Gossamer Axe (37 page)

Siudb remains on the stone bench in the great hall, frozen, immobile. But though she cannot move, she can feel, and when she hears Chairiste’s words rolling into the palace through the open doors, her heart leaps.

Outside, Orfide is fighting for his life; inside, Siudb begins to wage another kind of war as she strives to work herself free of her magical bindings. Chairiste’s attack helps, for though terrifyingly loud, the music is nonetheless haunting and human and rooted in the same magic of release that Siudb so desperately needs.

Seizing upon fragments of melody, Siudb throws them against the spell, concentrating on the forefinger of her left hand. It rests against a string, long nail hooked over the bronze wire, immobilized in the act of striking. Her throat is unresponsive, but she is singing a silent counterpoint to the foreign words that batter the Realm:

Rowan finger, Oak finger,

Ecstatic finger twined with Ivy…

And, just as one of her guards shifts his position to stand next to her, the finger twitches itself free, flexes, sounds a note that is lost in Chairiste’s pounding music. The spell collapses, but Siudb stifles a cry of relief. Though they are disorganized by the painful volume, her six guards are nonetheless quite capable of restraining an unarmed woman, Gaeidil though she might be.

Cautiously, she examines the nearest Sidh. His eyes are glassy, his jaw clenched. Accustomed only to the soft whisper of Sidh voices and chime of harpstrings, he is unprepared for this onslaught.

But he is still armed, and I have no weapon. Glasluit, where are you?

An almost sacrilegious thought strikes her, and for several minutes she regards the small, stout harp on her lap. Its bronze wires glisten in the light of the torches, and the twenty-nine tuning pins stand like a row of spikes along the length of the harmonic curve.

One of her guards covers his ears and runs from the room. Five left.

She herself made this harp. She has wept over it, longed for it. By dint of untiring work, she has succeeded in becoming a harper. And now…

O my friend.

The harp seems to hear her thoughts. From the wood radiates a gentle reassurance.
Do it
.

A crescendo of sound tumbles through the room, and Siudb moves, rising suddenly, swinging the harp like a club into the face of the nearest guard. The blow is such that the harp shivers and splits, but the Sidh’s sword is already falling from his strengthless fingers.

Siudb is no master swordswoman like Scathach or Aife, the teachers of Cu Chulainn, but she knows how to fight, and the Sidh are soft and unused to the rigors of combat. Snatching the sword, she falls upon the guards; and soon all but one are lying motionless upon the ivory floor.

The last, though, is determined. “Come now, youngling,” he says. “ ’Tis best to stop this foolishness.”

The sounds of magical battle have died down outside, Siudb shakes her head in the freezing silence. “By all the Gods, you will see me dead first.”

“Come now—” But as he passes before a pillar, his words choke off. He stiffens. His eyes grow wide for an instant, and then he topples to the floor.

Glasluit stands behind him, his sword bloody. He regards Siudb for a moment, hangs his head. “I ran away.”

“You came back, and at the best time.”

“I ran away.”

Chairiste’s stricken voice carries into the hall: “Siudb, are you sure? After all this time, are you…” As grievous as her tone is to Siudb, the gentle reply from just outside the doors of the palace is even more unsettling, for it is her own voice, with a touch of Sidh inflection.

“Mother Goddess!”

Glasluit steps forward. “Orfide’s magic…”

They start toward the doorway, running, but a chord from an unknown instrument rises up like a wall of green water and smashes into the palace. It plows into them, dropping them to the floor. Glasluit is holding his head, crying out, his words buried in the music. Siudb struggles onward, crawling across the ivory, her nails breaking on the slick floor as she fights for handholds. “Chairiste!”

Judith stepped away from the door, her garments whispering in the hush that had fallen over stage and palace. Christa stretched out her hands. “Beloved…”

“I have come to say good-bye, Chairiste. I think it is better this way. You have lived in the mortal lands so long, and I have been in the Realm. I could not wait any longer. I had to take friends where I found them.”

Devi watched and listened. Both Christa and Judith were speaking Gaeidelg, but she understood: Christa’s work had gone for nothing.

It happened. It always happened. Devi herself, abused by her father, had been unable to trust enough for intimacy, and so had made a practice of non-involvement. But friends and acquaintances had supplied her with enough vicarious experience that she was hardly surprised when Christa’s lover had appeared only to deny her.

