by Tom Deitz
“Nuada tried to warn him,” Fionchadd noted.
“Nuada,” David echoed. “What about him?”
“He is the reason I am here,” Elyyoth replied. “I was among those guarding Lugh’s Throne Room, and I alone survived that attack—though it shames me—by playing dead. As soon as I could, however, I hastened to Lugh’s chambers. I could hear the commotion within but could not reach him. Fortunately, most of the mortals had been abandoned by then, and wandered about dazed and aimless. Their traitor masters had apparently left them with some final orders to defend Lugh’s quarters, and so they attacked me—with their bare hands, their guns apparently having few…charges. Nevertheless, I was forced to fight them—and no few of the Sons who heard the commotion and came at me with swords. And then Nuada was with me, and together he and I escaped. Along the way, we chanced upon one of the wounded Sons hiding among Lugh’s halls and captured him. Nuada read his thoughts and there learned what I have told you. That, and their plans for Lugh: to sacrifice him on the feast of the Sun and set up a new king then—one who will brook no traffic at all with mortal kind. Nuada sent me here to warn you.”
“That they’ll flood the Cove regardless,” David growled. “Sons of bitches.”
Liz scowled thoughtfully. “So where’s Nuada now?”
“Rallying those who would aid in Lugh’s restoration, I imagine,” Elyyoth replied. “Alas, many were away from court, and disaffection is more widespread than Lugh thinks, wily though he is. It may take a while.”
“A while we may not have,” David sighed.
“Yeah, well, I don’t know if this is an omen or not,” Calvin observed ominously. “But it’s just stopped raining.”
Interlude I: Travelers’ Tales
I
(Erenn—high summer)
Finvarra mac Bobh’s summer seat, in what mortal men called New Grange, was not notably warmer than his winter halls beneath the Hill of Knockma, west in County Galway. Certainly it held a chill this season that seemed to shadow him as he stalked restlessly along the endless corridors, wondering vaguely whether his brother monarch Lugh did not have the right of it: to build a palace level upon level, with towers, stairs, and turrets, in lieu of this nigh-onto-endless sprawl.
His robe—gray velvet edged with matching fur—swished along the polished agate floor behind him, and swished again as he turned a corner and entered his favorite place in all that enormous maze. The Hall of Time, he had named it. It was the newest room in the palace; indeed, it was incomplete at the far end, which represented now, for now was always ongoing.
This end, however—He took a step, and his pointed velvet shoe pressed down on an explosion of jewels that represented what in the Lands of Men was called the Big Bang. And as he trod the length of that hall, history passed beneath him: the history of life in the Lands of Men, at least, which was also that of life in Faerie. For Faerie had no history, not from the beginning like this. No one knew whence the stuff of which it was wrought had come, before the Tracks had claimed it (and where had they come from? made or natural?), no more than anyone knew how the Worlds had grown up around those nodes of Power, mass, and force—with the subtle great Powers that supported the Lands of Men reaching through to hold things steady here.
Windows gaped by on the left: high square panes set in slanted stone walls an arm’s-length thick at their bases, the stone unfinished to better draw the gaze to the mosaic miracle underfoot. Beasts battled there now: dragons, of a kind (and surely these behemoths had begot dragons when they chanced into Faerie and mated with other creatures there in a way that was impossible in the Mortal World); and a few dozen strides farther on, a ball of flame crashed down from the sky in a sparkling explosion of yellow gold and crimson jewels, and when life resumed the dragons were no more and the beasts were furred. He wore the pelt of one now, as trim on his robe: a great cat with foot-long teeth that still dwelt in Erenn.
Yes, that floor was truly a wonder, and Finvarra marveled anew at it (not the least because it was mortal work; the Sidhe could not create such things and had long since left off trying). But a larger part of Finvarra’s thought was turned to puzzling out what in all the nested Worlds had made him so anxious this morning. It was not the Tracks, whose unexplained and unpredictable resonances sometimes awoke him in the night, demanding he use his own Power. Nor was it the strange pull of the Seas Between, which had been oddly calm this season, though more Holes gaped among them than ever. The Land itself, then? Was the Land troubled? Surely not, for Erenn overlapped the Lands of Men at an earlier time than Lugh’s Tir-Nan-Og overlay the continent to the west, and the things men wrought there of metal were not yet a problem here; though soon enough, as men numbered time, his own realm would find iron burning through. For now, however, the iron problem—and with it, the mortal situation—was Lugh’s dilemma. Himself—best to watch, wait, and remember.
