by Tom Deitz
“So you said,” David snapped back, anger making him rash, as reason fought to overcome it. “Adawehiyu,” he added wearily. “It has been a trying night.”
“Not for you alone,” the Black Man growled. “Many seek my realm, or its reflections on other sides.”
David didn’t look at him. He really did not have patience left for verbal sparring. He wanted this resolved so he could get on with the rest of his life. They were at the critical juncture now, with one spell in place and apparently working. He had to keep things moving.
“I come alone,” the Black Man informed him.
David gaped at him. “No way!” he blurted, aware even as he spoke that he sounded like a pouty kid. “You promised you’d help move Tir-Nan-Og!”
Asgaya Gunnagei lifted a brow the color of a coal mine. “And is Tir-Nan-Og not moving?”
It took a moment for the words to sink in. “It…is?”
The Black Man nodded. “What we would have done, your other allies have discovered on their own and effected already. We could do no more than they. You do not need us.”
“Then why’re you here?” Aikin protested, sounding as angry as David felt.
“Because someone here has died. Someone who dared my Land before and so won great honor.”
“Brock!” Calvin whispered. You’ve come for Brock!”
“He is not of my Land by lineage, but still it is his right.” David gnawed his lip as logic reasserted. “The…death!” he dared. “Was it Brock’s? Or those guys we fought, who died in the pool? Or…what?”
The Black Man glared at him. “What you are about requires the power of Life. It has cost one death freely given and a score sold unaware. It may yet cost another.”
“What—?” David began, not wanting to believe what he’d just heard.
The Black Man wasn’t listening. Wordlessly he made his way back to where the remainder of their companions stood locked in some kind of half-assed trance in the middle of the pool. David followed him. Fuck danger or decorum, Brock was still his friend! And Cal’s even more, as he slowed so his companion could take the fore.
“Poor little guy,” Calvin murmured when the Black Man knelt beside the slight young figure who still sprawled where he’d fallen: pale face half buried in gravely mud, black hair slicked to his skull where it wasn’t floating in water.
“Whatever happens,” David whispered back, “it’ll be better than what we’ve gone through.”
“Yes,” the Black Man agreed, not turning. And with that he gathered Brock into his arms and waded into the pool. Ignoring the circle still at work there, he marched straight for the waterfall. Nor did he stoop as he passed through, though the water steamed where it touched his skin.
David watched unblinking, eyes afire with unshed tears. Cal did too. All at once they were sobbing. Calvin’s arms enfolded him; he hugged back. And for a while two grown men bled sorrow into the night.
Music found them there: Piper, still alive and functional, still with his Uilleann pipes. He was playing “Green Fields of France.”
Interlude IX: Edge of Battle
I
(Tir-Nan-Og—high summer)
Lugh was beginning to think that perhaps he should not have built such an enormous palace. He hadn’t intended to, of course, but even one room added per year for a thousand years amounted to quite a number, and the place was ten times older.
They were in the old parts now and still on horseback, though that was becoming more difficult as corridors became narrower, ceilings lower, and floors more slippery, never mind the stairs. The straight ones they could manage, but not the tightly curved ones, which affected the route they chose.
He could’ve abandoned his steed of course: faithful golden Sunstorm, ninetieth of his line. But though he still held the advantage as he and his burgeoning band bored ever deeper into his citadel, height, mass, and a longer view were virtues that couldn’t be ignored. And now, though he was as sure of victory as he was certain he’d confront Turinne, still he was loath to relinquish whatever advantage he commanded. A man on foot might have presence; one on horseback always had more.
