Fireshaper's Doom

by Tom Deitz

  She began tallying those dark blots: herself, and Silverhand, and Gary, who was already swimming strongly, and there was Regan dragging Alec with one hand and clutching her horse’s tail with the other. A splash beside her as Uncle Dale’s head broke surface—minus his hat, which was floating somewhere out of reach. And further to the left there was a sullen Cormac swimming behind his former mount. Finally, already almost within arm’s distance of the nearest pylon, there was Froech. The Faery youth was still seated, though only his head and upper torso showed above the inky surface, even as his stallion’s head and arching neck alone were visible, riding low within the water. He was leaning far over the pommel, eyes closed, his body absolutely motionless except for his lips, which seemed to be chanting some unvoiced litany.

  Nuada paddled up beside him, just as the youth’s lids quivered open. “Present wisdom a trade for previous folly?” the fair-haired man asked. “Or was that not a glamour I felt you casting?”

  Froech nodded groggily. “Aye. The minds of men are easy things to cloud when they do not wish to trust their senses. The chariot drivers will but think themselves too much enthralled by wine. That much at least I could do—that, and break the force of our fall somewhat.”

  “Perhaps the first well-considered thing any of us have done lately,” Nuada replied, as Blackwind pulled him past.

  Liz concentrated on swimming, which she did well in spite of the increasing drag of her soggy clothing, all the while keeping a close eye on Uncle Dale. That old man was a continuing source of surprises, she thought, having seen him in the last few minutes ride a strange horse bareback with complete authority, jump that same horse over a bridge railing, and now seeing him swimming beside her. Granted the style he was using was not Olympic standard, but it seemed to serve him well enough.

  They were under the bridge now, and its pale ribs arched above them. She caught at one of the pylons and rested a moment, her hand wedged into a concrete joint. There were two more ahead, maybe a hundred feet apart, the farthest, she knew, in water that was not deep at all. She pushed onward, crossed the intervening distance, and then the next hundred feet, conscious more and more of the weight of her clothing.

  A horse splashed beside her and she thought she recognized Bessie, though in the darkness it was hard to tell. Her feet brushed bottom then, and she wrapped a hand in the dripping mane and allowed the mare to tow her the rest of the way to the steeper northern shore.

  Trees grew closer to the water’s edge there, and Liz released her hold on Bessie’s mane to fall gratefully against the rough bark of a pine. Around her, other shapes, some two-legged, some four, were emerging from the lake, and she found herself again taking mental inventory: Regan, Alec, and their horse; Froech and his own mount . . .

  They were all there. All conscious and none the worse for wear. The four Sidhe were seeing to the wild-eyed horses, breathing words of calm and comfort in their ears. One at a time Froech laid a hand between their eyes and with that touch they quieted.

  Liz looked around for Uncle Dale, saw him quietly tending to their shared mount, then busied herself with trying to wring as much water from her clothes and hair as she could. Alec, Gary, and Cormac had stripped off their shirts, and were twisting them between their hands as thin sheets of brownish water squirted from between the spiraled bundles.

  Nuada was also scanning the group, counting silently to himself. He frowned when he saw Froech, and Liz noticed that the Faery boy appeared to be quite dry.

  Gary approached Froech, grinning, his sodden gray sweat pants slapping together noisily. “Way to go, man. You sure got things moving—but next time give me some warning, huh? I’ll bring my bathing suit.” He clapped a friendly arm on the Faery youth’s shoulder. “Hey—why ain’t you wet?”

  Froech thrust him roughly back. “Keep away from me, human!” he snarled. “Don’t touch me!”

  “Now, wait a minute, man, I—”

  Froech’s hand shot to his left hip, and grasped the hilt of the sword that hung there. He had the blade halfway out before another hand closed over his and thrust it back into the scabbard with a click.

  Nuada stepped from behind him. (How had he moved so fast? Liz wondered. He’d been behind her an instant ago.)

