Dockalfar (40 page)

Explain as best he could to her what had happened, what was still happening to him. Try and tell her that it had never been his choice to forget her. As far as betraying her trust, he was not sure if that had happened before or after Leanan had gotten inside his head, but he would muddle through that explanation. He just needed to talk with Victoria.

“Alexander,” the voice drifted through his chambers like a whispery breeze. He stiffened, missing a heartbeat at the intrusion. He turned over and squinted through the darkness to make out the willowy shrouded form of his sidhe paramour. His heart hammered within his chest. Did she know? Had she sensed the shattering of her mental restraints? Her voice was sultry, her movements slow. He felt no tension in her. She looked more sleepy than angry. He quelled the fear, formed a smile for her. If there was no need for her to look she might not notice that her invisible bonds were broken.

She drifted to his bed and gracefully lowered herself upon it next to him. Her long fingers touched the bare skin of his chest. Lingered. She was tired. He could see it in her eyes. Her lips were pouting and rosy, her lids heavy. She had come from someone’s arms. He drew her into his own. Kissed the side of her mouth and murmured.

“I missed you.”

“Did you?” She snuggled into his embrace, lying her head in the crook of his arm.

“Always,” he told her, holding the impatience in check far, far back in his mind. He must not give her a hint that he was less than content. She closed her eyes wanting no more from him at the moment than arms to hold her while she slept. It was an inconvenience. An insurmountable blockage in his immediate quest to find Victoria. He was well and truly thwarted.

Leanan was too light a sleeper to ignore any quiet retreat on his part. Until she woke with the afternoon, he was stuck.

And if she insisted on his company after she had awaken, then he might not have the chance to see Victoria at all since she was riding with the hunt. The hunt of all things!

Victoria who despised hunting.

