Dockalfar (79 page)

With the light of day, the forest they rode through, although still close and dense, was alive with color and an abundance of activity. Moss covered the trees, and that was spotted with rich flowers and delicately creeping vines.

Small, skink-like lizards of a rainbow variety of colors scampered up and down the thick trunks. Birds preened themselves on lower branches, occasionally squawking in disgruntlement as an acrobatic tree rodent sailed past their perches, chattering happily to themselves.

It seemed, for one brief moment that all was well with the world. That there was no small army on their trail, and no sinister plot to steal the wealth of earthbound power they both carried within them. It might almost have been easy to forget the things they left behind. The misery. The fear. The emotional turmoil.

But the shield she constantly kept around them would not quite let her submerge the danger. It was a constant, strained reminder.

She glanced at Alex, who rode just ahead of her. He had slicked back his damp hair and it curled over the neck of his collar, so very much longer than the military cut he had come home to her back in Kansas City with. Had they been here that long? Months? How long? The days ran together, blurred with fey frivolity.

How long had it taken for her to lose the sense of her real home, back in the mortal realm and come to find the aspects of this world more to her liking? How long had it taken for her to find she liked the power and the prominence it brought her? When had she thrown away all the proper Christian beliefs of home and family that she had been brought up to worship?

Things that she could no longer settle for.

Things like settling down and producing babies, melting into the bland countenance of middle America. One man her lifeline.

One man her reason for being. Oh, God, even if she loved the man, she could not do it to herself. And that was the problem she had with Alex now. His mind still functioned on those dictums. He still wanted things to go back to the way they were. He wanted her dependency and he wanted her undivided loyalty and could not understand why she found it so difficult to give.

She sighed, torn between the old impulse to say something conciliatory and make it better, to soothe his feelings, and the new stubborn independence that demanded she let him work it out on his own and to hell with him if he couldn’t come to some type of middle ground.

“Vicky.” He said her name and she jumped guiltily, as if he had caught her unawares and overheard her rebellious thoughts. But he was not looking at her, his gaze instead fixed to the canopy of leaves and branches overhead. His eyes were a bit unfocused, his shoulders a little slack.

“What?” she asked curiously, following his stare upwards and seeing only green dripping leaves and intertwining limbs.

“I think we’re close,” he murmured, far away from her. “The whole forest is like a rolling carpet of green except to the far east where the green turns to gray and brown.”

He was farseeing, traveling out of his body and over the canopy of trees. She had seen the same look on Neira’sha’s face when that lady sent her mind out to scout.

“How far?” she asked.

“Come see,” he invited.

“No,” she shook her head. Leaving her body, even partially, was not a thing she found comfortable. She was perfectly content with the view she had from her own two eyes. “Can you see any pursuit?”

“Umm – no. If there were the wood would cover it.”

“Oh. Do you know where Bashru is? How far is this place?”

“He’s ahead somewhere. The place – the bad place – “ he frowned as he said this. “It’s a days ride. Maybe less. I don’t think I like it much. There are things in there that are – unsociable.”

“How do you know?” she asked, tempted to try and join him in his overland survey and see what he saw.

“I don’t know. It’s weird. Not like what the runes make you feel. More like a series of presences. Like walking into a room in the dark and knowing someone else is there. Only the someone else is – evil.”

She shivered, wishing him back suddenly and fully under the protection of her shield.

“And this is the place you want us to take shelter in?”

He was silent for a moment, then slowly he blinked and shifted in his saddle to stare back at her. There was full awareness in his eyes now.

“They will skirt it. Not because they can’t go in, but because they won’t think we will.”

“How dangerous are these ‘presences’?”

“I don’t know. Bashru was trying hard not to think about them. But if he’s willing to hide there without the benefit of magic shielding, then we should be all right with it.”

“You hope,” she grumbled.

Suddenly he grinned at her, a cocky, boyish grin that reminded her of the Alex she had known before the war. The one that had not been scarred by the things he had seen and done in the name of country and honor.

