Then he was gone. She remained standing on the platform, watching until the last Fey disappeared down the avenue of sentinel trees in Rain's wake.

When the street was empty and the city had fallen silent, she turned to Marissya and the shei'dalins standing nearby. "Well, kem'fallas, let's get back to work."

Rain and the Fey ran flat-out across the Plains of Corunn and the Eastern Desert, but once past the abandoned city of Sohta, the rocky rise and fall of the mountainous terrain slowed their land-eating run to a jog. At dawn of the fourth day, they reached the Faering Mists and the pass of Revan Oreth where the volcanic Feyls merged with the Rhakis mountains.

Though the Mists offered no resistance to Fey departing the Fading Lands, Revan Oreth was little more than a treacherous goat path winding through a canyon of razor-sharp rocks and crumbling cliffs. The Fey took each footstep with special care.

The pass opened into the turbulent heart of Kiyera's Veil, a gauntlet of mighty, three-hundred-foot waterfalls plunging down from opposing sides of the mountains. Magic teemed in the billowing mist and furious deluge, a powerful magic that flowed from Crystal Lake, the great mountain-born Source cradled at the intersection of the Rhakis, the Feyls, and the Mandolay ranges. Those waters, which then went on to feed the Heras River, burned Mage flesh the way sel'dor burned the Fey.

Rain and the Fey plunged into the cascades without hesitation. Though the pounding weight drenched them and nearly drove them to their knees, they slogged through the hammering gauntlet of the Veil.

Their reward, when they finally emerged on the other side, was to step into the closest thing the mortal world had to paradise.

Billowing clouds of spray rose up from the clash of falls, and grottoes of fern and moss clung to the steep mountainside, thriving in the cool moisture. Rivulets of condensed mist became small ribbons of water that spilled constantly down the craggy, moss-and-fern-carpeted cliffsides in a delicate web of secondary falls. Rainbows shimmered in every beam of light.

There, at the foot of the majestic torrent of waterfalls and nestled in the wide upper valley carved out of the mountains, Orest, the City of Mists, rose from the rainbows like a sprawling cathedral of black pearl, alabaster, and jade. Girded by steep, impenetrable battlements, the city's beautiful heart flourished in the sweet breath of the Veil, blooming with mossy tree-and-fern-filled gardens amidst graceful colonnaded walks and domed, glistening pearl gray buildings and bridges that spanned the headwaters of the Heras.

Armored guards clad in the gold, white, and crimson tabards of House Teleos stood at attention on every corner, bridge, and tower wall, guarding Orest like the treasure she was. Before Rain had even stepped outside the misty cloud of spray from the Veil, he was surrounded by a hundred soldiers—all jabbing the business end of their spears his way.

As score after score of drenched Fey warriors emerged from the deluge of the Veil, Orest's guardsmen found themselves backing up, but before the Fey outnumbered them, a shout brought reinforcements running. Overhead, rising from the rocks and crevices of the sheer cliffs, archers took careful aim at the Fey newcomers.

Rain, unoffended by the Celierians' fierce defense, held out his hands in the universally recognized gesture of peace. "Inform Lord Teleos the Tairen Soul has arrived."

"You should have sent word," Teleos chided as he ushered Rain, Tajik, Rijonn, and Gil into a warm, dry conservatory whose glassed walls and ceilings provided an unimpeded view of the Veil and the verdant splendor of Upper Orest. "If I'd known you were coming through the Veil, my men would have given you a much more gracious greeting."

"The greeting was as gracious as a stranger should expect," Rain said mildly. "My compliments to your men for their swift action. Considering that none have passed through the Veil for a thousand years, I half expected your men to have let down their guard."

"They are well trained for mortals," Tajik agreed. "They bring you pride."

"Beylah vo." Dev nodded his thanks. "The Veil may be quiet, but the greatest threat to the mortal world lives but an arrow's flight across the Heras. And we guard the only bridge from here to the Pereline Ocean." He walked towards the east-facing side of the room, where they could look out over the city.

At the base of Orest's great wall, the mountains dropped away again, and the Heras River plunged down a second broad waterfall called Maiden's Gate before winding eastward across the continent, a wide, dark ribbon that traveled well over a thousand miles to the sea. In all that distance, not a single stone nor strand of ferry rope bridged the wide, dark waters that separated Eld and Celieria. All that had existed were destroyed during the Mage Wars and never rebuilt.

"I think you'll find the bridges of Orest less valued by the Eld than once they were," Rain remarked. "The Well of Souls is all the bridge they now need."

He ran a critical eye over the admittedly imposing defenses of the middle and lower city. Middle Orest—called Maiden's Gate after the falls it flanked—stair-stepped down the steep cliffs of the river's southern bank in a series of well-fortified terraces. The bottom terrace of Maiden's Gate opened to the wide, walled city of Lower Orest. Like the fortress battlements of the upper city, thick walls of pearlescent gray stone ringed the lower city and loomed four tairen lengths high over the wide, dark waters of the mighty Heras. Steel-shuttered portals for bowcannon and archers dotted the solid walls, and the steel-enforced frames of heavy catapults crouched on broad platforms every tairen length along the crenellated battlements. Behind the massive outer wall, a secondary wall loomed higher, its ramparts studded with slender towers where war wizards conjured their spells during battle.