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Chapter Seven

Adam cried until he had no more tears to shed. Curled up on the couch with Samantha, he grieved until his chest ached, and his face stung. Samantha held him gently, rocking him like his mother would have; anyway, it felt the same, and he found it easy to imagine his mother holding him like this. The grief drained him, but once it was out he felt better, if weaker.

Now his sorrow had mutated to anger.

The Unseleighe must die, he seethed. The anger was a hot, bubbling mass, boiling over the rim and hissing violently over red hot coils. Slowly, painfully. My family is dead. They've taken everything! They deserve a long death.

He wanted to smash everything in sight, to scream and shout, pull his hair out, but he held back, knowing this wouldn't look very royal. Also, he would feel obligated to clean up the mess, whether or not Samantha told him to do so. This would waste precious time, something they had little of right now.

I'm in charge of these elves now, and everything I do from now on will be scrutinized. Behaving like the human teenager I once was will not win me favor in this new Court. And I will not shame my father by behaving irresponsibly on my first day of rule.

"Marbann," Adam said, "who else came through the Gate when you did?"

Marbann nodded, then went to another part of the house, to what sounded like Samantha's bedroom.

"Come with me," Adam heard him say.

He returned, holding the hands of two small elven children, a boy and a girl. The boy, Petrus, was small and frail, and dressed in a vaguely effeminate way. He wore his hair long and curly, and had unusually long ears for someone so young. Wenlann, the girl, looked like a frightened mouse. She seemed to be afraid of her new surroundings, Adam in particular.

"Prince Aedham?" Petrus said, clearly surprised, as he came over to Adam. "How long have you been here? You've grown so much since the last time I saw you. Which, by my reckoning, was only a moment ago."

"He is King now," Marbann said gently. "You must address him as such."

"Five human years," Adam said. "And yes, I have grown. But I'm still the same Adam you knew." Am I? He regarded the group, and felt a terrible weight fall on his shoulders.

Am I up to leading these people? he wondered. Not only must I deal with my own fate, I am in charge of theirs.

"Ignore me, will you!" an elf said from the hallway. Adam remembered him. Niamh. He had teeth like a gopher and a nose like a potato, and looked far younger than he was. He was really much older than Marbann, though Adam didn't know by how much. Niamh looked dazed and muddled, but then he usually did.

" 'Twas only a slight tap on the head," Niamh said quickly, rubbing the back of his head. "Where are the Unseleighe? I will rip their throats out, I will!"

"It's okay, Niamh," Moira soothed. "We're safe now." She felt the back of his head, and Niamh flinched. When she pulled her hand away, it glistened with fresh blood.

"You are more hurt than you thought," Adam said. "To the sickbed with you. Mo—Samantha, do we have bandages? Gauze, and the like?" I almost called her Mother, he thought, pained.

"The weapon," Niamh groaned, holding his head. "We left it behind."

Samantha and Adam turned, and the King said, "What weapon?"

"The . . . rifle, the thing we stole from the humans years ago. I almost had it working, I did," Niamh, clearly pained at the loss of whatever it was.

"Oh. That," Samantha said. "It was a science project the Elfhame appropriated from a school in California, years ago. We never spent much time with it because we never got it to work, and besides, there was no threat." She paused. "Until now."

"What we need is a healer," Moira said, feeling the rest of Niamh's scalp for more wounds. "None survived the attack. Bandages will have to do for now."

Adam and Marbann gently guided Niamh to his bed, and urged him to lie on it facedown. He looked ready to object, then complied.

"The bleeding has stopped, but we need to close that wound somehow," Samantha said. "Adam, would you—" She stopped herself, paused, rephrased. "No, I will get it myself. You are not my son now. It may take a while for me to get used to that."

"Don't worry, Samantha," Adam said. "Even though you raised me as a son, a human son, we hardly know each other as elven siblings." He grinned, a little embarrassed that his mother was his sister all along. "I promise to be a King you cannot offend easily."

