Then he was too busy to watch.
He sent a mage-bolt flying past Colath to fry a firbolg in midair as it leaped from another tree at Colath’s head. The creature fell to the ground, the stench of burnt fur and scorched meat filling the air.
Beneath Elon’s knees, his horse spun and kicked in tandem with Colath’s as he cut another of the firbolg in two and Colath took the limbs of another. Jareth sent mage-bolts flashing into the underbrush.
In an instant - faced with fierce opposition - the firbolg vanished, to skulk and hunt them from cover.
Elon knew the sounds of battle and the scent of blood would likely draw the boggarts as well. He looked to Colath.
Sliding his longsword into his scabbard, Colath reached for his bow, strung it swiftly. While the bow wasn’t his best weapon as a Hunter it was still one of his better skills.
Nocking an arrow Colath let fly into a thick batch of brush and was rewarded by a yowl of pain. There was a flurry of movement away from them as they kicked their horses into a gallop that wasn’t quite flight, keeping their weapons to hand.
Young Jareth turned in his saddle to send a burst of mage fire along their back trail to discourage pursuit.
The pride of firbolg hadn’t given up - Elon knew - they’d simply gone to cover, looking for another opportunity to strike.
Sure enough, a firbolg burst from the brush, going for their horses’ legs. Elon swung low from the saddle to take it with his shortsword as Colath loosed another arrow at those concealed in the brush.
In an instant it was clear it had been a feint as much as a strike and Colath’s blood went cold at the threat to his true-friend.
He saw the firbolg erupt from cover, its claws rake for Elon’s throat as Elon straightened, his sword coming up to parry the thing. His heart in his throat in fear, Colath knew the angle was wrong; he couldn’t get a clear shot at the thing in time. As fast as Elon was, it would still be close.
There was only time for Elon to see the firbolg’s claws rake for him, to feel Jareth draw magic as Elon whipped his sword up to block the claws. A burst of searing heat blew past him to take the firbolg in the face and send it spinning away. Wizard’s magic.
Giving a nod of acknowledgement and thanks to Jareth, Elon pulled himself up into the saddle.
Heart hammering, Jareth nodded.
It had been a near thing.
Camp was set at the very edge of the rocky, mountainous Dwarven domain. Miners and builders of stone, the Dwarves rarely took a step out of their burrows of rock, their deep Caverns.
It was a barren land to be sure; sere, gray and brown, but the layers of stone and rock had their own stark beauty. Here was the coppery rust of iron, there a sparkle of quartz and the thin white line of marble, the golden shimmer of sandstone. It wasn’t hard to see why the Dwarves loved it.
Leaning a shoulder against the tall boulder that shielded one side of their campsite Elon looked out over the green valley stretched out far below them.
In all his life he hadn’t been so long away from the towering trees and lush greenery of Aerilann, of home, and he missed it sharply. He sighed, knowing as only he could that in the years to come it was likely he’d be away from Aerilann nearly as much as he was there, if this fragile peace that he and Daran had wrought between them was to hold. It was a price he’d been willing to pay, knowing it from the beginning, warned by his foresight.
Across from him, perched on a rock with one knee up on the other the young wizard coaxed a pipe alight with sparks generated by magic and then sat to smoke contentedly.
Something about that sight spoke to him.
Behind them Colath banked the fire for the night.
They’d left the firbolg behind but there was still the chance of another attack. There was no sign of boggins or boggarts. It wasn’t unknown for them to follow a back trail in the hopes of catching their quarry off guard. It was dangerous territory riding so close to the borderlands.
It was, though, pleasantly surprising to find they’d fallen into habits quickly and easily, with little need for talk. After unsaddling their horses, Elon set up the camp while Colath fetched wood for the fire and Jareth water - although in this place Jareth had done so under Colath’s watchful eye, with Colath’s bow strung and an arrow notched and ready.
