by Tom Deitz
“I can get you all back to Athens,” Dale volunteered. “If a bunch of you don’t mind ridin’ in the bed of a rattly old pickup truck. I’ll drive it. David can take my new car.”
David almost missed the reference, then started. “You’ve got a new car?”
Dale grinned smugly. “Was gonna surprise you when you come up. Bought me a Lincoln Town Car.”
David rolled his eyes. “Better’n some, I guess—for what we need right now.”
“Got it in Bill’s garage,” Dale beamed. “That’s why you didn’t see.”
Liz cleared her throat. “Uh, I hate to mention this folks, but Myra’s right: We really do have to figure out some kind of battle plan.”
Sandy counted on her fingers. “Way I see it, we’ve got two options. We either figure out how to stop this resort from being built, or we figure out how to stop Lugh from stopping it.”
“What?” Fionchadd and Scott bellowed as one. It was impossible to say who looked more alarmed.
“You are mad if you think you can stop Lugh,” Fionchadd spat, abruptly all anger and ice. “I—”
“Shut the fuck up!” Scott roared, rounding on the Faery, face flushed with a fury of his own. Fionchadd was not the only focus of that wrath, though, and the force of it made David shiver as it came to rest on him. “Goddamn it! Shut the fuck up, all of you! In case you haven’t noticed, this isn’t just about you! I’ve sat here like a good little boy and listened to you spout the same old party line, but now I’m gonna have my say! And— And,” he continued more loudly, glaring at Fionchadd again, “I’m not gonna take second seat to any goddamn Faery!”
Fionchadd’s eyes all but shot sparks. His hand slid to the small dagger David had just noted at his hip. David was quicker, though, and caught that strong slim wrist before it could work any mischief. “There’s time for us all to have our say,” he gritted. “Unless we talk for two weeks.”
Scott puffed his cheeks; his eyes still showed anger’s embers, but no longer the fierceness of irrationality. “This isn’t just about you guys,” he repeated through clenched teeth. “In case you haven’t noticed, you’re talkin’ about my job! More to the point, you’re talkin’ about my fuckin’ future—the only future I may have if I don’t get myself straightened out in a fuckin’ hurry. These aren’t great folks to work for, but they offered me something that was mine, which is more than any of you cared to do. Sorry, but that includes you, Myra; you’ve listened, but you’ve not helped much otherwise, ’cept to say what you didn’t like, what you didn’t want me to do. But I don’t want a fight now. I’m like the rest of you: half-crazy about all this…this Faery jerkin’ around. But the fact is, I have to have this job. And it looks like I’ve wound up on the side of the enemy, but— Oh, hell!” His conviction dissolved into a strangled sob, and he buried his face in his hands. “I— Shit, guys, you’ve put me in the fuckin’ middle here, and I just don’t know what to do!”
Silence then, while Scott wept into his knuckles, and the rest exchanged troubled glances. “Here,” David whispered into that tense, strained lull, passing Scott a fresh mug. “It’ll calm you down.”
“Make me crazier’n I am already,” Scott snorted back, but drank the coffee to the grounds. “Sorry.”
“Probably,” Myra agreed. “But actually, things may not be as bad as you think. For one thing, whether you know it or not, you may be able to help.”
Scott blinked up at her, looking puzzled. “See,” she went on quickly, “what we’ve got now is…is access to more information than we had before. Basically, we’ve got somebody—you—who’s on the inside. You can help us get a better idea of this entire situation.”
Scott glared at her. “The situation is that they want to build a resort here and you don’t want ’em to, and that the best thing for me isn’t the best thing for you!”
“Best thing for you in the short term, maybe,” Sandy returned. “I don’t know you very well, but from what I’ve heard from all these folks, this doesn’t sound like the real you. Frankly I don’t see you as the earth-raping type, and that’s what’s going on here.”
“They just want me to survey,” Scott protested. “They want me to look for potential…mining options.”
“Fuckin’ great!” David groaned, rolling his eyes. “Double rape, then: rape the land with a resort, and rape the land with tourist gold mines!”
