A Host of Furious Fancies

by Mercedes Lackey

  Isn’t anybody helping these people? That guy shouldn’t be out on the street. But even as he wondered, Eric knew the answer. These were the “borderline” people, the ones who’d been dumped out onto the streets from the institutions where many of them had spent their entire lives to make their way as best they could in the world. The idea was that they’d have caseworkers and live in supervised housing, but there weren’t enough beds or caseworkers to go around, and so most of these walking wounded ended up alone on the streets. Add to that the junkies who stayed away from social services for fear they’d be jailed, the street kids damaged by predators or the homes they’d run from, and you had thousands and tens of thousands of people living on the streets—the population of an entire shadow city living invisibly in the cracks of the city most people saw.

  A bright flare caught his attention out of the corner of his eye. Magic—the same magic he’d been following. It ended at a brick wall, the glare of it so bright it nearly hurt his eyes. He touched the flaking brickwork, and recoiled when his fingers came away sticky and dark. He rubbed his fingers together. It was blood. Old, but not that old.

  This wasn’t Unseleighe magic he’d been following, but human magic. Eric blinked, bringing up the image of the human city to overlay his mage-sight, and bent over to inspect the wall and the sidewalk. Now he could see that there were bloody handprints on the concrete. The wall itself was covered with blood, great arcing gouts of blood, as if somebody had tried to batter his way through the bricks with his body.

  And I’m betting that’s exactly what happened, Eric thought grimly, straightening up. He felt nauseated. Echoing through his mind, preserved in the stone, were ghostly screams of fury, as if the raging spirit were still trapped here. He scrubbed his hand on his jeans and raised the flute to his lips, playing the first tune that came to mind, an old folk tune called “She Moved Through The Fair,” the sweet wistful lament seemed to soothe the energies here, sending the spirit on its way in peace, washing away the death-fury that had happened here.

  “Mister? Hey, mister?”

  Eric lowered his flute. He’d put so much of himself into the music that he’d lost his cloak of magic, and with it, his invisibility. He turned in the direction of the voice. There was a man watching him, a man only a few years older than Eric with haunted, lost eyes. That could be me, Eric realized in pitying horror. A little more bad luck, a few more missed chances . . . not meeting Beth, or Kory. Missing out on the Faire-circuit. That could be me.

  “That’s pretty music,” the man said, when he had Eric’s attention. “I’m Gary.”

  “Hello, Gary,” Eric said quietly, so as not to startle his new friend. Though his body was full grown, it was clear that the mind behind the eyes was much younger. “Do you know what happened here?”

  Gary’s face turned sad, as transparently as a child’s. “Fury died. We always used to call him that. He got sick and yelled at everybody, and then he started to fight with the wall.” Easy tears glinted in Gary’s eyes. “Nobody fights a wall,” he said sadly.

  Not with any chance of winning, Eric thought, glancing at the bloodstains. He was tempted to slip back into his magic and leave, but he’d already seen enough to know that he had a lot of urgent questions without answers. Maybe Gary had some of the answers.

  “Have a lot of people died lately? In just the last couple days? People like Fury?”

  Gary stared at him blankly, a sudden sourceless fear growing in his haunted eyes. “The angels take them—the night angels. I have to go,” he said suddenly.

  “Hey—wait! I didn’t mean to—”

  Gary turned away and scuttled quickly down an alleyway, vanishing from sight.

  “—scare you,” Eric finished, gazing at the empty street.

  He could run after the homeless man, but he didn’t think Gary had any more to tell him. Fury’s death hadn’t fed the Nexus—those deaths had occurred back in the Park. And what were the night angels? Unseleighe Sidhe? If the Dark Court was using Manhattan as a hunting ground, there should be unadulterated traces of their magic all over, but the only thing he’d found here was the magic he’d followed.

