The Coming Storm

by Valerie Douglas

  “A week or more ago.”

  “You don’t know it well.”

  “No, but I’m learning,” she said.

  For a time they walked in silence.

  After a moment, she said, “Talesin. Tolan tried to make me angry.”

  “He would, strong emotion is a powerful component of any magic. Using those visions you saw, the memories?”

  She nodded.

  Looking out into the night he took a slow breath, remembering. “No one should see such terrible things.”

  The blood and the chains, the terrible wounds. He shut away the memory.

  “If you could look upon that and not go mad, with so much laid upon you already, you need not fear it. What happened?”

  As with all Elves, his face was calm but in the depths of his eyes she could see the awful pain and horrific memories. Grief and a pain so deep it still wounded him.

  She took a deep breath. “I saw the look in Tolan’s eyes. Then I remembered what Elon had said, that it wasn’t wrong to fear such power, only to fear misusing it.”

  “It’s well you recognize that,” he said. “As for Elon’s advice, he is wise, is our Elon.”

  A smile. “He thinks so, too.”

  He gave her a quick glance and allowed himself a small smile in return.

  “It’s well you recognize that, also.” A pause. “You fought it. And Tolan.”

  “I will the next time as well.”

  “Good. He’s trying to take advantage of your inexperience. Tolan may invade your dreams but he doesn’t control them completely. He terrifies you with these images because he enjoys hurting you and to keep you off balance. That’s part of his revenge for thwarting his plans.”

  “He told me that if he takes me…”

  She couldn’t say it.

  He nodded and laid a hand on her shoulder. “You should know, it’s something they’ve done before. Use one, turn one, against the other. The shame remained even where there was no blame. They turned our honor against us. You fear it, that he’ll succeed.”

  It was her turn to stare out into the darkness, holding those horrible visions at bay.

  “Yes.”

  “Oaths bind you, Ailith, as even honor can’t. Your father was a wise man. Think on that. In the meantime, I would show you a thing.”

  With a turn of his wrist an elf-light appeared, with a wave it disappeared. “Lay your hand on my arm and I’ll do it again so you may sense it.”

  She laid her hand on his arm and felt … something.

  A ball of light appeared in the palm of his hand.

  Her eyes, though, were caught by his hand, by the bare skin of his arm where his sleeve had fallen back.

  She couldn’t miss what she saw there, scars on Elven skin. Elves didn’t scar, not easily, they healed too fast. Those wounds would have been open for a long time. With her hand on his arm, through it she could feel the thrum of memory of tearing pain and searing agony.

  She went very still before she raised her eyes to his.

  Those old eyes had seen far too much.

  “An Elf and a wizard was a great prize for them,” he said, softly. “I hadn’t meant you to know that.”

  Her heart went out to him.

  Through that touch, through Elven empathy, he felt the rush of emotion. He inclined his head gravely.

  “You are a better Elf than you know.” Then he nodded at the light. “Can you do that now?”

  Ailith raised her eyes to his.

  Turning her palm up, a small sphere of light appeared in the palm of her hand.

  Talesin looked deep into her eyes, the pale blue light in her hand reflected within her darker blue eyes, cool, clear and sharp.

  “Remember, Ailith, that even in the greatest darkness there can be light. You are one such, Elon another. Jareth, Colath, Jalila. All of them. There are others. Remember that and that you aren’t alone.”

  She nodded.

  “Have no fear of sleeping tonight,” Talesin said, “this place is warded so even one such as Tolan can’t trouble your dreams. We learned much from that time. He can’t reach you here.”

  With a quick touch to her shoulder, he left, an elf-light bobbing over his shoulder to light his way.

  The night was quiet.

  With a wave of her hand, Ailith banished the elf-light she’d created.

  Looking up at the spangled sky, with its river of light, she found the Loom.

  Peace for a night.

  Tomorrow would come soon enough.

  Oaths bind you. Her father had bound her with a promise, to protect her.

  Magic.

