Warstalker's Track

by Tom Deitz

  “You are the stranger here,” that voice growled back in what certainly wasn’t English, in spite of the fact that the words made perfect sense. “It is for you to say first.”

  “Names have Power,” Alec called abruptly. “If you need something to call me, you could call me…Mach One.”

  “Hush!” Aife hissed.

  “Mahkwuhn,” the other replied bemusedly. “This means nothing to me.”

  “Nor do Faery names—to me!” Alec countered.

  “We are not in Faerie!”

  “Then where are we?” Aife challenged.

  “You are in Colin’s Land,” that other supplied. “Or you might style it as it is styled by Alberon of Alban: Tir-Gat, the Stolen Country.”

  “Who are you?” Aife repeated. “I come in the name of Lugh Samildinach, High King of the Daoine Sidhe in Tir-Nan-Og.”

  “Who is not my lord!”

  “Enough of this!” Aife spat. “Show yourself.”

  Silence.

  “Show yourself!”

  More silence.

  “By your Name, I call you forth,” Aife shouted. “By my Name, I swear that if you do not reply in ten breaths’ time, I will tear down this tower stone by stone to find you!”

  “Which is not why you are here,” came that other.

  “Perhaps not, but—”

  Before she could finish, one of the dusty, fantastically dressed huntsmen in the tapestry suddenly shook himself and stepped lightly to the ground: grim-faced, blunter of feature, more muscular, and with far redder hair than any Faery male Aikin had ever seen.

  Somewhere, too, in the transition between fabric and floor, the man managed to unsheathe an eerily thin sword. It glittered balefully as he ran a finger along one gleaming edge. “Very well,” he purred with ritual formality. “Since you call me out, Aife of Tir-Arvann, I will give you my name as well. It is Yd.”

  “Yd?” Alec blurted.

  “Yd.” the warrior (for so he appeared, now he’d swept away the bright dagged cloak that gave him the air of a minstrel) affirmed. “I am Alberon’s guardian here,” he added. “That should be sufficient.”

  “And we thank you for it,” Aife acknowledged with strained civility.

  “Alas,” Yd replied sadly, “it is too late for fair words now. For if I am not mistaken, I believe I just heard a challenge.”

  Silence, for ten heartbeats, and Aikin could count each one. Then, distinct in the mirror-dusted air of that shattered tower, the voice of LaWanda Gilmore, from the swamps of Savannah, Georgia, uttering a very audible and precisely pronounced “Damn!”

  Interlude II: Catching Up

  (near Clayton, Georgia—Sunday, June 29—just past noon)

  “Anytime…” John Devlin grumbled into the telephone. He shifted it to his other ear and regarded his yard, which two days ago had been only his yard but now resembled a collision between a used car lot and a war zone. Lord knew he could recognize that last, too: war had taken his hand and left him a prosthesis. It had stolen one career and provided another. It had edited a couple of years from his life he could neither account for nor wanted to. And now he was on its border again, and the trouble was, it was friends—or friends of friends—who were in it, and John Devlin was nothing if not honorable. And since it involved the Worlds, there was no way to abdicate involvement. So far no one had asked more than advice, a little finessing of Powers, and a bolt-hole. But he doubted that would last past nightfall, when the Sons of Ailill might once again come calling.

  At least whatever shit hit the fan would start flying somewhere else, probably Sullivan Cove, if the current power structure in Tir-Nan-Og lived up to their threat and tried to flood the place, and every other where this World underlay the Faery one. In that case—well, this really would become his battle, because this place as well as Sullivan Cove touched Faerie.

  Now, if Scott Gresham would just answer his blessed phone!

  One more ring and he’d chuck it, and check on Dave Sullivan’s dad up in Clayton. He wondered if he was doomed to be party to the deaths of all that clan.

  “’Lo,” a voice grunted abruptly.

  “Scott Gresham?”

  “Yep.”

  “You don’t know me, but my name’s John Devlin, and I’m a…friend of David Sullivan. He wanted me to brief you on some stuff, and find out what I could about how things stand over there.”

  “How do I know you’re for real?”