  “This is an interesting sword, Froech,” Nuada said smoothly. “Is it yours?” His voice was silky calm, but Liz could sense a deadly anger just behind his eyes as he continued:

  “It is perhaps not appropriate to sheathe this sword in any wrapper but its own, boy, at least not at a time like this. I doubt human blood would improve the temper of the blade, do you? In fact, might there not be enough iron in this boy’s blood to ruin this weapon entirely? Neither Lugh nor I would find that amusing.”

  Froech’s face appeared to darken in the moonlight.

  “I—I am sorry, Lord. I am unaccustomed to dealing with humans. And truly, in our haste I forgot the sword. Lugh gave it to me to relay to you, before he sealed the borders. I pass it into your keeping now.” He unhooked the scabbard from his link-belt and handed the whole thing to Nuada.

  Nuada fixed him with a glare as he clipped the sword onto his belt one-handed. “Peace,” he said at last. “There is too much at stake here for contention.”

  Froech inclined his head sightly, though his eyes still blazed.

  Gary offered him his hand. Under Nuada’s frozen stare the Faery youth took it briefly, but obviously with little relish.

  “I will do what I can,” Froech muttered.

  “Right. No hard feelings, huh?”

  “There is strength to that boy he is not aware of himself,” Regan said softly from the silent shadows nearby.

  Liz turned toward the woman’s voice, saw her already remounted on her horse and giving Alec a hand up behind her. “How do you know?” Liz whispered.

  Regan smiled enigmatically. “Perhaps I am a seeress. Or perhaps I am simply a weaver, and can follow threads from one end of a pattern to another.”

  “But one never knows when someone else will cut the cloth,” Cormac added as he too swung up on his steed. He had not put his shirt back on and in the moonlight his bare white torso looked to Liz like some idealized Greek sculpture, so perfect were the Faery lord’s proportions, so clean the long, strong lines of his muscles. Except for Fionchadd at the Trial of Heroes, it was the first time she had seen the bare bodies of any of the Sidhe, and she was frankly curious. But then she remembered the last time she had seen David, seen his bare torso shimmering slick and pale in the moonlight, and she felt tears welling in her eyes. Suddenly she was a mass of nerves.

  “Can we get going now?” she heard herself cry, more desperately than she’d intended.

  “We can indeed,” replied Nuada. “And let us do so now.” The Faery lord glanced at Uncle Dale. “How far is this place you suggest we seek?”

  “ ’Bout six miles, but it’s mostly easy travelin’. We can follow the beach some, and most of the rest is pine woods, so they won’t be hard to get through. Once we get there, we can pick up whatever supplies we might need and head out. I ’spect we all could do with a bite.”

  “We could use some weapons too,” Alec suggested. “Knives and stuff, if you’ve got any.”

  “But what about the cops?” Gary insisted.

  “Do not forget on what you ride,” Nuada answered, as he exchanged an enigmatic glance with Froech. “Perhaps that journey will not take as long as you expect.”

  “Long enough in wet clothes,” Alec muttered.

  Nuada raised an eyebrow. “Aye. Froech, do you suppose you could dispose of some of this . . . dampness?”

  Froech frowned. “Of course I could. But do you forget that I am cut off from Faerie now, the same as you? I must rely solely on the Power that remains within me, and that is not great. Do you think it well to spend it so frivolously when we may be in greater need of it later?”

  Nuada’s eyes narrowed. “I think it best that you do what I ask you.”

  The younger Faery’s nose t
witched irritably, but he closed his eyes. A warm wind seemed to thread its way among the trees, brushing against Liz’s face like a breath of high noon in the desert. She discovered that she was almost dry.

  “And now,” said Nuada Airgetlam, “let us ride. And”—he eyed Froech again—“let us hope our riding passes quickly.”

  For most of the company, the ensuing journey through the bright, moon-shrouded silence of the Enotah National Forest seemed, indeed, to take almost no time at all. They maintained a brisk, steady pace through open forest, briefly uphill at first, but eventually turning right onto a narrow, rutted trail—probably an abandoned logging road—that traced a clear path along a gently rolling ridgeline. A range of small mountains stretched away before them in an almost straight line from north to south.

