Fireshaper's Doom

by Tom Deitz

  “I am not ignorant, boy—and what you have told me seems very likely, for deer are Fionna’s favorite animals. But tell me of this wounding. Was there blood? Does Ailill’s essence color the Lands of Men? If so—”

  It was David’s turn to smile. “What’s it worth to you?”

  “What is your sanity worth to you?” Morwyn shot back. “If you do not tell me, I will rip your mind apart and search the fragments until I find that memory!”

  Watch it, Sullivan! David warned himself. Play it close: Draw her out. Let her do the talking. Give nothing away without something in return.

  “So you can’t find out yourself?” he said at last. “Well now, that’s interesting. Are there, like, maybe, limits to your Power, then?” He raised an inquiring eyebrow.

  “Something limits it right now,” Morwyn snapped angrily. “A wall of arcane fire through which I cannot pass—and curse Lugh to the Cold for that. That is why I need you.”

  David took a sip of wine and tried to look wise and crafty. “Ah! A wall of flame that even a sorceress can’t get through. And something to be stolen, something to do with Ailill, I bet. Well, that’s right up my alley! I just took Locks-and-Keys 101 in school last year.”

  Morwyn took a sip of wine. “Your tongue leads you onto dangerous ground, my boy,” she said sweetly. “And if you are not careful, you may find no ground beneath you at all. But come, I will tell you my tale straight out. And then you will tell me about Ailill’s wounding. Is that fair?”

  David tasted the wine. “If you say so.”

  Morwyn ignored his sarcasm. “My intention in bringing you here was twofold. To use you to bait a trap for Ailill was one part; yet that portion of my plan has been rendered unworkable if what you have just told me is true, which I am almost certain it is. With the borders sealed, Ailill would be trapped in elk-shape and would not know you. That is unfortunate, too, for were he in his own form and thus cut off, his Power would be greatly reduced, and I could summon him easily.”

  “So why keep me here, then?”

  “Are you deaf, boy? I said I had two uses for you. And my second use is this: there is one thing I need, one instrument that would make Ailill’s doom exquisitely painful, whatever shape he wears—and exquisitely final as well. The problem, as you may have surmised, is that I do not have this instrument. It lies in Tir-Nan-Og: beyond my grasp, but not, I think, beyond yours.”

  “Ho now, wait just a minute!”

  “I aim to capture Ailill, David; it is simply the means of capture that has altered. Now that I know what form he wears, I will set a summoning upon him, using his blood as focus. But to work his doom, I also need a certain Horn Lugh has in his keeping. While I seek out Ailill, you will seek the Horn of Annwyn. With that I will destroy him.”

  “Ohhh nooo!” David cried, shaking his head emphatically. “Stealing’s one thing. Being an accomplice to murder’s something else again. And I haven’t even said there is blood yet.”

  Morwyn’s eyes glittered with a dangerous light. “Have you forgotten your peril already? That and your family’s as well?”

  David shot her a sullen glare. “I’d rather hoped you had.”

  “You hope in vain!”

  “But you’ll release me when I fulfill this quest? If I fulfill this quest?”

  Morwyn nodded gravely. “You have my word on it.”

  “And whose word is that? The thief’s? Or the murderer’s?”

  The sorceress’s face became dead serious. She reached down and drew one of her nails across her wrist so that a thin line of blood welled forth. “I swear by my blood and the Fire that burns within it that I bear you no ill will. Fulfill my quest and I will set you free.”

  David scowled. “That’s as good as I can hope for, I guess—for the time being, anyway. Now, how am I supposed to pull off this robbery of yours—and I want it understood right here and now that I’m having nothing to do with the rest of your little plan, got it? If the borders of Tir-Nan-Og are sealed and you can’t get through, what makes you think I can? I’m just a snot-nosed mortal, remember?”

  “Let us just say that I think I may have ways of getting around Lugh’s barrier.”

  “I don’t suppose you’d mind telling me what they are? If I’m going to do this thing, I’ll obviously need to know as much as possible.”

  “Now is not the time.”

