Chrome Circle Serated Edge Book 4
by
Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon


CHAPTER ONE

Gently bending the speed limit, eh?  Turnpikes were fine things, out
here in the Southwest; long stretches of arrow-straight macadam where
you could really burn up some hydrocarbons.  With one eye on the radar
laser detector and one ear on the CB radio, Tannim was confident there
weren't too many Smokies, plain brown wrapper or otherwise, that he
wouldn't know about long before he had to back down.

Heat waves distorted the landscape on either side of the Mustang, and
made false-puddles on the asphalt ahead.  Tannim had forgotten how hot
it was in Oklahoma at the end of May, and how intense the sun-glare got
by midmorning.  Despite the protection of his ultra-dark Wayfarers, he
still squinted against road-shimmers, the glare of sunlight off the
metal and glass of other vehicles, and the occasional flash from
reflective debris beside the road.  In Savannah, Georgia, it was still
spring; here it was already summer, and the long grass in the median
showed the first signs of sun-scorch.  Not as much as there would be by
the end of June, but enough to make the ends of the cut stems
noticeably brown, even at the speed he was moving.

One good thing about traveling by day.  No ghosts.  Usually.  He
wouldn't have been entirely surprised to have seen a weary spirit
trudging along the shoulder, equally weary ox beside it, pulling a
wagon that would not have been much larger than the Mach I Mustang he
drove now, laden with all the worldly goods the long-dead pioneer
owned.  Or an Osage or Cherokee, trying to defend the last corner of
the homelands he'd been promised.

He chuckled at his overactive imagination.  In all the times he'd
driven this stretch of the turnpike, he had yet to see a ghost, and he
wasn't likely to this time, either.  Not unless there was another Ross
Canfield somewhere down the road, existing in an endless loop of time
and replaying the mistake that got him killed, over and over again
until Tannim or someone like him happened by to free him.

Shoot, by now, Deke Kestrel's cleaned up every highway ghost between
here and Austin.

The Mach I's air-conditioning worked overtime against the heat outside
the car.  This morning in the motel outside Little Rock, the weatherman
on CNN had predicted temperatures in the upper 90s for all of Oklahoma.
Tannim suspected it was closer to 110 than 90, at least out here on the
open road with no shade.  He recalled working on his first cars in heat
like this, spending every free moment during the school year and most
of his summers out in his old barn, with no ac and scarcely a breeze to
dry his sweat.  He'd come a long way from that barn, and the kid with
all the dreams.  Never had the dreams included anything like what had
really happened.

Funny, when I was a kid, I thought the things I "saw" were nothing more
than oddball hallucinations, entertaining as hell, but no big deal.
Like an imaginary friend, only better, some a lot sexier than any
imaginary friend a high school kid would imagine.  I just chalked it up
to puberty, but they're still on my mind.  Hell, back then I even
thought Chinthliss was an "imaginary friend," and I figured that still
seeing him just meant I had a better imagination than everyone else.
Until the spring dance, I never knew it was all real.

How old had he been?  Young enough to think he knew everything; old
enough to impress that visiting writer playing chaperone with his
"maturity."  Then things at the dance got ugly.  Somebody there was
using the emotions as a power source.  I noticed, and so did that lady
writer Tregarde?  Was that her name?  She not only saw what I saw, but
knew it was trouble.  An adult, seeing it as sure as I did.  It wasn't
my own little fantasy anymore.  Showed me I'd have to stop playing
around with magic, or it'd eat my lunch.  He'd had a long talk with
Chinthliss that sleepless night.  Given how things looked on the
surface, intensive psychotherapy seemed like a fine option until his
not-so-imaginary friend had confirmed it all.  The magic he'd been
playing with was real; the things he'd been seeing were real.  In pilot
parlance, it was time to get out of the simulators and take a real
stick, or give it up.  I grew up on heroes; I opted for taking a shot
at becoming one and doing something about the bad guys.  Clever me, I
thought that just having magic would let me take care of everything.
Always happened that way in the comics.

Since then, he'd seen things no "rational" person believed in anymore;
he'd been shot at and beaten up and chewed on as his often-aching left
leg reminded him by creatures nobody'd ever heard of outside of myths
and horror movies.  The magic had brought him good times, too, but
plenty of moments when he wished he'd never taken the particular path
his life was on.  Sometimes he wondered if it had been worth it.  If
the green-eyed kid had known what was going to happen to him, would he
still have gone for it?  Or would he have sold off every piece of
chrome, burned his little notebooks, and gone into accounting?

Well, maybe not accounting.  Maybe art, like my folks thought I
would.

His eyes itched, and he groped reflexively for the package of
antihistamines on the seat beside him, popping one out of the foil and
into his cupped hand without taking his eyes off the road.  This was
the time of day when people suffered highway hypnosis, especially
people in cars with no ac; more than once he'd had someone in front of
him start to swerve into his path as they dozed off.  And there were
always the "Aunt Bee" and "Uncle Josh" types, who thought forty-five
was way too fast to be driving; you could come over one of the
deceptively gentle rises and be right on top of them before you knew
it.  Especially out here.  But the double-nickel was just too slow, and
the sixty-five limit wasn't much better.

He washed the bitter pill down with lukewarm Gatorade, and tossed the
now-empty foil packet in the back seat with its crumpled brethren.
Hopefully the pill would kick in before his nose started again.

Right.  Your Majesty, may I present the Incredible Hero Mage with the
dribble-nose.  He'd learned pretty quickly that magic was like any
other ability you needed to be aware of it to use it, and not only did
it not solve everything, it didn't solve most things.  It was about as
miraculous as a lug wrench.  Hell, he couldn't even cure his own
allergies with it!

He never had any trouble remembering why he'd left Oklahoma; his
allergies never failed to remind him, usually long before he crossed
the state line.  He sighed and downed another mouthful of his drink.
The planet must dump every substance I'm allergic to on the state when
I head this way.  The only good thing about his allergies was that by
the time he graduated from high school, they were so bad that he needed
no excuse to leave the family farm.  Not when I can't get within twenty
feet of a cow without my eyes swelling shut.  Never mind that the
antipathy between Tannim and farm animals seemed to be mutual.  Cattle
took a perverse pleasure in chasing him, geese hated him on sight,
chickens went out of their way to shed feathers on him, and as for
horses

The only horses that don't try to flatten me come under sheet metal
hoods.

That was most of the reason for his sinking feeling of dread as he
approached the outskirts of Tulsa, headed ultimately southward toward
Bixby.  His father's last several letters and phone calls for the past
year had all been about the changes he was making.  Since he had
resigned himself to his son's career-track in car testing and racing
and Tannim was not expected to take over the family farm, his father
had decided to turn the farm into something more lucrative.  Not
incidentally, it was also now more likely to sell when he retired.  The
old homestead was no longer a farm, it was a ranch.  A horse ranch.
Doing well, too, it seemed.

Quarter horses.  Just what I need.  They're going to take one look at
me, and I know what they'll do.  Tannim had never once gotten within a
foot of a horse without it stepping on him, kicking him, biting him, or
attempting other assorted mayhem on his person.  Dad would expect some
help, even if it meant that Tannim had to take allergy pills until he
was stony.  Well, Al told me that Joe likes horses.  Maybe I can talk
him into helping Dad out, and getting me off the hook, at least until
we can head back to North Carolina and Georgia.

Young Joe was the other reason for this trip, besides the Obligatory
Familial Visit, though the connection between the young man who now
called himself "Joe Brown" and Tannim was a convoluted one.

Yeah.  Once upon a time.

It all started with Hallet Racetrack.

Hallet International, the small and slightly silly monument to the
desire of men and women to hurl their bodies as quickly as possible
around a loop was not all that far from Tulsa, or more importantly,
Bixby, where the old family farm stood.  And last summer, Hallet was
where two Fairgrove Industries mechanics had been sent to help out in
track-testing the first Fairgrove foamed-aluminum engine block to leave
their hands.

Fairgrove also "employed" Tannim as a test-driver, mechanic, public
relations, and general "outside" man.  Or, as Rob had called him, a
"gentleman flunkie."  He also drove for their SCCA team, but he'd have
done that without the pay.

So far, so good.  Ordinary enough; plenty of racing concerns had a guy
who was that kind of jack-of-all-trades.  And plenty of racing concerns
hoped to become big enough one day to field engines or parts of them to
other teams.  But that was where the ordinary took a sharp right and
snapped at the apex.

One of those two Fairgrove mechs that had found themselves out in the
heart of Oklahoma just happened to be a Seleighe-Court Sidhe.

In other words, Alinor Peredon, "Al Norris" to the real world, was a
genuine, pointy-eared, long-haired, green-eyed, too-pretty elf-guy,
just like the kind that clogged sci-fi bookstore shelves and played
Tonto in the comic books.  So, too, was the head of Fairgrove, one
Keighvin Silverhair, Tannim's long-time friend and employer.

The other mech, a laconic fellow by the name of Bob Ferrel, was human
enough but he just happened to be a wizard.  A minor wizard, whose
magics mostly had to do with making engines purr like kittens, but a
wizard nonetheless.

Not that he's in my league, but he isn't bad in his own area.  Al's
better, of course, but you don't dare send an elf out into the Land of
the Mundane without a human helper to keep him from blowing his cover.
They may be competent enough Underhill, but out here in the wild world,
they're rubes.

Perhaps if Tannim had been sent along on that little junket, things
would have turned out differently.

Then again, maybe not.  Some way or other, though, I'd have wound up
with severe bodily injury.  I always do.  Why is that?

Somehow Alinor had gotten himself mixed up with a desperate mother, her
kidnapped and mediumistic child, and a looney-tune preacher.  The
preacher called himself "Brother Joseph," and manufactured bargain-rate
zealots that made skinheads look like cupcakes, and called his little
social club the "Sacred Heart of the Chosen Ones"..  . . add in a
Salamander from the era of the Crusades, the ghost of a murdered child,
and a bigger bunch of incendiaries than the Branch Davidians.  Naw, I
don't think anything would have been any different if I'd been there,
aside from my hospital bills.  The situation was too unstable.  The
Feds would still have moved in, and the Salamander would still have
blown things sky-high.  Nasty creatures.

Alinor and Bob had to handle the whole mess on their own; Keighvin
Silverhair and Tannim had their own fish to fry at the time.  A
spiteful bunch of Unseleighe Court creatures had made themselves
nuisances over a crucial period out at Roebling Road Racetrack in
Georgia.  They'd almost cracked up the Victor GT prototype, and they'd
managed to cream Tannim's good knee while they were at it. 
Coincidence? Maybe; maybe not.  The Unseleighe had ears and eyes
everywhere; like Murphy's Law, they always chose the worst possible
time to act.

For the most part, Al and Bob had handled it all very well.  Alinor had
been rather sloppy towards the end, though; he'd had to play fast and
loose with the memories of several of the humans involved, and he'd had
to do a quick identity switch on himself.  But by and large, there
hadn't been too many loose ends to deal with, and most of those had
been taken care of within a month.

All except one: young Joe, the teenage son of the lunatic preacher
Brother Joseph, a boy who had taken his own life in his hands to expose
the crimes going on in his father's compound.  He'd turned informer
partly out of a revolted conscience, but mostly hoping to save the
little boy Al had been looking for Jamie Chase, the kid who'd been
kidnapped to the cult by his own father.

When everything was over, Al had forgotten there would be one person
around who still knew something about the supernatural goings-on.  He
couldn't really be blamed for that.  He was a mechanic, not a military
strategist or superhero.  Young Joe still had unclouded memories, and
he had no relatives, nowhere to go.  For the short-term, the Pawnee
County Deputy Sheriff, Frank Casey, had been willing to take the boy
in.  Joe was eighteen barely but did not have a high school diploma and
was not particularly well socialized.  Frank felt the young man
deserved that much help.

Young Joe had seen a little too much for his own peace of mind, and not
enough to keep him from getting curious once most of the furor had died
down.

Turned out that he was both curious and methodical.  It wasn't hard for
him to find out some of what had gone on, not when his little friend
Jamie Chase and Jamie's mother Cindy were spending a lot of time with
Bob at the track.  Between one thing and another, he'd managed to
ingratiate himself with Alinor and Bob before the test runs ended, and
that was when they discovered that the kid was a potential wizard
himself.  He was telepathic and also had that peculiar knack with human
machines that Bob, Al, and Tannim shared.

Now, there were several options open to them at that point, including
shutting his newly awakened powers down.  But while he was not quite a
child, he was still close enough to that state to qualify for elven
assistance, at least so far as Alinor was concerned.

Alinor had an amazingly strong streak of conscience, and was quite a
persuasive master of argument when he put his mind to it.

He had stated his case, articulately and passionately, to his liege
lord, Keighvin Silverhair.  In the short form, Al wanted "Joe Brown"
brought into the Fairgrove fold, as many other humans had been in the
past.  Bob backed him up.  They both felt the kid had earned his way
in; certainly Jamie would have been dead two or three times over if Joe
hadn't protected him.

Joe sure was emotionally and spiritually abused by his old man, which
qualifies him for help as far as my vote goes.  Poor kid.  I wouldn't
have wanted to go through what he did for anything.  Then you figure
out what he must have felt when they told him that the compound went up
and that the Feds shot it out with his dad and killed him.  Poor Joe;
everything and everyone he knew either went up in smoke or is rotting
in a federal pen.  And rescuing that little Jamie kid by going public
and turning his nut dad in that took some real guts.  From all Al said,
the cult played for keeps; people like that usually find ways to deal
with "traitors."  Permanently.

Keighvin listened and Keighvin agreed, allowing Al and Bob time enough
in Oklahoma to reveal something of their true natures to the boy.  If
he accepted them, he could be invited to join the human mages, human
Sensitives, and elves of Fairgrove Industries.  That organization was
loosely affiliated with SERRA the South Eastern Road Racing
Association, which itself had more than a few non-mortals and
magic-wielders in its ranks.  And if he freaked, they would wipe his
memory clean, shut his powers down, and let him go join the normal
world.

Joe didn't freak; in fact, he was relieved to find some kind of
explanation for what had happened at his father's compound.  Either the
kid was very resilient, or this was a side effect of being taught so
many half-baked, conflicting notions that nothing really seemed
impossible anymore.  Bob was convinced that the kid would make a
first-class Sensitive and a fine assistant to Sarge Austin back at the
Fairgrove compound.  Sarge would make a good role model and father
figure for young Joe; a true rock of stability, with honest, simple
values.  The one place where Joe had actually been happy was military
school working under Sarge should do wonders for him.  The only
potholes in the road were the facts that the kid was barely eighteen,
being watch dogged by the Feds, under the temporary guardianship of the
local sheriff, and they couldn't just kidnap him.

So they reached a compromise, worked out with Frank Casey: Joe would
finish his last year of high school in Oklahoma, so that he had a
genuine diploma.  When he graduated, someone would come from Fairgrove
to pick him up with a "job offer."  And meanwhile, Al and Bob would
keep in touch with him through letters, phone calls, and occasional
visits, by means both mundane and arcane.

Enter Tannim, who hadn't been back home in more than a year.  The elves
felt very strongly about the ties of kith and kin, and took a dim view
of people who treated such things carelessly.  Around about March,
Keighvin had begun to hint that it would be a good idea for Tannim to
"spend some time with his family."  By the end of March, the hints had
turned about as subtle as a ten-pound sledgehammer upside his head.

In April, Tannim thought he might get off the hook; a major disaster
Underhill and in the more mundane lands of North Carolina had left
Elfhame Outremer in ruins and all of the Seleighe Court in shock.
Virtually everyone on the East Coast was needed to help put the pieces
back together again.  But by the middle of May, with Joe about to
graduate, Keighvin's hints turned into an order.  Tannim would go visit
his family, and while he was there, he would pick up young Joe and
bring him back to Fairgrove.  But not until he had spent at least two
weeks in the family bosom.

Go rest, he says.  Spend time with your family.  They miss you; they
need to know you're all right.  Relax, he says.  Like I'm going to be
able to relax around my parents!  I can't tell them more than a tenth
of what I really do!  And good old Chinthliss if he gets wind of the
fact that I'm not busy, he'll want to show up, and the last time he
showed up

"Hiya, boss!"

Tannim yipped in startlement and rose straight up in his seat, narrowly
avoiding running off the road.  He was no longer alone in the Mach I.
Lounging at his ease in the bucket seat next to him was James Dean,
famous boyish good looks, Wayfarer sunglasses, red leather jacket, and
all.  There was just one small addition: in fancy chrome over the right
breast of the jacket was a tiny logo composed of two letters.

FX.

"Mind if I come along for the ride?"  Foxtrot X-ray asked with a
lopsided smile.

Tannim calmed his heart and his temper with an effort.  There was no
point in getting mad at Fox; the Japanese kits une-spirit operated by
his own rules.  There was no point in complaining.  Fox wouldn't
understand why Tannim was upset.  And Fox was good-hearted.  He'd done
Tannim plenty of favors since they'd met.

"Can anyone see you but me?"  Tannim demanded, his attention torn
between his sudden passenger and the road.  Having a James Dean
lookalike along was going to complicate an already complex situation..
..

Why couldn't I just be gay?  It would be a lot easier to come out of
the closet than to explain any of this to my parents..  ..

"Of course not!"  Fox replied.  "Why?  Do you want to show me off? That
could be fun "

"No!"  Tannim shouted.  "No, I do not want anyone else to see you!  Not
my parents, not the neighbors, not the people in the next car "

"Oh, they won't be able to see me," Fox said, shrugging dismissively.
"I don't know whether your parents have the Sight, but even if they do,
I can keep them from seeing me if you really want.  They won't think
I'm real, and that's half the battle.  Half the fun, too!"  Fox cracked
a vulpine grin.  "But what about that kid you're supposed to pick up?
He could probably see me even if I shield from him, unless I made a
point of not coming around while he's with you.  That could be fun,
too.  I could make it a game.  You sure you want me to stay hidden?"

Tannim paused a moment before saying anything, thinking hard.  It could
be useful to have Fox appear to Joe could it cause problems as well?

"I don't know," he said finally.  "Just do me a favor and stay out of
sight until I get a feel for the situation, all right?"  It was useless
to ask Fox to just go away; there wasn't a chance in the world that he
would if he thought Tannim was going to be doing anything really
interesting.  Fox had more curiosity than a zoo of raccoons, and every
resource imaginable to indulge that curiosity.  There was no place
here, Underhill, or in any plane known to Tannim, that the charming and
often annoying fox could not go.  He was not a powerful spirit, as
power was measured among such beings, but what he had, he used
cleverly.

Fox sighed and shrugged his leather-clad shoulders.  "I 'spose so," he
said with some reluctance.  "It won't be as much fun, but I 'spose so.
Hey, how 'bout some tunes?"

Glad for something to distract his uninvited passenger, Tannim fumbled
for the still-unfamiliar controls of the CD player in the dashboard.
Not exactly stock equipment for a '69 Mach I, but then, neither were
the in-dash radar-detector, the cassette player, the CB, the
police-repeater scanner.  Tannim had never been one to let authenticity
get in the way of gadgetry.

Even if he had been, this CD player, gift of a friend, would still have
become the crown jewel in his dashboard.

Donal, my friend, I never jack up the volume without honoring your
memory.  Miss you, pointy-ears.

He'd forgotten what he'd left in the player, but the first bars told
him.  Icehouse.  "Great Southern Land."  Appropriate.  Fox certainly
appreciated it; he slouched down in his seat with every appearance of
pleasure, propped his black fox-feet on the dash, and surveyed the
rolling hills beyond the window.  An Australian "digger" hat appeared
from nowhere to cover Fox's head.

"So, where are we going?"  the kits une asked innocently.  "For that
matter, where are we?"

"Oklahoma," Tannim said in answer to both questions.  Fox's brow
wrinkled in puzzlement.

"Isn't it supposed to be like flat?"  he asked.  "No trees?  Covered in
dust?"

Since that was what virtually everyone said, Tannim only sighed.  Fox
wasn't stupid; he had perfectly good eyes.  "If you want flat and
treeless, I'll take you to West Texas," he said.  "Not everything's the
way you see it in the movies.  Most things about Oklahoma are filmed
out in California anyway."  He had no idea if that was really true or
not, but it probably was.

"Except UHF," Fox reminded him with glee.  "Supplies!"

Trust a Japanese kits une to remember an obscure Asian joke from a
Weird Al Yankovic film, Tannim thought, grinning in spite of himself. 
"Okay, you're one up on me.  How about sitting back and enjoying the
ride while I get us through Tulsa rush hour?"

"Tulsa rush hour?  Both cars and a mule?"

Tannim smirked.  "Just you wait, silly fox."  * * * They survived rush
hour, although Tannim had never been able to get used to the
schizophrenic traffic patterns even when he still lived here.  The mix
of granny drivers too timid to merge, urban cowboys determined to prove
their macho behind the wheel of their pickups, guys who'd stopped off
for "one for the road" before heading home after work, midwest Yuppies
in Range Rovers, and people who just plain shouldn't have been allowed
in the driver's seat all made for some white-knuckle maneuvering.  By
the time they escaped the stream of traffic headed out of the city
toward Broken Arrow and outlying bedroom communities, Tannim's tangled
hair was sweat-damp and he had to force the muscles in his hands to
relax.

No way am I going to go through this on the way back.  I'll wait until
after dark and start the drive at night.  I'm a race car driver, I
don't need commuter craziness.  It's too damned dangerous.

Fox wasn't the least bit perturbed, which was aggravating.  Then again,
if there was an accident, Fox wouldn't have to stick around and suffer
the consequences of someone else's stupid driving.  I've been in fights
that were more relaxing.

Never mind.  The last of it was behind him now.  In a few more minutes,
he'd have an entirely new set of problems to worry about.

"Don't try to talk to me when my folks are around, okay?"  he said to
Fox.  "Don't try to crack me up, don't make faces at me, don't play
practical jokes.  Don't try to distract me.  Whatever you think about
doing while they're there, don't."

"Would I do that to you?"  Fox replied, all injured innocence.

"Yes," Tannim said shortly, and left it at that.

Fox pouted.  Tannim ignored it.

Hi, Mom.  Hi, Dad.  Look what I brought home.  Oh God, all I need now
is for Chinthliss to show up.

He resolutely put the thought away, because sometimes simply thinking
about Chinthliss would conjure him up.

No.  I do not need that.

Finally, with a mixture of anticipation and dread, he turned down a
county section-line road running between two windbreaks of trees.
Beyond the trees were fields that hadn't seen the touch of a plow in
decades, dotted with the fat brown backs of grazing cattle.  The road
itself was bumpy and pitted; they didn't exactly pave roads out in the
county, they just laid asphalt over what ruts and holes were already
there, and hoped it wouldn't wash out too soon.  As long as it stayed
flat enough that VW-swallowing valleys didn't form, it would usually
do.

He crossed two more section-line roads, ignoring the rough ride.  Not a
lot of money in the county budget for fixing these roads.  Well heck, a
few years ago they hadn't even been paved, just graveled, and wasn't
that hell to drive on?  The blackened remains of an old barn loomed up
on his right out of a sea of uncut grass, and he averted his eyes.
That, if anywhere, was the place where his current odyssey had begun,
in the ruins of that barn, and his budding "business" of restoring
cars.  If the barn hadn't burned, would he be the person he was now?

Rhetorical question.  One that did not need answering.  One thing led
to another, and if one path was not taken, who was to say that another
would not have brought him to the same end?

One more section-line road, and then a bright red, oversized mailbox
with "Drake" in reflective letters on the side, and "RT 4 Box 451"
appeared on the left.  It was his father's little surprise for
mailbox-bashers; it was really two mailboxes, a smaller one inside a
larger, with a layer of concrete poured between them.  Anyone who hit
that with a bat was going to regret it, and anyone who tried to run it
over with a truck was going to be a very unhappy camper.  Depending on
whether they were driving a tall truck or a short one, it would end up
in their radiator or in their laps.

He signaled, and turned into the gravel drive.  There were changes
evident immediately.

He replaced the fences!  That was an expensive proposition, especially
since the post-and-barbed-wire had all been replaced with welded pipe.
He must've dug out my old welding rig I didn't know he knew how to
weld!  Behind the fences, instead of cattle, horses looked at him with
interest, while foals sparred with each other.

The house looked a little more prosperous, too.  And

I don't believe it.  I do not believe it.  He put in a satellite
dish!

The mesh dish presided over a front yard patrolled by guinea hens,
birds which were noisy as a Lollapalooza tour, but the only sure-fire
means of getting rid of ticks without spraying.  Tannim pulled up in
front of the garage, beside a pair of shiny aluminum four-horse
trailers.

Altogether it looked as if the quarter-horse business was doing well.

"Vanish," he growled out of the corner of his mouth, as the front door
opened and two middle-aged, slim people in jeans and work shirts came
out to greet him.

Fox vanished, eyes wide, obeying the warning in Tannim's voice.
Parents.  Now things were going to get scary.  * * * Tannim had always
known that his father loved techie-toys as much as Tannim did.  He just
hadn't realized that Trevor Drake knew as much about techie-toys as his
son did.

"..  . so we've got a LAN hooking up the office, the stable, and the
kitchen, since your mom has to access the database if we get a call
from a customer and I'm out in the fields," Dad said, as Tannim's head
spun under the burden of all the computer neepery.  "We're using dBase
for our data, and I've got a record not only of full pedigrees but
everything I've ever done with every field.  Got a plat of the property
in a CAD program, can keep track of where every buried line and
fencepost is to the tenth of an inch."  Trevor's voice filled with
pride.  "We're doing as much without spraying and chemicals as we can,
and we let the horses free-range all year except for foaling and really
bad storms.  The file-server's a 486 with a 2-gig read-write optical
drive it's in the closet in your old room so don't kick it or drop
something on it."

There was no doubt that Trevor was Tannim's father; the two had the
same slim build, although Trevor's hair was lighter as well as laced
with gray and cut as short as a Marine's.  Their faces had some
superficial similarities in the shape of the jaw and the high
cheekbones; Trevor's was tanned to a leathery toughness by years in the
fields in all weathers.  But there the resemblance ceased; Trevor was
as muscular as a body-builder from all those years of hauling hay and
wrestling calves, and if he looked like anyone, it was Will Rogers. For
all his strength, Tannim really didn't look as if he could defend
himself in a fight against a wily garden hose, and he looked more as if
he belonged on MTV than behind the wheel of sophisticated racers.
Unlike his father's buzz-cut, he'd had his hair styled short in front
and on top, but let it grow long in the back, where it formed a tangle
of unruly curls.  That changed due to the couple of months he usually
went between haircuts, though.  He was expecting to hear something
about the length of his hair, but so far the only comment had been from
his mother, a compliment on the style.  Peace flag up and accepted.

Trevor cocked an eyebrow at his son, a signal that Tannim knew meant he
was waiting for a reply.

"It's very cool, Dad," Tannim replied dazedly.  "I didn't know you'd
been doing all this "

What he was thinking was, Where did he get the cash?  The beef market
hasn't exactly been booming.  Even if he liquidated the whole herd, he
wouldn't have had enough for all those horses, let alone computers,
software, satellite dishes, renovations..  .. There were a number of
ways he could think of where his father could have gotten a bankroll,
but none of them were on the Light Side of the Force, so to speak.  It
worried him.  If I'd known he really wanted all of this so badly, I
could have found a way to make it happen, somehow.

"Well, I wouldn't have been able to, if it hadn't been for that boss of
yours," Trevor Drake said, with a certain fond satisfaction.  "You
signed on with a good firm, there.  Remember when you had that pile-up
a couple of years ago that landed you in the hospital, and he sent you
off for some rest?"

When that mess with the Unseleighe against the Underhill side of
Fairgrove happened, and I creamed my knee the first time, yeah.  He
nodded cautiously.  Dad had been talking about wanting to convert to
quarter horses, but he didn't have the bread.  A certain suspicion
dawned, hardening into certainty when he dredged up a vague memory of
drugged hallucinations while healing.  Yeah, he'd been babbling
something in a dream about his parents' money troubles, how he was
worried about who'd take care of them if something happened to him, and
how it would take a big load off his mind if only he could do something
about it.

"You wouldn't believe how well he has you insured," Dad continued.
Tannim nodded cautiously again.  "Turns out he's got a basic load of
policies on you, with us as beneficiaries on some of 'em.  And when you
tore up your knee, once the fuss all died down, they sent us a check. A
really big check.  I thought it was a mistake, so I called Fairgrove,
but your Mister Silver said no, it was right, and I was supposed to
keep the money, and then he asked if the herd was still for sale.  Paid
me top dollar for 'em.  Between that and the insurance money, we had
enough for some top stock and all the rest of this."

That pointy-eared Tannim bent down to adjust his pant-cuff as an excuse
to keep his father from seeing his face flush.  He throttled his
reactions and simply shook his head, expressing mild appreciation of
"Mister Silver's" generosity.  Actually, he wasn't quite sure how to
feel.  Not that he wasn't pleased that his folks had been taken care
of, but

It felt like a cheat.

You've got no right to feel that way, he scolded himself, as his father
led the way to his old room and showed him where the file server lurked
in the back of the closet, humming to itself.  Dad's worked hard all
his life.  He earned all this, it wasn't just given to him!  Yeah,
Keighvin was making sure that Mom and Dad were going to be okay. That's
the way he operates.  No matter how modern he acts on the surface,
underneath it all he's still a medieval feudal lord, and medieval
feudal lords take care of their people and the relatives of their
people.  It comes with the territory.

Put that way, he felt a little better about it all.  But it would have
been nice if Keighvin had asked first.

Medieval feudal lords don't ask, they dictate.  It's just dammit, he
took it all out of my hands, and they're my parents!  I thought I was
doing all right by them, and then Keighvin comes in and trumps me!  I
feel like he took me right out of the loop, and he eavesdropped on my
dreams to do it.  I suppose I ought to be grateful he didn't send them
a bag of gold or something.

"It was pretty funny, son Mister Silver had the check for the cattle
sent over in a Wells Fargo bag marked "gold bullion."  I thought I was
gonna bust a gut laughing!"

That does it.  Silverhair Stew when I get back to Georgia.

"When you're ready, come on down to the stables," his dad was saying
while Tannim brooded over the file server as if it was personally
responsible for all this.  "I've got some stuff down there that I have
to take care of right now, and a lot more I can't wait to show you."

"Great " Tannim began, but his Dad was already gone.

He turned around slowly, and shut the door.  The Ferrari poster he'd
hung on the back of the door when he was ten was still there; so were
all the models he'd built, although he had never arranged them quite so
neatly on the shelves.  And he didn't remember all those shelves being
there, either.

The plain wooden desk was empty, except for a clean blotter, a phone,
and a single pen next to a cube of notepaper.  It had never been that
empty when he'd lived here, not even on the rare occasions that he'd
actually cleaned the room.  It was always piled with car magazines,
comics, rock rags, books about art, and paperback science fiction
books.  His autographed picture of Richard Petty had been neatly framed
and now hung right over the desk, but the holes where he'd thumbtacked
it to the wall still showed near the edge of the mat.  The drawers of
the desk and the matching bureau beside it were empty, but all of his
paperbacks were in a new bookcase on the other side of the desk, with a
set of magazine-holders taking care of the magazines.  There was a
metal Route 66 sign hanging on the wall opposite the Petty photo, and
his tattered Rush 2112 banner.

Someone had refinished the desk, and done it well enough that all the
stains from oil and WD-40 he'd made when he rebuilt carburetors on it
were gone.  He ran his fingers slowly across the edges and surface.  It
felt as if someone had erased part of his life with the stains, even
though he had tried to remove those stains himself a hundred times.

The room had been repainted and there were new curtains, but the carpet
was the same, and the bedspread.  But in place of his old clock-radio
on the stand beside the bed there was a new digital clock-radio that
included a CD player.  Replacing the old black-and-white TV he'd
rescued from the junkyard and repaired with Deke Kestrel's help, there
was a new color portable.  No cracked case, no channel knob that had to
be turned with vise-grips; this television had an auto-tuner.  It could
effortlessly lock in a vivid image, just like he had tuned in those
strong images in that very bed, so long ago, of the dragons and magic
and her.  All she had done with him and to him had seemed so rich and
real, erotic and more.  But only a few of those images of dragons and
adventure had come true, and his ethereal lover had yet to appear in
the real world.

This, the real world, where he stood like an artist who has walked into
a gallery to see his life's work re-framed while he was away for
lunch.

The room felt both familiar and alien at once.  This is surreal.  Very,
very surreal.  He just wasn't certain of anything at the moment; he
felt unbalanced, uncomfortable, as if he had tried on clothing that was
too tight.

This is why I don't come back.  Because you can't come back.  I can't
be what I used to be, I can only try to fake what my folks remember. If
I just act .. . no .. . if I'm just myself, they'd never be able to
handle that.  They'll wonder what they did wrong.  Parents are as
fallible as anyone else, and they made mistakes with me.  They want to
know what they did right but like anyone else, they have rigid ideas of
exactly what's right.  It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out
that a boy-genius grease monkey isn't what a farmer wants or expects.

As he stared down at the worn red rib cord bedspread, Fox materialized
on the bed.  He looked a little less like James Dean now, and a little
more like the lead singer of the Stray Cats.

"Hey," he said cheerfully.  "Nice place!  You seen the stables yet?"

"No," Tannim replied cautiously.  "Why?"

Fox just snickered.  "You're in for a big surprise."  * * * Tannim
stared at the horse.  The horse stared back and laid its ears down in
an unmistakable expression of threat.  "Just hold the reins, son,"
Trevor repeated patiently.  "He won't hurt you."

"Dad that's a stallion.  Stallions are aggressive, even I know that
much.  And he doesn't like me."  Fluorescent lighting hanging from the
metal rafters of the ceiling showed every nuance of the stallion's
expression, and it was not a friendly one.  Tannim would have backed
off another pace, but there was a cinder-block wall in the way.  The
horse bared its teeth at him and stamped its foot on the rubber mat
covering the cement floor.

Trevor sighed.  "That horse is a kitten.  Tannim, your mother can hold
that horse."

"Then why isn't she here instead of me?"  he asked, as the stallion
stamped his foot a second time possibly indicating what he wanted to do
if Tannim's feet got within his reach.

"He's not interested in you," Trevor replied, patiently.  "He has other
things on his mind right now."

"I'll bet," Tannim muttered, trying to inch away.

Trevor stood beside something that vaguely resembled the gym apparatus
known as a pommel-horse, holding an object like a cross between a large
hot water bottle and an elephant's trunk, he referred to as an "AV." He
said he was going to "collect" the stallion, and he wanted Tannim's
help.  Tannim did not want to know what an "AV" was, and he certainly
did not want to help in what he thought his father was going to do.

"Dad, that horse is going to kill me."  He said this slowly and
carefully, so there could be no mistake.  The horse confirmed his words
with a neigh, a snort, and another exhibition of teeth.  "That horse
wants to kill me.  I did not drive all the way from Savannah to be
killed by a horse, or to assist you in giving one a good time!"

Trevor shook his head, whether in denial or in disgust, his son wasn't
entirely certain.  But at that moment, Tannim's allergies realized that
he was standing in straw, in a stable full of hay, dust, and powdered
grain, and not more than ten feet away from a large, sweaty,
dander-laden animal.

He exploded into a volley of violent sneezing.  The horse lost all
interest in killing him, and backed away from him in alarm as far as
the lead on the halter would permit.  The horse's eyes rolled
alarmingly, and it uttered a pitiful whine as it danced around and
jerked on the rope holding it to the side of the stall.  Trevor swore
under his breath, put the "AV" down, and worked his way hand-over-hand
up the rope to the stallion's head to try and calm it.  Tannim took
this as permission to escape.

He retreated immediately, eyes streaming, nose running, only to meet
his mother at the kitchen door.  "Dad deeds you, Bomb," he got out
between sneezes.  "Dable.  Wid da dall ion

Correctly interpreting this as a message that Trevor needed help with
his champion stallion, Tannim's mother thrust a box of tissues at him
and trotted across the backyard in the direction of the stables.  He
continued his retreat to the bathroom across from his room, where he
had prudently stashed everything he was afraid he might need.

He turned on the shower as high as it would go, and steam poured over
the top of the curtain-rod, giving him a little relief.  As he popped
pills out of their plastic-and-foil bubbles and gulped them down, he
heard the shower-radio come on all by itself.

It can't be heat- or water-activated.  So He stripped off his clothing
and ducked into the shower, putting his head under the hot water to
ease his aching sinuses.  It's him.  Maybe if I ignore him

"Hey!  It's Fox-on-the-Radio, taking the third caller who can tell me
Elvis Costello's favorite flavor of chewing gum, or answer the Super
Mondo Nifty Keen-o Boffo Kewl Bonus Question: Just what is Tannim, the
most eligible bachelor mage in southern Bixby Oklahoma, listening to?!"
came an all-too-familiar voice from the waterproof speaker.

Tannim took his head out from under the stream of hot water long enough
to look blearily at the white plastic radio.  "Fox," he said at last,
"you are weird."

"Hey!  That's the right answer, caller number three!  And you win a bar
of soap!"  A bar of soap popped out of the bottom of the radio, forcing
Tannim to grab for it before it got under his feet, only to discover
that it was an illusion.  "That's right, it's WYRD, weird radio!"

"WYRD is in North Carolina," Tannim corrected automatically.  "In
Haven's Reach.  This is Oklahoma."

"So how 'bout that reception?"  Fox replied gaily.  "It must be
something in the pipes.  Yes, it's WYRD, all-talk-talking, all day, all
night, all the "

Tannim reached over and turned off the radio with a firm click.

One super-hot shower with lots of steam, half a bottle of eye drops two
antihistamines and a few squirts of lilac-scented "prescription stuff"
up his nose later, he felt as if he might survive until suppertime, at
least.  Even if he was groggy now, it was better than being unable to
see or breathe.

Maybe I can just stay in the bathroom for the whole visit?

No, that would be the coward's way out.  Besides, Fox would DJ him to
death.  Or worse.  The fox was shameless.

He ventured out into the hallway, hearing voices from the kitchen, and
decided he might just as well face the music.  The kitchen had been
redone, too, but he knew that he had paid for that, at least it had
been his Mother's Day gift about three years ago.  Right now, that made
it the one place in the house he felt the most comfortable in.

His father was sitting at a stool at the wood-and-tile breakfast bar
while his mother did something arcane with a piece of raw meat.  Both
of them looked up as he came in, and to his relief, both of them were
smiling.

"I was beginning to think I'd failed my Test of Manhood," he began, and
his mother giggled.  She still looked a lot like her old high school
pictures from the late '50s; a little grayer, a little older, but still
remarkably like a Gidget-clone.

"I'm sorry, son," Trevor said, with real apology in his voice.  "I keep
forgetting about your allergies that is, I remember them, but I keep
forgetting how bad they really are.  I shouldn't have even asked you to
go out there with me."

This, of course, immediately made Tannim feel even more guilty than he
already did.  Didn't live up to their expectations, again.  "Look, I
should have known better," he interrupted.  "I brought a respirator,
like we use for painting cars.  It's in the trunk.  I could wear that
and "

His mother shook her head, still giggling.  "Oh no dear heaven, no,
don't do that!  The horses would be terrified!"

Well, that'll be a first.  Usually they terrify me.

"It's all right," his father said hastily.  "Your mother can help me,
it'll be fine.  She's the best hand with a stallion I've ever seen,
anyway."

Tannim bit his tongue to keep from saying anything really crude, and
managed to dilute all the things that sprang immediately to mind down
to a mild, "Well, she did rope you, didn't she?"

That made his father roar with laughter, and his mother blush and
giggle, and eased at least a little of the tension among them.

He managed to keep the conversation on safe subjects up to and through
dinner mostly on what those few of his classmates who were still in the
Tulsa area were doing.  He didn't really care, if the truth were to be
told, but it gave his parents something to talk about, and when they
were talking, they weren't asking him questions he couldn't answer.

In a way, it was rather sad.  The stars of the high school athletic
teams had all, to a man, washed out in college or in the minor leagues
and were now selling cars, or working oil field or construction jobs.
Most of the girls that were still in the area were married, and on
either their third kids or second divorces.  Tannim hadn't kept in
touch with any of them, for good reason.  He'd had nothing in common
with them in high school, and had even less now.

The only kid he had kept in constant touch with was Deke Kestrel, and
he knew right where Deke was.  Down in Austin Texas, working as a
studio musician, and doing a damn fine job of it.  Deke was sitting in
with Eric Johnson and the other local heroes of the Oasis of Texas.  He
was also training his more "esoteric" skills, but once again, that was
something he couldn't talk to his parents about.

"What ever happened to that girl you used to date, honey?"  his mother
asked, breaking into his thoughts.  "The one who was so into science?
Trisha, Trixie "

"Trina," he corrected without thinking.  "She finished her doctorate.
She's at Johns Hopkins, doing research into viral proteins."

"Oh."  From the rather stunned look on both his parents' faces, this
was not something they had ever anticipated hearing over the dinner
table.  How nice and you drive cars for a living, dear? Congratulations
Tannim, you certainly killed that subject dead in its tracks.  But his
mother was persistent, he had to give her that. "Well, what about that
friend of yours that went into musicals "

"I don't know," he lied.  "I lost touch with him after he went to New
York."  I lost touch with him after he died of AIDS, Mom.  This was
turning into the most depressing dinner conversation he had ever had.
I'd better talk about something cheerful, quick.  "I heard from Deke
Kestrel just a couple of days ago, though he's doing backup work for a
really incredible guitarist in Austin.  It's the guy's fourth CD, and
Deke says the guy might do a guest shot on his first solo project."

That revived the conversation again, and he managed to keep it on Deke
and how well Deke was doing until the dishes were safely cleared and in
the dishwasher.

Then he pleaded fatigue and fled to his room.  At least he could call
Joe and get that much accomplished.  Set up the meeting, feel the kid
out, make sure he wanted to go through with this.  Try and tell him
what the pros and cons of the job were.  That was one thing Chinthliss
had never been able to get through his head, but Joe already had a
taste of the "cons."  And at least with Joe, he would not have to hold
anything back.

It wasn't very comforting to think that he had more in common with Joe,
someone he didn't even know, than he did with his own family.

He moved the phone over to the bedside stand, called directory
assistance for Frank Casey's number in Pawnee, then took a deep breath
to steady himself and dialed.

"I'd like to talk to Joe Brown, please," he said carefully.  "This is
Tannim, from Fairgrove Industries..  .."

CHAPTER TWO

Joe nodded as he spoke, forgetting that the man from Fairgrove couldn't
see him.  The window-unit ac in the living room came to life with a
shudder.  The banter of a news-show anchor harmonized oddly with the
hum.  A drift of cold wafted down the hallway at ankle-height from the
direction of the living room.  "Yes, sir," he said.  "I can do that,
sir.  I'll be ready."

Joe hung up the old hall phone with a feeling of anticipation mixed
with trepidation.  So, it was finally going to happen.  This whole
strange year was finally over.  "That was the man from Fairgrove," he
called into the living room.  "He's in Bixby.  He says he'll meet me
tomorrow for lunch."

His guardian, the sheriff of Pawnee County, Frank Casey, got up out of
his chair with a creak of wood and leather audible over the television
and the air conditioner.  He turned down the volume on the television
and came out into the hallway of the tiny house he shared with Joe,
blocking off most of the light from the living room.  Frank was a big
man, one who truly filled the doorway, and his Native American
ancestors would have identified him immediately as a warrior, even
without paint, honor-feathers, or any other traditional signs.  It was
the ambient radiation of warrior, a halo of not-quite-there colors that
Joe was able to see now, after some coaching and training from Alinor
and Bob.  There were other colors in that aura, colors that told Joe
that his guardian was just as hopeful, and anxious, as he himself was,
despite Frank's impassive expression.

"You don't have to go through with this if you don't want to," Frank
said solemnly, while the ac shuddered into silence and the sound of
cicadas outside the front door behind Joe grew louder.  "I don't care
what you promised that fellow from Fairgrove.  If you aren't
comfortable with this, we can find somewhere else for you.  Maybe you
should consider college again?"

Joe shook his head as the cicadas wound down for a breather.  "No,
thanks," he said awkwardly.  "Sir, I appreciate your thinking about it
and all, but this is going to be for the best.  You know I won't ever
fit in around here.  These Fairgrove people, they know about people
like me.  I don't think college is the right thing for me now.  I'm not
ready for it, and I really don't think any college is ready for me.
Besides, Fairgrove promised me a full ride if I want to go to college
later."

Frank grunted, and the wooden floor creaked beneath him as he shifted
his weight.  "Sounds too good to be true, like the things recruiters
promise you to get you to sign up."

It was Joe's turn to shrug.  How could he ever explain to his guardian
why he trusted these people to keep their promises?  Frank would never
believe him.  Even though he'd been right there to see the worst that
the Salamander could do, he no longer believed in the creature's
existence.  Somehow he'd managed to convince himself that more than
half of what had happened during the raid had been optical illusions
and the rest was delusion.  He'd even forgotten how the Salamander had
warned the cult followers about police raids and the like.

That happens to people, Al said.  When something happens that just
doesn't fit with their idea of reality, they'll chip away at it and
twist it until they make it fit.  I guess that's what happened to
Frank.

"They have a good reputation, sir," he replied.  "You checked them out
yourself."

His guardian nodded slowly.  "I did, and I admit they came out clean on
all counts.  And you are old enough to make up your own mind.  Still
you're also old enough to change it if you want, and if you do, well,
you've got a place here."

Joe flushed, but with pleasure as well as embarrassment.  He knew there
were more things that Frank could not bring himself to say.  The lawman
was nothing if not stoic.  "Thank you, sir," he replied awkwardly.  "I
ah I probably ought to get some sleep.  Good night, sir."

"Good night, son," Frank said softly, as Joe retreated to the little
guest room that had been his home over the past year and more.
"Pleasant dreams."

The ten-by-ten room was tiny, especially in comparison with the
luxurious suite his father had bestowed on him just before he had
defected from the cult.  The walls, with their faded floral wallpaper,
sometimes leaked cold air in the winter, but it was nothing compared to
the cold fear he'd always endured around his father.  The ancient
window air conditioner wheezed every time it came on, and it vibrated
so hard that it rattled the windows in their frames, but the machinery
that kept the underground complex of his youth running had been just as
loud.  The only furniture was a single bureau, a tiny corner-desk where
he did his homework, and an equally tiny nightstand with a gooseneck
lamp from K-Mart on it.  Joe's own belongings all fit in that bureau
with room to spare.  But this was a more comfortable room than anything
in the mansion in Atlanta or the Chosen Ones' compound could ever have
been.  He felt welcome here, as he had not there.

For one thing, he didn't need to worry about hidden cameras watching
his every move.  He didn't have to worry about his father breaking the
door down in a psychotic rage, destroying everything in his path in the
name of his own holiness.

Joe piled up pillows at the head of the iron-framed bed and leaned back
into them, contemplating the poster Bob had given him, now framed on
the otherwise empty wall.  It was an artist's rendering of the Victor
GT prototype, over the Victor logo and the logo of Fairgrove Industries
itself.  The latter was a strange piece; at first glance it was simply
a pair of trees against the sky, but when you looked closer, you saw
that the trees formed the face of a lovely woman, wearing an enigmatic
smile.  Then you looked again, and it was only two trees.

Which was the reality and which the illusion?

Bob would have shrugged and said it didn't matter.  Al would say,
"Both.  Neither."

But it did matter.  So much of what he had thought was true turned out
to be deception.  Just one illusion after another.

Everything my father told me was a lie.  He thought about that for a
moment, then realized that he actually had more of a start than he'd
thought.  If everything he told me was a lie, then the truth would be
the opposite of what he told me, wouldn't it?  That made sense and what
was more, a lot of what Al and Bob had told him was the very opposite
of what his father would have said.

That meant he could trust what the two Fairgrove men had told him.  He
had no reason to doubt them, and every reason to believe them.  But
this it was jumping off a cliff into a sea of fog and no way of knowing
if what lay below him was the warm, friendly pool he'd been promised,
or rocks he would be shattered upon.

Would it be better to change his mind, and see what Frank could find
for him?  He could still do that.

Could he, though?  He'd spent a whole year here, and every moment of it
had been as an outsider.  His father had done one thing for him that
was decent he'd had a better education than most of the kids here. Even
if half of it had been laced with the manifesto of a lunatic.  At least
what he'd gotten in the military academy had been sound.  He'd tested
out of just about everything, and he was able to go straight into his
senior year with no trouble.

That was one thing that Frank, Al, Bob, and Mister Keighvin who ran
Fairgrove had all been adamant about.  Joe had to get his high school
diploma.  "It may not seem like it's worth much," Bob had drawled, "but
without it, if for some reason something happens to us, you'll never
get anything better than a fast-food job.  You won't even be able to
get into the Army.  That diploma is your safety net."  * * * He'd
breezed through his classes with no academic trouble and despite the
doubts of the principal and many of the teachers, no other kind of
overt trouble, either.  He knew what they thought or feared.  There
were those who were certain he would take up where his father had left
off, corrupting the other students with the poisonous doctrines his
father had taught. Others expected him to bully the other students,
start fights.  A few simply expected fights to find him, whether he
wanted them or not.

They were all wrong.  The other students were afraid of him, most of
them, but even the worst bully in the school was too cautious after the
first time he disrobed in gym class to try to pick a fight with him.

Just as well, since I could have wiped the floor with his face.  No
boast, just fact; the cult of the Sacred Heart of the Chosen Ones had
emphasized that there would be battles, and the faithful would be in
the thick of them.  Every child, Joe included, was trained in
self-defense from the moment they entered the compound.  Joe had the
added advantage of years of training in military school.  When he
walked into Pawnee High School in the fall, he knew that he had no
intention of starting fights but if they started, he knew that he would
be the only one left standing afterward.

There were no fights; no one even said anything to his face.  But they
whispered behind his back and watched him with wary eyes, as if they
expected that at any moment he might pull out an assault weapon and
start shooting.  Despite his powerful build, none of the coaches asked
if he wanted to be on a team.  Despite his looks, the few girls he'd
asked out were not interested.

He really couldn't blame them, not after what had happened at the cult
compound.  People were still talking about it, and a year later, the
FBI and aTF.  still had the place cordoned off.  Joe wouldn't go
anywhere near the place; the very idea made him sick.  But how were the
ordinary people of Pawnee going to know that?  For all they knew, he
was just like his father.  He didn't blame them for being scared of
him.  In fact, it was probably only the fact that Frank Casey was his
guardian that kept them from running him out of town.

From time to time someone in a car with darkened windows would pull up
to Frank's house after school and ask to talk to Joe.  It was always a
different person, but the questions were always the same: Do you
remember any more bunkers, or places where there might be weapons or
ammunition stored?  Whoever the person was, he would always bring a new
map of the compound, and there was generally one more tunnel or bunker
drawn on it than there had been before.  It was hard for Joe to picture
where things might be, since he was always working from the memories of
having walked through the compound and not from any recall of a map,
but with the aid of the ever-growing layout the Feds were building, he
could at least say things like, "I think there's another tunnel there I
wasn't allowed down that way."

They may never find it all.  Only his father had known where everything
was.  He'd told one of the men that once.  "Why does this not surprise
me?"  the man had answered and in the voice used by that parrot in the
Walt Disney movie.  It had kind of surprised him, that a supposedly
grim FBI guy would have seen the movie, and delighted him more that the
guy would have enough of a sense of humor to do that.  In its own small
way, it reaffirmed to Joe that he was dealing with human beings and not
faceless chess pieces

But strange cars pulling up to Frank's house did not add anything to
Joe's popularity at school.  Would it be any better in college, where
he'd turn into the subject of every psych major's term paper and
master's thesis?

The cicadas started droning again, right outside his window, loud
enough to carry over the sound of the ac unit.  He didn't mind in fact,
he kind of liked it.  In the bunkers you never heard anything but the
drip of water in the tunnels, and the hum and clank of machinery.

And sometimes, the marching boots on concrete.  That sound haunted his
dreams sometimes in the dreams, the marching men were coming to get
him, sometimes he was leading them.  Both were horrible.

Frank thought that college would be easier for him, and better than
high school, but Joe wasn't so sure.  How long before everyone found
out who I was?  Even if they didn't, he still wouldn't fit in, not
unless he went to some other military school.  He was just too too

Too straight-edge.  It didn't seem to matter that he liked trucks and
cars, the way a lot of the guys did, that he liked the same kind of
music and listened to Edge of Insanity after midnight when he could. He
got rid of that swastika tattoo right off, before he ever set foot in
school.  That had to go before he grew his hair or tried to.  None of
it mattered.  The differences were bone-deep.  They slouched; he stood
and sat at rigid attention.  They wore grunge, or cowboy-chic; he wore
carefully laundered blue jeans and spotless t-shirts or slacks and
button-downs.  He said "sir" and "ma'am" reflexively.  Even the nerds
looked more normal than he did.

But with Al and Bob, now he had felt comfortable for perhaps the first
time in his life.  However strange he was, they were stranger, they had
far more secrets to hide.

And they understood this knack he had for seeing into peoples' minds,
for knowing something about what was going to happen, for seeing
things.  Things like ghosts..  ..

Bob said that this Tannim guy could see ghosts.  Said he could do a lot
of other things, too.

The ac went off, leaving only the drone of cicadas and the chirp of
crickets.  This Tannim guy he sounded interesting on the phone.  Easy
to talk to.  He'd mentioned that Joe's first job would be as assistant
to a "Sarge" Phil Austin, running Fairgrove security, a man who had
some of the same knacks as Joe.  So he was going to get picked up by a
guy who talked to ghosts, and he was going to be errand boy to a guy
who ran security for a place where they built race cars with magic.

Sounded like the kind of place where one Joseph Brown just might seem
ordinary.

Right now, that didn't sound too bad.  At least these people wouldn't
be staring at him all the time, waiting for him to go off the deep end,
and whispering about him at PTA meetings.

Funny thing; every time he looked at the Fairgrove logo, the lady
seemed to be smiling a little more.  * * * Tannim didn't have too much
trouble finding Pawnee, even though he'd never actually been to the
county seat.  The address and the directions Joe had given him were
perfectly clear; it was equally clear that there wasn't much of a town
to get lost in.  Like the rest of the area around Tulsa, this was not a
place that had suffered in the Dust Bowl; the trees here were probably
as old as the town itself and lined the streets on both sides, giving
shade and the illusion of cool.  To Tannim's amazement, the streets
surrounding the courthouse were cobblestone.  Hell to drive on, like
River Street in Savannah, but very picturesque.  The town itself
probably hadn't changed much since the 1920s.

The tiny house belonging to Deputy Sheriff Frank Casey could have been
built any time in the last seventy-five years: a white-painted,
single-storied frame house with a native rock foundation.  It was
trimmed with just a little bit of "gingerbread," sporting a huge front
porch with a cement floor and a pair of porch swings.  Tannim pulled up
into the vacant driveway, which was two overgrown and cracked parallel
strips of concrete.  Before he could get out of the Mustang, two men
emerged from the house and stood waiting for him on the porch itself.

The older man of the pair would have dwarfed most people; he made
Tannim feel like a midget.  He was huge, copper-skinned, hawk-nosed,
with intelligent dark eyes, wearing a dark brown uniform shirt and tan
pants.  He wasn't wearing his badge at the moment, but he didn't have
to.  This could only be Joe's court-appointed guardian, Sheriff's
Deputy Frank Casey.

But Joe was big enough not to be dwarfed even by his guardian.  He
looked as if he'd been pumping iron since he was a fetus; blond and
blue-eyed, he'd have been a perfect model for a Nazi recruiting poster,
except that his blond hair had been done in a fairly stylish cut that
looked a lot like Tannim's, only shorter.  There was a pale patch on
his upper arm that made Tannim suspect he'd had a tattoo there, once.

Tannim got out of the car and went around the nose to meet them.  There
was no breeze under the trees, and he was glad of their shade.  It was
probably close to 90 out in the sunlight.

Frank Casey stepped forward to intercept Tannim.  "I'm Deputy Frank
Casey, Joe's guardian," he said, in a carefully neutral voice, holding
out an immense paw of a hand.

Tannim met his firm handshake with a clasp that was just as firm.  "I'm
Tannim, from Fairgrove Industries in Savannah," he said, looking
straight into Frank's eyes.  "My folks are from around here, though the
Drakes, over in Bixby.  They used to have cattle, but they're running
quarter horses, now."

He had figured that invoking local ties would relax Casey, and he was
right.  The man's tension ebbed visibly.  "Bixby, hmm?  Good horse
country," he replied.

Tannim shrugged and grinned.

"Couldn't prove it by me," he answered cheerfully.  "The last thing I
know is horse-stuff.  Well, I'm supposed to bring Joe Brown here over
to my folks' place; they want to meet him.  Fact is, they insisted on
it."  He turned to Joe.  "I'm not going to inflict them on you until
we've had lunch, though.  Dad wants to show off his stallions.  I
wouldn't do that to anyone on an empty stomach."

Frank chuckled, as Tannim had hoped he would.  Joe probably thought he
was managing a pretty good poker-face, but Tannim read any number of
conflicting emotions there.

"Well, my lunch hour is about over, so I'd better get back to the
office and find out what disasters came up while I was gone."  Frank
shook Tannim's hand again and clapped Joe on the shoulder.  "Enjoy
yourselves."

He strode off down the street under the ancient trees, heading in the
direction of the aged county courthouse only three blocks away.

Well, looks like I passed inspection.  Now let's see what Joe has to
say.  Tannim waited until he was out of earshot before speaking
again.

"Okay, just so you know, Bob Ferrel is a pretty good friend of mine,
and Alinor is some kind of cousin of my boss, Keighvin Silverhair. I've
been working for Fairgrove for a good few years now, and I was told
pretty much the whole story."  He quirked an eyebrow at the youngster,
who looked a bit uncomfortable.  "I'm sure this is going to sound
unlikely, but I promise you, I've seen things weirder than snake shoes
and Mets pennants.  I've had stuff straight out of Tim Burton films
happen to me before breakfast.  So don't worry about my thinking you're
crazy if you let something slip.  You're more likely to think that
about me."

A faint hint of skepticism crept over the young man's handsome face,
but he didn't say anything.

"So, how about that lunch?"  Tannim continued.  "I wasn't kidding about
Dad and the horses.  He's doing something kinky with them.  "Collecting
them," he said.  Whatever that is, I don't want to know."  He
shuddered. "They hate me, I'm allergic to them.  Seems to me those are
pretty good reasons to keep a decent distance between us."

Joe finally smiled.  "I like horses," he offered.  "There were horses
at the military school I went to, and I learned how to ride and take
care of them.  I'd have been able to get on the horse-drill team, but
Father pulled me out "

His face darkened momentarily, and Tannim nodded sympathetically.
"Look, from here on, no one is going to tell you what to do with your
life, all right?  If you decide to back out of this before we leave,
that's okay; if you want to leave Fairgrove after you've been there a
while, that's okay, too.  Keighvin'll cut you a ticket to anywhere you
want to go.  Hell, he might even be able to get you into West Point or
Annapolis, if that's what you want."

Joe blinked, as if the idea of an elven lord having the ability to
influence people in the normal world had never occurred to him.  "He
can do that?"  he asked.

Tannim allowed a hint of cynicism to enter his expression.  "Keighvin
has money.  Politicians need money.  Senators are the ones who make
recommendations to West Point.  Got it?"

Joe nodded.  "I'd like to make sure I gave Fairgrove my best shot,
though," he replied a little shyly.  "I mean, it's only right."

I like this kid.  How in the name of all that's holy he turned out this
good with that fruitcake for a father "You about ready for that lunch?"
he said by way of a reply, and waved Joe over to the Mustang.

Joe's eyes widened at the sight of the Mach I, and widened even further
when he got into the passenger's seat and saw all the electronic
gadgetry in the dashboard.  He didn't say anything though, until Tannim
asked him if he had any preferences in music.

He shrugged.  "Rock, I guess.  Anything but country."  There was
something behind that simple statement; something dark.  Was there
someone in Joe's past who had preferred country and western?  His
father, maybe?

Tannim's fingers closed on the Rush CD, Roll the Bones.  He took that
as an omen, and put it in the player before pulling out into traffic.

God, Donal would have loved this album.

One advantage of the CD player was the extraordinary clarity of lyrics;
the title track began, and Joe seemed more than a little startled by
the chorus, then began paying attention.  Very close attention.

Though Tannim was not one for placing life-guiding meaning into most
rock lyrics, Rush was a pretty darned articulate band.  And Joe could
do worse than get a dose of "hey kid, sometimes things happen just
because they happen for no other reason, not your fault, not anybody's
fault."  He left it on.

He wasn't in the mood for franchise food, so he picked the first
good-looking roadside diner that came along and pulled into the parking
lot.  GRANNY'S DINER, the sign said, painted on a cracked wall that
looked as old as any "granny."  The place was crowded, which argued for
decent food, and the interior could have come right out of any movie
from the fifties.  So could the waitress, from her B-52 hairdo to a
pink uniform with "Peggy" embroidered over her right pocket.  Fox would
love this place.  Thank God he isn't here; he'd be freaking out Joe by
now and giggling about it.  Kitsune.  I'll never understand 'em.  As
bad as dragons, I swear.  Thank God I don't have to deal with them too
often.  Well except for Fox and Chinthliss.

Joe's tastes were simple: big, juicy hamburgers, a large salad instead
of fries, milk .. . just amazing quantities of all of it.  Unlike
Tannim, he didn't talk while he ate, so Tannim kept up a one-sided
ramble about the more mundane side of Fairgrove between bites.

"What do you do?"  Joe asked, when the waitress came to take their
orders for dessert.  "Al and Bob never really told me."  His brow
wrinkled a little.  "I hope you don't mind my saying this, but you
don't seem very old."

"I seem too young to be doing anything important, right?"  Tannim
chuckled.  "I guess I started kind of young; a lot of people in racing
did.  As for what I do I'm a test-driver and a mechanic, I drive on the
Fairgrove SCCA team "

"SCCA?"  Joe interrupted.

"Sports Car Club of America," Tannim explained.  "We have three teams:
GTP, SERRA and SCCA.  The ah people like Al drive the GTP and SERRA
cars; I handle most of the SCCA driving, since SCCA doesn't allow
modifications like aluminum engine blocks and frames.  It's a racing
club, but for regular people with regular budgets."

Joe nodded, then accepted his apple pie la mode from the waitress with
a smile and a polite "thank you."  He spooned up a mouthful, and looked
at Tannim expectantly.  "That can't be all you do," he said.

Tannim chuckled.  "You don't miss much, do you?  No, the people like Al
and Keighvin can't go out much, so I do a lot of outside contact work
Sarge Austin will probably have you doing the same, before too long. We
can always use someone who's smart enough to know their way around, and
straight-edge enough to make the suits comfortable.  I'm afraid a lot
of the folks at Fairgrove look kind of like a cross between a rock
group and a Renaissance Faire."

Once again, Joe nodded but then he knew all about needing people for
"outside" work.  From what Tannim had heard and guessed, Brother Joseph
hadn't let too many folks outside the barbed-wire walls of his
compound, once they got inside.

The rest would have to remain unsaid, at least until they were safely
inside the Mustang again.  Joe evidently realized this, for he remained
silent until the meal was finished and Tannim had paid for it, with a
generous tip for the smiling "Peggy."  They walked out into the midday
heat, the air so full of dust that there was a golden haze over
everything.  Tannim thumbed the remote on his keychain; the doors of
the Mach I unlocked and popped open, and the engine started.  Joe
looked startled, then grinned his appreciation as they both got in.

Joe buckled up, fumbling a little, as he had the first time, with the
unfamiliar belts.  Not too many people put on a four-point harness like
it was second nature, after all.

"So," Joe said, with a tension in his shoulders that told Tannim he was
bracing himself for the answer to his question, "just what comes along
besides the ordinary stuff in this job?"

"How about me?"  said a voice from the backseat.

Tannim looked into the rearview mirror.  His jaw dropped.

Oh, it was Foxtrot all right.  But he was a five-foot tall fox, a
cartoon-style fox, only one with three tails and a little collar with
"FX" on the gold tag dangling down in front.

But just as startling as Fox was Joe's reaction.  His eyes were wide
with surprise, but also with recognition.

"Long time, no see, Joey," Fox said genially.  "If I'd known it was you
they were talking about, I'd have come for a visit months ago!"

Tannim said the only thing he could say under the circumstances.  He
pointed to the back and locked onto Joe's eyes.  "You know this
lunatic?"  he asked calmly.

Joe's mouth was still wide open, his eyes dazed.  "I uh he was my
imaginary friend," the young man managed, weakly.  "When I was a
kid."

"Not so imaginary, Joey," Fox replied.  "Of course, I'd much rather
look like this "

The whole figure shivered, blurred, and changed back into a
leather-jacketed James Dean lookalike.  "Hard to pick up chicks when
you look like a stuffed toy," Fox offered, leaning back in the seat.
"Well, most places.  By the way, what are you doing here?  You were
supposed to be in Georgia."

"It's a long story, Fox," Tannim interjected, and sighed.  "Well, at
least now I don't have to worry about you freaking Joe out by showing
up out of nowhere."

"Yeah," Joe said faintly.  "He already started years ago."

Tannim decided that he might as well seize the moment and use it for a
short lesson.  "I told you weird things show up around me.  This is one
of them," he told the young man as he pulled the Mustang out onto the
highway.  Thank God he didn't materialize while I was actually driving.
"Fox isn't human, never was, never will be."

"Hey!"  Fox exclaimed, feigning injured pride.  "I resemble that
remark!  I happen to come from a very distinguished pedigree!"

"Pedigree is right."  Tannim nailed the throttle for a quick pass
around a slow-moving hay wagon  "He's just what you saw as a kid: a
fox-spirit, a shape-changer.  Take a good look at him.  No, really look
at him, the way Alinor taught you."

Joe turned around and stared at Fox, who posed for his edification,
magic king a white sparkling gleam off his teeth as he grinned.  As
Tannim had hoped, the order to look at Fox steadied Joe considerably.
Having your imaginary friend from childhood suddenly pop up as real was
enough to take the starch out of anyone.  "Well, he's just a little
see-through," Joe said slowly.  "That means that he's a spirit, using
everything he's got to make people like us see him.  And there's a kind
of an outline around him, and it isn't like a human aura."

"Good," Tannim said with satisfaction.  "Right.  He's a kits une to be
precise, a Japanese fox-spirit and don't ask me how he ended up in
Georgia, 'cause I don't know."

Fox smirked.  "I'll never tell.  My lips are sealed."

"I wish," Tannim muttered.  "Anyway, he's tricky that's what he enjoys
doing, seeing new things and playing tricks on people.  He has
absolutely no ability to change anything in the real world, unlike a
human ghost, but he's pretty hot stuff Underhill or in the spirit
plane.  The reason you can see and hear him is because you can see into
the spirit plane and he is making the effort to be visible.  He's kind
of half here and half there and again, that's unlike a human ghost, who
can choose to be all here and affect the material world in a limited
sense."

Joe nodded, his forehead wrinkled with concentration as he tallied this
with whatever Bob and Alinor had already taught him.  "So there's
things like ghosts that can be here, and things like Fox who can't,
really?"

"Precisely Fox replied for Tannim.  "I can make you think I can affect
the real world, though."  He snickered.  "Like I did to you, hotshot,
with the soap."

"Yeah, well I'd like to know how you did that trick with the radio,
though," Tannim grumbled.

"Hey!  It's Fox-on-the-radio!"  The kits une voice came from the four
speakers, even though the radio was off.  "Betcha caller number three
can't guess how I'm doing this!"

Fox put his hands behind his head, leaning back, looking unbearably
smug.  His mouth had not moved at all.

"I know!"  Joe said suddenly, looking pleased.  "It's because since
he's really talking with his mind, he's just making us think his voice
is coming from the speakers instead of his mouth, which it isn't doing
either."

A bit tangled, but Tannim got the gist of it, and muttered imprecations
under his breath.  Fox looked crestfallen.

"Awww," he said.  "You guessed!  That's not fair!"

"Life's like that," Joe and Tannim said in chorus and complete
synchronization.  They exchanged a startled glance, then both broke up
in laughter.  Fox pouted for a moment, then joined them.

Either he's handling this really well, or he's so blitzed by Fox and
all that he only seems to be.  I think my bet's on the kid.  "Well now
that Fox has joined us, I was wondering if you wanted to tool around
Tulsa for a while."  Tannim looked at the young man out of the corner
of his eye.  "Keighvin told me to outfit you while we were here, and I
can put it all on the company card.  I kind of figured you didn't have
a lot of stuff."

"Take him up on it, Joe," Fox advised from the backseat.  "Tannim's a
Fashion God."

Tannim flashed the kits une a withering look.  "I'm supposed to get
Nomex for you that's fireproof underwear, basically, real popular back
at Fairgrove.  Some jeans and boots, too, and a few other things.  And
" He paused.  This was a delicate subject.  "And personal gear.  It
can't be a lot, since the Mustang will hold only so much, but Keighvin
seemed to think you ought to get yourself the same kind of things you'd
be furnishing a dorm room with.  You know, CD player, clock-radio, that
kind of thing.  And clothes."

Joe's face darkened.  "I don't take handouts," he said stubbornly.

Tannim sighed.  "Look, it isn't a handout, all right?  You're going to
be meeting people, some of them important.  If you're gonna be Sarge's
assistant, you'll have to escort Big Guns from places like Goodyear and
March and STP all over the plant.  You can't do that wearing jeans and
a t-shirt.  And as for the rest of it, well, if you had anything to
move, Fairgrove would be paying moving expenses, right?  But you don't,
so you're getting it in gear."

Now Joe looked confused.  "I don't know," he said uneasily.  "I never
knew anyone who got a job with a place like Fairgrove.  I don't know
what's right."

And until you get to Fairgrove, you won't ever meet anyone who's gotten
a job like this.  "Trust me," he said persuasively.  "It's perfectly
normal."

For Fairgrove.

"If you say so, sir," Joe replied, looking very young and uncertain.

"I say so," Tannim said firmly, taking the Mach I onto the on-ramp for
the interstate.  And in his head, though he was certain it was only in
his head, he heard Fox snickering.

"That's right, he says so!  Now how much would you pay?"  the radio
blared in Fox's voice.  "But wait, there's more if you order by
midnight tonight!  You get two free neuroses, a fixation, and your
choice of "

Click.  * * * There weren't a lot of bags in the back of the Mustang,
and not just because Joe had balked at purchasing too much.  It had
occurred to Tannim that "shopping for Joe" could be the way out of the
house that he had been looking for.  In fact, "shopping for Joe" might
become his salvation.  He could use it as an excuse to flee the house
even when Joe wasn't with him.

So, Joe was now wearing a good pair of Bugle Boy pants and a snappy
shirt ("You want to impress my folks, don't you?"); and there was a bag
of Nomex jumpsuits in red and black in the trunk of the car, and a box
containing a clock-radio.  It was not the one Joe had selected; Tannim
had switched it on him for a pricier model with a CD player in it.  But
since it was going to remain in the trunk of the Mach I until they
reached Savannah, Joe wasn't going to find that out.

