apparently untroubled by the air temperature. Thick stalks of corn jostled in the breeze. Root crops grew well in ordered banked rows, their leaves strong and broad.
Auum paused, listening to the ebb and flow of the wind. He could hear the diminishing echoes of demon calls and sporadic cries from young, scared mouths. Dying away slowly. Like Balaia.
He waved his Tai on towards a low barn set between two corn fields, aiming to skirt it to its far side and approach the college from the north. To his right, he could just make out Duele's progress through the stalks. Behind him, Rebraal and Eilaan kept as quiet as they were able. Left, Evunn had paused. Signalling stop, Auum joined him in the deep shadow cast by the barn.
Evunn pointed at three tiny holes in one of the timbers. They sat below a timber split and splintered by arrow strikes. Only a rainforest elf would have understood their significance.
'Hope or expectation?' whispered Evunn.
'Good habits,' replied Auum. 'And Yniss brought you here to find them.' He touched Evunn's shoulder. 'We have direction.'
A sharp wave of the hand and the elves moved off again, a little faster now. Entering the first streets of Julatsa, silence fell abruptly, the wind broken by a high stone courtyard wall. Auum paused briefly, cupped a hand to his ear and put a finger across his mouth for the benefit of the Al-Arynaar. Here, the merest sound could be heard streets away.
Twenty yards ahead, Evunn had found another marker, this time mere grazes on the wooden wall of a dark empty house. Further into the city, the lights of the college burned unnaturally bright, casting a halo over the surrounding buildings.
Auum indicated he turn into a side alley away from the wan wash of light. They continued on, veering right, further north of the college. Elves had been busy everywhere. The tiny marks were
visible on buildings and brazier stands, on windows and the bark of trees.
They were taken in a lazy curve that would end near the college and, Auum presumed, a tunnel entrance. He resisted the temptation to run, hard though it was. Not just the muted stench of human civilisation insulted his senses but the insidious evil of the cursyrd that pervaded everything, even the air he breathed.
Leading them through a network of tight-packed houses, Auum picked up a faint scratching sound ahead and left. He held up his hand. Behind him movement ceased and the silence closed around him. Even he could not discern without looking that any others stood behind him. He angled his palm left and held out his index finger. Moments later, he felt Duele's breath on his neck.
The scratching echoed faintly in the cramped space. The passages they travelled were narrow enough in places that their shoulders all but grazed the damp, moss-covered stone and timber either side. In hunter's stance, Auum paced deliberately towards the opening in the left. His weight was slightly forward, short blade in hand, his feet probing the ground ahead each pace.
In this city of shadows and silence, it might have been a rat but his instincts told him otherwise. The sound was too ordered. He edged his head slowly around the opening. Crouched facing die right-hand wall, the cursyrd was dragging a piece of flint repeatedly over the same foot-long section of stone wall. It was completely rapt in its task, oblivious to the world around it.
Auum frowned. One reason for its action came immediately to mind. It would have to be stopped. Auum reached back and touched Duele, never taking his eyes from the slim, wingless creature he guessed would be about his height if it stood up straight. It had a small head on wiry shoulders and a covering of fine hair. Little apparent muscle and a solid dark hue were strange make-up for the cursyrd; surely a lesser creature in their hierarchy.
Duele could see the cursyrd now. Auum pointed to himself then at the target. He tapped his leg, indicated the target again and finally Duele. The Tai nodded his understanding.
In the next instant, Auum had sprung, landing square on the cursyrd, driving it flat to the ground face down, one of his hands clamped across its mouth. A beat later and Duele had pinned its legs
down. It tried to bite, shout and scratch. Its body rippled strength despite its slender frame and a kaleidoscope of colour chased across its writhing skin. Auum held it until he felt the thrashing pass its peak. He put his lips by one of the flat slits it had for ears and spoke pure elven.
'You know my race. You know my calling. You cannot take me,' he whispered. The cursyrd subsided immediately. 'Struggle is pain.' All that heaved now were its lungs. 'Good. Do not test me.' Auum half turned his head. 'Duele, release and watch.'
The creature was pulled upright, Auum's hand still over its mouth, his short sword at its eye. They both knew die weapon wouldn't kill it. But the pain would bite so deep.
'Move.'
Auum drove the restrained cursyrd forwards, following the arc marked out for them. They turned again and again, deep into the heart of Julatsa's slums where the stench was unquenched by time. Duele had taken the lead and when he stopped to read a more detailed mark, Auum knew they were close.
The TaiGethen paced away and round a right turn into a dank dead end. It was bare but for weeds, grass and the detritus of humans long gone. The opening was marked by a delicate pattern in cracked mud that was obscured by grass about halfway down the passage. He knelt and plucked it open, speaking softly into the hole he uncovered.
It was man-width but made by elves. The demons would never find it unless led straight to it. Auum nodded for Duele to continue and the five elves and their demon captive entered the college of Julatsa.
The warrior and mage guard in the tunnel clearly couldn't quite believe what they were seeing. The leaders of the TaiGethen and Al-Arynaar dropping unannounced into their laps and accompanied by a captive demon. Auum had no time for explanations.
'We need a large open room. Defensible. Now.'
One of the warrior guard led them down the tunnel into the college proper. They brushed aside elven questions and the fears of men. The demon, cowed and scared but very alert, was held now by just its arms.
The tunnel ended inside a cellar beneath the library. Their guide
took them through the sparse bookshelves and across the short distance to the single lecture theatre. Already, word was spreading and elf and human alike were being drawn in.
Auum spared one glance up into the sky at the cursyrd circling there and pushed his captive inside. He hurried it to the centre of the stage.
'Rebraal, guard the door,' he said. 'Evunn, stand ready and watch.' He released the cursyrd which backed away confused, deep reds and blues chasing each other across its skin. Auum's smile was bleak. He turned to Duele.
'Fight it.'
Ule backed a little further into the cave. He looked down at Vituul, spent and shivering; and across to his brothers, bloodied, frozen, but unbowed. Both stood to his left, mace and axe in hands, waiting.
'They are coming back.'
Minute nods greeted his words, a tightening of grips on weapons, a shifting of stance.
'When the time comes, you know what to do.'
The three former Protectors stepped forwards to the cave entrance where the gap was at its narrowest. They looked out over the last foothills of the Blackthornes. To their right, Understone, the Pass and a sizeable encampment of Wesmen. To their left, the forward Wesmen positions and the city of Xetesk. Their destination. A day's walk but impossibly distant.
Ule wasn't sure how the demons had detected them as they descended from the peaks into the deep grey and black mass of the range. Perhaps a lone scout. Perhaps the elf mage's aura was too bright. It hardly mattered now.
Upwards of fifty demons were flying at them. Most were soul stealers and all were of the warrior strain popularly termed 'reavers'. They were tall and well muscled with powerful wings, trademark hairless bodies and writiling veins. The band had repulsed three attacks on their descent, with spells accounting for dozens of the enemy, but still the demons came and Vituul had no more to give. His face bore the terror of the fight and the wounds that iced his
blood and sapped his will to a point where he could no longer protect his soul.
Ule had time to appreciate the irony of the position in which he and his brothers found themselves. So long in
