Warstalker's Track Read online

  “Found ’em in a pool further back. Blind. Caught ’em one-handed, but kinda hated to.”

  The warrior raised his leather-gloved hand and studied it absently, flexing the fingers, noting how they still stung from his night’s work with sword and Power. He could have healed himself, of course, but this was not—quite—Tir-Nan-Og, for all that, as best he could tell, this little bolt-hole had once been part of that Land until it had broken away. Or been eaten off by the taint of iron in the Lands of Men and drifted here along a Track, changing as it went, acquiring its own existential conventions.

  “I am also glad I found you…Poet,” the warrior said at last, with a knowing twinkle in his eye.

  “I was wonderin’ about that…Warrior,” the poet replied. “Figured it was rude to ask.”

  “You have your secrets, I have mine,” the warrior laughed, trying not to stare at a certain silver boss among the many that marched down the front of the other man’s jacket. The same silver, in fact, as the silver arm that had given him his appellation: Airgetlam—Silverhand. His first name—his true name—he dared not think. The poet, whose name, safely enough, was John, did not know that Power rode with him most days, though the warrior imagined he was aware that the part always touched the whole, as far as some Workings went, and that connection between the once-joined was never entirely severed.

  The poet—John—dug through the ashes, dragged out a hand-long block of hardened clay, and cracked it open, to reveal a feast of pearly, sweet-smelling flesh. He offered it to his visitor, who took it with a certain amount of trepidation.

  “Sharing food and fire…” that one said.

  “…makes us friends,” the other finished. “Thought we already were—much as your kind and mine can be.”

  The warrior ate without reply—odd how hungry he was, no doubt a function of the Power he had spent so profligately of late, spiriting close to fourscore mortals out of Tir-Nan-Og. Eventually he became aware of his companion’s gaze upon him.

  “Sooooo,” John ventured. “Feel like tellin’ me why you showed up here? Homage to Bobby Bruce it might be, but I doubt re-creating mortal history was your main concern. No spiders here,” he added.

  “I am no king in exile,” the warrior retorted, flourishing his silver arm. “Nor can be, with this. But I suppose I am in exile, for the nonce.”

  John scowled, cleared his throat. “I’m not sure I’m entitled to speak for my folks,” he began, “but I appreciate what you’ve done. You’re the second most powerful person in Tir-Nan-Og, best I can figure. You chose to help my folks when the crap hit, ’stead of tryin’ to save your own king.”

  “Which some would say brands me a traitor,” the warrior observed. “And I would be one, had I not been following that king’s commands.”

  John looked startled. “He had wind of it?”

  “He has a seer—Oisin, of whom I imagine you’ve heard but doubt you’ve met. Oisin foresaw a threat but could not tell when or where. It was no real news to him. Tonight—the evacuation—was—I think the mortal word is contingency.”

  “One of several,” John drawled back enigmatically, applying himself to a second fish.

  The warrior’s eyes flashed dangerously, but he fought down anger. This was no time for dissension. “Would I be correct in assuming you are concerned for the boy?”

  A curt nod. “Got a debt to him. Blood debt. He lost close kin ’cause of me. Somebody got killed trying to connect with me, anyhow.”

  The warrior fumbled inside the neck of his tunic and retrieved a disk of oddly glimmering crystal framed in gold. “Would you see how he fares?” Without waiting for reply, he closed his eyes, called upon a trickle of Power and reached to a certain place, then to a certain other, and bound them together, then opened his eyes once more.

  The disk caught fire as it twirled first between silver fingers, then on the sand between the men. And as it spun, it expanded into a sphere of light as wide as John’s forearm was long. Images moved inside. John frowned in resignation and scooted forward.

