Mad Maudlin

by Mercedes Lackey

  At that moment, Eric beckoned the others forward.

  Hesitantly, Toni walked into the darkened living room, bringing the children with her. She kept her sword down, doing her best to make it look like a tool, not a threat. She put her free arm around Magnus—of the two kids, he was the more skittish, and she could tell that the whole scene had him pretty spooked.

  They reached Eric's side.

  * * *

  "This is Rionne ferch Rianten, Jaycie's Protector," Eric said quietly. "She comes from Underhill." He thought it was just as well to leave out the Unseleighe part of things. It didn't matter at Jaycie's age, and Rionne's loyalties were to Jaycie, not to either Court.

  "Is she going to take him back?" Ace said harshly.

  "I have to go," Jaycie said, still clinging to Rionne. He wore no glamourie now, and appeared fully Elven. He gazed past Eric, at Ace and Magnus, willing them to understand.

  "I never should have come here. I never should have . . . loved you both. But I was afraid of my magic, of what I would learn to do with it—of what my father would want me to do with it. So I ran away. But that just made things worse."

  Rionne held him tightly. "Nothing you could ever do would be wrong in my eyes, my heart," she said to him fondly.

  Jaycie closed his eyes for a moment. "I know. I should have thought of that. But I was scared. And now . . ."

  "And now we will go, on the Bard's promise, to the Bright Court and Elfhame Misthold, where we shall cry 'Sanctuary' and you may be healed of the ills the mortal world has dealt you. And when we have had time to consider matters further, the Bard will speak to the Prince, your father," Rionne said firmly.

  I will? But Eric guessed he'd volunteered for the job, in a way. And serving as envoys between Courts was one of the traditional jobs of Bards.

  But . . . an elf who didn't want to learn magic?

  "So you're just going to leave? And we're never going to see you again?" Ace asked.

  She sounded utterly lost. Romances were common between the Sidhe and humankind; the elves found humans just as fascinating as humans found elves enchanting. But such romances were commonly brief. And usually, when they were over, the Elven partner clouded the human's memories to spare them the pain of bereavement.

  Not this time.

  Eric could see the moment when Jaycie realized just how badly he'd hurt his mortal friends. By the time he was mature enough by Sidhe standards to leave Underhill again, many years would have passed in the World Above. Ace and Magnus would be very old, if not dead.

  "Perhaps you will be allowed to come and visit me Underhill," he said softly, taking a step away from Rionne. "I am sorry, my friends. I never meant to hurt you."

  "Eric," Magnus said urgently. "Can't you stop her? Can't you keep him here?"

  Eric turned to his brother. Magnus' face was white and strained, with the panicky expression of someone very much afraid he's about to cry.

  "They have to go, Magnus," Eric said, very gently. "If they don't go, they'll both die. There are places that elves can live in the World Above, but New York isn't one of them. And Jaycie needs help that he can't get here."

  "He'll be safe? And happy?" Magnus said desperately.

  "Yes. That much I can promise. Maybe—" He thought quickly. "Look, I have friends Underhill with e-mail. It'll take some time, but I'll fix it so you can e-mail each other. More than that, I can't promise." He turned back to Rionne. "I'll loan you my elvensteed, Lady Day—you'll find her below." He spared a bit of magic to take his promise to the elvensteed, who was taken a bit aback for a moment, but then agreed. "She awaits you; she can take the two of you through the Everforest Gate to Elfhame Misthold. You'll find Sanctuary there."

  Lady Rionne bowed her head in acknowledgement. "That makes good hearing, Bard. And perhaps—when the child is grown—I shall return to your world. From what I have seen here, your children need a Protector also."

  For just a moment, the Elven Knight vanished, and the form of the radiant Blue Lady appeared in her place, then Rionne stood before them once again.

  "Child, it is time to go."

  "One moment, Rionne, please," Jaycie said.

  He walked over to Ace, and stared down at her for a long moment. "I lied to you before, because I was afraid. The Healer and the Bard both told you the truth. About everything. You should trust them. They'll protect you."

  "I know," Ace said, her voice thick with tears.

