Bloodraven (51 page)

He saw things in the blackness then. Spots of color hiding in the shadows. Things that had not been apparent before. The darkness was illusion, a convenient facade to hide the truer nature of Elvardo’s soul. Or, at the very least, his intentions. He flung himself at those slim beacons in the darkness, for they seemed to be the only way out—a sparrow pecking at the heavy windows of a fortress. And perhaps he found a crack in the sill, the tiniest little weakness in Elvardo’s armor, for more light rushed in and he fled towards it—quite suddenly finding himself blinded by it.

His knees hit the thick padding of carpet hard enough to jar his bones. He clutched sightlessly at cloth, his head spinning beyond his capacity to calm. It seemed like something inside him had torn.

Indefinable little trickles of...
something
...leaked inside his awareness.

Vision cleared. Thoughts did to an extent. Enough at least to realize that what he clutched at was Elvardo’s trouser leg and that Elvardo himself stood staring down with some mild interest on his face.

The cut was still on his cheek.

It had been a trap. Yhalen knew not what Elvardo had hoped to gain from it, or even how he’d gone about it, other than initiating that melding touch of magic from Yhalen...but he’d been pulled in at the onset of it, then chewed up and spat out.

He hissed, pushing himself off Elvardo’s support, falling backwards to sprawl inelegantly on the carpet between the dark lord and the fireplace. He glared up, at the moment lacking capacity to form 158

adequate words.

Elvardo stepped around him, settling in the chair before the hearth. He ran a thumb over his own cheek and the cut disappeared under the brush of his skin.

“Let me tell you something about magic—”

“Don’t!” Yhalen growled, pushing himself onto his knees and crouching there, glaring in mistrust.

“I’ve heard all I want to from you—about anything.”

“I don’t think you have.” Elvardo lifted a finely arched brow. “In fact, you need a hint or two now more than you ever did before.” There was a subtle sense of radiant coolness that seemed surround Elvardo that Yhalen had not truly noticed before.

“What did you do?”

“Nothing that would not have happened on its own...in a decade or two...if you stayed true to yourself and used the powers that you were born with. You need to know things for this fool’s mission that I’ve taken an interest in to succeed. He can’t do it all by himself, determined though he is.”

Yhalen stared, a slow chill of horror seeping over him.

“What did you do to me?” he repeated, forcing a calm he in no wise felt into his voice.

“I unblocked the dam that nature, in all its wisdom, places in all young creatures with power such as ours. Or at least I removed a few stones that were loosened already by your own forays into magic.”

“You had no right.”

“Hmm. Right and wrong were never high on my agenda. Moral distinctions tend to get in the way of one’s goals, so they’re better off discarded, I’ve always found.”

Yhalen curled his fingers in the carpet, seething.

“If you’re angry, strike back at me,” Elvardo said lightly, and without warning Yhalen found himself knocked backwards, slammed against the foot of the bed by an invisible force that came and went with no more than a sigh of displaced air. He lay there, gasping, realizing with a faint sense of surprise that he had felt the brief gathering of energy before he’d been struck. Had felt the coiling energy of the air itself as a crafty Ydregi will had forced it to his will.

He did strike back. With the one skill that Elvardo had shown him that he had already felt an affinity for. Fire. He could already feel the dying embers of it in the hearth, and it was easy enough to draw on the flavor of that weak spark of life and create his own vibrant version of it, casting it to feed on the fine cloth of Elvardo’s tunic.

The dark lord’s arm caught fire, flames licking up from the dark material of his sleeve and spreading greedily to his torso. Yhalen blinked, shocked out of his rage by the success of a moment’s thoughtless revenge. Elvardo’s laughter shocked him more.

“Do you think to hurt me with the magic that comes most naturally to me?”

He shook his arm and the flames sprang off like droplets of water, falling to the carpet and greedily feeding upon the wool, then spreading across it to the tapestries and bed skirts.

Yhalen scrambled away, staring in horror at the growing conflagration.

“So, don’t you think that if you have the ability to start such blaze, it would not be wise to learn how to stop it? It’d be lamentable if you inadvertently created a catastrophe that ended up...say, burning a forest down...because no one had bothered to teach you how to control the monster you conjured.”

Elvardo had not moved from the chair, one knee still casually crossed across the other.

“Stop it.”

Yhalen had gained his feet. He couldn’t do it himself. He hadn’t the time to figure it out. Elvardo shrugged and the flames shrunk in upon themselves, flickering out and leaving charred cloth and an acrid, choking smell in their wake.

Elvardo rose, brushing a fleck of soot from a sleeve entirely untouched by flame. “Come to me in the garden tonight, after your ogr’ron has fallen asleep, and the next, and I’ll teach you the basics upon which you’ll build your own understanding of the powers within your grasp.”

159

The sun was well past its noon zenith when Bloodraven reached the outcropping of rock that jutted out from amidst the trees high on the valley slope and opposite the soot-gray walls of the dark lord’s keep. It had taken the morning hours to cross the considerable distance of the vale on foot, but it was a journey he’d preferred to make under his own power—at his own pace.

The further away he walked from Elvardo’s keep, the more pleasant the day had become. The lighter the air, and subsequently the elevation of his spirits. The earth of the valley itself was dark and fertile, cloaked in knee-high grasses that swayed with the winds coming down from the heights beyond.

But the winds were muted in comparison to those of the high reaches, blocked by the walls of the vale.

Closer to the northeastern end where the dark fringe of a well established forest melted into the grasses of the valley, there would be even more shelter against the elements. And protection, as well, against other threats.

