"Okay, let's go," Toni said.
* * *
Eric savored the ride up to the Everforest Gate. In another lifetime, he might have been on his way up to the Sterling Forest RenFaire, with nothing more on his mind than a feathered hat. Now he was riding into battle.
He could sense Lady Day's excitement. Unlike mortal horses, the elvensteeds were bred for battle, and relished a good fight. He tried to take comfort from her easy courage—Eric was no coward, though he'd spent the first half of his life running away from anything that looked even vaguely like a fight, but this was a different kind of fight than any he'd ever been in. It hadn't been forced on him. He'd had plenty of chances to back out. But he'd chosen to be here. If that was courage, then he guessed he was brave. But it seemed perilously close to desperation.
All too soon they arrived at their destination. The Faire would be running for a few more weeks, but the Everforest Nexus had been set on state park lands, away from the crowds.
He pulled the bike to a stop in the clearing that held the Gate, and he and Kayla dismounted. She looked around, turning in a circle. "Hey. Untouched nature. Who'd'a thunk there could be something like this so close to the city? Hey, what's that?"
She pointed. There were tire tracks sunk deep into the mud, and burn marks on the grass.
"Levin-bolts, or something similar, and probably a van. Jeanette said Aerune had Elkanah bring her here so he could take her Underhill easily."
"Creepy." Kayla hugged herself and shivered, though the day was warm. "He isn't coming back, is he?"
"I hope not. But this is the closest Nexus point to New York City, so most of the East Coast Underhill traffic comes through here."
Kayla didn't say anything, though Eric could tell she was thinking hard. Just then Lady Day shivered all over, and in place of the red-and-white touring bike stood a neat-footed black mare with golden eyes. Kayla goggled as if she'd never seen a horse before, and Lady Day minced delicately forward and nudged her with a soft black nose. Kayla reached up tentatively to stroke it.
"Hey, she's soft!" the young Healer exclaimed. "Am I going to get to ride her? I mean, like she is now?"
"Maybe. That's kind of between you and her," Eric answered. He knew Kayla had grown up on the street, abandoned by her parents when her Talent began to show, but somehow the experience hadn't hardened her. She pulled up a handful of grass from the turf at her feet and began to feed the elvensteed, who almost purred under the admiring attention.
A few minutes later, the Rolls pulled up, moving slowly over the narrow bumpy track. Ria was driving. She pulled the car to a rocking stop, and the venerable machine seemed almost to sigh with relief. Rolls-Royces were built like a bank vault, but by no stretch of the imagination were they off-road vehicles.
Ria got out, followed by the other four. She pulled a large suitcase off the driver's seat and began to unzip it.
"These are for you," she told the Guardians, opening the suitcase and hauling out the first of the shirts. "They're lined in Kevlar fabric, at least partly so they don't chafe, but you won't want to go jogging in them; they're heavy, and they don't breathe. Iron can kill the Sidhe-folk, and it also makes their magic run wild, one of the reasons Aerune is a lot less powerful here in the World Above than he's going to be when we go to meet him on his home turf. The steel part of these shirts will absorb some magic and deflect a lot in the way of levin-bolts, but some of it gets worn away each time."
"So if Aerune keeps hitting one of us, he'll eventually burn through the shirt?" Paul said, examining the shirt with interest.
"Try not to let that happen," Ria said, deadpan.
"Won't he know we're wearing these?" Toni asked, holding a shirt up to herself to check the fit. It was too small, and she passed it to Kayla. Each was slit up the sides and laced shut—with plastic-coated steel cording—to ensure a tighter fit.
"Sure. Think about it—if I were him, I'd be expecting it. There still isn't much he can do about it—if he touches you while you're wearing that, he risks getting his widdle fingies burned off," Ria said.
Kayla had pulled off her leather jacket and was slithering into the mail shirt. She wore her full elaborate Goth makeup and jewelry, but had elected to dress sensibly—jeans, Doc Martens, and a long-sleeved T-shirt that fit as if it were sprayed on. Hosea helped her lace the sides shut. "Ain't we gonna be a little conspicuous dressed like this?" she asked Ria.
