The Coming Storm

by Valerie Douglas

  Some part of her accepted that she would die here, this night.

  Darkness was no impediment for hell hounds.

  Delae began to say her goodbyes.

  Ah, Dorovan, she thought. I should have told you about Selah, about so much else. It grieved him, she knew, to know their time together grew short, she could see it in his eyes.

  Ailith, darling child. Though you hate me for it, if you do, it was right not to tell you, as it was right not to tell Dorovan. You’ve grown and you’ve thrived, sweetling, without that shadow hanging over you. It will be hard, so hard, but perhaps you’re free of the curse. Otherling, yes and magic, yes, perhaps. But not the madness. Please not the madness. I’ll go happy if we’ve saved you from that.

  The distant baying was constant, drawing close. Delae knew it had her trail. It was closing and getting closer. The horse was nearly frantic, fear a sharper goad than her spurs. It ran hard, blowing, foamed sweat trailing off him as he ran.

  She would have tried to save him, but there was no point. Not for either of them. It was the mad flight, or death. He would die as she did, of that she had no doubt.

  The first faint light of dawn touched the sky when she realized where they were and what lay ahead of her. The gorge. It split the woods here, the stream at its bottom feeding into the race of the river. Despair filled her. She fought the horse to turn him south, more south.

  A sharper yelp, even closer. Delae glanced behind her to see the dark shape that streaked through the woods. The light of torches was close behind. They would catch her for certain. She knew it now. There was no escape, they were too close and her horse too spent. The chasm loomed near as they spread out to cut her off.

  Delae turned the horse.

  She tried, she tried to escape them but they herded her to the very edge of the gorge. As she’d expected. There was nowhere to go, nothing for her to do but stop. Holding her horse in check. It was frantic with fear as the hellhound crept closer. Its face was a nightmare of blunted leathery muzzle, red eyes and drool that ran between savage teeth.

  “Hold,” a voice said, so calm, so normal, uninflected, undisturbed.

  The hellhound froze, one paw lifted, its mouth in a snarl.

  The man was nondescript, so plain you wouldn’t have noticed him in a crowd, with sandy-brown hair and eyes the color of muddy gold. Her son-in-law was with him. Behind him. A King, riding as if he were second.

  “Geric?”

  At his name it seemed suddenly as if Geric suddenly remembered that. He spurred his horse forward.

  “Where is she? Where’s my daughter?”

  His tone was sharp, cold.

  Geric and yet not Geric. Never in all the years had he ever spoken in such a tone to her. When his mother had died, it had been Delae who’d eased his grief and stood in his mother’s stead gladly. Geric had sought out her thoughts and opinions, had given them weight.

  He spoke to her now as to a stranger.

  She shook her head mutely, straining to hold the terrified horse, to keep it from bolting.

  “It seems stubbornness does run in the family. It holds even without mixed blood,” the nondescript stranger said. His voice was oddly uninflected, save for a sing-song quality to it. “It does, it does indeed. A stubborn family. A stubborn family. Yes, indeed. Oh, yes. But you shall tell me, shan’t you, Delae? Yes, you shall. Yes, you shall.”

  It was such a strange voice.

  What was it Ailith had said? Beware of Tolan, don’t listen to him, his voice entrances.

  Delae looked at this man, looked in his eyes and saw madness there even as his voice washed over her to take away her will.

  Memories rose up. Selah, her sweet daughter, so very much a girl in ways both her mother and her daughter were not. Such a good child and a good woman. Dead. Gone from her. Had one of these killed her? This one?

  Ailith, she thought and remembered a thousand moments, the joys and sorrows of watching her grow, her struggles and triumphs.

  Her beloved Dorovan. His gentle kindness, his stillness that had been like a balm to her wounded soul.

  She held those memories against that voice, holding them like a shield.

  It was hard and growing harder to hold them while Tolan talked.

  Anger touched that so reasonable voice, that lilting tone shifted and his eyes changed.

