Warstalker's Track

by Tom Deitz

  “Lookout Rock!” Alec finished for her. “That is what you mean, isn’t it?”

  “If that is its name. But I sense it even here. The waters under the earth, and out of the earth. Colin had a spring. We must have one as well.”

  Myra was frowning like thunder. “No way the van’ll make it. I’m not being anal or protective or anything; it just won’t!”

  Alec leaned past Aife to stare up the sodden, rain-slicked hill. “Big Billy’s pickup’s here, and it’s got four-wheel-drive—and I know where he hides the key.”

  “Let’s do it,” Myra decided. “We ain’t got time to argue.”

  Two minutes later, every one of them soaked to the skin, they were once again in transit, this time crammed into the F-150’s extended cab, with Aikin, who had most experience with pickups, at the wheel. It wasn’t that bad, actually, as Aikin steered the big Ford left and started up what had once been a logging road to commence the mile-long drive. And for a miracle, the rain had slackened now that they’d left the farmstead behind and had trees on either side. Either that or the branches screened the worst of the wind and water, save that which flowed beneath them, which was a regular torrent that had washed away most of the gravel, leaving rocks and holes and gullies you couldn’t see until you were in ’em. Alec had his fingers crossed. So far so good, and whatever.

  This was it, too, wasn’t it? The final roll of the dice for all this Faery shit. He hoped he was ready, and to calm himself took inventory of his gear. Clothes: wet but serviceable; fatigues and a surplus flak jacket Aikin had loaned him earlier. Gattaca baseball cap. The pistol and ammo Aik had added in Tir-Gat. His war club. The ulunsuti. And maybe, if she remembered he was alive, Aife.

  Who, Alec realized with a start, was still reading—in the dark.

  And then, as often happened during long stressful journeys on rainy nights, everyone withdrew into private silence.

  *

  In spite of himself, Alec dozed. Time-compressed, rather, to use the term he’d coined to describe that fugue state when you were mostly turned off and oblivious but with one little part still aware and letting you know if anything important occurred, then turning you off again after. He’d had an astronomy class like this once, right after lunch; he’d always nodded off in there, only to awaken if the prof said something he didn’t know, take a note on same, then drift off again. He’d made an A—of course.

  But somehow that just didn’t matter. Like graduation hadn’t mattered. What did matter was that Aikin had just pulled completely off what passed for a road and was trying to get back on track; and, more to the point, that the headlights had caught the dark archway in the trees that marked the side trail that led to Lookout Rock.

  Marked it clearly, in fact, for at that very moment, it stopped raining. Almost stopped, Alec amended; there was still a light mist. Aife sat up at once, as though startled or concerned, eyes darting everywhere, nostrils flaring as though she were a predator sniffing out prey.

  “Power,” she asserted. “Someone forestalls the rain with Power.”

  Alec exhaled his relief in a rush. “Like Finno, maybe?”

  “So I would hope,” Aife agreed. “It would still be wise to hurry.”

  Aikin did, sending rooster tails of muddy water a yard high to either side as he set the heavy Ford slipping and sliding across what was usually leafy-mossy ground completely overhung by oaks and maples. Over a minute he did that, until he skidded around one final curve and nearly collided with the back of Sandy’s Explorer, blocking further progress ahead.

  Beyond it, however, where the forest gave way to the rocky mountainside ledge-cum-clearing that was Lookout Rock, the headlights caught moving figures. Alec was out the door before Aikin shut off the engine. Not until that moment did he realize how much he’d missed his best friend.

  David had clearly missed him too and broke off lighting did torches to dash across the sodden moss, mud-bogged gravel, and slippery stone to enfold him in the hug he’d needed longer than he dared imagine. This was it, something told him. Not the end of all things, perhaps, but the end of the Faery stuff once and for all. After that, it would be back to real life. Grad school, a job, maybe a family—

  He froze. If they moved Tir-Nan-Og, what happened to Aife? And Finno, and all those other friends?

  Did that even matter when he had a tried-and-true forever buddy like David to grab him on a cold, rainy, miserable night and remind him simply by the sun-bright spark of life that burned within him that he, Alec McLean, was also alive and worth having around?

