by Tom Deitz
“My Lord—” Taran prompted behind him.
“In a moment!” Nuada snapped, more irritably than was his wont. Still, immortality conferred a certain patience that half-bloods (who might live forever and might not) were sometimes late in learning, and so he twisted around to fix the man with an icy glare. Just as a knock sounded on the door: a knock in a certain cadence he had no choice but to acknowledge.
“Gold,” he told his servant, who fled at a run, narrowly avoiding a younger man who neatly sidestepped him as he entered: graceful and lithe even in what were clearly travel-stained cloak, tunic, boots, and hose. An odor rode with that man: the pungent richness of forest loam from the Lands of Men. Leaves clung in his hair. He was panting hard.
Nuada passed the newcomer his own goblet as he strode down the two crescent steps from the door, and filled the vessel’s twin as the youth drained the first goblet to the dregs. Nuada refilled it, and motioned the youth to a seat across the table, pausing only to extinguish the mirror with a pass of his hand.
“My Lord,” the man breathed finally. “My thanks to you for your courtesy.”
“Those who serve me deserve to be served in turn, Elvrin,” Nuada replied. “Do I take it you have some need for haste?”
Elvrin nodded. “Three things, My Lord, most recently; though I have others to report at leisure.”
“Which I will hear at leisure as well—perhaps tonight, on the Rade.”
“As you will, My Lord,” Elvrin sighed. “Very well, the first thing is the least, which is simply that while pursuing the task you set us in the Lands of Men, we came upon one of those whose face you showed me in your mind, whose thoughts are to be left alone and their persons, whenever we can, protected—Sandy Fairfax, by name. We watched her for a long while, though we learned very little, for there was much iron about her dwelling. One thing we did learn, however, is that she and others who likewise know of us—including the boy—plan to meet tonight near a certain Track and await our Riding.”
Nuada silenced him with a flick of his wrist. “This we know. This they have done for several seasons, and there is no harm in it, for the Borders are sealed and none of them have the art of awakening Tracks. It is a thing they do to affirm the bond of the terrible knowledge they share, for terrible it is to them.”
Elvrin frowned. “My Lord, perhaps I have not yet recovered from wearing the stuff of that World, but I do not understand.”
“More meat for a longer talk, if you have other messages,” Nuada replied. “Suffice to say that most humans who know of us are accounted learned (if not wise) as men, and even many of the Sidhe, account such things; yet what they know of us and our arts and our World does not agree in many parts with what they have been taught about the nature of their own. We inspire them with awe and wonder—and fear. And since Lugh has forbidden them to speak of us to any save those who do know, they perforce seek each other out, though some were already friends.”
“Comrades bound by common grief.”
“In effect,” Nuada agreed. “But continue.”
Elvrin took a deep breath. “The second thing is that as we were returning to our sanctuary deep in that World’s mountains, we chanced on a band of the Sons of Ailill returning from some mischief. Alas, we were weary, and they saw us first, and so were able to arrange an ambush. Two men there were, and one woman—younger than we, and with the aspect of humans upon them, in dress and ornament alike, which I will never understand, knowing how they hate humankind. They harried us with minor magics, and might have done us actual harm, had I not been still in human substance, and so able to wield iron. They were no real threat, yet it reinforces what I have told both you and Lugh: that many of my age-friends grow reckless, even lawless; that they respect the king less every year, and would have their own way regarding the Human World.”
“Ailill’s way,” Nuada corrected. “His hatred of all humankind is what prompted them to take his name.”
“I know, My Lord,” Elvrin replied. “The troubling thing is that they seemed to know what we were about, and for the first time had nerve enough to challenge us. And there was something else, though I caught the thought but briefly, for I was in human substance and so almost entirely thought-blind.”
“And…?”
A pause for a sip of wine. “One of them had been playing the changeling game.”
Nuada’s hand clamped his goblet so hard the amber cracked with a snap, but he forced his face to calm. “Lugh has forbidden that!”
