Beyond World's End

by Mercedes Lackey

  The place Eric found himself in now wasn't nearly as nice. For one thing, it stank. He and Urla were standing on a hummock of grass in what seemed to be the center of a large swamp. Between the hummocks, the swamp water glowed a faint toxic green, simmering languidly as bubbles of gas worked their way to the surface and popped with an evil smacking sound. The illumination here was dimmer than the light of the forest and had a reddish cast. Thick mist hung from trees festooned with fleshy pale blossoms that gave off a nauseatingly sweet scent, as if they were rotting instead of blooming. Eric's skin crawled; he was in Unseleighe territory now, and no mistake about it. He could see large bat-winged things flying slowly through the distance, and as he stood gazing around himself, a terrible scream split the air—whether of predator or prey, he didn't know.

  Urla looked up at him to see his reaction, beady eyes glittering. Eric glared back as arrogantly as he could manage, and the bluff seemed to work. The redcap hurried off, bounding from island to island of dry land. The islands were yards apart, distances Eric couldn't jump, and he'd have to be crazy to step down into the water. This was obviously some kind of test.

  He summoned his power—he didn't need his flute here, or even music, but unbidden, a few bars of an old Simon and Garfunkel song skirled through his brain as he wove the magic. Like a bridge over VERY troubled waters. . . .

  Silvery mist rose out of the swamp and coalesced, following the redcap's trail. Eric stepped out onto it cautiously. It gave slightly beneath his feet, like the surface of a waterbed, but it held him comfortingly far above the surface of the swamp. He stepped out onto the bridge and followed Urla dry-footed across the bog.

  The exit Portal here was in a bank of mist. Eric knew enough about Underhill geography to know that the shortest distance between two points wasn't necessarily in a straight line. Navigating Underhill was more like solving a maze, one where every turn could take you half a dozen different places. The Unseleighe were a paranoid lot, defending their territories by making them hard to find, and even harder to enter.

  Urla walked into the mist and Eric followed cautiously. He didn't trust the redcap at all, and Urla would certainly think it was a great joke to lead Eric into danger, but he didn't think the creature was trying to lead him into a trap. Not yet, anyway.

  This time Eric found himself in utter darkness on the far side of the Portal, and quickly summoned a ball of elf-light. By its pale bluish illumination he could see that there was grass beneath his feet, short and trampled as if herds of animals had been running across it. A chill monotonous wind blew steadily, making him shudder more than shiver as he looked around. He was in the middle of a broad and featureless plain that seemed to stretch a thousand miles in every direction. When he looked up, there were no stars.

  "I'm losing patience," Eric warned, in what he hoped was the approved Unseleighe style. It seemed to be what Urla expected, because the redcap grovelled again, swearing to the Great Lord that they were almost there, indeed, their destination was mere instants away. The redcap turned away and began to trot across the plain, picking up speed until Eric was hard-pressed to keep up with it. Without the elf-light he'd summoned, he would have been unable to follow at all.

  A couple of times the ground shook silently as if something huge and heavy were running across it—though Eric saw nothing—and a couple of times he almost thought he'd heard something over the droning of the ceaseless wind, but he didn't dare stop to listen for fear of losing his guide. Bard or not, he had a notion that it would not be a good idea to be lost in this particular realm at the mercy of whatever it was that lived here. The swamp had been bad, but there was something almost honest about its malignity. This was a lot creepier.

  At last they came to a henge: two black rough-hewn standing stones supporting a third laid across their tops. The three stones were the size of Greyhound buses, and seemed to be made out of some fine-grained stone. Basalt, Eric dredged up from a dark corner of memory. Like in H. P. Lovecraft. I just hope whoever lives here isn't a fan of the classics.

  Urla trotted between the menhirs and vanished. Having no other real choice, Eric followed. As he'd expected, the landscape changed again. Now there was light. He stopped, blinking as his eyes adjusted.

  Wait. I know this place.

  He stood now in the wood that he'd dreamed of before—the black and silver wood where the winter-bare trees looked as if they were made of black and polished bone, and the ground was covered with a thick treacherous white mist. Urla was obviously on familiar ground now, for he moved more slowly than before—as if he didn't relish getting to his destination. Neither did Eric. Such a direct route to his destination indicated that whoever lived here felt he had little to fear from invaders, and that much confidence meant something old, powerful . . . and dangerous.

