The Coming Storm (68 page)

“You try, we’ll follow.”

She looked at him, at Jalila. Both looked back at her, steadily.

They were leaving her no choice.

“All right. As I feared before, we’re like to be trapped here until the trackers make a move, or risk riding through the town and having them come after us there where innocent people could get hurt.”

“Most of these older castles have a secret exit for members of the family in case of siege. Riverford had two. Let’s see if we can get an audience with Marta again.”

The sharp old Queen looked at her intently when they arrived in her Hall. A number of people came and went but she waved them all away.

“I’m conscripting more guard and preparing for siege, so what else can I do for you?”

“We need an exit where we can’t be seen. We’re pursued.”

“By the ones that did that to you?” Marta waved at the bruising on Ailith’s face. “Why?”

“All of this has been planned,” Ailith said.

It was more than she’d told anyone but less than the truth wouldn’t do for Marta.

“This what we do, works against them. Forewarned and forearmed, you won’t be the easy target they wanted. For that, he’s very angry.”

Marta looked at her, then nodded. “Some of my Guard questioned some men late this morning. It seems they didn’t like being questioned. I’ve got two dead and two more with the chirurgeons. It seems as if they wouldn’t have much of a problem doing the same to an Elf and a wizard, much less a King’s heir.”

It pained Ailith to hear it. She wouldn’t have chosen to bring this down on them.

“I’m sorry,” Ailith said.

“So am I. That doesn’t mean I like it,” Marta said, sharply. “For that I’m very angry. I can ill afford to lose any of them if what you say is true. So I’d just as soon you went. As it happens, the gates are closed while the Guard searches for them and the Guard has been increased by our Hunters. It’ll buy you some time.”

Marta had one of her many daughters lead them through a dark old tunnel so like the one at Riverford it made Ailith uneasy. She kept waiting for the rough stone walls to start bleeding, to see an iron door appear where stone was but then they were through.

It was a relief to see the sunshine. Late afternoon sunshine thinned by clouds but sunshine all the same.

The slush had turned to thick mud.

“No plan,” Ailith said, “We ride straight south as fast and as far as we dare. Until I know where the trackers are.”

It was enough of a plan for all of them.

Ailith scanned ahead. She found Elon and Colath but not the trackers who had trailed them to Doncerric. A week, maybe, maybe less. There were too many bright lights along that route through the heartlands to see gray ones. Their own picked them up quickly enough but they had put some time between them.

“They’re a few hours behind us. We’ll ride through the night since we’ve had a little sleep, take a brief rest in the morning and keep going. If we put enough distance between us, we’ll see about sleep. We need to muddle the trail. The next town we see, we go through it, it might slow them down.”

It was a long night and an even longer day but two towns and a village seemed to have slowed the pursuit.

Ailith chose a large inn with lots of traffic at around sunset, asking the innkeeper to wake them before he closed and barred his door, something that had become more common of late. Three hours, no more. Rest and food for the horses and for them.

She didn’t so much fall asleep as she was already there when her head touched the pillow.

For a time there was darkness and then there was light, flickering firelight and bloody walls and the pull was inexorable as she was quickly dragged into the room. This time there was no time to struggle. Fear poured into her. The Door to the South was there, open and that dark figure was speaking in that voice that wasn’t a voice, that whisper that was almost a language she understood.

Mornith.

A name.

There was more but she couldn’t concentrate.

Tolan was laughing and the doors were open, all the doors. Familiar faces. Blood and pain  and chains. Burning, torment and torture.

In his hand Tolan held the chains of a string of soul-eaters.. He swung them idly.

There was something different about this room, something very different. The walls were different, the doors. In the dungeons of Riverford this had seemed all wrong, doors where there shouldn’t be doors. Now the doors were where they belonged. There were barred windows, high in the walls. At Riverford, the dungeons had been dug within the hill. There were no windows.

Tolan was someplace else, someplace different.

“I shall have them and I shall have you, I shall have them and I shall have you,” he chanted in his familiar sing-song voice. “They shall break and they shall bleed. I have more, little Ailith, I have more. Do you remember?”

He reached out to touch her and the pain…

Awake.

Jareth leaned over her as she gasped.

“Elon told me to ward you if you couldn’t wake.”

