by Tom Deitz
“What?” Liz wondered, from where she sat beside the unconscious David.
“Remember when we were wonderin’ what’d happen if the thing tasted Faery blood? Well…” Aikin went on to relate a short version of what had transpired in the distant battlefield.
“God,” Alec breathed, when he finished. “You mean it can raise the dead?”
“The Faery dead,” the Morrigu amended, “not yours. Our souls are both more firmly linked to our bodies and more independent from them.”
“More Faery paradox,” Aikin muttered, staring at the stone. “How do you know when this thing’s ready?”
“When it won’t glow anymore,” Alec replied, then noted his scraped and bloody hands. “Guess you’d better do the honors,” he added. “When the gate appears in the stone, you stick the rock into the fire—and we jump.
“Aikin frowned. “And the gate itself…?”
Alec puffed his cheeks. “We stare at the stone and visualize where we want to go—I’d suggest the place we saw those two archways. And when it appears, you do the fire thing, and when the gate flares up, we jump. Somebody’ll have to carry David. Liz, you wanta take Eva?”
Without having to be caught, the cat leapt into Liz’s lap. Alec and the Morrigu eased their arms under their unconscious companion.
“Remember! Visualize!” Alec told Aikin. “Oh, and it’s gonna hurt like hell!”
Aikin nodded, set his jaw, and, as the others settled into a circle around it, stared at the ulunsuti, where it sat glowing in its bowl beside the fire. And tried to recall those twin trilithons that had marked the juncture of the Track and the actual Crimson Road. And waited…
…waited…
“No go,” Liz groaned at last. “Won’t work. The image forms, then shatters—probably ’cause we’re all too wired.”
Aikin wrenched his gaze away from the glowing stone, and blinked. Was it his imagination, or was the glare around them brighter? And did the endless plain seem…less endless?
“Shit,” Alec spat. “We’re up the creek now!”
“No!” the Morrigu countered, “we are not!”
And with that, she swept forward and seized the ulunsuti from where it still glittered wetly atop the burning cloth. Before anyone could stop her, she slashed her breast with one long fingernail, and, when bright blood burst forth, pressed the ulunsuti there. It flared once more: brighter than ever.
“Think of the outer gate!” she cried. And then she shouted a word in a language none of them knew, and flame rose up around her.
“Goddamn!” Aikin yipped. “Shit!”
“Stop her!” Liz screamed. “Don’t let her!”
“My choice!” came a shriek from the heart of the fire. “I owe David Sullivan a life. Use it—or waste your own!”
And with that, the fire raged hotter, and almost as bright as the impossibly brilliant sky. And then, within the heart of those flames, a darker center formed: the ghostly wavering shape of twin stone archways surrounded by lurking pines.
Another shriek followed, then another, the last of which sounded strangely like a caw—and the gate flared up man-high.
“Now!” Alec yelled, as he struggled forward with David in awkward tow. Aikin helped him, then a white-faced Liz, and together the four of them leapt toward it. The fire beat at them, but coolness lurked within, from that place beyond the gate.
And then the world turned to light and heat and they were through.
Light became dark. Waste became woodland. Day turned back to twilight; while the Track, that had been crimson, was once more orange fading quickly to gold. In lieu of sand, they stood upon pine needles.
As soon as Aikin got his bearings, he helped Alec ease David down, then surveyed their surroundings. Behind them rose the two archways, with a brightness behind one and blackness inside the other. But there was no gate glimmering in the air. No Morrigu—and no ulunsuti. Even as they watched, a brightness that transcended bright exploded beyond the right-hand arch then winked out, leaving only wavering no-color. An instant later, the stones themselves turned hazy and dissolved.
“Is she…?” From Liz.
“I think so,” Alec nodded.
“And your magic rock as well, looks like,” Aikin added.
“No big deal,” Alec told him. “How’s David?”
“I’ll live,” came a blessedly familiar voice. Aikin whirled around to see David easing up on his elbows, blinking back to awareness. “I’m not sure what’s been goin’ on,” he croaked. “But I think the Morrigu gave me some of her strength, or something, there at the end. I know that for a minute I was seein’ through her eyes. I…I know what she did, too, and why…and while I don’t think she should’ve done it, I guess it is done. And…I think she really is gone—in that body, anyway—and so’s the ulunsuti.” He shot Alec a weak smile. “One less thing to worry about, huh?—Mr. Reluctant Wizard!”
Alec rolled his eyes. “Yeah, but…we’re still lost.”
“Maybe not,” Liz countered. “Check out Eva.”
They did. The cat was running back and forth between them and the remaining trilithon, as though urging them to follow.
“Do it,” Aikin said. “I’ve seen her do that come-on thing before, back when she was an enfield.”
He glanced down at David, and was surprised to see his friend rising to his feet—with Alec’s aid, granted, but getting up all the same.
