His prison was by the sea—or what passed for the sea here in Underhill. He knew that much, though he knew little more. There were many Domains, many oceans.
As Gabrevys ap Ganeliel had many enemies.
Death . . . oh, death would have been kinder, but the Unseleighe were not a kindly folk. Not while there was advantage to be gained in keeping a fallen foe alive.
It was Toirealach who had found him—Wheatley knew much about their kind, but not that they could summon aid, mind-to-mind, even when bound with steel and iron—but by then it was too late.
The steel mesh that entrapped him had eaten its way into his face, marring his Unseleighe beauty past the skill of all but the greatest Elven Healer—and worse.
He was blind.
Toirealach—a loyal liegeman, then—had brought him through the Everforest Gate, hoping the power of his own Domain would Heal him. But Gabrevys was marred past all Healing, and none who was maimed in body could rule, by Danu's ancient law. The moment Toirealach had brought him through the Gate to his own Domain, his mutilation had shattered the magicks which held Bete Noir apart from the Chaos Lands.
Had Gabrevys been conscious at the time, he would have prevented Toirealach from doing what he had done. It would have made no difference to the fate of Elfhame Bete Noir in the end, but it would have bought him time. Perhaps that would have made a difference to his own fate.
For the moment the wards had shattered, Toirealach had realized the truth.
Gabrevys was Prince no longer.
And Toirealach was still Unseleighe.
There was profit to be made in delivering Gabrevys—powerless, now—to his enemies. It was a profit Jormin was too proud to share in—the injured Bard had come home as well, and, finding himself masterless, had simply taken his own personal followers and left to seek a new Court.
And so might Toirealach have done. But Toirealach had seen opportunity. He had always been one of the strongest of Gabrevys's vassals. It had taken all his strength, and that of those whose temporary self-interest he could compel, to retain Gabrevys against the others of this now-decaying Domain who sought to claim the prize for themselves.
Gabrevys, conscious by then, had fought as hard as he could against this treason, but the destruction of his Domain had taken much of his power with it, so closely had he bound himself to his Domain. And scarred as he was by Wheatley's bindings, he could no longer summon the spells of a Magus Major.
And so he had been bound again, though this time with silver instead of iron, and carried from his crumbling Domain—his no longer!—into an unknown realm by Toirealach and those who now followed him.
And there, he had been sold.
No one had spoken their names in his presence—for even as he was now, to know the names of his enemy was to hold power of a sort—and so Gabrevys did not know who they were. But they used him as he would have used them, should their situations have been reversed. He would not die, but he would have little cause to enjoy his life, either.
He drew small comfort from the knowledge that Toirealach had not survived to savor the fruits of his treason. The first secret Gabrevys had been forced to surrender at the bidding of those who held him was that of calling the Soul-eaters from their pocket Domain and controlling them when they fed, and Gabrevys had listened as Toirealach and all who had accompanied him were given to them, one by one.
Now only he remained. And all who knew where he was and that he yet lived were dead.
And he would live a very long time. . . .
Eric would not have called it a "small" bright spot in his day—it was certainly bright, but it was not small. It was also very, very, pink. Barbie pink. Bubblegum pink.
Pink as only 1950s pink could be.
Ria had not called in help for the problem of finding a way to keep Margot from killing him and Hosea over the destruction of her car.
Kory had.
"Help" had come from Elfhame Fairgrove, and had arrived in the person of a tousle-haired man with a deceptively young face and a pronounced limp. "Deceptively," because when you looked closely, and you saw the crinkling of laugh-lines around his eyes, you realized that he dressed like someone out of the eighties in his "Battlestar Galactica" field-jacket, not because he was being "retro" but because this was his favorite jacket, acquired new, and lovingly cared for. And he was not nearly as young as he first looked.
Eric had first met Tannim Drake a few years before, when Chinthliss the dragon, to whom he had gone for aid in his battle against Aerune, had rescued him and his companions from its aftermath. Chinthliss had called Tannim his son; something Eric had never gotten a real explanation of. He did know that Tannim was a test driver for Elfhame Fairgrove, which was turning out to be more than handy.
"Help" had advised telling Margot that he'd had an accident, but that Big Pink was being restored to pristine perfection at the hands of the automotive wizards of Fairgrove Industries. "Help" had given him a series of photos and a contact phone number for Margot to call to prove it—and the keys to a loaner for Margot, a red-and-white 1967 Corvette, which was a car she had coveted so much the first time she laid eyes on it that she forgot to be mad at either him or Hosea.
And now, almost six weeks later, "help" had turned up again, with—to all intents and purposes—Big Pink. A new, and substantially improved Big Pink.