  For a long moment they stood there, wet hair tangled together, stubbly cheeks brushing, breath harsh yet soft in each other’s ears.

  “Love you,” David whispered, easing him away. Then: “I am so glad you’re here.”

  Alec backed away, too, hoping David wouldn’t see the tears that fogged his eyes, or else mistake them for the mist of rain that got through whatever Finno had raised to shelter them. But David’s eyes were bright as well. “Guess you heard we succeeded,” David said, glancing back toward the clearing. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”

  Alec nodded and eased around his forever-and-always best friend to join the others, who were likewise reuniting in varying combinations farther on. Except for Aikin, who’d stayed behind to hug David too. Which wasn’t like him either.

  For a moment he considered waiting, but Dave and Aik surely needed a solo reunion as much as he had, and having found himself alone, he did what he always did when he visited David’s oldest, most private, and strongest Place of Power. He took in the view.

  Lookout Rock was like a notch that had been hacked from the dark granite bones of Nichols Mountain and never truly healed. Flat but stony, it was an acre or so in extent and surrounded on two sides by close-grown woods beneath which lay the ruins of the lean-to he, Dave, and the rest of the MacTyrie Gang had renewed countless times. A third side fronted the mountain, and the notch cut deep there: a hundred feet of sheer stone down which a waterfall slid like the mountain’s blood to form their ancient skinny-dipping site. Too many times to count, he, Dave, and Aikin—and, later, Gary and Darrell—had stripped off and dived in there. More recently, Calvin and Finno had joined their ranks. Every crisis, major and minor, that had marked puberty and adolescence had been deconstructed there. Love, sex, death, family, religion, drugs, politics, and rock-and-roll: all had paid their toll.

  The fourth side gave the place its name. Open to the sky and the wind, it was a thirty-yard-long ledge that dropped straight down far enough to kill anyone who leapt off, while still offering a view Mystic Mountain would have fought an army to possess.

  The lake glimmered out there and down, and more mountains, and a sprinkle of lights that were houses, though no towns could be seen. And no more than two miles away as the crow flew was the cause of all this trouble: the near-perfect quartz-crowned cone of Bloody Bald.

  Hands slapped his back, startling him from his reverie, but it was only David and Aikin, drawing him over to where the rest of their crew were assembling. All of them, he noted, including Scott and Elyyoth. Everyone, that is, except David’s clan, who were otherwise occupied, and that John Devlin guy, who had no real business here.

  What followed was confusion, chaos, and exchange of information, then, so suddenly it startled him, decision.

  It made sense, actually. David’s crew had a promise from the Chiefs of the Quarters that they’d do what they could, but no one knew when they’d show, save that it would be a time of their choosing. But since the present deluge proved that the Sons were already on the move, it made sense to try their own mojo first.

  Still, it seemed ludicrous to even consider such a preposterous notion: that some screwy, incomprehensible combination of words, belief, water, and blood could set something as utterly alien as Tracks to work at anyone’s whim. And to move a World—a big hunk of one, anyway! Why, Tir-Nan-Og must cover hundreds of thousands of square miles. How could they shift that much in one night? And
where would they move it to, anyway?

  And, again, what would happen to Aife, in whom the key was both inserted and seemingly stuck, if this crackbrain scheme succeeded? She was Faery, after all. If she cut herself off from that Land, she’d go mad. Granted, she could put on the substance of their World, but that was a stopgap at best. Eventually the call of like-to-like would become irresistible.

  What then?

  Apparently Aife, Finno, and the still slightly shell-shocked Elyyoth had some notion, as they likewise did about this Silver Track thing. But the former he dared contemplate no longer, and their attempts at explaining the latter had been frustrated by terms that not only had no English equivalent but that barely formed comprehensible images in the mind when Aife tried telepathic definition.

  All Alec had been able to grasp was an image of a silver river paralleling an enormous sandbar; and, farther on, an island, where the first tentative fragments of another bar of similar kind lay. The river—the Track—was to pick up sand from one and deposit it on the other until their sizes had swapped, then block itself off so that the island was surrounded by rings of both water and land. It was a screwy visual metaphor for something that was more than halfway metaphysical, but Alec thought it might succeed.