  But for Liz, that journey seemed to take forever. Her world had narrowed to the closeness of Uncle Dale’s back, and the physical effort involved in retaining both her seat and her hold.

  And, of course, to worrying about David.

  Her head was clearer, and one part of her knew that there was nothing to worry about—in the sense that she knew David was alive, albeit in Faery captivity. But she had no certainty she’d ever see him again, and that she couldn’t bring herself to face, especially in the light of what had so recently passed between them. It had taken a lot out of her: getting up the nerve to take the initiative in their relationship, then going along with David’s sudden burst of amorousness (though she had to admit she’d enjoyed it as well). But she hadn’t expected things to go so far so quickly, from total restraint to almost no restraint all in a matter of minutes.

  And now, it looked like it had all been in vain; and, she realized as well, she felt guilty—because, if not for her, David would have kept the ring and presumably have been protected against whatever had made away with him. That was what filled her with the sense of desperate urgency she was trying hard to keep distanced, but which threatened to overwhelm her.

  “Well, that didn’t take near as long as I’d figgered,” Uncle Dale exclaimed, shaking Liz abruptly from her dreamy reverie. She looked up just in time to see the forest open abruptly before them.

  And indeed, at the bottom of a grassy slope directly ahead lay the Sullivan Cove road. Beyond it was Uncle Dale’s house, nestled dark in its comfortable hollow among the pastured hillsides. And a couple of miles beyond that lay Franks Gap: the true beginning of their journey.

  Chapter XX: Tracking

  (A Straight Track)

  There were odors everywhere: the tickly mustiness of overdry moss; the staleness of close, still air; the metallic bitterness of empty beetle shells; and strongest, most pervasive of all, the sickly, corrupt sweetness of oozing briar sap and the cold sterility of the Track.

  Fionna, who was a fox again, wrinkled her nose as she sorted the thousand scents that drifted round her, but did not diminish the forthright pace of her trotting.

  The Track flowed beneath her, now thick as heavy satin, now thin as golden gauze, but her sensitive footpads knew it only as a tingling, an unheard sound of Power to which her slender bones sang back in a counterpoint of their own. Power called to Power, magic to magic. Every quick-bounced step brought a surge of strength. Soon she would be back to normal, even without the trickle of Power that reached to her from Erenn.

  The Track continued on, an infinite tunnel tight-twined with briars that shut out all light but the yellow glow of its own surface, which was enough for vulpine eyes.

  A breeze twitched Fionna’s whiskers, a lost wanderer from Outside whispering in her large, attentive ears of fresher air and wider skies, and land that held its own self-born Power. A faint tinge of brine rode that wind, and the part of the fox that was yet Fionna knew which sea in which World had sent its breath upon the Track.

  But another odor laced in and out of that hint of ocean: a hot smell that told of life and movement, a sourness that spoke of fear, a sweet saltiness that grew to overwhelm the scent of that unseen sea. That new odor Fionna recognized, for it was what she sought: Ailill.

  She trotted faster and faster, at last broke into a run.

  It is merely blood, her fox-mind told her without much interest.

  His blood?

  Faery blood.

  Another Track blazed in from the right, and the odor intensified.

  Down that way now, a brief two body lengths, and then she saw it: a red splatter upon dry oak leaves that smelled hotter than they should. The tiniest acrid hint of burning in the air.

  The fox nosed the blood, looked up, sought wider, saw the prints: cloven hooves wide apart as if some great stag had run mad upon the Straight Tracks.

  A deeper sniff told the story.

  So they have wounded you, my brother.

  The fox dabbed a tongue absently upon the bloody smear.

  I have been a fox too long, Fionna thought. Would that I might wear my own shape again, but if I would make the haste I need, I must need put on yet another.

  And with that Fionna set one part of her mind to the summoning of Power, and another to spiraling it through her body, stretching this bone, compressing that, enlarging this muscle, twisting that nerve. Longer legs and shorter gray-red hair and a splayed branching of backswept antlers.

  And Fionna became a deer.

  With a joyful leap forward, she set off on her brother’s trail.

