Dockalfar (24 page)

“Please lower the hood, I can’t stand talking to someone when I can’t see their face.”

It took four or five heartbeats before that got results. Slowly he reached up and drew back the hood. He was very, very golden. The room and the fey light had marvelous effect on him. Gold skin, masses of golden hair. Golden feline eyes.

For a moment she literally forgot to breathe, caught up in the alien beauty.

When she did recall to draw breath she wondered at the wisdom of face to face confrontation. He arched a elegant brow at her, a silent capitulation to her whim. She swallowed and nodded, accepting.

“Better.” She shifted uncomfortably and tried to fight back the blush. “Why didn’t you tell me you were trying to return me to Alex? I had no idea what you wanted?”

“You had no need to know,” he stated.

She blinked at him. “No need –? Are you quite insane? You drag a girl through a jungle – abuse her – terrify her and you think she doesn’t have a need to know why? What gives you the right? Do you think you’re some kind of god?”

“You were not abused,” he amended softly.

“Oh, I beg to differ.” Her voice rose.

She was not certain but she thought she saw him wince at the shriek. “I had every need and every right to know what was going on. I still do, damn you! What does Azeral want with us?”

“His reasons are his own, Lady,” the assassin spoke quietly. “Even were I in his confidence, it would not be my place to speak of them.”

“You don’t know? You mean you just blindly go about kidnapping and harassing people on somebody else’s whim and you don’t even know why?”

He inclined his head. The golden eyes glittered.

“What a font of free will you are,” she snarled icily. “Tell me, is it true that Azeral owns you?”

He met her furious gaze for a split second before he shot up, towering over her. The fear that he was going to strike her paralyzed her. He could have taken her too easily in that moment of fear, when her mind went numb and she forgot any new methods of defense she had been taught. But all he did was stare down at her in silence. Then whirl and stalk away from her to the boundary of the room. He paced like an animal in a cage, nervous and agitated.

“Why do you owe Alex a debt?” she whispered. The anger was diminished, withered away by the fear.

“He saved my life,” he said without looking her way.

She gnawed her lower lip, feeling her nerves tangle and twine. “Did he?” The words barely trembled over her lips. She suddenly wanted to weep. She did not.

She lifted her chin instead and recalled. “I saved your life.”

He did stop, across the room from her, framed by a painted fresco on the wall. The cloak swirled about him in the breeze from the balcony. Tendrils of hair stirred about his face and the delicate points of his ears. For a moment he seemed torn. Young and miserable and terribly anguished. Then he schooled his features and cloaked the emotions.

“I did, didn’t I?” she asked more forcefully. “Do you owe me a debt, too?”

Very slowly he inclined his head. He might have been fighting the pull of gravity for all the effort it seemed to take.

Victoria found herself repeating the gesture. “This is convenient,” she murmured, then smiled at him. “Does this happen often? This debt thing?”

He drew his brows at her and snapped. “Not very.”

Her smile widened. Emotion from him. She had managed to ruffle his feathers. She felt inordinately pleased. She stood up, and crossed to her closet, already planning what she needed to take with her. Leather leggings and tunic. Boots. A warm cloak. The knife Alkar had given her and its delicately worked belt.

She turned to survey Dusk. One never knew what was under that cloak, but she doubted he carried provisions of any sort on his person and she had never seen a pack, which meant he was good at living off of the land. So she needn’t take provisions for herself when he could provide.

“All right,” she said, turning with an arm full of clothing. “This is my debt. It’s not very hard, since it’s practically the same thing Alex asked of you. I want you to escort me to wherever Alex is. Escort. Not herd. Not haul. Not chase down like some sort of prey. I am not your prisoner. I am not to be treated like one. Is this a problem? Do whatever ethics you practice conflict with this scenario?”

He was standing so quietly still against the wall that she almost lost sight of him. The cloak blended so very well with his surroundings, but his face gave him away. Once the eyes locked onto that, the brain refused to let background colors and shapes interfere. No wonder he wore the hood so frequently, his features were like a magnet for aesthetic attentions. One could learn, she thought, to hate beauty.

