Mad Maudlin

by Mercedes Lackey

  "Aye, don't we all?" Greystone agreed somberly.

  Chapter Fourteen:

  Gravelwalk

  In a typical New York example of bad luck, Ace and Kayla's subway train went out of service at 34th Street, dumping several hundred irritated commuters out onto the platform. The train then closed its doors and sat there sullenly, blocking the tracks, with no relief in sight.

  "C'mon," Kayla said. "Let's walk up a couple of stops. Maybe they'll route around it or something. And at least we won't be stuck down here."

  Though she didn't have a lot of choice about taking the subway to get around the city, Kayla didn't like it much, especially at rush hour. With all those bodies packed in like sardines, you couldn't help touching people, and that meant she got to know a lot of people a lot better than she really wanted to sometimes. In an hour or so, not only would the blockage on the line clear up, the trains would clear out, too.

  So they walked uptown for a while.

  When they reached Times Square, they found that a street preacher had set up shop on the traffic island in the center of the square. He had an amplifier with him on a wheeled cart, and was shouting into a cordless microphone. His grossly amplified words echoed through the space around him.

  "Yea! And the Sabeans fell upon them and took them away! Yea! They have slain the servants with the edge of the sword, and only I am escaped alone to tell thee!"

  "Job 1:15," Ace muttered in disgust. "And he hasn't even got it right." She put a hand on Kayla's arm, trying to pull her past the crowd that had gathered around the man.

  Kayla looked at her in surprise. Ace hadn't struck her as particularly religious, let alone someone who could quote the Bible, chapter and verse, on the fly. But suddenly her attention was riveted by the god-shouter's next words.

  "Brothers and sisters, on that terrible day, I was there upon the Field of Blood, and God Himself reached out His Mighty Hand to shield me from the terrible destruction from the Towers. Daily I praise Jesus for giving me this miracle, and preserving me to bear witness to all of you that His Glory endureth, yea! Though the Sabeans fell upon them and took them away! Though they have slain the servants of God with their fiery sword, I am proof of Christ's miraculous love—"

  Kayla pulled away from Ace and started elbowing her way through the crowd, pushing to the front. The preacher was a white-haired old man in a long black coat and clerical collar that she bet he wasn't entitled to. There was a folding table beside him, with a jar for contributions, and taped to it were photographs of the Towers in flames, with a sorrowing Jesus crudely Photoshopped over them.

  It had not been an easy year for an Empath in New York. She knew, better than anyone other than the sufferers themselves, just what thoughts occurred in the panic of the moment, in the dark of the night, in the lonely times, in the times when even family said, "It's time for closure, get on with your life."

  Sure, as many people as had died that day died in car accidents every month . . . but not all at once. Not sacrificed to hatred, dying in terror, some of them knowing their fate for hours or minutes beforehand . . . and with the tragedy leaving a gaping unhealed wound in the very flesh of the city, visible for all to see.

  And not in a way that left survivors feeling guilty, so guilty, for being one of the ones that got out—or who hadn't been there at all. Wondering, "Why did I live?" or "Why didn't they?" Leaving the survivors—all the survivors—wondering if it was punishment, somehow . . . and wondering just who was being punished. Feeling angry, so angry, that a loved one hadn't survived that day. Bearing scars, visible and invisible. Wanting revenge, wanting to punish the people responsible, and knowing that would never, ever happen.

  What had happened that day was and would be inescapable: like other tragedies, needing only its name to invoke its memory in all the years to come. Dallas. Challenger. Oklahoma City. September 11th. It had been horrible. It was still horrible, though the shock and the rawness of the grief, if not the magnitude of the tragedy, diminished with time.

  And then—this.

  "You!" Kayla shouted, interrupting him. "Just who do you think you are?"

  The preacher stopped dead, and stared at her.

  "Hey!" Ace hissed, tugging at her elbow. Kayla ignored her.