He had just recalled a certain mortal wench he had borrowed from a Leinster farm, and was already turning his steps that way, when a darkness flickered into the edge of his vision. He froze at that, blinking, off-guard, hand flashing for the dagger that always hung at his hip. Yet by the time he had found its hilt, eyes, mind, and senses subtle and obscure had identified the flicker as a vast raven gliding with uncanny ease just beneath the massive square stone beams that supported the roof a bare three times his height above his head.
And not merely a raven; one of those ravens, lately come across the Seas Between from Tir-Nan-Og.
The raven circled once before alighting—precisely in the center of the pavement, which perhaps not accidentally put it atop a rendering of an extinct flightless bird mortal men called a moa, executed in jet, black jade, onyx, and rutilated quartz.
“Hail, Messenger,” Finvarra cried when the fowl had folded its wings and cocked a wary eye toward him. It was ritual politeness; one addressed such messengers as though they were their masters themselves—for sometimes they were. Lugh had been known to shapeshift, Ailill had done it constantly, and Nuada was a reluctant master. “Are you someone I ought to know?” Finvarra continued amiably.
“Raven,” croaked the raven, preening itself.
“Who is your master?”
“No one—now!” the raven replied promptly.
Finvarra took a step back. “No one?”
“No one.”
“Not the Morrigu?”
“Gone and not returned.”
“Not Nuada?”
“Vanished away.”
“Nor…High King Lugh?”
“King no longer—soon.”
“Then who sent you?”
“When the ravens leave the White Tower in London Town in the Lands of Men, it is said that land will fall.”
“And when they leave the twelve-towered palace of Lugh Samildinach?”
“They say that Land will fall, too. Or perhaps it has already.”
Finvarra took a deep breath, feeling an odd flux of emotions ranging from fear through distrust to a vague, hopeful elation. “Lugh is Ard Rhi no longer? Then who rules Tir-Nan-Og?”
“No one,” said the raven—and flew out the nearest window.
“No one,” Finvarra echoed, staring back down the long trod of the Hall of Time—which might as easily be called the Hall of Extinction.
“No one reigns in Tir-Nan-Og,” he mused again a short while later as he gazed with keen interest at the vast fleet anchored in his harbor.
II
(Annwyn—high summer)
It was hard to tell the departing ravens from the gloom that gathered in the sky. Black they were—all twelve, save the single white one that winged most clearly west. But black also were the clouds that hung above Annwyn’s rocky coast: black as boiling pitch, as the tumbling stones in a dragon’s craw, as kraken ink boiling in wine and brackish water.
But red showed there, too, reflected from foundry fires up and down the coast, for every forge in Annwyn was aflame. War, the word was—and Arawn it was who had proclaimed it. A
nd so every smith and fletcher, bowman and weapon-wright in all his vast, dim land worked day and night, forging bronze and copper and those esoteric new metals whose secrets came from the Lands of Men into spears and swords, daggers, axes, and arrowheads. Shields too they crafted, each with its own device, the colors born of the very metal; and armor they likewise made; the fine mail that moved like a second skin upon the body and held no weight at all but would stop anything that did not carry with its substance more than a hint of wizardry.
Smiths were not the only ones occupied, however. Every magus, wizard, and sorcerer to be found was at work as well, laying spells of direction on those weapons as they were wrought, and spells of protection on shields and armor as soon as they were done. Annwyn might be poor and underpopulated when compared to the lush, fecund splendor of Lugh’s bright Tir-Nan-Og, but Annwyn still claimed mighty wizards, and its bare, shattered rock and tumbled mountains yielded up far more ore than Lugh’s land, which was fit mostly to supply gaudy gems, strange beasts, and lavish vegetation.