Closing her eyes, she cast out her sight as far as she could reach around the two distant lights that rode north. There were gray lights. Many of them. All converging. The three behind them as well with Elon and Colath riding right into it, all unaware.
Would Elon’s foresight warn him
? She didn’t know.

And if it didn’t?

With so many trackers closing around them there was nowhere for them to escape.

“Jalila,” she said, sitting up quickly as cold fear raced through her, chilled her.

The Elf was already up, watching her, alarmed by the expression on her face.

“The closest Enclave is Aerilann, isn’t it? If you push as hard as you can how soon can you get there?”

Ailith was cold and getting colder – fear for Elon and Colath numbed her, turned her legs to water.

Looking at Ailith’s face as what little color she had drained from it, Jalila went tense.

“By tonight.”

“Do it. Get Talesin and as many Elves as will come. They must know they fight Trackers.”

“Where do we go?”

Ailith closed her eyes, remembering what she’d seen, the contrast of memory against reality.

“Tell Talesin that I’m sorry, so very sorry, but he’ll know where to go. He’s seen it of old.”

It had to be. It fit with the memories.

Jalila’s eyes turned cold. “Elon and Colath?”

“Yes, Tolan has gotten more trackers, they’re closing in on them even as we speak.”

Swearing, Jareth pounded the bedpost. “What are we going to do?”

Ailith took a breath. They weren’t going to like it.

“First, Jareth, you magicked the circlet to me. Can you do that with swords? If you couldn’t see me or my swords?”

He thought about it. “As long as I know the people and the swords.” He looked at her. “Elon and Colath, they’ll strip them of their weapons.”

She nodded.

“Yes,” she said, “and me as well.”

She handed him her swords.

Throwing up a hand she gestured them both to silence when they would have protested.

“Listen, just listen,” she snapped. “Jalila, tell Talesin the dark one’s name is Mornith. Somebody must know who he is, it’s important somehow. Tell him that. Tolan expects me to ride to the rescue, to drive me the way they did in the north. They want me to panic and throw caution to the winds to save them. To all appearances I will. I’ll give them what they want but not all they want. You and Jareth. Then we’ll give them something they don’t want, Elon, Colath and I in that room with our swords. They’ll have them a day, no more than that if I can help it. Know that. Bring the Healers, too. Go, Jalila.”

Without further question, Jalila left the room at a run.

“How will I know?” Jareth asked. “How will I know when?”

Ailith smiled but it wasn’t a pleasant one, there was a deep, burning anger and an anguish in her eyes, in her face, that wrenched at his heart.

“A light in the darkness. A bright elf-light in the darkness. I’ll tell you when to go and then you
must go
. Follow as quickly as you can and don’t get caught. It’s me they really want, not you. They’ll chase me. Do you
know
these?”

She held out her hands for her swords.

Jareth ran his senses over and through them. He shot a look at her in shock and surprise.

“These are Named swords.”

“Yes,” she said. Her tone was emphatic. “Do you
know
them?”

He nodded.

“Let’s go, then,” she said.

They’d set a good steady pace that covered ground without pushing the horses too hard and they were making good time, Elon thought. Riding late, starting early, both of them alert.

Pushing it a little. His foresight had been a goad, it prodded him to go faster. A shiver ran over his skin, a chill that prickled his forearms. He caught a glimmer of Vision, a warning of the inevitability of what was coming.

He’d misread the reason for the urgency, his thoughts of those in the north, of the dark wave that built in the high reaches of the mountains, not of themselves.

All of which was useless now. His stomach tightened.

“Colath,” he said. “We’re surrounded.”

Looking at him, Colath said, “Trackers.”

He nodded. “On all sides. They’ve no doubt been following and closing in since we left the City, waiting for the time when we were vulnerable and far from aid.”

That time had arrived.

He looked at Colath, met his true-friend’s eyes. Colath met his gaze levelly.

Ailith. There was only time enough to think that.

Both drew their swords. When it came it was no surprise. Certainly not the surprise the trackers had expected. They gave them a harder battle than anticipated.

The number of trackers was greater than anticipated, too, though.

Elon and Colath fought, side by side to guard each other, even knowing they would lose against such numbers, they also knew they had to try. There was still the chance they might succeed, they might get free.

