Summoned to Tourney (2 page)

He blushed as scarlet as he had earlier. Like Beth’s other maxim, “It works better when you plug it in,” he kept forgetting that. It was easy enough to forget, when he was always the first one awake because he needed so little sleep, and the hot water tank usually recharged long before either of the other two was awake enough to even think about showering. He shrugged and grimaced elaborately, then sent a tiny surge of power to the reservoir of cold water in the half-basement. Fortunately, the new hot-water tank (traded by a contractor for three pairs of boots) was not Cold Iron either.

A cloud of steam gushed from behind Beth, out through the open window, like a bit of fog that had escaped the rest down in the Bay. Beth’s head disappeared with a muffled exclamation; Kory waited a few moments to allow her to complete her shower, warm her body, and cool her temper. Then he returned to the house, following the tunnel he had created by asking the evergreens to interlace their branches above the path that ended at the lower entrance.

The townhouse was four stories in height, which had made Beth a little nervous in light of the recent earthquake. Kory had done his best to make the place as flexible as he could, given that he was working with materials and a plan that had been built nearly a century ago. He and Eric had removed every vestige of load-bearing brick and plaster, and had replaced them with conjured wooden siding on the exterior, and conjured wooden paneling within. He had worked on the supporting joists until they were supple but incredibly tough, gradually transforming them into something very like ancient briar; the whole dwelling
should
flex in a quake, but should not tumble down.

He really did
not
want to test that, however. With luck, they never would have to.

The bottom story was little more than a workshop and laundry-room. The workshop was new; he and Eric had added it. Kory smiled, recalling all the hours he and Eric had spent here, readying the house. They had strengthened the bonds between them, working together silently, sometimes with magery, and sometimes only with their hands.
Nesting
, Kory thought fondly. Domesticity suited the formerly footloose Bard. Not that he’d ever admit it.

The second story was public rooms, entered from below by the interior stair, and from the main street by a staircase to the front door, First from the front of the house was a huge room that Beth referred to as “the living-room,” which had been the single change they had made to the interior layout. They had knocked down walls between what had been a room Greg called “the parlor” used only to entertain guests, and a dining room, to make one huge room. It was a place Kory found very comfortable, full of light and air, and overstuffed futon-chairs and sofas. Behind that room was the kitchen, which Beth had pronounced “hopelessly outdated.” It too had been remodeled. The only things he had not been able to ken and reproduce had been the appliances. Fortunately, after he had seen all the work they had done up until that point, Greg had willingly bought those. Opposite the living room, on the opposite side of the entrance-hall, was the “media room,” with the overflow of Greg’s electronic toys: two televisions, a stereo, three kinds of tape players and a VCR machine. In back of the “media room” was a storeroom, still packed with wood, aluminum nails and wooden pegs, and the rest of their building supplies.

The third story was all living quarters; four bedrooms, including one master bedroom; two bathrooms. The fourth story had been servants’ quarters in the days when the house had been built; once again he and Eric had removed walls to make bigger rooms, four of them. One was a library, with floor-to-ceiling bookcases. One held their music and musical instruments. One was Eric’s retreat from the world, and one was Beth’s. When Kory felt the need for peace, he generally went out into the garden. Rain, fog, chill—these things meant very little to one of elven-blood. More important was being able to Feel the power-flows, to tap into the magic welling up from the nexus-points into Underhill.

Those here in the north had never been walled away, as they had in the south, in the place the mortals called Los Angeles. But they were not as strong, either. The elves who had settled Elffiame Mist-Hold were a different sort; less used to wielding powerful magic and much more used to blending in with the human world. Kory’s cousin for instance—Arvindel—he who had been second-born to the elves who had settled here on this western coastline—
he
actually worked among the humans, and no one the wiser. He was a dancer in the Castro District, and many were the humans who yearned after him when seeing him dance.

And Arvindel—he of the varied and capricious appetites—often indulged those yearnings. And just as capriciously dropped his conquests, afterwards.

“
Fickle
,” Kory had teased him.

“
Overfond fool
,” Arvin had replied, and half serious, more so than Kory.

