by Rob Summers
Chapter 8: Accommodating Problem Guests
…and they were all armed in black harness ready with their shields and their swords drawn.
-Sir Thomas Malory
Pyro loved being in Nineveh’s service because it meant he could get away with almost anything. As a Realmer he could laugh off laws and consequences. All the cold of the last two inns had not robbed him of that intoxicating satisfaction, and in fact, he had made those inns hot enough for awhile. But it wasn’t just burning buildings, it was scaring and harming people. Anyone, whether a Mage or some passerby, was his to play with. Take, for example, this fancy car that had just pulled into the driveway. He didn’t know whether this was the innkeeper and his family coming home or just some unlucky people who had stopped to ask directions. Either way, they were in for a nasty surprise.
The car had stopped and three people had gotten out. He shined a powerful flashlight on them as he approached.
“You folks lost?”
One of the car’s doors was not shut, so its interior light provided enough dim illumination to show them Pyro’s winter-thick, black clothing, his wild whiskers and over-bright eyes. The man who had been driving took a step back from him. When he noticed that Pyro was followed by three other men, also in black, he retreated another step.
“No, we’re not lost. We’re just here visiting my nephew. Who are you, some of his guests?”
Pyro produced a long barreled revolver and pointed it at him. “I’ll ask the questions. This is an inn, right?”
The man hesitated before answering. “It’s been a bed-and-breakfast but not anymore. Just let us go; we’ll just go.”
“You’ll stay here until we’ve cleared the house. Then we’ll have some questions for you. Give us your keys and get back in the car. Raj, keep an eye on them. After we bring these prisoners inside, put the keys back in the ignition. Junior might want to do a little joy riding. I’ll be back for these three soon.”
Things like this made up for all the miseries of chasing Magi through snow and across a frozen lake. It made up for presently having to sweat heavily in a winter coat with pockets full of weapons and an inner lining stuffed with the currencies of many nations and eras. It made up for going without sleep and getting portal lagged and constantly pushing himself. Yes, soon he would get to play with these people, or at the least watch Junior or Vivien play with them. Besides, he now had another inn to burn as soon as Junior would give the word. Then on to the next one. He wished it would never end.
Bob and Julie were rousing guests from their all-too-temporary beds and gathering them in the living room in a dense crowd when they noticed that the dwarfs were still not present. Julie went to call them again from the laundry room on the south side of the house. In the meantime Bob looked around at the assembly of innkeepers, pets, plain wizards, wizards wounded, wizards zombified, and wizards transformed. They gripped the few possessions they had brought with them, mainly just cloaks.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” he said to them. “Julie and I have been watching out the windows, and it looks like the Rebels are here and that they’ve captured some relatives of mine outside the house. Uh, Clark, can you translate that?”
When Clark had said the same in Kreenspam, Bob was surprised at how little reaction he observed. These wizards were worn out and fatalistic. They had felt doomed anyway.
“Uh, so anyway, we have to start out through the kitchen and on back through my bedroom and out the back door. Once we’re outside we’ll go south. That’s to the left in this case. Stay together.”
Rather than translating, Clark made a few disagreeing sounds in his throat. “Excuse me, Bob,” he said, “but they’re not idiots. They always watch back doors.”
“I figured that, but we’ve got to get out of here!”
Dwarfs began to crowd into the room.
“There is no way out,” Clark said darkly.
“I know it! So let’s get them moving.”
“The first one out that door will be shot.”
As if to emphasize the wizard’s words, a smashing and crashing sound came from the direction of the front door. The last dwarf into the room pushed the heavy interior door shut behind him.
“OK, that’s it. We go out a window,” Bob said in a higher pitched voice than he had intended.
“I tell you, they’re waiting,” Clark said. As he spoke he prudently switched off the only lighted lamp in the room.
They heard rough voices in the entrance hall, and something made a tremendous thump against the room’s door. As Bob opened his mouth to say something more to Clark, the phone rang. Automatically, he groped for it in the dark and picked up the receiver.
“Yeah?”
“It’s me,” Julie said breathlessly. “I’m on my cell in your bedroom. I got you the dwarfs, but then I went back for a moment to get a flashlight in case they cut the power lines or something. But now they’ve broken in the front door, and I can’t reach you, and what should I do?”
Bob breathed shallowly and could think of nothing.
“When life locks a door, try a window,” said the mirror behind him.
“Go out the laundry room window,” he said. “The bushes outside of it almost cover it up.”
“OK. Then what?”
“Hide there. Keep down and keep on the phone to me. I’ll get back to you in a minute.”
He laid the receiver down off the hook and stood listening to the slight noises of the wizards around him, the distant crackle of fireworks, and the indistinct voices of Rebels who were on the other side of the door. They were trapped, trapped just as Captain Hagley had been in 1862, in the same room and behind the same door. Why hadn’t he thought of that?
Mouser had pushed Pyro aside and thundered his considerable weight against the door, but it had not budged. Now his shoulder felt the result, right through his thick coat.
“Hell,” he said (his favorite word), and pulled out a machine pistol. He paused.
“Yeah, yeah,” Pyro said impatiently.
“But there wasn’t no inn sign.”
“Doesn’t matter. This has got to be the place. And if it isn’t, who cares?”
The other thugs gathered behind them expressed their agreement. What did it matter if they shot up a wrong house? If they killed people who had never heard of a Mage? No law could touch them. So Mouser squeezed the trigger.
In the laundry room, Julie heard the explosion of gunfire. She snatched up a half-full paper bag from the floor and a box of matches from a shelf above the washer. She dropped the matches and her cell phone (still connected to the house’s land line) into the bag, flipped off the room’s light, and tried the window. Stuck! No, just locked. She unlocked it and slid it up. The window-weight cords had long since rotted and broken, so she had to hold the window open with one hand and clutch the bag with the other as she put a leg over the sill. As she dropped to the ground outside, the window slammed shut behind her. That was as bad, she thought, as if she had yelled for the killers to come get her.
She crouched behind the overgrown hedge that Bob had pointed out would shield her from view, her head well below the window ledge. She felt around in the bag for her cell phone and, when she had removed it, for the matches.
With so many crowded into the living room and the windows shut, the heat was terrible. Bob stood sweating just to the side of the door, and wondering why no bullets seemed to have come through it. A thin line of light was visible at the bottom of the door, so why no light coming through bullet holes? Gingerly, silently, he ran his hand over the door’s surface. He could feel little bulges sticking out which certainly had not been there before. Bullets?
Someone had flipped on the overhead light in the entry hall. Pyro, Mouser, and the others looked at the dull gray ends of five slugs imbedded in the upper door panel.
“Hell!” Mouser roared, his huge body shaking, “Those are 38’s
! This door’s got metal in it.”
“No it doesn’t,” Pyro said. “It’s a damned Mage security door.”
