Melisande tossed her pink hair scornfully. “And what can a human do to us?” she asked.
“Little,” Dharinel replied, giving her a look. “But the creature may well be able to armor its agents against your magic and illusions, and their steel-jacketed bullets can do much.”
Melisande blanched.
As well she might. Steel—Cold Iron in any form—had disastrous effects on elven physiology. Even a fragment of a bullet might well kill one, though the marksman managed only to wound.
Storming the gates is going to be right out.
Pretty obvious that Dharinel—who had apparently been appointed their war-leader by default—had already dismissed that idea out of hand. He might prefer to stay Underhill, but he wasn’t stuck back in the Middle Ages like some of the Underhill crowd. He knew modern ways, and modern weapons, and he did not underestimate humans.
Okay, they’d have some notion of when Blair was going to rev up the engines. That would buy them time to do something. What, he had no idea. They probably couldn’t cut the power to the probes. They probably couldn’t subvert the guards. No way they’d be able to get inside the labs. Now if there was just something that they could do about the energy the probes would be putting out…
Wait a minute. It’s energy. Elves play around with energy a lot. I’ve seen ‘em change electricity into magic power—oh, they don’t do it well but they can! And I’ve seen Kory hold a lightbulb in his hands and make it work just for kicks. Can we feed that energy back on itself or maybe—maybe turn it into something else?
Maybe ordinary humans couldn’t—but Bardic magic seemed to have a lot to do with energy manipulation, just like the elves, might be able to work a conversion of one kind of energy to another.
“Who’s the best mage here?” he asked aloud. Every pair of elven eyes looked from him to Dharinel.
Dharinel seemed less than pleased to be singled out.
Great. Figures. The one elf here who hates my guts. Could be worse, I guess. Could be Perenor.
Dharinel looked at him warily, but nodded his head. “I am,” he said simply. “I can work with you, Bard. This is more important than my animosity.”
Thanks, Laughing Boy. He gestured, and Dharinel followed him into the kitchen. Eric gestured at the chairs, and Dharinel assumed a seat as if it were a throne.
Welcome, Your Highness, to my humble kitchen.
He dug into the fridge and poured them both big glasses of Gatorade, then got out the pretzels. Elves, he had learned, loved pretzels. Maybe it was the salt.
Dharinel took one, gingerly, and raised an eyebrow in unspoken question.
“Relax, my lord,” Eric said wearily. “I don’t have any assumptions, and at this point, I have no pride. I’m a half-taught bonehead, and you’re going to have to cram tensor physics into me in less than a day.”
“Ah.” Dharinel glanced out the window at the setting sun, then bit his pretzel in half. And managed something amazingly like a smile. “I believe it is going to be a long night.”
Hey, this might work. This just might work. He relaxed minutely. “Yes, my lord—but maybe it isn’t going to be as long as I thought.”
* * *
CHAPTER 13:
The Boys of Ballysaclare
Melisande hugged the ground, ignoring the damp of fog and the dew soaking her clothing. She needed no spells of deception, no magic at all, to disguise herself; only ability. She held herself so utterly still that birds had winged in to feed within reach of her hand. It had been a long, long time since Melisande had used her skills as a warrior, but old habits were easy to take up again.
Gone were the pink hair, the Spandex bodysuit. Those, oddly enough, werethe garb of a kind of warrior, but not the kind she was now. She had surveyed the ground of her chosen lookout point, above the green, flat lawns of Dublin Labs, and had created her camouflage accordingly.
Her hair was now a dull yellow-brown, blending with the weeds about her. Her clothing was of the same mottled coloration: gray, yellow, and brown. Her skin was hidden under gloves and mask of thin silk that blended with the rest; she had considered paint, and rejected it as too itchy and too likely to wipe off, had considered changing her skin, but rejected that as terribly conspicuous if she had to walk among humans. It was easy to hide the ears and the eyes; it would be a great deal harder to hide camo-colored skin.