  And the two of them—mortal and immortal, poet and warrior, John Devlin and Nuada Airgetlam—both at the same time saw…

  …mountains: lumpy with age, now softened more with the summer-toned crowns of countless trees—conifers and hardwoods in equal riot…roads webbing them like scars of silver-gray; lakes splashed among them like melted mirrors…

  …water everywhere: rainwater…drowning the lowlands, ignoring the banks of streams, filling every hollow with silt scoured from those mountains like flesh flayed away to granite bone…washing every rooftop, sheening every leaf plastering every hair on man or beast to the precise contour of skin and skull…

  …closer now, as though a bird flew there, or wide-ranging thoughts gained more focus…

  …a wide road through bottomland, thick with corn and sorghum but framed by mountains to either side…a thinner road running off it, once gravel, now washed down to bedrock beneath a glaze of mud…a farmstead crouching on the mountains’ knees…a church, a graveyard, an iron-ringed family cemetery…

  …closer…

  …a farmhouse on the road’s southern side, its boards decayed, its roof retained by patches…its front porch in ruins, its back stoop scarcely better…glass in half the panes, and a chimney a yard shorter than it ought to be, from which thin smoke wheezes, before drowning beneath the ongoing storm…

  …cedars in the yard; a house trailer on a knoll nearby…cars in the drive: a Dodge minivan, a brand-new Lincoln Town Car, a red ’66 Mustang, an aging Mercury Monarch, a new Ford Explorer…a BMW touring motorcycle…

  …and now inside…

  …an old room, all but abandoned—but crammed to the rafters with people. A door opens onto the collapsing porch, a window gapes beside it. In the left-hand wall, a massive stone fireplace stands behind an imposing hearth. Opposite the entrance, another window overlooks a backyard. Doors to the right lead to bedroom and kitchen, with the remains of a sofa between. A man sits on the hearth, folded upon himself as though his shoulders bear a world’s worth of pain. He is golden-haired, armored, and wears clothes not seen by mortal men in half a thousand years; his face bears the same alien cast as Nuada’s. John does not recognize him. Nor can he identify many of the others strewn about the room, save that he has seen them once before. Among those strangers are a slight, wiry fellow carrying bagpipes, and beside him an imposing black woman who, by the way she hovers about him, is clearly the wiry lad’s lover.

  There is a boy, fourteen or thereabouts, with a surly expression and waist-length jet-black hair.

  There is a woman a little older than the rest, clean-featured, and with hair bound atop her head like a blond fountain. Her clothes—black minidress and tights—scream Gothic. Something in her face brands her an artist to her soul.

  And there is a man in his late twenties, lanky, angular of jaw and chin, blond and worried-looking, as though guilt and fear wage some inner race to consume him.

  The rest John knows.

  There is Dale Sullivan, close to eighty, white hair worn in a tail; khaki-clad, hard as a fence post and nigh as gnarly-lean—and all but father to John’s lost friend.

  There is Calvin McIntosh: black-haired and rusty-dark, with features that proclaim, unmistakably, Cherokee Indian.

  There is Sandy Fairfax of the waist-length light-brown hair, athlete’s body, and scholar’s mien.

  There is Aikin Daniels: twentyish, brunet, compact, and furtive; clad in cammo and black; with a forestry degree all but completed.

  There is Alec McLean: slender and blandly handsome, and even amid the surrounding chaos, somehow a trifle too neat.

  There is Liz Hughes: a slight, pretty redhead, with more magic about her than she dreams.

  And there is the one he knows best: David Sullivan. Mad Dave. David Kevin Sullivan, to give his whole name: the same as John’s dead friend. He too is twenty-odd; a tad on the short side, and built like a wrestler or a gymnast. He has thick blond hair
caught back in a tail, and a handsome, snub-nosed face. He is also the leader of this company, though clearly unhappy to be cast into that role.

  And there are two other people in the room. Like the fair-haired man, neither of them is mortal.

  One would be barely more than a boy—had he not also been immortal. He might be a younger version of Nuada; then again, all Daoine Sidhe tended to look alike.

  The other is a woman: hair like black ice and perilously fair. She stands in the doorway between living room and kitchen, looking dazed, and with some odd garment clutched about her, as if she had donned it in haste…

  Nuada looked surprised at her presence and leaned closer. John noted his interest and likewise attended. “What…?” John wondered.

  “The last time I saw that one,” Nuada hissed, “she was a cat. And before that, an enfield.”

  John’s eyes narrowed in confusion. “Like the rifle?”

  “Like the beast—Lugh’s pets—you would know them from heraldry.” Nuada pointed once more toward the tableau. “It would seem that a discussion is about to commence that it would be wise for us both to attend.”

  John shook his head. “When…?”

  “A week, in your World, since you…left. Less than an hour, if that, for me. Now be silent, and let us see what we shall see.”

