There was the question of Geric’s mixed blood. Those that shunned him as a match for their daughters would shun him and her now for the same reasons. The landowners from miles around would come, though, to be guested in the village below or outside the castle. Tents and pavilions would litter the fields all around. As Tolan suggested there would be ample opportunity for Geric to request a word in private with one or another. A chance for he and Tolan to spend a little time with them, to pass or leave gifts. Trinkets. Openly or secretively.
Once the succession was assured they would look north.
To the north was Raven’s Nest, the seat of King Westin. A small kingdom. She’d been there often, once for the majority ceremony of Westin’s son and daughter, twins named Evin and Elen. Westin was a small, chubby man with bright eyes and a wry wit, something his children, unfortunately, hadn’t inherited.
Once they’d visited often but of late there had been a rift between the two kingdoms.
The castle there was bigger than Riverford, nestled in a broad green valley, the town spread around it on all sides like a skirt with concentric rings. It was a prosperous place. Each outer wall marked the time the town had grown beyond its boundaries.
By the time the first bright colors of fall bathed the leaves in crimson and gold Riverford and all around it would be theirs. When the creatures of the borderlands attacked Raven’s Nest, they would send to Riverford for aid. It wouldn’t come. Nor would any other, once the Hunters and Woodsmen of Riverford were converted and found new quarry to hunt – those who fled Raven’s Nest. Isolated and ringed by the mountains no one would know when it fell.
There was something else, some other plot or plan that Ailith could almost see in Tolan’s face as he spoke, some dark joy, some gleeful anticipation. It was as if he wanted to reveal it, wanted to revel in it so much so it sometimes almost seemed as if he might explode with it.
Whatever it was he kept to himself.
Tolan probed Geric for insights into Daran, Goras of the Dwarves, Eliade of the Elves, the Three who were the High Council, chosen from those elected to Council to lead it. He picked through Geric’s memories for all he knew of the members of Council, both high and low. All he knew and had heard of affairs of the Court. How it could be used to divide and isolate.
After there had been no word of the Elven party for some days, Tolan had sent the Guard along the trail of Elon and the others.
He wanted to know, to be sure. He had to know.
The Guard weren’t the trackers the Hunters and Woodsmen were but the wheeling of vultures in the sky had led them to the spot. All they’d found were the bodies of the boggarts and such. Tolan concluded that Elon and his party were dead, consumed by the creatures that survived the small battle. The thought made Ailith uncomfortable, despite the fact that she knew they were well. Perhaps it was the satisfaction in his voice that made her stomach churn.
It had also given them an excuse to rail against the Hunters.
Her father had gone into a huge rage, all feigned, in the courtyard for all to hear. Another plot. That such a horde had come so close to the castle and those of the town below was a disgrace, how had such a thing happened? What were the Hunters doing that such numbers had escaped them?
He sent a messenger out with orders to recall them.
Tolan wanted Gwillim back and he hadn’t come. He needed their skills.
Please, Elon, please have reached them and warned them, she thought.
Her muscles were cramped but she had to have a care for stretching them in so tight a space. Constrained as she was, it was hard to keep fit these days.
Each morning, in the early hours before dawn when the light barely touched the sky and the birds started chirping and singing to welcome the sun, she crept down the hidden stairs to run as hard as she might for as far as she dared, and then back again before the light was good enough for those on the walls to see her.
On her return, she worked with her swords as much as was possible within her chambers. It was her only outlet.
That glimpse she’d had of Korin in the courtyard had proven true. He was friend to her no more, or to anyone. There was no hope of riding now unless she borrowed Smoke again. Young Gellin was like a shadow and poor Meran trembled. Then one day the girl was gone, slipping away in the night. Gellin wouldn’t desert the man who had given him a home, no matter how changed he was. It wasn’t misguided loyalty, it was willing blindness. He simply refused to see. He was convinced Korin would become his old self once again, bringing him treats and patting him on the shoulder. It broke her heart to see it.
