Beyond World's End Read online

  He was sure he'd sweated all the way through his shirt, sure the audience could see his nervousness and uncertainty. Some of them, probably, still remembered his last memorable solo appearance on this stage, when he'd unwittingly summoned Nightflyers with his nascent Bardic Gift.

  Oh, THERE'S a cheery thought!

  For a heartbeat he was filled with panic, and for just that moment he was tempted to call up the magic again—under control this time—to exert just a tiny bit of influence on the professors grading and critiquing his performance. It would be so easy. . . .

  No. I came back to do this on my own terms. No magic, no Gift but the music I was born with. I know I'm a good Bard. I'm here to see if I'm a good musician, too.

  He lifted the flute to his lips and began to play.

  It wasn't as powerful an energy surge as playing with an ensemble. That was like driving a team of wild horses, a swelling power that came from many hearts and minds all working as one. This was more like flying, soaring over the earth on the wings the music lent him. As always, his anxiety vanished with the first note, and he carried his audience with him through all the intricate variations of the old dance tune. And perhaps because it was music made for dancing, he felt his audience caught up in his rhythm, toes tapping and heads nodding to the music.

  He brought the piece to an end with a flourish, and there was that one moment of silence as he lowered the flute that was the true tribute every musician looks for.

  Then the applause began, and Eric stepped forward to take his bow. The house lights came up, and for the first time he could see the people he'd been playing for all night.

  He looked down at the front rows—still bowing—looking for Rector and the other professors. He could just imagine the sour look on Rector's face—he'd been good, and he knew it, and so did they. He was smart enough not to catch Rector's eye—the man looked to be in a towering snit, and his mood wouldn't be improved by knowing Eric had seen it—and glanced around the rest of the house as he straightened.

  And froze.

  Ria Llewellyn was there. Second row aisle, the critics' seats.

  She was wearing something in pale blue, looked just the way she always had, the ice princess who had turned his world inside-out. Only years of professional experience kept him moving, and smiling, and got him off the stage.

  Ria! How did she get here?

  Backstage was full—friends and relatives coming back to congratulate the musicians, stagehands, other performers. Several of them tried to stop him, to congratulate him, but Eric tore through them, looking for the stairs that led down into the house, his flute still clutched in his hand. By the time he reached them, the audience was getting to its feet, preparing to leave.

  He didn't see Ria.

  He shoved through the concertgoers, fighting his way up the center aisle like a spawning salmon. He reached the street ahead of most of the audience, but he didn't see Ria anywhere.

  The biting chill of late autumn cut through the damp cotton shirt he was wearing, bringing him back to himself. Even if she had been here, he'd never find her now.

  And face it, Banyon. You could have been imagining things. And the only question that leaves, is—why would you imagine Ria Llewellyn coming to Juilliard?

  * * *

  The Sherry-Netherland was the grande dame of New York hotels . . . expensive, tasteful, and with better security than the White House. It kept secrets better than the White House did, too, even with the Joint Chiefs thrown in. If you wanted to vanish in style in Manhattan, you booked rooms at the Sherry-Netherland.

  LlewellCo kept a permanent suite here to pamper its out-of-town execs and to provide a perk for visiting guests. It had probably been occupied when Jonathan booked her flight. It wasn't now.

  Ria didn't care. She'd had a long day with a killer ending.

  Damn the boy! she thought furiously, and then, with grudging honesty: No. That isn't right. He's no boy. He's a man, now—and how does that make you feel, Ria-girl?

  She didn't know. That was the worst. Not the loss of command of her emotions, but the turbulent swirl that didn't even let her know clearly what they were.

  She walked into the bathroom, shedding pieces of her ice-blue satin dinner suit as she went. She kicked off her Ferragamo pumps and tossed her jewelled Judith Leiber handbag onto a chair, standing before the bathroom mirror wearing only a silk slip and enough pale-gold South Sea Island pearls to finance a startup company on the Internet. The bathtub beckoned invitingly—water hot enough to scald away her sins, and bath salts from a little shop down on Chambers Street that blended them to her personal specifications. She turned the taps on full, then, too keyed up to simply stand there, walked back out to her bedroom to pace.

