Landslayer's Law

by Tom Deitz

  “With a face like that,” she confided, nodding toward Fionchadd, “I could fill up a thousand pages.”

  “Actually,” the Faery replied with a troubled scowl, “I thought I was rather plain.”

  Myra snorted derisively and flipped the sheet over. David wondered what her next subject would be—Liz playing catch-the-string with Aife, perhaps (would the enchanted Faery woman admit to such frivolity should she ever wear her proper shape again?); or Piper polishing his brand new pipes; or Alec sunbathing in his skivvies when there was in fact no sun.

  Instead, Myra rose, stretched, and sauntered over to stand beside Fionchadd. “One complaint, oh tour guide,” she remarked with a wary chuckle, “not a lot of background ’round here.”

  “Soon enough,” Fionchadd assured her, turning back to the Track ahead, then straining forward abruptly, as though he’d finally seen something there besides fog. “In fact, sooner than that,” he amended, “if you do not object to drawing more ships.”

  Brock, who’d let himself be distracted from sentry duty by Myra’s arrival, uttered a startled yip and clambered halfway up the carved figurehead—a dangerous perch for certain. “Brilliant!” the boy enthused. “Oh wow!”

  “Wow’s right!” Myra agreed. Then: “You! Dave! Fetch my pad!” As soon as he delivered it, her hand was back in motion.

  David didn’t blame her.

  The fog had thinned before them, though it still loomed heavily alongside and aft, and the Track still glittered across the waves. David wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but it wasn’t a rugged semitropical coast crowned with more of the milky haze, below which, as in a harbor, a half-dozen ships similar to their own rode at anchor. Their sails were furled, but seemed to be white; and white-and-gold pennants snapped from their single central masts.

  “Jeeze,” Brock blurted, even more enthusiastically. “They’re…hovering!”

  And so they were: their keels fully exposed a bare hands breadth above breakers that seemed not one whit affected by what hung like silent leaves in the spray-filled air overhead.

  Fionchadd squinted into the unaccustomed glare. “So are we,” he told the boy, “but you are correct, and I am a fool not to have noted as much myself. I saw what I expected, not what I feared.”

  Liz squeezed in to David’s right, likewise squinting at the vista that drew ever nearer. “Something wrong, Finno? You look tense as…as Aife when she’s surrounded by iron.”

  Fionchadd’s face was grim. “I feared this,” he repeated through his teeth. “This Track does not emerge into the Seas at Lugh’s coastal haven, which I went to more lengths than you know to avoid, lest we be detained there and questioned. I knew, however, that he was seeking other havens less subject to the vagaries of the Seas, which, like the Lands, are being eaten away by your World. I thought these were merely scout ships, but our sharp-eyed friend here says those ships hover above the water, which only ships made by the Powersmiths can do.”

  David frowned. “Is that a problem?”

  The Faery scowled in turn. “Lugh has few such ships, and I one only because of certain…connections and certain kin. But those are Lugh’s ships, and such ships always carry warriors. These are surely charged with guarding this new coast.”

  Alec ambled up to join them. “What gives?”

  Fionchadd’s scowl deepened as he turned back around, shading his eyes. Myra kept on sketching. “Nothing, maybe, or maybe much, depending on whether they see us. But— Wait, they have seen us! Those on watch point this way.”

  Alec yawned. “So…?”

  “If they see us they will detain us. This is no warship and we are no warriors, not against those who crew those vessels. I—”

  “—They’re coming this way,” Brock interrupted.

  “Bloody hell!” Fionchadd spat.

  David raised a brow and started to say something about the Faery having been around humans too long, but then he saw his face, which was growing darker and more worried by the second.

  “We cannot let ourselves be stopped,” Fionchadd gritted. “Yet how can we elude them? Those are ships of Powersmith making, to cleave the air as well as the water, and such ships are swift indeed.”

  “Great,” Alec grunted. “We’ve barely started, and already we gotta go back.”

  “Or be captured,” Liz countered ominously.

  Fionchadd’s brow furrowed in thought. Clearly he was thinking hard. Myra turned a page, having already filled one with drawings of the small fleet. She began another—unfortunately in far more detail, for the ships were much, much closer. Wind rattled the paper.

