Elvendude (19 page)

"The Unseleighe," Samantha corrected, "have been here for
centuries.
Zeldan is the newcomer. He may have arrived shortly after you did, young King. Or a month ago."

"What matters is that they are here
now
," Moira said. "Gods, I didn't think it had already happened."

"Moira," Adam said, approaching this from a new angle, "did you notice anything odd last night about the party?"

Moira considered this carefully, taking a several moments to respond. "I wasn't particularly aware of anything Unseleighelike, though I always sense evil when I see humans abusing their minds, souls and bodies. But then,
I'm
not a mage."

Samantha hissed, her ears quivered, and her slitted eyes widened and glowed momentarily with an energy of their own. Her elfing-out totally like that was a frightening sight. Adam curled up into the chair like a cat, protectively.

"What? What did I say?" Moira asked, but she sounded like she knew she'd let something vital slip out.

"Samantha, what's a mage?" Adam asked. He had an idea. He wanted to be sure.

Samantha sighed in resignation. "I suppose it is well past the time we should keep anything from you, Adam," Samantha said.

Adam realized he preferred to be addressed as Adam instead of King, or young King, or even Your Majesty, but now was not the moment to bring that up.
Later.

"A Mage is an elf with exceptional magical abilities. Humans occasionally have mages sprout up randomly, but the occurrence is so rare it is not worth concerning ourselves with right now. Or, maybe, ever. Zeldan Dhu is our problem. Not mages."

"I see," Adam said, uncertain if he did. "Let me adjust to being an elf, first. That's . . . taking some getting used to. I've been a human a long time." He reached up and touched his ears. "These still feel weird."

"Our plan precisely," Samantha said, casting a warning look at Moira. "But I suppose no harm is done."

"There was something else," Adam said, hoping to break up the awkward moment by changing the subject, "that happened after this incident I described. Now
this
was weird."

Even Marbann sat up attentively.

"The boy I mentioned, he gave me a vial of—you guessed it—Black Dream. And walked off. Security cameras are all over the place there, so I thought, 'Hey, this looks like a drug deal,' so I started looking for a place to ditch it before I got busted. I went straight to the men's room and flushed it. It went all the way down."

"You flushed twice. Good boy," Samantha said. Marbann grimaced.
He is the King, not a child!
his look seemed to say.

Adam continued, "After I left the rest room, there was this unleased space to the left. And I was like, I dunno, hypnotized by something. The room filled up with fog. Lights appeared under the fog. I must have zoned out or something."

Moira seemed delighted. "So you were Dreaming, even under the spell." She turned to Samantha. "You felt it too, didn't you?"

"But what happened there?" Adam asked. He felt like he'd been excluded from yet another secret, and they were teasing him with it. "What were those lights under the fog?"

"Don't you know?" Moira taunted.

Adam held his tongue.

"Those were the
nodes,
" Samantha said. "Powerful ones, too. Deep underground, at the very spot they manifested. The human realm has them as well. Only, they're wasted here, unless an elf comes along and puts them to use. Why else do you think our kind would bother coming to this chaotic place?"

Moira seemed to be enjoying this. She said, "The Marketplace was built on the site of three power nodes, long ago. Originally the building was a cookie and cracker factory."

Adam groaned as cookie-making cartoon elves flashed through his mind. "Give me a break," he said, smiling just a bit in amusement.

"It's for real. Well, most buildings would have been knocked down when they outlived their original usefulness, but someone decided this one was worth saving. Maybe it was the nodes, influencing the humans subconsciously. Anyway, the presence of the nodes is one of the reasons we were drawn to the Marketplace. It's a natural place for us to be."

"The Marketplace," Adam said, bemused. Then a dark thought came to him: "If the nodes attract us, won't they attract the Unseleighe as well?"

No one said anything for quite a while. Then Samantha spoke up, "Most likely they would be as unappealing as the prospect is."

Hunger was not among the physiological differences between humans and elves. At some point during the dark discussion, Adam realized he hadn't eaten much that day and now had a craving for pizza.

