Robert Charrette - Arthur 01 - A Prince Among Men (32 page)

The edges of the leaves around them glistened; light reflecting from them shone in pure colors as though it were bent through a prism. Such a rainbow effect shouldn't be vis-ihlc at night, but John saw it anyway. The air seemed charged, and his skin tingled. Ahead, Kun seemed to glance mound with more frantic intensity. Spae turned her head in wider, more regular sweeps, taking in all around her with an expression of wonder on her face. She didn't even notice when the flickering light of her staff faded and died. Bear marched on, neither nervously fidgeting like Trashcan Harry nor rapt in awe like the doctor. He was taking it all in stride, and John tried to emulate his casual acceptance of the odd-ness around them.

After they'd walked for a half an hour or so, the trees thinned, opening into glades and finally meadows. Above them a silver moon shed light that somehow did not diminish the multitude of stars studding the clear sky. Occasionally, John glimpsed something pale moving among distant copses. Once he spotted dark shapes moving in the sky, occluding stars with their swift passage.

Bennett led them on, in more or less a straight line, until they came to a river; John recognized the curves, especially an odd, muddy oxbow he had seen from the highway while they were driving to the safe house. But it wasn't the same river. It couldn't be. There were no houses here, neither the battered shacks that had stood by the riverside for a hundred years, nor the more modern getaway cottages favored by well-off corporates. There were no piers, no weathered skiffs or gleaming pleasure boats, no strip mall at the roadside, no road, even. Bennett headed upriver to a wooden bridge carved with strange shapes. They crossed.

The countryside on the other side of the river was open, rolling hills. It might have been an idyllic pastureland, but no flocks grazed the moonlit slopes. It seemed to John that he couldn't see as far as he should have been able to on such a clear night; it was as though the haze of distance started sooner here. Off to the left, at the edge of visibility, he spotted the dark shape of a tower. A blue light gleamed from slits halfway up its height. The scene was at once strange and familiar. With a shock John realized that he had seen this landscape before. In dreams.

Bennett took a sharp turn, taking them up a slope rather than along it as he had been doing. Ahead, where their course would have taken them, John could see a pool of darkness that seethed and bubbled like a pit of pitch. A waft of air from that direction was filled with the stench of decaying matter and a harsh chemical stink.

"What's that?" he asked.

"A gift from the realm of man," Bennett answered. "Do you recall the Carenelli plant? It is situated about a mile from where Route 44 crosses Sefton Road."

"Vaguely."

"This is what it looks like here."

"How can that be?" Spae asked.

"It is part of the nature of the realms, Doctor. If you have been observing carefully, you will have noted that the land-forms here are almost identical to those in your realm. The ground cover and the living things are perforce different, but there are correspondences which arise from use of a place. For example, your dead buildings cast a depressive shadow into this realm, making some places less than pleasant for my sort. There are, however, things that are even more obtrusive. More offensive.

"The foulness that mankind spews and dumps injures the land simultaneously in both the realms. Surely you've seen the effects in your own realm. Sometimes your kind even does something about it, though you are so deadly slow to notice and slower to react. Here we must accept the damage you cause. Sometimes we can lessen the effects, but only rarely since we cannot attack the cause. The foulness you see below us is a wasteland which corresponds to the toxic dump site that is called the Carenelli facility in your realm. The beauty of our realm is blasted and corrupted by thoughtlessness in yours."

Spae looked unhappy with Bennett's indictment. "Do you have proof of a connection?"

"You see it below you."

"I see a blight. I don't see a cause."

"In your realm you are accounted a mage. Here you are a child. Were you better versed in the Way you would see." Mcnnett sat down, legs folded. "We will rest here for a while. You can contemplate what you have seen so far."

He closed his eyes, ignoring them all.

Bear gave Bennett a venomous glare, but said nothing to I he elf. Instead he looked at John and shrugged. "Elves," he said conspiratorially, as if it explained everything.

Which didn't explain anything, but did make John think.

They were well into the otherworld, and here was Bear reacting to John as he always had. Something was supposed to happen in the otherworld that should have changed Bear's attitude. Stealthily, he reached up and felt his ears. Round, as they always had been. Bennett had said that the spells making him look like a human would go away in the other-world.

So much for being an elf.

But if he wasn't an elf, why did this place seem so right? If Bennett was lying about John's being an elf, how could this place feel right? Or was there something wrong with the spells? Maybe too many years in the real world had made the spells permanent. Or something had gone wrong due to pollution like the morass down the hill. Maybe he had mutated or something.

Kun and Spae wandered off a ways and soon began a heated but quiet argument. Trashcan Harry limped down to poke at the edges of the corruption. Bear stayed on the slope and watched Harry with a wary eye. Left alone, John sat with his back to the darkness down the hill and stared out toward where he had seen the tower. He couldn't see it now—the haze of distance, maybe—but somehow he knew it was still there; it was almost as though he heard someone calling him. Was this his home? How could it be, if he wasn't an elf?

"Put away your doubts, Jack. The spells will not fall apart by themselves."

He hadn't heard Bennett sit down beside him.

"You said—"

"I said the spells could only be lifted here. It is an operation that will take some effort."

"But you
can
do it?"

"In the proper place."

"Which, of course, is not here."

"The proximity of the blight makes this a most inauspicious place for magic." Bennett looked over at Bear. "Also, I think you will agree that this is not the best time."

"Will it ever be?" John mumbled.

"If you will not put away your doubt at my word, will you l rust your eyes?"

"What do you mean?"

"Down in the vale, among the trees, there is a pond. The surface will serve as a mirror. Go look at yourself."

"And what will I see?"

"A true reflection."