  Dangerous enough to think invading New York would be a cakewalk. Oh, boy, Banyon. You sure know how to pick your enemies. . . .

  In the distance, shining through the trees like a baleful moth-green moon, was the goblin tower of Eric's vision, but oddly, instead of worrying him further, he found himself with a treacherous desire to laugh.

  Whoa! Who does the decorating here? Skeletor? That place looks more like Castle Greyskull than any place has a right to. This place was beyond over-the-top: it was just too grim and too gothic for him to be able to take it seriously—as if a Hollywood set designer had done a makeover on Hell.

  You'd better take it seriously, Banyon. Because THEY sure are, and I bet Unseleighe Sidhe don't have much of a sense of humor. . . .

  As they approached, Eric saw that the front gate of the castle was guarded by a pair of armed knights in full ornate elvish armor that glowed like tarnished silver. Both of them were holding long and wickedly barbed pikes, in addition to wearing swords. Their eyes glowed red in the cavern of their helmets, but it was plain to see that Eric's arrival—at least on his own two feet—was unexpected enough to disconcert them. More bad news: that meant they were Sidhe, not some kind of created servitors, things little better than those white-armored guys in Star Wars. If this lord could compel actual Sidhe to do gruntwork like this, well . . .

  Let's just say I've got a bad feeling about this.

  Urla hesitated, obviously expecting some kind of formal challenge from the guards, but Eric was pretty sure it wouldn't be a good idea to stop for one. He pushed past the redcap and strode through the castle gates as if he had every right to be there. He passed beneath the portcullis into the outer bailey. There was a second set of guards standing before the inner doors, as silent and rigid as the first.

  The inner door swung open as he approached, and Eric strode through, Urla scurrying along behind him. Now he was in the outermost interior room, a space as vast as a performance hall. It was bare and empty, its black stone walls polished to mirror brightness and long narrow windows high upon the walls. An open gateway beckoned Eric onward.

  If he hadn't already spent so much time in various parts of Underhill, he would have been lost immediately. But by now he knew enough of the interior layout of Sidhe castles—and castles in general—to have a good idea of where the throne room was. He moved quickly through the maze of corridors and chambers, working his way upward. He saw several guards, all armored the way the first sets had been, but no one challenged him. They probably think that if I've gotten this far, I have a right to be here. One good thing about a really evil overlord is that his underlings don't tend to do a lot of thinking for themselves. . . .

  Urla seemed to have deserted him somewhere along the way, and Eric wasn't sure whether this was a good omen or not. At last he arrived at the outer chamber of the throne room, and unlike the other rooms, this one was inhabited. Fops in jewelled armor meant strictly for display lounged languidly, most holding leashes that led to doglike and less nameable things. Ladies of the court whispered and smiled, inspecting him over spread fans or beneath embroidered veils. One of them looked more like a leopardess than anything on two legs had a right to—she caught Er
ic staring and laughed, exposing a mouth filled with sharp carnivore fangs. Beautiful they might be, but no one who'd ever seen one of the Sidhe would mistake a member of the Dark Court for one of the Bright.

  Word of his arrival had preceded him—he could tell by the whispers and glances exchanged by the elegantly dressed lords and ladies who filled the outer hall. He thought someone might try to stop him—to curry favor with their liege-lord, if nothing else—but no one did. Eric skirted the edge of the silent group, carefully keeping his back to the wall. At the far end of the outer hall, three steps led up to another set of massive doors of enamelled silver that depicted a battle between two groups of mounted elves. The red enamel drops of blood in the picture glinted as if they were backlit, as if somehow light was shining through the doors. It was a startling effect. Whoever this Unseleighe Lord is, Eric thought, he had a helluva special effects budget.

