Landslayer's Law

by Tom Deitz

  At which point his reverie was cut short because Devlin had caught him staring. A brow quirked up, a sly half-smile curled Devlin’s lips. He raised a hand—that hand—minutely, in subtle acknowledgement.

  “Close your mouth,” Myra muttered behind him, prodding him with a well-placed finger. “You’re starting to drool.”

  David turned half around. “All these people….”

  Fionchadd shot him a wicked grin. “You didn’t think you were the only one, did you?”

  “Son of a bitch knew all along!” David growled, nodding toward the smirking Devlin.

  “Who did?” from Liz, who had joined him.

  David nodded again. “Him. John Devlin. You know, the poet? Where Youth and Laughter Go. That John Devlin. David-the-Elder’s friend.”

  “Oh, right. Wonder what he’s doing here.”

  “The same thing we are, obviously,” David drawled, then finally managed to tear his gaze from that lone familiar face that had not accompanied him, to check on the rest of his party. They’d taken care of themselves, apparently, and claimed the remaining places—an even mix of sofas, cushions, and well-padded chairs. Alec alone remained hesitant, but when he saw David scowling, he scowled back and eased around to a cushion on the floor, scrunched up between David and Liz’s legs. David reached out to pet him on the head. “Don’t worry, big guy; I think we’re safe. This doesn’t look like a dangerous crowd.”

  “It looks like a scared crowd, though,” Alec retorted. “Or haven’t you noticed.”

  In spite of himself, David glanced around again. A few of that host did look apprehensive. But most merely looked tired or sleepy, which made sense, if they’d been roused from their beds for what he feared was an emergency meeting. He started to query Fionchadd, but at that moment his stomach gurgled again.

  Fionchadd lifted a brow, then motioned to one of the white-liveried figures who had just entered and were now ranging themselves around the walls. One nodded in turn, and slipped toward the fireplace, where he retrieved a pair of goblets from the hearth. Others mirrored his example, and with them came still others bearing trays of food. The room became a flurry of motion, as food and drink were dispersed. A particularly full and mounded plate of meat, bread, and melon was set on a small stone table between David and Fionchadd, even as one of the—did you call anyone who was obviously Faery a servant?—well, whatever they were, one handed him a steaming goblet of gem-encrusted gold that would’ve made the Ardagh Chalice seem like foamware from Burger King.

  He examined it warily, then shifted his gaze to Fionchadd. “Last time I heard, it wasn’t safe to eat Faery food.”

  “Why, whoever told you that?” Fionchadd teased, eyes wide above a far-too innocent mouth, as he helped himself to half a small glazed fowl. “Besides, what makes you think this is from Faerie?”

  Liz poked him in the ribs. (Did everyone have to do that?) “Just eat, Davy! I did before I caught myself, and if I’m gonna be stuck here forever, you’d better be too.”

  “Humans!” Fionchadd chuckled, as he lifted his goblet. “Do you trust no one at all?”

  “No,” Alec grunted from the floor. But his hands, too, were laden—with a long slice of crusty bread piled high with sauced meats and mushrooms.

  “Makin’ yourself at home, are you?” David chided.

  A weary shrug. “Might as well, seein’ how we’re stuck here. God, I wish Lugh’d put his ass in gear and get things going.”

  “Cool it!” David warned anxiously. “These folks have got mighty sharp ears.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Liz reminded them, eyeing Fionchadd speculatively. “They’re also telepathic—some of ’em, anyway.”

  “Wish we were,” David grumbled. “Then we could get some idea of what’s goin’ on.”

  “You are about to find out,” Fionchadd murmured. “Watch.”

  And indeed the room was falling quiet, as what David had taken for a window overlooking a sunlit garden suddenly opened, and with far less fanfare than had attended their own arrival, two tall figures strolled in.

  One was Nuada Airgetlam, called Silverhand: no longer in armor and thus instantly recognizable by his long blond hair and the intricate silver vambrace and gauntlet that replaced his missing right arm—what of it showed beneath a robe of thick-napped velvet, gold on one side and white on the other, and open down the front like a dressing gown. Nuada nodded to someone as he took a seat, and David followed that gaze, surprised to see that this great lord of Faerie had acknowledged John Devlin.

