Windmaster's Bane

by Tom Deitz

  He tried to blank his mind to all but the movements of his legs against the flow of water, and nearly succeeded. The wind swallowed his thoughts almost as soon as he thought them, carried them away to roll among the thunderclouds, so that he had trouble recalling much of anything beyond the endless left-right, left-right, the tiny trickles of cold sweat oozing out here and there as he exerted himself against the wind, against the ever more treacherous footing. It was probably stupid to go on the road and not under the meager shelter of the forest, he told himself. But somehow the forest did not appeal to him. He was already walking nearly blind, and at least on the road it was possible to tell where he was going.

  He plodded onward for a good while, not knowing how long he had been away, nor caring, aware only of cold and the hiss of his breathing and the howling of the wind. He was half blind, half deaf, soaked to the skin, his fingers numbing as the rain grew colder, his feet freezing, so that he was less and less certain where he stepped, and his legs were getting tired too, as the water sometimes rose above his ankles even on the road. He had never tried walking uphill in a flood before—but, then, floods were pretty scarce in north Georgia. It was funny how someplace you had been a thousand times could suddenly feel different—even threatening—when you realized there was one aspect of it you hadn’t seen.

  David tried to sing once, “The Old Walking Song” from The Lord of the Rings, but he couldn’t remember the words; tried a John Denver tune then, but the wind shrieked louder and he quit.

  He squinted at his watch, the green numerals barely visible in the gloom, and saw that it had stopped. He shook it furiously, saw the second hand feebly creep a few degrees and stop again. Another try produced the same results, and he gave up. He felt like his watch: run down. Could hardly make his legs move, could hardly feel his legs. He set himself a goal: a swirl of dark water thirty feet ahead that might mark a hidden boulder. Reaching it, he set another, and then another. There shouldn’t be much further to go, if he didn’t miss the landmarks and pass the turnoff.

  Another goal reached, and another. And then he brought his foot down on an unstable stone and staggered sideways, arms pinwheeling, his staff flying from suddenly loosened fingers to disappear beneath the torrent further to his right.

  “No!” he shrieked as he leapt after it, touched it, felt it slip again from his fingers.

  All at once he was near the edge of the ditch, and it was deep there, and the incline steep. He felt the earth crumble away beneath his feet, felt mud and stones carrying him downward into turbulent water, felt his feet covered, his legs engulfed. He tried to jerk himself upright, but the ooze sucked him back against the bank to lie there winded, half buried in mud, half covered by water that rose above his waist and poured down upon his head—and he could feel the current tugging relentlessly at his feet.

  A long moment passed before he realized what had happened. He looked to his right and saw towering cliffs of darkness that would be blood-red clay in the daylight, but here at night they were bulwarks of sticky black muck that were already fitting themselves greedily around him. He was slipping further into the water every second. And there was a cold seeping up at him through the ground itself; he thought he could feel it covering him softly, softly. David realized that if he didn’t move very soon he would drown—or be entombed by mud. And fail his quest. The Faery boy had said David had the stuff of heroes in him. Hero? Ha! He closed his eyes and lay still a moment longer and thought about heroes. And he thought about dying, and a resolve grew in him. Cuchulain would never drown in a ditch by the side of the road, no sir. He’d boil the water with his own fury. Finn would laugh at it and dare it to touch him. Oisin would point a finger and it would be gone. Well, David Sullivan would not give up, either, not when he had business to attend to. The earth had already claimed one David Sullivan, and that was enough. What would David-the-elder say now, if he could see him? Get your butt up out of there, boy, you got better things to do! I didn’t teach you what I taught you to have it all end here in the mud. Well, it wouldn’t end here.

  Ruthlessly David forced himself upright, feeling the mud pulling stubbornly at his back. His fingers brushed something smooth. His staff! He grasped it thankfully, poured his strength into it, used it to lever himself the rest of the way up. Water swirled about his thighs for a moment, and he almost lost his balance again, but he anchored the staff in the earth, and then he was clambering awkwardly out of the ditch.

