The Chrome Borne Read online

  But it was draining, and Tannim sagged back against the wall when he was done, letting the crowbar slip to the floor from nerveless fingers. It fell on the carpet with a dull thud, and Tannim kept himself from following it only by supreme effort.

  He looked up, right into Sam's face.

  The metallurgist was reaching for his shoulder to help hold him up, such a mixture of expressions on his face that none of them were readable.

  "I . . . don't suppose you have any Gatorade . . . ?" Tannim asked, weakly.

  * * *

  ". . . and he set fire to me," Sam continued, after another sip of good Irish. After all the wine tonight, he was only going to permit himself one small glass—but by Holy Mary, he needed that one. His nerves were so jangled that he wasn't going to be able to sleep without it, and he didn't trust sleeping-pills. "He did, I swear it. Only the flames didn't burn. Scared the bejeezus out of poor Thoreau, though."

  He reached down and fondled the spaniel's ears. Thoreau had emerged from the closet only after much coaxing, and remained half-hidden at Sam's feet, completely unashamed of his cowardice. Sam had praised the little dog to the sky for doing the right thing, though he doubted that Thoreau understood much of what he was saying; probably all Thoreau knew was that Daddy said he was a Good Boy, and Daddy was going to comfort him after the terrible fright he'd taken. Sam was quite glad that Thoreau had deserted him. One small spaniel was not going to make more than an indentation in a Sidhe's ankle—assuming the animal got that far before being blasted. He'd lost enough pets in his lifetime to old age and illness. He didn't want Thoreau turned to ash by a Sidhe with a temper.

  "That was bael-fire, Sam," Tannim replied, refilling his cup from the bottle of Gatorade on the kitchen table. He'd already polished off one bottle, and Sam wondered where he was putting it all. "If you hadn't been protected, you'd have burned up like a match, but nothing around you would have been touched. Charles Fort had a lot of those cases in his books of unexplained phenomena. He called it `spontaneous human combustion,' and thought it might have something to do with astral travel." The young man shook his head, much wearier than Sam had ever seen him. There were dark circles of exhaustion beneath his eyes, and his hair was limp and flattened-looking. "Nobody ever told Fort that going up in heatless flames is what happens when you get the Folk pissed off at you."

  "But I was protected," Sam protested, sensing a flaw somewhere. "You said I had shields, and you said other mages would know that."

  Tannim nodded, and rubbed his eyes. "Exactly. He knew bael-fire wasn't going to touch you. He'd have to be blind not to know those shields were there. I don't think he intended you to be hurt directly, Sam."

  "What, then?" Sam asked in fatigue-dulled apprehension. What worse could the Sidhe have had in mind? "Or was that just intended as a warning? A bit extreme for a warning, seems to me."

  "Heh. The Sidhe are always extreme." Tannim cocked his head sideways. "I think he was trying to scare you to death. I think he wanted it to look like you died naturally."

  Sam took another sip of Irish, thinking about that for a moment before replying. "He did then, did he?" His apprehension turned to a slow, burning anger. "Sure, and that's a coward's way, if ever I saw one."

  "Attacking a human with bael-fire is just as cowardly, Sam," the young man pointed out. "Or going after a human with elf-shot. In either case, it's like using grenades against rabbits. The target hasn't got a chance. I think he must have assumed that since you're retired, you're frail, and he was going to use that."

  "Can I assume the blackguard was Unseleighe Court?" Sam asked, the anger within him burning with the same slow heat as a banked peat-fire.

  Tannim nodded, and finished the last of his Gatorade. "That's their way, Sam. They never take on an opponent of equal strength if they can help it. I assume they came after you because you're hooked in with Fairgrove and Keighvin. I told you before that if you wanted to back out of this, you could." He capped the bottle and slowly tightened the lid down. "You're still welcome to. Nobody is—"

  "Back out?" Sam exclaimed. "Bite your tongue! If the blackguards want a fight, they've come to the right place, let me tell you! Sam Kelly never started a fight, but he always finished them." He bared his teeth in a fierce smile. "I don't intend to let that change, no matter how old I might be."

  Tannim's tired face lit up in a smile, and he clapped Sam on the shoulder. "That's the spirit! I was hoping we could count on you!"

