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NINE:
PUT YOUR HAND INSIDE
THE PUPPETHEAD

Bonnie Wing and Kit Duquesne were friends of Beth's from the old days back in L.A.—Bonnie was a scriptwriter for animated series, and Kit had been a show runner until deciding that the Hollyweird pressure cooker wasn't for her. By a flukey stroke of luck, a spec script of Kit's had been auctioned about the time she was deciding to get out, and she'd used the money to put a down payment on a down-at-heels New York apartment building that faced Inwood Hill Park. With her lover Bonnie, Kit had moved back East and started fixing the place up.

Beth, Kory, and Eric had stayed with the two of them last year when Beth and Kory were getting Eric settled in to his new digs, and Beth had welcomed the opportunity to renew her friendship with the two women. Beth and Kit—a tall regal blonde, equally adept with ritual blade and rattan sword—had been in the same coven back in Los Angeles, and Kit had started another one when she'd moved back East; Kit was the closest thing to a real-life Rupert Giles of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame that Beth knew. If anybody could solve the problem that Chinthliss had set them, it was Kit Duquesne.

"Beth—and Studly!" Kit stared at them in surprise through the crack in the door. There was a rattle of chains and deadbolts, and then she opened it all the way. "Come in—when did you get back?"

"We're just in town for a day or so. We left Maeve with Kory's family, but we did bring pictures," Beth answered. "Sorry to just drop in like this. . . ."

"No! It's great to see you both! I'll put on the tea. Bonnie's on a deadline, for BattleMages or Teddybear Bikers from Hell or some damn thing. She'll be out in about an hour."

Kit walked off to the kitchen, leaving them in the large sunny living room for a moment. Two futon couches were angled to take full advantage of the high windows, and a large air conditioner wheezed and rattled as it did battle with the August heat. Hallow, a very large gray tabby, slept atop it, oblivious to the noise. Two more—a tiny black kitten (new since Beth's last visit) and a regal long-haired white cat (Mistwraith)—drifted over to inspect the newcomers. Kory knelt down, and the kitten, taking this for an invitation, promptly swarmed up his arm and settled itself on his shoulder, purring noisily.

"Do you really think she can help us?" Kory asked quietly, straightening up and offering his fingers to the kitten on his shoulder, which promptly bit down with an expression of blissful contentment.

"I hope so. I don't know of any Sidhe with the kind of experience we need," Beth said.

"And how," Kory asked her, "will you phrase the question?"

"Talking secrets?" Kit asked, walking back in carrying a tray. "Bonnie's been baking—she always does when she's putting off work—and you reap the fruit of her procrastination. Ah, I see you've met Beltane. Don't let her bully you. Hallow is terrified of her," she added, indicating the sleeping tabby.

She set the tray down on the large handmade coffee table in the center of the room. Mistwraith instantly hopped up to investigate, and was set on the floor—several times—by Kit.

Maeve's baby pictures were brought out and admired, herb tea and orange muffins were served and consumed, and idle chitchat about the building, Bonnie's work (in addition to her various cartoon gigs, she also wrote a comic called The Elite, which was starting to gather a following), and various events mainly of interest to New Yorkers occupied several minutes.

"Now," Kit said, putting down her empty mug. "What's the deal? It can't be love of the Big Apple that brings you here twice in three months. Are you and Studly Do-Right here on the lam again?"

Beth smiled. "No, but we do have a problem we need some help with. It's kind of a long story."

Kit sat back on the futon couch. "We've got all day."

Beth looked helplessly at Kory. Coming here had seemed like such a great idea, right up until the time came to tell Kit why she was here. Kory was right. Figuring out what to say was going to be harder than she thought.

"We need to buy a computer system for a dragon," Kory said simply, "and we're not sure what kind will work in his kingdom. Beth thought you might be able to help."

Beth's jaw dropped.

"Uh-huh," Kit said, poker-faced. There was a long pause. "What does a dragon need with a computer?"

"Dragons prize novelty and innovation above all things. Also, he wishes to 'surf the net,' " Kory added, with the pride of one who has mastered an unfamiliar vocabulary.

Kit looked at Beth. Beth smiled weakly. Somehow, telling the simple truth had not been on her list of approaches to the problem of getting Kit to help them.

"Joke?" Kit asked, when it became apparent that Beth wasn't going to say anything.

"No joke." Beth sighed. In for a penny, in for a pound. . . . "Kory, it might help if you showed her."

Kory glanced at her, eyebrows raised, then dispelled the glamour that made him look like nothing more exotic than a very tall human. Beltane purred harder, and Mistwraith jumped up into his lap.

Kit stared at Kory and said nothing—very eloquently—for several minutes. "Bright Court or Dark?" she said at last.

"Bright," Kory said, sounding faintly miffed.

And that's a hell of a first question for someone who ought to never have seen an elf before, Beth thought.

"That's all right, then," Kit said. "And you aren't planning to start a War of the Oaks in Central Park, or anything like that?"

"Why does everyone ask that?" Kory wondered plaintively.

"It's a book," Beth explained. "Several books, actually. No, we're just passing through, Kit, honest. Most Sidhe don't want to have anything to do with New York. There's too much Cold Iron here for them."

"Uh-huh," Kit said again, still in that noncommittal tone. Whether she believed them or not, Beth still wasn't sure. "So, you want a computer that will work in Elfland? It won't be cheap, I can tell you that."

"No problem," Kory said.

* * *

The story of whatever experience it was that had made Kit so ready to believe in elves would be a tale for another time. Kit didn't go into it and Beth wasn't sure she wanted to ask right now; Kit simply accepted Kory and moved on to a series of questions about the computer. Beth wasn't sure whether she was disappointed or not. Over the years, she'd kind of gotten used to people being weirded out by the idea of Real Live Elves, and here Kit was taking it far more calmly than she'd taken the news that Beth was going to have a baby.

