by Tom Deitz
“No!” Alec spat, taking another step back. “I know what you’re gonna say, and it’s no good. We’ve been summoned to Faerie. Fine. You go—all of you go! Just don’t take me, ’cause I’ve flat had enough! Shoot, the only reason I’m here now is ’cause I keep hoping against hope Lugh or somebody’ll ride by and reclaim this flicking…cat. And yeah, I know the rationale behind that, but the rest of you don’t have to live with it, and Lugh sure as hell doesn’t! How’d he like having a former lover around all the time—watching, but never reacting?” He spun around to confront the gaping Faery boy. “Well, Finno, tell me? How would he like it?”
“He likes it fine,” Fionchadd answered amiably. “And I regret that you feel as you do, but with you here, I would much prefer to have your company.”
“Of course you would!” Alec raged, and with that, he turned to bolt. He had managed no more than two tentative steps, however, when he uttered a desperate “No,” flailed out with both hands, and stumbled backward, to collapse at David’s feet in an awkward sprawl.
David’s face was grim as he helped him up. He didn’t know who to be angrier at: Alec, for acting like such a fool; or Fionchadd, not only for starting all this with his ominous appearance and disturbing message, but also for that subtle movement of his hands just now, which was clearly some sort of barrier spell, close kin to that which had forestalled his own escape when he’d first met the Sidhe behind his house all those years ago.
Fionchadd padded forward, face an odd mix of irritation, amusement, and concern—odd indeed on a usually merry visage. “We have no time for this, Alec,” the Faery cautioned, reaching out to lay a slim, gloved hand on his shoulder, gently displacing David’s in the process. “No time,” Fionchadd emphasized.
Alec swallowed hard and reached up to bat the hand away, but Fionchadd grabbed his wrist and held it firm. Love showed in the Faery’s eyes, and compassion. And maybe even real tears, twins to Alec’s own. “I don’t like to hurt my friends,” Fionchadd gritted. “And I will swear any oath you like, in any place, before any witnesses you care to name, in this World or any other, that you are indeed my friend! I will not hurt you, nor does anyone in Tir-Nan-Og mean you harm.”
“But…” Alec paused to wipe his face with his free hand. “Why us? What can Lugh possibly want with us?”
“I am not at liberty to reveal that,” Fionchadd replied gravely. “Indeed, I know little more than you, and am eager to be on our way, so that we may both increase our knowledge. Suffice to say that I will be with you at Lugh’s council and will learn his full intent even as you do.”
Alec held his breath, swallowed again, and nodded. “Friendship by coercion is no friendship.”
“And no gift is worth anything that is not freely given.” Silence.
Fionchadd stared at Alec.
Silence.
The horse whickered impatiently.
Silence.
“Can the rest of you ride?” Fionchadd called finally, shifting his gaze to survey the uneasy company.
Myra cleared her throat. “You haven’t asked the rest of us if we’re going,” she retorted.
Fionchadd regarded her sadly. “You I do not know, save by repute and rumor. A painter, are you not? Few of my kind practice that art with any true conviction. I am already in awe of you, then; and for other things I have heard of you as well, not the least being the loyalty you have shown your friends.”
Myra lifted her head, gave him challenge for implicit challenge. “I sense a but approaching.”
Fionchadd’s eyes flashed fire (Faery pride, David reckoned, in disgust), but his voice, when he spoke, was gentle. “If you—any of you—do not accompany me, I have orders to destroy every memory you have of this meeting. I do not think you would like that, Myra Buchanan. And I will tell you this: Lugh will place a ban on whoever does accompany me, and this ban will forbid any speech between those who afford Lugh counsel and those who, by remaining here, do not. But those who accompany me will, I am sure, react to whatever awaits them, if not at the time, then later. And the rest of you will be curious, and perhaps they will need your aid, if what Lugh would discuss is what I suspect. But they will be unable to tell you of what transpires. And so, a barrier rises: a barrier of secrets.”
“Too many secrets already,” Liz growled so softly David knew it was for his ears alone, yet something about the acoustics of the Track (likely abetted by the unseen but evidently quite tangible barrier that had thwarted Alec) amplified her voice.
