Spirits White as Lightning

by Mercedes Lackey

  "We're looking for information," Kory answered warily.

  "Same dif." The girl signaled a waitress, who hurried over and set a drink in front of the girl. The drink was pink, with a paper parasol stuck in the top, and it smoked. The waitress hovered pointedly until Kory handed over another gold coin.

  "So. Why don'cha tell me a little about yourselves?" The girl picked up her drink—she was wearing white leather driving gloves—and sipped daintily, wincing. "This stuff'll kill you."

  "I am Sieur Korendil of Elfhame Misthold, and this is my lady, Beth Kentraine."

  "Pleased ta. You can call me Cho-cho. What kind of information?"

  "Can you help us find it?" Beth asked.

  "Depends. You're Seleighe Court, right? I don't do business with the other guys."

  "Would you believe us if we said we were? If we were of the Dark Court, we'd lie," Kory pointed out.

  "You lie to me, buster, and you don't get a chance to do it twice," Cho-cho said. "I got connections." For a moment she seemed to shimmer, and Beth felt a flash of cold, as if someone had opened the door to a walk-in freezer. "But we'll take that as a `yes.' Now. Here's the giggy. You tell me what you want, the more details the better, and I tell you if I can supply it. Then we argue about the price."

  "Fair enough, Mistress Cho-cho," Kory answered. "Beth?"

  Beth took a deep breath. Telling Ria her problem had been hard enough, but telling this total stranger was downright embarrassing.

  "Kory and I want to have a baby together. More than one, actually."

  "Mazel tov," Cho-cho said, sipping her drink. "There's more?"

  "It takes magic. But the only methods we've been able to find are . . . Unseleighe," Beth said delicately. "We're looking for another way. So we need help. Research help."

  "Huh. You wanna find something out, ask a librarian. Or somebody with a library." Cho-cho smiled, as if at a private joke.

  "Do you know someone possessing such resources who would be willing to help us?" Kory asked.

  "You need another drink," Cho-cho said. She signaled the waitress and turned away from them to watch the stage.

  A waitress brought their drinks. The wolf-boy left the stage, to be replaced by a torch singer and her accompanist. The singer was wheeled out onto the stage in a large crystal fishbowl, her silvery tail glinting in the houselights. Her accompanist was a satyr—Chippendales dancer above, goat below. His horns were gilded, and his eyes were elaborately painted in the Egyptian style. The mermaid reached out of her bowl to grasp the mike and began to sing: "Stormy Weather."

  Cho-cho sat through a medley of Cole Porter hits in silence. Finally she turned back to them.

  "I got a line on a guy," she said. "If he don't know it, he can find it. Whether he'll help, that's between you and him, but he's got a kind of soft spot for humans with problems, and he's on the side of the angels, more or less. What you pay me don't cover what you'll owe him. I can tell you where to find him, that's all."

  Beth glanced at Kory. His face was unreadable.

  Was this a good idea? A stranger who could help, but might not? On the other hand, she didn't see anyone else lining up to help them. She nodded ever so slightly.

  "And your price for this information—his name and his location both?" Kory asked.

  "What've you got?" Cho-cho asked with interest.

  "Gold?"

  She snorted. "I can make that myself."

  "Coffee?"

  "I look like a wire-head to you, Mister Korendil?"

  Kory shrugged. Neither of them knew what a "wire-head" might be, but it seemed to eliminate coffee as a bargaining chip. "I take it then that you would find neither chocolate nor Coca-Cola suitable either?"

  For a moment she looked wistful, then shook her head firmly. "Can't use 'em."

  "You must have something in mind," Beth said, playing a hunch.

  "Sure. Depends on if your friend'll go for it, though."

  Kory regarded the girl inquiringly.

  "Safe passage through the elven lands."

  So it all comes down to "Letters of Transit" in the end, Beth thought wryly. She wasn't sure how big a deal that was, and Kory's face gave nothing away, but Beth thought he'd twitched, just a little.

  "And I to stand surety for whatever you do there," Kory said through gritted teeth.

  "I don't want to do anything there," Cho-cho said. "All I want . . ." She stopped. "I just want to go home. They need me there."

