by Tom Deitz
Alec regained his feet and pulled David up with him, though he recalled neither grip, tug, nor effort. Liz took up the slack as they stagger-ran toward their Faery companion.
The Morrigu met them halfway down, and a moment of utter confusion ensued in which it was determined that David wasn’t able to sit a horse alone, and that the Morrigu was the only one competent to manage someone on the verge of unconsciousness and a near-panicked stallion at once. In the chaos another horse bolted. The Faery’s Word of recall was lost in a clap of thunder, and then it was too late.
By the time they were all reseated—David ahead of the Morrigu, and Alec hanging on to Liz, with the cat squeezed in between—lightning had conjured the world-tree twice more, and the aftersparks had claimed three-fourths of the horizon, leaving only the west unassailed. Fewer ridges than ever showed to the east—south of which the gate to the Crimson Road lay.
“If we can gain Dreamer’s Gate before this World dissolves, we will have a little time,” the Morrigu shouted, as they galloped down the hill.
“Be faster to head straight overland,” Liz advised, nodding to the right. “We cut across this field and a couple of pastures and save a quarter mile.”
“And maybe our lives,” the Morrigu added—and dug in her heels.
Though he mistrusted horses like the plague, Alec had no choice but to hang on for dear life as Liz did likewise, and the next few moments were the most frightening—and jumbled—of his life.
Reality had gone insane. The lightning was constant now, and so intense it really was like a vast strobe light distorting everything: landscape, distance, even Liz’s head and their mount’s flowing mane as it stretched out its neck before him. Nor was that all: the ground shook constantly, and the rise and fall of the terrain further screwed his sense of location, as did the spinning clouds and the glowering mountains to the right, which themselves had now begun to grow lines of dancing blue fire around their edges. The east was almost gone: the black-light nothingness having eaten its way much closer in just the last few seconds, so that it now seemed centered no more than one valley beyond that which cupped this World’s Sullivan Cove.
Never mind that he’d just seen a cow acquire a crackling halo around her horns, that quickly spread across her body—until, in a clap of thunder, she dissolved. A tree beside the Sullivans’ house did likewise. Black light showed in the earth where its roots had been.
The Morrigu was still pounding onward, however, with Liz and Alec right behind. And as best he could tell, there was only one pasture to go, and then a fence to vault and they’d be on the road to the gate. Already he’d caught a flash of crimson uphill to the right. Or maybe that was a trick all this pulsing light played on his poor tortured eyes.
Never mind the jolting and the effort it took simply to keep his seat—no smooth-gaited Faery steeds now!
And then they were careening downhill, and the barbed wire fence at the bottom was rushing toward them, and he had just time to recall that he’d only ever jumped a horse twice in his life, and both had been on Faery steeds too, when he felt the horse’s body tense and stretch and fly smoothly into the air, only to touch down far harder than he’d expected.
Almost he flew from his precarious seat, and was certain his tailbone would never recover; but by the time he’d snatched a stronger hold, the mare was scrabbling for footing as she sought to follow Liz’s frantic yanks on the reins and turn uphill.
Blessedly, they made it, and the gate was there: no more than an eighth-mile distant.
But the speed of dissolution was increasing rapidly, and worse, seemed to be eating its way toward their particular piece of road faster yet, as though it sought to cut off their escape. It had crossed the main highway now, and was reaving the woods where, in another World, a certain Straight Track lay.
But there was the trilithon!
—Only…something was wrong! No darkness laced with bloodred chasms lay beyond; rather, that landscape was lit with white so bright Alec could scarce bear to look at it. Yet even as it rose up before them, he saw a shape moving in there: moving quickly—
—A shadowy figure on the back of some kind of preposterous huge-horned animal galloping straight toward them. And even as the Morrigu yelled out a frantic “Ride for your lives!” that figure burst through.
—And resolved into a wild-eyed Aikin Daniels astride something between an elk and a moose.
“Turn now, you fool!” the Morrigu hissed, and kicked her stallion savagely.
Alec heard Aikin swearing at his unlikely steed, and the crunch of gravel as he got it slowed, and then, much more clearly, a desperate, “Oh bloody fucking shit!” and then they were all charging the gate, with the Morrigu in the van.