When Colath was knocked off Chai by a mass of trackers, Elon leaped off Faer to cover him and then they fought back to back until the sheer number of trackers took them down. Not dead but down. Both of them had taken wounds, and they’d each killed a tracker or two and wounded others, but it was clear the trackers didn’t want them dead. That didn’t prevent the trackers from taking their displeasure out on their captives. It was bad for both but worse when the chains went on, neck and wrists.

Cold iron. It burned.

The trackers left them no choice. It was follow or be dragged. They meant to humiliate, meant to shame but their captivity didn’t do either.

At the end of the journey, in the fire and darkness beneath the earth, there was Tolan, and pain, a great deal of it, burning, blood and the trackers to draw it.

They chained them to the walls facing each other so they would each would have to watch what was done to the other, not just for the horror of being forced to watch, but also to anticipate, as what was done to one was done to the other.

Elon had never understood how any rational being could gain pleasure from inflicting pain and suffering on another. It said much of the race of men that there were those among them that did. He still didn’t understand it. It was quickly clear though that the trackers enjoyed their work far too much.

There was that about the magic of the Elven constitution that it would in time heal most wounds, small ones in a matter of hours, larger ones over a longer span, so long as the body was rested and healthy. It would be some time yet before their bodies were so stressed their magic would have difficulty functioning. A fact the trackers demonstrated they surely knew.

The pain was bad enough. The truth was it was terrible. As night followed day after the pain came the sickening weakness.

Blood magic, Tolan drawing off their life force, their pain and suffering feeding his own magic.

To know that such a one as this drew off his strength and his magic, that he did the same to Colath, Elon’s trusted true-friend for so long, was only added torture. A fact which Tolan and his trackers also well knew, Tolan feeding off that as well.

It was another layer of horror to know Ailith knew, shared, sorrowed and took on some of the pain they suffered. Elon knew it full well and grieved for it but she would do it for him and Colath as they had done for her. It wrenched at him that she must share this through the bond but share it she would whether he wished it or no.

She willed strength through that bond to both of them, he could feel it rush through him, easing his pain by some small measure.

At what price to herself?

For Colath, there was the pain, the blood and the irons but there was also the pain laid on Elon as well. True-friend, the one person he could trust most but the bond that tied them to each other and now to Ailith helped. They shared out the pain, lent each other strength when they could. Ailith, too, through the bond. Wherever she was she took on their pain and lent them her strength as well. She was strong but he wouldn’t have wished her to suffer so.

It was the weakness, though, the dreadful sickening draining that was the worst, feeling his life-force drawn away from him. Horrific pain and then the draining weakness as blood flowed and Tolan took from them. The smell of burning, the terrible pain and the weakness again.

Tolan watched, smiling, as he fed on the power from their blood and the pain. It was almost visible the power he stole from them, it shimmered like the waves of heat from the braziers with their irons.

Another magic, oddly discordant, dark and bitter, hummed.

Elon went cold.

The Door to the South shimmered on the wall and for the first time they saw what it was that had tormented Ailith so. A Dark figure, a shadow within shadows, cowled and faceless. Save for the eyes. It shouldn’t have been possible for there to have been a greater darkness beneath that cowl but there was, and a mad reddish glow.

Instinctively both averted their eyes from it in their weakness, away from the seductive madness within those eyes.

That which stood within that Door took his own pleasure of them, drawing off their strength, their life force, their magic.

It fed, deeply.

The first battering pain hit her when the trackers took them. Ailith sagged in the saddle, crying out as the first burst of pain hit. Her heart wrenched. Elon. Colath. From and through Elon, too.  She fought to straighten herself in the saddle and leaned more into Smoke.

“They have them, Jareth, they have them now. Horse, Smoke, my friend, if you can manage it, more speed.”

Somehow, Smoke found it.

As bad as it was, she dreaded the moment when Elon and Colath reached Tolan’s hands. She felt it when they put iron on them, felt the burning, the ache. For all that, she couldn’t have prepared herself for how bad it became.

She knew the moment Tolan had them.

True pain began. Echoes of it reverberated through her and then…

Jareth saw the moment the agony hit her in full, saw her twist with it, stretch and suffer with the torture she shared with them but she was utterly silent in her struggle. Her blue eyes darkened, her face paled, every muscle went taut.

Bent over the horse, Ailith willed it on and willed both Elon and Colath the strength to bear it through the bond when she could.

