Landslayer's Law (2 page)

No fun having to keep tabs on a tomfool dickhead of a younger brother.

Still, the park beckoned: the nice clean streamside picnic area down the hill and to the right, where the government land ran up against 441, with only his folks’ washed-out gravel drive dividing all that neatness from their place, with its—what was that word he’d learned in school last week? Squalor?

Jamie strode along, relishing being alone. (Eight-year-old Alvin running on ahead like a banty rooster didn’t count, ’cause he was actually a fairly sharp kid most of the time, good-hearted when Ma and Pa let him, and cleaned up decent well in the bargain.)

No! He wouldn’t think about that; he’d think about good things. Pretty country everywhere but straight behind. A sweet, clear stream to play in: collecting rocks, or chasing crawdads, or looking for raccoon tracks; or even, sometimes, and not always in vain, panning for gold.

And the tourists. Most folks hereabout didn’t care for ’em, but Jamie kinda liked ’em, ’cause they mostly drove cool new cars or (increasingly) pickups, and wore new clothes, and had good food and lots of it, and sported fresh haircuts and—and even smelled good. (And when was the last time Ma or Pa smelled good?) And often as not, they had kids him and Alvin could play with who didn’t know his folks were Poor White Trash.

Jamie kicked at a pine cone, venting a rush of anger that had risen, maxed out, and faded all in a dozen strides. And by then he’d reached the road—no need to check before dashing across the gravel drive—and was dogging Alvin’s shadow into the fringe of pines that hid the park from his folks’ ugly lot. Quiet enclosed him there in that borderland, if not true peace. He inhaled deeply, relishing the scent of evergreens in lieu of the all too familiar sweat, beer, and burned grease that clogged the air back home.

“Come on, slowpoke!” Alvin chided up ahead, his Appalachian twang softened by the million dark green needles that filled the yards between. Impulsively, Jamie darted forward—and emerged into dazzling light.

It could’ve been another country: the clean, bright land of his dreams. But it was only a parking lot, recently paved, newly marked and painted—and empty. Jamie felt a pang of regret at that. No new kids to hang out with today and pretend he was a savvy and sophisticated city boy. No one to let him try their electronic toys, no town talk to listen to, so he could copy it—and maybe, someday, work the hick out of his own voice.

Empty.

“Damn!” he muttered, and jogged off to where Alvin was already disappearing down the trail to the creek. He joined him a moment later—and was shocked to discover that his brother was not alone. Two other boys crouched on the rocks there—or were they boys? They had
really
long hair, for one thing, and were awfully smooth-faced and slender, but they had wide shoulders too, and strong jawlines. It was hard to tell their ages—fourteen or fifteen, maybe: a little older than himself. There was also a girl, which might be good or might not. You had to be careful of city girls.

And these were clearly not country folk—not in clothes like that: new leather jeans and bright silk shirts, and with their hair dyed shimmery green and blue like those guys in Green Day, only darker, and with their ears and eyebrows pierced, but—there was no other word, in spite of two of ’em being boys—beautiful all the same.

“They’re from the mountain,” Alvin announced, as he sat down on a flat rock and commenced dabbling in the water. “They’re musicians.”

The girl’s eyes twinkled with mystery, even as she laughed; and the sound was like harmony sung with the tinkling water. She was also carrying a small drum. “You found that out already?” Jamie gaped. “Boy, you’re fast!”

“We told him,” the smaller outlander admitted. “We knew he wanted to know and was afraid to ask—so we told him.”

“You stayin’ over at the lodge?” Jamie wondered, feeling even smaller, dirtier, and uglier than usual.

“Near there,” the taller boy acknowledged. “We became bored and decided to…see what we could find.”

“Well, you found us,” Jamie grinned. “That’s about it. Not much goin’ on ’round here.”

“I do not think I would agree with that,” the girl retorted, flashing a smile so dazzling it almost hurt to look at. She shook her head so that the rings—six at least—in each ear jingled. There was something else funny about her ears too, but Jamie didn’t dare look too close, ’cause that would be staring, which was rude—and he suddenly wanted, very badly, for these strange, neat folks to like him.

“So what shall we play?” the smaller visitor inquired, rising.

“Tag?” From his larger companion.

“Follow-the-leader?” Alvin countered—because he was good at it, quick and nimble and fearless as he was.

The girl bit her perfect lips, then shook her head. “Hide-and-seek,” she proclaimed, staring at Alvin curiously. Then: “Jamie, I think
you
ought to be it.”

