A Life Less Ordinary (14 page)

I nodded. I’d been taught how to break most spells, although some of them were impossible to remove, particularly the ones that a person embraced voluntarily. I couldn’t believe that any of the slave families had accepted the spells willingly, which meant they could be freed and returned to the mundane world. I doubted that their tales would be believed, but in any case I could cast a few spells of my own to confuse their memories and make it impossible for any rational mundane policeman to believe them.

“I can do that,” I assured him. The sound of music was growing louder. I guessed, from the sound of cheering and loud whistles, that the show was finally reaching its climax. “All you have to do is help me get downstairs and into the basement.”

Cardonel nodded, reluctantly. “Very well,” he said. He looked up. I was suddenly struck by how
alien
he looked. It wasn’t just the pointy ears, but the sense that something – everything – was subtly wrong. Magic seemed to twist and flow through his body, too much magic for a human frame to contain. It seemed to be slowly eating him alive, like a magical cancer. I remembered what I’d been told about half-Elves and I shuddered. The Elves themselves were effectively immortal – nothing could kill them, apart from cold iron and even then they could pull themselves back together in a few centuries – but their half-breeds lasted only a scant few decades. Cardonel was literally burning himself up right in front of me. I wasn’t sure how old he was, yet I doubted he would live past fifty. “There will be a price, of course…”

I quirked an eyebrow at him, unable to conceal my amusement. “What kind of price?”

Cardonel grinned. “You come on a second date with me,” he said, with a wink. I had a feeling that the second date would be more intimate than the first. “Don’t worry. We won’t come back here or anywhere else that involves slaves.”

“Thank you,” I said. I held out a hand. He could have demanded almost anything and I would have agreed to it, just out of desperation. I
had
to free the slaves. I couldn’t have explained it to myself, let alone an outside witness, but what had happened to them – what had been
done
to them – was
wrong
. It had to be put right. If no one else was going to take care of it, I had to do it. “I accept your terms.”

Cardonel drew himself up. “You have just made an old man very happy,” he said, dramatically. I rolled my eyes, even though I was giggling. “My love for you is as boundless as the seas themselves, blessed by the many Great Powers that roam through this universe…”

I laughed. “Would you like a side of eggs with that ham?”

“Only if they are cooked with your fair hands,” Cardonel said, with amusement. I could tease him, I realised; the boys I’d known in the past had grown unpleasant when they realised that they were being teased. “And now I suggest that we return to our seats. We can put on our own performance after the show.”

An hour passed slowly after we returned to the table. The dancing slaves kept dancing, although they looked as if they would rather be somewhere else, anywhere else. I endured the concerned glances from the three others at the table – I suspected that Robin understood, although Sparks and Linux seemed bemused by my attitude – and talked about nothing in particular for the rest of the show. Cardonel amused himself by pointing out the various famous figures in the audience, several of whom seemed to be sneaking glances at me. I was used to boys looking at me, but this was different. I was being trained to serve the Thirteen after all and they would have to deal with me professionally. Sexism, at least, didn’t seem to be part of the magical world.

I was glad that I’d had time to grow used to it, because otherwise the sights would have overwhelmed me. There was a tall man with flame-red hair, sitting next to a woman who had covered half of her face with a metal mask; the man cast a very dark shadow into the human world. There was a man who bore an alarming resemblance to the President of America, chatting to a man who bore an equally-alarming resemblance to Stalin, or perhaps Lenin. I could never tell the difference between them. And, in the corner, the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future were sharing a bottle and chatting about which miser they were going to visit next Christmas Day. It made me wonder how many mundane concepts took on a life of their own in the magical world and grew and evolved past anything their creators had considered possible. Which came first, I asked myself; the chicken or the egg?

“Why, the chicken, of course,” Cardonel said, when I posed the question to him. “The egg needs a chicken before it can come into existence…unless you use a magical spell and…”

“That’s not wise,” Sparks interrupted. She winked at me. “You want to know how to create your very own cockatrice?”

