Dockalfar (25 page)

The sun was considerably lower than it had been when she had dozed off. Dusk had let her sleep for some time, then. It was late afternoon at best. Then she remembered his penchant for night travel and supposed letting her sleep the day away meant more time for walking through the night.

She stretched, checked to see if he had touched her knife while she slept, then climbed to her feet. She waited for him to lead the way in silence and the journey for the remainder of the day followed suit. No words were exchanged.

He hunted for her early that morning, before the sun had started its ascent. He found a sheltered ravine, not unlike the one in which she had spent a night guarding his life against rodent-like predators. She sat down under an overhanging ridge and massaged the complaining muscles of her thighs and calves. The pace he sat was a harder one than she and Aloe had traveled.

He came back with a small creature. He refused to let her build a fire to cook the carcass. She refused to eat it raw.

Exhausted as she was, and irritable and hungry to boot, she found herself becoming belligerent and just a little petty.

As soon as he had retreated from her glares, she evoked a surge of magic heat. It glowed warm and steady on the ground before her. It chased off the dew damp chill of morning. She found and met Dusk’s eyes above the pulsing light and silently challenged him to make an issue of it. He did not. He merely drew his brows and turned his attention to the shadows surrounding him. Satisfied, she began to prepare her meal. Strips of meat cut from the carcass that Dusk had thankfully skinned, cooked quickly when held over her fuelless fire on the point of her knife. She felt rather satisfied at her primal abilities.

She did not think to offer Dusk any of the cooked meat. If he wanted food, he could take it raw, the way he had wanted her to do. He did not ask. Nor did he seem interested in eating. He seemed much more engrossed in the dark horizon to the north and the gloomy transition of black sky to gray before the sun rose and spread the colors of sunrise across the sky.

Grass rustled in the breeze and somewhere a loose pebble tumbled down into the ravine. Dusk was on his feet in an instant, gray as early morning and dying night. She was looking straight at him and he wavered in her vision, fading into the backgrounds. Then he was gone, and she could not be certain if he had moved or she had just ceased to see him. Her mouth fell open in shock, even as she glanced wildly about the clearing.

“What’s wrong?” she demanded of the air. She clutched her knife to her breast, her only physical protection.

Where had the assassin fled to?

“Dusk?” she called plaintively, not expecting an answer.

She got one. Quietly from behind her.

“We’re not alone.”

She whirled, vainly trying to locate him. “What’s out there?”

“Something drawn by the light,” he surmised, no hint of condemnation in his voice. She swallowed and looked down at her magic fire, and with a thought, put it out.

“Is it dangerous?” she asked in a whisper, trembling as she stretched her earthly senses to hear what he heard.

“I don’t know what it is.” She could feel the shrug in his voice. She pressed herself back into the shelter of the overhang. She felt warmth and the trailing edge of cloth. Forced herself not to move away from him. He was her protection.

The grasses stirred again, and there were the very clear sounds of shuffling steps. Victoria drew a breath and surged back against Dusk. Then a unsteady, cracked voice called out.

“Is anyone there? Did my old eyes mistake the light of a fire?”

A weight half slid, half climbed down the ravine side and the purgatory light between night and morning outlined a bent, limping form.

“Did I smell cooking meat?”

It was an old woman. Or close to an old woman, if one made allowances for a great slab of a nose and hands that were longer than bones were naturally inclined to grow. The skin hung like loose tatters from skeletal limbs. A musty, old dress covered a bent back and a kerchief hid scraggly, thinning gray hair. There were so many wrinkles on the skin it seemed like a geographical map of all the fault lines in a seismically unstable area. The eyes were black and watery and one had the film of a cataract over the pupil.

“My God,” Victoria could not help herself. “What are you doing out here all alone?” She stepped forward before Dusk could stop her. The old woman swung her head to look at her. The withered lips turned up in a gentle smile.

“Look at you, pretty young thing. Come here and let Annis take a look at you.”

“Do you have family around here?”

Victoria asked, moving forward, taking the old woman’s thin arm. “You should not be out here at night by yourself. You could fall, no one would know.”

“Ah, so sweet,” the crone sighed.

“Young folk are hardly ever sweet anymore. I saw your light. Smelt your meat. Do you have any to spare for a lonely old soul?”

