“What do you want?” Leofwine said. Prederi remained still, his blond hair streaked with blood and his expression calm, the way a warrior showed patience when he was at his most dangerous.
“A trade,” the dark elf replied, his dark gaze sliding to Bren and back to the side of his captive’s face. “The seer for this man.”
Leofwine’s eyes narrowed. The way he carried himself, this being was not only a warrior but also a warlock. He exuded power like a curse and could kill the three of them without even soiling that pretty white cloak. So why the exchange? He obviously knew who Leofwine was and how he had defied the Fenrir Brotherhood. He hinted that he knew Leofwine had lost his power in the order. He knew Bren.
He wore the hide of a dragon, Lirea had said.
This elf served the Niflsekt who had taken the Gate.
Leofwine gazed into Prederi’s eyes, which were blue and filled with the pain of a man in love. Ingifrith. It was clear the elf had put together that Ingifrith and the ranger were dear to each other. Furthermore, he was holding Prederi hostage. That meant killing the ranger was dangerous.
He knew about Ingifrith and the High Commander of the Third Sun—the only being who had touched this world capable of destroying a Niflsekt.
“What do you want with me?” Bren asked.
“Your life,” the elf said simply.
“Why?”
“Because you can see,” Leofwine put in. The Niflsekt’s spell rendered immortals physical, forcing them to shapeshift to remain hidden. But they couldn’t hide from the eyes of a seer. Bren, and anyone like him, was a threat.
The question was, why cast the spell? Why become physical at all? Leofwine had not yet worked that out, and it disturbed him. The Niflsekt would not go through the trouble of casting such an intricate spell for nothing.
“I grow tired of waiting,” the dark elf informed them. Prederi stiffened as the knife edge pressed into his throat, reflecting the sun. Blood dripped in a single tear along the edge.
“Let him go,” Bren said, stepping forward. “I accept your trade.”
Prederi paled. “No,” he growled against the blade.
Leofwine’s throat turned dry. The confidence in Bren’s voice held more than love for his friend and brother in arms. He knew something.
He had managed to fool the elf, however. The dark warlock lifted the knife and released Prederi with a shove, drawing a long, thin sword which he held in the ranger’s direction. None of them dared to move. As the elf turned to Bren with a glitter of triumph in his eyes, his body coiling like an adder for a final blow, Leofwine’s mind raced to find some way of turning this to their advantage. But he could think of nothing that would outsmart an elf. Taking a demon was one thing. Elves were made of finer stuff—and this one had just thrown a four-hundred pound demon twenty feet, toasted like a biscuit.
A clicking, hissing sound hit the air.
The elf turned, but not even he was fast enough to evade the bolt that struck him just above the pendant on his breast. He yanked it out as swiftly as a snake and dropped to one knee, clutching his throat. Prederi ran; Bren and Leofwine backed away slowly. Heige, carrying a crossbow, emerged from behind a clump of brush in the bog and slogged to higher ground.
“You can’t kill me that easily,” the dark elf choked, blood spilling through his fingers. “You will suffer for this.” Fading like a tree beneath the fall of twilight, he shifted his form into mist and blended with the shadows in the grass, weeds, trunks and branches of the wood. And then he was gone.
The men stared. Prederi put his hand on Heige’s back in thanks. Finally, he turned to Bren. “Did you know Heige was over there?” He gestured to the bog.
“No,” Bren replied. “As we came over the hill, a dryad told me to accept the elf’s demand. I had to trust it.”
“I didn’t see any dryads,” Leofwine said. “And that elf would have known.”
Bren shrugged. “She was blended with the trees. She was in the bog, too. She must have hidden Heige from him.”
Leofwine took up Arvakr’s reins. A laugh slipped from his lips. “That, my friend, is why they want your life.”
“How’d he know who I was?”
“I didn’t tell him,” Prederi said. “I need to find my horse.”
“I have him,” Heige said, pointing. “Up there.”
The men mounted their horses and moved up the bank, casting glances behind them at the trees where the dark elf had fled. Leofwine said, “It’s not easy to kill an elf. If he had the strength to shapeshift, he’ll be back.”