  He skipped up the three wide steps—turning his back on the courtiers reluctantly—and gestured at the door, summoning up a simple knock-spell. For a moment he was afraid it wouldn't open, but like the first, it yielded to his power. A collective gasp went up from the watching Unseleighe Sidhe, and Eric heard the babble of conversation begin behind him as he stepped through the doors. As soon as he'd passed through them, the doors to the throne room closed behind him with the soft finality of the doors of a bank vault. Not a good sign. He bet they wouldn't open again as easily.

  Still, he'd come too far to back out now. He looked around.

  The throne room was enormous—far too big to have fit into the castle Eric had seen as he approached. For a moment he thought he was back outside in the bonewood, but then he realized that the walls were only carved in the semblance of a forest. The carven tree limbs spread to form a canopy far above, making the vault of the ceiling look like a blackened crown of thorns.

  Nice image, Banyon.

  The floor looked as if it had been poured from a single drop of liquid mercury, but Eric didn't dare break his momentum or show a moment's indecision, and to his relief, it was solid beneath his feet. At the far end of the chamber stood the same high throne he had seen in his dream. Only this time it was facing him, and occupied by the Unseleighe Eric had seen leading the Wild Hunt in Central Park. Refusing to think about what might happen next, Eric strode boldly toward the foot of the black throne and its darkling occupant.

  Like his guard knights, the Unseleighe Lord wore full ornate field plate armor of a silver so dark it seemed black. On his head was a black crown set with cabochon rubies that glowed as brightly as the blood drops in the door had. Eric stopped at the foot of the throne and stared up at its occupant. He forced himself to smile nonchalantly.

  "Hi. We need to talk. Now."

  * * *

  When Ria got back from Threshold, the package she'd asked Jonathan to send was waiting for her at the hotel desk. She was just as glad she'd left Logan with the others back at Threshold. What she had in mind now wasn't something a bodyguard could help her with, no matter how good a bodyguard he was.

  She signed for the package, and carried it upstairs to her suite to open it. Bless Jonathan! Her own personal .38 snubnose revolver and a lightweight chain mail vest—steel rings as supple and flexible as heavy silk—lay inside. There was a box of steel-jacketed hollow points beside the gun, a load that would bring serious grief to anyone—Sidhe or mortal—that it hit.

  There were two speed-loaders in the package with the gun. She loaded them both as well as loading the gun, but left the rest of the box where it was—any problem that eighteen bullets couldn't solve, magic probably couldn't solve either.

  A distant part of her mind was amused by her preparations. Who would ever have thought that there would come a day when she'd come riding to Eric's rescue Underhill? He knew more about the Sidhe than she did, but it was equally true that he had no idea of what people like Robert Lintel were capable of in their sublime self-obsession. Lintel wouldn't give up now that he'd seen the kind of power Eric had and thought he saw a way to get it for himself. And if Lintel caught up with him, Eric would be as helpless as a child, no matter how gifted a Bard he was. Down deep, Eric was a nice guy, and that would always put him at a disadvantage when dealing with people like Lintel—or the Dark Court.

  Fortunately, Ria thought, she wasn't nice.

  She stripped off her executive power suit and dressed again in the outfit Logan had brought her to go slum-crawling in. She pulled on her tightest T-shirt and slid the vest over it before slipping on the Kevlar-lined jacket and zipping it up to her throat. The combination should stop anything she might have to face, Sidhe or human. She slid the gun into her pocket and inspected herself in the mirror. Neither gun nor vest showed.

  She was ready to go to war. Now all she had to do was find the battlefield.

  * * *

  Guardian House looked serene and untouched by recent events. In order to track Eric, Ria needed something that was his—something attuned to his personal energy that she could use as a link to him, and his apartment was the best place to look. Ria wasn't sure it'd let her in without a fight, but fortunately she didn't have to try. As she stood in the little courtyard of the apartment building, she heard the frantic racing of a motorcycle engine coming from behind the building, and over it Greystone's gravel voice pleading with someone.

  "Aw, c'mon, sweetheart! Just—could you wait a minute here! Hey! Here now, mo chidr—"

  She ran around to the tiny private parking lot in the back of the building and found Greystone standing in front of Eric's bike. The elvensteed was making frantic dashes at the gate—all by itself—but Greystone kept blocking them, wings outstretched. The bike flashed its—her—lights in frustration, and her attempts to get around the gargoyle grew more frantic.