  "I wish I could stay," Jaycie said. "But it isn't right for me to." He put his arms around her and held her very tightly. "You humans have so very many wonderful things, and you never appreciate half of them!"

  Then he let her go and turned to Magnus.

  "I'm sorry I hit you—more than once, I guess. You were a good friend to me, one I didn't deserve. Let your brother help you, or, or—or I shall send Rionne to make you heed him!"

  "Yeah, right," Magnus said raggedly, as Jaycie hugged him very hard.

  "Now," Jaycie whispered, stepping away from Magnus, toward his Protector.

  Rionne stepped forward—

  —and suddenly the humans were alone in the room.

  "Elves know how to make an exit, gotta give 'em that," Kayla said into the silence.

  "That's all very well," Hosea said, "but just now we've got more than a little housekeeping to do here." He nodded his head at the room full of bespelled people.

  "Right," Eric said, thinking hard. "I think the best thing is for everybody to forget that tonight ever happened. The whole thing will just fall apart without Fafnir, anyway."

  Hosea nodded. "A little healin', a power o' forgettin', and let their own minds do the rest. Sounds good."

  Having set the terms of the spell, Eric summoned up his Flute of Air, and let the Bardic magic spill out in a skirl of notes.

  First music to cleanse and heal, sweeping away the last of Fafnir's toxic and baneful influences from the area. In a way, it was like jazz improvisation, the flute and the banjo winding around each other, each taking its turn to lead the melody. Eric could see Kayla's face relax as the last of the psychic and magical mess was swept away, and even Eric felt better once it was done.

  But all that was like cleaning up a kitchen before you were going to cook in it. Now they were going to cook. And once they were done, all of Fafnir's former disciples would go home, forgetting all about tonight—and particularly about Fafnir's death. Over the next several days, they'd forget all about Fafnir and the whole True and False Guardians scenario, retaining only as much information about their Fafnir-related activities as they needed to make sense of their day-to-day lives. But none of the things relating to Fafnir would seem very important, or very real, and in a year or so they'd forget about him, and what they'd done in the "Guardian" cult entirely.

  His intent lodged firmly in his mind, Eric began to play.

  He chose an old Gospel song—it seemed fitting, somehow: "On The Wings of a Dove." He knew Hosea would know it.

  But to his surprise, on the second repeat of the melody, Ace joined in as well, singing the words.

  Her voice was high and true and pure, filled not with Bardic magic, but with the power of her Talent. The song's words spoke of love, of endless forgiveness and healing, and as Ace sang, everyone in the room felt those things, blending into the magic, soothing the frightened panicky people, making it easier for the spell to do its work. She drew all of them together: Healer and Guardian, Bards and Bard-to-be, drawing their Powers and Talents gently together into a whole.

  And as the spell worked its way over them, Fafnir's people slowly got to their feet. They looked confused and distracted, but no longer frightened. Moving as if they did not see anything out of place—Eric, Hosea, Toni, the kids; Fafnir's body; the broken candles or shattered glass—they moved through the apartment like sleepwalkers, retrieving coats and hats and purses. In a few minutes all of them—including, presumably, the apartment's rightful tenant—were gone, and the others were alone.

  Eric brought the so
ng to an end and released the spell, knowing the magic would follow them out into the world to finish its work.

  The living room went silent, and suddenly Eric could really feel the cold for the first time. It was a lot colder twenty stories up than it was at street level, but when he'd walked in and seen Rionne standing there, he'd been too focused to pay much attention to it, and things had been moving too fast since then.

  Ace shook herself as if she were rousing from a dream, and glared at Eric and Hosea with confused suspicion.

  "Who are you people?" she demanded, taking Magnus' hand protectively. "You—I saw you down at the shelter," she said to Hosea.

  Hosea nodded.

  "Ah guess we might ask you the same thing," Hosea said with a smile. "You surely gave us a goodly bit of help there. Made the helpin' we did for those poor folks go down a might easier."

  Ace made a wry face. "It's what I do," she said bitterly. "I can make anybody believe any kind of lie."