"All I can say is," said Tannim, "I, for one, am really, really happy that she told us she's a big fan of Rides."
Eric blinked. "Who?"
Tannim laughed, and tossed the keys in the air and caught them again. "Show on the Discovery Channel. Doesn't matter, except that it means she won't be mad that this isn't exactly her original car. In fact, she'll probably be all over the improvements and won't notice that the only thing that matches is the VIN number."
Eric could certainly understand that. He'd taken a look inside. The sound system alone must be worth—well, probably more than the original Big Pink. But he was still puzzled. "I thought Kory said you could restore the car. . . ."
Tannim shook his head, and a curl of black hair fell into one eye. He brushed it back, before he began to look too much like a Japanese anime hero. "Nuh-uh. Cold Iron, my friend, which Keighvin Silverhair and his merry band cannot touch nor ken, and don't go borrowing this beast again and trusting her to keep you sheltered from Unseleighe. She's all-aluminum now. They weren't going to make her fiberglass, because your Margot would certainly have noticed that, so aluminum is what you got. Even the engine block. All we did with the original was to use her carcass to Far-See into the past to find out what she'd actually looked like, then take her VIN and consign her to the honorable grave of a warrior." He laughed a little. "Of course, your friend Margot will probably notice a substantial improvement in the gas mileage now, given how much lighter she is. But—"
But at just that moment, Margot shot out of the door of Guardian House with a squeal of glee, and whatever else Tannim Drake might have said on the subject was forgotten. And by the time Margot stopped dancing around the car and Eric thought to ask him to continue the sentence, the auto-mage was gone . . . like the Lone Ranger, into the sunset.
Now it was June, and the New York weather had finally become seasonable. Columbia's course year had ended a few weeks before, and this coming fall, Grace Fairchild (Ace intended to change her name legally as soon as possible) would be joining Kayla there as a freshman.
Donna Fairchild had moved back to Tulsa, Oklahoma, leaving her husband to weather the escalating storm of lawsuits, controversy, and criminal charges on his own. The Fairchild Business Park—and the Casino and Cathedral of Prayer—had been shut down, and would undoubtedly be sold to help defray Billy's swiftly mounting debts and legal expenses.
But Ace had decided exactly what she wanted to do.
"I," she announced to Ria, "am going to help you run the Llewellyn Foundation."
At Ria's astonished and utterly speechless stare, Ace had blushed and dropped her eyes. "Not run, run, or at least not at first," she had stammered, flushing. "But I'm going to get a business degree and a minor in psychology, and I'll be the assistant for whoever you put in charge of the school, and I can do it, Ria, I want to! You said yourself even thinking about trying to run it makes you crazy! And if you've got me there, you'll have someone telling you what you need to hear about all the time, and—"
"All right!" Ria said finally, laughing, and holding up her hands to stop the torrent of words. "All right! You win! I was going to ask Inigo Moonlight—but I knew he wouldn't want to do it for very long. Well, 'long' as the Sidhe see it. But if you want to take the whole thing on—"
"Yes." Ace set her chin. "I do."
Ria just shook her head. "All right. I'll put Moonlight in charge, with you as his apprentice. You are hereby in training to become Professor X, does that suit you? Just do me a favor and don't do anything that puts you in a wheelchair or makes you go bald . . . it's a good look on Patrick Stewart, but not on you."
Parker Wheatley's contribution to the entire concert-slash-bomb affair had dropped off the media radar after a few news cycles, but Ria's Washington contacts reported that his former colleagues and employers were extremely unhappy with him. She was fairly certain that this time they would arrange matters so that he led a very quiet life, assuming he managed to escape prison on some charge or other—though as far as she knew, he'd had nothing to do with the bomb plot at all. The rest of his anti-Sidhe technology cache—green suits, sunglasses, fancy wristwatches—had all vanished before anyone else in the government could get their hands on them. Ria had thought that was best.
Without Eric's parents to interfere, his adoption of his brother—now, legally, his son—had gone through without any further hitches, and Michael and Fiona Banyon were comfortably installed at Fall River. The only family-related problem that Eric currently had was what to do with Magnus during the summer vacation. Next year would be Magnus's last year at Coenties & Arundel, and Magnus would have to start looking into colleges. Or else find a permanent drumming gig. . . .
But then Magnus himself came up with an answer.
Magnus would be going back to Boston. To school. But not just any school.
Magnus was going—and he was grimly determined about this—to Berklee College of Music.