“You mean it’s conjured?”
A loud slamming sound came from the kitchen or some room beyond, and several of the Rebels flinched.
“Dan, Larry, go check that,” Pyro ordered. “Tor and Asher, secure the upstairs.” He turned back to Mouser. “Yeah, it’s conjured. We’ll have to shoot it to pieces. Get Benny.”
One of the Rebels laughed his approval. Benny carried an AK-47.
“This army Captain named Hagley was trapped in here in the 1860’s,” Bob whispered to Clark and Jane. “He crashed through that window there and circled around to the south and into the wood.”
“Will you give it up?” Clark said bitterly. “What does that have to do with us? He was just one man, and I bet whoever was watching for him was incompetent, and besides, he wasn’t even a Mage.”
“Yes, he was. He was the one who first conjured this door.”
“He did boundaries, huh? So do I. But all that ever does is buy time. I could have put a spell like that around this whole house, but then the Rebels would just shoot into it. And if I were as skilled as Hagley, enough to conjure against their bullets too—which I’m not—then they’d just burn the place down. I suppose your captain was the one who tried to conjure a hole in the wall over there?”
“That’s right, he tried it over there near the corner, but he couldn’t do it.”
Clark looked at the area Bob was referring to. “If I wanted to try that, it would be easier to do it where someone’s already made a start.”
“Go for it, try it,” Bob said.
“Don’t tell me what to do.”
Bob began pushing him in that direction. “I’m telling you what to do.”
Clark shook him off and walked to that corner. A moment later the tremendous sound of an automatic weapon erupted beyond the door. For several seconds, they heard the rounds crashing into the door’s panels. When it stopped, the door had held, Clark’s dog was howling, and at least one of the griffins had roared. The magi whispered to one another in Kreenspam.
Staring at the bullets that had not penetrated the door, Benny swore profusely. “Pyro, never I come across one this conjured. Look, the panel is split but the door still don’t fall down!” He demonstrated by slamming his assault rifle’s butt against it. “We got a grenade?”
“No, but we can just go through the wall,” Pyro said.
“That’ll take time.”
“Well, shoot the door again.”
“No, maybe we go around to a window.”
Dan and Larry came out of the kitchen to report, concerning the slamming noise, that there was no one on the south side of the first floor.
Bob decided to assume that Clark was going to open a hole in the wall. He risked switching on a lamp again and went around the room getting people to their feet and using sign language to the dwarfs so they would be ready to pull Merlin’s pallet. Meanwhile, he saw to his relief that Clark was standing before the anciently conjured section of the wall with eyes closed and one hand extended.
Crouching behind the hedge, Julie lit a match and, having set fire to the bag, threw it far out into the yard. In a few moments it erupted into sound and light.
“Done!” Clark said.
Bob found himself looking through a very large hole in the wall, roughly circular and perhaps eight feet in diameter. Beyond, across the darkened yard, he saw the tree row by the road. At the same moment he heard, very nearby, a cacophony of bangs, cracks, and sizzles. This did not sound like gunfire to him, it sounded like fireworks. But what sounded like real gunfire followed immediately.
No time to think about any of that. He pushed Clark through the opening, and the Canadian stumbled from the floor height of about eighteen inches down onto the grass. Then Bob shoved at the dwarfs and got them moving, for the pallet was next.
“What do you want me to do?” Jane asked hoarsely from beside him.
“Get out in front and make them turn right onto the road. I’ll catch up with you, but first I want to make sure everyone gets out. Grab the back of that pallet so it doesn’t bump down.”
With an anguished thought of Julie, he pushed through the wizards and back to the phone.
He lifted the receiver. “You still there?”
“Yes,” Julie whispered. “I’m around on the back porch now, up against the wall. When I set off our fireworks, they all went running that way and some of them were shooting—shooting at nothing, or each other. That gave me a chance to move without being seen. Where should I go now? Where are you?”
“That’s great, you diverted them from us! You can join us on the road.”
A griffin tugged at his elbow with its great beak, and he dropped the receiver, which fell between the table and the couch and hung there. When he looked around he was surprised to see the room empty except for himself and this creature: plainly the wizards had needed no one to tell them to hurry. But had they all been in the room to begin with? Wasn’t he forgetting someone? The griffin slapped him with a wing, which was not only unexpected but really did hurt. Plainly, of the two griffins this one was the changeling named Laban, ordering him out with human intelligence. He tried for the receiver again and was slapped again.
“He who hesitates is lost,” said the mirror.
That was advice enough. He ran to the opening and jumped down to the lawn with the griffin beside him. Someone caught his arm.
“Everyone out?” Clark asked.
“Yeah.” He hoped that was true.
“Well, I’m going to close it up then. Maybe that will delay how long it takes them to realize we’re not in there.”
“OK, don’t be long about it.”
South of the house, Pyro lifted a blackened piece of the remains of the fireworks bag and shined his flashlight on it. He grimaced. “A damned diversion,” he said to the thugs standing around him. “Let’s get back and go in through a window like Benny said.”
Nine of them made their way to the west side of the house, where Pyro himself, standing on a narrow porch, broke the glass out of a large window.
Mouser shined a powerful lantern inside. “Empty!” he said. “Hell. Junior ain’t going to like this.”
Pyro was shaken. “They’ve gone out their security door. Everyone but Mouser and me go around the house and hunt them. Wait a minute, four of you search the house again. Got it?”
They had not gotten it and said so. Pyro was confused enough about what he had said to go back over it twice, each time changing his wording slightly. When he had finished, no one moved.
He tried again. “Mouser! Go get the prisoners from Raj and get ready to bring them inside. Wait for Benny to tell you the place is secure. When he gives you the OK, it’ll be clear for Junior and Vivien to go in too. The rest of you, form into hunting squads.”
Despite the number of wizards moving on it, the benighted road was wrapped in a quiet marred only by the distant pops of fireworks. The huge trees on either side stretched out limbs as if to shelter them. Bob hurried to the front of the group, where he found Jane and the other griffin.
“How far do we go?” Jane asked him. “Some of them are too weak to go far.”
“We can turn off the road right here,” he said. “We’re going into the wood.”
“To go back through the portal? We can’t do that; the cold will kill us.”
“No, not through the portal, just into the Wandering Wood.”
Someone was pursuing them with a cross between a shout and a whisper. “Bob! Bob!” Suddenly Julie was hugging him. “Bob, I can hear them! I left my cell phone on, and I guess you left the land line off the hook, and I can hear what they’re saying! Go ahead and listen. I’ve got it on mute.”
She offered him the phone and he placed it to his ear. A man with an Englis
h accent was speaking.
“Junior, all I found in the basement was some old man.”
“What’d you do with him, Tor? Where is he?” was the reply.
