Sunshaker's War

by Tom Deitz

  David exhaled in relief. “Jesus, Man…I think you left my stomach somewhere back in Enotah…and my right kneecap ’bout three miles up the road.”

  “Oh, come on, I didn’t take that curve that tight.”

  “I don’t know about that…I started to scream and sucked up three hundred feet of ants and two dead possums!”

  “My ass!”

  “Yeah, and that’s another thing. I think mine’s up ’round my shoulder blades. Did you have to jump the creek like that?”

  “It was faster than going ’round.”

  David aimed a kick at Galvin’s denimed backside and followed him up the sidewalk between the dogwoods and banks of ivy that comprised most of the yard.

  A camo-clad Alec opened the front door before they could knock, and David shivered at the blast of air-conditioning. Alec’s mom was from Wyoming and had never truly adjusted to either the heat or humidity of Georgia summers—of which the present one had been a particularly virulent example in both regards.

  Calvin had not removed his helmet yet, and Alec was staring at him in confusion.

  David raised an eyebrow. “One mysterious visitor comin’ up.”

  Calvin flipped up the tinted plastic, and Alec’s face broke into a grin that stretched from ear to ear. He reached out to shake hands and found himself drawn into a hearty hug.

  “Hey, man, how’s it goin’?” Alec managed to croak as he tried to slap Calvin’s back.

  “Not too bad,” Calvin replied in his most innocuous tone as he set Alec back down. “How’s your own bad—” He stopped himself a hiss short of “self,” and David guessed he was fearful of resurrecting the negative memories he knew that term evoked for Alec. “How’re you making it?” he finished lamely.

  “Dandy, just dandy,” Alec answered, still beaming, “—’cept for the blessed rain,” he added with a peculiar half-snarl.

  A vigorous nod. “Yeah, tell me about it.”

  “If you’ll tell me ’bout what you’ve been up to,” Alec shot back.

  “You got two hours?” David groaned.

  “I got all day!” Alec cried airily. “I’ll just go get us a couple of D.P.s, then we can head upstairs.”

  “D.P.s?” Calvin wondered, when Alec had darted off.

  “Doctor Peppers,” David replied. “It’s sort of his and my totem beverage.”

  “Ah,” said Calvin. “I know all about totems.”

  David started. “Do you? You’ve never told me yours.”

  “I have too,” Calvin assured him. “Just not with my voice.”

  David was still staring at him when Alec thrust an ice-cold can into his hand.

  *

  “So,” Alec wondered five minutes later, “what’s up? What’s all this hush-hush stuff?”

  David took a long swallow from his D.P. and exchanged troubled glances with Calvin. “Well, gee, man: it’s like this…you know what’s been goin’ on with the weather and all, and what I think about it, right? Well, Calvin’s got an idea about it, too: a real disturbin’ one, and some evidence to back it up. But we can’t prove anything without your help.”

  Alec frowned uncertainly. “I’m not sure I want to hear any more.”

  “Yeah, but you really ought to anyway. See—”

  “Let me tell him,” Calvin interrupted. “Look, McLean, it’s like this…”

  He went on then, recounting the details of his most recent visit to Galunlati.

  “Whew!” Alec whistled when he had finished. “You really think it’s that bad? That the war in Faerie could have a negative effect on the friggin’ sun? I mean, look folks, fooling around with the weather’s one thing, but the sun’s ninety-zillion miles from here and Sagan only knows how many times bigger than the whole friggin’ planet! You’re telling me that the actions of a couple of Faery dudes are gonna mess up the sun?”

  “I said it might,” Calvin replied a little irritably, “It sure seems to be havin’ that effect in Galunlati. It’s smaller than this world, don’t forget, and not as massive. It’d therefore be more susceptible to anything that messed with the gravity over there, just like it’s easier to fool with the moon than the sun.”

  Alec frowned again. “Maybe so. Let me think about it a while, okay? I never can keep the physics straight on that.”

  “Uh, yeah…but, well, uh—there’s something else we need for you to do,” David said carefully. “And we don’t have a while for this one.”

  A thick black eyebrow lifted. “Like what?”