  The papers from this morning's meeting were still strewn across the bed, as if she'd have the discipline to look at them any time soon. She felt a faint pang of guilt, knowing that she'd dealt with the New York people a bit high-handedly. She'd pay for that later—if there was one thing years of corporate infighting had taught her, it was that while friends came and went, enemies accumulated. She was sure she'd made more than a few enemies today.

  But she hadn't been able to give the meeting her full attention, because more than half her concentration had been on the contents of that folder Jonathan had given her, and on the lunch appointment she'd made to interview the private investigator that she'd hired as soon as she'd started reading the report. She'd taken the woman to Le Cirque to overawe her, but the woman hadn't been overawed, and Ria had liked that about her at once.

  Claire MacLaren was an uncompromising woman in her fifties, prosaic as bread. She made no effort to hide either her age or the fact that her figure had long since lost, if it had ever possessed it, the whippet slenderness of youth. She resembled the Miss Marple sort of detective, grey-haired and kindly, her strong Scots bones and pale blue eyes showing her heritage, even without the faint flavor of the Hebrides still in her voice, and was, very simply, the very best at what she did.

  "I'm pleased to have the opportunity to speak with you personally on this matter, Ms. Llewellyn," she'd said, after they were both seated and the waiter had taken their drink orders. Ria had ordered white wine. Claire had unabashedly ordered Scotch.

  All around them the hubbub of Le Cirque's lunchtime clientele eddied and flowed, providing perfect privacy for their conversation. Mechanical eavesdroppers would be foiled by the background noise, and magical ones would be baffled by the sheer numbers of minds all thinking at once. Even Ria, whose gift was very small, had some trouble shutting them all out. But even with her shields in place, Ria could easily sense the unease radiating from the woman seated opposite her at the table.

  "I find it's always best to do this sort of thing personally," Ria said. "There are always some things that don't make it into a report. Things too . . . tenuous? to commit to paper."

  "Oh, I wrote it all down," Claire assured her strongly. "Everything I could find. And that wasn't enough—considering. There's the matter of the money, for one thing."

  "Money?" Ria said, momentarily at a loss. She knew Jonathan had already paid Claire MacLaren's exorbitant fee in full.

  "Money doesn't just appear out of nowhere," Claire said. "And that young man has quite a lot of it. Where'd it come from, is what I'd dearly love to know."

  "Oh, that," Ria answered.

  She kept a show of interest on her face, but in fact, the source of Eric's money didn't concern her very much at all. A full elven mage could ken and replicate anything—rubies, diamonds, Krugerrands, bearer bonds. She couldn't work that magic, and neither could Eric, but all that meant was that someone Underhill had set Eric Banyon up with a serious stake and the means to finish his studies Here Above.

  Why?

  That was the question that had occupied her throughout the meal, as she'd fenced with Claire and finally thrown a small glamour over her to quiet Claire's worries that Eric Banyon was being financed by drug lords, industrial espionage, or wo
rse. It had nagged at her through the round of afternoon meetings with various LlewellCo East department heads. She'd been supposed to have dinner with one of them, but had cancelled at the last minute. That was good luck of a sort. If she hadn't, she wouldn't have given in to the impulse to drive past Juilliard and seen the notices of a student concert to be held that evening. She wouldn't have looked at the list of the soloists and seen Eric's name. She wouldn't have gone inside—gaining a seat by a minor enchantment—and seen Eric soloing up on the stage, performing with a surety, a grace, and an art that he had never had before.

  The bathtub was full, and she walked back into the bathroom, shedding the last of her clothes, and turning off the taps. She picked up the bottle of bath salts and shook in a generous helping, watching the crystals dissolve and stain the water a rich living green.

  She sank into the water, wincing at the temperature. But the heat did its work, leaching away the nervous energy that filled her, calming her.

