13
The Boys of Ballysadare
Melisande hugged the ground, ignoring the damp of fog and the dew soaking her clothing. She needed no spells of deception, no magic at all, to disguise herself; only ability. She held herself so utterly still that birds had winged in to feed within reach of her hand. It had been a long, long time since Melisande had used her skills as a warrior, but old habits were easy to take up again.
Gone were the pink hair, the Spandex bodysuit. Those, oddly enough, were the garb of a land of warrior, but not the kind she was now. She had surveyed the ground of her chosen lookout point, above the green, flat lawns of Dublin Labs, and had created her camouflage accordingly.
Her hair was now a dull yellow-brown, blending with the weeds about her. Her clothing was of the same mottled coloration: gray, yellow, and brown. Her skin was hidden under gloves and mask of thin silk that blended with the rest; she had considered paint, and rejected it as too itchy and too likely to wipe off, had considered changing her skin, but rejected that as terribly conspicuous if she had to walk among humans. It was easy to hide the ears and the eyes; it would be a great deal harder to hide camo-colored skin.
She had cast spells of confusion to fool the eye of the humans who might be on guard against intruders, but Beth, Susan, and Bard Eric had all spoken of machinery that might watch—machines that could detect scent as a hound, or the heat of a body as a snake.
So she had dealt with those, as well; her body was the same temperature as the ground she lay on, and her scent was that of a cat’s. She only hoped that there were no other subtle machines to befool.
Below her was one of the probes Susan Sheffield said must be moved. There were a dozen more of them, all told. A dozen and one, to be precise. Somehow Melisande found that number appropriate.
Not evil, she reminded herself. In fact, Susan meant for them to serve a good purpose. It is the one who uses them that is evil.
There were elven watchers over all of them, although Susan was not sure which of the “array” would be repositioned. Melisande thought that this one was likely; for one thing, it was on Lab property, and there would be no attention paid when someone came to move it. For another—she had a hunch. Elven hunches were not to be taken lightly.
How long until the Nightflyer creature decided that Susan Sheffield was not to return? And then how long would it be before it decided to act on its own? There was no way of knowing. Melisande had decided that she would wait, no matter how long it took—but she had some doubts about the patience of the others. Some of them, anyway.
Light-minded. Now they are afeared, but when the fear wears off, so will their interest. Too many distractions. It is hard for some of them to believe in the FarSeeing, when there have been so few things in the human world that could ever affect us.
So she had taken up this first outpost herself, to be sure that at least one watcher would remain in place.
There were other things that troubled her. Before she left the Bard’s home, there had been some discussion of how the Blair-human—before he became a Nightflyer’s host—had found Beth, Eric, and the human healers. Melisande was not terribly interested, until Susan had speculated on more machines, and that had caught Dharinel’s attention for fair. The two of them had conferenced, with Dharinel becoming more animated than Melisande had ever seen him before. They came at last to the conclusion that there must be machines that could see the thoughts that moved from mind to mind, the energies of the healer—and, yes, most probably the powers of magic.
The very thought of that made Melisande shudder. Machines that had the same ability to See as the Gifted! Worse, machines that could do so for the benefit of humans who were otherwise blind to magic and all that it meant.
That meant, that in addition to everything else, Dharinel and the others must needs construct the tightest shieldings they had ever created for each of the watchers—and for the humans as well. The healers, Eric, and Beth were shielded so tightly that they no longer existed to Melisande’s inner Eye—and on the chance that there might be some subtle telltale on Susan, she had been shielded as well. It would do them little good to discover that the Blair-creature could track them and know where they were, or if it would actually want to find the elves. It would accomplish nothing if, with all their careful planning, the Blair-creature found and took Bard Eric.
The younger healer, Kayla, had gone out into the city to try to collect other humans with the Gifts. These, Dharinel had determined, would be needed for later work.
It was a complicated plan they had made; it relied on the abilities of humans and elves, on humans and elves working together. Melisande only hoped that it was not too complicated to succeed.
