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  Samantha wondered if the battle had touched the King's mind. This plan was, to say the least, extreme. Total amnesia? No memory of Avalon? She masked her doubts carefully. This was her King, and she was a faithful subject. Not only was it heresy to question him, the remaining members of Elfhame Avalon needed a single, strong ruler. They needed unity, now more than ever.

  Survival. In its own perverse way, the plan makes sense.

  "Your hesitancy," the King said slyly, "is understandable. But this is the only way I can be certain my son is protected. This total lack of memory will prevent any Unseleighe from reading his mind, if only by accident, and discovering his true identity. With the proper adjustments, he could be your son."

  "It will be done," Samantha said without hesitation, although she didn't much like the notion of making herself appear older to become his human "parent."

  The King stood, regarding the remaining soldiers of his Guard. "We must protect our youngest. Our children, even older children who are serving me in the capacity of adults, will go first. If we lose the nodes altogether, at least our most precious commodity will survive. You," he said, pointing at an elfling in full battle regalia, "and you. Step forward. Prepare to leave your heavy weapons behind. The less metal the better. And remove your chain mail. Yes, that's it."

  Ethlinn and Iarbanel began stripping all metal from their battle dress.

  "If we have the power, we will all go at once. If not, and if the rest of us survive," the King said, gesturing toward the remaining elves in the small room, "long enough to follow you in a later Gating, it may be several years, or decades, relative to yours and the Prince's arrival. Or possibly even before." The King offered his first smile since her arrival. "We might already be there."

  "Yes," she agreed. Time to think about the consequences of that situation later. "Gating becomes inaccurate under these conditions," she said to assert her knowledge on the matter. Better to let the King feel confident with who he's trusting his heir with. "We do have two nodes left," she pointed out, "which is about double what we would need to Gate the survivors. All the survivors."

  The King leaned over and gently woke his son, who rose with a start from his comfortable, curled position. He spoke in an undertone to the Prince, apparently explaining to him what was about to happen.

  On Samantha's right, Niamh muttered loudly to himself as he diddled with what she perceived now to be a weapon of some sort. Its appearance suggested a cross between an AK-47 machine gun and laser light show equipment. Thick cables ran to what had to be banks of batteries, cradled by a backpack. Niamh looked up at Samantha and the King, his face aglow with success.

  "Sire!" Niamh said, struggling with the backpack. Even for an elf, Niamh was small. "I think I have it this time."

  "That's . . . wonderful news, Niamh," the King said. He did not sound excited. Apparently, Niamh had "had it" before. "We robbed it from the humans some time back," he said, waving absently at the weapon. "The mages thought they might be able to amplify magic, enhance our fighting capabilities. But in Underhill, the godsforsaken thing refuses to work."

  "Have faith!" Niamh said. "There. That pebble." He pointed and aimed at a small stone in the corner of the chamber. Samantha stepped back in reflex; no one else bothered.

  Niamh closed his eyes, squeezed a trigger. Samantha held her breath as nothing happened.

  "If only we had a mage," Niamh said dejectedly. "I know we could beat the Unseleighe back, quick like."

  "It worked in the humans' world," a new voice said.

  Samantha turned to see Marbann, one of the King's knights. Marbann was easily the tallest elf in the chamber, strong and muscular, with blond curly hair and particularly long ears, even though he wasn't all that old. He wore the tunic and chain mail of battle, though the latter had taken some major hits. The tip of his sword was broken, the blade bent, his right arm bloodied. When he saw Samantha, his expression softened, then became sad.

  Thank the gods, you're alive, Samantha thought as she ran to embrace him.

  "We must leave now," Marbann said urgently, releasing himself gently from Samantha's arms. "The Unseleighe are crossing the moat now." The news did not seem to surprise anyone. As Marbann spoke, Samantha examined his injured arm, remembering her own leg wound when she saw the blood. Both wounds had stopped bleeding; they would both need more comprehensive healing later.

  "Another node has gone over to the Unseleighe," Marbann said.

