Windmaster's Bane (9 page)

Out of the frying pan,
thought David in dismay
. How should
I
know his name? I might as well try to name the stars, much good it would do me. Now I know how Gollum felt when Bilbo asked what he had in his pocket…. Still, there must be a way; they said that if I had the right learning, I would know—but they all look alike to me!

David studied the man carefully, taking in every detail of the silver armor, of the face and form, but could make out no special insignia, no distinctive marks that might offer some clue to his identity. The man had begun drumming his fingers on his upper arms, as if impatient. David noticed the movement, slight though it was, and looked more closely at the man’s hands. The left one was encased in an articulated silver gauntlet that came up over the wrist in an elaborate flare. But the right one was different somehow; the construction was not the same—its workmanship seemed more delicate, more like a real hand. He knew that one of the Sidhe had lost an arm in battle and a new one had been made for him of silver. All at once David knew the answer to the third question.

“Your name is Nuada of the Silver Hand,” he said, “or however you pronounce it. I hope that’s close enough.”

The man nodded and glanced back at the assembled host and then straight across at Ailill, whose diamond eyes now glinted with hints of ruby flame; but Nuada bore the brunt of that anger.

“You gave it away, Nuada. You helped him,” the black-clad man snapped.

“
I
helped him?
You
gave me the question, so it’s not your concern anymore, is it? He is free now.” Nuada flashed a triumphant grin at his adversary and turned back to David. “You have won the contest,” he said with unexpected gentleness. “You are free to go.”

David sighed a long soft sigh; his knees sagged as the tension flowed so swiftly from his body that he nearly collapsed. Much of his fear had fallen away as well, and in its place came an unexpected return of some of his old cockiness.

He looked up toward Nuada, faced him eye to eye. “Don’t
I
get three questions now?”

Nuada’s head snapped around. “You promised him
that,
Ailill? You
are
a fool.”

Ailill snorted sullenly. “I did. I did not plan on his winning.”

“A fool twice over,
then…
but still, he has won fairly, and so we are bound.” Nuada turned back to David. “Ask, mortal,” he said, as if intoning an ancient ritual, “and if it is within our power to answer, we will. But be warned that if you seek to learn the future, only ill can come of it.”

“Oh, I don’t want to know the future,” David replied almost casually. “I just want to satisfy my curiosity. After all, you don’t just come upon the Tuatha de Danaan riding through your daddy’s bottom land every
day…
and you
were
trespassing—by our laws.”

“And not by ours, which are older. But ask.”

“I’ll put it in one question, then: Who are you, exactly; why are you here; and where’re you going?” They were not the best questions he could have asked, he knew, but he hadn’t really considered what would happen if he won the contest.

Nuada took a deep breath and began. “As Ailill has doubtless told you, we are the Sidhe. Among us we number some of the Tuatha de Danaan, whom men call the old gods of Ireland. Since you have not asked our separate names, I will not give them to you, though you may have mine, as you have won it, and Ailill has forfeited his, so you may have it as well. As to
what
the Sidhe are, that is beyond the scope of your question.

“But as to why we are here, by which I assume you mean in this place and not some other; that is a thing both easy to know and hard to tell. Perhaps it is best to say simply that only in a very few places does the World in which we customarily dwell touch your own, and only in those few places can we find true rest from our wanderings on the Straight Tracks between the stars. Alas! Not all such places are the same; some are more firmly rooted to your World than others, and once there were many more than now remain. But all such resting places we cherish, and this is one of them. Tir-Nan-Og, we call it: the Land of the Young.”

David looked puzzled for a moment, but Nuada went on obliviously.

“And to answer your third question: Many of our kindred still dwell in Erenn, and many there have kindred here. This Track we now ride connects the two, yet that passage becomes ever more difficult as more and more the works of men breach the Walls between the Worlds. But, still, there are certain times of year—four of them, to be exact, of which this is one—when the Road is strongest and the journey less perilous. Those times we follow the Track to the Eastern Sea to greet whomever has chosen to come here. That is why we ride tonight, and where.”

Nuada paused, as if considering whether or not to continue, and the strength of his gaze made David feel as if his soul were being read. “You have a sympathy for the old things, David Sullivan, that I can tell. It is now a rare child indeed, in this or any other land, who has heard of the Sidhe at all, much less Cuchulain or Nuada Airgetlam. And you have the Second Sight, as well—and that is a gift both precious and perilous. Now farewell, David Sullivan, for the Track calls us, and the Track may not be denied.”

David felt his eyes tingle once more. Little Billy snored softly. All at once David felt very sleepy himself. He took a step backward, and then another. The paralysis was gone, the barrier lifted.

Nuada extended his silver hand forward and then raised it above his head in salute before gathering up his reins. He shook them once, so that the silver bells chimed, and then again, and again, and the host took up the rhythm with other bells, and with tambourines and flutes. Even the golden Track beneath them began to pulse gently. Old, that music sounded—older than man, David suspected—and filled with a heart-rending longing.

Little Billy slept quietly. David watched until the last horse had woven its way out of sight among the trees. Where the Sidhe had passed, the moss was unbroken, the pine needles unstirred. Only a faint golden glimmer remained to mark their passage, and then that too faded. He yawned again and began the walk home, his brother clutched in his arms.

As he came to the line of briars, David paused. They seemed lower, less densely tangled,
less…
vigilant. And he noticed that mortality had taken back the night: It was dark again—moonless, as it should be.

As the last light faded behind him, he did not see Ailill draw a needlelike dagger from a sheath at his waist and very discreetly prick his own right forefinger, which he then shook so that three drops of blood fell to the ground.

