Novel - Arcanum 101 (with Rosemary Edghill) Read online

The Music Arts teacher was sitting in the driver’s seat of something Tomas had never seen except in old movies. It was a wooden wagon—a little like a flatbed pickup truck, except without the cab and the engine—with bench seats in the back. It had yellow spoked wheels with red rims, and its sides were painted with a gaudy design of vines and fruits and flowers that reminded him of the curtains in the house of his girlfriend back in El Paso. Hitched to the front of it were a couple of cream-colored ponies with ribbons braided into their manes and tails, and all their reins and everything were yellow and red and green like the paint on the wagon.

  “Oh, wow,” Destiny said. “A buckboard. Just like in one of those old Western movies.”

  Chloe giggled. “Nah, it’s Lord of the Rings prop from the first movie!”

  “Yep,” Eric said. “It’s a little faster than walking—though not very. Still…”

  “Aw, c’mon, Banyon. Couldn’t you have at least gotten those things to turn into something more interesting? Like ATVs?” Ms. Smith said. She walked over to one of the ponies—slinging her backpack into the buckboard as she passed—and began scratching it on the forehead.

  “Oh, sure,” Eric said. “If I wanted to scare off everything between here and Elfhame Misthold. But the whole point of this field trip is to meet the locals.”

  One of the ponies turned its head to look at Tomas, and he could have sworn it winked at him.

  “Well, it’s a nice day for a joyride,” Ms. Smith said grudgingly.

  “It’s always a nice day Underhill—except when it isn’t,” Eric answered confusingly. “Oh, good. We’re all here.”

  Tomas turned around—and took a very deep breath.

  There were Kenny, Johnny, Chloe, and Megan, looking just the way they had before they’d walked through the shiny patch of nothing.

  And there was Mr. Moonlight. Who now had long—very long—very pointed ears. And instead of wearing that black undertaker suit that was all Tomas had ever seen him in, was wearing a tunic, and tights, and boots, and gloves, and had a cape, and a sword…

  Tomas swallowed very hard, determined not to boggle, at least not out loud. VeeVee had described to him what Elves looked like. And Mr. Moonlight… was an Elf.

  “Well, Bard Eric, where do you take us today?” Mr. Moonlight asked.

  The other four—who’d been standing in front of him, staring at the wagon and the landscape—hadn’t noticed the change yet. When he spoke, and walked past them to the wagon, they noticed him for the first time. Johnny said “Holy sh—” before Kenny kicked him, Megan squeaked, and Chloe stared with wide eyes.

  He’s enjoying freakin’ us out, Tomas realized.

  “We go to visit my liege-lord at Elfhame Misthold, Lord Moonlight,” Eric said, with a small formal bow. “The way should be pleasant, simple, and fast.” Tomas remembered VeeVee saying that you had to be on your best manners with Elves, and he’d figured they were kind of like bangers—you had to show respect, or you’d just be in a world of hurt.

  “Then let us begin,” Mr. Moonlight said, climbing up into the driver’s seat beside Eric.

  “Everybody in,” Ms. Smith said briskly, pointing at the back of the buckboard.

  Tomas scrambled up into the wagon—there were steps in the back to make it easier—and took his seat.

  “Those of you who are magic-users will find that your powers are stronger here in Underhill,” Ms. Smith began, in the dry tones of a bored tour-guide. “This doesn’t mean you should try to take them out for a spin, you know? Destiny, you shouldn’t have any particular problems, or you, Chloe—although they really like Bards here, and all of you should remember that there are more than a few critters Underhill that just think of Talent as a tasty snack—but Megan, there’s gonna be a lot more things for you to talk to here, so you better be ready to dial it back, okay?”

  “Got it,” Megan said. She darted a glance at the driver’s seat, where Eric and Mr. Moonlight were sitting, calmly watching the passing landscape.

  “What about us?” Devlin asked boldly.

  “Psionics don’t have the same basic power source as Mages, hotshot, and if you don’t remember that, you probably need to go back to P-track kindergarten,” Ms. Smith said. “Underhill will pretty much leave your abilities alone—although I’m sure you can get into trouble if you try. Just remember—and this is the last time I’m gonna say this—that for a lot of things down here, they ain’t gonna care whether you’ve got a Gift or a Talent; you can still be lunch. And just because they’re pretty doesn’t mean they ain’t trouble.”