  Sam let the grin soften to something more wry than fierce. "They should have known better than to try and frighten an Irishman. We're stubborn bastards, and we don't take to being driven off. But come to think of it—what the devil did you do to frighten him off? You just popped in the room, and he ran like a scalded cat."

  "It wasn't what I did," Tannim replied, tapping the glass bottle on the crowbar that sat on the table between them. "It was what I had. This."

  "Cold Iron?" Sam hazarded.

  "Twenty pounds' worth, enchanted to a fare-thee-well," the young man told him, one hand still on the red-painted iron bar, a finger trailing along the gooseneck at one end, apparently remembering past uses. "One strong shot with this, and I don't care how powerful a mage he is, he'd have felt like he'd been hit by a semi. Eh heh . . . pureed by Peterbilt."

  Sam snorted, then gazed at the bar with speculation. "Can anyone use one of those things? I used to be a fair hand with singlestick not long ago."

  Tannim's eyes widened for a moment, then narrowed with speculation. "Huh. I never thought about that, but I don't know why not. I'll tell you what; I can't give you this one, but I can make one for you. And until I finish it, just remember that any crowbar is going to cause one of the Folk a lot of distress. If you'd had one in here tonight, it might even have disrupted the bael-fire spell."

  Sam made a mental note to visit an auto-parts store tomorrow. He'd have one under his car seat and in every room in the house. "I'll get the one out of my car before you leave, and I'll pick up a few more tomorrow. You're sure nobody is going to be able to get back in here tonight?"

  "Positive." Tannim took a deep breath, and held Sam's eyes with his own. "Absolutely positive. And as soon as I get back to Fairgrove and tie Keighvin's protections into yours, if the sorry sonuvabitch even tries, the Fairgrove Folk will know. If he brings in enough firepower to crack those shields, he'll touch off a war—"

  "Not on my account!" Sam exclaimed with dismay. That was far more than he'd bargained on . . . and something he did not want to have on his conscience.

  Tannim grimaced, and now Sam realized that the young man had been a lot more shaken by the attack than he wanted to admit. "No—no, don't worry, they won't even try. They aren't any readier for open warfare than you and I are. But—you really can quit, Sam, and no one will hold it against you. . . ."

  Sam shook his head emphatically. "I told you before, and I meant it. Tannim, the answer isn't `no,' it's `hell no.' In fact—" he grinned, and discovered it was actually a real smile "—you couldn't get rid of me now if you paid me!"

  * * *

  Aurilia sighed, sipped her herb tea, and tried not to look at Niall mac Lyr. She concentrated instead on the delicate, fragile porcelain of her teacup, on the white satin tablecloth, and on the gray velvet cushions of her lounge chair. Normally she would have been enjoying a luxurious breakfast along with the tea, but her breakfast companion was not a creature designed to stimulate anyone's appetite.

  The Bane-Sidhe squinted across the table at her, and glowered, its cadaverous face made all the more unpleasant by its sour expression. Every time Niall moved, a breath of dank, foul air wafted across the table toward her. Niall smelled like a fetid ditch—or an open grave. There had been times in Ireland when they were one and the same. The Bane-Sidhe did not at all match his surroundings in Aurilia's sybaritic sitting room of white satin and gray velvet. He looked like a Victorian penny-dreadful cover, for something entitled "Death and the Maiden," or "The Specter at the Feast." Aurilia sighed again
, and pulled the gray silk skirts of her lounge-robe a little closer. She could only hope that when Niall left, he'd take the stench with him.

  "Where is he?" Niall asked, for the seventh time. The Bane-Sidhe's speaking voice was a hollow, unpleasant whisper; not even Vidal cared to hear its full-voiced cry. The wail of the Bane-Sidhe brought unreasoning terror even into the hearts of its allies.

  Aurilia shrugged. It was no use answering him. She'd already told him she didn't know where Vidal was. The Bane-Sidhe was only interested in his own grievances.

  "We have work to do," it continued, aggrieved. "Studio Two should be operational around the clock—we don't have to put up with union nonsense or mortal time-clocks. You promised me when I joined you that there would be enough nourishment for all of us. You told me—"

  "I know what I told you," Aurilia snapped, her temper frayed by the Bane-Sidhe's constant whining. "I told you that eventually we'd have all the pain you could ever need or want. I didn't promise it immediately."

