Dances with Death
Prologue
As first hunts went, this one was shaping up to be a humiliating goose-chase, Tjaren thought, wondering if he would be dismissed from the Bloodhounds if he requested reassignment. Probably. He sighed and shoved a clump of tangled hair off of his sweaty brow, ignoring the growling of his stomach as he surveyed the inscrutable forest surrounding him. Tjaren Gylesen, one-hunt wonder, he thought, then groaned. He would never live it down.
"How long will you hide?" he growled at the faceless wood. His voice fell into the watchful stillness that permeated the emerald twilight like a stone, and he strained to hear something beyond the sounds of smaller creatures fleeing in the wake of his intrusion, flutters and rustlings that fell all too soon into the comparative hush of the northern forest.
A breeze lifted his hair as he sighed, surrounded by an empty stretch of forest waving mocking green flags of truce as far as his human eyes could see. "How much longer am I going to have to chase you, irritating little sneak?" he grumbled. His gaze made another fruitless circuit of his surroundings, his vision more hampered than helped by the occasional shafts of late sun piercing the dimness beneath the forest's thick boughs.
Another sigh ruffled the leaves over his head, and Tjaren lifted his head in anticipation of the cool breeze against his hot-glowing face. Not a breath of wind reached him though, and instinct had him ready sword and crossbow before his conscious mind truly grasped the strangeness of that. That lagging part of his awareness caught up when words followed the sigh. "How much longer will I have to ignore you before you get tired and go home, you clodhopping farmer's boy?"
Tjaren glared over his sword's guard at the woman lying belly-down on the branch above his head, her feet kicking lazily in the air, and fired. Even as his finger squeezed the trigger, she slid sideways to hide behind the hefty limb, the barbed shaft from his sturdy crossbow biting deeply into the bark where she had been.
Not bothering to reload, Tjaren let the crossbow drop to hang on its strap and charged, aiming a wicked poke at the tree-bound female as he drew even with her. She hoisted herself back onto the branch and put it between herself and the human once more, pulling herself higher into the tree as he cursed his nimble opponent and swung again at her retreating legs.
His quarry eyed the gash in the branch he'd made. "Did I not merit the customary "or alive", then, or are you trying to compensate for inexperience with enthusiasm?"
Her continuing conversational tone despite having been chased into a tree at swordpoint caused the young bounty hunter to shake his head in disbelief. To his surprise and hers, he found himself answering, "My employer doesn't give half a rat's ass about you, girl. He wants that idol you stole. Hand it over, and you'll be rid of me." And I can go home and have a good meal and a hot bath, he added silently.
She snorted and pulled herself another branch higher, putting another layer of cover between herself and that crossbow and settling with her back against the trunk. "That's rich, coming from the man who bought it from a pair of thieves in the first place. Even if it were a legitimate sale, he has no right to it if he's so ill-educated as to call it an idol." She said this posed as if about to take a nap, head tipped back and eyes closed. Her eyes opened as a thought struck her, and she raised her head. "And if you must call me anything, it will be 'Kael', not 'girl', as I'm old enough to be your ancestor."
Tjaren didn't know it was a mark of disdain that Kael didn't bother to give him her full name, and was in fact amused at her claim of advanced age. He also didn't know that she was exaggerating her age, for that matter, as she was a mere ninety seven years old. "Of course you are," he replied, humoring her. "What is that thing, if it's not an idol?"
His voice was too loud, and Kael's keen ears caught the rattle of wood on wood beneath it as he quietly reloaded his crossbow. She slit her eyes open, watching the hunter furtively as he aimed. "It's nothing you'd understand, boy. The explanation was wasted on you, in any case. It's a thing of magic even older than your sorry tricks."
Kael dropped from her perch, guiding her fall between the branches and hitting the ground at a roll that ended more abruptly that she'd planned. A quick glance up gave her Tjaren's stunned face (not bad, for a fumble-footed human), his crossbow still pointed upwards, fortunately for Kael. She grinned, giving him time to get a full view of her slit-pupiled eyes and pointed teeth before she regained her feet and fled, the belated whirr of a crossbow bolt confirming her opinion that he was rather slow to recover from shock, for all that he was rather light on his feet.
