Darkthunder's Way (42 page)

“But
how
?” David choked, his voice shaking as he tried to regain control and fight back his own sudden tears. “She didn’t have any trouble with you telling me—or the whole mess of us just a minute ago! For that matter, what difference does it make if she prevents you? I’m my own man. What I say is on my conscience.”

“No,” Alec sobbed. “You don’t understand; she’ll kill me if you do. She’ll blow up my head, I can feel it.” He clutched his temples.

“But wouldn’t that mean she’s around here somewhere?” Liz wondered.

“Maybe,” David said. “Or maybe she’d left some kind of really weird safeguards that just kicked in again—who knows. Shoot, maybe the ulunsuti wore off, or something. But this is a real mess. I mean, I…I can’t tell them
anything
now, not with Alec’s life at stake. Besides, I doubt the name she gave him’s even the right one.”

“Prob’ly not,” Dale agreed. “But they might be able to figger out something from it.”

“They oughta’ve been able to read our minds out there on the porch too, but evidently didn’t.”

“They can’t read through strong emotions,” Calvin said unexpectedly. “Least that’s what Finny told me on our little jaunt. And they have to be close to you, or touching you, unless they’re really strong themselves. Either that, or have some other hold on you, like Alec told us Eva’s got on him.

“So what do we do?”

“I’ve heard that question before,” David sighed. “I reckon I’d better talk to ’em some more.”

A moment later he was back on the porch.

Though he had braced himself for it this time, the wind still startled him with its ever-rising fury, and there was now a hint of hard, stinging moisture in the frigid gusts.

“Have you come to deliver the traitor?” the captain asked casually, black-gloved hands draped across his pommel.

David grimaced and shook his head. “I…I can’t. And if I tell you what you want to know, it might kill him. Apparently…whoever it was left a pile of safeguards on his memory. If he talks, or if…if
I
talk, he’ll die. And if that happens, you’ll never find out.”

“We will find out,” the man said flatly, “if we have to search every mind in Faery.”

David glared at him. “So why bother Alec, then?”

“It was the simple way, so the Ard Rhi thought.”

“Well, I guess he was wrong then.”

The man glanced around suspiciously. “Perhaps he was.”

“Then why don’t you leave him alone, since you have other options? Why don’t y’all just go away?”

“Because we have no choice! Our king was in a rage when he dispatched us; he placed us under
geas
not to return without McLean, and we dare not defy that prohibition. He can find what he wants among the boy’s memories.”

“And maybe kill him or drive him mad?” David shouted back. “But I reckon I shouldn’t be surprised. It’d be just like you folks: take what you need and leave the rest, no matter how you leave it, huh?”

“It is not our intention to harm him.”

“But you don’t care if you do!”

“This accomplishes nothing, Mortal.”

“It keeps Alec alive longer!”

The captain snorted and turned away, scanning the horizon. “This is not your house,” he said. “Your family lives nearby.”

David’s blood froze. “You wouldn’t dare!”

“We would dare anything, except defy the laws of Dana. Do you think mere walls of wood dissuade us?”

“But you can’t risk hurting my folks,” David protested. “There’s been too much strange stuff around here already. More would bring the very thing you hate: people with questions and machines.”

The captain smiled fiendishly. “We do not have to
enter
dwellings, Mortal; for we have eternity to wait, which you do not. Eventually they will fall down; but long before that, someone will step outside. It is an easy thing, do not forget, to make changelings or drive men mad.”

A hand clamped down on David’s shoulder then; a hand old and rough and gnarled. “Enough, boy,” Dale said softly. “Maybe you oughta let me talk to ’em. I’ve argued me a case or two in my life. ’Sides,” he added, grinning smugly as he reached into his pocket, “I’ve got me a little something here from Mr. Lugh ought to change things right quick.”

David swung around and stared at him in wonder, then noticed what his uncle had in his hand. It was the birthday scroll, and in the other he held a cigarette lighter. His thumb was tapping nervously against the striker.