Heige took a deep breath and slung the bow over his shoulder. “I don’t know how quickly that’ll happen. One of the witches in camp gave me something to put on the tips of my bolts. She wouldn’t tell me what it was, but her smile put a fucking chill on my neck.”
Bren laughed. “Och, no good for that elf, then. These witches are the folks who nearly took down Isarvalos, you know.”
“Everything has a weakness,” Prederi said.
Witchery aside, Leofwine did not share in his companions’ amusement. The elf had made a point to reveal that he knew who they were, and quite possibly how he had known it, and then spared Prederi for fear of Ingifrith’s shadowy connections. He had played a game of intimidation to reveal one motive while hiding another.
The Niflsekt would not be so careless.
A Useful Weapon
Love and hate. Universal forces, two edges of a blade. In the right hands, the weapon was useful.
The Faersc Conservatory, tucked into the high northern reaches of the Fylkings’ realm, had not fared well in the hands of Vargn’s draugr during the war. For love of their home, and with the arts of the Fylking, the wardens had restored their mountain sanctuary to some semblance of its former state, resetting stones and cleaning up debris, planting trees and gardens, replacing windows, beams, steps and roofs, and rebuilding structures from the ashes of fire. They had buried their dead, cleaned the blood and salvaged what they could.
High in a tower overlooking the center of the conservatory, Vaethir gazed down at a five-rayed, clear quartz crystal newly set into a circle of stone. Tall saplings encircled it. The light of the Fylkings’ energies, once gathered in the star, was gone.
His men, rewarded after a long wait in the abandoned fortress hidden in the wilds of the Fylking’s homeworld, moved here and there, attending to their duties, training, and exploring the labyrinth of the Fylking’s erstwhile stronghold. Clad in the dark, shining shades of dragons and serpents, they trained, practiced magic and watched, warily, for trouble at the gates.
Voices echoed in the stairwell below. Someone ascended, taking the steps two at a time. As the door opened and a warrior in plain gray habit entered, a swift chill of foreboding rippled over Vaethir’s heart. He wore a light hauberk and a knife strapped to his thigh. Blood stained his tunic, along with small patches of feathers and fur. “Master,” he said, bowing his head. “It’s Alorael. Come quickly.”
A short time later, Vaethir stood by a bed where his lover lay, eyes half-lidded, sweat gathered on his brow, long hair in disarray on the pillow. His armor, stained with blood and dirt, lay heaped on a nearby chair. The room was dim but for the sun on the floor and the candles burning on the tables and walls. It smelled of peat and smoldering herbs.
“Hold still,” Vaethir said, bending over the dark elf’s throat with a crystal and a bowl of herbs. Closing his eyes, he murmured words to summon the structures of flesh from the elf’s ancestors. To get their aid, the Niflsekt had sacrificed a girl his men found hiding in the woods on the edge of the conservatory. A warden’s child, most likely. There were no wardens left here to mourn or rescue her.
Spectral hands and faces gathered in spiraling patterns around the elf, their expressions anguished. A woman shrieked, as from a great distance. On a table by the bed, a crossbow bolt shivered from the cloth it was wrapped in and shot across the floor, skittering on the hearth. Vaethir blinked at it for a moment.
&
nbsp; “I should like to know what you have done, Alorael,” the warlock muttered.
He returned his attention to his friend. The wound on the elf’s throat had closed, and something rippled over the smooth skin there. Vaethir placed a hand on Alorael’s brow and closed his eyes with a word. War. Demons, clad for battle and marked with tribal symbols, their eyes burning red. Light elves, fair and cruel, their weapons reflecting the sun like shimmering leaves. Mortal men in blue cloaks, wearing pentacles. A knife, a trick. A hidden archer. A seer, his aura pale with the mists of inner visions.
Vaethir opened his eyes and withdrew his hand. “You idiot. What did I tell you about the mortals of this world?”
“You told me to kill them,” the dark elf reminded him in a raspy whisper.
Vaethir rose and retrieved the bolt from the floor. He inspected the tip and brought it to his nose. A sharp, ragged scent hit his lungs like the fires of the Magician’s own crucible. He yanked it away and returned to the chair, gripping the smooth metal on the end farthest from the poison. “I told you to stay in the shadows. Instead, in your arrogance, you went into battle. Now they know there’s a dark elf out to kill them. They will spread the word.”