  "Wherever `home' is, there are other avenues to reach it," Kory said. "From here, you can go anywhere."

  Cho-cho shook her head. "You know how it is. `You can't get there from here'? Believe me, I've tried, for longer than the two of you have been on this earth, kids. The only clear way is through the elven lands . . . and I'd rather not mess with the Dark Court. We got a history, y'see."

  Everybody here seemed to have a history of one kind or another. "And where is home?" Beth asked.

  Cho-cho grimaced. "You pay for that info, too, if you really want it, and I don't think you can afford it."

  "You ask a high price for your help," Kory said.

  "You don't have anything else I want," Cho-cho said simply. "Maybe someone else here wants what you got. And maybe they don't have anything you want. Your choice."

  Impasse. The two parties stared across the table at each other, neither willing to give in.

  "If I were to give you a letter of safe conduct—under guard—to my lord, Prince Arvindel of Elfhame Misthold, you might plead your case to him. More I will not do. Nor," Kory added, smiling a wolflike smile, "can I guarantee he will hear you, should he know more of you than I."

  There was a long pause. Beth held her breath, afraid that Cho-cho would get up and walk away. "It isn't much," the girl grumbled.

  "Nor is what you offer us. Only hope, no more."

  "Okay," she said, putting both hands on the table. "We have a deal. You don't mind if I get the goods up front, do you?"

  "I would expect nothing less," Kory answered.

  Cho-cho snapped her fingers, and an iridescent lizard-maiden with improbable gauzy butterfly wings came over to the table. She had a tray slung around her neck, like the cigarette girls in old-time nightclubs. Beth couldn't see what it held.

  "Pen, ink, paper, and seals," Cho-cho said.

  It must have been an ordinary sort of request, because the lizard-woman produced the objects without hesitation from among the contents of her tray. Cho-cho pointed, and she set them in front of Kory. He dipped the pen into the inkwell and wrote: the letters sparkled and seemed to sink into the vellum as he inscribed them flourishingly. When he was done, he took off his seal-ring and picked up one of the disks of wax. He placed it on the paper and touched it with a finger. It softened and glistened, suddenly hot, and he pressed the ring into it until the wax began to harden.

  Cho-cho reached for it. Kory didn't let go.

  "Now you."

  Cho-cho sighed. "Okay. This guy I know . . . you know anything about dealing with dragons?"

  * * *

  "Are you sure this is the right place?" Beth asked, quite a long time later.

  They were standing in the middle of . . . nothing. Grey river mist surrounded them, thick and warm. It smelled like jasmine. The ground beneath the elvensteeds' hooves was covered with thick white sand. It sparkled whenever the sun broke through the mist above.

  It was morning—again. They'd passed through so many different time zones that Beth wasn't completely sure how much time had passed. Elves didn't need sleep, of course, but she had the jet-laggy feeling that it was two million o'clock in the morning. If she fell asleep, Bredana would see to it that she didn't fall off, but Beth was hoping for a real bed. And soon.

  Cho-cho had given them a name—Chinthliss—and drawn them a map. Or more precisely, she'd drawn an arrow on a map, but the arrow always pointed in the direction they needed to go. Ahead of them stood a Gate. Kory had examined it. It held only one destination, and Kory thought it led di
rectly into the dragon's lair. Apparently this Chinthliss didn't mind being easy to find, and Beth knew enough about the Underhill way of doing things to know that meant he had power—power enough to deal with any enemies who might come calling.

  He also seemed to have a sense of humor.

  She looked at the sign that stood beside the Gate again. It was battered and weathered. Painted on it in English in big black letters were the words: "I'd turn back if I were you. Signed, the Management."

  "Fair enough," Beth said aloud. "But we aren't going to."

  The Gate itself was huge—two stories high, and wide enough to drive a matched team of semis through—and solid bronze. The decoration seemed to be more Oriental than anything else, flowers and birds and branching trees.

  "But we are going to be very careful," Kory said seriously. "Dragons are very particular about matters of etiquette. It would not do to annoy him."

  "Best behavior and company manners," Beth agreed. She yawned, unable to stifle it.

