Lost and found

 

 Piercing sapphire eyes rooted Ferimor in place, but who among mortals would not pale before that gaze?

He thought only of the prize, only of the deepest lust of his heart as his eyes wandered to his own graying merely mortal beard. Sixty years did not seem much in the presence of one who had lived for eons, and yet the years weighed upon him. What would it be like to win the gift? To know countless years as the blind old mage he had dispatched had cheated from life? Or thousands like the dark Elven mage who now questioned him?

 Many had quailed at the goddess gift, but the spider queen had railed against it and in her bloodied heart granted a perversion of it to the perverse Elves that served her in the catacombs deep beneath the surface of the waking world.

 “The Maiden lives then?” asked a smoky voice dressed deeply in lightly veiled malevolence. Ferimor quelled an inner tremor.

 The twin gifts of long life or long and painful death sat within this man’s dominion and he knew that it was the man, or Elf really, and not himself who would decide which gift to award.

 “We have not heard back from the patrols yet sire, it is possible that they were dispatched by an unknown enemy.”

“The price of working with humans and halfers” the dark form said as if to himself  “Perhaps a more direct route might serve?” and Ferimor shuddered. The war that had brought the gift among the surface elves and their offspring was a thing far beyond his own memory though he had lived in its aftermath. The Drow had allied with all other beings of darkness under the auspices of their blood goddess to finally remove their kindred from the Tehran world. They might have succeeded had not the lost ones returned at the final hour. For their loyalty the tri-goddess had awarded them the gift.  A strong but simple blessing in that any possessing even a drop of elven blood would know at least a half of the special blessings of elven kind… an inherent understanding of the language, the gifts of dark sight and magical aptitude, and lastly that of endless years. As an anchor to her gift, the tri-goddess had promised that she would walk among them in physical form. Three physical forms, one to represent each aspect of her powers and responsibilities. Of the three only the maid was truly feared. The mother though fierce in her way would take at least a thousand years to raise to proper age and power, and the crone even longer…yet the maiden…the huntress?

 Twenty years at the least, perhaps two hundred at the most and she would be forever maiden living the full span of elven years with the power of one aspect of the goddess. Never knowing even the limited diminishment of power that elves did as they aged.   What blood arts had identified the Maid ferimor would never know and had no wish to ask, but his task was to kill her before she rose to power. His task and that of the organization he had raised and nurtured for the past forty some odd years. A thing of half-orcs and blood bound humans so dark into the evil of blood ritual as to be barely able to be called human. They had given their souls for worldly power, pleasure and the promise of prolonged life. Only three women stood in the way of the gift, and only one had to be purged quickly for the others would take eons to rise assuming they had not been purged in the now constant wars of attrition.

 “When will we know?” the Drow asked with a slight smile of black anticipation.

 “Within the month sire…we must keep the attack up for at least that long to avoid the ire of the goddess…as you ordered.” Ferimor could sense the hatred that open talk of the mage’s fear of anything stirred in the elf.

 “I will have this looked into…but you are sure that their protector is gone?”

 “Yes sire, your seer’s information was fed to him through sources…my own spies watched him fold the gates between planes. If they sent him where you said they would then he is gone and will never return.”

 “A loss to their kind that is… raise the town…scorched earth…nothing lives not man nor beast nor elf…am I clear or would you visit the sisters again?”

 The great man that Ferimor was simply shuddered and shook his head in an affirmative. Words simply wouldn’t form…there was only one time when he wanted to see that place again and that was to receive the gift.

 

 

 Hemmite the high ward and war mage of the Tehran Elves, tested his feet on the new ground and felt strange. He had opened windows to this plane before…he had taken steps to understand its culture and had even pulled a few things back to his own plane that he might understand them better, things like the conveyance…a 1998 Jeep Cherokee. That had taken time, and it hadn’t worked quite well in his plane, but well…each plane had its differences in physics as well as magics.

 Still his quest in this plane was what it was in every plane he visited, knowledge and weapons…weapons with which to defend his people against their many enemies. If he had taken to shifting more often of late, well then that was another offshoot of the war, which had nearly destroyed them. He was not dumb enough to think that the machines of this world were magical and yet they would seem that way to many of the people of his world. Still he wondered if he was in a different time, plane or world? Small differences really, but other worlds could get dicey. He sniffed the air and checked the skies for portents…he had a location of a coven from something called a computer and checked his map. An odd convergence of streets and pathways to his mind, but who would have ever thought that a people as undisciplined as humans could ever build such a world?

 He was here for a spear…he reminded himself, a spear that had helped to kill the god Jesus, a lesser god from the sound of him but a god nonetheless and what could kill one god might help in defending against others.

 Again something felt odd and he hesitated to close the window to his plane, for his power while adaptable to most worlds and planes was based in his own world and plane. Still he had seen the signs of magic in this world and even brought a little insurance.

 He closed the window and began loading the Jeep. Granted he had no currency and only a rough idea of where he was going to scry for the object, but once the coven recognized him for who and what he was he had no fear that they would aid him…and of course he’d brought gold.

 The eggs stirred in their sac, which shouldn’t have been possible for he had suspended their growth a millennia past.

 He paused at that as the window flickered again into existence and out and with its final disappearance…he began to feel heavy. Not a thing of gravity, possibly one of age though age had never bothered him before. A few hairs fell lose and he wondered? The simplest of spells, he thought trying to conjure up a ball of light. Trying and failing miserably.

 The information on this world had been “ify” at best, and its provider questionable…but when weren’t they? He sat and lit a small fire by hand pulling out his pipe and a bottle of good wine knowing that if a man were to meet his end he should do so with style.

 He placed the eggs into the fire and thought about what he’d miscalculated. Strange that on this side of the barrier the answer was too simple. The magic of this world was shielded somehow, but that would change…he’d seen to that. But if magic was shielded then in time he would be nothing more than human…a two thousand year old human for in the end an elf was only a human imbued magically with special immunities and gifts. He scratched his beard wishing that he’d left it long and thought about whether or not the eggs would hatch in time to save him.

 He tried to add another log to the fire, but the hand holding it turned to dust…age catching up to him now that the magic that made him possible was gone. He thought for a moment about his counter weight, the being that had been sent to his world to balance his traveling to this one. Well, that one would have a rude awakening he thought just as his skull turned to dust.

 

 As the sun rose so too from the fire rose a pair of beasts not seen upon earth since before the dawn of human existence.

  Eight-foot wingspans that would one day be eighty lifted the male and female children into the air scattering a wizard’s dust as they soared hunting for prey.

 *Where is this place? * the female asked her mate

*I don’t know but it isn’t our land…I’m hungry… * it said taking a large dog into its maw.

 The two flew on, feeding and growing looking for a place to shelter out of genetic instinct and talking in a language that sent horses and wild animals fleeing.

 The language?

 A thing of shrieks and screeches politely called…Draconic.

 And as one man’s world changed forever so to would the world known as earth.

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 Something woke Troy to yet another bleary hung over morning though the lighting seemed to suggest that it wasn’t quite morning yet. The summer season was just coming into bloom, and thankfully that meant work. Hours of dealing with the average American citizen…but well those scum at least tipped consistently if not well. As he stirred he thought of the old days before the Mexican invasion, when he’d been a cook and made a decent living at it. But then they had come, and for the last few years he’d been lucky to find piecework, luckier still if he could keep it, for cooking like so many jobs in America required knowledge of the Spanish language. It was odd to think that he’d skipped college to get into a good paying field only to have it destroyed by a passive invasion of illegal immigrants in less than a decade. But perhaps change was for a reason as the gods said, still if he wished for any single thing…it was for a true just change. Not a constant slide into poverty with every day being a harder and more intense contest for nothing that held any real value.

 With that thought he took a shot to brace himself for the coming day and hoped that he hadn’t overslept a shift.

He took another shot with that thought, lit a stolen cigarette and checked his watch.

 4 A.M. just enough time to get drunk enough to be able to wash up in the small cold creek than ran just past his tent. Camping in the local woods was a form of homelessness of course and he could be jailed for it…but what couldn’t you be jailed for in the land of the free?

 For a moment he puzzled at what had woken him for he’d drank enough after work to have made a zombie seem energetic and yet something had stirred his fogged mind.

 He thought for a moment about the welfare people, he’d claimed too much money in his months of working to qualify but hadn’t claimed enough for unemployment to be of any real value. Granted it fed him if you could call what he could afford food, and odd jobs had kept him in cigarette money. Still it was far from life, not enough money to leave nor enough to stay in the apartment he had been renting for five years. It had hurt to throw away years of goods and possessions, but with no family and few living friends Troy had been kind of stuck and then the DWI came and with it jail. When he’d gotten out nothing was left of his life and without the ability to drive keeping jobs became a problem. Yet the state still demanded its money or they would send him back to jail.

 And so it was a tent in the woods, the end result of thirty years in a nation whose government hated and feared its citizenry, even its veterans or perhaps especially them. He thought for the thousandth time that he should have stayed in the service. Then his mind reminded him why he’d left. He hadn’t known Randy Weaver well, but he’d known the man well enough in passing to know that he was no threat…and then Troy and the rest of America got to watch the man’s wife and child assassinated on public television… an object lesson in the price of disobedience.  And then of course Waco.

America in two acts of brutal terror against its citizens had shown its people the price of even the very thought of freedom and to misquote Star Trek…resistance was futile.