Fox was gone; he'd lost interest in the proceedings early on and simply
vanished.  He'd claimed he had a karaoke tournament to judge.  It
hadn't been easy persuading Joe that clothing could look good and be
comfortable, but Tannim had managed.

The kid looked really good, actually.  He was probably going to cut a
wide swath through the secretaries at Fairgrove.  Tannim guided the
Mach I through the traffic of south Memorial on the way to Bixby,
feeling relaxed and pleased with himself.  Modest, polite, and a hunk.
And he has round ears.  Uh huh.  They aren't gonna know what hit them.
He isn't going to know what hit him.  Oh, things are going to be
interesting around there.

Well, heck, why limit the mayhem to the secretaries?  There weren't too
many unattached female mechanics and engineers, but there were a few
and the elven ladies would probably be just as intrigued with the
polite young human.

Tannim grinned, but only to himself, and freed a hand just long enough
to pull his hair away from the back of his neck to let the sweat dry.
Joe's mere presence would get some of the ladies, human and elven, off
his back.  Not that they weren't charming, but they tended to get
possessive, and there just wasn't a one of them that Tannim found
right.

Yeah, throw Joe into the pool and see all the lady-fish go into
display, ignoring me.  Good plan!  Keighvin would see to it that they
didn't eat him alive or get him into any trouble, physical or
emotional.  And if he didn't, Bob, Al and Sarge would.  Do the lad some
good.  Loosen him up.

With those thoughts to elevate his mood, he pulled into the driveway
and into his "spot" beside the horse trailers, reflexively checking his
watch as he turned off the engine.  Right on time for dinner, just like
Mom asked.  Perfect.  The folks always said, "tardiness is the height
of conceit, punctuality the height of respect."

His parents came out to meet them, both obviously very curious about
Joe.  They climbed out, and Joe waited diffidently beside the
passenger's door while Tannim made introductions.  He charmed Tannim's
mother immediately with his politeness, and impressed Trevor Drake with
his soft-spoken attitude.  Supper was waiting for them, and it went
much more smoothly tonight, since Trevor could not say enough good
things about Keighvin Silverhair and Fairgrove, and Joe could not say
enough good things about the food.  He completely won over Tannim's
mother by volunteering to do the dishes afterward, and by insisting
that he help clear the table.  Tannim vetoed the former, and helped
with the latter.  "You and Dad can go enjoy the horses," he said. "I'll
give Mom a hand.  I'm not allergic to dishwashing."

So Joe changed back into his jeans and t-shirt for a trip to the
stables to inspect the horses, leaving Tannim alone with his mother.

"I was a little worried about this Joe," she told him, as she stacked
the dishes he rinsed in the dishwasher.  "We saw so much about those
awful people on the news, and I was afraid he'd be oh, I don't know
just someone I wouldn't feel comfortable around.  But he's a really
nice boy, honey."  She paused to fix him with a look he knew only too
well.  "He's so polite, and he looks respectable."

She did not say "why can't you be more like him?"  but Tannim knew that
was what she was thinking.

"Well, Mom, when your father puts a gun in your mouth to discipline
you, you learn to be polite pretty quick," he said, off-handedly.

"He didn't!"  she exclaimed, eyes round.  At her son's nod of
confirmation, she turned just a little pale.  "Well, the poor boy," was
all she said, but Tannim sensed the thoughts running around in her
head.  Joe had just gone from "that nice boy" to "that sweet,
mistreated boy" in her mind, and he had an idea what might come next.
Actually, he was all in favor of it.

Joe and Trevor came in then, talking horses.  Tannim joined them at the
breakfast bar, letting them do all the talking, just observing.  Joe
had relaxed a good bit; Tannim knew his dad probably wasn't like anyone
the young man had ever met in his short life, and that was all to the
good.  Expose him to something normal, and let that show him how
abnormal his own parents were.

"Listen, Joe, you don't have much to pack up now, do you?"  Trevor
asked, finally.

"No, sir," Joe replied, looking faintly puzzled.  Tannim held his
peace; this was what he thought might be on his parents' minds.

"Well, it's a long way out to Pawnee if your guardian doesn't mind
losing you a little early, why don't you come move into our guest room
until you and Tannim leave?"  Trevor asked, making it very clear that
he meant the invitation.  "That way you and my son can talk whatever
business you need to, and he won't be spending a lot of time driving
around in the heat."

"I think that's a great idea, Joe, if you'd like it," Tannim seconded
enthusiastically.  "A really good idea, in fact."

It means I can continue some of those magic lessons without worrying
about interruptions.  I know every good place around here to go where
we won't be disturbed.  And maybe if my folks feel like they've got a
replacement son, they won't look at me as if I'm not really what they
wanted.

Some of the same might be going through Joe's mind.  "I can call and
ask him," he said tentatively.  "If he says it's okay, I can pack up
tonight and be ready in the morning."

"Go call," Tannim's mother urged, adding her vote to Tannim and her
husband's.  "I'd love to have you here.  Tannim doesn't eat enough to
keep a bird alive, and I love seeing someone who appreciates food."

Joe blushed and excused himself.  Tannim grinned at his folks. "Thanks,
Dad, Mom," he said sincerely.  "Joe is going to need a lot of help
getting used to the way things are in this world.  I think we can help
him out quite a bit in two weeks."

Absolutely true, complete truth, but not the way they think.

"I kind of figured that, son," Trevor said warmly.  "Boy's been
sheltered in a pretty peculiar sense.  He knows everything there is to
know about the way lunatics think, and nothing about the way normal
folk tick.  And we raised you, so we know how to talk to lunatics.  We
can translate for him."

Tannim mock-threatened his father with a hand and then said, "Well, you
have a point, actually."  Tannim patted his mother's hand.  "And he
could use seeing a lady who stands up for herself, too.  Where he comes
from, women are supposed to go hide themselves in the kitchen and let
their men do all the thinking for them."

"Well, he won't get that here," she replied, forthrightly.  "I think
he's lonely, honey.  It would be nice if we could make him feel as if
he had a home to come back to, if he wants."

Well, it sounds like they've adopted him!  Heh.  He could sure do
worse.

"Thanks, folks," was all he said, but he put feeling into it.

At that point Joe returned.  "Frank said to make sure I wasn't making a
nuisance of myself," he reported, looking anxiously at all three of
them.  "And if this is going to be an inconvenience to you "

"Well, if you're worried that much about it, you can give me a hand
with the horses," Trevor said comfortably.  "Tannim can't; boy takes
one look at 'em and starts sneezing.  Help me run some of the friskier
ones on the lunge, maybe saddle up a couple of the mares and give them
some exercise in the mornings.  Some of those ladies are getting a
little pudgy."

"Could I?"  Joe's face lit up.  "You have beautiful horses, sir.
They're so great, are you sure you can trust me with them?"

Hoo boy, wait until the kid gets a look at the elvensteeds.  Did Al
ever show him Andur and Nineve in their true forms?  He thought back
over what Alinor had told him in his briefing.  No, I don't think he
did.  Didn't want to put the kid into overdrive.  A Sidhe was bad
enough.  Heh.  He and Rosaleen Dhu are going to get along just fine,
and that'll make him one of Keighvin's favorite "sons."

"If I didn't think I could trust you with them, I wouldn't have asked
you to help," Trevor said, invoking logic.  "That's a lot of cash tied
up in horseflesh, son, and I know you'll be as careful with them as I
am.  I saw for myself you can handle them fine, and you know your way
around a barn.  So, can you move in tomorrow morning?"

Tannim sighed.  The way his father said "morning," he knew that Trevor
meant it.  That meant rising at seven A.M."  no excuses.

"Sure thing, sir!"  Joe was eager now.  His blue eyes were alight with
anticipation.  "If I can tell Mr.  Casey that you want me to help out,
he'll know I'm not imposing on you."

"Good, it's settled then."  Tannim's mother nodded firmly.  Her curly
hair bounced with the nods.  "I'll have the guest room ready for you,
and we'll expect you tomorrow morning."

Joe looked at his watch.  "In that case, Mr.  Drake, Mrs.  Drake, I'd
better be getting back.  I don't want to wake up Mr.  Casey coming
in."

Tannim rose, stretching.  "Right.  Mom, Dad, I'll get Joe here back to
Pawnee, and I'll probably take the long way home.  It's a nice night
for a drive."

He watched his mother's face twitch as she repressed the automatic
response of "don't stay out too late."

He winked at his father and led the way out for Joe.  The sun had set
while Joe and his dad had been out in the stables; now it was full
dark, with no moon.  Their feet crunched on the gravel on the driveway,
and off in the distance, the whisper of a distant highway beckoned.  It
really was a good night for a drive, and Tannim intended to take full
advantage of the solitude.  He'd been promised some rest, and he was,
by God, going to get some.  He found driving restful, particularly when
he had no place to go and no time he had to be there.

They climbed into the Mustang, and Tannim joined the stream of traffic
on Memorial.  Joe was far more talkative on the way back; for a wonder,
Fox did not appear.  Joe was a lot more relaxed now than he had been
when they first drove out here.  Tannim took that as a good sign; he
already liked young Joe, and it seemed that Joe was far more
comfortable with Tannim than the boy had expected to be.

"So, how are we shaping up?"  Tannim asked, as he took the turnoff to
Pawnee, headlights cutting twin cones of light through the darkness.
"Me and Fairgrove, I mean.  Are we anything like you thought?"

"I " Joe faltered for the first time during the drive.  "Sir, you're
not at all what I expected.  You're not like Al or Bob, I mean."

Tannim threw back his head and laughed.  "Yeah, I can imagine!  Sieur
Alinor Peredon would probably be horribly offended if you thought he
was like me!  No, I'm not like anybody at Fairgrove, and neither is
anyone else.  That's the beauty of the place.  You're supposed to be
yourself, and no one else."

Joe's face was in darkness, but Tannim sensed his sudden uncertainty.
"What if what if you don't know who you are, sir?"  the young man asked
hesitantly.

"Well, wherever you are is a good place to find out.  And Fairgrove is
a good place to be," Tannim said firmly.  "And quit with the "sir'
stuff.  I'm not a knight like Alinor, and I'm not your guardian.  I'm
just Tannim, nothing more, and heaven knows that's enough for anyone.
Okay?"

They entered the outskirts of Pawnee, and a few street lights dimly
illuminated the cobblestones.  Leaves made dappled, constantly moving
shadows between each light.

"Okay," Joe said, although he didn't sound very sure.  "Uh, if you
don't mind my asking, what kind of a name is "Tannim'?  I never heard
anyone by that name before.  And why don't you use your last name?"

Tannim chuckled.  "I use it, because one of my teachers gave it to me.
"Tannim' isn't the name my folks gave me, but I guess it must suit me
since they started calling me by that right after I started using it.
And I don't use my last name because I don't really need it."  He
shrugged.  "People remember a guy who only goes by one name, and in
this business sometimes you need people to remember you."

I'm not gonna bring Chinthliss up unless I have to, and that is the
only way I can tell him where the name came from.  Kid's got enough to
cope with already.  He's got Fox; he sure as heck doesn't need
Chinthliss.

He pulled up into the Casey driveway at the stroke of ten; the lights
were still on, and the flickering blue in the living room windows
showed that the television was also going.  Good.  That meant they
wouldn't be waking the deputy up.

"I'll pick you up in the morning, Joe," Tannim said, unlocking the
doors from his console.  "Some time between eight and nine, all
right?"

"Great!"  Joe said with an enthusiasm that made Tannim wince inwardly.
Terrific.  The kid's a lark.  Ah, well, he and Dad can mess around with
the horses while it's still cool, and I can sleep in with a clear
conscience.

The young man slid out of the car, shutting the door carefully, waved a
cheerful farewell, and trotted up the porch steps into the house.
Tannim backed the Mustang carefully down the drive, and headed out of
Pawnee.

He stopped under a streetlight to make a selection from his CD box,
since there were no other cars in sight.  Driving to relax, let's see.
Kate Bush, Rush, Icehouse, Midnight Oil, a-ha, Billy Idol .. . there.
Cocteau Twins.  That'll do just fine.

He slipped the CD into the player, and turned the nose of the Mustang
out into the darkness.  No fear of getting lost; he knew the area
around Tulsa like the back of his hand, every section-line road, every
main drag.  All he had to do was look for the glow of Tulsa on the
horizon to orient himself.

He thought about checking out Hallet Racetrack, but thought better of
the idea.  It was probably locked up, and although he could get around
just about any lock ever made, you just didn't trespass on a racetrack.
Right now, when it came down to it, he just wanted the night, the
tunes, and the road.

A brief tingling of energies warned him of a "friendly" coming in; Fox
materialized in the seat next to him, but uncharacteristically didn't
say a thing.  Tannim let the Mach I set her own speed, and rolled the
windows down to let in the night and the air.  Music surrounded them
both in a gentle cocoon of sound as the Mustang rolled on through the
darkness, and the wind from the open windows whipped Tannim's hair and
cooled his face.

Night, stars, and sound, and the open road.  He felt muscles relaxing
that hadn't unknotted for a long time.  Fox leaned back in the
passenger's seat, resting one long arm on the window-frame, graceful
fingers tapping in rhythm to the song.

Stars blazed overhead.  The headlights reflected from the bright eyes
of small animals in the grass beside the road; once a rabbit dashed
across in front of the car, and he braked instinctively to avoid
hitting the owl following her.  The owl was hardly more than a flash of
wings and a glimpse of talons.  Barred owl?  Looked like it.  Be a
little more careful, lady; the next guy might not know you were going
to be on that bunny's tail.

"I'll warn her," Fox said quietly, picking up Tannim's thoughts so
easily that Tannim realized he must have relaxed enough to drop his
shields.  Well, that was safe enough in the Mach I; there were shields
layered on top of shields, magics integrated with every part of this
car, and the only reason Fox could get in and out so easily was because
Tannim had made those shields selectively transparent to him.

The music ended, and Tannim reached for the CDs, trusting to his
instincts to pick something appropriate.  For the first time, he
regretted the fact that Fox couldn't interact with the physical world;
it would be nice to have someone in the passenger's side to change the
CDs for him.  This wasn't quite like changing a cassette; still, he
managed with a minimum of fumbling.

A great rush of strings flowed from the speakers, and he relaxed still
further.  Alan Hovanhess, "Mysterious Mountain."  Good old instincts.
Not a lot of mountains in Oklahoma, but right now, with only the stars
and the swaths of headlights, the hills seemed mysterious enough.

"This is good," Fox said quietly, his voice full of approval.  "Really
good."

Tannim made an ironic little bow in his direction, but did not reply;
he didn't need to.  Fox was so rock-obsessed, he probably didn't
realize that any other kind of music existed.  The music spoke for
itself, sweeping through the Mach I like the night breeze, cutting
brilliant streaks across the sky like the occasional meteor.  He gave a
sigh of regret when it finished; someday he was going to find a store
that stocked enough obscure records that he'd be able to pick up more
from this particular composer.  He'd heard another piece on the radio
once, "And God Created Great Whales," that he'd snap up in a heartbeat
if he ever found it.

But when his hand sought the CD box for the third time, and the first
notes screamed from the speakers, he was startled at what his instincts
had chosen.  Billy Idol?  Not very relaxing

Just as he thought that, Fox sat bolt upright in his seat, glancing to
the rear in alarm.  "Oh-oh," the kits une said.

And vanished.

What the

He glanced in the rearview mirror, to see a pair of headlights coming
up on him from behind.  Fast.  Too fast for him to do more than
react.

He winced away from the mirror in pain, squinting.  Whoever this was,
he had his brights on, and he was not going to drop them.  The
headlights filled his mirror, glaring into his eyes, as Billy Idol
snarled over the speakers.

Some hot rodder?  Got to be, but why alone and why out here?  This is a
lousy road for dragging.

He edged over to the side, a clear invitation to pass.  The unknown
didn't take it, moving up to hang right behind his rear bumper, engine
growling.

Trying to pick me?  Out here?  Who is this jerk?

And why had Fox vanished like that?

He edged over further, until his right-hand wheels were actually in the
grass, and waved his hand out the window.  He wanted to flash the guy
the finger, but the idiot was probably drunk and Tannim was not in the
mood for a fight.

This time the answer was clear and unmistakable.

The car behind surged forward to hit the rear bumper.  Not so hard that
it knocked the Mach I off the road or his hands off the wheel but hard
enough to jar Tannim back in his seat and bang his head and neck
against the headrest.

"You sonuvabitch!"  Pain blossomed in his neck.  Savagely he jammed the
pedal to the floor, spinning the wheels for a moment before he jarred
into acceleration.  The Mustang's engine thundered in his ears,
drowning out Billy Idol, vibrating through him, a cross between a growl
and a howl.  For a moment, the headlights receded behind him.

But only for a moment.

The headlights grew again.  The car behind caught up as if it had
kicked in a jet engine.  He had only a moment's warning, and then the
vehicle pursuing him swerved to the left, accelerated again and passed
him, not quite forcing him off the road.

He got only a glimpse of the driver, just enough to see that it was
either a very long-haired guy, or a woman.  The car itself was clear
enough; a late-model Mustang, '90 or '91.  It was either black, or some
other very dark color.

Then it was past him, accelerating into the night, impossibly fast
unless the driver had a nitrous-rig under that hood.  All he saw was
the tail, red louvered lights winking mockingly at him, then
disappearing.

You arrogant bastard!

His jaw clenched painfully tight, an ache in his neck and the base of
his spine.  He forced himself not to pursue his tormentor.  He slowed,
then stopped, right in the middle of the road, turning off the
engine.

The license plate had been from no state.  And he had not been able to
read it.  Could not.  His eyes had blurred around the letters and
numbers, although everything else about the car had been
crystal-clear.

His hand reached out of itself and turned off the CD player.  In the
absence of the music, the singing of crickets and rustling of grass in
the breeze seemed as distant as the farthest stars.

He reached under the seat for a flashlight, opened the door and got
out.  Heat rose from the asphalt as he went to the rear to see what the
damages were.

He kicked rocks aside savagely as he took the few steps necessary to
reach the rear of the car, certain he was going to find a taillight out
at least, and a crumpled bumper at worst.  He moved slowly, played the
beam of the flashlight over the rear of the car, and couldn't see even
a scratch.

What the hey ?  If I didn't get hit, then what did happen?

Then he turned, and froze, as movement toward the front of the car
caught his attention.

There was something on the driver's side door.

He approached it, slowly, cautiously, playing the light over the door,
and felt anger burning up inside him, hot bile rising in his throat.

There in the circle of light from his flashlight, pop-riveted to the
door-panel, was a fingerless black leather driving glove.

With a growl of pure rage, he grabbed it and tore it off, the thin
leather ripping away and leaving the rivet in the middle of his
otherwise pristine door-panel.

I'm going to find him.  And I'm going to kill him.

Something rustled inside the glove, and a strip of white paper peeked
out at him impudently.  He had the uncanny feeling it was moving in
there on its own.

He pulled it out and unrolled it.  His hand trembled as he held it in
the light from the flashlight.

It was a thin strip of antique parchment, with a quotation written on
it in black ink in a clear, if spidery, hand.  * * * I have now found
thee; when I lose thee again, I care not.  All's Well That Ends Well
Act II, Sc 3 * * * He stared down the black ribbon of asphalt under the
stars.  There was no way that driver could have done this.

No way on Earth.

CHAPTER THREE

The warmth from the asphalt road seeped through his boots and the cool
breeze whipped the ends of his hair around his face as his rage ebbed,
and the fear began.  Not fear for himself any setup this obvious
wouldn't make him fearful for himself but for his parents, for Joe.
They were vulnerable, and only because they were related to him, or
connected to him.  His first impulse was to get in the Mustang and
start driving and not stop until he was back in Savannah, at Fairgrove.
But that was no more than a momentary impulse, and he preferred not to
act on impulse alone.  Impulsive decisions were for when he had less
than ten seconds to think before he acted.

Besides, that might be exactly what this challenger wants me to do:
take off for help and leave them all unprotected.  He throttled down
every emotion with a fierce determination to leave his reasoning
unclouded.  I have to think this one through before I do anything.

He opened the Mach I's door and slid into the driver's seat, throwing
the glove down on the passenger's seat.  His mind hummed.  Music.  I
think better with music.  He started the engine and put the Mach I
gently into motion, then punched the radio on.  It was after midnight;
time for the alternative rock program, Edge of Insanity, that took over
the midnight-to-six slot from the classical station.  With real luck,
the program would work for him the way WYRD did, the play-list acting
as a goad to his thoughts.

He tuned in right in the middle of a techno-trance piece; excellent.
That was good, logical, thinking music.  Okay, I need to analyze the
heck out of this.  There's a reason why they talk about "throwing down
the glove," and using a glove can't have been an accident.  This was a
gauntlet, a direct challenge.  Not just the glove, though, all of it
was meant to impress me so that it couldn't be ignored.  Whoever this
was, she managed to produce enough of a magical shove to the back of my
car that I thought she'd rammed my bumper.  And she slammed that glove
and rivet into my door, also magically, and in such a way that I didn't
even know she'd done it.  He realized he had already come to think of
his adversary as a woman; well, it was a reasonable assumption, given
the silhouette, the small size of the long-fingered glove, and the
finesse.  Not a bit of wasted energy; when males issued a challenge,
they generally overdid it.  Testosterone poisoning, clouding the
brain.

Right.  That's what she did.  Now, what she didn't do.  She didn't
shove the left bumper, although she made me think she had; if she'd
done that, she would have sent me off the road, and I could have been
seriously hurt.  She didn't damage the rear of the car.  The damage to
the pristine door panel was enough to send him into a rage all over
again.  Don't be an idiot; you have enough equipment to make that hole
disappear.  Borrow Alinor or Keighvin, and they might even be able to
stand the touch of Death Metal enough to ken the hole out of existence.
No, the point is she didn't do anything at all that would really have
harmed me or the Mach I. All she did was make me mad.  And she did it
with style.  This was very carefully calculated.  She could easily have
done me some serious hurt if she'd tried.

This also had the feel of something planned to enrage him, put him off
balance, make him stop thinking.

But if she knows anything about me, she has to know that I've got
pretty good control of my temper, and I think quickly.  So if her ploy
didn't make him act on anger or fearful impulse what did that mean?
Maybe this wasn't something planned to make him act impulsively.  It
was supposed to make him angry, there was no doubt of that.  If she can
send a pop-rivet into my door, she could have sent something else
through it.  An iron spike.  A crossbow bolt.  Hell, a bullet.  All
right, rethink everything.  Let me assume she's as brilliant and
complicated as anyone I've ever seen.  In that case, she'd do something
that could have multiple outcomes.  It might make me angry enough to
chase after her, or afraid enough to run, but that wouldn't be her
primary objective.

And her primary objective must have been

The challenge.  An invitation to single combat.

Yeah.  Everything she did points to the conclusion that this was a
formal challenge, properly issued, artistically issued.  Executed to
show me clearly that I was dealing with a certain level of finesse and
power, without giving anything else away.  And done by the rules.

The road passed over a creek; a gust of damp, green-scented air wafted
over him, and he thought he heard frogs.  If this was a challenge, that
meant a great deal; challenges were only meant for the person to whom
they were issued.  She who flung down the gauntlet would allow him time
enough to realize that it was a formal challenge, and further time to
think about it.  Even the worst of the Unseleighe played challenges by
the book.

There weren't supposed to be any Unseleighe living out here, though;
that was one problem.  So the questions of who and why still
remained.

And a new question arose: what next?

If he turned and ran, he might very well make things worse.  Creatures
who played the game of "challenge-response" often took the refusal to
accept the challenge as the signal for a no-holds-barred attack, for
the once-honorable opponent made himself into "prey" by fleeing.  A
worthy foe would not act on impulse.  An unworthy foe should be
disposed of as quickly as possible, for it not only hinted at treachery
by breach of format, but also threatened the system of honorable
challenge itself.

Easier to be the honorable opponent.  When you know the rules, you know
the pattern.  Thrust and parry.

The parents and the associates of the honorable opponent were not part
of the challenge.  The parents and associates of prey were

More prey.  No, I'll have to play this one clean until I know the
answers to my questions.

He found himself headed toward Bixby and shrugged.  All right.  I
shield and armor the farm right up to the limit.  Joe's going to be a
lot safer there than at Frank Casey's.  His education is just going to
start a whole lot earlier than either of us thought.  Damn.  Now
there's something else.  He might be the ultimate "prize" in this
little contest if I'm not careful.  I have to keep that in mind.  He
might be what she's really after, and she's challenged me to get me out
of the way, or to set things up so that he becomes, literally, the bone
of contention.  Winner take all.

He vaguely recognized something by the McGarrigles playing in the
background "Mother, Mother," perhaps and he turned the radio down until
it was a mere whisper of sound.  Good omen or bad?  Good, if it was
meant for Joe, as a warning to protect the young man; but maybe bad,
very bad, if it was meant for him.

Another impulse was to call Conal or Keighvin at Fairgrove, but that
was likely to be another mistake.  First of all, calling in help might
be a bad move at this early point.  Secondly, this was not the sort of
thing you could do much about over the phone.  His associates at
Fairgrove were not going to be able to help at long distance, and it
had not yet come to the point where he could legitimately ask for help,
reinforcements.  The dance of "liege lord and equal ally" that he and
Keighvin trod had its own patterns and measures.  If he was to retain
Keighvin's respect, he would have to deal with this quickly and
appropriately.

But he had another source of help available to him; one with a
different set of liabilities attached, but one for which the accounting
was definitely on his side.  Chinthliss owed him at the moment.  Time
to ask politely for a little payback.

One did not skimp on protocols and propriety when talking to dragons.

Tomorrow, he decided.  Tonight, just in case this lady doesn't play
fair and I'm misreading everything, I put up the defenses.  That
certainly matched the last song: the "house of stone" and the "cage of
iron."

The house was dark by the time he pulled into the driveway; only the
porch light left on, and a solitary lamp in his room still burning.  He
used his key and let himself in, and moved to his room, shadow-silent
on the carpeted hallway.

He stripped out of everything, including his body-armor; donned a clean
bikini-brief, and slipped into bed, turning the light off as he did so.
But he was not going to sleep, not yet anyway.

All the old protections and shields he had put in place around this
room as a kid were still here; dormant, but ready to be brought up at
any time.  That, at least, felt like "home."  He closed his eyes,
stretched in the comfortable and comforting embrace of mattress, clean
sheets, and blankets, letting his body relax itself, feeling shoulders
and neck pop and release their tension.

He chanted under his breath, old song lyrics invoking all the familiar
energies he had learned when he first began his mage-training here.  As
the chant harmonized with the hum of the machinery within the house,
his physical eyes drifted shut, and his body went rigid.

So far, so good.

He opened another set of eyes; everything around him glowed softly,
each object clearly delineated in its own faintly-luminescent aura.  It
could have been dusk in this room, rather than fully dark, so far as
the Othersight was concerned.  A bit more concentration, and he could
have lit up every item that he had cared for or spent time with,
according to emotional attachment.

He "sat up," although his physical body remained lying in the bed; his
spirit-self rose from the bed, went to the exact center of the room,
and took a fighter's stance.  As he had when he was a teenager, he
readied his magics and sent a spell of deeper sleep into his parents'
minds.  Not just because this would be a very bad time for him to be
interrupted; if, for some reason, one of them walked in on him at the
moment, they'd have the scat scared out of them.  They'd be sure that
he was dead and certainly, his heartbeat and breathing were so faint at
the moment that they would have every reason to believe just that.  He
was just short of death, connected to his body by the thinnest of
willed tethers.  Few people dared to go out-of-body this way, but the
advantages were worth the risk.

Oddly enough, he had never used that power to keep his parents sleeping
when he was a kid and had wanted to sneak out and raise some hell. Only
when he had to meet with Chinthliss, or practice some of what he'd been
taught.

Ah, I was just too lazy.  I had to be in trance to make them sleep, so
there was no point in doing all that work just to keep them from
catching me.  By the time I went into trance, mucked with their sleep,
and came out again, half the night would be gone.  Time's already
burning away.

The old patterns of shield and armor were still in place; he examined
them with a critical eye.  He'd based his old constructs on the smooth
dome-shapes of the silly, bad-effect "force-fields" of his favorite old
science fiction books and movies.  The basic shape was still good, but
he knew a lot more now than he had then; he tore the structure down and
began rebuilding it from within, constructing a crystalline structure
after the pattern of a geodesic sphere, with his room as the center.
Bucky Fuller, mage of logic that he was, would have been proud.  He
knew better, now, than to assume that because his room stood on solid
ground, the earth afforded as much protection as a shield.  No, now his
shields extended below ground as well as above.  The geodesic structure
was a lot more stable than a smooth dome, able to bear a great deal
more pressure.  Once the initial structure was in place, he really went
to work.  Over that, he layered shields and shunts to drain off excess
energies, and not a few traps for the unwary: magical deadfalls and
power-sinks.

When he was finished, he sat within a beautiful, radiant construction
that could have been a work of computer-generated art.  Multicolored
energies iridesced over the surface of his basic shield.  Satisfied
with what he had done at last, he repeated the patterns on a larger
scale, weaving a web of energies and barriers around the house and
stables, around the entire farm.  Layer on layer on layer it would take
someone who knew what he had done to untangle it, and he would be
warned and ready to deal with the intruder himself long before an enemy
actually penetrated those protections.

He worked feverishly, right up until dawn.  Then, and only then, he
turned his trance into a true sleep and let weariness take him into a
light slumber.

As Tannim drifted into the deeper realms of sleep, the dreams started
again.

Warm gray mists surrounded his body, evaporating the clothing he wore.
The tiny scales of his body armor whisked away, falling in a rain of
silent sparkles.  As he turned, the shadows from his lower body
coalesced into a bedroom of night-black satin.  Flames without candles
lit the room, atop hundreds of fluted golden rods.

And when he turned around completely, she was there, indescribably
beautiful, irresistibly seductive, waiting for him on a bed of silver
satin, imploring .. please .. . now..  .. * * * The alarm clock went
off far too early, even though he was more or less ready for it.  He
opened one eye and blearily looked at the display.

Oh God, six in the morning.  No choice, though; the sooner he got Joe
under a safe roof, the happier he'd be.  He dragged himself out of bed,
picked out clothing, grabbed his armor with it, and slipped across the
hall to the bathroom.

What was it about mothers and waterfowl?  This had been a perfectly
ordinary, plain bathroom when it had been his, but now that it was the
"guest bathroom," his mother had gone berserk with decorating.  Ducks.
There were ducks everywhere.  Wooden ducks with dried weeds in them on
the vanity, duck plaques on the wall, a duck-bordered,
pseudo-early-American wallpaper, ducks carved on the tissue-holder,
even a matching potpourri warmer.

"Ducks," he wondered aloud.  "Why did it have to be ducks?"

"What, dear?"  his mother said, and opened the door to the bathroom
before he could stop her.

"Oh!"  she exclaimed faintly, as he flushed with embarrassment at being
caught by his mother in his underwear.  Even if it did cover more than
a pair of Speedos.

But then she paled.  "Oh, dear," she whispered, even more faintly, her
eyes running with horrified fascination over the scars crisscrossing
her son's body.

Thank God none of them are new

But there was no denying the fact that his entire body was interlaced
with a fine network of scars, from the first, a knife-wound in the
forearm, to the latest, four talon slashes running from the right
nipple to the left hip.  Not exactly the way a loving mother likes to
see her child.  Especially since he couldn't explain most of them.

She was staring at those talon-slashes at the moment, and he knew what
she was going to ask.

"It looks worse than it was, Mom.  They're just scratches.  I was
shopping at K-Mart," he improvised hastily, "And I got knocked through
a plate-glass window during a blue-light special."

"A blue-light special?"  she replied, recovering her poise a little,
one eyebrow rising.

"I'm telling you, Mom, those women were crazy.  There were almost
knife-fights over those Barney dolls."  Sure.  It could happen..  ..

But her eyes were already traveling to the teethmarks that crossed his
left leg from hip to ankle.  "That ah was the wreck," he reminded her.
"Remember?  They had to cut me out of it."

"Aren't those bites?"  she asked, in horrified fascination.

"Jaws of Life," he lied frantically.  "They slipped.  Mom, please!  I'm
in my skivvies!"

"And I changed your diapers, young man," she responded automatically,
but at least she closed the door.

And at least she hadn't seen the glittering body-armor under the pile
of clothing on the floor.

He locked the door to prevent any further incursions and turned on the
shower.  There were a few things he could do to recharge his body and
make up for the lack of sleep, and the shower was the best place to do
them.  Writing an IOU to my body.  Oh, well.  It won't be the first
time.  Chinthliss was always on his case about doing things like this,
but But sometimes there's no choice.  If I get a choice, I'll catch a
nap after I get Joe over here.

He stood under the shower and let it literally wash the fatigue from
his body as he drew upon his reserves.  There was more in those reserve
stores than there usually was, thanks in no small part to some payback
on Keighvin's part, and a healer-friend of Chinthliss'.  By the time he
turned the hot water off, he felt better than he expected to.  Almost
human, in fact.

Certainly alert enough to deal with his mysterious lady in her
Mustang.

Ersatz Mustang.  Boy-racer fiberglass and recycled pop cans.  Might as
well have a plastic model.  Nothing more than the sum of its parts, any
of which you can pick up at Pep Boys off the shelf.  Heh.  If you can't
have the real thing, why bother?

Maybe that was why she'd put a hole in his Mach I; pure jealousy.

Sure.  It could happen.  And Carroll Shelby will join the Hare
Krishnas.  But if she can have anything she wants, why pick a Mustang
at all?

He reached under his clothing for the armor; glad now that he never,
ever went anywhere without it, even if it did mean he had to wear
long-sleeved shirts in the hottest weather.  He and Chinthliss had
worked on it together for three solid months, and no few of the scars
on his body were the result of being in a situation where he couldn't
wear it.  It had saved his life more than once, and was worth all the
trouble it posed.  If the mysterious lady had fired a crossbow bolt, a
bullet, or a spike through the door, she would have gotten a rude
surprise.  He might have gotten broken ribs, but she probably wouldn't
have killed him.  Not unless she knew about it, and how to get past
it.

He squirmed into it, like a dancer getting into a unitard, and that was
what it most resembled.  Made of thousands of tiny hexagonal scales,
enameled in emerald green, it was better than Kevlar because it offered
as much protection from magic as it did from bullets or knives.  The
cool scales slipped under his hands as smoothly as silk; the entire
suit of body-armor weighed about as much as a garment of knitted silk,
and moved with him as easily and naturally as a second skin.

He crooked his finger and ran the nail up the split down the front to
close it up again.  There were no seams, for every scale was linked
magically to every other scale, so it could be opened anyplace that he
wished.

It wasn't perfect he could, quite easily, be clubbed to death while
wearing it.  He could be injured through it, by impact.  And it didn't
protect his head, neck, or hands.  But it gave him a lot of edge over
someone expecting to do his arguing with a bullet, knife or elf shot

His clothing slipped on easily over the armor, and he made sure that
none of the green scales showed before he opened the door to the
bathroom to let the steam out.

When he'd finished with hair and teeth, he sprinted to the kitchen just
long enough to grab a banana and down a glass of orange juice, kissing
his mother quickly in passing.  "Gotta go pick up Joe," he said as he
ran for the door.  "I'll have a real breakfast when I get back."

Her protests were lost in his wake.

Personal shields were up before he left the static shields of his room
and the farm, and he activated every protection he had on the Mustang
once he was inside it.  With every sense, normal and magical, alert, he
drove the entire distance to Pawnee in a familiar state of controlled
paranoia.

Nothing happened.

Once or twice he thought he saw a late-model Mustang that might have
been hers, but it always drifted away in the traffic.  There were no
attacks, no probes, not even a whisker of power brushed up against his.
The attack or challenge of last night might never have happened.

Except that there was still a pop-rivet in the driver's-side door, and
a black leather glove on the seat beside him.

It taunted him; in no small part because he had been able to learn so
little from it.  It simply lay there on the black vinyl seat, a
palpable presence.  Finally he couldn't stand it any longer; at a
stoplight he grabbed it and shoved it into the glove box

Good God, I just put a glove in the glove box  That'll be a first.

Well, if she thought she was going to be able to winkle any of her
magics into the Mach I via that glove, odds were she was wrong.  The
glove box had its own little set of diamond-hard shields, and they
worked both ways, shielding what was in the box from outside influence,
and keeping what was in the box from getting any influences out.  This
wasn't the first time he'd had to carry something small and potentially
dangerous.  And for things large and potentially dangerous, there was
the trunk.

Heh.  Big enough for a body or two, if need be.

Jeez, his thoughts were bloody this morning!

He shook his head.  This woman and her little "present" were affecting
him in ways he didn't like, turning him savage.  A single steel
pop-rivet in the door panel and a stiff neck should not be doing this
to him.

Whoa!  Back up!  A steel pop-rivet?

He pulled the glove out of the box for a moment and examined it with
one eye still on the traffic before shoving it back in.  Why didn't I
notice this last night?  And steel eyelets on the back of the glove.
Whoever, whatever this broad is, she's not Unseleighe.  That glove's
been worn; there's scuff marks and creases in the leather.  No
Unseleighe would be able to tolerate steel on a glove, and no
Unseleighe would be able to use his magics to manipulate a steel
pop-rivet.  I don't think even Al or Keighvin could, and they have the
most tolerance to Cold Iron of any Sidhe I know.

That didn't mean, however, that she might not be in the hire of the
Unseleighe, or an ally of some kind.  They even had human allies and
servants.  But if she was that good, why would she be working on behalf
of someone else?

He sighed, and mentally shrugged, as he took the turnoff to Pawnee.
Maybe the pay was extraordinary.  Maybe she wasn't with the Unseleighe
at all.  Maybe she was the local hotshot, somebody who'd moved in after
he left, and she was pulling the equivalent of the young gun going
after the old gunfighter.

She obviously knew a great deal about him; she had a distinct edge over
him in that department.  He had to learn more about her, and fast!

Joe came bounding out of the house before he even came to a full stop
in the driveway, full of energy and enthusiasm, with a pair of duffel
bags and a couple of boxes waiting on the porch to be loaded into the
trunk.  His guardian was right behind him.  Tannim helped the young man
stow his gear in the trunk, trying to sound and look as normal as
possible, all the while reassuring Frank Casey that this was no
imposition.  Somehow he managed to smile and act as if everything was
exactly the same as it had been when he'd dropped Joe off last night.
Somehow he remembered to mention that Joe would be helping Trevor with
the horses; evidently that was what finally convinced the deputy that
Joe would indeed be pulling his own weight.

Being out here made Tannim nervous; he had to consciously force himself
not to look over his shoulder.  The last place he wanted to bring
trouble to was the sleepy little town of Pawnee; they'd already had
enough trouble to last them well into the next century, and Casey was
obviously able to take care of anything normal that arose.

When Joe was buckled into the passenger's seat, and they pulled out of
Pawnee with nothing sinister manifesting, Tannim heaved a sigh of
relief.

"Is something wrong?"  Joe asked immediately.  "Did your parents change
their minds or something?"

"Yes," Tannim replied.  "No.  Yes, there's something wrong, but it
doesn't have anything to do with my folks, and they don't know anything
about it.  They still want you out there.  Dad's making his famous
omelettes and Mom is doing pancakes so we get "proper breakfasts' when
we get back.  No, the problem's with what's in the glove
compartment."

He nodded at the glove box and Joe opened it, pulling out both glove
and quotation.

"A glove?"

"Yeah, weird, huh?  After I dropped you off last night, someone in a
late-model Mustang rammed the back of the Mach I and left that
pop-riveted to the door.  Except that she didn't ram me, she used magic
to shove me forward hard enough to make me think she'd rammed me, and
she whanged that into my driver-side door with magic, too, so that I
didn't notice it until after she'd passed me and was gone."

Joe was quick; he cut right to the chase.  "Why?"  he asked.

"I think it's a challenge."  He chose his next words carefully.  "The
trouble is, I don't know for sure.  I don't know what the stakes are.
And I don't know who or what she's going to drag into this."

"Like me, maybe?"  Joe hazarded, turning just a little pale.  "Tannim,
I hope you don't mind me saying so, but I could have gone a long time
without hearing that.  I was hoping I wasn't gonna have to deal
personally with this magic stuff for the next couple of years."

Tannim could only shrug.  "Sorry.  Sometimes stuff just shows up and
bites you in the ass.  Look, I've got major protections on the farm,
you, my folks.  I'm going to try to keep you out of this.  Maybe this
is as harmless as a drag race; she could be the local hotshot trying to
pick on me.  The main problem I've got is that all I know about her is
that she planted that on me with magic.  The rest is speculation.
Except for one thing: she can't be Sidhe.  Pop-rivet and the fasteners
on that glove are Cold Iron, and that glove's been worn."

"So what are you going to do?"  Joe asked, apprehensive, but covering
it fairly well.  Tannim negotiated a tricky bit of passing before he
answered, using the traffic to buy him time to think of what he was
going to tell the kid.

Everything.  Teenage sidekicks notwithstanding, he's got guts and he's
got combat experience.

"Use that glove to try and find something more about her," Tannim
replied grimly.  "Right now, I'm at a major disadvantage, since she
obviously knows something about me, maybe a lot.  And for the rest
besides being very careful, we're going to act as if this was all
business as usual.  We'll leave here on schedule for Fairgrove, unless
there's a good reason not to.  If we let her think she's disrupting our
lives, she wins a moral victory, if nothing else."

Joe nodded slowly.  "Just tell me what to do, and I will, sir," he said
bravely.

Tannim smiled crookedly.  "Besides putting that glove back, the best
thing you can do is give my mom someone to fuss over, and someone for
my dad to show off his horses to.  Occupy their time.  That'll keep
them from wondering what I'm up to, and maybe keep them out of danger.
I'm still thinking this through.  Unless you really want to stay out of
everything, I'm going to at least keep you informed."

"Right."  Joe accepted that, and stowed the glove back in the box.  "Ah
where's Fox?"

"That " Tannim replied quietly " is a darned good question."  And one
he hadn't considered until now.

He saw her coming.  No he sensed her coming.  He looked back over his
shoulder before I knew anything was up, said, "Uh oh," and vanished.
And he hasn't been back.

Fox knew something.  He had to.  There was no other explanation for the
way he'd acted.

Did he recognize her?  There had to be something there that he knew, or
sensed something that slipped right by me, because I thought she was
just some hot-rodder, or an obnoxious drunk, right up until she rammed
the rear of the Mach I. I had no clue she'd done anything with magic
until after she was gone.  So what does Fox know about all this?

"You're thinking about something," Joe observed, watching his face
alertly.  "Something to do with that woman and Fox."

"Yeah."  He ran his tongue over dry lips.  "He was with me right up
until the moment she showed up, then he just blinked out, and hasn't
been back."

"Can you make him show up?"  Joe asked hopefully.  "It sounds like he
might know something."

But Tannim had to shake his head with regret.  "No.  Not without
violating a lot of trusts, as well as protocols.  My friends the ones
like Fox wouldn't ever really trust me again if I forced him to show
up.  That's part of the reason they like me.  He knows I'm thinking
about him, I'm sure.  He'll only show up if he wants to."

Joe shook his head sadly.  "Sometimes it's really frustrating to be the
good guy, you know?  The bad guys never have to think of things like
this."

Despite the tension, Tannim had to chuckle at that.  " "Fraid so, Joe,"
he replied.  "I'm afraid so."  * * * They reached the ranch without any
kind of incident, but Tannim was not about to be lulled into lowering
his defenses.  If this was a challenge, that would be precisely the
sort of thing she would be looking for.  No, if anything, he had to
redouble his efforts.

But before he did that, he was going to have to refuel and get some
real rest.  He'd done everything he could do to protect the innocent
bystanders without having specific information on his opponent.  Now
was the time to get himself back up to top shape.

Joe had already gotten breakfast with his guardian, but he showed no
reluctance to eat when presented with a second breakfast.  Tannim
marveled yet again at the way the young man could dispose of food, as
he munched his way dutifully through as much of the "farmhouse meal" as
he could handle at one time.  One thing for sure, he's solved our
leftover problem for awhile.

After breakfast, when his mother and father both mentioned work in the
stables, he seized on the excuse to get a little more sleep.  "You guys
go right ahead," he said, trying to sound relaxed.  "I have a ton of
books with me I haven't had time to get to.  I'll go read in my room,
if you guys don't mind, and I'll catch up with you at lunch."

That gives me another three hours to sleep.  I can pack six hours worth
into those three, with a little hard mage-sleep.  That should put me
back up to par.  Or at least as close to par as I've been in the last
couple of months.

After the exhibition of allergic reactions Tannim had shown the last
time he'd entered the barn, neither of his parents were eager to have
him along.  They accepted his statement with a minimum of fuss and
ushered Joe out the kitchen door, all three of them looking eager.  The
proprietary way his parents flanked the young man made Tannim smile.
They had definitely "adopted" him.

He shoved the dishes into the dishwasher, cleaned up the kitchen
hastily, and practically ran into his room.  He spread a book open on
the nightstand, to make it look as if he really had been reading, but

But if they happen to come in and find me asleep, it's not that big a
deal.  They know I need rest, they'll just think I'm actually getting
it.

He thought, given the tension that he was under, that he just might
have to will himself to sleep.  He had not reckoned with the
exhaustion, long- and short-term, he'd been enduring for the past
couple of months.  He laid himself down on the bedspread, closed his
eyes, and fell asleep even as he was preparing the first stages of
willing himself into that state.

He woke to the sounds of voices in the house; Joe and his dad.  He lay
motionless for a moment, with the memories of vivid dreams in his
mind.

Dreams of her.

He'd dreamt of her, at least once a week, since he'd first encountered
Chinthliss.  Nightly, sometimes.  And interestingly enough, she had
aged at approximately the same rate that he had; when he'd been an
adolescent, so had she, and now she was a full adult, although it was
no longer possible to tell exactly how old she was.  She could have
been twenty or forty; showing nothing that pointed to chronology, only
that she was no longer an adolescent and not yet showing any signs of
middle age.

With raven hair that cascaded down below her shoulders, enigmatic green
eyes, and beauty that was both cultured and wildly untamed, she was, in
a sense, the perfect lover he'd never been able to find in anyone
else.

Not that he hadn't looked.

For a long time he'd been certain that he would find her.  He'd
assumed, as most young romantics full of hormones do, that the dreams
meant the two of them were destined to meet and become lovers.  But as
the years passed, and he never found anyone remotely like her, he
became convinced she was nothing more than an unconscious expression of
his wish for that "perfect" lover.  Not that she was slavishly devoted
to him in those dreams; far from it.  That would not have interested
him, once he was past the macho cockiness of every adolescent that
demanded absolute devotion, or worse, ownership.  Luckily, that
unflattering phase of his development had been brief.

No, she was very clearly herself in those dreams, perfectly capable,
perfectly competent, and quite able to take him on in a game of wits,
in a game of intellect, of purely physical challenge, and in any other
games as well.  That was what made her so perfect.  And so damned
impossible.

He wondered why he'd dreamed of her now, though.  And that kind of
dream: erotic so far past what he thought were his ordinary fantasies.
He'd been entangled to the point where he'd awakened in a state of
sexual tension that was as demanding as the state of nervous tension
he'd been in when he started this little nap.  His undershorts felt two
sizes too tight.  And he was in his parents' house, for God's sake. Not
in a position to do anything about it.

Oh, she was something special, though.  She was just the kind of
otherworldly succubus that would make all the sacrifices to get her
worth it.  He wouldn't care if she was going to eat him alive, if there
was a chance he could win her heart.  But, instead of her, he had some
crazy woman in a hot-rod Mustang forcibly planting leather wear on
him.

The voices in the hall drew nearer, and Tannim hastily put his dreamy
musings out of his mind.  He grabbed simultaneously for the paperback
on the nightstand and a throw-blanket to cover himself with, then
assumed a posture of reading.  When his mother tapped on the door and
opened it, he was able to greet her with a reasonably calm demeanor.

"Ready for some lunch?"  she asked.

"Sure," he told her, putting the book down and stalling a bit for his
blood to cool.  "I hope you three had a good time out there.  I already
know it was work."

That kept her busy, chatting about what she and her husband and Joe had
accomplished; while she was talking, she wasn't asking him any
questions.  Joe had clearly enjoyed the morning's workout.  A few
minutes later, while they all ate, Trevor couldn't say enough about how
well Joe had handled the horses.

"Well, if you haven't got anything planned for him this afternoon, I'd
like to borrow him," Tannim interjected.  "There's quite a bit of
outfitting we still need to do."

Joe paused in mid-bite and raised a single eyebrow at Tannim in
inquiry.  Tannim nodded, ever so slightly.

"There's not much for him to do in the afternoon," Trevor replied, "not
in this heat.  Remember, we were counting on that.  I know you two have
a lot of business to take care of, and I figured you were going to take
afternoons and evenings to do it.  And maybe just spend some time
driving around together; if you're going to be working together, you
ought to get to know each other."

Tannim smiled; if he hadn't had these current worries, that's precisely
what he would be doing.  Sometimes his folks showed some amazing
insight.  They always had seemed to get smarter the older he got.

"In that case, we'll take off," he said.  "As soon as you're ready,
Joe."

Joe made the last of his third sandwich and glass of milk vanish with a
speed that meant he had to be either magical, ravenous or
enlisted-Army, then pronounced himself ready to go.  Tannim stayed only
long enough to clear their own dishes away, leaving his parents
lingering over coffee, before leading the way back out to the
Mustang.

Which had, unfortunately, been sitting in the hot sun all morning.

He popped the doors open with the electronic gadget on his keyring and
started the engine the same way, but waved Joe away from the car.  He
opened the driver's side long enough to start the ac, then stood with
the door closed beside it for a moment while the interior cooled a
trifle.  He tried not to think about that shiny pop-rivet in the door
panel, but it seemed to be winking at him, mockingly.

Heck, I ought to at least hit it with a dab of touch-up paint so it
isn't so blatant.

He finally couldn't stand it any longer and waved Joe inside, pulling
open his own door and sliding gingerly over the hot black vinyl.  The
steering wheel was almost too hot to touch, and he made a vow to find
some shade, somewhere, that would cover the car in the mornings.  Joe
winced away from the hot seat, sitting forward a bit to keep his back
away from it.  He didn't have the protection of the armor; all he had
were jeans and a white t-shirt.

"Where to?"  Joe asked expectantly.  "I figured you didn't have
shopping on the brain."

"Wish I did."  He eased the Mustang around in the graveled half-circle
in front of the house, pulled up to the end of the drive, and headed
down the way he had first arrived.  No more backing down the drive; not
when that put him in a vulnerable position so far as a getaway was
concerned.  "No, I told you I needed to get more information on this
woman; I'm going to a place where it's safe to work some magic to see
if I can't get hold of well, he's an old friend, and he's something of
an expert on challenges."

When his encounters with Chinthliss had gone beyond real dreams and
into situations he had originally thought were "waking dreams" or
entertaining hallucinations, the old barn he'd rented for his Mustang
restoration business had been the place where he'd first encountered
his mentor.  That would be the safest place to try to contact him
again, even though there wasn't much left of the building.  No one
would bother them there, and the shield-frames Chinthliss had put in
place were still there.

He hadn't intended to come back, but now he had no choice.

The track leading up to the place was long overgrown, visible only as
two places where the grass was a little shorter and a little paler than
the rest.  He turned off through the broken gate in the fence that no
one had ever bothered to mend, and pulled the Mach I up through the
waving tall grass.  If he hadn't known exactly where the safe track
was, he would never have dared this with a car that was not an off-road
vehicle.  But the earth was packed down here, and there shouldn't be
anything lurking to slash tires or foul the undercarriage.  Still, he
kept the car at a walking pace, just in case, bringing it up to what
was left of the east side of the barn, pulling it into his old parking
place in the shade of a blackjack oak.

He retrieved the glove from the glove box and stuck it into his pocket.
He climbed out of the car, and waded through the weeds and grass to
where half of the barn door hung from one hinge, the other half lying
in the grass.  Joe followed, diffidently.

He stepped across the threshold.  "You know," he said,
conversationally, as he stared into the empty, weed-filled space that
had once held his workshop and all his beloved Mustangs in their
various states of repair, "I had a dream about this place, before I
ever set foot in it.  I dreamed that I came up to this door, opened it,
and looked around.  The place was mostly empty, full of shadows.  And
right there " he pointed to the west corner " there was a tarp with
something under it.  In my dream I would come up to that tarp, and pull
it off, and there was an engine under there.  Not just any engine, but
a 428 Cobra Jet in absolutely perfect condition.  Mint, like the day it
had come off the line.  And it had just been waiting for me to find
it."

He contemplated the corner for a moment; there was no sign now that
there had ever been anything there.  Somewhere under the weeds, there
probably lurked all the bits of junk the guy he'd sold salvage rights
to hadn't carted off, but you wouldn't know that from here.  "Anyway,
that was what convinced me to rent this barn; to begin my Mustang
restoration business, to go ahead with the whole plan.  I did just
that, rented it sight unseen; walked up to the place with the key in my
hand and unlocked the door and swung it open.  And sure enough, in that
corner, there was a tarp, with something under it.  I walked up to it;
my heart was pounding, let me tell you.  I grabbed the end of the tarp,
and I pulled it away "

"And the engine was there!"  Joe exclaimed when he paused.

Tannim shook his head, smiling.  "Nope.  Nothing but a pile of musty
old lumber and some odd bits of farm equipment.  And just at first, I
was horribly disappointed.  I felt like the dream had let me down,
somehow."

He let his gaze drift upward to what was left of the walls, to the blue
sky above where the roof had been.  And he realized that coming here
did not hurt, as he had feared it would.  He'd given up the limited
dreams this place meant a long time ago outgrown them, so to speak.  He
might just as readily have felt pain at seeing his old tricycle, or his
playpen.

"But then," he continued, "I had this revelation.  The dream hadn't let
me down at all, because it had spurred me to make the commitment to try
the business.  I might not otherwise have done it.  And I knew at that
moment that the things I would build here would be so much better than
that phantom engine, there'd be no comparison.  Everyone wants to hit
it big and have something great just happen, like winning a lottery.
But the things I would create here would be all mine, built out of the
work of my own hands and my own sweat, and not just thrown into my
lap."

"Yeah .. ."  Joe said, and nodded.  "Yeah, I see what you mean."  And
although not everyone would have understood, Tannim had the sense that
Joe did.

He took another step or two into the barn, and felt all the protective
energies of Chinthliss' magics close around him.  The blackened walls
took on a peculiar golden haze as he reactivated those magics; gaps in
the walls closed up, and a glowing golden field arched upward, between
him and the open sky.

Joe stared, wide-eyed, open-mouthed.  Tannim grinned, gazing right
along with him.  He still loved this place.

"Well, there it is, Joe.  Real magic.  Don't know how much Al and Bob
showed you, but this is it: two-hundred proof."

"They never showed me anything like this," Joe replied, still ogling
around with unabashed astonishment.

Tannim permitted himself a chuckle.  "Well," he said, "there's more
where that came from."  * * * Joe hadn't imagined why Tannim had
brought them to this burned-out hulk of a barn, except out of
nostalgia.  He did understand what Tannim meant with his story about
the dream-engine, though.  He'd had more than enough experience with
how gifts out of the blue could backfire on you, or have strings
attached you didn't even know about until you began your puppet-dance. 
No, it was better to earn what you got, that was for sure.

Still the place was not exactly prepossessing.  The roof was gone, and
although the remains of the four walls lifted ragged and blackened
timbers to the sky, he couldn't imagine what Tannim could find here
that he couldn't get in say a brush-filled ravine, or a tree-packed
ridge, both of which would offer the same amount of privacy that this
barn would.

Then Tannim had done something and as his skin tingled with the feeling
of a lightning storm building, the walls came alive and rose unbroken
to the sky in solid sheets of power.

More than that, a kind of roof appeared overhead a roof of glowing
golden light.

All of it was rather ghostlike, since he could see right through it,
but it felt powerful, and he had no doubt that it would protect them in
its way as well as armor plating.

That left him with a lump in his throat.  Witnessing magic like this
was an electrifying and bewildering experience.

Al and Bob had shown him a few things, including something they'd
called "personal shields," but it had all been small stuff compared
with this.  Was this the kind of thing Tannim did all the time?  Would
he be expected to work with this kind of stuff on a regular basis?  And
what about the other people at Fairgrove?  Were they all as well as
powerful as this?

"What do you want me to do, sir?"  he asked, pleased that his voice
shook only a little.

"Just watch," Tannim replied, taking a relaxed pose in the center of
the barn, legs spread apart almost like a pistol-shooting stance, arms
raised over his head.  "Nothing else."

Well, that was easy enough to do..  ..

He watched, and for awhile nothing much seemed to happen.  Then he felt
that funny tingling along his skin that he had learned meant something
magical was going on, and a faintly glowing ball of green-and-gold
light formed in front of Tannim, hovering in the air at about chest
height.  Soon it was quite solid, as if someone had hung a light bulb
right in midair.  He could not imagine what this thing was, but he
watched it with wide eyes.  This wasn't the sort of thing he saw every
day.

Tannim stared into the ball, and Joe had the sensation that he was
somehow talking to it.  He dropped his right hand long enough to pull
the black driving-glove out of one pocket, and held it up to the globe
for a long time.

Then he tucked the glove away again, raised his hand back over his
head, and stared at the globe for a moment longer.

This was as creepy as anything Brother Joseph had ever done, and only
the sense that this was not anything evil or even harmful kept Joe
standing where he was.  He knew what evil felt like; whatever it was,
this wasn't evil.

But he almost lost it when the ball suddenly brightened until it
rivaled the sunshine and cast a tall shadow of Tannim against the wall
behind him.  And he did yelp when it vanished in a clap of thunder.

But Tannim only dropped his hands, dusted them off against his jeans,
and stared at the walls for a moment.  Abruptly, the glow disappeared,
leaving only the fire-blackened timbers again.

"I love that effect!"  Tannim laughed.

"What was that?"  Joe blurted.  "What did you do?"

"Call it a magical version of a fax machine," Tannim replied after a
moment, his green eyes luminous in the bright sunshine, as if there was
some power making them shine.  "I have a friend named Chinthliss who's
like a more powerful version of Foxtrot, though he'd choke if you ever
said it to him.  I want him to help me, and that little glow-ball is
how I told him pretty much everything we know."  He grinned then, and
pulled his Wayfarers out of his pocket, putting them on.  "Now, we just
wait."

A magical version of a fax?  Joe shook his head; this was way beyond
anything Al and Bob had ever showed him.  Even though he knew that when
they came to visit they hadn't ever come by airplane much less driven
across the country, they hadn't once explained how they did manage to
cross the miles between Pawnee and Savannah whenever they chose.  They
certainly hadn't shown him things like this.  Tannim turned away from
him for a moment and bent his head down to peer at something in the
grass growing up through the barn floor.

Joe might have asked more questions, except that at that precise
moment, someone coughed delicately behind him.

"Excuse me?"  said a low, sexy, female voice.  * * * Tannim thought he
saw something give off a bit of mage-sparkle in the grass at his feet,
and he peered down for a moment.

"Excuse me?"  said a voice that was not Joe's.

Tannim jumped in startlement, and turned to face the barn door.

And froze as he saw who was standing there behind Joe, his mind lodged
on a single thought, unable to get past it.

It's her it's her it's her

And it was: the woman who had haunted him and hunted him down through
his dreams for the last decade and more.  The woman he'd dreamed of
this morning.  Her.  And she stood there, nonplussedly taking in his
look of complete and utter shock.

There was absolutely no doubt of it; she matched his dreams in every
detail.  Gently curved, raven-wing hair swept down past her shoulders
and framed a face that he knew as well as he knew his own.  Amused,
emerald-green eyes gazed at him from beneath strong brows that arched
as delicately as a bit of Japanese brushwork.  The regal nose was just
short of being hawklike, and gave strength to the prominent cheekbones.
The sensual mouth hinted at a hundred secrets.  And the body, the
perfect, slim, small-breasted body .. . did more than hint.

She stood as he remembered her standing; poised, and not posed,
graceful movement arrested for the briefest of moments.  She wore silk
and leather; a red silk jumpsuit that flowed in an exotic cut that
spoke of expensive designers, tooled and riveted black leather belt and
boots.  She wore them beautifully, flawlessly, unselfconsciously, as if
they were the stuff of her everyday attire.

"Excuse me," she said again, in a throaty contralto that he remembered
whispering intimacies into his ear, "..  . but I understood that I
could find someone here who works on Mustangs."

He took one step toward her; another.  At the third step, he looked
past her and spotted her black Mustang standing in the midst of the
tall grass outside the barn door.  The grasses waved gently around it,
like something out of a commercial.  Joe simply stood frozen in place,
staring at her.  She waited, calmly.  She looked as if she would be
perfectly ready to wait all day.

Tannim started to speak, and had to cough to clear his throat before
his voice would work.

"Not for a long time," he said dazedly.

"Ah," she replied, with a smile tinged with something he could not
read.

But then her eyes widened as she looked past his shoulder, and she
stepped back in alarm.

Fear lanced him.  He whirled to look.

There was nothing there.

Quickly, realizing that she had pulled the oldest trick in the book on
him, he turned back.

She was already gone.  And so was her car.

Only then did his mind click back into gear, as he sprinted past the
broken-down door, and stood where the car had been.  There was the
imprint of four tires in the grass but no track-marks leading up to
them.  There was no sign that the car had actually been driven through
the grass to reach that spot, and there had been no sound of a motor.

Belatedly, recognition.  The car that had stood there had been the same
Mustang that had shadowed him last night.

The grasses waved and parted; he looked down when his subconscious
recognized that the shadow there was not a shadow.  There was a second
black, fingerless driving glove in the grass at his feet.

He picked it up, and immediately banished the thought that he might
have dropped last night's glove and not have noticed.  That glove had
been torn where it had been riveted to the door and he'd ripped it off.
This glove, also for the right hand, was intact.

And it, too, contained a small strip of parchment.

He took it out, and there was another quotation handwritten there, in
the same spidery hand.  * * * The painful warrior famoused for fight,
After a thousand victories, once foiled, Is from the books of honour
razed quite, And all the rest forgot for which he toil'd.  Sonnet 25 *
* * He stared at it, the meaning burning arc-light bright in his mind.
The challenge has been made.  Chicken out of this one or be defeated
and everything you are and ever were will be erased, and everything you
ever did will be forgotten.

CHAPTER FOUR

Tannim tucked the slip of parchment back into the glove with special
care.  The sun burned down on his head, as the quotation burned in his
mind.  Of all the ways he'd ever imagined of meeting her, this had
never once crossed his mind.  He'd pictured himself simply running into
her in some exotic place, imagined finding her on his side in a
desperate combat, wondered if some day she might simply appear at
Fairgrove as a new "employee" even as he had.  He had fantasized
rescuing her, fighting by her side, having her rescue him, even.  It
had never once entered his mind that she could be an enemy.

No not an enemy.  Have to call it like it is; I don't know that yet. An
opponent, but I can't put her in the "enemy" column yet.  Maybe that
was wishful thinking, but he couldn't get all those dreams out of his
head.  Surely they meant something.

Grass swished and crackled behind him, and young Joe moved out of the
barn to stand next to him.  "There was a lady there a minute ago,
wasn't there?"  he said, his voice remarkably steady, given the
circumstances.  "And a car?"  In the brilliant sun, his hair looked
almost white, and his vividly blue eyes mirrored the Oklahoma sky.

"Uh-huh," Tannim confirmed.  "I'm beginning to feel like Prince
Charming.  She left me another glove."

Joe regarded the glove in Tannim's hand with a dubious expression and
made no move to touch it.  "I don't think you're gonna have too much
luck going around Tulsa getting women to try those on to see if they
fit."

Tannim smiled faintly.  Not bad; the kid's keeping his sense of humor.
"Not as reliable as a glass slipper."

No maker's mark in these gloves, though.  No tag, and no sign that one
had been cut or taken out.  No identifying marks at all.  Wasn't that a
little odd?

Come to think of it, they didn't really look mass-produced.  Huh.
Custom work?  If so, they might be as good as a glass slipper if I can
find out where they came from.

He was just about ready to take the gloves apart, stitch by stitch,
when a warning tingle along his personal shields alerted him. Something
was manifesting in the barn!

He tested the energies, and recognized one he had not really expected
to encounter quite so soon.  But it was more than welcome, especially
in light of this second challenge.

He sprinted back to the barn and reinvoked all the protections; the
golden walls of power came up around him, enclosing him in a safe zone
that only he, Chinthliss, or their sendings would be able to pass.  He
held his hands out at chest height, preparing the space in front of him
to receive whatever Chinthliss' answer would be.

A thunderclap announced its arrival in his hands, and a flash of golden
light that lit up the inside of the protective dome as it passed
through the shields.

It came in the form of the same green and gold message-globe he himself
had sent out, which confirmed his surprised and delighted guess that
Chinthliss had answered him immediately, interrupting whatever else he
was doing to do so.  There were times when the dragon came through for
him.

The globe settled in his hands, weightlessly, and pulsed for a moment,
as it confirmed his identity.  Then it deepened in color, turning from
golden green to a deep bronze, and he felt a familiar touch on his
mind.  He relaxed and let the message flow into his thoughts.

"I have heard, and am intrigued, Son of Dragons.: The deep bass, purely
mental voice tolled sonorously in his head.  "I will arrive at the
usual place at the hour the sun has vanished.  And in case you have
forgotten, the "usual place" is the building in which you once kept all
your machines.:

The globe spun on its axis then whirled and changed, fading as it
discharged its energies into the air, the shields, and anything else
that was able to absorb a little extra power.

Including Tannim, who was not too proud to get a little of the charge
he'd put into the thing back again.

Once again, he brought the protections down, and took a quick glance at
Joe.  The young man was not watching him; instead, he had taken up a
"guard" position at the doorframe, and his alert stance told Tannim
that his erstwhile protege was perfectly prepared to fight anything
that tried to cause trouble.  Obviously Joe had not made the assumption
that because the challenger was a woman, she could be dismissed.

Good.  At least that's one lesson he won't have to learn the hard
way.

"Joe?"  he said quietly.  The young man turned and nodded.

"Nothing out there that I can see," he said.  "Nobody watching us as
far as I can tell.  Did your friend send you a return fax?"

Tannim had to smile at the ease with which Joe had accepted his own
offhanded terminology.  "As a matter of fact, he did," Tannim replied.
"He's going to be here tonight.  We'll have to come out here to meet
him."

"And until then?"  Joe asked, his expression stolid, only his eyes
showing his nervous tension as he continually glanced from side to
side, making certain nothing could creep up on them.

"First I need to make a phone call, and I want to do that from a
private phone, not from home," Tannim told him.  "My friend's going to
need a hotel room, so why don't we go arrange that for him, and I can
use the phone in the room."

Joe nodded, and Tannim reflected that it was really useful having
someone like Joe around, a young man who was used to taking orders
without question.  Questions like, how was this friend going to get out
here, and why couldn't he arrange his own room, or stay with Tannim's
folks?

Setting aside the fact that Joe was in the only other guest room
besides Tannim's old room Joe could, after all, return to Frank Casey's
house.  No, Joe simply accepted that Tannim knew what he was doing, and
waited for explanations instead of demanding them.  Sometimes repressed
curiosity was a lot easier to deal with than open curiosity.

Well, there was no point in standing around here in the hot sun;
already his scalp was damp with sweat, and only the armor kept him
relatively cool.  Joe must be ready to drop; there was sweat trickling
down his forehead, and his t-shirt was damp.  "Let's get out of here
before anything else happens."

"Right."  Joe turned and strode to the barn door.

And there he stopped, crouched over, scanning quickly from side to
side.  Tannim watched in amazement; he had never seen anyone so young
with such moves!  These kinds of tactics had apparently become second
nature to Joe.  Jeez, another good reason to have him around.

He waited until Joe waved an "all clear" to him before joining him at
the door, crouching beside him with one hand on the rough wood.  "I
can't spot anything out there, sir," Joe said in a soft voice.  "The
birds aren't disturbed, either, so I don't think there's anybody hiding
in the grass."

"You can work point any time, Joe," Tannim told him quite seriously.

Joe flashed him a shy grin before returning his gaze to the field
beyond the barn.  "I'll go first."

"Go," Tannim said, and pulled out his keychain, pushing the button for
the radio-transmitter that controlled the doors and the engine.  On the
other side of the wall, the Mustang rumbled into life.  "There.  The
doors are unlocked."

Joe nodded and was gone in a flash, scuttling through the weeds in a
bent-over run, rather than crawling.  There wasn't a real reason to
crawl, unless bullets or other projectiles started flying, and a
formidable reason in the form of ticks and chiggers not to crawl.
Tannim followed in the same way as soon as he got around the corner of
the barn and out of sight.

He felt a little foolish as he crouched beside his car door, listening
intently.  But better to feel foolish than not feel at all.  "Dead" was
a hard condition to cure.

He slipped into the Mustang and punched up the ac, backed into position
so that he could drive straight out, and waited.  Nothing rushed at
them from the weeds, and there were no vehicles in sight in either
direction once they reached the road.  It looked exactly as it should:
a sleepy section-line road that seldom saw much in the way of
traffic.

Tannim did not drop even a fraction of his watchful caution, however,
and it was easy to see by Joe's tense posture that he felt the same.
Out here it would be easy enough for someone to perch in a tall tree
and watch their progress.  Not that he could really picture her, in
that flame-red silk jumpsuit, clambering up a tree.

But if she can make herself and her Mustang vanish, she can certainly
change her wardrobe as easily, he reminded himself.  Or, for all I
know, she has flunkies out here keeping an eye on us.

For that matter, she was a mage, and she could be using any of the
birds around here as "eyes."  There was nothing he could do about that
not without endangering himself and his passenger.  Anything he did to
make the Mach I less visible to birds would make it less visible to
other human drivers.  The drivers around here were bad enough without
complicating the situation by tricking their minds into thinking he
wasn't there.

He passed both gloves to Joe, who locked them in the glove box without
a word.  There was one thing he could do; birds had distinct
territories, and in the summer they didn't tend to venture out of them.
Right now, the best thing he could do, if she was using birds as her
scouts, was to drive some distance before stopping at a motel.  With
luck, she'd lose him and not find him again.

Unless, of course, she's using something like a bald eagle.  Well,
there was only so much he could do without his precautions hedging his
actions so much that he couldn't move.

He drove around in circles for about an hour, stopping once at a
convenience store for Gatorade for the two of them, before finally
seeking out a motel for Chinthliss.

The south side of Tulsa was a lot more upscale than Bixby; it was where
the Yuppies collected in expansive, milling herds, and was thick with
condo-complexes with gates and expensive, fenced-in houses set on
quarter-acre lots.  The blight crept farther south with every year.
Tannim figured that he'd be able to find something to suit Chinthliss
out here.  Nothing less than a palace would make the dragon happy, but
at least he wouldn't complain as much as he had the time he shared a
room at the Holiday Inn with Tannim and FX.

