Windmaster's Bane (21 page)

“You don’t understand, Alec, you really don’t. It’s a goddamn magic ring, and it’s very, very important. You didn’t even see the
chain
anywhere?”

Alec shook his head. “Sorry.”

Thunder rumbled ominously outside, and the lights in the room dimmed unexpectedly. Rain tinkled on the tin roof.

“Looks like we’re in for a bad’un,” said Uncle Dale, motioning toward the window with his pipe. “Just what you need to make you feel better, ain’t it Davy boy?… You think you oughtta be settin’ up like that?”

Thunder drowned out David’s grunted reply, and the lights dimmed again. Lightning flashed uncomfortably close. The tempo of the rain increased, rattling on the roof like an infinity of marbles dropped from an unimaginable height. David glanced toward a window but could see only a silver shimmer.

“A real bad’un,” Uncle Dale repeated.

David stood up, swaying. “Uncle Dale, did
you
happen to see anything of my ring when you found me?”

“You mean that old ring you got from that gal? Nope, sure didn’t. I ain’t seen you wearin’ it lately, so I figured you’d broke up with her.”

David rolled his eyes, his gaze seeking Alec’s. “I only had it a week!”

Uncle Dale spoke from beside the window. “A week’s enough time to do nearly anything, if a man sets his mind to it—course a week of rain like this’d be more than enough for most people, but not for God, maybe. I’ll tell you something, though, David. If that ring was anywhere on that bank before, it’s plumb washed away by now.”

“Ailill is a master of winds and tempests,” David recalled Oisin saying; had he contrived this storm just for the purpose of confounding David’s efforts at recovering the ring? August rain usually consisted of brief afternoon showers, the day’s electricity shorting itself out in a harmless display of self-indulgent pyrotechnics. Rain this hard this early in the day was almost unheard of.

“No!”
David cried suddenly. “No, I’ve got to find it. I’ve
got
to.” He broke into a lurching run toward the door that lead directly from the living room onto the back porch. Alec grabbed at him as he passed, but David shoved him aside with such unexpected force that his friend sprawled backward onto the floor.

David flung open the screen as another bolt of lightning struck nearby, followed almost immediately by a blast of thunder that rang through the valley like a mile high steel gong being smashed to pieces. The world turned white for an instant, and the stars he still saw became black cutouts against that background. The scent of ozone filled the air. David’s head throbbed abominably.

But he had to find the ring. It was his last chance, his
only
chance.

He didn’t notice the water that pounded directly off the tin roof without benefit of gutters, for he was already soaked to the skin, and skin was mostly what he had on anyway. He began to run toward the bank, his head exploding with every footfall, his scraped leg sending its own insistent messages of protest. But he didn’t care. He must get the ring.
He must get the ring.

The ring. The ring. The ring.
The thoughts echoed the pounding of his feet. Behind him he could hear Alec and Uncle Dale calling to him.

The ring, the ring, the ring, the ring, the ring.

David found himself by the creek, but it was hardly recognizable: a swollen, frothing torrent, colored blood-red by the sticky mud that scabbed the bank above it. A thousand tributary streams flowed into it, each with its own load of silt and red Georgia clay, each one maybe carrying his ring with it to some unreachable destination.

If the Sidhe did not have it.

But he had to look; he
had
to.

David waded out into the creek, tried to run his fingers along the bottom, but it was no use. The water welled up about his forearms. Once he thought he touched it, but it was only the ring off a pop-top drink can; the water carried it away before he could toss it. He waded a couple of yards downstream, following the current that was unexpectedly strong for such a shallow stream. He felt for the bottom again, but found only coarse, rounded gravel amid larger, more jagged rocks.

Another try, another failure. It was no use, he knew: There was too much to search, and no time, for the water was his enemy.

Another try.

Another failure.

The bank, then,
he thought as he heaved his aching body out of the stream and into the cleaner, though scarcely less dense, torrents that gushed from the swollen clouds overhead.

But the bank was a treacherous wall of mud, and David could scarcely get two steps up it before he began to slip downward again. It was almost too steep to climb at the best of times—and this wasn’t one of those times.

Lightning again, and thunder.

And rain.

Pain.

Noise.

His head hurt.

He had lost the ring.

He was defeated.

Wearily he slogged through the knee high creek, turning back toward the dimly discernible shape of Uncle Dale’s house. Two figures stood on the back porch.

David stopped when he saw them, and then fell forward onto his knees in the mud. His hair was plastered to his head; his tattered clothes clung to his body like a wrinkled second skin. But the water that washed his face most fiercely was the salt water of his own tears.

Uncle Dale was in the yard beside him then, and Alec as well. They helped him up, helped him climb the steps onto the back porch. When they had finally got him back into the living room, he flung his arms around Uncle Dale and began sobbing uncontrollably. “I’ve lost it,” he cried. “It’s gone!”

Alec draped a blanket around his best friend’s shoulders and patted him awkwardly.

David glanced sideways at his friend, and said with perfect lucidity, “It’s gone, Alec, and I don’t want to think about what might happen now.”

PART III

Prologue III: In Tir-Nan-Og

(high summer)

Silverhand’s weed seems to be everywhere,
Ailill noted irritably as he strode down the high-arched length of the Hall of Manannan in the southwest wing of Lugh’s palace. Ten times a man’s height those arches were, and white as bone—appropriately, for each of those spans was made of the single bladelike rib of a variety of sea creature that was now extinct in Faerie. Mosaics of lapis and malachite set in a marine motif and overlaid with a veneer of crystal patterned the walls, and the floors were tiled in alternating squares of ground coral and pearls.