"Not Underhill, so far as I know," Ria told her. "Unfortunately, it may be a long walk to reach the borders of Aerune's domain, but they're lighter to wear than to carry, I assure you."
Etienne appeared then, summoned by Ria, trotting out of the forest and greeting Lady Day with a whinny. The two elvensteeds nuzzled at each other, exchanging greetings in their own way. Whatever differences the two had once had seemed to have been dealt with.
"Eric?" Ria asked, holding out a shirt to him. He thought about it, and shook his head.
"I'll call up my armor once I'm on the other side of the Gate. Might as well go in all flags flying."
"And hope we don't go down with the ship." Ria walked over to Etienne and vaulted into the saddle with one easy motion. In her black duster, she looked like a vision straight out of the Old West.
Once they were all re-dressed, Toni and José opened their sword cases and removed their magical weapons. Toni's was long and elegant, with a cross set into the pommel and Hebrew letters running down the gleaming blade. José's sword was simpler—almost a short sword, with a browned-iron blade and a plain leather-wrapped hilt.
Hosea slung his banjo over his shoulder and looked at Eric.
"I guess this is your show now, Eric."
Eric nodded, touching his hip to assure himself that his gig bag was in place. He pursed his lips and whistled a soundless phrase.
A portion of the air in front of them seemed to darken, shimmering like a deep pool. As it faded into existence, the trees beyond it slowly disappeared.
"Is that it?" Paul said, hefting his sword stick.
"One gen-u-wine, accept no substitutes Sidhe Portal," Eric said, feigning a lightness he didn't really feel. He held out his hand, and Lady Day put her nose in it, her warm breath flowing over his hand.
"Let's go, then. I'm not getting any younger," Toni said. In the silvery mail armor, carrying her sword, she looked like a medieval warrior saint.
Eric mounted Lady Day, and reached a hand down for Kayla. She scrambled up behind him and settled snugly against him, her arms around his waist. With Ria leading, the small party passed through the Gate.
* * *
"It looks just the same," Paul said, sounding disappointed.
"No it doesn't," Toni said. "It looks the way everything did when I was a little girl—all bright and clean and new."
They were standing in the Underhill counterpart of the Sterling Forest glade. There was a theory that the Underworld places near Gates tended to grow to mirror the World Above they were connected to, and Everforest was an example of that. But if these were the Ramapo Mountains, they were those mountains as they had been before any humans at all had come to trouble the land: lush and wooded and green.
Eric could feel that they were being watched, but that was common enough. There were Low Court elves in the area, of course, and other creatures too numerous to name, any of whom might take an interest in visitors.
"Which way?" Hosea asked.
"You tell me," Eric said. "Jeanette's the one who's been this way."
Hosea played a few bars of "Foggy Mountain Breakdown," his head cocked as if listening. Here in the magic-rich air of Underhill, it seemed as if Eric could almost hear her too: complaining but resigned.
"She says it was dark when she came through here, and she was busy being poisoned. She also says you don't want to go the way Aerune took her, unless you've got a taste for dying young. But I think—ain't there something with shine over that-a-way?" He pointed.
Eric focused his senses on the direction Hosea indicated. I
t was like listening, but not really; human language was pretty inadequate when it came to describing what magic felt like. After a moment he nodded. "There's a Gate that way. Let's try it."
Before they started off, Eric transformed his garb into the flashy silks and gleaming armor of an Underhill Bard. The four Guardians frankly stared, and Ria applauded mockingly.
"I think I'm going to have major feelings of inferiority after this," Toni said a little breathlessly.
"Don't," Eric said. "There's no way I could do half of what you can—our magics are completely different—and you'll probably find that your abilities are increased here, too. Magic is as common in Underhill as, well, as cable TV in the World Above."
"A good thing to remember," Paul said. "Well, it's a lovely day for a walk. Shall we get started?"
Eric wished he'd been able to borrow elvensteeds for the others, but they weren't given out lightly, and to ask Prince Arvindel for some might have tipped Eric's hand. He wasn't sure how much he wanted Misthold to know about what he was doing until it was over—even if they disapproved of Aerune, having a bunch of humans come Underhill to take him out might have made some of the elves a little uneasy.
