by Tom Deitz
“I do not,” Rhiannon answered tautly.
“Then she has already sent it to the coast,” Rigantana groaned. “We have ridden away from it.”
Lugh studied Rhiannon perplexedly. “I thought your escort was smaller than when you arrived. Obviously they have taken this thing and fled, but my knights are faster than yours, and will overtake them.”
“They’d better,” Alec inserted edgily. “Or they could be in trouble.”
“How so, young wizard?” From Lugh.
“Don’t call me that!” Alec grumbled, more rudely than he’d intended. “But what I meant was that it has to be treated a particular way—like, if you don’t feed it the blood of a large animal every so often, it’ll go mad.”
Lugh looked sharply at Rhiannon. “Did you know this?”
Rhiannon’s response was to glare at Alec as though he were more loathsome than a slug.
Alec matched her glare. “I would have given it to you,” he said quietly. “Lent it, anyway. I don’t like doing that kind of thing, but if our folks are causing problems in Faerie, it’s our job to try to set ’em straight. Obviously we can’t do much, but we could’ve stopped using the ulunsuti to make gates, and we—that is, I—would’ve tried to help with the refugee thing.”
Lugh regarded him steadily. “For good or ill, you have been wronged by a guest in my land; the onus of compensation, therefore, falls on me. My knights will surely recover this talisman, but if they do not, do you seek further redress?”
Alec shook his head. But then a thought occurred to him—rash perhaps, but what did he have to lose? “Aife,” he whispered. “If she’s not in her tower, where is she?”
Lugh nodded solemnly. “It is what I thought you would ask, and the answer is this: Aife is kin to the Queen of Ys—which explains her likeness to Rhiannon and Rigantana—and likewise to one of the Morrigu’s favorite disguises. But since I did not entirely trust Rhiannon’s intentions—for well you know what has befallen when other Faery rulers have challenged my judgments—I thought it best that Aife be moved to a place closer to hand, for which reason I changed her into an enfield, such as those I keep about my court—in which guise, I am sorry to say, she escaped a few days past.”
“And let me guess,” David broke in. “She found her way onto the Tracks and got off in Athens.”
“She was probably searching for you, Alec McLean,” Oisin added.
“Probably,” Nuada agreed. “I think she truly did love you—and though the beast-mind would have prevailed, still, it could not obscure strong feelings. She would have sensed your presence as soon as she came into your World, and more clearly in the mind of your friend Aikin. Then—”
Alec wasn’t listening. “But…where is she now?” he blurted out.
“On the Tracks,” Aikin sighed. “I found her out at Whitehall and followed her onto the Tracks and then lost her.”
“She disappeared right after we found Aik,” Liz explained. “I noticed her, but wasn’t paying attention to her. I mean, a lot was going on.”
Alec blinked at him stupidly. “But why would she do that? If—if she…loves me, why would she fool around with you?”
“Perhaps because she knew you disliked magic and would not deal with it willingly,” Nuada ventured. “She therefore lured someone onto the Tracks she thought you—or your friends—would pursue. Probably she intended to bring you all to Tir-Nan-Og, where explanations would have been courtesy, if not necessity.”
“Except that she bolted when she saw the little guys,” Aikin broke in. “That was real fear, wasn’t it? Animal mind overruling human?”
“Yes,” Nuada acknowledged. “And it is ironic that that, of all Worlds, was the one you entered, for there alone could such shape-shifting as she wrought be accomplished. Something to do with the water, I think: manifesting desire, or some such.”
Aikin eyed him narrowly. “How’d you know about all that?”
Nuada smiled. “You were thinking very loudly indeed.”
“So Aife still walks the Tracks?” Lugh asked at last.
“Minus an ear, I’m afraid,” Aikin admitted. “My fault.”
“Her choice,” Oisin corrected.
“All of which gives me an idea,” Lugh announced, “assuming we can locate this…beast.”
“Is it one like this?” one of the guards asked from where he blocked the continuation of the Morrigu’s Track.