  “You don’t. But I know what your lady was wearing when she left here a couple of hours ago.”

  Scott hesitated before replying. Not that Devlin blamed him; caution was good, even wise—when you weren’t on the receiving end. “Okay,” Scott said finally. “Shoot.”

  “How ’bout you catch me up first.”

  “Fuck,” Scott grunted. Then: “Okay, okay. I guess the main thing you want is what’s up with Mystic Mountain, right?”

  “If that’s their name.”

  Scott cleared his throat. “Well, they’re antsy as hell ’cause of the rain. They’re antsy and angry ’cause of a couple of recent cases of industrial espionage.”

  “Paint in the computers, huh? I heard about that.”

  “Didn’t hear about sugar in a couple of gas tanks, though, did you? Caddy Seville and brand-new Dodge Ram.”

  “And a fuel leak in a certain generator that accidentally caught a spark and fired itself and the tool shed sittin’ right beside it?”

  “Can’t say I have.”

  “What about a bit of selective tree spiking?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well, let’s just say me and a certain Dale Sullivan have been right busy.”

  “So the bottom line is…?”

  “That they’re behind. That they’re tryin’ to interest the local law, but the local law doesn’t want to be interested, on account of they’re afraid of the Sullivans. That lots of money’s being thrown around to make people interested. That the lake’s still dangerously high but startin’ to go down. That they say they’ll have a new generator in later today and start diggin’ holes on the shoreline then. And yeah, I know it’s Sunday.”

  “Thought a certain person sabotaged the blueprints.”

  “Just the mountain lodge, apparently. The marina was an older design, and they’d already backed it up.”

  “I see.”

  “So…any other suggestions?”

  “Keep your nose clean and lay low. I think things are comin’ to a head.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  Devlin took a deep breath and told him.

  “What about Sullivan’s dad? Heard he wasn’t doin’ too well.”

  “Depends on how you take a stake in the back. It’s a routine fix, just hurts like hell and takes a long time to heal, assuming— Never mind.”

  “What?”

  “Let’s just say I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t something extra involved. Poison—magic—whatever.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  Devlin shifted the phone again and watched Nuada stride by on his latest patrol of his perimeter. And almost laughed at the notion of a fidgety Faery Lord. “Because,” he replied, “Dave’s mom called here just now to tell him she was worried about his dad, ’cause he didn’t seem to be recovering as quick as he should. Apparently his blood’s not clotting.”

  “I see.”

  “Wish I did,” Devlin snorted. “Anyway, gotta go. I’m not much on small talk with strangers. Plus frankly, I don’t trust this line, or yours.”

  “Uh, well, keep me posted.”

  “You got it.”

  And with that, John Devlin hung up the phone. Just as well. It was time to check the wards.

  Chapter XI: Something Fishy

  (Galunlati—high summer)

  “Has he…?” Liz cried desperately, edging as far forward as she dared, to peer down the rocky escarpment over which Lugh had just flung himself. The vapor made it hard to see—Calvin could make out little, and he was standing right beside
her. But at least the pain-crazed Faery had angled left before he’d leapt into the river and thence over the waterfall. Still, it was an awful end (and gut-wrenchingly abrupt on top of it) to one of the quests that had brought them here. And without Lugh, was there really any way to stop the rebels who’d unseated him from setting up their own king? Lugh had to die to fully ratify his successor, right? But wasn’t Lugh lost—or dead—in Galunlati just as useful for that end?

  “He shifted,” Fionchadd announced before Calvin’s despair had truly had a chance to sink in. “I glimpsed him through the vapor and felt the surge of Power.”

  Calvin stared at him. “But how—? Why—?”

  A shrug. “I do not know. But I think he became a fish. A salmon, likely.”

  “A…salmon?” Calvin began. Then froze.

  Where the notion originated, he had no idea, save that one moment he was standing on the cliff gazing down, the next he was poised on the riverbank, right hand closing around the uktena scale he wore on a thong around his neck, his strangely calm mind focused on one thing alone. Scales! Slick…sleek…no legs…tail at the base of his spine…fins…wide, staring eyes…gills…

  And then pain and odd restrictions and a final frantic plea to whoever stood nearest that began with, “Get outta…” but didn’t quite finish “…clothes.”

