Spirits White as Lightning Read online

  But he had hesitated too long. The first of the hounds reached him, springing silently to the attack.

  He went down beneath its weight, fighting to keep its jaws from his throat. He lowered his head and swung it fiercely back and forth, using the antlers as another weapon. The hound snapped at them, snarling, and that was enough to allow him to bring up the rock he still clutched in his hand, smashing it into the beast's head.

  It yelped at the pain, sounding almost doglike in its surprise. He hit it again, and heard the crunch of bone. It squealed and scrabbled back, glaring at him with those mad red eyes. But it didn't attack again. It didn't need to. The pack was only moments behind it. He scuttled backward frantically with hands and feet, not daring to take the moment to stand or to turn his back on the hound. He heard the riders behind them, and fury banished his weakness. He'd been so close, so close. . . .

  He felt rough stone at his back, and something more. Something like dark sunlight, a raw electrical tingling that made his bones vibrate. The Gate. With the last of his strength he thrust himself sideways, kicking out to propel his body through to whatever lay beyond.

  It didn't matter what was on the other side.

  * * *

  The Hunt reached the Portal seconds later. The hounds milled about the stones, whining and yelping their displeasure and confusion at their quarry's sudden disappearance. The huntsmen dismounted and waded into the animals, driving them back with whips.

  Aerune rode slowly forward, through the confusion of hounds and huntsmen. Behind him, his courtiers waited in silence for the explosion of his wrath. No one had expected this. Never in a thousand Great Hunts had the prey ever made it this far, nor should the Gate have opened for them if they had.

  But Aerune did nothing. He gazed at the Portal for a long moment in silence, and then turned back to his men.

  He was smiling. It was a sight more terrifying than his anger.

  "Now," Aerune said with quiet satisfaction. "Now, the hunt can begin. Now I have set my hunter upon the scent."

  * * *

  When Eric woke up on Sunday morning, he was clear-headed and full of energy—and it occurred to him that although he had made the plan to meet Hosea at the Y for a rehearsal session tonight, the Y might not be the best place to hold it. The walls of those little rooms were notoriously thin, and a flute tended to have a certain piercing quality. The neighbors might not appreciate their playing—or worse, might like it too much.

  On the other hand, he had a perfectly good apartment here, with thick walls and unflappable neighbors. Why not bring Hosea here? They could play as long as they liked in peace and comfort, and Eric could run the Appalachian Bard past the House, just to be able to reassure Bethie that he wasn't going off half-cocked here. So, once again he cleaned like a mad thing—polishing away the remains of last night's party and taking several bags of paper plates and cups down to the trash cans. He realized he wanted to make a good impression on Hosea, and the thought made him smile. There was a time when he would have dismissed a concern like that as sheerest hypocrisy. You've come a loo-o-o-ng way, bay-bee, he sang lustily and off-key inside his head. Though he didn't have Greystone to help him tidy, at least there wasn't nearly as much to do.

  Two cleaning sessions in two days. Am I turning into Mr. Mom or what?

  When he stepped out onto the street around four, the day's stored-up heat hit him like a hammer. He'd been luxuriating all day in his Bard-crafted winter weather (a lot more appealing in July than in February), and the reality of a New York City summer was brutal. The streets outside his Riverside apartment were the next best thing to deserted; in summer New Yorkers tended to retreat into their air-conditioned shells—those who had them, at any rate.

  It took him a little over an hour to make it crosstown to the Y—not one, but two trains died the death and had to be taken out of service—and he was hot and sweaty when he got there. But if he'd been looking for relief, he didn't find it in the lobby of the YMCA. It was only marginally cooler.

  Maybe going back to my place was a better idea than I thought.

  He didn't bother to check in at the desk, since he already knew Hosea's room number. The elevator was slow and creaky, with absolutely no air circulation. He was glad to get out.

  The hallway had the smells of long occupation and illegal hot plates. Several of the doors were open, and as Eric walked by, he could see that some of the windows were open as well, filling the hall with the smell of burnt asphalt and baking brick. Hosea's door was closed. Eric stopped before it, but as he raised his hand to knock, Hosea opened the door.

