Warstalker's Track (35 page)

“Go to it,” Alec sighed, likewise rising. “I’ve gotta find something to store this in.” He flourished the ulunsuti. “Ceramic jars are nice,” he added hopefully.

Aikin left him to it, made his way to the cupboard in question, twisted the latch (in the shape of a leering demon’s head), and opened it. The horn was the first thing he saw: as long as his arm and gently curved, like a hunting horn. He started to reach for it, then hesitated, squinting at it uncertainly. What was it made of, anyway? Ivory, maybe. Or bone. Except that it was red, and he didn’t think it was dyed, stained, or painted. It was carved, too: four separate bands of marching gryphons, interspersed with delicate interlace. And there were ties attached to it: cords of crimson silk ending in matching tassels.

Steeling himself, for he recalled Deffon’s reference to protections, he reached out gingerly and touched it. Nothing happened. Another breath, and he took it in his hand. “Hail to you, Aikin Daniels,” Deffon said quietly, at his side, though he hadn’t heard the beast approach. “Hail to you, Mighty Hunter: for this time and place, and the times that come after, the Lord of the Gryphons.”

It took a moment for those words to register. Then: “What?
Me?”

The gryphon nodded sagely. “Colin used that to summon us so he could then enslave us. Yet a threat to your World is a threat to ours, and in this World, at least, we are free. Only a mortal or one of Faery kind can wield that horn, but by your kind alone may it be destroyed. Think of that when such seems good to you.”

“Thanks,” Aikin replied solemnly, gazing into the beast’s vast sad eyes. “I will.”

“Hey, Aik!” Alec called. “Get your butt over here. Women folk say it’s time to travel.”

“Thanks,” Aikin whispered again, then turned to retrieve his shotgun. Aife had a firm hand on Colin’s grimoire. Piper was already tuning up his pipes.

“Until—” the gryphon whispered in turn, and in three swift bounds had vanished down the stair.

“Until…” Aikin murmured back, one hand on his sawed-off shotgun, the other on a Faery-wrought hunting horn.

Interlude V: Time and Tide

I

(Sullivan Cove, Georgia—Sunday, June 29—early evening)

Scott Gresham, who alone of the shaky fellowship bent on saving Sullivan Cove had actually
remained
there, kicked a discarded beer can and wished it were Ralph Mims’s head. Not that total decapitation of Mims and his cronies would do much good now, nor dismemberment and displaying the quarters at the mountain passes by which the tourists the assholes hoped to attract found their way here.
That
wouldn’t help at all, not with the on-site office all but installed, the backhoe primed to start excavating, and bulldozers on the way. Mystic had a foreman now; there’d be a dozen men on-site tomorrow, a dozen more two days later. Too many to stop single-handed, too many prying eyes. Never mind the matched set of rent-a-cops that’d be staking out the place from here on.

Only magic could save the Cove now—or divine intervention. He hoped David and his clan would forgive him for failing to stall these guys. For that matter, he hoped he’d forgive himself. Maybe it was time to take the considerable stash of ill-gotten gains he’d already accumulated and hit the high road for Alaska. Presuming there were no Faeries there. Or other troublesome realms.

Sighing, he kicked the can again and tried to go through the motions of being busy, which meant marching smartly, measuring, and looking intense while jotting down random figures in a notebook.

God, what a waste this was!
To despoil such a lovely place! He felt like a goddam rapist.

“Yo, Scott!” someone called amiably from the huddle of men crowded around the front of the office. “Get your ass over here, boy!”

Scott was tempted to ignore them. Mystic’s hired hands weren’t bad lads (the ones he’d met, anyway), nor was Mims intrinsically evil. But he wanted no part of them. He was just flat out tired of faking.

“Scott! C’mon! You don’t want to miss this!”

“I’m on it!” Scott yelled back, because he had no choice. But he took his own time ambling down the rise on which he’d pitched his tent back before Cal and LaWanda’s homemade deluge had flooded it, and into what remained of the broomsedged acre that marked both the terminus of the Sullivan Cove road and ground zero for Mystic Mountain Properties’ unstoppable resort.

A pause to check the sky (it was getting on toward sunset, which meant Mystic was paying double weekend overtime for folks to be out this late), and Scott joined the rest of the crew. It was nearly an even split: half in khaki work togs, half in expensive suits; but every pair of shoes, wingtips and hobnails alike, was caked to the ankles with mud. Which made Scott grin.

