The Coming Storm (64 page)

A garrison lay ahead, with luck they would reach it before the snow. Already the first flakes were falling. The clouds were heavy above them. There had been a dusting a few days before, enough to whiten the ground. This would be heavier, as would each successive snowfall now, but their arc across the north and west was taking them southward again.

Behind them, the trackers were gaining. Slowly but gaining.

When it hit, it rocked Ailith in the saddle.

The sound from deep in the tunnel was odd. Peculiar sounds were being heard in the deeper tunnels, those ways that led far into the depths of the earth, for many days. It had gotten so Sarok and the others avoided those passages. It wasn’t the Dwarven way but some instinct said to stay away and so they had. All with furtive looks at each other. Telak had suggested telling the Lore Masters or mentioning it to his wife but the others had shaken their heads. They were Dwarves and as such there was nothing under stone which they should fear.

And yet, they did, although none would speak of it.

This odd sound, though, grew close. A queer slithering, a great rush of air, as if the passage had grown lungs and breathed. There was a clicking, a clattering. As one, they looked at each other, took up their picks and axes and backed away.

What came out of the darkness of the passage made more than one Dwarven heart quail. It had legs by the dozen and pincers in front and a maw made for sucking something in but not letting it out. It had many teeth, it was fast and it wasn’t alone.

Sarok made it out, running for his life as the tunnels and corridors behind him echoed with sounds he didn’t wish to hear.

Ailith went suddenly pale and folded in on herself with her hand over her heart. Her eyes were stark.

“What’s wrong?” Jareth asked, alarmed.

“It’s begun,” she said through gritted teeth, feeling the loss with those in the Cavern, sharing it, mourning it with them. “With the Dwarves.”

Jalila looked at her in dread. “What has?”

“The dying,” Ailith said. “It’s begun.”

Somewhere high in the mountains at the very edges of the borderlands was a Dwarven Cavern. She could feel the magic flare as the Lore Masters sealed off the tunnels to the dark places below, even as their losses tore at them.

For some reason, Jalila had to know. Like Elves, Dwarves were an empathic but not terribly fertile race.

“How many?”

Ailith looked at her bleakly. “Many.”

Like Elves Dwarves lived long, their souls burned so brightly. Now it was as if something had taken a bite of one corner and left behind it a darkness that had never been there before.

It was too easy to imagine, many Dwarven lives, many Elven lives. Too easy for Jalila to know what that loss might feel like. She grieved for them. What bloodlines had been lost?

To that question, so crucial their races, there was no answer.

Pushing on, they rode to the garrison.

The house was Jareth’s quarters in Doncerric, a house he’d taken after Elon had been named to the Council. Unlike many in Doncerric it was a long building with rooms that opened onto a walled garden that overlooked the distant sea. Trees, plants and vines filled the garden and framed the view.

By right, Elon had claim to quarters in the Council building itself but he rarely used them. The Council Building had been designed more by and for those of the race of men, who seemed to prefer massive buildings of cold stone to the openness of sun and sky. Witness the castles in which their Kings lived and this city of stone by the sea.

Dwarves lived in stone, too, but they lived within it, as naturally a part of it as it was of them.

His people lived among the trees, their homes billowing canopies surrounded by trees and scented by flowers and growing things.

Like much of the lands of men, this city had forced nature around it, rather than making it part of it.

The King’s castle perched high on a precipice, its walls terraced beneath while the rest of the city clung to pinnacles or the long flat slopes that dropped down toward the waves. It was a city of bridges across chasms that always made Jareth shudder.

Elon found he missed his old friend, especially here in this place that was his.

Jareth had purchased it as much for Elon as for himself. Elon knew it and was grateful for it and for the use of it. To have taken a place like this on his own would’ve insulted the Dwarves and Men who’d built the Council building and he couldn’t have done that. Here he could maintain the illusion of a visit to a friend.

He himself had designed the Council Chambers, which weren’t chambers at all but an open domed pavilion facing a broad square so people might see and hear how their laws were made and justice was done. Not for Elves nor for Dwarves the secluded dark-chambered halls where men made laws behind closed doors for others to follow. No, this would be out in the open for all to see, that honor and truth be served.

He sighed.

It had been two days of waiting.

How did it go in the north
? Outside of the one quiver in the bond, he had no sign. His foresight nagged at him, offered more tantalizing glimpses but nothing concrete. Little had changed from what he Saw then to what he Saw now.

This place was the closest he could come to an Enclave in a city of men. Someone in this city had at one time had wished for more than cold square walls. Broad verandas ran across the width of the building, one for each floor, upper and lower, with high walls blocking the view of the garden from the street beyond and a low wall as barrier against the drop on the other but gave a view over the city to the endlessly rolling sea. It was a small pocket of living growing things on the side of a mountain of cold stone.

“How much longer will he keep us?” Colath asked as he joined him.

Elon let out a sigh with a shake of his head, as much frustration as he would allow himself to show.

“I don’t know. This is Daran High King, First among the Three and I would guess he wishes to show  me he doesn’t dance to the whim of an Elf, no matter that he is Councilor, or Advisor, or First among equals, only one among many.”