Between every set of arches was a waist-high vase in the shape of a giant purple murex. And in each of those vases grew one of those insipid flowers Nuada had brought from the Lands of Men.

And there is Himself,
Ailill added as the fair-haired Lord of the Sidhe stepped from the shadows of one of the arches with a handful of dead leaves in his hand, at which he gazed in a somewhat bemused manner.

“At the flowers, again?” Ailill inquired to Nuada’s back. “Perhaps Lugh should make you his gardener instead of his warlord.” Nuada did not look up, but Ailill saw the hard muscles of Silverhand’s back tense beneath the dirty white velvet of his tunic. The sight pleased him considerably.

“Well,” the dark Faery went on, “perhaps there is something to the study of the mortal lands after all. Perhaps you have had a favorable influence on me—”

“I doubt that,” Nuada observed archly, without turning around.

Ailill moved his hand a certain way and the rose closest to Nuada wilted.

Nuada whirled; a tiny dagger appeared, needlelike, in his hand exactly where the leaves had been.

Ailill was not impressed. “For you see, Silverhand,” he said languidly, “I too have taken up the study of men—and a fascinating study I find it.”

Nuada raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Indeed?”

“Yes,” Ailill went on, “and one of the things I find most fascinating is how they can get along without Power.”

“Very well, I would say,” Nuada retorted.

“Perhaps.” Ailill looked idly at the bush, blinked thrice in succession, and sent three more blossoms crumbling to dust. “But take an example here, Nuada. Suppose that one of us lost something. Well, then, all
we
have to do is to call upon the Power and there are half a score ways we may use to find it.”

“This is not unknown to me,” Nuada observed.

“Ah! But
mortals
can
not
always find things when they lose them, and one of the things I have learned in the process of my recent activities is that mortals lose things very frequently—very frequently indeed. But they do not find them nearly as often.” Nuada tapped impatient fingers on his hip. “What, in particular, are you talking about?”

“A certain ring.”

“A ring?”

“A particular ring that offers some slight protection against some forms of Power.”

“A
particular
ring?”

“—That is no longer in the mortal boy’s keeping.”

“Nor in yours, either, I would guess,” Nuada replied. “Or you would have taken special care to call it to my attention by now.”

“Would I?”

Nuada glared at his adversary. “There are things about that ring you do not know, Ailill. There are things about that ring
I
do not know. Probably even things Oisin himself does not know.”

It was Ailill’s turn to glare. “Indeed?” he echoed sarcastically.

“And besides,” Nuada replied calmly, “there is other protection to be had than the ring, protection older and stronger.”

“You would not be speaking of yourself, would you, Silverhand? You are certainly older than I, if not the ring. As to stronger?” Ailill shrugged. “It is not a boast I would make, if I were you. I have not noticed that you have had any particular success in protecting the boy.”

“I am as successful as I need to be. My strength has never failed me. Can you say the same?”

“My Power has never failed
me
.”

“Indeed? I was under the impression that a certain summoning of yours had not gone to your liking.” He paused. “Surely you see the foolishness of what you undertake, Windmaster. Whatever you may think, mankind is no docile foe, be assured of that. You may think the Sullivan boy easy prey, but that is not necessarily true, either, even without help from our side. And be assured, Ailill, that though I do not approve of intervention in the World of Men, I will do whatever I have to in order to keep the Worlds apart. The boy will
not
be harmed.”

“So you are a traitor?” Ailill sneered.

Nuada’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “I would be careful how I used that word.”

Ailill’s eyes narrowed as well. “I listened to you once, Silverhand, and have been put to much trouble because of it. I should have known that you could not study the ways of mortals as closely as you have done and not be won to their cause.”

“I have
not
been won to their cause,” Nuada flared, “but I believe in making no enemies without reason, and in making allies where they may help us. I have no more desire than you to return into the High Air, or to retreat into the Hollow Hills or the Deep Waters.

“But there are ways and ways of achieving one’s ends,” Nuada went on, “and I also believe one should study one’s foes and learn from them—and if possible seek to win their friendship. No war is yet declared between Mankind and Faerie, though I know
you
itch for battle. Yet mortal men do not know us as their enemy, they do not know us at all, except for one, and you yourself know that even his closest comrades think him both a fool and a liar. There is no honor in attacking the innocent and the ignorant, Ailill. And there is no honor in making war for your own glory. You despise mortals because they have no honor and have lost sight of truth, and yet you behave no better. And so I must stand with the lad.”

“But are you prepared to die with him?”

“I seriously doubt I will have the opportunity.”

“Do not be too certain of that, Silverhand.”

“I have seen mortal men at war. You have not. It is a thing worth remembering.”

“Perhaps I will, if it suits me.”

Nuada frowned. “Then perhaps there are a few
other
things you should remember while you are so engaged: your status in this realm, for instance. You are a
guest
in this land, an ambassador of your brother, Finvarra of Erenn. Lugh Samildinach reigns in Tir-Nan-Og—yet you have defied him a hundred times over in the short time since you came here. Lugh will tolerate only so much interference.”

“Interference may not be needed much longer,” Ailill replied.

“Nor may Finvarra’s most current ambassador,” Nuada shot back as he turned his face once more toward the Cherokee roses.

Chapter IX: Hiking
…

(Tuesday, August 11)

Fortunately David did not have a concussion, as a quick trip to the hospital had shown. But he did have a headache two days later—in the form of an early morning phone call from Liz Hughes. She had called simply to check on his recovery (which was progressing nicely), but things had quickly taken a more irritating turn.

“
No,
Liz,” David said firmly and for the third time, “you
cannot
go ginseng hunting with Uncle Dale and me.”