And when Ria had taken him Underhill, he’d been different. He hadn’t been able to compose; he’d barely been able to play, and when he did, it was with none of the “juice” he’d become accustomed to having.
Ria had been draining him; of that he was certain. No, she was not a good person to be around when you were something less than she was.
But if you were her equal—
He played with that notion a while. It was dangerous, but intriguing. She was a very sexy, very capable lady. And there was a soft side to her that he was pretty certain she hadn’t let anyone see but him: a vulnerable Ria who had been hurt over and over by an indifferent mother and a manipulative father.
What if they could meet again as equals?
Hell, and what if a boat could fly? One is about as likely as the other. Her brain’s fried, and that’s the bottom line. Hopefully whatever Happy Home Elizabet has her in is careful not to hire abusive attendants. Otherwise they’d have themselves a sure-enough sex doll, ‘cause she wouldn’t know or care what was happening to her.
He cracked an eyelid open and took a peek; sighed with relief. They were just coming down off the mountain and San Francisco lay before them, like a jeweled crescent pin around the Bay. Kory and Beth would have to cut the speed now; they were about to hit traffic.
The lights were on when they pulled up to the house; Eric felt Beth’s muscles tense under his hand, but Kory brought his steed to a halt and pulled off his helmet, shaking his hair loose. As Beth pulled up beside them, he grinned.
“’Tis Arvin, Pelindar, Treviniel, and some of the others. They have hasted ahead to help us. Oh, and Greg is here as well, but they have chased him from the kitchen—”
“My microwave!” Beth bleated, and abandoned the bike, leaving Eric to balance it precariously from the passenger’s seat. It hovered for a moment, until he could get control, fortunately. He managed to keep it from falling over, scooted forward to grab the handlebars, and got off. Kory shook his head, and led the way to the garage.
Funny how that bike kind of balanced itself for a minute. I guess my luck-factor has really kicked in today. They walked the bikes to the garage, locked them in, and came up through the gardens.
There were two elves—Eric could see their pointed ears if he looked really closely, the way he did if he suspected illusion—already in the hot tub. They waved indolently at Eric and Kory as they passed, but didn’t move. By the stature and the fact that they looked like adolescents, Eric guessed that they were Low Court elves, the kind that were tied to specific oak groves and couldn’t leave them without a lot of magical help from their High Court relatives. The Low Court kids—he always thought of them as kids, even though they were usually hundreds of years old, since that was what they looked like and often acted like—tended to hang out in shopping malls a lot. They’d use their magics to copy or snitch whatever hot fashion items took their fancy, replicate just enough cash to buy themselves endless meals of junk food, sneak into the movie theaters, and play video games that lasted for days. No one ever noticed them, since they looked just like all the other kids in the malls. The kids—the real, human kids—seemed to instinctively know the difference, though, and they tended to keep away from the elves.
The sole exceptions were the occasional misfits—usually girls, nerdy, bookish, and usually very lonely—who would be taken up by one or more of the elves over the course of a summer. At the end of that summer, the girl would return to school, transformed by her brief fling with magic and by the subtle touches of the elves. Sometimes they stayed misfits, sometimes they became very popular—but the end result was that they had usually found out what magic there was that lurked within them, and were much happier than they had been before.
They would never remember anything more than a summer romance with someone really incredible that centered around the mall. The elves took care that any memories more than that never stayed, and the one who had chosen the human lover would change his or her face so that it would never be recognized again.
Eric often wondered if that was what Kory had originally intended to do with him and Beth. If so, he had changed his mind at some point. And Eric got the feeling that some of his kin did not approve.
Yeah, these mixed-species marriages never work…
Oh well, if they didn’t approve, at least they were being civilized about it. They weren’t shunning Kory or his human friends, Which was more than you could say for—oh—the average Italian-Catholic getting involved with a Lebanese-Arab.
