Spirits White as Lightning

by Mercedes Lackey

  "Comdex. That big trade show they hold in Las Vegas every September. Kory says he thinks there's a hame there—some of the Seleighe Sidhe took over an Unseleighe casino, if you can believe that, so we'll have a Gate right there. And then we bring the stuff back through to Chinthliss' place, and he'll give us the information we need! He said so! Oh, Goddess, I can't wait to get home and tell Maeve she's going to have a little brother or sister!"

  Eric smiled, listening to her cheerful prattle. At least things were looking up for someone. He wasn't quite sure where that thought came from; his life was doing okay. This thing with Hosea would work out, he and Ria were doing fine, and nobody was even trying to kill him lately.

  "Well, that's great," he said, a little lamely. Beth picked up on his tone at once.

  "You sound a little down. Things working out okay at your end?"

  "Oh, sure," Eric said hastily. "I just got up way too early this morning. It looks like Hosea's going to be living here—there's a studio apartment available in the basement, and he's getting it cleaned out now. He's okay with my teaching him, too. I'm the only one who's worried about that."

  Beth laughed. "Banyon, sometimes you worry way too much! You'll be a great teacher. You wouldn't want to contradict Master Dharniel, now, would you?"

  "Perish forfend," Eric said, smiling in spite of himself. He found that deep inside he was actually looking forward to the day he could introduce his new student to his old master. "Hey, I hate to cut this short, but I've got class and I don't want to be late. You guys going to be around this evening? We could get together, maybe."

  "I wish we could, but Kory and I are going back to Everforest in an hour or so and then out to Lost Wages, and then from there to Chinthliss'. Come see us when we get back?"

  "If I can," Eric promised.

  "Gotta run," Beth said. "Love you!"

  "Love you, too," Eric answered. He stared at the phone for a long minute after he hung up. Beth's good news ought to have made him feel better, but the strangely unsettled feeling he'd had all morning didn't want to go away. He hadn't wanted to burden Beth with his own problems, but ignoring them didn't make them go away, either.

  Just what did the House want with Hosea . . . and why?

  * * *

  She'd thought she'd been afraid before, but it was nothing to the terror Jeanette felt now, clutching at Aerune as he rode through the shadows of this unearthly place. She could feel the T-Stroke burning through her veins, pulling her down into darkness. She fought its effect frantically. If she lost consciousness here and fell from Aerune's horse, she did not know what would happen to her.

  They were no longer on Earth. Somehow she knew that, though there was little she could see. Aerune's cloak whipped back over her, blinding her, as the stallion moved from a trot to a canter, and the chill surrounding her fought with the fire in her blood. She could see a full moon above them, horribly distorted, and around the horse's legs shadowy pale things yelped and gibbered, leaping into the air to attack the riders and falling back in defeat.

  Then the moon was gone in a blinding flash of light, and they rode across a sun-hammered desert of cracked clay beneath a dark brass-colored sky. Furnace heat struck like a blow, and in the sky above, black shapes wheeled and screamed.

  Then darkness again, and on the horizon, torn by the black peaks of mountains, a distorted, blood-red sun filling half the sky. The air was thin here, and Jeanette found herself gasping for breath. Her lungs burned with the need for oxygen, and the sky above was black, filled with unwinking stars.

  Then air and light—the foggy dimness of a swamp filled with giant trees festooned with corpse-pale moss. Aerune's stallion splashed and skidded through the slime, and with each step it filled the air with the stench of rot. She looked down, and saw that the black water was filled with writhing white worms, each longer than a man. She shut her eyes tightly then, and did not open them until a shock of cold told here that they were again elsewhere.

  —An arctic plain, the snow only marginally whiter than the sky overhead. In the distance, a vast structure of black stone, and the sound of a strange high-pitched refrain: Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!

  —Darkness more absolute than blindness, the only sound the stallion's running hooves.

  —Cold again, the stallion running faster, along a thin shining bridge only inches wide. Stars above and below, shining dimly through veils of violet haze. Ahead the bridge ended, and the stallion gathered itself to spring, leaping out into nothingness. She screamed then, the sound thin and flat as the world shifted once more.

