«Let me check,»Elfeya replied, and with a skill unaltered by centuries of confinement, she sent her empathic senses whispering out ahead of them. The tendrils of awareness curved around the blind corners and streamed, undetected, down the hallways, pale threads of invisible golden light, imperceptible to all but the strongest of senses. Swiftly, she verified the location and number of the guards.
«Four to the left, two to the right,»she confirmed.
«I’ll have to take them all,»he replied grimly.«If even one of them raises the alarm, we won’t make it.»Their path lay to the left, up a flight of stairs to a heavily guarded, private level of the fortress restricted solely to Vadim Maur and a select few Primages.
A flash of awareness made Elfeya’s senses tingle.«Someone’s coming!»The tingle darkened to discomfort, then outright pain. Her breath seized in her throat as she recognized the feeling.«Dahl’reisen, Shan.»
«Quickly,»he said,«into this room.»He turned abruptly towards a door on the left and reached for thesel’dorhandle. The door was locked but unwarded. Ignoring the sear of pain, Shan sent his senses into the keyhole, examined the locking mechanism, then pulled a black Fey’cha from his harness. A quick weave of Earth drew the Fey’cha’s tip into a shape that would release the lock.
He thrust the key-blade into the lock and turned just as Elfeya cried,«He’s here.»
The door opened. He thrust Elfeya inside and glanced over his shoulder as he followed her inside. The corridor was empty. But Elfeya’s pain was real. Shan had long ago learned to trust his mate’s senses, even above his own. Thedahl’reisenwas there. Fey eyes could not see him, but he was there.
As the door swung closed, Shan’s own warrior senses flared to abrupt life, as certain and infallible as Elfeya’s empathy. He dodged left just as a red Fey’cha whirred past the spot his head had been.
The door shut. Another blade thunked deep into thesel’dor-braced wood. The first red blade, which had sunk into the far wall of the room, disappeared as thedahl’reisenspoke his return word.
«Scorch it. We must have given ourselves away.»Shan shed his Primage robes and reached for his black Fey’cha as he scanned the room for a position of safety and attack. There was a table in the center of the room. Elfeya was already racing to take shelter behind it before he spun the weave to flip it on its side.
Shan went high, racing up the wall and launching across the ceiling on an Air-powered leap, just as the door opened. His senses merged with Elfeya’s, and he used her empathy to pinpoint the enemy he could not see. Black Fey’cha flew with unerring aim and blurring speed. Thedahl’reisengrunted. Shan dropped to the floor, as magic spun from Elfeya’s fingertips, wrapping the still-invisibledahl’reisentight in bands of power.
Shan thrust his hands into the center of Elfeya’s net, and sparks flew where hissel’dorbands touched thedahl’reisen’sinvisibility weave. He caught a brief glimpse of a pale scarred face and a mouth opening—no doubt to shout the alarm. His fingers closed around thedahl’reisen’sthroat, squeezing tight and cutting off his cry.
“I can’t kill you,dahl’reisen rultshart,”he hissed, “but I can make you wish I would.”
“That would be a shame,kem’chatok,since he came to save you.”
Shan’s spine went straight as a board, and he spun around, Fey’cha flying from their sheaths into his hands. “Vel Serranis,” he snarled, and he let fly his blades.
CHAPTERTWENTY
Come fly with me my love
Spread your wings with glee
Into the skies above
Together we will fly free
Come fly with me my mate
The one that fills my heart
Together passion we will sate
And never will we part
Flight of the Tairen Lovers,
a poem by Rainier v’En Daris, Tairen Soul
Shan’s most infamouschadindodged and deflected with a skill that would do anychatokproud, but he still didn’t manage to escape all of Shan’s blades. One Fey’cha caught him in the shoulder and one in the back of the right thigh as he spun away, before a cry on the vel Celay family path brought Shan up short.
«Parei, Shan! Parei! Gaelen and Farel are friends.»
“Tajik?” Elfeya rose from behind the overturned table, whispering her brother’s name.
«Elfeya, get down!»Fearing a trap, Shan thrust thedahl’reisenaway from him and backed towards his mate, blades drawn. He’d never betrayed the vel Celay family path—at least not that he remembered—and he didn’t think Elfeya had either. But after a thousand years of torture, anything was possible.
