Bound to the Prince (29 page)

The copper-haired elf bid them goodbye and,
with a bright smile and a wink in Igraine’s direction, rode
downhill, right into the sea of blue grass. Igraine held her breath
but when she tried to see if the grass troll followed the elf, she
noticed that it was gone.

“He’s the fastest rider I know. It will take
us much longer to reach the Inn, for Ahearn has to carry the two of
us,” Elathan remarked while he brought the horse to a fast gallop.
Igraine held her breath when they broke the treacherous peace of
the grass plain that lay so undisturbed before them, not raising
suspicions about its deadly inhabitants. But nothing happened, and
she did not see the strange form moving in the grass again.

They rode across the fields at breakneck
speed for what seemed like hours. The prince stayed silent, with
his gaze directed to a faraway point over her head, so Igraine
mused that he was occupied with thoughts and memories she could not
even imagine. She thought it wise not to disturb him, content to
feel his warm, protective body behind her. But after a while, she
noticed that the clear blue sky had grown darker, and the winds
felt cold on her skin, no longer a soft breeze but a howling over
the grass that had become a deep, dark shade of blue now. Elathan
felt the sudden tension in her body and nodded behind her.

“You are right, Igraine. Night will fall very
soon, and I believe we will not reach the inn before the sun goes
down. I am afraid we will have to spend the night here in the open.
Do you see the large rock? It will give us a certain amount of
shelter. It is still far away, but we should reach it just in time
to start a fire before they come out.”

Igraine did not have to ask him who ‘they’
were. “The grass demons,” she whispered. Instantly she regretted
having spoken the words out loud, for in that very moment, some
distance to their left she saw something move under the surface of
the grass.

Darkness fell over the plains so swiftly that
Igraine asked herself if she had been asleep for a few minutes for
she had not noticed the sunset. But Ahearn took them safely to the
large rock awaiting them, the only solid thing in this sea of
treacherously soft blue grass. A part of the stone formed an
overhang just wide enough to give them both a limited amount of
shelter from the icy winds that now lashed the surface of the
ground, giving it the appearance of a troubled sea.

Elathan dismounted as soon as they reached
the formation and pulled Igraine down with him. The steed snorted,
ears laid back. Even he seemed to sense the danger approaching them
from all sides. Wordlessly, the prince gestured Igraine to stay
behind his back before he started murmuring elven words. After a
while, a golden light emanated from the prince’s hands. Igraine
cried out with surprise when a line of fire lit up around them, but
then she saw that it was a circle Elathan’s magic had created,
seamlessly enclosing both of them and Ahearn for protection. The
horse nervously stomped his foot on the ground, then moved nearer
to the rock, pressing his quivering side to the hard stone.

“Back to back, Igraine,” Elathan commanded
roughly, drawing his sword. “No matter what happens, stay in the
circle. Once they smell our presence, they will attack us. Fire is
the only thing these creatures fear, for it threatens the grass.
They have adjusted so well to their surroundings that they can
exist in no other place.”

She nodded wordlessly and pulled her own
elven sword from its sheath. If the prince fell, she would not
stand a chance against those ferocious beasts, but she would not
surrender easily. It was so dark now that she could hardly see, but
when she narrowed her eyes and directed her gaze to the grass, she
saw something moving under the surface again, something that dug
tunnels through the earth with an incredible speed. All her senses
where heightened, her body tight with fear. The warmth of Elathan’s
strong, tall body against her back was the only comfort she could
hope for, but it gave her courage while she watched the grassy
fields starting to move all around them, and whatever it was that
disturbed the peace of the landscape, it drew nearer and nearer
until it surrounded them from every side.

She asked herself if her opportunity for a
noble death to save the prince had come earlier than she had
expected. Well then, if that was her fate, she would welcome it
with open arms. But should she tell him how she felt in the face of
almost certain death? Would he laugh at her foolishness, that she,
a mere human slave, had fallen in love with an elven prince? But
maybe he already knew. His mental powers were much stronger than
her own, and she could only guess how much he had seen while
entering her mind.

