One of the Unseleighe came forward, his sword still sheathed. He didn't seem particularly concerned that Adam and his two warrior elves brandished theirs. This elf, once he drew closer, seemed no older than Adam and wore thick leather armor. Though no insignia distinguished him, Adam felt this was their leader, come to parley. Before he had come too close, Adam smelled a horrible stench, one he remembered from the battle of his youth. Father had explained this was what the Unseleighe smelled like, rank and ripe, and with the hordes that lined the horizon that horrible day, the air was full of their stench.
The smell was horrible, and Adam tried not to let it show on his face. "I don't know you," the Unseleighe said. "You look like none of the warriors our leader took with him, Above." He glanced at the weapon Niamh held. "What have you there?"
"Zeldan Dhu sent us for it," Niamh squeaked, sounding anything but warriorlike. "He awaits its return as we speak."
A shadow passed over the Unseleighe's face, a mask of doubt, emphasized by a twitching of his right, pointed ear. He raised his nose and took a deep breath of the air. Then a wicked smile crossed his elven features.
One thing we left out of the disguises, Adam realized, too late. We don't stink!
He pulled his sword, as did his elves. "You are not Unseleighe."
"Shields," Adam said, pulling at the Gate for the power to create the protection. Marbann carefully and quickly erected thin barriers around them, as much as the weakening power flows would allow.
The Unseleighe attacked, and Adam's group moved forward; the enemy didn't sense the shield in time and ran headlong into it. Temporarily stunned, the Unseleighe stepped backward.
Adam's vision turned red. The Unseleighe were targets now, and his hunter's instinct, long dormant, now surfaced. He felt a change come over him, fueled by rage, but originating from something primal within. Something his ancestors possessed, perhaps, or something connected to his mage abilities. At any rate, he was no longer Adam McDaris, the civilized, mild-mannered human youth.
He was King Aedham Tuiereann, standing on the ruins of his clan's palace, where his father and mother had been murdered, his clan banished from what was rightfully theirs.
And he was pissed off.
"You will all die for this," Aedham said to the Unseleighe. Then all Hades broke loose.
It began as a distant thunder, like an approaching storm, but as it deepened and strengthened, the very ground they stood on shook; the Unseleighe looked at each other uncertainly.
Never seen a mage on the other side of a conflict, have you? Adam thought briefly, then reached for more of the node powers, seeking in his mental vision the mouth of the Gate and the power beyond. First he strengthened the Gate itself, to insure their return, then, like grabbing a rope, he pulled. The node power increased and surged toward him, reaching through the ground, then surfacing where they stood. Then he went to work on the Unseleighe.
The eight remained in place, but looked uncertain as to what was happening. Holding his father's crystal in his right hand, Adam found it easier to manipulate the node power, first by decreasing the resistance, then by channeling it into the nearest focal point—the sword he held. Bronze proved to be an excellent medium. The power flowed into it, a short broadsword that looked plain in the light of day, but as node power raced into it, it glowed white.
Adam stepped from the protection of the shield and lunged for the first Unseleighe, the leader who first approached him. Though visibly frightened, the elf held his ground, assuming a defensive stance with his sword.
As the swords clashed, it soon became clear they were unevenly matched. A node-powered sword against a similar model that was not so equipped had an interesting effect. It melted the opponent's weapon.
Adam parried and thrust, then advanced toward the elf, who withdrew immediately. He seemed to sense something wrong with his weapon, which had begun to glow not with node power but with heat. The tip drooped, and Adam watched, amid the swordplay, the area of red hotness creep toward the handle. Pain registered on the opponent's face. A fitting distraction before Adam struck the final blow.
Adam's sword swung in a diagonal arc; it caught the other's sword and severed the blade in two. It continued its descent downward, through the elf's shoulder, severing the arm. The Unseleighe's expression was of disbelief and confusion, and Adam felt a brief twinge of sympathy against an Unseleighe who didn't know what he was up against.