And if Beth had hoped for more dramatics from Bonnie, she was to be disappointed there as well. When Bonnie finally emerged from her office (looking rumpled and distant, most of her mind still obviously on her writing) and saw Kory—who had seen no reason to restore his human-seeming—she barely blinked. Bonnie was petite and dark, her classic Oriental beauty making her look fragile and innocent. This impression usually lingered with new acquaintances until they saw her fight.

"SFX?" Bonnie asked Kit in the shorthand of long partnership.

"Nope. True gen: Sidhe," Kit had replied. By now she was surrounded by reference books, in which she was looking up this and that esoteric factoid.

"More of them?" Bonnie asked in disbelief, as though she were talking about tourists or butterflies. Dearly as Beth would have loved to chase down that remark, she was not to be given the chance. Bonnie had her workout bag over her shoulder, and was obviously on her way to the dojo. "Grins. Bang-boom. Later?"

"Yeah. Gonna take 'em down to see Ray. Deep pockets for this one. Script done?"

"Bang. Boom," Bonnie said. "Kiss-kiss." She waved to Beth. "Late. Toodles." Explanation delivered, she left.

" 'Ray'?" Beth asked, eyebrows raised.

"Friend of mine," Kit said. "Tenant, too. Knows way more about all this stuff than I do, but that's not the point here. I know enough spelltech and psionics to figure out that side of it, but I know jack about computers. Meanwhile, we can decide what to do about dinner. Bon eats out on class nights, so we don't have to wait for her."

* * *

Over dinner preparations, Kit told the two of them a little more. Ray—Azrael Arcane if you were being formal—lived on the floor below Kit and Bonnie and built special-needs computer systems—and if Beth's project wasn't a special-needs system, Kit said, she didn't know what was. She'd inherited him from the previous owner of the building, and as far as she knew, he never left his apartment. He wouldn't be available until a few hours after sundown, Kit explained, so they made spaghetti and garlic bread, in between bouts of rescuing Hallow from Beltane and insuring that Mistwraith remained a white cat and not a tomato-colored one.

Beth found herself relaxing, because now the big secret was out and nobody seemed to care—and Kory had the Sidhe knack of easy charm, which he exercised in full measure.

"Is that name for real?" Beth said, returning to the subject of their evening's appointment following a luxurious dessert of strawberries in crème fraiche. Kit had wanted to serve them tiramisu, but the coffee and chocolate it contained would have been deadly to Kory.

"It's on his rent checks. And you're a fine one to talk, Miss If-It's-Tuesday-I-Must-Have-A-New-Alias," Kit teased.

Kit was one of the few people who Beth had kept in touch with following the Griffith Park Massacre, and one of the few who knew anything about the real situation of Beth's life, though of course Beth had been careful about what she'd told her. Now, she wondered if she'd needed to bother. Kit obviously didn't boggle at elves. "That's different," Beth said defensively. "I didn't have a choice."

"Yeah, sometime you're going to have to tell me the whole story—the whole story—about that. It just seems a little too X-Files to believe—you know, the government being after witches?"

"Psychics, really. And you're a fine one to talk. You don't even blink at seeing Kory, and you think a government conspiracy is too weird?"

"Not too weird. Too done-to-death. You'd think even the government would be bored with conspiracies by now," Kit amplified, tossing strawberry hulls for the cats to chase. "If you want conspiracy theory, talk to Ray. He's up on all of them from Gemstone to Trapdoor."

"Is he Wiccan?" Beth asked, because Kit spoke as if she knew him well.

"He's . . . eccentric," Kit said measuringly. "But systems designers can afford to be. I think he can help you, and he owes me a favor. Beyond that, there are things that woman was not meant to know. It's late enough now. Let me go call and see if he's around."

"Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice said," Beth commented to Kory when Kit had left the room.

"I suppose it is presumptuous to ask sorcerers to be commonplace," Kory said musingly. "Like Bards, their lives are their art."

"Eric's normal," Beth said, stung by the implication.

"In Bards, such normalcy is eccentricity beyond compare," Kory pointed out inarguably. "I love and value him, but Eric strives for the commonplace as others quest for dreams and far enchantments—much as if I were to drive a taxi and live in Queens."

"I'd love to see that," Beth muttered under her breath.

"The doctor is in," Kit announced, returning from her call. "C'mon. I'll take you down."

* * *

After what both Kit and Kory had said, Beth thought she was braced for every possible sort of Earth-plane weirdness—or at least, for the sort of theatrics and eccentricity she'd grown used to from her New Age acquaintanceship. But Azrael's bizarrerie was of an entirely different order.

There was a keypad lock affixed to his door in place of the usual sort of key and cylinder lock, and Kit tapped out a quick nine digits then pushed the door open into darkness. The hall lights illuminated a long hallway with floor, walls, and ceiling painted matte black. Kit ushered them in and closed the door behind her.

"Don't mind this. The light hurts his eyes, so he keeps the place pretty dark." She led them down the hall and into the living room, which was lit by a faint red glow.

It, too, was painted flat black, making Beth feel as if she were floating in a vast empty space. It was disorienting, but comforting, too—on a level far below consciousness, she was aware that nothing could harm her here. Despite its outré appearance, this was a safe place, a good place.

As her eyes adjusted, she could make out more details of her surroundings, and spared a pang of envy for Kory's natural advantages—elf-sight could see everything as plain as if it were broad day. There were several computers racked against the far wall, but all the screens were dark; the green and amber status lights giving the only sign that they were powered up. She could make out a sectional sofa—also black—that lined two walls, and the window was covered with heavy blackout drapes, drawn against the mild summer night. Despite this, the air was cool and fresh—somewhere a very quiet air conditioner and ozone generator must be running. The only illumination came from a strip of red neon that ran all the way around the ceiling.