They were approaching an intersection now, the narrow corridor they trod giving onto a wide one more than halfway to his throne hall, where lay the heart of his realm. Closer, and he knew with senses subtle and obscure that ambush waited there. A brow cocked at Nuada bestowed him the favor of the charge. Heels touched silvery sides, and Nuada surged forward, bent low, sword in hand. Carmagh thundered by on his left, likewise poised for attack. Forty strides… thirty…twenty…
Men poured from either side in the livery of the Sons of Ailill, all afoot. Nuada took the head of the foremost. A second knelt to fire one of those coward’s toys from the Mortal World. Lead rang off granite and chipped the horn from a carved unicorn, but Lugh was ready. Such they might use, but such could not prevail against something as simple as air—when Lugh summoned winds to aid him. Shot flew indeed, but shot turned aside in the tiny tornado that rose between the foe and Nuada. Let them have their fun, take their risk; he would do the rest.
“Throw down your weapons!” Nuada roared, as his sword clanged loud against mortal metal. “Throw down your weapons and save your lives, mortal men and Faery!”
“Throw down yours and die!” someone yelled from the side, releasing a barrage of shot. Nuada caught it on his shield, faster than any mortal could have imagined. Pellets made patterns in the intricate boss, and the metal smoked but held firm.
Nuada’s eyes all but smoked, too, as he wheeled in that impossibly narrow space and charged. The mortal who’d fired upon him stood still for maybe two seconds, pondered his weapon for a second longer, then turned and fled. Nuada rode him down, and the three behind him, trapping the rest between himself, Carmagh, and Lugh’s still-whirling wind. One dared the latter and got the meat stripped from his bones. Another ran, to be felled by a dart from Carmagh’s blowpipe; a third stabbed himself in the heart. The remaining two sent their weapons skittering down the hall and bowed their surrender.
“Accepted,” Lugh said calmly when he arrived. “Now take their heads. It will give Turinne more at which to gape.” A moment later, their souls fled, but their eyes still wide and staring, and the stumps of their necks still leaking gore, Margol mac Edril and Finocris ab Istyn jeweled either side of their rightful King’s saddle.
“Well, my lord,” Nuada chuckled as they continued on. “What odds do you lay against further interruptions?”
II
Coward, thought Finvarra of Erenn as he watched Arawn’s fleet depart that place in the Mortal World they’d turned aside to investigate. Coward and fool! For a moment he considered blocking his fellow King and giving him the battle he so clearly desired right there within Lugh’s precious World Walls. But though Arawn himself was mighty, his grim dark Land held little to be coveted, and to slay—or defeat—Arawn was to make oneself heir to his realm, which was in truth no prize.
Tir-Nan-Og, however, was another dish entirely. Who would not desire a realm such as that?—which Finvarra had never seen from on high ere this voyage, and was looking forward to seeing again, now that that foolishness in the Mortal World was concluded.
But shouldn’t they be there by now? Surely they’d been long enough within. Yet within continued unabated, nearly as full of nothingness as a Hole. Perhaps it was a Hole; perhaps the Lands of Men had burned through the World Walls right here, by pure blind luck.
“Lord,” his captain ventured beside him. “Where…?”
“There,” Finvarra sighed, then choked on his next word.
They had reached Tir-Nan-Og. The western realm of Faerie lay beneath them, green and rich and mellow. But something had changed. Or was changing. This high up he could see it easily; the air itself shimmered around them with some strange new silvery Power.
Silver and Power. Alberon and a usurper druid. A tower in a World near here in which he’d imprisoned Fionchadd. Another he’d never accessed. A threat over
looked until too late.
Not that it mattered when such a spectacle lay below. For it was as though the Land itself was alive, the hills, ridges, lakes, and streams like fur on some great monster’s back, remaining fixed in place, yet moving as muscles flexed beneath the skin. There was method to that movement, too: a slow spiraling along the grain of the World Walls, like liquid forced outward on a potter’s wheel, then sucked upward at the edge by a sponge.
“Dana help us all,” Finvarra gasped. “Tir-Nan-Og is moving!”
III
Turinne snugged a heavy gold belt around a waist still trim beneath four layers of silk, wool, velvet, and leather, and one of silver mail, and regarded himself in the wall, which was also, for this time, a mirror. He looked a King well enough: tall as Lugh and more muscular, though not so well proportioned, and younger, though that didn’t truly show. He’d shaved off the mustache, however, and wore his red hair longer in an elegant tail.
