Sunshaker's War

by Tom Deitz

“What?”

  “Talking about nothing to keep from going crazy.”

  “Yeah.”

  Another silence, then: “Did we do the right thing, Liz? It was so quick, but all I could think of was poor Finno cooking alive. And Lord knows I’ve never seen anybody look as bad as he did. One thing, though,” he added slowly.

  “I’m listening.”

  Alec’s eyes filled with tears, and he almost broke down. “I hurt, Liz; oh God Almighty, I hurt.”

  Liz glanced sideways. What she saw almost brought tears from her own eyes. How could she have been so insensitive, so damned unaware? Alec was sitting in the other bucket, staring at his hands. They were blistered, red; parts were even blackened. He was simply looking at them and crying uncontrollably.

  “Good God, boy!” she cried. “What hap—” but then she knew. Alec had stuck the ulunsuti into the fire with his bare hands. He’d had to, to get it seated right, and she bet anything it had something to do with the magic: the magic had to cost the wielder pain. Calvin had mentioned something like that when he’d told them a bit about the ritual used to prepare the scales to teleport. Blood too was involved, but she wasn’t certain how. Nothing was ever free, though; that was a basic tenet of magic; and Alec had paid a high price without complaint. Worse, he’d stuck his hands back into the fire when he’d tried to put it out, and then used them to carry Fionchadd cross country, and to light another fire in the car, and then grabbed the burning papers to throw them out the window. How much pain could one man endure?

  “I’m sorry,” Alec sniffed, trying to regain control. “I shouldn’t have said anything. A little burn salve, some bandages, and I’ll be fine.”

  “No you won’t!” Liz told him firmly. “You’ve got second-degree burns all over your hands. I’ve gotta get you to a hospital.”

  “No, Liz, we’ve gotta get to the coast!”

  Liz braked suddenly, swung the car into the parking lot of a convenient McDonald’s. She stuffed the car in neutral and turned to stare at him.

  “I’ll be okay,” he repeated. “I’ll put some ice on ’em.”

  “Alec!”

  “No, listen. It’s only pain. I can live with it. God knows if I hadn’t been so wimpy earlier, when David wanted me to use the ulunsuti and I wouldn’t, maybe we could have avoided this. Certainly we’d have had more time to plan, ’stead of making it up on the fly. But we’ve got to be on the coast as quick as we can—tomorrow morning at the latest. I can stand it till then. It’ll hurt like hell, maybe I’ll get sick—but I’ll be okay.”

  “You could get an infection, Alec. You could lose the use of your hands!”

  “I nearly lost ’em last year, trying to impress David; but he saved me from something much worse. Can I do any less for him?”

  “Oh, Christ, McLean, don’t ask me to do this. I can’t help David right now, but I can help you, and to do that I’ve gotta get you to a doctor.”

  Alec shook his head. “There’s no time. Just think. David’s gone. Calvin’s gone. Finno’s gone. It’s you and me, now. We’re the only ones ’cept Dale and Sandy that have any idea what’s up. And we’re the only ones with access to magic. And that’s what David may need to get him back. I can’t be in the hospital when I need to be down on the coast with the ulunsuti.”

  “The ulunsuti? Why?”

  “To open another gate, if we have to. I mean, hasn’t that occurred to you yet? I may have to open another gate.”

  “It could cripple you for life.”

  He shrugged. “That’s a risk. So is driving in rush-hour traffic.”

  A glance at the steady stream of cars told Liz the truth of that. “Touché.”

  “Besides,” he added, “if we don’t move, we’re never gonna get outta here. I’ll look for the first-aid kit. Now, let’s travel.”

  “Which way?”

  “East,” he said. “And south. Now what did we do with that ?”

  She sighed and pulled back into the traffic, heading against the heaviest flow. Almost she relaxed—until she heard the distant cry of an eagle, then heard it echoed twice more.

