“The cells on the thirteenth floor below the ground,” Kory put in, shaking back his hair. He leaned forward earnestly. “The cells where the evil man put Beth when he took her from us, and where he also put me and tortured me with Cold Iron. I swear to you upon my honor that he did this.” He displayed his own wrists, which up until this moment had been hidden in the long cuffs of his soft silk shirt. Eric gulped and averted his eyes, and beside him he heard Susan Sheffield gasp. As well she might. It looked for all the world as if someone had been working Kory’s wrists and lower arms over with red-hot wires.
Eric’s hands tightened around his cup, as his own wrists burned and throbbed in sympathy. That was what I Saw, he realized, suddenly, when I tried to reach him with the Bardic magic. That was what I felt. They were hurting him, and the Cold Iron might have killed him if the pain didn’t turn him crazy.
“Level thirteen?” the scientist asked, licking her lips nervously as Kory covered his wrists again. Her eyes had gone from skeptical to wary. Eric had the feeling that the reference to this thirteenth floor hadn’t taken her entirely by surprise. “But thirteen is a sealed level, it’s the one just above mine. That’s—that’s Warden Blair’s labs, the Cassandra Project! How did you get in there? Nobody gets in there! I mean, I know he has about four times the number of lab people than anyone else, but—you aren’t lab people—”
Both Kory and Elizabet nodded, but it was Elizabet who spoke. “We didn’t ‘get in,’ we were brought in. Our charming host called himself Dr. Blair,” she said calmly, outwardly unmoved by the display of Kory’s burns. “And I would guess that when the alarm went off, there were about a dozen of us who got out of our cells—our locked, monitored cells—and escaped. There were at least as many who didn’t, who were either too broken, too cowed, or too frightened to run. Or, possibly, too crazy.”
“He said that there were fourteen lab people missing,” the scientist said, as if to herself. Then her gaze sharpened as it fell on Eric. “But what about him and his pet monsters? What’s he got to do with this?”
Eric’s wits finally came back, and he straightened up, looking back at her with all the defiance he had left. “I knew that my friends were locked up in Dublin Labs, lady—high-tech, Fed stuff in there—and everything pointed to the Feds taking them. What was I supposed to do, call the cops and tell them to go arrest some Feds, or maybe write my representative in Congress? Was I supposed to just let them rot in there? Look what they did to Kory! I had to get them out!” He swallowed once, then continued. “So I used the only weapon I could think of. It wasn’t a good choice, but I didn’t know that then. I didn’t know what they’d do, I didn’t know that they’d manage anything worse than scaring people. I thought—I don’t know what I thought. I know that I didn’t think there’d be anyone innocent in there.” He dropped his eyes, then, to stare at his hands and the cup in them. “I thought everybody in there would have to know what was going on, would have to be bad guys. I don’t know what goes on in a place like that! I’m just a musician.”
The scientist started laughing, a note of hysteria in her voice. “Just a musician. Just a musician! Playing Pied Piper to a bunch of man-killing monsters and you’re justa musician!”
For a moment, Eric thought that Elizabet might slap the woman to bring her out of her hysterics—but when he looked up, the healer just pursed her lips at him and shook her head slightly.
Susan passed from hysterical laughter to soft weeping within a few moments; sobbing into her hands, crying with a peculiarly helpless tone to her voice. Elizabet left her alone for that, too, until she got herself under control, and wiped her eyes with a paper napkin. Then she looked up at Elizabet, and when she spoke, her voice was steady.
“I could believe just about anything of Warden Blair before today,” she said steadily. “And now, after this afternoon—I can believe he’d do anything. The man was as cold as a snake, and had about as much moral sense.”
“Do you have any idea what Warden Blair did there?” Elizabet asked urgently. “I have a very traumatized woman upstairs. If I have some idea what might have happened to her, I might be able to help her.”
