“Whatever the reason, that could be a tunnel,” Konowa said. “If it is, then we need to explore it.”

Pimmer rubbed his chin as if debating his next words very carefully. “Not to throw a damper on things, but won’t that take time, time we don’t have.”

Now you worry about time. “We’ll make time,” Konowa said, making sure his tone gave no room for argument. “RSM, when the regiment arrives, I want that rock pile searched. If it’s a tunnel entrance, I want to know what’s down there. Viceroy, look at that map again. If there are any other oddities on there that could mean a tunnel or hole or anything like that, I want to know.” His words were coming out faster than he intended, but he didn’t care. Visyna and Kritton were both alive, and they were somewhere nearby. He knew it. And he was going to find both of them.

“This does shed new light on things,” Pimmer said, standing up and wandering off with his map held close to his face. Konowa watched him walk over to where Tyul was sitting and plop down in front of him. He spread the map out between them, sheltering it from the snow with part of his robe, and began talking. The elf ignored him though Pimmer didn’t seem to notice.

Konowa turned back to Yimt, who was staring up at him with a questioning look.

“What?”

“It’s just that the last time I saw you look that happy, you were killing something,” Yimt said.

Was Konowa going mad? He’d just walked through a field of horrors and this is how he reacted? But it wasn’t that. He struggled to understand the feeling swelling inside him. It was . . . balance. All his life he’d been angry, thinking that one day he’d find peace and be able to come to terms with the world and his place in it. But he’d had it all wrong. He’d been miserable with his anger, but it gave him purpose. To lose it would be to rob him of something important. He needed his anger, but he needed more, too. He needed to be part of something. For a long time the regiment had served that role. It was his family. The time in the forest during his banishment had been hell. He realized that despite his outward bravado he wasn’t so different from everyone else. He wanted to be part of something more than himself. Maybe he could find it with Visyna. All he knew for certain was that the time was coming when he would have to make choices. Permanent, inviolable choices.

Konowa looked at Yimt and decided he could risk revealing a little of what he was experiencing. “What do you call it when you suddenly realize something that makes your whole life make sense? Everything just comes into view like a fog has lifted?”

Yimt snapped his fingers. “You, Major, just had what they call in technical terms an e-piff-anny. It’s named after some lass from way back. It means you came to an abrupt understanding of something. It’s like when you wake up after a night at the pub and for a minute you don’t know why your bed is wet and lumpy and your beard smells like the wrong end of a goat, not that there’s a right end, and you suddenly remember the wife chasing you out of the quarry with a battle-ax yelling at you not to come back until you sober up.”

“Ahh, that sounds . . . possible,” Konowa said, surprised that he actually got the gist of what the dwarf was saying if not the full meaning. “Um, I’ll probably regret this, but a goat?”

“Turns out I stumbled into the local cheesemongers shop a few doors down and took a table of cheese curds as a big bed. Wound up buying seventy-five pounds of a right tangy cheddar. Lucky for me the wife had put up some prune preserves, because after two weeks of eating cheese I was—” whatever Yimt was going to say was thankfully interrupted by a shout from the front gate.

“Major, you’d better get over here!”

Even before Konowa made it to the front gate he knew it was trouble. He sprinted the last few yards and came to a stop by the soldiers standing guard. They were all pointing down to the desert floor.

“Rakkes, sir, hundreds and hundreds of the buggers! They’re swarming in from all over.”

The chill that ran down Konowa’s spine had nothing to do with the black acorn. The regiment had yet to reach the bottom of the hill, but the rakkes already had.

“They just came out of nowhere, Major. One minute it was quiet and the next they were everywhere.”

Konowa gripped the edge of the wooden gate. The snow-covered desert plain below the hill was dotted with hundreds of rakkes. They bounded through the snow from every direction, all homing in on the regiment now stranded several hundred yards from the bottom of the road leading up to the gate. Deep in the heart of the swirling dark mass of rakkes, a vortex of black light spun on a wobbling axis. Images of a twisted, mangled figure walked in the center of it. The rakkes kept well clear of the spinning darkness. Konowa cursed under his breath.

“What is that thing?” Corporal Feylan asked, using his musket to point.

“One viceroy too many,” Konowa said. Corporal Feylan brought his musket tight into his shoulder ready to fire.

Konowa reached out a hand and knocked the muzzle down. “That’s a thousand yards if it’s a foot. You couldn’t hit that thing if you tried that shot for a month straight. And I doubt it would even notice a musket ball going through it.”

Feylan looked like he wanted to try anyway, but he grounded his musket. “We can’t just stand here, sir. We have to do something. The regiment is marching right into a noose. They’ll be ripped to shreds.”

“Easy, Feylan, you’re not thinking. One, there’s damn little the handful of us could do from up here, so I’d rather not draw attention to ourselves at the moment.”

Feylan lifted his musket again, his nostrils flaring. “But that’s the point, Major. If we draw their attention the regiment will have a chance.”

Konowa grabbed Feylan by the collar and pulled him forward just past the front gate. “What do you see right down there littered all over the rocks?”

“It’s more dead rakkes.”

“But they’re not just dead, are they? They’ve been tortured. Their bodies were mutilated and set out on display. Now who do you suppose all these new rakkes are going to think did that?”

“Whoever’s up here in the fort . . .” Feylan said, his voice trailing off.

“Exactly,” Konowa said, letting go of the soldier’s collar and patting him on the shoulder. “We’re relatively safe in here as long as we don’t do anything stupid. Even if the rakkes do climb up the hill they’ll have a devil of a time trying to get in. This fort isn’t much, but it’s on top of a chunk of steep rock, and that counts for a lot.” He put his hand on Feylan’s shoulder and gave it a firm squeeze. “Sometimes, lad, the smartest thing you can do is nothing at all.”

“But . . . you mean we just sit here and watch?”

Konowa pointed toward the desert floor. Black frost etched jagged lines in front of the oncoming rakkes. Icy flames rose from the ground then guttered out. In their place stood the shades of the regiment’s dead. The deathly remains of Regimental Sergeant Major Lorian sat astride the great, black warhorse Zwindarra. Konowa shivered in spite of himself. “We let the Darkly Departed do what they do best.”

Lorian charged, leaning forward over Zwindarra’s thick neck. The horse glided more than galloped across the snow and smashed into three rakkes. Blurred images of slashing hooves and Lorian’s ghostly saber flashed among the rakkes and blood splattered the snow in great swathes.

The other shades followed suit, cutting through the rakkes with a fierce abandon Konowa couldn’t remember seeing before. Something, or someone, had definitely fired them up.

“Major, a word?”

Konowa turned. Pimmer stood behind him with his pistol in one hand and a brown leather wrapped telescope in the other. The Birsooni map was folded and tucked in the front of his belt and his small brass storm lantern now hung from a loop of heavy twine around his right shoulder. In his layers of Hasshugeb robes the diplomat looked like a desert warrior ready for anything.

“You were right,” Pimmer said.

“About?” Konowa asked. He really didn’t have time for this, but hearing “you were right” granted the man a little leeway. It wasn’t often Konowa heard those three magic words.

“The map. It turns out that notation does mean tunnel. I think you’d better look.” He handed Konowa the telescope and pointed to the ladder leading up to the southern walkway.

“That’s good to know, but exploring it will have to wait at the moment,” Konowa said, turning back to watch the unfolding battle on the desert floor below. At first he thought a fog had rolled in, but realized it was the freezing mist of spilled blood. His stomach heaved. The black vortex continued to move forward, but as of yet had made no obvious signs of joining the fray. That worried Konowa. A hand on Konowa’s arm spun him around to face a stern-looking Viceroy. “I’m afraid I didn’t make myself clear. I know it’s a tunnel because people are emerging from it as we speak.”

Konowa grabbed the telescope from Pimmer’s hand and tore across the courtyard. “Keep a close watch on that twisted Emissary, but don’t do anything. I’ll be back!” he shouted over his shoulder. He skidded to a stop at the foot of the ladder and leaped, barely touching the rungs as he vaulted up the ladder and landed on the wood plank walkway attached to the wall. It shook alarmingly, but he barely noticed as he ran across it to where Private Meswiz stood clinging to the top of the wall. He pointed down toward the desert.

“They started popping up like rabbits by that pile of rocks. At first I thought I was seeing things, but they’re there all right.”

Konowa peered into the night. “Are you sure? Maybe it was just rakkes roaming around. I can barely see anything.”

“I know I saw people with muskets, sir, at least, I’m pretty sure that’s what they were.”

Konowa pulled the telescope open to its full length and sighted it where the soldier was pointing. Everything was black.

“What’s wrong with this thing?”

“The lens cover . . .” Private Meswiz said.

“Damn it,” Konowa muttered, ripping the cover off and re-sighting the telescope. He struggled to find the spot again. “I don’t see . . . wait, there are figures there.” Something about that one looks familiar . . . He moved the larger tube to bring the image into focus.

He lowered the telescope.

Kritton.

Do you see? This is what that fool Konowa has brought down upon us all!” Kritton said, throwing his hands around to encompass the snow-covered desert. He glared at Visyna. There was a certainty of purpose in his eyes that would brook no dispute. In someone else it might have been viewed as fierce determination, but Visyna knew this was something different, something lethal.

He’s losing control, she realized. It was only a matter of time before he tried to kill them all.

Kritton continued to rage, all the while flailing his arms around. His uniform hung in tatters from his lean frame. His hair was unkempt and his caerna was little more than a rag.

She lowered her head and turned away, partly to avoid antagonizing him further, but also to protect her face from the wind-whipped snow buffeting her. After the warm confines of the tunnel, she was finding it difficult to catch her breath in the cold. None of them were dressed for this weather, and all of them were tired, hungry, thirsty, and nursing wounds. They wouldn’t last more than an hour or two in these conditions.

She waited, bringing her hands in tight to her chest to warm her fingers in case she had to begin weaving. Kritton cursed and walked away, shouting orders to the elves to keep their muskets pointed at the prisoners. Visyna searched their faces, looking for a sign of compassion, of regret, or even shame, but all she saw were masks of indifference. The look in their eyes was as cold as the steel of their bayonets. Visyna had no doubt in her mind they would kill all of them without hesitation.

Hrem appeared beside her a moment later. “I think I was right. There’s a fort just ahead of us on those rocks. That has to be Suhundam’s Hill.”

Visyna squinted into the wind. What at first she took to be more darkness resolved itself into the outline of a jagged collection of rocks topped off with a squat, square box. “We need to act before we get inside there. Kritton is coming apart.”

“Elves could die,” Hrem said, his gaze still fixed on the fort.

“They made their choice. It’s time we made ours,” she said, echoing his words from earlier. She tested the air around her. Now that she knew what to look for her fingers easily found the elves’ threads in the storm. She gasped when her touch found one more surrounded by a cold, black power. Could it be? “I think Konowa is here,” she whispered, looking up at the fort.

“That means the regiment is here, too,” Hrem said, glancing around them before looking back to the top of the wall. “I thought I saw movement up there, but I figured it was just the wind. If the regiment is already inside the fort then Kritton is going to walk himself right into a trap. All we have to do is stay calm and let it happen.”

Visyna couldn’t believe their luck. Would it really be this easy? Kritton barked more orders and the elves and their prisoners began to move. In this weather it would be easy for one of the soldiers to slip away into the night unseen, but where would they run? With no shelter from the storm they would freeze to death out here. She looked at the huddled group of soldiers and realized none of them would be running anywhere. Zwitty, Scolly, and Inkermon were keeping each other upright in a swaying, stumbling fashion. Chayii walked with one hand firmly gripping Jir’s mane. The elf stopped and started to swoon, then caught herself and stood up straight.

“Hrem, I must help Chayii. If she collapses, her hold on Jir will, too, and he’ll attack. Keep the others together.”

Hrem nodded and slid over to steady the trio while Visyna matched her pace with Chayii and casually slipped her arm around her waist. The elf was shaking.

“You must keep your hands free to weave, my child,” Chayii said, turning to look at her. Chayii’s face was gray and her lips were turning blue.

“You’re turning to ice,” Visyna said, gripping the elf more tightly and hoping to get some warmth into her.

“Jir is becoming increasingly difficult to hold, and the weather is not helping. I don’t think I can make it to the fort.”

No. Visyna looked around to make sure no elves were close. “I think I felt Konowa up there. I’m certain I sensed him. We just have to make it inside and we’ll be fine. Everything will be fine.”

“My son is there?”

Visyna squeezed her waist. “You just have to hold on a bit longer.”

At these words Chayii stood up a little straighter. Jir looked up at them and purred, his ears pointing straight up and his muzzle to the wind, sniffing the air. Could he sense Konowa, too, she wondered? A moment later the bengar’s purr turned into a snarl.

Visyna took her hand from Chayii’s waist and sought out the threads again. There were more, hundreds more.

“Rakkes!”

“Where?” Chayii asked, coming to a halt. The elves around them heard her shout and stopped, too. Kritton was there in a flash, eyes boring in on her.

“I warned you, witch,” he said, raising the butt of his musket in preparation to strike her.

Before it could fall, the shrieking cry of a rakke sounded off in the distance. It was answered at once by dozens more. The sound grew to a fury far outstripping the storm. Kritton lowered his musket.

“Back to the tunnel. We need to go back there, now!”

“It’s too late for that,” Hrem said, walking up to place himself between the elf and Visyna. “Didn’t you hear those things? They’re behind us, too. Our only chance now is to make it to the fort. The rakkes will never get us in there.”

Mention of the fort snapped Kritton’s head around to look at the rocky hill. Visyna noticed the elves were watching the storm now and paying no attention to the rest of them.

One of the elves said something to Kritton in elvish and pointed toward the fort, but Kritton shook his head. “The plan was to meet at the foot of the path leading up to the main gate. The dwarf Griz Jahrfel will be there.”

“Kritton, if Griz Jahrfel is anywhere around here, he and the rest of his band of thieves are probably rakke meat by now,” Hrem said. “Listen to them. We have to get to the fort.”

Kritton raised his musket as if to fire. “You forget who’s in charge here! We will not go back in that fort!” Kritton shouted.

By now all the elves had formed a small square facing outward. This was exactly the chance Visyna had been looking for, but now that there were rakkes nearby she wasn’t certain if she should take it. She believed in her heart that Konowa was in that fort, and wanted nothing more than for him to charge out with the regiment to save them, but she already knew that was impossible. A regiment can’t move that fast, and it would be suicide to bring them out of the security of the fort.

She made up her mind.

While Hrem and Kritton continued to argue she moved over to stand in front of Zwitty, Scolly, and Inkermon. She turned to them as if offering them aid.

“Tell me if Kritton comes this way,” she said.

“What are you up to?” Zwitty asked, his weaselly face a scowl of suspicion.

“Saving your lives,” she said.

Ignoring the threads of life around her, Visyna focused instead on the weather. She closed her eyes and focused her attention skyward, picking out a single snowflake fluttering in the air several hundred feet up. Using it as her focal point, she began to draw more flakes to it, hoping to create a microstorm that would blind Kritton and the elves long enough to cover their escape.

Instead of massing together into a billowing pile, however, the flakes melted and froze together, forming a spinning chunk of ice. She grimaced, feeling the sting of the Shadow Monarch’s taint in the storm. Her dexterity was hampered by the pain. The more she wove the larger the ice grew. It was already man-sized and growing faster as it fell. The horror of what she had set in motion dawned on her. This wasn’t going to be a blinding storm, it was a single chunk of solid metallic ice.

She saw Kritton’s life force clearly in the storm. It was bound in the Shadow Monarch’s oath and pulsing with a black energy. It troubled her that it was so similar to that of Konowa’s, but unlike Konowa, she knew Kritton wasn’t going to change. There was more than just the oath staining Kritton’s energy. His rage and his need for revenge was consuming him, making him as toxic as the rakkes around them.

Visyna turned and opened her eyes. Kritton was still yelling at Hrem, but he paused in mid-sentence and looked at her. He saw her hands and his eyes grew wide.

He knows.

Kritton began to bring his musket up to his shoulder again. He was going to fire. Time stood still. Visyna knew what she had to do, but unlike the beetle in the tunnel, this would be no accident. She lowered her hands, removing the last of her hold on the falling ice. It occurred to her then she had the power in her to divert the ice so that it wouldn’t fall directly on Kritton, but she didn’t. A part of her was screaming that this was wrong, and that there would truly be no turning back, but her survival and that of the group meant more.

She made a choice.

There was a rush of air, a blur, and then a spray of red mist as the ice slammed into Kritton’s skull. The ice didn’t shatter then, but carried on to pulverize Kritton’s body into a four-foot-deep crater in the frozen desert floor.