Their plans were further complicated by their inability to speak mind-to-mind through the shields, which must remain in place until the last minute. So when a man came for this probe, Melisande would have to leave her watchpost, go to the BART station, and take the humans’ transportation to their headquarters. She could not even ride her elvensteed-motorcycle. Dharinel had ruled that the elvensteeds, being creatures of purest magic, had too much potential for being easily detected.
Wait—there was something moving below.
Melisande checked her shields and peered through the foggy gray of early morning. Was it a groundskeeper? Sexless in its muddy brown coverall, it—no, he—towed a trash barrel upon wheels behind him . . .
Then the snout of a high-powered rifle poking out of the open top of the barrel told her that this was no gardener. And as he moved across the grass towards the probe, she smiled in satisfaction.
When he reached it, and began to load it into his barrel, she inched backwards to slither down the side of the hill.
Six rings. Seven. Eight. “Damn,” Elizabet swore quietly, hanging up the phone. The house seemed terribly quiet with Eric and most of the elves gone. Occasional car noises filtered up from the street, and Elizabet tried not to listen too closely for the sound of one stopping outside. The elves had pledged that they were safe. She had to believe that.
“No answer?” Kayla asked with a grimace. She had accepted the elves’ assurance with no question. Elizabet wished she had her apprentice’s faith.
“No answer.” Elizabet stared off into the distance, her lips compressed into a tight line. No answer—but most of them were at the conference. Most of them were already paranoid—and what happened there must have simply proven to them that their worst fears were a reality. “Not that I blame them. After what happened to us, I wouldn’t be answering my phone either.”
Kayla drew a neat line through the last name on the list. “Yeah. Answer the phone and there could be a car outside your door five minutes later. Teach, we got a problem,” she said. “We’ve got three—count ’em, three—psis contacted so far. The rest, everybody from the conference, changed their numbers in the last day and got unlisted ones, aren’t answering, or just plain disappeared. Now what? Where are we gonna find anybody on this short a notice?”
Elizabet shook her head, feeling suddenly tired. I can’t feel tired. I don’t have time to feel tired. “I don’t know,” she said frankly. “I’m fresh out of ideas.”
Kayla blinked, then licked her lips. “I got one,” she offered. She had that look about her that told Elizabet she was probably not going to like the idea, that this was something that a child shouldn’t be doing. On the other hand—they were rapidly running out of choices.
Elizabet spread her hands. “I’m open to any suggestion at this point.” Just make this one a reasonable one. Something that might work.
“Well—” Kayla took a deep breath. “You know I’m pretty street-smart. And you know I know how to find people when I want to.”
In fact, Kayla’s ability to find people was quite uncanny. She knew somehow when people who were pretending to be out were at home; she even knew when people who were out could be expected back, usually coming within ten minutes of their actual return. It wasn’t precognition as Elizabet recognized it; it certainly wasn’t anything like clairvoyance, for there was no vision involved. Just a “hunch”—one that had served Kayla well when she had been pilfering apartments for food and small amounts of cash. It was astonishing how few people locked their windows even in a city the size of Los Angeles.
“You’re street-smart in L.A.,” Elizabet reminded her. “This is San Francisco; you don’t know the territory.” And I don’t want you out on the street; you’re a child, and children are terribly easy to snatch when the abductor is an adult and looks official. Flash some kind of badge, say the child is a truant or a runaway . . .
“Okay, I don’t know this area,” Kayla admitted, “but Sandy—Melisande, I mean—she does. She’s got the entire BART schedule in her head. And her Grove’s way up on one of the hills, so she can even go into Oakland, Berkeley—basically wherever BART can take her. So we had this idea. I know what the real high-psis around here look like, at least the ones that showed up at the conference. And I kind of picked up on things like, where they work, what their neighborhoods are like, so I could probably track them down if they’re still around. And they probably remember me. So—”
“You and Melisande want to go hunting, is that it?” At Kayla’s eager nod, Elizabet sighed. “A pair of teenagers.”
Kayla’s face fell. “What’s wrong with that? We can take care of ourselves!”
“But who would believe you?” Elizabet asked gently. “Honey, if I didn’t have the same Gifts, I probably wouldn’t—”
“They’ll believe me,” said a low, tired voice from the doorway.
