Spirits White as Lightning

by Mercedes Lackey

  "No! Don't do it!" Kayla shouted, running down the hill toward the war host.

  But before she could reach them, a horn blew from somewhere in the ranks of the villagers, answered by a deeper horn from the other side of the valley. A cheer went up, and the chariots began to roll down the hill. As the enemy saw the host begin to move, they began to howl, beating their swords against their wooden shields with a sound like distant thunder, surging forward to meet their foes.

  Kayla barely reached the bottom of the hill—too late to stop the charge—when the first bright agony lanced through her as one of the spears found its mark. She had one brief moment to realize that coming to a battle was probably a pretty stupid thing for a Healer to do.

  She concentrated on her shields, gritting her teeth and forcing herself to stand where she was, willing herself not to feel. In moments the orderliness of both armies had dissolved, and there was only a mob of men and women armed with swords and spears trying to kill each other. Aerete was in the forefront of the charge, as visible as if God was shining his own spotlight on her, and even in the brightening day Kayla could see the flashes of blue fire as she struck at the enemy with her levin-bolts. Kayla felt every strike, every sword-blow, that either army landed, but distantly, as if the pain were being felt by someone else. Shunt it aside, Elizabet had told her. Be the rock in the stream, unharmed by the water's flow.

  Kayla was glad to be so far away that she could not see what was happening clearly. What she could hear was bad enough—the screams of people and horses, the dull thick sound of metal hitting meat. She held her breath, crying without knowing it, digging her fingers into the palms of her hands. What could possibly be worth this much pain? Couldn't they see—couldn't they feel—what they were doing to each other?

  For a while it seemed as if Aerete's presence would be enough to gain victory for her folk. Despite their superior weapons and numbers, the enemy had little taste for facing one of the Sidhe upon the battlefield, and stayed away from her as much as possible, allowing the spearhead of Aerete's warriors to plunge deep into the shield line. But Kayla knew how this story ended.

  She didn't see who threw the spear. She only saw the moment when Aerete's white horse plunged sideways, the moment when its shining rider fell to earth. There were groans and cries of dismay from Aerete's folk; Kayla watched through tear-blurred eyes as they clustered around, trying to save her. But the blow delivered by the spearhead of Cold Iron was mortal.

  Suddenly the sky darkened, as if there were about to be a thunderstorm, though a moment before the sky had been clear. Cold winds whipped up, driving black clouds before them, covering the sky. Aerune appeared, standing where Aerete had fallen. He knelt beside her and saw that she was dead, then rose to his feet with a howl of despair that could be heard above every other sound upon the battlefield.

  And then he began to kill.

  Kayla watched in horrified fascination, unable to look away. He must know now that the weapons the enemy carried could kill him, but it didn't seem to matter to him. None of them touched him or the creatures he summoned to aid him—black wolves the size of ponies, ravens bigger than the biggest eagle ever hatched. It was like watching something out of a horror movie, like watching a harvester move over a field of standing grain. Aerune moved across the field, his sword spinning in his hand, and every time it struck an enemy died.

  The Eastmen would have fled or surrendered, but Aerune did not let them. His creatures harried them from behind, keeping them on the battlefield, herding the invaders toward Aerune's sword as the storm he had summoned gathered and finally broke, the rain turning the blood-soaked battlefield to a sea of red mud. In the end, the Eastmen were fighting one another to stay away from him, killing nearly as many of their own in their frantic attempts as Aerune did.

  Aerete's people watched in stunned amazement, the survivors of their army standing huddled together about their fallen lady. At the bottom of the hill, Kayla watched it all, battered by their pain and grief, too numb to think about what she was seeing. It was so horrible it was unreal.

  It's a dream, it's a dream, oh please please please let it be a dream—

  At last no Eastmen were left alive. Aerune turned back in the direction of his fallen love, and saw her people gathered around her, weeping. For a moment he hesitated, and Kayla held her breath.

  Then he slew them all, lashing out at them with levin-bolts until none stood, howling his anguish over the sound of the storm. Kayla screamed too—no shielding could withstand such agony. She fell to the wet grass, trying not to see what she could not help seeing. She saw the Guardians die, Eric and Ria and Hosea all cut down by Aerune's madness, and screamed until her throat was raw.

