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  Allegria paused long enough to yell back instructions to her apprentice. “Ella, keep to the fringes and watch Quinn’s back. Quinn?”

  Quinn nodded, gripping the scimitars he favored. “I’ll keep an eye on her.”

  Dexia, the being of dark origins who appeared to be nothing more than a girl child of approximately ten summers, dashed past Hallow, showing a mouthful of extremely pointed teeth, and with a shriek, flung herself on a spirit that was about to cleave Deo’s head from his body. Her hands and teeth shredded the form of the spirit before he even knew what was happening.

  Reddish gold light flowed around Deo when he slammed magic into another Eidolon, causing the warrior to burst into a shower of silver rain. Hallow sighted the thane, one of the three kings who ruled the Eidolon, fighting a familiar ghostly form.

  The captain of the Kelos guard was doing his best to keep up with the thane, but even as Hallow watched, the captain was cleaved in two, from his shoulder down to the opposite hip.

  Anger roared to life in Hallow. Ever since Hallow had assumed his role as Master of Kelos, the captain of the guard had been nothing but a burr in his side, but the captain was his burr, and no one else had a right to smite him. He allowed the chaos magic to slip out of control just a little, sending out a wave of the sickly red energy that destroyed everything it touched. Unfortunately, the thane had seen Allegria and, obviously remembering her visit to his crypt, yelled an oath and charged toward her.

  Hallow spun around to help Allegria, but another Eidolon leaped forward, slicing at his leg, cutting deep into his thigh and making him stagger to the side. “Allegria! Behind you!” he yelled, warning her of the oncoming thane. She turned from where she’d taken up a position on the fallen roof of a house, her long, narrow swords flashing silver and gold as she fought.

  “Goddesses of day and night protect us all,” Hallow swore, jerking the black staff from his back, aware that it wasn’t as potent as it should be without Thorn atop it, but focusing his arcany into it even as one hand danced, drawing blood magic symbols that hung in the air before slowly forming into a chain. He flung the chain on the Eidolon who had crippled him at the same time he slammed down his staff, blasting the spirit with arcany.

  “What the—” There was an answering explosion from the south that for a moment, had him turning in surprise. Had Deo suddenly mastered the magic of the Starborn? He’d been threatening as much during the entire trip from Eris, but Hallow had no time to ascertain what had happened. “Stay strong, my heart! I’m coming to help you.” He ran as fast as he could with his injured leg, his eyes on Allegria while she fought the Eidolon who had climbed onto the roof with her. Over the heads of other Eidolon, Hallow could see the crowned head of the thane, indicating the king was working his way toward Allegria.

  Hallow gritted his teeth against the pain and weakness in his leg, slashing out with the staff at the same time he alternated between sending balls of pure arcany into the mass of Eidolon and drawing the blood symbols that formed into chains taking down every Eidolon within range.

  Another blast sounded from the south, this one closer, strong enough to rock the buildings.

  “That was not from Deo,” he growled to himself. He wanted desperately to see whether it was friend or foe who was wielding arcany, but greater still was the need to protect his love. A half dozen Eidolon stood between him and the thane, who was even now starting to climb the crumbled wall that gave access to the collapsed roof. With effort, Hallow stood still, gathered up every last morsel of arcany he could, and released it in a blast that not only sent the spirits around him flying, but knocked the thane down the wall at the same time. Rock and dust exploded around them, showering down in a painful rain. Hallow ignored the debris as he stumbled forward, slamming bolts of magic into the fallen Eidolon attempting to rise.

  The thane snarled something in a language foreign to Hallow, leaping up the wall and lunging toward Allegria at the same time she sliced off the head of the Eidolon nearest her.

  “Allegria!” Hallow yelled again, but she had seen the approach of the thane, and spun around to face him. He noted quickly that although she held both swords in her hands, her chest rose and fell rapidly, and her face was dirty with dust and sweat. She’d told him that she had barely escaped with her life the last time she’d met the thane, and now here she was facing him when she was clearly tired from fighting what seemed like a never-ending wave of spirit warriors.