In Avalon, of course, there was no pizza or any of the processed foods humans enjoyed. Fruits and vegetables grew abundantly on the palace grounds, with the aid of magic. In his particular elfhame, Adam had learned that to create food, or
ken
it from nothing, was not polite. Kenning food was something the Unseleighe did, Adam had been told while growing up, but he knew that other Seleighe elf clans kenned regularly. It was just a matter of etiquette. While it was acceptable to urge the natural growth of vegetables along with spells, "acceptable" food went through the stages of normal growth, more or less.

Game was also in abundance, though servants hunted it for the royal family instead of raising it in pens, as Adam had grown accustomed to seeing out in the country in Texas. Servants did most of the hunting, but occasionally the royal family would indulge in a bit of sport, hunting deer with the crudest of bows and arrows, and
no
magic whatsoever. Neither Adam, nor anyone else in Avalon, had never been hungry. Food was always available, in one form or another. There had never been a drought, a famine, or a flood.

The Unseleighe were the only scourge in Avalon, and in less than a day they had taken everything from the rightful owners.

Adam found himself in a quandary. While it had been five years since his last experience with the war, Marbann had just stepped out of it, and was no doubt famished. Moira, who'd mentioned she'd eaten no breakfast or lunch, was probably starving, too. Other elves were on the way as well, and might arrive anytime. But this was the human realm, with no elven food to speak of; food here was all grown without spells, and was highly processed, seasoned, and garnished.

On the floor was a stack of newspaper with the coupon section on the top. "Unexpected Guests? Order a Two For One from Dominique's Pizza," one ad announced.
Dominique's makes the best pizza in the universe. And I'm King. That's what we're having.

"Anyone hungry?" Adam asked. Everyone was.

While the new King called in the order, Samantha went scavenging in the kitchen for other eatables. Since she wasn't expecting out of town guests either, at least on this particular day, she came up empty-handed.

"Looks like it's pizza tonight," she said from the kitchen doorway. "Time for a shopping trip to SAM'S."

Marbann looked puzzled. "What manner of beast is a
pizza
?"

Adam stifled a smirk and said, "Several kinds," he said. Samantha brought in a pitcher of lemonade and five glasses. "You're all probably parched," Samantha said. After filling the five glasses, Adam noticed the pitcher was still nearly full.

I guess a little kenning is acceptable, if done surreptitiously,
noted Adam as he downed his drink.

Presently, the pizza arrived, and Adam went to the door to pay for it.

"Ah, wait a minute," Moira said, following him to the door. "Aren't you forgetting something?"

Adam paused, with his hand on the doorknob. "Like . . . what?"

"Are we having a costume party here, or are you trying to pass yourself off as a Vulcan?"

Adam felt his ears. "Geez, of course." As Moira had shown him, he replaced the glamorie, and immediately noticed the difference between elven and human perceptions. His vision was not as sharp, and he didn't feel as strong. Moira stood back, out of sight. When he opened the door, he must have been presentable to the pizza human who was standing on the front steps with their dinner in a big vinyl box. The Dominique's guy didn't seem to notice anything amiss as he counted out the change.

Adam closed the door, and as he stood there, holding the two-for-ones, Moira changed him back. His vision sharpened, and his energy returned.
I'm not going to like going back to being a human, even temporarily,
he thought morosely.

Adam entered the living room and announced, "Dinner is served."

"That smells sooooo
goooood,
" Samantha said, holding a stack of plates and forks. "I never did get to eat that orange at work."

"Your hired servants put the kill in
boxes
before they present it to you?" Marbann said. "Most odd, these human ways."

Adam set the pizza down on the coffee table and opened the long cardboard box. The vultures descended on the kill.

All except Marbann, who gaped at the pizza, openmouthed. He picked up and examined one of two little plastic table thingies used to keep the box lid from touching the pizza. He held it up and exclaimed, "How did they manage to kill this strange beast with one of
these
?"

Moira almost choked on her slice. "Marbann, this is not an animal. It is a combination of ingredients, part pig, and part . . . well, pig. Something like a boar. Sausage and Canadian bacon. And cheese, made from milk. The red sauce is made from a vegetable. The crust is, a—well, never mind. It would take too long to explain baking."

