Beyond World's End

by Mercedes Lackey

  After that it was just a matter of lining up the ducks, and shooting them down. And here he was.

  He shook his head, levering himself up out of the chair with a sigh. He had a lot to unpack, so he might as well get to it. He could always brood later. There'd be a lot of time for it. And it wouldn't get much cooler even if he waited: the stone and concrete of the city held heat for hours after the sun set, unlike both L.A. and San Francisco, where temperatures tended to drop sharply once the sun went down. Since his apartment was near the Hudson River he could expect a drop of at least a few degrees tonight, but not really enough to count on. Still, there were only three or four more weeks of this hot weather at the very most, and he could always conjure up some cool if he really needed it.

  Say . . . there's an idea. He rubbed his sweaty forehead, and then went into the bedroom for his flute.

  Music was a handy tool for focusing his Bardic magic, but in most situations it wasn't absolutely necessary. Still, Eric enjoyed the game of fitting the music to the spell. And here in the World Above, where magic didn't fill the ambient air as it did in Underhill, it was nice to have a bit of a framework to work within.

  He fitted the pieces of the flute together and blew an exploratory trill before segueing into "Troika," one of the five pieces that made up Moussorsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. A troika was a three-horse Russian sleigh, and you could almost hear the sleigh-bells and the cadence of the horses' pacing feet in the bounce of the main theme. Eric closed his eyes, imagining the crunch of hooves on snow, the clear cold bite of the wintery air—

  But not too much. We just want to make it a little cooler in here, not turn the place into an icebox. . . .

  As a pleasant chill rolled through the apartment, Eric opened his eyes. He could see a faint shimmer of magic over the windows, where the parameters of the spell he had set turned the air from hot to cold as it passed through the window. In a few moments, the muggy cloyingness of the air was gone. The spell would fade away naturally after a few hours in order to avoid being too disruptive; after all, he could set it again any time he needed to. Eric walked back out into the living room, flute in hand.

  Now for a little urban renewal.

  He started with the CD collection, although the first things he unpacked didn't go into the storage cabinets, they went on the machine, and when he was done, he had a stack of thirty empty jewel boxes piled beside it.

  He set the changer on "shuffle," and let it rip, sinking back down in his chair and thinking amusedly that this was one mix no radio station on the planet would ever match. Hey, it's K-Banyon radio, all Celtic, all the time!

  Then again, maybe there was one station that could match his CD-shuffle. WYRD, a little station somewhere in the middle of nowhere in North Carolina or Georgia or someplace like that, was allegedly programmed by elves. All he knew was the one or two times he'd accidentally picked it up, it had played things he was only thinking about, as if the DJ were reading his mind. And supposedly, you could count on it to give you omens of what was going to happen to you.

  No thank you. And I certainly hope and pray my CD player doesn't start doing so.

  Well, he had some pretty esoteric platters in his Celtica-mix today; stuff he hadn't known was back in production, stuff he hadn't known was in production in the first place. Strange little labels he'd never heard of, and some that were clearly self-produced.

  * * *

  "We don't get a lot of call for this—" The clerk had said that over and over, in a bewildered voice, as Eric brought out disk after disk that wasn't in his computer. Finally one of the assistant managers had taken pity on the poor kid and sent him off to help a Gen-Xer find the latest Smashing Pumpkins CD.

  "Our owner has a hobby," the assistant manager explained, as he patiently entered the prices and stock numbers manually. "He's independently wealthy; as long as the store breaks even, he doesn't care. His hobby is to make sure that no matter what someone's musical taste is, he'll always find fabulous surprises here. You should see the mail he gets—catalogues from individual artists, even. So—a lot of stuff may sit around for a year or more before anyone buys it. He doesn't care; he knows that someday someone is going to want it, be amazed and thrilled that it's here, and keep coming back to see what else shows up. That's why the store's called `Plastic Meltdown.' He expects credit cards to go into overload when the right people walk through the door."