  "Pah!" the Bane-Sidhe snorted, tossing its head petulantly. "That was a year ago! You could have had Studio Two in full production three months after you brought up Studio One. It's not as if we have to fret about the cost of sets or casts, or even equipment! But no, you had to chase after Keighvin Silverhair—you had to waste your time discovering what he was up to. And instead of being at full power, I must limp about on the dregs of energy a few paltry deaths supply, and Studio Two has produced only that puny little Roman fantasy—"

  "You think humans come running to us to bare their throats to the blade?" Aurilia countered with justifiable irritation. Niall simply would not come to grips with the fact that the world had changed, and she had gotten tired of trying to convince him that things were different now than in 1890. "You think there's no risk involved in finding those `paltry few victims'? This isn't the old days; when people die or disappear, even if they have no relatives to ask after them, someone generally notices! Take too many, and we'll be contending with mortal police at every turn! I'd rather not have to fly the anchor off if I don't have to, and if too many people come up missing, or we pick the wrong victims, Folk or not, we are going to be—"

  "That is not the point," the Bane-Sidhe whispered angrily. "Your—" It turned, abruptly, its enshrouding wrappings flaring, sending a wash of dank stench over Aurilia, as the door to her sitting room opened and Vidal entered.

  She assessed his expression, and her already-sour mood spoiled further. If Vidal had been unhappy before he left on his errand, he was livid now. Aurilia started to ask him what was wrong, then thought better of the idea. The rage that burned behind his thoughts was palpable even to her, and she was not particularly sensitive to emotion.

  Well, this time she was not going to play scapegoat. Niall would undoubtedly want to know where Vidal had been and what he had been doing all this time. And just as surely, when the Bane-Sidhe learned of his errand, Niall would sneer at him.

  Well and good. Aurilia would stay out of it. If anyone was to suffer Vidal's anger, let it be the Bane-Sidhe.

  After all, she thought maliciously, he spoiled my breakfast by arriving when he did. Let him take it in the teeth. I've had more than my share of My Lord Vidal's temper tantrums. Niall outranks him; let Niall exert himself for a change.

  "And where have you been?" Niall snarled. "I have things I wish to discuss—"

  "And I don't give a damn!" Vidal exploded, his eyes black with rage, fists clenched at his sides. He turned pointedly away from Niall and snarled at Aurilia. "That thrice-damned human mage! Keighvin has had his little protégé put shields on the old man. I couldn't touch him! And what's more, when I threw bael-fire at him, the old bastard laughed at me!"

  The Bane-Sidhe rose to its full seven-foot height, stood over Vidal, and glared down at the elven-mage, its tattered draperies quivering with anger. "Do you mean to say that you have been wasting your time trying to frighten Keighvin's pet mortals when you could have—"

  "I'm doing what you should have been doing, you shabby fraud!" Vidal sneered. "You should have been the one trying to frighten the old man into a heart attack, not me! Not even a shield would have stopped your wail—right? Or—"

  "Why? Why should I waste my time, waste the energy it takes to cross the Gate into the mortal world?" the Bane-Sidhe countered. "I've not enough to spare as it is!"

  Vidal was not to be daunted by height or stench, Aurilia had to give him credit for that much. "Because Keighvin has to be stopped, or he'll stop us. Even you admit that! If you'd been here—"

  The Bane-Sidhe's eyes flashed angrily, and Aurilia held her breath. If Niall grew enraged, he might lose control. "I would not have been wasting my time pursuing a dead-end vendetta when there are other options open!" Niall whined, his voice climbing dangerously in pitch and volume. "Humans are infinitely corruptible. Just look at the sheer numbers of them that are willing to pay to watch their fellows in torment! Look at our files! All we need do is find these foolish mortals' weaknesses and they will be our allies, not Keighvin's! It's simply—"

  "A lot you know!" Vidal spat. "You haven't been Outside for a century! The mortals you knew are as dead as the creatures of Tam Lin's time! You can't corrupt a human by dangling a pretty piece of flesh in front of his nose anymore! And they aren't naive little village boys with shit on their shoes and not two thoughts in their heads. It's bad enough that we've got Keighvin against us, but now he has these human mages with him, and artificers, and they're not stupid, I'm telling you!"

