Crown of Crystal Flame
Page 34

Concerned, Jamis started towards him, only to stop when Kip’s eyes suddenly fixed on Jamis’s face and the confused look changed to something much more disturbing. Something menacing.
Kip raised his sword.
Rain led the tairen in series of flame runs over Kreppes’s ramparts to weaken the enemy shields and keep them occupied while the allies put their plans into action. The bowcannon and trebuchets were gone, not even piles of ash remained where they had stood. The current menace was archers armed with barbed sel’dor arrows. That and the Eld were up to the same tricks they’d used months ago at Orest, with portals to the Well of Souls opening and bowcannon firing from within. They kept the sky filled with sel’dor, but before the tairen came within flame-reach, the archers would race down the battlement steps, the portals would close, and the fire would splash against the smoldering stone of Kreppes’s diminishing ramparts. As soon as the tairen passed, the archers would rush back into place, the portals would reopen, and they would send a barrage of sel’dor arrows and bolts chasing after the tairen.
Xisanna had taken a sel’dor bolt to her flank and Perahl had a large hole in his left wing. Strafing the Kreppes battlements was getting to be a dangerous game of dodge-tairen.
Rain folded his wings and dropped. Wind whistled past his flattened ears. He held his forelegs tight and streamlined against his body. The tuck-winged dive was one of his favorite tairen maneuvers. He had always loved the speed, the reckless thrill, the sudden breathless jolt as his wings snapped wide and plummeting fall curved sharply into a high-speed glide. And in battle, he loved how small a target it made him on the approach, and what a blur of speed he was as he shot past the enemy, raining fire upon him.
Spewing flame into the onslaught of arrows and bolts, he burrowed a tunnel through the air. But as he drew another breath in preparation for his next jet of flame, a blast of fire from Steli illuminated the figure of a man standing on the battlement, distinctive Elfbow drawn, as he took aim at Rain.
That was no Elden Mage, and no servant of the Dark either.
What in the gods names was Cannevar Barrial doing up there?
His left wing dropped. The straight glide towards Kreppes became a banking roll away from his target just as Cann fired at the spot Rain had been.
«Cease fire!» Rain sang to Steli and the tairen. «Cease fire!» he cried on the new Warrior’s Path. «Those aren’t the Eld! It’s our men in there! Cease fire! Cease fire!»
CHAPTER SIX
“Cannevar Barrial has been Mage-claimed.”
After sighting Lord Barrial on the ramparts of Kreppes, Rain and the tairen had broken off their attack and returned to the Fey command post with the grim news.
“Impossible,” Gaelen said. Now that most of the camp had retreated out of range of the castle’s weapons, the influx of wounded needing Ellysetta’s care had slowed to a trickle, and since the worst of the injured had already been healed, she’d released him to join the rest of her quintet. “Dahl’reisen have lived on Barrial land for centuries. They would have known if he’d been claimed.”
“Then perhaps the claiming happened in Celieria City, when he was away from the dahl’reisen,” Rain said, “because that was definitely him on the ramparts, with his Elfbow. Shooting at me.”
“Could he have been trying to send you some sort of signal?” Bel suggested.
“Not likely. It’s only because I turned away that he missed.” Considering how fast Rain had been flying in that strafing run, that was no mean feat.
“Then you should have killed him when you had the chance,” Gaelen said. “Terrible as it sounds, death by tairen flame is the greatest boon you could give the soul-claimed. It stops them from harming others, and they can’t be called back to serve in demon form.”
Rain hunched his shoulders. Everything in him rebelled against the idea of slaughtering friends—especially Cann.
“It just doesn’t feel right,” he muttered. “I wouldn’t have been surprised at all to see Sebourne up on that wall… but Cann… He doesn’t like the Mages. He’s worked against them all his life…”
“Most Mage-claimed have no recollection of their claiming. That’s part of what makes them so dangerous. They’re undetectable unless you spin Azrahn to check them for Mage Marks.”
“Maybe, but could all of Kreppes have been claimed without detection? Over half the forces in the castle are Barrial men who’ve been stationed at Kreppes for years. Even if Cann is Mage-claimed, he couldn’t have overtaken all the troops in the castle without help.”
“Perhaps vel Serranis’s dahl’reisen friends haven’t been quite as observant as he thought,” Tajik suggested with an arched brow.
Gaelen cast a withering glance Tajik’s way but didn’t take the bait. “How many Eld did you and the tairen see on the ramparts?” he asked Rain. “It’s possible they came in through portals to the Well of Souls like they did at Teleon and Orest and overwhelmed the defenders.”
Rain reran the strafing runs in his mind’s eye. How many Eld had he seen? “I don’t know. It was dark. They were firing on us and the encampment.” His brows drew together. Come to think of it, he couldn’t recall seeing any Mage robes at all on the wall.
«Feyreisen! Come quickly.» A cry rang out across the new Warrior’s Path. «Something is—» The call broke off abruptly.