Summoned to Tourney

by Mercedes Lackey; Ellen Guon

  Eric glanced at the young healer, wondering if he really wanted the punkette kid in his mind.

  The girl grinned, showing teeth. “Don’t worry, Bard. I’ll be gentle.”

  “Thanks a lot,” he muttered.

  “We should try this as soon as possible,” Elizabet continued. “Maybe tonight.”

  “There’s something else wrong, isn’t there?” Beth asked.

  Elizabet grimaced, just a little. “Yes, unfortunately. Eric isn’t the only one who’s had problems with nightmares lately. Several of the Wiccans at the conference have had the same problem. Not dreams about earth quakes, but other things. Kat and Lisa had a similar nightmare, about being hunted by some kind of shadow-creature.”

  Eric’s fingers tightened around his coffee mug.

  Beth was quiet for a long moment. “Eric, how soon do you want to do this? We really need to get some rest so we can hit the Embarcadero, or we’ll miss the business lunch crowd.”

  “Okay.” He sat back in his chair. “Tomorrow night.”

  Monday, they were standing in the Embarcadero plaza across from the Italian fast-food place where two dozen gray-wool “suits” were busily chowing down on pizza slices.

  Beth scanned the crowd, and pointed to a corner with some benches next to it. “How ‘bout that one, guys?”

  Kory began unpacking the instruments. Eric just stood there for a moment, looking very tired, before he opened his flute case and began to fit the pieces together. Beth couldn’t blame him for being tired, considering what had been happening lately. She just hoped that Kayla and Elizabet could do something for him. Maybe some caffeine would help. “Guys, I’m in desperate need of coffee. You too, Eric?”

  He nodded blearily.

  “Sparkling water for me,” Kory said, looking up from where he was seated on the bench, rubbing the bodhran to tighten the drumhead. “The

  French brand, please.”

  Elves, she thought. If we’re not careful, Kory’ll be the first yuppie elf in history.

  She headed over to the closest food stand, glancing around at the crowd as she stood in line. A shiny new Mercedes, pale blue and with dark-tinted windows, was parked on the street nearby. A blond man in a blue business suit—the expensive kind, Beth thought—stood with another man, staring down at a map spread out over the hood of the car. He looked up and saw her watching him. A moment later, he walked up to her, smiling shyly.

  “Excuse me, miss?” the man asked. “Could you show me the best way to get to the Japan Center from here? I have a map in my car, but the one-way streets are so confusing…”

  “Sure, not a problem.” She walked to the curb, where the man’s friend was puzzling over a map spread out on the hood of their Mercedes. “Probably the best way is to go straight up to Van Ness, then over to Geary—”

  Something hit her hard, in the small of her back, and she fell into the open car door, landing on the back seat. A split-second later she heard the door slam shut, and the sound of the car’s engine starting. The interior of the car was very dark, and smelled of new leather and strange chemicals. Something cold and metallic pressed against the back of her neck, and she froze, not daring to breathe. Very slowly, she turned to stare down the barrel of a small pistol, only inches from her face.

  The blond man shook the pistol at her like a teacher admonishing a naughty child. “Please, don’t bother screaming. No one will hear you outside the car. Now, if you’ll just sit back and relax; everything will be fine.”

  They’re right, the barrel of a gun looks awfully huge when you’re staring down into it. “If you guys think you’re kidnapping me to get a ransom,” Beth whispered, “you are in for a big surprise, Why are you doing this?”

  “We’re not interested in money,” the blond man said, and Beth felt the car lurch out into traffic. “Please, don’t ask any more questions.” He sat back, the pistol resting in his hands.

  Beth edged away from him, until her back was pressed against the car door, She glanced down at her watch, noting the time. Think like a hostage, Kentraine. Be smart. Figure out everything you can about these bastards. Knowledge is power.

