Dockalfar (62 page)

Alex smiled at him. Cold, calculating smile that was very sidhe-like in its disposition. “Because you’re hiding something from the sidhe. Something to do with Victoria and the assassin.”

The spriggan blinked at him in shock.

His grungy complexion turned a shade paler. “I am not.” He denied the accusation in too shaky a voice.

“You’ve got a very closed little brain, Bashru,” Alex complimented him. “I can’t find out exactly what it is, but it’s there. I bet Azeral could find out.”

Bashru decided then and there that humans were the bane of his existence. He wished he had never seen one, or at the very least that some other unlucky spriggan had been picked to make the journey to the Portal at the End of the World to fetch them back to Azeral.

Trouble. Nothing but trouble and misery that a poor spriggan did not deserve.

“Is it worse than you plannin’ to take off and find the Seelies without the master’s consent?”

“Is it?” Alex countered. “Shall we find out? See who Azeral takes the most stock in?”

Humans were changeable as the weather. All of them. Going from confused, frightened creatures to things to make the darkest of sidhe seem mild. With a sinking desperation the spriggan asked.

“When?”

Alex smiled and told him.

~~~

Alex looked for Leanan, found her among her cronies of the court and coaxed her away from them with soft words and promises of pleasure. She smiled at him, surprised at the eagerness after the coldness of their morning meeting. He swore to make it up to her. The looks the court gave them as they left were lecherous and amused. He led her outside to a wonderfully secluded garden he had found within a sheltering maze of hedges and vine covered lattices.

He lay her down on the soft ground and spread kisses on her long throat while she purred and stretched like a kitten. She was ever so pleased with his change of attitude. He lifted his lips to whisper in her ear. “Do you remember the first time we make love?”

“Hmmm,” she sighed.

“You took terrible advantage of me,” he stated softly, “but it worked. You distracted me enough to get what you wanted. The advantage.”

Her lips twitched into a frown. He lifted himself above her and smiled down.

Then hit her squarely and sharply across the jaw. Her eyes did not have time to widen in shock. He was inside her mind before her body went limp, making the unconsciousness a deeper and deeper thing, twisting and twining the sleep about her like a net. She could work her way out of her eventually, or someone might help her if she was found, but for the time being, the unconscious sidhe woman was his alibi. His reason for not being around should someone, namely Azeral, ask.

He picked her up and carefully arranged her under the overhanging foliage of a flowering bush. Out of casual sight should someone happen by this deserted garden grotto.

On the way back to the keep he spread a spell of disinterest about himself.

It was an easy skill, one that he had used frequently at Azeral’s keep when he wished to avoid sidhe company. It was easy with them when they weren’t on their guard. Just a matter of making himself seem beneath their notice. An ugly goblinish slave going about his duty, or a bendithy cook far beyond her prime and no interest to a sidhe lord. He doubted they even clarified the figure, only peripherally noting a dull, harmless shape that was doing what it was supposed to be doing and no concern of theirs.

He entered the keep through the kitchens, passing bendithy who never even glanced up at him. Past them, and up a back stairway. He knew the way well, he had traced it earlier in the day. Three intersections down and then a more ornate stair down. He had bypassed the main hall and the great forum chamber where the sidhe held court.

The room where they held the assassin loomed ahead. The door was ajar. Alex stopped, breath catching in his throat. If someone had taken Dusk his plans were going to be severely hampered.

But though the room was devoid of light, either mundane or fey, it was not empty of life. The thing that Alex had willingly anchored his own soul to, tweaked against his consciousness at the presence of the physical form it was rooted to. Dusk was there. He would have known Dusk’s presence through the blackest of nights. That familiarity was somewhat shocking and he paused outside the door in an attempt to orient himself.

He had to remember who and what that captured presence was.

He took a breath and slipped into the room. The acrid smell of blood was strong. The guards at the door were gone, but a single willowy figure crouched before the prisoner. Damn. He did not need a sidhe picking this moment to relieve his boredom by tormenting the fallen from grace.

Sidhe eyes had no need for light.

Human ones did. Alex summoned a tiny point of fey light. The sidhe turned his head, fine brows drawn at the intrusion.

Ah, one of the guards after all, Alex thought. Where had the other one wondered off too?

“Out,” the sidhe hissed at him. One of the court who held no tolerance for lesser beings. One of the ones who secretly sneered at Azeral’s preoccupation with his humans and would probably very much like to see Alex in the position Dusk was now in.

“I’m sorry. Was I interrupting?” Alex spread his hands innocently, contrite, but continued into the room regardless. The assassin was sprawled on the floor, robes pulled aside to bare abused flesh, unconscious or magicked into immobility.

Alex smiled at the sidhe, pressing the fact that he was powerless and mortal and far below the sidhe’s contempt. “Long time coming, hmmm?”

He ran his fingers over a wood carving that had escaped the initial destructive invasion. Its delicate curves hid the weight of a solid chunk of wood.

He picked it up curiously while the sidhe was gathering breath and magic to oust him. “The Liosalfar are wonderful craftsmen, yes?” he inquired.

“Half-wit human,” the sidhe snapped.

“Get out!”

“Oh.” Alex looked beyond him and frowned. “Look, he’s awake.”

The sidhe whirled. Alex swung.

Wood met flesh covered skull and the lanky body of the sidhe crumpled to the floor. Alex sighed, wondering how long he was going to get away with leaving sidhe bodies stashed behind him.

Wondering if the next one might be more powerful than he was equipped to handle.