  "But you weren't lyin'," Hosea said. "You were helpin' them see the truth. Girl, ain't it true that there's love, an' love forgives? Ain't it true that God—whatever name you want to call Him by—don't want nothin' for us but what's right and good for us? It's a powerful Gift, if you use it rightly. Have you ever thought that if you were given a goodly gift, you could choose to do goodly things with it?"

  Ace stared at him for a moment and began to cry. It wasn't the kind of crying of someone who was hopeless. It was the kind of weeping that came from someone who had just been offered hope, unforeseen, unexpected.

  "Oh. Oh, jeez," Magnus said, sounding horrified, angry, and disgusted all at once.

  "Have we come at a bad time?" Paul Kern asked, walking in to the living room, closely followed by José. "My, what a mess."

  "You don't know the half of it," Kayla said fervently.

  She walked over and tried the light switch—there wasn't any reason to leave the lights off now, and she wanted to see if they still worked. They did. The sudden tasteful brightness further reduced the scene to ordinariness.

  "I'll go see what's in the kitchen," Toni said briskly. "I think our host owes us a few refreshments."

  Hosea had led Ace over to the couch—far away from the body—and gotten her to sit down, sitting down beside her and offering her a large white handkerchief. José came out of a back room with a bedspread and draped it over Fafnir's body. Even though everybody knew what was under the lump, it was better not having to look at it.

  "I turned the heat up to 'high'," Kayla said, coming and perching on the couch next to Ace and Hosea. "Not that it'll make much difference with that honking big hole in the wall."

  Paul followed Toni into the kitchen, presumably to get her version of the night's events.

  Magnus looked at Eric.

  "Things always this much fun around here?" the boy suggested, in tones that indicated it had been anything but.

  "No," Eric said. "Usually it's quiet for, oh, months at a time."

  "You meant it about not sending me back to Boston, right?" Magnus said aggressively. Eric nodded.

  "I'm not a musical prodigy," the boy continued.

  "I know you're not," Eric said.

  The boy looked startled and a little annoyed. Well, having been told from the time he could walk that he was a musical genius, it was probably a little offputting to have his talent so casually dismissed.

  "You're undoubtedly a very good musician. That much certainly runs in the family. You might be a Bard—or Talented in some other way. I'm not in any hurry to find out," Eric said, with a gesture of indifference. "All I want is to get you some space to find out for yourself what you want and what you're good at." Eric said.

  Magnus shrugged. "Fine with me. What's a Bard?"

  Just then Toni and Paul returned, carrying bottles of juice and a bag of paper cups. "Our host has an amazing collection of liquor, and quite a wine cellar, but I managed to find some juice," Toni said.

  She passed around cups, making particularly sure that the young Talents—Ace and Kayla—had some. Ace had gotten herself back under control now, but still looked rather strained. As would anyone whose greatest secret had been dragged out into the open for everyone to see.

  "It doesn't matter who your folks are," Eric heard Kayla tell her. "Ria Llewellyn'll eat 'em for breakfast."

  "Oh, I do believe she could," Ace said. "If she wanted to."

  "She'll want to," Eric said.

  "But right now we have another problem," Toni said. She pointed toward the corpse on the floor.

  "Looked like he died of a heart attack," Eric said.

  "He did," Hosea said quietly.

  Eric smiled. "Well, I don't see why this guy shouldn't have a heart attack in his own apartment and be found there, for one thing. Greystone?"

  A moment later, the gargoyle—who had landed on the roof about the same time Paul and José had come in the door—flew in through the open window and waddled over to the body on the floor. He peeled back the cover and regarded it critically.

  "Nasty piece o' work this," he said. "Troublin' poor Miss Caity and all those others the way he did. Some people do improve life by the leavin' of it. Just leave this to me, folks; there isn't an apartment in the five boroughs I can't get into when I'm of a mind to. I'll even make the 911 call from his apartment so they find him before too long. How's that?"

  "Perfect," Eric said.

  Greystone slung the body over his shoulder and climbed to the windowsill again. He sprang out into the night, falling like a, well, rock. Ace gave a small squeak of alarm, but a few moments later they saw a dark speck silhouetted against the moon: the gargoyle with its burden.