  Fionchadd glanced down at it reflexively, then away—then back at the parchment again. His eyes grew large; a wicked smile curled his lips. “Keep drawing,” he commanded. “Draw every ship; draw as though your life depended on it—for it may, and if not your life, your freedom!”

  Myra gaped at him.

  “Draw!”

  “Fine!” And with that she returned to her sketching.

  Fionchadd closed his eyes. He took a deep breath, then two more. His shape began to waver, then to contract and expand in odd directions, as he quickly became a totally different creature. An erne, it appeared: a sea-eagle; the largest David had ever seen. Before David could do more than utter a gasp of protest, wind filled the Faery’s wings and he was aloft, his clothes a shimmering gray pile on the planking. David followed his flight until he was a mere dark blot wending his way toward the approaching vessels—which seemed to be approaching more slowly now: very small comfort indeed. Probably that was a function of moving against the predominant flow of the Track. Maybe.

  Christ, what did he know? All he knew was that their guide had deserted them, and unless the Faery was over there parleying, they were in very deep shit indeed.

  Myra filled another sheet and kept on drawing.

  David shaded his eyes but could make out little more than intensifying glare. The sun—a sun, anyway—had just burned through the mist and set the waves a-blazing as though they were strewn with powdered gems. “What’s he doin’?” he asked Brock, even as he tried vainly to get his own eyes to focus, to recall that he did, in fact, have the Sight, and sometimes it was useful in situations like this.

  Maybe it was, or maybe the air simply grew clearer. All David knew was that he located the erne flying toward the mast of the nearest vessel. Abruptly it swooped down, incredibly fast, then banked up again as quickly—but not before it had grazed the banner that whipped and snapped atop the mast. Men swore on the deck; he could hear them even at this range, and knew they uttered curses, though he didn’t understand a word of their dialect. But by then the erne had moved on. Another banner suffered attack—which made absolutely no sense—and then another and another. By the time Fionchadd had strafed the fifth vessel, however, its crew was ready. Arrows flew, but none found purchase in their friend. Only one ship remained unassailed now, and Fionchadd was winging toward it.

  But a whole phalanx of arrows greeted his arrival, and he barely had time to wheel about and flee before they sliced the ether.

  “I don’t understand,” Alec muttered, looking at David. “I absolutely do not understand.”

  “Magic,” Brock replied. “Has to be.”

  Myra merely grimaced. “Wish I could freeze-frame some of this; that last would’ve made a great painting.”

  “Know what you mean,” David acknowledged—just as Fionchadd touched down on the deck.

  Something glittered in the eagle’s talons. Several somethings, as it evolved: shards of thick bright cloth torn from those longships’ banners.

  “What—?” From Liz.

  A whoosh of air was the Faery reclaiming his proper form; naked, save for the Ourobouros rings. “Give me those drawings—now!” he ordered, even as he found his cloak and fanned it across the planking.

  Myra blinked once, then complied.

  “Well done; oh, very well done,” Fionchadd approved, as he sorted through the pile. There were four o
f them. “I am sorry to do this,” he added, as he tore the depictions of the ships from the pad and arranged them in a certain pattern atop the cloak. “This is all I can think of—and we can only hope that those folk do not likewise employ painters.”

  Myra scowled her confusion, then shifted to a full-fledged frown as Fionchadd scattered the strips of fabric atop the drawings, connecting one to another. “Oh, I see!” David murmured, as the Faery rubbed the silver Ourobouros ring and brought the tiny dragon-head near one scrap of banner. A flicker of flame flashed out. The fragment ignited, as did the next and the next. The drawings beneath them soon did likewise, though not the Faery’s cloak. An instant later, the deck sported a good-sized conflagration. White smoke billowed skyward. Fionchadd spoke a word that made no sense in any language David had ever heard, and glanced up apprehensively. Brock beat him to the prow by bare seconds. “Oh wow!” the boy cried. “They’re on fire! And shrinking as they burn!”

  David joined them, not daring to believe the boy’s description. But Brock had been correct. The fleet, sure enough, was blazing—all but one vessel—and the rest really were contracting as those flames consumed them to the keels.