  Power…

  She tried to calm herself, to concentrate, imagining that long-haired too-handsome face, imagining him seated on the plaza bench, probably already wondering why it was taking her so long to get two cups of coffee and Perrier…

  Eric, hear me. Eric, I’m in trouble, I don’t know what’s going on, but I need your help, you and Kory. Come on, Eric, listen to me…

  “Son of a bitch!” The pistol cracked against the side of her face. Everything went white for a moment, and she tasted blood. “You’re going to sit there and do nothing and think nothing, girl,” the man warned her. “Or I’ll kill you.”

  “Bastard,” she muttered, covering her face with her hands, trying not to tremble too much. The tears were harder to fight, but somehow she managed to keep from crying or shaking too much by staring down at her clenched fists in her lap, only occasionally reaching up to wipe away the blood from her mouth.

  It was a small room, bare concrete walls painted white, at the end of a series of concrete corridors that led out from the silent underground parking garage. The dark-haired man in front of her was also white, wearing some kind of white laboratory coat. He frowned at her when he saw the blood on her face, and gestured for her to sit down in one of the two wooden chairs in the room. He took the other chair, sitting in front of the plain table with the laptop computer set up upon it. The blond man and his driver took up positions next to the door.

  Her jaw still ached, but the pain was nothing as hot as the fury in her brain. I don’t know what in the hell is going on here, but I’m going to kill someone, she thought. “So, schmuck, why did you bring me here?”

  He smiled. “Call this a recruitment drive. We have a form here that you can sign, which’ll allow us to treat you as one of the team, defining your legal rights in this situation.”

  She hardly believed she had heard him say that. “Team of what? Psychopaths? No thanks, slimeball.”

  “Or we can work out some other arrangement,” he continued, as if she hadn’t spoken. “But it would be much easier for us if you volunteered. Much easier for you, too.”

  “Or there’s a third option:you can let me go, and maybe I won’t send the cops and the mother of all lawsuits against you, mister,” Beth said angrily.

  “You won’t file a lawsuit against us,” The man gave her a cold, patronizing smile. “You don’t even know where you are, or who I am. If we toss you back out on the street, all you’ll be able to do is spin some ridiculous story about being kidnapped by government officials. And no one will believe you, of course.”

  “So you’re a government agency?” Christ, none of this is making any sense!

  “What is your name?” he asked, glancing down at the laptop computer on the table in front of him.

  “Up yours,” she replied tightly.

  He shook his head. “Not a very original answer. So, tell me about yourself. What are you afraid of?”

  Bastards like you. What kind of place is this, anyhow? She didn’t bother to answer his question, studying the blank white concrete walls. It looked too solid to be an office building. She remembered the thin plaster walls of the television studio, and how you could hear people yelling through them at every hour of the day and night. This was more like a bunker than an office building… who built in concrete slabs, anyhow?

  “What are you afraid of?” he repeated.

  Police, handcuffs, the blood staining the walls of Phil’s house like a surrealist painting…run away, before the Feds catch you and lock you up forever in a dark, airless cell… “You know,” she said in a conversational voice, “I bet I could break your nose before your goons could stop me. That would be an interesting experiment, wouldn’t it?”

  The man made a note on his computer, then looked up at the blond man. “Bill, please turn off that fan by the door. Yes, thank you.”


  She glanced at the fan, then at him. “Why did you do that?”

  “It felt a little chilly in here, don’t you agree? Don’t worry, there’s plenty of air circulation in the building.” He glanced back down at his computer screen, wrote several more words.

  “So, is there anything you’re afraid of?” he asked again.

  “Damn, it’s getting stuffy in here,” she muttered, glancing at the fan again. The room seemed smaller, the air already heavier, harder to breathe Nothing. Nothing scares me. Especially not an asshole like you. Do you really think you’re going to get anything out of me?”

  He smiled.

  “I think we’re finished here, boys. We’ll need to go to level 4-A next…call ahead to clear the hallways, I’d rather not run into another misguided Berkeley intern who doesn’t understand the situation.”

  “But that’s the Aerodynamics level, sir.” One of the young thugs had a puzzled expression on his face.

  So did Beth, she was sure. Government… Berkeley intern… aerodynamics… it felt like we were driving for no more than an hour and a half… am I in the Dublin Laboratories? She shuddered involuntarily at the thought of hundreds or thousands of nuclear weapons, possibly only hundreds of feet away from her.

