Nice work. I'm surprised you were able to get control of them so quickly…but then I thought you would be right for this job when I met you.
She wondered what it was talking about. Ardent reader though she was, she'd never thought of herself as "meeting" books—and she didn't remember any chance encounters with a Fodor's Guide to Glenraven.
I was at the used bookstore when you stopped by two days ago. I tried to summon you back, but I couldn't make you hear me.
My wards would have protected me from that sort of manipulation, Kate thought.
No doubt. But when you didn't come back to get me—and since we were running out of time—I used a huge amount of the little raw power I can control and brought myself to you. I'm not going to be much use to anyone for months now, except for offering advice. If I don't overextend myself, I should be able to do that.
What could possibly make a magical book want to follow her home?
Long story. I'll write it out for you when we aren't in such a hurry.
Were they in a hurry? Why? What job did this book think she could do, and why had it chosen her to do it, and how was she supposed to deal with the creatures in her house, and where in the hell was Glenraven? She had a hundred questions, but the book addressed only one of them.
You've done a good job of dealing with your visitors so far, but you're going to have to make friends with them. They're here to help you, just as you are here to help them. Though considering how badly they acted after you saved their lives, I wouldn't be surprised if you weren't happy to discover that.
You'll find an ally in the dagreth, incidentally. He was not in favor of capturing you. He wanted to thank you and ask for your help. The Machnan was neutral.
All she wanted was to recreate her gate and go home. The warrag might be won over to your side if you treat him well. You'll have to decide for yourself about the warrag and the Kin.
"Which of you is the dagreth?" Kate asked, though she had an idea. When the bearish creature growled, "I am," her guess was confirmed. She asked, "Can you read?"
"Of course."
"Then read this, and throw it back to me when you're done." She tossed the book to him. He caught it with a surprisingly deft movement. She filed the knowledge of that agility for future use, then turned her attention to the other three. "While he's reading, I'm going to talk to the rest of you." Kate leaned against the doorframe and let the barrel of the shotgun dip toward the floor. "We're supposed to be allies. Apparently you aren't here by accident, and neither am I. I'm going to be honest with you. I didn't volunteer for any of this. Nevertheless, the four of you are sitting in my living room and that monster is out on my front step, and I'd be a fool to deny the reality of what's happening, and a bigger fool if I didn't take the necessary steps to deal with it." She sighed and looked at the four of them. The three who weren't reading looked back at her, faces impassive.
"Okay. I'm going to tell you where I stand in all of this. Three men attacked me last night. They were going to do worse than just beat me up, but a police car on a routine patrol came by before they had a chance to finish what they started. While I was at the hospital, they came out here and killed my horse and left a message nailed to his head telling me that I was going to be next. If I don't show up at work today—and I am not showing up for work today—I think they may come by here. I suspect that one of them might be a sheriff's deputy."
She looked into four pairs of eyes, wondering if what she was telling them meant anything to them, or if such concepts as hospitals and police cars and sheriff's deputies were so far from anything they had ever experienced that she was wasting her breath.
The dagreth, who had put down the book to listen, said, "Go on. The book says you are concerned that we may not understand, but that it is translating your concept words into things we know from Glenraven."
"Oh." It had occurred to Kate that the four spoke awfully good vernacular English, but she'd had bigger things to worry about.
"Fine. It's just that I haven't had any sleep in…" She looked at her watch. It was past seven. "…In more than twenty-four hours, and I've been beaten up and those creeps killed Rocky, and then you…people…showed up out of nowhere and I've had to fight with you, too. Evidently I wasn't supposed to have to fight with you. You were supposed to help me."
"Now I'm exhausted and I hurt and I'm afraid the thugs will come here to kill me. If we're going to be allies, and if I'm going to help you do whatever it is you need to do, you're going to have to protect me while I sleep."