“No,” I said, quickly. She looked the kind of person who would be happy to demonstrate and cockatrices were dangerous. They might not have been the most dangerous creatures in the magical world, but even creating them used darkest magic and it could go horrendously wrong. The books had been quite specific on that subject, although they had also detailed the whole process step by step. At least it didn’t include naked dancing in the moonlight. “I think I don’t want to know.”

“Very wise,” Cardonel said. The enslaved dancers had finally been pulled off the stage to a mixture of cheers and boos from the watchers, who started to stand up and pull on their coats. Most of them, I guessed, would be either going back home or seeking other entertainment elsewhere. The party here was over…and it would be over permanently if I had anything to say about it. “You three go onwards. Dizzy and I intend to…entertain ourselves here.”

I blushed, almost as brightly as Linux. “Just make sure he gets you home before you’re supposed to start work,” Sparks said, firmly. “Your master will not appreciate you being late. He might even turn you into a toad to teach you how to be punctual.”

“I’ll be careful,” I promised. I liked them enough to hope that we’d be able to meet again, perhaps individually. I disliked large groups personally. One was either part of the group or on the outside looking in. Neither one was particularly fun for me. “You all have a good evening, you hear me?”

Cardonel pulled me into a side corridor as the remainder of the audience started to filter out the doors. “The owners of this place earn some extra money by opening up rooms for anyone who doesn’t want to go home,” he said. “I happen to have one booked and ready.”

I gave him a sharp look. “Hoping to get lucky, were you?”

Cardonel shrugged. “Hope springs eternal,” he said, dryly. “This is pretty much your last chance to back out and change your mind.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. I was amused at his presumption at hiring a room. Did he really think that I would put out on the first date? Or maybe it wasn’t as unwise as it seemed. He
was
handsome and I
did
enjoy his company and if I hadn’t seen the slaves…perhaps I would have made out with him, if not a little more than just making out. It would have made a pleasant change from lessons and being introduced to the movers and shakers of the magical world. “I have to do it.”

“I hope you can live with yourself afterwards,” Cardonel said, shortly. If I had been wiser, I might have followed up on that statement. He opened a door with a key made from human bone and beckoned me inside. The room was very basic, with a bed, a washbasin and a mirror hanging on the otherwise bare wall. It was clearly meant for sex and little else. There were strange ghostly images centred around the bed, although I couldn’t see them clearly for once, which made a pleasant change. Perhaps there were just too many ghostly images and they all blurred together. “So…how shall we entertain ourselves for the next hour or so?”

It was clear what he had in mind, but I was too keyed up to indulge him. “Tell me about you,” I said, instead. Cardonel looked up in surprise. “Where does a half-elf come from, anyway?”

He affected a droll tone that didn’t quite manage to mask his amusement. “Daddy went walking in the mundane world one day and found a winsome young lassie who took his fancy,” he said, in a sing-song voice that couldn’t quite hide the pain behind it. “He showed himself to her and invited her to the Land below the Hill. He grew bored of her quickly and eventually threw her out, pregnant with his child. In the time she had spent in his home, three hundred years had gone by in the mundane world. She was completely lost in a world that included cars and marvels she had never dreamed existed. She still thought the world was flat.”

Cardonel’s voice darkened as he spoke. “The mundane world didn’t understand her, of course,” he added. “They thought she was mad and locked her up when they discovered that she was pregnant. They thought that she’d created the whole story about meeting the Elves and being born so long ago to hide a darker truth. By the time I came bursting out of her – almost killing her in the process – she had nearly lost her grip on sanity. She never found her own place in the mundane world and died not long after I was born.

“I didn’t know what I was at first. My ears” – he touched them with one long finger – “weren’t apparent at first. I was using magic to hide them from prying eyes without realising what I was doing. It took me several years to realise that I could see things that other people couldn’t see. I was just so
aware
, far more than any mundane child. My mother’s ghost whispered to me when she thought I was asleep, telling me about my father and…and promised me that one day I would return to the Elves. I should have known better. When I was old enough, I went to find my father – and they rejected me. I was lucky to escape with my life.”

