by Nunn, PL
“That’s right,” Alex said softly, for Dusk’s ears alone. “You know what this is. It’s not Azeral’s any more. It’s mine. Do you understand?” He clenched his arm about Dusk and the assassin winced, looking up past the pendant to meet his eyes. No more speculation, just plain shock.
Carefully he lowered the barriers he had set up between himself and that alien entity. That foreign soul. He wrapped his mental fingers about it and squeezed.
“I understand,” Dusk said, quickly, quietly. Alex closed the barriers again, shuddering. No matter what he picked up from Dusk’s physical mind, the soul mind always projected the same thing. Misery.
Disembodied and lost.
“Good.” Alex released him. He whirled and started back towards his mount. The spriggan stayed rooted to the spot he had stood during the entire exchange, jaw somewhat slack, eyes wide in disbelief. The assassin was quicker to follow. Alex cast a glare back to him and asked irritably, “Are you coming?”
The spriggan’s wide eyed look turned to one of a fouler disposition. He shambled through the underbrush after the assassin who was picking his way with more care. Alex stood waiting between the horses, staring levelly at Dusk.
“If you can pull a stunt like that you can damn sure ride.”
The assassin merely nodded, went to the animal Alex indicated and paused at its side, as though gathering the strength to mount. Alex honestly didn’t think he could do it. There was pain there, under the surface and a weakness that Dusk hid well. Desperation and adrenaline had carried him this far.
“Help him,” he told Bashru. The spriggan glowered but went over to give the assassin a hand nonetheless. Dusk was not so obedient. He cast a glare over his shoulder at the spriggan when the little man made to lay hands on him. Bashru backed off, muttering under his breath.
With an effort of will the assassin pulled himself up onto the saddle and afterwards bent over the pommel, face lost in a fall of wet hair.
For the next several hours, Alex’s concentration was pushed to the maximum.
He kept as much of a shield as he dared around them in hopes of warding off casual surveillance and at the same time establishing a light hold on Dusk, in no wise trusting the assassin’s loyalty to the bearer of his soul. But Dusk showed no signs of further flight. Dusk did little more than ride with his head lowered and his cloak pulled about him in the useless effort to keep out the hard falling rain.
Alex had given up the fight hours ago. He was going to be soaked and that was that.
Exhaustion finally forced him to loose the hold on Dusk. It was the lesser of two evils. The shield had to be maintained.
Bashru, after a while, urged his horse close to Alex’s. The spriggan leaned towards him conspiratorially and whispered.
“What was that?”
“What was what?”
“What you have around your neck that had the assassin all but cowering?”
Alex arched a brow. “Was he?”
Bashru hissed in irritation. “Damn near. What is it?”
“None of your business.”
~~~
They were forced by sheer exhaustion to make camp. The closest thing to shelter they could find was the hollowed trunk of a great tree. Fire was an impossibility, even with power. The wood was so soaked that no spark, even a magic one, would do more than quickly fizzle out.
The most they could do was huddle in the spongy shallow depression while the horses shivered and tolerated the weather outside it, heavy equine bodies somewhat of a shield against the driving force of the wind.
Bashru miserly passed out sticks of jerky he had packed in his provisioning and crouched as far away from the other two as he could. Dusk was furthest back in the cubby, curled against the rotting bark in misery. Alex thought about just putting him out for the remainder of the night, suspicious of a sidhe with Dusk’s skill not to just spirit himself away once Alex drifted to sleep. Even crowded and blocked in as he was. Reason told him not to squander his resources. Even battered and tired as he was, Dusk likely had a better sense for trouble than either the spriggan or him. And he wanted to be back in the Unseelies’ clutches less than Alex did.
He stared out into the darkness, letting stray drops of rain spatter his face.
With a sullen thoughtfulness he posed the question. “How does it feel not to have the power to destroy souls?”
