by Nunn, PL
The ward had responded to her.
~~~
The rumble of ogre voices mutilated the serenity of the forest. Their smell was too pugnacious for mere winds to blow away. The wood, where the majority of them had set up camp, was turning rapidly into a trampled, foul strip of dying land.
One wondered if the deserts and rocky mountains where ogres generally made their homes had started off lushly planted and fertile. Even to a spriggan, to whom cleanliness was never an important matter, the stench of a multitude of ogres was overbearing.
Bashru weeded his way though the sporadic camps, glowering at no one in particular, clutching in his gnarled fingers a dispatch, that he had written at the prompting of an illiterate ogre captain that was bound for the sidhe commander of the troop. The spriggan did not appreciate playing messenger. The spriggan would have much liked to be roaming the safe forests of the north, looking for a likely spriggan wench to couple with, instead of accompanying a high sidhe hunt out to war with their fellow high sidhe. A bit of inventive marauding here and there was one thing, but this conflict hinted at a great deal of invested time and possibly a great deal of losses where the sidhe’s underlings were concerned. He had personally seen the corpses of over a hundred ogres and half that many goblins left to feed the scavengers in the forest surrounding the Seelie keep. He had no wish to test Seelie defenses, even if they were on the run.
Sooner or later, he knew the troops would be called out again, and this period of lull would be over. The Mistress of the Hunt had taken off with half the host the previous afternoon, while the rest of the court made good use of the keep the Seelies had abandoned. That lady would find trouble.
She had a nose for sniffing it out. And she would come back and the troops would reform and the sidhe would throw them at their enemies. And this time, he might not be able to hide in the background.
He padded through the inner gardens of the keep and approached the main entrance. Bendithy servants warded those portals. He gave his dispatch to them to deliver and strode away. But as soon as he was out of sight he veered to circle the keep’s white walls. The goblins had been looting. They had been gloating over their prizes in camp. Fighting over the best of them. He had overheard them claim that an unguarded entrance lay on the eastern side. Curiosity and no small amount of greed prompted him to stroll past and see just how unguarded. He passed a garden whose protective hedges had been trampled, and sneered at the delicacy of the design. Leave it to a sidhe to take the weakest of nature’s bounty and set it aside for show. One never saw creeping vines or thorn bushes in their gardens. The garden was not unoccupied. As he passed by, a figure on a bench formed out of the low lying limb of a willow tree, looked up at his movement. The spriggan cursed his ill luck and quickly thought up an excuse for lurking around this side of the keep, where no camps had been sat up.
Then Bashru cursed even more, for it was not a sidhe in the garden, but the damnable human. And he had spotted the spriggan and was looking at him with furious eyes. Bashru decided he did not need an excuse for the human and started to make his escape, vowing to explore the possibilities of looting later that night.
The human called out to him and he pretended ignorance. Then a grip of power reached out and encircled his thoughts. For a moment he forgot where he was going. His steps faltered. It took a second to realize that magic was being used on him, and with a determined effort of will he shook the offending spell off. A sidhe would have insisted and punished him for the rebellion. The human graciously let his magical fingers slide off. Bashru tossed a snarl over his shoulder as the man approached.
“Wha’dya want?” he hissed, indignant.
“What are you doing here?”
“Planning a garden,” the spriggan retorted. “What do you think?”
The human stared at him, some small bit of accusation in his eyes. There was deep running anger below the surface emotions. Bashru was clever enough to see that. He wondered what had set the human off. For that matter he wondered what the human was doing here. Last the spriggan had heard, he had been back at the keep with Azeral’s daughter.
“What else?” he snapped, and the man shook his head silently. There was something there that Bashru did not understand. He did not care to take the effort to figure it out. With one last glare, he scurried off towards the wood. But despite his attempts, he could not shake the feeling that something was very much wrong in this keep and with that human and somehow, some way he was going to find himself involved.
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Part Twenty-three
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There was a break in the darkness. A pinpoint of light that pierced the shields of her eyelids. It was an uncomfortable physical sensation that Victoria would have been more than happy to go without.
She had been quite content in her oblivion.
But the light was followed by other bothersome irritations. The scratchy feel of grass under her skin. The cool spray of a light mist that caressed her face. The smell of wood smoke. The soft sound of voices whispering around her.
The voices brought her around. She opened her eyes and stared fuzzily up at what appeared to be a moss covered stone archway. Just beyond it, within her field of vision, was the foliage obscured vista of a pale sky. She blinked back grit and tried to turn her head. The motion hurt.
Her muscles screamed in rebellion. She moaned softly and contemplated closing her eyes again and dropping back into darkness, but curiosity won out and she forced her protesting body into action.
With an effort of pure will she rolled to one side. The motion cost her a blinding stab of pain that ran from her left shoulder down past her ribs and well into her back.
She lay in stunned disbelief, half on her side, her legs curled up to her body as the agony tore through her. Tears pooled in her eyes.
There were people by a fire not too distant from her berth, but they were blurry images at best. Someone noticed her movement, if not her pain, and rose, approaching her. Hands touched her shoulder, pushed her back over in the position she had awakened in.