Alorael closed his eyes. “They know nothing.”
Vaethir lifted the tip of the bolt. “Do you know what this is? What it will do to you?” Alorael did not respond. “It will devour you from the inside. Slowly. You will age as a mortal until your body hits the earth.”
Alorael opened his eyes. “No mortal would have a spell like that. The elves—”
“Elves do not touch this kind of dirty magic. This, my dying fool, is the reason Isarvalos is killing witches. This is the Hooded One’s magic, black as the stinking well over which he hangs.” He slapped the bolt onto the table and flung the cloth back over it. Then he rose and left the room, his heart heavy beneath the tender side of the love-hate sword.
~*~
Vaethir stood upon a stone jetty on the far northern reaches of a ramshackle port in a realm the humans called Ylgr. The wind off the sea carried the first scent of autumn, a distant chill, like a long shadow in the afternoon.
Magnfred’s Pact. The Demon Prince of the Severed Kingdoms was using Vaethir’s military occupation to avenge himself on a guild of witches for nearly destroying him. Witches with the same powers as the Order of the Hooded One, whom in his twisted amusement Loki had summoned the demon to ward. And Loki, who had saved Isarvalos from the witches’ poison, was no doubt behind the demon prince’s turning a blind eye to the murder of the Hooded One’s priestesses. Now Isarvalos’s army, physically focused and hot for war, rampaged the land, not only giving the Fylking a cloak under which to hide, but also stirring up a guild of witches capable of doing things like fatally poisoning a dark elf.
Somehow, Isarvalos had learned of Vaethir’s spell. It was the only explanation for the timing of the demons’ arrival and the prominent fact that Isarvalos was not here to attend to details. Ever wily, the demon prince would not come into this dimension and risk being trapped.
The demon army Vaethir had seen on the plain beneath Ýr had gotten to Ylgr somehow, and since he had cast his spell, they could not use the Otherworld to move around, but had to maneuver in form. Unlike elves or High Immortals, demons were not adept at shapeshifting, but they did it well enough to pass themselves off as a band of ugly sailors, two of which he had spotted earlier, creeping like ruffians in the street. Ylgr, a bleak land full of wicked men, was not only short on seers, but also a vigilant harbormaster, it would seem.
Clearly, Isarvalos had someone here, a mortal who was orchestrating this occupation and could tell the demons where to go and how to find witches or warlocks trained in the ways of the Hooded One—not easy to find without magic. While capable enough at tactical maneuvers and destroying things, demons did not possess that kind of skill.
They did not perform well under torture, either. The High Vardlokk of Chaos excelled at it, and Isarvalos’s demons were not accustomed to the more intricate subtleties of this dimension. Vaethir had caught one lumbering through an alley. The nasty root knife he had taken from the Blackthorn witch was all he needed to discover to whom the demons were reporting.
A Fenrir Adept.
No doubt the Archwolf would put this off to Isarvalos’s orders as well. But Vaethir had doubts. He took to the wing and flew east, to the forest in the foothills of the mountains where the sorcerer had his base of operation. The outpost was made of timbers set amid tall pine trees and thatched with sedge. Smoke curled from a crude stone chimney. The Niflsekt fluttered to the path before the door, where two heavily armed guards in seasoned patchwork gear stood watch. Mercenaries.
“Fucking raven scum,” one of them muttered, stepping forward to kick the bird away.
Vaethir rose to full height, two heads taller than the soldier, clad in black scales and metal, his hair stirring on the wind. “Tsk,” he chided. “Is that how you treat a creature that moves between?” He closed his hand around the gaping mercenary’s throat and lifted him into the air. Choking, his eyes bulging and his feet kicking wildly, the soldier made one small sound as the Niflsekt crushed his windpipe.
The second man fled into the woods. Vaethir let him go with his tale. Dropping the dead man to the ground, he strode to the door and kicked it in like a tavern thug, sending it sailing from its hinges and crashing over a trestle table laden with plates, mugs and weapons. He strode in, his cloak billowing. Men fled this way and that, shouting, their boots slamming on the floorboards. Above, a window shattered. Something heavy rumbled over the floor.