"You are a Tuiereann," the Unseleighe wailed before he fell backward, across his own severed limb. Life drained quickly from the Unseleighe's face, the pallid color turning to an ashen gray.
The others stepped backward slowly. Adam's sword had cut through his opponent's like a dinner knife through a stick of butter. This must have been a very discouraging image for the ones who remained; one turned and ran. The others backed up a little more quickly this time. His sympathy for the Unseleighe was short-lived. The fever of hate, fueled by the images of his father's skeleton, urged him forward.
He had no idea what he looked like right then, but had never seen such terror in anyone, friend or foe, before. The ground around him was illuminated, and at first he assumed it was from his sword. But it was all around him.
From his soul Adam generated a levin bolt, pulling on the full force of the largest Marketplace node. The power suddenly turned red, like the setting sun, as it reached through the ground, through his feet, and simmered within his body. Using the sword as a sight, he aimed the power at the retreating Unseleighe.
You designed this sword to kill elves, he thought. And kill elves it will.
Adam let loose the power, which blasted from the sword with a brief flash of red. The concussion knocked him backward, and he nearly stumbled; arms caught him from behind, friendly arms. When he looked up, it was Marbann.
"King," he said, breathlessly. "You have defeated them. Turn loose the node power now, before it kills you."
He barely heard the words. His head and body were drunk with the power flowing through him. When he looked up to see the attackers, he saw six vague outlines of black, in the shape of a shadow, extending away from them. Then, six long, molten puddles of metal, bubbling and hissing—probably their swords. Beyond that, a blackened path, like a giant scorch-mark left by a fifties vintage spaceship, reaching to the arid horizon.
Adam blinked, and turned around. "Where . . ." he said, then tumbled to his knees. "The Gate. We must . . ."
Then, his world went black.
Chapter Seventeen
"She's already online," Rathand said, glancing furtively toward the door as Zeldan barged into the New You's basement. The Unseleighe was not happy about the interruption; each call to him through the Terminal put a strain on the entire system, including the stored energy he had in the crystal capacitors. Not to mention the time he spent scurrying down here to heed her calls. In general, her presence was annoying. It reminded him of the deal he'd entered into, perhaps in haste, the advantage from which he had yet to see.
Zeldan tried not to wince at the hideous image. "Yes, what is it?" he barked into the Terminal. He made no pretenses; he was mad, and he was going to let her know it.
"Did you send a party of Unseleighe to Underhill for any reason?" she asked accusingly.
The question took Zeldan by surprise. "Well, no. Why?"
"As I suspected," she said, and whispered to someone off screen. "A group of what looked like elves of the Unseleighe court showed up at the Avalon palace today—"
"It no longer belongs to the Tuiereann family," Zeldan pointed out icily.
"And claimed to be sent by you."
Zeldan scratched his long, pointed chin thoughtfully. "Not I, my dear Morrigan. I do hope you've imprisoned them."
She nodded, with some relief evident on her obese features. "They are now in a node shell, on the palace grounds."
"Node shell?" Zeldan said. "But that means, if you made this transmission, you had to pull away power from the prison. Are you certain they're still secu
re?"
For the first time Zeldan remembered, Morrigan looked uncertain, threatened, even. "What?" she finally said. "Certainly that won't mean . . ."
"Who knows," Zeldan said with an air of resignation. If she's slipped up, and these intruders have escaped, it would really make my day. "My elves are down there. Nagas, if I remember, is in charge of patrolling the area. He is young, true, but he has a firm understanding of leadership." And torture. And maiming. "Have you even bothered to contact him?"
"Of course I have!" Morrigan snapped. "They are on their way to the palace as we speak."
"Find out who the intruders are," he said, wondering who would do such a foolhardy thing. Certainly not the Avalon elves, gone to reclaim the palace? Since we've already sacked it, I'm tempted to give it back to them, so that I can have the satisfaction of taking it from them again.
"One moment," Morrigan said, and left the screen temporarily.
