First stop, the donut shop.
He pushed the door open, and the bell over it jangled as shrilly as his nerves. “Excuse me, miss?” he asked the young woman behind the counter. “I’m looking for someone
“Well, you’ve found someone,” the woman looked like she’d come straight out of a James Dean movie, pink waitress uniform and bleached, teased hair and all; she glanced at him from across a tray of fresh donuts, and smiled flirtatiously. “What can I do for you, handsome?”
He didn’t answer the smile. “A friend of mine is missing. Tall gal, long red hair, very pretty…“
“Sorry, I don’t notice the women very much. Want a donut?” Her continuing smile suggested that he might want to try something else instead of a donut. Eric felt the blush beginning at his ears, and fought it, somewhat unsuccessfully.
“You haven’t seen anyone like that?” he persisted.
The smile faded. “No, can’t say I have.” She turned away from him, plainly dismissing him as a lost cause. He spoke to her back as he pushed the door open again.
“All right. Thanks.” She ignored him.
He quickly retreated from the donut shop, looking around for other likely places. The sushi stand probably didn’t sell coffee, or the Thai shop, but the Italian place…
The portly, elderly man behind the stand nodded with recognition as Eric described Beth. “Pretty gal, long red hair? Stacked?”
At last! “Yeah,” he said eagerly, “that’s her.”
The old man rubbed the top of his bald head, and smiled at him the way you’d smile at a slightly stupid child. “I don’t think you need to worry about her. She left with some friends. I saw her talking with them on the curb, then they all left in their car.”
Friends? A car? Why wouldn’t she have come back for us? “What kind of car?” He couldn’t believe she’d just leavelike that if it really was friends. So it had to be something else altogether. Cops? Maybe the Feds had caught up with her? But that didn’t match the feeling of wrongness…
“A nice car,” the old man replied vaguely. “A really nice car. It was blue.”
Eric tried to imagine just how many “nice blue” cars existed in the Bay Area. “Great. Thanks. You’ve been a real help.” Shit.
He turned away from the stand to ponder his next move. All right, think this through. Beth wouldn’t just leave without telling us where she was going. Those guys weren’t friends, no way. Besides, we don’t know anybody with “nice” cars; everybody we know drives wrecks. Maybe they were Feds, or something worse. But what could be worse than Feds?
He didn’t want to think about that.
Four hours later, he didn’t want to think about anything. No sign of Beth, and no new clues other than the old man’s comments about her “leaving with friends.” Eric sat heavily on a bench, wondering what he was supposed to do next. Go home? But that wouldn’t accomplish anything either, and it would take him away from one end of the “trail,” such as it was.
At five p.m., the Embarcadero Plaza was like a sea of human beings, waves of people headed toward the parking lots, Metro, and BART stations. He lay on his back on the bench at the edge of the stream of humanity, looking up at the four tall skyscrapers and a glimpse of blue sky, and tried to come up with some tactic he hadn’t tried yet.
“Excuse me, can you help me?”
He jumped in startlement. “What?”
Eric looked up to see a young, blond man in a blue suit smiling at him. Blond, handsome, but not as cute as Kory. He smiled back, without any real feeling.
The young man took a step closer. “I’m a little lost. I’ve got a map over here, but I don’t know where I am on it exactly. Do you know how to get to—” The man gestured at his car, parked in a red zone a few feet away, with a city map spread out over the hood.
Eric froze.
A blue car. A Mercedes.
A nice blue car. Just like the one that drove away with Beth—
Eric tried to jump away and fell off the bench, landing on his hands and knees. Before the man could react, he vaulted to his feet, and took off like a sprinter towards the plaza. The blond man cursed and grabbed for him; Eric felt his hand catch and slip off the fabric of Eric’s jacket.
If there had been any doubts as to the man’s intentions, that move had canceled them.
Eric leaped over another bench, dodging around a trio of business women and a young man selling flowers. He clutched his flute case to his chest as he ran across the plaza, trying to spot a place to hide. In the Embarcadero, there weren’t very many options.
He tripped over the curb, dashing across the street as the traffic light changed to green. Drivers honked at him, then a squeal of brakes behind him caught his attention. He glanced back to see a car skid to a stop inches from the blond man, who was only a few seconds behind Eric.
He turned the corner, and then another, hearing the man’s running feet close behind him… and stopped short, confronted by a blank wall.
A dead-end alley. Dead, just like he was going to be, if that blond guy caught up with him.
He glanced back, trying not to panic. No time to get the flute out of its case. No time for anything, in fact. Except maybe to yell for help and hope somebody paid attention.
Or to try magic-music without the flute.
He puckered up, took a deep breath, and began to whistle the first thing that came to his mind, thinking very hard about being invisible. His mind had no sense of priorities; it chose a jaunty Irish tune, “The Rakes of Mallow.” He nearly lost the melody as the blond man dashed around the corner, slipping on some of the scattered garbage. The stranger quickly regained his footing, and looked around the alley.
Frowning.
His glance slid over Eric as though he wasn’t there.
I’m not, really. Just part of the garbage in the alley, m’friend. Managing to calm down a little, since the trick was working, Eric whistled the Bpart, willing the man to give up, turn away; willing the man to see nothing.