  She cupped her hand and a tiny elf-light appeared within it.

  Even in the greatest darkness there can be light. Looking inward, she saw the stars that spread across her heart and mind and soul, thousands and thousands of them.

  Lives.

  The scars on Talesin’s arm. They’d been terrible wounds. Chains and blood.

  A light in the darkness. Her father’s face, her father’s voice. Promise me, Ailith. A different binding. Her mother’s face, from the time before, with a serenity in it that Ailith now knew as Elven. Delae. All gone. That grievous pain had grown more bearable. She couldn’t save them, she couldn’t help them. Those lights were gone. All the magic in the world couldn’t change that. There were lights here she would help if she could. Oaths bind you as even honor cannot, Talesin had said.

  She walked slowly back, not so much thinking as clearing her mind.

  The gallery was empty, her feet made barely a whisper of sound on the slates of the floor. What would it be like among a city of these? She couldn’t imagine it. Ascending the steps, she was passing the fourth balcony when a familiar deep voice called to her softly.

  “Ailith.”

  Elon, standing in the darkness. With his dark hair and dark eyes, the dark robe and the vines and such, he nearly blended into the night.

  In the palm of her hand appeared a small light, small so as not to awaken the others.

  “I’ve learned a new thing,” she said, with a small smile as she joined him.

  “So I see. Talesin?”

  She waved the elf-light away. She could see him well enough in the starlight.

  “Yes.”

  There was that stillness to her that was also very Elven, Elon noted.

  “I need to ask you a thing,” he said.

  “Ask.”

  That, too, was Elven, that directness.

  “Why did you come to me, when you fled?”

  The question surprised her, clearly.

  “In truth, Elon, I never considered anything else. Where else would I go? Oh, I well know I could’ve lost myself in the heartlands. As Geric’s daughter I could have claimed sanctuary anywhere. I could’ve taken my chances and gone to the King. Knowing what I knew?”

  She shook her head.

  “I couldn’t. You knew there was something wrong. I could see you knew, even if Tolan and Geric couldn’t. They couldn’t, though they feared what you might find. You were acting on what you knew, what your Foresight and your wisdom told you was true. I’d been helpless for so long and I don’t like being helpless. Hemmed in on all sides. I wanted, needed to do something. If I’d gone elsewhere, who could I have told, who would have believed me? I would’ve had to stay silent with what I knew or have folk think me mad even while knowing I wasn’t. Waiting for the darkness to come. I couldn’t do that, stand aside and do nothing. There was truly and ever only one place to go.”

  Elon stared out into the darkness, remembering the war that had gone on within him and the weight he’d carried since, now lifted.

  “You couldn’t have known what I would do, knowing the truth of you.”

  Tilting her head, she looked at him.

  “Couldn’t I? I doubted, that’s true. I might have misjudged the sense I had of your honor and integrity. I knew the things my father had told me of you. I also knew that when I rode into your camp that night you truste
d me. All reason said otherwise.” She smiled a little. “As Colath said, I didn’t look like a king’s daughter. You’d been told I was elsewhere by those you had as yet no reason to mistrust. Yet you believed me and acted on it.”

  “You’re a King’s daughter, yet you follow me.”

  She waved that away. “So I am and raised to lead but I’m not foolish. I can rule and I know it, I learned it at my father’s knee. When or if the time comes give me an army and I can lead it. I know tactics and strategy. I know these things. None of that applies here. I also know what I don’t know. This is a different kind of war. More than that, not all leaders wear crowns. There are leaders and there are Leaders. You are one of those last. I follow you because I choose to and because I must if we’re to win here.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me all you saw in that dream?”

  Her breath caught and her heart. “Elon.”

  Those terrible images. Chains and blood. Not visions, memories. Tolan’s memories. Once, they’d been real. Somehow even then she thought she’d known that. They’d seemed too true, too immediate. They had been real, once, those terrible visions. She had seen the scars on Talesin.