Susan Sheffield pursed her lips. “I know he had a lot of equipment,” she said, finally. “He was supposed to be running some kind of psych project. That was what rumor said, anyway. But he had all kinds of equipment that he’d scrounged from all over the labs that no psych project would need. Colonel Steve likes to use mythological names for our projects, names that kind of have something to do with the project itself. Like, mine is ‘Poseidon,’ because it’s got to do with earthquakes, and Poseidon was the god of the sea and earthquakes.”
“Poseidon, the earth-shaker,” Elizabet muttered. “But ‘Cassandra’— that was the prophetess of Troy, the one doomed both to speak the truth of what would come and never be believed.” She pondered a moment. “Could it be that he was attempting to collect psychics for some kind of government work? Seeing the future, perhaps?”
The scientist shrugged. “He was popularly thought of as a real nut-case; nobody who had ever met him wanted to work on his projects. As I said, I could believe about anything of him. And—” She paused and her face paled. “And some of the people who quit his project had—bad luck. Pretty bizarre bad luck, really… I’d never thought about it before, I guess nobody did, but it was things like the intern kids getting kicked out of their grad programs or being forcibly transferred to other universities. I remember one kid in tears, because they’d told him to either quit or go to Anchorage. And we sure never saw them around the labs anymore.”
Elizabet snapped her fingers in front of the woman’s eyes, startling her. “You were going to tell me something about the equipment Blair has,” she said firmly.
“Weird stuff,” the scientist said faintly. “Oh, a decompression chamber, for one thing; that had been sitting in the corner of my space since I’d gotten my floor and I was just as glad to see it go upstairs—but what would a psych project need with something like that? And one day one of my grad students came back giggling that the dumpster from his floor was full of boxes from—” she blushed crimson “—from, ah, one of those—ah—‘adult toy stores.’ You know—”
“Pornshops,” Elizabet said crisply. The woman flushed again.
“Yes, well, this one is supposed to be really popular with the—ah—‘leatherboys.’ The ones who like to tie each other up. Handcuffs, restraints, and gags, according to my lab kid.” She rubbed her cheeks, and averted her gaze. “There were lots of boxes. So many that Charlie asked me if Blair was planning on holding a party. A ‘black tie-down party for thirty,’ he said.”
“Hmm.” Elizabet seemed lost in thought, and asked the next question absently. “What did you mean, earlier, when you said that you would believe just about anything of Blair before today?”
Susan’s flush vanished, and her face went dead-white. “Today—today when I saw Warden Blair, he wasn’t the same man at all. Oh, outwardly he looked the same, but—the snake that used to be on the thirteenth floor was someone I wouldn’t have trusted without all the cards on my side of the table, but he was still someone I understood. I’ve seen his type before. But today—he’s changed, and I can’t read him at all. I think he would do anything.”
Eric had a horrible, sinking feeling, the feeling as if he almostknew something. And that when he found out what it was, he was going to be really afraid. Not that he wasn’t afraid now, but—
Suddenly Susan Sheffield seemed to wake up, and she stared at Elizabet as if the healer had just sprouted horns and wings. “What am I doing, talking to you like this? You don’t have clearances, you don’t have any right to know anything about the labs. I came here to get you to answer my questions, not the other way around!” She shoved her chair back and stood up, angrily. Eric distinctly heard Kayla mutter damn. “I’m getting out of here, and when I do, I’m calling Colonel Steve and letting him know I found you.”
But Kory was between her and the d
oor, instantly. She looked up at him, surprised, probably wondering how he had gotten there so fast.
“We shall not imprison you, my lady,” the elf said gravely, “but we cannot allow you to do that.”
Susan’s response to that was a quick knee to Kory’s groin.
Eric heard something like a muffled clank. Then she bent over double, clutching her knee and moaning.
Kayla giggled. “All that and endurance too,” she said with a grin. Elizabet glared at her, but she kept on grinning.
Kory remained in the doorway, shaking his head sorrowfully. “I am very sorry, my lady,” he said over Kayla’s snickering, “but I have seen those television programs also.”
Elizabet rose, graceful and unhurried, and got the scientist back over to a chair. But instead of placing her hands on Susan’s knee and doing something about the pain as Eric had expected, she sat back in her own chair.
