Dockalfar (14 page)

Alex gaped, too stunned to do more than stare at Azeral, then to Leanan, groping for some sign of humor or jest.

Their faces were perfect masks of seriousness, his a caricature of disbelief.

“Me?” he gasped, his voice gone high with shock. “Me? My God, what made you pick me? I don’t have anything to do with magic or power… Jesus, I don’t even have a job. Why me?”

“Not you in particular,” Azeral twined his fingers. “I opened a portal that would lead me to a likely candidate. Someone with an affinity for channeling. The portal opened to you. You were the best choice in your world at this time.”

“So you just took me? You arrogant son of a bitch. What right did you have?” The wine and the indignity made him bold. He glared, matching Azeral’s gaze.

“Is it so unworthy a cause,” Azeral whispered, “the salvation of two worlds?”

“No,” Alex agreed, gripping his goblet with crushing force. “I’m just an unlikely savior. And I don’t believe you.”

“That is your choice, of course.”

“It is true,” Leanan touched his arm and he jumped. He shook his head, lost and confused.

“I can’t think,” he murmured, pressing a fist to his forehead. Leanan leaned close and stroked his hair, soothing touch in body and mind.

“It is all right,” she crooned. “It is so very much to learn in one night. It will become clear, I vow to you.”

He looked up at her. She was so very beautiful. Luminescent white skin. Great blue eyes. Bones that were elegant and fragile. Inhuman. He thought of human beauty, of burnished red hair and green eyes.

“Victoria.” A whisper and suddenly he whipped about and fixed Azeral with his glare. “She’s out there somewhere, damn you. And it’s your fault. If you want any cooperation out of me in anything, then you’d better find her.”

“Your lady.” Azeral inclined his head. “You’ve already seen to it that she be brought safely here. You’ve set my Ciagenii to the task. I assure you, there is nothing alive better suited to the chore. She will be here.”

Alex shook his head. “It’s not enough. What if he can’t find her alone? Please send someone to help.”

The high lord shrugged. “Very well. If it will relieve your mind.” Azeral steepled his fingers and smiled a breathtaking smile. He was too mesmerizing a creature for comfort. He watched Alex with an expression of almost innocent curiosity. “It has been a very long time since I stepped on the soil of your world.”

“You’ve been there?” Alex blinked, realizing he was being led off subject and fighting against it. There were too many wills bent on keeping him astray to fight.

Least of all Azeral, who was tilting his head with such charming persuasion.

“I supped, on my last sojourn with a Tudor king. Henry something or ‘nother. They were so hard to keep straight. All the same names. I was sidetracked here after that and when next I had time, your world was too polluted with deadly iron to venture into it.” He smiled. “Shame. It was wonderful fun, impressing the simple folk. They used to be so quick to worship.”

“Is that what you want. Worship?”

“Not in itself. It is flattering though. Humans do it so much better than this craven lot here.” He waved a hand at the mass of his court. They laughed at the comparison. A few even offered flowering verses of adoration. There was sarcasm there, and wry wit directed at the high lord, but never for a moment did Alex doubt that each and every one of them adored him. Adoration and worship. The two were not so very far apart. Someone called for a hunt. Other voices joined in, lifting in excitement.

Azeral’s eyes wafted over them. “No,” he said. “Not this night. But soon. And you, Alex, may ride with us. The sidhe at hunt are a grand spectacle.”

“What do you hunt?” Alex asked.

Azeral laughed. Leanan smiled beside him and patted his hand. He felt foolish and childish and wondered if he were picking that up from their thoughts of him.

The court, disgruntled with the abortion of a possible hunt, fell to other things in their boredom. They called for music, and a group of thin-limbed, smooth faced figures gracefully set up at the end of the hall. A lively melody penetrated the chamber. The sidhe were up and dancing, a breathtaking array of swirling hair and floating material. Leanan urged Alex to join, and he shook his head. She did not press the point, thankfully, and sat at his side, watching. There was a touch of envy in her eyes. But Azeral had appointed her his guardian and she would not abandon her duty.