  * * *

  An hour and a half later they were running on straight caffeine and adrenalin—the former from the last of the two six-packs of Jolt Cola they’d bought at the same Winder convenience store as they’d got their morning candy bars; the latter from tension that would not go away. God knew they should be absolutely fried, given that only Alec had had a reasonable night’s sleep in the last two, but Liz was wide awake: perhaps too wide awake, since she was so wired she was about to scream. She kept finding herself scrooching up under the steering wheel, peering forward with feverish intensity, straining her back as if that tension would grant the Mustang extra speed beyond the seventy-five she’d been averaging since they’d finally escaped Atlanta’s urban sprawl somewhere around Monroe. They’d taken Georgia 11 south to 1-20, and were still heading east, coming up on the thriving metropolis of Crawfordville—all 594 souls, according to Rand McNally.

  A bump in the road, not major, but Liz started, almost cried out. Every sound she heard seemed to herald pursuit: death from above in some form she dared not even imagine. Worse, every sound the car made hinted at imminent disaster. She’d never realized how many sounds a car—especially an old one like David’s—could make: squeaks, rattles, howls from the tires, the rear end, the transmission. Suppose something happened to the car: suppose they found themselves stranded in the wilds of Taliaferro County with a dead ’66 Mustang?

  One more thing to fret over.

  Another thing was gas. It was one thing to get by on caffeine and adrenalin herself, but the car was something else again. The gauge had dipped past the last mark just beyond Madison, and now they were running on what David liked to call “air and imagination.”

  “I’m gonna have to stop,” Liz told Alec, who’d been leaning against the passenger door with his head half out the window and his eyes closed, rousing only when he delicately fumbled with the radio every now and then. At least his hands looked a little better. He’d found burn ointment in one of the surviving packs and had slathered the damage with it, resisting the temptation to bandage them as well, since what burns needed most was air, not confinement.

  “Alec?” Liz prompted, somewhat louder. “I’ve gotta stop. We’ve gotta get gas.”

  A slow nod. “Got any money?”

  Got twenty bucks, that be enough?”

  “To get us there, probably. To get us back? Who knows?”

  “Another thing,” Liz added. “I think we need to find a phone, we’ve gotta let some folks know where we are. I know Mom’s probably going crazy about now. Shoot, she’s probably already called the cops.”

  “Damn!” Alec exclaimed suddenly.

  “Huh?”

  “Your exams! Don’t you have a big one coming up?”

  She nodded sadly. “Yeah, gotta killer chemistry on Wednesday, but—well, some things are just more important.”

  A sign caught Liz’s attention up ahead: not the expected Crawfordville, but simply a Chevron logo on a neat blue background, with the legend: NEXT EXIT.

  She slipped into the right hand lane and followed the arrow up into the oil-stained forecourt of a small self-service station that seemed to be standing guard at the intersection of the interstate and some nameless secondary road. Woods grew close around. A sign pointed south to Orton Carlton State Park.

  “I’ll fill ’er,” Alec volunteered, as Liz eased in between the pumps. “You be ready to fly if anything happens.”

  “I’ll go look for a phone.”

  “Good idea, but stay close if you can.”

  “I’ve, uh, also gotta go to the restroom.”

  “Me too, soon as I get done here, but we’ll go in shifts, never desert the car.”

  “Okay.”

  Alec patted her arm awkwardly and almost as awkwardly got out of the car and trotted around back to void the previous sale and stick the gas nozzle into the filler between tail
lights. Liz could see him there, keeping a wary eye out. She also saw his face blanch every time he manipulated the equipment.

  She wished she hadn’t said that about the restroom, too, because all of a sudden she really did have to go about as bad as she ever had in her life. If Alec would only hurry…she squirmed around in place, stared out the window. Alec was still vigilant, she could see his eyes shifting back and forth as the numbers slowly rolled up.

  Eventually the dollar amount reached fifteen, though the gauge didn’t seem to be registering, probably due to the car’s recent abuse. She saw Alec fish into his pocket and pull out a twenty. He held it delicately between his fingertips. Probably the only way it didn’t hurt.

  A scraping sound was the gas cap being resecured, and then Alec was trotting into the station.

  Suddenly she couldn’t wait any longer. She didn’t want to leave the car, but Alec was taking his own sweet time, and she wondered if he’d decided to take advantage of being out to do a little freshening up while he was at it. She doubted he meant any harm, but Jesus, why now, when she really had to go?