  Fortunately, Kirkwood grasped his intent, so that by the time the transformation was complete, Calvin was having trouble breathing, and strange, panicked instincts were assaulting his higher mind. Somehow, he was on the ground, half wriggling, half leaping down the bank and impacting water, abruptly all poetry and grace.

  —Until the current snared him, and he was grateful indeed that he was a fish as he began that long, slow fall.

  Longer and longer he fell. Perhaps he’d died in truth and would never reach the continuation of the river at the base of the cataract. Or maybe he’d already hit, but the pool below was bottomless and he’d be swimming down and down forever. And then he did hit the foaming water.

  Disorientation ensued, during which he determined that yeah, color sense was supposed to work like that, and that you breathed through gills that way (and it wasn’t as though he’d never been a fish before, and not that long ago, either), and then he was swimming.

  —And looking for Lugh, and trying to keep firmly in mind that this was not his natural state, though his physical brain was closer to its primal prototype than any he’d dared essay before, so that it was harder than it had ever been to recall that he was human.

  What kind of fish was he, anyway?—as he made his effortless way to the clearer waters downstream. Trout, maybe? Since he’d both eaten and “hunted” them. Not that it mattered. What mattered was locating Lugh and getting him back to someone—most likely Fionchadd—who could return the Faery King to man-shape once again.

  Why had Lugh done it, though? What would revive a Faery Lord so suddenly, then prompt such precipitous action? And where was he? How did fish locate other fish? By smell? By sight? By this screwy sensation filtering in from along both sides that involved what were called lateral lines?

  Or simply this feeling in his brain that might be Power in use nearby—or Faery thought in progress, or something else entirely—that drew him steadily onward and to the left, and which told him, to his great relief, that the one he sought was not as far ahead as he’d feared, and seemed not to be fleeing at all but slowly circling, as though he’d been a fish all his life and was merely taking his morning constitutional.

  Closer, and Lugh was no more than five times his own length ahead, there where the water was clearest, where the sun beat down most steadily, where another of those obscure senses spoke of delicious cold depths where the riverbed spiraled down to darkness indeed. Lugh? he tried to think. Your Majesty? Lugh Samildinach? Lugh the Many-skilled?

  Silence, at first; in the water and his mind alike.

  And then confusion, anger, fear, and something that felt like relief, and then anger again—and challenge. Who profanes my presence? Who questions my will? Who dares approach in my time of pain?

  Calvin didn’t bother to respond, occupied as he was with trying to recall how to do something he’d only managed a few times before, which was to change back to his own form without feeding blood and pain to the scale. For he’d just that moment realized that now he’d found Lugh, he had no way to retrieve him.

  In the absence of other options, he swam forward and down, trying to think Comfort…calm…apology…freedom from pain. Whether he succeeded, he had no idea, but the force of those other thoughts abated, and he finally got close enough to determine that that fine big salmon there was turned to face upstream, mouth agape, gills flapping like silver fans.

  Yet Calvin continued on: down, then up again, so that he nudged the salmon’s belly. It resisted, turned to snap at him, then relented and let itself be eased higher, though it didn’t change its orientation.

  Closer to the surface (What then?), and closer yet, and the water around them was clear as glass, and he felt the sunlight hot on his back as his dorsal fin broke through. Lugh was beside him, neither aiding his efforts nor complicating them, simply letting himself be nudged shoreward, where Calvin might find something sharp enough to summon sufficient pain to regain his own form without the scale.

  But while his gaze sought anxiously for some stick or stone, pain found him from another source entirely.

  One moment he was floating lazily, half drifting, half paddling, with Lugh between him and the shore so as to minimize his chance of escape; the next, pain had stabbed into both sides (in five places, so those sensitive lateral lines supplied)—and he was yanked aloft.

