He held out the second quote, and tilted the small square of paper to catch the light. Sure enough, the light sparkled off a few crystals of sand stuck in the ink.
"All of this points in only one direction, unless your mysterious lady is so very eccentric that she drives modern cars yet uses the most archaic of writing implements. And unless she is so very wealthy that she can afford to discard hand-tailored driving gloves made with materials one would have to search the world to find."
"Well, we knew she must be using magic," Joe said thoughtfully. "But you're implying there's more than that."
Chinthliss nodded. "These small things indicate a radically different upbringing than you would find in your America, Tannim. I believe these things indicate that she cannot be from this culture, perhaps not this world. She may well not be human."
Joe looked queasy. Tannim wasn't so sure about his own health at the moment.
"Unless she was using illusion to change her eyes, she isn't Sidhe," Tannim interjected. "The Sidhe all have cat-eyes, with slit pupils, not round."
"But most, if not all Sidhe, Seleighe and Unseleighe, use illusion to cover their differences when dealing with mortals," Chinthliss countered. "There is no reason to think that she would change that pattern with you."
Tannim sucked thoughtfully on the cherry-pop and nodded. "Why two right-hand gloves?" he asked.
"Because at the moment she does not wish to kill you," Chinthliss replied. "As my brother taught me once, there is a reason why the left hand is called the `sinister' hand."
Tannim swallowed. "Well, that's handy," he said as dryly as he could. Which was not very. He could not help thinking that she had two perfectly good left-hand gloves somewhere, doing nothing, taking up drawer-space. . . .
And where in the hell was Fox? He hadn't shown in over twenty-four hours!
Wait a minute. . . . "FX was with me just before she showed up the first time. He took one look out the back window of the Mach I, said `Oh-oh,' and flat disappeared," he said. "He hasn't been back since, and he had been bugging me hourly. Old lizard, I think he recognized her. I think he knew her. Wouldn't a kitsune recognize another kitsune, even if a human didn't pick up anything at all? Sort of like a scent on the wind—"
"You are more likely being hunted by a succubus or the like, but that is a very good point, and the answer is probably yes," Chinthliss responded. His brow creased and his eyes narrowed. "Bear in mind though, just as a Sidhe would be sensitive to the `scents' of those creatures from his world, a kitsune is going to be more sensitive to the `scents' of those from his. A gaki, for instance, or a nature-spirit. But that does give me something to work from."
"Can't you do something magical with those gloves?" Joe asked. "I mean, can't you use magic to find out something about her from them?" He bit his thumbnail as Chinthliss turned to look at him, obviously ill at ease with the whole concept. "Isn't that why you shouldn't let something that belonged to you fall into a wizard's hands, because they can use it to put a hex on you or something?"
"Cogent," Chinthliss agreed. "And if these were ordinary gloves, from an ordinary person, such things would bear fruit. But they are the gloves of a mage, and she has made use of the properties of the materials to remove as much of the essence of herself from them as she can."
"Which means it will take some real work to get anything useful out of them," Tannim translated for Joe. "And probably a lot of time."
Chinthliss put the gloves down and stretched. "I shall be comfortable here, and I will need nothing. It grows late. You should sleep, Son of Dragons." He lanced Tannim with a penetrating stare. "You were in need of rest when you came here, as I know only too well. I will consult with my allies and send them sniffing along the path these gloves have traced."
Tannim stood up, and Joe followed his example. "Yes, Mother," he said mockingly. "And I'll take my vitamins and brush my teeth before I go to bed."
Tannim chuckled, and he and Joe let themselves out, leaving Chinthliss sitting on the couch, studying the gloves.
* * *
Shar smiled and petted the little air elementals that flocked around her, vying for her attention. Cross a kitten with a dragonfly and you might have something like these creatures. Less like a classical sylph than a puffball with wings, they were some of her chief sources of information when she did not care to go and gather it herself. They were not very bright, but they could be very affectionate. They seemed to like her.
One in particular was very affectionate, and extremely reliable; that was the one she called "Azure," and set him the particular task of keeping a constant eye on Tannim. She sent him off on his duties with a shooing motion and continued with her own preparations. She had a scheduled meeting with Madoc Skean, the chief of her "allies," and she was not looking forward to it.
The Unseleighe Sidhe was a sadistic, chauvinistic, selfish braggart, and a traitor to his own kind to boot. Most Unseleighe were born "on the dark side," so to speak: boggles and banshees, trolls and kobolds. But some, like Madoc, chose that path. Until recently, he had served as a knight in the court of High King Oberon. Oberon was a fairly tolerant fellow when it came to his subjects and their "games" with mortals—outright mischief was well within the bounds of what was considered amusing. Further, if he felt some foolish human deserved punishment or needed to learn a lesson, he saw no reason why a Seleighe shouldn't do whatever was needful so long as he stopped just short of killing the mortal. But some things he would not abide—and he caught Madoc at one of them. What it was, precisely, Shar did not know, though she could guess—but it had been enough to send Oberon into a red rage. He had physically cast Madoc out, blasting him through several layers of Underhill realities before he came to rest in a battered, broken heap.