Visyna cried out. The violence of Kritton’s death shocked her. Blood, snow, and ice exploded in every direction. A chunk of ice struck Visyna in the stomach, knocking her backward into the three soldiers, sending all four of them tumbling to the snow.

Visyna gasped for breath, her arms and legs twitching as she tried to regain control of her senses. A hand appeared out of the dark. She reached for it, yelping as the frost fire singed her bare flesh. Hrem hauled her upright then quickly let go. Scolly, Zwitty, and Inkermon staggered to their feet. Jir padded into view with Chayii still gripping his mane.

“That was one hell of an ace you had tucked up your sleeve,” Hrem said. There was a fierce grin of satisfaction on his face that Visyna couldn’t share. He held up his other hand. Yimt’s drukar was clenched in his fist. Did he want to give it to her as a war prize? She’d just murdered another living being. She knew she had done it for all the right reasons, but it still didn’t change the fact of what she had done. She shook her head and turned away.

A musket fired. Everyone ducked, but the shot had been aimed away from them. Rakkes yowled. A rock sailed overhead. The elves were all turned to face outward. More muskets fired.

“The rakkes are closing in,” Hrem shouted. “We have to try for the fort. Can you do more of that weather stuff?”

Visyna was still reeling. It wasn’t remorse, but more shock that she had deliberately taken another life. She tried to probe her feelings further, wanting to feel something beyond disbelief, but her mind was too full of images of blood-splattered ice and the horrible sound of crunching bone. She knew it would stay with her the rest of her life.

“Not like that, but I should be able to keep us partially hidden in the storm.” She suddenly felt the need to explain herself. “I can’t kill them all, Hrem. I did what I had to do to stop Kritton, but I can’t take the lives of all these elves. Even if I had the power I don’t think I could do it.”

“You won’t have to,” Hrem said, looking away.

Visyna followed his gaze. The elves were disappearing into the snow, firing their muskets as they went.

“Are they running away?” she asked.

“Don’t know and don’t care,” Hrem said. “After what you did to Kritton, they probably figure they’re safer with the rakkes. If anything, they should prove a nice distraction for us. We’re a lot smaller group. We have a better chance of remaining undetected.”

A volley of musket fire made further conversation impossible. Visyna ducked again. Rakkes screamed in pain from somewhere close.

“You’re risking our lives,” Zwitty said, pointing a finger at Hrem. “You really think one of these elves won’t put a musket ball in our back as a parting gift? They were ready to end every last one of us down in that tunnel. We set out toward the fort on our own and they might just fire a volley at us.”

“Would you rather stay here and wait for the rakkes?” Hrem asked.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Scolly said, looking at Zwitty. “Those rakkes are terrible.”

Zwitty looked at Scolly, opened his mouth and then closed it in a frown. He lowered his hand. “No one wants to meet up with those damn rakkes, I’m just saying it’s our lives if you’re wrong, Hrem.”

“It’s our lives regardless,” Visyna added, marshaling her energy. “We have to get to the fort, it’s the only chance we have. I should be able to weave a small storm within the storm that will keep us hidden.”

“Can you control it?” Zwitty asked. The concern in his voice was obvious. They had all seen Kritton’s death. Cannon balls weren’t that destructive.

Visyna knew her cheeks were burning. She hadn’t meant to create a massive chunk of ice, but in the end it saved them. She saved them. “I won’t be focusing my energy above us, only around us. You’ll all be fine, just don’t touch me, and don’t stray outside the area I protect.”

“And if we did?” Zwitty asked.

Visyna said nothing, simply looking over at the crater where Kritton had been standing.

The musket fire lessened. Visyna could still see a few of the elves through the snow, but it was as if her group no longer existed. Now that Kritton was dead, maybe his toxic concepts of honor and revenge would no longer sway the elves. She wanted to believe that was true, but she had already made up her mind she wasn’t going to stay here to find out.

She noticed Chayii still holding on to Jir and walked over to them. “Konowa must know we’re here. We just have to make it to the walls and we’ll be safe.”

“You have a lot of faith in my son,” Chayii said. It was a statement. Visyna detected no sarcasm.

“I do, but I also have a lot of faith in myself, and in you and Jir and the rest of the squad, even Zwitty.”

Chayii’s eyebrows went up and Visyna tilted her head. “Well, faith that he doesn’t want to get left out here all alone.”

The elf smiled. “In that case, my faith in him equals yours.”

Visyna paused, listening to more musket fire. Before she could stop herself she blurted out the question she knew she had to ask. “Do you want me to save them? The elves?”

Chayii stood up straighter. Her eyes peered deep into Visyna’s and for several seconds she said nothing.

“No,” Chayii said. Her voice was free of any emotion. “They are beyond our help.”

“But Konowa . . .” Visyna started to say, then paused. She wanted to say that Konowa’s whole life had been about finding his elves. And now that they were so close, they were about to slip away.

Chayii smiled at her. “I think you already know the answer. These are not Konowa’s elves. They were once, but not anymore. If by some miracle they were to survive, Konowa would have no choice but to court-martial every one of them. You know what the penalty for their crimes is? He would have to sign their death warrants.”

Visyna knew it was true. “Is there nothing else we can do?”

“We can save ourselves, my child,” Chayii said. “That will be difficult enough.”

There was a cold logic to what Chayii said that Visyna couldn’t dispute. Hrem strode up to them with the other three soldiers close behind. The musket fire began to pick up in intensity again, and this time it didn’t slacken off. Rakkes roared and called to each other all around them.

“We really need to go,” he said.

Visyna looked one last time at Chayii, who turned away to face the fort. It loomed before them like a dark block. It seemed impossibly far away. She knew she was cold, tired, hungry, and scared and did her best to ignore it. The snow swirled around in patches, providing sporadic views of the desert. She caught glimpse of packs of rakkes and bodies sprawled in the snow.

“Stay close.” She began to weave the air, pulling at the threads around her. Musket fire crackled all around her, making it difficult to concentrate. The responding screams and roars from the rakkes only made it worse. She shook her fingers and rolled her head from side to side. She went deeper into herself, ignoring the chaos and searching for something solid to hold on to.

Konowa. She smiled and growled at the same time. He was less base and more a potent element in an alchemist’s cauldron, but he was energy and life. The key, and one she wasn’t sure she’d ever fully comprehend, was to get the mixture of who he was just right. She had no illusions that she could ever change him . . . at least not completely, but however far he’d drifted from his origins he remained a creature of the natural order. That was enough.

Visyna pictured him in her mind, seeing the elf that he was. She accepted the darkness and the violence that was in him, knowing the choices he’d made had been as difficult as they had been necessary. It didn’t mean she agreed, and it certainly didn’t mean she wasn’t going to help him become a better elf, but for now she found it in herself to accept him the way he was. She’d killed an elf this night because he couldn’t change. The regret weighed heavy on her heart. She would move heaven and earth to help the elf she loved find the strength that Kritton could not.

The ground around her erupted in a geyser of snow and sand. A single column of tightly swirling snow a foot thick climbed twenty feet into the sky. She gasped and slowed down her weaving, allowing the column to settle at a height of six feet.

“The Creator be praised,” Inkermon said, wonder and fear evident in his voice.

Visyna wanted to say his so-called creator had nothing to do with it, but that wasn’t helpful.

“Could you ask him for a little help?” Visyna said, turning her concentration back to the column of snow.

“What, pray to him? Now?” Inkermon asked.

“I could use it. We all could.” She risked a quick look over her shoulder. The soldier appeared stunned.

“No one’s ever asked before,” Inkermon said. He stood up. His knees wobbled, but he stayed upright. “I’m always ridiculed. I have only ever tried to spread the word and offer them a path to redemption.”

“Mercy, Inkermon, don’t get all weepy on us,” Hrem said. “I can’t speak for the rest of them, but I admire a man with firm convictions. Just maybe keep in mind other men might have different ones.”

“There is only one true . . .” Inkermon started to say, then let the rest of his words get taken by the wind. “A prayer right now would be appropriate. Yes, I will call on his aid that we may yet live to do his bidding.”

Visyna smiled. She had no idea who or what might exist beyond this world, but if they wanted to throw a little help their way she wasn’t going to turn it down. She shivered and lifted her hands out in front of her. With a flick of her right wrist she began to tease apart the column, unfurling it like one of Rallie’s scrolls. As she did she coaxed it into a curving wall, bringing it around to fully enclose them in a five-foot-diameter space.

“Not a lot of room in here,” Zwitty muttered.

“Can you ever give your mouth a break?” Hrem asked.

“Look, I’m not saying I want to be on the other side of this thing,” Zwitty said, his defensive whine in full pitch. “I’m just saying it’s tight quarters is all. She’s the one that said we can’t touch her while she’s doing her spells. That’s not going to be easy trying to get to the fort now, is it?”

“It will be challenging,” Chayii said, her grip loosening on Jir’s mane as she crowded in to stand in front of Visyna. The bengar sniffed at the swirling snow a foot away from his muzzle, but had the sense not to touch it. The soldiers shuffled close to stand beside and behind her in a crescent.

“This is the best I can manage,” Visyna said. It truly was. The dawning realization that she now had to maintain this wall while walking several hundred yards over increasingly difficult terrain and surrounded by rakkes made her question if she could really do it.

“Not much though, is it,” Zwitty said, clearly unable to contain himself. “Now that boulder of ice you used to crush Kritton, now that was some good magic. This, though, it’s just a bit of snow swirling around, isn’t it?”

Before she could shout a warning, Zwitty yelped.

“That could have scoured the skin right off my bones!” he shouted. “It’s scalding!”

Visyna felt his hand briefly touch the wall without having to see it. “Do not touch it. The longer the wall is maintained, the hotter it will become. I should warn you, it will likely become very warm in here.”

“I’m still freezing my—Well, it’s freezing right now so a bit warmer would be just fine,” Hrem said.

Let’s hope that’s all it becomes, Visyna thought, easing back on the pace of her weaving. It was going to be a delicate balance. The rakkes would sense the use of magic, so all the swirling snow in the world would only mask them for so long. She’d need to keep them hidden with enough of a barrier to dissuade any curious rakkes from trying to see what was inside.

“Hrem, you’re all soldiers. We need to walk at a steady pace.”

“That I can help you with. All right, ladies and gentleman. Nice and easy. I’ll give the cadence and you just follow along. Ready? By the right . . . and by that I mean your right foot . . . forward . . . march.”

As Hrem called out a soft “left, right, left, right” Visyna used the tempo to help her weaving. She soon had a comfortable rhythm going. Chayii kept her hand on Jir, but for now he seemed perfectly content to pad along with them. He still favored his wounded shoulder, but it didn’t seem to be slowing him down.

“Left, right, left, right, I see the fort straight ahead, left, right, left, right,” Hrem said, saying the words at the same tempo as the cadence.

“Any sign of rakkes?” she asked. “I have to concentrate on this. It’s difficult to see beyond it.”

Hrem didn’t answer right away. “Well,” he said, dropping the cadence, “we’re about to find out just how hot that snow is. Can you brace yourself?”

Visyna risked a quick push of her senses beyond the wall and immediately regretted it. “There’s hundreds of them!”

“I can’t see all that, but I can see enough. We don’t even have any damn weapons,” he said.

Sweat began dripping off the end of Visyna’s nose. She blinked and more drops stung her eyes. She couldn’t afford to wipe her hands across them so she rubbed her face into the cloth of her sleeve while still maintaining her weaving. It was already hot inside the circle and they had barely traveled twenty yards.

“Just stay close . . . and keep moving,” Visyna said, really talking to herself. She already knew she couldn’t keep this up all the way to the fort.

A rakke howled from just outside the swirling wall of snow.

A moment later, Visyna felt the creature impact the wall. Its screams were cut short as the small group continued moving forward and over the rakke’s smoking body. Jir growled and barred his fangs at the sight of the rakke, but other than giving the corpse a good sniff, he left it alone. Visyna stepped over it while doing her best not to look, but the smell of singed hair and flesh made her gag.

“Well, that’s all right then,” Zwitty said, his voice startling loud inside the small area. “Any rakke stupid enough to try to get through this is in for a nasty surprise. Good. But could you turn down the heat a bit?”

“I can’t,” she said, wiping her eyes again. She licked her lips and tasted salt. Her skin felt like she was lying in the sun at high noon. “I’m sorry. It’s only going to get hotter.”

There was a commotion on the other side of the wall and several rakkes began screaming in pain. Fortunately, none of them fell down in their path, but now the snow and sand beneath their feet was turning to mud. Walking was becoming increasingly difficult. If anyone slipped they would fall through the wall. If that didn’t kill them, the slavering beasts on the other side would. They were all walking a tightrope with just one wrong step meaning a horrible death. “I’m going to have to stop,” she said. Her legs were shaking and she was having a hard time walking. Between the fear and her exhaustion it was becoming a challenge just to stand upright.

“Are you mad? We’ve barely—” was all Zwitty managed before the sound of a thump suggested Hrem had knocked him off his train of thought.

“The fort is still quite a piece away,” Hrem said.

“I know,” she said, lifting her sandals out of the mud one at a time only to sink back down again. “I just can’t keep this up. I’m sorry, I thought I could but I can’t.” It was as if the muscles in her legs had been replaced with solid lead.

“You’ve done everything you could, child, no one is blaming you,” Chayii said, her voice calm and without a hint of accusation.

I am, she thought to herself. Her hands were cramping and her hold on the spinning wall was faltering. If she didn’t dissipate it soon, she might lose control of it completely and risk all their lives.

Her right foot caught as she pulled it from the mud and she stumbled. She fumbled her hold on the storm. She struggled to get it back, but it would take more strength than she had left to pull it in tight and keep it strong. The best she could do now was focus it outward, pushing the swirling snow and heat further away while still keeping it swirling around them. Visyna knew before long she would lose even that ability, and when that happened, they would be completely exposed.

And when it happens, I will have killed us all.

Viceroy, I want another exit, now!” Konowa shouted. His right knee was throbbing after jumping the last six feet off the ladder, but pain could wait. He limped across the courtyard of the fort, his mind a whirl of conflicting emotions.

Visyna is alive! And his elves . . . he sped up his gait and to hell with the stabbing sensation in his knee as he tried to process everything. After all this time, they were just a few hundred yards away. Everything and everyone he’d wanted and searched for were now on the outside of the fort.

But it wasn’t what he expected.

The soldiers he thought of as his sons and brothers weren’t the elves out there, but the raggedy-arsed collection of human misfits he’d led into battle from Elfkyna to the Wikumma Islands to here.

The smell of leather, polished copper, and sawdust snapped him back to the here and now. He’d come to a stop under a tattered canvas awning tacked to the inside of the fort’s west wall and held up by two broken cart shafts at the other end. It created about the saddest, leaky, and sagging roof he’d ever seen, but it did serve to keep most of the snow off Pimmer, who had taken refuge underneath it. The spot had clearly been a workshop at one point. Everything from boot soles to leather and canvas straps, bits of brass and pewter, and clay jars littered the ground. Pimmer sat on an overturned bucket while his ever present map was spread out on a door resting on bricks, which created a more than adequate table. His small brass lantern gave off a surprising amount of light.

RSM Arkhorn sat off to the side on a tangled mound of coiled rope, chain, and burlap sacks. He was turning the handle of a small grinding stone set upright in a wooden yoke while holding a piece of copper sheet to it. A rat-sized pyramid of copper dust already filled an earthenware basin set at the base of the grinding wheel.

“I think Kritton’s dead,” Konowa said, “Visyna killed him. Or at least, I think she did. Dropped a huge chunk of ice on him.” The image still shocked him. Between the snow, the dark, and the distance he couldn’t be sure, but even if his eyes couldn’t confirm it, something in his heart did . . . or at least, very much wanted to. That huge chunk of ice had come plummeting from the sky and hit someone. He had no idea she could do that.

Yimt stopped grinding. “Blast. I was looking forward to putting a permanent crimp in his spine myself. You’re sure he’s dead?”

“If he’s not, he’s at the bottom of a crater with his head in his boots.”

Yimt let out a low whistle. “I owe that lass a pint. Is she okay?”

“As far as I can tell,” Konowa said, starting to pace then stopping when the pain in his knee flared up. “I saw a storm. She weaves weather so it had to be something she made. It hid everything from sight, but that’s about all it’s probably good for. There are a lot of rakkes between her and the fort. We have to find a way to help her.”

Pimmer looked up from the map. The expression on his face wasn’t encouraging. “We’ve gone over this a hundred times from a dozen different angles and there’s no other way in or out except the main gate and the entrance we used.”

