Dockalfar (81 page)

She was the most competent of his trackers. The most successful of his hunters, as her position required.

“Block their way,” he told her without bothering to look her way. “Drive them back towards me, Lady Huntress.”

She inclined her head respectfully.

“Of course, my lord.” She rode apart from him, calling several of the hunt to her.

Short orders were given and sidhe split off from the main body of the hunt, speeding forward into the forest. She herself left not long after, taking a pair of bendithy with her. Azeral watched her go, but he had little thought to spare for her, so consumed with visions of having the earth bound power back in his hands.

Something in the flow of power shifted. He caught the awareness of it from the very edge of his senses. It was tinged with dread familiarity. Something coiled and sifted through the roots of his magic weavings. It was ponderous and slow moving, like some great slithering dragon.

He shied back from it in shock that it so openly showed itself in the light of day, in the height of conscienceless. For one brief moment, it snaked between him and the root source of his power. The link he held to the power of this world and his usage of it was suddenly and blindingly blocked.

All his senses crashed down upon him.

All awareness of the bodies about him ceased, all connection with the way the earth moved and the sky shifted. He was blind and deaf and mute and could only gape ineffectually for the span of a half dozen heartbeats until the presence moved aside and the power came flooding back.

He gasped, too stunned to observe where it went or what it did after it left him. Over his saddle bow he leaned, and someone, one of his sidhe, inquired of his health in a tone fraught with unease.

Azeral lifted his head to stare at the woman. She stared back, frightened. But not shocked, not stunned by the power that had so casually usurped his own. He looked past her to the faces of his hunt.

Some had noticed his distress and drew brows, not daring to stare too openly.

Most rode on, oblivious. Not one of them had felt it. No single of his sidhe had perceived of the unnameable presence.

It chilled him to the core of his soul.

He wrapped his hands around the pommel of his saddle and fought against the tremors that would hint at his loss of control. He straightened in his saddle and looked straight forward, hiding the fear.

All desire to prolong the hunt had fled. All pretense of enjoyment vanished along with the mysterious, omnipotent presence. He wanted the humans now. He
needed
their power immediately.

It had been a warning of sorts. He knew that deep in his gut. What had gone before, the nightmares, the stabbing lashes of pain, had been nothing more than some sort of punishment. What had just happened had been more. He was being warned off the power he sought. That could only mean his desire for it was correct. That he was a threat with human power under his control. That something, somewhere, and he thought he had a good notion where that somewhere might be, was becoming uneasy.

He kicked his horse into a canter and mentally demanded that the hunt increase the pace. They followed obediently, excitement rushing along the byways of their thoughts. Oh, they longed for the kill.

But he would deprive them of that, for he longed for his own hunt. For his own kill and he would have none of either if he did not have the human power in his possession.

A call rang out through all their mental wavelengths, but meant mostly for him. A cry of victory. The humans had been intersected. They were being driven back towards the main body of the hunt.

The great hunt hurried, hearts beating in time with the pounding of nighthorse hooves. Glittering, deadly predators. They descended upon their prey and suddenly the cry of a sidhe in the throes of death rent the mental air. The scream went the length and breadth of the eastern wood and the hunt cried out in reflexive sympathy. Azeral did not. He ground his teeth and pushed forward.

And found a pair of bewildered horses, and an armored body sprawled in the debris of the forest floor. And further away another, not quite finished dying, but on the path to that goal. The hunt floundered behind him, flabbergasted, enraged. Sputtering in indignation and a growing restless, surge of vindictive power.

The humans should have come this way, but there was no sign. There had been no hint of magic used on the winds that reeked of such things. There was blood soaking into the earth. A great deal of blood. Azeral felt the rage building, competing with the confusion.

Then all he felt was awe and pain as the blade passed through the side of his throat, slicing into the pulsing thickness of his jugular. Blood spurted in great warm torrents. He could not quite cry out, all he could do was slap an armored hand to his neck in panic to staunch the blood, and then when the first frantic hysteria passed call all the healing power at his disposal to seal the wound, to repair the damage.

