Dockalfar (59 page)

“She’s all right.” A breath of relief escaped her. “Thank God.”

“Thank someone,” Aloe agreed, but her brow was furrowed. “We’re still waiting for Ashara.”

“Waiting for what? What happened to her?”

“She and a few our most powerful held the shields of our keep while the rest of us fled. That was yesterday. We have heard nothing from them since. The silence I do not fear so much, for they would not risk alerting the Unseelies to their presence… but with so few to hinder travel they should have been here now.”

“Azeral took the keep.” A great deal of sadness crept over Victoria at the thought of the Seelie keep in the hands of the dark lord. It was so pristine a place, so pure. They would tarnish it. Darken it with their malevolence. It made her cold to think of it. She wished fervently for something to cling to. She wondered where the gulun cub was. Phoebe was so efficient a lifter of spirits. She sent out a spear of inquiry looking for the cub, and before she had half completed the thought, memory flooded back. The cub was not here, could not be here. For she could not have followed the sidhe to this gloomy haven. She had been sealed within Victoria’s own room inside Ashara’s keep. Sealed inside as an afterthought to keep what Victoria had really wanted caged, company…..

The color drained from her face and the world spun. She felt Aloe’s hands on her. The girl’s arm about her waist. She was helped to a prone slab of stone.

“You should not be up,” the sidhe said worriedly. “Flesh needs more time to mend, even with the aid of magic.”

“I left him there,” Victoria said numbly. “Oh my God. I left him there for Azeral to find.”

Aloe knelt before her, frowning. Comprehension lit her face. “Your assassin.”

“Azeral will be furious.”

“Rightly so,” Aloe agreed and when Victoria scowled at her, shrugged and said. “One does not find Ciagenii so frequently that losing one’s services is easily forgotten.”

“Or forgiven,” Victoria whispered, then her eyes flared and she shot a glare at Aloe. “How could you just leave him?

You knew he was there.”

“In all honesty, I believe he was overlooked. And even if he was not, he has no loyalty to us. Only you. Who would you have wished to have taken him out of your prison and risked his bite? I tell you freely it would not be a task I would relish.”

Victoria had no desire to argue the point. She had no desire to do anything other than wallow in the misery clenching about her gut. She had abandoned him.