He felt rather than saw the spriggan perk up. From Dusk there was nothing. He knew the assassin was awake. “What was it you could do? Know every living creature’s one deadly weakness? I’ve seen you fight… kill… you did it reflexively. Do you even notice it’s gone? Did you feel it go… or were you too busy feeling her?”
Nothing from Dusk. Alex bit his lip in frustration and tasted blood. Was supremely glad of the night and the rain because he thought tears were leaking from his eyes. Damn them for bringing him to this. Damn Azeral and his siren daughter. Damn the pitiful creature huddling behind him. Damn Victoria for making him hurt so much for something that was not his fault. Damn it, it was not his fault!
He slept. God only knew how, with his emotions as riled as they were and the rain an unrelenting torment. Daylight woke him. He moved and mud made a suckling sound around him. Mud made of leaves and rotting wood that smelled of mold and fungus and clung repulsively to his clothing. The horses stood close, shifting uncomfortably, misery showing in their not so equine eyes. He reached out and patted a wet muscular leg in sympathy.
The animal snorted softly at the touch and lowered its great head to stare at him accusingly.
The spriggan was gone. It took a moment for that to sink in and for him to collect his wits enough to swing his gaze around towards the assassin. Dusk at least was still in place, curled fetally under his cloak with nothing more than a tangle of half dried hair visible. Alex dismissed him for the moment and looked out under horse bellies at the forest beyond. Three sets of legs sliced his view. Bashru, where ever he had gone, had not ridden.
Using the knobby trunk for leverage, Alex pushed himself up. Joints and muscles screamed in complaint. After a day’s ride in wet weather and a night spent crammed into a tree hollow he was in no shape to be doing anything in a hurry. His awkward movements stirred the assassin.
“Bashru’s gone,” he remarked in disgust, not expecting a response.
Surprisingly enough he got one.
“No. He’s not.” No more than a whisper. He swung around to stare at Dusk, then back towards the forest at the snap of a wet branch. The spriggan was picking his way towards the tree, several rodent like shapes strung over his shoulder. He had a rather pleased expression on his craggy, misshapen face.
“Supper,” the spriggan announced in almost good cheer. “Rain flooded their burrows, forced ‘em to the open.”
“It’s good for something then,” Alex grumbled. “How’re we gonna cook them?”
“Raw’s best,” Bashru assured him.
Alex declined to comment. He cast a sour look at the dripping leafy canvas. “When’s it gonna stop?” Another rhetorical question. No one answered this one.
Dusk was crawling out of the cubby, knees deep in muck. He made an effort to gain his feet, stopped halfway, one arm clutching his middle, a small grunt of pain escaping him. Alex put a hand under his elbow and helped him up and got a surprised look for the effort. Was a little surprised himself, because for a moment there, he had felt concern. It was hard as hell to wish pain on something so closely linked with his own soul. Damn hard.
“What?” he asked. “The lashing?” He figured if it was mere discomfort they could live with it, if it was something worse, then it might very well impede hard travel. The assassin shook his head, murmuring that it was nothing. Alex gauged him for a moment, then casually elbowed the side he was clutching as he moved past him towards the horses. The assassin gasped in pain and his knees buckled. Alex caught him before he hit the ground, backed him up against the tree and gave him a narrow glare. “Nothing?”
He push
ed aside the cloak and pried Dusk’s hand from his side. The worst of the lashing and the burns were beginning to heal, some of them fading already. What was new, was a violent black and red bruise twice the width of Alex’s splayed hand covering the ribs of Dusk’s left side.
Red streaks radiated from the core of the bruise. He put fingers to the ribs tentatively and felt bone give. Dusk spasmed, tears leaking from the corners of his eyes.
Damned inconvenience. “Son of a bitch! This is all I need.”
“I can ride.” Strained, hoarse, which was to be expected after some fool had just shifted your ribs about.
“Shut up!” Alex snapped, then on second thought, “For how long, damn it!”
Dusk’s eyes flashed sudden anger at him. “As long as need be.”
