Summoned to Tourney (7 page)

He spent the evening wandering, too restless to settle down, too full of nervous energy to stay in one place for very long. He spent some time with the crowd in the entertainment room when Arvin gave them a free show to the
Rocky Horror Picture Show
soundtrack. Small wonder Arvin didn’t have to ken and replicate money! Even
here
he had people stuffing bills in his waistband. And Arvin finished the set with an even bigger harem than usual…

Eric grinned and wandered off. He danced a little, played a little, talked a lot—ate quite a bit. And drank almost nothing, which surprised him. It was as if he’d lost his taste for it.

Funny
, he thought, lounging back on the grass and watching Beth dance with Ian,
I never used to think it was a real party unless I’d gotten
stoned, drunk, or both
. It wasn’t as if there was any lack of opportunity; wine was more plentiful than soft drinks tonight, though there was nothing whatsoever with caffeine in it, as a safeguard against one of Kory’s folk accidentally getting a dose. Plenty of people had brought stronger stuff, and he’d had lots of those bottles offered to him. And he knew he’d smelled the green-sweet smoke of weed from the secluded areas of the garden.

I guess I’m having too much fun. I’d hate to miss any of this by being flat on my back—or flat on my stomach; I’ve done that, too
.

Gradually the crowd thinned; he found himself escorting people to the door and looked at his watch. He could hardly believe it when it read one a.m. But the kitchen clock agreed with it—and when he looked around, he realized that the only guests left had pointy ears and looked nowhere near ready to retire.

As if he had read Eric’s mind, Arvin turned away from the pink-punk elf-girl. “Anyone not in a condition to drive has been found a driver or has been put to bed upstairs. Beth I sent up to bed not five minutes ago. Kory needs but an hour or so of sleep—but you, mortal, will feel the effect on the morrow if you do not seek yon waterbed.”

Eric nodded reluctantly. “But—” he said, feeling as if he ought to at least make the motions of being a host.

“Go!” Arviri scolded. “Kory is host enough for us!”

He left, gratefully. Beth was already asleep, in her usual place in the middle of the king-sized waterbed. He stripped off everything but the cotton pants and took his usual place, on the right.

The sounds of the party—much quieter now—drifted up through the hall and the windows, He listened to the music for a moment, puzzled, trying to determine what record it was, when a sudden change in key and tempo made him smile. It wasn’t a record, of course, it was elves making music in the garden, blessing it and the house in their own peculiar way.

He fell asleep, still smiling.

Something awakened him, though he couldn’t remember what. A whisper of sound, like someone calling to him very quietly, from very far away.

:Bard, do you hear me?:

“No, I don’t,” he muttered to himself, trying to bury his head beneath a pillow. “Go away.”

He blinked once, looking around the dimly-lit room. Beth was still asleep, one arm flung out towards him, her hair in a wild tumble on the pillows. From downstairs, he could hear quiet elven voices… Koiy and his friends, talking in the kitchen. Eric glanced at the clock, and winced, closing his eyes again.
Three a.m.!

:Bard, do you hear me?:

He sat up abruptly, the waterbed shifting underneath him at the sudden movement.
:Yes, I hear you. Where are you?:

:Outside.:

He moved carefully off the waterbed, trying not to awaken Beth, and to the window. Outside, the street was shrouded in fog. Someone was standing outside on the sidewalk, barely visible through the mists, looking up at the house.

Several moments later, after pulling on the black silk robe that Kory had conjured for him, Eric was padding quietly down the stairs. He slipped past the elves in the kitchen and out the front door, still not certain why he didn’t want to tell anyone else about the unexpected visitor. The concrete was cold and damp against his bare feet.

And the stranger was nowhere in sight.

Great
, he thought.
Just what in the hell is…

He noticed it then, the strange, unnatural silence that had settled over the sleeping city. Like the world was holding its breath, waiting for something to begin.

In the distance, a dog barked. And another. A flight of birds, nesting in the oak tree next to the front door, suddenly took wing, wheeling overhead and screaming shrilly.