 For whatever else he might be, Troy simply wasn’t evil enough to serve such people. As a pagan, Troy didn’t much believe in such things as Satan but if such a being were to exist one wouldn’t have to look much further than America’s government. That they weren’t as horrible as some was a sad justification for the fact that they were far worse than most and in the end one had to deal with the devil in his midst before he could pay much attention to one a few thousand miles away. Strange how Americans always seemed to get that backwards…

 It was a scream that tore him from his revelry, a horrid scream of pain beyond pain, and an odd smell of wood smoke on the air. Troy grabbed his one possession that might serve as a weapon, a walking stick made for him by a Wicca high priestess he’d once dated, and almost against his will found himself walking toward the sound. Some part of his mind screamed at him that he should have long ago learned his lesson when it came to helping strangers…jail…jail was what you got for not letting people suffer or die or worse while you waited for the proper authorities to arrive.

 Strange that while he hated the thought of imprisonment he simply no longer feared it. He’d been there enough for having done no harm that he’d simply begun to accept that his nation needed him as a criminal…still he feared the dark places that his spirit went when he gave that thought too free a reign.

 Step after step his hesitant feet climbed the small hillock that shielded his little camp from the flat woodlands that would allow the police to see the light of his fire. The hill that had hidden and sheltered since his release from jail.

 

 He could see a building on fire, something that looked to be a small barn. Something that couldn’t possibly be where it was for like the few others that lived in the woods around town he’d set his tent in the deepest part of the thousand-acre town park. The scream didn’t come again but his eyes, well attuned to the night for few places of work had ever needed him during the day light hours, could see a small figure seemingly crucified to the door of the an out building next to the burning barn. The figure moved and something turned dark in Troy’s soul. It was a familiar feeling, the dropping of masks he’d once called it when he’d still been reputable enough to teach the fighting arts. The masks that separated man from his animal nature, the bullshit that kept man from embracing the darkest and truest parts of his soul.

 It was in that darkness that Troy stalked toward the house. It was in that darkness of spirit that he spied the aggressors and in that same darkness of spirit that he slew them. The details would come back to him in dreams…they always did. For the moment he settled his mind to the task at hand though the grisly images of the horror inside the house tried to creep into his mind. Slowly, carefully he pulled the blades from the bloodied figure’s wrists and wrapped them against future blood loss knowing that what he was missing in his moments of intense concentration would be played back to him through his dreams until his higher more human mind could understand them. Troy had been through enough hell in life to know that much about himself…his mind would record every detail, ever nuance, every sliver of anything that might help him to survive.

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He remembered setting the child in a bed in the basement, root cellar, whatever the hell it was…but he couldn’t remember bringing the bed down. There was something odd about the child but his mind would tell him in time. He remembered running back to his small camp and packing his few belongings and then settling in beside his charge.

 He’d picked up a bottle of something that smelled strong and tasted worse among the debris scattered by the attackers. For some reason his mind told him that the police weren’t coming, that they’d never be coming again. He didn’t believe it on one level but on another he had learned to trust his subconscious enough to simply shove a few swords through the door ring as a bar to intruders.

 4:49 AM, he thought looking at his watch, amazed as always at how fast life and death could dance.

 He lit a cigarette and drew too heavily on the bottle…it would be a sleep of nightmares and he knew it. He also knew that nightmares were best met with a bit of a buffer.

 

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 Sweat and worry filled the morning hours. The sweat smelled strongly of booze, but Troy went through the motions regardless. Little tiger flowed into little tiger little dragon into tiger dragon dancing with only a few halts to remember steps.

 He’d let go of the more active fighting styles as the combined effects of long hours, poverty and premature aging had worn on him, but he’d kept to the softer styles. Several months in jail to pay off the most immediate fines at twenty dollars per day had reawoken his studies. Then work and homelessness had again taken away the energy.

 Something about the place though suggested that more active fighting styles might be needed, some tidbit left over from half remembered dreams. Twenty dollars a day…his mind thought as a back fist flew at an unwanted angle…that was what a man’s freedom was worth in America…and not a penny more.

 He settled his mind into the forms…losing himself in the sweat and the rhythm. Picturing the faces of half remembered foes from the evening before. Strange that one could do in cold rage what the body in a waking state had to train and prepare for, for what seemed endless hours. He focused aiming each block or strike against the foes that his mind constructed for exactly those movements. Strange that some wore armor or bore swords or maces, weapons removed from all but poorest of his nation’s streets. Something in that hinted at a removal from his world and yet he could both accept it and not.

 The simple fact was that he was no longer where he’d passed out from a long night of drinking. The land that had sheltered him in the month since his release from jail had been radically altered…that simple. The how and the why of it nagged at him, 

though he knew that no answer would be coming soon.

 Hekate had walked his dreams the past night with cryptic messages that he knew his mind would sort out in time. He’d chosen well in his goddess, or perhaps she’d chosen poorly in him…the jury was still out on that one.

 The dance slowed down into Bil-gee, into Chum-kui and finally the staid and sedate Si-Lum-Dao…”the way of the little idea” a single stance form that concentrated heavily on in close fighting techniques and as such was a good cooling set.

 He stood for a moment panting, his eyes somewhat glassed from exertion but pointed towards the house. The door still stood wide open and if he looked hard enough he could still see a few of the bodies.

 The old woman in the common room, a hint of the fathers long red hair sticking out from the corner of the kitchen counter…he didn’t even want to think about the mother and sister in the bedroom, but he’d have to clean it all up and deal with the bodies.

 The police weren’t coming. No one was coming. Smoke still poured from the ashes of what had been a barn, part of a horse could be seen among the piles of ash, two more work horses stood dazed and tied to a hitch bar as though not sure if they should bolt or simply lie down and die.

At some point it seemed that the terror of the night had simply sapped all ability for thought or action. The men who had burned the barn in some fit of thoughtless fury had seemed to have found enough sense at some moment to spare the last two horses though the bodies of other animals dotted the ash.

 Late spring into summer Troy thought and left his shirt off.

At sometime during the night, he must have picked up a sword from among the fallen for he found himself strapping it to his waist. He had thought re-enactors at first, but re-enactors would have been better equipped, and some one among them would have had some sort of modern device…a cell phone at the least. Then there was the house and its outbuildings, not one among them even as modern as the Mennonites he had lived next to in Missouri. No running water, no modern roofing, not even hints of modern construction techniques. They seemed solid and livable enough, but not one would have passed even the weakest of building code laws. Just one more set of the millions of restrictions that free people set upon themselves, one of the many ways in which those above poverty helped to ensure that their children would have to work harder than they had…but still a reality of his time…a time that would never have allowed such buildings to exist regardless of the care that had obviously gone into the building of the homestead.

 A quick glance showed the blood stains on the doors where the boy had been crucified. He counted the boy lucky for what had happened to the women had been far worse than any simple death could have been.

 He had caught the greater part of the men in the bedroom fighting over rights to mount the varied orifices of the still warm bodies, caught them in the rage of their anger and lust. That they’d paid for their crimes with their lives seemed barely sufficient to him. He simply hadn’t had the time to make the punishments fit the crimes…but still the boy would need to be force fed water, and the bedding would need to be changed, his clothing as well for Troy hadn’t even the slightest idea of how to make a catheter for the child…well, young man now he guessed.  Fifteen and orphaned, sixteen at best, but young men went to death or life imprisonment at that age in his world…so it would have to be old enough.

 His hand went to the sword and he let himself pull it and feel its weight. Not a bad sword, decent balance, not what he’d trained with really, but Chinese broadsword technique should work with it, he thought going through a few of the basic movements that he remembered. He would have to sort out what would be of value and set the house in what order he could then it would be a question of when the boy woke.

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 The Goddess of night filled his dreams over the next few days haunting him as only a lover could…Hekate in all her dark glory. The lightening of her wrath charging his soul the blackness of her spirit comforting him, the deep love of her tears washing away doubt and hesitation leaving only a cold fury that had been with him seemingly since the day of his birth.

 He wondered if it were the maiden that brought forth the goddess image so strongly in his mind.

 He had gone to change the boy and found that not all was what it seemed.

 Small breasts tied back with cloth, a pair of woolen socks to provide the male bulge, an odd corset to hinder the natural femininity of the gait. Some one had gone to great pains to spare the young woman the pain of femininity. The hands were even calloused from “Man’s” work.  

  Everything but the face screamed male, the face hinted only at androgyny, not that different than his own.

 High check bones and a narrowness of angle that could be either male or female. The short cropped hair no different from many women he’d known back home, but seriously out of place on a woman from what he’d seen so far of his new reality.

 He felt again at the sword on his side…in America the wearing of such a thing would earn him years of imprisonment. Strange he thought that even under the English of Pre-American times a man could wear a sword or even a pistol with little advent and yet in the newer free and independent nation…such a display meant prison.

 Not for the first time, Troy thought that it would have been better had the damned rebels lost. Looking back over his own life and its many trips to jail he knew that not even once would he have been jailed under even the harshest of English colonial laws. Just one more lie of freedom to be tossed on the heap of propaganda that was America’s ode to Orwellian double think.

 Her green woodland eyes had fluttered fear at him once, but only once and then she was back into her catatonic state.

 Four days to clean the place and set it in some sense of order, four days of memory flashes and hints of horror, four days to burn the dead and get a good look at his attackers.

 Humans…they had been human though the greater majority had seemed odd in some way, like steroid users gone bad. The average was at least his own six feet in height, but all outweighed his meager one hundred and fifty pounds by at least another eighty and all of it muscle. Had they been paying more attention to their surroundings than to their sick work, he would have probably have been killed. But true evil had a way of consuming itself.

 He might be dark of spirit but darkness didn’t by its very definition mean evil. If anything Troy found love and honor and even a reason to live within the sheltering blackness of the night princess’ deep devotion. The maiden, the mother and crone…the female triumvirate.  Perhaps it was simply that one leg still stood that so strongly brought his Goddess to mind. He could sense her and even see her in this place though even he had to admit that he wondered at his sanity when she appeared before him in misty ghost like form.

