“And if there really is an Army of Darkness?” Gaelen asked.
Rain fixed a grim look upon him.“Dai tabor, Fey, bas desrali lor bas tirei.”Then, Fey, we die where we stand.
Celieria ~ Orest
The Great Sun was just beginning to set, turning the Faering Mists into a sea of flame, as the armies of Light crested the last hill overlooking Orest and the Heras River valley. Steli, Xisanna, and Perahl, who had been running with the allies rather than flying above them to avoid giving away their position, drew to a halt behind Rain and Ellysetta and crouched there, growling low in their chests at the sight laid out before them. As Rain and his generals had seen earlier today in Bel’s weaves, the city was overrun. Instead of the bright colors of Celieria and House Teleon, the purple flags and pennants of Eld now snapped in the breeze from the battered ramparts of Lower and Upper Orest. Instead of the colored tabards and shining silver armor of Fey and Celierian defenders, black armored Eld swarmed the city like a colony of ants. Smoke billowed up from the charred remnants of buildings throughout the city. Fey and Celierian corpses, impaled on pikes, surrounded the walls of Lower Orest, serving both as a macabre victory boast and a grim warning to would-be patriots who might think to recapture the city for Celieria.
But it was on the gatherings of great, gleaming black dragons that Rain’s gaze became fixed. Like flocks of colossal vultures, they perched on the half-eaten bodies of fallen tairen, toothy snouts ripped the remaining chunks of flesh and hide from bloody bones with ravening savagery. Wings flapped and hisses, roars, and blasts of flame erupted as the dragons fought over their terrible feast.
Ellysetta reached for Rain’s hand. Her fingers curled around his, squeezing tight. “Who?”
“Barsul and Storus. They were the youngest of Cahlah’s kits before this last hatching.”
She gave a fanning waving and murmured a prayer for the tairens’ souls. “We will avenge them,shei’tan.”
“May the gods will it should be so. I have marked their locations. After this battle, the tairen will take what is left of their remains back to Fey’Bahren for their Fire Song, so their songs will not be entirely lost to the pride.”
Rain dragged his gaze from the tairen remains and scanned the lines of the allied troops. Thedahl’reisenhad circled around to the east, leaving the Fey and Celierians to advance from the south. As they had for the battle of Kreppes, hundreds of Earth masters had spent all afternoon constructing trebuchets, siege towers, and bowcannon of their own to aid in the reconquest of Orest.
As Farel had pointed out earlier, normal siege tactics of blockading the city and waiting for starvation and thirst and the Mists to take their toll would not work. The best hope of victory was to drive the enemy troops out of the city walls and onto the field. While Mages might be able to protect themselves against Fey attacks, on an open field, the rest of their army would find even ten-to-one odds against an army of Fey swordsmasters to be a statistical disadvantage.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t going to be easy to convince the Eld they should surrender their fortified mountain stronghold and confront the Fey on an open field. The only way Rain knew how to do it was to make Orest more hazard than haven—starting with taking out those bowcannon batteries and the dragons so the tairen could have free reign of the sky.
“He’s here.”
“Who?” Rain frowned at Ellysetta. A strange stillness had settled over her, and her shadowed gaze was fixed on a point north of Orest.
“The Mage.” She clasped her arms across her chest. “I can feel him. He’s come to witness his victory.”
The Shadar horn in Rain’s veins went hot as Rage rose, swift and violent. Instinct moved him closer to her side, blocking her body protectively with his as he followed her gaze north. His eyes narrowed and he adjusted their focus to bring the distant shores of Eld into closer view. A purple canopy had been erected behind the lines of bowcannon, and dozens of blue-robed Primages were milling about beneath it, but if the High Mage was among them, Rain could not see him.
“It will not be his victory, but ours,” he assured Ellysetta.
With visible effort, she turned away from Eld. “May the gods will it should be so.”
His heart ached at how pale she looked beneath her forced calm. She was so afraid, but so determined not to show it, so determined to be brave for his sake. He lifted a hand, brushing back the wayward curls from her face in what he hoped would not be the last of their small intimacies. “I love you, Ellysetta Baristani.”
Her mouth trembled, and her beautiful eyes glimmered with a sudden sheen of tears. She blinked them back quickly. “And I love you, Rain.” The tears she would not shed made her voice sound low and throaty so that it purred across his skin like velvet. “I always have. I always will.”
“Rain.” Bel gave an apologetic look as he interrupted. “Forgive me, but the troops are in position.”
Rain nodded. He threaded his fingers through Ellysetta’s and lifted her hands for a kiss. “I have to go now,shei’tani.”
“I know.” They had said their good-byes before, during their last few chimes of rest before the final push to the battlefield, but even so, she caught his face in her hands and pulled him down for a last kiss farewell.«Come back safe to me, shei’tan.»
He caught her tight against him and poured his heart, his soul, his life’s essence into that kiss. Trembling, aching, he whispered,“Ver reisa ku’chae. Kem surah, shei’tani.”He held out an arm to Bel and the rest of Ellysetta’s quintet. “Guard her well,kem’jetos.”The quintet and three hundred of herlu’tanwould stay behind to guard Ellysetta and the othershei’dalinsin the healing tents.
Then, regretfully but purposefully, the Fey who was Rain, theshei’tanof Ellysetta, folded back into the privacy of his soul. And it was Rainier vel’En Daris, Feyreisen, King of the Fading Lands, Defender of the Fey, who stepped forward to stand before the assembled army of Light and called them one last time to war.
Aloud and on weaves of powerful Spirit which he spun and flung out upon the whole assembled armies, he called, “My friends… today, we are not Fey, Celierian, ordahl’reisen,but brothers, united and strong, each of us honorable and worthy warriors of Light. We are the steel no enemy can shatter. We are the magic no Dark power can defeat. We are the rock upon which evil breaks like waves. We are warriors of honor, champions of Light.” He pulled one of hisseyaniswords from its scabbard and raised the blade high, letting sunlight gleam on the long blade of golden steel.
“To victory my brothers!” he cried. “And to life!”
“To victory and life!” came their answering cry.
Rain raised his golden war horn and blew the call to battle. Across the fields of Orest, other horns, Fey, Celierian, anddahl’reisenalike, blew answering blasts, and the army of Light began to march.
Remembering the speed and distance of the bowcannon that had shot him down over Eld, Rain ordered Steli, Xisanna, and Perahl to stay behind near the healing tents.