They both looked up to see Beth leaning against the doorframe. “Not only that,” the singer continued, “but I probably know some of them myself. As far as that goes, I would bet that I know some high-psis that didn’t go to your conference for one reason or another, and we could go track them down.”
Kayla looked their patient over with a critical eye. “Are you sure you’re up to this?” she asked, as Elizabet opened her mouth to protest, then shut it again.
Beth nodded, then smiled thinly. “Even if I wasn’t, we don’t have much choice, do we?” she pointed out. “It’s either that, or those of us who can, run for the East. I imagine we could get into safe territory before the quake hit, even on motorbikes.”
“Run out while we still have a chance to stop this thing? Leaving the people and elves who can’t escape to face those—things?” Kayla snarled. “I don’t think so.”
“The visions all depend on Eric being there,” Beth pointed out. “They all show him here, as the instigator. At least, the ones we know about do . . . ”
“But they’re getting worse, not better.” Kayla shook her head. “That’s what Sandy says. The elves haven’t told us much detail about theirs; maybe they don’t show Eric. The only details we know came from Eric; and me and Elizabet have been putting him too far under to dream when he sleeps, so he’s not getting them anymore. Which means, I bet, that it wouldn’t matter if Eric was here or not. Hell, he’s done his gig. They don’t need him; I bet they’ve got some other way of coming over without him calling them. If they did need him, you can bet that bastard Blair would be on him like flies on—”
“Kayla,” Elizabet said warningly.
“Yeah, well, he would.” Kayla frowned. “So I don’t think we got a choice. I think we gotta stop this if we can. And the only way we know of is Eric’s plan.”
“I don’t think we have a choice either,” Beth admitted. “I just wanted to hear somebody else say it.” She pulled her hands out of her pockets; one of them held a bit of shiny covered elastic. She put her hair into a tail and nodded at the older healer. “So, am I sufficient chaperone for the two delinquents? Think I can keep them out of trouble?”
“You’ll do,” Elizabet admitted tiredly. Kayla bounced up out of her chair and stopped only when Elizabet held up a restraining hand. “We have three for the circle—plus you, Beth, and me. Eric won’t be in the circle; he can’t be, since he’s the channel. The elves will be working their own magics. That means we have to have no less than seven more. I’d personally like more than that, in case we have some last minute cancellations.”
One corner of Beth’s mouth twitched, as if she was trying not to smile. “The classical thirteen? I thought you didn’t subscribe to traditional ways.”
“I don’t,” Elizabet snapped, “but out of the six we have so far, three of us do. Belief is a powerful weapon.”
Beth reacted to Elizabet’s unusual burst of temper by straightening and looking a little livelier. Like a tired cop that just heard the Chief growl, Elizabet thought. As if she figures if I have enough left to snarl with, she should, too. Good—that was the reaction I hoped to get.
Or maybe it was the reminder of how powerful belief was. Belief, after all, had helped them make it through the last one . . .
Belief, and the unlikely combination of Eric and a plan.
The Bard is growing up, I think. Nowhere near so feckless these days.
“In that case,” Beth replied, “let’s see if we can’t find you a few more believers.” She nodded at Kayla. “Come on, kid. Let’s go collect Sandy and hit the road.”
Elizabet dropped her hand, and Kayla bounded to Beth’s side.
Kayla let Beth take over; it didn’t matter who played leader, and Beth knew San Fran better than Kayla, though not as well as Sandy. The two of them headed out the back way into the garden, Beth in the lead, figuring to look for Melisande there first. Anytime Kayla didn’t know where to look for one of the elves, but knew the elf in question was somewhere around, she always checked the garden right off.
They didn’t have to look far; she was sitting in one of the little bowers, with her knees tucked up under her chin, watching—something. She sat so quietly she could have been a garden gnome—if anyone made them with pink hair. She had changed back to her pink-punk look as soon as she got back to the gathering.
Come to think of it, somewhere someone probably does. Only they’re in cutesy peasant costumes, not pink Spandex.
When they got a little nearer, they saw what it was that Melisande stared at so intently. An early rose, the same color as her hair and Spandex tights and miniskirt. Small, but perfect, with dew on its velvet petals, straight out of a honey-sweet greeting card.