Gods love him, he thought I was human, she chuckled to herself as she ran, pack thudding against her back. Her heart lightened with every impact, each a reminder of the onyx and white jade statue of a lovely elven woman- the last of the stolen hoard of Morzadavien'mgo of Raszkethemiorl, who was murdered by dragon hunters. A grin broke out over her face, in part due to the tremendous crash announcing that Tjaren had tripped over a nasty knot of roots and underbrush she had leaped not long ago. The rest was pure anticipation; her task was almost complete. Soon, she could return home!
Ahead of her loomed a hulking, moss-covered tree, so ancient as to seem carved from stone. Its base stood apart from the other trees, but its green-bearded branches reached outwards to the ancient ash's children, straining up through their elder's canopy towards the dimming light. To Kael, its imposing height and girth formed a living ladder and upper floor to the forest. Pulling two short daggers, she scaled the far side of the craggy trunk, pulling her booted feet out of view a moment before Tjaren stumbled into the clearing, red in the face, hair in his eyes, and swearing. Kael, well-travelled and fluent in three languages, still raised her eyebrows appreciatively at the young bounty hunter's inventive display of invective.
Kael had planned to remain hidden within the leaves to finally lose the boy, but, peering down at the hapless human struggling to his feet, a grin stretched across her shadowed face and a chuckle bubbled up to her lips. For all that the hunter had nearly wounded her thrice, Kael could not bring herself to take a mere mammal youngling seriously, and saw no reason not to have a little more fun at his expense.
The young man's gaze found her instantly, an intensity to his eyes that would have told Kael that he had grown tired of her games had she not been quaking with mirth several feet above his head. Amid her giggles, it was pure luck that the thin dagger he threw at her missed, and only that by a few scant inches. The near miss stifled her levity, and she vanished into the concealing upper branches as a shorn lock of her deep red hair fell to the ground, a poignant marker of her fourth close call with the determined young man.
"We've done this already, fay'ri," Tjaren called up to her, keeping the frustration in his voice to a minimum. "Just throw down what you stole, and I don't care where you go after that."
Fay'ri? Indignation stole her voice for a moment, and only self-preservation (although she would name it a desire for an element of mystery) kept her hidden within the cradle of branches once she had regained it. "Did the cow step on your head as a child, farmboy? I look nothing like the demon-elves!" Beneath her exaggerated bluster, she congratulated herself for the resignation in the boy's voice; she had no real desire to kill the poor creature, not after she'd enjoyed the banter they'd traded over their clashes. It was better if he just gave up and never returned to the Baron. Kael hoped he had gotten half of his fee in advance, gritting her teeth as she reflected on the repulsive sight of the man's sausage-like fingers running lewdly over the treasure she carried, a sight she'd had to suffer through as she lay in wait to recapture it.
Kael belatedly realized that Tjaren said nothing for several long moments, and she snorted contemptuously, assuming he was sulking. Then she heard a flask being uncorked and decided that the odds he could uncork a flask one-handed and still attack her were low. She peeked over one of the heavy, contorted branches in time to see him walking around the tree, splashing it with a reeking, viscous liquid. Oil.
The sight amused her enough that she decided to remain standing, the better to harass the human. "You're new at this, aren't you?" she asked.
"What makes you say that?" Tjaren replied, calm once more in his confidence that he had the upper hand.
"First, there are elves in this forest. Wild elves. And you're about to burn a very old tree. Second, the wood is covered in wet moss, and will burn slowly while giving off plenty of smoke that will make you easy to find. Third, I am stronger than a human- but not fay'ri- and I can get out of this tree whenever I want to and beat your pudding head against it." The last was technically true, although Kael's hide lacked the resilience that she would try such a trick against a well-armed opponent.
Tjaren paused briefly, debating whether or not to dignify her ludicrous boast with a response as he pulled out a flintstriker. He decided after a moment's consideration that answering her wouldn't compromise his newly discovered dignity and replied, "Is that why you've been running from me for a tenday? You must be awful hungry about now, without any proper meals."
The accusation of fleeing made Kael go very still within the uppermost branches of the old tree, her slit-pupiled eyes narrowing even as a detached part of her noted the rural accent that surfaced with the boy's temper. "What gives you the idea that I was running from anything, farmboy?" she asked, her voice suddenly as cold as snowfall in the dead of winter.
