“It seems so easy,” Hosea said.
“It is. We’re the ones that make it hard,” Eric said. He summoned a grin and drew a deep breath. “That doesn’t mean I let you out of all the practice and drills, though. We’ll start with an easy one. Call up a shield.”
Hosea frowned, consulting his memories. “Like this?” he asked. He slowly strummed a minor chord, each note separate and distinct. A faint rippling light seemed to grow up around him.
Eric batted it down with a triumphant major. “Yeah, but make it stronger. Push back when I push you, or that shield isn’t going to do much good.”
Half an hour later, both men were panting and out of breath. Instinctively, Hosea used his magic in a much different way than Eric did. Where Eric tended to confront an enemy and do his best to overawe it with a display of superior but (now at least) elegantly-crafted power, Hosea relied on seeming harmless and not being noticed—pretty much an extension of his real-world behavior. After a while, Eric’s attacks on Hosea’s shields just slid aside: it wasn’t that the shields had a great deal of strength, something that would only come with more practice and skill, but more as if they were shaped to deflect the attack, rather than meet it. If Eric was a lance, then Hosea was the stubborn round stone in the middle of the road. The stone could break the lance, or the lance the stone, but it was likeliest of all that the lance would simply . . . slide away.
“Crane and turtle,” Eric said, standing and stretching. I guess Ria’s style would be tiger. What does that leave for Kayla: monkey? She’d kill me if I ever suggested that. “We ought to open a school of the Bardic martial arts.”
“Too fancy for me,” Hosea said, stretching until his muscles cracked. “I’m a simple country boy. Let’s go find the young’un. I could eat a whole horse, raw or cooked.”
“I won’t tell Lady Day you said that,” Eric said with a grin. After the morning’s workout, he felt a peace and confidence that had been absent from his life for too long, as if he’d found the work he should do and was doing it. It was a good feeling.
The smell of fresh paint greeted them when they went downstairs. The door to the basement apartment was open, and some items of furniture—and the rest of Kayla’s luggage, delivered from Ria’s that morning—were waiting in the laundry room. There was a futon couch, a table and two chairs, some bookcases, and a couple of lamps, all contributed by the tenants of the house and customized by Kayla with fresh paint in shades of black, ultraviolet, poison green, and hot pink. The sound of hammering came from within.
Eric knocked loudly on the open door. “Kayla?”
“C’mon in! Ooh, is that the scent of Bardic power I smell? It smells like victory!”
Eric and Hosea walked cautiously into the main room. Kayla had been working hard, and it showed.
The walls had been painted an even velvety black, then stenciled with Celtic borders halfway up their height in a glittery dark purple. More of the glitter was painted on the walls themselves, so that they glistened in places like mica-studded granite.
The ceiling was the same deep purple as the Celtic border, painted with swirling clouds and a yellow crescent moon. A bead curtain of iridescent dark purple moons and stars had been set up to screen the studio’s kitchen from the rest of the space, and a mirror wreathed in black silk vines and roses had been hung on the bathroom door. The battered linoleum floor had disappeared under several moth-eaten but still serviceable Oriental rugs. Kayla was standing on a short stepladder, hammering a curtain rod into place over the high narrow windows. Black lace curtains were piled on the floor waiting to be hung.
“You gonna help me with this, or just gawk?” she asked. Hosea moved forward to hold up the curtain rod—black iron, with twining leaves for finials—as Kayla finished sinking the last of the nails.
She jumped off the ladder and turned to face them, grinning. She wore black cigarette-leg jeans and a cropped black (and paint-spattered) “Anarchy” T-shirt. Her navel was pierced. Eric blinked.
Am I getting old, or just out of the loop? Fashion or not, that looks painful.
“Pretty neat, huh?” she asked.
“I’m sure Ria is blessing her narrow escape,” Eric answered.
Kayla made a face. “Oh, sure, like I’d do this to somebody else’s apartment! But this is mine, all mine—I can do anything I want! Toni said so.”
“And you certainly have,” Eric said. “How’d you get all this done in—what?—two days?”