High and mighty dragon couldn't unwrap the little soaps by himself.
Poor baby.

With a little bit of searching, he found exactly what he was looking
for: one of those high-end "suite motels."  If it became too dangerous
to stay with his folks any longer, he and Joe could just move in with
Chinthliss.  He pulled up to the office, and left Joe in the car with
the motor running and the ac on while he took care of throwing money at
the clerk.

He returned with a grin on his face and slid into the seat.  "Amazing
what a paid-up Gold Card will do, even in this neighborhood.  I got a
two-bedroom with a parking slot guaranteed to be in the shade all day,"
he said, and tossed Joe a key.  "That's for us, if we need someplace
else to go.  Hang onto it for me."

"Sure," Joe said obediently, pocketing the key.

"Now, let's go see what kind of digs poor Chinthliss will have to stoop
to."  He pulled the Mustang around to the side of the complex and found
the slot assigned to Chinthliss' suite.  As promised, it was in the
shade.  They locked the car and ventured into the depths of the
complex.  The suite was supposed to be like a townhouse: two-story,
with two bedrooms upstairs and living area and kitchen down.  The door
wasn't more than a few feet from the parking slot, and when he opened
it, cool air rushed to meet them, faintly perfumed with disinfectant.

It was as advertised, and would probably suit His Draconic Majesty just
fine.  Joe went immediately to the living room and turned on the TV.
Tannim let the ac blow through his hair for a moment, then went to the
kitchen.  As the clerk had instructed, he filled out the grocery list
with things he knew Chinthliss liked.  Someone from the staff would be
around in the next couple of hours to stock the refrigerator; an extra
service invoked by the Gold Card's near-bottomless cornucopia effect.
After this, the maids would keep the fridge stocked the same way.  This
was going to make life much easier for him, even if he was in for over
a grand already.  I'll have to put the old lizard up in places like
this more often.  He can prowl around and poke into things to his
heart's content, take showers as long as he wants without using up all
the hot water, pop every bag of microwave popcorn in the place.  This's
going to be a lot easier than taking him to restaurants.

He did not want to think about the last time he'd taken Chinthliss to a
real restaurant.  Fortunately, it had been one that catered to the
elves at Fairgrove, and the staff was used to some of the customers
acting peculiarly.

Like ordering escargot and jalape o pizza with bleu cheese, and eating
it with chopsticks.

While Joe relaxed for the first time since she had shown up, sprawling
in the living room and watching cable, he left the grocery list on the
doorknob and found a phone in one of the bedrooms.

Dottie answered it on the second ring, which was a relief.  There was
no mistaking her sugar-sweet phone voice.  She would know that if he
said he needed to talk to Keighvin, he really needed to talk to the
boss there and then.

"Fairgrove Industries, Kevin Silver's office," she chirped.  "How may I
help you?"

"Dottie, it's Tannim," he said.  "I need to talk to Keighvin. Something
came up out here."

That last was a code signal among Fairgrove employees; it meant
something had gone seriously wrong.  "I'll page him, I think he's out
in the plant," she said immediately, every trace of sugar gone from her
voice.  "Hold on a minute."

She didn't put him on hold, just put the phone down on the desk, so he
heard her when she used the pager.  "Keighvin, Line One.  Keighvin,
Line One.  Charlie Tannim."

That would tell Keighvin that he needed to get to the phone immediately
without telling any visitors to the plant that there was something
wrong somewhere.  It would also tell him that he needed to get to a
secure phone, one without any outsiders anywhere around.

"Okay, I've paged him," Dottie said, picking up the phone again.  A
moment later a click and the background whine of turbines signaled the
fact that Keighvin had just picked up a phone somewhere in the
complex.

"I have it, Dottie."  Keighvin Silverhair's resonant tenor was as
unmistakable as Dottie's phone voice.

"Yes, sir," she said, and hung up.

"It's Tannim, Keighvin," the young mage said.  "And I've got a problem
here."

Briefly he outlined the appearance of the mysterious lady and
everything that had happened associated with her.  Except for one small
detail; he did not reveal that she was the one he had been dreaming
about for years.  Somehow he just couldn't bring himself to; the dreams
were so intimate, so much a part of him.  And how could they be germane
to the situation, anyway?

Keighvin remained silent all through the narrative, but Tannim knew him
well enough to know that his mind was working at a furious pace,
analyzing everything Tannim had told him.

"You've been challenged, lad," he said at last.  "It's definitely in
the style of the Sidhe, too.  But I canna explain those bits of Death
Metal; in no way could any Sidhe handle those.  She canna be Seleighe
nor Unseleighe herself, but she knows our style.  Is this the lady
ye've been dreamin' of all these years, lad?"

Tannim felt himself flush with anger.  "Damn, Keighvin, have you left
anything in my mind alone?"

"Aye, more'n ye know, lad, but that's na important now.  It's her then,
is it?"

"Yeah.  I think."

"Mmm."

"That's it, just mmm, Keighvin?"

"Mmm-hmm.  As I said, ye've been challenged with the gloves."

"So what's it mean, really, having gloves delivered?"  he asked. "Other
than the obvious challenge."

Silence on the other end of the line, as Keighvin Silverhair tried to
twist Old World feudal customs into words that a twentieth-century
hot-rodder would understand.

"It implies one of two things," he said finally.  "I believe that we
may eliminate the notion that you hac somehow insulted the lady's
honor."

Not unless she somehow found out about my dreams..  ..

Keighvin's accent always thickened when he harkened back to his "other
self," Lord Sir Keighvin Silverhair, ruler of Elfhame Fairgrove and all
who dwelt therein.  "So 'tother implication is that you hac been chosen
by th' lass t'prove her ain worth.  She didna slap ye with yon glove,
did she?"

"Not unless you call pop-riveting the first one to my door a slap, no,"
Tannim replied.  "Unless her slamming into the back of the Mach I
counts.  Does it?"

"Nay."  Keighvin was firm on that.  "The glove wasna physically
involved.  An' you mind, she was very careful to have no impact when
she delivered the glove, aye?"

"Oh, absolutely," Tannim said.  "No impact at all, or I'd have noticed
it for sure.  I had no clue she'd done anything until I was out of the
car."

"Then she's not issued th' challenge mortal, or at least, she's not
been insulted to th' point where she's wishin' your heart an' head on a
platter, an' yer privates for remembrance," Keighvin replied, relief
clear in his voice.  "The meanin' is simply that she sees you as bein'
the best t' measure her sel against.  "Tis a bit like yon drag race;
she wishes t' cast ye down, an' rise her sel in the process.  Like the
young knights that would challenge their elders, the Lancelots and
Gawaines or challenge us at the crossroads of a midnight if they were
truly bold.  Now mind, it can still go t' the challenge mortal, but at
th' moment, I'd say she wishes t' gae only to first blood."

"In other words, she's picked me.  She can keep it civilized, or she
can decide to go for the whole enchilada."

"In essence, aye."  Keighvin went silent again as he thought.  "I dinna
think ye can count on her staying civilized, though."

Tannim heaved a sigh.  "Yeah, we have to figure on worst-case scenario.
We also can't count on her working alone."

"She could be in th' employ of our darker cousins, aye."  Keighvin
echoed his sigh.  "For that matter, though her intent be innocent now,
still, once th' Unseleighe learn of her and her intent, they may yet
make it worth her while t' make this more than a contest of wits an'
skill."

"Got any ideas?"  Tannim asked, hoping against hope that Keighvin, with
all of his centuries of experience in situations like this, just might
know of a loophole somewhere.

"Don't reject th' challenge, an' don't run," Keighvin said firmly.  "
"Twill reduce ye t' th' hunted animal.  That's the rules of th' game:
run, an' ye become a coward, an' th' coward can be squashed like a
bothersome insect.  Aye, and anyone with him.  Run, an' Joe an' your
parents could' be sacrificed, or used as bait t' bring ye in."

Tannim cursed softly, hearing his own thoughts confirmed.

"But, for all that she seems t' know a fair bit about ye, she canna
assume she knows all," Keighvin continued, raising his hopes.  "So my
advice is pretend ye dinna understand."

"You mean play dumb?  Like I've never heard of the challenge game?" The
idea had its appeal.  "How long can I drag things out that way?"

"Depends on how much she knows, an' who she knows.  If she's
hand-in-glove wi' our cousins, she'll find out soon enough 'tis an act,
and challenge ye outright."  Keighvin put one hand over the mouthpiece
and spoke to someone else for a moment.  "Conal reminds me of another
aspect t' all of this.  As th' challenged party, 'tis you who has the
choice of weapons.  Ah, here "

Some fumbling on the other end of the line, then Conal's thicker accent
and deeper voice sounded over the speaker.  "Eh, lad, has she not yon
Mustang too, ye said?"

"Yeah, it's a late-model number.  Depending on what she's done to it,
if she's not kicking in nitrous injection or magic, we're probably a
match in that department.  Hers is lighter, it's reliable, it handles
better.  It's easy to boost the power on it with after-market stuff.
Are you saying," he continued, "that I should accept her challenge and
pick the cars as weapons?"

"Make it a race, lad," Conal agreed.  "Set the conditions.  Use yer
expertise and yer magery on yon pony-car yersel'.  I've not seen a mage
here t' match ye i' that department.  An' I know for a fact that t'only
driver we hac that is as good as ye is young Maclyn."

"What if she wants to make it what did Keighvin call it?  The challenge
mortal?"  He gritted his teeth, waiting for Conal's reply.

"There is that."  Conal took a deep breath.  "Well, an' ye find yersel'
withe challenge mortal where would ye rather find yersel'?  Behind yon
blade, i' th' mage-circle, or behind th' wheel?"

He thought long and hard before replying.  "Behind the wheel," he said
slowly.  "I'm better off there than anywhere else."

"I wouldna say that but I would say this.  I think ye'd be safer there.
I think she canna be th' driver ye are.  An' once ye learn whence her
magery an' her trainin' come, I think ye can best her.  Ah, here's
Keighvin back.  The luck to ye, lad."

A moment more, and Keighvin came back on the line.  "I agree with
everything Conal told you, Tannim.  Stall her while you learn about
her, then when she delivers a challenge you can't refuse, take her to
the road.  Don't hesitate to call us.  There's only a limited amount we
can do, but what we can, we will.  And we'll see to it that yon Joe and
your parents stay safe.  In fact, we'll begin on that this very moment;
'tis a fair amount we can do even at long distances."

"I'm working on getting someone here who can help me," Tannim told him.
Relief spread through him and made him limp as Keighvin offered
Fairgrove's help.  That took a tremendous amount off his mind.  With
Sidhe mage-warriors watching over the noncombatants, he could deal with
this lady with all his attention.  He had the feeling she would require
his entire attention.

"Keep us informed," Keighvin concluded.  "Call once a day from now on,
perhaps about this time.  I'll be havin' some of the rest dealin' with
keeping your parents shielded and safe as soon as I hang up."

"Thanks, Keighvin," Tannim said fervently, running his hand through his
tangled hair.  "I can't even begin to thank you enough for that."

I can even forgive you for funding the horse ranch without telling
me.

" "Tis nothing you don't have as your due, lad," Keighvin replied,
warmth in his voice.  "Now, I'll be off."

"Same here.  And thanks again."  He waited for the click that signaled
Keighvin had rung off before hanging up himself.  Protocol, protocol.
Never be the one to hang up on an elven lord.

Joe looked at him inquisitively when he descended the staircase using
every other step and entered the living room.  "Good?"  the young man
asked.

"Good," Tannim replied.  "Keighvin's taking care of some of it, and he
and Conal gave me some good advice on the rest."  He leveled the most
authoritative gaze he had on the young man.  "The moment the instant we
know that this might mean more than a simple magical drag race, you are
out of here.  Keighvin's going to see to it.  Got that?"

"But " Joe protested weakly.  "But "

"You're not a two-stroke engine, stop imitating one," Tannim told him,
crossing his arms over his chest.  "No arguments.  If this gets
serious, you haven't got the training, the experience, or the power to
handle fighting between two mages or between two drivers.  If this
turns into a Mustang shootout, I don't want innocent bystanders making
it into Death Race 2000."

Joe flushed and looked chagrined.  "All right," he said reluctantly.
Very reluctantly, for someone who had just yesterday told Tannim that
he had not wanted to get involved with magic anymore.

Sheesh, the kid's decided he's responsible for me.  Or else he's
feeling guilty about leaving me to take this on alone.

"Look, Joe," he said, lowering his voice persuasively, "if this were a
regular fight, there isn't anyone I'd rather have working point or
tail.  I'd rather trust you at my back than anyone else in the state.
But it's not a regular fight it'd be like you going out into a
firefight with an ordinary college freshman backing you.  See?"

Joe nodded, his flush fading.  "Yes, sir, I do see.  You're right.  I
understand."

Oh, the wonders of a paramilitary education.  Authority actually means
something!  Try telling that to one of the Fairgrove fosterlings, and
you'd find him following you as closely as if you'd hooked a tow-bar to
his forehead.

"I'll tell you what you can do," he continued.  "You can help me keep
my folks from finding anything out about all this.  And if anything
happens to me well, you and Keighvin take care of them for me, okay?"

Joe straightened at that, and came very close to saluting.  "Yes, sir.
I can do that, sir.  I will do that; your parents are wonderful
people."

"Yes," he said simply.  "They are.  And you have taken an enormous
weight off my mind, knowing there will be someone who'll look after
them.  And speaking of my parents, we'd better get back; it's almost
suppertime, and I think Mom is planning pasta.  I know it seems kind of
stupid to go back home after all this, but there are reasons for it."

Joe rose with alacrity and followed him to the door, making certain
that it locked after them.  Tannim found himself liking the young man
more and more with every hour he spent in Joe's presence.

The odd thing was that having a promise from Joe to "take care of" his
parents did take an enormous weight off his mind.  He was an only
child, and while he had every intention of staying alive a long, long
time well, the racing business alone was dangerous, as his own wrecks
proved.  Then, once you added in the other complications, well if he'd
been an insurance agent, he wouldn't have written a policy on
himself.

One thing that had always troubled his sleep besides the special side
effects of those dreams about her was what his untimely demise would do
to his mom and dad, and at times like these it troubled him even more.
Now, if everything went badly, they'd have Joe there to help them
through the mourning and be a second son to them afterward.

And if everything goes well, they'll still have their first son, plus a
second son.  One that can stand horses, to make up for me.

This was nothing that Alinor and Keighvin could ever have foreseen when
they asked Tannim to pick up the young man.  No, this was the kind of
magic that had nothing to do with elves, and everything to do with the
human heart.

Sometimes, he reflected, things worked out okay.  As he popped the
locks on the Mustang, he decided that letting the good things happen
was the best magic he knew.  * * * SharMarali Halanyn examined herself
in the mirror with a critical eye.  Her facial fur was perfect; her
ears were groomed immaculately, as always.  In the reflection of her
own green eyes she could see the mirror's glinting circle; she then
banished the silvered glass with a thought.  All was well.  If she
looked this cool after being out in the sweltering Oklahoma sunshine,
she must have been devastating when Tannim had seen her.  She smiled
with satisfaction and no little anticipation as she sat back in her
overstuffed red-silk chair and gazed at the flower arrangement that had
taken the mirror's place.

This looked remarkably like an upscale Manhattan condo, except there
were no windows anywhere, and no doors to the exterior, either.  There
were no windows because there was nothing to look out upon except the
emptiness of mist-filled Chaos where she had created her home.  And
there were no doors, because there was no need for doors.  The only
possible way in or out of here other than stumbling on the place by
sheerest accident was by Gate.

Her own Mustang rested in a heavily shielded shelter attached to this
apartment, and it had its own Gate large enough to drive through.  It
had not been easy, bringing so much Cold Iron into this place; the very
fabric of Underhill rebelled against the presence of the Death Metal,
and the magics of her allies became unreliable and unpredictable around
anything ferrous.  That was one reason why they did not seek to visit
her in her own "den"; and that was the main reason she had insisted on
keeping the car here.  That, plus the masking properties of silk, kept
them just wary enough to suit her needs.  Good.

Tannim had looked so wonderfully stunned.  That old
deer-in-the-headlights look.  It was such a marvelous feeling, being
able to wipe that self-assured grin off his face and leave him
completely off balance.  Without a clue!  And without even a dime to
buy one with!

And it had been so gratifying to know that she could do that to him
anytime she wanted.  She knew all there was to know about him; he knew
nothing of her.

Had he guessed that she was his challenger from last night?  There had
been some kind of recognition, so perhaps he had.  Or perhaps, just
perhaps, he recognizes you from something else entirely, whispered the
little voice from within.  Perhaps he has dreamed of you, even as you
have dreamed of him.  Remember the candles and satin, and the warmth of
his body over you, in you, cupping you and pouring deep..  ..

She shook the voice into quiescence with a toss of her hair.  How could
he possibly dream of her?  He had no notion that she even existed!
Whereas she had known of his existence from early adolescence.  Hadn't
she been trained and groomed to be his opposite number, his ultimate
rival, yin to his yang, even as her father was Chinthliss' ultimate
rival?  She had watched him, studied him for years, and she knew he had
no inkling that she or someone like her was anywhere in any universe.

Even Chinthliss had never told him, although Chinthliss knew very well
that she existed, though he did not know where she was.  Her father
Charcoal had seen to it that Chinthliss was kept abreast of her
progress.

The jerkoff.  Her father Charcoal, that is, not Chinthliss.  Charcoal
was no longer a part of her life, and that was the way she wanted it.

No, there was no reason to think that Tannim had recognized her from
dreams.  Particularly not the kind of dream passages that she had about
him.

Erotic?  Oh, a tad.  They had certainly been far more satisfactory than
anything shared with her Unseleighe lovers.

She frowned a little at that.  There would be no more dalliances with
the Unseleighe; she had cut them off from that years ago when she
realized how much they were using her.  They had no consideration for
her pleasure in their spurious loving intimacies; their only thoughts
were for their own satiation.  She preferred a fantasy-dream with
Tannim any night over a real-life assignation with an Unseleighe,
however comely the elven twit might be.

Not that the Sidhe were extremely attractive to her.  It was just that
Tannim was anything but uncomely.  When it came down to it, he was far
better looking in the bright sun of day than he ever had been in her
misty dreams, or in much of the covert spying she had done on him.  If
he were kits une she'd be even more in lust with him.

She closed her eyes, and he sprang into her mind with extraordinary
vividness.

He looked far younger than his true years; he shared that with her,
despite his purely mortal origins.  He had a fine face; not handsome in
the classical sense, but one that was not likely to be forgotten: high
cheekbones, broad brow, firm and determined chin, sensual mouth given
to smiles and laughter.

Unlike these dour Unseleighe, who smile only when they kill and laugh
only when blood spills across their hands.  They all think they are
such great kings and warriors.  What a bunch of complete weenies.

Despite the fact that Tannim was as slim as a young girl, there was
strength to him, in the broad shoulders, the wiry muscles.  Good bones,
her mother would say.  And, ah, that wild mane of dark and curling
hair; women must go mad to run their hands through it!

But it was the eyes that caught you, when he wasn't staring at you like
a rabbit trying to guess the make of the car about to run it over. Huge
green eyes that changed hue with the changing of his emotions.
Vulnerable eyes; eyes that promised something wonderful to those whom
he gave his loyalty and affection.  And she had every reason to believe
those implied wonders were real, for she had seen how generously he
gave of himself once his trust and heart were pledged.

Ah, lucky one, who becomes his true lover..  ..

It was that little internal voice again, and with annoyance she
squashed it down.  She had no business with such thoughts; he was a
human and she was most decidedly not, for one thing.  And for another

She was his mirror.

Whether she would be his fate, as the Unseleighe wished, remained to be
seen.

She opened her eyes again and interlaced her hands over the red silk
covering her knee, thinking in silence.  Unlike Tannim, music
distracted her.  For him it was a focus.

He had, as yet, given her no sign that he recognized the challenges for
what they were.  Then again, she had given him no chance to respond.
She enjoyed this game; she wanted to stretch it out as long as
possible, and by teasing him like this, she fulfilled the letter of her
agreement with the Unseleighe without actually taking any action
against him.

Given how much time he had spent with Keighvin Silverhair, though, he
surely must have recognized a Challenge by now.  But she could continue
to tease him for several days without giving him an opportunity to
answer the Challenge.  Eventually, of course, the Unseleighe would
become impatient with her, and force her to conclude the opening steps
of the dance, but for now, she was free to improvise her own patterns
on the stage.

A glissando of subtle energies chimed upon her inward ear, and a rustle
of stiffer silk than she wore alerted her to the presence of someone
who had just crossed the Gate into her private pocket of Underhill.
Since that Gate was guarded against everyone but her parents and since
she had long since barred her father from coming anywhere near her
without her specific permission there was only one person it could
be.

"Mother!"  she exclaimed with pleasure, rising to her feet and whirling
to meet the Honorable Lady Ako with outstretched arms.  The Honorable
Lady Ako stepped across the threshold in a flutter of ankle-length,
fox-red hair and a rustle of blue-green kimonos, serene as a statue of
a saint and graceful as the most exquisitely trained geisha, and she
smiled to see her daughter running to greet her.

The Honorable Lady Ako magician, healer, shape-shifter, bearer of some
of the most noble blood in or out of Underhill, and nine-tailed kits
une met her daughter's embrace and accepted it.  But something in Ako's
eyes told Shar that this visit was not a social call.

Nevertheless, the amenities of civilization must come first.

Shar led her mother to the seat of honor, and with a brush of her hand,
changed the silk of the couch to a blue-green that harmonized with her
mother's kimonos.  Should there be a tea ceremony?  she wondered, as
she settled at her mother's feet.  Perhaps

But Ako laid one gentle hand on her daughter's before Shar could summon
the implements for a proper tea ceremony.  "Tea, but no ceremony, my
love," Ako told her firmly.  "I must speak with you, and I have little
time."

Shar summoned perfectly brewed tea and translucent porcelain cups with
a gesture, handing the first cup to her mother before taking up her
own.  Ako took a sip, then placed the cup back down on her own palm.
The amenities had been observed.  Now for business.

"I have learned that you have been abroad," Ako said delicately.  "That
you have been there at the behest of your father's friends."

Ako would not mention the Unseleighe by name, nor Charcoal.  She had
long ago fallen out with the blood-father of her daughter rightly, Shar
thought, since Charcoal was insufferable in all ways.  She would have
no commerce with Charcoal's friends and allies.  And when Ako declined
to mention someone by name, it meant that she declined to acknowledge
their existence, given the option of doing so.

Reluctantly, Shar nodded.  She was too well-trained to flush, but the
feeling of faint shame was there, as if she had been caught in
something dishonorable.

Ako studied her daughter's face, her green eyes grave in the
white-porcelain doll-face beneath the crimson waterfall of her hair. It
was all that Shar could do to maintain eye contact with her mother. "I
know what it is that they wish you to do," Ako said finally.  "You know
that I do not approve.  This young man has done nothing to harm you; he
has done nothing, save to be the protege of Chinthliss.  But that is
not to the point.  Are you so certain that you wish to visit
destruction upon this young man?"

For a single, bewildered moment, Shar wondered if her mother could
somehow have learned of her years of dreams.  She shook her head, and
bit her lip.  "Honorable Mother, I am not to be commanded by such as my
father's friends.  I do what I will.  At the moment, it amuses me to
occupy this young man.  It may amuse me to deliver him to them.  But it
will be of my will or not at all."

She raised her chin defiantly, willing her mother to recognize that she
would not be tamed by any creature.

Ako looked deep into Shar's eyes, and the young female found herself
hot with the blushes she had conquered earlier.  "I will say only this
to you: look deeply into your thoughts and your heart, your instincts
and your memories, before you commit yourself to any action," she said.
"Do nothing irrevocable until you have determined that you can live
with the result for all of your life.  I say this, my dearest child, so
that you do not follow in the path of your mother.  Do not make
mistakes you will regret, and prove unable to correct."

And with that, as Shar sat in stunned silence, Lady Ako rose with the
grace of a bending willow, and summoned the Gate to life.  She glided
toward it, and paused on the threshold.

Then she turned, and caught Shar's eyes, so like her own, one more
time.  "Remember the past," she said simply.

Then she stepped across the Gate, and was gone.  * * * Stuffed full of
pasta and garlic bread, Tannim and Joe arrived at the old barn just at
sunset.  Once again, Joe spotted for Tannim as he drove carefully into
the long grass and parked the Mach I beside the barn.  Joe was the
first one out of the car, and Tannim waited for him to give the "all
clear" signal before he got out himself.

If the mysterious woman was watching, and she meant no more than a
simple challenge, their behavior would seem very consistent for someone
who had not understood the meaning of what she had done.  And if she
meant worse than that, well, she would see that they were alert and
would be hard to catch off guard twice.

Once he and Joe were inside the barn, he activated the entire set of
protections on the place.  It was a pity he couldn't get the Mach I in
here anymore now that the door was a wreck, but the Mustang had its own
defenses.

The protections rose, layer on layer, forming a shifting golden dome
inside the barn.  It would take something like a magical bomb to
penetrate the shields on this place now, plus a physical one to do
otherwise.

"Remember, you can't leave till I take this all down," he reminded Joe,
who stared in wonder at the glowing dome over them.  "Chinthliss did a
lot of this; I don't know everything it's set against, I only know that
I haven't come across anything that can break in or out."

"Won't somebody see the light and think I don't know, maybe it's a UFO
or something?"  Joe worried.

Tannim laughed and hit the young man in the shoulder lightly.  "You've
been hanging around elves too much," he chided.  "Turn your mage-sight
off."

He watched as Joe frowned in concentration, then grinned with relief.
"Nothing," the young man said.  "There's nothing there."

"Right, it's only visible to those with the ability to see it."  He
considered the lovely golden dome overhead.  "I suppose there might be
a few folks around here who would notice it if they looked this way,
but they're also the kind who'll stay out of anything they haven't been
invited to.  Not because they aren't curious but because they'll have
learned "don't touch' the same way I did.  The hard way.  Nothing like
getting your hand burned to teach you to watch that fire."

He grinned, and Joe shook his head in mock sadness.  "Maybe you shoulda
had a dose of military school," Joe told him with a spark of
impudence.

Tannim blinked at the unexpected display of wicked humor.  "That's what
my dad kept saying," he admitted.  "I guess I ought to be glad he
didn't have the money for it."

Joe sized him up as if he were looking at Tannim for the first time.
"You'd either have done real good, or real bad," the young man replied
at last.  "Depending on whether you got to be the brains of an outfit
or not."

"Probably real bad," Tannim told him.  "When I was younger, I never
could learn to keep my mouth shut.  Only thing that kept me out of
trouble in high school was that the jocks knew I knew how to fix cars,
and if they beat me up, next time they were stuck out in the parking
lot with a fuel-line block or worse, I'd keep right on trucking."

And the fact that people who beat me up tended to get blocked
fuel-lines or worse and always when they were miles away from a gas
station and I had cast-iron alibis.  Not my fault they never bothered
to get their cars serviced regularly.  A little regular maintenance,
and their mechanics would have found my little presents.

Ah, well.  His former tormentors were like snow on the fired-up gas
grill of life, and he had a whole new set of tormentors to deal with.

So who's after my hide now that Vidal Dhu and his crew are out of the
picture?  That was a good question, actually, and one he would really
like to have an answer to.  The Unseleighe were less cohesive than a
rolling barrel of bullfrogs; it was hard to get them to agree to
anything long enough to get beyond the "nuisance" stage.  Vidal Dhu had
nursed a feud with Keighvin's folk for centuries before Tannim ever
came on the scene, and he had targeted Tannim for elimination largely
because he was Keighvin's most reliable outlet to the human world.

Could it be that they've decided I'm dangerous to the Unseleighe as a
whole, even without my connection to Keighvin?  That was possible, and
it had happened before.  When one human came to know too much about
Underhill, that knowledge was often seen as a threat by the Unseleighe.
Rightly so; they relied on invisibility in their predation on
humankind, and when a human knew what they could do and how they
operated, he would be able to tell when something was simply misfortune
and when it was caused.  And he could move to stop what was going on.
Humans always had three things going for them against all the magic of
the Sidhe: cleverness, sheer numbers and Cold Iron.  Those things alone
could stop the Sidhe dead in their tracks.

And when a human knew how to make Cold Iron into a weapon .. .

That made him much more of a danger.

And I'm training Seleighe Sidhe in Cold Iron Magery 101.  Yeah, I can
see why they might tag me as a problem.

The sun set with a minimum of fanfare; after a cloudless, hot day there
was very little color in the west, nothing but a fattened, blood-red
ball gliding down below the horizon.  It won't be long now, Tannim
thought.  Chinthliss has a lot of faults, but tardiness isn't one of
them.

Full dark came quickly; within fifteen minutes the first stars were
out, and within a half hour the only light was from the half moon
directly overhead.

Moonlight poured down through the open roof, and Tannim frowned a
moment as he contemplated the slowly twisting patterns of moonlight
crossing the barn floor.  Then he realized what was affecting the
moonlight.  Jeez!  The Gate!

As he ushered Joe out of the way, he felt a little smug for noticing
the patterns.  Did Chinthliss know that his magic interfered with
moonlight just before mage-senses could feel it?  For now he sensed
that odd internal chiming that meant someone had called up a Gate
between this human world and another, and a moment later, the Gate
itself appeared.

He'd seen it all before, of course, but Joe never had.  The young man's
eyes widened as the air where the Gate would be twisted in geometries
no mathematician of this world had ever encountered.  Something
darkened, rotated through dimensions human eyes were not built to
perceive, and formed into a gossamer arch made up of hundreds of thin
threads of pure power, as if an unearthly spider had been coaxed into
spinning the structure.

Then it flared, plates formed across the threads, and sheets of light
played with each other in oil-on-water colors.

Tannim patted Joe's shoulder.  "Don't worry about it," he said easily.
"It's just Chinthliss' way of being invisible."

"But " Joe said, gesturing at the light show.  Then he grinned as he
realized what Tannim really meant.  "Oh.  Yeah."

The entire Gate-structure flared again, and the mage-light built until
it would soon be impossible to look at.  Tannim pulled out his
Wayfarers and flicked them open.  Joe shielded his face and winced
away.  Tannim simply put on his shades and smirked.

Then a note deeper than that of a huge bronze temple-gong vibrated
across the barn.  It thrummed in Tannim's chest, and he had to close
his eyes behind the protection of his dark glasses when the final flare
ended.

And then came the deafening silence.  Magic was like that sometimes.

The crickets resumed their interrupted nuptial chorus, and Tannim
reopened his eyes and took off his glasses.

Directly below where the peak of the arch had been, framed by the
blackened walls and silvery moonlight, stood a gaunt but obviously
powerful man.  His thin features were vaguely oriental.  He wore an
impeccably-tailored Armani suit, and Tannim knew, although the
moonlight was too dim to see colors, that it would be bronze silk.

The man straightened his bolo tie, and the eyes of the little dragon
curling around the leather winked with bright topaz flashes.

The man raised one long eyebrow at Tannim in a gesture that Tannim knew
perfectly well had been copied after long study of Leonard Nimoy.

"Could you manage subtle, do you suppose?"  Tannim asked wistfully,
thinking of all the Sensitives for miles around who would be suffering
with strange dreams and unexplained headaches thanks to Chinthliss'
lust for the dramatic.

His mentor simply raised that eyebrow a little higher, though Tannim
could not imagine how he'd done it.

"No," he replied.

CHAPTER FIVE

"Well," Tannim said as they walked into the suite.  "It's not home, but
it's much."

Chinthliss gazed about with delight and immediately began exploring all
of the amenities.  Joe was perfectly willing to show him around.

Once they reached the bedrooms, with amazingly spacious closets,
Chinthliss produced luggage from somewhere.  Armani, of course.  Tannim
had no idea where the luggage had appeared from, since the dragon
hadn't brought anything across the Gate and hadn't loaded anything into
the Mach I. Still, Chinthliss spent the first half hour unpacking.

And people accuse me of being a clotheshorse!  Then again, Chinthliss
didn't wear this form very often, and Tannim knew he found the concept
of clothing-as-persona fascinating.  Just please, God, don't let him
have brought any leisure suits.

Tannim waited, joked, and curbed his own impatience.  There was no
point in rushing Chinthliss.  He would get around to the problem at
hand when he felt settled, and not before.  Rush him, and you were apt
to end up with more trouble than you had in the first place.

At least he was happy with the suite, which was a relief.  When
Chinthliss was annoyed, he grew uncooperative, and right now, Tannim
needed glasnost more than detente.

His old friend finished with his prowling and settled onto the sofa in
the living room as Tannim tuned in the local classical station on the
radio TV console.  On the table at his mentor's elbow was a tall cola
with a great deal of ice; unlike the elves, Chinthliss had no trouble
with caffeine, and unlike most of his relatives, he hated tea with a
passion.  His jacket had been tossed carelessly over the back of a
chair, and he had rolled his silk shirtsleeves up to his elbows.  He
was ready to work.

"Now, tell me again everything that has happened when this young lady
appeared, in as much detail as you can recall," Chinthliss ordered,
leaning forward to listen intently.  The topaz eyes of the dragon bolo
tie at his neck glowed with their own muted power.

Tannim obeyed, closing his eyes to concentrate.  When he finished, he
fished the gloves out of his jeans pocket and handed them over.
"They're custom work, I can tell that much," he said as Chinthliss
studied the gloves minutely, then applied the same care to studying the
parchment slips.  "I didn't realize it until later, but they're both
from the right hand, so evidently she doesn't mind wasting whole pairs
of custom-made gloves.  There's no maker's mark on them, no labels, and
the leather isn't stamped.  I think they're deerskin, but they're made
of very light leather, lighter than any deerskin I've ever seen.  They
seem to be hand-stitched "

"They are," Chinthliss interrupted.  "With silk thread, which is
unusual, to say the least.  And the "string' of the backs is also
silk."

Tannim gnawed his lip, and reached into the pocket over his right thigh
for a cherry-pop.  "Where would anyone get silk yarn like that?"  he
asked, as he unwrapped the candy and stuck it in his cheek.

Chinthliss shook his head.  "It is available in your world, but not in
too many places," he replied.  "And the supply is very limited.  It is
silk noil, made from the outer, coarser threads of the cocoon.  It is
normally used to weave heavier material with a rougher texture than
this " He pointed to his shirt.  "Under most circumstances, one would
not waste such threads, however coarse, on making string for driving
gloves.  Unless "

"Unless?"  Tannim prompted.

"Unless the wearer wished to make use of some of the magical properties
of silk as an insulator," Chinthliss said, and shook his head.  "The
leather is unusual also; not deerskin, but fawns king  Very difficult
to obtain, and unless I mistake your laws, not legal in this country. 
The paper, as you probably noticed, has no watermark, and the texture
is too even; it might not have been manufactured, it might have been
produced magically.  The quotes were written with a real quill pen, not
metal, but a goose-quill; you can see how the nib has worn down on the
longer piece by the time she reached the end of the quote.  See there,
where the lines are just a little thicker.  The ink is of an old style
that does not dry quickly and must have sand sprinkled over it to take
up the excess.  Here "

He held out the second quote, and tilted the small square of paper to
catch the light.  Sure enough, the light sparkled off a few crystals of
sand stuck in the ink.

"All of this points in only one direction, unless your mysterious lady
is so very eccentric that she drives modern cars yet uses the most
archaic of writing implements.  And unless she is so very wealthy that
she can afford to discard hand-tailored driving gloves made with
materials one would have to search the world to find."

"Well, we knew she must be using magic," Joe said thoughtfully.  "But
you're implying there's more than that."

Chinthliss nodded.  "These small things indicate a radically different
upbringing than you would find in your America, Tannim.  I believe
these things indicate that she cannot be from this culture, perhaps not
this world.  She may well not be human."

Joe looked queasy.  Tannim wasn't so sure about his own health at the
moment.

"Unless she was using illusion to change her eyes, she isn't Sidhe,"
Tannim interjected.  "The Sidhe all have cat-eyes, with slit pupils,
not round."

"But most, if not all Sidhe, Seleighe and Unseleighe, use illusion to
cover their differences when dealing with mortals," Chinthliss
countered.  "There is no reason to think that she would change that
pattern with you."

Tannim sucked thoughtfully on the cherry-pop and nodded.  "Why two
right-hand gloves?"  he asked.

"Because at the moment she does not wish to kill you," Chinthliss
replied.  "As my brother taught me once, there is a reason why the left
hand is called the "sinister' hand."

Tannim swallowed.  "Well, that's handy," he said as dryly as he could.
Which was not very.  He could not help thinking that she had two
perfectly good left-hand gloves somewhere, doing nothing, taking up
drawer-space..  ..

And where in the hell was Fox?  He hadn't shown in over twenty-four
hours!

Wait a minute..  .. "FX was with me just before she showed up the first
time.  He took one look out the back window of the Mach I, said
"Oh-oh," and flat disappeared," he said.  "He hasn't been back since,
and he had been bugging me hourly.  Old lizard, I think he recognized
her.  I think he knew her.  Wouldn't a kits une recognize another kits
une even if a human didn't pick up anything at all?  Sort of like a
scent on the wind "

"You are more likely being hunted by a succubus or the like, but that
is a very good point, and the answer is probably yes," Chinthliss
responded.  His brow creased and his eyes narrowed.  "Bear in mind
though, just as a Sidhe would be sensitive to the "scents' of those
creatures from his world, a kits une is going to be more sensitive to
the "scents' of those from his.  A gaki, for instance, or a
nature-spirit.  But that does give me something to work from."

"Can't you do something magical with those gloves?"  Joe asked.  "I
mean, can't you use magic to find out something about her from them?"
He bit his thumbnail as Chinthliss turned to look at him, obviously ill
at ease with the whole concept.  "Isn't that why you shouldn't let
something that belonged to you fall into a wizard's hands, because they
can use it to put a hex on you or something?"

"Cogent," Chinthliss agreed.  "And if these were ordinary gloves, from
an ordinary person, such things would bear fruit.  But they are the
gloves of a mage, and she has made use of the properties of the
materials to remove as much of the essence of herself from them as she
can."

"Which means it will take some real work to get anything useful out of
them," Tannim translated for Joe.  "And probably a lot of time."

Chinthliss put the gloves down and stretched.  "I shall be comfortable
here, and I will need nothing.  It grows late.  You should sleep, Son
of Dragons."  He lanced Tannim with a penetrating stare.  "You were in
need of rest when you came here, as I know only too well.  I will
consult with my allies and send them sniffing along the path these
gloves have traced."

Tannim stood up, and Joe followed his example.  "Yes, Mother," he said
mockingly.  "And I'll take my vitamins and brush my teeth before I go
to bed."

Tannim chuckled, and he and Joe let themselves out, leaving Chinthliss
sitting on the couch, studying the gloves.  * * * Shar smiled and
petted the little air elementals that flocked around her, vying for her
attention.  Cross a kitten with a dragonfly and you might have
something like these creatures.  Less like a classical sylph than a
puffball with wings, they were some of her chief sources of information
when she did not care to go and gather it herself.  They were not very
bright, but they could be very affectionate.  They seemed to like
her.

One in particular was very affectionate, and extremely reliable; that
was the one she called "Azure," and set him the particular task of
keeping a constant eye on Tannim.  She sent him off on his duties with
a shooing motion and continued with her own preparations.  She had a
scheduled meeting with Madoc Skean, the chief of her "allies," and she
was not looking forward to it.

The Unseleighe Sidhe was a sadistic, chauvinistic, selfish braggart,
and a traitor to his own kind to boot.  Most Unseleighe were born "on
the dark side," so to speak: boggles and banshees, trolls and kobolds.
But some, like Madoc, chose that path.  Until recently, he had served
as a knight in the court of High King Oberon.  Oberon was a fairly
tolerant fellow when it came to his subjects and their "games" with
mortals outright mischief was well within the bounds of what was
considered amusing.  Further, if he felt some foolish human deserved
punishment or needed to learn a lesson, he saw no reason why a Seleighe
shouldn't do whatever was needful so long as he stopped just short of
killing the mortal.  But some things he would not abide and he caught
Madoc at one of them.  What it was, precisely, Shar did not know,
though she could guess but it had been enough to send Oberon into a red
rage.  He had physically cast Madoc out, blasting him through several
layers of Underhill realities before he came to rest in a battered,
broken heap.

It took Madoc some time to recover; once he did, he used the powerful
charisma that had made him a brilliant manipulator in Seleighe Court
politics and turned it on the Unseleighe left in disarray after the
demise of Vidal Dhu and Aurilia.  He not only organized them, but he
attracted others to his side, including Unseleighe Sidhe far more
powerful than Vidal Dhu had been.

Powerful Unseleighe Sidhe tended to be solitary souls; they did not
like to share their power with anyone, and would support a "retinue"
composed of vastly inferior creatures that were easy to control.  They
formed a "court" mostly as a means of amusement; they seldom agreed on
anything.  Innate distrust made alliances tenuous at best an "I won't
destroy your home if you don't destroy mine" cold war.  But somehow,
Madoc won them.  And won them to his pet project.

Get rid of Keighvin Silverhair's little pet, the mortal called
Tannim.

He managed to persuade them that Tannim, knowledgeable as he was in the
ways of the Sidhe and Underhill, was far more of a danger to them than
their traditional enemies, the Seleighe Court elves.  He convinced them
that Tannim was unlikely to turn against his friends, but that there
was nothing stopping the young man from marching on Underhill and
taking over the areas held by Unseleighe with a small army of
Cold-Iron-wielding humans.

He even half-convinced Shar.  She had been trained as a youngster by
the Unseleighe, after all, in the time before she had broken off with
her father.  Why shouldn't Tannim think that she was just the same as
them?  She was the daughter of Charcoal, Chinthliss' great enemy and
she had been groomed by Charcoal to be Tannim's rival in magic ever
since Chinthliss took Tannim as a protege.  Allying with Madoc Skean
became a matter of self-defense.

Until she came to learn more about both Tannim and Madoc, that is. Then
it became obvious, at least to her, that this tale Madoc had spun about
a human mage mad for power was full of what they threw on the compost
heap.  Tannim was no more a conquering Patton than she was.  He might
consider moving into some little unused section of Underhill one day,
just as she had, but conquering vast sections of it would simply never
occur to him.  It was only Unseleighe paranoia that made such a thing
seem possible.

But by then she had already committed herself to Madoc.  She'd been
having second thoughts for some time now.

The very fact that her blood-father was friends with the Unseleighe was
enough to make her think they were worthless.  What she had learned
about them since she had cut off all ties to him only confirmed that.
Only her own paranoia had made her listen to Madoc in the first place;
only his incredible charisma had persuaded her to give the Unseleighe
one more chance.

But Madoc had grown more and more arrogant with her every time she had
spoken with him since she first pledged her help.  He needed her; she
was the only creature allied with him that could handle Cold Iron with
impunity.  He knew that, and yet pretended that it was otherwise.

And the more she saw and learned of Tannim, the less she liked Madoc or
wished to put up with him.

So she donned her armor; armor that the Unseleighe would understand.
Her hair she braided back in a severe and androgynous style that left
the impression of a helmet.  She wore tunic and pants of knitted
cloth-of-silver that cleverly counterfeited fine chain-mail and
minimized her femininity.  Her belt was a sword-belt, with a supporting
baldric, and the empty loops that should support a sheath spoke
eloquently for her capabilities.

She looked herself over in the mirror, analyzing every nuance of her
outfit and stance for clues that might hint at weakness.  She found
none.

She banished the glass again and turned toward the Gate, activating it
and setting it for an Unseleighe-held portion of Underhill where she
could Gate to Madoc Skean's stronghold.  Although this was a poor
strategic move, coming to him like a petitioner, she would not permit
him here.  Allow him here but once, and there was no telling the
mischief he could cause.

Or what he might leave behind, besides his smell.

Her Gate had only three settings: Unseleighe Underhill, her mother's
realm, and her father's.  The last, she would not use.  To go to the
human world, she must use the Gate in the "garage."  A bit awkward,
sometimes, but necessary.

She stepped through her Gate, felt the shivering of energies around her
as it sprang to life and bridged the gap between where she was and
where she wanted to be.

As usual, it was dark.  She blinked, and waited for her eyes to adjust.
Many Unseleighe creatures simply could not exist in bright light, so
most Unseleighe realms were as gloomy as a thunderstorm during an
eclipse, or dusk on a badly overcast day.  She stood at the head of a
path that traveled straight through a primeval and wildly overgrown
forest.  Forests such as this one had not existed on the face of the
human world since the Bronze Age, if then.  It was the distillation of
everything about the ancient Forest that primitive man had feared.

And it contained everything dark and treacherous that primitive man had
believed in.

The trees were alive, and they hungered; strange things rustled and
moaned in the undergrowth.  There were glowing eyes up among the
branches, and as Shar stepped out on the path, the noises increased,
the trees leaned toward her, and the number of eyes multiplied.

Something screamed in pain in the distance, and something nearer wailed
in desolation.

Shar looked about her with absolute scorn, as the sounds and eyes
surrounded her, and the trees closed in.

"Will you just chill out?"  she snapped, putting a small fraction of
her Power behind her words.  "I've been here before, and you know it. I
am not impressed."

A moment of stunned silence, a muttering of disappointment, and within
a few more seconds, the trees were only trees, and there were no more
scuttlings in the underbrush or eyes in the branches overhead.

"Oh, thank you," she said sarcastically, and made her way to the second
Gate.  So much of the power of the older Unseleighe depended on fear
that the moment anyone faced them down, they simply melted away.  That
might be why there were so few of these unadapted creatures active in
the humans' world these days, and Cold Iron had nothing to do with them
fleeing to dwell Underhill.  The modern world was frightening enough
that most people couldn't be scared by these ancient creatures.  Where
was the power of glowing eyes to terrify when rat eyes looked out at
children every day from beneath the furniture of their ghetto
apartments?  How could a man be terrified by reaching tree branches
when beneath the tree was a crack-addict with a gun?  Moans and cries
in the darkness could be the neighbor pummeling his wife and children
to a pulp and he just might come after anyone else who interfered, too,
so moans and cries were best ignored.

The supernatural lost its power to terrify when so much of the natural
world could not be controlled.  These elder creatures were forced to
abide in places like this one, where, if they were lucky, some poor
unsuspecting being from another realm might stumble in to die of
fright.

But the Unseleighe who had adapted found the modern human world rich in
possibility.  They fed on human pain and misery, so anywhere there was
the potential for such things, you found them in the thick of it.
Sometimes they even caused it, either as sustenance for themselves or
as a hobby.  Some considered inflicting suffering on humans to be an
art form.

She had been taught by her father and his friends that humans were no
business of hers.  They were cattle, beneath her except to use when she
chose and discard afterward.

But she had been taught by her mother that humans were not that much
different from her.  More limited, shorter-lived but did that mean that
a human confined to a wheelchair was the toy of humans with no such
limitations?

For a long time she had been confused by the conflicting viewpoints,
especially while the handsome Unseleighe Sidhe had been courting her,
seeking her favors.  They seemed so powerful, so confident.  They had
everything they wanted, simply by waving a hand.  They were in control
of their world, and controlled the humans' world far more than the
mortals knew.  They were beautiful, charismatic, confident, proud..
..

But after a few bitter and painful episodes, she began to see some
patterns.  Once an Unseleighe got what he wanted, he discarded her
exactly as they urged her to do with the humans.  Her father, whom she
tried desperately to please, cynically used her childish devotion to
manipulate her.

The lessons were branded deeply; as deeply as the ones she was supposed
to be learning.  Little by little, she changed her own approach.  She
began learning, fiercely, greedily.  She stole knowledge, when it was
not given to her.

She spent more time in her mother's company.  No one, not even the
powerful Unseleighe lords, dared to block the approach of a nine-tailed
kits une to her daughter, and Ako made certain they were given no
reason to think she was undermining their teaching.

Then, when the time was right, after Shar had established her own tiny
Underhill domain, and she had learned everything she could, she began
severing her connections to the Unseleighe and to her father.

She had cast Charcoal out of her life first; he had made the mistake of
trying to coerce her when she refused to cooperate with some unsavory
project of his.  She no longer even remembered what it was; it had been
trivial, but she had not wanted to have any part of it, and for the
first time, she had the power to enforce her own will.

After barring him from her domain, she began pursuing her own projects
the first of which was to spend an entire year with her mother and her
mother's people.

That year had been the most eye-opening time she had ever passed.  She
had moved among kits une with poise, not posturing.  She had learned
manners rooted in respect, not fear of repercussions.  She had heard
laughter that was not aimed at anyone but instead filled the room with
its warmth.  At the end of that year, she had withdrawn to her own
domain and begun planning what she truly wanted to do with her life,
and more importantly, plotting how to rid herself of the Unseleighe
influence without a loss of power or status.

She shook herself out of her reverie as she approached the Gate that
would take her to Madoc Skean.  This one was guarded, by literally
faceless warriors, but she had the signs and the passwords, and they
ignored her.  There were four of them, of the "immortal" type; no
weapon would kill them except Cold Iron, and even then it would have to
penetrate their mage-crafted armor.  The Gate was a real, solid
structure, four pillars supporting a dome above a platform, all of
black-and-red marble.  The faceless ones stood at each corner, staring
out into nothingness.  They had no wills of their own, never tired,
never needed food or drink; they were enchanted flesh and metal,
sustained by the mage-energies of their master.

She walked up onto the platform beneath the dome, closed her eyes, and
"knocked" with her power.  At the third "knock," she opened her eyes on
the audience chamber of Madoc Skean, Lord of Underhill, Magus Major and
Unseleighe commander.

As if to emphasize how different he and his Seleighe rival Keighvin
Silverhair were, everything in Madoc's domain was of the most archaic
mode.  This "audience chamber," for instance.  Shar was fairly certain
that he had copied it from a movie about a barbarian king and his
barbarian rivals all the Sidhe seemed to love movies.  Built of the
same black-and-red marble as the Gate, the main body of it was lit only
by torches in brackets along the walls, so that the high ceiling was
shrouded in gloom.  Pillars ranged along each side of the room, their
tops lost in the shadows.  The floor, of the same marble, held a
scattering of fur rugs.  A fire burned in the center of the room, held
in a huge copper dish supported on bronze lions' feet.  At the end of
the room, on a platform that raised him above the floor by about three
feet so that anyone who approached him would be forced to look up at
him, was Madoc.  He sat in a Roman-style chair, made of gold and draped
with more furs.  Torches burned in golden holders on either side of
him, and the rear wall was covered with a huge tapestry depicting Madoc
doing something disgusting to a defeated foe.  Two more of his faceless
guards flanked his throne; their black armor was ornamented with gold
chasing and rubies the same color as drying blood.

Madoc wore a heavy, primitive crown of gold, inscribed with Celtic knot
work and set with more rubies, on his handsome, blond head.  He made no
attempt to disguise his cat-pupiled green eyes or pointed ears. His
costume was an elaborate and thickly embroidered antique-style tunic
and trews made of gold and scarlet silk; on his feet were sandals that
laced up over the legs of the trews.  The leather was studded with
gold, as was the heavy belt at his waist.  A crimson mantle of silk
velvet was held to his shoulders by matching Celtic circle-brooches.
His jewelry, aside from the crown and the brooches, consisted of a pair
of heavy gold armbands and a gold torc with monster-head finials.

Shar could not help thinking that he looked like an art supply catalog
on two feet.

Shar stepped carefully down from the platform, which held the physical
counterpart of the Gate in the Forest, and made her way across the vast
and empty floor.  She kept her face impassive right up until the moment
that she came to Madoc's feet.

Then she allowed her face to assume an expression of amused irony.  "I
think you owe Frank Frazetta licensing fees," she said.

Madoc frowned, a flash of real anger, as his impassive mask slipped for
a moment.  Shar smiled.  Madoc hated being reminded that the elves
copied everything they did from humans, and he hated it even more when
she recognized the source.

"Don't mention Frazetta's name to me again.  He has caused the
Unseleighe enough trouble.  You're making no progress in dealing with
Tannim," he said abruptly, as she crossed her arms over her breasts and
took a hip-shot, careless stance designed to tell him without words
that she was not impressed.

She shrugged.  "It's coming along.  You know as well as anyone that
Oberon has been taking an interest in Keighvin and his crew, and that
includes Tannim.  Challenge him without all the proper protocols and
you could wind up answering to the High King.  Again.  Just because he
threw you out of the Court once doesn't mean he can't choose to come
after you."

Madoc flushed.  "You haven't stayed long enough to get Tannim's
response to your challenge!"  he accused.  "You're toying with him!
Enough of your foolishness!  We are not engaged with this plan to amuse
you.  Deal with the man and have done with it!"

She lowered her eyelids to hide her anger at the tone of command he had
taken with her.  He should know better than to take that attitude with
her

Suddenly, a soft popping sound signaled Azure's arrival into the throne
room, speeding towards her with obvious excitement.  Something must
have happened to make her pet seek her out here!  She raised her hand
to warn Madoc not to disturb the creature

Too late.

He was already irritated with her, and this intrusion gave him an
excuse to vent that anger on something connected with her.

He blasted the hapless creature into the back wall with a flick of his
hand.  It whimpered once, and died.

Shar felt stunned, as if she had taken the blow herself.  She stared at
the remains of her pet, then transferred her gaze to Madoc.  The
Unseleighe yawned, rubbed his chin, and smiled at her lazily.

"Next time," he purred, "curb your dog."

At that moment Shar made up her mind about which side she was on.

She gave no outward sign of her thoughts.  Instead, she said, "What do
you want me to do?  Don't you realize what weapon he's likely to choose
for the Challenge?  Cars.  Racing.  His Mustang against mine."  She
gritted her teeth and went on with the deception.  "In anything else, I
could best him, but not that.  He's better than I am or ever will be,
and no amount of magery is going to counteract his skill."

Madoc frowned, as if that had never occurred to him.  "Well, kill him,
then!"  he snapped.

But again, she shook her head.  "Oberon," she said succinctly.  "If you
don't want Oberon's attention, play by the rules of the game.  We've
issued the Challenge; we can't kill Tannim out of hand now.  Remember,
if you violate the rules, no Unseleighe will ever trust you.  He has to
accept the Challenge, and you're going to have to figure out some way
of making him choose magery or some other weapon I am superior with.
That's why I've been drawing things out; I've been trying to get him
off balance enough that he won't think of racing as the response when I
finally let him respond."

There.  Bite on that awhile.

She seethed with anger at the wanton, pointless destruction of Azure;
she would mourn the poor little creature later, when her privacy was
assured.  But the best way to get revenge on Madoc was to frustrate
him, to make him angry.  If he lost control of himself, he would do
something stupid, and he might lose all of his allies.  That would put
him right back at square one, all of his plans in ruins, all of it to
do over again.  But this time it would take much longer to undo all the
damage.  Look how long it had taken Vidal Dhu to regain his reputation
after losing to Keighvin Silverhair the first time!

Madoc frowned fiercely at being confronted with the truth but then,
unexpectedly, he smiled.

"But he cannot choose racing if he has nothing to race with, can he?"
the Unseleighe lord said with glee.  " "Tis simple enough: we steal his
precious Mustang with magic, and bring it Underhill!  There are pockets
we can armor against the harmful effect of so much Cold Iron and I
myself have enough power to bring the vehicle here!"

She blinked, taken aback then quickly recovered.  "What if he comes
after it?"  she countered.  "What if he brings help with him, armed
with Cold Iron weapons?"

"Then he but proves my point to Oberon," Madoc retorted with triumph.
"And we can lay a trap for him.  Oberon cannot object to our squashing
him like an impudent insect if he brings Death Metal into Underhill!"

She was too well-trained to panic, but her mind raced as it never had
before.  "Let me deal with the car and set the trap," she said quickly.
"Why waste your energies on dealing with something I can handle with
impunity?  Then you can confront him yourself, power intact."

Madoc nodded slowly.  "You have a point," he admitted.  "It would
exhaust me to bring the car Underhill; it would serve us little if I
cannot be the one to defeat him here."  He straightened regally on his
throne.  "Very well," he said, his arrogance as heavy a mantle as the
red velvet shrouding his shoulders.  "Deal with it, Shar.  Bring the
car to the Underhill pocket nearest the Hall of the Mountain King.  The
Norse are used to the presence of metals; it should cause a minimum of
disturbance to their magics.  And if it troubles them " he smiled, a
snake's smile as it prepared to sink its fangs into the neck of the
prey " well, I offered an alliance, and they refused me.  They can deal
with the consequences."

She nodded shortly and turned on her heel, striding to the Gate at the
other end of the hall and presenting him with her back instead of
retreating, walking backward, as an underling would do.  In that much,
at least, she could offer open defiance.  Her jaw was clenched so hard
it ached, and her hands twitched as she forced them to remain at her
side without turning into fists.

He had gone too far.  He had neither the right nor the cause to
callously slay Azure.  Now it was time for her to think, plan
everything with absolute care, and then act.  She must kidnap the
Mustang; she must make sure that Tannim would follow it.  But the
result of that would not be what Madoc supposed.  She would best Madoc
at Madoc's own game.

And, fates willing, feed him his own black heart at the end of it all.
* * * Shar crouched in the gravel of the driveway of Tannim's house.
Her fur was almost black under the pale moon, and she laid out the last
components of her spell with care.  Her tail lashed as she spun out the
energies, linked them all in together, and flung them with hand like
paws at the Mach I

She held her breath, waiting, as the spell settled into place, a
gossamer web of her power laid carefully over the layers and structures
of Tannim's spells on his Mustang.  As delicately as this was made, it
still might set off his alarms

It didn't, and she let out her breath in a rush.  It had been damned
difficult to get past all his mage-alarms and shields and this close to
his parents' house, even wearing the true-fox shape.  She had never
been so close to triggering someone else's protections in her life, and
she suspected that only her form had kept her from setting off all
those alarms.  It would have been disaster if she somehow set off the
protections on the Mustang.

She had known from the moment Madoc opened his mouth to order the Mach
I's capture that Tannim would, if the car was merely taken, simply
write it off as a loss.  He would know it was going to be bait in a
trap.  When he refused to come after it, Madoc would insist that she
make good on the Challenge, assuming that Tannim would have to choose
some other weapon.

The trouble was, Tannim could still choose racing.  He could have the
damned Victor GT sent down here to him if he wanted.  He could buy two
identical cars off a showroom floor.

Madoc would know she could not match him on a race course.  He could do
something stupid to hex the race, but he would do it in the mortal
world, where he could not operate as freely as she could.  Yes, she
could work this into Madoc's downfall, but there would be a sacrifice
she no longer wanted to make.

Madoc would murder Tannim, as he had murdered Azure.  SharMarali
Halanyn vowed, on the spirits of her ancestors, Madoc Skean would have
no more victims.

She had to do something to make it look as if the Mach I's
disappearance was an accident.  If it happened while he was doing
something to the car, he would not assume it was a trap.

So, she laid in a spell to open a Gate to the appointed place the
moment Tannim tried to set another spell of any kind on his car.  With
her nipping at his heels, it couldn't be long before he did just that.
She would be ready to snatch his car away before he knew what was
happening.

And since the Mach I would not end up anywhere near Unseleighe domains
as per Madoc's orders he would assume that something had backfired in
the spell he had set, and come after his wandering Mustang.

Or so she hoped, for his sake.  If he did that, she had a chance of
saving him and engineering Madoc's downfall.

The only other way of saving him would be for the two of them to join
forces and take Madoc on.  She knew how strong she was and in a head-on
confrontation, Madoc would win over her.  He was the better fighter.
The strengths of the kits une lay in subterfuge, trickery.  The
strengths of the dragon

She had not learned.  Not well enough.  Her father had not taught her
enough to become a rival to his power.  If Ako had remained with
Chinthliss, perhaps

Perhaps changes nothing, she scolded herself, and crept carefully down
the driveway, still in fox-shape.  She was strong enough to hold her
independence only because Charcoal would not challenge Ako and her
family, and because the Unseleighe did not realize how she had come to
despise them.  They thought they still ruled her, and permitted her
what they thought was the illusion of independence.  She could not
protect Tannim alone.  He could not withstand the full power of the
Unseleighe alone.  His friends from Fairgrove could not reach him
before Madoc murdered him, if Madoc struck without warning.

They would have to join forces, and for that, she would have to show
herself as his ally.

She looked back over her shoulder at the house once she was safely
outside the perimeter of Tannim's shields.  A single light burned in
the room she knew was his.

What was he doing?  Trying to extract information from her carefully
Cleansed gloves?  Thinking?  Dreaming?

Of her?

She shook her head violently, her ears flapping, and sneezed.  Then she
spun around three times, a little red fox chasing her tail, and reached
through the thrice-cast circle for her Gate to home.  * * * Tannim
pulled the Mustang into Chinthliss' slot just before sunset.  His
mentor had told him on the phone when Tannim called him this morning
not to bother to appear before then; his own researches would not be
completed before dark.

So he and Joe cruised around Tulsa in the afternoon.  Fox still hadn't
put in an appearance.

But the mysterious, dark-haired woman in her black Mustang certainly
did.  She was tailing them.

She made no attempt to hide, but she also made no further attempt at
contact of any kind.  In fact, the two times he had tried to turn the
tables on her and force a confrontation, she had managed to vanish into
the traffic.

She stayed no less than three cars behind him, and no more than five,
no matter what route he chose; even when he was certain he'd managed to
shake her, she always turned up again.  He thought he'd lost her when
they pulled into one of the malls, but when he and Joe came out again
with more clothing for Joe, she was there, parked three rows away from
the Mach I, watching them.

When he stopped to fill up the tank, she was in the parking lot of a
fast-food joint across the street.  When he turned onto the Broken
Arrow expressway, she followed right behind.  He got off and thought
he'd lost her for sure when he didn't see her following on the little
two-lane blacktop road he'd chosen but as soon as he came to a major
intersection, there she was again, as if she had somehow known where he
was going.

She finally vanished when he pulled into his folks' driveway, hot and
frustrated, and doing his best not to take his frustration out on
Joe.

He certainly hoped that Chinthliss would have better news for him than
all of this.

She hadn't shown up on the drive to the hotel, so that was a plus.
Maybe following them around all day, between the power-shopping and the
aimless driving, had been driving her as buggy as being followed had
driven him.

She sure as hell hadn't learned anything interesting.  Unless it was
which stores had his favorite brands of clothing.

They piled out of the car and started up the walkway in the blue dusk.
Chinthliss met them at the door, letting them in without any of his
usual banter.  That was enough to make Tannim take a closer look at his
friend.  Chinthliss had a very odd, closed expression on his face.

"What's wrong?"  Tannim asked bluntly.

Chinthliss shook his head and waved them both to seats on the couch.
The two gloves lay on the table, in the exact middle, side by side,
both of them palm showing.  As Chinthliss took his own seat, Tannim
watched him closely.  Something was definitely up.

"I believe I have the identity of your challenger," Chinthliss said,
abruptly, with no warm-up.  "I don't know why she has challenged you,
for certain, but I can guess.  And I hope that I am wrong."

"So who is she?"  Tannim asked when Chinthliss had remained silent for
far too long.

Chinthliss drew himself up and tried to look dignified, but succeeded
only in looking haggard.  "I would rather not say," he replied.  "It
involves something very personal."

That was the last straw in a long and frustrating day.  Tannim lost his
temper.  Chinthliss liked to play these little coaxing games, but
Tannim was not in the mood for one now.

"Personal, my " Tannim exploded, as Joe jumped in startlement at his
vehemence.  Then he forced himself to calm down.  "Look, lizard," he
said, leaning forward and emphasizing his words with a pointed finger.
"I've told you a lot of stuff that was damned personal over the years,
when it had a bearing on something you needed to know.  You know that
nothing you tell me will leave this room.  Time to pay up.  I have to
know this stuff.  It's my tail that's on the line, here!"

Chinthliss licked his lips and tried to avoid Tannim's eyes.  Tannim
wouldn't let him.

Finally Chinthliss sighed and let his head sag down into his hands. "It
is very complicated and goes back a long time," he said plaintively, as
if he was hoping Tannim would be content with that.

Not a chance.  "Ante up, Chinthliss," Tannim said remorselessly.  "The
more you stall, the worse I'll think it is."

Chinthliss sighed again, and leaned back in his chair, eyes closed. "It
all began twenty-eight years ago, in the time of this world," he said,
surprising Tannim.  Huh.  He wasn't kidding about it being a long time.
 That's a year longer than I've been alive.

"This occurred in my realm.  There were two young males, constant
rivals.  One was called Charcoal, and one, Chinthliss," his mentor
continued.  "They both courted a lovely lady of the kits une clan.  She
was young and flirtatious, and paid the same attentions to each.  Very
ah personal attentions.  Chinthliss was the one who temporarily won
her, mostly because Charcoal became insufferable.  But it was not
Chinthliss who fathered the daughter she bore."

Tannim sat bolt upright.  Chinthliss and a kits une

"The daughter was charming and talented, and Chinthliss had no qualms
with accepting her as a foster-daughter, even though Charcoal had gone
beyond being his rival and had become his most vicious enemy.  But he
had many things on his mind, and eventually the Lady Ako became
disenchanted with the lack of attention he paid her, and left him."
There was real pain on Chinthliss' features, the ache of loss never
forgotten and always regretted.  "When she left him, she took her
daughter.  He never saw either of them again."

He opened his eyes at last, and Tannim locked his lips on the questions
he wanted to ask.  "That was when Chinthliss realized that he needed
others, and began looking for someone yes, to take the places of Lady
Ako and SharMarali.  Stupid, I know, for one person can never replace
another, but I have never been particularly wise, no matter what my
student might say to flatter me..  .."  His voice trailed off for a
moment, then he looked Tannim straight in the eyes.  "I never found
anyone to match Ako, but I did find an eager young mind to teach, a
protege, someone to take the place of little Shar.  That was why I gave
him the name, "Son of Dragons'; not only as a joke on the name of his
real, blood parents, but because he became a kind of son to me."

Tannim licked lips gone dry, and prompted him gently.  "Is this Shar
the one who's been following me?"

Chinthliss nodded painfully, as if his head was very heavy and hard to
move.  "I don't think there can be any doubt," he said.  "Especially
since there is only one kits une-dragon I know of, and in the past, I
heard rumors, rumors I had thought I could discount.  I thought that
Lady Ako had Shar safely with her; the rumors were that not long after
I began teaching you, Charcoal asserted his parental rights over the
girl and took her off to be trained by himself and by his allies.  The
Unseleighe."

At Tannim's hissing intake of breath, Chinthliss grimaced.  "You see,
the rumors I heard were that he intended to make her into the opposite
of you."

Joe scratched his head thoughtfully.  "I can see that," he said.  "It
all matches, if she's supposed to be the anti-Tannim.  Even the car she
drives is a Mustang.  Late model, old versus new.  The same, only
different."

"So you see why she would be challenging you," Chinthliss continued
unhappily.  "And why it's happening here and now, in Oklahoma, where I
first found you."

Tannim shook his head and groaned.  "Oh, God.  I'm in an evil twin
episode.  If this were a TV show, I'd kick in the screen about now."

Joe snickered; Chinthliss made what sounded like a sympathetic noise
deep in his throat.

Tannim looked up at Chinthliss again.  "Okay, we can figure it's Shar;
we can figure she's sleep ah working with the Unseleighe.  She's
challenging me, and figures she's going to wipe me.  Keighvin and Conal
said that since I have choice of weapons in a Challenge, I should
choose racing."

Chinthliss brightened a little at that.  "The laws of challenge are
clear on that point; you have the right of any weapon you choose and I
rather suspect that they would never think of racing as a weapon.  I
cannot imagine how even Shar could best you in a contest of that sort.
Unless her allies make it something less than a fair fight."

Tannim leaned back in his chair and ran his fingers through his hair
thoughtfully.  "Okay.  Let's assume they do.  What can they do?
Booby-trap the course, do something to her car to turn it deadly, do
something to mine to make it fail on me."

"I can prevent them from interfering with the course," Chinthliss
replied quickly.  "I have more practice working in this world than
they."

"No matter what they do to her car, they have to get it close to mine
to make any weapons work."  Tannim unwrapped a pop, stuck the paper in
the ashtray and the cherry-pop in his mouth.  "That just takes a little
more finesse on my part.  I've had has ties after me.  If she's never
done combat-driving before, she's no match for me."

Chinthliss shrugged.  "Where would she have learned?"  he asked.  "Who
would have taught her?"

"More to the point, where would she have gotten the practice?"  Tannim
put in.  "SERRA keeps an eye out for reports of driving "incidents';
things like that sometimes mean there's a mage out there that isn't
trained or mentored.  I think we'd have a tag on her if she'd been
messing around on her own.  Hell, she'd have run into one of ours by
now, for sure."

"That only leaves sabotaging the Mach I," Joe said.  "But how do you
keep someone from messing around with your car when they can do it
magically?"

"Easy," Tannim and Chinthliss said in chorus.  "More magic."

Joe sighed.  "I shoulda known."

Tannim half grinned.  "So," he said, looking into Chinthliss' eyes,
"feel up to anything tonight?  Time might not be on our side.  Your
wicked stepdaughter was trailing us all over Tulsa today."

"Mmm.  I will help, yes," Chinthliss replied.  "Most of today's work
was not mine.  And I have a few ideas that I would like you to try
anyway."

"Shall we?"  Tannim rose and bowed, gesturing toward the door.

"Let's shall," Chinthliss said with a sigh.  "Tannim, this is not how I
wanted to find her again."

"I can imagine."  Tannim led the way out to the Mustang.  It was fully
dark now.  The stars above dotted the sky even through the light-haze
thrown up by Tulsa.  Out in the country they would be able to see the
Milky Way.

Joe automatically wedged himself into the backseat, leaving the front
to Chinthliss.  "If this girl's half kit-whats-it," he asked, leaning
over the seat as Tannim pulled out of the parking slot, "would that be
why Fox just disappeared and hasn't come back?"

"Exactly so," Chinthliss told him.  Tannim let his mentor make the
explanations; he was too busy watching for that black Mustang.  "Shar's
mother is a nine-tailed kits une she can shape-change into a real fox
if she chooses, or into anything else.  She can act and be acted upon
as a real human woman.  She has powers I could wish I enjoyed.  Nine
tails is an enormously high rank, and I have never personally heard of
or met a kits une with more tails.  The number of tails indicates the
rank and power in a kits une I doubt that Shar, in her kits une form,
has less than six.  FX has only three tails, which is why he can affect
nothing in this world; he could not possibly best her, and if he
crossed her, she could take one of his tails."

"So?"  Joe wanted to know.

Chinthliss shrugged.  "So, he would definitely lose rank and power and
there are some who say that the number of tails also means the number
of lives a kits une has.  Lose a tail and you lose a life."

"Oh."  Joe sat back to digest this.