Zeldan sighed. The idea behind communicating with Underhill in this fashion was to keep the messages brief; dead space like that took as much power as dialogue. He glanced at a dial on their bank of storage cells, watched it drop ever so slowly, and resisted a temptation to break the connection. "Hanging up" on Morrigan would give a certain amount of satisfaction. But her wrath would be difficult to deal with later.
She returned to the screen, this time more shaken than before. "It was a mage," she said. "And they've escaped. Nagas intercepted them as they were trying to leave."
"Ah, excellent," Zeldan said confidently. "Then we have nothing to worry about. Nagas will deal with them." A mage? That might only mean . . . certainly not. "Have Nagas report to me immediately. May he use your terminal?"
After a pause, during which Morrigan had a difficult time maintaining eye contact with Zeldan, she said, "He can't, Zeldan. He's dead. The group, whoever they were, killed the entire patrol."
Zeldan stared at her image. If there were some way to wrap my hands around your neck, I would, he thought in the confused rage that followed. Dead? The entire party?
"No witnesses?" Zeldan finally sputtered. This can't be. "Survivors? Anyone?"
She looked distressed, not smug. Zeldan gave her credit for that much. "None. Except, the group of mercenaries I had watching the fields."
"Mercs?" Zeldan asked hopefully. They would have to be formidable to be any match for a mage.
"Gargoyles," she explained.
Zeldan groaned. The weakest creatures in Underhill. I'm surprised they subdued the intruders in the first place.
"Whoever they were, they are long gone," Morrigan said. "Tell me, Zeldan. You'd said that Aedham Tuiereann was no threat. Is it possible he was this mage?"
He withheld a snarl. "Perhaps, but I doubt it," he managed to say.
"You don't sound convinced," she said. "But no matter. Once our plan is completed, we will have all the negative power we need, and then some. Avalon and any other Seleighe clan that happens along will have their hands full with our mayhem. I am not worried."
You should be, Zeldan wanted to say, but that would only make things difficult for himself. "As for the Avalon pestilence, we will have that under control as well. We have a lead that should take us directly to the Tuiereann rat's nest. The McDaris residence, I believe," he said proudly. She probably doesn't care that much about eliminating this particular King, but I certainly do. It was just a matter of simple detective work. Mort has proven his usefulness three times over.
Zeldan continued, "We have already met with our human minions. They are ready to deliver your concentrated Black Dream to the human watering holes."
Morrigan's face turned blood-red. "Then why hasn't it happened already?"
"These things take time," Zeldan replied. And planning, and patience, neither of which you have experience with. "The logistics involved, the different layers of security we must penetrate to disperse our product in the water system. It's more complicated than you realize."
Her face darkened. "Details!" she screamed. "I want action!"
The screen went blank.
Zeldan gazed at it for a long time, then got up, put on his Peter Pritchard human seeming, and went back among the cattle, and their pain.
And with the death of Nagas, Mage Japhet Dhu thought, with no small amount of satisfaction, dies the remaining obstacle to my plan.
The mage had sensed the Gate in Underhill the moment it formed, but instead of intercepting whomever came out of it, he watched from a distance. It was, to his surprise, the former Prince of Avalon.
The Seleighe have returned to Underhill. Come to claim your kingdom, have you? he thought. Nagas was the last remaining Unseleighe leader who had remained faithful to his father, so it was only natural that he seek out this new threat to Zeldan's territory. The others in Japhet's organization remained quietly loyal to Japhet, while his father made a fool of himself chasing down Seleighe children. Japhet had considered approaching Morrigan in hopes of making an arrangement beneficial to both of them, but as it stood Zeldan was providing a substantial amount of raw power, energy which was lacking in this Underhill wasteland. Better to wait until Father is less useful before approaching the bitch.
This new development with the Avalon clan was completely unexpected. At first the mage didn't know what to make of it. The Seleighe King didn't seem to be particularly powerful, in fact had not even bothered to construct any kind of shield. And when the mercenary gargoyles captured them, they had put up no fight whatsoever. Their actions are curious, Japhet thought. What do they expect to gain among the ruins of their former elfhame?