  "Even if you aren't lying through your teeth, which I doubt," Kayla continued savagely. "Just what makes you think you're so especially holy and deserving of a miracle? Are you trying to say that those people in the Towers and the planes and at the Pentagon weren't? That they deserved to die, and you and you alone deserved a miracle?"

  The preacher's mouth worked, but no sound came out. Ace stared at Kayla in horrified fascination, but Kayla had just gotten started.

  "What about all the babies that died?" she snarled into the bubble of silence that had formed around them. "Do you think you're so much more pure than a baby that you deserved a miracle more than they did? Do you go around saying to everybody who lost someone that day that their loved ones were so horrible that they deserved to die and you're so wonderful that you deserved to live? Is this the way you show people that God loves them?"

  The preacher's eyes were blank and expressionless. She shouted at him in frustration. "Am I even getting through to you? Are you thinking at all? If God could have made that kind of a miracle, don't you think He would have kept the whole thing from happening at all? Does it even occur to you how much you're hurting people every time you open your mouth to claim that you're a better person than someone who was just in the worst place at the wrong time? Or are you just thinking of how much money you can get out of it? Dammit, how does doing something like this make you any better than the people who flew those planes into the Towers in the first place?"

  She turned to the crowd. "We're better than this! We have to be! Or else— Or else—" Her eyes filled with tears, and she couldn't continue.

  The crowd began to applaud, shouting derisively at the preacher as he tried to resume his harangue.

  Ace was beside her, putting an arm around Kayla's shoulders.

  "Or else it was all for nothing," she said quietly. "All those deaths, and all the good everybody's tried to do since."

  * * *

  They went down into the subway again to wait for a train. Kayla could tell that Ace wanted to say something. For herself, she was still shaking all over with anger. People like that "Reverend"—people who took other people's pain and turned it into a cash cow for themselves—they were the lowest of the low.

  "What you did back there," Ace said, "that was good. I wish I'd had the nerve to do that. A long time ago."

  "I hate people like that," Kayla said feelingly.

  "So do I," Ace said. "C'mon. Let's go home."

  "If you—" Kayla began. If you had someplace else to go—someplace better—would you go there?

  But just then a train pulled into the station, and the opportunity for that conversation was lost.

  * * *

  When they got back up to The Place, the tension in the atmosphere hit Kayla like a slap. Chinaka hurried over as soon as she saw them.

  "Kayla! Thought we wouldn't see you again!" she said, giving Ace a poisonous look. "Doin' all right," she said, giving Kayla's clothes an appreciative glance. "Where's Eric?"

  "Been lookin' all over for him," Kayla said. "Guess he's moved on."

  "Wouldn't be surprised—with how welcome some people made him feel," Chinaka said. "You wanna hang with us? We got smoke."

  Kayla slid her eyes sideways. Ace had drifted off, unwilling to provoke a further confrontation.

  This must be why Ace had been so relieved to see Kayla again. Feuds as well as friendships developed quickly on the street, and Kayla and Eric coming in had been enough to tip the balance. And those spells Eric had cast to make Chinaka and the other girls like him probably hadn't helped matters any . . .

  "Catch you later," Kayla said. "I got some stuff to do."

  She went over and sat down next to Ace, who was sitting with Magnus over in their
corner. Something had happened here, too, though Kayla wasn't quite sure what it was. Magnus seemed tense, and Ace was unhappy.

  Looking at the room, even though everyone was spread out all over it, Kayla could almost see the invisible dividing line: Ace and Magnus and Jaycie, and everyone else.

  "You sure you want to be here?" Ace said, a little bitterly, though she made room for Kayla to sit down.

  "I couldn't stop them," Magnus said, resuming the conversation he'd been having with Ace before Kayla'd come over. "I was afraid they'd go for Jaycie if I did. They didn't take much."

  Looking around, Kayla could see that Ace's makeshift bookshelf was gone, and the tidy orderly piles of things were all scrambled.

  "Just my books. And most of our food," Ace said wearily. She turned to Kayla. "You hang with us, you aren't going to be real popular."

  "I choose my own friends," Kayla said. "And you look like you could use some."