  There was no helping it. She simply had to risk it. A quick dash out back would probably be okay.

  She got out of the car and trotted as quickly as she could without being obvious around the side of the station, hoping the sign she saw was accurate.

  As she walked in, she glimpsed Alec coming out again. Good, that meant the car wouldn’t be unguarded.

  Five minutes later she felt remarkably better, though mostly because of the water she’d splashed on her face (she was still in warpaint, she realized), and the quick toweling-down she’d given herself.

  After the gloom of the restroom, the sunlight outside made her blink, and she spared a glance toward Alec, who was waiting patiently beside the car, then started toward the pay phone she’d noticed at the edge of the parking lot. She pointed; he nodded. She brandished a handful of change, and he nodded again and made shooing motions.

  She went in, shut the glass door behind her. The receiver was working—fortunately. She listened for the dial tone, got it, punched up the operator and asked her to dial Uncle Dale, figuring he was the one person most adept at the various levels of diplomacy needed to bring half a dozen people of varying degrees of interest or involvement up to date on what was happening.

  Behind her she saw Alec slowly walking toward her. He’d probably thought of something he needed to say.

  The phone rang twice, and then someone picked up.

  “Hello?”

  She deposited the requisite change, then: “Uh—oh, hi, Uncle Dale; it’s me, Liz. I’m—”

  “Miss Lizzy! Good God A-mighty, where are you? Yore folk’ve been worried sick about you, ever since you didn’t call last night—I had to do a heap of explain’ there, let me tell you!” A pause. “Hey, you okay? And what about Davy? How’s he doin’?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied, and caught herself on the ragged edge of tears. “We’ve got Finno, but…but we’ve lost Davy. He’s somewhere in Galunlati.”

  Another pause. “I ’uz afraid of that, from what Calvin’s lady told me ’bout y’all’s plans. But where are you?”

  “We’re in—”

  And then the phone went dead.

  “Hello? Hello?” she called, low at first and then suddenly louder as panic took her. “Hello?” A subtlety of sound made her look around and when she did, every hair on her body stood on end, for she saw Alec leaning against the phone booth with a length of ragged telephone cable in his hand.

  Reflexively, she jerked open the door, started to run—and saw another Alec start toward her from inside the station. He was walking by himself, but there was something odd about his gait, as if he were not quite in control.

  He cleared the corner, but another figure was behind him: one of Finvarra’s black-liveried guards. A Word pulsed in her head, freezing both her will and her body. Hands brushed her as the bogus Alec came up behind, and she saw four other black-cloaked shapes wander from the woods. “The metal steeds of this World are swift,” someone said in strangely accented English, “but not as swift as the winds of the upper sky—not when one wears the shape of a dragon. Come, now, and join your friend.” It was then that she saw the gas station dissolve back into the deserted block shell that had actually been there. “One sometimes sees what one desires to see,” that voice told her. “And if there are those who can read desires, almost anything can happen—and often does.”

  And with that her legs took her against her will towards the woods.

  Chapter XXI: In the Dark About Things

  (Galunlati—night)

  The first thing David noticed when he came to himself was the cessation of the searing pain of intra-World transition. It had been awful that time—much worse than any time before, and he still wasn’t absolutely certain he was completely intact, either in body or soul; though in part that was due to the second thing he noticed, which was that wherever he had wound up was dark, and he was lying on his face. That was strange, too: zapping from a bright Georgia dawn complete with the distant hoot-and-holler of rush hour to the silence and darkness of…wherever here was.

  The third thing that entered his reality was that his left ear was being quite vigorously nibbled by a ’possum.

  “Uhhhmmm,” he half-groaned, half-sighed. He closed his eyes against the dark, feeling grateful to be alive—and thinking he’d be even more grateful if not for the insistent machinations of the blessed marsupial. If it’d only leave him alone for a minute, he’d get up and see what it wanted. For the time being all he wanted to do was lie here on whatever soft surface this was until his brain-cells got their act together again.

  Tiny sharp teeth nipped his nose with exquisite precision.

