palace of the Shidhe. After that first interview with Lady Deigh, Sum had seen nothing of the ruler of the palace. Hart he had seen, but not talked to; every time he approached her, she slipped away.
Father Rinaldi was his near constant companion. The two wandered the halls, groves, and shadowed passages of the Seelie Court, talking. As soon as the priest was released from the cell, Sam had demanded the reason for Rinaldi's imprisonment. The priest had revealed that he was investigating rumors of renegade druids. When his attempts to gather knowledge from the Irish elves had uncovered the existence of the Hidden Circle, his welcome had come to an end. Lady Deigh had called for an interview and Rinaldi had revealed too great an interest in the subject. Apparently, the Lady had her own plans, though the priest had no idea of their content. She had ordered him imprisoned. The priest had not spoken of his involvement in the affairs of the Hidden Circle earlier for fear that Sam would distrust him as an agent of the cabal.
They concluded that the elves had thrown them together in the hopes that they would reveal things about the Circle. Sam didn't know what he knew that the elves didn't. He suspected that they knew more by far and were just being cautious. Once Sam and Rinaldi discovered they were opposing the same adversaries, they postponed their discussions until Sam, with the help of Rinaldi's theoretical knowledge, managed to adapt one of Herzog's spells to cloak them in silence. Protected from prying ears, they pooled their knowledge and reached the conclusion that they needed to escape confinement as soon as possible. The renegade druids had to be stopped.
They wandered the halls of the palace, alert for anything that might offer an opportunity of escape. They knew they were followed, usually by a single elf; the watchers made little secret of their surveillance. Follow they did, but the watchers did not interfere unless Sam and Rinaldi strayed towards one of the zones forbidden to them. At such times, the lone watcher was rapidly reinforced by other elves with munchkin minions who blocked the prisoners' path and ordered them to turn back. They were never told why they were not allowed to proceed further. Sam maintained that they had gotten too near the outer precincts, but Rinaldi seemed more inclined to think that they had only approached some reserved sector.
Three times the great tables in the main hall were replenished with the elaborate meals Sam had dubbed 'dinner' before he and Rinaldi stumbled upon a service passageway that led to a space under the open sky. The Shidhe's cloak of illusion made the open space appear to be a natural clearing in a forest. The confusing fog of active magic was weaker in that place, and Sam's astral senses let him pierce the masking spell to see open space as it was: a modern helipad designed to facilitate the loading and unloading of cargo craft. Four more 'dinners' passed before Sam, using some of Dodger's tricks and paying a terrible price in headaches, managed to tease a transport schedule from the palace computer. system while the watcher thought he was reviewing library files.
From that list, they learned of a regular cargo shuttle run. Sam was relieved to see that the aircraft assigned to the run was an Ares Wyvern, a small single-rotored cousin of the massive twin-rotored Dragon that seemed to be the mainstay of the Irish helicopter transport fleet. He wasn't sure he would be able to handle the big ship; he was nervous enough about trying a small helicopter even with the help of the sophisticated autopilot with which Ares equipped their aircraft.
Sam and Rinaldi started taking irregular walks, making sure that their paths frequently took them near junctions close to the service passage. They honed their plan to hijack the Wyvern and use it to cross the Irish Sea to England. Periodically, they checked the palace computer system's bulletin board, watching for the dummy message that was the signal from the knowbot Sam had left monitoring the cargo schedule. Sooner than they dared hope, the Wyvern arrived. They redirected their path, hoping that they still appeared to be wandering aimlessly while they were in fact taking as direct a route as possible to the landing pad. They wanted to time their arrival to coincide with its final clearances for takeoff, and they didn't have much time.
Two archways from the pad, they ducked into the shadows on the side nearer their goal and waited for the elf who had been following them. Their watcher had grown complacent; he stepped through the archway totally unsuspecting. Sam's punch took him cleanly in the belly. The elf folded, gasping for air. Grabbing handfulls of collar and of pants, Sam directed the elf into the wall. Sam winced at the crunch the elf made but was relieved to see his knees buckle. The elf sprawled on the floor, unmoving. 'Let's go,' Rinaldi urged.
