Fireshaper's Doom

by Tom Deitz

  Liz took it with shaking hands.

  “Now, what was that you was tryin’ to say?”

  Liz set her mouth, forcing herself to remain calm. “It was the Shh—The Irish F-f-f—Uncle Dale, what has David told you about last year? About—about when you were sick? About all that run of bad luck, when Little Billy was catatonic, and all that?”

  The old man scratched his beard thoughtfully. “Hmmm. Never told me nothin’—not directly—and I didn’t ask. But I figured out a lot. Took a look or two at some of them books of his. Always liked books, I did—boy takes after me there. Figured David was actin’ strange for a good reason, recalled what my daddy used to say about that old Indian trail. Put two and two together. Don’t know what the answer was though.”

  “I do,” Liz began: “A little over a year ago Davy heard music one night and followed it into the woods behind his house. He met some p-p-p—” Her tongue froze in her mouth. Shit! The blessed Ban of Lugh again. What a time for that to rear its ugly head. She started over: “It was the—” Her tongue locked tight.

  “Tell me!”

  “I can’t!” she almost sobbed.

  “Sure you can.”

  “No, I can’t. My tongue won’t work. It’s mmmmm—”

  Uncle Dale chewed on his upper lip for a moment. “You really can’t? Like somethin’s keepin’ you from talkin’?”

  Liz nodded vigorously.

  “Like magic, maybe?”

  Liz nodded again.

  “Well, that clinches it, then. You say some of them Irish fellers might be able to help? Well, I guess we’d better be gettin’ over there, then.” He stood up abruptly and stalked toward his bedroom.

  “You mean you’ll help me? You’ll come along?”

  He nodded. “Just let me get my shirt—gun too, I guess.”

  A disturbing thought struck Liz. “What about his folks?”

  “Bill and JoAnne?” Uncle Dale called from his room. “No time for them. They’d just cause trouble if this is the kind of thing I think it might be. If everythin’ works out, maybe they won’t find out. We’ll give it a try. But if we don’t learn somethin’ in a hurry, I don’t see as how we’ve any choice but to tell them and then get ahold of the sheriff.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

  They made it to Enotah in a time that David would have been proud of, and then pressed on to MacTyrie. Uncle Dale drove Liz’s car, roughly at first, but later with surprising finesse and authority. Liz allowed herself ten minutes of tears, grateful for the silence that had fallen. She was beginning to consider the implications now, each more dire than the last. She had feared the old man might ask her to explain what she and David had been doing, but he had asked no questions. All he’d inquired about had been the ring.

  “Davy gave you that?” he’d asked.

  She’d nodded.

  “Tonight?”

  “Yeah.”

  “ ’Bout time” had been his only comment.

  “Want to stop and get Alec?” Uncle Dale asked, as they sailed across the long curve of the MacTyrie bridge.

  Liz shook her head. “Not now. Maybe later, if this doesn’t work out. For now just hurry. Something tells me we need to hurry.”

  “You’re the boss,” the old man replied, and turned north toward the ball field.

  Two minutes later they lurched to a halt outside the Traders’ encampment.

  Liz threw open the car door and hit the ground running, but Uncle Dale called her back.

  “Hold on there, girl! Folks as old as me can’t run much fast. You may be the guide, but a guide with nobody to follow ain’t worth a lot.”

  In spite of her panic Liz found herself smiling. She stopped and waited for him.

  A glare of headlights cut the night then, making her blink as they flashed across the side of the concession stand and the wire-wall of kudzu.

  A car horn sounded as a flaming red Chrysler Laser scrunched to a halt behind them. A throb of too-loud Smithereens quieted. Voices called her name—and David’s, she thought: young male voices. A head of short, dark hair stuck itself up above the driver’s side of the car’s T-bar roof.

  “It’s Gary!” Liz told Uncle Dale, “Gary Hudson—one of David’s friends. Wonder what he’s doing here?”

  And then another boy was clambering over the door on the far side and into the ghastly blue glare of the single streetlight.

  It was Alec, running on ahead while an apparently unconcerned Gary sauntered over to look at Liz’s car.

