Dockalfar

by Nunn, PL

  She tossed the chunk of roasted meat to Bashru without inquiring if he wanted it.

  He was not so offended or so picky to refuse. He gobbled it down with out chewing and settled down to observe the two.

  A week’s journey at least, filled with the same strange goings on. The girl rode most often, trading sometimes with the spriggan when his short legs tired, which was not often. He mostly asked to trade for spite, wanting to make her walk. She seemed not to mind, which irritated him.

  Whenever she did walk, the assassin stayed close though, as if fearful that she was more vulnerable on the ground and needed his protection. It was not long after that Bashru was convinced that the wench needed no one’s protection at all.

  It started on the fifth day of travel.

  She was riding, humming to herself in a voice that even the spriggan could find no fault with. The words were strange though, alien things and alien concepts. He remarked about it, inquiring if she knew any decent songs. She glared down at him, then screwed her face in discomfort and leaned over the saddle horn. She brought one hand to her middle and left it there.

  He figured she had eaten something rancid. He was not of a mind to inquire towards her comfort. She was unusually quiet for the rest of the day. It was later that evening when they sat up camp and she had gone off into the woods by herself to relieve her bladder that she started cursing. Bashru looked up startled, grabbing his knife. The assassin materialized out of seemingly thin air and was across the clearing to the place she had disappeared before Bashru could take a step.

  The wench’s cursing rose in volume and intensity and the assassin suddenly backed out of the foliage.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Bashru demanded, fearing for anything to happen to the wench when Azeral had charged him with her return. Dusk shook his head.

  After a while, the girl reappeared, pale and disgruntled.

  “What was that about?” Bashru demanded.

  “None of your business,” she almost snarled, whipping a hand around to take in the both of them. “Just leave me alone.”

  The entire clearing radiated with the force of her desire. Bashru suddenly wanted to slink away into the wood. He did take one step backwards, hand held up against an intangible threat. He watched with narrowed eyes as she settled into the hollow of a moss quilted tree trunk. She pulled her legs up to her chest, and wrapped slim arms about them. The fire burst to life before her without even the trouble of a gesture. It was bonfire size and it radiated enough heat to curl the leaves several feet away from it. The girl stared moodily into the wavering crackle of warmth.

  “What are you looking at?” It came out a whisper, but the force of the question was like hail pounding unprotected flesh.

  It was not directed at the spriggan. The assassin stared at her, hood back, skin and hair highlighted orange by the fire, while the rest of him was forest dark.

  “You’re not well,” he whispered back, shaken. “You’re bleeding.”

  “Oh for God’s sake,” she almost laughed, settled for an expulsion of breath and laid her cheek on her upraised knees.

  “It’s not bleeding like that. It’s just that time you know? That time of the month.”

  They both stared at her uncertainly.

  She sighed wearily and closed her eyes. “Let me guess sidhe women don’t… don’t… oh never mind. Just leave me alone. I really don’t feel very well.”

  Reluctantly the Ciagenii backed off.

  Bashru was more than happy to take himself across the camp from her and curl up into his own tight little ball. Her eyes were wild. Spriggan women did not bleed, but they did loose their hold on sanity every three or four moons. Just for a few days they become shrieking shrews that male spriggans made certain to stay well clear of. If this was the same thing, he wished himself a hundred leagues away.

  He drifted to sleep dreaming of heavy breasted spriggan wenches coming after him with wooden cooking mallets. He was not quite certain if it was a nightmare or a fantasy. Then the girl’s scream woke him.

  The screech was of surprise and fear, it raised every hair on his body. Her fire had gone down and the light barely illuminated the small clearing. It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the light. His hand was already on the knife. There was a twisted black shape over the girl. A coarse cloak covered a bent back and claw like hands twined in the girl’s long hair and clutched the skin of her pale throat. It was a twisted old hag, reeking of malignance. Her limbs were like reeds yet she had the strength to yank the girl around and hold her as a shield as the assassin flowed into the camp. The girl’s eyes were wide and terror stricken. Her mouth was open in surprise. Blood trickled down her throat from the places where the hag’s nails bit into her flesh.

