Sunshaker's War

by Tom Deitz

  “I…I felt him die…I was there, in his head—and I felt him die.”

  She gasped softly, then paused. “You can’t worry about that, David, he’ll be reborn, they all will. The Sidhe can’t die.”

  “No, but they can feel pain, just like us. They claim they’re used to it; but how can you get used to havin’ your throat slashed or your head cut off? And if you did, what would it do to you? I liked Froech. He was sort of like me: wild and impetuous, even if he was a thousand years old. But will he like me now? I caused this mess, in the last analysis, so will any of the Sidhe like me? I mean crap, girl, any way I try to reason it out I come to the bottom and find me being nosy on a summer night. Am I supposed to assume the Sidhe won’t make the same conclusions?”

  “It wasn’t just you, though,” Liz said. “The Morrigu had a hand in it too, remember? She’s the one who saw you assume the Second Sight position, the one who sensed the Power of the Sidhe in you from some ancestor of yours she’d dallied with, the one who woke the Sight in you. You only had the desire and the potential. No, if it’s anyone’s fault, it’s hers.”

  “I hope she’s happy, then. Morrigu, they call her: great queen. But queen of what? Of the dead? She oughta be in her element now!”

  “I thought you said her thing was combat. Lawful combat—enforcing the rules, and all.”

  “Yeah, but even if I blame it on her, that doesn’t change the situation.”

  “Which is?”

  “Shoot fire, just look around you! Weather gone wild, contention in the air, war in another World causing the equivalent in this! You think I like havin’ to live with that, knowin’ it’s all my fault?”

  “But it’s not your fault!”

  “Yes it is! The only question is: what am I gonna do?”

  “I…I don’t know.”

  “And it’s gonna get worse, too. As Midsummer’s Day approaches, it’ll just get worse. Mark my words.”

  “Maybe you should leave town for a while.”

  “Yeah, sure—and let all hell break loose while I’m gone? What about that? Good God, girl, I could come home and find my folks with their throats cut. Pa’s got that much violence in him, so has Ma.”

  “So then…”

  “I think it’s time I started acting instead of just bitchin’.”

  “Okay, then; I’ll turn it around: what are you gonna do?”

  “Well, for one thing, I’m gonna go see Alec and make him use the ulunsuti so I can maybe find out what’s goin’ on in Faerie. I’m gonna talk to Uncle Dale, probably; and I’m gonna try to get hold of Calvin.”

  “Okay, then,” Liz said. “See, things are better already; you’ve got a battle plan.”

  “Yeah,” David sighed. “But how do you stop a war?”

  “One man at a time, and one side. You remove the cause.”

  “If we can even find the cause. Sometimes I get the feeling the Sidhe are doin’ this just for giggles.”

  “Maybe so.”

  “Guess I’d better get in now, though. Folks’ll be out here next.”

  Liz nodded, and they stood. For a long moment they remained there on the porch, close together. David enfolded her in his arms and bent his head into her neck, stifling a sob.

  When they parted at the base of the stairs, he saw that her eyes, too, were shiny.

  Back in the attic a short while later, he lay down naked atop the covers, then shivered and climbed underneath, hugging his pillow close like the teddy bear he had abandoned years ago. Never in his life had he felt so alone.

  Chapter VIII: Universal Secrets

  (Galunlati—summer)

  Though Calvin had spent a considerable amount of time in Galunlati during the previous nine months, he had visited the place Uki led him to only for very special functions—certain prayers and meditations, rituals such as that which empowered the uktena scales to teleport, the passing on of particular bits of lore. To reach it, they walked for perhaps half an hour northwest from Uki’s home in the caverns above the gorge Hyuntikwalayi. During that journey, by some unspoken agreement, they did not converse, and Calvin found himself becoming keenly aware of his environment. The trees grew closer together here than any other place he had seen, and eventually he noticed that the oaks and scattered dogwoods were gradually being replaced by cedars and laurel—plants of vigilance. More than once he felt the hair rise up on the back of his neck. The light slowly shifted in color as well until it bore a distinct greenish tinge that in no wise lessened the almost-blinding glare. Nor had the heat abated, though they walked in a semblance of shade. If anything, it had become even more stifling in the windless spaces of the woods. He could see very little ahead, for the tall shaman’s wide, white shoulders filled most of the trail.