  “Liz!” Alec sighed when he reached her, looking very relieved. “Thank the Lord we’ve found you!” He noticed Uncle Dale then, and his cheeks puffed in consternation. “You’re not Davy!” he exclaimed.

  “David’s gone, boy,” Uncle Dale said solemnly. “Tell him, Liz.”

  “It was the Fff—” Liz began, and found her tongue once again locked tight.

  Alec bent close and whispered in her ear too quietly for the old man to hear, “Faeries?”

  She nodded vigorously, then saw him looking at the ring. “He gave it to me before—We were over at B.A. swimming. I think one of them . . . caught him.”

  She dragged Alec far enough away from Uncle Dale to be able to speak freely. In a few short phrases, she sketched out the story of David’s disappearance.

  “Christ!” he groaned when she had finished. “Good thing we came along when we did.”

  Liz frowned at him uncertainly. “Yeah, but what are you doing here?”

  “Good question, girl,” Alec responded quickly. “Your mom called my house about ten minutes ago wanting to know if you were there. Said she’d called up at Davy’s, and you weren’t back yet, so she hoped you were at mine.”

  Liz rolled her eyes in dismay. “What’d you tell her?”

  “What’d you think? I told her you’d said something about going back to see the Traders; finally had to promise her we’d go check and send you home if we found you. Figured that was safest for both of you. Darrell went to check out the Tastee Freeze; he may be by a little later.”

  Gary trotted up to join the group, a gray shadow in nondescript sweatpants and jacket.

  “Nice car, Liz!” he panted. “How ’bout a ride sometime?” Then he too noticed Uncle Dale. “Hey, where’s Sullivan?”

  “Gone,” Alec hedged carefully.

  “What d’you mean, gone?”

  “I mean gone, like in ‘not here.’ Not anywhere, possibly.”

  Gary frowned.

  Alec laid an arm across his shoulder and drew him aside. “Look, G-man, Liz and I kind of need to talk privately, so could you, like, boogie off a ways. I’ll fill you in later.”

  “Oh, come on, man . . .”

  Liz eyed Gary nervously. “Please, Gary,” she said. “I—We have some business inside. So could you sort of wait out here?”

  “No way,” Gary replied, shaking his head emphatically. “No goddamn way. Hell, girl, all I have to do is look at your face to figure out one thing: you’re scared as shit. Something weird’s going on, and I aim to find out what.”

  “It’s none of your business, Gary.”

  “None of my business! Well, maybe not, but it’s sure as hell somebody’s business, and I think it concerns Davy, who’s my friend, which makes it my business. I mean, what is this crap about him being gone, anyway? Sure sounds weird to me. And that business just then—that stuff about not being able to talk; you think I didn’t see that? And you wanta know something? It was just like something I saw old Mad Dave do right before him and McLean left for Valdosta. I saw that note you wrote him, too: the one about the book and the otherworld. And I’ve heard a bunch of other stuff.”

  Liz sighed and folded her arms in exasperation. “Oh, all right. I don’t have time to argue.”

  She led the way through the turnstile, followed closely by Uncle Dale, Alec, and Gary. Something made a clinking noise behind her, and she looked back, noticing for the first time that Alec wore shiny links of metal chain threaded t
hrough his belt loops, with a heavy combination lock for a buckle. It had struck against the iron post.

  Alec noticed her looking. “It’s a MacTyrie Gang affectation,” he told her, “nothing more.”

  She shrugged and pressed on ahead, passing quickly under the sagging roof and into the Traders’ camp.

  Once again the vague sense of otherness folded itself about them, seeming at once to rise from the short, damp grass beneath their feet and to trickle down from the clear heavens above them. The sky shone midnight blue, the wagons and tents were cutout shapes of blackness except where torches flared in the center of their circle, mixing fire gold with the gilded reds and greens and purples of the wagons, and the more sullen green of the tents. A sparse ground fog had begun to ease up from the river, and dark-clad shapes stalked here and there within it, flickering silently among the wisps like distant memories.

  One of those shapes stopped, looked around, then turned toward them. As it approached it clarified into a tall, blond man with a single arm.

  As the rest of the group held back, Alec and Liz rushed forward to meet him. A horse whickered somewhere, as if alarmed.