  In the starlight Elon could see her face plainly enough, see the look in her eyes, the horror. What had she seen?

  Very gently, he said, “Tell me.”

  “I can’t,” she said and the terrible pain in her voice was clear.

  It pained him to hear it.

  “How can I say that with you standing before me? Have those pictures in my mind? How could I tell you of that? I can’t. I won’t. It won’t happen.”

  “What won’t happen? Tell me, Ailith.”

  His dark eyes compelled her, not through magic but through trust.

  “He showed me what he’ll do to you, to Colath, to Jareth, Jalila if we’re captured.”

  Ailith leaned on the rail and looked away from him. She couldn’t bear to look at him with those visions in her mind. Not and speak of it. She couldn’t.

  “Chains. Chains and blood.”

  He laid a hand on her shoulder. He could feel the tension, the tear in her heart, the shame, horror and aching agony.

  “And me,” she said. “And me.” That image, beyond that door. “You and Colath, Jareth, Jalila. All in chains. So much blood. Me with a soul-eater, putting it on you.”

  Chains on the soul.

  That image was such a shock Elon’s mind recoiled from it. Chains on him, bound. And on Colath, his true-friend. To see him and the others chained and battered. Men had done that more once to his kind over the centuries. To have seen that, to have that thrown against her. To know what it meant to them. Men could only stand so much. Elves had no such release but they understood the concept of time. To see herself, betraying as she’d been betrayed.

  She turned to look at him and the expression in her eyes was fierce and angry. “It won’t happen. It won’t.”

  Ailith straightened

  Oaths bind you, Talesin had said. A light in the darkness.

  “I will never betray you, Elon. Never,” she said, her voice strong, “not you nor any of the others. I will lift no hand in harm against you or them. He won’t use me to bind your souls. He won’t. I swear it on my honor, on my life and on my soul. It will not be.”

  It was as if a deep and sonorous bell rang deep inside her.

  “My hands will never lay such a thing upon you,” she said, vehemently.

  Elon felt it, that shiver of binding magic. He looked at her, knowing what she’d just done, what she had bound to herself. Willingly. In the face of that, in the face of the pain Tolan had inflicted on her, Elon had to tell her, needed her to know what he himself knew to be true. She needed to hear it and from him.

  “Until the day I would see such a thing with my own eyes,” he said, quietly. “I would never believe it possible. You would never do such a thing, not of your own will, Ailith, I know it. This I swear to you.”

  He looked at her, let her see the truth of what he said in his eyes.

  Ailith sighed. “And you wonder why I came to you?”

  He allowed himself a small smile and then sobered.

  “I’m sorry, Ailith, to have put you through such pain,” he said.

  This Tolan had more to answer for now, to torture her this way. And make him a party to it.

  “I needed to know,” he said, firmly, “Never fear to tell me.”

  She shook her head. “It wasn’t fear, it was what I saw. How could I say such things to you? Look you and Colath in the eye and talk of such terrible things. Or Jareth and Jalila. To look in your faces and still see what I’d seen in that vision. I couldn’t.”

  “Always,” he said, taking her hands so she would know it for truth and feel it, “you can. So you aren’t alone with it.”

  It was true, she could sense it through the empathy, sense it and the core of strength that ran so deep in him.

  “Your hands are cold,” he said, releasing them. “Go rest.”

  Weary in body and soul, she nodded. She paused once on the stair to look back at him, a greater shadow against the darkness and then she went on.

  Crossing his arms, Elon stared out into the night. It had been a day of unexpected revelations.

  This Tolan and the other, that Dark figure Ailith had seen. A wizard with stolen Elven magic. The creatures of the borderlands massing. He thought of Aerilann and all of those in it all unknowing of what was about to be unleashed upon them. The heartland and all within it, Elves, Dwarves and Men, all unaware. He could still prove none of it. There remained Raven’s Nest and winter.

  There had to be a way. Somehow they would find it.

