The Coming Storm by Valerie Douglas Page A

with his back against the stones of the wall, Jareth watched Elon fret.
    Not that there was much to watch.
    Elon stood with hands clasped behind him, as still as a statue. For an Elf, it spoke volumes about his concern. Men would pace, wasting energy to no purpose. An Elf wouldn’t. They were still, conserving energy.
    It was no use to reassure him as Jareth would have a man. Elon well knew Colath was capable and didn’t need another to remind him of it. In fact, it might have irritated him – as much as he would allow it to show. Nor would he offer Elon hopeful words as men did to each other, for it was meaningless if disaster had occurred.
    Jareth was well used to Elven silences. They weren’t a people for small talk. The weather was the weather, whether it rained or the sun shone wasn’t a topic for conversation. If it was raining, you went somewhere dry. If not, you were wet. Within the Enclave if it rained it made music. The interlacing of boughs and vines didn’t allow much through but where it did it pattered musically on the curved wooden shingles of the roofs, or slid through thatch to drip through chimes and bells.
    Since he wasn’t much of one for idle conversation either, preferring to speak for a purpose or not at all, it suited him well enough. He lacked Elon’s eloquence, his facility with words whether in Elven or the mannish tongues.
    It chafed at him, this waiting. The worrying.
    Colath was a good friend and Jareth feared for him. He knew why Elon waited. Colath hadn’t asked for aid through their bond. The true-friend bond. Jareth understood what that bond was only a little.
    It wasn’t mind magic but some greater form of the empathy that all Elves shared.
    Bond or no bond he didn’t know how Elon could stand it. More so because in many ways Colath was Elon’s good right arm and trusted aide. He’d been such for as long as Jareth had known them, Colath a bright shadow to Elon’s darkness.
    A runner came at speed along the trail. “They come, Elon. There are injured. I’m to fetch the Healers.”
    Elon glanced back at Jareth and they both took off at a run as the other Elf raced to find the Healers.
    Injured? More than just Colath? Why hadn’t he summoned help?
    The question was in both their minds.
    If it had been a long run Jareth couldn’t have kept up with Elon’s long fluid strides but from the center of the vale to the border wasn’t that great a distance.
    They arrived as the first of the riders emerged from the Veil, that mist that shielded and concealed an Enclave. Natural creatures could pass through it unhindered. It wasn’t unusual at all to see a small herd of deer wander through the vale without fear. Someone would chase them out or the Woodsmen would be called if they ate too much of the vegetation.
    No, the mists of the Veil were a ward against the uninvited and unwelcome. They didn’t harm, they merely redirected, with the wanderer emerging unharmed where they didn’t expect to be.
    Originally the Veil was a defense against the borderlands creatures. These days, as like as not, the Veil was a ward against Men.
    Some among his own race were enchanted with the idea of Elves for some reason, as if they were curiosities to be examined or elevated to some higher plane of existence.
    Others hated them.
    A few came convinced the hot springs at the center of each Vale were fountains of youth, the source of Elven longevity, rather than the magic of the Elven constitution.
    The mists deterred them all, frustrated some and sent them on their way.
    To that end, a rare few of those among Men who Elves trusted were given a charm that allowed them to pass through the Veil, to come and go as they pleased. Otherwise, you had to be escorted. Jareth’s charm was a cloak pin, as many were. Something that was both useful and beautiful. Like so much of what Elves did.
    The first rider to emerge from the mists of the Veil sagged in his saddle, clearly injured.
    That it was an Elf was so