Keeping It Real (28 page)

is almost certain we will pay also, for my mistake in underestimating you.'

'Me?'

'Better Zal die on the road than stand up and take back what he has done,' Dar said. 'If I could not

have maintained his freedom I would have killed him. Although he is a . . . clever bastard, you would say.

There is magic in the music and in his changed voice. Where he sings is as important as what and to

whom. I do not mean that metaphorically. It is our magic. I will explain it some other time to you.'

'And his songs are everywhere,' Lila said and thought to herself -propaganda!

'Even in Alfheim,' Dar agreed. 'Though they are much murdered on the flute and tabor. Now you must

sleep. Or everything will be wasted. If you are my friend, let me also rest.'

Friend? That was the word actually, Lila thought, inducing alpha waves across her brain to speed her

into sleep. Yes, since yesterday's strange fusion, they had become somehow more like each other, or

maybe only understood how alike they were, but it didn't matter which. In that moment
they had become

friends
.

'Goodnight,' she whispered.

'Inaraluin,'
he said - be dreamless.

Lila woke into full power two and a half hours after she had gone to sleep
.
Before she was aware of

what she was doing she was padding quickly along the tunnel, a gun in each hand, her Al-self in control.

After being still for so long she felt
twinges and aches now, but
she ignored them. Beyond the door she

could hear sounds of terrible fighting from further down the hillside
.
She heard elven voices shout
-
ing, and

they sounded desperate. For a moment her hand lingered on the door.

The clash of metal on metal and the grunt
of hard effort and pain, the whining buzz of magics and a

horrible background noise she couldn't identify reached her senses as she flung the bolts back and looked

out. Flickering faint light danced a few metres below the treeline. The awful noise was like distressed

metal screaming but she felt its timbre in her bones, what was left of them, and knew it
for some kind of

fell creature she didn't want to see. A scream sliced the night
in two and fell silent in its course, harmonics

enough to damage ordinary human hearing. One elf at least was dead.

Lila used sensors on her hand to sweep-clear the area around the door before stepping out and closing

it behind her, in case there were any of the Night
Prowlers still around
.
She didn't consider waking Dar.

Better he stayed where he was less likely to pull attention from the Saaqaa. Instead, she ran quietly

downhill towards the fighting, con-cealing herself carefully with camouflage and stealthy moves until she

was almost
on top of the scene. Her effort
was wasted, since nothing there was looking out
for her.

She saw an elf body on the ground ten metres away in a dappled pool of faint starlight. Over it the

gigantic form of a black, bipedal animal crouched. It
had long arms and savage claws. Lila didn't
know

what
it was. Like the Saaqaa it
was eyeless, its long, narrow head merely jaws with ranks of dagger

teeth and a bony crest running side to side across its skull. A long tail balanced the head's weight and

long legs, short at the thigh but lengthy in the shin and the foot, which was perched delicately on the

earth. She was amazed to see that
in one hand it
held a short, decorated spear and with this it was

fighting another elf, standing.

It
was extremely strong
.
The wooden spear point struck the elf's sword with the force of a wrecking

ball each time the elf blocked an attack and the elf was failing
.
Lila saw the fighter's
andalune
body close

and tight, weakening as the black creature came close so that
it dealt
not
only physical punishment
but

drained the energy from the Elf at
the same time. The
andalune
body was torn off with every pass of the

creature's hand as if it were tissue paper.

The third elf of the party was casting the strange werelight Lila had seen from the doorway of the

shelter
.
Its peculiar intense green made the black creature flinch backwards each time it flared, but it was

clear that this was not enough to do any real damage
.
And then Lila saw one of the four-legged types of

Prowler stalking around behind the sword-fighting elf, and knew that their time was up if she did not

intervene
.
The light didn't hurt the Saaqaa enough to deter them completely, and whatever the sorcerer

whispered in between light bolts was drowning in the dreadful screech that
the Prowlers made, a noise,

she realised as her AI analysed it, that was geared exactly to disrupt the sonics of elven magical senses.

Around the whole scene wild aether swirled and gathered. The black creatures' tails actively swung

around, searching for strong currents and these they seemed to drink into their skins, becoming darker as

the aether vanished, and more violent
.

The elf with the sword missed her footing at last
.
Her energy body was almost gone
.
She was as

magically undefended as Lila was
.
The creature's spear struck her shoulder as she missed her block and

she spun and fell on her face without a sound. At a speed Lila would have had to work hard to match the

huge two-legged Prowler pounced on her and stabbed her through the back, pinning her body to the

ground
.
It let out a shrill, terrible scream of victory and its doglike companion leapt forwards, head close

to the body, weaving as though dancing as it drained the final aether
.

The werelight vanished. She lost track of the third elf as the bipedal

Saaqaa straightened up and yanked its spear free with a bloody wrench. All this happened in a few

seconds, no more.

Lila felt
the odds turning bad. She could go now and leave whoever was out
here, yes. It would be

smart to do that It
would be the spy thing to do, the agent's business dealt
with by nature, not
even her

fault, not her guilt.

She set a Starlight flare for a low altitude long burn and launched it
from the gun in her forearm.

Suddenly the forest lit up like daylight
.
The elf spellcaster whirled towards her at the sound of the gun and

cracked a small branch in doing so. In the burn of the rocket glare he stood out against the wooded

hillside like a white statue, as brilliant
as an angel. The Prowler turned its attention instantly onto him,

shadows gathering around its head like a cloak of darkness. It flung its spear and the cast drew a black

line across the aetheric mist, gathering momentum as it
went.

