Summoned to Tourney (36 page)

He saw panic in the human eyes, calculation in the elven, as they tried to figure out how much of the original vision might still come to pass.

“We have to stop it,” Kayla said. “Dr. Susan said it’d be a major quake, very bad. She thought it could collapse this complex; what would it do to the rest of the city?”

“We can’t stop an earthquake,” Beth said shaking her head. “Do you know how much energy is released in a quake? It makes an atomic weapon look like a bottle bomb. We can’t stop that. Nothing can stop that!”

“Not—not stop it,” Eric said, wishing that his eyes would allow him to focus on his friends. Beth was still a vague blur, and looking at the elves was even worse. “Deflect it. Send part of it south, L.A. can handle a small quake. Send the rest of it out to sea, where there’s nothing for a few thousand miles; a tsunami probably wouldn’t hit the Orient or Hawaii from here. I hope.”

“Even if it did they’d have hours of warning,” Kayla said. “Plenty of time to evacuate.”

“It’s worth a try.” Elizabet looked around at the elves, then back at Eric. “What can we do to help?”

“The Bard can gather all the energy we can give,” Dharinel said firmly. “Ours, and the circle’s.”

Beth closed her eyes for a moment. “They’re still going strong,” she said. “I don’t think they even noticed when I took out Blair.”

“I believe in his abilities now,” Dharinel said, with a nod towards Eric. “Perhaps our power, with the human witches, will be enough.”

Oh God, is it up to me again?

He picked up his flute and sat down unsteadily, Beth and Kory next to him. He closed his eyes, gathering his thoughts, trying to think how in the hell he was going to do this. Not without music, that was for sure.

Next time, I just want to call in the U.S. Cavalry. Or figure out a solution and send it FedEx to Washington D.C. I hurt too much to do this…

Like a distant echo, he heard the Mount Tam group singing. The melody was unfamiliar to him, but powerful, and he followed their lead, breaking away after several measures into an improvised counter-melody. He felt the magic brightening around him, and let his mind drift down, following the near-musical resonances of the Poseidon device to where the resonances gathered and built upon each other, far below the city of Hollister, many miles away.

He quailed when he saw what he faced. It was impossible. He saw the weight of the forces at play, far beneath the surface, and knew that there was no way their group could affect those vast pressures. It was completely impossible. In another few seconds, the pressure would build to the breaking point and smash the entire Bay Area with a rippling wave of destruction…

And he Saw the devastation that would bring; no Nightflyers this time, but whole neighborhoods flattened, people dead and dying. High-rise buildings breaking out in fires, trapping those who had survived inside the swaying structures. The face of Warden Blair, laughing. The man
and
the monster.

No! This is my city, my home. I’m not going to let that bastard win!

He reached out, in a way that he’d never thought to try before, to touch the others in the building around him, not just the elves and his friends, but the few remaining guards and personnel that hadn’t been evacuated. Carefully, not wanting to hurt them, he drew power from them as well, then reached out further, drawing in as many of the people of the city of Dublin as he could reach—

More, farther, the people of the cities along the East Bay, across the Bay to San Francisco, south to San Jose. People, people, the huge sprawling, brawling megacomplex of people, as diverse as any place on the face of the earth.

The city. The city itself was alive, had a soul, the soul of millions of people that lived in it and loved it and wouldn’t live anywhere else. And that soul had power as well. The power was deeper, more akin to the force building within the fault—and perhaps it would touch that force in a way nothing else could.

He cast the power down as quickly as he drew it, forcing the energies in the faultline to dissipate harmlessly outward, gently releasing the pressure from the merging continental plates. It was a fragile balancing act—

And a deadly one; it frightened him, knowing that if he faltered and held onto any of it for more than an instant, it would destroy him, a giant hand swatting a fruit-fly. Too much, too quickly… he felt caught in a vise, trapped between the pressures of the faultline and the searing magic that he channeled, suspended between the live wires of a million volts of electricity. There was no way to know whether this would work—to pause for a moment, even to check the faultline, would overset him, and he would lose his balance and his life.