  They dismounted, and led their horses forward past the sign. There was a large square red button at doorbell height at the edge of the frame. Beth was pretty sure it hadn't been there a moment ago. She looked closer. There was writing on it, one word: ENTER.

  "Press `Enter,' " Beth said. Something with this kind of a sense of humor couldn't be all bad, could it?

  Kory pressed the button. With a shudder that seemed to shake the world, the great bronze doors swung inward, opening into mist. Kory reached out and took her hand, and slowly they walked forward, leading the horses.

  They were in a hall. Its scale made the doors they'd just come through look petite. The walls were yellow, lined with enormous pillars painted Chinese red, and the floor was black. Burning torches in bronze baskets lined the walls, their glow almost lost in the chamber's vast dimensions. The air smelled of incense. Several football fields of distance away, a long flight of shallow stairs led to a curtained archway. On each step stood a large porcelain cache pot, each filled with a full-sized flowering tree. They were completely alone, and nobody seemed to be rushing to welcome them.

  "Now what?" Beth asked in a whisper.

  "Now we offer gifts and wait, most respectfully, for that is the first rule when dealing with dragons." Kory turned to Mach Five and opened his saddlebags. He began piling the trade goods they'd brought on the floor in front of them. Beth emptied her saddlebags as well. Four six-packs of Coke, twenty pounds of Hershey bars, and several large bags of whole-bean Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee. They looked very odd sitting in the middle of the floor of a dragon's temple.

  "Great Chinthliss," Kory said after a few moments, "please grace us with your presence. We have traveled far to seek your wise counsel."

  The curtains opened, and a slender man stepped out and slowly began to walk down the stairs. He was wearing an impeccable Armani business suit in a deep rich bronze, and instead of a regular necktie, a bolo tie around his neck, held closed with a bronze jewel at the throat.

  Uh-oh. Looks like he's sending in the high-priced lawyers.

  As the man came closer, Beth could see that he had skin the color of old ivory and brilliant amber eyes. His gleaming black hair was almost waist-length, brushed straight back from a high forehead and a deep widow's peak, and his topaz eyes gleamed from beneath heavy lids. He looked vaguely but not entirely Oriental. More like . . .

  A brow like Shakespeare and eyes like a tiger . . . Holy Mother, we're having tea with Fu Manchu!

  "Enchanté, madame," he said, bowing over her hand. His shirt was linen, with French cuffs, and the cuff links and the slide of the bolo tie both were in the same design: a curled bronze dragon with gleaming amber eyes. He smelled faintly of burning cinnamon. "How lovely to make the acquaintance of one so fair."

  He turned to Korendil, who inclined his head respectfully. "Lord Chinthliss."

  "He's the dragon?" Beth blurted, unable to stop herself.

  Chinthliss regarded her, one eyebrow raised. Though his expression was bland, Beth could swear he was laughing at her.

  "Does my appearance disappoint you, fair lady?" he asked mildly.

  "I was expecting someone taller," Beth said, startled into bluntness by lack of sleep.

  "Like this?"

  The man was gone, his form dissolving like mist. In his place stood a dragon. A very big dragon. A gleaming bronze dragon big enough to fill the entire hall. His tail snaked up the stairs, its tip hidden behind the curtain, and his mantled wings brushed the walls. He lowered his head—it was the size of a bus—down to Beth's eye level, and regarded her with glowing yellow eyes. Tendrils of steam curled from his nostrils, and Beth could feel heat radiating from him as if from a stove.

  "Um . . . yeah," she said weakly. "That'll do."

  The dragon bared its teeth in a draconic grin.

  "Excellent. I would hate to disappoint so fair a guest." The dragon was gone, and in his place stood the Oriental gentleman once more. "But you have come a long way and are weary from your journey. Please. Allow me to offer you the poor comforts of my little house. We can discuss your business after you have rested." He snapped his fingers. Two women appeared, dressed in full kimono. Except for the fact that they were slightly transparent, they looked as if they'd just stepped out of a Japanese scroll painting. "My servants will see to your animals."

  The geisha took the elvensteeds' reins and led the horses toward the wall, vanishing before they reached it.

  "Come." Chinthliss beckoned, smiling.

