Landslayer's Law (31 page)

“Need a favor,” he blurted out, before she had time to berate him for distracting her from her drawing. Evidently he had the most sensitive ears on the whole frigging vessel.

Liz’s brow furrowed cautiously. “What?”

David fished into the neck of the belted tunic he’d adopted like everyone else but Alec, and drew out the medallion Brock had given him. It gleamed even in the dim light admitted by the thick frosted glass windows that lined the cabin’s walls for a foot below the rafters. Impulsively, he raised it to his face and inspected it more closely. It seemed to have suffered no damage from having turned—or simply blasted—a Faery assassin’s knife. And it really wasn’t anything special to look at, bar an occasional hint of glow that was so subtle it might’ve been a trick of light. The boar relief on both sides was workmanlike, if vaguely Celtic in execution. Someday he’d have to find out why the Sullivans had claimed that for their emblem.

“What do you make of this?” he demanded.

“What do you?”

A shrug. “Kid gave it to me in the pool back at the castle. Said he bought it in England. Said somebody told him it was magic, and that it was supposed to offer protection against the Sidhe. It’s my family crest,” he added.

Liz frowned. “Odd coincidence, huh? Protection against the Sidhe
and
it’s your family crest.”

David nodded. “I thought so. And I can’t say why I think this, but…it just seems like Brock’s not bein’ quite straight with me about it.”

Liz’s frown deepened, though she made no move to touch the medallion. David had removed the piece and cupped it in the palm of his hand, which rested on his thigh. “Would you like to elaborate?”

A long sigh. “Hell if I know. I mean, I know the kid’s basically a straight shooter. Cal wouldn’t put up with him if he wasn’t, never mind Sandy, and sure as hell not Uki—and before we get off this boat, remind me to find out what he’s been up to out there—or up there—or in there, or wherever Galunlati is from here. But anyway, I just thought I’d ask you as a favor, since I know you don’t like to do this, if you could, you know, do a scryin’ on it.”

Liz exhaled wearily, but held out her hand. “I’m not very good at this, you know. It tends to come when it wants to, not when I do.”

“So you’ve said,” David returned. “Still, anything’d help. I don’t want to accuse Brock of sneakin’ ’round on me, but I don’t want mojo around I don’t know about, either.”

“Ha!” Liz snorted. “Would that there was mojo we
did
know about! Now hand it over.”

David was not entirely surprised to feel an odd reluctance thrill through him as he let the disc fall into Liz’s palm and coiled the chain atop it. That accomplished, she closed her eyes and took three deep breaths.

David watched avidly—a little frightened. He hated to do this to her, but he also hated not knowing. Yet he also feared what he might find—

The door burst open. Light flooded in. Alec stood there, dark against the glare, and preposterously wild-eyed. “Dave!” he yelled. “On deck.
Now
!”

David started to protest—but then he saw the sky. “Oh shit!” he choked. “Forget that, Liz: come on!”

Liz blinked in startled confusion, like someone who’d barely awakened.

“Come on!” David repeated, as he grabbed her hand.

“Davy, what—?”

“Come on!”

“Davy, I— Oh shit!”

For Liz had seen it too.

He froze there at the base of the stairs, shivering uncontrollably and staring at the sky—at the entire
world
beyond the gunwales, which had clearly gone totally, utterly bonkers.

It was black. It was white. It was gray. It was clear, it was closed. It was still, it was giddily awhirl. It looked like a TV screen trying to show dead air, a test pattern, and a kaleidoscope at once, save that all those hues were dark and grim and muddy.

Liz pressed against him, shaking; he clasped her back, and didn’t mind a bit when Alec clutched him from the other side. Myra was also there now, face pale and drawn, fluffy hair flaring wildly in a wind that had roared in from nowhere with the force of a hurricane. Brock wedged in as well. A moment later, Piper likewise squeezed in beside them.

“What’s going on?” David shouted.

Piper’s face had gone completely blank—from surprise, or unadulterated terror, David didn’t want to know. He still had his pipes; however, David doubted he’d ever let them out of his sight again.

“Piper?” David all but screamed through the still-rising wind. “What’s up? Where the hell is Finno?”

“Trying to save your skins!” the Faery called from above and behind them. “Trying to atone for not attending to what I should have.”

