Crown of Crystal Flame

by C. L. Wilson

  A map of Kreppes and surrounding area—modified by Rijonn to show the recent fortifications and topographical changes—lay flat on a large table. The commanders gathered around it.

  “Most of our heavy siege was inside the castle,” Bel said, “but we still have the trebuchets and bowcannon mounted on the hilltops.” He spun a Spirit weave to mark their locations. “These are within firing range of Kreppes.” He indicated the siege directly north of the castle. “We need to reposition them to provide cover fire for the tairen and do what we can to keep the cannon off those walls. Quintets of Earth masters will move the others into position here and here and here.” The small, glowing replicas of the siege weapons on the far eastern and western hilltops disappeared from their current locations and reappeared in the formations placed to attack the west, east, and south walls of the fortress. “The rest of the Earth masters will start constructing siege towers and ladders to scale the walls.”

  “Commander Tarr.” Bel fixed his gaze upon the Celierian officer in charge of the king’s archers. “I need your archers in position along these lines.” He pointed at the map and drew the lines in Spirit. “When the tairen aren’t firing the castle, your men should be.

  “Commander Nevin, Chatokkai vel Amah, as soon as the towers and ladders are ready, you’ll lead your men up the southern wall. Commander Bonn, our Earth masters are working on a battering ram. Your men will storm the gate on my signal. Fifty quintets will accompany each of your attack forces to weave shields and keep Mage Fire off you.”

  Bel stepped back from the table. “My lords, my blade brothers, we either retake Kreppes, or we bring it down.”

  In the outlying fields surrounding Kreppes, two dozen men broke off from the mass of Sebourne troops, each taking a different direction into the crowd of allied troops.

  There were so many men running hither and yon, no one paid any attention to Sebourne’s men… or the small white stones they dropped in their wake.

  Two young Celierian infantrymen rushed through the crowded encampment towards the area where Commander Bonn was marshaling his forces. One of the two fell behind, and his companion turned to scold him.

  “Get a move on, Kip. The battering ram is nearly done, and Commander Bonn won’t wait on us.”

  “Wait a chime, Jamis,” Kip said. “I thought I saw something over here.” He took a few steps towards one of the paths between the lines of allied tents, drawing his sword as he went.

  “Saw what? Kip!” his companion exclaimed. Kip had disappeared into the shadows between the rows of tents. “Kip!” He started towards the place Kip had disappeared, then stopped when his friend emerged from the shadows. “What was it? Kip? Are you all right?”

  Kip had a strange, disoriented look on his face. His sword arm dangled at his side, and his fingers curled loosely around the hilt of his unsheathed blade.

  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.

  Rain tried to trace the weave back to its sender, but the Spirit threads had already dissolved. “Who was that?” he asked. Gaelen and the others shook their heads. «Fey!» he called. «Report! Identify yourself? What’s happening?»

  A moment later, another call rang out, but it was a different voice this time. «Fey! Ti’Commander Bonn! We’re under attack! It’s—»

  The second call broke off as abruptly as the first.

  “Where is Bonn?” Rain demanded.

  “Here.” Bel pointed a finger and threads of Spirit illuminated a position deep in the heart of the allied encampment—well out of range of enemy fire. No attack on that particular location should have been possible without the enemy coming through the surrounding allies.

  Unless the enemy had been among them all the time.

  Sudden suspicion reared up. “Where are Sebourne’s men?”

  Squads of Fey went in search of Sebourne’s men while Rain and several hundred Fey raced across the allied encampment to Commander Bonn’s position. They arrived to find a full-fledged melee in progress. Shouts of “Save the king!” and “For Celieria and King Dorian!” resounded as silver swords flashed in the moonlight.

  «Fire masters!» Rain cried. «Light the sky!»

  Streamers of brightly burning magic shot into the air over the encampment, illuminating the battle below. Shadowy figures struggling in the darkness became Celierians and Fey locked in mortal combat. Rain had suspected he would find Sebourne’s men among the group, and he did. But there were others, too—King’s army, Barrial men, even Fey, all slashing at each other with grim savagery.

  Of the Eld, however, there was no sign.

  Not a single sel’dor blade or arrow. Not a single Mage robe. Nothing.

  “My Lord Feyreisen!” Surrounded by a cadre of armored soldiers, each with shields raised, Bonn was being driven back by a horde of attackers wearing Sebourne colors.

  «Fey, form a line. Take out Sebourne’s men.» Rain dove towards the beleaguered commander. Fey’cha flew from his fingertips, spinning out in silvery blurs, thunking home with lethal accuracy in the throats of Sebourne’s men. He spoke his return word to call his blades back to their sheaths and threw a second volley even before the first bodies hit the ground.

  Reaching Bonn’s side, Rain dispatched another six attackers with red Fey’cha to their throats and spun a rapid fivefold weave to shield the Celierian commander.

  “Commander Bonn, order your men to fall back behind the Fey. It will be easier for us to deal with this attack if they stand clear.”

  “My men?” Bonn gave him a harried look. “Most of those are my men.”

  “We were waiting for the Earth masters to finish the battering ram,” Bonn explained. “There was a commotion near the tents, and the next thing I knew my men started attacking each other.”

  “Did you see anything else? A Mage perhaps?” Rain could detect no Azrahn, so if the Mages were controlling the allies, they’d either found a way to mask the signature of their weaves, or they were using some other method of control entirely.

  Before Bonn could answer, an armored Celierian infantryman charged the Fey line. “For King Dorian and Celieria!” he cried as he attacked.

  Seven Fey’cha hit him simultaneously, and he dropped like a stone at Commander Bonn’s feet. The commander stared at the fallen man in shocked dismay. “Avis? “

  “You knew him?” Rain watched the commander’s face for any sign of deceit or treachery but saw only genuine shock and sorrow.