Jamie started to protest, but decided these folks might choose not to play with him if he did, so he nodded. “How high you want me to count?”

“Nine times nine,” the girl replied, taking Alvin’s hand. “Now come away, child; you can hide with me.”

Jamie clamped his hands over his eyes, leaned into the rough bark of a nearby pine, and began: “One—two—three—” He’d reached twenty before he recalled that it wasn’t like Alvin to agree to hide with
anyone,
much less a girl. And he’d reached seventy-four before he realized he had never once mentioned his name.

Prologue II: and Back Again

(Gargyn’s Hold—Tir-Nan-Og—high summer)

“Da’s comin’!” The Littl’un crowed from the cottage’s open door, eyes round as the bottom of one of those all-too-perfect bottles the Quick Folks discarded so carelessly—and as green as some of them, too. He was fidgeting like a hop-toad on a griddle: bouncing from foot to bare foot almost too quick to see.
Dirty
feet, Borbin noted. Torn shirt. Mud on the hem of his kilt, and the Lord Lugh knew what kind of leaves stuck in that impossible thatch of crimson hair, which more than hinted that the lad had been where he oughtn’t—like the feathery woods visible across the melon patch behind him.

Borbin sighed wearily—tolerantly, though she hid that lapse at once—and wiped her pudgy hands on the snowy apron that encircled her ample girth: ample for a bodach, anyway. “An’ where, a worried mother might inquire, did you
do
this seein’, my child?”

The Littl’un braced himself on the doorjamb, which stabilized his upper half somewhat, though his lower part kept right on twitching. “Out by the—” His face fell. His eyes grew even rounder.

“By the
Hole,
perhaps?” Borbin snapped, suddenly all steel.

The boy turned pale—and stilled as far down as the knees, likely from raw terror. “I didn’t
mean
to! Me an’ Urgo was playin’, an’ all at once we were just there, an—”

“Urgo’s gonna be the death o’ you,” Borbin grumbled—”an’ it’s
hard
to kill one o’ us, as well you know!” A pause for breath, and to take an ominous step closer, then: “Don’t let me tell you again! Them Holes is dangerous. They’re eatin’ through everywhere ’round here now! Why, one could gnaw through right here ’tween us, ’fore we knew it! Lugh knows one opened up under poor old Maddy MacOrpins t’other day, an’ she ain’t been seen since! I oughta—”

She paused abruptly. “What did you say?”

The Littl’un looked puzzled. “When?”

“When you came in!”

“That Da’s home—”

“Gargyn!” Borbin shrieked, and forgot her youngest entirely until she was ten strides out the door—and only recalled him then because she tripped over the mechanical manticore Gargyn had carved him before his voyage. And by the time she’d picked herself up, Gargyn himself was running through the melon patch toward her. She winced, even as she laughed, certain she’d heard at least two ’loupes split beneath that reckless tread. Markon, the eldest old’un, wasn’t far behind: any excuse to get out of work, though she supposed she’d forgive him this time. Wasn’t every day your sire returned from a voyage to Ys. Wasn’t
every
day a voyager to Ys made it back safe and sound, not anymore; not with the Holes nibbling away on the Seas Between as much as on land, so she’d heard.

“Sweet wife!” Gargyn yelled.

“Darlin’ husband!” Borbin hollered back. And a moment later they were entwined like newlyweds among the pumpkin vines.

Eventually Gargyn released her, but she knew the news wasn’t good long before then, by the way his embrace had seemed impatient and tired, dull eyes had capped what she knew from centuries of wedlock was not a sincere smile, never mind the preoccupation hiding in his kiss.

“Any news?” she prompted softly, even as she drew him toward the piled stone wall between the patch and the cottage proper. Gargyn’s shoulders slumped as he collapsed against her. His feet were dirty too, just like the Littl’un’s, and raw and blistered, as though he’d run most of the way
from the haven at the coast. He smelled of sweat and weariness. But all that was for later, for now he needed peace—as much as she needed to know.

Finally Gargyn spoke, voice thin as his shanks, his shoulders, and his sides. “
Bad
news,” he agreed. “Herself’s withdrawn her offer. Says Ys is bustin’ at the seams now; says she can’t take no more refugees, an’ may have t’ send some of the ones is there now back. Says Lugh’s let the trouble go on too long, and it’s for him to fix—which I’ve been sayin’ all along.”

“But the gate? I thought—”

Gargyn shook his shaggy head. “Gate’s got to be too dangerous—she says. Says even she don’t dare poke through the World Walls no more—not since Lugh cheated her out of the Openin’ Stone.”

