Sunshaker's War

by Tom Deitz

  “I got me a greenhouse,” Minniebelle beamed. “Don’t rain in there ’less I want it to.”

  “Good jelly too,” JoAnne observed, relieved at the slackening of the previous moment’s hostility.

  “Have to try some,” Big Billy replied, and fell silent.

  “Least it’s not rainin’,” JoAnne added warily, checking her watch. “Uh, Minniebelle, I hate to do this, but I really need to start gettin’ ready for graduation.” She winked at Big Billy over the old lady’s head. “Bill’ll run you home, won’t you, Bill?”

  “I reckon,” Big Billy mumbled sourly, starting to rise. “If you don’t mind ridin’ in a muddy pickup. ’Course I gotta go get it first. Left it over at Dale’s.”

  “Can’t keep nothin’ clean round here,” JoAnne offered.

  Minniebelle stood up so abruptly JoAnne started, sloshing tea into her lap. “Well I never!” the old lady shrilled, like a cat whose tail had been rocked on. “Why don’t you just come out and say it, ’stead of pussyfootin’ around?”

  JoAnne gasped incredulously. What in the world had brought this on? Minniebelle was a pretty straight shooter, but she wasn’t usually rude—and JoAnne thought she had a thicker hide than to get huffy over honest talk.

  “Say what?” she finally choked.

  “That I ain’t wanted here! You can keep the damned jelly,” she added. “But don’t ’spect nothin’ else this summer!” Suddenly she was shaking, her wrinkled face red with rage.

  The last bonds on JoAnne’s control unraveled. “I don’t want nothin’!” she shouted back before she could stop. Big Billy’s eyebrows nearly intercepted his receding hairline.

  “You ain’t gonna get it, neither!” Minniebelle raged on, heading for the front steps.

  “Well, I…” Jo Anne broke off as she saw the gasp of realization that suddenly rounded the old woman’s lips, the sudden horrified brightening of her eyes before they filled with tears.

  “Why…I…I don’t know what made me say that,” Minniebelle sobbed. “I didn’t mean it, none of it. I just got real mad of a sudden, and wanted to…to hurt somebody.”

  “Yeah,” JoAnne whispered shakily, taking her in her arms. “I felt it too.”

  Big Billy looked puzzled but went back inside to begin the trek back to Dale’s. “Foolishness,” he muttered, as he slammed the door behind him.

  The tomcat scratched JoAnne for no obvious reason.

  Chapter II: …Prophesying War

  (a tower—no place—no time)

  Silver—and gray, and crumbling stone, and the persistent clink of the Iron chains that bound him: these filled Fionchadd mac Ailill’s days.

  How long had he stared at the ill-made walls of his prison? How many risings of sun and moon had passed him by? Except that he was not certain there was a sun or moon in this strange shattered place, at least not as there was in Ethlinn’s obsidian tower from which he had lately been spirited—though of his time there he remembered little because he had spent all his Power keeping the pain at bay. Here there was only a sporadic brightening in the silver-white haze of the close-looming sky—a brightening that drew closer every day, as if some celestial body inscribed a slow progression that might sometime bring it in line with the single slit of window that lit the round tower chamber that was his world.

  Or might never.

  As to the room itself, it had curving stone walls and a floor of concentric circles of precisely cut gray flags inset with spirals of silver that here and there lapped up the walls and in four places reached the domed ceiling and spread out once more, though cracks and flakes and fissures disturbed the complex pattern.

  For the rest, he had a silver-framed bed with torn sheets of rough gray silk, and a coverlet of ragged gray fur, and a table and chair of gray wood gilt with silver. The simple breeches and sleeveless tunic he wore were also of that non-color, and made of plain coarse wool; and his pierced and gathered shoes were of nondescript gray leather. He had chains, too: Iron-alloyed bonds lined with wyvem skin that bound his wrists and ankles to the wall and trailed across the floor behind him when he paced out the narrow limits of his freedom. But even that metal was dull: gave off no reflections, so that Fionchadd could not see the green of his own eyes, or the gold of his hair, or the pink of his lips and his tongue. His skin was pale—too pale to offer much contrast, and he had thought more than once of slicing open his veins so that the gush of red would relieve the monotony that drugged his sight. Not suicide that cut, for such was an impossibility with his kind. Oh, he might sever the ties between body and soul for a space of seasons, but the two would rejoin in time, and there was nothing he could do to forestall that reunion. And his captors would still have his body, and when the two reunited, the cycle would start all over with his situation not one whit better.