"Well said, young King," Marbann said, arranging a blanket carefully over Niamh.

But Adam was paying little attention; at the mention of bandages he felt the palms of both his hands turn warm. At first the warmth became uncomfortably hot, then receded. Thin tendrils of yellow light crackled and sparked over his fingers. The tendrils increased in brightness and number, bathing his hands in yellow light.

Marbann gasped, as did Moira, who stood in the bedroom doorway.

"Your Majesty," Marbann said, stepping back. "You have the gift."

Adam stared at his hands as if some foul substance had coated them. "What gift? What's going on?"

"Don't you feel it, Adam?" Samantha said, her surprise turning to evident pleasure. "The gift. The healing gift. Your father was right."

"I don't understand. . . ." he started to say, then suddenly understood clearly. Without taking any conscious actions, his hands went to Niamh's temples. His fingers flared with yellow light, so bright he had to squint to look at them. It looked like he was on fire, but somewhere inside Adam knew all was well, this was as it should be. His hands moved around Niamh's head, over the wound; through the glare he saw the wound closing, changing color. They watched the flesh heal until only a patch of pink remained. The blood surrounding it had dried to a fine pink dust. When Adam blew, the blood dust vanished, cast to the winds.

"The King is a healer!" Adam heard Petrus shout in the living room. The entire Elfhame had gathered at the door, looking on in awe, their faces filling the doorway; it looked like the whole stack would fall if the bottom row shifted.

"I am a healer," he thought, but the thoughts didn't feel like his own. A wave of exhaustion fell over him, and he fell to his knees. The yellow power that bathed his hands dimmed, then became a faint trickle. As the last of the power left him, he felt dizzy, and weak, and just a bit nauseous.

"Good gods," Samantha said. "He hasn't been trained. The healing was too much. . . ."

He lay on the floor of his bedroom, his stomach churning, feeling horrible, until he saw Niamh's face join the others who were looking down on him; when he smiled, the dizziness subsided. Adam sat up.

"To the sickbed with you!" Niamh said, mimicking Adam's words and voice perfectly. Marbann hissed at him, with a full elven ear quiver: a remarkably hostile expression. Adam found Niamh's comment amusing, managing a grin as they helped him to his bed.

"You'll need water," Samantha said, and Moira dashed out of the room, temporarily upsetting the elven pyramid blocking the door.

"You'll need more than a drink," Marbann said, looking into Adam's eyes, first one, then the other. "So far you've managed to avoid healer's shock. Next time, you may not be so fortunate." Marbann stood to his full height, and his head threatened to touch the ceiling. "I made a promise to your father that if our escape ever succeeded, as it has, I would teach you in the ways of the elves. You father said you would forget much, and now it is evident that you've forgotten more than we've bargained for. No mage would have handled that much raw power without protection."

"It seemed the thing to do," Adam said. "Niamh, are you well already?"

"I am, I am, Your Majesty. Your most capable hands have healed me completely."

Moira returned with a Flintstones jelly glass full of water, which Adam gratefully drank down. He was thirsty; when it was finished, he gave it to Moira, who went off again to refill it.

Marbann continued, "My education is a bit sparse when it comes to mage powers. However, I believe you have forgotten some basic concepts."

Adam's first reaction was to deny this—after all, wasn't he the King? Even before today he caught himself assuming he knew it all, a common trait among teenagers, elven and human. But he still hadn't quite recovered from healing Niamh, and if Marbann had advice to offer, he was going to listen to it.

"Will you please show me?" Adam said. Marbann seemed to bloom with the request. The big elf beamed proudly and extended his hand. Adam took it and, with some effort, got to his feet. "I have my memories, but other things, basic abilities, I've lost. I don't know how to turn myself into a human, and as you've seen, I don't know how to protect myself from my own power." He had a raging headache, he discovered when Marbann helped him to his feet. "And my head hurts."

Marbann chuckled. "That I don't doubt, young King."

"And another thing. I think I should insist that everyone should call me Adam, even if we are among ourselves. I don't feel like a king yet, and the title makes me feel distant."