 

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 It was the fourth evening when she awoke long enough to sip some broth. The bloodletting had taken much out of her, as had the simple damage of crucifixion. Troy thought for a moment of the luck that her tormentors haste had brought him, for if they had bothered to put a dagger through her ankles as a proper crucifixion would have…not only might she not have lived, but she would have never been able to walk again. As it was, he wondered what permanent damage the wounds would inflict upon her arms and hands. Loss of motion was a real concern as was loss of muscle control and atrophy. 

 She would be up in a day or so was his best guess, and with that he might be able to get some answers as to why the night had happened.

 The what of it he knew, gang rape, robbery and murder all sort of tied together with necrophilia into a nice odd ball of shit that was worse than even the worst he’d seen in his days on earth though he had heard of stranger things. Racial hatred was a guess but they all seemed to be humans of roughly the same color even if the larger of the attackers did have a slightly grayish look and pronounced front teeth that took on the look of fangs. Perhaps that was the separation, the difference. He’d seen humans hate each other on earth for far simpler differences, and such hatreds when infected with the mob mentality had produced no end of horrors back home.

 He wished for a moment that he had paid closer attention to them before burning the bodies, but his eye for detail would sort out more differences given time. As well he’d kept the lot of their belongings. What worth they might have he didn’t know but he’d felt that the girl deserved at least that much.

 Maybe the weapons and horses could be sold to set aside some sort of fund for her whenever whoever took her in decided that she was of age. Or maybe it could pay for some one to look after the land until she was healed enough to take care of it herself. He would have to take her to the nearest town and see what happened from there…but then that would be that. The authorities whoever they might be would take what care of her was thought right…what bothered him was that he had no real trust in such things. But what else to do with her?

 He couldn’t just leave her, and he wasn’t even sure where he was or if he could provide for himself much less a young woman he didn’t know who might not even be able to speak to him in a language he could understand.

 He’d come across a few books written in a script that seemed to sing to him, but not in a way that he understood. It was as though he could get a feel for their meaning but couldn’t read the words. Some of the weapons held the same script, and he wondered at just how active the band of murders and thieves had been before he stumbled upon them.  Twenty-two seemed an odd number for any sort of military group, if they had been such?

 The last to die had put up a small fight and had seemed the leader, but even outlaws and gangs had leaders and some form of command structure. They had left behind some money, some loot and a passel of weapons of questionable value as well as some armor and shields.

 All in all he figured himself to be somewhere in the dark ages, a horrible time yet still more free in its way than his own. He wondered about his survival, and about what it would be right to take for himself.   His money would have no value…not even his coins for they were made of nothing of value.

 The coin of the day seemed to be copper or silver or gold…not the useless worthless metals that his country had gone to when it switched long before his birth from the gold standard to the standard of speculation and inflation. He would keep one of each of the weapons excepting the greatsword, which had to have some serious value even in this time. That would go to the girl, or at least the money from its sale would.

 With that and the sale of the other arms and armor perhaps she could have some form of a future. He would have to piece together some sort of armor for himself, and a shield and at least one of the horses, though two would be better…leaving her three and the two that her family had owned. Not a bad dowry for a woman of those times. It probably wouldn’t buy her into even a merchant family, but at least it would be a step above poverty, he thought checking the weapons by weight and feel…sorting for the ones that he might use best.

 The war axes would go to her fund, so he simply passed them by though he would probably keep the one spear as it was close in its feel to a Yari and he had once trained with such a weapon. Perhaps the Plum Blossom spear form would be of value with such a weapon even if the weight was wrong and the construction more western in its styling. He picked the spear up from the pile and began the dance, faltering where its weight and balance failed the intricate steps of the age-old Chinese style. It felt sort of right though, it felt as though it could be made to work…and so he set it in the pile of weapons that he planned to keep for himself. As well he set ten percent of the coin and other valuable objects in that pile. It would he hoped be enough to tide him for a time until he could find work or some kind of calling. He thought for a moment of taking it all and leaving the girl…most likely some one would find her given time, but he knew that his conscience wouldn’t allow it no matter how much booze he hid under. He thought for a moment of trying to find a way home, but he’d always hated it there…so instead he settled into the forms and the sweat began to pour.

 One decision he had made, no matter where or when he was…he would never allow himself to be disarmed again.   

 

  Chpt 2

 

 She was coming around but only half conscious most of the time. Troy felt himself coming around as well. He could go through a full set of forms for the first time in years, and even have the energy to play a set with weapons though wearing full armor tired him.

 He wondered if it was simply the weight of his cares being lifted from his shoulders. Granted he would have to worry about food soon, either that or start hunting, but he didn’t have to worry about a swat team arresting him at work because the cops were too damned wimpy to face a trained opponent without the aid of overwhelming force. Bullies, like the nation they served, punks and losers who could find no more honest employment than serving a tyrant. He knew that he would find such men in this place as well, for they always existed…but in a time of swords….overwhelming force took on a different meaning.

 As well this world seemed to have more of a feel of magic to it. Its winds whispered a sweeter song to his soul than the winds of his home ever had. Winds that blew a light hint of wood smoke across the dawning twilight and in the distance he could see the faint hints of fire. Someone there would be dying or being raped to death or possibly worse and his honor railed within him to do something to aid them, but his honor also bound him to his charge. He couldn’t go riding off to help someone else and possibly lose the girl he had saved.

 Honor a weight, a duty, a joy…the lost American word surrendered in the choice between dignity and security in a nation of pussies where security always won out. Strange that he had always said that only a free man could ever be secure and here in a place of terror he was armed and by right of those arms free…and he had never felt safer in his life.

 He walked the small dirt drive of the farmhouse area checking that his bows and arrows were still in their proper positions. He had inherited about a dozen bows of differing strength and size and had placed them at intervals around the lot so as to always have one within easy reach. If the marauders were to attack in the dark, he didn’t want to be left searching for weapons.

 He had settled at last on a straight bladed double edged basket hilt sword much like unto those once wielded by the Scott’s many years before his time.

 He had some training with it, and had studied martial weapons styles that closely related to it. The shield had taken some getting used to, but the two in conjunction seemed like a good starting point and he had learned the basics from various re-enactment groups that he had met over the years. Unlike them, he hadn’t the same weakness for fantasy or rules.

 Granted he had to admit that rules had their place in training but rules that made sense, rules that made the training as realistic as possible…not like the majority of re-enactors who simply swung hunks of wood at each other and shrugged off mortal blows because they weren’t within the rules. Kendo had been much better training but like most things in his life, he’d lost the ability to afford it. Kendo theories at least could be carried over to the more western blade even if techniques would have to be set aside.

 Fantasy he did have a weakness for, but in a way differing from most. What scared others appealed to Troy. When he’d gone to see the lord of the rings he didn’t think of the bad guys as scary or the place and time as much more than a much better place to be, even in the midst of a war.

 What better place to be than a land with simple weapons and a lot of room to move?

 He hoped that was true of his new reality, but the future would show what it held and one could rarely guess at it. Still he wondered sometimes if his hatred of his world and its ways was why he was adapting so quickly to the new world. Granted he had his weaknesses, like the fact that he couldn’t ride a horse much above a walk without fear of falling off…but he had an odd faith in himself that such simple things would change with practice.

 He walked by the horses as he went to check on the girl and spied what looked like an advance scout of one of the raiding parties in the growing twilight. He waved at the scout to let it know it had been seen and then walked away from where he had been keeping the girl.

 He wanted them to know he was wary, and that he would be on his guard. Again he regretted not posting the heads of the slain around the yard as a warning to others, a mistake he would not make again…a last vestige of the counter survival skills he’d brought with him from earth- a place where the concept that violence doesn’t solve anything is drummed into every child’s mind even if the child can see for itself that violence or the threat of it not only solved damned near everything, but also brought freedom from violence itself.  A place where people were smart enough to know that constant vigilance was the cost of freedom and dumb enough not to bother with it.

 With that thought in mind he started to light his fires. Over the last few days he had learned that he could start them by combining elements of the energy work he had engaged in on earth with his will and directing the twain at the wood.

 It helped since he could find nothing with which to accelerate the fires, not even something as simple as lamp oil. The magic of this place spoke to him yet he knew that he had yet to learn how to truly listen.

 The watch fires would keep the raiders from sneaking up on him in the dark and also alert them that he was aware of them and prepared to meet them and to resist. As such he figured they’d either move on or at least be wary enough to allow him a better chance at survival. Though honestly his experience had taught him that only a truly brazen force attacked someone who seemed capable of defending himself.

 

 As he walked to the house the sound of hoof beats shaking the earth rang him to attention and he grabbed up one of the bows and slid into a shadow. One of the advantages of being the one to set the fires was that he could also shadow the best defensive positions, leaving himself covered by darkness but leaving his enemies stuck attacking from a lighted direction.

 Every advantage he cold have, he wanted for he was unlikely to go cold until the moment of close contact. That had unfortunately always been the way of it for him, not that he couldn’t bring roughly the same focus to distance weapons, but cold rage was a personal matter, something between one living being and another.

 Something somehow marred by bows or guns or a distance that didn’t let you feel the other being’s soul rub up against you.  

 Surprisingly they rode up to the first fire and hailed the house in a singsong language that on one hand made all the sense in the world to him yet on the other he couldn’t exactly define. It seemed to be a courteous if concerned hail, but he knew nothing of the language with which to answer it.

 “Come and be welcomed if you come in peace…go or die if you come for other reasons…” he yelled back to them and then moved within the shadows to a different position so that they would not be able to simply home in on his voice.