“Siudb, are you sure? After all this time, are you…”

Devi could see the grief cutting deeply into Christa’s face. It had cut her before, when she had cradled the dying Monica in her arms, but its strokes tonight were infinitely more telling, more cruel.

“I am sure,” said Judith. “You’ll find others you love, Chairiste. Be well. I must go now.”

Maybe, Devi reflected, this was better. Christa had always been someone who was unmistakably real, and her words and actions, in marked contrast to the rattling of the average rocker, invariably carried weight and substance. Judith was not like that at all. She had none of Christa’s presence and solidity. In fact, she seemed as unreal as the unreal Sidh, and if her sympathies had changed so easily, then—

Devi lifted her head suddenly. She was shouting before she could think. “Chris! This is a bunch of bullshit! That’s not Judith! That’s a fake!”

Christa turned, her face streaked with tears.

“You said nothing changes in the Realm!” Devi continued. “So how can she change enough to dump you? Orfide’s just trying to pull a fast one!”

The guitarist shook her head, stunned, uncomprehending.

Devi was already changing computer programs, calling up the full voice from every synthesizer she had and assigning them all to her main keyboard. She threw the volume faders all the way up and her hands descended on the keys. The chords she summoned were thick, ferrous, gritty with the crunch of overdriven guitar, fluid with pulsing waveforms.

Two licks, three licks, and the likeness of Judith became hazy. Another few seconds, and it faded entirely.

Devi stopped playing. “You son of a bitch!” she screamed at Orfide. “You keep dicking around with my friends and I’m gonna fry your ass!”

The bard seemed disconcerted for an instant, but he sat down again. His fingers went to his harp.

Devi felt the world shift around her, felt the touch of magic on her skin. She fought, but the stage and the palace both vanished, and their place was taken by something both familiar and frightening.

Her old bedroom. Her father’s house.

She was nine years old again, her fingers pudgy with baby fat. Standing in her nightgown, she stared at the slowly opening door.

“Hi, princess,” said her father. “Mama’s out shopping.”

“Get away from me.”

“Now, is that nice?”

“I blew off your hand,” she said, looking around for her keyboards, not finding them. “I’ll do worse this time.”

But her voice faltered. Though she knew that she stood on a stage in Gunnison National Forest, she was unaware of anything save her old bedroom. Orfide had trapped her in the past.

Her father moved quickly, grabbing her hands and shoving her back onto her bed, pinning her with the full weight of his body. “You’re going to be nice, or I’ll have to punish you.”

Was Christa helping? Was anyone?

My keys. Where are my keys?

Clothesline was being knotted about her wrists, her nightdress lifted. Large hands prodded at her body.

Her mind almost blank with pain, Devi fought the illusion in which she had been wrapped. Blindly, she reached out to the keyboard that lay, unseen, before her. She could not hear, but her fingers knew their way, and, haltingly, she started out with the rhythm of the song that had sustained her throughout her hellish childhood, added the solo…

The bedroom flickered. She had a glimpse of the stage. Christa was calling out to Melinda and to Lisa: “ ‘Light My Fire.’ Jump in with Devi.”

Orfide redoubled his efforts, but though the bedroom came back, it was transparent now, an overlay through which Devi could see her friends fighting to help her. Her childish wrists were pinned, but her adult hands were loose, and the Doors’ song flowed ever more freely.

Devi’s father lifted his head, met her eyes. Behind his face was that of Orfide.

“All right, you bastard,” she said. “You’re on my turf now.”

And with flourishes and fills, she tore the image of her father apart, bundled the bloody shreds together, and threw them at the bard. Stomping on her volume pedal, she sent the arid, precise butchery of her solo into the Realm and watched the Sidh run for cover.

Orfide, eyes closed, brow knotted, played on, a trickle of blood winding down his cheek.

The massed chords are gone, but what has taken their place is worse, and the music from the unknown instrument is a knife in Siudb’s ears as she staggers to the door of the palace. Orfide and Lamcrann stand in the courtyard, but her eyes are drawn to a place of light and brilliance beyond the Realm.

