Warstalker's Track (45 page)

Nuada’s eyes all but smoked, too, as he wheeled in that impossibly narrow space and charged. The mortal who’d fired upon him stood still for maybe two seconds, pondered his weapon for a second longer, then turned and fled. Nuada rode him down, and the three behind him, trapping the rest between himself, Carmagh, and Lugh’s still-whirling wind. One dared the latter and got the meat stripped from his bones. Another ran, to be felled by a dart from Carmagh’s blowpipe; a third stabbed himself in the heart. The remaining two sent their weapons skittering down the hall and bowed their surrender.

“Accepted,” Lugh said calmly when he arrived. “Now take their heads. It will give Turinne more at which to gape.” A moment later, their souls fled, but their eyes still wide and staring, and the stumps of their necks still leaking gore, Margol mac Edril and Finocris ab Istyn jeweled either side of their rightful King’s saddle.

“Well, my lord,” Nuada chuckled as they continued on. “What odds do you lay against further interruptions?”

II

Coward,
thought Finvarra of Erenn as he watched Arawn’s fleet depart that place in the Mortal World they’d turned aside to investigate.
Coward and fool!
For a moment he considered blocking his fellow King and giving him the battle he so clearly desired right there within Lugh’s precious World Walls. But though Arawn himself was mighty, his grim dark Land held little to be coveted, and to slay—or defeat—Arawn was to make oneself heir to his realm, which was in truth no prize.

Tir-Nan-Og, however, was another dish entirely. Who would not desire a realm such as that?—which Finvarra had never seen from on high ere this voyage, and was looking forward to seeing again, now that that foolishness in the Mortal World was concluded.

But shouldn’t they be there by now? Surely they’d been long enough
within.
Yet
within
continued unabated, nearly as full of nothingness as a Hole. Perhaps it
was
a Hole; perhaps the Lands of Men had burned through the World Walls right here, by pure blind luck.

“Lord,” his captain ventured beside him. “Where…?”

“There,” Finvarra sighed, then choked on his next word.

They
had
reached Tir-Nan-Og. The western realm of Faerie lay beneath them, green and rich and mellow. But something had
changed.
Or was changing. This high up he could see it easily; the air itself shimmered around them with some strange new silvery Power.

Silver and Power. Alberon and a usurper druid. A tower in a World near here in which he’d imprisoned Fionchadd. Another he’d never accessed. A threat overlooked until too late.

Not that it mattered when such a spectacle lay below. For it was as though the Land itself was alive, the hills, ridges, lakes, and streams like fur on some great monster’s back, remaining fixed in place, yet moving as muscles flexed beneath the skin. There was method to that movement, too: a slow spiraling along the grain of the World Walls, like liquid forced outward on a potter’s wheel, then sucked upward at the edge by a sponge.

“Dana help us all,” Finvarra gasped. “Tir-Nan-Og is moving!”

III

Turinne snugged a heavy gold belt around a waist still trim beneath four layers of silk, wool, velvet, and leather, and one of silver mail, and regarded himself in the wall, which was also, for this time, a mirror. He looked a King well enough: tall as Lugh and more muscular, though not so well proportioned, and younger, though that didn’t truly show. He’d shaved off the mustache, however, and wore his red hair longer in an elegant tail.

He was not so much a fop as Lugh, though, and had chosen warrior garb as much as that of scholar, craftsman, or bard—which meant mail showed at wrists and throat and underlay his robes to afford his body protection against conventional weapons. Iron—that was another matter, but it was not important, for Power was Power whatever transpired, and had no regard at all for
any
metal.

Still, he was a fine figure: crimson hose and underrobe, emerald tunics layered over them, each embroidered with gems along collar, cuffs, and hem, each a hand’s width shorter than that beneath.

And over all a cloak bearing the arms he’d chosen for himself as High King:
per chevron inverted argent and gules; in chief a sun-in-splendor, Or; pierced of a dagger, proper; goutee de sang,
as mortal heralds would blazon it.

There was also a sword, though not the sword of state, for he couldn’t yet access the place where it was kept, no more than he could access Lugh’s most official crown. For that, for this time, his own helm would suffice, which was more than fine enough. Mortal work, too: stolen from an unmarked Irish rath.