She had cast spells of confusion to fool the eye of the humans who might be on guard against intruders, but Beth, Susan, and Bard Eric had all spoken of machinery that might watch—machines that could detect scent as a hound, or the heat of a body as a snake.
So she had dealt with those, as well; her body was the same temperature as the ground she lay on, and her scent was that of a cat. She only hoped that there were no other subtle machines to befool.
Below her was one of the probes Susan Sheffield said must be moved. There were a dozen more of them, all told. A dozen and one, to be precise. Somehow Melisande found that number appropriate.
Not evil, she reminded herself. In fact, Susan meant for them to serve a good purpose. It is the one who uses them that is evil.
There were elven watchers over all of them, although Susan was not sure which of the “array” would be repositioned. Melisande thought that this one was likely; for one thing, it was on Lab property, and there would be no attention paid when someone came to move it. For another—she had a hunch. Elven hunches were not to be taken lightly.
How long until the Nightflyer creature decided that Susan Sheffield was not to return? And then how long would it be before it decided to act on its own2 There was no way of knowing. Melisande had decided that she would wait, no matter how long it took—but she had some doubts about the patience of the others. Some of them, anyway.
Light-minded. Now they are afeared, but when the fear wears off so will their interest. Too many distractions. It is hard for some of them to believe in the FarSeeing, when there have been so few things in the human world that could ever affect us.
So she had taken up this first outpost herself, to be sure that at least one watcher would remain in place.
There were other things that troubled her. Before she left the Bard’s home, there had been some discussion of how the Blair-human—before he became a Nightflyer’s host—had found Beth, Eric, and the human healers. Melisande was not terribly interested, until Susan had speculated on more machines, and that had caught Dharinel’s attention for fair. The two of them had conferenced, with Dharinel becoming more animated than Melisande had ever seen him before. They came at last to the conclusion that there must be machines that could see the thoughts that moved from mind to mind, the energies of the healer—and, yes, most probably the powers of magic.
The very thought of that made Melisande shudder. Machines that had the same ability to See as the Gifted! Worse, machines that could do so for the benefit of humans who were otherwise blind to magic and all that it meant.
That meant, that in addition to everything else, Dharinel and the others must needs construct the tightest shieldings they had ever created for each of the watchers—and for the humans as well. The healers, Eric, and Beth were shielded so tightly that they no longer existed to Melisande’s inner Eye—and on the chance that there might be some subtle telltale on Susan, she had been shielded as well. It would do them little good to discover that the Blair-creature could track them and know where they were, or if it would actually wantto find the elves. It would accomplish nothing if, with all their careful planning, the Blair-creature found and took Bard Eric.
The younger healer, Kayla, had gone out into the city to try to collect other humans with the Gifts. These, Dharinel had determined, would be needed for later work.
It was a complicated plan they had made; it relied on the abilities of humans and elves, on humans and elves working together. Melisande only hoped that it was not too complicated to succeed.
Their plans were further complicated by their inability to speak mind-to-mind through the
shields, which must remain in place until the last minute. So when a man came for this probe, Melisande would have to leave her watchpost, go to the BART station, and take the humans’ transportation to their headquarters. She could not even ride her elvensteed motorcycle. Dharinel had ruled that the elvensteeds, being creatures of purest magic, had too much potential for being easily detected.
Wait—there was something moving below.
Melisande checked her shields and peered through the foggy gray of early morning. Was it a groundskeeper? Sexless in its muddy brown coverall, it—no, he—towed a trash barrel upon wheels behind him…
Then the snout of a high-powered rifle poking out of the open top of the barrel told her that this was no gardener. And as he moved across the grass towards the probe, she smiled in satisfaction.
When he reached it, and began to load it into his barrel, she inched backwards to slither down the side of the hill.
Six rings. Seven. Eight. “Damn,” Elizabet swore quietly, hanging up the phone. The house seemed terribly quiet with Eric and most of the elves gone. Occasional car noises filtered up from the street, and Elizabet tried not to listen too closely for the sound of one stopping outside. The elves had pledged that they were safe. She had to believe that.