Fionchadd twisted around to study her. “You will go. Because David goes, you will go, if for no other reason.”
Liz shrugged noncommittally, but David could feel the blend of fear and anger in the grip she laid on his arm. “It’ll be okay,” he assured her. “I—”
“I want to go!” another voice announced, its tones muffled by the press of bodies that, David noted, seemed to be crowding closer every second.
“Watch it!” Gary warned, from the front rank—at which point a slim, dark-haired shape wriggled between him and Darrell, and David found himself facing Brock-the-badger No-name.
Fionchadd smiled. “Three, at least—now.”
“Four,” Alec managed, stepping back to David’s side. “I’m trapped. If I go, I know I’ll regret it, and if I don’t, I’m bound to regret it, too. But”—he looked David square in the eye—“I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let anyone—or anything—erect another barrier between us!”
“You are a good man,” Fionchadd acknowledged, with more than a hint of smile. “And you others…?”
“Someone’s gotta keep ’em outta trouble,” Myra sighed. “Which I guess means I’ll go…I reckon.”
“As long as you promise we won’t meet the Wild Hunt,” Aikin hedged.
“He is elsewhere tonight,” Fionchadd informed him darkly. “He thinks he may soon expand his hunting range.”
Aikin scowled. “How so?”
“It is for Lugh to say—and now, how say you others?”
“I don’t trust Lugh,” Calvin said flatly. “And though I doubt you’re lyin’, you could be playin’ hopscotch with the truth. But since I’ve got magic that isn’t Faery magic, I suppose I oughta tag along, just in case.”
Fionchadd nodded. “And you, Sandy Fairfax, what have you to say?”
“Knowledge is power,” she breathed, with a twinkle in her eye. “If Cal goes, so do I—from what I’ve heard about Faery women, I’d better. Besides, maybe it’ll help me straighten out all this chaos I’ve got myself into trying to puzzle out Faery physics.”
“Darrell Buchanan?”
I’m, uh, ’sposed to play music tomorrow night, and really do need to practice.”
Myra eyed him askance. “Excuses, excuses, little brother.”
“But,” Darrell went on quickly, and David was amazed to see that his friend’s eyes, like Alec’s, were misting, “it…it may be the last adventure I ever have with the Gang.”
“Which means I have to go too,” Gary grumbled. “Can you guarantee to have me back by tomorrow? I really would hate to worry my lady.”
“Easy as thinking,” Fionchadd informed him. “Time is especially flexible on Midsummer’s Eve.”
“Which leaves us,” LaWanda grunted, evidently speaking for both herself and Piper—an affectation that got on David’s nerves. “Pipe better follow his own head this time, but…I’ll go, if my only other choice is to have you fool with folks’ heads and build barriers between me and my friends.” She paused. “See, I don’t know why I even think I owe you explanations, Faery Boy, but…I’ve been to that place once, and seen the bad side—the scary side, anyhow, and I…I guess I just wanta see the other.”
Which left Piper, who was looking remarkably like a man who’d run off the edge of a cliff and was waiting for gravity to catch him and drag him down to doom. “If I’d known this would happen, I wouldn’t have come tonight,” he whispered, looking imploringly at LaWanda.
“Yet you are here,” Fionchadd counter
ed.
Piper’s eyes were bright with incipient tears. “If I don’t go…it won’t be good.”
“Likely,” Fionchadd agreed.
“Promise me one thing, then,” Piper pleaded.
Fionchadd folded his arms and eyed him dubiously, gnawing his lip in what David knew was a gesture of fierce impatience. “What?” the Faery snapped. “Time flies, and though the Tracks can twist and turn it, Lugh truly did bid me bring you in haste, and yet we tarry. Have your say, Morry Murphy, and be done!”
Piper stared at his feet, shoved a twig aside with a sneakered toe. “The promise.”
“Very well— If it is within my power and a just thing!”
“A song,” Piper stated simply. “I want to learn one new song from Faerie.”