  David’s lips drew back in a snarl of suppressed rage. “Not the time? When the hell is the friggin’ time? And what’s this about some magic horn? Could you at least bring yourself to tell me about that?”

  Morwyn’s eyebrows arched delicately. “I take it we have a bargain, then?”

  David heaved a weary sigh. “Looks like I have no choice—but I sure as hell don’t like it. I just want you to know that.” And I’ll find a way around it if I can, he added to himself.

  “No choice at all,” Morwyn affirmed as she rose to her feet. “And as for the Horn of Annwyn, we will discuss that and the plans for its retrieval when we have finished eating.”

  “Eating?” came David’s shocked reply, as he recalled the dangers incumbent upon consumption of Faery food—like being trapped forever in that land.

  “I’m . . . not hungry,” he stammered.

  Morwyn smiled her amusement. “No need to fear, my pretty boy, but a feast must seal the bargain. Venison, I think, would be the thing—I trust you like yours bloody?”

  Chapter XVIII: Running

  (The Straight Tracks)

  Running. That was what the world had narrowed to: running and pain and fear. And spiraling ever closer like the twisting black shadow of a carrion bird: madness.

  Blood like dark wine oozed from a gash deep in the Faery-flesh of the stag’s hind leg. Gray-haired hide flapped around it in ugly, festering tatters.

  It had been running for hours, the stag had, fleeing the pain it could never escape, which was a part of it, bound to it as surely as the tortured nerve and sinew that was its source.

  The pain of iron it was, that ate at the substance of Faerie, that chewed away slowly, oh so slowly—not in a mortal spot, but rendered more painful thereby, for that gnawing could never end. Flesh burned and flesh renewed in a cycle only death could sunder.

  And another pain there was, one which was far more subtle, for it crept into the mind and nagged there like an insidious goad. That pain was a memory or a wishing or a longing; the substance of Faerie calling to its fugitive own.

  Running: a strip of golden light between . . .

  . . . trees flashing by, elm and ash and maple, and bushes with leaves like waxy paper. Conifers hung with finger-long needles filling the air with a smell of freshness . . .

  Pain: a strip of golden light upon . . .

  . . . a beach of gray sand where twelve-legged crabs contrived geometric courtship dances between a circle of standing stones carved with the faces of weeping women. Purple clouds slashed across a green sky . . .

  Running: a strip of golden light between . . .

  . . . endlessly billowing curtains of shifting metallic whiteness that drift from an infinite height to lose themselves in unfathomed depths.

  Pain.

  A flash of gold beneath the feet and then more running.

  Chapter XIX: Flight

  (Enotah County, Georgia)

  . . . a pounding of hooves, and trees flashing by in pencil shadows of dark and light . . .

  A broken pine twig sneaked around Uncle Dale’s shoulder and snagged Liz’s cheek. She swore silently, but did not cry out. Another brush of outthrust needles loomed ahead, but this time the black horse beneath her veered neatly around it, sending her slipping sideways—almost too far. She did not ride often enough to be really good at it, and galloping bareback through the scanty fringe of woods north of MacTyrie was not the way she would have chosen to improve her skills.

  Maybe a half mile behind them, sirens droned like angry bagpipes, contriving a sort of insistent, keening dirge with the shrill hiss of wind in her ears
and the muffled, bodhran pounding of silver horseshoes against hard earth.

  The black shifted again and slowed. Liz felt Uncle Dale’s back muscles tense, and she wrapped her arms tighter about his wiry waist as they bent forward to half jump, half slide down a short, steep slope laced with bracken that fronted along a shallow, curling stream. Water splashed high from among the moon-rimed rocks, drenching her shoes and the cuffs of her jeans.

  Trees arched in closer overhead, and laurel became a screen to left and right. Liz did not know where she was, only that they were moving along the stream bed with far more speed and silence than any normal steeds could achieve.

  But these were not normal steeds. Their coats were too glossy; their legs and trunks too slender to encompass the sort of strength and endurance they had already shown that night. And their elegant heads were a touch too narrow, even as the jaws of the Sidhe tended to be narrower than those of mortal men.

  As if it mattered.

  All that mattered was Davy.