“No answer?” Kayla asked with a grimace. She had accepted the elves’ assurance with no question. Elizabet wished she had her apprentice’s faith.
“No answer.” Elizabet stared off into the distance, her lips compressed into a tight line. No answer—but most of them were at the conference. Most of them were already paranoid—and what happened there must have simply proven to them that their worst fears were a reality. “Not that I blame them. After what happened to us, I wouldn’t be answering my phone either.”
Kayla drew a neat line through the last name on the list. “Yeah. Answer the phone and there could be a car outside your door five minutes later. Teach, we got a problem,” she said. “We’ve got three—count ‘em, three—psis contacted so far. The rest, everybody from the conference, changed their numbers in the last day and got unlisted ones, aren’t answering, or just plain disappeared. Now what? Where are we gonna find anybody on this short a notice?”
Elizabet shook her head, feeling suddenly tired. I can’t feel tired. I don’t have time to feel tired. “I don’t know,” she said frankly. “I’m fresh out of ideas.”
Kayla blinked, then licked her lips. “I got one,” she offered. She had that look about her that told Elizabet she was probably not going to like the idea, that this was something that a child shouldn’t be doing. On the other hand—they were rapidly running out of choices.
Elizabet spread her hands. “I’m open to any suggestion at this point.” Just make this one a reasonable one. Something that might work.
“Well—” Kayla took a deep breath. “You know I’m pretty street-smart. Mid you know I know how to find people when I want to.”
In fact, Kayla’s ability to find people was quite uncanny. She knew somehow when people who were pretending to be out were at home; she even knew when people who were out could be expected back, usually coming within ten minutes of their actual return. It wasn’t precognition as Elizabet recognized it; it certainly wasn’t anything like clairvoyance, for there was no vision involved. Just a “hunch”—one that had served Kayla well when she had been pilfering apartments for food and small amounts of cash. It was astonishing how few people locked their windows even in a city the size of Los Angeles.
“You’re street-smart in L.A.,” Elizabet reminded her. “This is San Francisco; you don’t know the territory.” And I don’t want you out on the street; you’re a child, and children are terribly easy to snatch when the abductor is an adult and looks official. Flash some kind of badge, say the child is a truant or a runaway…
“Okay, I don’t know this area,” Kayla admitted, “but Sandy—Melisande, I mean—she does. She’s got the entire BART schedule in her head. And her Grove’s way up on one of the hills, so she can even go into Oakland, Berkeley—basically wherever BART can take her. So we had this idea. I know what the real high-psis around here look like, at least the ones that showed up at the conference. And I kind of picked up on things like, where they work, what their neighborhoods are like, so I could probably track them down if they’re still around. And they probably remember me. So—”
“You and Melisande want to go hunting, is that it?” At Kayla’s eager nod, Elizabet sighed. “A pair of teenagers.”
Kayla’s face fell. “What’s wrong with that? We cai take care of ourselves!”
“But who would believe you?” Elizabet asked gently. “Honey, if I didn’t have the same Gifts, I probably wouldn’t—”
“They’ll believe me,” said a low, tired voice from the doorway.
They both looked up to see Beth leaning against the doorframe. “Not only that,” the singer continued, “but I probably know some of them myself. As far as that goes, I would bet that I know some high-psis that didn’t go to your conference for one reason or another, and we could go track them down.”
Kayla looked their patient over with a critical eye. “Are you sure you’re up to this?” she asked, as Elizabet opened her mouth to protest, then shut it again.
Beth nodded, then smiled thinly. “Even if I wasn’t, we don’t have much choice, do we?” she pointed out. “It’s either that, or those of us who can, run for the East. I imagine we could get into safe territory before the quake hit, even on motorbikes.”
“Run out while we still have a chance to stop this thing? Leaving the people and elves who can’t escape to face those—things?” Kayla snarled. “I don’t think so.”