 “We seek Aust and Liea who be you to be answering far them?” A man called from horse back seemingly unfamiliar with the language he was speaking but at least aware enough to speak it.

 “We’ve had troubles here…most of the family are dead. Who are you to come here at this hour?”

“I am Listel, mayor of Restal and chief of the guards. Why do you speak not the tongue?”

“I’m not even sure which tongue that would be…which tongue do we speak now?”

“Anglic tongue…or what be known as common. A man tongue. The tongue of common man and lesser things. We are coming in, if you are friend to the family or to our kind then you will not fire. If you are other your crimes shall be paid in blood.” The man who thought of himself as something else…quite possibly something more said as he moved his horse slowly through the outer fires towards the house, perhaps two dozen mounted men followed him. Troy’s disciplined eye took in detail that he had recorded from the other bodies he had seen.

 Like himself they had small points to their ears, and fangs were noticeably absent. Also like himself they were slight of build though unlike himself most wore their hair in long braids hanging most of the way down their backs though a few had shorter hair, none wore the close cropped styling that had become so popular within his own nation. Unlike the brigands, or raiders, each wore a long sword and all were of the same styling, each also carried a bow and all looked comfortable with the weapons. What surprised him was that they headed directly for his position in the shadow as though the shadows didn’t exist.

 Whatever else might be the case, they could be relatives to the girl and her family unlike the larger men who had attacked them. There were familial or racial traits that defined them as being one people perhaps even all of the same basic seed line.

 A great number of thoughts ran through his head as the lead horse neared him and the moment of face to face contact dawned upon them.

 “You are of the blood” the man said simply “Why have you not the gift of the tongue?” the man asked with noticeable suspicion.

 Troy thought through a world of possible answers and then simply went with the truth… “I’m not exactly from around here…for that matter I don’t know what the blood is, nor do I know this gift that you speak of. I was camping in the woods, I saw the fire and heard the screams. Rape, murder and worse occurred here. At least I had the chance to settle the score.”

 “Do any of the blood live?” the man said with words deeply dripping sadness but not venom.

“ I am hesitant to answer that question, for all I know you could be an enemy. Still you have the look of family about you and what you say of yourself seems to fit you as well. The youngest daughter still lives, though she was wounded and is only now recovering.”

“You speak Anglic with an odd note…yet what you speak seems true.” He said and then turning to the men behind him began chatting in his own language. And to Troy’s surprise the more people who spoke the words the easier it was for him to follow them…like trying to use a language you’d learned in high school out in the real world, it became clear only when he was immersed in it. 

“How can this be? The gift was given a hundred years past there is not one of the blood who does not speak it…”

“I agree with Wellby, there is some odd trick in this. And yet what of Vadania, she has no kin at hand and is not of her majority.”

“Can we think of no one who would take her in?” the leader asked his voice odd with passion “ We can’t just leave her here alone nor can we give her majority that she might leave.”

“I do not trust this blood…he bears the marks, and even the scent of our kind and yet he shows none of the gift.” Wellby, who was obviously some sort of second in command added in.

“The council then?” another man asked.

“And leave her here for what a week? A week in which the enemy will have a dozen chances to finish yet another of our family lines. I would have them at the Inn, yet this harassment is into its second week… I have no room as it is I have people camping on the grounds and no money to feed them with unless we go into town funds and all know those to be short.”

“Then what choice do we have?” Wellby asked yet sadness marred his otherwise beautiful face.

 “Perhaps I can help in that…” Troy said in the tongue and all eyes turned to him.

“You said you spoke not the tongue.”

“I didn’t, but in listening to you it has come to me more easily than my own language seems to right now. I would love to know what that means and what this gift is that you speak of, but first I must ask that something be done for the girl she is barely healed and I have no idea how to even find this town you speak of. I’m not all that sure that it was even safe to move her…”

“What was done to her?” the mayor asked with a face that said that he really didn’t want to know.

“Well she was made up like a boy and it seemed to fool her attackers, so she missed the worst of it but still they hung her from the door by her wrists like a sack of wheat. Hung her by daggers through her wrists…she lost a great deal of blood and the goddess alone knows what damage it has done to her arms and wrists.” Troy said watching a wave of relief wash over the men, and he realized for the first time that they must have seen the same horrors he had seen or worse. “There was a farm burning in the distance…I couldn’t leave her to go to them but you must…we can wait the few hours until your return…ride through the fields if you have to…the crops can be replaced.” Troy said hanging his head as if he was somehow responsible for what might have happened there.

 “Still your heart stranger…”Wellby began with an honest tone of friendship “That was my sister’s farm and we have already been there twice this week. This time they managed to burn down the outhouse with flaming arrows nothing more…” and Troy felt his own shoulders relax with relief…he might not know these people but he would not wish what had happened to the girl’s family upon anyone. “You had a hard choice and you made it.

 My sister has a husband and a half dozen sons of fighting age as well as a dozen brothers and their families…Aust had only his wife and two daughters. You must have caught their attackers as they left…or you’d be dead. They attack in groups of twenty to twenty five though this last group we chased off seemed closer to fifty. Either would have taught any blood his worth had he been foolish enough to face them alone.”

 For a moment Troy was delighted for this man was actually making a polite excuse for his not doing more...yet the excuse implied that he had somehow hung around and possibly waited for them to leave.

“Friend I appreciate your tact, but I came when I heard the screams and honestly somewhat unwillingly. But I faced them and I put twenty-two of them in the ground. If you doubt that I have every scrap of their possessions which I am hoping I might sell to improve the girl’s position. What money was found I will keep until I see what you plan to do with her and then I will take ten percent for myself and not a coin more.”

 The men looked a bit doubtful about his story, and about his philanthropy… Yet something about the fellow and his candor struck Lissel as true and he said as much.

 “I say he speaks true…but to test the point sir, how much coin did you liberate from the beasts?”

 “ 48 pieces of gold, 239 pieces of silver, and 489 pieces of what appears to be copper. As well there are some small personal items that might be gold or silver, some unset stones whose value I do not know, their weapons and armor and five horses of which I claim two.”

For a moment the area fell under a hush. The men seemed to have a hard time believing his story and most probably never would…but the rest could be checked and at least the lad could be kept to his word.

 That he was of the blood at least all agreed upon and some started to wonder if he’d simply never been around halven or even elves before. It would explain the late blooming of the gift and his problems with the language. Still he was young by Halven standards, a decade possibly a hair more past his majority. No time at all in which to have gained the skills needed to take on and conquer a gang of half orcs and humans.

 Yet no other answers seemed to come quickly to mind. Aust and his family might have been able to kill a few of their attackers but they were in the end only farmers. Aust knew the bow and long sword for he had grown among the Halvens and was even an auxiliary member of the guard, but even if by some miracle the family had managed to thin the attackers numbers by half…that would have left the young stranger in an eleven on one fight…and since both options seemed ludicrous to all in the guard all in the guard seemed to be of the opinion that the stranger had done exactly what he’d claimed and their opinion of him rose dramatically.

  Troy had many questions, but Lissel pressed for sending his healer to the girl and Troy obliged telling them where to find her. Then set in again. “What is the gift? Is that how I can speak to you though I have never spoken or even heard this language before?”  The Mayor paused at that. Among his people the gift was common knowledge, even among other Halven for that matter all Halven or so he had thought. “You know nothing of it?” Wellby asked simply stunned and then he chuckled… “What do you believe yourself to be?”

 “Human…what I have always been and will always be. Like yourselves and those who attacked these people, simply human.” Troy said and the sincerity of his statement raised many more questions among the guard than he would have thought possible. Though it was the mayor who asked the most important question…”What plane or world are you from that you have so little knowledge of our races?”

“Earth…a world not unlike this one, but then again from what I’ve seen very much unlike this one. I know that sounds crazy…but I’m really not from here…”

 “No sir, this is not a thing of madness it is one of magic. Magic does exist in your world does it not?”

And at that Troy was the one who had to think, had to sort of sift for the proper words. Troy was a pagan and as well a witch… he believed in magic after a fashion, but not in even the limited ways he had so far been able to use it in this world.

 In his world magic was something used to gain a control of one’s self or to empower one’s self or others. It was a thing of energy, of ritual and waiting. Supposedly there had been a time when it had been more. A time when man had used it directly to influence his daily life and the lives of others and yet he didn’t know if he’d ever truly believed in it in that way, and yet here he had been able to make fire with little more than a weaving of energies and the will to do so.

“Not in the way it does here…It is more a metal discipline in my world…a concept far more than a reality.” And the men around him all seemed to be coming to a certain conclusion…”So that was the end of the wizard then?” Wellby spoke out into the night “He will be sorely missed.”

“The council must speak on this…by the goddess this bodes ill for our community and the humans and any who lived within his sway…”

“Okay guys…You’ve lost me.” Troy said watching the healer and the girl walking towards them from the shadows.

“We are a relatively new community…a remnant of a remnant…but we have always been safe here for an Elven wizard lived here who had been instrumental in bringing about the close of the great war of cleansing.

 His power sheltered us, and we had been wondering what had become of him for he has not heeded our calls. If you come from a non-magical world, most likely he went there and used you as a counter weight for his jump. Unfortunately he is also most likely not coming back. He is either trapped there or dead. Even the most powerful mage on a dead world is trapped, and the timing leads me to believe that this area is in far greater danger than we had at first believed. I’m afraid that we must return to the town in haste. Wellby, you have the command I will need only Artis and Charn. My new friend…I’m afraid your questions will have to wait for the moment.”