  The stallion slowed to a walk.

  They were in a forest. It was dark, but this time the almost-comforting dark of night. Everything was lit by faint greenish moonlight, though she could see no moon. The trees were like nothing she'd ever seen: black and smooth and leafless, looking unpleasantly like polished bone. The ground was covered with a low white mist that reached to the horse's knees concealing everything beneath it. She felt flushed and nauseated as the drug worked through her, and Jeanette knew she had only a few minutes of consciousness left. The trees wheeled dizzyingly around her, and she could not tell whether that was an effect of the drug, or whether they really were moving.

  When they finally left the forest, Jeanette could see the source of the light. Far in the distance, at the top of a peak that rose up out of the center of the bone-wood, stood a tall gothic castle, shining with a baleful moth-green light. Try as she might, she could not see it clearly; walls and towers seemed to meet at impossible angles, and it wavered in her sight like a heat mirage, though the night was damp and cool. The castle grew to fill the entire world, burning brighter and then blindingly bright.

  And then there was nothing at all.

  * * *

  Consciousness returned in slow stages. For a long time she drifted back and forth, aware enough to know she was awake, but unable to remember why that might be odd. Finally, a single fact floated to the front of her mind, pulling awareness with it like a train of boxcars.

  She'd taken T-Stroke.

  Aerune had kidnapped her.

  The T-Stroke hadn't killed her.

  She was somewhere in Elfland.

  Aerune's castle?

  Jeanette opened her eyes, rolling over in the same movement and crashing to the floor as she fell off the narrow bed she had lain on. The pain completed the process of her awakening, and the last few hours settled back firmly into memory. She looked around.

  She'd been lying on a narrow shelf cut into a wall. She was in a small room, much taller than it was wide. Twelve feet up there was a door set into the wall; a latticework of iron bars through which light spilled. The walls and floor were made up of large gray stone blocks, like every dungeon in every movie ever made. Torches burned in iron brackets on the walls, but the light was white and directionless, too steady to be coming from the flickering orange flames or the doorway above.

  It's like a stage set.

  She got to her feet and quickly sat down on the bed, her heart racing with excitement and fear. She'd gambled and won: by the very fact that she was alive, she knew she was one of the lucky 10%—she'd survived her dosing, and now, by rights, she should be able to manifest some sort of paranatural power.

  But what? She felt no different. All the test subjects had used their powers instinctively, but she felt no instinctive pull to do anything out of the ordinary.

  What was true was that she was dying. All the subjects who had received T-Stroke had died in a matter of days or hours. She felt a small thrill of triumph at cheating Aerune of his victory by dying, but quickly stifled it, unwilling to look beyond this moment to her own death. If Elfland existed, then so must Hell, in some form or another, and Jeanette knew that Hell was her destiny for what she'd done in life. To distract herself, she resumed her study of her cell and herself.

  The clothes she had come here in—jeans, jacket, boots—were gone: she was barefoot, wearing a sleeveless grayish knee-length tunic of some coarse sti
ff fabric. There were chains and shackles set into the walls, and she walked over to inspect them, hefting the fetters in her hands. By rights they should have been black iron, and they were black, but the sheen and smoothness told her they were not iron. If anything she'd read about elves was true, cold iron would burn them like a red-hot poker, so the metal must not be either iron or steel. Pewter? Silver? More mysteries. It did explain the absence of her clothes, however. Everything but the T-shirt had iron in it—the studs on her jacket, the toe caps of her boots, the hooks and eyelets on her brassiere, even the snaps and rivets on her jeans. All steel, and thus taboo in this place—or should be. How much of what she'd read in old books could be trusted, and how much was sheer fabulation? Trusting anything she thought she knew could be fatal.

  She did know one thing for sure and certain, however. Aerune had not brought her here just to lock her up and leave her to rot. And there was only one thing that made her valuable: her ability to manufacture T-Stroke.