Forever lost, her thoughts drifted away like
flotsam on a wild river when the first creature rose before her
like a demon from deepest hell, a huge black shadow that seemed to
grow rapidly from the ground like a gnarled tree. But it was
nature’s cruel mistake, for it ripped the earth apart with brutal
strength, making its way as it forced its own birth from the grassy
plains. Igraine cried out with fear and blindly grabbed for
Elathan’s arm although she knew she should not hinder him while he
prepared himself for the fight that awaited them.

Igraine had not seen many creatures of the
elven world yet, but the grass demon looked like nothing she had
ever laid eyes upon before. Not in her wildest imaginings could she
have dreamed up the horror that hid in this mockery of life, those
dead, blood-red eyes that pierced her from deep inside their
sockets, the black, leathery skin that had a disgusting wet shine
to it, the deep blue fur on its back that was the result of
adjusting to the beast’s natural environment, for it looked
treacherously similar to the grass that grew on the plains. Its
sniffling sounds that made her feel sick when she noticed what they
meant, something that could only described as longing ran through
the demon’s body like a violent shudder.

It smelled her blood, and obviously she was
its favorite kind of dinner. The creature looked faintly like a
distorted human form after breaking all limbs several times, but
there was no face apart from the gruesome eyes or the gaping hole
that had to be the mouth, for it was filled with razor-sharp teeth
that waited to dig into living flesh, drawing blood. When the demon
shook its head with excitement, hot, stinking saliva sprayed all
over her and burned on her skin. Its arms ended in huge claws,
clearly made to rip flesh and bone into pieces.

Trembling, she raised her sword. It was very
clear that her swordsmanship was not expert enough for her to
survive more than a few minutes – if she was lucky - but she would
not stand there like a frightened deer while her prince fought for
both their lives. She was unable to avert her gaze from the demon
before her, but from the corner of her eyes she saw that several of
those creatures had risen from the grass like grotesque flowers,
swaying softly from side to side while they seemed to be waiting
for something. The prince did not move at all, but she felt his
strong, flexible body at her back, ready for the attack.

Then a high-pitched screaming started, and it
sounded like the dying cries of a thousand souls. The noise did not
seem to come out of the demons’ mouth openings, but seemed to
surround them, as if it came from all of them simultaneously.
Igraine cringed at the terrible sounds, but before she had time to
even cover her ears, the creatures attacked as one, their movements
suddenly very smooth and targeted – the way predators moved.
Holding her breath, she moved her arm to hit the first one when the
beast came to an abrupt halt at the edge of Elathan’s magic fire
that protected them, roaring with fury. The demon was so near that
she could feel the heat of its breath, smell its rotten,
sickeningly sweet stench. It reminded her of blood, and maybe it
was and the remains of the demon’s former victim were not wholly
digested, causing this foul smell rising from its bowels.

Igraine heard a low chanting behind her back
and turned shortly to see that the prince had closed his eyes. He
murmured words in an unknown tongue that didn’t sound even elven,
strangely guttural and melodic at the same time. Shivers raced down
her spine, and she sensed that something old was awakened, a force
that seemed to arise from the deepest bowels of the earth.

With the bloody sword in his right hand,
Elathan held up his left hand as if trying to stop the demons
advancing on them. Igraine felt that his muscular body trembled
with power before a bright beam of fire erupted from his palm. It
pierced the air with the speed of light and hit one of the grass
creatures. It cried out with pain, grabbing its chest while the
magic fire started to burn the demon mercilessly from inside out,
consuming and killing the thing quickly.

The grass creatures seemed to be unable to
move for a moment, mesmerized by the old magic that made the air
crackle with energy all around them. It grew stronger with every
moment and crawled under Igraine’s skin like an electrical shock.
With a quick move of his wrist, the elf shot another red-hot arrow
of fire towards their enemies. It hit the first row of demons, and
they burst into flames like heaps of dry straw.

