Sunshaker's War (35 page)

At first David wasn't sure he was going to be able to make it, since Calvin outweighed him by a good fifteen or twenty pounds—especially as he could barely feel his own fingers and doubted his friend's were much better. But with Calvin's persistent struggles and one final shove from a cooperative wave, he managed to haul his friend ashore. Only then did they realize how dangerously chilled they were—for though the air itself was warmer than the water by some small fraction, there was a wind that flung around the base of the tower and sucked even that embryonic comfort from their bodies with shocking rapidity. David tried to recall everything he knew about hypothermia. There were various stages, he knew, each characterized by certain effects and responses, including a euphoric stage that was
really
dangerous because it gave you a sense of well-being right before it zapped you. Cold was the one thing they had not counted on.

“Quick, to the tower!” he cried, as soon as Calvin had found his feet. “We've gotta get out of this wind and dry off a little; gotta take a minute to think.”

“That's about all we can spare, too,” Calvin replied, rubbing his body frantically. “My hair hurts,” he added with a solemn chuckle.

“Mine too,” David assured him, and dragged him into the shelter of a projecting buttress. The low morning sun lanced in there, and it was noticeably warmer. A quick check in Calvin's pack rendered relatively dry cut-offs and T-shirt which David envied. “Jesus,” Calvin whispered, as he shucked the loincloth and donned them, “I had no idea I was
that
far gone. Damn near went into shock there.”

David started to reply that he was pretty burned out too, but then remembered that Calvin had gotten even less sleep than he.

“So what next?” Calvin wondered, apparently back to normal—for a person covered with goose-bumps from head to foot and shivering like an epileptic. Not that he was any better.

David surveyed the section of tower beside him. It was even rougher than it had appeared through the ulunsuti; was fissured and snarled with patterns that might have been natural or might have been carved, all wrought of the silver stone that comprised it. “Don't remember there bein' a door, but I don't reckon it'd hurt to look.”

“Right.”

David glanced back at him—and froze with his reply on his lips. Something had moved out there in the choppy, frigid sea; he was sure of it. Calvin noted his frown and followed his line of sight, shading his narrowed eyes with a hand. “What's up?”

“I don't know,” David whispered—just as a slick golden shape broke water, followed immediately by a smaller, more angular form he thought might have been a fin.

“Dolphins, maybe?” Calvin suggested, though something in his eyes told David he didn't believe it.

David backed further around the tower—maybe ten feet. “I don't think so,” he said slowly, straining his eyes.

Nothing.

And then—so quickly it took his breath—a shape reared from the cold silver sea not twenty feet to their left. Up and up it rose, towering over their heads. Foot-long claws slapped like matching daggers onto the shore of their suddenly precarious refuge. Claws, yes: long silver hooked ones—and paws to retract them into: webbed and covered with sleek golden fur like a seal's. But the head that gazed down on them was like nothing David had seen in all his forays into other Worlds. Like a lion, it was—but like a shark as well: long-ish muzzle, a cat's slitted nostrils, fangs like a sabre-toothed tiger backed up by the more extravagant dentition of a shark—all beneath slitted eyes as big as baseballs and greenly glowing, and the whole at least four feet across.

David caught only the smallest glimpse of body before he grabbed Calvin and ran—but that glimpse showed him a form at once mammalian and piscean—as if a smilodon had been raped by a great white shark and born hideous offspring. For the monster, though forelegged like an enormous lion, had the scaly hindquarters of a fish.

And now it was coming after them, and they had, David realized grimly, nowhere to go. There was water on all sides, the tower was only fifty or so feet in diameter—and the beast itself was easily half that long. It'd get them, sure enough, or the water would—if not the icy wind. Unless…

“Quick, Fargo, the scales!”

“Huh? We can't make
fire
here. There's no t—”

“Who's talkin' about fire?” David yelled, reeling frantically on the rawhide thong that secured his uktena scale. “I'm talkin' 'bout the
other
scales—the shapechangin' ones. Quick, think small and portable and quick. Maybe we can hide in one of these fissures.”

“Huh?”

“'Possum
,
Calvin, think
'possum
!”

And with that David grabbed Calvin's hand and clamped it around the scale that hung at his throat. He thought desperately, sparing a moment to glance toward where the monster had subsided back into the sea, hoping against hope that the thing could not come fully ashore, could only make frantic, sea-based lunges.

“Possum…?”

David squinted his eyes almost shut, not daring to close them entirely for fear of unseen attack. If only he could focus on one thing for just a minute, banish fear for a bare sixty seconds.
Come on now, Sullivan, you can do it,
he scolded himself. “'Possum, 'possum, 'possum,” he began to chant. White 'possum, he added, and felt the first twinge in his stomach that heralded the change. He did close his eyes, then; though fear almost consumed him, and he prayed the sea-lion would not come at them again in the instant that remained. What was 'possum? It was small, it was quick, it was furtive, it had delicate feet that were sensitive and could climb, it had a long pointy nose that could sort out odors. It couldn't see well, but had good instincts. It was…

The change came over him so quickly he gasped. He had only time to force Calvin's hand hard enough over his own scale to bring forth blood and hope the change would work as well for the Indian, hope their mingled blood would do the trick, when he lost himself in the agony of the shift. One moment he stood, the next was arching forward as his spine and joints shrank and re-aligned. He felt his face stretch, his vision blur and alter to read a different part of the spectrum; was vaguely aware of a thrusting at the base of his spine, of a sudden blessed wash of warmth as fur sprouted all over him.

Abruptly he was on all fours and tangled in something—his clothes; they'd not shifted with him—not that he'd expected them to. And what of Calvin? Yeah, there he was—another 'possum, ruddier than that bit of himself he could see, and darker about the head.