“Done!” Fionchadd cried. “And now that is concluded, let us be on our way…. You all did say you could ride?”
“Not well,” Aikin admitted. “And my butt’s gonna hate me if I do….”
“I could get you an…Irish elk,” Fionchadd offered. “You have ridden one of those before, have you not? With a little help, I seem to recall,” he added with a wicked smirk.
“No big deal,” Aikin mumbled. “Whatever.”
“Anyone else?”
“Nothing special,” Piper confessed.
“That will be sufficient,” Fionchadd assured him. “And now, let us be on our way.” And with that he returned to the Track, patted his steed on the shoulder, and removed a small curved horn from an intricate jeweled mount at the front of the saddle. David shivered when he saw it. Evidently Fionchadd saw him. “Horns it is, again!” he observed. “Horns are indeed part of our history, you and I. Yet this is not the Horn of Annwyn, nor any part of it. It is only a horn of summons.”
And with that, he raised the instrument to his all-too-perfect lips and sounded a dozen notes, each subtly different, each of which made the shifting patterns on the Track spark and flare with crimson and azure.
They waited no more than ten heartbeats. Nor, David suspected, would the clearly impatient Fionchadd dare to wait much longer, given the misgivings their party had expressed. But while everyone present at least loosely deserved the label ‘friend,’ they were all independent people. Therefore, even if David didn’t go, he had neither right, authority, nor strength to prevent anyone else from accepting the Faery’s call. And Finno seemed bent on taking as many as he could, which was damned odd. So far they’d managed a unified front, which boded well for a possibly uncertain future. He had to preserve that bond. He wasn’t certain why, but—especially in the face of the latest round of incursions from Faerie—he had to keep his friends together.
At which point the clatter of galloping hooves echoed down the Track (such sounds had always disturbed David, given how overtly insubstantial those pathways seemed to be), and an instant later, the first horse thundered into view.
“Motherfucker!” LaWanda yipped, awestruck—and honest in her attitude.
“Not quite,” Fionchadd corrected with a smile, “yet well-sired all the same.”
Liz lifted a brow. Like most women David knew, she was nuts about horses. Certainly Myra was; and Sandy, in her outdoor-mountain-girl aspect, to judge by her expression, was as well.
“Beautiful!”
“Brilliant!” (That was Brock).
“Not bad.” (Was that Gary…or Aik…or Runner-man?)
“Epona’s get,” Fionchadd informed them, as the first pranced to a stop behind him, all in a flurry of silky manes, tails, and forelocks. “By different mates,” he appended, with a sly grin at Sandy. “All of them princes of the Sidhe begot when she walked among them.”
“As a woman or a horse?” Liz challenged.
“Both,” Fionchadd grinned. “As were the sires.”
The last of their mounts had arrived by then, and as best David could tell they were mighty fine horseflesh indeed. All had the light builds and slender legs and bodies typical of Faery steeds. And all had narrow heads, glossy coats, dark intelligent eyes; and nostrils that every now and then vented flame. Color alone was the main distinction, for their hides ranged from one as white as Fionchadd’s stallion, through every shade of silver-gray he could imagine (some skewed toward what were not mammalian colors), to black so dark it glittered.
Aikin, of course, chose the latter.
Somehow, they got themselves sorted out and mounted. At least there were saddles and, more importantly, stirrups. And each saddle, David noted with surprise, as he heaved himself up on the white stallion Fionchadd urged on him, bore embossed atop its high pommel some sigil unique to the rider. His was a yinyang symbol. Calvin, who rode nearest for the nonce, sported a stooping Falcon. Alec’s, to his surprise, was a printed circuit; Aikin’s was a stag at gaze.
When the last leg had been flung across supple leather, Fionchadd studied them for a long moment, then stalked up and down the file, checking seats and cinches. “No one has ever fallen from a Faery steed,” he told them. “At least not of their own will. But as things stand now in Tir-Nan-Og, tonight could witness…many changes.”
And with that, he strode toward where his own mount waited at the head of the line and in one fluid motion leapt astride. “No need for spurs,” he advised, “these beasts know their destination. And,” he continued an instant later, “it occurs to me that we have means to speed this journey.”
