A badly burned soldier leapt from the smoking ruins of his fallen comrades to make a grab for Ellysetta. She slashed out with Rain’s red Fey’cha. Blood spurted from the Eld’s torn throat, splashing her face. She swiped her forearm across her face and kept running. Beside her, Rain swung his seyani sword in his left hand and fired off red Fey’cha with his right.

Behind them, the Mages had reached the crest of the ridge. A line of archers fired a volley of arrows. As they soared overhead, Rain saw the white stones attached to each arrow shaft already brightening. Rain grabbed Ellysetta’s hand and put on a desperate burst of speed.

Too late. Portals opened like gaping black maws directly in their path. Mages and soldiers poured out, blocking their path to the river and cutting off their only hope of escape.

Cornered, breathing hard, Rain and Ellysetta turned to face the enemy.

The Fading Lands ~ Chatok

With the Baristanis healed and safely in tow, Kieran and Kiel led their small group back up and over the shattered mountain to the edge of the Faering Mists. Though Teleon and the Garreval now appeared completely clear of Eld, Kieran and Kiel took no chances. They traveled just inside the edge of the Mists, following that edge to the Garreval and emerging only to make a swift dash into the Mists-filled pass between the Rhakis and Silvermist mountains.

They stayed close to the shei’dalins, walking in the thinner mist that surrounded them, and the passage into the Fading Lands went without incident. Kieran held Lillis on his back, while Lorelle rode on Kiel, and the girls’ kittens, who had also survived their ordeal, purred happily inside their slings on Kiel’s and Kieran’s chests.

Within a few bells of entering the Garreval, they emerged onto Taloth’Liera, the great, walled field that marked the boundary of the Fading Lands. Fey in full war armor stood atop the wall and flanked the mighty steel gates that led into the Fading Lands.

The warriors guarding the gate greeted Kieran and Kiel as if they’d risen from the dead. Which, Kieran supposed, they had.

“We’re glad to see you alive and well,” the captain of the gate said. “I’m sure Marissya-falla will make the Feyreisa’s family feel right at home.” «Despite the current circumstances,» he added on the Warrior’s Path.

Kieran and Kiel shared a frown. «What circumstances?» Kieran asked.

The Forests of Eld

Eld surrounded Rain and Ellysetta on all sides, swords drawn, sel’dor-barbed arrows nocked and aimed. And with them were Mages. Scores of them. Yellow-robed Apprentices, red-robed Sulimages, and twelve of the most dangerous, the blue-robed Primages. The Mages’ eyes were alight with the unholy red-sparked black of Azrahn, and each of them held globes of lethal Mage Fire at his fingertips.

“Throw down your weapons, Tairen Soul,” one of the red-robed Sulimages ordered, “or we’ll see how your mate likes dancing with our Fire.”

Rain sneered at the threat. “Harm her, and the High Mage will roast your liver and eat it from your still-living body,” he reminded them in fluent, perfectly accented Elden.

To the right, the blue-robed Primage gave a wry laugh. “Very true,” he acknowledged pleasantly in equally fluent Feyan. “You have good ears, and a wonderful command of our language.” Suddenly, his eyes blazed black with red lights, and the line of Eld bowmen behind Ellysetta let their arrows fly.

Ellysetta cried out as half a dozen arrows plowed into her back and shoulders, dropping her to the ground and pinning her there. The red Fey’cha in her hands fell harmlessly to the dirt.

Rain let out a choked snarl of fury and reached for his own red Fey’cha, but five more bowmen shifted their stance to aim directly at Ellysetta.

“But,” the Primage continued calmly, “there are degrees of harm. The High Mage wants her brought to him alive, but he won’t mind a scratch or two. And I’m quite expert at knowing how to bring a Fey close to death while keeping her chained to life.” All pretense of warmth left his voice, and his smile vanished. Eyes swirling with Azrahn threatened from the hard, cold face of an unforgiving enemy. “Now drop your weapons, or we’ll see how much more sel’dor your mate can take before she cannot stop herself from screaming.”

Rain dropped the sword and Fey’cha still clutched in his hands, then began to unbuckle the straps that held the rest of his weapons.

“Nei, Rain,” Ellysetta moaned. Her face turned towards him, her eyes glazed with pain. “Don’t do it!”

He shook his head. «I have no choice, shei’tani, and they know it.» He’d given her the red Fey’cha to take her own life if he was slain. But fighting would only ensure her torture and his certain death, and she would be left alone and vulnerable in the hands of the Eld.

When all his steel lay in the dirt at his feet, two soldiers and one of the apprentice Mages approached. Two of them gathered his weapons and retreated out of reach.

“Hold out your hands,” the yellow-robed Mage ordered.

Rain extended his arms.

The Mage nodded, and the soldier beside him pulled a pair of black metal manacles from a large leather pouch. Long, sharp black spikes drove inward from the metal cuff, and thick, heavy metal chains joined the manacles together.

“We run across dahl’reisen from time to time,” the apprentice Mage informed him, “so we’ve learned to always be prepared.”

Rain shuddered and dropped to one knee as the Eld clapped the manacles over his wrists and drove the sel’dor spikes into his bones. The dark metal, poisonous to the Fey, burned where it touched him, making his skin redden and blister, short-circuiting his body’s natural self-healing abilities. His wrists, like every burning wound where sel’dor shrapnel still lodged, would remain unhealed and in constant pain until the foul metal was removed.