by Tanya Huff
Tom stood, stretched, and slowly began pacing away.
“Yeah, all right. I’m coming.” Carefully, Roland bent and picked up the two instruments. He hadn’t felt this bad since pee-wee hockey, but he’d be damned if he’d fall over in front of a cat.
An hour and seven minutes later, they came to a path. Fifty-six minutes after that, the path split, one route heading down into a pleasant valley and the other snaking up a rocky, barren mountain that had somehow managed to remain unseen until they actually got to the fork.
“Yeah, well, I’ve read this book,” Roland sighed and collapsed on a convenient boulder. “And if you think I’m going to climb that mountain, you’re out of your furry little mind.” He shifted gingerly to ease the bruising across his back. “I’m going to be pissing blood as it is.”
Tom yawned, pink tongue delicately curled.
“Same to you, hairball.” Wincing, Roland stood. “So let’s get going already …” He turned on to the treacherous path, made doubly so for him because he had no hands free to help him climb and he would not abandon the harp. Not now. Not after all they’d been through together.
Tom bounded ahead, pausing to wait for Roland at each new obstacle with a superior look on his face.
As darkness fell, the faint call of hunting horns sounded in the distance.
Roland tried to climb faster.
The horns grew louder.
Eventually, the path ended. So did the mountain.
Gasping for breath, Roland staggered to the edge of the cliff and looked off. All he could see, far below, were fuzzy white specks that had to be clouds.
Down at the base of the mountain, armored figures brushed with moon-silver highlights rose in their stirrups and shrieked their challenges.
“Now what?” Roland asked the night.
Purring loudly, Tom brushed against his legs, then leaped from the edge, his tail streaming behind him like a pennant.
“Oh, no,” Roland took a step back, “I am not jumping off a cliff after a cat. Forget it. No way.” He considered the alternatives. “I’ll take my chances with the princess before I do something so damned stupid.” And in his mind’s eye he saw the jaw of the corpse move as the Darkness told him there was no way out save through him. He squared his shoulders. “Oh, hell, might as well make it my choice …” Like a swimmer entering cold water, he limped forward and threw himself into the air.
Patience and the harp played a harmony to his scream.
Chapter Eleven
“Please, let me help you with that.”
The large-blonde-lady-from-down-the-hall positively preened as she allowed the handsome young man to haul her shopping cart up the stairs.
“A woman like you,” he purred, “should be carrying urns, like a Cretan goddess, or flowers like a nymph of the spring. Not groceries.”
She simpered as she dragged herself up the stairs behind him and, although she didn’t usually have breath enough to talk and climb, managed to pant, “My brother-in-law says I’ve got the best bone structure of anyone he’s ever seen.”
The Dark Adept smiled. “Your brother-in-law is very perceptive. He waited patiently on the second floor for her to catch up. “But what could your husband be thinking of to allow you to walk about unescorted.” His voice dropped. “There’s a lot of strange people in this city, dangerous people. Especially for a lovely woman alone.”
“Don’t I know it.” She rested a moment, one hand fluttering over her heart, like a pudgy. hummingbird amid the purple flowers of her shirt. She lowered heavily mascaraed lashes. “Unfortunately, I don’t have a husband.”
“A wise decision not to limit yourself to just one man. A woman like you needs to be free.”
She agreed with him all the way down the hall.
Selfish, vain, and stupid, he thought as they reached her door. Mine for the taking.
“Would you like to come in for a while? We could have tea. Or wine, maybe. I think I have a bottle of very nice wine.” She smiled in the way she thought a woman of the world would smile.
“I’d love to come in. I have plans for you.”
“Oh. My.” She fumbled with her key in the lock, the almost forgotten sensation of being wanted making her clumsy.
By the time the glasses had been dug out of the clutter, he was no longer bothering to hide his aspect. She was his.
“Come on, bubba, open your eyes. I got better things to do than sit in an alley with you all night.”