  “Shit!” he yipped, jerking himself to an awkward squat, arms flailing automatically. One connected with something small and furry and sent it tumbling head-over-heels. The other hit something larger and prompted a vaguely human groan out of it.

  He blinked, shook his head, trying to clear his vision and finally figured out that the reason he couldn’t see worth a damn was because he was being overhung by a handsome rhododendron and there was about a foot of wet hair in his eyes. He slapped both back, and took inventory of his surroundings. It was night: that hadn’t changed. He was in the woods, though. And then the reality of his situation dawned on him. He was—or was supposed to be—in Galunlati.

  Except that it didn’t look like any part of Galunlati he’d been in before—not that he’d seen very much. He leapt to his feet (bare, he discovered to his dismay), glanced around—and saw trees. Oaks and beeches, to judge by their style of growth and bark, laced with a regular underforest of dogwoods, a few of which were still in bloom—but nothing else familiar. He stood on tip-toes, turned around in place—and made out only more of the same. A glance skyward showed him sky tinted with the hint of impending moonlight. Stars were everywhere, but not the ones he was used to. It was also rather remarkably warm.

  There was a clear patch in the forest canopy a couple of yards from where he stood, and he staggered over there and gazed up at it. Three stars in a row, and a fourth and fifth right below it: almost like the belt of Orion, except it wasn’t. But it was one of the constellations he’d found and named last time he was in Galunlati, so that must be where he was.

  But where in Galunlati?

  And what was he gonna do?

  All at once the events of the last twelve hours came sneaking up on him and pounced, and he had to sit down again to keep himself from reeling.

  Then it struck him that the particularly brave and obnoxious marsupial was without a doubt his old friend Calvin.

  And finally that the groan had been Fionchadd who was in serious bad shape and probably ought to be looked at immediately.

  He scanned the clearing in search of the ’possum, saw it absently nosing about at the base of a tree. Good, let it stay there, he couldn’t do anything else for the time being. Meanwhile…r />
  A half-leap brought him back to his other companion. The Faery boy was lying on his back, and the moon had begun to peek through the trees enough for David to be able to assess his condition.

  He was almost as ill-clad as David, except that David’s cut-offs and T-shirt were relatively clean, if sweaty-damp, while Finno’s ragged tunic and breeches were filthy. Gently he smoothed the tangled, matted hair out of the Faery’s face, peered close, shifting his position to get out of his own light. His fingers brushed something soft and raised, something that split and oozed clear liquid when he touched it, and David remembered to his horror that the entirety of the Faery boy’s face was blistered. Ditto his neck, his bare arms, his feet, even a section of belly. No charring, but it was as if the whole skin had bubbled loose.

  It was awful. Almost he wept again, this time not from relief, but from the futility of it all: alone, almost naked in a strange land, with an itinerate ’possum and a deathly ill Faery, and himself no great shakes either.

  “Okay, Sullivan, get it together,” he told himself aloud. The sound echoed loud in the night, made the ’possum look his way before going back to its rooting. Fionchadd groaned. David took quick inventory of his equipment. Clothes like he’d noted, his uktena scale still on its thong, Liz’s medallion, and his fannypack. Another search of the clearing showed him that he also had Calvin’s largely empty fannypack and knapsack, and—wonder of wonders—even the ’possum’s uktena scale. Evidently the critter had scooted out of it upon…landing, or whatever they’d done. Okay, then, check the packs. He snapped his open, found tightly wrapped plastic with his fingers, and dragged out the mixed-nuts can it contained—the one that housed Sandy’s survival kit.

  A quick flip undid the lid, and the next few moments proved sometimes enlightening, sometimes perplexing. There was everything from aluminum foil, string, and fishline, through a Swiss Army Knife, razorblades, and fishhooks, to instant coffee, water purification tablets, and a couple of batteries. There was also a tube of what might be burn ointment and a sheet of paper about the size of his hand covered with tiny black lines that might have been printed. He squinted at it in the moonlight, but could not tell what was on it, though he suspected it was instructions—probably everything in the can had at least two functions. But Sandy (presumably) had saved space even more by reducing it on a photocopier until the lettering was barely legible. He guessed she didn’t plan on having trouble at night.