War For The Oaks Part 45

"Just for a sec." Carla smiled and thumped her on the shoulder. "Lighten up, girl. They look like our kind of people, and they're all here to have a good time."

"Hah. Wait till the Queen of Air and Darkness starts in on them."

She looked around the little room at her band. Carla smoked a cigarette and leaned over one of Dan's keyboards. Dan was playing it unplugged, scales to keep his fingers limber. Scales without sound, only the precise rhythm that his fingers made hitting the keys. Carla's hair hung like a black satin curtain around her face, brushing the electric blue of her sleeveless blouse. Dan wore a pale pink baggy linen suit, a light gray shirt and a white tie. On his lapel was a b.u.t.ton that read, "When MIDI talks, money walks." He was completely absorbed. Hedge was wonderfully well-dressed, at least for Hedge: an enormous shirt in a red- and-black j.a.panese print, and tapered white pants with cuffs. He was reading a comic book, a copy of Swamp Thing that someone had left in the room. He giggled now and then.

They seemed impossibly calm; that and Eddi's nerves made her want to hit them. She felt her own tension on the air, so thick it didn't seem breathable. "Be right back," she muttered, and stalked into the hall to find the phouka.

He was leaning against the wall, pretending interest in the toes of his patent-leather boots. He'd found something to wear that at first glance looked like a tuxedo. But the jacket was shorter than that, and the pants narrower, and the white tie that nestled under the wing collar was a little too softly knotted. His shirt studs were cabochon emeralds.

"I have to circulate a little," she told him. "Want to come with?"

He smiled. "Is it becoming too much for you?"

"h.e.l.l, yes."

"Me, too."

Eddi leaned against him and sighed. "The guys-they're nervous, and they're worried, but... Carla reminded me yesterday that the worst that can happen is more of the same, more Faerie war. And she's right. So why do I feel so scared?"

He put his arm around her, and they walked down the hall like that. "Because you know more of Faerie than Carla does. Particularly more of the Dark Lady. If you lose... Once the terms of the challenge no longer apply, she needn't fight fairly."

Eddi looked up at him quickly. "I'm right to be worried, then?"

"I don't know. But I am perfectly terrified, and I would hate to think there was no reason for it."

They came out from backstage into the wall of music that Boiled in Lead was building. The dance floor was full, and Eddi remembered Carla's p.r.o.nouncement about the fireworks. "Lucky b.a.s.t.a.r.ds," she yelled, watching the band tear gleefully through "The Rights of Man." "I wish we'd already played."

"No, you don't," the phouka shouted in her ear. The first set crowd would have needed warming up. By third set, the audience would be addled with music and dancing and drink, generous and ready for wonders. It would be harder for the Queen of Air and Darkness to dim their vision.

They wandered through the crowd, seeing nothing more unusual than on any night at First Avenue.

There were a few of the polo-shirts-and-chinos crowd, what Carla called "the tourists." There were women in vintage finery and new-wave splendor, men in antique tailcoats with their braided queues hanging down their backs, and people in the latest from the trendy departments of Dayton's. Eddi suddenly loved them all, desperately.

At last she made a stop at the ladies' room, leaving the phouka to wait on the balcony. The restrooms were the only places in First Avenue where the lights were bright. The sound of the band was muted there, too, and people came to talk, or repair makeup. Only in the restrooms did the club reveal its earlier life as a bus station; though the stalls had been painted, they were the original ones, as were the old black- and-white tiles and the row of sinks. Eddi bent over one of those to wash her hands, between a woman in pale makeup and red lipstick, and two college women who were doing each other's hair with setting gel.

"So, all ready for the big show?" the low voice said behind her, obscenely pleased. Eddi looked up, looked into the mirror, and found the Dark Lady standing behind her. She was dressed in dark gray brocade threaded with silver. She wore her black hair unbound, and it made a cloud down her back. Tiny tendrils of it were spit-curled around her face. There were huge silver disks in her ears, and her lips were the color of strong wine.

No one else in the room seemed to take special notice of the Dark Queen. To Eddi, however, she wore her uncanny nature like heavy scent, a dark fragrance that made the head spin. She met the queen's black eyes in the mirror.