Arawn sighed as he watched those birds depart. Many fled where one had entered, bearing a certain message. Of a throne emptied but not yet filled, of the mighty of an entire kingdom fled, of a rich realm ripe for picking. Those were temptations indeed, and Arawn had not been slow to heed them. Yet for a good while longer he lingered on the high rocky headland where he had released those ravens, each with a particular message for a particular other ear, which would be repeated in precisely his own words and tones. He stood until the last black tail had faded utterly, vanished both to eyes and mind—and yet he waited, rust-red hair blowing wild around his shoulders, the wayward locks at the end merging with the dags on his cloak like dried blood among torn and rattled feathers.
The messages were gone. A throne stood empty. In a hidden cove two leagues to the south an immense armada waited.
Arawn wondered if he was ready. A throne usurped was one thing, a throne vacant quite another. And if Lugh fell (and it was time someone fell in Faerie; affairs had been as they were millennia too long to be entertaining), it would be wise to have the goodwill of Tir-Nan-Og’s new master (and his measure as well—assuming that master was not Arawn himself). And if Lugh had not fallen or regained his Power (which there was more than a little reason to expect), why then the forces a fellow monarch could muster to shore up a shaky throne might be much appreciated.
No matter how affairs resolved, Arawn would profit: a new alliance, a new throne, or a new debt. Each had possibilities.
Another sigh, as he turned from the view of the dark, frothy sea and toward the inner land. Two things alone gave him pause.
One was his seer—Taliesyn—who claimed to see nothing at all ahead but a dense knot of change he could neither decipher nor comprehend.
The other was the ship of Powersmith make that had lately approached his coast, flying the sign of Fionchadd mac Ailill, which had been attacked by those whom Arawn chose to regard (with careful toleration) as refugees from Tir-Nan-Og (Lugh would have styled them rebels), and retreated—straight into a Hole in the Seas Between.
He shuddered at that. Ships did not enter Holes freely. Not even ships built by the Powersmiths. Not even ships commanded by high-minded, dare-anything fools like Fionchadd. There had been mortals on that ship, too, which was troubling. Then again, Fionchadd liked mortals, he had heard. But what could have brought them here? Desire for an audience with his own splendid self? Unlikely. But Fionchadd had Powersmith kin, and to reach them, one must pass through Annwyn. That the boy had turned tail and fled rather than proclaim his errand did not bode well. That he had fearlessly entered a Hole boded even worse. (He had given out that Fionchadd had been slain and his mortal crew had entered the Hole in confusion, but he and two others knew that was a lie.)
There had been a taint of Power riding that boat as well—mortal Power, and of more than one derivation, and mortals with Power was not a concept Arawn was eager to embrace or, really, understand.
But, he told himself again, he truly was ready. His only fear now was that he might not be the only one prepared.
Chapter II: Muster
(Sullivan Cove, Georgia—Friday, June 27—mid-morning)
The high, soft peals of Myra Buchanan’s laughter tumbled around Big Billy Sullivan’s den like a toy ball that had escaped its master and gone exploring on its own. It bounced off cheap paneling and expensive leather furniture (the funding for which had not come from this World), and would’ve been louder yet had it not been absorbed by thick brown shag carpeting and a room full of refugees lately come from Uncle Dale’s house, which had simply become too crowded.
David looked up from the yellow legal pad on which he’d been scribbling notes on an hour’s worth of preposterous revelations, and glared at her. “What’s funny?”
She stifled another giggle into a smirk, then peered absently at the bottle of Miller beer Big Billy had provided to calm all those frazzled nerves.
“What?”
“I was just thinking,” Myra murmured, “how screwy all this is. I mean, here we sit, for all practical purposes a Faery government in exile—if you can call three people who barely knew each other a government. But what’s funny is that Tir-Nan-Og is so strange and perilous and…fucking aloof, and yet here’s this bunch of college kids, flaky artists, and rural farmer types trying to save two Worlds, one of which would shaft us if it could. We’re like George Washington trying to restore King George because he’s the devil we know.”
