Dockalfar (76 page)

His eyes were shining.

“No. Just hard. But magic can shield.

Magic can shield damn good if it’s strong enough and between the two of us – “ He trailed off invitingly.

“That’s why you came to me,” she breathed. “To suggest this? My God, you go to all this trouble getting here and now you want to leave?”

“It’s a losing battle,” he stated, then waved a hand about him in frustration.

“The whole damn thing. I don’t know what to expect anymore. From you. From the world. But I do know that the Seelies are about to get crushed and we might be able to stop it.”

“Where would we go?” she whispered. “Where they could not find us?”

He smiled at her. A humorless, cold smile. “Let’s say I happened to overhear of a place that the hunt will shy from like the plague. Somewhere maybe two or three days travel from here that we could lay low in until they passed on.”

“Lay low?” Suddenly she was felt lost. He was asking her to trust in him on the heels of raging against her. She could not be sure of his purposes. She had told him she was not the woman he knew, but the same surely held truth for him. “I don’t understand you.” Softly spoken.

He stared at her for a long moment, then threw out his hands in exasperation.

“Would it make you feel better if I threw out every scrap of pride I have? How low do I have to grovel for you Victoria? How much do I have to give to make up for what I did? I want you safe and I don’t think it’s going to happen here.”

For a long moment she met his eyes.

The blue was almost gray in the late afternoon mist. A chill passed her. A cold, hard fear. She looked past him to the towering walls of the valley that rose on all sides. The things the forest hid were the stuff nightmares were made of. The minions of her enemies. An army that was solely intent on hunting her down. She shivered and hugged her arms about herself.

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I ran before and look what happened.”

He took a half step towards her, then hesitated. He wanted to touch her. She could see it in his face, the division of emotion. He was hurt by her, disappointed in her, he wanted desperately to resent her, but he could not stop caring. He could not stop what she did to his emotions, how she tangled his thoughts. His face turned hard and stony, as he pinned the emotions down. He straightened his spine and coldly stated.

“Your friends came and got you. The Seelies brought this on themselves and now they’re too honorable and stubborn to give you up even though it might save them. Will you let them go down protecting you?”

“Alex, what do you want?” she finally cried. “Do you want me to abandon them after all they’ve done?”

“It’s the only thing you can do to repay them.”

She swept past him, ashen faced. She ran up the slight incline to the larger buildings where that the sidhe had claimed for their own shelters. Blindly she searched out her friends, Neira’sha and Aloe and found hints of both in the large hall the Seelies had appropriated for their council. She stumbled in that direction, not bothering to look to see if Alex followed.

Sidhe stood outside the hall, gathered miserably in the rain. A few of them had erected shields to protect themselves from the weather, most endured it. She pushed through and found herself in the midst of a crowded council. Almost the whole of Ashara’s court was here, hunters and elders both. She squeezed through the press, sidhe being too polite to shoulder her out of the way. By the door she found a place against the wall, sheltered from the view of the inner room by tall backs.

There was dread in the air. She cowered and listened.

They spoke of the rising water and their helplessness to stop it. They spoke of possible retreat and more possible battle with the Dockalfar forces. They pondered whether their magics could stand up to those of Azeral’s court. Most seemed to think not. They all agreed there was little hope in facing the overwhelming number of troops the dark lord had brought into these woods. Surrender was discussed briefly, but sidhe pride and the realization that Azeral’s court would not allow them dignified capitulation made that conversation short and bitter.

Victoria shivered against the clammy wall, realizing Alex’s words had been so very true. They would never dream of surrendering her. Even the cold, skeptical ones like the lady Mendalah held too much honor to contemplate that. She wept.

Bowing her head she let the tears silently fall. Her throat burned with it. Someone put their arm around her, patted her shoulder reassuringly. She glanced up at a blurry sidhe face. She could not place a name to the features. A hiccup escaped her and she forced a smile. Shrugging from under the arm she slipped back outside.