“’Pears to me I can finish this right now, just by wishin’,” the old man called, louder, fixing his eyes on the captain. “This here gives me one boon, and I’m thinkin’ I just may use it.”

“You may try,” the captain sneered. “You will not succeed.”

A grizzled eyebrow lifted. “Suppose,” Dale said, “just
suppose
—and mind you I ain’t wished yet, nor lit no fire—but just suppose I wished for you all to go away and leave us alone.”

“You could wish that,” the Faery acknowledged. “But more of us would return, and you would have no more wish, and would thus still be where you are. Also,” he added, “we might choose to interpret
us
in a way that you did not find pleasing.”

“What if I said for all the Sidhe to leave all mortals alone for…for ten thousand years, maybe?”

“We have allies.”

“So maybe…”

“Enough, mortal,” the captain snapped. “We could stand here a month with you proposing
ifs
and myself countering with
thens.
Do you not remember the conditions of the gift? Lugh promises you a boon, aye; but he promised not
any
boon. Remember the words,
see
them, mortal, with your own poor eyes! Do they not say,
‘if it be within my power and a just thing’?
Some things you might ask for would not be within the Ard Rhi’s power—to lift the spell on young McLean, for instance, for he did not set it. To abandon this effort would not be a just thing, for it would put at risk his kingdom. Do you not see? Someone has betrayed him, he wants the betrayer back— The same betrayer who has also betrayed your young friend.”

“Then I reckon we ought to both be lookin’ for a common enemy.”

“Perhaps we should. But until we hear otherwise, we wait.”

“Seems to me,” Dale noted, “that you’re askin’ us to do the same thing that started this mess in the first place. Didn’t somebody ask Mr. Lugh to give up somebody who took shelter with him? And didn’t that boy in there just spend ’bout a week and nearly die tryin’ to get her to safety? And now you want me to hand him over ’cause you think he’s a traitor? Shoot! He may be, to you. But he’s innocent to us. And we’ve got him!”

“Fool of a mortal, we can wait forever.”

“I can wait till hell freezes over too,” Dale shot back. “Even if we starve to death and you find the bodies, you still won’t have no answer. But I’ll tell you
this
: sooner or later somebody’ll come by. Oh, you might hide yourself, but they’ll find out something’s up, and they’ll be here with iron. Or Bill will, or JoAnne. You may think you can wait forever, but you may just find out that’s over a fair bit sooner than you thought it was.” And with that he took David by the arm, dragged him inside, and slammed the door.

“Jeeze,” David gasped, when he had recovered from the shock of their precipitous departure and had ensconced himself in a rocker by another window. “That was…was damned eloquent. You should’ve been a lawyer.”

The old man favored him with an ironic smirk. “Thought about it once. Wanted David-the-elder to be one. No point in worryin’ ’bout it now, though, with all these other things goin’ on.”

“What’re they doing?” Alec asked from the couch.

David squinted through a grimy pane that rattled until he touched it. The circle around the house appeared to have tightened, and more riders had evidently joined the ranks. He rose and checked the other windows, saw the same thing. On his circuit he also discovered something else that disturbed him. Four riders had dismounted: three men and a woman. They had cast aside their cloaks and stood revealed in pure white robes. For a moment they consulted together, then separated, skirting around the house until one faced each quadrant of the compass. David could not hear them, but could tell by the movements of their mouths, the rhythm of the half-heard words buzzing in his head that they had begun to chant.

And in answer to that invocation the sky grew darker still, and thunder slammed the heavens in earnest. The wind picked up too, its gusts louder and longer and wilder. Rain began to fall, the drops heavy as liquid steel, and lightning prodded the mountains with fearful glee, then danced quickly closer. A bolt struck one of the cedars and split it to the roots, and it blazed up, burning. None of this fazed the Riders of the Sidhe, though; still as statues, they sat their horses, frozen except for the wild billowing of their cloaks, and the glint of arrogant disdain in their inhuman eyes.