Much less two, though the elves seemed a lot less hung up on the mathematics of sex than humans. He’d seen them going around by twos, threes, and mobs. Hell, Arvin usually had a whole harem.
He followed Kory up the stairs, into the kitchen. Beth was nowhere to be seen. Arvin was in charge of plates of little somethings that looked incredibly fattening. He was idly filling tiny cups of pastry with something from a big bowl—not touching either, of course. Eric liked Arvin, a lot. The elf looked like a dark blond version of Tim Curry, and had a wicked sense of humor. One of the Low Court elves, a gorgeous girl in full punk gear, except it was pink, was doing something with the microwave. Evidently she knew what she was doing; she was setting the time, putting trays of sausages in, and nuking them until they sizzled, then dropping them into a warming-pan to stay hot. She grinned saucily at Kory, who only sighed. There were two other elves Eric didn’t recognize; one, a real fairy-tale princess type who looked like she wouldn’t know how to file her own nails was cutting up veggies with brisk efficiency and arranging them on dip plates. A vast set of trays of cold cuts and cheese already completed bore mute testimony to her expertise. A second, another Low-Court, this one a surfer-duuuuude complete with tan, glaring Hawaiian shirt and baggies, was running the trays out to various locations in the living and entertainment rooms.
Arvin looked up from his work. “We have things well in hand,” he said mildly. “Revendel and Lorilyn cleaned e’er we arrived, so there is nothing of that for you to do. I sent them to soak in yon human boiling-pot. Greg is below also, making certain the outdoor speakers function still.”
Eric looked around. “I can’t see anything else for anyone to do,” he said, gratefully, as Kory nodded agreement. “Look, I don’t know how to thank you guys—”
“A trifle.” Arvin dismissed his thanks with a wave of his hand. “Enough that you have built us a trysting and dancing ground below.” His eyes glittered wickedly. “And we shall be using it, take heed.”
“Just don’t take it into the street and scare the neighbors’ kids,” Eric advised. “Okay? Kory, we might as well get a quick shower and change.”
“Aye. The mob will be here soon.” Kory tossed his helmet into the air, where it promptly disappeared, and ran up the stairs. Eric put his away more mundanely, and followed.
Beth was already out of her clothes and into the shower; they joined her. It was a tight squeeze for three, but they’d done it before. There wasn’t as much horseplay as they usually indulged in, but they were still breathless with laughter when they tumbled out, now clean, to scramble into clothes.
Kory and Eric opted for comfortable versions of their Faire outfits: soft, baggy cotton pants instead of the tight leather, and bare feet instead of boots. Beth was doing something she had seldom done before the hair-change; she was wearing a dress Kory had made for her. Soft black and silver, silky and floor-length, it looked vaguely period, but Eric couldn’t pin it down to a particular style. Kory had one of those peculiar smiles when she twirled around in it, though, so Eric suspected that it was a copy of an elven design. Whatever, she looked terrific, straight out of the Kevin Costner Robin Hood.
The master-bedroom overlooked the front steps; the window was open to the glorious breeze coming in, and there were voices right below. Beth blew both of them a kiss and flew down the stairs to open the door as the doorbell rang.
After that, the guests began arriving in herds, and someone was always answering the door.
At least half of the guests were elves, who had chosen, to keep from revealing themselves to the humans, Eric suspected, to enter the normal way rather than just popping into the garden. Most of the rest were the Faire folks who were in on the secret identities of Tom Lynn, Janice Lynn, and Kory Dell—or at least, they knew Kory Dell was a friend of theirs. No one knew about the elves’ existence except Beth and Eric—even the former members of Beth’s old rock-group Spiral Dance seemed to have put the Battle of Griffith Park out of their minds. There were other humans who knew about elves, like the bunch over on the East Coast Arvin referred to now and again—but the elves themselves had not seen fit to introduce Eric and Beth to them. Maybe they would, someday.