Willing or not, she seemed ever in the habit of losing the things she loved in this world.

~~~

They had run from the time they had abandoned the keep. Hard and fast into the wood, pushing mounts to their limits while the Great Hunt hammered down the last of their defenses. Ashara and her handful of powerful ones. The ones that were old enough and strong enough to keep their heads and hold up a weakening shield against an enemy that vastly outnumbered them, yet young enough to make the headlong dash through the wood that escape required of them.

They knew it was only a matter of time before the hunt was after them.

Before Azeral figured out the only direction they could flee. And despite what Ashara had told those of her folk who had gone before her…her Heartmate in particular…she had no intention of following in their tracks. She could not risk leading the hunt in that direction. So they went in another. Leaving just enough trace of their path to draw pursuit away from the slower caravan of the Seelie court. And then, when the Dockalfar hounds had latched onto their scent, they used every bit of their forest skill to obscure further hints of passage.

Keirom ranged behind them, making certain of the secrecy of their path. Ashara forged ahead, bolstering the strength of horses that would have long ago given out.

Her party followed closely, expending power aplenty in smothering spell of silence, of non-entity. Even the birds of the forest they passed under were unaware of their presence. The Hunt, despite all its offensive power, would not break that spell. Whether their trackers could overcome Keirom’s woodcraft remained to be seen.

The route they traveled was southerly. Around the bulk of lake Mirikii.

It was a longer journey by far than the passage across the lake would take her people. The southern arms of the lake reached almost to the plains bordering the End of the World Mountains. The forest was a thin veneer of shelter between the lake and the flat grasslands at the extreme south end of Mirikii. After two days of constant travel, even the sidhe’s spells of endurance were having little effect. They were forced to camp once, at the edge of the lake shore and they did so with unease and impatience. So they sat, the most powerful of her lot, shivering in the misty cold of dawn, because they would not risk the light of a fire or the hint of magic not used for obscuring. They would not even dare to travel the distance with their great minds to discover if their folk had reached the haven they hoped for in safety. That ignorance ate at Ashara more than anything else. She crouched with her knees to her chest the long hours of the morning, sleep a distant and unattainable goal, while the worry gnawed at her. If their misleading had not been fruitful, then the hunt might have latched onto the more prominent trail of Okar and her people.

When the sun reached mid day they moved on. They left the shores of the lake on the third day and cut north east through the forest. When the lands began to dip and rise she knew they had reached the outskirts of the forest covered hills of the Great Eastern Wood. The valley of Vohar was nestled within them.

As the day drew to a close and night wrapped her velvety arms across the sky the first of the runes blocked their progress. Ashara had not realized they were so close. It was not until they were making their way down the incline of a particularly rocky slope that the fear came upon them. The horses seemed not to notice at all. The riders experienced a few moments of unease that without warning blossomed into a stomach curdling, mind numbing fear.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Ashara knew what was happening. But that nub of rational thought was pushed back in the face of rune caused hysteria.

And every step the horse took further down the slope the fear increased tenfold. She could not stop the scream that bubbled up. She heard gasps and cries of fear behind her.

Put up shields! Put up shields
, came the one defensive thought. But that required some degree of concentration.

Some degree of conventional thinking. Her body took over where her magic and her mind would not function. Jerking savagely on the reins she turned her mount and spurred it back up the slope, fast on the heels of her comrades who had come to the same conclusion quicker than she.

A dozen paces up the hill and the emotions of utter terror and revulsion ceased. Just stopped altogether. They stopped, a shuddering group of sidhe, trading pale faced, shocked stares. Those few of her group that had not crossed the boundary of the rune stones looked past their comrades gravely. Keirom, who spoke so infrequently that the sound of his voice was unfamiliar, commented dryly, “So the wards are working.”

Ashara wiped sweat from her brow then patted the heavy neck of her mount who had not deserved the rough treatment it had gotten from her in her haste get back up the hillside. Just so. She thought. And beg the four great elements that her people were on the other side of that terrible warding.

~~~

He was young in the dream. It was evident in the carelessness of his step, the excitement that coursed through him as he moved towards his destination. The wood he walked within was just beyond the great city of Eagra. He could see its many spires over the fringe of trees. It had been long years since he had seen that far northern city. Ages before his lord father had gone the way of the most ancient of mountains, eroded away by time. Before he had been given mastership over his father’s court and made a name for himself among the other sidhe lords.

He thought to wonder, in what subconscious control he had over his dreaming, what he might possibly be doing outside Eagra. There was nothing there that interested him now. Nothing but a melting pot of races. Dens of iniquity that were too low breed for even Unseelie tastes.

He walked for a while in the wood, his feet crushing new spring grasses.

When he looked back, he saw the ground withered and browned where his tracks had been left. That startled him and he stood for a bit, awed at the destruction of his simple passage. How odd. Stepping forward, he watched the grass die in his wake. He touched a low hanging limb blocking his path and the spring blooms fell from it as if from blight. He drew his hand back in shock and thought that this must be a holy place. Yet he knew of none such near Eagra. Clearly, though, the wood rebelled against his presence.

Against his Dockalfar darkness. It angered him that it should. It seemed unjust that such a pristine place should judge him unfit. Should die from his mere touch when he held no ill intentions towards it.

And from that anger came the natural impulse to destroy what defied him. He could bring down fire upon this wood. Or call locusts to devastate it. Perhaps a death spell to steal all life from the prejudiced greenery. Other options crossed his mind, but they fled at the sound of her voice.

“Azeral?”

He spun, finding her sitting upon a moss covered log in a grotto that had escaped his notice. She was braiding flowers into her hair. As if that mass of gold needed adornment. He knew why his dream had taken him to Eagra. It was where he had met her. Where his soul had found companionship.

