Pixie Noir (Pixie for Hire Book 1)

by Cedar Sanderson

  Alger never finished that train of thought, as the simultaneous arrival of Bella from the basement Armory, Joe, Melcar, the Lady Herbale, and at least one of the healer apprentices arriving from Court, turned the room from quiet to chaos. Lucia, to his surprise, stepped in to brief both the Underhill people and the human arrivals, while Bella took everyone one at a time downstairs, and they each came back up with pleased smiles and weaponry. Alger sidled over to Ellie, who was standing by the door, a bow and quiver slung over her shoulder.

  “Um, how did she...”

  She grunted and raised an eyebrow. Alger backed off. While he hadn’t been paying attention, Lucia had finished, and now everyone was looking at him.

  “Um, hrmph...” Alger cleared his throat to buy time to remember what Lucia had been saying. Oh, yes, that he would guide them to Baelfire Tower.

  “Can we leave now?” Alger asked Bella politely, as she came upstairs and leaned against the door, closing it and - he caught a flicker of light - resetting the spell.

  She shook her head, fatigue showing. “I need to eat and rest. We all do. Joe...”

  The majordomo, dressed in fighting gear rather than his usual sartorial splendor, came closer to her. “Yes, Bella?”

  “I need your help to plan this. Can you coordinate with Mark and the boys? Ellie...” she and the tiny wood elf exchanged grim smiles. Alger sensed something there. “Is coming with us, but plan on her covering my back. Alger.”

  “Yes?” He was half afraid she would order him to hand over the map and stay behind. He could tell she was not happy about his pessimism over the boy’s survival.

  “Can you... If he is still alive?” Her voice quivered a little. Alger held out his hand and she took it.

  “He’s alive, I can feel that much through the spell. I’ll be able to tell if... things change.” Alger put both his hands around her small, cold one, and looked down at her. “I’m sorry if I sound bleak, m’dear. I have so many years behind me, I find hope difficult. I had no idea how fast you could move, or the kind of power you truly have.”

  She shook her head. “I just do what needs to be done. I’m not that strong.”

  Melcar took her elbow. “You need to eat. You have used an enormous amount of energy, and you are going to fall down if you don’t sit.”

  She murmured an inarticulate protest, but didn’t fight him as he led her into the kitchen. Lady Herbale came out with a tray bearing a coffee urn and teapot. Lucia followed with one of cups and accoutrements. Alger could feel the tension in his shoulders, cramping with anxiety to be going, but knowing that they should wait until dark, and travel on full bellies with rest.

  “Waiting is something I have never learned to do, in all the years I have been forced to.” Alger muttered to himself, sitting with fingers steepled and thinking. They were all tense. Something had taken down the bubble Lom and the Easterners were traveling in. The poor wretches they had rescued from the goblins, along with Melcar’s two apprentices, had turned up at Eastern Court only hours after the diversion of the Court bubble. Melcar had told all of the assembled friends what he knew. Lom was facing an unknown number of beings, all vile, vicious, and wanting him dead.

  Alger understood, probably better than Lom did, why they wanted him to die. The Low Court saw the human realm as easy picking for them, with magic and power to seize what they wanted. High Court wanted humans to remain blissfully unaware of Underhill as a reality, to let this world fade into legends and tales. Lom was the tool who had kept the creeping incursion of Low Court’s foray into human matters at bay. They saw him as a threat to their plans, and they were quite right. He would give everything to keep them from sparking a war that would certainly cause the death and destruction of everything they held dear. He had already paid a high price for it, beginning with being caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, innocently as Alger’s young apprentice when they were trying to reach Alger.

  Alger regretted that deeply, and Lom had blamed Alger for his distance while he recovered, but Alger had done it to keep him safe, to keep him out of the fight he eventually chose to enter into of his own accord as an adult. Alger was proud of him, of what Lom had become, and he would likely never be able to tell the boy. The spell was weakening, and that could only mean Lom was fading away.

  It was time to rein Low Court in, and bring their power back into check. Alger had held back, under orders, but no more. He got up and walked into the kitchen. Bella had her head down on her crossed arms, apparently asleep. Alger touched her shoulder.