:Why isn’t she helping?: he asked Kory silently, forming the words carefully in his mind. This telepathy thing was still new to him and it didn’t come easily. Nor was it of any use much outside of normal vocal range. A different kind of speech, was all, and if he wanted to talk to someone on the other side of town, he might as well use the telephone; it was a lot more reliable.
:I believe because she has no strength to waste and wishes to save it for Bethany,:Kory replied the same way.
“Gentlemen,” Elizabet said after a moment, while the woman massaged her maltreated knee, “why don’t you go into the other room for a moment. And Kayla, go sit with Beth. I think Susan and I should talk together a little. You can watch the door from there easily enough.”
Kayla started to protest, but a look from Elizabet quelled her. She got up sulkily, and left with a look of disgust at being excluded. Eric and Kory followed.
Kayla clattered noisily up the staircase; so noisily that it had to be on purpose. Eric waited until Kayla was up the stairs before saying anything.
“Kory, Elizabet needs to know what happened to Beth, right?” he asked, flinging himself down into a chair. Kory seated himself on the couch, across from him. “Not just what happened to her, but what went on inside her head.”
The elf nodded, slowly, his blond curls looking a lot more wilted than Eric was used to seeing. “I believe so.”
This is taking a lot out of him. Me, too. “And we need some serious reinforcements.” He scratched his head. “Look, I tried to get through to your relatives when you got caught, and I couldn’t reach them. But I was using the phone—you’vegot to have some way of getting to them, you know, elvishly. Right?”
Kory glanced warily at the kitchen door as the voices on the other side of it rose for a moment. “I can contact my cousins, yes,” he replied. “And at nearly any time or place. But—why need we reinforcements? Are we not safe again, and together? Have we not defeated the evil men? Once Bethany is well—”
“Is the guy that kidnapped you dead?” Eric countered. “You just heard that woman say he’s still around. As long as he’s around, we aren’t safe.” He ran his hands through his hair distractedly, trying to think of all the angles. Plotting was not his forte. It should be Beth doing this, not him. “Shit, we aren’t safe now, if he knows where we live. I’m only hoping that he doesn’t, that the reason he took Beth in broad daylight was because he doesn’t know who we really are and where we live. I dunno, he was picking up psychics, maybe he’s got some kind of psychic sonar that zooms in on people like Elizabet and us. Maybe that’s how he found us. I hope so. ‘Cause if he knows where we live, we’re in deep kimchee.”
At Kory’s look of bewilderment, he shook his head. “Let me see if I can explain this right. Remember—-ah—Die Hard 2?” The elf was an insatiable consumer of action films, good, bad, and terrible, and with his magic, if they didn’t have the cash, it was easy enough for him to sneak into theaters with his Low Court cousins, so it was a safe bet that he had seen the movie and he would recall it.
If the film industry had more fans as devoted as Kory, Hollywood would have nothing to worry about.
“Remember how the bad guys had friends in with the good guys?”
“The special army team; yes, I remember.” Kory frowned. “I think I catch your meaning. While those who are honorable would condemn Warden Blair’s actions, they are prevented from knowing about them by friends of Blair’s who have been corrupted by him.”
“Pretty close,” Eric said, relieved. Fortunately for them all, Kory became less naive about the human world with every day, particularly where human failings were concerned.
Hooray for Hollywood.
“And these same corrupt men have the resources to find us again,” the elf brooded. “This is an ill thing. I believe I must call the others. Arvin above all will know what to do.”
“Good. Excellent. How soon do you think they can be here?”
Kory pondered for a moment. “Bard Eric, would you say this is an emergency?”