The Hunters didn’t return and for that she was glad. Gwillim, at least, was safe. She hoped it would stay that way, that Elon had reached him and convinced him not to return.
Otherwise, she kept to her rooms while she dared and wandered aimlessly sometimes. Like her mother and yet not. With so much inactivity the pretense at mindlessness sometimes didn’t seem like pretense.
She hadn’t yet decided when she would go. Ceremony or no, she would be of age with or without it once the day came. Whether she was here or somewhere else. Nor could she give them too much time to find her again. If she was caught she would be revealed. They wouldn’t allow her that chance again, not then.
A chair scraped. They’d been discussing the matters of Court, picking through her father’s memories. Affairs she’d remembered as pleasant and enjoyable became a darker business, a web of deceit and lies. Petty slights her father had shrugged off with unconcern became major offenses. Gossip and rumor, weaknesses and strengths. Who might be sleeping with whom despite their vows to someone else. Digging at petty faults like conceit or those who put on airs they hadn’t earned. How that could be used.
Tolan paced, his chin down, his arms across his chest.
“What is it with your daughter, Geric?” he demanded, suddenly. “What is it with your people? So stubborn, so willful. Stubborn and willful. Why does it take so long?”
The man who’d been her father looked up.
Ailith sat up as well, her heart suddenly pounding. Was she discovered? Carefully, she stretched one leg, then another. In case she had to run. Up the stairs, take her swords, down the back stairs. Get to the door to the hidden stairs before they had the chance to raise the alarm. If she could. If she could run fast enough.
“How is it she hasn’t succumbed? How does she still resist? Tell me this.”
Geric shook his head slowly.
Ailith had seen him do this before, this careless search through her father’s memories like a marshman sifting the mud for crayfish. It always sent a shudder through her, picturing the thousands of cherished memories tossed aside.
Then he paused.
He went very still. His eyes widened. Sheer joy bloomed on his face.
Ailith didn’t like it. What was it he knew about her that gave him that look?
That made him lick his lips like a wolf.
It felt as if her skin had frosted over, gone cold and tight.
“Perhaps it’s her blood.”
“Her blood?” Tolan asked. He, too, saw the look, that feral anticipation. Now it ran in him, too. “Her blood. What of it? It’s also yours.”
Slowly again, Geric said, “Not all. Some of it is her mother’s. And some another’s.”
Like a cat stalking a mouse, Tolan strolled toward her father slowly. “Another’s? Another’s. Explain.”
“The mix isn’t all mine,” Geric said, looking up, his eyes alight. “Ailith has Elven blood in her as well. Through her mother.”
He paused again.
“Ailith is Otherling.”
Otherling.
The word went through Ailith’s mind like lightning.
Otherling?
No. That was insanity. Otherlings were the mad half-human creatures conjured up to frighten small children. They were the stuff of the stories told around campfires or during a storm to make one shiver with fright. They were madness and death, burning villages
or drowning them while folk slept. Nightmare tales of death and destruction.
That’s not me. Her skin crawled and she shivered.
“It’s true,” Geric said, each word a hammer at her heart. “Delae told us after Ailith was born. Selah was half-Elven, though she didn’t know it until that day.”
Shaking her head, Ailith tried to deny it.
Tolan had gone still, his chin down, his head slightly tilted as if he listened to something she couldn’t hear. His teeth were bared but you couldn’t call it a smile. There was an unholy glee building within him, as if he finally had the answer to an unasked question.
“Yes,” he said, his voice rising with excitement, “yes, that explains it. That’s why I was sent here. That’s why this place. This King. A King and Otherling. Oh, yes, that explains it. Well, well. Yes, that explains it very well.”
Turning suddenly, he fixed Geric with a hard stare. “She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know. How is it she doesn’t know? I’ve seen no magic such as the tales tell. She doesn’t know, does she?”
Geric leaned back with a satisfied smile.
