The Coming Storm (29 page)

A voice that sank and rose.

The Door, opening.

“No,” she said and awoke, shaking like a leaf, pushing backward to fetch up against the wall. Half in the dream still and half out.

Someone, there in the darkness. Moving.

The light of the candle lit familiar dark eyes.

Elon, rising from the chair, saw her shy away from him a little before her eyes cleared and she recognized him.

He put her sword aside.

“Ailith,” Elon said, as he settled on the edge of the bed.

The look in her eyes gave him a chill.

Wide, dreaming awake, her pupils were huge and dark. He knew that look.

An awful certainty settled over him. It nearly broke his heart.

She drew in a breath, slowly, fighting for calm.

“I dreamed,” she whispered.

It was still there before her eyes, that Door. The image overlaid the darkened room around her.

“Of what?” Elon asked, as his heart sank. Magic, a very special magic.

“Darkness and fire.”

Her voice was dreamy, a seer’s voice.

Ailith could still see it. The light of the flames in her mind danced on those dank and dripping walls. Her breath came short.

“A Door. It opens South, to lands of Darkness, heat and fire. A voice speaks words I cannot ken. I’m so afraid and the Door is opening…”

Her eyes on Elon, Ailith clearly saw him and yet in another she didn’t.

Jareth knew that look well, had seen it a time or two. Ailith, a fledgling wizard? How had they missed her?

That didn’t explain the worry in Elon’s eyes, though, or the tension in his body.

Her words did. Her breath came in short gasps.

“I fear what lies behind it. I’ve seen this before. I’m so afraid. The darkness and the fire. It comes from the south but it will burn through the north ‘til the snow comes down red. The Door opens.”

Her breath sobbed in her throat but her blue eyes were dry.

She reached out to steady herself or to hold something at bay.

Instinctively Elon put a steadying hand beneath her elbow.

It was so rare to touch another not of his race and he’d done it for her several times now almost instinctively. An empathic race, the touch of skin to skin revealed too much to his people. As it did now.

The contact seemed to break the hold the dream had on her and she relaxed, gripping his arm tightly for balance.

A slight frown creased her brow. Her eyes lifted.

She looked at Elon, then at Jareth standing in the doorway. Some of the images from her dream were still vivid in her mind but fading.

“Elon, Jareth. I was dreaming.”

“Have you dreamt like this before, Ailith?” Elon asked carefully.

Ailith looked at him.

A quiver ran through the muscles of his arm where her hand rested.

Something about the tone of his voice sent a shiver down her back. “Yes. The night my mother died.” Her hand tightened on his arm. “I Saw it.”

Elon felt it, a touch of that raging grief his people knew of old, shimmering through the connection between them, wrought of his Healing and her magic. Fear and grief.

“You said you believed she was dead,” Jareth said.

“I didn’t know it. I dreamed it.”

Elon said gently, “You dream true.”

“Is that what it is?” Ailith asked wonderingly.

There was that note in his voice again, though. Fear shivered through her.

Their eyes met.

“Elon,” she whispered.

Ailith sat back, withdrawing her hand from the support of his arm reluctantly. From what she saw and felt there. An echo of deep pain. Her breath caught in her throat.

“You know.”

This was a different fear from what she’d known before. In the short time she’d known him she’d come to like and respect him. She trusted him. She’d hoped it was mutual but now…? She knew how Dwarves felt about Otherlings. There were Elves who felt much the same and for the same reasons.

She’d have faced a thousand hell hounds not to have known this moment.

Jareth looked from one to the other. There was something going on here but he didn’t know what.

Ailith waited, watching Elon, keeping her face still but looking at him squarely. Letting him look.

See me, I’m not a monster. I’m not.

Otherling.

Fire was always a danger in an Enclave, since so much of their lives depended on trees and wood.

Elon remembered walking among the trees of Lothliann, seeing the scorched and dying trees of the Enclave,  the tattered remains of the homes of his people. The fallen roofs of the galleries, the tumbled boards, railings that hung from twisted limbs like fingers reaching out to him. He’d been scarcely Colath’s age then, nearly three centuries ago or more. The fire had swept through so swiftly and suddenly that some hadn’t had time to run.

Lives had been lost. Children. Bloodlines. All precious to his race.

Elon had fought the flames as had so many others, racing against time to stem that scorching tide. To save what they could of green Lothliann, the jewel of the Enclaves. The terrible grief of that day haunted him. He hadn’t lost anyone himself but he’d helped to ease the pain of so many.

All for the madness of an Otherling.

That story and that of the others, all told again and again, to impress on each and every generation the dangers of mixing blood. It was ingrained in them.

“You have magic,” Elon said.

The very tonelessness of his voice alerted Jareth to how deeply wrong things were here.

“Elon?”

Ailith closed her eyes, took a breath and looked at him. Her blue eyes were haunted, afraid, but resolute.

