and shred them, his Fey half rebelled at the thought.

The five bond-threads he shared with Ellysetta warmed with golden brightness, infusing him with warmth. Her voice, as calming as a tranquil summer sea, washed over him in soft waves.

«Las, shei’tan. Ke sha eva ku.»
I am with you.

He closed his eyes, absorbing her Light, drawing her gentleness into his soul and knitting her proffered strength into the ragged threads of his self-control. When he was calm once more, he told her what was happening.

«Gaelen believes it’s an ensorcelment that’s somehow being passed like a contagion,»
she told him.
« Bring some of the affected to me. If we can figure out how the spell is controlling them, we may be able to counteract it.»

Rain hesitated. They didn’t know what this evil was or how it spread, and he was loath to let a single possessed combatant within a tairen-length of Ellysetta.

His hesitation must have given him away, but Ellysetta wouldn’t permit his over protectiveness.
«Rain, we don’t have a choice. If I can’t figure out what this is and how to stop it, the Eld will just use it against us again and again.»

«One,»
he capitulated with ill grace.
«One only. Under heavy guard the entire time and slain at the first hint of danger to you. And don’t bother trying to negotiate. It’s that or nothing. I won’t risk you, shei’tani.»

«Very well,»
came her grudging agreement.
«Send me your one… but hurry. We’re getting more reports from elsewhere in the camp. The contagion is spreading.»

“My Lord Feyreisen?” Bonn prodded. “What are your orders?”

Rain opened his eyes. “We will try to save as many as we can,” he told the Celierian. On the new Warrior’s Path, he gave the command,
«Fey, do whatever you must to immobilize them, but don’t kill them unless you have no other choice. And shield yourselves. Until we know what this spell is and how it is passed, do everything you can to minimize your risk of being affected.»

A moment later, the weaves spun out like ropes of lightning, vivid green and lavender and silvery white, shining bright in the darkness of the night.

Weaving enemies unconscious was much easier when those enemies did not include Fey warriors bombarding you with red Fey’cha and countering your weaves as quickly as you could spin them… especially when you were trying
not
to kill the ones thwarting you.

In the end, Rain sent three quintets after each ensorcelled Fey, one to stop his weaves, one to stop his weapons, and the last to render him unconscious. Once all the ensorcelled Fey were contained, the
lu’tan
made quick work of immobilizing the mortals.

“Careful, Fey!” he called, as warriors rushed towards the mass of limp bodies. “Don’t touch them. Whatever this is, we don’t know how it’s spread. Use weaves only to bind and move them.”

Turning back to Bonn, he said, “Can you point out one of the ensorcelled men who you know is not Mage-Marked? The Feyreisa is going to try to counter the spell that has addled their minds, but I won’t take the chance of sending a Mage-claimed to her.”

As the Fey lined the still-living magic-bound soldiers on the ground, Bonn searched through the rows of unconscious warriors until he came across a face he recognized. “This one. He’s one of Avis’s men. He was one of the first vel Serranis checked.”

“Kabei.
Take him to the Feyreisa.” Rain gestured to the Fey, who hoisted the man onto an Earth-weave stretcher and carted him off the field towards the shining dome of magic where Ellysetta waited.

“What shall we do with the wounded, Feyreisen?” the Fey commander asked.

“Have the Fey do what they can to keep them alive, but don’t send any more of them to the Feyreisa until they’re free of this ensorcelment.”

Rain regarded the carnage grimly. Hundreds lay dead and dying. Hundreds more were useless to the allies until a cure could be found. The Eld could not have devised a more effective attack. Using the allies’ own men against each other had dealt twice the damage of any conventional attack—and all without the loss of a single Eld life.

He bent over one of the fallen to bind his limbs and seal the deep slice in his side. The puddle of blood that had gathered beneath his fallen form shone like black oil in the waning moonlight. A faint, exotic scent made Rain’s nostrils twitch.

“Do you smell that?” he asked the Fey closest to him.

“What?”