Elvrin shrugged in turn. “Thus more risk, thus more…enjoyment. You were young once. You recall.”
Nuada nodded grimly. “But I never dared defy my king! I do not suppose you knew these three?”
Elvrin shook his head. “They wore human guise and no insignia; and there was a taint of glamour about them.”
Nuada leaned back in his chair. “We must inform Lugh of this at once. You said there was one final thing?”
Another sip of wine, which drained the glass. Then: “Aye, Lord. And this is most terrible of all, and a thing I learned but by chance where we passed though, there where the boy’s Gating has worn the Walls thin near the very heart of this realm.”
“Which none but you and I and Lugh know,” Nuada noted. “What is it you learned there?”
“It was from a human I heard it—overheard it, rather. And the thing I heard was this….”
As Elvrin told his tale, Nuada’s face grew steadily colder, darker, and more grim. When Elvrin finished, he rose. “Bathe, eat, and rest yourself,” he commanded. “And meet me again when we begin the Rade. But before you do, find someone you trust and summon Fionchadd. Tell him to meet myself and Lugh as soon as court is over.”
“Aye, My Lord, as you will—and thanks unto you, for trusting me with such weighty matters.”
“Heavier than you know,” Nuada whispered, as the youth departed in a swirl of velvet and leaves. “Perhaps so heavy it will change two worlds forever.”
Chapter VI: Can’t Refuse
(Geology-Geography Building, University of Georgia—Friday, June 20—midmorning
“So how’s the dissertation?”
It was the worst question anyone could have asked Scott, and his friends had long since shied away from it, in terror of their lives—or of scathing glares, anyway. Which, he supposed, as he settled back in Dr. Robert Green’s black Volvo wagon and watched Lumpkin Street whisk by, meant that Green wasn’t a friend. Except that wasn’t true either. They had too much history, for one thing—Scott had first encountered the Great Man during a junior year survey. And no one save a true-blue buddy would’ve put up with all his crises, delays, procrastinations, and excuses.
But surely Green knew that was a sore spot with him. Surely he had…compassion enough not to twist the knife.
“Not what you wanted to hear, is it?” Green chided with a smirk Scott didn’t like, as they paused for the light at the foot of the hill where Baxter Street teed in from the left, just past the Tate Student Center. “Makes you wanta scream and yell and call me a heartless creep right? Well, of course the solution to all that is to finish the damned thing! I mean, how long can it take, Scott? You’ve been four-fifths done for months. One trip to the mountains to check stratigraphy. What’s that? Four days, max, and I happen to know you like camping. And then transcription: another day; comparison: another two at most, given your aversion to computers. And then you write it up, which shouldn’t take more than thirty pages, if you do everything in excruciating detail. Christ, guy, if you wrote one page a day, you’d have it drafted in a month! Let’s see, at twenty-seven lines per page, you’d only have to do three lines an hour for nine hours!”
Scott had tuned him out and was praying for the light to change so that Green might possibly have to deal with more imminent concerns than haranguing him—like traffic.
It did—maybe the first thing that had gone right that day. But since he was feeling cranky anyway, and Green had fired the first salvo, he felt entitled to
counter with one of his own. “So what have I done to deserve this? Breakfast, I mean?” He didn’t add that Green was a famous miser who never ate out except under extreme duress.
“I’m not paying,” Green replied cryptically. “Let’s just say I’m more concerned about your future than you appear to be. And since even I, the eternal optimist, have begun to doubt that you’ll finish this summer, I—well, you’ll see.”
Scott didn’t answer. He was still sleepy, to start with. He was also still puzzling over that odd deal with the photos, (both the aberration itself, and what it was that he was supposed to remember about it and couldn’t), and likewise wondering if he ought to mention it to Green in either case.