Something… shifted… in the fault, and he felt it in his own bones—the rising wave of energy, the earthquake arcing out in all directions from the epicenter—he cast away the last of the magic that he was channeling, and yelled, “Hang on! Here it comes!”

The floor rippled underneath him, then vibrated sharply. He felt the rumbling turning his insides to water as the floor rolled beneath him, like a boat on stormy seas. He held onto Kory and Beth and waited for his nightmare to become reality, for the walls to crack and tumble down like the houses of San Francisco in his dream.

Suddenly, it was over. The hallway trembled one last time with a faint aftershock, then everything was quiet and calm again.

It’s… it’s over?
Eric asked himself, looking around. The elves and humans were staring at each other in disbelief.

“That—that was it?” Elizabet asked in an unbelieving tone. “That’s
all
?”

“I guess so,” Eric said, surprise in his voice.

“It worked.” Kayla grinned at him, and shot her fist ceilingward. “Yes! It worked! We did it! Yeah! Way to go, Eric!”

“Th-thanks,” he said. It was hard to breathe for some weird reason, and every muscle in his body seemed to be twitching. He thought about standing up and decided against it, just as everything tilted around him.

“Eric?” Kayla’s voice sounded very far away. “Eric, you okay?”

“Fine,” he tried to answer, but for some reason his voice didn’t seem to be working right, either.

“What is wrong with him?” he heard Korendil ask in alarm.

Eric felt the magic in Kayla’s hands, though he couldn’t seem to focus his eyes well enough to see the pale blue light that he knew was flickering over her hands. Kayla’s voice sounded closer, stronger. “Yeah. There’s just a hell of a lot of energy running through this guy, and it kind of overloaded his nervous system. At least, that’s what it feels like—touching him felt like sticking my hand in an electrical socket.”

What an image.
Eric thought of the commercial possibilities:Bard-O-Matic Fluorescent Light, just add magic. Barderator, take him on your camping trip and bring all your appliances. Compu-Bard, plug in your computer and use him as the backup power source.

Maybe he’d do better just to lie there and not worry about it. He felt terrible, and lying on the floor did seem like the best idea, at least for the next few minutes. This “saving the world” business wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, and certainly didn’t seem to be a very survivable hobby.

He lay there, half-awake or half-asleep, the healing energy warm and calming. He could almost breathe easily again, which felt marvelous. Other than that, he hurt too much to move.

Next time,
he decided,
we’ll just call Chuck Norris and the Delta Force. Or maybe Arnie. Or better yet, the IRS.

Kayla straightened at last, and Korendil breathed a sigh of relief. The Bard was barely conscious, but he was no longer shivering or so deathly pale. The young healer, on the other hand, looked tired and drawn, not much better than her patient. She stood up unsteadily, muttering some human curse under her breath. “Can we go home now?” she asked plaintively, and fainted.

Kory caught her easily, and the older healer was at his side a moment later, pressing fingertips to the young girl’s wrist and checking beneath her closed eyelids a moment later. “Someday she’ll learn,” Elizabet murmured, then spoke louder. “She’s all right, just exhausted.”

“We’d best leave this place before other guards arrive,” Dharinel said. He gestured at two of his warriors, one who lifted Eric easily, the other who took Kayla from Kory’s arms. “Help your other friend, Korendil,” the elven mage said quietly, glancing at Beth.

Kory walked closer to Beth, who was standing very still, her eyes distant. “Milady Beth, please walk with me,” he said, taking her hand. She did not answer, but followed beside him as the group began to retrace their steps out of this underground maze.

They had survived. That was the first and foremost thought in his mind, that though many had been wounded in the battle, either in body or in spirit—he glanced at Beth, who walked woodenly, eyes downcast—they had all survived, against all odds. Healing would come with time, at least for the physical damage. For the wounds of spirit, he had no way of understanding what would happen.

Beth had been hurt that way, as seriously as a sword cut to the vitals, and it was only now something that he was beginning to understand.

She had survived; how long until she could be healed?

CHAPTER 18:
The Pleasures of Home

Kory had thought he would never again feel as terrible as he had the day he had gone off to the bulldozed Fairesite to die. He learned differently in the next few moments.