“I always loved roses,” she said, sadly and softly, as they neared. “They won’t grow Underhill—did you know that? They won’t grow without true sun.” There was something about her; something resigned and wistful . . .
That was when it hit Kayla: Sandy expected to die. In fact, now that she thought about it, at least half the elves gathered here had the same attitude Sandy did. Now that the probes had been moved, they expected to die; all of the Low Court elves and many of their High Court cousins. Of the High Court elves, only Kory and Dharinel seemed reasonably confident that this save could be pulled off.
I bet they figure we can’t hold up our end. Huh. We did it before, we can do it again. You bet.
“Yeah, well, it’ll still be here in a couple of days,” she said. “From the look of it, you’ll have a whole bush full of flowers you can admire. Right now, you’n me’n Beth have got some tracking to do. Beth figures she knows where some of the witches around here live.”
“Not all witches,” Beth corrected. “Or at least, that’s what they’ll tell you. They run the spectrum from ultra-Christian to the absolute opposite. But they’re all psychic and they’re strong, and I’m pretty sure once they hear what we’re up against, they’ll be willing to work together. At least, I hope so. There’s a lot of rivalry and a couple of feuds we’ll have to deal with.”
Kayla heard an unspoken undercurrent and asked, sharply, “What’s the catch?”
Beth shook her head and sighed. “The catch, me dear young child, is that most of these people range from—ah—eccentric to pure, unadulterated out-there. I’m hoping they’re enough in touch with the planet to believe they can’t vibrate their way out of this one without help. But—honey, these people are the nuts and flakes in the bowl of granola.”
“Great,” Kayla replied as flippantly as she could manage, while Sandy got to her feet. “In that case, it’ll be just like a family reunion. Everybody got change for the BART?”
Beth rubbed her temples and tried not to snap. Behind her, Kayla and Sandy stood in respectful silence.
“But the Universe is a friendly place, dear,” Sister Ruth chided gently. “You simply haven’t communicated properly with these entities. I’m sure that once you talk to them, they’ll understand that they mustn’t hurt anyone when they come over to Our Side.”
Right. And Ted Bundy is a real sweetheart, once you get to know him. Ruthie, you’d sign Charlie Manson’s parole petition. But Beth didn’t allow a shadow of her real feelings to show on her face—or get past her defenses. Sister Ruth had an erratic, but unfortunately accurate, ability to read people—and this was not the time to let her read what Beth thought of her “the Universe is a friendly place” drivel.
“Once we have the time, we’ll do that—” she promised glibly. “In fact, I don’t see any reason why we can’t put you in charge of the project. You’re so good at communicating with the non-human spirit entities.”
Sister Ruth beamed with pride, but Beth continued before she could say anything and get off on her own Cosmic Muffin tangent. She did not need the guided tour to the spirit world to get in the way of the real business. “Right now, though—unless we can stop this quake before it starts, we won’t have the time. In fact,” she continued grimly, “the visions of the future that we’ve been granted show most of us dead. Including me. The entities aren’t the real problem, Ruth, the quake is. According to the Seer I’ve consulted, it’s the quake that kills most of the people.”
Sister Ruth frowned slightly, and Beth knew she’d inadvertently tripped another button. Oh gods. Karma. Karma and predestination. She hurried on, keeping Ruth from getting off on the “no one dies until it is time” kick. How do I get out of this one? Ah—I know.
“Sister Ruth, please remember, this isn’t a natural quake. It’s being created, by those military men over in Dublin Labs.” She paused to let that sink in. “I know. I was there; I saw the machine. It’s no more natural than if one of them dropped a bomb on the city. These people in Dublin Labs have no compunction about cutting everyone’s karma short.”
Yeah, and you signed on every petition to close them down since the sixties, whether or not you knew what it was about.
Sister Ruth hesitated a moment. “Dublin Labs? Oh dear. Oh my . . . they do horrible things in there. And I know that what we ignorantly call Good and Evil are just parts of the Cosmic Balance—and I’m sure that there may be a place even for people like that in the Balance—but they do horrid things in there, cutting up poor little bunnies and white mice. Making those awful nuclear bombs and lasers. Taking over our minds with Rays. And there is such a thing as Free Will . . . one can choose to be Wrong-Minded . . . ”
“I’m sure that’s exactly what they’ve done,” Beth said firmly. “Really, Sister Ruth, it’s your duty to help us stop them so that they learn the lesson that not all their machines and power can prevail against the Cosmic Balance. It’s the land of lesson they really need to learn.”
