Warstalker's Track (20 page)

For the rest, everyone had been debriefed
(before
David’s impromptu nap). Which is to say Aikin had given a clipped but accurate account of their voyage to Faerie, their meeting with Nuada, and their rescue of Lugh and subsequent escape. Calvin had filled them in on his activities, which was basically that Sandy had refused to stay home, but had brought every weapon in her place, and that he’d recruited his cousin Kirkwood because, as Kirkwood himself had put it, “Two crazy Indians’ll put the wind up anybody, mortal or otherwise.”

And then Liz had quickly summarized what should also have been David’s graduation—essentially that it had happened—and the parental chaos that had ensued, which had consumed massive amounts of time they hadn’t known was all that critical. Happily, they’d also fulfilled their quest, as evidenced by the array of odd artifacts scattered on Devlin’s coffee table. Bows, swords, war clubs
—atasi
was the proper term—and a few uktena scales.

“Got more of those,” Calvin confided, to David’s great relief. “Figured we might need to get the hell out of Dodge on the fly, as it were.”

Meanwhile, the Faeries had focused most of their attention on the unconscious Lugh, washing his body repeatedly to remove ever more of the insidious iron dust, including that which had made festering lumps of his ears. He did look better, David conceded. Flesh that heretofore had been blistered and red was now utterly unblemished, without freckle, mole, or misplaced hair.

He was healing himself, Nuada had said. Slowly, from the inside. Quite possibly from the brain out. Maybe the Faeries were helping, though what good the two males could accomplish, David had no idea. Fionchadd had been no great shakes when the voyage had begun, and Nuada had pushed himself to exhaustion. David wondered whether he too might have some link beyond mere birth to the Land of Tir-Nan-Og.

Somewhere in the wee hours, too, Uncle Dale had arrived with LaWanda and news of the rest of the clan. Short form: Big Billy was stable but neither improving nor reliably conscious, which his doctor opined was shock: how else to explain the things he’d babbled when flirting with awareness. In spite of evidence to the contrary, no major organs had been compromised, though a couple of third-string arteries had taken significant hits. They’d X-rayed everything in sight, probed what the ’rays had missed, tested him for everything under the sun, irrigated his wound three times, and stitched him up. Oh, and added four units of blood to replace what had oozed away. JoAnne was planning to camp out there, along with Little Billy. Dale might make a run back to the Cove come daylight. Nor did he remain at Devlin’s compound long, since they’d thoughtlessly brought only one car, which JoAnne would need in Clayton.

Thank God for Dale, too; running interference like he was, and keeping David informed on the one hand, JoAnne calm on the other, while laying down considerable law about how this wasn’t over yet, that it was far bigger than she dared think, and that David was doing what he had to, with his father’s full blessings.

As for the slain: Nuada, Fionchadd, and Aife had gone out there to check, along with himself, Cal, Kirkwood, Aikin, and Devlin. There was blood aplenty, but no bodies.

Whether that meant the enemy had gone into hiding, returned to Tir-Nan-Og, or simply dispersed (as Nuada had hinted they might), David had no idea. Nor cared, now that it was daylight and they could breathe easier. Tonight—that was what they were debating now, sitting on Devlin’s porch, drinking coffee, orange juice, and herbal tea, and eating breakfast biscuits and omelets contrived from groceries Myra had provided.

“So you think tonight’s attack will be worse?” Sandy was saying through a mouthful of ham and cheese.

Nuada shrugged. “That would be my intent if I knew where my opponent lay and that he had valuable personages with him who were so injured he dared not move them far, nor could, with ease.”

“And if I had tested his defenses,” Aife added.

“But dared not let my own actions be closely observed,” Fionchadd concluded, “lest the tide be turned once more.”

“Bottom line,” LaWanda said. “We gotta hurry.”

“Where? And to what end?” Sandy wondered.

David took a deep breath and slapped Calvin on the thigh. “Fargo, my friend”—he grinned—“we think we should get Lugh to Galunlati.”

“Galunlati!” Calvin cried, genuinely surprised, which surprised David in turn.

“Galunlati,” David affirmed. “I figured you’d already considered that, else why bring all those scales?”

Calvin shook his head. “Yeah, well, I thought somebody might want to zip off there, maybe chase down some help or something. But I never thought that Lugh—”

“Yeah, well, listen,” David broke in. And told him about their plan.