"When I am through with you," Marbann said as they made their way through the living room, "you will feel like a king."

Someone had turned the entertainment center on, and Moira was showing Petrus how to channel-surf. The young elf held the Sony remote as if it were a live animal that would bite him, and the other elves were gazing at the screen, awestruck. Of course, they had never seen a TV before, Adam realized, much less one this big. The elves jumped when the surround-sound blasted through from a fight scene from Terminator, and one of them looked behind the couch, apparently looking for hunter-killers.

"Moira, maybe you should order more pizza," Adam said. "Looks like we have the makings of a party here."

"Might as well," Moira said, making herself comfortable on the couch next to Petrus. A surge of jealousy flared in Adam, then quickly subsided, knowing that Petrus was far too young for her.

"Marbann, why don't you both go out in the garage," Samantha said, taking control of the remote from Petrus, who was all too willing to surrender it. Niamh was fascinated with the techie toys all lit up on the console, and was poking at the receiver's illuminated dial. "Niamh, don't touch anything yet," then, to Adam, "I think I'll stay here and give our recent arrivals a crash course on the human realm with the help of cable TV. There's a big clear space out in the garage with lots of privacy."

"Which is precisely what we need," Marbann said. "Cold iron will get in the way, but I suppose now that we're in the human realm this is unavoidable." He turned to Adam. "And another thing. When I am teaching you, and only when I am teaching you, you are no longer the King, and I am not the royal subject. You are the student, and I am the master. Agreed?"

Learning, or relearning, the elven ways in a suburban garage in a human city seemed a bit ludicrous to Adam, but they were in hiding for the time being, and there was no other place. Since he never felt like a king in the first place, Marbann's conditions were easy to swallow.

Besides, if I make a mistake, I'm not likely to destroy anything valuable, he reasoned.

"Let's go," the young King said. "Now's a good a time as any."

Adam had started keeping the two-car garage fairly tidy once he'd bought his Geo, so that it and Mom's Taurus would both fit without banging the doors. At the end toward the house was a set of aluminium shelves, the gas heater, and the hot water heater. On the shelf was a set of metric sockets, a power drill, a fire extinguisher, and a heavy-duty staple gun. Next to the shelf was a portable wooden worktable with adjustable clamps, which was handy for working on things you didn't want moving around. Then there was the smoker, a crude piece of work, made of quarter-inch steel plate. Its steel content made it too uncomfortable for either of them to use.

The garage was easily ten degrees hotter than it was outside. Adam turned on a ceiling fan, but that only stirred up the hot air.

"Do you think it's hot in here, Adam?" Marbann asked.

"It's hotter than hell in here," Adam replied, gazing at the ceiling fan forlornly. "Maybe this wasn't such a good idea."

Marbann shook his head. "You're still thinking like a human, and this is something you must stop doing. Elves do not let their environment rule them—elves rule their environment. Granted, there are specialized problems here in the human realm. However, a hot garage is not one of them. Observe."

Marbann closed his eyes, and Adam felt something change in the garage. His ears popped as the air pressure increased, and the temperature began to drop quickly.

"It's comfortable now," Adam said. "How did you . . . ?"

Marbann continued with his work. The temperature continued to drop, until Adam saw his breath fog before him. The ceiling fan slowed, as the grease and bearings inside it became cold, and its whine was a little deeper. Frost formed on the floor, the shelves, the worktable.

"Marbann! It's cold enough in here. It's below freezing, at least!"

Marbann opened his eyes. "Cold, is it? I thought you said it was too hot."

"Well, it was, but now . . ." He ran his finger along the wall, leaving a line in the frost. "Is this how you like it? Cold enough to freeze your  . . ."

Marbann was grinning wickedly. "If you don't like the temperature, then you change it to your liking." He folded his arms. "Well. I'm waiting."

"I don't know how to do that," he said. "You've got to show me. . . ." He began to shiver, and he hugged himself against the cold. It's got to be ten degrees in here!