  But what did a faerie lord want with a drug that gave humans psionic powers? Jeanette frowned, puzzled. Elves had magic powers—she'd certainly seen enough hard evidence of that from Aerune—so she couldn't imagine why they'd need what T-Stroke could do for them. T-Stroke didn't give anyone magic powers, anyway; it gave them psionic powers—a fine distinction, but a real one. While magic could play cut and paste with the laws of physics, psionics were essentially bound by them: with psychic powers you might be able to read minds or see the future—or heal—but you couldn't turn lead into gold, raise the dead, or teach a pig to speak English. And while natural psychics might manifest several different psychic gifts in varying strengths, her T-Stroke-created Talents only seemed to be able to do one particular thing, which must make them doubly inferior to an elven magician—though it was also true that Aerune had wanted her test subjects, inferior or not. Back in December he'd been grabbing them before she or Robert could get to them, though presumably he could do everything they could do and more. She'd never found out why; she supposed she'd find out now.

  She knew she should be more afraid than she was, but all Jeanette felt was numb. Shock, she thought—that and the certain knowledge that she would die soon whether Aerune tortured her or not. Death was such a final answer—and however much she feared it, she couldn't escape it—so why not embrace it as much as she could?

  Because she was too afraid to, that was why.

  Just then there was a rattling sound from the doorway above. She looked up, just in time to see the doorway sink majestically downward through the stone like a descending elevator cage, until the opening was level with the floor.

  Two trolls—they couldn't be anything else—gazed through the bars at her.

  Their smooth shiny skin was the greenish color of tarnished copper, and a wave of stench like rotting frogs rolled into the cell from their presence. They were about five and a half feet tall, alike as twins, and cartoonishly muscled, with shoulders nearly as wide as they were tall, and arms that dangled below their knees. Their faces were like a caricature of Early Man: flat noses, massive jaws, and heavy beetling brows from beneath which their eyes glowed with the silvery redness of beasts'. The long tips of pointed ears extended for an inch or two above their flat skulls, and dull lank hair the color of old moss began low on their foreheads and straggled down their backs. They were dressed in a parody of medieval costume: knee-length chain mail shirts beneath black tabards with a crimson blazon, bronze bracers laced onto their huge forearms, and shaggy boots that seemed to have been crudely made from imperfectly-emptied bears. Each of them held a seven-foot billhook in his hand.

  One of them reached for something she could not see from inside the cell, and the portcullis rose with a rattle of chains.

  "Come out, little girl," the other said, leering. His voice was low and hoarse, like granite boulders mating. His teeth were huge and yellow, like a horse's, but with long upper and lower fangs. Jeanette could smell his breath six feet away. It smelled like rotting meat.

  "Bite me," Jeanette said sullenly. No matter how unnatural they looked, they were only another incarnation of big, stupid street muscle, the sort she'd dealt with when she ran with the Sinner Saints. They answered to a master—Aerune—and to show them either fear or deference would be a bad mistake.

  The troll looked puzzled, trying to decide whether to be angry. He shifted uncertainly, gazing at his partner.

  The other troll walked into the cell. He was not so much tall as massive—must weigh close to a thousand pounds—Jeanette estimated. He bowed, holding the billhook to one side and resting the knuckles of his free hand on the floor.

  "Mortal lady. The great prince Aerune requires thy presence, and we are sent to escort thee into his presence." The words were subservient, but his manner wasn't.

  The smart ones are always trouble. He made her feel like Elkanah always had—as if he knew something she didn't, as if all the knowledge and power she possessed would be useless against that secret wisdom. She got to her feet.

  "Okay. Fine. Let's go."

  She stepped past him, out into the corridor. The stone was rough beneath her bare feet, and cold. Torches lined the walls, but again the illumination was flat and directionless, as if the torches were only a sort of window dressing, and not the real source of the light. Barred doorways, such as the one she'd come through, lined the walls all the way to the ceiling. From some of the higher ones, liquid trickled down the wall, staining the gray stone to black. There was a faint whiff of latrine, perceptible beyond the ripe rankness of her guards. She felt queasy and ill, as if she were coming down with the flu, but put it down to a combination of emotional shock and T-Stroke. She steeled herself against showing how she felt; any show of weakness could be fatal, and she still had to face the main event—Aerune.

