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

8th 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.