Now that the shooting was over and he had gotten the all-clear from Benny, Junior Lee followed some of his men and their three prisoners into the inn. Someone had left a lamp on in the living room, and he switched on another. He had been carrying his suit jacket in this unfamiliarly hot climate and now inattentively threw it down on a table by the couch. He looked around, amused. Except for one surprisingly attractive chair, the place might have been furnished from yard sales. This was the sort of dump he had come to associate with the Magi. No class. No money of course meant no class, but he had come to expect no class from Magi, regardless.
The prisoners, plainly a family, were forced to sit on the hearthstone, where Asher made a show of pointing his pistol at them. That’s right, let the boy have his fun. The daughter, he noticed, could have passed for a Rebel, dressed in black and with lots of black eyeshadow. Pretty, but with a hardened look. Maybe, he thought, she could become a new convert? The Realm could use more women, Dad always said. Her parents, on the other hand, were just a couple of flabby, middle aged idiots, looking as sick as such people always did when a gun was pointed at them.
“Pyro’s got the squads out hunting them,” Asher said.
“And he’ll get them, too,” Junior said cheerily and socked Asher in the shoulder.
“I hope so, Junior. I thought you were going to be mad because they got away out of the inn.”
“No, I’m not mad. We can always learn from these things, learn to be more focused. Man, you’ve just got to believe in what you’re doing.” Junior produced a comb and ran it through his thick, dark hair and down his long sideburns. He straightened his wide, loud necktie. “There’s no such thing as a setback, only opportunities. Think positive, and positive things will happen.”
“Right, Junior.”
He could see that Asher was still disappointed because the Magi had not been kept bottled up in this room. What of it? They would not get far, and it was usually safer for the Realmers to hunt their enemies on the run than to try to exterminate them when they were cornered.
But had they really been in this room to begin with? No one had actually seen them pass the last portal in the blizzard. Though sounds of animals had been heard, no one, Benny had said, had seen Magi in this house. Somebody had played a cute trick with some fireworks, but had it been a Mage? For all he knew, some or all of the damned witches were still back in the Himalayas. If so, they were perishing of cold, so that took care of that.
Tor came in through the now open security door, dressed like a cross between a typical Rebel and a medieval knight. “Junior,” he said in his thick English accent, “all I found in the basement was some old man.”
“What’d you do with him, Tor? Where is he?”
“Stabbed him in the heart.” Tor gestured to the sword he wore sheathed outside his dark garments. “I was looking for the gem when I noticed him standing back under the stairs and just watching me. He says to me that the gem isn’t there, which I’d already figured out. I thought maybe he’d got to it ahead of me, so I told him to hand it over. But he doesn’t, he just stretches out on a row of stones and tells me I can go away, like I was his servant. I know I should have yanked him up here for questioning, Junior, but I just got mad and stabbed him. You know I can’t stand it when someone tries to throw his weight around like that. Anyway, I searched him but he didn’t have the gem or anything of value on him. No regular ID either, but just a lot of these.”
Junior took the business card Tor handed him and read it aloud. “P. Johns, Director.” He looked at Tor with a grin. “That’s it? No address, nothing?”
Tor shook his head. “I don’t get it. God’s blood, director of what? Anyway, I just left the corpse down there.”
“Right, fine. Any indication he was a Mage?”
“No, Junior.”
“OK, how about the portals? We got them covered?”
As the wizard’s limping column approached the pin oak and the huge limb that had fallen from it during the storm, Bob kept his ear to Julie’s cell phone. He gradually learned that squads of Rebels were being sent to guard both portals against them, and he shook his head drearily. He had led the wizards the wrong way, then. It was too late now, considering that the Rebels could move much faster than the Magi he was shepherding, but at the time he had left the house he might have led them west to escape into Africa. He soon remembered, however, that Clark and his group had been chased back this way by Rebels coming from that direction. Clark had said that Nineveh had somehow sent those thugs ahead to trap the wizards between them and the other Rebels coming from the east. So the west portal had been no real option. The Wandering Wood remained their only hope of holding out for a while.
Suddenly something clutched his free arm. It was the huge bill of one of the griffins. “Just a minute, Laban,” he said, guessing that this was the changeling. Though he could not free himself, he somehow managed to keep walking. On the phone, he could still hear Junior giving cheery orders.
“Tell Pyro he can do a little burning,” Junior was saying. “I saw at least one shed outside, so he can have that. Don’t let him touch that BMW though! I want to use it. Oh, and somebody call Meph and get him over here.”
“Can’t boss. We haven’t found the phone here.”
“Ha, probably they don’t even have one in this dump. Never mind. Meph knows we’re coming tonight, so he won’t be long.”
Since this Meph was reachable by telephone and could be summoned quickly, Bob took a guess that he was none other than his old friend Spangles. Even as he listened he felt the grip of the griffin’s hard bill release from his arm. What felt like a human hand replaced it and pulled him to a halt. He forced himself to lower the phone and pay attention to what was apparently Laban in his human form, standing beside him unclothed and barely discernable in the darkness.
“I have smelled Rebels ahead of us,” the man said in a deep voice. “Make everyone stop here before we’re noticed by them.”
Since Bob had been in the lead, the others were halting anyway, quietly grouping up behind him, Laban, and Julie in the shadows under the oak. Clark came to his side and asked him what was the matter.
“This is it,” Bob said bitterly. “Laban says there are Rebels ahead, so we can’t get into the Wandering Wood. And I just heard on Julie’s phone that a Rebel named Tor murdered that old man who came in late and was in the basement. I knew I’d forgotten someone, I knew it! All I had to do was get him up when we were gathering the others, and I forgot him.”
“You did your best.”
“No, I didn’t. And now they’re going to start the burning. How could things get worse?”
Clark made a challenging, disgusted sound, as if to say that things could easily get worse and certainly would. “What do you want to go in the wood for anyway?” he asked, ignoring the other matters. “Shouldn’t we just scatter? They can’t get us all if we do that.”
“The wood is conjured,” Julie explained. “Enemies can’t get in.”
“Don’t you think I know the wood is conjured? Two ways! That would be your Captain Hagley again. But once we’re in there, we’re trapped, surrounded, and eventually they’ll get us. They’ll set the trees on fire if nothing else. Or they could use teargas, or even poison gas. They can go buy anything they need.”
“Your friends can’t walk any farther,” Julie said. “This is it.”
Clark sighed. “Well, OK, how many are there blocking us? Maybe we can draw them off.”
Bob was surprised to hear Clark saying something somewhat positive. “Really? How?”
“Well, you know, make them think we’re over to the left somewhere. Of course, they’ll leave a man or two here, because they’re trying t
o keep the portal guarded from all directions. But the dwarfs have this thing they can do to immobilize at least one of them, and if we have to use it, I’ve got a revolver we picked up from the one who jumped out the window at the last inn.”