"Look at this, bro!" he said, dragging Eric over to the computer, where he had the Berklee site pulled up, pointing to a course called "Making Music With a Garage Band." "These people live in the real world! They're into music real people listen to! They've got a network to get gigs, they teach how to be a road-manager, or a session-musician, or a film-score writer, you come out of there knowing what's what!"
Looking over the curriculum, Eric had to agree. Berklee certainly sent its graduates out into the world with a much better preparation for life as a commercial musician than did—say—Juilliard. Mind, anyone with a Bard's abilities was never going to starve, but—
But it looked as if, when you walked out of Berklee, you had all the tools you needed to make a living, and if you couldn't, it sure wasn't for lack of instruction.
So, when this last year was over, Magnus would be going to Boston's Back Bay, and Eric would be an empty nester.
Unless, of course, something happened between then and now. . . .
Hosea's article about Fairchild Ministries and the concert had been the cover story for Rolling Stone. Suddenly, as a writer, Hosea was very high on the radar. Before the summer was half gone, it was clear that his days as a busker were over.
Not that he minded, though for old-time's sake, he did keep his license current. But it was soon clear to him that writing for a living had a lot of advantages. Air conditioning, for one. Regular hours, for another. A much, much bigger potential audience.
And the fact that, as a Guardian, writing for a living had a lot of advantages too. Because he could drop what he was doing at a moment's notice—and as another Guardian who had once lived in this very building had learned, a writer could do his (or her) job from virtually anywhere and still save the universe, one small bit at a time.
So all in all, it was beginning to look as if every member of Eric's immediate circle was going to be able to settle down and actually plan their lives with a reasonable expectation that those plans would be carried out.
It was a strange feeling. But one that Eric thought he just might be able to get used to.
"Cake!" Magnus greeted its arrival as if he'd never been fed in his life.
"There's plenty for everyone," Ace said, setting it down in the middle of the table.
The six of them—Eric, Magnus, Hosea, Kayla, Ria, and Ace—were gathered at Ria's townhouse. Tonight was a celebration. Today Ace's final papers had come. In the eyes of the State of New Jersey, she was legally an adult.
"What's the candle for?" Magnus said.
"It's because today is the first day of the rest of her life," Kayla told him. "Yum. Chocolate."
"I'm just as glad to have put the last few months behind us," Ria said, when the cake had been cut and served. "There's something to be said for a nice, old-fashioned monster. At least that way, you can knock it over the head and know when you're finished dealing with it."
Eric shuddered feelingly. "Monsters—or complicated political plots. I think I'm getting too old for either one of them."
Magnus snickered around a large mouthful of cake.
"They do tend to trouble a body's rest," Hosea agreed. "And get in the way o' the important things in life. How are yore students comin' on?"
For a while the friends spoke of the everyday matters in their lives. Many of Eric's students (most of the paying ones, in fact) were going to be away for the summer, but that left Eric free to concentrate on his pro bono clients. Hosea's feature article had attracted a lot of attention, and the New Yorker had asked him for a think-piece on "The neighborhood as a village." Kayla was going to be going home in a couple of weeks to spend the summer with Elizabet, and looked forward to visiting old haunts—though with the time-slip, she'd have to be careful that she didn't run into anyone who remembered Elizabet's foster daughter, who should now be much older than Kayla was.
Just normal life, Eric thought, looking around the table at his family and closest friends. As normal as it gets. And it feels good.
After all we've been through, I think we deserve this.
"Well, heck," Hosea said, looking around the table with a smile. "Ain't we the family. Ah reckon we're 'bout due for some peace and quiet. So here's to it."
"You said it, Too-Tall." Kayla grinned, and raised her glass. "To uninteresting times, and lots of them, and plenty of time for our very own lives!"
"Amen," Ace said with feeling.
"Ditto. As long as there's cake," Magnus added, clinking his glass with the rest.
Eric added his glass to the rest. Uninteresting times. Peace and quiet. Nothing more stressful than nagging Magnus to clean his room. Time to heal. Maybe—he glanced at Ria—time for something else, too. I can get behind that.
"Works for me," he told them all, and with a pleasant shock, caught Ria looking back at him with a soft expression in her eyes that he almost didn't recognize. "Yeah!" he added, with more enthusiasm, speaking directly to her this time. "I can really get behind that!"
Things are looking up . . . definitely.
He let his smile creep into his eyes, and saw, with pleasure, the faintest hint of a flush on Ria's cheeks. So, Ms. Overachiever was finally willing to take a little Her-time, hmm? And maybe they were finally going to sort something out. That would be good. Very good.
So, maybe the times won't exactly be uninteresting . . . and I can get behind that, too.
He ate a bite of cake, and smiled.