"Hello, Kit. You must be Kory and Beth. Welcome."

And in all this, he wears dark glasses, Beth thought in disbelief, seeing their host at last. The self-styled Azrael Arcane got to his feet and came over to them, leaning heavily on a silver-headed cane. He was indeed wearing dark glasses: square-lensed, faintly antique-looking things, whose lenses appeared entirely black in the weird scarlet light. He had long straight hair, as pale as Kory's—though in the neon it looked candy-apple red—that fell straight down his back, and was wearing an open-collared Poet Shirt beneath a dark suit of the Earlier Victorian period. He was barefoot. The whole effect was exotic in the extreme.

He held out his hand for Beth to shake. Seeing the darkness of her skin against his, she realized what the eccentric lighting was designed to conceal—Azrael Arcane was an albino.

No wonder it's so dark in here. If his albinism is acute, he's practically blind in strong sunlight. Well, that explains a lot.  

I think.  

Maybe.  

He shook hands with Kory as well, who had resumed his human disguise, and motioned them toward the couch. "Sit down, please. Kit tells me you need to consult about the specs for a special needs computer system. Environment or user?"

"Environment," Beth said, remembering that Chinthliss could look perfectly human when he chose, and so would not need something that could be operated by someone the size of a small aircraft. "What we really need is a top of the line, newer than tomorrow system that's totally self-contained. No outside power source, no hookup to phone lines—" let Chinthliss figure out his local ISP; that part wasn't her problem "—and it has to be stable in . . ." She faltered. Just how did you describe the physical conditions of Underhill without describing Underhill itself?

"In Between-the-Worlds conditions," Kit supplied smoothly.

"You want to run a computer in a Circle without interfering with the raised power?" Azrael asked. "Why not just do your computing after you take the Circle down?"

"We can't," Beth said quickly. "This is a sort of . . . permanent Circle." She looked at Kory, who nodded agreement.

Now why didn't I come up with that explanation earlier? Not that Kit would have bought it for a New York minute. Elves would have had to come into it somewhere.  

But Azrael didn't seem inclined to pry, taking the explanation—and the parameters—at face value. "Well, it can be done, of course," he said, sounding puzzled. "But it will take a lot of space, and a lot of money, and it'll eat batteries like nobody's business. Your best bet might be a small gas-powered generator—"

"This must be done without Cold Iron," Kory said. "As much as possible."

Azrael glanced at Kit, and some unspoken communication passed between them. "You like a challenge," she reminded him.

"Hm. Well, some of the new Lithium-Ion batteries have a pretty long life, or you might want to run it off solar; the new ones run on what comes through on a cloudy day. If you use solar cells to charge your LION pack, you can recharge while you're not using the computer. Is iron-free your only restriction?"

Beth glanced at Kit, who seemed to know where Azrael was going with this and was able to translate. "That's all. We don't have to worry about planetary influences with the other metals."

"And price is no object?" Azrael asked. "We're talking thousands, here. Several thousands—possibly several ten thousands, even waiving my usual exorbitant fees."

Kit looked at them.

"None," Kory said firmly. "And we will be happy to pay your fees as well."

There was enough kenned gold on deposit in a special bank account that Elfhame Misthold used for its World Above purchases to cover almost any need, and when funds ran low the elves could always ken more gold. There was no fraud involved, for the gold was good—true metal, not faerie gold, to vanish when the spell dissolved.

"No, this is a favor to Kit. Okay. If you can give me a day or so to make some calls, I can give you a set of plans for the cage, and a shopping list for the computer. Your best bet is probably to hit up Comdex next month and pick up something there. You said top of the line?"

"The newest and most fancy," Beth said, on secure ground when it came to shopping. "But . . . what cage?"

"A Faraday Cage, of course," Azrael said. "Named for the magneto-optic effect in which the polarization plane of an electromagnetic wave is rotated under the influence of a magnetic field parallel to the direction of propagation."

Beth blinked, having gotten lost somewhere around "magneto-optic." Azrael smiled and took pity on her.

"Michael Faraday was a nineteenth-century inventor who discovered that an electrical discharge, such as lightning, would flow outside and around a metal cage to go to ground. This is the reason airplanes and cars can be struck by lightning without harm to the occupants: they're a type of Faraday Cage. But when you build one out of copper or some equivalent neutral conductor and run a current through it, it cancels out all electromagnetic field energy. Cages of this type are used to shield delicate electronic equipment from stray EMF fields, and when J. B. Rhine was doing his ESP experiments at Duke University back in the last century, he discovered that his subjects' accuracy tended to skyrocket when they were placed in a Faraday Cage, leading to the theory that psionics—and, by extension, magic—involves some kind of manipulation of electromagnetic or bioelectric fields. What this means for you is that the computer's magnetic field and sphere of influence will stay inside the cage, and the magical energy will stay outside the cage, and never the twain will meet."

"But won't that kind of insulation keep the computer from connecting with the Internet?" Kit asked.

"Possibly. I couldn't say for sure unless I saw it up and running in its host environment. The simplest solution is just to run a copper ground to your landline, but it might need to be tweaked with. You'll probably need to run a few tests to see how well your system connects—it will, however, run without disrupting the magical environment, so long as it's in the cage and the cage is powered up."

"Can it really be so simple?" Beth marveled.

"Only in the sense that it can be conceived and described. After that, you're talking money—large cartloads of it, and that's where you run into trouble. Most magicians have more interest in the Great Work than in getting rich. Governments commonly have large cartloads of money, but have trouble attracting competent magicians. Magic is anarchic by its very nature—Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law doesn't get along very well with beancounters in suits. Any competent tyrant with any awareness of the Unseen World starts out by restricting access to it: Hitler didn't round up all the Adepts he could get his hands on in the 1930s—from astrologers to Freemasons and everything in between—just to be mean. He saw them as a threat to his power. Fortunately, these days nobody takes magic that seriously. Something to be thankful to the New Age fluffy bunnies for."

