A sound came from the house that Silverdun had never heard before. A howl-no, a pair of howls-rising shrilly into the night sky, a sound of infinite pain, infinite horror.
Reality shifted back to its normal state. The front door to the house slammed open, and one of the Bel Zheret, Asp, lurched out of the front door, lunging at Ironfoot.
"Monsters!" he screamed, tackling Ironfoot. The two of them went down in a tangle. "She killed them! She took them! You are all monsters!"
The Bel Zheret was stronger by far than Ironfoot, who was still recovering from his close call with Timha on the ledge. All for nothing, Silverdun realized. He ran and kicked Asp in the stomach as hard as he could.
Which, it turned out, was harder than he imagined. The Shadow strength flowed through him. The Bel Zheret flew off of Ironfoot and slammed into a nearby willow trunk, his knife clattering from his hand. Silverdun pursued him.
With astonishing speed, Asp righted himself and met Silverdun's approach. He grasped Silverdun by the throat and hammered him with his fist, in the solar plexus, driving Silverdun's breath out of his chest and knocking him backward. The force of the impact twisted Silverdun's neck in Asp's iron grip, and it felt as though his throat was about to split open with the strain.
He hit back, his dagger still in hand, slashing across the Bel Zheret's belly, drawing blood that came out black in the dim moonlight. Asp barely seemed to notice. He shoved Silverdun to the ground and stomped on Silverdun's ribs. Silverdun tried to catch his breath, and couldn't. Spots appeared and wavered in his eyes. He felt Asp snap his wrist, prying the dagger out of it. Felt teeth on his throat. Felt the percussive damage of fists on his face, in his groin. He swam toward consciousness but felt himself slipping deeper and deeper into the darkness.
He looked up and saw Ironfoot standing over Asp, holding Asp's own knife, reaching it around to slit the Bel Zheret's throat, just as Jedron had taught them: the certain kill.
But it was too late. Asp already had Silverdun's knife and was digging it upward through Silverdun's belly, twisting it, angling it, plunging it into his heart.
Ironfoot slit the Bel Zheret's throat, and it fell over Silverdun.
"Silverdun!" Ironfoot shouted. He yanked the Bel Zheret's body off of Silverdun and hurled it at a tree. It was dead, its eyes blank, its black blood running out onto the lawn.
Ironfoot looked back at Silverdun. He wasn't moving. His eyes were closed. There was no breath.
Silverdun was dead.
Ironfoot heard sobs coming from the door of the villa. Sela!
He ran into the house and saw Sela, alone, on the floor of the entryway, weeping. The other two Bel Zheret were nowhere to be seen. Sela was holding the iron band up on her arm; he could see that the bare iron was burning her skin, and that it was a severe effort for her to hold it on.
Ironfoot was no Master of Elements by any stretch of the imagination, but he could manage a simple shaping.
"Give me the band," he said. "I can resilver it."
"No!" she shrieked. "You can't remove it. Can't! Can't! Not ever again!"
"Okay, okay," said Ironfoot. She was hysterical, her eyes crazy and wandering.
Ironfoot held up the Bel Zheret's long knife; its blade was of hardened silver. He touched the knife's edge to the iron band. The band repelled it with a force like magnetism. He had to push the blade onto the band. It dug into Sela's arm and she shrieked, pulling away.
"Hold still, dammit!" he shouted.
"It hurts!"
"I know it hurts; if you'll hold still, I can stop it."
He channeled Elements into the silver of the dagger and pushed hard against it, flowing it off the blade and onto the iron band. He'd never worked with iron, and realized that he didn't know the binding that compelled it to bond with the silver coating. He channeled Insight into the binding on the knife and saw that it was not particularly complicated. So he simply copied the binding from the dagger and placed something similar on the band, wrapping it around the silver coating. The binding took hold, thankfully, and the silver coating stuck onto the band. It was by no means pretty, but it worked. He tossed the dagger aside, and Sela collapsed in his arms.
"Sela, what did you do to them?" he asked, bewildered.
"I showed them things as they truly are," she answered, her voice thick. "It's okay. They're not real." She closed her eyes and slumped against him.
Ironfoot had never felt so alone in all his life.
Ironfoot didn't sleep that night; he sat watching Sela sleep, wondering whether more Bel Zheret were on their way. He was too tired to care.
When Sela awoke it was morning. Ironfoot told her about Silverdun, and she broke down all over again. She knelt next to his body, weeping, which was exactly what Ironfoot felt like doing.
"We have to go," he told her after a while.
"I know," she said, gathering herself. "We have to bury Silverdun first, though."
"No," said Ironfoot. "We're taking him with us."
"I don't think that's a good idea," she said. "He's dead; he doesn't care where he's buried."
"That's not it," said Ironfoot. "Paet insisted that if one of us died, we were to return the body. If the Unseelie find him"-he nodded toward the dead Bel Zheret-"they can use the Black Art to find out everything he knows."
"Oh," said Sela.
She stood. "I'm going to look inside the villa for some proper clothes," she said. "Clearly a lady lives here, or lived here." She disappeared into the house.
Ironfoot looked down at Silverdun. "Sorry, friend," he said.
They wrapped Silverdun's body in a rug. Ironfoot fed and bridled the two strongest-looking horses in the stable, and tied Silverdun to the back of the saddle. He placed an inexpert glamour on the awkward bundle to make it look like a saddle roll, but it would only pass the most cursory of inspections.
They found hard bread in the pantry of the villa and ate a sullen breakfast. On the way out of the house, Ironfoot stopped and looked down at Timha's corpse, at his dead eyes staring blankly.
"Some help you were," he said. He patted the leather satchel that he still wore. "But at least I got your plans, you bastard."
Something glinted in a corner. It was one of the Bel Zheret's long serrated knives. Its owner wouldn't miss it, so Ironfoot took it and put it in his belt.
They mounted without speaking and rode away, to the south, toward the Seelie Lands.
Elenth was one of only three Unseelie cities on the ground. There were few places in Mab's territory that would support permanent structures, and even those in Elenth were squat and sturdily built against the quakes in the nearby mountains. To the south of the city they rode up the side of the valley and found themselves in a thick forest.
"If we keep heading this direction, we'll hit the border tomorrow evening," Ironfoot said. "Of course, I have no idea what we'll run into along the way, since that was Virum's job."
Sela said nothing, only nodded glumly. She would be worse than useless if there was more fighting.
The wood stretched on for miles and miles, relatively flat and not particularly thick. The going wasn't easy, but they were able to maintain a steady walk throughout.
Near the end of the first day, Ironfoot looked ahead and saw a break in the trees ahead. A road? Something was moving past, something huge. He waved for Sela to stop her horse and listened. A regular rhythm. Soldiers on the march.