  Branches reached out to caress her with glossy leaves, and then suddenly there was clear air around her, and water glittering ahead. Horseshoes cracked against the rocks of the lake shore as Nuada urged his stallion to a gallop and the others followed.

  Faster now—for pursuit might appear at any time, might erupt from the woods and end their flight with more questions than any of them could answer. Liz’s car was still at the camp, David’s clothes still in it. Two questions right there that would be a long time answering. And what about Uncle Dale’s gun? What about the fire? What about Gary’s car?

  What about Davy?

  Her concern for him had become the pervasive blankness across which all other questions were scrawled like bits of dark graffiti.

  What about Davy?

  He was alive, and that was all she knew. Alive and captured by the Sidhe.

  And she had to get him back, she knew that of a grim certainty, though how that was to be accomplished, she had no idea.

  Abruptly the horse swerved to follow Nuada’s lead closer to the shore, and Liz was forced once more to focus on retaining her seat.

  Beach flew fast below them; long-legged shadows leapt among the layered shelves. The lake shimmered on the left, a shard of blue-black mirror laid before a scowl of mountains.

  More trees ahead: a looming darkness like black feathers; and then they were in the forest again. Pine needles slipped and scurried, and Nuada brought his stallion to a halt. Light sparked from the Faery lord’s eyes, as his single hand sought for purchase in the long strands of silky mane.

  “Hold!” he called clearly, though a hush enclosed his voice. “Easy there, Blackwind, halt we here a moment.”

  The black stopped still beneath him, bowed its head. The heavy hiss of equine breathing filled the air.

  “ ’Bout time, too,” Liz heard Alec mutter, saw him grimace painfully as he availed himself of a welcome opportunity to shift to a more secure seat behind Regan, who in turn scooted slightly forward to accommodate him.

  “A moment only,” Cormac muttered, “for unless I miss my guess, these humans will not be slow in pursuing us.”

  “I figger we’ve got about a ten-minute lead on ’em,” Uncle Dale volunteered.

  Nuada’s lips curled thin in pensive agreement. “The form of our escape may have purchased us some time, for the mortals are bound to their chariot roads, or else their legs, and it will take them a while to discover that we have gone at all—and longer still to find out our direction. Yet it is clear to me as well that we will soon need a place to stop and plan.”

  “What about my house?” Uncle Dale suggested. “I figger it’s about halfway between the last place David was seen and the place Alec and him saw that Crazy Deer.”

  “Won’t it be watched, though?” asked Alec. “Won’t the law eventually go to David’s house, and wouldn’t David’s folks try to notify you? May have already.”

  Uncle Dale tugged thoughtfully at his whiskers. “Got a point there; I—”

  “Where is this place?” Nuada interrupted.

  The old man gestured southeast toward the lake. “Bunch of miles by road, not far a’tall if you can make it overland. Nothin’ between here and there but woods and that little arm of lake. Lake’s the biggest problem.”

  “How so, sir?” Gary asked. “Bridge is just around the bend.”

  “Good chance it’ll be watched, too,” Alec pointed out.

  “But couldn’t we swim across or something?”

  “That might work for us, but what about the horses?”

  “Swim them too, I guess” came Gary’s somewhat chagrined reply. “That’s what they’d do in the movies.”

  Uncle Dale’s voice cackled softly into the night. “You ever swim a horse, boy? As like to drown you as to save you. Nothin’ I’d do, less’n I had to.”

  Froech suddenly wrenched his mount around. “Enough of this. If there is a bridge, then we should use it. I have no fear of mortals.”

  With that he jabbed his spurs into his horse’s flanks and bent low across the high pommel of its saddle as the silver stallion hurled itself forward.

  “Froech! No!” Nuada cried, even as he whirled Blackwind around and charged after.

  The others followed, too, not much of their own free will; for the Faery horses were fey, and both more intelligent and more capricious than the steeds of men. Liz saw Froech’s horse burst through the trees ahead of her and pelt down the lake side, its hooves sending fist-sized dollops of clay flying into the air behind it.

