Dockalfar (73 page)

“Not too long ago, every sidhe lord in the land would have fought over this. I can still think of some who would probably like to have it, but I don’t want it anymore.

You helped clear my name with Vicky, so I’m going to do you one better and give you your soul back.”

Dusk’s mouth actually dropped. His eyes got very large and his color faded two shades at least. Alex was somewhat pleased with the utter shock on the assassin’s face. He was not prepared for the venom in Dusk’s voice when he spoke.

“If you’re trying to sanctify yourself with my liberation, then do not! I refuse your gesture. Find some other way to soothe your soul.”

“I’m not trying to ‘sanctify’ anything. This is payback. I never want to be in your debt.”

“I did nothing to warrant such a debt.”

“You set Vicky straight. She was damned and determined not to hear it from me.”

Jaw set stubbornly, Dusk shook his head. “No! I want it not.”

Alex laughed in amazement. Of all the reactions he might have imagined, outright refusal had not been among them. There was no reason for it. Absolutely none.

“Have you lost your mind? You are the most backwards son of a bitch I’ve ever met. You don’t know what the hell you want. It’s your soul, man.”

The assassin backed a step away, and there was fear in his eyes. Fear of his own soul? Fear, perhaps of something he had never had, and never known the feel of.

Superstitious dread of what having a soul might suddenly imply to a creature whose only purpose in life had been to kill.

“Oh, Dusk,” he purred, suddenly feeling very certain of the terror in the other’s eyes. “Do you think the weight of all those deaths is going to crash down upon you with the advent of a soul? Do you think you’re going to develop a conscience. Do you think the guilt will suddenly be unbearable because of a little thing like a soul?” He swung the chain between his fingers like a hypnotist dangling a watch. Dusk stared at it with as much fascination. The fear in him was all consuming. Azeral’s punishment not one tenth of the horror as the possibility of gaining his soul brought. Alex felt it though the soul bond. It was so strong it made his hand shake.

“Maybe it will,” he contemplated, twirling the chain between his fingers.

“Because I think you made a pretty poor assassin to begin with. You’ve got too much of a conscience already, even without a soul. Victoria would make a better one. She’s good at tearing out hearts without even the benefit of practice. But that’s all hypothesis. The only way to find out is to try.”

Dusk was mouthing denials even as Alex stared at the dangling orb and concentrated on the rune symbol that Azeral had made his. He delved deep into the part of that poisoning orb and found what linkage it had to his own soul and erased the bond. The runes faded from the dark orb and left a smooth, polished surface that waited for another’s rune mark to be encrypted. Dusk cried out to him, and Alex only smiled, and swung the incomplete soul orb by its chain, smashing it into a moss-covered stone pillar. It shattered with a tinkling of glass, as if it had been fragile and delicate, instead of the heavy solid orb he had assumed it to be.

Dusk screamed at the impact, clutched his hands to his head as if in horrible pain. One knee buckled and he went down, the cry still on his lips. Alex stared, fascinated by the reaction. The assassin’s shoulders quaked, breathless sobs escaped his bowed head. Then another scream, this one holding more hints of outrage than agony, and he leapt up, quicker than Alex could follow and slammed the hard edge of an elbow into Alex’s jaw. He stumbled backwards into the same pillar he had destroyed the orb against, vision spotting. He tried to lift a hand in defense but Dusk did not give him the chance. Rigid fingers drove into his solar plexus and he lost all breath, went down to hands and knees in the water logged cut grasses. Another blow to the side of his head and he rolled to his side, sight obscured by pain and dizziness. He closed his eyes and thought desperately, frantically that Dusk was going to kill him.

And there was not anything magic, or his measly, navy-taught knowledge of self defense could do about it. He found the breath to gasp. “Are you sure you – want – to do this? Now that – you have a – soul?”

Silence. He fought against nausea and squinted his eyes. Caught a wavering vision of Dusk squatting a few feet from him. The assassin glared at him.

