Bel turned his head towards the dahl’reisen horde, where a young, unscarred warrior stood talking with his brothers. As if sensing Bel’s gaze, the warrior glanced up. Apart from a brief, darting glance from Rain to Bel and back, no expression crossed the young warrior’s face, but he put a hand over his chest and bowed slightly in a Fey gesture of welcome and acknowledgment.

“His name is Beren.” A faint, melancholy smile curved the corner of Bel’s mouth. “He has Ben’s eyes.”

“Bel… kem’jeto.” Rain was at a loss for words. He remembered Benevar vel Jelani, Bel’s older brother, and how Bel had idolized him. The pain of his loss had honed Bel to a razor-sharp blade, and he’d become a deadly terror on the battlefields throughout the remaining months of the Mage Wars. “My sorrows for your brother, but mioralas for his son.” Rain clapped a hand on Bel’s shoulder. “With joy, I celebrate this new warrior of the Jelani line.”

“Beylah vo.” A brief silence fell between them, then Bel admitted in a low voice, “You know, Rain, if I’d known Ben was still alive… I think perhaps I would have traded my own honor to be with him… to spend the years with him.”

“Perhaps that’s why he never let you know.”

Bel, the most honorable Fey Rain knew, nodded sadly. “I wish he had though, Rain.” He met his best friend’s gaze. “I really wish he had.”

Rain looked out across the seemingly endless sea of warriors, the outcast sons of his homeland. Many of them banished for weaving Azrahn—the same crime for which he and Ellysetta had been banished, a crime he was beginning to think wasn’t half so evil as he’d been raised to believe. And instead of looking upon them with revulsion and dread—instead of seeing their scars and reviling them for their dishonor and the threat of Shadow that hovered over their bleak lives—he saw Fey. Warriors, brothers, friends. Fey whom someone like Bel had once known and loved.

And for the first time, he accepted the possibility that here, in the most unlikely place and from the most unlikely quarter, he had just found the allies he’d been looking for.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Celieria ~ Dahl’reisen Encampment

Ellysetta thought bloodswearing thirty thousand souls would have taken much longer than it did, but Farel and her quintet had already decided how to handle it. They divided the dahl’reisen into blocks of five hundred and each block swore their oaths simultaneously. Ellysetta’s existing lu’tan stood amongst the groups to ensure that every dahl’reisen made a proper and complete oath.

What to do with the massive pile of thirty thousand bloodsworn Fey’cha became a subject of heated debate, but in the end, both Fey and dahl’reisen lu’tan agreed to weave a new suit of armor for Ellysetta, this time using only a small button of metal from each bloodsworn blade. The remaining, unused portions of the Fey’chas were buried in the Verlaine, under a thirty-six fold protective weave, to be retrieved and taken to a place of honor and safekeeping after the threat of war had passed.

To say that Ellysetta and her quintet were happy with the decision to bloodswear the dahl’reisen was stretching the truth, but as Tajik said with a sigh as they prepared to leave, “War is a strange thing, kem’jitanessa. I’ve seen bitter enemies fighting side by side, because they hate the thing they’re fighting more than they hate each other. Sometimes, you have to take your allies where you find them and hope for the best.”

She laid a hand on his arm. She knew how difficult it was for him to overcome a lifetime of revulsion for the warriors who walked the Shadowed Path, but he had not been among them. He had not spent time with them as she had, nor seen the love and vulnerability in their eyes when they were safe in the circle of their families, nor felt their shame at having fallen from the honorable path of the Fey warrior.

“They saved my life, kem’melajeto,” she told him gently. “They saved Rain’s life too.” She looked at the assembly of dahl’reisen, the scarred faces filled with purpose and determination rather than shame, and at the larger gathering of their sons and grandsons, fine, fierce young warriors who’d never learned that they were suppose to revile the scarred, soul-shadowed Fey instead of love and honor them. “I think they may just save us all.”

Watching her, Tajik shook his head, a peculiar half-smile on his face.

“What is it?” she asked.

“You just looked very Elvish just then. And very like your mother.” He glanced back at the dahl’reisen camp. “I hope you’re right, Ellysetta. I hope they do save us. But I’ll settle for just knowing this wasn’t the biggest mistake we’ve ever made.”

Celieria ~ Allied Encampment by the Verlaine

With fifteen bells of hard travel lying between the Fey army and Orest, Rain and his generals had agreed to spend one final night camped beside the Verlaine and set out before sunrise.

As he and Ellysetta retired to their magic-warded tent for the night, Rain shed his steel and spun his war armor to the stand in the corner. His bones warmed as the Shadar horn added its power to his weave.

The tiny boost to the magic made Rain go still.

He closed his eyes, fingers curling in loose fists. Earlier this evening, he’d spun that same weave without the Shadar horn supplementing his control. His condition was deterio-rating—and much more rapidly than he’d hoped. How long did he have? Days? Bells? Did he even want to know when there was nothing he could do about it?