Even before he sensed Ellysetta's instinctive, horrified recoil, Rain's hands moved in a blur. Four red Fey'cha thunked hilt-deep in the dirt a finger span from the boots of the three Massan and the Shei'dalin Venarra. The other Fey's answering blades froze in midair—caught by the swift, masterful weaves of icy-eyed Gaelen and Bel.

"Touch her and you die," Rain stated coldly. "Consider warning given."

"She has bewitched you!" Tenn accused.

"She has led me back from death to life and opened my eyes to truth. She has saved us all and risked her soul to do it. If that is bewitchment, then the gods themselves are the sorcerers who taught her the spells."

"Rainier Feyreisen." Venarra seized his wrist and spoke, her voice laden with the resonant, irrefutable command of a shei'dalin's compulsion weave. "Did your mate Ellysetta weave the forbidden magic?"

He could not resist, so he spat the truth defiantly. "Aiyah, she did and so did I! And I would do it again."

Silence fell over the plateau. The eyes of the Massan and the Shei'dalin went hazy as private Spirit weaves passed between them. A moment later, Tenn turned back to Rain and Ellysetta, his face a mask of unflinching stone.

"Ellysetta Baristani and Rainier vel'En Daris, you are guilty of weaving the forbidden magic, Azrahn. For your crime, the Massan declares that you both shall be stripped of your steel and banished for all eternity from the Fading Lands."

Rain laughed without humor. "Banish us? You overstep yourself, Tenn. The Tairen Soul does not answer to the Massan, and the Massan's will does not trump the Tairen Soul's."

"You are mistaken, Rain. The Fey vested the Massan with the power to override your will a thousand years ago to ensure that you, in your madness, did not lead us astray, as you are doing now."

The words struck Rain like a mortal blow. He turned in stunned disbelief towards Bel, and the knife slid deeper into his heart when his best friend looked away. All this time … all this time the Massan had not simply been wielding power in his name. They'd been wielding power over him.

And not even Marissya had ever told him.

Not even Bel.

Eld ~ Boura Fell

Elfeya lay panting on the stone floor, every finger span of her body bruised and bloodied. She sensed the instant Shan regained consciousness, and she reached out to him on the threads of their bond, desperate to give him what information she could before her tormentors began again. «Orest and Teleon, beloved. They strike at Orest and Teleon.» That much she'd been able to pull from the High Mage's mind as she'd healed him. «Tell her, Shan.»

«Elfeya …»

«Tell her to warn them.»

She cried out as hands seized fistfuls of her hair and hauled her to her feet. Rough hands slammed her hard against the stone walls of the cell, knocking the breath from her lungs. Glowing, red-hot metal filled her vision. She tried desperately to close her bonds to Shan before the scream was ripped from her lungs and the smell of sizzling flesh assaulted her nose, but she wasn't fast enough.

A terrible, wild roaring filled her dazed mind…her screams and Shan's mingling in an agony of madness and pain as again and again and again the Eld seared and scorched her.

The Fading Lands ~ Fey'Bahren

Fey and tairen stood in a tense ring, violence simmering beneath the surface. Rain struggled to gather his thoughts and find the breath Tenn's revelation had knocked out of him.

«Rain…» Bel's expression was desolate. «Sieks'ta, kem'maresk. I should have told you, but once you came back to us, I never thought there would be cause. I never thought they would be so bold.»

"You would banish the Defender of the Fey when the Fading Lands stand on the brink of a second Mage War?" Gaelen challenged with cold fury. "You would banish the woman who brought life back to the tairen and the Fey? You would cast them out when the only reason they wove Azrahn was to save your miserable lives?"

"The reasons do not matter," Tenn said. "The law is clear. Those who weave the forbidden magic must be banished or slain. These are the ways of honor. These are the ways of the Fey."

"These are the ways of death and idiocy," Gaelen snapped.

"Feel free to join them in their exile, dahl'reisen" Yulan spat.

Steli growled. «What is 'banish'?»

Rain answered, speaking aloud for the benefit of the Fey. "Banishment, Steli-chakai, means these Fey say I am no longer the Tairen Soul. It means they intend to drive me and Ellysetta-Feyreisa from the lair and from all lands of the Fey."

Every tairen on Su Reisu roared. Flames shot from snarling muzzles, searing the morning sky, wings spread wide in a show of fearsome might.

Protective shields sprang up around the gathered Fey. Dozens of hands reached for red Fey'cha.

Rain flung shields around Ellysetta but none around himself. He glared at the gathered warriors. "And you call me mad? You would pull red against the pride?" He raised his hands to the tairen. «Steli-chakai, my pride-kin, stop.» To all of them, he said, "We have enemies enough without turning upon one another. Stand down, Fey." When they did not move, his voice dropped an octave and boomed across the plateau. "I said stand down!"

Behind him, Ellysetta gave a choked cry, and an icy chill washed over him.

He whirled around and all the blood drained from his face.

She was shaking, every muscle clenched, every tendon pulled taut beneath her skin. Her hands were clawed and her eyes were endless black pits awash in whirling red lights, like a dead sky filled with bloody stars.