  Abruptly Uki stepped aside and ushered Calvin into a circular clearing perhaps thirty yards across, completely covered with hard white sand: his Power Wheel. The light was nearly unbearable, but by squinting Calvin was able to reacquaint himself with its particulars.

  The perimeter was faced with a high wall of dark laurel beyond which cedars glowered. But what caught Calvin’s attention every time he came here was that each of the cardinal points was marked by a lightning-struck tree, which were very strong medicine indeed. That to the north was blue, the east red, the west black, and the one to the south, from which direction they had entered, white. He had been unable to copy them when he’d made his own amateurish duplicate, and had been forced to substitute wood from a single tree painted appropriately.

  A final quick survey showed him something he had copied, though: The sand was not actually pure white, but quartered by yard-wide strips of darker gravel leading from each tree to the center and girding the clearing as well, so that the configuration was that of a circle divided by a cross. A magic sign: sigil of the Four Councils Sent From Above, and also of the World. And well he should know that, he thought wryly, for in those days before he truly appreciated its significance, he had gotten that same symbol tattooed on his bottom.

  He knew better now, of course. Someday he would have it removed.

  Uki seated himself at the point where the southern arm joined the others and motioned for Calvin to face him on its northern twin.

  “Now,” the shaman said, when Calvin had positioned himself, “now we may talk freely. I imagine you have many questions.”

  “Uh, yeah,” Calvin replied uneasily, finding it difficult to sit still on the hot sand. “What’s goin’ on with the sun?”

  “You have gazed upon it,” Uki replied. “Look again and tell me how it seems to you.”

  Calvin lifted an eyebrow dubiously, then dared a tentative skyward glance. Was Uki crazy? You didn’t gaze straight at the sun and keep your sight, at least not for more than the instant he had risked before.

  “It will not harm you here! Now look!”

  Calvin swallowed, took a deep breath, and stared straight at the solar disc, startled to realize that he really could gaze full on it without discomfort. In fact, he had never seen it so clearly; it was almost like peering through a telescope. It blazed at the zenith, red and furious, and Calvin was certain he could actually make out the sunspots that pockmarked its surface, the solar prominences that rose and fell upon it. He held his breath, caught up in wonder. But something really was wrong—the great star was pulsing, quivering a little, flinging off mass with wild abandon, and if he tried very hard, he thought he could feel the heat increase with each flare.

  “It’s…moving,” he whispered finally. “And it’s awful bright.”

  “Shaking,” Uki affirmed, nodding.

  “And let me guess; this isn’t normal; leastwise it sure wouldn’t be back home.”

  Uki nodded again. “Yes, there is a wrongness—a great wrongness, and it troubles all of us here. I have met with the Chiefs of the three other Quarters, and none of us have found answers.”

  “No ideas? That’s hard to believe.”

  “None to speak of,” Uki replied calmly. “But perha
ps I should relate the whole tale. To begin, the last time you were here nothing was wrong; Galunlati was as it should be. The seasons came and went in their proper times, and Nunda Igeyi was neither too bright nor too dim. The rain came when I called, and the winds answered my need, and all was well. But six hands of days ago, Nunda Igeyi began to grow hot. The increase was slight at first, but quickly became greater, so that many of the plants began to wilt, and it sometimes took all my effort to bring the rain while at other times I had to strain to keep it away, for it seemed to come from nowhere, and with great violence. Finally we saw changes in Nunda Igeyi itself, and then we recalled with fear how when this Land was made Nunda Igeyi was too close and had to be moved nine times before Galunlati grew cool enough for anything to live.”