  “Leaving one intact is a risk,” Fionchadd grumbled. “I wish I could have claimed part of that one as well, but perhaps they will be busy enough saving their fellows.”

  “They don’t shrink with the ship?” Alec wondered. The Faery shook his head.

  “And they can’t just shapeshift like you did?” Liz added in turn. “Become fish, or birds, or whatever?”

  “Some can, but that art is not as common among our kind as you seem to believe,” Fionchadd returned. “Nor is Powersmith magic…compatible with that of Faerie on all occasions. Also, we are not precisely in Faerie, but rather in a realm nearby, and Power can vary with distance from one’s native World. The rules do not always work the same from World to World, either. After all, you cannot shapeshift without assistance, but I can.”

  “And since none of your kind can draw,” Liz chimed in, “it never occurred to them that you could bespell them that way.”

  “Well,” Myra concluded flatly. “I’m glad to have been of service. Now if I can only remember how those ships looked, I can try to duplicate those sketches.”

  Alec gnawed his lip, then tapped Fionchadd on one bare shoulder. “Now let me get this straight,” he began, “best I can figure, you used contagious magic, or whatever you guys call it, to hoodoo those guys. Those were Powersmith ships, right? So you used some kind of screwy Powersmith fire to…dehydrate ’em by remote control.”

  “Deflame ’em!” Brock corrected.

  Fionchadd merely nodded and continued watching the fleet dissolve. “It was a risk,” he repeated. “Not all risks end as fortunately.”

  “We’re movin’, though,” David noted, “headin’ out to sea. And the fog’s back.”

  “Good,” Fionchadd retorted. “That will hide us.” He whirled around, gaze fixed straight at Piper, who hadn’t moved throughout the entire encounter. “Morry, my friend,” he continued. “Forgive me, but it is time for another music lesson.”

  Chapter XV: Weathering the Week

  (Sullivan Cove, Georgia—Saturday, June 21—morning)

  “Le’ me ’lone, Marshall,” Scott mumbled into whatever mildew-smelling mess was draped across his face. “Le’ me th’ fuck alone!” Something was poking him in the ribs—poking with extreme vigor, too. He batted at it clumsily, one part of what passed for consciousness expecting to impact Marsh the ferret, even as a slightly more alert aspect rejected that hypothesis on the grounds that Marsh was too small to muster that much thrust, never mind direct it—again—into his ribs at that specific angle.

  “Wake up, White Boy,” someone giggled, followed by another, more forceful, assault.

  “What th’ fuck?” Scott sputtered, as he flung away the cover (it proved to be a moth-eaten sweater, sufficient only for his face) and sat up groggily. “Oh shit!”

  “Name’s LaWanda, actually,” LaWanda drawled, deadpan. Whereupon she squatted beside him and latched hold of his left ear, by which handle she proceeded to haul him to his feet.

  “Do you mind?” Scott protested, applying pressure to her wrist, even as he sought to twist away. She fought him—it was an ancient game between them, but one he didn’t feel like indulging just now, what with all kinds of bizarre foolishness flooding back into his brain. “I’m not in the mood for this, okay?”

  “Just keepin’ you humble,” LaWanda advised, releasing him.

  Scott massaged his injured appendage—and only then ventured to take true stock of his surroundings.

  “Fuck,” he yawned, “kinda hoped I’d dreamed all that.”

  “If I’m gonna be in anything,” LaWanda informed him, “it’d be somebody’s nightmare.”

  Scott yawned again and took quick inventory of the inert forms scattered across the floor. It didn’t take long. He yawned once more. “Started out as twelve,” LaWanda volunteered, “plus you, Dave’s uncle, the Faery boy—and that cat, or whatever it is. Seven left, countin’ us.”

  She seemed to be right, though it was difficult to distinguish people from piles of clothes, bedding, and miscellaneous defunct fabric. Calvin McIntosh, he determined finally, was the dark-haired lump beside the front door; Aikin Daniels, a surprisingly similar, though smaller, one by the back. “Looks like we’ve been well guarded.”

  LaWanda snorted. “Not and have eight more hightail it in the middle of the night without nobody knowin’.”

