Summoned to Tourney by Mercedes Lackey & Ellen Guon

Author:Mercedes Lackey & Ellen Guon [Lackey, Mercedes & Guon, Ellen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Elizabet, Dharinel, Bardic, Kory, Summoned, Korendil, Nightflyers, Melisande, Bedlam's Bard, elves, Eric Banyon
ISBN: 9780671721220
Google: 3oTNYgEACAAJ
Amazon: 0671721224
Publisher: Baen
Published: 1992-05-01T04:00:00+00:00

The choice was to go home or call home; he only had change for one. Eric sat on the BART bench, staring at his clenched hands in his lap. He could see it now, in his mind’s eye… the Nightflyers gliding into the building, leaving nothing alive behind them. He knew he could’ve seen it before it had happened, if he’d bothered to think about the consequences of his actions.

What did they do? How many people did they kill, when I let them into that complex?

Something small and shadowy whispered in the back of his mind: We will tell you, if you let us come back… Bring us back, bring us back…

“No!” he said violently, loudly enough that the other passengers on the subway looked up at him. He leaned his head against the glass, closing his eyes to shut out the rest of the world.

No, I won’t bring you back, he silently said in the direction of that shadowy voice. No dice. I know what you are now, and I’ll never do that again, never.

The image of the Nightflyer bowing to him in the ruined streets of San Francisco hit him like a fist, a mental sending that was as clear and sharp as a memory.

You have/will/are helping us, the voice continued. Help us again. Lead us, bring us back…

With a sudden clarity, Eric saw the Nightflyers, poised around him, but just beyond reach… just beyond a veil, thin and shimmering, that was all that stood between the waking world and the realm of nightmares. He understood their way of thinking in all times at once, past/future/present, and how they hungered for all things human and living. And how they needed him, needed someone or something to break through that thin veil and bring them into the real world. He could feel their slow and patient thoughts, simmering evil that was completely inhuman, and how they had watched him—since he was a child, they’d known he would be a Bard someday (if he lived that long) and would be able to aid them… waiting for a moment, a Breakthrough, when the Special Ones could get through.

Well, you’re going to be waiting a hell of a lot longer than that! He thought to the waiting throng. Because I’m not doing it!

Not evil, not us, the voice said quietly across the void between the two worlds. But different, and in need of your masses of humanity to survive… we need you, as you needed us…

Eric reached out blindly with his thoughts and shoved, hard, until he no longer heard the voice, and he was alone again in his own head, with no whispering evil by his side. Like a sleepwalker, he left the BART train at the Powell Street Station to change to a Metro bus, and then to step down from the bus and walk up the hill to their house. Even from the end of the street, he saw the two motorcycles parked in the driveway, and felt a weight, that he hadn’t known he was carrying, lift away from him.

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