"I'm ready," she said. "Are you?"

"I quite look forward to it." The wine-colored lips curved upward. Eddi swallowed and wished she'd go away.

Then Eddi saw a bright figure behind the dark one, and spun round in surprise. The Lady was there.

Other women in the room did notice her. She was hiding her true nature, Eddi realized, but not the fey beauty that was part of it. She was a powerful presence in the room; she commanded it as if by a sword or sceptre.

Her streaming red hair had been cut, and it curled and frothed over her forehead, sparkling with a dusting of gold. Her white features were too beautiful to be imagined, too perfect to be real. She wore a slender tunic that flashed when she moved, as the light bounced off the pale green spangles and sequins that covered it, the rhinestones (or diamonds, perhaps) around the high collar. She wore stockings of the same color in some shimmering stuff, and short silver boots.

The Queen of Air and Darkness looked over her shoulder. Her lips pressed together at the sight of the Lady. "You do not, I take it, come to watch quietly from the shadows."

The Lady's white lips twitched at that. "This would be ill garb for that, certainly. No, cousin, we come to watch our champion fight."

Eddi looked swiftly from one to the other. The Dark Queen's eyes widened as if she'd been struck, until anger replaced surprise. The Lady held out a long hand to Eddi, palm up. It was the same gesture, the same hand, with which she had offered the morsel of Faerie bread, so many weeks ago.

In her palm lay a pendant, a woven knot of silver and red enamel. No, not red enamel. It was a strand of the Lady's hair.

"It is our token," she said to Eddi, in a voice that made her shiver, "and our pledge. The Seelie Court shall abide by what transpires here; we shall stand or fall with our champion."

The Dark Queen's face was feral and eager. "If I win, then, you agree that these lands are mine."

"And if Eddi McCandry wins, you shall forfeit them, yourself and all who bow to you. It shall be so for seventy times seven years, and any who would defy that banishment shall be cast out of Faerie."

The Dark Lady showed white teeth. "Which applies equally on both sides, of course. Yes, this gives the evening a great deal of spice."

Eddi reached out and took the pendant from the Lady's hand. It shone a little more brightly than she thought it should, but she felt no great power in it. It was not a weapon-only a symbol, as the Lady had said. She slid the chain over her head and let the token fall against her chest.

No one in the restroom seemed to find anything odd in their words or actions, Eddi found when she looked up. Though the Lady was stared at, no one stayed to do it; there was no crowd gathering.

"With the stakes so much higher," said the Queen of Air and Darkness, "I would like some guarantee against false dealing."

"You have my sworn word," the Lady said coldly. "You need no better."

"Oh, that will bind you, and all your Court. But-forgive me my prejudices-I cannot trust it to bind a mortal." She directed a dazzling smile at Eddi.

"You can have my promise, too," Eddi snapped.

The Dark Queen looked her up and down, and drawled, "How much is a mortal promise worth?"

Eddi felt an angry heat shoot through her. The Lady's pale eyes blazed, and she seemed about to speak.

But before she could, the Dark Queen continued. "I'm sure we can find some more tangible symbol of our agreement." She nodded to Eddi and the Lady, and walked out of the room.

Eddi closed her hand around the Lady's token. "Why?" she said finally, hearing despair in her words.

"Before, if I won you got what you wanted, and if I lost, you were no worse off than if none of this had happened. Why did you do this?"

The expression on the Lady's face sat so oddly there that Eddi barely recognized it. It was sorrow.

"To be our champion is an honor, Eddi McCandry, and one you have earned. You have shown yourself loyal and beyond reason courageous. You have served the Seelie Court more wisely, perhaps, than I have ruled it. For you to stand against the Queen of Air and Darkness and not bear our blessing-it would be black insult to you, and dishonor to my house."

"I can't say anything about the dishonor," Eddi said with a ferocious quiet, "but do you think I give a good G.o.dd.a.m.n about the insult?"

"No," said the Lady fiercely, "I do not. You are free to ignore it, or forgive it. I cannot. We are inflexible, aye, and you have scorned that. Yet that is why we speak naught but the truth, and why our sworn word will bind us though the earth swallow us up. Does that seem such an ill thing to you?"