“I’m sure we could talk some on the ride ?” Troy asked now fervently wondering just what the hell was going on here but then a window of blue white light opened before them and Troy looked to see one of the Halven in deep concentration. Strange that if he squinched his eyes up in a certain way he seemed to be able to see the strands of elemental powers that the man was using to hold the light in its place.

“There will be no long ride my friend…this is not a dead world…magic lives and breathes here and for us it is the very stuff of life. Now mount, and we will be in the heart of our town in seconds.”

 While Troy couldn’t quite believe it, the simple truth was that the man hadn’t lied.

 

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  This new world had possibilities, Troy thought as he looked out over the keep’s expansive grounds, unfortunately it also had its limitations chief among them the kingdom’s emigration laws. Samhuinn, the kingdom in which he now lived, was a mixed race kingdom and perhaps the only mixed race community left in the world. Not that the varied races didn’t trade with each other and have to live with one another

After a fashion, but few chose to do so in intermixed communities. As such Samhuinn like most other nations had emigration laws. Granted Troy had been given a certain leeway because he’d been brought into the country against his will…but his needs and Vanadia’s had met and the agreement would settle both of their problems.

 The same agreement would settle some of the community’s needs as well. And so on his third day in town he’d gotten married.

 His head still spun a little at the very idea of it, but it was a marriage of conveniences…a handfasting really, a sort of test marriage. Yet there had been some fire in her kiss, a simple kiss to seal the bargain…but he’d felt the heat of it. Perhaps in time?

 He looked out over the well manicured lawns and realized that he didn’t know her in the slightest, didn’t know these people or the one’s that would be living with him as charges at her farm until they married or reached their majority.

 A dozen in all, but it had been the best arrangement he could work out if he intended to continue to live in their world.

 His week of contemplative solitude would end at midnight and then he’d get to see her again, to re-commit to  the vows they’d spoken and then there would be the honey moon week and then they would move to her farm. He was happy that at least in this world being a female did not limit her in any legal way though from what he had heard from his visits to Remal the human kingdoms on any side of them alternated government types and freedoms.

 Elves, Halven and humans ruled Samuinn in an odd sort of confederation of towns and cities, a high Elf as king ruled with limited powers the real power being in town or city lords, Barons, Queens or mayors.

 This arrangement had its problems, but by and large it had worked since the war yet hard feelings between the races kept a feel of suspicion between them and war of some sort was always in the air. The human realms it seemed both feared and coveted Samuinn’s limited success.  Vana being Halven had fears concerning the humans as well as the Elves many ancient enemies.

 Troy turned from the window and began his walk to the practice field.

 

 The field held the wooden men that fighters of ages past had used to train against the real thing. The tall heavy wooden men with their arms and wooden weapons and shields had lain pretty much unused until his coming. It was simply that with the wizard alive most of the town’s people hadn’t felt the need to train. They had other things to do like work or learn their magical skills, or look after children. That at least reminded him of his own world. They’d moved to a safe place, and set aside their own protection…even the town guard barely trained. Now with the wizard gone training would need to begin again, and not all thought that a bad thing.

 

 

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Vana’s head spun, but then again it wasn’t every day that you met a half dragon or had your whole world turned upside down. She would mourn given time, but time was the one thing she hadn’t been given. To meet the terms of her majority, she would have to wed and without that she wouldn’t be able to keep her family’s lands.

 For whatever reason her mother and father had taught her that the land was all, and to keep that land…she had contemplated the outrageous, or at least it had seemed outrageous until she’d talked with Dharma the keep’s seneschal and a woman who was half dragon and half elf.

“Much like the gods, we of dragon kind are bound in what we can do in the physical plane. Those who oppose your coming will know of me in time, will know that Hemmite for all his power was not the true power of this keep. And yet my hands are bound to a point. They will oppose this union and anything else that grants you your majority.” The woman said with a slight something to her voice that sent chills through Vana.

 “But why? Why would anyone give a damn about a farmer’s daughter…the town council doesn’t. That much is obvious…”

Vana replied more than a little frustrated by the choices given her and perhaps somewhat put off by what this very odd and powerful woman was implying.  “Because you will become the huntress…” the woman said with a simple matter of fact face that sent a shiver down Vanadia’s spine.

 She thought of the legends of the tri-goddess, and felt the pull in her very soul that she always felt when she thought of the goddess. A simple darkness of soul that she couldn’t quite believe was at her core. Granted like most girls she had dreamed of such things…but the huntress would be Elvin, all of the goddess’ forms if they ever came would be Elvin. That had been simply accepted since the goddess had spoken of her desendance to the physical plane.

 Most believed in the basic concept that the goddess would once again walk among them, but she had to admit that she really didn’t know much about the gods and all of that. “The huntress will be Elvin, everyone knows that…” Vana said knowing it a pale defense. But she couldn’t be the huntress…if she had been then why couldn’t she have saved her family? Why had she had to hide the very basic fact that she was female? Why hadn’t she just called the hounds or the whispering death?

“You will become the huntress…the power will come with your majority it will come when you become the maiden…forever maiden. You will not age, you will not tire, from the day of your majority until the day that you take you last breath, you will be maiden and as maiden you will be huntress.” The woman said and then turned and slithered out of the room in a way that was so sensual Vana found herself oddly envious.

 She would reach her majority early, only a few years early, but early none the less. Her majority would be granted her the day she married even if it was only a trail marriage, and that as well was messing with her mind and emotions.

 Why had she kissed him so fiercely? What was the pull about him? He had saved her life. And she felt that he wouldn’t push her sexually, he’d had the chance to use her in that way for all of the days that she’d been unconscious…and he hadn’t.

 She wondered for a moment if he was simply not interested…but then he had returned the kiss in kind. Her hands ran up and down her body for a moment wondering what it would be like to have his hands do the same. A different shiver ran through her at the idea.

 The black dress Dharma had gifted her sat on her bed and she smiled at the gift. It was gorgeous, thin and spidery barely a covering, but also much more than a covering. It played with the light trapping it and yet drawing the eye of the mind to every curve.

 She would wed in that dress?

 Vana moved to the mirror for a quick look at herself in her normal clothes before setting out for yet another informal gathering of the girls. Strange that a male was given a week of solitude to think through a marriage but a woman was given a week of formal and informal gatherings to do the same. Were they really that different? Males and females that is.

If they were that different how could they even hope to understand one another…and yet they did. Her mother and father had been happy. Not that they didn’t fight and argue at times but they’d been happy and she couldn’t remember him ever once yelling.

 She thought of the girls that would be staying with her until they reached their majority. Girls recently orphaned like herself who had no local family. Their parent’s lands would be held in trust for them as the boys lands would.

 Some were young enough to be little more than walking while others were close to her seventeen years. Dharma had said a great many things that worried her, and those things would need to be discussed with the others. But the huntress? The woman had to be mistaken.

 

 “Care for a bit of sparring Sir Ward?” Welby asked with a grin as he entered the training field. Troy simply ducked the wooden mace that would have left him with one hell of a headache and spoke the spell that turned the wooden men inanimate. “Sure…” Troy answered “Just give me a minute to get some water…I’ve been working through forms all morning.” Welby just smiled and strapped his armor on.  Then again most of the men smiled at him these days and not just because he was getting married.

 Both Elvin and Halven societies it appeared had castes, though they were far more rare among the Halven. Elvin castes never appeared among the Halven and yet he had somehow been born to a triple gift of High Elvin castes Prince, Priest and Ward. All of which had been explained to him by the seneschal in a way that had left his mind weary and perhaps even more confused. But the men seemed to take his birthright as a gift from the gods. And perhaps it was… though he had no idea how to use any of the gifts that supposedly came with the castes. He could enchant weapons to a point, a gift of the Ward caste, but so far only in the most simple ways. The gift had helped to make him and his wife to be a little money for enchanted weapons bore a greater price on the market even if the enchantments were simple things like a permanent edge or an unbreakable weapon. He had been told that other enchantments were possible, but so far he simply couldn’t do any of them. Perhaps when the king’s ward came he would learn more. Though even Dharma seemed hard pressed to give him much specific knowledge regarding his gifts. “ I have never been a male…” was all she had to say as an excuse. But at least that made sense. The cold rage it seemed was also a gift of the Ward caste and while he had lived with that all of his life, it seemed to be a deeper thing in this world and more adaptable to his commands. “So have you figured it out yet?” Welby asked still smiling.

 “Which it is that?” Troy asked with what he knew had to be a befuddled look.

“Wife, life, all of that happy stuff.”

Troy simply shook his head. “oh your going to get a workout today my friend…” Troy said and Welby laughed, though  he didn’t keep laughing for long. He was their best swordsman, and barely able to defend himself. Not that the man didn’t have skill, but Troy had always had a certain gift for weapons.

 They danced for perhaps half an hour and Troy felt himself slipping into the cold, he sped up as Welby slowed landing killing blow after killing blow. Until finally Welby called the hold. “Remind me to never get on your bad side…” Welby said panting. “I did mean it though…the question…any ideas as to what you’re going to do with yourself?”

“I guess I’m going to reaffirm my vows, raise a few kids. That should do for the next couple of years.” Troy answered going through a quick set of cool down exercises.

“I don’t think that you were meant for the quite life my friend…” Welby said again with that damnable smile “Then again with four witches and a handful of vengeful young men on your hands…Still you will be joining the guard?” he asked hopefully as he did every time he and Troy talked.

“Auxiliary, I will be joining in a limited fashion…but I’m going to have my hands full.”

“Yes you are. You know I think that girl has a crush on you….well, young woman. Don’t take her lightly, there’s something about her…even the seneschal noticed it.”