  “I thought I was finished with you,” Nuada cried loudly with unexpected (and unjustified, Liz thought) anger. “Can we get no rest from you? Disturbance and more disturbance, and still the horses need tending.” He reached over and grasped Liz’s shoulder roughly, his mouth a hard, fierce line.

  Her mouth gaped in horror. But the words began to shape themselves in her mind.

  Ignore my voice, girl. There is fear here. I can hear it as if it were screamed aloud. Quick, take the boy’s hand. He should hear this as well.

  Liz reached down surreptitiously and enfolded Alec’s fingers. Somewhere above her she heard the voice of the Faery lord still berating her, but this was a public show; the real conversation was on another level, at a point of finely compressed time.

  No need to talk. Nothing is clear to me of what has happened, but with what you told me before, I have no good feeling about it.

  But I haven’t told you yet!

  Images speak faster than words and with more eloquence.

  Can you help us?

  I do not know. I should notify Lugh. Our role here is not to interfere. You know what that may bring.

  But David’s gone!

  But alive! You showed me that! You believe that!

  Nuada—

  I will do what I can. But these others . . . ?

  Our friends: David’s Uncle Dale; his friend, Gary Hudson.

  Very well, then, come along.

  “It’s okay,” Liz said aloud, when she and Alec rejoined the group a moment later. “We can all come.”

  A thought echoed in Liz’s mind, then; not Nuada, but another heard from farther away. Calming. A woman’s thought, but not one she had touched before. He lives, girl. Your heart tells you that. There is nothing to fear. But you must keep your head clear, keep yourself in control.

  They gathered in Nuada’s tent, a motley crew. The three Sidhe: Cormac and Regan and Nuada; Lin the Trader and a gray-haired woman they had not met before but who introduced herself as Katie. She and Lin kept well to the background, saying little but missing nothing.

  Gary smiled uncertainly, as if he sensed some vague wrongness about the circumstances that he couldn’t quite put a finger on. Uncle Dale seemed blessed with infinite patience, though he took the pipe Nuada offered. Alec looked as edgy as Liz felt.

  Nuada stared at the assembled company, then spoke: “Some of you know, though perhaps not all”—he fixed Gary with his gaze—“that David Sullivan has disappeared.” He cleared his throat and continued. “And believe me, I would not reveal what I am about to reveal to the ignorant among you, were I not convinced of the need for haste. I will mince no words: what we must speak of—what we must use in order to find him—is Power. Mortals would call it magic.”

  “Magic,” Gary whispered. “I don’t believe in magic.”

  “You better learn, then,” Alec gritted. “Look, Davy’s in trouble. These folks can help him. They’re the—” He looked imploringly at Nuada.

  Nuada smiled briefly then. “Ah, yes, Lugh’s ban. Well, I can be of some help there, for I am his warlord and charged with enforcing his laws. And if I choose not to enforce the law, then the accounting is on my head.”

  “—the Sidhe,” Alec finished suddenly. “The Irish fairies. Like in those books David was always reading.”

  “I think I believe you,” Gary said with simple acceptance.

  Liz nodded, wide-eyed. “Believe him.”

  Nuada sighed with some exasperation. “Good folk, I do not choose to reveal myself or my companions—or the Power we command—lightly, but I fear I must. David Sullivan has vanished under mysterious circumstances. I think we may yet be able to find him, if we hurry. If Liz is willing.”

  Liz nodded. “Anything. Just get him back.”

  “Very well. We will need a focus. And we will need to put away the substance of this World.”

  “What’s he talking about?” Gary whispered in Alec’s ear.

  “What they’re made out of,” Alec grunted back from between his teeth.

  Cormac rose. His fellows joined him, three points of triangle.

  “We could perhaps do it in man’s substance,” Nuada said, “but the substance of Faerie works far better. Liz, if you would come stand between us?”

  Liz nodded and moved to the center.

  “You do not have anything in your possession that belongs to David, do you?”

  Liz shook her head, then remembered the ring. “This?”

  Nuada’s eyes widened slightly, but he shook his head. “No, that is too powerful a focus. It has had too many owners.”