By the time the Faery had passed through, Alec had realized that his glance back at Aikin had shown the Viking dream that had transfigured Sullivan Cove now on the ragged edge of dissolution. The lightning was a constant flash, and every building, tree, and blade of grass wore Saint Elmo’s fire around its edges—but this phantom ornamentation also consumed. The mountains across the road were gone, the road thin as gauze in spots, and the house a blue-black silhouette limned in cobalt neon—and then…not.
Lightning struck a tree right in front of them. The cat yowled. Their horse reared. Alec slipped back over its haunches, grabbing for Liz frantically.
No good. Fabric tore. Liz screamed, and then he was falling, and all he could see was the aft end of a white horse rising to fill the sky, and Liz fighting to retain her seat—
—And failing, as she too slipped off.
And then he struck the ground with a force that drove the air from his lungs and made him see stars dance across a stroke of lightning—whereupon Liz landed atop him, evoking yet another constellation. His butt hurt like hell, as did his hands where he’d scraped them raw; there was also something up with his elbow. Claws dug into his chest as Eva found him. Liz kicked him as she struggled to rise.
A dark shape loomed above: Aikin, reaching impossibly far down to yank Liz to her feet, even as she tugged at his own torn and bloody hands.
“Run, you fools!” the Morrigu cried from safety. “Forget the beast! Make for the gate—or die!”
Alec did, vaguely aware that the ground felt uncomfortably insubstantial, as it had not when he’d landed on it, and how his every step left a web work of glowing cracks.
And then the gate rose ahead, and hooves were thundering past, and Liz was gasping along beside him, and the cat was clutched to his chest with his one good arm.
Abruptly he was under the stone arch—and through. The thunder vanished; the world turned cold. “Thank God,” Liz gasped, slowing to a stagger. “We made it!”
“No,” the Morrigu called back, “we did not!”
Chapter XXVI: The Last Gate
(The Crimson Road—no time)
“What do you mean we didn’t make it?”
Those were not the first words Aikin would’ve chosen to hear from Liz after far too long on the back of a beast he’d never in his wildest dreams expected to see, much less ride. Certainly not what he’d have chosen after dealing first with the weirdness of the Tracks themselves, then with a screwy stone gate that had jerked him from twilight into the insane glare of an endless blasted white plain fissured with crimson, all beneath a sky whose impossible brightness transcended color yet was lit with flickers of something brighter still. Never mind another gate beyond which black, blue, white, and whatever color lightning was strobed across what might’ve been a version of Dave’s folks’ farm, and then passing that gate and seeing his friends, only to be ordered to a return engagement in what he’d termed the Fucking White Hell!
“Yeah,” Alec echoed Liz. “What’s the deal?” It was strange, Aikin realized distantly, to hear conversation again. “Oh crap,” Liz added, with a groan. “The horse didn’t make it.”
The Morrigu reined her steed to a halt and twisted around to regard the three who followed her: one on elk-back, two plus a c
at panting along afoot. “The dreamworld is all but gone,” she announced. “Before long, dawn will devour this place as well, and if we are here, we will also be devoured.”
“Huh?” Aikin blurted out, likewise halting his mount as he finally blinked reality back to some sense of stability; his eyes—shoot, his whole head—aching from the glare and the noise and the insistent pounding of his interminable ride. “Oh Jesus!” he added, having finally gotten his act together sufficiently to make a body count and come up missing Dave—until he’d noted the figure lolling ahead of the Morrigu; clad, it seemed, in some odd mix of the running shorts he’d worn earlier and baggy checked sweatpant-things.
“Welcome to hell, preacher,” Alec called, quoting Paint Your Wagon. He sounded, Aikin thought, totally fried.
“Been there, done that,” Aikin retorted from reflex. “What’s up with Dave?”
“Too much dreaming,” Alec breathed, gaze flitting from Aikin to his cervine mount and back. “That’s the short form. We’ll save the long one for later, if you don’t mind. ’Scuse me while I catch my breath.”
“Yeah, but is he gonna be all right?” Aikin persisted. One look at Liz staring fixedly at the witch-bitch showed that she, at least, was bloody concerned.