“Mrs. Ruth?” Roland tried to focus on the bag lady, but her face kept slipping sideways and going misty around the edges. It didn’t seem worth the effort to keep them open, so he let his eyes close. I don’t feel very good. In fact, I feel like shit. His entire body ached, but pain seemed localized in his right shoulder, his left leg, across the small of his back, and his face. First the right cheek. Then the left. Then the right again. It took him a moment—his brain ached as much as everything else—but he finally figured out what was happening.
“Mrs. Ruth …” He wet his lips and tried again. “Mrs. Ruth, please stop hitting me.”
“Not until you open your eyes, bubba.”
Roland sighed. Why bother. Left cheek. Right cheek. Left… “Ow!” His eyes snapped open. “That hurt!”
Mrs. Ruth sat back on her heels and looked pleased with herself. “It was supposed to. Now get your ass in gear. You’ve got work to do tonight.”
“Where am I?” He winced as she frowned. “Uh, never mind. I’ll look.” Teeth clenched, he heaved himself up on his elbows. Mrs. Ruth blocked the view to the front, so he carefully turned his head from side to side. In one direction, a rusty blue dumpster rose up out of the evening gloom and the smell of rotting foodstuffs suggested he was in back of a restaurant. In the other direction, much farther away, traffic rolled past the alley’s mouth, the sound of engines muted by distance. He could just barely see the edge of a sign: Peking Gar …
“Chinatown.” And then it sank in. “Chinatown. I’m home.” He looked at Mrs. Ruth, who nodded. “Home,” he repeated, struggling to sit up. He still wore the black silk and velvet and just beyond his reach the harp gleamed in the uncertain light. Images flooded back; the giants, the child, the forest, the bears, the sun, the prairie, the spears, the princess, the black armor, and the final terrifying plunge off the cliff….
“Shhh, bubba, shhh.” Mrs. Ruth shoved a handkerchief into Roland’s hands and patted him comfortingly on a shaking shoulder.
Roland swallowed a sob, fought for control, and got a fingernail’s grip on it. He sucked in deep, shuddering breaths and scrubbed at his face with the square of cloth—which, surprisingly, smelled of fabric softener. The memory of fear mixed with the mind-numbing relief at being home, brought him as close to total loss of self as anything that had happened in the shadow realm.
“I know, bubba, I know.” Not just meaningless sounds of sympathy, she sounded as if she did know, which steadied Roland further. “You’ve been through horrors few men can imagine, but as bad as it seems now, it’ll make a better Bard of you in the end.” The sympathy left her voice and she returned to a brisk no-nonsense tone, “You can have a wallow in it later. At present there are those who need you.”
“What happened to Tom? Did he get back?”
“Of course, he did. He’s a cat, isn’t he?”
Roland had no idea what being a cat had to do with things, but he nodded anyway and began convincing his battered, body that it had to stand.
Two nights to Midsummer. Two nights. Only two. The words ran through Evan’s thoughts, a litany that looped around and around. He sighed, wishing he could take the time to enjoy this world. In so many ways, it was so much closer to the Light than to the Dark; both in its people and in the lives they had made for themselves.
The day’s rain had washed the sticky heat from the air and the evening breezes were delicately scented with the presence of green and growing life. Evan didn’t care for cities; they barricaded their inhabitants away from the
A group of children swirled around his legs and ran off down the street, their laughter filling the evening with Light. Evan smiled after them, a gentle benediction. One small girl stopped, turned, and stared back at him, her expression puzzled, wondering why she was drawn. Evan sketched a sign in the air between them and the girl smiled as well, one hand reaching out to touch the delicate lines of Light. “Marian, come on!”
Their eyes met and Marian nodded solemnly, then whirled and, whooping, ran off to join her friends.
This is why the Darkness must be stopped, Evan thought, and bent his mind once more to the task at hand.
He didn’t exactly understand what had happened yesterday between Rebecca and the Dark Adept. When he’d arrived, freed from the glamour his enemy had thrown about him, the struggle was over. Only the power signatures and Rebecca remained.