“Of course.” She released the old woman and hurried to what was left of her dinner. “There’s a good portion left. Let me just restart my fire and you can join us.”

The fire sputtered to life and the crone’s eyes widened.

“You’ve magic?”

“Well… yes. I’m very new at it.”

“Oh, delicious,” the old woman clasped her hands. “A magic user. It’s been so long since I…talked with a magic user.” Then she stopped and her face sagged into deeper wrinkles. “Did you say ‘us’? Are you not alone?”

“Not really,” Victoria admitted.

“Dusk is somewhere about. He tends to be hard to see sometimes. But don’t worry about him. He’s harmless.”

But the old woman was searching the ravine with narrowed eyes. Victoria could almost feel a thin film of power radiate from the crone. Then it was gone. The old woman spun and stabbed a long finger at Victoria.

“You lie. There’s no one else here. Do you think to scare old Annis off?”

Victoria gaped at the violence in the elder’s tone. “Of course not. He is here, somewhere.”

And rather suddenly, as if to prove her point, Dusk stepped out from the shadow, cloaked and hooded like the grim reaper. Old Annis stepped back, holding up a hand as if to ward him off.

“Dark sidhe,” she hissed. “You travel with the night, girl.”

“No, I travel in the night,” Victoria said dryly, casting an irritated glance at Dusk for his dramatics. “It’s perfectly all right. Really.”

Dusk was not helping, standing there, looking so foreboding. She practically choked in surprise when he did do something. He spoke. Very softly, very slowly.

“The hunting here is dangerous. Very dangerous. Seek easier game.”

“What are you talking about?”

Victoria demanded, casting an apologetic glance at the old woman. But Annis was backing away, face twisted into a snarl. Sharp teeth hid behind withered, wrinkled lips. Her eyes were glued on Dusk. When she reached the edge of the ravine she cackled and spat in their direction.

Victoria was dumb struck.

“Ignorant fledgling,” she shrilled.

“You let old Annis go to hunt you another day.”

Dusk did not move. Victoria blinked.

“What are you talking about?”

“She hunts youth,” Dusk said quietly behind her. “Youthful flesh gives her the illusion of youth herself.”

“Ha!” the old woman laughed as she struggled up the hill. “She’s an infant. Younger than the youngest newborn. And you’re nothing but a child, dark one. Your flesh would be almost as tasty.”

“Try,” he suggested.

Annis topped the rise and fled into the night. Victoria sat shivering by her fire, numb. That something so innocent, so helpless seeming as an ancient woman, could hide a predator was stunning.

Terrifying. Nothing in this land was ever as it seemed.

“She wanted to eat me?” she asked in a small voice, almost afraid to turn and look at Dusk. When he did not answer, she did turn. He had not moved. She could not see his face under the hood. “She would have eaten me.” Then it occurred to her that the assassin had not done what his nature demanded.

“Why did you let her go? Why didn’t you kill her?”

He shrugged finally and moved to circle the small area that they had claimed for their own. “There was no need.”

“She said she would hunt us again. Didn’t she? If I wasn’t here, would you have killed her?”

“No,” he answered shortly.

“No?”

Finally he whirled on her, exasperated. “Lady, if you were not here, she never would have come. Never would have been attracted by the light.”

“Oh.” A certain amount of contrition eased over her. “Do you think she’ll be back tonight?”

“If she’s wise, no. I give no second chances.”

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The sprites were becoming an annoyance. An overwhelming, brainless irritation that had the hair on Bashru’s back bristling. The glowing vermin would not leave him alone. They harassed and molested him at every turn. They had the nighthorse snapping and bucking at the snap of a stick or the rustle of leaves.

Bashru was ready to abandon his mission to find the human girl and devote all his time and effort into setting sprite traps and collecting as many of the pesky creatures as possible for a great steaming pot of tumble root and sprite stew. It was almost as if they knew he had serious business to attend and no time to dally with them. For five days, since he had retraced his path to the place where he and the ogre had lost track of the girl, the agitating things had been plaguing him. He had taken to sleeping during the daylight hours when the sprites were not as likely to venture forth, because they took such great relish in tormenting him during the night. They had taken his packs and loosened the nighthorse tether one night, chasing the disagreeable beast far into the forest before Bashru had been able to catch him.