  "That takes care o' everything but Mr. Neil Grandison's window," Hosea observed a moment later.

  "I'd just as soon leave it, rather than repair it by magic," Eric said, after a moment's thought. "He'll need some reason why he went out tonight. And big birds do fly into them and shatter them from time to time."

  "Ayah," Hosea said approvingly. "Probably that's jest what happened here."

  "It's been a long night," Toni said, looking around. "Let's go home."

  "That means you guys, too," Eric said to Ace and Magnus. "You're with me."

  For a moment the two runaways looked at each other.

  "Hey, Ace," Magnus said. "I bet Eric's got a television with all the channels—"

  What? The non sequitur made no sense to Eric. But tired as she was, Ace's face lit up with secret mischief.

  "Internet access—?"

  "A refrigerator and a stove," Magnus said.

  "Coffee—" Ace said next, with the air of one playing out an old game.

  "A bathroom and a door that locks," the two of them finished in chorus, before dissolving into helpless, and slightly hysterical laughter.

  Chapter Seventeen:

  Boys Of The Lough

  This Thanksgiving Eric had even more than usual to be thankful for.

  He'd found Magnus alive and well.

  Having a "baby" brother was still a whole new world for Eric, and one that was going to take a lot of getting used to, for both of them. For one thing, he was going to need a larger apartment. Toni had promised to give him the first two-bedroom that she could manage to free up, but that would take a while. For now, Magnus was sleeping on the couch in the living room, and Eric had spent the past week shopping for clothes for him, and trying to decide what to do about school and other such mundane necessities.

  The two of them arrived at Ria's apartment around two, having spent the morning down at Macy's, watching the parade with the rest of the New York crowds. They'd had beautiful—if ice-cold—weather for it, and a good view of all the performances. Christmas decorations were already up on most of the buildings, which Eric thought was hardly fair—Christmas was weeks away, wasn't it? And it looked like it was going to be a white one.

  Ria had argued, logically enough, that as she had the largest apartment and the biggest dining room table, Thanksgiving should be he
ld at her place, and Eric could see no reason to disagree with this plan. She had the biggest kitchen, too, even if (he suspected) everything was going to be shipped in from an upscale caterer.

  But when the private elevator opened into the foyer, Eric's nostrils were assailed by the smells of . . . cooking?

  "Hey," Magnus said appreciatively. "Smells like food."

  "You can't be hungry," Eric protested. Magnus had eaten three hot dogs during the parade, assuring Eric they wouldn't spoil his appetite for dinner at all.

  "Can," Magnus said simply, heading off in the direction of the food smells without bothering to take off his jacket.

  * * *

  Ace waved as they appeared in the doorway.

  "Boy, when I said I wanted a kitchen, I wasn't expecting something like this," she said, grinning.

  "Hey . . . wow," Magnus said, and for once Eric knew he wasn't thinking about food.

  A week—and a shopping spree—had worked radical changes on the young teenager. Her pale blonde hair had been cut so that it haloed her face in a trendy mop of curls. Small gold hoops glittered in her ears. Expert makeup made her blue eyes seem enormous, and mascara darkened her lashes. And tight blue jeans and a form-fitting sweater didn't hurt matters either.

  She looked, in fact, like a normal, healthy, teenage girl. Pretty, too.

  Accent on the teenage, Banyon. Mind your manners. "You look great," Eric said, as his brother had apparently just been struck dumb. "But what's all this?"

  "It's dinner," Ace said. "When Ria said she was going to get a bunch of store-bought stuff, I said I'd cook. She's done so much for me—and I like to cook."

  "You can cook?" Magnus said, drifting toward a platter of devilled eggs.

  "Out!" Ace turned, quick as a flash, to intercept him. "You haven't even taken off your coats yet. You go take off your coat, Magnus Banyon, and wash your hands, and then—maybe—you can come back into my kitchen and I'll give you something to keep body and soul together until dinner. Which won't be for a couple of hours, because Ria called and she's running late, and—as you can plainly see—Hosea and Kayla aren't here yet. And the turkey isn't ready anyway. So scat."