  The dumb one led the way, and the smart one followed. They went up a winding staircase, the steps sized for trolls and not humans; Jeanette was aching and breathless by the time they reached the top. Here the workmanship on the stones of the corridor was finer, the doors of solid wood.

  They walked for at least half an hour, seeing no one, as the corridors slowly changed, becoming more refined and upscale, until at last Jeanette was walking across smooth mosaic floors between walls of carved alabaster hung with tapestries. She felt less sick now, though all around her there was the same sort of waiting tension that heralded the storm. There were guards here and there along the way—elven knights, this time, not trolls, wearing elaborate jeweled armor and holding long silver pikes. At the end of one corridor, her captors stopped before a pair of them. The elves' faces were invisible within their helmets, but she could see the faint red spark of eyes deep within the shadows.

  "Here is the woman whom Lord Aerune has summoned, lord," the smart troll said.

  The elven knight bowed silently, and gestured for her to advance.

  "Be good, human girl," the smart troll said. "Or the prince will give you back to me to do with as I choose." Despite the unspoken threat, Jeanette had the odd feeling the words were kindly meant.

  "And if you can't be good, be careful," she said in return.

  "Silence!" one of the elves snapped.

  This time both members of her escort preceded her, obviously unable to imagine that she would run (they were right, but she still thought they were stupid). They walked only a short distance before stopping before a pair of gigantic doors that seemed to be carved of one giant sheet of black jade. As they approached, the doors swung open, and she followed her guards into Aerune's throne room. Once inside the doorway her escort stopped, and waited for her to go on alone.

  The throne room was enormous—big as a sound stage or a church, and empty save for Aerune. The walls were carved in the semblance of a forest, copies of the same black trees she had seen upon her arrival, their carved branches rising to form a vault above the room.

  The floor beneath her feet was the glassy dull silver of liquid mercury, treacherously smooth. In the center of the room, ato
p a round three-step dais of the same smooth black material as the doors, stood a throne. It was black, massive, and intricately figured, but somehow it was not quite there, as if parts of it curved off in directions the human eye was not equipped to perceive.

  And on the throne sat Aerune.

  This was the first time Jeanette had gotten a really good look at him, and once again her heart twisted at the sight of his beauty. Save for the helmet—for Aerune's head was bare—he wore the same full ornate field plate armor as his guards, but of a silver so dark it seemed black. On his head was a black crown set with cabochon rubies that glowed as brightly as if they were lit from behind, and on his black-gloved hand he wore a matching ruby ring.

  All her life Jeanette had dreamed of a moment like this, when she could cast aside the bonds of Earth and walk the halls of Faerie. And now that the moment had arrived, she could think of only one thing.

  He can't be serious.

  Everything that she'd seen was just too overblown, too derivative, too much. It was all done with money to burn, but it still looked like an episode of Dr. Who. It had no heart to it. Actually, Dr. Who had heart; it didn't take itself seriously and it was on a bargain budget, so heart was all it had, but it had a lot of it. No, this looked as if some avaricious goon with all the money in the universe had decided to copy Dr. Who on an infinite budget without the least understanding of what made the BBC series live for its fans. This place was hollow—the exact opposite of creative.

  So now you know why they call them The Hollow Hills. Good going, Girl Detective.

  "So, mortal girl. At last you face your ultimate desire—for I am Death, and Pain, and the end of all things."

  Jeanette wasn't sure whether to laugh, cry, or just stamp her foot in frustration. She'd ruined her life, killed hundreds, to get here . . . and this was all there was? This fanboy weenie from hell?

  And worst of all, she was still terrified. And he was still beautiful as the morning.

  As she stepped onto the floor, something lying at the foot of the throne raised its head. She hadn't seen it before because it was so black; it looked a little like a wolf crossed with a Doberman, if the result were the size of a small pony and had eyes that glowed a featureless red. It opened its mouth and yawned, exposing ivory teeth and a blood-red tongue, then put its head back down, joining the other creatures coiled at the foot of the throne in sleep.