Crown of Crystal Flame (36 page)

Azurel nudged the body aside with one foot and scanned the trees around them. Another barrage of Fey’cha ricocheted off the Mages’ hastily erected shields, followed by a concussive blast as a twelve-fold weave from the first group of
dahl’reisen
slammed into the forward shields.

“These twelve are not alone. Have your archers clear our flanks.” Azurel directed the attention of the Mages to the dense forest on either side of them. He could sense nothing, but
dahl’reisen
weren’t fools enough to send a mere twelve blades against five Mharog and so many Mages.

Dur snapped the command on a whip of Azrahn.
«Archers, fire. Rain sel’dor on our flanks!»

The air turned black with flying arrows. Azurel watched closely, looking for the telltale energy flares of
sel’dor
hitting Fey shields. He would be very surprised if the
dahl’reisen’s
admittedly impressive invisibility weaves could completely hide shields strong enough to block
sel’dor.

«One in the large fireoak there, another near that tumble of rocks. Two more in the trees to our left. Earth, on my command. Shake them out of the trees. Now!»

Green Earth arced outward from two of the Mharog, with Azurel directing rippling flows of it both to his left and his right. The ground bucked and heaved. The tumbled pile of boulders shuddered, massive rocks shifting and falling, and the
dahl’reisen
taking cover there gave a sharp cry, quickly silenced. Nearby, the large oak that sheltered the second
dahl’reisen
shook wildly from the force of the powerful quake. With a mighty groan, the tree toppled, and as the
dahl’reisen
in the branches tumbled to the ground, two of the Mharog broke his shields with a six-fold weave, and Dur followed with a blast of Mage Fire that sliced the warrior in half.

The line of trees to the right shivered but stood firm beneath the attack of the two Mharog as a masterful counteractive weave of Earth dispelled the rippling force. The Eld bowmen released another hail of barbed arrows while Mages peppered the woods with globes of blue-white Mage Fire. Beneath the Mharogs’ feet, the earth gave a sudden, heaving lurch that knocked them off-balance.

A shout rose from the back of the infantry formation, and Azurel turned to see the Eld soldiers falling upon themselves, teeth bared in feral snarls as they sliced and hacked at one another. A heavy black-and-lavender weave lay over the Eld like a shroud. He tracked the weave back to its source—more
dahl’reisen
hidden by their admittedly impressive invisibility weaves—and flung a blistering combination of Fire, Air, and Azrahn at them, but that blast exploded harmlessly against another six-fold shield.

From the front, another brutal, twelve-fold hammer cracked the forward shields. An intense Spirit and Azrahn weave shot through the breech, plowing into two Mages, who suddenly turned and began to throw Mage Fire at their own brothers—incinerating half a dozen Mages and enough of Azurel’s shields to crisp his hair and singe the side of his face before his own red Fey’cha dispatched them.

Azurel touched his scorched flesh. His eyes narrowed.

“Time for you Mages to earn your jewels, Dur,” Azurel snarled to the Mage. “Take out the Spirit masters before all your soldiers slaughter themselves and your weak-minded Mages kill the rest of us. And send something with a kick, not your easily diverted little fireballs. The ones spinning Spirit are directing most of their energy into the illusion weaves, but the others are shielding them. The Mharog will take care of the blades in front.”

Dur nodded grimly. “Mages!” Blue-white Mage Fire gathered in Mage hands, a glowing ball that grew larger and brighter, illuminating the concentration and strain on the Mage’s face as he fed power into it. The massive fireballs shot out of the Mages’ hands straight at the Spirit master. The Mharog spun a four-fold weave to box in the Spirit master so he couldn’t leap clear of the Mage Fire’s path.

Trapped, the
dahl’reisen
dropped his invisibility weave. He faced, unflinching, the approaching fire and screamed defiance into its consuming maw,
“Miora felah ti’Feyreisa!
“

The Mage Fire plowed into him and flared with a thunderous boom. When it dissipated, the
dahl’reisen
Spirit master was gone. Without his energy to sustain it, his weave dissolved, and the Eld soldiers under its control came to their senses, shaking themselves and looking about in shock.

Dur took out the other Spirit masters in the same manner, and after that the air filled with flying Fey’cha, Mage Fire, arrows, and magic. The remaining
dahl’reisen
fell after a brief but intense battle.