~~~

The first of the bendithy huntsmen came back with terror in their eyes and minds full of an incomprehensible terror.

The Great Hunt veered its course to follow the path that could be gleaned from the confused memories of the huntsmen.

Through the Eastern Forest the Hunt rode and the denizens capable of cognizant thought hid well and deeply while they passed. It had been millennia since these woods had seen of hunt of Dockalfar nature but instinct stirred fear that memory did not. The elves took to their burrows under the roots of old trees, the sprites fled to that nether region that only sprites had access to. What fairies there were ran and kept running, their thoughts too scattered to do more than flee what race instinct named enemy. The Hunt stopped for none of them. The Hunt had graver matters to attend. Prey of a higher nature to run to ground.

Of the great ones who rode the Hunt, Tyra, Mistress of the Hunt, was foremost.

Her power was the greatest, her skill in tracking the most honed. She had followed and lost the trail of the fleeing Liosalfar twice and finally given up the effort altogether, figuring it for a ruse. The prey was good. Crafty as well as powerful.

And she thought, after a night of on again, off again tracks, the prey was leading them where it wanted them to go. Tyra was not so easily led. She fell back on her first assumption. The Seelies would seek shelter where they thought the Hunt would not, could not follow. The Ancient place that nestled within the Eastern Forest.

Knowing vaguely of its location she led the hunt. And her far-ranging scouts came back to her with jabberings of terror and frenzied hysteria. Yet they knew not of what. Tyra did. She led the Hunt with more care until the stirrings of discomfort begin to hit even the minds of the high sidhe. She sent the huntsmen back to a safe distance and set the hunt to finding the perimeters of the warding. They found the stones and no magic they could work would alter the warding or effect in any way the great, moss-covered rune stones that jutted out of the forested hillside like bones.

She circled the valley once, contemplating what lay behind the shelter veil of forest, then retreated to the highest ridge overlooking it and sat up her camp.

The bendithy huntsmen she placed at guard about the valley. She sat on her nighthorse long after her hunt had taken to the ground to break their long fast and stared down at the mist covered treetops that dipped deep into the valley below and rose ever so steeply up the other side. An indefensible place, if not for the wards.

The Mistress of the Hunt closed her eyes and let her mind roam the distances.

She sought the one overpowering aura that was her Lord and demanded his attention.

Slowly he let his shields lower enough to allow her mental voice entry. She let him see what she saw and let him know what she guessed. There was no pleasure at her disclosure. She felt his agitation across the miles.