“You should not yet rise,” a soft female voice advised.
She blinked to clear her eyes and made out the face of the woman leaning over her. Sidhe face. Soft eyes, plaited hair. Vaguely familiar. Victoria could not recall the name.
“What happened?” she whispered, touching a hand gingerly to the center of the pain, a place just below her left clavicle.
“You took an arrow. Rest.”
An arrow! Stunned, she eased onto her back and stared at the stone overhead.
She had been shot. It was an enormity that left her awed. Shakily she lifted a hand and touched the wound once more. She extended that portion of her will that responded to the magic and gently explored the area. Someone had already been at it. There was the feeling of foreign magic in her muscles and flesh. The major damage had been corrected, but healing another was never as easy as healing one’s self. She remembered that lesson plainly. She called in the power and tried to ease the pain. She tried to find the source of the discomfort and mend it more to her liking. Sweat stood out on her brow by the time she had reached a point of comfort. By that time the one sidhe had returned to the fire and her companions, and another was softly walking towards her.
This one she did know. She pushed herself up with less torment and sat on the edge of the moss covered slab as Aloe approached. The sidhe girl stopped several paces from her and stared, great silver eyes narrowed in speculation.
“What happened?” Victoria asked quietly, negligently rubbing her shoulder.
“Where are we?”
A sigh escaped Aloe and she spared a moment to look around herself with clear unease on her face.
“An old place,” she finally said. “A very old place. It’s haven to us now and hopefully to no other.”
Victoria looked out past the fire.
Trees loomed close. A barricade that rose sharply following the line of a sharp hill. The ground
about her was covered with stone flagstones. But they were cracked with age and corrupted by weeds and grasses, and much covered by mosses. The slab where she sat was an overturned support of the building that sheltered her. A room stretched back into darkness, shallow and unadorned. It reeked of age.
“They took our home,” Aloe said with the trace of a tremor in her voice.
There was the hint of a twitch to her jaw. Of anger. Of fear? “The filthy ogres trampled our grove.”
Saying she was sorry would be a moot point. Claiming fault would not ease the pain in Aloe’s eyes. She stood with a twinge of pain, and waited until the world stopped swaying before stepping out of the shelter. Leaves rustled under her boots. She moved past the fire, circling the stone ruins. Aloe followed her soundlessly.
Once past the outcropping of her shelter rest of the valley came into view.
They were only on the outskirts of a warren of thick stoned buildings. Slabs of stone were stacked and piled not unlike dominoes to form a haphazardly collection of dwellings. Some were flat, one story affairs, others rose higher, ponderous and ungainly. The whole of it was dark, even with the pale light of morning… afternoon?
She felt uneasy staring at it. She felt uneasy standing close to something so obviously abandoned and ancient.
“It is a place older than any sidhe,” Aloe whispered. “The folk who built it are long gone and no one knows where, not even those oldest of our people who trafficked with them. The magic they used is not one familiar to us.”
Staring at the blocky shapes, Victoria felt some vague familiarity stir. Something about the careless placing of blocks, as if some great hand had strewn them on purpose, struck a note of recognition. The feeling was eerie and unappreciated. She shivered and looked from the ruins to Aloe.
“How long have we been here?”
“Not yet a day. Neira’sha says this valley’s wards will keep our enemies at bay.”
“She’s all right.” A breath of relief escaped her. “Thank God.”
“Thank someone,” Aloe agreed, but her brow was furrowed. “We’re still waiting for Ashara.”
“Waiting for what? What happened to her?”
“She and a few our most powerful held the shields of our keep while the rest of us fled. That was yesterday. We have heard nothing from them since. The silence I do not fear so much, for they would not risk alerting the Unseelies to their presence… but with so few to hinder travel they should have been here now.”
“Azeral took the keep.” A great deal of sadness crept over Victoria at the thought of the Seelie keep in the hands of the dark lord. It was so pristine a place, so pure. They would tarnish it. Darken it with their malevolence. It made her cold to think of it. She wished fervently for something to cling to. She wondered where the gulun cub was. Phoebe was so efficient a lifter of spirits. She sent out a spear of inquiry looking for the cub, and before she had half completed the thought, memory flooded back. The cub was not here, could not be here. For she could not have followed the sidhe to this gloomy haven. She had been sealed within Victoria’s own room inside Ashara’s keep. Sealed inside as an afterthought to keep what Victoria had really wanted caged, company…..
The color drained from her face and the world spun. She felt Aloe’s hands on her. The girl’s arm about her waist. She was helped to a prone slab of stone.
“You should not be up,” the sidhe said worriedly. “Flesh needs more time to mend, even with the aid of magic.”
“I left him there,” Victoria said numbly. “Oh my God. I left him there for Azeral to find.”
Aloe knelt before her, frowning. Comprehension lit her face. “Your assassin.”
“Azeral will be furious.”
“Rightly so,” Aloe agreed and when Victoria scowled at her, shrugged and said. “One does not find Ciagenii so frequently that losing one’s services is easily forgotten.”