Tannim knew that the young man must be confused as all hell.  Kitsunes,
dragons, magic-enhanced cars .. . it could have flattened a less stable
person.  Maybe in some cases old what's-his-name was right: "that which
does not kill us, makes us stronger."  It sure seemed to work for
Joe.

Helluva way to grow up, though.

The barn seemed the right place to go, even though they'd have to do
any magic on the Mach I "without a net," outside the protections
available inside the barn.  But with two mages here, one of them a
dragon, what could go wrong that they couldn't fix?

Joe went out ahead with a flashlight, just to make sure that their
little playmate hadn't booby-trapped the access with tire-slashers.  He
walked all the way to the side of the barn, examining the flattened
lines in the grass, and waved an "all-clear" when he reached the barn
itself.

Tannim pulled up beside the barn and got out.  Chinthliss followed.

He stood looking at the Mach I for a long time, fists on his hips, feet
apart and braced.  Then he took a deep breath, and stepped back.

"All right folks," he said quietly, as the crickets and mockingbirds
sang in the distance, and a nighthawk screamed overhead.  "It's show
time."  * * * Although Tannim had never done anything synchronized this
way before, Chinthliss wanted to set up all of their spells in a
complex net, so that they all meshed and could all be triggered
together.

Tannim had argued against that, but not very forcefully, because he had
known Chinthliss was right about one thing.  Once Shar got a whiff of
magics out here at the barn, she'd know that Chinthliss was involved.
And once she knew that, she might change her mind about keeping her
distance.  They'd really better do everything at once, because they
might not get a second chance.

The trouble was, he had no idea how well all this stuff was going to
"take," given the protections that were already on the Mach I. And he
had no idea how it would integrate with what was already there.  Hell,
he thought ruefully, as Chinthliss laid out the last of his webs of
power over Tannim's own "crystalline" geometric structures, I've got no
idea how half of what he wants to do is going to work!  It was worse
than computer programming.

Chinthliss surveyed his handiwork and stepped back a pace.  "Ready?" he
asked.

"Ready," his former pupil replied, though not without considerable
misgivings.

"Right.  On my count."  Chinthliss walked to the tail of the car and
raised his hands, and Tannim copied his gesture, standing at the nose.
"Four.  Three.  Two.  One.  Fire."

Tannim triggered his spells.

What should have happened was that a structure a great deal like the
dome inside the barn would form, then shrink down to become one with
the Mach I's skin.

What actually happened was that the dome formed and shrank, all right

But as soon as it touched the skin of the Mustang, there was a blinding
flash of light.

Tannim shouted in pain, and turned away, eyes watering, swearing with
every curse he had ever heard in his life.  He scrubbed at his eyes
frantically What did we do to my car?

There were spots dancing in front of him, but it was perfectly clear
what they had done to his car.

Because the Mach I was no longer there; only a flattened place in the
grass, and a single chrome trim-ring from one of the wheels, gleaming
in the moonlight.

"Ah, hell!"  he half groaned, half shouted.  "Now what am I gonna do?
How do you explain this to State Farm?"

CHAPTER SIX

Tannim stared at the chrome trim-ring for a moment longer, then waded
through the tall grass and picked it up.  It felt warm, as if it had
been sitting in the sun for a long time.  "The Mach I can't have gone
far," he said finally.  "At least, I don't think it could have.  We
didn't put that much power into those spells, not enough to have
teleported a car for miles "

"If it went Underhill, "far' is relative," Chinthliss warned.  "My
guess is that's where it went.  It would not take a great deal of power
to open a Gate into some truly outre realm."

Tannim felt himself blanch, and the bottom dropped out of his stomach.
Underhill.  It wasn't just Keighvin and his "good" elves who lived
Underhill.  So did the Unseleighe, the efrits, and a lot of other nasty
characters.  Underhill wasn't one place, it was many places, all lumped
in the same generic basket.  Some of those places held people who
didn't care for Tannim very much.  "If it went Underhill," he said
slowly, "and the bad guys get ahold of it, I am in deep kimchee.  I've
got a lot of personal power invested in that car.  They could get at me
through it.  I've got to get it back before they know it's there."

"Do you think that is wise?"  Chinthliss asked, looking skeptical and a
tad worried.  "You could end up in more difficulties than if you simply
left it there."

"I don't think I have a choice," he retorted.  "It's either that, or
cut it off from me entirely, which I'm not sure would work, then try to
explain to my folks where my car went.  They know I'd never sell it.
Shoot, I'd rather deal with Unseleighe."

Not to mention the long walk back.  I could say someone stole it.  But
then I'd have to go through the whole police show, and meanwhile I
still have Shar on my tail and I wouldn't have all the protection I
built into the Mustang.  It did occur to him that he could borrow an
elvensteed from Keighvin after all, if Rhellan could look like a '57
Chevy, surely another 'steed could look like the Mach I. But that would
mean calling in yet another favor from Keighvin, and that would still
leave the problem of the Mach I in possibly unfriendly hands.  It won't
take them more than a couple of days to figure out that it's down
there; all that Cold Iron unshielded is going to make a helluva
distortion in the magic fields Underhill.  It'll only get worse the
longer I wait.  If I just get in and get out again, everything should
be fine.

Besides, he loved that car.  There were a lot of important memories
tied up in it.  It had carried him through a lot of bad situations, and
more than a few good ones.  He wanted it back.

"It hasn't been down there that long; I can't imagine anyone would have
found it this soon.  I can use this to scry with," he continued,
holding up the trim-ring as he pushed through the waist-high grass to
get inside the barn.  "It shouldn't take me long to find it.  Once I
know where it is, I can go get it and bring it back with me.  It's
easier to open up a Gate from there to here than vice versa.  Right?"

"That depends " Chinthliss began.

But Tannim ignored him.  After all, if it hadn't been for Chinthliss
insisting that they trigger all the spells together, none of this would
have happened.  Although how that particular batch of spells could have
conspired to open up a hole into Underhill, he could not imagine.

Of course, no one knew how programmers got Windows 3.1 to run, either,
and it had at least as many ways to go wrong as their cobbled mass of
spells.

He put the trim-ring down on the ground once he got inside the
protected area of the barn, triggered some of the primary protections,
and then laid a mirror-finished disk of energy within the trim-ring.
That turned the whole trim-ring into a scrying mirror, very like some
of the scrying pools Underhill, but set specifically for the Mach I.
Chinthliss came in behind him and conjured up a mage-light that
provided real-world illumination.  In the dim, blue light, Joe wore an
expression of worry and puzzlement.  Chinthliss was, as usual,
inscrutable.

He crouched down on his heels beside the ring as Joe and Chinthliss
joined him.  Joe stared nervously down over his shoulder, but
Chinthliss kept chewing on his lip and casting suspicious glances
everywhere except at the ring.

The surface of the mirror glowed with a milky radiance like fog lit up
from within.  Silently, Tannim commanded it: Show me the vehicle of
which you were once a part.  Show me where it is, and the condition it
is in.

He continued to stare down at the ring as the light within it shifted
restlessly, showing only vague shapes, and hints of wavering forms
within its misty depths.

Finally, faint color tinged the fog, red and gold, purple and deep
blue.  He willed more power into the mirror, and the image within it
strengthened and the colors intensified.

Then the whole image trembled violently, and settled; the huge oblong
of deep, deep red in the center cleared and became the Mustang, while
the rest of the image focused into the background.

The Mach I sat sedately in the exact middle of what could only be a
huge audience chamber, literally fit for a king.  She looked terribly
odd there: the only modern object in a room that resonated with a
feeling of ancient times.  Her four tires rested on a floor of polished
amber; behind her was a wall covered with a geometric tapestry of red,
blue, purple, and gold.  Benches of gold and amber sat beneath the
tapestry, and in between the benches were ever-burning lamps of gold
and tortoiseshell, or stands holding antique weaponry.

A thick patina of dust lay over everything except the car.

Tannim chewed his lip, trying to figure out just where this was.
Underhill, obviously, since of the humans of this world, only a Russian
Tzar could ever afford to have a room with a floor of amber, but the
question was, where Underhill?

Chinthliss finally looked down at the image within the mirror and
frowned.  "That's the audience chamber of the Katschei, the one he used
when he was in a good mood," he said.  "It's not that far from the
Nordic elven enclaves.  Once the Katschei was dead, I'd have thought
for certain that something else would have taken over his Underhill
holdings, but it looks abandoned.  Maybe there's a curse on the place
or something."

"Yeah, look at the dust.  Well.  The Nordic elves are deep Underhill.
Keighvin says some of them haven't come out for centuries."  That gave
him distance and direction; he ought to be able to Gate from here to
there with Chinthliss' assistance, using the trim-ring as an anchor,
then return the same way.  The ring, having been part of the car,
should keep the path between them open and clear.

He stood up.  "Well, if it's as abandoned as it looks, this should be a
piece of cake.  I can Gate over and Gate back before three in the
morning."  He grinned at Joe, crookedly.  "Be glad you're with me,
otherwise Mom would have you under a curfew."

"I really don't feel comfortable with this," Chinthliss began, then
shook his head.  "Never mind.  I fear it was my work that caused this;
I shall have to defer to your judgment."

"I told you why I can't just leave it there," Tannim replied.  "If we
were home, I'd grab Keighvin and a bunch of the polo players and go
riding cross-Underhill to get it.  But I'm not, and we don't have time
to call them in.  If I go now, before anyone realizes the big anomaly
that just plopped down there has a physical focus, we should be fine.
Underhill's not that stable, and stuff causes mage-quakes all the time
down there."

And people are always watching for mage-quakes, bonehead.  Sometimes
interesting things surface after one.  Yeah, you'd better get your tail
moving before somebody finds this particular "interesting thing" and
gets the pink slip on it.

Chinthliss shrugged and stepped back a pace.  "Have it your way.  I can
at least establish the Gate for you."

Tannim nodded, and cast a glance back at Joe.  The young man looked
very worried, but he said nothing, perhaps because he felt so out of
his depth with two obviously practiced mages.

Chinthliss stared fixedly at the trim-ring for several minutes, then
raised his hands slowly.  The trim-ring rose smoothly and rotated
sideways until it was facing Tannim and balanced on edge, forming a
shining "O" that hovered in midair.  Joe's eyes widened.  Chinthliss
spread his fingers, and the trim-ring shivered and expanded, an inch at
a time, thinning as it did so, until it was about a half an inch thick
and tall enough for Tannim to pass through.  The scene inside the ring
remained the same: the Mach I, crouched on the amber floor as if in the
heart of a showroom.  As the ring widened, the scene expanded so that
it was possible to see a bit more: the geometrics on the tapestry
proved to be only a very wide border; now the legs and lower torsos of
humans and other creatures engaged in combat were visible, all of it
woven in the same flat but colorful style, like a lacquer box.  Then,
as Chinthliss shifted the focus of the spell from seeing to going, the
scene vanished, replaced by a dead-black wall.

"I can't hold it long," Chinthliss warned in a voice that showed
strain.  "If you're going, go now!"

Tannim did not hesitate.  He stepped across the edge of the ring,
closing his eyes involuntarily as he felt the internal lurch and tingle
that a Gate-crossing always gave him.  He experienced a moment of
disorientation and blackout, accompanied by a jolt as he dropped about
a foot.  He flexed his legs automatically and dropped into a crouch,
one hand touching the floor.

When his eyes opened again, he found himself not more than a couple of
feet from the Mach I, one hand resting in about a half inch of dust.
Beneath the dust, the amber floor glowed slightly, adding to the
illumination in the room with a warm, buttery light.

The same depth of dust lay everywhere except around the edge of the
room, in a path about three feet wide.  Odd.

He repressed a sneeze, straightened, and turned around.  It was
virtually the same behind him.  The tapestry on that wall showed twelve
lovely maidens dancing around a tree loaded with golden fruit, in the
heart of a walled garden.  The chamber itself was immense, as big as a
high school gymnasium at least.  The benches were pushed up against
three of the four walls; gold and transparent amber, rather than the
opaque butter-amber of the floor and walls.  The fourth side held a
raised platform with a gold-and-amber throne standing in lonely
splendor on it.  The hanging on that wall was plain purple with gold
fringe as long as his arm on the bottom hem.  There was no hanging on
the opposite wall; it held a set of huge golden double doors, both
gaping open.  Beyond them lay darkness; light from the audience chamber
was swallowed up by that darkness immediately, as if it was just as big
as this room.  Above the doors, the wall had been inlaid with mosaics
of cabochon gemstones forming a pattern of flowers.

He tensed as sound came from beyond those doors.  Instinctively, he
sprinted to the side of the Mach I and crouched down beside the
headlights, ready to use it for cover.

The noises continued; they sounded like someone shuffling, out there in
the darkness.  He listened carefully and caught another set of sounds:
a steady brushing in a rhythmic pattern, scraping, and something like
the sound of squeaking cart wheels.

What the

Something moved out there in the darkness.  He tensed, and crouched a
little lower beside the fender, one hand in the dust and one clutching
the chrome.  He smothered another sneeze.  He strained his eyes into
the murk; magical ever-burning lamps might have been a neat touch, but
they didn't give off a heck of a lot of light, and neither did the
glowing floor.  The sounds neared.

And finally, the maker of the sounds appeared.

A gnarled and twisted old man, dressed in nondescript rags, shuffled in
and stood by the hinge of one of the open doors.  He was mostly bald,
but with a ring of long, unkempt, yellowish-white hair straggling down
the back of his head, and he had an equally unkempt white beard that
reached to his knees.  He held a push-broom and shoved it in front of
him with laborious strokes.  There was a cart tethered to him by a rope
around his waist, which followed him, wheels squeaking, creeping
forward with every shuffling step.  He made short, hesitant strokes
with the broom, then put the broom down painfully, leaning it against
the cart; he then reached into the cart, and picked up a whiskbroom and
a dustpan.

He got down onto his knees with little whimpers of pain, felt his way
to the edge of the area he had just swept, and brushed the little ridge
of dust he had collected into his pan.

He got back up to his feet in the same laborious fashion, turned, and
felt around the cart.  His hand touched the mouth of an open bag
resting in the cart, and he carefully tapped the dust into the bag.
Then he picked up the broom and began it all again.

What the heck is this the janitor of the damned?

The old derelict came fully into the audience chamber and only then did
Tannim see why he was doing his work with such slow and stilted
motions.

Where his eyes should have been there were two gaping, old, but still
unhealed, wounds.

Tannim's hissing intake of breath alerted the old man to his presence.
The old fellow turned his sightless eyes in Tannim's direction, holding
the broom defensively in front of him.

"Who be ye?"  he called in a quavering, rusty voice.  "What ye want?"
His country-English accent was so thick that Tannim could hardly make
out what it was he had actually said.  I haven't heard an accent like
that since I watched one of those BBC nature shows.  It's almost
another language entirely.

Tannim stood up slowly, but he made no move to approach the man.
Appearances could be deceptive Underhill.  It was hard to tell what was
a trap and what was harmless.

"My name is Tannim," he said slowly and carefully, so the old man could
make out the words through his own American accent.  "I am here to
retrieve something that was lost."

"Lost?  Lost?"  The old man shook his head in senile bewilderment.
"Naught's been lost here, boy, 'cept me."  He grimaced with pain, his
face a mass of wrinkles.  "This be no place feran honest Christian.
There be boggles here."  He turned his head blindly from side to side,
as if looking for the boggles he could no longer see.  "Ye seem a good,
honest lad.  There's danger here.  Best leave whiles ye can."

"I found what it was I was looking for, sir," Tannim said placatingly.
"But I've seen no danger."

"What ye cain't see kin getcha," the old man retorted, and cackled
crazily.  "I come here lookin' fer treasure, an' see what it got me! No
doubt ye look at all th' gold, an' there's lust in yer heart fer it.
Pay it no heed, boy!  "Tis fairy gold, an' not fera ny man of God! Take
yerself and yer lost thing away, afore them boggles git ye, an' ye find
yerself like me " the voice shook, and tears trickled from the eyeless
sockets " all alone, i' th' dark, fere ver an' ever.  Never t' see m'
lovely Nancy, nor m' ol' Mam.  Never t' see nothin' an nobody again.. 
.."

The old man stood there, weeping horribly from the ruins of his eyes,
rattling on about how he had come to be here, as he clutched his broom.
Tannim pieced out from the rambling discourse that the man had somehow
come upon one of the rare doors into Underhill that opened at specific
times one of the solstices, for instance, or at the full moon.  He had
seen a rich hall beyond the door and had returned with bags to carry
away the loot, full of greed.

But those who had owned the hall beyond the door were not Seleighe
elves, who would have tricked him, terrified him for the sport of it,
but let him go relatively unharmed.  They were Unseleighe, who used
that hall as a tasty trap for the unwary.  They throve on pain and
fear, and nothing pleased them more than to have a human captive to
inflict both on.

They had tormented him until they grew bored with his antics, then had
decided on one last torment.  They blinded him and sent him here. Where
"here" was, he had no clue.  His task was to "keep the place clean" and
his life depended on it, for once a day he was to return to a specific
spot somewhere in the depths of this place, and the dust he had
collected would be transformed into an equal amount of bean-bread.
Ironically, the rope that held him to his cart, the sack in the cart,
and the cart itself were all tools he himself had brought to carry away
his loot.  It was an irony that obviously had not been lost on the
Unseleighe.

Blinded, he could not see where he had cleaned, and apparently he was a
fairly stupid man, who had not figured that he could tell where he was
in a room by the echoes from the walls, as many blind people Tannim
knew had learned to navigate.  That was why he cleaned no farther into
the room than he could reach with his broom, despite the tantalizing
fact that he knew there was thick dust just beyond that point.  He had
ventured into the middle of a room once, and had been hopelessly lost
until he had managed to crawl into a wall again.  After that, he never
dared make a second attempt.

He was in constant pain, he was more than half mad, and the two oozing
holes where his eyes had been made Tannim sick to his stomach to look
at.  If he remembered his name, he never told it to Tannim.  But he was
or had been a human being, once.  However stupid or greedy he had been,
he did not deserve a fate like this one.

Yet when Tannim offered to take him away, the man cowered against the
wall, wept, and babbled in sheer terror.  Clearly, he had been tricked
by Unseleighe pretending to "rescue" him before this.  Every time
Tannim tried to touch him, he only winced violently away.  The only way
Tannim would ever get the oldster into the Mustang would be kicking,
screaming, and utterly mindless with terror.  Which right now, could
attract a whole lot of unwanted attention and get them both caught.

Finally, Tannim did the only thing he could think of to help the man.
He cut bits of the gold fringe from the bottom of the tapestry at the
end of the hall and knotted the pieces together until they formed a
very long, heavy rope, which he gave to the old man.

"Tie this to the rope on the cart," he explained patiently.  "Tie the
other end to your waist.  You can go as far into the center of a room
as you like, and as long as you don't pull the cart after you, you can
always follow the rope back to the wall."

He had to explain it several times before the old man finally grasped
it, and if the lesson would last past the next meal, Tannim would never
be sure.  But he had tried.  And the old wreck was weepingly,
pathetically grateful.  But not grateful enough to lose his suspicion
of Tannim's motives or identity his paranoia was too deeply ingrained
for him to trust anyone to take him away.

There was something else that occurred to Tannim: time passed oddly
Underhill, and the Seleighe and Unseleighe had ways of staving off old
age from mortals when they chose.  But those methods did not work in
the human world, where magic was not as strong.  Assuming that he could
persuade the oldster that he was to be trusted, Tannim could rescue the
poor old goat and bring him across a Gate, only to see him crumble into
dust on the threshold.

Would that be a kinder fate than the one he currently had?  Given a
choice

Yes, but it's his choice, not mine.

There was enough cutlery in this audience chamber alone, in the
weapon-stands, for the old man to have ended his life long ago if he
chose.  Evidently he preferred living, however miserable that life
might be.  Maybe it wasn't all that miserable by his standards.
Presumably he still had a home, something in his memories worth living
for.  Perhaps the unknown of death presented a more terrifying prospect
than the quiet horror of his daily existence here.

He doesn't trust me, and I can't promise him anything, anyway.

The old derelict filled his sack to the top and shuffled off into the
darkness, muttering happily to himself.  The cart-wheels creaked,
marking his progress, until at last the sounds were swallowed up in the
thick darkness.  * * * Shar shuddered and came awake with a smothered
gasp.

The internal lurch as Tannim triggered Shar's trap caught her asleep in
her own pocket-domain, and took her completely by surprise.  She really
hadn't expected him to try anything magical for another twenty-four
hours at least!  She had been so tired after all her work of last night
and the ruse of tailing him today that she had thrown herself down on
the couch as soon as she returned "home," and must have fallen asleep.
The aftershock of so much Cold Iron linked to her hitting the fields of
mage-energy Underhill resonated through her as she sat bolt upright,
shaking hair and sleep-fog out of her eyes.

She swore to herself as her head rung with a very physical sensation of
impact.  There was no way that Madoc would ignore that!  And since he
knew that Shar was bringing the Mustang Underhill, he would know what
had caused this particular mage-quake.  She massaged her temples and
swung her feet down to the floor, and wondered what particular imp of
ill luck she had annoyed enough to plague her with all these
miscalculations.

Oh, most excellent, she told herself sarcastically.  Madoc knows where
I was going to dump the car.  He'll be there, either as soon as or
before I can get there.  He won't wait for me to tell him I've caught
Tannim he'll go to gloat over the car!  He might even decide not to
trust me further and set up an ambush of his own!  Why didn't I think
of that in the first place?  I swear, I get tired of having to
second-guess these Unseleighe pricks!

Tannim would, probably, follow his car as soon as he knew where it had
gone.  He might already be there.  Oh, damnation, if he'd been in the
car when it made its little journey, he would be there already!

Better count on it.  If he's not, I can revise things.

Her mind buzzed with a hundred plans, but all of them hinged on one
thing whether Madoc went to the Katschei's Hall alone, or with his
troop of mage-warriors.  Alone, she and Tannim could probably best him
and be away.  But with his troops backing him, there wasn't a chance.

Ah, damnation, I've never seen him leave his hall once without a full
escort.  He'll have them with him.

Her plans had been based on the notion that she could bring the car
Underhill without Madoc knowing when she did.  Why hadn't she foreseen
that the Mustang would cause such a ruckus?

Because I was basing it on my car, and I plain forgot how much of
Tannim's car is steel and Cold Iron, and all of it filled to the roof
with spell work  I should have done my homework, and now it's too
late

How soon would Madoc get there?  How much lead time would she have?
Better plan on not having a lot.  Better plan on none.  Better assume
that he'll beat me unless my short route is faster than his.

If Tannim was there, and she had a few minutes, she would probably be
able to give him some kind of warning.  If she had no time, perhaps she
might still be able to do something.  Convince Madoc no, wait!  He must
have a dozen Unseleighe lords who all have their own plans for Tannim!
If I let them know Madoc has the man, I can get them all tangled up in
arguing with each other long enough to get him out of there maybe ..
.

The more she thought about it, the better it sounded.  The beauty of it
was that she would not even have to identify herself to let the
information loose.  All it would take would be a few well-placed
anonymous messages.  If all they had was the car, and Tannim didn't
follow it immediately, Madoc's allies would be all the more annoyed
that Madoc hadn't told them of his plans to trap the human.

So she delayed her departure just long enough to send Madoc's allies
their little messages, magicked into pockets and other handy places by
the same means she'd used to tack her first note to the panel of
Tannim's Mustang, though this time sans pop-rivet.  In a few moments,
as they discovered their messages, they would all go looking for their
titular leader.  If Madoc showed up now, it wouldn't be with his own
hand-selected guards, but with a following of "allies," all of whom had
their own axes to grind on Tannim's skull.

She faced her Gate and set it for that first Gate in Unseleighe lands,
from which platform she could descend through another series of magical
portals and wind up in the Katschei's Hall, in the room beside the
audience chamber.  There were very few places Underhill that led
directly into each other.  For reasons of defense on the part of the
Seleighe and neutral realms, and paranoia on the part of the
Unseleighe, one could only Gate into halls, Elfhames, or other
residences from carefully guarded external Gates, which in turn could
only be reached from Gates in friendly or neutral territories.  Her one
advantage would be that she knew a way to the Katschei's Hall that
involved fewer Gates than Madoc did.

She set the Gate and stepped through, but remained on the platform
where she had arrived.  With a chanted phrase and a sigil drawn in the
air, she reset it to another currently vacant domain.

That's where I did do my research, she comforted herself, stepping
through and arriving at the edge of a swamp.  If you know who used to
be allies, you know where the Gates are set.  Each Gate had a maximum
of six destinations; many were not set for more than three or four.  No
one ever went anywhere in a straight line Underhill, and often a
traveler would have to physically walk from one Gate to another in
neutral lands in order to reach a Gate that would take him in the
direction he wanted to go, and not likely even close to his true
destination.  It was like trying for connections at Dallas/Ft.  Worth
airport.

Fortunately, this was not one of those places.  Shar would not have
enjoyed a stroll across any swamp, but this one, which once had housed
Egyptian crocodile-spirits, was particularly unpleasant.  They had
simply vanished over time; the theory was that something had used these
swamps as hunting grounds, and picked them off, one by one.  Life was
dangerous Underhill; the creature that trusted in his own invincibility
and immortality often discovered how misplaced that trust was.

But the Egyptians once allied with the efrits, and the efrits with the
vampires of the Balkan states.  Those in turn had alliances with the
Nordic elves the sort that corresponded to the Unseleighe and they
contracted an alliance with the Katschei.  All of those connections
were as long distant as the things that once prowled this marsh, but
Shar made a point of discovering such alliances and making mental maps
of all the Gates that interconnected.  Such maps had served her well in
the past, and no doubt would again.

Five Gates later, she walked into the audience chamber of the Katschei,
a Russian creature, half-monster, half-mage, who had been defeated and
killed by a clever human and a benevolent Russian bird-spirit, the
Firebird.  A great many of the Russian counterparts to the Seleighe and
Unseleighe were bird and animal spirits.  The Mare of the Night Wind,
for instance, and her sons inhabited the same realm as the Firebird.

According to all that Shar had learned, there were not many creatures
who cared to share the Katschei's realm with him.  Most of the
Katschei's underlings had either been his own creations, or creatures
which quickly fled as soon as he was no more.  No one had ever taken
over this domain afterward, partially because of a superstitious
feeling that a place where an "immortal" had been destroyed was very
unlucky for other "immortals."

Most of the Katschei's palace now lay in complete darkness, except for
the gardens outside and the audience chamber.  The garden contained a
Gate to the human world, but it came out in the heart of Old Rus, not
far from what was now Moscow.  Probably not the best place for an
American with no passport, no luggage, and nothing but his vehicle to
appear, even in the current enlightened times..  ..

Assuming Tannim was already here, and that she had so great a lead time
over Madoc that she could help him get the Mach I out of the palace,
into the garden, and through a Gate that hadn't been used in centuries.
Assuming Tannim would cooperate.

The glow from the audience chamber lay ahead and to the right; she
moved carefully across the hallway, and paused for a moment on the
threshold.

He was there, all right, standing with his hands in his pockets and his
legs braced apart, staring at the car.  Already it was a disruptive
presence Underhill: little crackling tendrils of energy crept across
the hood and roof from time to time, and the longer it remained here,
the worse the effect would be.

She stepped into the room, making no effort to be quiet.  The heels of
her boots made muted ticking sounds on the amber floor.

He whirled, hands held out to attack or defend.

She waited for him to say something, but he remained silent.  She kept
her own hands down at her side, and walked slowly toward him.  She did
not hold her hands out; in a mage, empty hands did not mean "no
threat," and such a gesture could be construed as aggressive.  He
showed no sign of relaxing.

She stopped when she was a few feet away from him.  Already she sensed
the Gate in the other room gathering energy; it would take longer to
transport Madoc and his guards than it had to bring only her, but her
time was still short.

But he spoke first.  "I know who you are, Shar," he said flatly.  "I
know who your teachers were, and who you've allied yourself with, and
they're not exactly friends of mine."

His use of her name shocked her into unconsidered speech, and she
flinched as if she'd been slapped.  How had he learned her name, much
less anything else about her?  Unless

Chinthliss?  Could he have contacted Chinthliss?

"They aren't exactly friends of mine, either, monkey-boy," she snapped
before she thought.  Then she shook her head, and continued, talking so
quickly she sounded like a New Yorker so that she could get everything
out before Madoc arrived.  "Look, you don't have to trust me, you don't
have to believe me, but I want to help you.  I'm not what I seem, or
what you think.  But I'm going to have to play along with these jerks
to get some room to act, so cut me some slack until the next time you
see me, okay?  Things are changing faster than you can guess, and I
don't much like the idea of being your opposite.  I really don't like
being forced into it."

He started to answer; she waved him to silence.  The Gate had just
opened again.  She backed up several paces, then said, "Sorry about
this," and slapped a spell of paralysis on him just as a clamor of
metal signaled that Madoc had come with his guards.  Madoc walked
through the door into their midst.

"I told you I would bring him, Madoc Skean," she said calmly, without
turning around.  "I told you, and I have."

Madoc didn't quite run, but he certainly hurried his walk, pushing his
escort aside.  His eyes gleamed with eager greed as he surveyed Shar
briefly, and her prisoner in a more leisurely manner.  "You did.  Well
done," he replied absently.  "Now, if you'll just turn him over to me
and "

"Not so fast, Madoc Skean!"  said another Unseleighe, who joined Madoc
at her side.  The sounds of many boots behind her warned that, as she
had hoped, the rest of the Unseleighe lords had gotten her message and
had taken it seriously.  "Not so fast!  I have my own claims on this
mortal!  Did he not slay my own sister's son, Vidal Dhu, with that
Death Metal chariot?  I swore I would have revenge on him!"

"And what of my claim?"  cried another.  He was joined by the rest, all
of them claiming a piece of Tannim.  Shar waited; it was her spell that
held him, and protocol dictated that they could not have him until and
unless she let him go.

When the clamor of voices ceased, she spoke into a moment of silence.
"My claim supersedes all of yours," she said flatly.  "My Challenge to
him still holds.  And you dare not touch him until it is discharged you
know well the rules of the Challenge.  Once issued, it must be answered
unless the challenger is willing to be otherwise satisfied.  I am not
satisfied.  And High King Oberon will be less than pleased if you
violate so simple a tenet of the laws that bind us all."

There was an uneasy stirring behind her as soon as she mentioned the
name "Oberon."  Madoc's face was set in a frozen snarl.

She could not look at Tannim's expression; she confined her gaze to a
point just below his chin.  She was afraid to look in his eyes and see
the bleakness of betrayal there.

"But his vehicle is causing harm in the aether of Underhill," she
continued.  "I will release him to you, Madoc Skean, only if you pledge
to hold him unharmed until I can deal with the vehicle and take it
somewhere safe.  Only I have the ability to handle so much Death Metal
as well you know."

Madoc's snarl increased a trifle.

"You cannot leave this metal beast here," she reminded him.  "Look you,
how already it causes rifts in the energy-fields, and warps magics
about itself.  It will not be long until its influence reaches even to
your own realm."

He nodded slowly, reluctantly.  "I will hold him unharmed," he said
finally.  "I pledge it upon my True Name."

"Then give me your True Name," she replied immediately.  The True Name
did not have the power that some granted it to give absolute control
over another mage but it did make it possible to penetrate most of his
defenses.  That effect was largely psychological, rather than
magical.

With a growl, he leaned over and whispered it into her ear.  She kept
herself from smiling in triumph, and released the spell into Madoc's
hands.

"Remember," she warned, "you pledged to hold him unharmed until my
return to your court."

"Aye," he said, tightening his "grip" so that Tannim paled.  "But mind,
we all have our claims as well."

She gave him a look of warning, and he loosened the cocooning paralysis
spell enough to let Tannim breathe easier again.  "I will not be gone
long, Madoc Skean," she told him.  "Be aware of that.  This man must be
in good health and unharmed, ready to take my Challenge, when I return
to your court."

Madoc merely smiled.  She dared not stipulate more than she had; she
knew very well that Madoc had any number of ways of inflicting
suffering that caused no permanent damage to body or health.  She only
hoped that Tannim's tolerance of such things was as good as she had
been led to believe.

She did not watch as Madoc had his guards surround his prize and then
released the paralysis spell.  She turned her back as Tannim was
escorted from the room inside a ring of guards, followed by the dozen
or so Unseleighe lords who wanted a piece of him, and then by Madoc
himself.  She feigned indifference and pretended to study the Mach I.
The less real interest she showed in the mortal, the safer he would be.
Madoc would not hesitate to use him as a weapon against her, if he
thought her interest was anything other than the Challenge itself.

When they were all gone, she studied the Mustang in earnest, for there
was no doubt in her mind that she had better do something to make it
safe, both for the sake of Underhill and for Tannim.  She cast a spell
of Creation, reweaving it three times before it fell correctly, and
summoned a sheet of silk.  That, at least, helped ease some of the
disturbance its mere presence was creating, and made it less likely
that the neighbors, those surly and unpredictable Nordic types, would
come storming across the threshold in the next few moments.

I'll have to actually build another Gate-spell of the kind I put on it
in the first place, she decided.  I can't just drive it off.  For one
thing, I don't have the keys and I bet he's put some nasty surprises in
there for anyone who tries to hot-wire it.  For another, the only Gate
big enough for this thing is the one in the garden.  I could certainly
fake my way as a Russian, but this is not a Trabant and how in hell
would I get it back to the USA, anyway?  Slap a FedEx sticker on it?

So, the question now was, how much power did she have to spare to move
the Mach I somewhere else?  She didn't want to send it to her "garage";
that was too obvious a place, for one thing.  For another, she wasn't
certain she could manage to bridge that much physical distance.

Whoa, wait a moment.  I told Madoc I'll be moving it, and that's just
about as good as actually moving it.  The very last place he'll look
for it is here, and if I put enough shrouding spells on it to negate
the effect of all that Cold Iron, no one will ever know that it's here.
Except for that poor old blind beggar that sweeps this place, and he
won't know it isn't supposed to be here, he won't even know that it's
not some peculiar sculpture or piece of furniture.

The amount of power she would need for those shrouding spells was much
less than the amount it would take to open a Gate for even a short
distance.  Look what bringing the thing here had done to her she'd
slept like a mortal for a dozen hours, then fallen asleep again as soon
as she relaxed at the end of the day.  There were better uses for that
power.

And there was a distinct advantage to not using all that power.  Madoc
would assume she was drained, as he would be after such an attempt.  Or
else, he would believe her to be stronger than she actually was.  In
the latter case, he would not presume to block her, and in the former,
he would seriously underestimate her strength.

She nodded to herself as she made her decision and began spinning the
gossamer webs of spells that shielded the Mustang from the aether here,
and the aether from the Mustang.  Each spell settled over the bulk of
the car like a delicate veil.  Such spells broke the moment whatever
they protected moved away from their protection, but that was all
right.  The only person who would be moving this car was Tannim
himself, and if she had him in the driver's seat, it probably wouldn't
matter how much disruption they caused.

Finally, the last veil settled into place, and the mists of power
flowed through the hall with scarcely a ripple of disturbance.

Shar turned briskly and headed back out the door.  She had done all
that she could here.

Now she needed to see what she could get away with under the eye of
Madoc Skean.  Her draconic side knew how deadly a contest of powers
this would be but beneath all the seriousness, her kits une heritage
kept reminding her gleefully how much fun this contest would be,
especially if she won.

This much was sure; if ever there was to be a test of her full
abilities of craft and cleverness, this was surely it.  * * * Things
were happening a little too fast for Tannim to react to them.  But he
had least had one thing straight.  No point in fighting six guys armed
with sharp, pointy things.  Especially since they'd really like it if I
would.  It would give them the perfect excuse to use those sharp,
pointy things on my soft little body.

So Tannim stayed uncharacteristically meek and polite and silent as the
six faceless guards marched him out of the amber room and into the
darkness.  Their very appearance had given him a bit of a shock, when
he'd realized that behind the faceplates of their helms was nothing but
empty darkness.  He'd never seen this particular kind of Unseleighe
before, and he wasn't certain if it was some creation, or something
that had intelligence and will of its own.  It really didn't matter; in
either case, the guy who thought he was in charge, the one Shar had
called Madoc Skean, would be only too happy for an excuse to have
Tannim roughed up.  It was in Tannim's best interest to make sure he
had no excuses.

He was still trying to recover from the shock of Shar's little speech.
He prided himself on his ability to read people, to pick up on the most
subtle of body language, and everything he had "read" indicated that
she was telling the truth.  She sounded she acted as if she wanted to
be on his side.  Could he believe her?  Could he trust his ability to
read body language when he was dealing with a kits une-dragon hybrid
who only looked human?

After all those years of dreaming about her, he wanted to believe her;
he wanted to believe it with an ache of longing that he simply could
not deny.  Yes, it was stupid to believe her.  Yes, he might be pinning
his hopes on a creature as evil and devious as Aurilia nic Morrigan.
Like her, Shar could be a female who would betray him simply because it
amused her to do so.  But long ago he had made up his mind that his
life was always going to be precarious at best.  He could expect the
worst of everyone, be paranoid and fearful, and spend his life being
miserable and driving away people who really did want to be friendly.
Or he could expect the best out of everyone, treat them that way, and
enjoy himself.  He might not increase his potential lifespan, but it
was even odds that he wouldn't shorten it, either.  And he just might
gain himself a whole lot of allies against the day like today when the
real enemies he had made or inherited caught up with him.

Some of the Unseleighe had left mage-lights hanging in the air of the
corridor and one room beyond.  They weren't much as a whole, the
Unseleighe preferred a gloomy twilight but they helped keep him from
stumbling over his own feet.  By the time the guards marched him up
onto a stone platform in the middle of a very dimly lit room, he had
made up his mind to believe Shar, or at least believe that she intended
to help him.  If half of her heritage came from Chinthliss' enemy
Charcoal, still, half of it came from a kits une-woman who was clearly
someone Chinthliss still cared for and admired deeply.

Besides, he reminded himself, evil isn't a genetic trait.

He and the guards stepped through the archway over the stone platform.
The mental and physical jolt that accompanied a Gate-crossing hit him
and disoriented him; one of the guards shoved him when he didn't move
quickly enough off the new platform, and he sprawled facedown on the
ground beyond it.  Fortunately, it was soft turf, but he scrambled to
his feet quickly before one of them could follow up the shove with a
kick in the ribs.

He had expected that he would be marched immediately off into a prison
or some other place where he could be locked up, but to his surprise,
he found that they were standing beside a huge, naturally flat stone in
the middle of a grassy meadow.  To either side of them was a row of
long, turf-covered mounds.  It was twilight here, the perpetual
twilight he'd noted in many places Underhill; the "sky" overhead looked
like that of an overcast day.  His guards moved forward, and he
perforce had to move with them.  They marched down the row and turned
between two of the mounds; there were openings in the middle of these
mounds, dark holes with no doors, the sides supported by stones.  His
escort waited while the rest of the party caught up with them.

While they waited, he tried to remember where he had seen this Madoc
Skean before, or had heard the name, and could come up with nothing.
Not altogether surprising; there were a lot of Unseleighe, in a vast
number of sizes and types, and he'd collected enemies from among many
of them just by being Keighvin's friend.  Hell, look at Vidal Dhu, for
instance; he'd never done a thing to that particular Unseleighe lord,
but Vidal had sworn to exterminate Keighvin's entire clan, and Tannim
stood in the way of that.  No doubt Keighvin or Conal could identify
this particular Unseleighe lord, and likely tell off at least part of
his family tree, but it took one of the elven folk to do that.  It was
enough to know that he wanted Tannim disposed of, and if Shar hadn't
intervened, he'd likely have done the disposing then and there, back in
the amber room.

That made him wonder about something else.  Shar had said that she had
brought Tannim Underhill; could she have been responsible for what
happened to the Mach I?  If so, when had she decided to turn her coat?
Or had she been on his side all along, but forced into helping capture
him?

His head swam with possibilities, and in the long run, none of them
really mattered.  What did matter was that she had forced Madoc into
keeping him alive and unharmed for a time, and if she could be trusted,
before that time was up she would find a way to get him out of here.

Once the entire party had assembled, the guards marched him forward
into the mound.  Or that was what he thought but as he passed under the
capstone of the arch, he felt that same disorientation of a
Gate-crossing as he had before.

And once again he found himself on a stone platform; this time a simple
slab in the middle of the mist of the Unformed areas.  They took him
through ten or twelve more Gates before they were through, and from the
impatience he thought he felt from his captors, he didn't think all
this was for the purpose of confusing him.  No, they had no choice but
to take this route.

Other than very occasional visits to Elfhame Fairgrove, he'd never been
Underhill except to visit a couple of the other Seleighe Elfhames and
the one ride through the Unformed lands between the Gate Vidal Dhu had
established and Elfhame Fairgrove.  He'd had no idea that travel around
here was so complicated.

And now a new twist entered the picture.  If travel was this difficult,
it was going to make escaping a stone bitch.  Without someone who knew
the way from realm to realm and to the human world, he could wander
around in here forever.

Finally, after passing through a Gate into a dark and eerie forest,
taking a path right out of a horror movie through that forest, they
reached a stone platform guarded by more of the faceless warriors.
After this last crossing, he found himself at one end of a huge room of
black marble that seemed hauntingly familiar.  Finally, after a moment,
he realized why.  He'd seen it, or one just like it, in the cover
paintings of sword-and-sorcery barbarian epics.

He almost earned himself a whack on the head right then by laughing out
loud.  Creativity.  The elves just didn't have it, and here was a
striking example of exactly how much they lacked it.  Given the power
and resources of one of these Greater Lords, a human would have come up
with something at least a little original.

The elves simply couldn't; it wasn't in their natures.  Everything they
had was a copy of something that humans had already done, from the
chrome-and-glass Art Deco splendor of Elfhame Fairgrove to the
Tolkienesque groves and tree-dwellings of Elfhame Outremer.  Elsewhere,
he'd been told, there were realms copied from such diverse sources as
Italian science fiction movies and King Ludwig of Bavaria's famous
palace.  It didn't matter if the source was real or fictional.  There
had never been a "barbarian kingdom" in the history of humanity that
would have produced a throne room looking like this; the mythical,
fictional character those books purported to describe never existed,
nor did his kingdom and palace.  But the elves had copied it as
faithfully as if it were real.

In fact, this was a much more slavish copy than anything the Seleighe
elves ever produced.  They generally elaborated, and often improved, on
the originals.  Apparently the Unseleighe lacked even that ability.

He wasn't given long to gawk, however; as soon as the rest of the
little party had passed through the Gate, it was time to march off
again, this time down to a Hollywood nightmare of a dungeon.  While
part of him tried very hard to seem nonchalant, and another part of him
gibbered and groveled in stark panic, a detached third part wondered if
they had any idea how to use half of the stuff in here.

Of course they do.  It's their specialty, he chided himself.  The one
place you can count on an Unseleighe to show some originality is in the
ability to hurt someone.

Beads of sweat trickled down his forehead and neck, making him shiver.
My only hope is that the guy in charge is going to keep his promise to
Shar.  Oh, please, please, make him keep his promise to Shar.

Tannim was not a coward, but at that moment he came as close as he had
ever come to flinging himself at Madoc Skean's feet and blubbering.
He'd had enough injuries to know only too well how it felt to have
bones broken, flesh slashed, skin burned..  ..

There was a peculiar contraption hanging in one corner literally
hanging, in fact.  It was a cube about four feet on a side, suspended
at one corner by a chain; he couldn't decide if it was made of stone or
metal.  It lacked the sheen of metal, but seemed too heavy to be stone.
That same detached part of him wondered what it was; he'd never seen a
device quite like it before.

As two of the guards seized him by the arms and dragged him toward it,
he realized that he was about to find out just what it was.

One entire side pivoted up on hinges, revealing an interior composed of
panels of blunt-pointed, fat spikes, about six inches in diameter at
the bottom and three inches tall, set into the walls of the interior so
that their sides touched.  As he discovered when the two guards grabbed
his elbows and heaved him unceremoniously up off his feet and tossed
him inside, they were not sharp enough to pierce, but they were
certainly sharp enough to bruise.  And there was no way to escape
them.

They slammed the wall shut on him, leaving him in almost total
darkness.  Almost because a little air came in through the top corner,
where the chain was strung through a pair of holes.  The box was not
big enough to stand in or lie down at full length, and the spikes made
it impossible to sit comfortably in any position.  Despite the
ventilation holes, it was stuffy in there.  And to add insult to
injury, water dripped in steadily from the chain.

Very clever.  The "room of little comfort," new improved version.  This
would certainly not harm him, but it would exhaust him and keep him in
a state of constant discomfort, very nicely obeying the exact letter of
the promise.

But the situation only made him think faster.  What else would I do if
I was one of them?  Ah I'd put a telepath on watch, to see if I was
thinking of escape, and glean information.

He settled himself in a position that was as close to comfort as he was
likely to get and waited, listening, both with his ears and his mind.
Though no telepath himself, Keighvin had taught him how to recognize
the touch of a telepath on his thoughts some time ago.

Interestingly enough, they hadn't taken anything from him, neither his
watch nor the contents of his pockets.  Granted, some of it, like the
pocketknife, could hurt them, but he had no doubt they could find some
way around that.  Perhaps they meant to show him how contemptuous they
were of his abilities.  Perhaps they simply assumed, with typical elven
arrogance, that there was nothing a mere mortal could do against their
magics once they had him in their grasp.  The watch alone was a
godsend; with it, he knew exactly how much time was passing.  After
about thirty minutes, he heard the scrape of a chair on stone outside.
And a moment later, he felt an insidious little brush against the
outside of his mind.

Keighvin had taught him that it took a moment for a telepath to
accustom himself to his target's mind, but that once he was inside it,
only determined effort would keep him from learning what he wished.

Unless, of course, the target could provide something else to
completely distract himself and his eavesdropper.  Something as
insidious as advertising jingles, for instance.

For the first time since his capture, he grinned.  So.  They want to
know what I'm thinking about, hmm?  Let's see if I can provide them
with something .. . completely unexpected.  Oh, Yogi, the ranger isn't
gonna like this!

He cleared his throat, took a deep breath and began to sing.

"I'm your only friend, I'm not your only friend, but I'm a little
glowing friend, but really I'm not actually your friend but I am "

Beat, beat, beat

The manic grin spread widely over his face as the chair scraped
again.

Ladies and gentlemen of the Unseleighe, you are about to be treated to
a nonstop concert of They Might Be Giants.  Have a nice day.

The thing about the lyrics of a lot of the songs that particular duo
came up with was that they were so completely illogical that it
required concentration to remember them.  You couldn't just infer the
next line from the line previous to it.  He caroled at the top of his
lungs, concentrating only on the incredibly infectious melody and the
unbelievably bizarre lyrics.  Get that out of your head, not-friend.  I
sure as hell can't!

As he began the second verse, and got to the part about "..  .
countless screaming Argonauts," he thought he heard a faint whimper.

As he began his second tune, "She'd like to see you again, slowly
twisting in the wind," the whimper was no longer faint.

Just wait until I start on the Apollo 18 album.

He settled back, protecting the back of his head with his hands, and
sang with great gusto at the holes in the metal above him.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Joe stood back in the murky shadows cast by the ruined walls of the
barn, where Chinthliss and Fox wouldn't notice him unless they really
looked for him, and kept his mouth shut.  Fox hadn't been here long
just long enough for Chinthliss to get both their tempers to the
boiling point.

When Tannim didn't return, Chinthliss decided to do something the first
thing that apparently came to his mind was the need to interrogate FX.
And despite what Tannim had said about not being able to bring FX here,
Chinthliss was evidently not bound by any such constraints.  A few
mumbled words, a clenched fist slapped into a palm and there was Fox,
the photo-image of James Dean, except for his fox-feet and the three
tails that lashed furiously behind him, his whole body tense with anger
and apprehension.

This was the first argument Joe had ever seen between two mythological
creatures; there was no telling in what direction it might explode, or
who might get splattered when it did.  He decided to stay out of it for
the moment, while he let his subconscious work on the problem of
getting Tannim back.

Chinthliss had backed the kits une into what was left of the wall
beside the door, and he must have done something that made it
impossible for FX to disappear, because so far Fox seemed stuck right
where Chinthliss wanted him.  Surely Fox had made at least one attempt
to get away by now, since he certainly looked as if he wanted to be
far, far, away from here.  Whatever he'd tried, though, it hadn't
worked.

"Look," FX said, his eyes widened pleadingly, as Chinthliss loomed over
him.  Fox spread his hands to either side in entreaty.  "What was I
supposed to do?  I couldn't cross her, I didn't dare!  I'm a lousy
three-tail, she has nine!  I get in her way, and I end up being called
"Stumpy' for the rest of my short life!"

"You could have told Tannim what she was," Chinthliss growled, looking
less human with every passing moment.  "You could have called on me."

"How was I to know you knew her?"  Fox retorted, tails rigid for a
moment.

"You knew she was challenging Tannim; you knew that Tannim is like a
son to me.  Of course I would be interested in anything or anyone
challenging him, whether I actually knew the creature or not!"
Chinthliss thundered, standing tall and dark against the glow of magic
shields.  Joe shivered; when Chinthliss talked like that, he sounded
powerful.  Very powerful.  Scary, too.

"You don't understand kits une politics," Fox retorted, dropping his
eyes and staring at his furred and clawed feet sullenly.  "Hell, that's
what got you into trouble with Lady Ako in the first place."

Chinthliss' expression darkened perceptibly, and he seemed to grow a
little.  Joe decided this might be a good time to intervene.

"None of this is getting Tannim back," he pointed out.  "We don't even
know where he is.  We don't know if he's in trouble or not "

But FX shook his head and raised his eyes to meet Joe's.  "He's in
trouble," Fox replied glumly.  "When I ducked out, I ran back home to
check on the nine-tail who was following Tannim.  There was only one
unaccounted for; that was Lady Shar, and everyone knows that Lady
Shar's been playing footsie with the Unseleighe.  And whether or not
you can smell it, old man," he added, regaining a little courage to
glance insolently at Chinthliss, "this young nose tracked the scent of
her all over his Mustang.  She's probably the reason it went A.W.O.L.
in the first place."

Chinthliss' eyes narrowed, and he tensed.  For a moment, Joe was afraid
that Chinthliss might actually strike the kits une  Or worse.  But
Chinthliss regained control of himself with an effort after a sidelong
glance at Joe.

"Fine," he said acidly.  "And if you are so very clever, why don't you
find out where he is now?"

"Because I can't," Fox replied, deflating abruptly.  Now he looked
depressed, and no longer even remotely insolent.  "I tried, and I
can't.  Whoever has him crossed through too many Gates and I lost the
scent."

Chinthliss growled and turned away.  Fox hung his head and his
shoulders drooped.  Joe tried to pat him on the back consolingly, but
his hand went right through Fox's body.

Funny: Chinthliss could touch him..  .. Never mind.  The important
thing was to find Tannim.

"Well, we know where the car is," he reasoned out loud.  "If Tannim has
been caught by somebody, that's the first place he'll go, right?  And
if he's just gotten lost or something, it's still the first place he'll
go!  Why don't we just wait there for him to show up?"

But Fox only looked panicked at that idea, and Chinthliss shook his
head.  "This is not like a trip to the mall, young friend," he said,
just a little patronizingly.  "Tannim will not simply return to where
the car is parked.  He may decide to abandon it; he may decide that it
is wiser to come back after it with a force.  He may be unable to
come."

Chinthliss' voice faltered on that last, and Joe's resentment at his
patronizing tone faded into worry.  "Well, what can we do?"  he asked.
"Should we go there and see if we can track him or something?"

Fox shook his head fiercely, his eyes wide.  "No!  Oh, no, no, no!
She's been all over that place, and I bet she comes back!  That's a
very bad idea!"

"But it would be no bad idea to try tracking him from somewhere
Underhill," Chinthliss mused.  "Magic is more available there, and more
reliable as well.  We still have the chrome circle to keep track of the
Mustang, and we have other things of his to use to find Tannim.  Hmm. I
believe we could do this."

"If you're going to start messing around with her, I'm " Fox began, as
he sidled away from Chinthliss.  The latter shot out a hand and caught
his jacket collar before he could sneak out of reach.

"You will remain with us to help," Chinthliss rumbled dangerously.  "A
nine-tailed kits une is not the only creature that can change your name
to "Stumpy."  I can change your name to "Mulch."  It is at least in
part your fault that he is missing; you will help us to find him.  And
if you try to slip away, the first item I conjure will be hedge
clippers.  Understand?"

Fox shrank in Chinthliss' grasp, but said nothing and did not
struggle.

"Now, the question is, where are we to go?"  Chinthliss continued, with
FX still dangling from one outstretched arm.  "Not a Seleighe Elfhame;
the very nature of the place would make it impossible to find him from
within one.  Besides, we need somewhere less law-abiding."

"Jamaica?"  Fox suggested hopefully.  Chinthliss shook him a little,
and his teeth rattled.

"Are there neutral places there?"  Joe asked.  "Like Switzerland?"

Chinthliss nodded.  "The trouble is they are most often densely
inhabited.  There are more creatures that are neither good nor evil
than there are creatures of either persuasion."

Joe thought for a moment.  "Is that bad?"  he asked.  "I mean, would it
be bad for people to know that Tannim's missing and might be in
trouble?  Maybe some of them would help us if we came up with the right
price.  And well, if the bad guys have got him, how can it hurt to have
other bad guys know?  Either they're going to know already, or else
they just might be pissed off that somebody else got Tannim first and
try and get him for themselves."

Fox brightened considerably as Chinthliss tightened his lips and drew
his brows together in thought.  "We might be able to spring him while
they're fighting over him," Fox pointed out.  "Maybe some of the
neutrals would help us because they owe Tannim a favor.  You know how
the neutrals are: if the scales ain't balanced, they're not happy.  I
know of a real good place to go looking for critters that might owe
him, too.  Furhold.  News travels faster there than anywhere else
Underhill."

Now Chinthliss smiled, a thin sliver of a smile full of sardonic irony.
"Oh, yes.  Indeed it does.  Not surprising.  The Furholders have a
privileged life, and a rich economy.  They have little else to do but
find new ways to entertain themselves, and invent exotic drinks.
Chocolate khumiss, indeed."

Joe looked from one to the other and back again, and a strange idea
occurred to him.  "Is this place the one you want to go to anything
like a Mexican border bar?"

Chinthliss' lips twitched with reluctant amusement.  "It is a
comparison that has occurred to me, yes," he admitted.

Joe nodded, feeling a little more on secure ground.  Not that he had
ever been in a Mexican border bar, but plenty of the men in the Chosen
Ones had, before they were "saved," and a lot of loose talk went on in
the barracks.  The shapes might be different, but there would be drunks
and bar girls, pushers and pimps, out-of-town tourists, students
looking for a thrill, out-of-work self-styled mercenaries and he should
be able to recognize each type for what it was, no matter what shape it
wore.

"Let's go," he urged.  "I'm not too bad in a fight."

Now Chinthliss let go of FX, turned, and looked at him sternly.  "I did
not mean for you to go," he protested.  "Tannim would be most
displeased."

"No, he wouldn't," Joe lied fluently.  "Besides, I bet I'm a better
shot than either of you."

"He can't take a gun across the Gate, can he?"  Fox asked, looking
interested and eager.  His tails twitched with nervous energy.

Chinthliss shrugged.  "If a Mustang can cross over into Underhill, I
fail to see why a gun should not.  The only question is, where can he
get a weapon at such short notice?"  He tilted his head in Joe's
direction and waited for an answer.

Joe grinned.  He was in!  They were already talking as if his presence
was an accepted thing.  "I've got one in my baggage, back at Tannim's
house," he told them both gleefully.  "A .45 M1911A1, GI-issue.  And
ammo, too.  I didn't tell Tannim, but Frank didn't want me unarmed, in
case some of the old Chosen Ones might have gotten away the night of
the raid.  It's not that far a run; I can be there and back in no time.
Besides, I'd better leave a note for Mr.  and Mrs.  Drake, otherwise if
we aren't there in the morning, they'll be really worried."

That was something else he'd considered what if they couldn't bring
Tannim home by dawn?  His parents would think something bad had
happened to him.  Well, something bad had happened to him, but Joe
didn't want the Drakes to know that, and he was certain Tannim didn't,
either.

"You don't want me there alone, if we can't get him back soon," Joe
continued with warning.  "They'll start asking questions I can't
answer.  But if I leave a note saying that an emergency came up and Mr.
Silver from Fairgrove needed us to run up to Kansas City, they'll
probably figure we're fine."

Chinthliss sighed and shrugged.  "You are an adult by the laws of your
land," he admitted.  "You are fully capable of making your own
decisions.  We will wait here for your return."

"And I'll be back before you know it," Joe promised, and turned and
vaulted the doorframe into the tall grass.  Excitement chilled his skin
and gave his feet extra spring as he ran out into the night.  * * *
Shar did not go straight to Madoc's domain; she was fairly certain that
he would keep the exact letter of his pledge.  Tannim would be alive,
sane, and in relatively good health when she returned.  Bruises,
hunger, thirst all were easily cured, all were trivial.

She needed advice, and there was only one completely trustworthy source
for that advice.

She returned to her own place and composed a carefully worded message,
writing it properly in elegant calligraphy on rice paper, folding it
into the shape of a flower, before finally encapsulating it and sending
it away with a brief exercise of power.

Then she waited, with folded hands, for her little Gate to activate. If
Lady Ako did not appear within an hour, she would take her own chances,
unadvised, with Madoc Skean.

She forced herself not to look at her watch.  The minutes crept past
with agonizing slowness.  She kept thinking of all the things that
could be going wrong.  And what if Tannim had contacted Chinthliss
before he came Underhill?  What if Chinthliss was looking for him? 
That was another complication that she had not counted on.

The hour ticked slowly to the end, and she rose, preparing to activate
the Gate herself to take her to that relatively neutral point in the
Unseleighe lands.  She had actually touched it with her power, although
she had not yet done anything, when the Gate came alive under her
hand.

She disengaged her own magics and backed up a pace.  Her mother stepped
through the dark haze within the doorway as soon as she had cleared the
way.

But this time Lady Ako was not the image of the proper kits une lady.

She looked scarcely older than Shar; her long hair had been braided
into a single tail in the back, and she wore a spotless white t-shirt
and form-fitting black jeans.  She raised a perfectly manicured eyebrow
at her daughter, and set her hands on her hips.

"I have been making some inquiries among the lesser kits une she said
without preamble.  "There is a young fox that you have rattled badly,
and I fear that your actions will have effects reaching up to the
highest tables."

Shar flushed, although she could not imagine what her mother was
talking about.  Unless

"Saski Berith, who calls himself Foxtrot X-ray, is now among the
missing," Lady Ako continued.  "I believe that he is in the humans'
world even now.  He is known to have been a friend of Tannim, and he
told some of the others that a lady of nine tails was interested in
"one of his friends' in a way that was likely to jeopardize that
friend's health.  I can only conclude that he sensed you and ran.  And,
unfortunately, talked.  I am probably not the only kits une who has put
all the pieces together by this point in time."

Shar flushed more deeply.  "I didn't know there was another of our kind
about," she confessed.  "Actually to tell the truth, Mother, I didn't
think to look."

Lady Ako shook her head.  "Draconic carelessness," she chided, none too
gently.  "It may cost you.  There are questions being asked.  Kitsune
of nine tails are not to involve themselves seriously in the lives of
mortals unless that mortal is a relative, or unless the kits une is
under divine direction, you know that.  And when it comes out that the
young man was being challenged by you because of your involvement with
the Unseleighe "

Shar hung her head; she couldn't look into her mother's eyes.  "I did
not think that it would matter."

"Say rather only the first four words of that statement, and you will
be closer to the truth, my daughter," Lady Ako said sternly.  "And have
you brought the mortal to harm by your meddling, or is the situation
yet salvageable?"

Shar raised her head slowly.  "He is in the hands of Madoc Skean, but
will not be harmed until my Challenge is satisfied or revoked," she
replied.  "That is what I wished to ask your advice upon, Mother."  She
put pleading into her gaze, but her mother's youthful face did not lose
its expression of disapproving judgment.

"You knew what you were doing," Lady Ako replied implacably.  "I warned
you, and you did not heed the warning.  Now there is a mortal in
Underhill in the hands of his enemies, it is your fault, and it has
come to the attention of the clan.  This is not a good thing.  You will
be asked to balance the scales.  It would be better for you if you even
them yourself, before you are ordered to do so and find you cannot,
because the one you should aid is dead."

Shar clenched her jaw in anger.  "How?"  she demanded.  "If I help him,
it is only the two of us against all the Unseleighe that Madoc Skean
has under his sway!"

Lady Ako shrugged, as if it mattered little to her.  "The way of the
kits une her mother said.  "Trickery.  Guile.  Craft.  Divide them;
make them quarrel amongst themselves.  Plant rumors; engineer incidents
that make the rumors appear to be the truth.  Fling the pebble among
the bandits, and see them argue over which of them tossed it.  I need
not tell you these things; you should know them already."

Shar remained silent, waiting for her mother to answer her real
question, the one that had been in her letter.

Lady Ako pulled her braid over her shoulder, and toyed with the end of
it for a moment.  "As for the rest it is sufficient that you have
placed yourself in a position of obligation to this mortal.  Discharge
that obligation; get him free.  Only then can you proceed in any other
directions."

"And if I don't?"  Shar asked, with a touch of rebellion.

Her mother did not respond to the tone of her voice, only to the words.
"If you choose not to, you will be liable to answer to the clan; what
will happen then, I cannot say.  It will depend on how cleverly you
argue your case.  You could lose a tail; you could get off with little
more than a reprimand.  If you try, but cannot aid him, what happens to
you will depend on whether the Unseleighe detect your meddling."  She
shrugged.  "If you escape the Unseleighe alive at all, I suspect the
clan will judge your attempt enough to balance the scales.  You will be
lectured, and shamed, but no more than that."

Trust Lady Ako to answer her literally!  What she wanted was advice of
the heart which, having given it earlier, Lady Ako would not give a
second time.

But she had to admit, her mother was right.  Before she could decide
what to do about Tannim, she must even the scales between them yes, and
confess what her part had been in all of this.  If he could not deal
with that, well, then there was no point in pursuing a mouse down a
hole.  All that would happen would be sore paws from trying to dig
through granite.

And meanwhile well, she had an answer of another sort.  Her status
among the kits une was in danger because of her own actions.  If the
clan had never come to hear of this, or if that lesser kits une had not
been frightened, she might have come through this with an unsullied
reputation.  Now the least of it would be a blot in her record.  How
big a blot would depend on how well she managed to set things right. If
she managed to not only set things aright, but did so in archetypically
kits une manner, spectacularly, she would even gain status from it. 
Kitsune respected style in any form.

She bowed formally to her mother.  Lady Ako nodded her head in return.
While Shar remained bent over her knees, the lady turned and left,
without a farewell.

A bad sign, both for the state of her mother's temper and the temper of
the other high-ranking kits une  For a moment, Shar indulged in a fit
of resentment.

Didn't she used to be a rebel?  Can't she remember what that was like?
To have two suitors, to ally with one but bear the child of the other?
Isn't that as scandalous as anything I have done?

But her conscience came up with the answer.

It had not involved mortals.  It had not changed the lives of humans.
Like it or not, human mortals were considered to be beings deserving of
pity for their limitations.  Ako's had only changed her life and Ako
had no scales to even.  That was the difference.

Scandal was one thing.  Upsetting the balances was far more serious.

What could she do?  She could deal with it.  She could follow her
mother's advice.

Or she could ignore it all, stay here, and face the consequences.

But her feet were already on a different path than indifference to what
she had done to Tannim; they had taken the first steps the moment she
asked him to trust her.  She was under an even heavier obligation than
Lady Ako knew.

So I deal with it.  She nodded to herself, faced her Gate, and
activated it.  Now just what kind of pebble can I throw among the
feasting bandits, I wonder?

And despite her mother's real anger and the gravity of the entire
situation, she felt herself smiling a true vixen's-grin.

This had the potential to be so much fun!  * * * The dripping water
turned out to be less of a nuisance than Tannim had thought; it gave
him something to drink to ease his throat.  At least he wasn't too
hoarse yet.  His singing voice wasn't too bad even after a couple hours
of abuse, though he didn't think there were any recording contracts in
his future.

"This is where the party ends, I can't sit here listening to you and
your racist friends," he sang, wondering what his enemies were making
of all this.  Most of the Unseleighe he'd seen with Madoc looked as if
they hadn't been out of Underhill since the sixteenth century the very
meaning of many of the words he sang had changed since that time, and
some words hadn't existed.  They were probably analyzing every little
syllable, trying to find some meaning in it.  He knew he'd heard
someone cry out in tones of despair, "The White Eagle I know, but what
in the name of the Morrigan is the Blue Canary?"  The White Eagle was
an alchemical term; were they trying to find alchemical formulas in the
lyrics?  No wonder they were going crazy out there!

He had held the thought firmly in mind since he had begun that he was
working on some kind of spell to set him free.  Halfway through the
lyrics of the Flood album, it had occurred to him to concentrate also
on the accordion as a vessel of incredibly potent magical power just to
confuse the issue even further.  So now they were trying to make sense
of senseless lyrics and wondering what the heck made an accordion so
magical.  Would there be a rash of mysterious accordion thefts from
pawnshops and music stores all across the USA after this?  Had he just
inflicted the madness of the accordion upon the Unseleighe?

The horror .. . the horror .. .

In fact, if he hadn't been so damned uncomfortable, this would have
been a lot of fun.  He was pretty certain he was on his third telepath
by now; one had collapsed, and the second had begun moaning and been
taken away a few minutes ago.

Mom used to claim my music drove her crazy.  I didn't think it would
ever be the literal truth.

Since about the third song, they'd stopped giving the cube occasional
shoves to set it swinging.  He was rather glad of that; one major
disadvantage of being so thin was that he didn't have a lot of padding
between him and those spikes.  He was going to be black and blue by the
time they let him out of here.

There was a scrape of chair legs.  "No more," a voice said firmly, and
the light touch on his mind went away.  "I will bear no more of this.
And I do not think you will find another to take my place, Madoc Skean.
There is no treasure and no revenge worth this madness!"

Tannim grinned wider in the darkness of his prison, and sang lustily,
at the top of his lungs: "When you're following an angel doesn't mean
you have to throw your body off a building..  .."

More footsteps retreating, and the muttering of voices.  Were they
actually giving up?

No point in taking any chances.  Better start repeating the most
infectious song he knew.

"Throw the crib door wide, let the people crawl inside.  Someone in
this town wants to burn the playhouse down.  They want to stop the ones
who want a rock to wind a string around..  .."

Take that, Madoc Skean!  * * * Shar stepped through the Gate to find
Madoc Skean's throne quite empty.  The Unseleighe prince was in the
center of a huddle of his allies and underlings.  Two of them were
simply monsters: an ogre, and something Shar suspected was a Greek
lamia.  There were about a half dozen of the Unseleighe elves, dressed
in their ornate brocades and silks, enchanted armor, and elaborate
jewels, the evidences of the power of their magic.  The rest were
retainers, each in the livery of his master's colors.  "No more," one
was saying, firmly, his face creased with strain.  "He tortures us with
his conundrums more than we torture him."

At that moment, one of the little hobgoblins that served as lower
servants trotted by, singing to itself.  The melody was incredibly
catchy, but the words

"They want to stop the ones who want prosthetic foreheads on their
heads," the little hunched-over creature crooned happily.  "But
everybody wants prosthetic foreheads for their real he "

A tremendous smack interrupted the song, as Madoc Skean whirled and
slapped the small creature into the wall.  "Enough!"  he roared into
the sudden silence.  "Is it not bad enough that the fool mortal carols
us with his arrant nonsense?  Must I hear it from the basest servants
as well?"

The hobgoblin whimpered, picked himself up off the ground, and
scampered away.

Madoc turned and saw Shar.  He was appallingly easy to read; she
wondered if he had any idea how easy it was.  Even if she had not heard
him arguing with his putative allies, she would have known from his
thundercloud expression that things were not going well for him.  These
Unseleighe made no effort to control themselves or their emotions.

Throw a pebble among the bandits?  Ah when better than right now?

"I have investigated the vehicle, Lord Madoc," she said smoothly,
offering him the title of honor although she seldom accorded it to him.
"I have come to some disturbing conclusions.  I am not entirely certain
that the creature we have now is truly the human Tannim."

Madoc's blank look of shock came very close to making her smile; she
repressed it and continued, with the gravest of expressions, pitching
her voice so that all the assembled Unseleighe heard it.  "There are a
great many traces of magery on the vehicle.  They are not magics as a
human would practice them; they are not Seleighe.  I cannot identify
them."

That much was the strictest truth; the very best kind of
misdirection.

"If I were to hazard a guess, I would say it was not impossible that
these traces were from a neutral creature, or even " she hesitated a
moment, then continued " even an Unseleighe.  I do not think it would
be going too far to warn you that this thing we have taken prisoner
might be a shape-shifter, or a changeling.  It might even have been
sent as a kind of expendable assassin by one of your enemies.  For that
matter, Lord Madoc, you might not even be its target; it might have
been intended for one of the other lords and ladies here."

She nodded at the gathered Unseleighe, who were eavesdropping without
shame, their sharp features betraying their alarm at this unwelcome
news.  "It could be that one of your allies is the real target, and
whoever sent this creature intended the blame for the death to fall
upon you, Lord Madoc."

The ploy was working!  Already the other Unseleighe edged slightly away
from each other, casting glances of suspicion at one another and at
Madoc.  Lovely!  Now if she could just make Tannim vanish from his
place of captivity..  ..

Wait a moment

"Perhaps we had best see if your prisoner is still there, Lord Madoc,"
she continued earnestly, wondering if he had noticed by now that she
had called him "lord" no less than three times now.  That was more
honorifics than she normally accorded him in the course of a week!  "If
this creature is a shape-shifter, he may already have escaped.  If he
is more powerful than we realized, he could have vanished without you
ever knowing."

One of the others laughed scornfully.  "Escaped?  How?  When we have
heard him a-singing like a foolish jongleur this past hour and more?"

She leveled a glance at the speaker, an ogre, in a way that made him
snap his mouth shut on his laughter.  "And how better to make you think
that you had him still than to leave a voice singing there?  It need
not even require magic!  Did this creature not come from the human
world?  Have none of you heard of the mechanical wonders the humans
build?  Did any of you think to search it for one of those human
devices by which words and music may be captured and replayed?  Why,
such things are made that are no larger than this!"  She measured out
the size of the palm of her hand.  "It could easily have concealed such
a thing in its clothing!  And there are spells enough to accomplish the
same thing.  Am I to understand that you are no longer keeping a
mind-reader a-watching of his thoughts?"

At Madoc's reluctant nod, she shook her head, as if she was impatient
with all of them.  "The moment this creature knew that its thoughts
were no longer subject to scrutiny, he could have made his escape.  Any
shape changer could become a snake, and slip through holes.  A vampire
could become a mist or a fog and do the same.  A changeling who knows
what it could become at the will of the one who sent it?"