It took Madoc some time to recover; once he did, he used the powerful charisma that had made him a brilliant manipulator in Seleighe Court politics and turned it on the Unseleighe left in disarray after the demise of Vidal Dhu and Aurilia. He not only organized them, but he attracted others to his side, including Unseleighe Sidhe far more powerful than Vidal Dhu had been.
Powerful Unseleighe Sidhe tended to be solitary souls; they did not like to share their power with anyone, and would support a "retinue" composed of vastly inferior creatures that were easy to control. They formed a "court" mostly as a means of amusement; they seldom agreed on anything. Innate distrust made alliances tenuous at best—an "I won't destroy your home if you don't destroy mine" cold war. But somehow, Madoc won them. And won them to his pet project.
Get rid of Keighvin Silverhair's little pet, the mortal called Tannim.
He managed to persuade them that Tannim, knowledgeable as he was in the ways of the Sidhe and Underhill, was far more of a danger to them than their traditional enemies, the Seleighe Court elves. He convinced them that Tannim was unlikely to turn against his friends, but that there was nothing stopping the young man from marching on Underhill and taking over the areas held by Unseleighe with a small army of Cold-Iron-wielding humans.
He even half-convinced Shar. She had been trained as a youngster by the Unseleighe, after all, in the time before she had broken off with her father. Why shouldn't Tannim think that she was just the same as them? She was the daughter of Charcoal, Chinthliss' great enemy—and she had been groomed by Charcoal to be Tannim's rival in magic ever since Chinthliss took Tannim as a protégé. Allying with Madoc Skean became a matter of self-defense.
Until she came to learn more about both Tannim and Madoc, that is. Then it became obvious, at least to her, that this tale Madoc had spun about a human mage mad for power was full of what they threw on the compost heap. Tannim was no more a conquering Patton than she was. He might consider moving into some little unused section of Underhill one day, just as she had, but conquering vast sections of it would simply never occur to him. It was only Unseleighe paranoia that made such a thing seem possible.
But by then she had already committed herself to Madoc. She'd been having second thou
ghts for some time now.
The very fact that her blood-father was friends with the Unseleighe was enough to make her think they were worthless. What she had learned about them since she had cut off all ties to him only confirmed that. Only her own paranoia had made her listen to Madoc in the first place; only his incredible charisma had persuaded her to give the Unseleighe one more chance.
But Madoc had grown more and more arrogant with her every time she had spoken with him since she first pledged her help. He needed her; she was the only creature allied with him that could handle Cold Iron with impunity. He knew that, and yet pretended that it was otherwise.
And the more she saw and learned of Tannim, the less she liked Madoc or wished to put up with him.
So she donned her armor; armor that the Unseleighe would understand. Her hair she braided back in a severe and androgynous style that left the impression of a helmet. She wore tunic and pants of knitted cloth-of-silver that cleverly counterfeited fine chain-mail and minimized her femininity. Her belt was a sword-belt, with a supporting baldric, and the empty loops that should support a sheath spoke eloquently for her capabilities.
She looked herself over in the mirror, analyzing every nuance of her outfit and stance for clues that might hint at weakness. She found none.
She banished the glass again and turned toward the Gate, activating it and setting it for an Unseleighe-held portion of Underhill where she could Gate to Madoc Skean's stronghold. Although this was a poor strategic move, coming to him like a petitioner, she would not permit him here. Allow him here but once, and there was no telling the mischief he could cause.
Or what he might leave behind, besides his smell.
Her Gate had only three settings: Unseleighe Underhill, her mother's realm, and her father's. The last, she would not use. To go to the human world, she must use the Gate in the "garage." A bit awkward, sometimes, but necessary.
She stepped through her Gate, felt the shivering of energies around her as it sprang to life and bridged the gap between where she was and where she wanted to be.
As usual, it was dark. She blinked, and waited for her eyes to adjust. Many Unseleighe creatures simply could not exist in bright light, so most Unseleighe realms were as gloomy as a thunderstorm during an eclipse, or dusk on a badly overcast day. She stood at the head of a path that traveled straight through a primeval and wildly overgrown forest. Forests such as this one had not existed on the face of the human world since the Bronze Age, if then. It was the distillation of everything about the ancient Forest that primitive man had feared.
And it contained everything dark and treacherous that primitive man had believed in.
The trees were alive, and they hungered; strange things rustled and moaned in the undergrowth. There were glowing eyes up among the branches, and as Shar stepped out on the path, the noises increased, the trees leaned toward her, and the number of eyes multiplied.
Something screamed in pain in the distance, and something nearer wailed in desolation.
Shar looked about her with absolute scorn, as the sounds and eyes surrounded her, and the trees closed in.
"Will you just chill out?" she snapped, putting a small fraction of her Power behind her words. "I've been here before, and you know it. I am not impressed."
A moment of stunned silence, a muttering of disappointment, and within a few more seconds, the trees were only trees, and there were no more scuttlings in the underbrush or eyes in the branches overhead.
