The Coming Storm (26 page)

One of the oddly shaped things stepped into the pooled light and Delae’s heart nearly stopped. She knew it. Her blood froze.

A hellhound. Named so for its resemblance to a dog in general shape and for their method of hunting, especially by scent. There all resemblance stopped.

Hellhounds. Mounts of trolls and goblins, creatures of the borderlands. Predators. Hunters by scent.

Fear coursed through her veins, made her stomach tighten. In all her life Delae had never been so frightened as in that moment.

Carefully and quickly, Delae backed her horse up, holding its reins tight and close to its head. There wasn’t much time. She didn’t want them to notice the movement and give them a direct quarry. Another hell hound stepped into light even as she mounted and turned the horse’s head away. Down and away from Ailith’s trail. It was dark, deep dark here beneath the trees and she was alone in it and unarmed. There was no place to go but away as fast as she dared, keeping her head low and letting the horse find its way. She’d known a few moments of fear in her life but nothing like this.

In the near distance she heard the sound of baying, like a hound’s on the scent. The hell hounds. Which scent? Hers or Ailith’s? She prayed desperately for her granddaughter. Her only blood, now. All that was left of their families. She prayed for them both and tried to drive her poor horse farther and faster. It needed little encouragement with that sound on its heels, forcing and plunging its way through brambles and bushes, dodging trees half seen until they were almost upon them.

A sharp yelp, almost triumphant, sounded from behind her. Far behind but not far enough. Her heart pounded.

Some part of her accepted that she would die here, this night.

Darkness was no impediment for hell hounds.

Delae began to say her goodbyes.

Ah, Dorovan
, she thought.
I should have told you about Selah, about so much else
. It grieved him, she knew, to know their time together grew short, she could see it in his eyes.

Ailith, darling child. Though you hate me for it, if you do, it was right not to tell you, as it was right not to tell Dorovan. You’ve grown and you’ve thrived, sweetling, without that shadow hanging over you. It will be hard, so hard, but perhaps you’re free of the curse. Otherling, yes and magic, yes, perhaps. But not the madness. Please not the madness. I’ll go happy if we’ve saved you from that.

The distant baying was constant, drawing close. Delae knew it had her trail. It was closing and getting closer. The horse was nearly frantic, fear a sharper goad than her spurs. It ran hard, blowing, foamed sweat trailing off him as he ran.

She would have tried to save him, but there was no point. Not for either of them. It was the mad flight, or death. He would die as she did, of that she had no doubt.

The first faint light of dawn touched the sky when she realized where they were and what lay ahead of her. The gorge. It split the woods here, the stream at its bottom feeding into the race of the river. Despair filled her. She fought the horse to turn him south, more south.

A sharper yelp, even closer. Delae glanced behind her to see the dark shape that streaked through the woods. The light of torches was close behind. They would catch her for certain. She knew it now. There was no escape, they were too close and her horse too spent. The chasm loomed near as they spread out to cut her off.

Delae turned the horse.

She tried, she tried to escape them but they herded her to the very edge of the gorge. As she’d expected. There was nowhere to go, nothing for her to do but stop. Holding her horse in check. It was frantic with fear as the hellhound crept closer. Its face was a nightmare of blunted leathery muzzle, red eyes and drool that ran between savage teeth.

“Hold,” a voice said, so calm, so normal, uninflected, undisturbed.

The hellhound froze, one paw lifted, its mouth in a snarl.

The man was nondescript, so plain you wouldn’t have noticed him in a crowd, with sandy-brown hair and eyes the color of muddy gold. Her son-in-law was with him. Behind him. A King, riding as if he were second.

“Geric?”

At his name it seemed suddenly as if Geric suddenly remembered that. He spurred his horse forward.

“Where is she? Where’s my daughter?”

His tone was sharp, cold.

Geric and yet not Geric. Never in all the years had he ever spoken in such a tone to her. When his mother had died, it had been Delae who’d eased his grief and stood in his mother’s stead gladly. Geric had sought out her thoughts and opinions, had given them weight.

He spoke to her now as to a stranger.

She shook her head mutely, straining to hold the terrified horse, to keep it from bolting.

“It seems stubbornness does run in the family. It holds even without mixed blood,” the nondescript stranger said. His voice was oddly uninflected, save for a sing-song quality to it. “It does, it does indeed. A stubborn family. A stubborn family. Yes, indeed. Oh, yes. But you shall tell me, shan’t you, Delae? Yes, you shall. Yes, you shall.”

It was such a strange voice.

What was it Ailith had said?
Beware of Tolan, don’t listen to him, his voice entrances
.

Delae looked at this man, looked in his eyes and saw madness there even as his voice washed over her to take away her will.

Memories rose up. Selah, her sweet daughter, so very much a girl in ways both her mother and her daughter were not. Such a good child and a good woman. Dead. Gone from her. Had one of these killed her? This one?

Ailith
, she thought and remembered a thousand moments, the joys and sorrows of watching her grow, her struggles and triumphs.

Her beloved Dorovan. His gentle kindness, his stillness that had been like a balm to her wounded soul.

