A Host of Furious Fancies

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Charles” must be Chinthliss’ formidably-correct butler. As if he had been summoned by the speaking of his name—and for all Beth knew, that was literally the case—the manservant appeared in the doorway.

  “Prince Korendil, Lady Beth. May I show you to your rooms—or would you prefer to go directly to the library?”

  “The library,” Kory said decisively.

  Beth turned to Chinthliss and Tannim. “Thanks so much for all your help.”

  “Hey, my pleasure,” Tannim said. “I’ll check out those guys you mentioned when I get back to Fairgrove. Haven’t seen anybody like that hanging around, but you never know. There’s some weird folks out there.”

  “That’s the unvarnished truth,” Beth agreed, and turned away to take Kory’s hand. “See you around.”

  “Come down and visit,” Tannim urged. He waved, and followed Chinthliss from the room.

  “If you will be so good as to accompany me?” Charles said.

  The entrance to the library was on a par with the rest of the palace’s semi-Victorian sensibilities: a double set of coffered oak doors twelve feet high, surmounted by an elaborate plasterwork coat of arms. The golden doorknobs were in the shape of eagle claws grasping jade spheres, and there was a keyhole on the right-side panel just beneath the knob.

  “If you require anything further, do not hesitate to ring,” Charles said. He bowed stiffly and walked off, leaving the two of them standing before the library doors.

  “Well,” Beth said, suddenly nervous. “This is it.”

  “Yes,” Kory said. “But somehow I fear . . .” He shrugged, leaving the sentence unfinished, and inserted the key in the lock.

  Both doors swung inward. Beth drew a deep breath, stifling a squeak.

  The room was huge—four stories tall and as long as a football field. Books lined the walls, all the way to the ceiling. There were ornate gilded catwalks circling the room so that one could reach the higher volumes, and ladders on tracks were set on each level so that the top shelves could be reached. There were long tables running down the center of the room, and a number of comfy chairs that seemed to urge her to curl up in them with the nearest handy volume. The alabaster lamps that hung down from the ceiling bathed the entire room in a soft shadowless light. Beth took a few steps into the room, gazing around herself in wonder.

  “There must be about a billion books here,” she said in awe.

  “Yes.” Kory looked around, frowning. “A great number of books. But where is the catalogue?”

  Beth wandered over to the nearest shelf and inspected the titles. A copy of The Arabian Nights stood next to a book on practical gardening for the weekend gardener. The book next to that had no title at all on its spine, and when she picked it up, she saw that the pages were covered in a strangely ornate script that she didn’t recognize. She put it back. Next to it was a book in French—the title was something like A Saraband for Lost Time, but Beth wasn’t confident enough of her French to be quite sure. Next to that was an Oz book, but not by Baum.

  “They’re not in order,” she said, turning to Kory. “They’re just . . . here.”

  “As the information we seek is here,” Kory said gloomily. “Somewhere.”

  “But why would he do that to us?” Beth could think of nothing else to say.

  Kory sighed. “I do not think he meant us harm. It may not have occurred to him that we could not find something here as easily as he could himself. Or perhaps it did—but this is what we asked for—access to his library. He has fulfilled the bargain we asked of him.”

  Beth walked over to the nearest chair and sat down numbly, staring at acre after acre of randomly shelved, uncatalogued, unindexed books. Even if they searched every volume—a task that could take years—they had no guarantee that they’d even recognize the information they wanted when they stumbled across it.

  Dumb, Kentraine, dumb. You were so careful at the Goblin Market to ask for exactly what you wanted. Why couldn’t you put your brain in gear when it really mattered?

  “All is not lost, Beth,” Kory said.

  “Oh yeah?” she answered bitterly. “It sure looks like it from here.”

  FOURTEEN:

  TOGETHER WE

  After the grief and exertion of the night before, Eric slept as if someone had hit him over the head with a blunt instrument. He awoke, still exhausted and disoriented, in the late afternoon, barely able to remember what day it was.