"All right." John would give Bennett another chance. The otherworld was real enough; maybe Bennett's other asser-lions were true too. Besides, being an elven prince was too good a deal to pass up just because it didn't happen all at once. But when he stood up, Bennett remained seated.

"Aren't you going to come along?"

"I should remain here. The others might become alarmed if we wandered off. You will be safe enough."

"More secret protectors?"

"No more than usual."

John didn't think Bennett's protectors had done all that good a job so far, but the countryside seemed quiet enough. And he had the Viper, if there was trouble. He left Bennett sitting on the hilltop.

He found the pond easily enough; he seemed to be able to... smell it. The surface of the water was still, shiny as a mirror in the moonlight, and thin wisps of fog drifted across its surface. Somewhere something broke the surface and reentered the water with a plop; whatever it was, it was too far away for the ripples it caused to disturb the reflective waters near his feet.

the brink of the pond seemed more than just the boundary between earth and water. He found himself reluctant to approach it. What was he afraid of? As soon as he did, one of the questions that so troubled his mind would be answered. All he had to do was look into the water.

Knowing he should be eager, he felt frightened instead. He could go back to Bennett and say he'd looked. No one would know he hadn't. No one but himself. But Arthur had known when Bedivere hadn't thrown Excalibur into the sea, because Arthur had known what Bedivere would see. Did Bennett know what John would see? What if he asked him questions about it, as Arthur had asked of Bedivere?

Ultimately, there was only one thing to do. Like Bedivere, he had to do what he was told.

Selecting a spot where the bank projected out a bit over the water, he took a few steps closer. Keeping his eyes on a distant part of the pond, he moved closer to the edge. He stood for a moment, steeling himself; then, slowly, he looked down.

There was an image in the dark mirrored waters: a tall, thin figure in dark clothes whose feet vanished into the earth of the pond's verge. The clothes made the person almost invisible in the water, save for his head and hands. Those hands might have been human, for all they were slender and had long, tapering fingers. Tall people often had hands like that. But the head—there was no mistaking the head for human. A long, gaunt face dominated by wide, slightly slanting pale eyes. Ears with finely pointed tips, easily visible where they poked through silver hair as delicate as moonbeams. The features were at once familiar and alien. John's heart beat faster. That familiarity did not come just from the bit of Bennett's features that he saw there. He knew that face very well, even though he'd never seen it quite this way before.

It was him.

Wasn't it?

Wondering, he stared into the face of the elf that stared at him from the surface of the pond. What had become of the John Reddy who had lived in Rezcom Cluster 3? Dead, they said.

What of Marianne Reddy's child? Who was
hel
Here before him was evidence that John was not that child, never had been. Marianne Reddy was human, not elf. The mother he missed was not his.

He wished he were home, safe in his bed, and waking from a bad dream.

But nothing changed. He stood beneath the moon of Faery and looked down at an elf with his face. How could his life ever again be what it had been?

Now the boy without a father had one, an elf. He had a father who said that John was a prince, and the son of a prince. He didn't feel like a prince; but then, he didn't know what a prince should feel like. The closest he'd ever come to royalty was in books, songs, and vids, and nothing he'd encountered in those seemed to fit the here and now.

But was it real? If only he could know whether this was a true reflection, as Bennett had told him it would be. Was this elf before him really himself?

"Yes, John."

John started at the familiar voice, realizing that for the first time he was hearing it with his ears.

A new image appeared in the pool beside the familiar-strange elf. She was tall, though not so tall as he, and slender, moving with a lithe fluidity as she walked up beside him. He couldn't see her ears beneath her flowing mane of spun-silver hair, but she had the fine-boned, attenuated features John had learned were elven.

"Faye?"

"Yes, John?"

Afraid she would vanish, he turned away from the pool. But she was still there. More
there
than ever, being no longer a disembodied voice in his head. He drank her in. Her eyes were sparkling silver, the irises of a shade that rendered them almost invisible. Her skin was as fair and pale as starshine.

And she was ... beautiful.

John was surprised at the heat in his loins; he had always thought of his companion Faye as a friend, sometimes even as a sibling. Sexual matters had been irrelevant. He realized with a shock that he had never considered her gender seriously at all. Now she stood before him, more beautiful, more desirable than any girl he'd ever wanted to date.

Did she find him attractive as well?

She smiled as if she read his thoughts, and his knees felt weak. She stepped closer and he retreated a step. His foot slipped at the edge of the verge and he started to lose his balance. She reached out and pulled him back from the edge into the safety of her arms. She laughed at him. No, with him. Then they both stopped laughing and their lips met.

Not like kissing your sister at all.

A shadow rose up inside him. Since he was an elf, she might actually be his sister. Or at least a relative.

Awkwardly, he broke their embrace.

"What's wrong, John?"

"Nothing," he lied. "We, ah, we really ought to get back to the others. We've been away for a while. They'll be worried."

Her slight frown spoiled the perfection of her face and tore at him. Unable to bear it, he didn't look at her face when he took her hand and tugged her away from the pond. She resisted for a brief moment before following along.

John wrestled with his troubled thoughts all the way back to the others, without managing to find something to say to her.

CHAPTER
20

When they cleared the tree, the first thing John noticed was the pair of horses standing silhouetted against the sky. At least they
looked
like horses, at first. As he and Faye got closer, John could see that the black beasts were longer legged and slimmer than any horse he'd ever seen pictured. Their long, narrow heads were crowned with tall, tapering cars that might be considered an equine version of an elf s pointed ears. They stood so still that they might have been statues; but they hadn't been there when John had gone off to the pool, and no one could have moved statues there in the short time he'd been gone.