For when one got down to it, what made a King of Ti
r-
Nan-Og was the bond with the Land, and that merely required a particular dagger, and that he certainly
had
found.

“Lord,” said his page, from the doorway, “time draws nigh if you would do this thing tonight. And surely…surely you know that the palace has been breached and Lugh Samildinach advances with an army at his back.”

“I know,” Turinne replied calmly. “I go to meet him. For good or ill, this thing will be resolved now.”

IV

(Sullivan Cove, Georgia—Monday, June 30—the wee hours)

Big Billy Sullivan was dreaming. He hadn’t moved from his lounger since returning home, but had been drinking steadily. Not to get drunk, however (indeed, he was stone cold sober), but because he had thirst unending and a strong suspicion why. He was also tired, which was why he’d drifted off, which was how it was he was dreaming.

In his dream there were four boys. Three were blond and good-looking; the fourth was a stocky redhead. Two were brothers and all but identical; the others were also brothers, but not quite so alike. One of each set was named David, and one of each set was named Bill—the smallest (though they were all the same age, somehow—say fourteen) and the largest, who was himself: the one with the auburn hair. And in that dream they were
all four
brothers, yet also all best friends. And they were playing soldier; only it wasn’t playing, all at once; it was real, and they were shooting real bullets and people were shooting back, and the stone fort they’d rallied in (which had started out as a cardboard box, then progressed to an abandoned outbuilding at Uncle Dale’s) had disappeared, so that they were vulnerable from every side. And then they all got shot and he could actually feel the bullet boring toward his heart. But instead of dying, they collapsed together, clasped hands, and held each other as though their hard strong fingers held life itself, and swore not to let each other die.

And then they were all well again, and no longer boys, but four kings of four lands, and they warred with each other yet still loved each other, but now they loved the land more and it was over land that they fought.

And then it was no longer a dream, nor yet was he totally in his body. Instead, he looked through other eyes
—David’s
eyes (his son, not his long-dead younger brother)—and felt grief fill his heart from some great sorrow, and saw war there as well: the horror he’d known himself in a far-off jungle country.

And then someone was shaking him and calling his name
(Was
that his name? What
was
his name, anyway? David or Billy or Dave or Bill?), and he awoke to see his wife staring down.

“A boy ought never to have to kill a man,” he whispered. “And a man’s no man that ever, ever, ever kills a boy.”

JoAnne regarded him curiously, tears bright in her eyes. He smiled and took her hand. “And you know what, sweetheart?” he confided. “Inside us, we’re
all
boys.”

And for the first time in years, Big Billy Sullivan cried.

Chapter XXI: Earthshaking Events

(Lookout Rock, Georgia—Monday, June 30—very early)

It was funny, David decided numbly as he and Calvin eased free of each other’s arms, how big things and little things were weighted in one’s heart. Like tonight, for instance. He’d just seen two demigods nearly come to blows, and it had scarcely fazed him. But a mere mortal boy, whom maybe twenty people alive really knew—losing him had all but taken him apart. What Aife was about right now could well save several Worlds, but all
he
cared about was the fact that no one had saved one runty teenage kid.

What was it? Maybe two minutes from Brock’s first wound to his death? And how long had the Black Man and Arawn engaged in their pissing contest? Not even half that long. Everything was out of balance, and absolutely
nothing
was fair.

Calvin started toward the pool but paused to look back at him. “Gotta keep on,” he urged. “Time for this later, some things you
gotta
deal with now.”

David didn’t move. “It’s just that I wasn’t
done
with him. He got ripped out of my life and he’s just…
gone
.”
A pause to swallow, as tears hovered close again. “It’s not like my dad. Whatever happens to him, we’ve made some kind of peace. Me and Brock didn’t. He was just here and then he wasn’t, like a great piece of art forever left unfinished.”

“Yeah,” Calvin acknowledged, “I know. But we gotta go on. I mean, look, guy: Aife’s got something goin’ on, too, and that’s also unfinished!”