  Nothing was adding up. It was as if he had all the puzzle pieces—and they all turned out to be from different puzzles. He sighed and looked around. At the end of the block a blue neon cross shone into the night. Eric raised his flute to his lips again, gathering his cloak of invisibility around him once more. The light at the wall was gone now, thanks to Eric’s music, but somehow the neon cross shone even brighter in his Shifted sight. It was a sign for a mission, one of the places that tried to feed and shelter New York’s rising tide of homeless. Reluctantly, Eric turned toward it. He didn’t want to see any more horrors, any more forgotten men and women, but he needed to find out why Sidhe magic was tangled up with the homeless here.

  The inside of the mission was warm and welcoming. Tables were set up where men—and women, some with children—sat spooning up soup. At the kitchen in the back, volunteer workers doled out more soup, sandwiches, and chunks of bread to a long line of those patiently waiting. They were talking among themselves in low voices where the diners couldn’t hear. Eric crept closer.

  “Not a lot of people here tonight,” a woman said. Her companion sighed, rolling his shoulders to take the kinks out.

  “There’s something bad out there on the streets. A lot of our regulars are afraid to come in. I heard Johnnie Rags talking to Lindy earlier. They think we might be poisoning them.”

  “Poisoning them?” The woman recoiled in shock.

  The man shook his head grimly. “I’ve heard from some of the other soup kitchens and flops. A lot of people are dead. And more have just . . . vanished. All in the last seventy-two hours. I thought at first that a shipment of bad drugs might have reached the street—but where would our guys get the money for drugs? They can’t even afford beds, most of them.”

  “Unless the dealers have started handing out free samples like the tobacco companies.” The two of them laughed together in disbelief, sharing the bitter joke.

  “And what are the cops going to do? A lot of people die down here every day,” the woman went on.

  “Not like this,” the man said grimly, shaking his head. “Not like this.”

  Eric turned away. The answers he wanted weren’t here, but he couldn’t escape the feeling that he’d just been handed another clue . . . if he could only understand it.

  Even Shielded as he was, Eric was reluctant to leave the light and warmth of the mission for the cold gloom outside, but he knew he had to move on, see if he could follow this trail to where it began . . . or ended.

  As he turned to go, a young woman sitting at one of the tables got to her feet, heading for the door. She was skeleton-thin, but she’d made some attempt at looking pretty. She wore a down jacket a dozen seasons out of date and a thin bright summery dress. Her legs were bare.

  “Where you going, Annie?” the man behind the soup cauldron called.

  “Got me a date,” Annie said belligerently. Eric could see they wanted to stop her, to call her back, but before they could do anything she was outside, hurrying up the street.

  Eric followed her. She didn’t go far. There was an alleyway a few doors down from the mission. Annie ducked into it with an ease borne of long familiarity. There was a crude shelter there, made of flattened cardboard boxes, and Annie scuttled inside, squatting down and digging into her jacket.

  “Got me a free sample, got me a free sample,” she sing-songed under her breath. Eric could see the glitter of a small packet of white powder in her hands. It radiated a kind of non-magical malignity that made Eric blink.

  “Hey—don’t do that,” he protested, making himself visible again. He dug in his pocket for his wallet. “Don’t take that. Here—I’ll buy it from you. Okay?”

  Seeing him, Annie crouched back with a feral cry of alarm. Before Eric could react, she’d torn open the packet and poured the contents into her mouth.

  It
s effect was immediate and drastic. Her eyes rolled up in her head and she slumped down, unconscious.

  Oh . . . God. Eric stared at her, sure for a moment that she was dead. I’ve got to help her.

  He pulled out his flute. The people at the mission knew her. They’d know what to do. But their help wouldn’t be any good to Annie if she was dead.

  He let the magic flow down into him, reaching out to the flicker of magic—Eric experienced it as music—that every living thing had. Her song was faint, the contents of the envelope poisoning her nearly to death. It was as if two songs were playing at once, creating a jangling discord. Imposing a third one wouldn’t help much.

