Dreamseeker's Road (43 page)

“No big deal,” Alec grunted. “How'd you find us, anyway?”

“Rigantana started me off, but then I met Lugh and his crowd, and that old guy—what's his name? Oisin? Anyway, he held back and told me to ride north as fast as I could, then ride the red road as fast as I could, and then ride the road to the right as fast as I could—and keep on ridin' no matter what.”

“Sounds like him,” Alec grumbled. “Lay a bunch of cryptic bullshit on you that doesn't make sense until you're so far in you can't get out again.”

“Yeah,” Aikin agreed, but then had to break off as the Morrigu drove her stallion faster.

The glare worsened. Heat rose with it. Aikin was sweating like a pig; his eyes were squeezed nigh to slits. As often as not, he closed them. Alec's arms were a vise around his ribs. The cat had found its way into his lap.

Abruptly, the elk faltered. He kicked it, urging it back to its steady ground-eating pace.

No go.

“Hold up!” he yelled, to the Morrigu, who was already obscured by heat haze. He heard her swear, then had no time for such considerations, for the elk took a dozen more stumbling steps, vented an agonized wheeze, and crumpled onto its knees. “Jump!” he shouted, as he tensed to leap free. As soon as Alec released him, he pushed off—and the elk collapsed utterly. Aikin hit hard on his right shoulder, and rolled, barely missing an antler. Something yowled and hissed. Alec uttered a muffled “Oh hell!” His nose filled with glowing red sand.

But already he was struggling to his feet, dusting himself off as he helped Alec up. The latter retrieved the cat as Aikin stared at his fallen mount. By the way its eyes were dimming, he knew the creature was dead. “It ran half the length of Georgia tonight,” he sighed. “And twice that back again—mostly at a gallop. Don't blame the poor critter a-tall.”

“No mortal steed could have done as well,” the Morrigu murmured, joining them, her face as darkly grim as the pervasive glare was bright. “Would it had lasted longer, though; for by dying it has doomed us all.”

“What do you mean?” Alec demanded. “You can still shape-shift, can't you? If you turned into a horse—”

The Morrigu shook her head. “I have already
changed
too many times today—which, though you may not believe it, is wearying beyond belief; I have no strength left for such Workings, for a while. And even if I could, to dare that sort of thing here, on the Crimson Road, where the balance between Powers is already perilous—it could hasten the dissolution tenfold.”

“Then take Dave and Liz and fly.”

The Faery glared at him. “In the name of my kin I owe him one life. I will not have others laid upon me!

She paused abruptly. “What did you say a moment ago?” she asked, fixing Aikin with a piercing stare. “When?”

“About Oisin.”

Aikin told her.

“And you recovered the oracular stone?”

“Yeah…but…so what?”

“Oisin would not have directed you to the Crimson Road unless you had business here. Therefore, he foresaw some reason for your presence.”

Aikin blinked at her—easy enough in the glare. He could barely see her white horse against the blazing sky. “Huh?”

“Think, boy!” the Faery demanded. “What is there about you that Oisin would send you to a place that could easily mean your death?”

Aikin shrugged and glanced at his friends for support. Liz shrugged back. Alec scowled, but then his eyes widened. “The rock!” he cried. “That's the only thing I can think of that separates you from the rest of us!”

“R-right,” a weak voice agreed. Aikin started, then realized who had spoken. “God, Dave, you're alive!”

“But not well—yet,” David gave back in a raspy whisper. “…too tired to talk, but not to hear…or think.”

“So there's something we can do? Some way to use the ulunsuti?”

“'Course…there is,” David managed, but Aikin could tell it took all his strength to continue speaking. “Gate…” David mumbled—and fainted.

The ensuing silence filled with three gasps, and, more distantly, a low rumble like thunder. The sky turned black for a slivered second, like a TV switched off and on.

“It will be soon,” the Morrigu hissed.

Alec gnawed his lip. “Gate,” he mused. “Of course!

We use the ulunsuti to gate the hell outta here. Unless”—he spared a scowl at the Morrigu—“that'll hasten the dissolution too!”

“But what about the World Walls?” From Liz.

“Fuck 'em,” Alec snapped. “They'll live, we won't.”

“It will likely not damage them anyway,” the Morrigu put in, looking as though she thought their plan might actually succeed. “The Tracks—even this one
—transcend
the World Walls. They are
already
between; therefore, we should do no harm—if we gate to another place on the Track beyond the outer gate! And,” she added pointedly, “even if it
does
hasten the dissolution, we will not be there to observe it.”

“Let's do it,” Alec agreed.

“Do we have the stuff?” Liz wondered.

Alec patted his backpack. “I've got the gear I took when I went to rescue Eva. All we need's a fire, something to put the blood in…and blood.”

Aikin eyed them dubiously. “Human? Or—”

“We've got the horse—and whatever crazy thing that is we were riding,” Alec gave back.

“Right!”

The Morrigu scanned the horizon, face going grimmer by the second. “Whatever we do, we must hurry. If one of you will help me with your friend…” Aikin was beside her in an instant, as was Alec. Together they lowered David to the ground. He looked, Aikin thought, deathly pale—or maybe that was simply the glare. The Morrigu joined them, then paused to whisper something in her horse's ear. That accomplished, she gave it a swat on the rump and sent it galloping down the Crimson Road.

“What'd you do that for?” Liz cried furiously.

“We could not all ride it, and there was no way to choose one life above another. But if the horse reaches the outer gate in time, it can pass on what has happened. At least our deaths will not go unmarked.”

“Great,” Alec growled, kicking at the ruddy dust.

Thunder rumbled, closer. No one dared look at the sky. “Let's to it,” Aikin sighed, kneeling by the fallen stag. “Anybody got anything to put blood in?”

“In my pack,” Alec grinned, already fumbling through it. Liz set the ulunsuti down beside Aikin. “Fire?” she asked the Morrigu.

“Fabric?” the Morrigu gave back with a sigh. “This velvet you see upon me is but a glamour I raised lest my nakedness offend you.”

Liz rolled her eyes, but stripped off the khaki vest she'd been wearing. Alec added his own vest, his shirt, and the patch pockets from his fatigues. Aikin donated his T-shirt, wadded it with the other material, and placed it on the ground.

A sharp glare from the Morrigu, and it sparked, then smoked, then smoldered, and finally erupted into flame. The heavy padded vest burned slowly—which was fortunate. Alec dug into his pack for the appropriate herbs to add to the blaze, as well as a small salt-glazed bowl, which he passed to Aikin, who produced the ulunsuti from his vest and set it in it. At Alec's nod, he slit the elk's carotid. Blood oozed out: a slow drip that nevertheless quickly filled the container. The stone promptly began to glow. “You should've seen what this guy did earlier,” he offered, offhand.

“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.