* * *
Lady Day was waiting for him in the parking lot. The lights of the red-and-cream touring bike flashed to life as Eric approached, and her engine began to purr—quietly, as she and Eric had had a number of talks about the stentorian engine noises that the elvensteed preferred to produce.
Sometimes Eric wondered if she got bored, sitting in the parking lot all day. He didn't get much chance to take her places these days, not even on runs around the city. Well, today would make up for a certain amount of that.
"The Everforest Node," he said, swinging a leg over her saddle. He did not add "as fast as lightning." Elvensteeds had a puckish sense of humor, in addition to being oddly literal-minded. Lady Day was perfectly capable of taking him at his word, or trying to. "Let's bend the speed limit, but not the speed of sound."
* * *
Magnus looked out the window and saw the flash of the elvensteed's headlight as Eric turned onto the street. He felt a pang of guilty relief. He was just as glad that this mysterious Van Helsing (Bard, yeah Bard) stuff had come up when it had, otherwise he and Eric would have been bouncing off of each other all night over Mommy and Daddy's latest bright idea.
Not like all of them shouldn't have seen that one coming.
Magnus shook his head. It wasn't that Eric wasn't a good guy—a great guy, really. But there were times when he seemed really naive. And what he never got was that Magnus wasn't a kid. He kept trying to shield him from the harsh realities of life. Magnus grinned to himself. He'd figured out all the harsh realities of life a long time ago, and they boiled down to two things: nobody loved you and nobody cared.
Except . . . he frowned. Eric loved him and Eric cared. God only knew why. He had no reason to—he'd known Magnus for less than six months. But Magnus knew in his gut, where it counted, that Eric cared about him in a way he had never been cared about in his entire life.
Another great theory shot to hell. But it still doesn't change the fact that he treats me like I'm a ten-year-old. And I'm not.
He supposed it was what Dr. Dunaway called "displacement"—Eric treated him like a child to make up for the fact that neither one of them had gotten much in the way of a childhood. That was what Dunaway had said, last session.
Magnus hadn't wanted to go to yet another shrink, even if it was the same one Eric was going to, but he liked Dr. Dunaway, and he had to admit that she made sense sometimes. Helped him understand Eric, anyway. She was cool with the magick stuff, too, cooler than Magnus was for sure, and Magnus couldn't for the life of him figure out where Ria had found a shrink like that. It wasn't as if you could put that in your yellow pages advert—Specializing in Trauma, Stress, and Magickal Overload.
And it looked good on the court records. After all, his supposed mom was now pushing up make-believe daisies in the Canadian wilderness, and he'd spent most of his putative life as baggage on her neo-hippie peregrinations. Anybody with that background would be badly in need of headshrinking. And Dr. Dunaway was happy to keep two sets of records—one on the real Magnus, and one on the imaginary one.
But it was still annoying to be treated like a kid.
His stomach rumbled, reminding him that it was dinnertime, and there wasn't much in the kitchen unless he wanted scrambled eggs or sandwiches. He picked up the phone and dialed a familiar number.
"Ria Llewellyn's apartment. Can I help you?" a well-known voice answered.
"Yo, Ace. How come you're picking up on the main phone?"
"Oh, the cleaning service was in today and knocked the phone in Ria's office off the desk—and after I told them not to go in there! Now all the lines are set to forward to the main phone, and I can't find the fool manual to reset them. I wish she'd just let me do the cleaning myself." Ace sounded irritated.
"Hey. She didn't take you in to have you slave for her," Magnus said.
"After what Ria's done for me, I'd do more than a little cleaning, you'd best believe," Ace said tartly. "But she won't let me lift a finger. She said I could do the cooking—hah! She's never home to eat what I cook. And now a perfectly good pot roast is shot to—" She stopped abruptly, as if realizing her voice was getting shriller by the moment.
It occurred to Magnus that Ace was a little more upset than an overdone pot roast would account for. She'd been living with Ria Llewellyn for long enough to know that Ria was never home on time.
"Hey," he said awkwardly.
"Oh, don't mind me," Ace said, sounding muffled. "I've just had . . . a bad day."
