The Coming Storm

by Valerie Douglas

  “What is it you want, Elon?” Goras asked.

  “Send the army north, now, before it’s too late. Call up the Kings. Stop the tide before it reaches the heartlands.”

  Before it reached Aerilann and Lothliann before it got any farther. Before it reached Ailith, if it hadn’t already. She was still alive, that he knew but what had caused, still caused, the pain? Her magic was more set now, at least, but the wound would still weaken her.

  What of his friends Jareth and Jalila, who he’d sent with her? How did they fare?

  He had no answers. They were in the north, where he would be as soon as he might.

  “Do it, Daran,” Eliade said.

  Goras nodded his assent, thinking of the Cavern in the north.

  “Don’t leave the south undefended,” Elon said.

  He remembered Daran’s comment about Olend. That King was an old friend to Elves and to himself personally, he wasn’t one to make idle complaint.

  “And you?” Eliade asked.

  “I ride north, to know what happens there. I’ll join our armies from there.”

  He looked to Daran High King, almost daring him to deny him or to command him to remain.

  Don’t try to order me otherwise, he thought. Don’t make me defy you, Daran.

  The warning was clear in Elon’s dark, sharp gaze, Daran saw that. For a moment he was tempted to see how far he could push it, how far Elon would go, but not with that look in those dark eyes.

  He nodded.

  With a bow, Elon departed.

  Colath waited for him in the Square with their horses saddled, packed and ready.

  The Kingdom of Mountainhold was high and mountainous. They crossed into Queen Marta’s lands riding through muddy slush.

  “Queen Marta won’t be happy to see us again and so soon,” Jareth said, although it had been nearly six months now, he realized to his astonishment. “She’s not much fond of Elves. Or wizards. I don’t know what she’ll make of you.”

  “We’ve met,” Ailith said, shortly. She took a breath and sighed. “Sorry, Jareth. She wasn’t much fond of my father’s mixed blood either. It doesn’t matter. She can’t deny us Sanctuary or aid, not by law.”

  Although Jareth and Jalila had both been Healed, neither looked well, their injuries, cold and weariness had taken their toll even on Jalila’s Elven constitution. Ailith didn’t know how she appeared but she did know it must be bad. The guards at the gate took one look and let them in, as one on horseback rode ahead up through the streets at a gallop. Here there were no averted eyes, no undue caution, no frightened populace as they followed him through the cobbled streets.

  The castle was a simple mott and bailey structure much like Riverford, not the crenellated and towered structures of some of the other castles they’d visited and the town had grown up closer around it. It was a little bigger perhaps. Queen Marta was on the steps as they rode in under the gate.

  “You don’t need to cry Sanctuary, Lady Ailith,” she said, briskly, “I can already see you need it, I’m not blind. A room has been prepared. Someone give her a hand out of the saddle before she falls out of it.”

  A guard leaped to obey.

  “I need to talk to you,” Ailith said.

  “It will wait long enough to get you patched up,” Marta said, not unkindly.

  It did. Ailith was still exhausted but a chirurgeon bandaged her shoulder a good bit more neatly and a bath had cleaned up most of the mess. She felt somewhat better, if weak from loss of blood and still in pain.

  Certainly cleaner. That mattered. It had been too many days since she’d had a bath.

  “Your companions,” Marta said, as she came into the room, “are being cared for. Now, what is so important you’ve been pestering everyone with requests to see me.”

  Ailith had sent multiple requests through the servants, even the chirurgeon.

  She told her.

  When she was done Marta sat back in the chair, folded her hands together and tapped her chin with tips of them.

  “Well,” she said, finally. “Given the circumstances I can hardly think you’ve gone through so much for a false warning. That Elf Elon, the Councilor, he was here some time back asking questions with the same two you have with you. They tell me he has the Sight. Have I a guess he saw this coming?”

  Ailith nodded. “He was trying to get enough proof to get aid when he spoke to you. As you know, we know have it. The last I knew he was on his way to Daran High King.”

  He was in Doncerric, that she did know. It was all she knew.

  Patting her arm, Marta said, “Get some rest.”

  With relief, she did.

  Ailith woke from a restless sleep. For once she hadn’t dreamed, or if she did she didn’t remember them, which in the end was the same.

  Her shoulder pained her, as did her face. Still half-awake, she searched among the stars in her mind for the ones she knew and found them, riding steadily north. She smiled and sighed. She’d only slept for a few hours. Opening her eyes, she found Jareth and Jalila in her rooms, sitting and watching.

  She eyed them.

  “Elon and Colath ride north,” she said.

  Relieved, Jalila sat back.

  “The trackers?” Jareth asked.

  Searching back over their trail, she couldn’t find them. There were too many lights around the castle to find their own.

  “In the town below, I suspect. Somewhere. I can’t see them among so many.”

  Jalila said, “What now?”

  They still looked to her after she’d miscalculated so badly. “Jareth, Jalila…”

  “You couldn’t know,” Jareth said. “We’ve done what we set out to do, against all the odds. You got us out as well. Jalila tells me you took on all three trackers and held them for a little, just you against them. She tells me it was something to see. She also said you shattered the chains and called down an avalanche.”

