A Host of Furious Fancies

by Mercedes Lackey

  He just wants to talk. But boy, is he going about it the wrong way!

  But how could she expect more? They were children, all of them. They were still learning how to do all the things adults took for granted—make friends and alliances, fall in love, serve conflicting loyalties, react wisely to unfairness and cruelty, and all the rest of the things that were supposed to set adults apart from children. If she’d been willing to make an effort, she could have turned the whole situation around, made a joke, maybe even talked to Cary. . . .

  But she hadn’t. She’d pushed hard to make them enemies, because it was easier, because she was young, too. She’d made them into monsters and they’d done their best to be what she wanted.

  But I could have wanted something else. I threw away my whole life and let them bring me to this just because I was stupid!

  It was an epiphany, but she didn’t like it very much. The best revenge wasn’t revenge, it was living well, and she hadn’t. She hadn’t revenged herself on her childhood tormentors by turning into Aerune’s hound—she’d finished their work for them.

  The boys went on. Young Jeanette got her locker open and began picking up her books again. A clique of girls—the bright ones, the pretty ones—went by, pointing at her and sniggering, but inside each of them was the fear: am I like that? What makes me different? What if I’m not pretty any more? How do I do everything right when I don’t know what I’m doing at all?

  They could never have been her friends—their interests were too different—but they didn’t have to have been her enemies. She hadn’t had to notice them at all, one way or the other. That was the part that had been her choice.

  “Can we go home now?” she asked in a hard voice.

  “There is still the hunt. You know what I seek. Find it for me,” Aerune answered implacably.

  She looked at the kids still filling the halls. They all thought of themselves as fully adult—only she knew how much of their lives’ journey was before them. Refuse to do what Aerune wanted, and those unfinished lives all ended here. She didn’t remember a bloodbath happening in her high school years here, but that didn’t mean Aerune couldn’t arrange one now.

  The few for the many, and no matter what she chose, Death would come to JKPHS today.

  Defeated, she began the hunt, pacing through the halls at the end of Aerune’s leash. For a while back in the beginning she’d used to hope that if she spent enough time back in the Real World the T-Stroke would catch up with her and burn her out, but Aerune had quickly destroyed that hope. While she hunted for him, his spells kept time from touching her, even here. There was no escape.

  She had no way to block the pain radiating from the kids around her—this one was pregnant, that one’s parents were divorcing, the other was trying drugs for the first time and was terrified he was going to hell—but if she forced herself, she could let it wash through her, sifting through it for what Aerune sought. Several times a pang of Talent made her stop and quiver, but a lot of kids had Talent that burned out within a few years at this age. That wasn’t what Aerune was looking for, and God help everyone here if he didn’t find something to make his Hunt worthwhile.

  Then she felt it. Burning like the sun, heat and life enough to warm her cold bones, banish all the borrowed pain. Helpless, she turned toward it. Refuse to follow the trail, and the killing would begin.

  One or two instead of a dozen. That’s good, isn’t it? Isn’t it a better choice?

  There were other wellsprings of Power here. She could feel them. But this one was the strongest, the closest, and so she could concentrate on it and not give warning of the others. It was all she could do.

  It was lunchtime, so most of the classrooms were empty. She passed each one, seeing glimpses of a world as foreign and lost as ancient Atlantis inside. There were real tragedies here, and cutthroat social climbing more intense than anywhere outside of Hollywood, but at the same time, there was a certain innocence to all of it. That was why people always spoke of high school as the happiest time of their lives . . . if they managed to forget the pain.

  She hadn’t. She’d let it rule her. And this was the result. She’d become someone she didn’t even know.

  She followed the trail of Power to the school auditorium. No one was supposed to be in here, but it wasn’t locked. James Polk had been a nice upper-middle-class school in a good district. Parents all congratulated each other about not having the problems with violence or vandalism found in other schools. She and Aerune went inside.

