A dozen hands went up and Garrison pointed at the man in the wheelchair in the front row. “Yes, sir?”
“Alan. What’s your next book? Another fantasy novel?”
Garrison grinned at him. “It’ll be out next year. I think you’re just going to have to wait and see. And I hope you like it. Thank you all!”
Garrison stood up, grabbed his sportcoat from the empty chair beside him and signed his way through a sea of copies of The Virgin Enchantress as he made his way to the door. A few people followed him into the corridor, asked a few questions, asked him to sign a few more books.
After several minutes, the last question asked, the last book signed, Alan Garrison reached the stairs and started down. He still smoked as little as he always had, but all someone had to do was post a sign announcing that smoking was prohibited and he wanted a cigarette. He had checked convention records and a one-day membership had, in fact, been sold to a woman named “Swan Creath” and there was always Brenda, and Alicia and Gardner, too. They remembered her.
There was no Swan Creath living in the entire United States. Before leaving the Bureau, he’d run the name with the best people finder program to be had.
What he remembered as happening had to have been real.
He had the nonscars to prove it. Before he’d met Swan and been magically whisked off to Creath, he’d had the usual unremarkable collection of dings people got from daily life—a mark on a finger where a wart had been burned off, a tiny chicken pox scar at the corner of his left eye, a reminder on his right leg of a serious collision with a formica tabletop when he’d been a kid. All of those scars were gone.
Wisnewski had recommended Garrison for a commendation in the arrest of William Brownwood. Garrison resigned before it was approved, but they sent him the commendation anyway.
Brownwood had been in a state of mental collapse when he was arrested. If Brownwood ever got well enough, Garrison assumed that he’d be called to testify in the man’s trial.
Garrison reached the ground floor and looked for an exit, the closest one at registration; or, as Swan would have put it, “... the great hall through which all who come here must pass.”
It sucked, Garrison told himself. Swan existed in her “realm” and he in his. He couldn’t call her, send her flowers, anything. All he could do was love her. And, the way that time passed so oddly there, a hundred years or only a hundred minutes might have gone by. “Sucked” was too mild a word.
Garrison almost punched open the door leading outside. Despite the time of year for Atlanta, the weather wasn’t that terribly hot. He took off his sportcoat, anyway. Even though he’d left law enforcement, he still carried a gun, but just the little .32 Seecamp in the Pocket Natural holster in the side pocket of his trousers.
He started digging around in his jacket pockets for his cigarettes. “G’urg,” Garrison snarled.
There were a bunch of people hanging around outside the entrance, some in hall costumes, most not, some older than he, most of them younger. Nearly all of them stood and smoked, while a few sat on the sidewalk and smoked.
Garrison pulled a cigarette out of his half-empty pack, started to flip the cowling back on his lighter.
His cigarette lit.
Garrison’s jaw dropped and he almost lost the cigarette from his lips.
He didn’t look right or left, in front or in back.
Instead, Alan Garrison stared at his pack of cigarettes. It was full.
He raised his eyes, glanced around. There were people everywhere. “Swan?” Garrison whispered. He saw her. “I’m crazy.” She was crossing the street on the green light, and he almost didn’t recognize her. Her auburn hair was cut to just past shoulder length. Instead of a medieval-style dress, she wore a cream-colored sleeveless knit top and an ankle-length brown skirt with a cream-colored floral print. She was wearing sandals. He could see her toes! He’d never seen her toes, the one time he’d had the chance his eyes were too busy elsewhere.
Garrison glanced down at the cigarette, ran into the street, but stopped dead.
He asked himself aloud, “Am I crazy?”
She stopped in the middle of the street.
Garrison stood maybe a foot away from her. “Swan?”
“Al’An.”
Garrison took the solitary step that brought him right in front of her. “Swan.”
“I decided that magic stifled technology, and that while the people of Creath depended on magic, there would be no reason for them to depend upon themselves. I appointed Mitan and Gar’Ath to rule Creath so that someday the people of Creath will learn to rule themselves. Erg’Ran will advise them, of course. Captain Bre’Gaa has convinced the Gle’Ur’Gya that his people and the people of the Land should try to live in peace. I think it will work.”
“So, uh—you’re here on vacation?”
“No. I’m not.”
The light had changed, Garrison noticed absently, from green to red. He could hear a lot of horns honking.
“You here to stay?”
“If you want me to, Al’An.”
“What about the, uh—Well, I mean, will it be dangerous to you when we—?”
“If you will help me, I think I’ll be okay.”
Alan Garrison drew Swan into his arms, looked into Swan’s grey-green eyes. “I’ll help you—every chance I get,” he promised her.
Alan Garrison let his cigarette drop into the street and kissed Swan so hard that his lips hurt. Cars kept honking at them and honking and honking and honking.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
The Golden Shield of IBF Page 46