“Bull shit!” He whirled about and looked for Bashru. Found the spriggan looking highly entertained by the exchange and barked, “Find something to bind his damned ribs with.” And when Dusk started to argue, stabbed a finger at him and glowered. “Just let him do it, because if I have to it’s gonna hurt like hell.”
It was clear Bashru did not appreciate playing nurse and it really could not have hurt worse if Alex had bandaged Dusk himself, even if he’d tried. But he could not bring himself to lay hands on the assassin again.
They rode out once more, a miserable, aching, unhappy collection. They broke briefly for supper late that afternoon. Alex chewing on tough jerky while Bashru happily consumed his kill.
Dusk refused anything but water.
The way turned east finally, after over a days travel out of their way. Bashru seemed sure of the path. Alex had no choice but to trust him. The storm seemed to get worse as they traveled. The blackened stumps of recently lightening struck trees became more and more frequent. The forest floor was a suckling mire under their horse’s hooves. After two days of it the spriggan began to mutter obscenities.
“Too long. Too long,” he complained. “It never rains in these parts for so long.”
Alex gnawed his lip in worry and cast anxious glances at the hidden sky. It was there. If he put his mind to it, he could barely sense the oddness. The storm was a rolling bank of raw power, but behind it there was something else. Something not connected with the fury of nature. He snapped his mouth shut on the desire to blurt out the niggling hunch. It was too damned likely his mind was playing tricks on him. Too likely he misinterpreted the nature of this world’s weather patterns.
Before he could dwell on his discovery they ran into the first of the Unseelie bands to cross their path. The assassin sensed them first. He straightened up a bit in his saddle and stared intently into the wood a moment before declaring, “Riders.”
Alex and Bashru jerked their horses to a halt and stared at him in alarm.
“Where?” the spriggan demanded. The assassin nodded to the south.
They wheeled their horses about in the other direction, the spriggan in the fore. Alex put every bit of power he possessed into the shield and miraculously it seemed to be enough, for they reached the shelter of a think fringe of vine in time to glimpse a troupe of mounted sidhe winding through the wood. Armor glinted in the dull, rain refracted light. A half dozen sidhe at least, and twice that many bendithy huntsmen.
His woodcraft was inconsequential compared to this companions, but still Alex looked to them in warning, somehow feeling that neither of them might take Unseelie interference as strongly as he.
But that was nonsense, of course. They had more to lose, now that he had dragged them into his plans. The spriggan, his life, with no more thought than the sidhe might extinguish a flame. For the assassin a return to the endless torments the sidhe could devise. Alex could only imagine what retribution would come his way in payment for his rebellion. He had certainly made returning to the court an impossibility.
The hunting party passed. The spriggan climbed down from his mount, eyes white rimmed, mouth a tight line.
With one knobby knuckled finger to his lips he scurried off into the wood.
Alex glanced to the drooping assassin, who merely sat, head down, lashes closed over eyes. His breathing was labored, painful. Alex did not say a word. Just shut his own mouth with a grinding of teeth and concentrated on his shield. They had to be close. Had to be if the Unseelies were patrolling the forest.
A slight shuffling of wet leaves and Alex’s hand went for his sword. He gathered power for defense or attack, whatever might be more appropriate. The assassin whispered to him, without lifting his head.
“The spriggan.”
Before Alex had the time to relax his guard the little man slid through the dripping foliage and stood at his stirrup. A glower soured his features even more than usual.
“There’s more of ‘em,” he hissed.
“Huntsmen and goblins. Crawlin’ all over the wood to the south.”
“That’s the way we’re going.”
The spriggan glared up at him. “It is. There’s no safe way through. Best to turn tail and make for the north.”
“No. We’ll just have to be careful.”
“Stupid, round-eared fool! You may want to visit Annwn, but I’ve no such notion. I tell you the way is swarming with goblins and their ilk. There’s no passing.”
Alex set his chin and glared back.
Glanced to Dusk, for he was the master of getting places he was not supposed to be, but the assassin was in no wise contributing to the conversation. Back to the spriggan in frustration. “No. We’ve got to get through.”
