Sunshaker's War
Chapter I: Ancestral Voicesâ¦
Chapter II: â¦Prophesying War
Chapter VII: Dark Night of the Soul
Chapter VIII: Universal Secrets
Chapter XIV: Shuttle Diplomacy
Chapter XVI: A Night in the Woods
Chapter XXI: In the Dark About Things
Chapter XXII: Trouble in the Woods
Chapter XXIII: Playing 'Possum
Sunshaker's War
By Tom Deitz
Copyright 2015 by Estate of Thomas Deitz
Cover Copyright 2015 by Untreed Reads Publishing
Cover Design by Tom Webster
The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.
Previously published in print, 1990.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher or author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. The characters, dialogue and events in this book are wholly fictional, and any resemblance to companies and actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Also by Tom Dietz and Untreed Reads Publishing
Windmaster's Bane
Fireshaper's Doom
Darkthunder's Way
Sunshaker's War
Tom Deitz
For
Gilbert, Bob, Mike, and Paul:
veterans of the old campaigns
and
A.J., D.J., Buck, and Paul II:
warriors of the new
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
thanks to:
Boo Alexander
Chris Durance
Ben Matcher
Christie Johnson
Jim Jones
Adele Leone
Buck Marchinton
Paul Matthews
Chris Miller
Jon Monk
John R. Newell
Vickie Sharp
Kerry Stroud
and a special thanks to
K. Michael Waldrip, for a needed distraction
and to Larry and Betty Marchinton for many others
Prologue I: Time A-wastin'
(Sullivan Cove, GeorgiaâSaturday, June 7âmid-afternoon)
By the time three o'clock had finally dawdled around, David Kevin Sullivan was getting almighty tired of shoveling gravel and busting up rocks.
And
of getting sunburned and dirty and sweaty and soreâespecially on the last Saturday afternoon before high school graduation when there were a lot more interesting things to do than engaging in impromptu slave labor on a certain waterlogged farm in the wild south end of Enotah County.
Especially
when it was the first decent day in over a month.
The mere futility of it made his blood boil: half a precious weekend blown to hell because his pa had finally felt compelled to try to salvage the driveway, when David knew with the absolute conviction of the much-put-upon that just 'cause the sun was shining and the roadbed dry enough for them to haul half a dozen loads of rock and gravel from the county quarry to the steep bit of defunct logging trail that provided access to Sullivan Manor was no guarantee
at all
that the dratted monsoons wouldn't
return by nightfall and wash it all away again. After all, why should today be any different from the last thirty-five?
Futility for sure then; and it was all his pa's fault. A whole day gone from his life because Big Billy had decided he was tired of parking at the foot of the hill.
Ha!
David snorted to himself as he paused in mid-swing to check his watch. More like the old sot was tired of having to tote his endless six-packs an extra hundred yards. Certainly Big Billy had made no move to fix the drive when the ruts got too bad for either his wife's Crown Victoria or his son's beloved Mustang-of-Death to navigate. But when
he
couldn't get out,
then
it was suddenly a problem. In the meantime, the Vic was becalmed in the backyard until David's ma felt confident her oil pan wouldn't go bye-bye on some rain-exposed rock, and he'd taken to leaving the Mustang at Uncle Dale's for much the same reason, even if it did mean a half-mile jog to fetch it.
“I'm payin' you to work, not lean on that there hammer!” Big Billy's admonition rumbled up to him from where he was shoveling their latest load off the back of his old Ford pickup.
David sighed.
Just like a bleedin' chain-gang,
he thought, once more lofting an impressive sledgehammer above his rapidly reddening shoulders before thunking it angrily into his latest obstacle: a recalcitrant white quartz boulder that dead-centered the miniature Grand Canyon of ruts and bare rocks he was ensconced in.
Just like bleedin' Reidsville State Pen.