She held those memories against that voice, holding them like a shield.

It was hard and growing harder to hold them while Tolan talked.

Anger touched that so reasonable voice, that lilting tone shifted and his eyes changed.

It seemed her thoughts were thick but what she saw then blew away the fog his voice had tried to lay. His face shifted, changed. In terror Geric backed his horse away, his face frightened in a way that her son-in-law’s had never, would never, have been. Cowering.

Geric the King would have cowered before no one, no matter his fear, he had had too much pride for it.

As did she. Deliberately she lifted her chin.

Though she tried not to, she shivered and trembled as Tolan’s face seemed to melt, to become horror, his eyes slitted like a snake’s. He smiled to show teeth that were sharp, so sharp, and pointed inwards, teeth that would rip out chunks of flesh.

“You will tell me, old woman,” the thing that had been a man hissed, bending the full force of its will and its magic on her.

Dorovan, forgive me
, she thought, fighting to remember the silky feel of his hair between her fingers, the softness of it. Holding that last image of him in her memory, of his beautiful face, his silvery eyes, before all of the will left to her vanished. It felt as if she were drowning, suffocating beneath that gaze. Deliberately, she pried her fingers loose on the reins, gave the horse his head.

Her heart cried out, words she couldn’t speak.

I’m so sorry
.

For a moment, Dorovan was there, if only in spirit. Dorovan, holding her.

The maddened horse bolted where there was no place to go.

Away.

It leaped out over the chasm.

At the last second Tolan realized his error.

“NO!” he bellowed but it was too late.

She was gone.

Horse and rider tumbled over the side of the ravine.

Raising his head to the sky Tolan howled his frustration and fury. Shrieked it to the heavens. His men cringed, the horses shied and fought. The hellhounds echoed him, baying their displeasure at the loss of the prey.

Tolan fell from his horse, ripping and tearing at the earth where she had been, venting his rage on it. Gobbets of dirt flew. Suddenly he spun.

He glared at the hellhounds.

“Find her, find the other. Don’t kill her, she’s mine.”

They were off, gleefully. Another hunt, another prey.

There was already one on her trail, he’d set it when the trail split.

Now there were two. They wouldn’t kill her but they would hurt her. They would hound her and wound her and drive her to earth. They would keep her until he came, until she was glad he came.

Tolan smiled.

In his distant aerie, Dorovan awoke with a start, feeling a sharp bolt of sheer terror strike through him and then a bright flash of pain that was gone in an instant, leaving behind a void in his spirit where Delae had once been.

He tumbled from his bed and folded in on himself, locked down the empathy all his people shared and the grief he dared not share with them. He bowed his head against the pain.

Delae was gone. His beloved friend and companion of decades, his closest and most cherished companion, the balm to the emptiness that had yet to be filled was gone.

The scent of her skin came to him, delicate, framed around the memories of their days and nights together, of the warmth of her in his arms, of her gentle touch.

It pained him that he couldn’t give her more, that she wasn’t the spirit he longed for, but as a friend-of-his-heart he could have asked for no better, no more devoted than she.

He remembered her bright smiles, her gladness each time she beheld him. Their stolen moments together, her warmth and her joy.

What had happened
? He turned and looked toward Riverford, but the darkness held no answers.

And what of sweet Selah, that gentle spirit
?

Another hollow awaited there. Gone so subtly he hadn’t noticed the loss until he sought it inside himself.

His breath caught in a greater pain.

And Ailith
?

Beneath the stars, the setting moon, Ailith rode hard. The stars in the sky and the stars in her mind were different. There were stars that that could tell her where north was. The stars inside her mind were different somehow. She’d known them always, shining at the edges of her thoughts. Like the ones in the sky, some shone brighter, some dimmer. She followed the ones in her mind that guided her like lodestones.

It was all she could do.

Fear for Delae, fear for herself burned in her veins.

The long days of dread and growing horror, of grief and pain, of revelations, all caught up to her and overwhelmed her, tried to drag her down into despair. Yet, if they did, if she allowed them to, she would die.

She fought it, crouched over Smoke, clinging to his mane. Summoned up all she remembered of Dorovan’s teachings. All the lessons in calmness and control. She’d always known she had Dwarven blood but she hadn’t known them, the Dwarves. The Elves she knew through Dorovan. Dorovan, with his calm serenity, his endless patience.

There were those others, too. Elon, so serious, so stern but she’d seen that small smile, that lightening of expression that so changed his face. His trust, not something an Elf gave easily to men. His surprising kindness when he’d helped her both onto and off of Smoke’s back.

Colath, with his so-pretty face but so steady and calm.

Jalila, with her golden-brown skin and golden-brown hair, her hands so quick with a bow.

There was Jareth, too. She mustn’t forget him.

The blood of men ran through her as well.

She’d liked the homely wizard with his mussed hair and wrinkled clothes.

Already she was growing more calm, becoming steadier. So. She was Otherling. Not Halfling but Otherling. She had the blood of all the races in her veins. They said she had magic but she didn’t know it to be true. That was for another time.

She rode alone beneath the cold stars, trying to come to terms with all she’d learned.