No sooner did they reach the parking lot unmolested, than reaction set in.

Physically, while he was not wounded, he was as exhausted as it was possible to be and still remain on his feet. He had a headache from a blow one of the soldiers had dealt him on the head, combined with the unaccustomed exercise of feeding Eric with mage-energy. No, not a headache; the word was not adequate for what he was enduring. There was someone standing on top of his head with spiked shoes, while driving stakes into both eyesockets, as a third person pulled every muscle in his neck and shoulders tight and tied knots in them.

Emotionally, he was a wreck. There were the minor worries, of course, about what would happen to Susan, to Kayla. And he fretted about Eric, who looked as bad as Kory felt. He was sick with fear for Beth, who had not emerged from her silence in all the long walk to the parking lot. And there was the old fear, driven home yet again by this series of brushes with death.
Humans. They are so fragile, so easily hurt. And they die so soon. I love them, and in a few short years they will leave me forever…

Elizabet took one look at them all, and ordered them into
her
car, turning to face the waiting elvensteeds with the kind of look Kory associated with training dogs.

“You two,” she said sternly. “Go home. Go
directly
home. Invisibly. No excursions. No frightening the police. Got that?”

The bikes flickered their lights, and Kory got the impression of great disappointment. “Wait a moment,” he said, and they canted their wheels in his direction with a sense of anticipation.

“The humans are still in circle up on Mount Tam,” he pointed out. “Perhaps they could take Melisande and Arvin there to thank them, and let them know what has occurred? The countryside is a bit rough for conventional vehicles.”

Elizabet nodded. “That’s reasonable,” she said. “And a good idea. The others should recognize Sandy, at least. Once she kills the ears and eyes. All right, go on, then.”

Recognizing that the older healer had taken charge of the war-party, Lord Dharinel nodded to the two, who leapt onto the bikes and roared off into the darkness.

“With your permission, Lady Elizabet,” he said, bowing, his voice only a
little
ironic, “the rest of my people and I will go home Underhill or to our Groves. We have rest and healing to accomplish.”

So they did; while Kory was unwounded, that was not true of many of the others. None of the wounds were life-threatening, but many were serious, and while they had lost no one, the unspoken message was that it had been a very near thing.

Elizabet nodded, the irony in her gesture carefully gauged to exactly match that in Lord Dharinel’s voice. “If we could help you, we would,” she said. “As it is—”

“As it is you are fully as weary as we, having paid your portion in full, unstinted measure,” Dharinel replied. “We have somehow averted many tragedies this night, coming forth relatively unscathed. I come to the conclusion that there is value in working with mortals.”

Elizabet’s smile widened a little, making her look like a cat with a bowl of cream
and
a bowl of tuna in front of her—and a canary feather at one corner of her mouth. But, “Thank you, my lord,” was all she wisely said.

Dharinel, just as wise, bowed again, and led his forces out into the darkness, over the grass hills, away from the roads. Elizabet turned her attention back to her captives.

“You three in the back,” she ordered. “Kayla, you in the front.
Passenger
side.” For once Kayla didn’t object. She simply got in and leaned back against the seat with a sigh that spoke more of exhaustion than disappointment at being unable to drive.

Kory helped Eric in at one door, then got Beth installed in the middle of the bench seat. This was a newer car; mostly not of metal, and the bits of Cold Iron in the framework and engine were not enough to cause him discomfort.

He waited for one of the other four to say something after Elizabet took her place in the driver’s seat, but no one did. There was a bit of a stir back at the building they’d just left, but it never got as far as the parking lot. Finally, after they got past the gate guard without incident, he leaned back and closed his eyes, with no further distractions to keep him from his troubles.

Beth stared at the patch of road between Elizabet’s and Kayla’s shoulders, and flexed mental muscles to see if they still hurt.

They did.

She
hadn’t
gone into screaming hysterics when the quake hit; that in itself was something of a miracle. She wasn’t certain that she believed it even now. She still walked that tightrope between sanity and the abyss; it wouldn’t take much to shove her over. Not much at all, actually.