“Feel free,” she said softly, “to jump into this discussion at any time.”

“No conflict,” he said stiffly, affronted by her remarks, no doubt. No doubt taken completely by surprise with her sudden eager cooperation.

“Wonderful,” she drawled. “Now, if you don’t mind, please step outside while I change my clothes. I promise not to do anything naughty.”

The night covered their movements.

He was at the tree and down it, graceful as a cat. She was considerably less graceful and less sure and afraid to use magic that might help her descent in fear of waking up certain sensitive sleepers. She had scrapes on her palms by the time she was on the ground as a result. He hardly gave her time to catch her breath, much less examine the wounds.

They clung to the trees and the shadows and the soft grasses silenced their footsteps. Well, her footsteps. He moved like fog and it was clear that it was a strain for him to keep her clumsy pace.

Through the gardens they went and past the outer grove of ornamental trees and then they were in the wood, and she breathed a little easier for that cover.

Dusk was in no wise satisfied. He kept the pace up, one hand on her arm above the elbow. It was not a hurtful grip, but it brooked no argument. She contemplated reminding him that she was not his prisoner.

“There’s really no need to exercise this much caution,” she finally declared when they were well into the wood and away from the keep. “I left of my own will. They’re not likely to chase after me.”

He did not answer for a while and she tightened her lips, wondering if the entirety of this journey would be made up of one-sided conversations. Not that talking with him was any great triumphant of auditory achievement. She would be better off not speaking at all.

“Do you really think so?” He shocked her out of her sour musings with the question.

“Of course I think so. They’re my friends. They’re not barbarians like the things you associate with.”

Another silence. He tended to take a great deal of time thinking before he spoke.

“What do you know of my associates?”

“Only what I’ve been told. And what I’ve seen myself before I was lucky enough to escape the first time… and besides, if they all have your manners then they must be uncivilized.”

He shook his head, the hood swept about his face, dark and shadowy. “You know nothing, Lady. Nothing.”

“So tell me!” she hissed. But he had said all he planned to on the subject and lapsed into frustrating silence. After a long while, he spoke once more.

“I cannot be tracked magically. You can. If you have the means, I suggest you shield yourself from such a search.”

She narrowed her eyes, formulating a scathing reply, but he was not paying her heed. He loped ahead, trusting her to follow, trusting her to dwell on his warning. Might he be right? Would Ashara attempt to stop her from running to the Seelie Court’s eternal enemies? She spoke quickly enough on Victoria’s freedom of choice, but when it came right down to it, could she stand by and let a magic as strong as the one Victoria possessed flee to the opposition? Would her friends stand by and let her travel to Azeral’s keep alone? She shuddered at the thought of Aloe or Alkar surprising Dusk and suffering for it. She remembered the fairy death cries. Immortal creatures could be killed. One just had to know how. Dusk was apparently a wealth of information in that area.

