by Tom Deitz
Table of Contents
Copyright
Dreamseeker’s Road
For Reid
Acknowledgments
Prelude: Invasion of Privacy
Prologue: Closing Time
Chapter I: Autumn Chill
Chapter II: Worlds, Tracks, and Blood
Interlude I: Live Audience
Chapter III: Rocks and Mages
Chapter IV: Dreamseekers
Interlude II: Freedom of Information
Chapter V: Into the Woods
Interlude III: When Duty Whispers Low
Chapter VI: Trick or Treat?
Chapter VII: House Guest
Chapter VIII: Spirits in the Night
Chapter IX: On Track
Chapter X: Rude Awakening
Chapter XI: Off Track
Chapter XII: The Woman in the Woods
Chapter XIII: Over the Hills and Far Away
Chapter XIV: Sight for Sore Eyes
Chapter XV: Blood on the Tracks
Chapter XVI: Reunion
Chapter XVII: Childe Alec to the Dark Tower Came
Chapter XVIII: Walls
Chapter XIX: Awakening
Chapter XX: True Hallows
Chapter XXI: Deceptions and Inceptions
Chapter XXII: Raid on a Rade
Chapter XXIII: Stags and Stones
Chapter XXIV: The Waking
Chapter XXV: The Wake
Chapter XXVI: The Last Gate
Epilogue: Treasure Trove
Dreamseeker’s Road
By Tom Deitz
Copyright 2016 by Estate of Thomas Deitz
Cover Copyright 2016 by Untreed Reads Publishing
Cover Design by Tom Webster
The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.
Previously published in print, 1995.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher or author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. The characters, dialogue and events in this book are wholly fictional, and any resemblance to companies and actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Also by Tom Dietz and Untreed Reads Publishing
Windmaster’s Bane
Fireshaper’s Doom
Darkthunder’s Way
Sunshaker’s War
Stoneskin’s Revenge
Ghostcountry’s Wrath
www.untreedreads.com
Dreamseeker’s Road
Tom Deitz
For Reid
Acknowledgments
Gilbert Head
Manfred Jones
Greg Keyes
Nell Keyes
Adele Leone
Reid Locklin
Betty Marchinton
Buck Marchinton
Larry Marchinton
Chris Miller
Prelude: Invasion of Privacy
(Gargyn’s Hold—Tir-Nan-Og—approaching Samhain)
“Don’t dig down too far,” Gargyn advised his eldest through a puff on his thornwood pipe. “The land runs thin this far out—you could chop right on through!”
“’T’d be more interestin’ ’n stayin’ ’round here!” the lad shot back sourly, pausing to wipe a lock of moss-colored hair from his forehead before continuing his midday hoeing.
“Here’s good ’nough for us,” Gargyn replied, with a scowl that took in most of the melon patch and half the surrounding woods besides—as well as two more biddable sons beyond range of his tongue: Evvan and Evvell—wheat-thatched the one, cornflower-locked the other; black-kilted and crimson-trewed respectively. “We know who we are; nobody bothers us; don’t take much to make stuff grow; an’ there’s always ’nough to hunt. What else you want?”
“Fun, mostly. ’Citement.”
“You think fallin’ through the floor o’ the World’s fun?” Gargyn snorted through another puff. “You wanta see the end o’ the World, you march half a day past where I’m pointin’ an’ you’ll find it soon enough! Fresh hole burned through there not a year gone by.”
“Fuckin’ iron,” the eldest—Markon—grumbled.
“That’s a quick-folks’ curse!” Gargyn snapped. “You don’t need t’ be usin’ quick-folks’ curses.”
Markon paused again at his hoeing. He had made no discernible progress. “The Littl’un saw a dragon,” he offered slyly, lifting a brow for effect.
Gargyn’s slanted eyes narrowed beneath his crimson mop. Chills danced across his bare torso and dived beneath his kilt. He suddenly felt ages old. “Where?”
Markon grinned smugly. “Them woods,” he replied, sweeping a knobby six-fingered hand toward a copse of feathery trees a good minute’s trot away. “Said it was red as blood an’ crusted with jools an’ silver. Had round black feet an’ squinty cat eyes.”
“How…big was it?” Gargyn asked carefully.
Markon leaned on his hoe. “He said it was all crouched down like a wolf does when it’s huntin’; said it was ten arm spans long an’ twice as tall as he was. Said he was just standin’ there chewin’ a ’shroom, an’ he heard somethin’ roar an’ saw it flash ’tween two trees, an’ then it was gone.”
Gargyn gnawed his pipe stem. “Wish he’d tol’ me.”
“Tol’ you what?” another voice intruded—as a welcomed cool dampness pressed between his bony shoulders. He twisted around to accept the mug of cider his mate, Borbin, had brought to ease his tiller’s thirst, noting the jug in her other hand and a covey of mugs hung from her scarlet kirtle. Impulsively, he hugged her, tweaked a tawny braid, and would have fondled an ample breast had the boy not been gawking.
“Tol’ you what?” Borbin persisted, filling another mug for the glowering Markon.
“Dragon,” Gargyn mumbled, between swallows.
