Although Brind Palwyn had steadfastly insisted he knew nothing about a redheaded child, Sian had woven Spirit between them and retrieved the man's memories. Those memories had contained exactly the information Sian and Torel had been sent to find, but not at all what they'd expected.

As a child of ten, Brind had seen his parents tortured and killed by an Elden Mage looking for an escaped slave and a flame-haired child. A child the Elden Mage had claimed was the stolen daughter of his master, the High Mage Vadim Maur.

Even now, Torel wanted to cry out that it wasn't true, that it couldn't be true. He'd seen the Feyreisa with his own eyes, seen her brightness. But Brind's memories were so vivid, he couldn't doubt they were real.

The Paldwyns had only offered a night's shelter to the slave and the child, but afterwards, unbeknownst to his parents, Brind had agreed to hide the baby in the woods while the slave drew off her pursuers. That task had kept Brind from dying with his parents. The slave girl, he later discovered, had set her own body aflame and thrown herself off the cliffs of Norban's quarry to avoid being tortured and questioned by the Mage. Brind had retrieved what little remained of her burned and broken body, and had buried it alongside his parents. As for the baby, Brind had followed a Celierian couple traveling through the woods and put the baby beneath a tree where they would find her. He'd stayed hidden until he was sure they would take the child, and then he'd spent the rest of his life trying to forget everything that had happened.

He'd been relatively successful, too, until recently. While searching Brind's memories, Sian discovered another disturbing image of local villagers bringing treasured Fey-gifts passed down through generations into the town square to be destroyed in a huge bonfire, while a white-haired priest in a voluminous, hooded blue cloak stood by and collected shards of Tairen's Eye crystal from the villagers Brind had inquired about the bonfire later, but none of the villagers remembered anything about the Fey-gifts they'd thrown into the fire, or the Tairen's Eye shards they'd given to the blue-cloaked priest. It was as if those memories had been wiped clean. But Brind, who'd watched from the woods rather than participating in the bonfire, remembered—and he'd suffered nightmares about his parents' deaths ever since.

Sian had erased all memory of Mages, death and Ellysetta from Brind's mind, then gave the poor man what he'd wanted his whole life: memories of a happy childhood, unmarred by tragedy, memories of parents who died happily in their sleep after a satisfying life. It wasn't legal. It broke the Fey-Celierian treaty and several Fey laws, but Sian did it anyway and dared Torel to say a word.

Torel wouldn't, of course. He'd still been young when the Mage Wars started. He hadn't even completed his first level of the Dance of Knives. But he, too, had seen his parents slaughtered by the Eld, just as Sian and Brind had, and there were days Torel wished someone would weave Spirit to remove his memories of that horror.

"Come on, then," Torel said, clapping his friend on the back. "With a little effort, we might just make Celieria City by moonset tomorrow.”

"Do you think it's true?" Sian didn't elaborate, but he didn't have to.

Torel didn't want to believe it, but Fey didn't lie, so instead, he forced a chiding look on his face and said, "She made Bel's heart weep again. Do you think she could have done that if even the smallest part of her were tainted by Elden evil?”

"Of course. You're right" Sian nodded and stared at his booted toes.

"Silly pacheeta" Torel grabbed his friend around the throat and scrubbed his knuckles against Sian's skull through his wavy brown hair. "Come on, then. All doubts are forgotten. Let's get back to our brothers.”

They were still smiling when the sel'dor shrapnel ripped through them.

Sian and Torel staggered, fell, then leapt back to their feet with red Fey'cha steel bared, automatically assuming the slightly crouched battle stance of a Fey warrior. Only then did they detect the reek of Azrahn and see the red-black glow of it around them. Only then did they see the shadowed mob of attackers lying in wait for them.

There were fifty or more, Torel estimated. Too many to beat. He and Sian were already surrounded, so there was nowhere to run. It was a fight to the death, then, his and Sian's.

"Where did they come from, Torel?" Hands moving at incredible speed, Sian fired red Fey'cha into the surrounding mob with deadly accuracy.

"Scorched if I know. Guard my back." Torel cursed as a barbed sel'dor arrow pierced his thigh, then gritted his teeth and sent four of his own red Fey'cha whirling into the shadows that surrounded him. Muffled shrieks, quickly silenced as tairen venom did its job, made him grin with savage victory. He would take as many with him as he could before he died.

Though he had yet to see the face of a single attacker, Torel was certain they were Eld. The sickly sweet reek of Azrahn was too strong for them to be anything else. He and Sian should have sensed them miles away—if only through their Fey instinct for danger—yet neither of them had detected the Eld even when standing virtually on top of them.

The sel'dor piercing their flesh prevented Torel and Sian from summoning magic to their defense. The black metal of Eld burned Fey flesh like acid and twisted even the weakest weave into agony. They could not weave Spirit to cry out a warning to the Fey warriors in Celieria.

But they could fight. With naked steel, deadly skill, and grim determination, Torel and Sian fought like the Fey warriors they were.