Dear gods, I hope I’m making all the right noises, she thought frantically. She’s about a dozen bricks short of a full load, but she’s really powerful—one reason why nothing’s ever actually hurt her. And we need her.
“We need you, Sister Ruth,” she pleaded. “I can’t tell you how much. You’ll have to work with a few people you may not agree with—but do you know, I think your wonderful example in this hour of crisis may be just what they need to see the Light. Jeffrey Norman, for instance—you just might be the one to show him the Cosmic Way with your shining leadership.”
The simultaneous appeal to vanity, responsibility, and the opportunity to show up some of the people she despised most in the psychic community was too much for Sister Ruth to resist. She agreed to come, with much simpering and disavowal of her own powers.
Second verse, same song.
New setting though; instead of ruffles and flowered cotton, she and her crew were surrounded by red velvet and black leather. Instead of potted plants and birdcages full of budgies, there was a micro-computer and a sleek, hi-tech stereo. Instead of genteel, gentle middle-class, the place reeked of money.
Instead of an overweight myopic woman in a flowered caftan, they made their pitch to a goateed, middle-aged cynic in leather jeans. Black, of course. Like his sofa and chairs.
“Look, Jeff, you’ve got a choice,” Beth said rudely. “You can help us—or you can watch everything you own go down in a pile of rubble.”
Although Jeff—a self-proclaimed Satanist—sat back on his leather sofa with his hands laced casually behind his head, not all the control he thought he had over himself kept his body from tensing up. Nor did it keep him from glancing at some of the more expensive appointments of his livingroom out of the corner of his eye.
“How long did you say we have?” he asked cautiously, and Beth could almost see the little wheels turning in his head, as he tried to calculate how much stuff he could load into a trailer before the zero hour.
“Under forty-eight hours at this point,” she said honestly. “I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to rent a trailer or a truck on short notice, but it isn’t easy. The things are usually booked pretty well in advance. You could probably waste about twenty-four of those hours just trying to find one.”
Now she could tell that he was trying to figure how big a bribe it would take to rent a truck out from under someone.
“Besides,” she continued, “you’ve got a lot sunk into this condo. I know you think your insurance will pay for it—” she leaned forward, intently “—but let me clue you in on a little fact of life. Insurance companies are in the biz to make money, not lose it. And the last couple years have been real bad for insurance companies. Lots of disasters.” Now it was her turn to lean back, and spread her hands wide. “We’re talking a Richter nine or even ten quake here. With a disaster of that magnitude, the city is gonna be flat. Every vision we’ve seen has shown major damage to every building in sight. From the looks of things, you wouldn’t even be able to rescue more than a couple of suitcases worth of clothing. I’ll tell you right now—that insurance company of yours will declare bankruptcy before they pay out. They all will. They can’t afford losses like that. Maybe the Feds will bail them out—but after all the Savings and Loan bailouts and the hurricanes and tornadoes and floods, I wouldn’t count on getting more than ten cents on the dollar. And that’s a fact, Jack.”
She watched his face pale for a moment, watched a tic pulse in his cheek as he calculated odds. He had sold insurance at one point in his life. He sometimes joked that this was how he had become a Satanist in the first place. From selling insurance to selling your soul wasn’t that big a step . . .
Actually, he became a Satanist partially because it suits his cynical, hedonistic attitude, and partially because it’s a good way to part fools from their cash. As witness this condo.
He didn’t like the numbers his own calculations were coming up with; Beth read that in the narrowing of his eyes. Finally he leaned forward, took an oversized deck of cards from the handcarved ebony box on the teakwood table between them, and called upon his court of last resort. As he shuffled them, his hands trembled a little.
“I hate to admit it, but I couldn’t figure why all my readings kept telling people to get out of town this week,” he said, half to himself.
But he is high-psi. I’ll give him that. His clients may be fools, but he does give them what they overpay for.
