A Host of Furious Fancies

by Mercedes Lackey

  “No, she isn’t,” Eric said levelly. “Let go of her, Ria. We have to find out what she knows. And then the law can make her pay for her crimes.”

  “No,” Jeanette said, her voice barely intelligible through sounds of pain. “No, it can’t.”

  Ria let go of Jeanette’s hair to try to break Eric’s grip, but he refused to release her. Jeanette ran to the end of the leash Hosea still held and dragged helplessly at it, trying to get away. Hosea reached for her to try to calm her.

  “Oh, God, no! Don’t touch me!” Jeanette shrieked. The raw agony in her voice stopped all of them cold for an instant, but an instant was enough.

  “She’s an Empath,” Kayla said, her voice flat with discovery.

  “I don’t care if she’s Mother Teresa,” Ria growled, yanking herself free of Eric.

  “I think,” Paul Kern said, “that we’d better take this inside if we possibly can.” He pointed back at the House.

  Eric looked up. It was well after midnight—nearly dawn, in fact—but all the windows on this side of the building were lit, and he could see people at most of them gazing down into the parking lot. In a few moments some of them would come downstairs, asking a lot of questions that the people standing in the parking lot wouldn’t want to answer.

  “Yes. Greystone, is this some kind of trap?” Eric asked.

  :Not that I can see, laddybuck. She’s harmless:, the gargoyle replied in mindspeech. :Come on in.:

  “You guys go ahead,” Eric said.

  They went, Hosea dragging Jeanette by the leash. She shied away from all attempts to touch her. Ria stalked into the building without looking behind her, back stiff with fury.

  But Ria’s anger was a problem to solve later, if he could. For now, some damage control was needed. Eric stepped back from the building, lips pursed in a soundless whistle as he summoned Power. The simplest of the Bardic Gifts—a spell of sweet dreams and forgetfulness for all those who stood watching from their windows, and for everyone else within the House it could reach.

  Safe. You’re safe here, all is well. Nightmares belong to the night and fade with the sun. It was all a dream, an evil dream, and it’s over. You’re safe. All is well.

  The magic sounded forlorn and lost, like a candle in the wind. But each time the tune circled round again the magic was stronger, more hopeful. Eric ran through the simple tune that worked the spell nine times—three to shape it, three to set it, and three to bind it well—before he was satisfied. And finally he could feel it reach out to the people inside the House, touching them, bringing them comfort and hope, drawing force and reality from their hesitant belief.

  It wouldn’t be enough to banish the effects of Aerune’s levin-bolt, but it would do for tonight. Later he and the others would have to see what they could do to unweave the harm that Aerune had done here, but tonight they had a more immediate disaster.

  When he got back upstairs, Ria was sitting in the corner, seething, with Hosea hovering over her like a prison guard. Jeanette cowered in the far corner of the living room, her back against the wall, hugging herself and moaning. Her too-beautiful face was haggard, etched with lines of suffering. She looked like a bad plastic surgery case. Kayla knelt in front of her, several feet away, talking softly.

  “I don’t care what Aerune’s done to her—it isn’t enough,” Ria said angrily when Eric arrived.

  “Maybe not. But right now, finding out what he’s up to is more important than revenge,” Eric said.

  Ria growled wordlessly and looked away.

  “Yeah, facts are always nice to have,” Kayla said, “but you aren’t gonna get anything out of her while she’s like this. She’s got no shields, Eric. None. How can somebody be an Empath, and her age, and alive, and not have shields?”

  Eric shook his head. “Maybe we can give her some.”

  “Wait a minute.” Ria surged to her feet and took a step toward Jeanette. “You’re going to help her?” She glared furiously at the three of them. Kayla glared right back.

  “I’m going to—” Eric began.

  “Don’t worry, Ria,” Jeanette said painfully, her voice a whispery croak. “Just a little time . . . I’ll be dead and it won’t matter.” She smiled with great effort, as if this were a good joke on someone.

  “You took T-Stroke,” Eric said in abrupt understanding. Suddenly it all made terrible sense. That’s why she has Gifts and no idea of how to deal with them.

  Jeanette flinched. To an unshielded Empath, strong emotion was like salt in an open wound. He saw her meet his gaze with a grim struggle. “I thought Elkanah was going to kill me and T-Stroke was my only weapon. I wish he had,” she added in a ragged whisper. “He killed someone here. Aerune said so.”