Something…something’s wrong…

He could feel it then, a low, rumbling noise that seemed to be growing louder. The ground rippled beneath his feet, rising gently like a wave, then falling. The front door began to rattle in its frame, at first quietly, then more insistently. Eric turned back to the house, took a step forward, and…

The earthquake hit in full force, hurling him to his knees. Everything was moving, panes of glass shattering like gunshots, the sidewalk cracking beneath his hands. Eric covered his head with his hands, trying to protect himself from a spray of flying glass as a pickup truck was shoved hard against the streetlight. With a rending crash, the house across the street ripped away from its neighbor, tilting slowly before collapsing into the next building.

As suddenly as it had begun, the rumbling ended. He could hear the wail of dozens of car alarms, but no other sound. A small aftershock rippled beneath him, then was gone.

He stood up unsteadily, and stared at the ruin of the street. Two of the houses had collapsed completely, while several others were canted at strange angles.

Something struck him in the small of his back, and he looked up to see plaster and wood falling from the fourth floor of his house into the street. The house began to fold in on itself, like a stack of cards in slow motion. He stared, too terrified to scream. Then someone shoved past him, climbing the wreckage of the house, screaming curses and prayers incoherently.

Himself.

The other Eric disappeared through a ruined window. He still stood on the street, frozen in shock. The streetlights flickered once, then went out, leaving everything in foggy shadows. A moment later, his duplicate climbed through the window, carrying an unconscious Beth. He set her down gently on the broken concrete, and immediately began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Blood was mixed with her long red hair, pooling on the sidewalk.

He stood there, unable to move. The other Eric slowly looked up at him, tears mixed with blood on his face. “You didn’t stop it, you bastard,” his other self whispered. “Kory’s dead in there, a Cold Iron nail through his face, and Beth’s dying…and you didn’t do anything to stop this!”

Something fluttered past the other Eric, a half-glimpsed shadow. Another, a touch of darkness, flitting past them.

He could see them now, the shadows in the fog. Nightflyers. Hundreds of them, moving down the silent street. They moved past him as though they couldn’t see him, circling around the other Eric, Beth still cradled in his arms. His double yelled in pain as one of the creatures brushed against him, and swung at it, not connecting with the lithe shadow. Another slipped by, with a delicate touch to his back, his exposed face. Others gathered at the edge of sight, drifting with the fog.

I can’t move—can’t do anything
—He tried to call a warding, something that would protect himself and the other, but the magic eluded him, just out of reach.
Dammit, Beth always told me to practice doing magic without using the flute, and I never did, and now we—and I—are going to die for it!

The night brightened with a burst of light as the other Eric summoned a Ward, his Bard magic blossoming before him. The creatures recoiled for a moment, silhouetted by the bright light, then closed in. The light flickered once, then vanished. The shadow monsters flitted aside; for a brief moment, he could see his own dead face, blankly staring. Then the Nightflyers turned to face him, radiating malevolence, their shadow-claws reaching…

“Eric! Wake up! Eric, please, wake up!”

He blinked, looking up into a pair of concerned green eyes. Kory moved back so Eric could sit up, and he realized that Beth was watching him, too. “Guys, I’m okay, it was just a bad dream.”

There was a frightened look in Beth’s eyes, something Eric rarely ever saw. “It’s the same bad dream, right?” she asked. “The same nightmare you’ve been having once a week for the past month.” She glanced at Kory, then back at him. “Want to talk about it, Eric?”

Houses collapsing down the street, Beth’s blood on his hands, the nightmare creatures closing in around him—
”No, I don’t want to talk about it. C’mon, it’s not a big deal. Just a nightmare.” He managed a laugh. “I should probably stop eating lunch at that burrito place near the Park. Their food would give anybody nightmares.”

“This isn’t funny, Eric!” He recognized that look in her eyes now…it had nothing to do with fear, it was that tough-as-nails Beth Kentraine that he knew and loved. “I’ll call a doctor tomorrow. Somebody has to figure what’s going on inside your head, love.”

“Of what value is a human physician?” Kory asked. “Eric is a Bard, not a normal person. There should be nothing wrong with him that he cannot cure himself.”