Bob remembered that the Rebel Clark was referring to had been shot by Jane Farrington and picked up dead. “Right. So what do we do?”
“Let me talk to the dwarfs first.”
“OK, you get things going here. Right now I’ve got to go back to the inn and make sure nothing gets burnt. I’ll be right back.”
“You’ll do what?” Julie said. “You’re not going anywhere!”
But Bob thrust her phone into her hand and ran off.
“So, Dave,” Junior said to Bob’s uncle, “if you don’t live here, what are you doing here?’
Dave looked up from his uncomfortable seat on the stone hearth beside Marci and Deirdre. “I told you, we came to see my nephew Bob and talk to him about him moving out.”
“Why so late, Dave? Why after dark?”
“Because we had relatives drop in without calling first, holiday guests, and it took a long time to get rid of them. And then—we thought my nephew might be trying to sneak stuff out of here after dark, things that belong to me. We had about decided to wait until tomorrow after all, but then I thought we’d come when he wasn’t expecting us and, by God, catch him at it.”
“Right, Dave, right. So Bob keeps the inn for the Magi?”
“I don’t know anything about it,” Dave said miserably. “What are Magi?”
“So this is not a Magi inn?”
“No, it’s not an inn! Bob can call it whatever he likes and maybe have people spend the night here who can’t afford to pay, but in fact it’s just an old house that I own. I’m having him evicted.” Dave fumbled in his shirt pocket for a moment and handed Junior a paper. “See, that shows I bought the place at auction, and the redemption period ends tomorrow. Every stick of furniture here is mine.”
Junior looked over the paper briefly and tossed it aside. His first impression of this man was proving correct: just a clueless chump. He had plenty of experience of Magi and had never met one as dull as this. This was no innkeeper either, if he was any judge. How could he be if he was only just now coming into possession of the place? Maybe they had mistaken the building. Maybe this wasn’t the inn. It had happened before.
“Tor, what have you seen around here to prove it’s an inn?”
“A Mage security door, boss. Once we got in through the window and could reach it from this side, I just pulled it apart with my hands, it was so shot up. But from the other side it was like it was made of iron. We couldn’t get through.”
Junior knitted his forehead as he loosened his tie in the heat. “That doesn’t really prove anything. A Mage might have done that for a neighbor’s house, you know, as a favor or in trade for something else. What about the inn sign?”
“No sign.”
“Well, look around for it inside. They might have taken it down since they knew we were coming. And see how much food they have, if it’s more than for just a few people. And get somebody to search for the gem. Look for it in the basement.”
“I told you, Junior, I already looked in the basement before I did the usual to the old man, but no luck.”
“Then tear up that fireplace.”
“Right, Junior.”
He turned his attention to Deirdre. “Sweetie, you a Mage?”
“I don’t know, do you want me to be?” she responded smoothly.
“You’re no Mage. You could be one of us though, a real princess of the Realm. Travel a lot. Get to have some freedom. Lots of money. Does that sound good to you?”
“Anything to get me away from here,” she said with feeling.
“Don’t talk with him,” both her parents said at once.
Junior laughed. “I’ll bet you’re sick of them, aren’t you?”
Before she could answer, another Rebel came in from the entrance hall. “Pyro’s burning the shed, Junior. We ain’t found no Magi yet.”
Bob dashed back toward the inn, only slowing down when he came to the edge of the yard. There he found something not just unexpected but unfathomable. In the middle of the yard, with Merlin’s horse tied to it, was a—well, a thing. A box about seven feet wide, seven high, and twenty long was hovering a foot above the lawn. Its thin frame pieces reflected light coming from the house as if they were made of metal. From within its walls, which had the appearance of smoked glass, came a glow so faint that he did not wonder that he had failed to notice it when passing down the road earlier and at some distance. When the figure of a person walked part of the box’s length and then sat down, he could just make it out.
On any other night he would have hoped he was seeing a recently landed UFO. As things stood, he could only suppose this was something the Rebels had brought with them—or perhaps had ridden in? Presently, a small part of one of the large wall panes lit up and a colorful message was projected into the air just outside it: ‘Drink Reiner’s, the Official Beer of the CXX Winter Olympics.’ A 3-D image of a brimming glass of beer, big as a bucket, appeared briefly, and then disappeared as the box’s wall dimmed to darkness again. A few seconds later, and in front of another and larger part of the wall, a 3-D image of the box itself shone, but in the image the box’s walls were completely translucent and the scene was daytime on a mountainside. People were standing inside the box and enjoying the view of the peaks. Above them appeared the words: ‘The Zareen Porto-Deck, favorite of sightseers everywhere.’
The wall went dark again, and Bob crept away, circling the vehicle with a feeling of distaste. He could understand that the Rebels would want a mode of transportation, and that given the chance they would, of course, choose something flashy from the future. But these built-in advertisements were so tawdry, like sporting one of those stand-up signs on the roof of your car.
The shed was south of the house, and from what he had overheard on the phone, Pyro would start there. He slipped around the edge of the yard as quietly as he could in his haste. Sure enough, someone, presumably Pyro, had just lit some rags piled against the wall of the little outbuilding, and they burned as if soaked with oil. The arsonist was illumined not only by the small fire but by light coming from the windows of the house. As he straightened up and backed away from the flame, Bob ran past him to the spigot on the side of the house. He turned it on full and, hearing the water rush out, groped along the ground in the dark for the end of the hose. Suddenly it was easy to find: the arsonist had turned a strong light in his direction. Bob laid his hand lightly on the gushing nozzle and grinned.
“Hi, Pyro.”
“Who the hell are you?” Pyro demanded, stepping near and pulling a pistol from his pocket. “Are you with Meph? What’s your name?”
“Logan Alberti,” Bob hazarded. “Yeah, I’m with Meph.”
“Are you? Then what’s the shape of the mole on his chin?”
“How should I know?” Bob said, remembering Spangles. “He’s got a beard.”
“OK, well, turn the hose off. What the hell did you think you were doing? Junior ordered this.” Pyro gestured toward the rising flames that were blistering the old paint on the wallboards of the shed.
“Right, sir,” Bob said. “Sorry.”
Suddenly, he lifted the hose and sprayed Pyro full in the face, and to his happy surprise the man dropped both his flashlight and his pistol. Bob scooped up the pistol and threw it into the darkness beyond the shed. Then he alternated spraying at the fire and at Pyro. Spraying Pyro was more fun. The arsonist was choking so that he could not call for help. He backed away and, still coughing and choking, produced an acetylene torch from another coat pocket and lit it with a cigarette lighter. He turned the flame up full. Holding the lit torch behind him to protect it from the water, he ran at Bob again. As he came closer, he moved the torch from behind his
back and directed its five-inch flame at Bob.
