Marion Zimmer Bradley & Holly Lisle - [Glenraven 01]

by Glenraven (v1. 5) (html)

The doorman kept shouting.

  Jayjay tapped him on the shoulder. "Excuse me."

  The doorman turned and caught his breath. "My apologies for sending you this stupid girl—"

  "She isn't a stupid girl," Jayjay told him. "I tried to tell her what I wanted but my Galti is terrible. I tried to tell her that we were starving, and I probably told her we were dying."

  "Starving?" The doorman turned from the chambermaid and stared at Jay. "You told her you were starving?"

  "Yes. We had breakfast a long time ago, and we rode from Inzo to Zearn, and we're hungry. But the useful phrases included, 'We're starving,' so I used that instead. Because we're really, really hungry."

  The chambermaid sniffled and wiped her eyes with a sleeve.

  The doorman glowered and lifted his chin so that he could look down his nose at them, in spite of being shorter than either. "Starving. I thought you needed help."

  "Look. Just tell us where we can find the nearest restaurant…well, tavern or inn or whatever. We don't care. We'd love to eat here, but we want to eat now."

  He stared at her as if two dragon heads had sprouted from her neck. For a moment, he sputtered. Then he said, "You would stay under the master's roof and refuse the hospitality of his table?" His tone made it clear that he believed people who would consider such an atrocity would be capable of any crime. Jay knew she'd become a psychotic ax murderer in his eyes.

  "No, we wouldn't do anything of the sort," Sophie said, smiling and doing her best to soothe the poor man.

  He sniffed and glowered some more, then said, "I will come back for you when it is time." He snapped an order at the chambermaid, who scurried off like a mouse chased by a cat; then he stalked away, too.

  "And still no food," Sophie mourned.

  Jayjay looked down the long, many-doored hallway after him.

  "That's the way it goes." Sophie leaned against the wall beside the door and looked at Jayjay, her expression quizzical. "Did your guide really tell you how to say 'I'm starving'?"

  Jay nodded.

  "That's a weird phrase to stick in a guidebook."

  Jayjay stood there and considered Sophie's remark for a moment. It was a weird phrase to find in a Fodor's, come to think of it. Fodor's guides never included slang or colloquialisms. They told the tourist how to ask prices and directions and how to find a bathroom or a newspaper in the most inoffensive way possible. They were made by people who knew how easy it was to say the wrong thing, by people who had gone out of their way to make sure that untraveled neophytes from North Carolina or Nebraska or New York wouldn't cause an international incident by saying something printed in one of their guides.

  Yet when Jayjay had looked in the book, she'd been looking for a way to tell the chambermaid she was starving—and right in the back on page 546 under Useful Phrases, there it had been. I'm starving. Ag dru gemmondier. ach troo je-MOAN-dlee-air. Three neat little columns: the English, the Galti, and the pronunciation guide.

  She could still see it on the page, right underneath I don't understand and I am American.

  But she'd been using Fodor's guides for years, and she'd never seen anything like that in there before. Jayjay flipped to the back of the book. Page 546, Useful Phrases. She ran her finger down the left-hand column.

  I don't understand. I'm American. What's your name?

  Not I'm starving, but What's your name. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly She read the entries in the column. Statements about speaking Galti and not speaking Galti, asking what time it was and where she could find medical help, stables, post offices, banks. She found the separate entry Fodor's always had for Where are the restrooms; that question had a little section marked off for itself in every Fodor's Jay had ever used. The most essential words in any language, she guessed.

  Nowhere in there did it tell tourists how to say they were starved. The book had, though. It had, and she had used the phrase, and the chambermaid had understood her, but had taken her literally. She had not heard Jayjay say I'm really hungry but I'm dying of starvation, and she had gone to get help.

  "I can't find it now." Jayjay put the book on the bed and crossed her arms. She paced beside the bed. "It isn't in there."

  "It was in there before," Sophie said. Ever the voice of reason, that Sophie. "It sure didn't go anywhere."

  "Okay. You find it."

