The Coming Storm (67 page)

Goras, however, didn’t move.

“I’ve had a true vision of a dark wave. A wave of creatures from the borderlands that builds even now in the north. We know these creatures, we’ve fought them of old. The Hunters and the Woodsmen have kept them in check. No more.”

That caught Goras’s attention, he straightened as well.

“When it crests and breaks, that dark wave will carry down over the hills and the valleys. It will crush all before it.” He took a moment to say the next words. “Aerilann and Lothliann will fall. The Caverns of the Dwarves will fall as well.”

Goras sat up. His voice was leaden with grief. “One already has. Not completely but the Lore Masters have had to seal up the tunnels against what comes from within. We had your warning, Elon, but we didn’t think it would come from there, we who live under stone.”

Elon looked at him. The grief in the old Dwarf’s eyes pained him.

“How many?”

“A hundred dead,” Goras said, heavily.

So many. Elon’s breath caught.

Dead. Not wounded. Not passed to the Dwarven version of the Summerlands, but Dead.

Eliade sat back, too, her eyes stunned.

Her action mirrored his own feeling. Elon closed his eyes and bowed his head. A hundred bloodlines, lost. He ached for them.

“We grieve for your losses, Goras.”

Sitting up again, Goras looked at him grimly. “There is more?”

Against that grief, to layer more pain on him.

“My people, your people, men, all in chains.”

Daran winced, as he should.

It was a thing of men, after all. It was men who’d first put chains on Elves and Dwarves. Paraded their captives down the streets of their cities like trophies. Men who’d put them in cages of stone and iron during the wars between them. It was something for him to remember during those times he forgot he wasn’t Ruler here. And that for a reason. This reason. That it not happen again.

“The armies move but too late to stem the tide. Banners turn, friend becomes foe. A dark figure waits for his victory.”

“Who?” Daran demanded.

Shaking his head, Elon said, “That I don’t know, that I can’t See.”

He’d debated showing them what he held, had gone back and forth about it. It was Daran High King he feared with this. It would convince the others, though, of the seriousness of the situation. Goras likely knew of it through his people but wouldn’t want to believe it. He had little love for magic either, who had so little of it himself.

Eliade, though…

From his pocket, he took the small Elven-silk wrapped bundle. He removed his wards and tossed it at their feet. “And this.”

Eliade felt it and flinched back, revolted.

Shaking his head, Goras sat back in his chair to be away from the thing.

“What is it?” Daran said, and started to get up.

Sharply, Eliade said, uncharacteristically shooting to her feet, “Don’t touch it, Daran, if you value your soul. Where did you get this, Elon?”

“The woman who bore it is dead,” Elon said. “There are more, Eliade. At least five that I’m sure of.”

Five, one for each member of his party, or so Tolan had indicated.

“It’s a soul-eater, Daran,” Eliade said, clearly sickened. “A thing from the wizard wars. Something your people don’t speak of much but ours remember all too well. It eats the soul to chain and bind what remains to the one who sets it to them.”

This was the reason Elves and Dwarves had fought wizards being added to the Council, for they had created these things. History had proven that wizards rarely handled power well – the Jareths of the world notwithstanding. Never again would such be given so much power. That they had imagined such a thing that would chain a soul and bind it forever. Another mark against men, who in the wars they waged against each other and the other races, had thought to fashion such things. That men had also worn them unwillingly no one argued but they had been used to great and horrible effect on his people, on the Dwarves, and with such abandon.

Eliade looked down at it.

A soul-eater. Daran stared at it. He’d thought they were a metaphor for something. Not real. A thing of legend, from one of the dark periods of history. Of that shameful time during the wizard wars.

Elon continued. “I believe this dark one leads and controls those creatures from the borderlands. He sends them against us to weaken our defenses and to sow fear. We have reason to believe he’s one of those who escaped at the end of the wizard wars.”

Leaning down, Elon picked up the terrible thing, warded it once again. As much as he loathed carrying it he couldn’t think of a safe place to keep it. Not yet.

Daran looked at him. “That would make him nearly five hundred years old.”

It was a fact many men couldn’t encompass, that Elves lived so long. And one that some wouldn’t.

Daran was one of the former.

Taking a deep breath, Elon looked at him and said quietly, “I was born during that war. Eliade has a few years of me. Many of the wizards of that time practiced blood magic and soul magic. Men. They used that magic on our people torturing and killing many, taking our magic and our long lives. Talesin, Elf and wizard, has lived even longer than I have, nearly half again or more.”

For the first time he saw the light of understanding dawn in Daran’s eyes.

The concept of it took a minute to comprehend, that this Elf who looked no older than Daran himself was nearly ten times as old. He’d known they were long-lived but he’d never truly understood how long was long. 

“Even now in the north, Ailith of Riverford, Jareth the wizard and Jalila of Aerilann ride to warn the Kings of that place of the danger. Putting their lives and souls at risk to buy us time. Don’t waste it.”

If he could do nothing else, he would assure that those precious lives hadn’t been spent in vain.

“What is it you want, Elon?” Goras asked.