She could talk to Aloe later. But not to gather advice, for she had already made her decision.

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The torches burned low and fey light was in short supply in the great, ponderous keep in the Desney mountains.

There were few sidhe in residence and the servants breathed easier for the absence.

The halls echoed for once, with the hesitant conversation and laughter of those who served the dark court.

The laughter had died when Azeral came back. Only those that were forced into it ventured out to tend to his needs.

Surprisingly he shooed them all away with nothing more than a dark glance and a sharp word, sequestering himself and the lifeless form he carried in the towering cavern of his throne room.

He sat in the darkness, not bothering to call fey light into existence and stared at the physical remains of his only daughter. The only child of his loins. He had laid her out on the raised dais where his carved chair sat, and settled several steps down from her, leather armor and all. Her features were composed, her body in perfect order. Of her soul there was no sign. No clue to whether she had suffered the death of her true being, or might choose to come back to this realm in some other form.

He had no heir. That shocked him.

Scared him in a way he had never experienced. The Four knew he had slept with more females than he could easily recount, yet only on Ashara had he conceived a child. And only with Ashara had he killed the one he had.

A muscle jumped in his jaw as he clenched his teeth. He dropped his forehead to his fist, fair hair shielding his face. Conniving and insidious as she was, she had been his, a tribute to his own nature. Damn her for initiating her own downfall. For causing him to be a part of it.

In the vast darkness of the hub of his power and influence, he suddenly felt mortal. He felt powerless and vaguely incorporeal. The weariness overwhelmed him. There was a great yearning for Ashara. The Ashara of years past that had not looked at him with loathing. She had ever been the balm of his soul. He thought she was the reason for his downfall. She was the reason he had searched the core of what he was born to be and tried to change his nature. The reason why something that he could even now, only partially comprehend, punished him for the transgression.

He bit his lip and forced calm on himself, on his shattered nerves. He looked up to capture the mother’s features on the still face of the daughter. Leanan had been the epitome of them both. He had had some part of Ashara with her. Now he had nothing. He touched the soft hair, rubbed it between thumb and forefinger.

Luxuriant texture, luxuriant color.

And the silence and darkness devoured his thoughts. For hours unknown he sat in the throne room, sprawled on the steps by his daughter’s body. He saw nothing and heard nothing, not even the soft rasp of his own breath. His magic, the power that churned at the center of his soul, grew morbid and infusing. It reached out to make the very air of the keep and the surrounding range dank and oppressive. The servants shivered in their cells. The remaining guards shifted nervously at their posts. Nothing in the immediate forest surrounding the keep dared venture from nests or burrows. The world, or at least the one close around him, shared in Azeral’s dark depression.

Until his Mistress of the Hunt dared to intrude upon it. She broke the silence of the audience chamber with the sound of her boot heels on the polished marble floor. Azeral’s eyes narrowed to a glare, even as he whirled at the affront. Tyra walked on heedless of the fury in her lord’s eyes. She was in full armor save for the elaborate headdress that would have obscured her features. A sword clanked at her hip. He had needed her power to open the doorway to the keep earlier, but his own was full to bursting now and he seriously contemplated chastisement for her audacity. But ever a creature of curiosity, he waited to see what her excuse might be.

“Will you stay here all night, my lord?” she asked, sounding properly concerned for him. “Should I summon the court to observe the funeral pyre?”

“You take much upon yourself, lady,” he drawled at her, holding back his annoyance.

She lifted a brow. “This court is my concern, as always,” she countered and her voice lost the hint of consolation.

“And I advise you either draw them here or return to camp, for their restlessness grows.”

“You advise?!” he repeated in amazement. “You think I ought cater to the court’s restlessness?” He shifted from the position he had held for so long and rose in one fluid movement to tower over her.

Lady Tyra remained unmoved. Her coolness irritated him. He wanted to slap her down. To see her cringe under his might. The magic in him welled at the thought and he saw no reason not to use it, but she gave him pause with her next words.