And he was still pondering that when another stop at the top of a long hill also gave him time to ponder a poster someone had tacked to a pole at the corner of Lumpkin and Broad. “Scarboro Faire,” it proclaimed, “East Georgia’s Own Renaissance Festival.” Crap, he thought, through a sudden chill; that was all he needed! One more ghost from his past to haunt him. One more reminder that alpha reality wasn’t at all like most folks imagined: that what he and his youthful adjuncts knew (but didn’t begin to understand) about biology, mythology, folklore, magic, religion, and physics, just for starters, was far more than most full professors even suspected. Shoot, one could take a course in Irish myth two blocks away, but David Sullivan, to name one, had talked to Nuada Silverhand face to face! (Where, he couldn’t recall, though he also didn’t recall that he was supposed to.) One could ponder the theory of multiple worlds in a physics class—but he, Scott Gresham, had been to one not ten miles away. Somewhere in one of the south campus labs scientists were laboring away decoding fragments of the human genome, with an eye to ending aging, when his own girlfriend had met people who were already effectively immortal. Never mind what those folks might know about real human history should they chose to divulge it. Never mind what that crazy critter Alec McLean and Aikin Daniels had lugged into the newsstand yesterday would do to evolution theory. Or the law of conservation of matter, when it changed shape.
Yeah, Scott concluded, Green might choose to interpret his foot dragging as sullenness, but it was really because he spent a lot of time blanking—simply running on automatic and not thinking—because any alternative could lead in directions that would turn the whole world over.
God knew the entire MacTyrie Gang—Aikin, and McLean, and all that crew—had had theirs turned over for them more than once. (Where?—he couldn’t recall.) And God also knew that most of his friends had experienced a similar…epiphany a few years back at that very same Scarboro Faire. He, Piper, LaWanda, and Myra remained of that crew, who actually knew anything—not counting Jay and Dal, who were AWOL in parts unknown. Yet at that, it had taken a couple of years for Myra to ferret out her brother Darrell’s connection to certain odd events…somewhere…and then link those events to others she’d experienced herself, at Scarboro Faire.
“Cat got your tongue?” Green teased.
“Ferret almost got my nose,” Scott snorted back. And because it was a safe topic, and he’d been an asshole most of the ride, he recounted the tale of his rude awakening. Green was guffawing when he had finished. Indeed, Scott was enjoying his reaction so much he failed to notice they had actually found a parking place downtown. In front of his favorite restaurant, in fact: Harry Bisset’s New Orleans Cafe and Oyster Bar. “We’re here,” Green intoned ominously, flipping down the Volvo’s passenger side visor.
“Comb your hair and put your shirttail in. You’ve got a job interview.”
“Job—” Scott gaped. “You are joking?”
“Never in my life,” Green retorted deadpan. “And even if I was, they’re still buying breakfast. Feel free to order whatever you want; these guys are loaded.”
* * *
“These guys” proved to be one man: a balding fellow of about fifty whose manic manner and constant fidgeting made Scott wonder how on earth he remained as plump as he was—and that in the few seconds it had taken the waiter to escort their little party from Bisset’s elegant front bar back to the skylighted courtyard, where they crammed themselves into a booth in one of the arches beneath the mezzanine stair. Somewhere along the way Scott had been told his would-be benefactor’s name, which was Ralph Mims. Somewhere, too, they had presumably shaken hands; at least his own hand was clammy when it ought not to have been, and he thought it might still be tingling from an overtight grasp. He assumed that he’d said the right thing, but frankly his head was in a whirl.
Menus appeared. Specials were announced. Drinks were ordered. Scott joined the others in requesting a Bloody Mary, since free alcohol before lunch was one of the world’s great decadences. In the meantime, there was coffee: Dancing Goat, if he’d guessed the blend right. While they waited on the cocktails, and Scott tried to decipher the breakfast menu of a place where he only had dinner on special occasions, Mims proceeded to plop a large briefcase on the table, open it, and drag out a handsome faux-leather folder, embossed in gold with a logo that read Mystic Mountain Properties.
