by Nunn, PL
The selkies drew back into the concealment of mist. Their eyes could be seen glowing just beyond the foggy barrier.
“They have no liking for the light of day,” Neira’sha remarked with heartfelt weariness. Her face in the wan light of early morning was drawn and translucent.
She was nothing more than a wisp of flesh and bone in his arms. A fragile housing for such power as she wielded.
“We feared you would never wake,” he murmured, a breeze that he felt was of her making, gently pushing the collection of craft across the lake surface.
“I had things to do,” she said. Then after a long moment, she turned her face into his tunic and whispered brokenly.
“They destroyed my wards.”
“I know, lady. And they’ve likely the keep by now.”
“Ashara?” her head came up and her eyes sought out his own.
“Behind us. Somewhere. She held the keep while we fled.” The words were rancid on his tongue. It hurt to say them.
“Fled where?” she began, then answered her own question. “By the Four.
She seeks the Vale.”
He was silent. Neira’sha pushed herself upright, unsteadily sitting on her own. Running a hand through the tangle of her hair. She turned her ancient eyes upon Okar. He met her gaze, steadily, somberly.
Finally her lips twitched upwards in something akin to a smile.
“Fret not. Your lady has planned well. For I know a way past the runes. The Vale of Vohar shall be our haven.”
~~~
They stepped through the man-sized portal into another world. It was warm here, and smelled so fresh that one had to stop and orient to the change in air quality.
Then, upon consideration, the smell of wood fire and the leathery musk of ogre sweat drifted in among the sweeter smells of blooming flowers and newly misted woodland.
The portal had opened in a garden.
Not the manufactured, controlled atmosphere of the gardens of Azeral’s keep, but a artistic urging of nature to take its own course. Willow trees and creeping lilac vines topped blooming bushes and winding streams. The fresh, soft grass made a delicious carpet under boots.
There was an almost sacrilegious feeling when treading upon it.
Azeral paid none of it heed. He strode through his portal mindless of those who followed. The doorway closed promptly behind Alex as he stepped out behind Leanan. Had he been a moment slower, he might have been caught in it.
He shuddered to think what might happen to a body trapped in a magical door after it had slammed shut. Images of a body divided ran through his mind. One half falling on the entrance side of the door, the other on the exit.
A white building stood as one wall of the garden. It was modest in size compared to the Unseelie keep, the mass of it rising only a few stories save for several graceful towers that broke the haze of the early morning sky. Clearly it was made of marble or some similar stone, but it seemed light and airy despite that. The walls might have been paper thin for their delicacy. An arch that held reminiscences of Turkish architecture led in from the garden. A colonnaded hall ran perpendicular to that.
A sidhe stood in the hall, awaiting Azeral’s arrival. He spoke quickly and quietly to the armored courtier before Leanan or Alex reached him, and the woman departed in haste. Azeral turned to his daughter. He gestured about him with one arm. “The Seelie keep, my dear. My present to you.”
Her eyes sparkled with delight. “My Lord.”
He laughed, but there was only coldness in the sound. “Your heritage demands it. Do with it what you will. I’ve need of Alexander’s company. I’m sure you can find ample entertainment’s with the court.”
She nodded, eyes already clouding with speculation over her new present.
Azeral indicated Alex should proceed him, and they left her gazing about the hall.
Alex had kept his peace since his confrontation with Azeral in his study. He had pushed for no answers. Demanded no explanation, even though he was close to bursting in his need to know. The Unseelie lord directed him up a wide set of steps.
Down another, narrower hall, and finally up a last stairwell. They came to a round chamber. Glass windows, not unlike the ones in Azeral’s study, overlooked the forest and the keep grounds. Dozens of makeshift campsites littered the view. The lumbering forms of ogres could be seen moving about in the morning light. Alex turned from the window and surveyed the chamber. It was mostly stone and wood.
Comfortable chairs sat about a round oaken table. Padded benches lined the walls. Hanging pots housed well maintained plants whose vines trailed the floor.
“Her council chamber,” Azeral spoke, having circled the table. He did not bother to ignite any of the fey globes mounted on the wall. Alex did not dare.
“Whose?”
Azeral blinked at him, then shook his head.
“The lady of this keep.”
“What are we doing here?”
“Waiting.”
Alex did not hope to get more out of him. He leaned against the window frame and did as Azeral suggested. He waited.
And soon footsteps from outside interrupted the silence that had overpowered the room. He looked up with interest. Azeral did not move.
The door opened and two armored sidhe entered. Between them they half supported a tattered, bloody creature.
Lesser sidhe, Alex thought, for the hair was dark and the stature slight. A captive taken from this keep then. A pitifully fragile, weak captive that stood wavering between the heavily armored forms of his guards. Still they clutched his arms with cruel force, regardless that his hands were bound behind him. Still their eyes under their ornate helms held some gleam of nervousness.
Azeral dismissed them, and they released their hold with something akin to relief and backed from the chamber. The prisoner stood unsteadily where they left him, head down, tangled, dirty hair that only hinted at what color it might be when clean, obscuring features. One of the long tipped ears was bleeding from a narrow gash. Like a tomcat who had seen one too many fights. Bare from the waist up and only the ragged remains of ripped pants adorned the battered body. No boots.