"This is all speculation," snapped one poisonously lovely woman, a pale
blond in an Elizabethan gown of deep green brocade with a huge ruff of
silver lace about her long neck.  "Let us go and see whether he is the
mortal we wanted or no!  If not, and if it has escaped somehow, we must
recapture it and discover what it wants.  And if so, well, this lady
wishes to discharge her Challenge, and the sooner this is done, the
sooner we may deal with the mortal."

Whatever Madoc wanted was moot at this point; the rest of his allies
clamored for an immediate visit to his dungeons.  Shar simply looked
grave, and let them carry her along with them.

And while they were arguing about it all, she exercised just the
tiniest bit of her powers in a spell of illusion.

The entire group pushed and shoved through the doors, still arguing.
Shar brought up the rear, confident of what would happen and wanting to
be out of the way when it did.

"Sir!"  one of Madoc's guards called out over the noise.  "The mortal
seems to be repeating his songs now.  I thought that it might be a ruse
to make us open his prison; I restrained Lord Liam's liegeman from
breaking the seal."

"Yes, my Lord Liam, he kept me from the performance of my duty!"
another guard called out resentfully.  Shar raised an eyebrow in
surprise at the number of guards crowding the room.  It looked as if
every one of Madoc's allies had insisted on having his own guard
here.

Good.  That meant they trusted each other even less than she had
thought.  She reached into a pocket while they were looking at each
other and palmed the first thing she touched that would serve for her
next ruse; a cheap pocket-calculator she had broken and shoved into a
pocket, then all but forgotten.

"Open it now!"  Madoc ordered, waving peremptorily at the guard.  This
was not one of the faceless creatures Madoc generally favored, although
Shar would have preferred one of those to this monster.  It wasn't so
much the single eye that bothered her as the very pink skin that
glistened around it.  The creature bowed and propped his pike up
against the wall, then turned to the suspended cube and broke the seal
on it.  Then he swung the side up to reveal an empty interior.

The singing stopped in mid-phrase.

The heavy side slipped from his fingers as he gawked in startlement and
slammed it back into place.  Another guard quickly pulled the side back
up, though everyone here had already seen that the cube was completely
empty, just as Shar had predicted.  She reached out herself and
"plucked" the calculator from the interior with a neat bit of
sleight-of-hand palming.

"Look!"  she said, waving it aloft.  "What did I tell you?  Here is the
device the mortal used to trick you into thinking he was singing in
there!  Now he has fled, and who knows where he might be?"

She flung the calculator down at Madoc's feet.  No one here would
recognize it for what it was; they'd have to take her word for it.
Since it was already broken, they could play with it forever and not
get it to "work."  And just as she expected, pandemonium erupted as one
of Madoc's servants hastily scooped the device up.

Accusations flew for a moment, most of them leveled at Madoc, who had
gathered his bodyguard around him and was backing up toward the door.
Shar prudently got out of his way; it was never a good idea to be
between an Unseleighe and his exit.  But after a moment, the
accusations and counter-accusations became general.  Each of the
Unseleighe gathered his underlings to him (or her), and followed Madoc
Skean's example, backing toward the exit while screaming imprecations
at everyone else.  Shar's suggestion that Tannim might be an assassin
had fallen on fertile ground; none of them were willing to risk the
chance of being the target of that assassin.

There were some tense moments as the several parties collided at the
door; those who had more retainers with them intimidated those who had
fewer.  Madoc, with the most, was the first out and heading toward some
place where he might barricade himself into relative safety.  The ogre
was next, followed by the beautiful Unseleighe elven lady.  The rest
sorted themselves out, glaring at each other in mingled fear and
accusation, until they all got out into the freedom of the hall.  Then
they headed elsewhere.  Where, Shar did not particularly care, so long
as they left her in sole guardianship of this room for a few moments.

When she was certain that the last of the Unseleighe were gone, she
swung up the unlocked side of the cube and banished the illusion of the
empty interior.  Tannim sat there for a moment, arms wrapped around his
legs, chin resting on his knees, regarding her with a wry expression
and the hint of a tired smile.

"I'd love to know how you managed that," he said finally.  "I figured I
was about to become Spam when I heard all the voices out there.  And
when they all stared at me instead of grabbing me, I couldn't figure
out what was wrong.  That was your doing, wasn't it?"

"Yes," she replied.  "But unless you've grown fond of that thing, I
suggest we might find someplace else to have a discussion about what
just happened.  They could be back any moment."

Tannim took the hint and scrambled out of the cube in a way that
suggested to Shar that he had probably acquired a few bruises in there.
He brushed himself off as he straightened up, and gave her a look that
clearly said, "Now what?"  But wisely, he kept silent; she had to give
him a lot of points for that.

She simply gestured to him to follow.  The less talking they did, the
better; there were spells that could reach back in time to see what had
happened in a particular area, and if there was no dialogue to tell the
spell caster what they planned to do, following them out of this room
would be a matter of hit-or-miss.

Tannim seemed ready enough to trust her; or at least, he was going to
trust her until he had a chance to strike out on his own, or she
explained herself sufficiently to him.

Well, as long as they were in this palace, he would be very stupid to
try and strike out on his own, and she hoped he had the good sense to
realize just that.

There was noise enough in the direction of the audience chamber; she
had a fair notion that at least two or three of Madoc's former allies
were fighting their way to the Gate there.  Madoc's men, in absence of
any other orders, had probably assumed that the "allies" had become
"enemies" and were trying to keep them from the Gate.  The Faceless
Ones assumed nothing, and there was no telling what they were doing.
Madoc might have told them to oppose anyone who tried to leave, he
might have told them nothing at all.  In the latter case, the Faceless
Ones would let anyone who was already on the approved list to go
through the Gate as they wished.

She hoped that was the case; their own escape depended on it.  The Gate
in the audience chamber was always guarded, but the Gate she intended
to use would very likely be as well.

There was no point in putting a dungeon underground when you were
already Underhill; the reason for having a prison beneath the earth was
to prevent easy escape.  Well, there was no such thing as an "easy"
escape for someone in Unseleighe lands and Unseleighe hands.  Even if
you made an escape, you were forced between one of two choices.  You
could take your chances on whatever Gate you might find unguarded, or
you could take your chances in the Unformed.  You might run into a
solid wall out there; you might not.  One's sense of direction went all
to pieces, and people had wandered in small circles until they dropped
without ever reaching a barrier or the place they had left.  You might
discover that the "land" you had escaped and the Unformed surrounding
it comprised an area of less than one hundred acres.  You might
discover it was the size of a small continent or, as in Shar's case,
the size of a generous townhouse with attached garage.

Just to make matters even more entertaining, you might or might not
find a physical opening into another realm or domain.  Shar knew where
a few of those were, but no one knew them all.  Few cared to trust
their safety to the Unformed to explore the possibilities.  The mist
was strange stuff; very sensitive to magic and to even the thoughts of
those within it.  Your fears, if you dwelled upon them for too long,
could become reality..  ..

Well, just at the moment, Shar had no intentions of dashing off into
the dangerous mist outside the walls of Madoc Skean's realm.  She had a
better plan.

As soon as they penetrated beyond the prison section, she made a sharp
right, away from the black-marble corridors lit with torches in
gold-chased sconces, and into a hallway built of some dull gray stuff
that could not even be identified.  Two lefts and a right later, and
they were deep into the maze of passageways that only the servants
used.

There weren't too many of those about; the noise of fighting, shouts,
and the occasional clash of metal-on-metal penetrated even here and
warned all but the very dullest that it was not wise to be abroad just
now.  Only the occasional hobgoblin skipped by, humming to itself,
oblivious to everything except the last task it had been given.

The corridors remained the same: gray walls, floor, and ceiling made of
something that might even have been taken for plastic elsewhere.  Maybe
it was, anyway.  Out of sight of anyone to impress, Madoc might well
have eschewed tradition for sheer practicality.  Plastic was one of the
easier substances to ken and reproduce, after all.

There was no mistaking the light source, however.  Dim witch lights
bobbed at intervals near the ceiling.  Madoc was not one to waste
energy on creating comfort or convenience for the sake of mere
servants; there was just enough light to keep from falling on your
nose, and no more.

No matter.  Shar already knew where she was going and could have felt
her way in the dark, if need be.  Madoc might not know it, but she had
prowled the halls of his domain in several shapes until she knew it
better than he did.  She had been a hobgoblin, an Unseleighe elven
lady, even one of his very own Faceless Ones.  And wouldn't he have
been surprised to know what she had seen in that form!

It was not the brightest of moves, to invite a shape-changer to be your
guest..

Two rights, a left, and a smell that just bordered between savory and
unsavory wafted down the hall, telling her that she was nearing her
goal.  Tannim followed flowed, actually; for a mortal, he was
surprisingly graceful.  A little knife in his hand told her that he was
not as guileless as he looked; she wondered where he'd hidden it.  A
leg sheath, perhaps?

She motioned him to wait as they neared the door to the kitchen.  She
straightened and concentrated for a moment, shutting her eyes as she
shifted her form.

When she opened them, she was quite a bit shorter, and her neck
strained from the odd angle she was forced to hold her head at.  Never
mind; she wouldn't have this form for long.  She glanced back at Tannim
and grinned a little at the dumbfounded expression on his face.

Well, it probably wasn't every day he watched a "human" woman shift
into a hunchbacked female troll.

Now, if luck is on my side this little while more, every servant in the
Hall will have fled to places of safety while their betters are
squabbling.

She shuffled into the kitchen door as if she had every right to be
there which in this servant-form, she theoretically did.  The strange
mix of smells nauseated her for a moment until she dimmed that
particular sense down to something bearable.  Some of Madoc's allies
and servants ate perfectly palatable foods.  But then there were
creatures like that ogre

Best not think about what might be floating in the soup kettle on the
hearth.  Not all the bodies from midnight gang fights on the streets of
big cities ended up in the hands of the coroner.  Not all the old winos
who vanished in the night were ever accounted for.

Enough; her guess was correct: the kitchen was empty.  The work tables
were clean, since the evening meal was long since over, but the soapy
water and pottery shards on the floor and the heaps of soiled dishes
showed that cleanup had not been completed when the servants learned of
their masters' quarrels.  They might be routed out and sent back to
work, but not within the next hour.

She shifted back to her preferred form and waved Tannim in, then headed
to the doorway on the opposite side of the room.  If it had been gloomy
in the hallway, it was positively dark in the kitchen, and hot as
Hades.  All the light came from the fires in the two fireplaces, and
both put out enough heat to melt lead on the hearthstones.

She wrestled with the bar across the door for a moment, then it came
free; she lifted it and pulled the latch, slipping out into the eternal
dusk outside.  Tannim followed, and stood looking cautiously around as
she closed the door behind them.

They were in what would have been the kitchen garden in the manor-house
that this hall had been copied from.  Here Underhill, in Unseleighe
lands, where there was no reason to grow things for a purpose, this was
simply a rank and weed-filled annex to the main garden.  Black vines
covered with decaying leaves clung to the walls, their branches
infesting the brickwork.  Where plots of herbs and vegetables would
have been, spiky, gray weeds and limp, dispirited grasses attempted to
choke the life out of each other.  Trees reached clawlike branches
against the deep gray sky beyond the weedy plots, marking the edge of
the "pleasure gardens."

But Shar's interest lay here, not out there.  Food for Madoc, his
guests, and the horde of servants had to come from somewhere, and it
was not from anywhere within his realm.  Instead, there was a Gate out
here, a Gate set to a neutral area where Madoc's servants could obtain
the needed foodstuffs.  It would probably be a fairly unpleasant place
to visit, but Shar didn't intend to be there for long.

She signaled Tannim to follow her, across the garden to the wooden
platform and arched roof that marked this Gate position.  Somewhat to
her surprise, it was not guarded; a dropped spear proved that the
goblin that usually guarded this Gate had deserted his post.  Beside
the platform were burlap bags full of garbage, and it occurred to her
then that the Gate could be as useful for disposing of kitchen refuse
as it was bringing the raw material in.  For a moment she toyed with
trying that setting

No, I think not.  I don't believe I want to visit an Unseleighe garbage
dump.

Not so much because it was a garbage dump as because such a place would
be a fine place for scavengers.  Unseleighe scavengers were generally
not things you wanted to meet under any circumstances.

Unless, of course, you happened to be toting an AK-47.

In her guise as a kitchen servant, she had been once to the "market,"
and she had noted then how the Unseleighe seneschal had set the Gate.
She triggered the spell herself this time, and the crude wooden arch
filled with a dark haze.  She motioned to Tannim to enter; he bowed
mockingly and shook his head.

"After you, lady," he said quietly.  So, he didn't trust her?  Well,
she couldn't exactly blame him.

She walked right through the Gate, ignoring the brief internal jarring
as she crossed the boundary between here and there.  A moment later,
Tannim joined her, and she banished the Gate quickly, before anyone in
Madoc's hall could stumble into the garden and notice that it had been
activated.

After the relative silence of the garden, the noise here left her a
little numb.  The stench of the place could only be compared to a cross
between a feedlot and a garbage dump.  Fortunately, the merchants here
were too busy trying to sell their wares to pay any attention to a
couple of human types standing beside the Gate platform looking
stunned.

"Come on," Shar said, nodding her head at the Gate.  "We aren't going
to be here long.  I can reset this thing to a place that's a little
friendlier."  She saw that he was staring at the rows of meat merchants
and added, "You really don't want to know what they're selling.  Trust
me."

He was already about as pale as a human could get; he swallowed hard
and nodded.  "Ah by the way, I don't suppose we could get to my car
from here, could we?"

She considered the question for a moment; his suggestion had a lot of
merit.  She already knew the Mach I had some very complex spells worked
into its fabric, and there was every reason to think that he might be
using it as a kind of magical storage battery as well.  It might prove
very useful.

"Not directly," she said after a moment.  "Why?"

"Because it has a lot of protections on it," he replied with open
honesty.  "Other things, too.  It's Cold Iron; lots of things down here
can't cope with it.  We're already in trouble; couldn't we really use a
safe haven, a rolling base of operations?"

She nodded, and not at all reluctantly.  "It's going to take us about a
dozen Gates to get there, but yes, I can get us there from here
eventually."

Tannim looked over his shoulder at the marketplace and shuddered.  "How
about if we start now before someone out there needs to replace his
inventory?"

One of the meat merchants, a boggle, had noticed them, and his eyes
narrowed with speculation.  Granted, a lot of the Unseleighe had human
servants, or rather, slaves but such slaves usually didn't loiter
anywhere.  They didn't dare.

"Good idea," she said shortly, and turned to reset the Gate to one of
its other destinations.

Anyplace with fresh air..  ..

CHAPTER EIGHT

Tannim slid into the driver's seat of his beloved Mustang, shut the
door, and simply leaned back in the familiar surroundings.  He had
never been quite as happy to see any material object as he'd been to
see his Mustang still waiting there in the middle of the amber room.
The journey to reach it had been a harrowing one in terms of all the
strange and menacing slices of Underhill they'd had to traverse.  He
was still astonished at Shar's ability to pick her way across all of
those Gates.  She must have an incredible memory..  ..

But they made it, and without any opposition to speak of.  For the
first time since he'd come Underhill, he felt relatively safe.  There
was Cold Iron between him and any enemies now, and lots of it.  There
were spells of protection and defense built into the very sheet metal.
He had reserves of magical energy stored here as well; energies that he
badly needed.

And his magic-imbued crowbar, his weapon of choice in any confrontation
with the Unseleighe, was right under the seat where he could grab it.

The other door opened and closed as Shar slipped into the passenger's
side and shut the door as soon as she was seated.  He noted that she
locked it, too, and did the same on his side.  She fumbled for a moment
with the controls on her seat before getting the hang of it and sliding
it back as far as it would go.

Shar.  Now, there was a mystery wrapped in an enigma: half-kits une
half-dragon, all perplexing

And one I'd better figure out before she turns around and stabs me in
the back.

Chinthliss himself hadn't known where she stood but had assumed she was
not on the side of truth, justice, and apple pie.  Tannim had been so
happy to see her, though, back in that Rubik's Prison, that he hadn't
given a thought to what Chinthliss had said about her.  Or, frankly, a
fat damn about her motives in cracking him out of there.  Her motives
didn't matter, as long as she was getting him free.  If she was leading
him into another and different trap, well, maybe it would be easier to
escape or talk his way out of than the last.  The important thing was
that he was buying a little more time, and in an uncertain universe,
every moment counted.  It gave him a little more opportunity to think
things through.  Something unexpected might happen.

So far, so good.

"All right, we made it.  Now what?  Aren't Madoc and his Merry Men
going to come straight here as soon as they get over fighting with each
other?"  he asked, opening his eyes and blinking them wearily.  How
long had he gone without rest?  Long enough; his eyes felt puffy and
swollen, very heavy.

He looked over at Shar's lovely profile; she smiled a little and shook
her head.  "No," she said with a ghost of a chuckle.  "No, I put a lot
of masking spells on your car to deaden the effect of so much Cold Iron
here then I told them that I'd moved it to a safer place.  Madoc won't
go anywhere in person if he has the choice.  The spells work like that
silk sheet we put in the trunk; your Mach I is insulated from the
energies Underhill now which means that they are not going to be able
to detect it by its effect on the world around it.  They have
absolutely no reason to think I left it here.  I don't believe any of
the Unseleighe Madoc's got know these masking spells are even possible,
so they're going to take me at my word if they don't see Death-Metal
effects here.  And scrying is so costly in terms of time and energy
that I don't think they'll make the attempt.  They'd have to have
something of yours, mine, or the vehicle's for scrying to find it
anyway.  We can actually afford to get a little rest, then be on our
way."

"How?"  he asked skeptically.  "Drive out of here?"

To his surprise, she nodded.  "This place was meant for creatures
larger than this vehicle; the doors and hallways will all accommodate
it, and this room is on the ground floor.  We can drive it out into the
garden; there is a Gate there as well as the one in here.  We will have
to take our chances on where it goes, though; the only setting that I
know of would land us in a fairly unpleasant and unfriendly place.  I
can see how many other settings there are, and you can pick one, and
we'll hope it takes us somewhere familiar."

He nodded.  She turned to him then, pulling her hair away from her face
and looking at him rather wistfully.  "I don't suppose you have
anything in the way of food in here, do you?  I'm awfully hungry.  I
could get something from the garden, but I'd rather not leave the car,
frankly.  This is about the first time I've felt safe outside of my my
own place."

He lifted an eyebrow at her, quite well aware of gnawing hunger in his
own innards.  "You mean our gracious host didn't offer you dinner?"

She made a little face.  "You saw the kitchen; you saw what was in it.
Would you eat anything prepared there?"

He had to grin, just a little, and reached behind the seat.  "Here " he
said, handing her one of the high-energy sports-bars he kept back
there.  "I fool my body into thinking this is food all the time.  It's
not exactly cordon bleu, but it'll keep you going."  He looked back
around the side of the seat.  "I've got crackers and Spraycheeze back
there too, if you'd rather."

"This will be fine," she responded, unwrapping the bar and nibbling on
it.

There were dented drink-boxes of Gatorade back behind the seat as well;
he fished out a pair and handed her one.  She nibbled at the bar
daintily, but not as if she disliked the taste.  He wondered what a
kits une normally ate; not sushi, surely.  Somehow she didn't seem to
be the sushi type.

He made short work of his own share and reclined the seat to its
fullest.  After sitting in that cube for hours, the car seat felt as
luxurious as a featherbed.  He was going to have to get some sleep;
this seemed to be the safest place for it.

But worries swarmed through his mind, preventing any relaxation.  How
long, real-time, had he been Underhill?  Time often moved very
differently here; by the chronology of his own world, he could have
been down here a few minutes, or a few months.  His folks would be
frantic

I hope somebody thought of a story to tell them.

Chinthliss had obviously lost the link to the Mustang; he might be able
to reach back to the human world with a Gate, but only at the price of
expending everything he had and leaving himself open to any attacker.

That might be just what Shar was waiting for, in fact.  Just because
she'd been chummy with him so far today, that didn't mean she was on
his side.  She could be waiting to catch him in a moment of
vulnerability.

Yeah, like asleep in this car.

But he didn't want to think about that.  He didn't even want to
consider it.  He wanted to hear that she had somehow seen what her
former allies really were like and had rejected them.

I want to find out that she's turned into a good guy, darn it.  I want
hell, might as well admit it.  I want her to be the girl in my
dreams.

Well, there was another objection to opening up a Gate on his own.  He
was no Chinthliss; he would need quite a bit of time to establish that
Gate, and such a huge expenditure of power would signal his presence as
effectively as a Las Vegas-style neon sign.

Yeah.  "Good Eats Here."  Bad.  Very bad.

So how was he going to get home again?  Drive cross-Underhill?  What
was that going to do to the Mustang?  He could create small planes of
force, like magical ramps, all day long.  They weren't too tough to
make.  He could even create those from inside the car, while it was in
motion, so that should take care of stairs, lumps, and small ravines.

And where in heck are the gas stations down here, anyway?

Where did Shar figure into all this?  What was she all about?  Was she
friend, foe, or neither?

"So," he said carefully, staring through the windshield at the throne
at the other end of the room.  "Why don't you start with some
explanations?  Like, how come you're suddenly my friend?"

She stiffened a little, then wrapped both hands around her drink-box,
propping it on her knee.  "You know who I am," she stated.  "Who my
father is."  Her voice was completely neutral, and he nodded just as
neutrally.

"Your name is Shar, your father is a dragon named Charcoal.  He is an
enemy of my mentor, Chinthliss, and an ally of the Unseleighe."  He
waited for her response; it was a curt nod.  "I'm assuming you are, or
were, an ally of the Unseleighe yourself.  Your mother is a kits une
Charcoal and Chinthliss both courted her, and Chinthliss won her,
temporarily at least.  That's basically all I know."

"My blood-father is a manipulative control freak," Shar replied
bitterly.  "I was raised supposedly as your opposite number.  I was
supposed to be everything you are not.  Fortunately, Mother made
certain that Charcoal wasn't the only creature with a hand in my
upbringing.  I parted company with him some time ago; our parting was
less than friendly and he has forgiven neither Mother nor myself."

She glanced at him to see how he was taking this; he kept his
expression neutral, but nodded.

"Unfortunately I was taught by Unseleighe and spent a lot of time in
several of their domains.  I began severing as many ties with his old
allies as I deemed feasible, but much as it galls me to admit this
there were some I didn't dare cut off completely.  If I had, they would
have been mortally offended."  She bit her lip, and looked at her
hands.

"And offending an Unseleighe prince can have very permanent results,"
Tannim commented.  He could understand that; heck, he lived it.  "They
hate everybody, and it's only when they want something out of you that
you can trust them within limited bounds.  It's just a good thing that
there are rules even they don't dare break."

"Exactly."  She blinked rapidly, and rubbed her eyes.  "I was still
supposed to be your opposite; I went on studying you, partly because it
didn't do any harm, and partly because if Father wanted me to be your
opposite, I wanted to see what I was supposed to be the opposite of.
You posed something of a challenge, actually, trying to come up with
things I could do to match your skills.  I've been watching you, on and
off, for years.  Since you were in high school, in fact."

She'd been studying him?  For years?  He couldn't conceal his shock and
surprise and it was that shock that made him blurt out what he would
not otherwise have revealed.  "Did you dream about me the way I "

She brought her head up like a startled deer and stared directly into
his eyes, her pupils wide with shock and surprise.  "You dreamed about
me?  When?"

Good one, Tannim.  You really stepped on your dick that time.  Well, it
was too late now; might as well fess up.  "At least once a month,
sometimes as often as every other night, for years.  Since Chinthliss
first came across to my side of the Hill, anyway."  He couldn't help
himself; he felt his ears turning hot as he flushed.  Would she guess
just what some of those dreams had been about?

But she averted her eyes, and pink crept over her cheeks.  "I dreamed
too, about you.  I thought it was just because I was studying you."

Quick, get the subject back on track before you really stick your foot
in your mouth.  Don't ask what she dreamed about!  "Right," he said
more harshly than he intended.  "So now what?  How do you figure into
this mess?  Besides challenging me, I mean; I suppose that was on this
Madoc Skean's orders.  Why'd you get me out of that prison?"

"I caused it," she said in a very small voice.  Her blush deepened to a
painful crimson, and she stared fixedly at her clenched hands crushing
her empty drink-box.  "It's my fault you're Underhill in the first
place.  I was the one who brought your car here."

So that's why !  Damn it

"I didn't expect you to follow it so fast!"  she continued, an edge of
desperation in her voice, as she finally turned to meet his accusing
gaze.  "I was oh, I was under pressure from Madoc Skean.  I didn't know
what to do, I mean, I really got a rush out of challenging you, but he
kept pushing for me to "

"To get rid of me," he supplied, flatly.  "So?"

"So I was trying to buy time for both of us!  I couldn't risk a direct
confrontation with Madoc Skean, I didn't want to actually consummate
the challenge, and I was trying to buy us both time!"  Her hands
tightened on the drink-box.  "I thought I thought you'd follow the car
in a few days at best, and by then, I'd have some idea of how to put
Madoc off further, or I'd have managed to create a rift among his other
allies, or you'd have gotten in touch with your Seleighe friends.  And
I had no idea this car was going to make such a huge disturbance when
it came across!"  The muscles of her throat looked tight, and there was
a line of strain between her brows.  "Madoc had a lot of ideas; he
thought that without the Mach I you might choose something other than
"racing' as your weapon.  And in case you decided to go chasing after
it, he expected to use the car as bait in a trap, and I was the only
one that could bring it Underhill for him.  My plan was to keep the
fact that I actually had it hidden from Madoc until I could talk to
you..  .."

Her voice faltered and died, and she licked her lips unhappily.  But
she did not avert her gaze, and she seemed sincere.  He looked into her
eyes and saw no falsehood there.

Could he believe her?

Ah, hell, why not?

"Okay," he said into the thick, leaden silence.  "Okay, I'll accept
that.  Now, why are you helping me?"

She dropped her eyes for a moment, then looked up again, with a spark
of defiance in her expression.  "Because I got you into this," she
said.  "The scales have to be balanced before we decide on anything
else; that's kits une law and custom.  I got you into this, but now
I've gotten you out of this.  You have to release me from that debt."

But he shook his head slightly.  She was not going to get off the hook
that easily.  He was still Underhill, and so was the Mach I; springing
him from Madoc Skean's little reception didn't even things out.
"Sorry," he told her.  "I can't do that.  I'm not out of this yet, I'm
only out of Madoc's clutches, and that may just be temporarily.  I
can't release you from your debt until I'm back in my world, and my
car, too."

She flinched, but she nodded; she obviously saw the justice of his
demand.  Her cheeks were so pale that he longed to touch her and
reassure her.

He wanted to do more than just touch her, if it came down to that.
Unbidden dream-memories told him of any number of ways this could go

But this wasn't a dream.  He couldn't make that kind of assumption.

He tore his gaze away from hers and stared out the windshield again,
trying to calm the chaos of his mind and heart.

He just wasn't certain how to act did he behave as if she was a
stranger, or as if she really was the person he had dreamed about? This
was as confusing as all hell; it felt as if he knew her, as if he had
known her intimately for years!  It was all those damned dreams, where
she'd figured as his lover.  They'd had a solid feeling, a reality to
them, that made the current situation positively schizoid. He didn't
know her in any sense; they'd never met before she'd nailed that glove
to his Mustang.  Yet at the same time, all the little things she did,
the tiny quirks of behavior, the ways she reacted, the bits of body
language, were all exactly the way he "remembered."

"I hate to ask you what your dreams were about, if they were anything
like mine," she whispered across his confusion.

"If you knew," he replied, trying desperately to make a joke about it,
"you'd slap me into next week."

"Oh, I don't know about that," she said, which was exactly what he
would have expected her to say if this was a dream, and not at all what
he had rationally expected to hear.  He looked over at her in
startlement to find her smiling wanly at him.  "After all, I am
half-kits une  We have a certain reputation; one that's been known to
attract even dragons."

His body reacted in a predictable manner before his mind took over and
gathered up all the reins firmly.  This isn't the time or the place, he
told his galloping libido firmly.  We're surrounded by potential
enemies, we're exhausted and on top of that, the front seat of a '69
Mustang is absolutely impossible.  These are bucket seats.  The
backseat is practically nonexistent.  You'd have to be a
contortionist.

"Trust me," he said firmly.  "You'd smack me so hard I'd lose teeth."

He closed his eyes for a moment just for a few seconds

It was long enough; she struck as swiftly as a cobra.  Before he could
open them again, she'd writhed around in her seat, leaning over the
center console, and planted her mouth firmly on his.  One hand snuck
around behind the back of his head, holding him so he couldn't jerk
away.

Not that he wanted to!

Without the use of anything as confusing as words, she was letting him
know that her dreams had probably been along the same lines as his own.
And in no uncertain terms, she was telling him that she had enjoyed
those dreams.

When she'd succeeded in setting every nerve afire and causing a
complete meltdown of his brain, she let him go, returning to her seat
with a teasing smile on her lips.  "I don't think I would smack you, if
those dreams were like mine unless you asked nicely," was all she
said.

"I guess not."  He blinked and tried to make his frontal lobes function
again, after having the blood supply to his brain rush off elsewhere.
Should he follow up on this?

If I do, I could get into more trouble than I can handle right now.  If
I don't, it could still be trouble, but not as complicated.

"This isn't a a good time to get into anything ah distracting," he
ventured.  "We aren't really safe here, just safer for the moment than
a lot of other places."  He hoped she understood; the lover who had
shared more than just his bed would have.

"You don't like it dangerous?"  she purred.

"No, and you wouldn't, either."

She nodded; reluctantly, he thought, but in agreement.  "Damn.  You're
right.  I'm not happy about it, though."  She smiled weakly.  "I
shouldn't have done that, but I couldn't resist.  Let's just call that
a a promissory note, a raincheck, until a better time."

Jeez, some raincheck!  Makes me want to call Fighting Eagle for a
thunder-dance!  He yawned, exaggerating it a little.  "Look, Shar, I'm
not capable of thinking or much of anything at the moment.  I am beat,
and I need some rest badly.  Can you stay awake long enough for me to
catch a couple of hours of sleep?  Once I can think straight, we can
make some plans, but right now, I wouldn't want to make any kind of
decisions.  I'm two burritos short of a combination plate when I'm this
tired."

She nodded, and to his relief, she did not seem put out by the fact
that he didn't follow through on her tacit invitation.  But the Shar I
know knew think I know would understand.  "Get some rest, then," she
said with surprising gentleness.  "I'll keep watch."

Could he trust her?

Did it matter?

Not really.  If he couldn't trust her, he was already doomed, and he
might as well get some sleep.  And if he could trust her he might as
well get some sleep.

"Thanks, Shar," he said, and smiled.  He reached out and squeezed her
hand.  "Thanks a lot.  It's nice to have somebody watching at my back
in this."

Her reaction blinking as if such a thing had never occurred to her made
him wonder about her past.  Living with the Unseleighe would only teach
you that there could be no such thing as a partner.  But someone or
something had to teach her that it was possible.

Has she ever had someone she could depend on?  Her mother, maybe.

"I can see that it would be," she replied wistfully.  Then she shook
her head and became her usual, confident self.  "You get that sleep; I
probably need a lot less than you do, anyway.  When you wake again,
we'll make some plans."

"Right."  He smiled again, and closed his eyes firmly.  Having her so
close was such a temptation

Go to sleep, Tannim.  And jeez, if you can help it, don't dream about
Shar.  * * * Joe padded up to the old barn a little more than two hours
after he'd left it, sweating, but not even close to being winded.  It
had felt good to run full-out like that, with the cool night air all
around him and the drone of cicadas coming from all directions.  When
he was doing something like running, he didn't have to think so much
about things.  Like how all of this was more than a little crazy.

He'd let himself into the Drake's house and had left a note propped on
the kitchen table, explaining pretty much what he'd suggested to
Chinthliss.  Kansas City was far enough away that the Drakes would not
expect to hear anything for at least a couple of days, especially since
this was supposed to be an emergency.  And if they weren't back with
Tannim in a couple of days, then things really would have gone
seriously wrong.

To lend credence to the note, Joe had rummaged through Tannim's room
and his own, making it look as if some things, but not all, had been
taken.  Then he had gotten what he'd come for from its hiding place up
inside the box springs of his bed.  A .45 automatic, basically the same
handgun as the military surplus he'd trained with.  Pity that it wasn't
an M-16 or some other fully automatic assault rifle, but well, it
wasn't supposed to have been a bullet-hose for all-out attacks but
something to defend himself from one or more of the Chosen Ones until
the real law showed up.  He had to keep reminding himself that he was
supposed to be a civilian now.  Most civvies didn't even have this much
firepower, when it came right down to it.  They saw guys like Dirty
Harry in the movies, and that was about the extent of their gun
knowledge.

Which was why, of course, whenever one of them did get scared over
something and get himself a weapon, the people who usually got hurt or
killed by it were people in his own family.  Frank had once remarked
that for a bunch of paranoid nut cases, the Chosen Ones had the best
gun-safety classes he'd ever heard of.  Joe had not only taken those
classes, he'd taught them to the Junior Guard.

He had strapped on the shoulder holster, and slung extra pouches of
ammo on their web-belts around his waist.  They were heavy, but you
never knew..  .. Better take all he had; there probably weren't any gun
shops where he was going.

He was used to running with full pack and kit; this had been nothing,
really, no kind of weight at all.  He had let himself out of the house,
moving so quietly he didn't even make the floor creak, and took off
back the way he had come.

He was halfway afraid that Chinthliss had used his acquiescence as a
ruse, or had changed his mind, and that when he got back to the barn he
would find the other two gone.  Then what would he do?

Call Keighvin at Fairgrove, he supposed, and let him know what had
happened.  And hope that he didn't let anything slip to Mr.  and Mrs.
Drake when they asked him where their son was.

But the glow of heavy shields over the barn told him that Chinthliss
and Fox were still there, and as he ran back up the track through the
tall grass, intermittent flashes of bright white light beneath the
golden glow indicated that they were up to something.  None of this was
visible if he did that little mental trick and turned what Tannim had
called his "mage-sight" off.  This other kind of sight it was so
strange, seeing colored glows around people, and the occasional figure
that he knew wasn't "really" there for the rest of the world.  It had
started when he'd seen Sarah for the first time, and thanks to the
training Bob and Al had given him, it was getting stronger all the
time.  Every time he used it, he saw more.  Was this how everyone at
Fairgrove saw the world, bathed in extra colors and populated by more
creatures than anyone else knew existed?  Or was this something only a
few people could do?

Well, he'd find all that out later, if he made it through this.

If.

He had to think of it in those terms.  He had no illusions that this
was going to be some romp through Wonderland; Fox was terrified, and
even though Chinthliss tried to seem glib about the situation, Tannim's
mentor was worried.  There was danger here, much more real than the
"danger" his father had prophesied.

He was about to get into something he hadn't really wanted to deal
with, and something he wasn't really prepared for.  Magic.  What the
hell did he know about magic, really?  Not much when push came to
shove.  Not enough to use it as a weapon, probably not enough to put up
an adequate defense of his own.

But Tannim, in the short time that Joe had known him, had become a "big
brother," just as Jamie was his "little brother."  Not a blood
relationship, but one that went far deeper than blood and bone and
genes.  Tannim was family.  You stood by your family.  When they were
in trouble, you helped them.

Fox stood beside the gap in the wall that had once been the doorway,
his tails swishing nervously.  Joe trotted up.  The tall grass resisted
him a little and caught on his jeans.  Chinthliss stood in the center
of the barn, as Tannim had stood not that long ago.  He didn't seem to
be doing anything, but Joe knew better than to assume that nothing was
going on.

"What's up?"  he whispered to Fox, wiping the sweat off his forehead
with the back of his arm.

"He's building a Gate," Fox whispered back.  "The whole thing; all the
Gates where we want to go are booked up and unless we build our own, we
can't get there from here.  I gave him all the oomph I had to spare, so
now he's channeling in everything he can get from outside.  It's not
that easy, building a Gate in your world; magic runs thinner here.
We're just lucky that it hasn't been tapped around here much."

Just as he finished that last sentence, Chinthliss exclaimed in
satisfaction, and a tiny glowing dot appeared in the air in front of
him, at just about eye-level.  Chinthliss cupped his hands before him,
catching the spark for a moment so that his hands glowed and the bones
showed through the translucent flesh.  Then Chinthliss slowly spread
his hands wide; the dot became a glowing ring, which grew as he spread
his hands, until it was a circle of light taller than he and broader
than his outstretched arms.  A dark haze filled it, a haze you couldn't
see through, and which made Joe shiver for reasons he didn't quite
understand.

"You've come exactly in time, Joe," Chinthliss said without turning
around.  "We are ready, now.  You and I, that is," he amended.  "Fox
can journey there without the need of a Gate; one of the advantages of
being a spirit-form."

"Right.  See you at the bandstand?"  Fox replied, and vanished without
waiting for an answer.

"Will he really be there?"  Joe said a bit dubiously, for all that Fox
was his old "friend" from childhood.  Even his memories painted Fox as
something less than reliable and inclined to tricks.

"He'll be there," Chinthliss replied grimly.  "If he's not, well, he
knows that I will be looking for him when all this is over.  Being
called "Stumpy' will be the least of his problems."

Joe stepped across the threshold of the barn to join Chinthliss in
front of the circle of light.  "So what do we do?"  he asked bravely,
putting the best face he could on all this.  "I I'm afraid I don't know
a lot about this kind of thing."

Chinthliss looked down at him, and the dark eyes changed from hard and
purposeful to warm and kindly, all in a single moment.  "We simply step
across," he told Joe.  "There will be a moment of disorientation, then
you will find yourself in the place we wish to go to.  And you are
doing very well, young man.  You are bearing up under some very strange
experiences, and doing so with more composure than many with more years
than you."

Joe looked up into those odd, oriental eyes, saw or sensed far more
years than he had dreamed, and swallowed.  "I don't suppose you have
any advice before we do this, do you?"

Chinthliss shook his head.  "Nothing that would help.  Are you
ready?"

Joe took a very deep breath, allowed himself to be conscious for a
moment of the weight in his shoulder holster, and remembered with a
flush of pride how good a marksman he was.  Heck, he wasn't too bad at
hand-to-hand, either.  Chinthliss had obviously included him in this
party because of that expertise.  If he simply kept his eyes, ears, and
mind open, obeyed his orders, and behaved in a professional manner,
everything should be all right, no matter how strange the external
circumstances became.

"I'm ready, sir," he said, proud of the fact that his voice did not
break or quaver, and that he stood tall, straight, and confidently.
"You first, or me?"

In answer, Chinthliss gestured at the circle of light.  Joe repressed a
shiver when he remembered how Tannim had stepped into an identical
circle and vanished.  .

He took a convulsive grip on his belt and stepped through; his skin
tingled all over, as if he'd grasped a live wire, his eyes blurred, the
world swirled and spun around him, and he gasped as his stomach
lurched, exactly as if he'd gone into free-fall for a moment.  He
flexed his knees involuntarily.

Then with a shock, he went from night into full day, and his feet
landed on soft turf.  Since his knees were already flexed to take the
strain, he only staggered a little to catch his balance.  As he
straightened, he saw that he stood in the center of what looked like a
city park, with a white bandstand or gazebo in the middle.  By the
bright light, it had to be just about noon, and where they'd come from,
it was around two in the morning.

Overhead, he heard someone whistling.

He looked up in startlement to see a cartoon sun in the middle of a
flat, blue sky, staring down at him jovially.  You could look right at
it without even blinking; lemon-yellow, it had round, fat cheeks, blue
eyes, a wide mouth, and a fringe of pointed petal-like rays.  It smiled
at him as soon as it saw he was looking at it, winked broadly, and
waved at him with one of the petals.

Stunned, he waved back automatically.  It grinned, and went back to
whistling and bobbing a little in time to the song a real song that was
also being whistled by a vivid blue and red bird perched on the top of
the gazebo.  Puffy, flat-looking marshmallow clouds sat in the sky with
the sun, a sky that was an unshaded, turquoise blue, without any
variation from horizon to horizon.  The emerald grass under his feet
was more like carpet than grass, and did not crush down under his
weight.  There was no breeze, yet the air smelled fresh and clean.  In
fact, it smelled exactly like freshly washed sheets.

They also weren't alone.  The other creatures were not very near, and
they didn't seem to care that a Gate had been opened in the park,
although many noticed.  There were otters and foxes, though none of the
foxes looked like FX.  There was a massive cobalt-blue unicorn, and a
centaur with a black, d'Artagnan beard.  They were having a picnic with
what could only be called a foxtaur, and a small golden-colored dragon,
and an oddly hunched, very large bird.  A white unicorn mare chased
playfully after a humanoid, black-horned unicorn wearing black leather
and spikes, howling taunts.  And overhead, a red-and-umber gryphon with
broad coppery wings glided in to join the rest.

He turned as a crackling, sizzling sound beside him startled him again.
There was nothing there for a second then a familiar arm clad in
Armani-tailored silk phased into existence, as if the owner was pushing
his way through an invisible barrier, exactly like an expensive special
effect.  The rest of Chinthliss followed shortly as Joe watched in
utter fascination.  He seemed to arrive suspended a few inches above
the plush green lawn and dropped as soon as all of him was "there."

Chinthliss landed with flexed knees, just as Joe had.  He straightened,
looked around, and nodded with satisfaction.

"Good," he said.  "At least we made our transition safely.  Now, where
is Fox?"

"Right here."  Fox strolled up from behind them, although Joe could
have sworn that there hadn't been anyone there a moment earlier.  He
was in the fox-footed, three-tailed James Dean form, the one with the
red leather jacket.  "Now where?"

"One moment."  Chinthliss glanced at Joe.  "Young man, would you please
grasp our friend?"

Joe didn't understand what Chinthliss was trying to prove he couldn't
touch Fox, he already knew that but he shrugged, reached out, and made
a grab for Fox's arm.

And with a shock, realized that he was holding a very solid, completely
real, red-leather clad arm.

"What " he said, startled.  "How but "

Fox looked at Chinthliss in irritation.

"So what were you trying to prove?"  he growled.  "You know I'm real
here!"

"That's what I was trying to prove," Chinthliss said with ironic
satisfaction.  "That you were not playing any of your kits une tricks
with me and projecting a spirit-form here as well, rather than risking
your real self.  Thank you, Joe."

"You're welcome," Joe responded automatically, dropping his hold on
Fox's arm and backing up a step.  He hadn't expected that.  If Fox was
real here was that cartoon sun up above real as well?

He didn't want to think about it.

But then he suddenly realized that he really didn't have to think about
it.  His part in this mission was very simple.  He didn't have to try
and figure out what was real and what wasn't; all he really had to do
was keep a lookout for trouble and hit it or shoot it if it got too
close.  And if it turned out that all this was just one big
hallucination, well, no problem.  He'd wake up from this dream, or in
the looney bin, and pick up his life where he'd left off.  Right?

Yeah.  Sure.

"I think our first logical destination would be the Drunk Tank,"
Chinthliss continued, unperturbed.  "All news comes there, sooner or
later and if any of Tannim's friends are here, that is where they will
go."

Fox sighed with resignation, but shrugged.  "Suit yourself," he
replied.  "You know this place as well as I do, and you know Tannim's
friends better than I do."

"Are you going to build a Gate again?"  Joe asked nervously.  He hadn't
liked the sensations of crossing into this place, and he wasn't certain
that he wanted a repetition of the experience quite so soon.

"Build a Gate?"  Chinthliss said.  "Here?  Good heavens, no."

"Then how are we going to get to this place?"  Joe asked, more than a
little confused now, since there didn't seem to be anything here except
lush grass, a few fairly normal-looking trees, some benches, the
gazebo, and the cartoon sky.  Literally; the sky appeared to intersect
with the ground no more than a few hundred yards away on all sides.

"How?"  Chinthliss said, and whistled loudly, waving an arm.

And a fat taxi, bright yellow with black checks, shaped rather like an
overgrown VW Bug, pulled up beside them.  Joe blinked; he knew that
thing hadn't been anywhere near them a moment ago, yet there it was!

A creature like a mannish badger leaned out the window.  "Hiya folks!"
the thing growled.  "Where to?"

"The Drunk Tank," FX told it blandly.

"This is how," Chinthliss said to Joe, opening up the door and
gesturing for him and Fox to enter.  "We take a taxi, of course.  It's
too far to walk."

"Of course," Joe echoed in a daze, climbing into the rear seat.  "A
taxi.  Of course."

"Well what else would we use?"  Chinthliss retorted, as he wedged
himself inside as well, with Fox squeezed between them making Warner
Brothers cartoon faces.  "A dragon?"  * * * The taxi accelerated toward
the flat blue sky, which looked more and more like a wall as they drew
nearer.  Joe closed his eyes and gripped the seat they were going to
hit!  He waited for the impact, his teeth clenched tightly.

But a second later, the taxi screeched to a halt.  "Here we are,
folks!"  came the cheerful voice from the front.  "Thanks for riding
with me!  See you soon!"

The door popped open on its own, and Joe stepped cautiously out onto
the pavement.

Real pavement.  Real, cracked cement.

The sky above them was dark here, with a haze of light-pollution above
the buildings.  This looked like any street in any bar-district in any
big city he'd ever been in.  The street was asphalt, the sidewalk and
curb were chipped and eroded concrete with cracks in it, but there were
no cigarette butts and other trash scattered around.  Dirty brick
buildings on both sides of the street stood four or five stories tall,
with darkened storefronts on the ground floor, and lighted or darkened
windows that might lead into offices or apartments in the stories
above.  The taxi had pulled up in front of another brick building with
a neon sign in a small window, set into a wood panel where a much
larger window had once been.  The sign flashed The Drunk Tank twice in
red, then flashed a green neon caricature of a tipsy tank with a
dripping turret the third time.  To the right of the building was a
parking lot; to the left, a vacant lot with a fence around it.  The lot
was about half full of the kind of "beater" cars most people of modest
means drove in a big city.  They were just about in the middle of the
block, which seemed to be pretty much deserted.  A couple of cars and a
panel-truck were parked on the other side of the street, in front of a
black-and-silver sign which read Dusty's Furley-Davidson.  Below it was
what could only be an authentic Springer Softail.  With a warning
sticker.

The cartoonish taxi did not belong here, but the driver didn't seem to
care.  It waited until Chinthliss got out, then buzzed off down the
street.

Fox still had his fox-feet, but he'd lost the tails somewhere.
Chinthliss still looked entirely human.

"Do bullets work here?"  Joe whispered to FX as Chinthliss led the way
to the red-painted door.

"Oh, yeah," Fox replied, a little grimly.  "Yeah, bullets work just
fine.  You're not in some kind of cartoon, no matter what it looks
like.  The last bunch of city planners were animation buffs and made
the sky and all look like this, but this is real.  This may look weird
to you right now, but bullets work, knives work, crossbows and darts
work, getting hit hurts a lot, and dead is very, very dead.  No second
chance, no resurrection, no magic spell to bring you back.  Keep that
in mind if trouble starts."

Joe gulped.  "Right."

Fox followed on Chinthliss' heels into the bar; Joe followed on
Fox's.

Inside, the bar looked a lot bigger than it had from the outside.  A
lot nicer, too kind of like one of those fancy nightclubs in movies
about the Roaring Twenties and the Depression.  They stood in a waiting
room at the top of a series of descending tiers that held two- or
four-person tables.  Each table was spread with a spotless white
tablecloth, centered with flowers and a candle-lamp.  Wall-sconces made
of geometric shapes of black metal and mirrors fastened invisibly to
the white walls held brilliant white lights.  To Joe's left was a
check-room with a hat-check girl and the hostess' stand; beyond those
was a curving balcony looking out over the tables, with a few doors
leading off of it.  To his right was the bar, which curved along the
wall behind the top tier of tables as one immaculate, unbelievably
precise arc of mahogany.  Everything else was done in shiny black,
chrome, and glass.  At the bottom of the tiers was a dance floor with a
geometric pattern in black and white marble laid out on it and somehow
lit from below and behind that a glossy black stage large enough for a
complete big-band orchestra.  From the stands pushed to one side and
the classic grand piano, it often held such a band, but right now there
was a combo composed of a keyboard-player, a drummer with a full
electronic rig, a guy with an impressive synth-set, and a female
vocalist.  They were covering "Silk Pajamas" by Thomas Dolby, and those
in the crowd who were actually listening seemed to be enjoying it.  And
singing along.

But Joe had to do another reality check when he looked the crowd
over.

Around about half the folks here were human; plenty of them were
wearing outfits that would have had them barred at the door in the real
world.  Said "clothing" ranged everywhere from full military kit to as
close to nothing as personal modesty would allow.  In the case of some
people, that pretty much meant clothing-as-jewelry or, as Frank had
once put it, gown less evening straps."  Joe tried not to stare at the
blonde girl in the G-string, fishnets, diamond-choker, and heels; she
was centerfold-perfect and her brawny, saturnine escort could have
picked him up with one hand and broken him over his knee without
breaking a sweat.  He was done up in what looked like medieval chain
mail the real thing.  The sword slung along his back was certainly real
looking.

Fortunately, both of them were too busy watching the stage and the
dancers on the dance floor to notice his stares or his blushes.

The rest of the patrons including most of those on the dance floor were
definitely not any more human than the creatures he'd seen in the park.
The couple drawing the most attention at the moment was a pair of
bipedal cat-creatures, one Siamese, the other a vivid red lynx, who
were showing off their dance steps.  But sharing the floor with them
was a female with green hair and wearing what appeared to be a dress
made of leaves who was dancing alone, a couple of elves, two fox
couples, a pine marten dancing with a large monitor lizard, and a pair
of beautiful young sloe-eyed men, dark and graceful, with the
hindquarters and horn-buds of young goats, who were dancing together in
a sensuous way that made Joe blush as badly as the blonde girl had.

He averted his eyes and fixed them firmly on Chinthliss' back.  The
dragon was speaking to the hostess who seemed to have a wonderful
personality, if you didn't mind the fact that otherwise she was a dog.
She nodded, and wagged the tail that barely showed below her Erte
dress.  Chinthliss made his own way towards the bar.  Joe and Fox
followed him.

Chinthliss ordered "yuppie water"; Fox, with a defiant glance at
Chinthliss, ordered a rum-and-Coke.  Joe waved the bartender away.
First of all, he had no idea how he was going to pay for a drink, or in
what currency and secondly, it was a bad idea to have your hands busy
with something else if a situation came up.

Chinthliss scanned the crowd, then turned back to the bartender as the
man (Arabic-looking, but with pointed ears) brought him his drink and
Fox's.  "So, Mahmut, have you heard or seen anything of Tannim?"  the
dragon asked casually, as he pushed what appeared to be a coin made of
gold across to the bartender.  The being slid it expertly out of sight,
as he pretended to polish the bar with a soft cloth.  "Not recently,
Chinthliss," Mahmut replied, rubbing industriously at a very shiny
spot.  "Why?  Are you looking for him?  He never comes here anymore; in
fact, as far as I know, he never goes out of the Seleighe Elfhames
these days, if he leaves America at all."

Chinthliss sighed, and sipped the bubbling water.  The band finished
its number to the applause of the dancers and some of the people at the
tables.  The lights came down, and a pair of women, one very, very pale
and in a long, white, high-collared dress, and one with long blond hair
right down to the floor, wearing what appeared to be a dress made of
glittering green fish scales, took the stage.  The one in white sat
down at the piano; the blonde took the microphone.  A spotlight
centered on the blonde, who lowered her eyelids for a moment and smiled
sweetly.

The bartender tapped Joe on the shoulder; he jumped.  When he turned to
see what the man wanted, the fellow was holding out a pair of
earplugs.

"You single?"  the man asked.  Joe flushed, and nodded.  "You wouldn't
be a virgin, by any chance, would you?"  the bartender persisted, this
time in a whisper.

This time Joe flushed so badly that he felt as if he was on fire.

"Thought so."  The bartender nodded.  "You'd better wear these if you
don't want to end up following Lorelie around like a lost puppy for the
rest of your short life."  He held out the earplugs.  Joe looked at Fox
and Chinthliss, who both nodded.

"We're protected.  I wouldn't worry so much about Lorelie, but her
friend has appetites you wouldn't want to satisfy," Fox said solemnly.
"Lamias are like that."

"Th them?"  Joe stammered.

"Yeah, them," Fox said.  "Think of them as the Cocteau Twins gone
horribly wrong.  The LL Music Factory, embalming optional."

Lamias?  Lorelie?  Something about both those names rang a dim and
distant bell in his mind, but he couldn't put a finger on what they
meant.  Still, if not only this bartender but Chinthliss and Fox
thought he ought to put in those earplugs well, maybe he'd better.

He took them gingerly and inserted them.  And he discovered, rather to
his surprise, that even with them in his ears he could hear perfectly
well, if a little distantly.

There were waitresses circulating among the tables, he saw now, and
they were handing out more earplugs.  But oddly enough, only to the men
or rather, male creatures.  The two young men with the goats' legs
laughed and waved them away, as did one or two others, including the
pine marten and the lizard, but most of the men took them and fitted
them into their ears.

Interesting.

The pale girl at the piano began singing as soon as the last of the
earplug-girls retired; Joe recognized the song as "Stormy Weather," and
after a few bars, Lorelie began to sing.

She had a low, throaty voice, rather than the bell-like and pure tones
Joe had half expected; there was no doubt, though, that in his world
she'd have a lot of people offering her record contracts.  Especially
with that face and figure behind the voice.  But he couldn't help but
wonder what all the fuss was about and why the earplugs?

Oh, well.  When in Rome .. .

He turned his attention back to Chinthliss and the bartender.

"..  . and we think he might have bitten off more than he can chew,"
Chinthliss was saying, as Mahmut listened attentively.  "Look, I know
you're on the Seleighe side of the fence, so to speak, at least most of
the time.  You know some of the kid's friends.  If any of them show up
here, can you pass that information on for me?"

Mahmut nodded gravely.  "For a dog of an infidel, that one is a good
boy," he replied.  "For me, he arranged a lager distributor from
America.  He has done several of my friends a service or two in the
past.  For a chance to even the scales, I think that they would do
much."

"What kind is his kind?"  Joe whispered to Fox.  FX shrugged and
muttered something that sounded like "gin," although that couldn't
possibly be right.  It was probably the earplugs.  Joe made a move to
take them out; Fox grabbed his hand to prevent him

Just as someone entered the bar, stared at the singer below, and
stopped dead in his tracks, as if transfixed.

It was a young man; one with branching antlers rising from his head,
but otherwise quite normal-looking.  As Joe paused with his hand on the
plug in his ear, the newcomer shook his head violently, turned a
deathly white, and made a kind of odd moaning noise.

His eyes glazed over, and he stumbled down the stairs between the tiers
of tables, ignoring everything and everyone in his path.  He staggered
across the dance floor towards Lorelie, who ignored his presence
completely, and dropped down at her feet in a crouch, gazing up at her
with the adoration of a saint at the feet of the Almighty.

If Joe hadn't chanced to look in her direction, he might never have
seen the piano player's reaction.  If Lorelie was indifferent to her
worshipper, the pale girl was not.

She stared at the young man with such pure, naked hunger that the word
"hunger" simply did not describe the expression she wore.  He might
have been a thick, juicy steak, and she suffering starvation.  Then she
licked her lips and smiled.

Her teeth were all pointed, like a shark's.

"Poor kid," the bartender said distantly.  "She got another one."  And
somehow Joe knew what he meant.  Lorelie might have snared the man, but
her accompanist was going to devour him somehow.  Not just
figuratively, either.

Joe rounded on the bartender, suddenly suffused with anger.  "So why
aren't you doing anything about it?"  he hissed, one hand on the Colt.
"Why do you let her sing here?"

Mahmut's eyes narrowed dangerously, but his voice remained calm and
even.  "Look, kid, we have placards in the lobby announcing that
Lorelie's singing in here.  The hat-check girl would have offered him
earplugs.  The hostess would have offered him earplugs.  How much more
do you want us to do?  Shove the plugs in his ears?  This is a neutral
realm; Lorelie's free to sing, we're free to hire her, and he's free to
ignore the warnings.  Who knows?  Maybe he was suicidal.  You may not
like it, son, but you're not in Kansas anymore, either."

This is a neutral realm.  Maybe he was suicidal.  They know he's going
to die, and no one is going to help him.

Joe felt cold all over.  He looked at Mahmut's flat black eyes; looked
back down at the bandstand, at Lorelie, at her admirer, at the piano
player.  He shivered, and briefly considered the ramifications of
running down there and trying to save that poor guy

Then he caught Fox's eyes.  The kits une shook his head slowly.  He
remembered all of Fox's warnings, shuddered, and turned away.

Mahmut spoke to him again.  "Sometimes we get people doing that because
there are a lot of ways to drain a man.  Those two know most of them. I
have been told that many are pleasurable and leave the man more alive
than before.  Some think the risk is worth it for the experience.  The
young buck there isn't likely to die and he might enjoy it."

He still might have tried to think of some way of getting Lorelie's
victim free, but he never got the chance.

At that moment, one of the waitresses (a delicate creature like a
winged lizard with veil-like wings sprouting from her shoulder blades)
came over and tapped Chinthliss on the arm.  "Sir," she said, "the lady
over there would like you and your friends to join her in the Blue
Room."

Chinthliss shook his head impatiently, as the young creature pointed.
"I do not have time " he began, looking in the direction she
indicated.

Then he stopped speaking, frozen with shock that even Joe could read.
And beside him, Fox went as white as the girl at the piano.

Joe turned to see what they were looking at.

On the other side of the room, behind the last tier of tables where the
bar was on this side, there were several doors that presumably led to
private dining rooms.  There was someone standing in front of one of
those doors.

She wore the kimono and elaborate hairstyle of a traditional Japanese
woman Joe could only think "geisha," since he had no idea who else wore
the kimonos with the long, trailing sleeves, or the hair pierced
through with so many jeweled pins that her head looked like a
pincushion.  But although the body beneath the gown was that of a human
woman, the face was that of a fox.

And behind her, fanned out like the glory of the peacock, was an array
of fox tails that clearly belonged to her.

"Oh, shit," FX said weakly.  "It's it's "

Chinthliss cleared his throat with difficulty.

"Tell the Lady Ako," he managed, after several tries, "that we would be
honored to join her."

CHAPTER NINE

Shar watched Tannim out of the corner of her eye, hoping it wasn't
obvious that she was watching him.  If he felt her gaze resting on him,
he probably wouldn't be able to sleep; he'd assume she was waiting for
him to fall asleep so that she could do something unpleasant to him.

Well, she wouldn't mind doing something to him, but it wouldn't be
unpleasant.  If she had gotten his hormones dancing with that kiss,
she'd sent her own into orbit.  There hadn't been anyone who'd had that
effect on her for a long, long time.

At least she knew one thing, now.  She knew he'd had the same kind of
erotic dreams of her that she'd had of him.  The way he'd responded to
her impulsive kiss had left no doubt in her mind of that.  Enthusiasm
under the surprise and a great deal of heat under the control.  He
would feel so good..  ..

But Shar knew he was also not going to presume on those dreams.  He
didn't trust her yet and she couldn't blame him.  But there was another
thing: he didn't assume that her personality was anything like the
person he'd dreamed about.  He didn't know anything at all about her,
and he acknowledged that.  I knew he was a cautious and clever man, she
mused as his breathing deepened, and he began to relax minutely.  This
is just one more example of that.  I have the advantage here; I know
that the lover in my dreams is virtually identical in personality to
the real man or at least, as much of the real man as I have been able
to observe over the years.

And yet, even though he didn't trust her yet, it seemed to her that he
was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt; he was apparently
willing to give her the time to prove to him by her actions that she
could be trusted.

She sighed quietly.  If that kiss was anything to go by, he was just as
talented and considerate as the dream-lover had been.  A far cry from
the Unseleighe, or the relatively shallow and skittish kits une males.
Those were the only creatures of male gender she'd spent any time with;
she'd avoided human males simply out of disinterest.  And if Charcoal
and Chinthliss were examples of dragon kind

They're either manipulative, selfish bastards who'll run over the top
of anything and anyone to get what they want, or they're fast-talking,
charming rogues who'd rather lose everything they have than make a
commitment.

Bitter?  Oh, a tad.

Tannim sighed and nestled down a little further into his seat.  Was he
truly asleep?  She shifted slightly, touched the door handle and made
it rattle just a little.  He didn't stir; his eyelids didn't even
flicker.  There were dark shadows under his eyes, shadows that spoke
eloquently of just how exhausted he'd been.  In sleep, he looked
frighteningly frail, and now she realized just how much of his
appearance of strength depended on his personality.

Well, now what?  They couldn't stay here forever; they probably
shouldn't stay here longer than it took Tannim to catch up on some rest
and recover a bit.  So, how to get out of here?

There was the Gate in the garden; that was probably their best bet.  As
she had pointed out, there would be no difficulty in simply driving the
Mustang out into the hall and out the door into the garden.  The
Katschei had used that particular Gate to get into the mortal world to
steal his collection of princesses, but there were five more settings
on it.  They'd have to take their chances, but at least she would
recognize a potentially dangerous setting for a destination she had
encountered before.  That would keep them out of Unseleighe domains,
even if it did dump them off into unknown territory.  If they kept
traversing Gates, sooner or later she'd find her way back into a place
she knew.

A pity that the Katschei hadn't left at least one setting empty; she
could have used that to Gate somewhere friendly.  Or at least, to
somewhere neutral.

I would be very happy with neutral, she decided.  Particularly neutral
and familiar.  Most neutrals can be bought, and usually remain bought.
In neutral territory I might be able to buy some help, or a way out of
Underhill.

Tannim slept very quietly; barely breathing, it seemed, head turned
slightly into the seat that cradled him, one hand curled up beside his
face.  She touched his hair hesitantly.  So soft, she thought with
wonder, as she pulled her hand back before it betrayed her by turning
the touch into a caress.

There was nothing impulsive about the strength of her reaction to him;
in a way, it was inevitable, given how long she had studied him.  If he
had not interested her, she would have given up on her studies a long
time ago, and none of this would be happening now.  If he had not
attracted her as well as interested her

I probably would have done exactly what Madoc Skean wanted me to.  I'd
have gotten rid of him a long time ago.

And if she had not met him in her dreams?  Difficult to say.  She'd
enjoyed her little glimpses into his life.  She found him in some ways
completely alien to her.  Perhaps that was part of the root of her
attraction; she couldn't predict him, and her kits une heritage would
always be intrigued by anything she didn't understand and couldn't
predict.  Just as she would always be repelled by something that bored
her.

Tannim was anything but boring..  ..

On the other hand, Madoc Skean was quite predictable, and she ought to
be trying to predict what his next move would be, not hovering over
Tannim like some lovesick nymph.

She sat back in her own seat, reclining it to match Tannim's, but
turned her gaze outward, staring at the wall.  Madoc had fled the
dungeon with his own guards, and probably went straight to the isolated
wing of the keep that contained his own quarters.  Paranoid as any
Unseleighe, he would not live in a place where he could not defend
against all comers.

But as his allies fought their way to his Gate and left, and nothing
whatsoever happened, he would collect his courage and his few
functioning brain cells.  What conclusions would he come to?

The most obvious would be that Tannim or Tannim's impersonator was
somewhere in his stronghold still.  But he had means to discover if
that was true, and he would put those means in motion as soon as he
knew his people had cleared the entire holding of potential
troublemakers.

Sooner or later, he would learn that there his fears were completely
groundless.  He would learn that Tannim was not in his dungeon, nor
anywhere else in his own domain.  Then what?

Well, his allies had all deserted him.  Even if he decided to first go
after them, it would take a great deal of coaxing to bring most of his
allies back.  It would be possible to chase after Tannim without them,
but Madoc Skean was a cautious sort, and he always preferred to operate
from a position of strength.  He really had two options at this point:
try to mend the mess that had been made of his alliances and then
pursue Tannim, or go after Tannim without any help.

She could hope that he would pursue his allies; she must plan that he
would pursue Tannim.  She would have to assume that Madoc would figure
out that she was with Tannim, given that she had been there when they
all discovered he'd "vanished."

Madoc would waste some time trying to figure out where she had gone in
order to escape his stronghold.  Sooner or later, he would narrow the
possibilities to the Gate in the courtyard.  Then he had six possible
destinations; eventually he would find the Gate that led here, but
unless he had a way to trace her movements, every succeeding Gate they
took would lead to no less than three and as many as six more
possibilities.  So it was safe to assume that they had time enough for
Tannim to get some sleep.

But after that they should assume that Madoc could be no less than a
single Gate behind them.  Tannim and Shar could even have the
misfortune to Gate into the same place at the same time as they tried
to find them.

So who or what is Madoc going to have with him?  Probably all of the
Faceless Ones; they were the most faithful of his fighters.  Madoc's
own ego tolerated no better mage than himself among his followers, and
she was better than they were.  Madoc himself would be the one to watch
out for, magically.  Unseleighe got to the top of the "food chain" by
cutthroat competition.  Literally cutthroat, sometimes.  She didn't
know exactly how powerful he was, and she didn't want to find out by
going head-to-head with him.

The trouble was, it was going to take a lot of work to find a way out
of Unseleighe domains.  Gates generally connected like with like; out
of every three Gates, the odds were that only one of them would have a
connection to neutral lands, and then only a single connection out of
the six possible.  Their best hope was that the places those Gates did
go to would be empty and unused, deserted like this one, or only a
transfer point.

The best thing will be to keep moving, she decided.  The more we can
muddle the trail, even by simply moving at random, the better off we
will be.

So given that they had no choice but to use the Gate in the Katschei's
garden, where was it likely that the settings on that one went?

No love lost between him and Baba Yaga; I doubt he had one set there.
In fact, he didn't have any alliances with any of the other Russian
myth-figures, not even the neutrals.  He did have an arrangement with
some of the Chinese demons though..  .. No, that would not be a good
idea.  The yush eat human souls and use the bodies.  I'd be safe
enough, but if they all ganged up on Tannim, they might be able to take
him before we got out.  He had a private hunting preserve that would
probably not be a healthy place to go, either.

She rubbed one finger behind her ear as she tried to recall the rest of
his historical alliances.  Something from India .. . oh, no, I remember
now!  He had something going with the rakshasha!  That would be a very,
very bad place to end up!

The only remotely safe places she could think of were with other
national equivalents to the Unseleighe and certain minor Unseleighe
folk: ogres, trolls, and the like.  Most of those folk were a great
deal like the major lords Madoc Skean had courted; they had shut
themselves off from the human world a long time ago, and the sight of
the Iron Chariot that was Tannim's Mustang, moving through their realms
and causing no end of damage in the process, could be enough to
frighten them into panic.  Certainly they would be confused and wary
enough to leave the two of them alone while they studied the situation.
She and Tannim should have time to find another Gate or another setting
on the one they had just used and get out before anyone mustered up
enough courage to oppose them.  The only awkward part was that she
would have to physically get out of the vehicle in order to read the
Gate and reset it; that created a time of great vulnerability. Ah well,
it couldn't be helped.

Once they found such Gates, they could only hope that the creatures
there did not decide to find Madoc Skean and tell him where they had
gone.

Damn.  We'll be moving; it won't be possible to keep those special
shields on the Mustang for long.  We'll show up just by the disruption
we cause.  The more magic there is in a domain, the more disruption
will take place.

No help for it; while she could not tell from in here just how much
magic Tannim had infused into this vehicle, there was no doubt that it
represented a major undertaking.  Protections were layered on
protection; and was that an energy reserve?  It could be.  They would
be much safer in the Mach I than without it.

So it'll be a lot like taking a cross-country trip in a tank.  Maybe
we'll leave a swath behind us, but most of what people shoot at us
should bounce off.

She massaged the back of her neck with the ends of her fingers.  I got
myself into this, she reminded herself.  I have to get myself out of
it.  There were a hundred things I could have done to prevent all this,
including simply taking shelter with Mother when Madoc Skean demanded I
help him.  I was so sure that I could stall Madoc and have a good time
doing it and I just didn't want to hide behind my kits une kin.

No point in pretending that if she hadn't done what she'd done, Tannim
would still be in trouble from some other ally of Madoc's.  Whether or
not that was true, it was irrelevant.  She had made her decisions, she
had put her steps on this path, obliterating all other possibilities.
Now she was the one who must deal with it all.

And she had never felt quite so alone and uncertain before.  Or quite
so vulnerable.  * * * Joe followed in Chinthliss' wake, walking just
behind FX, as the dragon moved slowly toward the fox-lady on the other
side of the balcony.  Fox had sprouted all of his tails again, but they
trailed dispiritedly on the ground behind him, telegraphing major
submission.  And as they neared the door which presumably led to the
private room that Lady Ako had reserved, past a very attractive and
very large female bat, Fox's clothing was mutating as well.

By the time they actually reached the door, the red leather jacket had
become a short, wrapped red jacket along the lines of a karate gi, and
the jeans had become some other kind of loose blue pants.  Both looked
like silk to Joe; both were very rich and shiny.  Chinthliss' silk suit
was impressive enough without turning it into anything else.  Joe
wished he had Fox's talent; he felt terribly underdressed in his
fatigue pants and white t-shirt.

Well, maybe if he pretended as if he was Chinthliss' bodyguard, he
wouldn't look as conspicuous as he felt.  No one ever expected a
bodyguard to be dressed in any kind of fancy outfits, after all.  They
only wore tuxes in the movies, right?  The rest of the time a bodyguard
surely dressed comfortably.  They weren't there to provide scenery but
protection, right?

Whatever.

He kept his eyes on Chinthliss' silk-clad back as they reached the
doorway, resisting the urge to stare at Lady Ako.  Her head wasn't
precisely like a fox; the lips were more mobile, he thought; the muzzle
blunter.  Her eyes were lovely, large, and exactly the same color as
melted chocolate.  Her hands were entirely human, but like Fox, she had
fox-feet.  Then there were all those tails..  ..

He tried to tell himself that she wasn't any different than those
cat-creatures down on the dance floor.  She certainly was not at all
cartoonlike.  Her wide brown eyes rested briefly on him as he passed;
she blinked, and he got the oddest feeling that it was with surprise at
his presence.

Now why should someone like her be surprised at him?

Then again .. . he hadn't seen too many humans down here, only people
that looked human from a distance.  If he'd gotten closer, who knows
what he would have seen?  Scales, fangs, more tails?  His kind might be
pretty rare, actually.  He might look just as outrageous to her as she
did to him.

What an odd thought that was!  It made him feel acutely uncomfortable.
He'd been trying not to stare at the other creatures around him, but
what if they'd been gawking at him all this time?

Lady Ako closed the door behind him.  Chinthliss stood off to the far
side of the room, and as he took his own place, standing in a kind of
parade rest behind Chinthliss, he saw that the Blue Room contained only
four flat cushions, a very low table with four brown-glazed cups and a
teapot on it, plus a couple of things he didn't recognize.  He wasn't
sure what he should do next, but Lady Ako solved the question for
him.