Alec started, and had to peer between the Faery women to see, trotting calmly from beneath the guards’ horses, a familiar tawny form—looking for all the world like a smug, almost cartoony fox, save for the eagle talons that replaced what should have been vulpine forepaws, and the fact that it was missing an ear. It paused there, facing Light in the center of the crossroads, then peered first at Lugh, then at Alec—where, after a plaintive whistling trill, its gaze rested.
“Convenient,” Lugh mused. “Perhaps she too saw her desire in the waters of that World and followed the Tracks to find it.” And with that, he swung down from his horse and stepped to the center of the crossroads, where he knelt before the enfield. “At least it will be simple here, in this place of Power,” he muttered—and laid both hands on the creature’s head. Alec saw David tense, and felt a tightening of the air as some unseen force was brought to bear. Brightness smote his eyes; he blinked away tears, and when he could see again, Lugh’s hand rested on a large orange house cat. The King of Tir-Nan-Og scooped it up with one hand, stroked it reflectively, then marched straight between the Morrigu and Rigantana.
It took Alec a moment to realize that he was the intended target, and then Lugh was handing the cat up to him. He had no choice but to accept it. An instant later it was purring in his arms. At which point a troubling suspicion awoke.
“Oh…no…!” he choked, shaking his head. “Uh uh. I’m not gonna be your jailer! I mean, with all due respect, I hate magic, and the last thing I need’s one more magical whatsis to worry about. Shoot, look what happened the last time someone from another World gave me something.”
Lugh’s eyes twinkled mischievously as he pointedly backed away.
“No, wait—your honor! You can’t be serious about this—aren’t you the one who’s concerned about damage control in our World? So the last thing you oughta want’s one more piece of magic loose there!”
“It will not be loose,” Lugh laughed, continuing his retreat. “In fact, I imagine it will be difficult for you to loose yourself from it. And since you despise magic, you are the best possible guardian for something magical—because you will not be tempted to use it. Finally, being in your service is fitting punishment for Aife’s treachery, since it was you among all mortals whom she most wronged.”
“But—”
“My decision has been made. We have other errands tonight, or do you forget that it was you who lately gated through the World Walls—which damaged my land. I do not have to overlook that!”
Alec swallowed hard. Would it really be that bad? He liked cats—sort of. Even one-eared ones.
“Two other things,” Lugh added, as he climbed back on his stallion. “I have given her the substance of your World to relieve her of the draw of Faerie and so that she need not go constantly in dread of Iron. But she will briefly resume her enfield shape at dusk and dawn.”
“Now you tell me!” Alec growled, even as he found himself stroking the cat’s fur.
“Serving you may reduce her sentence, however,” Lugh confided. “It will likewise hasten her return to human form—which surely you desire.”
“But when . . ?”
“When I so choose!” Lugh gave back, abruptly imperious again.
“Never mind,” Alec grunted. “I’ll deal with it.”
“Indeed you will!” Lugh retorted with a disturbing chuckle. “Now we must continue the Rade.” He surveyed the Morrigu’s company. “I have granted all present the right to ride with us. Do you accept or stay? You first, David Sullivan.”
David took a deep breath, and Alec
suddenly felt very sorry for him. God knew Dave had been holding a lot back, not the least the impatience he must be feeling at this delay in his own ambiguous quest. “I…have another errand,” David sighed. “I’m sorry.”
“And you, Alec McLean: Do you ride with your friend or with the company who leave anon to retrieve your property?”
Another choice, Alec thought. Another damned choice, and he had no idea which was correct. The ulunsuti was his, and it had been his own stubborn silent folly that had lost it. But Dave was his truest friend and had borne far heavier burdens longer, unspoken for the most part, and unavenged.
“I go with David,” Alec breathed finally.
“Liz Hughes?”
“With David, of course.”
“And you, Aikin Daniels, who were so eager to visit my realm? What would you do?”
Aikin gnawed his lip, and Alec guessed that he was having a devil of a time choosing between logic and emotion, between loyalties—between one quest and another.
“You hesitate,” Lugh said a little gruffly. “Is it so hard to see what is in your heart?”