"Some people do," Beth said, repressing a shiver.

"Well, there's Sun Streak and Stargate and things like that, but those projects seem to be focusing more on psionicists, fortunately. So long as they're concentrating on natural Talents, and not on Adepts, they should lose interest eventually. And if they do decide we're a nuisance, probably all they'll do is make study of the Art illegal. We've been underground before. We'll survive."

"Except for the people who get caught," Beth said tightly.

"That's right," Azrael said levelly. "Except for those who get caught. But I'm sure Kit warned you both about my hobbyhorse, and I don't think I'm going to transgress the bounds of hospitality by riding it tonight. You'll forgive me, I know." He smiled at them engagingly, and Beth found herself liking him more and more.

"I think—in the long list of people the government is likely to build internment camps for—that occultists come way, way down the list," Kit said.

Beth and Azrael exchanged glances of wordless disagreement. Both of them thought that Adepts were much higher on that list than Kit seemed to—and when you came right down to it, it didn't matter if they were at the top of the list or the bottom, if they were on the list at all.

"Well, that's enough for tonight, ladies and gentleman. I've got places to surf and people to annoy. I should have that stuff you need by tomorrow night, and after that, it's up to you," Azrael said.

"That seems fair," Kory said.

"More than fair. You've been a great help. Are you sure there isn't anything we can do in return?" Beth asked.

Azrael smiled. "Sure there is. When you get it up and running, let me know how it works, okay?"

"We will," Beth promised.

* * *

After Hosea left to go and clean out the basement room, Eric paced around the apartment, still edgy. There was no real point in trying to go back to sleep—not with the adrenaline surging through his system. He fielded a couple of calls from friends who lived in the building—mostly they wanted to compare notes on what he thought had happened. Finally he decided he might as well get his stuff together and go on over to the school. At least at Juilliard, he'd face a different kind of annoyance. And maybe he could shake his feeling that there was trouble on the horizon—distant still, but surely coming.

Must've picked that up from Jimmie. But the Guardians are supposed to have some kind of Distant Early Warning System, and it doesn't seem to have gone off. Every attack of the blue megrims doesn't have to herald the end of the world—I guess it's true what Freud said: sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.  

He was on his way out the door when the phone rang again. At first he just looked at it, unwilling to answer it and field yet another set of vague yet apprehensive questions. All the psychics in the building knew perfectly well that there hadn't been trouble with the boiler this morning, but even if he wanted to tell them the whole truth, he wasn't sure what it was. So far, this morning was a story without an ending. None of the Guardians, or Eric for that matter, knew why the building wanted Hosea, or for what—and Eric wasn't sure if the discovery that Guardian House could act independently of the Guardians wasn't the creep-worthiest part of the whole thing.

After the fourth ring, though, he turned back to answer it. Might as well do his damage control now as later.

"Eric? I was afraid I'd missed you!"

"Bethie?" She wasn't quite the last person he'd expected to be calling him, but she was certainly in the bottom ten. "Where are you? Is everything all right?"

"We're at Kit and Bonnie's up in Inwood. Everything's fine, actually, for a change. Kory and I are off to Comdex tomorrow to buy a computer system for a dragon—we took Ria's advice, and it worked out great!"

She sounded happy and excited. Beth was in better spirits than Eric had seen her for quite a while—more like the old, pre-everything self, bubbly and effervescent.

"Wait—wait—wait—slow down. You're buying a dragon?"

"A computer for a dragon," Beth corrected, laughing. "His name's Chinthliss, and he can help us—Kory and me—figure out how to have kids. He's a friend of someone named Tannim, at Elfhame Fairgrove, he says—you know, with the race cars? All he wants is a computer system that will work Underhill, so he can surf the net, and Kit's friend Azrael figured out how to make it work—all you need is a Faraday Cage and some really big batteries—this is going to be great!"

Beth was burbling, and well she might, if this Chinthliss had solved the problem of her and Kory's future offspring. How had that been Ria's idea? He'd have to ask her.

Are you sure you can trust this Chinthliss? Eric wanted to ask, but kept himself from asking. She'd said Kory was with her, and Kory would cut his own throat before he let Beth wander into any perils Underhill. If the two of them had cut a deal with this dragon, Chinthliss must be all right.

"So where are you going to find this computer?" Eric asked, when Beth ran down a little.

"Comdex. That big trade show they hold in Las Vegas every September. Kory says he thinks there's a hame there—some of the Seleighe Sidhe took over an Unseleighe casino, if you can believe that, so we'll have a Gate right there. And then we bring the stuff back through to Chinthliss' place, and he'll give us the information we need! He said so! Oh, Goddess, I can't wait to get home and tell Maeve she's going to have a little brother or sister!"

Eric smiled, listening to her cheerful prattle. At least things were looking up for someone. He wasn't quite sure where that thought came from; his life was doing okay. This thing with Hosea would work out, he and Ria were doing fine, and nobody was even trying to kill him lately.

"Well, that's great," he said, a little lamely. Beth picked up on his tone at once.

"You sound a little down. Things working out okay at your end?"

"Oh, sure," Eric said hastily. "I just got up way too early this morning. It looks like Hosea's going to be living here—there's a studio apartment available in the basement, and he's getting it cleaned out now. He's okay with my teaching him, too. I'm the only one who's worried about that."

Beth laughed. "Banyon, sometimes you worry way too much! You'll be a great teacher. You wouldn't want to contradict Master Dharniel, now, would you?"

"Perish forfend," Eric said, smiling in spite of himself. He found that deep inside he was actually looking forward to the day he could introduce his new student to his old master. "Hey, I hate to cut this short, but I've got class and I don't want to be late. You guys going to be around this evening? We could get together, maybe."