  It seemed her thoughts were thick but what she saw then blew away the fog his voice had tried to lay. His face shifted, changed. In terror Geric backed his horse away, his face frightened in a way that her son-in-law’s had never, would never, have been. Cowering.

  Geric the King would have cowered before no one, no matter his fear, he had had too much pride for it.

  As did she. Deliberately she lifted her chin.

  Though she tried not to, she shivered and trembled as Tolan’s face seemed to melt, to become horror, his eyes slitted like a snake’s. He smiled to show teeth that were sharp, so sharp, and pointed inwards, teeth that would rip out chunks of flesh.

  “You will tell me, old woman,” the thing that had been a man hissed, bending the full force of its will and its magic on her.

  Dorovan, forgive me, she thought, fighting to remember the silky feel of his hair between her fingers, the softness of it. Holding that last image of him in her memory, of his beautiful face, his silvery eyes, before all of the will left to her vanished. It felt as if she were drowning, suffocating beneath that gaze. Deliberately, she pried her fingers loose on the reins, gave the horse his head.

  Her heart cried out, words she couldn’t speak.

  I’m so sorry.

  For a moment, Dorovan was there, if only in spirit. Dorovan, holding her.

  The maddened horse bolted where there was no place to go.

  Away.

  It leaped out over the chasm.

  At the last second Tolan realized his error.

  “NO!” he bellowed but it was too late.

  She was gone.

  Horse and rider tumbled over the side of the ravine.

  Raising his head to the sky Tolan howled his frustration and fury. Shrieked it to the heavens. His men cringed, the horses shied and fought. The hellhounds echoed him, baying their displeasure at the loss of the prey.

  Tolan fell from his horse, ripping and tearing at the earth where she had been, venting his rage on it. Gobbets of dirt flew. Suddenly he spun.

  He glared at the hellhounds.

  “Find her, find the other. Don’t kill her, she’s mine.”

  They were off, gleefully. Another hunt, another prey.

  There was already one on her trail, he’d set it when the trail split.

  Now there were two. They wouldn’t kill her but they would hurt her. They would hound her and wound her and drive her to earth. They would keep her until he came, until she was glad he came.

  Tolan smiled.

  In his distant aerie, Dorovan awoke with a start, feeling a sharp bolt of sheer terror strike through him and then a bright flash of pain that was gone in an instant, leaving behind a void in his spirit where Delae had once been.

  He tumbled from his bed and folded in on himself, locked down the empathy all his people shared and the grief he dared not share with them. He bowed his head against the pain.

  Delae was gone. His beloved friend and companion of decades, his closest and most cherished companion, the balm to the emptiness that had yet to be filled was gone.

  The scent of her skin came to him, delicate, framed around the memories of their days and nights together, of the warmth of her in his arms, of her gentle touch.

  It pained him that he couldn’t give her more, that she wasn’t the spirit he longed for, but as a friend-of-his-heart he could have asked for no better, no more devoted than she.

  He remembered her bright smiles, her gladness each time she beheld him. Their stolen moments together, her warmth and her joy.

  What had happened? He turned and looked toward Riverford, but the darkness held no answers.

 
; And what of sweet Selah, that gentle spirit?

  Another hollow awaited there. Gone so subtly he hadn’t noticed the loss until he sought it inside himself.

  His breath caught in a greater pain.

  And Ailith?

  Beneath the stars, the setting moon, Ailith rode hard. The stars in the sky and the stars in her mind were different. There were stars that that could tell her where north was. The stars inside her mind were different somehow. She’d known them always, shining at the edges of her thoughts. Like the ones in the sky, some shone brighter, some dimmer. She followed the ones in her mind that guided her like lodestones.

  It was all she could do.

  Fear for Delae, fear for herself burned in her veins.

  The long days of dread and growing horror, of grief and pain, of revelations, all caught up to her and overwhelmed her, tried to drag her down into despair. Yet, if they did, if she allowed them to, she would die.

  She fought it, crouched over Smoke, clinging to his mane. Summoned up all she remembered of Dorovan’s teachings. All the lessons in calmness and control. She’d always known she had Dwarven blood but she hadn’t known them, the Dwarves. The Elves she knew through Dorovan. Dorovan, with his calm serenity, his endless patience.