  “We need to go. He is slipping away.” Alger told her gently, hating the pain he was causing this young woman he was coming to be very fond of. She was a warrior.

  She nodded, getting up and following Alger into the large room. “Let’s go outside, everyone.” Alger announced. “We need enough room to transport a group this size.”

  “Should we do more than one bubble?” Lucia asked. She was standing in the kitchen door, clutching a towel and looking oddly out of place. She had never been domestic in the slightest.

  “No, that just invites defeat in detail when we are separated. We will go in as a group. Does anyone have any questions?” Alger looked around as the group assembled in Lom’s garden, the overcast sky above a perfect mood setting for the somber crowd. Dan caught his attention.

  “Yes?”

  “What do you want us to do? Engage at will, or only when attacked? I get that they won’t have weapons like we do, but they are still armed with...” he stumbled a little on the concept. “Magic, you say.”

  “Just before we get into the tower, Melcar and I will give you spells that will lessen the harm of any magical attack on you. They won’t last long, you need magic to power them and only Mark,” Alger nodded at the cousin who he needed to talk to, about his ancestry, “has any, among you humans. As for the rules... Kill them, before they can kill you, or any of us.”

  He nodded grimly. In one way Alger had made it easier, in another, harder. None of them showed any signs of sociopathy. They didn’t want to kill anyone, they just wanted to bring Lom home and keep Bella safe and happy.

  Alger bubbled the group without further discussion, grimly aware that while they might have some advantages, according to what little information they had, there were a lot more of the enemy.

  Chapter 41 - Tower Baelfire

  Bella put a hand on Alger’s shoulder, and he startled as he felt the surge in his magic. She was channeling power through him.

  “Blessed Titania, I had no idea just how strong you were,” he blurted.

  “Get us through the interdiction if at all possible?” She murmured into his ear.

  Alger took a deep breath, “I think I can, now.”

  “I broke the Court’s interdiction without really knowing it until later,” she offered him a partial explanation of how she knew to try this.

  “Oh.” Alger grounded the bubble gently in the Tower courtyard, but held the walls of it up. He spoke loudly enough to be heard. “Ready, now!”

  When the walls went down it was rather anticlimactic. The denizens of the tower had assumed that because they could not go in or out, no one else could, either. Most of them were indoors. Mike took point, Dan the tail of the little relief column, and they marched in the front doors. Or rather, the hole that was left after Alger used his adaptation of Bella’s excavation spell to take them down. It was a nice thing in that it removed all the matter from a sphere, and aimed correctly, left an open space to walk through. The debris was elsewhere. Matter in this case also included the door guards, if there had been any. There were a few stones that fell from above, that was all.

  A small crowd spilled into the great hall they had just invaded, milling about in confusion. One, with better reflexes than the others, lobbed a spell. Alger blocked it, and the humans, seeing that they were under attack and their consciences were clear, opened fire. Mike’s big weapon made the stones of the Hall ring, and the enemy all flinched back toward the doors they had come
in.

  Alger didn’t stop moving. The enemy of any offensive, particularly a surprise one, is hesitation. Bella was a half step behind him, and to his right, so the two of them had the point as the humans-at-arms took flanking positions, firing until there was nothing moving in the hall, and whatever else was here, was hiding and had the sense not to come see what the ruckus was. Alger had the map up, floating in front of them and glowing brightly enough to illuminate the dim hall they took, the one that would bring them to the cellar stairs. They were not dungeons, Alger had been told by an informant years ago, in a putrid tavern, with a leer and a wink as she swilled the ale he’d bought her.

  Bella stepped in front of Alger, suddenly, and held up a hand. They all stopped. Melcar and his apprentice were behind those two, and Ellie ghosted up on Alger’s left, knife in hand. It was too close quarters for her bow.

  Bella warned them, “close your eyes,” then flicked her fingers and launched a spell, triggering a burst of light. As soon as the redness was gone, Alger opened his eyes again, blinking to be able to see. Even through eyelids that had been spectacular. Alger made a mental note that he would need to talk to her about weapons that harmed your own side.

