He ascended the staircase, to emerge in the kitchen just as Beth, head wrapped in towels and body enveloped in an enormous white terrycloth bathrobe, descended from the bathroom above. She shot him a look, he spread his hands in apology. “I crave your pardon, my lady,” he said, bowing a little to her, as he would to a lady of his own kind, “I fear I am but an airhead.”
Her mouth quirked in a smile, despite her attempts to keep that same smile from emerging. Finally, she laughed. “Elves,” she said to the air above her head. “Can’t live with ‘em, and there’s no resale value.”
Seeing that he had been forgiven, he shamelessly collected a kiss; a long, slow, sensuously deep kiss. She pushed him off—regreffully—a moment later, however. “No, you don’t,” she half-scolded. “We’ll never get to the Fairesite at this rate. Have you eaten?”
He nodded, then added, with a wistful expression, “But that was before dawn. I fear I may waste of famine e’er we reach the site—”
What he really wanted was to watch her work the microwave; an arcane creation that fascinated him endlessly—and which he had been forbidden to touch after popping all of their twenty-five packets of microwave popcorn in a single evening.
She raised an auburn eyebrow at him. “Where are you putting it all?” she asked, incredulously. “If I ate as much as you do, I’d look like the Goodyear blimp!”
Having no answer to that, he simply shrugged. She busied herself for a moment at the refrigerator, then put a plateful of frozen sausage-biscuits into the microwave. She set the machine, then stepped aside to towel her hair dry while they heated. Kory leaned back in his chair, admiring her. He liked her very much as a redhead; it was a good color for her. A pity that the change had been mandated by their attempts to fool those “Feds” that were haunting their footsteps. A pity too that she could no longer sport those “cutting-edge” hairstyles she had favored, as well. In an attempt to change her silhouette completely, Kory had told her hair to become auburn and curly, and had instructed it to grow—very fast. She now had a mass of red curls that reached to the middle of her back (which she complained about constantly), and she made him think of tales the older Sidhe told of Ireland and the fabled mortal beauties of old. He’d made a new Faire costume for her which included an embroidered leather bodice and boots to match, in black and silver, with a pure linen skirt and loose-woven silk blouse of lovely forest green. Since she had been well known in Faire circles for only making the briefest of concessions to the dress-code, this should throw off hunters as well.
He had made Eric’s hair into a mane of raven black; for the rest, the changes the young Bard had wrought in himself were enough to confuse pursuers. He no longer indulged in drugs or overindulged in alcohol, and he had added muscle in rebuilding this house. The result was something quite unlike the vague-eyed, skinny, sickly-looking creature Kory had first encountered. And in his new Faire costume, which matched Beth’s except that the colors were burgundy and silver, instead of black, he was quite an elegant sight. Kory’s own garb was of a piece with theirs, in scarlet and gold. The embroidered patterns matched, as did the placement, making it very clear to anyone who saw them together that they were an ensemble. Since neither Beth nor Eric had ever worked in a formal group at the Faires, that, too, should help to confuse things.
When they went out street-busking—which was how they had been paying for items like food and other necessities—they all wore their Faire boots and shirts, with jeans. The effect was striking, and caught quite a bit of attention for them down on the Wharf. Kory was quite proud that he had contributed in a material way to their success as buskers.
Danaan knew that his playing certainly wasn’t outstanding enough to do so. He was competent with drum and bones, but nothing more. And his singing voice, while pleasant, was not going to win any prizes either. Beth and Eric outshone him completely in both areas.
And when Eric exerted his full power as a Bard—coins and bills leapt into their hat.
Eric, however, was inclined not to use his power in that way unless it were direst emergency—as it had been during the first month of their escape from Los Angeles. He felt that it was a cheat, that people were not rewarding his skill as a musician, they were being hypnotized into giving him largesse. Kory silently applauded such a decision; it said a great deal for Eric’s growing sense of ethics. Beth sometimes seemed exasperated when he said things like that, but she also seemed to be pleased, if in a grudging way. Kory wondered often about Beth—how she could be so honorable, and then turn to and display an equally high ethical callousness. Eric just said that it was her television background, as if that explained it all.