  PART ONE

  Chapter I: Ongoing Chaos

  (Sullivan Cove, Georgia—Friday, June 27—early morning)

  “This ain’t no natural storm,” Big Billy Sullivan opined from the smaller of the two back porches that flanked the kitchen extension on the back of the north Georgia farmhouse he’d occupied for close to fifty years. He thumped the morning’s third cup of coffee down on the porch rail and leaned against the post nearest the steps. The worn, faded wood groaned at the pressure: two hundred pounds was a lot to bring to bear on old construction. The yard was all but invisible, masked by slanting sheets of rain and rushing streams of mud-colored water that carried more of the drive-way—and the mountain, on whose knees the house squatted—into the frothing river at its base that had once been Sullivan Cove Road. His lower lip stuck out in his standard scowl of disapproval. A chill breeze caught him—damned chilly for Georgia in June—and he shivered, hugging the brawny torso that strained beneath the plain white T-shirt he wore above worn jeans and bare feet.

  “No natural storm,” he repeated.

  The initial response was from Tiberius, the ancient yellow tomcat, who made one quick pass against his legs, apparently sensed a kick impending, and fled to the sheltered corner where Little Billy’s bedroom had been tacked on ten years back.

  “You ever think it was?” someone snorted behind him, the tones so masked by the rattly timpani of what sounded suspiciously like hail on the roof he couldn’t tell if it was his wife or younger son who had spoken—save for the wording. Nor did he look around, as JoAnne, his spouse of twenty-three years, padded out to join him. The scent of breakfast came with her: coffee, corn bread, and bacon freshly fried. He felt her stop at his back, and reached around to draw her close. Warmth flowed across his shoulders as her arms enclosed his ribs. Hair brushed his neck where she laid her head against him. Gettin’ to her, too, he thought. Has to be, for her to be like this.

  “Hoped it might be,” he replied in a pause between blasts of thunder. He squinted into space, gazing west: toward the lake, the mountain—Bloody Bald—and the farm that lay between his own and those two landmarks: Dale Sullivan’s place, home of his single surviving uncle. It was dark as pitch over there, as if all the fury that had wracked the mountains for nigh onto a week had been distilled into one single vat of gloom that was rupturing out there, half a mile away.

  “Men in this family do a lot of hopin’,” JoAnne murmured through a shudder he knew she’d have masked if she could. “Me, I do most of my hopin’ about the men in this family.”

  “Billy okay?”

  A shrug. “Think so. He was up half the night, but once he’s out, he could sleep through the Second Comin’.”

  Big Billy nodded toward the yard, the rain, and the road. “Might get his chance sooner’n we thought.”

  JoAnne eased around to flank him. “Wish it was that,” she acknowledged. “That I’d understand. It’s this stuff that comes from that other place I can’t puzzle out. I’ve seen it and I still can’t. Seen enough, anyway.”

  “Magic,” Big Billy agreed. “Just ain’t natural. Folks like us oughtn’t to have nothin’ to do with it.”

  JoAnne nodded solemnly. “Yeah, well you an’ me both know that, but this ain’t our world anymore. We got the kids, but this sure ain’t their world now! Shoot, they know more now than we’ll ever know. And David’s just barely finished the first part of college, never mind Billy—I still say he’s gonna beat ’em all, smart-wise.”

  Big Billy gestured at the yard with a stubby right hand, while the left sought his abandoned coffee; he winced as a gust of wind whipped rain into his face. JoAnne edged behind him again. “Shit,” he spat. “Reckon I oughta go check on Dale?”

  “Might be a good idea. Phone was still out last time I tried. Comes and goes,” she added, as her husband turned toward the house.

  “Wish this fuckin’ rain’d go!” Big Billy grumbled, aiming one final frown at the storm before retreating inside. “Guess I’d better walk; truck’d prob’ly flood out on the way.”

  As if in answer, thunder boomed again—louder and closer alike. A final gust of wind flailed at him, as though to hasten him away from things he did not understand.

  *

  It was just as well that the loudest thunderclap yet had that moment rattled what remained of Uncle Dale Sullivan’s first-and-birthright house, because the noise hid a room’s worth of startled exclamations; and the flare of lightning that followed hard on the thunder’s heels—prelude to a clap that was even louder—gave the occupants something to gape at besides the figure that had just appeared in the doorway to the ruins of the collapsing farmhouse’s kitchen.