  There was a shriek that dopplered up high enough to be out of the range of normal hearing, and Ellie blurred into action. The ghoul that flew out of the side hall had to be blinded, but she was attacking anyway, her jaws unhinged and talons reaching out for Bella, who side-stepped her neatly, and Ellie broadsided her. Alger almost didn’t catch what she did, except it involved a mighty handful of stringy black hair, yanking the creature to a dead halt with a cracking of bones, then a swipe of that sharp little blade removed the scalp and hair. Ellie’s other hand was on the ghoul’s throat now, and she crammed the bloodied scalp into the unnaturally wide open mouth, neutralizing the venomous teeth. Then she stepped back as it thrashed against the wall, still scratching with talons for a target, and Bella shot it twice in the head.

  The limp body thudded to the floor, and in the sudden silence, they heard Lom scream below, in the black hole that gaped and the stairs went into. Bella ran, one hand over her head, elf lights spinning off her fingertips, and the other holding the pistol she had just used to dispatch the ghoul. Ellie followed on her heels.

  “Melcar, go. I’ll stay here and cover her back.” Alger ordered, pointing, and the wood elf healer went down into that foul pit without hesitation. With the new illumination Alger could now see the hellish scene below us, at the foot of the shallow stairs. Lom lay on the floor, naked, bruised, and bloody, under him, an amorphous mass. Alger deliberately turned his back. He could not rush down there to Lom’s side, and he needed to keep his focus clear on threats from above. The small cellar was empty of life besides the wreck that had been a pixie warrior. The spell connection Alger had with him had severed with the eldritch scream, and he couldn’t bear to think about that.

  Ellie and the small apprentice ran up and past Alger, with her saying, “We need something for a cot or sling to carry him.”

  “Is he alive?” Alger blurted hoarsely. She didn’t answer. Dan gestured for her to follow him, and they vanished around a corner. Behind and below him, Alger could hear Melcar saying something, but couldn’t make out the words. Mark, Tex, and Mike were on guard at the entrance to the great hall, out of his sight, and he felt very old and alone for a fleeting second.

  The little apprentice reappeared with Dan trailing him, carrying an armload of what looked like bedding. They went down the stairs. Alger could hear someone retching down there, and cursed his cowardice for not being able to look.

  Melcar was the next one up the stairs, and he put a hand on Alger’s shoulder. “He’s alive, Alger. Barely, but there is still a magical essence protecting him. It’s keeping his soul together with body, but also accelerating his death. He’s incredibly weak, and I wish we didn’t have to move him.”

  Alger shook his head, both to suppress the tears of joy, and to negate the implied suggestions. “We must leave here immediately. I have no idea how close reinforcements are.”

  “Moving him may kill him. I want to at least stabilize him first.”

  Magical transport is a curious thing. While less of an effort than any of the human methods Alger had studied, it still draws from the life force of those who use it. It’s a tiny leaching of power, not even noticeable to a normal, healthy being of the Folke. For Lom, it had always been a tiring experience since the brush with the elfshot, and in his current condition, it might well be the last straw.

  “At least we must move to a more defensible position. I will set the men-at-arms to clearing the Hall.”

  He nodded, and sent Dan up when he went back down. Melcar, Ellie, Bella, and the apprentice whose name Alger had never gotten, carried Lom up the stairs, each of them at a corner of the sheet he was on. Alger was guessing Melcar had told Bella not to use magical means to carry him. He was oddly pale, limp, and Alger could not see him breathe. He stood back against the wall to let them pass, then brought up the rear, using spells to ward and seal halls and rooms behind the group. At the very least, they would be safe from that direction.

  They placed him gently on a table, Ellie tucking a bit of rolled up cloth under his head for a pillow. He was swaddled in blankets, presumably for warmth. Alger knew well enough the harm shock could have, even in the absence of an obviously mortal wound. Melcar was rubbing his feet, and Bella and his apprentice each had a hand. Alger was so distracted with what they were doing, and just how dead Lom looked, that he missed the threat riding through the gaping hole in the outer wall.