“Demon spawn,” Dusk accused him of with a hiss, then staggered to his feet with none of his usual grace, as if he were the one who had taken the beating. He stared down at the pieces of the broken orb, then kicked them savagely, scattering them across the floor. Alex half smiled in his misery, closed his eyes for a brief moment before the expected wash of darkness swept over him.

~~~

Okar was pacing the length of the room, skirting around fallen beams, avoiding puddles of dripping water. He had the look of something caged. It was easy to feel the frustrated surges of his magic as it fought against inactivity.

Neira’sha was starting to cast worried looks in his direction.

Victoria, who had gone to Neira’sha when she could not find Aloe to confide her troubles to, could well understand Okar’s unease. Ashara had been gone too long. He was upset, he was scared and he was chafing at the bit to be after his mate.

Neira’sha was holding the rein connected to that bit as firm as she could without resorting to magical restraint that he was sure to contend against.

“These things take time, my dear,” she soothed.

He cast her a glower, knowing very well her calm words were only to balm his nerves. “She is long overdue, Lady.

Darkness has fallen and she vowed to be back with the decent of the sun. He
has
reneged on his bargain. I told you he was not to be trusted.”

“He holds her in greatest respect. He will not harm her,” Neira’sha assured him.

“Ha!” Okar whirled on her and threw out his hands. “So much respect that he drives her from her home. Speak not to me as if I were a child or a fool.”

The elder sighed, as if indeed she were dealing with such and cast a look that pleaded for understanding to Victoria, who sat quietly by the brazier.

“He has greater reason than most to despise him,” she said quietly to Victoria. “Greater reason to distrust his motives.”

Okar turned his gaze towards the human also. His tilted, blue eyes sparkled. “Only because I know first hand his treachery. His capacity for foul deeds.”

“What did he do to you to make you hate him so?” she asked, realizing that there was seething hatred for Azeral lurking behind Okar’s stare.

He shifted his gaze from her, frowning. “When one finds a match for one’s heart at the same time one has a match for the soul – there will forever be strife. He was her soul match, yet she loved him not. He could not abide that she did love me. With one such as Azeral, the only option was to destroy what she loved. He spent a great deal of time trying.”

“God,” she breathed. “No wonder he tried so hard to get at you when we were on the run.”

He sat down abruptly on the fallen stone pillar. “There was a time, I think, when he put more effort into hurting me than wanting her.”

“That was long ago,” Neira’sha reminded him softly. “He was younger then too. And driven by something stronger than love.”

He looked up at her balefully. “Was he?”

Victoria stared, aghast at this talk of love and souls as if the two were so distantly separate. And something inside her wrenched. She gasped, quietly beyond the notice of the sidhe. She put fingers to her temples as a sensation that was beyond physical assaulted her. It was not entirely unpleasant, but it was shocking and intrusive. Something foreign that tickled the boundaries of her self even behind the thick protective bastion of her shields. It was a trauma of sorts that was not quite her own.

Vaguely she heard Neira’sha and Okar speaking. She shook her head of the strange sensation and tried to catch up with the conversation. Okar was still sitting, calmer now, although his frown had deepened. Neira’sha was gesturing towards the ceiling.

“If only for an hour,” she was saying, “there were clear skies, weather wards could be encrypted into the rune stones and draw from their power.”

“Dare you meddle with the spellwork of the ancients?” he inquired warily.

“I think I am better qualified than any other,” she snapped, fatigue making her short. She sighed after retort, and gave him and Victoria an apologetic smile.

“Those runes have known me, my dear, than longer than either of you can guess.

They will allow my small addition. The weather was never something the ancients had need to defend against. This valley was ever protected naturally from the harshness of the Four’s whims.”

“Only Azeral’s whim threatens it,” Okar declared grimly.

“Where are they? The ancients that built this city?” Victoria asked.

“Long gone from this world. They were ever travelers of the realms.”

“They just decided to up and leave?

What made them go?”

Neira’sha shook her head vaguely.

“They never alluded. I was not present when they made the decision.”

Victoria gnawed thoughtfully on her lower lip, half caught up in interest over the mysterious ancients, half distracted by the unusual sensation that had overcome her moments before. Before she could contemplate delving deeper into either, raised voices from outside drew her attention.

Okar jumped to his feet in alarm, expression distant.

“She’s back.”

