Dockalfar (82 page)

He turned to Victoria and caught her worried profile in the failing light. She had been holding tight shields over them for hours now. The strain was bound to be telling. His own, as Dusk had pointed out, were useless as far as Azeral was concerned. He should have known. The dark lord had been too much inside his head to lose sight of him completely.

There was still that within him that occasionally urged him to give up the flight, that giving into Azeral was the right thing to do. He fought those urges of misplaced loyalty with a vengeance, telling himself over and over that they were false conceptions planted by Azeral.

Sometimes it was hard to ignore them. He found all he had to do was look at Victoria to overcome them.

“God, I wish there was just a hint of him I could find,” she murmured, brows drawn.

He did not need to ask to whom she referred. His lips tightened. Her concern for Dusk was too plain. Although the assassin’s appearance had set her thoughts to him rather forcefully, Alex could not wholly resent Dusk’s interference. Not with how cleanly and quickly he had cut through the sidhe and their bendithy henchmen. It was all too likely he had saved their lives. And was most likely out there doing it again in the form of hindering the hunt.

“If there was, they could find him too.

He’s good, Vicky. Trust him to take care of himself. We’re the ones at risk.”

She turned her haunted eyes to him.

They glittered green in the evening light.

Her hair was dry for the first time in days and burnished with coppery fire.

“I wish I could take your jealousy away. I wish I could make you at peace here.” The eyes closed and she sighed.

“Even if you had me all to yourself, could you be happy here?”

“With Azeral after me?” He laughed, then realized how serious she was and felt his mouth go dry. She was asking him things he was too tired and scattered to answer now. Things that were too important to glaze over or take lightly.

“Vicky, this isn’t our home. We’re the outsiders here. Who’s going to ever look at us and wonder if we’re dangerous or think what use we can be to them? I hate being looked at like an enemy or somebody’s pet!”

“Oh, Alex, you’ve seen the bad side.

You’ve lived in Azeral’s court for far too long. You’ve never met the good people, the ones that would give their lives for you because they named you friend. Those people could make this home for us.”

“Your friends,” he reminded her. “The ones that distrust me.”

She did not respond. She turned her face away and rode in silence and he recalled her initial question. Quietly he asked, “If we found a place to be at peace here, would I have you all to myself?”

She was a long time in answering. He thought she might decline a reply altogether. But finally she looked back to him wearily.

“You would have my heart. You would always have my heart.”

Then she frowned and looked over her shoulder. “There’s something prying at the edge of my shield.”

He brought his own farsight into play, scanning the forest around them. Nothing.

Which meant not a thing, since their pursuers could shield just as thoroughly as Victoria. But she had his nerves tingling now. He was certain there was something out there. One might hope it was merely Dusk, protecting their tail. But it was unlikely that either one of them would sense his presence.

They kicked their tired mounts into a canter, the fastest they dared go with all the debris making an obstacle course of the ground. “Damn,” he cursed. “We have got to get far away from here.”

“Oh, I agree,” she called across to him. “But how?”

He lost himself for a moment in the smooth pace of his steed, remembering the first time he had been free to ride a nighthorse of his own accord without the constraining arms of an ogre around him.

During the hunt. His first hunt, when Azeral and Tyra had taken them far across the Alkeri’na in pursuit of worthy game.

They had used a magic portal to get there.

A portal that bisected space and distance.

He turned and beamed back at Victoria with sudden inspiration.

“A portal. We open a portal.”

She stared back at him in blossoming hope. Then her face fell. “I don’t know how to open a portal. Do you?”

In all honesty he did not. But he had ridden enough hunts with Leanan and seen Azeral and sometimes Tyra create no few holes out of thin air to guess. It was not quite an outright lie when he nodded his head and declared that he did. It was just a matter of power. Azeral could do it easily.

Tyra had to work at it a bit harder. Both of them were used up for some time after creating the hole. He was certain that he did not possess that kind of power. He thought Victoria did.