  Eric just grinned. "Well, I know I'm going to put my plastic through a workout here on a regular basis. Does this happen often?"

  "Often enough," the middle-aged fellow said, with a wink. "Yesterday it was someone who collects movie scores—she was funny, kept saying, `My God! My God!' until I thought the Big Guy was going to show up to find out why she was calling on Him. Today it's you. Tomorrow, probably no one unusual, but next week, maybe an opera buff. The heavy hitters are usually from out of town; the rest of us know we don't have to blow all our savings at once."

  If that was a subtle inquiry, Eric didn't answer it quite as the fellow expected. "I just took the plunge on a CD player—I resisted for a long, long time; now that I'm a convert, I put the vinyl in storage and gave away the tapes, and I'm replacing everything with CDs. And picking up stuff I didn't know was around."

  The clerk coughed, but didn't comment; it was a Centurion AmEx card on the register.

  He probably sees a lot of heavy rollers in here.

  "Win the lottery?" the clerk asked instead, as the total on the register continued to mount.

  Eric grinned, since that was his original cover story. "Actually," he said, "yes, I did. Low enough it paid out all at once, high enough to let me do what I've wanted to for a long time."

  The clerk stared at him for a moment as if to see if he was joking, then said, almost reverently, "Does any of that luck rub off?"

  Eric chuckled. "Not that I've ever heard of. You know luck—you always get it when you don't need it. I was pretty happy where I was—playing for tourists down in Mexico. Climate was good, cheap to live down there, and the tourists were pretty pleased to discover people who spoke English, so they always tipped well. But—when I didn't need luck, there it was. And if things don't work out here like I hope, I'll probably go back."

  "Why would anyone leave Mexico for New York?" the clerk shook his head wonderingly as he passed the AmEx through the reader and waited for the approval to come through.

  "Because the coast of Mexico doesn't have Juilliard, and I want to find out if I'm a musician or only a busker," Eric told him as the approval came across the wire and the receipt scrolled out. The clerk nodded, and might have said something more, except at that moment four more customers appeared behind Eric, and all of them looked in a hurry to check out and leave. So Eric took his bulging bags and got out of their way before they started giving the clerk a hard time.

  * * *

  He opened his eyes and sank a little deeper into the chair, acutely aware of the silence beneath the music coming from the speakers. For the first time in a long time—a very long time, going back to even before his last girl dumped him, just before he met Kory and got really involved with Beth—there were no other sounds of occupation around him. The walls and floors of the building were very thick—which would be a blessing on the whole, but right now it prevented him from hearing the sounds other tenants made, noises that might have let him feel less alone and isolated. The only sounds within this apartment came from him. There would be no quiet clatter of Beth puttering about, or of Kory experimenting with modern human foods in the kitchen—

  On the other hand, that isn't altogether bad. The kitchen won't have to be hosed down at least once a week. I'll never forget the day he discovered microwave popcorn. . . .

  But the place felt like a museum—a stage set, with no life in it. He sighed. Maybe I ought to get a cat. Or a couple of finches. Anything to sound as if there's something home besides me. He couldn't remember what the lease said about pets; he'd have to look it up.

  But a ca
t would mean more responsibilities, and having to remember to feed it and change the litter and be here to play with it. How much time would he have to give a pet, anyway? Even if the lease said he could have one (he hadn't read it that closely), he'd better be careful about what kind of companion he chose. He'd be in classes and rehearsals all the time, and studying when he wasn't at the school. It would be cruel to have a pet that needed a lot of attention.

  A dog would be out of the question. So would a parrot or any other bird bigger than a pair of budgies. With enough toys and each other, a couple of budgies would be all right left alone all day, and so would the right temperament of cat. If I got an adult cat from the pound, or even rescued one off the street. . . .

  Maybe a tabletop waterfall and some environmental disks might be the better answer. Or canaries? Eric sighed, remembering the birds of Underhill. Now that was one thing he would miss about the place.