Marbann shook his head. "Why go to all that trouble? It is much easier to cook the boar on a spit, and the vegetables taste much better by themselves."

As Spence devoured his slice, he said between mouthfuls, "It has been a long time since I've arrived from Underhill. I remember thinking the same thing, but after awhile I grew to like human food. Humans don't have magic, remember, and they have to go to extra trouble to make their meals enjoyable."

"I can't imagine life without pizza," Samantha said. "For humans, too much of this causes fat to build up around their stomachs. Elves have no such problem, you see."

"Humans gain fat when they eat?" Marbann was aghast. "Then why do they eat this
pizza
?"

"Because, my dear Marbann," Samantha said, "that is the way of the universe. Humans have little control over their lives, their physical surroundings. And
no
control whatsoever over the sacred pizza pie."

Marbann tried a piece of Dominique's finest and recoiled violently.

"Humans also like their food very hot. Be careful," Moira said belatedly.

"Thank you for the warning," Marbann said, then frowned, regarding the slice of pizza as if it were poisonous. "I'm not so certain I'm going to like the humans' world."

"It will grow on you," Adam said, already reaching for another piece. "What should we do about our human covers? Should we go in hiding somewhere, or retain our human identities? If Zeldan is looking for us, might it be in our best interests to go somewhere else? Overseas, perhaps?"

"I've always wanted to go to Ireland," Spence said. "I remember my father talking about it in the old days, how easy it was to be elves there. No glamories, no secrets."

"And those days are gone forever, I'm afraid," Samantha said. "I've been giving it some thought, especially recently, since I've suspected we would soon learn the outcome of the battle we fled. It is not easy to go into hiding in the humans' world now. So much is explored. Although the humans don't have magic, they do have advanced technology that can record and track us, if they so desired. When I arrived in the new world over a hundred human years ago, this land was largely unexplored, and an elf could live in relative isolation because so many of the humans here did.

"Now it is much easier to hide in plain sight. I don't think we'll have any trouble staying here for awhile. With our magics we can make do with this abode for some time. What do you think, Adam?"

It was unusual for his mother to ask his opinion of important matters, but she was not his true mother, and he was, after all, the King.

Time to act like one.

"Perhaps it would be best," Adam said, "if we stayed here until we find out more about Zeldan Dhu, and what he's up to. I don't like the idea of spreading out just yet. I think we're all in danger."
Black Eagle. Unseleighe. Zeldan Dhu . . . 

"They're after you, not us," Spence said. "Don't kid yourself, Ad—I mean, Your Majesty."

"But they won't hesitate to kill us all. That means we all need a
sanctuary,
" Adam said. "And if we're going to go on living like humans, it would look a little odd to keep calling me 'Majesty.' Call me Adam. Like you always have."

"Well, not
always,
" Moira said.

"Those of us with human covers should stick with their human names," Sammi said. "If anything, to keep
us
from getting confused."

"I'm inclined to agree," Marbann said. He'd eaten one slice and was starting on a second, this time without hesitation. "Zeldan is out there. And we must stay here until the others appear, since I don't know how to move a Gate once it's established. Gating is not my specialty. Those capable of moving a Gate are now dead."

"Alas, 'tis true," Samantha said. "But no matter. We are safe here, for many reasons. My cover is secure with the police department, as is the King's at his place of employment."

"The King, doing
manual
labor? Is this appropriate?" Marbann said, but he seemed more interested in the pizza, talking around his piece most impolitely.

"What better way to keep an eye on the Marketplace?" Adam said, eyeing the vanishing pizza with distress. "If Zeldan and his people show up there, we would be in the best position to notice it."
Maybe we should have ordered more.
"And if Spence and I suddenly disappear, that would seem strange, even suspicious. Anyone familiar with the Yaz would notice. Jimmy would be left running the entire place, and he's been fair to us from the very start. I think he deserves the same in return."

"I agree with the King," Samantha said. "At least for now, I think those of us already living in the humans' realm should go on, business as usual."