Beth shook back her wild mane of curls with a grimace. “I can’t get used to this,” she complained. “It’s just so weird, having all this hair—” The microwave beeped then, and she pulled an oven mitt over her hand and took out the plate of biscuits.
Kory grinned. “Tis that, my lady, or be recognized. Wigs, they might expect—and hair-dye and curls. But not such a length, and obviously yours. True?”
“True,” she sighed, and put the plate down on the table, snatching a biscuit for herself and biting into it. “Very true. And I’m the one who keeps harping on the fact that we have to be underground. I just wish I knew another way of making a buck without coming out of hiding besides busking—everybody in L.A. knows I’m a musician, and somebody is bound to have let it leak.”
“But they aren’t lookin’ for a trio,” Eric yawned, shuffling sleepily through the door, and enveloped in a robe even larger than Beth’s. “And they’re a lot more likely to look for you with a rock-group than with a busker.” With all his newly-acquired muscle hidden beneath the bulky cloth, he looked as frail as he used to actually be. He kissed Beth between yawns, and gingerly picked up one of the biscuits, juggling it from hand to hand until it cooled off.
“That’s true,” Beth acknowledged, hugging him, and then pushing him into a chair. Eric was not a morning person in any sense of the word, and had been known to wander into furniture until he actually woke up. He smiled sleepily at Kory, who mimed a punch at him.
“Are you going to be awake enough to ride?” the elf asked him as he ate half the biscuit.
Eric nodded, and reached for the cup of coffee Beth was handing him. “With enough of this in me, I will be,” he said, after a swallow. Kory sniffed the tantalizing aroma wistfully; one mouthful would have put him in a stupor; one cupful might actually kill him—but it smelled so good.
Beth handed him a mug of cinnamon-hibiscus tea, which smelled nearly as good, and did not contain any of the caffeine that was so deadly to his kind. “He’ll be fine, Kory,” she said cheerfully. “He’s ridden up behind me plenty of times, you know that. You’d be amazed at what a good grip he has when we’re going sixty-five.”
“I still wish those things had seatbelts,” Eric muttered, but Kory suspected that Beth hadn’t heard him. He took another biscuit. “Are we changing here, or at the site?” the Bard asked.
“The site,” she replied, trying to get a comb through her hair. “I’ve got passes for us through the Celts as ‘Banysh Mysfortune,’ the name we auditioned under. So don’t tell anyone your real names unless they’re somebody I already cleared, okay? Even if you think it’s one of your best friends and they think they recognize you.”
Eric shook his head, and knuckled an eye. “I think you’re being overly paranoid, Bethie, but if that’s the way you want it…“ He shrugged. “I don’t have any best friends but you guys anyway—and if any of my old girlfriends showed up, I’d just as soon have an excuse not to recognize them. Are we doing the Celtic shows?”
Beth nodded; one of the first people she had contacted after their initial flight had been the head of the Celt Clan, a very resourceful gentleman, as Kory had seen when he’d met them at a Berkeley hamburger place. Evidently people in San Francisco—some of them, anyway—took the appearance of fugitives from the law on their doorstep in stride. He had been th
eir chiefest help—had “networked,” was the word Beth used—gotten them in touch with others, and within a few days they had been settled into this townhouse and began putting new lives together.
At first, transportation had not been a problem; the BART system ran everywhere they wanted to play, and Kory could ride in the metal trains and buses, even though it was sometimes less than comfortable. He had rather enjoyed walking home from the stores with his arms loaded down with bags. It had been an entirely new experience. And, at first, things had been too precarious for them even to think about doing Northern Faire—making the house livable was taking up all the time they had to spare from street-busking. But as Faire-season loomed nearer for the second year of their tenure here, and Beth had realized that they could make a substantial amount of money if only they could get there, she had become increasingly anxious to find some sort of transportation that could take them outside BART’s magic circle.
