Vanyel banished an ice-breathing saber-toothed demon that guarded the door to the temple Lendel had run into a minute before, and was almost sorry he had when the heat engulfed him. The temple was on fire. He saw Tylendal slumped under the unmoving form of a green dragon, and saw that flames were spreading down the dragon's tail. He lifted his lifebonded onto Gala's back, and only then, knowing Lendel was safe, did he gather his wits enough about him in order to call rain.
Yfandes was telling him to get out — Before I lose you, Chosen," and the sight of her mane covered in deep cuts from the demons' claws, filled him with pain. She stood near Gala at the door to the temple but was blocked from entering. Tell Gala to run, he said. Keep Lendel safe for me.
He started to make his way towards the door, pushing aside debris, a fallen throne — and underneath he thought he saw his former prisoner, dead.
Yfandes screamed as a new group of Sunpriests burst in the door of the temple. Vanyel let out a mage blast to fling away two men, and send himself so close to empty he worried about his own mage power for the first time in a long time. But the nodes near here were changed beyond recognition, corrupted by blood magic, and he couldn't draw that magic without flinching back, much less feed on it or use it.
He could feel Yfandes' terror— Leave, get help! I can't live without you. Leave, or we'll both die! And he knew that she was right— that is, if he could leave. But the men who had entered the temple outnumbered him ten to one, and his mage power was burnt to the dregs. As they pulled him to his feet and bound his hands, he heard them screaming for Arvin, the High Priest. Where was Arvin, so they could show him they had captured the Demonrider, the hated Vanyel Ashkevron? And then the kicks and blows as the rumor circulated that Arvin had been killed in the battle, burned beyond recognition.
Vanyel reached out through the haze of pain and felt for his link with Yfandes. She was over the border, at the barracks on the Valdemaran side of the border. A healer was tending her physical wounds, but her mind still screamed for him.
He felt for his link with Lendel — Stay safe, Ashke — and focused on it for a long moment, letting it draw him out of the spasms of pain, the torture his body was enduring.
There was a meditation technique he learned in Haven, one that relied on mind power instead of mage power, a tool of last resort. Using this tool walled off the nerves from sending their signals of pain, walled off the mind from receiving and acting on those signals. Dimly, through the fog of this tool, he saw that the body of the blind Karsite was being lifted off the floor and being bound in chains as well, and he felt only relief— he lives, perhaps — before being half marched, half carried, into a barred and warded cell covered with filth and bloodstains— the temple's dungeon.
"I saw Arvin attack him," he heard one of the priests say, as the blind man was dragged in behind him. So let the traitor cool his heels with the Demonrider. Our Lord will have the worst of his enemies as a sacrifice."
The Karsite priests and soldiers left the prisoners, distracted by a funeral of State, for Arvin, the High Priest who called himself Son of the Sun, was dead, and rules and rituals were to be followed to determine his successor. Dead at the hands of the Herald Tylendel, who even now was frantic with worry on the other side of the border, waiting for Vanyel's return.