“You make it, man?” he wondered.
“Got to,” David grinned, and shuffled forward.
They hesitated before the remaining gate, for only darkness lurked beyond, and the merest glimmer of yellow Track. But the cat—who didn’t look quite like a cat just then—trotted primly forward and pranced through. Aikin exchanged smirks with Liz, then eased back, bowed, and told his three friends, “After you.”
“Don’t trust magic, huh?” David chuckled, and followed Eva.
Aikin was the last to dare the gate. For an instant it was dark and cold, but then he felt warmth and the brush of wind, and scented wild things growing—and a moment later, found himself marching out of the woods atop Lookout Rock.
The sun was rising beyond the mountains to the east.
Alec was holding an honest-to-god enfield.
Liz and David were holding each other.
And from every tree, bush, and stone outcrop thousands upon thousands of crows, ravens, and starlings gave forth a raucous, unearthly keening. Yellow eyes glittered balefully—everywhere. Aikin’s hair prickled.
The enfield trilled back, something that sounded close to language. The keening persisted, but the birds slowly parted, opening a path away from the cliff and toward the logging road that lower down became the Sullivans’ drive.
The sun was fully risen now: a disk of red perched atop the ragged horizon like an immense burning ruby in the crown of a sleeping giant-king. Its rays lanced across the land like tangible things, to strike the quartzite cliffs of Bloody Bald.
And though the pointed cone of the mundane mountain did not alter for anyone save Second-Sighted Dave, all of them heard one sound, clear above the keening.
Horns, softly blowing: the horns of elfland greeting a Faery dawn.
“Wanta stand on my feet, big boy?” David stage-whispered into Aikin’s ear.
Aikin grinned back but shook his head. “I’ve seen enough.”
“Repeat that in a month,” Alec snorted. “Then we’ll know you’re not lying.”
Aikin cocked his head, listening. “The splendor falls,” he murmured, eyes shining.
“On castle walls,” Alec added.
“And snowy summits old in story,” David finished
Tennyson’s line, in a tone that betokened finality. And for a minute more they listened. The keening ended with the last trumpet call. The blackbirds as one watched—and waited.
“So,” David sighed, when the morning light had shifted back to normal, “what’ll it be? Go down the mountain and lay another wild tale on my folks, and get ’
em to take us back to Athens…”
“Or…?” From Liz.
He kissed her.
She pinched his butt.
The enfield stretched and whistled—which segued into a purr as the beast became a cat once more.
Alec patted his grumbling belly. “C’mon, folks, I’m starved.”
“I could always hunt something,” Aikin suggested wickedly. “Got four-and-twenty blackbirds right here!”
“Dream on,” Alec shot back promptly. “But not till we get back to Athens.”
“I’ve had too much death,” David shuddered. “Come on, guys, let’s do some livin’!”
And with that, they marched past the black-winged multitude—and raced morning into the valley.
Epilogue: Treasure Trove
(Jackson County, Georgia—Monday, November 2—evening)
The phone rang six times before David collared it. “Hello?” he ventured, half-afraid it would be a panicked Cammie, as the last call he’d answered had been—when was it? Barely two days ago, though it seemed like half a lifetime.
Instead, it was Uncle Dale. He felt a twinge of nerves when he recognized his kinsman. Dale Sullivan never called to chat.
“How’s it goin’, boy?” the old man asked without preamble.
“Fine, I reckon,” David answered carefully. “How’s things up in the cove?”
“Fine as frog hair,” Dale gave back. “Just thought I’d pass on a couple things you might wanta know.”
David raised an eyebrow at Alec, who was peering in from the hall, cat in hand.
“Like what?”
“Like I had company today.”
“Wanta tell me who?”
“Guess.”
“The Pope—Nuada—hell, I don’t know.”
“John Devlin.”
“Oh!” Then: “What’d he want?”
“Brought me a poem he’d written. Said he should’ve been by a lot sooner, but just wanted to see where David-the-Elder came from. And that it was never too late to make new friends.”
“Ah-ha!”
“Said he’d see you one of these days.”
“O-kay, David drawled.”
A pause. “Something else, too, boy: something kinda strange—nothing to worry about, but…well, I thought you’d wanta know.”
“I’m listenin’.”
Another pause. “Well, that Devlin guy wanted to go see David-the-Elder’s grave, so me and him went over there. And…we found something.”
“What?”
Dale cleared his throat. “It was right at the headstone; couldn’t hardly see it, ’cept Devlin stubbed his toe on it. But…it was a sword.”
David’s heart flip-flopped.
“A…sword?”
“Viking, Devlin thought, or a damned good copy. I’ve got it here waitin’ for you.”
“Yeah,” David laughed, “some things are worth hangin’ on to!”