"I wish we could, but Kory and I are going back to Everforest in an hour or so and then out to Lost Wages, and then from there to Chinthliss'. Come see us when we get back?"

"If I can," Eric promised.

"Gotta run," Beth said. "Love you!"

"Love you, too," Eric answered. He stared at the phone for a long minute after he hung up. Beth's good news ought to have made him feel better, but the strangely unsettled feeling he'd had all morning didn't want to go away. He hadn't wanted to burden Beth with his own problems, but ignoring them didn't make them go away, either.

Just what did the House want with Hosea . . . and why?

* * *

She'd thought she'd been afraid before, but it was nothing to the terror Jeanette felt now, clutching at Aerune as he rode through the shadows of this unearthly place. She could feel the T-Stroke burning through her veins, pulling her down into darkness. She fought its effect frantically. If she lost consciousness here and fell from Aerune's horse, she did not know what would happen to her.

They were no longer on Earth. Somehow she knew that, though there was little she could see. Aerune's cloak whipped back over her, blinding her, as the stallion moved from a trot to a canter, and the chill surrounding her fought with the fire in her blood. She could see a full moon above them, horribly distorted, and around the horse's legs shadowy pale things yelped and gibbered, leaping into the air to attack the riders and falling back in defeat.

Then the moon was gone in a blinding flash of light, and they rode across a sun-hammered desert of cracked clay beneath a dark brass-colored sky. Furnace heat struck like a blow, and in the sky above, black shapes wheeled and screamed.

Then darkness again, and on the horizon, torn by the black peaks of mountains, a distorted, blood-red sun filling half the sky. The air was thin here, and Jeanette found herself gasping for breath. Her lungs burned with the need for oxygen, and the sky above was black, filled with unwinking stars.

Then air and light—the foggy dimness of a swamp filled with giant trees festooned with corpse-pale moss. Aerune's stallion splashed and skidded through the slime, and with each step it filled the air with the stench of rot. She looked down, and saw that the black water was filled with writhing white worms, each longer than a man. She shut her eyes tightly then, and did not open them until a shock of cold told here that they were again elsewhere.

—An arctic plain, the snow only marginally whiter than the sky overhead. In the distance, a vast structure of black stone, and the sound of a strange high-pitched refrain: Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li! 

—Darkness more absolute than blindness, the only sound the stallion's running hooves.

—Cold again, the stallion running faster, along a thin shining bridge only inches wide. Stars above and below, shining dimly through veils of violet haze. Ahead the bridge ended, and the stallion gathered itself to spring, leaping out into nothingness. She screamed then, the sound thin and flat as the world shifted once more.

The stallion slowed to a walk.

They were in a forest. It was dark, but this time the almost-comforting dark of night. Everything was lit by faint greenish moonlight, though she could see no moon. The trees were like nothing she'd ever seen: black and smooth and leafless, looking unpleasantly like polished bone. The ground was covered with a low white mist that reached to the horse's knees concealing everything beneath it. She felt flushed and nauseated as the drug worked through her, and Jeanette knew she had only a few minutes of consciousness left. The trees wheeled dizzyingly around her, and she could not tell whether that was an effect of the drug, or whether they really were moving.

When they finally left the forest, Jeanette could see the source of the light. Far in the distance, at the top of a peak that rose up out of the center of the bone-wood, stood a tall gothic castle, shining with a baleful moth-green light. Try as she might, she could not see it clearly; walls and towers seemed to meet at impossible angles, and it wavered in her sight like a heat mirage, though the night was damp and cool. The castle grew to fill the entire world, burning brighter and then blindingly bright.

And then there was nothing at all.

* * *

Consciousness returned in slow stages. For a long time she drifted back and forth, aware enough to know she was awake, but unable to remember why that might be odd. Finally, a single fact floated to the front of her mind, pulling awareness with it like a train of boxcars.

She'd taken T-Stroke.

Aerune had kidnapped her.

The T-Stroke hadn't killed her.

She was somewhere in Elfland.

Aerune's castle?

Jeanette opened her eyes, rolling over in the same movement and crashing to the floor as she fell off the narrow bed she had lain on. The pain completed the process of her awakening, and the last few hours settled back firmly into memory. She looked around.

She'd been lying on a narrow shelf cut into a wall. She was in a small room, much taller than it was wide. Twelve feet up there was a door set into the wall; a latticework of iron bars through which light spilled. The walls and floor were made up of large gray stone blocks, like every dungeon in every movie ever made. Torches burned in iron brackets on the walls, but the light was white and directionless, too steady to be coming from the flickering orange flames or the doorway above.

It's like a stage set.  

She got to her feet and quickly sat down on the bed, her heart racing with excitement and fear. She'd gambled and won: by the very fact that she was alive, she knew she was one of the lucky 10%—she'd survived her dosing, and now, by rights, she should be able to manifest some sort of paranatural power.

But what? She felt no different. All the test subjects had used their powers instinctively, but she felt no instinctive pull to do anything out of the ordinary.

What was true was that she was dying. All the subjects who had received T-Stroke had died in a matter of days or hours. She felt a small thrill of triumph at cheating Aerune of his victory by dying, but quickly stifled it, unwilling to look beyond this moment to her own death. If Elfland existed, then so must Hell, in some form or another, and Jeanette knew that Hell was her destiny for what she'd done in life. To distract herself, she resumed her study of her cell and herself.

The clothes she had come here in—jeans, jacket, boots—were gone: she was barefoot, wearing a sleeveless grayish knee-length tunic of some coarse stiff fabric. There were chains and shackles set into the walls, and she walked over to inspect them, hefting the fetters in her hands. By rights they should have been black iron, and they were black, but the sheen and smoothness told her they were not iron. If anything she'd read about elves was true, cold iron would burn them like a red-hot poker, so the metal must not be either iron or steel. Pewter? Silver? More mysteries. It did explain the absence of her clothes, however. Everything but the T-shirt had iron in it—the studs on her jacket, the toe caps of her boots, the hooks and eyelets on her brassiere, even the snaps and rivets on her jeans. All steel, and thus taboo in this place—or should be. How much of what she'd read in old books could be trusted, and how much was sheer fabulation? Trusting anything she thought she knew could be fatal.