"Well, so have I," Magnus said cheerfully. "I could come over. You can tell me about yours. I'll tell you about mine. And we'll get rid of the pot roast before it can cause any more trouble. Bet you can save it, or enough of it to feed both of us."
"Well . . . sure," Ace said, sounding pleased and a little shy. "If you don't mind. I think I'm in a mood. Won't Eric object? It's a school night."
"Eric isn't here to object. Eric is off to go chase orcs or something," Magnus replied. "Kory sent him an email, he looked like he'd swallowed a sour pickle, and said he had to leave until morning. And anyway, we were coming over there in the first place before we got shanghaied by Bad News. We were still coming over when he found that email from Rivendell and said he had to split. I guess Lord Elrond can't find the ignition key for the White Ships or something."
Ace giggled. "All righty then. You come on up. And you can tell me what that email really said."
Chapter 2:
Across The Border
The Everforest Gate was nestled on state lands in the Ramapo Mountains, near where the Sterling Forest RenFaire was held each year. Eric wasn't absolutely sure, but he suspected that a lot of Gates were near Faires—or maybe that was the other way around. Come to think of it, a Faire made a good place to "work" if you were one of the rare sorts of elves that preferred to live in the World Above, or even to visit regularly, so maybe that was why. At any rate, this was one of the few Gates on the East Coast, aside from the Thundersmouth Gate almost a thousand miles north of here, or Fairgrove in Savannah, and though Everforest no longer had an Elfhame connected with it—if it ever had—it was a busy place, for most of the traffic going in and out of the East Coast moved through here. Technically, the Everforest Gate was part of Thundersmouth, since that was the closest Elfhame—if "close" had any meaning on the Underhill side.
Tonight, however, there might as well have been no Sidhe and no Elfhames, for all the activity in the area. It was dark and silent—to mundane and magickal senses both—as Eric turned off the main road and headed for the Gate. Just as well, really. He wasn't in the mood for any delays.
A quick twist of discontinuity, and he was through. Except for the fact that now he could see—for the land on the other side was lit with the eternal, unchanging, elven twilight—nothing much had changed. The area directly around a Gate tended to mirror its World Above counterpart, and so the area looked very much like the place he'd just left . . . only better.
The moment she passed through the Gate, Lady Day stopped. She shivered all over, and suddenly, in place of a motorcycle, Eric was seated in the saddle of a black mare with golden eyes. She snorted and pawed the ground, turning her head to look at him meaningfully.
"No need to nag, nag," Eric muttered. With a wave of his hand and a mental run of five notes of a John Dowland song—Magick was so easy here!—he transformed his riding leathers to the armor, silk, and velvet that Prince Arvin would expect to see him arrive in. He might not be able to ken a fancy outfit in the World Above, but here he wasn't dependent on someone else to change his clothing for him. There were a lot of places Underhill where the best defense was to look like exactly what you were, and a Bard had both a lot of power and a lot of protection here. Besides, it wouldn't do to show up at Prince Arvin's Court looking like he'd just come off a race track.
Lady Day whickered her approval.
* * *
The way was a familiar one, and a Bard had free passage wherever he wanted to go. Since this wasn't an emerge
ncy, Eric took the easy way out and went by the established Gates—an elvensteed didn't exactly need them to get where it wanted to go, but such a trip could be a little rough on its human passenger, no matter how much fun it might be for the 'steed.
When he arrived at the outer gates of Elfhame Misthold, he was surprised to see that Kory was one of the knights waiting for him at the gate.
Some people thought that Peter Jackson had overdone the pretty-elves business in his movies. They didn't know the half of it. Sure, elves were tall and drop-dead gorgeous—far too pretty sometimes—but they were to movie elves what racing greyhounds were to mutts. The plainest of them could beat out runway fashion models, unless they used magick to render their appearance even more exotic, in which case they looked like escapees from Cirque du Soleil. It was easy to forget they were highly efficient knights and warriors. But Korendil looked every inch the warrior in his gleaming elven armor as he stood before Misthold's golden gates.
"Eric!" he said happily, stepping forward. "Prince Arvin will be pleased that you have come so quickly."