Victoria lifted her shields. She concentrated for the rest of the trip out of Neira’sha’s wood on making her presence as unnoticeable as possible. She knew it was a feeble attempt at obscuring, unschooled and unpracticed. But she had power aplenty to pour into it and the added advantage of night to cloak it with.

~~~

Luck was with them at least for the remainder of the night. As far as Dusk or Victoria could discern, there was no active pursuit of her departure, either magical or physical. And more importantly, at least as far as Victoria was concerned, Phoebe had not managed to latch onto her trail and follow. They were well out of the wood and no gulun kitten had shown itself. At least Phoebe would be safe and cared for with Ashara’s people.

Morning was long gone and they were well out onto the plains of the Hallow Hills before Dusk condescended to stop and let Victoria rest. They found a thicket of young trees in the midst of a dense patch of brush and bushes. It provided shade from the sun and cover from prying eyes. The bushes had an abundance of berries that Victoria decided were edible. She greedily crammed her mouth, ending up with blue-stained lips and fingers. She hardly cared. Her muscles were weary from a night and morning of unrelenting travel. The oblivion of sleep seemed a distant fantasy.

She was determined she was going to at least nap, whether Dusk agreed or not.

She curled between the boles of two close growing young trees, closing her eyes and ignoring Dusk’s presence. It was funny, she thought, in the altered world of darkness behind her lids, that she could be more aware of the assassin’s presence without her sight than with it. Visually, he was a wraith, slipping in and out of comprehension. In the dark, the true dark of her own private oblivion, without her eyes to confuse the issue, she felt his presence like a beacon. She
knew
he was crouching across from her, far out of easy reach, close enough for him to keep watch over her. As if she might change her mind and flee.

It was almost indecent, the intimacy of her awareness. It nestled with too much familiarity in her mind. An intruder that she did not welcome. A disturbance of her so fragile state of calm.

She wanted him out with a vengeance. Wanted nothing of him in her head, but it was like trying not to dwell on the suspicious shape across the room at night in your bedroom. You knew it was probably just a chair with a coat on it, or the shadow of the hat rack, but your mind kept insisting that it was something more.

And to stop dwelling on it was impossible.

“Stop it,” she ground out, not opening her eyes because she would not see him right away and she hated talking to thin air.

“Stop what?” A quiet wondering. His voice, without his presence was like the softest ripple of silk. Goose bumps stood out on her flesh. She hugged herself tighter, lowering her head to her knees so that her hair covered her face.

“Stay out of my head.”

Silence on his part. Her awareness of him did not disperse.

“I’m not magic,” he finally admitted, subdued. “I’ve not resources to break your shields.”

She did not believe him. He was no more not magic than he was not a chameleon. She refused to argue the point.

That would mean prolonged conversation and she wanted as little contact as possible with him.

She tried to relax. Tried to lull her mind to sleep with the wordless tune of a lullaby. She hummed it softly to herself… and drifted into sleep…

…Alex was sitting at a pool. He was dressed in blue silks. His hair was a little longer than she remembered, his eyes a more vivid blue. There was a game board in front of him with delicate crystal pieces. His concentration was fixed on that.

Sidhe were around him, languid and sleepy. Decadent in a way that the sidhe of her acquaintance were not. A few of them played the game with him, but it was clear to her that it was a condescension of their part. An amusement for them to entertain a human. A lesser being.

The room slowly coalesced in her mind. The pool was the center of a chamber with towering stone walls and only slits for windows far above human or sidhe heads. So little sunlight. So many tons of stone overhead. It was dark and heady. Filled with must and decay.

Victoria felt the fingers of claustrophobia tighten around her.

She stood against a wall and felt moisture through the thin tattered remnants of her nightgown. The gown she had worn when she had been brought to this world.

Some of the sidhe noticed her. Damned her for her raggedness with humorless cat eyes. Alex never looked up from his game.

He never knew she was there. She could not open her mouth to call his name. The sidhe smiled at her helplessness.

Frantically she looked about, searching for a way out of the dream.

Searching for someone that would help her. And found, in a corner across the room from her, the only set of eyes that did not condemn or ignore her. Merely watched her with a strange mix of sympathy and wariness. Her own eyes widened at his appearance in her dream.

That he acknowledged her when her own lover would not.

“Get out!” Her lips formed the words. They came out as a shriek of desperation….

….And broke the quiet of the wood as her eyes snapped open and she flung herself away from the light touch that had mercifully awakened her. The echoes of the scream lingered in the tiny grove. Dusk sat back from her in shock, eyes wide. It took him a moment to gather his wits and school his features.

She huddled against the tree, calming the erratic beat of her heart. She despised him for the intrusion. How dare he? To slip behind her sleeping shields and invade her dreams was the worst type of rudeness. She could not for the life of her figure why he would want to, unless it were purely to torment her.

“It is time to move on,” he told her, carefully placing slender fingers on the ground before him.

She glared at him. “I hate you.”

He returned the stare evenly, then inclined his head, accepting her verdict. As if hate were no stranger to him. She imagined that it wasn’t.