  Scott scratched his butt absently, and followed his nose to a large aluminum percolator sitting close by the freshly tended fire. It smelled sublime. “Somebody’s got their head on straight, anyway.”

  “Not them two, though,” LaWanda countered, pointing toward the less intact of the adjoining bedrooms. “Gary and Darrell in there, sawin’ some serious lumber.”

  Scott managed a smile—which brightened considerably when he tasted the coffee. “And what’s ’er name? Sandy?”

  “Bathtub.”

  “And…the rest?”

  A shrug. “Gone, like I said. Don’t surprise me, really. Faery left a note.”

  Scott raised a brow. “Wanta show me?”

  “Can’t. I found it. I read it. It vanished.”

  “V-vanished?”

  “Dissolved. Turned into glittery dust and sweet-smellin’ air.”

  “Better’n the way this place smells,” Scott sniffed, gazing once again at the grimy chaos of Dale Sullivan’s abandoned living room. “So, what’d this note say, anyway?”

  “That they were gone. That they’d be gone at least a week. That they wished us luck.”

  Scott scowled into his mug. Something pattered against the roof. He glanced up, then scowled more deeply. “Doesn’t give ’em much time.”

  “Don’t give any of us much time,” LaWanda amended.

  “I—” She cocked an ear heavenward. “Is that rain?”

  “If we’re lucky,” Scott mumbled. “I— Oh, shit!”

  “What?”

  “My stuff. My bag’s still down by the lake. And all that other crap.”

  “So buy more. Tell that Mims guy your dog ate it.”

  Scott glared at her and stumbled to the nearest window. He just hadn’t had enough sleep, absolutely not even slightly enough to keep somebody as wired as he usually was going.

  He braced himself against a splintered window frame, set his cup on the flaking sill. And gazed out into Dale Sullivan’s former backyard. The patter on the tin roof became more insistent. He loved that sound—normally. But not now, not when he had outdoorsy things to do. He squinted through the grime that patterned the cracked pane. This was a fine one—if you like showers: a good, solid all-day soaker, if he read the omens right.

  “Piper loved rain,” LaWanda murmured, beside him.

  “No accountin’ for taste,” Scott chuckled. “Remember that time—”

  “—He went out in the backyard in a goddamn
downpour, got nekkid, and started soapin’ himself and singin’? And we heard, and all got umbrellas and flashlights and snuck out there and surrounded him and then turned ’em on, with him in the spotlight?”

  Scott couldn’t help but laugh. “Those were the days.”

  “Piper…loved rain,” LaWanda repeated. But this time there was a catch in her voice. Scott gave her impulsive hug. “Not loved, Wannie; loves. Don’t worry ’fore you got to.”

  “Everything changes,” LaWanda whispered, and turned away.

  It rained harder; thunder rumbled with it, like distant armies on the march. “Startin’ to think like Sullivan”—Scott grumbled, not moving—“damn it.”

  The rattle on the roof muffled a series of clumsy thumps by the front door. “Cal’s up,” LaWanda announced. She cast one final wistful glance out the window, and departed. Calvin had made it to the hearth and was sorting through the amazing array of crockery scattered there, in quest of a cup that didn’t look too grungy. “What’s the matter, Red Man?” LaWanda chided. “Don’t like roughin’ it?”

  Calvin rolled his eyes. “There are advantages to civilization.”

  LaWanda nodded. “Dishwashers. Coffee grinders. Fax machines.”

  “I was thinkin’ hot-and-cold runnin’ water.”

  “We got cold right outside, Red Man.”

  “How ’bout hot biscuits, though?” someone challenged from the back porch, right on cue.

  For a wonder, Scott beat Calvin to the door, though he had to step over the tight, black-clad knot that was Aikin in order to open what passed for a back door screen. He prodded the kid with a toe for good measure, in memory of a certain interlude involving a certain Barnett’s Newsstand and a certain enfield. God, but it seemed like ages since then!

  “Here,” LaWanda grunted, shouldering between both Scott and Calvin to relieve Dale Sullivan of the foil-covered tray that filled both his hands. The smell tickled Scott’s nostrils, for the nonce more enticing than coffee.

  “Biscuits,” Aikin mumbled from the floor.