I put a hand on his shoulder. Cardonel had never asked to be born to such a family – if family was the right word. I couldn’t understand how anyone could just abandon a child, but it wasn’t unprecedented in human history. White men who had fathered half-black children had a nasty habit of abandoning them before interracial marriage had stopped being taboo…and they had had purely human children. The Elf-Human half-breeds belonged to neither world.

“So I spend my days here in the magical world,” he finished, sadly. “I have no dreams and no hope for a future. I can have sex all week and there is no chance I can get anyone pregnant. I used to hope that I would be able to amass the magical knowledge necessary to drive into the Kingdom of the Elves and demand my place among them, or perhaps to tear them down, but it was an impossible dream. I belong nowhere, trusted by no one. Your Master warned you about me, didn’t he?”

I hesitated, and then decided to be honest. “Yes,” I said. There was no point in discussing the unflattering way Cardonel – and half-Elves in general - had been described. “I’m afraid he did.”

“They don’t like creatures that cross the barriers,” Cardonel admitted. “My very existence is dangerous to them, yet I am something they can hit. I am not a Being of Power to be placated – if even talking on human terms is possible – or an Elf who has ties back to the Kingdom and the ability to call on support from the King and Queen of the Land below the Hill. They prevented me from gaining access to any of their libraries. I sometimes wonder why they haven’t killed me outright.”

He snorted. “Perhaps they think that my father and his court would go to war to avenge my death, once I am safely dead,” he added. He chuckled, bitterly. “That isn’t going to happen. My father would rest easier once he knew that I was dead.”

I frowned. “If that is the case,” I said, “why didn’t he kill you?”

“The Elves don’t have many children,” Cardonel explained. “They don’t breed as easily as humans, so killing one’s own child is taboo to them, even a half-elf child. Daddy Dearest would probably be delighted if another Elf killed me, or one of the human magicians caught me and used my blood as an ingredient for a spell, but he couldn’t kill me himself.”

He leaned back on the bed and smiled. “Are you sure that you don’t want to join me tonight?”

I blinked in surprise, before realising that it was his way of changing the subject. “Not tonight,” I said. I hadn’t realised, until I had said it out loud, that I had implied that I would sleep with him one day. I looked down at him and considered it. He was handsome, I did like him…and I felt sorry for him. The chances were good that he wouldn’t live anything like as long as a mundane human, let alone a magical human with access to good rejuvenation spells. “Maybe I’ll join you one day.”

“Tease,” Cardonel said, without heat. He sat up and stretched. His body contorted oddly as he moved. I found myself suddenly fascinated. His bone structure couldn’t be human, not if he could move like that. “Are you ready to move?”

I looked up, sharply. “Is it time to move?”

“Just about,” Cardonel said. He looked sharply at me. “Start by feeling out the security spells and then determining how to fool them.”

I sat down, crossed my legs and focused my mind. Master Revels had trained me well and I could enter the searching trance quickly. All magic had an effect on reality, even if the effect was minimal and carefully hidden. I could feel out the defences surrounding the building and found myself smiling. Thanks to Cardonel, we were
inside
the main defences already. The wards were focused around keeping unwanted people out, not preventing someone from moving around inside the building. I was less amused to discover that one of the security spells seemed configured to spy on the people who hired rooms, including us. If anyone had been looking through it, they would have seen us chatting rather than making love. Angrily, I tinkered with the spell, forcing it to report that we were still in the room rather than sneaking out to free the slaves.

Outside the room, there were fewer security measures, although there was at least one security spell covering the basement. I studied it carefully and realised that I could fool it, given enough time and preparation. It would be relatively simple. All I’d have to do was convince it that I wasn’t there.

“All right,” I said, finally. I made my preparations and pulled a glamour-spell around me, a simple ‘I’m not here’ spell to fool casual observers. If I was lucky, I could walk past the manager and his goons and they wouldn’t see me. “It’s time to move.”