“She doesn’t. Nor will, now. We didn’t tell her. It was agreed. My decision but they agreed. She wouldn’t know. She would grow up a normal child, without that doom hanging over her head, without everyone knowing, everyone waiting and watching. Waiting to see if she would go mad like all the others. No. We would keep the secret, even from her, so she wouldn’t have to grow up wondering if she would be like them. Nor would anyone else. My mother’s people would have killed her out of turn, just for her blood. They remember too well the madness. None know why Otherlings go mad but Delae had a friend who was a wizard. They have theories. It seems Otherling magic may be both blessing and bane. They can’t lie. Ailith can’t. Deflect, dissemble, but not lie. Ask her a question directly, phrase it so she can’t find an aversion or diversion and she’s caught. Her father was amused sometimes to see the ways she’s found around it.”
With a wave of his hand, Tolan said, “Something else. There’s something else.”
Grinning like a man who knows he has shaved dice, Geric said, “Oaths bind her.”
Tolan pounced, grabbing the table and leaning over Geric.
“What, what say you? Oaths bind her?”
“They bind all of them. All Otherlings. That’s what the wizards think drive them mad. Promises made they can’t unmake. Binding them without knowledge of the consequences.”
Ailith couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t true, it couldn’t be true. She wasn’t hearing this.
“But the magic,” Tolan said. “There should be magic.”
Geric shook his head. “Yes. She has it. As a child she would entertain herself with dancing lights above her bed. What’s called elf-lights. It’s why I never had household servants save in the kitchens, in case one might see…After a while, she forgot she could make them.”
“Yes, yes,” Tolan interrupted. “Excellent. Yes. She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know how to use it. All that power and she’s helpless. Excellent. Excellent.”
He paced away, paced back, thinking. “She should be malleable enough by now. We can end it. You can do it. Give her the soul-eater. A gift. Make her promise to wear it. That’s all and we have her. Her and the magic.”
A sudden silence fell. Hesitation. Wariness. Fear.
Geric practically shrank into the chair, all his glee vanishing.
Tolan turned, his eyes narrowing. “What haven’t you told me? There’s something, I can feel it.”
Reluctantly, Geric said, looking away. “Not yet. We can do nothing yet. Not until her majority.”
“What?” Tolan demanded, his eyes furious.
Taking a breath, Geric said, in a rush, “She’s bound not to, not even by me. I made her promise. We spent days crafting the oath, getting the words just so, talking it over, thinking about it. Looking for loopholes and dangers. At first it was too long, too much for a child. We simplified it. As soon as she was old enough to speak, to understand, we made her swear. We bound her not to make promises until her majority, when she was old enough to understand the consequences. No magic where someone might see. No promises, not even to her mother or I. Not one. Save this one promise. And she did. She grew up normal, unknowing of her heritage, of the shadow over her. No one would know. No one does.”
Tolan went still again. Considering.
Frozen in the act of staring through that little hole, Ailith didn’t move. Couldn’t move. If her muscles cramped, she didn’t feel it. She was numb. Stunned.
Part of her mind whirled, calling up a dozen memories. All the times she’d tried to lie but couldn’t. Sitting in her mother’s lap, her young heart broken, trying to cry because Elena from the village wouldn’t play with her anymore. Ailith wouldn’t promise to be friends forever. It had hurt so bad but she couldn’t cry. Her mother had soothed her as she fought the grief over the lost friendship. The thousands of little oaths children swear to each other. Promise not to tell, Ailith? But she couldn’t, although she didn’t, as long as no one asked her directly. Swear not to do that again. She wouldn’t swear but she didn’t do it. How many little compacts, how many small oaths?
Memories of stories told around campfires. Horrible stories. An Otherling who’d started a terrible wildfire, another who’d drowned villages.
The other part of her mind waited and watched. What would Tolan do? What would he do now?