  "Hey! Blondie!" Greystone called when he saw Ria. "This thing can talk. Why ain't she talkin' to me, then?"

  "It's an elvensteed," Ria answered. "She won't listen to you or let anyone ride her but Eric. But elvensteeds can travel anywhere without Gates or Portals, and if he's called for her—"

  "We can follow?" Greystone said, brightening.

  "Exactly. Just get out of her way before she decides to bite you."

  Greystone stepped aside and folded back his wings. Lady Day zipped around him like a bull avoiding the matador's cape. By the time she was halfway up the block, she was gone from sight.

  But if I can follow Eric, I can certainly follow you, my dear.

  "She's gone! Hey, Blondie! What do we do now?"

  "We follow. And Greystone . . . ?"

  The gargoyle looked at her hopefully.

  "Don't call me `Blondie.' "

  * * *

  Aerune stared down at the bold interloper. It had never occurred to him that the mortal Bard might dare to beard him in his stronghold.

  "Kneel to me, mortal," he thundered, mantling himself with Power and stretching out his hand. A massive ring gleamed, blood-red, on his outstretched forefinger.

  "I don't think so," the Bard said. "We don't do much kneeling in the World Above these days. Or hadn't you noticed? Things have changed since the last time you led a Wild Hunt there. More iron, for one thing—but that's just the tip of the iceberg. Magic's really impressive, but Cold Iron will stop it dead, and we've got a lot of that in the World Above. We've also got machines that can do things you've never even dreamed of, machines that magic can't stop. If you want a bunch of mortals to pay homage to you, you're going to have to have a lot more in your bag of tricks than a little flashy magic and some big dogs. And I don't think you do."

  Infuriated by the Bard's arrogance as he was, Aerune was an honest enough tactician to see that there was much merit in what the mortal stripling had to say. The mortal Robertlintel had been quick to defend himself with Cold Iron when Aerune had attacked him, nor had his servants cowered at the sight of the Wild Hunt as Aerune had expected. Fear and magic were the Unseleighe's two main weapons against the mortal kind, and if those proved ineffective . . .

&nb
sp; "And the fact that you can't take us over isn't the worst of what I've got to tell you. Those guys in the park? The ones with the chain mail and the iron spears? They're playing you, Dark Lord. I don't know who sent them after you, but I do know the kind of person he is. I've met people like him before. He's got hundreds of `warriors' at his command, and he wants your magic. He's already killed I-don't-know-how-many innocent people to get a handle on it, and he's getting closer to figuring you out every minute.

  "And once he does, he's going to be coming after you—here. If humans figure out a way into Underhill, your intramural feuds won't matter anymore. Dark Court and Light—you'll both be history."

  Such audacity and ruthlessness as the Bard described was worthy of Aerune himself, but the notion of a mortal having the temerity—and the weapons—to conquer Elven Lands was a sickening thought. Aerune considered the mad wizard he'd faced in the Park, the crude-but-effective weapons that had accounted for the lives of so many of his Hunt.

  No. It is not possible. They were lucky, nothing more, he decided. Now that I have taken their measure, I will cow them utterly. For Aerete.

  But the Bard was still talking, impervious to his own immediate peril.

  "So you're going to have to choose. Work with me to take this guy out and bury what he knows. Or end up serving him with an iron collar around your neck."

  "You have gone too far, Bard!" Aerune shouted, rising to his feet in a swirl of black cloak. "I am the Great Lord Aerune mac Audelaine of the Unseleighe Sidhe, and before I am done with you, you will beg me for death, as will any of your kindred who dare to raise their banners against me. Guards! Attend me!"

  He would blast this mortal where he stood, hang his body on the castle gates as a warning to other impertinent trespassers! Aerune drew back his hand, preparing to strike.

  And the throne room . . . rippled . . . as the fabric of Aerune's realm twisted sideways with a sickening and disorienting lurch. Mage-quake! Aerune staggered, fighting for balance in the aftermath of the disruption, as his tiny kingdom was destroyed and remade itself again in obedience to his will and his magics. But the Bard who taunted him here could not claim such power. . . .