The Coming Storm (90 page)

In Elon’s mind’s eye he saw her pitching from the horse into the thick of battle.

His heart chilled.

Abruptly, he pulled her close and hard.

They closed around her, he, Colath and Jalila.

Not here. They needed to be elsewhere, all of them. Away from the sights and smells of battle, from the cries of the wounded that he couldn’t answer, from eyes that watched.

He let Ailith go for a moment, mounted Faer and put his hand down to her. She grasped it, raising her eyes to him as he swung her up behind him. She wrapped her arms around his waist and laid her head against his back. There was something about the feel of her there that brought back memories. He remembered the journey to the Dwarven Caverns near Riverford with Ailith asleep at his back.

She wasn’t asleep now. She was alive.

Jalila leaned down and held out an arm to Colath. He clasped it first, to show her he was glad she was alive as well. Their eyes met, briefly, and then she gave Colath an arm up so he wouldn’t have to walk. Chai was limping from a cut on his foreleg.

“Jareth?” Elon turned his head to Ailith to ask.

“Chirurgeons tent. It’s not bad, I think.”

They found Jareth there. He had a knot on his head, some cracked ribs and some cuts but he and Zo were otherwise fine.

His eyes lightened to see them as they rode toward the chirurgeons tent, then he wrapped an arm around his injured ribs and ran toward them.

Both Elon and Ailith leaned down, reached for him. Their hands met, all of them looking at each other in relief and gratitude.

Urging Laes forward, Jalila crowded close so she and Colath could greet Jareth, too.

“Where now, Elon?” Jareth asked, with a grin.

Elon sighed but gave a small smile. “Have you room at your house in Doncerric for all of us, Jareth?”

His grin widened into a smile, “I think so. More than enough, perhaps. I’d love company.”

Jareth swung up into Zo’s saddle a little stiffly but he made it.

Away.

That was all Elon wanted. Away from the battlefield, past the High King’s tent with folk who came and went.

Elon didn’t stop. The victory had been won. He was tired of it, tired of all of it, weary unto death of trying to get that recalcitrant King to see sense. Daran couldn’t understand why it was always Ailith and Colath. It was her because he could say a thing to her or Colath, do this and they did it. Take these three people and warn the northern Kings. She did it. Some still survived. Say to her and Colath, hold at Marakis with Olend and Itan, and they had held.

Daran could say to his people, do this and it would take a week of debate to decide to get it done.

Except for himself, of course, except for himself. Not now, not this time. This time Elon would claim for himself.

Let Daran handle it. He was, after all, High King and First.

Standing beside the High King’s tent, Avila waited for her first chance to speak with Daran High King since he’d returned from battle.

A group of passing riders caught her eye.

It was Jareth, of course, that made her look.

For one thing, he wasn’t wearing his robes.

She wouldn’t admit that the chafing of the collar had rubbed a harsh line across her throat. It was a fair price to pay in exchange for the recognition of status.

For another, he didn’t even look her way and it didn’t look as if he intended to try.

They were clearly riding away from the battlefield. By all rights, Jareth shouldn’t have left without checking with her first.

Elon of Aerilann was with him, of course, Jareth dancing attendance on him as if it were only right. The fair one, the one they called Elon's bright shadow, was up behind a female Elf, one of the archers to judge by her bow.

There was someone else up behind Elon. A young woman, her arms wrapped around him. That was interesting. Very interesting.

Filing it away in the back of her mind, Avila ducked into the High King’s tent in answer to his summons.

Riding through the streets of the King’s city, Doncerric, it was as if they entered a different world. One not shadowed by death, by the stink and clamor of battle. Although their expressions were worried, and some were clearly strained, folk went about their business as if a battle hadn’t just been fought and a war won.

Some of them were on the walls, watching the scene below.

In the city itself people eyed them curiously, especially seeing Elves and men in company but most went about their daily business of running errands, of buying and selling. The battle that had just been fought and won, the war there were distant things to them until or unless they arrived on their doorstep.

Those that had fought and died for them so they could were strangers.

Life went on.

And in the end that was what they’d fought for, so that it could.

They went slow for Chai's sake, the cut on his foreleg was deep and he favored it as they climbed the streets of Doncerric to the sound of the clatter of their horses’ hooves.

When they finally reached Jareth’s house it was a relief.

They got the horses unsaddled and unbridled in the stable but no one made it any farther than the garden.

No one wanted to.