“Sapphires,” Scott corrected absently. “And amethyst. And I don’t want to rape the land. I hate that kinda shit. But I’ve seen the plans, and they’re actually not that bad. Mims says they’re gonna try to be real low-impact. You won’t even be able to see much of it until you actually get there.”
“Just a hotel on top of Bloody Bald!” David growled.
Scott shook his head. “Inside Bloody Bald. They’re gonna hollow it out; use the natural fissures for windows. Only thing you’ll see from the land’s the boat dock.”
“Inside the mountain?” Fionchadd gasped. “That is even worse than I had imagined!”
Scott shrugged helplessly.
Silence.
“You could play two possible roles,” the Faery offered at last. “You could be a friend, or you could be a foe. If you choose the latter—if you continue as you seem to be inclined—you risk these friends, who would be your friends forever, in exchange for fickle gold.”
Scott’s eyes flashed dangerously, but Myra covered his mouth before he could reply. “Let him finish,” she hissed. “He talks sense.”
“Thank you, Lady,” Fionchadd murmured, with a little bow. “You could be a foe,” he repeated. “Or you could be a friend. You could be a—”
“A spy!” Brock finished for him. “Sure! It’s brilliant. You’re our inside man! You tell us what’s going on; you hold up progress, you—if nothing else, you buy us time until we can figure out what else to do.”
Scott’s face clouded. “Damn you!” he growled. “I hate you!”
“Why?” Myra shot back. “’Cause you know it’s what you really oughta do?”
Fionchadd toyed with the dagger David had stopped trying to deny him. “Gold,” the Faery whispered, as though to himself. “It all reduces to gold.”
Scott’s glare could have melted stone. “If you mean money, yes it does.”
Myra shook her head. “I’m disappointed in you, Scott. I thought you’d have a higher price.”
“I’m tired of worryin’,” Scott retorted. “This could set me up for the rest of my life.”
“At the price of your soul?”
“I can’t worry about that. I— Haven’t you ever done something that was good for you but not for somebody else? It all boils down to what you want to worry about.”
“I thought you were a hero,” Myra spat. “I guess I was pretty damned wrong.”
More silence. Scott stared at the floor, stirring the thick dust with a shard of kindling stick. The fire popped. The coffee cooled.
“Okay,” he breathed at last. “I’ll…I’ll do it—what I can. I’ll be your goddamn mole. But,” he added bitterly, “if this falls out like I think it will, you guys have gotta be there for me. You’ve gotta help me build some other future, ’cause I sure as bloody hell ain’t gonna have anything left of the one I’ve got right now!”
“Deal!” Myra cried at once.
“Deal,” Scott echoed with far less enthusiasm, but with the ghost of what David was certain was a sincere, if rather wan, smile.
To David’s surprise, Fionchadd was grinning. “Okay, Finno, spill it,” he commanded. “You look like the cat that ate the—never mind.”
Fionchadd raised an elegant arching brow. “Gold,” he repeated softly. “No gift is worth anything that is not freely given—and since Scott has just offered up his future, I feel free to offer a gift of my own.”
Scott scowled at him distrustfully. “What?”
Fionchadd’s grin widened. “When this is over, should this beautiful land remain intact, I will see that you find far more riches he
reabout than those others would ever have paid you.”
“Not…all at once, please,” Scott objected. “If I don’t work for it, it, uh, won’t be good for me.”
“I intend you to work for it,” Fionchadd assured him. “But there is still one problem.”
David took a deep breath. “Right, Finno—and thanks by the way, for holdin’ your tongue when we had no right to expect you to—but the fact is, there’s something you may not know about.”
Fionchadd frowned. “And what is that?”
David told him about Lugh’s plan to flood Sullivan Cove.
The Faery’s eyes were like granite when he had finished. “This…could change many things,” he rasped. “And I now see why you are so consumed with the need for haste!”
“Glad you understand,” David drawled. “Now—do you have any suggestions?”
“About how to stop Lugh?” Fionchadd replied with a bitter laugh. “As soon try to stop the winter.”
A resigned shrug. “Another point of view never hurt.”