  So Fionchadd had only to sit and wait and gaze out his window at a vista of white-silver water across which four bands of silver light slowly spun with the tower itself as their hub, until they merged with the like-colored sky of this strange, tiny land no one had heard of. Straight Tracks, he thought: roads between Times and Worlds. But who had ever seen them in silver?

  He had asked once, queried the friendliest of the Erennese guards; but the man had told him little. Finvarra alone knew of this place, he had discovered, but almost nothing more except that it was not truly a part of Faerie. He still hoped by careful questioning of his captors to learn the full, true tale in time. It was something to do, after all, a puzzle to fill the spaces between more troublesome concerns, the principal one of which was winning his freedom.

  But escape eluded him, because of that same pain that dulled his mind and would not let him draw on the Power that should have let him choose any number of shapes and so win free. There were two kinds of pain, too; one he had learned to live with, and one that was troubling and new.

  The first, the wound in his soul, had never healed. It ached always, a gnawing between his thoughts, around his movements; so much a part of him he could no longer remember what it was like before. It, he had mastered; it, in a sense, he could numb—as he could ignore the slap and hiss of waves outside and the tangy smell of salt water, and center on other sounds and odors. But that did not mean it was not present.

  The other agony was born of the Iron rings that bound him, for the fires of the World’s first making yet burned in that metal and never cooled. It was tolerable—barely, if he was careful; but of it, too, he could not be free.

  And a final thing he could not elude was fear. For himself, of course, but more importantly for his mother, the Fireshaper Morwyn, whose fate he did not know except that she had offered herself up in exchange for his freedom when Finvarra had demanded she surrender herself for judgment because of her role in the deaths of his half-mad sister and her twin, his own equally insane sire.

  Evidently that had not happened, however, for he had not been released, and he had heard vague rumors of the ship that would have delivered her being intercepted by her mother’s Powersmith kin. There were tales, too, of a massive battle waged between the Powersmiths and Finvarra’s folk, of Finvarra’s daughters taken hostage and Finvarra fleeing in the shape of an albatross, then turning his full wrath on Lugh and attacking both north and south, while a third force tried to intercept the Powersmiths en route home. This last had supposedly succeeded, but the Powersmiths had raised a shield of magical fire around their fleet which not even Finvarra could shatter.

  All this he had slowly found out the previous autumn. Winter had come then, and in previous years both the Tracks and seas of Faerie would have been impassable. That was before the Powersmiths had learnt how to build ships that could sail in any weather and promptly built a fleet of them for Finvarra—an action they doubtlessly regretted now, since he’d heard something about an impass: the Powersmith fleet besieged that same navy. As for Lugh and Arawn, who did not have the new, stronger, vessels, he supposed they had used the interim to muster forces and augment their fleets so that they could come
to their ally’s aid, now that the Tracks were once more growing stronger with the approach of Midsummer.

  As for himself, he knew things Finvarra wanted also to know, and his un-loving uncle had spent most of the winter trying to discover those things.

  The torture was new. Before, the bonds were only to prevent his escape by distracting him enough to dampen his Power. But lately things had changed. At least—so far—he had resisted.

  They were coming now, he could feel the dull tread of heavy feet on the invisible stair that wound up from somewhere below. Closer and closer, and a door opened in the wall and two figures entered; squat, muscular manshapes not quite shoulder high on him, cleanshaven all over to better display skin that gleamed like waxy, dark-green leather where it was not covered by loincloths of short white fur and arm-and-leg bands and torques of polished silver. Djinn, Fionchadd knew, who could work with Iron—unlike his guardsmen, who were men of the Sidhe.