The air smelled sweet there, not of blood and death, trolls, goblins or other foul things.

It was peaceful here in this place. Green. Enough like Aerilann to ease the soul.

The breeze was soft and pleasant in this city of perpetual summer.

Elon lay with his head propped on the root of a tree, staring up through the leaves at the brilliant wash of color across the sky. The golden glow of the setting sun bathed everything in warm light. The first stars had appeared, tiny points of light.

The battle had taken all of a day.

Nearby Ailith lay on the side that didn’t hurt. Both Colath and Jalila were stretched out flat, Colath on his back, Jalila on her belly, with her head propped up on her arms. Both uncharacteristic positions for them but it had been a terrible day. One in which none of them had come away unscathed.

Only Jareth still sat up.

Tilting her head, Ailith looked at him.

At that curious glance, Jareth said, “Laying down isn’t bad once you get down there. Getting up again with sore ribs is a problem.”

“Ah,” Ailith said, nodding.

“What happened?” Jalila asked, curiously.

He sighed, “A troll ran me down.”

Colath looked at him. “They are large and hard to miss.”

There was a glint in Colath’s eye.

He was teasing Jareth.

Burying her face in her elbow, Ailith smothered a laugh at the look on Jareth’s face.

She chanced at glance at Elon, who looked back at her and then Colath, a small smile curving his mouth.

“I was looking the other way,” Jareth said, by way of clarification.

“Ah,” Colath said, “that would explain it.”

Looking at him askance, seeing the twinkle in his eye, Jareth said, “More Elven humor?”

“It
is
subtle.”

Jareth snorted.

Listening to the banter, Elon’s heart lightened.

For now, all he wanted to do was look at them, his four, look at all of them. At Ailith and Colath. Colath, his friend for so long, his features as familiar to him as his own. To look at Ailith’s face, so strong and resolute in battle, it was bright again now, as he looked at the warmth in her blue eyes. Jareth, always dependable. Jalila, as sure and as true as her arrows. At all of them, his four. They’d been through a great deal together these last months. Somehow, they’d survived both the battles and the war.

Somehow they were all still alive.

“Olend?” he asked Ailith, conscious of the stars in her mind.

“He and Itan live.”

That was something, too. He would seek them out soon.

He felt echoes of pain, in Colath’s arm and his leg, Ailith’s ribs and the sharp sting of his own cuts.

As tired as he was, how could he leave them hurt?

With an effort, he pushed himself up and went over to Colath, whose hurts pained the most.

“Elon,” Colath said, shaking his head and giving Elon a look, “It’s nothing, it will heal.”

He could see Elon was too tired for this. It would heal. It would take time but it would heal.

At the echo of his own words at Raven’s Nest, Elon shook his head and smiled a little. It was something and it would be Healed.

As if in answer to a thought he hadn’t completed, there was Ailith beside him.

Settling down on Colath’s other side, she said, gently, “We’ll share it out between us, Elon, you and I, borrowing a little of your strength, Colath, as we go. I think we need to do this.”

Elon nodded.

She was right, they did.

It needed to be Healed, the sting and pain of battle. They needed to find the connections between them again and remake them. They Healed each other to remind themselves of who they were and that they were still alive.

Jareth was a little surprised when they turned to him, although he knew he shouldn’t have been. It wasn’t the first time either had Healed him, after all, but they’d never done so in tandem.

The pain eased and for the first time since the troll had taken him down, it didn’t hurt for him to breathe.

Used to the bumps and bruises of life among the Hunters, Jalila was still not sorry to have them Healed. It was something, too, to have Elon and Ailith to do this for her.

For a few moments everyone was quiet.

It had to be said, Elon couldn’t avoid it. Ailith had the right to know and he should be the one to tell her.

“Geric is dead,” he said and waited.

For a moment, Ailith wasn’t certain whether she felt relief or pain. A breath, caught and then slowly released. The pain was more distant.

She looked at Elon and saw something in his eyes, fear or concern, something that shadowed them. She felt it echo through the bond.

“That grieving I did out on the plain,” she said, as she looked out at the distant ocean and  remembered the pain, the anger and the terrible sorrow. “My father died, truly died…what, is it only months ago? That man, the one who loved me well and tried so hard to keep me at peace was already dead. To know that the one who stole his face, who broke his will and destroyed him is dead, that was well done. How?’

A moment.

“I did it.” Elon waited.

