Not Magic Enough and Setting Boundaries Boxed Set (The Coming Storm) (23 page)

For Jareth the agony was nearly unendurable. Darkness tried to bury him, to drag him down, but he fought it, fought it with every fiber of his being.

Friends.

Warmth suffused him, poured through his body like a flood tide, washing the pain away with it. Warmth and something else. Magic of a kind he’d never known. He could almost feel his muscles, nerves and skin knit to become one again. A sound that was almost like music whispered in his head, a harmony that tried to be and then was clear. It rang clear. Like a bell inside him, the sound swelling.

With his head cradled in the crook of Elon’s arm, he watched in amazement as power surged through him and the wound in his chest knitted before his eyes.

Stunned, Jareth looked up into Elon’s strong, stern face.

“You can Heal,” he whispered in astonishment.

No one knew that Elves could Heal. Healers were almost unknown among men and those few lived a life of hell. They could only heal so many.

If word got out that Elves could Heal, they might very well have another war on their hands.

Elon nodded, looking at him. “I can.”

In that moment Jareth knew exactly how much Elon of Aerilann trusted him.

Friend.

Jareth looked up into Elon’s dark steady gaze.

“Know this,” Colath said, gently, because Elon wouldn’t. “As hard as it is to do, our Healers are enjoined from healing Men. Healers are too few among us as well. Even with all the healing our bodies can do, even our folk must sometimes have a Healer - fighting with the Borderlands creatures or even accidents cause damage such that we cannot spare the lost energy of even one. Having Elon out in the Kingdoms is already a sacrifice.”

Elon had healed him, Jareth.

Nodding, Jareth nodded weakly. He understood all too well what Colath said.

“Don’t worry,” he said, “I won’t tell.”

“My thanks,” Elon said. “I never doubted, but it would be…difficult.”

More difficult than what he was about to do but only by a slight degree.

Elon looked at Colath.

“Aerilann,” he said.

Giving Elon a look, eyebrows lifting, Colath allowed his mouth to twitch a little. Amused.

“This should be…enlightening.”

Jareth looked from one to the other warily as they helped him into the saddle, wondering what they were up to.

“I would go home,” Elon said, wearily, feeling every inch of his own wounds, of stretched muscles and cuts he hadn’t marked at the time.

They would have to heal of their own. Healers couldn’t heal themselves.

In the distance there was a clamor, alarming at first, all of them fearing another attack, but it was only the farmers come out to battle the fire with blankets and beaters.

Smoke spiraled into the sky as the fire spread.

This, though, was a magic Jareth could do. With a gesture and a soft incantation he dampened the fire, drew off its energy before he slumped wearily in the saddle.

It was as well that Arlis was already dead, once the farmers found out who’d set the blaze.

It was a pleasure and a joy for Elon to draw close to Aerilann again, to ride through the high, thick green and gold grasses that would soon be the buffer zone between Aerilann and those who would take from her, who would violate her.

This though was only the buffer zone, ahead were the towering boles of the trees of the wood. Sunlight speared down through the thick green canopy, the outer edge of the great forest that was Aerilann and her environs.

Even now, Elon could lift his head and inhale the scent of home, the thick powdery duff that lay beneath the trees, the sharp tang of the pines, and a whisper of flowers. Here beneath the great outer trees the air was slightly cooler. In the depths of the forest, though, it was always comfortable with soft breezes to refresh body and spirit.

Jareth kept waiting for them to stop, to set camp.

There was a haze, almost a fog, which seemed to rise up out of the ground around the base of the trees, not surprising given how cool it must be in there.

But they didn’t stop, not even at the edge of the fog. A light tingle of magic brushed over his skin as they moved through it. A Veil of some kind, then. A magical protection.

Fear touched him. Not of where he was going, but of the responsibility, of the undeserved honor they did him.

“Elon,” Jareth protested.

They were entering Aerilann, truly Aerilann. An Elven Enclave, where men didn’t go. Men, much less wizards…

What would the Elves within think of Elon, of he and Colath, for bringing him among them?

“It will be well, Jareth,” Elon said quietly. “It’s time for this, and if any, I would it was a friend first.”

That pierced and silenced him.

He looked up, around, and then there wasn’t room for anything but wonder.

His breath left him in a sigh of sheer awe. His heart ached.

In all his life, Jareth had never even imagined much less seen anything as lovely as Aerilann. He’d didn’t have anything to compare it to, although the wizard’s Collegium came close. All his life he’d yearned for something like this; a place where he’d belong, where he’d be welcome. He understood what it was to have such a place and then to have to leave it.

The Elven Enclave went beyond magic - beyond imagined - for it was real and it was all around him. He was surrounded by the cool green of the deep forest and yet the air was warm and filled with the sweet scent of flowers, soft against the skin. A gentle breeze ruffled his hair. It was refreshingly cool. To his astonishment he could see people move above him in the trees. Elves walked along flowered pathways between the trees, thick vines stretching from one tree to another to form a bridge that these folk nimbly traversed.

In the clearings carefully cultivated bushes and small trees grew in the light that streamed down between larger trees.

Much larger trees.