  “I told you. I told you,” the crone shrilled. “Cross old Annis, will you. Horrible children. Young children. Sweet young thing.”

  Dusk took a step toward her, relaxed, weaponless. “You’ll die,” he said softly.

  “I’ll come back.” The hag giggled. “I always do.”

  “Ciagenii knows the path to true death,” he promised, silken voice over a threat so black it made Bashru’s skin crawl. Soul death. Ciagenii could kill a soul. When Dusk killed, his victims never came back, in any form. His victims eternally populated Annwn without hope of benediction. Even something as ancient and evil as one of the eternal hags.

  The hag’s eyes widened, her fingers tightened. “You lie,” she accused, then she jerked. Her whole body flinched.

  “How…?” she gasped, before her hands just started to crumble. Victoria pushed herself forward, the grip holding her turning to dust. She went to her knees in the leaves and a snarl not unlike that of the kitten she had adopted crossed her face.

  “Vile thing,” she hissed.

  The hag stepped back against the tree, flattened herself against it as if forced there by massive winds. Her body began to fall in upon itself. Under those coarse robes the bones shattered inside their packages of loose skin. The flesh dried out and fell away. And Black Annis screamed. She screamed and screamed long after her chest had caved in and her throat was little more than a dry cavity.

  Her robes collapsed into a brittle puddle, falling to ash on the ground. Then it spread to the tree. The bark withered, the moss died, the leaves turned from green to brown and littered the ground. Twigs fell, then limbs. Its root shriveled under the ground.

  The assassin did what Bashru would never have dared. He placed himself in the line of the human girl’s murderous vision. He knelt before her and put hands on her trembling shoulders and told her to stop.

  And amazingly enough. She did. She stared at him and blinked as if coming out of a daze. Her eyes were fevered, her cheeks red. A small laugh escaped her.

  “I don’t think I meant to do that.” She laughed again and stared straight at the assassin. “God, you’re really beautiful.”

  She sounded giddy and mad. He took his hands off of her and stood, suddenly wary.

  Again she laughed.