“Poor Leanan. Met with Deigah’s fate and all on a whim.”

The power surged to a standstill. He stepped down to the floor and up to her.

“What do you speak of? What whim?”

Tyra looked past him to Leanan.

“Would she have attacked her mother without goading? Would she have done more than cast dark glances?”

He stared at her, at her inattention to him, then past her and into the darkness of the hall, seeing Leanan and Neferia with their heads together as he had ushered Ashara out of his tent. He recalled the jealousy on his mistress’s face and the hate on his daughters. He could well imagine their topic of conversation.

“No one forced her hand,” he told Tyra grimly. The lady smiled and shrugged.

“No. But there are those more adapt at weaving words than others. Those who use the weave to ensnare others to do their bidding.” She reached into her belt and pulled out a knife. For a moment, Azeral tensed, the ludicrous supposition that she meant to use it on him flashing through his thoughts. His shields were up before she had cleared it from her belt. But she only held it up for his inspection.

“Just as Deigah was led. Do you know he had his dagger out when he fell. Unusual for a man to be inspecting his blade just before he accidentally falls from a terrace, don’t you think?”

“What are you getting at?” he demanded stiffly, letting down his shields in an angry cascade of magic that she surely felt. She held the knife out for him and when he refused to take it, put it back in her belt.

“I found it across the garden from where he fell. I’ve been told that the human girl was in that wing that very morn. Did he follow her or her him? Everyone saw them dancing a few nights before. Do you think they had a rendezvous? Neferia was so kind to introduce them.”

He turned from her, feeling the darkness close back around him. His mind whirled with the possibilities. With the things he knew his court capable. His present lady in no wise the exception.

Jealous of a human girl. Jealous of a love he had shared millennia ago. None too scrupulous to use Deigah or Leanan to prove her points.

He turned a wary eye to Tyra. “Do you accuse her of sending him after the girl? What? To kill her? Not Deigah’s style. To sully her in my eyes?”

“Perhaps,” Tyra agreed. “But the girl had her own protector. The Ciagenii, and Deigah lost his life and soul for the plot and there was nothing Neferia could do to disclaim his ‘accident’ and not involve herself. Poor thing, it must have been frustrating.”

He hissed. The darkness turned to black rage. He turned and fixed his gaze on Leanan. Foolish child to be goaded in such a manner. His eyes narrowed and their beautiful silken body erupted in a gout of flame. Tyra gasped and took an instinctive step backwards as the impromptu pyre licked the air about them.

The flesh was crisped to ash before the scent of roasted meat could fully permeate the air.

Azeral whirled without a word and stalked from the hall. More carefully, Tyra followed. No breeze or footstep would disturb the unordered pile of gray ash that sat at the foot of Azeral’s throne for some time to come.

~~~

A small, dark shape scurried through the ruins and towards the inclining slope to the east. The movements were quick and sharp, the stealthy traveler used to creeping about in the night. No one beheld him save one, and that one moved with an equally cunning quiet, padding through water on thick, fur covered paws.

Up the slope went the first, clutching a sack over one shoulder. He wove through trees and brush and finally passed the parameter of the rune stones that protected the vale. He breathed a sigh of relief, for there was no sense of ensnarement coming out as there had been traveling inwards. The great moss covered stones sat silently, glistening in the continuous rain. He continued on, chuckling to himself, small eyes alert to movement in the wood around him, ears listening for any sound not of the storm’s making.

And behind him stalked his four legged pursuer. And she stopped only briefly to sniff at the foot of the rune stone before creeping into the wood after him.

~~~

The magic portal opened from the dry coolness of the Desney range to the water drenched plateau overlooking the Vale of Vohar. The Lord of the Unseelie court stepped through in much the same state he had left, save for the fact that on departure his face had been twisted in agony and now it was rigid with barely contained fury. The court, who had come running from their tents on sensing his arrival shied back from their questions and demands. His gaze swept over them, his pale eyes hard like chips of blue glass.