After the hunt, then. When the court was immersed in the celebration of its own grandeur. After the hunt he would find her.

~~~

She moved into the-fey lit darkness, a tingly feeling of excitement coursing through the byways of her body as she stepped outside the inner walls of the keep. The air was fresh and cool and the sky awesome and liberally sprinkled with stars. Despite the cumbersome walls of the outer bailey, she felt as if she had been granted some exquisite freedom. The guards had let her pass without comment, with nothing more than steely-eyed nods at her passage. She felt as if she had bested them at some game.

A bendithy servant led her to the stables and she found herself among a cluster of milling bodies both equine and fey. The bendithy had no more knowledge of her position than she and left in concern to seek aid in the finding of her mount. She remembered Tyra’s offer and searched out that worthy lady. It was hard to pick her out among the field of jeweled armor and shining night horse flanks. She asked a sidhe lady and was given directions in the form of a general wave to the right. She edged through heavy bodies looking for the mistress of the hunt. The coppery blonde hair of that one stood out as a beacon from beneath an ornate helmet.

The lady stood by the side of an enormous nighthorse, checking her own tack as opposed to letting the stable servants do it, as most of the other sidhe were content to do.

Victoria stood quietly behind her, waiting until she had finished her inspection of harnesses and buckles. The animal snorted and roughly butted its nose against the Mistress of the Hunt’s armored chest. The lady took an involuntary step back and patted the offending, velvety nose. The animal’s glinting orange eyes settled upon the human standing behind its mistress. Its long ears pricked forward with interest. Tyra followed its gaze. Her lids half obscured her pale eyes.

“So you decided to join us after all. I had my doubts.” Victoria swallowed. “You said you’d help outfit me.”

“So I did,” Tyra said. She slapped the heavily muscled shoulder of her mount, looking Victoria up and down.

Victoria had chosen to wear the leathers she had come to the keep in. Sidhe-made and soft, yet resilient enough to have survived the sometimes harsh journey afoot to the Unseelie court. It was a comfortable attire and one that made her feel more physically secure than the outfits provided for her by Azeral.

Tyra nodded her approval. It was by far less flamboyant than any of the others and would do little in the service of armor, but then she would be an observer on this hunt, not a hunter. She hoped she would have no need to protect herself from whatever poor beast the sidhe chose as prey.

The mistress of the hunt signaled to a stable servant, calling out a name. The bendithy boy nodded and hurried back into the shadow of the stable awning. He returned momentarily with a smallish nighthorse. Tyra walked towards it, her own great animal trailing. Victoria gave the beast right of way and followed after.

“She’s a gentle thing,” Tyra informed her. “Well-mannered and used to the seat of an untrained rider. Give her her head and she’ll follow the pack. She knows the ways of hunt. Trust her. Touch her nose, let her smell you.”

Not totally unfamiliar with nighthorses, Victoria had no qualms over holding out her hand for the animal to nuzzle. The warm breath tickled. She rubbed her knuckles over the tip of the soft nose. The ears pricked forward and the glowing eyes regarded her solemnly.

Horns sounded, and every head turned. Tyra’s attention left Victoria totally as the hunt’s mistress mounted and urged her beast forward through the crowd. Victoria stood by her own uncertainly as riders climbed to the backs of their steeds. The bendithy servant gently took her elbow, dull fey eyes looking at her encouragingly.

“Mount up, milady.” He held the bridle while she found the high stirrup and pulled herself up. Her mount stood passively at her less than graceful ascent. She took the reins in hand, along with a fist full of silky black mane. The animal shifted, vying for position among the other nighthorses.

Up ahead she saw the glitter of gilded armor as the high lords formed the apex of the hunting party. Azeral would be there, with his lady, Neferia. Victoria had no wish to share in that company. Her beast was content to find a place in the rear, not far from the less grandiose animals of the retainers who would trail the party with refreshments and pack animals to carry back the carcass of the prey.

The great hunt moved out. The outer bailey doors opened and like a parade of festival riders, they left the confines of the keep. The nighthorse’s sure hooves took the steep mountain path at a effortless cantor. Victoria held tightly to reins and mane regardless, insecure now that she had no magical means of controlling her mount. The trees surrounded them in short order. The foliage thick and still green despite the cooling weather. There was something of a path that they followed. A trail where the bramble was not quite as high and the brush not as dense. The nighthorses still had to jump here and there to avoid a fallen branch or a particularly thick clump of ground bound vines. The darkness was too overwhelming with the foliage cutting off the light of the stars for her human sight to make out much of the passage. She trusted to sidhe night vision and nighthorse senses to keep them on track. Her beast seemed to know exactly what it was doing. It resisted her attempts at guidance and took the path it judged most sound. She soon learned to accept its judgment.

The incline was steep enough to warrant some degree of alarm on her part.

She was forced to sit back in the saddle to compensate for the odd angle at which her mount descended. She clutched the saddle behind her with one hand and held onto thick mane with the other. Her legs were already strained from clenching the girth of the animal so tightly. Leaves and small overhanging branches brushed her face.

She closed her eyes and ducked her head.

