Sunshaker's War (2 page)

“Trouble for sure,” David repeated aloud, “trouble with a capital
T.
”
And then Big Billy decided to fetch another load of gravel, which was trouble of a different kind entirely.

*

Sprawling sleepily in the bathtub two hours later, with his buddy Darrell Buchanan's latest homemade acoustic blues tape slowly winding down on the Walkman, David was certain there was no part of him that was neither sunburned nor worn to a frazzle. Or if not
every
part precisely, then at least a considerable number of large and/or conspicuous ones. With a deft twist of toes, he adjusted the hot mix to a gasp shy of intolerable, and set himself to compiling an inventory of those ills for possible guilt-tripping applications. Sunburned shoulders, back, and arms to start with, and ditto cheekbones and nose, all because there hadn't been enough clear weather this spring for him to get his usual tan. And sore muscles in all the same parts (or at least the movable ones) not to mention hips and thighs in the bargain. Nor could he ignore shovel-born blisters on six fingers, a splinter in his right palm, and a numbed-and-blood-blistered toe where he'd dropped the hammer on it right before quitting.

And that didn't even count being pissed, which—he supposed—was also pain of a sort, though in this case not of the body but of the mind.

He flopped back against the porcelained rim to let the rising tide draw the stiffness from his body, eventually finding the gumption to corral the soap and actually tackle some of the grime that patterned his torso like a Jackson Pollock painting. And recapitulated his litany of lost opportunities.

He
could
have been gaming with Gary and Darrell and Aikin, for instance: exploring imaginary paper worlds with the half of the MacTyrie Gang that had no particular interest in studying for finals and would not have sacrificed a Saturday for them even if they had. But that, at least, he was just as glad he had missed. He'd seen enough of real alternate Worlds to last him a lifetime. The worst thing was knowing they were still there: a temptation barely out of reach, waiting and—he sometimes suspected—watching.

And speaking of watching, he was suddenly having a fine time watching the soap slide and spiral over his body. Unfortunately, the patterns began to remind him of the interlaced designs the Sidhe used, and there he went again, thinking about a chapter of his life that was over—except, he feared, it wasn't. That's what his best friend, Alec McLean, had told him time after time. “You ain't seen the last of old Silverhand, I promise you.” Or, “Wonder what Oisin's doing now,” or, “Wonder if the war ever started.” Yeah, Faerie might be closed off, but it damn sure wasn't forgotten.

Not when everything he encountered reminded him of it, including Alec, who wasn't even interested in such things.

Alec! He was another defunct entertainment possibility, though in this case not one entirely out of the picture yet. In fact, after supper he was going over to Casa McLean to brush up on his chemistry (his weakest subject, and Alec's second best), and to bounce a couple of ideas about his valedictory speech off him, to see if they found a better reception with him than they had with his in-absentia girlfriend, Liz Hughes, when he'd bounced them off
her
across the phone lines for forty-five minutes the night before.

And that brought him to that same Liz Hughes, who was the person he had
really
wanted to spend time with this weekend. But she had a bodacious final art project to complete, down at the private school she'd been attending in Gainesville for the last two years, and wouldn't be coming up this weekend anyway. He quickly banished thoughts of her though, because it didn't do to be naked and wet and soaping one's body while thinking about one's remarkably pretty lady, because it put him in mind of
her
plying the bar of Coast…

At least he still had Liz's token, indeed had never removed it since she'd surprised him with it last Christmas.

It lay on his chest now, right between his pecs: a coin-sized disc of cloisonned copper she'd made in jewelry class, that bore on one side a full-faced human head (rather like his own, he thought), and on the other a conventionalized heart.
Head
and
heart:
his and Liz's years-old conflict: the dichotomy that ever confounded him.

A swirl of heat into his armpits made him realize that the tub had finally filled to acceptable level, so he turned the water off with another twist of his foot and set himself to soaking. A drip remained, though, a steady trickle that he found somehow soothing.

He was tired, so tired. He slid down lower, let the water float the soap from his body.

His eyes closed and he dreamed.

There was rain in that dream, and already he didn't like it because his dreams had been unpleasant lately—dark visions of war and death and conflict he suspected were slopping over from some unseen altercation in Faerie—never mind that he'd seen enough rain the last few weeks to last him a lifetime. But then the dream-self wrested free of even semi-conscious control, and there was nothing for a while but the hiss of sheeting water and vague, drifty images of running through a darkness full of cold prickles and slashing droplets all aligned at precise forty-five degree angles. He was lost on a stormy winter night, slogging along a road that
might
be the Sullivan Cove road, or might not, or maybe through woods where the long pine needles added their own prickles to the falling water. And there was something following him, something huge and cold and evil, with glowing yellow eyes. Something that hissed and made a rustly, squishy sound where it dragged itself across the sodden land.