  Once back on the top he paused breathlessly, letting the rain strip the worst of the mud from his body. He glanced back down the road. It was like sighting into a long black tunnel full of ancient spiderwebs blending into a shiny floor. He turned his gaze uphill, then took a step forward. Another landmark, another goal to strive toward. All at once he became aware of a sudden warmth from somewhere to his right, and a prickling about his right hand. He stared at it curiously and noticed a faint light issuing from his runestaff: a pale ruddy radiance that glowed but did not illuminate, almost like phosphorescence. He recalled how the staff had glowed when he had given it to Liz that time in the woods. “Things have Power because you give them Power,” Oisin had said. Well, this was certainly Power. Maybe it only required the presence of a little real magic to awaken more. That was interesting, but he didn’t have time to waste on such speculation. His eyes were tingling. Magic was afoot.

  The glow did not spread, but the warmth did, seeping slowly up his hand, through his arm, across his chest to where he felt it loosen a constriction that lay about his heart, a tightness that he had not noticed until it was lifted. The warmth continued downward, and up into his head. When it reached his eyes, his vision cleared for a moment and he saw ahead the break in the trees where the narrow track went out a short way to Lookout Rock. He had almost reached his goal.

  And when he reached the place itself, David knew that magic was afoot, for the clouds were torn away like gossamer before a torch, and the witchmoon showed overhead. But he could see the familiar stars as well, Cygnus high in the northwest, his favorite constellation after Orion. He raised his runestaff in salute, half fearing to see the wings of the sky-swan flap in response. Stranger things had happened lately. He cleared his mind, trying not to think of arcane matters. And then he laughed. It was a good sign that such an image had come to him; it meant his brain was working again.

  He walked over to the precipice, stood as close as he dared to the edge, listening to the roar of the waterfall behind him drumming on the rocks like the low song of the hosts of night on the march. Straining his ears, he could hear the faint cries of bats and night-jars and whippoorwills. Warily he glanced down, but the shapes twisted and blurred, showing at one moment clouds and at one moment moonlit mountains.

  Bloody Bald reared up straight across from him, and David tried to conjure the Sight, tried to see again the castle he knew was there. But nothing changed about the mountain; whatever glamour hid it was more powerful than Second Sight. Perhaps only at dusk and dawn did it reveal itself.

  David shrugged and turned his thought to other matters.

  How does one summon the Sidhe? he wondered. Stand up here and yell “Here I am, come get me”? But he was less sure of himself now. Did he want to go through with it? Well, he’d come this far, and the Sidhe were obviously waiting for him—somebody was, or they wouldn’t have been fooling with the weather. Slowly he raised his ash staff above his head, gripping it with two hands. The wind whipped his hood away, slapping damp strands of hair across his face.

  “Silverhand!” David cried into air that still vibrated with the thunders of the mortal world. It almost seemed that he could see the words hanging visible in the air, as uncertain as he was.

  “Silverhand!” he cried again, and put more force into the cry, but the sound again seemed muffled.

  He took another breath, filled his lungs to their depths as if for a long dive, steeled his throat and vocal cords, and cried again: “Silverhand!” The word sprang forth, hard and clear into the night; he
could almost feel it rip his mouth and throat as it burst out like the report of a rifle, could almost see the air spring aside in surprise at the presumption of its volume, could hear it echo from mountains and rocks, heard even above the falls: “Silverhand, Silverhand, Silverhand . . .”

  He sat down then and waited, watching the lightning that played among the lowlands like lost stars.

  Nothing happened.

  He leaned back on his arms, his hands braced behind him . . . and abruptly jerked erect when a pain stabbed through his right hand. Something had pierced it . . . a snake?

  He twisted around—and saw an ice-white raven sitting placidly preening its feathers behind him, its ivory beak the instrument of his pain.

  The raven looked up at him. “Silverhand,” it said.

  “You?” asked David.

  “Raven,” said the raven.

  “Raven?”

  “Raven.”

  “I called Silverhand. Nuada of the Silver Hand,” David said impatiently. He was in no mood to talk to a bird; his resolve was weakening by the minute.

  “Messenger,” said the raven.

  David folded his arms and looked away. “I need to talk to Nuada.”

  “Forbidden,” said the raven.

  “Why?”

  “Lugh’s law.”

