Crown of Crystal Flame

by C. L. Wilson

  Rain made his way to the tent entrance and held the flap aside for Farel and his lieutenants to pass through. With a last nod to the Fey and Celierian commanders, he ducked through the opening and let the tent flaps fall back into place.

  When Rain returned, he was pleased to see everyone had chosen to stay, though he suspected Bel and Lord Barrial may have had some hand in convincing the others.

  “The army is large, by anyone’s estimation,” Rain said as the commanders examined Bel’s three-dimensional weave of Orest, “but with the dahl’reisen joining us, the Eld are not as insurmountable a force as they would otherwise have been.”

  Cann Barrial arched a brow. “No, they just outnumber us at least ten-to-one and have the advantage of holding both high ground and fortified defenses.”

  “Mei sorro.” Rain gave a wan smile in acknowledgement of the verbal hit. “But before the dahl’reisen joined us, we were expecting the odds to be forty-to-one or higher, so ten-to-one is actually good news.” He turned to the map. “We still have our work cut out for us. They’ve bulked up the bowcannon batteries here and here and here.” He pointed to the cliffs circling Upper Orest, the city walls of Lower Orest, and Maiden’s Gate, the fortified series of battlements that stairstepped up the mountainside from Lower to Upper Orest. “These are tairen killers and they need to go.”

  “Do we really need to waste lives storming a well-defended city?” Commander Bonn asked. “They can’t go west into the Mists, and the spray from Kiyera’s Veil is poison to them. Why not just pen them in and wait.”

  Farel shook his head. “Penning them in won’t work. The Mages can use the Well to come and go at will. And as for Kiyera’s Veil, the Mages have already dammed the Source that feeds it to take the Heras out of play. The northern falls are dry and the river levels have been dropping all day.”

  Guilt stabbed Rain. He was the one who’d made the call not to send warriors to Dunelan. “Sha vel’mei. I should have sent troops to protect the Source before leaving for Elvia, but I thought we could dispatch warriors from Orest if there was trouble.”

  Bel shook his head. “Don’t berate yourself, Rain. It was the right decision at the time. We thought the Army of Darkness would strike at Kreppes. Any of us would have done the same.”

  “Speaking of the Army of Darkness, is anyone besides me still waiting to see it?” Gaelen looked up from the table, where he’d been scanning the three-dimensional Spirit weave with intensity. “I mean, clearly this isn’t it.” He gestured to the Spirit weave of Orest.

  “I wouldn’t exactly call it a ragged band,” Eimar replied with an arched brow. “There’s easily half a million blades in the city.”

  “Aiyah,” Gaelen agreed, “but this Mage spent decades—possibly centuries—planning for this war, laying the groundwork, infiltrating the north, doing everything possible to drive a wedge between Celieria and the Fading Lands. Do you honestly believe half a million troops was the most he could come up with? We cobbled together close to a hundred thousand in just a few months.”

  “Maybe there is no Army of Darkness,” Cann suggested. “Maybe it was just deliberate misinformation leaked to divide our forces and scatter our armies across the continent and make us easier to defeat. If this Mage truly does command such overwhelming numbers, why would he not have unleashed them at Kreppes or Great Bay? It would have ensured an Elden victory. With the King’s Army destroyed, they could have swept through the whole of Celieria in a matter of months.”

  “I agree,” Gaelen said.

  “One thing my centuries in the Brotherhood taught me was never to underestimate this Mage. He plays to win. He doesn’t bluff and he always has backups for his backups. It would be a mistake for us to believe his Army of Darkness doesn’t exist just because we haven’t seen it yet.”

  “I think Kreppes and Great Bay were the diversions, and the Fading Lands has been the target all along,” Rain said. “Think about it. We were holding Orest and keeping the Eld at bay until we captured that Mage and learned about this supposed Army of Darkness. Once we were lured into leaving Orest and dividing our forces, King Dorian was murdered by Sebourne. Prince Dorian nearly drowned when his ship went down in Great Bay. Our forces were winnowed. The Eld took Orest. And Annoura was left surrounded by Mage-claimed courtiers, and would have been claimed herself by the Mage masquerading as her Favorite.” Rain spread his hands. “My guess is the Eld never intended to take Celieria by force. They’ve always intended to conquer it from within, then use it as a base to launch on the Fading Lands.”