“Or forgiven,” Victoria whispered, then her eyes flared and she shot a glare at Aloe. “How could you just leave him?
You knew he was there.”
“In all honesty, I believe he was overlooked. And even if he was not, he has no loyalty to us. Only you. Who would you have wished to have taken him out of your prison and risked his bite? I tell you freely it would not be a task I would relish.”
Victoria had no desire to argue the point. She had no desire to do anything other than wallow in the misery clenching about her gut. She had abandoned him.
Willing or not, she seemed ever in the habit of losing the things she loved in this world.
~~~
They had run from the time they had abandoned the keep. Hard and fast into the wood, pushing mounts to their limits while the Great Hunt hammered down the last of their defenses. Ashara and her handful of powerful ones. The ones that were old enough and strong enough to keep their heads and hold up a weakening shield against an enemy that vastly outnumbered them, yet young enough to make the headlong dash through the wood that escape required of them.
They knew it was only a matter of time before the hunt was after them.
Before Azeral figured out the only direction they could flee. And despite what Ashara had told those of her folk who had gone before her…her Heartmate in particular…she had no intention of following in their tracks. She could not risk leading the hunt in that direction. So they went in another. Leaving just enough trace of their path to draw pursuit away from the slower caravan of the Seelie court. And then, when the Dockalfar hounds had latched onto their scent, they used every bit of their forest skill to obscure further hints of passage.
Keirom ranged behind them, making certain of the secrecy of their path. Ashara forged ahead, bolstering the strength of horses that would have long ago given out.
Her party followed closely, expending power aplenty in smothering spell of silence, of non-entity. Even the birds of the forest they passed under were unaware of their presence. The Hunt, despite all its offensive power, would not break that spell. Whether their trackers could overcome Keirom’s woodcraft remained to be seen.
The route they traveled was southerly. Around the bulk of lake Mirikii.
It was a longer journey by far than the passage across the lake would take her people. The southern arms of the lake reached almost to the plains bordering the End of the World Mountains. The forest was a thin veneer of shelter between the lake and the flat grasslands at the extreme south end of Mirikii. After two days of constant travel, even the sidhe’s spells of endurance were having little effect. They were forced to camp once, at the edge of the lake shore and they did so with unease and impatience. So they sat, the most powerful of her lot, shivering in the misty cold of dawn, because they would not risk the light of a fire or the hint of magic not used for obscuring. They would not even dare to travel the distance with their great minds to discover if their folk had reached the haven they hoped for in safety. That ignorance ate at Ashara more than anything else. She crouched with her knees to her chest the long hours of the morning, sleep a distant and unattainable goal, while the worry gnawed at her. If their misleading had not been fruitful, then the hunt might have latched onto the more prominent trail of Okar and her people.
When the sun reached mid day they moved on. They left the shores of the lake on the third day and cut north east through the forest. When the lands began to dip and rise she knew they had reached the outskirts of the forest covered hills of the Great Eastern Wood. The valley of Vohar was nestled within them.
As the day drew to a close and night wrapped her velvety arms across the sky the first of the runes blocked their progress. Ashara had not realized they were so close. It was not until they were making their way down the incline of a particularly rocky slope that the fear came upon them. The horses seemed not to notice at all. The riders experienced a few moments of unease that without warning blossomed into a stomach curdling, mind numbing fear.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, Ashara knew what was happening. But that nub of rational thought was pushed
back in the face of rune caused hysteria.
And every step the horse took further down the slope the fear increased tenfold. She could not stop the scream that bubbled up. She heard gasps and cries of fear behind her.
Put up shields! Put up shields, came the one defensive thought. But that required some degree of concentration.
Some degree of conventional thinking. Her body took over where her magic and her mind would not function. Jerking savagely on the reins she turned her mount and spurred it back up the slope, fast on the heels of her comrades who had come to the same conclusion quicker than she.
A dozen paces up the hill and the emotions of utter terror and revulsion ceased. Just stopped altogether. They stopped, a shuddering group of sidhe, trading pale faced, shocked stares. Those few of her group that had not crossed the boundary of the rune stones looked past their comrades gravely. Keirom, who spoke so infrequently that the sound of his voice was unfamiliar, commented dryly, “So the wards are working.”
Ashara wiped sweat from her brow then patted the heavy neck of her mount who had not deserved the rough treatment it had gotten from her in her haste get back up the hillside. Just so. She thought. And beg the four great elements that her people were on the other side of that terrible warding.
~~~
He was young in the dream. It was evident in the carelessness of his step, the excitement that coursed through him as he moved towards his destination. The wood he walked within was just beyond the great city of Eagra. He could see its many spires over the fringe of trees. It had been long years since he had seen that far northern city. Ages before his lord father had gone the way of the most ancient of mountains, eroded away by time. Before he had been given mastership over his father’s court and made a name for himself among the other sidhe lords.
He thought to wonder, in what subconscious control he had over his dreaming, what he might possibly be doing outside Eagra. There was nothing there that interested him now. Nothing but a melting pot of races. Dens of iniquity that were too low breed for even Unseelie tastes.