Mage Japhet grew bored with the proceedings, returned to his stronghold, and summoned his fellow mages. While Morrigan's attention was focused on these new intruders, he reasoned, they had the perfect opportunity tap into Morrigan's fresh load of harvested human pain.
My father will pay for his folly, Japhet thought. His obsession for ridding the universe of the Seleighe plague will be his undoing.
And I will be waiting, patiently, until he fails. Then I will claim for myself what is rightfully mine. I am, after all, the sole heir to Zeldan's kingdom.
One of his mages brought a crude oracle to him; it was a construct of one of Morrigan's crystals, stolen from her mines. On occasion they were able to eavesdrop on the transmissions between Zeldan and Underhill, and do so without detection. They used the oracle sparingly.
This had better warrant my special attention, Mage Japhet thought as he took the fist-sized crystal from the cowering Unseleighe elf.
Interesting, Japhet thought, as he took in Zeldan's and Morrigan's conversation. The King of Avalon is a mage. And he is returning to the human's world to destroy my father!
How very kind of him to simplify my life for me.
Daryl returned home from the trip to Lake Tawekoni, in part because he hoped he might shake Mort. The little demon had appeared nearly everywhere else in his life but here, in his house. So here he came, hoping to be alone, at least for a little while.
The house appeared to be empty when he pulled up. Both cars were gone, which meant Mom was probably at her bridge party, and Dad was out God only knew where. Only the porch light was on, but that came on automatically at sunset; the rest of the house was on a computer, which automatically turned on certain lights, but lately hadn't been working right, so Dad had shut it off. The house was dark when he entered, but he didn't find anything peculiar about that.
The Dream had worn off somewhat, but he didn't really want to do more of it right away, for fear Mort might reappear. He knew he had to slow down, he was doing too much of it, and since he wasn't an addict he had to show himself that the stuff didn't have control of him. That meant leaving the Dream alone.
He went into the kitchen in search of a beer or a cooler, found a half-consumed six-pack of Bud, and opened one. The cold suds burned a comfortable path down his throat, and as its numbness spread, he decided he wasn't so anxious anymore.
Maybe I should just switch to beer and leave it at that
, he considered. But somehow the thought reminded him of Justin, guzzling suds with those football jocks in the pickup, and the prospect didn't have as much appeal to him.
Maybe scotch. That is the civilized way to imbibe, after all.
On the kitchen counter he found a note, with a twenty-dollar bill. It was from his mother, who was letting him know that she would be out playing bridge, as he'd already guessed. The twenty was for him to use "any way he liked."
A twenty. Mere pocket change, compared to what he'd been making at the New You. That day he'd made the first drop, a whole ki of Dream, and took his cut for that day, one grand, in cash. It was the easiest thousand he'd ever made in his life, and despite his reservations about working for this strange outfit, Mort included, he looked forward to more of the easy money.
The light buzz the beer gave him told him he'd hadn't had any garden-variety coke in awhile. Hell, he thought, I guess that would be okay. It's Dream I'm slowing down on, not coke. Dad has some in his bedroom. He always has some. Might even be able to snatch a few Valiums from Mom's bottle to help me sleep later.
He went into the master bedroom, turned the light on, and reached for the silver tray under the bed. It was an antique, probably about a hundred years old, but was so finely polished that it worked just as well as a mirror. There was enough coke leftover from the last time to make two healthy, go-for-it lines. He took the twenty, rolled it up, and snorted both lines in two deep breaths.
Use it any way I liked, he thought whimsically, regarding the twenty. Mom can occasionally be helpful, if only by accident.
The coke burned for a moment in his sinuses, then became a mild itch, which had just been scratched. The numbness originating with the beer deepened.
Just coke, he thought, as the clouds of heaven descended on his brain. No Mort. Part of him realized that cocaine reduced his thinking to two-syllable snatches. No prob. I'm fine.
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