  “What about Mists?” Eimar interjected. “No invader who ever went into the Mists has ever come out again.”

  Rain shrugged. “Maybe they’ve found a way through it using the Well. Maybe they’ve learned how to circumvent its magic. Maybe they have some weapon or magic we haven’t seen yet.” He’d already contacted Sybharukai and asked her to recall half a dozen of the tairen from Orest and have them scout the perimeters of the Faering Mists for any suspicious activity. “All I know is, if they want Orest this badly, we can’t let them keep it.”

  “Which brings us back to where we started,” Bel said.

  “Aiyah. And our first priority is to take out those bowcannon batteries. Both here on the wall”—Rain pointed to the image of Maiden’s Gate—“and here across the river in Eld.”

  “The dahl’reisen will take the cannon across the river.” Farel grinned with dark humor. “We’re used to raiding beneath Mage noses.”

  “Bas’ka. Then, Cann and Commander Bonn, I’ll need you and your best cannoneers and siege masters marching with the Fey here and here. The Fey will give you cover, while you give the Eld hell.”

  “With pleasure,” Cann said.

  “What about siege weapons?” Bonn asked. “We left everything behind.”

  “Rijonn and the Earth masters will weave them for us like they did at Kreppes.”

  “And if there really is an Army of Darkness?” Gaelen asked.

  Rain fixed a grim look upon him. “Dai tabor, Fey, bas desrali lor bas tirei.” Then, Fey, we die where we stand.

  Celieria ~ Orest

  The Great Sun was just beginning to set, turning the Faering Mists into a sea of flame, as the armies of Light crested the last hill overlooking Orest and the Heras River valley. Steli, Xisanna, and Perahl, who had been running with the allies rather than flying above them to avoid giving away their position, drew to a halt behind Rain and Ellysetta and crouched there, growling low in their chests at the sight laid out before them. As Rain and his generals had seen earlier today in Bel’s weaves, the city was overrun. Instead of the bright colors of Celieria and House Teleon, the purple flags and pennants of Eld now snapped in the breeze from the battered ramparts of Lower and Upper Orest. Instead of the colored tabards and shining silver armor of Fey and Celierian defenders, black armored Eld swarmed the city like a colony of ants. Smoke billowed up from the charred remnants of buildings throughout the city. Fey and Celierian corpses, impaled on pikes, surrounded the walls of Lower Orest, serving both as a macabre victory boast and a grim warning to would-be patriots who might think to recapture the city for Celieria.

  But it was on the gatherings of great, gleaming black dragons that Rain’s gaze became fixed. Like flocks of colossal vultures, they perched on the half-eaten bodies of fallen tairen, toothy snouts ripped the remaining chunks of flesh and hide from bloody bones with ravening savagery. Wings flapped and hisses, roars, and blasts of flame erupted as the dragons fought over their terrible feast.

  Ellysetta reached for Rain’s hand. Her fingers curled around his, squeezing tight. “Who?”

  “Barsul and Storus. They were the youngest of Cahlah’s kits before this last hatching.”

  She gave a fanning waving and murmured a prayer for the tairens’ souls. “We will avenge them, shei’tan.”

  “May the gods will it should be so. I have marked their locations. After this battle, the tairen will take what is left of their remains back to Fey’Bahre
n for their Fire Song, so their songs will not be entirely lost to the pride.”

  Rain dragged his gaze from the tairen remains and scanned the lines of the allied troops. The dahl’reisen had circled around to the east, leaving the Fey and Celierians to advance from the south. As they had for the battle of Kreppes, hundreds of Earth masters had spent all afternoon constructing trebuchets, siege towers, and bowcannon of their own to aid in the reconquest of Orest.

  As Farel had pointed out earlier, normal siege tactics of blockading the city and waiting for starvation and thirst and the Mists to take their toll would not work. The best hope of victory was to drive the enemy troops out of the city walls and onto the field. While Mages might be able to protect themselves against Fey attacks, on an open field, the rest of their army would find even ten-to-one odds against an army of Fey swordsmasters to be a statistical disadvantage.