  Armageddon at my fingertips. But that’s not all they do at the Dublin Labs. Other kinds of research, too. So why am I here? And why in the hell did these idiots kidnap me?

  She stood up slowly, wondering whether she should try to make a run for it, maybe risking getting a bullet in the back. Or maybe she should just wait and see what happened next… they need me for something, hell if I know what. That’s what this whole song-and-dance is about. So maybe I wait and see what they want, and then use that against them?

  It seemed like a good idea, as they walked through the empty corridors and down several flights of stairs. Until she saw their destination, the huge metal sphere crouched in a corner of a lab, covered with dials and pressure gauges.

  “You’re not—” she said whitely, and turned to run. Blondie caught her and she screamed, kicking him hard. He cursed and dropped her, staggering back into a table covered with glass beakers and notebooks. The other thug grabbed her before she could bolt for the door, and shoved her through the narrow metal opening. The tiny chamber reverberated as he slammed the door, spinning the bolts shut tightly. Beth screamed and pounded on the glass window until her hands ached.

  All light vanished suddenly as the room outside went dark. Beth slid down the cold metal wall, huddling on the floor of the chamber.

  This is insane, they can’t do this to me, they can’t—A low rumble and hiss of machinery began, and she could feel the air pressure increasing. She swallowed, feeling her ears pop suddenly, and closed her eyes, trying to calm herself.

  This can’t be happening to me. What kind of lunatic locks someone in a decompression chamber? Especially someone who’s… claustrophobic… like me…

  Stay calm, stay calm. Don’t let this get to you. They’re doing this deliberately, you can’t let them win…

  She pressed her fists against her face to stop her hands from shaking. She could feel the screams building against her tightly-closed lips. The darkness seemed to close in around her, thickening, too heavy to breathe. An invisible hand tightened around her throat, cutting off her air—

  Hyperventilating. I’m hyperventilating. Have to slow down my breathing. Think, Kentraine, there’s plenty of air in here, you’re not going to suffocate, that’s all just in your mind…

  Breathe. In, out. In, out. Slowly, calmly, you can do it, just concentrate on your breathing…

  Her breath was very loud in the tiny room, gasping for air. She was too hot, it was too hot in here; she ripped open the front of her blouse, just as the room’s temperature seemed to plunge by fifty degrees. She wrapped her arms around her knees, and shivered. Nausea hit her like a wave, and she choked, losing the rhythm of her breathing.

  God, please, please… She gulped for air, and the panic hit her, overwhelmed her… she heard screaming, and recognized it as her own voice. Her stomach emptied itself suddenly, and left her choking on the taste of coffee and bile. She couldn’t breathe; the darkness brightened to a checkerboard of glittering black and white, as she shook and trembled and wanted to die.

  A creak of metal an eternity later, as the door opened slowly. She tried to get up, but she couldn’t stand. The blond man lifted her to her feet, but her legs were trembling too much, and as he let go of her she crumpled back to the metal floor. She couldn’t stop crying; she couldn’t speak or scream, only cry, deep wrenching sobs that hurt her aching chest.

  The dark-haired man shoved a piece of paper and a pen in front of her; she tried to pick up the pen, and dropped it, her fingers too numb to hold anything. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she managed between sobs, as they hauled her back to her feet and toward the door.

  She couldn’t remember how long she walked, gasping and sobbing and unable to feel the floor beneath her feet. They let her fall down onto a plastic mat, in a small concrete room without a window, but it was cooler, she could feel the chilled air against her skin, not the insane darkness that had clenched her throat and ripped the air from her lungs. She lay there and cried, feeling like something was broken inside, something wrong with her heart and her head. She couldn’t think, everything was too blurry and bright and terrifying. She cried and cried, huddled on the plastic, until someone turned off the light overhead, and then she began to scream again.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 5:

  Nonesuch

  “No, I didn’t see where she went, no, I don’t see her anywhere, and will you stop asking me that!” Eric snapped in frustration, “The answer doesn’t change by asking the same thing over and over!” He walked as quickly as he could on the crowded sidewalk, craning his neck in vain for a glimpse of Beth. Kory followed him several feet behind, looking uncertainly at the pedestrians on the street.

