Dockalfar (50 page)

Ashara stared fixedly into the mass of dark bodies. Her face was serene, untroubled. Victoria had no attention to spare wondering what magic she was about.

An ogre screamed and suddenly let off its attack on Victoria’s shield and flailed about with its battle ax. The blade cut into the closest of its companions.

Blood and bone spattered where the ax met flesh. It chipped away at metal armor and cut through leather. Its companions spared little thought on falling upon it.

They chopped it to bits, but when they had finished no fewer that four of them lay with it on the blood soaked ground.

Another ogre followed the path of the first, then a third. A melee of bloody, psychotic proportions ensued. The lot of them fell upon each other, severing limbs as thick as sidhe torsos, creating sickening gashes in thick leather like skin. Those newly leaving the gap in the bramble wall were sucked into the madness. The sidhe stood and watched impassively, protected behind a magic wall, for the moment invulnerable. When the flow from the forced path slowed, then stopped, silence reigned. The bodies were waist high in the clearing. The grove began to seal itself, growing back to the impenetrable wall it had been before the intrusion. If an ogre body was in its way, the roots grew through it and around it. Incorporating bone and armor and least of all weak flesh into the rebuilding of it’s barricade.

Victoria let her shield falter, then fall away altogether. Her stomach rebelled.

She half fell from the horse in her efforts to dismount. Managed to stumble a few yards away before falling to her knees and retching up the remains of her dinner.

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Sweetheart. No one had ever in his memory, and sidhe of any sort tended towards long memories, called him sweetheart. He reckoned she had meant in with wry humor. There had been that look on her face. Although human expression was not a study he had ever took much interest in before ‘she’ had come along.

He had never been to the human world. Not even when the master had sent him to bring the two humans back to Elkhavah.

Azeral had never held enough of a grudge against any human in particular to send his Ciagenii to that world in order to amend it. Not within Dusk’s lifetime at any rate.

And he was Azeral’s only Ciagenii. The only one the master had ever been lucky enough to get his hands on.

He had never failed Azeral before.

Had never questioned any task given him.

It was not his place. It had been impossible to think of denying Azeral anything. All possession of souls aside, he had been reared from the very day of his birth to owe allegiance to the lord of the Unseelie keep.

The soul was merely a reminder of how deep a loyalty he must have. He held no least bit of understanding of how the girl had managed to snare him so entirely.

Certainly she had sparked his interest with her total lack of fear from the first day she had demanded he take responsibility for feeding the monstrous bundle of fur, teeth and claws that had been sealed in this room with him. He had been surprised by her appeal for protection of the thing to begin with. So surprised that he had granted that protection.

He had never seen a pure human before. Only bakatu, whose blood was so mingled with sidhe, bendithy mamau and nymph, as to make them nothing like the original stock from which they sprang. She and her male were not so bad to look at.

Round eared and heavier boned than sidhe, but alluring in their own way. Little wonder that the inhabitants of Elkhavah, capable of breeding with them, had done so on frequent enough occasions to create a new breed of being. The Bakatu. He tried to pin point the exact moment when she had stopped being a mere curiosity and become something he could hardly take his eyes from. When he had began following the party just out of sight so he might watch her. He had always understood lust in a distant, clinical fashion. It was something enjoyed and exploited by the court, by just about everyone from the trolls to the sprites who roamed the woods. But anathema to him.

Poison to him. The destruction of what made him so valuable a commodity to his master. He had never once felt its stirrings until the human girl had been forced into his company. And she unwittingly – or wittingly, depending on her mood – drove him to distraction that he had never before experienced.

There was no reasoning behind it.

Nothing that made her so much more attractive than any other female forced in his company. And it generally was force; most contacts of his. No one preferred close association with so elite a dealer of death. No one but the girl.

Victoria. He rolled the alien name off his tongue, liking the sound of it. She defied all logic. She went from hating him to – Mother Earth! – kissing him, back to hating him and finally to a warped pursuance, and he had yet to figure out what triggered her turbulent emotions.

