by Tom Deitz
Lightning seared his eyes. Another flash followed in its wake. Another. He had to halt entirely until his vision cleared, and even then could only inch forward, plagued with afterimages. One more curve and they should be there—almost.
More lightning, but they made that turn, and the land opened out before them, and for the first time, they could see Bloody Bald.
See where it was, anyway, for the entire horizon was smoky-dark with roiling clouds, fractured with jagged silver lightning. The world went black, then white, then black again, limning the mountain in eerie high relief, before shrouding it utterly. For an instant David thought a Hole was actually burning through there, for the effect was not unlike that which accompanied them. But then he recalled that Holes were born of his World—more to the point, of concentrations of iron in his World—and that, for the moment, he hoped, they were still in their own place.
No one spoke. Even Aife had fallen silent. The rains came harder yet, and with them, likewise, the wind, which actually shook the car, though it was heavily laden. More lightning, too: flash after flash. David could scarcely see to drive, and yet he pressed slowly onward.
But then something dark loomed ahead, even as the land opened out at the turnaround that marked the southern arc of BA Beach, and they were there. “Town Car,” Alec noted.
David eased in close beside the big sedan, and was relieved to see Myra flanking it on the other. When their front doors were side by side and no more than six inches apart, Liz rolled down the window. The adjoining one likewise whirred down, to reveal a wild-eyed Calvin at the wheel, with everyone else accounted for. “So what’s the deal?” David yelled across Liz’s lap.
In reply, Calvin merely pointed. His face was tight with fear.
“Jesus!” Aikin whispered behind him.
Something new was happening—something besides wind and rain and lightning; besides things that had no color at all of themselves, and washed away all other color save those that arrived with the grim and faded dawn.
This was yellow. Pale at first, and then gaining intensity and strength and going gold. A line—a flickering line, true, but real—blazing to life above the waters of the lake.
“A Track,” Aikin breathed. “Oh, Jesus!”
“There’s no Track there,” David protested.
“Oh yes there is—now!” Liz retorted. “But— Oh, my God, it’s…it just flared once, and now it’s gone!”
David blinked into the sudden color vacuum.
And blinked again an instant later, for out of the silver-steel darkness that was lake and sky and horizon alike, a figure was manifesting: tall and racing toward them, surrounded by a trembling nimbus of light. Headlights flashed across fabric and metal, as that figure continued its erratic approach.
“Oh, fuck!” David groaned. “Oh, Christ-in-a-Chevy motherfucker!”
More rain then, and more lightning, and something slapped against the window—and screamed. David caught a flash of startled male features—Faery features. And then the figure vanished: pounding—staggering rather—into the gloom that swallowed the road down which they’d come.
For a long moment David could do nothing but sit and gape, and it took a longer pause to realize that words—a word, anyway—had just flared into his mind.
“Follow!” David managed at last. “He wants us to follow him!”
“Back,” Liz shouted desperately, across the gap to Calvin.
Calvin nodded and mouthed a silent “yes.” David saw him put the Lincoln in gear. He only hoped Myra also got the message or had sense enough to follow. With Finno in there, she might.
The only good thing about the trip back up the hollow was that the wind was at their backs, as was the rain, which meant the windshield was marginally clearer.
David drove as fast as his frazzled nerves allowed, which was barely fast enough to keep pace with that fleeing figure. As best he could tell, the guy was a warrior—wore partial armor anyway, and he thought there was a sword and metal vambraces. But he bore no helm or shield, and all he could tell about the tattered surcoat was that it might once have been snow white.
No, was white, he confirmed a short while later, as a stretch of reasonably clear road allowed him to gain ground on the runner. And then his heart sank again. White with a gold sun-in-splendor. Lugh Samildinach’s livery.
“Shit!” Alec swore behind him. Then: “He’s going up to Uncle Dale’s place!”
David had no choice but to follow. With everyone finally accounted for, he’d do anything to get indoors, mysterious Faery notwithstanding.
That one reached the house ahead of them, though—and leapt straight up on the porch, blond hair flailing wildly in the wind, surcoat beating at him savagely. Yet when David finally wrenched his door open, it was to enter an island of calm. Hurry, came that thought again. Without pausing to question his own wisdom, he scrambled onto the chest-high porch. Other doors slammed behind him. Voices yelled or swore or yammered, but they were all white noise now, lost in the greater cacophony of the storm.
The Faery met him on those rough, worn, half-rotten boards, and gave him a hand up when he slipped, even as others joined them and more yet angled around to the more accessible back. But the stranger made no move to enter. David scowled in confusion, then realized that the man was waiting for him to bid him welcome. “Bloody hell,” David muttered, even as he grabbed what remained of the door and motioned that tall figure in.