David swallowed hard and let Calvin lead him into the pool. The water was cold—which shocked him—which was probably good. And his friends were out there, holding hands in a circle centered on Aife, a handful of bloody, dirty people trying to do the most improbable thing he could imagine: trying to move a World.

Without him, when it was at heart his quest. Squaring his shoulders and sidestepping far too many floating bodies he didn’t want to think about right now, he waded into the deeper water near the center. And found himself chuckling giddily, having realized how much it reminded him of a country baptizing.

Except they weren’t generally held at night, and he doubted anyone present was a card-carrying Christian, save maybe Piper. They were all present, too, but LaWanda, who had leg wounds and didn’t dare enter water that might suck her dry, and Piper, who likewise remained on shore, playing softly on the pipes.

David tried to focus on the music as he freed Alec’s hand from Liz’s and inserted himself between, while Calvin eased in on the other side. It was actually kind of nice. Cold water around his legs; rain (back, now that the Black Man had left, but fairly gentle) upon his head and shoulders, slicking his hair into his eyes. His best friends’ hands. The melancholy droning of the pipes that was oddly comforting. A deep breath, and he closed his eyes and felt Aife’s Power touch him and start to draw.

The warmth of that connection pulsed through his hands and up his arms like Christmas lights on a string, but
including
his thoughts, so that he knew certain notions were his alone (like the filaments of those lights), but that the light
he
made merged with all the light around him. He was blind, too, yet he was seeing with…
cosmic
eyes, though exactly what he witnessed, he wasn’t sure. It was like a real landscape but with every source of energy that pervaded it also visible, so that he could see winds push and froth past each other, and watch tectonic forces underground slide and shimmer like black oil upon still water, and even perceive what must be gravity as tiny sparks leaping between every single thing, like iron filings around a magnet.

But under it all—and over it all and
within
it all, together—was a lattice of gold that existed in the three dimensions he could sense right now and surely continued into more. Those had to be Tracks
—golden
Tracks. But there were silver ones as well, sliding neatly through the spaces between. And while every one of the gold Tracks was straight, the silver ones were curved. Even as he watched, those silver Tracks wove ever more pervasively through the physical Land.

They touched a tree, a leaf, a mite upon that leaf, and it dissolved and went sparking and tumbling down that shimmering length. But if one followed it, why, somewhere farther on, it surfaced again, intact. And that was happening over and over
everywhere:
in forests, plains, and Tir-Nan-Og’s few villages (it had no true cities), and every place between. It touched beasts, too, and bodachs and the Sidhe, apparently without their knowing; and it was as if they were reflected in some more distant place, and for a moment both were equally real, and then the reflection alone was. One could be moved that way and not know it any more than one felt it when someone moved a mirror in which one’s image showed.

It’s working!
He told himself, completely caught in wonder.
It really and truly is working!

But not perfectly, for when he’d joined that curious circle, the movements had been as smooth as a laser-cut edge, as precise as the gears in a virtual machine. Even his added presence had caused no obvious disruption. But now, it was as though a machine was wearing down, as though the smallest gears in that vast complex mechanism now and then skipped a cog, or a spring lost a fraction of its tension.

And
he
knew where that weakness lay.

Aife!

A thought that was not thought acknowledged it; a cluster of images explained. The Power alive in the pool had to come from somewhere, and in practice it came from life, since Power was the active aspect of spirit as energy was to matter. But once the pool began to draw it evidently couldn’t be stopped. And Aife had been wounded, then fallen into the hungry water. It had sucked at her wound at once, never stopping, even when she stood, but continuing to reach up from its surface through her clothes to the skin of water that sheathed her wound. In effect, she was bleeding to death. Her only hope was that they would finish their task before she succumbed.

David felt her terror, as he felt the strength of her resolve. The movement was well along now; indeed, the Land itself was all but relocated, there only remained the sealing-off to conclude. Already she’d begun: finding the heart of Tir-Nan-Og and withdrawing the Tracks from that center, feeding those farther out, making them larger, thicker,
deeper;
pouring them into a moat of time/space/matter that could never be forded by anyone approaching from the Lands of Men, even to drowning the Tracks that led there from that World.