With Nine You Get Vanyr Read online

  Dedication

  To our husbands, the heroes of our lives. And to our beta readers (you know who you are) for reading this story and helping us make it much, much more.

  The weird sisters, hand in hand,

  Posters of the sea and land,

  Thus do go about, about,

  Thrice to thine, and thrice to mine,

  And thrice again, to make up nine.

  Peace! The charm's wound up.

  Macbeth, Act I, Scene III

  Chapter One

  The skinny, bald guy’s fur boots and matching fur condom weren’t that unusual by the standards of Atlanta’s Dragon*Con. What pushed the costume right into the ozone, however, was the chainsaw attached to the guy’s left wrist like a weird prosthetic hand. What kind of caveman had a chainsaw for a hand?

  “Thea, you’re dripping.”

  Thea Gardner jerked the Styrofoam cup away from her lips. Drops of iced tea splattered the convention programs and glossy gaming fliers spread across the table where she sat with her friend.

  “Liz,” she whispered as she shook the papers dry, “check out the chainsaw guy who just walked into the lobby.”

  Liz glanced over her shoulder in the direction of the freestanding bank of elevators dominating the Hyatt’s lobby. In front of the elevators, a pair of escalators and a carpeted staircase connected the lobby with the auditoriums and meeting rooms of the lower levels. Unfortunately, at that moment, a double line of white-armored Stormtroopers blocked Liz’s view.

  Thea sighed with disappointment. From their table in front of the coffee shop, you could see from one end of the lobby to the other—except when the crowd got in the way. By the time the parade of Stormtroopers passed, the guy with the chainsaw would be halfway down the escalator.

  Luckily for Liz, there were too many people, costumed and not, between chainsaw guy and the stairs. Chainsaw guy obviously thought so too. With a fearsome yell, he brandished the saw over his head and pulled the cord dangling from the gearbox covering his left hand. Stormtroopers scattered like white rats at the sound of the lab assistant’s bell. Liz gasped as the saw growled to life.

  Only it didn’t. The lethal looking teeth of the saw remained stationary over its owner’s head while the “engine”—probably a disguised tape recorder—roared like a motorcycle going from zero to eighty in ten seconds flat.

  A smattering of applause from a few of the other coffee shop patrons greeted chainsaw guy’s special effect. He bowed and melted into a welter of Hobbits the size of professional football players. The Stormtroopers, their helmets probably hiding more than a few red faces, reformed their ranks and marched into the bar. With a sheepish expression in her own slate blue eyes, Liz leaned back in her chair.

  “Gotcha,” Thea said. “And the rest of us too. By the way, how many of these fantasy conventions did you say you’d been to, Ms. Been There, Done That, Got the Henna Tat? Any idea who or what he was supposed to be?”

  “In order—not enough, nope, and I don’t plan on asking anyone either.” Laughter bubbled under Liz’s words. “Damn, I needed that. I need this.”

  Liz flung her arms wide, as if to encompass the entire lobby. In typical Liz fashion, her grand gesture didn’t cause so much as a ripple in the streams of humanity swirling around their table. If Thea had tried anything similar, the best she could’ve hoped for would’ve been multiple charges of aggravated assault. That was only the tip of the iceberg as far as their differences were concerned.

  Liz Devereaux was a slender, high-level civil servant with expensively styled, titian-colored hair and an equally expensive wardrobe to match. Thea, even though a year younger, looked ten years older. A marriage gone horrifyingly wrong and a spate of bad health had left Thea overweight and careworn. Her graying blonde hair had been cut by a discount salon and her clothing was retail—and aging retail at that.

  Yet for all their differences, in so many ways they were alike. Thea needed Dragon*Con too. She thanked the stars she’d agreed when Liz suggested the nine members of their Internet fan group meet at the Labor Day convention. The con was worth every hard-earned nickel of Thea’s savings.

  Coming to Dragon*Con was like coming home. Only home had never featured hordes of science fiction and fantasy fans dressed as their obsession du jour, or wandering medieval singers doing their best to be heard over the boisterous crowd. The fact the minstrels were failing miserably seemed to bother neither the singers nor the crowd.