“’Bout time,” Mims snorted as Scott panted up beside him.

“What’s the deal?” Scott inquired with calculated nonchalance.

Mims pointed to a small folding table on which rested a shiny new iron spike marked with bright red paint. An equally pristine sledgehammer lay beside it. The man was all but glowing. “Well, Scott, my boy; I can’t tell you why, but I just had this hunch it’d be lucky if we drove the first spike on Sunday night. You know, so we can hit the ground running tomorrow.”

“I…see,” Scott managed, feeling as though someone had kicked him in the gut.

“Yep,” Mims went on enthusiastically. “Figured I’d drive that sucker in right at sundown.”

“Right,” Scott said again, staring west, where the sun sat right atop the mountains. But the mountain he saw was much closer, and the sheer quartz cliffs atop it glowed red as burning blood.

II

(Clayton, Georgia—Sunday, June 29—near sunset)

JoAnne Sullivan smoothed no-longer-so-Little Billy’s white-blond hair for the thousandth time that day and wondered for the ten-thousandth what in the world was going on with her husband, who’d been recovering just fine when she and Dale and the boy had arrived last night, but now seemed to be going steadily downhill.

The waiting room at Rabun Regional was deserted save her clan. The rest—two old men, one old woman, and a teenage girl with a baby she looked too young to have—had departed just after seven, likely in quest of dinner. As for Bill—her husband had been whisked away half an hour ago for another round of tomfool tests.

Tomfool because she knew what was wrong with him: something insidious that had entered his body with that stick of wood and now gnawed away at him, invisible to mortal detection. “Shit!” she spat abruptly, fumbling in her purse for a cigarette.

Little Billy glared at her. “Wish you wouldn’t smoke.”

She glared right back. “Gotta do
something
when things get like this. Can’t drink, don’t feel like eatin’, too wired to sleep.”

Dale put down the outdated issue of
Southern Living
he’d allegedly been reading since noon and ambled over to join her. If he was tired, he didn’t look it. If he was worried (as was likely), he was keeping it to himself. If he had anything to say, he’d already said it: “Don’t worry.”

“He’ll be okay.”

“If they can’t fix ’im here, we’ll find somebody who can.”

She didn’t know if she could stand to hear those things again.

“Goin’ for a burger,” Dale muttered instead, looking at Little Billy. “Anybody wants to tag along can.”

JoAnne almost accepted his invitation. “Better not,” she sighed. “No tellin’ when they’ll bring Bill back. I promised that Devlin man I’d call as soon as I knew anything, even if it was nothin’.” A pause, as her eyes misted and she almost broke down. “God, Dale,” she choked into her hand. “I wish David was here! I wish this hadn’t happened. I wish…I wish poor Bill was
well!”

“We all do,” Dale murmured, patting her arm, then giving her a fierce, hard hug. “Some things are bigger’n we are, though.”

“Right,” Little Billy agreed. “I—” He broke off, cocked his head as if listening to something outside.

“What?” JoAnne prompted. “What is it?”

Little Billy shrugged and managed a very forced smile. “Nothin’—not really. I just thought I heard a woman cryin’.”

Dale’s face went pale as the bone-white walls.

JoAnne could only look at her menfolks and shudder.

III

(Tir-Nan-Og—high summer)

Turinne mac Angus mac Offai stared first at the spreading bloodstain that ensanguined the pearl-white marble floor, then at the headless corpse of the latest of Lugh’s former guard to be ferreted out and dispatched (he thought this one’s name was Froech), and finally at the gridwork of iron that caged Lugh’s throne, there on the dais in the audience hall at the heart of Tir-Nan-Og. “Careful, lads,” he cautioned. “There may be more, but they will think twice before they waste their lives, now that they know they face the Death of Iron.”

“Aye, Lord,” Ciarran, his warlord-to-be, acknowledged; watching with absent, smug interest as Turinne flung a pouch of gold (the real stuff, not the usual englamoured surrogate) to his human executioner, who was even now wiping his steel-bladed sword on his ill-fitting livery. The man grinned wickedly and stared at Turinne’s throat, as though he’d cheerfully add it to the considerable tally he’d already amassed that day, in the Sons’ final sweep of the palace before freeing Lugh’s throne from its iron tomb. They’d use mortals for that, of course, and then get rid of them. Unless Lugh showed up, or Silverhand, or other of the deposed Ard Rhi’s clan, household, and kin.