"I'll do no such thing. At least, not directly. You healed a rather nasty wound in there. With no training, I might add. Bringing the temperature up a few degrees in here is nothing compared to that."

"But I had to do something! He might have died."

"Precisely. So tell me, how did you heal Niamh in there? Tell me quickly. Or don't tell me at all. I can wait all day."

Adam didn't like this one bit. Marbann had suddenly turned the tables and was toying with him, like he was a child. Compared to him, I am a child. I should go along with this, I guess. . . . 

"I reached inside, and it, well, just happened."

"Then make it happen again. It's not getting any warmer in here."

Marbann was right—it wasn't. The older elf was still making the temperature go down. The ends of Adam's nose and ears were getting numb.

"We're going to freeze in here!"

Marbann smirked, which, despite the cold, made Adam's blood boil. "No, you are going to freeze in here. I'm doing just fine, thank you."

He's making a fool out of me, that's what he's doing! He doesn't like the idea of my being King, and he resents it, and now he's playing with me. Damn him. . . .

Adam hardly noticed his own clenched fists, clutched at his sides, as the anger boiled up within him. Then, something began to happen. He visualized his anger, imagined it turning to heat. He sensed Marbann letting go of the situation, the older elf's expression turning from ridicule to anticipation.

"That's it," Marbann whispered. "It's like grabbing a rope and then pulling on it. But if you pull too hard, it comes free, and you have to start all over again."

As the temperature stabilized at what had to be around seventy, Adam let go of the "rope" and looked at Marbann expectantly.

"Well? How did I do?"

"You did fine," Marbann said, "though I have to admit that I set you up."

Adam tested the floor, finding it damp from the recently melted frost, but safe to walk on. "What did you do?"

"Anger is one of the primal emotions of our kind, and of the humans, as well. It is an emotion that protects, and defends. Magic-using is also instinctive, but since it's been blocked for so long in you, I had to get to it a different way, through emotion."

Adam reached for the power, now closer, accessible. It was like a recently hatched eagle, young and awkward, but no longer sealed off by its shell.

Marbann went on to the next lesson: shields. Adam had a bit more trouble with these, mostly because of the distance between him and the nodes, which were miles away. But once he established the link between himself and their prized power source, the shields went up practically by themselves.

"These shields are malleable and can be concentrated on certain sides, depending on the direction of the attack. For example," Marbann said, standing in the center of the garage, "like this." When he closed his eyes, the shield formed around him, a humanoid block of blurry ice that reminded Adam of a cubist painting. The shield contracted, then appeared to melt from behind and reform before him.

"If you are certain your enemy is nowhere behind you, you can concentrate your shield elsewhere." Marbann's voice had changed timbre and sounded like he was speaking through a long metal tube once the shield was up.

Adam tried several times before he successfully copied the move, first forming the full shield, then focusing the energy on a flat area before him.

"The shield, in this state, is much stronger and will withstand more from your opponent," Marbann said. "The disadvantage, of course, is that your arse is vulnerable. Now. I'd like to demonstrate a helpful aid, commonly referred to as bridging."

Adam glanced over at Marbann, who seemed to be tapping into the nodes as well. The King felt the subtle change in the flow he was receiving.

"Even an experienced mage cannot use the full potential of power in a node cluster the size of this one." His mood turned visibly dark. "This is how Zeldan seized our nodes. Instead of his best mage taking on the nodes alone, they spread the power out over several mages. This formed a web which, when focused on a specific point, generated levin bolts of horrendous strength." The teacher paused before continuing. "It was one of these bolts that killed your father."

The King said nothing in reply, instead focusing on extinguishing the new anger that surfaced. His shield flickered during the brief lapse in concentration.

"Bridging can be useful, then," Adam said, when he'd regained some of his composure. "With the help of my people, I shall return the favor to Zeldan."

Marbann bowed, a signal for Adam to do the same, and dropped his shields. The protective fields evaporated, and Adam's teacher came into sharp focus once again.

