by Nunn, PL
“No.” The foremost sidhe made a sharp motion to his fellow, glared back accusingly to Dusk. “How did you pass the wards?”
“I have come to see the human woman. I mean you no harm.”
Confused, wary, they conferred amongst themselves. He waited.
~~~
She passed the boundary of the rune stones alone. She had forbidden her folk to follow her that far. There were none of his waiting on the other side. She rode on in silence, fear a thing she kept tightly under lock and key within her. Her horse struggled on wet footing. Silently she encouraged it. She kept an eye to the forest around her. The unprotected wood where her enemies lurked. But none showed themselves just yet. She wondered if Azeral had told anyone of her request.
Was he waiting for her to show up in his camp unannounced? Did he wish for the speculation and shock that would cause?
Possibly. He was never one for moderate enterprises. Or entrances.
No, moderation had never ever been a strong point in Azeral’s personality. Not from the moment she had met him, long, long ago, when they had both been young and less powerful than they were now.
When they both had been willing to believe that it mattered not what house a body hailed from if souls and hearts were aligned. And the souls had been. Oh yes, their souls were the perfect match, it was just the heart that balked. It was the heart that could not forgive and not forget.
Up the hill and she reached a stretch of flat land. Through the rain she caught the foul stench of ogre. Ogres en masse.
Shivering, she sent out a finger of magic and found the source of the odor, not quite half a league to the west. A company of them at least, entrenched beneath the forest canopy. Waterlogged and foul because of it. Every thing was waterlogged. She sent her senses up to where she knew the Dockalfar camp perched. It was protected against prying. She’d known it would be.
Up the hill and riders moved out of the forest towards her. She slowed her own mount and let them come. High sidhe in grand armor. Visors making faces featureless. There were two of them. They ushered her onwards with elegant gestures of their gauntleted arms. Of course they fell in behind her. She did not look back at them or attempt a probe. They mattered not. What lay ahead mattered.
The land started drifting upwards again towards the final ridge that overlooked the valley. The trees thinned here as the land grew too rocky for the purchase of roots. The first of the pavilions entered her view. A grandly colored tent that was surrounded by other gaudily decorated shelters. Lesser canvas stood over the picket lines of nervous horses. Sidhe stood under the protective flaps of the pavilions, dressed for court or hunt and looking so out of place in the midst of the downpour and the mud. All their eyes were on her. Eyes flecked with anticipation or hate or morbid curiosity.
She knew which tent belonged to Azeral.
The greatest of the pavilions at the center of the cluster of tents. She kept her seat until the last moment, stopping her horse just before the outer canvas ledge.
No one stood waiting in that alcove.
She dismounted and her escort followed suit. They did not follow her as she strode towards the closed flap of the pavilion.
She paused one moment before pushing aside the thick canvas and entering. She found herself in light and warmth and comfort. The floor was thick rugs over dry canvas. Magically dry, she was certain.
Pillows dominated the corners and spilled out into the floor. A bronze brazier housed a hungrily dancing fey light. There was a short-legged glass table near the back covered with food. Two women reclined behind it, observing her. There was ill-concealed hostility in those eyes. One she knew not, nor cared if the emotions raging behind the placid face were malevolent or otherwise. The other…disturbed her. The other’s hatred she could not, and never had understood.
“Mother,” Leanan purred from her pillow.
Ashara’s spine stiffened. No one had tried her shields. She buffered them regardless.
“Will you join us, lady?” the other asked. By the Four, there was hatred beneath her calm surface. Dockalfar hatred for Liosalfar? Or something more?
Ashara returned their gazes levelly. She would not have touched their food or drink at any amount of urging. Not with the malevolence emanating from the two.
She did not ask after Azeral. He knew she was in his camp. He chose to make her wait on his pleasure. She would do that with dignity. She stood before the brazier and faced its warm glow. The two women watched her, idly picking at the feast before them.
“Are you here to beg mercy, Mother?” Leanan finally asked, her tone dripping with insolence. The other smiled lazily at the question. “What have you brought to barter?”
“They say she rode in with nothing,”
the other commented. “Perhaps what she wishes to tempt him with is on her person?”
“Oh? I’ve heard tell that Azeral was ever so indulgent of her wishes in his youth. Will he be so willing to trade for your charms now?”
Ashara glared across the brazier at the creature she had spawned. The other’s eyes had narrowed considerably at Leanan’s words. His current lady, then.
She refused to demean herself by returning their jibes. She drew breath and ignored them.
After a sufficient wait, the tent flaps drew back and her host appeared. He put on a most elegantly concerned visage at the sight of her.
“My lady. Have you been waiting long?”
He knew exactly how long. She met him eye for eye and silently let him know she knew. “I am at your disposal, my lord,” she said softly.
“Yes,” he agreed. His eyes took her in. Traveled the length of her and deeper.
She could not help feeling bedraggled and dirty. She had the urge to twist her hair into a more orderly arrangement.
He had changed very little. More refined. More graceful. His hair was damp and hung in heavy waves about his head and shoulders. As ever his eyes were startlingly, penetratingly blue.