Bashru sneered in derision. Cursed under his breath and finally hissed. “Fool!
Son of a fool! You want to get past, then you’d damn well better go to ground and wait for them to settle down. Trying to pass while they’re still surrounding the vale and all over the wood is a wish for disaster.”
“All right.” He could live with that.
Barely. “You find us a hole somewhere and we’ll lay low… for a while.”
~~~
Okar sloshed through water up to his ankles, his hand firmly attached to Ashara’s as he led her to the worst of the flooding. He had not yet grown accustomed to her being safely within his reach again to let her too far from his sight just yet. The sky railed at them from above while the surrounding hills dumped streams of water from once harmless brooks. The main little stream that fed the valley had swelled to three times its normal size. It swept limbs and debris with it as it plunged into the vale. The water collected past the main cluster of structures and gathered in a dark, turbulent lake that was growing with alarming speed.
They stared at it from an elevation only slightly higher than the newly formed lake itself. Lightening and thunder clashed and the whole of the evening turned brilliantly, blindingly white. Ashara stood beside him, quiet and still. Her face was a mask of pale flesh.
“Damn him to Annwn,” she whispered, the words forced out between tightly compressed lips. Her gaze went skyward. She blinked back rain, contesting the sky its might. Her power flailed uselessly against the rolling bank of clouds. It was so easy to call a storm.
Impossible to dispel one until it had spent all its natural fury. And the sidhe atop the hill were calling storms with all their might.
“There will be standing water inside the buildings by nightfall,” he said quietly.
“It cannot last forever.” He felt no hope as he said it.
She turned tired eyes on him. Said nothing. Merely pulled her hand from his and trudged back towards the buildings.
He closed his eyes against the rain and the sight of her slumped shoulders. He could not shut out the guilt. The blaring self accusation that if he had followed her wishes in the first place none of this would be. What was unbearable was that he knew she felt the same, yet chose not to throw the fault at his feet.
~~~
There was a fire going inside the greatest of the still functional buildings. It was crackling atop what might have been a stone altar, protected from the dampness of the floor. Even though it threw off to
ngues of light, it gave little in the way of heat. So everyone huddled in damp cloaks and silently, despairingly found private niches to settle. The active power was like a flare, for any sensitive enough to sense it. Almost everyone that could, was expending energy holding back the worst of the storm from the vale. It was a moot effort, for even if the center was not focused directly above the vale, the circled close and the ground soaked up the water and delivered it to the underground streams that eventually fed it into the valley anyway.
It was frustrating that something so common and elemental as a storm might be their downfall. Victoria found it hard to convince herself that it could not be simply magicked away. She had willed one up, why not send one on its way? But to her dismay, wave after wave of her power sent against it did nothing more than change the formation of the clouds.
Neira’sha showed her how to channel the winds to keep the worst of it away.
They might have blown it far enough off course that it presented no harm, but for the winds being summoned on the other side of the rune wards.
Even though the storm was the battering ram, it was essentially a war of magic. And essentially the Dockalfar outnumbered and outpowered them. And Victoria felt weak. Her body felt defeated.
She was sore and tired despite all the self healing she had managed. Even though she had furthered the healing of the sidhe, knowing her body better than they, the after image of the wound still haunted her.
It was, she was told, a normal occurrence after a serious wound. Though magic could heal the flesh, the body still reflexively reserved energy to heal a wound that was no longer in evidence.
And the mind could not forget. And the magic knew too. The power was shy in coming to her. And when it did come, it was tremulous and weak. Neira’sha told her it was part and parcel with the nature of female power. That it ever cycled, like the seasons, going from uncontrollable highs, such as Victoria had already experienced. to lulls, like the one she found herself immersed in now, and in between waxed normal. Sidhe females experienced the same cycle, she was assured, only where Victoria’s magical rotation spanned no more than an earthly month, sidhe women’s lasted more than a decade.