Everyone else, he was relieved to see, either followed or was already there. As for the stranger—he was gazing around as though in shock, dark eyes wild and feral, elegant nostrils flaring. Aife hissed at him, then uttered an inhuman screech and bolted for the adjoining kitchen. For a wonder, Alec didn’t pursue her, content for the nonce to slump down on a torn, brown leather cushion between the hearth and the window.
“Faery—?” David dared, because he could no longer stand the suspense and had no strength for propriety.
The man stared at him, then rubbed his eyes and stared again, his eyes slightly out of focus. David was vaguely aware of Fionchadd standing in the doorway, frowning.
The stranger’s face tensed abruptly. He started, then shivered and sank down—nearly fell—onto the hearth, where he buried his face in his hands. “Awful,” he choked, his English so oddly accented David guessed he rarely spoke it—if he spoke often at all; not all Faeries did. Obviously this one had had little contact with humans.
Fionchadd slid down by him, did something odd to the cooling percolator, filled a cup, and passed it to the man. The Faery’s hands were actually shaking. “Awful,” he repeated. “Awful, but…someone had to tell you.”
“Tell us what?” David demanded, as the man once more fell silent.
“The worst that could happen,” the man returned, face now as wet with tears as the water running like molten silver into his eyes.
“What?” Fionchadd insisted. Then said a word in a language David didn’t know.
The man’s face grew minutely sterner, as though he had drawn strength from that injunction. When he spoke again, his accent was clearer, though he still stared at the floor. “Lugh no longer reigns in Tir-Nan-Og,” the man declared. “I was one of his guard. I fought to the last. He…he said you would want to know.”
David’s eyes were huge, but no larger than Fionchadd’s. “You…must explain,” he heard himself reply.
The Faery shook his head. “It was the Sons of Ailill. They have not slain him, for even they dare not slay a king—not until they have made good use of him. But…he will die. They have already chosen his successor. When the Bright Season reaches its center at what we call now the Feast of Lugh, Lugh Samildinach will be…murdered. It must be then, for only on that one day will the Land accept a new king, and the Land, as you have seen tonight, already rebels at the loss of its ancient master.”
Fionchadd looked as though everyone he’d ever known or loved or cared about had just died. “This cannot be!” he roared.
The st
ranger grabbed his hand. Both hands, David saw, were shaking. Tears had started in Fionchadd’s eyes.
“It is true, though,” the stranger stated. “Lugh no longer reigns, nor yet does his successor. No one truly reigns in Tir-Nan-Og, but soon enough one will. And this new king they would raise up, I will tell you now, will be absolutely no friend to humans. Indeed, as soon as he is confirmed in his power, the flooding—the real flooding, not this which you have seen here—will commence.”
“Sullivan Cove?” David had to ask.
Again the man shook his head. “No,” he countered, “every place where Tir-Nan-Og touches the Lands of Men.”
“Oh, my God,” David gulped. “That’s most of Georgia!”
A weary nod. “And not only that,” the Faery continued, “should any iron bite the flesh of the sacred mountain, those who wield it will taste iron themselves soon after.”
Footsteps made David glance up, to see Scott stomp across the room, then kneel at the Faery’s feet. It was impossible to read Scott’s emotions, but he looked wired enough to explode. David held his breath.
“Now let me get this straight,” Scott began, in an oddly calm, slow voice. “No matter what happens, they’re gonna flood—”
“Everything,” Fionchadd finished for the stranger. “Resort or no?”
“Apparently.”
“And if any construction begins…?”
“They’ll kill the developers.”
“And flood things anyway?”
“Apparently.”“
Shit!”
“Great!” LaWanda growled. “Now we gotta look out for the bad guys too.”
“So it would seem,” Fionchadd agreed.
“Or,” Uncle Dale rasped, from his place near the back of that tired, dripping, and now-incredulous company, “we could try to set things straight.”
David gaped at him. “You don’t mean—”
Dale nodded so vigorously his goatee waggled. “Makes as much sense as anything else, and it sure looks like there’s gonna be risk any which way. But yeah: we’ve gotta put Lugh back on his throne.”
David gazed back at the floor, at the puddle slowly forming there. And thought of a North Carolina kid ripped from his play, toyed with in some unknown manner, then released in an alien town a hundred miles away in the midst of a storm. “And how do we do that?” he challenged. “I have no idea.”
“No,” said a female voice from the kitchen door, in oddly accented tones. “No,” it repeated, when it had their attention: “but I do.”
“A-aife!” Alec stammered through a strangled gasp. “You’re—”
He didn’t get to finish, for she said it for him. “Yes, my Alec, I seem once more to be a woman.”
No one spoke then but the thunder.