Warstalker's Track

by Tom Deitz

  Now, however, that vale, with its meandering streams and mile-off view of the twelve-towered palace, was ripe to be named again: the Vale of Remorseless Slaughter.

  Lugh had expected them: these warriors in the livery of the Sons of Ailill, which was such a poor parody of his own. Turinne had to have at least one seer (though not Oisin, for whom Lugh was deeply concerned), and that seer was bound to have noted his approach. The usurper wouldn’t send his best, though, if he had yet to confirm his bond to what was still not his throne; therefore, these armed shapes who rose from the grass as from the earth itself would be expendable and likely halfhearted in the bargain. Most likely they were meant to delay anyone who sought to attack the palace.

  As for the Bonding Rite—well, Turinne was certainly one to take risks. He’d risked unseating a king, after all. And though the ancient Laws of Dana said one king must die (or abdicate) on the day that marked his birth for another to supplant him (and such had been Turinne’s plan), the form of the rite was common knowledge, and it would be like Turinne to try to force his own bond with a Land already bonded and let the Land decide. It was against that choice Lugh rode.

  Faster, then; bearing down on those who raised sword and spear to daunt him. Nuada was at his side. His tithe and another that had joined along the way, not all of them Daoine Sidhe, rode at his back. He thought to stop and fight, for bloodlust was strong within him, but that would waste precious time. And so he raised his spear, so that the long, strong rays of westering sunlight caught it and glittered along its length, and those who stood against him, who did not throw themselves to the ground at once, withered beneath that weapon’s fire.

  And the Vale of Dhaoinne Chainnai drank deep of thick, rich, heart-pumped wine.

  II

  (Tir-Nan-Og—high summer)

  “Lord…” Cemon ap Cadwyr, Arawn’s page and cabin boy, ventured as he padded to a stop at Arawn’s back, feet wide braced on the rolling deck. “Lord,” Cemon dared again. “There is—that is, the lookouts have sighted another fleet approaching.”

  Arawn never moved from his place at the forward railing, from which, through a curious complex of mirrors and engraved metal, he was observing what transpired in the Vale of Dhaoinne Chainnai. Yet the muscles tensed along his jaw, and the hand that held his sword grew marginally tighter. “Lugh? Or—?”

  “Finvarra,” Cemon panted. “Whether he pursues or shares your goal—”

  “He is no fool, or else I am one,” Arawn retorted. “He will know what I know, and will have heard the news at one time and the same.”

  “Will he fight with us or against us?” Cemon persisted.

  Arawn watched the empty southern reaches of Tir-Nan-Og flash by beneath him: woods and vales and a few farmsteads or private palaces; herds of beasts, and flocks of birds around the many lakes. It was too alive for him, too lush, too bright, too green. It was an implicit insult to his own dark, dry, morbid-seeming Land. And that was reason enough to contest it.

  “Does it matter?” Arawn replied languidly, not turning, though he could all but feel the boy’s frightened scowl. “Either way, we will all be bloodied. Either way, things will change. Either way there will be poems to write, songs to sing, and stories to tell.”

  “Which will do no good if no one survives to hear them,” Cemon gave back bravely.

  Arawn almost struck him for insolence, then decided that such scarce-disguised disapproval was likely the bravest thing the boy had ever done. “Someone will hear,” he chuckled. “If nothing else, we will kidnap mortals and make them give our bards a hearing. But put your heart at ease; for now I am set to contest with Lugh, and if that avails not, with Turinne. And if neither give me satisfaction, I may give Finvarra of Erenn a go. If he is as bored as I am, he would relish it. It would be interesting to rule three realms at once, whether that king be Lugh, Turinne, Finvarra, or…me.”

  “The Powersmiths—” Cemon dared again.

  “Are very far away,” Arawn snorted.

  “Will we fight on the ground? Or indoors? Or…aloft?”

  Arawn stroked his chin and gazed behind him. “It is true,” he mused, “that I have never waged battle from on high.”

  III

  (Tir-Nan-Og—high summer)

  Turinne paused with one hand on his ceremonial helm and stared through two windows at once. They were set close together in the eastern corner of the tower he’d chosen for his suite, but neither opened on the World Without; not as it was, anyway. For the openings were glazed with a mesh of clear glass and mirrors, milky-clear panes, and stained (kin to the apparatus Arawn used at that very moment, had he known). Usually they made pictures of their own devising, but now they filled another function entirely.

