Keeping It Real (26 page)

trained in the art of faking sincerity. And so she told herself that, but it sounded a wrong chord in her

heart which didn't believe that Dar was lying. Her heart felt confident in its judgement, had done ever

since the moment they had - well, what
had happened?

Lila was brought up short by the realisation that
she didn't
have an explanation, in fact
did not
know

what
to call it
or how to think of it. She had simply brushed it
aside as irrelevant
to the moment at hand.

But now she had nothing to do but
yomp along, watching Dar's back, and it hit home just how far she

was from what she knew in any direction. But on the bright
side, her aching bones and sore muscles

neither ached nor burned. When she concentrated, she couldn't even feel a hint of pain where the medics

had struggled to heal the junctions of metal and flesh mere days ago.

Now, as well as stopping mentally and emotionally, she stopped in her physical tracks. Dar turned and

looked back at her, questioningly.

'Did you hear something?'

'No,' she said, taking a deep breath. 'Nothing.'

He glanced at
her with curiosity but
didn't
ask what
was on her mind. He waited.

'How long would you wait?' she asked, turning the moment to test her heart and its judgements.

'A long time,' he said. 'Questions are always leading. So one never asks a question, if waiting will

suffice, otherwise one gets the answer one expects, which is not generally the truth. What
you want
to

say will reveal itself, if it is going to, when it should. You humans tend to think of it as some kind of

superiority complex, I understand, when we keep our silence and give you our full attention. To an elf

such a thing is a natural courtesy.'

This was not the response Lila had been expecting. She felt
conciliatory. 'You must find humans most

prying.'

'It has been noted. But I think our curiosity levels are well matched. It is simply the case that we have

different ways of dealing with it.' He wiped sweat from his face with the fabric back of one of the archery

bracers which encased his forearms
.
'I am glad that you have stopped,

as it
happens, because we are about
to step onto the foot
of the true mountains which mark the border

between Lyrien and Sathanor, and these are places where wild magic collects in great
abundance
.
I

wanted to warn you to be on your guard for its presence in whatever way you can. It would be very

difficult for us if we were to become trapped in a Game, even a trivial one.'

Lila's high spirits sank somewhat. T never saw the last
one coming, and I was watching for it. Sort of.

Anyway, I knew it
was a risk. You lot
always ... I mean, you're well known for catching humans in

Games.' She stumbled over the end of the sentence in shame. Words that wouldn't have seemed even

slightly dubious a few days ago now made her sound like a galloping racist. Because that's what she was.

Or had been. She looked up, thinking she would see a flash of the real, haughty Dar now all right, but he

only shrugged.

'We are guilty of many foolish Games with Otopians, romantic gambles being only one. But
do not
say

you are not
pleased by it, or I think you will make yourself a liar.'

That
told me, Lila thought, and did not deny it.

'Come,' he beckoned, looking back and glancing at the sky where the sun was going down. Shadows

lengthened. 'Night
falls like stone at
this time of year in Alfheim. We should find some shelter and rest

soon. Some hours are not
good to be abroad in this part of the country, and one of them is fast

approaching.'

'You make it
sound extra spooky when you say it
like that,' she grumbled gently, following him closely.

'Why can't
you say,
i
t
's ge
tt
ing dark, le
t
's
t
ake a break, and by
t
he way
t
he neighbourhood could
use some work.
That
sounds much less imposing, you know?'

'I. . .' Dar stopped. Lila felt
the faintest
prickle across her skin and a scent, like lemon, in her nostrils.

'Oh,' she said, realising the sudden presence of wild aether. Then, suddenly, from a childhood moment

she'd never recalled until now, 'White rabbits, white rabbits, white rabbits . . .' She said it seven times.

Saying the silly words broke the charm that she could feel forming between them, the one which Dar

would have contracted for them both if he had answered her question. The air around them twinkled with

tiny, firefly lights and she felt
the prickling more strongly, almost
as though she were being nettled. It

swirled and she thought, for an instant, that
it
formed something like a face that
pouted crossly into hers,

but
then it was gone, and the breeze became an ordinary breeze.

'It
worked,' Lila said with honest
surprise, stunned. White rabbits never worked on anything
.
It
was

something you said on the first
day of the month to ward off bad luck
.
, . she couldn't imagine it really

doing
something.

'Good,' Dar said, almost silently. He called her on with a nod and she concentrated on her step. The

twilight had darkened, become blue. His skin had taken on the same hue, making him difficult to see.

Around them the trees on this high ground had trunks that
looked like pillars of ash as Alfheim's moon

rose. Its thin sickle shed barely any light
at
all. Dar became shadow, and then Lila switched on her night

vision and stopped in total shock.

Among the trees on the high hill, now restored to full detail and reprocessed by her Al-optics into

realistic colour, she saw drifts of rainbow watercolours flowing across the landscape
.
Not like cloud, not

like water, something of both, the transparent, delicate traces wound around objects, eddied and pooled.

Sometimes they formed limb-like shapes and darted swiftly as fish, sometimes they diffused into thin air

or fell in showers
.
They were everywhere. And then she looked at
Dar and saw him encased in a blue

and lilac and emerald radiance, clearly of the same material - his
andalune
body. It
had a distinctive

outline many arm lengths away from his body. She saw that he was holding it diffused and that its edges

helped him navigate the land. He paused to look back, wondering what had stopped her this time, and

with his intent
to locate her she saw an indigo streak dive towards her almost as fast as an arrow. It

brushed her torso, so lightly she couldn't feel anything, and his gaze fixed on her at the same moment.