“The visions all depend on Eric being there,” Beth pointed out. “They all show him here, as the instigator. At least, the ones we know about do
“But they’re getting worse, not better.” Kayla shook her head. “That’s what Sandy says. The elves haven’t told us much detail about theirs; maybe they don’t show Eric. The only details we know came from Eric; and me and Elizabet have been putting him too far under to dream when he sleeps, so he’s not getting them anymore. Which means, I bet, that it wouldn’t matter if Eric was here or not. Hell, he’s done his gig. They don’t need him; I bet they’ve got some other way of coming over without him calling them. If they did need him, you can bet that bastard Blair would be on him like flies on—”
“Kayla,” Elizabet said warningly.
“Yeah, well, he would.” Kayla frowned. “So I don’t think we got a choice. I think we gotta stop this if we can. And the only way we know of is Eric’s plan.”
“I don’t think we have a choice either,” Beth admitted. “I just wanted to hear somebody else say it.” She pulled her hands out of her pockets; one of them held a bit of shiny covered elastic. She put her hair into a tail and nodded at the older healer, “So, am I sufficient chaperone for the two delinquents? Think I can keep them out of trouble?”
“You’ll do,” Elizabet admitted tiredly. Kayla bounced up out of her chair and stopped only when Elizabet held up a restraining hand. “We have three for the circle—plus you, Beth, and me. Eric won’t be in the circle; he can’t be, since he’s the channel. The elves will be working their own magics. That means we have to have no less than seven more. I’d personally like more than that, in case we have some last minute cancellations.”
One corner of Beth’s mouth twitched, as if she was trying not to smile. “The classical thirteen? I thought you didn’t subscribe to traditional ways.”
“I don’t,” Elizabet snapped, “but out of the six we have so far, three of us do. Belief is a powerful weapon.”
Beth reacted to Elizabet’s unusual burst of temper by straightening and looking a little livelier. Like a tired cop that just heard the Chief growl, Elizabet thought. As if she figures if I have enough left to snarl with, she should, too. Good—that was the reaction I hoped to get.
Or maybe it was the reminder of how powerful belief was. Belief, after all, had help
ed them make it through the last one…
Belief, and the unlikely combination of Eric and a plan.
The Bard is growing up, I think. Nowhere near so feckless these days.
“In that case,” Beth replied, “let’s see if we can’t find you a few more believers.” She nodded at Kayla. “Come on, kid. Let’s go collect Sandy and hit the road.”
Elizabet dropped her hand, and Kayla bounded to Beth’s side.
Kayla let Beth take over; it didn’t matter who played leader, and Beth knew San Fran better than Kayla, though not as well as Sandy. The two of them headed out the back way into the garden, Beth in the lead, figuring to look for Melisande there first. Anytime Kayla didn’t know where to look for one of the elves, but knew the elf in question was somewhere around, she always checked the garden right off.
They didn’t have to look far; she was sitting in one of the little bowers, with her knees tucked up under her chin, watching—something. She sat so quietly she could have been a garden gnome—if anyone made them with pink hair. She had changed back to her pink punk look as soon as she got back to the gathering.
Come to think of it, somewhere someone probably does. Only they’re in cutesy peasant costumes, not pink Spandex.
When they got a little nearer, they saw what it was that Melisande stared at so intently. An early rose, the same color as her hair and Spandex tights and miniskirt. Small, but perfect, with dew on its velvet petals, straight out of a honey-sweet greeting card.
“I always loved roses,” she said, sadly and softly, as they neared. “They won’t grow Underhill—did you know that? They won’t grow without true sun.” There was something about her; something resigned and wistful… That was when it hit Kayla: Sandy expected to die. In fact, now that she thought about it, at least half the elves gathered here had the same attitude Sandy did. Now that the probes had been moved, they expected to die; all of the Low Court elves and many of their High Court cousins. Of the High Court elves, only Kory and Dharinel seemed reasonably confident that this save could be pulled off.
Summoned to Tourney Page 21