  Elkanah? Toni said that was Jimmie’s brother’s name! It made terrible sense—Jimmie’s brother would have been able to get through her shields. If she had felt his pain, if he had led her to her death . . .

  “Let me help you,” Kayla repeated, reaching out.

  “Don’t touch me!” Jeanette gasped, shrinking back. “Whoever you are, you can’t fix this. I’ve seen Healers die. I know. Please.”

  Kayla drew back. “We’ve got to do something. We can’t just let her die,” she said pleadingly to Eric.

  Eric looked at Ria. Of everyone there, she was the only one, aside from Jeanette, who knew anything about how T-Stroke worked. All Eric knew was that Jeanette Campbell had come up with a drug that turned ordinary people into Talents . . . and killed them.

  “Yes, we can,” Ria said. “That’s what T-Stroke does. It kills people a few hours after someone gives it to them. Only your clock wasn’t running while you were in Underhill, was it, Campbell? Too bad Aerune’s hung you out to dry, isn’t it? Maybe now you’ll know what it’s like to die the way all the people you killed died.”

  Jeanette met Ria’s gaze, though Eric could see that for her it was as much of an effort as to thrust her hand into an open fire. And just as agonizing.

  “I never hurt you, Ria. Just your pride. Others have a lot more right to my head than you do. Stand in line.” Jeanette gasped and doubled over, hugging herself against sudden stabbing pain, coughing raggedly until she began to gag. Kayla winced, flinching back from Jeanette’s distress. Hosea crossed the room and swooped Kayla up as if she were a doll, depositing her on the couch at the far side of the room.

  “You have got to stop Lord Aerune,” Jeanette got out through gritted teeth. “He’s got help.” She curled into a fetal ball on the floor, shaking and gasping.

  “I think if you’ve got any rabbits, Eric, now’s the time to pull ’em out of your hat,” Hosea said quietly.

  But what could he do? He couldn’t send Jeanette back to Underhill—from the looks of things, she wouldn’t survive long enough for Lady Day to make it to the Everforest Gate. And he couldn’t heal her—she was right; whatever T-stroke did to the human body, it was beyond the ability of either Healer or Bard to undo. Her time was running out.

  But if he could stop time here . . .

  “I’m going to try something,” Eric said to the others. He thought about asking Hosea to help him, but he wasn’t sure how Guardian Magic layered over Bardic Gift worked, and this wasn’t any time to go doing field tests. “It’ll buy us the time to figure this out, I hope, but it might feel kind of weird. Don’t fight me, okay?”

  “Whatever help we can give is yours,” Paul answered.

  Eric looked at Ria. She had power that stemmed from her half-Sidhe heritage and a lifelong study of sorcery. She could help him—or make this impossible.

  Ria took a deep breath and nodded. “You’re right. She’s right. Do what you can. I won’t stop you.”

  The first of the two spells was easy: a simple warding, to build the shields for Jeanette that she couldn’t build herself. Eric saw them settle into place around her, saw her uncoil from her fetal crouch, panting with relief.

  The second part was harder: to stop time itself for all of them here in this room. He didn’t
know if he could do it at all, if the House would permit it, and if he could, it wouldn’t be for long. But he had to try.

  For Eric, for any Bard, magic was music. He took a deep breath, holding the finished tune—the finished spell—fully formed within his mind—then letting it uncoil, filling him with music as he filled it with power. “Backward, turn backward, O ‘Time in Thy flight . . .’”

  It was like rolling a giant boulder uphill. He gritted his teeth, focusing his will on that impossible task. He got through the first iteration, but there were eight more to go before the spell was truly complete.

  Seven—six—five— And he had no more to give. For a moment he thought he would fail, that the spell would uncoil right then, then new strength came flowing into the working.

  Ria.

  :I said I’d support your decisions, remember?: her cool voice came in his mind.

  Four—three—two—one—and the spell was set and began to run. The walls of the room grew pale and indistinct, the doors and windows vanished, leaving the eight of them suspended in a bubble of silvery timelessness.

  “You must teach me that sometime,” Paul said respectfully, looking only a little rattled. José and Toni were looking around at the transformed apartment, wary looks of wonder on their faces.