Like most psychics, Jeff was a little too good; he couldn’t read for himself, for what he wanted to see would skew the reading off the true. And he was too proud to go to someone else for a reading. Which was probably why he’d missed seeing the quake for himself.
He stopped shuffling, evened up the pack, and laid out the cards; the Tower of Destruction occupied a prominent place. Swords were everywhere, most reversed—including the Princess. It was the single most negative reading Beth had ever seen with any Tarot deck, much less the Crowley.
So even if he runs—which is what I bet he was asking—he’s screwed to the wall.
“Shit.” He picked up the cards of the Crowley deck carefully, and put them back in its little ebony shrine. Only then did he look back up at her.
“All right,” he said with resignation. “When and where? And what do you want me to bring?”
The sun set over the Bay, dull red in a cloudy sky, leaving them still on the hunt; one short of a full thirteen, with no spares or backups. Beth trudged wearily down into the BART station, with Kayla and Sandy trailing behind.
She stood staring at the map for a while, her eyes fixed on the YOU ARE HERE spot without really seeing it. Behind her, elf and human fidgeted restlessly in the way of teenage young.
Was I ever that young? She thought back to endless, sullen hours of playing the same tapes over and over at ear-shattering volume while native diggers cast quizzical glances at her while they followed her parents’ direction. Or squirming in stiff wooden seats while one or the other read papers to an audience of fossils stiffer than the seats, when all she wanted was a chance to get out of there and Shop in Civilization.
Yeah, I guess I was.
“Okay, guys,” she said finally. “I’ve got an idea. It’s a long shot, but there’s two groups meeting tonight over at UC that tend to attract high-psis. Some of our missing persons probably belong to one or the other. One advantage is that both groups bring bodies in from off-campus. The other is that the devotees of both tend to be fanatic about their hobbies.”
“What is the disadvantage?” Melisande asked. “We know you by now. You never state an advantage without there being a disadvantage.”
Beth shrugged. “Only the usual with hobbyists. They tend to take their hobby a little too seriously. That’s why they meet on the same night; the real fanatics on both sides don’t want their members to ‘waste their time’ with the rival group’s activities.”
Melisande sighed. “Like Jeff and Sister Ruth.”
“Exactly.” Now that she’d decided to take the plunge into the wilds of Berserkely, Beth wanted to get it over with and get out of there. “Are you game?”
“Lead on, McDuff,” Kayla replied, gesturing grandly. The train to the campus area pulled up, just as she straightened. “See? The gods are smiling upon us.”
“I sure hope so,” Beth muttered, and ran for the train.
“See anyone you recognize?” Beth asked Kayla, as the young healer took a slightly more aggressive stance, and Melisande tried to shrink behind both of them.
There were fifty-odd people in the room, and most of them wore expressions of faint hostility. They also wore creative variations on medieval and Renaissance clothing.
Except for the half-dozen Costuming Nazis, who wore completely authentic clothing and expressions of complete hostility.
“They probably figure we’re from the Women’s Lib meeting down the hall,” Kayla observed, absently. “Uh, yeah. The guy in the green and black tights with the great ass, the woman that looks like a Rose Parade float, and the chick with the pregnant guitar. They were all at the conference.”
“Sandy?” Beth asked. The elf peeked out from behind her shoulder. “The young man in the particolored hose, the woman in the Elizabethan farthingale, and the girl with the lute.”
“They’re all strongly Gifted,” the elf assured her. “And imperfectly shielded.” She squinted a little. “Unless I’m greatly mistaken, the woman and the young man are related. And I think I see a Celtic knotwork embroidery pattern on the woman’s gown that used to be used as an identifying agent among the devotees of the Old Religion about twenty or twenty-five years ago.”
“Oh really?” Beth’s eyes narrowed, but she couldn’t make out anything special amid all the decoration on the gown. “If you’re right, we might have hit paydirt.” She turned her attention back to the speaker on the dais. “I think they’re going to break for refreshments in a bit. We’ll move in then. Sandy, you try for the lute-girl; Kayla, you take the guy and I’ll take the Architectural Monument.”