Another blow, and another, but his efforts had little effect except to free a runnel of sweat from under the red bandanna that bound his thick, white-blond hair and send it snaking through black brows and into his bright blue eyes. He blinked at the sudden stinging and let the hammer thud into the ooze by a Reeboked foot. A forearm across his face cleared his vision passably but caught the headphones of his Walkman. He swore softly and readjusted them, then retied the soggy rag tighter, taking special care to secure the controversial mid-back ponytail. âControversial, because his ma hated it, his suddenly balding pa was jealous of it, his kid brother and most of his non-track-team friends loved it (the team, whose emblem it was, went without saying), and his favorite uncle and girlfriend hadn't yet made up their minds. As for himself, he hadn't decided either, because he could not divorce the
fact
of it from its symbolic function as both a gesture of defiance against institutional authority (he fully intended to wear it to deliver his valedictory oration in spite of Principal Taylor's protests), and as a sigil of a goal acquired.
Defiance indeed! What he wanted to do now was defy these blasted bouldersâeither that, or defy his pa, who had set him at them. Except that he didn't think that Big Billy was in much mood for defiance just then.
A final pause for a swig of Dr Pepper from the can on the grass behind him, and to flip over the Led Zeppelin tape he'd been listening to, and he was at it again: swinging the hammer in long, clean arcs that made his hands throb and the hard, smooth muscles of his bare torso tense and relax in syncopy.
“Don't pick at it,
hit
it,” Big Billy admonished grumpily. David glanced up, scowling, to see his pa expertly flip a pile of gray and white granite chips into a particularly muddy depression.
“I'd
like
to hit itâor something,” David muttered back.
It was bad enough to have his afternoon co-opted, but to have his technique criticized as wellâthat
really
made him crazy.
As if in sympathy to his sudden burst of mental agitation, “When the Levee Breaks” began on the Walkman, and David swung harder, smiling grimly at the appropriateness of the tune as he let the grinding rhythm add its own energy to his rising spleen.
Thwackâcrack, thwackâcrack, and by God let Pa call
that
tickling! Thwackâcrack,
and a section of boulder shattered, leaving one insolent, sharp-edged excrescence that looked to David exactly like the damned thing was giving him the finger. He dealt it a solid one and saw it fly off to the right downhill.
“Incoming,” he hollered absently.
“Shit!”
Big Billy yelled back, then:
“Damn,
boy, watch what you're doin'! That 'un like to 'uv took out my eyeball!”
David didn't bother to look up. “Sorry,” he grunted, though he wasn't, much.
“Cut my damned face,” Big Billy continued incredulously, and then David did look up, to see his pa lower a hand from a ruddy and mud-spattered cheek and stare at a thin smear of the blood that decorated both it and his left cheekbone an inch below the orbit. The blood was scarcely redder than the hair Big Billy had started growing longer in back as it abandoned the front and top.
“I
said
I was sorry,” David offered.
“Well just watch it! We've had 'nuff trouble 'round here lately.” Big Billy eyed the flooded riverbottoms across the nearby highway meaningfully.
“That's for sure,” David mumbled, and reapplied himself to his roadwork.
Trouble! That
was
for sure, too; and most of it his fault. After all, he'd been the one who'd insisted on prowling around the woods when his pesky younger brother had thought he heard music outside two years ago this coming July 31st. And he'd been the one who had got (or been given, he'd never quite figured out which) the Second Sight, which had allowed him to see the source of that music, whence it had led him to a series of adventures that had kept his life out of kilter ever since. For that warm summer night David had learned that his everyday world was not the only one; that there were others that lay about the familiar terra-firma like wet tissue paper thrown against a globe, and
some
of them were inhabited. That night he had met the denizens of the closest: Tir-Nan-Og, one of the three principal realms of the Sidheâthe old gods of Ireland, maybe; had seen them as they embarked on one of the periodic processional Ridings that marked the quarters of their year. That was before he had gotten tangled up in their politics, before the last in a series of ever-more-perilous encounters had resulted in their king ordering the border 'twixt Earth and Faerie closed and commerce between the Worlds forbidden.
But there were other Worlds as well, lingering tantalizingly among the golden Straight Tracks that linked them. Galunlati, for instance, the Overworld of the Cherokee Indians, where he had journeyed in a vain attempt to thwart a war among the widespread tribes of Faerie. He had lost a Faery friend on that adventureâor been unwilling participant and first cause of his betrayal and subsequent capture, which amounted to the same thingâand his conscience had not truly left him alone since.