Abruptly it was on him: a serpent that had no end he could see through the driving rain—a monstrous red thing with a triangular head the size of his car and ivory horns sweeping back from it and a kind of stony searchlight between that played back and forth and suddenly transfixed him so that he could only run in the slow motion pace of terrified dreamers, while the dreadful creature got closer. Its maw gaped; he tried to flee but could not; and then it had swallowed him, and he had climbed up into its forehead (which was, for some reason, hollow), and was gazing out its eyes. And then he was the serpent himself and gliding through the woods in search of…

What? Prey? Yeah, that's what he wanted: prey and vengeance. Vengeance, and…

Light ahead of him, and he slid into a clearing where the rain had drawn back to form a dry circle in the center of which a young man sat on horseback, facing away. No, not a
man
,
the captive rational part corrected: one of the Sidhe, one of Lugh's black-cloaked guards. The figure twisted around in his saddle, and fear crossed the parts of his face visible below his helm, and he screamed—except that David couldn't hear it, only see the full lips pop open. Suddenly he knew the face. It was Fionchadd mac Ailill, his one true friend in Faerie, the one he had inadvertently helped betray, and he shivered reflexively because he knew Finny probably hated him now and would hate him more if David ate him. But suddenly he was no longer the monster but Fionchadd, and he was scared, not because he was about to be eaten, but because there were people coming at him with chains, with
iron
chains, and already he could feel their heat, and then that other became aware that David was watching him, and somehow turned around in his own head and said, very slowly and distinctly, “It is all your fault, you know.”

David's heart skipped a beat and he jerked away, as if fleeing that accusation.

“No it's not!”
he screamed.
“No it's not! No, no, no!”

And back in the tub his real body flinched as well, and came desperately awake, the words still on his tongue.

“No! N—”

The word trailed off as he caught himself, and a chill shook him in spite of the steamy heat. Jesus, that had been real—so real.
Too
real, in fact, because some of it
was
real—or had been. He swallowed hard. Not a difficult dream to interpret really, he'd had it before several times in the last few months, or variations, anyway. Not always with the rain—that was a late addition, though he did tend to have it more often when it rained—but always with two elements. One was the serpent that his waking mind knew was called an
uktena:
a monster from Galunlati that he knew all too well because not only had he helped kill one, but because he had briefly
been
one, last year when the Sidhe had come seeking Fionchadd's betrayer. Anger had welled up in him, then; anger at his helplessness, and he had become the strongest thing he knew, the thing he now most feared, because he knew it reflected part of him, the darkest pit of his soul.

Yet still the memory infected his dreams—it, and the other recurring element: Fionchadd himself, now prisoner…where? He didn't know. He only knew that it was his fault. If only he'd—

With no more warning than a brief mechanical click the door popped open.

David sat up frantically, snatching a washcloth to obscure crucial portions of his anatomy, only to see with minor relief the freshly clipped blond head of his seven-year-old brother, Little Billy, staring him straight in the eye, his expression an almost comical mixture of surprise, concern, and curiosity.

“Sorry, Davy,” he began. “Pa told me to find out what the matter was.”

David glared at him. “Shut the door, dammit!” Then, when the little boy acquiesced—unfortunately with himself on the inside, “What do you
mean
what's wrong?
Nothin's
wrong 'cept I just had a whole afternoon blown to hell!” He spoke deliberately loud, not caring if he were overheard.

Little Billy twisted in the frustrated consternation of one whose good deed has gone awry and prodded David's abandoned jeans with a small, bare foot. “No, Davy,” he said patiently. “I mean why was you yellin'?”

David rolled his eyes. “Was it
that
loud?”

Little Billy nodded solemnly. “Sho' was.”

“Jesus!”
David slumped further down into the water, leaving only his head and knees exposed.

“Is something
wrong,
Davy? You been real jumpy lately. And you been talkin' in your sleep a lot, I can hear you even in my room.”

“Christ,” David groaned for variety. “What about?”

Little Billy shrugged, sat down on the toilet lid, and dragged both arms inside his Batman T-shirt, which gave him the appearance of an armless but well-endowed female dwarf. “Don't know, 'zactly. Mostly just stuff like now. You know: ‘no, no, no,' and ‘it ain't my fault,' and all. You woke me up doin' it last week. Two times!”

David didn't know whether to be irritated or grateful. His brother's room was across the hall from his own, closer than his parents' lair, which shared porch frontage with the living room. He always slept with his door closed, even when it was really hot, as did his folks. But the kid didn't. It was thus irritating to be spied upon, but a relief that it was his brother and not his parents doing the reconnaissance.

“You're not mad at me, are you?” Little Billy inquired hopefully, freeing his hands again. “Everybody's been real grouchy lately.”

David started to reply that
yes,
he was angry, at having his bath interrupted and his sanity questioned by a seven-year-old, however precocious. But then he saw his brother's face, saw the real apprehension there.

He swallowed hard. “No, kid, I'm not mad, just tired. Tired and worried, and feelin' kinda bad about somethin' I did.”

“Finnykid?” Little Billy asked, hopping down from his perch.

“Yeah,” David acknowledged, as he levered himself out and wrapped a towel around his middle. “Finnykid.”

“It wasn't your fault, y'know,” Little Billy observed, and scooted out the door David obligingly opened for him.

The door closed abruptly and David found himself facing the steamed-up mirror on its back.

“Oh yes it
was
,
” he whispered to his strangely hollow-eyed reflection.

Prologue II: Behind the Lines

(north of Erenn—high summer)

The selkies had been swimming for three days and the nights between and not always through water—though what the curious red-purple stuff was they had passed through a half-day's hard journey back, neither had known. All that was certain was that it had offered less resistance than sea-water and had tasted and smelled like flowers: alarming, yet pleasantly strange. And this morning something far more perilous had happened: when seeking to escape a curious kraken, they had dived too deep and come fearfully close to an Edge! Indeed, Tagd, the larger one, the male, had accidentally slid a flipper through and still felt in the long slender bones the empty cold that lay below the World. The rumors were true, then: there were places to the north of Erenn where the sea bed had begun to unravel—either that, or had not yet taken form.