  Mark and Dan did not, both opening fire at the same time. The boom of their shotguns had everyone’s full attention, and Alger ran forward toward them, shouting “Cease fire!”

  Half of the Wild Hunt was in the hall by the time Alger had reached the Huntsman, who had contemptuously stopped the slugs with a flick of his fingers. He stared down at him, and Alger refused to think about how he must look, a graybeard huffing and puffing at his armored knee.

  “Why have you come?” Alger demanded, holding onto his stirrup with one hand, summoning a spell with the other. The Huntsman’s riding beast, a giant and unnatural stag, stamped nervously, flicking his ears. The Huntsman was silent for an interminable moment, his visor concealing his thoughts. Around them, the hunt was equally silent, except for the slight jingle of harness as someone shifted.

  “We came for our prey that was denied us.” The Hunstman boomed. That deep, resonant voice shook Alger to his bones, as it always had.

  “He is not yours.” Alger shot back. “Moire LeFay gave her life for him, rest her soul.” Whatever else the banshee had been, she had been devoted to Lom.

  The Hunstman shook his head, and raised a hand to point at Lom’s prostate form. “He was afflicted by the elfshot that night, as well, and I claim him by the rights of the Old Ways. Old Man, stand aside. You know the Law.”

  Alger did know it. The Wild Hunt existed for those who were neither High nor Low court, for the lawless, to give them both freedom and an endless prison. Bound to the Huntsman, those who rode in the Hunt were no longer able to leave it. They existed only to hunt. None commanded the Hunt, in theory, although for the last centuries it had been aligned at least loosely with the Low Court.

  The Huntsman spoke again, and Alger could detect a touch of emotion in that rumbling voice, now. “Yon Pictsie has done us a great favor, Old Man. We will not kill him. But he is Ours.”

  “A favor,” Alger repeated incredulously. Lom hated and feared the Hunt, it was very unlikely he would have done anything for them.

  “He killed the Low King, who had gotten an unfortunate amount of power to control the Hunt.”

  Ah... that was, interesting. Alger looked back at Lom. Melcar was standing by his feet, staring at them, and Bella was kneeling on the table, crouching over Lom and protecting him with her own body. The apprentice was under the table. Alger didn’t blame him. The Hunt was the boogeyman. Children had been
told tales of how the Hunt would get them if they were naughty. In a way, it was even true. There were no prisons Underhill, nor were they needed. Alger let go of the Huntsman’s stirrup and stepped back.

  Alger knew that in breaking the code they had kept for so long, he would break that protection given to all the innocents who feared, respected, and lived cleaner lives through that learned caution. It didn’t matter if Lom was innocent, he was, through the Law and tradition, under the purview of the Hunt. And if the Hunt were not going to kill him, they might also be the best way to keep Lom alive.

  Alger despaired, and his voice broke as he answered the Huntsman. “I concede.”

  The Huntsman nodded, ponderously, and with a gesture, released two of his men to dismount and start toward Lom. They hit the floor with a clash from their all-enveloping armor, and Alger tried not to think about Lom, forever hidden in black metal, speechless, all but mindless...

  Bella stood up suddenly, and screamed defiance at the hunt, the Huntsman, and even Alger. Her fists knotted at her sides, her hair half falling down, and her wings vibrating like a plucked string, she shrieked, “He’s Mine!”

  She was standing on the table, straddling Lom’s body, and Alger could see her moving her hands like she was pulling something upward, then hurling it toward the Hunt. She hit the two men moving toward them first, lashing them with rivers of sickly green energy that had them reeling backward, screaming. She used it like a whip, driving them backward, then moving on to the rest of the Hunt.

  Alger was torn between wanting to watch her, as he saw that she was actually pulling the energy out of Lom’s body, and knowing she was just as mad at Alger as she was the Huntsman, and from this angle he stood between her and the Hunt. Self-preservation got the better of Alger, and he dove for cover under the nearest bench just as she cracked that whip of energy at him. Safely out of the way, Alger was finally able to analyze just what she was doing. She was pulling the poison out of Lom’s body and using it against them. Which was likely why it was so very effective; the elfshot turned on the Hunt had to sting bitterly.