  It was dark in here. The school had been built in the thirties, and the auditorium bore a more than passing resemblance to a theater, with balconies, stage, and thick red velvet curtains, now drawn back to reveal an empty stage. A few lines of Shakespeare were carved on the archway above:

  All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts . . . As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 7.

  There was someone sitting at the foot of the stage, leaning against it; a small untidy boy with an ever-present spiral notebook in which he had constantly been doodling.

  That’s Strange Stan Chandler. He ran away from home his junior year and nobody ever found out what happened to him.

  Now she knew. She could feel his power, his creativity, that wonderful gift that the Sidhe lacked. She could see the life he would have had as if a movie were unrolling in her mind: high school, then art school, then an apprenticeship at one of the major animation studios, then ground-breaking work in CGI and a series of brilliant movies that would bring a renewed sense of childhood wonder to all who saw them. . . .

  And none of it was ever going to happen. Because Stan Chandler wasn’t going to get a chance to grow up to be a wizard. Because Stan Chandler hadn’t run away at all.

  “So this is the one,” Aerune said, as Jeanette died a little more inside. There was a ripple of Power, and she knew they were suddenly visible.

  “Come with me, little one,” Aerune said. “Come into my kingdom.”

  She saw Stan’s face awaken with wonder, with hope, with incredulous disbelief and gleeful awe, saw him jump to his feet—a skinny kid with big ears and thick glasses, somebody that nobody would ever look at twice—staring at the elf-lord in amazement. And then saw suspicion replace wonder, saw the fear begin.

  But by then it was too late. Aerune had reached him, taken his hand. And the world melted around the three of them like a disrupted reflection, to re-form as Aerune’s throne room.

  Jeanette backed away—he’d dropped her leash, now that his prize was in his hands—but she could not block out what came next. Somehow Aerune reached into Stan, finding the reservoir of his Talent and draining it away, into himself.

  It hurt. She covered her ears, but that didn’t block out the screams. Or the pain. She crawled up the steps of Aerune’s throne and huddled against its coldness, begging and praying that the pain would soon be over.

  For both of them.

  A long time later she became aware that people were talking above her head—Aerune and someone else. This was rare, but not unheard of, and she tried not to listen. If Aerune noticed she was here—if Aerune noticed she was here and didn’t like it, he would transport her to some other place. If she were lucky, she’d wind up back in her room. If she weren’t, it would be some place like an open grave, or a swamp filled with maggots, or a bright place where things she could never remember clearly afterward did . . . something. Something horrible.

  But she couldn’t shut out the voices. Because while one of them was Aerune’s, the other was human, from her own world and time.

  “Oh, we’re moving forward, Lord Aerune. People are willing enough to believe in you after Tunguska and Roswell and Grover’s Mill. I’m sure you don’t mind if they think you’re space aliens—‘elves’ is a little hard for folks to swallow these days, but it doesn’t matter what they call you, so long as it gets the job done. And psychic space aliens are even scarier t
han the other kind, if you get my drift—especially once they start encroaching on humanity.”

  Whoever he was, he wasn’t afraid of Aerune. Jeanette listened in amazement. It was almost as if they were . . . allies.

  “I believe I do, Mr. Wheatley. But I trust that your inner circle is quite aware that the invaders are not ‘space aliens,’ but the Sidhe?” Aerune asked.

  “Indeed they are, Lord Aerune. The bodies you’ve provided have been quite helpful in that respect. But I have to ask—when are my boys going to have a live specimen to play around with? We can go just so far with sweeps and drills.”

  She didn’t dare move, didn’t dare look up or draw attention to herself in any way. Aerune was talking like Earth was being invaded by elves in all directions, but as far as she knew, the only one who wanted to invade Earth was Aerune, and he couldn’t get any of the other Sidhe to play along.

  So he’d gotten this human to help him present elves as a threat to humanity, so that elves would see humans as a threat. Couldn’t this Wheatley see that if Aerune’s plan worked, he’d be as dead as everyone else? How stupid could bureaucrats be?