“The watch in the pawnshop window was slow, Evan,” Rebecca had said, wide-eyed at his sudden appearance. But the power signatures told him that the Darkness had attacked and something had stopped it, something huge that had barely stirred and yet had still slapped the Darkness down.
Today, he’d walked Rebecca to work and back, spending the time between finding the faint path the Dark Adept had left when he’d fled, too rattled to mask properly. Tonight, he traced it, hopefully tracking the Darkness to its lair.
Two nights to Midsummer. Two nights. Only two.
“Where the hell have you been?”
Roland sighed and sagged against the wall of Daru’s cubicle. “It’s a long story,” he said, shifting the weight of the harp on his shoulder.
“It had better be a good one. Rebecca’s been worried sick.” She looked him up and down and snorted. “You look like you’ve been to a costume party.”
A shadow passed across his face. “No. It wasn’t quite a party.”
Daru’s expression softened slightly. It looked to her like Roland had done a little growing up in the forty-eight hours he’d been away. He had a depth now that she hadn’t seen before. “What happened to your face?”
“It’s nothing.” He touched his cheek where the point of the black sword had drawn a delicate line and ran his finger along the crimson beads of dried blood. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You tangled with the Dark Adept.” She wasn’t asking, but Roland nodded anyway. “You okay?”
Roland drew in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Things seemed to stay together. “There was a time,” he said, “when sanity hung by a hair. It’s not a lot more secure now, but in comparison, yeah, I’m okay.” He made the effort and straightened, ignoring the screaming pain in his kidneys. “Mrs. Ruth says we, you and me, have to get to Rebecca’s right away.”
“Mrs. Ruth says?”
“That’s right.”
“Rebecca’s friend, the crazy old bag lady?” “Right again.”
Daru frowned and waved a hand at her buried desk. “I’ve still got stacks of paperwork to get done if I want to get out into the field tomorrow and you’re telling me to just leave it because some crazy old bag lady says I should?”
Roland shrugged. His shoulders felt like they weighed a hundred pounds. Each. “Look, I only know what Mrs. Ruth told me. She says Rebecca needs us, both of us, and that’s good enough for me.”
“You believe her?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Roland’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t need this. “Because once you’ve become intimately acquainted with Darkness,” he snarled, “it gets real easy to distinguish the Light.”
Meeting his gaze, Daru had to believe him. She stood and snatched up her purse. “Let’s go,” she said, and led the way to the elevators.
Rebecca stared at the orange juice in the pitcher. There’d been more the last time, she was sure of it. She picked up the empty can and frowned at the label. Most of the big words made no sense but she could read, “Fill with three cans cold water.” She looked into the pitcher again. Maybe they meant another, bigger can? Maybe the can was bigger last time. She thought she’d gotten the same kind. The picture was the same.
The sudden loud banging on the door startled her and she narrowly missed dumping the entire problem in the sink.
Maybe it’s Roland, she thought, hurrying across the apartment. Maybe he’s come back! She fumbled with the chain, twisted the lock off—Evan had insisted she use both anytime he wasn’t with her—and threw open the door.
“Oh,” she said.
The large-blonde-lady-from-down-the-hall filled the open doorway. Her hair, usually lacquered to a bouffant neatness, was in wild disarray. Her face, beneath the streaked remnants of thick makeup, was puffy and pale. Under the lilac muu-muu, her body shivered and shook, free of the restraint of girdle and bra, and, with a kind of horrified fascination, Rebecca watched the tips of her massive breasts swaying back and forth.
“It’s all your fault!” she shrieked, lurching forward.
Rebecca tried to close the door, but the large-blonde-lady-from-down-the-hall had her weight against it and it wouldn’t budge. She stumbled back as the woman staggered another step or two into the room. “What’s all my fault?” she pleaded, growing more frightened by the second. “I didn’t do anything.”
Heavy arms spread and in one hand a carving knife gleamed dully in a white-knuckled grip. “This used to be a decent building until you moved in!” She lunged, the knife swooping down through the air in a murderous arc.
