by Nunn, PL
She knew damn well what was among her enemies at that point, even before her eyes made him out clearly enough to catch his whirlwind movement across the space separating the fallen sidhe from their now unprotected henchmen.
The bendithy never saw him coming.
They never realized their masters were down. Dusk cut into them with all the grace of a choreographed dance. When they finally did notice that they were not the attackers anymore but the attacked, half of their number were down. They turned on him, only half aware that something deadly was among them.
Blindly they slashed out, more a danger to themselves than the assassin. Victoria could not follow it all. It was all she could do to cringe and fight back the effort to make the earth swallow up the lot of them, in fear that such a physical magic would do damage to Dusk as well. And then Alex was into the melee, using the bulk of his mount as a battering ram and slashing down and across at frantic bendithy mamau.
She could not watch. Instead she turned her attention and her magic back the way they had come. She could sense them now. No one was bothering with shields.
There were a great many of them.
Huntsmen on horseback. Goblins afoot.
Sidhe. The mass of the hunt was back there. Not too close. Not yet. But their magic was creeping towards them. She threw out a bubble of shielding, striving to hide herself and Alex from immediate discovery.
When she turned back it was to a field of dead. Dusk afoot, all forest colored, looking past her to the dark shadows of the morning forest. There was blood on his sword from tip to hilt. In his other hand was a long curved dagger, equally sullied. There was blood on his face, whether his own or another’s impossible to tell. Alex was glaring down at him, his own blade liberally smeared with red.
“You shouldn’t have,” she scolded the assassin, feeling foolish even as she said it.
“God, does everybody know where we are?” Alex complained. “Did we leave that wide of a trail?”
“Did you think he wouldn’t know?”
the assassin snapped, voice betraying his lack of breath. “He was in your mind. You cannot shield against that. You cannot escape him ‘knowing’ you.”
Alex stared at him, stared back into the wood, then grimaced. “Just great. Absolutely lovely.”
She thought he was discovering what she had already seen. How close their enemies were to them. She did not bother to follow his thoughts, or the direction his magic took. She could hardly control the sporadic flow of her own power. She could hardly think with Alex and Dusk both before her, bloody from a battle that was ultimately her fault.
“God, why did you have to follow me?” she demanded.
He was trembling somewhat. More from the exertion and the excitement of battle than anything. His eyes were veiled.
He refused to meet her own desperate stare.
“Jesus!” Alex cried in disgust. “We don’t have time for this. They’re too damned close!”
“Go,” Dusk stated calmly, quietly.
“They will find delay.”
“No,” Victoria cried.
“Go now while you have time.” He was talking to Alex now. He was playing the role of Ciagenii now. Cold, efficient.
So very deadly. But she knew he was scared. Oh he did not show it outwardly, but she felt it in her soul. Tears were threatening. She wanted to cry so bad she could taste the salt of tears.
“I said no!” She was ready to dismount and plant her feet.
Alex turned on her and snapped.
“He’s right. Let him slow them down.”
“Damn you, Alex!” she cried, fury rising. “You’d just love that, wouldn’t you?”
She knew she had struck home when the momentary hurt crossed his face. At the moment she could not care, for he was not the one proposing suicide. He was not the one with that damned annoying habit. If it was the last thing she ever did she was determined to absolve Dusk of the notion that dying for her would in any way make her more favorable to any given situation.
“Shut up, both of you!” Dusk hissed at them, sounding a good deal more frustrated than she could ever remember.
He wiped off the dagger on the tunic of a fallen bendithy and thrust it in his belt.
“Will you distract me with your presence when they pass, woman? You’ve no choice but to go.”
“Where?” she practically screamed.
“They’re all over the wood.”
“Where they cannot follow,” he said simply. “Now go!”
Her protest was cut short as Alex took the bridle of her mount in hand and jerked her horse into motion. Into the woods they fled and when she looked back, only moments later, there was no sign of Dusk. He might not have existed at all.
She did not fight the urge to wail her own frustration.
~~~
The trees whipped past at too frightening a speed. The horses labored breathing and flattened ears told that they were no happier at the breakneck pace set through too close a forest than their riders were. Victoria’s mount ran in the fore.
There was no room, in whatever faint path the animal’s thought they were following, for more than one rider abreast. She gathered power and released it, happy to be doing something, in the form of a wind shield of solid energy that obliterated most of the hampering vines and forest debris from their path. Another part of her tried to keep track of where the hunt was and guard against power thrown at them from that direction. She mourned and raged that Dusk was behind her in the path of that destructive force. There was no hint of him. No tiny scrap of feeling, not even in the depth of her soul. All that was there was fear and that was purely her own.
There was no rain now. God, that was a blessing among this disaster they found themselves in. But the ground was still slick with the remnants of the storm that had overstayed its welcome. Their horses skidded as they flew down a gentle, wooded slope. Her own careened out of control and sideswiped a featureless, towering pine. It squealed in distress, fighting for balance. Alex’s mount crowded up behind it, tossing its head, nipping at struggling hindquarters.
