Dockalfar (18 page)

“I suppose,” Victoria said carefully, “if you took it literally, you would be demons to tempt us.”

Aloe laughed, a silvery tinkling trill. Long strands of hair whipped about her face. “Oh, I like that. Demons, are we? How delightful. I think we’ve always tried to live up to that at any rate. You humans are so entertaining to bait. Do you think some of us appeared to your saints and suggested that very idea just to stir up trouble?”

Victoria chewed her lip, wondering if she ought to be offended on behalf of her religion. She could find little outrage when the notion Aloe had given was such a likely one.

“Perhaps,” Aloe suggested, sounding as if she brought the subject up only to soothe her companions sensibilities, “your world operates on different principles than mine. Perhaps the writings of your holy men are very reliable in your mortal realm. It would explain your short lives.”

“Then what happens to me if I die here? Does this world have a heaven my mortal soul can journey to? Or does it cling to my body and give me back my life?”

“It depends how you die.” Aloe grinned. “There are some things even sidhe don’t recover from. But I would tend to think, that your soul being as powerful as it seems, would cling to your physical form.”

“Does that mean I’m immortal like you?”

Aloe shrugged. “I’ll tell you in a century or two.”

~~~

There was a shadow of forest on the horizon. Not an all encompassing bulk of flora like the Alkeri’na, but a smaller, neater array of woodlands. It sat in the middle of the Hallow Hills, sprouting from the earth like a well modulated crop.

Aloe said it was called Neira’sha’s Grove. She said it had been planted, seedling by seedling by a great lady of the Sidhe. By the look of the trees in all their mammoth bulk and glory, that planting had been some long while past.

As they walked closer stranger features than the careful placement of trees became apparent. From what seemed almost the center of the grove white spires rose. In the right light, they almost blended with the tree tops. In the afternoon light they were pale pink. When they stepped within the wood, the undergrowth was almost nonexistent. It was as if someone kept the forest floor swept clean of debris and unsightly bramble. It was a larger wood than one might have thought. They walked for over an hour before the trees gave way to something that had not been wrought of nature. They came upon the gardens first. A great twining maze of flowering plants and bushes that flanked soft dirt paths and sometimes ended at crystal pools with colorful fish, sometimes in grottoes where domed gazebos sat unattended. Chimes hung, too numerous to count on the limbs of ornamental trees. The air sung with their soft melody.

And then the gardens ended at a great flowering hedge. The pathway led through an arch of twisted rose vines, whose flowers hung down far enough to brush Victoria’s hair. The scent was overpowering. One almost forgot to look beyond the arch when blooms the size of volley balls poised before one’s eyes.

When one did look, breath left the lungs in awe. The keep rose like a mythical castle.

The earth seemed to cling to it, clutching upwards along its lower walls with fingers of moss and creeping vines. The flowers bloomed in vibrant array in the cracks where dirt and mortar mixed. Tiny blooms found footholds in the moss. The stone underneath was as white as snow and as smooth as marble. It was architecture of fable. Columned and domed, and topped with graceful spires. A dozen balconies trailing flora transcended its height. It was Greek and Indian, Russian and Rome all combined, with elements of fantasy thrown in to boggle the mind and bedazzle the eye.

A half dozen waist-high birds with feathers that would cause a peacock shame wondered the manicured lawn that stretched before the keep. Phoebe flattened her ears with predatory glee and pounded off to awkwardly stalk them. The birds raised squawking alarm and scattered. The cub dashed about in indecision on just who to chase.

Ashara’s Keep. Home of the Liosalfar. The Seelie court. And hopefully the place where Victoria would learn to control her erratic powers. Hopefully the place where she would learn why she had been brought to this world and might conceivably figure out how to find her way back to Alex. And God willing, their way home.

~~~

Alex woke up tired. The vague feeling that he had drunk too much, and done too much the night before playing on his mind. He could not remember what had actually happened last night. It was not an unusual occurrence, that lack of conscious memory. The nights went by in a glorious daze in the company of the court. He always had the taste of it on his tongue, but never recalled what he had partaken of.