  The King groaned and looked down at his son. "That last hit. We must get out of here now. While we still can."

  "We'll have to go a few at a time," Marbann said. "Then, if it holds out . . ."

  "Samantha, you take my son," King Traigthren said. "You will both leave immediately."

  The Prince stepped backward, away from Samantha, toward the rear corner. "I don't want to go, Father," he said simply.

  "But you must," the King said impatiently. "You have no choice!"

  "I will be deserting the family!" he wailed. He stood resolutely with his arms crossed, with such apparent unwillingness to leave it looked like a direct levin bolt would be necessary to persuade him. "What will you do to protect yourselves if you cannot escape? You need as many adults here as possible."

  "You are not an adult," the King said. The Prince flinched at the insult. "And there is very little family left," he added, glancing at the shrouded body of the Queen. "You are still a child, and you haven't even begun to explore your magical potential. I suspect you could be a powerful mage someday, but now is not the time for debate!"

  "If you activate the spell to turn me into a human, won't that divert power from the nodes?"

  "Node," the King corrected. "We only have one left."

  "My point precisely!" the Prince said. "This plan to hide me with the humans . . . I have doubts."

  Apparently he wasn't missing a thing when he "slept". . . .

  "Doubts you may have, but say in it you have not," the King said, his temper slipping visibly. "You are more liability than asset right now."

  Samantha thought the argument would soon escalate into a full battle; the elfling was trying to be a hotheaded adult and succeeding nicely.

  "You don't understand Zeldan Dhu the way I do," the King insisted. "I know you're trying to be mature, but now is not the time to grow up. Do as I say. You don't even have to listen to reason. Just obey it."

  The Prince's face changed slowly from anger and self-righteousness to sadness and, inevitably, tears. The King went to his son and held him for a long time, then whispered something inaudible to him. The Prince nodded his reply.

  "Farewell, Father," the Prince said. His shoulders drooped, and his gaze dropped to the floor. In his own moment of defeat, his posture mirrored his father's. Then he looked up, jutted his chin out, and marched over to Samantha's side, with a single tear trickling down his cheek.

  He's trying to look so strong, and failing so completely. He's crying inside so loudly the enemy can probably hear it.

  "We're ready," Samantha said. "Who will summon the Gate?"

  "I will," Marbann said. "With your assistance, sire," he added, bowing deeply.

  "Of course," the King said, and the guards cleared an empty space in the middle of the chamber. Marbann and the King stood facing each other an arm's length apart, then raised their arms, forming a circle. The faerielight dimmed as a low resonant hum began to vibrate in the floor, then reached up the wall. Several long moments passed with no visible sign of the Gate, and Samantha began to worry.

  Gods help us all if they fail, she thought. Have the Unseleighe already seized the remaining node while the King squabbled with his son?

  Light flickered in the air, but this was not the comforting arc of Gate light. Power popped and crackled and began dancing across the floor with the familiar power of destruction.

  Not another levin bolt . . .

  She instinctively grabbed the Prince and dropped to the floor. The wail of the incoming blast reached even their ears, deep
below ground level.

  "Everybody!" Samantha screamed, oblivious to royal protocol. "Get down! Levin bolt!"

  Marbann turned toward Samantha, but made no move to follow her suggestion. His look was maniacal and desperate. The King remained standing, arms raised. He also seemed to be ignoring the approaching blast.

  When it came, the Prince had covered both ears against the deafening wail of the bolt, the roar drowning out his screams. The room rose and settled as the concussion rippled through the castle like an earthquake, throwing everybody in the small chamber to one side. Except the King and Marbann; they stood in precisely the same spot, this time protected by the reddish hue of a shield, surrounding them in a sphere.

  Then Samantha realized what Marbann had done, and why he had looked so crazed. He had reached directly for the incoming levin bolt, and siphoned off enough power to create a shield and protect their tiny room from harm.

  Only a mage, or someone incredibly stupid, or practical, would do this, she knew. We would have all died otherwise.