  David stood up and paced back and forth, precariously close to the edge. He faced the raven again. It sat implacably. David gestured around at the night. “So what is all this?”

  “Power.”

  “Whose Power? Ailill’s? Nuada’s? Lugh’s?”

  “Enemy! Enemy!” squawked the raven, suddenly agitated. Even as David opened his mouth to frame another question it spread its wings and took flight.

  David found himself cast abruptly into shadow. A darkness passed overhead, eclipsing the starlit sky, and then was gone. David jerked his head up, frowning. Cygnus still blazed. He looked at another part of the sky and saw Corona Borealis, which the Welsh called Caer Arianrhod, the Castle of the Silver Wheel. It reminded him of the ring. And then his eyes took fire, and he was plunged once more into darkness.

  A sound reached his ears, then: a concussion of the air, as of vast wings flapping. David looked up to see the raven fluttering frantically about, only a little above his head. And beyond it, shadowing half the sky, the outstretched pinions and dagger talons of a vast black eagle—fully forty feet from wing tip to wing tip.

  There are no eagles in Georgia that big.

  The eagle dipped its wings. Once. Twice. Slowly, almost deliberately. And each time those wings moved, blue lightning arced and crackled among the inky feathers at their tips, setting the creature now in such high relief that David was certain he could see every vane of every plume cut out against the heavens, now plunging it into darkness so profound that it was like a jagged rip in the sky itself.

  And the size kept shifting: forty feet first, then scarcely larger than a real eagle, then spread across the sky so far and thin that the stars could be seen through its substance, then forty feet again.

  A bolt of lightning struck at it from somewhere, briefly outlining it in glory.

  Its size seemed to stabilize at that, but the eagle continued to float in the air, ominously aloof, still too impossibly huge to fly.

  There are no eagles in the world like that! David thought as he blinked eyes he felt certain must themselves be blazing. A few yards below it the raven fluttered in small, confused circles, trapped, looking for escape—out, or up . . .

  Or down. The smaller bird folded its wings and dove toward the sheer cliff face beyond David’s feet, where it disappeared into the gloom below him. The eagle wheeled lazily and followed, abruptly dropping in pursuit like a stone. David could feel the displaced air whipping his face as the eagle fell past his vantage point. He peered cautiously over the edge.

  Both eagle and raven were lost to sight in the shadow of the mountain. But a brief, high cry cut the night, and the eagle rose alone, climbing like smoke into the midnight blue sky. And then it turned its red eyes toward David.

  A blast of heat seared his face, and suddenly he was running—across rocks, over fallen tree trunks, toward the sheltering forest. He barely made it, for as he dived into that protective darkness, still clutching his runestaff, he heard the whoosh of wings, felt hot breath on his neck, smelled again the odor of sulphur—only this time it was mixed with blood—and felt pain cut across his shoulders like a whip. A harsh cry exploded in his ears, like the snapping of a branch from a tree, a nonhuman cry that yet registered first surprise and then rage. Instinctively David reached down to feel inside his shirt collar, but the pain had already passed, as quickly as it had come. He felt a rent in the fabric, but there was none of the expected sticky ooze of blood on his fingers when he looked at them, only a thin smear of some black powder like soot.

  It’s the ring, wherever it is. It’s still working. It saved me, he thought as he passed deeper into the woods, still fearing to hear at any moment the sound of wings or to feel talons or beak come at him out of the air to pierce his flesh and rend his life from him, in spite of that protection he hoped was still upon him—or take him away to Faerie, where he now realized he did not want to go. But there was no sound in the night except his own breathing; nothing unusual showed against the sky in those few glimpses he got of it.

  Sometime later he came out onto the bank above the logging road that led down to his house. He was much further up than he had expected.

  The eagle was waiting for him there, perched in the sturdy branches of the same ancient oak whose shelter David had just abandoned. As he stepped into the open, the bird glided soundlessly toward him, talons outstretched, seeming to grow longer, sharper, more terrifyingly pointed as they filled his vision.

  Instinctively he raised his runestaff above his head, held it horizontally between his two hands—and to his surprise the eagle retreated, rising to hover impossibly slowly just out of reach above his head, wings masking the sky, claws like dire knives. He fully expected it to fall upon him, to smash him to a bloody, mangled pulp. Certainly it had mass enough to overpower him with ease—yet it did not. It simply hung in the sky, upheld by some supernatural wind.

