by Tom Deitz
Gibbered, rather say.
Whether there was sense to those utterances or not, they conjured images of vast battlefields strewn with corpses of every race and nation: chain mail and plate, bare skin and armored, elaborate uniforms and nondescript fatigues. Swords and shields, knives and axes and maces; blades straight or curved, single edged or bi or tri; rifles and mortars and tanks. Banners of silk and linen and hemp, bright-dyed or faded. And everywhere severed limbs and smashed skulls and piles of steaming viscera, over which dark birds whirled and speculated, and atop which more than one lit to feast. And surely one of those birds had the same eyes as the crazy woman; surely one of those slain was the very likeness of David-the-Elder.
Somehow David tore his gaze away. Liz’s fingers tightened in his hand, as she drew close against him. A stronger hand clamped hard upon his shoulder. “This is a crock,” Aikin muttered.
“Kill them! Split their skulls, shatter their bones!” the red-haired woman shrieked, kicking her horse forward. “Show me their hearts where they beat in their chests! Carve the blood eagle thrice and let it fly. Float their brains in cups of blood, with their eyeballs as ornaments!”
“I will do what I will!” the Huntsman snapped—and moved closer.
David backed up. His companions did the same. One step, two, and they were halfway down the alley. Four yards separated them from the Hunt, then three. The Huntsman lowered his spear, pointing it first at David, then at Liz, then at Aikin, where it paused. “No one eludes me,” that dark figure spat, with a grim laugh. “Yet had you but kept your earlier shape you would have been safe; for I hunt no one twice in the same body.”
The tip wavered. No more than a yard separated it from Aikin’s chest. But just when David feared to see it thrust home, it moved again, to where the Faery woman stood at Liz’s right.
Another step, and the spear tapped her breast above her heart.
The woman never flinched. “You would not dare!” she hissed.
“I hunt whom and what I please when it pleases me,” the Huntsman replied. “And though I know that you are other than you seem, still, I own no one master: human, god, nor Faery.”
“Not even the sister of one who travels with you?” the woman shot back, gazing at the gibbering Huntress, who was leaning over her mount’s head like a gargoyle atop a charnel house.
David’s breath caught, not only at the challenge, which hinted both at hope and betrayal, but because the gesture had brought the madwoman’s face into range of the alley’s sole illumination. And somehow that single dim bulb washed the blood from her lips, cheeks, and chin, and showed her features whole: the features, he realized with sick despair, of the Morrigu.
Which confused him more than ever, for their Faery companion had also worn those features—he thought. At which point something began to nag at him: something that would probably have been clear had not panic overridden it.
—Panic, and the words of the Huntsman, when, after a pause during which the spear point did not waver, he shook his head and spoke:
“Kinship will not save you, not when you walk the Tracks this night unguarded. For have you not heard that this night is mine?”
“Not even if by so doing you incur not only Lugh’s wrath, but that of the Queen of Ys?” a new female voice cried, from behind them. “I stand with the mortals and their…friend.”
David jumped half out of his skin, then twisted around—to see, stepping from the alley’s single door, another Faery woman. The very one, surely, whom he’d spotted the previous night at the 40 Watt: the second one, whom his friend Mark claimed to have seen in the library. Now, though dressed in student togs—a white silk shirt above black jeans—she stood revealed as some great lady among the Daoine Sidhe.
But what was all that about the Queen of Ys?
Who was the Queen of Ys?
The Huntsman paused, as though considering. Then: “The Queen of Ys, you say?”
“Aye!”
“You are not her.”
“I am her daughter!”
“Rigantana?”
“Aye!”
“What difference does it make?” the tattooed man snapped, as he ambled up beside his leader. The ends of his mustache showed a disturbing shade of red.
“The difference,” Rigantana said coolly, “is that these fine hounds that seethe about your mounts would not exist had the House of Ys not bred them.”
“Which is no reason to let these mortals live—nor two chattering Faery bitches!”
