The Coming Storm

by Valerie Douglas

  Blood magic, Tolan drawing off their life force, their pain and suffering feeding his own magic.

  To know that such a one as this drew off his strength and his magic, that he did the same to Colath, Elon’s trusted true-friend for so long, was only added torture. A fact which Tolan and his trackers also well knew, Tolan feeding off that as well.

  It was another layer of horror to know Ailith knew, shared, sorrowed and took on some of the pain they suffered. Elon knew it full well and grieved for it but she would do it for him and Colath as they had done for her. It wrenched at him that she must share this through the bond but share it she would whether he wished it or no.

  She willed strength through that bond to both of them, he could feel it rush through him, easing his pain by some small measure.

  At what price to herself?

  For Colath, there was the pain, the blood and the irons but there was also the pain laid on Elon as well. True-friend, the one person he could trust most but the bond that tied them to each other and now to Ailith helped. They shared out the pain, lent each other strength when they could. Ailith, too, through the bond. Wherever she was she took on their pain and lent them her strength as well. She was strong but he wouldn’t have wished her to suffer so.

  It was the weakness, though, the dreadful sickening draining that was the worst, feeling his life-force drawn away from him. Horrific pain and then the draining weakness as blood flowed and Tolan took from them. The smell of burning, the terrible pain and the weakness again.

  Tolan watched, smiling, as he fed on the power from their blood and the pain. It was almost visible the power he stole from them, it shimmered like the waves of heat from the braziers with their irons.

  Another magic, oddly discordant, dark and bitter, hummed.

  Elon went cold.

  The Door to the South shimmered on the wall and for the first time they saw what it was that had tormented Ailith so. A Dark figure, a shadow within shadows, cowled and faceless. Save for the eyes. It shouldn’t have been possible for there to have been a greater darkness beneath that cowl but there was, and a mad reddish glow.

  Instinctively both averted their eyes from it in their weakness, away from the seductive madness within those eyes.

  That which stood within that Door took his own pleasure of them, drawing off their strength, their life force, their magic.

  It fed, deeply.

  The first battering pain hit her when the trackers took them. Ailith sagged in the saddle, crying out as the first burst of pain hit. Her heart wrenched. Elon. Colath. From and through Elon, too. She fought to straighten herself in the saddle and leaned more into Smoke.

  “They have them, Jareth, they have them now. Horse, Smoke, my friend, if you can manage it, more speed.”

  Somehow, Smoke found it.

  As bad as it was, she dreaded the moment when Elon and Colath reached Tolan’s hands. She felt it when they put iron on them, felt the burning, the ache. For all that, she couldn’t have prepared herself for how bad it became.

  She knew the moment Tolan had them.

  True pain began. Echoes of it reverberated through her and then…

  Jareth saw the moment the agony hit her in full, saw her twist with it, stretch and suffer with the torture she shared with them but she was utterly silent in her struggle. Her blue eyes darkened, her face paled, every muscle went taut.

  Bent over the horse, Ailith willed it on and willed both Elon and Colath the strength to bear it through the bond when she could.

  They pounded through the day and into the night, racing south.

  “I have to sleep,” Ailith said. “He means me to witness it and I must, so he knows that I’m coming. And so they know I am. Don’t wake me too soon, Jareth.”

  Jareth couldn’t imagine it, couldn’t imagine willingly going into a nightmare like that, but she did, in that tiny room in the small inn.

  And he watched over her.

  To close her eyes was an act of will, but for Elon and Colath Ailith did it.

  Darkness closed around her, drew her down into dreaming true.

  Flickering firelight, the door and the doors and the Door to the South. The doors were open.

  Only this time, it was real.

  Both Elon and Colath had been divested of their swords and stripped to the waist. Their arms were manacled to the walls at the wrists with cold iron. It burned, she could see the marks. There was another kind of burning, irons in a brazier. She looked because she had to, at the cuts, the blood, the chains and burning. Her heart wrenched to look at those terrible wounds, so precise, so horribly precise. She forced herself to look, forced herself to look into Elon’s dark eyes. To look at him. To see his suffering. To look at what they had done to him. At the terrible things they’d done to him and to feel through the bond his pain and the weakness, that dreadful draining weakness as Tolan took from him.