  Sophie grinned. "Maybe looking will keep my mind off the fact that I'm still starving." She sauntered over to the bed, flopped down on it, and picked up the Fodor's. A funny expression crossed her face, and for a moment she held the guide. "I felt that the first time I picked it up, too."

  "What?"

  "Exactly that sort of electric shock. I figured static electricity, but…" She shook her head and flipped to the back of the guide. "It's really evident sometimes, isn't it?" She ran a finger along the entries, reading. She looked annoyed.

  Jay watched her.

  "Yeah, yeah," Sophie muttered. "I am American, I do not understand, I am an international buffoon with oatmeal for brains and I cannot find the potty."

  Jayjay snickered.

  Sophie did nasal. "What is it? Why? Who? Where is the carriage house? Where is the post office? What should I do about…"

  She stopped, and Jayjay caught a change in her expression. Bewilderment and fear flashed across her face and the color leached out of her skin until she was white as death.

  Jayjay felt the shivers run down her spine. She took the book from Sophie's unresisting hand, and looked at the page, at the left-hand column.

  Where is the carriage house? Where is the post office? What should I do about Lorin?

  "What should I do about Lorin?" Jay held her place in the Fodor's with a thumb and rubbed her temples with her other hand. She felt a headache coming on, and she suspected aspirin would be a tough find in Glenraven. She wanted her little stash in the emergency kit to last as long as it could, though, so she didn't want to take any unless she absolutely had to. "Who the hell is Lorin, and what is useful about that phrase?"

  Sophie, still the color of bleached linen, slumped on the bed as if someone had taken the bones out of her.

  "Soph? You okay?"

  Sophie didn't say anything.

  Jayjay walked over to her friend and crouched down so they were eye to eye. "Soph. Snap out of it. C'mon, Sophie. Talk to me. What's wrong—and what does that question mean? Lorin…who's Lorin?"

  Sophie rolled onto her back and drew her knees to her chest. She stared at the canopy with flat, blank eyes; when Jayjay finally turned away, deciding that Sophie had gone into shock and she needed to find help, Sophie whispered, "How did it know?"

  Jay looked down at the sentence again, and the air hissed out of her lungs.

  Where is the carriage house? Where is the post office?

  Welcome, heroes. We have awaited the day of your arrival for a very long time.

  Jay dropped the book on the floor and stood there shaking, staring at it.

  What the hell was going on? Heroes? What heroes? And who had waited?

  She crouched down and touched the book again. That little electric "zing" tingled through her fingertip; stronger now that she was looking for it, but dammit, she should have gotten spooked by that the first time she picked the book up. And she should have put it down.

  She should have listened to Amos when he tried to trade the Glenraven Fodor's for a Spain Fodor's. Spain wasn't all that bad an idea. People had heard of Spain. Spain had plumbing and electricity and an air of cosmopolitan elegance that Jay was sure she would adore.

  The forests in Spain probably looked the same on the inside as they did from the outside. And books in Spain wouldn't send their own private messages.

  Bells began ringing from somewhere in the Wethquerin Zearn Inn and out in Zearn itself. The city came alive with the sound. Jayjay raised her head, then stood, drawn by the joyous music. She opened one of the French doors and it poured into the room; she heard the richness and variety of hundreds of bells pe
aling up and down the valley, echoing off the mountains. The inn's bell tower was straight across the garden from their room. Somewhere in the distance, a bell ringer played an exuberant melody; at each pause, the untuned bells of the rest of the city created an accidental but perfect antiphony. Home, the bells sang. This is home. Welcome home.

  Spain didn't have bells like that, either, she'd bet anything.

  Which didn't make Glenraven home. That was still Peters. Home was pain, and Glenraven was impossible—but at least it was impossible in a good way. In Glenraven, a book called her a hero and welcomed her. Things like that didn't happen in Peters.

  They didn't happen anywhere, did they?

  Sophie was sitting up, biting at her bottom lip, looking distraught. Lorin, Jay thought. Lorin. Who the hell was Lorin, to make her friend become so ill? The question mattered—just as the remark about heroes mattered—but Jay decided while Sophie's skin was still gray under her faint tan and while her eyes still bore their haunted, hunted look, she wouldn't ask.