A slave was brought out onto the floor. A female being formed very much like the sidhe, but smaller and larger of eye. Small filmy pieces of cloth made up her clothing and she had bells on her wrists and ankles. She whirled and danced to the beat, the sidhe egging her on. They cleared a space for her. She moved with exquisite grace and rhythm. It was like watching the music come to life.

It was beautiful and Alex sat entranced.

Then the spell was broken. A male sidhe rushed forward, hooking an arm about the dancer’s tiny waist and swinging her off her feet. He bore her back, ripping her scant veil free. Yells of delight went up from the crowd. Others went forward, joining the first, smothering the dancer.

They moved upon her, and there were only scant glimpses of her slender limbs. She never made a sound. If she had, it would have been drowned out by the excitement of the watchers. The heat, the lust was palatable in the air. The music never stopped for the benefit of mass rape. Or was it merely a skilled courtesan plying her trade? The servants seemed to think the former, huddled and frightened in the shadows. He felt like them. That to move, or draw attention to himself would bring them down on him. That if he sat very still, they would forget his very existence.

“She’s a favorite of the court,” Leanan told him, an electric presence at his side. “She’s very talented. For a lesser sidhe.”

“She’s a sidhe?” Very small voice. Embarrassment. Tingling excitement.

“Lesser sidhe. Slave. Would you like her?”

He blinked at her in shock, color rising to his face. “No!” Too sharp, too quick. Leanan lifted a brow at him. Azeral was watching him, half-lidded. Lazy.

Deadly facade.

A bendithy screeched. Two sidhe pulled her forward from her place by the hearth. The other servants cowered. It was too ugly a creature for the sidhe to want in the manner they wanted the dancer, which lead one to dwell on other reasons. From the pitiful cries, the bendithy knew all too well what bored high sidhe did to relieve their tensions.

Leanan was pulling him to his feet, turning him away from the spectacle. He almost rebelled, almost wanted to stay and see what depths those painfully beautiful beings could sink to in their amusements, but as Leanan urged him forward, Azeral trailed fingers over his sleeve.

“Sleep well,” he purred. Alex flinched, snatching his arm to his body.

After that he did flee, with Leanan a mere guide to help him retrace his steps back to the silken room they kept him in. Sleep well. Not this night.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The woods were so much more alive and alluring with the new perspective Victoria seemed to have gained.

Everything glowed. If she tried she could see tiny auras around the very trees. She could see the hidden shapes of animals and hear their voices with more clarity than she had ever imagined. Everything that lived had some small degree of inner light. Everything but Dusk, and he didn’t matter. He trailed her far enough behind so that she sometimes forgot he was there.

She made her own way through the wood, heading in the general direction he wanted, so he left her alone. She thought he was wary of her. She thought that when he looked at her there was a great deal of uncertainty behind the ever-changing color of his eyes.

She loved it. She loved the feel of the grass under her toes and the wind gently caressing her hair. She made the lights dance around her unabashedly, reveling in the sensation of power tingling through her. Aloe would have been wonderfully impressed. She intended to find Aloe again. She made better company than the assassin, although she was not as nice to look upon.

A grotto of waist-high ferns and lilies beckoned and she ran through it, arms wide, wondering what the night-closed flowers would look like open. She sent her lights to dance around the great cocooned blossoms, willing the flower to open. Wondering if she could. Like a wakening sleeper it trembled, then spread its petals. She laughed like a child and willed them all to open and found herself standing in a glade of brilliant white blossoms, her own lights swirling around her.

It was inebriation of a sort. The discovery that she was suddenly a force to reckon with. She, Victoria McFadden, had come to her own. She wanted to sing, and did so, humming a tune of her own making.

The assassin was close. She could not sense him with her newfound power, but the hairs on her arms tingled, and her purely human seventh sense warned that he was near. She turned in a circle and scanned the wood for him. If he did not wish to be seen, he would not be seen. He was making little effort to conceal himself. She sent her lights to swarm around him. He lowered his head somewhat, shadowing his face from her.