It was a long, tense moment.
Finally the blond man obliged, a snarl of frustration on his face, walking back toward the plaza.
It was tempting to run off. Even more tempting to stay where he was—
Beth. If those men have her—
Still whistling, Eric strolled after him, simultaneously thinking about being invisible while rooting in his pocket for the stub of pencil he usually kept there. He snatched up a bit of litter as the man reached his car, then jotted down the number of the Mercedes’ license plate on the scrap of sandwich-paper he’d caught up. The blond man conferred with another business-suited type standing by the car, then they both got into their vehicle and drove away.
Eric didn’t stop whistling until the car turned the corner onto Market Street and disappeared into traffic.
Then he sat down on the curb and thought, very hard. Harder than he ever had in his life. About kidnappers in fancy cars. Kory, who was still gone after several hours. And Bardic music, which had saved them once, back in Los Angeles, and was probably the only thing which could save them this time.
God knows, I sure can’t go to the San Francisco cops over this! And where in the hell is Kory?
Korendil, Knight of Elthame Sun-Descending and Elihame Mist-Hold, squire of the High Court, Magus Minor, and Child of Danaan, stood with his arms crossed, trying to understand the forces behind an electrical fence.
He had sensed the danger from it, and noted the way that the grass had been carefully cleared away from it. Then, trying to understand what was so alarming about a plain metal fence strung with wires, he was treated to the spectacular sight of what happened when a hapless sparrow had the bad sense to try landing on the fence.
Just as dazzling as his battle with Perenor, in a small way… and with the same result for the sparrow.
It would seem that climbing this fence is not a good idea, he thought, considering the scorched bird lying dead at his feet. Even if Beth is here, somewhere under the gro
und ahead of me. She was there; he was sure of it. It had been intensely frustrating to try to make the Bard understand that his ability to track Beth depended not so much on spell-born magic as on the spiritual bond that the three of them had forged. Tracing her had been like playing the child’s game of “warm—getting warmer.” That was as close as he could come.
Perhaps it was just as well that Eric had remained behind to try human means of tracking. Without the Bard nearby to confuse the vague tuggings in his heart, it was easier to pinpoint Beth. He walked back toward the road and the place where the bus driver had stopped to let him out, and then to the guard gate. Beyond the gate, he saw that the road led into a large parking lot, surrounded by several block-like gray buildings. “Excuse me?” he asked politely, knocking on the glass panel of the guard house at the gate.
The panel slid open, and a woman peered belligerently out at him. She wore a uniform that Kory liked immediately, a dark blue jumpsuit with different badges pinned on it. It was very attractive. The woman would have been, too, if she had not been frowning. He wondered what he could possibly have done that would so raise her ire.
“Go away, kid. Your peacenik friends aren’t doing their annual blockade of the Labs until next month.” Her teeth bared in something less like a smile than a snarl. “Unless you want to start early. You could spend the next month in jail, until the rest of them arrive.”
He shook his head, not understanding the woman’s strange speech. “No, I am not wanting to go to jail. I’m here looking for a friend of mine. I believe she is inside this place.”
“Hmmmph. Should have said so.” The woman gave him an odd look, but softened her frown a little. “You look so much like one of those hippie-activists, I figured you were here to make trouble.”
“No, no trouble,” Kory said earnestly. “I just want to find my friend.”
“What’s your friend’s name?” she asked, consulting a printed list.
Now he was getting somewhere. “Beth. Bethany Margaret Kentraine.”
The woman shook her head. “Sorry, she’s not on the cleared list. Maybe she’s working back at the University? A lot of the interns get switched back and forth between the various labs…“
The sense of Bethness was even stronger now. Why was this woman claiming that Beth was not there? “I know she is here,” he protested. “Down there—” he pointed off in the distance.
The woman’s expression hardened. “Sorry. If she’s not on my list, she’s not here. You’d better move along, now.”
“But I have to find Beth,” he told her stubbornly. He turned away from her and began walking through the tall metal gates.
“Hey, kid!” The woman called from behind him. He heard the sound of sirens going off, a shrill wailing noise. Kory kept walking.
The next sound he couldn’t ignore, a loud blast of noise from directly behind him. He turned…
… and found that he was looking down the twin barrels of a shotgun.
“Back through the gate, kid,” the security guard gestured with the shotgun. “No one goes into the Labs without clearance. You seem like a nice boy, but you can’t go any further.”
He looked over the gun into the woman’s eyes, pleadingly, trying to trap her gaze. “Please, I have to find Beth. I promise I won’t damage anything here—” He caught her eyes; held them with his own. Touched her mind.
:Please… just let me walk through.:
The woman nodded, slowly, her eyes blank and unseeing, and Kory turned away, satisfied that she would no longer impede him. He continued down the road toward one of the square, squat buildings. Several people with drawn guns ran past him, heading for the gate-house. Movies and television he had seen suggested that they were answering the alarms the woman had triggered—but the same shows also told him that if he acted as if he belonged here, rather than as an intruder, they would ignore him without the intervention of magic.