The last to die was a lavender-eyed
dahl’reisen.
He lay mortally wounded, the lower half of his body in ruins. As Azurel approached, the fallen man gave a bloody, triumphant smile and plunged a red Fey’cha into his own chest.

“Miora felah ti’Feyreisa,”
he whispered as his body spasmed. A moment later, his eyes went blank, and his head lolled to one side. The smile remained on his face even in death.

Azurel knelt beside the corpse. Azrahn came to his call, whirling in his palm as he tried to summon the dead man’s soul.

But for the first time in his five hundred years of being Mharog, something blocked him.

Frowning, he fed more energy into his Azrahn weave, trying to force the
dahl’reisen’s
soul to answer his call.

Still, it did not come.

Instead, a great blinding light rushed up at him. Furious, defiant love, so hot it made the ice of his soul crack and shudder. In sudden, breathless terror, he ripped apart his Azrahn weave and threw himself back away from the
dahl’reisen
‘s corpse.

“What’s the matter?” Dur asked.

Azurel bit back a sharp curse and rose to his feet. “His soul is bound. It cannot be summoned.”

“What do you mean ‘bound’? Bound to what?”

“To her, you idiot. His soul is bound to her. Bloodsworn.”

Azurel stalked to the next closest
dahl’reisen
corpse. Steeling himself to confront the white light, he tried to summon the second
dahl’reisen’s
soul. It, too, defied his call. As did the next, and the next, and the next. “They’re all bloodsworn. Every scorching one of them. That’s why you could not Mark them when they wove Azrahn.” Azurel’s fists clenched, and his teeth ground together. “Never would I have believed Rainier vel’En Daris would allow
dahl’reisen
to bloodswear themselves to his truemate.”

Dur eyed him skeptically. “The Mages bind the souls of all their followers, but those souls can still be summoned after death.”

“Bloodswearing is different. It is more like
shei’tanitsa
than your soul-binding. They have willingly tied their souls to hers, dedicated themselves to serve only her in life and in death. It is a compact that cannot be broken or perverted.” Through a combination of Magecraft, Feraz black magic, and Merellian demon sorcery, the High Mage had managed to tie a tairen’s soul to Shannisorran v’En Celay’s but never had he succeeded in calling v’En Celay’s soul to his service. Nor had he ever have been able to claim a bloodsworn soul. “Step aside and let me try.”

Azurel’s eyes narrowed, but he stepped back and allowed the prideful Primage to approach the
dahl’reisen’s
corpse. He watched as Dur summoned Azrahn and called to the dead man’s soul, watched him feed more power into his summons, and almost smiled as the Mage swore and threw himself away from the body.

“What was that?” Dur gasped.

“That was Rain Tairen Soul’s mate—or rather, the power of her bloodsworn bond. It defends the souls in her keeping.” “It felt like… love.”

Azurel’s lips curled. “Of course. Love is the greatest power of a
shei’dalin.
With it, she could break you completely. Every evil you have ever worked, she could force you to relive through the eyes of those who loved your victims. You would shred your own flesh from your bones in self-loathing.”

“I never believed the stories were true.”

“Now you know differently.” Few of the Mages who’d earned their blue robes after the Wars had ever seen a
shei’dalin
at work. Most had only ever known those broken creatures captured by the Mages, bound with
sel’dor,
and tortured to insanity. And so they thought
shei’dalins
were weak and insignificant. They forgot that the truemate bond did not form between uneven halves. The truemate of a powerful Fey Lord would have her own power, vastly different but nonetheless equal in strength to her mate’s.

Azurel called Fire to incinerate the
dahl’reisen
dead. “There were only thirty-six
dahl’reisen.
This ambush was not meant to stop us, only slow us down.” He held out a hand. “Give me more
chemar.”

This time, Dur didn’t hesitate before handing over another ten stones. Azurel dumped them on the ground. A chime later, another flock of deadwood birds winged skyward,
chemar
clutched in their talons.

Tears blinded Ellysetta, but she ran without slowing.

The ones who’d gone to hold back the Mharog were dead. She’d felt each one of them as they perished, Varian the last. They’d died not in fear, but in joy.

She’d felt that, too.

Rain ran close at her side. His soul sang to hers with love and pride, and he wrapped her in supporting weaves, feeding her his strength as they ran.