“Send the army north, now, before it’s too late. Call up the Kings. Stop the tide before it reaches the heartlands.”

Before it reached Aerilann and Lothliann before it got any farther. Before it reached Ailith, if it hadn’t already. She was still alive, that he knew but what had caused, still caused, the pain? Her magic was more set now, at least, but the wound would still weaken her.

What of his friends Jareth and Jalila, who he’d sent with her? How did they fare?

He had no answers. They were in the north, where he would be as soon as he might.

“Do it, Daran,” Eliade said.

Goras nodded his assent, thinking of the Cavern in the north.

“Don’t leave the south undefended,” Elon said.

He remembered Daran’s comment about Olend. That King was an old friend to Elves and to himself personally, he wasn’t one to make idle complaint.

“And you?” Eliade asked.

“I ride north, to know what happens there. I’ll join our armies from there.”

He looked to Daran High King, almost daring him to deny him or to command him to remain.

Don’t try to order me otherwise
, he thought.
Don’t make me defy you, Daran
.

The warning was clear in Elon’s dark, sharp gaze, Daran saw that. For a moment he was tempted to see how far he could push it, how far Elon would go, but not with that look in those dark eyes.

He nodded.

With a bow, Elon departed.

Colath waited for him in the Square with their horses saddled, packed and ready.

The Kingdom of Mountainhold was high and mountainous. They crossed into Queen Marta’s lands riding through muddy slush.

“Queen Marta won’t be happy to see us again and so soon,” Jareth said, although it had been nearly six months now, he realized to his astonishment. “She’s not much fond of Elves.  Or wizards. I don’t know what she’ll make of you.”

“We’ve met,” Ailith said, shortly. She took a breath and sighed. “Sorry, Jareth. She wasn’t much fond of my father’s mixed blood either. It doesn’t matter. She can’t deny us Sanctuary or aid, not by law.”

Although Jareth and Jalila had both been Healed, neither looked well, their injuries, cold and weariness had taken their toll even on Jalila’s Elven constitution. Ailith didn’t know how she appeared but she did know it must be bad. The guards at the gate took one look and let them in, as one on horseback rode ahead up through the streets at a gallop. Here there were no averted eyes, no undue caution, no frightened populace as they followed him through the cobbled streets.

The castle was a simple mott and bailey structure much like Riverford, not the crenellated and towered structures of some of the other castles they’d visited and the town had grown up closer around it. It was a little bigger perhaps. Queen Marta was on the steps as they rode in under the gate.

“You don’t need to cry Sanctuary, Lady Ailith,” she said, briskly, “I can already see  you need it, I’m not blind. A room has been prepared. Someone give her a hand out of the saddle before she falls out of it.”

A guard leaped to obey.

“I need to talk to you,” Ailith said.

“It will wait long enough to get you patched up,” Marta said, not unkindly.

It did. Ailith was still exhausted but a chirurgeon bandaged her shoulder a good bit more neatly and a bath had cleaned up most of the mess. She felt somewhat better, if weak from loss of blood and still in pain.

Certainly cleaner. That mattered. It had been too many days since she’d had a bath.

“Your companions,” Marta said, as she came into the room, “are being cared for. Now, what is so important you’ve been pestering everyone with requests to see me.”

Ailith had sent multiple requests through the servants, even the chirurgeon.

She told her.

When she was done Marta sat back in the chair, folded her hands together and tapped her chin with tips of them.

“Well,” she said, finally. “Given the circumstances I can hardly think you’ve gone through so much for a false warning. That Elf Elon, the Councilor, he was here some time back asking questions with the same two you have with you. They tell me he has the Sight. Have I a guess he saw this coming?”

Ailith nodded. “He was trying to get enough proof to get aid when he spoke to you. As you know, we know have it. The last I knew he was on his way to Daran High King.”

He was in Doncerric, that she did know. It was all she knew.

Patting her arm, Marta said, “Get some rest.”

With relief, she did.

Ailith woke from a restless sleep. For once she hadn’t dreamed, or if she did she didn’t remember them, which in the end was the same.

Her shoulder pained her, as did her face. Still half-awake, she searched among the stars in her mind for the ones she knew and found them, riding steadily north. She smiled and sighed. She’d only slept for a few hours. Opening her eyes, she found Jareth and Jalila in her rooms, sitting and watching.

She eyed them.

“Elon and Colath ride north,” she said.

Relieved, Jalila sat back.

“The trackers?” Jareth asked.

Searching back over their trail, she couldn’t find them. There were too many lights around the castle to find their own.

“In the town below, I suspect. Somewhere. I can’t see them among so many.”

Jalila said, “What now?”

 They still looked to her after she’d miscalculated so badly. “Jareth, Jalila…”

“You couldn’t know,” Jareth said. “We’ve done what we set out to do, against all the odds. You got us out as well. Jalila tells me you took on all three trackers and held them for a little, just you against them. She tells me it was something to see. She also said you shattered the chains and called down an avalanche.”

Ailith shook her head.

“There was little choice. The chains, yes, I didn’t call down the avalanche, I only weakened that which held it back. It was a desperate move but one I had to try.”