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t going to be easy to convince the Eld they should surrender their fortified mountain stronghold and confront the Fey on an open field. The only way Rain knew how to do it was to make Orest more hazard than haven—starting with taking out those bowcannon batteries and the dragons so the tairen could have free reign of the sky.

  “He’s here.”

  “Who?” Rain frowned at Ellysetta. A strange stillness had settled over her, and her shadowed gaze was fixed on a point north of Orest.

  “The Mage.” She clasped her arms across her chest. “I can feel him. He’s come to witness his victory.”

  The Shadar horn in Rain’s veins went hot as Rage rose, swift and violent. Instinct moved him closer to her side, blocking her body protectively with his as he followed her gaze north. His eyes narrowed and he adjusted their focus to bring the distant shores of Eld into closer view. A purple canopy had been erected behind the lines of bowcannon, and dozens of blue-robed Primages were milling about beneath it, but if the High Mage was among them, Rain could not see him.

  “It will not be his victory, but ours,” he assured Ellysetta.

  With visible effort, she turned away from Eld. “May the gods will it should be so.”

  His heart ached at how pale she looked beneath her forced calm. She was so afraid, but so determined not to show it, so determined to be brave for his sake. He lifted a hand, brushing back the wayward curls from her face in what he hoped would not be the last of their small intimacies. “I love you, Ellysetta Baristani.”

  Her mouth trembled, and her beautiful eyes glimmered with a sudden sheen of tears. She blinked them back quickly. “And I love you, Rain.” The tears she would not shed made her voice sound low and throaty so that it purred across his skin like velvet. “I always have. I always will.”

  “Rain.” Bel gave an apologetic look as he interrupted. “Forgive me, but the troops are in position.”

  Rain nodded. He threaded his fingers through Ellysetta’s and lifted her hands for a kiss. “I have to go now, shei’tani.”

  “I know.” They had said their good-byes before, during their last few chimes of rest before the final push to the battlefield, but even so, she caught his face in her hands and pulled him down for a last kiss farewell. «Come back safe to me, shei’tan.»

  He caught her tight against him and poured his heart, his soul, his life’s essence into that kiss. Trembling, aching, he whispered, “Ver reisa ku’chae. Kem surah, shei’tani.” He held out an arm to Bel and the rest of Ellysetta’s quintet. “Guard her well, kem’jetos.” The quintet and three hundred of her lu’tan would stay behind to guard Ellysetta and the other shei’dalins in the healing tents.

  Then, regretfully but purposefully, the Fey who was Rain, the shei’tan of Ellysetta, folded back into the privacy of his soul. And it was Rainier vel’En Daris, Feyreisen, King of the Fading Lands, Defender of the Fey, who stepped forward to stand before the assembled army of Light and called them one last time to war.

  Aloud and on weaves of powerful Spirit which he spun and flung out upon the whole the assembled armies, he called, “My friends… today, we are not Fey, Celierian, or dahl’reisen, but brothers, united and strong, each of us honorable and worthy warriors of Light. We are the steel no enemy can shatter. We are the magic no Dark power can defeat. We are the rock upon which evil breaks like waves. We are warriors of honor, champions of Light.” He pulled one of his seyani swords from its scabbard and raised the blade high, letting sunlight gleam on the long blade of golden steel.

  “To victory my brothers!” he cried. “And to life!”

  “To victory and life!” came their answering cry.

  Rain raised his golden war horn and blew the call to battle. Across the fields of Orest, other horns, Fey, Celierian, and dahl’reisen alike, blew answering blasts, and the army of Light began to march.

  Remembering the speed and distance of the bowcannon that had shot him down over Eld, Rain ordered Steli, Xisanna, and Perahl to stay behind near the healing tents.

  “When it is time, pride-kin, you will strike, but you cannot fly against Orest now—not with so many bowcannon trained on the sky. The danger will be great enough when I call upon you.” Grumbling, the tairen acquiesced.

  With only Rain flying overhead, the armies of Light advanced upon occupied Orest. He flew back and forth, scorching the field before them to destroy any chemar scattered upon the ground. Their advance was slow, but unhindered, which made him nervous. He expected the dragons to attack. The allies’ own bowcannon were aimed skyward, ready to fire, for just such an event, but instead, the great, scaled creatures retreated from the field, winging away to perch like reptilian vultures on the walls of Orest. No doubt their masters preferred to draw the tairen closer to Orest and the batteries of deadly bowcannon perched on the ramparts before they struck.