They pounded through the day and into the night, racing south.

“I have to sleep,” Ailith said. “He means me to witness it and I must, so he knows that I’m coming. And so they know I am. Don’t wake me too soon, Jareth.”

Jareth couldn’t imagine it, couldn’t imagine willingly going into a nightmare like that, but she did, in that tiny room in the small inn.

And he watched over her.

To close her eyes was an act of will, but for Elon and Colath Ailith did it.

Darkness closed around her, drew her down into dreaming true.

Flickering firelight, the door and the doors and the Door to the South. The doors were open.

Only this time, it was real.

Both Elon and Colath had been divested of their swords and stripped to the waist. Their arms were manacled to the walls at the wrists with cold iron. It burned, she could see the marks. There was another kind of burning, irons in a brazier. She looked because she had to, at the cuts, the blood,  the chains and burning. Her heart wrenched to look at those terrible wounds, so precise, so horribly precise. She forced herself to look, forced herself to look into Elon’s dark eyes. To look at him. To see his suffering. To look at what they had done to him. At the terrible things they’d done to him and to feel through the bond his pain and the weakness, that dreadful draining weakness as Tolan took from him.

She looked to Colath. Her true-friend. To see the pain he suffered, the same burning, the wounds and to feel that same dreadful weakness.

Her heart ached and twisted to see them so. She nearly couldn’t bear it. She would, though, for Elon and for Colath.

Tolan, full of stolen strength, as bloated as a tick, gloated. Fed… Weakened them, as he fed off them.

No!
Her heart wrenched terribly.

Mornith, watched…and fed as well.

If they kept going as they were, Elon and Colath would die, truly.

But they would be a long, terrible time in the doing of it.

“Look what I have for you, little Ailith,” Tolan said, gaily, with a wave of his hand. “I told you I would have them and I would have you. I have them. Maybe I’ll trade them for you.”

Elon heard a name. It roused him. Through the pain, he looked up at the sound of Ailith’s name.

To his astonishment he could See her, Ailith, a shadow-Ailith with her blue eyes and chestnut hair. Seeing her expression, he forced himself not to share the pain he suffered. Looking into his eyes, in her anguished steel-blue eyes he could see she saw it anyway.

He shook his head.
Don’t see this
.

Raising his head was an effort but Colath managed it as well. A ghost of Ailith stood beyond Tolan, conjured by him. He hated her seeing this, seeing him like this, the pain and the torment.

She met his eyes, her steel-blue ones reflecting his suffering but steady.

Elon saw her lips move.

She called to them, willed them to hear her.

Tolan’s eyes slit. He’d seen her lips move but didn’t know what she’d said.

Ailith had gambled on that, that Tolan didn’t know the language.

In Elvish, those words. Not really heard but sensed.

Elon hadn’t known Ailith knew his tongue.

Trust me
, she said,
I come, soon
.

No, Ailith
, he thought, but he knew she would.

Then as suddenly as she’d appeared, she was gone.

Tolan roared in frustrated fury.

Jareth, warding her.

Elon was grateful.

The sickening weakness, the draining, started again, as Tolan took his fury out on them.

Elon hated it, that weakness.

Trembling and shaking, Ailith stumbled to her feet then fell to her knees and was sick. It seemed she couldn’t vomit up enough, and then, finally, it passed. She rinsed her mouth clean with water from her waterskin, wiped her mouth and remounted Smoke.

“Ailith,” Jareth said.

She looked at him, her eyes shadowed but steady. “Thank you.”

He nodded, got on his horse and followed. There was nothing else he could say or do.

Dawn, early. Ailith could See the gray lights closing on them. It was time. 

“Go now, Jareth,” she said, gently. “Then follow. Whatever you do, don’t get caught.”

Those blue-gray eyes met his.

“Don’t lose me.”

“I won’t. Not for my life, Ailith.”

“Then go.”

He went.

Ailith felt the Trackers close around her. All those gray lights in her head. She would have to make it look good but conserve her strength. She would give them a good fight and pray they would see her as one of them, as one of their race, the race of men. Weak.

She wasn’t. She was Elven, and Dwarven, too, and she could endure. Would endure.

If she could, she would have spared Elon this, Colath this. They would know when she was taken as she’d known when they were.