“Yeah…hey what are the people here at the keep going to do now that the wizard is gone?”

“Stay and help as they always have. We built the town around the keep, not the other way around. There are wizards here. Not the strength of Hemmite, but strong enough to be of value. And the king is sending a ward and a company of fighters and archers. We will be trained and the seneschal will train those who can use magic as Hemmite always did. Change comes slowly to the long lived peoples. But these changes will be lived with. The raiders have gone for now. That will give us time to train. Time to reawaken our sense of duty to ourselves.”

“You sound pretty sure of yourself…”

“I’m not really, but what can you do? Pray for the best, plan for the worst and hope for the future. Long lived peoples don’t dwell on the negatives.”

“Perhaps I’ve just seen too many negatives…”

“Well, perhaps if we change your experiences…”

“Just maybe you’ll change my perceptions. How long do Halven live?”

“We don’t really know yet. The gift hasn’t been with us that long. The going guess is upwards of a thousand years.”

“that’s funny…I barely wanted the next day in my world. Hoped I’d die most of the time. Hoped I simply wouldn’t wake with the next sun and yet here…a thousand years doesn’t sound so bad…does it.”

“Guess that depends on what you do with it?” Welby said with a smile and then began to work with one of the wooden men.

 

 

 The first challenge came from an unlikely source, and Troy hadn’t expected it.

 Petitioners could come to a wedding to stop it or challenge it as a right of law. But he hadn’t expected anyone to actually do so, that someone did told him that perhaps the community had spies within it. Some one somewhere semmed to have issue with Vanadia wedding and thus reaching her majority. A family had moved into the area only a day past asking to take in the girls and other orphans and were told that arrangements had been made, yet the family had pressed the issue until no one really trusted their motives. But it was Ailill that had issued the challenge. A known mercenary and on again of again resident of the town.

 Few trusted him as he seemed to always be absent when attacks came, and there were questions as to his heritage that suggested that he was something other than half human and half elf. He had simply come to the ceremony and issued his challenge giving no reason for the challenge and not even bothering to pretend to have one when pressed. Still, Troy was bound to it. If he wanted to marry Vana then he had to meet any challenger in combat who presented himself or herself at the ceremony.

 The man had fought with cunning and cleverness and even magic, he’d also died only to be replaced by challenger after challenger Until the last moment just before midnight when no more challenges could be declared.

 Troy stood worn and tired and then he married. He wasn’t sure if it was just his exhaustion but there seemed to be a change in Vana when they again kissed to seal the bargain. Not a change in a lover’s sense, but an almost palpable sense of power seemed to rush through her. Dharma simply smiled.

 And Troy wondered just what he’d gotten himself into.

 

 “She has gained a false majority Ferimor, but the changes can already be seen. She must die before she reaches her true majority. How many troops will you need to get the job done…” the gray clad Drow asked him as the mage simply sat and simmered. He would not speak to Ferimor and Ferimor wasn’t sure how to take that. It was obvious that the mage was angered, but there was only so much he could do without direct support. He’d sent a force of five hundred men and less than half of it had returned. They’d destroyed farms, killed raped and robbed and yet they’d failed in their mission. Even his assassins had failed to keep the male from marrying the girl, and now they would have an angry goddess in human form to deal with one who would just now be starting to grow into her powers.

 If she lived the two years it would take her to reach her majority…then little short of a war would be enough to kill her. “How many can be given to me?” he asked wondering if any number would be enough, and for the first time wondering if this deal was worth getting into or for that matter if it could be gotten out of.

 “You will be given a legion of Drow warriors, and one of orcs. Add whatever numbers you feel appropriate to that force and we will move it into position for you when you are ready to move. Haste is an issue here. Our goddess will not be very forgiving of failure.” The Drow officer said not much caring for his human counter part.

 Ferimor thought for a moment…if he added a legion of his own that would make for a force of three thousand men and yet he was tempted to wait.

 The area now had high Elvin forces patrolling it, and an Elvin ward and the rumors surrounding this mysterious husband spoke of him as a ward.

 Though he had never heard of a Halven Ward before. Even with three thousand men…it would be tricky to get what he wanted done for while the wizard had been dealt with the keep still had power, and there were Elvin forces and the Halven would be training with arms and making preparations against future raids.

 Some small element of surprise would by on his side, but if either of the two wards were aware of the force before it struck they could construct magical barriers that would keep out all but the most powerful mages for days and would slow even powerful mages for an hour or two. “I’ll need mages…and not lower level ones. I’ll be wanting some men from the assassins guild as well. If we’re going to do this, then it has to be done a certain way…your forces as awe inspiring as they are in the darkness are nearly useless in the daylight. So we will have to wait for a stormy time. Orcs are equally useless in the day and so they are also a problem to be looked into. Still, a quick surgical strike through Al-Dathi…”

 “To pit the humans against the Halven once more?” the officer said as he thought through the possibilities “You don’t think we can win the objective do you?” the officer asked with a knowing frown.

 “I’d say our chances are slim…but with the right collection of forces in the right places at the right times…it may be possible. Still the mages need to be prepared for the defenses that a ward can draw upon and it’s possible that we are dealing with more than one ward…” Ferimor said watching the gore rise among the Drow.

 Few Elvin castes were hated more by the Drow then the wards and mostly because the drow had no similar caste. But the drow were not of the land as the Halven and Elvin people were, they could not conceive of land rage or the power that it could channel.

 The wards strongest gift, the birth right ability to channel land rage into magical walls, living wards. Such a wall could keep an army out for months if that army had no mages. A Ward could also use land rage as a weapon calling upon the four elements of the land to expel his enemies. Luckily wards were few and far between there being only a dozen or so know to exist within all Elvin lands. Still, they were no lax threat and two in one place could be an ugly thing to war against…but with timing, speed and deception…perhaps a god could die.

 “So if we fail, then at least we can try to set Sammuin and Al-Dathi at war?”

 “That is an excellent side bet…the humans have just been looking for an excuse to destroy Sammuin and my people sow the seeds of discontent as often as possible. If it is seen that we are to fail then we must lead any who pursue back towards Al-Dathi’s borders.”

“And if none pursue?”

“Then we’ll just have to kill Some of the Al-Dathi guards ourselves and try to make it look like a Sammuin attack.”

The old mage leaned forward settling his piercing gaze upon Ferimor “Make this war happen and your reward will be given you. Kill the girl if you can, but make this war happen. We can sway the humans as we have in the past. With war upon them, we will have the options we need to bring this huntress down before she can grow. What news of the mother and the crone?”

“As yet unidentified, but we do believe them both to be Elvin. And we do believe them both to be among the living at this time. There are too many strange events and rumors for this not to be so and yet the High Elves are a closed mouthed people at best.”

“Little matter for now, though the goddess wishes this false goddess dead and in her physical form she can be killed. The war will proceed regardless of whether or not the huntress lives, but before she reaches her true power she must die…she is the teeth of the three, and only through her can they be whole. Bring war and fire and suffering to the people who hide this bitch from us. Then let’s see who her friends are?”

 

  A month without attacks and the regular company of the High elves had set them all in a comfortable rhythm. For which Troy was aberrantly happy. As for he and Vana well, the marriage was turning into more of a friendship with a hint of courtship mixed in.

 Some kissing and snuggling and growing feelings. But still under the surface he could feel her anger and her loss. And fear, but he didn’t understand the fear.

 Then again perhaps he did but couldn’t see why she would feel that way towards herself. Why she would fear herself. The answer seemed to lie in something that Dharma had said to her at the keep but she wouldn’t confide that in him or anyone else for that matter.

 What had surprised him and the others was her interest in training with the Elvin Ward and his willingness to train her.

 Troy found himself strangely jealous of the Elf even though he knew that Dafyd had no intentions toward Vana. Dafyd was cultured and disciplined and driven in a laid back Elvin sort of way. He was also exceptionally well trained in his arts and a kind and patient teacher who didn’t seem to hold the same prejudices towards Halven that most of the other Elves did.

 He was unfortunately beautiful, in a way that men shouldn’t be, not even Elvin men…and he seemed aware of it. Though how the man could stand it Troy didn’t know. The constant fawning and preening among the girls and even a good number of women from the surrounding farms and the town itself. And the man liked to take his shirt of to display his perfect physique. Often their training times turned into a sort of family outing with women and girls from the surrounding area just happening to remember some reason or another for having to stop by.

 Jania was by far the worst among the girls at the house, though not one of them were prone to staying away. Dafyd simply had that effect on women and he definitely enjoyed it. Troy guessed that he couldn’t blame him but still it irked.

 “You get used to it…” Dafyd had simply said one day when they’d finished his instruction in warding shields “aside from which they aren’t just staring at me my friend…a lot of those eyes are turned in your direction. And don’t think that your little woman hasn’t noticed.”

 Troy had to admit that he was becoming more physically fit, not that he’d ever let himself go to pot or anything but regular honest work mixed with exercise and training had done wonders for his body…and the gift had an effect of its own.

 He felt about a decade younger and thanks to Dharma he could even smile again without feeling odd. When she had healed him she had frowned and bitched about what kind of world he must have lived in to be so physically beaten at such a young age, but the healing had grown back lost teeth and healed cavities.

 It had taken the constant pains from his body and he thought in some ways may even have healed some of the pain in his soul. The end result left him with a sort of hopeful feeling that life might have some value after all.

 Not a felling that he or most who he knew back home had on any sort of regular basis. Then again, he had a fresh start in a world that he simply enjoyed more than his own.