Game was taken along the way but they also had journey-bread and whatever fresh fruits or vegetables they found along their path. Once the meal was cooked and done they took their ease while they watched the sun set, as now, Jareth smoking his pipe discreetly downwind, before those not on watch curled up in their bedrolls to sleep.
There was only the matter of the bedrolls, Elon thought with some amusement. No matter where Jareth set his there was always a rock beneath it so he awoke sore and grumbling to Elon and Colath’s mild entertainment, his brown eyes indignant. He was proving to be good company.
It was a companionable silence and Jareth found he enjoyed it as much as the Elves appeared to.
Truth be told, most people wore on him quickly. They talked too much. He had no need for the constant noise most of his folk seemed to enjoy.
Knocking his pipe against the stone, Jareth was careful to make certain it was empty and then crushed the dottle from the pipe thoroughly to make certain the fire was out - not that there was much to catch fire here except the thin scrubby grass.
In the sky above them the moon rose in a thin crescent.
Each of them took turn standing watch at the entrance of the little cup of stone where they made camp.
Colath came to take Elon’s place at the mouth of the little bowl of tumbled boulders for the first watch of the night.
After the fight and the flight of the day, it was a pleasure for Elon to curl up in his blankets - knowing Colath would rouse him if there was a problem. Elon could see his old friend standing at the entrance to the camp, his arms crossed. Across from him Jareth slept restlessly.
The horses browsed the thin grasses at the back of the bowl where they would be safe from the attacks of firbolg, boggin or boggart. It wouldn’t do, to lose the horses in these lands. It would be their lives if they did - slowed by two up or, far worse, caught on the ground.
Resolutely, Elon put such things from his mind and set himself to sleep.
A light mental nudge from Colath awakened him, the barest touch. It took little more than that. True-friends for more than two hundred years as men measured such things they knew each other’s ways well.
With a nod and a touch to the shoulder, Elon shrugged into the harness for his swords and took Colath’s place.
Jareth was a long huddle beneath his blankets. He would take the third watch, just before dawn, breaking up the darkest hours of the night between them.
It was calm and quiet, serenely beautiful, the pale moonlight casting a faint argent glow over the rocks, stones and boulders. Not far away an owl called softly to its mate. In the sky above him the thin crescent moon had reached its apex and begun its downward journey. Stars glittered like ice in the vault of darkness above him. A soft breeze rustled the thin grasses, a faint whisper of sound. He listened to the sounds of the night and became aware when they went silent save for the sound of the grasses.
The owl took silently to the wing, swooping into the night and not by choice. Something had disturbed him.
Cautious, Elon drew his swords.
They came out of the night, the firbolg, their pale fur mimicking the moonlight as they rushed across the ground. Nor had they come alone. A boggart leaped for him.
Chapter Three
A feline scream drew Jareth out of sleep with a rush. For a moment, he could only stare in breathless astonishment…and in wonder.
He’d never seen anything so swift, so strangely beautiful or so very deadly as watching Elon of Aerilann fight off firbolg and boggins alone in the moonlight.
The Elf moved like water - smoothly, gracefully - his swords swirling around him almost as if they, too, were fluid, as if the steel bent li
ke reeds in the flow of his movement. Yet where they touched, blood flew. There was no sound save for the cries of the firbolg and boggins. Bodies littered the ground around him, as steel flashed like lightning in the thin moonlight. Every movement was graceful and sure as he wove a web of steel around himself, denying entrance as Colath took up his swords and went to join him.
There was no pause, Colath simply stepped into the flow of Elon’s movement and became part of it. It was as if they were one person; extensions of each other, one stepping in where the other wasn’t.
Jareth saw the firbolg leap and scramble to the rocks above him and them and fired a mage-bolt, sending it spinning out into the night as he rolled to his feet, calling up power. Energy flared around him, gathered in his hands.
A boggart leaped to one of the rocks and then toward Colath. Jareth picked it out of the air.
