Lackey, Mercedes - Serrated Edge 05 - Chrome Circle

by Chrome Circle [lit]

  "Tell me we aren't going there," FX begged. "Please, Lady, tell me we aren't going there after them! I'm only a three-tail, I can't take on the Wild Hunt!"

  "Not unless we have more than just a `tentative match' from a collection of silicon chips to go on," Chinthliss replied. "The lady has graciously put one of her best sorcerers at our disposal; when we know where they are, he will give us a Gate that will take us directly to them. But we are not going to waste that advantage until we have no doubts."

  "Indeed," Ako added with a decisive nod. "I wish that we could work your Tannim's trick with the chrome circle a second time, but while we are all Underhill, the mere presence of even this much steel—" she tapped the ring with one claw "—changes the effect of our magic. We have not practiced in the presence of Cold Iron as Tannim and Shar have; we do not know how to use the effect."

  Joe stared at her as something hit him. Oh, surely the lady had thought of this already! It was so obvious—

  Oh, what the heck. "Then why not go up?" he blurted, face and ears reddening as he thought about how stupid he must look. "Why not go to our side of the Hill, where your magic won't be affected as much?"

  "Oh, it will still be affected," Ako said with a sigh. "The problem is the magic itself, and not entirely the place where it is cast. Your Tannim knows those effects, we do not. He could compensate for them, but we have never had the need to learn to do so."

  "A mistake, and one that I have pointed out to others," Chinthliss rumbled. "No point in rehashing old debates. I—" He broke off, suddenly, and his expression changed. "Ako, the boy is right! I had forgotten that Tannim used the ring to build his Gate! We cannot use the trim-ring to do more than scry here, for a number of reasons—but we can make a Gate out of it on the other side of the Hill because we will make the Gate from it exactly as Tannim did! You've been assuming we would create a new Gate, not that we would use the chrome circle! And it won't matter if the Mustang warps magics where it is, because the trim ring is part of the Mach I! It would matter if we were trying for Tannim himself, say, or Shar, but not if we're linking into the Mustang directly! Magical resonance should . . ."

  He went on at some length about "Laws of Magic" and spouting some kind of mathematical equations—Ako replied in the same vein, with great enthusiasm and growing excitement. Within seconds, Joe was hopelessly lost. Fox's gaze went back and forth between the two of them, like a spectator at a tennis match, but Joe couldn't tell if he was actually following the increasingly esoteric conversation or not.

  Well, it hardly mattered. Chinthliss thought his idea was going to work, that was the point, and it looked as if he was convincing Lady Ako. Finally she nodded.

  "I believe you are right," she said. "And what is more, I believe your logic is absolutely sound, magically and mathematically. There is no need for us to sit here in idleness any longer."

  She slid the door to the tiny room open, and the three of them followed her out into the larger room. "Come," she said with an imperious gesture, showing no sign of stiffness after all that sitting in cramped quarters.

  Chinthliss winked broadly at Joe and FX behind Lady Ako's back, but followed her with no other comment.

  She paused only to shed her fancy outer kimono and collect a belt hung all over with a variety of implements. Beneath the elaborate robe she wore a much more utilitarian outfit, something like the jackets and loose pants that karate students wore, only in a scarlet silk as red as blazing maple leaves in autumn, bound at the waist with a scarlet scarf. She slung the belt over the jacket and pulled it snug.

  "So where is this sorcerer you promised us?" Chinthliss asked mildly, as she gestured again that they should follow and headed down a corridor that ended in a door. She waited while Chinthliss got the door, nodded gracefully, and preceded Joe and FX through it. It let out onto a perfectly ordinary sidewalk bordering a paved street in the middle of a well-manicured park of the kind that would surround an English manor-house. Grass as perfect as a carpet of Astroturf undulated beneath huge oak trees and immaculately groomed bushes, and made plush paths between beds of flowers in full and riotous bloom. Behind them, the building, which Joe knew was huge, was nothing more than a single-storied one-room cottage surrounded by more beds of flowers, picturesque as anything in a fairy tale.

  Lady Ako advanced to the street without a single backward glance. "Taxi!" she called, waving her paw-hand in the air, although Joe hadn't seen a single sign of anything like a cab. But within a few seconds, one appeared—this time it wasn't a cartoonish taxi like the last one, but a perfectly normal London cab.

  "Where to, mum?" the driver asked in what was definitely an English accent.

  "Grand Central Station," she replied, getting into the front, next to the driver, leaving the rest of them to pile into the rear. It was a bit of a squeeze, with Joe stuck in the middle, but they all made it. The cab smelled pleasantly of leather and metal polish; it made a U-turn and proceeded down the tree-lined avenue at a modest pace. There wasn't any other traffic, and no one on foot, either.

  Fortunately, the ride wasn't long. "That's it, up there," Chinthliss said, waving at a building rising above the trees ahead of them. Joe had no clue what the real Grand Central Station looked like, but it probably wasn't anything like this. . . .

