Music to My Sorrow

by Mercedes Lackey

  The sound from the screens was kept down to a tolerable level, thank the Good Lord, though even with the casino's excellent soundproofing everything seemed to vibrate just a bit from the playing of the actual band outside. Try as he might, he could not find it within his heart to like this music, no matter how good it was for the Ministry. It was nothing like his own sweet Gospel choir and his dear Heavenly Grace. Even from in here, the band's playing was like being next to a freeway at rush hour, and according to Gabe, it wasn't the loudest one that was going to play today. At least he could leave after he'd made his speech—and before he lost his hearing.

  Oh, how he missed Heavenly Grace's singing! But Gabe had promised him that she would be with him soon. Maybe Gabe had come to his senses about straight talk and straight action. Maybe spending time with the young and impatient had done the trick. Yes, yes, that was surely the answer, for Gabe had sworn that after today, the lawyers and the courts wouldn't matter any more, and that Billy would never have to deal with them again. His lost lamb would soon be back within the fold, and that after today, he wouldn't have to worry about missing her any longer. It could be those long-hair boys had done Gabe some good, set his mind to action instead of dancing around that limb of Satan that called herself a judge. Billy had to give Gabriel Horn this much: only in that one instance had Gabe not been able to deliver what he'd promised. And Gabe had been madder over that than Billy'd been, almost.

  Suddenly Billy realized that the God-awful caterwauling had stopped. He glanced up at the screen, and frowned. The musicians were just standing there, holding their instruments, staring off into space.

  Just like they were off in a trance or something. Except if this was a Visitation of the Holy Spirit, they'd have been speaking in Tongues, not standing there like a bunch of street-corner hop-heads.

  There could only be one explanation. They were a bunch of street-corner hop-heads.

  His temper flared.

  Dammit, he'd told Gabriel no drugs! These were supposed to be good Christian boys witnessing to Jesus through music, not drug-addled Satanic vipers like the kind of rock musicians you saw on television and read about in the papers! He couldn't afford any shadow of scandal—

  And where was Gabriel, come to that?

  Fuming, Billy Fairchild went off to look for the man responsible for this disaster.

  * * *

  Parker Wheatley stood as far as it was possible to get from the front doors of the casino, but the sound of the guitars was still like the whine of a jet engine; both piercing and exhausting. From the briefing earlier in the day, he knew that they had at least another forty minutes of this to endure before it was time for the Reverend Billy Fairchild to strut and preen.

  And for him to do his bit, as well. It had taken every bit of persuasion he had, and ultimately he'd had to point to a miniscule bump in the collection-plate tally that was statistically insignificant, but he'd managed to get Billy to agree to let him have another shot at haranguing the masses.

  He didn't much like this business, these neo-Nazi Christians. They were unstable, uncontrolled, dangerous. There was no telling what they might do.

  If he'd still been working in Washington—or even had any contacts there that he still cared to cultivate—he would certainly have sent a carefully worded memo or two their way just to consolidate his own position. If Fairchild Ministries wasn't on one of the hatewatch lists yet, it would be very soon, unless the political climate on the Hill had changed out of all recognition. He was going to have to do something about that if he was going to get anything useful out of them at all. Not that he cared about the direction as such—but narrowing the focus to the far-far-far end of the extreme came with a price tag. Pretty soon people like the Anti-Defamation Leagues of both Jewish and Moslem sectors were going to come nipping at Billy's heels, not to mention the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the ACLU and—well, fighting them was going to take away money and resources, and there was no point in pouring both down a hole when simply moderating the tone would keep them away.

  However, once they went away—well, that particular far-far-far-out sector and their plans for America were very, very useful indeed, so far as Wheatley was concerned. Moderate the tone in public, that was the key. In private—find a way to control them, then use them, use them for all they were worth.