David twisted around. Fionchadd was braced atop the cabin, striving mightily to lower the sail. It didn’t seem to be working. “Need some help?” David hollered, because that was what you were supposed to say.

“Nothing can help us now!” Fionchadd yelled back, releasing the line he’d been holding, which sent the sail crashing onto the deck, where it draped across the forepart of the cabin, revealing the dragon prow—and what lay beyond.

David’s blood turned to ice when he saw it.

Nothingness! He was gazing at absolute
nothingness
!

A nothingness they were sailing into.

“Finno!” he shrieked one last time, though the Faery’s face was less than three yards from his own. “What the fuck?”

“A Hole!” the Faery screamed, even louder than before—from necessity. “A Hole in the Seas where your World has eaten through!”

And then everything beyond the gunwale turned white.

* * *

“We aren’t
anywhere,
”
Fionchadd groaned, when he reentered the dragonship’s cabin. With seven of them sheltering there, it was approaching cramped, even with everyone being fairly slender, Brock being small for his age, and David somewhat less than average height. Alec, at five-ten and one-fifty, was by a slight margin the largest.

Still, however tight the quarters were, it was better than being on deck, where there was neither zenith nor horizon; neither right nor left nor up nor down visible beyond that hard arc of deep-carved oak and the graceful curve of the dragon prow.

“We can’t be nowhere,” Liz shot back—being practical because it kept her sane, David reckoned. He wondered how long they’d last—or how long they’d lasted already, given that time itself seemed oddly protracted, so that some words took whole minutes to complete, followed by entire sentences compressed to one quick, wavery burst.

Fortunately that didn’t happen often, but David wasn’t so sure they hadn’t slept, or passed out, or…died. Certainly it seemed an eon since Fionchadd had explained their situation, and another since he’d gone back on deck to make certain. At least things had calmed down out there. At least the sky was no longer crazy—because there was no sky. No water beneath them either. And no Track.

But maybe the worst thing was Aife. Lugh’s curse was that she be a cat in the substance of the Lands of Men for most of the time, only returning to enfield form briefly at dusk and dawn. But where there
was
no dusk or dawn, nor never was, apparently—whatever drove Lugh’s magic had clearly slipped the bounds of control. One moment she was a cat, the next, an enfield, then the cat once more, and at times a bit of both, in the most outlandish combinations, and all the while venting the most ungodly screams, yowls, and whistles David had ever heard. He had a good idea what was prompting them too, given that his own experiences with shapechanging were nothing to write home about, comfortwise; in short, it hurt like hell. And to have that happening all the time, with no control, and with instincts winking in and out, and senses playing realignment games, and knowing somewhere at the heart of all that chaos a sentient intellect lurked—well, he hoped, if they ever got out this, Lugh would consider this punishment enough and lift the curse.

Alec would probably go for that too—assuming Alec, or anyone else, ever went for anything again.

At which point the whole of reality gave one final twisted lurch and stabilized.

“‘Once upon a midnight dreary,’” David cried, in hopes sound was working as it should, which it presently seemed to be.

“We can’t be nowhere,” Myra objected, belatedly. “In all of space-time, there has to be…
somewhere
we can be.”

“You sound like Sandy,” Brock snorted. “She’d eat this up with a spoon.”

Liz snorted in turn. “She’d be scared as shitless as the rest of us, you mean. I don’t think it’s sunk in on you yet, Brock…but we can’t get out of here—can we?” She gazed at Fionchadd.

The Faery’s face was grim; his shoulders slumped. “I should have been watching,” he reiterated. “Yet the last time I sailed this way there were no Holes. And there has never been one so large so close to shore.”

Alec glared at him. “You knew about those things and didn’t warn us to look out for them?”

“Do
you
worry about Krakens when you go to the beach?”

Brock scowled in confusion. “Krakens?”

“Giant squid,” David supplied impatiently. “He means that you don’t look for things where you don’t expect to find ’em. And while I’m certainly not happy about bein’ here, I don’t think there’s anything to be gained by pointin’ fingers.”

Fionchadd spared him a wary smile. “I suppose if I am to die, I could do worse than the six of you for company.”