  Hallow started chanting as he climbed after the thane, his injured leg buckling under the strain, slipping out from under him and causing him to fall forward. He swore profanely, calling on Bellias to give him the strength needed to wield her magic as he tried to rise. To his surprise, strong hands grabbed him by his arms, jerking him upward.

  “Master Hallow, I assume?” one of the two men grasping him asked. He was a short, stocky man with a close-trimmed beard, and the blue eyes of an arcanist. “I’m Tygo. That’s Aarav. You called for us, and here we are. Just in time, it would appear.”

  “The thane,” Hallow said, struggling to get up the fallen wall. “That’s my wife up there with him. Help her!”

  Aarav, a tall, thin man who was one of the arcanists Hallow had summoned upon leaving Eris, leaped forward, a blue-white ball of arcany in his hands. Allegria, with a cry that warmed Hallow’s heart, leaped to the side, her swords slashing as she turned toward the thane, positioning him so that Hallow—and the other arcanists—could blast him back to his crypt.

  Hallow stood at the top of the wall, his breath ragged and rasping while he summoned the last of his strength, holding the staff as arcany rippled down his arms onto the wooden shaft, little white and blue tendrils of magic snapping in the air, making the fine hairs on his arms stand on end. The thane, glancing toward them, hesitated a minute, giving Allegria the opening she was clearly waiting for. She lunged toward him, but just as her sword was about to pierce his throat, he turned, one hand grabbing her hair and yanking her up close to his body, using her as a shield even as Hallow and the other two arcanists prepared to destroy his corporeal form.

  The thane’s gaze met Hallow’s even as his heart seemed to stop. “You will not succeed!” the thane snarled. “This time, I will have redemption!”

  And then, in the length of time it takes for one moment to pass to another, the thane was gone, clearly having returned to the spirit realm.

  And taken Allegria with him.

  Chapter 3

  “Any news, Lord Israel?”

  Israel Langton, leader of the Fireborn, turned from where he had been staring out into the night, his eyes on the bonfires that dotted the town of Abet, and cocked an inquisitive eyebrow at the woman before him.

  “I saw your headman return earlier,” explained Sandorillan, head priestess at the temple of Kiriah Sunbringer. Although her brown eyes were downcast, and her demeanor was suitably placid and contemplative as befitted her profession, Israel was not deceived. He’d known Lady Sandor for several hundred years, and a fiercer protector of her people—short of Queen Dasa herself—he had yet to find.

  “Marston traveled as far as the Neck,” he answered, glancing back at Abet. He and his handful of men and women were all that remained of his company. They were camped on one of the three heavily forested hills ringing the east side of the capital city, ostensibly to await further members of his force, but in reality he feared it was more a matter of licking their wounds. The battle that his arrival at Abet had triggered had been quick and decisive, leaving him well aware that Jalas had not been idle during the time Israel had spent in Eris rescuing the queen and their son. “He found none but the infirm and elderly, those unable to raise a sword, or indeed, even to sit upon a horse. Crops lie untended, houses are abandoned, and the towns are empty of all but those who are least able to care for themselves.”

  “Jalas has taken them for what purpose?” Sandor asked, disbelief and horror in her ey
es. “Do not say he has put to death all of the Fireborn?”

  Israel returned to the small camp table at which he’d been sitting, writing messages. “Not slaughtered them, no. Marston said that great trains of people, horses, oxen, and other such beasts were reported to have passed through the Neck and onward north, to the High Lands.”

  Sandor’s eyes widened. “Jalas has taken prisoner all of Aryia? How can he do so? What does he intend to do with everyone?”

  “Put them to work as slaves is my guess.” Israel spilt the wax of a candle onto one of the messages, sealing it with his signet ring. “Which makes it much harder for us to retake Abet.”

  “Is it hopeless, then?” the priestess asked, her stillness making Israel feel twitchy.

