Lord's Fall (Elder Races #5)(69)

“Not yet,” said Dragos. “We’re too close to the passageway.”

“I don’t like this. It’s too quiet.”

“They’re here,” he told the High Lord. “And they’ve only had a few hours’ start. We’ll take to the air and find them.”

“For now, we should make for the house and see if it is still intact,” Calondir said. “Winter nights get bitter here, and we should make use of all the shelter we can get.”

As Dragos strode down the path, he remembered his questions. “Where are the others that traveled with Gaeleval? What happened to the one who was wounded?”

“They’re dead,” Calondir said shortly. “Their bodies were found in the apartment where they and Gaeleval stayed.”

That didn’t surprise Dragos. They had fulfilled their function by leveraging a way into Calondir’s home. Once Gaeleval had taken their will, he wouldn’t have needed to actively wield the Machine, which was why none of Calondir’s seers had sensed any issue. The seers would have had no cause to probe too deeply into anyone’s mind.

“How did they travel to Lirithriel Wood?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

He controlled his impatience. “I mean just what I said. Did they travel across this Other land, or did they travel on the other side, on Earth? Why did you host them in the Wood and not here?”

“They traveled here,” Calondir said briefly. “And I had them brought over the crossover passageway to Lirithriel Wood. With your mate’s impending visit, I didn’t want to step out of sync with the time on Earth.”

Just then a fresh gust of wind from the other side of the trees gusted in Dragos’ face. It brought with it the smell of more wood smoke, and Elves.

A lot of Elves.

He sped up until he loped, sensing the gryphons pick up their pace behind them. “What is it?” Calondir demanded.

“Trouble.”

He broke through the other side of the tree line and skidded to a halt at the edge of land. To his left, the path took an abrupt turn to follow the edge of a bluff up to the smoking ruins of what must have once been a long, gracious building at the top of a cliff.

The path along the bluff and the ruined building looked over a wide, snowy valley that would probably be beautiful in the springtime.

At the moment the valley was filled with an army.

Calondir whispered a shaken curse.

Dragos walked to the edge of the bluff and crouched like an enormous cat, gripping the rocks tight with his talons as he stared down at the thousands of Elves. Warriors and non-warriors. Men, women. Children. Some were better dressed than others. Some were barefoot in the snow. All of them looked ill fed. His snout wrinkled as he smelled the rarest of oddities for Elves—disease.

As he had reached the edge, all the Elves in the valley turned to look up at him.

All of them, all at the same time. Every single one of them cocked his or her head at exactly the same angle, in exactly the same way. His sharp raptor’s gaze moved from blank face to blank face.

Wyr came up on either side of him, gryphons and the pegasus and the harpy, then other Wyr along with Elves. They stared down in silence.

The dragon chuckled. The low, bitter sound reverberated in the rock of the bluff on which he stood, and several Elves drew away from him in dismay.

“I think we just found the answer to one of my other questions,” Dragos said. “What happened to all the Elves in Numenlaur?”

FIFTEEN

Every Elf in the valley smiled.

Dragos felt the Power of the God Machine pulse to life.

Shouts and screams came from behind him. Fuck. He whirled and lunged back through the trees, knocking people and horses aside in his rush to find Pia. Both Elves and Wyr dodged to get out of his way, horses plunging headlong off the path, while even more ran toward him from the direction of the passageway. He ignored all of them, looking for Pia and her bodyguards.

He saw a tower of flames through the trees.

Where was she?

In the next moment he saw her running toward him, surrounded by her guards, as she looked back over her shoulder at the blazing fire. He slowed to a stop, breathing hard, and waited for her to notice him.

She was the last of her group to do, looking away finally to discover him blocking the path. She skidded to a halt a few yards away.

Somehow Calondir had managed to avoid being dislodged from his back. Now the Elf Lord leaped to the ground and raced back toward the passageway, along with several others. Dragos twitched his shoulders, glad to have Calondir’s insignificant yet extremely annoying weight off of him.

“You,” he said to Pia. “Forget everything I said about hanging back.” She squeaked with surprise as he plucked her unceremoniously off the ground. He raised her up and held her to his shoulder until he felt her scramble onto him and perch at the base of his neck.

“All right,” she muttered. “But I’m not riding like this if you’re going to fly.”

“Just stay put for now,” he snapped. He looked down at her unit, three in canine form and three in human form, plus apparently Pia had managed to add the Elf girl with the blue hair to her collection. All seven stared up at him. “I don’t know,” he told them, answering their unspoken questions. “Figure out something to do with yourselves for now and get the hell out of my way.”