But since Lugh was
dead,
as far as any seer they had could determine—well, there was no longer any point in waiting until Lughnasadh to bind Turinne to the Land in truth. He would be king—a good one, he hoped—and Tir-Nan-Og would prosper, as she had not since the World Walls (he’d tend to them first) had begun to fade and wear and rupture.

Oh, iron would still be a factor, but there’d be no
more
iron, because the Mortal Lands that so disrupted Tir-Nan-Og would all be underwater, and eventually the Land would heal. And after a longer space of years (though not so long to one who was immortal), the iron already present would rust away, there in its watery grave.

And then—

Turinne froze—they all did, everyone in that whole vast chamber, down to the brain-numb mortals.

It was a sound, yet not a sound. A thrum, like a harp string snapped, but not the thrum the Tracks made when unsourced Power pulsed along them. Yet he heard it: like a gong, like a chime, like a bell; so high and clear and pure he almost
didn’t
hear it, but with roots that reached straight to the roots of the mountain.

Indeed, Turinne realized, it
was
the mountain. The rock itself was ringing. Shuddering, rather, as though something tiny but infinitely sharp had pierced it to the root and set every atom in the whole stone pile to shaking.

Which could only mean one thing.

“The gauntlet has been thrown,” he told Ciarran. “That which we have awaited has occurred in the Lands of Men. War, my friends, has awakened.”

PART THREE

Scott Gresham’s Journal

(Sunday, June 29—late afternoon)

Well, fuck. I shouldn’t even bother doing this, but Dale’s gone, and Elyyoth’s a nice enough guy, but he can’t really relate to this stuff—probably because he’s trying to relate to all the stuff in the Sullivans’ house, most of which has some iron content, so he’s probably, at some level, freaked all the time.

Only I seem to have got used to ranting on this thing, so stay tuned, boys and girls, for Scotto’s latest self-indulgent tirade.

The shit, as it were, has hit the famous fan. I knew it was coming, but it just didn’t seem real. Actually, a lot of this doesn’t seem real, and I’m not just talking about the obvious stuff. No, it’s like this is all stuff we’re fighting really hard, but the folks from Mystic Mountain may want it just as bad, and I have to try to see their side, too: that maybe some resort like this is something Ralph Mims has wanted all his life. Maybe it’s something he doodled designs for in the margins of his high school notebooks. Maybe he’s mortgaged everything he’s got so he can throw money at me like it was Mardi Gras beads or something. Maybe he’s got a wife who’s just the neatest person in the world and a kid who’d be my best friend if I met him, and here I’m trying to completely ruin him forever. I mean, the Faerie thing makes sense, too, in a Medieval History 101 kind of way, but…

Fuck, I’ve got away from myself, and I’ve just realized that if I’d spent as much time dissertating as I have working out my angst on this fucking computer, I’d have the fucker done by now. But anyway, back to where I was trying to be: this doesn’t seem real. All that stuff I bragged to Devlin about, that me and Dale did. I was proud of it, but I wasn’t the guy whose expensive car wouldn’t start, or the mechanic who’ll have to figure out how to fix it, or the perfectly innocent person on some production line somewhere who decided to make that one fuel pump the best fuel pump he’d ever made just to see if he could, and I went and fucked it up. It was real to him then. The sugar was a game.

Fucking up all that computer gear was a game to me, but the stuff that got wasted might well have been pretty damned real. And now they’ve driven that spike, and that wasn’t real either, only I’ve gotta feeling it’s gonna be, ’cause the air already feels like rain.

I think I’m gonna go hang out with Elyyoth some more and see what he thinks is real these days. Like people maybe. Like ants are real to us. Fuck, it’s raining!

Chapter XVII: Return to Sender

(near Clayton, Georgia—Sunday, June 29—sunset)

…heat…

…light…

…pain…

…heat…light…pain…

…heatlightpain…

…heatlight…

Light…
that was not that which suffused Galunlati: softer, less stark, less focused. Or maybe merely less clear. Heat that was quickly fading.

Pain that was not the impossible agony that had characterized their journey to Uki’s Land. More a soreness, really; as though Liz’s cells were simply tired of being manhandled.