Bob did not want to find out the hard way whether the hose would extinguish the torch. Instead he dropped the nozzle and wrestled with Pyro. But the older man had his physical momentum and a ferocious anger in his favor. Momentarily, he brought the flame to bear on Bob’s face. Almost at once Bob relaxed and stopped fighting him. He stood at ease, neither retreating nor crying out as the flames bore directly into his open eyes. In shock Pyro withdrew the torch and found that Bob was grinning at him, unmoved and unburned.
“You’re a Mage!” Pyro cried.
“Nope, just conjured.”
Bob bent down and picked up the nozzle. As he turned the hose back on Pyro, again in the face, the man turned away spluttering and ran. Bob finished putting out the fire, turned off the spigot, and slipped out of the yard.
“Laban,” Clark whispered, “get the other griffin, and I’ll send Looper with you too, and go maybe a hundred meters over to the left and—here take Prof. Carlos with you.” He handed him the cloak he had been carrying. “All of you get over there fast and make some noise to draw them off. Make just enough noise to make sure they hear you, and then stop. Then fly into the woods and meet us there. Looper, you just follow them and do what they do.”
Laban’s head lowered and grew in size as wings expanded on either side of him. He took the cloak in his beak and, padding along with Looper at his side, went back to fetch the other griffin.
Cat had thrown down his heavy coat at his feet, but he was still sweating so heavily in his ammunition packed jacket that his fingers slipped on the surface of his assault rifle. He could not see anything in these woods, nobody seemed to know what was happening, and until a few moments ago he had been so sleepy that he had felt he might pass out on his feet. He envied the boys that Junior was allowing to stay in the inn, envied them especially after having heard such bestial calls and barks nearby, mixed with the sound of a human voice, as to jerk him fully awake. It was one thing to hunt down exhausted, frightened Magi and shoot them through their heads, quite another to be out here with some kind of wild animals. Maybe wolves? And who knew whether a wolf might be sneaking up behind him right now? That was one trouble with always going through another portal to some strange, new place. You had no way to know what kind of big, fierce animals might be around. To make matters worse, he had been forbidden to use his flashlight because it would warn the Magi of his location. He wished his squad would group up a little instead of being spread out around the portal site.
But here was Doper, whistling a recognition signal through the considerable gap in his front teeth. Doper could see him, Cat knew, because his friend still had his night vision goggles. Cat had lost his goggles several inns back and was hoping to pick up some new ones soon.
The short, long-haired Doper came near. “Man, we’re going over to see what that was. You stay here and guard the portal.”
“Give me your goggles, Doper. I can’t see a damned thing.”
“No, man, I gotta keep my goggles.”
“Get me some goggles, Doper! What’s the use of leaving me to guard if I can’t see the damned witches?”
“Oh, hell, I’ll ask Dandridge if he’ll loan you his.”
“The hell you will! You’ll go off and forget about me.”
“You shut up and do what I tell you.”
“You’re leaving me all by myself.”
“No, I’m not. We’re posting Albin on the other side of the portal. Between the two of you, you should be able to hear anyone who comes near, even if you can’t see them. Look, none of the Magi want to go back through this portal anyway, right? They know that if they do they’re back in a blizzard and freezing. Still, if anyone comes along, and you don’t hear a recognition signal, hit ’em with your flashlight. If it’s a Mage or an innkeeper, you know what to do.”
Cat grinned in the dark. His assault rifle was loaded and ready.
Julie had her phone to her ear, but had not yet heard the rebels in the living room say anything about Bob. Meanwhile, Clark had called forward a teenage boy who, until now, Julie had scarcely noticed. The Canadian and the boy had a short conversation in Kreenspam.
“What’s happening?” Julie whispered to Clark.
“Kruger says all but two of the Rebel squad ahead have gone away to somewhere over to the east of us. The diversion worked.”
“How does he know that?”
“Kruger is a seer, so he just knows. We don’t like to talk to him all that much because he might tell us things we don’t want to hear, such as who’s going to die next.”
Julie thought about this for a moment. “Please, ask him if Bob is all right.”
“Julie, he went off to the inn by himself. So, please, you don’t want to know what’s happened to him.”
“We haven’t heard any shots! Ask him.”
“Jalan be, Bob?” Clark said to the boy.
“Ban si seelkir veli,” he replied.
“He’s coming back here,” Clark said.
“Thank God,” Julie breathed.
Now Clark called forward the dwarfs and gave them instructions. Julie heard the clink of metal against metal and was reminded that each dwarf carried a little oil lamp encased in glass.
In order to clear the way for his men to pry apart the bricks of the fireplace, Junior had ordered his two older prisoners to move from the hearthstone and instead sit with their backs to a wall. Asher still stood guard over them. The third prisoner, the pretty girl, Junior had stood beside him, his meaty hand gripping her upper arm. The shed had supplied a shovel and the girl’s parents’ car a tire iron; and with the use of these, two of the Rebels had already torn out dozens of bricks, filling the air with dust.
“It’s not all work,” Junior was saying to the girl. “When we kick back, we can really enjoy life. You should see my Dad’s palace. Huge, big as a town. Hundreds of servants all over the place and, get this, no government to interfere with us. No taxes, no police, no nothing! That’s because the palace is sitting there way back in ancient times, and we get to it through the portals, and nobody else can. When we get done with these Magi—and it won’t be long now, baby—I intend to go back to the palace, light up a good cigar, drink Tequila, sleep half the day. And I mean this lasts for weeks. Does that sound good to you?”
“Sounds sweet,” Deirdre said smoothly. “Who is your dad?”
Junior paused while another clump of bricks tumbled down, revealing a hollow space. The man who had knocked the bricks aside looked inside the space. Maybe this was it.
“I thought we had the gem, Junior, but there’s nothing in here.”
Junior was disappointed but not greatly. “Just keep at it. Baby, my Dad is the head honcho of the universe. You think the President and the Russkies run the show? Huh-uh, it’s my Dad owns the portals and really decides what happens in the world. He’s richer than God and above the law. You know what above the law means? You think you do!” He laughed. “You don’t know. It’s the sweetest high that ever was. You want to get a piece of that? Of what lawless really means? You think it would be groovy to be one of us?”
She winked at him.
“If you trust a wicked man, it’s because of your own wickedness,” said a female voice from the mirror.
Deirdre calmly turned to look in that direction, but Junior started so violently that he released his grip on her. In a moment he remembered himself and, seizing her arm again and pulling her with him, approached the fireplace. Shovel and tire iron had stopped moving.
“What have we got here?” Junior said, looking up at the stained and spotted mirror with a grin. “Boys, I do believe this thing’s conjured. So maybe our old friend Sophia has been through here and has been up to her tricks again. A shame we can’t do to her what I’m about to do to this.” Still holding Deirdre, he stooped and took a brick in his free hand. “Have a seat and watch, boys
; take a break. Let’s see what this mirror has to say when it’s in a million pieces.”