  Carved of white marble, the place rose several stories tall, covered in arches and staircases—and it made Joe dizzy just to look at it, because it was all so completely wrong. Staircases were at right angles to one another, even running upside-down, arches gave out onto platforms that were at the tops of staircases that nevertheless went up from the platform, even though the platform was already higher than the staircase. . . .

  Worse yet, there were people walking all over this thing, upside-down, sideways—though always at the correct angle to the surface they were walking on.

  "Don't think about it," FX advised him in a kindly voice. "It's all right, it just isn't operating by the rules you're used to."

  If that wasn't the understatement of the century! At least the bottom story looked normal enough as the taxi pulled up to the single entrance. Joe decided that the best thing he could do would be to fix his gaze firmly on the ground in front of him and not look anyplace else.

  Lady Ako paid and tipped the driver, and they all piled out of the cab onto the white marble sidewalk. Joe refused to look any higher than the first floor, but that was impressive enough. The whole thing was white marble, and every inch of it was carved with patterns of flying birds that became fish that became birds again, or lizards, or rather bewildered-looking gryphons.

  "The sorcerer?" Chinthliss prompted. Lady Ako just smiled.

  "I've always said that if you want something done right, you should do it yourself," she replied. "Why should I delegate something this important to someone else?"

  "Ah." Chinthliss only nodded. "Hence Grand Central Station."

  She shrugged. "It will save me some effort," she replied, as if that answered everything. "The price of four tickets is far, far less than the cost of the safety of my daughter."

  Chinthliss only bowed, and gestured to her to lead them on again. She did so, taking them under an archway upheld by two pillars carved with sinuous, intertwined lizards.

  Once inside, Joe forgot his resolution to only look down at his feet. He stared upward, gawking. They were inside a single enormous room of white marble that reached into the misty distance. Around the edge of the room was a ramp spiraling upward until it dwindled far above them into a mere thread. Giving out onto the archway were doors with names carved over them and inlaid with black marble. Joe simply couldn't read most of those names; they weren't lettered with anything he recognized. The words were as foreign as Arabic or Chinese.

  People were coming and going from those doors; not many, and not at any regular intervals, but there did appear to be a certain amount of steady traffic.

  "Don't worry about those," FX told him, nudging him to get him moving again. "What we want is over there—"r />
  The kitsune pointed to another arch, this one quite plain, but with a ticket booth at one side. Lady Ako was already there, buying tickets, while Chinthliss waited beside her. There was a single word carved above this archway as well: Home.

  Home?

  "Come on," Fox urged, as the lady turned away from the booth with tickets in her hand.

  "What the heck does that mean, `Home'?" Joe asked. "What's going on here?"

  "All those doors you see up there are Gates," Fox explained as the two of them hurried to catch up. "You can get here from just about any domain Underhill—this is the other side of the park from the gazebo where we came in. If you don't want to use up your own magic in building a Gate to somewhere, you can always come here and use the public Gates. Underhill couldn't exist without this place, actually, it's sort of the center for everything. This is the most neutral spot in the universe. You could meet your deadliest blood-enemy here, and no matter how much you hated each other, you'd both better smile, nod, and ignore each other. The guardians of this place don't interfere with much, but break the peace, and they'll squash you flat."

  FX giggled. "We call 'em Sysops."

  "What's that got to do with `Home'?" Joe persisted, as they came up to where Chinthliss and Lady Ako were standing just beneath the archway.

  "This is a unique Gate in all of the domains," Ako supplied, handing him a ticket. "It requires an enormous amount of magic to operate—and it will take you home. Wherever your home is. It responds to your desire, to the place you feel is truly home to you—anywhere Underhill, or anywhere on your side of the Hill, from Warsaw, Poland, to Warsaw, Indiana; from Athens, Greece, to Athens, Georgia. For that reason, although the other public Gates here in Grand Central Station are free or of nominal cost to use, use of this Gate is very expensive—but I do not grudge the expense. I will need all my powers once we reach your side of the Hill to build the Gate to reach Shar and Tannim; this will help me save them for that."

  "So Joe, it's up to you," Chinthliss said quietly. "We need to get back to the barn, or somewhere near it, so we can use the trim-ring as a Gate." He handed Joe a different ticket from the other three: metallic gold, it felt very much like a very thin sheet of metal, embossed with odd characters. "You're the one with the Master Ticket for this trip; the Home Gate will take its setting from you. Take us home."

  Home? For a moment, his mind was a complete blank. He'd never had a home, not really, so how could he take the others there? Not the succession of low-rent apartments that he and his parents had lived in while his father was working out his Grand Plan. Certainly not the old mansion outside Atlanta. Definitely not the bunkers of the Chosen Ones in Oklahoma. Not even the military school, which was the only place until now where he'd ever felt comfortable. . . .

  Until now. Suddenly his thoughts settled. What was wrong with him? Of course he had a home now! Tannim's parents had made that clear, that he was welcome and wanted there. Needed, too, when it came to it; he could pull his own weight there and know he was useful, and be sure of getting thanks afterwards.