"Oh, thank you," she said sarcastically, and made her way to the second Gate. So much of the power of the older Unseleighe depended on fear that the moment anyone faced them down, they simply melted away. That might be why there were so few of these unadapted creatures active in the humans' world these days, and Cold Iron had nothing to do with them fleeing to dwell Underhill. The modern world was frightening enough that most people couldn't be scared by these ancient creatures. Where was the power of glowing eyes to terrify when rat eyes looked out at children every day from beneath the furniture of their ghetto apartments? How could a man be terrified by reaching tree branches when beneath the tree was a crack-addict with a gun? Moans and cries in the darkness could be the neighbor pummeling his wife and children to a pulp—and he just might come after anyone else who interfered, too, so moans and cries were best ignored.
The supernatural lost its power to terrify when so much of the natural world could not be controlled. These elder creatures were forced to abide in places like this one, where, if they were lucky, some poor unsuspecting being from another realm might stumble in to die of fright.
But the Unseleighe who had adapted found the modern human world rich in possibility. They fed on human pain and misery, so anywhere there was the potential for such things, you found them in the thick of it. Sometimes they even caused it, either as sustenance for themselves or as a hobby. Some considered inflicting suffering on humans to be an art form.
She had been taught by her father and his friends that humans were no business of hers. They were cattle, beneath her except to use when she chose and discard afterward.
But she had been taught by her mother that humans were not that much different from her. More limited, shorter-lived—but did that mean that a human confined to a wheelchair was the toy of humans with no such limitations?
For a long time she had been confused by the conflicting viewpoints, especially while the handsome Unseleighe Sidhe had been courting her, seeking her favors. They seemed so powerful, so confident. They had everything they wanted, simply by waving a hand. They were in control of their world, and controlled the humans' world far more than the mortals knew. They were beautiful, charismatic, confident, proud. . . .
But after a few bitter and painful episodes, she began to see some patterns. Once an Unseleighe got what he wanted, he discarded her exactly as they urged her to do with the humans. Her father, whom she tried desperately to please, cynically used her childish devotion to manipulate her.
The lessons were branded deeply; as deeply as the ones she was supposed to be learning. Little by little, she changed her own approach. She began learning, fiercely, greedily. She stole knowledge, when it was not given to her.
She spent more time in her mother's company. No one, not even the powerful Unseleighe lords, dared to block the approach of a nine-tailed kitsune to her daughter, and Ako made certain they were given no reason to think she was undermining their teaching.
Then, when the time was right, after Shar had established her own tiny Underhill domain, and she had learned everything she could, she began severing her connections to the Unseleighe and to her father.
She had cast Charcoal out of her life first; he had made the mistake of trying to coerce her when she refused to cooperate with some unsavory project of his. She no longer even remembered what it was; it had been trivial, but she had not wanted to have any part of it, and for the first time, she had the power to enforce her own will.
After barring him from her domain, she began pursuing her own projects—the first of which was to spend an entire year with her mother and her mother's people.
That year had been the most eye-opening time she had ever passed. She had moved among kitsune with poise, not posturing. She had learned manners rooted in respect, not fear of repercussions. She had heard laughter that was not aimed at anyone but instead filled the room with its warmth. At the end of that year, she had withdrawn to her own domain and begun planning what she truly wanted to do with her life, and more importantly, plotting how to rid herself of the Unseleighe influence without a loss of power or status.
She shook herself out of her reverie as she approached the Gate that would take her to Madoc Skean. This one was guarded, by literally faceless warriors, but she had the signs and the passwords, and they ignored her. There were four of them, of the "immortal" type; no weapon would kill them except Cold Iron, and even then it would have to penetrate their mage-crafted armor. The Gate was a real, solid structure, four pillars supporting a dome abo
ve a platform, all of black-and-red marble. The faceless ones stood at each corner, staring out into nothingness. They had no wills of their own, never tired, never needed food or drink; they were enchanted flesh and metal, sustained by the mage-energies of their master.
She walked up onto the platform beneath the dome, closed her eyes, and "knocked" with her power. At the third "knock," she opened her eyes on the audience chamber of Madoc Skean, Lord of Underhill, Magus Major and Unseleighe commander.
As if to emphasize how different he and his Seleighe rival Keighvin Silverhair were, everything in Madoc's domain was of the most archaic mode. This "audience chamber," for instance. Shar was fairly certain that he had copied it from a movie about a barbarian king and his barbarian rivals—all the Sidhe seemed to love movies. Built of the same black-and-red marble as the Gate, the main body of it was lit only by torches in brackets along the walls, so that the high ceiling was shrouded in gloom. Pillars ranged along each side of the room, their tops lost in the shadows. The floor, of the same marble, held a scattering of fur rugs. A fire burned in the center of the room, held in a huge copper dish supported on bronze lions' feet. At the end of the room, on a platform that raised him above the floor by about three feet so that anyone who approached him would be forced to look up at him, was Madoc. He sat in a Roman-style chair, made of gold and draped with more furs. Torches burned in golden holders on either side of him, and the rear wall was covered with a huge tapestry depicting Madoc doing something disgusting to a defeated foe. Two more of his faceless guards flanked his throne; their black armor was ornamented with gold chasing and rubies the same color as drying blood.
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