  She looked to Colath. Her true-friend. To see the pain he suffered, the same burning, the wounds and to feel that same dreadful weakness.

  Her heart ached and twisted to see them so. She nearly couldn’t bear it. She would, though, for Elon and for Colath.

  Tolan, full of stolen strength, as bloated as a tick, gloated. Fed… Weakened them, as he fed off them.

  No! Her heart wrenched terribly.

  Mornith, watched…and fed as well.

  If they kept going as they were, Elon and Colath would die, truly.

  But they would be a long, terrible time in the doing of it.

  “Look what I have for you, little Ailith,” Tolan said, gaily, with a wave of his hand. “I told you I would have them and I would have you. I have them. Maybe I’ll trade them for you.”

  Elon heard a name. It roused him. Through the pain, he looked up at the sound of Ailith’s name.

  To his astonishment he could See her, Ailith, a shadow-Ailith with her blue eyes and chestnut hair. Seeing her expression, he forced himself not to share the pain he suffered. Looking into his eyes, in her anguished steel-blue eyes he could see she saw it anyway.

  He shook his head. Don’t see this.

  Raising his head was an effort but Colath managed it as well. A ghost of Ailith stood beyond Tolan, conjured by him. He hated her seeing this, seeing him like this, the pain and the torment.

  She met his eyes, her steel-blue ones reflecting his suffering but steady.

  Elon saw her lips move.

  She called to them, willed them to hear her.

  Tolan’s eyes slit. He’d seen her lips move but didn’t know what she’d said.

  Ailith had gambled on that, that Tolan didn’t know the language.

  In Elvish, those words. Not really heard but sensed.

  Elon hadn’t known Ailith knew his tongue.

  Trust me, she said, I come, soon.

  No, Ailith, he thought, but he knew she would.

  Then as suddenly as she’d appeared, she was gone.

  Tolan roared in frustrated fury.

  Jareth, warding her.

  Elon was grateful.

  The sickening weakness, the draining, started again, as Tolan took his fury out on them.

  Elon hated it, that weakness.

  Trembling and shaking, Ailith stumbled to her feet then fell to her knees and was sick. It seemed she couldn’t vomit up enough, and then, finally, it passed. She rinsed her mouth clean with water from her waterskin, wiped her mouth and remounted Smoke.

  “Ailith,” Jareth said.

  She looked at him, her eyes shadowed but steady. “Thank you.”

  He nodded, got on his horse and followed. There was nothing else he could say or do.

  Dawn, early. Ailith could See the gray lights closing on them. It was time.

  “Go now, Jareth,” she said, gently. “Then follow. Whatever you do, don’t get caught.”

  Those blue-gray eyes met his.

  “Don’t lose me.”

  “I won’t. Not for my life, Ailith.”

  “Then go.”

  He
went.

  Ailith felt the Trackers close around her. All those gray lights in her head. She would have to make it look good but conserve her strength. She would give them a good fight and pray they would see her as one of them, as one of their race, the race of men. Weak.

  She wasn’t. She was Elven, and Dwarven, too, and she could endure. Would endure.

  If she could, she would have spared Elon this, Colath this. They would know when she was taken as she’d known when they were.

  She knew and accepted there would be pain.

  Elon had taken the pain of the soul-eater on himself. She would do this for him and for Colath. For her love for them and for the shared bond between them.

  The trackers closed around her.

  Ailith drew her swords as they surrounded her.

  She fought because she must but the sound of the swords she heard in her mind was the sound she’d heard the day she, Elon and Colath had sparred. The music of the swords.

  The wound in her shoulder opened again, fresh pain speared from it.

  In the end she went down and they hurt her as they took out their frustration and their success on her.

  She bore it then made it seem as if she fainted. The chains went on.

