War For The Oaks Part 20

"How would you like to do it anyway?" Eddi said.

The phouka and w.i.l.l.y looked at each other. Then they turned back to Eddi.

"All right," she sighed, "what would you think of finishing your conversation at the bottom of the stairs outside?" Surely that was close enough for the phouka's standards of good bodyguarding-the windows were the only other way into the room.

w.i.l.l.y smiled, an enchanting sight. "Okay, we'll be nice guys. Come on," he said to the phouka. The phouka, after a dubious glance at Eddi, followed him out the door.

And it was quiet in the practice room again. Hedge had gone back to looking at the floor, and was now biting at a fingernail. Eddi almost began to talk, to put him at ease. Then she remembered that words made Hedge nervous.

"I'm going to rest until Carla and Dan come back," she said at last. "You don't have to do anything you don't want." She lay down on the floor again, laced her fingers under her head, and closed her eyes.

From the open windows she could hear cars going by on Washington Avenue, and the occasional muted rumble of a bus. Two sparrows started a quarrel under the eaves, finished it, and flew away. A breeze whispered through the pages of the notebook Dan had left open on his amp. All of these only thickened the stillness.

Hedge broke it; he laid his voice on it like a leaf on an unruffled pool, and the song spread on the air in widening circles. His voice was soft and tuneful; he began as if he was telling a story or a piece of history.

In Newry town I was bred and born, In Steven's Green now I die in scorn.

I served my time to the saddling trade.

But I turned out to be I turned out to be a roving blade.

The song hung in the air like a gift tentatively offered. But listening was a gift as well, and Eddi gave it.

In the exchange, as often happens, both gifts increased in value. Fear and anger were gathered up in each single note, carried in ever-widening circles away from the heart of the room, and evaporated. It was not a lasting peace, but its effects lingered well beyond the end of the song.

"Hark, the evening has begun," said the phouka's voice in her ear, "the nighthawk's on the wing. The enchanted princess wakes."

"Uh," Eddi said, and lifted her head from the pillow. "Wha?" Practice had gone on until five. Then they'd ridden home, where the phouka had made her a sandwich, ordered her to take a long, hot bath, and given her a cup of-oh.

"What," she gritted, and noticed even as she spoke that the cobwebs were clearing from her thoughts with supernatural speed, "did you put in the cocoa?"

His smile was uncommonly white in the dimness of the bedroom. "Didn't you need more sleep?"

"Mmm."

"And would you, under normal circ.u.mstances, have been able to get any?"

She frowned at him.

"Well, then!" the phouka said. "Mind, I wouldn't recommend the technique for every day, but you're none the worse for it now, are you?"

Eddi was, in fact, far from worse. She felt strong, fresh, and clearheaded. Whatever the phouka had used, it wasn't the average sleeping pill.

"Get dressed, now," he told her. "I let you sleep perhaps a little longer than I should have, so don't dawdle. Oh, and wear shoes you can climb in, just in case."

She squinted at him. "Just in case of what?"

"Why, just in case you need to climb in them, sweet." He'd shut the bedroom door behind him before she could respond.

The clock radio showed nine P.M. She turned it on loud and went to the closet. Blue jeans, black high- top sneakers, her denim jacket, and an old turtleneck sweater-she had no idea what she was supposed to wear, but she was grumpy enough to feel that the Seelie Court was not worth dressing up for.

Certainly the phouka's sleeping potion hadn't improved her mood. She was becoming steadily more anxious, in a way that years of stage fright had not prepared her for. She knew how to bring stage fright under control: imagine the worst that could happen, and its consequences. The terror was always out of proportion to anything she could expect. She had no idea what she could expect of a fairy war. Once again, she cursed the phouka comprehensively. He had told her just enough to make her afraid.

The phouka rose from the couch when she came into the living room, as if in salute. He was costumed for the occasion. His heavy, high-necked sweater was olive drab, and had suede gun patches on the shoulders. His pants were olive, too, and tucked into high brown boots. Over his shoulder hung a nicely aged brown leather jacket. He looked like a guerrilla outfitted by Ralph Lauren.

"Never dress better than your date," Eddi grumbled at him, which made him laugh.

"Here," he said. He held out something black.