“There’s also the healing lake,” Aikin reminded them, at which point Alec perked up, but Liz looked unhappy. “We used to have some water from there,” she said, glaring at Aife. “Used to, but no longer.”

“Another debt I acknowledge,” Aife murmured back. “Another reason I am here instead of plotting your destruction.”

David slapped his knees. “So we’re agreed, then? We get Lugh to Galunlati—today, if possible.”

“Possible,” Calvin acknowledged. “Difficult and a pain, but possible.”

Liz continued to look troubled. “But what about John? He’s the one who’ll have to deal with this attack if it comes, whether or not Lugh’s here. I mean, think, folks; the enemy won’t know Lugh’s gone if they can’t read through all the steel around here.”

“They can read that much,” Nuada corrected. “Power such as Lugh commands, whether directed inward or without, would shine from this house like a beacon.”

“So there’ll be no attack?”

“Shouldn’t be,” Devlin mused. “Then again, there’re things like anger, retaliation, senseless slaughter. Down and dirty
meanness.
This is
war,
folks. In war there are no rules except win, and these folks we’re fightin’ here never heard of the UN. Our ancestors took heads, don’t forget—those of us with Celt blood in our veins, which is most of us.
These
folks still take heads!”

David nodded grimly. “I’ve seen ’em do it.”

“So, what about you, then?” Alec ventured.

“I stay,” Devlin replied. “With Lugh gone, I’m a lesser target, whatever else happens. I’ve got protections of my own, and more I can call up if I have to, and…other eyes to watch.”

Aikin cleared his throat. “I take it that we’re plannin’ to split up again?”

David looked at Devlin and Nuada, the two seasoned warriors present. “Your call, guys.”

“I don’t have enough scales for all of us,” Calvin stated flatly. “As it is, I’ll have to finagle some stuff.”

“How many
do
you have?” Liz asked.

“Seven—that I can use.” He fingered the one on his neck thong meaningfully.

“Well, that settles one thing,” David sighed. “We know how to save the King. Now all we gotta do is figure out how to save what that King thinks is the enemy country.”

Silence.

“Any ideas?” he prompted. “Anything at all?”

Silence.

“Aw, c’mon, folks. How many degrees we got in this room? How many SAT points? How much cumulative IQ? How many years of experience, you Faerie folk? Doesn’t that count for something? Imagination? Passion? Dammit, why doesn’t somebody just
think,
so I don’t have to!” And with that David rose and began to pace.

“Lateral thinking,” Liz murmured at last.

Most of the company looked puzzled, but David scowled thoughtfully. “You wanta explain that?”

Liz did: it was simply looking at a problem from a different direction, or at the literal, rather than implicit, meaning of words. “Like a knight on a quest for a virgin,” she suggested. “He meets all these people and asks where he might find a young and virtuous lady, not realizing that, as stated, he could as well find a dried-up old crone or even a man.”

Kirkwood frowned thoughtfully. “Okay, then, how ’bout this?” He paused for a sip of coffee, then leaned back against a porch post and folded his arms. “First off, best I can tell, the problem is that whatever separates Faerie and this World is being eaten away by iron on our side, which does the other side no good. The more basic problem is that Faerie depends on our world for existence, only ours doesn’t have to be inhabited, it simply has to exist. But the
root
cause of all this—what’s brought matters to a head—is the fact that some real estate developers are gonna put up a lot of ironwork on the one place in this World that Faerie is linked with most strongly.”

Calvin elbowed him in the ribs. “What’re you gettin’ at, Churchy?”

“What I’m gettin’ at is—well, what do most people do when one thing intrudes too much on another? You
destroy
one of those things. Or you—”

“Move ’em!” Liz cried. “Of course!”

“Yeah,” Alec echoed sourly. “
Of course!
Liz, what’re you thinking about? You can’t separate our World and Faerie!”

“Can’t you?” Calvin retorted. “Maybe you can’t separate those two, but something like that
has
been done. My people speak of it as myth, but half the people here have been to Galunlati and met Uki, and we know for a fact that it was moved seven times before they got it right, and then, much later, moved again—away from us.”

“And if Galunlati can be moved, no reason Tir-Nan-Og can’t be.”