“A few days longer,” he said, suddenly, startling her. “A few days and Riverford is secure. The soul-eater has her. On the day of her majority you will give it to her. A gift from her loving father for all to see. You’ll make her swear to wear it always as proof of her love for you and then her Dwarven blood and Elven blood won’t be able to reject it. Now I know why it took so long for Selah and how she got it off. Her Elven blood. You have to bind those folk to give it time to take hold. We should have left it longer, given it more time to wear away her will. Ah, now I understand. A gift from her loving father on the day of her majority. You’ll make her swear to wear it always as proof of her love for you.”
Geric nodded.
So did Tolan, that odd mirroring. The excitement practically had him dancing.
Pacing across the room he waved at Geric as he strode out the door. “Enough. Get out. Go. I need to think. This has possibilities we hadn’t considered. No, we hadn’t considered. This is the reason I’m here, this opportunity. Yes, it is. Opportunities, yes.”
Geric lumbered out of the chair.
Doors closed.
Ailith sank to the floor. Her knees ached and her feet were numb. Her mind was a blank.
It was insane. She didn’t know what to think, didn’t know what to do. It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t real.
She could almost feel her father’s hands on her face, his voice in her ears. A promise. The words were just out of her reach.
Otherling? No. Otherlings went mad. That’s what her father had feared. It was too much. She couldn’t think of this. It couldn’t be real and it couldn’t be true.
The castle was quiet. Peering out the door, she made certain the way was clear then made her way up the stairs and crawled onto the bed.
Otherling. No.
She buried her head in her pillow and closed her eyes. She didn’t want to think about it. It was too much. Where had her life gone? Everything she thought she knew and believed had been turned upside down. All she wanted to do was sleep, sleep and forget. Pretend she hadn’t heard what she heard.
Sleep was release. Sleep took her down into darkness. Ailith welcomed it.
Darkness.
In the dreaming darkness strange shifting misshapen shadows moved on rough stone walls. An odd sing-song voice whispered somewhere. Dreaming, but she knew that she was and she didn’t. Firelight and shadow danced on the walls. Odd shadows, huge. Dark, dripping walls. Mold bloomed on the stones like cankerous sores. Earth floors and iron doors. Flickering shadows.
A whispering voice, speaking
. That strangely even voice, the odd sing-song.
It chilled her now, chilled her to the bone. It sounded slippery, slurred, almost drunken. And mad. Completely and utterly mad.
“Soon, soon. It begins soon, My Lord,” he crooned. “Raven’s Nest, first, and blood. The others will fall behind the snows. By the time they know of it, the north will be corpses and shadows. Corpses and shadows where only the dark things run and the ghosts walk. The heartland will be open.”
An odd sibilance hissed in the darkness, a voice that wasn’t a voice but a noise that hummed in her head, speaking, but she couldn’t quite hear it. Couldn’t quite understand it.
Unwillingly, she drifted toward a door.
Oh no, she thought, I don’t want to go closer. I don’t want to see this, I don’t want to hear it.
Drifting closer whether she willed it or not. Her legs felt like water, she wanted to run but she couldn’t. Her breath came short. If she’d felt afraid that night in the ruins it was nothing to the terror she felt in that moment. No, she didn’t want to see.
She didn’t want them to see her.
Like a feather on a breeze, tossed and turned, she drifted above the floor and drew ever closer to a door. A dungeon door, made of iron but gaping open. In a corner between the door and wall like a pile of rags was a body. She didn’t know him. And was grateful she didn’t. What had been done to him was terrible. Shocking. There was blood everywhere.
A lot of it, sprayed over the wall.
Closer.
“Yes, it’s taken care of. They’ll never see it. Their eyes will be on the north.”
A murmur, a sound that was almost a voice.
No, please, no. Almost there.
Sheer terror spread through her veins like ice water. She didn’t want to know what was on the other side of that door.
“Did you know, did you know?” Tolan asked. In his glee he sounded insane, mad and nearly mindless. “The daughter, she’s Otherling.”
Sudden sharp attention. Ailith could feel it.
Like a wave it rolled through and past her, a craving that was almost like lust. A hunger, an exhilaration. Ailith could feel it. It made her cringe.
The Coming Storm Page 19