  Ailith shook her head.

  “There was little choice. The chains, yes, I didn’t call down the avalanche, I only weakened that which held it back. It was a desperate move but one I had to try.”

  “You try, we’ll follow.”

  She looked at him, at Jalila. Both looked back at her, steadily.

  They were leaving her no choice.

  “All right. As I feared before, we’re like to be trapped here until the trackers make a move, or risk riding through the town and having them come after us there where innocent people could get hurt.”

  “Most of these older castles have a secret exit for members of the family in case of siege. Riverford had two. Let’s see if we can get an audience with Marta again.”

  The sharp old Queen looked at her intently when they arrived in her Hall. A number of people came and went but she waved them all away.

  “I’m conscripting more guard and preparing for siege, so what else can I do for you?”

  “We need an exit where we can’t be seen. We’re pursued.”

  “By the ones that did that to you?” Marta waved at the bruising on Ailith’s face. “Why?”

  “All of this has been planned,” Ailith said.

  It was more than she’d told anyone but less than the truth wouldn’t do for Marta.

  “This what we do, works against them. Forewarned and forearmed, you won’t be the easy target they wanted. For that, he’s very angry.”

  Marta looked at her, then nodded. “Some of my Guard questioned some men late this morning. It seems they didn’t like being questioned. I’ve got two dead and two more with the chirurgeons. It seems as if they wouldn’t have much of a problem doing the same to an Elf and a wizard, much less a King’s heir.”

  It pained Ailith to hear it. She wouldn’t have chosen to bring this down on them.

  “I’m sorry,” Ailith said.

  “So am I. That doesn’t mean I like it,” Marta said, sharply. “For that I’m very angry. I can ill afford to lose any of them if what you say is true. So I’d just as soon you went. As it hap
pens, the gates are closed while the Guard searches for them and the Guard has been increased by our Hunters. It’ll buy you some time.”

  Marta had one of her many daughters lead them through a dark old tunnel so like the one at Riverford it made Ailith uneasy. She kept waiting for the rough stone walls to start bleeding, to see an iron door appear where stone was but then they were through.

  It was a relief to see the sunshine. Late afternoon sunshine thinned by clouds but sunshine all the same.

  The slush had turned to thick mud.

  “No plan,” Ailith said, “We ride straight south as fast and as far as we dare. Until I know where the trackers are.”

  It was enough of a plan for all of them.

  Ailith scanned ahead. She found Elon and Colath but not the trackers who had trailed them to Doncerric. A week, maybe, maybe less. There were too many bright lights along that route through the heartlands to see gray ones. Their own picked them up quickly enough but they had put some time between them.

  “They’re a few hours behind us. We’ll ride through the night since we’ve had a little sleep, take a brief rest in the morning and keep going. If we put enough distance between us, we’ll see about sleep. We need to muddle the trail. The next town we see, we go through it, it might slow them down.”

  It was a long night and an even longer day but two towns and a village seemed to have slowed the pursuit.

  Ailith chose a large inn with lots of traffic at around sunset, asking the innkeeper to wake them before he closed and barred his door, something that had become more common of late. Three hours, no more. Rest and food for the horses and for them.

  She didn’t so much fall asleep as she was already there when her head touched the pillow.

  For a time there was darkness and then there was light, flickering firelight and bloody walls and the pull was inexorable as she was quickly dragged into the room. This time there was no time to struggle. Fear poured into her. The Door to the South was there, open and that dark figure was speaking in that voice that wasn’t a voice, that whisper that was almost a language she understood.

  Mornith.

  A name.

  There was more but she couldn’t concentrate.

  Tolan was laughing and the doors were open, all the doors. Familiar faces. Blood and pain and chains. Burning, torment and torture.

  In his hand Tolan held the chains of a string of soul-eaters.. He swung them idly.

  There was something different about this room, something very different. The walls were different, the doors. In the dungeons of Riverford this had seemed all wrong, doors where there shouldn’t be doors. Now the doors were where they belonged. There were barred windows, high in the walls. At Riverford, the dungeons had been dug within the hill. There were no windows.

  Tolan was someplace else, someplace different.

  “I shall have them and I shall have you, I shall have them and I shall have you,” he chanted in his familiar sing-song voice. “They shall break and they shall bleed. I have more, little Ailith, I have more. Do you remember?”

  He reached out to touch her and the pain…

  Awake.

  Jareth leaned over her as she gasped.

  “Elon told me to ward you if you couldn’t wake.”

  Closing her eyes, she cast out her sight as far as she could reach around the two distant lights that rode north. There were gray lights. Many of them. All converging. The three behind them as well with Elon and Colath riding right into it, all unaware. Would Elon’s foresight warn him? She didn’t know.

  And if it didn’t?

  With so many trackers closing around them there was nowhere for them to escape.

  “Jalila,” she said, sitting up quickly as cold fear raced through her, chilled her.

  The Elf was already up, watching her, alarmed by the expression on her face.

  “The closest Enclave is Aerilann, isn’t it? If you push as hard as you can how soon can you get there?”

  Ailith was cold and getting colder – fear for Elon and Colath numbed her, turned her legs to water.