“Oh, everybody helped. Margot gave me the bead curtains, and Caity did the stenciling, and Tat gave me the couch—all I had to do was go out and buy a new cover for it. Everybody’s nice, and it’s not like they’re . . .” She searched for a word. “Hurting inside all the time. I like this place.”
“And it likes you,” Eric said, “or you wouldn’t be here.” And maybe it needs you, too. The Guardians protect the city, but who protects the Guardians? Aloud he said: “Hosea and I were going to go out and grab some lunch. Want to come?”
“Sure,” Kayla said. “And then when we come back you can help me move the furniture in. I think it’s all dry now.”
If it wasn’t now, it would be before he put his hands on it, Eric vowed. He had no desire to go through life wearing a coat of black enamel in interesting places.
Kayla studied Hosea critically. “You look taller. Did it hurt much?”
Hosea grinned at her amiably. “Not too much. You’d better do some growing on your own, Little Bit, or I’m liable to trip over you one of these days.”
“Size elitist,” Kayla grumbled, but she sounded pleased. “Just let me get my stuff, and I’m there.”
The three of them walked a few blocks to a fried chicken place on Broadway, where Hosea ate most of a family-style dinner for four while Kayla nibbled on fries and an order of buffalo wings and Eric contented himself with a chicken sandwich and a Coke.
“So is he ready?” Kayla wanted to know. Eric had warned her about his morning’s plans—for one thing, there’d been the possibility that Kayla’d be needed to do a patch job if something went wrong.
“That’d take a lot longer than one morning. But he’s made a good start,” Eric answered, grinning at Hosea.
“Shucks, ma’am, it wasn’t nothing. I’ve got a magic banjo, you know,” Hosea said, playing up his drawl.
“That’s so dorky it’s almost cool,” Kayla said, brandishing a French fry as if it were a conductor’s baton. “But really.”
“We won’t know until we get there,” Eric said, his earlier good humor fading as he concentrated once more on the threat they faced. “But it’s as good as I can do in the time we have.” And pray that it’s enough. I don’t think I can bear any more deaths on my conscience.
All too soon, it seemed, Saturday came. Eric had continued with his summer classes—if he wanted to graduate from Juilliard, he couldn’t let them slide—but had given very little attention to his studies, devoting all his concentration to the training sessions with Hosea. Fortunately his native skill could carry him through a little scholastic sluffing off, but he was really going to have to hit the books when he returned—if he returned—if he wanted to go into the Fall term with passing grades in his summer make-up courses.
Now there’s a cheery choice: death or summer school.
At first he’d been surprised at how nervous he was over the upcoming battle, but then he realized why. All the other messes he’d gotten into had been last-minute, skin-of-his-teeth races against time. This was more like deciding to go clobber somebody in cold blood. Never mind that it was vitally necessary and they had more than enough cause to act. Aerune wasn’t here, wasn’t an immediate threat. If Eric wanted to go into the realm of serious denial, he could even tell himself that Aerune would lose interest in destroying humanity, that the elf-lord’s real-world allies would fall into disorder and doubt and no longer be a threat. That he didn’t really have to do anything at all.
I guess I’m starting to see the elves’ side of thi
ngs. When you live that long, most problems do tend to go away if you ignore them. So how could they know that this one is going to be different?
If it is. But waiting to find out isn’t a chance I really want to take.
There was also the fundamental difference between Elvish psychology and that of humans. Terenil had explained it to him, when Eric was taking his first steps into the world of magic.
“We are virtually immortal, Bard. Our lives are measured in centuries, not decades. That can be as much curse as blessing. Firstly, we are few in number. Secondly, strong emotional ties bind for centuries, not mere decades. Your legends call us lightminded and frivolous in our affections—but think you for a moment. Suppose you have a love that turns to dislike. But you are tied to the place where that love dwells, and there are perhaps a few hundred inhabitants of that place. Try as you will, you must see that love every day. For the next thousand years. Unless one of you finds a way to leave. So do we avoid both love and hate, granting either only when there is no other choice.”