“Enotah County,” Mims announced, without preamble. Scott blinked at him, stopped immediately, and hoped he didn’t look too much like a deer caught in headlights.
“What about it?” he blurted, and could’ve kicked himself.
Mims was nonplussed. “Ever hear of it?”
“Been there—once. Got a bunch of friends from there. Girlfriend, actually—sort of.”
“Sort of from there, or sort-of girlfriend?”
“If you find out,” Green chuckled, “tell me, and we’ll all three know.”
Scott suppressed an urge to bare his teeth at him, and would have, had Mims not, in spite of his twitchy persona, been represented as someone who could get him employed—presumably in his field, or else why was Green along?
“You are a geologist, correct?” Mims continued obliviously.
Scott nodded. “Stratigraphy, mostly. A bit of work with fossils. Geography,” he added. “Once.”
“You’ve worked with maps?”
(Stupid question.) “Sure,” Scott replied, instead. “Actually, I work in the cartography lab right now. It’s kind of a holdover from…before.”
“Landsat?”
“You got it.”
Mims reached into the folder and drew out a packet of photographs, which he slid over to Scott. Scott examined them numbly. Basic amateur mountain shots, he determined at once; Myra was an expert photographer and had taught him (tried to, anyway) everything she knew about composition, lighting, and framing. That aside, he supposed he was expected to assess the subject matter, with a probable eye toward commentary on same.
The first had been shot straight down a dirt road, with low forested ridges to either side, looming above fields of broom sedge. A clump of woods ran in from the right in the midground, and behind it, he could make out the shimmer of water, with a bit of mountain rising beyond: a mountain with startling white outcrops crowning its summit.
The next shot showed that same lake, but from the edge, with mountains probing its blue-gray waters and the stone-capped peak dominating the center. A near-perfect cone, he noted: lower than most of the surrounding ridges, but no less impressive—rather like Spirit Island in Crater Lake.
There were several more shots of the mountain, a couple clearly done with a telephoto lens. The next batch depicted the nearby shore, which showed flat shoals of stone shelving down to the water’s edge. Those were followed by more of the mountain—double exposures—or something—for the peak had a vaguely nebulous quality, as though it were out of focus, or…transparent, or simply not quite there.
At which point he recalled with a shudder the work he had done last night. “Does this place have a name?” he managed, through a sip of coffee he hoped masked his sudden apprehension.
“Locals call it Bloody Bald,” Mims admitted offhand. “They seem to have a hard time remembering it.”
Scott’s heart skipped another beat. Bloody Bald
—that was the name that had popped into his head earlier that morning. A chill raced over him.
“It’d be hard to forget a sight like that!” Green observed beside him.
“That’s what we’re hoping,” Mims agreed. “See, Mr. Gresham, we at Mystic Mountain Properties have been scouring that area for months in search of the perfect place to build the perfect mountain resort. Something with completely controlled access and completely remote from the rest of the world as well. Something from which there are absolutely no reminders of external civilization except one road and contrails overhead.”
“So…where do I fit into all this?” Scott finally dared, swallowing hard.
Mims stabbed the topmost photo with a stubby finger. “Would you believe this mountain has never been surveyed?”
Scott took a deep breath. “Actually, yes. As a matter of fact, I was lookin’ at the Landsats of this area last night and noticed it in some of them, but couldn’t find it on the Geo. Survey master—or anywhere else.”
“Here there be dragons,” Green commented wryly. “But that’s actually not that surprising, not really. That area’s damned remote, for one thing; and what with assorted wars, courthouse fires, and so on—that county can’t keep a courthouse—well, all their records are pretty sketchy. Anyone wants to buy property up there has to chase down the neighbors and take what they say about the corner markers on faith. Only thing you can really count on is stuff that’s been surveyed postwar, and that lake predates it.”
“How do you know so much?” Scott inquired.
“Went to college up there—didn’t you know? MacTyrie JC, class of 1963. I don’t remember that mountain either.”