Rigantana glared at Mr. Tattoo for a long moment, as though regarding a spider she would grind into the dirt, then turned back to the Huntsman. (God, she was a cool one, David decided—or insane.) “There was a promise,” she observed.
The Huntsman’s eyes narrowed beneath his horned helm. The spear remained where it was: inches from the Faery woman’s breast. “There was,” he growled eventually.
“What promise?” the gibbering woman shouted. “I have not seen near enough blood tonight, and these are merely mortals!”
“Not all of them,” the Huntsman snarled back, threatening her with his free hand. “And as for the promise… When your kind came to this World I resisted them, and then I fought them. The Realms of Faerie sent champions, whom I defeated. Only Ys sent gifts instead: hounds which never tired and could track forever. I swore then that I would never use that pack against those who presented them: that I would never hunt anyone of Ys’s royal house, or under that kindred’s protection.”
“Which protection I hereby confer upon these three humans and…one other,” Rigantana said clearly. She smiled, a little smugly, but her eyes were grim.
Abruptly the spear ripped skyward, leaving an afterimage like backward lightning. David cried out, fearing to see the Faery woman’s body crumple, awash with blood.
Instead, she stepped back—intact.
For a long moment the Huntsman regarded them. “The Tracks are mine!” he gritted. “Walk them at your peril!”
“You defy me?” From Rigantana.
“Quarry who fear are better than quarry caught unaware,” the Huntsman replied. “But tonight…they are free of me.”
“Fool!” the tattooed man spat. “You—”
The Huntsman smashed him in the chest with the butt of the spear. He went pale and fell silent, eyes wide and dazed. A trickle of red oozed from the corner of his mouth.
“No…blood?” the gibbering woman whined, like a pouting child.
“No blood…here,” the Hunt told her, and spun his horse around.
And then, like a thundercloud evaporating, they were gone.
David gaped incredulously, heart pounding, legs scarcely able to support him.
“Shit!” Aikin breathed beside him, releasing his shoulder. David turned to give Liz a desperate hug, only to see both Faery women striding toward the alley’s open end. The air crackled with unresolved tension. David released Liz and followed them as quickly as he could, but his raw thighs made it hard to walk and were cramping worse than ever, so that the women had reached the sidewalk before he caught up with them. “Wait!” he panted.
Rigantana froze, then turned to look at him. Her face was stern and impatient, as though her next word would be “Well?”
David had just opened his mouth—though he had no idea which of the zillion questions crowding down to his tongue from his brain would jostle to the fore-front—when Liz grabbed his arm. “Look!” she cried. “Is that—?”
“Alec!” David finished for her, as he followed her gaze up the street to the right. “Jesus Christ, it’s Alec!”
“Looks like hell, too,” Aikin noted.
“God, you’re right!” David agreed. And sore legs notwithstanding, was elbowing his way through a thickening clump of revelers that had flooded the street during their standoff with the Hunt—in anticipation, evidently, of the band setting up at the next corner down.
“Alec!” David yelled again, as he drew nearer. But already he knew something was wrong. Oh, his
roomie looked okay—intact, anyway—though he likewise resembled a refugee from a week-long trek in the woods (save for the sword he was clutching); but he was also weaving along like someone half-awake, and his eyes were wide and staring, as though he were drunk, stoned—or dazed.
A deft pair of sidesteps to clear a generic ghost and a giant bunny, and David was sliding an arm around his best friend. “Oh, man…what the hell’s wrong?”
“Cold hillside,” Alec mumbled—and collapsed against David’s chest. It took a moment to realize that his buddy was crying: sobbing his heart out into his shoulder. David didn’t resist—not with so much heart-wrenching angst evident in Alec’s action. An instant later, Liz and Aikin joined them, with, more distantly, Rigantana and the nameless other. David looked up desperately. “Get him something to drink,” he begged the party in general, and was grateful to see the nameless one nod, then vanish into the crowd.
“C’mon, man, sit down,” David urged, as Alec showed sign of regaining control. “C’mon, let’s go”—he looked around—“over there: the bus stop. We can talk there, but there’s still people around—and something tells me we need people around.”