“He knows, Jareth, that I’m Otherling. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

For a breath or two Jareth stood there uncomprehending.

Otherling.

Said so flatly and matter-of-factly.

It was like a punch in his chest, taking all the wind out of him. He swore softly. The stories of Otherlings crossed all cultures, all races. Elon was one of the fairest Elves he knew but this…

Ailith looked back at Elon, her blue eyes even, steady.

“If I do have magic, Elon, I don’t know it. As I didn’t know this. I would’ve told you had I known. Geric told Tolan. Until then I didn’t know.”

Elon had noticed the night she’d come to warn them how well she could see in the dark. As sure in the night as an Elf. Guiding them to the ruins, to safety. Riding through the darkness, knowing what was coming. It had taken courage to do that.

It explained so much.

Even Otherlings weren’t proof against the creatures of the borderlands. He’d seen that himself, only this short time past. He’d Healed her from it.

She’d come anyway. To fight beside them though she could have stood back and let those who were bigger and stronger fight. None of them would have faulted her for it. Yet she hadn’t. She’d fought and then she’d gone back. Knowing what awaited her. A few hours ago he’d been relieved to see her, felt the burden of letting her go lift from his spirit.

He was torn.

As before, she looked at him now forthrightly, meeting him eye to eye, not in pride but with courage. Facing him, knowing he might condemn her or revile her. Or kill her. She didn’t beg or plead for mercy, merely waited and trusted to his judgment to see her rightly. She had to be afraid. Where else would she go if he cast her out? Her mother was dead, her father ensorcelled, her home and peace were all gone.

“If you want me to leave,” she said, softly, as if reading his mind, “I’ll go.”

Jareth took a breath in protest.

Oh, he knew the stories, those horrific tales and he knew them for truth but still…

Ailith held up her hand and shook her head, her eyes on Elon. It was his decision. It had to be.

Fear had turned to limbs to water, but still, she would give him this. She was so afraid. Still, she wouldn’t beg. She put it in Elon’s hands and prayed that she’d judged right.

It struck Elon that she did that.

Finally, he looked at her. Truly looked at her.

She meant what she said as she had before. She would leave, without protest.

He looked hard to see her clearly. Wavy, sun-touched hair and level blue-gray eyes. He’d trusted her from the first, from the very moment she’d ridden into their camp perched on the back of an Elven-bred cull.

Instinct had spoken to him, his Elven instinct and that even gaze. No guile.

He glanced at her swords.

Ailith saw where he looked.

“Would you tell me if I asked?” he said.

It was a test. Another’s secrets. There would be some among his people who would have no love for the one who had given her those, if what he suspected of the giver were true.

“Yes,” she said, carefully, “if you asked.”

Another’s secrets. She would tell him if he asked, of that he had no doubt.

“I won’t ask.”

Her head bowed. Like his people, she had no capacity for tears.

For a moment she hesitated and then looked up and said, evenly, “I’m not those others, Elon. I’m not. I know you have the right to hate me for what I am but I’m not them.”

“I know, Ailith,” he said and offered her his hand so she would know it for truth.

With all trust, she laid her hand in his, opened her heart and soul to him without any understanding of what it was she truly did.
Look at me
, she was saying. There was nothing controlled or held back, she opened for him to look into her heart and soul if he chose. Absolutely opened to him. So he could see her clearly.

Such faith she had in him.

“I won’t go mad, Elon,” she said, solemnly, and then her mouth quirked up in that grin he was coming to know was so uniquely Ailith. It faded suddenly. “I think if it were so, I would have in these last few days. What I’ve seen…”

He felt it, hand to hand, that thrum of utter terror, a horror so great she’d teetered on the edge of insanity. Tilted but not fallen. It was in her eyes as well.

Even among his own people this sort of openness was rare. The reserve they used to keep painful emotions at bay was at work even then.

 “In that dream?” Jareth asked.

“That and another. In the other I looked through the Door.”

“I think,” Elon said, releasing her hand with some little reluctance, “that we should tell the others. I don’t think telling it twice will make it easier.”

She shook her head. “No, it won’t.”

“How much should we tell them?” Jareth asked, worriedly, looking at Elon.

Otherling. Ailith was Otherling.

It echoed through him.

He knew Colath well enough to know that where Elon led, Colath trusted to follow. He hadn’t yet gotten to know Jalila well enough. Gwillim was a complete unknown.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t Elon who answered but Ailith.

“Everything. All,” she said, firmly.

Then looked at them both squarely and gave them that smile again. She gestured at herself.

You see what secrets do? With no ill intent at all. There’s trust or none. I’ll ask no one to trust me without full knowledge.”

“What if they can’t?” Elon looked at her.

She winced but faced him.

“I’ll make my own way. You can’t go on divided and I won’t be the cause of it.”

Such courage. Elon had to admire it.

After a moment, he released a breath he hadn’t known he was holding and nodded.