  Chapter Ten

  When they awoke the next morning it was to find their horses saddled, bridled and awaiting them. So was one other. Talesin also waited for them, his arms folded, his pack at his feet.

  “What are your plans?” Talesin asked.

  “Knowing what we do, we have to find a way through Riverford lands to Raven’s Nest to warn them,” Elon said. “Ailith?”

  Jareth said, “Not that Bridge again, please.”

  Restraining a grin, Colath gave Elon a look.

  Apologetically, she said, “It may be the only way. We can’t use the northern trail, not if what we saw in the Gorge is any hint. The only other way I know would be through Dwarven lands.”

  There was a danger there, in bringing Ailith to those places. The Dwarves had more recent reason to hate Otherlings than the other races. If they discovered what she was they would kill her without a second thought. Yet, he should seek them out. They would have to tread carefully.

  He looked at Ailith. She looked back evenly.

  To look at her, there was no way to tell.

  If she was willing to chance it…

  “I would speak with the Dwarven Lore Masters anyway,” Elon said. “I would know what they think of this. What is it they sense?”

  Talesin nodded. “It would be as well. The Lore Masters might be inclined to listen. It seems unlikely they won’t have noticed something amiss so close to their borders. They should be warned in any case.”

  He hesitated for a moment, then handed Elon a silk-wrapped package. “You’ll need this, to help convince them. They’ll remember these.”

  Holding the thing in his hand, knowing now what he knew of them, what their purpose was, Elon loathed it. Hated it, hated touching it even through the silk with every fiber of his being. He looked at Talesin, their eyes met. There was a like loathing there.

  Talesin was right, though, he would need it.

  “If you can find a way to destroy it, do it,” Talesin said. “We never could.”

  They rode through the Veil around Talesin’s Enclave. The ancient Elf glanced back once and didn’t look back again.

  After the third time Ailith did, looking with puzzlement back over her shoulder down the trail, Elon raised an eyebrow in question.

  “There’s something. I can’t put a finger on it,” she said
, frowning, in answer. “I thought I would look at the stars in my mind to see what I could sense around us. Practice so it wouldn’t make my head ache so much. After sensing the Guards, it seemed a good thought to try it now and then. There’s something or someone following us, I think. I can’t sense it well. There’s something odd about it.”

  “Tolan,” Elon said. “His other tries have failed.”

  Ailith nodded. “It’s likely. He knows he did, he said so.”

  “So, what has he set upon our trail this time?”

  “There is a ridge ahead,” Talesin suggested, “where we can see the track for some distance behind us.”

  Trees obscured parts of the trail but other parts of it were clear. Through a break between the trunks they saw the riders but not clearly, eight or ten of them, it was difficult to tell for certain through the foliage.

  “Men?,” Elon asked.

  Ailith hesitated. She was clearly confused and frustrated. “Yes and no.”

  “What is it?” Elon said.

  “They’re not white lights, they’re gray,” she said, letting out a breath. “I would have missed them but for the fact that there’s no one but ourselves around. I thought only to see the difference, between there being something and nothing.”

  Jareth said, surprised, “Testing it?”

  She nodded. “To see what I can see and what I can’t. To sort one from another, nothing and something. So when I saw gray it didn’t make sense.”

  Talesin suddenly went still. He took a breath. “Men but not men.”

  Looking at him, Ailith nodded with relief. “Yes, that’s it.”

  “What is it?” Elon said, looking at Talesin.

  There was something in Talesin’s voice, some odd foreboding. A heaviness.

  “Trackers.” Talesin took a breath, forced back the memories. “These, too, are of old. Men who have gone into service to dark wizards. There are men who glory in violence, who like to shed blood. They take pleasure in it. They have no magic of themselves, it’s imbued in them. Blood magic, a life in trade for it.”

  “Murderers and thieves,” Jareth said. “Exiles.”

  As punishment for their crimes, exile to the borderlands was a common sentence for men who took the life of another or for those who repeatedly broke the laws of men or the Agreement.