  “Right,” Calvin said. “But we’ve talked about this, about my lady’s idea that the sun’s probably the same for all the Worlds, or at least how the suns of all the Worlds hereabout are probably interrelated, kinda like shadows of each other, and how in our World the earth moves, not the sun. So it was probably Galunlati that was moved then. I know over on our side small differences in the tilt of a planet can make a major difference in its weather.”

  The discussion that followed was one of the strangest Calvin had ever had. He had explained something of conventional cosmology to Uki before, and the shaman more or less understood it, though he had trouble with the terminology, which did not translate too well. The gist of it was that Calvin’s World was the primary World, or at least the most complete one, and its sun was therefore the primary sun—but that there were others, visible in adjoining Worlds like Galunlati or Faerie—suns which probably occupied the same part of space/time occasionally, but not always, rather like a multiple star with the secondaries in other Worlds—except that they occasionally all collapsed back together and occupied the same space but in different dimensions. Sol’s gravity was strongest, though, and its solar system was complete with fully realized planets.

  But Sandy had theorized more, had decided that gravity might not be confined to one’s own universe, but might pass through what Dave called the World Walls and influence other Worlds as well. Thus, while Earth was round, the Worlds that clustered about it did not have to be, as long as Earth remained to anchor them. It was rather like bits of wet paper dropped upon a globe: they held their own shape and substance, but depended on the globe to hold them and give them strength. Certainly Galunlati was not complete, at least not in the sense Earth was—this Uki had told him. There were places where one could literally walk to the edge and find nothing beyond, though Uki thought the Land as a whole was slowly growing, which also seemed logical to Calvin, if Galunlati was still drawing mass to itself, as all incomplete Worlds probably did.

  The part that was hardest to get across though, was the theory Sandy had come up with to explain Straight Tracks. Basically, her thinking was that a large mass like the sun produced gravity “waves” which inevitably encountered the gravity produced by other heavenly bodies as well—and by extension, heavenly bodies in other Worlds. Those interfaces made the waves focus into strips like the “lines” where soap bubbles joined together, and these were the Tracks—essentially accretions of concentrated gravity. Where a bunch of Tracks intersected, mass began to accumulate and eventually formed Worlds—but they still needed the gravity of a large body—like the Earth—to keep them together, otherwise they might start to decay.

  “So Galunlati actually depends on your Land for survival? I do not like this,” Uki mused thoughtfully when their discussion had finally wound down. “Yet I think such a thing could be. It would explain much about the differences between the Lands as I perceive them.”

  “But not the problem with the sun, I gather.”

  The lines in Uki’s brow grew even deeper. “Unless something is changing the amount of this…gravity Nunda Igeyi produces, and that change is tugging Galunlati back and forth. We are smaller than your Land, after all, while Nunda Igeyi is doubtless the same as your own.”

  “But what about the pull of our World?” Calvin inserted. “Seems like it would attract Galunlati more than the sun—either sun.”

  “Hmmm, yes, an interesting notion: Galunlati caught between the pull of two Lands. The problem is how to stop it, for if what you say is true, Galunlati may soon cease to exist. It may burn up—that is what we feared. But if I understand this gravity right, Galunlati could be torn apart as well.”

  “Jesus,” Calvin whispered slowly.

  “What we must do,” Uki said, “is to find out what is causing Nunda Igeyi to shake and how to stop it. First, though, there is something I must show you.”

  Calvin watched silently as Uki removed a pouch from his beaded belt and drew out an earthen jar from which he shook a transparent crystal about the size of his closed fist. A single line of red ran through it from one side to the other, like the septum of a papaya. Calvin recognized it immediately as an ulunsuti. He’d worked with this one once or twice before, usually to help Uki check on the weather in the more distant parts of Wahala, the Quarter that was effectively his kingdom. It had other uses as well, but Calvin had mostly heard of them, not been witness. This should be interesting.

  Uki placed the ulunsuti between them on the sand, the wide end exactly centering the Power Wheel. Though Calvin knew what was supposed to happen next, he swallowed nervously.

  “Fear is to be overcome, not denied,” Uki told him. “Were you not fearful, you would not truly be a man.”