It wasn’t his first fire-fight, but he felt the same mixture of terror and exhilaration as he spun and turned in response to the motion he saw at the edges of his vision as Elon and Colath defended the entrance to their little shelter.
While he could take no pleasure in killing even these vicious things, Elon couldn’t deny it felt good to move; to fight cleanly - rather than be mired in seemingly endless debate, negotiation and discussion. It felt good as well to have Colath at his back once again in honest battle rather than the verbal kind, and surprisingly, to find he trusted Jareth to cover them both. As he had trusted him earlier in the day with his own life, sensing the wizard as he drew power. More, to draw him into the familiar pattern of he and Colath - to know and trust that Jareth would fill a space that hadn’t been there before but now was.
And he did.
Faced with such determined opposition the firbolg fell back. The tipping point had been reached between losing too many for the pride to recover and the prey they might win, if they succeeded.
The boggins were more stubborn but a last spray of mage-fire from Jareth was enough to discourage them and convince them to quit the field of battle, too.
If it hadn’t been for the risk that men would pass so deep into borderlands territory and so encroach on Dwarven territory from the rear, Elon wouldn’t have risked it and their lives to set a marker so close to the borderlands. Too many centuries of men ever pushing their boundaries had taught him a lesson that wouldn’t be unlearned.
Wiping the blade of his sword Elon looked to Jareth. It had grown light while they fought, bright enough to see the young wizard’s resolute expression.
There was hope yet though, to be found in him.
A clatter of hooves on stone warned them of riders approaching from the depths of Dwarven lands.
To Elon’s surprise, he saw it wasn’t a party of the men but one of the Dwarven Wives, and she wore a Lore Master’s jewel suspended from the heavy golden chain around her throat. Both a leader and a user of magic…
He, they, would do well to go cautiously here. Very cautiously. He glanced at Jareth, worriedly.
The young wizard met his look, quickly concealing his own apprehension.
The Lore Master was perched on one of the small, sturdy Dwarven ponies they used in the mines to pull the carts of ore. A coterie of massive Dwarven men - their faces much like the rock they mined, grim and gray - surrounded her, their bodies heavily muscled from years of digging and working the stone.
The Dwarves gave the outward appearance it was the men who led when in truth it was the women - a concession to their dealings with Men after one too many of the Wives had been killed. Men had had no understanding of the importance of Wives to Dwarven culture and society. Like the name of their people - which in their own language meant chosen of the stone while in Mannish it meant small - it was a source of much misunderstanding. Adapted to heavy work in the mines, the men were all obstreperous and volatile when not at work. Smaller in stature and warmer by nature, the Wives were the balance to their men - a calming oasis. They were the Healers among them, the gem miners and workers.
Like Elves the Dwarves were also empathic and there were bindings within their community as deep and strong as the soul-bond that bound Elven couples together, or the true-friend bond Elon and Colath shared. A friendship so deep it held them as close as or closer than brothers. To lose a true-friend was to lose a vital part of yourself, someone who understood you completely.
To lose a soul-bond? It was to lose half of yourself, to always feel that loss keenly, that missing part of one’s soul, one’s spirit, the ease and peace of knowing the one person who understood your heart and soul, the boundless depths of your spirit.
Elon hadn’t yet formed a soul-bond and he felt the absence sharply, especially at times such as these. He’d had alliances and a child had been born of one of them but that deeper bond was denied him. Much older than many of his folk to find his, after so long there was a part of him, buried deep, that feared his soul-bond had been lost in the terrible days of the Wizard Wars or in one of the many conflicts between Elves and men, before he could know her.
In the end, he couldn’t know; he could only serve his people, letting that and his treasured true-friend bond with Colath salve that wound…and wait.
Long-lived, the Dwarves were - like Elves - also less fertile than men. The loss of any of child-bearing age layered disaster on top of desolation.