What he did know, was that he had very little defense against her. He could not quite chase her from his thoughts. Her scent. The sound of her laughter. The color of her hair. If he were not secure in the knowledge of his own immunities, he would have thought the attraction witchery. He might not have cared.

Dying for her would not have been an outrageous thing. If not for her interference he might have already done so and saved himself a great deal of trouble. He had sacrificed his talent for her. The thing he had been born with, that set him apart from the rest of Elkhavah. The thing that the highest of sidhe lords would move mountains to possess. He had destroyed it with one simple act. And he had done it for the simple reason that it was the only way he could think of to protect her from his hand. He could kill her physically, still, but he could not banish her soul.

With her own power and the power of her allies, mere physical death might not be permanent. And if his own life was forfeit, so be it. And his soul – Death he could deal with. He had dealt with it most of his life. The destruction of his soul scared him. Even though he knew it not. Had never known his soul as other sidhe did. He felt it sometimes through Azeral, and knew that even severed it was an integral part of him. After his death, Azeral would still control him. Torment him. Or he might choose to simply destroy it and then there would be nothing. And to a sidhe, there was no fate worse than soul death. He had destroyed enough souls to know from the final terror on his victim’s faces, that it was no small thing.

He shivered, thinking about it, wondering how soon Azeral would discover the treachery. Would he feel it through the bond they shared through Dusk’s soul?

The gulun kit made a small inquiring sound. It lifted its head, tufted ears pricking. Its paws, every bit the width of the assassin’s palms, rested on his leg.

There had been an on-going battle to keep overly long claws from shredding flesh with insistent kneading. The cat had taken a liking to him. Its purrs had been a comforting backdrop for his musings.

Now it rose in a smooth predatory motion and paced to the sealed balcony. It stared at the unnaturally stretched stone with great indignation, not understanding why its formerly open portal was blocked.

It let out another cry, this one louder and more irate. Most likely, it was long past its regular feeding. It was long past his own. It seemed evident that Victoria had been delayed. Or something unforeseen had happened. Or the Seelies had taken none too kindly to her fraternization with the enemy. There were a great many possibilities. Most distressing. None of which he was free to intervene in.

The floor trembled. A mild tremor ran through the stone like a shiver. He pressed his back against the wall, hardly knowing if he might expect worse. But the motion faded and the stone was solid again. The gulun was crying outright now.

Pacing back and forth, ears laid back. It senses were sharper than his own. It hissed before the second tremor hit. The chairs vibrated across the room, and the vases and urns threatened to topple.

No question then. The keep was under attack.

~~~

The ogre breakthroughs were sporadic and numerous. Ashara and the stronger of her magic wielders spent an exhausting day and late evening turning back attack after attack. The ogres were relentless, their numbers unending.

Although easy to manipulate slow ogre intellects, the constant drain of energy was telling gravely on the Seelies.

The Seelie hunters were almost as fatigued. Running from place to place, holding back intrusions until their power mongers could get there and break the attack once and for all. If not for the power of the grove itself, they could have held the attack back not at all.

It was for naught. All the feints and thrusts into the grove that slashed at Seelie spirits and defenses were nothing more than transparent hints at what was to come. Ashara felt the wrongness. Victoria could see it in her expression, even through the veil of her own exhaustion.

Her power was wild and untempered. It seemed so much more of an effort for her to curb its turbulent impulses and force it into an ordered array of action, than to simply expel raw power and let it do what it pleased. It was damned hard following the ‘rules’ and constructing the simple, steadfast shields that Ashara demanded of her.

They had rested little or none between expelling intrusions. She had become numb to the slaughter Ashara invoked. She knew similar slaughter occurred elsewhere. It was simple. Too easy to achieve the wholesale massacre.

Even Victoria knew that the Unseelies could have protected their minions if they chose. They did not. There was no peep out of them, magically speaking. Nothing to suggest they did anything more than observe from the camp they had made outside the boundaries of the grove. They were brewing trouble. Victoria was certain Azeral had some sinister ulterior motive in his inactivity. Some blindingly shocking move that would put the game in checkmate before his adversaries had even the chance to counter the move.

Ashara knew tactics better, but she was not talking. Oh, she carried on telepathic communication with her other commanders. With Neira’sha at the keep, with her scouts, but she kept the fear to herself. Victoria could see her eyes cloud on occasion, when they took rest or rode to the next place of battle. As she stared sightlessly through the impenetrable forest cloak towards the place where the Unseelie court crouched.