  "I heard you coming up the hall," he said, stepping back to usher Eric inside.

  The room was smaller than most of the dorm rooms Eric had seen lately. There was a twin bed and a battered dresser, a wooden chair and a fold-down shelf that served as a desk. The window opened onto an enchanting view of the airshaft, and the battered air conditioner in the window was doing its noisy best, but not making a lot of difference to the temperature. Despite his surroundings, Hosea looked as if he'd just stepped out of a bandbox: he was wearing a white T-shirt and neatly-pressed jeans. His banjo lay in its open case on the bed, which was made to Marine Corps standards of neatness. Hosea held out his hand and Eric shook it, but despite the fact that Eric's hand disappeared into Hosea's, the larger man's grip was firmly gentle. Here was a Bard who knew a great deal about control; Eric had the feeling that Dharniel wouldn't have much to teach him there.

  "Glad you could make it," Hosea added. "Would you care for something cold to drink?"

  "You've got something?" Eric asked in surprise. He hadn't seen any sign of a refrigerator.

  In answer, Hosea reached under the bed and pulled out a large plastic sack. He opened it, revealing a selection of containers—Cokes, bottled water, and a carton of milk—nested in a couple of pounds of slowly-melting ice. "Easier than running down to the corner store every couple of minutes." He pulled out a bottle of water and handed it to Eric, who accepted it gratefully. "Cheaper when you buy them at the supermarket, too."

  Eric twisted off the cap and chugged the water gratefully. It was as cold as the ice that had surrounded it, like drinking winter. He wondered if Hosea might have used a little Bardcraft on it, but he wasn't sure of how skilled in magic Hosea might be. Playing on people's emotions was a lot easier than affecting the physical world.

  "You haven't brought your flute with you," Hosea observed, when Eric set down the empty bottle. Hosea picked it up and placed it fastidiously into the battered plastic trash can.

  "There's been a change of plans. I think we'd be better off practicing at my place."

  "Ay-ah, the walls do seem to be a mite thin here," Hosea said, echoing Eric's earlier thought. "Though I haven't noticed anyone ever going to bed at all," he added ruefully.

  "The city never sleeps," Eric agreed, quoting an old advertising slogan.

  "I've noticed that. Can't imagine how you folks get on."

  "You get used to it, I guess." As he said the words, Eric realized that in fact he'd done just that. When he'd moved here a year ago, he'd thought that the noise and constant bustle would drive him crazy. Now he hardly noticed it.

  Hosea greeted this remark with a silent—though eloquent—expression of disbelief. "Well, if we're going back to your place, just let me get my traps together. No point in putting temptation into the path of some poor weak-willed critter, is there?"

  "No point at all," Eric agreed readily, since this was fitting in very nicely with a nebulous half-plan of his own. It took Hosea only seconds to return all of his possessions to the worn duffle bag and lock his banjo into its case, and only slightly longer to pour the ice-melt out the window and tie the bag full of ice up neatly. On the way out he knocked on a closed door, seemingly at random, and thrust the bag into the hands of its surprised occupant.

  "Here you go, Leroy," Hosea said. "You share that with your friends, you hear?"

  Leroy smiled, and said something quick
in soft Spanish. Hosea smiled and continued down the hall.

  "You speak Spanish?" Eric asked. Somehow it wasn't an accomplishment that seemed to go with his picture of a banjo-playing hillbilly Bard.

  "Nope," Hosea answered easily. "But it ain't too hard to figure out what most folks mean, no matter how they put themselves."

  They hit the street and headed for the subway. At Hosea's urging, rather than wait to get back to the apartment and phone for pizza, they stopped and picked up dinner on the way.

  "Save a little that way," Hosea pointed out practically, and it did mean that once they reached the apartment, they wouldn't have to wait around for food to arrive. They stopped at the same place Eric had ordered the pizzas from for the party last night—ought to just open a charge account here—and ordered. The heat had pretty much killed Eric's appetite, but Hosea studied the menu for a moment and ordered three super deluxe sausage calzones, a kind of Moebius pizza with the crust on the outside and the topping on the inside.