  The close connection between some of the Christian denominations and the White Power sects was a more than open secret. As far back as Reconstruction at least, racism and bigotry had wrapped themselves in the American flag, thumped the Bible, and brandished the Cross . . . when they weren't burning it on somebody's lawn.

  And when the times had changed, they'd changed with them. After the end of WWII, certainly racism and anti-Semitism had continued to flourish as ugly blots on the American landscape, but any notions of "Aryan supremacy" had needed to be carefully packaged, as the Nazis had rendered the name—if not the actual concept—unpalatable to the generation that had fought and died to make Europe free.

  But nearly six decades had passed since V-E Day; the men that had fought the Nazis were dead, senile, or too old and polite to say anything, and what might seem an unlikely alliance for any student of history—Nazi tenets and far-right Christian fundamentalism—had taken hold in the ideological attics and basements of the Far Right, growing more powerful every year.

  And their promoters more savvy. These days the neo-"Aryan" groups recruited at "festivals of European culture" that seemed, on the surface, just as innocuous as the Highland Games and Scottish festivals that had thousands of normal red-blooded American men dressing up in plaid skirts every year. They slicked up their message and set it to a hard-rock beat—just as Gabriel Horn was doing now—and before their listeners quite knew what was happening, they were swept into in the dark, poisonous subculture of "racial purity."

  Oh, not many, out of all those who bought the albums or went to the events. Right now, the recruiters thought that one in a hundred was a good return on their investment. And it was, because for every person who didn't get involved on a deeper level, there were a dozen who thought that whatever aspect of European Christianity—to give the movement only one of the hundreds of names it was currently going by—they'd encountered was perfectly harmless. Nothing to make a fuss about. In fact, some of their points were right on, brother! And they'd continue thinking these cheerful, smiling, happy people were all right, a little loud, maybe, but pretty much on the right track. They'd let themselves be lulled, let themselves look past all the warning signs, and if this lot ever found themselves a single charismatic leader, they'd watch and applaud him all the way to the White House.

  Wake up, America. It's 1938, Wheatley thought sardonically.

  Not that he cared much. There was business to be done under any government, and if the power was consolidated at the top without all those checks and balances like the ones that had put an end to his career, that made things a lot easier for guys like him. Parker Wheatley wanted power, and he wasn't at all fastidious about what he had to do to get it—or who he had to work with. Who was in charge at the top wasn't important. What was important was that they helped him get his job done. Everything else was superfluous.

  In fact, hitching his wagon to Billy Fairchild's star might have been a smart move for more reasons than just the Ria Llewellyn connection.

  Oh, he hadn't gotten very far yet hunting Spookies in the Fairchild organization—or demons, as Billy preferred to call them—but there was something here to find: he could smell it. He couldn't say just what it was, but somebody in Billy Fairchild's happy family had their hand in a damned big cookie-jar somewhere. It took a horse-thief to know one, after all. So far he'd been kept busy making speeches; he'd barely had a chance to interview—and clear—half the staff. His office and his apartment had both been searched, which was interesting in a quiet way. They were after Aerune's equipment, obviously. And that someone was looking for it was very interesting indeed . . . because no one else was supposed to
know it existed.

  The music stopped—he felt it as much as heard it—and Wheatley sighed in relief. He knew it was only a temporary respite, but they must all give thanks for the gifts they were given, as his current patron would say.

  He went over to the bar to get another drink.

  Halfway through his Scotch, the band started up again. Wheatley glanced up at the screen in faint annoyance.

  His glass dropped from his nerveless fingers.

  There were four Spookies up there on the stage. Playing guitars. And, aside from features more angular than he'd remembered, and the pointed ears, looking very damned much like that pet rock band of Gabriel Horn's, the one he'd been so proud of, the one that was the whole reason for this counter-Woodstock. . . .

  And it hit him.

  Horn knows. Horn knows what they are.