Eddi met her burning eyes and finally shook her head.

When the Lady spoke again, her voice was gentler. "I would deny you this if I could. Were w.i.l.l.y alive, he would try to turn me from my purpose-and even for love of him, or his memory, I could not spare you this. We are a hard people, and we think perhaps overmuch of the weighing of rights and wrongs, of favors and slights. I could not rule Faerie if I did not live by its precepts." She went to the mirror and stared blindly into it. "So I must mete out your due, for good or ill. Then I shall stand and see the consequences of what I have done, and take them as they come."

Eddi rubbed the pendant between her fingers, and studied the Lady's bleak white face in the mirror. "I'll do my best," she said at last. "For both of us."

A spasm of pain crossed the alabaster features. "For all of us. Have you not guessed the surety the Dark Lady will demand?"

Eddi frowned. The pity with which the Lady regarded her finally sank in. "The phouka," she whispered.

"No. She can't."

"She is within her rights to ask a hostage of us. She will ask for him. She holds him, and you, in bitter hatred for freeing w.i.l.l.y. If you lose to her, she will take his life before your eyes, and be revenged on you both."

Anger and fear were scrambled in Eddi's head. When she spoke, she didn't know which emotion it was from. "When Faerie and my world intersect, does anything good ever come of it?"

The Lady gave her a cool glance, one of bitter amus.e.m.e.nt. "Think on your lover, Daughter of Eve, and answer for yourself."

She, too, swept from the room. Eddi was left leaning on the counter, feeling cold and ill.

When she reached the balcony, only the phouka was there. He knew what had happened; she could tell from his expression. They held each other in silence, and he buried his face in her hair. "Do what you can, my primrose," he whispered at last. "I love my life better than I ever have, now that it's at risk. But even so, I love you better still."

She strangled on a sob and kissed him. Then he straightened his shoulders and lifted his chin in that familiar way, and walked until the crowd swallowed him.

She would have run backstage, but the press of people kept her slow. When she reached it, Carla saw her face and stood up with a snap.

"What's wrong?"

Eddi leaned against the wall and breathed deep and slow. Carla hurried over, took her hand, and Eddi wanted so much to cry, to collapse and let Carla take care of her.

"They just changed the stakes," she said finally. Her voice sounded flat in her head.

"What do you mean?" Carla asked. Dan stood at her shoulder, alarmed, and Hedge looked horrified, as if he'd already guessed what the stakes must be now.

"If I lose... then the Unseelie Court gets the city, and the phouka dies."

After a moment, Carla squeezed her shoulder hard. "What do you mean, if you lose? You mean we, girl." Eddi stared at her, and finally nodded grimly.

They said things to her after that-even Hedge said something. But she didn't hear them. She sat down in a corner and put her axe in tune. Boiled in Lead finished their set with a manic, thrash-band rendition of "The Gypsy Rover," their equipment was whisked off the stage, and Eddi and the Fey's replaced it.

When they went down the corridor to the stage, Eddi was still shaking off her mental fog.

They stood ready at their mikes, while an amplified voice from the sound booth announced their name into the dark room. The crowd cheered-Eddi hadn't expected that. Were there people out there who'd come to hear them? Carla tapped three beats on the rim of her snare. The fourth fired the stage lights and Hedge's ba.s.s. No turning back now.

They had ten songs. In ten songs, they had to catch and hold an audience, overthrow a queen, free the phouka, and save the city. Put like that, it was the stupidest thing Eddi had ever heard. So she didn't think of it that way again.

They opened with Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes." Perhaps they should have chosen something louder and faster, something that would grab the dancers right away. She couldn't see the dance floor past the stage lights, couldn't tell what was happening. Where was the Queen of Air and Darkness? Where would she position herself, in such a time and place?

Once Eddi thought to ask the question, the answer was obvious. She raised her head and scanned the VIP balcony.

The Dark Queen sat watching from a little table, ignoring the drink in front of her. She met Eddi's eyes and nodded. Behind her the phouka stood, one hand on the railing, his face set and tense. She saw a glimmer of light at his wrist, and squinted. It came from a thin cord of some magical weaving, and it bound his wrist to the top rail. Eddi stumbled over the next chord change and saw the Queen of Air and Darkness smile.