Oddly enough, it was Kory who had provided that. He had reminded her that most autos were too painful for him to ride in. Then he had mentioned, wistfully, that it was too bad that horses were no longer common—he could have called up a pair of elvensteeds for them in a trice. Beth had narrowed her eyes in sudden speculation, but it had been Eric who had said, as if a memory had suddenly surfaced, “Elvensteeds?
But what about that white Corvette I saw Val driving? The one that was a horse, except it wasn’t a horse—”
“Elvensteeds can counterfeit anything,” Kory had said without thinking. “They will not stand up to much of an examination, but they can counterfeit the appearance.” Then he had hit himself on the side of the head, in a gesture unconsciously borrowed from Eric. “But of course! I can call us elvensteeds, and ask them to counterfeit us cars—”
Beth had shaken her head. “Too conspicuous—and there’s always the chance that somebody would try to mess with them in the parking lot, and then what?” She’d bitten her knucide in frustration. “No, what I wish is that we had some way to get a pair of bikes.”
“Bikes?” Kory had said, as Eric blanched. “You mean, motorcycles? But the elvensteeds can counterfeit those, as well!”
“The parking lot—” Beth had protested.
“Well,” Eric had put in reluctantly, “we could leave them and get off and walk and they could go hide themselves. People would think we’d gotten rides or hitched, and the ones who saw us ride in would just think we’d put the bikes inside one of the Admin buildings or something. Then when we needed them, Kory could call them in again. And it wouldn’t be that conspicuous for us to have bikes around here, not like a car, anyway; I know lots of buskers that have bikes.” He’d gulped. “There’s just one thing; I can’t ride.”
Beth had shrugged. “So, ride behind me. Kory? You think you can pull this off?”
He had nodded. “I can copy enough of Thomas’s Ninja to make ours pass, I think. I know a way to keep them from being meddled with in public places. And I can conjure us leathers, easily enough.” Beth had rolled her eyes at that, but had agreed, taking safety as a prime consideration. Kory had taken advantage of the situation to conjure leathers in “their” colors: burgundy and silver for Eric, scarlet and gold for himself, and black and silver for Beth. She had made a face and muttered something about the leathers being anything but inconspicuous, but she wore them anyway.
So their problem had been solved; and if they always arrived dry even when it rained, that could be chalked up to the San Francisco weather patterns, that would have one side of the street drenched and the other bone-dry.
“Then let us wear leathers,” Kory said with relish. He loved the outfits; loved the way they felt as if he was donning armor for a joust, or hunting garb for a wild ride. Eric sighed, ate another biscuit, and headed back up the stairs to change.
Beth took the time for another large cup of coffee; Kory finished his tea, reached for a bit more Power, and clad himself in his leathers between one sip and the next, planting his helmet on the table next to him with a muffled thud.
Beth shook her head. “I can never get used to you doing that,” she complained.
“Hazard of living with elves, lovely lady,” he said, standing up, and tucking the helmet under his arm. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go fetch the steeds from the garage.”
“Thanks, love,” she said, blowing him a kiss as she turned to run up the stairs. “For that, I forgive you for running out the hot water.”
He grinned, and trotted back down the kitchen stairs, taking another path than the one that led to the hot tub. This one wound around the edge of the privacy fence and ended at the tiny garage occupying an otherwise useless odd-shaped corner of the garden.
It wasn’t much of a garage; it would have been barely big enough for a sub-compact car. It held the two elvensteeds quite comfortably, with plenty of room for them to transform into their normal forms if they chose. Kory’s steed matched his colors of scarlet and gold; Beth’s twinned her black and silver. Kory had based them loosely on the Ninja models of what Beth called “murder-cycles,” but he had made up a style-name— “Merlin”—and a company—”Toshiro.” That way, if people thought there was something wrong with the way the bikes “should” look, they could blame it on the fact that they’d never heard either of the company or the model. The names were private jokes; a merlin was both a small falcon, and the use-name of one of the greatest of Bardic Mages, although few humans these days seemed to realize that Bardic connection. And “Toshiro” was for the human who had created many great movies of Japanese culture, movies that Kory had often watched in the long hours of the night when Beth and Eric still slept.