  And then the storm and the screaming was gone, as if someone had changed the channel.

  For long moments she was too stunned to care, huddling in a tight ball of misery, feeling the anguish of the dead vibrate along her nerves. She tried to breathe as Elizabet had taught her—slow deep breaths that drew strength from the earth and let the pain flow away—but it was hard. She choked and gasped, fighting against herself, until at last she found the rhythm. Slowly her muscles relaxed, and the memory of the pain eased. At last Kayla came back to herself enough to realize that her eyes were closed, and opened them warily.

  The sun of an unblemished spring day shone down upon the small village. She was huddled beside the well, curled against its rough warm stone. In the doorway of a nearby hut, Eric and Hosea worked on their instruments. She pulled herself to her feet and leaned against the sun-warmed stone, dizzy with nausea and disorientation. The screams of the dying still echoed in her ears, but the battle had been wiped away as if it had never been.

  Because it has never been. It's still in the future, from here. This is the way it started when the Chaos Lands went away. This is where I was when it began. Oh, God, is it all going to happen again? I can't watch that happen again. I can't!

  Maybe she was dead, because living the same two days over and over again, with the same terrible ending, was a pretty good approximation of hell, in Kayla's opinion. She took a deep steadying breath, welcoming anger.

  No. It ain't gonna work out that way. This time I'm gonna make them hear me if I hafta grab each one of them and wrestle 'em to the ground to do it!

  "Jeanette!" she shouted at the top of her lungs, but the harp that was Jeanette Campbell's form in this world was in Hosea's hands. Unstrung. Voiceless.

  Kayla wasn't in the mood to let something like that stop her. She wanted to talk to Jeanette, and concentrated with all her fear and frustration, all her Healer's power, on making that happen.

  "What?"

  Jeanette walked around the well and stopped in front of Kayla, hands on hips. She was hard to look at; her form kept shifting back and forth between the sleek leather-clad hellhound that Aerune had made of her, and a dumpy irritated woman in a leather jacket and jeans. Neither form seemed really real.

  "Why are we back here?" Kayla asked hoarsely. "If this is Aerune's way of attacking us, he won. So why do we have to start over?"

  "Oh, you aren't dead yet," Jeanette said airily. "Out there you're still fighting. None of you will stay dead here until he kills you there."

  "That's comforting," Kayla muttered shakily. Even if trying to think about it makes my head want to explode.

  "Of course, each time he kills the others here, he weakens them there. It's quite elegant, really. As for you, you might just go mad, seeing the same disaster happen over and over." Jeanette sounded wistful, as if death were something desirable.

  Should'a thought of that before you decided to become a banjo until the end of time! "You are being so fabulously helpful," Kayla said through gritted teeth. "I thought you wanted to make up for killing all those people."

  "I don't know how!" ghost-Jeanette cried in real exasperation. "I'm no good at being nice—only at knowing things and telling them to people if they want to listen. If you want to change things, you've got to make the ot
hers realize this is a dream. There's no point trying to wake up Aerete or any of the other villagers. Only Aerune or the people you came with can deviate from the script, because they're the only ones who are real. And if you wake them up here, it might distract them enough so he kills them there. And then he'll have you." Jeanette shuddered and bowed her head. "Don't let him. Die first."

  "But you know what's going on in both places," Kayla said. Jeanette nodded reluctantly. "So tell Hosea there, so he can tell the others, while I try to wake them up here. Are you with me, Banjo Girl?"

  "You say it like it's so easy," Jeanette said sullenly. "It might not work—don't you understand? If I try, if I do it wrong, I could kill them!"

  "That's what you're here for," Kayla said grimly. "To try. Do it."

  Jeanette turned away, and her jangling discordant image vanished. Kayla was alone again in Fantasyland.