“He gave his life to raise the dead,” the Morrigu retorted. “He gave all but the last drop of blood he could give.”
“Christ!”
“—Gave all he could too,” the Morrigu observed, unexpectedly.
“And us?” From Liz.
“We double up—or triple up—and maybe we reach the gate, and if we do not, this brightness waxes until it transcends light, and then this place will vanish, and us with it, until it manifests next year to point the way to some other poor fool’s dream—without us.”
“But—”
“We must ride, mortal, if any are to survive! One of you sit behind me, the other go with Aikin! I dare not shape-shift here.”
Liz and Alec exchanged glances, obviously torn between choices. Alec took a deep breath. “You’re lighter,” he told Liz. “You go with the Morrigu, so her horse won’t have to carry as much.” Without waiting for reply, he jogged toward the elk, his face a mask of despair as he realized just how high the beast’s back was.
“Grab hold and jump,” Aikin advised, and when Alec caught his hand, jerked with all he had. It took two tries, but Alec made it. And as soon as he’d settled into place, the Morrigu kicked her stallion to a gallop.
Aikin had no choice but to follow, but even flat out, the pace was less than his mount had dared once or twice—which was the first thing that had gone right in ages. And at least it bought him leisure to puzzle out what in blazes was going on. “Got your rock back,” he called over his shoulder to Alec, patting his vest where the ulunsuti lurked in an inside pocket. “Pot was gone, though.”
“No big deal,” Alec grunted. “How’d you find us, anyway?”
“Rigantana started me off, but then I met Lugh and his crowd, and that old guy—what’s his name? Oisin? Anyway, he held back and told me to ride north as fast as I could, then ride the red road as fast as I could, and then ride the road to the right as fast as I could—and keep on ridin’ no matter what.”
“Sounds like him,” Alec grumbled. “Lay a bunch of cryptic bullshit on you that doesn’t make sense until you’re so far in you can’t get out again.”
“Yeah,” Aikin agreed, but then had to break off as the Morrigu drove her stallion faster.
The glare worsened. Heat rose with it. Aikin was sweating like a pig; his eyes were squeezed nigh to slits. As often as not, he closed them. Alec’s arms were a vise around his ribs. The cat had found its way into his lap.
Abruptly, the elk faltered. He kicked it, urging it back to its steady ground-eating pace.
No go.
“Hold up!” he yelled, to the Morrigu, who was already obscured by heat haze. He heard her swear, then had no time for such considerations, for the elk took a dozen more stumbling steps, vented an agonized wheeze, and crumpled onto its knees. “Jump!” he shouted, as he tensed to leap free. As soon as Alec released him, he pushed off—and the elk collapsed utterly. Aikin hit hard on his right shoulder, and rolled, barely missing an antler. Something yowled and hissed. Alec uttered a muffled “Oh hell!” His nose filled with glowing red sand.
But already he was struggling to his feet, dusting himself off as he helped Alec up. The latter retrieved the cat as Aikin stared at his fallen mount. By the way its eyes were dimming, he knew the creature was dead. “It ran half the length of Georgia tonight,” he sighed. “And twice that back again—mostly at a gallop. Don’t blame the poor critter a-tall.”
“No mortal steed could have done as well,” the Morrigu murmured, joining them, her face as darkly grim as the pervasive glare was bright. “Would it had lasted longer, though; for by dying it has doomed us all.”
“What do you mean?” Alec demanded. “You can still shape-shift, can’t you? If you turned into a horse—”
The Morrigu shook her head. “I have already changed too many times today—which, though you may not believe it, is wearying beyond belief; I have no strength left for such Workings, for a while. And even if I could, to dare that sort of thing here, on the Crimson Road, where the balance between Powers is already perilous—it could hasten the dissolution tenfold.”
“Then take Dave and Liz and fly.”
The Faery glared at him. “In the name of my kin I owe him one life. I will not have others laid upon me!
She paused abruptly. “What did you say a moment ago?” she asked, fixing Aikin with a piercing stare. “When?”
“About Oisin.”
Aikin told her.
“And you recovered the oracular stone?”
“Yeah…but…so what?”