She looked back at him, shocked, shaken beyond her ability to compensate. He looked just as bad. She wanted to ask the inevitable, horrible question that had nagged her since learning the Dockalfar were very well aware of where they were. Had his ‘safe’ haven been negated?
Would Azeral stop at anything, short of unconquerable runes, to get at them? She doubted seriously that superstition and spriggan folklore would keep Azeral from pursuing them into this evil place that Bashru had been certain would keep his less powerful forces at bay. And if there was no safety for them there – then where could they flee?
They reached the bottom of the gully and struggled up the other side. The horses were tiring too quickly. She thought there must be a way to revitalize them magically. Okar and Keirom had managed to keep their mounts fresh at full speed for a goodly time while they were spiriting her away from Azeral, but her schooling had not gotten so far. And she dared not tamper with the horses for fear of doing some harm that would leave them stranded afoot.
Almost at the top of the hill and the ground shuddered. It quaked beneath the horses’ spindly legs with seismic furor for breath-stopping moments. And then the top of the hill quite literally erupted outwards.
Dirt and rock spewed in all directions, uprooted trees crashed with splintering force down into the fragile barrier made by their brothers not disturbed by the explosion. Splintered wood and rock flew like shrapnel. Victoria could only stare, deafened by the earth-felt noise, gaping at the rolling death that descended upon her.
Alex thought quicker. He threw everything he had into a shield. One could see the shape of it as the first spatters of dirt pelted it from without and soon covered it and their unobstructed view. It was just as well, for they were spared the shock of the majority of the hill top coming down upon them. She only knew the incredible mass of what his shield was protecting them from by his sudden agonized scream and
the respondent trembling of the ground as the weight hit all around them.
“Help!” he cried, wavering in his saddle. She knew it was not physical support he needed. She threw her own shield beneath his, buffering it up, experiencing the overwhelming weight of earth and wood that was pressing down upon them. It was suffocating. They were devoid of light and movement of air. And sound.
They might have been in a crypt for all the outside stimulus that reached them.
The closeness of it made her skin crawl.
“Has it stopped?” she whispered, trusting more in his ability to clearly see outside the dome of dirt and rock than her own.
He drew sharp breath. “Yes,” he said. “But we’re not alone.”
“Good. Keep up your shield, if you don’t mind.”
She flung her own shield outwards like a pressurized tank rupturing. It took a great deal of power, but not so much as the initial eruption. The collected loose rock spewed outwards with as much force as it had hit. A dozen horsemen and smaller two legged shapes on foot went down from the barrage. There was a moment of confusion as riders went for cover, and goblins scattered. She used it to look frantically about, seeking the author of the destruction. But there was no Azeral in sight. There were sidhe though, stunned from her return blow. She screamed at them inarticulately and the poor, abused trees closest to them shattered, splintering into a thousand pieces that she flung like spears towards her enemy. Most of them got shields up, some did not. The bendithy and the goblins had little chance.
The sidhe buffeted her in return with a barrage of mental lashing. They might have expected her to be weak from her own display. They might merely have thought she was too untrained to counter a more subtle attack. Little did they know that her shields had been the first line of defense for her in coping with this world.
Some of it got through and it hurt, but she blocked the majority of it. She wished fire down upon them and the ground obligingly sprouted flame. It roared up in geysers ten feet tall, singeing wet leaves, blackening tree bark. What corpses were near crisped at the heat, but the sidhe were unharmed. They turned the maneuver against her, their skill more pronounced than her own. The flames traveled across the ground towards her and Alex.
She wished it gone. She desperately wished it away and put her power behind it and the fire winked out. She giggled hysterically at the chagrin on the faces of the sidhe. She barely heard Alex yelling for her to ride. She did not want to. The desire to stay and finish those impudent sidhe who dared attack her was tenacious and alluring. She was doing so well.
Those few were not a match for her power.
As she turned, the sunlight that reached the forest floor courtesy of the cleared hill top glinted off armor through the trees. Her ringing ears picked up the faint sound of clattering gear and rattling weapons. An outside power that was not her own infused the area. A great collective strength that could only be the combined power of the hunt.
“C’mon,” Alex was turning his horse towards the mess of the hill top. “Now!”
he barked, and she whirled her mount to follow. They scrambled madly for the top, for that slight vantage of height. She turned once more and saw the riders clear the shadow of trees. No bendithy these, but sidhe in full armor. And among them – Azeral. Grandest of all in crystal armor the color of his piercing eyes. Clear, clear blue and hard as diamonds. He looked up at them, triumphant.
She felt the broad, sweeping wings of his power reach out and try to ensnare her own. She fought it off. Casting Alex a desperate look she urged her mount to plunge down the other side of the hill and back into forest. Even though he was out of her sight, she knew Azeral remained where he was, confident that he would catch them. It was his nature and the nature of his court to prolong the hunt. To have the terror of the prey grow and grow until there was nothing else but that. It made the final victory so much sweeter.