When they reached the Gate, Eric chose their direction from the available destinations already set into it. He and Ria had both been to Aerune's domain, and Jeanette had been in and out of Aerune's land several times. Locating the Goblin Tower wasn't going to be the problem. Getting to it safely was. Travel in Underhill was sort of a cross between cross-country hiking and code breaking.
The Gate led them through to a land considerably less lush and tended than the one they'd originally entered. It looked as if it might have belonged to someone once, and now was returning to the wilderness it had originally been. Depending on how much magic had been used to create it, it might go on this way until a new owner claimed it, or dissolve back into the mists of the Chaos Lands.
It's not knowing which until afterward that's so amusing, as Humpty-Dumpty said to Alice.
The maze-seed was a heavy weight at the bottom of his gig bag, and Eric couldn't keep his thoughts from fixating on the battle to come. The real question is, am I sure that what I'm doing is right? And the answer is, I can't think of anything else to do. And something has to be done.
The next Gate brought them to a tropical seashore, where a smooth white sand beach as fine as sugar formed a broad shining ribbon between pale clear water and a cliff of dark craggy rock. The light was sunset-ruddy, but there was no sun to be seen anywhere on the horizon. This was the first major discrepancy the Guardians and Hosea had experienced, and Eric could tell it unnerved them a little. But at least this realm was safe for them to pass through—friendly, or at least neutral. This was obviously the domain of some oceangoing branch of the Sidhe, such as the Selkies, or of another aquatic race, such as Undines or Nereids. The upside of this was that sea dwellers tended to be fairly indifferent to humanity, having no interest in them for good or ill. There might be a pretty long walk to the next Gate, but they were unlikely to encounter anything fiercer than a sand crab along the way.
But as they walked along the beach, Eric realized he had other things to worry about than their immediate danger. He'd never really thought about it before, but he'd spent so much time Underhill that he was, if not quite accustomed to its wonders, at least no longer dazzled into slack-jawed amazement by them. It was hard now to remember how astonished he and Beth had been when they'd first seen the halls of Elfhame Misthold, and how long it had taken either of them to get used to (or at least to be able to function around) the sheer beauty of Underhill. Magical, enchanting, and glamorous weren't just empty words to the Sidhe—and "stunning" was pretty relevant, too.
All of which became a problem when four people who'd never seen Underhill before, and who comprised most of your fighting force, were going there to pick a fight with a native on his own turf. While Kayla had been briefly Underhill once before, and Ria had spent half her life in Perenor's pocket domain, neither of them could be considered really experienced with Underhill, either. Even beauty had its dangers.
Eric glanced back over his shoulder. Kayla was openly gawking at the landscape, but she wasn't the one whose reactions really worried him. Paul, José, and Toni were staring around themselves like kids on their first trip to the big city. If their minds were blown by an empty stretch of beach—admittedly a pretty gorgeous beach, but still just a beach—how were they going to react when they got to a place where things got weird—children's-book-illustration, role-playing-game, sci-fi-movie weird?
He didn't know. And there wasn't anything he could do at this point but worry about it. Even drawing attention to his fears might simply make them worse.
"Oh . . . look!" Toni exclaimed in awe. Reaching down, she plucked up a seashell out of the sand. It was as big as her hand, and perfect: a gleaming pale golden color as luminous as a unicorn's horn. She held it up, and the ruddy light made its surface sparkle like an opal.
Paul and José stopped to examine it. All three of them looked . . . spellbound, somehow as if they'd never seen a seashell before and it was the most fascinating thing in the world. If something in Aerune's domain made them freeze up like that, distracted them . . .
We'll all be toast.
"It's beautiful, and wholly unfamiliar," Paul said. "What manner of creature inhabited it, or what its native environment is, are things we may never know. Suddenly the world becomes as vast and uncharted as if we lived a thousand years ago."