  What do I do? What do I do? She felt a panicky flutter in her chest. It wasn't as if she was a stranger to tough situations and sudden death, but this time she wasn't just fighting to keep herself or her friends alive in a place where she knew what the ground rules were. She was trapped in a dream world whose rules she didn't understand. It wasn't enough to get out—if she couldn't figure out the right way out, she and all her friends would be tortured to death, and then Aerune would start on everyone else. Everyone she'd ever met. Everyone she'd ever known. Just . . . everyone.

  The pressure made her feel ill, made her want to go off somewhere and hide and pretend it wasn't happening. And if she did that for long enough, everything would come crashing down and she'd never have to try . . . and fail.

  She wished with all her heart that she could believe she was going to do that.

  She squared her shoulders and headed over to where Eric sat.

  "Eric." She kicked at the squatting figure halfheartedly. He didn't move. "Eric!"

  That didn't work either.

  How did you wake someone up who was already awake? It was like trying to heal somebody who wasn't hurt.

  Hurt . . . heal . . .

  Eric wasn't hurt, but he certainly wasn't all right. Could she tap into the power she used to heal to rouse him to wakefulness? And if she did, would it doom him in whatever passed for the Real World here?

  If it's a choice of dying quick or dying slow, I know which one Elizabet's favorite apprentice picks. . . .

  She stepped up behind him, and hesitated. Healing someone was easy—or at least, it was natural to her. The injury itself was what called forth her power, and though she directed its use, its scope was defined by what it healed. Most of a Healer's training involved learning to not use her power: to shield, to disengage, to hold herself back in the face of a serious hurt, lest in trying to heal it, she spent all of her own life-force.

  Now she was essentially trying to call up that power without that sort of stimulus, doing consciously what she normally left to instinct and reflex. It was like trying to figure out what you needed to do in order to walk. Biting her lip, Kayla touched her fingers to Eric's temples, trying to push the power out through her skin. For a moment nothing happened, then it welled up and rushed out of her as if she'd pulled the cork out of a bottle.

  Eric, wake up! Eric, see me! And try not to get killed in the process, she added as an afterthought.

  Eric jerked as if he'd been stung. He turned and looked up at her, his eyes foggy and unfocused. "Who are you?" he said blankly. He didn't know her, but at least he saw her. That was a start.

  "I'm Kayla. You're Eric—Eric Banyon. None of this is real, Eric—it's some kind of a dream!"

  "We're all dreaming," he told her kindly, getting to his feet. "Are you a spirit?"

  Kayla ground her teeth. He could see her, but the rest didn't look promising. "I'm your friend. New York—the Guardians—Aerune—Hosea—remember?"

  "Hosea is my apprentice," Eric told her, still with that maddening kindly smile, like he'd joined some kind of mind-control cult. "Have you come to bring him visions? I think he will be a very powerful Bard, when he is trained."

  "I think you are all going to die tomorrow, if you don't get with the program! This is Aerune's nightmare, and it's only got one ending. You've got to change that!"

  "Your words are strange," Eric said. "And your clothes are, too."

  Look who's talking. "Eric, please, try to grow a brain! Remember Aerune, the psychopath on the big black horsie? This is his dream. He's cast some kind of spell on you to make you forget."

  "I forget nothing!" Eric snapped, suddenly very haughty. "Spirit, I am a Bard of a Hundred Songs."

  Kayla wanted to shake him. "Then be a Bard! Wake up! Try to remember—you, and Hosea, and Ria, and the other Guardians—Aerune's got you all playing roles in his dreams, but you've got to make the dream come out differently."

  "Ah." Comprehension seemed to dawn, and for a moment Kayla believed she'd reached him, until his next words made her heart sink. "You come to bring word of the future. Tell me, Spirit, what shall I do to save our folk?"

  "Tomorrow the Eastmen are going to kill Aerete. You have to stop them."

  "Aerete the Golden cannot die." Now Eric looked troubled, but he was worrying about the wrong thing. "She is one of the Bright Lords. No weapon made by men can harm her."

  "Iron can. The Eastmen are carrying iron weapons. She's going to die."

  "Master?" Hosea came over to Eric. "Master, you speak to the air."

  "A spirit has come to foretell the battle," Eric said, turning to Hosea. Kayla tried not to look—it seemed as if wherever this was, it was strictly clothing optional.

