The Coming Storm (23 page)

Frantically, she searched, looking for the cut or tear, the rip in the seams. There, a place where the seam parted.

She had few fancy clothes but there were still pieces of her mother’s dress.

With Elven-silk wrapped around her fingers, she felt through the mattress. She didn’t look at what she found, never touched it with her bare fingers. Binding it tightly in the remaining pieces of the dress, she tied a long piece of thread around it and dropped it down the garderobe. The thread held it suspended far below but she could pull it back up if she needed. The thought that she might need to wear it, even temporarily, sickened her.

The terrible humming faded. She felt better but her hands were shaking, her stomach rolling.

This might work in her favor, though, and buy her time.

Tolan would expect her to act differently. She could be dreamy for a while, imitate her mother as she had acted during those last days. To all appearances she would take to her rooms as her mother had.

The only question was would he be able to tell it was a sham?

The sun was setting. It was time for dinner.

She brushed out her hair, her stomach churning. She didn’t want to go down there to the Great Hall but she must.

Her father, or the soulless thing that was now her father, looked up as she came in.

It was so hard to look at his face and not see memories of a thousand happy moments. And one terrible one.

Tolan craned his head around, too.

The smell of food made her nauseous. Although she’d eaten nothing all day, she could only pick at her meal The long night, the few hours of rest and that thing in her room had left her tense and anxious. She was exhausted and she hated this pretense.

“Is something wrong?” Tolan asked, his eyes glittering.

“I don’t feel well,” she said, not looking at him. It wasn’t a lie. “I’m tired. Father, may I be excused?”

His eyes, too, had that ugly brightness, that anticipation. It made his familiar face look like an odd mummer’s mask – the distorted face-like masks that mummers wore when they danced their way through the village on holidays.

“Of course,” he said and smiled.

There was no real sympathy there. If he’d been her father in truth, there would’ve been. Later, her real father would have brought fresh bread and weak soup from the kitchens with his own hands to make her feel better. This was just a mask, a trumpers mask, an ugly distortion of what her father had been.

Relieved, she fled but not far. She didn’t want to sit and pretend, to look at their faces and have them look back but she wanted to know what was said between them. In only her court shoes, which were little more than slippers, she moved nearly silently, creeping into the library to crawl behind the shelves.

“That’s easier,” Tolan said with satisfaction, in that odd high-low voice. “Much easier. Proximity will do much of the work, as with your lady wife, Geric. Time will tell, time will tell.”

Now she knew for certain.

So that was how they’d caught her mother.

It explained the dreaminess. A Soul-eater. Sleeping with it each night, all the time she’d spent in her rooms. It seemed you didn’t have to wear it for it to have an effect on you. That buzzing though, that hum, how had her mother not heard it? Had she dismissed as a trick of the ear? She didn’t know.

Unconcerned, Geric asked, “How long?”

Leaning back in the chair, Tolan propped his arm with his mug of wine on the arm. He shrugged a little.

“Enough. You took some time. Selah surprised me, she took far longer than I expected. Strong wills and stubbornness seem to run in your family, Geric. They do, they do indeed. Tell me more of good King Daran.”

Ailith listened for a while as her father spoke, randomly, his thoughts jumbled and the topics wandering.

It was his voice, his face, but not his manner. He’d never rambled so aimlessly. Tolan kept having to remind him of his topic. Listening to his voice she remembered the thousand times she’d sat by her father’s knee listening to him talk about the affairs of Court, or those in town, the clear judgments he’d rendered.

After a while, she crept carefully from behind the shelves and went up the stairs.

Elon stood by the entry to the ruins, looking out on the bodies of the borderland creatures, out into the silent, starlit night. Somewhere, out in that darkness, Ailith of Riverford was riding home. She’d been brave and forthright. And he’d let her go.

“There was no choice, Elon,” Jareth said.

Perhaps Elon didn’t need to hear it but it needed to be said.

Jareth needed to say it, for himself.

There had been no choice. None.

Geric as King was the ultimate law within his Kingdom. The Agreements and the Accords stated that clearly. Even Daran High King had no right to interfere within the borders of this realm, save for two exceptions – a clear and proven violation of the Agreement or open rebellion that threatened the peace and safety of all. Neither was the case here. There’d been no violation of the Agreement that they could prove, there was nothing in it or the Accords to account or cover for this and Jareth had seen no sign in the castle or the village of open rebellion.

Nor was there likely to be with the captain of the Guard in thrall.

“We can’t break the law.”