  A woman. A beautiful, dark-haired, exotic-looking woman. A Faery woman, who was clutching—barely—the remains of what looked suspiciously like a tablecloth around her like a threadbare sarong.

  A woman who instants before had been a yellow cat named Eva and who twice a day, for a few moments at dusk and dawn, had worn a third, less likely, shape entirely. One patently not part of mundane reality.

  Not that the woman David Sullivan saw now was either.

  “Aife,” he blurted into the silence that followed the last round of thunder. Silence, save the white noise cacophony on the roof.

  The woman blinked at him as she slumped against the doorjamb—and kept on slumping, as though she were mortally tired. David lunged toward her, but Alec was there before him—and the other fifteen people in the crowded room—and eased the woman’s descent as she sank down atop a pile of dusty cushions between the worn-out sofa and the floor. And went utterly mute, as though tongue-tied.

  An eruption of voices followed: questions, cries of astonishment, admonitions of caution, offerings of advice. David ignored them all, save Alec, who had a vested interest. Yet even he sat back on his haunches as the woman’s face contorted, a mighty cough racked her, and she doubled over, coughing twice more, before choking something dark into her hand. He recognized it as she dried it against her sketchy robe, and was reaching toward it even as she passed it up to him with the merest ghost of a smile.

  “Iron has its uses,” she murmured in a voice soft and oddly accented. “Especially iron that is overlaid with Power—even when one wears the substance of this World.” She paused, dark eyes probing the room. David twisted around to follow that gaze as it settled on the smallest person present: a boy of about fourteen, slim and feral-looking, his face pale with alarm beneath a belt-length flag of patently dyed black hair. Gothic elf was how someone had described him. It fit, as much as his name did—the name he went by anyway: Brock.

  Brock’s eyes locked with David’s, who countered with a wary s
mile and an upward quirking brow, as one tiny mystery was clarified.

  “Told you it was magic,” the boy chuckled.

  David regarded the object curiously. It was a medallion the size of a half-dollar, wrought of black iron that still showed a faint metallic sheen beneath the patina of ages. Quite a few ages, to judge by the wear that had smoothed the device raised on both sides. A wild boar: the ancient arms of the Sullivans of Ireland, though Brock claimed to have bought it from an old woman in an antiques store in Yorkshire.

  “What’s that?” someone asked nearby. David started—God, but there were too many people in too small a space, and too much was hitting him too fast, and he was having a damned hard time sorting it out. And now one more thing!

  Finally he cleared his throat—no one else seemed able to say anything coherent, including Alec, whom logic suggested might have some comment, given that the woman to whom he was ministering had once, in a fashion, been his lover. “Lady, is there anything we can do?”

  Aife shook her head even as she accepted a cup of coffee from Liz Hughes, David’s own sweetie. “That was a potent magic, and a strange one,” she managed at last. “Or”—she paused, staring at the grimy window to her right, as though what she sought might somehow be visible there—“or perhaps it was not only the Power of the medallion but also the fact that he who bespelled me is no longer in touch with his Power.”

  Lugh, David thought through a chill, and scanned the room for reactions—or advice. Troubled faces stared back: his friends, and friends of friends, the latter mostly folks he knew through Myra Buchanan, the blond woman with the fountain of hair gathered atop her head. Folks like James Morrison Murphy (Piper, to his chums) and LaWanda Gilmore. Not to omit Myra’s sometime-lover, sometime-basket-case, underachiever, work-in-progress: Scott Gresham, who had more than a little to do with why they were all crammed in here.

  Never mind the immortals. Besides Aife, there was rash young Fionchadd mac Ailill, David’s closest friend among the Sidhe. And the newest arrival: the golden-haired man who sat slumped on the hearth with his inhumanly handsome face buried in his hands, while his tattered white surcoat steamed in the heat of the fire someone had (in spite of the season) had the sense to stoke up—for light as much as anything, given that the cabin’s power had long been disconnected. Shoot, he still didn’t know that guy’s name—or anything else, save that he’d been a guard to Lugh Samildinach, High King of the Daoine Sidhe in Tir-Nan-Og, and had just escaped that place with his life—and a warning.