  Eric is back, and he has Underhill backing. And why is he back? Because he's finished with everything he needed to learn Underhill—that much was clear from tonight. You saw that performance. The old Eric couldn't manage to play "Baa Baa Black Sheep" without some magic leaking. This Eric has as much control and discipline as any Elven Bard I've ever seen.

  She closed her eyes, trying to surrender to the spell of the water. In a lot of ways, an Eric in control of his magic was the scariest thing she'd encountered since she'd reentered the world after her coma.

  First of all, who taught him? And most of all, who sent him back?

  She knew that most of the Seleighe Sidhe didn't blame her for Perenor's attempt to grab the Nexus back in Los Angeles. She'd changed sides at the last minute, at great cost to herself, and that counted for a lot with their kind.

  But what if Eric's teacher were one of the few who did bear a grudge against her—either because of her past actions or because of her halfblood ancestry? What if Eric had come into the world as a kind of secret agent, intending to lure her out?

  What if, for that matter, Eric held a grudge of his own? She'd tried to kill his friends, after all. Most people tended to take that personally.

  She sighed, sinking deeper into the water and inhaling the fragrant steam. She had no idea what Eric was feeling right now, and that disturbed her more than she could express. She hadn't been able to read anything in his face but shock when he spotted her, and after that . . .

  She'd panicked, plain and simple. Proof (as if she'd wanted any) that her feelings for the man were too strong to lightly dismiss. There was unfinished business there, and like it or not, one way or another, it was going to be finished. Before the turn of the year, she thought, with an undependable flash of Foresight, and shivered.

  The bathwater had grown cold while she'd sat musing, and now Ria got to her feet, swirling her long ash-blond hair up into a towel and wrapping herself in another of the voluminous Turkish towels the hotel provided.

  It was just too bad the problem wasn't on Eric's side, she thought, rubbing herself dry until her fair skin was pink and tingled. If Eric hated her, it wouldn't matter. Ria had been hated by experts. It made little difference in her life.

  The trouble was the fact that she wanted him. Still. Again. Not as a pet, as she had before, a graceful subservient boy who could amuse her while she used his magic for her own ends. No, if it were that, if her own desires were that simple, it would be an inconvenience, but not a problem.

  The problem—the real problem, the insurmountable one—was that seeing him tonight on that stage, assured and totally in control, Ria had realized that Eric Banyon would never again be anybody's pet. Not a boy, not a toy. He was a man now, with a man's will and determination. Her equal, and more.

  And everything in Ria's half-Blood Perenor-nurtured soul rebelled against the thought of accepting anyone on equal terms. Conciliation was weakness. Cooperation was only a trap. Only the strongest had any right to survive, and Ria knew that if she matched her power and her tricks against the Eric she had seen tonight, she might very well lose the battle.

  And the worst was, she had no heart for such a fight. Unless he truly was here hunting her, he was no threat to her, and unlike Perenor, Ria had never had any taste for empty cruelty. She was ruthless. That was her nature. But viciousness had never been a part of her spirit, and if it had, that part of her was purged long since. So she had no quarrel with Eric Banyon, True Bard of Underhill, and if he were in truth sent here as her foe, mercy would be impossible. For either of them.

  I can't be his pet. He won't be mine. Where does that leave us?

  Where does that leave ME?

  FIVE: GOBLIN FRUIT

  It was cold out here under the highway tonight, but Daniel Carradine tried to ignore it. There was money to be made, and the need to make it. Bobby wanted his money, and Daniel wanted his White Lady, the demanding mistress for whom Daniel had given up everything else.

  Not that there'd been all that much. When home was a decaying Pennsylvania steel town and a father who couldn't accept that times had changed, even the underside of the West Side Highway on a freezing December night was better.

  The wind came whistling in off the Hudson, cold as memories. If he'd been able to fix before he came out, Daniel wouldn't have minded the cold, he knew, but Bobby didn't sell on credit. Still, Daniel told himself hopefully, it might be a good night. He was seventeen, and looked younger, and that was good. It was what the marks liked, the guys who came cruising down here with their Mercedes and their Jags, looking for what Daniel and the others were selling. Goblin fruit, like in the Rossetti poem, where no matter how much you ate, you were always hungry for more.