He’d hoped Daran wouldn’t.

These games and whims were so much a part of power for some men. What purpose did they serve? None, except to delay what should be done.

But Daran did love them.

There was a knock at the door. Colath went to answer it and returned, lifting an eyebrow.

“Daran High King requests your presence.”

At last.

Elon dressed carefully, knowing such things mattered to men. Even to the heavy chain of his office as Councilor.

Men didn’t know how little Elves or Dwarves liked chains, how little they liked the implication of the restriction of freedom. It bound him to his office rather than freed him to serve it. It also served as a bitter reminder of other chains, made not of the softer metals like gold but of colder ones like iron and placed on his people by men. He’d tried to explain it to Daran and others, but none among those folk truly understood, they who’d never worn chains or knew those that had. He’d resigned himself to accept it but he was never comfortable with it.

He stood outside Daran’s Great Hall and awaited entrance.

His presence was announced.

As he entered Daran waved away his retinue, the small gathering of secretaries and ministers that fluttered around him like moths to a flame.

There was much about Daran that reminded Elon of a hunting bird, an eagle or a hawk. It was in the look of him, from his high bridged, arched nose to his glittering, deep-set, sharp black eyes to his short black hair, touched with gray, that had been brushed back from his forehead and confined with his Court Crown. Tall for his race, he was nearly of a height with Elon. Staring back with those black eyes, he waved the secretaries and ministers further away and gestured Elon to join him on the balcony over the gardens below.

Leaning on the balcony wall, propped on his arms, Daran looked out over the gardens restlessly.

Elon was wary of this mood.

“I hear,” Daran said, “ you’ve been traveling the north of late.”

“Have you?” Elon said, carefully. “I don’t deny it. I ‘d been hearing some disturbing tales of late. I wished to investigate.”

“What have you found?” Daran asked, looking out to sea.

For Daran this kind of talk was like a game of horses and hounds, moving pieces on the board against a master player. Although he rarely won against Elon, he liked the challenge of it, and it made his occasional victories all the sweeter.

“You are Daran High King, you must have heard some of it,” Elon answered. “There have been raids and forays all along the north and elsewhere by creatures of the borderland.”

Daran said nothing, merely waited. Sometimes silence gained more than speech. It was certainly true among his own people. Often Daran had only to wait silently and soon enough someone would speak, if only to fill the silence.

This was a game Elon wouldn’t play. He spoke sharply. “Speak plainly, Daran.”

Turning Daran looked at him with angry black eyes. “One of the Council, one of my Advisors, goes wandering my borders and I know nothing of it.”

Calmly, Elon said, “By your own Agreement those aren’t your borders but the borders of all races, Men, Elf and Dwarf. More plainly, though, I wouldn’t come to you with supposition but with knowledge, to serve the Three and the Council.”

Inwardly, though, Elon was angry. Daran forgot the terms of his own Agreement, the one he’d helped to write, the one he’d signed. Daran needed reminding sometimes that he served at the will of all the races, not merely his own. It was a frequent error of Daran’s, to think himself High King of all. He was only one of the Three who did rule, equally. First in name only. The Elves and the Dwarves ran their own lands as they saw fit. An equal number of all the races sat on the Council. The laws of men affected men, the Laws of the Council affected all.

It was also personal. Daran had named him Advisor to him not the Council. Their agreement that he would serve so didn’t mean he was at Daran’s beck and call, nor that he had to answer to him, and, knowing Daran, he’d made that clear at the beginning. Now Daran was angry Elon hadn’t sent word of his actions.

Checked
, Daran thought, mildly irritated,
on two counts
. He must now step back.

This was important or Elon might well have walked out by now. He’d done it before to prove he wouldn’t be brought to heel like some tame dog. How important was this to him?

“I’ve had complaints,” Daran said, more mildly, reining in his frustration.

Elon went still. “Have you? Of  what and by whom?”

“King Geric.”

“What of him?” Elon asked.

This was dangerous territory. What had Geric complained of? This was Tolan’s doing, of that Elon was sure.

“It seems you’ve been wandering his lands without his leave.”

Taking a breath, Elon shook his head. “The last I knew, the Agreement doesn’t prohibit me from wandering where I choose. I’m a Councilor and your advisor, which gives me certain rights, so long as I don’t abuse them. I don’t need his warrant to cross his lands any more than any other traveler, as long as I break no laws. So far as I know I’ve broken none.”

“He says you have his daughter and Heir.”
There, state it baldly and see what he says
, Daran thought..

“I don’t have Lady Ailith. The last I heard she was of her majority and free to go where she pleases. As for King Geric, where once he was a good King it would serve him better if he turned his eyes to his people, he doesn’t serve them well any longer. His people have suffered more from these raids than any I know and I have reason to know it. Lady Ailith feels differently than her father, wishing to serve her people and the people of the Kingdoms better. As I’ve witnessed, and others. She shepherded those people her father abandoned at the risk of her own life to save them from such predations. Only to find herself and those very same people in more dire straits, when Raven’s Nest was attacked in force by goblins and trolls.”

Shocked, Daran’s head whipped around, his eyes sharp.