“We’re talking about something wrong up here, Kory—” Beth tapped the side of her head. “Humans have special doctors for that kind of thing. Psychiatrists. And even magic isn’t good for that kind of stuff… remember Perenor? He was crazy-psycho, a real nut case. His magic didn’t help him there.”

Kory’s eyes widened in horror. “Eric isn’t like Perenor! He could never be like Perenor!”

“I didn’t mean he was like Perenor, just that it’s the same kind of thing.”

“I don’t want to talk to a shrink,” Eric protested. “Beth, it’s just a bad dream!”

“A bad dream that you’ve had for over a month!”

“Look, I’ve talked to enough shrinks in my life, okay? I don’t want to see another one, ever.”

“Eric, I love you. I don’t want you to have to go to a psych. But something’s wrong, and you have to do something about it.”

“No shrinks,” Eric repeated stubbornly.

“We’ll talk about this in the morning,” Beth said, matching his stubbornness.

“Beth…” Kory began hesitantly. “You say this is a human thing, but could this have something to do with Eric’s magic? Some Bards have the ability to look into the future, or to call to others from the past…“

His own eyes, staring and lifeless—
”Kory. It’s only a dream. Maybe Beth’s got the right idea, maybe I’m nutso, but it’s still only a dream.”

“But Kory could be right.” Beth sat up suddenly. “Eric, have you ever used your Bardic magic to look into the future?”

“Bethie, I’ve only been a Bard for a year! Give me a break!”

She gave him a look. “Well, you could give it a try,” she said. “Take a look into next week and see if it turns out like your dream.”

Oh God, I hope not.
“Okay, okay, I’ll try it, if only so you won’t sign me up at the local psycho ward. Now, I think we all could use some more sleep, right?”

He lay there in the darkness, listening to Beth’s quiet breathing, the waterbed shifting as Kory turned over onto his side.

I can’t be seeing the future,
he thought.
That can’t be what’s going to happen to us. San Francisco destroyed, Nightflyers everywhere, all of us dead…

I won’t let that happen.

In his mind, he thought about a particular melody, light and airy: “Southwind.” A gentle tune, one that had always reminded him of quiet pleasures and warm evenings with friends. Good memories. That was the tune he would use to look into the future.

He could hear the lilt of the melody, adding just a touch of ornamentation at the end of the B part, a little trill to wind back into the melody. He imagined the way his fingers would press on the flute keys, the exact timing of his breath.

“Oh, what the hell,” he muttered, moving carefully so he wouldn’t wake Beth or Kory. “I’ll never be able to get back to sleep tonight anyhow.”

CHAPTER 4:
A Moonlight Ramble

Once upstairs, he retrieved his flute from its stand, then moved quietly down the stairs and out into the garden. There was one place that he loved most in Kory’s garden, a small stand of birch trees that circled a grassy area in a ring.

Eric sat down under the leafy trees, which had been scrawny saplings until two months ago, when Kory had “convinced” them to grow more quickly.

As always, he had the same sense that he had felt that night, years back, in the old oak grove at the destroyed Southern Fairesite, that feeling of magic lying just beneath the surface, woven into everything around him.

Just enough moonlight shone through the night fog to reflect off the flute as he brought it to his lips. It was his favorite kind of San Francisco night, the city finally quiet and sleeping as the fog swirled through it.

Little tendrils of fog moved around the trees; he could taste the fog, thick and damp, as he breathed in the night air. And over all of it was the sense of belonging; this place was his, this was his home.

He’d never felt that before, not during his childhood or all the years of traveling. Now, in the perfect stillness, he played for himself and for the sleeping city.

He frowned at the first note he played: fiat, and very thin. He adjusted the flute accordingly, and played another note, clear and vibrant, followed by the first few notes of “Southwind.”

The tune unfolded before him, lilting notes fading into each other. He concentrated on the tune, on the coldness of the flute’s metal against his fingers, on the way his lips shaped each note. After a few moments, the world faded from around him, and he was alone with the music, playing out his soul to the birch trees that bent closer to hear him.

All right
, he thought,
now let’s take a look Elsewhere.

He began weaving that into the tune, the future that he wanted to see, letting the dancing notes build it out of moonlight and fog. Suddenly, it was there, shimmering before him.