  “Yeah,” Eric said, sighing. He turned back to Jeanette. She was sitting up, breathing more easily. She looked at Eric.

  “This is magic, but it isn’t a cure,” he told her. “I don’t know how long I can hold this bubble, but when it pops . . . you’re probably going to go with it,” he finished reluctantly.

  “Just as well,” Jeanette answered. “I’ve killed a lot of people. It’s time I paid for that.”

  “It isn’t enough.”

  It was Hosea who spoke, coming to the center of the room and looking down at Jeanette with a stern expression on his face that Eric had never seen before. “I’m not sure who you are or what you’ve done, ma’am, but Miss Llewellyn seems to think it’s something pretty bad. You can’t wipe out something like that with one grand gesture and a quick death. It’s gonna take a power of effort and time—a lifetime of doing good, and more.”

  “I don’t have a lifetime,” Jeanette said, looking at him. “And I suck at social work. If you can think of any way around that, I’m open to suggestions.” She shook her head, looking away. “I did have, once. All the time in the world—a lifetime to use however I wanted. But I pissed it away and you don’t get a second chance, so be happy, Ria, because I’m going to fry in Hell for a thousand years.” She closed her eyes, gathering her resources. “Here’s what you need to know. Aerune found where I was hiding. He sent Elkanah, one of Lintel’s Threshold ops, to bring me to somewhere he could get his hands on me. He’s got most of my stash of T-Stroke, but it doesn’t work on elves.”

  “Elkanah? Elkanah Youngblood?” Toni demanded in amazement. “Jimmie’s brother?”

  Jeanette stared at her. “Maybe. How do I know? People in our line of work aren’t that free with last names and home addresses, y’know?” She took a deep breath. “Elkanah didn’t know he was working for Aerune until the end—neither of us did. I thought he was going to kill me, so I dosed both of us with T-Stroke. The higher the dose, the more time you have—maybe if you take enough, you get to live, I don’t know. But Aerune came. He took me Underhill and left Elkanah behind. I don’t know what happened to him, but he’s dead now, for sure. At least I know he deserved it,” she added quietly.

  “Most of what happened then isn’t important. But this is: Aerune has human help—a guy from this side of the Hill. Parker Wheatley. They’re working together—planning to start a war between humans and elves so Aerune can get us to bomb ourselves back to the Stone Age. I get the idea Aerune found a bunch of government elfchasers and gave them a little help. Wheatley depends on him now. If you can’t stop them, they’re going to drag all your precious secrets onto the front page of The New York Times, and then what I’ve done is going to look like a wet firecracker next to a neutron bomb. They were talking about . . . internment camps for witches. Crazy stuff.”

  Even insulated as she was, Jeanette was still painfully weak, and delivering the message had cost her a lot. She hung her head, breathing hard. “There’s a lot more to tell you, but I don’t think I have time.”

  Eric knew she was right. His spell couldn’t hold, even reinforced with Ria’s power. In a few minutes, it would fade away, and time would run normally once more. And a few minutes after that, Jeanette would be dead.

  “You could have.” Hosea spoke again. “Time.”

  Jeanette looked up at him, hate and hope in her expression. “Yeah? And how do you figure that?”

  “Your body has to die. You don’t. Instead of going on, why don’t you stick around and clean up some of your mess?” Hosea said, as if it were the simplest thing in the world.

  “Become a voluntary ghost?” Paul said doubtfully. “That has certain drawbacks, you know. Once a spirit has chosen to tarry, for whatever reason, moving on becomes a rather ticklish proposition. And you’d need an anchor to hold the spirit in place.”

  “Like a building,” Toni said. “But I don’t want her haunting Guardian House.”

  “It could be a physical object, not a house,” José said. “A sword, or a mirror, as the old tales say. Or a harp.”

  “We’re a little short on any of those objects right now,” Paul pointed out, looking around the room. “Even if the lady agreed.”

  “And we don’t have a lot of time to discuss it,” Eric said tightly.

  “Hey, so you don’t have a harp. You’ve got this,” Kayla pointed out, holding up Hosea’s banjo. “Will this work?”

  Paul took the instrument from her hands and studied it carefully. “If Hosea consents, and Miss Campbell does as well, I think this will do nicely. But I warn both of you: though we can hold her here, we can’t set the terms of her imprisonment, and I do know one thing—if the banjo is destroyed without Jeanette’s spirit being released from it, she will be dead in this world and the next, with no reprieve possible.”