“Oisin would not have directed you to the Crimson Road unless you had business here. Therefore, he foresaw some reason for your presence.”
Aikin blinked at her—easy enough in the glare. He could barely see her white horse against the blazing sky. “Huh?”
“Think, boy!” the Faery demanded. “What is there about you that Oisin would send you to a place that could easily mean your death?”
Aikin shrugged and glanced at his friends for support. Liz shrugged back. Alec scowled, but then his eyes widened. “The rock!” he cried. “That’s the only thing I can think of that separates you from the rest of us!”
“R-right,” a weak voice agreed. Aikin started, then realized who had spoken. “God, Dave, you’re alive!”
“But not well—yet,” David gave back in a raspy whisper. “…too tired to talk, but not to hear…or think.”
“So there’s something we can do? Some way to use the ulunsuti?”
“’Course…there is,” David managed, but Aikin could tell it took all his strength to continue speaking. “Gate…” David mumbled—and fainted.
The ensuing silence filled with three gasps, and, more distantly, a low rumble like thunder. The sky turned black for a slivered second, like a TV switched off and on.
“It will be soon,” the Morrigu hissed.
Alec gnawed his lip. “Gate,” he mused. “Of course!
We use the ulunsuti to gate the hell outta here. Unless”—he spared a scowl at the Morrigu—“that’ll hasten the dissolution too!”
“But what about the World Walls?” From Liz.
“Fuck ’em,” Alec snapped. “They’ll live, we won’t.”
“It will likely not damage them anyway,” the Morrigu put in, looking as though she thought their plan might actually succeed. “The Tracks—even this one—transcend the World Walls. They are already between; therefore, we should do no harm—if we gate to another place on the Track beyond the outer gate! And,” she added pointedly, “even if it does hasten the dissolution, we will not be there to observe it.”
“Let’s do it,” Alec agreed.
“Do we have the stuff?” Liz wondered.
Alec patted his backpack. “I’ve go
t the gear I took when I went to rescue Eva. All we need’s a fire, something to put the blood in…and blood.”
Aikin eyed them dubiously. “Human? Or—”
“We’ve got the horse—and whatever crazy thing that is we were riding,” Alec gave back.
“Right!”
The Morrigu scanned the horizon, face going grimmer by the second. “Whatever we do, we must hurry. If one of you will help me with your friend…” Aikin was beside her in an instant, as was Alec. Together they lowered David to the ground. He looked, Aikin thought, deathly pale—or maybe that was simply the glare. The Morrigu joined them, then paused to whisper something in her horse’s ear. That accomplished, she gave it a swat on the rump and sent it galloping down the Crimson Road.
“What’d you do that for?” Liz cried furiously.
“We could not all ride it, and there was no way to choose one life above another. But if the horse reaches the outer gate in time, it can pass on what has happened. At least our deaths will not go unmarked.”
“Great,” Alec growled, kicking at the ruddy dust.
Thunder rumbled, closer. No one dared look at the sky. “Let’s to it,” Aikin sighed, kneeling by the fallen stag. “Anybody got anything to put blood in?”
“In my pack,” Alec grinned, already fumbling through it. Liz set the ulunsuti down beside Aikin. “Fire?” she asked the Morrigu.
“Fabric?” the Morrigu gave back with a sigh. “This velvet you see upon me is but a glamour I raised lest my nakedness offend you.”
Liz rolled her eyes, but stripped off the khaki vest she’d been wearing. Alec added his own vest, his shirt, and the patch pockets from his fatigues. Aikin donated his T-shirt, wadded it with the other material, and placed it on the ground.
A sharp glare from the Morrigu, and it sparked, then smoked, then smoldered, and finally erupted into flame. The heavy padded vest burned slowly—which was fortunate. Alec dug into his pack for the appropriate herbs to add to the blaze, as well as a small salt-glazed bowl, which he passed to Aikin, who produced the ulunsuti from his vest and set it in it. At Alec’s nod, he slit the elk’s carotid. Blood oozed out: a slow drip that nevertheless quickly filled the container. The stone promptly began to glow. “You should’ve seen what this guy did earlier,” he offered, offhand.