“I’m sorry,” Alec choked dully. “I did something really dumb.”
“You’re not alone,” Aikin echoed under his breath.
“So what’re you guys doin’ here?” Alec managed a minute later, when he’d slumped down beneath the canopy of the ornate new shelter that served City Hall. “I tried to call home, but no one was there, so I figured I’d see who was around… And here you were…”
“Whoa,” David inserted. “You’re gettin’ outta order here. Last we knew you’d zapped into Faerie. Obviously you’re back—or didn’t make it. Equally obviously something’s happened. So maybe you’d better ’fess up, given that we’re all safe now.”
“From what?” Alec asked, sounding marginally more coherent.
“All in good time,” Liz said. “You first.”
Alec nodded, and in fits and starts, with many pauses during which he seemed embarrassed about certain details, laid out the whole tale of what he called his fool’s errand. His friends listened without interruption, as did Rigantana. But David found himself watching her as much as his roommate. Something was bugging her: something very troubling indeed, by the way her jaw had grown tense and her brow was furrowing more deeply every second. And then, when Alec was relating how he’d awakened in Oconee Hills with his clothes and gear but no ulunsuti, she obviously could restrain herself no longer.
“That woman…” Rigantana gritted. “She who lay with you, who stole the oracular stone: she was my mother!” She spat out the last word, as though it disgusted her. David was startled at her vehemence.
“Oh, God!” Alec moaned. “Shit.”
“I…sense another story impending,” David sighed. “As best I can figure, there’s one down and three to go—plus whatever’s up with whatsername.”
“Where’d she go, anyway?” Aikin wondered, rising on tiptoes to scan the mob.
“For something to drink—I hope. But she must’ve gone to Atlanta to get it.”
“I’d as soon not wait,” Rigantana said. “And I do owe some explanation—though obviously you’ve figured out part of it already.”
“Sit,” David said. She did.
“Hear, then,” Rigantana began, and with that phrase the grad student persona vanished utterly, for all her mundane attire. “As I have said,” she continued, “my name is Rigantana, and I am of Faerie. I know that you have visited that realm and know somewhat about it. You therefore know of the various Realms: Tir-Nan-Og, Annwyn, Erenn…”
“Right,” David acknowledged, nodding. Aikin was leaning forward attentively.
“Then you also know that there are other realms which touch the ones you know, and of these the greatest is Ys, which in Faerie can only be reached through Annwyn—one cannot sail there direct from Tir-Nan-Og. My mother, Rhiannon, is queen of Ys; and of her I will speak more in a moment. For now, be it known that one unique aspect of Ys is that it overlaps the Lands of Men underwater, for which reason my mother tends to restrict her Otherworldly visits to a land that touches Ys beyond a different set of World Walls than those which veil it from the Lands of Men—a place not unlike this, save that it contains more…magic.”
“Like our World touches Faerie and Galunlati,” David inserted, “but Faerie and Galunlati don’t touch each other?”
“Exactly.”
“So what’s the deal with the ulunsuti?” Alec broke in. “And what’s your mother doing here? Why’d she play that stupid game?”
“You will not like the answer.”
“Didn’t figure I would.”
Rigantana gnawed her lip. “I suppose I have spilled enough secrets already, what harm can a few more do? Very well, the situation is this: You mortal folk can use iron with no harm to yourselves, and you use it in profligate amounts. And you mortals know that too much iron in one place for too long can weaken the World Walls—even burn holes into the substance of Faerie, or actually burn Faerie. Such incursions were already a source of tension in Tir-Nan-Og, though less so in other realms, especially my mother’s. But of late there has come to be gating directly through the World Walls: gating performed by you and your friends through the agency of the ulunsuti and certain scales. Now, I am certain you held no ill will toward Faerie when you made these gates, and we ourselves could not have predicted the effect they would have—but it now seems that any gate between Worlds made by the ulunsuti does irreparable damage to the World Walls. Indeed, those ’twixt here and Tir-Nan-Og have become dangerously weak, so that the lesser fey, at least, feel—and are—threatened.”