'Hell's bells,' she said to herself quietly. She'd never realised she could have seen magic just by shifting

the sensitivity of her vision to different spectra. The wild aether followed Dar's interest, clustering around

the slender string of his regard. Now she began to see how it latched onto things. As he walked back

towards her he trailed vast floating banners of it
in his wake. Where it
touched him it
took on the colour

of his
andalune
for a moment before furling softly away.

'I can see it,' she said. 'On the full electromag display. I can see aether. I think.'

I . . .'

'Wait,' she said. 'There's a lot hanging around you.'

'I know that,' he replied, whispering
.
'We should not talk. The safe place is not far from here.'

Lila smiled. T can see you.' A gout
of sparkling pink seemed to leap forwards from her and pose just

in front of his face. It looked as though it was waiting for him to reply. 'Hey, d'you see that?'

Dar shook his head and started away again, not looking back.

Lila ignored his irritation and resumed the journey with a new lightness, recording as she went. This

was so incredibly - well, she hated to say it, being a top spy with a mission, but - it was so cool! But then

other thoughts occurred to her. Humans must have known about this - surely someone had tested it

before? There had been years in which to scientifically address aether and progress was being made. But

nobody had thought to tell her about it? She instantly tried to call Dr Williams to complain but, of course,

there were no comms connections
.
The silence began to annoy her
.

She found that
trees and patches of ground had their own magical signatures, that some plants were

almost as actively involved in the wild magic as Dar was, that they had magical properties, clearly. She

found a fungus that exuded a yellow vapour
.
She saw hidden animal dens by the gentle miasmas of green

that surrounded them. It was a beautiful, unexpected delight. She didn't turn around and look behind her

until Dar led her up a steep and difficult path to a hidden door in an outcrop of rocks. Beyond him she

could see this led into a shelter inside the hill above the woods. As she ducked under the ancient lintel

and turned to take the handle and pull the door closed she glanced back at
the forests.

The lovely coloured washes of aether extended up into the sky, across the trees and the open ground.

Alfheim under the slight
moon-light
was as lovely as in the day, but
her attention to this beauty was quite

lost as she caught sight of sharp-edged silhouettes moving quickly along the path that she and Dar had

taken. They were four-limbed, slender, with long tails like whips and strange heavy heads shaped like axe

blades which they swung side to side in the streams of wild magic. They had no eyes or ears. They

followed in her tracks with the unerring single-mindedness of stalking predators
.
Where they left dark

wakes that
briefly obliterated even the trunks of the palest
trees
.
She had the distinct
impression they

were filter feeding off the aether, tasting their way through it
.

Dar pulled her sharply backwards and closed the door. She heard bolts slide home and then his

breathing, elevated from the running, relaxing now. It
was utterly dark inside the shelter. She had to

switch to

thermal imaging. Dar stood easily close to her, taking the quivers off his shoulders
.

She told him what
she'd seen in a rush, breathless herself, 'What
was
that?'

'Saaqaa,' Dar said, setting the quivers down in a niche beside the door, his bow next to them. 'Night

Prowlers. They were once hounds of the shadow elves but
they have become feral in the last centuries.

Now they cannot be tamed. They eat flesh, but also some kinds of magic. The
andalune
kind in

particular
.
Elves per se are not at the top of the food chain in Alfheim
.
I told you there were hours of

danger. This is one. The first two of the sickle moon. After that, they will still be there, but
their power

will be reduced until moonset. Then it
waxes again and we must hide until dawn. They are, like their

masters, nocturnal.'

'And that door will stop them?' She thought
that, maybe, if the door stopped the Saaqaa then the

Saaqaa might stop the elves on their trail. It seemed too much to hope for.

He tested the door and leant
on it
for a moment
.
'Any barrier of wood or earth or spelled natural fabric

with an elemental charge of those types. They will not
cross through those materials, but they will transect

other substances. Not metal of course. They are not properly material.'

Transect! She didn't like the sound of that. Ts there anything else I should know?'

'Many things.' She heard the scrape of some part of Dar's body on the wall. She could see him

perfectly well from the heat he was emitting, and he looked tired. His body sagged and he made himself

stand upright when he clearly wanted nothing but
to stop. 'Come with me. There is a room in this warren

where we can both sleep. And water is there. And food, I hope.'

The tunnel was quickly made but
sturdy. Lila got the impression it had been dug in a great rush, and

then fortified later in stages. There were no niceties about it. Rough beams supported its narrow roof and

the relatively welcoming width of its mouth soon became the height
and narrowness of an average elf,

which was just
about
the same size as she was, fortunately. Ts this some kind of hunting lodge?'

Dar snorted, 'Hardly. No respectable elf would be seen dead in a lodge as rough as this one. This is a

Night Shelter, an emergency post built by the light elves for when they are carelessly stranded in the wild

at night. Many are scattered across these regions because of the

Saaqaa. Our Daga pursuers will be in one, unless they have elected to
l

travel under cloak and risk being hunted by the Prowlers. They are three, possibly including a