  “He was my Sergeant at Arms. One of my most trusted men.” Bonn’s dark brows drew together. “There’s no way he could have been one of Sebourne’s plants.”

  “Mage-claimed?”

  “Impossible.” Bonn shook his head in bewilderment. “Vel Serranis checked all my men yesterday at my own request.”

  Rain skimmed the minds of the combatants with the light Spirit weave Fey often used in melee combat to determine enemy from ally. The only thoughts he could detect came from the allies and were predominately concerned with defending king and country and slaughtering the traitors wearing their own colors. A number of the combatants kept wondering how friends they’d slept, eaten, trained, and worked beside could have turned on them with so little warning.

  He tried a different, more probing weave with the same result. Rain could not tell friend from foe.

  What the flaming Seven Hells was going on here?

  «Bel.» Rain sent the call on gleaming lavender threads. «Scan the area around me. Tell me if you can sense anything controlling these men.» Apart from Rain himself, Bel was the strongest Spirit master of the Fey, and with the bond madness making Rain’s control of his magic increasingly unpredictable, it seemed only wise to get a second opinion. If there were any subtle weaves controlling Bonn’s men, Bel would be able to detect them.

  One of the Fey behind him gave a strangled gasp. Rain turned in time to see the flash of the red Fey’cha embedded in his throat wink out as its owner invoked his return weave. The dying Fey gazed at him in an instant of mute surprise, then crumpled to the ground.

  Rain spun back around, searching the crowd, finding the soulless eyes, the vivid scar marring the perfection of what otherwise would be a shining Fey face.

  «Dahl’reisen!» he cried. “Dahl’reisen are among the attackers! Fey! Fall back. Bonn, tell your men to get out of there now!”

  “Dahl’reisen?” Tajik turned to Gaelen. “That’s three times now we’ve found your friends in league with the Eld.”

  “Not every dahl’reisen joins the Brotherhood, nor does every one who joins stay,” Gaelen answered with a scowl. “Whoever these dahl’reisen are, I doubt they’re acting in the name of the Brotherhood.”

  “You doubt?” Tajik pounced on the opening. “Which is another way of saying you hope it’s not them, but you aren’t really sure, isn’t it?”

  “They are dahl’reisen, Tajik. The Dark Path’s call can be very strong.”

  “Quiet!” Bel snapped. His eyes were hazy, his mind traveling on weaves of lavender light, probing the minds of the warriors engaged in the melee.

  “Bel, something is wrong.” Ellysetta walked into the command tent. “No one from this new battle in the encampment is being brought to me. Surely there must be wounded? “

  “There are wounded.” His eyes narrowed and began to glow as he sent his senses out, away from the protected healing enclave. “They do not come.”

  “Why?”

  “They don’t believe themselves badly injured. They are determined not to give up.” He blinked, and his eyes lost the soft haze of magic, becoming twin cobalt diamonds glittering beneath ebony brows. “All they’re thinking of is fighting, of dying, if necessary, to protect king and country.”

  “Krekk,” Gaelen said.

  “What is it?” Ellysetta asked.

  “It’s a rare mortal who, when faced with his own death, thinks only of king and country. Mortals may believe in the Bright Lord and his promises of a next life, but every one of them I’ve ever fought beside has clung to this life with his last dying breath.”

  “Are they Mage-claimed?”

  “I doubt it. I checked many of them personally,” Gaelen said. “So many would not fall so quickly. And even if it were possible, directing so many Mage-claimed all at once would raise such a stink of Azrahn that every Fey for forty miles would come running.”

  “Could the dahl’reisen be controlling them with a Spirit weave?” Gil asked.

  Bel shook his head. “I already checked. It’s not Spirit. I don’t think it’s a weave at all—or if it is, it’s nothing I can detect.”

  Gaelen turned slowly. Thin, questing tendrils of his magic spun out in every direction, and with each quarter turn, the frown on his face deepened. “It must be a s
pell of some kind. But I can’t sense what it is or where it’s coming from or how it’s controlling them.”

  “Whatever it is,” Tajik interrupted, “it’s not affecting only Bonn’s men anymore. I’m getting reports from all over the encampment. Our own men are turning on each other. Fey included.”

  “Scorching Hells!” Rain and the Fey fired Fey’cha without cease to cover their retreat, but the attackers only seemed to be multiplying—and determined to kill them.

  “Watch out, Feyreisen!” Powerful air weaves swirled around Rain, batting down a red Fey’cha that had been flying towards him. At the same time, five lu’tan loosed their own red daggers. They screamed and fell to their knees in agony as the dahl’reisen attacker clutched his pierced chest and collapsed in death.

  “Feyreisen, I know that dahl’reisen.” One of the Fey commanders pointed to the body. “He’s Paris vel Mirothel, an Earth master who came with us from Dharsa. He’s one of our own.”

  “Rasa?” Rain asked.

  “Nei. Not even close. He was only a boy during the Mage Wars.”

  Rain’s mouth went grim. If Paris hadn’t been rasa, slaughtering a thousand mortals should not have tipped him into Shadow… and yet clearly something had. That could only mean one thing. Paris had either slain one of the dahl’reisen or one of his own blade brothers—and then come after the rest of his blade brothers.

  “Whatever this is,” the Fey commander said, “it’s too dangerous to risk its spreading further. Fey are killing Fey. You should have the tairen fire the field.”

  “Fire the field?” Bonn echoed. “You can’t be serious. These are our own men—including some of my oldest and most loyal friends.”

  “As your Avis just proved, those friends would kill you if they could,” Rain reminded him.

  “Isn’t there some other way to neutralize them until we can figure out a way to undo whatever has taken over their minds? “