“Hope has nothing to do with it. I’ve got luck on my side.”

She rolled her eyes and could not help the grin that touched her own lips.

“Luck? Is that what they’re calling it nowadays?”

“Uh, huh. If it was fate we’d both be dead by now, ‘cause she seems to have it in for us. But I think luck’s still looking down on us with a little bit of benevolence.”

“Hmmm. On who’s authority do you have this bit of hot information?”

“My own. You’re with me after all. That at least proves part of the point.”

She stared, grin fading down to a half smile. “You didn’t think I would come?”

“Chances were leaning definitely against it. I thought you might have other things to do.”

The sigh came out of its own accord.

She knew very well what he meant by ‘other things’ and did not wish to get into that right now when they were at such ease with one another.

“It was the only thing I could do to help them,” she explained reasonably. “I could not sit by and let them fight my battle and die protecting me.” She hesitated and quirked a brow at him.

“Would you have gone without me, if I had declined?”

He laughed, started to answer then put a bit more serious thought into the reply. When he finally spoke all the humor was gone from his eyes. “No. I would have gone down with you, whether you noticed I was there or not.”

“Oh, Alex,” she whispered, thinking how very much she still loved him. How tangled the strings of her heart were. “I would have noticed,” she told him, and then thought to tell him the rest.

But his eyes had left her, fixed behind them and to the right. He held up a hand for silence and she trembled with a sudden, impulsive fear. She sent out spears of mental questing and found nothing. Nothing but the silent wood and the ingrained response of the plant life to the nourishing rays of the sun.

“What?” she hissed at him.

“Too quiet,” he murmured back.

“And – “ he frowned, then abruptly cried out throwing up a hand and a backwash of power behind it that rushed within her ears like crashing water. She cried out, still at a loss as his magic – and fairly destructive magic it was in the form of a wall of charged energy – crashed into the forest just behind them. It soaked past trees, leaving trunks blackened and crisped and burned away the shielding mass of bramble and then it was eating into something more fleshy.

Cries rose up in the forest. High pitched goblin shrieks. A dozen or more small, dark figures scattered away from the magic Alex had sent at them. Some of them escaped its path, others, too slow were caught and incinerated. The survivors disappeared into the surrounding wood, silent now. She turned frantic eyes to Alex, still shocked that she had not been able to perceive their presence.

“How?” she cried. He shook his head, his own eyes panicked and yelled at her to ride. She did so, spurring her mount forward.

Goblinish forms leapt out at her as she did, and she lashed out with blades of her own potent magic, slamming her attackers into solid tree trunks with bone-breaking force. The trees passed too quickly and she gave up trying to guide her mount, letting it choose its own path through the dense trunks. She chanced a look behind her, fearing that Alex might have foolishly chosen to stay and eliminate the rest of the goblins, but he was not far behind her. She sighed in relief and concentrated on discovering who else was in the wood with them.

Again she found nothing and this time she realized the silence or the quiet that had alerted Alex. There was too much stillness. The wood was being shielded.

Just as she had shielded them, someone else was shielding whoever was in the wood on their trail.

A horse crossed the path ahead of her, its rider taller than a goblin and wielding a curved sword. Bendithy huntsman. She cried out, unable to swerve the direction of her own mount as it took her careening towards the gleaming blade of the bendithy. She hastily projected a buffer of solid shield before the nose of her horse and slammed it into the man blocking her path. The opposing animal screamed, knocked totally from its feet. Its rider was flung from the saddle and into the unsympathetic bulk of a great pine. She almost giggled in her relief at the clear path then choked in pain as a sharp stab of power got past her forgotten mental shield and pierced her mind. She released the reins and clutched at her head. Tears leaked from her eyes, swept away by the wind.

Alex. Alex. She silently screamed, disoriented and fighting to gain control of her barriers, fighting to oust the offending magic that had slipped past her notice. It was not Azeral. She would have known his touch. But it was strong and it took all of her attention to combat it. She vaguely heard Alex behind her. Yelling something at her. She could not concentrate on him.