  Tuesday. I think. And that means I missed class today, but somehow, I can’t find it in my heart to care. Jimmie’s unjust death was still too fresh, and everything surrounding it too unbelievable and tangled. Hosea a Guardian. Aerune back to make more trouble. And, unless he’d slept a lot harder than he thought, sometime last night the lot of them had infested Hosea’s banjo with the soul of a thirtysomething underground chemist.

  I need a shower. I need tea.

  He staggered blearily out from behind the closed bedroom door, and was mildly surprised to see Hosea in the living room, his banjo across his knees. Hadn’t Hosea . . . ? Oh. Memory smacked him on the brain once more, and Eric continued wordlessly on to the shower.

  Ten minutes under a shower hot and cool by turns put what was left of Eric’s brain into working order. He dressed and went into the kitchen to see about the tea.

  As he was standing over the kettle waiting for it to boil—Eric was a firm believer in the adage that a watched pot needs the help—his mind registered the fact that Hosea was playing quietly. And more than that. There seemed to be a kind of whispering sound mixed in with the melody, like the sound of wind through leaves, but whenever he tried to hear it, it disappeared again. Curious enough to abandon his morning-transplanted-to-afternoon ritual, Eric went out into the living room. Hosea looked up as he entered.

  “Afternoon, Eric. For a while there, I thought you were going to sleep the clock around.”

  “I still feel like I’m a few days short on sleep,” Eric sighed, running a hand through his hair. He glanced at the banjo in curiosity.

  “Oh, Jeanette and I was just getting caught up on a few things, and I was hearing all about that Dark Lord feller we run into last night. He sure is a piece of work.”

  “Yeah. Kind of ‘Welcome to the Hollow Hills, now go home.’ But you said you were talking to, um, Jeanette?”

  “It’s the darndest thing. When I’m playing, it’s just like I was talking to her—only I’m thinking, and I guess she is, too.”

  “Can she hear me? I mean, right now?” Eric asked.

  Once more Hosea ran his fingers over the strings, and again Eric caught the overlay of eldritch whispering. Hosea grinned.

  “She says she’s dead, not deaf. Seeing’s not quite the same, but she can hear real fine.”

  “Um . . . great.” Eric cudgeled his brains. “I guess we kind of need to know what Aerune’s planning, and then figure out some way to stop him.” And good luck to that. I don’t think the Guardians would stand much of a chance against a Magus Major, and Aerune’s a lot more than that. It’s not so much that the Unseleighe Sidhe are more powerful than the Bright Elves as it is that the Dark Court doesn’t care what it has to do to gain its power and the Seleighe Sidhe do. Still . . .

  “Ayup. Miss Hernandez called while you was still sleeping and said she wanted to get together tonight and study on that with you and the rest of . . . us.” Hosea looked a little discomfited at the renewed realization that he, too, was one of the Guardians, and quickly changed the subject. “And Kayla’s been here for awhile. She took a look at that studio down there and went out to buy a couple of gallons of black paint.”

  Eric grinned faintly, thinking of Ria’s reaction to Kayla redoing her Park Avenue pastels in basic black. It was nice to think that one thing in this mess had worked out for the best.

  “Any word about the funeral?” Eric forced himself to ask.

  “Day after tomorrow. I guess I’ll have to go out and get myself a dark suit.”

  “Yeah. I’d li
ke to help you out there, but I don’t think the two of us wear the same size.”

  That got a grin from Hosea. “No, sir. I reckon we don’t. Well, I expect I’ve been loafing long enough. Time to get back to work. I’m packing up Jimmie’s things.” Hosea laid the banjo aside.

  “I’ll help,” Eric said, though it was about the last thing he wanted to say. Still, it was a brutal job, and Hosea shouldn’t have to do it all by himself. And it was a last service Eric could perform for a fallen comrade.

  “So we can’t fight this Aerune, and we can’t get the elves to fight him? That doesn’t leave much,” Toni said in disgust.

  The four Guardians, Eric, and Kayla were gathered in Eric’s apartment once more. For the last several hours the six of them—with advice from Jeanette via Hosea’s banjo—had been trying to figure out what—if anything—they could do about the threat of Aerune mac Audelaine.