So the need for subterfuge, foregone here when it was Elves and Dwarves who treated with one another, Jareth’s presence notwithstanding, although she looked askance at him before she chose to ignore him. One or two of the male Dwarves didn’t, their eyes glittering as they eyed him with warning.
This then the reason for sending a Lore Master, as defense against Jareth’s magic.
“Elon of Aerilann,” she said, her voice surprisingly deep, a rumble in her chest, yet the sound was still musical.
Elon inclined his head in respect.
“I am Palic, Lore Master and First Wife here,” she said. “There is one of the race of men with you - a wizard.”
Her tone was accusatory.
First Wife was Elon’s counterpart as First among Equals among the Dwarves - chosen by all of her Cavern to lead.
As many of the Dwarven women were, she was fair to look upon, with hair the color of polished oak. It spilled in tight curls and ringlets down over her shoulders and back. She was sweetly curved but her golden eyes were as cold and implacable as the metal they resembled.
There was power in her, too.
“A wizard, yes, and a man,” Elon acknowledged.
It wasn’t as if the Dwarves hadn’t known they were coming, they’d been warned. This had always been a danger, though. The Dwarves looked for a reason to break the compact.
Jareth went still, his heart in his throat.
Dwarves had no reason to love the men who encroached on their lands, attempted to invade their mines and cheated them - these people to whom a Contract was Law…and as binding.
These folk loved wizards even less than Elves as their people too, had suffered at the hands of his kind during the wizard wars. Like Elves, the long-lived members of this race hadn’t forgotten.
As Elon hadn’t, though he’d been little more than a boy. The memories were bitter and painful. He set them aside.
Thankfully, Palic wasn’t one of those or they might be facing greater difficulty on Jareth’s behalf.
Men - living much shorter lives - forgot easily, considering such things as something from the past, while some here and throughout Elven and Dwarven lands still bore the scars - both physical and mental - of those terrible wars. There was some question as to which type of scar was worse.
And forgetting, men didn’t change their ways but repeated the mistakes and habits of old.
The elder races might be empathic, but that didn’t guarantee a uniformity of opinion. Even among Elon’s own people, as dedicated to justice as they were - it being one of the tenets of Elven life and an integral part of Elven honor - there were some who weren’t comfortable with the Agreement, knowi
ng men too well.
Among the less flexible, more conservative Dwarves, the conflict was more pronounced. It had taken much persuasion on Elon’s part to convince them to sign, binding them to the Contract that was the Agreement.
Given the circumstances, Jareth couldn’t defend himself against an attack - even unprovoked - and certainly not with magic, or risk open war, no matter the circumstances.
Something they all well knew.
Nor could Jareth best a Dwarf physically however tall he was. Even Elon and Colath would have been tried there. Jareth was at real risk.
That he knew it was evident by the slight paleness of his skin.
For all his youth, though, he wasn’t impetuous; he said nothing in his own defense, wisely leaving that to Elon. He sat his horse, his hands resting on the pommel of his saddle in plain sight of all, his gaze respectfully lowered.
Elon could only be grateful for that self-possession - although he found he hadn’t doubted it nor truly feared it. He was coming to like and trust the young wizard, despite everything he knew of men.
It wasn’t time to mention to Palic that the presence of a wizard had been in the Agreement the people of the Dwarves had signed. The Agreement was a Contract, and inviolable. Were he to present it now, though, he would give up his strongest point in the negotiations too soon.
Impassive as his own folk in the presence of a Wife and a Lore Master, it was difficult to tell if any of the males here bore Jareth any enmity for what he was.
“Do you stand surety for his behavior?” Palic demanded.
The moment Elon had accepted this mission it had been implicit that he would stand as guarantor for the behavior of those in his party. That acceptance had been tacit. Hence his concern at the beginning of their journey.
Now, though?
There was no question. Jareth had guarded their backs, his and Colath’s.
“Yes,” Elon said without hesitation.
Not Magic Enough and Setting Boundaries Boxed Set (The Coming Storm) Page 12