It shouldn’t have surprised her and it didn’t. For a second, Ailith paused, considering it. Some might have seen it as killing her father. No wonder he’d been worried.

Her eyes came back to his, full of compassion.

“It worried you what I would think of it? You shouldn’t. Thank you, Elon. Perhaps now my father can be at peace. To have forced him to do what he did to my mother was a terrible thing. He loved her well. At least now he’s avenged. And so is she.”

The relief that went through him was enormous. She didn’t and wouldn’t hate him for that. The fear of that had worked on him, as he’d been the one to do it. However necessary it had been for what Geric had done and for what he planned to do.

“He can’t lift your disinheritance now that he’s dead, that’s unchanged.”

“He wouldn’t have, even had he lived,” she said. “The father I loved wanted an independent heir. What you killed didn’t.”

That, though, brought up her own actions on the plain and what she’d done there.

“Elon…”

Now it was her turn to be afraid to speak. Or not speak. She looked at all of them.

“I had to do it. I’m so sorry but I couldn’t let it happen.”

Looking at her, Elon felt a cold chill steal around his heart.

Fear for her.

He hadn’t wanted to think about it.

It was too easy to remember what it had felt like sitting out there on the plain, trapped and helpless. Knowing his people were about to be slaughtered and unable to find an honorable way out, to escape. Being forced to consider choosing to slaughter innocent people to save his own. Knowing, too, what it would do to those in all the Elven Enclaves to feel so many of their people die.

She’d freed him from that by making a desperate decision of her own.

Elon looked at her, could feel her heart aching through the bond. Her fear.

“I can’t fault you, Ailith. I know what you did and all the reasons you did it.” That hum through the bond. “We’ll find a way, Ailith, somehow.”

There was nothing to do save wait to see how it played out and hope no one realized or guessed who was responsible while they tried to find a way to save her if it did.

Her act had saved the lives of thousands on the battlefield, not only those of their people but the men and Dwarves in the vanguard who’d been trapped in the gaze of the basilisks. It had to count for something that she’d saved so many.

The haunting echo of Talesin’s words played in Elon’s head. They would destroy her not because of what she was but because of what she was not.

He feared Talesin was right.

So he said, “All we can do is wait to see what happens.”

It troubled him, though, as night settled.

That night, as they all went off to their rest, he found Ailith on the balcony outside her room. They didn’t speak, he simply reached out to her and she came into his arms. For a time they stood there in silence.

“I’ll find a way, Ailith,” he said, a promise whispered against her hair.

Then he kissed her gently on the forehead and went into his own room.

With a sigh, Ailith wished she could have held him for a little while longer. She remembered the night in Marakis, awakening in his lap, his expression so peaceful.

Sleeping that night, she dreamed of laying her cheek against his chest, feeling his smooth warm skin against hers as she listened to the slow steady beat of his heart.

Elon was waiting in the garden the next morning, with her swords and his own in his hands, Colath beside him.

He offered her swords to her and she smiled. His grave eyes lit.

The forms.

It was so necessary to do them. It was joy. In unison, feeling muscles move, bodies turn, concentrating on the movements. They flowed one with the other, each motion precise and smooth, flowing and graceful. Soothing, as the patterns eased away the horrors and the fears, the moments of tension and the moments of terror.

That terrible moment when Elon had known  he was trapped and helpless washed away.

Colath’s resolve, knowing that he and those with him had doom hanging over their shoulders and nowhere to go.

The grieving rage triggered in Ailith by Smoke’s death, that had triggered her terrible sorrow for all the other deaths that had gone before it.

Each of them knew it and felt it, shared it, flowed with it and then let it wash away. Elon stepped out, then Colath and Ailith and the swords began to ring. A slow tolling at first, that reflected and released the grief and the sorrow and the pain. Slowly, as muscles grew more limber,  they went faster, passing from relief slowly to joy. And peace. Their swords rang like bells. The music of it filled them, eased them.

The swords slowed and stopped.

Jareth came out. He’d been watching until there was a knock at the door.

“Daran High King wants you, Elon. The messenger said he wants up at the castle you right away.”

It was too soon. Elon sighed. He’d wanted more time. As usual there was none. He looked at them all regretfully but he couldn’t ignore a summons from the High King, Elf, Councilor and Advisor or not. Daran would not take it well, and he was still the First.

Colath started to follow but Elon shook his head, “There’s no need, Colath. At least one of us should be able to rest.”