King of Sword and Sky (52 page)

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 cliffand 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.

Protected by airborne missiles and magic shields, an entire company of Mages lobbed sphere after enormous sphere of Mage Fire at the defenders. Hundreds vaporized in instants. Half of the first three levels simply disappeared, as if scooped out of the mountainside by the hand of a god.

«Fey!»
Rain cried on the Warriors' Path. «
Twenty-five-fold weaves! Hold off that Mage Fire.»

He took to the air, twisting and turning as the air around him went black with
sel'dor
arrows and great barbed spears catapulted from the bowcannon. The arrows were a nuisance.

The massive spears, however, were tairen killers.

«Rain! Bank left! Left!»
Bel's scream tore through his mind. Instinctive trust in his oldest friend sent him rolling left, and the bowcannon spear that would have ripped through his chest tore a gaping hole in one wing instead. He barely made it back to Maiden's Gate before his ripped wing gave out. He fell from the sky, crashing right into the center of an Eld attack force.

Fortunately, tairen didn't need wings to breathe flame. The entire level went up in a boiling sea of fire. Screaming Eld leaped from the walls and fell, burning, to their deaths.

Rain Changed and finished off those left with his swords, fighting with delirious fury and roaring in triumph as blood filled the air like hot scarlet rain. His teeth flashed in a savage grin. Bloodlust rose high. Tairen Souls killed with fire at a distance. But this close, intimate dance of death brought the savage predator in him screaming to the surface.

Dead allies were scattered like leaves across the ruins of Orest. Too many of them wore Fey faces. Friends' faces. This battle must stop. Here and now. No matter what.

He Changed again—his wings re-forming whole and untorn—and leapt back into the sky. This time when he dove for the Mages and
sel'dor
filled the air, he didn't try to dodge the missiles. This time he simply Changed into formless mist and let the spears and arrows fly through him.

The burn still hurt. Some sentient part of Rain scattered to the rainbowed gray cloud of the Change felt the acid brush of
sel
'dor
against each tiny droplet of his being, but the foul black metal passed through him without doing harm.

When it was gone, he Changed back into the midnight black tairen with death in his eyes, and dove towards the knot of Elden Mages, spewing a furious jet of flame that incinerated everything in its path. The Mages' shields lasted a scant three chimes before crumpling like seared kindling, leaving the hot, fierce licks of tairen fire to consume the vulnerable red- and blue-robed sorcerers beneath. He screamed in triumph, put on a burst of speed, and raced into the sky.

Rain used the same tactic to destroy three of the trebuchets and their flanking bowcannon, but when he swooped down upon the fourth, the Eld had adapted to his attack. Their
sel'dor
barrage came in a continuous stream rather than a single, dense burst, so that he emerged from the Change into a stream of arrows and took a dozen of the barbed missiles in one side. His flame burned the rest, but as he dove to set fire to the trebuchet, portals opened on every side, revealing bowcannon targeted directly at him.

His body twisted, and four
sel'dor
spears raked deep cuts in his side as he swept by.
Sel'dor
nets fired from another two portals, and the weighted wire mesh wrapped tight around him and dropped him to the ground. His attempt to Change to escape the net ended in writhing agony as dozens more
sel'dor
arrows thunked into his side.

Eld surrounded him, brandishing black metal pikes and barbed blades.

A deafening roar drowned out the cacophony of battle. Bright, boiling clouds of flame burst from the Faering Mists, heralding the arrival of eight great tairen. With screams of fury, they dove towards the battlefield of Lower Orest. Steli led the way, white and fierce, and on her back she carried a slender, shining figure clad in studded scarlet leathers.

Flaming cyclones of Air and Fire shot from Ellysetta's fingertips, driving back the Eld circled around her mate.

Rain closed his eyes as tairen flame poured over him in searing jets. The heat and fire enveloped him, burning the
sel'dor
net and barbed ends of the arrows from his body without raising so much as a blister on his tairen hide. Moments later, he sprang into the sky. «
You should not be here, Ellysetta,»
he chided as he circled close to Steli's fierce form.