~~~
Azeral watched the humans disappear over the rise. He laughed. A delightedly cold laughter that had his followers casting him uncertain glances. He ignored them, needing their presence in no way save for the power they could offer him if he so chose to take it. He preferred to take the girl on his own. To match his own fey magic against her human one. He needed to batter down her defenses and prove that he was her master. Of the man he had no doubts. Alex would be his the moment the woman no longer added her shields to his.
Even though most of the control had been shattered, there was still enough within his mind for Azeral to grasp hold of and use to dominate him. It was and always had been the girl who held the power.
He wanted her alive. He needed her alive, but if that was not possible, then he could always fall back on Alex. Not so great a potential, but still the earth power burned bright. He had learned a fair amount on his own. Things Azeral’s court had never taught him. Azeral respected the initiative. It was just as well that Leanan had fled her body, for the boy never would have survived a return to court after what he had done to her. And one of the two of them would be in his keeping again.
He urged his mount forward and the hunt followed. He cared little for the bodies he trod over. He spared not a glance for even the sidhe that lay sprawled and twisted beneath his horse’s hooves. Fools, to be caught unawares.
The edges of the girl’s shielding were solid. Their presence was invisible to him. But he knew where they were heading. A haunted place that wise, living beings avoided. A section of the wood that in all this world lay the closest to the borders of Annwn. And sometimes, things crossed over, if the boundaries between the two realms happened to wax thin.
Those things made the wood dangerous, but the proximity itself kept all life from thriving. The land was brown and shriveled and he had no compunction whatsoever about following them into it.
He would almost go to Annwn itself in his pursuit. Almost.
Tyra pulled up beside him, her visor up, her gaze speculative. She had made no secret of the fact that she had thought him rather addled to abandon the Vale on such short notice and with little in the way of explanation. He would see her punished for the open disbelief, among other irritants that she had plagued him with lately. But for the moment, she was useful.
She was the most competent of his trackers. The most successful of his hunters, as her position required.
“Block their way,” he told her without bothering to look her way. “Drive them back towards me, Lady Huntress.”
She inclined her head respectfully.
“Of course, my lord.” She rode apart from him, calling several of the hunt to her.
Short orders were given and sidhe split off from the main body of the hunt, speeding forward into the forest. She herself left not long after, taking a pair of bendithy with her. Azeral watched her go, but he had little thought to spare for her, so consumed with visions of having the earth bound power back in his hands.
Something in the flow of power shifted. He caught the awareness of it from the very edge of his senses. It was tinged with dread familiarity. Something coiled and sifted through the roots of his magic weavings. It was ponderous and slow moving, like some great slithering dragon.
He shied back from it in shock that it so openly showed itself in the light of day, in the height of conscienceless. For one brief moment, it snaked between him and the root source of his power. The link he held to the power of this world and his usage of it was suddenly and blindingly blocked.
All his senses crashed down upon him.
All awareness of the bodies about him ceased, all connection with the way the earth moved and the sky shifted. He was blind and deaf and mute and could only gape ineffectually for the span of a half dozen heartbeats until the presence moved aside and the power came flooding back.
He gasped, too stunned to observe where it went or what it did after it left him. Over his saddle bow he leaned, and someone, one of his sidhe, inquired of his health in a tone fraught with unease.
Azeral lifted his head to stare at the woman. S
he stared back, frightened. But not shocked, not stunned by the power that had so casually usurped his own. He looked past her to the faces of his hunt.
Some had noticed his distress and drew brows, not daring to stare too openly.
Most rode on, oblivious. Not one of them had felt it. No single of his sidhe had perceived of the unnameable presence.
It chilled him to the core of his soul.
He wrapped his hands around the pommel of his saddle and fought against the tremors that would hint at his loss of control. He straightened in his saddle and looked straight forward, hiding the fear.
All desire to prolong the hunt had fled. All pretense of enjoyment vanished along with the mysterious, omnipotent presence. He wanted the humans now. He needed their power immediately.
It had been a warning of sorts. He knew that deep in his gut. What had gone before, the nightmares, the stabbing lashes of pain, had been nothing more than some sort of punishment. What had just happened had been more. He was being warned off the power he sought. That could only mean his desire for it was correct. That he was a threat with human power under his control. That something, somewhere, and he thought he had a good notion where that somewhere might be, was becoming uneasy.
He kicked his horse into a canter and mentally demanded that the hunt increase the pace. They followed obediently, excitement rushing along the byways of their thoughts. Oh, they longed for the kill.
But he would deprive them of that, for he longed for his own hunt. For his own kill and he would have none of either if he did not have the human power in his possession.
A call rang out through all their mental wavelengths, but meant mostly for him. A cry of victory. The humans had been intersected. They were being driven back towards the main body of the hunt.
The great hunt hurried, hearts beating in time with the pounding of nighthorse hooves. Glittering, deadly predators. They descended upon their prey and suddenly the cry of a sidhe in the throes of death rent the mental air. The scream went the length and breadth of the eastern wood and the hunt cried out in reflexive sympathy. Azeral did not. He ground his teeth and pushed forward.