“That smell… a sweet spice… very faint.” Rain lowered his head closer to the unconscious Celierian.

On the ramparts of Kreppes, an armored man lowered a small brass spyglass and turned to hurry down the stone steps to the yard below. Though he wore the colors of the King’s Army, the pallid skin that had never seen daylight belonged to no Celierian. The man crossed the yard and ducked into the common room of the large barracks, where a blue-robed Primage and a trio of red-robed Sulimages stood waiting.

The soldier bowed to the Mages. “The Fey have contained the infected, master. They have rendered them unconscious and are binding them now.”

The Primage accepted the news without expression and waited for the soldier to bow again and exit before he turned to the Sulimages. “You know what to do.”

The dome of magic surrounding Ellysetta and the allies’ command center parted to admit the Fey carrying the unconscious body of the ensorcelled Celierian. They deposited the man on one of the empty tables set up for the wounded. Unwilling to leave Ellysetta’s safety to anyone else, her primary quintet closed around her protectively, and their magic swirled around them and her in visible auras.

When she started to reach for the bound man, Gaelen blocked her. “You mustn’t touch him. We don’t know what this is or how it’s passed,” he said.

She stifled a sigh. “Give me a little credit, Gaelen. I wasn’t planning to touch him, but I can’t examine him from halfway across the room.”

Unchastened, Gaelen reluctantly stepped aside.

Ellysetta moved closer and began to examine the unconscious man carefully. He was soaked in blood, both his own from numerous deep cuts as well as splatters that clearly had come from other donors. Gaelen checked him for Mage Marks, just to be on the safe side, before Ellysetta spun protective weaves around her hands and began checking the man’s body for clues as to what had taken over his mind.

“We’ve already ruled out Azrahn and Spirit,” she said as she worked. “So how else could a spell of this sort be invoked? “

“Potions or totems are the usual vehicles,” Rijonn said.

“If it’s a potion, it was most likely added to their food or drink,” Tajik suggested.

“But different areas of the camp were affected at the same time,” Bel said. “Which means someone would have had to slip the potion into all the cookpots—and if they did that, why would only some of us be affected? “

“If the spell is tied to a totem, the totems could have been hidden in various parts of the camp,” Gil said. “The spell could affect anyone within a specific distance of the totem.”

“If that were the case, Rain and the others would have been affected when they got near it,” Ellysetta said.

“We know the spell affected different areas of the camp, which means there were multiple points of origin, but not all occurred at the same time. Whatever it is affects Fey and Celierian alike, and it spreads.”

“It could be darts,” Gil suggested. “Delivered by finger-bow, wristbow, or even blowpipes. They’re tiny enough to be easily missed, and could deliver a potion or poison directly into the blood.”

“Or insect stings,” Rijonn added in his rumbling voice. “I remember Lord Shan telling us once about a Feraz witch who used an army of buzzflies to attack her enemies.”

“I haven’t heard anyone talking about darts or swarms of insects,” Gaelen said, “so I think we can safely rule those out.”

“It burns,” Bel exclaimed. Everyone turned to look at him. “When I was scanning their thoughts, looking for what was controlling them, I heard a couple of Celierians thinking about something burning them. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. I thought the Fire masters had spun a weave on them.”

“Burns how? Their eyes, their throats—ah!” Ellysetta gasped as a sudden chill, like the poisonous bite of an ice spider, raced up her spine. Her legs went weak, and she had to grab the edges of the table to keep from falling.

“What is it?” Gaelen asked with quiet urgency. “Is it the poison?”

Before Ellysetta could gather her wits enough to respond, a cry rang out across the Warrior’s Path.

«Portals opening! Fey! Bote’cha!»

Rain leapt to his feet, away from the bodies of the unconscious, as gaping black maws opened up across the encampment. Barrages of
sel’dor
and Mage Fire poured out of the openings, clearing a path before brightly colored
fezaros
leapt out of the Well on the backs of their tawny
zaretas,
swinging not swords but strange pierced pots on long chains.