"Please," she said, in a gentle voice that nevertheless brooked no
argument.  "Sit.  We will have Tea."

The way she said the last word, with a subtle emphasis on it, made him
think that this was not going to be a silly affair with cookies and
cream and sugar.  She made it sound rather like some kind of holy
ritual.

"Ako!"  Chinthliss exclaimed, his voice pained.  "Please, we don't have
time "

"We will have Tea," she repeated firmly.  "You have accepted my
invitation.  You will find the time."

"Don't argue with her, lizard," Fox hissed, and then bowed deeply over
his knees and took his place on one of the cushions.  With a grimace,
Chinthliss did the same; after a moment, Joe did likewise. Fortunately,
a great deal of his martial-arts instruction had been very traditional,
so he was used to sitting Oriental-style on the floor.

"What's going on here?"  he whispered to Fox behind Chinthliss' back,
as Lady Ako clapped her hands and another brown kimono-clad fox-woman
entered, carrying a few more implements on a tray.  This one didn't
have the elaborate hairstyle of Lady Ako, and her kimono-sleeves were
much shorter.

"The Tea Ceremony," Fox breathed back.  "I'll explain it all to you
later; just be quiet and don't fidget.  It's very important and very
meaningful, and you're supposed to be contemplating the cosmos through
all of this."

Well, that confirmed his feeling that this was supposed to be some kind
of ritual or other.  But "contemplating the cosmos"?  How did that have
anything to do with drinking tea?  It must be a fox thing.

The only tea he'd ever had much to do with was in the form of the
gallons of iced tea he usually put away in the summer, and there wasn't
much there to inspire a ceremony.

Oh, well.  Hopefully, Lady Ako would ignore him.  Hopefully, he
wouldn't get involved with this at all.

"Who is this young human, Chinthliss?"  she asked in a quiet voice with
no discernible accent.  "I do not know him."

"He is the pupil of my pupil, Ako," Chinthliss replied with a sigh of
resignation, as she took up what looked like a small bowl and a shaving
brush.  "My pupil is missing; this young one wishes to help me find
him. When last seen, Tannim was Underhill, but we do not know where. 
We fear that he is in some danger.  He has enemies Underhill."

Is he going to say something about Shar challenging Tannim?  Joe
wondered.  Is he going to say anything about Shar at all?

Chinthliss said nothing more, however, and after a glance at Joe, Lady
Ako's eyes twinkled for a moment with some secret amusement.  "Then,
since this young man you bring is new to both Underhill and the ways of
the kits une this will be a new experience for him," was all she
said.

Oh, great.  "A learning experience."  The traditional three-word
preamble to a burial.  Terrific.

It was certainly that.  Joe had never seen anyone make so much fuss
over a cup of tea in his life.  Lady Ako went through so many
ritualistic passes you'd have thought she was concocting the Elixir of
Life.  It made as much sense as gold-plating popcorn kernels by hand.
She was very graceful at it, however; she made the whole thing seem
like a dance.  Maybe that was the point.  Who knew?  He hadn't
understood Fox all the time when he'd been a kid, and this Lady Ako
made a fine art out of creating mystery and obscurity.

Anyway, when he finally got his cup of tea, he was rather disappointed,
much as he had been the first time someone gave him a glass of what was
supposed to be a fine vintage wine.  The tea was odd, rather bitter,
very strong.  On the whole, he would have preferred a cola.  He would
have liked to add sugar at least to make it more palatable, but there
didn't seem to be any, so he hid his grimaces and sipped at it while
Chinthliss and Lady Ako discussed poetry and music.  Joe tried not to
fidget while they exchanged what were probably terribly Meaningful and
Insightful remarks.

It all took hours.

Finally, finally, she clapped her hands and the other fox-woman came
and took the tea things away.  They all sat in complete silence while
the other female carefully placed each object on her tray, bowed, and
took it all away.

But when the serving-fox was gone, and Chinthliss started to rise, Lady
Ako tilted her head to one side and gave Chinthliss a warning look that
made him sit right back down again.

"You are seeking Tannim," she stated.  "I suspect that you are also
seeking my daughter."

Chinthliss wore no discernible expression at all.  "There was some
indication that she has challenged him or intended to challenge him in
the near future," Chinthliss replied levelly.  "I don't see any
demonstrable connection between that and his disappearance.  I am not
making any accusations, nor can I imagine why Shar would want to "

"Please," Ako interrupted.  "Don't take me for a fool.  You know why
Charcoal asserted his rights over her.  You know what he intended to do
with her.  Must I put it in simple terms for you?  He wanted to make
her the enemy of your human, this Tannim.  He sees all that you are,
and ever moves to make himself the image in the darkened mirror.
Charcoal would steal from you whatever he can.  I do not know why." She
glared at him, and the mighty Chinthliss, much to Joe's surprise,
seemed to shrink into himself a little.  "I never knew why.  I never
understood this rivalry of yours."

She drew herself up in profound dignity, and Joe suspected that she had
said a great deal more with those words than he had perceived.
Chinthliss closed his eyes for a moment, as if in acknowledgment of
that.

"Well," Ako said after a moment.  "He did not succeed in his endeavor;
I had far more influence over her than he ever guessed, and she broke
off all connections with him four years ago.  She refuses to see him,
speak with him, or communicate with him in any way whatsoever."

"She did?"  Chinthliss showed his surprise, briefly.  "But in that
case, why challenge Tannim?  What's the point?"

Ako sighed, and carefully arranged the fold of a sleeve before
continuing.  "She maintained some alliances with some of Charcoal's
Unseleighe connections; I do not know why.  She told me that these
alliances amused her.  I think there was more to it than that, and I
can hazard a guess or two.  I believe that these alliances were too
powerful to flaunt, and she was too stubborn to seek shelter with the
kits une from their anger.  One of those connections, an Unseleighe
elven lord named Madoc Skean, wanted your pupil, Tannim.  I warned her
that pursuing this human would have grave consequences; she disregarded
that warning, and due to her meddling, this young man was trapped by
Madoc."

"What?"  Chinthliss roared, starting to leap up off his cushion.

"Calm yourself!"  Lady Ako snapped, before he could get to his feet.
"Do you think that I would have brought you here and led you through
Tea if I thought he was in any danger?  We of the tails have
obligations to this world and the other and to the Balance between
them!"

Chinthliss sat down again, slowly, but Joe sensed that he was
smouldering with anger and impatience.

Ako's nose twitched with distaste.  "I advised Shar that she would have
to remedy the balance herself.  She agreed, and took herself back to
Madoc's stronghold.  Madoc had Tannim but briefly, and he has the young
human no longer.  Further, his allies have scattered, and his own
domain is in confusion.  I don't know where your young human pupil is
right now and I also do not know where Shar is.  I believe that we can
assume that they are together, and that she at least took my advice and
freed him from the captivity that she sent him into."  Lady Ako
directed a chilling look at Chinthliss; the dragon gave her back a
heated one.  "I told her that by leading this human into captivity, she
had seriously unbalanced the scales not only between them, but between
our world and his; that she and she alone would have to bring them back
into balance.  Her actions attracted the attention of the Elders, and
she will be called to account for what she has done before a Council. I
informed her of this, and that how she fares will depend entirely on
what she does now to rectify the situation."

"Did she tell you what she planned to do?"  Chinthliss asked, after a
long moment of silence.  Joe glanced at FX; the kits une gazed at Lady
Ako with rapt astonishment, all of his tails twitching.  Evidently, all
of this was news to him as well as to Joe and Chinthliss.

"No," Ako responded.  "She came to me for advice and I could give her
none, other than what I just told you.  I assume by the confusion in
Madoc Skean's holding that she rescued him successfully, but she has
not attempted to contact me nor to put herself at the disposal of the
Elders, as she would do if she had also returned him to his side of the
Hill."

Chinthliss nodded, slowly.  "So they are still Underhill, somewhere.
Where?  Her own domain?  I assume she has one " He smiled, ironically.
"I cannot imagine her sharing a domain with anyone."

"Oh " Lady Ako said very casually.  "I can.  Eventually.  Still, that
does not matter at the moment.  If she had reached her own domain, she
would have been able to bring Tannim out of Underhill, for she has a
direct outlet to the human side there, in America.  So, she has not.  I
suspect that she is wandering Unseleighe Underhill, searching for a
Gate that will bring her into neutral holdings, or even out of
Underhill.  I think that we must begin looking for her ourselves. Where
she is, your pupil will most certainly be."

"We?"  Chinthliss did jump to his feet this time.  "We?"

Joe blinked.  They had been looking for an ally.  He hadn't expected
one like this.

Wonder how good she is in a fight, he thought.  Then he sized her up
with a practiced eye, ignoring her sex, the fancy outfit, the hair, and
the fox-face, concentrating only on the strength of the muscles, the
lithe body.  Huh.  Pretty good, I bet!

"Of course, we," Ako said with complete composure.  "You didn't think I
would allow you to go chasing off after my daughter without my
presence, did you?"  * * * Shar had slept in less comfortable places
than the front seat of a 1969 Mustang.  The front seat of her Mustang,
for instance.  She had chosen her own car with the view to personifying
the "modern" version of Tannim but after seeing all the electronic gear
in here, and experiencing the greater comfort-factor at first hand, she
was having second and third thoughts.

Tannim woke, rested and cheerful, after a few hours of very deep sleep
so deep that he had hardly moved, and Shar had needed to check him now
and again to make certain he was still breathing.

It was her turn to be yawning.  She was happy enough at that point to
let him stand watch while she caught a quick nap; by then, even she
felt the strains of the past several hours and needed to recharge.

She thought, just as she finally dropped off, that he was watching her
just as surreptitiously as she had studied him, but she was just too
tired to be sure..

She woke with a start at a noise from outside the Mustang, a shuffling
sound, the scraping of a pair of feet.  She sat bolt upright in alarm,
but there was nothing in the amber room with them, the noise was coming
from the hallway outside.  Tannim wasn't alarmed, either.  He just
shook his head at her.

"Don't worry about that sound," he told her, watching the hall door, a
shadow of melancholy in his eyes.  "I know who it is; I ran into him
the last time I was here.  It's just a poor old man that the Unseleighe
left here.  He might be more than half mad by now.  I think he was
English, and I'm afraid he was taken more than a hundred years ago.  I
can understand him barely so he can't have come from much longer ago
than that."

The cursed human.  But why would he be here?  Why would the Unseleighe
put one of their captives here?  It's horribly hard to get to this
place!  Unless they got tired of him, but they wanted to keep him
alive, just in case they ran out of amusements.

That would certainly be like them.  And it wasn't as if they managed to
get too many humans to play with these days.  Not like in the old
times, when they could kidnap people at will, practically.  No, by the
late 1800s, they probably had figured out they couldn't snatch people
off the face of the earth without it being noticed, and when they got a
toy, they kept it, even if they were tired of it.

She forgot all her questions, though, as the old man shuffled into the
room, pushing his broom and dragging his cart.  She felt an unexpected
surge of pity for the old creature and then she caught sight of his
eyeless face.

She stifled a gasp with the back of her hand.  Not that she hadn't seen
the cruelties that the Unseleighe worked on their captives before but
there was something about this man.  He struck something unexpected
inside her, clothed in his rags, with his wrecked face held captive
here, in this magnificent room, a prison whose beauty he would never
see

The contrast was so great, it shocked her.  Tannim watched the poor old
wreck with an expression she could not read.  Then, before she could
say or do anything, he popped the door and was out of the car, walking
quickly, heading for the old man.

She opened her own door and hurried to catch up with him, wondering
what he thought he was going to do.  Tannim was already talking to him,
when she caught up with them.

"..  . aye, sir, an' thankee," the old man was saying, with something
like a smile, if such a heap of misery could produce a smile.  "I hac'
bread enow for many a day, thanks to ye."

Shar couldn't help but try to analyze the accent; English, obviously,
and probably from the Shires.  It was an accent that hadn't changed
much until the advent of a radio in every home.  "Would you like more
than bread?"  Tannim asked, leaning forward with nervous intensity.
"Would you like to be free of this place forever?"

"Free?  Free?"  The old man shook his head, alarmed, and shuffled back
a pace or two.  "There's nought free for Tom Cadge!"  He held up his
hands before his face in abject fear.  "Are ye one o' them black hearts
that ye taunt me wi' bein' free, an "

But Tannim seized one of Cadge's hands and put it over his ear before
the old man could pull away.  "Feel that, Thomas Cadge!"  he ordered
fiercely.  "Is there a single one of the People of the Hills that has
round ears?"

The old man stopped trying to escape and stood as still as a statue
except for the hand that hovered over Tannim's ear.  The trembling
fingers explored the top of the ear as the face assumed an expression
of confusion.  "Well, sir," the old man said very slowly and in great
perplexity, "I dunno.  I don' think so "

"And here, follow me!"  Tannim yanked the improvised rope free, took
Tom's wrist, and led him in a rapid shuffle across the floor of the
amber room, to end up beside the Mustang.  He put the old man's hand
flat against the Mach I's hood.  "Feel that!"  he ordered.  "That's
steel, Thomas Cadge; Cold Iron, from nose to tail!  It's a carriage, a
Cold Iron carriage, and that is how we plan to escape from here.  In
it!  Could any of the Fair Folk, kindly or unkindly, bear so much as
the presence of a carriage like this?  Could any of their magics ever
touch someone inside it?"

Thomas Cadge began to tremble, though Shar could not tell if it was
from excitement, apprehension, hope, or all three.  "N-n-no, sir," he
whispered.  "That they could not, and there's an end to it.  They could
no more bear the touch of yon carriage than I can fly."

"Then come with us, Thomas Cadge," Tannim urged.  "I won't pretend that
there won't be danger we're in a strange and dangerous place, and we
don't know our way out of it yet.  I have to admit to you that we're
just a bit lost at the moment and that the same Fair Folk that put you
here are probably after us."

Thomas Cadge shook his head dumbly.  "I canna think what worse they
could be doin' to me, sir," he replied, in a kind of daze.  "They could
only kill me, eh?"

Tannim sighed.  "I don't think we can get you home.  I don't think you
want to go back to your home, anyway "

Tears dripped horribly from the dark sockets where the old man's eyes
had been.  "Nay, sir, 'tis one'o the things they mocked me with, that
the world I knew is a him nerd years agone an' more.  An' I knew it,
aye, I knew that in that they spake true enough.  Ye think on all th'
auld ballads, an' how a day Underhill is a year in the world above, an'
I knew they spake truly.  Nay, sir, I canna go back "

"But I have friends Underhill, if we can find them," Tannim
interrupted.  "Good people people who will help get rid of your pain
and take care of you.  I'd like to leave you with them.  Will you come
with us, Thomas Cadge?"

"Us?"  The old man was quick; he swung his blind face around, as if
searching for the other person.  "Us?"

"He's talking about me," Shar said hastily.  "Please, come with us I
don't want to leave you here.  If the Unseleighe decide they want
entertainment again, and come back for you " She left the rest unsaid.
"I don't want that on my conscience," she added simply.

And although she had been aghast when Tannim first urged the old man to
join them, she was surprised to find that she meant the offer as the
words left her mouth.  Tannim cast a surprised smile at her, one with
hints of approval in it, and she was even more surprised to find that
the idea of rescuing the old man felt rather good.

Ah, well, why not?  Perhaps the Elders will think of this as a sign
that I am striving to rebalance my earlier actions.

"I ye hac a sweet voice, milady," old Tom quavered shyly.  "If ye will
ha' me, aye, I'll come wi' ye."

It took some work to wedge Thomas Cadge into the backseat of the
Mustang, but once there, he exclaimed over the softness of the seat,
the smoothness of the "leather" on the cushions.  And when Tannim put
an unwrapped sports-bar into one hand, and a bottle of spring-water
into the other, the old man nearly wept with joy.  It made Shar feel
very uncomfortable, and very much ashamed.  To this poor old wreck, the
cramped back seat of the Mustang, the sweet treat, and the bottle of
pure water were unbelievable luxury.  And a few hours ago she had felt
slightly sorry for herself for "having" to sleep in the front seat and
"make do" with a sports-bar and a Gatorade.

Admittedly, it helped that although Thomas Cadge was shabby, he was
clean.  She had to admit to herself that she would not have felt so
sorry for him, nor so willing to take him along, if he had been filthy
and odorous.

Thomas Cadge devoured his meal in a few bites and gulps, and promptly
curled up in the blanket Tannim got out of the trunk.  Tannim came back
with an armload of things besides the blanket; Shar welcomed the extra
crowbar with fervent glee, and with another body in the car, the extra
rations were going to come in handy.

So were the heavy flashlights, the highway flares, the first-aid kit,
and the bayonet-knives he piled into the passenger's-side foot well
Other domains would not necessarily be lighted, and there were plenty
of creatures who would fear the flame of a highway flare.

She swiped one of the breakfast bars and went over to the other side of
the room to open up both doors into the hallway.  When she returned,
Tannim had strapped himself in and Thomas Cadge was asleep in the back
seat with an improvised bandage of white gauze from the first-aid kit
thankfully covering the ruins of his eyes.  Now the old man was truly a
sight to inspire anyone's pity, rather than horror or revulsion.  He
looked like a wounded, weary old soldier from some time in the long
past; still trying to keep up his pride, though the infirmities of his
own body had betrayed him.

Taking her cue from Tannim, she strapped the seatbelt across her
shoulders once she had shut the door.  "Go out those doors, take a
sharp right, and the door to the gardens will be at the end of the
hall," she directed.  "You'll have to use your lights; I'll get out and
open the doors into the garden once we reach them.  Then it's down a
set of four very shallow stairs, and follow the garden path.  The Gate
will be at the end of it, and it will be night out there."

He nodded, and started the car.  The sound of the engine seemed
terribly loud in all the silence, but Thomas Cadge did not even seem to
wake up.  It occurred to her that this must be the first time he had
slept with any feeling of safety or security in decades.

Poor, abused old man.  No home but yourself.  * * * "Now what?"  Tannim
asked from the front seat.

Artificial stars gleamed down from a flat-black sky; the Katschei's
round, silver moon sailed serenely in its track above them.  Although
no one had tended the garden for centuries, most of the plants here
were much as they had been when their creator died; that was part of
their magical nature, to thrive without being tended.  Flowers bloomed
on all sides, all out of their proper season.  Trees had flowers,
green, and ripening fruit, all at the same time.  Perfumes floated on
the faint breeze, and bowers beckoned, promising soft places for
dalliance.  All a cheat, of course there had never been any dalliance
here.  The Katschei's captives had been quite, quite virginal; this was
merely the appropriate setting for a dozen of the most beautiful
maidens in Rus.  The Katschei had surrounded them with fresh beauty and
all the stage-dressing of romance.  The setting was still here, and it
was more romantic in its overgrown state than it had been when neatly
tamed and pruned.

And even if we weren't in a hurry, we have a chaperone, damn it all.

The Gate here was a rose trellis; the rose vines had overgrown it
somewhat, but it was still quite useful.  Roses of three colors
cascaded down over it, saturating the air with their mingled fragrances
of honey, damask, and musk.  Only the Katschei would have had
night-blooming roses.  Only the Katschei would have covered a Gate with
them.

And only the Katschei would ever have placed the Gate back to their
homelands in the heart of the garden his captives had been imprisoned
in.

None of them could use it, of course.  He would never have carried off
a princess with even a touch of magical power.  But he surely enjoyed
the irony: his prisoners danced in and around the very means of their
escape, if they could only have learned how to make it work. Doubtless,
he told them that very thing.  He had been an artist, in his way,
juxtaposing cruelty with beauty, wonder with tragedy.  If he had been
the one who had captured Thomas Cadge, he would not have blinded the
old man.  No, he would have done something artistic with him; perhaps
gelded him, shaped his face and body into that of a young god, and left
him to guard his flock of lovely virgins.

Shar studied the Gate with her eyes closed, testing each of the six
settings.  One, she already knew, came up in Tannim's world, but only a
few miles from present-day Moscow.  However improved current conditions
were, he would have a damned hard time explaining his presence there
and such a destination was likely to be as hazardous in the end as
anything Underhill.

One definitely ended in the domain of the rakshasha; man-eating
shape-changing creatures of India, and another was set for the realm of
the yush.  Bad destinations, both of them; neither she nor Tannim could
ever hold their own against a group of either monsters.

That left three other settings, none of which she recognized.  They all
felt very old, older even than the setting to the other side of the
Hill.  They might represent alliances the Katschei made before he began
his collection of human maidens.

What the heck.

She returned to the car and reported her findings.  "And I can't even
tell where those last three go," she warned.  "The third one is the
nearest, and that's all I can tell you about it."

Tannim only shrugged.  "Door number three sounds all right with me," he
opined, as she got into the car and strapped herself back into her
seat.  "If you don't recognize it, chances are whoever lives there
won't recognize us, right?"

"That's the theory, anyway."  She lowered the window and leaned out
from inside the safety of the steel framework.  Feeling very grateful
that she knew the effect of Cold Iron on her magics, and knew it
intimately, she reached out with a finger of power and invoked that
setting.

The rose vines quivered for a moment, and then lit up from within with
a warm, golden light.  The magic ran through every vein, illuminating
the flowers from within, as Shar stared, transfixed.  How had the
Katschei done that?  She'd never seen anyone incorporate living things
into a Gate before, at least not in a purely ornamental fashion.

Trust the Katschei to do it if anyone would.

"Now there," Tannim said with detached admiration, "was a guy who had
style."

The center of the arbor filled with dark haze.  Whatever lay on the
other side, they were now committed to it.

"Ready?"  she asked, pulling her head and arm back into the steel
cocoon of the Mach I, and rolling her window back up again.  Not that
the glass would provide any protection at all, but at least it gave her
the illusion of shelter.

Tannim managed a wan smile, and a thumb's-up.  "Here we come, ready or
not," he said lightly, and put the Mach I into gear, driving slowly up
to and into the arbor.

Shar repressed a shudder as the dark mist seemed to swallow up the
light, then the headlights, the hood, and crept toward the windshield.
It was just as well that Thomas Cadge was not only asleep but blind.
He'd have run screaming from the car if he'd seen this.

She closed her own eyes involuntarily.  Her skin tingled as the magic
field passed over her; her stomach objected to the moment of apparent
weightlessness.

Then, with a jolt, it was over.

The Mach I bounced slightly as it dropped about an inch, and she opened
her eyes.

And her jaw dropped as Tannim quickly hit the brakes, stopping them
dead.  Just in time, since they had a reception committee, and a few
more feet would have put the Mach I within range of their weapons.

The weapons were the first things that she noticed; the headlights
gleamed from the shining surfaces of huge battle-axes, smaller
throwing-axes, spear points, and knives and swords.

Evidently someone here had sensed the Gate coming to life and had
gathered a crowd to greet whatever came through it.  From the looks of
the group, they had not expected the visitors to be friendly.

"A little strong for the Welcome Wagon, don't you think?"  Tannim said,
as the twenty or so armed warriors stared into their headlights.  * * *
Whoever these fellows had been expecting, Tannim figured it wasn't
Ford's Finest.  They obviously didn't recognize him, Shar, or the
vehicle; the way they glared at the headlights suggested that they
didn't even notice the passengers, only the car, and they didn't know
what it was.

He didn't recognize them, either.  Sidhe of some kind, that was all he
could tell; pointed ears thrust through wild tangles of very blond,
straight hair, and the slit-pupiled green eyes were unmistakable in the
bright lights from the headlights.

Elves.  Why did it have to be elves?

But the clothing they sported was not anything he recognized.  In fact,
by elven standards, it was downright primitive.  That was the amazing
part.

The elves he knew, even the Unseleighe, reveled in the use of ornament
and lush, flowing fabrics, of intricate gold work and carved gems, of
bizarre design and exotic cut.  The elves he'd associated with wore
armor so engraved and chased, inlaid and enameled, that it ceased being
"armor" and became a work of art.  They carried weapons of terrible
beauty: slim, razor-sharp swords as ornamented as their armor, knives
that matched the swords to within a hair, bows of perfect curve and
silent grace, so elegant that their bowstrings sang, not twanged.

These warriors carried small, round shields of plain wood with copper
bosses in the middle; they had no helmets at all, and only corselets,
vambraces, and leg armor of the same hammered copper.  The blades of
their swords and heavy axes also appeared to be of copper or brass.
None of the metal-work was chased or engraved; there was a tiny amount
of inlay work, but not much.  Under the scant armor, they had donned
short-sleeved woolen tunics of bright colors, with bands of embroidery
at all the hems.  They wore sandals and shoes, not the tooled leather
boots favored by the elves Tannim had seen.  Their hair looked as if it
had never seen a pair of scissors; a few of them had it bound up in
braids, but the majority sported lengthy manes that would have been the
envy of any human female.

They seemed frozen in place, staring at the Mach I in horrified
fascination.

"You don't recognize these jokers, do you?"  he asked Shar quietly. She
shook her head.  While the reception committee stayed where it was, he
took a moment to get a look at where they had landed.  Maybe the
setting would tell him something.

Except that the roof took him rather by surprise.

A cave?  He blinked, very much amazed.  Even when an Underhill domain
had originally looked like a cave, those who inhabited it usually took
pains to make it look like something else someplace outdoors, usually.
This was the very first time he had ever seen a domain that looked like
what it was.

It was an awfully big cave, though.  Bigger than Mammoth Cave, or
Meramac, or the largest room in Carlsbad Caverns.  The ceiling had to
be at least a hundred feet up, a rough dome of white, unworked, natural
rock.  The rest of the place was on a scale with the ceiling; from here
to the other side of the room was probably fully half a mile.  The
floor between here and there was not of stone, though, but of wood,
smoothed only by time and wear, and not put together with any level of
sophistication.  In fact, it looked something rather like a deck built
by drunken beavers or very, very bad industrial-arts students.  At
regular intervals a round platform of stone rose above the level of the
wood for about a foot, and these platforms were topped with huge
bonfires.  Oddly enough, though, the fires didn't seem to be giving off
any smoke.  That was the first evidence of magic he'd seen here.

Spitted over these fires were the carcasses of animals; deer, pig, and
cow.  Beside the fires were barrels that he presumed contained beer or
ale but these barrels had not been tapped, as the kegs he knew were.
Instead, the end was open, and people came along and dipped their cups
into the liquid to fill them.

There were fur-covered benches around each fire; some of them even held
prone figures, possibly sleeping off that beer.

Most of the people in this place, however, were staring at the Mach I
with the same postures of surprise as the warriors directly in front of
it.

There were women out there or, at least, Tannim assumed they were
women, since they wore dresses.  Hard to tell with elves, sometimes.
Simple T-tunic dresses, of the same bright colors as the tunics the men
wore.  Over the dresses, most of the women wore a kind of apron.  The
straps were heavily embroidered and were attached to the embroidered
panels of the front and back by large, round brooches of copper,
silver, and gold.  Their blond hair was bound around their foreheads
with ribbon-headbands and covered with small veils; some of them wore
their hair unbound except by the headbands, but the rest wore it in two
braids.  Their ears were as pointed as those of the men, and the
nearest had the same cat-slitted, elven eyes.

One of the nearest men, one who had a gold headband, finally got over
his shock.  He gestured with his copper sword and shouted something to
the rest.  It was a fairly long speech and involved a lot of
sword-waving and pointing at the car.

It wasn't in any language Tannim recognized.  He'd heard his own elves
spouting off long strings of Gaelic curses often enough when they
dropped something heavy on a toe, or a wrench slipped and skinned
knuckles.  Whatever this was, it wasn't Gaelic, and neither were these
lads.  Funny, it almost sounded like the Swedish Chef from the old
Muppet show

Shar narrowed her eyes as the leader continued his speech to the
headlights, pointing and threatening with his blade.  At that point,
Tannim realized something.  Huh.  He's shouting at the car!  Does he
think it's alive?

To test that theory, Tannim tapped lightly on the horn.

With a yell, all of the fighters leapt back a pace and stared at the
front of the car as if they thought it might suddenly shoot out
flames.

"Oh hell " Shar said into the silence.  "I know where we are.  These
Sidhe haven't seen a human for fifteen hundred years!  They sealed
themselves off so long ago that not even Madoc could get them to come
out.  They're Nordic we're in the Hall of the Mountain King!"

Tannim bit off an exclamation as all the clues fell into place.  Right
copper and bronze weapons, copper armor these were some of the first
elves to be driven Underhill and seal themselves off from Cold Iron and
the world above.  "I don't suppose you speak their lingo, do you?"  he
asked hopefully.  Those axes might only be bronze, but they could do
plenty of damage if the fighters decided to attack the Iron Dragon.
They'd go through glass just fine, for instance.  "It would be really
nice if you could apologize for breaking up their party, tell them that
we're just passing through."

"No," Shar said shortly.  "Sorry.  I don't think there's anyone alive
who does understand them without a telepath.  They not only sealed
themselves off from your world, they sealed themselves off from the
rest of Underhill.  Maybe there's a scholar in your world who speaks
Old Norse, or Old Swedish, or Old Finnish but I wouldn't count on it,
and I doubt he's going to suddenly teleport into the back seat."

Tom Cadge?  Tannim thought

"I can't help ye, sir," came an apologetic voice from behind them.
"Whatever yon spouted, 'tis pure babble to me."

Tannim studied the situation: the leader finished his speech, and he
and his followers went back to staring into the headlights, as
transfixed by the light as a bunch of moths.

"Shar, can you reset the Gate behind us to somewhere friendlier?"  he
asked quietly, and glanced out of the corner of his eye at her.  She
bit her lip, then cranked the window down.

Slowly.

Just as slowly, she edged one hand and a bit of her head outside,
turned to face the rear of the car, and stared back at the Gate behind
them.

"There's a very shallow stone platform the Gate rests on right behind
us, just past the rear wheels," she said quietly.  The elves didn't
seem to have noticed her head and hand sticking out; maybe the
headlights were obscuring whatever he and Shar did.  "That was why we
bumped down when we arrived.  The Gate is one of those stone arches
like at Stonehenge, and it looks big enough for an elephant.  I think
the Mach I will fit in there with no problem."

So far, so good.

"One of the settings is the Katschei's palace, obviously," she
continued.  "I just don't recognize the others but if these people have
been cut off for as long as I think, I wouldn't.  There are plenty of
places Underhill where I've never been, and plenty more that sealed
themselves off from the parts that continued to progress.  I don't know
a darned thing about this lot, who their allies were, or anything
else."

"Okay," Tannim replied after a moment of thought.  "Pick one, I don't
care what.  I'm going to drive slowly toward these guys, and see if I
can't get them to clear off enough to give me room to turn around."

This was a "dragon" made of the Death Metal, something these elves had
gone Underhill to avoid completely.  With luck, they were too terrified
of it to touch it.  With equal luck, if he was very, very careful, they
would realize in a moment that he didn't want to hurt them.

Then again, maybe they were too busy thinking about hurting him to
notice.

He put the car into motion, creeping forward an inch at a time.

The elven warriors backed up, an inch at a time, staring at the
headlights.  From the way they glared at the Mach I, they evidently
read this as an aggressive move.  The moment of truth was going to come
when he spun the car and turned his back to them.  Would they rush
him?

They might.  If they realized he was going to escape, they might very
well.

Look, Sven, we killed the Iron Dragon and it had eaten three humans!

"Can you gear that Gate up so as soon as I get these guys cleared, I
can pull a doughnut and get the heck out of here?"  he asked anxiously.
"I don't want to have our back to these guys for more than a minute,
max."

"No argument here."  Shar poked her head a little further out of the
window, as he continued to creep the Mustang forward.  The elves
cleared back a bit more, their eyes narrowing, their knuckles going
white as they clutched their weaponry tighter.

"Got it," she said, after far too long.  The elves in front of him were
beginning to look as if they resented being backed up, and he didn't
think he'd be able to force them back much further.  He took a quick
glance in his rearview mirror, and another over his shoulder.

There was enough room for the maneuver he wanted to pull.  Barely.

Barely is still enough!

"Hold on!"  he said through gritted teeth; then he leaned on the
horn.

The elves screeched and jumped back; he'd succeeded in frightening them
back another precious foot or so.  He floored the accelerator, smoked
the wheels, and slung the steering wheel over.

The tires screamed; the rear slung sideways, then around in a complete
half-circle, while the elven warriors shrieked in answer and threw
themselves wildly out of the way.  Tannim stabilized the spin, until
the nose pointed straight at the dark haze under the trio of huge,
rough-cut stones looming up in front of them.  He let up on the gas for
a moment, then floored it as the elves leapt at the rear of the car
with hideous war cries.

The Mach I roared through the Gate as Tannim saw the blade of a
throwing-axe sail past the rear end, and in the rearview mirror, the
leader buried the blade of his huge battle-axe into the wooden floor,
scant inches from the rear bumper.

Then there was a moment of darkness, and of dizziness, and then they
were through.

He slammed on the brakes quickly, and looked up at a full moon and a
sky full of stars under a snow-filled and seemingly endless plain.

"Maybe you'd better turn on the heater," Shar suggested mildly, and
rolled up the window.

CHAPTER TEN

Tannim reached over and automatically turned on the dash-heater, and a
moment later was grateful that Shar had prodded him to do so.

It must be thirty below out there!

Cold penetrated the window glass, and the side-window on his side
frosted over between one breath and the next.

"Where the heck are we?"  he asked, peering up through the windshield
at the sky.  Only the fact that the stars did not twinkle proved that
this was another Underhill domain and not some place on the other side
of the Hill: Siberia or Manitoba.  Otherwise the sky was a much more
accurate copy of the real thing than the one over the garden they'd
left.

Except that there didn't seem to be any constellations he recognized.

"I have no clue."  Shar craned her own neck around to look up through
the glass at the stars above them.  "No clue at all.  I don't recognize
the stars up there; for all I know, they might not even represent the
constellations, they were just thrown up there randomly.  This could be
an analog of anywhere: Alaska, the Arctic, the Gobi Desert in winter
heck, even the Great Plains.  Your guess is as good as mine."

Maybe if he got out and took a look, he might get a clue.  "Hang on a
minute.  Keep the heater running."  He was going to have to get into
the trunk again, anyway; it was just a good thing the trunk on a Mach I
was so big and he never took his survival supplies out, no matter what.
They were going to need some of his winter emergency stash.

He opened the door and got out in a hurry; his nose was cold and his
fingers were frozen by the time he reached the trunk and extracted two
Mylar blankets and three of green wool.  Army surplus, of course.

There wasn't a lot of snow; it wasn't much past calf-deep at the worst.
It formed an icy crust over long grass, beaten flat, and held down by
the weight of the ice.  He crunched his way back to the front of the
Mustang, hands and feet numbed, grateful for the warming effect of his
armor.  The driver's-side window was completely frosted over, and the
air was so cold it hurt to breathe.  Hopefully they wouldn't be here
much longer; the Mustang's heater was not going to keep up with cold
like this.  He could make do with one of the wool blankets, but old Tom
and Shar had probably better have the Mylar as well as the wool..  .

He pulled open the door and slid in quickly, then turned to Shar and
stared.

"Hi," Shar said, turning a pointed muzzle and a pair of twinkling eyes
at him.  "You didn't seem to have a fur coat around, so I grew my
own."

He dropped his jaw and the blankets; fumbled the latter up off the
floor.  The warm air curled around him as he stared at the lovely
fox-woman with Shar's eyes sitting on the passenger's side of the
Mustang.

An arctic fox, no less, with thick, white fur, and a blunter nose and
smaller ears than the red fox FX usually morphed into.  He stared like
a booby, and she winked at him.

I'm taking this all very well, aren't I?

"Eh, excuse me, young sir, but if ye've brought a bit more blankets "
Tom said humbly from the rear seat as Tannim sat and gawked.  " 'tis
getting' a bit chill here."

He didn't move.  It really was Shar.  And it really was a human-sized
fox.  It was one thing to know intellectually that Shar was half-kits
une but to actually see the proof of it

"Oh, yeah, of course."  Tannim shook himself out of his daze, passed
back the Mylar and one of the wool blankets, and kept one of the wool
ones for himself.  He turned back to Shar and offered her the remaining
blankets.  "Do you "

"Just give me a wool one," Shar replied.  "I may have fur, but I want
to spend some time studying the Gate this time before we jump, and I'll
have to do it from outside the Mach I."

Wordlessly, he handed her the scratchy old wool blanket and left the
little silver packet of Mylar for later.

He couldn't keep from staring at her; this had never happened in any of
his dreams!  Jeez, if anything came of this between him and Shar, he
was going to have one heck of a fascinating love life .. . or did
something like this come under the category of bestiality?

Boy, I hope not.  Otherwise I'm a lot kinkier than I thought.

And to think that he'd had trouble explaining some of his other
girlfriends to his mother!

"Hi, Mom, this is my girl.  By the way, have you got a spare flea
collar around?  And she's due for her shots."  She gets one look at
Shar like this, and she'll be praying for me to go back to Teresa and
her red Mohawk!

Shar didn't seem to be in the least offended by all of his staring.  "I
ah " he began.

"You're taking this very well.  Oh, I don't do this very often around
humans, not nearly as often as Mother," she offered casually.  "Being
brought up around the Unseleighe, I tended to keep to the elven look.
It was bad enough that I wasn't Sidhe; they tend to regard any of the
anthropomorphic forms as very much inferior.  Has Saski Berith FX ever
gone completely fox on you?"

"Not for long," Tannim admitted.  The thick, white fur looked so
incredibly soft and the eyes were still human, still Shar's.  And never
mind that the voice came from a muzzle full of pointed teeth, it was
still Shar's voice.  Shar's clothes, for that matter; she'd left them
on when she changed.  Fascinating.

"It has its points."  She regarded her hands very much fur-covered
human hands, except for the long claws.  "I can inflict a lot more
damage this way if there aren't any weapons available.  And raw meat
and fish taste much better in this form than in the human.  Still, does
it disturb you?"

He shook his head.  "I don't think so."  Belatedly, he remembered what
he'd been looking for when he'd gotten out of the car.  "Oh I think we
might be in a Native American analog to the Great Plains, or to the
steppes of Russia.  The grasses look right, anyway.  Tall grass, I
think, or whatever equivalent grows on the steppes.  If that's true,
there's going to be a lot more Spirit Animals around here the
steppes-herdsmen have a lot of the same shamanic equivalents to the
Native Americans.  That's one massive generalization, of course, but
what the hell."

"Really?"  she said with acute interest.  "I wonder why the Gate went
here, then?"

"Eh, who knows?"  Tom put in.  "The Fair Folk, they ne'er did make
allies an' enemies th' way us mortal folk do.  It don't matter t' them
whether a land were across the sea Above the Hill; 'tis all Underhill
here."

"True enough," Tannim agreed.  "The other possibility is that this
place was abandoned a long time ago.  Who wants to live in eternal
winter?  Even Spirit Animals prefer summer to winter, on the whole.  It
might be that this is only used when someone is doing a Vision Quest in
winter, or needs to make part of the Quest through a winter setting."

"I don' know naught about quests, sir," Tom replied, "but there's a
mort 'o places down here that go beggin'.  Some 'un gets t' playin'
with it, an' it goes wrong, they give it up an starts over, like. Could
be some 'un was tryin' for a nice place for winter hunting', long
gallops an' no places for your horse t' bust his leg, an' this is what
they got."

"Well, if so, it better not be fox hunting that they were planning,"
Shar replied, baring her teeth and snapping playfully.  "This fox might
just chase them!"

Tannim grinned.  It really felt good to be working with Shar, even
though they really knew so little about each other!  He'd have to be
mindful of those teeth, later, when they

The old man had a point, though; it wouldn't do to linger here.  Just
because the place looked abandoned, that didn't mean it was.  And if it
was someone's private hunting preserve, it would be a good idea to get
out of here before the hunter returned.  Not that they needed any more
reasons for urgency!

"Whenever you're ready, Shar," Tannim said quietly.  "Take all the time
you need.  I've got a near-full tank, and at idle, the Mach I won't be
drinking too much gas."  He thought a moment.  "Actually, I have an
idea."

We're both in trouble together.  She's made the effort to get me out.
And just in case I don't make it I can add to her chances to survive
this.  Even if everything goes to hell.

"Hold on a minute before you go out there."  He closed his eyes, sank
his own awareness into the fabric of the Mustang, and began to chant
quietly.

He didn't leave his body this time, but with his mage-sight tapped into
all the myriad possibilities Underhill, he had to blink a few times to
get here and now clear.

Beside him, Shar was particularly disconcerting.  Lovely woman,
flirtatious fox, and something else.  Not quite like Chinthliss'
draconic form; Shar was more delicate, graceful, entirely feminine. But
the resemblance was there.  The three forms washed in and out of focus,
but the strongest was not the draconic but the human, followed by the
fox.

Jeez, and I swore I wasn't going to date outside my own species.  Even
at Fairgrove.  She's so sexy!

He reached out with his real hand; Shar put hers into his without any
prompting on his part.  Physical touch gave him physical linkage; he
pitched his chanting a tad higher and plugged her into the Mach I's
energy reserves.

"Oh!"  she exclaimed.  And then thoughtfully, "Oh .. . my."

He sealed the connections to her and dropped back into the real world.
She was sitting in absolute, Zen stillness, head cocked to one side,
eyes unfocused, her attention concentrated on what he had just given
her.

He watched her face; interestingly, it was as easy to read the vulpine
expressions as the human ones.  Finally, her eyes focused again, and
she came back to reality, turning a face still full of surprise to him.
"Tannim " she said very slowly, her expression full of wonder and
gratitude.  "You didn't need to do that."

He shrugged, covering his mingled feelings.  He was filled with
pleasure at her thanks, and nervousness at having given her the key to
so much of himself.  "Gives us both an edge," he replied.  "Gives us
both a source of power to draw on when we don't want to let the locals
know that we're mages.  Now, you go out there and study that Gate.
Here, take the other Mylar blanket, too.  Put it over the wool.  Sit on
the hood.  The engine'll keep your ah tail warm, and you'll have a pure
and reliable power source to draw on."

Tom took all this in, head tilted to the side, a slight smile on his
face.  "I'll be havin' another bit of a nap, if ye won't be a-needin'
me, eh?"  he said, when Tannim had finished.

Tannim chuckled weakly.  "Sounds good to me, Tom," he said, and the old
man curled up, tucking his head under an improvised blanket-hood so
that his face could not be seen.

Shar laid her hand on the back of his.  "Thank you," she said quietly.
"Thank you very much.  It is a noble gift, and a generous one.  I'll
never forget it."

Then, before he could reply, she popped the door open and slipped out
with a crackle of plastic.  She stood wrapped in Mylar in a reversal of
"woman in a silver dress, wrapped in a fox-fur cape."  He turned the
car around carefully, so that the nose faced the Gate.  Like the one in
the Mountain King's Hall, this was a simple arch of three rough stones
and appeared to be the only structure here for as far as the eye could
see.

She slid up onto the hood of the car and sat just in front of the
air-intake, breath steaming up into the air, pointed ears perked
forward.  Tannim took it upon himself to sit guard for her, watching
with every sense, in every direction except the one she faced, for any
sign of living things.

He sensed her slipping into deep meditation; she must have felt him
putting out warning-feelers, and trusted to him to guard her back.

It was the second such evidence of trust she'd granted him, the first
being when she had slept for an hour or so, back in the amber room.

And despite their precarious situation, he felt his mouth stretching in
a silly grin.

Or maybe not so silly.  Because maybe, just maybe, this is all going to
work out.  . * * * "You will come with me, please."  Lady Ako rose
gracefully to her feet; Joe discovered that he was not as practiced at
sitting on the floor as he had thought, when he tried to follow her
example.

Chinthliss and FX didn't seem to have much more luck than he had,
fortunately, or he'd have felt really stupid.

The kits une-lady led the way not to the door into the nightclub but to
the door through which their kits une-server had come.

"We will use the private entrance," she said, turning her head to speak
over her shoulder.

"I didn't know there was a private entrance," Chinthliss observed with
mild surprise.

Lady Ako smiled slightly.  On a fox-head, that translated to showing
the barest tips of her teeth.  Definitely an unsettling sight.  "You
were also not aware that the majority partners in this establishment
are five-tail kits une I assume."

FX started with surprise.  "I'd wondered about the Tea Ceremony,"
Chinthliss replied with equanimity.  "There aren't too many nightclubs
equipped to perform it at a moment's notice."

Lady Ako said nothing; she only opened the door for them all and bowed
without a hint of servility.  They all filed through, Joe taking the
rearmost position.

The door led into a perfectly ordinary, utilitarian hallway,
white-painted, terrazzo-floored, with ordinary light fixtures overhead.
Odd creatures squeezed by them as they passed, emerging from other
doors along the hall.  Some were in the uniforms of the cocktail
waitresses and waiters, some in full tuxedos, a few in very little
other than strategically placed spangles.

Joe blushed; he couldn't help it.  Bad enough when these females were
at a distance, but they brushed past him without a trace of
embarrassment, full breasts practically in his face.  His cheeks and
neck felt as if he had the worst sunburn in his life, and he was
certain he looked like a boiled lobster.

"Two sequins and a cork," Fox muttered in his ear as they threaded
their way past another group of girls with butterfly-wings in matching
outfits.  "Placement optional."

Joe blushed so hard he could have blacked out from the rush of blood to
his skin.  And elsewhere.

Finally Lady Ako brought them to a door at the end of the corridor and
opened it for them.  Joe had only a moment to notice that the doorframe
seemed filled with a hazy darkness

Then, before he could stop, his momentum took him through.

His stomach lurched for a moment.  A Gate?  he thought in confusion;
then his leading foot came down solidly on the "other side."

His eyes cleared; he shook his head to clear it as well, taking a firm
grip on his weaponry.

"No need," Lady Ako said mildly from behind him.

He blinked, finding himself in bright sunlight on an immaculately
groomed gravel path.  Sculptured mounds crowned with carefully placed,
twisted trees, stone statues, and iron lanterns rose on either side.
Ahead of him was a bridge that arched over a tiny stream, with a curve
as gentle as a caress.  Beyond the bridge, on a perfectly shaped
miniature hill, stood a pavilion with a peaked roof and white paper
walls.

"You are at our embassy here; you have not left your original section
of Underhill," Lady Ako stated calmly.  "We will be able to search for
Shar and Tannim from here and we will be able to alert our allies and
agents in unfriendly domains to watch for them."

It was not until she came around in front of them that Joe saw she had
changed significantly.  She was no longer a fox-woman, but was, to all
appearances, perfectly human.  She still wore her kimono, but she had
discarded the elaborate black hairdo somewhere.  Now she wore only what
Joe assumed was her real hair: a long, unbound fall of fox-red, with a
streak of white, ornamented by a single clasp in the shape of a carved
fox of white jade.  That hair color looked distinctly odd on someone
with otherwise Oriental features.

She moved to the front of the group, but did not lead them to the
pavilion as Joe had expected.  Instead, she brought them, after a short
walk, to another building altogether.

Joe got the oddest feeling that Lady Ako was giving them the runaround.
But why would she want to do that?  Wasn't it her daughter that was in
trouble here?

He put his feelings aside; surely he was mistaken.  It was just because
this was all so weird that the only way his mind could cope with it was
to be suspicious.

This was something like a bigger version of the pavilion; it had a
wide, wooden porch around it, with more little flat tables and cushions
arranged neatly and precisely.  Lady Ako brought them up onto the porch
and took her place on one of the cushions; they did the same, arranging
themselves around her.

"Now," she said, when they were all settled, "we shall have Tea."

"We will not have Tea!"  Chinthliss exploded, shattering the serene
silence and frightening some little birds out of a sculptured bush near
the porch.

Ako fixed him with a look of stern rebuke.  "We will have Tea," she
repeated stubbornly.

But Chinthliss had evidently had enough.  "We will not have any damned
Tea!"  he shouted, leaping to his feet.  "Tannim is missing, you don't
know where Shar is, an Unseleighe enemy of Tannim's and mine wants
Tannim in small pieces, and you want to serve us another bowl of your
damned green glop?"

"She's stalling!"  Joe blurted.

All eyes turned to him including Lady Ako's, and she was not happy with
him or his observation.  But Joe couldn't help it; now that his
subconscious had come up with what was really going on, he had to
report it to Chinthliss, his "superior officer."

"She's stalling, sir," Joe said to Chinthliss, deliberately avoiding
Lady Ako's gaze.  "I don't know why, but she's been taking as much time
as she possibly could to do everything.  It isn't just that tea-stuff,
it's everything; if she really wanted to get something done, couldn't
she have met us at the park?  Or if she had someone watching to see if
we came to the Drunk Tank, couldn't she have brought us straight
here?"

The sheer numbers of people crowding that hallway, too, had been way
out of line.  "She even had everybody working in the club out there in
the hall, just to keep us from moving through it too quickly."  Now he
cast a quick glance at Lady Ako; she looked distinctly chagrined. "Sir,
she's been throwing every single delay at us that she could.  She
probably even had some kind of "emergency' planned, so that she could
shut us up someplace for a while."

Chinthliss stood, towering over her as she remained seated on her
little cushion.  "Well?"  he asked icily.

She averted her eyes.  "I haven't the least idea what the boy is
talking about," she protested, though it sounded to Joe just a bit
feeble.  "Why would I do anything like that?"

"The reasons are as many as your tails, Ako, and only you know which of
them are true."  Chinthliss was clearly out of patience.  "The only
thing useful to have come out of this is that you have told me that
Shar and Tannim are likely together, and that Tannim is pursued but no
longer captured.  Thanks to all this tara diddle of yours, that may no
longer be the case."

He jerked his head a little, and Joe took his place behind him.  FX
vacillated for a moment, then joined them.

"You may do what you like, Ako," Chinthliss said, his voice coldly
emotionless.  "I am going to find a taxi.  I suggest that you do
nothing to stop us."  * * * Tannim's nose and feet were awfully cold,
but the rest of him was warm enough, wrapped up with his armor beneath
it all. Tom Cadge slept blissfully on in the backseat, and Shar
contemplated the Gate from the hood of the car, a fox of white jade
wrapped in shiny silver gift wrap.

She could have been an incense burner, with the fog of her breath for
smoke.  Or a baked potato in a microwave?  No, she's not at all
potato-shaped.  And potatoes explode.  Hope she doesn't do that.

Finally, though, she stirred and climbed carefully down off the hood of
the Mach I. Still wrapped in her silver cloak, she padded quickly to
the door of the car, opened it, and slipped inside.  The Mylar crackled
annoyingly as she slid into her seat.

"This was good.  With leisure to study the Gate, I was able to trace
all of its destinations as to type if not actual location.  Six
settings, so I can't add one of my own," she said.  "One is back to the
place we just came from.  One goes directly to the domain belonging to
the yeti.  We could take that one they have another Gate that goes to
the other side of the Hill but we'd wind up in the Himalayas near
Everest, and the Mach I is neither a yak nor equipped with oxygen and
climbing gear."

"And I'm not a mountain climber," Tannim added.  "We'd have to be
damned lucky to survive the Himalayas long enough for Tibetans, monks,
or some expedition or other to find us and rescue us.  And if we
arrived in the middle of one of their killer snowstorms, we're ice
cubes.  Next?"

"One leads to a swamp.  I don't know who owns the swamp, but I suspect
something like the Will-o'-the-Wisps."  She waited for his reaction,
keeping quite still, so that the Mylar wouldn't crackle.

Tannim shuddered; he'd encountered one, the real thing, not swamp gas.
Will-O'-the-Wisps were not little dancing fairy lights; they were
horrible creatures who lived only to lure living beings into sucking
morasses in the swamps they called home.  Like the other Unseleighe,
they thrived on fear and pain; when their victim was well and truly
trapped, and sinking to his death, they would perch nearby and drink in
the panic and despair as he struggled and died.  The Will-o'-the-Wisp
Tannim had encountered had not been content with trying to lure him
away to his death; when he had not cooperated, it had tried to frighten
him into a morass.  Then it decided to take the matter into its own
hands.

The experience had not been a pleasant one, to say the least.  "I don't
think that's a good idea," he said.  "Next?"

"Nazis," Shar supplied succinctly.

"Pardon?"  he replied, sure that he could not have heard her
correctly.

"Nazis," she repeated.  "And I must admit, this does solve a little
puzzle for me.  The Nazis had a secret program of research into magic
and the occult.  I always wondered where all the Nazi sorcerers went
when the Third Reich collapsed; they were too powerful to have been
caught, the way the Nazi leaders were, but there was no sign of them
after the end of the war.  Apparently, they discovered or built a Gate,
found a vacant realm and took it over for their very own.  They must be
some of the very few mortals to succeed in living Underhill without
elven aid."

"Nazis."  He shook his head.  "I hate those guys."

"I doubt that even the Unseleighe would care for them," Shar replied.
"They were approaching magic as a science, and their attitude would
have turned even Madoc Skean off.  So, that's four of the six
destinations.  The other two end in the Unformed."

Tannim gave that some thought.  The Unformed was the generic term for
pockets of odd, thick mist in completely unclaimed and untouched areas.
There were a few realms that were so large that they were still
surrounded by a dense and impenetrable cloud of the Unformed.  Elfhame
Outremer had been like that and it was out of the Unformed that their
destruction had come, for the mist was psychotropic, and anyone with
strong enough psychic powers could influence it, create things out of
it.

In the case of Outremer, disaster had come at the hands of a seriously
unbalanced child with powerful psychic and magic powers: a deadly
combination, when put together with the Unformed.

Anyone who was both psychic and a mage could find himself facing down
his worst nightmares out in the Unformed.  In the old days, that had
often been a test of a new mage, the test that proved how good his
control was not only of his magic but of himself.  There were a lot of
mages who hadn't survived this particular ordeal.

There were a number of unclaimed pocket domains that were the results
of these trials-by-fire, as well.  The one that they were in might well
be one of those, come to think of it.

"Any idea how big the pockets are?"  he asked finally.

Shar shook her head.  "Not even a guess.  Can't help you.  The only
thing I can tell is that one of them might have more than one Gate in
it.  The other might have a physical connection to another realm.  You
have to remember that it is very likely that every setting on the Gates
there is taken up by a destination we wouldn't like.  The Unseleighe
and their ilk still prove out young mages in trial-by-Unformed."

"Go for the one with the physical connection?"  he hazarded.  "That
would be my choice.  The drawback I can see to the Unformed with two
Gates in it is that there's twice the probability that there's
something really nasty still roaming around in the mist out there, left
over from a trial and twice the chance that some new Unseleighe mage is
going to pop in on us while we're there, and maybe even break the
Unformed down around us while he goes through his trial."

Shar nodded thoughtfully.  "I hadn't thought of that, but you're right.
It's going to be hard enough to keep our own thoughts pleasant; I'd
hate to meet some Unseleighe nightmares.  Actually, a Nightmare may be
exactly one of the things we'd meet out there."

"A Nightmare?"  Tannim had only heard of those, and he had no real wish
to meet one in person.  Sometimes a skull-headed white horse with her
retinue of nine black, man-eating foals, sometimes a grim woman in a
robe of storm clouds, with the head of a fanged horse in place of her
own, she was, as Dottie succinctly put it, mon do bad news."  If you
were lucky, she would only force you to mount and ride her through your
greatest fears.

If you weren't lucky .. .

"Anytime I can avoid a Nightmare, I'd prefer to," Shar replied, echoing
his own thoughts.  "They're classic Unseleighe, so they wouldn't like
the Mustang's Death Metal, but why take chances?"

"Heh.  Mustang versus Nightmare now that's something I'd like the video
rights to!"  He cracked a smile, and Shar pretended to swat him.  "So,
you want to aim for what, then?  The destination with the possible
physical outlet?"

She shrugged.  "They're all bad; that seems the one with the least
risk.  With luck, that physical connection will be to something
neutral."

"Right."  He was under no illusions here; they were in enemy territory,
working without a map, and their best hope was to end up somewhere Shar
recognized.  Only then would they be able to make their way to safe
ground.

And home..  ..

Unexpectedly his throat closed for a moment, as longing for home hit
him like a physical blow, and he bit his lip.  God, he was so tired of
running..  .. Home had never felt so far away, so unattainable; at
least in the past, he'd known where he was, what to expect, what the
limits were.  Here, it was all up in the air.  And he would give almost
anything to see a familiar face.  Would he ever see anyone he knew
again?

"What's the matter?"  Shar asked, quickly putting one soft hand over
his cold one, as his face reflected some of his feelings despite his
effort to hide them.

He shook his head, intending to say nothing, but it came out anyway. "I
want to go home," he whispered hoarsely.  "All this it's all so
strange.  I've never been this far Underhill before.  I've never been
anywhere but Elfhame Fairgrove, Furhold, and I just want to go home."

He couldn't continue.  Fairgrove was a short step, and I was back on my
side of the Hill.  I wasn't lost.  And even if someone was trying to
kill me, it didn't matter, because I was standing by my friends.  He
had to face the reality of the situation: he could die here, and no one
would ever know what had become of him.  He was pretty sure by now that
Shar was on his side, but they could be separated they would be
separated if they were caught and he would die alone here.

"I've never had a home, as such," Shar said wistfully.  "I have my own
domain, but it's really just a place to live.  I've never felt
comfortable enough with the kits une to live in their realm.  I
certainly don't want anything to do with my father, or his allies.  I
have a few friends, but not many.  Maybe that's why I spent as much
time on your side of the Hill as I did."  Her tongue flicked out
thoughtfully.  "Things are simpler there.  At least on your side of the
Hill I know the rules, and they don't change."

"Simpler " He nodded.  "That's not a bad thing."  Then he shook off his
mood of melancholy with a heroic effort.  They didn't have time for
this.  Maybe Hamlet could take time in the middle of a firefight to
soliloquize, but real people had to keep on running and shooting.

"I'll go set the Gate," she said, as if reading his mind.  "Be back in
a few seconds."

She slipped out of the blanket and the car at the same time; a rush of
cold air numbed his ears as she opened and shut the door.  She stood
beside the Mustang for a full minute, staring at the stone arch, one
paw-hand raised to it, palm outward.

The stones began to hum.

He didn't realize what it was at first; he thought that the cold might
have introduced a new note into the rumbling of the Mach I's engine.
But then, as the sound built, he realized that it came from the stones
in front of him, a deep note just barely in the audible spectrum, that
vibrated in his chest and made his hands and feet tingle.

Shar slipped back into the car, bringing with her another rush of cold
air and a sparkle of frost.  "Whenever you're ready."

He put the car in motion, creeping slowly forward, as the dark mist
filled the space defined by the three stones.  This scene was beginning
to take on the uncanny feeling of familiarity; as the Gate swallowed up
the lights, the hood, crept toward the windshield, he simply braced
himself slightly, the same way that he braced himself against the lurch
of an airplane take-off.

This time, though, the moment of disorientation was much shorter.  The
blackout lasted barely long enough to blink twice, then the Mach I
moved smoothly into a thick, gray fog, illuminated from everywhere and
nowhere.

He hit the brakes as soon as the tail cleared the Gate; red light
washed up behind them as the brake-lights reflected through the mist.
He killed the headlights and turned off the engine.  There was no point
in advertising their presence here with the glare of headlights, even
though the fog swallowed up most of the light.  Behind them, the Gate
was a smooth arch carved of white stone, easily lost in the mist of the
Unformed now that the haze of activation was gone.

That was probably the point.  If a mage blundered too far away from the
Gate, he'd better be able to use his powers to find it again, or he was
going to be in trouble.

The Unseleighe were great believers in Darwinism, it seemed.

"Tannim " Shar said suddenly.  "Look at what the mist is doing!"

At first he wasn't sure what she meant; a moment later, though, as he
followed her gaze to the hood of the Mustang, he realized what it was
she saw.

The mist of the Unformed curled away from the Mach I, leaving a shell
of clear space between the metal and the mist.  Was the car repelling
the mist?  Was the mist reacting to the metal, trying to avoid it?  The
mist was charged with raw magical energy, after all.  Or was the mist
reacting to the spells of protection on the Mustang?

Whatever the cause, here was a visible sign that the Mach I affected
the world Underhill, one that he didn't need to invoke mage-sight to
read.  He watched in fascination as the mist pulled back into itself,
for all the world as if it reacted in pain.

Shar's features blurred briefly, and returned to the human ones he knew
best.  She had shifted as suddenly as a sigh, and as noiselessly as the
mist.  He was not entirely certain she had done so consciously.

"Probably we ought to both recon this situation," Shar said into the
silence.  But she made no move to leave the Mustang.

He didn't blame her; there was something about this mist, uncanny,
sinister.  Sad, too; his depression returned in full force, and it was
all he could do to keep from giving up and curling up into a fetal ball
right then and there.

Right.  And if you do that, there's no way you're going to get out of
here, bonehead!

Shar stared out the window, her own expression pensive, her eyes full
of secrets.

"Your parents," she said out of nowhere.  "I watched you with them, and
I envied you for having two such people to care for and who cared for
you.  I could not understand why you left your home so eagerly."

It was not a question, but the questions were there, nonetheless. "It's
hard to explain," he told her, knowing that it sounded feeble. "I think
the world of my folks, and I know that they are prouder of me than they
ever let on, but " He snorted, as a little more of his depression
lifted.  "This is really going to sound trite, but they honestly don't
understand me."

"Well, you are a mage, and they are good, normal folk," Shar replied
sensibly.

But Tannim shook his head.  "That's only part of it.  They would never
understand me, even if I wasn't a mage, but that makes it
astronomically worse.  They don't know why I do what I do for a living,
test-driving, all that.  Half the time they think I'm going through
some kind of a phase, and after a while I'll get tired of all this and
become an accountant, or a car salesman."  He ran his hands through his
hair in distraction.  "They worry about me, that I'll wake up some day
as an old has-been driver with nothing to fall back on.  And that's
just the surface problem."

"And the deeper problem?"  Shar prompted.

"There's the magic, the Sidhe which I can't tell them about."  He
clutched his hair.  "I've tried; they literally don't hear it.  Won't
hear it.  I'm afraid to try anymore; they might think I was on drugs or
something.  Mom half hinted at that the last time.  Usually they just
act like they think I'm talking about a book I read or some movie."

"But they love you " Shar said blankly.

"Love doesn't mean understanding," he replied, letting go of his hair
and staring at his hands.  "They don't share the same values I have
anymore.  How can I pay any attention to the package a person comes in,
when so many people I'm proud to call my friends aren't even human?
Then I get home, and Dad starts bitching about the "foreigners taking
over' and signs a petition to forbid every other language in America
but English.  And that's only the start of it.  Dad's a great man but
he's coming down with hardening of the attitude; looking for some group
to blame for problems, and not bothering to do something about the
problems.  Instead of trying to fix things, he's bitching about it."

Shar's mouth formed into a silent "oh."  Tannim's lips twitched.
"That's one reason why I try to keep my visits brief, because I know
that I let things slip that they worry about.  Mom isn't happy about my
lifestyle; Dad isn't happy that I've turned my back on three
generations of Drakes farming in Oklahoma.  I'm not happy knowing that,
deep down, they wish I was someone more like Joe."  He rubbed the side
of his head unhappily.  "Sometimes I think I'm a changeling.  I
couldn't be more of a misfit in my family if I'd been left on the
doorstep in a basket."

Shar was very quiet for a long time.  "But I thought you said "

"I said I loved my parents.  I do.  And they love me.  They just don't
understand me."  He laughed weakly.  "Oh, Shar, it's awfully difficult
to explain.  Sometimes you can care a great deal about someone, and
simply not understand him at all.  Especially if you're related to
him."

She blinked at him.  "Forgive me for saying earlier that life in your
world is simpler."

"Life is ne'er simple, lass."  Tom Cadge spoke softly from the rear
seat.  " "Twasn't when I was a lad, and likely has got no better.
There's more grief 'twixt relations than strangers."

"Don't misunderstand me.  I love my folks, Thomas," Tannim protested.
"I just don't fit in their lives anymore.  Their home just isn't home
for me now.  I don't belong there anymore.  I can't go back without
feeling like an alien."

"Well, now, that's as it should be, eh?"  Tom cocked his head to the
side and turned his bandaged face toward Tannim.  "The chick don't go
back in the shell, do he?  Nor the wee bird go back to his mam's nest
come spring again?  Ye can't go back to a home, lad, not once ye be a
man grown.  Ye have to make your home, your own home, or it ain't
really your home, if ye take my meanin'."

"What about those who've never had a home, Thomas Cadge?"  Shar asked
softly, with a note of bitterness in her voice.

Tom turned his head toward her, creating the odd impression that
despite his blindness, he still saw right through the layers of bandage
over the grisly ruins of his eyes.  "Those who've never got a home has
all the more reason to make one, milady," the old man said with odd
gentleness.  "Even an old man, half mad an' all blind has a reason t'
make a home.  An' them as never got a home, well, mebbe they ought t'
look to them as knows what a good home is, to show 'em how t' build
one.  "Specially sum mat who's a friend.  Bain't that what friends be
for?"

Tannim stared at the swirling mist as the silence lengthened.  "Well,"
he said, finally, "Before we get out of the Mustang, we'd better get
ourselves in a better mood.  That mist out there is going to react to
what we're thinking, and even more to what we're feeling.  The car's
got shielding enough to keep us from creating any nightmares, but once
we get out to study the situation "

Shar straightened visibly, and her face took on an expression of
determination.  "Absolutely right.  I think we're letting this
miserable place get to us.  And absolutely the last thing I want to do
is conjure up my wretched father out of the Unformed."  She made a
grimace of distaste.  "One of him is bad enough; two would be
unbearable."

"Oh, I don't know," Tannim replied, managing a chuckle.  "From what
you've said, if you created a second Charcoal, they'd be so in love
with each other we'd never have to worry again."

Shar actually smiled.  "You have a point," she agreed.  "Still, let's
not take any chances."  She pulled her hair back from her face, and
closed her eyes for a moment.  "Right.  I assume you don't know
anything about the Gates, since you haven't volunteered to examine them
with me."

Tannim spread his hands helplessly.  "Not a hint.  Haven't the vaguest
notion how to look into the things.  I make my own Gates when I need
'em, but only back in America.  However, I do know a bit about the
Unformed, since Fairgrove got involved in the cleaning up after the
disaster at Outremer.  If the Gate doesn't pan out, I can probably find
that physical connection to the next realm."

"You can?"  Shar brightened visibly.  "Oh good I can tell there's one
out there, but I can't locate it."

"Then I think we have our two tasks laid out for us; nothing like a
proper division of labor.  And I believe I'm ready for the mist, if you
are."  Tannim put his hand on the door and gave Shar an inquiring
glance.

"As ready as I'm likely to be."  She sighed, and opened her own door
with an expression of resolution on her face.

The Unformed was not precisely "mist" as any human knew it.  It was
neither cold nor damp.  It had no odor, no taste, nothing to feel in
fact, if Tannim had closed his eyes, he would not have known it
obscured everything in every direction.  Anything more than three feet
away might just as well be invisible.  As he understood it, the theory
went that the mist was a physical manifestation of the available energy
in these pockets of Underhill.  Raw energy at that; the theory was that
once that energy was given a form, it ceased to be random and started
to obey normal laws of physics.  Until then you had this mist,
potential in its purest form.

It tried to trick you into giving it a form, too.  There were phantom
shapes out there, shapes that teased the mind and made it strive to put
definition on the vague shadows.  The more the unwary person peered,
the more his mind tried to match the half-seen shape, the more the
half-seen shape fitted itself to the image in a watcher's mind.

In the case of one particular child, in a sea of Unformed mist outside
Elfhame Outremer, those images had been very terrible..  ..

Forget that.  Don't look out there.  Don't let it trap you.  Just hunt
for the pathway into the next domain.  Shar might be the expert on
Gates here, but that was something he could do, though it was a tricky
bit of work, and akin to echolocation.

There was a peculiarity to the rock walls of Underhill pockets; they
reflected magic.  Real rock didn't do that, so Tannim could only assume
that the caves of Underhill were not exactly made of rock.

I wonder if they only look like caves because that's what the creatures
who first came to this place expected.  The mist was psychotropic,
after all..  .. If you had enough mist, could you form rock walls out
of it?

But that wasn't getting anything done.  The point was that the rock
walls reflected magic, but a place where the rock wasn't obviously
didn't.  So he had to become the human equivalent of a bat.

He walked around to the front of the car, settled himself on the hood
of the Mustang, absentmindedly pulled a cherry-pop out of his pocket,
and unwrapped it.  He tucked the cellophane neatly back in his pocket
and the candy in his cheek, crossed his legs, and went to work.  * * *
Shar faced the Gate, the Mach I a solid and reassuring presence behind
her, and closed her eyes, sinking her awareness into the fabric of the
pale stone arch.  One of the settings she already knew; the frozen
plain they had left behind.  Her first action would be to count the
number of settings this Gate had; after that, she would worry about
where they went.

She tended to think of them as directions in three dimensions; forward
and back, left and right, up and down.  "Filled" settings pulsed with
power; the "empty" places where settings would be when there were any
such empty slots, which wasn't often in a public Gate held power, but
not as much, and always felt to her as if she touched the surface of a
glass, warmed by sunlight, holding a gentle glow of magic.

"Up" is the plain that we just left.  Damn, the rest are active, too.
No chance to add a setting of my own.  Ah well, it had been a faint
hope, after all.  In pure reflex, she checked "down" first, and got a
nasty shock when she recognized it for what it was.

One of Charcoal's domains?  As a destination for us?  I don't think so!
Of course, as a powerful mage as well as a dragon, her father had more
than one little pocket kingdom.  He might not be using this one; as she
recalled, it was smallish, as small as the ersatz apartment she had
built for herself.  Charcoal preferred grander dwellings; he mostly
used this one as a place to leave people he wasn't sure were guests or
prisoners.  It was one of the places he had graciously allowed her to
use when she was a child.

It's tempting, though.  There's at least one setting on every Gate he
builds that goes someplace neutral.  Charcoal might be insufferable,
but he wasn't stupid, and he always kept his options open.

Long familiarity with the Unseleighe let her quickly identify the other
four destinations.  They all were Unseleighe Sidhe holdings, and all of
them places she had visited, thanks to her father's habit of playing
both ends against the middle: the Shadow Tower of Bredna, the Hall of
Tulan the Black Bard, the private hunting preserve of Chulhain Lorn,
and Red Magda's stud farm.

Best not ask what she raises.  She might feed you to them.

All of them grim destinations, and all too small to escape from
readily.  Smaller, even, than Madoc Skean's holding.

The one saving grace was that none of the four were on good terms with
Madoc.  In fact, Red Magda and Tulan had little private feuds with him
that virtually guaranteed they would turn him away with a curse if he
came to them on the trail of Tannim.

Of course, this did not mean that they would help Tannim.  Since the
young human was an ally of Keighvin Silverhair, they would probably be
perfectly happy to hunt him down on their own.  Magda hunted any humans
she could find or kidnap just on general principles; she preferred the
Great Hunt over any other kind.  And as for Shar well, they'd probably
treat her the same as a human.