  Now they sought out threat.

  Not threat to him, however; a room’s worth of windows couldn’t display all those now, and he rather relished that notion. Rather, these windows showed threat to the Land itself. And while Turinne knew his own mind well enough to know that Kingship had its own enticements, this whole elaborate plot had at its heart a true and abiding love for the Land that had nothing to do with any ulterior cause.

  Mortals were threatening it—Tir-Nan-Og first, but the other realms in time—and that threat, while unintentioned, was insidious. Men fought wars and men died, but the Land was always there after, sometimes injured but always recoverable. Mortal men, though, had iron in abundance, and that iron had burned through to devour the Land, and that Land could not be reclaimed. A finger gone, for him, was a finger that would grow back eventually. A farm or a field or a wood devoured by an iron-wrought Hole: that was gone forever.

  Which had decided him. Lugh was the Land, but Lugh ignored the Land in its pain. Turinne would not ignore it, therefore he must destroy that which would be its bane: mortals in general and whichever ones were annoying the Land now.

  He saw them clearly, for all it was dark in the Lands of Men. Mortals they were, and with them traitors to his own kind: Fionchadd mac Ailill, Aife of Tir Arvann, and Elyyoth whose lineage he did not know; all engaged in some complex working whose nature he couldn’t tell, for the window showed only threat, not reason, distance, or kind.

  But the place he did know: a place he’d heard of in the Lands of Men that had almost as much Power as some parts of Tir-Nan-Og.

  But he had time yet. It was far too dangerous to stake his claim before sunset, and so minor a skirmish as he had in mind didn’t require his presence. Besides, his warriors were restless. They’d vowed revenge on this very same band of mortals, and who was he to say them nay?

  “Fetch”—he counted through the window, speaking to the guard who lingered by—“fetch a tithe; half of it mortal, half of it Sidhe. Go to that place, slay all you find there, and return with their heads to me.”

  IV

  (west of Clayton, Georgia—Sunday, June 29—near midnight)

  “This is a crock,” JoAnne Sullivan grumbled from where she was driving Dale’s big Lincoln far too fast for slippery mountain roads; antilock brakes and traction control notwithstanding. The wipers beat at the downpour: fierce as her anxiety, steady as her pain.

  Safely ensconced in the back seat, Little Billy blinked stoically and tuned out her latest tirade on why his dad should’ve stayed at Rabun Regional, how he shouldn’t have gone off to fight in the first place, why that wailing he and Dale still heard now and then really could not be the family banshee. And finally, and most forcefully, how a stick in the back was just flat out not an acceptable reason to die. Dale, in the front shotgun, had tuned her out, too, by the expedient of playing ’possum. Which was just as well; it left Little Billy alone with his pa—his dad, rather; he’d never liked that old-fashioned term Davy, against all sense, continued using.

  Might not be a problem much longer, though, ’cause Big Billy looked pale as a ghost, and if truth were told, wasn’t hardly breathing. Frankly, it was a miracle they’d released him, and if Bill hadn’t threatened to sue, and had Dale to back him up (and himse
lf, too, if an eleven-year-old counted), they’d still be back there waiting.

  “A man’s got some rights,” his dad had said, staring his mom in the eye. That was what he’d been saying when he and Uncle Dale returned from a lightning raid on Hardees. “And one right a man’s got most of all is the right to say when and where he’ll die if he knows he’s dyin’. I don’t know I am, but I think I am, and something else has a pretty good idea that could happen too. Now help me or go away, ’cause I’ve said what I’m gonna do.”

  They were doing it now, though later than his dad had wanted by about two hours, ’cause it had been after hours, and there were some things hospitals had to bend the law to do. But home wasn’t far now, maybe ten miles, and they’d have been there long since if not for the incessant rain.

  Little Billy wondered what he’d find there. That Elyyoth guy, who’d been from Faerie and told him tales of wonder when fretting over Davy threatened to drive him crazy? Maybe. Water? That was for sure; but what else? War, somehow, some way, and likely fought with magic. Shoot, if he was a little older, he’d be in there, too, Mom or no. Christ, Brock wasn’t but a couple years older’n him, and he’d been in the thick of things. On the other hand, fighting meant you might die, and he didn’t think his mom could stand it if him, or Davy, or even Dale, died too.