  He listened as hard as he could for the original tune, there in the cold alleyway, and slowly began improvising a counterpoint around it, strengthening it without overwhelming it. The music became stronger—he could almost identify the tune—when suddenly he was knocked off balance by a blast of . . . music?

  It reverberated through his head, soundless yet loud enough to make his teeth ache, overwhelming all other sounds. The music wanted him to follow—it was a call, a command, dark and powerful and magical. Resisting it was like trying to stand still in the path of a cyclone. Annie still needed help, but Eric couldn’t “hear” his own magic against the howl of the magestorm. He ran toward the mission. He could at least summon worldly aid. The pull of the Summoning grew stronger by the moment; he pushed open the door to the mission and half staggered, half fell inside.

  “Hey,” Eric croaked, half-deafened by the buffeting he was receiving. “Annie’s out there in the alley. She’s sick.”

  The woman who’d been talking as she served the soup ran over to him. Dizzy and battered by the dark undertow of the magical Summoning, Eric clung to her for support.

  “Are you hurt? Can you tell me your name? Come over here. Sit down—”

  “No,” Eric gasped. “I’ve got to—I’ve got to go. Help her. She’s in an alley up the street, in a box. She took something. Something bad.” It was hard to get any words out against the call of the Unseleighe magic, and finally Eric abandoned the effort. He pushed the woman away and thrust himself out into the night once more, turning in the direction of the summons.

  As soon as he was moving with the pull of the magic, his head cleared enough for him to throw up some stronger shields. The power of the assault had taken him off-guard, but he had his bearings now. It would be a simple thing to isolate himself from its pull entirely, but Eric wasn’t sure he wanted to do that. He’d come down here looking for the source of the magic that had befouled the city—and now, it seemed, the magic was looking for him.

  Sorry, Master Dharinel. I know you wanted me to stay out of this one, but a Bard’s gotta do what a Bard’s gotta do. I just hope I’m around afterward to get yelled at for it.

  And I think I’m glad after all that I didn’t get Ria to come with me. . . .

  The only way Ria could follow the magical trail was on foot, and that was a slow process. The trace was faint, and easily confused, but Ria always managed to find it again. It led her south and east, down into some of the worst neighborhoods in New York. She was glad more than once to have Logan at her back. Most folks who saw him just tended to veer off from whatever mischief they were contemplating.

  Night came early in the winter, and by the time they finally crossed Houston Street it was already getting dark. Ria was footsore and hungry, but unwilling to give up the hunt just yet. She felt more alive than she had any time yet since her recovery. Ria was a born hunter, and if more of her stalks were in the world of finance than on the city streets, well, the instinct was the same.

  On the Lower East Side a lot of the buildings were red brick dating back a century and more. New York had moved slowly uptown from the foot of the island since its founding, leaving behind outgrown neighborhoods to fall into decay. With taxes rising astronomically, many landlords found it more economical to let buildings rot where they stood rather than invest the money to make them livable again. The ever-growing population of those who had slipped between the cracks of what had once been touted as the Great Society had taken over the abandoned buildings, forming new tribes outside of the protection of society. As Ria and her shadow had moved downtown, out of the affluent neighborhoods, the number of homeless had increased. They huddled in doorways or crouched on the steam vents that led down into the subways, watching Ria’s progress with empty eyes.

  With Logan behind her, Ria headed eastward, across the Bowery. More than a hundred years ago, this had been the northernmost boundary of Manhattan, its then-cobbled streets filled with gracious ladies, fine gentlemen, and horse-drawn carriages. Of that era, only a few landmarked buildings still remained.

  The trail she followed was stronger here, but her puzzlement was growing. What would a mage, human or Sidhe, be doing here, in the middle of such poverty and despair? There was nothing down here but crack houses, squats, and a few brave homesteading yuppies. Soon enough urban development would sweep through here, just as it had elsewhere, leaving a litter of Starbucks and Barnes & Nobles in its wake, but for now, the area looked like a bombed-out city in the aftermath of a war it had lost.