  David took a deep breath. “We need to find out what’s goin’ on in Faerie. Maybe if we know what’s happenin’ there we can do something to forestall further disaster, both here and there. Use the ulunsuti,” he added, as calmly and sincerely as he could. “Use it to spy on Faerie. Maybe that way we can at least be forewarned. We might even use it to get word to them about what all their foolin’ around’s doin’ to us.”

  “No,” Alec stated flatly, not meeting David’s eyes. “No deal.”

  “But why?”

  “I…I just don’t like to use it, David. It scares me, man!”

  “But why? I mean I know you’ve been doing minimal upkeep on it…I read up on it some in Myths of the Cherokee, and it agrees with what Uki told us: you’re supposed to feed it blood once a week, and once a month heavy-duty blood or it’ll go wild. Since it hasn’t gone wild, I presume you’ve been feedin’ it blood. Not,” he added with a touch of sarcasm, “that you’ve bothered to let me know.”

  Alec’s mouth worked, but he still did not look up at his friend.

  David clamped a hand on his thigh and squeezed hard. “You have been, haven’t you?”

  Alec nodded sheepishly.

  “Hey, man, don’t worry ’bout it. It’s what you’re supposed to do. It’s part of the responsibility of havin’ the damned thing.”

  Alec turned at him, face grim. “But don’t you understand, David? How many times do I have to tell you? It’s not rational—and I’m a rational person.” He gestured around the room. “All this stuff: the computer, the TV, the CD player, the VCR: all of it makes sense. You line electrons up a certain way and push a button and off they march. You turn current on and off, and letters appear or math gets done or lines get drawn. But you take a piece of God-knows-what-kind of transparent material out of the head of a monster snake from another world and feed it blood and it shows you the future—that I can’t accept. It freaks me out. It just doesn’t fit!”

  “And therefore it scares you,” Calvin finished for him.

  “Yeah, something like that,” Alec conceded. “I guess…I guess I figure that if I accept that, then everything else will be suspect, and my whole reality system’ll fold up like a house of cards.”

  “You could think of it as opening up like a flower instead,” Calvin suggested. “’Stead of shuttin’ it out, maybe you should be tryin’ to work out a…a unified field theory of magic, or something.”

  “Give me a break!”

  “No, think about it, McLean,” Calvin went on reasonably. “We know a fair bit about the cosmology of Faerie, or you guys do, anyway. Why not try to put it all together and work out more? That way we might learn something really useful, and you wouldn’t have any reason to be scared of it.”

  “You forget one thing.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah…like that people have been trying to work out a unified field theory of our known reality for years and haven’t got anywhere. How’s an eighteen-year-old supposed to throw Faerie into the mix and get an answer any sooner?”

  “Good point, but—”

  “But we’re getting beside the point,” Calvin broke in. “I mean look, McLean, it’s your property, you can do what you want with it. But if you don’t want to try it, at least let me do it. I’ve been trainin’ with Uki some, I know the technique.”

  A shadow of strain crossed Alec’s features. “No,” he said again. “Then…oh crap, guys, okay…but just once, and that’s it. Deal?”

 
Calvin shook his head. “I can’t agree to that. But just once today unless something really serious is going on, how ’bout that?”

  “And we each get a vote,” David added. “Two out of three does it, and we all try to be sensible about it. Do what’s right, not what we want to do. Head over heart, and all that.”

  Alec sighed. “Reckon I don’t really have any choice then, do I?”

  “You’ve always got a choice,” Calvin told him. “But sometimes you don’t know what you’re really choosin’.”

  Alec did not reply, but pulled out the top drawer of his night stand and withdrew an earthenware pot plugged with a thick bark stopper. He tipped it on its side and shook out a white deerskin bag which bounced once on the bedspread. Alec loosened the drawstring and emptied the ulunsuti into his left hand where it glistened tantalizingly. David gasped involuntarily as a stray beam of sunlight lanced through the window and struck it, projecting a rainbow onto the R.E.M. poster on the wall behind them—a rainbow whose red stripe was pretenaturally bright.

  “What now?” David asked.