All she could do was try and pry the contracting fingers of force from her mind and one by one evict them from her head.

She thought she did know the other mind.

There was some vague familiarity to the veiled power. Female and cold. And very powerful. But not vindictive and not jealous. Just business-like. So it surely was not Neferia or Leanan. But perhaps, the mistress of Azeral’s great hunt.

She flung the realization of identity back through the grip the woman had on her and for a split second there was a moment of surprise. Victoria gathered every iota of strength and compelled the other out of her mind. She snapped her shields up after, but they were shaking, weak from the battle.

She tried to find Alex and cover him also, but she doubted she would have the strength to shield them both should Tyra and Azeral both attempt her barrier.

“Alex!” she cried and knew he was somewhere close by. A great breaking of branches and bramble and a dark horse plunged towards her, trailing vines and briars. She cried out, readying a desperate defensive magic before she recognized Alex. He had his sword out, and scratches on his face. She was so shocked to see him with a sword that she could only gape.

“How’d they find us?” he complained, sorely out of breath. “Damn it, how could they find us?”

“They saw us leave?” she suggested shakily.

“No,” he insisted, even as he urged his mount ahead of hers. There came the sounds of close pursuit from behind and they quickened the pace recklessly.

Branches were too close overhead for comfort. She had nasty scrapes on her legs from brushing close to tree trunks.

They passed a line of low furs, thick green growth shielding the forest beyond.

The nighthorses plunged through, breaking and straining young limbs. Her own mount was smacked viciously in the face by the elasticity of branches Alex’s horse pulled forward. She covered her own eyes with one raised arm. Then she was through and wished vehemently that she had never bothered, for ahead of them were a line of mounted bendithy and…. God, she closed her eyes for a moment and sobbed – sidhe.

Fantastically armored, radiating power.

Two of them. Two of them protecting their bendithy fighters from magical onslaughts.

Alex swerved suddenly, cutting her horse off sharply. Her animal screeched its displeasure and reared back on its hind legs. She clutched handfuls of mane and hung on desperately. To be thrown here and now would be deadly. Alex was looking for an out. He kicked his horse in another direction, but riders were weaving in and out among the trees, dark ominous shapes. He cursed loudly, inventively and she felt him summon offensive magic. Magic that the sidhe would block. She summoned her own, waiting to follow his lead, to lend her power to whatever gambit he chose to employ.

And rather suddenly there was a scream from the wood behind them. The bendithy shifted, looking that way, then almost as a whole cried out and launched themselves towards them. Alex moved in front of her, throwing out a shield. She sent a battering ram of force toward the sidhe. They staggered, one visibly, the other mentally, but held on to their protection of the bendithy. The attackers rammed against Alex’s shield and he rocked in his saddle, face strained.

A bendithy came at her, short sword slamming again and again at the shield protecting her. She cried out with each and every blow, and then again as the hilt of a slim dagger rather surprisingly appeared just below the huntsman’s Adam’s apple. He gurgled and his fingers lost their ability to hold the sword. It hit the ground a moment before he did. Her widened eyes followed the descent to the forest floor and therefore she missed the first of the sidhe fall.

She only noted it with the realization that the magical protection over the bendithy had halved. Then she heard the other sidhe’s scream of rage and looked up to see a crumpled armored form lying under the feet of his nervous nighthorse.

The other sidhe gave up the protection of his minions altogether in favor of frantically shielding himself. All the magic in the world did not make a difference when the shadows rose up behind him and jerked him backwards off his perch. His mount was too well trained to do more than stand and toss its head in outrage of what it was being forced to endure, even as its rider had a sword inserted between the seams of his armor, then pulled out just as quickly.

She knew damn well what was among her enemies at that point, even before her eyes made him out clearly enough to catch his whirlwind movement across the space separating the fallen sidhe from their now unprotected henchmen.