"Gone." His fingers clenched tight around the stone altar top. "They were there, in the city, and you just let them go? Did you even attempt to capture the girl?"

"There wasn't time, Most High. They were not here for more than a few bells, and they brought several hundred Fey with them. Before I could make arrangements to separate her from her guard, it was too late. They must have used the same invisibility weave as the dahl'reisen to leave the city without being detected."

The temperature of his spell room plummeted as Vadim's ire rose. "You haven't Marked the queen and now you tell me you let Ellysetta Baristani come and go without a single attempt to bring her to me?" Vadim's teeth came together with a snap. Ellysetta Baristani should already be his, fully Marked and under his control, not running about the countryside eluding him and his Primages. "You do remember whom you replaced in Celieria and why you replaced him, do you not?"

Nour's throat bobbed as he swallowed. "Yes, Master Maur."

Sulimage Kolis Manza, who had been the High Mage's agent in Celieria before Nour, had done a much better job infiltrating the queen's inner circle and gaining her confidence. He'd done so well, in fact, that he'd turned her against her king and half her lords and used her as one of Vadim's most powerful political pawns in Celieria's royal court. Were it not for the fiasco he'd made of the attempt to capture Ellysetta Baristani, the young Sulimage would still be there.

"I will see to Ellysetta Baristani myself" Vadim bit out. "As for you, I expect significant results with the queen before your next report. Since you can no longer Mark her without running the risk of discovery, you will have to find another way. I will have the hand of Eld guiding the Celierian throne before the month is out, or you will beg me to show you one tenth the mercy you offer your own umagi." Even among the Eld, Nour's brutality was legend. To Vadim's grim satisfaction, the Primage went pale as milk beneath his Celierian tan. "We will speak again at this same time seven days hence. I will expect better news."

"Of course, master. It shall be—" Nour's muffled voice died abruptly as Vadim lifted the Drogan chalice and tossed its thickening contents down the spell room's drain hole.

Bah. Sending Nour to Celieria had been a foolish decision. Vadim had hoped a more seasoned Primage would be better equipped to manipulate the mortals and their minds, but despite his substantive magical gifts, Nour lacked finesse. He was a sledgehammer in a situation that clearly required a chisel. Which just went to prove that power alone wasn't the measure of a great Mage.

Well, Nour was one mistake Vadim would soon remedy. For now, however, he had a Tairen Soul to trap.

After cleansing his spell room of the Drogan Hood magic, he sent his consciousness to every umagi within four hundred miles of Celieria City. Whichever way the Fey had headed, if they dropped their invisibility weaves, he would know it. Finally, carefully, he sent a subtle seeking thread out into the darkness of night and settled in to wait with all the tireless patience of a spider in its web.

When Ellysetta Baristani lowered her defenses, he would be there.

Chapter TEN

Relentless warrior

Restless soul

Deadly defender

Daring foe

Fey’cha drawn

Fey magic surrounds

Battle ready

Bravery abounds

Fey Defender, a Fey warrior’s poem warrior's poem

Southeast Celieria

The Fey ran hard through the first silver bells of the night, stopping only once to rest, and then but briefly. Rain flew overhead, Ellysetta seated on his back. The stars scattered the sky like plentiful diamonds, shimmering silver-bright against their backdrop of cool, black velvet.

The twin moons of Eloran reached their apex in the sky, the Daughter still nearly full, the larger Mother a waning quarter. Fatigue weighted Ellysetta's eyelids. Her lashes drooped, and she slumped in the saddle. The binding straps held her securely in place as she swayed in a boneless rocking motion to the rhythm of Rain's flight, and her thoughts began to drift like weightless feathers floating upon the cool night wind.

As she drifted, the light of the stars dimmed, and the sparkling night sky became a lightless well, cold and dank and black as pitch. In the silence came the susurration of fabric dragging across stone, the soft pad of slippered feet. Her right palm twitched from the sensation of cool, damp stone abrading the sensitive pads of her fingertips.

She was in a dark cavern wandering through corridors carved out of the surrounding stone. Gradually, the darkness began to ease. Light flickered in the distance. The rough corridor opened to a smoother hallway whose walls were tiled in a mosaic pattern that made her bones tingle with recognition. Whatever the pattern was, it was magic, and some port of her knew it. The flickering light came from the sconces installed along the length of the corridor. This was no simple cavern. This was a place of great power and magic. The same part of her that recognized the patterns of the tiles also recognized this place.

She turned down an adjacent hallway and walked to its end, where another two doorways offered the only possible exits. The first, directly in front of her, was a large wooden door with a golden knob. The second, to her right, was a sel’dor-clad door that shimmered with powerful magic wards. Both doorways drew her, but the pull from the doorway on the right was overwhelming.

She turned and laid her hand upon the tingling veil of magic. Words in a language she did not know spilled from her lips, and power flowed down her arms to her fingertips. The weave of magic protecting the doorway began to unravel. She reached out to turn the knob. The door swung open.