Mindful of those behind him, Dragos kept moving. He nodded in the direction of the path. “Where does that go?”

“To my home here, just on the other side of the tree line. It overlooks a valley.” Calondir shifted and said, his voice edged, “Can you tell if that smell is from Lirithriel or if something else has burned here?”

“Not yet,” said Dragos. “We’re too close to the passageway.”

“I don’t like this. It’s too quiet.”

“They’re here,” he told the High Lord. “And they’ve only had a few hours’ start. We’ll take to the air and find them.”

“For now, we should make for the house and see if it is still intact,” Calondir said. “Winter nights get bitter here, and we should make use of all the shelter we can get.”

As Dragos strode down the path, he remembered his questions. “Where are the others that traveled with Gaeleval? What happened to the one who was wounded?”

“They’re dead,” Calondir said shortly. “Their bodies were found in the apartment where they and Gaeleval stayed.”

That didn’t surprise Dragos. They had fulfilled their function by leveraging a way into Calondir’s home. Once Gaeleval had taken their will, he wouldn’t have needed to actively wield the Machine, which was why none of Calondir’s seers had sensed any issue. The seers would have had no cause to probe too deeply into anyone’s mind.

“How did they travel to Lirithriel Wood?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

He controlled his impatience. “I mean just what I said. Did they travel across this Other land, or did they travel on the other side, on Earth? Why did you host them in the Wood and not here?”

“They traveled here,” Calondir said briefly. “And I had them brought over the crossover passageway to Lirithriel Wood. With your mate’s impending visit, I didn’t want to step out of sync with the time on Earth.”

Just then a fresh gust of wind from the other side of the trees gusted in Dragos’ face. It brought with it the smell of more wood smoke, and Elves.

A lot of Elves.

He sped up until he loped, sensing the gryphons pick up their pace behind them. “What is it?” Calondir demanded.

“Trouble.”

He broke through the other side of the tree line and skidded to a halt at the edge of land. To his left, the path took an abrupt turn to follow the edge of a bluff up to the smoking ruins of what must have once been a long, gracious building at the top of a cliff.

The path along the bluff and the ruined building looked over a wide, snowy valley that would probably be beautiful in the springtime.

At the moment the valley was filled with an army.

Calondir whispered a shaken curse.

Dragos walked to the edge of the bluff and crouched like an enormous cat, gripping the rocks tight with his talons as he stared down at the thousands of Elves. Warriors and non-warriors. Men, women. Children. Some were better dressed than others. Some were barefoot in the snow. All of them looked ill fed. His snout wrinkled as he smelled the rarest of oddities for Elves—disease.

As he had reached the edge, all the Elves in the valley turned to look up at him.

All of them, all at the same time. Every single one of them cocked his or her head at exactly the same angle, in exactly the same way. His sharp raptor’s gaze moved from blank face to blank face.

Wyr came up on either side of him, gryphons and the pegasus and the harpy, then other Wyr along with Elves. They stared down in silence.

The dragon chuckled. The low, bitter sound reverberated in the rock of the bluff on which he stood, and several Elves drew away from him in dismay.

“I think we just found the answer to one of my other questions,” Dragos said. “What happened to all the Elves in Numenlaur?”

FIFTEEN

Every Elf in the valley smiled.

Dragos felt the Power of the God Machine pulse to life.

Shouts and screams came from behind him. Fuck. He whirled and lunged back through the trees, knocking people and horses aside in his rush to find Pia. Both Elves and Wyr dodged to get out of his way, horses plunging headlong off the path, while even more ran toward him from the direction of the passageway. He ignored all of them, looking for Pia and her bodyguards.

He saw a tower of flames through the trees.

Where was she?

In the next moment he saw her running toward him, surrounded by her guards, as she looked back over her shoulder at the blazing fire. He slowed to a stop, breathing hard, and waited for her to notice him.

She was the last of her group to do, looking away finally to discover him blocking the path. She skidded to a halt a few yards away.