Konowa wasn’t satisfied. “They must have built more bolt holes. There has to be another way.”

Pimmer shook his head. “I’m sorry, Major, but I don’t see it. And even if there were . . .” he said, shrugging his shoulders.

“Meaning what?” Konowa asked, the pain in his knee forgotten.

“Meaning,” Yimt said, “what would we do with it? There’s hundreds of yards between us and them, and then there’s a vertical climb to get up here. And that’s not counting the rakkes. There’s precious little we can do for them by charging outside these walls without a plan.”

Konowa couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “This isn’t like the regiment. They have the Darkly Departed. They’re trained soldiers. Rallie’s with them. They’ll be fine. Visyna’s out there alone.” As soon as he said it he paused and rubbed a hand against his forehead. “Visyna and your squad and my mother and hopefully Jir are out there alone. They’re the ones that need our help.”

“As I was saying, Major, we’d be little more than fresh meat for the rakkes if we venture out without a plan. However,” Yimt said, looking over at the Viceroy, “we’ve been working on something that should put a lit fuse up their keisters. We were concocting it with the lads in mind, but now that Visyna and her group have arrived I’d say they could use it more.”

The two of them smiled. Konowa found his hand reaching for his saber of its own accord. Yimt Arkhorn and Pimmer Alstonfar had come up with a plan to inconvenience hundreds of rampaging rakkes.

And they’d done it together.

“Tell me,” he ordered.

When they finished, both looked at him for his response. For several seconds, Konowa was absolutely speechless. Finally, he nodded and took his hand off the pommel. “Let’s do it. Now, explain to me again why I’m the one who’s going to be set on fire?”

Kritton.

The elf’s shade appeared before Alwyn. It was a dark spectral being in searing pain, yet it wasn’t like the other shades of the deceased Iron Elves. Kritton’s shade exuded an awareness and a presence the others did not, not even RSM Lorian.

“Take your place among the fallen and defend the regiment,” Alwyn said. He phrased it like an order, but would Kritton obey? Alwyn’s relationship with the shades was a precarious one. He walked on the edge, just one slip away from joining them wholly. But as long as he still lived he wasn’t one of them. He did command the dead, but only because they chose to follow. He had bargained with the Shadow Monarch and won them a freedom of a kind, but they remained dead, and in servitude. Alwyn saw the futility of it. “Rakkes have encircled us and Her Emissary approaches.”

Alwyn turned from the shade, expecting it to obey, and focused his attention on Her Emissary. It took him a moment to realize he was wrong. Her Emissary no longer serves the Shadow Monarch. The realization would have filled him with hope a few days ago, but now he knew the cost behind it. The Shadow Monarch’s former servant was utterly mad and destroying itself in the process. It was literally and figuratively flying apart, and growing more dangerous in the process. How do you destroy something like that?

“I have always defended the regiment,” Kritton said, his voice an icy tendril worming its way into Alwyn’s mind.

Alwyn blinked and turned back to Kritton’s shade. “Then do so again,” he said. “As the oath bound you as you lived to the regiment, and through it, the Shadow Monarch, it binds you now to me. You must feel this.”

“You can’t understand what I feel,” the shade of Kritton said, moving forward so that it stood only a foot away. “You are not elf. You are not one of the tainted ones soiled by Her vile touch. You were not betrayed as I was.”

“This is not the time or the place to discuss betrayal, Kritton,” Alwyn said, finding it easier now in the face of Kritton’s anger to exert his own power. “You are bound by the oath as we all are. You have no choice.”

“You lie! I hear it in your voice. I do have a choice. I may not have the power, but I have the choice. You yourself tried to break Her oath. Yes . . . I feel this.”

Alwyn focused on Kritton. Power arced between them in ugly barbs of harsh light. Kritton’s shade began to scream. It flailed and tried to break free, but it was no match for Alwyn.

“Stand and fight with the others. You know this is our duty. We are all soldiers of the Iron Elves. Forget the oath that cursed us and remember the one you made with the regiment. All of us must fight.”

“I do not accept that!”

Alwyn raised his hand to strike Kritton down, then paused. He felt Rallie’s power being exerted to keep the rakkes at bay. The shades of the dead should have been more than sufficient to handle them, but they had fallen back and were no longer attacking. The living soldiers of the regiment were yelling and pleading for the shades to resume the battle, but the shades now refused to move. They were waiting for something.

They were . . . afraid.

“They do not want this fate any more than I do, any more than you do,” Kritton said. “And you know this.”

Alwyn thrust a hand and drove it into the heart of Kritton’s shade. He felt it scream as he closed his fingers tight. “You are right, Kritton, but I remind you again that we took the oath, and now we will see it through.” He released his grip and withdrew his hand. Kritton’s shade wavered and blurred before resuming its remembered shape of the elf.

Several shades drifted closer to the war of wills between Alwyn and Kritton. Would any of the other shades come to Kritton’s aid? Was their pain so unbearable that they would rather flee than fight?

Alwyn looked the dead in their eyes, steeling himself for the empty horror he saw there. “Our only chance is if we stick together as one. We are all Iron Elves, living and dead. There is no other way.”

The shades appeared to accept this, and a moment later a cheer went up from the regiment as they dead moved forward and began to attack again. Alwyn noted, however, that none ventured near the approach of the thing that had once been Her Emissary. The creature’s spiraling madness spread fear before it like a tornado.

“. . . the advantage is yours . . . for now,” Kritton said, moving off to join the other shades.

Alwyn watched it go, but knew he had bigger problems to deal with. Gwyn, though the thing drawing near no longer resembled the man in form or being, managed to hold some core of itself at the center of its own storm even as the rest of it was torn away.

Is this to be my destiny, too? Alwyn wondered. Will I become little more than a maddened collection of violence and death? He half-expected Rallie to appear at his side and tell him he was being foolish, but she was busy, and in the end, he still had a duty to perform. And that, he realized, was what would keep him sane. He was a soldier. He was an Iron Elf. As long as that was true, he could never become the monstrosity Gwyn had.

He adjusted his caerna and brought his hand up to adjust his spectacles, then remembered he no longer wore them. He brought his hand down and knocked on his wooden leg for luck, then limped forward to meet the threat.

“And how is this better than my plan?” Konowa whispered, scrambling over an ice-slicked rock and sliding down the other side to land awkwardly and fall to one knee before catching himself. “We’re still outside the walls risking life and limb.” He stood, brushed the snow off his trousers, and strode after Yimt. How the blazes does anyone with legs so short move so bloody fast? The dwarf had a knack for navigating among the tumbled rocks of Suhundam’s Hill like a mountain goat.

“Almost done, sir,” the dwarf said, easily bounding up and over another boulder. Yimt spooled out more twine from a bobbin slung from his belt. A continuous line now led all the way back to the secret entrance they had come through just a short twenty minutes before.

Konowa ignored the view from below as Yimt’s caerna blew in the wind, and instead marveled that he could move so nimbly after having been shot in the chest. Dwarves had a reputation for toughness, but just how tough Konowa had never fully appreciated. It was truly impressive.

“That’s how I feel,” Konowa said, letting gravity pull him the next few yards before digging his boot heels into the snow to slow himself down as another pile of rocks loomed before him.

“Think low and wide, Major,” Yimt whispered back over his shoulder. “The idea is to spread yourself out over a bigger area, and keep your body close to the ground. Makes a fellow more stable, especially a lanky one like you.”

“I’ll be low and wide and splattered all over these rocks if you don’t slow down,” Konowa grumbled. He finally gave in to his heaving lungs and stopped at the next boulder. Unlike the slow, tense climb up to the fort of a few hours ago, this descent was barely controlled chaos. Konowa’s body was now bruise on top of bruise. If he ever lay down he seriously wondered if he could haul himself back up again.

Yimt turned and trotted back up to where Konowa had halted. “Your orders, if you recall, sir, were to, and I quote, ‘get down the damn hill as fast as you can bloody well move.’ “

“Yes, you’re right,” Konowa managed, bending over double. His face was flushed and he’d already undone the top four buttons on his jacket despite the cold. He straightened back up and started to move off, but Yimt placed a strong hand on his arm and held him in place.

“If you don’t mind my saying, Major,” Yimt said, steering Konowa toward a small rock where he could sit down, “you haven’t really conquered the whole patience is a virtue thing.”

“They’re surrounded by rakkes out there,” Konowa said, struggling to get up from the rock and reluctantly giving into this body and allowing himself to rest for a moment. “Patience won’t do them any good if they’re dead.”

Yimt lowered his chin to his chest for a moment as if in deep thought. When he lifted it again he gave Konowa a look he’d never seen before. Konowa wasn’t looking at a sergeant in his regiment—it was the disgusted and disapproving face of a father.

“Then go, charge out there like a mad, brave fool and see what it gets you. You’re as worn out as a butterfly in a windstorm right now. You’re no good to anyone like this, least of all your missus.”

Missus . . . ? Konowa stood up though it was no easy feat. His thighs screamed and he almost tipped over. “You’re not out in the desert with two elves too far out on a branch. I’ll check the regs, but I’m fairly certain I’m still your commanding officer.” It was surreal to hear those words coming from his lips. It sounded precisely like something the Prince said, but maybe he was allowing his feeling for the troops to breed too much familiarity. He was their commanding officer, but the comradeship and friendship he felt with them, especially Yimt, blurred the lines.

“And while you’re at it, you can check my paybook. Do you know why I’ve been busted back down to private more times than a unicorn has virgins lining up to ride it?” Yimt asked, his voice taking on a hard edge. “I mean, besides the drinking and brawling and general disregard for military rules and discipline?”

Konowa said nothing, deciding a smart remark wasn’t needed at this juncture.

“Because I’ve saved more bloody officers from themselves than deserved it. Most of ’em didn’t even have the decency to give thanks. No, their egos were a little too bruised for that, so when I stopped a lieutenant from leading his company across the path of another regiment about to fire a volley I was brought up on charges of insubordination. And when I fired at a shrubbery that was hiding a band of archers and sprung an ambush before we walked into it, a captain busted me for not maintaining fire discipline.”

“I’m not like that,” Konowa said, his feelings hurt that Yimt would lump him in with these other incompetent officers.

“No, Major,” Yimt said, “you’re worse. You really do care about the men, and yet you still charge hither, yon, and beyond, saber flashing, hair flowing, and setting an altogether bad example.”

“Bad example?” Konowa wasn’t standing for that. “The hell, you say! I lead from the front. I’ve never backed down from a fight.”

“Aye, and that’s an admirable quality in a soldier, but an officer also has to use his brain once in a while. What do you think all those young impressionable lads get in their heads when they see their officer deep in the thick of every fight? I’ll tell you what,” Yimt said, cutting off Konowa’s response. “They think they have to live up to your example, and so they start charging around like mad hatters, too. But here’s the thing—they ain’t you. Let’s face it, you ain’t you either. You’re banged up more than a round-heel on payday. But you’ve got the knack, same as me. The two of us get into trouble all on our own, but we figure a way to get back out again. We’ve both been shot at and hit, missed, and learned a few tricks. A lot of these lads, they don’t have what we have. They can get themselves into trouble, but getting out ain’t going to be as easy for them.”

This was something Konowa had never really thought about before. “But I can’t just sit back and watch. I’m not the Prince.”

Yimt shook his beard and snow fluttered to the ground. “A few weeks ago I would have said that was a good thing, but you know, that royal pain in the arse does use his gray matter. Oh sure, he’s got lofty plans, but I’ll be buggered if he hasn’t put a hell of a lot thought into each one. He thinks about what comes next. Probably learned it from his mum. You could learn from him. Think more than one step ahead. Remember, when you charge there are a lot of soldiers that are going to follow in your footsteps. Know where you’re leading them, and for that matter, know what you’re going to do when you get there.”

The nearby howl of rakkes reminded Konowa of the urgency of their task, but he held the urge to simply charge forward in check. “You know, for a loudmouthed, highly opinionated, rule-breaking malcontent, you offer some damn good advice.”

Yimt’s metal-stained teeth flashed in the night. “And you’re not the dandiest, wouldn’t-know-his-arse-from-a-hole-in-the-ground officer I’ve ever met . . . though you do vie for that distinction at times.”

“Let’s just pretend that was a compliment and get on with it.”

Yimt motioned with his thumb. “Just waiting for you to catch your breath, Major. Got three more of the sorry things right here.”

Konowa looked and saw three rakke bodies now half covered in snow. “They piled the things everywhere.” He stood up and walked over to the bodies, using his boot to kick off the snow from each one. Grunting with the effort, he then propped each frozen corpse into as close to a standing position as he could manage as Yimt piled some rocks around them to keep them in place. His hands stung as he handled the snow-crusted rakkes, but there was nothing for it. An uneasy feeling washed over him as he realized he was doing something very similar with the bodies of the rakkes that his elves had done.

“This ain’t the same thing,” Yimt said as if reading his thoughts. “We’re just trying to save some lives.” He took the twine and wrapped it around the nearest arm of each rakke. When he was done, they were all tied together. Without pausing, he lifted the flap on the haversack he had slung over one shoulder, reached a hand inside and came out with a dollop of axle grease used for wagon wheels.

“There’s a part of me that says this is desecration,” Konowa said, not feeling sympathy for the rakkes, but something dangerously close to it.

“Part of you is right,” Yimt replied, quickly smearing grease on the rakkes’ chest and head, if they still had a head. “But the way I see it, for all the evil they did in their short, brutish lives, they get to make amends by helping us now. Makes what we’re doing here almost noble.” He took some of the fur on top of a rakke’s head and used the grease to pull it up into a spike then stood back to admire his work.

“You think this is something you’d tell the grandchildren one day?” Konowa asked, opening the haversack he was carrying and scooping out a small handful of copper shavings. He sprinkled some on each body, making sure to trickle a small pile on the grease-coated twine as well. The copper shavings stuck to the grease despite the wind.

“There are things I won’t tell myself,” Yimt said. “As for the rest of it, I imagine I’ll wind up being a plucky warrior saving poor benighted officers left, right, and center. Yup, they’ll think their gramps was a real hero.”

Konowa clapped the dwarf on the shoulder. “He is.”

“You’ll make an old dwarf cry with that kind of mush,” Yimt said, absently pulling up the hem of his caerna to rub the grease off his hand. The howling of rakkes turned both their heads.

“How much more twine do we have?” Konowa asked.

Yimt lifted up the bobbin and pulled the last foot of twine from it. “Out of twine and out of time.”

Konowa rolled his eyes and looked out across the desert. “I can see all kinds of shadows moving out there. I see the storm Visyna is controlling, too. Maybe two hundred yards away.” The thought of her being so close filled him with anxiety. Was she okay? He wanted to run out there right now to her, but he knew if they were going to have any chance of making it back to the fort they had to follow through with this plan.

“I wish I had my shatterbow with me,” Yimt said, sliding a large chopping ax out of the leather straps that held it to his back.

“We’ll be moving too fast to reload. If your plan works, your ax and my saber should be more than enough. If they aren’t, it won’t really matter.”

Yimt hefted the ax in his hands and gave it a few twirls. He deftly spun it around his body as if it were an extension of his arms. Images from Konowa’s dream in the Shadow Monarch’s forest came back to him and he was tempted to ask Yimt about it, but the sound of the rakkes was growing louder. Time was definitely up.

“So,” Konowa said, “I’ll find Visyna and the squad and lead them back here. When you see my signal, light the twine.”

Yimt looked him over. “Now that the rakkes from here to the door are done, a liberal dusting of you should do it.”

Konowa untied the bundled Hasshugeb robe that hung from the belt at his waist and draped it over his shoulders.

Yimt reached forward and opened the flap on Konowa’s haversack and stuck a hand inside. He took the copper shavings and dust and began patting them all over Konowa’s robe, ordering him to turn with a swirling motion of his main finger where upon he patted down his back as well.

“And this won’t hurt?” Konowa asked.

Yimt gave him an extra hard pat and turned him around to face him. “More than anything else you’ve been through in the last few days? Naw,” Yimt said, “can’t imagine it will feel more than a bunny nibbling on your fingers.”

Konowa decided to inquire about the kind of rabbits Yimt had encountered another time. “Right. Somehow, it seems like I should be sending you out running across the desert,” Konowa said, looking down and noticing how the copper shimmered in the reflected metallic light of the falling snow.

Yimt held out his right hand palm up. A small, black flame burned in the center of it. “Gotta hand it to the Viceroy. He knows as much about metals and alchemy as a dwarf. That pencil pusher has one devious mind.” The admiration in his voice sounded sincere.