They went on to the next lesson: offense. Marbann began with the basic attacks, starting with paralyzing moves reminding Adam of Vulcan neck pinches, moving up to the more lethal weapons of their magical armory.

"The energy for levin bolts comes from the same source as shields. The main difference is that the bolts are highly concentrated in a tight area and are focused outward. As you are a mage, your capacity is greater than the average elf, but it will, like everything else, take time to master." Without concentrating much on what he was doing, Adam tried to randomly generate a bolt; too late, he realized he had given the blast nowhere specific to go.

"Adam, no, wait. . ." Marbann began, but it had already begun. Adam felt node energy race from the souls of his feet through his body and blast from his palm. Marbann ducked as the searing white arc flared past his head and plowed into the metal shelves against the garage wall. The blast threw them both sprawling backward; Marbann fell into the wall, and Adam landed gracelessly on his rear end.

Adam sat on the floor, dazed, an eerie silence having fallen on the garage. With Marbann's assistance, Adam crawled to his feet, and his hearing gradually returned, the blast having temporarily robbed him of it.

"What are you two boys doing out here?" Samantha admonished from the garage doorway, hands on her hips, evidently trying to look angry. The grin on her elven features gave her away.

"Nothing to worry about, my lady," Marbann said quickly, as Adam brushed dust off his jeans. "Just a little levin bolt practice."

"I'll say," she said. "It's past nine. Here in the human realm, we can't make noise that attracts attention to us, much less noise that occurs at this hour. I might be able to cover for us once or twice if my coworkers at the police department show up, but if this becomes a habit, it might look a little weird."

"Yes, my lady," Marbann said. "Perhaps we should take a rest from tonight's practice and resume tomorrow?"

"Marbann, that is a splendid idea," Samantha agreed. "There's something inside here I'd like to show you."

In the kitchen, Adam found Moira cutting hair with a pair of ceramic scissors she carried around in her purse for emergencies. Niamh sat at one of the informal dining room chairs with a pink flowered bed sheet around his neck, scowling most unhappily about the whole thing. Several hues of elven hair lay at their feet.

"Marbann, you're next," Moira commanded, snipping the scissors in his direction. "You need something a little more human."

Marbann looked pained. "But, my lady, this is my mane, my badge of honor. . . ."

"Which no longer applies up here," Moira came back.

"But how are we to hide our ears?" Marbann protested weakly. Moira gave him a look.

"Don't give me that," she barked. "You know as well as I do that glamories will hide just about anything. I cut the hair because it takes too damn much node energy to hide eyes, ears and hair."

"Look out," Samantha said as Petrus zoomed in from the entrance on a fat skateboard, nearly colliding with Marbann in the process. Petrus wore a black ball cap and an oversized t-shirt with the Tasmanian Devil huffing and snorting on the front. The boy came to a stop, then expertly toed the skateboard so that it leapt into his arms.

"Whatcha think?" Petrus said without a trace of elven accent. "New look. New do. I can even skate circles around people with this thing."

"I thought we'd go for the pre-teen hip-hop look," Moira said. "Baggy shorts are in style." Adam noticed the cap with an "X" on it, turned backward. "Trendy. The 'X' is a little out, but no one will notice. I left a tail on the back of his head. Pete, take your hat off and show us your do."

"Pete?" Adam asked.

"My new cover," Pete proclaimed proudly. "Petrus don't sound too cool." He took the hat off, showing a nearly shaved head with a thin layer of blond fuzz, with a long, dangling tail reaching halfway down his back. "We might even dye it blue or something."

"Cool," Adam said. "Where'd all these clothes come from, anyway?"

Samantha stepped into the kitchen, and Pete squealed away. "I had a box of clothes put away for just such an occasion." She gestured them to follow her. "There's something else you probably don't know about."

In the garage she pulled down the wooden ladder which led, Adam had thought, to the attic. Instead, there was something else.