  Yet here was where the trail began—or ended. Ria stopped in front of the old building her stalk had led her to. It didn’t look particularly promising. Even in the cold, she could smell the pervasive fug of rotting garbage and old urine. She cast around, looking for some hint that the trail continued, but there was nothing. She would have been more reassured to find a Nexus here than what she had found. A blank wall.

  What the hell is this? Some kind of magical roach motel? “Mages check in, but they don’t check out?”

  It was impossible.

  It was the truth.

  “Lady. Hey, lady. Gimme dollar?”

  A man—a boy, really, younger than Eric—came shuffling out of the alleyway to her left. He had the look so many of the homeless had, as if he’d been sucked dry of some vital component; prematurely haggard, but no less dangerous for that. There were two more behind him, obviously there to follow his lead and share in any bounty he acquired.

  She held her ground. To back away would only encourage them. Most predators—including the human predator—would chase anything that ran.

  “You one a’ them angels. You come down here, you gotta gimme dollar. Whaddya say, angel? Gimme dollar?”

  He was close enough for her to smell him now. His hands were stuck in his pockets, clutching a knife, a club, or even a gun. She knew he didn’t plan to hurt her, only to take what she had, but when did life ever go according to plan?

  And why had he called her an angel? The incongruity of it made her smile. Almost.

  “You don’t want to do that.” Logan appeared between her and the would-be predator like a drift of smoke. She couldn’t see his face, but he held his hands out, open-palmed, defusing the situation with his presence and his will. The man stopped.

  “She come down here, she gotta give me money,” he whined, focussing on Logan. But he was hesitating now, uncertain. “She an angel. Angels take, they gotta give.”

  “No.” Logan’s voice was gentle and final. “You need to get on and take care of business somewhere else. Go on.”

  “Bitch. Uptown bitch.” His companions had already melted back into the alleyway, discovering that Ria wasn’t an easy mark. Their leader glared at Ria in frustrated disappointment. “Bitch! Angel bitch!”

  “Go on,” Logan said, still in the same calm voice. As if he were dealing with a child or a lunatic, Ria thought. And I suppose these people qualify on both counts. He dropped one hand to his side and flicked his fingers at her. Obedient to his signal, Ria backed away, stepping off the curb into the street. She crossed to the other side, turning her back on them reluctantly. Behind her, Ria heard a faint scuffle, and a cry, and when she turned back, the man was lying on his back on the sidewalk, and Logan was turning away.

  “Let’s go,” he said when he reached her. “Unless you need me
to take him all the way down.”

  “No. I’m finished here. Let’s go find a cab.”

  A few blocks took them back to Broadway. It was like crossing into another world. Broadway was one of the city’s main arteries, running all the way from the Battery at the southernmost tip of the city, all the way into Upstate New York. It was fairly safe even at midnight, lined with boutiques, shops, and all-“nite” delis. Ria did a small Summoning magic, and a few moments later, a cruising cab turned the corner and stopped.

  The ride uptown covered in minutes the blocks it had taken her hours to walk. On Sixth the trees were strung with fairy lights. The bright shops and well-dressed shoppers were a universe away from the war zone she’d just left.

  And Ria had more questions than she had answers to.

  A human drug addict doesn’t just suddenly turn into a magician without a cause. And an Unseleighe lord doesn’t just start building a Nexus in the middle of one of the most densely populated human cities on Earth without some expectation of being able to finish it. There’s a connection there, somewhere.

  So . . . find it. Find the root cause.

  I think I need to do some more research.

  Aerune had been patient, and now his patience was to be rewarded. After his last defeat, he realized he had violated the first rule of war. Always make the enemy come to you. No longer would he follow the human cattle into their puny traps to gain what he needed. His prey would come to him. And so he had woven a dark spell, a calling-on, that would bring every creature with the wit to hear it to a place of his own choosing. The Crowned Ones would hear it . . . and so, he had no doubt, would those who sought to keep his rightful prey from him.