“I think it’s part of the job requirement,” Konowa said, reaching out with his own hand and the black flame that burned there. The two shook, black sparks whirling up into the night.

“You know all those things I said about thinking ahead and not always charging headlong into battle?” Yimt said, looking up at Konowa with an unblinking stare.

“I wasn’t listening,” Konowa said, giving the dwarf’s hand a squeeze then letting go. He turned and worked his way down through the last jumble of fallen rocks and hit the desert floor at a run. He unsheathed his saber and it immediately glistened with black frost.

“I didn’t think you were,” Yimt shouted after him. “Now go do what you do so well, Major. Stir up that hornet’s nest!”

Awind blew among the sarka har on the mountaintop, rattling their branches. Leaves heavy with ore and dark power twisted and ripped away, twirling through the air like miniature scythes. A few of the blood trees snapped and splintered, their trunks too rigid to cope with the strain. The Shadow Monarch ignored the whirling debris around Her and pulled Her robe closer. It was cold up here, even for Her. She sat on the leeward side of Her ryk faur, sheltered by its massive, gnarled trunk from the worst of the wind. Great, knobby branches hung low around Her, offering further protection.

She closed Her eyes and leaned Her head against the Silver Wolf Oak’s trunk. She felt the strong, urgent vibration of the ichor pulsing through the tree and took comfort from it. Her ryk faur would live. The early frost would not kill it. She saw the birthing meadow sparkling with white frost and felt the anguish as the tiny sapling screamed in terror and pain as the frost burned it. She turned to plead with the elves of the Long Watch to save it, but there was no one there.

The Shadow Monarch sat up, crying out as She reached to soothe the sapling. Her hands came to rest on the ulcerating trunk of the tree. It was sick. It was a thought She knew, yet refused to accept. The contradiction made Her angry, and She looked around for a place to vent Her rage.

A constant trickle of ichor bled down the side of the Silver Wolf Oak to collect in a pool near the Shadow Monarch’s feet. She stared at the shimmering surface, feeling the power flow from the tree. She tried to find Her children as She had before, but the surface of the ichor would not settle. The mountain shuddered and rock cracked as the roots of the sarka har drove deeper in search of sustenance.

Growing angrier, She focused all Her thought on the pool, willing it to cooperate. An image began to appear, but it wasn’t of elves but of a city of humans. Celwyn. She’d never been, but She knew it from the minds of Her Emissaries. A loud snap overhead made Her look up as a heavy branch from the Silver Wolf Oak splintered and fell to the ground, shattering. Ichor splashed Her, and She smelled the taint of death.

Using Her anger, She called on the power in the depths, urging the roots to dig deeper still. The mountain shook and several sarka har fell into chasms that opened wide beneath their trunks. Undaunted, She reached out to the shimmering vision of Celwyn.

Large, lush trees lined cobbled streets. Huge parks with vast meadows buzzed with life. Everywhere She looked, the land mocked Her with its verdant energy. She saw the image of Her ryk faur reflected in the pool of ichor and the contrast drew a slow hiss from between Her teeth.

She felt its branches come down to gently rest on Her shoulders. Two snaked their way down Her arms to wrap lightly around Her wrists. She plunged both hands into the ichor up to Her elbows. The cold shocked her, but cleared Her mind. She felt the natural order and began to tug on the web of roots deep underground, directing them to a new destination. She withdrew Her hands and watched. The branches slid back up Her arms and away.

She sat like that, unaware of the passage of time or the growing cold. Frost sparkled on Her cloak and in Her hair, turning it gray and brittle. The view of Celwyn shimmered and then changed. She blinked. Darkness erupted from the earth throughout the city as Her sarka har sought to conquer this new land. She smiled, and leaned back against her ryk faur as the screams and cries of a people echoed in Her mind.

The Shadow Monarch closed Her eyes. Soon, there would be nowhere else for Her children to run. Soon, they would have to come home. They would have to come back to Her.

Visyna stumbled again, and this time she knew she wouldn’t be able to keep control of the storm around her. The stinging threads began slipping through her fingers at an increasing rate. Her fingertips burned and she stifled a scream, doing her best to use her weaving to shape what little of the storm she still controlled.

“I’m losing it,” she said, knowing her warning was obvious as the wall of swirling snow that had protected the group disappeared into the larger storm around them.

Cold air rushed into the bubble, chilling her to the bone. The pain in her fingers turned into pins and needles. She pressed her hands under her armpits and dared to look around. Rakkes were emerging from the snow wherever she looked.

“Everyone stay close. Don’t get split from the group and don’t try to make a run for it!” Hrem shouted, coming to stand beside her on her left. “We’re stronger as a group and they know it!”

Three dozen rakkes began beating their chests and thrashing in the snow as they built themselves into a frenzy. The fur on Jir’s back stood straight up and his lips peeled back to reveal his fangs. The growl that emanated from deep within his chest sent shudders up Visyna’s spine. Against a few rakkes she would have given the bengar a better than average chance of defeating them, but there were far too many. He couldn’t kill them all, though he would die trying.

Visyna freed her hands and tried to call up some threads from the surrounding storm, hoping against hope that she could yet weave something more out of the chaos, but her efforts were in vain. She sank to her knees, her energy spent.

She felt a hand on her shoulder and looked up to see Chayii. The elf smiled at her. “I would have been proud to call you my daughter-in-law,” she said, gently reaching down and grabbing Visyna by the elbow, helping her up.

“He would have had to ask first,” she said, wiping away a tear.

“He would have,” Chayii replied.

The rakkes howled and moved in closer, though none yet dared to charge the last ten yards.

“Release the animal!” Zwitty hissed. He stood so that Hrem covered him on one side and Scolly on the other. “He wants to get at them anyway. This is the perfect time.”

“There are too many rakkes,” Visyna said, looking to Chayii for support.

She shook her head slowly. “I can’t hold him any longer, child—his rage grows too strong. He will hunt, and what will be will be.” She leaned down and whispered something into the bengar’s ear, patting his mane as she spoke to him. Jir’s growl turned into a deep, rumbling purr. For a moment, Visyna hoped he might stay with them, but then Chayii stood up and released her grip.

Jir shook his head and brought his left paw up to his eyes and rubbed it across them. He then extended his legs, stretching and arching his back as if waking from a sleep, which perhaps he was after Chayii released her hold on him. His muzzle sniffed the air and the purring grew louder.

“Has he gone stupid?” Zwitty asked. “There are rakkes everywhere. He’s acting like he doesn’t even see them.”

“He sees, he smells. He knows they’re there,” Chayii said, leaning against Visyna. The old elf was even more tired than she was. If the wind got any stronger it would blow them both over.

A rakke charged forward a couple of steps in a show of aggression, throwing its head back and gibbering into the sky. Jir twisted his head around and began to lick the fur around his wounded shoulder.

“I can’t believe I’m with Zwitty on this, but why isn’t Jir tearing into them?” Hrem asked.

“Elves have a great affinity with nature and all its creatures,” Chayii said, talking slowly, “although I suppose my son is not the best example. It is how we came to bond with the Wolf Oaks. It is also, unfortunately, why we face the evil of the Shadow Monarch now. Konowa did, however, bond with this creature. As their spirits are very much alike his influence on it did not materially change its basic personality of a predator.”

Visyna understood at once. “But you did!”

Chayii stood up enough to look at her and smile. “He is still very much a predator, and a wild one at that, but during the time I held him in thrall I was able to impart a certain degree of . . . patience. Something, sadly, I had less success doing with my own son.”

“How in the hell does that help us now?” Zwitty asked.

“You will see soon enough,” Chayii said.

The rakke that charged ahead of the others grew bold when no response came from the group. It gnashed its teeth together and bounded ahead another yard. The other rakkes howled their encouragement and began to shuffle forward. Visyna knew a mass charge was imminent. The longer the rakkes remained uncertain the better their chances were of coming up with some kind of plan to save themselves. She raised her hands and began to weave.

“I thought you couldn’t?” Hrem asked, raising his own hands and balling them into fists.

“I can’t,” Visyna said, “at least, not enough to push them away, but they don’t know that.” She made a show of waving her hands about her before crouching down in the snow and scooping up two handfuls of the tainted snow. It burned her hands, but it also warmed them enough for her to be able to tease a gossamer thread of power from the air and create a thin, shimmering wall between them and the rakkes.

Many of the rakkes scurried back a couple of yards. The lead rakke crouched lower and grew silent, but it didn’t retreat.

Good, Visyna thought, amazed that her plan was actually working, but knowing it wouldn’t for long.

“We need to stall them a little longer,” she said. “Inkermon, start praying. Out loud. Hrem, if you can keep control of the frost fire, call it up now. Make a big show of it. Grunt and yell. You see how they are. Try to do something similar.”

The big soldier looked down at his hands then back at her. “I can’t act.”

Visyna choked back a curse. “Forget acting. Just get angry. Stomp around. Yell.”

“Imagine someone got between you and a bowl of stew,” Zwitty said, his wheedling tone cutting through the building tension.

Hrem roared. Visyna gasped. The soldier spun on his heel and swung his fist at Zwitty’s head. Zwitty leaped backward, took a couple of awkward steps and fell to the snow. The rakkes nearby howled with renewed fury. Zwitty scrambled back to the group on his hands and knees.

“You could have got me killed!” Zwitty said, jumping to his feet and waving an arm at the surrounding rakkes.

“And?” Hrem asked. “Guess I can act a little after all.” There was no humor in his voice.

“This isn’t helping,” Visyna said.

“What should we do?” Scolly asked.

“Make snowballs.”

“Snowballs?” Zwitty asked as Scolly bent over and began scooping up snow in great handfuls. “You really think that’s going to stop a rakke?”

The temptation to punch the private in the nose now had her clenching her fists until she remembered she was supposed to be putting on a show of weaving. “They might if you toss a few to Hrem and the frost fire lights them and then he throws them at the rakkes.”

“Clever,” Chayii said, patting Visyna on the arm.

Jir padded a few feet toward the closest rakke, but still he gave no indication that he was aware of him. The rakke roared and raised its arms high above its head in a threat display. Jir turned as if noticing the creature for the first time. And then he did the most remarkable thing.

“He’s cowering,” Visyna said, not sure she believed her eyes. The fearless bengar was actually belly down in the snow and slowly slinking backward. The rakke recognized the posture and charged.

“No,” Chayii said, “he’s acting.”

Jir’s demeanor changed in an instant. His ears flattened against his skull and his fur rippled as muscles bunched and tensed. The rakke was two strides away when Jir leaped, a blur of black and red fur against the snow. There was a scream that cut off short, the sound of ripping leather, and a spray of blood. Jir landed on his front two paws and let his rear ones softly come down a second later.

The body of the rakke lay sprawled in the snow, its head resting in Jir’s jaws.

The other rakkes retreated several steps and their constant screeching and bellowing calls ceased. Jir had bought them some more time, but how much? More rakkes were appearing who hadn’t seen Jir’s horrific demonstration. Their roars would soon enough encourage the others to move forward again.

“Now what?” Zwitty asked.

“We start moving again toward the fort. Hrem, toss the snowballs about seven yards ahead of us and then a few to the sides. Jir can keep a watch and go after any that come in too close.”

Scolly handed Hrem a snowball. Hrem strode forward from the group and held his hand out at arm’s length. The rakkes fixated on him immediately. Hrem roared, and the snowball burst into black flame. He moved his arm around so that as many rakkes as possible could get a look and then he threw. The ball made a graceful arc trailing black frost in the air. It hit the snow with a sharp crack and Visyna realized it had instantly frozen the powdery snow into solid ice. Black flames and sparks flared for a few seconds before burning out. The rakkes near the flames screamed and pulled back several more yards.

“Move!” Visyna shouted, forcing her fingers to weave what little threads she could manage.

They started forward. Inkermon prayed, Scolly and Zwitty made snowballs and passed them to Hrem who lit them with frost fire and threw them as quickly as he could. Visyna did her best to prop up Chayii while weaving as Jir circled the group, snarling here and there at any rakke that came too close.

“It’s working!” Hrem shouted, tossing a snowball and hitting a rakke directly in the chest. The creature screamed as black flames washed over it and it ran off into the night. “We’re going to make it.”

A rock sailed out of the dark striking Hrem a glancing blow on the side of the head. He didn’t fall, but bent over in pain clutching the wound. The rakkes lunged forward. Jir attacked, his claws sweeping in lightning fast arcs designed more to wound and frighten than to kill.

The charge faltered, but did not stop. There had to be fifty or more rakkes around them now, and even creatures as primal as these knew that with numbers like that they could overwhelm their prey.

“They’ve figured out how to get to us,” Zwitty said, not bothering to hide the rising fear in his voice.

“They’re predators,” Chayii said by way of an answer.

Scolly and Zwitty started throwing snowballs though neither one lit them on fire. Inkermon’s prayer grew louder, but if it was having an effect Visyna couldn’t see it. She only caught a few words, but noticed that the soldier was invoking a lot of salvation, righteous fury, and a quick death. She hoped that last part was directed at the rakkes and not them.

A growing roar filled the air from the direction of the fort. The rakkes turned to look even as they continued to charge.

The sound reached a crescendo and a dark form burst through the circle of rakkes, its body covered in bright green spots of fire.

The reaction of the rakkes was immediate and stunning. They yipped and gibbered with fear and ran, everything else forgotten. They flayed and scrambled over each other to get away from the figure now stumbling around in their midst. Green flame flickered all over the creature obscuring its true shape as it swung its arms as if trying to beat out the fire.

That’s when Visyna noticed it was also waving a saber and cursing a blue streak.

“Konowa!” Visyna shouted, running toward him. She pulled up several feet short from him. He was wearing the tattered and smoldering remains of a cloth robe which was smoking furiously as it burned up with hundreds of tiny green flames.

“Has a spell been cast on you?” she asked, surprised that she could sense no foreign magic at work.

“Ow, ow, bloody, ow!” Konowa shouted, ripping what was left of the robe off his shoulders and diving into the snow where he began to roll over and over. “A bunny nibbling my fingers my arse! Ow!” he shouted some more, some of the choicer words being lost as his face went beneath the snow.

He finally sat up, covered in snow, his saber still waving dangerously around him. “I am going to kick that dwarf right in the—Jir!” he managed to say before a blur raced past Visyna and thundered into Konowa, sending them both, elf and bengar, tumbling in a snowy heap.

Their reunion was short as Konowa staggered to his feet, an excited Jir threatening to bowl him over bounding all around him, the wound in his shoulder completely forgotten. Frost fire arced between them but Jir didn’t appear to notice.

“Major!” Hrem said, stepping forward and clamping a huge hand on Konowa’s shoulder. “It’s great to see you, sir. Where’s the rest of the regiment?”

Konowa was still brushing himself off and didn’t appear to hear the question.

“Are you all right, my son?” Chayii asked, holding out a hand toward him then reluctantly pulling it back as black frost sparkled on his uniform.

“Mother. Oh, just a little hot under the collar is all . . . Look, no time to explain. We have to move, now.” He started to turn back toward the fort then stopped and looked at his mother again. “Father is back to his elf self, well, almost.”

This time Chayii did step forward and embrace her son. Frost fire glittered where her arms wrapped around him, but she held on.

“I missed you, too, but um, this isn’t really the best time,” Konowa said. His troops stood staring at him with open mouths.

Chayii let go and stepped back, but not before reaching up and brushing a strand of hair from his forehead. Visyna felt a pang of longing, wishing it was her in Chayii’s place right now.

Visyna began to lower her head and start walking. She so desperately wanted him to run to her and sweep her up in an embrace and to hell with the frost fire. The thought made her angry. I’m no delicate flower, she told herself. She lifted her head up, threw back her shoulders and walked right up to him and stopped.

“You, Konowa Swift Dragon, are my elf.” After everything she’d been through, all the pain, all the fear, and all the uncertainty, she was certain about this. She’d found him. She reached up, put her hand around the back of his neck, and pulled him down toward her. Frost fire needled into her hands, but it could have been dragon teeth and she wouldn’t have let go. Their lips met. The kiss was unlike any she had ever experienced. It was cold cold lightning, sweet and clear like fresh spring water. His right arm curved around her waist pulling her in close. The frost fire sparked across her back, but she barely noticed. She was lost in a feeling so wondrous that pain would have to wait. She could have stayed there in his arms forever, but long before she was ready to let go, he pulled away. She could still taste him on her lips.

“Ummm, I fwink my wips are nuwmb,” he said, his cheeks flushing red.

“Mwine twwo,” she said, not caring one bit.