  As to who would be doing the hard parts, Aife had the knowledge locked within her, all unknown, though she swore she could access it at need. She also had a fair bit of Power, now that she’d once more clothed herself in the stuff of her native World. Fionchadd too had regained most of his strength, and of his previous injuries there was no sign. Elyyoth, while larger than either of the other Sidhe, was also the weakest in terms of Power, yet even so had more to command than the mortals.

  “So let me get this straight,” Scott concluded after the latest round of fine-tuning logistics. “Aife, Finno, and Elyyoth are gonna be the movers and shakers—the ones who work the spell, or whatever.”

  “Right,” David affirmed. “But since the Sons are bound to know what we’re up to, courtesy of Finno’s little umbrella here, we’ve gotta be primed for attack. Unfortunately, we can’t fight ’em much with mojo, though Cal and Brock are already settin’ wards”—he gestured to where the pair were driving colored stakes, drawing lines and circles, and chanting in Cherokee—“and LaWanda’s off mumblin’ too. Which means we’ve gotta fall back on guns and ammo, which they’re gonna be ready for, seein’ how we’ve used those against ’em already. In fact, if they’re savvy, they’ll send their mortal flunkies, ’cause they know it’ll freak us by puttin’ us in a moral bind.”

  “Fuckers,” Aikin muttered, to nobody.

  “Mind fuckers too,” Liz cautioned. “Don’t forget, the Sons took over those guys, no reason they couldn’t get us too.”

  “Which means we need somebody to spy on them,” Sandy concluded. “Someone to warn us of impending attack. Sounds simple enough: the Faeries do their thing with the Tracks; we split the remainder. Liz, I know you can scry, and Alec’s got a new ulunsuti. Myra, you’ve got something, but you’re not a fighter type, so why don’t you help out there too? Piper, you’d best join them; you don’t like to fight either, but if worse comes to worst, maybe you can pipe us out of here, or something.”

  Piper nodded mutely, stroking his pipes and gazing soulfully at LaWanda, who’d just returned looking inordinately pleased with herself.

  “So the rest of us play soldier?” Aikin queried.

  Sandy nodded in turn. “Those that know which end of a gun the bullet comes out of should use ’em: shotguns, rifles, doesn’t matter. That’s you, Dave; and Aik, and me, and Scott—who can also do the sword thing if he has to, assuming Elyyoth will lend his. Wannie, you get a choice: guns or that machete I hear you’re hell-on-wheels with. Or—”

  “Both,” LaWanda broke in tersely. “The rest—it don’t work fast, and in cases like this, it only works on me. Let’s just say I may not always be where you think I am.”

  “And speaking of mojo,” Sandy continued, “Cal can shapeshift, and he’s also got a war club with some mojo to it. Dave and Alec do, too, but seems like they’d be best used elsewhere. So, Churchy, what’s your poison? Smith & Wesson or atasi?”

  Kirkwood grinned. “To echo my fellow ethnic minority: both.”

  “You can use mine,” David offered. “Alec, what about yours? We seem to have a spare atasi and a person who shouldn’t even be here.” He fixed his gaze on Brock, looking long and hard at the boy as though they shared some secret. “So how ’bout, it, Badger? Wanta have a go with a war club?”

  Brock, who was standing with his arms folded across his chest looking by turns scared to death and sullen, drew himself up straighter. “That’d work.” He’d recovered the Ruger, too, just in case. Alec wondered if he was prepared to use it. He caught the boy’s eye and gestured a silent summons. Fumbling a little, he freed his atasi from the belt loop where he’d thrust it and held it out to the boy. It gleamed in the light of the flickering torches: two feet of wood shaped vaguely like a double-bladed ax, but with the handle continuing into a knob. Good for smashing bones, capable of rending flesh if you hit hard enough. By repute, able to send off—or fend off—bolts of lightning. Cal’s could, at any rate. His own? Who knew? He’d never tested it. Brock’s eyes glittered as he took it solemnly. To his surprise, Alec’s misted back. “Just stay alive to return it.”

  “Well,” David announced, “best I can tell, we’re as ready as we’re gonna be.” He glanced at Aife, then at Fionchadd, and finally at Elyyoth. “You say midnight’s best to start this wingding? We’ve got fifteen minutes, then. I suggest we all use it makin’ peace with whoever needs makin’ peace with, and anything left over just off by ourselves makin’ ready.”

