Dockalfar (49 page)

They were halfway down the hall leading to the council chambers when the doors burst open and Ashara, followed by several of her advisors, stormed out. Her face, lovely as it was, had the look of unpleasant disposition.

“Mother Earth!” she cried out. “Do you do this on purpose?”

Since it was apparent she was yelling mostly at Victoria, Aloe stepped to the side and left her friend to weather the storm on her own. Victoria winced. It had probably been Alkar’s rendition of the tale Ashara had heard. She wished she could have broached the subject on her own.

“A Ciagenii in my own keep? It’s a wonder all our throats haven’t been slit in the night.”

“He was otherwise occupied,” Aloe offered dryly. Victoria cast her a glare for the support. Ashara ignored her all together.

“How could you keep this from us? What were you thinking?”

Taking a deep breath, Victoria walked to Ashara and met her eye for eye.

“May we please discuss this somewhere other than in the hall? And I would appreciate it if you and I and Neira’sha might talk this over alone.”

The Seelie Lady’s eyes narrowed. Her head went up and her spine stiffened. Her sharp tipped ears were practically twitching. “I have no time to talk this over.

Azeral’s forces are at this grove. I’ve no effort to spare for your reasons. I’m told you at least did us the service of incapacitating the creature…”

“He is not a creature! Damn it, he’s not your enemy!”

“Ashara.” Neira’sha’s quiet voice shattered the indignant ire that was rising in Ashara’s face. The elder sidhe passed Ashara’s other advisors and stood at her lady’s side.

“We can spare one moment to appease Victoria. Let us find out why we’ve a Ciagenii so peacefully in our midst.”

Ashara opened her mouth, then snapped it shut. For a brief moment, the weariness showed in her eyes. The tension and the accusation. Ashara knew who was the cause of this. She finally whirled, stabbing an arm towards the group of the most powerful of her sidhe.

“See to the defenses. You know what needs to be done.”

She stalked back into the council chamber. Victoria stood mutely where she was, cringing at the abruptness, the hostility. Gently Neira’sha took her arm and urged her forward.

“We’ve little time, child. They are at our outermost wards as we speak.”

“Oh God.”

“They’ll hold for a time,” the elder told her. “Then the grove itself will defend us. Tell us what this Ciagenii wants here.”

They were in the chamber, the doors swung shut behind them. Neira’sha’s doing or Ashara’s.

“What does a Ciagenii do anywhere, but kill?” Ashara asked bitterly, standing with her back to them at the tall crystal windows. The night outside seemed so peaceful.

“He was sent to kill me,” Victoria stated. “Azeral told him to kill me if I’d regained the use of my magic.”

“Either you’re a very good liar, Victoria or he’s rather dense for an assassin of his caliber.”

“Neither. He chose not to.”

Ashara turned, both brows arched in disdain. “He chose not? Impossible. You’re being played for a fool.”

“No! It’s true. It’s not in his disposition to deceive.”

“He is an assassin.”

“That’s right. Not a politician. Not a high sidhe lord or lady!”

Outraged silence. Neira’sha broke it. “Why?”

“Oh God, I don’t know why. He doesn’t know. I don’t know if I love him, but I
need
him. I think it’s the same for him. He came to kill me. He couldn’t do it. He might be gone now if I hadn’t kept him here.”

“He stayed the night with you?”

Neira’sha had a vaguely suspicious sound to her voice. Ashara merely stared at her.

Victoria nodded. “He did.”

“You joined flesh?”

The blush was inevitable. Slowly she inclined her head. Neira’sha expression remained absolutely unreadable. The elder shifted her gaze to Ashara, whose eyes were widening in surprise. Rather unexpectedly, she laughed.

“He did this,” she inquired with a considerably lighter tone, “of his own free will?”

“Of course he did.” Victoria did not know whether to be offended or baffled.

Ashara laughed again. Victoria was beginning to become annoyed. “I do not see what’s so funny?”

“You do not know, do you?”

Ashara’s mirth was the type that hinted at amusement over someone else’s discomfort. Victoria was not used to such from her. Neira’sha took pity.

“Victoria. He is Ciagenii.”

“I know what he is,” she said sulkily.