All four of them looked at each other, and the dagreth said, "Here. Catch," and tossed the Fodor's back to her. It landed at her feet and she knelt to pick it up, still keeping her eyes on all four outworlders and her gun visibly at the ready.
The dagreth turned to his three companions and said, "The book brought us here to close the Rift. It says it can tell us how to get back home, but before it will do that, we have to find Callion and the Watchers. They're in this world somewhere. Until we either capture or destroy them, we aren't going to be able to leave. And the book says we won't be able to get to him without her, because she can show us this world's magic, and how to survive here."
When the dagreth fell silent, Val looked up at Kate and said, "I am in charge of all of these save Rhiana, and I am Rhiana's superior by birth. Why didn't you give your book to me to read, instead of to the dagreth, who is least among the Lesser Peoples?"
Kate looked at Val and thought, I really don't like him. She said, "I gave the book to Tik because Tik suggested that you ask for my help instead of attacking me. Rhiana didn't care one way or the other, and you and the warrag were in favor of taking what you wanted by force. I preferred Tik's approach."
Val's eyes narrowed. "How did you know that?"
Kate held up the Fodor's and shrugged. "It was right in here. So. Do we have an agreement? You'll watch out for me and I'll help you?"
"You don't know what you're getting into," Rhiana said. It was the first time she'd spoken directly to Kate. "We are being asked to capture one of the preeminent magicians of Glenraven, a vile, cunning murderer with enough magical ability at his command to destroy all of us. And the Watchers we're supposed to find are creatures of the Rift."
"What's the Rift?" Kate asked.
The warrag growled something about ignorance and outsiders, but Rhiana shushed him. "In Glenraven more than a thousand years ago, a Watchmistress named Aidris Akalan used a spell that opened a door between two worlds. The door was much like the gate we came through, but unlike it, this door stayed open. She used the door to bring through creatures who could give her magic that she needed in order to live forever, and she made a pact with them that they could devour the people of Glenraven if they would give her the magic from their victims' souls in return."
"For a thousand years, Aidris stayed in power, driving our world further toward death with every year. The evil she did drained the magic from the world and hope from the people, until a Machnan wizard named Yemus Sarijann brought two heroes from your world into ours to defeat her. Jayjay Bennington and Sophie Cortiss didn't just destroy the Watchmistress, though—they changed Glenraven in fundamental ways."
"Sophie Cortiss…and Jayjay Bennington? They're both from Peters," Kate said. "Or were, in Jay's case. Sophie's husband is a lawyer. She and Jayjay are the women who went missing over in Italy, but Jay died when she fell off the side of a mountain. Sophie brought her body back. I know Sophie. I used to play softball with Jay, until she was killed."
Rhiana shook her head. "Jayjay Bennington became Glenraven's new Watchmistress."
"I'm telling you, I knew Jay. She pitched for the Peters Library Lions. I was a first baseman. I met her when Craig and I moved here…" She caught her breath at the inadvertent mention of Craig, then went on. "We weren't friends precisely, but we were teammates. I went to her funeral. She died."
Rhiana was still shaking her head. "That is what you were intended to think. Sophie returned home bringing
a copy of Jay's body. Sophie can never return to Glenraven, but we and our world owe her our existence and our freedom. Still, Jay and Sophie couldn't close the Rift. When Aidris died the Watchers would have had to go back to their own world and the Rift would have closed on its own, but another wizard, one of the First People, whose name is Callion, bound the Watchers to himself. Then he and they vanished. Because the Watchers remain on the wrong side of their gate, the Rift remains open, though it has been quiet."
The warrag said, "It hasn't been quiet. It's been waiting. Waiting. That monster on her front door is from the Rift."
Val and Rhiana turned startled faces toward Errga, though Tik sat nodding his head in agreement. "From the Rift?" Val asked.
And Rhiana said, "Are you sure?"
"It stinks of the Rift," the warrag said.
"I smell it, too," Tik said. "The otherworld smell, strong as the smell of wrong about this place, but different. Stink from the Rift world."