  Alec shrugged. “I’ve never used it prophetically. The first time I used it at all, I was just staring at it and wondering about something. I was kinda tired and dreamy and all, so I wasn’t making any real effort, but then suddenly it took control and gave me the answer I wanted. And then later when you were hurt, we used it to call you back.”

  “Right,” Calvin inserted. “You use it to focus mental energy.”

  “Whatever.” Alec glanced at Calvin. “Guess you’d better tell us what to do and we’ll try to follow. You’re the shaman here.”

  David giggled suddenly, and both his friends looked at him. “What’s funny?” Alec asked, scowling.

  “Oh, just that up until now it’s always been me playin’ boy-sorcerer, and now it’s you-all! I don’t have a bit of magic to my name, ’cept Second Sight that can’t see anything, but here you both are playin’ with Cherokee mumbo-jumbo.”

  Calvin cleared his throat. “Okay, guys, we’ve got a job to do.”

  “We’re waitin’,” David told him, grinning attentively.

  Calvin frowned thoughtfully. “Well, this may be a major working, and since we don’t have the kind of power Morwyn had when she used it to spy out the future, we’d probably better all try to do this together—” He looked at Alec. “Sorta like we did when we called David back. Also,” he added with a sigh, “I suppose we oughta do what we can to enhance our power.”

  David cocked an eyebrow. “What’cha got in mind?”

  “Two things right off: We’ll have to do this sittin’ on the floor hand-in-hand with the thing between us, but if you just do that, it kinda cramps the energy flow—so one thing we can do is to drop our britches and sit with our bare knees touchin’.” He flopped down on Alec’s bed, and began tugging off his boots, while Alec and David did likewise on the floor and windowseat respectively.

  “And the other thing?” Alec wondered when Calvin had stripped down to falcon T-shirt and black briefs, and he and David had rejoined him in a sort of lopsided triangle on the faux-Persian throw rug beside Alec’s bed.

  “You won’t like it.”

  “I already don’t like it.” Calvin picked up a boot and reached into the top, to draw out a potent-looking hunting knife. “Blood,” he said. “We prime it with blood. Our blood.”

  Alec rolled his eyes.

  David sighed. “Might work. Won’t hurt—much—to try. One of us, or all?”

  “All,” Calvin replied. “That would be strongest.”

  David nodded. Alec closed his eyes and swallowed.

  Calvin bit his lip, held out his left hand and made a quick stab along the length of his index finger, allowing bright red to show, then handed the weapon to David. David followed suit, more quickly than he’d expected, for the blade was unexpectedly sharp and he cut further and deeper than he intended before he knew it.

  Alec went last, and hesitated longest, but finally he too drew the blade along his finger.

  Calvin took the ulunsuti and placed it on the center of the intricate design. Then, at a nod from him, they all reached forward and smeared their life-essence across the crystal. It remained there for a moment, veiling the glitter, then slowly faded as the ulunsuti absorbed it. But where before the talisman had shone softly, now it blazed with an arcane light, and the red line in the center was bright as fire.

  “It does that when you feed it,” Alec admitted.

  He started to wipe his still-bleeding hand on a convenient dirty sock, but Calvin restrained him. “Leave it till we’re finished. It’ll aid the power flow. Now,” he added, “we all join hands and touch knees and try to concentrate on the red line in the crystal—and keep one part of our minds open to the question: just wonder real hard about what’s going on in Tir-Nan-Og.”

  “Shouldn’t we maybe have a more specific goal?” David wondered. “I mean, we don’t want the ulunsuti to get confused. Maybe we should try for a person—Lugh, or somebody. He should be fairly close by, so to speak, and we know him and know what he looks like—and he might be less alarmed than some if he detected us spying on him.”

  “Good idea,” Alec agreed. “Anything to take the heat off a tad.”

  “Okay then,” Calvin said. “Grab hold and let’s to it.”