 He paused for a moment to study his own reflection in a pool of water and thought that maybe Dafyd had a point. The hair was still far shorter than average for a man of the times and probably always would be, but the rest of him looked good. The high cheek bones angled down into a firm if slim jaw that seemed to highlight an intense set of sky ice eyes, a slim neck leading down to a trim body that had become sculpted muscle over the last month.

 His strength and stamina were returning at an alarming pace and he even felt the clothing to his liking though he would probably never get used to the robe like attire that most wore. He preferred tailored clothing in black and was rarely seen without something black on his person. This day being no exception with his knee high black leather boots riding up tight cotton trousers into a baggy black long-sleeved shirt with volumous sleeves that tapered at the wrists.

 A comfortable fencing outfit that made him look somewhat lordly and appealed to the more gothic side of his personality.

 This night he and Dafyd would be ranging, one of the many responsibilities of a ward. Meaning that they would be riding the whole of the town’s circumference using magical portals to jump from place to place to help them cover the distance. According to Dafyd a Ward could cover the whole kingdom in a few days by this method if he was of a mind to and Troy wondered when they were going to work up to that. First would be archery with Vana and the girls which was always fun to watch because they were so busy watching Dafyd that he was amazed one of them hadn’t shot any of the others yet.

 Still Vana had the eye for it, seemed a natural for that matter. She could best him and was quickly catching up to Dafyd, which might explain some of the man’s interest in her. But didn’t explain why he kept trying to teach her the rest of the wards techniques or why she seemed so able to learn them. Thankfully at least she would probably never best him with the sword for that seemed to be his gift.

 Dafyd was gifted with the bow, and it was said that the other wards all had slightly differing gifts. One was noted for the spear, another for his enchanted axe that returned to him regardless of how it was thrown. One thing that irked Troy though was that so far in the subjects that most interested him, Vana seemed to be ahead of him in their studies.

 He could imbue weapons with special abilities, and his own he could imbue with greater ease…but nothing like the flaming arrows that Vana had come up with on her first try. He could also find a kinship with the local animals which was another gift of being a ward, but nothing like Vana who now had a pet wolf that she talked to on a regular basis.

 Strange that she seemed only to be able to bond with predators…but he looked forward to the day when he could do as much.

 She came walking up with Dafyyd who had apparently found some pretext to take his shirt off yet again which must have made the local girls all fluttery. 

 “So then we’re ready?” Dafyyd asked calling their horses with his mind.

“Well…yes but why are you dressed to go outing?” Troy asked taking in Vana’s riding clothes bow and sword belt.

“Because I’m going with you silly…” she said with a kiss as the horses cantered into sight “Dafyyd seems to think that I may be strong enough to weave the portals though he’s not sure if I’ll be able to weave them the way a ward can.”

“You seem to be able to do everything else that we can do? Which is making me wonder a little about this whole big bad “Ward” thing.”

“I’ve trained more people in the fighting arts within my lifetime than I can count, and she is the first being I have ever met who while not of the caste can perform within our gifts. I cannot in good conscience refuse her nor do I think you’d want me to…”

“No…” Troy said hanging his head “No I wouldn’t. Something is in the wind…and we can use all of the help we can get when it comes…”

 “You just don’t like me being able to do all of this because it was supposed to make you special and different somehow…been awhile since you’ve felt that way about yourself hasn’t it?”

Damn Troy thought, was he really that see through. Had he really gotten to be that pathetic back home?

What hurt was that the answer was yes.

 Oh he’d done some things in his life that he’d been proud of, but nothing was ever enough in his world. He’d lost a lot to that world, but mostly he’d lost his faith.

 Not his faith in his goddess, but his faith in himself, in his species, in his nation. It had been a long damned time since he’d felt special or loved in any way, and he had to admit that it hurt a little to have her be able to do better at being a ward than he was.

 Granted he was taking to the sword like a fish to water, but that was really the only area in which he had so far excelled…well that and Warding walls…He could make a warding wall that even Dafyyd couldn’t find a way through and Dafyyd had been the one who’d taught him and was considered a master of that technique.

 “You’re right love…” he said leaning down and giving her a solid lover’s kiss “ It has been years since I’ve even felt like I belonged much less was anything special.

 For that matter it has been a long time since I’ve even wanted to live another day. And Dharma wanted to know why I didn’t want to go home…I’d take being an average farmhand in this world over being a prince in mine any day. But I’ll give you a little competition along the way. There’s something else about you coming along that worries me, but I can’t put a finger on it…maybe its just me being silly again…”

“Troy I never think of you as being silly…oh well okay every now and again when you are being silly…but not when it comes to stuff like this. I don’t know what kind of hell world you lived in, but those scars are real and I won’t mock them. You’ve never mocked mine. Still if you have some reason that you feel I shouldn’t go?”

He shook his head but that didn’t make the feeling go away.

“I can’t put a finger on it…but something feels wrong about this. A feeling of danger, something on the wind that says we shouldn’t risk all of our strength in one place. I mean not for nothing, but we’re it as far as serious magical defenses go. One ward and two partly trained wards, and if by some chance we stumble into something we can’t handle…”

“Then the community loses its most valuable defenders all at once. I hadn’t thought about that, but I don’t know that I’ve been expecting the threat to return.”

He paused for a moment and turned his head, his long silver hair blowing slightly in the wind “I hear no hints of evil…but you’re right there is something odd on the wind. Maybe you have a latent talent for listening to the winds that you haven’t been able to consciously access yet. I’d like you to do something for me…” he said looking Troy squarely in the eyes “ I’d like you to close your eyes and sink into trance…”

 And Troy did as he was asked. Halven trance wasn’t the same as Elvin trance, nor quite as limited as human trance. It was a thing half meditative and half in the spirit plane.

 Somewhere off to the north…he thought through the misty place between world and spirit, something wrong, something out of place.

 Something not quite right was coming from the nation on their border. He felt his body point in the direction he felt, and felt himself sliding out of the trance to find his outstretched arm pointing to the north. “I can’t put words to it, but something comes. And its coming from there. What? I don’t know, and I don’t even know if its dangerous…it just feels not right…like a dirty version of your psychic scent and I don’t think that’s possible…”

“Well elves do sometimes go bad, but there are also the Drow though they have not moved from their dark lairs since before the last war.”

“The Drow?” Vana asked as though the man had told a joke “ They don’t really exist…I mean no one I’ve ever talked to really believes that they exist as anything more than something to scare children with…” The look on Dafyyd’s face told her just how funny he found that particular joke. “Who do you think started the last war?” he said quietly searching the winds for a particular scent “I can’t tell…and for all I know they may be aware of my presence and trying to block me…but I think that if it is Drow, they just might have underestimated you.”

 “I’ll go, and I’ll go alone.” He said noticing their glares “I am the only fully trained ward among us…you kids are just pups. Oh you have strength enough, and you have gifts between you, but I have been a ward for nearly a thousand years and if the Drow are out there you’ll be little more than a liability to me while here you can be a blessing to these people.”

 “You’ll return if you find anything?” Vana asked with a worried tone.

“I’ll return if I can, but you two and you two alone will be able to feel my wards and weaves if I must act. Perhaps the seneschal will feel me upon the winds as well for no one truly knows the extent of her powers.”

“Don’t be a hero, get in and out…you’ll be of more use to us here than you will be dead.” Troy said wondering just how much the man was truly capable of.

 “Oh I’ll be back.” He said with a wicked smile “but not before I’ve had a little fun with them…” and he mounted his horse and leapt through a portal. Oddly Troy felt cold, and he knew it had nothing to do with the weather.

 

 Dafyyd had to admit that the kids were growing on him, he also had to admit that they were right. Two legions approached from Al-Davi. The human democracy helping the Drow yet again for age old reasons of fear and lust. He would have thought that they had learned from the last war and truly hoped there would not be another. The long-lived races had few allies and it took longer for them to repopulate after a war which had decimated their numbers.

 Even with the Halven on their side he wasn’t sure that the realm could win such a war as weak as it was. The wards had been depopulated in the last war as well for while they were hard to kill they could still die and he had no intention of doing so just yet. He turned his horse to follow sign that he knew would lead him to the enemy somewhere up ahead. He slid into a sight shield and air walked the horse to cut down on sound.

 He moved the horse into a canter and walked it higher into the air to give himself a better view. And in the darkness he found them, aiming roughly towards Vana’s farm. One of the first attacks hd been at that farm, and the intrigue surrounding their marriage had surprised him. Someone it seemed had taken a great interest in the girl and he wondered at the why of it.

 The double file arrangement was odd for Drow and stranger still for Orcs but stealth seemed to be the order of the day and so they would seem to have arranged themselves accordingly.

 All to the better as far as he was concerned, and yet something wasn’t quite right about the feel of it. He brought the horse to a halt and sunk into trance for a moment. Mages abounded, but where he couldn’t say exactly. They were intentionally hiding from someone they knew would have the ability to sense them and might be hiding something else. Still he had his duty to do, and so he rode the horse back down to ground level. A ward needed to be in contact with the ground to use his power, for it was directly linked to the earth, to the mother herself.

 He felt the land rage rush through him as he focused his mind upon the enemy before him, wrapping it in a tight shield of land pain. And he could feel the mages fight against it as soon as they started. He’d trapped them for the moment, but the mages would rip through his shield in time. He targeted them with burst of earth and fire and sent those animals that heeded him call against them. In his minds eye he could see the gouts of fire and the birds and wolves and other animals attacking, could see through the eyes of a deer as it rammed a mage to death with its horns only to be killed himself by a Drow crossbow bolt but not before taking a few more with him. Something pulled at him from the physical world just as the bolt penetrated his left shoulder. No one should have been able to see through his sight shield but who knew what a Drow mage could or could not do? He threw up a shield in the direction that the bolt had come from as another ripped at his leg, missing him but stunning the horse. He raised a circular shield around himself and then opened a portal to the farm and jumped the horse through before it fell on him.