Elon said nothing for a moment, turning the small ball of silk with its dangerous contents over in his fingers. He and Jareth had both warded it, rendering it somewhat safe.

Choices and judgment. Elven law allowed for them. He had chosen. This odd presentiment, the sense of impending doom that hovered at the edges of his thoughts warned him that greater forces were at work here than they knew. Greater forces than applied to just one person. The laws of Men and the Agreement. In all the many hours he’d spent with Daran, with the Council, with his own people and the Dwarves, he’d never considered the laws of Men. Had never really looked at them in truth. Without looking at them, he’d still sworn to uphold them. That was on him.

There was a greater law still that bound him. Honor. He couldn’t find a way to reconcile his honor with that vow. He couldn’t violate one and not violate the other.

She’d known she had to go. She wouldn’t have gone with them and had known it. The thought didn’t offer him any solace.

“He knows,” Colath said, quietly.

In the end, it had been Elon’s decision to make. First among equals. They’d given him their opinions but to him fell the greater weight of making that final verdict. Colath didn’t envy him that.

Jalila said, “She’s clever, she’s done well so far. Better by far than many would. Calm, controlled. She keeps her humor.”

Clever, yes. Clever enough to outwit the master of one of these
? Elon wondered, fingering the warded amulet in its insulating ball of cloth.

Where had it come from? How had this Tolan come by it
? It was another piece of that mosaic, the pattern still not clear.

They would have to find Talesin.

Of all Elves now, he was the only one of that age not to have gone to the Summerlands. His wizard’s magic had stretched his life far longer than even the most long-lived of their people.

Talesin. Both Elf and wizard. He might know something, have another piece of this peculiar mosaic.

This Tolan was also a piece but where did he fit into it, was he merely a player, or the mastermind behind it?

And what was the final plan
?

There had been nothing about the man to alarm Elon, nor Jareth. Both of them were well attuned to magic and its use. He thought back carefully. There’d been nothing. That worried him as well. Not as much as the other but it had deeper and longer implications. They relied on that instinct. What if there was something they missed, another like this Tolan? There was so much at stake.

What was one life measured against so many? How many lives, if what he felt looming on the horizon was true? Hundreds, thousands, his people, Men, Dwarves. Trade all those lives for one?

This solved nothing. The decision had been made and now he must live with it.

He raised his head. “Rest for a while. We came here for a purpose and that hasn’t changed. We have another. I made a promise. I’ll keep it. There are a few hours left until daylight, we should take what rest we can.”

They dragged the bodies of the dead creatures out. Elon took first watch and no one argued.

Jareth thought he wouldn’t sleep, he was so tense. The events of the night, the revelations and that damned charm had left him shaken and troubled. All of it chased him down to a restless slumber.

Sleep claimed Jalila, too. Her dreams were haunted by shapes and forms that swam through endless darkness.

It didn’t claim Colath soon, though he gave the illusion.

No, he watched Elon, his true-friend, stand in the doorway and turn the small ball of warded silk endlessly in his long, agile fingers. It was like him. He’d learned to compromise as men did, treading the fine balance between integrity and necessity but he didn’t like it. A man of honor, he didn’t live easily with those choices. He wouldn’t live easily with this one.

The sun was just lightening the sky when they rode out the next morning. Their breakfast was travel bread eaten in the saddle.

As they left the walls of the old ruins behind Elon said, “If we hear no word of her we’ll come back this way before we turn south.”

It was the last he said of it until they found the Hunters and Woodsmen.

Ailith crouched behind the shelves listening  – as she had for two weeks and more. Sometimes what they spoke of made her shiver. There were times when she sensed Tolan held things back, not for lack of trust but because his minions didn’t need to know. She learned to hear hesitation in his so-smooth, so even voice.

What the man was who was once her father was becoming was something else, less erratic. Somehow he, it, retained her father’s memories, thoughts and observations but he was cold. Very cold.

Of  them all Caradoc seemed the least changed by his wearing of the soul-eater.

He’d always been a hard man, very sure in his duty and purpose. In this, he seemed to have become only more so.

Plans and plots. What they did say had her clasping her arms around herself.

They waited to secure Riverford. Waited for her majority ceremony to secure the succession.

It was only a few days away.

The guests would start arriving soon.

Geric had invited some of the other lesser Kings but his was a minor kingdom far from the Heartlands.

It wouldn’t be the lavish affair to which some of those lowland and heartland Kings were accustomed. Nor was it likely they would come, although they would send gifts.

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.”