  "If I ate like that, I'd look like a city bus," Eric said ruefully, all too aware that a relatively sedentary lifestyle and a few more years had stepped his metabolism down a notch from his freewheeling RenFaire days. Hosea just grinned as he picked up the bag from the counterman.

  "I'm a tad bit bigger than you are," he pointed out. "Reckon it comes from having to wrestle bears before breakfast," he added, grinning even wider.

  "Yeah, right." Eric snorted. "Pull the other one." Hosea worked his country-cousin veneer like a wolf with a designer sheepskin. It was protective coloration, but not exactly the whole truth. They continued up the block, and turned the corner onto Eric's street. Hosea's eyebrows rose when they stopped in front of Guardian House.

  "Being a subway minstrel must pay better than I thought," Hosea drawled, gazing at the impeccable Art Nouveau exterior.

  "I get by," Eric said, leading him inside. After this long, he could enter the ten-digit security code almost as a matter of reflex.

  Hosea regarded the fragile-seeming brass elevator cage. "I reckon I'd rather take the stairs, if it's all right with you."

  Eric grinned. "It's stronger than it looks, but it takes forever. That's why I usually take the stairs."

  One more ten-digit code later, the two men were inside Eric's apartment. Hosea sighed appreciatively at the cool—he probably attributed the lack of a window a/c to central air—while Eric got napkins and plates, and a couple of bottles of ice water.

  "I'm gonna have to let her set for half-an-hour or so before we do any playing," Hosea said, indicating his banjo. "This weather purely plays hob with her tuning."

  "Banjos are kittle cattle," Eric agreed, setting down his burden on the coffee table. Hosea opened the sack from the pizza place and began tucking into his calzones.

  "Listen, I've been doing some research, and did you know that the whole banjo modality and a lot of the tunes are derived from bagpipe music?" Eric asked. "Apparently it was hard to manufacture bagpipes and reeds and whatnot in the Appalachians when the Scots and the Irish immigrated there, so musicians borrowed an African instrument—the ancestor of the banjo—and set it up for the kind of music they were used to."

  Hosea stopped chewing. "Seriously? Didn't know that."

  Eric grinned. "Well, flute and bagpipe aren't exactly what I'd call natural duetting material, but that means we can probably pull off a lot of the Celtic and folk stuff I know, since that's Celtic modality."

  Hosea nodded. "You play a tune a couple times, I can pick it up, Mister Bard."

  "Same here." Eric chuckled. "As if you didn't know. Mister Bard. Ready to give it a shot? As soon as your lady is tunable, I mean."

  "Suits me." They cleaned away the debris of the meal and spent a happy half hour going through Eric's CD collection, then got out their instruments and put them in mutual tune. It took Hosea quite a while to get his lady tuned—no professional kept tension on the strings when the instrument wasn't in use—and Eric remembered the old joke about the instruments' notorious temperament. Q: How do you know when a banjo's in tune? A: It never is. Having silver strings rather than catgut helped a lot, though, and after a little doodling around, they began working out a playlist.

  There wasn't any magic involved in what they were doing, or not overt magic, at any rate, but there certainly was a level of "enchantment" that Eric hadn't felt since he played with Bethie's old group, Spiral Dance. In fact, when he compared that experience to this one, it was like predawn and glorious sunrise—which in itself was kind of odd, since according to Dharniel, in the old days, Bards had been, well, tetchy was the word the Elven Magus had used. Easily irritated, and subject to extremes of professional jealousy that would make a modern pop diva turn green with envy.

  But in the old days they were regarded as the equivalent of kings, Eric reflected, as he played "Smash the Windows" for Hosea, while the latter listened with a concentration that would have been intimidating to someone who wasn't accustomed to that sort of reaction at Juilliard. They were treated like nobility, so they acted like brats. Guess having to busk on the sidewalk for their dinners might have cured them of a little of that 'tude. Certainly there was nothing like professional antagonism between him and Hosea—and the way the country boy had pitched right in and helped with the cleanup after dinner without being asked spoke well for Eric's other embryonic plan.

  But it wasn't until well after dark, when both of them were satisfied that they had a solid list of audience-pleasing pieces—including one of Eric's favorites, almost a personal anthem, Billy Joel's "The Entertainer," which had a killer banjo part built right in—that Eric put the last test in motion. Greystone, of course, had been skimming his thoughts, and only waiting for his signal.