  The realization filled him with virulent excitement. Gabriel Horn had disliked him from the beginning—Wheatley had put that down to a simple turf-war. But—oh, God—what if there were more to it than that? He'd told Fairchild that this was just the sort of operation that the Spookies loved to take over for their own unknowable purposes, and he'd been right—

  He looked around wildly. Neither Billy Fairchild nor Gabriel Horn were anywhere to be seen.

  Cursing under his breath, Parker Wheatley ran to get his equipment.

  * * *

  He'd elected to watch the concert from his office. Better that than subjecting himself to the yammering of the mortal cattle that Billy loved to surround himself with. And on this day of all days, it would have been too great a temptation to simply slay them all.

  Personally.

  The mere idea of just summoning his royal armor and his blade, and wading through the crowd swinging, was almost too much to resist.

  Gabriel Horn paced back and forth across the floor of his office, all but growling aloud. Only the promise of the carnage to come in less than an hour was remotely soothing.

  How could everything have gone so desperately awry so very quickly? Only last night he had everything well in hand: the Bright Bard and his brother were his captives, and by now they should have been destroyed and on their way to spend the rest of their truncated lives as toadying serfs. Heavenly Grace had been a small disappointment, but at least there he would have had revenge, if not victory.

  And then they had escaped.

  And Jormin and the others had not recaptured them.

  The humans he had sent in their place had been no more expert huntsmen, even though he had included a Sidhe among their number to trace the fugitives by magick. It had not occurred to him that they would have elvensteeds—impossible to track by magick or huntscraft—and by then the trail was cold.

  He'd done what he could to reclaim the victory. He'd set a watch upon the hotel at which Heavenly Grace and Hosea Songmaker had stayed—if Jormin's geas held, the apprentice-Bard and the little songbird would return there as soon as they could. But in the wake of so many disappointments, Gabriel had little hope of such luck. Though his hunters were still searching for their quarry—as they would until he recalled them did they know what was good for them—without magick to aid them, the hunt would be long and undoubtedly fruitless.

  So Misthold's Bard and his acolytes ran free. And Sieur Eric would undoubtedly go whining to his master—if he was not at Arvin's feet already, licking Bright Court boots—of his ill-usage. And worse. The bedlamite Bard would tell all he knew of Gabriel's plans in the world, and who knew what Gabriel's Bright Court cousins might say to that?

  Who knew what they would attempt to do to his son?

  And if High King Oberon were brought into it . . .

  Gabrevys would not forego his revenge against Eric Banyon, by any means, but it would have to take another form, at another time. For now, he would have to content himself as much as he could with knowing how the fate of the Bright Bard's parents would grieve him—and was it not, after all, a fate truly of Sieur Eric's own making?

  He would have Jormin make a song about it.

  If he did not feed the wretched Bard to the Shadows instead. At least he could do that, if he chose. Jormin was his Bard, his liegeman, and Gabrevys had the rights of life and death over him by ancient usage.

  How—how—could Jormin have underestimated the damage young Songmaker could do? It must have been he who had freed the others: there was no one else. Foolish, the confidence that had left one enemy, however weak and ineffectual, to run free, and only see the disaster it had brought in its wake—!

  Slowly a sense of wrongness began to penetrate Gabriel's furious anger. It took a long time to gain his attention, but at last he looked—really looked—out the window at the concert venue below.

  The audience was moving away from the stage. Turning away from the performers that they had come to see, moving slowly toward the building at the far side of the parking lot, as if there were something there that drew them. But the only thing there should be Gabrevys's own camera setup, placed safely out of harm's way to film the explosion to come.

  No.

  There were humans on the roof.

  The Bard and his companions.

  Playing instruments.

  Making magick.

  Bespelling the audience—his audience!—for a purpose Gabriel did not understand, but which must be some plot to further ruin his plans.

  And the blend of the girl's Talent with the magick of Misthold's Bard was irresistible.

  But that can be remedied . . .

  Gabriel clenched his fist, summoning a levin-bolt, and took aim at the wretched chit of a girl.