The bloodsworn
dahl’reisen
had slain scores of Eld soldiers, more than a dozen of the Mages, and even one Mharog. Still, she wept. They had been strangers to her until today, yet each had willingly died to prevent her from falling into Mage hands. She wept because somewhere—either in this world or the next—there were mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers who had loved them. She wept because those men had not died as strangers but as her friends. In giving her blessing and accepting their oaths in return, she had taken a little bit of each warrior into herself, and it lived there still. It always would.

The
dahl’reisen
around her sang a warrior’s lament on weaves of Spirit.

She answered with her own, an elegy Celierian women sang when their men returned from war not in glory but in caskets. She wept as she sang. It was a song meant for weeping.

«Enough, shei’tani,»
Rain said, when the last note died away.
«You will have us all on our knees if you do not stop.»

Surprised by Rain’s remark, she wiped her eyes and turned to find tears streaming down his own face. The
dahl’reisen
ringed closest around them were white-faced, their eyes dark with the torment of tears they could not shed.

«You wove your sorrow as you sang.»

«Sieks’ta.»

«Nei, do not apologize. It is good to mourn them. They died with honor, as Fey should die.»

«I would mourn them even if they did not.»

«Aiyah, but it is better that they are deserving of your tears. And it will ease their families’ sorrow to know they died with honor. If we survive this war and are allowed to return to the Fading Lands, I will accompany you to visit the families of the ones who died today.»

She nodded.
«Do you think Varian and the others bought us enough time?»

Rain met her gaze, his eyes bleak. He shook his head.

Celieria ~ Dahl’reisen Village
8
^th
day of Seledos

Outside the bedroom window of the
dahl’reisen
house perched high in the treetops, the skies over the Verlaine had lightened with the first blush of the coming dawn.

Sheyl smoothed a damp cloth over Carina’s forehead, brushing back tangles of sweat-darkened hair and weaving what relief she could to ease the woman’s pain. She’d tried for bells yesterday to keep the child from coming, but the birth would not be stopped. Sheyl wasn’t sure she was a powerful enough healer to keep either mother or child alive—the child was coming months too soon, and the labor was not an easy one. Throughout the night, she’d spun healing weaves on the child in the womb, hoping to mature its lungs and heart enough that it could breathe on its own after birth. Sheyl knew her own death would come today, but she hoped to spare Carina and her child.

“Arin…” Carina whimpered, calling once more for the dead father of her child. “I want Arin…”

“I know, dearling. I know. Shh. Save your strength for yourself and your baby. That’s what he would want.” She moved down to the foot of the bed to check the baby’s progress.

“The child is coming. I can see the baby’s head. Push now, Carina.”

The woman’s teeth clenched, a strangled cry rising in her throat as she strained to push the child from her womb. A few chimes later, Carina’s son greeted the world with his first, weak squall. Sheyl handed the child into his mother’s arms then swiftly went to work delivering the afterbirth and spinning a healing weave to seal off ruptured blood vessels that threatened to hemorrhage Carina’s life away.

The door to the chamber opened. One of the warriors who’d stayed behind to guard Sheyl and Carina poked his head in. “The Eld are here. We’ve got to go.”

“She still too weak. She’ll die if we move her.”

“She’ll die if we don’t.” He pushed into the room and bent to scoop Carina up from the blood-soaked sheets. “I’ll carry her. You run. Now.”

The barked command left Sheyl little desire to argue. She ran.

Outside the bedroom, away from the privacy weave the
dahl’reisen
had spun to silence Carina’s labor cries, the cacophony of war was deafening. Mage Fire had shattered the village shields and now bombarded the village without pause. Felled trees toppled like slain giants, crashing down upon one another. Fire burned all around, its orange flames devouring the autumn bracken on the forest floor, licking hungrily at the trunks of trees, climbing the vine ladders and hanging stairs with ferocious speed.

This was her vision—the death and destruction she’d seen. The world seemed to slow as she turned her head to the left, looking for the death strike she knew was coming. She saw the Mage archers break through the thicket wall, arrows nocked, bowstrings taut. She saw the gloved fingers release, and the black, barbed arrows fly like deadly, soaring birds. One of the
dahl’reisen
shouted and spun a fiery wind to intercept the arrows’ flight, but he was too late.