  No words passed between them as they approached. He tried, as he had tried a hundred times before, to summon Power to blast them, but it would not come; the pain had caused its flame to burn too low.

  Without dispatch, one of the djinn seized his left arm, spun him around to draw both wrists together, while his companion grasped Fionchadd’s legs, subduing their pointless thrashings with the skill of one long practiced, and with speed not even his Powersmith kin could have equaled.

  The rest he knew from grim experience: chains shortened until his limbs were drawn to the corners of the bed; his tunic racked up to his armpits, his breeches to his feet, then hair-fine needles of Iron deftly applied so that they wrought neither wounds nor bruises, but only tiny holes—and delicate, almost crystalline pain.

  “Tell ussss,” one demanded, in a sort of hissing whisper. “Tell ussss of the place you came from. Tell us of the land beyond the fiery waterssss.”

  “Finvarra would know thissss,” the other took up. “Tell ussss, and no more will we harm you.”

  But Fionchadd would not tell and was glad he had given away the torque that contained one of the seeing stones that would have told, had Finvarra got hold of it, and gladder yet he had destroyed its twin before his capture. Oh, he would not have known the Words that called the images showing all the ways of that other World Fionchadd had traversed in hopes of finding a way to safe-haven for his mother, but he had no doubt the Ard Rhi of Erenn would have eventually discovered them. Finvarra’s druids were mighty, and his own Power also, that of the Tuatha de Danaan—far mightier than Fionchadd had expected, for had Finvarra not somehow found a realm that was not of Faerie, nor the Mortal World, yet in some way of both, where the Tracks ran not gold but silver? Such a thing Fionchadd had never heard of, and with such things, what other arts might the Lord of Erenn command?

  “Tell ussss!” the hissing persisted.

  No! He had friends there in that other place beyond theWorld Walls—three at least, even if one of them—Alec McLean—had inadvertently betrayed him. As for the other mortals, David Sullivan and Calvin McIntosh, they bore no taint at all. Them he would not abandon.

  “The sssecret,” the other one hissed, as pain entered Fionchadd’s abdomen and ran in cold fire down the nerves of his legs. A needle turned, and the fire reversed itself and fled along his ribs, making it hard to breathe. A slight pressure, and he lost control of his water.

  “The sssecret,” the first one echoed. “Tell us of Galunlati.”

  Galunlati? Fionchadd wondered. I have not told them that word—or have I? He tried to think of the last time they had come to him and could not. Maybe he had said something then. Maybe. But they would get no more out of him, no more at all.

  “The sssecret”—and pain.

  “The sssecret”—and pain.

  And then more pain, and Fionchadd fled into a dark place inside himself where he had hidden once before when the death of Iron had come upon him. And there he stayed, while agony ripped his slender body and left no outward sign.

  Help, he thought. Help me, help me!

  For he knew someday the pain would find him even there, and then, despite himself, he would reveal all he knew.

  (another tower—Tir-Nan-Og—high summer)

  The wind had shifted around to the north, and with it came rain and the rumor of war.

  At guard atop the northmost tower of Lugh’s northmost citadel, Froech felt the former as a stinging upon his face and knew the latter by some subtle resonance in his bones. Power, it was—Power used profligately to raise the storms that had harried Lugh’s realm for days, drowning the outposts and coastal forts along the wild northern shore with tidal waves that crested far inland and smashed the low-lying woods that stretched south between here and Lugh’s principal hold, shattering trees a hundred spears tall to splinters with blasts of unholy lightning. Such storms frightened him—he who had seen the Quarters change four thousand times. And such storms as these, Froech very much feared, could even reach outside Faery.

  At their heart was wild Power, Power that had been born elsewhere, wrapped around the very stuff of nature, and directed. But now, he knew, the wielders of that Power had come as well. They faced not the storms alone, but the stormmakers in the bargain. The first attack in any Faerie war was always with the weather.