The spell was broken when he moved past her, ushering her to the mountain of pillows at the back of the tent. She allowed him to herd her, settled down stiffly on the pillows with him between her and the women. He offered her a goblet of wine. She took the glass but did not bring it to her lips. She watched him as he did. Watched the gazes of the female sidhe as they flickered between him and her.
“Have you come to surrender?” he finally asked, driving around courtesies and getting right to the point.
“No. I have come to talk.”
“Talk?” He lifted an amused brow.
“What is there to talk about, my lady? I have bested you and you will surrender what I wish one way or another.”
“Perhaps she has some other plan, Father?” Leanan suggested. “Something only a Liosalfar mind could conceive. Why don’t you let her beg. It could be amusing.”
The other smiled slyly, leaned over and whispered in Leanan’s ear. Leanan laughed. Harpies, the two of them. Ashara lifted her chin a notch and looked directly into Azeral’s eyes.
“If you wish to make a spectacle of me, then by all means invite the lot of your court here. If you will do me the honor of speaking with me, then pray do it alone and not under the scrutiny of these two.”
He chuckled. “You find our daughter unamusing? And my lady Neferia? How odd. The court finds them both to be of the highest charm.”
“Your court finds many distasteful things charming,” she retorted dryly, gaining sharp glances from both women, and an amused quirk of brow from Azeral.
He waved a negligent hand. “Be gone.”
“But – “ Leanan started to whine and stopped at a dark look from her sire. She rose in a huff and stalked out of the tent.
Neferia went more leisurely, her elegant face a mask of cold hatred. She said not a word, but there was jealousy simmering behind those eyes.
Azeral waited for them to clear the tent before resting back against the cushions. “You wished to be alone with me, my lady. I have made it so.” His tone
implied other things than business. She flushed, cursing herself for allowing him to fluster her after so very long.
“I do not understand you,” she said, strengthening her resolve. “One time I might have, but not now. What is it you hope to gain by crushing my folk? We are no power to contend with. No rival court that vies for your power or your territory. So why the trouble?”
“You are well aware of what I want,” he said silkily. “You are the one that took her from me, and yet you expect me not to actively pursue her recovery.”
“The human girl. All this for a human?”
“All this for a human,” he agreed.
“Do you want her power? Is it greed that sparks this crusade? I would think you power to spare. Granted her magic is considerable, but not so much more than yours… or mine for that matter.”
He looked at her strangely. “And did I not pursue you with as much persistence, Ashara?”
“So you love this girl?”
He laughed. “A human? No, not love.”
She rose fluidly and paced away from him, turned with her back to the brazier and stared at him. “You told her such nonsense about needing human magic to relieve the leakage of power from her world to ours. Do not expect me to believe such drivel.”
“I ask you to believe nothing,” he said mildly.
“There is leakage to be sure, but it can no more be lessened by one human magic user than all the water you’re calling down on our heads can be drunk by one thirsty dwarf.”
“You are not here to surrender,” he surmised. “It is not in your nature, my lady. What did you come for then. To talk me out of this campaign? To alleviate your own curiosity? To plead mercy for a chosen few when I do take your untakeable vale?”
“You will not,” she purred. “If I have to build rafts and float my folk, you will not take us. And the rain will run out soon enough when the sky has no more to offer.”
“And without your determination, will your people think likewise?”
She blinked at him. “I came to you under truce, would you break it and honor also?”
“Truce? I made no truce. I agreed to speak with you, lady. If there was truce, it was made in your mind only.”
She kept the emotion from her face. She could not give him the advantage of knowing her shock or the growing self-accusation that she had been incredibly stupid.
“You used to have honor,” she said softly.
“Time changes everything,” he philosophized. “Sit down,” he half invited, half commanded. “You wish to talk. Let us do so.”
~~~
The sidhe took Dusk down into the valley. They surrounded him, as if they might keep him from escaping from the closeness of their bodies when their magic could in no way touch him. One of them insisted on holding onto his arm. Dusk tolerated it. Barely. They asked him few questions and he offered them no more explanation.
Sidhe trotted forward to meet them once they descended past the forest line and into the vale proper. He recognized the woman as a companion of Victoria’s.
Long, rain-darkened silver hair clung close to her head and back. Eyes of the same hue narrowed dangerously.
Yes, she remembered him. He saw it in the stiffening of her back, of the slight move of her fingers to the grip of her belt knife. Past him she looked, to her fellow Liosalfar. Communication went on beyond his capacity to overhear. Patiently he stood while they exchanged information.
The girl finally turned her icy eyes back to him.
“How did you pass the rune stones?”
“The wards are magic in nature, lady. Magic has no hold on such as me.”
She gnawed her lip. The sidhe around him muttered among themselves, more nervous than before. Perhaps it dawned on them what he was. Perhaps she told them.
The grip on his arm loosened and the hunter stepped back.
“You seek Victoria?” the girl asked.