  They followed him back up the long flight of stairs. Beyond the curtain was . . . a palace. High windows opened onto vistas of exquisite gardens that seemed to stretch into infinity. The walls were covered with painted murals done with such skill that it was hard to tell where the real garden ended and the painted one began. Beth tried not to gawk.

  "I trust you will find these poor accommodations to your liking," Chinthliss said, stopping in front of another set of double doors. These were of sandalwood, carved and oiled until they gleamed like gold. They opened at a touch.

  "Thank you," Beth said. "You're very kind."

  The dragon smiled. "And now I will leave you. Do not hesitate to summon any of my servants to see to your needs." He bowed.

  Beth stepped inside, Kory following. The suite was decorated with as much lavish ornamentation as the rest of the palace, but was obviously scaled to human size and needs. There were Western-style couches and chairs, a bookcase filled with books, and at the far end of the room stood an enormous canopy bed. Golden dragons twined about its ebony posts, and the hangings were all of scarlet silk embroidered in gold. In the center of the room stood a table filled with covered dishes. Whatever they contained smelled wonderful.

  "My," Beth said.

  "We are safe, for now," Kory said. His sword and armor had vanished, and he was dressed in more ordinary clothes. He approached the table and lifted one of the silver covers.

  "Hey, look at this!" Beth had gone through the doorway to the right of the bed. She was standing in a bathroom that any Roman emperor would have killed for. A tub big enough to do laps in stood in the middle of the room. "Big enough for two," she said invitingly, when Kory joined her.

  "Yes." Kory put an arm around her. "Why not? It would be churlish of us not to accept what is offered." He walked over to the tub and touched one of the taps—gold, in the shape of a leaping dolphin. Water immediately began jetting from it, filling the tub with hot water and perfumed bubbles. "And then you will eat and rest," he said firmly.

  "And after that, business."

  * * *

  Beth couldn't remember the last time she'd slept so well and so deeply. She awoke in the morning—or at least, after long slumber—to the smell of bacon and eggs, and sat up in bed to see more of the semi-transparent servants laying the table for breakfast.

  "Good morning," Kory said, sitting down on the bed beside her. "Did you sleep well?"

  Elves didn't sleep—not under normal conditions, at any rate. More time for
them to get into trouble, Beth had always thought, but lately she'd started to wonder what it was really like to have all that free time. It was almost as if Kory had a secret life, one she couldn't be any part of.

  She yawned and stretched, banishing all such vague morning thoughts. "Did you have a good night?"

  "The tea was hot, and the books were entertaining," Kory answered seriously. "And I had a great deal of time to think. Dragons are . . . experts at solving the problem we face. He can help us, I think, if he will."

  "But what will he want for his help?" Beth said. Kory stood, and she swung her legs over the edge of the bed. "That's the real question, isn't it? Whether we can afford to pay?"

  "For your happiness—for Maeve's—I will pay any price, but—"

  "But some prices are too high," Beth finished firmly. Nothing that would endanger the elves, or anyone else for that matter. "Well, we'll see."

  One of the nice things about magic was that the food was always hot, Beth reflected. They were just finishing—bacon and eggs, blueberry pancakes with real maple syrup, fresh-squeezed orange juice, herb tea—when there was a knock at the door. It opened, and instead of one of the little flowerlike geisha, the travelers were presented with the awesome sight of a Real English Butler in full formal livery.

  "Good morning, Lord Korendil, Mistress Bethany. May I trust that you have found everything to your satisfaction?" His accent was as English as the BBC.

  "Of course," Kory said graciously. "And we are looking forward to speaking with your master at his earliest convenience."

  The butler bowed. "I believe Lord Chinthliss is in the conservatory at this hour. If you would care to accompany me to his receiving room, I shall inform him that you are awake."

  Chinthliss's receiving room bore a strong resemblance to the library of an English country gentleman. There was an Oriental rug on the floor, and the oak-paneled walls were lined in books. A massive desk with a top carved from a single slab of green malachite dominated the area before the windows, which gave a magnificent view of a formal garden. If the view didn't match that available from the other windows, Beth didn't mind. This was magic, after all.