  Alec rifled his pockets, and pulled out the bloodstained handkerchief he had given David when he had cut his finger on the mountain. “What about this?” he offered. “I’d forgotten I had it; it’s even got some of his blood on it.”

  Nuada took the square of brown-stained fabric. “Oh, aye! That will do very well indeed!” He handed it to Liz. “Lady, if you will . . . ?”

  Liz took it solemnly and wadded it into her fist as the Sidhe joined hands, with Cormac resting his left one on Nuada’s shoulder.

  Light filled the room: a white glow that seemed to emanate from the tall forms themselves. It was a cold light, and it brought with it a sound of music: a soft tinkling like harp strings and bells.

  Then as quickly as it had come, the light was gone. The Sidhe released their grip on one another’s hands. They looked no different, except that there was now a sort of glow upon them. Or glory, Liz thought.

  “Like angels,” Uncle Dale breathed. “Oh, Hattie, I wish you could see this!”

  Nuada closed his eyes for a moment, then reopened them and rested his single hand on Liz’s right shoulder. She found herself returning his stare. Her eyelids grew heavy, and she felt her body released from the tension that had filled it for what seemed like hours.

  “Water,” Nuada whispered after a moment, then: “Cold. And a place of fire—that I do not understand, for it is not of Tir-Nan-Og, nor of the Lands of Men either. A desire for vengeance, too, that is hotter than Fire. And fear: the fear of a mortal boy alone in an unknown place.”

  “Where?” Alec cried urgently. “Where, Silverhand? Liz?”

  Nuada shook his head. “Water. And a not-place and . . . Aiiiiieeeeeeeeee!!!”

  The Faery lord’s scream cut the thick silence of the tent. The Sidhe seemed to collapse upon themselves. Their glory faded as they became human once again. One by one they sank to the floor.

  Katie’s brogue floated thick upon the air: “Mother of God!”

  “Nuada!” Alec gasped as he rushed forward. “Liz!”

  Liz swayed, but remained standing as Alec caught her. “Liz, what happened?”

  Within the circle of Alec’s arms, Liz found herself shaking. “It was awful, Alec. We could see David—alive. Feel his fear. But then it was li
ke a knife cut through our thoughts.”

  Nuada began to stir. “It is Tir-Nan-Og,” he said heavily. “We are cut off, Powerless, forced to put on the flesh of mortal men to save our minds.”

  “What do you mean?” Liz cried frantically. “What about Davy? Can’t you reach him?”

  Nuada wiped a long-fingered hand across his eyes and shook his head. “Not without more Power than we can now muster: the substance of Faerie was the source of our Power, and now we may not reach it. It is possible that a little may remain trapped within us, but it will quickly fade and cannot be renewed, nor will these bodies allow us to use more than a trickle of that at a time.”

  Liz looked hopelessly confused.

  Regan laid a hand upon her shoulder. “It is what Nuada spoke of earlier as something that could never happen, yet now it has: something has snapped the thread that binds us to our homeland, the thread down which our Power flows. We had to return to the substance of this world, or face the Call that denied leads on to madness. We have a problem of our own now. But that does not mean we will not help you.”

  Liz looked up at her. “But—”

  Shouts from outside interrupted her. “I will go in,” a male voice snapped clearly. From his place by the door Lin jumped to his feet, but almost fell backward again as the curtained front was thrust open. A Faery youth stood there, looking more than a little dazed and angry. His hair was black and he wore a black silk cloak above a loose velvet tunic, from the heavy linked belt of which depended a sword hilted in gold and ivory.

  “Froech!” Nuada cried, rising unsteadily to his feet. “What in the name of Dana brings you here?”

  “I am too late, Lord. And I beg your forgiveness.”

  “That may very well be true,” Nuada replied dryly. “But if I am to forgive you I must know your crime.”

  “It is Ailill, Lord. He has escaped. His sister aided him, and it is believed he fled onto the Tracks, or else into this World. Lugh sent me to tell you this, and then, as I see you have discovered, he sealed the borders. One word only he had for you. And that was to seek Ailill in the Lands of Men, or if need be, through all the Worlds.”