~~~

She gave the horse its head, not caring particularly where it took her. Leanan’s death cry still echoed in her skull, pounding over and over like the blow of a hammer to the fragile shell of a silver bell. She clutched her hands over her ears, clinging to the saddle with her knees, but little good it did. Branches whipped at her face, snagged her hair. She was welted and bleeding from the path her mount chose and still nothing got through to her but the death knell of her child. Her first born. Part of her flesh had ceased to be. Part of the essence that was Ashara that she had given freely to the life she had harbored within her own body.

Gone. Gone. Gone. And by her own hand. It had happened so quickly. The girl had stuck at her. Stupid,stupid child. She could only defend herself, what other choice did she have in the camp of her enemies? And that defense had triggered an avalanche. The malignant power had come at her in an overwhelming onslaught and Azeral…Azeral of all folk…had come to her aid. And between the two of them,their daughter had died.

The cry rebounded inside her head again. Ashara screamed in misery. In a hopeless effort to drown it out. Her horse plunged breakneck, down the sloping valley.

~~~

The spriggan was wet. The spriggan was unhappy. The spriggan was in the camp of a people his master considered an enemy. Not that the spriggan held strict allegiance to his master’s whims. One could hardly consider Azeral his benefactor now, after all. One would probably be safe to assume that Azeral would have his head on a pike if the chance arose. And sooner or later, Bashru knew, the chance would come.

The Seelies were fighting a losing battle. Fighting! Pah! Not a term the Liosalfar knew. They were cowering, was more like it. They were determined to hole up in a rapidly filling valley and let Azeral pick over the remains of what washed out past the runes. And one bloated, spriggan body would be among all the long, smooth-limbed sidhe ones.

Foolish, foolish place to find one’s self. Disgusting situation. Bashru was thoroughly agitated with himself for allowing it to happen. Magic coercion or not, he should have turned tail and run at the first hint of the insane plan.

Bad situation. A spriggan that had worked for a Dockalfar lord for a good part of his life was bound to meet suspicions in the arms of the Liosalfar. He was rightly surprised they had not slit his throat or trussed him up and thrown him in the most convenient hole. Only all the convenient holes were filled with water.

But they had asked him a few questions, nothing too hard for him to answer even though his devious little mind searched desperately for hidden meaning in the blatant query.

Did he mean them harm? Of course not. He came to them dripping and chased by ogres as well as the hunt. He came most certainly not of his own free will.

Was he still in the employ of Azeral?

Regretfully no, and they all raised their brows at his sour tone. Not since he had taken up with the damnable human. He went into detail on what Azeral would probably do to him when and if he got his hands on him. Some of the more delicate sidhe turned a little green at the vivid explanation.

Would he abide by their rules whilst he was among them? He had shrugged.

Why not? There was certainly little enough to tempt a spriggan into other action. He had no intention of running to Azeral to betray them, as if anything he might offer would accomplish their downfall quicker than the misery the sky delivered upon them. It would not be enough for Azeral’s mercy any way.

Then they had let him go. Just dismissed him out of hand and turned their attention to the human, who still looked shocked and dazed from the girl’s attack.

So Bashru wondered out on his own, barely under the suspicious eyes of the younger sidhe standing guard outside the structure the Seelie council had taken for its own. Bashru hunched his shoulders and contrived to look as small and harmless as possible. Spriggans often assumed that they could seem harmless, small, misshapen creatures that they were. Even the young seemed nothing more than malformed little men. But from the cradle on, they were predators. They were thieves at heart, and often thieves of the worst kind. Spriggans had a reputation for stealing the young of other species. Often for jest, sometimes for profit, occasionally for nothing more than pure malice. It showed in their eyes. In the dire gleam beneath overhanging brows. The sidhe knew it. Despite the nonchalance of the elders in letting him roam free, the hunters followed him with their eyes. Their minds too, if he knew his sidhe.

Bashru thought that sooner or later they would get around to making him a less viable threat. And if they did not get the chance, then the Dark Court certainly would when it took this vale. He needed to be out of it before either possibility became reality. For a while he crouched under an overhanging slab of stone, staring moodily into the rain. He clutched his bony knees to his chest and bemoaned his situation.