The first order of business, Feodor decided, was to gather more brambles and thorny vines. He and Suzette produced leather gauntlets from their saddlebags and Krystina used her wand to turn a couple of leaves into a pair for herself. Feodor instructed the ladies to leave one side lower than the rest.

"But why?" Suzette asked, puzzled.

Feodor smiled a little grimly. "Because Elves are not the brightest candles in the rack and tend to follow the path of least resistance. I'd rather not be surrounded if I can possibly help it."

"Of course these aren't true Elves but Elf-kin," (1) Krystina observed thoughtfully. "On the other hand they do act and think Elf rather than human."

"I certainly hope so," said Feodor.

After building up the bramble barrier he set them all to gathering wood. "I want the biggest, brightest bonfire we can manage."

"Elves don't mind fire," Krystina frowned.

He smiled. "I'm thinking of light, godmother. Light for us to see by and blind their nightsight."

Krystina nodded again. Clearly this godson of hers knew what he was about.

Princess Suzette agreed. "Feodor is very clever."

"I'd better be," he said a little grimly.

Dusk deepened into twilight and all was ready. The bramble barrier rose high on three sides and was lines with neatly piled fire wood with a bonfire laid ready in a circle of stones in the middle.

"Su, it'll be your job to keep the fire going," Feodor told his Princess. "And get your dagger, the steel alone will be some protection and with luck you won't have to use it." He turned to Krystina. "Any suggestions, godmother?"

"Just one," she said. "An octagon can used to keep things out as well as in. It won't protect us from physical attack but it will keep any spellcraft they try at bay."

Feodor grinned. "I'll take any advantage I can get! Please, proceed."

"Right." Krystina took the wand from her apron pocket stepped over the low part and walked the bounds of their little fortification. A beam or ray from the wand tip carved a furrow in the ground at the foot of the bramble barrier as she muttered a spell under her breath. She hopped back inside. "Well that should do some good anyway."

Feodor looked around and found it good. "That's about everything, I guess."

"Not quite everything." Krystina bent to pick up a twig and held it at arms-length. It twisted, thickened, lengthened. She twirled the staff experimentally and gave the Prince and Princess a smile. "Like Daddy always says, there's nothing quite like six feet of solid oak in a tight place."

-----

The darkness deepened and the wood began to change. The pretty flowering rowan and shapely beech and birch crouched and gnarled, reshaping into squat black oak and hemlock and skinny elder joining leafless fingers in a tangle overhead. Bramble and rose turned to thickets of nettle and thorn. The air took on an damp chill and was filled with evil little rustles and whispers.

"Which is real?" Suzette whispered. "The pretty wood or this?"

"Both," Krystina answered. "In their own time."

"Magic doesn't do business with the law of mutual exclusion," Feodor murmured.

"No," the witch agreed.

The howling began, distant but growing closer. Princess Suzette frowned. "That doesn't sound right."

"Oh I'd say it's about what we could expect," Feodor answered.

"No, I mean the howls are wrong somehow." she persisted.

"As if they're not coming from dogs' throats?" Krystina asked quietly. "That's because they're not."

Suzette looked at the witch warily. "I won't ask."

"No need, you'll be seeing for yourself soon enough," said Feodor. "Build up the fire, Su, and keep it going."

Giant hounds bounded from the dark beneath the trees, firelight reflecting redly in eyes and off bared fangs, and hurled themselves over the bramble barrier - at the low spot just as Feodor has hoped. He severed the head of the leader with his first swing and loped off another with the return stroke. He was using his own axe now, long handled and double headed like the one Krystina had made for him but rather more permanent. It sang as he etched the dark air with patterns of blood and fire.

A hound got by him to snap at Suzette, she wacked it hard in the teeth with the branch of firewood in her hands and it gave a howl cut off as its spine snapped under a blow from Krystina's staff.

Suzette turned back to her bonfire then recoiled as it rose in a roaring column of orange and red, shooting sparks high into the stygian sky. It bent, the point of its flame touching the end of Krystina's staff. Little red tongues of fire ran its length then the whole burst into white hot radiance. The witch twirled it over her head then thrust it deep into the mouth of an attacking hound and out the back of its head. Two others fell into burning pieces sliced neatly in half, one horizontally, one lengthwise. Silence fell.