Soon the trail leveled out and she was able to straighten her back. She patted the animal’s neck in congratulations of the successful navigation. Up ahead she could make out the glints of armor or the occasional flash of nighthorse eyes.

The whole company slowed. Her own animal closed on the flank of its predecessor and tossed its head nervously. At the very front of the column, a spark blossomed. It spread to a infusing glow that illuminated the forest around the leaders. The landscape blurred and Victoria blinked as her brain tried to orient the suddenly out of whack scene her eyes were feeding it. The leading riders urged their mounts forward and they simply melted out of existence. As the other riders followed, they too disappeared.

Victoria was holding so hard to her own animal’s reins that it balked uncertainly as the nighthorse in front of it began to move towards the disturbance. It tossed its head violently, tearing the reins from her hands and gaining its head. She let it go numbly. What magic was this?

Certainly nothing she had been taught. The sidhe and the nighthorses had no fear of riding blindly into it.

Her mount’s ears twitched and it swung its head to the left. They passed a great, lumbering tree. Its ancient appendages hung down over the trail. The nighthorse took a few nervous steps sideways. Victoria ducked her head to avoid contact with the moss-covered limb and rather suddenly felt something wrap around her arms with surprising strength and lift her right out of her saddle. Her feet left the stirrups and with her weight gone from the animal’s back it danced forward with no misgivings over losing its rider.

She did not think to cry out at first.

She was too startled. And so quickly was she borne upwards and into the concealing foliage of the old tree that she had no time later when the thought did hit her. Hands, she was certain it was hands and arms around her, clamped over her mouth and pinned her arms to her body. She was hugged against a hard body and held perfectly still. No one raised a cry of alarm. Riders passed under the tree with no indication that they had observed her kidnapping. The whole of the party, including her former mount passed through the distortion in the forest and disappeared. The wavering illusion ceased to be and the night returned to normal save for the fact that she was held hostage by an unknown stranger on the lower limbs of a craggy tree.

For a long series of heartbeats she was held unmoving, then the hands loosened over her mouth. She took a much needed deep breath. Twisted to see her captor and found herself instead lifted and propelled back down to the forest floor. A form silently leapt down to her side. All she could see in the night’s cover was a tall, lanky figure. She knew he had strong hands. One of them grasped her upper arm and urged her quickly forward across the trail. She cooperated for a few steps before indignity began to take over. She was thoroughly tired of being a piece in this game they all played. Being a rook in someone else’s campaign was in no wise fun.

She shook her arm loose with an impatient release of breath and demanded.

“Just what do you think you’re doing?”

A hand came up immediately to the shadowy face in what might have been a gesture for silence.

“Lady, we’ve no time. Come with me.”

“I will not!” She planted her feet stubbornly. “Not until I know where you want to take me and who you are.”

“I take you to friends,” he insisted.

“And there’s no time. They will notice you gone and return and no amount of cloaking will hide us when we’re this close.”

She wished dearly for the magic of night vision. She needed to see her new companion’s face. “What friends?” she whispered.

His answer if any were forthcoming was cut off by a thunderous flapping of wings and a demented squawking. A midnight-cloaked demon descended from the heights. It cried out and swooped over her head to land on the stranger’s shoulder. She could hear another fluttering about overhead.

The birds. Her messenger birds.

“You sent the message stone?” she breathed.

“I did.” He took her arm, dragging her forward. “There is no time.”

For some unfathomable reason the presence of the birds, who were familiar, made her trust him. She followed as fast as she could, his erratic path through the untamed underbrush of the mountainous forest. They might have traveled for twenty minutes when he suddenly grasped her about the waist and bodily threw her into the decaying cubby formed by the roots of a great tree. He crowded in with her, curling his limbs around her. Reflex made her struggle until he whispered harshly into her hair.

“Riders.” That was all. She relaxed, fearing even to breath. But he was doing something that made that caution unnecessary. She could not practice the magic, but she was aware of its usage.

The forest became deathly silent. It was as if all sound had ceased to be. No chirp of crickets, no snap of branches as night birds and predators moved. No rustle of leaves or dripping of dew soaked foliage.

A bubble of total and complete quiet had fallen. She could not even hear her own labored breath, or the pounding of her pulse. There was movement in the distance. A heavy shadow passing. Then another. They were gone. Still the silence reined. For too long a time she sat crammed between the roots of the tree, her muscles cramping and her nerves stretching to the breaking point. Then at no particular signal the silence was broken and the forest sounds again intruded upon her hearing. It was a blessed relief. Even more so when the stranger shifted and crawled out of the cubby, holding out a hand to help her do the same.

“The hunt?” she asked shakily, as she stood, one leg numb from her forced position. She rested weight on the other unsteadily, dreading the pins and needles of awakening flesh.

“The hunt.”

“You shielded us?”

“I did.”

“Who are you?”

He started her moving again, a hand gently on her back. “Keirom,” he said softly.

She repeated the name. “Who are you taking me to, Keirom? What friends?”

He did not answer her right away, which began to make her nervous. The birds came and went from his company. He was very, very tall. No lesser sidhe this one. Not with that height.