The Coming Storm (97 page)

“Hold!” the Hunter shouted, throwing up his hands to halt the blowing horse.

He held up his torch.

“Who goes this night?” he said.

“Jored, milord. I’m called Jored. Please, I must speak to the Lord Elf and the wizard if they’re here.”

“It’s late to be abroad and alone. Is your duty so important you must take such risks?” the Hunter asked calmly and glanced at his companion, who stepped out of the shadows with his sword drawn. In these times there were always two on guard.

That one nodded in return and disappeared among the trees.

“It is, sir, it is,” Jored said, bobbing his head.

A light blossomed brightly beyond the leaves and branches and drew closer.

His heart pounded and for the first time Jored wondered if he’d been foolish.

Had he really chased so far and so long through the night to shake a wizard and an Elven Lord from their beds? Had he been right to do so?

Right is right and wrong is wrong. He knew that as he knew his sword and shield. What those folk in the city planned was wrong, no matter the reason they might find to make it right. At the very least, these two would tell him if that weren’t true.

The Lord Elf appeared first, a ball of light dancing above his head and Jored slipped from the saddle with his heart seeming to sink below his knee even as he bent it.

Here was an Elven Lord, for true. His look was severe, stern, his dark brows winging out above dark eyes. Like all those folk he had that calm mien that to Men seemed unnatural, a serenity and certainty no man could match, not even the High King himself. He was tall, taller than most men Jored knew, even the one who stood beside him.

Jareth the wizard. He looked like any other man but he was a wizard as well, Jored knew.

As long-lived as Elves, almost, wizards were.

Whatever Elon expected, it hadn’t been this. He hadn’t been asleep. His foresight had plagued him all afternoon, as had his bonds with Colath and Ailith, some kind of distress moving through them. Something had happened. He’d already been contemplating returning.

When they’d met up with the Hunters it had seemed fortuitous. The problem of Forest Glen could be left in their capable hands, his honor and duty to Daran satisfied.

All the Hunter who’d come to get him had said was that someone had ridden through the night with a message. He’d been expecting a messenger, an Elf or Hunter.

This man was neither, he was a rough soldier, a common man. Big, with a beard as wild as that of some Dwarves, his clothing disheveled. His horse stood on spread legs, trembling and blowing. Sweat darkened its hide. There was a wildness to this man, a clear mark of the mountains. Extraordinary that he should come in search of an Elf and a wizard. His folk didn’t have much care for either. Desperation and fear marked him and a little of the awe that some folk held for his people and wizards.

 “Who are you? What mission is so urgent,” Elon said, frowning a little, “that you should risk horse and life this night?”

Something within him shrilled, Foresight or something else. Elon’s heart beat slow and hard in growing dread.

No less startled, Jareth was surprised to see their visitor. The man was one of the mountain folk and he’d driven his horse near to foundering. Horses were like gold to those people.

“Get up, man,” Jareth said, “and tell us what drives you out so desperately.”

“Jored, sirs. That’s my name. They mean to kill her,” Jored blurted.

Both went still and looked at him in dawning horror and concern.

A chill spread out from Elon’s heart.

No.

His tone hard, Elon said, “Who? Who do they mean to kill?”

“That one, the one they name Otherling,” Jored stammered, in the face of that look. “The Lady Ailith.”

If he’d thought they’d been still before, Jored hadn’t known what still was. They might have frozen in place.

His heart was heavy with dread but a small trickle of hope blossomed within him to see them not mock him or his fear.

Elon thought his heart might stand still. His blood went from chill to cold.

Ailith
. A terrible certainty dawned.

Frowning, Jareth said, “What do you mean, Jored? Who wants to kill her?”

This didn’t make any sense. Jareth didn’t want it to make sense. It couldn’t be, they couldn’t have done it. It was incomprehensible.

“The High King has had her taken. The Lady Ailith. Arrested. They mean to judge her on the morrow.”

Jored would have quailed if the look he saw on that Elven face had been meant for him. He was relieved it wasn’t.

“They what?”

“Arrested her. They mean to judge her on the morrow,” Jored repeated, breathlessly, wavering beneath that unrelenting stare.

The Elf lord shook his head, his expression grim, implacable.

“Jareth, the whispering you heard.”

The pain grew in Elon’s chest, his heart contracted.

More than whispers. Jareth knew it now. They’d known who they talked to and hadn’t told him.

“They drew us off, Elon,” Jareth said, looking murderously, furiously angry. “A feint, to draw us away and leave her undefended. This is Daran’s doing.”

Damn the man. The pressure had grown too great and he’d given way.

Jareth knew the reasons, the excuses, he could probably recount them all but he still couldn’t believe they’d actually done it. How carefully they must have planned it, to make certain he and Elon were far enough away before they set it into action.

A glance from Elon to the guard sent that one off down the path toward camp.

“Not just Daran’s,” Elon said, his tone grim.

Ailith.

Suddenly he pictured her as he’d last seen her, in her shift, lit by the morning sunlight.

The searing pain in his chest grew.

Jareth looked at his companion. “There will be consequences.”

“Of that I have no doubt,” Elon answered, calmly.