“I’d need help,” he asked. She brought her horse to a standstill and he reined back to join her. She was staring at him with forthright determination. Her face was too intent and too serious for him to avoid the truth. “I’ve never done it, but I’ve seen it often enough. I know I can do it, but I’ll need to borrow some of your power. It’s a big magic. It always took a lot out of Azeral.”

She nodded her head once, which surprised him. She was ready to trust him on this foolhardy plan.

“I might not be able to do it,” he warned, feeling the urge to argue against himself since she was not going to do it. Her eyes bored into him. “Have you a better idea? I don’t.”

He shrugged and grinned weakly at her. “Where should we go?”

“Someplace we know. Someplace I’m familiar with. Maybe the plains below the End of the World range where we arrived at. We were there for a couple of days and I think I’ve got a pretty good image of them in my head.”

“Okay. So what do I do?”

“You lend me power.”

When she looked at him quizzically he shrugged, not able to explain exactly how one drew power from another, yet excruciatingly familiar with the process due to all of Azeral’s thievery of his own.

“Just open up. Let your inner shields down so I can draw out what I need.”

Her face closed up just a little. She was so used to shielding herself from all comers it would be hard for her to let him in.

“If I let my shields down they’ll be able to get at me,” she whispered. “So we’ll have to do this quick.”

He took her hands in his and leaned across the saddle to press his lips to her forehead. She looked up at him in confusion. Her lips trembled with a half-pleased smile. He whispered to her, “I trust you too.”

– And somewhere not too far in the withered forest sidhe horses struggled through the twisted growth. Armored forms with blazing, spell created shields urged them forward with feral excitement –

He closed his eyes and pictured the plains. Flat, featureless grasslands that stretched as far as the eye could see. If one squinted the line of mountains could just be perceived to the south. He remembered them being cold and inhospitable, filled with trolls the size of small houses. He shivered and pictured the plains closer to the southern edge of the Alkeri’na forest. Less of a threat there, more cover. He took a great deep breath and summoned all the power that would respond to him. It filled him, obedient, calm, waiting to be used. He held it in check easily and reached tentatively out towards the bright shining aura of force that was Victoria. For a moment, her outer shell resisted him, then it receded and he was swept up in the maelstrom of her power. Not at all tame like that which responded to him. It was a whirlwind of tumbled, emotional force. It changed and shifted and was in no wise stable. For a long moment he observed it in shock, observed her, and wondered how she managed to keep herself under control.

Summoning his courage, he drew it into himself. It flowed easily, not minding the transfer from human to human. It had been harder for Azeral to take that earth bound power from Alex and merge it with his own fey magic.

A tingling sensation began in his fingertips and toes. It worked it way up his limbs with a not unpleasant quality.

His power was but a fraction of what gathered around her. It filled him to bursting, overwhelmed him with images and feelings of her. Victoria filled his mind. Her essence, her image, the sound of her voice, the feel of her body. Her loves. Her hates. God, she did love him. If he had ever doubted it was clear in what he felt from her now. But not him alone.

There was another essence that she kept deep down within herself, at the center of her being, that she treasured. He had had that same core of existence bonded with his own soul long enough to recognize Dusk. He almost cried out in rage as images of her physical bonding with the fey assassin fluttered across his mind. In retaliation he brought forth the memory of the first time he and Victoria had consummated their own relationship.

Moonlit night. On the grassy knoll overlooking the old airfield that he had hung around constantly as a kid. The place he had come to dream of flight. The place he had brought her to share in his fantasy and where she had given him a new dream to take promise in. They had spread a blanket and taken a basket dinner. The sky was open in all directions. To the east had been a small natural pond where ducks habitually made their home. There were trees beyond that and past them the sprawling urban mosaic that was Kansas City. You could see the lights at night from the knoll. They had lain there with the star light over their heads and the manmade lights of the city beneath them and made love. He threw that in the face of her memories of Dusk and the power surged.