“Only dragons ’round here’s them kind,” Borbin muttered, as she pointed to the High Road that formed the far edge of the field. Gargyn had to squint even more than usual, but made out the traveler: elegant gray stallion with silver stripes, sky-blue barding, and a young man astride: gold-haired, slim, and handsome; his every move graceful, the ice-blue gaze he trained on them keen even here, and full of disdain. He stared a long moment, while Gargyn glared back, then set spurs to sides and was gone in a flurry of shimmering cloak. Gargyn wondered vainly why all the Danaans were so tall and sleek and fair, while all male bodochs were as knottily thin as their women were ample. Not that the Danaans minded, sometimes. Why, he remembered his cousin Mev…
“’Least dragons hoard stuff you c’n steal,” Borbin sighed. “Them Seelie folk won’t help nobody, not even when it’s their land what’s rottin’ away.”
“I’ve tried to talk to ’em. We all have—”
“An’ got as much hearin’ as a cat pissin’!”
“They say Varzi’s ’quested audience w’ Lugh again.”
“Be better off talkin’ to Rhiannon.”
“She’s got no say here, ’cept guest right.”
“No, but she’s got ears that’ll listen to us small folk. That’s more’n Lugh’ll do.”
“Yeah, well, he�
�d better learn to—or he’ll wake up one day an’ find he’s king of an empty kingdom.”
“They say Erbo’s gonna emigrate.”
Gargyn was about to request elaboration—but at that moment, with a rumbling shriek like a pride of cow-sized lions trying to roar and purr and yowl all at once, a scarlet shape leapt from the fringe of the forest and launched itself across the melon patch, scattering Gargyn’s brood in its wake. The Littl’un had been right too: it really was all crouched down like a wolf. Real compact, in fact, with its black legs moving faster than he could see, a flipped-up rump but no true tail, and a hint of shadowy gray beneath, that hurt to look at straight.
And then it was rushing at them, narrow eyes wide and blazing; and Gargyn saw with a start that someone rode in a sort of enclosed carriage midway along its back. And then it sprang—and vanished, leaving a wake of wind hot as forge-fire and smelling of iron.
When he picked himself up from where he’d flung himself in fear of his life, it was to see Borbin’s eyes as huge as the bottom of her mug. “Dragon…” he managed between gasps.
“Dragon…”
Fortunately, Borbin was infinitely practical. “Didn’t hurt nobody,” she observed. “An’ weren’t no dragon.”
“Fuck it weren’t!” Gargyn spat before he remembered what he’d told the boy.
“Weren’t no dragon,” Borbin repeated. “I seen a picture in a book one time, what was stole from the quick-folks.”
“An’ what were it then?” Gargyn demanded.
“Well, I’m not sure, exactly,” Borbin admitted. “But I think it was what the quick-folks call a shev-ro-lay.”
Prologue: Closing Time
(University of Georgia Library—Friday, October 23—late)
Tana hid behind Edgar Allan Poe.
More precisely, she hid behind a life-size cardboard cutout of the illustrious Virginian some resourceful English major had posted on perpetual lookout just inside the door to the study carrel she’d let herself into half an hour before. That it was not her carrel was of no concern, nor that the means by which she had circumvented the lock would have raised eyebrows in security forces more elite than the University of Georgia Police. No, what mattered was remaining undetected five minutes longer.
She’d had a bout of panic just now, when the youthful security guard had paused by the inset window and peered through—to catch Mr. Poe, but not the slim, dark-haired woman who crouched behind him. A sigh of relief whispered from her lips as his footsteps slapped away, echoing among the looming ranks of loose-shelved periodicals that filled half the Ilah Dunlap Little Library’s basement.
Braaakzzzkkkk!
The alarm made Tana start in spite of herself. Six months in this country, and she still hadn’t acclimated to all those electronic trinkets that festooned every building: warning her away from this, watching while she did that; denying entry to one place, easing access to another.
—Buzzing fifteen minutes ago to remind a huge building’s worth of would-be scholars that a mere quarter hour remained until closing time.
And again five minutes later, this time with blinking lights.
And once more just now, with lights and guard. Four minutes to go.
Three.
Two.
One.
The fluorescents outside, that had given her sharp pale features a sallow glow, went dark, plunging her into blue-gray gloom in which the only relief was the ghostly silver square of the carrel window.
One minute…
Two—Tana eased from Mr. Poe’s shadow and turned the doorknob—and was alone with three million books, uncounted periodicals, and more microforms—film and fiche both—than she wanted to consider.
Silently—barefoot beneath designer jeans and a long-sleeved black silk shirt—she crept toward the library’s core. No one was about. Then again, few would have noted her anyway, master that she was at moving unobtrusively among these foreigners, among these odd strangers who were so scared of…everything that they built glass and metal eyes to ward them while they slept.
Eyes that did not, however, see everywhere—or everything. Or everybody.
Abruptly she was there. Steel-toned elevator doors faced double gray-painted analogues across an unlit lobby. Steps angled up and down beyond the second, while an eye-sized light blinked balefully above their juncture: a fiery counterpoint to the moonbeams that worked their way through infrequent windows to paint sea-toned geometries on the floor.