  “It’s not that we can’t get the Sidhe to come in on our side,” Eric explained patiently. “It’s just that we can’t get them to do it fast. By the time they’re convinced Aerune is a real threat, and organize to stop him, a lot of damage will have been done.”

  “A good thing to prevent, if we can,” Paul said. “And from what Jeanette has told Hosea, our Sidhe friend has learned some lessons from the last time you went up against him. He’s got allies in this world working to sow distrust between human and Sidhe—a neat trick, since humans are largely ignorant of the Sidhe’s existence and the Sidhe, from what you’ve said, are largely indifferent to the common run of humanity.”

  “That’s about the size of it,” Eric admitted. “And as usual, humans can manage to do a lot more damage in this world than any number of Sidhe. Aerune’s more immediately dangerous, but it’s his allies that worry me. Cut off Aerune’s involvement with them, and that threat might disappear, though.”

  Eric spoke from experience. Aerune was undoubtedly giving the mysterious Parker Wheatley Jeanette had told them about the ammunition to put on a pretty good show for whoever was backing him in government circles. Remove that aid, and the whole conspiracy might collapse under its own weight.

  “Well, isn’t there some way you guys can just stop Aerune from coming around here? Nail his door shut, or something?” Kayla suggested.

  “We can’t exactly put a lord of the Sidhe under house arrest . . . even if we could get to him,” Toni said dubiously. “Or can we?” She looked at Eric.

  “I’m not completely sure on this,” Eric said, “but I kind of think he could break through any barrier we set in place . . . and to keep him from being able to enter the World Above, we’d have to be able to seal all the Nexus points connecting Underhill with the World Above. And even if we could get all the Elfhames to agree to that, it’d have severe repercussions for humanity. From what Beth and I could see back when Elfhame Sun-Descending was in danger, humans and Sidhe are pretty closely intertwined. We’re the ones with the creativity, but something about them feeds that creativity in us. Split us off from each other completely, and we’d lose something pretty important.”

  “Still . . . house arrest,” Paul mused. “There has to be some way to trap Aerune Underhill and sever his connection with our Mr. Wheatley.”

  “Pop quiz,” Kayla said. “How do you trap something bigger and stronger than you that can bust through any walls you put up?”

  They sat and stared at each other in glum silence. Suddenly there was a scraping at the window, and Greystone stepped through.

  “Sure an’ it’s surprised at your lack of a classical education I am,” he said in a broad stage brogue. “Hasn’t a one of you ever heard of the Minotaur?” The gargoyle winked at Kayla, who grinned. She’d met him for the first time earlier today, and taken his arrival with a lot more sangfroid than Eric had exhibited.

  “The Minotaur!” Paul exclaimed. “Of course! The solution has problems of its own, but—”

  “Hey?” Kayla said, raising her hand. “For those of us playing along at home?”

  Paul smiled at her. “There’s an ancient Greek legend about a monster called the Minotaur, a beast with the body of a man and the head of a bull, enormously strong and powerful. It was said to be the son of King Minos of Crete, born to his queen, Pasiphae, as a punishment for disrespect to the gods. Unable to control it, Minos asked his court artificer, Daedalus, for a solution. Daedalus built the Labyrinth beneath Minos’ palace, and installed the Minotaur at its center. The creature roamed the maze endlessly, unable to find a way out, and Crete was saved from its ravages.”

  “So we need to find this Daedalus and have him build us a maze?” Kayla said doubtfully. “And how do we get this Aerune guy into it?”

  “But is this the best solution?” José asked. “Caged enemies can escape.”

  “It certainly seems like the most promising one we’ve come up with so far,” Toni said. “And I don’t like the idea of setting out to execute someone in cold blood. Assuming we could, which I wouldn’t bet on, even if we got the drop on him. Eric?”

  “It could work. And it would at least solve the Aerune part of the problem—better than killing him, which even if we could do it, might gain him some allies among the Sidhe, and end up starting that war after all. Decoying him into the cage would be easy—he’s always looking for Talents to drain them, and we’ve got two Bards and a Healer to bait the trap with. But where do we find someone to build a maze that would keep him in?”