  There were those others, too. Elon, so serious, so stern but she’d seen that small smile, that lightening of expression that so changed his face. His trust, not something an Elf gave easily to men. His surprising kindness when he’d helped her both onto and off of Smoke’s back.

  Colath, with his so-pretty face but so steady and calm.

  Jalila, with her golden-brown skin and golden-brown hair, her hands so quick with a bow.

  There was Jareth, too. She mustn’t forget him.

  The blood of men ran through her as well.

  She’d liked the homely wizard with his mussed hair and wrinkled clothes.

  Already she was growing more calm, becoming steadier. So. She was Otherling. Not Halfling but Otherling. She had the blood of all the races in her veins. They said she had magic but she didn’t know it to be true. That was for another time.

  She rode alone beneath the cold stars, trying to come to terms with all she’d learned.

  One of the stars in her mind and heart suddenly went out.

  Grief and loss struck her like a blow, a pain so huge she cried out. “Delae! NO! Delae!”

  Her eyes burned but she could shed no tears.

  She fell and found herself on her knees in the grass with her head to the dirt, anguish twisting her heart. The pain was nearly too great to bear. Delae! Gone. She shook her head in denial, though she couldn’t deny the pain, or the sure knowledge of her grandmother’s death.

  Then she heard the far distant scream, the echoing, frustrated fury that rang against the vault of the sky. So far away. She knew that sound, knew that voice.

  She knew the other sound, too, that distant howling. A baying, like hounds at the scent but much higher, almost a scream. Gleeful. She’d seen them, those beasts that trolls and goblins would ride like horses. Those huge creatures that looked only somewhat like dogs and more like something from a dreadful nightmare. Even through the grief and the loss that sound sent a chill through her.

  Delae’s voice surrounded her. Delae’s hands were on her arms. It was all memory but somehow real. Those ephemeral hands shook her.

  ‘Don’t let them get you, sweetling, my heart. Don’t. You’re all that’s left of us, all of us. Don’t you die, too.’

  She was the last of her blood now, save for what remained of her father. The last of her name.

  There was Elon, too.

  In his stillness she’d known his struggle to balance his honor against the law. If she died here, he’d blame himself.

  Jareth. Colath. Jalila. They hadn’t wanted her to go. If she died here…

  She couldn’t. It wasn’t in her. For those others or for herself.

  There was more, there was something she couldn’t name.

  She pushed herself up.

  Her legs were unsteady. Smoke had stopped and stood waiting in the early dawn light, the sky the pale color of pearls behind and above him so like his hide he nearly blended in with it.

  The distant baying was insistent.

  Hellhounds, and they had the scent.

  “We’ll have to run,” she told the horse, for lack of anyone else to talk to, “but don’t run yourself out, you silly beast. And if we have to fight, don’t toss me off?”

  He stood patiently.

  This time there was no one to lift her up. That had been an unexpected kindness. There was a rock, though, where she needed one for once. Her knees felt like rubber but she made it onto Smoke’s back somehow.

  One glance behind her.

  She couldn’t see them yet but she knew they were there. At least two of them. She pulled out her bow. She’d never tried to use one from horseback. It looked like she’d learn the hard way.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  Smoke leaped forward, settling into that long steady gallop. If there were riders with the hellhounds they would leave them quickly behind.

  The hellhounds they wouldn’t. She’d seen them run.

  The sun had burned away the last of the light mists of morning when she finally saw them. A quick look behind to the dark shapes bounding in that odd awkward run that was more like a series of leaps. She strung her bow and notched an arrow, remembering Jalila. That one was so sure, so fast. She’d never seemed to need to look at the arrows, rather she simply reached, set and fired. Elon, as well. Her quiver was full but she must try not to waste them or it wouldn’t be full for long.

  Baying became belling, the sound of the hounds in sight of prey. With knees and thighs she clung to Smoke’s back and turned with her bow ready. They closed fast. Holding her breath, she released it with the arrow. It flew but missed. She saw it now, her mistake. There was no room for another.