“His magic is of a most specific nature. A curse, one might say, or a blessing. He was born with the instinctive knowledge of every creature’s weakness and a natural immunity of all other magics. Whatever power created such a being, such a natural assassin, also built in certain restrictions. Certain fail-safes, you might say. For a Ciagenii to retain his natural skills there must be a certain purity. For the immunity to magic, a purity of body. Nothing can pollute his flesh or mind or the immunity fades. No drug, no wine, no animal flesh. As to the other, the ability to know the weakness of even the most powerful foe, that requires a purity of another kind. A naivety of the spirit. The abstinence of the flesh.”

Sitting down would have been rather nice. Victoria’s legs felt shaky. She stared between them.

“Are you saying – ? He never – he’s not –”

“A rather hypocritical relationship, wouldn’t you say,” Ashara commented.

“Virginity of spirit and flesh and the deadliest of assassins. I suppose nature balances out all of her creations. And my dear, you’ve managed to rid this world of one less aberration and Azeral of his Ciagenii. I do grant you that.”

She understood what he had meant now. His murmured comment about something being irreversible, and him not being the threat to her that he had been.

Had he come to her planning such a sacrifice or had her actions goaded him into the idea? Ashara was being unreasonable, so she turned to Neira’sha in desperation. But the woman’s eyes had clouded, her brow furrowed in concentration. Ashara’s mirth disappeared altogether in a heartbeat.

“Mother Earth,” she whispered. “They’ve destroyed the wards.”

A dozen mental pleas slammed into the council chamber. They were aimed mostly at Ashara but the overflow was clearly understood by Victoria. The sidhe in the grove were reporting with frantic urgency of the enemy forces spilling into the grove. Of the great battering ram of power that had shattered the outer wards.

She combed the reaches with her own far senses and felt the backwash of destructive power that had been unleashed against the age old wards. Neira’sha must have felt it as it happened, having set up most of those wards herself when she had created this grove. She was reeling on her feet now, struggling to collect her equilibrium. Victoria went to her side, wrapping a supporting arm about the thin waist. Ashara was at the great window, staring out with sightless eyes, magic vision reaching far.

Victoria tagged along in her wake, a frightened observer. The sight took her through the grove, trees whipping by at sickening speed. Past the scattered groups of Seelie scouts, and to the outer fringes of Neira’sha’s grove. There was a black field of movement there. It moved down from the Hallow Hills like lava from a leisurely volcanic eruption. There might have been a three hundred ogre troops. As many goblinish figures scurrying among the slower, massive forms of their compatriots. And sparkling among them, bright spots among dull, were the high sidhe. The Great Hunt had cornered its prey in its hole and was about to spring the trap. The shimmering of the sidhe varied from sidhe to sidhe. She had not noticed that before, then realized that what she was seeing was Ashara picking out the power mongers among them. She was searching out the most powerful, looking for her foe. She found him among the largest cluster of lights. His own shining brighter than the rest combined. Ashara did not venture closer, merely marked the position and began to retreat. The lights flared as they began the backward trek and suddenly shot towards them. Victoria pulled back as far as she might, behind Ashara’s own personal aura. She urged silently for flight, but Ashara held her ground, facing off before the glowing mind’s eye that was Azeral. There was recognition there. Victoria could feel it as clearly as she might a physical pinch. And animosity that had more to do with ego than real hate. They marked each other’s presence and did no more. Ashara was the one to back down, drawing back her roaming eye with such alacrity that it left Victoria disoriented and suddenly leaning on Neira’sha for support.

Ashara turned from the window with grim determination on her face.

“He’s here. He broke the wards.”

“He’s grown,” Neira’sha commented. “Much more than he used to be.”

Had she been there too, overlooking that field of destruction?

“So have I,” Ashara’s voice was tight, level. “I want you here, keeping what wards we do have intact. Victoria, you may come with me.”

She swept past. Victoria exchanged a worried look with Neira’sha, who nudged her away with a nod of her head. “Go, child. Be safe.”

The hallways of the keep were deserted. The gardens outside showed more activity, but they were clearing fast as sidhe hurried to whatever task needed to be done. Aloe joined them at the edge of the grove. She had three white horses in tow. Her bow was clutched in her left hand, a full quiver of arrows on her back.

“Where is the worst infraction?”