Piper, who’d withdrawn into a corner with his pipes, twitched at that and peered out from beneath his tangle of hair. “Die?”

“Eventually. It happens.”

David shook his head. “No, I won’t accept that. For any problem, there’s a solution. We got into this thing from a physical place, therefore that place still exists, therefore the juncture between that place and this likewise exists.
Therefore,
we should be able to find it.”

Fionchadd shook his head in turn. “You amaze me,” he confessed. “In the face of all this, you still retain hope.”

“I’ve got things to do,” David sighed. “Folks’re dependin’ on me. I’ve got a kid brother I’d like to see grow up and go to college. I want to swim in the Cove again before whatever happens, happens. I don’t want poor Scott and Aik and Calvin to spend the rest of their lives wonderin’ what became of a bunch of their buddies.”

“What do you propose?” Fionchadd challenged. “My power comes from my World. The further from my World I go, the less Power I can call upon. And here, I must tell you, the cord is stretched very thin indeed.”

“I thought we weren’t
in
a World,” Myra countered. “Stick a knife through an onion,” Fionchadd replied. “Which layer is the blade in?”

Liz slapped her fist against the floor. “This isn’t doing any good! We can sit here for what might be a pretty odd forever making neat little similes, but that won’t help us get out of here. I’d prefer to come up with a solution before we all go apeshit from despair.

Fionchadd shrugged helplessly. “I have no Power that would do us any good.”

“What about Piper’s music?” Liz retorted. “Surely there’s a song somewhere that’ll get us—”

“They resonate with the Tracks, but there
are
no Tracks in a Hole—or else
everything
is
a Track, as one of my mother’s kin once implied,” Fionchadd explained. “But even if that last were true, it could take longer than you have to live to locate the right set of tones.”

“Best we get started, then,” David advised, looking at Piper.

Piper shuddered and clutched himself more tightly.

Myra studied him for a moment, then: “Maybe sometime, but not now. No, folks, there has to be something else, some other means of finding our way out of here.”

Silence

Breathing.

Aife, who’d stabilized as an enfield, vented a pitiful whistle that ended on a disturbingly human note.

“Finding,” Brock blurted abruptly.

David gaped at him. “What?”

The boy’s face was all but glowing. “Finding. Myra said we had to find our way out of here.”

“So?”

“So I know a charm for finding.”

David’s eyebrows invaded his hairline. “A charm…?”

“Cherokee.”

David felt as though a vast weight had lifted from his soul, though another part knew it was far too early to raise hopes as faint as these. Still, it had worked before, if the boy was suggesting what he supposed. Shoot, it had even worked on
him
—had drawn his consciousness back to his body when he lay dying in Uncle Dale’s house, the same night the house had been trashed beyond repair. “You got a stone?” he found himself asking.

Brock promptly pillaged his pockets.

Fionchadd, meanwhile, was gaping like a fool—odd indeed on Faery features. David shot him a hopeful grin. “That’s what we brought him for, remember? Magic from a different tradition than any of us are used to.”

Myra looked easily as confused as Fionchadd, but Piper actually seemed marginally intrigued. Certainly the ball he had contracted himself into had loosened.

Brock’s face fell. “No.”

“What are you looking for?” Myra wondered. “Maybe I—”

“No,” David broke in triumphantly, “I’ve got it! And with that he removed the medallion he’d replaced around his throat, all that vague time ago. “Will this do?” he added, to Brock.

Brock reached for it, but David snatched it back. “I’ll respect your privacy for now—such as it is, or is ever like to be—but someday you and me are gonna talk about this thing.”

“Someday…we will,” Brock agreed, as David relinquished his hold.

“I learned this from Cal,” Brock confided, folding his fingers around the talisman. “He learned it—I think—from Uki, or his grandpa. I had to fake it one time, but that scared me a bunch, so I learned how to do it right.”

“It?” Alec queried impatiently.

“The finding ritual. The
Cherokee
finding ritual. I mean, I know it’s a long shot, since we’re the ones who’re lost, but— Oh, crap, I forgot something! This may not work!” He gazed expectantly at Fionchadd. “It’s safe on deck now, right? If you don’t go all vertigo, or something?”

The Faery nodded.

“And you can still steer this thing?”

Another nod.