"Well, when you asked so nicely, how could I do anything else?" Eric said, grinning as he swung down from Lady Day's back.
Kory pulled him into a hearty hug of greeting, made only slightly uncomfortable by the fact that he was wearing full plate and Eric—wasn't.
"I am glad to see you, my friend," he said quietly. "Does all go well in the World Above?"
Eric shrugged. "Well, Magnus isn't all that happy with his new school, but he isn't kicking too much. It's still winter, I hate winter, and I miss La-La Land if only for the decent weather. Toni found us a two-bedroom—I wrote you about that—so the space crunch has eased up. I wish it had a second bathroom, but you can't have everything. How's Maeve?"
"She blossoms," Kory said with quiet joy, as the two of them headed for the throne room. "You must bring Magnus to meet her."
"Maybe this summer. Unless you and Beth are planning on hitting up any of the Faires?"
"Perhaps." Kory sounded doubtful. "She grows so fast. Beth thinks it might be . . . awkward to attend the Faires, for Lady Montraille could not accompany us, and she is loathe to be parted from Maeve, even to give her into her parents' care."
Lady Montraille was Maeve's Protector, the one sworn to put Maeve's safety before everything else in both worlds. But Lady Montraille was also human, and had come Underhill centuries ago—and a human who had been Underhill long enough could never return to the World Above at all. All the years that they had spent agelessly Underhill would catch up with them in a matter of hours if they went back into Mortal Time. For now, Beth Kentraine could come and go between the Realms as she chose, but someday—very soon in elven terms—she must choose one place or the other forever. Eric knew she had already chosen Underhill . . . but Maeve was human. If Maeve chose the World Above when she was grown, would Beth regret her own choice?
"Well, we'll work something out," Eric said. "I'm just not sure Magnus is ready for the whole Lord of the Rings experience. He's having some trouble suspending his disbelief."
Kory regarded him quizzically. "He does not take after you, then?"
Eric shrugged. "Hard to say. Right now he's really busy not being his . . . our . . . parents."
They'd been walking through what looked like, to all intents and purposes, a park. Gorgeously dressed High Court elves strolled among the trees in the distance, while their lesser kindred of the Low Courts, from Low Court elves who looked more like punk versions of their High Court cousins, to every sort of Sidhe-creature ever described in myth, scampered among the low plantings or flew through the canopy on rainbow wings. As they reached a fork in the path, Lady Day flung up her head as though she'd heard someone call her name and trotted briskly away. Eric and Kory continued on the main path, and when they passed between a pair of towering oaks, they were suddenly . . . elsewhere.
* * *
If there were such a thing as Medieval Deco, Prince Arvin's throne room was a perfect example of it. The elves had no creativity—any more than the average human had innate magick—but they had an endless ability to observe and adapt human creativity, and the ability to ken anything they wanted and reproduce it as long as the magickal energy was there.
Misthold was one of the more "progressive" Elfhames, and Prince Arvin's throne-room bore a distinct resemblance to a cross between an old movie palace and one of those Busby Berkeley nightclubs that had probably only existed in the imagination of Hollywood. The floor was a perfect sweep of polished green Bakelite, and the walls were covered with polychrome bas-reliefs of stylized flowers and animals. A long carpet of heavy purple velvet, with a wide gold fringe, led from the doors all the way to the dais at the far end of the room. The effect was cheerful and formal (not to say a bit lurid) at the same time. Most elves were positively awash with Good Taste, but some—and Arvin was one—had never met a color they didn't like. This might have been a carryover from the old Pictish days when they still hung out regularly with humans—who also had never met a color they didn't like, preferably piled on top of every other color they liked.
Prince Arvin was seated on his throne at the far end of the throne room, with Dharniel—his war-chief, as well as Eric's teacher—standing beside him. Somewhat to Eric's surprise, so was Lady Rionne, Jachiel's Protector. Kory fell back as they passed through the doors, allowing Eric to go first.
