Gaelen covered his eyes and looked up, near blinded by the brightness. The hole in the ceiling widened as the sel’dor ore simply… disintegrated and floated up, towards the light. “Kem’falla,” he breathed. He could feel her presence, taste her brightness with every shortened breath. She was the Light. She and Rain. And they were… glorious.

Their power pulsed in the air, showered his every cell with dazzling brightness and searing, electric heat. He could feel himself being pulled towards that brightness, wanting to join with it, to surrender up his essence, to be Unmade and transformed, as they had been.

The ceiling overhead dissolved. The blazing tairen bent its mighty head, and from the great, blinding suns of its eyes, a shaft of searing light fell upon him. «Go, ajian. Go now to the Well.»

Command and comprehension filled him with equal measure, and his body moved without conscious thought, backing away from the Light, backing towards the Fey and the women they’d come to rescue.

Rain and Ellysetta were glorious, all right. Glorious and unstoppable. What they had begun, they would not—could not—halt.

«Bel, we’re out of time. We have to go.» He turned to the dahl’reisen, who had retreated towards the door. “Go help General vel Jelani. Fellanas or not, grab every woman you find and get her out of here.” On the path forged between all the warriors who’d come on this mission, Gaelen cried, «Time to leave, kem’jetos! Head for the Well now!»

* * *

The power of the great Light tairen had grown to fill four levels of Boura Fell. Tendrils of light spun clockwise around the glowing mass of its center like the whirling silk scarves of Feraz veil dancers. As Mages died and the umagi bound by them were freed, the brilliant notes of the Light tairen’s Song directed the innocent to the Well of Souls. Those who had willingly embraced the Dark and gorged their souls on evil, however, did not hear the shining notes of the tairen’s Song; all they heard was a deafening roar as Light consumed Darkness.

Everywhere the tairen’s Light touched, mass dissolved. Steel, sel’dor, rock, wood, Mages, and servants of the Dark: everything and everyone who did not flee before the growing brightness burned away as the Light touched them. Glowing sparks—the remnants of their existence—floated up, some small, sparkling white globes, like fairy flies rising from an evening glade, but most were darker red sparks, like the embers that rose on the heat of a bonfire. The sparks floated towards the mass of energy that was Rain and Ellysetta, joining their Light, feeding it. Just as Ellysetta could siphon the energy of those around her and channel it through herself, now she and Rain together absorbed all the evil that was Boura Fell, Unmaking the Darkness and channeling its power into Light.

Their brightness grew brighter. Layer after layer of Boura Fell disintegrated, consumed by their fiery radiance.

The Fey ran through the crumbling corridors of the dissolving Eld fortress, guiding the captive women towards the promise of freedom. The stairwell leading to the level housing the open Gateway to the Well was still intact, and they leaped up the stairs by threes and fours, Air masters helping those who could not manage the stairs themselves.

Gaelen was the last to leave the chamber where the women had been held. Parts of the ceiling of this level were disintegrating. Walls were crumbling. The second door in the short corridor—the one he had not checked because it was closed and warded—now lay in the center of the hallway amid a pile of rubble. As he ran by, a noise made his heart rise up in his throat. A tiny cry. The squall of an infant.

All but a handful of warriors had already left. Only the dahl’reisen remained, deliberately hanging back to spare empathic Fey women the pain of their presence.

“Farel!” Gaelen called. “With me!” He pivoted sharply and dove for the hole where the door had been. The opening led to a hallway. Its ceiling—much lower than the cavernous garden room where they’d discovered the women—was still intact, though not for much longer.

The squall of a child sounded again, followed by anxious shushing and soothing murmurs. A woman. Speaking the Elden tongue, telling the child to be quiet, hissing at someone else, “Hurry! Before someone comes!” Gaelen exchanged the red Fey’cha in his hand for black. Fey did not kill women, not if they had any other choice, but he would be spitted and scorched before he let any Eld—woman or not—run off with an innocent child.

He glanced back to see the hard glitter in Farel’s eyes… and the white-knuckled fingers clenched around a black Fey’cha.

Together, they ran in swift silence down the corridor.

The infant lay in a sling around Melliandra’s chest, his brilliant blue eyes watching her with solemn calm as she tied the final knot in the sling holding another baby strapped to the shei’dalin Nicolene’s chest. The pair of them each carried two infants strapped in crisscrossing slings across their chests. The four infants were the youngest of the children from the High Mage’s secret nursery, all blue-eyed, all young enough to be Shia’s child. Which child had actually been born to the gentle, loving woman who’d given Melliandra her name, Melliandra didn’t exactly know.

It didn’t matter. To her, they were all Shia’s child, and she was determined to save them.

An explosion rocked the nursery. A fine shower of grit rained down from the ceiling. Time was running out. The battle that had killed the High Mage was still raging—and drawing closer.

Melliandra tried not to look at the other children in the nursery as she and Nicolene gathered their bags of supplies and prepared to depart with their precious burdens.