There were no few of his own kind who looked askance at this close liaison with short-lived humans, may-flies, who would fade and die in the blink of an elven eye…

Kory shuddered away from the thought.
This is no day to worry about trifles like the future
, he told himself
. Particularly when a year ago you thought you had no future, and a scant few months before that you were spell-locked and Dreaming
.

Time, which normally had no meaning for elvenkind, had set its seal on him, if he was thinking in terms of “months” and “the future.” Well, a pox upon Arvin, and upon anyone else who thought ill of him because of it!

He ascended the staircase, to emerge in the kitchen just as Beth, head wrapped in towels and body enveloped in an enormous white terrycloth bathrobe, descended from the bathroom above. She shot him a look, he spread his hands in apology. “I crave your pardon, my lady,” he said, bowing a little to her, as he would to a lady of his own kind, “I fear I am but an airhead.”

Her mouth quirked in a smile, despite her attempts to keep that same smile from emerging. Finally, she laughed. “Elves,” she said to the air above her head. “Can’t live with ‘em, and there’s no resale value.”

Seeing that he had been forgiven, he shamelessly collected a kiss; a long, slow, sensuously deep kiss. She pushed him off—regreffully—a moment later, however. “No, you don’t,” she half-scolded. “We’ll never get to the Fairesite at this rate. Have you eaten?”

He nodded, then added, with a wistful expression, “But that was before dawn. I fear I may waste of famine e’er we reach the site—”

What he really
wanted
was to watch her work the microwave; an arcane creation that fascinated him endlessly—and which he had been forbidden to touch after popping all of their twenty-five packets of microwave popcorn in a single evening.

She raised an auburn eyebrow at him. “Where are you
putting
it all?” she asked, incredulously. “If I ate as much as you do, I’d look like the Goodyear blimp!”

Having no answer to that, he simply shrugged. She busied herself for a moment at the refrigerator, then put a plateful of frozen sausage-biscuits into the microwave. She set the machine, then stepped aside to towel her hair dry while they heated. Kory leaned back in his chair, admiring her. He liked her very much as a redhead; it was a good color for her. A pity that the change had been mandated by their attempts to fool those “Feds” that were haunting their footsteps. A pity too that she could no longer sport those “cutting-edge” hairstyles she had favored, as well. In an attempt to change her silhouette completely, Kory had told her hair to become auburn and curly, and had instructed it to grow—very fast. She now had a mass of red curls that reached to the middle of her back (which she complained about constantly), and she made him think of tales the older Sidhe told of Ireland and the fabled mortal beauties of old. He’d made a new Faire costume for her which included an embroidered leather bodice and boots to match, in black and silver, with a pure linen skirt and loose-woven silk blouse of lovely forest green. Since she had been well known in Faire circles for only making the briefest of concessions to the dress-code, this should throw off hunters as well.

He had made Eric’s hair into a mane of raven black; for the rest, the changes the young Bard had wrought in himself were enough to confuse pursuers. He no longer indulged in drugs or overindulged in alcohol, and he had added muscle in rebuilding this house. The result was something quite unlike the vague-eyed, skinny, sickly-looking creature Kory had first encountered. And in
his
new Faire costume, which matched Beth’s except that the colors were burgundy and silver, instead of black, he was quite an elegant sight. Kory’s own garb was of a piece with theirs, in scarlet and gold. The embroidered patterns matched, as did the placement, making it very clear to anyone who saw them together that they were an ensemble. Since neither Beth nor Eric had ever worked in a formal group at the Faires, that, too, should help to confuse things.

When they went out street-busking—which was how they had been paying for items like food and other necessities—they all wore their Faire boots and shirts, with jeans. The effect was striking, and caught quite a bit of attention for them down on the Wharf. Kory was quite proud that he had contributed in a material way to their success as buskers.

Danaan knew that his playing certainly wasn’t outstanding enough to do so. He was competent with drum and bones, but nothing more. And his singing voice, while pleasant, was not going to win any prizes either. Beth and Eric outshone him completely in both areas.

And when Eric exerted his full power as a Bard—coins and bills leapt into their hat.