  A veteran of many battles, most of them against the Fireborn’s long-held foes, the Starborn, Israel was well aware that times of inactivity were as necessary as those when fighting exhausted his body and mind. And yet, the fact that he had been denied entry into his own city, the one he had built over the course of the last two hundred years, grated on him. He felt restless, driven to action, but knew that until his small company received reinforcements, it would be folly to try to drive Jalas from Abet.

  The last such attempt had cost him two men and Idril.

  “If it was hopeless, I would have withdrawn immediately,” he answered after giving one of the men-at-arms the sealed parchments to pass along to the messengers. “Marston told me that it is rumored several towns along the west coast escaped Jalas’s tribesmen; the people hid in the caves that dot the shoreline. If that is true, and Marston can convince them that Aryia has need of their service, then all will not be lost.”

  “I will pray to the blessed goddess that is so,” Sandor murmured, bowing and withdrawing almost silently to her tent.

  Israel’s gaze flickered back to the dots of yellow and orange light that were visible along the parapets of his beloved home. “Let us hope Kiriah hears that prayer. We desperately need her help.”

  Sandor, pausing at the flap of her tent, turned and gave him an odd look, opening her mouth to speak, then with a little shake of her head entered her tent instead.

  * * * *

  The next two weeks passed with tedious slowness. Israel, driven by the need to be doing something, anything, spent his days hunting, both for game to feed the company of twenty-two who had followed him to Eris and back, and for any survivors of Jalas’s purge.

  On the fourteenth day, he arrived back at camp with a handful of his men, hauling the carcass of a buck they’d taken down, only to discover a messenger just setting off to find him. Marston had returned at last, and with him another score of men and women.

  “You are a most welcome sight,” Israel said, clapping Marston on the shoulder and greeting the newcomers. “You all are, for we have sore need of strong sword arms.”

  “Lady Idril has not been released, I take it?” Marston asked when Israel ordered the newcomers be given food and places to sleep, and for the mounts to be fed and watered.

  Israel frowned as he turned back to Marston, gesturing for his old friend and first in command to take a seat at his table, pouring them both goblets of wine. “She has not. Jalas might find his daughter’s tongue sharper than an adder’s bite, but I doubt if he would be foolish enough to simply turn her out. Holding her as a hostage guarantees Deo’s good behavior.”

  Marston rubbed the whiskers on his chin, the lines of strain and exhaustion on his face revealing the speed at which he’d traveled from the other side of Aryia. “That is curious, most curious, my lord. One of the women I found upon the road was a handmaiden to Lady Idril. She said that she’d received a message a sennight ago that Lady Idril had need of her aid. I thought that meant she had escaped the hold her father had on her.”

  “A sennight ago?” Israel cast his mind back. “There was no action then that we witnessed. Yesterday there was a great coming and going of men. Mostly coming, but enough men patrolled outside the town that our scouts made note of it. That is the only sign we have seen of Jalas stirring.”

  “Surely Lady Idril would come here, to you, should she make her escape?” Marston asked.

  Israel was slow to answer, his mind turning over the question. Though it was on the tip of his tongue to answer that Idril would naturally turn to her nearest allies, his familiarity with her stubbornness—rivaled only by that of his son—had him qualifying that statement. “She would if she had need of our protection. But it has been many years since I have understood the paths that Lady Idril’s mind walks.”

  Marston shared a rare grin. “She is well matched with Lord Deo in that regard.”

  “Aye. And the less said about the sort of half-mad children they will have, the better. Tell me of what you found on your way to the coast.”

  The next hour was spent hearing of Marston’s journey, of the fields left fallow and others filled with crops consumed by birds, of empty villages, and the old and infirm who were slowly starving.

  Israel let his gaze wander over the people milling around the encampment, the men and women busily setting up pallets and tents, eating, tending their animals, or just lying on the ground, resting. A company of forty-two was not enough to challenge the Tribe of Jalas when he was protected by the strong walls of Abet.

  “Take five of the Easterners you brought back, and give them supplies, a cart, and a horse. Send them to each region, and tell them they must travel from village to village, relocating those who are willing to do so, and making sure the others do not starve. They may draw on our reserves to feed those who were left behind, although I would prefer that local resources be used whenever possible.”