  The King and his subject visibly drew power from the levin bolt's residue, and trickles of red and yellow tendrils leaked through the walls and floor, and formed a swirling, circular cluster of light between them.

  Samantha took the Prince's small hand and walked toward the Gate. Ethlinn and Iarbanel stepped close behind them.

  Fare thee well, Elfhame Avalon, she thought as they entered the circle of light.

  The vertigo returned, and the colors swirled angrily around her. She sensed the two guards close by, but they were only dim outlines in the light.

  Please, King, come through now! she thought as she held the Prince closer to her. The Gate will hold!

  But before the rest followed them through the Gate, Samantha felt another explosion. The Gate slammed shut, leaving them cradled in a web of light. She felt the change as they passed between the worlds, her own vision blurred by a cloud of gray fog; presently, she felt the solid ground of the Earthplane beneath her feet. Rich, moist earth. The smell of humus.

  Unbalanced, she fell to her knees. The Prince was beside her, his eyes closed, unconscious. The two guards had fallen down as well and were crouched a short distance away. She looked frantically for the rest.

  When it became obvious even to her scrambled senses that the others did not succeed in crossing, she let out a wail of grief that echoed throughout the forest that now surrounded them.

  Chapter One

  Lying sprawled on a wooden bench in a gazebo, Daryl Bendis woke to the sound of barking dogs and sprinklers. He blinked as bars of sunlight scorched his cornea through the ornamental roof. Groaning, he tried to sit up. When his head began to split open, he surrendered to the hangover, lay back on the bench, and closed his eyes against the supernova that had so rudely interrupted his sleep.

  Why do tongues feel like roadkill after a good kick-ass party like last night?

  Party. Yeah, he knew he'd been at a party. Somewhere. It took a few moments to orient himself, search his memory for clues to his whereabouts. He wasn't at home because they didn't have a gazebo, and anyway, he recalled telling Mum and Dad he was going to be spending the night at a friend's house. "To study trig." Such explanations generally granted him at least twenty-four hours of uninterrupted party time, and maybe a few hours more to sober up with, if he was lucky.

  But which friend? Despite a strong desire to remain prone for a long, long time, he sat up. His head pounded with the worst headache of his life. When he was eleven, he'd microwaved a whole egg, just to see what it would look like when the shell finally exploded. This image appeared vividly in his mind now, as his throbbing head threatened to recreate the scene. He wanted to lie there at least another hour, while some of the drugs and booze filtered out of his body. One hour. That's all it would take, he knew from experience, before he was up and somewhat coherent, ready to do it all over again.

  Once he sat up, he made a disturbing discovery. He was sitting in someone's backyard, near a kidney-bean swimming pool, with the beginnings of a sunburn glowing pinkly on his chest, wearing nothing but a pair of red Lee Wright briefs.

  His clothes were nowhere to be seen on the finely manicured lawn. Instead, he found a trail of about four empty wine coolers, leading from his present location to the back door of a three-story mansion. A rhythmic heartbeat pounded away somewhere, mixed with the low electric whine of the pool pump.

  Time to get into the house. Time to figure out where I am. Time to get out of this sun, he thought foggily. With every footstep, blood vessels threatened to rupture in his forehead. He hoped it wasn't too late in the day. And he hoped the day was either Saturday or Sunday. If today was a school day, he'd be up shit creek without a paddle, canoe or a life vest.

  As he opened a set of French doors, a wall of new sound knocked him over. "Let the Good Times Roll" by Sheep on Drugs threatened to complete the microwaved-egg number on his head. Bone-jarring bass thundered through Earthquake woofers, plucking at his intestines with salad tongs. This was the heartbeat he'd heard earlier, muted by the mansion's architecture. Darkness, blessed darkness, as he closed the French doors behind him.

  The music jogged his memory. Steve threw the party. This is Steve's house. Steve's parents are in Cancun, slumming.

  Then, This was my birthday party. I'm eighteen.

  I'm hung over.

  Daryl burped.

  Where the hell's Steve?