Kate didn't like the import-freighted looks Rhiana and Val exchanged. And she didn't like the idea that the Watchers, which Rhiana said had devoured the people of Glenraven for a thousand years, were now somewhere in her world.
She thumbed the book open again.
That's right. Your stake in this is just as big as theirs. Callion and the Watchers will destroy your world if they aren't stopped, just as they are destroying Glenraven. The three bastards who came after you aren't much of a problem at all by comparison. In fact, I think the Glenraveners and I will be able to solve them shortly.
Meanwhile, get some sleep. You won't be able to do much to help them or yourself until you do.
"I'm still in," Kate said. "Maybe I don't know exactly what I'm getting into, but I'll help you if you'll help me. Will you?"
The dagreth grinned. "I like you," he said. "You can count on me."
Rhiana said, "If I ever want to get home again, I don't have much choice, do I?"
Nothing like a vote of confidence, Kate thought.
The warrag just nodded.
Val smiled. "Of course you can count on me," he said. "We share a common cause. And what could be more important than saving our worlds?"
Chapter Five
Fort Lauderdale wasn't the way Callion remembered it, but unlike most things in the universe, it had changed for the better. He stood on the manicured lawn beneath a stand of India dates and Queen palms and looked over the house. It was a typical two-story stucco development home with a heavy, pale orange tile roof; every other house in the planned community was a variation on it. Behind him Callion heard the steady hum of traffic over the main highway out beyond the wall, and the rise and fall of human voices from a soccer field that lay on the other side of a tall hedge.
He turned to the real estate agent and smiled. "How much?"
"The owners are asking two hundred."
"I'd like to move in right away, and I really don't want to waste time dickering. I've already checked prices on comparable houses in the neighborhood, and they're asking too much. If they'll sell immediately, I'll pay one eighty-five in cash. That's the only offer I'll make, and I won't negotiate. If they won't sell for that, I'll find another house just like this one with a different seller who will." He let his smile broaden. "Quite frankly, dear, I intend to be in a house today, and I don't care if you sell it to me or if someone else does."
She nodded. "Let me run inside and call them." She frowned. "The paperwork will take some time, of course."
"I expect that if you want the commission, you'll find a way to expedite that, too."
She raised an eyebrow, started to say something else, then thought better of it. "Let me call and see what they say." She walked across the lawn, avoiding the sagos and the palmettos that poked out beyond the edges of their manicured beds.
When she was gone, Callion looked down at the palmetto bug that had been crawling toward him for the last couple of minutes. He crouched and grabbed it before it could escape, then popped it in his mouth, chewed it slowly, and swallowed, savoring the flavor. He liked palmetto bugs. They were a larger sort of the cockroaches he'd found elsewhere in the United States, and they were everywhere in South Florida.
Munching on the insect caused him to lose the fine focus of his concentration, though. One of his hands began to crumble, reverting to the sand he'd used to form it. He frowned, focused, and reformed the fingers into a perfect representation of human flesh. He'd decided when he went househunting that he would have trouble buying anything if the sellers or their agents got a look at him in his true form. Real estate people happily sold their properties to drug dealers and racketeers and pornographers, but they balked when faced with a client who bore a more than passing resemblance to an overdressed badger.
He didn't intend to be refused. He liked Fort Lauderdale for more than its ubiquitous palmetto bugs. It was the sort of place he'd spent three years looking for: it offered pleasant weather in a boomtown atmosphere, with people living right on top of each other and spending as much time as they could ignoring each other in order to preserve the little bits of privacy they could wrest from their busy, overcrowded lives.
He was willing to put up with some inconveniences to gain neighbors with blind spots like that.
The agent came bounding out the door, a big smile on her face. "Let's go do your paperwork," she said.
He smiled back at the agent. Then he smiled at the next door neighbor who was watering his lawn, and he smiled at Fort Lauderdale and then all of South Florida in general. Almost home, he thought. Almost home free. Suckers.