He inclined his head. She studied him a long moment, then abruptly waved the hunters away. They were glad to be released. They retreated, casting uncertain looks over their shoulders. The girl did not make a move. Just stood in the rain facing him. There was something about her that made him nervous. A gauging expression that hinted she knew things he did not. A most assuredly female expression. “Are you Azeral’s still?”
He shook his head slowly. “No more.”
“Not at all?” She arched a brow.
“Not in the least.”
“I am to believe he gifted you with freedom after your – betrayal?”
“No,” he admitted, not particularly wishing to discuss the matter.
She thought a moment more, then shrugged and lifted a hand towards the ancient settlement. After a moment’s hesitation he proceeded her into the ruins.
~~~
Azeral looked at her back. Slim and straight, her slowly drying hair a golden mass reaching almost to her hips. She was nothing so much as the girl he had first seen millennia ago. Physically she had changed not at all. Sidhe seldom did. He had held little hope, other than in the errant fantasies of his dreams of ever seeing her in the flesh again, of ever speaking with her. He had pushed her far back in his mind. He had taught himself to ignore the longing of his soul, just as she had taught herself. How many countless decades had thoughts of her never entered his waking mind? How tragic that one brief moment with her brought back all the pain. He could only hope she hurt with it too.
“You never change,” she said acidly.
“Always there is only you.”
“I seem to remember a time when I went to great lengths for you.” She hurt him speaking of the past and he only made it worse engaging her on the topic. “I seem to remember making more of an effort than you ever did, lady.”
She whirled on him. “I could have tolerated a great many things from you. One thing I asked of you. One thing. And you failed me. You let her become twisted and dark like you.”
“Leanan is what she is. What she was preordained to be. Just like you were preordained to be Liosalfar.”
“And you Dockalfar. We make ourselves, Azeral. You chose to make her in your own image.”
“To spite you?” A great sadness crept over him. She was so wrong. He had tried. He had truly tried to make their daughter what she wanted. But the keep and the court had made her into what she was. And something else. “I would have given my immortal life for you, and yet you accused me – accuse me of willfully defying your most strident wishes and making her Dockalfar?”
“You could have given her to me.”
He laughed. This was such an old argument. One that had long ago been firmly settled in both their minds. “She was my blood. I do not give up my own.”
“No. Not you,” she agreed. “This was a mistake. I was foolish to come here. I should have known.”
“Known what? How I would react?” he asked. “Yes, you should have. The lines between us are so clearly marked, are they not? Do you ever wonder why?”
“No. Never.”
“Ever the game piece, aren’t you, my lady? Never question the hand that moves you.”
Her eyes turned quizzical. She had always been brilliant. Always of a wit to equal his. It had made the matching of their souls ever so logical forever ago.
Suddenly, desperately he wanted to confide in her his suspicions. His fears. If anyone could understand, could see through the duplicity that was being played on a world, she could.
“Did you never question why I failed on that one task you required? Did you just take it on faith that being Dockalfar, it was my nature? Of course you did. We all accept what we are, do we not? Well answer me this, if I was so set in my ways why did I let you go?”
“You did not willingly,” she reminded him.
“What other dark lord, so enthralled with a lady, a lady that was the mate of his soul no less, would have ever ceased the chase? I’ll tell you. None. I spent decades calling myself a weak fool when I did give up the fight. And then it began to occur to me to won
der why everything I did with you, every effort I made to make myself better in your eyes, came so hard. Why could I not make one small girl child a being of sweetness and morality to please you? I had no choice. Just as you had no choice hating everything I stood for.”
“What are you speaking of?” Her voice was low, suspicious. Almost frightened.
He drew a breath. “Every sentient creature born of this world draws on magic in one form or another. It is our lifeblood. The magic comes from the life force of the world, yes, but what rations it out to the beings that inhabit the world?”
“Nothing rations it out,” she said.
“We draw on it, each according to our own capacity.”
“I do not believe that is entirely true.”
She simply stared at him, waiting.
“It’s a game.” Blatantly stated. “It is a great game and we are all game pieces. Why else the clear division? Dark and light. Good and evil. Classic. And there is no changing of loyalties. You can no more change than I can because whatever being is controlling the board will not allow it.”
She thought he was daft. She did not even have to voice it, he could see it in her face. He wanted to shake her in frustration. Why could she not see it? It was so clear. “Ashara, I wanted to change for you. I could not. I could not! Do you understand? And years later when I began to rationalize my failure, when I began to delve into the possibility that there was some controlling factor that governed our actions…then I came to understand. It’s out there. I have seen it. I have followed it to its own realm.”
“You are mad.” Her eyes were wide.
“No. I am not. You just won’t accept the possibility.”
“What possibility? That there is some all controlling god overlooking us? Are you trying to displace my deities?”
“Not god,” he amended. “Sidhe, I think, or sidhe like, to make us the dominant players in its game. But it’s losing control, I think. It’s slipping. It plagues me because I question it. Because I defy it. Yet I have no power to fight it, because it controls the very magic I use.”
“Ah – “ Her eyes lit up. “Therefore the girl. A different magic. A power your games master does not control.”
