The Rival by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Warders had confirmed it with the few recalcitrant prisoners, that the road went directly to the capitol city.
    If he stayed on the same path, he would get there.
    Through the marshes, he saw very few Islanders.  Those he did see were heading north, like he was, as if they were fleeing the Fey army.
    They probably were.  Rugad had said he wanted Islanders to escape.  He had a plan for this Isle, a plan he hadn't shared with anyone outside of his advisors, and it differed from other campaigns Flurry had been on.  In those, the Fey never asked for surrender.
    Surrender was assumed.
    Surrender was the end result of a Fey victory.
    Surrender, sometimes, wasn't even necessary.  There usually weren't any leaders left to capitulate.
    But Rugad was exercising caution here.  Some said it was because his son got trapped and died here.  Others said it was because the Islanders had special powers.
    A few years back, word had leaked through all the ranks that the reason the Fey never returned from Blue Isle was because the Islanders had their own magick.  That magick came in a bottle, in the form of poison that killed Fey with a single touch.  Flurry had thought the rumor untrue until he spoke to one of the Warders a year later.
    It seemed that a handful of the Nye had practiced the Islanders' religion.  The religion never really got off the ground in Nye, and the missionaries from Blue Isle returned to their home.  But a few of the Nyeians still practiced, still believed, and still hoarded the magick poison, or holy water, as they called it.  Only the Nye had never learned its Fey-killing properties.
    They never learned those properties at all.
    The Fey executed the religious Nye and confiscated the magick poison.  And then experimented with it.
    The Warder had told Flurry that Rugad's people had solved the riddle of the poison.  They had a neutralizer, an antidote, and a warding spell.  The Warder said that, as soon as the neutralizer and the antidote could be produced in large enough quantity, Rugad would have his troops warded, and invade Blue Isle.  Flurry had scoffed.  Everyone had heard how impossible Blue Isle was to invade.  And, at that point, everyone had thought the first Fey force had died in the ocean crossing.  It wasn't until later that the failure of the first force became clear.
    And then Rugad had said he wanted to conquer Blue Isle.
    Some Fey had been surprised by Rugad's decision to invade.  But Flurry hadn't.  Rugad was a warrior, and even though he felt the armies needed a rest after they conquered Nye, he also knew that the Fey would have to fight again.  The Galinas continent belonged to the Fey.  They had nowhere else to go.
    Except to Blue Isle, and on to the Leut continent.
    Rugad's grandsons weren't capable of taking the Fey onto the Isle. Rugad had to do it himself.
    Flurry dipped and followed a twist in the road.  The tall marsh grass was thinning, and the water had receded into small puddles.  The ground was rising, and ahead he saw it level out in a sort of plain.  The land was divided into different colors, like a quilt made by Domestics, and gradually the divisions resolved themselves into patches of land with a small clumps of buildings.
    Farms. 
    Prosperous farms from the looks of them, with healthy mid-summer crops.  This was the Blue Isle that the Nye talked about, not the poverty-stricken hovels near the Snow Mountains.  These farms obviously kept themselves fed, and shipped crops all over the Isle.  No wonder the Islanders hadn't starved without trade from Nye.
    They hadn't needed it in the first place.
    Trade had only made them richer.  Now their prosperity had leveled off. 
    Flurry smiled to himself.  The Fey could use this land.  The Fey could use this place.  His moods were rising.  He had served with Rugad for four decades now, and he had never seen Rugad make a mistake.  If the Islanders had to be approached differently than anyone on Galinas, so be