  David gritted his teeth and prayed as he continued to hold the staff aloft. Things have Power because you give them Power. Oisin’s words chimed in his mind, seeming to spread, to resonate throughout his body. Iron and ash are some protection. Iron and ash. Iron and ash. Power. Power. Power. He felt the staff grow warm.

  Suddenly, beyond the eagle, David saw a vaster whiteness flash down from the night sky, to fall straight upon the back of the black eagle. He felt the eagle’s shadow spread to engulf the world and stumbled backward onto the ground, covering his eyes, his staff fixed in his hands.

  But the expected suffocating weight did not fall upon him. Instead there was one brief, strangled cry, and then—nothing.

  When he opened his eyes again, the eagle was gone. Where it had gone, Cygnus the Swan glittered brightly in the sky overhead. A yard to his right a white feather five feet long glimmered, fading into the air even as he looked at it.

  David ran then, wildly, madly, unaware when the rains returned. Relief, or fear, or both, he didn’t know; he simply buried his rational mind and let instinct rule. He was in the forest, he realized at one point, for branches poked him painfully and tore brutally at his clothes and skin. The rain had lessened, but only by comparison to its former fury. He tried to stop, to think, to compose himself. But it was hard, so hard. And it was so dark he could scarcely see where he was going.

  His toe struck a fallen branch, sending him sprawling forward. He retained his hold on the staff, but his other arm flailed outward, its fingers grabbing vainly at the twigs that clutched at him. One slipped through his grasp, another broke off in his fist. He fell heavily to the ground, winded, the staff beneath him. For a moment he lay motionless and gasping, trying vainly to regain control of himself.

  Something warm touched his cheek and
he looked up, squinting into the gloom. There was nothing there. But he knew he had felt something. Something very like a summer breeze.

  As if in answer to that realization, he noticed a sparkle of light in the forest ahead of him. As he watched, it grew brighter, moment by moment, second by second. All at once he realized he was looking into a circle of light, almost like daylight, perhaps twenty feet across. He sat up, brushed his fingers across his clothes. They were dry, the mud flaked away as he brushed at it. He fumbled his glasses out of his pocket, and put them on, realized they were filthy and tried to clean them on his shirt.

  “Seeing is not really necessary when you’ve important things to hear,” came a familiar voice scant feet ahead of him. “In fact, it is not really necessary at all.”

  David looked up quickly, then stared stupidly at the tri-pointed leaves of the branch he still clutched in his fist. Maple.

  Oisin!

  “It will not last long,” said Oisin. “For it takes much Power for me to send my spirit roving in a form you can see, and more to provide an appropriate setting for any sort of discussion. But I did not come to discuss metaphysics. You have summoned me, I surmise, in a time of distress.”

  “Actually, it was an accident,” David admitted, suddenly embarrassed. “But I’m glad you came.” He stood up and took a hesitant step forward.

  “You are not wearing the ring, David,” Oisin said mildly, “nor do I sense it anywhere about you.”

  David exhaled, startled. His lips quivered, and he looked down at his feet.

  “I’m sorry, Oisin, I’m sorry!” David burst out. “I strayed onto a Straight Track, and a Faery boy started chasing me, and then all at once I ran off the Track, or fell off, or something, and when I came to the ring was gone. And now the Sidhe are after my friends and family.”

  Suddenly he was crying, his tears falling on the warm, dry leaves. He did not fight it.

  Oisin said nothing for perhaps a minute, then briefly laid both hands on David’s head. “This tale is known to me already, David; and though it distresses me yet there is hope, for though you do not have the ring, I do not believe the Sidhe have it either. It does not answer my call, yet I can sense its protection still upon you, and such would not be the case if anyone else had claimed it for his own, unless he were very powerful indeed—more powerful than Ailill. That one does not have it, I am certain; you would not be standing here now if he did. For though you have Power, you cannot stand against him. No, the ring must remain in your world, perhaps not far from where you lost it. Seek the ring, David, first of all, for at least it will prevent further misfortune.”