  “I’m game,” Hosea said, and looked at Jeanette.

  “A choice between Hell and bluegrass,” Jeanette said. “I’ll take bluegrass—if you’ll have me, Hosea?”

  “This isn’t right,” Kayla said. “I saw— When Jimmie— Shouldn’t she go on and find what’s waiting for her?”

  “No, thanks,” Jeanette said briefly, and shuddered. “I think I’ve seen it.”

  “Everybody deserves a chance to fix what they broke,” Hosea agreed. “If you do right, Miss Jeanette, I’ll do right by you.”

  “Folks—” Eric said urgently.

  “Come here, Jeanette. Take the banjo. Eric, when I give the word, release your spell and let us cast ours,” Paul said. “I warn you, Miss Campbell, this isn’t going to be pleasant for you. Keeping a spirit from passing over is a terrible thing, painful for both the spirit and the enchanter, even when full consent is involved. You may wish we hadn’t.”

  “Just do it, for God’s sake.” Jeanette crawled to the center of the room and sat, reaching out to take the banjo and cradling it in her arms. The Guardians formed a circle around her, even Hosea, who looked very unsure of himself.

  “Call this your baptism of fire,” Toni told him.

  “I can’t—” Eric said, just as Paul said: “Now.”

  With a pang of relief, Eric stopped feeding power to his spell and felt it uncoil and vanish. Time rushed back into the room like the incoming tide filling a sea cave. Jeanette gasped and fell over on her side, groaning and clutching the banjo tightly.

  Light surrounded the five of them, like an egg of multicolored opal. Ria reached out for Eric’s hand, and he took it.

  Eric wasn’t sure he believed what he saw happen next. He saw Jeanette—a ghostly, different-looking Jeanette—climb to her feet, stepping over the slumped body on the floor. She gazed around, frightened, shaking her head, obviously looking for a way out. But there was
nowhere to go. She beat against the walls of the egg, crying out silently in frustration.

  Kayla jerked forward.

  “No, Kayla,” Ria said. “Her choice, right or wrong.” Ria coaxed Kayla to sit down again. The young Healer’s face was a mask of frustration. “You don’t know,” she repeated.

  “Jimmie went to what she deserved, after a lifetime of service and self-sacrifice. Do you think Jeanette wants to face what she deserves?” Ria asked.

  “How can you be sure you’re right?” Kayla demanded.

  “I don’t have to be,” Ria said austerely. “All I have to do is let her make her own mistake.”

  Slowly, the egg of light shrank, keeping Jeanette imprisoned within it despite her struggles, dwindling until it surrounded the banjo alone, forcing her down with it.

  Then the light was gone.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we have created the world’s first haunted banjo,” Paul said wearily. “And I wish I felt better about doing it.”

  “You did what you had to, Paul. We all did,” Toni answered.

  Hosea picked up the banjo from where it lay against Jeanette’s dead body. One of the strings promptly broke, and in the faint ringing Eric thought he could hear the echo of a human voice.

  :Bluegrass . . . :

  “Feels heavier,” Hosea said, hefting the instrument. He began to detune the banjo, taking the tension off the remaining strings.

  “Well, this has been a hell of a night,” Ria said.

  “Look,” Kayla said. “The sun’s coming up.”

  And it was. The sky outside the living room window was gray with dawn.

  “What now?” Eric said.

  “We need to make plans,” Toni said, “but first things first. We all need sleep. And then . . . Hosea, I guess Jimmie’s apartment is yours now.” Her eyes filled with tears as the reality of Jimmie’s death hit her anew.

  “Eric, you should warn Misthold about Aerune’s plans. I don’t know much about Underhill politics, but maybe there’s something they can do about him from their side,” Ria said.

  “Yeah.” Weariness—healthy weariness this time, and not Aerune’s spell of despair—overwhelmed Eric, and he dropped into the nearest empty chair. But I doubt it. Aerune’s too clever to give them an excuse to move against him, and by the time I convince them he’s a real threat to Underhill and the World Above alike, it might be too late. Elves don’t do anything in a hurry, and nothing much excites them. Kory’s the real exception there, and he’s young. The others just won’t listen—or if they do, they won’t do anything.