  It was a shame real life couldn’t be like this. Small as it was, a hotel room shared with a friend felt a thousand times more welcoming than the arctic emptiness of Thea’s efficiency apartment. The number and variety of costumed fans gave the illusion of a universe of limitless possibilities.

  I don’t want to go back.

  Like the note of a pitch perfect Tibetan singing bowl, the thought circled through Thea’s mind. She didn’t want to go back to her cheerless apartment and dead-end job. She didn’t want to go back to her life. She wanted to go forward instead of back. Most of all, she didn’t want to slide into the darkness at the end of it all without something to mark her passage through the light.

  “Earth to Thea. You okay?”

  Liz’s chin rested on her laced fingers. Her somber gaze gave the impression she could see the dark thoughts inside Thea’s brain. It was a good act, but the translucent quality of Liz’s pallor and the slight puffiness around Liz’s eyes told a different story.

  Thea knew stress when she saw it. “I’m fine. But you aren’t. Come on, Liz. Talk to me.”

  “It’s nothing, really—or nothing new. I can’t seem to handle the crap at work like I used to.”

  “What happened?”

  Liz shook her head. “Nothing. Same old same old.”

  Thea raised an eyebrow and waited.

  “No. Really. If Johnnie’s death didn’t take me down, those turkeys at the State Department don’t stand a chance. It’s just…” Liz gazed toward the bar. Thea had the oddest feeling Liz wasn’t seeing the Stormtroopers playing cards or the werewolf with silver-tipped fur drinking his Bloody Mary through a straw.

  “I wish I could make a difference.”

  Liz’s wistful remark was so close to what Thea had been thinking, the short hairs on the nape of Thea’s neck stood straight up. The skin on her arms prickled as if the air had become charged with electricity.

  Liz didn’t appear to notice. She stared straight at the werewolf. The werewolf cocked his masked head in her direction. When Liz didn’t react, he shrugged and turned to a pair of Eowyn look-alikes to his left.

  “I wish I could too,” Thea said.

  Liz patted Thea’s arm. “It’s funny, people think because I work in Washington I can actually do good. They think I’ve got some kind of power over the system, that I can make the world a better place. But I can’t. No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to make things any better. Hell, it’s a good day when I can keep things from getting any worse.”

  “How do you think I feel? I’m so low on the corporate totem pole, I can’t get my human resources person to answer my calls—even when I’m standing right in front of her desk with my cell phone in my hand. Damn straight I want to make a difference. But I have about as much chance of changing the world as one of those giant Hobbits has of ever finding their way to the Shire.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Liz mused. In the blink of an eye, her expression shifted from melancholy to mischievous. “Who’s to say they aren’t in the Shire right now? Look at it this way, if somebody looks like a Hobbit and talks like a Hobbit and acts like a Hobbit—and his friends are all doing the same thing—doesn’t that mean they are Hobbits for the duration? In which case… Oh, shit.”

  Liz pushed her
chair away from the table. She pointed to the left of the elevators. “The little old lady in the blue caftan—I think she’s in trouble.”

  It took Thea a moment to spot the old woman. The crowd, several hundred strong, surged like a restless sea around the elevators. Its breakers spilled out toward the escalators. The old lady couldn’t have been much more than five feet tall. One wrinkled hand clutched a silver-headed cane. Her silvery-gray hair was caught up in a neat bun. The old lady frowned at the hordes around her.

  Thea could understand why Liz thought the old woman was in trouble. People in the lobby were packed body to body. A dark angel’s faux wings flapped against a Gondorian knight who was backed against a Teletubby dressed in satanic black.

  The angel whirled around and slapped the knight. The knight staggered into a Vulcan, who howled and grabbed his foot. The Vulcan fell into the Teletubby. The Teletubby swung at the angel. A KISS-booted Darth Vader look-a-like wandered into the pentacle-topped Teletubby’s right hook. Darth toppled like a redwood, felling nearby con-goers like so many psychedelic mushrooms. The old lady smiled and trotted forward. Thea’s eyes widened.

  “Liz.” She caught her friend’s arm. “Wait.”

  Liz tried to pull away. “Thea, let me go. I need to help that old lady.”