Rebecca stumbled away, whimpering. The blow missed, but she felt the cold air of its passage. “I don’t understand!” she wailed. She wanted to run, but the large-blonde-lady-from-down-the-hall was between her and the open door.
Stagger. Slash. “You should all be locked up!” Stagger. Slash. “Away from normal people!” Stagger. Slash. “Why should we have to look at you?” Stagger. “DISEASED!” Slash. “CRAZY!”
The knife missed, but a flailing hand slammed Rebecca up against the wall. Her fingers touched the edge of something hard and metal. The empty orange juice can. Snatching it up, she threw it as hard as she could. It clanged off the far wall, distracting the large-blonde-lady-from-down-the-hall just long enough for Rebecca to grab the pitcher of orange juice and throw it in her face.
She screamed and clawed at her eyes, dropping the knife.
In her corner, Rebecca trembled. She couldn’t go past to get to the door. She just couldn’t.
Eyes streaming, the woman stared at Rebecca and smiled. “It doesn’t really count, killing you,” she said with terrible clarity, “because you’re different.” Leaving the knife where it had fallen, she advanced.
Rebecca scuttled along the wall, throwing everything she touched. The toaster from the top of her tiny refrigerator. Plants from the windowsill. Her plush dragon from the shelf over the tv. The rolled up towel …
The towel smacked the large-blonde-lady-from-down-the-hall on the chin and unrolled. The black dagger fell out at her feet. Swollen lips drew back off the great white slabs of her teeth and she bent to pick it up.
It looked absurdly tiny in her huge hand and not at all dangerous.
And then Darkness began to spill out of the blade.
A strange silence fell as the two women watched the shadow cloud spin once around the hand that held the dagger. Then it settled and began to grow.
When it reached the dimpled flesh of her elbow, the large-blonde-lady-from-down-the-hall began to shriek. “Get it off me! GET IT OFF ME!” She tried to drop the dagger, but her fingers wouldn’t respond. The shadow slid across her shoulder and began to cover her chest, gaining speed. The shrieks became a wordless wail and then cut off as the shadow surged up and over her face. Hazel eyes stared for an instant out of the Darkness, their expression a mixture of pain and puzzlement.
As the body hit the floor, the shadow and the dagger disappeared.
From the back seat of the hatchback came a chord so doom invoking that Daru, listening to it, almost ran the car off the road.
“What was that?” she demanded, narrowly missing a cursing cyclist.
Roland swiveled around in his seat. “The harp,” he said shortly.
“Why …”
“I didn’t.”
“Then wha …”
His lips thinned. “I think we’d better hurry.”
Tires squealing, Daru pulled up under the no parking sign in front of Rebecca’s building and she and Roland tumbled out. They could hear the screams from where they stood.
With Patience slamming against his legs and the harp tucked under his arm, Roland dashed up the path after Daru.
“The door,” she cried, pounding on the glass. “It’s locked!”
“What?” Roland skidded to a halt. “Don’t you have a key?”
“Why would I have a key?” Daru protested. “I don’t live here!”
“Oh, fucking great! There has to be a back …” From the guitar case came the muffled sound of a piercingly high note. The harp twisted in his grip and echoed it. Loudly.
But not quite loudly enough. A couple of cracks appeared, but the door held.
“Oh, yeah?” Roland set Patience carefully to one side and rested the harp on his hip. “Plug your ears,” he told Daru, took a deep breath, and plucked the thinnest string, throwing himself into the single note as he’d thrown himself into the music.
The glass door trembled and shattered.
The sound still cutting through his head, Roland scooped up Patience and followed Daru into the building. He slipped on the broken glass and slammed his injured shoulder painfully into the wall. The world went away for a second and when it returned, the hall seemed to be heaving up and down and he couldn’t hear a thing over the echoes ricocheting about the inside of his skull. I should’ve known I’d pay for that, he thought, somehow managing to get to the stairs and up them.
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