He stared at the filmy curtained ceiling, painfully aware of the weight of his bones and flesh pushing into the cushions. His body ached. He did not think it had complained the day before.

But then again, he had slept most of the daylight hours away. He was becoming very much a night creature. Even the most industrious of the court rose no sooner than late afternoon, and the whole of them stayed up the night and early hours of the morning feasting and dancing and creating ways to amuse themselves. Vague flashes of some of those things flickered through his mind. It was too much effort to chase them down and not worth his while. He knew the things that mattered. He had been with Leanan. She had been pleased with him. Her scent still clung to the silks of his bedding. Sometimes she slept with him through the morning, sometimes she left before he woke. He knew how to find her.

He could reach out with his mind and search for her particular signature of persona. Her particular light. She could shield herself from him if she chose, and at times she did, just to be mischievous, but for the most part she let him spy her out at will, as long as he went no deeper than her surface thoughts. She was private.

They all were. The whole of them became down right testy if one accidentally looked beneath the surface veneer. There were some he strictly kept away from, Azeral chief among them. Some minds that were too dark and too powerful for a fledgling magic user to attempt. They did not teach him to go past shields. He thought they taught him what they wanted him to know and no more. He was content with that as long as Leanan stayed with him.

He searched for her and found her in her own chambers, taking a lazy bath with several bendithy women attending her.

She half dozed, her thoughts were myriad and lazy. She contemplated the warmth of the water and the welcoming ease the bendithy masseuse gave her muscles. He left her alone before she spied him, and stretched his new power on more harmless things. It was so easy to lay sprawled on his pillows and send his mind’s eye trekking through the keep and into the surrounding forest. There were birds in abundance around the keep in the heavily forested slopes, and small animals too meek for the hunt to bother with. Their mentalities were small and business-like.

They concentrated solely on gathering food or watching the activities of other animals from high branches. It was relaxing to glide with those animal intellects. They at least were blithely unaware of his intrusions. He searched further and found bendithy and gnomes hunting in the forest. They sought fresh meat for the night’s feast. If they sensed the tickling in their minds they paid no notice, or were too used to the sidhe’s manipulations to complain. He passed them on, ranging further. There were miles and miles of forest to wonder. He could go quite a ways before reaching the limits of his ability. He found a predatory bird to soar with and watched the forest from a cloud top view.

The bird spied prey far below and dove. Alex rejoiced in the speed of flight.

It brought back vague recollections of past. The hunt kept him from dwelling on fleeting memories. The bird’s talons stretched out for a simian-like creature high in the tree tops. It looked up too late and screeched. Alex looked on with something akin to arousal, waiting for the kill and suddenly something pulled him away from the bird.

Something very distant and faint wrapped feather soft fingers about him and questioned. There was nothing concrete to the query, just the knowledge that something was curious about him.

Something that had far greater reach than him. He let himself flow with the new presence. It was warm and welcoming and old. Yes, very old. Despite the distance, it was more open than the sidhe here. It held very few strict barriers. There was benevolence there. Benevolence to the point that he recognized the vast difference from what he felt here. It was a shock.

Pain lanced through his head.

Something huge and dark closed over him cutting off all sight and sense. He felt himself jerked none to gently back. Back to his body where he rebounded from the abrupt return to physical form with bewildered shock. He blinked up at his ceiling, too dazed to immediately wonder what had happened. His vision spun alarmingly. Real vision, not mental. He could not find the strength to summon that.