They waited, patiently, enduring the glares from the mortally offended, until the Seneschal finally ran out of wind. When people began leaving their seats, Kayla and Beth headed for the woman and the young man, while Melisande took a lateral to intercept the musician before she could join the others who were gathering in a corner.
“Hi,” Beth said cautiously, as she stepped in front of the farthingale, forcing the woman to stop. “You don’t know me—but you do know a friend of mine. Her name is Elizabet—”
“And she’s the teacher of that charming and obstinate little child who’s trying to back my son into a corner,” the woman said, with a faint smile. “Since you don’t have that nasty ‘desperately mundane’ look of those goons that were lurking about the conference, I assume you must be all right. Or has Elizabet sent you to warn me about them?”
“Uh—sort of.” Out of the corner of her eye, Beth watched the lute-girl shaking her head violently at whatever Melisande had told her. Her face was white, and her hands clutched the neck of the lute like a lifeline. “Listen, this is awfully complicated, and well—”
“I know just the place.” The woman waved at her son, who nodded at Kayla and gestured at her to precede him with full High Court grace.
Wonder if there’s a touch of elven blood in there somewhere?
All three of them followed the woman out into the hall, to a little alcove with a pair of loveseats. The farthingale needed one all by herself; the son took up a seat on the arm of the sofa, and Kayla and Beth took the other seat.
“By the way, I’m Marge Bailey. Which was not the name I used for the conference, if you’re interested.” The woman smiled again, this time wryly. “Call me paranoid if you like, but I’ve always had a suspicion that someday some government goons would show up at one of these things and start taking names and addresses. So I only use the SCA post office box, and one of my old persona names.”
Beth grimaced. “Just offhand, I’d say that this time your caution was entirely appropriate . . . ”
Fifteen minutes later, Marge and her son Craig were pale with shock, and Beth was dry-mouthed and talked out. She nodded to Kayla, who took over.
“We’ve got a plan,” she said. “We think we can head this thing off. But we need—”
“A circle,” Marge interrupted, leaning forward, her eyes afire with intensity. “A circle. The kind the witches of England gathered in to thwart the Armada.”
“Wow!” Kayla went round-eyed. “I didn’t know that! Yeah, that’s exactly what—”
“When and where?” Craig said. “We’ll be there; Dad’ll come, and maybe we can get a couple of others.” He took a deep breath. “We knew something wasn’t right; we’ve been getting signs for weeks. But none of us are real good at prediction. That’s why we went to the conference in the first place; we figured if there was anyone who’d know what was up, he’d show up there.”
Beth felt a great weight lift from her shoulders. This was her thirteenth body—and one, maybe two spares. “Mount Tam—if you’ve been up there, you know the place. As soon after sunset as you can manage.”
Marge nodded. “No problem. Did you plan on checking the Paper-gamer’s Club meeting for some more recruits?”
This time it was Beth’s turn to be surprised. “Uh, yes. Why?”
Marge chuckled. “Because my husband’s in there. Ask someone to find Chuck Bailey for you; he’ll round up the couple of gamers with—ah—esoteric talents. That should save you some time.”
Beth didn’t know quite what to say. “Marge—thank you. I think you just bought us our chance at making this work.”
Marge shook her head. “Well, I grew up reading old J.R.R. and the Norse sagas—I always wanted to be Galadriel, the Ringbearer or another Beowulf. You know what they say about being careful what you ask for.” She recovered some of her color, and managed a weak chuckle. “I suspect you’ve had a time convincing some of the others to get involved.”
Beth nodded. “I’m still not sure why you agreed so easily.”
This time Marge Bailey laughed out loud. “My dear Beth, it’s really quite simple. I may be crazy, but there’s one thing that I’m not.”
“What’s that?” Kayla asked.
“Stupid.” Marge rose majestically. “I’d better get back before the others think you’ve recruited me for your biker gang. And we will see you tomorrow night.”
“With the proverbial bells on,” Craig added, as a dejected Melisande approached from the door of the meeting room. “Listen, I know Mom. This is going to work. If she can make the Kingdom Seneschal back down and apologize for screwing up the demo we had for the science fiction fans at ConDiego, that earthquake hasn’t got a chance.”