He wheeled them out one at a time, setting them up in the street in front of the street-side door, and waited for Beth and Eric. They came out quicker than he’d had any right to expect; Beth on the run, stuffing her hair down into the back of her jacket, with the bags containing her costume, his, and their instruments slung over her shoulder. Eric followed more slowly, locking the door behind himself and, as always, settled himself behind Beth rather gingerly. Although Kory couldn’t see his face, he had the feeling that Eric wore a look of grim and patient determination.
Poor Eric; he never felt safe on these pseudo-metal beasts. Kory wondered if he’d have felt any better if they had been in their proper horseshape.
Probably not.
He looked over at Beth, her face hidden behind the dark windscreen of her helmet, and nodded. She handed him his bags; he stowed them safely in the saddlebags on the “flanks” of his steed. Although these elvensteeds needed no kick-starting at all, they always kept up the pretense that they were real bikes by going through the motions of starting them.
Of course, with an elvensteed, there was never any nonsense of struggling with a motor that wouldn’t quite catch… The bikes roared to life with twin bellows of power; Beth let out a whoop of exuberance, and shot off into the lead. Kory followed, grinning happily. Beth had needed this for some time; to get back into the Faire circuit, to see old friends without worrying if the mysterious “Feds” were going to catch them—and she especially needed the party tonight.
For that matter, so did he, He hadn’t had a celebratory party in—
Danaan, is it that long?
High time then.
An odd humming reached his inner ears, a musical sound that accompanied a trace of magic energy; he leaned over the handlebars of his bike and smiled as he traced it forward. Eric was humming—
So was Beth.
He laughed aloud, and popped a wheelie.
It was going to be a most excellent day.
* * *
CHAPTER 2:
As I Walked Through the Fair
Eric Banyon kept his eyes shut tightly through most of the ride, his stomach lurching with every turn. He joked with Beth and Kory about his fear of riding; he never let them know how real that fear was. At one point in his life he had actually envied some motorcycle maniacs who had stunted their way past a bus he’d b
een riding; now that memory seemed to belong to another person entirely.
I was high, he told himself, or drunk. Or both. There were drawbacks to going clean and sober.
Or maybe it was so simple a thing as the fact that something that looked easy when you had no prospect of engaging in it—well, relatively; as opposed to, say, piloting a 747—became something else entirely when you had to do it.
And the simple truth was that Eric had been terribly sheltered in this one aspect of his life. He had never once owned a vehicle of any kind. As a child, he’d been driven from place to place by his parents; as an adult he’d cadged rides or used public transportation. He did have a driver’s license, which he’d taken care to keep updated, but he’d obtained it by taking the test on a dare, when high on a combination of grass and mescaline. He had no memory of the test, or even whose car he had taken it in.
Like many things that he’d done back then, it had seemed a good idea at the time.
Kory had a license—kenned from his, with Kory’s picture substituted for his own. So long as no one ever asked him to produce his at the same time, there should be no trouble. Kory could drive; he could probably drive anything, Eric suspected. Or ride wild mustangs or pilot a 747. In all likelihood, no one would ever even think of stopping Kory, he was just that competent.
Or even if they did, he or Kory could probably play head-games with the officer to make him give them warnings and ignore the licenses. The “Obi-Wan-Kenobi Gambit,” they called it. “These are not the elves you’re looking for—”
Eric had never once driven anything that he remembered. He may have driven any number of times that he didn’t remember; there was a great deal of his life that was lost in an alcoholic or drug-enhanced fog. But now that he was sober and staying that way, he had no intention of being at the helm of any vehicle when Beth and Kory were around to drive it. Hell, he wasn’t even certain he knew how to start these things! Let them deal with the motorcycles —even if Beth did drive like a graduate of the Evel Knievel School of Combat Driving. He’d stay a passenger, unless, of course, it was a dire emergency and both of them were incapacitated.
Summoned to Tourney Page 2