  A friend of his—Tony—went by, and he smiled and waved. Bobby had come across for Tony before he left the flop tonight—it was obvious in the way Tony strutted, as if he were living in a warm world where the river wind didn't blow—and for a moment Daniel felt a pang of envy that was shocking in its violence. He quashed the emotion firmly. There was no point. Nothing came free. That was the first lesson growing up in Cartersville had taught him. There was a price for everything, even freedom. And if the only freedom he could buy with the only thing he owned—his body—was the freedom of a derelict flop down in the Bowery that he shared with half a dozen other rentboys, then he'd take it.

  A car cruised by—slowly, on the prowl—and Daniel smiled hopefully, arching his back and shaking his head so that a lock of bleached-blond hair fell down over his eyes. But the car moved on, and Daniel hunched back into himself again, seeking what comfort he could.

  He wanted to get this over with and go find Bobby. He really did.

  * * *

  From a few feet away, beneath the body of a burnt-out and abandoned car, Urla watched its victim. The redcap had been about to rush out, but the cruising car had stopped it. The Great Lord had said there must be no witnesses, and Aerune's command sat upon Urla like a geas.

  He had also said that Urla must take no one who would be missed, and Urla knew that nobody would miss this one. Still young and strong, and filled with such self-hatred and despair that the redcap was nearly drunk with it, all laced through with a yearning, a fiery craving for something that was not food or drink or sex. Urla dismissed its own curiosity. It did not matter what the boy hungered for, for he did not hunger as much as Urla did for the bright warmth of the untasted years, the unspent years the boy would have had if Urla had not come hunting here tonight.

  Another car passed, then two more, and each time the boy was assessed and refused. His fear was stronger now, and Urla licked its lips in anticipation. Soon, soon. . . .

  At last the boy stumbled away from the pillar by which he stood and began shuffling up the street, his steps uncoordinated. He shivered, wrapping his thin jacket tighter around his starved body as if the thin cotton had the power to grant him the warmth he lacked. In a few moments more he would pass directly before Urla's hiding place.

  But the redcap's anticipated
feast was not to be. Another great black chariot turned down the street, its night lamps pinning the boy in their beams. Urla saw its prey stop, hopeful once more, as the car drew level with him, and the door opened. The boy stepped forward, and a mortal—tall, tall, with the stink of Cold Iron about him—rose up out of the car and grabbed Urla's prey, dragging him into the car as he began, too late, to struggle and cry.

  The door shut. The chariot moved away, more quickly now, belching foul gasses that made Urla cough.

  No! They will not have him! He is mine!

  Snarling its disappointment, the redcap wrapped itself in shadows and began to trot after the black chariot that had taken its prey.

  * * *

  "I said no alkies, goddammit! Which word don't you goons understand?"

  The tall dark man with the sleepy eyes blinked at her. Jeanette wished she could kick him, but she didn't dare, quite. She took a deep breath and tried again, marshalling her hard-won and inadequate social skills.

  "Look, Elkanah." Was the name on the tag first, last, or even his? Not her problem. "Most of these people are fine. But you see that one in the corner?"

  Jeanette gestured toward the monitor in the Security Room. It showed the space they called Large Primate Containment—a euphemism for the Black Labs and holding cells set up for human experimentation. Just now it was dressed to look like a police holding cell—an environment she was sure all of her guests were more than familiar with. Junkies, rentboys, and hookers, the lot of them, and that was fine with her.

  Except for the man in the corner, the one in the tattered vomit-stained trenchcoat, his face long-unshaven and caved in upon missing teeth and malnutrition. The others gave him a wide berth, and she could imagine why. He probably stank to high heaven.

  "That guy is a juicehead. I can't use him. His liver's already shot to hell—drugs process through the liver, Elkanah, did you know that? Alcohol's legal—by the time a juicehead gets to the street he's already a walking corpse; all his insides pickled and shot to hell. I told you guys when you went out: no alkies, no crazy street people. Junkies and whores, that's what I told you to get."