  Kenny snickered, and for a moment Tomas wondered just why Johnny Devlin was here. He’d thought this trip might be a reward for good behavior, but now he was starting to think it just might be another test.

  Eric had been right that the wagon was only a little faster than walking, but Tomas found he didn’t mind. Even though landscapes weren’t exactly his thing, there was so much to see. In the sky overhead were just about the biggest eagles he’d ever seen. In the distance, a herd of deer watched them, and one of them was pure white. Even up close, down by the wagon’s wheels, there were things to see. He’d thought at first the meadow was all grass, but now, looking closer, he could see that the grass was mixed with all kinds of tiny flowers as well, in dozens of colors….

  “Hey there, hombre,” Ms. Smith said, grabbing his elbow. “You don’t want to take a header out of the bus.”

  Tomas grinned, a little sheepishly. He hadn’t realized just how far he was leaning out. He shrugged, straightening up.

  “The flowers mean we’re getting deeper into Underhill,” Ms. Smith explained. “Almost up to the next Gate.”

  “I thought we were already in Underhill,” Kenny said.

  “We are. But Underhill is made up of a bunch of different Domains—each of which is under the control of some Power or other—connected by Gates. All the Domains are carved out of something the Sidhe call the Chaos Lands, which are a place you really don’t want to go. The Chaos Lands are pure undifferentiated magic, which means they can be anything at any moment—including your worst nightmare.”

  “So none of this is real?” Megan asked nervously, looking around.

  Ms. Smith grinned at her. “Sure it is. But it’s only real because it’s anchored by Gates, a Node Grove, and the will of the Sidhe whose Domain it is. Without those three things, it’d just dissolve back into Chaos. How fast it would dissolve depends, pretty much, on how long it’d been a Domain.”

  “Kind of like a memory plastic,” Destiny said consideringly, looking around. “But what if the, um, Sidhe dies?”

  “Then his—or her—heir takes over maintaining the Domain,” Ms. Smith said patiently. “That’s why Elves—at least—go in for royalty, so there’s always somebody in charge of the Domain. Some of the other Domains can get kinda… wacky.”

  “I’d like to see one of those,” Tomas said.

  “Not this trip,” Ms. Smith said. “Ria’d skin me alive if I didn’t bring you all back in one piece. And this year, too—remind me to tell you about timeslip Underhill when we get back. But maybe sometime.”

  “Oh, look,” Chloe said. “That. Is that a Gate?”

  She pointed. Several hundred yards in the distance Tomas could see two trees. They looked odd, and after a moment he realized why. They were absolutely identical to each other.

  “Yes. Yes it is,” Megan said. She sounded absolutely certain.

  When they went through the next Gate—all they did was drive up to the suspiciously-identical set of trees and drive between them, as far as Tomas could see—he received his next big shock.

  On the other side, everything was completely different.

  Moments before, he’d been in an open meadow that looked pretty much like the meadow he’d walked across when he’d left the van. Now, suddenly, the wagon was in the middle of a dense ancient forest where it was as dark as twilight, and when he whipped around in his seat, all he could see behind him was more forest.

>   “Steady,” Ms. Smith said.

  “But… how do we get back?” Tomas asked. He took a deep breath.

  “Most of the Gates are connected,” Eric said, from the front seat. “We can either retrace our path exactly, using the same Gates we took to get to the Everforest Gate, or use a different set. Whichever ones we use, the final one will be the Everforest Gate, so that we come out in the same place in the World Above.”

  “A-a-a-a-nd… you gotta have a Mage to work the Gates, or even find one,” Ms. Smith added. “Which means Eric, or Mr. Moonlight—or in a pinch, Megan, Chloe, or Destiny.”

  “What about you?” Destiny asked. “You’ve got one of the Three Gifts, right, Ms. Smith?”

  Ms. Smith shrugged. “I’d hate to try it. Not that it’s likely to come up. Of course, if I was stuck down here, I’ve got a lot of friends I could call.” She grinned at them. “Not that that’s gonna happen.”

  “So Kenny and Tomas and me’d be screwed,” Devlin said.