With words of enthusiasm for the anticipated vandalism, the two Rebels laid aside their tools and obediently seated themselves. Junior backed off a step and heaved the brick into the middle of the mirror. The brick penetrated the mirror’s surface and disappeared, leaving behind no cracks. Junior’s smile slipped, and everyone was quiet.
“Maybe we should get Viv in here and get an opinion,” Junior said. “Where is she? Still in the Porto?”
“I think so, boss.”
“She said she’d go to the west portal to welcome the other squad when they come through,” Junior said petulantly. “Well, don’t just sit there, Burris, apply that shovel to the mirror. Stand up and swing it.”
Burris, a gray-headed, tattooed wonder with gold earrings, got up and tentatively raised the shovel. Before he could strike, the brick flew back out of the mirror, passing close by his head, and hitting the far wall with a thump, fell to the floor.
Junior stood staring at the mark it had left on the wall and breathing heavily. “Break the damn mirror,” he ordered again.
Burris lowered his shovel and turned to him with a pasty face. “I don’t know, Junior, these things are tricky. Like maybe, if I hit it, it’ll blow up or turn me into something.”
“Oh, it will not! They don’t work that way.”
“Yeah, but maybe we should wait till Vivien Wizardbane looks at it.”
Junior happened to look down at the girl Deirdre’s face and noticed that she was amused. “Never mind. Just turn it so it faces the wall and get on with the fireplace.”
The old Rebel lifted the mirror with infinite gentleness and set it down facing the wall.
Junior felt angry about even such a small reverse as this and angrier still because the girl had found it funny. “You’re a wimp, Burris,” he said. “You don’t have to be afraid of these things. Isn’t that right, Saul?”
This was addressed to the young man with the tire iron, who, Junior suddenly noticed, was drooping in his chair, his face fallen, tears on his cheeks.
Saul moaned aloud. “What have I done with my life?” he said. “My parents had such hopes for me. My God, what am I now? When I left home, I stole their money and their car. Now I’m just scum, I’m a murderer. How could I ever face them?”
“Shut up!” Junior ordered. “What’s the damned matter with you?”
Saul dropped the tire iron and covered his face with his hands. “I listened to you, that’s what’s the matter—you and Nineveh. Now I’m going to hell. I’m going to die and burn in hell.”
Junior was about to say something, but was interrupted by the girl, who was snorting with merriment. “Poor boy!” she said. “I’ll give you a hint, Junior. Get him out of that chair.”
Junior looked at the chair. Yes, this was the one he had already noticed as having an odd appeal. Suddenly it occurred to him that it might be conjured.
“Burris, tip him out of it.”
Burris quickly complied, and Saul sprawled across the floor.
“He’ll be all right in a few minutes,” Junior said. He looked around to the doorway. “What’s this? Heya, Viv. Are these our boys that’ve come from the other portal? Good job, boys, cutting them off. You really made it happen.”
Many newly arrived cutthroats were pouring into the room, most of them dressed in thin, loose black robes. But leading them was a tall, blonde woman, young and beautiful, dressed in flowing garments of great richness and wearing a single gold earring shaped like a dragon’s head. She approached Junior firmly and spoke to him with an elevated English accent.
“Freddy, they’re telling me you still haven’t got the old man.”
This was spoken in an even and pleasant tone, but Junior knew better than to think Vivien Wizardbane was merely making conversation. She always functioned as his father’s spy, to tally his every blunder and hesitation. More than that, she longed to recapture her personal enemy Merlin and would never forgive Junior if the master Mage escaped. She herself had been given no orders, carried no responsibility, while he would have to answer to his father for everything. Sometimes he wished the Magi would kill Vivien. He never felt so for long, however, for he was in love with her.
“We’re hunting him down, Viv,” he said with cheerful tones. “I’ll save him alive for you to play with.”
Saul had only just stopped sobbing and was getting up shakily from the floor. Vivien pushed him aside, causing him to fall down. She paid no attention to him but advanced on the older couple, who all this time had remained huddled on the floor with a pistol pointed at them, looking wide-eyed at everything that had passed.
“What about these?” she said surveying them with hungry, hopeful eyes.
“I don’t know, I don’t think they’re Magi.”
“I want them,” she said simply.
Cat had almost decided to turn his flashlight on when the lamps appeared. He paused to count them—seven. So he had not just been imagining sounds coming from in front of him. He raised his gun barrel and slipped forward. This was going to be easy. Sure, he would like to call Albin to back him up, but even one word would warn the Magi. Out would go those lamps and they would scatter. So easy does it. He moved forward silently, hoping to catch all seven lamp bearers in one burst of fire, planning how he would crouch and swing his barrel level with the ground. He could surely do it. Why call Albin? These Magi were his, all fourteen of them. Nothing to it. Just keep slipping forward, a few more steps and a few more.
Now he was so close that he was practically among them, so close that he could see that they were dwarfs, holding the lantern handles with child size hands, their little faces impassive, each one staring straight ahead as if entranced. His forward motion slowed. Now was the time to do something. He noticed that the dwarfs were standing in some sort of pattern, some star-shaped pattern, some infinitely significant pattern all around him. The pattern was fixed from the beginning of time, all twenty-one lights of it, solidified to the extent that he, at the center was now necessarily motionless. He thought it was the wisest thing, under the circumstances, to keep absolutely still, and it occurred to him that the heavy thing he was carrying had best be lowered. When he had lowered the thick end of it to touch the ground, then ever so slowly he looked around again, moving only his eyes. It did not surprise him, but seemed inevitable, that the trees and undergrowth were gone, in fact he barely remembered them. He was on a plain as flat as a chessboard, and on this plain, in their necessary, eternal pattern stood the twenty-one dwarfs with their twenty-one lanterns, and all was still.
After what seemed like a long time, he found that there was someone else in the pattern. A young woman was approaching him, holding something heavy in one hand against her long skirt. Presently she stood directly before him.
“They’ve got him,” she said hoarsely. “He’s like a statue.”
“Watch out for the other one!” a man’s voice said. “Look behind him!”
She raised the heavy thing and there was a flash of light and an explosion. For a minute or two he was left alone with the dwarfs, then a young man appeared in front of him.
“He’s still in a trance,” said the young man as he pulled the heavy object from Cat’s hands. “Let’s just take him with us. If the wood is conjured the way I think it is, and we want him to go in with us, then we’ll have to push him in ahead of us and follow.”
Jane sat on the ground near the edge of the wood, holding the hot flintlock pistol, and wept. They had covered up the corpse of the second Rebel after she had shot him, but she would forever carry the memory, just as she did the memory of the other Rebel she had shot in her own inn, the one who had fallen to his death out the window.
The dwarfs, reduced again to seven and with their lanterns extinguished, were moving past her, and the other Magi were following. Clark came
to her and helped her up.