  Calvin nodded and stretched out his arm. Uki took it gently, and Calvin tried to watch without flinching as the shaman drew blood from his palm with an obsidian knife, before handing the blade to him to reciprocate on Uki. Eyes locked with each other’s, they lowered their bloody hands to the talisman.

  Light flared there, but it was cool light, though Calvin could feel warmth flowing out of the crystal, linking them in some uncanny way.

  “Now go into trance,” Uki whispered. “When you are ready, gaze at the ulunsuti and follow where I lead.”

  “Right,” Calvin replied softly, and closed his eyes, focusing only on his breathing, letting each breath go longer and deeper, inhaling through his mouth and exhaling more slowly through his nose. He felt himself start to go under, felt his eyes sliding back in his head, and with great effort opened them again.

  The blazing crystal filled the world, but very quickly his vision narrowed to the line of red at its center. And then he was falling into it, further and further, only distantly aware of the touch of Uki’s mind.

  Suddenly he was somewhere else. It was dark at first, but then the darkness was lit by countless hazy spheres—one of which swam nearer, and he saw that it was itself made up of a seeming infinity of glowing, shifting strands. He stared at it and became aware that it was twinned—no triplicated—no, that there was a whole series of spheres and half-spheres and fragmentary spheres, some of them superimposed upon each other, others overlapping, others standing alone at a little distance, each made of filaments of a different color but connected to those of all the others as well. And then he looked beyond the spheres and saw straight lines of light flowing out from the spheres to make a vast webwork like a three dimensional fiber-optic spiderweb a-glimmer in the black. At places those lines crossed, and made brighter spots, and sometimes they merged with those spun from several spheres and made very bright spots indeed. One of those intrigued him, and he willed himself closer, saw that it was also a sphere of white, but that threads of red flowed into it from one of the other spheres, so that the white sphere had a splotch of red on one side, and then he saw lines of gold coming in from another of the overlapping spheres, and saw that they joined into several splotches. He understood—he thought.

  And with that realization, he was back in the Power Wheel.

  “God Almighty,” he gasped.

  “You have seen what few men have,” Uki told him. “You have seen the pattern of the Lands.”

  “And the white’s ours, right? And the r
ed’s, maybe Galunlati, so the gold must be…”

  “What you call Faerie. But now enter the ulunsuti once more, for I would show you another marvel.”

  Calvin swallowed and slipped back into trance. This time Uki took him close to what he supposed was the sun of Galunlati, though he could sense the greater strength of the nearby earthly sun as well. But now Uki brought him near one of the strands of red that reached from that sun to Galunlati, and Calvin saw that it did not run straight, but kept bowing and shifting out of true, rather like the wavelengths in a string. They swept toward the sun again, and then were inside it, and Calvin could see a thousand tiny filaments reaching from a golden sphere there to shake the red. Uki brought him nearer yet, then carried him along a golden strand back to the sphere that was the earth, until suddenly they could go no further.

  Again Calvin returned to himself. He stared at Uki curiously, too stunned to speak.

  “I have shown you as much as I can,” Uki said. “Something disturbs Nunda Igeyi—the red threads you saw; yet the disturbance does not come from our Land or from your Land. It comes from that place that lies on the other side of your Land from this. What I would have you do is find out what is causing it.”

  “How?” Calvin wondered. “Why can’t you find out here?”

  “Because though the ulunsuti can show us the pattern of the Lands, it can only look into those, like yours, that lie beside it, which Faerie does not. I therefore ask that you use the ulunsuti I gave to your friend Alec McLean to spy into the Lands that I cannot reach and see if the source of this disturbance can be found there.”

  “Hold—” Calvin cried, looking down and shaking his head. “This is too much, I’ve gotta think.”

  “Think then,” Uki told him, “but do not think long, for the fate of three Lands may depend on your finding out what is shaking Nunda Igeyi.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Calvin groaned. “It’s just—just a lot to have to swallow all at once. But I’ll see what I can do. And now I think of it, I bet this has something to do with the weather in my World as well.”