  “Which is why you tell anyone you meet—if you happen to get separated from our little tour group—that you’re a close personal friend of Sieur Eric, Bard of Elfhame Misthold, who is liegeman to Prince Arvin of Elfhame Misthold, and wait for the cavalry to show up. Think you can remember that?” Ms. Smith asked.

  Devlin nodded, but to Tomas’s eye, he didn’t look as worried as he ought to. As for Tomas, he knew she wasn’t trying to scare them—at least not more than they needed to be scared. He was starting to get the idea that this Underhill place was kind of like a big city. It had safe spots, and rough spots, its upright citizens, bangers, and malo hombres. And you could be safe just about anywhere in it so long as you knew just what—and who—you were dealing with.

  “Heya—Ms. Smith—these, um, these Underhill vatos…” vatosvatos He glanced toward the front of the wagon and decided to ask his question anyway. “They ever come out? You know—where we are? I mean—”

  Eric laughed. “Go ahead, Kayla,” he said.

  “A lot of them,” she said. “A lot of Elves like to live in our world, and most of them are no trouble at all—like the folks at Fairegrove. Or our boss up there,” she added, nodding toward Mr. Moonlight. “Some of them can be pretty bad news, though—the Unseleighe Court.”

  “Un—Unseely?’” Tomas asked, stumbling over the unfamiliar word.

  “The Unseleighe Court is the Dark Court. Elves come in two flavors, Dark and Bright. The Bright ones are the Good Guys. You’ll be getting into all of this next year, really; there’s a whole course on Occult and Magical Races and Creatures. Most of the things in Underhill stay Underhill, though. Either they’re tied to a specific place—like the Low Court Sidhe, which can’t leave their Node Groves—or they’ve been sealed into a specific Domain—usually for a very good reason. Or they just like Underhill better.”

  “Good,” Megan said firmly.

  Tomas had to agree.

  “Okay,” Eric said, pulling the wagon to a halt. “Time for lunch. It’s about an hour to the next Gate, after which we should have a straight shot through to Misthold, and this looks like a pretty nice place to stop.”

  Tomas looked around. He’d been so intent on listening to Ms. Smith that he’d been a little distracted from his surroundings, but now he saw that the forest had opened out a bit. The wagon was drawn up at the edge of a small—but picture-perfect—meadow. Sunlight slanted down through the trees, dispelling the sense of gloom and doom he’d felt while they were in the forest itself. Butterflies flitted among the trees, and he could hear water splashing in the distance.

  “Oh my god. It’s gorgeous,” Destiny said, sounding awestruck.

  “You can take some time to explore after lunch,” Eric said, swinging down from the driver’s seat and starting to unhitch the ponies. “Just don’t plan on going too far.”

  There were a couple of large plaid blankets stowed in the back of the wagon—plenty of room for everyone—and they quickly spread them out. The ponies wandered off to a far corner of the meadow and began grazing unconcernedly.

  Tomas thought it was just about as odd as anything else he’d seen today to see Mr. Moonlight—dressed the way Tomas guessed Elves dressed all the time—sitting cross-legged on a picnic blanket eating a sandwich and drinking bottled water, but he guessed he ought to be getting used to weird things by this time. Two months ago he’d still be freaking out over the whole idea that Elves could even exist at all. Now he wasn’t even—exactly—mad that VeeVee hadn’t told him in advance that their Headmaster was from way out of town. And he was even kind of looking forward to that class next year—the one that would be about all kinds of weird monsters and things.

  There was so much food in their brown bags that none of them finished it all; in fact, the girls barely touched theirs before they were stuffing their brown bags back into their backpacks and heading out to explore. After a few minutes, Devlin got to his feet and wandered off too—being really ostentatious about not going in the same direction.

  Kenny looked at Tomas, raising an eyebrow. He didn’t say anything because they were surrounded by teachers, but his expression was plain: oh yeah, like he thinks he’s going to get over with any of them?

  Tomas had to agree. Devlin was so convinced he was caca fuego, that and if he’d just lose the attitude, he’d probably do a lot better with the ladies…

  “I believe I shall take a short constitutional in order to settle my repast,” Mr. Moonlight said, getting to his feet. “Yourself, Bard?”