She did know one thing for sure and certain, however. Aerune had not brought her here just to lock her up and leave her to rot. And there was only one thing that made her valuable: her ability to manufacture T-Stroke.

But what did a faerie lord want with a drug that gave humans psionic powers? Jeanette frowned, puzzled. Elves had magic powers—she'd certainly seen enough hard evidence of that from Aerune—so she couldn't imagine why they'd need what T-Stroke could do for them. T-Stroke didn't give anyone magic powers, anyway; it gave them psionic powers—a fine distinction, but a real one. While magic could play cut and paste with the laws of physics, psionics were essentially bound by them: with psychic powers you might be able to read minds or see the future—or heal—but you couldn't turn lead into gold, raise the dead, or teach a pig to speak English. And while natural psychics might manifest several different psychic gifts in varying strengths, her T-Stroke-created Talents only seemed to be able to do one particular thing, which must make them doubly inferior to an elven magician—though it was also true that Aerune had wanted her test subjects, inferior or not. Back in December he'd been grabbing them before she or Robert could get to them, though presumably he could do everything they could do and more. She'd never found out why; she supposed she'd find out now.

She knew she should be more afraid than she was, but all Jeanette felt was numb. Shock, she thought—that and the certain knowledge that she would die soon whether Aerune tortured her or not. Death was such a final answer—and however much she feared it, she couldn't escape it—so why not embrace it as much as she could?

Because she was too afraid to, that was why.

Just then there was a rattling sound from the doorway above. She looked up, just in time to see the doorway sink majestically downward through the stone like a descending elevator cage, until the opening was level with the floor.

Two trolls—they couldn't be anything else—gazed through the bars at her.

Their smooth shiny skin was the greenish color of tarnished copper, and a wave of stench like rotting frogs rolled into the cell from their presence. They were about five and a half feet tall, alike as twins, and cartoonishly muscled, with shoulders nearly as wide as they were tall, and arms that dangled below their knees. Their faces were like a caricature of Early Man: flat noses, massive jaws, and heavy beetling brows from beneath which their eyes glowed with the silvery redness of beasts'. The long tips of pointed ears extended for an inch or two above their flat skulls, and dull lank hair the color of old moss began low on their foreheads and straggled down their backs. They were dressed in a parody of medieval costume: knee-length chain mail shirts beneath black tabards with a crimson blazon, bronze bracers laced onto their huge forearms, and shaggy boots that seemed to have been crudely made from imperfectly-emptied bears. Each of them held a seven-foot billhook in his hand.

One of them reached for something she could not see from inside the cell, and the portcullis rose with a rattle of chains.

"Come out, little girl," the other said, leering. His voice was low and hoarse, like granite boulders mating. His teeth were huge and yellow, like a horse's, but with long upper and lower fangs. Jeanette could smell his breath six feet away. It smelled like rotting meat.

"Bite me," Jeanette said sullenly. No matter how unnatural they looked, they were only another incarnation of big, stupid street muscle, the sort she'd dealt with when she ran with the Sinner Saints. They answered to a master—Aerune—and to show them either fear or deference would be a bad mistake.

The troll looked puzzled, trying to decide whether to be angry. He shifted uncertainly, gazing at his partner.

The other troll walked into the cell. He was not so much tall as massive—must weigh close to a thousand pounds—Jeanette estimated. He bowed, holding the billhook to one side and resting the knuckles of his free hand on the floor.

"Mortal lady. The great prince Aerune requires thy presence, and we are sent to escort thee into his presence." The words were subservient, but his manner wasn't.

The smart ones are always trouble. He made her feel like Elkanah always had—as if he knew something she didn't, as if all the knowledge and power she possessed would be useless against that secret wisdom. She got to her feet.

"Okay. Fine. Let's go."

She stepped past him, out into the corridor. The stone was rough beneath her bare feet, and cold. Torches lined the walls, but again the illumination was flat and directionless, as if the torches were only a sort of window dressing, and not the real source of the light. Barred doorways, such as the one she'd come through, lined the walls all the way to the ceiling. From some of the higher ones, liquid trickled down the wall, staining the gray stone to black. There was a faint whiff of latrine, perceptible beyond the ripe rankness of her guards. She felt queasy and ill, as if she were coming down with the flu, but put it down to a combination of emotional shock and T-Stroke. She steeled herself against showing how she felt; any show of weakness could be fatal, and she still had to face the main event—Aerune.

The dumb one led the way, and the smart one followed. They went up a winding staircase, the steps sized for trolls and not humans; Jeanette was aching and breathless by the time they reached the top. Here the workmanship on the stones of the corridor was finer, the doors of solid wood.

They walked for at least half an hour, seeing no one, as the corridors slowly changed, becoming more refined and upscale, until at last Jeanette was walking across smooth mosaic floors between walls of carved alabaster hung with tapestries. She felt less sick now, though all around her there was the same sort of waiting tension that heralded the storm. There were guards here and there along the way—elven knights, this time, not trolls, wearing elaborate jeweled armor and holding long silver pikes. At the end of one corridor, her captors stopped before a pair of them. The elves' faces were invisible within their helmets, but she could see the faint red spark of eyes deep within the shadows.

"Here is the woman whom Lord Aerune has summoned, lord," the smart troll said.

The elven knight bowed silently, and gestured for her to advance.

"Be good, human girl," the smart troll said. "Or the prince will give you back to me to do with as I choose." Despite the unspoken threat, Jeanette had the odd feeling the words were kindly meant.