Eric, however, was inclined not to use his power in that way unless it were direst emergency—as it had been during the first month of their escape from Los Angeles. He felt that it was a cheat, that people were not rewarding his skill as a musician, they were being hypnotized into giving him largesse. Kory silently applauded such a decision; it said a great deal for Eric’s growing sense of ethics. Beth sometimes seemed exasperated when he said things like that, but she also seemed to be pleased, if in a grudging way. Kory wondered often about Beth—how she could be so honorable, and then turn to and display an equally high ethical callousness. Eric just said that it was her television background, as if that explained it all.

Beth shook back her wild mane of curls with a grimace. “I can’t get used to this,” she complained. “It’s just so weird, having all this hair—” The microwave beeped then, and she pulled an oven mitt over her hand and took out the plate of biscuits.

Kory grinned. “Tis that, my lady, or be recognized. Wigs, they might expect—and hair-dye and curls. But not such a length, and obviously yours. True?”

“True,” she sighed, and put the plate down on the table, snatching a biscuit for herself and biting into it. “Very true. And I’m the one who keeps harping on the fact that we have to be underground. I just wish I knew another way of making a buck without coming out of hiding besides busking—everybody in L.A. knows I’m a musician, and somebody is bound to have let it leak.”

“But they aren’t lookin’ for a trio,” Eric yawned, shuffling sleepily through the door, and enveloped in a robe even larger than Beth’s. “And they’re a lot more likely to look for you with a rock-group than with a busker.” With all his newly-acquired muscle hidden beneath the bulky cloth, he looked as frail as he used to actually be. He kissed Beth between yawns, and gingerly picked up one of the biscuits, juggling it from hand to hand until it cooled off.

“That’s true,” Beth acknowledged, hugging him, and then pushing him into a chair. Eric was not a morning person in any sense of the word, and had been known to wander into furniture until he actually woke up. He smiled sleepily at Kory, who mimed a punch at him.

“Are you going to be awake enough to ride?” the elf asked him as he ate half the biscuit.

Eric nodded, and reached for the cup of coffee Beth was handing him. “With enough of this in me, I will be,” he said, after a swallow. Kory sniffed the tantalizing aroma wistfully; one mouthful would have put him in a stupor; one cupful might actually kill him—but it smelled so good.

Beth handed him a mug of cinnamon-hibiscus tea, which smelled nearly as good, and did not contain any of the caffeine that was so deadly to his kind. “He’ll be fine, Kory,” she said cheerfully. “He’s ridden up behind me plenty of times, you know that. You’d be amazed at what a good grip he has when we’re going sixty-five.”

“I still wish those things had seatbelts,” Eric muttered, but Kory suspected that Beth hadn’t heard him. He took another biscuit. “Are we changing here, or at the site?” the Bard asked.

“The site,” she replied, trying to get a comb through her hair. “I’ve got passes for us through the Celts as ‘Banysh Mysfortune,’ the name we auditioned under. So don’t tell anyone your real names unless they’re somebody I already cleared, okay? Even if you think it’s one of your best friends and they think they recognize you.”

Eric shook his head, and knuckled an eye. “I think you’re being overly paranoid, Bethie, but if that’s the way you want it…“ He shrugged. “I don’t have any best friends but you guys anyway—and if any of my old girlfriends showed up, I’d just as soon have an excuse not to recognize them. Are we doing the Celtic shows?”

Beth nodded; one of the first people she had contacted after their initial flight had been the head of the Celt Clan, a very resourceful gentleman, as Kory had seen when he’d met them at a Berkeley hamburger place. Evidently people in San Francisco—some of them, anyway—took the appearance of fugitives from the law on their doorstep in stride. He had been their chiefest help—had “networked,” was the word Beth used—gotten them in touch with others, and within a few days they had been settled into this townhouse and began putting new lives together.

At first, transportation had not been a problem; the BART system ran everywhere they wanted to play, and Kory could ride in the metal trains and buses, even though it was sometimes less than comfortable. He had rather enjoyed walking home from the stores with his arms loaded down with bags. It had been an entirely new experience. And, at first, things had been too precarious for them even to think about doing Northern Faire—making the house livable was taking up all the time they had to spare from street-busking. But as Faire-season loomed nearer for the second year of their tenure here, and Beth had realized that they could make a substantial amount of money if only they could get there, she had become increasingly anxious to find some sort of transportation that could take them outside BART’s magic circle.