“Can you do that?” she asked. “The lights I mean?” He did not answer, walking carefully towards her. “Or this?”

She waved an arm and threw out a surge of will and the forest opened around them. Everything that slept in the darkness was abruptly brought to life. Her magic lights illuminated all. He stopped in his tracks, looking above and around them.

Was that surprise on his face?

Exclamation in his parted lips. God, he was really quite lovely when his face softened with astonishment. She giggled and withdrew her lights to coalesce around herself. She danced away, touching things with her magic as she skipped.

A sprite fluttered across her path, drawn by the spectacle of her lights. She willed it to stay and it did. It was so recklessly easy to catch its tiny will with her own budding one. She wanted others of its kind to join with her. She called them silently, still humming to herself.

They came. They spiraled out of the wood, dancing towards her. She swirled among them. She wondered if she might call the fairies. Oh how she wished to dance with them once more. She sent out the call.

The trees rustled in the night breeze.

Natural music that her sensitive ears found melody to. The night creatures accompanied the rustle with various chirps and croaks. A hesitant figure crept out of the wood. Luminous skin glowed in the moon light. Delicate graceful limbs moved around roots and brush. Victoria cried out in her joy. She ran towards the fairy, but its great eyes darted nervously.

It was afraid, but it could not resist her call. She sensed others in the wood behind it. They feared what she traveled with.

They feared Dusk.

Indignant that his presence might spoil her whim, she whirled, searching for him. He was gone, more elusive than the fairies.

“I won’t let him hurt you,” she crooned. Touching the slender arm. “I promise. Come out. Come out.” She giggled – she could not seem to help herself. They did. Hesitantly at first, then with greater abandon as they saw that the first comers were not struck down.

“I want to dance,” she cried out to the wood at large, to the hidden assassin. “You’ll leave us all be while I do. Do you hear, Dusk?”

No answer. She had not expected one. She grabbed a set of hands and swung the fairy around, wanting music but not knowing how to bring it about herself. But they knew. And they were ever slaves to the music and the passion of dance. They cavorted around her, gradually relaxing and loosing themselves as she lost herself to the dance. She realized, in the midst of her delirium that she was not the one being led this time. She led them. They followed her with awe, with reverence even. She could almost sense a sort of worship. Oh to have such power. It was delirious.

Wonderful. It surged through her, rejoicing over her full acceptance of it. The lights, her lights, out shone the flickering sprites.

The glade glowed as if the sun itself shone down. The music rebounded inside her head. The sky thundered in response. The fairies faltered at the resounding intrusion, but she urged them on. She would drive any foul weather away. She would drive the sun from hiding if she knew how.

She danced with all of them. Male and female. They were like flowers, beautiful and fragile. They were not quite enough. Not quite close enough to her human perception of beauty. They did not satisfy the need. She sent her lights into the surrounding wood, sent her fairies dancing to the edges of the glade. The lights could not reveal him. The fairies did, skirting away from where he stood against the bole of a great tree, sullenly observing the festival. She swung towards him, swirling and his eyes turned wary.

She put her hands on him and he stiffened as if he might strike her down.

“Dance with me,” she whispered, pulling him forward. He did not wish to dance with her. He made that quite clear.

He wanted away. He resisted her will, and she could not understand how, when dozens of fairies were so helpless to it.

She called them all, creating a weaving, convulsing ring of bodies around him and her.

“Am I so hideous? A human woman?” She wrapped her arms around his waist, daring him to push her off. He cast desperate looks about him, at countless fairy bodies that swirled and touched. His colors were changing from dark forest to fairy lightness. He twisted to get out of her arms, but she held tight, swaying into him, making him move to the music.

He was exquisite in his desperation.

He was suddenly the tormented, the captive and she delighted in it. She wanted him to plead with her, but of course he never would. He would flail about him and kill the lot of her fairies before he stooped so low. She would bring the heavens down before she let him. But at the moment her driving need was to feel those incredibly soft lips under her own. She was dizzy and hot, and the power made her hungry. It drove her as she had never been driven before. She needed him. Desperately needed him to quench the fire before it consumed her.