"Before the rest got here, young King, I had additional living space built," she said. "You wouldn't remember it because I made sure you wouldn't. Didn't want you and your little human friends hiding up here to play doctor."

They ascended the steep wooden stairs, and entered an apartment.

"I didn't know this was up here," Adam said, confused. "All this time . . ."

"I put a mild glamorie on the ladder to make you ignore it. I can dress the place up with magic if we so desire, but by itself it makes a suitable living space for our guests."

Adam counted eight beds in the attic apartment. The walls and floor had been covered with new carpet and still smelled unused. In the corner was a bathroom and a kitchenette.

"No need to hide everyone in the house. That would be dangerous, with all the unwanted visitors that might come by. Door-to-door peddlers, in particular. The only problem is that it's only accessible from the garage, from the pull down ladder we just climbed. Not the most elegant way to ascend to the new place, but it will be discreet."

They climbed back down, and Sammi raised the ladder. From below it looked like any other unfinished attic space over a garage.

Everything was happening fast, too fast. He knew it was real but it didn't feel real. Samantha's transition from mother to sister was still unnerving; perhaps it was his human side, hanging on to his elven self.

He asked her about this. Samantha replied, "Given the circumstances, you will probably always have a little bit of human in you. Which isn't such a bad thing, provided you use the good part of your humanity."

"You would know, I suppose. You've been here, living as a human, for a long time. What did you find so interesting about this place?"

Samantha looked thoughtful for a moment, as if carefully considering the question. "The world here is in a constant state of change. Avalon was too . . . utopian, I guess would be the proper human term. I was bored." She regarded him with a hard look that wasn't altogether unfriendly. "I've always been your sister, and it's going to be interesting, switching to that role."

"But if you're my older sister, then why aren't you the new ruler and not me?" He tried not to sound accusing; the throne was, after all, his responsibility, and he didn't want it to sound like he was trying to avoid it.

Samantha laughed softly, looking much younger than she had in years. "We have different mothers, Aedham. Yes, I am Tuiereann. But my mother, she was from Outremer." To Adam's confused look, she added, "I think our father was trying to establish some sort of alliance with the other elfhame. And for whatever reason, it didn't quite work out. We remained distant from Outremer." She looked past Adam, as if trying to remember something. "I never knew my mother. Our mother was everything I ever needed. I loved our parents dearly, Adam. Please don't forget that."

The serious turn the conversation had taken felt uncomfortable. As they walked back to the house, Samantha subtly changed the subject back to the situation at hand. "Since it's summer, we won't have to worry about putting anyone in school. If anyone asks, I'd suggest the following: relatives from out of town. The Haight in San Francisco. I have an address we can use, if needed. While you and Marbann were practicing, I showed them our tape of Encino Man. Looks like Pete's already picked up on some of the slang already."

Adam groaned. "He doesn't need to be going around sounding like Pauly Shore. I think it would drive me nuts after a while."

"Just think what a good disguise it would be," Samantha pointed out.

In the dining room, Moira stood over an empty chair, and with the scissors waved Marbann to sit down. "Your turn, Marbann. And speaking of disguise, did you ever show our King here how to hide his elven features? He can't be walking the street looking like that, you know."

Marbann held his arms up in a gesture of surrender before Moira fastened the sheet around his neck. "I leave that in your capable hands, my lady," he said. "He knows basic self-defense. This I thought would be most important to learn."

"Basic self-defense and how to nearly level a house with an uncontrolled levin bolt," Samantha said sardonically. "It doesn't look like any structural damage is done," she added, eying the ceiling suspiciously.

As it turned out, learning the human glamorie was simpler than building the basic shield and required less energy. Since Adam's hair was already styled to blend in with the human population, all he had to alter were his ears and eyes; it was like wrapping a miniature version of the magical shield around his face and wearing it like a helmet.

"There. Now you look presentable," Moira said.

At the door came a knock. Adam looked up at Samantha, who had a mischievous expression he couldn't quite fathom.

"Well, King Aedham," she said, "shouldn't you go answer it?"

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