  Why…? But then he knew. Devlin too was down a hand. The left had been shot off trying to save a friend in some “police action” or other, back when the guy had been an army Ranger. The glove he always wore covered the prosthesis that replaced it.

  “Is that Lugh?” Sandy whispered behind him, elbows braced on the sofa.

  “Yeah,” David acknowledged, inspecting the other figure who had accompanied Nuada.

  He didn’t look much like a great lord of Faerie at the moment (though David suspected that was a deliberate ploy, designed to put them at ease). Though tall, strong, and handsome, he had entered casually—his tread steady, but no regal stride. He’d eschewed a crown too, or any other symbol of rank. Instead, his black hair flowed unbound past his shoulders, a spill of ink down a long plain robe of gold and scarlet.

  His mustache flowed as well, the long ends brushing his collarbones. Neither he nor Nuada were smiling. They conferred briefly, then scooted their thrones closer together. A further pause ensued, while each received a goblet from a lingering server, then another for a pair of savory swallows and a clinking of vessels, as if to say, “okay, comrade, here we go….”

  At times, David thought, they were all too human. If only he didn’t fear this was all for show, all a carefully contrived PR event.

  Lugh cleared his throat, then tapped his goblet gently with a nail. It rang bright as a gong, but far more piercing. The servants sketched deep bows and departed in haste through the door by which Lugh and Silverhand had arrived.

  As the last fragment of conversation rumbled into silence, Lugh sat down. A leader among equals, he was, yet clearly in command, though trying very hard (it seemed) to appear nonthreatening. He surveyed the room for a long moment, examining every face—and, David feared, every mind—then puffed his cheeks and spoke.

  “I welcome you here,” he said formally, in a voice like low soft chimes. “Some of you I know; some I do not, yet all of you have heard of me—though even now there are those among you who think me a myth or a dream or a demon or a fiend from some child’s play. Yet I thank you; and thank you again for my friend Nuada, beside me; and a third time for my kingdom, Tir-Nan-Og, Land of the Ever-young.”

  He paused for a sip of wine—and only then did David realize he hadn’t tasted his own. He did so hastily, finding it sweet and smooth yet with more than a hint of effervescence, vaguely like pine needles mixed with tarragon and zinfandel.

  Lugh took another sip, not rushing anything, then went on. “Friends, I call you, and truly you must be friends, to rise, many of you, from your beds to answer a summons you in no wise expected, delivered in so much haste at such, to you, odd hours. Yet I have summoned you, and you have come: those among mortals who by diverse means have learned of us: of the Tracks and the Worlds and the Daoine Sidhe. Some we have sought out, some have made your way here by wit alone, or, sometimes, unfortunate luck. One bond you share, however, and that is knowledge. Dangerous knowledge, often. Knowledge that you dare not share in turn, lest you be judged…odd, if not truly insane. Knowledge that brands you different, that builds walls between you and your kith and kin; that makes you distrust the very world around you.

  “And yet, you are special in that knowledge,” Lugh continued. “Elite you are, and elect, and there is not one of you but is here by my express will. All of you I have watched from afar, all of you I have studied. With some I have had converse for years. A few I have met but once, and that scarce longer ago than
yesterday. Few of you know each other—the exceptions were the last to arrive”—he nodded toward where David and his companions sat—“and you, in particular I would greet and wish well, whose lives my kind have so disrupted, and whose acts in turn have so disrupted mine!”

  David knew from the wash of heat flooding up his face that he was blushing—he hated being the center of attention, for all that—too often—he found himself the leader of the band. Certainly of the MacTyrie Gang, all of whom—as Darrell had noted—were present. At least Runnerman was getting his wish. This was one fine send off to their youthful brotherhood.