For a moment, she hardly recognizes her lover. Her red hair a shaggy mane of curls and spikes, her body clad in black leather and flashing studs, Chairiste might well be twisting her strange instrument in her bare hands, wringing sounds from the wood and steel as though from her own heart. A few minutes ago there was despair in her voice, but now her face is set, her eyes hard and unyielding. She chops out chords, shrills harmonics, and, with seeming indifference, blasts away large chunks of the palace, knocking off towers, splintering doors and windows, fragmenting walls and buttresses.

Christa’s voice rolls across the debris. “Give her up!”

Orfide shakes his head, continues. There is desperation in his playing now, and he claws at the harpstrings, his nails cracked and broken, his fingers bleeding.

One of the women with Chairiste—black-haired and slight, but standing as tall as the High King’s champion—sees Siudb, smiles, lifts a fist in salute. Her costume is bizarre, but her smile tells the Gaeidil everything.

“We must run,” Glasluit shouts above the hurricane of sound.

“We cannot,” relies Siudb. “The years await us on the far side of the gate. I am not sure what they will do to you, but I know they will kill me.”

“Then let us put an end to this foolishness.” Lifting his bloody sword, Glasluit steps toward the bard.

Orfide, though, has seen them. A few feet from the bard, the lad halts, paralyzed. His flesh begins to melt from his bones, running down to the pavement in streams of phosphorescence. He cannot move, he cannot speak, but his eyes are full of screams.

Siudb tries to go to him, but she is knocked away as though by a fist. Stunned, she falls against a pile of rubble, and as she struggles to her feet, she has a last look at Glasluit’s face before the flesh sheets off it and leaves him to stare pleadingly out of a bare skull. He falls, smoking, and his remains smolder slowly.

Two of the guards seize Siudb and disarm her. Orfide is on his feet. “I will do the same to your lover unless you withdraw, Chairiste Ní Cummen.”

“Try it.” Chairiste stands now at the border of the Worlds, commanding, implacable. “Try it, ghost among ghosts.”

“ ’Twill be your woman who is a ghost.”

“Try it.” Chairiste’s hands are already moving, playing down a barrage of sound. The very foundations of the palace tremble, and an entire wing collapses as Orfide rushes to counter.

Melinda tried to keep her mind on her playing, reminding herself that Christa knew more about her opponents than anyone else. This was a gig, she told herself.

Christa had been talking to the bard in Gaeidelg, but now she went off again into fast-changing improvisations. Melinda knew the guitarist’s style and how she put chords and scales together, and she followed with her bass, supporting the music, lending strength to the woman who had taught her the ways of the harp… and saved her life.

The stage was alive with energy that crackled in Melinda’s hair, sparked from her bass strings, tingled up her hands. But as the music went on, as Orfide clawed at his harp, as Christa lunged into mazes of rarefied diminished chords, Melinda wondered where she was going to be tomorrow. Dead? Maybe. She had seen what had happened to Judith’s friend. But it seemed to her more likely that, her usefulness at an end, she would find herself alone, without a band, without friends, without guidance.

It made sense. Christa could not possibly have replaced her in the few weeks between Beltaine and Midsummer, and so, quite logically, had allowed her to stay on as a tame puppy who could be depended upon to come when called, to respond gratefully to a dog biscuit, to play bass when needed.

’
Tis true
, a voice seemed to whisper in her ear.
She will be done with you tomorrow, and then you can go back to your little apartment, and your insomnia, and your Led Zeppelin records, and no one will hear from you ever again
.

Tears were starting from Melinda’s eyes, and the scar on her heart threatened to split wide open.

No one at all, until the police find you with your wrists cut open, of course.

Melinda faltered. The bass line went wide and dropped out. Christa glanced back at her, startled, and Orfide’s energy surged toward the stage.

But then Melinda saw the bard looking straight at her, and she suddenly knew the origin of the voice and the despair. Madness, Christa had said. physical death was the least worry.

Melinda’s spirit, broken since Beltaine, rallied abruptly. The bass line came back. “No way, guy,” she muttered to the voice. “I can hack this shit. Chris is my friend. She stuck with me. And I’ll be damned if I’ll let her down now!”

Christa looked back again, and Melinda, eyes blurry with tears, gave her a nod.

“Love you, Chris,” she mouthed.

Christa’s smile was like a warm embrace, and Melinda felt herself coming back. Maybe she was a fuck-up, but it seemed that, in Christa’s world, fuck-ups got another chance.

Pumping out a cannonade of bass notes, she fired Christa’s harmonies straight at the Sidh bard.