“I…oughta go with Dave,” Aikin admitted, his voice very soft. “He’s my friend and I owe it to him. But”—he paused and grinned at David—“sorry, man; but all my life I’ve wanted to ride with the Faeries.”
Lugh nodded gravely. “I see in you a true love of Faerie such as few mortals possess anymore. But I have another quest for you, if you are brave.”
Aikin’s eyes were bright. “Yeah?”
“Someone needs to return the ulunsuti to young McLean when my knights retrieve it. If you like, you may ride with those I send to secure it.”
“That’d be…great,” Aikin whispered.
“There is one condition, however.”
“What?”
“You will be unable to speak of what transpires there to any not here present.”
Alec had to suppress a giggle at the irony, given how pissed Aik had been about their enforced silences. An exchange of glances with David and Liz showed that they’d been thinking the same.
“You will also need a swifter steed,” Lugh concluded. “My squire will lend you his—then go! Rigantana, you may join them if you wish.”
Aikin started to dismount, but Alec was already fumbling at his waist for the sword he’d been lugging around since he’d begun his own quest. “Hang on a sec,” he called frantically.
Aikin twisted around, blinking in surprise.
“I don’t know what good this’ll do,” Alec mumbled. “But it can’t hurt.”
“Iron is still Iron!” Nuada observed. “And however dull that blade may be, it has tasted Faery blood!”
Aikin accepted the weapon with a foolish smirk and a sketchy bow, uttered an embarrassed “Hey, thanks, man!” then slid off his faithful mare and strode to where a fair-haired youth was waiting beside an elegant but muscular stallion whose coat, if possible, was even whiter than that of the one he’d been riding. It also had a saddle and stirrups—which was a relief. The Faery gave him a quick leg up, and Aikin tried not to appear too full of himself as he guided his new mount to where the six knights who had guarded the wings of the crossroads were regrouping at their juncture. They made room for him and Rigantana in their midst, and, as one, touched heel to flank and sped away.
Alec watched them go. The cat purred. He stroked its fur. He was, he realized, grinning.
“And now let us proceed!” Lugh cried, as new warriors rode up to replace those who had departed—warriors who, Alec noted, crowded close around a hard-jawed Rhiannon.
And then the host was moving, slowly, solemnly, as though they had all the time in the world: a long file of warriors and princes, lords and ladies, heralds and craftsmen and seers; all dressed in white and riding mounts that were not all horses, and bearing weapons that were not all swords or spears or daggers. Light rode with them, both the human personification, and that which every fragment of metal about them reflected.
And then the Rade had passed.
—Leaving a grim-faced David Sullivan to continue north, in the company of his best friend, his lady, a dangerous Faery queen—and a cat that was also an enfield and a woman.
Chapter XXIII: Stags and Stones
(The Straight Tracks—no time)
The last thing Aikin expected while galloping full tilt along a Straight Track with a troop of Faery knights and the daughter of a Faery queen, all on a desperate race to recover an oracular stone, was boredom. Yet bored he was.
Though they indisputably rode a Track (he could tell by the unvarying line of gold that flashed beneath the hooves of the four horses that sped at a shocking pace before him), the rest of the landscape could as easily have been the south Georgia pine barrens he’d seen far too often on forays to Florida: mile on mile of dead-straight, dead-level, unrelieved boredom. Oh, he’d spent a few minutes trying to puzzle out the construction of the armor on the knight just ahead. But though his mount’s gait held the eerie smoothness of all the steeds of Faerie, it was still bouncy and uneven to someone accustomed to cars, so that he could never quite focus on the details that intrigued him, never mind the intricacies of workmanship. Horses, it seemed, had no vertical hold—which he needed. In the end he gave up and rode—bored.
That galled him, too, because the image he’d had of riding with the Faeries was of seeing neat things and asking all kinds of questions about the Worlds and the Tracks and the folk thereof—questions it had surely not occurred to Dave to ask, never mind Alec or Liz.