It seemed very much as if that power had been drained from him, so suddenly it was gone.

~~~

Azeral’s chambers were like a cavernous monastery. Huge and heavy with stone, dark and silent with an aura of sacredness. His windows were draped with heavy cloth to keep out the morning sun, and the water than ran down one wall and gathered in a deep pool made no blasphemous gurgle of sound that might disturb the Unseelie lord. Azeral did not sleep. His lady lay sprawled in silken grace on the dark cushions beside him, her hair fanned out in waves of gleaming highlights. He lay beside her, half covered, sheets dark against his moonlight pale skin. His blue crystal eyes were open in the darkness, pupils dilated to take in what light dared the stone fortress of his rooms. His fingers clenched in the silk cloth, his body tensed, lean muscles twitching.

He shivered with stolen power. He compounded it with his own and searched for the intruder that had dared his realm.

He chased the scent down ruthlessly before it could be totally obscured and found some slight familiarity. Something he knew. Something that had not casually stumbled upon his human. The essence, the power, was old and tricky and disappeared under his nose before he could lash out at it in reprimand. There was no trace after that, other than the scent of it left on the boy, whom he had hurled back into his physical form as soon as he had become aware of the intrusion. Azeral turned his attention there, thinking to rebuke his daughter for being errant in her care. Alex Morgan was barely aware.

Dazed and exhausted and on the verge of darkness. Azeral had taken too quickly and too much, but he had panicked at the powerful foreign presence. He cursed himself for that momentary lack of control.

But the boy would regain power quickly.

There was so much of the earth magic to spare. It was plentiful and oh so easy to take. The channels he had opened within his human supplied him well. And would so for time untold, unless the boy figured out how to close them on his own. Azeral had no intentions of giving such instruction. But there were others, far away who plotted against him and his seat of power, who might. He needed the earth power to hold sway against them. He needed that all powerful edge.

He felt the human fall into sleep and relaxed, closing his own eyes. Very carefully he searched his domain one last time for sign of the intruder. He encompassed the mountains and the forest with the vast magnitude of his own magic.

Seeking anything. Finding nothing. He withdrew, pondering. He thought he knew who it had been and wondered how word of his human could have possibly reached those ears.

~~~

There were a dozen curious faces that came and went about Victoria as she and Aloe walked through the wonderful white halls of the fairy tale palace. Her bare feet slapped softly on polished marble floors, great swatches of sunlight shone down from the open ceiling of the entrance hall.

Hanging vines descended from the skylights, trailing voluptuous blossoms, filling the air with their sweet scent.

Someone took meticulous care with an indoor garden that lined the walls. Birds freely fluttered from the ornamental trees, ferns and blooming plants to the open sky without.

The inhabitants of Ashara’s keep knew Aloe. They floated past her, sometimes touching, sometimes smiling in silent welcome. Victoria thought they might be exchanging mental welcoming as well, and questions about the sidhe woman’s unusual companions. A human and a gulun cub could not have been common visitors to the Seelie court. She withheld her curiosity admirably. Not once did she use her magic to pry into the strangers inner selves and she kept up the shield Aloe had taught her with equal control. What she could feel was their eyes. They were not hostile or wary, merely curious. They were like Aloe, in their facial structure and grace of movement. Their bodies were lithe and smooth, their hair long and silken. They were all beautiful, like delicate china dolls.

Aloe led her to a broad marble stair.

Great glass windows looked down upon it from either side. The stair branched out in two directions. They took the left fork.

She followed breathlessly, marveling at the serenity and the solitude the keep exuded. Phoebe found the steps a perplexing exercise. She dallied far behind, playing at hiding under the ledge of one step then leaping up to the next level. Victoria let her play, somehow assured that the cub would remain unmolested in this place.

“Do we go to see Ashara?” she asked Aloe at the top of the stairs.

The sidhe girl smiled. “Not yet. We’re both tired and you in dire need of a bath and proper clothing. She knows we’re here and will attend to us presently.”

Victoria looked down at her ragged attire. Her favorite silk gown. Truly ruined beyond repair. How Alex had liked that gown. How she had liked to wear it for him. She ran a hand down the streaked, stained tatters and sighed. There was no keeping it, sentimentality aside. Best throw it out and find something new and more suited to her present situation.

Aloe stopped before a oaken door. It lacked a handle and pushed open at her urging. There was a room of white and blue behind it and an open balcony that looked over the forest. Aloe entered with a deep sigh of pleasure and flung herself down into a rectangular pit filled with pillows and covered with silken sheets.