~~~

Alkar let an arrow fly. He had already loosed a dozen. His quiver was half-empty. The attackers still came.

There were goblins with the ogres this time. Small, dark shapes that moved with more speed than the lumbering bulks of their larger companions. The goblins got through. The goblins slashed with jagged knives and steel-tipped claws and brought the battle to a more personal ground.

Alkar and his scouts were finding themselves outnumbered and in danger of being overrun, and without great enough power to turn the attack.

He shot a goblin through the throat.

Blood splattered too close to him. Another arrow was notched in a heartbeat. It was almost too late as a second goblin sprang, sharp dull claws spread wide. It came up hard against a shield. Alkar could not stop the arrow from flying. It shattered against the same shield, spraying him with pieces of wood. The bird man from the Alkeri’na, Keirom, had pulled up behind them ahorse. His birds were absent, either scouting on their own, or sent to safety by their master. Another rider followed, one that should not have been anywhere near the combat, by order of Lady Ashara.

Alkar was terribly glad to see him anyway.

“What are you doing here, Okar?” he demanded, wiping sweat from his brow.

“Saving your hide,” his brother commented, distractedly, attention on the writhing mass of enemies struggling to break through Keirom’s shield. The ogres were easy to control. The goblins were another matter. Their devious little minds were too dark and twisted for sidhe magic to get a proper grip on. The best that could be done was turn the ogres violence upon them. Alkar doubted Okar was up to major magic use, so soon after his run in with Azeral. Mentioning it would only serve as a distraction, so the younger sidhe silently lent his brother what support he could, offering his lesser developed pool of power for Okar’s use.

Concentration was solely on the manipulation of the enemy. Every eye, both magic and physical, was turned to that effort. When the blow came, no one was prepared for it, much less expecting it.

It hit no one sidhe or even the lot of them. They were merely witnesses who stood too close to the explosion. A hundred magic ears were momentarily stunned. A hundred senses reeling from the shock. It came with a crack of power not unlike the roll of violent thunder and its release in the form of electricity. It hit a dozen places within the grove with enough force to shake the ground for miles. It was sudden and unprecedented, it allowed no time for defense. Even the most insensitive felt the grove scream.

Every form stood stock still, sidhe, ogre and goblin alike. And for a heartbeat or two, they remained that way, until the goblins screamed bloody murder and resumed their charge and the slower ogres fumbled towards coherency brought on by the cessation of Okar’s attack. Keirom’s shield faltered. The closest goblin got through and an arrow pierced its forehead.

The shield came back up.

“What happened?” Alkar demanded, feeling the alteration in the air. Feeling a strangeness in the grove that he had never felt before. A weakness.

“The wards,” Okar cried, as though hit. “By the Four, they’ve destroyed the wards.”

It was not an adequate prologue for the desperation that was to follow.

~~~

Victoria felt it like a dull throbbing ache behind her ears. It reverberated inside her head for what seemed an endless time. It was not aimed at her – God, she could not have withstood ‘that’, but around her. It penetrated the earth and drove down deep, past soft dirt and twining roots into the first layers of bedrock. The fingers of it spread like disease and slammed back upwards, hitting the grove at a heretofore undefended angle. And something broke.

The sidhe cried out in varying degrees of shock and surprise. Ashara swayed in her saddle, eyes gone wide.