  Aerune was speaking once more.

  “I am aware of your concerns, but I must counsel patience. You may continue to use the special equipment I have provided to search out those members of the Bright Court who live among you, passing as your own kind. Properly handled, even their discovery can bring about the war we seek. Meanwhile, I shall endeavor to provide you with captives who will be properly . . . unconcilliatory, but it will require time.”

  “Yeah. The last thing we want is to grab one of those Bright guys who’ll go all reasonable and multicultural on us. We need a real fighter,” Wheatley said cheerfully.

  “All in time. And what of your plan to move against those of your own kind with Power?” There was a gloating note in Aerune’s voice that made Jeanette shudder.

  “Well, there we’re seeing real progress,” Wheatley said, gloating. “We’ve consolidated a number of those dumb-ass government psychic research programs under our agency umbrella—Anomaly, Trapdoor, Arclight, and so on—and we’re massaging the results to make it look not only as if psionic powers are widespread and reliable, but that the Spookies present a real threat to the power structure. You’ll have the screening programs and internment camps you want within five years, or my name isn’t Parker Wheatley. When you come right down to it, the Psionicist Threat is the perfect social control: fear of a minority that’s invisible, that you can’t prove you don’t belong to. We can put down anybody we need to by saying they’re psychic once this gets rolling.”

  “I am glad you are pleased—” Aerune broke off suddenly, and Jeanette realized with a pang of sick despair that he’d noticed her after all. She scrambled back off the edge of his throne, hoping to beg for mercy. But the floor swallowed her up as if it were water, and then she was falling, falling down into the night.

  By unspoken agreement, they all gathered back in Eric’s apartment on their return from the hospital, huddled together like the survivors of a disaster. For a long time no one spoke. Finally Paul got up and left, returning a few minutes later with a bottle of Scotch and a large silver cup.

  “I’d been saving this for a very special occasion. There’s none more important than saying good-bye to a beloved comrade. We’ll hope it’s unique.” He poured the calleach full—it took half the bottle—then set the bottle down on the floor, very gently.

  “Here’s to Jimmie Youngblood. Warrior and friend. I will miss her.” He drank, and passed the cup to Toni.

  “I loved her,” Toni said, her voice stark in its grief. “Waes hael, girlfriend. Go with God.”

  The cup passed, each person saying their own good-byes.

  “She gave me more than I ever gave her. I wish we’d had more time.” Eric took only the barest sip, but his farewell was no less heartfelt for that.

  Kayla was next. “I didn’t know her. I wish I had. Death bites.”

  Ria followed, giving nothing but a simple toast and passing the cup. He ought to get up and make some coffee, Eric supposed, but it didn’t seem worth the effort. He sat on the end of the couch, the smoky taste of the Scotch on his lips, and mourned the future that would never be. It was one thing to die fighting for something that mattered, giving up your life so that the innocent could live on in happy ignorance of their peril. But that wasn’t how Jimmie had died. She’d died in an accident—a stupid, pointless, meaningless fluke, as random as if she’d stepped off the curb and been hit by a car. After all she’d done, all she’d suffered, all she’d given up to be a Guardian, her death should have had more meaning than that. It was as if God had just lost interest in her and blotted her out.

  It wasn’t fair. He bowed his head, not caring if the others saw his tears.

  “If Jimmie had to die for me to become a Guardian, I don’t want the job,” Hosea said thickly. “She was a righteous lady, and I won’t ever be able to fill her shoes.” He drank deeply, passing the cup to José.

  “Good-bye, my friend. You should not have had to die for so little.”

  Greystone had joined them, his wings held high and tight over his back as if he wished to shut out the events of the night.

  “Farewell, mo chidr. We can’t always choose our fights, but you never ran from yours. Fare you well.” He accepted the cup from José and drained it.

