Dockalfar (26 page)

Whatever it was. Something had flashed in front of them, plain as day, and now it was gone. He started mumbling wards that never really worked in a pinch. He began figuring how to sacrifice the nighthorse to whatever was stalking him, and hope it was delayed long enough for a resourceful spriggan to make good his escape. The horse was an encumbrance. The horse could not hide itself or cover its movements. It drew attention to itself and its rider. The horse was staring at him balefully and accusingly, no doubt dwelling on all the uncomfortable things it could do if Bashru decided to remount.

Bashru would do well to be rid of it.

There was a crashing of leaves and twigs from the way they had come. Bashru whirled and dove for the cover of the bank ready to fight for his life and soul. And found himself staring at a single, slim, long-legged female in finely wrought sidhe leathers with a delicate sidhe knife in her hand and wisps of reddish hair escaping a braid to float around her face.

He stared, wide eyed, as she came to a panting halt some ten feet from his position and bent over to rest her hands on her knees as she tried to catch her breath.

She was not a sidhe. She was more delicate than a bakatu, which left one alternative that he could think of. “You!!”

he accused. He jumped up so quickly that he startled the horse. He shook a massive hand at the girl and scrambled up the bank towards her.

She straightened and held out her puny knife as if that would deter him. His own blade was twice as long and had tasted more blood than ran in her body.

“Wait,” she said, before he reached out to grab her arm and shook her hard enough to make her drop the knife. She half cried out in more shock than pain and tried to pull away. Bashru was having none of it. He knew not what kindly spirit had smiled on him to bring them together, but he was not risking a turn in favor. He did not even care how she had gotten here, or why she was wearing sidhe clothing and carrying a sidhe blade.

It was as he was drawing her forward, thinking of how quickly he could make it back to Azeral’s court that his hand started to burn. It started as a pin prick of heat, then rather startlingly it blazed to life as a roaring, white hot flame. The spriggan let out a screech and jerked his injured member from the human girl, shaking it convulsively to put out the fire. But there were no flames, and despite the fact that it felt like all the flesh had been charred from the bone, it was whole.

The girl was glaring at him.

“So nice to see you again too.” She sniffed and crossed her arms over her breast.

He gaped at her, then at his hand. The heat slowly faded. “Did you do that?” he whispered, cradling his hand. She shrugged, and looked about the wood.

“There are goblins in the woods. I was trying to warn you. I really wonder if I should have bothered.”

“Goblins?” he repeated dumbly.

“You warnin’ me?”

“There weren’t that many,” she muttered, then her eyes lit up as they fixed on something behind him and she amended. “There probably aren’t any now.”

Bashru whirled and looked at the opposite bank. There was nothing there but forest. Green on brown with patches of yellow that glowed dully in the night’s scant light. Then it shifted and flowed down the bank in a roughly man-sized shape and with graceful, delicate motions leaped across the brook using outcropping stones to keep from getting its boots wet.

Bashru gaped even more. Then managed to get his astonishment under control and compose his features.

“You’ve been dallying, assassin,” he accused. “Takin’ your own time bringing this girl back. His Lordship’s agitated enough as is.”

“Might you mean, Azeral?” the girl leaned forward, a practiced smile on her lips. “Is he eager to meet me?”

Bashru glared at her for the affront of Azeral’s name on her lips. “Been tellin’ her all the master’s business too, have you?”

The assassin flowed over to stand behind her, what might have been a troubled expression on his face. Bashru did not care. All that mattered was that he had the human girl, who Azeral had sent him to find and bring back, and the Ciagenii assassin, whose services Azeral valued, was with her. Bashru might very well be amply rewarded.

He stomped back into the brook to gather the reins of the nervous nighthorse. The animal’s eyes were showing red at the edges and its nostrils expanded rapidly with labored breathing. Bashru growled at it under his breath.

“You’re heading straight back to the keep, or were you planning a side trip to Lake Eerna to show the wench the water lights? Only a few weeks out of the way. The master should understand.” He cast a scowl over his shoulder at the assassin.

There was no response to the jibe from that corner.