  It was evening before the logistics were taken care of, and Israel felt more anxious than ever to be doing something. Just as he was about to propose to Marston that a covert trip to Abet might be managed without rousing too many of Jalas’s guards, he noticed something odd.

  “Do you see what I see?” he asked, nodding toward the port side of Abet, and handing over his spyglass.

  Marston took it, looked, then lowered the glass, his eyebrows raised. “Where are all the ships?”

  “That is a very good question.” He thought for a few moments. “I wonder…could Jalas be so foolish as to have sent his tribesmen away from Abet?”

  “He might if he thought the sheer number of captives he drove north could turn on their captors and take over the High Lands,” Marston answered, watching him closely.

  “It is an interesting thought, and one that leads me to believe that a little exploration of Abet under the light of Bellias is in order.”

  “That is not needed if all you wish to know is how many members of the Tribe remain in town,” a female voice called out of the darkness. There was a ripple in the company, from which emerged a woman with the lithe, elegant grace of a doe.

  Idril, Jewel of the High Lands, strode forward with three handmaidens in her wake. She looked annoyed, Israel was amused to note, her gown torn and dirty, her face showing signs of mud that had washed off none too well, her hair poking out at odd angles—in fact, everything about her was unlike the coolly collected perfection that was the norm for Idril. But more unusual than the state of her clothing was her agitation. Israel had grown accustomed to seeing an invariably placid, unemotional expression on her face.

  “Lady Idril,” he said gravely, keeping the amusement from his voice at her unkempt appearance. He knew it must be costing her pride a great deal. “So the rumors were true, then? You escaped your father’s grasp? Or did you make him see reason?”

  “Reason,” she said with a sound that in any other woman he would have called a snort. That, too, was unlike her. Idly, Israel wondered if the few weeks she’d spent in Deo’s company had cracked her cool, calm exterior. “My father wouldn’t know reason it if came up and bit him on his gigantic pink—”

  “Lady Idril, you are
with us again? Blessings upon you, child.” Sandor’s voice cut across her words without effort.

  Marston choked, and bowing at Idril, murmured something about seeing to his duties.

  Idril managed to get herself under control, her features smoothing out to an expression of blithe unconcern. “Greetings, Lady Sandor. I am, as you see, although no thanks to my father. To answer your question, Israel, my father has not been smitten upon the head with the reason stick. If such a thing existed, I would happily volunteer to be the one to beat him about the head and shoulders with it. I managed to get out via the Captain’s Swain.”

  Israel blinked at the name of the seediest, rowdiest of all taverns in Abet, one frequented only by women who paid no mind to their reputation. “Via the trapdoor to the bay?” he asked, eyeing the wrinkled and filthy gown, one that bore all the signs of having been much abused.

  “Yes.” A fleeting grimace passed over her face as she lifted her chin. “My ladies were waiting for me, and assisted me ashore.”

  “Lady Idril fought us most strenuously,” one of the handmaidens piped up in a high, bell-like voice. “She does not swim, and struggled so hard when she was in the water that we had to knock her insensible in order to drag her ashore, and then we had to hide in the swineherd’s hut when Lord Jalas’s men rode past.”

  “Yes, I don’t think we need to go into all the details of my escape,” Idril said swiftly, shooting a glare at the maid in question.

  “And then she woke up just as the guard noticed Noellia outside the swineherd’s hut, so we had to knock Lady Idril senseless again because she began to yell, and the guard came in to see, but luckily, we had just pushed Lady Idril out the window into the wallow, and the pigs hid her from view. Well,” the second handmaiden added with a glance at her compatriots, “that and the mud, which was up to our knees.”

  Lady Idril looked as if she would happily murder her handmaidens, but after a moment’s obvious struggle with such violent emotions, she lifted her chin again, and graced Israel with one of the cool, impersonal looks that were all too familiar. “My journey here was fraught with many trials, but I am at last free of my father, and able to help you take control of the city again.”