I have no notion how I'd stack up against them.  Rather not find out by
meeting them head-to-head, either.

It was rather interesting, though, to discover that she recognized all
the destinations of this Gate.  Were they finally getting back into
familiar territory?  That could be good or bad news.  Good, if it meant
finding a neutral destination at last bad, if all that happened was
that they worked themselves deeper and deeper into the holdings of the
darker creatures.  Shar had heard rumors of those who'd worked
themselves into places where even the Unseleighe Sidhe were afraid to
go.  And once, when she was a child, her father had returned silent and
stiff from one of his own journeys of exploration and he would not talk
about where he had been, only sealed off the setting on the Gate that
had led there.  Now that was an unsettling recollection.

It almost made a foray into one of Charcoal's holdings into a tempting
idea.

She disengaged her awareness from the Gate carefully, making sure to
leave behind no traces that she had been there.  No magical
"footprints" or "fingerprints"; nothing to betray her presence.

Moving that circumspectly took time.  She only hoped that Tannim had
been able to find the physical opening out there in the mist, since
this Gate was pretty much a washout.  Of course, they could always go
back to the plain and try the other pocket of the Unformed that Gate
went to.  They might have better luck there.

Behind her, she heard Tannim stirring, the shh-ing of denim on the hood
of the Mustang.  Good!  He must have found the opening into the next
domain.  They could compare notes, make some further plans.

The sound of fabric sliding over the metal ended with the faint thud of
sneakers hitting the soft, white sand of the ground of this place.  She
was turning to greet him when a hint of movement out of the corner of
her eye caught her attention.

Is there something out there?  She peered into the mist, trying not to
think of anything in particular, but whatever had been there was no
longer there.

She still wasn't certain if the momentary curdling of mist had been the
result of the mist "wanting" her to see something, or if it had been
something very real slinking through the fog, when Tannim screamed.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Tannim slid off the hood of the Mach I feeling rather pleased at how
quickly he had found the entrance he'd been searching for.  He was
straightening up, his defenses momentarily down, when the mist-thing
streaked out of nowhere and sank its teeth into his arm.

He never got more than a glimpse of it; his brief impression was of a
long, lean creature about the size of a Great Dane, as white as the
mist, and impossibly fast.

It was possessed of an obscene number of sharp, white teeth, thin as
razor blades, most of which seemed to be scraping his arm bones.

Maybe it was a giant white shrew, or a wild dog or an albino weasel.
More likely it was someone's worst nightmare.  That was certainly the
way Tannim felt when the thing's teeth met in his arm as it knocked him
to the ground.

He screamed, unable to stop it, no macho posturing or stoicism he
screamed.

He didn't resist the fall, he continued it, rolling over on his back
and kicking at the beast as hard as he could with both legs, feet
planted firmly in the creature's belly.

The thing let go of his arm as the breath was knocked out of it in a
fetid puff, and the force of his kick sent it sailing over his head.

Into the side of the Mach I. The monster screeched like a chainsaw
ripping through an oil barrel.  For a moment, it hung over the front
fender, body convulsing as it encountered some of the protective
spells.  It screamed again, and a crackle of energy arced across its
body, a tiny display of fireworks that obscured whatever the beast had
looked like.  Not that he was in any shape to notice details.

In fact, he wasn't in much shape to notice much of anything, since he
was lying on his side, eyes unfocused, trying not to scream loudly
enough to attract another one of the creatures.

The thing hung on the fender for a few more moments, then it slid to
the ground and burst into flame.

Within seconds, as Shar ran toward him out of the mist, hands ablaze
with magical energies, it was gone, leaving nothing behind to show it
had ever existed.  Except, of course, for the ragged remains of his
shirtsleeve, which hardly amounted to more than a few ribbons of cloth
over the armor.

And the bleeding puncture wounds, where the beast's teeth had gone
through the armor.

He clamped his teeth shut on his own pain and stared at the sluggish
blood dripping down his arm in shock as the pain turned to numbness,
though he knew that state was only temporary.  The shock was not only
because he had been wounded, but because he had been wounded through
the armor.

Shar dropped to her knees beside him but did not touch him.  "Is that
arm broken?"  she asked, her voice tight.

He shook his head, unable to speak, for now the pain began all over
again, worse than before, and his arm felt as if he had he had

Ah, God this hurts!

With that assurance, Shar carefully picked his arm up by the wrist, and
with one crooked finger, deftly made a slit along the joining of the
top row of scales.  The armor peeled back from his wounded arm,
revealing a half-circle of wide, oozing punctures, all of them turning
an ugly shade of purple around the edges.

"Is that poison?"  he asked in pain-filled and masochistic
fascination.

"No," Shar replied absently, "just fast bruising.  Mother taught me
some Healing; I'm not in her league, but let me see what I can do."  *
* * Shar's reaction was automatic and immediate: I've got to help him!
Without a second thought, she dashed in the direction of the scream,
war-magics ready and burning to be thrown, only to see Tannim go over
on his back and flip his assailant against the fender of the Mach I.
That was the end of that; Shar didn't need to watch the beast convulse
and burst into flames to know that it was finished.

She dropped down beside him and went to work, ignoring the blazing
mist-creature, although she thought it was a species that she
recognized.  The beast, before it had vanished, seemed to be one of the
guard creatures Charcoal had created, or else something cooked up along
the same plan.  Charcoal did that sort of thing on a regular basis,
rather than recruiting other creatures to his service.  In fact, when
she was young, he had made a habit of going to pockets of the Unformed
specifically to create such monsters and chimera, bringing them back to
his own domains to serve as watchdogs.  Madoc Skean had gone Charcoal
one better, creating the Faceless Ones the same way.  Both of them
preferred the expenditure of personal energy in order to obtain
servants that were utterly loyal.  The only trouble with these little
expeditions was that it was quite difficult to keep the new creations
rounded up.  They always lost one or two every couple of trips, leaving
the creatures roaming the mist, waiting for unwary prey.

That explains why Father had a Gate set here, she thought, as she
engaged the little set-spell that parted Tannim's armored scales and
slit it along the top of his wounded arm.  This pocket of the Unformed
must be particularly sensitive.  The mists were not uniformly
psychotropic, and those who used them to create living creatures kept
the locations of the best mist pockets as a valuable resource.

She couldn't help but notice Tannim's start of surprise at her ability
to open his armor.  But at the moment her greatest concern was with his
damaged arm; if that creature really was one of Charcoal's "shrogs"
(her father's "clever" name for a thing based on shrews and dogs what
an idiot), the wounds could and would go septic in a heartbeat, and
there wasn't exactly an emergency room with antibiotics handy.

She sank quickly into a Healing trance, held her hands around the
wounds, and forced Healing energies into his cells.  She worked from
inside out; that way she wouldn't Heal the wound only to leave the
infection still active inside.  There was no telling if there were any
more of the creatures nearby, nor when they would appear if there were
more, but Tannim's injury had to be dealt with now.

As she penetrated his defenses, she realized something else.

There was something very erotic about this; it was the first time that
she had Healed anyone other than herself of a serious injury.  Shar had
closed up other peoples' cuts and soothed abrasions, but this was
deeper, much deeper.  She was aware of him in a way that she had never
experienced with anyone else; the touch of her hand on his arm sent
pulses of sensuous electricity through her arms; she felt what he felt
directly, from the tiny ache where he'd hit the back of his head, to
the caress of the silk-smooth armor over the rest of his body,
including the places where it was so closely fitted that it held
swelling down.

Hmm.  They didn't allow for it to expand much, did they?

She had never been so aware of a male in her life, or on so many
different levels.  Not the level of telepathy; neither of them were
telepaths.  No, this was on a visceral level, where the instincts
lived.  Was this how an empath felt?  Small wonder most of them got
into Healing of one sort or another and pursued all Arts of the body.

She wasn't good enough to mend the bites completely; she cleaned out
the sites of possible infection, dulled down the pain, and stopped the
bleeding.  Then she accelerated the cell growth as much as she had the
skill and the power to do.  In another day, he would have a half-circle
of mostly healed punctures, and in two, a half-circle of tiny scars.

She got into the car for a bottle of water and washed the blood off him
with it, then got a pad of gauze from the first-aid kit.  Figuring that
nothing preventive was going to hurt, she dabbed each wound with a spot
of antibiotic salve, then wrapped the arm in a thin layer of gauze and
resealed the armor over the whole.

It was only when she looked up from the final motions of sealing up the
scales that she looked up to see his expression of complete
disbelief.

"How are you doing that?"  he asked, voice a little harsh from the
screams, but harsher still with suspicion.  She would have been a
little hurt by that suspicion if she hadn't been well aware that she
would feel the same if a secret of hers had been uncovered.  "How did
you know how to unseal my armor?"

"Very rapid deductive reasoning," she replied as she let go of his arm,
and he flexed it to test it, wincing at residual pain.  "You're
Chinthliss' pupil, there are only a limited number of ways you can seal
armor like this, and I know all of the ones Chinthliss uses.  The
easiest would be the most logical, since you're obviously going to have
to get in and out of it at least once a day, and you might have to get
into it when you're hurt.  Like now.  So I tried the first spell, and
it worked."

She tilted her head to the side and waited for his reply.  It wasn't
long in coming.

"Oh " he said, "but Chinthliss told me that no one had ever had armor
like this."

"He was right," she told him.  "No one has.  Most people simply work
spells into standard armor.  A few more have enchanted Kevlar, or
something else high-tech.  No one has ever combined anachronism,
high-tech, and magic to make something like this.  But there are still
only a limited number of ways armor like this can be opened."

Tannim sighed explosively.  "Well, damn.  And damn it again; he told me
the armor wouldn't stop everything, but I'd gotten kind of used to it
doing just that."

Shar nodded, with sympathy this time.  She recalled the time that she
had first discovered that she was not invulnerable in her draconic
form.  It had been a painful revelation.  Literally.

"It's not going to stop everything maybe in your world, but not here.
Any time you have a situation where there's a seam, there's a
weakness," she told him.  "I still have scars on my ankle to prove the
truth of that."

"I'm sorry," he said, as if he meant it.  "You shouldn't have scars
anywhere."

She held her breath, and looked up, to meet his intensely green gaze.
"Oh," she said, unable to think of anything else.

What are you doing, Shar?  You're a kits une you're supposed to be
unpredictable, wild, willful.  What are you getting yourself into?

Just because you've always found this man fascinating, intriguing just
because he's the only male you've ever imagined trusting at your back
and at your front that's no reason to sit here like a love-struck
ninny, gazing into his eyes.

That's no reason to want to kiss him.  Or to pull him right down next
to you on this relatively soft ground and finish stripping off that
armor.

Like hell it isn't!

"Bloody hell!"  said a voice just above her head.  "What was that
'orrible screeching?"

Tom Cadge had his nose stuck out of the open window; apparently he'd
managed to figure out the mechanism to lower it.  Both she and Tannim
jerked upright; he with a curse as it jarred his arm, and she with a
curse for a different reason entirely.

"Nasty piece of Unseleighe work," Shar said, as she got up off the
ground and offered Tannim her hand.  He was not too macho to accept it,
or to accept her help in getting to his feet.  "It bit Tannim," she
continued, trying to sound matter-of-fact.

"I'll be all right," Tannim added hastily.  Then, in an undertone, "I
will be all right, won't I?"  he asked Shar.  A stray lock of hair fell
over his worried eyes, and his complexion was pale.  "I don't feel all
right."

"Don't play any tennis with that arm for a little, and go have a
Gatorade.  You're just in shock," she assured him.  "In fact, it might
not be a bad notion to move the car just to that opening you found, and
then sit there for awhile.  The intersections of domains tend to be
rather chaotic and stressed, and I think perhaps that the Mach I won't
make as much of a disturbance there."  She gave him a sharp look, as
she noticed that he was leaning very heavily against the side of the
Mustang.  "I can drive, if you can direct me."

"I think maybe you'd better," Tannim replied honestly.  "I really don't
feel very good at the moment."

He went around to the passenger's side and opened the door with a
little difficulty.  She slid into the driver's side and found the keys
waiting in the ignition.  As soon as she settled herself, she cast
another long look at him, and did not like what she saw.  Pale and
sweating, he was obviously still in a lot of pain, and very shocky.
"Here," she said, fishing behind the seat for another Gatorade.  "Just
tell me where to go, and I'll get us there.  You rest and when we get
there, you should take a longer rest."

"I'm not going to argue," Tannim told her, as he leaned back in his
seat and closed his eyes.  "Not at all.  Forward, about two o'clock."

She followed his directions, murmured between gulps of Gatorade,
through the absolutely directionless white mist.  Finally, the rock
wall of the boundary loomed up in front of them, gray and smooth,
rather than craggy as a natural rock face would be.  "Right," Tannim
said.  "I mean, go right, along the wall.  You'll find it in a
moment."

She did; in fact, she spotted the place where the opening was by the
turbulent swirling of the mist ahead of them.  The mist itself was no
longer white or drifting; stained with pale colors and random shifts of
light, it eddied and flowed restlessly.  It still avoided the Mustang,
however, which was comforting; anything that lived in it would probably
be as vulnerable to Cold Iron as the creatures spawned in the quieter
areas.

She parked the car and turned off the engine.  "Rest," she told him.
"The problem might just be a bit of shock; give your body and mind a
chance to catch up with what I did."

He started to protest, then evidently decided better of it.  "How bad
are ye hurt, lad?"  Tom Cadge asked with evident concern.

"Not too bad," Tannim replied, as Shar rummaged for a Gatorade of her
own.  "Been hurt worse."

"But we are not going any further until you are completely ready for
anything," she told him in a voice that would permit no argument.  "I
never got a chance to tell you back there, but we've got more than one
choice.  We can try this unknown pocket of Unformed ahead of us, or we
could try something that has well, risk.  The Gate goes to one of
Charcoal's smaller domains.  He might be there, he might not but it's a
place I know, and I can get to neutral territory from there."

He sipped his Gatorade, a lock of his hair falling over his eyes, as he
sat in thoughtful silence.  "So, the choice is the total unknown,
versus a place where we know there's an enemy, one who may or may not
be home right now."

She grimaced, but nodded.  "If it were me I'd go for the mist.  I
haven't been in that particular place for a long time, and Charcoal may
have laid some nasty traps for the unwary in there.  And anyway, even
if he isn't there, his serving-creatures will be, and I don't think I
could pass them anymore.  But I thought you ought to know that the
option is there; you have as much say in this as I do.  If you think we
should risk the known danger for the sake of a known way out "

But Tannim shook his head decisively.  "I'd rather take the unknown.
You probably know Charcoal better than anyone else, and I'm strongly in
favor of trusting an expert."  He raised an eyebrow at her.  "I take it
that the rest of the destinations were equally unattractive?"

She smiled thinly and recited the other four destinations.  His eyes
widened for a moment at the mention of Red Magda and the Black Bard,
confirming her guess that he just might know something about them.

And they just might know something about him, too.  I rather doubt that
they want to make certain he gets invitations to all their weddings and
bar mitzvahs.

"The last possibility is to go back where we came from," she finished.
"We could try the other settings on that Gate.  The drawback is that if
someone is following us, we might meet them."

"The other side of this rock wall sounds better all the time," Tannim
said after a significant pause.

"A little rest, first," Shar said firmly.  "You need it."

And I am not going to drive his car into another domain.  If there's
any trouble I know who the good driver is in this car, and it isn't me
or Thomas Cadge.  * * * Chinthliss stalked off down the garden path,
with Joe right behind him, and Fox making a reluctant third.  "You
really shouldn't do this, you know," FX said plaintively.  "Lady Ako
has some powerful friends.  She could cause us a lot of trouble."

Chinthliss did not reply.  His stiff back said it all.  As their feet
crunched along the gravel path, Joe glanced from side to side,
nervously.  He could not believe that Lady Ako would let them go so
easily after detaining them for so long.

He was right.  Two massive guards in fancy lacquered armor stepped,
literally out of nowhere, to bar their path.  It was really weird; they
unfolded out of the air on either side of the gravel walkway, then
stepped onto it with curved swords bared.  Chinthliss stopped abruptly;
Joe loosened his weapon in its holster.

"I told you she could cause us trouble!  We're doomed," Fox said from
the rear of the group.

With a growl, Chinthliss turned abruptly; Joe stepped out of the way,
leaving Chinthliss face-to-face with FX.  The kits une backed up a
couple of steps after one look at Chinthliss' expression of rage.  The
guards didn't move, and Joe opted to disregard them for the moment, in
favor of keeping Chinthliss from disemboweling Fox right then and
there.

Fox held up his hands placatingly.  "Hey, it was just a comment, you
know?  A little information?  A bit of a reminder?"

Chinthliss took another step towards him.

Fox's hands transformed into a pair of fur-covered paws.

"Wee paws for station identification?"  FX continued, with a nervous,
feeble grin.  "Ah please accept my apology for the social fox-paws?"

The corner of Chinthliss' mouth twitched, although Joe could not see
anything that would have been funny in that last sentence.  But
evidently the dragon did, and Joe breathed a little easier.  Maybe
Chinthliss wouldn't kill the kits une quite yet.

"I did not bring you along as my court fool," Chinthliss replied
coolly.  "Whatever capacity Tannim has you in.  I brought you because
you are a kits une and Shar is half kits une and I assumed your
knowledge of her would be useful."

"What about the information Shar's mother could give you?"  The sweetly
feminine voice coming from behind Joe had a distinct edge to it.  Joe
turned again, and the two armor-clad bulwarks parted to let Lady Ako
pass between them.

"Your information would be damned useful, my lady, if you could just
bring yourself to part with it instead of offering endless Tea
Ceremonies," Chinthliss replied, his own voice honed to an icy
sharpness.  "Failing that, we will simply seek help elsewhere."

"I have not been your lady for a very long time.  You will not need to
look elsewhere."  Lady Ako made this a statement without a hint of
apology to it.  "There are circumstances surrounding this sad state of
affairs that required you be detained."  Her tone said, as clearly as
words, that she did not intend to apologize for anything, nor did she
intend to give any further explanation than this.  She matched
Chinthliss stare for stare.

Finally Chinthliss broke the silence.  "Fine," he said abruptly.  "I
suppose I'm going to have to assume this has something to do with
internal kits une politics, the secrets of which mere mortals are not
free to plumb.  As long as your little game is over with, I'll put off
looking for that cab."

He crossed his arms over his chest and waited, wrapped in dignity, for
her to reply.

She bristled.  "Do not presume to dictate my actions to me,
Chinthliss!"

"I wouldn't dream of it," the dragon replied dryly.  "Nor will I be
drawn into an argument so as to permit you to delay us even further."

Fox looked from one to the other of them, and finally held up both
paws.  "He's called your bluff, Lady Ako," the kits une said bluntly.
"You might as well admit it, and give us some real help."

Lady Ako stared for a moment longer, then sighed.  "He has indeed
called my bluff.  And the best I have is a pair of twos," she admitted.
"All right; I can't seem to delay you any further, so we might as well
get down to the business of actually finding them."  She started back
toward the building they had all stalked away from, and with a glance
to the rear at the impassive guards, Chinthliss, Joe, and FX followed
her.

"I've had someone watching the boy's car since it came Underhill," she
said, as they mounted the steps to the graceful porch, and a few kits
une sitting on the flat cushions watched them with covert curiosity. 
"Not actually watching it, you understand, but keeping track of it by
means of the disturbance it causes in the magic-fields. Shar managed to
cloak it somewhat, but that much Cold Iron was bound to wreak a certain
amount of disturbance no matter how skillfully she shielded it a
disturbance of a distinctive flavor, as you know."

"That makes sense."  Chinthliss mounted the wooden steps of the
building, keeping pace beside her.  The steps creaked slightly under
him, as if he weighed far more than his appearance would suggest.  "But
why track the vehicle instead of the people?"

"Because Shar is better than I at cloaking spells, and I do not know
Tannim."  Lady Ako held the scarlet-painted door open for them, and
they all filed through except for Chinthliss, who took the brass handle
from her and bowed her inside.  It seemed to Joe that she smiled
faintly at the gallantry.  "I knew that Shar would bring Tannim to his
vehicle if she found a way to free him, because it represents a
powerful weapon of defense," she continued.  "And I know that Madoc
Skean has no allies other than Shar who could do anything with so great
a concentration of Death Metal.  Further, I suspected that only Tannim
would have whatever other devices were needed to make it work, such as
a key.  So it followed that no one but Shar or Tannim would be able to
move it.  Not long ago, my intuition bore fruit; the car moved, and as
soon as it moved, Shar's cloaking-spells destabilized, making it easier
to track. Since we saw no motive-spells working, it must have moved
under its own power."

Chinthliss stopped right in the middle of the white-paneled room.  "It
did?  Where?  And where is it now?"

Lady Ako beckoned them to follow, past a room full of flat cushions on
the floor, through a sliding paper screen instead of a door, and into
the kind of room Joe had not expected to find here.

It was a room full of computer equipment, mostly deep blue and bright
red, with huge screens.  There were at least a dozen SPARC stations and
Silicon Graphics computers that they could see, with about half of them
being used by creatures that were more or less fox like  Some only had
fox tails, some fox tails and feet, and some were humanized foxes as
Lady Ako had been when they had first seen her.

They were all dressed in varying costumes, from futuristic jumpsuits to
the full kimono-kit that Lady Ako wore.  The lady bent over the
shoulder of one of the silver foxes in a pearl-gray jumpsuit; this one
had long, flowing white hair crowning her fox-mask and cascading down
her back.

"It isn't that easy, Chinthliss," Ako said at last.  "We know that the
vehicle is moving, and we know in general where it is, but we can't
tell specifically."  She shrugged helplessly.  "You simply cannot map
Underhill; I have tried, with no success.  You can go north, then east,
then south, and find yourself facing north again.  You can go up
several levels only to find yourself four levels below the place you
had started.  The Gates do not connect domains in any kind of logical
fashion.  This room holds the closest thing anyone has to a map of
Underhill."

"They're somewhere in the predominantly Unseleighe region, my lady,"
said the silver fox, tapping the screen with one furry forefinger.  "If
they can just get into one of the larger domains, one where we can
pinpoint them by what Gates they are near, I can give you coordinates.
But now well, the sensors and programs we are using only show that
they've used Gates to make domain-jumps, but since we don't have those
specific Gates in our lists, it can't locate them precisely."  The
silver fox looked at everyone assembled.  "We have magical sonar, and
there's a lot of noise.  We don't get a ping on them until they do
something."

"You see?"  Ako held up her hands helplessly.  "We can track the
perturbation and know that they are moving.  Once they reach and use a
Gate that we have in the computer, we know where they truly are.  But
until then, we'd be jumping blind."

Joe nudged Chinthliss.  "Sir," he said hesitantly, "what about the
trim-ring?  Tannim used it to find the Mustang.  Couldn't we do the
same thing?"

"I wouldn't do that if I were you, sir," the silver fox replied
respectfully, before Lady Ako could say anything.  She turned around to
look Chinthliss right in the eyes.  "That much iron and steel is
warping the magic fields down there in ways I can't predict, and
neither can the computers.  We just can't model chaos that well.  If
you tried to use that artifact to create a Gate, you might end up
tearing a hole in the fabric of Underhill.  Or you might just end up
Gating somewhere you wouldn't like.  The odds of actually going where
you wanted to go are pretty low.  We could run a simulation but if we
had enough data to make an accurate simulation, we'd have enough to
find the vehicle, too."

"Laini is my best tech," Ako said, placing a hand on the silver fox's
shoulder.  "If she says it's dangerous, I'd believe her.  And if she
doesn't like the odds, I wouldn't take the risk."

Chinthliss eyed both of the kits une dubiously.  "So what would you do
if you were in our position?"  he asked.

Laini thought for a moment.  "You might use the trim-ring as a
magic-mirror, just to show you where they are.  We use an optical link
through a magic-mirror to connect to Internet from here.  The Internet
is great for hiding things and communicating with obscure locations on
Earth Underhill enclaves with outer world fronts, allies, informants
just bounce encrypted files from one anonymous site to another. Anyway,
we use a tuned laser beamed through two stationary mirrors one here in
Furhold, and one on the other side.  If you use a magic-mirror, you get
a super clear image most of the time.  You might recognize something we
could use, or get a photograph sharp enough that we could
cross-reference it through our Silicon Graphics image systems here."
She pointed one delicately-clawed paw hand at the crimson boxes
whirring away.  "We have thousands of sub realms identified and imaged,
and some of them are mapped down to ten-meter grid squares with local
magical data.  We just don't know all the Gates that lead to them,
because that takes a lot more than remote viewing.  But we do have
some."

Laini looking thoughtful again and tapped at her silvery-black snout.
She flicked an ear.  "If you can determine a place, or give us enough
data that we can find it, we might be able to plot a route that could
get you there, using the Gates that we know of."

Joe grinned.  Now that's a little more like it!  he thought.  Evidently
Chinthliss felt the same.

"I didn't realize that you had an artifact," Lady Ako said, "or I would
have offered all this a little sooner."

"Is there somewhere secure that we can use to set up a scrying-spell?"
Chinthliss asked.  "You know what I mean by "secure," I trust."

"Of course."  Ako smiled sweetly.  "This is the embassy, after all.  We
have some very secure places.  If you'll follow me?"

Once again, Lady Ako led them all down a maze of corridors, this time
with walls of white paper and bamboo rather than white-painted wood.
How such a place could be considered "secure" was beyond Joe, but if
Lady Ako said it was, he might as well take her word for it.  At least
no one would be able to eavesdrop on you here you'd see his shadow
through the walls first.

Maybe that was what made it secure?

At length she pushed aside a sliding door and led them into a room
containing what was either a very small building or a very large box,
lacquered in black, with graceful images of cranes and carp and, of
course, foxes on the sides, formed in strokes of gold paint.  "You will
be secure enough in there," she said.  "It will be a little crowded,
but it is very well shielded."

She opened a door into the box; it looked rather like a sauna inside,
with benches against two of the walls and a low table in the middle.
Somehow all four of them managed to squeeze inside; Lady Ako and
Chinthliss on one bench, FX and Joe on the other.

Ako shut the door; after a moment of darkness, a gentle, sourceless
light came up all around them.  Chinthliss placed the chrome trim-ring
down in the middle of the black-lacquered table.

Here we go again..  ..

As all three of the others bent over the shining circle of chrome,
Chinthliss chanted under his breath.  A drift of sparks came from his
outstretched hand and settled on the ring, exactly as if he had
sprinkled glitter down on it.  But these sparks spread and grew, until
a skin of light coated the whole trim-ring.

Mist gathered inside the ring, and all four of them leaned a little
closer.  "Damn," Chinthliss muttered irritably, "that tech of yours is
right.  The Mach I really is warping things all out of shape down
there."

Ako laid one hand over the top of his, and a second shower of sparks
fell on the ring.  The light strengthened, and for just a moment, a
picture formed in the middle.

It was the Mach I, all right; Tannim was in the passenger's seat,
though, and in the driver's seat was the woman who'd shown up at the
barn.  There was someone else in the rear seat, too, and the whole car
was surrounded by a white mist that eddied around the car as if it
didn't quite want to touch it.

Then the picture faded, leaving only the shiny black lacquered surface
of the table.

"Well, at least we do know that they're together," Lady Ako said into
the silence.

"But who was that in the rear?"  Joe asked.  "And where were they?"

"The Unformed," Chinthliss growled.  "There are only several hundred
places they could be, with that Unformed mist around them.  Damn."

But surprisingly, it was FX who shook his head.  "That's the bad part;
don't forget, the Unseleighe and the Seleighe both have Gates into
those pockets.  So do the neutrals, for that matter.  It's not a big
deal; we just need a little more time.  We just wait for them to Gate
out of there, and see if we can identify where they came out."

"Which means we sit here until the car moves again."  Joe sighed.

Chinthliss nodded abruptly, scowling.

Lady Ako looked from one gloomy face to another, and finally ventured
to speak.  "I don't suppose," she said doubtfully, "that any of you
would care for some tea?"  * * * Shar stared at the swirling,
pastel-colored mist and wondered if it was half as unsettled out there
as she felt.  Most disturbing was the feeling that things had gotten
completely out of her control.

Her reaction to Tannim being attacked was entirely out of character. If
Tannim hadn't already slain that mist-creature, she would have reverted
to Huntress-mode and leapt upon it to rend it with her own, sharp teeth
right then and there.  She never leapt to anyone's defense; she always
assumed that they could take care of themselves.  After all, no one was
going to leap to her defense..  ..

The strength of her own feelings had shocked her; more shocking had
been the way she had automatically reacted on seeing that he had been
hurt.  She had never expended Healing on anyone else before.  Not once.
She was not a "natural" Healer as Lady Ako was; it cost her a great
deal to invoke a Healing spell.  There had never been anyone worth the
effort before.

And before my mind could weigh all the consequences, I found myself
Healing him without even pausing to think about what I was doing.  Very
strange.  Very unlike her.

Tannim did not sleep this time, but he rested as Shar had ordered,
slowly regaining color as he sipped at a Gatorade and nibbled at
packaged crackers.  After a glance at her, which she met with a smile,
he fished under the seat and came up with a car magazine.  His
inquiring glance asked "may I?"  and her answering shrug replied "be my
guest."  He immersed himself in its pages as she stared out at the
mist, still sorting her thoughts.

It was logic, she told herself firmly.  Pure logic.  This is his car,
we need each other at top form to guard the other's back.  I Healed him
because of that.  It has nothing to do with how I feel about him.

And pigs were certainly flying in tight formation over La Guardia at
this very moment.

"Ready to switch places?"  he said into the silence.  When she gave him
a measuring look, he grinned at her with a good measure of his old
cockiness.

"I would certainly not care to take the blame for anything that
happened to your beloved car if I ran it into something out there,"
Shar replied dryly.  "Please, Captain, take the helm by all means."

But before popping any doors, they both checked the mist for the
telltale swirls that signaled something hiding in it.  And Shar noted
with some amusement that both of them scooted around the car and into
their new places so quickly that it would have taken a photo to tell
which of them hit the seat first.

She snapped her seatbelts in place.  He quirked his eyebrows at her.
"Paranoid?"  he asked.

"Of course," she retorted.  "They are out to get us."

"Point taken."  He started the car and drove into the mist, heading for
the place where the colors and eddying were the strongest.

The gap in the rock walls must have been larger than she had thought;
when the rock disappeared on the left, there was no answering darkness
up ahead to show where it might resume.  Tannim turned the Mach I into
the gap, still keeping the wall on the left.  The mist was at its most
turbulent here; the predominant color was a blue-green, but there were
swirls of red, yellow, even purple.

"This place makes me think of an explosion in a tie-dye plant," Tannim
muttered under his breath.

Shar peered ahead into the psychedelic fog, every muscle and nerve
alive with tension, and started when Tom Cadge tapped her shoulder.

"Please, lass," he said quietly, "can ye tell me where this magical
chariot is goin'?  All I know is we been someplace cold, an' now we're
someplace else."

"Did you ever ah see any of the places that the Unseleighe Sidhe call
"Unformed'?"  she asked.  She hated to ask it that way, but Cadge
didn't seem to mind.

"Before they put out me eyes, ye mean?"  He shook his head.  "I heard
tell of 'em, but I ne'er saw one.  I didna see much but Lady Magda's
Hall, an' not much o' that."

"Well, that's where we are.  It's a place full of mist, and not much
else, and someone with a strong enough will and magic can make it into
anything he wants," she told him.  "Somebody left something nasty
behind the last time he was here, and it attacked Tannim."

"Mist?"  Tom shook his head.  "What can anyone be doin' with mist?"

"It's a special kind of mist," Shar replied absently.  "Think of it
like clay.  That's how most of the domains were made in the first
place, right out of the mist.  Either one incredibly powerful mage,
like Lord Oberon or Lady Titania, or a group of mages with a single
plan in mind, would move into one of these places and turn it into what
they wanted."

"So?"  Thomas replied.  "Is that where we are, then?  One o' them mist
places?"

"Exactly.  There are often Gates in there, and that's what we're
looking for."  Shar continued to stare ahead as she talked to Tom; was
it imagination, or was the color slowly leaching out of the swirling
mist?  "People can make small things out of the mist, too, so they'll
come here when they need something and create it."

"So if ye can make anything ye like, why don't ye make a Gate now?" Tom
asked with perfect logic.

Shar sighed.  "Partly because I'm not certain either of us is up to
creating a Gate at the moment.  Partly because this iron carriage that
protects us also warps magic around it, and I'm not certain what the
effect of making a Gate around it would be.  Partly because a Gate is
one thing you can't make out of the mist with any certainty at all it
would be like you trying to juggle a dozen sharp knives at once.  And
lastly, making a Gate makes a fearful disturbance; there are people
watching for us, and they'll know where we are and what we're doing."

"Ah."  Tom nodded wisely.  "So I see.  This workin' of magic, it just
purely isn't like like magic, is it?"  He grinned, amused at his own
wit.

"Precisely."  She forced a tired chuckle since he wouldn't be able to
see her smile.  "Well, we're going to see if we can't find another Gate
in here to take us somewhere nearer to our friends."

By now the mist had definitely gone to pastel.  In a few more moments,
all the color would be gone, and it would be time to stop the Mustang
and see if she couldn't locate another Gate on this side of the wall.

But as the color leeched out of the mist, the mist itself thinned.
Shadow-shapes appeared, not the moving shapes the mist itself produced,
but stationary shadows, with solidity to them.

The mist thinned further as the Mustang rolled forward, and the shapes
took on substance, color, and texture.  "Are you seeing what I'm
seeing?"  Tannim asked quietly.

"I think so," Shar replied, while she cobbled together the most apt
comparison she could come up with.  "This is really weird.  It looks
like somebody's rock collection."

If it was, the collector had to be a giant.  Ahead, behind, and on
either side loomed huge slabs and boulders of polished, formed or
crystallized stone, each piece as big as the Mach I or bigger.  These
slabs balanced upright somehow, defying gravity, even though their
bases might be no bigger than a foot or so across.  The impression of
being in the midst of a rock collection was inescapable now that Tannim
had pointed it out; no two of these huge "specimens" were alike, and
they all appeared at least to Shar's uneducated eyes to be purely of a
particular "kind" of rock.  Here was a cluster of quartz crystal
points, the smallest of them as long as her arm and the largest taller
than Tannim there a polished boulder of amethyst big enough to crush
the Mach I ahead a single giant violet diamond-shaped fluorite crystal
balanced precisely on one point.

"This is bizarre," Tannim said softly, staring at the next rock, a
milky yellow multifaceted crystal which balanced on a single point like
the fluorite crystal now behind them.  The one next to it looked for
all the world like an irregular slab cut from a geode and polished on
both sides.  "Have you ever heard of anything like this?"

"Never," she said firmly.  "But I'm not sure I like what it implies.
Someone had to create all this out of the Unformed; that's the only way
you'd get things like this, right?  So that person had to not only be
some kind of rock-nut, but he had to be a complete monomaniac."

"Rock is my life, man," Tannim said automatically, but the joke fell
rather flat.

Mist writhed away from the Mach I as they passed the balanced slab and
a round boulder of pink quartz appeared to the right.  "To the
exclusion of everything else?"  Tannim hazarded.  "Boy, I hope we
aren't disturbing his collection, wandering around in here!"  He ran a
hand through his tangled curls worriedly.

"Why don't you stop for a moment, and let me see if I can find a Gate,"
Shar suggested, feeling as worried as Tannim looked.  "If someone got
in here to create all this, there has to be a way out.  I think I'd
like to find it before he finds us."

Tannim nodded, and stopped the Mustang between a colorful metallic
cubic aggregate of selenium and a polished granite egg the size of a
Kenworth.  Shar got out, checking all around them with such caution
that it felt as if every nerve was an antenna, tuned for danger.

Only when she was certain there was nothing within the reach of her
senses or her magics did she take a seat on the hood of the Mustang and
send her spirit out questing for the peculiar magical signature of a
Gate.  * * * "Want to try again?"  Joe suggested, as the rather stilted
conversation in the crowded room died into silence again for the fourth
time.

Chinthliss looked at Lady Ako, who alone of them had not lost her
outward serenity.  She shrugged.  "I told my underlings to come inform
us if the Mustang made a sizable change of location.  That would
indicate a Gate-passage, of course.  There's no telling, though, if
they were able to locate a domain within the Unformed where we saw
them.  Elfhame Outremer is such a place; I'm certain the Unseleighe
also have domains within the mist.  I know that the Grand Bazaar is in
the mist, and that it is not the only neutral hold to be in the center
of the Unformed."

"Is that a "yes' or a "no'?"  Chinthliss asked in open exasperation.
"Oh, never mind.  I want to see if your precious daughter is up to
anything."  He bent over the chrome trim-ring, and once again chanted
until a shower of sparks drifted down from his hand and settled on the
chrome ring.  This time the lacquer tabletop enclosed by the ring
fogged over with no help from Lady Ako.

The haze cleared, and Joe leaned over the table for a closer look.

Shar sat on the hood of the Mach I, her eyes closed and a frown of
concentration on her face.  Tannim stood beside the car in a protective
stance, his be spelled red crowbar in his hands, watching warily to all
sides.  The Mustang itself was parked in front of a huge gray boulder,
a rock as big as two cars put together and polished to a glossy sheen.
The mist of the earlier vision was thinner here, but there was still
nothing really identifiable about the place.

Joe looked up at Lady Ako to see her reaction.  She was smiling: a
satisfied little smile compounded of equal parts of approval and
relief.

"It seems they truly are working together," the lady said with a faint
air of satisfaction.

Chinthliss only grunted.  "I should give a great deal to know how my
foster-son's sleeve came to be so shredded," he replied.

Joe glanced back down at the little scene imprisoned in the chrome
circle, and saw with a start that Tannim's right sleeve was hanging in
rags.  But beneath the shirt-sleeve was something altogether
unexpected; armor of some kind, he guessed.  Iridescent green, of tiny
hexagonal scales invisibly joined together, it covered his arm as
smoothly as Spandex from wrist to shoulder.

"Pretty," Lady Ako remarked, indicating the armor with a fingertip that
did not quite touch the image.  "I assume that this is your doing, this
armor?"

"As much Tannim's as mine," the dragon admitted with a touch of pride
in his voice.  "I happen to think that it is very good work.  Something
must have attacked them, though."

"If so, it learned that he bites back," Ako observed.  "Honestly, I do
not recognize this place, although I will inform my techs with a
description, and we will see if the computer has a match.  What of
you?"

"Not a clue," Chinthliss admitted, as Ako slipped what looked to Joe
like a palm top computer out of her sleeve and laid it on her lap,
quickly scratching something on its screen with a fingernail before
returning it to her voluminous sleeve.  I always wondered what they
used those huge kimono sleeves for.  Heck, you could smuggle Mexicans
in there!

"You seem to be having an easier time holding the vision this time, old
lizard," Fox observed.  "Got any idea why?"

Chinthliss shook his head.  "Probably has something to do with the area
they're in.  Less instability, maybe.  There's a lot less of the
Unformed mist, anyway."  He turned to Ako.  "What's she doing?"

"I would guess that she is searching the area for a Gate," Ako told
him.  "Shar is particularly sensitive to the energies of Gates.  Even
if she does not recognize a setting, she can sometimes tell general
things about the destination."

"No " Chinthliss took his eyes from the vision in the chrome trim-ring
for a moment to stare at Ako in astonishment.  "Where did she pick up
that trick?  From "

"Yes," Ako confirmed.  "I myself do not know how she does this.  It is
not a kits une gift."

"It isn't a dragon-talent either."  He shook his head.  "Evidently she
is not simply a meld of kits une and dragon; she is something more."

"As I have always maintained."  Ako was too composed to beam with
pride, but there was a great deal of pride in her voice.

Inside the chrome circle, Tannim walked a wary patrol around the car as
Shar remained perched on the hood.  There was nothing in Tannim's
behavior that suggested to Joe that he was at all worried about Shar or
what she might do.  If anything, his prowling suggested that he was
determined to protect her from anything that might come at her out of
the mist.

That certainly suggested they had come to some sort of arrangement, an
agreement of cooperation, perhaps.

The vision still wasn't clear enough to make out who was in the back
seat of the Mustang.  The figure was blurred, as if the focus was a bit
out in that one spot, although the rest of the scene was clear
enough.

"I can't see what is in the backseat," Chinthliss said with a frown,
echoing Joe's own thought.  "That's odd.  Look, you can see the front
seat itself clearly enough, so it isn't the Mach I's shields that are
interfering."  He glanced sharply at Ako, who only shrugged.

"I could not tell you who that might be," she replied.  "Shar has no
allies that she would trust in a situation like this.  Perhaps it was
someone they met along the way?"

"Maybe another prisoner of Madoc Skean," Chinthliss muttered.  "Tannim
wouldn't be able to leave someone like that behind.  Especially not if
it was a Seleighe Sidhe."

"Can you blame him?"  Fox made a face.  "I wouldn't leave a dead cat in
the hands of that lunatic."

"Maybe if I " Chinthliss held his hand over the trim-ring again, his
eyes narrowing as he focused his magic.  "I would feel a lot better if
I could just see who or what that is "

But his efforts were not only in vain, they undid everything else he
had accomplished.  As Joe watched in dismay, the vision flared, then
faded, leaving only the hint of haze on the black lacquer.

Then even the haze faded, and only the shiny surface remained.

Chinthliss cursed, but Lady Ako remained philosophical.  "You can only
hold such a vision for so long," she reminded him.  "And what good
would it do you to sit here and stare at it?  You cannot help them
until you know where they are."

Chinthliss growled under his breath, but had to admit that she was
right.  "But I don't have to like it," he added.  Joe agreed silently.
At least, if they could watch, they had the illusion that they could do
something.

"I can " Chinthliss began, then pulled his hand back before he even
began the spell again.  "No.  No point in wasting magic that we might
need later."

"A messenger will come if the Mustang makes a large enough movement for
a fix," Ako promised.  "I gave you my word."

At that, Chinthliss actually smiled.  "I do not recall that you
actually gave your word before, my lady, but now that you have I am
inclined to trust you."

Ako looked at him in some surprise, and Joe thought, she also looked a
little hurt.  "Have we grown so far apart, Chinthliss, that you no
longer trust me without my given word?"  she asked softly.

Chinthliss blinked, and turned to meet her gaze completely.  The two of
them stared deeply into one another's eyes, unable to look away.

Joe cleared his throat, and they both jumped and looked at him as if
they had forgotten that he and FX existed.

Maybe they did forget we existed.

"Can we ah take a break, lady?"  he asked carefully.  "All that tea "

"I don't " Fox began, and Joe jabbed him fiercely in the side with an
elbow.  FX emitted a strangled grunt and fell silent.

"Certainly," Lady Ako replied, ignoring FX.  "Saski can show you where
everything is.  Can't you, Saski?"  Now she smiled at FX, to his
obvious discomfort.

"Yes, Lady Ako," FX managed.  Joe slid the door to the little room
open, and he and Fox climbed out.  The door slid shut again as soon as
they were outside.

"What did you do that for?"  FX hissed angrily.

"They wanted to be alone, dummy," Joe replied scornfully.  "Jeez, man,
couldn't you see that?  Don't you remember what Chinthliss told us
about him and the lady and all?"

"Of course I remember!  That's why I wanted to stay there and watch!"
Fox told him.  "And owl"  he exclaimed, as Joe elbowed him again. "What
did you do that for?"

"Because you're rude, crude, and not even housebroken," Joe told him,
shaking his head in dismay.  "Man, I can't take you anywhere, can I?
Why don't you show me what passes for a bathroom around here.  I really
did drink too much of that tea."

Fox sighed and cast a longing look back at the closed doors of the
little room.  "Oh well," he said philosophically.  "We'll figure out
whatever they've been up to when we get back anyway."

"You're impossible," Joe retorted.

Fox only snickered.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Tannim prowled around the car restlessly, the comforting weight of his
crowbar filling both hands.  He studied the mist as it eddied around
the giant mineral specimens, watching it with wary suspicion.  Mist
alternately concealed and revealed the farthest of the rocks, moving in
no pattern he could discern.  Unless he was greatly mistaken, the
farthest of those rocks was a slice of watermelon tourmaline, a huge
irregular wedge of transparent pink and green.  He wouldn't even have
known that watermelon tourmaline existed, much less what it was called
and what it looked like, if Dotty hadn't been so infatuated with the
stuff.

She'd be going ape right now, trying to figure out how to cart a
five-ton rock out of here.  Boy, this place is surreal.  I feel like
I'm in the middle of a Lexus commercial.

He kept thinking that he saw things moving, just out of the corner of
his eye.  But any time he turned to see what it was, there was nothing
there but a swirl of mist.

Too bad I'm not some kind of superhero.  I could sure use an edge right
now.  Heros in books had magical senses to warn them of approaching
danger; all he had were his eyes and ears and mage-sight.  My
crowbar-sense is tingling!  The mage-sight wasn't doing him a heck of a
lot of good; the mist itself was full of magical potential and obscured
everything else.

It's doing me about the same amount of good as a guy with a heat-scope
in the desert at high noon.

That left eyes and ears.  Plain old human senses, backed by red-painted
iron and a bit of experience.  Maybe a little good sense.  It would
have to do.

His feet made no noise at all in the sand.  None.  He might just as
well have been walking on a foot of packed feathers.  The ground here
was as strange as the rest of the place.  You could dig down just as
far as you wanted, and all you'd find was sparkling white, utterly dry
sand.  Yet neither the tires nor feet sank in more than an inch, and
there was firm, excellent traction, as good as the sands of Daytona
Beach.  Better.  As good as the Bonneville salt flats.  If I could just
export this stuff, I'd make a fortune selling it to dirt-tracks.

He glanced over at his companion every time he passed her, just to see
if anything had changed.  Shar's face was utterly still, without
expression of any kind.  Once again, she looked like a statue sitting
there; if he hadn't seen her chest rising and falling in slow, even
rhythm, he'd have thought she was dead, spellbound, or otherwise
incapacitated.

And that chest, rising and falling, up and down, slowly

It looked as good as the rest of her.  He prowled a series of full
circuits around the Mustang, still without seeing anything.  This bit
of magic was taking her a lot longer than the last time she'd done
something.  Of course, the last time, she'd had the Gate right in front
of her, and this time they didn't even know if there was a Gate over
here.

What would they do if there wasn't a Gate here?  A good question.  Turn
around and go back, I guess.  Take our chances with one of the
unfriendly settings, or with the place before that.  It was cold and
not very hospitable, but we wouldn't have to be there all that long.  I
hate to backtrack, though.  We might meet something on our tail.  That
would be bad.

It shouldn't take them all that long to get on our tail, either.  All
they have to do is figure out that Shar didn't move the Mach I like she
said she did.

By now, Madoc Skean must have figured out they'd slipped through his
fingers.  He and his cronies were surely on their trail in some form or
other.  How long would it take him to sort through all of the
possibilities?  He wasn't stupid; he wouldn't have amassed as many
allies as he'd had if he was.  He had to be on his way already.

There something flickered at the edge of his vision again.  This time
he patrolled a few more soundless steps, then made an abrupt
about-face, hoping to catch whatever it was in the act of eluding
him.

Nothing.  Not even an eddy of mist.

Maybe this place is getting to me, making me see things.  Haven't been
this jumpy in a long time.

He decided that he might as well prowl in the opposite direction, since
he was facing that way anyway.

Madoc's not stupid, and he's got a lot of ears in other domains.  So,
given how good a spy-network Madoc has, by now he's surely heard about
our little visit to the Hall of the Mountain King.  From there,
there're only five destinations besides the one we came from.  Given
enough people to check them out .. . yeah, he could be on to us right
now.

"Eh, lad?"  Tom Cadge called from inside the car, sounding anxious.
"How long ye reckon afore the blackguards follow us?"

Even the old man was following his thoughts.

"I don't know, Tom," he answered truthfully, leaning against the car to
talk through the window.  "Could be they're after us right now.  The
one thing we've got going for us is that they've got to tread the same
maze that we do.  With any luck, they'll get as lost as we are."

Tom nodded, his mouth solemn below his bandaged eyes.  "Mayhap they'll
blunder into a nest 'o their own foes, eh?  Like knockin' over a
beehive.  That'd be a choice jest."

"Oh, that'd be the best thing that could happen," Tannim told him, with
a mental image of the Black Bard's surprise on finding his home invaded
by his old rival Madoc.  That would be a lovely sight to see!  If Madoc
got out of there with half his followers, he'd be lucky.  The Black
Bard was without mercy when it came to his few friends and when given a
chance at a foe .. .

Tom cocked his head to one side for a moment, then grimaced.  "This
place is mortal strange, lad.  I keep thinkin' I'm hearin' sum mat off
i' the distance, an' then when nothin' comes of it, thinkin' it's nob
but m' addled wits."

"Well you're not alone.  I keep seeing things, but when I turn to look
at them, there's nothing there."  He pushed away from the car as Shar
stirred.  "Well, it looks like the lady may have found us something.
Keep your ears open, all right?  They're probably keener than mine."

"Aye, I will," Tom promised solemnly.

Tannim reached the front of the Mustang just as Shar opened her eyes.
"There is a Gate here, but it's a long way off," she said, stretching
her arms and blinking to clear her sight.  "I wouldn't have believed
this pocket was so big that Gate must be six or eight miles from here.
I can't think of too many places Underhill that are this size, and all
of them have huge populations."

Tannim raised an eyebrow at that.  "I wouldn't have thought it could be
that big either; I would have thought that a pocket this large would
have been claimed by now."

"Maybe it has," she replied ominously.  "I caught distinct traces of
Unseleighe magics out there.  Only traces, so this isn't truly a domain
of theirs, but they use this place for something."

"Grand."  He sighed, and hefted the crowbar just for the reminder of
its comforting weight.  "Well, let's get on the road, shall we?  If
we're moving, we're a harder target to hit."

She slid off the hood without a comment, and landed lightly on the
sand.  He turned around and headed for the driver's side.  He reached
his seat a fraction of a second before she took hers, but this time
they both fastened their safety belts.

She pointed directly ahead when he looked to her for directions.
"Straight on, the way we were already going," she said.

He nodded, with a quick glance at the gas gauge.  He'd started this
trek with darn near a full tank of gas, and he'd tried to be careful

And we're still a hair above the three-quarter margin, he noted with a
bit of relief.  Hard to find a gas station out here, and neither of us
are Sidhe, to be able to ken and replicate whatever we want.

He started the Mustang and drove on, slowly, in the direction she
indicated.  Visibility still wasn't good enough to warrant going faster
than fifteen or twenty.  Another towering rock-sample emerged out of
the mist right in front of them, this one a huge nugget of pure copper,
constructed like a branching coral formation.

Weird.  Just too weird.  He shook his head, and drove on.  * * * A half
an hour later by his watch, the mist had thinned to no more than a
veil, upping visibility to about half a mile.  The landscape had been
changing for about the past fifteen minutes.  The rock formations grew
smaller, replaced by groves of dead and leafless trees, stretching
blackened limbs against the white haze in the distance.  Overhead was
exactly the same as the nonexistent horizon: white haze.  Lighting was
a constant semi dusk nondirectional.  All the place needed was a
vulture or two for atmosphere.

The terrain itself had changed in that time; getting rougher, with
increasingly steep hills and deep valleys, and nothing like a road in
sight.  The Mustang wasn't built for territory like this; heck, the
Mustang wasn't built for anything but a real road.  The only way to
handle this kind of situation was to work his way up and down the hills
in a zig-zag pattern, or travel along the ridge until a better crossing
place showed up.  The ground was still made of that strange sand; why
it didn't slide and behave like dune-sand he had no idea.  The top
layer would slide down a little as the Mustang's wheels touched it,
making the going a bit treacherous and tricky to drive, but beneath the
top layer, the ground was firm.

That didn't help much, not when his jaw ached from clenching it and his
knuckles were white from clutching the steering wheel.

Finally, they topped a rise only to find themselves looking down into a
valley with a fifty-degree slope.  Tannim stopped the car altogether.

"We can't take this in the Mach I," Shar said abruptly, before he could
say a word.  "Nothing short of a Land Rover could negotiate a slope
like that.  Tannim, I'm amazed you got this far I'd have given up a
mile ago.  I almost asked you to quit when we passed that hematite
boulder."

Tannim stared down the smooth slope, unbroken except for an occasional
boulder of some highly polished stone or by a trio or quartet of
spindly black trees, and nodded.  Finally, after a long silence, he
coughed.

"I'm pretty much stuck here without you," he admitted.  "I don't know
how to work those Gate things without already knowing the setting I
want.  I guess it's going to be up to you.  Do we ditch the Mach I and
try for this new Gate on foot?"

He was hoping she would think that was a bad idea.  I'll argue with her
if I have to, but we're partners in this.  I'm not going to make an
arbitrary decision for both of us.

Shar shook her head immediately.  "No," she replied decisively.  "Not a
chance.  This is one we're going to have to do without.  It'd take us
hours to get there on foot, Tom couldn't do it, and we'd be without our
protection, our ability to move quickly, and our power source.  That
wouldn't be stupid, it would be suicide."

He ground his teeth to relieve his frustration, then gave voice to the
only other solution, the one he'd already contemplated.  "We go back.
And try the other Gate."

She nodded, her own face displaying her distaste for the obvious.  "And
unless we're willing to take the chance on running into the people
following us by going back to the frozen plain the only other setting
we stand a chance with is Charcoal's holding."

"We'll decide that when we get there," he replied.  "One problem at a
time."

At least he had a good idea how to get back.  The soft sand didn't hold
tracks forever, but he could still make out a clear trail behind them.
While the tire-tracks in the sand were still visible, he could follow
them.  And after that he'd kept track of the various rock-samples
they'd passed.  Unless the unknown collector (if there was one) had a
habit of swapping them around on a regular basis or they moved on their
own he'd get back to the point where the mist got so thick he could use
his talent to find the gap in the walls again.

It didn't feel right, though, turning back like this.  Besides being
frustrating, it felt as if he had missed a point somewhere.  Granted,
this wasn't a video game, where you always got the next level if you
did things in the right order, but still turning back felt like a
mistake.  There ought to have been a way, but if there was, he hadn't
seen it, and neither had Shar.

One thing was oddly comforting, though, and that was Shar's behavior.
Not only had she refused to give up the Mustang she'd refused to dump
Tom Cadge.

That was automatic, too.  She didn't lean over and whisper to me that
we ought to abandon him with the car.  She didn't suggest we leave him
and come back for him with help.  It wasn't, "we could leave the
passenger behind, but that wouldn't be right."  Instead, it was, "it
would take us hours on foot, and Tom couldn't do it."  As if there was
no question of keeping him with us it's a given.

He could trust her.  He could.  That single sentence had told him that
much.  She had nothing to gain and everything to lose by continuing to
help the old man, and she hadn't even given it a second thought.  It
had been a completely natural response; that she accepted him as a
responsibility along with her "debt" to Tannim.

His mood now much lighter, he surprised her by smiling at her once they
got the Mach I turned around and headed back the way they had come. The
furrows cut by the tires pointed the way, and he followed, retracing
their path exactly.  And hoping that he was doing the right thing.

Now as long as there isn't someone laying false tire-tracks for us to
follow, we'll be all right.

"I suppose it could be worse," she said after a moment.  "There might
not be anyone following us yet.  We do have options still, and there's
"

Her head and Tom's came up at the same moment in identical startled
movements, like a pair of deer alerted by a danger signal.  "Oh, no "
she whispered.

"Tell me I didna hear a hunting' horn, milady," Tom begged, his
wrinkled face white beneath the bandage.  "Please tell me it was just
th' wind, or sum mat like that.  There's only one kind o' pack
a-hunting' Underhill "

He was interrupted by the sounding, faint but clear over the Mustang's
rumble, of a hunting horn.  At least, Tannim assumed it was a hunting
horn, since they both shivered when they heard it.

"The Wild Hunt," Shar whispered, her eyes wide.  "Oh no we don't need
that kind of trouble!"

"Whoa, whoa, what Wild Hunt?"  Tannim asked, responding to the fear on
both their faces by speeding up just a little.  "What hunt?  What's it
mean to us?  Who're the hunters?"

"The lost gods," Shar said fearfully, looking back over her shoulder as
if she expected to see them at any moment, topping the hill behind
them.  "The spirits that once were gods of death and darkness in your
world, who lost their worshippers and were banished Underhill.  They
hunt the living, led by their pack and their terrible Master.  Even the
Unseleighe fear them and hide when they hear that horn.  It's said that
there's no escape from them.  Once they have the scent of you, they
never give up!"

"Won't all this Cold Iron stop them?"  he asked, as the horn sounded
again, and sent a chill running up his spine.  "I mean, we're talking
pre-Christian, Bronze-Age guys here, aren't we?  Shouldn't the rules
that hold for the Sidhe hold for them?"

"The Master of the Hunt bears a spear tipped with the Death Metal from
a fallen star," Shar replied, dashing his hopes.  "That is why the
Unseleighe fear him.  They are no more bothered by iron and steel than
a kits une  They can cross running water with impunity, and holy things
do not bar their way.  Only sunlight stops them, and I doubt we're
going to get any of that piped in to us on request!"

Tom Cadge had hunched down into his blankets, shivering, his head
completely covered, like a child trying to hide from the monsters in
the dark.  It didn't look as though he had anything coherent to add.

"Great," Tannim muttered.  "So what do we have going for us?  Anything
at all we can use against them?"

"We're not predictable."  She stared through the back window; the
horn-call sounded again, and it was definitely nearer.  "They are more
powerful than you, I, and all the Seleighe in Fairgrove put together
they used to be gods, for heaven's sake!  Their horses never tire, nor
do their hounds.  But they will never have seen anything like this car,
and they won't know what it, and we, can do.  For that matter, they may
not realize that the Mach I isn't alive remember how the elves in the
Mountain King's Hall reacted?  If we can get out of this, it'll be by
our wits."

"If I can get us into the heavy mist, can we lose them?"  he asked. "Do
you think that the turbulent area where the two pockets join is going
to be confusing enough that they might lose the scent?"

"I don't know but that just might work."  She bit her lip and closed
her eyes for a moment, thinking furiously.  "Come to think of it, I
know more than a few tricks along those lines.  If you can get us some
lead, I can kill the trail so cold they'll never find it, once we get
into that mist!"  Shar said at last, with determination replacing the
fear in her eyes.  "There wasn't a clever fox worthy of his tail yet
that couldn't baffle any pack, on this side of the Hill or on the
other, and haven't I nine tails?"

"That's the spirit, milady," Tom quavered from beneath his blankets.
Tannim was surprised that he could respond at all, as obviously
terrified as he was.

"All right then," Tannim said firmly.  "Just let me get down where I
can do some real driving, and I'll buy you that time."

In answer to that, the horn sounded a new set of notes entirely, and
faintly beneath it came the deep and baleful baying of hounds.

Not the excited belling of foxhounds, however.  These howls had a
strange and doleful sound to them, as if the dogs themselves were in
pain and wanted nothing more than to inflict that same pain on their
quarry.  This was a howl of bloodthirsty despair, a cry of doom
approaching on four sore paws, whipped on by something even more
terrible behind it.  The deep cries called on the fear in the soul, the
terror of the thing behind, the monster in the darkest shadows of
childhood.

"They don't have hawks or anything, do they?"  Tannim asked, suddenly
struck by a horrible thought.  If he had to contend with attacks from
above as well as the hunters on the ground granted, a hawk wouldn't be
able to do a lot against the Mustang, but if this Master had complete
control of them, there were things he could do with them.  Having them
drop rocks on the windshield or hurl themselves against the windshield
in kamikaze attacks.

"Not that I ever heard," Shar assured him.  "Hawks can't be forced to
course the way that hounds can.  Turn a bird loose, however you have
coerced it, and it can and will fly away."

One less thing to worry about.  "Good."

As the ground gradually leveled, it became easier to drive.  The sounds
of the Hunt behind them grew ever nearer, as if the Hunters realized
that they had the advantage here, and were determined to catch up while
they still had that advantage.  "What kind of rules are they limited
by?"  he asked, negotiating the downslope of a hill studded with gem
like boulders.  "Can they go faster than a normal horse would?"

"I don't think so," Shar replied after another moment of thought.  "The
whole point is that the Hunt is their sport, and it wouldn't be
sporting if they could just run anything down, would it?  The quarry
has to have some chance."

"Well, how would they react if the quarry fought back?"  he asked.  "If
we took some of them out before they caught up with us?"

"I don't know.  I'm willing to find out, though."  He glanced quickly
at her, to see that she looked determined and stubborn.  "I'll throw
everything at them I can think of."

"Take everything you can from the Mach I," he told her.  "Try not to
erode the shields too much, if you can help it, but drain whatever you
need."

But she shook her head.  "We need the shields too much, if what I've
heard is true.  No, I'll be throwing everything I can back there, and
most of it won't be offensive."  Another glance at her showed she was
smiling thinly.  "My training is primarily from mother's side; the kits
une way is trickery and illusion.  That's what I'll try first."

The horn-call behind them sounded as if the Hunters were close, very
close; perhaps no more than three or four hills away.  He made out the
calls of individual dogs within the general belling of the pack.

Not good.

"I see them," Shar said, as they topped another hill.  Her voice was
strained and tight.  He glanced into the rearview mirror and caught a
glimpse of a darkness, a swiftly moving shadow in the distance, a mob
of something that poured over the top of the hill like a dark flood.
Something about that shadow sent a chill across his heart, and a touch
of frost into his soul.

But beside them were the last of the dead trees, and ahead of them the
first of the really large rock formations.  This hill was the last bad
one; after this, he could take them straight on, and since he knew what
they were going into, he could accelerate down the hills to get
momentum for the climb.

Shar was twisted around in her seat in a position that couldn't
possibly have been comfortable, but she didn't release her
safety-belts.  Probably a good idea, he decided.  I don't know what
kind of evasive driving I'm going to have to do.

Tannim dropped the accelerator another half-inch and the Mustang's
velocity increased.  The white sand went up in a rooster-tail behind
them as they put some serious distance between them and their pursuers.
The sparkling shapes of the stones blurred past, while the speedometer
needle swept toward three digits.

"Tannim, driving like crazy will buy us some time, but it won't stop
them.  Ten-second quarter-miles won't stop the Wild Hunt."

Tannim grinned.  "Here.  Hold the wheel.  I'll slow 'em down."  He
rolled down the window on his side, and Shar leaned as far sideways as
she could manage with her seat-harness still buckled to grasp the
wheel.  Tannim let off the throttle, and the Hunt closed on them.

The wind whipped his curly hair around his face as he hung his left
arm, still somewhat tattered, out the window.  He chewed on his upper
lip a moment and sighted along the rearview mirror before turning his
head to face the bad-dreams-on-hooves behind them.  The Hounds, canine
sacks of sharp bone, were solid black with glittering eyes, loping
along as fast as greyhounds on a track.  The Hunters were all in black
barbarian types in fur and flying capes, crude tunics, but all of it in
dead black.  They all wore helms that hid their faces completely, which
was fine by Tannim.  The horses they rode were also black, but they had
fangs instead of horse's teeth.  What disturbed Tannim the most right
now was that they were close enough he could see such details through
the white sand the Mustang was clouding up behind itself!

It was that rooster-tail of sand that had given him this idea, though,
so maybe it wasn't all bad.  Tannim conjured up one of his planes of
force, the same kind he had been using as ramps for the Mach I. He laid
it down behind the speeding Mustang, a few feet behind the rear chrome,
and dragged it along.  The plume of sand grew even taller while Tannim
adjusted the angle of it to make it a scoop.  He then called another
plane into existence.  This time it was vertical, and caught the
majority of the sand the other one was kicking up.

Then he snapped his fingers and the vertical one dropped back behind
them, braced between a monolith of beryllium and a bus-sized lump of
coal.  He snapped his head around to face forward, grinning like a
fool.  What are you doing, you idiot?  Are you actually showing off?
You are!  You are!  You're showing off for Shar!

"That's one!"  he said as he dropped the accelerator pedal again and
the engine's rumble went up in pitch.  "Now for the clincher take the
wheel again "

Tannim changed the angle of the trailing plane of force, simultaneously
making it both wider and taller.  In a few moments more, they had a
perfect square of white sand following them as they shot between rows
of semiprecious stones the size of student apartments.  Tannim
laminated a second thin wall of force over the sand, let off the
throttle again, and to Shar's obvious amazement, stopped the car.

"What are you doing?"  Shar demanded.

"Hang on.  You'll see," Tannim said tersely.  He unbuckled and stepped
out of the car.  With a few hand gestures, he slid the upright square
of compacted sand to one side, and then split it in half horizontally.
He shuffled that half down to ground level and pushed it off to the
other side, then placed one slab of white sand on either side of the
tire-tracks.

"What are you doing?"  Shar asked again, a note of frantic worry in her
voice this time.

The sand they had left in the air behind had settled enough that he
could see, with disconcerting clarity, that their pursuers had split
around the wall he had put up a minute ago.  Some had simply punched
through it with impunity.  It had, after all, just been compacted sand,
held together by the vestiges of a walling spell.

The hellish horses were lathered.  They had no eyes, only dark holes
where the eyes should be.  The Master of the Hunt was the only Hunter
whose face was visible; he wore an open-faced helm crowned with stag's
antlers, and his horse was practically a skeleton.  The Master looked
like the ultimate predator; there was obviously only one thing for him,
and that was the hunt and the kill.

And they were all gaining.

Tannim kept his hand gestures to a minimum, so he wouldn't telegraph to
the closing horde what he was up to by now they must be thinking their
prey was exhausted, stopped to make a hopeless last stand.

Well if that's what they're thinking, I sure hope they're wrong.

Tannim called up three more planes of force, dropped them into place,
and dropped back into the driver's seat as fast as he could.  His foot
was on the accelerator before his door was even closed, and an eye
blink later, the Mustang was moving again.  The thickness of the
ever-present mist was increasing.  Behind them, the Hunters' horn
sounded again, audible over the growling engine and was abruptly cut
short.  Tannim looked in the rearview mirror.

Behind them, the Wild Hunt's dogs and horses were being cut down by the
planes of force he had left at knee-height on either side of the
upright, double layered, and very rigid walls of force.  Horrors of
ages past, spectres of ancient armies and spirits of death were being
clotheslined at the kneecaps and vaulted, deathless faces first, into
the white sand.  By a kid from Oklahoma in a fast car.

And beside him, a half-dragon, half-kits une lady was feverishly
concentrating on something glowing in her hands.

"This is it!"  Shar shouted over the howl of the engine.  "This is my
trump card!  If this one doesn't work "

She didn't finish the statement.  She didn't have to.  They both knew
what the outcome would be if the Hunt caught up with them.

The mist was so thick now that Tannim's effectiveness as a driver was
cut in half.  The rocks weren't spaced apart at predictable intervals
in this section, and there was always the chance he might run into one
if he wasn't careful.  That would bring a swift end to the Hunt, but
not the one they wanted.

So now it was up to Shar to shake their followers off the trail.

There were no fireworks this time; Shar simply held something small in
her hand, visibly pouring every erg of energy left to her into it.  She
finally tapped into the resources of the Mach I as well; Tannim sensed
more power draining from it into whatever it was she held, as if she
had suddenly opened a spigot at full force.

Then she dropped it whatever it was out the window.  And collapsed into
the seat, her face drained and white, her eyes closed.

A flash in his rearview mirror startled him into glancing up, taking
his attention off her for a moment.  To his amazement, there was
another Mustang behind them, with two occupants in the front seats,
speeding away at right angles from their own path!

She's built a decoy!  But how

"A hair from me, a hair from you, and a loose screw from the
dashboard," she said faintly.  "Wrapped up in a swatch of silk.  It
won't create tire-tracks, but it's made to leave a strong scent,
magical and physical.  I hope it'll hold them until we pass the wall
into the other pocket.  The decoy will incinerate in about twelve
minutes .. . but by then, our trail should be cold enough that they'll
give up."

However she'd done it, it had taken everything she had in her, and then
some.  It was obvious that she had held nothing in reserve.  She lay
back in the seat, pale and drained, so tired that only the seatbelt was
holding her erect.

So now it was up to him again; he'd bought her the time to create the
decoy, now her creation was buying them the time to escape.

Time to find the gap in the wall, and get the heck out of there.  * * *
Tannim waited until the last of the color and turbulence was gone from
the mist around them before bringing the Mach I to a halt and turning
the engine off.  Shar had not moved in all that time; she was as spent
as a channel-swimmer or a marathon-runner at the end of the race.  She
hadn't even noticed that they'd left the realm of the Hunters.

"Are you all right?"  he asked, wanting to touch her, but not certain
that he dared.  As a sort of awkward compromise, he took both of her
cold, limp hands in his to warm them.

"Are we there yet?"  she replied, without moving or opening her eyes.
"Are we on the other side?"

"Yes and I can't hear the Hunt anymore."  That had been a relief; the
moment he'd crossed the barrier of turbulence, he'd lost the last
sounds of horns and hounds, and they hadn't returned.  It looked as if
Shar was right; the Hunt couldn't track anything past all that magical
confusion.  They might not even be able to find their way in it.

"Nor can I, lad," Tom put in from the rear seat.  "An' I think I got
sharper ears nor ye."

Shar heaved an enormous sigh of relief, and finally opened eyes that
mirrored her own complete exhaustion.  "I think we've lost them.  I
didn't dare believe it, but I think we managed to lose them."

"You mean you managed to lose them, clever fox," he said, squeezing her
hands.  She smiled faintly and squeezed back.  "If you hadn't created
that decoy, we'd never have gotten away from them."

"There ain't many as escaped the Wild Hunt," Tom Cadge said, with awe
and delight.  "I didn' think e'en the two o' ye coulda done it!"

"I couldn't have done it," Tannim said flatly.  "Not alone.  All the
fancy driving in the world wasn't going to shake that bunch."  He shook
his head at her shrug.  "No, I know what I'm talking about and look,
Shar, I want you to know something.  I know we aren't out of this yet,
but you're free of your debt to me.  You've put in more than enough to
get us both out of this mess."

At that, a little life and color crept back into her face.  "But I
haven't gotten you back yet " she protested.  "You were right.  I got
you into this, and the only way to balance the scales is to get you
home again."

"I know," he replied, "but you've done more than you had to.  It's not
your fault we couldn't go back the same way I came in.  So, no matter
what else happens, the scales are balanced so far as I'm concerned, all
right?"

"If that's the way you want it," she said slowly, "all right.  But I'm
still going to get you home, and I'm going to get Tom somewhere that
will be safe for him."

"I know," he said, letting her hands go, with a smile.  "I know.  Now,
help me find that Gate again, all right?"  * * * Finding the Gate was a
great deal easier than he'd thought it would be; Shar didn't even need
to stir herself to help.  On this side of the wall, with no wind to
disturb the sand and no hills for it to slide down, the tire-tracks
were still as plain and as clear as if they'd just driven by a few
seconds ago.  He simply followed his own trail back to where it ended
at the alabaster arch in the midst of the shifting mists.