Before anyone could respond, he swung around and looked Piper straight in the eye. “You, Morry Murphy: play for us! Play for me, if no other, for I have not heard your skill. Play, O James Morrison Murphy, that tune called ‘The King of the Fairies’!”
Piper turned pale as his platinum mare, but before he could protest further, LaWanda thrust a hand into the jumble of musical gear that had somehow become attached to his saddle and passed him his Uillean pipes. Piper was sweating, David noticed, though his balance seemed fine. But already his fingers sought the chanter.
* * *
It was like no Riding David had ever essayed—though most of those journeys had been under duress, and not necessarily on what he suspected was a High Road favored by the Sidhe. Some things didn’t change, however: the way reality shifted as soon as they’d taken more than a dozen steps down that shimmering golden road. The way the blackberry briars that flanked it in their own World immediately began to whorl and twist and swell in size, so that they quickly formed a tube maybe five yards across completely encircling the Track. The way the Track itself grew brighter and dimmer by turns, as the motes that both comprised it and drifted above its surface ebbed, flowed, and sometimes vanished altogether.
Yet some things were different as well. David could’ve sworn that the last time he’d fared this way the briars had held off, that theirs had been a more gradual transition: a simple walk in the woods, save that the trees had grown larger, taller, older, and eventually more exotic as he’d progressed. And of course he’d had different company. Shoot, he’d ridden with the Queen of Battles herself: the Morrigu, though at the time she’d turned herself into a mare. And though Liz had also been with him then, they’d been on a much more—to him—urgent quest, namely locating Aikin, who, having captured Aife (in enfield guise) when first she’d entered their World (back when they had no idea she was other than what she seemed), had used the power innate in the beast to activate the Track whose location he had dreamed, and so venture into the webwork of Worlds so long denied him.
Yeah, it was different this time, all right, and for other reasons as well. This time there was the security of having his closest friends along; this time there would be no secrets. Never mind the assurance of having Finno in the lead, who actually knew how to navigate such places. But the main change was the haste with which the journey was accomplished.
It had to be the music, and surely Piper had never played so well. They rode in procession, solemnly, almost as though they were themselves on a Rade. And while “King of the Fairies” was properly a fiddle tune and meant to be played ever-faster (every version he�
��d heard had been rendered thus, at any rate), Piper played it slowly, almost as a lament. Indeed, a sort of sadness seemed to pervade their band. Certainly there was little levity, even from those from whom he would’ve expected it, like Brock and Darrell. Yet there was no real gloom either, in spite of their somber clothing, the shadow tones of their mounts, and the golden half-light that lit their faces from beneath far more often than distant, filtered suns lit them from on high.
“I feel it too,” Fionchadd acknowledged at last, falling back to pace David and Liz, who rode second in line. “You have not said it, but I feel it: the melancholy. As if we were at the end of all things.”
“Are we?” David dared. “Something sure has changed.”
“The edges fray,” Fionchadd admitted. “That which was clear and certain has become muddled and vague. Here and there are no longer separate entities.”
“Never were, I thought,” David retorted. “According to some philosophy.”
Fionchadd smiled wanly. “Some day I will put on mortal flesh and spend some useful time in your World. Though we are older than you, and wiser in the ways of Power, yet there are many things in your Lands we but vaguely comprehend.”
“I wonder,” David mused, “if there’s really any need for all these barriers.”
Fionchadd blinked at him. “What do you mean?”
A shrug. “The World Walls, I guess. Is there any real reason they have to be? Couldn’t we, like, all live together in one World? Couldn’t we learn from each other? I know it’d be hard at first, ’cause our science would certainly turn upside down; but you folks—”
“You are forgetting iron.”
“You could put on the substance of our World,” David countered. “And if there was only one World….”
Fionchadd shook his head. “You forget. The World Walls were not wrought by us; we only reinforce them—sometimes. You could no more destroy them than you could…destroy the attraction between the sun and moon.”
“But you folks could live in either—and if you put on our substance, like I said—”