But he would come. She felt that as he snipped the communication short. For what he wanted had holed up in the valley below. And she knew, as did any high sidhe with a half a brain in their heads, that there was more in that valley to draw him in than the human girl. Much more.

~~~

The ogre captain bellowed at his sluggish troops to gather their gear and prepare to move out. That frighteningly huge specimen of ogre malehood cast tiny dark eyes here and there for a layabout.

Bashru ducked behind a wagon made to hold great ogre bodies and clutched his satchel to his chest. He was muttering obscenities under his breath. These centered mostly about his own monumental misfortunes and peripherally around the damnation of the human race.

He was in a foul temper. He was tired from a sleepless night of scavenging and terrified over the idiocy he was planning on undertaking. Better to take what punishment the sidhe might hand out for his past crimes rather than adding to the list of deeds they were going to find fault with. But Bashru never had been partial to pain. And despite the knowing that it would be worse later, he could not quite bring himself to risk the hurt now to avoid it. They would wrench the life from his screaming body anyway…why not put it off till later.

That argument and others of its ilk had run through the spriggan’s head for all the night and all of the day he had to wait for the human’s appointed meeting time.

He had what the human requested. His weapons, and enough food to last several days travel, since there might be no time to hunt or scavenge. He avoided the busy preparation of moving the battalions out.

Avoided the sharp eyes of his sidhe overlords and their slower ogre underlings, which was hardly a surprising feat considering his race. Spriggans were notorious for getting out of work. For slinking unknown through honest folk’s holdings and making off with a fat sheep or a fatter child. No one saw him creep around the keep and into the furthest back gardens.

Well away from the activity of the mobilizing ogres he found three quietly grazing nighthorses. They lifted their heads at his approach, gear softly creaking. Their ankles had been hobbled.

They wrinkled their noses at his scent, one going so far as to lay back its long ears.

The spriggan snarled at it in mutual dislike.

Where was the human? There was no life other than the horses in the little clearing. He moved close to an overhanging hedge, hiding in the shadow, speculation on just what might be holding the human up careening through his head.

The sidhe were no easily fooled. They had caught on that their pet human was up to no good. They were probably skinning him at the very moment and he was screaming out all he knew of Bashru’s indiscretions. Bashru could take a nighthorse right now and flee. Run into the dense Eastern wood while the sidhe were busy campaigning after the Liosalfar. No one would notice and when they did, if they did, he would be so deep in the forest that they might never uproot him. He could do that. Spriggans were crafty in the wood. Craftier maybe than high and mighty sidhe. He would be willing to take that chance against the higher odds of the sidhe finding him here.

He had almost convinced himself to take the least offensive of the nighthorses when a figure shuffled out of the foliage of the garden. For a moment, he doubted it was the human, it was so shadowed and bulky. Then he saw it was the man, only carrying a large wrapped bundle over his shoulder. The human looked pissed.

Bashru returned the glare of greeting and demanded, “You’re late. What in Annwn is that?”

“An inconvenience is what,” the human snarled and hefted the bundle off his shoulder and at Bashru. The spriggan dropped his own satchel in efforts to catch the heavy thing, and still stumbled under the weight. Scrambled back even more when he found himself holding onto a body. He glared up under a sprawl of limbs and cloak as the human mounted one of the nighthorses.

“You pale-skinned, addle-witted, round-eared twit, what’da you expect me to do with him?”

The human stared down at him with the cool superiority of a sidhe.

“Hand him up.”

The spriggan muttered under his breath, worked himself out from under the body and went about getting his shoulder under the weight when he happened to get a good look at the much abused face. He almost shrieked, thrust the body from him and backed a few frantic steps away. Alex was staring at him with growing impatience. Bashru thrust a finger to the unmoving form. He sputtered in wordless indignation before his brain caught up with his reflexes.

“It’s the damned Ciagenii. Are you brain fevered? What you want with the damned assassin? How’d you get him? You lookin’ for a quick way to Annwn?”

Alex leaned down. “I know who it is.

It doesn’t matter what I want or how I got him, just hand him up so we can get the hell out of here.”