  "Well," Hosea sighed, detuning the banjo and placing it with great care back in the case, "This's been more fun than I've had in a long time, Eric, but I reckon I'd best be getting back."

  Eric nodded slightly at the window. "Would you mind meeting a friend of mine before you go?"

  With a quizzical look, Hosea turned around to look behind himself, and froze.

  "Y'all pick a pretty neat banjo, theah, boyo," Greystone drawled, with a wink to Eric. The gargoyle climbed in through the window and stood in front of Hosea.

  Hosea thawed a trifle. "Thank you kindly," he said, punctiliously polite, then cocked his head to one side. Eric sensed little feelers of Bardic magic creeping cautiously towards the gargoyle. Greystone grinned, and opened his wings, just a trifle. "Reckon you may look more than a bit like Old Nick, but you ain't nothing unchancy—so what are you?" Hosea asked, with more composure than Eric had expected. "Besides Eric's friend, that is?"

  "Oh, now that is a long story," Greystone replied, dropping the drawl. "Could take a couple of hours at least to tell it." Greystone turned to Eric. "The House likes him," was all he said, but that was all Eric needed to know.

  "Listen, Hosea," Eric said, waving a hand to get Hosea's attention away from the talking gargoyle. "You just passed a couple of—well, tests. You need a better place to stay than that steam bath, I've got a perfectly good couch here that won't cost you anything, and you've already got all of your stuff here. Want to stay the night and hear what Greystone has to say? If you'd rather go back to the Y after that, no problem, but I've got this big old place with only me rattling around in it, and there's no reason why you can't move in for a little bit until you've got a stake for a decent place of your own. If you're planning on staying around New York, of course."

  Hosea looked from Eric to Greystone and back. "Huh," he said, finally, clearly making up his mind. "Well, I came up here looking for new things; reckon I'd be pretty dumb to run off when what I was looking for shakes my hand and says howdy."

  "Good enough," Greystone said, genially, and lowered his bulk onto the bench Eric had bought just for him. "Well, the story starts like this. . . ."

  * * *

  She had spent the last six months looking for a place to hide, and here in the mountains of West Virg
inia she'd found it. She'd lucked into Morton's Fork while cruising the Appalachian Chain on Lady Mystery. Hillfolk, as a rule, were even more suspicious of the government than she was, and as closemouthed as the dead. Somewhere in these hills she'd hoped for a bolt-hole, and she'd found it here. No one would be looking for her in Morton's Fork. The town was barely a wide spot in the road. The last excitement in Lyonesse County had been the 1924 WPA project that had left a string of cabins behind. The nearest library was twelve miles away, the nearest supermarket, twenty. There wasn't even television or radio here—the guy down at the general store said there was something about the area that made it impossible for the signals to get through.

  That suited Jeanette Campbell just fine. She'd set up housekeeping in one of the old WPA cabins, and for the last several weeks she'd been here, considering her next move. She'd cached her bike and most of her supplies under a tarp in the ruins of an old building about a mile up the hill—she'd found it by following one of the winding deer tracks that crisscrossed the mountain. She didn't like having Lady Mystery so far away, but the old sanitarium was the closest thing to a bolt-hole and a back door she could manage. And Lady Mystery would attract attention wherever she went—a big flashy cream-and-maroon Harley touring bike with all the extras, Jeanette's one extravagance from her time at Threshold. She didn't want to lose her.

  When she'd bailed out on Robert last December, she hadn't known whether or not it was for keeps. Robert had been the one who'd found her as an outlaw chemist and rescued her from the Feds to head up a secret R&D project at his pharmaceutical company. She'd been chasing a dream—a drug that would unlock the psychic powers inherent in the human brain. Robert's dreams had been grander and darker, of a secret army of psychic ninja, loyal to him alone.

  They'd both gotten more than they'd bargained for. The one hundred fifty-seventh compound of the sixth year of trials—T-6/157—had actually worked. You gave it to people and they manifested psychic powers: psychokinesis, telepathy, thought projection, teleportation, healing. . . .