The vein closed and the skin over it sealed, but his body was still covered with his own blood. It made his head spin.

Dizziness warred with outraged indignity.

He looked slowly out into the wood.

The shields were strong enough to almost affect vision. The hunt was well and truly spooked now, and not even into the domain of the wood that bordered Annwn.

There was nothing there. No magic, no shield that he could discover. Nothing but thick, closely placed trees that made too good a cover for attack and helped little in the movement of a great body of horses.

And then he thought he saw movement between the boles of two trees, what might have been a slim, cloaked form that blended with the colors of the wood.

“My Lord.” The soft voice echoed out at him. It sent fingers of fear down his spine. “I cannot let you pass this way.”

Azeral drew breath, felt the trickle of cooling blood down his chest and the fear turned to incoherent rage. “Damn you to Annwn,” he hissed. “I’ll see you in the bowels of hell, you traitorous worm!” He flung out an arm and fire blazed forth.

Magic fire that exploded outward like the breath of the sun. The trees blackened and charred, bark catching and burning. Of the assassin there was no sign. Azeral cried out in fury.

“Find him. Find him and kill him.”

~~~

The flight was not as fast or as undetectable as it might have been. Dusk chose to leave the hints of a trail, he chose for his colors to vary just enough from the surrounding forest that a sidhe might take notice of him now and again. It mattered little that they were ahorse and he on foot.

The very nature of this forest gave him the advantage in that respect, and when the trees spaced out enough for the hunt to move at a faster pace, he merely called upon all the skills of a lifetime of creeping about unknown in shadows and eluded them.

Even as he made his way through the wood, skirting far and wide from the path Victoria and Alex had taken, he cursed himself for his ineptitude. Twice he had failed this day. The first in letting an arm of the hunt get past him and close enough to Victoria to drive her and Alex from their chosen path. And the second, the failure he truly berated himself over, was his bungled attempt on Azeral’s life. So close. So very close and the blade had gone awry. Through the center of the throat and the spine at the base of the neck and there would have been no chance for healing. The most important throw of his life and he missed!

He called himself a fool, among other things. The loss of his mysterious Ciagenii powers had little to do with the pride he took in his skill with the blade. With or without them he should have been able to hit such an easy target. Now, instead of having a confused hunt milling about the eastern wood, he had an enraged and vindictive Dark Lord, that would only chase him so long before reverting back to his original quarry.

He heard the raucous disturbance of horses behind him and stayed visible for longer than his protesting reflexes would have normally allowed. He melted into the shadows of a group of pine, then slipped into the cover of another and another. A spray of tiny fists of energy tore into his original cover, igniting damp pine needles and young bark. The smell of burning sap was overpowering.

Foolish sidhe. They would burn this wood in their efforts to take him and themselves in it. The resulting fire might even accomplish their goal, but they ought to know the magic assault would in no way effect him.

He let the first scattered group of them pass him, noting with unease that Azeral was not among them and wishing for just enough magic to be able to locate his former master. He slipped through the wood, heading east, senses straining for sounds of pursuit. Damn them if they had given up on him so easily.

He pressed behind a tree as he came upon a gathering in a tiny, cramped clearing. Two bendithy, one hulking ogre on a horse that dwarfed the other animals and a single sidhe hurriedly giving directions. Dusk hefted his last knife, one of four appropriated from unsuspecting Liosalfar in the Vale of Vohar. Lightly he shifted his hold from hilt to tip and with little exaggerated movement sent it sailing across the distance to bury in the base of one of the bendithy’s skull. The other bendithy cried out as his companion fell against him and the sidhe made an unnecessary gesture in bringing up shields around herself. The ogre just bellowed in rage and turned his horse without a moments hesitation to charge Dusk.

For a moment, Dusk stood in the open, allowing the sidhe to see him, allowing time for the alert to be given.

Absently he noted that the ogre bearing down on him was one he was well familiar with. The great, twisted face belonged to Zakknr. He inclined his head, a gesture lost on the ogre, and melted into the ample cover of the wood.