  So it had been when first his kindred had been swept by the Tracks to this clump of Worlds and had found themselves in Erenn. The Firbolg had been there before them, who were of olden times their kin; and before their hosts ever joined in war Badb and Macha and the Morrigu went to Tara and brought mists and clouds and darkness over the whole place, following that with showers of fire and blood. Three days it had lasted, before the druids of the Firbolg broke it. He knew; he had been there. And so it had ever been.

  Grimly he scanned the horizon, fair angular face set, dark brows glowering from under his helm, black hair twitching wildly where it flowed unrestrained across his back. He clutched his wine-red cloak around him and shivered, wishing he could draw warmth from the sun-in-splendor emblazoned on it. There was cold in that rain, a cold that should not be present this far south in Faerie. A moment more he would watch, then make his report.

  Steps sounded on the dampening flags behind him. He glanced sideways and saw Andro, his flame-haired blood-friend, striding toward him, hand hovering, as their hands ever did these days, near his swordhilt. Andro’s eyebrows lowered, as he too turned his gaze north and sniffed the air which now smelled strongly of lightning.

  “So Finvarra’s minions have landed, have they? Well, it had to happen. Beat us into weariness with storms and then attack. Break the spirit, and the body follows it down.”

  “But why here in the north?” Froech wondered. “When Lugh’s principal strongholds lie south and east? Surely if they were whelmed the north would quickly follow.”

  “I have wondered about that too,” Andro replied. “And only now have I contrived a possible answer.”

  “I wait—but hurry, for this we must pass on.”

  “It is the forests themselves Finvarra seeks to destroy,” Andro said heavily. “Only think, brother: Erenn has little wood, and not even Finvarra’s druids can make it grow faster than it will. He has built many ships and lost many ships, and even before this war we traded him timber from our groves.”

  “And now he has lost more ships and can build none to replace them…”

  Andro’s face brightened. “But Lugh can. Yet what of the rest of the war? What of the message that came this morning? Is it as I have heard? Has the war truly shifted our way?”

  “This sea war, maybe,” Froech replied thoughtfully. “But I think it has all been a diversion. Finvarra never attacked with all his fleet; he kept some in reserve, and with them he has come against the forests, for without wood Lugh cannot build ships any more than can he.”

  “Ah! An evening of the scales, then…”

  “Aye, but would we were not in the balance.”

  “All for a pair of half-mad twins.”

  “All for the Laws
of Dana.”

  “A life for a life.”

  “And ten thousand deaths thereby.”

  Andro nodded sadly. From a pouch he drew a prickly shape: a caltrap, it was called: four thorns of a certain kind joined at their centers by druidry. He laid it in his palm. Another nod, and Froech clamped his hand atop it, and as one they squeezed them together. Pain flowed into them, and with it blood. But with that blood flowed Power, doubling and redoubling as it mixed and mingled.

  And so it was that Froech and Andro both gazed north and saw the land stretch long before them, thick with the corpses of trees. But they saw too the clouds that overlay those trees like a blanket of doom, and beyond those trees—still leagues and leagues away—the white lace of waves on a distant, storm-tossed shore.

  Those waves were not empty though, nor was that shore, for ships lay there at anchor: black ships with black sails emblazoned with scarlet eagles. And all along that coast came the glitters of spears reflecting ever-increasing lightning, and war drums that echoed the thunder, as Finvarra of Erenn at last brought battle to Tir-Nan-Og.

  “Dana help us all,” Froech sighed, as Andro put on raven’s form and flew south with a message dark as the weather.

  Help me! another thought tickled his mind—but was gone before Froech knew it was not his own.

  (Sullivan Cove, Georgia—Friday, August 13—mid-afternoon)

  “David!” Alec McLean cried. “Christ, man, you gonna sleep all day?”

  David dragged his eyelids open and levered himself up on his elbows, still seriously muddle-headed. He stared first at his best friend’s concerned expression; then, automatically, at his own near-naked body in search of incipient sunburn. For the time of year he was as pale as he’d ever been: the glaze of gold on arms and legs, chest and shoulders was mostly last summer’s leftovers—and the residue of the previous weekend’s forced labor.