He was not so much a fop as Lugh, though, and had chosen warrior garb as much as that of scholar, craftsman, or bard—which meant mail showed at wrists and throat and underlay his robes to afford his body protection against conventional weapons. Iron—that was another matter, but it was not important, for Power was Power whatever transpired, and had no regard at all for any metal.
Still, he was a fine figure: crimson hose and underrobe, emerald tunics layered over them, each embroidered with gems along collar, cuffs, and hem, each a hand’s width shorter than that beneath.
And over all a cloak bearing the arms he’d chosen for himself as High King: per chevron inverted argent and gules; in chief a sun-in-splendor, Or; pierced of a dagger, proper; goutee de sang, as mortal heralds would blazon it.
There was also a sword, though not the sword of state, for he couldn’t yet access the place where it was kept, no more than he could access Lugh’s most official crown. For that, for this time, his own helm would suffice, which was more than fine enough. Mortal work, too: stolen from an unmarked Irish rath.
For when one got down to it, what made a King of Tir-Nan-Og was the bond with the Land, and that merely required a particular dagger, and that he certainly had found.
“Lord,” said his page, from the doorway, “time draws nigh if you would do this thing tonight. And surely…surely you know that the palace has been breached and Lugh Samildinach advances with an army at his back.”
“I know,” Turinne replied calmly. “I go to meet him. For good or ill, this thing will be resolved now.”
IV
(Sullivan Cove, Georgia—Monday, June 30—the wee hours)
Big Billy Sullivan was dreaming. He hadn’t moved from his lounger since returning home, but had been drinking steadily. Not to get drunk, however (indeed, he was stone cold sober), but because he had thirst unending and a strong suspicion why. He was also tired, which was why he’d drifted off, which was how it was he was dreaming.
In his dream there were four boys. Three were blond and good-looking; the fourth was a stocky redhead. Two were brothers and all but identical; the others were also brothers, but not quite so alike. One of each set was named David, and one of each set was named Bill—the smallest (though they were all the same age, somehow—say fourteen) and the largest, who was himself: the one with the auburn hair. And in that dream they were all four brothers, yet also all best friends. And they were playing soldier; only it wasn’t playing, all at once; it was real, and they were shooting real bullets and people were shooting back, and the stone fort they’d rallied in (which had started out as a cardboard box, then progressed to an abandoned outbuilding at Uncle Dale’s) had disappeared, so that they were vulnerable from every side. And then they all got shot and he could actually feel the bullet boring toward his heart. But instead of dying, they collapsed together, clasped hands, and held each other as though their hard strong fingers held life itself, and swore not to let each other die.
And then they were all well again, and no longer boys, but four kings of four lands, and they warred with each other yet still loved each other, but now they loved the land more and it was over land that they fought.
And then it was no longer a dream, nor yet was he totally in his body. Instead, he looked through other eyes—David’s eyes (his son, not his long-dead younger brother)—and felt grief fill his heart from some great sorrow, and saw war there as well: the horror he’d known himself in a far-off jungle country.
And then someone was shaking him and calling his name (Was that his name? What was his name, anyway? David or Billy or Dave or Bill?), and he awoke to see his wife staring down.
“A boy ought never to have to kill a man,” he whispered. “And a man’s no man that ever, ever, ever kills a boy.”
JoAnne regarded him curiously, tears bright in her eyes. He smiled and took her hand. “And you know what, sweetheart?” he confided. “Inside us, we’re all boys.”
And for the first time in years, Big Billy Sullivan cried.
Chapter XXI: Earthshaking Events
(Lookout Rock, Georgia—Monday, June 30—very early)
It was funny, David decided numbly as he and Calvin eased free of each other’s arms, how big things and little things were weighted in one’s heart. Like tonight, for instance. He’d just seen two demigods nearly come to blows, and it had scarcely fazed him. But a mere mortal boy, whom maybe twenty people alive really knew—losing him had all but taken him apart. What Aife was about right now could well save several Worlds, but all he cared about was the fact that no one had saved one runty teenage kid.