Sam tore his eyes from the fallen elf and followed the priest down the corridor. They cut through another arch into a more crowded thoroughfare. It was torture to move at the more sedate pace, but Sam knew they had to do it. He felt that the elves and other beings they passed were aware of what he had done, what he and the priest were trying to do. But despite his fears, no one tried to stop them.
At last they reached the side passage that would take them to the landing space they had discovered. It was a service corridor lined with crates and parcels and bereft of the cloaking illusions so prevalent in the Shidhe palace. This stretch of passage might have been in any airport in any metroplex. Once through the illusion that hid the corridor's mundanity and assured that the way was clear, they ran.
They couldn't have timed their arrival at the arch to the landing pad any better. Through the cockpit windows of the cargo helicopter, they could see the pilot going through his preflight checks. Fortunately for the escaping prisoners, the pilot had set his craft down so that the boarding ladder was turned toward them. The bulk of the Wyvern screened the ladder from the controllers' blockhouse.
Focusing his concentration, Sam cast the spell to project the words he whispered into the pilot's headset. He held his breath, praying for success. He swallowed hard as the pilot tapped his headset in apparent frustration over mechanical difficulties. Sam saw the pilot's lips move as the elf asked for a clarification. Refocusing his auditory illusion, Sam whispered again the words he wanted the pilot to hear. To his relief, the elf listened intently, then took off his headset.
The pilot hauled himself out of his flying couch and disappeared into the body of the helicopter. He appeared again in the hatchway, kit bag in one hand. The elf slung the bag over one shoulder before clambering down the ladder. He walked around the nose of the aircraft and headed for the illusory clump of trees and brush that was really the pad's control blockhouse.
Sam allowed himself a sigh of relief before forming the visual illusion that would cloak himself and Rinaldi, making them appear to onlookers as elven pilots. Having seen the flight suit and insignia of the departed pilot made it easier to get the details right. He hoped no ground crew showed up to intercept them. The illusion was purely visual, since overriding one sense was all he could handle. Anyone who touched them would feel the diiference immediately. Even sound could give them away; the imaginary clipboards hanging at their sides would not be making the normal clatter and ground crewmen would not fail to notice that discrepancy.
They stepped onto the tarmac together and tried to look casual. Sam hoped any onlooker would think they were chatting when, in fact, they were watching over each other's shoulder for any sign that they had been unmasked. Sam was sweating by the time they passed the nose of the aircraft and out of sight of the unseen elves in the control booth.
Rinaldi was standing at the foot of the ladder and Sam was halfway up when a cold voice ordered them to freeze. Sam looked down to see the elven pilot emerging from beneath the Wyvern. The elf held an automatic pistol trained on them. For all the awkwardness of clambering out from under the aircraft, the muzzle remained steady, leaving no doubt in Sam's mind that the elf was more than capable of using his weapon. The elf's smile was that of a cat who had just caught a mouse.
'Now just ease yourself down,' he said to Sam. 'Your work's not too bad for a norm. The aural bit had good resolution, even if you had me wondering why O'Neill had gotten so formal all of a sudden. You really need work on your visuals, though. It was a good likeness, but even if it hadn't been me who saw you, you would have been hosed. Should have varied the spell for the old guy; I'm not twins.'
Rinaldi had to move aside to clear space for Sam. The elf didn't react to priest's motion; his attention was mostly focused on Sam. Thus, the pilot was wide open when Rinaldi snapped his foot up into a kick.
The priest's foot connected with the pilot's elbow, wrenching the elf's arm straight. The gun fell from the pilot's suddenly numb hand. Before the weapon hit the ground, Rinaldi stepped toward the elf and grabbed his arm. Jerking the pilot forward, Rinaldi drove his knee upward. Air whooshed out of the elf and he started to collapse, and Rinaldi helped him down by slamming his left elbow into the base of the elf's neck. The pilot's head snapped back and he hit the concrete chin first. Sam heard teeth and bone snap.
Rinaldi snatched up the gun and tossed it to a surprised Sam.
'Don't stand there,' Rinaldi said. 'Get in the helo.'
'But you…'