Fionchadd shrugged in turn. His smooth brow furrowed in thought. “No,” he cautioned after a pause, “do not dismiss me so easily. You simply caught me…off guard. But I am thinking, and what I think is this.”
David leaned forward eagerly. “What?”
Fionchadd took a deep breath, then stood and began pacing around the tight-packed room. “One thing,” he informed them, “Lugh is not the only Lord of Faerie. There are others, though mostly they look to him because of the way our Realms lie in space and time—and please do not ask me to explain that now. Finvarra warred with him but lately, and has little ’cause to love him now, so we might find an ally there, though I doubt it, for even bitter enemies may join to combat a foe that would destroy both—and whatever else you say, sooner or later, the Lands of Men will destroy Faerie, or render it uninhabitable. Finvarra has time, however; Lugh does not.”
Another deep breath, and he went on. “Arawn of Annwyn is even more removed. He will watch Lugh and Finvarra. So will Rhiannon of Ys. But”—and here Fionchadd’s face brightened—“there are others who might take a larger view.”
David shook his head in confusion. “Who?”
“The Powersmiths!” Fionchadd declared triumphantly. “They are as far beyond the Sidhe as—forgive my arrogance, but this is true—as the Sidhe are beyond you. They have arts no one in Tir-Nan-Og, or Erenn, or Annwyn, or Ys, either, could begin to understand.”
Liz ventured a smile. “And if I remember right, you are yourself related to the Powersmiths.”
Fionchadd nodded. “If I had not thought of this, you would have; thus, I risk nothing in the long cold sweep of time. But you are correct. My mother’s mother is of that line.”
“Would she help us?” Aikin inquired.
“She would—might—get us a hearing with those who could.”
“Assuming we could get there.” From Calvin.
Another nod. “Assuming. But I think that might indeed be possible.”
David eyed him askance. “In two weeks? No—less than that; we’ve got two weeks max.”
It was Scott’s turn to scowl. “Two weeks? I don’t understand. How—?”
“That’s where you come in!” David chided, slapping him on the leg, having figured out where Fionchadd’s logic was leading—he thought. “You keep ’em busy here with a holdin’ action while we go off and bring in the big guns.”
“Maybe,” LaWanda amended. “You folks are mighty big on maybes and mights.”
Myra took a long draught of coffee. “It’s all we’ve got right now. I’m open to suggestions.”
“I’ll give you one when I got one,” LaWanda returned. “Right now, I’m just thinkin’.”
Alec stroked Aife absently. “So what you’re saying here is that we’ve basically got two goals. Scott slows things down here however he can, and somebody goes off and tries to convince the Powersmiths to talk sense into Lugh?”
David looked around helplessly. “Any other ideas? Or are we all agreed in theory?”
Liz shrugged. “Makes as much sense as anything we can come up with on the fly. Uncle Dale, what do you think?”
Dale took a leisurely swig of coffee-an’-’shine, and studied each one in turn. “I think there’s a lot of thinkin’ been goin’ on here, and most of you folk’re a heap lot smarter’n me, but…basically it makes sense—as a frame. But you can’t do any of this by yourselves, by which I mean you can’t send any one of you off to do this stuff alone. And since this is my land you’re talkie’ bout here, even more than it is Davy’s—’cause I’ve lived here longer, boy—I’ll help Scott however I can. I’ll be a haven, if nothing else, ’cause I don’t think we need to involve Bill and JoAnne ’less we have to.”
“And please God, don’t let Little Billy get wind of it,” David appended. “Please, Uncle Dale, I truly do beg that of you.”
“Do what I can,” Dale grunted. “But as I was sayin’, you folks are gonna have to work together.”
Gary coughed nervously, looking, David thought, very, very unhappy. “I—uh, God, but I hate to say this,” he began, “but…I don’t think I can; not much anyway. I’ve got a wife, see, and a kid, and a job. And the wife and the kid don’t know about all this stuff, and I don’t want ’em to. I’m not closing any doors, or anything, but whatever I do will have to be inside…inside the context of my real life. I’ll help, but only when I can.”
