Crown of Crystal Flame (42 page)

Farel and Ellysetta’s primary quintet were waiting to greet them at the curve of the last hill. The moment the Fey rounded the last hill and stepped foot on the field where the
dahl’reisen
had gathered, they froze in their tracks.

“I don’t believe it,” Eimar whispered.

“I had no idea there could be so many,” Ellysetta breathed.

“Nor did I,” Rain said in a hoarse voice. He swallowed to moisten his dry throat and gazed across the vale with stunned eyes. Stretched out before them, more than a mile in every direction, were row after row of tents. An entire army—a very, very
large
army—was camped at the edge of the Verlaine Forest.

Not just a few hundred. Not even the few thousand Rain had suspected there were.

Tens of thousands.

“So tell me, Farel,” he rasped, “exactly how many blades do you count in the Brotherhood of Shadows?”

Beside him, Farel smiled. It was the first genuine smile Rain had ever seen on the
dahl’reisen’s
face. The warrior cast a proud gaze over his assembled brothers.
“Dahl’reisen?
Thirty thousand. Sons of
dahl’reisen?
Another forty.”

Rain almost choked on his own tongue. Gods save him. Seventy thousand.

Seventy thousand.

Twice the number of all the Fey still living.

Rain’s stunned gaze traveled across the seemingly endless sea of warriors, the outcast sons of his homeland. And he saw the pride on their scarred faces, the renewed light of hope shining from eyes that had been dark with shadow for centuries.

“They all wish to serve the Fading Lands,” Bel said. “All thirty thousand
dahl’reisen
have asked to bloodswear themselves to Ellysetta, and fight on her behalf to regain some part of their honor as you allowed Farel and his men to do. Their sons have offered their bonds as well.”

“I will accept
dahl’reisen
bonds,” Ellysetta said, “but not the bond of any Fey who still has a chance to find his truemate.”

“Some might argue that sons of
dahl’reisen
are not Fey, Ellysetta.” “They’re Fey enough.”

Bel smiled. “As I was saying, even the young ones are good fighters. The
dahl’reisen
have taught them well.”

Eimar couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Bel? You truly approve of this? You trust these
dahl’reisen?”

Bel shrugged. “Two nights ago, I would have called Rain a fool for allowing
dahl’reisen
to bloodswear to the Feyreisa. But today… well, today, he and the Feyreisa are alive because of them… and I”—he lifted his hands in a dazed gesture—“I learned that I have a nephew. My brother Ben, didn’t die in the Wars as I thought. He joined the Brotherhood of Shadows and mated a Celierian woman. They had a son before he died fighting the Mages.”

Bel turned his head towards the
dahl’reisen
horde, where a young, unscarred warrior stood talking with his brothers. As if sensing Bel’s gaze, the warrior glanced up. Apart from a brief, darting glance from Rain to Bel and back, no expression crossed the young warrior’s face, but he put a hand over his chest and bowed slightly in a Fey gesture of welcome and acknowledgment.

“His name is Beren.” A faint, melancholy smile curved the corner of Bel’s mouth. “He has Ben’s eyes.”

“Bel…
kem’jeto.”
Rain was at a loss for words. He remembered Benevar vel Jelani, Bel’s older brother, and how Bel had idolized him. The pain of his loss had honed Bel to a razor-sharp blade, and he’d become a deadly terror on the battlefields throughout the remaining months of the Mage Wars. “My sorrows for your brother, but
mioralas
for his son.” Rain clapped a hand on Bel’s shoulder. “With joy, I celebrate this new warrior of the Jelani line.”

“Beylah vo.”
A brief silence fell between them, then Bel admitted in a low voice, “You know, Rain, if I’d known Ben was still alive… I think perhaps I would have traded my own honor to be with him… to spend the years with him.”

“Perhaps that’s why he never let you know.”

Bel, the most honorable Fey Rain knew, nodded sadly. “I wish he had though, Rain.” He met his best friend’s gaze. “I really wish he had.”

Rain looked out across the seemingly endless sea of warriors, the outcast sons of his homeland. Many of them banished for weaving Azrahn—the same crime for which he and Ellysetta had been banished, a crime he was beginning to think wasn’t half so evil as he’d been raised to believe. And instead of looking upon them with revulsion and dread—instead of seeing their scars and reviling them for their dishonor and the threat of Shadow that hovered over their bleak lives—he saw Fey. Warriors, brothers, friends. Fey whom someone like Bel had once known and loved.

