Free Summoned to Tourney by Mercedes Lackey; Ellen Guon Page B

laughed, ruffling Kayla’s short brown punked-out hair. “This girl is a never-ending source of joy to me. I’m very glad you crossed my path that night, child.” She looked at Kory, Beth, and Eric. “Perhaps you would want to order breakfast? Everything at this cafe is quite good. We’ve been eating here every morning during the conference.”
    “How’s the conference going?” Beth asked.
    “Reasonably well. Any time you gather more than a hundred Wiccans together into one building, there will undoubtedly be chaos. But I believe we are accomplishing something. Just yesterday, we worked on a formal contract of apprenticeship, so that the other witches won’t necessarily have to adopt their students, as I have with Kayla.”
    A waiter took their order, then hurried away. Beth waited until he was out of earshot, then leaned forward, her elbows on the table. “Liz, I mentioned this over the phone…we’re here because of a problem. Eric has been having a lot of nightmares lately.”
    Elizabet stirred her coffee. “Both Kayla and I are experienced at healing traumas and emotional problems, though Kayla’s turning out to be better at that than I am. She’s done very well with Ria Llewellyn in these last few months.”
    “How is Ria?” Eric asked neutrally.
    “Some days, she’s better than others,” Kayla replied. “Sometimes she’s almost lucid. A few weeks ago, she gave me this.” She lifted a small amulet from where it rested on her t-shirt, tugging the necklace over her head and handing it to Eric.
    He looked at it closely, wondering where he had seen something like this before. It was a small circle carved out of some kind of translucent rock, maybe a geode, with the outline of a shadowy mountain drawn out of the colors of the rock.
    “I’m not certain what it is, but it’s unusual,” Eric said. “It might be magical, I can’t tell.”
    Kory leaned over to look at it, puzzled. “It looks like one of the mountains in the Faerie Realm,” he said thoughtfully. “One of the distant mountains, near the edge of the Lands Underhill.”
    Eric handed it back to Kayla. “It’s probably harmless, but I’d be careful with it, anyhow. Why did Ria give it to you?”
    “I don’t know. She was nearly catatonic for days afterwards, and then couldn’t remember it when I asked her about it. Sometimes I feel like she’ll never get better…“
    “You’re doing fine, child.” Elizabet smiled reassuringly at her protégée. “Some healings just take longer than others,” She glanced at Eric. “Tell us more about these nightmares, Eric. Are they all the same dream?”
    He nodded. “Mostly the same. They’re mostly about earthquakes.” And Nightflyers, those shadow-demons that I summoned accidentally several years ago. First at that concert, and then at Ria’s, and now in my dreams…why do those damn things keep turning up in my life? It’s like I have some weird affinity for them, somehow.
    The Nightflyer, bowing to him…
    “And last night, after we talked about how this could be a precognitive dream, I tried to look into the future. And I saw the same thing as in my dreams, except this time I was awake.” He stared down into his cup of coffee. I’m afraid that I might be seeing the real future, that this is what’s going to happen to us.”
    “What can we do about this?” Kory asked. “If this is a true future that Eric is seeing, we will want to do everything we can to prevent it from becoming reality.”
    Elizabet thought about it for a minute. “Kayla’s very sensitive. If Eric looked into the future again, while she was near him, she might be able to determine if this is a fantasy that Eric is creating in his own mind, or something real.”
    Eric glanced at the young healer, wondering if he really wanted the punkette kid in his mind.
    The girl grinned, showing teeth. “Don’t worry, Bard. I’ll be gentle.”
    “Thanks a lot,” he muttered.
    “We should try this as soon as