She inhaled, trying to breathe through the sick agony twisting in her belly. The dahl’reisen were shielded. The Mharog were not, and the cloying horror of them was worse than anything she’d ever felt before. “I’ll manage,” she rasped. “Let’s go.”

Farel gestured, and the dahl’reisen began to run.

The thirty-six who had volunteered for death ran in the opposite direction, the joy in their eyes replaced by lethal determination.

“What’s this?” Primage Dur squinted at the glow of magic in the forest before them. Twelve shining warriors in red leather stood interspaced between a line of gnarled trees, blocking the advance of the Eld. “Who are they?”

“Dahl’reisen,” Azurel hissed.

“Are they… singing? “

“It is a Fey warriors’ song called ‘Ten Thousand Swords.’” The Mharog spat on the ground. “No dahl’reisen sings that song.”

But singing they were. What had the Feyreisen’s mate done that dahl’reisen would sing with all the fierce pride and joy of the Fey?

They continued to sing even as the glow of their magic began to coalesce into thick, powerful ropes. Fire, Earth, Air, Water, Spirit… and then Azrahn. “They use Azrahn freely.” Even at this distance, the sweet chill of the forbidden mystic made the back of his teeth ache and his own power rise in response. “One of them, at least, is a master of it. Or close enough so it makes little difference.”

“Foolish, foolish Fey. Do they not learn?” The Primage sneered, closed his eyes, and sent a whip of Azrahn arrowing across the distance to Mark the fools who wove Azrahn in the presence of a Mage. A moment later, his sneer faded. His brow furrowed. His Mark had found no target. “What’s this?” The Mage spun Azrahn again, and again the dahl’reisen eluded his claiming. “They’ve somehow shielded themselves against my Marks.”

“Just as well.” Azurel closed his fists around hilts of the long, black-bladed knives at his waist that had replaced the curved meicha scimitars he’d once worn. He smiled with eager bloodlust. “I prefer to wet my blades in a fight.”

Beside him, the other Mharog growled deep in their throat, and Azurel could sense they were as eager as he to spill the blood of these dahl’reisen who sang as if they were still Fey. The song, once so beloved, seemed a symbol of all that the Mharog had lost, all that they now reviled.

Without warning, the Eld soldiers behind them gave choked gasps and crumpled. Even as they fell, a red Fey’cha glanced off Azurel’s own, ever-present shields and sliced the unprotected hand of the Eld captain standing beside him. The captain’s eyes widened in horror at the sight of his bleeding hand. His fingers spasmed. Then his arm began to shake as the tairen venom spread rapidly through his veins. Within moments he was gasping for air and clutching at his throat as a white froth bubbled at the corners of his mouth. The poison reached his brain, and he dropped to the ground, stone dead, eyes staring.

Azurel nudged the body aside with one foot and scanned the trees around them. Another barrage of Fey’cha ricocheted off the Mages’ hastily erected shields, followed by a concussive blast as a twelve-fold weave from the first group of dahl’reisen slammed into the forward shields.

“These twelve are not alone. Have your archers clear our flanks.” Azurel directed the attention of the Mages to the dense forest on either side of them. He could sense nothing, but dahl’reisen weren’t fools enough to send a mere twelve blades against five Mharog and so many Mages.

Dur snapped the command on a whip of Azrahn. «Archers, fire. Rain sel’dor on our flanks!»

The air turned black with flying arrows. Azurel watched closely, looking for the telltale energy flares of sel’dor hitting Fey shields. He would be very surprised if the dahl’reisen’s admittedly impressive invisibility weaves could completely hide shields strong enough to block sel’dor.

«One in the large fireoak there, another near that tumble of rocks. Two more in the trees to our left. Earth, on my command. Shake them out of the trees. Now!»

Green Earth arced outward from two of the Mharog, with Azurel directing rippling flows of it both to his left and his right. The ground bucked and heaved. The tumbled pile of boulders shuddered, massive rocks shifting and falling, and the dahl’reisen taking cover there gave a sharp cry, quickly silenced. Nearby, the large oak that sheltered the second dahl’reisen shook wildly from the force of the powerful quake. With a mighty groan, the tree toppled, and as the dahl’reisen in the branches tumbled to the ground, two of the Mharog broke his shields with a six-fold weave, and Dur followed with a blast of Mage Fire that sliced the warrior in half.

The line of trees to the right shivered but stood firm beneath the attack of the two Mharog as a masterful counteractive weave of Earth dispelled the rippling force. The Eld bowmen released another hail of barbed arrows while Mages peppered the woods with globes of blue-white Mage Fire. Beneath the Mharogs’ feet, the earth gave a sudden, heaving lurch that knocked them off-balance.

A shout rose from the back of the infantry formation, and Azurel turned to see the Eld soldiers falling upon themselves, teeth bared in feral snarls as they sliced and hacked at one another. A heavy black-and-lavender weave lay over the Eld like a shroud. He tracked the weave back to its source—more dahl’reisen hidden by their admittedly impressive invisibility weaves—and flung a blistering combination of Fire, Air, and Azrahn at them, but that blast exploded harmlessly against another six-fold shield.