He’d skimmed the edges of the valley on his way towards that destination, often detouring up into the forest that clung to the ascending slopes. Following well-worn game trails, he discovered traces of the things that made their homes here. He’d seen the rock during one of his forays up the forested slopes. He’d paused in a clearing, looked out over the vale and seen the slab of gray sitting half way up the far end. Massive and steady, it had called to him and he had made his way towards it. The gentle slopes of this vale were no challenge to a mountain-bred ogr’ron and he chose the more secluded path along the wooded side.

He was well aware of the man that dogged his heels. One of the knight’s men who trailed far enough behind not to be an overt agitation. Only the occasional nicker from the horse he rode or the jangle of gear reminded Bloodraven he was there at all. The man did not choose to dismount and attempt to follow him onto the wooded slope. A lucky thing, since Bloodraven found the solitude of the trees a balm for his unease.

It made it easier for him to put what he’d seen inside the keep today in a place that didn’t threaten so badly to shake him to his core. It allowed him to distance himself from that alarming dark magic that even the most ferocious of ogre warriors would find frightening. He could face an enemy twice his size in battle and feel nothing but grim determination, but the insidious touch of magic couldn’t be defended against, couldn’t be fought off with honest steel and physical prowess. It could seep into a body and taint mind and spirit without a warrior ever seeing hide nor hair of his enemy.

He recalled the face of the man who had attacked the dark lord. The utter shock and fear as his body was attacked by a force that no mundane creature had defense against. He felt pity for that man, human or no. There was no honor in such a death. His first impulse, the reflexive one driven into him by years of listening to the superstitious talk of the old ones around the fire, had been to strike out at the author of it, just as he might strike off the head of a mountain viper if one chanced across his path. It had taken as much will to stand idly by and then calmly walk away as it had not to flee this place, abandoning his purpose in the face of such baneful magic.

And yet he hadn’t. Fool that he was, he still looked upon
Fah’nak Gol
as a solution to his dilemma, its dark lord a path to that goal that might be politically less demanding than the one King Valeran proposed, though far more treacherous, morally.

He sat upon the bleached slab of rock and stared out over the valley. A long, green swath of haven.

He envisioned huts and longhouses on the hillside beneath his perch, and further out where the trees did not shadow the earth, neatly plowed plots of earth where food could be grown instead of killed.

His folk, even the half-bloods, were not farmers, preferring to leave those tasks to human slaves, but they could learn. How hard could it be? He imagined the most advantageous places along the valley walls for defensive positions, calculating how well an ambush could be sprung upon invaders utilizing the thick shelter of a mountainous forest.

His gaze traveled further down the vale, to the keep perched upon its rocky slope and frowned. It wasn’t as if he weren’t accustomed to living under the shadow of danger...this threat was simply of a more unnerving nature. And it could be avoided and ignored for the most part, if his folk kept to their 160

end of the vale and the dark lord to his. One could hope. He’d rather keep to this end himself for the duration of his stay, but there were issues yet to be resolved and temptations within that keep that he was not willing to forego.

He rose, stretching his limbs, and resolutely started the long walk back towards the keep.

The knight’s men who loitered in the courtyard near their stabled horses were subdued when he tromped back in through the ominous gate. They gazed at him as he passed, but there was little distrust or hatred in their eyes. They had discovered a far more virulent threat to cast their suspicions upon.

Bloodraven grunted, grimly figuring that a trust formed on the basis of a mutual enemy wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Better for Elvardo to occupy the role of villain than the halflings who Bloodraven wished to lead back to this human-held valley.

He heard the clack of hooves behind him and the low voices of men. His escort following him back into the keep, and a man being sent to inform the knight. Bloodraven ignored it, caring very little what Alasdair’s thoughts were about his foray into the valley or the hour of his return.

He retraced the pathway to his guest room, and smelled the acrid scent of smoke and cinder before he reached the half open door. One of Elvardo’s females stepped out into the hall, her face as passive and sloe-eyed as ever. A shiver of wariness passed across his skin. A chest-tightening pang of concern as to why this woman was here and Yhalen was not, when the smell of fire that had fed upon more than logs in a hearth infused the air.

He stopped, lips pulling back in a low snarl, in no wise confident that Elvardo’s females were as helpless and weak as the rest of their species.

“My lord ogre,” the woman inclined her dark head. “My lord expresses his apologies for the upset to your rooms. New chambers have been provided. All of your things have been moved.”

“Yhalen?” He moved forward warily, wanting to see beyond the door that blocked his view of the room.

“
All
your things,” the female said with a solicitous smile.

She pulled the door shut behind her, and though he could have moved her easily, he hesitated to lay hands upon her.

“Follow me, please.”

She moved down the hall and he lingered a moment, fighting with the desire to see what had become of his rooms and the growing urgency to assure himself that nothing ill had befallen his human.

The new room was at the end of the hall, close to a balcony that overlooked a large and shadowed hall. The dark-haired female rapped once, lightly, before turning the latch and opening the door for him.

She stepped back and let him pass.

He stepped into the room as if he expected enemies, his guard up and his suspicions high. There were no enemies. Simply Yhalen, in the process of rising from the deep, padded alcove before one of the room’s two tall windows. It was a larger chamber than they had been afforded before, or perhaps that was the flood of natural sunlight that the windows let in. The hearth crackled merrily, the rug was thick and warm and the bed no less spacious and tall, flanked on all four corners by thick, subtly carved posts.

Yhalen stared at him, a bone-handled comb in one hand, hair loose and damp across his shoulder, eyes large and worried. Guilty, almost.

Bloodraven stood there, the tension draining out of him, the worst of the apprehension dissipating.

He heard the soft sound of the door closing behind him, and the softer, almost imperceptible tread of the female as she departed.

He stared at Yhalen, waiting for an answer to the questions Yhalen knew very well wanted answering.

Yhalen turned his gaze away, staring towards the hearth and the low burning fire there. His fingers tightened over the comb.

“There was an accident. With the fire,” Yhalen said softly.