And for the first time, he accepted the possibility that here, in the most unlikely place and from the most unlikely quarter, he had just found the allies he’d been looking for.

Celieria ~ Dahl’reisen Encampment

Ellysetta thought bloodswearing thirty thousand souls would have taken much longer than it did, but Farel and her quintet had already decided how to handle it. They divided the
dahl’reisen
into blocks of five hundred and each block swore their oaths simultaneously. Ellysetta’s existing
lu’tan
stood amongst the groups to ensure that every
dahl’reisen
made a proper and complete oath.

What to do with the massive pile of thirty thousand bloodsworn Fey’cha became a subject of heated debate, but in the end, both Fey and
dahl’reisen lu’tan
agreed to weave a new suit of armor for Ellysetta, this time using only a small button of metal from each bloodsworn blade. The remaining, unused portions of the Fey’chas were buried in the Verlaine, under a thirty-six fold protective weave, to be retrieved and taken to a place of honor and safekeeping after the threat of war had passed.

To say that Ellysetta and her quintet were happy with the decision to bloodswear the
dahl’reisen
was stretching the truth, but as Tajik said with a sigh as they prepared to leave, “War is a strange thing,
kem’jitanessa.
I’ve seen bitter enemies fighting side by side, because they hate the thing they’re fighting more than they hate each other. Sometimes, you have to take your allies where you find them and hope for the best.”

She laid a hand on his arm. She knew how difficult it was for him to overcome a lifetime of revulsion for the warriors who walked the Shadowed Path, but he had not been among them. He had not spent time with them as she had, nor seen the love and vulnerability in their eyes when they were safe in the circle of their families, nor felt their shame at having fallen from the honorable path of the Fey warrior.

“They saved my life,
kem’melajeto,”
she told him gently. “They saved Rain’s life too.” She looked at the assembly of
dahl’reisen,
the scarred faces filled with purpose and determination rather than shame, and at the larger gathering of their sons and grandsons, fine, fierce young warriors who’d never learned that they were suppose to revile the scarred, soul-shadowed Fey instead of love and honor them. “I think they may just save us all.”

Watching her, Tajik shook his head, a peculiar half-smile on his face.

“What is it?” she asked.

“You just looked very Elvish just then. And very like your mother.” He glanced back at the
dahl’reisen
camp. “I hope you’re right, Ellysetta. I hope they do save us. But I’ll settle for just knowing this wasn’t the biggest mistake we’ve ever made.”

Celieria ~ Allied Encampment by the Verlaine

With fifteen bells of hard travel lying between the Fey army and Orest, Rain and his generals had agreed to spend one final night camped beside the Verlaine and set out before sunrise.

As he and Ellysetta retired to their magic-warded tent for the night, Rain shed his steel and spun his war armor to the stand in the corner. His bones warmed as the Shadar horn added its power to his weave.

The tiny boost to the magic made Rain go still.

He closed his eyes, fingers curling in loose fists. Earlier this evening, he’d spun that same weave without the Shadar horn supplementing his control. His condition was deterio-rating—and much more rapidly than he’d hoped. How long did he have? Days? Bells? Did he even want to know when there was nothing he could do about it?

He blew out the candle lamp. His elongated pupils reacted to the loss of light instantly, lengthening and widening, adapting like a cat’s to the tent’s dark interior. That much of him, at least, still worked as it should.

Naked, his skin glowing silver in the dark, he glided on silent feet towards the sleeping pallet. Ellysetta pulled back the coverlet and when he crawled in beside her and lay down, she scooted closer, snuggling against him and putting a hand over his heart. The instant her skin touched his, the tension in his body began to fade. Her love and concern washed over him, enveloping him in a haven of peace and comfort. With just her touch, she calmed the crying madness in his soul and filled the cold, empty places inside him with light and warmth.

His arms closed around her, holding her tight. “I was afraid I’d lost you,” he confessed in a low voice. “When I saw you slay that Mharog.” Even the memory of it made him shudder.