The silence broke, and the monsters shook off
their paralysis. Fiercely, they threw themselves against the magic
ring, not seeming to care that their blue fur burned and their
black, leathery skin melted until the raw flesh lay bare. Elathan’s
flames did not work as natural fire did. It didn’t go out when the
demons tried to roll on the ground to extinguish it, and it found
its way through hair, flesh and even bone, consuming them in an
instant. Not even a heap of ashes remained when each demon went
down, it was as if they had simply never existed.

Their high, painful screams made Igraine want
to cover her ears, but instead she raised her sword and began to
attack the beast nearest to her. The demon hit her with a mighty
stroke of its front paw, and the razor-sharp claws dug deep into
her naked shoulder. She cried out with pain and rage. A sudden
feeling of strength and courage took hold of her and made her
forget her fear, and she rammed her sword deep into what seemed to
be the throat of the creature. Crimson blood emerged from the wound
like a fountain, and it went down to the ground right at her
feet.

Behind Igraine, the elf sprang into action.
His sword whirled through the air and hit another demon, cutting
off its head in one single blow. The absurd creature was too
surprised to know that it was dead. Its limbs twitched wildly in
the air before it dropped to its knees and hit the ground. The
others hesitated for just a short moment before they attacked,
jumping right into the fiery barrier the prince had erected.
Elathan fought several of them at once, his sword a deadly flash of
lightning in the darkness while he continued to burn them down with
his magic flames. He moved so quickly he seemed to dance, his
glorious hair flying around his head like a silvery cloud. Angel,
Igraine thought. He is my dark angel.

His deadly beauty had hypnotized Igraine just
for a short moment, but it gave a huge demon enough time to cross
the ring and strike her down. His claws ripped apart the soft
fabric of elven cloth over her chest, cutting deep into her skin.
The creature grabbed her ankle and drew her nearer to the stinking
hole that was its mouth. Long, sharp teeth gleamed up in the
moonlight.

The prince roared with fury, and a flash of
his fire killed the demon instantly, burning diagonally through its
high, dark shape. The monster went down, severed into two pieces
like a broken doll. Heavily breathing, Igraine looked up to the
prince who now stood over her. He protected her with his life while
he fought as many demons simultaneously as he could, bleeding from
several wounds now. She heard nothing but the horrible screams of
the creatures. There seemed to be dozens of them approaching now,
maybe hundreds, she didn’t know. She only knew that even Elathan
could not save them from certain death. There were just too many of
them.

But once again, Igraine had underestimated
the prince. Closing his eyes again, he raised his arms above his
head as if to draw power from the heavens. Suddenly, there was
fire, fire all around them, spreading over the plains to all sides
and burning everything it touched in the blink of an eye. Igraine
screamed and clung to Elathan’s leg, sure to feel the flames
touching her at any second. But instead, nothing happened, so she
dared to look around. She realized that she and the prince seemed
to be in a safe bubble while everything around them, even the air
above their heads, burned.

She took a few deep breaths, then slowly
stood up. She embraced Elathan’s waist and pressed herself as close
to him as possible. He did not seem to notice her movements,
evidently carried away by the incredible force of magic that was
his slave now. Fire, fire all around them.

As quickly as it had started, it was suddenly
over, and there was nothing but silence. She let her gaze wander
over the grass plains, but all she saw was the black, burned
ground. Not a single blade of grass was left, and not a single
grass demon – it was as they had never existed. Behind her back,
there was a soft sound, and she turned her head, afraid that one of
them had survived after all. But it was just Ahearn, still standing
under the rock. The horse looked nervous, stomping the burnt ground
with his hoof and shaking his head, but otherwise, he was perfectly
fine.

But Elathan wasn’t. He swayed for a moment,
then went down like a felled tree before Igraine could catch him.
Still too shocked to think about what had just happened, she sat
down beside him and cradled his head in her lap, studying his pale,
handsome face. His eyes were closed and he did not move, but to her
relief he was breathing steadily.