Carefully he walked towards her. The ground withered at his passing.

That embarrassed him, for her to see what his nature invoked. She was frowning at him, looking at the ground beneath his feet. Then up at him. Her eyes were mesmerizing. But they were sad.

“What do you want?” he asked numbly, knowing what she would say.

What she always said when he dreamed of her.

“You failed me,” she accused, still braiding her hair. “You took a part of me and fouled it. You promised to make her good.”

Misery washed over him. He drowned in it. She could not understand, no matter how many times he told her in his dreams. She could not understand that it was not in his nature to make things ‘good’.

“I tried,” he whispered. “But the place – it worked against me.”

Her eyes flashed in anger. “Then you should have given her to me – but no – that would mean surrendering something you considered yours and that is impossible for you.”

How true. How well her dream self knew him. How little she had known him in the flesh. But it was not really her in his dream, it was a part of himself playing devil’s advocate. And no one knew Azeral quite so well as himself.

“You darken everything,” she said quietly. “There is no abiding you.”

“You are wrong,” he pleaded with her. “It’s only a matter of will.”

She stared at him, waiting. And he forcefully changed the reality of his dream. He coerced his dream self to affect the dream world. He held out a blackened stem to her and made it beautiful. He made the blossom full and colorful. He made the grass under his feet crisp with life. She looked at him uncertainly, but there was a smile at the corner of her lips.

And then the pain hit. It came from nowhere and everywhere and sucked up the colors of the dream like air through a vacuum. She was gone. The forest was gone and all that was left was bitter pain that he had no defense against. He writhed and screamed in that place between sleep and waking.

And hands tore at him, shook him, nails bit into his flesh and a mind pounded at his own in panic. It brought him over the edge to awareness and the hurt stopped.

Neferia stared down at him, eyes wild, hair disheveled. Her hands still clutched his shoulders. There was fear on her face, but none so much to equal his own. Her threw her off, springing from the bed, wanting nothing of company when his mind was scattered still. She normally let him go.

She did not this time. She went after him, frantically grasping his arm.

“My Lord. My Lord. What is amiss?”

He savagely jerked his arm from her grasp, growling at her.

“Nothing. Let me be!”

“You lie,” she cried, and fell to the floor, wrapping her arms about his knees, pressing her face against his thighs. Azeral stared at her, wild eyed, contemplating punishment for the affront. She cared naught for him, but for what he might give her. For the honor her position as his favorite brought her. But she was fervent in her devotion to that position. She was loyal to him as Lord of the Mountain Court if nothing else.

He stood, unclad and shivering in the keep of Liosalfar, his nemesis. The light to his dark. The charity to his greed. The Unseelies hated them. His court reveled in crushing this place. He could not help but wonder why. He could not help but question the fates that declared him an entity of evil. That made him hate and made him turn towards destruction.

He put a hand to her hair and said softly, shakily. “I lie. But only because I know not the truth. And if I dare to seek it – “ He trailed off a shiver caressing his flesh. He half laughed and finished, “ – then I find myself chastised and I’ve no magic fit to combat it. No magic of Elkhavah can.”

Neferia stared up at him, incomprehension in her eyes. No, she would never understand. It was not in her nature.

~~~

Alex crept through the shadows of the white keep. He felt cold. The air was sweet with lilac, blessedly mild compared with the weather in the mountains where the Unseelies held their court. But the chill still cut to the bone. He had felt the tremors of that incomprehensible freeze all day and hardly noticed it. The black daze that had overwhelmed him took all his energy and comprehension. There was room for nothing more.

This keep itself was small in comparison to Azeral’s. Its byways were easily memorized and its halls lacked the twisting complexity of the mountain keep.

The gardens outside were as much a part of the keep as the stone covered interior.

That was where the real masterpiece of design lay. In the flowing trails and grottoes that surrounded the keep itself. So much of that had been trampled by careless ogre feet. The dark sidhe cared naught, for even being connoisseurs of beauty, this beauty was wrought by the hands of their age old enemies and they relished its tarnishing.