David flopped an arm across his shoulders and gave him a brotherly hug. “Actually, G-Man, I understand. And,” he continued to the group at large, “anybody says different’s gonna have to deal with me.”
Sandy had not spoken for a good long while, but now she cleared her throat in turn. “Folks, what do you think of this?”
And for the next ten minutes she told them.
“Not bad,” Fionchadd acknowledged when she had finished.
And, David agreed, it truly did seem to be a well-thought out plan.
Basically, they would form two main groups, with assorted subsidiaries. One would be based in Enotah County and try to delay construction of the resort. Scott would be in this group, of course, and Uncle Dale, though not actively. Calvin would join them as well, because he had a lot of woodcraft and other less common but potentially more useful skills. To David’s surprise, LaWanda also asked to be included, but gave no explanation. Since Gary lived nearby, he’d do what he could, but they’d try very hard not to involve him. Darrell had musical commitments he couldn’t break, and—as he admitted himself, no other talents save being silly—so he was out of the loop but on call if anyone thought of a way he could be utilized. Of the other “woodsy” folk, neither Sandy nor Aikin (who had summer school and one final quarter respectively) dared sacrifice academics, but both agreed to run interference at their institutions—Western Carolina and the University of Georgia—and, perhaps more importantly, on the Internet. They would also provide hands-on aid on weekends whenever viable, and possibly at night as well. David had also suggested they try their damnedest to locate the enigmatic John Devlin.
That took care of one group, and even Liz agreed that it contained a useful mix of skills.
The other group were what Sandy called the Envoys. This band would dare the Seas Between and try to contact the Powersmiths, whose land, Fionchadd reminded them, was primarily accessible through Annwyn, which might not give them a warm reception. Fionchadd would be point man, and David had no choice but to accompany him, because he was uniquely qualified to explain the human side of the crisis while still maintaining some small grasp of the complex subtle workings of Faery politics. Liz and Alec would also be part of this expedition, basically because Sandy said they were used to working together and it would be bad karma for them to be separated. It would blow hell out of graduation, but all three agreed to worry about that later.
Which left Myra, Brock, and Piper.
“I’ll do anything you need me to,” Myra offered. “But I’ll tell you what I’d do if I ha
d my druthers.”
“What?” Sandy asked curiously.
“I’m an artist, what do you think?”
“Painting vacation in Faerie, huh?” Liz teased, with the first real laugh anyone had dared all night.
“Wish I still had my camera,” Myra replied wistfully.
“What about me?” Brock demanded. “I mean, I know I’m just a kid—kind of—but I actually do know some…magical stuff.”
“I’m afraid he does,” Calvin confessed. “And since I know him too well to expect him to stay put, and we don’t have time to lock him up—actually, I think we oughta send him off to Annwyn. Most of what mojo he knows is Cherokee tradition, and it might be smart to have somebody on hand that’s used to thinkin’ about power some other way than the rest of you guys do.”
Brock fairly glowed, but Piper, who’d sat silently in the corner all this time, simply looked sad and doleful, as all eyes turned to him.
Fionchadd strode over and knelt by him. “I promised you a song,” the Faery reminded him. “There was no time to give you one this evening, but if you will join me on this one journey, I guarantee you five new tunes every night.”
Piper stared him straight in the eye, but his face was tight with dread. “If you will promise.”
“I do,” Fionchadd affirmed. “But I must be truthful, Morry Murphy, if we are to get where we must in time, I will also have need of you.”
David sauntered over to join them and nudged Fionchadd in the side with a toe. “Uh, I hate to ask this, but I’m about to keel over on my feet, and I’d rather not hit the hay tryin’ to work out even one more thing I don’t have to, but…how the hell are we gonna get there?”
Fionchadd smiled cryptically and did something complex with his fingers. “With Morry Murphy’s aid, we will leave from here at dawn—by boat.”
“Piper…?” David began, through a sudden yawn. But Piper, like everyone else, was dreaming.
Chapter XIV: All at Sea
(Sullivan Cove, Georgia—Saturday, June 21—dawn)