It was a wool beret with a thin leather sweatband. Fastened to the wool was a pin, a five-petaled, rather Oriental-looking gold flower inside a silver square. She looked suspiciously at the phouka. "Is this part of the uniform?" she asked.

"No, worse than that," he said. "It's a gift."

"From you?"

He looked carefully over both shoulders. "I don't see anyone else."

She looked at the beret again, ran the sweatband back and forth through her fingers. Then she took it into the bathroom. She put it on in front of the bathroom mirror, adjusting the angle carefully. The black wool was severe and elegant against her pale hair.

When she came back to the living room, the phouka nodded. "I have exquisite taste."

"It looks good," Eddi said finally, remembering not to thank him. "I like it."

The phouka made a vague, dismissing gesture, as if it didn't matter to him whether she liked it. True or not, for once, the gesture was more endearing than annoying. Maybe everything looks better when your life's in danger, she thought, even dumb phoukas.

"You'll have to hang on to it while I'm wearing my helmet."

"I think I might manage that."

"Well," she said, "let's do it."

The phouka nodded, opened the hall door, and dropped her one of his graceful, foolish bows, his face grave. "Forth to honor and glory."

"Get stuffed," she said crisply, and she walked out the door.

chapter 10 Spellbound.

The Triumph shone like new in the alley lights, all black satin and silver. It fired on the second kick. So much for that excuse. The phouka slid on behind her and said, "Do you know the way to the Falls?"

"I know where they are, more or less."

Something in his moment of silence made her look over her shoulder at him.

"You've never been to Minnehaha Falls?" the phouka asked, clearly startled.

"No."

"How long have you lived here?"

With an effort, she kept her voice cheerful. "Not long enough, I guess."

He must have heard the effort, because he sighed impatiently and said, "You're not of a certainty going to your execution, you know."

"Hush," she said, and let out the clutch.

It would have been maudlin to choose a route that pa.s.sed some of her favorite places. So she was practical and drove straight down LaSalle onto Blaisdell, only to find that everything suddenly seemed precious. The red stone castle at Groveland and the brooding brick church at Twenty-sixth Street became architectural marvels. Even the stucco duplexes, common as field mice, looked gracious and welcoming with their living room windows aglow. By the light of the street lamps she could see gardens planted under apartment house windows, and swollen flower buds on the lilac bushes. She wished furiously that it were November.

She signaled to turn at Twenty-eighth Street, and the phouka called, "Go straight."

"Can't you get there this way?"

"Yes, but you can get there my way, too."

She twisted out more gas, and they sailed through the intersection. "I bet mine's faster," Eddi shouted after a moment.

"Quite possibly. But mine is more scenic."

"I don't want scenic. I want to get there and get it over with."

The phouka's arms stiffened around her waist. "Objection noted," he said haughtily, "but would you mind very much indulging me?

Eddi stopped at the red light on Lake Street and looked back at him.

He regarded her steadily, and without any particular expression. "I would like to see a lovely thing or two," he said, "on the chance that I won't see many more."

Of course. Though she might be in little danger tonight, he would be in the thick of it; he would be protecting her. There was no one at all to protect him. "Oh," she said in a small voice.

South of Forty-eighth Street, Eddi realized they were in a portion of town she'd never seen. The phouka directed her through a tangle of streets that ran in every direction except north-south and east-west.

Streetlights and yard lamps showed her large, gracious houses with well-kept lawns. Old elms flung an arched roof over every street.

"What about the help you said you'd give me?" she asked, breaking a long silence between them.

"Help?"

"You said you'd do something to keep me from... well, being bedazzled by bulls.h.i.t."

"Ah, yes. Protection from glamour. That should wait, I think, until we've arrived. The effects might interfere with your driving."

"Sounds like drugs," she grumbled.

"It is not." His voice was suddenly stern and cold. "It is magic. You should get used to the idea- immediately, if possible. Faerie cannot be explained away with talk of inebriation, pre-Christian religions, or cave men. Magic is the nature, the tool, and the weapon of the Folk, and nothing makes you so vulnerable to them as refusing to believe in it. Magic will be thick on the ground tonight, and if you are busy trying to explain it away, it will have you by the throat in an instant."