  Thea held fast to Liz’s arm. “Liz, look again. I don’t think she needs our help.”

  “Of course she needs…oh.”

  The domino effect of Darth’s fall spread through the lobby, opening a path from the elevators to the escalators. The old woman strolled through the chaos as if she were walking through daisies instead of an impending riot. A trail of sapphire light followed the old woman through the lobby.

  Thea let go of her friend’s arm. Liz rubbed her eyes. “You know, we might want to call it a night soon. My eyes are playing tricks on me.”

  Thea dragged her gaze away from the old woman. “Mine too. Everything is coated in blue.”

  Liz frowned. “Did you say blue? That is too weird.”

  “Hello there, dears! Would you mind if I sit with you for a minute?”

  Both Thea and Liz jumped. The old woman stood by their table.

  “Excuse me?” Thea stammered. “I don’t believe…”

  The old woman smiled. “Of course you don’t,” she said. “But you will.”

  A Stormtrooper materialized next to the old woman and proffered her a chair. “Why thank you,” the old woman cooed. “You’re too kind.” The Stormtrooper helped the old woman sit and arrange her cane to her satisfaction. He saluted and wandered away.

  Thea gaped at the old woman. Why did she feel like she’d fallen down a rabbit hole? What the heck had that cryptic “But you will” been all about? But she would what?

  “Thea’s not used to conventions,” Liz said. “Of course you can sit at our table for as long as you like.”

  “Thank you, dearie,” the old woman said. “It’s so crowded a body hardly has room to breathe, much less think.”

  Thea hoped the old woman wouldn’t want to sit for too long. Thea wanted to get to bed. That freaky moment with Liz must’ve been the first stage of a migraine. Now Thea was seeing blue auras—especially around the little old lady, who seemed to be dripping with iridescent blue light.

  A deep-toned bong resonated through the lobby. Thea shook her head and pulled at one ear. Now she was hearing bells—bells nobody else seemed to hear. The crowd flowing around their table displayed no visible reaction to the ringing. Was the sound all inside her head? Maybe she was coming down with something?

  “Marvelous!” the old woman crowed. “Let me introduce myself. I’m Madame Reyah.”

  Thea choked on an ice chip. Did the old lady actually believe she was a character in a TV show?

  Liz, evil wench that she was, obligingly pounded Thea’s back. “Like the mother goddess on the television show, Domain?” Liz asked between thwacks.

  The old woman beamed. “The one and only. Are you Domain fans too?”

  Thea didn’t trust herself to speak. She set down her iced tea. In contrast, Liz appeared to have no problems making polite conversation with geriatric delusionals. “Are we ever! It’s the best fantasy television show in years. Between your sons, the Vanyr…”

  “Madame Reyah” grinned from ear to ear. The theme music from Jaws started playing in Thea’s brain. Thea had no idea why. The little old lady’s dentures didn’t look all that pointy.

  “…and the guys you’ve selected as your Chosen champions, Domain’s got more gorgeous young immortals than the first three seasons of Highlander put together. You’ve got magic and adventure and stories that don’t rehash The Lord of the Rings every other week. And did I mention great looking guys?” Both Liz and Reyah laughed.

  “You did, dear,” Reyah said, “and I’ll have you know I’m very proud of them myself.”

  Liz took a sip of tea. “What made you decide to attend Dragon*Con, your…” Liz’s voice trailed away.

  Thea hoped the pause didn’t mean Liz was going to fumble the conversational ball. The hairs on the back of Thea’s neck were still standing at attention, and her weirdness meter had gone off the charts.

  “You know, that’s something they never addressed in the show.” Liz spoke as if she occupied multiple realities every day of the week. “What is the proper honorific for the mother goddess of a planet?”

  Oh! The old lady was role-playing, and Liz was playing along with her. Well, duh. Thea got it now.

  This must be what Liz had been talking about earlier with regards to the Hobbits. It was more than putting on a costume. As Thea could attest after only a few hours at the con, a lot of the fans tried to live the role they were playing. Liz was humoring the old lady by acting as if her Reyah fantasy was real. It was a variation of what the live action role-playing gamers did. Thea could deal with that.