Surprised and gratified that he had finally struck a nerve in his irritating quarry, Tjaren smirked up at her and shot back, "So you're running towards a hot meal, then?"
An odd light entered Kael's silver-blue eyes, and her voice wrapped around him with all the tender sweetness of frostbite as she said, "That is entirely possible. Or, as luck would have it, it may be that a meal is blithely chasing me, unaware of my kind's tastes."
"Your kind?" the young man scoffed, covering his unease with scorn. Did she just threaten to eat me?
"Indeed," Kael affirmed.
She just threatened to eat me!
There was a moment of stillness in the forest as Tjaren glared up at her and, in a gesture of defiance, lit the oil.
The flames licked up the oil-soaked wood, and Kael climbed lower into the tree, daring Tjaren to loose another bolt at her. He didn't take her bait, confident that he would have a clearer shot once the fire forced her into the open and more respectful now of the thief's agility. The moss withered and charred under the rising heat, the bark of the ancient tree began to blacken, but Kael spared not a glance for the blooming flames beneath her, staring steadily at Tjaren.
He was still waiting for her to cringe away from the flames and run, his crossbow steadily pointed at her, just in case. His fearless ignorance irritated her, along with the fact that he hadn't even tried to ponder her dramatic allusion to her heritage. I'll teach him to ignore me, she promised herself, and casually let one hand drop into the rising flame. She trailed her fingers through the fire, opening the path within her and letting her power fill it, drawing it into hypnotic ripples as her fingers played the chords of a melody only she could hear.
"Elves haven't only mixed with demons, farmboy," she remarked, attempting to draw him into realization. She gave him the merest glance, reflected vermillion dancing in her pale eyes, the only movement in her serene face. Her eyebrows contracted, a brief shattering of her remote expression as she saw Tjaren's wondering face pointed at her above the business end of the crossbow he held loosely, also directed her way. He was suitably impressed, but free of any of the shock that would accompany comprehension of her hint. Gods, he is slow.
"No guesses still, farmboy?" Kael growled, her temper breaking through the quiet euphoria of letting her power become infused with living fire, even the pale shadow of it that the boy had made here. She poured her will into the flames and they erupted into a great red, yawning maw that closed over Tjaren, surrounding him briefly before streaming past him. He'd evidently had the sense or lucky instinct to hold his breath- his voice was only a little hoarse as he dropped the cinders that were his crossbow, tried to draw his sword on her and screamed as his palm blistered.
Kael was too focused on the cavorting flame-bodied dragon to even comment. She felt it tugging at the edges of her control, threatening to sap her reserves (already low thanks to her disdain for conserving her strength when in the realms of the merely mortal), and decided to end the show, backing the human against the trunk of the tree before releasing it. Deprived of her will or any more mundane fuel, the burning apparition vanished, leaving Tjaren blinking in the sudden murk. He nearly screamed again as Kael's upside-down face materialized in front of him, her slit-pupiled eyes reflecting the dim light so as to make her look blind, intoxicated by the night, feral.
The portion of his brain not taken up with being horrified spared a thought for how ludicrous he must look, scorched and trapped by a young woman…thing hanging upside down out of a tree. It was hardly how he'd envisioned his first mission as a bounty hunter- and the inhuman thief with her dagger at his throat was hardly the frail waif the baron had described fleeing out his window three tendays past.
The thief blinked at him- an odd thing to watch upside down- and said, "What has no fear of fire, lives longer than humans, and likes to play with its food?"
Taren felt a bead of sweat trickle down his face, stinging his burned skin. He was no loremaster, but he could give one answer to that question. "You," he rasped.
Kael let loose a delighted chuckle. "Me," she said, and kissed the tip of the frightened young man's nose before flipping out of the tree and disappearing into the woods, willing the flames on the ash to darkness. Curiosity made her stop and peer back through the dusk that rendered her invisible to the hunter's eyes, watching as he trudged away from the smoking tree and slumped into a hollow in the roots of another.
Hopefully he's considering a change in occupation, Kael thought, watching him flinch at his burned skin as he put his head in his hands, and turned her back to the woods, proceeding to head for the mountains. She preferred seclusion for summoning Jiriaewuthelaan.