  Arrow in hand, notch, draw and fire.

  A yelp, as the arrow took the hellhound in the shoulder and it pitched to the ground. It tumbled, screaming its rage and snapping the end of the arrow into pieces. It scrambled to its feet. The other closed. Another arrow. The thing dodged and the arrow flew past. Another, this one scoring it down the side.

  The other was back in the hunt.

  Even Smoke couldn’t keep that pace for long. Already the hellhounds were almost on them. Smoke seemed to sense it, his ears flattened and his muscles shifted. Grabbing a handful of mane, Ailith hung on as the horse stopped in mid-flight, spun and lashed out with his rear hooves. The impact sent a hellhound flying.

  Ailith turned and let fly at the other. Another yelp and her arrow bristled from its side.

  The other came at them.

  Somehow, she stayed on as Smoke spun, kicked and bucked, holding the hellhounds at bay even as she drew and fired. A slash of claw raked the horse’s hindquarters but the hellhound had gotten too close. Ailith put an arrow through its eye.

  It dropped.

  The other struck, slamming into her from behind to send her plummeting from Smoke’s back even as pain ripped through her shoulder. The impact knocked her bow from her hands.

  Ailith saw the ground come up and tucked her head in as the hellhound overshot and tumbled down the rise past her. She hit, rolled. Her shoulder was on fire from where it bit her. Burning pain.

  Sweat wasn’t the only thing trickling down her back now.

  Desperately, she scrambled to her feet and drew her longsword even as the hellhound raced up the hill towards her.

  Smoke drove his forefeet into the other, pounding it to pulp.

  Ailith dodged, ducked and the hellhound sailed past her only to turn like a cat and leap at her again.

  This time she swung, anticipating the charge and had the satisfaction of hearing it scream in pain and fury. It twisted, scrambled to swat at her like a cat. She hacked and slashed at it, watching for an opening, getting its rhythm, its pattern. She took another set of scores on her
thigh as it came in low but she danced and spun away before it could do more harm and opened up a gash along its ribs. It leaped and she swung, a feint. It twisted but so did she, swinging as hard as she could.

  Blade sunk into flesh and crunched into bone. The hellhound crumpled and hit the ground still thrashing.

  Smoke spun and his rear hooves lashed out to send it flying. It smashed against a tree and lay still.

  It was over.

  Ailith looked around. The other hellhound was a smear on the ground, pounded into the dirt.

  “Good horse,” she said, her arms so weary she could barely hold the sword.

  She gathered up her bow, looked it over to be certain it wasn’t damaged. It was a good Elven bow, though, and solid. It had survived the fall.

  Would she ever be able to tell Dorovan his gift had saved her life?

  Someday she hoped she would.

  The wound in her thigh stung badly.

  Looking around she found a small stream not far away. As best she could she washed out her wounds while Smoke nibbled at her hair. She couldn’t see it but she could certainly feel it. It burned like fire. This time she didn’t push Smoke away. It was oddly comforting.

  The water was cold but it tasted wonderful.

  With a handful of grass and some more water she carefully washed out the scores on Smoke’s hindquarters. Remembering Colath’s words she wiped the blood off the blade of her sword with handfuls of grass, and then cut off a piece of her shirttail and dampened it to wipe off the rest. She needed those swords too desperately to let them be damaged.

  Did she dare rest? Even for a few moments?

  If there was a time, it was now, any riders would be far behind, and she was so tired.

  She lay in the grass and closed her eyes.

  The sun was warm.

  Smoke stood guard over her, nibbling at her hair now and then to let her know that he was there.

  Delae. The grief was still there, deep and raw but not as mindlessly devastating now.

  She slept uneasily but not for long. Dreams and memories chased her back to wakefulness. She sat up.

  The wound in her thigh bled lightly but sluggishly. She ripped off another piece of her shirt and bound it around it as best she could. At this rate by the time she got where she was going, she’d be in tatters. A ragamuffin. Well, she’d never been one for dressing up much – as Colath had noted.