“I looked at the other one,” he said, “and he’s still entranced. So we’re taking him with us as a hostage. Come on, Jane, you did the right thing. There was nothing else to do when he was about to shoot you and the dwarfs.”
“Is he dead?” she said miserably. “I mean is it certain?”
“Yes, it’s certain. Come on now. We have to hide in the wood.”
Junior was glad Viv was off looking for a large hollow tree. He did not want her to hear these reports of one man dead and another missing.
“So you didn’t find what was making the noise?”
“Just some animals, I guess,” Doper said. “I don’t know. I mean, we heard a man shout too, but we didn’t find any Magi over there, or anyone.”
“So what killed Albin?”
“He’s shot through the chest. Could have been a local hunter.”
“At night? No, it’s Magi. They’re out there and you missed them.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
Junior did not know how to pursue this, so he turned to Tor who, judging by his anxious face, seemed to want to tell him something.
“Yeah, what?”
“I’m not so sure this is the inn, Junior. There’s no food at all here, and we never found a gem.”
“Yeah, but there’s conjured stuff here, Tor. That door, and a chair, and a mirror.”
“We haven’t found Magi here either, Junior. And no inn sign. Maybe it’s just the Magi’s neighbors who live here and the people at the real inn gave them the chair and the mirror and conjured the door for them. It’s just not natural to have an inn with no food. Anyway, Meph just showed up, drove over from the little town down the road, and he says he thinks this is the inn but he’s not totally sure either, and sir, he’s been in this area all the time. He hasn’t seen an inn sign here either, and he says neither has that boy Logan that he recruited.”
“Tell Meph to get in here. So what do you want to do? Search other houses?”
“With your permission, sir.”
“Right. Then tell Pyro to reform the squads to sweep a wider circle and to include any nearby houses. We’ve got to figure that they did come through the portal and that they’re somewhere close around here. So then, hell, if we have to wait till daylight we’ll still get them. You know the ones we chased can’t be in much shape for walking. It’s only the dark that’s protecting them. They don’t have a chance. Don’t any of you know how to think positive? Attitude, man. If you think right, the opportunities just keep coming. You get on with it. Don’t send Asher and Saul out, though. They’re off with Viv, and they’ll come back here to get the prisoners for her. Tell Pyro I want him; and Burris and Meph can stay here too. Oh, and the Doubtful Duo. I want them here in case Viv can’t find a tree that suits her and we get to keep the prisoners and work on them. That’ll do it. Everybody else joins the hunt. Did Meph bring something to eat?”
“He’s supposed to have his local boy bringing something.”
“Well, he’d better hurry up. I’m starved.”
The Magi were in the Wandering Wood, but Julie was not. She knew that, once she was inside its borders, the spell, interacting with the presence of enemies, would prevent her from getting out and looking for Bob. So for several draining minutes she had been waiting on the Ghastly Path, holding her cell phone to her ear and watching for him. At last he came, whistling a few bars of a sprightly tune from a wizard movie—the goofball. She called his name and with a little difficulty they found each other’s hands in the dark. Bob described to her how he had saved the shed and added that, when trying to return, he had been forced to hide repeatedly, for Rebels were everywhere.
“More came through from the other portal,” she whispered to him. “I heard it on my phone. Their leader named Junior has almost all of them out looking for the Magi.”
“But you got all the Magi into the Wandering Wood?”
“I didn’t have much to do with it, but yeah, they’re all in there.”
“OK. What about Uncle Dave and Aunt Marci and Deirdre? Where are they?”
“Still in the inn. Somebody named Viv is supposed to come get them later.”
“Uggh, I think I know who that is.” Bob pondered. “How many Rebels are there in the inn?”
“I don’t know, but it sounded like maybe just five or six for the moment.”
“What about guards around it?”
“Nobody said anything about that. I don’t think there are any.”
“OK, it’s time for you to get out of here. Our cars are in the field across the road. Sneak up to yours and drive home fast. Keep your headlights off.”
She hugged him. “You know I’m not going to do that.”
“Yeah, you are. There’s nothing you can do here now. Look, go to the police. You’ve got to bring back the cops.”
“And why don’t you do that? What are you planning?”
“Nothing. Come on, let’s go in the wood.”
This she agreed to, and they walked hand in hand to the place where Bob had placed his sign. It was too dark to read its message: ‘Wandering Wood. Do Not Exit.’ Here he paused.
She turned to him. “What is it? What’s the matter?”
“Look into the wood,” he said, turning her gently. “What do you see?”
“Nothing. What is it? Hey!”
He had given her a tremendous shove, so that she stumbled forward several yards into some light brush. When she turned, he was running away.
“You weasel! You’re not going anywhere without me!”
She ran after him, pushing aside branches, advancing blindly through such thick undergrowth that she had to wonder if she was somehow going in the wrong direction. But she could hear sounds of movement ahead. Breathing hard and almost crawling, she pushed her way around a tall bush and reached some open space. Perhaps this was the path.
“Bob! Bob!” she whispered.
Suddenly a hand was over her mouth. People were around her, whispering in another language. She yanked the hand away.
“What is it? Who are you?”
“Your Mage friends,” a man’s voice replied. “I’m Professor Carlos.”
“Let go of me! I’ve got to get Bob. He’s still out there.”
“Shh. You must remember, the spell on the wood will not let you go.”
Dave Bernard felt unsteady on his feet, as if his fear were a heavy weight upon him. The humid July air did not seem enough to sustain him; he kept panting it in. He and Marci were in the inn’s yard closest to the road, their hands tied behind them and pistols to their heads. Enough light came from the house to reveal to him the Rebel beauty Vivien standing in front of them. Behind her stood the trunk of a large sycamore.
The tall lady was uncorking a vial produced from a purse at her waist. Momentarily, she flipped on a flashlight and shined it into a huge crack in the side of the trunk. She chanted something quietly in what seemed to Dave to be Latin.
While holding one of the pistols to Dave’s ear, Asher said to Vivien unhappily, “What are you going to do with these two?” He was apparently irritated by proceedings that he could not understand.
She did not seem to mind the interruption. “I’m perfecting something, dear boy. Dosage is so important when you’re attempting to bind someone in a thousand years’ sleep.”
“That’s what you did to Merlin,” Saul volunteered. His captive, Marci, made a weak, frightened sound.
“The old man,” Vivien calmly corrected. “Someone in his condition no longer deserves a name.”
After pouring a few drops into the interior of the hollow trunk, she stepped back and recorked the vial. “Untie them and put them in the tree,” she said lightly. “But keep the ropes handy in case it doesn’t work.”
“We can’t both fit in there!” Dave said pleadingly.
“Oh, but I’m sure you can, chu
rl, for you will have so great an incentive. Any body parts sticking out will be hacked off.”