Borbin snorted. “Wouldn’t o’ worked no better”—an old argument. “First off, it weren’t his to give or hold back; it belonged to one of the Quick Folks—though how that ’un got such a thing, I have no idea. An’ second, a Hole in the Walls is a Hole in the Walls, far as I can see.”

“’Cept she said she thought the Walls might heal ’round a permanent one,” Gargyn countered. “If it was made with Power, I mean.”

“Fuck they would!” Markon grumbled, stomping up to join them, sweat streaking the dust on his bare chest and legs. He peered at his parents sullenly from beneath the wide brim of an intricate purple velvet hat one of the Seelie Lords had lost last time they rode by. He sat down without asking—breathing, Borbin thought, a little
too
hard for the amount of hoeing he’d actually accomplished. Concern made her ignore the Quick Folks curse she’d had no luck eradicating.

“What’re the World Walls?” the Littl’un blurted, out of nowhere. “An’ who’s
she
?”

“The Queen of Ys,” Markon hissed. “Rhiannon—’less Rigantana’s took over like folks was sayin’ she might, on account of how she’s better at dealin’ with the Quick Folks—”

“She hasn’t—yet—that I know of,” Gargyn broke in, fondling the Littl’un’s head. “As for the World Walls…they’re whatever separates this World from the Lands of Men, or the Quick Folks Land, or whatever you want t’ call it. Don’t you remember
nothin
’,
lad?”

“I forgot,” the Littl’un mumbled, turning red.

“They’ve got Holes all through ’em now,” Markon inserted. “Like them places where Quick Folks iron has burned through. But there’s even worse Holes where a couple o’ Quick Folks boys got hold o’ some kinda stone from another World an’ started usin’ it to jump from World to World, only those Holes had Power mixed up in ’em, an—”

“An’ the Queen of Ys tried to steal that stone to make a gate to that other World she’d found beyond Ys, where nobody lived, that she was gonna open up to us bodachs and other small folk what feels like the Seelie Lords give us short shrift.”

“And now she won’t,” Borbin finished for him. “Which is a damned fine how-de-do.”

“So wha’cha gonna do?” Markon inquired, scratching his scrawny bottom through his threadbare kilt.

“Gonna go see Lugh himself,” Gargyn sighed.

“Again,” Borbin sighed, more loudly, in turn.

“Again!” Markon spat, and rose, kicking at a convenient cantaloupe. “Blood an’ iron, but I hate Quick Folks!”

“Yeah,” Gargyn agreed with a final sigh. “I do too.”

Chapter I: Changing Shifts

(Athens, Georgia—Thursday, June 19—sunset)

“Marlboro-Lights-in-a-box,” snapped the girl with the Maori tattoos binding her thin wrists like tight black handcuffs wrought of some odd lace. Scott Gresham spared her face the briefest glance—she
looked
of age to buy smokes—and reached up reflexively to snare the requisite white-and-gold pack from the eight-foot rack suspended above the newsstand’s checkout counter. Free Camel matches joined the box on the flat plexiglass sheet beside the register, beneath which an array of Zippo lighters gleamed like metal ice. To his left, Byron was already ringing in the purchase. Meanwhile, Scott’s gaze had meandered from the girl’s nondescript visage to her more intriguing waist, where was displayed the first bare midriff—with attendant pierced belly button—of the evening.

Transaction completed, Scott caught Byron’s gaze and winked. Byron grinned back enigmatically from beneath his trademark
X-Files
cap. They were an unlikely pair at best. Byron was a citizen of the world: erudite, witty, and charming; muscularly compact, short-haired—and black (one of Scott’s two friends of that persuasion). Himself: born-and-bred in Tellico Plains, Tennessee, bright but not brilliant, sarcastic rather than clever, likeable in lieu of charismatic; and lankily tall, curly-topped, and Nordically Caucasian. They got along famously. Or perhaps it was merely the camaraderie of shared combat in the behind-the-scenes trenches of Barnett’s Newsstand. God knew it was damned hard work, much of that resisting the ongoing urge to tell the terminally brain-fried to fuck off. Or to tell the fatally lottery-addicted to find their own fortunes. Not that he was any example, he hastened to add; what with a still-incomplete geology dissertation hanging over him like the geode of Damocles.

Speaking of which, it was almost 9:30, which was when the Money Talks numbers were drawn, which was also when (because of reduced demand on the lottery machine) he got off.