“They fight in pairs because each pair is made up of one male, one female. Fully half the army is composed of female warriors. Not like Bellona. These women do not fight with weapons. They fight with magic. Like the holy sisters of Seth, these women use the magic to defend themselves and their partners. The men use the magic to fight. In other words, the women are the shield, the men are the sword. The weapons they are using are darts. They do not look very lethal, but they can be thrown by the hand with the force of the magic behind it. One of those darts killed Bellona.

“The man throws the dart from behind the cover of the defensive magic cast by the woman beside him. Both of them remain invulnerable to attack. And the dart is not their only weapon, I’ll wager.”

“But the magic drives males insane—like the mad monks. Those men don’t look mad,” Ven remarked.

“No, they’re quite sane,” said Draconas. “Like your brother, Marcus. I thought I had done something special with him. Apparently I was wrong. Over the years, Grald culled out the lunatics and placed them in the brotherhood of the Blessed. Not a bad plan. The Blessed keep watch over the population of Dragonkeep, and if the ordinary people know that they are crazed and unpredictable, they fear them all the more. Grald put the sane males into his army. He’s had hundreds of years of selective breeding, and he was able to pick and choose and train only the best. This may be the second or third generation of soldiers we’re looking at.”

Draconas paused, then said quietly, “No human army has a chance against them.”

Ven glanced at the girl sharply. “Human army. What human army do you mean?”

“These soldiers are preparing to march to war. The dragons are going to use them to launch an attack against Idylswylde.”

Below them, the male warriors threw darts, while the woman chanted and sang, making circular motions with their hands, as though smoothing out the empty space in front of them. The magic of the women shaped the air into concentric circles, so the bodies behind it became shapeless blurs of purple and blue radiance, dazzling and ghastly.

Other soldiers, ranged at intervals around the pairs, played at being the enemy. They fired arrows—real arrows, not illusion— into their ranks. Other soldiers drew swords and ran in to attack on foot.

The arrows struck the dazzling, whirling, magical shields and bounced off. Swords hit the shields and were either turned aside or the blades shattered in the hands of those who wielded them. The leader called a halt to the exercise and congratulated his troops and dismissed them.

“For,” said their leader, his voice ringing through the chamber, “the days of conquest are near at hand. The day we have worked for our entire lives will shortly be upon us.”