  No, there was no question of where home was. Not anymore.

  "Ready?" Chinthliss asked, looking searchingly into his eyes.

  He nodded, confident now, and led the way under the vast, white arch of stone, knowing what he would find at the other end of it.

  Home, he thought with a longing, and yet a deep contentment, as he felt that now-familiar disorientation take hold of him.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  There was the usual moment when he was blind, deaf, and directionless; this time Joe flexed his knees automatically and stepped forward confidently, walking out of blindness into—

  Darkness. It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the dark after the dazzling whiteness of Grand Central Station.

  Don't panic; we left at night, it should still be night, shouldn't it? How much time had passed while he was Underhill? Several hours, certainly. Should it be dark, then? Shouldn't it be dawn by now? Were they even where they were supposed to be? What if they were in Atlanta, or even the military academy?

  Then, to his immense satisfaction, the bulk to his right resolved itself into the Drake house at the end of the driveway, and the flat to the left became the road.

  "Good job," came a whisper to his right; Chinthliss, he thought. "Right on target."

  "When are we?" FX whispered urgently.

  Joe swiveled and reached out involuntarily, only to find that his hand passed right through FX. So they were definitely home, the world he knew, where Fox was nothing but a spirit. When? What does he mean by that?

  Chinthliss raised a shadowy arm and a bit of blue light flashed up from his wrist. "Good," he said with satisfaction. "Very good! Only four in the morning, same night that we left."

  Another shadow-shape touched his arm, this one slim and graceful. Lady Ako. "The time between Underhill and your world runs at different paces," she offered in low-voiced explanation. "Your sense of place is very strong, and includes a solid feeling for the exact time you came Underhill. Because Underhill has not been precisely real to you, your sense of place was not influenced by the apparent time you spent there."

  If that's supposed to be a simple explanation, I don't want to hear a complicated one! he thought, bewildered. Nevertheless, he bowed his thanks to the Lady without revealing that her explanation left him as baffled as before.

  "I'd like to get back to the barn," Chinthliss said, scanning the house and the road quickly. "The shields on it are good ones, and I don't want to leave a live Gate open behind us without shields. The only way we're going to get them out will be if we leave the Gate open at our backs."

  "A good point," Ako murmured. "This is your place of expertise, Chinthliss, and I will follow your instructions. I have only visited here on this side of the Hill, and none of those visits was very recent."

  "Which way is the barn from here?" Chinthliss asked Joe in an undertone. "I don't remember."

  "Not a problem." Joe took the lead with confidence, even in the thick darkness of the last hour before dawn. The others followed, accepting him as the temporary leader.

  The Junior Guard had followed him and his orders once—but it had been out of habit to obedience, and not because they were particularly confident in his ability.

  But this was different. At this moment, despite anxiety for Tannim and worry about what lay ahead, he was as content as he had ever been. He was trusted for himself, now, and not because he was Brother Joseph's son, or the duly authorized leader of the Junior Guard, or even an officer in the ranks of the Chosen Ones.

  It felt good.

  He owed this, all of it, to Bob, Al, Tannim, and the other Fairgrove people he hadn't even met yet—a family of his own choosing, if it came right down to it. They'd given him a place where he belonged, where he could find out what he was all about. He owed them for something beyond price, something not too many people ever got, really.

  Well, he thought, lengthening his strides when he sensed that the others would be able to keep up with him, in that case, it's time for some payback.

  * * *

  "I'm sorry," Shar said, wiping her nose on the tissue Tannim offered. Her eyes were sore; her throat and lungs ached. She felt vaguely as if she should have been embarrassed; she'd never broken down like that before in front of anybody, not even her mother. Charcoal, Lady Ako, some of the Unseleighe had seen her anger, her rage, but never her tears. Grief until now had been a private thing.

  But she wasn't embarrassed. It had felt so good to lean on someone else, even for just a little—so good to let loose all that grief, all the frustration. So good to be held by someone who wasn't going to expect the very next moment to be a passionless roll in the sack.

  "Hey," Tannim said, patting her hand awkwardly, "you were just tired, that's all. You still are. Just wait until we're somewhere safer, and you get a chance to rest; you'll be all right then."

  She sniffed and blew her nose, then looked up at him to meet his p
eculiar, weary, lopsided smile.

  He handed her another tissue. "I wish all I did was cry when I get tired. When I'm beat, you can't trust my aim with anything. That's one reason why I don't carry a gun around."

  "Really?" she said, seizing the chance to change the subject gratefully. "I can't imagine you being unskilled at anything."

  He nodded solemnly. "Honest truth. Scorched one of my own friends with a mage-bolt once during a firefight with the Unseleighe; gave him a reverse Mohawk."

  "No!" She giggled as he nodded with a touch of chagrin as well as amusement.

  " 'Fraid so." He sighed and looked around at the eddying mist outside of the Mustang. "Look, I hate to try and push you, but we really need to make some decisions here. What are you going to set the Gate for? The frozen plain first? Or do we jump right into the fire and try Charcoal—"