Kory was an exception to Sidhe customs. Barely two hundred years old—a very young man by Sidhe standards—he cared passionately about many things. It made him a sort of freak in the world of Underhill, and Korendil had always preferred the company of humans to that of his own kind. But Kory was comparatively lucky. He was a child of the High Court. He could leave his Grove and its Nexus, and go elsewhere if he chose, or if he needed to. And he had Beth.
But what if Beth . . . died? What would Kory do then? Would he hate whoever had caused her death? And over the course of a hundred centuries, would that hatred grow and fester until he became a monster like Aerune?
Eric hoped not, but he didn’t know. Any more than he knew what Aerune had been like before he had loved Aerete the Golden and seen her die at the hands of humans. Just as Kory had, Aerune had broken the first commandment that governed the life of the Children of Danu. And as Terenil had warned Eric, so long ago, not knowing what he warned him against, it had destroyed Aerune.
It’s no excuse for what he’s done. No matter how badly you’re hurt, that doesn’t give you a free pass to hurt someone else. But I wish we could think of a better solution than just locking him up.
And maybe they could, if they had infinite time and resources. But they didn’t have either. They had to stop Aerune now, and then see about undoing the damage he’d already caused in the World Above.
“No brooding,” Kayla said with mock sternness, rousing him from his reverie.
“Sorry,” Eric said sheepishly. “Just thinking about how to change the world.”
Early Saturday morning—too early, by Eric’s standards, though he hadn’t slept well the night before—the seven of them gathered once more in Eric’s apartment.
Toni, Paul, and José had brought their swords. Toni’s and José’s were conventional longswords, carried in long slender cases that looked like instrument cases, but Paul carried only an elegant sword cane, an antique, ebony with a silver ferrule and a large cairngorm set into the silver ball-handle. He was dressed as if for an afternoon’s grouse hunting, with lace-up calf-high boots, khakis, and a Norfolk jacket in an understated tweed. The other two were wearing everyday clothes—Toni in jeans and a pink sweatshirt, José in a dark workshirt and twill pants.
Toni had suggested that Hosea take Jimmie’s sword—like the rest of her magical paraphernalia, Hosea had inherited it along with her apartment—but the big man had declined.
“I guess I wouldn’t hardly know what to do with a sword. I’ll stick to my banjo, if it’s all right with you all.”
Toni had wanted to argue, but Paul convinced her that it would be better for Hosea to go into the field with no weapon at all rather than one he didn’t trust. “And Eric has assured us that the young man is coming along quite well with his Bardic studies, so it is not as if he will be quite defenseless.”
Ria was the last to arrive. She was dressed in a street-casual outfit Eric hadn’t seen before—black jeans with the extra gusset at the crotch that would give them as much flexibility as a pair of dance tights, a long black linen duster, black dance boots that came up over the knee, and a long silvery mail coat, its links so fine that it shimmered like hammered silk.
“You look like an outtake from Highlander,” Eric told her.
“Wait till you see my sword,” she answered with a tight smile. She patted the pocket of her duster. It hung heavily, and Eric suspected she was carrying a gun and several extra clips or speedloaders. Steel-jacketed hollowpoints could cause serious damage to any of the iron-averse Underhill folk, even kill.
“I left the shirts in the car. Not only do they weigh about a hundred pounds, but you’ll be a lot more comfortable on the ride up to the Gate without them. Eric, are you going to ride with us? I think we should take the ’steeds with us. Etienne’s waiting for me up in the park with the rest of our gear. If anyone sees her, they’ll just think they’ve seen a deer.”
“If Eric’s going up on his bike, I want to ride with him,” Kayla said instantly. “Hey, this could be like, my last moments on Earth. They should be fun. Eric? Puh-leeze?”
“Fine with me,” Eric said, grinning in spite of himself at Kayla’s exuberance.
“Okay, let’s go,” Toni said.
Eric savored the ride up to the Everforest Gate. In another lifetime, he might have been on his way up to the Sterling Forest RenFaire, with nothing more on his mind than a feathered hat. Now he was riding into battle.