  The phone rang. An irritating, wimpy, chirping sound. His eyes adjusted to the gloom, took in a high-tech kitchen with three hundred copper pots and pans hanging from a ceiling rack, a bank of microwave ovens, an intercom system, halogen track lighting dimmed to almost nothing. It reminded him of a biology lab: clean, sterile, and smelling of antiseptic. The music originated from the living room, a short hike down a marble hall. Thick black drapes concealed windows and French doors. Steve's parents must like it dark, too.

  He padded across cold tile, chilled by air-conditioning turned down way too low. Then collided with a waist-high pyramid of empty and half empty beer cans, a carefully constructed work of art taking up a three-by-three-foot square of floor. The sudden and unexpected noise of tumbling aluminum and sloshing, stale Budweiser reminded him his bladder was about to burst.

  "Hhmmmmph," he said, with little emotion. And suddenly he didn't want to answer the phone. Why should I? It's not my phone. It's Steve's phone. But it's probably not for Steve, it's for his parents, and they're not even here. Probably some bitchy neighbor bitching about the noise last night. Hell, what about right now? Though he didn't recall much of the evening, he assumed they had made enough noise to wake the dead. The condition of his central nervous system suggested as much. Do they have a housekeeper? The prospect made him uncomfortable, as he stood in the middle of the kitchen in his skivvies. If they had a maid, how could we have a party? They must have sent her away or something.

  I gotta take a leak.

  The phone continued to ring. If Steve was anywhere in the house, he was either unwilling to answer the phone, or unable to. He suspected the host was upstairs in his king-sized waterbed, with the girl or girls of his choice, passed out in never-never land.

  In spite of the pressure in his groin, he felt strongly compelled to pick up the remote handset.

  "Hello," he said tentatively, and began wandering through the house, looking for a rest room.

  "This is Adam," said a voice on the other end. "Is Steve around?"

  "Don't know. He's . . . I just got up."

  A long pause. "Daryl, is that you? Are you okay?" Adam said, clearly concerned.

  "Yeah, I'm fine. Just looking for the bathroom. I'm in the kitchen. Was."

  "Find the utility room. There's a half-bath back there." Adam continued, as Daryl started that direction, "Is anyone around?"

  "Nope. Haven't been in the living room yet. Music's still going. I fell asleep in the backyard."

  "Music's still going because it's on a CD carousel. Random. Steve put it on last night bef
ore I left."

  Daryl paid little attention to his friend. His bladder had reached critical mass. Little else registered until he found the bathroom and started relieving himself.

  "That's gross," Adam said. Daryl sighed with relief. He noticed a bulge, right below his stomach, that had extended further than normal. Someone once told him that was his liver.

  "What time is it anyway?" Daryl asked.

  "One o'clock," Adam replied. "And you're just getting up?"

  Now he wished he hadn't picked up the phone. This was not the kind of lecture he was in the mood for. Jesus, I don't need parents. All I gotta do is call Adam. He'll do all the bitching for them.

  "You drank," Daryl whined.

  "I had one. Then I left. You know that. I might as well have had a Sprite."

  Which was one aspect about his friend he never understood. What is the point of just having one? He didn't like the way the conversation was going, the inevitable debate, which usually took place the day after a party. And since he couldn't recall much that would support his argument, he decided to end the discussion.

  "Do you need to talk to Steve?" Daryl asked impatiently.

  "No. I just . . . I dunno, I just had a bad feeling something happened over there. Guess you're all right."

  He's just playing head games with me, like he usually does when I'm like this. Adam can be a real jerk sometimes. It wasn't always like this, though. He tried to remember when things began to change with them, counted back a dozen months, to their sophomore year in high school. Daryl once thought it was pretty neat that Adam's mother was a cop. When he started partying, though, and buying pot by the ounce, coke by the paper, and crack by the bottle, he didn't think her profession was very neat anymore.

  In the next room, Sheep surrendered to KMFDM. In the brief transitional silence, Adam ended the conversation.

  "Call me later, if you feel like it. I gotta go. Late for work," Adam said. "And oh, yeah. Happy birthday," he added, and hung up.