There would be repercussions. He’d thought her actions that day should have proven those whispers false. He’d misjudged. Fear drove this. Blind fear and old tales, which he now knew were false. Even among his own people, for they couldn’t have done this without Eliade.

Now he knew why Eliade had needed Colath’s assistance. She had indeed been spending too much time around Daran, but she was of the older Enclave and they still held to the older traditions. Including the ban on the mixing of blood.

Elon had thought Ailith had proven those old tales wrong but apparently her actions hadn’t been enough. He’d seen her courage in the face of adversity and battle. Even in the depths of fear, even though her heart was breaking and her soul torn, she’d chosen her path and followed it true. Followed it to him. Always. Had put her faith and trust in him and more. He couldn’t betray that trust. Wouldn’t betray what he saw in her eyes when he looked in them. To do so would be to betray everything he was.

More, though, there was the bond, the bond that wound so tightly between them…

What of it?

More, what of the joy she brought him, the sheer comfort of her presence?

Watch over him?
She’d said,
‘Always, of course’
.

Among the trees he could hear the sounds of the others breaking camp.

“We’ll have to push to make it in time,” Jareth said.

“Then we’ll push.”

A Hunter brought two horses forward but these horses were hands taller than the ones that Jored knew. These were Elven-bred, long-striding and nearly tireless.

His own poor gelding was blowing hard, run nearly off his feet. With these, they might just make it in time.

“Jored…” Jareth began.

“That’s all right, milord,” he said, “I know. I’ve done what I can. My part here is finished. I’ll follow as fast as this poor old horse can carry me. You go on. Don’t you leave them do this. I saw her in battle, sirs. I stood beside her in that last charge. She was as scared as we all were and said so but she never gave. No sir, not once. Nor did I. I saw what she did. Because of her, I'm still here. I don’t care what she is. What they’re doin’ is wrong, just plain wrong, milord. There has to be another way. You all go on. You do what you have to. I’ll be along.”

No
, Elon thought,
Ailith would never give
. He remembered when she’d faced Tolan. For him and Colath. A deep fury burned.

“Good man,” Jareth said, swinging his leg over Zo’s back.

No Elven horse needed a spur, nor required one now. Elon leaned into Faer.

With those eldritch lights darting on ahead, they were off, disappearing among the trees.

Jored watched them go, then took his own horse’s reins and began the long walk home.

The leader of Hunters at Alatheriann, Kierath, turned her steady gaze on Colath. For all that Colath had supposedly been there to advise, it had fallen on her as the leader of Hunters to set this duty. It was not their way. Nor was it their way to keep their actions from him. Given the Otherling’s magic, the Council had decreed that in addition to her human guards, there must also be an Elven escort. It would be safer that way, in case she decided to try to escape, but Kierath couldn’t reconcile herself to it.

“No,” Colath said again, resolutely, “I’ll do it. I’ll lead it.”

He set his jaw, cold anger caged deep inside. It wouldn’t do to let those of Alatheriann see it, and it was wrong that he couldn’t share it with them.

“I’ll do it,” he said, holding his hand out for the warrant. “Better me than another. I wouldn’t send a stranger. Ailith deserves better.”

There was no question of whether he could be trusted to do it, Elven honor wouldn’t allow him to do less.

All through the night he’d listened to the debate as it raged in Council, unable to speak, to protest, as they imposed their charges. Against his true-friend Ailith. He’d watched those charges  mount, helplessly.

This one thing he could do.

Kierath nodded without comment as he took it from her, turned on his heel and left the room, with two Alatheriann Hunters at his heels, the number of guards they’d thought she’d need. They didn’t know her.

He would do it, Colath thought for Ailith and be kinder than another. He would stand for her. For Ailith, his true-friend, no matter how bitter or how painful this duty was.

His heart ached.

Striding down the halls of the High King’s castle he passed familiar faces but didn’t glance at them or even nod. Some of them, he knew, agreed with this. Others kept their silence, whatever their private thoughts. At least they hadn’t confined her to a dungeon or some other grim place. She’d already had enough of those, as had he. Instead they’d given her a room like any other.

A prison with a comfortable bed, though, was still a prison.

Grief burned in his chest like fire.

The guards on the doors were two he knew but neither commented as he stepped past them and to the door. Neither spoke as he flashed the order at them.

“Wait here,” he said to those with him.

Ailith stood at the window, her curling chestnut hair glowing in the early sunlight.

True-friend.

He remembered so much. Most of all he remembered Ailith as she’d faced Tolan and the icy horror he’d felt as he stood, chained and helpless, while she claimed the soul-eater as her own to keep Tolan from laying it on him.

There was nothing overtly Elven about her, nothing in her appearance that shouted of her heritage, but he knew it.

She was small but there was strength in her, a wiriness that wasn’t unlike the strength in his own people that Men found so surprising. There was only a slight hint of their folk in the shape of her ears, although her high, arched eyebrows might be a mark of it. It was in her calmness, though, in her courage and the quietness of her demeanor that he saw a resemblance to his own folk. In her dignity. Her constancy. In her heart and soul, in her true-friend bond to him and in her bond to his true-friend, to Elon, she was Elven.