  She knew through the bond how much Elon hated what they did to her, how much it pained him to know this, how much it tormented Colath. She wished she could spare them, but she couldn’t.

  It was hard, nearly impossibly hard, for Jareth to stand there and watch from safety. Harder than he’d ever believed possible but Jareth watched as he knew Ailith had what was done to Elon and Colath. He watched because he must, for their sake and hers and because if she could bear it he could.

  At first, there was an awful beauty to it, to watching her as she fought, and he knew that if Elon and Colath could see her in those first moments they would have been proud. She and Smoke fought as one, her swords flashing in the thin autumn sunlight. Even ahorse she was graceful, lovely to watch, even at so deadly a purpose.

  He saw the blow that took her from Smoke’s back, saw her land on her wounded shoulder and the blood flow afresh.

  Still, she rolled, came up on her feet and whirled to drive them back.

  Her swords flew and flashed in the pale sunlight.

  Until she went down.

  One drove a fist into her wounded shoulder and she collapsed. Even though Jareth knew she feigned some of it, it still hurt to see. More to see the chains on her, to see them strip off her boots so she must stumble after them barefoot.

  He waited.

  Then he followed.

  Elon felt Ailith’s pain even in the midst of his own and his heart twisted. That hurt nearly drove out the more immediate pain they laid on him. Looking into Colath’s eyes, he saw the sorrow mirrored there as his true-friend shared it, too.

  I come, she’d said, soon. Ailith. His heart wrenched. She was coming. She would.

  Tolan smiled, swinging the chain with the soul-eater on it. The one Elon had been carrying. He waited for her.

  A chill went through him. Or did he?

  Not now, Elon thought. Not now.

  Whatever it was Ailith had planned…

  Tolan smiled, nearly danced with glee. His face melted and reformed, melted and reformed.

  “They have her, they have her. Which shall I hang it on, which will she see? Which shall I hang it on, which will she see?”

  His eyes went to Elon and the hate in his mad eyes was strong.

  Tolan smiled and turned to Colath.

  No.

  Not Colath. Not his true-friend. He would know it through the bond, would feel the ripping away of Colath’s valiant soul. The friend who’d stood by him, beside and behind him so faithfully for so long.

  His eyes steady, Colath stared the dark wizard down, even in the face of the soul-eater.

  That one would see nothing, nothing of the fear, of the coldness that went through him at the thought of that thing touching him.

  Tolan stood, soul-eater in hand, so close, too close to Colath, waiting for Ailith.

  Even in his own extremity, Elon flinched when they brought her stumbling in with heavy chains on her bleeding wrists. Ailith. She was Elven enough that the iron chafed. There was blood on her face and more of it matted her hair – a bruise darkened one side of her face beneath the blood and there was more blood from her shoulder.

  Fury nearly transcended his agony. If he could have killed Tolan in that moment he would have.

  Just for that.

  All he needed was his swords.

  The trackers dropped her carelessly to the floor.

  She fell to her hands and knees.

  Looking at Ailith, Colath would have killed Tolan with his bare hands, seeing what they’d done to her. He longed for the feel of the hilts of his swords in his hands.

  “Ah, little Ailith,” Tolan crooned. “All alone are you? Did the others run? Did the others flee? No matter. I told you I would have them and I do. I told you I would have you and I do. Broken and bleeding, broken and bleeding. Which shall I hang it on, which will you see? This one or that one. This one, I think. It will be more entertaining.”

  The flickering firelight came from braziers. Ailith could see them from the corners of her eyes. Hot irons. One of the trackers stood close to them, turning the pokers, stirring the coals to get maximum heat.

  Lifting her head, Ailith could look on them now, Elon and Colath, and see the truth of what had been done to them.

  A breath whispered out of her, left her breathless.

  Elon. Her heart ached to see the cuts and tears and slices on him, the burns. His stern, strong face showed nothing but there was pain in his dark eyes, not his own but hers.

  Her eyes went to Colath at Tolan’s words and she went cold.