There were marks of burns on his feet and the skin of legs and arms. The singular pattern of bite marks upon torso and shoulders. The pants were dirty enough and blood stained enough to make one wonder what damage they hid. And still, Alex had no notion why Azeral wanted him here.
The Unseelie Lord stepped around the table, circled the prisoner who made no move save for the constant battle for balance. He leaned close, without touching and whispered sibilantly.
“Have they treated you roughly?”
The prisoner jerked his head up slightly, as if in reflex. There was a flash of dark eyes, the line of a narrow jaw.
Something familiar in the bruised features. It took Alex a moment to put it together. The lack of grace was what threw him. The absence of that utter fluidity that was Dusk’s. He gaped and stared, and Azeral looked up at him with one arched brow.
What could have possibly have happened that Azeral let his prized assassin come to this? That Dusk allowed himself to be brought to this state?
“What? No pleas for forgiveness? No whimperings for the state of your soul?”
Azeral’s whisper turned to a snarl. Magic seared the air. Dusk did not quite cry out, but he convulsed and staggered. Azeral caught him by the hair before he could lose his footing. He twisted it cruelly, forcing the assassin’s head back awkwardly until the totality of his weight rested on Azeral’s grip on his hair, his arm across his back.
“I set him to a simple task.” Azeral’s eyes were on Dusk’s pale face, but his voice was pitched for Alex. “And he failed me. Not because events conspired against him, oh no. He chose to fail me.
He chose to oppose my will. Betrayal most foul, for it rid me of my most valued of tools. And do you know how, Alex? Such a simple thing, really. He lay with a woman.”
He released his hold on Dusk. The assassin fought for balan
ce and won it.
Stood shaking. Azeral hovered behind him. “Was she worth it, my lovely? Was she worth your soul? Your torment? The sacrifice of your body to the hunger of the court? They weren’t as sweet to you as she was, were they?” Azeral’s eyes flickered up to Alex. They were filled with such calculating rage. Alex feared to the core of his being what he might say next.
“You wished to know how you were betrayed. Well, look to the temptation that stands before you.”
He paused, letting Alex put it together in his own mind. Letting the pain and the anger of what Azeral suggested settle in his mind. And it did settle. It nestled down and wrapped its tentacles about his brain and burned him to the bone. For he knew it to be true. He knew without a doubt that Victoria had done with this creature what she had only ever done with him. She had given her purity to this damned fey killer.
He had seen it coming. He had seen the signs long before he had ever reached Azeral’s keep. He had even gone so far as to extract a promise from Dusk. Little good that had been. And it was Dusk he blamed, for he could not in his heart condemn Victoria. She was the innocent.
She was the victim. How could she not be lured in by something like Dusk?
Azeral had been so right. His illusions had shattered into a thousand shards, each and every one of them razor sharp and cutting. The only picture his mind could form was one of Victoria and Dusk, naked and intertwined. Victoria.
His Victoria, who he had felt so tragically guilty over for his own unwitting betrayal.
Hot tears ran down his cheeks. Hatred welled up inside him.
With a scream of animalistic rage he leapt across the room, striking Dusk with all his might. Dusk’s head snapped back and he would have fallen but for Azeral, who caught his arms and held him upright for Alex to hit again. A third time and the assassin sagged bonelessly. Azeral let him crumple to the floor at their feet before Alex could land another blow. He pulled back his foot to kick the still form, but Azeral laid a hand on his arm. The Unseelie lord’s smile held some small hint of smug satisfaction.
“Later. Yours to deal with later, I promise.” He grasped Alex’s clenched fist and brought it up between them. Bright red blood covered his knuckles. Not his own.
He met Azeral’s eyes over the fist.
“Drink the blood of your enemies and you shall know their weaknesses,” the high sidhe quoted. Alex stared at the blood, then jerked his hand from Azeral’s grasp and licked the blood from his skin.
He ground his teeth and spun, needing escape. Needing for the red that obscured his vision to fade.
“Find Leanan.” Azeral suggested.
“Let her soothe you.”
~~~
Okar helped Neira’sha over the last rocky outcrop cresting the path of their climb. The woman’s hand was steady, strong in his own. Her stamina had grown since their landing across the waters of Lake Mirikii. She recovered quicker from the breaking of ten-thousand-year-old wards than he did from a mere mind lashing from a foe a five hundred leagues distant.
Their people slowly worked their way up the thickly wooded slope behind them. It was a hard path without mounts for the children and the wounded. It had taken them all of the day and well into the night to reach the place they sought. In the darkness, with only fey lights to illuminate the land, all he saw was a steep, rocky slope that graduated into a forested valley obscured in darkness. The hills rose steeply on the other side, pocketing the valley neatly.
“The Vale of Vohar,” Neira’sha said softly. He glanced at her sharply. Looked back out into the vast darkness of the valley. It was indefensible. He could not conceive how this was the place of ultimate safety that Ashara promised.