"And if you can't be good, be careful," she said in return.

"Silence!" one of the elves snapped.

This time both members of her escort preceded her, obviously unable to imagine that she would run (they were right, but she still thought they were stupid). They walked only a short distance before stopping before a pair of gigantic doors that seemed to be carved of one giant sheet of black jade. As they approached, the doors swung open, and she followed her guards into Aerune's throne room. Once inside the doorway her escort stopped, and waited for her to go on alone.

The throne room was enormous—big as a sound stage or a church, and empty save for Aerune. The walls were carved in the semblance of a forest, copies of the same black trees she had seen upon her arrival, their carved branches rising to form a vault above the room.

The floor beneath her feet was the glassy dull silver of liquid mercury, treacherously smooth. In the center of the room, atop a round three-step dais of the same smooth black material as the doors, stood a throne. It was black, massive, and intricately figured, but somehow it was not quite there, as if parts of it curved off in directions the human eye was not equipped to perceive.

And on the throne sat Aerune.

This was the first time Jeanette had gotten a really good look at him, and once again her heart twisted at the sight of his beauty. Save for the helmet—for Aerune's head was bare—he wore the same full ornate field plate armor as his guards, but of a silver so dark it seemed black. On his head was a black crown set with cabochon rubies that glowed as brightly as if they were lit from behind, and on his black-gloved hand he wore a matching ruby ring.

All her life Jeanette had dreamed of a moment like this, when she could cast aside the bonds of Earth and walk the halls of Faerie. And now that the moment had arrived, she could think of only one thing.

He can't be serious.  

Everything that she'd seen was just too overblown, too derivative, too much. It was all done with money to burn, but it still looked like an episode of Dr. Who. It had no heart to it. Actually, Dr. Who had heart; it didn't take itself seriously and it was on a bargain budget, so heart was all it had, but it had a lot of it. No, this looked as if some avaricious goon with all the money in the universe had decided to copy Dr. Who on an infinite budget without the least understanding of what made the BBC series live for its fans. This place was hollow—the exact opposite of creative. 

So now you know why they call them The Hollow Hills. Good going, Girl Detective.  

"So, mortal girl. At last you face your ultimate desire—for I am Death, and Pain, and the end of all things."

Jeanette wasn't sure whether to laugh, cry, or just stamp her foot in frustration. She'd ruined her life, killed hundreds, to get here . . . and this was all there was? This fanboy weenie from hell?

And worst of all, she was still terrified. And he was still beautiful as the morning.

As she stepped onto the floor, something lying at the foot of the throne raised its head. She hadn't seen it before because it was so black; it looked a little like a wolf crossed with a Doberman, if the result were the size of a small pony and had eyes that glowed a featureless red. It opened its mouth and yawned, exposing ivory teeth and a blood-red tongue, then put its head back down, joining the other creatures coiled at the foot of the throne in sleep.

"Lord Aerune," she said, reaching the foot of the shadow throne and looking up at him.

"Come, little alchemist. Kneel at my feet, and I will tell you how you may serve me."

Despite herself, Jeanette stumbled forward and up the steps of the dais to kneel at his feet. One of the hellhounds growled as she approached, and Aerune held out his hand to silence it.

"Know, first, that all your comrades are dead, including your former master. The slave Elkanah, whom I sent to retrieve you from the human world, is undoubtedly dead now, and by your hand."

Tell me something I don't know, Jeanette thought sullenly. She'd hated Elkanah, and feared him, but part of her was happy for him. He was dead. He was free. No one should have to live with the memory of being Aerune's pawn.

"Very well," Aerune answered, a hint of displeasure in his voice. "I shall tell you that I shall destroy your pestilent, arrogant race, and your work shall be a weapon in my arsenal. If it can kindle the power of the Starry Crown in such fleeting creatures of mud and stench, then what more may it do for the Children of Danu? Armed with its power, we will nevermore fear your Cold Iron, nor your foolish violence. And my Aerete shall be avenged."

There was genuine sorrow in his voice, and when Jeanette dared to look up, she could see that his face was set in lines of bitter grief.

"Once," Aerune said softly, "the world was ours. There was no Dark Court, no Bright—only the Immortal Sidhe, the firstborn of Danu. Your kind was less than the beasts—animals whom we raised up from the rest of the brute creation and taught to serve us. And for many years you understood your place and kept to it. But you became presumptuous—and to our eternal doom and sorrow, there were those among the Sidhe who helped you to rise from the dust where you belonged. Aerete the Golden was one such—guardian to your tribe, aid and protection against all who would harm you, though I offered her my heart and my crown. Yet even would I spare you for her sake, turn aside when you incurred my just wrath . . . yet you slew her with your deathmetal, and I will never rest until all your race has paid the price in full measure for slaying her whom I loved—my soul-twin, my mate, the only creature who could lift my being from the darkness and eternal night. . . .

"And you yourselves shall be the instrument of my vengeance—you and your endless inventiveness."

"I won't," Jeanette said. Tears were running down her face—fear for herself, grief for Aerune's loss. She knew what it was like to be denied the chance to be through a cruel trick of fate, and she felt his sorrow as if it were her own. But she could not help him kill again. "I won't make T-Stroke for you. I won't shoot up your guinea pigs."

Shockingly, Aerune laughed, and reached down to tousle her hair as he might pat the head of an unruly dog.

"Do you presume to know my mind, or to tell me the extent of my power? I do not need you to create more of your poison—I already have enough of your Crownfire to ken enough to drown the world. And as for proving its worth . . ."

He raised a hand and gestured. The doors to the throne room swung inward once more, and Jeanette blinked. This time they were gold and jeweled. This was what living in a world made with magic was, she realized: a universe in which there were no certainties, even those extending to the continuity of the world which surrounded you.