  Tolan stood with a soul-eater in his hands.

  Colath. He was too close to Colath. To put that thing on him. Knowing what it would do to her true-friend and sword-mate. The pain. She remembered the pain Tolan had showed her. More torture for Elon, too, that Tolan would do this to his true-friend, his dearest, closest and oldest friend as he watched, unable to prevent it. He would watch and he would feel it.

  Her heart wrenched for him, for him and for Colath.

  It would be torture as well for her, although Tolan wouldn’t know it. She, too, bore the true-friend bond with Colath, so true and so sure.

  For Elon, for herself, she had to draw Tolan away.

  “No,” she said, suddenly, “that would be mine.”

  Elon thought his heart would stop at her words. Ailith, no.

  Locking eyes with her, a chill shivering through him, Colath shook his head violently in denial.

  Tolan turned. “Ah, would it? Would you do it? Would you trade your life for theirs?”

  It was what he and those like him did, she knew, torment one to torment the others – that’s what Talesin had said.

  Ailith struggled to her feet. Tolan was still too close to Colath, too close with that dreadful thing in his hands. Her weakness wasn’t so feigned, pain bit into her shoulder.

  Jareth, where was Jareth?

  In the lights in her mind, she sensed him near.

  Intrigued by her efforts, Tolan took another step away from Colath. Tolan’s back was turned now to both he and Elon.

  “Would you? Trade your soul for theirs?”

  The trackers watched, fascinated.

  Quickly, Ailith met Elon’s eyes. A sending through the bond.

  Elon saw the look and the warning in those sure and steady blue eyes. Too steady.

  Ah, Ailith. She had something planned.

  He felt something through the bond. Something. He almost smiled, nodded and tensed, prepared himself.

  She shot a similar glance at Colath. The same message passed through the bond to her true friend, Be ready.

  There was something in Ailith’s eyes, a sense through the bond. With an effort, Colath slowly straightened, gathered what strength he had.

 
; Ailith’s gaze went to Tolan, looked into his snake-like eyes and answered with absolute conviction so he would know the truth of it.

  “In a heartbeat,” she said softly, “For them, yes. I would take it for either or both, with all of my heart and soul, yes, I would trade mine for theirs.”

  Closing her eyes, she sank down to her knees, willed Tolan closer.

  “Always. Always. But you don’t trade, though, do you Tolan? You just steal. So I won’t have to trade after all, will I?”

  He took another step closer, his eyes narrowing at her words.

  She looked up at him and smiled. Shot to her feet.

  A light in the darkness.

  She threw the elf-light directly at his face. His slitted eyes shut as he flinched and staggered back, away from the brilliance of it.

  The signal to Jareth.

  Magic, a shiver of it.

  Elon felt it. A familiar and known magic. Jareth, somewhere near. To his astonishment and pleasure his swords appeared at his feet.

  Colath’s swords appeared at his. His heart gladdened.

  Elven steel.

  Another whisper of magic, a softer magic, sweet, closer, drifted over Elon’s skin.

  Ailith’s voice rang in the room, her tone reverberating in the massive space.

  “Elon, Colath, you would be so proud of me, I’ve learned a new thing…” She paused, but only for a moment, and then her voice raged. “How to shatter iron.”

  Her head came up, those steel-blue eyes blazed and then their chains and manacles did just that.

  The irons in the brazier exploded, too, sending white-hot iron flying through that part of the room.

  The tracker nearest was too close. He screamed as the shards pierced him in a dozen places, the wounds cauterizing themselves even as they burned deeper.

  Ailith was close enough now, far closer than Elon had been when he’d helped Colath Heal her.

  Her swords appeared at her feet.

  She smiled and sent a surge of strength and Healing through the bonds to Elon and Colath as she bent to take her weapons up. It wouldn’t Heal all their wounds, she had neither the time nor the energy to do so but it would help. The surge went from her to Elon to Colath. So much so that there was only enough strength left in her to stand for a little while before exhaustion took her.