He let himself in through the double glass doors of the largest building, looking around curiously. Another human in a similar uniform to the woman was seated behind a large desk. Before the man could respond to the door opening, Kory touched his mind as well; he glanced at Kory, then back at a screen on the table, ignoring the presence of a stranger. A bright red light was flashing on his desk; he paid no more attention to it than he did to Kory.
Kory crossed the sterile, white-painted entry-hall, stopped in front of a large row of elevators, and pressed the button. He looked up as another team of blue-jumpsuited humans ran to the double glass doors, taking up odd positions near the glass. It reminded him of another one of the movies he and Eric had watched on the television, with the policemen moving in pretty, dance-like patterns through rooms and stairways, hunting for an enemy. These humans seemed to be running in the same patterns, one dashing forward and then stopping behind a desk or a potted plant, and then another running past the first one, to stop at another desk or potted plant. It would probably be a good idea to leave the area as quickly as he could. The humans would not be inclined to ignore him for much longer, and he wasn’t certain he could hold all of their minds at once.
The elevator arrived with a happy DING! sound, and the doors opened. Kory stepped inside, and stopped, freezing as a primal fear chilled him through all of his veins.
Iron. Cold Iron, all around him. Not touching him, but close enough that he could feel the chill on his skin, the whisper of death in the silent metal.
He wanted to turn and run, to get as far away from this place as possible. He’d been in elevators before… Eric and Beth had taken him up in the elevator to the top floor of a place called The Hyatt, so they could drink wine in a restaurant and watch the sunset from a vista of windows overlooking the city. But this elevator was different, built of more solid metals, more deadly metals.
He took a deep breath, and reached for the button panel inside the elevator. He couldn’t retreat; not with a lobby full of wary, angry humans behind him. And besides, all of his instincts told him he had followed the right path. Beth is down there. I cannot leave her here. The iron will not harm me, it is hidden behind layers of plastic and other metals. I can ignore it. I can do this. I can.
The elevator doors closed. Kory kept a tight hold on himself, fought down his fear, and considered the array of buttons, each one with a peculiar slot next to it.
He tried to decide which one to try first. He knew Beth was on one of the lower levels, but how deep? He could spend days in this place, trying each button.
Just to get started, he pressed one button. The elevator did not move.
Odd. Elevators move to the floor you press. So why wasn’t this one moving? Kory chewed his lip, and again noticed the strange slots, next to each button.
The slots were roughly the size of one of Beth’s old credit cards… he remembered how impressed he had been by the idea of giving someone a piece of plastic and in return they would give you all kinds of clothing, boots, even food. But Beth said they couldn’t use her cards anymore, the police could track them that way.
In any case, he didn’t have any of Beth’s credit cards with him, not now. If he needed one of those cards to make the elevator work, this might turn out to be more difficult than he thought.
Perhaps there was an easier way…
He knelt and pressed his hand against the elevator floor, twitching slightly at the feel of plastic against his palm. But not Cold Iron. I can touch this, it won’t hurt me.
He pressed harder, a magical push against the elevator floor, forcing it downward.
The elevator descended silently, and Kory closed his eyes, trying to imagine where Beth might be, trying to “reach out and touch someone,” as Eric always joked, trying to find…
There!The elevator chimed and the doors slid open for him.
It was another featureless hallway, with a young man seated behind another desk. Kory looked at the man’s badges and insignia, and decided that he did want a badge with his own picture on it. Perhaps after he and Beth left this
place, they could go find someone who made those badges…
“Hey, how did you get down here? Where’s your security badge?” the young man blurted, as Kory approached.
The sign over the young man’s desk was interesting: Psychic Research Wing. Q Clearance Required.
Psychic… Kory knew he’d heard that word somewhere before. Perhaps Beth, talking with one of her Wiccan friends. Clearance, now that was a word he understood… that was when everything was half-price at Macy’s, and Beth had to go buy clothes for herself. Together, though, the sentences did not make much sense to him.
As Kory considered this, the youth reached under his desk, and when his hand emerged, he held a small pistol, aimed directly at Kory with an assurance that told the elf that the human knew how to use this thing, and use it well.
:Please. You should not threaten someone, especially a warrior like myself I do not intend you any harm. I am seeking my friend Beth Kentraine. I know she is here, somewhere… have you seen her?:
The young man stared at him, his hand dropping, his mouth and mind both opening like poppies in the sun. An image appeared in Kory’s mind, of a woman walking down a hallway… no, barely able to walk, a stranger supporting her on either side. A door closing, and the sign 13-A Room 12 on the wall outside it.
“Thank you,” Kory said gravely, and started down the corridor. Behind him, he heard the clatter of the pistol falling to the ground, followed shortly by the sound of a body landing on the plastic floor.
He carefully followed the row of signs, each labeling a closed door. From behind one door, he could hear someone crying, as if from a very far distance. Someone was calling out hoarsely from behind another door, the words too faint to understand. He stopped in front of “13-A Room 12,” and tried the doorknob. It refused to open. Kory frowned, and considered the lock for a moment, then closed his eyes, gathering his will.
Summoned to Tourney Page 8