  “I think I’ll stay with our ride,” Eric said. “I’m pretty sure nothing will happen to it here, but…”

  “But Triple-A charges a wicked premium for those Underhill service calls,” Ms. Smith finished. She got to her feet as well. “Go on, guys. Check the place out. How often do you get a chance to visit Elfland?”

  “True,” Kenny admitted. “C’mon, Tomas.”

  “Try to be back at the wagon in about half an hour,” Eric said.

  The two of them walked off under the trees. Tomas stared up into the leafy canopy. Only tiny chinks of daylight filtered down.

  “Not much like home, is it?” Kenny asked.

  “Yours or mine?” Tomas said, smirking.

  “Well, anyone’s. But I was thinking, this is a lot more like Seattle than it is like Texas.”

  “Yeah,” Tomas said. “I—Oh, wait. Is that a house?”

  Both boys stared at something nestled in the roots of one of the enormous unfamiliar trees. It wasn’t a whole house, but it was the front of one—in miniature. A shingled roof and a door with a tiny brass knocker. The whole thing couldn’t be more than six inches high.

  “Yes-s-s-s…” Kenny said cautiously.

  Tomas stared up into the branches of the tree. He couldn’t see anything, but he had the strong feeling that something was watching them.

  “Do you want to find out what comes out if we knock?” he asked.

  “No,” Kenny said hastily. “Not really.”

  As they moved on, Tomas could swear he heard high-pitched giggling behind him.

  They didn’t—exactly—see anything else as they walked through the forest. Not if you didn’t count birds in more colors than a whole box of Crayolas, and all kinds of flowers. Some were twining up the trees in vines, some were growing on bushes, and some were just growing right out of the ground. They all looked… fancy.

  By mutual consent, neither of them went very far into the forest. Tomas was hoping to find the water he’d heard earlier—it had sounded like a waterfall to him—but although he could hear it, it never seemed to get any closer.

  “I think we’d better turn back,” he finally said.

  Kenny was staring dreamily at a big yellow flower about the size of his head. It smelled a little like bananas and a little like grapefruit—which was better when you smelled it than it was to describe. He didn’t react.

  Tomas poked him. Hard.

  “Hey!” Kenny said. “What’d you do that for?”

  “Becaus
e I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life out here watching you stare at una flor, amigo.”

  “Um… yeah.” Kenny took a deep breath. “Let’s get back.”

  When they got back out to the meadow—Tomas breathed an unconscious sigh of relief—he could see that the three teachers were already waiting by the wagon.

  “I don’t suppose you saw the others?” Eric asked, when Tomas reached him.

  Tomas shook his head. “We were over there.” He pointed.

  “And they are there,” Mr. Moonlight said, pointing in turn.

  Eric sighed faintly. “Let’s go get ‘em. C’mon.”

  The five of them crossed the meadow and walked into the trees for a short distance. The sound of the water that Tomas had heard before got louder.

  Suddenly the trees opened out again. Not into a meadow this time; it was more of a clearing, an open space about the size of one of the classrooms back at St. Rhia’s. At one corner of it there was a rocky pool, and a backsplash down which water was bubbling and spilling just as if this were an ornamental fountain in somebody’s back yard.

  The other four were here. And they weren’t alone.

  Devlin was lying with his head in some girl’s lap. She had short pink hair, and her ears were even longer than Mr. Moonlight’s. They were also furry like a donkey’s, and when Tomas looked down at her feet, he saw that she didn’t have feet, she had hooves.

  Megan was sitting with something that looked like a giant German Shepherd in her lap. She was scratching it behind the ears, and talking to it adoringly. Only dogs weren’t supposed to be bright blue. And they weren’t supposed to have hands and feet instead of paws.

  Chloe was sitting with a harp in her lap while two pretty-normal looking girls in brushed and braided her hair. At least, they were normal-looking except for the fact that they both had enormous butterfly wings growing out of their backs.

  And Destiny was sitting staring into a mirror that was being held up for her by what looked pretty much like a kid Tomas’s own age—although considering all the others, Tomas bet he wasn’t. All he was wearing was a bunch of vines and flowers and a loincloth like Tarzan. When he saw them, he turned his head and smiled at them over his shoulder. Tomas saw that his teeth were pointed like a cat’s, and his eyes were all green, no white at all.