The lady smiled though, a sweet curving of her lips that the spriggan almost found attractive. “Not right now. Later maybe. At the moment I’m rather eager to meet your master.”

“Oh and a lively meeting it should be,” Bashru muttered. He hauled the nighthorse out of the brook and stood for a moment to get his bearings. His mad dash had taken him askew of the course he had been traveling. He made to pull himself up onto the animal, but the assassin’s light touch stopped him. He flinched away from it as from a burning poker and glared indignantly and just a tad nervously at the Ciagenii. Dusk stepped back from the violent reaction, pulling his hand back within the folds of his cloak. If the spriggan didn’t know better, he would have thought embarrassment flickered across the dark sidhe’s face.

“Let the lady ride,” Dusk murmured, hardly audible. Bashru drew his considerable brows.

“She’s got longer legs than I,” he complained. The assassin lifted his head slightly and just stared at the spriggan.

Bashru cursed and threw the reins to the earth.

“Fine. Let the wench ride. Damned animal’ll probably take her leg off.”

~~~

They made camp in a grotto next to a pool of uninhabited water. The girl started a small fire with nothing more than a flick of her finger and sat beside it carefully roasting the small game that Dusk had brought to her. Bashru glared at her surreptitiously from under his brows.

Humans with magic. It was unnatural. And the way she used it. So casual that she almost didn’t notice she was doing it. It made his skin crawl with more than its usual ailment of lice and fleas. And her mood! By Annwn, she was almost cheerful to be traveling to Azeral’s court.

Did anyone not of the Unseelie court want to visit it? He thought not. Eager to see her human lover, no doubt. Her mood might change once she did, considering what Azeral and that daughter of his had been up to.

And the assassin! He thought the Ciagenii had lost some of his mind.

Bashru had been at Azeral’s keep the day the Master brought back a mewling, crying Ciagenii infant, and never once during all that time since, even as a youngling, had Dusk spoken more than three words to anyone other than to ask a question or to answer one. And in one night Bashru had heard him speak whole sentences to this human wench. Granted, she prompted it.

She was fearless in her treatment of the Ciagenii. She ordered him about. She snapped at him. She hesitated not to touch him in order to draw attention or get a point across. Bashru expected to see her sprawling for the offenses. But Dusk tolerated it. He was also staying close to camp, which was another anomaly. Once darkness hit, one almost never saw the Ciagenii. If he made an appearance at all, it was generally the next morning and then only briefly. That night, he actually sat across the camp between Bashru and the girl. Far enough out of the light to blend with the shadows granted, but he was there.

The girl offered him a piece of meat and he shrugged and refused. She frowned and snapped at him, asking if he ate at all or merely subsided off air. The assassin very carefully told her that he had eaten during the day and she glared at him for it.

She tossed the chunk of roasted meat to Bashru without inquiring if he wanted it.

He was not so offended or so picky to refuse. He gobbled it down with out chewing and settled down to observe the two.

A week’s journey at least, filled with the same strange goings on. The girl rode most often, trading sometimes with the spriggan when his short legs tired, which was not often. He mostly asked to trade for spite, wanting to make her walk. She seemed not to mind, which irritated him.

Whenever she did walk, the assassin stayed close though, as if fearful that she was more vulnerable on the ground and needed his protection. It was not long after that Bashru was convinced that the wench needed no one’s protection at all.

It started on the fifth day of travel.

She was riding, humming to herself in a voice that even the spriggan could find no fault with. The words were strange though, alien things and alien concepts. He remarked about it, inquiring if she knew any decent songs. She glared down at him, then screwed her face in discomfort and leaned over the saddle horn. She brought one hand to her middle and left it there.

He figured she had eaten something rancid. He was not of a mind to inquire towards her comfort. She was unusually quiet for the rest of the day. It was later that evening when they sat up camp and she had gone off into the woods by herself to relieve her bladder that she started cursing. Bashru looked up startled, grabbing his knife. The assassin materialized out of seemingly thin air and was across the clearing to the place she had disappeared before Bashru could take a step.