Nor did he see another member of the company, who had fallen unobtrusively back to ride near the end of the procession, rein his horse to a halt and turn empty silver eyes after him, and with great precision inscribe a circle in the air with the ringed fourth finger of his right hand.

Chapter IV: The Ring of the Sidhe

(Sunday, August 2)

“I have seen the Sidhe!” David said to himself, flopping back against his pillow, arms folded reflectively behind his head.

It was not the first time those words had chimed in his thoughts that night. No, he had whispered them over and over again as he passed ghostlike through the dark forest, across the yard, into the silent house—never certain if he walked, or ran, or moved by a remnant of some supernatural power that lingered yet about him. He had seen, but still could not believe; his mind recoiled from what it had witnessed. Already his body was falling asleep around him as he strove to sort his confused thoughts.
He had seen the Sidhe!

The Sidhe.

Impossible; or was it? That castle on Bloody Bald, the one he had almost convinced himself had all been a hallucination or the work of an overly active imagination—it was
real
!
He
had
seen it,
had
heard the horns of Elfland greeting dusk and dawn.

And his eye problem—the recurring itchy tingle. Was that what had enabled him to look into that other world? They had called it Second Sight. But how did it work? More to the point, how did he get it? Certainly he had not always had it.

David yawned, stretched luxuriously, and glanced across the room to the door where Little Billy had appeared the night before. Abruptly he had a troubling thought: Exactly how much
had
Little Billy seen? What would
he
remember? The little boy
had
seen the lights and heard the music, that much was clear. Yet he had not seemed to see anything during the actual encounter, at least not if his response to David’s actions was any indication. And the Sidhe had said they were visible to mortals—it was funny thinking of himself as a “mortal”—only if
they
chose, or, he supposed, if they had the Sight. For that matter, why had Little Billy not reawakened, even when David laid him in bed? Was that more Faery magic? Or—as David was beginning to fear—something worse? He wished he’d thought to ask Nuada a few more questions, but it was too late now. He was probably lucky to get away with his skin. What had they got themselves into?

God, he was tired, he realized, as consciousness faded further—not entirely voluntarily. But there was something lingering in the back of David’s mind, one more thing that he needed to recall before he could sleep—something important. But whatever it was hovered tantalizingly just beyond recall and would not focus. And as his mind dropped its guard to follow that elusive something, sleep found him instead.

*

Certainly it was not enough sleep, but when his mother hollered in the door that breakfast was ready and he’d better get it while it was hot because she was going to church and wasn’t going to cook but once, David woke immediately, unexpectedly refreshed. Simultaneously he realized what had been bothering him the night before. It pranced into his consciousness and sat there clear as day: He had forgotten to ask the Sidhe for the promised token of their meeting.

“Crap,” he said aloud as he climbed out of bed and pulled on his jeans, noting a few briars still caught in the worn denim. He paused to look in on Little Billy, who slept peacefully, a blissful smile upon his face, seeming none the worse for wear, then padded barefoot into the bathroom.

David splashed cold water on his face, ran a comb roughly through his tangled hair, and was just picking up his toothbrush when he felt a sudden burning pain against his right thigh, like when Mike Wheeler had put a hot penny down the back of his shirt in the eighth grade. He glanced quickly down, half expecting to see smoke, but saw nothing; stuck his hand into his pocket and found the source of the heat—and felt it grow cooler even as he fished it out and looked at it: a silver ring, almost a quarter of an inch wide, entirely plain except for an indentation running completely around the circumference. Automatically he slid it onto the forefinger of his left hand.

It fit, though perhaps a big snugly. He raised it to eye level to examine it more carefully. Not as plain as he had thought; there was a pattern in the indentation, an intricate knotwork of interlacing lines that passed over and under each other in an endless looping circle. He found his eyes following that pattern, fascinated. Simple it was, and yet fabulously complex. And beautiful—the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. It never occurred to him to wonder where it had come from. He knew. “I
have
seen the Sidhe!” he whispered.

Little Billy trotted into the bathroom, yawning hugely, rubbing his eyes with his fists. David whirled around, glaring, and jerked his hand behind his back.

“Don’t you ever knock?”

“Door was open. Now get, I gotta go. Ma’s lookin’ for you.”

“So what else is new?”

Behind his back David tugged at the ring, and it came loose, slipping capriciously from his grasp to fall to the beige tile floor with a gentle
ping.
He snatched it on the second bounce and stuffed it hastily back into his pocket, realizing as he did that trying to hide it was absolutely the wrong thing to do. His brother would be suspicious now.

“What’s that?” Little Billy asked sharply.

“Oh, just a ring.” David tried to change the subject. “Did you sleep okay last night?” he asked carefully.

“Fine. Had some funny dreams, though.”

Well, that’s a relief,
thought David
.

His brother stared solemnly at him. “Where’d you get the ring?”

“Found it. What’d you dream about?”

“Nothin’ much. Where’d you find it?”

“Up in the woods.”

“When?”

“When…”
He hesitated; he was not ready for this, not when there was so much to sort out. “When me and Alec went camping a couple of nights ago.”

Little Billy’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Then how come I never seen it before? How come you never showed it to me?” David was not at all pleased with his brother’s persistence.

“I’ll show you my hand on your backside if you don’t hush up.”

“You’re hidin’ somethin’, ain’t you, Davy? You didn’t find that old ring, did you?”

David thought desperately. “I got it from
the…
from
a…
from a girl,” he said finally, making up the best excuse he could on such short notice, immediately aware of how lame it probably sounded.