Across the room, in the back, a door flew open. Someone barked a command. A man in a black cloak appeared, his face livid. Then he registered the source of the tumult. Growing pale, the sorcerer backed away and dropped to his knees before a stone hearth smoldering with peat.
“Master,” he breathed, clenching his hands before him.
A woman sidled around a desk and ran for the door. Vaethir held up his hand and stirred the air with a gale that caught the portal and slammed it before she got there. His glance prompted her to slide down to the floor and stay put. One more glance made the whimpering stop.
Vaethir paced slowly before the man hunkered on the floor. “I suppose,” he began, folding his arms over his chest, “you have an explanation for why you are escorting demons into my realm?”
The sorcerer bobbed his head, his breath audible. “Master. Forgive me. I thought you knew.”
Vaethir stopped pacing, staring down. “By whose orders are you here?”
The sorcerer opened his mouth, his voice catching. Whoever had sent him had also ordered him to keep quiet. With the speed of a snake, Vaethir reached down, clutched the back of the man’s neck and drew a knife of the finest steel, shining with a crystal edge. He pressed the tip into the hollow beneath one eye.
“The Archwolf of Ýr, Master,” the sorcerer choked, blinking rapidly as his eye began to tear with blood.
Vaethir leveled a solemn gaze on the man. “Why was I not informed?” He pressed the knife upward, causing the eye to spurt and bulge.
The Adept breathed in heavy gasps, blood running down his face. “The Order of the Hooded One served us well,” he panted. “The Archwolf was displeased by having to kill them.”
Vaethir lifted his brow, a smile twitching on his mouth. “They were plotting to destroy you.” As the Niflsekt released him, the sorcerer sank to the floor. “Are you now telling me the Archwolf is serving Isarvalos because I had the priestesses killed?”
Holding a hand over his eye, the Adept took a breath to speak. Evidently, the Archwolf had threatened this man with something worse than what Vaethir had in mind. The withered old wolf had plainly been at the top of his self-made pinnacle too long, to challenge a High Immortal with a petty act of reprisal.
The Niflsekt lifted his gaze briefly to the ceiling. “Get up.”
The sorcerer did so, his chest heaving, his gaze shifting around the room from his one good
eye. He flinched as Vaethir took his hand and swiped the knife over the palm, making a deep cut. The man’s hand shook violently as Vaethir closed his fingers, drew his arm out over the floor and squeezed. Blood dripped and splattered on the stones.
“Master,” the Adept rasped, sagging with resignation. “It was the Archwolf who told Isarvalos about the spell.”
Or perhaps not so petty, after all.
This was more like war.
Gazing into the sorcerer’s eyes, Vaethir uttered a nasty string of words that formed the pattern of a dimension in the Severed Kingdoms ruled by demons with a taste for mortal flesh. The smell of urine wafted from the puddle at the man’s feet. He stood trembling, his eyes closed and his lips moving with nonsense.
A rift formed in the air, smoking with the stench of graves. The Niflsekt clutched the sorcerer’s hand and flung him into the rift like a rag. His screams rippled out, layer upon layer of agony as pale, eyeless forms engulfed him in a sea of sharp fingers and teeth. Something roared and spat. A scrap of flesh flew out from the smoke and landed on the floor. Curled on the edges like a burned piece of meat, the skin bore the Brotherhood’s tattoo.
The rift closed. Vaethir picked up the tattooed flesh and turned around. The woman sat on the floor by the door, arms clenched over her knees as she rocked back and forth, eyes closed. She was not a young woman, but she was strong and had a mop of graying blond hair.
“Was he a friend?” Vaethir said, as if to ask a casual question of someone he knew. “A lover, perhaps?”
Her eyes snapped open. Wiping at tears with her sleeve, she rasped, “No. I hated him.”
Vaethir rumbled with laughter. “Well, now. That’s a good start.”
“What do you want with me?”
The Niflsekt stepped forward and knelt, studying her as he might a particularly interesting puzzle. She was not a wholesome creature. Not a whore, either, unless his senses deceived him. She smelled of a woman’s trials, the sort of strong, rich scents women keep to themselves. “Tell me, what is your business here?”
The Fylking: Outpost and The Wolf Lords Page 72