  David took a deep breath and took his buddies’ hands: Alec’s firm but a little soft, Calvin’s much harder and rougher, though with a certain gentleness of touch that surprised him. Another breath and he let his eyes go out of focus, trying to see only the ulunsuti’s red septum. He resisted the temptation to close his eyes; tried, rather, to call Lugh’s face to mind: long black hair, narrow, angular chin, flowing mustache, blue eyes…

  Nothing happened for a moment, but then the red slowly expanded. David felt his eyes drawn toward it, and his other senses seemed clearer as well. He was aware of Calvin’s hand and knee to the left, of Alec’s to his right, but now he thought he could detect a gentle flow of warmth spreading from Calvin’s flesh into his own, up his arm and across and into Alec, while a parallel flow entered his knees and flowed through his groin and back down his other leg.

  But an instant later he forgot that, for his thoughts had turned to Lugh, and this time the image formed rapidly. One moment he saw only a line of red, and then it had been replaced by a vista he had seen before: Lugh’s primary palace—the one at the heart of his kingdom.

  In plan, it was shaped like a star; with six lesser, towered points, and six greater. Each tower was white and two hundred feet tall, and each bore a banner on top: a golden sun-in-splendor upon a field of crimson.

  David did not know whose body he shared, only that it was gazing north. He saw the terraced grounds of the keep, the narrow band of open country that surrounded them—

  But where forests had once ringed the castle, marching a hundred leagues in a thousand shades of green edging slowly to blue and then the not-color of the horizon, now was only devastation.

  It was destroyed, all of it: the stuff of a thousand navies a million times larger than Finvarra’s. Trees a hundred—a thousand—feet tall, all straight and true and so ancient many must have started growing when Tir-Nan-Og first gained mass enough to hold their roots; those same trees lay on the ground, broken, rotting, torn to pieces by the fury of Finvarra’s storms which had laid open even the land itself. It reminded David of two things almost simultaneously: the ravaging of the Amazon rain forests he’d been seeing nightly on the news, and the devastation in Siberia following the explosion of the Tunguska object: trees blown flat, radiating from a common center.

  But it was not man’s greed nor nature’s caprice that had wrought this, but a war that embodied them both. Storms: wind and rain, all driven mad by magic. And followed by Finvarra’s hordes, which now marched toward Lugh’s citadel.

  From the northmost tower a figure looked down on Finvarra’s troops spread across the land like black ants, their lines stretching far into the shattered forest to mer
ge with the scattered smokes of the trees that had been set aflame lest even their hulks be used to build new vessels.

  A woman rode forward from Finvarra’s host: a tall Faery lady astride a huge black horse, both liveried in the black and scarlet of Finvarra’s house. She took off her golden helm and looked toward the tower, raised her voice to the folk who stood above.

  “Lugh Samildinach,” she called. “High King of the Sidhe in Tir-Nan-Og! Know that I am Macha, Mistress of War of the Sidhe in Erenn, second only to High King Finvarra who may not touch your soil until you relinquish your claim!”

  “I know who you are,” Lugh shouted back, not bothering to remove his black helm. “Why have you come here? Why have you blackened my land?”

  Macha laughed, the sounds clear even in the weighty air. “Ships must have wood, Ard Rhi; and wood you had a plenty, far more than Finvarra. And now wood you have no more. The seas are heavy with the wrack of your fleets, and they may not be rebuilt. You have no longer any way to attack Finvarra. I have come to ask your surrender.”

  “And what of the boy?” Lugh inquired casually.

  “Fionchadd? He has been hidden where no one can find him. Not even I know where he now resides.”

  Lugh’s eyes bored into her, even from that distance. “Do you not? No, I suppose you speak the truth. It would be exactly like him. True form for the Spider King.”

  Macha ignored his remark. “Ard Rhi, I await your reply.”

  Lugh sighed with theatrical nonchalance. “If it is an answer you must have, I fear I must give you one you will not like.”

  “And what is that?” Macha asked. “Do not forget that we can kill the boy past hope of return.”

  “I have not forgotten,” Lugh said. “But do not you forget that this is my land and that there are certain things I can do that Finvarra cannot, certain weapons I have at my disposal.”

  “Finvarra knows too well of your weapons,” Macha snorted. “And he knows that both Arawn and the Lord of the Powersmiths have forbidden you to use the Horn of Annwyn.”

  “Ah,” Lugh chuckled, “but does he know of all my weapons?”