Steli growled and paced after them. Her blue eyes whirled. «Fey-kin gather on Su Reisu. Growl pride-warnings, Rainier-Eras. They are not welcome with kits in the lair.»

"Bel must have arrived. I will tell him and Gaelen to leave."

The sky was still dark over the Fading Lands, and to Rain and Ellysetta's surprise, at least twenty warriors stood in the firelight on Su Reisu where they had left Gaelen. But Gaelen and another warrior, who could only be Bel, were kneeling on the plateau in the center of a ring of warriors, imprisoned by dense, radiant, multifold weaves.

"Stay here," Rain said. "I will go down."

Ellysetta clutched his hand in a tight grip. "Nei, they didn't come here for you." Both Bel and Gaelen were imprisoned. That could mean only one thing. "They came for me. They must have realized what I was intending to do."

"We will go together, shei'tani." When she would have objected, Rain pressed a silencing finger to her lips. "We made this choice together. We'll face the consequences together."

She stepped back so he could summon the Change, and together they flew down to Su Reisu to face the gathered Fey warriors.

He recognized a few of the Fey: A handful of them were those who'd made a great point of walking out that first day at the Academy, before Gaelen rang the gong. Unbending warriors, clinging to the shining, spotless ideal of perfect honor, as if only that could ever be worthy of their regard.

He couldn't blame them for their views. The idea of perfect honor was a beautiful dream, one Rain himself had fixed in his heart for years. And it was a worthy goal—as long as the pursuit of it did not become a slavish devotion empty of all compassion and willingness to accept change.

"What is your business here, Fey?" he asked. Bel and Gaelen were both speaking and gesturing at him, but neither voice nor Spirit could penetrate the twenty-five-fold weaves wrapped so tightly around them. His magic pooled within him, ready for summoning at the first hint of aggression. "By what authority do you imprison the First General of the Fading Lands and a chatok of the Academy?"

One of the Fey stepped forward. His eyes were bright and hard, his face an expressionless mask. "By the authority of the Shei'dalin and the Massan," he said.

Rain sensed the explosion of power only a split second before another thirty Fey shed their invisibility weaves. Two dense, twenty-five-fold weaves sprang up around him and Ellysetta.

Eld ~ Boura Fell

Bound in sel'dor manacles and collar and pinned to the wall by thick sel'dor chains, Elfeya hid her savage joy as she beheld the rotting wreck of the High Mage. His face was the decaying skull of a corpse. Livid flesh drooped in waxy folds beneath his sunken eyes and around his nose and mouth. His eyes were silver coins floating in pools of scarlet blood, and his once-thick mane of white hair had gone thin and sparse, sickly tufts clinging to the thin, mottled, parchment-like skin that covered his skull.

"I will not heal you," she told him with cold defiance. "If that is why you summoned me, you have wasted what little time in this life you have left."

He laughed, and it turned into a cough that sprayed bloody sputum like a red mist. "Such brave words. You grow much bolder than you should." He waved, and the wall beside her became transparent. Inside a well-lit chamber, Shan was strapped by dozens of barbed sel'dor bands to a table made of the same foul, black metal. His eyes were blindfolded, his mouth gagged.

The sight of him made her quail as fear and desperate love seized her in equal measures. She wanted to plead for his release, but she and Shan had already agreed they would not. She tossed her head and forced herself to speak as though her heart were not being ripped from her chest. "What else can you do to us that you have not already done? He will not survive more torture. If you kill him, you only set me free. Either way, I am through prolonging your foul life. No matter what you do, I will not heal you."

"Oh, I won't kill him. Not for a long, long time." He bent and spoke into a tube connected to the adjoining room. "Disembowel him."

Elfeya closed her eyes as one of the guards in Shan's room lifted a razor-sharp hook and approached Shan's vulnerable belly. She felt the instant the hook sank into his skin as if it sank into her own, felt the burn of his intestines tearing as the guard drew them out of his body. She didn't speak to Shan. She didn't dare, terrified that if she heard his voice, she would not be strong, as they'd agreed she must be. She felt every moment of his suffering and bit her lip until her mouth filled with blood.

"That's enough, I think. Time for healing." Maur spoke into the tube again.

Despite herself, Elfeya opened her eyes and turned her head in time to see a woman with vacant eyes being escorted into Shan's room. When the guard led her to Shan's body and put her hands over his torn belly, a green glow lit the air around the woman's hands. Shan's body arched and his throat strained as a muffled scream rattled out of him.

"She isn't nearly as skilled as you, I'm afraid, and her mind is gone, as you can see, but the poor thing can't stop healing. You've been getting…recalcitrant… so I had her brought from one of my other palaces. Alas, she causes as much pain as the wound she's healing, but she's quite adept at keeping her patients alive. Indefinitely."

Elfeya began to weep. Thrice more, the guards ripped Shan's belly open. Thrice more the poor, mindless husk of a shei'dalin healed him with her instinctive weaves. All the while, both Elfeya and Shan felt every burning moment, and they both knew it could—and would—go on and on and on. The pain grew so terrible, Shan lost consciousness.