Lila shot the wooden weapon out of the air in mid-flight with a flechette round that made it into

matchwood before it got halfway to its target. Other fragments of the tiny grenade struck both prowlers,

inflicting stinging cuts which confused them so that
they leapt
back into the darker regions, leaving the

dead and their defender tempor-arily free. Without hesitation the surviving elf ran straight towards Lila.

She caught his arm as he reached her and accelerated both of them even faster up the hillside towards

the night shelter, their retreat accompanied by the triumphant screech and scream of the Saaqaa as the

flare burned out
and fell to ground.

Lila bolted the heavy door behind them. Immediately her captive attempted to slide along the tunnel

away from her, but he didn't know she could see his every move as clear as day. She easily caught up

and in the darkness used her excess of strength to pin him against the wall and bind his hands behind his

back with a plastic arrest tag. His breath was hot and fast in the confined space, much faster than her

own, and she could feel that he was shaking, although he did everything he could to stop it.

Dar was awake and sliding his second sword into place, its hilt above his shoulder at his back, when

she came in, pushing her prisoner ahead of her. In the lantern light their visitor's wide eyes showed green,

his hair as fine and blond as Zal's, skin a fine porcelain white. He was Light, Lila thought, pleased at

being able to classify him. He was not very good in the dark. Maybe that was why his party had been

caught.

Dar's eyes widened in surprise and then narrowed. He glanced at
Lila, displeasure evident
all over him,

'What
is this? Are you mad?'

'Dar,' the prisoner called in elvish. 'Who is this? Why are you here?'

'Do not
seek to explain yourself,' Dar told him, his eyes never leaving Lila's face.

'He can talk,' Lila said, sticking to Otopian in case it was an advantage and the other didn't
know it.

"The others won't
be so forthcoming. Something's eating them.'

At
these words the blond elf jerked his bound hands out
of her grasp and staggered forwards, away

from her and towards Dar. 'You will not speak of them so lightly,' he hissed in perfect Otopian, glancing

back at her. So, not an advantage.

'Shut up,' Dar said offhandedly, still not looking at him. 'And now what are you going to do? Torture

him? He won't talk. Well, only to lie.' His gaze to Lila was strangely desperate, she thought, almost afraid

.

'We were trying to reach you, in order to warn you that the Daga have completely split,' the captured

elf said rapidly, switching to elvish in an effort to exclude Lila. 'It is openly in conflict over the Lady in

Sathanor.'

'I said shut up.' Dar stepped forward and kept
his gaze locked with Lila, returning to Otopian and the

first
streak of sarcasm Lila had ever heard from him. 'Do you hear him? Good news. The Resistance is

unmasked.' As he talked he worked at
unbuckling the other's weapons and carefully drawing them off

him. Lila put her gun away.

At the sound of her armour rebuilding itself the strange elf looked around in spite of himself and

flinched visibly. He gave her the look she'd long been expecting from Dar, the one that said, that
is

disgus
t
ing!
"This is the Otopian agent,' he said to Dar. "The one you . . .'

Dar's backhanded blow cut
his voice off. He staggered and Dar snatched something from around his

neck, a talisman, Lila thought, jerking it
clear and almost
dragging him off his feet. Dar was glaring at Lila,

in a real rage as he stalked around to her behind the other's back and hissed, 'You should have saved

one of the other ones. Do you see this?' He showed her the silver amulet
he'd torn clear. It
looked like a

Greek letter omega to Lila. "This necromancer is more dangerous than twenty other agents.'

'Ghalada of the Dark is dead.' The elf turned around. Blood ran freely from the side of his mouth. He

fixed quickly on Dar and Lila saw Dar

flinch inwardly and guessed that this was the name of his conspirator, his friend, more than a friend

perhaps. 'She died to save you and Zal. I can help you free Zal from Arie. You know it
is true. Without

me you stand little chance. You have fair skill in magic, but
nothing like hers. And she has an army of

sorcerers with her. This machine cannot help you, even if it feels no pain and suffers no magical bond

upon it.'

"This machine saved your sorry one-candle ass,' Lila said quietly in perfect elvish, adapting the words

to her natural style in a way she hoped annoyed him. 'And it can put you right back with your friends.'

She met his gaze with an even one of her own and enjoyed his obvious discomfort when he did not
know

where to look - the surface of her eyes having no iris or pupil upon which to centre attention. He lifted his

head and looked down at her.

"They were not my friends in this campaign, even if they were friends of my heart. Do you think I

would have let them die in the grip of monsters if they were?' His emerald stare was piercingly direct,

vici-ously sincere. 'No. I led them into danger and I watched them die. As you did from your hiding place

before you chose to act. But they will not have thought you should help them as they suffered. I know

they thought it of me, for I saw their faces full of heartbroken surprise.' He turned to Dar, leaning towards

the taller, darker elf, licking his own blood from his lips. His voice was clear and heartfelt, 'You know me

of old, Shonshani Dusisannen. You must
believe I am your ally.'

'You were ever the Lady's slave,' Dar said shortly, still facing away from him, and from Lila. His hands

twitched. 'Such allegiance as you claim would be the best
hidden secret
in all Alfheim.'

Lila wasn't sure of it but she thought she detected a moment of weakness in Dar. She could tell from