There were shadows in the sound booth, silhouetted against the second-floor bar. There were shadows on the dance floor. She would be a shadow of a different sort if the Dark Lady won, and Carla and Dan and Hedge with her. Here in this room was what she fought for, this wild human energy, this fast-burning mortality that made so much light. There was a dark cloth laid over it now, dimming, smothering. She could feel it. She could almost see it. Pull it back, shred it, smolder it away with sound and light....

She lost track of what she was singing. Were they her words? She was driving them up out of the middle of her like flame from a dragon's mouth-they must be hers. Hedge stood on one side of her, braced as if against a gale, head thrown back, eyes closed. He clawed the Steinberger with eagle talons, climbing a spiral of ba.s.s notes into the hot blue air. Dan danced behind the keyboards, with feet and hands and mouth, mad and swift as a striking snake. Carla summoned up the beat of pounding water and falling stone, rhythms that had not faltered since the universe took shape.

And still the darkness lay over them all, the Dark Queen's barrier to light and noise.

Eddi shot out a hand and plucked the lights from the ceiling, fired all the neon at once. She made it rain flash pots like falling stars. The video screens roiled with color, throbbed with beat, trembled with images that seemed to want to break their surface tension and spill out onto the dance floor.

The darkness shouldered up to meet them.

Sparks leaped and spat all over the stage, under Eddi's fingers, singeing them, bridging the beads of sweat on her face. Current crackled and arced over the dance floor, around the metal balcony railings. The room glowed blue for an instant, as if struck by lightning.

At the back of the room, near the balcony stairs, the Lady stood pale and shining. Oberyc.u.m was beside her, tall and knightly, gleaming in green and gold and his hair like bleached wheat. In that flash of blue he nodded to Eddi, the solemn salute of equals, but she had no time to nod back.

She hammered down on three chords, repeated them, heard Carla roll sticks across the snare like a forest fire. Hedge screamed down his low E string, the sound of a descent into h.e.l.l, and they began "For It All." The neon lashed the ceiling again, and Eddi saw the light-dyed faces of the dancers turned up to her, flowers following the sun. She demanded their minds, then insisted that they think for themselves; stole their ears and made them fight to get them back. Their dancing bodies she did not take by force-those she sought humbly, and each one given to her was a treasure. She felt their sweat running down her skin, felt their arms cutting shapes in the air around her, her muscles aching with the motion of their dance.

Darkness and light ran together around them like confluent rivers, like braided streaming hair, black and red, like tangled patterns of cloud and sky.

Her guitar was gone; she didn't know where. She thought her mike was in front of her, but she couldn't see it, hadn't the attention to spare to sing into it. She took a breath, then let her voice spill out: .

Fire coming down the sky On a horse of wind Beckons to the naked eye And who can see?

Carla backed the words with the thunder of deep drums, Hedge with the rolling voice of his ba.s.s, Dan with wild flying piano like flocks of birds.

Those who look up, Hearts that hurt for height and heaven, Those who look up see What never falls to earth.

The music grumbled under her voice like something large coming closer to them all, approaching swiftly through the earth toward the surface. Carla and Dan and Hedge sang up a net of light behind her, a veil of sun and shadow that trembled with the deep instruments.

On the balcony, the Dark Lady was a pillar of black fire, hands clenched on the balcony rail, face turned upward. A devouring silence roiled where she stood, pressed outward. But a powerful wave of music was rising against her.

Armies hurled against the hall Cannot breach the outer wall The castle built of thundercloud Will only yield To those who look up Hands held out aloft and empty. . . .

She pointed and the dancers all turned to see it, laughing with delight when it did look like a castle.

Thunder boiled up, from Carla's drums and the air above them. Ozone smelled bright and mind- clearing and sounded like Dan's synthesizer. Eddi pointed again to the tarnished silver sky, where the thunderheads raced toward them like flying mountains.

Tall ship on the hungry sea An ark, a savior sent to free Those who see the ladder tossed And jump, and catch, and climb aloft. . . .