  I wonder if Dharinel would let me sneak a couple of those Underhill larks out here? I could leave the cage open so if they got bored or hungry they could go back home. . . .

  He watched the clouds pass outside the window, and let his thoughts drift with the music. And at some point he must have actually fallen asleep, because he suddenly woke with a start, to find that the sky outside his window had gone from silvery to indigo, there was a crick in his neck, the environmental spell had faded, and his mouth was dry. Sunset! I didn't think I was that tired; I must have been working harder than I thought. By now the Faire was over for the day, and Beth and Kory were—what? Probably gathering with old friends and new around someone's fire, passing around bowls of stew, trading gossip. The Faire circuit really was a world unto itself, upon which the real world seldom intruded until Monday rolled around again.

  He got up, stiffly, and wandered into the kitchen to get something to drink.

  Beth had loved the apartment's kitchen, which meant, he supposed, that it was laid out well. There were too many cupboards for his few pots and dishes, though Beth had seen to it that the pantry was filled with things that were easy to cook, even for someone of his limited skills. The cabinets were newer than the building, but not by much: cream-colored metal with black Bakelite Deco motifs, and the floor was those tidy octagonal tiles that no building outside of New York seemed to have. But the stove was modern enough, and so was the refrigerator, and at some time in the past one of the cabinets next to the sink had been sacrificed to permit the installation of a dishwasher, which was a good thing, since Eric never liked to wash dishes. The countertop and splashboards were of white marble that matched the cabinets, and it all looked very unused and perfect, like an illustration in House Beautiful from 1920.

  Yeah, well, I'll try making an omelet tomorrow, and fix that in a hurry. If I don't slash my hand open chopping onions, I'll drop at least two eggs on the floor and leave bits of potato all over the top of the stove.

  He opened the fridge and was confronted with a vast array of crystalline water bottles of various shapes and labels, with a few lone bottles of juices, root beer, cherry, and cream soda providing a little color among the colorless army. There'd be no one to drink it all but him, and suddenly Eric was struck with a sense of loss that brought a lump to his throat.

  Kory had obviously, personally—lovingly—stocked the fridge.

  Elves couldn't handle caffeine. It was as destructively addictive for them as cocaine was for humans, and worse: it acted on them like horse tranquilizers, sending them into a euphoric, oblivious state they called "Dreaming." Kory would no more have put cola or tea into a fridge than Eric would have stocked one with heroin and crank.

  Bless Kory! Nothing wrong with yuppie-water. And until I get a filter on it, I'm not sure I want to trust what comes out of the kitchen tap. Kory's "allergy" had done Eric a favor. The pipes in old buildings frequently added a liberal helping of rust—if not lead from the pipe solder—to the drinking water. I've killed enough brain cells on my own, I don't need to lose any more! Eric snagged the first bottle that came to hand, twisted off the top, and took a long swig of water as he wandered back to the living room.

  As he settled back into his chair, Eric suddenly had enough of the CD player. He shut it off with the remote control, and silence rushed in so abruptly it felt as if his ears had popped.

  He waited, straining to hear what, if anything, the building contained. By now people should be coming home from work or school; they should be taking baths, fixing dinner, turning on TVs for the evening news. And there were some sounds, faint and far-off, as if from another building, but they certainly weren't intrusive. In fact, he had to really concentrate to hear them at all.

  He shivered, stood up and started to pace, then stopped himself and sat down quickly on the sofa, putting the water down on the floor and reaching for the flute case that lay on a small table in front of the sofa. Suddenly he wanted the silence filled again—but not by someone else's music.

  For a while he simply played whatever was most familiar, a mix of the tunes he'd used to play when he busked alone. One thing he knew he didn't want to do, and that was to play the things he and Beth and Kory performed together.

  But as his fingers warmed up and the notes came as easily as breathing, an idea came to him.