Julie did not want to listen to her phone, for if Bob were to enter the inn, she would probably hear the sound of his being shot. Seated among the wizards in the middle of the Wandering Wood, she laid the phone by and tried to pay attention to the whispered conversations around her, though what little there was of it was in Kreenspam. To truly divert her thoughts, she would have to stir up the English speakers. Clark and Jane, she knew, were beside her.
“Clark?” she said in the darkness.
“Yes?” he answered softly.
“I want to talk about something, anything but where we are and what’s happening.”
“Good idea. So what’ll it be?”
“I think I hear one of the griffins breathing.”
“Yeah, he’s right beside us,” he said. “Which one is it Jane?”
“He’s the one that’s all griffin, not a changeling like Laban,” Jane whispered dully.
“That means he’s Veljel, the one our group left behind,” Clark said. “We had him with us, but he was too hard to control and was slowing us down, so we left him at one of the inns. Laban’s group came along after ours and picked him up.”
“Laban was very happy to find him,” Jane said wispily. “He has no trouble controlling him.”
“But where did it come from?” Julie asked.
“He isn’t even supposed to be here,” Clark said, “I mean in this world we grew up in, the world you think has all been mapped. He comes from the Great Forest, the Nash Seelkir. Merlin had brought him out of there for study. He’s one of the few Magi who have permission to bring creatures out of the Forest. So Veljel was in Merlin’s tower when Viv caught the Master and put him to sleep. Then the Rebels were closing in, so we had to remove Veljel with us. That was to save his life, but even more important, to make sure he wasn’t let loose. You can’t loose a Seelkir creature, not even in ancient England. There have been plenty of stupid lapses there as it is. You know, giants, dragons, that sort of thing. King Arthur has had a hundred headaches trying to deal with them.”
Jane Farrington spoke from the darkness, “But where is this Forest?”
“That’s the puzzle, isn’t it? It’s one of those places you can reach through the portals, or by other odd means, but you can’t possibly get there by ordinary three-dimensional travel. It’s not on the map. It’s funny how everybody knows about the Forest, everybody has been there in a sense, but almost no one believes it exists. Do you know any fairy tales?”
“Many,” Jane said.
“Well, most of them are either based on things that have happened in the Forest or are the sort of thing that could happen there.”
“That must be fun,” Julie said.
“No, it’s scary. It’s not a safe place even for Magi. So a solid, conjured boundary is kept up, or should be. What’s inside is often trying to get out, you see. My job was to maintain the boundary to the Forest as impassible on the side where Merlin had breached it for the sake of his work. And I did, though it’s a tricky proposition. But now… Well, the boundary may be holding or it may not. I should be there tending it, not sitting here in this big dark trap.”
Julie was already regretting her choice of subject. “What might come out of the Forest besides griffins?” she asked tightly. “You said giants and dragons?”
“That’s one more thing we have Nineveh to thank for. Without meaning to, he’s interrupted the Watch on the Forest. He wanted an empire and he got it, and he just doesn’t care how that affects other people, people who might have to face what could come crawling out of the Seelkir, or galloping; or slithering or flying.”
“The dwarfs come from there?” Jane asked.
“Sure do.”
Jane’s hoarse voice quavered. “Will these crawling, slithering things come to my forest, where my inn was?”
“They’d surely like to, but no, animals can’t speak the Kreenspam words to pass the portals. For that matter, without knowing how to find the portals and use them, even the intelligent creatures that might get out of the Forest near Merlin’s tower would be limited to Logris, to ancient England. They’ll just make havoc for Arthur.” Clark grew quiet. “I’m just thinking,” he said presently. “Merlin’s tower is at the junction of many portals, and Nineveh’s Rebels know the ways throughout the Realm, and so—actually, now that you mention it, there are some ugly possibilities. Remote possibilities. You’d have to suppose that some Rebel would, for some unknown reason, help the Forest folk onto the Magi roads. If that happened, even your quiet little bit of Regency England, Jane, might eventually have some peculiar visitors. Trolls, goblins. But not to worry, dearest, we won’t live to know about it.”
“I’ve got to listen,” Julie suddenly breathed. “I’m going to listen for Bob on my phone. If he’s in the living room, I’ll hear.” She snatched up the phone and held it to her ear. After a few moments she spoke again. “It’s all right, he’s alive. I can hear them talking to him. They must have taken him prisoner.”
Bob arrived unchallenged at the wreck of his own front door, left hanging open, and stood in the shadows on the porch. He grimaced as he felt and heard the crunch of glass underfoot, due to windows having been broken. The porch furniture had been overturned. He could see some of the Rebels standing in the lighted living room beyond the entrance hall, could see them through the frame where the now shattered security door had hung. The floor of the entry hall was littered with pieces of the door, bullets, and spent shells.
He had not yet tried to analyze what had brought him here. Partly, of course, it was that his relatives were being held inside. There was something more. If he had had to put it into words, it might have been in the form of a question: What is an innkeeper without his inn? The place was not yet burned, so what business did he have being outside of it? He had been warned by someone—he thought it was the dead man Johns—that this would happen, that he would become suicidally attached to his post, to this pile of old lumber. Now that it had happened, he could not say that he was unhappy. They, the Rebels, were the ones in the wrong, the ones who did not belong here. He would stand within where he did belong. He had no more plan than that.
He walked straight in through the entrance hall, then right in among them in the living room. The place, he saw, had been partly demolished, the hearth torn apart and the mirror removed. Windows were broken here too and some of the furniture knocked around. A man in a tie and white shirt stopped talking and looked at him. This was presumably Nineveh’s son Junior, whom Bob and Julie had heard addressed while listening in on her cell phone. The other men in the room stirred and drew weapons. He noticed that Deirdre was among them and not as a captive, or at least she was not bound and did not seem to be threatened by any of them. The thought that she might have joined them was far from surprising. She was Deirdre the Damned.
“Who are you?” one of the thugs demanded. He was old, ugly, tattooed, and wore lumpy earrings.
“Hi. I’m Bob, the innkeeper. You guys are going to have to leave,” he said gamely.
The man looked to Junior. “What the hell?”
Junior laughed. “Put him on the couch there.”
Bob sat down quickly so as to avoid being manhandled. He saw—as he had expected—that the base of the telephone was covered up, as it happened by Junior’s suit jacket. The receiver, he assumed, was still dangling by its cord between the table and couch. Junior approached him and looked down at him. Bob guessed that he had been made to sit because Junior, though tall, was not as tall as he.
“Bob,” Junior said, his handsome, slightly pudgy face alight, “you just did the stupidest thing in your life.”
Bob nodded. Yes, this had been pretty stupid.
“He’s my moronic cousin,” Deirdre volunteered. “He lives here.”
The ugly thug with the earring
s laughed. “Not for long.”