It looked like night out there, David thought, what with the clouds piled in huge masses over the ridges and the sun hidden behind them. Night—or a vision from Doré’s Hell, as larger drops smashed into the earth and beat the clay until the yard looked like raw meat. The metallic clatter on the roof changed pitch, as hail mixed into the rain and smashed the summer foliage.

“I don’t think they can attack us directly,” David said. “But they can use the things of this World and augment ’em with their magic.”

Dale eyed the ceiling, where a steady drip had made its presence known. “Yeah, and I was just wonderin’ how it is ’zactly they define a dwellin’?”

David stared at the others. And shivered.

Chapter XXV: Thunders of the Mind

The telephone rang.

David, leaning against the wall by the porch window, jumped at least a foot and headed for it, but Calvin was there before him and wordlessly handed it to Uncle Dale.

“Hello?” the old man said tentatively, and David could hear the pops and crackles halfway across the room. The voice too: female and agitated.

Dale frowned. “Maybe I better let you talk to him.” He motioned David over and passed him the receiver.

“Hello?” David began, and jerked his head away from a second barrage of static.
“Hello?”

“David? David, is that
you
?” It was his mother. She sounded scared.

“Yeah, Ma,” David sighed. “I guess you know we’ve got a problem.”

“I reckon
so
!
What the hell’s goin’ on? It’s rainin’ like Revelations over here, and the power’s done flickered twice.”

“It’s…it’s worse than that here,” David said, wondering if his mother had figured out the true gravity of their predicament. “It’s…one of
those
situations.”

The phone fell silent for a moment. Then, distinctly: “Shit.”

“Uh, yeah,” David muttered, glancing around the room. “Hey, look, Ma, don’t do anything. Don’t do anything at all. They’re after Alec, not me, but we’re not gonna let ’em have him. Do me one favor, though—don’t go outside. Don’t—” Another burst of static made him hold the receiver away. “Ma? Are you there?”

“Barely. Lightnin’ just blew off the whole front of the hayloft.” She sounded breathless and even more frightened.

“The hayloft?” That was where the whole thing had begun, with him reading
Gods and Fighting Men
and fantasizing about Faerie. And now it was gone, and those same gods were fighting men with lightning in his uncle’s front yard.

Abruptly the lights flickered. David saw Calvin scurrying to light the oil lamps that flanked the rough stone mantel. “Look, Ma,” he shouted, trying to make himself heard over a rising storm of white noise. “This can’t last forever. We’ve got to wait it out, but whatever you do, don’t go outside, and don’t let anybody else over there go out either. Just sit tight. We’re gonna—”

The world turned white, then; and the air seemed to vanish for an instant, then came crashing back with almost visible force as lightning struck the porch. David heard tin shriek and the slow rip of overstressed wood splintering, but even before it had truly registered, he had flung the phone away. Something lifted him and hurled him into the wall and he saw whole constellations of stars. When his vision cleared, he was lying on the floor gazing up at the hole his shoulder had made in the cheap paneling four feet above him. The receiver was a mass of melted plastic, twisting on a cord, its gyres highlighted by the flames of the oil lamps.

“Jesus,” Liz cried, rushing over to help him to his feet, while Calvin gingerly re-hung the useless appliance.

“Or somebody,” David sighed. He started to rejoin Dale and the white-faced Alec in front of the fireplace, but could not resist another glimpse outside.

The Sidhe were still there, still waiting; but the sky was aflame with lightning that leapt and cavorted among masses of clouds that were roiling so fast their ephemeral streamers made patterns—patterns which the bolts limned or erased or ripped asunder. It was hard to believe it was the real world out there, for the elements had gone crazy; water was acting like a solid thing, and so was the wind; and solid matter had become soft metal for their forging. Even colors had ceased to matter, for the darkness was not uniform, and the clouds were at one moment red, then gray, and then a sick greenish-silver; and the half-seen forms of the cedars and the Faery warriors (apparently quite dry) outlined now in blue, now in gold, now in crimson. And through it all was the distant buzz of chanting, the roar of the wind, and the incessant thunder that was like the booming of not-so-distant cannon.