  “How about ‘Your Divinity’?” Thea suggested.

  Madame Reyah tittered. Thea had never truly heard anyone titter before, but that was the only way to describe the sound coming out of the old bird’s mouth. Reyah’s spangly blue aura tittered too—even though according to everything Thea had ever read on the subject, colors didn’t have sounds. It was fascinating as hell, but Thea was beginning to think she needed to get back to her room five minutes ago.

  “How clever you are!” Madame Reyah caroled. “I’ll have to remember that when I get back home.” She tittered again. “However, I don’t go in for that kind of formality here. ‘Madame Reyah’ is fine.”

  Liz winked at Thea.

  “You must come visit me. I’ve got a booth over at the Marriott, in the exhibit hall, right between Eric Bernard and Michael Ryan,” Reyah said. “Eric plays the Lord of my Keep, and Michael plays my son Deryk. He’s a lovely boy.”

  “Who, Michael or Deryk?” Liz purred. Thea stifled a groan. At this rate, they’d be here all night.

  “Why both of them, of course,” Reyah replied.

  “Give me Michael, any old day,” Thea said. “Deryk is too extreme.”

  “You don’t like Deryk?” Reyah asked.

  Thea took a deep breath and faced down the irrational panic Reyah’s question inspired. What was it about this old lady that had her so spooked?

  “No. With all due respect, Your—Madame Reyah, Deryk’s an evil, murdering sorcerer who slaps people around. What woman in her right mind would like that?”

  “Oh bother,” Reyah grumbled. “Has he been naughty again? I’ll have to put a stop to that. It gives people entirely the wrong idea.”

  “I’m partial to Roarke myself,” Liz said.

  “Roarke!” Reyah squawked. She sounded genuinely outraged. “He can’t hold a candle to Deryk.”

  “Only if you like blonds,” Thea countered. “Some of us like them tall, dark and—”

  Reyah sniffed as if anticipating the h-word.

  “Wounded,” Thea finished with a small grin of triumph.

  “Bah,” Reyah answered. “Deryk is twice the man Roarke is.” r />
  “Twice the scoundrel,” Thea replied with some heat. “At least Roarke isn’t trying to take over Seshmeel like Deryk is.”

  “Yeah, but he’s given the producers a great reason to set most of next season in Seshmeel,” Liz said. “Studio shots are always good for the budget.”

  Reyah’s cane clattered to the floor. “What did you say about Seshmeel?”

  Chapter Two

  Across the universe, on the planet known as the Goddess Reyah’s Domain

  Salentia, the capital city and busiest port of the kingdom of Seshmeel, hid her age well. In fact, she buried it. It was one of the things Roarke liked best about the place, especially on nights like this.

  Late winter moonlight silvered the facades of the seafaring associations, guilds and businesses along Dock Street. Burnished by the faint mists wafting off the nearby river and the buttery glow of wizard lights, the cobbled street gleamed like a ribbon of pearls.

  But an alley stinks like an alley no matter how much moonlight you throw at it, Roarke reflected as he massaged the chill from his gloved hands. The alley behind the Wayward Bard tavern at the corner of Dock Street and Poole Lane was no exception. From the pungent aroma of the slop buckets outside the kitchen door, today’s bill of fare had consisted of cabbage, cabbage and…cabbage, none of it particularly fresh. Adding to the bouquet was the unmistakable stench of putrefying rodent and the even less savory odors from the storm sewer running down the center of the alley.

  Roarke wished the local scavengers could’ve disposed of the animal before he arrived. But he had to admit there was something terribly fitting about sharing his vigil with a dead rat. With a little luck, tonight he’d send the biggest two-legged rat in all of Reyah’s Domain straight to hell.

  Again.

  Roarke pushed the thought aside. He didn’t want to queer his luck.

  Some might argue standing in a stinking alley with nothing for company but evil thoughts and a three-foot length of serrated volcanic glass was hardly a suitable occupation for the immortal son of a goddess. Roarke’s lips twitched as he triple-tested the obsidian blade’s draw from its padded scabbard. In fact, he could imagine his mother expressing Her opinion on the subject in exactly those terms.