Somehow Calondir had managed to avoid being dislodged from his back. Now the Elf Lord leaped to the ground and raced back toward the passageway, along with several others. Dragos twitched his shoulders, glad to have Calondir’s insignificant yet extremely annoying weight off of him.

“You,” he said to Pia. “Forget everything I said about hanging back.” She squeaked with surprise as he plucked her unceremoniously off the ground. He raised her up and held her to his shoulder until he felt her scramble onto him and perch at the base of his neck.

“All right,” she muttered. “But I’m not riding like this if you’re going to fly.”

“Just stay put for now,” he snapped. He looked down at her unit, three in canine form and three in human form, plus apparently Pia had managed to add the Elf girl with the blue hair to her collection. All seven stared up at him. “I don’t know,” he told them, answering their unspoken questions. “Figure out something to do with yourselves for now and get the hell out of my way.”

They scrambled to either side of him, and he strode after Calondir and the others.

This time the trees weren’t burning. The stone itself in the passageway was on fire, fueled by the Power in the God Machine. The flames roared thirty feet tall, and they threw off a ferocious heat. Of course the heat didn’t bother him any more than the cold did, but mindful of Pia riding on his back, he took care to get no closer than Calondir and the others had.

Pia and her group had done just what he had told them to do. They had crossed over in the middle of the warriors.

It was a good thing they had. Those Wyr and the Elves who had been the last to cross over had been carried off to one side and were being triaged. Several suffered from burns. A few of them were severely injured and still screaming.

He sensed Pia’s intention to go help those who were injured as she lifted one leg to sit sideways on him, preparatory to sliding down the outside of his front leg.

“No,” he said to her.

But I can help them, she said. She didn’t try to jump to the ground, although her telepathic voice throbbed with unhappiness.

You said you were prepared for how ugly this could get, he said ruthlessly. Well, the ugliness has started. There will be too many people for you to help. There already are. Not only would you expose yourself but you would spread yourself too thin.

Her breathing hitched, but after a moment she shifted back in place astride him.

Calondir approached. The Elf Lord looked incandescent with fury. He asked, “Can you put this fire out too?”

Dragos lowered his eyelids as he probed the magical blaze curiously. It was more resistant to him than the forest fire had been. “Probably,” he said at last. “But I’m not going to waste time and energy doing it. Gaeleval wants to trap us on this side. Well, so be it. We don’t want to leave. In the meantime, he has an entire army he has to control, and this fire is taking up more of his Power and concentration. There is a limit to what he can do. I say we help him reach it.”

Calondir’s chest moved as he sucked in a deep breath. The Elf glanced at the wounded, his face tight. He said between teeth, “Very well. Just see what you can do to keep something like this from happening again.”

“You are mistaken about the purpose of my presence,” said Dragos. “I am not here to do what you tell me to do, nor am I here to defend you. I’m here to attack him.”

“Dragos,” murmured Pia.

He twisted his head around so that he could scowl at her. She said nothing, just gave him a steady look.

He bared his teeth and growled at the High Lord, “But I’ll see what I can do.”

He had his sufferance rewarded, as she patted and stroked his neck. Calming down, he supposed it hadn’t cost him all that much to promise to do what he could.

• • •

The temperature plummeted as the day began to fade.

Pia’s armor had kept her comfortable earlier. After the sun set, she was constantly on the tense side of a shiver, and as a result, her muscles were tired and achy.

Dragos had relaxed enough to let her get down off his back. He set the Wyr to setting up camp around the magical blaze, which continued to burn steadily, the stone of the passageway glowing bright red.

“It’s going to get cold tonight,” he told them. “And Calondir’s home on this side of the passage has been destroyed as well. We should take advantage of the warmth Gaeleval is giving us. Besides, if we’re not going to engage him right away, I’d better stay close so I can keep an eye on this and make sure it doesn’t spread.”