  “But why would Beth leave us here?” the elf asked plaintively.

  Eric couldn’t help himself; he exploded. “Jesus, Kory, I don’t know! Stop asking these stupid questions, okay?” People glanced at him in startlement at his outburst, then away, quickly. Kory’s eyes darkened with anger for a moment—but the moment passed, and Eric tried to put a leash on his temper, feeling ashamed of himself, but too upset to admit it. Something was wrong, something was very wrong, but he didn’t know what or why, and that wrongness, coupled with Beth’s disappearance, had him at a breaking-point.

  “Look,” he said tightly, after affronted silence from Kory, “why don’t you see if you can figure out which way she went? You’re the one with all the experience at—uh—hunting. Don’t you have some kind of tracking ability or something?”

  More silence for a moment, and he turned to see Kory staring vaguely off into space. “I think she went that way,” Kory said, and pointed east.

  “How did you figure that out?” Eric said, trying very hard not to snarl. If the elf knew that, why couldn’t he figure out where she was exactly?

  Kory shrugged helplessly. “Just an intuition. I think she’s over there somewhere.” Kory waved in the general direction of Oakland, Berkeley, and Alameda.

  “Only two million people live in that direction, Kory!” he growled. “Can’t you narrow it down a little?”

  “We should start searching over there,” Korendil replied, his eyes focused on the far distance. “We should search until we find her. That is what any good hunter would do.”

  Eric couldn’t help it; Kory’s simplistic “solution” brought out the sarcastic side of him with a vengeance. “Right. You want to start walking through Berkeley and Oakland? You want to go ask two million people if they’ve seen her? Be my guest. It should only take you about fifty years or so.

  Kory gave him a level look. “Have you a better plan?”

  Eric’s mouth tightened. “I’m going to retrace our route and figure out where she might’ve gone, whether anybody saw her leave,
all of that. If you want to go off on a wild goose chase across half of the Bay Area, then do it! I’m going to do this scientifically, like the cops do… damn shame we can’t call any of them in for this.”

  He thought about it for another minute. “Besides,” he continued, half to himself, “maybe Beth just decided to go home.” But the mere idea had a false ring to it. Without telling us. When she’d just gone to get coffee. Sure. “You can do what you want. But I think the first thing we should do is check around here some more, then check back at the house in case she left a message, and then make a plan of action if we still haven’t gotten anywhere.’

  Kory nodded, as if Eric had answered him, then picked up his and Beth’s instrument cases and began walking away.

  Eric stared at the moving crowd of business-people, wondering where to start. She went for coffee and mineral water. That means it was one of these places here… maybe the donut place, or the Italian food stand…

  A flash of something colorful and familiar caught his eye; he looked up just in time to see Kory walk aboard a Metro bus, not fifteen feet away from him, and the door closed behind him.

  “Goddammit, Kory!” Eric ran to the bus, nearly falling into the path of a speeding BMW as the bus pulled away into traffic. “Dammit, Kory, I didn’t mean it!”

  The bus pulled away, Kory still on it, doubtless headed for Berkeley. He gave chase for another futile minute, then gave it up as he avoided death by Beemer for a second time.

  He sat down on the curb, winded, and wondered what in the hell he was going to do next. Beth missing, and Kory vanishing off to search the East Bay house by house…

  For one selfish moment, Eric seriously considered burying his face in his hands and crying, but that wouldn’t exactly be constructive. Kory knew where he was; he knew how to get around on his own. And he could have magical resources he hadn’t told either of his human partners about, maybe things he couldn’t do while they were around. Maybe he would be able to kick something up if he went off on a lone hunt. And if he didn’t, well, he knew Eric would be going home if he came up dry. So if Kory had gone off to hunt the way an elf could, playing a magical MacGyver, Eric had better go play Spenser Junior, boy detective.