The whole of the magic was sucked out of him, leaving him suddenly devoid of her essence and the buffeting force of her power. His vision spun, but he caught her face as she gasped, staring behind him.

He made to turn, but movement from the other direction caught his eyes. Riders burst out of the trees. He caught her around the waist and spun with her, throwing them both through the portal he knew he had created. The light of passage momentarily blinded him. His shoulder hit the grassy ground of the plains and he rolled, protecting her as best he could. He gave up all hold on the power and the rip in space and distance closed up, as if someone had just pulled up a zipper. Sight careened crazily and then grayed around the edges altogether.

~~~

The gulun found him, of course. He had half expected it from Bashru’s frustrated complaint over the ‘damned, horrible cat’. He did not welcome her presence for she was loud in her own manner and too youthfully exuberant to practice caution. He thought about putting his own skills to the test and avoiding her, keen nose and all. But the sight of the half-grown cub bounding towards him, her tufted ears pricked in delight, weakened the stonier side of his reserve and he crouched down to receive her. She barreled into him, as always, upsetting his balance, and covered half his face in one great sweep of her rough tongue. She had leaves aplenty in her fur. He took the time to swipe the majority of them off before setting off again, with her on his heels.

She trotted along, as obedient as any domesticated dog.

Then it hit him. Something inside him wrenched. He gasped at the unexpected shock of it. The force that drove him almost to his knees. Then it was gone and in its place was an emptiness. A void that he had never known, because he had never known his soul to be without what was now very clearly missing. He stumbled, put a hand out for support against a tree and slowly sank down to his knees. The gulun sniffed curiously at his face, whining plaintively over his distress. He stared at nothing, heard nothing, felt not a thing for too long a time. Finally blinked, aching at the emptiness, at the utter feeling of being alone. He felt sick and relieved at the same time. She was safe. Safe.

Drawing a shuddering breath, he felt wetness on his cheek. The gulun nuzzled her face close to his and licked it off. He put his arms around her thick neck and buried his face in her pelt.

“She’s gone,” he whispered. “Gone where he won’t dare to follow.”

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Alex came to with grass under his cheek and cool night breeze on his skin.

He had awakened when something moved beside him. He blinked his gritty eyes open and got a good look at green grass and dandelions. He shifted his point of view up and saw Victoria sitting next to him. Her hair was gently lifted on the breeze, swept back from her face. He had never seen anything so lovely.

“We made it,” she said. Her voice sounded as dazed as he felt. It was a struggle to sit up next to her. He put an arm around her shoulders and hugged her to him.

“I told you.” He tried to sound light, but his voice still held a tell tale tremor.

God, he felt shaky. He had never felt this bad after passing a portal before. Then again he had never opened one himself.

There was darkness ahead of them. They were sitting on an incline leading down.

Neither could think of much to say. Both were content to recover from the jarring passage through his portal.

Then below, something twinkled. A light appeared. In the pitch darkness of the night, it might have been an exceptionally bright sprite, hovering in place. But then another and another blinked on after the first. All said and done thirty or more of the stationary lights graced the darkness in strict formation. Two lines of them, straight as arrows that lit up the night. He stared at it, befuddled. Then came a drone that he had never heard in Elkhavah before. Whiny and high pitched, it broke the silence of the night. Victoria clutched his arm, just as startled.

The sound grew louder and louder until it was deafening. And just when he was ready to cover his ears, something huge and darker than the night passed over their heads, disturbing the air in its wake.

He gaped after it, seeing lights on the flying thing. Lights that for a moment he could not connect to any logical thing, because the logical world as he knew it had ceased to exist. Then it occurred to him. The utter familiarity of what he was seeing.

It was a landing strip and what had passed over them was a plane.

Uncontrollable excitement ran the circuit of his body. He leapt to his feet, surging out of Victoria’s grasp.