She paused at the right-hand portal, listening, caught steps, but distant and receding, then sharper clicks as master switches were thrown on level after level. Each quenched an acre of brightness; each dimmed the stairwell more, as guards cleared every floor in sequence from top to bottom.
Another breathless minute passed, ears alert for the alarm that would signal a secured zone breached. And then, cracking the profound silence only large buildings can conjure, Tana heard, by means of certain…advantages, a young male voice call “all clear.”
She’d timed it exactly right.
The red light above the door gained a green accomplice; the trigger was in place. Anyone breaking those contacts now would set off alarms in half a dozen offices. Tana, however, wasn’t planning to leave that night—not by conventional means.
Assuming she ever got started.
A quick sifting of her pockets produced a tightly scribbled list in an odd fluid hand and luminous ink. She studied it briefly, then squared her shoulders and padded away from the stairwell and into the waist-high labyrinth of beige-enameled cabinets that housed the vast master archive of the Georgia Newspaper Project—a decades-long attempt at locating and preserving on microfilm the official legal organs of each of Georgia’s 159 counties, most of the significant city rags, and all the major dailies. The largest collection in the state, ’twas said, and likewise the most comprehensive assemblage of information about Georgia happenings in existence—with duplicates strewn worldwide, including the Library of Congress.
So where was tonight’s victim? She scanned the cardboard placards atop the cases. K…L L…M…Morgan County…Moultrie— But where…? O-kay… She squatted, scarcely able to see the drawer labels in the dim light, and at that, her night vision was better than most. M…for…Mouth of the Mountains.
Carefully she slid out the designated drawer. It moved smoothly on nylon runners—and blessedly did not squeak, as others sometimes had.
Her gaze swept the blue-and-white boxes, each maybe four-by-four-by-two inches, with a range of dates typed on labels. But where to begin? August of a certain year, perhaps? That year, in fact—whereupon she snared a spool and rose. The walls around the labyrinth showed more carrels, these housing microfilm readers. Not locked. Never locked—as she well knew. She chose the nearest, eased inside, and shut the door. A denser gloom enclosed her, but she found the switch on the machine by practiced feel and flicked it. A square screen of white light promptly appeared, marred by abstract lines and speckles, and illuminating an intricate apparatus beneath. She slipped into the chair before it and threaded the film through a complex of rollers and between two plates of glass. Now what was the first date?
Right.
She twisted a dial. A blur of gray flew across the screen, smudged with darker lines that a more-leisurely viewing would resolve into type—fortunately, this reel was a positive image, a welcome change from the white-on-blue negatives she’d grown accustomed to. She slowed halfway through…slower… Larger words appeared, and squares of pictures. Slower, checking dates now: August 7…8…9… Had it! Now to locate the article…
Before she could, however, her gaze was drawn to a pair of grainy photographs to the upper right. Nothing remarkable, really, merely standard yearbook mug shots of two boys in their mid-to-late teens. Handsome one was, by the standards hereabouts, with thick, white-blond hair worn long above what she knew from other sources were blue eyes, the cheeks and chin showing the angles of incipient manhood emerging from the more androgynous curves of a
dolescence, the eyes displaying the slight squint of one accustomed to wearing glasses and eschewing them from vanity, a not-so-slight grin parting lips she would not have minded kissing.
The other boy, by contrast, was pleasantly bland if a shade too neat, with short dark hair rising in careful spikes above a smooth-jawed face that narrowed to a pointed chin. His lips were thinner than the other boy’s, his brows level, shadowing eyes probably gray or green, his expression, self-consciously serious. Follower, that face proclaimed. Eternal runner-up. Vice president. Second-in-command. Jilted lover.
“Local Boys Win Essay Awards at Governor’s Honors Program,” ran the caption beneath. She shaped the names silently: David Sullivan. Alec McLean. “David Kevin Sullivan,” she repeated aloud. The blond. From rural Enotah County up in the mountains. Probably the smartest lad his age in his part of the world, the most gifted—and quite possibly the most cursed. Someone whose innocent actions a few years back had caused ripples in his small splash of Georgia that had become tsunamis impossibly far afield. Yeah, that boy, admirable though he was, had launched a shipload of grief. And though he’d been encouragingly quiescent lately, he still bore watching. Indeed, if not for him, she wouldn’t be here now.
But she’d wasted enough time pondering facts that could not be altered; it was her job to massage their repercussions. And for that she required a certain article.
It took but an instant: four column inches on the lower half of the same page:
FREAK FIRE FRUSTRATES MACTYRIE FIRE DEPARTMENT
That was exactly what she sought: an account of a fire that had decimated the camp of a band of Travelers—Irish Horse Traders, as they were sometimes called—who’d set up business on the athletic field of a small north Georgia town. The article was sketchy on details but did note how very difficult the blaze had been to extinguish, how oddly it had appeared, and made reference to a number of unusual-looking characters setting the fire, prolonging it—and escaping on horseback. One in particular was mentioned: a tall, blond man with only one arm.
Not much there that was either informative or incriminating—by itself. But combined with enough other references, it could suggest a troubling pattern—which Tana was pledged to eradicate.