  Ace let that pass without comment. "But Jaycie's okay?" she asked.

  "Sure," Magnus said, shrugging. "He didn't even wake up."

  Kayla winced, feeling the sudden flare of fear and anger. But Ace had a good tight rein on her temper—outwardly at least. She just got very quickly up off the sleeping bag and hurried over to the corner where Jaycie was sleeping.

  "Hey," Magnus said. "You better not wake him up. Ace! Remember what happened the last time—"

  But Ace wasn't listening. She knelt down beside Jaycie.

  "Jaycie, honey, wake up. It's Ace. It's time to wake up now."

  Jaycie didn't move.

  Ace reached out and shook him, ignoring Magnus' protests. Still no response.

  Kayla came over, Magnus following her a little warily.

  "You'd better not get too close," he told Kayla. "He can get really upset when you wake him up suddenly."

  "Can't you see he isn't going to wake up?" Ace burst out angrily. "I told you he was sick, but you wouldn't listen!"

  "He sick?"

  Shimene had wandered over to what Kayla thought of as "their" side of the room. Two of the other girls stood behind her—Graz and another girl whose name Kayla couldn't remember. Shimene gazed down at the four of them, her expression simultaneously smug and frightened. "He gonna die?"

  "Go away," Ace said, not looking up.

  "You don't tell me what to do, white girl," Shimene said angrily. Behind her, her two girlfriends muttered encouragement.

  "If he's got something horribly contagious, I'd sure hate for you to catch it—and die," Kayla said sweetly. "You haven't touched him or anything, have you?"

  "Yeah, you aren't looking so good, Rent-a-Butt," Magnus chimed in. "Better back off."

  Shimene took a step backward. "He sick, you better get him outta here," she said, retreating hastily to the other side of the room.

  "He won't wake up," Ace groaned, sounding truly terrified.

  "Look," Kayla said, "I don't think he's sick, exactly. And I think I can help. But I don't want to do it with all those other kids here. The way things look like they're going right now, there might be a riot. And the three of us can't take all of them on."

  "You're right," Ace said. She stroked Jaycie's forehead. The boy didn't stir at all. Except for his slow steady breathing, he might have been dead. "He feels all right. There isn't any fever . . . and Shimene's always been trouble. Some of the others, well, they won't start trouble, but they won't stop it, either. Oh, Jaycie . . ."

  All at once she seemed to come to a decision. She turned away from the sleeping boy and faced the other two, smiling a dangerous smile.

  "You want them gone so you can help Jaycie? I'll get rid of them. Here," Ace said, holding out her hands to the other two. "You hold my hands, both of you. It gentles it some. And whatever you do, don't let go."

  Kayla took Ace's hand reluctantly. She was wearing gloves, and so was Ace, which provided some insulation, but it was still an intimate thing. She tightened her shields as much as she could, but as soon as she took Ace's hand she still felt the younger girl's anger and despair flood into her, swamping her own emotions until she could no longer tell which were her own feelings and which were Ace's. And with the emotions, a stray scrap of thought.

  I swore I'd never do this again—but it's for Jaycie—

  Ace took a deep breath and began to sing.

  At first she sang very softly, almost in a whisper, but slowly the volume of her song grew, drowning out the rap music from the various CD players in the room.

  "Ladybug, Ladybug, fly away home . . . your house is on fire; your children will burn—"

  A nursery rhyme or a folk-song; Kayla couldn't remember which. Ace had a strong trained voice; it filled the room with ease. And Kayla felt the uprush of Power from the other young Talent—and more. She felt absolute terror, a primal need to get out of this place, to be somewhere, anywhere else.

  She watched in amazement as the effects of the song struck the other teenagers in The Place. If, as Ace said, holding her hands "gentled it some," they had no such defense. Suddenly every one of them—even those who had been asleep when Ace began to sing—was consumed with the single desire to be gone.

  Kayla looked on as they hastily grabbed anything that they could, just as if The Place really were on fire.