  Looking at Ailith’s face as what little color she had drained from it, Jalila went tense.

  “By tonight.”

  “Do it. Get Talesin and as many Elves as will come. They must know they fight Trackers.”

  “Where do we go?”

  Ailith closed her eyes, remembering what she’d seen, the contrast of memory against reality.

  “Tell Talesin that I’m sorry, so very sorry, but he’ll know where to go. He’s seen it of old.”

  It had to be. It fit with the memories.

  Jalila’s eyes turned cold. “Elon and Colath?”

  “Yes, Tolan has gotten more trackers, they’re closing in on them even as we speak.”

  Swearing, Jareth pounded the bedpost. “What are we going to do?”

  Ailith took a breath. They weren’t going to like it.

  “First, Jareth, you magicked the circlet to me. Can you do that with swords? If you couldn’t see me or my swords?”

  He thought about it. “As long as I know the people and the swords.” He looked at her. “Elon and Colath, they’ll strip them of their weapons.”

  She nodded.

  “Yes,” she said, “and me as well.”

  She handed him her swords.

  Throwing up a hand she gestured them both to silence when they would have protested.

  “Listen, just listen,” she snapped. “Jalila, tell Talesin the dark one’s name is Mornith. Somebody must know who he is, it’s important somehow. Tell him that. Tolan expects me to ride to the rescue, to drive me the way they did in the north. They want me to panic and throw caution to the winds to save them. To all appearances I will. I’ll give them what they want but not all they want. You and Jareth. Then we’ll give them something they don’t want, Elon, Colath and I in that room with our swords. They’ll have them a day, no more than that if I can help it. Know that. Bring the Healers, too. Go, Jalila.”

  Without further question, Jalila left the room at a run.

  “How will I know?” Jareth asked. “How will I know when?”

  Ailith smiled but it wasn’t a pleasant one, there was a deep, burning anger and an anguish in her eyes, in her face, that wrenched at his heart.

  “A light in the darkness. A bright elf-light in the darkness. I’ll tell you when to go and then you must go. Follow as quickly as you can and don’t get caught. It’s me they really want, not you. They’ll chase me. Do you know these?”

  She held out her hands for her swords.

  Jareth ran his senses over and through them. He shot a look at her in shock and surprise.

  “These are Named swords.”

  “Yes,” she said. Her tone was emphatic. “Do you know them?”

  He nodded.

  “Let’s go, then,” she said.

  Chapter Fourteen

  They’d set a good steady pace that covered ground without pushing the horses too hard and they were making good time, Elon thought. Riding late, starting early, both of them alert.

  Pushing it a little. His foresight had been a goad, it prodded him to go faster. A shiver ran over his skin, a chill that prickled his forearms. He caught a glimmer of Vision, a warning of the inevitability of what was coming.

  He’d misread the reason for the urgency, his thoughts of those in the north, of the dark wave that built in the high reaches of the mountains, not of themselves.

  All of which was useless now. His stomach tightened.

  “Colath,” he said. “We’re surrounded.”

  Looking at him, Colath said, “Trackers.”

  He nodded. “On all sides. They’ve no doubt been following and closing in since we left the City, waiting for the time when we were vulnerable and far from aid.”

  That time had arrived.

  He looked at Colath, met his true-friend’s eyes. Colath met his gaze levelly.

  Ailith. There was only time enough to think that.

  Both dre
w their swords. When it came it was no surprise. Certainly not the surprise the trackers had expected. They gave them a harder battle than anticipated.

  The number of trackers was greater than anticipated, too, though.

  Elon and Colath fought, side by side to guard each other, even knowing they would lose against such numbers, they also knew they had to try. There was still the chance they might succeed, they might get free.

  When Colath was knocked off Chai by a mass of trackers, Elon leaped off Faer to cover him and then they fought back to back until the sheer number of trackers took them down. Not dead but down. Both of them had taken wounds, and they’d each killed a tracker or two and wounded others, but it was clear the trackers didn’t want them dead. That didn’t prevent the trackers from taking their displeasure out on their captives. It was bad for both but worse when the chains went on, neck and wrists.

  Cold iron. It burned.

  The trackers left them no choice. It was follow or be dragged. They meant to humiliate, meant to shame but their captivity didn’t do either.

  At the end of the journey, in the fire and darkness beneath the earth, there was Tolan, and pain, a great deal of it, burning, blood and the trackers to draw it.

  They chained them to the walls facing each other so they would each would have to watch what was done to the other, not just for the horror of being forced to watch, but also to anticipate, as what was done to one was done to the other.

  Elon had never understood how any rational being could gain pleasure from inflicting pain and suffering on another. It said much of the race of men that there were those among them that did. He still didn’t understand it. It was quickly clear though that the trackers enjoyed their work far too much.

  There was that about the magic of the Elven constitution that it would in time heal most wounds, small ones in a matter of hours, larger ones over a longer span, so long as the body was rested and healthy. It would be some time yet before their bodies were so stressed their magic would have difficulty functioning. A fact the trackers demonstrated they surely knew.

  The pain was bad enough. The truth was it was terrible. As night followed day after the pain came the sickening weakness.