Two of Aerune's armored knights entered, dragging a third between them who struggled and snarled curses in some unknown language. The bright silks he had worn were in rags, and his body bore the marks of a world-class beating, but he was still defiant. As he approached Aerune's throne, the hounds raised their heads and growled, watching him intently. And somehow his speech turned to English, so that Jeanette could understand what he said.

"Kneel before your master: Prince Aerune, Lord of Death and Pain!" one of the knights said.

The stranger fought like a wet cat as they forced him to his knees. He spat at Aerune, and one of Aerune's guards backhanded him with a metal-clad fist. The impact of the blow was a sound like wood hitting wood, and blood sprayed across the mirrored floor. Jeanette felt pain shoot through her, leaving her weak and shaking, with a throbbing headache. But the stranger remained defiant.

"Prince of nothing! Oathbreaker and fool! Know that I am Aliagrant Tannoeth, Knight and Magus of Elfhame Thundersmouth, herald and cupbearer to Prince Seithawg and the Lady Cyndrwin, traveling beneath a ward of truce across lands held by no lord! Release me at once—or risk my lord's terrible vengeance!"

"Such passion," Aerune murmured. "Such foolishness, here in the stronghold of your enemies, but I forget: you are but a boy. Do you truly think Aerune is bound by the treaties that bind the Dark Court to the Light, or that your people will know what fate has befallen you? Shall I fear Seithawg, whose father's father I slew, or the lennan sidhe who rules beside him? Or shall I fear Lady Aniause to whom you ride, and who will seek for you in vain once word reaches her that you have vanished? There is danger in the Chaos Lands. All know that. But in your pride you would dare them, and so you have found . . . me."

From his expression, Aliagrant was not hearing anything he liked. It was as if Jeanette could feel his fear, like silent music. And Aerune was right—he was young. Even if the elves were immortal and eternal, Jeanette could tell that much about him.

"So. You see I speak no more than the truth. Bow down and swear fealty to me, boy, and perhaps I will allow you to live."

But afraid and in pain though he was, Aliagrant still would not submit. "Kill me, then!"

"Perhaps in time. Meanwhile, you will serve me—in one fashion or another."

Once more the doors opened, admitting two more . . . creatures.

One looked like The Old Witch from the cover of EC Comics: an ancient, ugly, hunchbacked woman, dressed in rags. Her nose and chin were hooked, her toothless mouth fallen in upon itself. One eye was white and bulging, the other a narrow slit. She carried a tray upon which stood two objects: a jeweled wine cup, and one of the brown plastic bottles of T-Stroke that Jeanette had in her jacket pocket back at the van.

The hag's companion was small, barely the size of a child, but with a distorted, misshapen form . . . and very long arms. It wore a laborer's smock and ragged pants, and upon its head there was a soft cap of bright scarlet, as bright as the blood of men. It looked like it had wandered out of the background of some Hildebrandt painting. It looked like a hobbit on crack.

"Don't do this," Jeanette whispered, cowering and shivering against the foot of the throne. She could feel Aliagrant's pain radiating from him like heat from an overstoked stove, and in the middle of everything else, she had a horrible intuition that the T-Stroke had worked—and what the Talent it had given her was.

Aerune stepped down past her and over to the hag. He picked up the brown bottle and poured a generous dose into the wine, then stirred the mixture with a long golden spoon. Then he picked up the cup and gestured to the redcapped hobgoblin.

It scampered over to where the two elven knights were still holding the boy on his knees. The redcap crouched behind him, pulling his head back with one hand and forcing his jaw open with the other.

Then Aerune stood over him and poured the contents of the cup into his mouth. The boy choked and tried to struggle, but the redcap was far too strong for him. Wine ran down his chin and onto his chest, but he ended up swallowing more than half of the mixture.

"You see?" Aerune said, turning to Jeanette. "I have no need of your assistance." He gestured to the knights, who released their victim.

Aliagrant began to scream, joined half a beat later by Jeanette. She was burning, she was dying—she felt what Aliagrant felt, and the pain was hideous, it felt as if she was drinking Drano, and far worse than the pain was the terror of an immortal creature being sent down into death.

For Aliagrant was dying. She could feel it more surely than she could feel her own body—the flesh withering and dissolving as his body burned away to nothingness.

And then it stopped. Blessedly, it stopped.

Barely able to focus, she looked up fearfully, scrubbing her face dry on her bare forearm. All that was left of Aliagrant was a mess on the floor, as if a mummy were in the process of crumbling away into ash. As she watched, the body crumbled further, then dissolved altogether, leaving only a smear of dust that sank into the mirrored floor, leaving no trace behind.

"Interesting," Aerune said impassively. "What calls up magic in your race destroys it in mine—and that, you will have observed, my mortal alchemist, is fatal." Aerune sounded more interested than put out by that fact. "Still, its effects are entertaining—are they not, Urla? Far more so than elfbane or caffeine."

"Yes, Great Lord," the redcap answered. It had a high hoarse voice, like that of an evil child.

"And it still works on humans—on precisely those humans who will have to be eliminated to ensure that my race may once more assume its rightful place as their overlords—the magic users, the Crowned Ones, whose ancestors mingled the blood of their race with my own. Why should they not be useful in death?"

He looked back at Jeanette, smiling gently. "I never needed you to make more of your wizard's potion. I needed to find out what you knew, and to keep you from falling into the hands of my enemies to become their weapon. And now I see that the sorcery you have worked has made you useful to me beyond that." His smile grew wider and more razored. "You think that this T-Stroke will save you from me, that it will grant you a quick and easy death beyond my mercy, but in truth, for all your arrogance, you know so little about my kind. How can the sands of your life run out if Time itself does not run Underhill? No, you will live as long as I choose, and serve me. But not in that unpleasant form . . ."

He reached for her, smiling, and when he touched her, Jeanette began to scream.

 

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