The wench’s cursing rose in volume and intensity and the assassin suddenly backed out of the foliage.

“What’s wrong with her?” Bashru demanded, fearing for anything to happen to the wench when Azeral had charged him with her return. Dusk shook his head.

After a while, the girl reappeared, pale and disgruntled.

“What was that about?” Bashru demanded.

“None of your business,” she almost snarled, whipping a hand around to take in the both of them. “Just leave me alone.”

The entire clearing radiated with the force of her desire. Bashru suddenly wanted to slink away into the wood. He did take one step backwards, hand held up against an intangible threat. He watched with narrowed eyes as she settled into the hollow of a moss quilted tree trunk. She pulled her legs up to her chest, and wrapped slim arms about them. The fire burst to life before her without even the trouble of a gesture. It was bonfire size and it radiated enough heat to curl the leaves several feet away from it. The girl stared moodily into the wavering crackle of warmth.

“What are you looking at?” It came out a whisper, but the force of the question was like hail pounding unprotected flesh.

It was not directed at the spriggan. The assassin stared at her, hood back, skin and hair highlighted orange by the fire, while the rest of him was forest dark.

“You’re not well,” he whispered back, shaken. “You’re bleeding.”

“Oh for God’s sake,” she almost laughed, settled for an expulsion of breath and laid her cheek on her upraised knees.

“It’s not bleeding like that. It’s just that time you know? That time of the month.”

They both stared at her uncertainly.

She sighed wearily and closed her eyes. “Let me guess sidhe women don’t… don’t… oh never mind. Just leave me alone. I really don’t feel very well.”

Reluctantly the Ciagenii backed off.

Bashru was more than happy to take himself across the camp from her and curl up into his own tight little ball. Her eyes were wild. Spriggan women did not bleed, but they did loose their hold on sanity every three or four moons. Just for a few days they become shrieking shrews that male spriggans made certain to stay well clear of. If this was the same thing, he wished himself a hundred leagues away.

He drifted to sleep dreaming of heavy breasted spriggan wenches coming after him with wooden cooking mallets. He was not quite certain if it was a nightmare or a fantasy. Then the girl’s scream woke him.

The screech was of surprise and fear, it raised every hair on his body. Her fire had gone down and the light barely illuminated the small clearing. It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the light. His hand was already on the knife. There was a twisted black shape over the girl. A coarse cloak covered a bent back and claw like hands twined in the girl’s long hair and clutched the skin of her pale throat. It was a twisted old hag, reeking of malignance. Her limbs were like reeds yet she had the strength to yank the girl around and hold her as a shield as the assassin flowed into the camp. The girl’s eyes were wide and terror stricken. Her mouth was open in surprise. Blood trickled down her throat from the places where the hag’s nails bit into her flesh.

“I told you. I told you,” the crone shrilled. “Cross old Annis, will you. Horrible children. Young children. Sweet young thing.”

Dusk took a step toward her, relaxed, weaponless. “You’ll die,” he said softly.

“I’ll come back.” The hag giggled. “I always do.”

“Ciagenii knows the path to true death,” he promised, silken voice over a threat so black it made Bashru’s skin crawl. Soul death. Ciagenii could kill a soul. When Dusk killed, his victims never came back, in any form. His victims eternally populated Annwn without hope of benediction. Even something as ancient and evil as one of the eternal hags.

The hag’s eyes widened, her fingers tightened. “You lie,” she accused, then she jerked. Her whole body flinched.

“How…?” she gasped, before her hands just started to crumble. Victoria pushed herself forward, the grip holding her turning to dust. She went to her knees in the leaves and a snarl not unlike that of the kitten she had adopted crossed her face.

“Vile thing,” she hissed.

The hag stepped back against the tree, flattened herself against it as if forced there by massive winds. Her body began to fall in upon itself. Under those coarse robes the bones shattered inside their packages of loose skin. The flesh dried out and fell away. And Black Annis screamed. She screamed and screamed long after her chest had caved in and her throat was little more than a dry cavity.

Her robes collapsed into a brittle puddle, falling to ash on the ground. Then it spread to the tree. The bark withered, the moss died, the leaves turned from green to brown and littered the ground. Twigs fell, then limbs. Its root shriveled under the ground.