  The Bane-Sidhe grew another half a foot. "I have taken the lives of more mortals than you ever dreamed of; I've the deaths of six knights of the Seleighe Court to my credit. That's more than you've ever hoped to do, you elven trash! Destroying the likes of you is less than a pastime—"

  By the dark moon, this is getting serious—Aurilia clapped her hands together, distracting both of them for a moment.

  "Niall, unless you really want a duel on your hands," she said coldly, "I think you'd better take back those last words to your partner."

  She had dealt with the Bane-Sidhe for so long now that she knew exactly what was running through its head, now that she'd sidetracked it. For all Niall's power—and he was powerful—he was old and afraid of losing any of it. He used his hoarded energies sparingly, and he lived in fear of finding himself in a duel of magics and coming out the vanquished. Vidal was young, as elves went, but he was powerful as well. Niall did not know how powerful, and that uncertainty would be enough. If he were forced to go head-to-head with the younger mage . . .

  . . . who had done away with two of the Seleighe Court single-handedly, in the far past. . . .

  "I beg pardon for those hasty words," the Bane-Sidhe whispered stiffly. "I am concerned that you seem to be wasting time better spent elsewhere."

  Aurilia turned to Vidal, who stood, still rigid with anger, facing the Bane-Sidhe. "You should explain the problem to Niall, Lord Vidal," she said, in as close to a servile tone as she could manage, given how angry she was at both of the fools. "You are right in saying he is not familiar with the world outside the Gates today. You should tell him why Keighvin and his pets are dangerous to us."

  Vidal's jaw tightened, but her subservient tone evidently mollified him enough to try to be polite. "Keighvin Silverhair is interfering directly in the world of mortals," he said, slowly, "as I have pointed out to you before. He will stop us in our quest for power if he can, for we are on directly opposing sides where mortals are concerned. But he has gone beyond simply interfering. Tonight I discovered that he is using them, recruiting and training them. And betraying our deepest secrets and weaknesses."

  "What?" Niall and Aurilia both gasped. This was news to Aurilia; unpleasant news. If mortals knew how to meet the Folk in equal combat—

  "The mage tonight had a bar of Cold Iron as a weapon," Vidal continued grimly "Not steel—pure, forged Cold Iron, with Far-Anchored spells keyed to the Folk, and shieldings set specifically against our powers. The bastard glowed t
o the Sight, and he knew what he was doing, I tell you. Keighvin must have told him everything. He's going to be impossible to deal with. Another Gwydion, Merlin, Taliesen."

  If Niall could have paled, he would have. Instead, he seemed to shrink, and he fluttered back into his seat, collapsing bonelessly with a moan.

  "By the dark moon," the Bane-Sidhe groaned. "Why didn't you tell me this before? We must—"

  Aurilia knew what the old coward was about to say—that they should leave, pack up in defeat and leave the ground to the enemy. Not a chance.

  "Oh, no," she interjected sweetly. "He won't be impossible to deal with. I already have human informants following his movements. Before the week is out, I will know his weaknesses."

  When the other two turned to stare at her in astonishment, she smiled, careful to cloak her triumph in modesty. "I simply don't have the power you have, my lords. I have learned to make do with the kind of weapons mortals use themselves. There are many ways to wound the human heart, and I have learned most of them. All I need to know is what the young man Tannim cares for—and he will be powerless against me."

  She bowed her head a little, to hide the gloating in her eyes, for both the Bane-Sidhe and Vidal were still staring at her in a kind of awe. "You deal with the old man," she finished. "Leave the younger to me. I will deal with him, Cold Iron and all—for Cold Iron will not save him from a pierced heart."

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Tania sat in the farthest corner of Kevin Barry's and nursed her mug of hot, milk-laden coffee between hands so numb she couldn't even feel the cup. The weather had turned cold, out of nowhere, and despite Laura's repeated warnings, she had decided to take a chance and come to Kevin Barry's long enough to look for the strange young man again. The hundred he'd given her was long gone for rent; she'd been eating once a day here for the last week, trying to make the tab last a while, but she hadn't found a single trick in a week of walking the streets.