At the base of some of the trees were verandas, for want of a better word. Stone or wood floors were encircled by a railing and roofed by wood shingles or thatch thickly entwined with flowering vines. The vines twined around the railings and cutwork braces that supported the roofs. The air was filled with the light or spicy scent of their flowers.

Jareth bent his head back and back to look up into the branches.

A stairway twined around the bole each tree, circled around it, rising up into the lower branches where floors had been created. Nearly concealed by the thickly leaved branches, these living spaces were set among them; bright walls of Elven-silk fluttered in a myriad of colors and glowed like flowers among the limbs and leaves.

Somewhere someone played a flute or a pipe lightly, a few voices trilled wordlessly to the tune as soft laughter echoed among the branches. It was a lilting song - light yet complicated.

Here in the understory were copses of smaller trees or groupings of flowering bushes. Pathways and trails ran between them through which Elves walked, some in conversation, others to more purpose.

Folk, Elves, rode to intercept them but Jareth was too enraptured with Aerilann to notice. He’d have been happy with just this glimpse. Only dimly did he register the discussion, however mild, that raged around him.

Looking at him, at the look in his eyes, Elon knew that whatever would come was worth it for Jareth’s sigh alone.

Elon allowed himself a small smile at the look on Jareth’s face.

He glanced at Colath, who smiled at Jareth’s dumbfounded expression and nodded back.

“Elon,” an Elf said, reasonably. “He’s a man.”

“As I’m aware,” Elon said, “He’s also a wizard. Still, he will enter. He’s my friend.”

“Mine as well,” Colath added.

“No man has ever entered an Elven Enclave,” another said.

“There is a first time for anything,” Elon said, “although I believe that the men and women who were our allies during the wizard wars did enter our Enclaves.”

“We’re not at war,” another said.

“For which you can thank this man,” Elon said, “Or else we might have been. He saved my life at the risk of his own and nearly died for it.”

“As he did for me,” Colath said.

That silenced the opposition as shock reverberated through them at the thought of the loss of their First and his true-friend.

Jareth still couldn’t believe he was here, in Aerilann. Where men didn’t go.

“It’s beautiful,” he said, reverently.

Suddenly a dozen Elven eyes were on him.

He swallowed hard and looked back at them.

For a moment he was dumbstruck - his throat too tight to speak. He hadn’t meant to say anything, it had just come out.

Before them was a great stone veranda ringed with a wood and vine railing. From above, flowers appeared to drip like beads of water from vines that twined through the stone carvings of the roof. A circular railing twined around the trunk of one of the largest trees, it spiraled up into the branches to the balconied, silk-walled apartments above, the silk the color of turquoise and jade.

Colath looked at Jareth and nodded as Elon folded his hands on the saddle horn with a small smile on his usually stern face.

“Thank you,” Jareth said, simply. “For letting me see this.”

Among that empathic people, the depth of his feeling was clear.

It stilled them.

Then one, a woman, reached across their horses to lay a hand over Jareth’s “I am Sareth. Second among equals. You are welcome here, Jareth of the Kingdoms.”

Slowly, Jareth straightened in the saddle with a small apologetic smile and shook his head.

“No, Sareth. With my thanks but I am Jareth, wizard. I serve no one, am beholden to none. None command me, I serve all and everyone, Elf, Dwarf or man at need. I am Jareth… Just Jareth.”

Now Elon understood more clearly what the wizard Dorcet had seen in Jareth and why he’d sent him. They shared the same vision but Jareth was the heart of it.

A whisper of foresight went through him, bound in struggle, grief and triumph.

The way would not be easy, nor would it be straight, nor was it even assured, but hope for them all glimmered on the horizon.

Swinging off his horse, Elon tossed the reins over the railing of his veranda.

He was home, finally and at last.

Turning, he looked to Colath, who let out a sigh of satisfaction and relief as he looked around for a moment in satisfaction before swinging down from Chai.

Bewildered, a little uncertain, Jareth dismounted.

The horses trotted off in the direction of the paddock, to be untacked, brushed down and freed to graze by whoever served at the stables.

“Come Jareth,” Elon said and offered his hand in the traditional greeting. “Welcome to Aerilann and my home.”

Jareth’s breath caught as he looked at Elon, knowing what it was he did.

He let out a breath with a glance to Colath, and then, for the first time, clasped Elon’s arm as friend to friend.

Something seemed to lock and seal between them, a promise, from Elon to him and back.

Colath reached out, too, then, offered his free hand in the same way.

Straightening, his chin lifting, Jareth took it and felt the same sense of closure, of rightness.

Looking at them, at Jareth and Colath, a frisson of foresight whispered through and over Elon’s skin, a soft whisper of sudden sure knowledge.

Slowly, he nodded as he let it move through him.

Jareth, wizard and man, would be a part of his future for many years to come…in what way, what manner? Friend, companion, advisor…

Some of their folk arrived with food, Sareth joining them for the briefing.

Hitching himself up on the stone railing Jareth made himself comfortable as Colath crossed his arms to lean a shoulder against a post while Elon paced - his head lowered thoughtfully - as he considered their options and began to outline them for the others.