There were more of their Faire buddies than Eric had realized. The Celts alone filled a room. Of course, one Celt was perfectly capable of filling a room all by him/herself…
In no time at all, the party was in full swing. There was a group in the entertainment room, laughing, talking, and munching away while cutting-edge rock played in the background. There was a second group in the living-room, watching a videotape someone had made of the Celtic show today, commenting sarcastically and making jokes. A spillover group of costumers in the kitchen were trading project rehashes, to the fascination of the punk-elf in pink. And Greg might just as well not have bothered about the ground-speakers; no one was using them. The clear spot in the garden, just big enough for dancing, held a tiny band of buskers who hadn’t gotten their fill of playing during the day—and dancers who hadn’t gotten their fill of dancing.
Oh—the buskers are dancing, and the dancers are husking. That explains it.
The hot tub was as full of people as it could be. Eric had a notion that the little nooks and corners made for privacy were full too, but he wasn’t crass enough to check them out.
He spent the evening wandering, too restless to settle down, too full of nervous energy to stay in one place for very long. He spent some time with the crowd in the entertainment room when Arvin gave them a free show to the Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack. Small wonder Arvin didn’t have to ken and replicate money! Even here he had people stuffing bills in his waistband. And Arvin finished the set with an even bigger harem than usual…
Eric grinned and wandered off. He danced a little, played a little, talked a lot—ate quite a bit. And drank almost nothing, which surprised him. It was as if he’d lost his taste for it.
Funny, he thought, lounging back on the grass and watching Beth dance with Ian, I never used to think it was a real party unless I’d gotten stoned, drunk, or both. It wasn’t as if there was any lack of opportunity; wine was more plentiful than soft drinks tonight, though there was nothing whatsoever with caffeine in it, as a safeguard against one of Kory’s folk accidentally getting a dose. Plenty of people had brought stronger stuff, and he’d had lots of those bottles offered to him. And he knew he’d smelled the green-sweet smoke of weed from the secluded areas of the garden.
I guess I’m having too much fun. I’d hate to miss any of this by being flat on my back—or flat on my stomach; I’ve done that, too.
Gradually the crowd thinned; he found himself escorting people to the door and looked at his watch. He could hardly believe it when it read one a.m. But the kitchen clock agreed with it—and when he looked around, he realized that the only guests left had pointy ears and looked nowhere near ready to retire.
As if he had read Eric’s mind, Arvin turned away from the pink-punk elf-girl. “Anyone not in a condition to drive has been found a driver or has been put to bed upstairs. Beth I sent up to bed not five minutes ago. Kory needs but an hour or so of sleep—but you, mortal, will feel the effect on the morrow if you do not seek yon waterbed.”
Eric nodded reluctantly. “But—” he said, feeling as if he ought to at least make the motions of being a host.
“Go!” Arviri scolded. “Kory is host enough for us!”
He left, gratefully. Beth was already asleep, in her usual place in the middle of the king-sized waterbed. He stripped off everything but the cotton pants and took his usual place, on the right.
The sounds of the party—much quieter now—drifted up through the hall and the windows, He listened to the music for a moment, puzzled, trying to determine what record it was, when a sudden change in key and tempo made him smile. It wasn’t a record, of course, it was elves making music in the garden, blessing it and the house in their own peculiar way.
He fell asleep, still smiling.
Something awakened him, though he couldn’t remember what. A whisper of sound, like someone calling to him very quietly, from very far away.
:Bard, do you hear me?:
“No, I don’t,” he muttered to himself, trying to bury his head beneath a pillow. “Go away.”
He blinked once, looking around the dimly-lit room. Beth was still asleep, one arm flung out towards him, her hair in a wild tumble on the pillows. From downstairs, he could hear quiet elven voices… Koiy and his friends, talking in the kitchen. Eric glanced at the clock, and winced, closing his eyes again. Three a.m.!