Ashara demanded.

“Just east,” the girl declared, swinging up onto her mount. They followed suit and urged the horses into a canter through the trees. It seemed as if the grove had grown denser overnight. Where once there had been pleasantly spaced trees and lush, grass covered ground, there now was bramble and briars. The branches had grown down, intertwining with each other, forming a barrier of living wood. And yet a path seemed to open for the horses. They passed something Victoria had never noticed in her forays into the grove. A waist high stone marker, carved with runes of some sort. Ashara paused by it, reaching down from the saddle to place her hand against its top. She nodded after only a moment and continued on.

“What was that?” Victoria asked of Aloe.

“A ward stone,” the girl replied.

“One of the inner ones. They broke the outer ones. That’s how they managed to get into the grove.”

“I thought they were days away.”

“So did we. It was a ploy. Their lord’s doing, no doubt. There still is a force two days from here. It drew our attention while
he
shielded the approach of this one.”

Three sidhe darted into their path.

The horses shied and complained at being so abruptly halted. The three were clothed in forest browns and green. All had bows, and blades at their sides.

“Lady.” One of them stepped forward, grasping Ashara’s stirrup, he swung his arm north east to the path they traveled. “The worst of it is that way. They’ve battered a path into the grove.”

“Ogres or sidhe?”

“Ogres only, as far as we can tell.”

“To Annwn,” Ashara muttered. “If they’re not backing them there, then he’s up to something elsewhere.”

They left the scouts behind, heading north east. The forest did open for them. Literally. The trees pulled back branches and the roots and vines slithered back from their path. The snarl of bramble would have been untraversable otherwise.

The further they traveled from the keep the worse it got. It slowed the pace to a trot.

The horses were less unnerved about the living path that opened before them and closed behind, than Victoria. This was what Neira’sha had meant when she said the grove would defend itself.

As they rode, a sense of dread began to creep over Victoria. It was a curious feeling, an almost palpable emotion that seemed to stem from outside. It intensified with each step of her mount. Each yard closer to the source of the intrusion. It was the grove. It emanated its own dissatisfaction over the assault. The sounds of turmoil faintly caressed their ears. The hacking of blades and axes against forest flesh. Occasionally the deep-voiced cry of an ogre. In frustration or pain? More of their own scouts appeared, acknowledging their presence.

Trotting behind them to form a guard of sorts. Ashara stopped beside a cluster of her folk. They stared at a spot in the dense bramble. The sounds of destruction came from behind it. It sounded as if some massive creature struggled to break through.

Victoria broadened her senses, picking out pockets of destruction. The grove cried out in silent agony and rage against the assault. There were a dozen places where stubborn, slow-witted ogre troops methodically ripped their way into the grove. One could almost hear the shift and grind of massive muscles and bone as axes were lifted and dropped. Over and over. The forest struggled to close behind the forerunners, but the dark bodies behind kept at the wounded wood. Sap bleed like amber blood. Somewhere, she thought with a chill, Neira’sha was feeling that pain.

“Shield yourself,” Aloe suggested, on the ground, long bow in hand. There was grim fear in her expression. Grimmer determination.

The barrier of bramble pulsed inward with a dry crackle. Archers scattered for cover, notching arrows. Like a serpent poking its way out of its egg shell, something broke through. The gap widened, the width of a man’s chest. A pause, an expectant breath of air, then the whole of the affected bramble wall burst outward as some great form slammed through. Ogres rumbled out into the first of the small clearings. The first to break through, hesitated to get his bearings and a half dozen arrows sprouted from his head.

He floundered back, clutching at twin arrows that impaled his eyes. It took too long for the body to register that the brain had ceased to function. The massive body toppled backwards and its fellows lumbered over, not making the mistake of pausing.

Very calmly, Ashara spoke to Victoria. “A shield, my dear. A large one, if you please.”

Fumbling towards concentration, fighting off horror, she struggled to comply. Her power was at a lull, but more than enough was eager to do her bidding.

She called forth an invisible wall of force, as wide as the clearing and twice as tall as the tallest ogre. A few lagging arrows from their own side bounced off it before the archers realized what was afoot. The ogres rebounded into it and bellowed their outrage. Great fists and axes slammed against it. Victoria could feel each blow.