Nuada stroked his chin. “An audacious plan, but not one I would dismiss out of hand.
Either
hand,” he added, flourishing his own. Sunlight struck both, but one glittered metallically, the other gleamed with healthy flesh. Slowly he brought them together. “Two hands. Two Worlds. Air between.” Then he drew them apart. “Two hands. Two Worlds. The same relationship to one another, save one thing: more air between.”

David’s mouth popped open. “You mean—”

Nuada dropped his hands. “If moving Worlds is possible, then we should look into moving Worlds. It is certainly better than war, for either side.”

“Won’t argue that,” Devlin murmured.

Myra cleared her throat. “In that case, I know of at least one other case of moving Worlds—Worlds like we’re talking about.”

“Oh, shit!” LaWanda gasped. “Girl, you don’t mean—”

Myra nodded mutely. “That place we wound up after that crap went down at Scarboro Faire all those years ago, that fucked Scott up so bad he’s still not over it.”

Calvin shook his head. “Don’t know about that, not much.”

“Too much to tell in a hurry,” LaWanda growled. “Basically, some magic dude from one of these Faery countries discovers Tracks that are silver, not gold, and not only that, he finds out he can control ’em and use ’em to steal little bits of other places and build a country—a World, I guess—of his own. Well, we fucked up his plans and he was destroyed, and his country got shook up some, but might still be there. Even if it isn’t, the Tracks might be. And if they can move little bits of Worlds, I figure they could just as easy move big ones.”

Nuada’s brow furrowed thoughtfully. “I know this tale, but had forgotten it—which I should not, just as I should not have forgotten Alberon of Alban, whose realm we visit but seldom and who sits and sulks and keeps his own council these days, even more so than Arawn and Finvarra.”

“Finvarra knows about them, though,” Fionchadd supplied. “I was imprisoned in a place with a view of them, and Finvarra sent me there. Whether he has studied them, however…”

Nuada shrugged in turn. “Do not forget that as time runs differently between your World and Faerie, sometimes, too, it runs differently between the realms of Faerie. Time runs slow in Alberon’s realm indeed, and less time will have passed there than in this World. I doubt he has had time to learn much at all. And Finvarra little more.”

“So we go ask some Faery king to tell us everything he knows about some Tracks that almost flicked up his own Land?” Alec snorted. “I don’t think so.”

“No time to get there, anyway,” Nuada agreed. “Still, if Colin’s realm—for such was the name of the druid who wrought that realm—yet survives, perhaps some clue remains there that might explain how he was able to manipulate the Silver Tracks.”

“He had books,” Piper volunteered, speaking for the first time. “Lots of books. I saw ’em in his tower.”

“Which was destroyed,” Myra countered. “The land may well have been.”

Nuada shook his head. “Not all. We watched these things. We should have investigated and did not. We thought we had all the time we needed.”

“So the records may still be there?” Myra whispered. “Oh, Jesus!”

“Yeah,” LaWanda grumbled. “And I got three guesses who’s gonna have to try and find ’em.”

Myra reached over to squeeze her friend’s hand. “You and me, girl, together again.”

“And me,” Piper sighed. “I don’t think you can get there otherwise.”

David frowned. “It was a cold place, surrounded by water. If it’s the tower Finno was locked up in.”

“It was not,” Nuada said. “There were two towers, one greater, one lesser. The one you visited was the lesser. The one your friends visited, the greater. When Colin died, his land fragmented. Parts drifted away.”

David eyed him dubiously. “If you say so.”

No one spoke.

“Well,” Sandy said decisively into that lull, “now that’s all decided, I guess the next thing we figure out is who goes where.”

“And stays,” Nuada amended. “Some of us ought to. Some of us may have to.”

Calvin checked his watch. “Well, if Lugh’s goin’ anywhere before dark, we’d better get to talkin’.”

“Or rolling dice,” Aikin put in, a trifle giddily. “Might be just as effective.”

“No,” Sandy assured him with a smile. “I’ve been thinking.”

PART TWO

Scott Gresham’s Journal

(Sunday, June 29—morning)

This is really great! Just fucking ducky! First of all, here I sat actually doing what’s
almost
real work on Mr. Laptop here—for a change—and then all of a sudden I get this phone call from Myra wondering if just maybe, perhaps, might I kinda, from the goodness of my heart, being as how I’m a really nice guy and all, want to dump everything here and bop down to Athens so I can hare off to Faerie with a bunch of ’em looking for some kind of fucking magic book that may not exist.