Suzette stared at the bodies and bits of bodies scattered around her feet. They were indeed those of hounds, big black and hairy, but the snarling heads with their glassy eyes were human - or had been. She looked away, sickened. "It's horrible!"

"Yes," Feodor agreed grimly.

Krystina touched the remains, piece by piece, with the tip of her blazing staff and they vanished in a puff of smoke and fire.

The Prince looked at her weapon with interest. "Not exactly witch magic, godmother."

"Daddy's a wizard," she shrugged. "I've picked up a trick or two from him."

Feodor opened his mouth for a follow up question - as wizards are not supposed to have children much less teach them tricks - then the Elf-host arrived, slipping like so many shadows out of the darkness to glimmer red-gold at the edge of the firelight.

"Keep that fire going," Feodor ordered softly. Suzette hastily bent to pile on more wood.

Krystina stepped up onto the low edge of the barrier, gaining some much needed height. The staff burned white-hot in her hand. She'd lost her hat and her neatly pinned hair was coming down. She looked formidable.

"I am Krystina, daughter of Pearl, Daughter of Margotta, Daughter of Roxelana, A Rose of Ban Benoic," she announced raising her voice above the crackling of the fire. "This man is my godson, a true prince of the Line of the First King. If I were you I'd turn around right now."

A slender, somehow spidery horse danced forward, black as pitch, red of eye and sharp of hoof. The rider also glistened darkly, hair flowing wild on her shoulders beneath a red-gold crown. "I am Morga, queen of air and darkness!" a pale horse with a pale rider both shining with an unhealthy greenish light, came to her side, and a blood red hose with a red rider and an iron gray with an armored rider. "These are my consorts; Queen Leso, Queen Nethe and Queen Ogra. These are our knights and squires. You stand on our ground, witch, and you are outnumbered!"

Krystina contemplated queens and host. "I'm not impressed." She turned her head to address Feodor. "What about you?"

He surveyed the opposition thoughtfully and decided. "Not so much. Suzette, any opinion?"

"Their kitchen is filthy and I don't like the help," his Princess answered decidedly.

"That makes it unanimous," Feodor looked at the Elf queens and bared his teeth in a predatory grin that made the Yell-Hounds look like friendly, gamboling puppies - human heads and all. "Very well, ladies, bring it on!"

-----

The slow thick disclight flowed like clear honey through the clefts of the turnwise mountains and into the magical valley. It touched the dark and hoary trees and they blanched and straightened becoming again slender silvery birch and beech and flowering rowan. It expanding into the little clearing chasing away the swirls and eddies of the night's darkness.

All the wood and part of the bramble barrier was gone, ashes in the still smoldering fire. Suzette sat beside it, skirts every which way, smears of charcoal on her face and her coronet sliding sideways.

Krystina dropped a charred stick into the coals and collapsed next to the princess. "That was a night!"

"Almost as bad as the escape from the Demon-Knight's castle," Suzette agreed.

Krystina looked at her with interest. "That's where he rescued you from?"

"Oh yes," Suzette smiled at her Prince. "He's good. Even if he will use that old axe instead of a proper sword."

"I like my axe. It's decisive." Feodor pulled a leather flask from his saddle-bag and handed it to Suzette.

She took a pull, then passed it on to Krystina. "Have some, but not too much."

The witch took a cautious sip and her eyes flew wide then she started to choke. Suzette pounded her on the back. "You've got to just toss it down," she said sympathetically. "The less you taste it the better."

"You can say that again!" Krystina wheezed. "What was that?"

"Oh, just a little recipe of my grandmother's," Feodor grinned. "Really give you a jolt doesn't it?"

"To say the least!" she mopped her eyes.

Suzette stood up, looking over the remains of the barrier at the churned ground, littered with slashed cloaks and broken swords. "Can Elves be killed?"

"Oh yes," Krystina answered, busily tucking her hair up under her rather dented hat. "For all the good it does, there are always more. By this time next week there'll be new queens, new knights and all the rest."

"But they won't be our problem, thank Io," the Prince said firmly. "If you ladies are quite ready, I think we should get while the getting is good, don't you?"

-----

NOTES:

1. 'Elf-kin' are Elf/human hybrids abandoned when the true Elves were forced back into their own dimension. So-called 'Elves' residing on the disc in places like this Ramtops valley or the Forest of Skund are actually Elf-kin. As Krystina observes they have most of the weaknesses of true Elves and are, if anything, even more sociopathic.