He gave a thought to what the elves might consider an “emergency.” His peril and Beth’s—not a chance. They were human, and important only to Kory. But Kory—
“Yeah, I’d say so,” he replied. “Tell Arvin that the human had you captured and bound with Cold Iron—that he’s going to come after you again—and that once he has you it would only be a matter of time before he figured out what you are. That means humans—in the government— would know all about elves. And that would mean that none of you would be safe outside of Underhill.” He smiled a little to himself Arvin might well be indifferent to the fates of Kory’s pet humans, but he adored living in human society and he’d go mad from boredom in the carefully controlled world of Underhill. That would bring him around soon enough—
“You might tell him that given this set of humans, they might even figure a way for themselves to actually get into Underhill,” he added. “They’re scientists, and once a scientist knows that something is possible, they find ways to do it.”
Put that in your little leprechaun pipe and smoke it, Arvin.
“I shall do that,” Kory replied, a certain grim delight on his face. “I think I can have at least a dozen or two here within the hour, with that to fling at them.”
Thatwas good news. “Okay, you take care of that. I’m going upstairs. By the time they get here, I may have some idea what’s going on with Bethie.” He vaulted up out of his chair and sprinted for the stairs, noting absently as he passed the kitchen door that the murmur of voices sounded less angry and more—anxious.
And maybe Elizabet’s getting through to the scientist-lady. I sure hope so. I don’t want to have to wipe her mind clean of what happened at the labs and anything to do with us.
This Bardic magic stuff was getting messier all the time. Seemed as if every time he used it to fix something, he had to use it again to fix what the fix had messed up, and then fix the problems that the fix to the fix had brought up.
Why couldn’t things be simple, like in one of those awful Role Adventure Escape books? Just find the Magic Talisman and poof, all the crayon-box dragons would roll over on their backs…
He paused at the door to the bedroom and peeked inside. Beth was asleep, but he doubted it was anything other than magic-induced sleep. Kayla looked up as the door creaked, surveying him warily from her perch in the window.
And just find the Wand of Wizardly Wonder, wave it, and everyone is healed of everything. Including death. He shook his head a little unhappily. I could do with one of those right now. And not just for Bethie.
“Kayla?” he whispered, easing himself into the room. “You’re gonna have to spot for me. Kory’s calling in some kind of elven SWAT team to back us, and I’m going to try to find out what happened to Bethie, since she won’t tell us.”
The kid’s expression sharpened with interest, until she looked like an alert little fox. “What are you gonna do, Bard?”
He grimaced ruefully. “Wish I knew. Oh, I have a plan—I’m gonna try and get inside her head. But once I’m in there, well, I
dunno what’s gonna happen. So you’ll have to play it by ear. Sorta put a lifeline on me and haul me out if something goes wrong, okay? You’re better at this than Elizabet is.”
“Jeez, you don’t ask for much, do you?” the kid muttered. Then, louder,
“Okay, I’ll do what I can. But—shit, Bard, I don’t know what I’m doing
here. So don’t sue me if I mess it up.”
“If we both mess it up, kid, there isn’t gonna be anything to sue.” This was going to be dangerous for Kayla—not so dangerous as it was for him —but she could get hurt and he hoped the healer kid realized it. From the expression on her face, she did. From the expression on her face, she also had no plans to try and back out.
Kayla gritted her teeth. “I know,” Kayla said grimly.
He settled himself on the bed next to Beth, one hand covering one of hers. What should he use to key on? There weren’t any Celtic songs about mind-reading…
Oh, of course. Gordon Lightfoot. Perfect. He closed his eyes, and hummed the first few bars—and Felt the power take hold of him.
“Okay,” he muttered, “let’s get this over with.”
He came up out of his trance with a scream.
And he found himself the center of an audience. Kayla he had expected, and maybe Kory—but the tiny room was full of bodies, human and elven. His eyes went first to Elizabet—and, to his immense relief, he saw a pale-faced, round-eyed Susan Sheffield crowded in beside her. Kory stood on the other side of the scientist, and the rest were jammed in however.
He checked the elves first, and they were equipped for mayhem. Elegant, but definitely no one was going to mess with them. Knives long enough to qualify as swords hung at many sides; the elf he had last seen dressed in pink-punk style was still in pink, but it was a cat-suit, and she had a bandolier of throwing knives across her chest. One end of a bo staff peeked over the heads of those on the right side, and were those arrows on the left?
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