What was it? Maybe two minutes from Brock’s first wound to his death? And how long had the Black Man and Arawn engaged in their pissing contest? Not even half that long. Everything was out of balance, and absolutely nothing was fair.
Calvin started toward the pool but paused to look back at him. “Gotta keep on,” he urged. “Time for this later, some things you gotta deal with now.”
David didn’t move. “It’s just that I wasn’t done with him. He got ripped out of my life and he’s just…gone.” A pause to swallow, as tears hovered close again. “It’s not like my dad. Whatever happens to him, we’ve made some kind of peace. Me and Brock didn’t. He was just here and then he wasn’t, like a great piece of art forever left unfinished.”
“Yeah,” Calvin acknowledged, “I know. But we gotta go on. I mean, look, guy: Aife’s got something goin’ on, too, and that’s also unfinished!”
David swallowed hard and let Calvin lead him into the pool. The water was cold—which shocked him—which was probably good. And his friends were out there, holding hands in a circle centered on Aife, a handful of bloody, dirty people trying to do the most improbable thing he could imagine: trying to move a World.
Without him, when it was at heart his quest. Squaring his shoulders and sidestepping far too many floating bodies he didn’t want to think about right now, he waded into the deeper water near the center. And found himself chuckling giddily, having realized how much it reminded him of a country baptizing.
Except they weren’t generally held at night, and he doubted anyone present was a card-carrying Christian, save maybe Piper. They were all present, too, but LaWanda, who had leg wounds and didn’t dare enter water that might suck her dry, and Piper, who likewise remained on shore, playing softly on the pipes.
David tried to focus on the music as he freed Alec’s hand from Liz’s and inserted himself between, while Calvin eased in on the other side. It was actually kind of nice. Cold water around his legs; rain (back, now that the Black Man had left, but fairly gentle) upon his head and shoulders, slicking his hair into his eyes. His best friends’ hands. The melancholy droning of the pipes that was oddly comforting. A deep breath, and he closed his eyes and felt Aife’s Power touch him and start to draw.
The warmth of that connection pulsed through his hands and up his arms like Christmas lights on a string, but including his thoughts, so that he knew certain notions were his alone (like the filaments of those lights), but that th
e light he made merged with all the light around him. He was blind, too, yet he was seeing with…cosmic eyes, though exactly what he witnessed, he wasn’t sure. It was like a real landscape but with every source of energy that pervaded it also visible, so that he could see winds push and froth past each other, and watch tectonic forces underground slide and shimmer like black oil upon still water, and even perceive what must be gravity as tiny sparks leaping between every single thing, like iron filings around a magnet.
But under it all—and over it all and within it all, together—was a lattice of gold that existed in the three dimensions he could sense right now and surely continued into more. Those had to be Tracks—golden Tracks. But there were silver ones as well, sliding neatly through the spaces between. And while every one of the gold Tracks was straight, the silver ones were curved. Even as he watched, those silver Tracks wove ever more pervasively through the physical Land.
They touched a tree, a leaf, a mite upon that leaf, and it dissolved and went sparking and tumbling down that shimmering length. But if one followed it, why, somewhere farther on, it surfaced again, intact. And that was happening over and over everywhere: in forests, plains, and Tir-Nan-Og’s few villages (it had no true cities), and every place between. It touched beasts, too, and bodachs and the Sidhe, apparently without their knowing; and it was as if they were reflected in some more distant place, and for a moment both were equally real, and then the reflection alone was. One could be moved that way and not know it any more than one felt it when someone moved a mirror in which one’s image showed.
It’s working! He told himself, completely caught in wonder. It really and truly is working!
But not perfectly, for when he’d joined that curious circle, the movements had been as smooth as a laser-cut edge, as precise as the gears in a virtual machine. Even his added presence had caused no obvious disruption. But now, it was as though a machine was wearing down, as though the smallest gears in that vast complex mechanism now and then skipped a cog, or a spring lost a fraction of its tension.