  There was a long moment of silence. “The first time I saw Jimmie,” Paul said softly, “it was raining. She was standing outside of the House—no umbrella—looking like a wet cat, and about that mad. . . .”

  But talking about Jimmie didn’t make the loss of her easier to bear. It made it worse. They were whistling in the dark, choking on their own despair, each wondering when their own painful pointless death would come. Why live? Why do anything, when your death would be nothing more than a ripple, counting for nothing, quickly forgotten. If life meant so little, if death was so cruel, why not hasten the moment? If you could control nothing else, if there were no true choices in life, why not choose death and get it all over with? There was no way to win against it. Everybody died, and no death meant anything in the long run.

  * * *

  “A test.” Aerune’s voice came out of nowhere, rousing Jeanette from her aching daze. She could see nothing, could barely feel the surface on which she lay. Everything hurt; her eyes burned and her throat was raw with screaming, but worse than that was the terrifying blankness in her mind. She could not remember where she’d been, or what had happened to her, since she had been in Aerune’s throne room.

  Worse, she felt as if the information lurked somewhere beneath the surface of her mind, and to recover it would drive her mad.

  But it did not do to ignore Aerune when he was speaking. He was still angry with her. She could tell.

  “What test, my lord?” she asked. She reached up and felt her face. Her eyes were open, but she still saw nothing. Blindness? Darkness? Or some kind of spell? Asking would only bring her more trouble.

  “Of your abilities. I will bring you to a place where there are many of those whom I seek. You will find me the strongest concentration of them. And I will use their power to give Mr. Wheatley the proof he so ardently desires.”

  “Yes, lord.” She staggered to her feet, groping for stability in the darkness. When would she stop caring about what he used her to do? When would she go numb, or mad, or just die? When would he be done with her?

  “Come, then.”

  She felt a whisper of air, and then the tingle of magic as Aerune opened a Portal. She stepped through.

  The assault on her unshielded senses was as if a million people were shouting at once in a language she didn’t understand. She staggered, blinded now by the wash of physical and psychic pain, choking, gasping for breath. She fell against the side of Aerune’s elvensteed, felt his armored leg against her back. He moved his mount away from her touch and she fought to stay on her feet. If she fell, he wouldn’t let go of her leash.

&n
bsp; She forced her eyes open. Night. Trees. City lights. Hot summer air, the smell of car exhaust and hot asphalt and the distant wail of sirens. Aerune usually chose less populated places for his hunts—Cold Iron was deadly to elves, as well as screwing up their magic, and big cities were full of it. He wouldn’t have come to a place like this without good reason.

  Her heart hammered faster, racing, and waves of chill and nausea swept over her. Something was different this time, but she couldn’t take the time to puzzle it out right now. Aerune wanted results, but how could she find one trace of Power among so many false clues?

  She was in a park, near the edge. As she peered at the buildings across the street, she realized she knew where she was. New York. Central Park.

  Almost home.

  New York must have some kind of connection to Aerune’s home base, somehow—he’d first appeared here when Threshold was doing field tests, and she didn’t think he’d have noticed the tests if he hadn’t been here, in the same world at the same time. New York must interest him somehow, and she didn’t think it was because it was the center of the global business economy, or a great cultural center, or the home town of American publishing, or one of the biggest and most advanced cities on Earth.

  No. That must really be the reason. Aerune wanted to take humanity down here, because if he took out New York, no place else could be any harder to destroy. If she were a Sidhe looking to build a beachhead in the mortal world, she’d pick some place like Minneapolis or Toronto to start with—smaller cities with fewer people. Or maybe someplace with no people to speak of at all, like the Great Plains, or Russia, or Antarctica. But obviously Aerune felt differently.

  Arrogant. Stupid. And powerful enough that it probably didn’t matter, in the long run. Make a big Sidhe fuss here, in the Big Apple, and there’d be no way on earth the government could hush it up. He’d have all the panic he wanted—and the war he wanted, too.