 

 That troy had specifically set the shield to allow Dafyyd through was something that Dafyyd would have to thank him for someday, but at the moment he was busy dealing with his own wounds and the legion of humans and half orcs that surrounded the farm. The shields were holding, but mage archers were getting a few flaming arrows through here and there. The mages were in groups of ten to twelve and were working in tandem to open small holes in the shields, just small enough to get arrows through which was how Liam the light bringer had died in an ambush. The girl Jania who was healing him, seemed to be at cross-purposes with her self for on

One hand she was focused on her work yet on the other she was almost painfully infatuated with him and that infatuation was making her flustered which didn’t do her healing skills a damned bit of good. She was young and pretty enough, but his

Power would be limited until he stopped bleeding. Though Vana and Troy were dealing the enemy any unrelenting amount of damage they weren’t skilled enough yet to seek out individual targets like mages or assassins. Still, by choice or happenstance they were taking their toll on the attackers. Vana with her short silver hair flying sent flaming arrow after flaming arrow into the attackers while Troy in trance sent wave after wave of riven earth at them accompanied by gouts of flame and instantly forming pools of quicksand.

 Much of which was countered by the enemy’s mages, but a great deal of the damage was getting through. Vanadia screamed as a crossbow bolt tore through her hip sending her to the ground and Dafyyd watched as the boys turned their bows on the black clad assassins who had either somehow snuck through the shields of more likely had suck up under the shields before they were set. She would live, but they wouldn’t he thought as he watched arrows begin to jut out of nearly every part of them.

 He sunk quickly into trance and probed the area, finding on sign of other enemies, but finding strange blank spots around the farm that he knew had to be assassins. Bleeding or not he pulled away from Jania who yelled at him for being stupid as he drew his sword and headed for one of the blank spots pushing Jania towards Vana.

 The boys and girls were all in it now, firing either through the shield out into the attackers beyond it, or at small groups of assassins that were popping up from hidden spots around the farm. What surprised Dafyyd was that the thrust of the attacks were aimed toward vana and not himself or Troy. Someone somewhere wanted that girl dead in a bad way, but she had shielded herself after the first arrow hit. A small circular shield that included her and Jania who seemed to be able to concentrate on Vana far better than she had been able to with him.

 A wave of chill air struck him and he knew that Troy was no longer in trance, but that he had gone cold. Dafyyd fought with sword against assassins, but kept an eye on troy from within his own cold rage…the kid was going to make one hell of a Ward if he could go that cold with only minimal training, he thought as he hacked a black clad figures head off.

 He stood for a moment just to watch the dance but also to watch the weaves. Troy had tied them off, though he held the innermost weave as he danced the dance of death through the last few assassins that had somehow been within the shield radius. Someone else must have been watching as well for the attackers seeming to know that they had failed were retreating. He called lightening down upon the mages he could identify and if the strikes weren’t at his full strength they were still more than enough to kill…and kill they did.  

 

Twenty years in the occult sciences had prepared Kendra for a multitude of possibilities, but never the one that lay before her. The dust contained human DNA, and the eggs…what kind of creature could possibly have spawned them? She simply didn’t know but her mind ventured a guess as her eyes and digital camera took in the tracks. She opened herself to the magical forces of her planet pale as they might be a felt a shimmer of something she simply couldn’t explain. A hint of knowledge, a feel of power such as she had never believed possible in the human world…and yet if she was right about the eggs…

 Perhaps the world wasn’t simply human anymore?

Colors blurred her eyes and a veil seemed to shift, a great edifice began to fall, a brief glimpse into another world and there in it a man she knew a Warrior a priest and a witch.

 Her head swam in possibilities, and in no unlimited amount of envy. Somehow Valen had crossed the bridge and close by had to be the answer.

 A wind blew and a leaves rustled…a small black book appeared, leather bound and in a language she could not even begin to understand…but that’s what computers were for.

 She set a weave of protection around the site and felt it take shape…by the gods…she had felt the magic. Felt it crawl through the mist, through her veins, and into her soul.

 Twenty years in the occult sciences and she had never felt a moment as pure and empowered as this.

 She would hold the knowledge for now… but she would have to tell her coven and from there she knew the secret and the vision would spread. Still to do what she wished to do…she would need more than her coven, she would need every witch she could find.

 

 In the deepest dark of the rainforest monsters stirred, seeking food and solace and feeling the veil that surrounded a world’s magic thin and wither. What this world would do with magic they did not know…what they would do with it was simply live and feed and grow, as it always was so shall it be.

 

 Troy woke to a fever dream even though he had not been wounded. Perhaps it was his fear over the girl, or the ward, or the others who had received wounds. A familiar face had screamed through the darkness towards him hunting him, haunting him. Something once discarded was coming to this realm in time.

 He woke to the darkened farm and the sound of soldiers shifting from one position to another. None were willing to risk the loss of the ward or his charges and so the High Elvin soldiers walked the grounds of the most concentrated attacks while the guard dealt with the other farms and the town proper.

 

 Dharma hissed at Hemmite’s memory as she felt the first testing shiver of magic touch against her wards. She had warded the space\time opening that Hemmite had created into her world.

 A world she loved and had become a part of so many eons past that even she couldn’t truly remember. She had taken lovers, had born children to her own race and others and in the end had made the transition to something less than dragon but far more than mortal.

 That the mage had gone in search of weapons with which to secure her world didn’t matter as she watched the misty portrait take hold. The witch would bring a war between peoples, gods and races…far more than the petty war the Drow were brewing for when weren’t they brewing wars?

 Ten billion beings on a world half the size of her own and starved for anything they could suck out of their world or any… other the great parasite known as humanity had spied a quick glance at her world having fouled their own…and they were hungry.

 Dhrama Raised her head and keened to the spirits of her kind, a deep raspy calling that made the foundations of worlds shiver.

 She bent her head and wept as she began to feel the old kindred rise. So long had they slept uncaring, unflinching, unwanted.

 Yet they would hear their child’s cry. Her world was about to see what had awoken its magic and few would survive its terror. Perhaps this time…

 

 

 

 Winds blow and times swirl and worlds change and in the midst of chaos and times some constants remained…

 

  A year and a day he had promised her and a year and a day given. Troy married Vanadia on the hill behind their home where in his world he had lived as a vagrant. War was forming, it was coming and there was nothing any could do to stop it though dark portents spoke of deeper things. As she looked into his steel blue eyes Vana could have cared for none of it.

 Not every maiden need be jaded, she thought nor every pain be her own. She was huntress and yet not, her powers had grown over that year and yet she knew that she was not yet herself and questioned if she ever would be. Yet there was something about the man she had wed…

 Something that touched the goddess heart in her and made her soul sing. Still the attacks came, but her town would be in no immediate harm. Dharma had seen to that before she’d sealed herself within the keep. Dark shield’s surrounded every village and town and farm within fifty square miles of the keep making the area the thrusting point of her kingdom’s counter attacks. Troy would be called away, and she would as well but there was something to her love that spoke of those separations as right and true. Still it would hurt her to leave her land and yet with her friends fighting and possibly dying how could she not reveal her claws?

 She thought of all of this in the moments it took Troy to seal the bargain with a deep and abiding kiss that spoke of the nature of his love. Perhaps someday she would bed him, perhaps not…he had not pushed the issue leaving it to her choice and she knew that she would chose to just not when.

 Dafyyd smiled, Dafyyd always the bridesmaid…though Jania had made damned good and sure that Troy had thrown the garter straight to the man.

 A half dozen Wards now dotted the farm in buildings that had been built to house them over the last year though among them only Kira and Dafyyd had become friends though she felt her self fond of them all.

 Troy or Valen his choice name, had been somewhat distant in months past. He could hear things on the wind that only hinted to a future that she could not yet see though some part of her screamed within her to hear those breezes.

 The wards would be splitting with Dafyyd and Valen heading into the Drow homeland while she and Kira would hunt the hills of Al-Dathi as they had so many times over the past months.

To the surprise of all Valen had been vehement in his opposition to leaving her, even at one point threatening to renounce his birthright as a ward.

 Some inner fear tore at him that she could only guess at, yet it had something to do with Dharma. She knew that to the core of her bones, even if Valen had begrudgingly agreed to the hunt.

 Perhaps as a wedding present or perhaps simply because it was time her hounds had begun to appear and introduce themselves to her for as the huntress, only she could lead the wild hunt, and the hell hounds would serve her and her alone though they seemed fond of her mate. Ten feet tall with foot long fangs, and feet that left no prints, she had been slightly terrified of them at first but something within her had spoken to her as something within them had spoken to her. They seemed shadows made flesh, and yet that made a certain sense to her for they were of both the physical world and the spirit world. Her hunt into Al-Dathi would be her first test of them and she had to admit that she was oddly curious as to their powers. And then she would find a way to enter the closed keep for even without Valen’s barely hidden seething she could feel something afoot.

 Strange she thought as she walked back through the shield from her wedding place that Dharma had excluded only that small hillock from her shielding. The place where her husband had first come into there world, stranger still that he would not shield it.

 Leaving a thin but unshielded path right up to their door. A sliver of land reaching out from her home to the greater world beyond. Still there wasn’t a ward present who hadn’t backed Dharma’s shield with one of their own. Nothing short of a god was going to come down that path and breach her land. Yet something whispered to her that perhaps that was what was coming?

 

 Kendra had seen the FBI man before, he had questioned her for four days without allowing a phone call, with little or no food, and without charging her with a thing…simple side effects of America’s new war on terror.