  "Do we win?" Hosea asked.

  Kayla saw the sorrow in Eric's eyes, and knew he was going to lie.

  "Yes. She promises us a great victory."

  Hosea smiled with relief. "We should tell the others."

  "Tell Aerete!" Kayla urged, knowing that warning her would do no good. Eric had his stubborn look on—that hadn't changed—and she could tell he'd made up his mind not to pay any attention to her. She turned to Hosea, grabbing his arm.

  "Hey! Farmboy! Look at me!" The power flowed out of her more easily this time, as if it had learned what to do.

  Hosea's eyes focused on her and alarm replaced relief. "Kayla?"

  "Hosea—remember Jeanette! None of this is real! It's a dream that repeats over and over—you have to change the ending or we aren't going to be able to get out of here to fight Aerune!"

  "Eric." The big man moved slowly, as if he were under water. "Eric, it's Kayla. Wake up. Jeanette says . . ."

  For a moment the world shimmered, and Kayla caught a flash of the Chaos Lands. But before she could get her bearings, they were back in the village again, and both men were staring at her with identical looks of horrified comprehension.

  "Jeanette. Jeanette. Kayla—what?" Eric stammered.

  "Oh, thank God!" Kayla gasped, but the moment of relief made her lose her concentration. The village blinked out of existence, and she was back on the hillside, overlooking the field of battle.

  No—no—no!

  She closed her eyes, dropping to her knees where she stood. Once more she heard the cheers, the rumble as the two armies clashed.

  The screams. She hugged herself, moaning, trying not to be there. She heard a howl of despair from the villagers, and knew that once more Aerete had died. Once again the storm came. Kayla opened her eyes, knowing she couldn't bear not to see, and Aerune moved through the enemy army, cutting them down with his sword of elvensilver. Once more they all lay dead, and Aerune turned upon the remnants of Aerete's army.

  But this time Ria rode out to meet him, Eric at her side.

  This isn't the way it went before! Kayla thought with a pang of hope.

  Ria leaped down from her chariot, raising her spear. Aerune sliced it in half with a single blow, his sword so covered with blood that it sprinkled the Bard and the warrior who faced him with tiny drops of red.

  Both knelt before him, offering their necks to his blow.
r />   And Aerune stopped.

  Turned away.

  Left.

  And Kayla stood once again beside the well in the sunlight, back in the village, staring at Eric, who was staring back at her, bewildered and appalled. Whatever had happened this time, he remembered it too.

  It wasn't enough. It didn't work. Even if he spares the villagers, Aerune still blames humanity for Aerete's death.

  "We have to get out of here," Eric said. He stared down at himself, frowned, and the loincloth and Celtic jewels vanished, to be replaced by elven Bardic silks.

  "Get the others," Kayla said pleadingly. "Help me make them remember."

  * * *

  "The real question is, how long is this taking? What are we doing out there while we're in here?" Paul asked.

  The four Guardians, Eric, Ria, and Kayla, were all gathered in Eric's hut, while outside the afternoon of the dream played itself out. It had taken hours of subjective time to gather them together and break the others free of the dream-spell, but even that wasn't enough to free them from the larger dream. They were still here—though at least they all had their own clothes back. That helped.

  "It's a dream, you said. If that's the case, it shouldn't be taking any time at all," Toni said.

  "That's about right," Hosea said, stroking the neck of his banjo. "I can see it—what's going on there—kind of, through Jeanette here."

  "We don't dare let him keep the advantage. We have to get out of this loop, or we're going to die—here and there," Eric said. "If I used magic—"

  "Jeanette doesn't think that will work," Kayla said quickly. "She thinks trying that here will be enough of a shock to get you killed there."

  "Maybe," Ria allowed grudgingly. "Maybe not. But I think we should save the heavy artillery for a last resort. If we're inside his mind, we're also inside most of his defenses. Maybe we can stop him here."

  "How?" Eric asked. "I'm open to any and all suggestions." He looked at Kayla.

  She took a deep breath. "We have to derail the dream, make it come out differently, break the cycle. Jeanette said that the only ones who can affect the outcome are us—or Aerune."