The sidhe he had chosen to let live would call the hunt down on him. He only hoped it be long enough for Victoria and Alex to make good their escape. He only hoped they realized the only path that escape could take.

He leapt over a rotting tree corpse and his boot crunched down on long brittle limbs and dried leaves. He compensated for the terrain, placing his feet with more care to avoid sound. He noted, with the analytical part of his mind that took stock in such things, that the trees were barren of leaves and the cover was less than it had been. He would have to rely more on the shadow and the spear-straight boles of the trees themselves for camouflage.

No rain had touched this part of the wood, that was clear from the water starved bramble that struggled for purchase here and there. The ground was dry and even under its layer of discarded pine needles and long dead leaves it felt hollow, almost brittle. Instinctively he stepped lighter, the nagging fear that it might crumble beneath him nipping at the corners of his mind. He stopped altogether and stood listening. Faintly he picked up the sound of riders crashing through the undergrowth far behind him. Good. They were following him after all. He started to move again and froze as something small and brown darted across his vision thirty feet in front of him. Into the wood it moved with desperate speed, not quite as silent as Dusk in its flight.

He took a moment to calm his heartbeat at the unexpected shock, then slipped after the figure. A small man, carrying a fairly large sack, was in the process of squeezing himself into a too small crevice at the trunk of a long dead tree. He was struggling to push the sack in first, all attention on his efforts. There was a certain smell that one could mistake for nothing other than spriggan. Dusk stopped a dozen paces behind the little man and deliberately stepped on a dry twig. The resulting crack echoed through the silent forest. The spriggan gasped, whirling so quickly that he lost his footing in the tangle of roots and sprawled forward. He had a wicked dagger in his fingers though, even as he fell, and a frantic look to his small eyes.

“Begone foul creatures,” he cried, much too loud for Dusk’s liking. He saw nothing at first, of course and muttered in superstitious fear. “Damned, horrible cat.”

At which point Dusk stepped forward carefully and allowed himself to be noticed.

The spriggan gasped and his eyes narrowed. He filled his lungs with indignant air a moment before venting his frustration in pounding his fist ineffectually against the ground. “Are you tryin’ to scare me ta death?”

Dusk arched a brow and asked quite seriously, “If that were the case, don’t you think you would be dead now?”

The spriggan sputtered, then settled for muttering. “Damned, arrogant assassin. Why are you following me?”

“I am not. But I might suggest you find another place to hide, for the hunt comes this way.”

“What?” The spriggan scrambled to his feet, staring behind Dusk as if the great hunt were already riding down upon him.

“Oh no. I knew they’d find me. I knew it. It’s all your fault. Yours and those damned humans. I’ll die slow… slow… slow.”

“Would you rather die quick?” the assassin snapped, unnerved by the overly loud quality of the spriggan’s voice. “I suggest you find a better hiding hole than that one, or they’ll find you for sure.”

“But they won’t come here. Not in this wood.” Bashru seemed to remember something that perked him up. “They’ll skirt this place.”

“They are already within it,” Dusk told him. Then having no more time to dally, slipped back into the wood. The spriggan called his name in frustration.

The echoes of it rebounded off the trees.

~~~

“I hate this place.” Victoria made a vocal statement of the feeling that had Alex’s nerves jangling irritation. The wood they rode though was creepy to say the least. It was dead and brittle and the only sounds issuing forth from it were the occasional cracks of rotten branches falling from the trees that had sprouted them.

A half hour ago, a band of sidhe had intersected them, rushing unexpectedly out before their path. A very short, bitter battle of magic had ensued, in which no one had come out the better. They had ended up turning tail and retreating along they path they had come. Alex was not so dense to continue on that path. At the soonest possible chance he had turned their animals sharply north and attempted to circle around the small band they had clashed with. So far it seemed to be working. They had entered what could only be the wood he had picked out of Bashru’s mind. He could see where superstitions might arise. It was not a comforting place to travel within, even negating the fact that the whole of Azeral’s hunt was after them. And to make matters worse it was starting to darken with oncoming night. He did not relish the thought of spending the night in this place.