  His first impression, stupidly enough, was how there ought to be noise and wasn’t. His next was that he’d lost Lugh again. But then he caught a burst of panic from that other mind that some sense informed him was close by, and then the fish took over with floppings and thrashings, forcing Calvin’s self deep into the darkness that surrounded that ascendant primal brain. Fight/flight. It shrieked. Caught. Fly-thing. Claws. Beat. Eat. No-spawn. High. Fall. Pain. Claws. Bird Beak. Claws. Bird… Bird— Bird. No, some kind of bird. Peregrine? Hawk? Eagle? No, osprey. No, erne: sea-eagle!

  Sea eagle! Came another thought, neither his nor Lugh’s, but soothing, comforting, as he’d sought to comfort Lugh.

  Suddenly he was mostly Calvin again, and aware that he’d been snatched from the water by some kind of raptor, and that Lugh was with him, and that the bird might be more than a bird, but that wasn’t to be expected (so said the fish), and maybe he ought to try to escape again anyway, just in case.

  In any event, the decision might soon be taken from him, for the erne was clearly not equipped to lug two substantial fish and fly at the same time, and seemed to be having trouble gaining much altitude at all. The only comfort was that they were heading back toward the cliff and the waterfall, which was also toward his friends.

  Calvin’s heart skipped a beat. This was no safe situation, and Lugh likewise seemed to divine the same as the erne winged closer to a narrow ledge set back from the sheerer slope at the top, most likely to deposit them, then shift back to some more useful form, or perhaps even change them back.

  But no; it was simply flying onward, wingbeats faltering more with every flap.

  Lower, and it might not make the ledge at all, or might drop them (and hadn’t he just felt one of those claws slip, where they jabbed into his side?).

  Lower again, but closer to the ledge. And then another shape was arrowing out of the nearby shadows, faster than anything animate had right to be: dashing, leaping, pouncing—slamming the erne from the air. Claws raked his sides, and he was flung free.

  Panic found him; the fish reasserted; and when he was himself once more, he’d thumped down on hard rocks, with something much larger and darker than the eagle looming over him. Something with green eyes and a mouth full of sharp teeth at the end of a snarling feline muzzle.

  Cougar, something supplied. And
the fish came back.

  He might just let it drive for a while. After all, if he was going to be eaten alive, it would be better experienced at maximum mental remove.

  Yet the jaws that gripped him were lifting, not chowing down, and all at once he was being carried in long, fluid lopes up the near-vertical face of the cliff. It jolted, but not as much as he would’ve expected, though it was still damned disconcerting. And maybe there was enough pain now, if he concentrated.

  Forgetting everything else, he reached within, to that place where he remembered Calvin. Remembered having arms and legs, fingers and toes, all of which were deft and strong and nimble; remembered having smooth bronze skin, thick black hair, and clear-cut brows; strong cheekbones and jaw, and a nose too short for any proper Indian, with a tattoo on his right buttock that had all but faded away from so many prior shiftings, and with nothing anywhere else that wasn’t Calvin-as-designed.

  Heat washed him and awakened hope, but then he heard—in his mind alone but heard nevertheless—his companion in adversity start to panic. And as that panic struck him, his own awakened, and for a long dark moment, fear consumed him.

  Fear! Fear! Fear! Fear! Fear!

  He was aware of being carried, of raw rocks close beneath him, of his tail slapping them painfully, and of increasing darkness in his mind as his gills dried, making it harder and harder to breathe.

  He had just steeled himself for one final go at regaining his own shape when that wild upward surge gave way to a loping dash along smooth, dark, damp stone, with water splattering in from one side. And then a closer, more comforting darkness enclosed him entirely: stone passages and an all-encompassing unheard roar that he connected with the waterfall and another, more intense memory from back when he’d been Calvin. And then the jaws released him and he fell splash into a shallow, star-shaped pool. For a moment he gave the fish rein again and gloried in being wet all over and able to breathe.

  A splash beside him was Lugh. A flood of relief like unto his own surged out to brush his mind, which helped keep his human aspect awake. And now he worked at it, he saw that they were enclosed by a vast rocky chamber that was almost certainly inside the cliffs behind the waterfall, that a matched set of sleek black cougars sat primly on the sandy shore just out of reach, and that a taller shape he recognized as truly human was striding up between the cats and reaching down to swish something leafy through the water while murmuring words he had no way of hearing.