  They were looking at him too, David realized, every eye in the room had turned to stare straight at him. He gazed elsewhere—not accidentally toward John Devlin, who hadn’t moved, but was regarding him with absent interest. David tried to distract himself by decoding the black T-shirt visible beneath the man’s jacket. He could just make it out. Widdershins. That was a band. Louisiana, he thought. Celtic. He’d never heard them. But widdershins had other implications as well. One walked nine times widdershins around this or that, and odd things sometimes occurred. He wondered if that was how Devlin had come here. Had he walked nine times widdershins…?

  Lugh cleared his throat softly, and David felt the pressure of all those eyes diminish, replaced by Lugh’s alone, which still bored straight into him. “I am immortal,” he intoned. “You are not. Time matters to you, and so I would not waste it. Therefore, it is best that I address the matter at hand, that which has caused me to summon so many humans from so many beds for the first time since we came out of the Air and the High Air to Ireland.”

  Lady Gregory, David identified. The first line of her book Gods and Fighting Men, which had been his introduction to the no-longer-so-mythical Sidhe all those years ago.

  “To get to the point,” Lugh went on, “the King is the Land, and the Land is the King, and the Land and I have a problem. Some of you may know this. Those of you who are astute have seen the clues, though Nuada seeks with equal vigor to veil them as they appear. Yet he and his cannot be everywhere, nor observe everything that chances. More and more your World intrudes on ours, and ours on yours, with equally unpleasant results: a…car breaching a bodach’s hold here; a child stolen from your World there, and bestowed some other place: these events are no longer uncommon.”

  Another sip of wine, and Lugh’s voice quickened. “There is a reason for all this, however, one that should be clear to the clever or learned among you, and the reason is simply this: the World Walls, which have, since we came to this World, divided our Lands from yours, are failing. We are unsure of the cause, and we know that some of it is simply the way of things, the way stars grow old and die, or moons slow in their circles. Yet some is not. The World Walls can be pierced, and there have long been places where they are so thin they can be made to dissolve entirely. And we too have been guilty, for more and more we have bored through the Walls directly, eschewing the safety of the Tracks, which does them far less harm. And before accusations are leveled—before any one of you assumes guilt that is not your own, and I mean you, David Sullivan—be aware that at worst, you have but speeded the inevitable. And while you have undoubtedly done our lands harm, your intentions were honorable, and I, at least, bear you no malice.

  Another pause. “Still, the worst has happened. For reasons that are yet unclear, the glamour with which I reinforce the World Walls here is failing along with the Walls themselves. Those of you who dwell in certain parts of the Lands of Men—the name you use is Enotah County—know of a peak named Bloody Bald. Once it stood alone in a secluded valley, crowned by cliffs of solid white stone that shone like blood when the sun of that World struck them at dusk and dawn. We likewise saw it, when we came to this Land from across the Seas Between, from Erenn. We saw it in that World and we loved it; and we saw it in this as well, and knew we had found what we sought: a heart for the realm we would build. Tir-Nan-Og, we called it, diverse parts of which you have seen today. Certainly you have seen a mountain, and a palace on that mountain; but what some of you may not know is that this palace lies atop that wonderful peak that so ornaments that other World. I made it the center of my realm: two mountains atop each other, with my citadel upon the higher, yet the lesser provides its core, for though our World is not fully round, it depends for its shape and strength on yours.”

  (“Wish I had a notebook,” Sandy—ever the physics teacher—muttered. “Better yet, a tape recorder.”)

  “Eventually mortals came,” Lugh resumed. “Red men, the fathers of Calvin McIntosh’s folk, and they regarded that peak with wonder. Bloody Bald they called it, in their own tongue. And to protect ourselves from them, we raised a glamour. Time passed, more men arrived: white men. The glamour held, save at Dusk and Dawn, and to all but the Sighted, even then. Yet white men were curious, and asked questions, so we augmented our glamour with enchantment, so that any who chanced to view either mountain would forget it as soon as they moved on. That helped, yet people settled nearby—Sullivans, by name—with the blood of Erenn in their veins. Them we could not fool so easily, when the first of that clan built his cabin on the very foot of Bloody Bald. Still, we maintained peace. We clouded what sights we could and cloaked what memories we might. And more time passed. More men came, and a lake was built, which would surround that mountain, and so we relaxed our vigilance, for surely no one could set foot there unseen.