  Alec found a rock near the juncture of mountain, woods, and overlook, and sat there alone, staring at the jar that held the ulunsuti. What would he see there? he wondered, when he, Myra, Piper, and Liz fed it the blood that figured so much in all this ritual and began their scrying? More to the point, what was the secret David’s band were hiding and thought no one suspected, and would he live to see it revealed? They were playing for keeps now. Chivalry was Lugh’s province, and chivalry was dead, as far as their enemies went. Come…whatever, they would receive no mercy.

  Sneak attack, Aife had urged. Start the ball rolling, set Tir-Nan-Og moving, and catch the Sons before they could act.

  Yeah, sure!

  “Okay,” David proclaimed far too quickly, “it’s time.”

  *

  Somehow it all fell together. Those who would work the spell—Aife, Fionchadd, and Elyyoth—stripped to their undertunics, leaving arms, legs, and feet bare, then waded into the pool, with Aife clutching Colin’s grimoire. Fionchadd carried Uki’s obsidian knife (When had he got it?), and Elyyoth simply stood there looking grim. If Alec understood things right, they’d all offer blood (not that different from what he’d done in Tir-Gat, actually), and then Aife would call the Tracks. According to Myra, they spiraled around various axes, and if you stayed in one place long enough, one would conveniently sweep by. All Alec knew was that they’d better!

  And with the Sidhe all up to their knees in cold mountain water, the others took their places.

  Alec, Liz, Myra, and Piper sat down in a second circle between the edge of the pool and the sheerest edge of the overlook, arranging themselves so that all but Piper had a view of Bloody Bald, with the ulunsuti jar in the center. Liz had another knife (Lord, but this was a bloody undertaking!), but wouldn’t use it until David gave the signal.

  The rest—the warriors—formed a protective crescent around the sorcerers and the scryers, with the heavy, dark mass of the mountain closing up the unguarded side. They’d alternated, too, gun-toters and blade-or-club men: Kirkwood, Scott, Aikin, Brock, David, Sandy, LaWanda, and Cal, in order from the road. They were all standing very straight, Alec noted, as though they were warriors in truth, not volunteers and halfhearted conscripts. Weapons gleamed in their hands: shotguns, rifles, and pistols wrought in the
Lands of Men; swords and machetes of iron or Faery metal; wooden war clubs and Calvin’s bow, made in Galunlati; and poison-tipped arrows from their foes. Most wore black. A few sported odd bits of garb from Galunlati or Tir-Nan-Og.

  Wind whipped their hair, and the mist began to thicken as Fionchadd’s shield, which he no longer dared sustain, began to dissolve. They had wards, of course: another circle of sticks and chanted words, but the location of the pool and the mountain had made it impossible to fix them neatly with the quarters, so that neither Cal nor Brock were certain they were viable.

  Alec shifted restlessly, looking first at the overlook, then ten degrees sideways at David, who was staring at his watch; then back at his own timepiece, noting that the flashing numerals had synchronized with his heart.

  “One minute,” David warned. Whereupon Fionchadd flourished his knife. Liz laid hers on Alec’s thigh as he reached to the center of the circle formed by their touching knees and opened the jar which held the ulunsuti. A pause for breath and he tipped the stone onto a black silk scarf Myra had provided.

  “Now!” David said softly into the night. Barely a whisper that was, yet Alec heard him even above the patter of rain and the rush of sliding water. He took the knife from his thigh, slid it across his other palm without considering it might actually hurt, and closed his eyes. Around him, he sensed, more hands than his own were bleeding.

  Around him, too, the torches wavered and the rain fell harder.

  Interlude VII: Road Warriors

  I

  (Tir-Nan-Og—high summer)

  The tall thick grass of the Plain of Lost Stars had long since given way to the close-grown stubble of the Vale of Dhaionne Chainnai, as the bodachs thereabouts called the place where the famed mortal historian had dwelt after Lugh kidnapped her to write her history of Cymruw. She’d died there, too: an old woman surrounded by strange stumpy dogs, and been buried beneath a jet-black stone carved with thistles, ravens, and bears. She’d befriended the bodachs, though, and, the place having no other appellation, theirs had persisted.