  “You’re the one who gets invited to parties Underhill,” Hosea pointed out slowly. “Don’t you know any wizards who owe you a favor?”

  When all else fails, ask an expert. And hey, I can live without sleep.

  It wasn’t really much of a plan, not yet—more of an idea that needed more research, and as Eric was the one with the Underhill contacts, that part of the matter fell to Eric. Could a labyrinth be built that would keep Aerune inside it, cut off from the World Above? And, if so, who could build it?

  At least it was a good excuse to take Lady Day for a run. Going Underhill in person would actually be faster than sending e-mail, and if you were asking for favors, it was always best to do it personally.

  The ride to the Everforest Gate sped by with the quickness of familiarity, and once through, he left the route to Misthold up to the elvensteed. She shifted to horse form once she was Underhill—there weren’t a lot of paved roads here, and four legs were better than two wheels for covering the ground safely—and Eric changed from his biking leathers to the silks and mail of a Bard. It wasn’t long before they reached the golden gates of Elfhame Misthold. The guards recognized him, and let him through without difficulty.

  He thought about going directly to Prince Arvindel, but realized that might play directly into Aerune’s plans. Dharniel had warned him about Aerune before. It might be best to start there; scope out the territory before he put his foot in it. And Dharniel was Prince Arvindel’s Master of War. Eric would be following protocol as well as using common sense to see Dharniel first.

  You have learned wisdom, Grasshopper, Eric told himself with a wry smile. He went to Dharniel’s suite of rooms, and asked his old master’s chief man-at-arms for an audience. To his surprise and pleasure, his request was granted at once.

  “So, young Eric, is your student proving too much for you already?” Dharniel asked, once they were seated in the Elven Bard’s inner chamber.

  The room was strewn with a working musician’s litter—sheaves of music half-transcribed, bundles of strings looking like strange silvery pasta, a half-finished lute neck drying in a heavy padded clamp. A young girl—Dharniel’s newest apprentice, Eric was willing to bet—had brought them spiced fruit juice and small sweet cakes, then withdrawn to leave them alone. Eric had waited as patiently as he could manage through these preliminaries, knowing that they were inevitable.

  “I haven’t really started working with him yet. Right now I’ve got another problem—you remember that Unseleighe Prince you talked to me about a few months back? The one with an interest in
New York?”

  To name someone in Underhill risked drawing that person’s attention to you, even within the walls and wards of an Elfhame. As Dharniel had been cautious in giving his initial warning, so Eric was cautious now.

  “Aye.” Dharniel’s face had gone still and watchful. “I remember.”

  “I’ve seen him recently. My friends and I think we need to take him out, but we haven’t got a lot of good ideas.”

  “A moment, Sieur Eric,” Dharniel said.

  He got to his feet and went to a cabinet on the wall, from which he removed a surprisingly prosaic item. It looked like a fat white candle, set in a shallow dish of carved green stone. Dharniel cleared a space on his worktable and set it down, then called fire from the air to light it. And Eric got his first surprise.

  The light was . . . thick. As the candle flame rose to its full height, the thick syrupy glow of its light seemed to roll outward slowly, like one of those enormously slowed down films of a big explosion. As the bubble of light reached him, Eric could feel it, like a fine warm mist breaking over his body.

  “Whoa!” he said, startled. “What’s that?”

  Dharniel smiled, pleased with the reaction he had provoked. “You may call it ‘hard magic,’ young Eric, and think of it as a compression of the Power all around us into this tangible and highly-concentrated form. While it burns, we are as safe as we may be anywhere from prying ears and eyes. But I will not spend it without cause, so do not dawdle in this tale you have to tell me.”

  Accustomed to this sort of rebuke from his stint as Dharniel’s pupil, Eric told his story as concisely as he could: Aerune’s appearance last night, his taunting promise that he had discovered a way to destroy Eric and the Guardians, their discovery—through Jeanette—that Aerune had human allies, and intended to force the Sidhe into war with the World Above.

  “And so we figured the best thing we could do was cut him off from his human allies and keep him from meddling any further in the World Above. Paul suggested a kind of maze-prison, but even if it would work, none of us has the faintest idea of how to build one.”