But then he had no more time to watch, for a huge splash behind him made him switch around, and he saw the monster again, only this time it had dragged itself wholly out of the water at a point where the shoreline was lower, and was making deliberate haste toward them.

“Run!”
he hissed, and then
was
running, sparing only a moment to grab the cumbersome fannypack with his
teeth. (The changing scale was still on a thong around his neck where he prayed it would stay, along with Liz's token; the knife was a no-go, as were his clothes). Calvin seemed to be loitering, though, and David had to zip back and urge him along with a sharp smack of naked tail against his furry russet rump.
That
got him going: pack, changing scale, and all.

Door? Where was the door
?—as they scurried around the base of the tower. Sounds behind them, enhanced beyond human hearing: a fishy-catty smell that made him want to gag. Perception strange: movement quick, but so little ground covered, and the dratted fannypacks kept snagging as they dragged across rough rocks—and that wasn't even counting the added mass of the bolt-cutters, which suddenly seemed very heavy and awkward indeed.

Slap, slap, slap:
webbed claws behind them, followed by a roar that might have been out of a grade-B Tarzan movie—except that it scared the shit of him. Onward they scurried, and the slurpy-scratchy sounds grew ever louder. Calvin was lagging, too; twisting around too often to gaze back. But then they rounded the edge of a second buttress, and David himself risked a glance back, and saw the creature—sea-lion, whatever it was—gaining on them, its shadow stretched long before it, threatening them with a dark that was pale to what would surely follow.

Another swat at the dawdling Calvin, and they were making tracks again, with the monster still behind. Around another buttress, still no door—but there
was
an opening, at the juncture of the buttress and the tower proper. No, not an opening so much as a slit: the bottom of a fissure that seemed to snake and twist right up the side of the tower, not much bigger than their own furry bodies. David hesitated there for a moment, but then the monster's shadow fell full upon them, and he decided. A final swat sent Calvin scurrying inside; he followed, finding himself at once engulfed in a stifling, smelly darkness. Probably a garderobe shaft, he thought, or something that intersected one—if the Sidhe used such primitive solutions to basic functions—if they even
had
basic functions. But then there was no more time for thought, for the slit of light behind was obscured by a mass of yellow fur, and the smell of fish and wet feline overwhelmed all others. Calvin hissed viciously and barred his needlelike teeth, though he did not let go of his pack. David tried to quiet him, but could not.

Which way now?

That was the question. Their shelter was small, no more than two feet on a side—except up.

So up it was. David started climbing, hoping Calvin would follow, and thanking a variety of deities for 'possum strength and balance. Fortunately, the shaft was not quite vertical, but seemed to describe a slow, steep spiral that made it possible to make reasonable progress. Straight up David thought he could have managed as a 'possum, but not with their equipment—and they had to have the equipment. Up then, into darkness, feeling rough stone beneath and occasionally bits of slicker material, all mixed with a brush of mold or fungus that sent spores into his nose when he slipped past them.

Up and up, and he suddenly realized he had no idea where this tunnel went, or if it even led to Fionchadd's prison. But just when he'd decided it might in fact have no openings, another crack snaked in from the left, and he could see light through it: a guard room, it looked like; he could make out a trestle table, a handful of squat, halfhuman figures standing around one, the other manned by an even dozen bored-looking Sidhe in the black-and-scarlet livery that marked them as Finvarra's warriors. Curious, he scooted closer, wondering what he could learn.
Too
close, and a paw struck a loose stone, sending it sliding back down the shaft.

The noise made one of the Faerys look up, but by then David had scuttled back into the darkness and was following Calvin further up the shaft. Good, the Indian seemed to be adapting to shape-shifting nicely.

Higher and higher, and he was starting to get tired: three hundred feet, maybe, and little 'possum legs had to move back and forth a lot to mark that distance, especially in the spiral path they followed. Another series of curves, another juncture of broken stone, another shaft of light arrowing unexpectedly in—and then a breath of fresh air found them, mixed with the sound of sweat and stagnant bodily fluids and a slow, steady groaning.

Quicker, now; crowding around Calvin and climbing higher, faster. More light, and he was suddenly looking down—not through a cleft in the wall as he had expected, but from one in the joint where a piece of vaulting met the webbing that backed it, at the juncture of ceiling and vault and wall.

Below—fifteen feet maybe—was Fionchadd.

Beyond all luck, they had found their quarry.

He was not alone, though. One of the squat figures David had seen before was just withdrawing a glittering needle from an inch or so below his navel, but not without giving it an occasional flick or twist. David saw his friend's near-naked body tauten with each movement as he obviously fought back screams, then relax at last as the needle joined other, even more wicked-looking implements, on a round table by the door.

A second torturer jerked Fionchadd's breeches up, but left his chest uncovered—so that he could lay a dagger there. It must surely have been of iron, too, because the Faery boy immediately turned very pale, and David could see his jawline tighten as he bit back a scream. Tendrils of smoke—or steam—began to drift up from the flesh beside that blade.

The first guard frowned, then shrugged, and adjusted the chains tighter. And then—God be praised—headed for the door. His fellow followed, and sharp 'possum ears caught the sound of a key grating in a lock and of a bolt being thrown. Primitive, David thought, compared with some of Lugh's precautions. Finvarra must be very confident of this place's secrecy. A moment only it took to scurry down the intricate carving of the column that supported the vaulting, and they stood on the floor.

The room swung, shifted; David was looking up at it, at the narrow bed that held Fionchadd—at the chains of iron that bound him. Their Faery friend was apparently unconscious.