But here he was in the equivalent of a candy store—with no one to wait on him, all the goodies out of reach inside glass jars—and no money to spend in the bargain.
And he’d have been even more bored, had it not been for the pain: stretched muscles, cramping muscles, and abrasion, all three.
What I get for never taking riding lessons, he told himself, as he tried to shift to a more comfortable seat on a saddle obviously made for someone configured differently—narrower of foot, for one thing: he’d barely been able to get his eight-and-a-halfs in the stirrups when he’d hooked up with this batch of grim-faced dudes bent on catching Rhiannon’s bad boys, and by the time they were in transit, it was too late to complain.
He hoped he had skin on his legs when they got there—or pants, for that matter. Or even legs. He was afraid to look down, lest his cammos be smoking where they rubbed against saddle leather and horsehide both.
“Fuck this!” he muttered—and tried, yet again, to reseat himself. His right thigh promptly cramped. “Ouch! Damn! Hell!” he added, for emphasis.
He was trying to massage the over-stressed muscle loose, when the Track widened and one of those who rode in his wake galloped up to pace him. A sideways glance showed Rigantana.
“It would seem,” she called, with a very-human grin—“that your…‘contact patch’ is giving you grief.”
Aikin rolled his eyes and tried to choose between venting his rapidly accumulating spleen (thereby sounding like a wimpy mortal and disgracing himself before a very pretty woman); suffering in silence (which, while more macho, might have long-term repercussions if he was doing something wrong that could be remedied and he didn’t change it before incurring actual damage); and simply admitting meekly that he hurt like a son of a bitch and requesting advice.
“Yeah, well, I don’t have radial ply legs,” he grumbled at last.
“It hurt me too, when I learned,” Rigantana told him breathlessly.
“You didn’t do it by magic?”
“You cannot learn everything that way!” she laughed back. “One must learn any art or skill the…slow way first. Even then, it often takes more effort to effect a task with Power than with muscle or mind alone.”
“But what about—?” he began, but had to abandon the conversation when the leader of their company sharply increased his pace, forcing the rest of the troop to do likewise or be left behind.
Aikin’s stallion stretched out with the rest, and he concentrated o
n retaining his seat. Every muscle from his waist down promptly protested, and even his arms grew sore from gripping the reins so tightly. Rigantana fell back, but he was certain he heard her chuckle—and, therefore, scowled. And then he could do nothing but simply hang on while air howled past his face and whistled around the earpieces of his glasses, and the pine barrens became a blue-black blur.
Faster yet—and his right foot jolted from its stirrup. He kicked for it desperately as he nearly fell—found it—lost it again, and by reflex as much as volition yanked on the reins. His mount slowed immediately.
A knight flashed by, then another. The first glared at him, the second guffawed with open derision. Rigantana too surged past—and a clear voice reached back from the head of the line: “This is no good! If we could catch those we seek, we must have swifter steeds.”
“Oh hell!” Aikin groaned, not caring who heard, and dropped the reins as their pace relaxed.
“—Or swifter riders,” someone else told their captain, gazing at Aikin pointedly.
“Speed is still speed, and for everything there is a limit,” the captain countered. “The boy slowed us no more than that dainty lady of yours.”
Aikin’s gaze sought automatically for the horse in question, and saw a beautiful mare, sides heaving violently and sweat—actual sweat—lathering her pearly white coat. Even Faerie, it seemed, had its earthy side.
“Were it not for the lad, we could shape-shift into fleeter forms,” someone else flared.
“And would you shift Snow Spark as well? If so, you are stronger than I!”
“We could leave them…”
The captain snorted. “You know who rides the Tracks tonight! You would do well to find two hairs and a bone when you returned.”
“Then what?”
The captain scratched his chin, eyes narrow beneath his silver half helm. “There is a World near here where we could both find faster mounts and leave our own to forage. And Himself is unlikely to go there.”
“What World?”
“My father’s. He discovered it while on a Rade, and Lugh granted it to him if he would explore it, share whatever he found there with the rest of Tir-Nan-Og, and let it serve as a way station for travelers on the Track.”