Whistles and approving clucks suggested the nearby Iron Elves approved.

“There’s still the matter of the rakkes,” Hrem said, dabbing at the side of his head where a thin trickle of blood was seeping from the wound. “How many soldiers are out here with you, Major?”

“Fwowwow me,” Konowa said, then stopped and rubbed the back of his hand against his lips before trying again. “Follow me, and I’ll show you.” This time Konowa did turn and began striding toward the fort. Jir bounded to his side and butted his head against his knee, almost knocking him over. Konowa reached down with his hand and scratched the bengar’s head leaving a patch of glittering frost on the animal’s fur.

Visyna smiled. She took hold of Chayii’s arm and they followed with the soldiers bringing up the rear. They were surrounded by ravenous monsters intent on their destruction, caught up in the complex web of a demented elf witch, and in the middle of a snow-covered desert, yet her overwhelming feeling was of absolute bliss. She had her elf, and he felt the same way about her as she did about him. Nothing in this world or any other could surpass how good that made her feel.

“I remember when Yimt first told me about you,” Chayii said as they walked along. “I must admit I did not approve.”

Visyna could only smile. Her cheeks actually hurt because she couldn’t stop grinning. “And now?” she asked, knowing the answer.

“And now I’m wondering when I will have grandchildren?”

Visyna’s grin vanished. “We, uh, we only just—”

Chayii squeezed her arm and smiled at her. “I tease,” she said, “for now.”

Visyna noticed that Konowa had slowed to try and overhear their conversation. She took the opportunity to change the subject.

“What was that green fire and why were the rakkes so frightened of it?” she asked.

Konowa slowed enough to walk beside her. “Copper dust and shavings. It burns green. Seems rakkes associate that with some kind of nasty bug that they instinctively fear. Wish I’d known this a few months ago.”

“Rakkes were extinct a few months ago,” Visyna said.

As if to put a point on her thought a rakke bellowed into the night. Several returned the cry. They were gathering for another attack.

“They’re stupid, but persistent,” Konowa said. “We need to move faster.”

Visyna reached out and touched his arm, knowing it would sting. “Everyone is tired and hurt. We’re lucky to be standing at all.”

Konowa slowed. He turned and looked at her. His face was drawn and he looked every bit as exhausted as she felt. “I know, and I’m sorry, but we really have to get out of here.”

“And you came out here by yourself, for us?”

Konowa smiled. “Not exactly, I did bring one other soldier along to help.”

The ground began to slope upward and she saw the dark outlines of large boulders ahead of her. A shadow detached from the side of one and began to move toward them.

“Konowa,” she said, moving to place her body in front of Chayii’s.

“You don’t have to worry—he’s not dangerous unless he starts talking.”

Like the ghost he should have been, Yimt materialized out of the snow and came to a halt, his metal teeth shining like polished diamonds. “I ain’t dead, in case you were wondering.”

For a minute, the dwarf disappeared as Hrem and Scolly mobbed him. Inkermon and Zwitty eased forward cautiously, their right hands extended for a quick shake, but Hrem reached out and pulled both of them into the scrum and whatever ill-blood existed between the soldiers and their sergeant appeared, at least for the moment, to be forgotten.

“All right, let him breathe,” Konowa ordered, breaking up the reunion. The pile parted and Yimt straightened his caerna and caught Visyna’s eye.

“Miss Red Owl,” he said, turning to Chayii, doffing his shako and bowing his head toward the elf. “Miss Tekoy,” he said as he repeated the gesture. “I understand you did this world a great service.”

“It was him or us,” Visyna said. She saw Konowa’s eyes go wide, then he nodded in approval. She nodded back, wishing Konowa was congratulating her for anything else. Taking a life should never be a happy occasion.

“Damn straight,” Yimt said. “It’s what I’ve been trying to get through this lot’s thick melons from the day I set eyes on them.” He paused as he looked over the soldiers and his smile vanished. “Teeter?”

“He went down fighting,” Hrem said, his voice catching.

Yimt nodded. “Aye, that he would. Well,” he said, clapping his hands together, “we’ll drink to him later. Right now we need to get climbing.”

“You might want this,” Hrem said, holding out the dwarf’s drukar.

Yimt’s mouth opened and closed, but no words issued forth. He reached out a hand and took the blade, staring at it the way Visyna had at Konowa. “I never thought I’d see this again,” he finally managed.

“Sorry we couldn’t get your shatterbow, too,” Hrem said.

Yimt waved away the apology. “Lil’ Nipper served me well, but when Kritton shot me, I lost my grip on it and it cracked when it hit the floor. It was tough, but I had to leave it behind. I did, however, find a rather nasty little surprise in the library that more than made up for it,” he said, his eyes twinkling.

Two rakkes emerged out of the darkness and charged straight at the group, ending the conversation.

Jir’s claws flashed and one of the creatures fell to the snow, its legs tangled in its own spilled intestines. The second met its fate at the end of Yimt’s drukar as the dwarf buried the blade deep into the creature’s chest.

The smell of hot blood filled the air, and the rakke howls grew in ferocity.

“Still works,” Yimt said, trying to pull the blade out. “Now we really need to go,” Konowa said, directing them toward the rocks. “It’s steep and it’s slippery, so watch your step but move as fast as you can.”

“A little help,” Yimt said, struggling to pull the drukar out of the rakke’s chest.

Hrem walked over and placing a boot on the rakke’s rib cage heaved and freed the blade.

“Always nice to have a big, strong man around,” Yimt said, patting Hrem on the forearm. “Now get your arse up that hill and mind you don’t trip on the twine. Oh, and watch out for the dead rakkes. They’re with us now.”

Visyna looked at the dwarf. “There are rakkes up there, too?”

Yimt looked like he was about to explain, but Jir’s growl changed his mind. “Let’s hope we have all the time in the world later to chat. For now, up you go,” he said, shooing her toward the rocks.

“Wait, aren’t you coming with us?”

The soldiers turned when she asked the question, and she could read the concern on their faces. Having just discovered their sergeant was alive, they weren’t about to lose him again.

“Steady now, boys and girls, your old sergeant isn’t leaving. I’m just going to lag behind a tad to keep these critters from getting too frisky and galloping up after us.”

“I’ll stay with you then,” Hrem said, stepping down from a rock and coming back toward Yimt.

“Your heart’s as big as your head, and it’s to your credit, but there ain’t room among these rocks for a big job like you. You just get along and help the others. I’ll be fine, and I won’t be far behind.” He stood up a little straighter. “So now’s the time to follow the twine.”

“Yimt of the warm breeze, it is very good to be in your company again,” Chayii said.

“You flatter me, madam,” Yimt said, “now get your pretty little self up those rocks and take the rest of this rabble with you.”

“Everyone, start climbing,” Konowa said. “Now. And believe it or not, that’s actually an order.”

Visyna’s face flushed, and the familiar urge to snap back at Konowa danced behind her teeth, or maybe it was just the aftereffects of the kiss. This time, however, she wasn’t looking for a fight, but for a way to draw him closer. She longed to feel his body pressed up against hers again. It was beyond infuriating that now that they were together in both presence and emotion, they were still apart because of the oath. She wondered if that fact made her desire for him that much stronger, but she didn’t think so. She wanted him, and she knew he wanted her, too.

“Now off you go,” Yimt said, twirling the drukar in his hands and either not knowing or not caring that it was spraying blood everywhere as he did it. “I will be right behind you.”

Visyna reluctantly turned her back and began climbing. She held out her hand and guided Chayii over a cracked boulder. There was a path of sorts to follow that Konowa and Yimt had made on their way down along with a grubby-looking piece of twine laying on top of the snow. She paused as she looked at the twine closer. It appeared to be flecked with copper as well.

“Do you know why green fire or insects would frighten rakkes so much?” she asked Chayii.

“Are you asking if I was alive when rakkes still roamed the earth?”

Visyna mentally cursed herself. “I wasn’t trying to imply . . . I just meant . . .” she sighed and looked at the elf. “Well, yes, I guess that is what I am asking.”

Chayii brushed some snow from her hair and considered the question. “I was not there. There are many things in this world older than I, child.”

Visyna accepted the soft rebuke with a smile. “But I doubt few as wise, or as kind.”

“I have my moments,” Chayii said.

From a few feet below them, Yimt bellowed. “C’mon you mangy bastards! You want fresh meat, I’m right here! Maybe a little gamey, but nothing you brutes can’t choke down.”

Visyna turned to look. Yimt was standing on a boulder, his drukar casually resting over his shoulder, his other hand firmly on his hip and his caerna waving merrily in the wind.

“Oh my,” Visyna said,

“Indeed,” Chayii said. “Quite impressive.”

Visyna didn’t think her cheeks could get any hotter. “We should probably keep climbing,” she said, desperate to change the subject.

“Yes, I suppose we should,” Chayii replied, lingering a moment longer to watch the dwarf. She turned back to climb and saw Visyna looking at her. “I very much love my fool of a husband, but as we say in the Long Watch, ‘You may admire another tree’s nuts as long as you don’t harvest them.’ “

I was wrong, Visyna realized. My cheeks can get hotter.

Up on the hill, Konowa waited by the first dead rakkes, wanting to make sure no one overreacted when they saw them. Even frozen stiff and partially covered in snow, the creatures were still fearsome to look at.

“Just keep following the twine,” Konowa said, ignoring the questioning looks as the soldiers passed by the first bodies.

“Did you kill all these, Major?” Scolly asked, stopping and carefully prodding the leg of one rakke with the toe of his boot.

“They were already dead when we got here, must have frozen to death standing around asking too many questions,” Konowa said.

Hrem clearly got the message and grabbed Scolly’s arm, pulling him away. “C’mon, we need to keep moving.”

“But I want to know what happened to the monsters,” Scolly said.

“Just be glad they’re dead and can’t hurt you anymore,” Hrem said, nudging the soldier on.

“Weren’t they dead before and then they came back again?”

Konowa turned and looked at the corpses. Scolly was a full horn short of a unicorn, but he hit on something that worried Konowa. The rakkes had been dead. Extinct, gone and never to be seen again, until they came back. What would stop the Shadow Monarch from reviving them again and again? The answer was always the same. To hell with his dreams—if he had an ax in his hands when the time came, he’d cut Her down like any tree in the forest.

Yimt’s war cry, sounding much like first volley in a barroom brawl, echoed off the rocks. The rakkes’ reply drowned out anything after that.

“Okay, Sergeant, you little rascal, let’s see if you think it feels like nibbling bunnies,” Konowa said.

“What was that?” Visyna asked as she helped Chayii past the rakkes.

Konowa started. “Ah, nothing. You’d better hurry, it’s about to get very exciting around here.”

“Yes, because up until now our day has been fairly uneventful,” she said while his mother clucked her tongue at him.

“Right, sorry,” he muttered. He watched them go by, making a solemn vow that whether he continued in the service of the empire or not, he would, as a general rule, ensure that neither his parents nor his love interest accompany him out in the field. It just wasn’t good for his elfhood.

“. . . between the eyes you smelly furball!” Yimt shouted, arriving at Konowa’s position huffing for breath.

“I’ve been called worse,” Konowa said, drawing his saber as he brought forth the frost fire. His saber lit at once, giving off a shimmering black, translucent light.

“Probably with cause, too,” Yimt said matter-of-factly, “but in this case I was directing my keen observations at the hairy brutes not that far behind me.”

Konowa spied them. “They appear to be suitably enraged, well done,” he said, taking a quick look behind him for the best footing.

“I do have a gift for the oral-torical,” Yimt said, resting splay-legged on a boulder while he sharpened the blade edge of his drukar on the rock between his legs. “You know, sometimes I think my talents aren’t fully utilized in the infantry.”

“Do tell,” Konowa said.

“Well, I’ve been wondering of late if a change in career might be called for. I’m not as young as I used to be. Now don’t get me wrong, Major, I do enjoy the fresh air and the travel and even the chance to meet the natives, although it loses something when you usually end up having to shoot them.”

As eager as the rakkes were to rip them to shreds, judging by the mewling and howling, the recent deaths of many of their brethren had instilled a degree of wariness as they stalked their prey. Still, they continued to climb up the rocks, oblivious even to the macabre sight of their mutilated brethren. They were out for blood. Their claws clicked on the rocks as they came on, growing louder as they jockeyed for position to be the first to sink their fangs into the fresh meat barring their path.

“I’ve been thinking along those lines myself,” Konowa said, a sense of relief filling him as he spoke the words aloud. Maybe it was time to hang up his saber and try his hand at something new, that is, if they did manage to survive this and destroy the Shadow Monarch. “What would you do if you left the army? Between the two of us, we’ve served longer than most of these boys we lead combined. It’s hard to imagine doing anything else.”

Yimt held up his drukar blade and admired the edge. “Well, that’s just it, isn’t it? After a lifetime of honing our skills in battle, what to do after you parade for the last time and walk out the barracks gates a free dwarf or elf?”

“I’ve a feeling you’ve got an answer.”

“Barrister,” Yimt said.

“Hold that thought,” Konowa said, as three rakkes were overcome by bloodlust and began scrambling over the boulder just a couple yards below them.

Yimt stood up on his rock and hefted his weapon. “Step forth, oh ye wretched and rabid rabble, and prepare to be judged.”

Whether the rakkes understood anything Yimt said was impossible to tell, but his voice was enough to send them into a frenzy. They charged.

Konowa reached forward and touched his saber on the hem of Yimt’s caerna. The coating of copper dust immediately burst into hundreds of tiny green flames. The night turned a sickly green as the flames roared to life.

Yimt leaped from his rock, looking for all the world like a green comet crashing to earth. He landed between two rakkes and dispatched them with quick, powerful blows of his drukar. Konowa fought the urge to join him, knowing his job was to wait.

Rakkes roared and screamed with fright as they tried flee. Yimt was a glowing green nightmare among the rocks, bounding from boulder to boulder cutting down the creatures with brutal precision. Unlike on the desert floor, however, the rakkes were hemmed in by the rough terrain and couldn’t escape fast enough. Konowa lost count after the seventh rakke went down.

“You’re flaming out!” Konowa shouted, noticing the green glow was rapidly dying. “Get back now.”

The rakkes appeared to be noticing it, too. Already, several of them were curving around to climb the hill on either side of them.

“They’re flanking us, Sergeant!” Konowa shouted again, getting ready with his saber.

“Coming!” Yimt yelled, turning and running back up to Konowa’s position as the last of the green flames went out. He leaned forward with his hands on his knees and gulped in air. “Definitely getting a bit long in the beard for this.”

Several rocks crashed into the boulders around them. “I think they’re starting to figure this out,” Konowa said, ducking as another rock sailed overhead.

“Maybe, but we’re slowing them down, and that’s what matters,” he said, standing up straight and drawing in a deep breath through his nose. “Okay, I’m ready.”

Konowa couldn’t help but stare. “Your caerna . . .”

Yimt looked down. “Appears to have burnt right off. Think they’ll dock my pay for damaging military property?”

Konowa touched his flaming saber to the rakke corpses and the copper shavings caught fire, illuminating the night once again. “I’ll make certain they don’t,” he said, leaping to the next rock and making his way up. “In fact, I’ll make sure you get a special stipend specifically for uniforms so you never have to go without ever again.”

“Very kind of you, Major,” Yimt said as he stepped past him and ran ahead. His short, powerful legs and muscular buttocks pumping vigorously as he climbed. “I don’t mind telling you, now I really do notice the chill.”

“I imagine you would,” Konowa said, doing his best to keep pace, but not too fast. Behind him, the sound of rakkes scrambling over the rocks told him the green fire wouldn’t slow them down much longer.

They reached the next rakke corpse and Konowa simply lit it and kept going. The idea of making a stand at each one was no longer viable. Rakkes were ascending the hill all around them. He was sure a few had even got ahead of them, but their fear of what they thought the green fire really was held them back just enough.

“So a barrister?” Konowa said, finding the idea of the dwarf putting on the robes and powdered wigs of the legal profession fascinating and frightening. He stepped on a rock and slipped, twisting his knee. The pain simply added another layer to the blankets of agony covering his body. He bit off a curse and kept going. “Why spend your days in a courtroom with judges and rules? You don’t strike me as the type to prosecute some poor lad who stole a loaf of bread.”

“Prosecute? Major, I have my pride.” Yimt said, huffing as he bounded over a jumble of rocks. “I’d be representing the wrongfully accused.”

A couple of rocks bounced off boulders nearby. Konowa turned to look over his shoulder, but the rakkes were still far enough back to make their aim wild. “Okay, barrister, convince me.”