Then he had returned to the cliff, along with Calondir, Elven and Wyr mages, his sentinels, and Carling, to study Gaeleval’s “army.”

Pia had gone with them but she hadn’t stayed long. After she took one long, horrified look at the tragedy in the valley below, she pivoted on her heel and walked away.

She understood now why Dragos had said there were already too many people for her to help. A lack of attending to basic bodily needs, along with exposure and neglect, had taken its toll on the enthralled Numenlaurians. She could scent gangrene and other whiffs of disease on the wind, and she didn’t trust herself to control either her emotional response or her impulse to vomit. Everybody was busy dealing with their own reactions. Nobody needed to be inflicted with hers as well.

Already strained from the events of the night, the fighting spirit of the Elves had been broken. She could see it in their faces. Calondir, Linwe, Ferion and all the others were the walking wounded, the expression in their eyes heartsick.

This whole nightmare leaves the Wyr in an even more awkward position, Dragos told Pia telepathically just before she had walked away. If the Elves themselves can’t face the reality of fighting their own kin or possibly having to cut down an obviously sick Elven child that attacks them, they certainly aren’t going to be able to handle it if the Wyr go alone into battle. When Calondir and I talked, he asked for my oath that we work in partnership on this, and I gave it to him. At the moment our goddamn hands are tied.

They’re in a terrible position, Pia said as she wiped her eyes. I don’t know how they can endure this. Something has to be done to break that maniac’s hold.

If I could locate Gaeleval, I might be able to stop him, but he has his army wrapped around him like a shield, Dragos said, his voice tense with frustration. I can’t just go hunting for him on my own. If the Wyr can’t go alone into battle, I certainly can’t kill any more Elves. Whatever we decide to do, Calondir and I have to stay united and do it together. Either that or we run the risk of becoming even worse enemies than we were before.

Pia picked up her pace, reconnected with her guards and went back to the passageway with them to help construct a quick, rough camp along with the rest of the Wyr. They were basically water- and wind-resistant pup tents to give people a chance to shelter from the weather.

As the temperature turned bitter, more and more Elves joined them in tight silence, setting up their own shelters as near as they dared to the heat. They came just close enough for the fire to stave off the worst of the bitter night. Even though the fire had quickly melted the snow around in its immediate area until patches of grass showed, nobody wanted to get too close to that magical blaze. Thankfully, the screaming had stopped. There had been enough healers and healing potion to help the burn victims.

After the shelters were constructed, campfires were set to heat water for hot coffee and tea. Nobody wanted to try to use any part of the magical fire. Soon there came the smell of cooking food.

“We have to do something,” James muttered. Those who had crossed over in their Wyr forms had since changed back into their human forms to make use of their opposable thumbs and help set up camp. “We can’t all just f**king sit here.”

“You know better than that,” Eva said. “More than half an army’s time is spent waiting around. Take advantage of the downtime while we’ve got it. I expect we’ll see action soon enough.”

The group had gathered around their own campfire. Linwe had left them to wait for word and grieve with a few friends.

Looking spooked, Andrea said, “In the meantime, nobody better go to sleep, or that bastard might add more soldiers to his ranks.”

Pia lifted her head. She was sitting on a sawed-off log, cradling a cup of tea in cold fingers as she stared into their fire and generally felt useless. Unused to wearing any kind of armor, no matter how lightweight, the molded leather plates had quickly come to feel heavy and restrictive, and she had relished the opportunity to loosen straps until the chest plate and the leg pieces simply hung in place. She would have removed them completely except that they helped to keep her warm.

She said, “If Dragos could break the enthrallment on the Elves, I bet he has the ability to cast protections on the camp. Besides, everybody is on guard now, and we have other magic users. Gaeleval won’t catch people by surprise again.”

“Truth,” Miguel said. “If they’re targeted right, aversion spells can work for more things than just physical weapons. But nobody should go to sleep until we get word that we have a plan of defense in place.”