“What’s down there?” he asked finally. He felt someone at his back. His brother. The lady Mendalah.
“Ruins,” Mendalah prophesied.
“Ruins that we most likely will not even be able to reach for the wards.”
“Wards can be broken,” Alkar said with determination. “Look at ours.”
“Not these wards,” Neira’sha said serenely. “For they draw from the very power of the earth. There is no living power that can overcome them.”
“My point, exactly,” Mendalah sighed.
“It is not our purpose,” Neira’sha said, “to overcome them. It is to beg passage.”
“Wards have no sentience,” the other lady snapped.
“Not wards of our making.”
Neira’sha started down the slope, one hand clutching her skirts, the other to the outcropping rocks that made the way less than gentle. “Stay here until I summon you.”
Okar took a step after her. “Lady, the way is rough. Let me lend you support.”
She looked back at him, tilting her head. Then shrugged narrow shoulders and accented. “You may. But use no magic and step not from the shadow of my path.”
With those precautions in mind, he almost wished he had not offered. But Neira’sha was too valuable a personage to allow out into the unforgiving night alone. Especially after her recent trauma.
They made their way down the slope, sidhe night vision only barely adequate to keep them from tumbling heedlessly and humiliatingly down to the valley below. A hundred feet down and the rocks started to give way to the fringe of forest. The trees lent more support in the downward passage. The underbrush was not dense and the way was easier than he might have thought. The valley was also considerably deeper than the illusion the night shadows had made of it.
Suddenly, Neira’sha held out an arm, stopping him in his tracks. She stood frozen for a long moment and he dared not break the silence. Finally she took hold of his sleeve and drew him sharply south, angling away from the downward descent.
He concentrated, trying to discern what had alerted her to the change in direction and found, only vaguely, a trace of tingling unease emanating from the land below.
His foot slipped once and slid a few paces down the slope. That minuscule distance, a matter of a few feet, was enough to triple the feeling of discomfort.
He regained his former level hastily, sweat on his brow. Mother Earth. If two feet did that, what might ten feet or ten yards do to the state of the mind? He had no desire to find out.
A large outcropping of rock loomed before them. It jutted out of the earth like an accusing finger, pointing up towards the ridge of the valley. Moss covered it liberally, almost obscuring all signs that it was a rock at all and not merely an abnormal projection of earth. Neira’sha stopped before it, her head barely reaching the boulder’s top. She stared at it intently, reached out a hand and almost touched it. But not quite. Okar thought he saw places where the moss grew darker.
Indentions in the stone’s surface that formed patterns.
Runes. This then, was a ward stone.
A ward stone that had grown out of the earth itself. Not been placed there by living hands. He stepped back from it in reverence, even as Neira’sha inched forward and settled herself on the ground before it. She crossed her legs, put her hands on her bony knees and remained just so. She did not move, or speak, or use any magic that Okar could discern. And soon his own stance began to ache and he moved up slope a bit and sat down amid the leaves and pine needles.
After a long while, Neira’sha unexpectedly rose. She looked back at him expectantly and began her hike around the perimeter of the valley once more. He hastily followed after, and once the ward stone was out of sight, dared to question.
“What happened?”
“I let it know who I was. It did not remember. Not surprising. It has been a very, very long time. We’ll try the next one.”
They found the next Stone. They seemed to be placed in a level pattern about the valley. Neira’sha sat before this one and after a time sighed and rose with just a bit more stiffness to her movements.
“The next,” she said.
He did not ask her what might happen if none of the wards responded to her pleas. He knew. It would mean flight past this valley, with the host on t
heir heels and no place to hide.
They came to the third ward and she repeated the ritual. He sat on a stump behind her and listened to the night sounds. Crickets aplenty. The beat of an owl’s wing as it took flight. The rustle of some small animal hurriedly fleeing the winged predator. Only the mildest of moonlight breached the cover of trees. Its blue glow was faint, reflecting off the moisture of the rock, the paleness of Neira’sha’s hair and skin. The color of his own hands. And then, there was a speck of light from the darkness past the Ward. A tiny flicker of illumination that winked off and on erratically. Then another of a different hue. He recognized them for what they were.
Spites. A dozen of them. A hundred.
Wavering and dodging trees on their journey up the slope. He rose, not knowing whether to be alarmed or delighted. He wondered if Neira’sha saw them and what she might make of their approach from the warded valley.
After a moment, there was no need to ponder if she knew or not, for the swarm of them fluttered around the wardstone, dancing and bobbing in general sprite mindlessness. They flocked about Neira’sha, touching the point of her ear, the strands of her hair, her lips, the skin of her hands. A few of them darted about Okar curiously. He let them have their way, more interested in the swarm around Neira’sha.
How had they gotten past the ward in the first place? Small as it might be, sprites did have intellect and it seemed that these wards repelled anything with half a thought in it’s head.
“They’ve always lived here,”
Neira’sha answered and whether she had picked the question out of his mind, or merely guessed that he wondered he could not know. She turned to look at him, her face illuminated by the glow of sprite light. Her grin was entirely triumphant.
