Rain stopped in his tracks and turned to Gaelen. "Yours?" The infamous former dahl’reisen had spent most of the last thousand years leading a band of banished Fey he called the Brotherhood of Shadows. He'd be leading them still if Ellysetta hadn't restored his soul.

Faint color bloomed in Gaelen's cheeks, but he held Rain's hard stare without wavering. "Four of them were at one time," he admitted. "They disappeared on reconnaissance missions into Eld. The other two weren't familiar to me."

Instinct pushed Rain closer to Ellysetta. The thought of dahl'reisen coming within ten miles of her made his hands ache for the weight of his steel "So it seems not all in your Brotherhood are as committed to protecting the Fading Lands as you thought them to be."

«Rain,» Ellysetta chided softly. Her fingers brushed the back of his wrist.

Gaelen's ice blue gaze flickered briefly as he noted the gesture. "Nei, kem'falla, it's all right. The Feyreisen is right to doubt." He lifted his chin, and his eyes narrowed. "Those in the Brotherhood are committed, Tairen Soul, but they are still dahl'reisen. Even when I was one of them, I never forgot that."

"Meaning you can't trust them." That remark came from Tajik vel Sibboreh, the red-haired former general of the eastern Fey armies who now served as the Water master of Ellysetta's bloodsworn quintet. Tajik had survived a millennium as a rasa, one of the haunted, soul-burdened Fey on the cusp of turning dahl'reisen, tormented by the lives he'd taken but desperately clinging to honor by a thread, refusing to take that last step that would tip his soul into Shadow. Because of that, Tajik had little liking or sympathy for Gaelen—he certainly didn't trust him—and he rarely missed an opportunity to get in a dig.

"Meaning trust, but not blindly," Gaelen countered. "I knew when I formed the Brotherhood that some would go astray, but I thought it better to save nineteen and lose one than see the full score slip down the Dark Path."

"So were these dahl'reisen Mage-claimed, or were they serving the Eld willingly?" Rain asked. Tightness crept over Gaelen's features, and Rain had his answer, "I see—"

"Not every dahl'reisen who joins us chooses to stay. And before you ask, nei, we don't open our doors to every dishonored blade cast out of the Fading Lands. Dahl'reisen we may be, but warriors truly bereft of honor were never welcome in our company."

"Says the dahl'reisen who slaughtered every man, woman, and child in an entire Eld clan," Tajik muttered.

"As if you would not have done the same had you seen your sister slain before your eyes. Oh, but I forgot. When your sister disappeared in the Wars, you did nothing."

Color flamed in Tajik's face. "You grot-jaffing, krekk-eating rultshart." He lunged for Gaelen, and only Rijonn and Gil— the Earth and Air masters of the quintet—managed to hold him back. Bel and Rain caught Gaelen's arms.

"Stop it. Both of you." Ellysetta stepped between the two warriors. "What is wrong with you? The enemy is out there." She pointed northward, towards Eld. "Save your anger for them."

Gaelen tugged free of Bel's and Rain's grip. "Sieks'ta. I know better than to give in to vel Sibboreh's taunting ... and I shouldn't have pricked him about his sister. Sieks'ta, Tajik."

He held out his right hand in a gesture of peace, but Tajik only glared, yanked himself out of Rijonn and Gil's tight hold, and stalked to the glass wall overlooking the river. The fingers of Gaelen's extended hand curled in a loose fist, and raw emotion shone from his eyes for an instant before a shutter fell over his face.

He smoothed the bunched creases in his black leather tunic and swept the ruffled strands of ebony hair back out of his face. "As I was saying, Tairen Soul, not all dahl’reisen join the Brotherhood. Nor do all who join the Brotherhood stay. Many do, but when hope fades, the call of the Dark Path is hard to resist."

"So now the dahl’reisen—at least some of them—are in league with the Eld," Rain summarized. "Which means the Warriors' Path and every nonprivate Spirit weave are compromised."

"And the dahl'reisen from the Brotherhood are spinning Gaelen's invisibility weave on behalf of the Eld," Bel added. The black-haired, cobalt-eyed Spirit master of Ellysetta's quintet made the announcement with none of the implied accusation that had been in Tajik's voice earlier. Bel had been the first warrior to welcome Gaelen back into the fold, and he was still the only Fey Gaelen truly considered a friend. "It won't take the Eld long to figure out how to penetrate it, if they haven't already."

Some found it odd that Bel, a warrior widely regarded in the Fading Lands as the living essence of Fey honor, could befriend the dahl'reisen whose infamous deeds were legend and whose name had become synonymous with the Dark Lord's, but Rain knew that Bel's unswerving sense of honor was exceeded only by the greatness of his heart. Belliard vel Jelani was a warrior who embodied the best of the Fey. He could plan the systematic and merciless destruction of an enemy army, kill with breathtaking skill, and make decisions that would break lesser men—but even when he'd clung to the pained, gray existence of the rasa, he never abandoned either honor or compassion. That nobility of spirit, an intrinsic goodness that suffused his every action and yet never blinded him to the harsh realities and demands of a Fey warrior's life, was one of the qualities Rain admired—and envied—most about his oldest and most trusted friend.