“Another time, Major. Shadows up ahead on the path,” Yimt whispered, pointing forward. Konowa saw them.

“Is it our group?”

“I don’t think so, because they are coming down.”

Konowa took a hurried look around and didn’t like what he saw. They were hemmed in by boulders on all sides. There was nowhere to run, and they were out of copper-covered rakkes. Growling and scraping noises echoed from all sides. They were completely surrounded. He looked up and could see the fort’s wall a little over thirty yards away. So close.

“Our best bet is to scream bloody murder and charge,” Yimt said, shifting his drukar from hand to hand.

“I thought that was a bad trait.”

“There’s a time and a place for everything, and in this particular time and place, a good old-fashioned berserker charge is just the ticket.”

Konowa flexed his fingers around the pommel of his saber and rolled his shoulders. They still had the frost fire to call on, and they were close enough to the fort that maybe help would arrive in time. It would have to do.

“Ready?” Konowa asked, moving up to stand beside Yimt.

“Time for these rakkes to hear my closing argument,” Yimt said.

Konowa groaned, but smiled. “You might want the Viceroy to write up your briefs. On three. One . . . two . . .”

A volley of musket fire lit the night, its sharp cracks cutting through the snow-deadened air. Rakkes screamed. Konowa stuck his head over the rock in front of him. Corporal Feylan stood fifteen yards away with Yimt’s squad.

“Hurry, Major, there’s a lot more coming up behind you.”

The pair climbed over the rocks and the fallen rakkes before running as fast as they could up to the squad. Yimt’s soldiers were already reloading their muskets in preparation for another volley. Konowa looked behind him and saw they were in no immediate danger.

“That’s enough. Let’s get back inside,” he said. “The regiment is still out there on the plain.”

A touch on his arm made him look down.

“Probably good for them to blow off a little steam,” Yimt said in a low voice. “With everything they’ve been through, I imagine it feels good to give a little back.”

Konowa thought about that. They hadn’t just seen hell, they’d been battling their way through it from the very beginning. So many good men had fallen. There were wives who would never see their husbands again, small children would grow up without ever knowing their father, and mothers who would grieve for their son for the rest of their lives.

He studied the faces of the soldiers. They were gaunt, their skin chalky white with cold, and their eyes red-rimmed. These were men who had to look over their shoulders to see where they had passed their breaking point, and still they were ready to stand and fight.

Konowa knew time wasn’t in their favor, but to hell with that. “Good shooting, men. A few more volleys should keep them out of our hair for a while. On your own time, tear those bastards a new one.”

There were smiles and grunts of approval as the soldiers continued reloading their muskets. The sound of ramrods rattling down barrels as his soldiers tamped down lead ball and black powder was music to his ears. This was the release they’d been longing for. Finally, and at least for the time being, they had the upper hand.

More rakkes appeared and clambered up the rocks to be met with a withering rain of lead shot. The soldiers began cheering and calling out to each other as they picked apart the charging rakkes.

The sharp vibration in his chest as the muskets spit out their lead balls put a grin on Konowa’s face. The rotten-egg smell of the smoke filled his nostrils. He tasted the bitter powder on his tongue and the constant ringing in his ears kicked up an octave.

The rakkes fell by the dozen, but there seemed to be two more ready to take the place of every one that died. The cheering fell away, and soon the joy of exacting an ounce of revenge became a grim task as wave after wave of screaming, roaring predators climbed over the rocks to get them.

“Major,” Yimt said, “they aren’t going to stop.”

Konowa shook his head in disbelief. The beasts just kept coming. He’d once thought the walls of the fort would be easily defended, but with an enemy like this nothing was safe.

“RSM, get these men inside, now.”

Yimt began barking orders and the soldiers started backing up, taking turns covering each other as they retreated to the safety of the fort. Konowa was the last to step inside, realizing that the fort wouldn’t be a safe haven at all. If they didn’t get out of it soon, it would be their tomb.

I want everyone ready to move in ten minutes!” Konowa shouted as he emerged from the steps leading up to the fort’s main square. Passing through the torture chamber again had made his mood very grim. “Grab whatever you can carry and get by the front gate.”

Musket fire sounded along the top of the wall’s forts as soldiers shot down at the massing rakkes. Konowa knew it wouldn’t delay the beasts for long, but hopefully just long enough.

“Major, you had better see this,” Pimmer said from the gate.

Konowa trotted over. “How’s the battle going?”

For an answer, the Viceroy pointed down to the plain below. A single soldier was marching into the open and straight for the whirling madness that had once been Faltinald Gwyn. Frost fire blazed all around the soldier, creating a barrier that no rakke dared approach.

“That’s got to be Renwar,” Konowa said.

Yimt appeared at Konowa’s elbow. “I’d recognize that gimpy walk a mile away. What in the hell does he think he’s doing?”

“He’s challenging Gywn again,” Konowa said, admiring the soldier’s courage. “I told you, Renwar already ripped him apart once before.”

“But did that monster look like that the last time?” Yimt asked.

Konowa didn’t answer. The creature moving toward Renwar looked like nothing so much as a whirling, black storm. Konowa could feel the malevolence of it from here.

“Surely the shades of the dead will aid young Renwar,” Pimmer said. No sooner were the words out of his mouth than several shadows flickered into being near the creature on the desert floor.

But something about them was wrong.

“Those aren’t the Darkly Departed,” Yimt said, starting forward. “Bloody hell. They’re shades of dead rakkes!”

Hundreds of them appeared, emerging from the storm-whipped vortex and flying outward like shrapnel. They were met at once by the shades of the Iron Elves in massive explosions of black frost and ear-splitting cracks. The desert floor gleamed as it iced over. Shadows merged and fragmented in close-quarter combat. The air vibrated with screams and howls as huge chunks of darkness ripped open and then closed as the fighting between the dead escalated from this plane to the next.

The living rakkes took the opportunity to descend on the Iron Elves, charging across the ice with wild abandon. Volley after volley of well-aimed musket fire scythed through their ranks. Limbs and heads flew through the air as the beasts were chopped apart by the lead shot. Blood droplets froze in the air and fell like red glass beads to roll around on the icy ground. Rakkes died by the dozens, but the beasts refused to retreat and launched fresh assaults over the bodies of their fallen.

“You cagey bastard,” Konowa said, his fury rising as he focused on the swirling entity that had once been Viceroy Faltinald Gwyn.

“We have to do something,” Yimt said, turning to look at Konowa. Konowa halted before he’d taken two steps toward the roadway leading down to the desert. His first reaction was to run all the way down there and wade into the beasts with nothing but his saber and his anger. He turned, and with an effort, sheathed his saber, allowing the frost fire to die out. Musket fire from the Iron Elves manning the fort’s walls was crackling like wet pine in a fire. Already, he could hear the shrieks and growls of the rakkes on the far side of the fort.

“The fort is untenable, and the regiment is in trouble. We’re between a rock and an even harder rock. We need to be able to create some kind of diversion,” he said, frustrated that he couldn’t think of anything big enough that would pose a threat to the mass of rakkes attacking the regiment.

“Your father’s a wizard and Miss Tekoy’s a witch,” Yimt said, though Konowa could tell by the tone of his voice he didn’t have much hope in that regard.

Konowa kicked the stone wall of the fort with his boot.

“Unless he’s stopped speaking squirrel I don’t think he’ll be much help, and Visyna is exhausted. Damn it! There has to be something else.” I was wrong to leave the regiment, Konowa realized, horrified that he might very well watch its destruction and not be able to do a bloody thing about it.

“There’s nothing for it then,” Yimt said, standing to his full height and straightening his uniform. He clutched his drukar in his right hand and pointed toward the battle below. “We’ll just have to charge down there and take’em on head on.”

Konowa looked at the dwarf. “That’s suicide and you know it.”

“Aye, but it’s the best kind. Maybe we’ll buy them enough time to get away.”

Konowa was already shaking his head even though he still had no better idea. “We’ll call that plan B. I still want something we can do that gives us at least a five percent chance of survival.”

A small cough alerted Konowa to the presence of Pimmer. “Five percent you say?” he said, offering the two of them a smile he probably only brought out just before revealing the existence of the Calahrian Army outside the opposing diplomat’s capital city. “I think I have just the thing.”

Alwyn felt the presence of the dead rakkes before he saw them. The shades of the dead creatures tore through the wall between this world and the next, staining the air around them with a toxic mix of mindless fear and ravenous hunger. The cries of the living soldiers sounded distant and muted compared to the reaction of the shades of the Iron Elves’ dead.

They charged headlong into the dead creatures, meeting frenzy with the controlled violence of seasoned soldiers. The dead of the Iron Elves slashed and burned their way through the dead creatures, tearing their shadowy forms into fragments that shattered and bled darkness into the night. Frost fire sparked off them and burned holes in the ice on the ground, creating deep, black holes. Wails of absolute agony ebbed and flowed as the battle raged.

Frost fire consumed rakke shades, eating their essence until nothing but disembodied screams of pain remained to echo in the night. The temperature continued to fall as death swept across the mortal plane. It beckoned to things dead and gone eons before rakkes ever walked the earth. Huge, multilegged creatures with spike-crusted claws scrambled into being, lunging and stabbing at the shades of the Iron Elves and forcing them to slowly retreat.

The vortex around the creature continued to grow, its scouring winds tearing and scattering anything and everything they touched. It fed on the darkness, drawing ever more power as time disgorged dead after dead onto the field of battle. Each new creature was more twisted and broken than the last, its memory of what it was so fragmented that it could only piece together parts of what it had once been. What remained as strong as ever, however, was the rapacious need to feed, and these monsters of tentacle and spike, fang and barb, flew at the shades of the Iron Elves with abandon. The shades fell back, and Alwyn let them, knowing that not even they could withstand this force. There was only one way for this madness to stop.

Alwyn took in a breath and breathed out frost fire.

“I challenge you, Gwyn!” Alwyn shouted, and strode forth to meet the darkness head on.

Konowa, this is madness,” Visyna said, standing at the front gate of the fort. Except the front gate wasn’t there anymore. The two large wooden doors had been ripped from their hinges and repurposed by Viceroy Alstonfar. “The Viceroy is a very creative man, but this is just lunacy.”

Konowa couldn’t disagree, but he didn’t see what choice they had. He stepped aside as soldiers ran back and forth from inside the fort. They were scrambling to load as many supplies as would fit on the hastily constructed wooden contraption now resting on the top of the snow-covered roadway leading down to the desert floor. Armloads of anything and everything were being tossed onto the Viceroy’s invention, though Konowa thought a more apt description would be “disaster waiting to happen.” In this regard, he and Visyna agreed, but he couldn’t let her know that.

“Careful, Major, coming through,” a soldier said, tottering under the weight of a large wooden cask. Anything of possible value, especially foodstuffs, were being hurriedly bundled and loaded as RSM Arkhorn barked orders that would sound more at home in a grocer’s shop: “Try to find a bag of flour with a few less rat droppings in it! Don’t go mixing the tins of boot polish with the tins of jam. Some of us will be wanting toast later, and if I open the wrong tin in the dark guess who’ll be eating every bite!”

The crackle of a musket volley drifted up from the desert floor below, adding urgency to the loading. It was a clear reminder that living men were down there among all the shades. Smoke from volley after volley mixed with flashes of light and bursts of frost fire were making it difficult to see what was going on. The urge to charge down there rose up in Konowa again and he fought it by pacing. He looked down at the plain again. The Iron Elves with the Darkly Departed and Private Renwar would have to hold off Gwyn and his monsters for a little longer.

Konowa tore himself away from the view and faced Visyna. “It’s our only option,” he said, looking at the toboggan and wishing it wasn’t. While Konowa had been outside the fort bringing Visyna and her group inside, Pimmer had been hard at work crafting what was little more than thirty feet of sled with a bow made of wood planking, and everything nailed and banded together with cobbler’s supplies. It did not fill Konowa with confidence, but there really was no more time. More musket fire and a rising gibbering howl of maddened rakkes emphasized his point.

“I know it is,” Visyna said, leaning forward and giving him a quick kiss on the lips. The frost fire stung, but he thought he could get used to that.

“All aboard who’s going aboard,” Pimmer shouted.

Konowa turned. His mother was placing his father and Tyul onto the toboggan and getting them settled in. His father was still not talking. Konowa knew it was risky, but he hoped that thrusting the elf into the heart of a battle would snap him out of it. They were going to need him.

Pimmer ran past to direct a soldier where to put some sacks then hurried over to Konowa. “We’re just about ready, Major. I think you can call the soldiers down from the wall.”

Konowa heard their musket fire and shook his head. “Not until the very last moment.”

“We are rapidly approaching that moment,” he said. “Once The Flying Elf starts sliding, there’ll be no stopping her.”

Konowa brought his right hand up to his ear and rubbed a knuckle in it. “The Flying Elf?”

“HMT The Flying Elf, actually.” When Konowa didn’t respond, Pimmer elaborated. “Her Majesty’s Toboggan, of course.”

“Of course. And the name?”

Pimmer’s smile lessened a little. “A bit cheeky, I know, but after I relayed your experiences with the flying sarka har, Miss Tekoy insisted.”

“And can you steer this . . . elf?

Pimmer’s face clouded. “All I had time for was the basic design. We’ll just push it down the slope until it starts to move then hop on and hold tight. Our great luck in this is that the road leading down to the desert floor runs straight with a three-foot wall on either side, creating a nice, deep furrow. Now that it’s filled with snow we should stay well centered all the way down. I am a little concerned about the angle of transition between the road and the desert when we reach the bottom. There appears to be a large snowbank down there, but I think we’ll manage with a fairly gradual transition.”

Konowa looked down to the bottom. “More ice than snow I’d say.”

“Best not to think about it too much,” Pimmer offered.

Konowa agreed. “Right. We’re going now.” He looked around and spotted Yimt waving his drukar in the air as he spurred the men on. “RSM! Get the men formed up and make sure we have everyone. We’re not coming back. I want this sl—this toboggan moving in one minute.”

“Corporal Feylan!” Yimt shouted, pointing at the young soldier with his drukar. “I want everyone right here in thirty seconds. Get the men down from the walls, now. Any dawdlers will have the honor of welcoming the rakkes to this place. In light of what happened around here, I imagine death will be almost instantaneous.”

“Yes, RSM, right away,” Feylan said, running off to round up the soldiers still inside the fort.

“So whose butt did he kiss to make corporal?” Zwitty asked, walking up with a single loaf of moldy bread in his hand.

“Corporals and higher sit at the front of this device. Want a promotion?” Yimt asked.

“Just asking,” Zwitty said, scurrying away to place his loaf of bread on the pile then jumping on well away from the front.

“Shame he didn’t dawdle,” Yimt said, watching the soldier the whole time.

A musket fired from inside the fort. Privates Vulhber, Erinmoss, and Inkermon came running. “It’s the rakkes, sir! They’re climbing over the walls!”

Bloodcurdling roars echoed inside the fort as the beasts vaulted over the top and descended into the yard. A couple of muskets fired, dropping one rakke where it twitched and growled in agony, and taking off the left arm of another at the elbow.

“Do we have everyone?” Konowa shouted.

“All accounted for, Major,” Feylan said.

“Good. RSM, get this toboggan moving!”

“All right, laddies . . . and ladies,” Yimt said, grabbing hold of a wooden crate roped onto the toboggan. “Start pushing!”

A collective groan went up as backs bent to the task. Konowa tried to do the mental calculation of how heavy this toboggan with all its supplies and passengers was and came up with bloody damn heavy.

“It’s not moving!” someone shouted.

More rakkes poured over the wall and started bounding across the fort’s small yard. A single musket fired in response. If a rakke went down Konowa couldn’t see it in the mass of furry beasts closing in on them.

“Then keep bloody pushing!” Yimt shouted back.

A blur off to the left caught Konowa’s attention and he was shocked to see Pimmer running for all he was worth toward the toboggan. “What are you doing, man? This was your idea! Get on!”

Pimmer jumped on and the toboggan broke free and began to slide across the snow. Konowa pushed until he thought his eyes would pop out of his head. The toboggan inched forward, slowly picking up speed. Blood pounded in his ears. I’m getting too old for this, he decided, easing off for a moment to catch his breath. The toboggan leaped ahead a few feet and his heart raced as it started to slip away from him.

“Jump on! Jump on!”

Konowa pumped his legs and dove, landing headfirst in a bag of flour that burst open on impact.

He came up gasping for air. “Do we have everyone?” he shouted, turning to look behind him. Rakkes screamed and picked up pieces of wood and threw them at the toboggan. Too late he wondered what would stop the rakkes from simply sliding down the hill after them?