  Which sounded like he’d given up on his dad, which he hadn’t. Without thinking about it, he did something he’d never done in his life. He reached over and grasped his father’s hand.

  Chapter XIX: Life’s Blood

  (Lookout Rock, Georgia—Sunday, June 29—midnight)

  David wished he had a better view of what was going on behind him, where Aife, Finno, and Elyyoth stood knee-deep in what had always been, to him, sacred water, beginning to work their spell. He dared not turn full around, however; not while he was on guard. Against what, he didn’t know; though it was absurd to assume they could actually pull this off without a glitch. Well, perhaps in a perfect world, but they’d surely blown their luck quota by now, and they’d need luck in spades to avoid detection.

  Or simply to stay alive. All he knew about Turinne was that he was ambitious, didn’t think along traditional Faery lines, and was far more ruthless than Lugh; witness his execution of poor Oisin. Opposing him wasn’t good odds.

  Their best chance lay in the rebels’ getting close enough to have at them with something besides magic. Bullets, they’d already proven, could put serious hurt on Faery bodies: smashing joints, breaking bones, and disrupting senses, if not slaying outright; plus those injuries took Power to heal, which was Power the injured couldn’t access in a fight. Steel shot was even better, because not only did it hurt but the Sidhe actually feared it. David’s concern was that Turinne might be canny enough to pit them against ordinary people.

  Best not think about that, he decided, as he turned just in time to catch the flash of obsidian as Fionchadd slashed one palm, then shifted the blade to the other and sliced the free one in turn. Blood dripped into the pool: an offering of Power to the water, as he offered the knife to Aife, who followed suit. Elyyoth would as well, but Elyyoth was out of view.

  For himself, Brock was to his right, Sandy to his left, Alec and Liz behind and to the left: them and the wind and the rain and the night and what was still, and forever, a magnificent view. And so he stood and waited; poised, but not tense; no longer tired, or beyond it; shotgun in hand, Beretta at belt, odd lots here and there; black fatigues, black sweatshirt, brown sleeveless jacket bristling with pockets; an ugly green boonie hat that fended the rain from his eyes.

  And, he suddenly realized, an iron medallion around his neck whose origin he still didn’t know. He fingered the chain and looked down at Brock, whose gift it was, the boy dressed more or less as he, but bareheaded, and with his flag of hair twitching in the wind and Alec’s atasi held two-handed before him like a battle-ax. “I haven’t forgotten,” he murmured, nudging Brock with his elbow. “The medallion, I mean.”

  “Woman gave it to me,” Brock mumbled. “Like I said. Supposed to be protection against the Sidhe.”

  “Thought you bought it.”

  Brock shook his head, took a deep breath. “Gave it to me for a tumble—my first, actually. I don’t think she was human. Said she needed a mortal’s first seed for her own conceiving.”

  Christ! David thought, dead Sidhe sometimes had to link their souls to a new conception. “Did this woman have a name?”

  “Neman,” Brock replied, barely audible. “She said I was to give that to you to settle a debt. She said it was interest on a death.”

  David’s breath caught. So that was it! Neman, the part of the tripart goddess who gloried in what had come to be called friendly fire, had contrived his namesake uncle’s death in Lebanon. He, in turn, had inadvertently precipitated her sister’s doom: Morrigu, Mistress of Battles, who by rights should’ve overseen all that transpired here. Clearly that had shaken Neman, and equally clearly, Morrigu sought rebirth.

  And because Morrigu ruled honor and fairness in battle, her sister had felt obliged to honor him in turn and had empowered this talisman made of what to her would’ve been the deadliest metal to shield him from her own kind.

  That made as much sense as anything, anyway.

  “Thanks,” David murmured, and fell silent, gazing out at the ominous woods. Wondering, as his eyes probed every shifting shadow, how many others had stood like this: forlorn and frightened in the dark, waiting for their deepest fears to manifest. Devlin had, and lost a hand trying to save a friend. David-the-Elder had, and lost more than that in the long run. Dale had, and his father. He was no less than they, no more important in the grand cold scheme of life. And here he was. Waiting. A soldier—almost—in the night.