  “And now we have reached the present. The Sullivans we have learned to trust, more than they know. And we have learned to trust those they trust in turn. Did you never wonder, David Sullivan, why you never spoke of Bloody Bald beyond your kin and closest friends? You have seen it every day, have often swum in the waters thereabout; you have spoken of it to Alec McLean and Aikin Daniels and Gary Hudson and Darrell and Myra Buchanan and Liz Hughes. They likewise have named it to their friends. But ask yourselves: has anyone ever named it back to you? Have any others you have brought there ever named it? Have you ever named it beyond your trusted clan? You have not! I have forbidden it, and a ban from me can be very, very subtle indeed.”

  David’s gut knotted at that, at once from anger and awe. God, Lugh was a sneaky bastard! How dare he confess to something like that! Messing with his friends’ minds! Messing with his own, for all he knew. He was a clever asshole, too: mixing the good and the bad, sugar-coating his connivance. Well, Mr. Lugh’d best be careful now, ’cause Mad Davy Sullivan was onto him, and would no longer drop his guard!

  “At any rate,” Lugh concluded, “all this is history. The problem is now. And the problem, simply stated, is this. The glamour has all but failed. Humans have seen Bloody Bald, and retained that memory. They have eluded our grasp, and too many now know of the mountain’s existence for us to seek them out before they in turn tell others. Images have also been made and distributed far and wide. And before you ask why we cannot change those memories anyway, I would reply that with the glamour failing, some of those men will return, or others like them. And before you ask can the glamour not be reinforced, I tell you we have done as much as we dare. Even I cannot maintain it forever—not were I to stab a dagger through my hand and join myself by blood and Power entirely to the Land, as already once of late I have done—and the effort to preserve what remains grows stronger day by day. Eventually the glamour will fail utterly. Therefore, we must act while something can yet be done, while choices still remain among both humans and Sidhe.”

  There was a rumble of voices at that, not all of it sounding pleased. David definitely wasn’t, and he imagined Aikin in particular (who was the most woodsy of the Gang, and the biggest romantic) was absolutely livid.

  Lugh cleared his throat again. “A council, I have called this, though all you have heard is discourse from me, yet there is one more thing I would tell you, which is what has, to use your term, forced my hand, and that is this. Men have learned of this place, as I have said. But these men are not like you. They have no magic in their souls, only love of riches, pleasure,
and power. These men have formed a plan—I learned of it but today, to my regret. They have acquired territory in what is known in the Lands of Men as Sullivan Cove. They have likewise acquired rights to the lake in which this Mountain stands, and thereby to this mountain itself. They would build there—many buildings they would build—to entertain themselves and others and so win more riches. More to the point, they would build structures of iron—iron which can damage the World Walls. Iron which, we very much fear, could dissolve the World Walls here, in the very heart of my realm. This I will not allow. I will not give up Tir-Nan-Og. I will not give up this mountain. I will not give up this palace that stands upon it, nor the rooms I keep therein, nor the bed in which I sleep, nor the chair in which I study, nor the throne in which I hold court! It is mine, by ancient rite, and the blood I gave to link myself to it with unbreakable bonds. The King is the Land, I have said. The Land is the King. And my land—my self—I am determined to defend!”

  Silence then—stunned silence, for Lugh’s voice had hardened as he spoke, from careful amiability to oratory of skill and power. He’d played them like harps, too: had made them relax, then dropped the big one. And the trouble was, he was clearly far from finished.

  And then it hit David: delayed reaction, like when the space shuttle had exploded, which someone had told him about in passing, and which had only struck him with full force two hours later. A resort: that was what Lugh meant. Someone was going to build a resort that threatened Tir-Nan-Og.

  A resort in Sullivan Cove!

  “No!” he gasped. This couldn’t be happening! No way! No way! No way! Surely someone up home would’ve heard and told him, or moved to head off such a stupid thing. Surely they couldn’t do anything that big without his folks’ permission, which he’d see they never gave—as though such a thing were possible!