  “I don’t feel right. I really don’t feel quite right.” She was talking to herself now. “It must be the time of the month. Oh God, it hurts.” She bent over and clutched her middle. The welts leaking blood on her neck closed themselves. Bashru shivered. She was crazy. Woman crazy and he had no liking for the fact that it would be another day’s travel before they reached the keep. And less still that they would bring her to Azeral with the woman’s sickness upon her.

  ~~~

  Victoria was having visions. Waking, walking visions that she could not control or cease. Things danced before her eyes that neither of her traveling companions could see. The spriggan stared straight ahead, dumbly, as apparitions floated out of the trees to torment Victoria. The first few times, she had pointed them out and gotten dubious stares and mutters of irritation. The spriggan was a creature of little patience. The assassin merely looked worried and made no comment, but he stayed close, a shadow that she was ever aware of.

  She
thought it was because of her menstruation. Somehow here, in this land, the natural cycle became worse. Her cramps were worse, and her agitation was at an all time high. Why not visions? Why not a certain lack of control? She had not meant what had happened to the old woman. Truly she had not. But the fear, and the pain washed over her and the power came of its own accord. She could feel it even when she did not call upon it.

  It churned in torment about her, sympathy for her discomfort. It was volatile and unstable, like her present mood. She felt reckless and dangerous. She dared the visions to encroach too far on her.

  She laughed for no reason and gained the spriggan’s attention. He looked up at her from the ground where he walked beside the nighthorse. Horrid, horrible little man that he was, she still found something about him more comforting that the Ciagenii assassin. He never made her lose her train of thought, or make her blood beat harsh inside her head. He was solid and mundane. He never made her feel guilty.

  “What now?” he muttered warily.

  She laughed again and leaned over the saddle to look at him. “Nothing. Absolutely nothing. How close are we?”

  The little man shrugged. “By afternoon, if we’re lucky.”

  By afternoon! She threw up a handful of fey lights and let them dance about them both. The spriggan swore and swatted at the elusive spots of brilliance. It would be worth every bit of the pain and discomfort to see Alex again. To have him wrap his arms about her and tell her everything would be all right. Even if it was a lie.

  The woods that cloaked the mountain varied in age. Sometimes the trees were older than time, thick and gnarled with age. Sometimes the growth might have been no more than a hundred years. In the younger sections there were often hints of ruins. Corroded columns, the fallen masonry of buildings long destroyed.

  Indications of cellars and basements in moss covered pits. Occasionally a vine-covered statue that stood between the trees.

  “What used to be here?” she asked.

  Bashru shrugged and made no comment. His eyes were glued forward in expectation. She looked about for Dusk, but he was invisible to the eye. She stared forward, following the spriggan’s gaze.

  Through the break in the forest she could see the beginnings of a steep rise. The foot of a mountain that thrust up almost unnaturally in its abruptness. She squinted at the cover of trees that grew on it’s slopes and found oddity among them.

  There was a glint of silver. A hint of smooth marble. A dome glittering in the onset of evening’s tainted light. A spire that thrust through the shield of tree tops.

  Azeral’s keep. She did not need the spriggan to tell her what it was. She drew in a breath of sudden apprehension. The mood shift left her almost dizzy. Fear replaced excitement with cold, quicksilver fingers. She was about to walk blithely into a place ‘her’ sidhe hated. To a place that spawned the likes of Dusk and his companions. It was dark there. She sensed that with all her being. It was dark like the coiling mazes of her nightmares.

  There was death there. And Alex or no, she would be alone in that absolute darkness. In a moment of panic she reined the nighthorse to a stop and stared wild eyed at the keep on the mountain. The Spriggan walked ahead, blithely unaware.

  A hideous cramp seized her and she groaned, leaning forward over her mount’s neck. Her own earthly magic swarmed about her. She could almost touch it physically as it reacted to her dilemma. She reached out and formed a shield about herself. A unbreakable armor about the inner part of her soul that made her what she was. Instinctively she knew that part to be at the most risk. She saw nothing for a few breathless moments as she wove the power, then a feather touch on her knee.

  “Lady?” The assassin looked up at her, pooled in evening shadow. She saw through him, saw past the camouflage in the grip of the power. Was aware with painful clarity that he had no center. No soul. There was a gaping old wound where it might once have dwelled.

  Something that could never truly heal. She jerked away, pulling self and mystic senses away from that emptiness.

  “It is not far, now,” he told her, half looking away from her, shielding his eyes with a wealth of lashes.

  “I know,” she whispered. “I’m afraid. Tell me not to be.”

  He would not meet her eyes. He moved forward to the nighthorse’s bridle and urged it gently forward. She let him.

  The animal’s hooves rustled the leaves. Dusk made no sound at all.

  “What reception will I receive?”

  “I know not,” he admitted quietly.

  “Oh.”

  Silence for a long while. The path widened. They slowly rounded the curve of the mountain and the greater part of the keep loomed over them. She shivered at the immensity of it. Ashara’s keep was nothing in comparison.

  “Lady.” His voice was almost a whisper. She strained to hear it. “This is not your debt.”

  “What?”

  “This debt belongs to your man. You still have yours.”

  She sat back up, blinking at his back.

  Her debt? The debt that he owed her for his life. He was giving her the reassurance of an ally. He was offering her in some way, his service. She did not quite know what to say, so she did not say anything.

  But the fear lifted a hair’s breadth.

  ~~~

  The bendithy ran frantically into the great games room, paused momentarily to bow to the lords and ladies amusing themselves with the entertainment’s provided before scurrying to the master of the keep and falling heavily to her knees in front of him. Azeral lifted his brow and looked down at the trembling female.