  He didn't necessarily have to stay alone. He was a magician, and although he had to be very careful not to meddle, there were things he could do for himself without casting a geas. Why not use Bardic magic to hunt out a friend here in this building?

  There was no good reason why he shouldn't do just that—now. He had the control; he knew what not to do as well as what to do. Instead of the old sledge-hammer process of using brute force to get something done, his touch these days was the equivalent of a neurosurgeon with a hair-thin laser beam. All he had to do was to send out a call for someone who also needed a friend like him—simply speeding up the inevitable, because sooner or later he'd run into people in the building who had similar interests anyway.

  If he did this right, whoever came would hear his music despite the excellent sound-deadening qualities of the building. He—or she—would recognize it for live music, become curious, and follow it to the source. He shouldn't get too specific, though. And he should keep the need on the lighter side of friendship. Otherwise I could end up with a case of Fatal Attraction. Oh, no; no thank you! We'll keep this casual and innocent. Just the same kind of good times and good fun I had with some of my Faire buddies. He knew what that felt like; friends you could count on, but who gave you the space you needed. He'd taken it for granted: first, on the Faire circuit, and then Underhill, but now that he'd shut himself out of both worlds, he realized how much he'd unconsciously depended on them.

  He set his thoughts in the right pattern, breathed softly into the flute, and set the magic free on the wings of the song.

  Three times to repeat the song; that was what Dharinel had taught him. Once to make the pattern, twice to set the pattern, three times to bind the pattern. For really heavy work, he'd repeat his melody nine times—or, more rarely, five—but this wasn't heavy work. There was nothing riding on whether or not anyone "heard" his call, there would be no grave consequences if no one answered. He had been careful in being so completely species-nonspecific that it was even remotely possible that something from Underhill might answer the call. He didn't think any of the Sidhe lived in New York City—they lived in Los Angeles and San Francisco, but so much more of New York was man-made than either of the other cities, layers and layers of infrastructure descending as far below the surface as the skyscrapers stretched above, that he doubted they could stand it. He hadn't even specified "in the building," only "nearby"—and for Sidhe or other Underhill creatures, "nearby" could be quite some distance away.

  Not that he wasn't being cautious; the other half of his "call" was very specific. Nothing would "hear" him that didn't have what Dharinel called "good intentions." These were not the kind of "good intentions" that the road to Hell was allegedly paved with—more like a healthy set of eth
ics and morals. Nothing would hear or respond to Eric's music that would harm him, willingly or accidentally.

  It was no longer a difficult proposition to hold all those components of his magic in his mind—but it was rather like being a skillful juggler. It required intense concentration, and he kept his eyes closed to maintain that concentration right up to and through the final note.

  And as the last breath of that note faded, Eric heard a quiet tapping, just loud enough to catch his attention.

  But not from the door. From the window.

  Surprised, he opened his eyes, wondering if the wind had blown some bit of debris up against the frame of the open window that was making the tapping sound. But he knew there were no trees that close to his windows. Maybe a pigeon? That was possible. If the last tenant had been feeding them. . . .

  What they hey, there's bread in the kitchen.

  He walked over to the window to see, still thinking of pigeons, so it was with a profound shock that his eyes met another pair of eyes on the other side of the frame—dark, wide, and set in a fanged grey face beneath a pair of waving, batlike wings. And just to confirm that it was no accident, beside the face was a claw-like hand with a single talon extended, tapping once again on the frame.

  TWO: A CALLING-ON SONG

  If this had happened a couple of years ago, before Eric had the unique experience of having an Elven Knight appear in his apartment and scare the crap out of him, been worshipped by Nightflyers, chased by Unseleighe Elves and become a Bard, he probably would have put an Eric-shaped hole in the door on his way out. By now though, he had seen so many arcane and outré critters that having a monster staring at him from his fire escape, wanting to come into his apartment, was not going to frighten him. It was a surprise, even something of a shock, but it didn't frighten him.