"Sorry."

"Left here," said the phouka.

She knew where she was, finally. They'd turned onto the boulevard that ran along Minnehaha Creek, through a ribbon of parkland, to the Falls. This, she realized, was the true beginning of the phouka's scenic route. She drove a little slower; the Triumph's growl became a mutter.

After a moment, the phouka began to speak dreamily next to her ear. "All things that live are drawn to water, and arrange their lives around it. Humankind is no different. There is water at the heart of every human community-as much as the sea, or as little as a spring. This is the water at the heart of this city."

Eddi had never seen this mood on him, or heard such a voice from his lips. It was resonant but contained, and the words came in the measured cadences of poetry or song. He was talking about Minnehaha Creek. If he'd asked her to pick the most important body of water in Minneapolis, she might have said the Mississippi. Or Lake Calhoun, the largest of the city's lakes....

"Not the largest body of water, or the most useful," the phouka said, still in that br.i.m.m.i.n.g voice, but with humor bubbling in it. "I said the city's heart.

"Follow the creek back to its source, and you'll find that it binds together all of what people call Minneapolis. It starts in Grays Bay in Lake Minnetonka and ends in the Mississippi-if anything can be said to end in the Mississippi. In between, it runs through woodlands, through unreclaimed marsh, wild in culverts and well-behaved beside suburban backyards. It is not a conduit for commerce; it is the pure spirit of running water, small, but deep and full of secrets."

Deep it certainly was. As the bike idled at an intersection, Eddi could hear the rush of the water, high with spring, against the bridge pilings. And secrets? She supposed that the conflict they drove toward would become one of them. She hoped her body wouldn't end up as another.

Wind rattled the leaves above them, and the phouka's words seemed to weave in and out of that and the sound of the creek. "One might say that, less than a mile from the Mississippi, the creek reaches a precipice and plunges over it-but that would be shading the truth. The creek has made that precipice, shouldering back against the limestone and wearing it away. The Falls move up the creekbed like a child walking backward against the sun to admire his shadow.

"Once the Falls were called holy. Now its priests are the Army Corps of Engineers and the Minneapolis Park Board, but it is still a shrine, a place of power. It is the city's birthplace and its soul.

"That," said the phouka, in a voice so much more natural that it made Eddi jump, "is why it's the site of the first battle. Control of the Falls brings with it a great deal of magical leverage."

Eddi stopped the bike in the middle of the parkway and turned to look at him. "Leverage? All that loving description, all that-feeling-and you sum it up by saying it's got strategic importance?"

"Drive," was all he said.

They pa.s.sed Lake Nokomis, shining silver-gray in the intermittent moonlight, its beaches like brushed aluminum. Just past Hiawatha, the phouka directed her down a drive and into what a sign declared was Minnehaha Park. She pulled up next to the park administration building and pried off her helmet. "Won't they notice anything tonight?" Eddi asked, poking a thumb toward the door bearing the legend, "Park Police."

The phouka raised an eyebrow at her. "No. They will not." He handed her the black beret.

The sound of running water was a low-pitched thunder; it came to her more through her bones and the soles of her feet than through her ears. The Falls, she supposed, and wondered where they were.

The phouka frowned at the sky. "Rowan and Thorn! Come on," he said sharply, and grabbed her hand.

His fingers were cold. He loped her along to a stone wall that bordered the parking lot, and for a moment she wondered if he would go over the top of it. Then she saw a gap, and the top of a heavy iron handrail.

They plunged down an old stone stairway, the steps slippery with last fall's leaves. The parking lot lights did nothing for the darkness on the stairs. The air was full of moisture.

They reached a landing, and the phouka grabbed her around the waist and swept her down onto the first step of the next flight of stairs. As he set her on her feet, she saw a line of green light streak along the edge of the landing behind them, climb the stone wall, and course off through the wooded land beyond. A moment later, a low curtain of trembling emerald fire rose from the stripe of green, writhing and flickering like the northern lights in miniature.

"The circle is closed," the phouka whispered. In a steadier voice he added, "A near thing, my primrose.

A moment later and we would have been on the wrong side of that. And I would rather hear an Oakman curse than listen to what the Court would have to say then."