He could sense Lady Day’s excitement. Unlike mortal horses, the elvensteeds were bred for battle, and relished a good fight. He tried to take comfort from her easy courage—Eric was no coward, though he’d spent the first half of his life running away from anything that looked even vaguely like a fight, but this was a different kind of fight than any he’d ever been in. It hadn’t been forced on him. He’d had plenty of chances to back out. But he’d chosen to be here. If that was courage, then he guessed he was brave. But it seemed perilously close to desperation.
All too soon they arrived at their destination. The Faire would be running for a few more weeks, but the Everforest Nexus had been set on state park lands, away from the crowds.
He pulled the bike to a stop in the clearing that held the Gate, and he and Kayla dismounted. She looked around, turning in a circle. “Hey. Untouched nature. Who’d’a thunk there could be something like this so close to the city? Hey, what’s that?”
She pointed. There were tire tracks sunk deep into the mud, and burn marks on the grass.
“Levin-bolts, or something similar, and probably a van. Jeanette said Aerune had Elkanah bring her here so he could take her Underhill easily.”
“Creepy.” Kayla hugged herself and shivered, though the day was warm. “He isn’t coming back, is he?”
“I hope not. But this is the closest Nexus point to New York City, so most of the East Coast Underhill traffic comes through here.”
Kayla didn’t say anything, though Eric could tell she was thinking hard. Just then Lady Day shivered all over, and in place of the red-and-white touring bike stood a neat-footed black mare with golden eyes. Kayla goggled as if she’d never seen a horse before, and Lady Day minced delicately forward and nudged her with a soft black nose. Kayla reached up tentatively to stroke it.
“Hey, she’s soft!” the young Healer exclaimed. “Am I going to get to ride her? I mean, like she is now?”
“Maybe. That’s kind of between you and her,” Eric answered. He knew Kayla had grown up on the street, abandoned by her parents when her Talent began to show, but somehow the experience hadn’t hardened her. She pulled up a handful of grass from the turf at her feet and began to feed the elvensteed, who almost purred under the admiring attention.
A few minutes later, the Rolls pulled up, moving slowly over the narrow bumpy track. Ria was driving. She pulled the car to a rocking stop, and the venerable machine seemed almost to sigh with relief. Rolls-Royces were built like a bank vault, but by no stretch of th
e imagination were they off-road vehicles.
Ria got out, followed by the other four. She pulled a large suitcase off the driver’s seat and began to unzip it.
“These are for you,” she told the Guardians, opening the suitcase and hauling out the first of the shirts. “They’re lined in Kevlar fabric, at least partly so they don’t chafe, but you won’t want to go jogging in them; they’re heavy, and they don’t breathe. Iron can kill the Sidhe-folk, and it also makes their magic run wild, one of the reasons Aerune is a lot less powerful here in the World Above than he’s going to be when we go to meet him on his home turf. The steel part of these shirts will absorb some magic and deflect a lot in the way of levin-bolts, but some of it gets worn away each time.”
“So if Aerune keeps hitting one of us, he’ll eventually burn through the shirt?” Paul said, examining the shirt with interest.
“Try not to let that happen,” Ria said, deadpan.
“Won’t he know we’re wearing these?” Toni asked, holding a shirt up to herself to check the fit. It was too small, and she passed it to Kayla. Each was slit up the sides and laced shut—with plastic-coated steel cording—to ensure a tighter fit.
“Sure. Think about it—if I were him, I’d be expecting it. There still isn’t much he can do about it—if he touches you while you’re wearing that, he risks getting his widdle fingies burned off,” Ria said.
Kayla had pulled off her leather jacket and was slithering into the mail shirt. She wore her full elaborate Goth makeup and jewelry, but had elected to dress sensibly—jeans, Doc Martens, and a long-sleeved T-shirt that fit as if it were sprayed on. Hosea helped her lace the sides shut. “Ain’t we gonna be a little conspicuous dressed like this?” she asked Ria.
“Not Underhill, so far as I know,” Ria told her. “Unfortunately, it may be a long walk to reach the borders of Aerune’s domain, but they’re lighter to wear than to carry, I assure you.”
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