  Meanwhile she had to consider the import of the book that was more than a book. What could cause a book to change its print to suit the person who read it? A brilliant bit of microelectronic technology? She would welcome such an idea, but the Fodor's Guide to Glenraven consisted of paper and ink; a glued-on cover of glossy paper cover stock, pages of a good-quality smooth paper, black ink that smelled like the ink in a paperback book. No place for a microchip existed, and even if it had, how could it induce ink on paper to change and reform to spell out new words? She was comfortable with the idea of technology, of course. If the cover hummed a bit beneath her fingertips, she could pretend that it was part of the technology that made the book work. But comfortable as such an explanation might have been, she wouldn't allow her mind to accept it. The lazy mind forced every unexplained phenomenon into the molds of things already known and experienced. The lazy mind, confronted with the seemingly impossible situation in which a book changed its print by itself, soothed itself with the thought that those whiz kids in the basement at Microsoft had been hard at work. Electronic paper. What will they think of next?

  But for all the flaws she admitted in herself, Julie Jean Bennington would not admit the flaw of a lazy mind. The book was not a modern-day miracle of technology. The book had done something she knew to be impossible, and yet, because it had happened, what she knew to be impossible was not impossible. Highly unlikely, but unlikely and impossible were different animals altogether.

  She stroked the book's cover. Not technology. Not the safe thing, not the known thing, not the reassuring thing. Instead, something that reeked of voodoo drums, of midnight rituals, of superstition and fantasy and fear and trembling, shimmering, breathless wonder.

  Magic.

  Her mind reflexively scoffed at the thought, but she slammed the reflex out of the way.

  Magic.

  How easy to close her eyes, to ignore the unlikeliness of this trip to a place she didn't really think could exist. To deny the fact that the book had called to her. To refuse to see the impossibility of this place out of time, untouched by modernization, unaware of industrialization, of mechanization, of electronic miniaturization.

  Insisting always that there had to be a logical explanation was a form of blindness. She'd partaken of that blindness as long as she dared. But no more.

  "Sometimes," she whispered to the book in her hands, "there is no logical explanation."

  The book hummed and sang against her palms, purred like a cat. She sensed that it was content for the moment. It had made its point.

  The bells stopped swinging almost at the same instant, and the last of the echoes died away, and behind her someone cleared his throat.

  She turned. The doorman was back, waiting. "Now," he said, "is the time to eat."

  Back they went through the mazes of corridors, and arrived at last in the great dining hall they'd seen earlier. Now, however, people filled it from one side to the other and spilled out the doors; servants in the Wethquerin Zearn livery ran in and out, carrying bowls and platters and shouting to each other, while men and women sat around the long tables, shoving food in their mouths and talking and laughing; the cleared central space between the tables held a troupe of entertainers; a lute player and someone with an almost-violin, a flautist, a drummer, and several dancers who clapped and stomped and leapt their way through a lively circle jig. The seated crowd were well dressed in colors as bright as those Jay and Sophie wore, and they all looked well fed, as did the liveried servants; the entertainers looked dusty and seedy and thin.

  The doorman tapped the shoulders of two men at the lower table, and whispered something. The men flashed smiles and scooted down on the bench, making room for Jayjay and Sophie if they didn't mind being cozy. The food smelled delicious, and Jayjay would have put up with a lot more than crowded eating conditions to get some of it. Sophie, with faraway eyes, settled into her seat and began filling the wooden bowl in front of her.

  The chef had provided quite a bounty; venison and pig and stuffed fowl and baked fish and several types of bread and fruit. He'd not included a single vegetable, however. That's right, Jay recalled. Vegetables were animal fodder in the Middle Ages; meats, grains, and fruit in season were it. She looked at the table; spread in front of her was the Upper Class Gout Diet. She sighed. Oh, well—she only had to eat it for three weeks. Three weeks of fatty foods and no greenery wouldn't kill her.

  She loaded her own bowl, then glanced up. She'd felt for a moment that she was being watched. Casually she let her gaze wander up and down the table, as if looking for something else to eat. And there he was, Amos Baldwell's identical twin. Staring at her.