“You noticed that, too?” Calvin chuckled, combing his still-damp hair.
“Noticed what?” Alec wondered, padding barefoot and shirtless from the adjoining kitchen. His hair was even wetter than Calvin’s, legacy of the hot shower he’d been latest of that company to claim. That pissed David, too, though he tried not to let it. War was impending, after all, against which clean hair and fresh clothes paled out of consequence, screw what Liz had whispered in his ear about people being more cooperative and thinking more clearly when they were warm, well fed, and dry. David had acquiesced to her—but vowed to be last to bathe.
“So…is there a plan?” Alec asked more loudly, as he slid down beside Aife. She caught his hand as he hesitated, then looked around again.
David ruffled his notes. “Actually, we’ve just come to that.”
Liz looked up from a notebook of her own. “The way I figure, we’ve got three problems. First: where, exactly, is Lugh, and if nobody knows, how do we find out? Second: how do we poor mortals spring somebody who’s bound to be guarded to the hilt, both with people and magic from someplace strange enough to cut him off from his Power? And third: assuming we solve the first two, how do we get in and out?”
Silence filled the room, broken only by breathing, the rustle and creak of clothing against leather, and the occasional cough. And by Little Billy munching Frosted Flakes in the corner, before David’s own mother, a weary/wary-looking JoAnne Sullivan, shushed him. She hated this, David knew. So did Big Billy. So, if he had his head on straight, did the kid. This was no place for this kind of conference, but the cabin was just too cramped and uncomfortable. That moving it here meant involving his folks—well, he supposed it was time for that.
“I know where he is,” Aife announced abruptly, with absolute conviction.
David lifted an inquiring brow. “Where?”
“I thought I knew earlier, but so much was occurring then that the memory fled. Indeed, it was a memory I did not know I possessed, but with the breaking of Lugh’s spell, others seem to have broken as well.”
David tapped his pencil against his pad…loudly.
Aife looked him straight in the eye as though daring him to command her to haste; some things rarely changed with Faery folk. “The Iron Dungeon.”
David scowled. “I’ve heard of an Iron Road. It’s a secret route into the bowels of the palace Lugh had built to guard his treasure. There’s also an Iron Stair.”
“Neither of which lie precisely in Tir-Nan-Og, else the
iron would have eaten through,” Aife continued coldly. “But I speak of the dungeon Lugh’s queen had built without his knowledge to house a rival.”
David started at that. “Lugh’s…queen?”
Aife regarded him levelly. “Her name was Ainu. The Tracks sang to her one day and she…left. No one knows where she now resides—if she still lives. As I said, even Lugh does not know of the Iron Dungeon, but certain of Ainu’s women do—among them, my mother. She confided that knowledge to me, and I, in my foolishness, relayed that secret to the Sons of Ailill when I allied myself with their number.”
“I knew it!” Liz snapped. “You had to be one of them!”
Aife shrugged, though her eyes flashed dangerously. “That was when I thought Ailill hung the moon, kindled the stars, and enflamed the sun in the sky. Before I knew what true love was,” she added, clutching Alec’s hand tighter. “I have learned better since, else I would not be here now.”
David cleared his throat. “Okay, fine. But how can we be certain that Lugh’s in this Iron Dungeon? I doubt we’re gonna get a second chance to spring him.”
Aife’s jaw tightened. “When I was among the Sons, even then they discussed Lugh’s dethronement. That was the plan they laid out at that time. From what Elyyoth said, it must still be their intent, or near it, for their plot involved looking where Lugh did not: to mortal men and iron. Their thinking would therefore already have been of iron.” She paused for a sip of beer, wincing at the taste. “Too, something must block Lugh’s Power, or the spell that held me would not have failed, though in truth it did not slip away all at once. Few things could block such Power, but a shell of iron might, which could only be the Iron Dungeon.”
“Okay,” Liz inserted cautiously. “Assuming Lugh is prisoner in this Iron Dungeon—I presume you know where it is?”
“Close enough. I know which Track it lies upon—leads to it, rather.”