  *

  The words weren’t there, and then, quite simply, they were.

  Aife didn’t know whether her eyes were open or not, though they had been when she’d drawn the knife across her palm and let her blood fall into the pool. Carefully, she’d done that, for she’d known without consciously learning as much that if the pool touched a wound, it could suck you dry. That had been Colin’s doom; that was what had almost destroyed Tir-Gat. He’d been Powerful, too; more Powerful than herself, Fionchadd, and Elyyoth together. But his had been the need for stealth, to steal a little at a time from Alberon: a hill, a tree, every third stone in a mountain. Such subtlety was useless now; what she needed was control and direction. But first she had to find a Silver Track.

  And so they’d fed blood to sacred water and sent it questing. Blood to awaken water, to wake more water, to touch all water and be aware. Even the water in the air, perhaps, for she could feel the touch of Power in it as it fell.

  And so she watched with her inner eye, feeling the water around her feet, and through it, all water everywhere; all the while recalling the touch of the Silver Tracks Colin had so carefully described in words no mortal could ever translate.

  Nothing…Nothing…Farther and farther, down near Athens now; and then she touched one, and more of Colin’s words awoke, and she began to summon it here.

  * * *

  Alec stared at the ulunsuti and tried not to think of the crimson septum that divided the oracular stone as a metaphor for the barrier he sensed rising between him and Aife.

  Barriers…human and Faery. Mortal and Sidhe. Blood from the Lands of Men and an organic jewel from a monster from Galunlati.

  Blood.

  His hand glistened where he’d sliced it to prime the stone before passing his knife on to Liz, who’d passed it to Piper, thence to Myra, and so back to him. They were watching him, too, which he hated. “Okay,” he whispered, so as not to disturb Aife’s spell, “let your blood drip on the stone, no more than a drop or two until we get a sense of it. Yeah, that’s right. C’mon, Piper, you too.”

  Piper’s face was white as snow; the poor guy was actually trembling. Alec was beyond sorry for him. He hated this stuff because it disrupted his life and what he’d grown up assuming
were the universe’s givens. Piper hated it because it scared him to death. At least Myra was here: Piper’s most tenured friend, that bond as old as the one ’twixt himself and Liz, if the two of them even were friends.

  Scratch that; they were. She was getting anxious, though; he could tell. And so he took a deep breath and reached out to clasp the hands of those nearest. Liz’s were soft and silky, Myra’s competent and hard. “Okay, like I’ve told you, it works best if you just worry at it. Think about threats, but not specific threats. Keep your eyes open as long as you can and stare at the septum. Pretty soon it’ll take over.”

  “Been there, done that,” Myra affirmed. “Don’t worry.”

  Alec didn’t reply. Years of much-begrudged experience had made him more facile at scrying than he imagined, and before he knew it, the septum had become the whole world, and he was flying.

  There was no other way to describe the sensation, though he had no sense of giddiness, only of cool observation. Nor could he tell precisely what he saw, save that it seemed to be their own World. Which made sense, given that Liz or Myra could be directing as easily as he. Christ, both of ’em were stronger-willed than he was!

  At any rate, chaos had clarified into Sullivan Cove and that yucky bunch of make-do structures out at B.A. Beach. A shift, and he glimpsed Dale’s Lincoln approaching, though what that portended, he didn’t know. Someone was worrying about the elder Sullivans, though, or concerned about what would happen should David lose his dad.

  A jerk, a mental twitch, and they looked on Tir-Nan-Og and Lugh’s palace, now bathed in fading light, which meant time between the Worlds was out of synch again. The place was alive, too, with hundreds of half-seen figures on horseback, afoot, or aloft, all converging on Lugh’s citadel. He hoped Lugh was there as well; that these were warriors come to aid him, not riffraff come to storm the palace or witness the crowning of a mortal-hostile king. And then he saw the ships: two whole armadas aloft, one Arawn’s, one Finvarra’s, likewise intent on the palace. He breathed a sigh at that: whatever they faced here, far more was occurring in Tir-Nan-Og. Maybe with enough distractions there, no one would heed a band of half-mad mortals a World away.