  She looked down at her food and gave Sophie's shin a good, hard kick.

  "Ow!"

  "Don't look up," Jay murmured. "You know that guy I told you about in the market this afternoon? The one who looked familiar?"

  "I remember. What does that have to do with you kicking my shin to pulp?"

  "He's sitting at the other end of the table from us, and staring this way."

  Sophie kept her eyes fixed on her bowl and speared chunks of meat onto the tip of her knife; forks and spoons being noticeably absent, the knife was the only silverware she had. "Why shouldn't I look?" she asked under her breath.

  "Because I'm not sure whether that is Amos or not, and if it is, I'm not sure whether we want to recognize him or not." Jayjay frowned into her dinner. "I got the book from him and the book is doing impossible things, and he's here, and that's way more strangeness than I'm willing to pass off to coincidence."

  Sophie glanced sidelong at her and smiled slowly. "Okay. So if you want to pretend you don't see him, why did you bother to point him out?"

  Jayjay forgot what she intended to say as, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Amos, still staring steadily at her, rise from his seat and motion to the two human gorillas who sat one on either side of him to stay where they were. Her stomach flipped; if he was Amos Baldwell, what was he doing in Glenraven? And if he wasn't Amos, what was he doing watching her?

  Magic, she thought. It's all tied together and wrapped up in one big, incomprehensible package of magic.

  She watched him work his way through the milling crowd of servants and retainers and entertainers and hangers-on; she kept her head down and pretended to eat. Should she run out of the room before he worked his way past the dance troupe and the mob of waiters and maids, or sit tight and find out what he wanted? She decided to sit tight. He couldn't very well do something to her in full view of everyone. And since at the moment she knew nothing, if he gave her information of any sort, she would be ahead.

  Meanwhile, she ate steadily. When his hand dropped onto her shoulder, she didn't even have to pretend to jump.

  "Julie Bennington!" The voice was Amos's…but not quite. Some of the stiffness and prissiness was gone.

  She looked up at him and smiled brightly. "Amos?"

  "Of course!" He smiled and the smile, too, was famil
iar but not quite right. It was too easy, too broad and confident. "Who else could I be?"

  She tilted her chin up and looked at him out of narrowed eyes. "Someone who looked like Amos but who knew how to ride a horse," she said coolly.

  He blanched, then hid his response with a laugh. "If you saw me earlier, why didn't you stop me and say hello?" He smiled again, that broad, too friendly, too-happy-to-see-her smile, and nodded toward Sophie. "Who is your friend?"

  Sophie looked up and gave him a polite half-smile.

  Jayjay sighed. "Sophie Cortiss, my best friend. This is Amos Baldwell, who had a bookstore in Peters and who sold me the interesting book we have."

  "I hope you're enjoying your visit." He tapped the shoulder of the man next to Jay and gestured for space; the man nodded and immediately all but shoved himself into the lap of the man beside him. "I cannot believe I ran into you here! Mind if I join you?"

  Since he'd already stepped over the bench and was halfway seated, Jay said, "Of course, not at all." She rested her elbow on the table and leaned her jaw into her hand. "What are you doing here in Glenraven?"

  His grin broadened. "Quite a coincidence, isn't it?"

  "I don't believe in coincidences." Jay didn't bother to smile, but Amos seemed oblivious.

  "My brother and I decided to take a vacation. We're touring the country for the next month."

  "I see." Jay found something reptilian about him—something she had never noticed in her brief encounters with him in the bookstore. His cheerful smile and bright enthusiasm did nothing to conceal the coldness and calculation in his lying eyes. She could see that he wasn't at all the person he'd portrayed himself to be. He was a user, a manipulative, lying bastard, and he wanted something from her. He wanted something, and she didn't doubt for an instant that what he wanted would be trouble for her. Or maybe she was just projecting her feelings about Steven onto this stranger. He started talking about the sights he and his brother visited, and Jayjay let his voice wash over her without taking in any of the words.

  Magic. He's tied up with the book, and because of his connection with the book, I'm somehow bound to him.