  Chapter XXI: Hard Talking

  (The Burning Lands)

  I have just committed myself to murder, David reminded himself gloomily as he stared at the half-empty goblet in his right hand. The thick red wine reminded him unpleasantly of blood, and that did nothing to improve his mood, which was darkening by the instant.

  He took a final reckless swallow and slammed the goblet down beside his heavy golden plate. A smear of grease and a fan of suspicious orange fungus were all that remained of what had truly been the finest feast he had ever eaten—if only he’d had the stomach for it. Or the nerve. The food was safe—so an amused Morwyn had told him, but he wasn’t sure he believed her.

  That lady was rustling about somewhere behind one of her screens—the same one from which she had somehow produced the sumptuous meal on ridiculously little notice, probably by a method that would not stand close scrutiny by any rational mind. Not that he had time for such considerations just now.

  Or a particularly rational mind.

  Not with his head awhirl with what Morwyn had told him about the Horn of Annwyn. (And there were things she hadn’t revealed, of that he was equally certain, though her description of the Horn itself had been excruciatingly precise, and she’d made him repeat it a score of times to make certain he had it exact.)

  And not with her equally obscure and evasive directions on how the theft was to be accomplished, though the film of grease on her plate displayed an intricate series of maps and diagrams of portions of Tir-Nan-Og, Lugh’s palace, even the treasure chamber itself. She had promised more information upon her return. Like how he was supposed to get in once he got there, and then where the Horn was, once he got in.

  David skewered the final shrimp from one of the small cloisonné bowls that surrounded his plate, and munched the sweet morsel absently. (At least, the finger-long curls of white and pink looked like shrimp, except that they had two tails—and that was another thing he didn’t want to think about too much.)

  When he got down to it, in fact, there was very little he did want to think about.

  It had all been very remote, his conversation with Morwyn—partly, he suspected, because of the wine—and he’d agreed to her terms without giving them the full and careful analysis they deserved.

  But now he was thinking about it, thinking hard. The business about Ailill bothered him most—not that he’d been given a choice. It was either deal with Morwyn or see his family endangered.

  Perhaps he could find a way to fulfill the letter of his obligation and still not be an accessory to murder. If Morwyn wanted Ailill dead, that was her concern, but the respon
sibility should be hers as well.

  David’s perplexed frown was still wrinkling his forehead when Morwyn returned with yet another ewer, this one in the shape of a slim-necked bird—a stork or heron, maybe.

  More wine? Hell, I’ll be high as a kite in no time, and then what’ll happen? The lady did not seem to be in any particular hurry to set him on his way, and David very much feared that her idea of dessert might include him. Not that that would be bad, necessarily; his body probably wouldn’t complain. But his conscience certainly would. He’d been so close to Liz, and so recently. It had been marvelous to be that close to someone else without guilt or fear. Very, very special. Anything else would seem very much like betrayal.

  David found himself blushing as Morwyn bent close and tilted the contents of the ewer into tiny, delicate goblets of smooth white jade, goblets thin as eggshells and more transparent. The liquid was thick and creamy green, yet it sparkled in his nostrils like champagne; its bouquet held a distant suggestion of mint.

  He took a tentative sip—it was delicious, of course—and all the while Morwyn’s eyes watched his every movement with that languid expression of distant amusement that he found so damned disconcerting. All at once he recalled that she could read thoughts, and then, to his horror, exactly what his thoughts had been scant seconds before. His ears commenced to burning.

  “So . . . you were going to tell me how I’m supposed to do this,” he ventured at last. “Assuming I can find the palace, how do I get into the vault—how do I even find it?”

  “Why so hasty, boy?” Morwyn replied with elaborate indifference. “Finish your drink, then we will talk.”

  “No,” David said firmly, setting the fragile goblet down hard. “We’ll talk now!”

  Morwyn’s face stiffened as she eased down opposite him. “Very well,” she whispered icily. “We will talk, and you had better listen, because your life may depend upon what I tell you. Is that clear?” She smiled primly and folded her arms.