The air goes static. Electric. Like the sky before a lightning strike. I am afraid to look at him and somehow equally afraid to look away. I force myself to turn, fixing my eyes on the naturalwall at the back of the chamber. I run my hands over the rough surface. It, like the rest of the cliffs, is dark, almost black in color, and veined with deep red. I have never seen anything like it.
“What kind of rock is this?”
“It’s not rock. It’s petrified ash.”
“Ash?”
“Caeldera is built inside the crater of a long-dormant volcano. Those walls, like most of the cliffs here, are hardened lava flows.”
“We are inside a volcano,” I breathe. “Right now.”
“A dormant one, yes.”
My eyes are round as a barn owl’s. “How long has it been dormant?”
“Longer than living memory tells. A millennium or more. The city was built by my ancestors’ ancestors, during the time of the empire. The Fire Court. One of Anwyvn’s four maegical strongholds.”
“And the others?”
“Two were destroyed after the uprising—their temples sacked by culling priests, their palaces looted by invading armies.” He pauses. “The Water Court remains. Soren holds it still.”
“Hylios?”
He nods. “Soren and I may not be friends, but Dyved and Llyr are allies in war. Whatever our personal issues, we stand united against the grasping Midland kings…and the darker dangers brewing in the Southlands.”
“The red army?”
“Yes. Efnysien’s army.”
“You and Soren both speak of him—Efnysien—like he is the worst sort of evil.”
“Because he is.”
“But who is he?”
“Once, Soren called him family. A tie of marriage, not blood, made them brothers. But jealousy left to fester can reduce even the bonds of kinship to a bitter feud. Eventually, Efnysien was banished from Soren’s court. From all of Llyr.”
“What did he do to warrant such extremes?”
“To this day, I do not know all the details. Even if I did…it is not my story to tell, but Soren’s.” He sighs. “All you truly need to know about Efnysien is that he is an enemy—not merely to his former family, but to all fae.”
“Like the Reavers.”
He shakes his head. “No. The Reavers hate fae for possessing maegic, which they see as unnatural. Prejudice has soured into poison. Efnysien…He hates us not because we possess maegic, but because he himself does not. Jealousy and ego are at the heart of his crusade. He covets fae abilities and has spent a lifetime searching for ways to acquire power that will outmatch his brother-in-law’s.”
“Are there such ways?”
“Dark ones, yes. Ancient druidic arts of blood and sacrifice, from the time before the empire. Where he discovered them, whom he learned from…I do not know. I do not wish to know. But it is a vile practice—a perversion of all moral codes, both mortal and fae.” His brows furrow in deep thought. “To steal maegic is akin to ripping a soul in two, tearing away the vital essence of one’s very being. Efnysien has no scruples. He drains power from any source he can find. Any halfling he can find.”
“But halflings are powerless.”
“Most. Some are born with minute traces. Like a few drops at the bottom of an otherwise empty cup. Efnysien finds those drops and uses them to fill his own vessel. It does not matter thathe himself was born empty, so long as he gorges himself on the gifts of others. Shoring himself up by brute force, a vile conglomeration of countless blood sacrifices.”
“And he—” My voice is halting. “He can wield maegic?”
“Not natural maegic. Not elemental. It is something…darker. Distorted. It has given him an unnaturally long life—one he has used to build a dark kingdom of his own. Dymmeria.”
I remember Dymmeria from Eli’s old maps. A vast territory of desert at the southeastern tip of Anwyvn, isolated from the rest of the continent by a wasteland of sand and shadow. I know nothing else about it, save what my mentor told me—namely, that any halfling in the Southlands is better off dead than captured. Based on what Penn is describing, I cannot say Eli was misguided. To tear apart a soul is an evil I can scarcely contemplate. Even the mortal Midland kings, in all their endless war and senseless slaughter, are not half so horrific.