Eric reached the foot of the dais and went down on one knee. As peculiar as it might seem in World Above terms, Arvin was his liege-lord, and he owed him the proper forms of respect in this world. Certainly Dharniel had done everything but beat that lesson into him during his training: a Bard was more than a musician and a Magus. A Bard was a diplomat and an ambassador as well. First rule of Bardcraft: know who to kiss, what part of him or her, and when. . . .
"Rise, Bard Eric," Arvin said. "It is good to see you again."
"It is always a pleasure to visit Elfhame Misthold," Eric said. "I am only sorry this visit is business, not pleasure."
"The matter of Elfhame Bete Noir, and the child Jachiel." Prince Arvin sighed. "You render our days . . . interesting, Eric. Still, how could we turn away any child in need, much less a child of the Sidhe? You did no less than what you must in sending him to us. But the circumstances are . . . odd." He turned to Rionne, indicating she should speak.
Rionne looked a lot different from the Rionne that Eric had first seen in the World Above. She'd shown up as this bleeding-eyed specter out of a horror movie to take apart anyone hurting a kid, if the kid had the power to call out for help magically or psychically. Not that she was any less scary now, actually. It was more a matter of if you really understood what was just beneath the surface. . . . If Kory was the archetypal Warrior of the Light, looking altogether too much like the Archangel Michael without wings for most peoples' comfort, then Rionne was his polar opposite, lacking only enormous, tattered bat-wings to stand in for a darkly handsome, utterly menacing fallen angel.
"Jachiel ap Gabrevys is a child of the Dark Court. The Prince his father is lord of Elfhame Bete Noir, and the treaties laid down between Emperor Oberon and the Empress Morrigan are clear: any may change his allegiance from Dark to Bright, or contrariwise, should he find a liege who will have him, but a child cannot choose his allegiance until he comes of age. Though Jachiel may wish to forswear the Unseleighe Court, he may not do so."
She didn't really need to state all of this, but Eric knew that this was just How Elves Did Things; they were kind of like lawyers. You had to state the obvious for the record any time you went into any undertaking. So he nodded, and kept his expression pleasantly interested.
"Yet it is also the Law that he may bide anywhere I choose, until the day when he is of an age to swear his fealty-oaths, and no one, neither Prince nor Emperor, nor even his own father, may constrain my choice," she added grimly. "Should Gabrevys assay to take him from my care, I should raise up my own meine to prevent it, and then there would be such a taking of heads as has not bee
n seen in some time. It was attempted. Once."
And it was the one time the Bright and Dark Court had fought on the same side—if the song Eric had learned about the occasion was in the least correct. No, Prince Gabrevys wouldn't be crazy enough to argue with an Elven Protector who'd made up his or her mind.
"So . . . everything's fine?" he suggested hopefully.
"It is not 'fine,'" she corrected him firmly. "You have kin whom you cherish. If your brother vanished from your ken, would you not seek him?"
"Well, I . . . yes. Of course." Where was this going?
"Yet Prince Gabrevys does not," Rionne said, and frowned, fiercely. "I have lands of the Prince, and my steward there sends word to me. No whisper of his heir's absence has gone abroad, nor does any seek for him."
"Ah—um," Eric said, cleverly. This didn't sound right. Unless for some reason Gabrevys didn't want anyone to know that his son was gone.
Then again, if it became known why Jachiel fled . . . major loss of face, there.
"It is too much to expect that he doesn't know the boy is missing," Prince Arvin said. "And he may well know where he is. Therefore, I charge you, as Misthold's Bard, to ride to Elfhame Bete Noir and . . . explain matters to the Prince. Let him know that we would . . . welcome him, should he choose to visit his son and heir."
From the expression on Arvin's face, "welcome" was the last thing he wanted to do, but among the Sidhe, ties of blood trumped just about every other relationship. If Gabrevys wanted to visit his son, there was no way Arvin could deny him.
"Of course," Eric said, bowing. "I go at once."
* * *
Beth and Kory rode with him as far as the edge of the Misthold Domain. It was nice to have the company, and nicer still to see that Beth was looking settled. It was strange how, of all people, Beth had been the one to find a real home in the cloud-cuckoo-land of Underhill, while he, Eric, just couldn't find any way to be contented here.
Music to My Sorrow Page 5