  The allies were halfway across the field when the first of the black Shadows appeared amongst them.

  “Demons!” someone cried.

  Fey magic burst forth in powerful, five-fold weaves, shielding the Celierians and plunging into the dark shades of the dead. There were hundreds of them. Thousands. Orest had been conquered, and more than one night had fallen upon the bodies of the Mage-slain, giving the Mages ample time to call and bind the souls of the corpses left littering the field. They appeared amidst the allies, demons of Celierians and Fey, whose slightest touch would drain all Light and life from their victims.

  Rain wheeled and dove towards the army, preparing to Change, when the first of the dragons leapt from the ramparts of Orest and headed his way. Six others followed on its tail. So that was the plan. Distract his own cannoneers with demons, then attack Rain undeterred by allied cannon fire.

  It was a good plan, but neither Fey nor Tairen Souls were so easy to outwit. Rain soared back up, skyward, spewing flame and roaring a challenge.

  «Cannoneers!» he cried. «Look to the skies. Fey, protect the cannons. Air masters! Give those beasts a taste of trouble!»

  Howling winds swept across the skies, buffeting the dragons and slinging them across the sky. Rain gave a grim, chuffing laugh and dove after the first of the scaled monsters. The beast saw him coming and trumpeted a challenge, spewing its green-tinged, acid flame. Rain dissolved into the Change, letting both flame and dragon pass through him, then re-formed behind the beast and ripped its back raw with razored claws and breathed tairen fire into the unprotected flesh. As the dragon shrieked and plummeted from the sky, Rain roared in victory and dove after the next.

  Standing aboveground, shielded from the sun’s glare by a purple canopy, Vadim Maur had come to watch his great victory unfold with his own eyes. When the Fey had advanced across the field, he’d ordered the dragons back to Orest to draw them closer before releasing the demons and a handful of dragons to thin their ranks.

  Now it was time to make them earn each man-length of progress.

  “Vargus, tell the Mages to counter the winds! Kron, are the cannoneers ready with Grule’s special bolts?”

  “Ready, Master Maur!”

  “Then fire at will, Kron. Take the Tair
en Soul out of the sky.”

  * * *

  «Rain! Watch your flank! Incoming from the west and north!»

  Rain saw the shadows in the sky, streaking towards him. Bowcannon bolts, six of them, flying much faster than a bowcannon bolt should—just as they had when they’d shot him from the sky. But the Eld didn’t have the element of surprise this time. He pumped his wings and soared high into the sky, well above the bolts’ trajectories.

  «Beware, Feyreisen! The scorching things are following you!»

  What? He glanced back over his shoulder, and sure enough, the six bolts had changed their flight to mirror his and were still coming strong—straight at him. Rain rolled left, putting on a burst of magic-powered speed. The bolts rolled after him, still gaining. He dove for the battlefield. The bolts dove too. With each passing moment, the distance between then decreased. Left, right, up, down, Rain zigged and zagged across the sky, trying to shake the flaming things off his tail, but they would not be shaken.

  He tried burning them out of the sky, wheeling around to face them, flaming them as they raced towards him, then Changing at the last possible instant. The bolts raced through his mist, unharmed by his flame, but the instant he re-formed, they looped back around to come after him.

  Krekk. The Eld must have warded the missiles to make them resistant to his flame. He spied a dragon swooping down upon the Fey, and his tairen mouth curled up, baring fangs. Time for a little game of dodge-tairen.

  He dove for one of the dragons, spewing fire. Two of its brethren saw his attack and dove after him, coming at him from two sides. Fangs and claws ripped and shredded, wings tangled. Acid fire and tairen flame spewed in fiery maelstrom. And then, as the five bowcannon bolts zoomed close, Rain Changed. The bolts passed harmlessly through his mist and slammed into the three dragons, driving them out of the sky and pinning them to the ground. Rain landed in Fey form beside them, drained of magic and breathing hard. He finished the three dragons off with red Fey’cha.