She pressed her face against his throat. “I thought I’d lost you, too. It didn’t matter what happened to me then.” Her voice became nearly inaudible as she added, “Or so I thought.”

He brushed her soft, curling hair back off her forehead, stroking the smooth satiny skin. “What do you mean?”

Her teeth worried her lower lip in a moment of indecision. “I never really knew what true Darkness was until I stabbed that Mharog. As vile and depraved and malevolent as the Mage is, comparing him to the Mharog is like comparing a deep Shadow to a world utterly without the smallest glimmer of light. I’ve never felt anything so unrelentingly, consumingly evil.”

She pulled back to look up at him, and her eyes were bleak with remembered horror. “I felt his soul, Rain—or rather the void that exists where his soul once did. It’s a bottomless, Light-eating abyss. His only pleasure comes extinguishing the Light of others in the most brutal ways possible, because Light, in all its forms, has become anathema to him.”

Skin to skin, he could feel her distress as if it were his own. She was genuinely terrified. “Put it from your mind,
shei’tani.”

“I can’t, Rain. That’s the problem.” Her brows drew together. “For the first time, I truly understand what will happen if I fall to Darkness. I won’t become the Mage. I’ll become Mharog… and I’ll consume every last spark of Light in this world. That’s what Lord Galad was trying to tell us.”

“Nei, shei’tani,
you won’t. I won’t let that happen.” He took her shoulders in a firm grip and stared into her eyes as if his own, fervent insistence had the power to convince her. “I promise you, so long as I live, I will not let you fall.”

Her arms twined about his neck, and her slender body surged against his, seeking shelter. He knew she didn’t believe him—if the gods willed she should fall, she would—but for both their sakes, she was as willing to pretend that hope was enough. That together, they could hold the Darkness at bay, no matter how powerful its call.

When the bright sweetness of her essence began flowing into him, he caught her hand in his.
“Nei,”
he said, though he savored the stirring pleasure of her selfless gift. “Keep your strength for yourself,
shei’tani.”

“But you are weary.” She pressed kisses against his throat, and where her lips touched, more bright golden warmth flooded his skin.

“I will be fine.”

“Aiyah,
you will.” She agreed in a throaty voice. Her lips curved against his neck. “I will see to it.” Another heady rush of sweetness shot through his veins.

He should have refused her. She’d already given him more strength than she had to spare. But if tomorrow’s dawn was to be their last together, he wanted sweet memories to take with him beyond the Veil.

His hands stroked the soft coils of her fiery hair then down her satiny skin to cup one small, perfect breast.
“Fellana,
I am yours. Do with me what you will.” And he surrendered to her lips, her hands, her love, letting her pour herself into him as he poured himself into her. The richness of his tairen song rose in his throat and he sang the shining, wordless notes on weaves of Spirit, wrapping them in wild beauty as she wrapped them both in the vast, deep power of her love.

Later, much later, when she slept in boneless exhaustion by his side, he lay awake, staring at the ceiling of their tent as it rippled in the breeze off the mountains.

He’d never been a Fey who spent much time in prayer. Before the Wars, he’d never truly appreciated the many blessings of his life, and afterwards, he’d held a bitter grudge against the gods and their whims. But now, on the eve of a battle that, despite his encouraging words, promised almost certain death for them all, Rain closed his eyes and, before he let sleep claim him, sent up a simple, but fervent prayer.

Please, gods, grant me time enough to finish this. Time enough to make her safe.

Eld ~ Boura Dor

“Master Maur!” Primage Kron, commander of Boura Dor, rushed to greet the purple-robed High Mage of Eld. “Welcome to Boura Dor, Most High. It is an honor beyond measure to have you join us.”

Vadim threw back his hood and cast a cold silver gaze around the central command room deep in the heart of the subterranean fortress.

“Yes, well, some tasks are too important to leave to underlings. Vargus,” he turned to the elderly Primage who had accompanied him from Boura Fell. “Set up the tracker.”

“Most High.” Primage Vargus bowed and moved towards the central table to weave the spell that would allow the Mages to track and activate the
chemar.

“Kron, has your team reached Crystal Lake?”

“A few bells ago, Most High. There were scouts in Dunelan, but the
dahl’reisen
helped us eliminate them. Quietly, of course, though I doubt it will be long before their brothers raise the alarm.”