  And then, with a growl and an internal wrench, stopped. Even now he did not—quite—dare openly break the Law of the Sidhe that held that there should be no overt usage of magick in the World Above. Besides, there was too much Cold Iron here for him to be sure his bolt would fly true—if it struck Bard Eric instead of Heavenly Grace . . .

  Then he would be called to account before the High Court itself, and his enemies would be delighted to see that the accounting fell heavily upon him. Oberon would not be amused. And Oberon was High King, not merely because he was Eldest, which he was, but because he was more powerful than any fifty Magus Majors put together.

  There was silence below, and then a sudden upwelling of sound and magick. He recognized the playing of his own Bard, and saw the audience eddy about in confusion, caught between the two Bards.

  For a moment Gabriel hesitated. If he went down to the stage, joined his power to Jormin's . . .

  But no. Though he was a Magus Major, vast in power, he was no Bard. Even here he felt the weakening effects of the spell Bard Eric was spinning; the lure of Heavenly Grace's singing. Perhaps if it had merely been Bard against Bard, Jormin could have won this battle. But it was not. There was the Bard, who had human creativity as well as magick. There was the Apprentice, who was strong in spirit if not in skill. There was the girl, with something beyond mere magick. And—he sensed—another, who had a Talent that bound them together in a whole that was far, far, greater than the sum of its parts. Much as he honored Jormin's gifts, he did not believe his Bard could prevail.

  There was only one thing to do to salvage what little he could of all his hopes and plans.

  The bomb must explode now.

  * * *

  Wheatley always kept some of his equipment in his office. Not the irreplaceable things, like the parasympathetic energy detectors that detected the reality-manipulating energy that Spookies gave off, or the illusion-filtering lenses that would allow their wearer to see through most Spookie illusions, but the simple things that could be made with Earth technology, like the bolt-guns and the steel capture nets.

  Weapons.

  It only took him a moment or two to arm himself and stuff some extra equipment into a small bag. If he was lucky, today he'd be able to provide Billy Fairchild with what he'd wanted—a Live Capture of an actual "demon." And all on film! There were cameras all over, trained on that stage. He'd have th
e capture from as many angles as anyone could want.

  And coup of coups, it would be the capture of a "demon" that had been taken into the bosom of the Ministry and cherished there.

  As he hurried from his office back toward the casino, he slipped the filter-glasses on. He hated wearing the things: no matter what they'd done with them in R&D, they'd always looked like cheap sun-glasses, and everything the wearer saw looked faintly green.

  But wearing them, he'd see the world as it truly was.

  And that was vital.

  * * *

  It seemed an eternity as the elevator doors closed and the car began its slow descent toward ground-level, and to Wheatley's intense frustration, it stopped almost immediately.

  The doors opened, and Wheatley found himself staring at . . . One of Them.

  Tall, taller than Wheatley. Features so angular they looked like a cartoon exaggeration of a human. Pointed ears, and the green, cat-pupilled eyes that were the hallmark of every single one of them. There was a frozen moment when they stared at each other, then Wheatley saw understanding in the monster's eyes that he saw it for what it was.

  Wheatley raised his gun and fired.

  It was something they'd designed themselves, back in the PDI days, based on Aerune's careful descriptions of what would be most effective against his kind. It was a spring-driven gun—a purely mechanical process—that fired inch-long projectiles of pure iron about the diameter of a really fat knitting needle. It didn't have the range or penetrating capability of a conventional weapon, but against Spookies there was nothing on God's Green Earth more effective.

  Half-a-dozen of the projectiles buried themselves in the creature's chest with a faint stuttering sound—thank God the guns were relatively silent, because the upper floors were filled with sightseers today. The Spookie staggered backward, falling to its knees, and then to the floor, twitching as if it had been electrocuted. Wheatley noted with faint interest that smoke was actually rising from the entry wounds.