Silence fell over the chamber. Rain and the rest of Ellysetta's quintet shared troubled glances. They all clearly wanted to refute Gaelen's claims, yet they could not dismiss the former dahl'reisen's suspicions.

"Rain was the last Fey to call a Song in the Dance," Gaelen reminded them. "We all know how that turned out. If not for the tairen, he would not have survived."

An uncomfortable silence fell over the room. None of them could dismiss the possibility that Ellysetta's Song would end in devastation. They'd all seen the same dire prognostications in the Eye of Truth.

Bel cleared his throat. "Hawksheart can obfuscate and manipulate all he wants; it will get him nowhere. We may be the seven he chose to hear his revelations, but that doesn't mean we must act on them alone. Once we send word back to the Fading Lands, not even Tenn and his supporters will be able to stop the Fey from demanding that all the force of the Fading Lands be focused on rescuing Lord Shan and his mate.”

"Flames scorch that pointy-eared rultshart," Rain muttered beneath his breath. He scowled at them. "That's exactly what he was counting on, because he knows it's exactly what I cannot allow to happen." Rain shoved a hand through his hair. "I need the Fey protecting Celieria and the Fading Lands—not rushing into Eld to confront the Mages on their own ground. We're too few—and whatever the Mages used in Teleon and Orest to open those portals, they surely have seeded all over Eld. The moment we march deep enough into their forests, they'll simply surround and slaughter us." He spun on a heel and began to pace.

"Nei. We cannot let the truth about Lord Shan and his mate go any farther than the seven of us." His jaw hardened and his eyes went flinty. "And at this point, we must accept there is nothing we can do to save them. For now, they stay where they are."

Eld ~ Boura Fell

"Hurry," Melliandra ordered. She gave the chains that bound the beautiful black-haired woman a hard yank, and the prisoner stumbled forward. "Move your feet!" she snapped without pity. "Lives depend on it—including yours!"

The woman looked at her with dazed eyes, then quickly looked down and shuffled faster. Sel'dor chains rattled and clanked on the hard ground beneath the tattered remains of the woman's once beautiful red gown.

Stupid, stupid woman. She'd been too stubborn for her own good, spitting defiance at the High Mage and the umagi who served him when a wiser woman would have groveled and begged for mercy to appease them.

Well, they'd taught her. After the beatings and the rapings had reduced her fiery defiance to shattered, dull-eyed submission, they'd bound her in manacles and chains. None of the thin, decorative sel'dor bands and earrings for this Fey shei'dalin. No. The thick, heavy sel’dor shackles usually reserved for dahl'reisen prisoners were clamped tight around her ankles and wrists, and the long, sharp spikes fitted along the interior of the shackles drove into the flesh and bone just above her joints to cause her constant, agonizing pain. A matching collar filled with a hundred tiny sel'dor needles bound her throat so tightly that every swallow and gasping breath forced the needles deeper into her flesh.

Melliandra hardened her heart. There was nothing to be done. She wasn't about to let those pain-dulled brown eyes draw her in like the tender blue eyes of the now dead Shia. Melliandra's life was already too dangerous and complicated, and if the High Mage ever discovered how she was working against him, death would be the least of her worries.

"Here." She threw a filthy woolen blanket at the woman. "Cover yourself. If the guards get one look at you, it won't go well for either of us."

The woman struggled with the cumbersome scrap of smelly fabric until Melliandra growled a foul curse and yanked the blanket out of the woman's hands and tugged it roughly into place herself. She draped the folds to cover the woman's silky hair, tattered gown, and the telltale shining skin of her manacled arms.

"There," she muttered when she was finished. Melliandra peered at her critically until she was satisfied not one flash of shining Fey skin was revealed. "That will have to do. Now come!" She grabbed a fistful of blanket and hidden chain and gave a yank. There's not much time."

She dragged the unresisting woman down the corridor. The stench of smoke and scorched flesh hung heavy in the air; and in the refuse pit two levels down, the darrokken were howling. Savage screams echoed the creatures' howls, and the sound sent chills up Melliandra's spine.

Death was no stranger to Boura Fell, but today its visit had been like none she'd ever witnessed, coming not at the hands of Mage Fire or Azrahn, nor at the untender hands of torture masters tike Goram and his hammer, but instead from tongues of flame, dancing on the lethal music of a magic beast's roar.

Wild, vengeful, hotter than the Seventh Hell, the clouds of boiling flame had blasted up the stairwells and the refuse shaft that ran from the uppermost level of Boura Fell to its darkest depths. The fire seared and scorched everything in its path, catching more than one unwitting Mage and umagi in its fiery jaws.

For one sweet, glorious moment of savage joy, she'd thought the Fey Lord had won his victory. She'd actually dared to hope Lord Death had slain the High Mage of Eld.

But abruptly, the Fire had died and the shattered screams of a man gone mad had replaced the roar of the beast and its flames.

And the six icy Marks on Melliandra's chest still remained.

Vadim Maur, father of the Dark bloodline from which she'd sprung, still lived. '