Chapter Six
Rhiana walked from the broken window in the dining room to the door that she could not close because the Rift monster blocked it, then back to the window again. What if the men Kate had spoken of had weapons like the one Kate had? What if they came after her with those weapons?
Val and the warrag sat together in the living room, heads together and voices low. Rhiana suspected they were plotting some way to rid themselves of Kate as soon as they could—the longer Rhiana spent with Val, the more she disliked him. She wondered if he might be a member of the Kin Resistance, which fought against the new Watchmistress and the changes she wanted to make in Glenraven.
Tik sprawled on his belly on the living room floor, sleeping. Every so often he snorted and grumbled and shifted position, but he never woke up. That was typical, Rhiana thought. The dagreth were rumored to be the most comfort-loving and sedentary of the Kin-hera. If he found the larder, no doubt he would apply himself to enjoying that the way he was applying himself to getting the most out of his nap.
Leaving me to worry alone.
Kate had handed the book to Tik before she went upstairs. Tik, in turn, had passed it to Rhiana before he took his nap. Rhiana moved away from the partially open front door and the stink of the monster to the window again. She peeked through the curtains in time to see a sort of horseless wagon pull onto the little dirt road that led to the house. She'd been watching as similar horseless vehicles raced past on the smooth stone road out in front, and had been horrified by how quickly they moved. This one—beige with writing on its sides—stopped under the pines, and doors on both sides popped open.
She wondered if these were the killers and debated raising the alarm.
But then two large men got out, walked around to the back, and removed a mechanism she recognized as a variety of hoist on wheels. They wore matching clothing in an ugly shade of light brown and heavy leather work boots with laces and leather gloves, and they didn't carry anything that she could identify as a weapon. She realized they had come to remove the dead horse.
They looked almost like the southwestern Machnan—their features were broad and flat and their skins were deep shades of brown. Their hair was tightly kinked, though, while the southwestern Machnan had hair that curled more loosely. And both of them were much taller. Closer to the height of Kin, as was the woman Kate. As was the new Watchmistress, for that matter. Rhiana wondered briefly if all the people of
the Machine World were so tall.
She wondered what the men would do when they saw the Rift monster.
She wondered what she ought to do. She opened the book, hoping for advice.
You can't pretend no one is home with the front door obviously standing open. But you don't need to have much to do with them. They're here to do a job, and they won't be a danger to you unless you make a mistake dealing with them. When they ask about the Rift beast—and they will ask—tell them you shot it with your shotgun. You won't need to tell either of them any more than that. But you should go outside and wait. You don't want them to come to the door and see Tik or Errga or Val. That would be unfortunate.
I'm not from this world, Rhiana thought. I don't know anything about this world. My clothes are wrong. My voice will be wrong. I won't know what to say.
But the book was right. If people from this world got a good look at her companions, trouble would ensue. So she took a deep breath and opened the front door the rest of the way and slipped out of it. She climbed over the stinking carcass of the Rift monster and hopped down to the grass on the other side as the men wheeled the hoist up the path to the horse. She kept the book with her. She was afraid she wouldn't understand either of the men without it.
It was only when they could see the horse that they could see the monstrosity on the front step, and both men came to a halt, mouths hanging open.
"What in the hell is that?" the one with the rich brown skin and black hair asked.
The other, who was lighter brown with graying hair, said, "Sweet Jesus, Roy."
Both men looked to her.
"Ma'am, what is that thing?" the younger one asked.
The book did a good job of translating for her. The movements of the men's mouths didn't match the words she heard, but she had no trouble understanding their meaning.
"I don't know," she said.
"My…God…that wingspread must be close to thirty feet. Maybe it's a dinosaur. I read about the Loch Ness monster maybe being a dinosaur. There are all sorts of places on earth people haven't been yet—maybe this came from one of those places."
Marion Zimmer Bradley & Holly Lisle - [Glenraven 02] Page 4