Jir bounded up beside him and dug his claws into the stack of supplies. He stuck his head up into the wind with his mouth open and his tongue hanging out. His stubby little tail wagged furiously.

“Cover your ears!” Pimmer shouted, using his thumb to point back at the fort.

Konowa looked, then flinched as the fort vanished in a black orange flash. The explosion rocked the toboggan and set it hurtling even faster down the slope. Rakkes and rubble rocketed into the air. Konowa had seen gunpowder explode before, but never this much. It sounded like a thousand thunderclouds detonating at the same time. The walls of the fort buckled and flew outward, scattering cartwheeling chunks of masonry down the hill and toward the toboggan. Body parts and bricks began falling all around them.

People screamed. Something heavy hit Konowa in the back between the shoulder blades knocking him forward again into the flour. He pushed himself back up and looked down at his side to see the grinning, severed head of a rakke staring back at him. He picked it up by the smoldering hair on its head and flung it over the side.

He became aware of a new sensation, that of falling. He turned and faced forward as the toboggan whooshed down the snow like the bow of a ship plunging into the trough of a monster wave.

The rock walls whizzed past much closer than Konowa thought was safe. He squinted into the wind and saw that due to the prevailing wind the snow had drifted more to the western side of the road, creating a ramp that was angling them toward the east side, and the rocks that lined it.

“Everyone lean left!” he shouted, throwing his body sideways. The whole toboggan lurched and began to tilt as it climbed up the snowdrift on the west side.

“Too much! Back to the right!”

The toboggan lurched again and a loud crack sounded from somewhere beneath him.

“She’s breaking up, Major!” Pimmer shouted from somewhere behind him. “She can’t handle the strain!”

“We’re almost there!” Konowa shouted, trying to reach for his saber then forgetting the idea when he realized he’d have to release one of his hands from its death grip on the supplies. The toboggan hit a bump—it might have been part of a rakke—and became airborne. The bottom of his stomach fell away and he suddenly felt as light as a feather. It wasn’t a good feeling.

The desert floor appeared through the snow. It was close, and on an angle that looked more vertical than horizontal. A cluster of rakkes stood at the bottom of the snow-covered stairs looking up.

“Rakkes dead ahead off the bow!” Corporal Feylan shouted, embracing his naval ambitions in his excitement. “Brace for impact!”

In the final second before toboggan, Iron Elves, and rakkes met in what would be recorded as the first and last battle of the HMT The Flying Elf, Major Konowa Swift Dragon, brevet naval captain, said a silent prayer to blind, dumb luck.

“Viceroy!” he yelled, the wind and snow stinging his face. “You know how to make a distraction!”

Konowa’s understanding of physics was, as he was the first to admit, more of a complete misunderstanding. The looming change from the steep descent down the snow-covered road to the flat snow-covered desert rushing toward him was blocked by a huge mound of accumulated ice and snow. It looked less like a soft pile of fluffy snow and more of a hard, ice-encrusted ramp. He chose to keep his eyes open as he’d already lived his life once and a lot of it he would just as soon forget. He wanted to see the next few seconds, especially if they were to be his last.

What saved Konowa and the riders of HMT The Flying Elf was luck in the form of the combined body mass of thirty-five rakkes. The toboggan launched itself into the air and immediately took a nose down position as it sailed through the air toward the desert floor. At that angle it would have shattered on landing, but the rakkes took the initial impact of the toboggan, absorbing the force of over two thousand pounds traveling faster than an eight-team horse carriage.

A rakke’s skull, though heavy and thick to protect what little brain it had, wasn’t designed to withstand the blunt impact of that much force. Konowa had never seen a body disintegrate two feet in front of him before. The spray of rakke material stung his face with a wet mask that dried instantly in the wind.

If the creatures screamed, Konowa couldn’t hear them. He did, however, feel the force of the wood pulverizing them as it shuddered toward touchdown. More rakkes appeared and while these, too, were smashed by the toboggan, the body parts now flying through the air were considerably larger and posed a real danger.

“Duck!” someone shouted entirely unnecessarily. Even Jir had had the sense to crouch down as limbs and heads began flying overhead.

HMT The Flying Elf touched down some thirty feet away from the foot of the road and rebounded at once, throwing up a hundred-foot-tall geyser of ice, snow, wood, and more rakke parts. This time Konowa did hear screams, but he had no time to check who they were. He was too busy holding on. His hips then his legs flew up into the air, and for a moment, he was doing a handstand before the toboggan slammed down again and Konowa did, too.

Three more bounces and one more handstand occurred before Konowa was able to remain firmly on the pile of supplies. Rakke howls rose and fell away as the toboggan roared across the snow, bowling over the creatures with little regard and minimal drag on its high rate of speed.

“That was marvelous!” Pimmer shouted, his voice filled with glee.

“Miraculous is more like it,” Konowa yelled, rising up slightly to look beyond the next group of rakkes running to get out of the way. Three didn’t, but one did. Konowa stuck out his boot and caught the rakke at the base of its skull with his heel as they flew past and immediately regretted it. The crack he heard had been the rakke’s spine and not his ankle, but he was still seeing stars for the next several seconds.

“Everyone keep your hands and legs inside!” Visyna shouted. “We’re traveling much too fast.”

Konowa was still grimacing with pain so he didn’t bother to look over his shoulder. He had a feeling she was looking right at him.

“Shades!”

The shades of dead rakkes flitted in and out of sight up ahead. Maybe they’re still trying to get the hang of it, Konowa wondered, hoping that provided enough of an advantage to allow the toboggan to slide through. He risked taking his right hand off the supplies and grabbed his saber, drawing and calling on the frost fire as he did so.

The part of him that was forever six years old grinned while the rest of him tried to convince himself this really had been the best and only plan of action. The blade of the saber sparked to life with frost fire and began trailing an eerie icy black tail of flame and frost like a comet falling from the heavens. Unlike the living rakkes, however, these shades moved to intercept the toboggan. Konowa suddenly realized there was no way he’d be able to swing his blade in a wide enough arc to cut a swath big enough for them to pass through safely.

“I hope this works!” he shouted, swinging his saber down to lodge it into the table top acting as the bow. Black flame engulfed the wood and the entire front of the toboggan, sending huge, flickering tongues of frost fire back along the toboggan. Jir yelped and stuck his head beneath his front paws while screams and shouts rose from those immediately behind him.

“What are you doing?” Visyna and Pimmer shouted at the same time.

Konowa didn’t bother to reply. The answer was about to happen . . . now!

The first shades of dead rakkes hit by the flaming toboggan exploded in a shower of sparks. Their shadowy forms fractured and disintegrated like smashed crystal as the black flames consumed the tumbling pieces until nothing remained. The toboggan barreled on, making living and dead rakkes one and the same.

“A most novel idea, Major,” Pimmer said, crawling up beside him. “We appear to be through the rakke wall. Any thoughts on how to put out the flames?”

His grin vanished. “Oh . . .”

The flames, fed as much by the wind as the supply of rakke shades, were quickly clawing their way back along the supplies.

“I am sorry about this,” Konowa said, meaning it. He hadn’t set out to destroy the man’s pride and joy. “We’ll just have to jump off and let it burn out.”

“That sounds wise, especially considering I saved a few kegs of black powder and loaded them on the toboggan.”

Konowa looked down below him. He could just make out the curve of a keg at the bottom of the pile. “How could you be that stupid?”

Pimmer looked crestfallen. “I’m afraid I placed them on the bottom to provide some ballast and keep our center of gravity low, like on a ship.”

“Everyone jump off!” Konowa shouted, turning and looking back down the length of the toboggan.

The looks he received were a mix of horror and incredulity. Even Jir perked his head up as if to see if he was serious.

“It was a mad plan to start with, you don’t need to embellish it!” Visyna shouted back. “We’re still going too fast!”

Konowa couldn’t help but notice how attractive she looked with her hair blowing wildly in the wind. He’d have to remember to tell her that. Later. “There’s black powder on here. When the frost fire hits it it’s going to explode!”

“You arse!” Visyna shouted. She glared at him for a second then began weaving the air. Konowa felt the power of her control over the elements around them. It suddenly started snowing much harder. Big, fluffy flakes pasted him like a cold, wet wool blanket.

“I don’t think that’s going to put out the fire,” he said, taking a quick look at the front of the toboggan and the growing bonfire there.

“This isn’t over!” Visyna shouted, grabbing a hold of Chayii. His mother just looked at him with disappointment in her eyes, a look he’d seen far too often. And then the two women in his life stood up and dove off the side of the toboggan and into the snow.

“The Viceroy did it, not me!” he shouted after them, knowing that was the six-year-old part of him again. “I’m just trying to help!”

“And to think you were complaining about a little bit of copper fire a few hours ago,” Yimt said, his face and beard a mask of snow.

“This was the only—Look, I’m still in charge here!” Konowa shouted, anger rising that he was being scolded by apparently everyone. “And I order all of you off the damn sled!

“Damn toboggan,” Pimmer offered helpfully.

Konowa grabbed the diplomat under both arms and held him up. “Thank you for pointing that out. Try to roll when you hit the snow.” He heaved, his anger sending the diplomat flying in a graceful arc, which ended in an explosion of snow.

He turned to look back at the rest of the passengers. “Anyone else need assistance?”

Yimt began kicking supplies and soldiers off the toboggan with equal force. “Never a dull moment in the service!” He jumped, grabbing a flailing Zwitty in one hand and a metal tin in the other. The rest followed in a melee of limbs, prayers, and curses, the latter aimed, he was certain, directly at him.

By now the flames were licking all around Konowa. He knew he was impervious to their effect, but he had no such protection from gunpowder. “Time to go, Jir,” he said, motioning for the bengar to move. Jir growled, and the hair on the back of his mane stood straight up. “This is no time to get squirrelly,” Konowa said, and shook his finger at him. “Jump or I’ll boot you off.”

Jir growled again and bared his fangs. Konowa realized the poor creature was terrified.

“Look, I don’t like it either, but we have to get off this thing. Everyone else is gone, it’s just you and me, and I’m not leaving you behind.” He held out his hands and motioned for Jir to come to him.

Konowa doubted the bengar understood the words, but the tone in his voice must have registered. Jir stopped growling and slinked over to rest his head against Konowa’s thigh. Frost immediately arced between Konowa and Jir and the bengar stood up in surprise. Konowa lunged, grabbed Jir by the mane, and pushed him over the side as the bengar flailed the air with his paws.

“You can thank me later!” he shouted, after the howling bengar landed on the snow, snout first. He skidded along like that for a few yards before emerging from a growing snow pile and began running after the toboggan as it pulled away. “Thought they always landed paws down.”

Konowa turned to face forward again and was surrounded by black flame. It was surprisingly peaceful, as if he’d just dived into a cool lake on a hot summer day. The feeling only lasted a moment.

“Right, this is going to explode,” he said to himself, and prepared to jump. He was halfway to throwing himself off the side when the battle somewhere out in the snow between Private Renwar and Her Emissary caught his attention. The acorn made a grating sound as it constricted with an icy burst of energy. Konowa bent over double with tears streaming down his face. He struggled to right himself as the toboggan continued to tear through the battlefield. He wasn’t steering, but the pull of the conflict between Renwar and Gwyn was drawing him and the toboggan toward them. The power in the night was astounding. It was as if all the breathable air had been replaced with raw energy, and he wasn’t breathing it so much as absorbing it.

The toboggan began to pick up speed as it homed in on the dueling pair and Konowa knew his time was now. The temptation to ride it out and draw even closer to the swirling battle of power almost kept him on the toboggan.

Almost.

With a scream he didn’t pretend was anything but, he flung himself off the side. He’d lost count of the number of times he’d experienced the sensation of flying and falling, but he knew if he never felt it again he’d be entirely okay with that. The snow-covered desert floor came up and punched him in the face and everything went white, cold, and suffocating for a while.

After what could have been an eternity or a few seconds he lifted his head and sucked in some air, choking down a mouthful of the bitter-tasting snow in the process. He gingerly climbed to his hands and knees as the earth pivoted and spun beneath him. He shook his head, which didn’t help one bit. Everything was vibrating, and not in that warm, slightly drunk-feeling way. This was harsh and unsettling. He stood up, surprised to see his saber still clutched in his hand.

“Where’s my . . . damn shako?” he muttered, poking around in the snow with the point of the blade in the vain hope of finding it. He turned around in a small circle intent on finding the hat while a voice deep inside was screaming at him to pull himself together. “Not without my shako,” he said to no one, then dry-heaved.

Sweat dripped off his nose and his whole body began to shake. “Think I should sit . . . sit down,” he said, starting to walk instead. That’s when the sights, sounds, and smells of battle assaulted him all at once. He staggered and had to use his saber as a cane to stay upright. Rakkes howled and screamed. Musket volleys rippled and snapped through the air as the acrid smoke of gunpowder mixed with the falling snow turning everything a dusty, pale gray.

He heard shouts, saw shadows, felt the cold wind on his face. It occurred to him then that he was still sweating a lot as more liquid poured down his face and dripped off the end of his nose. He reached up with his left hand to wipe the sweat away and thought it felt awfully sticky. He looked at his fingers. They were covered in blood.

“Oh . . .”

Got to keep moving, he thought, even as his knees buckled and he sat down in the snow. The weight of the world pressed down on his shoulders. He watched the snowflakes spin and float in the air. That was him. Weak and blown about by the wind. He shook his head again. No, that wasn’t him. He had purpose. He had strength. Still, right now that was just so many words.

“. . . just close my eyes for a minute,” he said, aware that the ground was shaking. Something loomed over him and he looked up.

A rakke stood two yards away. His shako was clutched in its claws. It opened its mouth and peeled back its lips to reveal the full length of its fangs.

Konowa tried to lift his saber, but his right arm stayed limp at his side. The rakke stepped forward, looking around as if trying to detect a trap.

“Run,” Konowa mumbled, not sure if he was talking to himself or the rakke. It didn’t matter. He couldn’t move and the rakke took another step toward him.

Something hard and impossibly cold pressed against his breast until he thought it would burst through and shatter his chest. Still, it wasn’t enough. He watched the rakke approach, the shako still dangling from a claw. He ignored the creature’s milky eyes and its drooling fangs. All his attention was on the shako.

“That’s not yours,” he said, his voice little more than a hoarse whisper. Images of a locket and four words inscribed inside—Come back to me—kept him from slipping into unconsciousness.

The rakke seemed to understand what he meant. It looked down at its claws and brought the shako up to its face. It sniffed at the hat and then tore a chunk out of it and threw it to the snow, spitting out the piece a moment later.

Konowa got one leg underneath him and tried to stand. “You really shouldn’t have done that,” he said, struggling to stand upright. He wobbled and collapsed back down, the strength from anger not enough this time.

The rakke growled and took another step forward. Its arms could now reach Konowa. One swing and his throat would be torn open or his intestines spilled in the snow. That’s all it would take for him to be so much red meat going down the gullet of a rakke.

“I haven’t had a bath in weeks,” Konowa said, doubting the rakke’s taste buds would care. He took in a breath and cursed under it. Not exactly the most poetic of last words. He was still thinking of something better when the rakke screamed and vanished in a burst of frost fire.

A shade stood where the rakke once had. Konowa blinked.

“Kritton? You saved me?”

The shade of Kritton stepped forward and swung its blade. “No, I didn’t.”

I am the master!

Never in the creature’s past life had it ever believed that statement in its entirety. It had served senior diplomats, and then the queen of Calahr, and finally the Shadow Monarch, and though it had exerted much power and control over the destinies of others in those roles, it had always had a master to answer to. What few memories remained of that time only served to fuel the uncontrollable rage that now consumed it. How could it have been so weak, so powerless, so . . . human?

It continued to tear itself apart, ridding itself of everything superfluous and soft. The human frailties that had defined Gwyn eroded in the fierce storm of its madness. All that remained was pure, unadulterated power. Its world was now one of unbearable pain, yet within that suffering it found an existence so euphoric that it sought even more ways to hurt itself. It scoured and tore every last shred of humanity from its being, whittling itself down to nothing but a collapsing mass of absolute agony.

The vortex of its madness swirled faster and faster, rending the fabric between the planes of the living and the dead. More and more creatures long vanished from the world poured through the tear, taking up ethereal form and attacking the shades of the Iron Elves with raw, wild glee, unfettered again after millennia.

I do this! I control this!

Its core grew smaller even as its power expanded. Its rage and power flew around it in a blur, spinning so fast they created a vacuum. There was no longer any air to breathe within its boundaries, but it had long moved beyond the need for it.