Now there was only one decision left to make.

"Back to the tundra?"  he asked out loud, staring at the translucent
rock of the Gate.  "Or somewhere else?"

"The only "else' we have available is that little domain of my
father's," Shar replied, sitting up and running her hands through her
hair in an obvious effort to revive.  "It has to be the tundra.  We'll
just have to go there and hope that we don't meet up with Madoc."

"And if we do?"  he countered.  "Shar, if we have a plan in place,
we'll be one up on him.  If we can move while he's still staring, we
have a chance to get away."

She nodded slowly.  "You're right.  The worst that can happen is that
we don't use that plan.  Do you have any ideas?"

"Actually, I do."  He stretched and popped a couple of vertebrae in his
neck.  "I think we ought to keep the Gate live behind us.  And if we
run into Madoc on the tundra, we duck back through to here before he
can react.  He won't know where we went, so we'll have a little lead
time.  Then, from here we go straight to Charcoal's pocket holding."

She stared at him, eyes wide.  "You have got to be kidding.  That's
crazy!  Why don't we just stand off in the mist and let them search
around, wait until they give up on this destination and then go back to
the tundra?"

But he shook his head.  "Because Madoc's going to leave someone to
guard that Gate on the frozen plain.  If we stand off and wait, they
can still follow the tire-tracks and find us.  But if we go to
Charcoal's domain, when they come through here, they just might see the
tire-tracks on this side and follow them out across to the other side
of the wall.  If they do that they'll run right into the Hunt."

He waited while she absorbed all that and gave it some serious thought
particularly the part about leading Madoc to the Hunters.

"At the worst," he continued, "they'll figure out which setting we used
and follow us there.  By then, if we haven't gotten into trouble, we'll
be following Gates that you know, and we won't be flying blind
anymore."

"Those are all good points," she admitted.  "And I can't think of a
better plan."  She ran a hand across her eyes and rubbed her temple
wearily.  "I hope we don't have to make too many fancy maneuvers,
though.  I don't have too much left in me."

He knew then exactly how much had been taken out of her by that last
heroic effort.  She would never have admitted her weakness if she
hadn't known there was no energy, no strength in her to call on
anymore.

And now he was in the uncomfortable position of trying to decide what
was the most risky proposition.  Should they stay where they were until
Shar recovered a little, taking the chance that the Wild Hunt might
find them, or some other, equally nasty inhabitant of this pocket
jumped them or Madoc found them?

Time is running out, either way.  We're getting hemmed in.

Or should they go on, and take the chance of running into Madoc with
Shar in a dangerously weakened state?

"I wish I knew where Madoc was right now," he muttered, running his
finger nervously across his chin.

"If I had my old air elementals, I could tell you," she replied, her
eyes growing suspiciously bright and wet.  "They used to scout things
for me, until Madoc murdered one of them, and the rest of them ran off
in terror."  She rubbed her hand across her eyes.  "My favorite .. ."

He sat down beside her and offered his shoulder.  He half expected her
to refuse it.

But she didn't.  She put her head down on his shoulder and wept
silently, tears soaking into his shirt, her whole body shaking with
quiet sobs.  He held her, sensing that the tears were long overdue.

For the moment, decisions would have to wait.  * * * Joe tapped quietly
on the door of the black-lacquered room, after intercepting FX just
before he yanked the doors open with no warning to the occupants.

The door slid aside after a moment's pause.  Lady Ako was the one who
opened it, but Joe thought that Chinthliss looked a little less
out-of-sorts.  He still looked worried, but not as annoyed as before.

There was no change in Lady Ako's expression, at least not that Joe
could read, but then she surely had a doctorate in inscrutability.  He
hoped that the two of them had gotten some of their differences ironed
out while he and FX had left them alone.

He'd never have admitted it out loud, but he was kind of a romantic,
and he had heard the pain in Chinthliss' voice when the dragon had told
the story of how he had lost Ako.  Maybe if Ako knew that, it might
make some difference to her.  Maybe if Chinthliss got over some of his
attitude problems, she'd be willing to give him another chance.

But Lady Ako's first words had nothing to do with the relationship
between herself and Chinthliss.  "The computer has a tentative match
with some of the things Chinthliss and I have seen while you were
gone," she said.  "If the match is a true one, it is most imperative
that they make some move to get out of there before very long.  It is a
most dangerous pocket of the Unformed."

"Aren't they all?"  Fox asked, as he took his place behind the table.

"Not all pockets are accessible to the Wild Hunt," Lady Ako said
shortly.

"What?"  Fox yelped, every hair standing on end.  Joe blinked in
surprise at Fox's reaction.  He'd never actually seen anyone or
anything but a cat bristle with fear before.  It was a very interesting
effect; Fox became twice his normal size for a moment, before Lady
Ako's soothing hand motions calmed him.

"Tell me we aren't going there," FX begged.  "Please, Lady, tell me we
aren't going there after them!  I'm only a three-tail, I can't take on
the Wild Hunt!"

"Not unless we have more than just a "tentative match' from a
collection of silicon chips to go on," Chinthliss replied.  "The lady
has graciously put one of her best sorcerers at our disposal; when we
know where they are, he will give us a Gate that will take us directly
to them.  But we are not going to waste that advantage until we have no
doubts."

"Indeed," Ako added with a decisive nod.  "I wish that we could work
your Tannim's trick with the chrome circle a second time, but while we
are all Underhill, the mere presence of even this much steel " she
tapped the ring with one claw " changes the effect of our magic.  We
have not practiced in the presence of Cold Iron as Tannim and Shar
have; we do not know how to use the effect."

Joe stared at her as something hit him.  Oh, surely the lady had
thought of this already!  It was so obvious

Oh, what the heck.  "Then why not go up?"  he blurted, face and ears
reddening as he thought about how stupid he must look.  "Why not go to
our side of the Hill, where your magic won't be affected as much?"

"Oh, it will still be affected," Ako said with a sigh.  "The problem is
the magic itself, and not entirely the place where it is cast.  Your
Tannim knows those effects, we do not.  He could compensate for them,
but we have never had the need to learn to do so."

"A mistake, and one that I have pointed out to others," Chinthliss
rumbled.  "No point in rehashing old debates.  I " He broke off,
suddenly, and his expression changed.  "Ako, the boy is right!  I had
forgotten that Tannim used the ring to build his Gate!  We cannot use
the trim-ring to do more than scry here, for a number of reasons but we
can make a Gate out of it on the other side of the Hill because we will
make the Gate from it exactly as Tannim did!  You've been assuming we
would create a new Gate, not that we would use the chrome circle!  And
it won't matter if the Mustang warps magics where it is, because the
trim ring is part of the Mach I!  It would matter if we were trying for
Tannim himself, say, or Shar, but not if we're linking into the Mustang
directly!  Magical resonance should .. ."

He went on at some length about "Laws of Magic" and spouting some kind
of mathematical equations Ako replied in the same vein, with great
enthusiasm and growing excitement.  Within seconds, Joe was hopelessly
lost.  Fox's gaze went back and forth between the two of them, like a
spectator at a tennis match, but Joe couldn't tell if he was actually
following the increasingly esoteric conversation or not.

Well, it hardly mattered.  Chinthliss thought his idea was going to
work, that was the point, and it looked as if he was convincing Lady
Ako.  Finally she nodded.

"I believe you are right," she said.  "And what is more, I believe your
logic is absolutely sound, magically and mathematically.  There is no
need for us to sit here in idleness any longer."

She slid the door to the tiny room open, and the three of them followed
her out into the larger room.  "Come," she said with an imperious
gesture, showing no sign of stiffness after all that sitting in cramped
quarters.

Chinthliss winked broadly at Joe and FX behind Lady Ako's back, but
followed her with no other comment.

She paused only to shed her fancy outer kimono and collect a belt hung
all over with a variety of implements.  Beneath the elaborate robe she
wore a much more utilitarian outfit, something like the jackets and
loose pants that karate students wore, only in a scarlet silk as red as
blazing maple leaves in autumn, bound at the waist with a scarlet
scarf.  She slung the belt over the jacket and pulled it snug.

"So where is this sorcerer you promised us?"  Chinthliss asked mildly,
as she gestured again that they should follow and headed down a
corridor that ended in a door.  She waited while Chinthliss got the
door, nodded gracefully, and preceded Joe and FX through it.  It let
out onto a perfectly ordinary sidewalk bordering a paved street in the
middle of a well-manicured park of the kind that would surround an
English manor-house.  Grass as perfect as a carpet of Astroturf
undulated beneath huge oak trees and immaculately groomed bushes, and
made plush paths between beds of flowers in full and riotous bloom.
Behind them, the building, which Joe knew was huge, was nothing more
than a single-storied one-room cottage surrounded by more beds of
flowers, picturesque as anything in a fairy tale.

Lady Ako advanced to the street without a single backward glance.
"Taxi!"  she called, waving her paw-hand in the air, although Joe
hadn't seen a single sign of anything like a cab.  But within a few
seconds, one appeared this time it wasn't a cartoonish taxi like the
last one, but a perfectly normal London cab.

"Where to, mum?"  the driver asked in what was definitely an English
accent.

"Grand Central Station," she replied, getting into the front, next to
the driver, leaving the rest of them to pile into the rear.  It was a
bit of a squeeze, with Joe stuck in the middle, but they all made it.
The cab smelled pleasantly of leather and metal polish; it made a
U-turn and proceeded down the tree-lined avenue at a modest pace. There
wasn't any other traffic, and no one on foot, either.

Fortunately, the ride wasn't long.  "That's it, up there," Chinthliss
said, waving at a building rising above the trees ahead of them.  Joe
had no clue what the real Grand Central Station looked like, but it
probably wasn't anything like this..  ..

Carved of white marble, the place rose several stories tall, covered in
arches and staircases and it made Joe dizzy just to look at it, because
it was all so completely wrong.  Staircases were at right angles to one
another, even running upside-down, arches gave out onto platforms that
were at the tops of staircases that nevertheless went up from the
platform, even though the platform was already higher than the
staircase..  ..

Worse yet, there were people walking all over this thing, upside-down,
sideways though always at the correct angle to the surface they were
walking on.

"Don't think about it," FX advised him in a kindly voice.  "It's all
right, it just isn't operating by the rules you're used to."

If that wasn't the understatement of the century!  At least the bottom
story looked normal enough as the taxi pulled up to the single
entrance.  Joe decided that the best thing he could do would be to fix
his gaze firmly on the ground in front of him and not look anyplace
else.

Lady Ako paid and tipped the driver, and they all piled out of the cab
onto the white marble sidewalk.  Joe refused to look any higher than
the first floor, but that was impressive enough.  The whole thing was
white marble, and every inch of it was carved with patterns of flying
birds that became fish that became birds again, or lizards, or rather
bewildered-looking gryphons.

"The sorcerer?"  Chinthliss prompted.  Lady Ako just smiled.

"I've always said that if you want something done right, you should do
it yourself," she replied.  "Why should I delegate something this
important to someone else?"

"Ah."  Chinthliss only nodded.  "Hence Grand Central Station."

She shrugged.  "It will save me some effort," she replied, as if that
answered everything.  "The price of four tickets is far, far less than
the cost of the safety of my daughter."

Chinthliss only bowed, and gestured to her to lead them on again.  She
did so, taking them under an archway upheld by two pillars carved with
sinuous, intertwined lizards.

Once inside, Joe forgot his resolution to only look down at his feet.
He stared upward, gawking.  They were inside a single enormous room of
white marble that reached into the misty distance.  Around the edge of
the room was a ramp spiraling upward until it dwindled far above them
into a mere thread.  Giving out onto the archway were doors with names
carved over them and inlaid with black marble.  Joe simply couldn't
read most of those names; they weren't lettered with anything he
recognized.  The words were as foreign as Arabic or Chinese.

People were coming and going from those doors; not many, and not at any
regular intervals, but there did appear to be a certain amount of
steady traffic.

"Don't worry about those," FX told him, nudging him to get him moving
again.  "What we want is over there "

The kits une pointed to another arch, this one quite plain, but with a
ticket booth at one side.  Lady Ako was already there, buying tickets,
while Chinthliss waited beside her.  There was a single word carved
above this archway as well: Home.

Home?

"Come on," Fox urged, as the lady turned away from the booth with
tickets in her hand.

"What the heck does that mean, "Home'?"  Joe asked.  "What's going on
here?"

"All those doors you see up there are Gates," Fox explained as the two
of them hurried to catch up.  "You can get here from just about any
domain Underhill this is the other side of the park from the gazebo
where we came in.  If you don't want to use up your own magic in
building a Gate to somewhere, you can always come here and use the
public Gates.  Underhill couldn't exist without this place, actually,
it's sort of the center for everything.  This is the most neutral spot
in the universe.  You could meet your deadliest blood-enemy here, and
no matter how much you hated each other, you'd both better smile, nod,
and ignore each other.  The guardians of this place don't interfere
with much, but break the peace, and they'll squash you flat."

FX giggled.  "We call 'em Sysops."

"What's that got to do with "Home'?"  Joe persisted, as they came up to
where Chinthliss and Lady Ako were standing just beneath the archway.

"This is a unique Gate in all of the domains," Ako supplied, handing
him a ticket.  "It requires an enormous amount of magic to operate and
it will take you home.  Wherever your home is.  It responds to your
desire, to the place you feel is truly home to you anywhere Underhill,
or anywhere on your side of the Hill, from Warsaw, Poland, to Warsaw,
Indiana; from Athens, Greece, to Athens, Georgia.  For that reason,
although the other public Gates here in Grand Central Station are free
or of nominal cost to use, use of this Gate is very expensive but I do
not grudge the expense.  I will need all my powers once we reach your
side of the Hill to build the Gate to reach Shar and Tannim; this will
help me save them for that."

"So Joe, it's up to you," Chinthliss said quietly.  "We need to get
back to the barn, or somewhere near it, so we can use the trim-ring as
a Gate."  He handed Joe a different ticket from the other three:
metallic gold, it felt very much like a very thin sheet of metal,
embossed with odd characters.  "You're the one with the Master Ticket
for this trip; the Home Gate will take its setting from you.  Take us
home."

Home?  For a moment, his mind was a complete blank.  He'd never had a
home, not really, so how could he take the others there?  Not the
succession of low-rent apartments that he and his parents had lived in
while his father was working out his Grand Plan.  Certainly not the old
mansion outside Atlanta.  Definitely not the bunkers of the Chosen Ones
in Oklahoma.  Not even the military school, which was the only place
until now where he'd ever felt comfortable..  ..

Until now.  Suddenly his thoughts settled.  What was wrong with him? Of
course he had a home now!  Tannim's parents had made that clear, that
he was welcome and wanted there.  Needed, too, when it came to it; he
could pull his own weight there and know he was useful, and be sure of
getting thanks afterwards.

No, there was no question of where home was.  Not anymore.

"Ready?"  Chinthliss asked, looking searchingly into his eyes.

He nodded, confident now, and led the way under the vast, white arch of
stone, knowing what he would find at the other end of it.

Home, he thought with a longing, and yet a deep contentment, as he felt
that now-familiar disorientation take hold of him.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

There was the usual moment when he was blind, deaf, and directionless;
this time Joe flexed his knees automatically and stepped forward
confidently, walking out of blindness into

Darkness.  It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the dark after the
dazzling whiteness of Grand Central Station.

Don't panic; we left at night, it should still be night, shouldn't it?
How much time had passed while he was Underhill?  Several hours,
certainly.  Should it be dark, then?  Shouldn't it be dawn by now? Were
they even where they were supposed to be?  What if they were in
Atlanta, or even the military academy?

Then, to his immense satisfaction, the bulk to his right resolved
itself into the Drake house at the end of the driveway, and the flat to
the left became the road.

"Good job," came a whisper to his right; Chinthliss, he thought. "Right
on target."

"When are we?"  FX whispered urgently.

Joe swiveled and reached out involuntarily, only to find that his hand
passed right through FX.  So they were definitely home, the world he
knew, where Fox was nothing but a spirit.  When?  What does he mean by
that?

Chinthliss raised a shadowy arm and a bit of blue light flashed up from
his wrist.  "Good," he said with satisfaction.  "Very good!  Only four
in the morning, same night that we left."

Another shadow-shape touched his arm, this one slim and graceful.  Lady
Ako.  "The time between Underhill and your world runs at different
paces," she offered in low-voiced explanation.  "Your sense of place is
very strong, and includes a solid feeling for the exact time you came
Underhill.  Because Underhill has not been precisely real to you, your
sense of place was not influenced by the apparent time you spent
there."

If that's supposed to be a simple explanation, I don't want to hear a
complicated one!  he thought, bewildered.  Nevertheless, he bowed his
thanks to the Lady without revealing that her explanation left him as
baffled as before.

"I'd like to get back to the barn," Chinthliss said, scanning the house
and the road quickly.  "The shields on it are good ones, and I don't
want to leave a live Gate open behind us without shields.  The only way
we're going to get them out will be if we leave the Gate open at our
backs."

"A good point," Ako murmured.  "This is your place of expertise,
Chinthliss, and I will follow your instructions.  I have only visited
here on this side of the Hill, and none of those visits was very
recent."

"Which way is the barn from here?"  Chinthliss asked Joe in an
undertone.  "I don't remember."

"Not a problem."  Joe took the lead with confidence, even in the thick
darkness of the last hour before dawn.  The others followed, accepting
him as the temporary leader.

The Junior Guard had followed him and his orders once but it had been
out of habit to obedience, and not because they were particularly
confident in his ability.

But this was different.  At this moment, despite anxiety for Tannim and
worry about what lay ahead, he was as content as he had ever been.  He
was trusted for himself, now, and not because he was Brother Joseph's
son, or the duly authorized leader of the Junior Guard, or even an
officer in the ranks of the Chosen Ones.

It felt good.

He owed this, all of it, to Bob, Al, Tannim, and the other Fairgrove
people he hadn't even met yet a family of his own choosing, if it came
right down to it.  They'd given him a place where he belonged, where he
could find out what he was all about.  He owed them for something
beyond price, something not too many people ever got, really.

Well, he thought, lengthening his strides when he sensed that the
others would be able to keep up with him, in that case, it's time for
some payback.  * * * "I'm sorry," Shar said, wiping her nose on the
tissue Tannim offered.  Her eyes were sore; her throat and lungs ached.
She felt vaguely as if she should have been embarrassed; she'd never
broken down like that before in front of anybody, not even her mother.
Charcoal, Lady Ako, some of the Unseleighe had seen her anger, her
rage, but never her tears.  Grief until now had been a private thing.

But she wasn't embarrassed.  It had felt so good to lean on someone
else, even for just a little so good to let loose all that grief, all
the frustration.  So good to be held by someone who wasn't going to
expect the very next moment to be a passionless roll in the sack.

"Hey," Tannim said, patting her hand awkwardly, "you were just tired,
that's all.  You still are.  Just wait until we're somewhere safer, and
you get a chance to rest; you'll be all right then."

She sniffed and blew her nose, then looked up at him to meet his
peculiar, weary, lopsided smile.

He handed her another tissue.  "I wish all I did was cry when I get
tired.  When I'm beat, you can't trust my aim with anything.  That's
one reason why I don't carry a gun around."

"Really?"  she said, seizing the chance to change the subject
gratefully.  "I can't imagine you being unskilled at anything."

He nodded solemnly.  "Honest truth.  Scorched one of my own friends
with a mage-bolt once during a firefight with the Unseleighe; gave him
a reverse Mohawk."

"No!"  She giggled as he nodded with a touch of chagrin as well as
amusement.

" "Fraid so."  He sighed and looked around at the eddying mist outside
of the Mustang.  "Look, I hate to try and push you, but we really need
to make some decisions here.  What are you going to set the Gate for?
The frozen plain first?  Or do we jump right into the fire and try
Charcoal "

Without warning, the Gate flared into life.

Tannim's reactions were faster than she would have believed possible
for a mere human.  He had the Mustang in reverse and skidding away from
the Gate in a flash.

It just was not quite soon enough.

The sand came to life with a roar and rose up in a barrier behind them.
It acted as if it was alive, or something was alive and burrowing
beneath it, heaving upward in a towering mound with sides too steep for
the Mustang to climb.  He slammed on the brakes, and spun the wheel to
the side, throwing the Mach I into first and accelerating into the mist
at right angles away from the brand-new mound, only to find the way
barred by something entirely unexpected.

A wall of shadow and dulled silver.  A living wall.

A wall with ten talons, each as long as an arm.

He slammed on the brakes, just short of it.  Shar stared through the
windshield at the two enormous fore claws each half as large as the
Mustang.

A dragon..  ..

There was only one dragon in all of Underhill that peculiar metallic
gray, like polished ash, or matte-finished hematite.

Charcoal.

Father.

She bit back a gasp of fear, and felt a wave of chill wash over her.

Her hands were on the door handle.  She tried to take them off and
couldn't.  They would not obey her.

She found herself opening the door of the passenger's side, entirely
against her will; found herself getting out, standing beside the
Mustang, mist eddying around her ankles.  Her hands shut the
passenger's door as she strove to regain control of them, to no avail.
She should have been angry, but all she could feel was rising panic.

Charcoal shares my blood; he must have the ability to control my body

More shapes moved in on them, out of the mist: bipedal shapes in black
armor, with surcoats and cloaks of midnight black, a dozen or more
altogether.  They paused in a group for a moment, in complete silence.
One of them strode out of the midst of them with his sword drawn and
his faceplate up.

Madoc Skean.  He looked rather pleased with himself.  Bastard.  He got
Father to track us down!

"Ah, Charcoal," Madoc said with false good humor.  "I see you've found
them.  Now, just hand them over to me, and "

The dragon coughed, and warm air laden with the scent of aged stone
washed over her.  He bent his neck down to stare at Madoc, his
sulfur-colored eyes wide with amusement.  "Hand them over to you?
Aren't you getting above yourself, Madoc Skean?  It was you who came to
me for help, as I recall, and not the opposite."  Charcoal's voice
boomed overhead, kettledrums and distant thunder, a vibration in the
breastbone.  "If it had not been for me, you would never have found
them, would you?  If it had not been for me, you would not have known
the Gate into this domain, nor would you have been able to hold it."

Shar found herself free to move again, as Charcoal's attention was
momentarily on Madoc, and she backed up, one slow step at a time.  So
he doesn't control me unless he's concentrating on it!  Maybe if she
could get a little out of reach, where the mist was thicker, she could
make a run for it.  And if she broke and ran, that would give Tannim an
opening to try something.  Her magic was exhausted, but there was still
his, and he was no amateur.  Tension corded every muscle in her body as
she edged past the rear of the Mustang.  A little more.  A little
more..  ..

Madoc's expression changed from genial and self-satisfied to petulant
and angry.  "I thought we had a bargain, Charcoal," Madoc replied
harshly.  "You would find them, I would "

"You would what?"  Charcoal laughed so loudly that Shar winced
involuntarily.  She knew that laugh.  Charcoal was sure he held the
situation completely under his own control.  "Dispose of the human?
Punish my daughter?  You would presume?  I claimed this human as my
prey a long time ago, elven fool and such as you are not fit to polish
the talons of one of my kind!  However she has offended you, she has
previously offended me, and she is mine to deal with, not yours!"

Charcoal's tail lashed, scattering Madoc and his followers, and the
barrier of sand collapsed as Madoc took his attention from it.  But the
overall effect, when Madoc's Faceless Ones gathered around him again,
was to put Shar and the Mustang directly between Madoc and Charcoal,
with the Faceless Ones between her and freedom.  This was not an
improvement.

"I will challenge you for them if I must, impertinent lizard!"  Madoc
shouted, gesturing with his sword.  "The human has slain my kin,
wrought havoc among my kind!  She broke faith with me!  She violated
the terms of our agreement!  I have first claim on her and on him as
well!"

"My claim takes precedence over yours, oh cream-faced loon," the dragon
retorted, raising his head again.  "She broke faith with me long before
she broke it with you.  In fact, I would say that you owe me for making
a separate peace and an alliance with her when you knew that she and I
were at odds."

The Faceless Ones were creeping up on Charcoal from behind, working
their way across the sand silently, using the mist as cover.  Shar
wondered if he noticed

Then his tail lashed again with sudden, deadly purpose.  Most of them
evaded it, but one did not; the creature was caught across the
midsection by twenty feet of scale-covered muscle as big around as the
trunk of a tree and sent hurtling, broken-bodied, out into the mist. It
did not return.  Not surprising; most created creatures disintegrated
when damaged beyond repair.

And what will happen to me when I am damaged beyond repair?

"And as for the other, the human, my prey," Charcoal continued, as if
nothing had happened, "I will deal with him as I see fit.  His very
existence is offensive to me, and has been since my rival chose to make
a protege of him."

Tannim opened the driver's-side door and slowly emerged from the
Mustang to stand beside it.  But Shar got the distinct impression that
he had not been forced, as she had been, that he was getting out under
his own control.

Tannim, no don't do anything, don't say anything

The young mage ran a hand through his tangled mop of hair and looked up
at Charcoal with no sign of fear.  "Don't you think it's a little early
to start calling me "prey'?  I mean, we just met," Tannim said
mildly.

Shar stiffened at his casual tone, now more afraid for him than she was
for herself.  Oh no no, Tannim, don't provoke him!

Charcoal bent his gaze on the human below him, his eyes glowing with
pent-up hatred.  "Oh really?  Perhaps you need to be reminded of how
tiny you are."

Tannim folded his arms across his chest, and casually leaned against
the car.  "If you're trying to intimidate me, it's not working.  I know
all the tricks.  And size doesn't impress me in the least."

What was he trying to do?  Did he have some clever plan to get them
both out of this?  Shar clenched her fists until her nails cut into the
palms of her hands, desperately trying to muster up even the tiniest
amount of energy.  The sparks of her magic sputtered and died as she
tried to fan them into life.  Surely he couldn't be counting on her to
back him up he knew she was exhausted!

This was a hazardous gambit Tannim was playing, if what he was doing
was trying for time by bluffing and she didn't think it had a
snowball's chance of working.

Charcoal's eyes narrowed.  "You are an arrogant fool," he rumbled, his
talons flexing in the soft sand as if he longed to sink them into
Tannim's body.  "As big a fool as that Unseleighe idiot who was hunting
you."

But Tannim simply shrugged and leaned a little more against the car,
dropping his left hand down behind the open door, paying no attention
whatsoever to Shar.  "Really?  You think so?  Then you haven't been
paying attention."

His left hand flickered once, quickly, out of Charcoal's line of sight;
the keys to the Mustang fell at Shar's feet, the sound of their impact
muffled in the soft sand.  Charcoal was so busy concentrating on Tannim
that he didn't notice.

The dragon's eyes narrowed to mere slits.  "You tire me," he hissed. "I
believe it is time to squash you, and "

A whiplash of mage-energy crackled across the distance between Madoc
and Charcoal.  Shar ducked involuntarily as it arced over her head, and
Charcoal's head snapped back from the impact on his muzzle, precisely
as if Madoc had slapped him.

"First there are my claims, worm!"  Madoc cried, his voice high and
tight with anger, his hands glowing with the residual energy of the
mage-bolt.  "This mortal is mine!"

"Don't you think both your claims are a little premature?"

Shar turned, for the voice had clearly come from behind her.  Another
figure loomed out of the mist.

Tannim oohed.  "The gang's all here."

Loomed was precisely the word; the shape moving through the mist
towards them was just a little shorter than Charcoal although in this
mist it was difficult to judge.  In the next moment, a blast of wind
from a pair of huge, fanning wings blew all the mist away from the
immediate area.

It all began to drift back immediately, of course, but not before
Chinthliss made an impressive entrance in the wake of the wind.

Shar had never seen Chinthliss in his full draconic splendor before,
and she felt her eyes widening with surprise.  He stalked onto the
sand, bronze scales shimmering subtly as the muscles beneath them
moved, head held high on his long, flexible neck, wings half-spread
behind him like a golden-bronze cloak.  Beside him, the rest of his
party looked like dolls

Dolls?  Perhaps that was not the best comparison.  Perhaps they were no
match for him in size, but that did not mean they were not formidable
in their own right.

On Chinthliss' left, and nearest Shar, was the young blond human Tannim
had been partnering before Shar kidnapped the Mustang; he had a drawn
weapon in his hands, and Shar might have been the only creature present
other than Tannim who knew just how deadly that tiny piece of metal
really was.  Beside him, in full battle arousal, was a three-tailed
kits une his fox-mask convulsed in a snarl of rage, every hair on end,
his paws crackling with mage-energy.

And on Chinthliss' right

Mother!

Lady Ako was as serene and outwardly unmoved as a statue of a Buddhist
nun; only someone who really knew her well would see the anger in her
eyes and sense how close she was to the boiling point.  And Shar knew
that scarlet outfit she wore so regally, that belt with all of its many
surprises.  Lady Ako had come prepared in her own way for battle.

Tannim hadn't moved a muscle, although both Charcoal and Madoc Skean
had backed up and shifted a few involuntary feet.  Shar allowed herself
to hope, just a little.  Charcoal stared at the newcomers with the
first signs of surprise Shar had ever seen him display.  Shar took
advantage of the distractions to bend down and snatch up the keys to
the Mustang, knowing what that had cost Tannim and what it meant to
her.

He had sent her a message, as clearly as if he had spoken it to her. If
I buy it it's yours, the car and all the power in it.  Everything.

Her heart ached.  It wasn't the Mustang that she wanted..  ..

Shar, Tannim, and the Mustang were now the exact middle of a triangle,
the points of which were Madoc and his Faceless Ones, Chinthliss and
his allies, and Charcoal.  Shar was already several feet behind the
tail of the Mustang.  With the change of position, Madoc was nearest
Tannim, Shar nearest Chinthliss, the Mustang between Tannim and
Charcoal.

"Chinthlissssss."  Charcoal's hiss of recognition was so full of hatred
that Shar could taste it.  "I might have known you would show up."

The bronze dragon shrugged; an oddly human gesture.  "I am not as
careless of my proteges as you, it seems.  Nor am I inclined to abandon
my allies as my whim suits me."

Charcoal ignored the sally and dropped his gaze to Chinthliss' feet.
"Ako," he said in a tone that Shar could have sworn was one of reproach
if she hadn't already known that Charcoal was a master of manipulation.
He assumed an expression of noble hurt.  "Ako, I am surprised to find
you with this brat.  I thought you had more dignity and pride than to
be taken in by a manipulating charlatan."

Lady Ako looked Charcoal up and down, her face so full of open scorn
that even Tom Cadge must sense it.  "I do," she replied shortly.  "That
is why I left you."

Charcoal reared up as if he had been struck.  The three-tailed kits une
openly snickered.  Chinthliss' mouth widened slightly in a draconic
smile.

"I believe," he said genially, "that we have a stalemate,
Chinthliss."

"Foolish worms!"  Madoc Skean shouted furiously, startling them all.
"You are forgetting me!"

He rushed Tannim, sword held high over his head, the blue-black blade
alive with crawling actinic-white tendrils of mage-power.  But Tannim
was not as unready as he had looked nor as relaxed.

Tannim reached down into the Mustang's front window, and turned with
one smooth motion to face Madoc's charge.  As Madoc's blade slashed
downward toward his head, Tannim brought up both hands with something
between them.  Madoc's sword met Tannim's red crowbar instead of
Tannim's head.

However tempered the elven blade was, it was no match for a solid bar
of Cold Iron, doubly-tempered with spells.  With a scream that sounded
almost human, the blade snapped in half, leaving a charred stump in the
hilt in Madoc Skean's hands.

The Unseleighe lord stared at the remains of his weapon for a single
stunned second.  That was long enough for Tannim to make his
countermove.

Showing all the expertise of any battle-honed elven warrior Shar had
ever seen, Tannim swung the crowbar in a two-handed slash toward
Madoc's head.  The elven lord ducked aside at the last moment, and the
crowbar only caught his upraised arm.

Sparks flew from Madoc's spell-strengthened armor, and Madoc staggered
back a few steps.

But now the fight was no longer one-on-one.  The Faceless Ones closed
in to come to the aid of their master.  Tannim whirled to parry their
blades, but there were many of them and only one of him.

Tannim!  He could never fend them all off not without help!

Shar managed to summon up the power for a mage-bolt.  Her hands blazed
with magical energy; she screamed at the top of her lungs with the pain
it cost her, but she blasted the nearest of the Faceless Ones full in
the unprotected back, just as Tannim connected with a second, a raking
blow straight across the chest with the pointed end of the crowbar.

Both disintegrated in a shower of sparks, empty armor dropping to the
sand with a clatter.

Tannim dove through the opening presented by the loss of a faceless
warrior, turning the dive into a somersault that brought him up onto
his feet much nearer Shar, and outside the circle of Faceless Ones. Out
of the corner of her eye, Shar saw that the young human with Chinthliss
was trying desperately to find a target, but was clearly afraid of
hitting Tannim.  Tannim swung on another Faceless One, catching it in
the back.  Another shower of sparks and tumble of empty armor marked
the loss of another of Madoc's creations.

Now it was Madoc's turn again; he charged Tannim with a wild war cry,
his hands full of a much cruder weapon than his prized mage-sword. This
was an ancient Celtic war-club, a massive piece of lead-weighted wood,
previously strapped across his back.  Tannim's crowbar was no match for
it and Madoc was a warrior trained since his birth hundreds of years
ago in the art of wielding such weapons.

The club came down; Tannim deflected it rather than blocking it, but
Madoc recovered swiftly and used the momentum of the deflected swing to
come in from the side.  Tannim deflected it again, but only partially;
he got a glancing blow in the ribs that made him gasp and go double for
a moment.

Madoc brought the club around again

No, you bastard!

Shar's mage-bolt to the side of Madoc's head was weak, but enough to
distract him for a moment.  She crumpled to her knees, gasping with
pain that brought tears to her eyes, but Tannim took advantage of
Madoc's distraction to recover, and landed another blow against Madoc,
this one a solid hit to the knee with the full weight of the crowbar
behind it.

Madoc's leg crumpled and he went down on the other knee, as Tannim
shuffled backward, getting out of range of the vicious club.

That gave the young human enough room to begin shooting.

Yes!  Shar exulted.

Faceless ones dropped like puppets with cut strings as the human's
bullets connected.  Joe emptied one clip, and slapped in a second
without pausing.  He wasn't just a good shot; he was an expert.  For
every crack of gunfire, another Faceless One fell, until the only set
of black armor still moving was the one containing the Unseleighe
Lord.

Madoc was in full battle-rage, oblivious to the decimation of his
followers.  In this state, only his own chosen target had any place in
his maddened mind.  In a condition of berserker mindlessness, he felt
no pain, and would not notice injuries or even broken bones.  He
regained his feet and charged again, limping slightly, heading straight
for Tannim.

But the young human beside Chinthliss wasn't finished either.

In a flurry of rapid fire, the young man emptied three well-placed
torso-shots into Madoc Skean's breastplate.

Madoc's body jerked backward with each of the three shots.  Three
fist-sized metallic dimples appeared in the carapace of Madoc's armor,
where the spent bullets hit metal after passing through breastplate and
flesh.

Silence.  Shar's ears rang from the noise of the shots.

Madoc dropped down to one knee with a clatter of armor, leaning on the
war-club.

Blood poured from every seam, every hole in Madoc's armor, yet the
Unseleighe lord somehow remained erect.

The young human ejected the second clip and slapped in a third,
leveling the sights on Madoc, although he did not resume firing.

Madoc's helm came up, the eye-slit pointing at Tannim.  There was a
gurgling sound as Madoc tried to speak, but nothing coherent emerged.
Then, like a tree falling in slow motion, he dropped over sideways to
land sprawled in an ungainly heap, blood still oozing from his armor.

The young man swiveled instantly to train his sights on Charcoal, but
the dragon's attention was not on him, nor on Chinthliss, nor even on
Tannim.

Shar met her father's eyes and could not look away from the burning
yellow gaze.  His eyes grew until they filled her entire field of
vision, until she was lost in them, drowning in them, helpless to look
elsewhere.

Once again, fear overwhelmed her, chilling her very soul.

She felt her body moving forward, one slow step at a time.

"This is no stalemate," Charcoal thundered, his voice vibrating her
bones and shivering along the surface of her skin.  "If you try to stop
me, you will all suffer.  Chinthliss, you are no match for me, and
never were.  Ako, your powers lie in cunning and in Healing; the lowly
three-tail beside you cannot even muster the latter, much less courage.
No human born could ever harm me.  Even if you should conquer me
against all odds, some of you will die, and all of you will suffer. You
cannot risk that."

Shar fought Charcoal with every atom of her will, to no avail.  Her
feet continued to move, dragging reluctantly through the sand, taking
her ever nearer to him.  She sensed the Mustang within reach; it might
as well have been on the other side of the Hill for all the good it did
her.  She could not even feel her hands clutching the keys: they were
completely numb.

"Nevertheless," Charcoal continued maliciously, "I shall grant you this
much.  You may go; even the human called Tannim.  I will permit you to
escape this time.  But I will have my daughter."

"No!"  Ako cried, and Shar bled inside to hear the pain in her voice.

"Yes."  Charcoal's icy tone sent a frost of fear down Shar's spine.
"She is of my blood; see for yourself how I control her body.  As I
created her, she is mine, and I will have her."

"You couldn't hold her the last time, Charcoal," Tannim said defiantly.
"She isn't yours, she isn't property.  She'll slip your leash and
run."

But Charcoal laughed, and the sound froze the blood in Shar's veins.

"Not when I am through with her, she will not."  The dragon chuckled
maliciously.  "I shall see to it that there is nothing left in her mind
that I have not placed there, no image that I have not approved.  This
time my dear Shar will be everything a doting and dutiful daughter
should be body, mind, and soul.  And the body, mind, and soul will be
mine."

She knew he could do it.  He had the power to erase everything that she
was, and replace it with whatever he wanted.

To unmake her.

No!  she cried out in horror, but only in her mind.  No!

And her feet stopped moving.

Fear gave her strength she didn't even know she had.  Encouraged, she
continued to fight: she stared into Charcoal's eyes and forced them
away from her, fought against the control of her body until she shook
as if she were fevered.  Feeling came back to her hands, her arms

Charcoal's eyes narrowed in anger; his breath escaped in a hiss, and he
snapped his jaws together with impatience.

"Do not fight me, girl," he snarled.  "Do not fight me, or I shall make
your friends suffer."

She ignored his threats, knowing that while she fought his control, he
would not be free to turn his attention elsewhere.  With a snarl like
cloth tearing, he changed his tactics.

She screamed as pain struck her with a thousand fire-tipped lashes,
convulsed and dropped to the sand, holding her head in her fisted hands
as agony lanced her in both temples.

"Stop it!"  cried Ako, in shared agony.  Shar saw through eyes blurred
with tears of pain that her mother stood as rigid as a stone, her face
a mask of anguish.  In answer, Charcoal only sent another assault of
pain through his daughter.

"I can continue this as long as her mind resists," he said with a laugh
that filled her ears and mind, and echoed in her heart.  "And you can
do nothing to prevent it."

"I'm not your property!"  Shar managed through teeth gritted against
the pain.  "I will not surrender!"

"Then you will suffer," Charcoal replied, and suited his actions to his
words.  "And when I am finished with you, if the rest of these fools
have not taken advantage of the opportunity to escape, I shall turn my
attention to one of them."

A different kind of pain grated on her nerves, racing up her arm from
her left palm.  She realized that she still held the keys to the
Mustang.

And she still held the key to the power in the Mustang.

In the brief interval between waves of excruciating pain, she reached
for that power.  Held it.

Used it.

She threw up a shield between herself and her father; a crude thing,
but strong, and she panted with relief as the next wave of pain broke
on it and failed to reach her.

She used the moment of respite to refine it and reinforce it, before he
realized what she had done, and that his punishment no longer reached
her.  Slowly, she got her balance back; slowly she raised her head,
defiant once again.  She got to her knees, then to her feet, and stood
staring at him, daring him to try something new.

Charcoal was clearly taken aback by this development and stared back at
her with open astonishment.

"I am not your property, Charcoal," she said in a voice hoarse from
screaming.  "I am not anyone's property.  Anything I owed you before,
you lost all right to when you tried to control me."

Charcoal's eyes widened in speculation, and she sensed that he was
thinking furiously.  "Shar " he said then, his voice sweetly persuasive
and hypnotic, "I don't know what this human has been telling you to
turn you against me, but humans are by nature deceitful creatures.
Whatever he has promised you, there is no way that he intends to make
good on his promise.  It is easy for humans to promise more than they
can deliver they never live long enough to be forced to account for
those promises!  You have not seen as much of the worlds as I have; I
have only been trying to protect you from all the lies and trickery
that "

"That you are the master of," Shar snapped, holding her head high.
"That always has been your way, hasn't it?  When you can't force
someone, you hurt them, and when you can't hurt them, you try to
manipulate them.  It isn't going to work with me."

Charcoal reared up to his full height, and only then was it apparent
that he was much larger than Chinthliss.  But his voice remained smooth
and calm, even though malice underlay it.

"In that case, daughter," he said silkily, "I shall simply have to
destroy you, as I destroy any flawed creation."

The fear returned, fourfold, holding her helplessly hostage.  Shar
sensed him gathering his power, and winced back behind shields she knew
were inadequate, waiting helplessly for the blow that would be the last
thing she ever felt.  She closed her eyes, trying not to show that she
was paralyzed with terror.

Any moment.

Her skin crawled as she threw the last of her power into her poor
shields.

Now .. . now..  ..

"Stop it!"

The blow did not fall.  Shar opened her eyes.

"Stop it, Charcoal," Tannim said wearily, stepping away from the car.
"That's enough.  Leave them all alone.  Leave her alone."

Charcoal turned his burning gaze on the battered young human.

"And why, pray, should I?"  he asked.

What is he doing?  Shar stared, trying to fathom what new trick he was
going to pull.  Did he have anything left?

Surely he must

"Because you don't want her.  If you want revenge on Chinthliss, you
want me.  So take me."  He held his arms wide, and her breathing
stopped as she realized what he was saying.

"Take me instead.  I surrender."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

"Take me.  I surrender," Tannim repeated, dropping the crowbar to the
sand with a dull thud as if to emphasize his words.  A dispassionate
part of his mind noted the shock in Charcoal's eyes with grim
amusement.  This was the last thing the old lizard had expected.

"An interesting offer," Charcoal replied slowly.  "I fail to see what
prompts you to assume that I will take it."

"Oh, please, I'm not that dense."  He allowed a weary sarcasm to color
his words.  "Don't you think Shar's already told me why you spent all
that time training her?  You wanted her to be my opposite, right?  The
counter-weapon to Chinthliss' little "Son of Dragons."  That's all you
ever wanted her for.  Well, here I am; all yours.  You won't need her
anymore, you make Chinthliss unhappy, you get rid of me, you've got the
whole enchilada."

He had known the moment Charcoal started in on Shar that the gray
dragon was right; they couldn't fight him.  If they did, they'd all get
hurt.  Probably at least three of them would be killed Shar definitely,
Joe the most likely after her, Fox and himself as a tie for third
victim.  Joe would die because he had no idea what he was up against,
and a fight with Charcoal was no time to learn.  Like the new recruits
in the trenches, he wouldn't have time to gain the experience he needed
to survive.

They couldn't abandon Shar, leave her to be murdered or mind-wiped by
her father.  He couldn't abandon her.  And even if they did abandon
Shar to her father like a bunch of cowards, the moment Charcoal
finished with her, he'd start on the rest of them anyway.

No matter what happened, Shar would die, physically or mentally, and
she didn't deserve any kind of death, much less the kind that Charcoal
would give her.

Unless he gave Charcoal what he really wanted.

And if I'm going to die, I'd like it to be keeping my friends safe.
Keeping Shar safe.

Right, Tannim.  Very brave.  Very noble.  Very stupid.

What the hell.  When we played soldiers, I was always the one who fell
on the grenade and got the terrific funeral.  Too bad I won't be around
to see this one.  Damn.  Life's been good.

He took a slow step forward, feeling every bruise, and savoring the
pain as the last thing he was likely to feel.  He was acutely aware of
the soft, shifting sand under his shoes, the oddly clean taste to the
air, the faint ache where that mist-thing had bitten him.  "Here I am,"
he repeated.  "I won't fight you.  It won't cost you a thing.  Take
me."  * * * Shar could not believe her eyes and ears, as her throat
closed, choking back her cry of horror.  What was he doing?

He was sacrificing himself, that was what he was doing.

She tried to grab him, to stop him, to counter his offer with one of
her own, but she was held frozen, paralyzed.  And what could she offer?
She had just defied her father should she make Tannim's offer worthless
by surrendering herself now?  Charcoal would never take her surrender
and let Tannim go.  Tannim was right.  Charcoal didn't want her and
never had; he wanted the human.  She had never been more than the means
to get Tannim.

Tannim stepped forward again, arms still wide.  "Think about it,
Charcoal," he said, as calmly as if he was not writing out his own
death warrant with every word he spoke.  "Think about how much you
gain.  You make Chinthliss miserable.  Since you let Shar loose, you
don't make Ako unhappy; in fact, you might even stand a chance of
getting her back.  Ako doesn't give a damn about me, she only wants her
daughter safe, and she knows you won't want her once I'm gone.  You get
rid of me.  As an added bonus to that, there's a bunch of Unseleighe
who'll be so happy with you for getting rid of me for them, you'll be
able to write your own ticket with them.  Madoc Skean wasn't the only
Unseleighe lord who wants me dead."

Everyone's attention was on Tannim, so only Shar saw that Thomas Cadge
had crept out of the rear seat and was stealing out of the Mustang on
all fours.  He had taken the bandage off his head, and although she
could not see his face from where she stood, he did not appear to be
acting in the least blind.

He waited for a moment, crouched behind the shelter of the
driver's-side door, then twirled his fingers in a peculiar gesture.

A thick eddy of mist twined up to the door, and he slipped off out of
sight under its protective cover.

Shar nearly choked on bitterness, and fury shook her along with her
grief.  He must have been Charcoal's confederate he was the one leading
Charcoal to us, and here we thought we were trying to save him!  I
should have thrown him to the Wild Hunt.

If she ever saw his cowardly face again, she would throw him to the
Wild Hunt.

"Well, Charcoal?"  Tannim waited, now just within Charcoal's reach, the
droop of his head and his slumping shoulders reflecting weary
resignation.  "How about it?  Is the offer good enough?"

No Shar wailed silently.  No, Tannim, please don't leave me alone

Charcoal looked down with smoldering eyes for a long moment at the
small human at his feet.  Silent tears cut their way down Shar's
cheeks, and her heart spasmed with agony.

"Yes," he said at last.  "I believe that I shall take advantage of this
situation."

He stared down at Tannim for a moment longer; then, before anyone could
move or speak, he struck.

He lashed out at Tannim with a fore claw all talons extended, striking
sideways, like a cat.

Shar reached out uselessly, with agonizing slowness.  Every second
became an eternity, enabling her to see the tiniest of details.
Charcoal's talons hit Tannim in the chest and bent against his armor,
tearing at the remains of his shirt.  Only one of the five
three-foot-long talons caught and penetrated the armor, but it was
enough.  It pierced his chest completely, going through the armor, the
entire torso, and emerging from the back, a needle-shaft of blood
glistening in the light.

Charcoal flexed his talons open, then closed his fist around the body
for a moment, as it convulsed in his fore claw and he screamed in
triumph.  Then he flung it contemptuously at Chinthliss' feet.

"Tannim!"

Shar screamed.

Her heart caught fire in mingled pain and anguish, despair and rage,
and something broke within her, unleashing a fury she had never known
was inside.

She reached for power, found it in her rage and hate.

Charcoal was going to pay in blood.  No matter what it cost her.  * * *
Right up until the last moment, Joe was sure that Tannim was going to
pull some rabbit out of the hat.  Even as the gray dragon lashed out,
he was positive Tannim was going to do something clever.

It wasn't until Tannim's broken and bleeding body flew through the air
to land at Chinthliss' feet that he understood the truth of the
situation.

There had been no way out.  Tannim's offer had been genuine.  And
Charcoal had taken it.

He didn't realize that he was screaming until he ran out of breath;
didn't realize he was shooting until the hammer clicked on an empty
chamber.  He ejected the clip and slapped in another, emptied it, and
slapped in the last, tears running down his face and into his open
mouth.

Then he paused for a moment, for now Fox was a streak of red lightning,
launched into the air, then slashing at Charcoal's muzzle and eyes
until Charcoal roared and slapped him down into the sand, where he lay
stunned and unmoving.

Lady Ako was on her knees beside Tannim's body; Joe didn't bother to
wonder why.  Once Fox was out of the line of fire again, he emptied the
last round into Charcoal, trying for the eyes.

Just as he dropped the last bullet into the dragon, Shar opened up on
him.

She stood in the center of a pillar of white-hot flame, her two hands
aimed for the gray dragon, and from those hands she poured the fires of
the inferno itself down onto Charcoal.  She looked like a living
flame-thrower.

That, Charcoal felt.

He screamed and tried to fend the fire off with his fore claws the webs
of his wings withered in the yellow-green flames and started to crisp
around the edges

Then the fires died, and Shar stood wavering for a moment, then
collapsed bonelessly onto the sand.

Charcoal was still standing.

All the damage seemed to be superficial.  Joe stared at him, frozen in
place, unable to breathe or move, tears still scorching his face.

What does it take to kill this bastard?

Charcoal turned toward Chinthliss, and shook himself once.  Flakes of
ash fell away from him as he glared at the bronze dragon.

"Now," he snarled.  "You die with the human."

Chinthliss gathered himself, preparing to spring at Charcoal's throat.
Joe looked frantically for a weapon and saw nothing even remotely
useful.

We're all going to die

A huge shadow uncoiled itself out of the mist behind Charcoal.  A dark
bronze, fisted fore claw lashed out of the shadow and slammed into
Charcoal's head in a fearsome backhand smack.

The gray dragon rocked back on his heels, as a second bronze dragon,
darker and larger than Chinthliss, and faintly striped with deep gold,
strode past him across the sand to stand beside them all, facing
Charcoal.

"I don't think so," said the newcomer.

"Thomas?"  Chinthliss gasped, his fanged mouth gaping open in blank
astonishment.

The new dragon grinned toothily.  "You haven't been home in ages,
Chinthliss.  Just keeping up the tradition of bailing you out of
trouble, little brother."  Thomas turned his attention back to
Charcoal. "You," he said, contempt dripping from his voice.  "You may
take your miserable carcass out of here and slink back to whatever hole
you call home.  You may do so only because we have other concerns at
the moment, more important than dealing with you."

"And if I don't?"  Charcoal hissed.

Chinthliss drew himself up to his full height.  "We, my brother and I,
will kill you.  This I pledge."

Charcoal looked from one to the other and back again, and evidently
believed them, for he snarled and limped off into the mist.

Now Joe unfroze; his knees turned to jelly and he sank down on the
ground, closing his eyes in despair.  Oh, Lord God, what do I tell
Tannim's mom and dad?  He must have had some kind of premonition this
was going to happen he asked me to take care of them if anything ever
happened to him.  Now he's gone oh, God, what do I do now?  His
shoulders shook with sobs, his throat was tight, and his chest ached as
he hugged himself in his grief.

"Boy " Someone was shaking his shoulder.  He looked up, to find an old
man well, older than Chinthliss, anyway shaking him.  "Boy, go help
your kits une friend.  Lady Ako needs me to aid her."

He nodded dully, responding to an authority automatically, and stumbled
to his feet.  He shuffled across the sand to Fox, who was stirring and
moaning faintly.  Just as he reached the kits une Fox opened his eyes
and looked up at him, clearly still in a daze.  He'd reverted to the
semi-human form, the one with James Dean's face.

"Dial nine-one-one, would you?"  FX asked weakly.

"Yeah, sure," Joe replied.  "Is anything broken?  Can you sit up?"

"No.  Yes."  With Joe's help, Fox managed to get into a sitting
position, holding his head with one hand.  "Ah, hell.  Being physical
is not all it's cracked up to be.  For every kiss I get when I do this,
seems like I catch ten punches."

"Right."  Joe had no idea what he meant, and right now, he didn't much
give a damn.  He hurt too much inside to care about much of anything.
All he could think of was the last time he'd seen Tannim, standing
beside the Mustang, trading jokes with Chinthliss..  ..

Never again.  Never again.

Chinthliss was a few feet away, back in his human form, helping Shar to
her feet.  The old man and the other dragon were nowhere in sight.

Or was the old man the other dragon?

The young woman leaned heavily on Chinthliss' shoulder, and Joe thought
she might be crying, for she hid her face behind the curtain of her
hair and her shoulders shook.  He was saying something to her that Joe
couldn't hear.

Chinthliss led her over to Lady Ako; lacking any other orders, Joe got
Fox up and helped him stagger in that direction as well.  He averted
his eyes as they neared; he just couldn't bear to look at

"I believe I have him stabilized, with Thomas' help," he heard Ako say
in a voice so faint with weariness that it was hardly more than a
whisper.  "If we can get him to further help quickly, I believe we can
pull him through, but he shouldn't be moved without more Healing than
we can give him.  We are at the end of our strength."

For a moment, the words made no sense to him.  Stabilized?  Healing?
What?

Could she mean Tannim?

He let go of Fox's arm, and stumbled the remaining few steps to where
Thomas and Lady Ako knelt on either side of Tannim's body.  A body
which was breathing, shallowly.  There was an awful lot of blood
soaking into the sand around him.  Although the green, hexagonal-scale
armor he must have worn under his shirt gaped open over the chest,
there was no huge wound, only a raw red line, the kind you saw on a
wound that had just been sutured.

"The talon missed the heart," the old man was saying.  "Just.  It would
seem your protege's luck is holding."

"How long can you hold him?"  Chinthliss asked, as Shar picked up one
of Tannim's hands and held it as if she was willing her remaining
strength into his body.

"With Thomas' help, an hour, perhaps more."  Ako smoothed the hair over
Tannim's pale forehead.  "I am not sure that anyone will ever be able
to heal the damage completely.  I fear he will always bear the marks of
this encounter.  And he may well still be lost to us."

Chinthliss looked straight at Joe.  "The Gate to the barn is still
open," he said.  "If I send you through it with the Mustang, can you
get to a phone, call Keighvin Silverhair, and get him to us within an
hour?"

Joe had no hesitation.  "Yes, sir!"  he replied.

"I'll stand watch for trouble," Fox offered.  "I've got enough left in
me for that."

"I'll hold the temporary Gate for you and Keighvin.  It'll be faster if
he Gates to the barn, then takes my Gate here.  He'll waste time trying
to find us otherwise," Chinthliss said.  Then he looked at Thomas. "I'm
going to want to know everything later," he said firmly.  "But now
let's move.  Tannim is still near death, and slipping away."

Joe did not need any urging.  Shar pressed the keys into his hand,
though how she came to have them, he had no idea.  He ran for the Mach
I, and with Chinthliss leading through the mist, took it to the Gate
they'd made of the chrome circle.

This time he drove out of the barn under a dawn sky and headed straight
for the nearest Quik Trip.  There was a quarter burning a hole in his
pocket.

There were some tense days ahead.  * * * Reality seemed to float like a
feather.

Even now.

Concentration returned to him easier now, despite the fact that his
mother was on the phone.

"No, it's all right, Mom, really.  Mr.  Silver has taken care of
everything.  Don't worry.  Really."  Tannim hung up, sighing carefully,
since any movement of his lungs hurt like hell and Shar took it from
him, putting it out of the way in the headboard of The Bed.  She handed
him a Gatorade and made a little face of apology.

Fox insubstantial, Tannim assumed, since he was in the real world
perched on the top of Tannim's TV set on the bureau at the foot of The
Bed.  He shrugged sympathetically, and twitched four tails.

"How are they taking it?"  Shar asked.  "I hated to make you talk to
them, but they've been calling here three times a day, and this was the
first time you've been awake enough to deal with them.  I've been
passing myself off as a private-duty nurse, telling them you've been
taking pain-pills and you're sleeping."

He coughed, and a sharp stick stabbed him under the ribs again.  "About
as well as you'd expect.  They hate it when I get hurt."

Shar nodded, her face full of sympathy, and sat cross legged on the
foot of his side of The Bed.  He slowly tucked up his feet to make room
for her.

At least his legs weren't broken this time.

"Hey," Fox said, "look at it this way.  If they'd actually seen you,
they'd have been having fits, followed by lots of really expensive
therapy."

"He's right.  It could be worse," Shar told him.  "Joe was very quick
to think of a plausible accident, to account for " She nodded at his
chest.  "I certainly would never have thought of a runaway
glass-truck."

"At least you can tell your mother the truth," he said, just a little
bitterly.  Then he shook his head and grimaced.  "I'm sorry.  It's just
post-injury depression.  I'm a rotten patient."  He managed to drag up
a little smile for her.  "Usually, once Keighvin's Healers get done
with me, there isn't anyone here who has to put up with me.  That's why
I bought this monster bed.  As long as I'm not full of IVs, I can
pretty much take care of myself if I have to until I'm mobile again."

"Wait.  You bought a huge bed to be all alone?"  she replied, one
eyebrow arching.  Fox smirked.

"Let's say it works out that way."  He shrugged carefully.  "It's got
room for my electronics, anyway."

"I found the fridge and the microwave in the headboard, and all the
controls to everything else," she said with a fellow gadget-lover's
admiration, "but I was afraid to try any of them; I didn't know what
they did and I didn't want to turn you into a sandwich."

"Jeez, or worse," FX put in.  "I can just see trying to explain to Lady
Ako how come Tannim's laminated!"

Glad for the change of subject, Tannim demonstrated his prize for her.
The Bed was the only piece of furniture he'd ever really hung onto
through all of his many moves, after he found it in a Goodwill.  The
years of ordeal-after-injury-after-trauma had all been survived with
this one item intact.  Though he'd modified it for the electronics,
someone somewhere had spent a lot of money designing a bed for a market
that didn't exist.  Or a market of one, depending upon how you looked
at it.

He had awakened more than once in The Bed after one of his close
encounters with severe pain but never after quite such a close
encounter with death.  His last memory looking down at his chest, his
vision filled with seeing Charcoal's talon sticking into it, deep into
it, as everything went red and black played back.  He wasn't certain he
really wanted to think about that very hard; but he couldn't help it.
If he did think about it, he was going to start shaking, and he was
afraid he'd never stop, never have the courage to leave this room
again.  Still, the sequence of events played through his mind, and he
felt his control slipping again.  Then his mind cleared and the memory
mercifully faded away.

His next clear moment had come a couple of hours ago: waking up in The
Bed, and finding Fox on the TV and Shar sitting on the edge, pretending
to read, but watching him.  That had been enough to drive all other
thoughts from his mind, at least temporarily.  Then his parents had
called, frantic with worry, and some story about a wreck that he'd
gotten hit by an out-of-control glass-truck and had gotten a huge shard
of glass in the lung.  Joe was with his folks, keeping them calm.

Just like I asked him to.  Am I getting prescient?

In a few more days Joe would "fly" here, once the Drakes were
sufficiently calmed.  Actually, Keighvin was going to send Alinor after
him.  Joe had said, with a laugh, that Al had orders from Keighvin to
"outfit him."

God.  Al has great taste, but he's gonna turn the kid into a bigger
gadget-hog than me.  At least Joe no longer had any problem with
accepting Fairgrove's generosity.

He thought he'd come to a few times in between that moment Underhill
and now; he had vague memories of Chinthliss and Keighvin hovering over
him, of a woman with long red hair and oriental features, of Lidam, one
of Keighvin's Healers, of Fox and Shar, and of Thomas Cadge.  He did
think he remembered waking up in terrible pain several times only to be
soothed back into sleep by a gentle hand on his forehead, a hand he
associated, for some reason, with Shar.  He thought he'd dreamed of
voices, of Shar and Fox talking together about him.

And he had a particularly vivid memory of awakening in the middle of
the night to see Shar asleep in an exhausted tangle of hair and pillows
and a blanket, on the other side of The Bed, her face tear-stained and
white with weariness.  He would have chalked that up to a hallucination
if he hadn't come to this morning to find her here.

This was certainly a new experience; the very first time he'd ever
awakened in The Bed after an injury to find that he wasn't alone.

"So, you were starting to explain just what Thomas Cadge has to do with
all this when the phone rang," he prompted.

"Yeah, I wanted to hear this, too," FX said with interest.

She thought for a moment, then resumed the interrupted explanation.
"Thomas is Chinthliss' older half-brother," she said.  "Chinthliss says
that while they have the same dragon-father, Thomas' mother was a
human, one of the Sidhe fosterlings who was a very powerful Healer.
Thomas used to feel very strongly against cross-species romance, partly
because of all the trouble he had growing up.  So when Chinthliss got
involved with my mother, Thomas was against it from the very beginning,
and did everything he could to break the romance up."

Tannim shook his head, puzzled.  "All right, that much I've got.  So
why did he get involved now?  And what the hell was he doing,
pretending to be a crazy old blind guy?"

"That was part of his plan you see, he got involved because he saw how
unhappy Chinthliss was after Mother left him.  He says he heard from
some of his friends that Mother wasn't exactly full of cheer either,
and he reexamined his feelings."  She fell silent for a moment.  "He
told me after we brought you back here that he felt at least partially
responsible for their breakup, because of all the things he'd said to
Chinthliss.  He decided he was wrong, and he wanted to make it up to
them.  He loves Chinthliss; all he ever intended to do was to try to
protect him from getting hurt.  And whether or not he'll admit it,
Chinthliss adores him, too."

Tannim nodded; he could understand that.  Chinthliss had often remarked
on how unfortunate it was that Tannim was an only child, how he missed
out on a great deal by not having a brother.  Tannim had never known,
before now, that it was because Chinthliss himself had a big brother
who watched out for him.

"So.  Thomas decided that he was going to have to find a very subtle,
clever way to get Ako and his brother back together."  Shar paused. "He
is the reason we used to dream about each other."

Tannim blinked.  "W wait.  You mean, since he couldn't get the two of
them to talk to each other, he forced the issue by getting the two of
us what would you call it?  Curious about each other?  Involved?"

Shar shook her head, puzzled.  "I'm not quite sure.  I think his
original intention was just to have us get glimpses of each others'
lives, so we'd be sufficiently intrigued to see if we couldn't track
each other down.  He certainly didn't intend for us to have the kind of
dreams we've been having since we discovered the opposite sex!"  She
laughed then, the first time he'd heard her laugh with no sign of
strain in her voice.  She had a beautiful laugh.  "He was very
embarrassed when I came right out, described the dreams, and asked him
if he was the cause!"

"I guess the only thing we can blame is our own subconsciouses for
that."  He chuckled very carefully, more of a wheeze.  Laughing hurt
too much.  "So, he figured that if we went looking for each other, Ako
and Chinthliss would have to go along with it.  And if we became
friends, Ako and Chinthliss would be forced together, is that it?"

"Pretty much.  Then things got out of hand."  She licked her lips and
stared at the wall for a moment in thought.  "He wasn't prepared for
Charcoal molding me into your opposite number."

Tannim sipped his Gatorade.  "So what did he do?"

"He said he worked with it, keeping an eye on me through my air
elementals.  He figured he could get things back on track when I broke
away from my father, but then I made alliances with the Unseleighe, and
that was almost as bad.  The last thing he wanted me to do was well,
what I did, kidnapping the Mustang.  He knew you were going to come
after it as well as I did.  That was when he decided he'd better get
involved directly, disguised as Thomas Cadge."  She shrugged.  "He
freed the real Thomas Cadge, took his clothes and his cart and all, and
folded so many disguise-shields on himself I didn't have a clue, and
neither did you.  He said he didn't know what he was going to do, he
just knew that if he didn't come along, we'd probably get caught again,
and Ako and Chinthliss would never reconcile and never forgive him."

"Well, that's where I came in," Fox said lightly.  "Shar, since you
don't need me to talk to to keep you awake, I've got a date with a
pretty lady fox."  He winked at Tannim.  "Glad I'm seeing you on this
side of the spirit-world, buddy."

With a pop, FX vanished, leaving his glowing "FX" hanging in the air
for a moment, like the grin on the Cheshire Cat.

"Huh.  That's Fox all over.  Vixen chasing."  He finished the Gatorade
and put the empty glass down.  "So that's what Thomas Cadge was all
about.  I wish he'd pulled his rescue a little sooner."  He tried to
say it lightly, to make a joke out of it, but it came out badly.  The
implications hung heavily in the air, and he flashed on the talon
penetrating his chest again..  ..

He shivered, and caught a pain-filled breath.  How long before he'd
stop seeing that in instant replay?

Shar bit her lip.  "I saw him sneaking out of the car.  I thought he
was the one who had led Charcoal to us in the first place when I saw
that.  Then, when I realized what he really was, I was almost as mad at
him for not showing up sooner, too.  For what it's worth he
demonstrated draconic shape-changing to me, and since he's half-human,
it takes a lot longer for him to go from human to dragon than it does
to do the reverse.  Chinthliss told me that if the dragon is
interrupted halfway through, it kills him.  He feels really awful,
Tannim.  As badly as you'd like him to feel, I think.  The only way
he'd feel worse is if if you weren't all right."

"Oh."  Tannim digested this, and to buy himself a little time to think,
picked up the audio controls and triggered the CD player.  He didn't
remember what he'd left in there, but it would probably help lighten
the mood a little

But the first selection hit him between the eyes and left him stunned.
"I'll Find My Way Home," by Jon Anderson and Vangelis.

Home.  He'd thought he'd lost his home forever; that he didn't fit in
the old one, and hadn't found a new one.  Shar had never had one.  What
was it that Thomas had said something about not being able to go back
to your childhood home because you outgrew it?  And that part of being
an adult was building your own home?

And building it meant finding someone to share it.  Home wasn't really
more than a place to live if it meant being alone.

So why did this room feel so much like a home?

"Ah are Chinthliss and your mother getting along?"  he asked
carefully.

She smiled, and it was clear that she approved of what was going on.
"As a matter of fact, I think they're doing just fine.  Mother
confessed that she was stalling him to let me get you out of the mess
on my own, but by then, Chinthliss was so grateful for the way she'd
spent herself for you that if she'd confessed to murdering his parents
and sleeping with Madoc Skean, he'd have forgiven her."  Her green eyes
softened, and her smile softened with them.  "He really cares a great
deal for you, you know," she said quietly.  "He could be your father;
he loves you that much."

Another revelation that left him a little stunned.  "I think maybe
you're exaggerating a little."

But she shook her head.  "No.  No, I don't think so.  I watched him
with you here; I listened to him browbeating the Healers, swearing he'd
search through every domain Underhill if he had to, in order to find
the best for you.  He nearly did that, too he's going to owe a lot of
people a lot of favors for a long, long time."

"Oh, hell," Tannim muttered numbly.  "He's never going to forgive me
for that he hates owing people "

But she leaned over and placed both her hands on his.  "He doesn't
care.  Didn't you hear what FX said?  You nearly died, not just
Underhill, but three more times after we brought you here."

"I did?"  Some of those confused memories began to make appalling
sense..  ..

"You have no idea how much damage Charcoal did to you," she said
soberly, the color draining from her face.  "Mother thought that the
talon missed your heart it didn't.  Thank the Ancestors there were
Healers here when " She shook her head.  "I can't talk about it.  I
thought Chinthliss was going to go mad, or I would.  Fox was the only
one who stayed calm.  He was always here, the least powerful and the
most hopeful, when we were feeling like hope was lost."

He took a slow, careful breath.  "So what's the real damage?"  he
asked.  He didn't want to know and he did.  Hell, he had to know; he
was going to have to live with it for the rest of his life.

"The permanent damage is in your left lung and your heart," she said
bluntly.  "You've lost the bottom lobe of that lung.  The rest broken
ribs, torn muscles, internal damage is either healed or is going to
heal."  She blinked, and her eyes glistened suspiciously.  "You're
going to have to be careful.  It's always going to hurt when you really
exert yourself, like a stitch in the side, only worse.  That's the best
they could do, and Chinthliss would have sold himself into slavery to
make you well."

Then she added in a very quiet voice, "So would I."

There it was, out in the open.

"You were here the whole time?"  he asked softly.

She nodded.  "I never left.  I couldn't.  When I thought you were when
Charcoal " Her voice faltered and died.  "Fox kept me company.  I never
saw much of the lesser kits une before this.  He's a lot deeper than he
lets on.  He couldn't do anything physical on this side of the Hill,
but he watched you for me when I just couldn't keep my eyes open
anymore."

So the "memories" were real..  ..

He thought very carefully about his next words, picking them with utter
precision before he spoke them.  "You're probably the most unique lady
I've ever known, Shar.  It's kind of funny Charcoal tried to make you
into my opposite, and failed.  But you wound up becoming my complement.
Or else I became yours."

She licked her lips nervously and nodded, clearly listening very
carefully to what he was saying.

"What I'm trying to say is that we went through a pretty wretched
experience together and I think we make a good team."  He grinned, just
a little.  "And, dreams aside, even though we haven't known each other
very long, I think we know each other pretty well."  His grin faded as
he turned his hands over and caught both of hers.  "What I'm trying to
say is that I would really, really like it, Shar, if you would decide
to stay here.  With me.  Maybe we can make this place into a home
together.  If you'd do that every bit of this will have been worth it
to me."

She stared at him, and her hands trembled in his.  He bit his lip. "The
three best words on this earth are "I love you."  Would you believe me
if I used them now?"

She blinked rapidly, and nodded.

"I love you, Shar," he said softly.  "I really do.  I gotta be crazy,
lady, but I do."

"I I guess we both are."  She smiled tremulously.  "What a pair we are!
A half-kits une half-dragon, and a human racer-mage!  If Thomas hadn't
changed his mind, he'd be having a litter of kittens.  I " Her voice
broke.  "Tannim, I love you."

He looked into her eyes for a long time, then gently lifted one hand
and kissed the back of it.  "I'm afraid that's the best I can manage at
the moment " he said with a rueful chuckle.  "You're not getting much
of a lover right now."

"You'll just have to make it up to me later," she replied, regaining
some of the mischievous sparkle he remembered from dreams.  "And you'll
have to remember, I am a kits une half, anyway.  I won't be tied down.
I won't be Suzie Homemaker."

"I never thought you would," he replied, with growing content. "There's
a lot more to life than picking out drapes."

She looked at him for a long time, a penetrating stare that weighed and
measured the truth of everything he had said and done.  He just smiled,
knowing that she would find he meant exactly what he had said.

Finally, she returned his smile and moved forward, arranging herself
very carefully against not on his shoulder.  He managed to get an arm
around her without hurting himself.

He closed his eyes, savoring the moment, and realized that it was this
that he had been looking for, without knowing what it was he had been
in search of.  Somehow, through pain and fear and long loneliness, they
had found their way home.

Together.

Tannim held her, lovingly, as they drifted off to sleep.  They had a
lot of new dreams to catch up on.