Reluctantly, Toni set her prize carefully back down on the sand. She looked around wistfully. "I only wish there were some way I could bring Raoul and Paquito here to see this. It is so beautiful. It seems as if nothing bad could ever happen here."
"When you know the Sidhe a little better, you'll realize that beauty is their greatest weapon. While you're being dazzled, they're sticking a knife in your back, or doing whatever else they damn please."
Though Ria's voice was lightly mocking, there was an undertone of real bitterness in it as well.
Toni looked up at Ria, her dark eyes as startled and hurt as if Ria had interrupted a lovely dream. "So you're saying this is all a sham? A trick?"
"I'm saying it's beside the point—it doesn't count much one way or the other, except to put you off your guard. The ancient Greeks might have thought that what was beautiful had to be good, and vice versa, but I think we've managed to learn a little better in the last 4,000 years. The Sidhe live in a world where magic flows freely and they can alter their appearance and surroundings almost at will. If you can do something like that, the way things look becomes just another tool. Or a weapon."
"I hadn't thought of that." Toni's voice was flat. Disappointed. "I suppose human nature isn't much different even when humans aren't involved. C'mon, folks, let's get a move on. No telling how far we're going to have to walk today." She settled her sword on her shoulder once more and strode off ahead.
Eric glanced across at Ria. Her face was expressionless, except for a coolly-raised eyebrow. Yeah, I know this looks bad, Eric told her in his thoughts. But it was the only idea any of us had. And I'm not sure even a few test runs would have prepared folks for this—and it might have alerted Aerune to our plans.
"So how come we're taking the scenic route instead of the express?" Kayla wanted to know, thumping Eric on the thigh to get his attention.
"Believe it or not, this is the fastest way, or at least the fastest safe way," Eric told her. "There aren't any straight lines through Underhill, not really. It's more like playing Connect The Dots. And based on some of the things Jeanette has told Hosea, one of the important things about finding our way to Aerune's involves not getting killed in the process."
"I'm behind that. But I'd kind of like not to starve to death before we get there."
"Don't worry," Ria called to her from Etienne's back. "I've packed a lunch. And if we choose our Gates carefully, Aerune's kingdom won't be too far from here."
This was one of the sm
aller domains—at least, the dry land part of it was—and a few minutes more brought them to the next Gate, the one that would take them further into Underhill and possibly to a destination one of them recognized. It lay in the depths of a sea cave hollowed out of the black rock by the unceasing caress of the ocean, the smooth black walls glowing greenly with phosphorescent algae and luminous starfish.
They waded inside through the shallow water, leading the elvensteeds. Kayla stood at the back beside Ria, holding Lady Day's reins. The keys for this Gate were in the form of small seashells embedded in the rock almost at random, but their aura of Power made them easily visible to Eric, and probably to the others as well. Eric and Hosea considered where the Gate might take them.
Hosea's hands fanned over the strings of the banjo, calling forth silvery whispers that echoed in the darkness.
"That one," Hosea said, pointing.
Eric touched it, feeding the Gate with his Bardic Power to activate it. The back wall of the sea cave dissolved as he keyed the Gate, and the seven adventurers could feel a cold wind blowing over them from whatever lay beyond it, but no light spilled through the opening.
Cautiously, Eric and Hosea stepped through into the darkness, followed quickly by the others. The Gate closed when the last of them had passed through, and Eric could feel winter-dry grass crunch beneath his feet. But no matter how hard he strained, he could still see nothing.
A chill monotonous wind blew steadily, making him shudder more than shiver as he looked around blindly, unable to keep from trying to see. If not for the evidence of the sound and feel of the wind, and the dry scent, like musty hay, that assailed his nostrils, he would have wondered if he'd wandered into some trap that had stolen his senses. But only sight was missing.
"Eric . . . ?" Hosea sounded—not frightened, exactly, but concerned. The kind of "concerned" where if you don't get answers in a hurry you might start screaming.
"Wait." I know this place.
Eric summoned a ball of elf-light, and saw what he had expected to see: a broad and featureless plain that seemed to stretch a thousand miles in every direction, its short dry dun-colored grass trampled as if herds of animals had been running across it.
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