  Ladybug, ladybug—

  And rising up from somewhere, Bardic power. Young, unawakened, unaware. But there, waiting to be roused. Suddenly it flooded into her as well.

  And with that, Kayla's shields crumbled. She felt like a penny in a fusebox, barely able to retain her identity beneath the uprush of a power she'd never been meant to carry. She resonated to the terror Ace was projecting like a tuning fork, her own Empathic power turning itself somehow inside-out, projecting itself as Ace's did, projecting raw fear; broadcasting emotion instead of receiving it.

  That which can heal can also harm.

  Ladybug, ladybug—

  * * *

  It had started out as a rotten day and was now going on to be a weird one. A few hours after Ace had left, some of the others had come over and started rooting through her things, saying they just wanted to "borrow" some stuff.

  Yeah, right.

  Just as Magnus had told Ace, he'd tried to stop them, but then a couple of them had gone for Jaycie, starting to pull him out of his sleeping bag. Jaycie hadn't even stirred, and that had scared Magnus even more. It had been pretty clear to Magnus that he could either protect Jaycie, or his and Ace's things. Not both.

  He knew they'd been laughing at him for not fighting back. But he'd had no particular desire to get knifed or razored. Or shot, for that matter.

  Then when Ace finally showed up with Kayla, she went ballistic—not (as Magnus had expected) over her stuff getting trashed, but because Jaycie slept through it all. Shouldn't that be a good thing?

  Next, this Kayla person went all over psychic healer on them, saying she could help Jaycie—weird thing number two—and—weird thing number three—Ace went for it. And when Kayla said she needed privacy, Ace offered to clear The Place out.

  By . . . singing?

  By now the weird things were piling up too fast to count. Ace never sang, and didn't much like music, as far as Magnus had been able to tell. He guessed he was willing to hold hands with her, because she'd had a rough day.

  But after that . . .

  He wondered if he'd gotten hit on the head by one of the other kids and just managed to forget about it, because when Ace started singing, he started hallucinating.

  Heat flowed from her hand into his, just as if she'd plunged his arm into a tub of hot water. He tried to pull his hand away, but her grip was too strong. And even though she was just singing some stupid nursery rhyme, over and over, he could hear music behind it: a full orchestra.

  And he was afraid.

  Of course he was afraid. He was losing his mind. He was so hot all over now that he was sweating, just as if it was summer, not winter.

  And the other kids . . .

  They were scrambli
ng to get out of The Place, grabbing everything they could in a hurry, throwing on coats and shoes and grabbing for backpacks and stashes.

  If it's my hallucination, I wonder if I can affect it?

  He tried thinking the orchestra louder. Wagner louder.

  It cooperated.

  He could feel the floorboards tremble under him, just as if the music were real, but Magnus didn't care. This was just a hallucination. Somebody'd probably slipped him some drugs. So he'd deafen them in return. Fair was fair. Magnus cranked an imaginary amplifier up a few more notches.

  He could feel the whole building vibrating now—with the invisible orchestra that loud, he shouldn't have still been able to hear Ace singing, but somehow he could. That contributed to the comforting feeling that none of this was actually happening, and made him a little less afraid.

  * * *

  Jachiel ap Gabrevys had finally lost himself in the shadowlands. This time, at last, he knew he would not waken. He did not know if this was what humankind called sleep, this condition he could only reach through the foods of mortal lands; he only knew that this dark oblivion was a sweet thing that he courted desperately.

  He would be very sorry to leave his human friends. If he only had their mortality, there would be no need to slip into Dreaming. Were he only mortal, there would be no need for any of this.

  But he was what he was. Every day of his life he had dreaded the thought that the day would come when he must begin to learn the arts and disciplines of magic, the day when he would begin to be of some use to the Prince, his Father. He could not bear the thought. He dreaded it, all of it: the magic he felt ripening in his very bones, the uses he would be forced to put it to, the politics and necessities of the Court.

  And so he had run away, to a place he had only heard of in Bards' legends. The World Above. A place without magic, without elves. A place where the Dreaming was possible.

  And now—at last—he had what he sought.