The room was filled with children, at least sixty of them, ranging in age from tiny infants to five-year-olds. A dozen village women tended the tiniest of their charges, while the older children gathered in groups supervised by one or two adults. Noisy, childish chatter and the tiny cries of babies demanding maternal attention filled the air, muted from the outside world by a privacy weave tied to the room’s floor, ceiling, and walls.

“These are our children. And this is our greatest secret.”

“Oh, Rain…” Ellysetta reached for Rain’s hand. «So many children, shei’tan.»

Rain stood frozen in the doorway and let the noise wash over him. He’d known there were children. He’d seen a number of them yesterday when he’d entered the village. But he hadn’t realized the true enormity of what he’d seen. He forced himself to breathe as he scanned the room, seeing the bright glow of Fey magic shining from child after child. More than half of the children were Fey. Even before the Mage Wars had left the women of the Fading Lands barren, it was rare for thirty children to be born in a village this size in twenty years, let alone four or five.

A chill, too-sweet odor made his hands reach instinctively for his missing blades and he spun in the half crouch of a warrior, his eyes scanning the room for the person spinning the forbidden magic. A woman at the far end of the room held a spiral of Azrahn in her palm. At her feet, a semicircle of children held their own, less organized spirals of the black magic.

Horror sapped all moisture from his mouth. “You teach them to weave the forbidden magic?”

Sheyl glanced back at the children in question, then returned her wary gaze to him. “Azrahn is not forbidden here. I know the Fey believe otherwise. You banish your strongest warriors if they dare to weave it.” The corner of her mouth curled up. “Your customs aren’t so different from the villagers who cast out their children and abandon them to die. You just wind your children at an older age.”

Rain’s head snapped back as if she’d slapped him. “The customs are nothing alike. Azrahn is the evil tool of the Mages.” But even as said it, he remembered Ellysetta saving the tairen with Azrahn, himself saving her, the warriors and civilians who would have died without Gaelen’s weaving Azrahn so Ellysetta could hold dying souls to life, the countless lives Gaelen had saved by detecting the Mage claimed hiding among the allies.

“Azrahn is just magic, a mystic like Spirit. Is Fire or Spirit evil? Nei, though, the manner of their use can be. It is no different with Azrahn. Which is why we teach our children from a very early age how to weave their magic—more importantly, how to control it. The ones with Mage Marks do not spin it, of course, but the rest of us do.”

“Some of these children are Mage-claimed?” Rain asked “Marked, not claimed. And, yes, some are. The dahl’reisen save the ones they can and bring them here, where we can protect them and give them some semblance of a free life, safe from the Eld.

“It is Azrahn that lets us offer them that haven,” she added. “We spin it in our shield weaves to hide our presence from the Mages. We use it to detect Mage Marks and know who is a real danger to us, and who is not. Most of us here in the village possess at least some ability to spin the soul magic, and we are not evil.” She gestured to the room at large. “These children are not evil.”

“Why would Gaelen not tell us about you?” Ellysetta asked, her stunned gaze roving over all the little faces.

“All of us have sworn a blood-oath never to reveal information about our village and our children. The Eld would slaughter us. The Celierians would burn us out. The Fey would never accept dahl’reisen back within their borders, and none who live in this village would ever settle in a place where our men are not welcome. We are outcast, and keeping our secrets ensures our safety.”

“Then why show us now?” Ellysetta asked.

Before Sheyl could answer, a childish laugh rang out, and a tiny voice cried, “Again! Again!” Ellysetta gasped and clutched Rain’s hand in a tight grip. She stared in disbelief at the face of a child she’d loved dearly and never thought to see again. “Rain, that’s Bannon!”

The son of her best friend, Selianne Pyerson, was dressed like a village child and playing with the other toddlers. She sent a frantic gaze towards the other end of the room, where the infants were, searching for another sweet face dominated by the big blue eyes so like Selianne’s. “And Cerlissa!” Cerlissa, Selianne’s baby, had grown so much in the last four months, but the chubby-cheeked infant, sitting on a rug, playing with blocks, was most definitely Selianne’s daughter.

“You know Bannon and Cerlissa?” Sheyl asked.

“Their mother was my best friend. She died trying to protect me from the Mages.” After Selianne’s death, when the Fey found her husband murdered and her Elden mother hanging from a knotted cord, Gaelen had promised he would take Selianne’s children to a safe place where they would be welcomed despite the Mage Mark set upon them by the Mages who’d killed their mother. “Gaelen said he would take them to a safe place, but he wouldn’t tell us where.”

“They were taken in by a couple who lost their own child to a lyrant last year.”

Ellysetta bit her lip. The children were obviously happy and well tended, but—“Please, may I see them?”

“Of course.” Sheyl signaled, and two of the village women collected the children and carried them across the room to Ellysetta.