  They all followed, faster and faster, with Uncle Dale and Liz third in line. The world became a blur of wind and streaking stars, and the relentless roll of the horse between her legs. Liz’s thighs were getting sore already. And what of poor Alec and Gary, who didn’t ride even as often as she did? She was surprised one or the other of them had not fallen off by now.

  Maybe it’s the horses, Liz thought. Or maybe the craft of the Sidhe.

  They pelted around an outthrust arm of land, and suddenly the MacTyrie bridge slashed the horizon before them, its white pylons glimmering in the moonlight, carrying its span thirty feet above water that was far deeper.

  Froech had dwindled to a dim spot against the steep, raw slope that loomed to their right.

  Closer now, and Uncle Dale urged the black onward. “Get ’er, Bessie, come on, you can do it. Horse like you can do anything.”

  Liz grinned in spite of herself. Bessie was about the last name in the world she ever expected to hear applied to a Faery steed.

  Ahead of them, Nuada had almost caught the fleeing youth. A bare ten yards separated them.

  But beyond, half a mile across the lake to the left, where the road from Enotah swung down the mountain and burst upon the bridge, lights showed a car fast approaching.

  “Froech!” Nuada’s shout cut the night.

  But Froech ignored him, and spurred his mount up the steep slope at the bridge’s nearer end.

  He turned left onto the span, and the company followed close.

  “Gotta catch that boy,” Uncle Dale gritted, as he urged Bessie up the bank, with the rest at his back in a tide of black and gray and silver.

  Lights bounced across the railing an eighth of a mile away, as the company surged onto the bridge. Liz saw the Faery youth shudder as he passed near the iron railing.

  But then he was riding again, spurs digging into the silver haunches, as fear rose red in his horse’s eyes.

  Headlights glared onto the bridge.

  Froech froze—in the exact center of the left-hand lane.

  The lights burned closer, setting the boy’s handsome face into a one-dimensional cutout of shock and horror. Slanted Faery eyes slitted in the light of General Electric halogens. The youth raised a screening arm across his face.

  High beams dipped, flashed, dipped again. A horn blew.

  Froech grimaced. The heat of iron born of the World’s first making was rushing down upon him, even as it surrounded him to either side.
He spurred the horse, and jerked it in an awkward sidestep onto the walkway beside the railing. Water sparkled below.

  A longer blast on the horn.

  Froech jerked the reins, dug his knees in.

  Another set of lights swung onto the bridge. Heavy motors rumbled.

  Froech’s horse revolted then, and flung itself across the wide roadway directly in front of the oncoming vehicle . . . and calmly arched itself across the low railing on the opposite side.

  Suddenly the whole company was galloping after, the four remaining horses inspired by their fellow’s recklessness. And facing them was a gold Camaro, its brakes squealing a cacophonous counterpoint to its horn.

  There followed a moment of frozen time when it seemed to Liz the world was lost in a chaos of movement in which the only anchor was Uncle Dale’s khakied back.

  And then their mounts were leaping in pursuit of their fellow, as much from high-hearted joy as from fear or their riders’ urging.

  Lights blazed to Liz’s left and the railing loomed ahead of her. Silver shoes rang loud on pavement, and then she felt the horse’s hip muscles tense beneath her.

  “Hold on, girl!” Uncle Dale cried as she buried her face desperately between his shoulders.

  There was sidewalk beneath her, and then a gray glimmer of railing, and then air and darkness.

  “Shiiiiiit!” a voice cried, and Liz glanced sideways to see Gary’s mouth and eyes round to astonished circles as Cormac launched his mount into the air.

  The horn dopplered into silence as the Camaro sped past behind them—

  Above them.

  Raw, sick fear bloomed in Liz’s stomach as she realized that Uncle Dale had kicked free, and they were simply falling . . .

  Water, cold and hard, slapped her diaphragm against her lungs, hammered the air from her chest. A sour burning flooded into her nose, her eyes, her gaping mouth.

  Arms flailing automatically, Liz sought the surface.

  Other heads broke water around her, and she saw Nuada to her left, ponytail slicked thin across his shoulders, as he grasped Blackwind’s mane with his single hand and sent him paddling into the bridge’s shadow.