“Like those little guys I met on the Track!” Aikin blurted out. “Oh, I haven’t told you ’bout that, have I? They looked like refugees. And they said something ’bout our World destroyin’ theirs.”
“They were refugees,” Rigantana acknowledged. “And your world is destroying theirs, in places. And since you speak of the small folk, you should know that Lugh, great king though he is, has never given them much notice—certainly not as much as my mother bestows upon them. Thus, increasing numbers of them have lately been claiming sanctuary in Ys, it being the Faery realm most remote from the Lands of Men. This was acceptable—for a time. But Ys is small, and my mother no longer has room for so many newcomers. She therefore came to Tir-Nan-Og at Lughnasadh to petition Lugh, first, to pay more heed to the needs of what small fey remain; secondly, to address the problem of mortal encroachment directly; and, finally, to try to learn more about the nature of those troublesome gates.
“And now,” she went on after a pause, “she seems to have taken matters into her own hands.”
“What makes you think that?” David asked.
Rigantana scowled. “By reading between the words of what your friend has told us, I must assume that my mother—who is a good ruler as far as her folk are concerned, though not at all fond of your kind—must have tricked Alec McLean into venturing onto the Tracks with the gating stone, for the sole purpose of relieving him of that object.”
“But why?” Alec protested. “All she had to do was explain all this, and I’d have stopped letting anyone use it. Shoot, I’d have been glad to do that.”
“Save that I think my mother has other plans for it,” Rigantana countered. “I suspect—suspect, mind you—that she intends to use the stone to construct a gate of her own, from Ys into that other World that overlaps it, on which she has become fixated. I think she hopes to resettle the refugees from Tir-Nan-Og there.”
Liz’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “So why are you telling us this? You being her daughter, and all?”
“Because I do not agree with her,” Rigantana snorted. “My mother and I have never gotten along. That is why I have never returned to her court from Lugh’s, where I was fostered. Indeed, I regard him as a second father—a second parent, rather, for I never knew my sire.”
“And why the college studen
t act?” David inquired. “I mean, while you’re spillin’ the beans, and all.”
“I am in Lugh’s service,” Rigantana answered, with a smile. “More precisely, I am in Nuada’s service. I have been in your World, in your substance, for nearly six months, doing what your kind call…‘damage control.’ Specifically, I have been charged with manipulating physical written or visual evidence that might lead mortal men to suspect that Faerie—or any other World—exists.”
“What kind of evidence?” From Aikin.
“Newspapers, microfilm archives, videotapes—though there are mercifully few of those. Suchlike as that.”
“Which explains the library!” David gasped. “They’ve got the master copies of loads of stuff there.”
“The Georgia Newspaper Project!” Liz added. “God, you’re right!”
“Which is why I chose to base myself in Athens,” Rigantana said, “that, and the fact that this town, more than most, has retained its magic—and another fact as well.”
“What?”
“Why, that you were here, David Sullivan: you and your troublesome friends. A third of the mortals in this part of the World who have been to other Worlds live in this town or are friends with those who do. But you are the nexus, David. You are the one around whom all revolves.”
“But I don’t want it to!” David protested. “It’s neat enough in its own way, but it’s only complicated my life! I never get to enjoy it!”
“Still, you needed to be watched—so I have. In my persona as Tana, I have.”
David rolled his eyes at Liz. She shrugged, then glanced sideways. “Finally!” she grumbled. “’Bout time.”
David followed her gaze, and saw the other Faery woman approaching, and could have kicked himself for not asking Rigantana about her—not that they’d really had time.
“So where’d you go for this?” Liz demanded fearlessly, when the woman passed around a cardboard tray of what looked and fizzed like Cokes. “Bogart?”
“I do not travel with mortal money,” the woman retorted. “There are also such things as lines, and I did not feel inclined to advance myself with Power. It is harder than you think to use it in this World—and there was no true emergency, since Alec McLean was not like to die.”