I am the master!

The voice that answered back shook it to its core.

“You are mistaken,” Alwyn said, “and I am here to put things right.”

“Are you all right?” Visyna asked, helping Chayii to her feet while brushing snow from the elf’s hair.

“I appear to be,” she said, her voice shaking as she smoothed out her Hasshugeb robe and straightened up. “Your weaving has saved us again. The snow is much deeper here.”

“I hope the others landed as softly as we did,” Visyna said, not entirely sure her weaving had really had that much of an effect. The burst of fear- and anger-induced energy brought on by Konowa’s latest recklessness had fueled her power to weave the snow in the wake of the toboggan. She doubted she could do it again, although knowing Konowa she didn’t rule it out. He could charm one second and infuriate the next.

“I hope so, too, my dear,” Chayii said, reaching up and brushing some snow out of Visyna’s hair. “You work well with the natural order. I suspect the elf-line runs in your family.”

“Actually, I don’t think one’s bloodline really matters when it comes to caring about the world around us. You either do or you don’t. It just feels right to me.”

Chayii paused in brushing Visyna’s hair and looked deeply into her eyes. “So wise for one so young. Do not tell my son, but I hope my grandchildren take after you.”

Any other time Visyna would have blushed, but being in the middle of a battlefield didn’t afford her that luxury. “We must move,” she said, grabbing the elf by the arm and heading off after the toboggan. It was easy enough to follow its tracks in the snow along with bits of crates, sacks, uniforms, and, eventually, soldiers.

“Friend or foe?” Corporal Feylan shouted. He held the back half of a broken musket in his hands and appeared dazed.

“Shoot first, then ask,” Yimt said, appearing out of the gloom and placing a hand on the soldier’s arm. “But in this case it’s all right. Ladies,” he said, taking a quick bow. He held his drukar in his hand. The blade was slick and dripping.

“Are you okay?” Visyna asked, walking closer. Yes, there was definitely blood on the end of his weapon.

Yimt followed her gaze and then looked back up. “Just my luck I landed on a rakke and the poor thing broke my fall. I am glad I found you. We’re scattered about like dandelions in a windstorm. Ah, there’s a few more now.”

“Is everyone all right?” Hrem asked, running up to them. He had Scolly and Zwitty and three other soldiers in tow. Visyna wasn’t surprised. The big soldier was a natural leader with the added advantage of being easy to spot.

“Better and better,” Yimt said, punching Hrem affectionately in the bicep. “We’re still missing a few, but we can’t stay here. We’ll keep following the trail and see if we can’t round up the stragglers on the way. If you haven’t already done so, grab some kind of weapon. I don’t care if it’s a piece of ice or a knitting needle, but we’re deep in the middle of nowhere safe. Miss Red Owl, Miss Tekoy, please stay behind Private Vulhber. He makes a lovely wall. The rest of you, heads on swivels and if you think you see a rakke or worse, shout it out. Now, by the left if you still remember how it’s done . . . march.”

As they walked Visyna found herself tussling between two emotions. On the one hand she felt relieved that Sergeant Arkhorn so quickly and easily took command of the situation, but she was surprised to feel a degree of resentment, too, at the loss of the authority she had earned just a short few hours before. In the end, she was content to let things be as her thoughts turned to Konowa.

“I hope he’s all right, because when we find him, I might just punch him in the nose,” she said.

“He was like this even as a child,” Chayii said, keeping her voice low. “The incident in the birthing meadow when he was not chosen by a Wolf Oak only added to what was already there. I realize now he will never truly be at peace until this has come full circle. He will face the Shadow Monarch, and one of them will die.”

Visyna was taken aback by Chayii’s matter-of-fact assessment of the fate of her son, but she didn’t disagree with it. “Perhaps there will be another way.”

“Perhaps,” Chayii said, but she didn’t sound like she believed it, and Visyna wasn’t sure she did herself.

“Heads up! Movement on the left flank.”

Visyna turned. Two shadows emerged from the dark and resolved themselves into the Viceroy and Jurwan.

“Look who I found, or rather, who found me!” the Viceroy said, his voice booming as if trying to get the attention of a barkeep on a busy night. He walked with one arm around the elf’s waist. Jurwan clutched his left arm tight to his chest and appeared to be in pain. Blood glistened between the fingers of his right hand.

Two more shadows emerged ten yards from the pair and angled toward them at a growing rate of speed.

“Rakkes!” Visyna shouted, her fingers flailing uselessly in the cold air. She couldn’t pull so much as a single thread to weave. She stomped the snow in frustration as the rakkes closed in. The Viceroy nonchalantly drew his saber and began to whistle loudly and with little sense of rhythm. Jurwan removed his right hand from his wounded left arm and waved it into the air, scattering drops of blood everywhere.

The rakkes roared and ran even faster toward them. Five more rakkes appeared from the other side, boxing the hapless pair in.

Yimt was already charging toward the rakkes with Hrem right behind him, but they wouldn’t reach them in time.

“Yimt. Hrem. Stop!”

The command cut through the night like a sliver from a single hair threaded through the smallest needle. If Visyna hadn’t been standing right beside her she doubted she would have heard it, but Yimt turned, startled. Hrem stopped, too, after plowing into Yimt and sending them both to their knees in the snow.

“Chayii, why?” Visyna asked, as the rakkes covered the last few yards to the Viceroy and Jurwan.

“My husband is up to his old tricks again,” she said, her tone a mixture of pride and annoyance.

A fifth shadow slid through the night. It moved so fast and so silently that Visyna couldn’t keep it in focus. A soft, subtle voice carried on the night air, and while she couldn’t understand its language, its meaning was clear; this was the power of a Silver Wolf Oak unleashed.

Tyul cut through the rakkes like lightning falling from the sky. He appeared, he destroyed, he disappeared. The creatures had no chance to defend themselves and no time to scream.

As the last rakke collapsed, Tyul came to a standstill, standing quietly in the snow as if he’d been there all along. No other living thing except perhaps Jir could look so calm and yet exude so much potential for violence. It was in the smooth, calculating grace of his stance. She would have found that attractive but for looking in his eyes. The elf was gone. What remained was little more than pure, natural force, a predator of the natural order driven and sustained by the power of a Silver Wolf Oak.

The smell of hot blood filled the air and Visyna brought her hand to her nose.

“What is—” she started to say, but Chayii held up her hand to silence her.

She took a slow, careful step toward Tyul, but the elf simply turned and disappeared into the night. Visyna looked down at the snow where he had stood and could see no sign that he had ever been there.

“A single company of lads like that and the Empire could rule the world,” the Viceroy said, walking up to them as he sheathed his saber. He stopped when he looked at Chayii and his smile froze on his face. “But of course, his affliction is a most tragic one and not something to be used for gain.” He sounded genuinely concerned if a little wistful.

“I see my husband does not share your concern equally,” she said, turning her gaze on Jurwan. “No doubt he cut himself deliberately so that the rakkes would smell his blood and come running, unaware they were being drawn into the hunting ground of one of the dïova gruss.”

Visyna had heard that term before and remembered it meant lost one. It definitely fit Tyul. It wasn’t that the elf was insane, at least, she didn’t think so, just that he was so in tune with the natural order that he had become part of it as much as the wind and the rain. He would strike down rakkes and any other ill-conceived creatures that marred the world and upset the natural order.

“Chayii,” Visyna asked, “what will happen to Tyul when there are no more rakkes to hunt?”

The elf hung her head before answering. “Eventually, they lose themselves so completely that they can’t bear to feed on anything, knowing their very existence mars the world. They starve to death in one final act of guardianship of the natural order, giving back their bodies to the earth.”

“That’s crazy,” Zwitty muttered, drawing everyone’s attention his way. He looked guilty, but met their gaze and glared. “Well, isn’t it? What good is anybody dead to anyone?”

“I’ve often wanted to find out,” Yimt said, eyeing Zwitty as if sizing him up for a coffin. “But as with so many joys in life, that will have to wait. We need to keep moving. Anyone seen Inkermon? He jumped about the same time you lot did?”

Hrem shook his head. “It was all a white blur. He’s got to be around here somewhere though.”

No one mentioned the obvious, but Visyna could tell they were all thinking it. With rakkes roaming everywhere his odds of survival were slim. He was no Tyul.

“Well, if that creator of his put any sense in his brain he’ll follow the tracks and catch up. Let’s go.”

Visyna fell into step, watching Chayii gently take her husband’s arm and rest her head on his shoulder. Jurwan still wasn’t talking, but it was clear from his tactic with Tyul he was regaining his elfness.

A forlorn shako, a broken musket, and other bits of uniform and equipment surrounded several black marks in the snow where Iron Elves had perished. Yimt took the time to quickly sift through each one, muttering under his breath as he did so. In each case he picked up something and put the object in a haversack he’d found and slung over his shoulder.

“What’s he doing?” Visyna asked Hrem.

“Collecting something from each soldier, hopefully something personal their family back home might know and appreciate receiving, especially when there won’t be any body.”

“Damn,” Yimt said, standing up from the last spot. He was holding a small white book in his hand with a torn cover.

“Inkermon’s holy book,” Hrem said, his voice low and rough.

Visyna waited for him to say more, but he didn’t. She thought about it, and realized that for soldiers like Hrem and Yimt and Konowa, the squad, the regiment, was another way of saying family.

“Everyone stay sharp, we’re coming up on the main battle,” Yimt said, pointing with his steel bar toward the front.

Visyna had been feeling the pull of the energy in the air for some time and her head began to swim.

“I see a rakke!” Scolly shouted, harkening Yimt’s advice.

“Pointing would help,” Yimt growled, trying to follow Scolly’s eye line.

“It’s standing over there by the major.”

Everyone looked. Up ahead in a rockier area that hadn’t received the heavier snowfall, Konowa sat limply in the snow, looking up at the creature. He wasn’t defending himself.

“Help him!” Visyna cried, not knowing who or what could.

“My son, my son,” Chayii said, her voice trembling.

The rakke stepped forward, ready to kill him when it disappeared in a violent flash of frost fire. The shade of an Iron Elf stood over its body.

“The Darkly Departed are handy to have around, I’ll give them that,” Yimt said, starting to chuckle. His laughter died as the form of the shade sharpened.

Visyna screamed.

Kritton raised his ethereal blade and swung.

The swirling mass that had once been Her Emissary tore itself into ever tinier pieces, scattering its rage and influence among the shades of the dead rakkes. Alwyn had expected to fight the creature as he had before at the canyon, but he realized now that was impossible. It had devolved into a burning black core of hatred no bigger than Alwyn’s fist, but around it swirled an ever-growing maelstrom of shadowy death, each element a fearful particle of what Faltinald Gwyn had become.

Worse, the tear opened into the realm of the dead was expanding, and the creature’s manic anger was drawing more and larger monsters through into this world. Alwyn leaned forward, pushing the wall of frost fire that surrounded him into the path of the shrieking vortex. The pain in his stump flared and he winced. Tears welled in his eyes. His wooden leg creaked with the stress, its many interwoven limbs splintering as he moved through the magical storm.

The storm reacted with fury to his presence, its howling winds buffeting Alwyn as he closed the distance to its center. Screams from the living and dead mingled in a chaotic thunder. Alwyn tried to draw in a breath, but as soon as he opened his mouth he felt ice form on his tongue. The cold dug into him like metal forks, twisting and stabbing into his flesh as each step brought him closer to the creature.

“I am the master now!” the creature screamed, focusing its attention on Alwyn.

“Then why do you fear me?” Alwyn replied, standing up to his full height and fixing the pulsing black core with his gray eyes. He had its full attention, which meant the others would have a chance. The thought struck him as oddly comforting. He did still care about others, and he knew they still cared about him.

He stepped forward, leading with his wooden leg. The wood chipped and cracked as it was flayed by the storm. Black frost crystallized along the length of the wood, extinguishing the last trace of the more wholesome power once placed there by Miss Red Owl and Miss Tekoy. So be it. With the wood now sheathed in protective black ice, he leaned forward and kept walking.

He’d expected pain, and he got it. It was a new kind of agony, like thousands of knives nicking his flesh one sliver at a time, but it wasn’t the pain that hurt him. He wasn’t just being eroded away by the force of the spinning storm. Bits of who he was, what he believed, what he desired, were being frayed and blown away by the grinding, howling wind.

He caught fleeting visions of thoughts that were once part of the thing at the center of the storm. Pain, horror, misery, and death dominated, but there were other, kinder thoughts. He saw a beautiful jeweled map and an intricately carved table that looked like a dragon. Alwyn began to sift through the storm as he strode toward its center, collecting what pieces he could, however small, containing joy and hope. He let his own fears and angers get torn away as he did his best to replace them with the bits of goodness he found. The task was an uneven one, but he only needed to sustain himself a little longer. The seething core was now just yards away.

Here, near the center, the storm spun slower, but the madness grew denser, making it difficult for Alwyn to focus. Insane laughter filled his lungs. Is this me? Am I becoming it?

He stopped a yard away from the black core. It hung in the air in front of his eyes, an infinite blackness so crazed it repeatedly shattered and re-formed under the pressure of its own insanity. He tried to remember why he’d come and couldn’t. The blackness deepened and his understanding of this world and the next blurred. He shuddered, his body and his being slowly disintegrating in the storm. The fabric of his uniform melted away, leaving him naked and exposed.

Something small and white flew past, just at the edge of his vision. It came around again and stuck into his arm. He felt a hot fire begin to burn, its heat spreading out from the point of impact. As it spread, it redefined his shape, his form, and he understood who and what he was again. He looked down and saw Rallie’s quill sticking out of his arm, dead center in the acorn tattoo: Æri Mekah . . . Into the Fire.

He smiled and looked up at the blackness before him.

“Your pain is at an end,” he said, reaching out with both hands and grabbing the blackness between them.

The fury of the storm spiked, the wind screamed, and the very air fractured as the madness that was Faltinald Gwyn began to collapse. Alwyn squeezed, crushing time and space into an ever-dwindling point of nothingness. Everything Alwyn ever knew and loved was ripped away as all his energy focused on destroying the creature and closing the tear. Claws and fangs lashed and cut him, gouging flesh and bone and memory. Obsidian-like blades of frost fire cauterized and healed the wounds, replacing flesh and blood with icy flame.

Tears rolled down his face forming icicles on his cheeks. He closed his eyes and squeezed harder, taking the pain from the creature, amplifying it with his own, and building a wall in the tear between this world and the next. Everything dead became caught up in the whirlwind as Alwyn focused all his might. The monsters broke apart and flew back into the darkness, followed by the shades of the rakkes. Still, the maelstrom did not weaken.

He slipped, as the branches of his wooden leg broke. He dropped down to his one knee and his grip on the creature faltered. The wall began to crack as the dead on the other side saw an opportunity to be free again.

“Help me,” he cried, though he couldn’t be sure his voice had made any sound at all.

Shades of the Iron Elves appeared at his side. He opened his eyes as they moved to the wall to buttress it, but even they were not enough. The creature sensed this, and the storm began to spin even faster. Alwyn cried out and would have let go, but a voice came to him from a distance.

“Kick him in the arse and be done with it, Ally. I know damn sure I never taught you to give up!”

Yimt!

Alwyn turned, blinking tears out of his eyes.

The dwarf stood on the edge of the storm. He was looking straight at Alwyn. The tears in his eyes were unmistakable.

“I knew from the moment I laid eyes on you that I’d have my work cut out turning you into a soldier,” Yimt said, “but I always knew I would. You ain’t about to prove me wrong now, are you?”

Alwyn laughed and cried at the same time. “Yimt! You’re alive!”

“Well, what the hell else would I be? You didn’t think I’d let some mangy rakkes get the better of me now, did you?”

Alwyn found the strength he needed. He squeezed one more time, and this time the creature was unable to resist. The monsters and shades of the rakkes were cast deep in the abyss of the distant past. He absorbed the creature’s pain, robbing it of its power.

“I . . . there’s so much I want to say,” Alwyn shouted. His entire being was agony, but he still managed to smile. Yimt was alive.

“Save your breath, Ally,” Yimt shouted back, his voice breaking up between sobs. “I’ll say it for both of us. You’re the skinny, overly sensitive, whiny, yet tough as bloody iron son I never had. I’m damn proud of you.”

As the life force in his hands flickered with its last moments, Alwyn smiled. He crushed the last particle that had been Gwyn and the tear between the worlds was closed. The storm around him began to die, and as the air cleared he was able to get one, perfect look at Yimt. The dwarf stood military straight, giving Alwyn a salute.