:Bard, do you hear me?:
He sat up abruptly, the waterbed shifting underneath him at the sudden movement. :Yes, I hear you. Where are you?:
:Outside.:
He moved carefully off the waterbed, trying not to awaken Beth, and to the window. Outside, the street was shrouded in fog. Someone was standing outside on the sidewalk, barely visible through the mists, looking up at the house.
Several moments later, after pulling on the black silk robe that Kory had conjured for him, Eric was padding quietly down the stairs. He slipped past the elves in the kitchen and out the front door, still not certain why he didn’t want to tell anyone else about the unexpected visitor. The concrete was cold and damp against his bare feet.
And the stranger was nowhere in sight.
Great, he thought. Just what in the hell is…
He noticed it then, the strange, unnatural silence that had settled over the sleeping city. Like the world was holding its breath, waiting for something to begin.
In the distance, a dog barked. And another. A flight of birds, nesting in the oak tree next to the front door, suddenly took wing, wheeling overhead and screaming shrilly.
Something…something’s wrong…
He could feel it then, a low, rumbling noise that seemed to be growing louder. The ground rippled beneath his feet, rising gently like a wave, then falling. The front door began to rattle in its frame, at first quietly, then more insistently. Eric turned back to the house, took a step forward, and…
The earthquake hit in full force, hurling him to his knees. Everything was moving, panes of glass shattering like gunshots, the sidewalk cracking beneath his hands. Eric covered his head with his hands, trying to protect himself from a spray of flying glass as a pickup truck was shoved hard against the streetlight. With a rending crash, the house across the street ripped away from its neighbor, tilting slowly before collapsing into the next building.
As suddenly as it had begun, the rumbling ended. He could hear the wail of dozens of car alarms, but no other sound. A small aftershock rippled beneath him, then was gone.
He stood up unsteadily, and stared at the ruin of the street. Two of the houses had collapsed completely, while several others were canted at strange angles.
Something struck him in the small of his back, and he looked up to see plaster and wood falling from the fourth floor of his house into the street. The house began to fold in on itself, like a stack of cards in slow motion. He stared, too terrified to scream. Then someone shoved past him, climbing the wreckage of the house, screaming curses and prayers incoherently.
Himself.
The other Eric disappeared through a ruined window. He still stood on the street, frozen in shock. The streetlights flickered once, then went out, leaving everything in foggy shadows. A moment later, his duplicate climbed through the window, carrying an unconscious Beth. He set her down gently on the broken concrete, and immediatel
y began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Blood was mixed with her long red hair, pooling on the sidewalk.
He stood there, unable to move. The other Eric slowly looked up at him, tears mixed with blood on his face. “You didn’t stop it, you bastard,” his other self whispered. “Kory’s dead in there, a Cold Iron nail through his face, and Beth’s dying…and you didn’t do anything to stop this!”
Something fluttered past the other Eric, a half-glimpsed shadow. Another, a touch of darkness, flitting past them.
He could see them now, the shadows in the fog. Nightflyers. Hundreds of them, moving down the silent street. They moved past him as though they couldn’t see him, circling around the other Eric, Beth still cradled in his arms. His double yelled in pain as one of the creatures brushed against him, and swung at it, not connecting with the lithe shadow. Another slipped by, with a delicate touch to his back, his exposed face. Others gathered at the edge of sight, drifting with the fog.
I can’t move—can’t do anything—He tried to call a warding, something that would protect himself and the other, but the magic eluded him, just out of reach. Dammit, Beth always told me to practice doing magic without using the flute, and I never did, and now we—and I—are going to die for it!
The night brightened with a burst of light as the other Eric summoned a Ward, his Bard magic blossoming before him. The creatures recoiled for a moment, silhouetted by the bright light, then closed in. The light flickered once, then vanished. The shadow monsters flitted aside; for a brief moment, he could see his own dead face, blankly staring. Then the Nightflyers turned to face him, radiating malevolence, their shadow-claws reaching…
Summoned to Tourney Page 5