Even then, the animal had come up lame and the spriggan had been forced to walk for two days before the leg was strong enough to support a rider’s weight.

Bashru hated sprites. He hated humans who aimlessly wondered off and got themselves lost. He hated assassins who should have been competent enough to solve the problem before a poor spriggan got hauled into the situation. And he very quietly, and far back under his conscious thoughts, which could be read by an enterprising sidhe, hated Azeral for sending him on such a hopeless mission.

The Forest was huge. The human wench was probably long since something’s supper. Or she was so deeply lost that she’d never be found. Or something had found her and she was starting out her days as some lucky creature’s human slave. Humans made good servants. He remembered the days when humans crossed over the boarders to Elkhavah all the time. Brought as slaves or captives or brides. Humans used to think the inhabitants of Elkhavah gods to worship.

Or demons to fear. They never ignored them. And never ever took them for granted.

A sprite buzzed through the darkness and whipped past Bashru’s nose. He swatted viciously at it, but it avoided him with something akin to a tinkling laugh. He glowered and thought dark thoughts. The night horse tossed its head, pulling nervously at its reins. Bashru cursed at it and jerked at the bit. The animal heaved a great sigh of irritation and made certain to wander painfully close to the next thornbark tree they passed. Bashru vowed to eat it one day. But he kept that to himself, having no desire to walk. He was traveling a path that could only barely be classified a game trail. It was covered with tumbled undergrowth and littered with limbs. Great spilling falls of moss tumbled down from towering oaks, sparkling with tiny bits of phosphorescence. Dew coated the nighthorse’s legs and Bashru’s leggings.

The chorus of night song enveloped everything in a reassuring harmony. And then, the sprites went away. At first, Bashru did not notice, so busy was he riding hunched over in his saddle bemoaning his misfortunes. But after a while, when no irritating little miscreant fluttered out to harass him, when for so long they had been doing nothing else, he noticed the lack of presence. He sat a little straighter and looked about the woods, eyes squinted in the dark, nose twitching as he searched for scent of something that might chase the sprites away. The night sounds were undaunted. The tree frogs and the crickets, the birds and the night animals were not in the least alarmed. But there were so many things that hunted more sophisticated prey. Things that the lower animals had no natural fear of because there was no danger to them.

Those were the things that a spriggan had to fear. Things that needed an intelligent soul to feed upon. Things that might, in a pinch, go after a sprite. But not, if there was larger prey afoot.

He shivered under the rough weave of his tunic, and clutched the carved bone hilt of his dagger. Spriggans did not prey to the same gods sidhe did. They relied upon the whims of fate and their own innate ability to survive and if that did not protect them, then it was just as well. For a spriggan that could not see to his own safety was a poor spriggan indeed. He urged the nighthorse to a faster pace. It tossed its head in irritation and flattened its long ears. It was no more scared of the night than the birds and frogs, but one could hardly call it intelligent. Then, suddenly, its eyes did roll and it snorted in more than minor agitation at its rider.

Bashru clutched handfuls of mane as it skittishly sidestepped, half bucking in its disturbance. Its gaze was fixed to the obscuring fall of ivy and moss to the left and the darkness beyond that. He kicked it hard to get it moving and with an explosive release of air it did, launching into full gallop with such alacrity that Bashru’s head snapped back and he almost lost his seating. He clung like a small, gnarly burr to the nighthorse’s back, hopefully making as small a target as possible. He imagined bogles swarming through the forest after him, or baen spirits wanting to feed on the substance of his soul, or tilpen-sel who fed on the screams of their victims, or even goblins who would relish to feed on spriggan flesh, regardless of soul or screams. The nighthorse jumped a brook, its hind legs sending up a spray of water as it struggled up the opposite bank. Soft, spongy moss flew in the effort. Then something was in front of them, right up in the nighthorse’s face. The animal screamed. Bashru screamed. His mount reared in shock, lost its footing in the soggy ground and tumbled backwards. With a monumental splash it crashed into the brook. Bashru threw himself clear and found himself in several feet of water, his hat dripping over his brow and his dagger clutched securely in his hand. The nighthorse surged to its feet, dangerously close, and stood trembling, sides heaving. Bashru cursed it under his breath and scanned the bank in desperation. Where was it?