  Neferia stroked his arm and made a comment about scatterbrained slaves.

  “My Lord, my Lord,” the bendithy babbled. “Your pardon? Grant pardon?”

  “What is it, girl?”

  The bendithy refused to look up at him, content to prostrate herself on the floor. “The Ciagenii returns, my lord. In the great hall. There’s a woman in his company.”

  Neferia made a sound of amazement.

  Azeral swore and surged to his feet. Every eye in the room turned towards him in amazement at the outburst. He swept the bendithy up by a handful of her homespun smock. Her eyes widened in mindless panic as he glared into her face.

  “When?”

  “J-just now, great Lord. I-I was sent as soon as they made themselves known.”

  He threw her away from him. He stepped over her and stalked from the room. A cloud of his court followed, curious and whispering amongst themselves. He ignored them. He wished them somewhere else so that he might have moved into a less dignified trot.

  He came to the great hall from a balcony overlooking it. There was a crowd down there. A handful of ogre guardsmen, numerous bendithy servants.

  Several sidhe that the lesser creatures gave way to. And in the center a small slim female form, red of hair and pale of skin. It took a moment for him to locate the assassin by her side. His eyes swept back to the female and the tendrils of his power. He felt the magic about her.

  Sensed the alien mystic that enveloped her. She was shielded. He could not even begin to see past it. At the moment had no time to try. All the man’s power at his disposal was nothing compared to the hint of magic that this girl held.

  He descended the stairs to the great hall where he had greeted the human man.

  The bendithy scattered at his appearance.

  The ogres stepped back respectfully, dull eyes gleaming. The girl stood where she was, hands clenched in front of her, head up. She did not flinch at his approach and the approach of the cloud of high sidhe behind him. A soft wave of hair obscured half her face. She was, he thought, lovely.

  A rare human beauty. The assassin bowed slightly and stepped away from her. Her eyes flicked at that, but only slightly. She stared straight at Azeral. He stopped in front of her. A mere arm’s length away.

  “Azeral.” She spoke his name experimentally.

  He inclined his head. “My Lady Victoria.” He let her name slid like silk o
ver his tongue. She was afraid. He could see it in her eyes, even if he could not pierce the shield she had constructed about herself. Where had she learned that skill? “I am so pleased to have you.”

  She flinched. “Are you? I hope my unannounced arrival is not inconvenient.”

  He smiled in spite of himself. She was mannered and courtly, this human, even in her fear. He took her small hand in his and brought his lips to her knuckles.

  “Never. My keep is at your disposal.”

  She drew a breath and let her eyes wonder about her. To the great arched ceiling and the spider web walks and balconies. To the gaggle of high sidhe behind him. Then back to him. Her eyes were forest green.

  “My fiancée is here. I want to see him.”

  “Of course. He’s eager to see you as well.” He put a hand on her back and urged her forward. The sidhe parted before him. She was tense – he could feel the tremor in the muscles of her back.

  Suddenly she flinched. He felt it a moment after she. A probe. A curious, stupid probe from one of the court. It encountered her shield and with the egotistical folly that no human magic could be greater than sidhe, tried to push past it. The girl cried out and retaliated. A sharp stab of pure energy grabbed hold of the probing force and traced it to its perpetrator. The unfortunate sidhe screamed in shock as she received a overload of magical energy. The others cried in alarm raising shields and preparing defenses.

  Azeral solved the problem at its root.

  With a sharp mental slap, he severed the probing mind from the frantic human one and sent the curious sidhe spinning backwards.

  “Cease! Cease, Victoria!” he cried, putting hands on her to get her attention.

  Her large eyes blinked at him slowly.

  “Forgive. She is a fool. It will not happen again, you have my word.”

  Very slowly she nodded, she licked her lips and gained control of the tremor that traversed her body. He took her hands in his, sharing the warmth of his skin.