Landslayer's Law (32 page)

“And…
are
we moving?”

“We were moving when we entered the Hole. All rules I know say that we should continue to do so until something stops us.”

“So you should be able to steer this thing? To make it go where we want?”

Fionchadd wrinkled his nose. “I should—assuming I
had
a direction.”

“And where was it we were going to start with?” Brock persisted.

“Annwyn—first.”

“Why not back where we were?” Alec countered.

“If we’re going anywhere,” Brock replied with exaggerated patience, “It might as well be where we want to go, instead of back where we’ve already been.”

“And,” Fionchadd amended carefully. “It is possible we might actually gain time in the bargain.”

Brock frowned for an instant, then set his mouth. “Okay
…
everybody cool it for a minute and let me think. And—I don’t know if it’ll do any good, but maybe you guys oughta all hold hands or something.”

“Wish I had my ulunsuti,” Alec grumbled as he scooted in to complete the rough ring they were forming around the boy. He was referring to the magical seeing-stone he’d seen destroyed two autumns back—at the cost of one very important Faery life sacrificed to save him and David and Liz and Aikin.

David suppressed a giggle. ”I thought I’d never hear you say that.”

Alec didn’t reply—possibly because Brock had glared at him. “Quiet!” the boy snapped. And with that, they all fell silent. David took Liz’s hand in his left, Fionchadd’s in his right. They were equally smooth, which in no wise surprised him. The Faery’s, though, was stronger.

Brock, meanwhile, inhaled deeply and let the medallion slip through his fingers, then closed his eyes and began to chant softly, in a language David had heard before but couldn’t even vaguely claim to understand, bar the odd word or phrase here and there—plus some English Brock had been compelled to slip in. As the boy continued, he began to swing the medallion in a slow, wide circle.

Sge! Ha-nagwa hatunganiga Nunya…bright medal ,ga-husti tsuts-kadi nigesunna. Ha-nagwa dungihyali. Agiyahusa…my way, ha-ga tsun-nu iyunta datsi-waktuhi. Tla-ke aya akwatseliga. Stanley Arthur Bridges digwadaita.

He repeated that thrice, then started over, this time in English.

Listen! Ha! Now you have
drawn near to hearken, oh bright medal! You never lie about anything! Ha! Now I am about to seek for it. I have lost my way, and now tell me where I shall find it. For is it not mine? Mv name is Stanley Arthur Bridges.

That too he repeated thrice, before returning to bastard Cherokee. David held his breath, watching intently. He was also, at some level, trying to ease into a trance himself, even as he wished, very hard, for the desired effect to occur. Fionchadd, he realized, was sweating.

Brock had recommenced the English version, but nothing seemed to be happening: the disc still swung in the same wide circle.

Or did it? Wasn’t the trajectory shifting the merest fraction? Wasn’t it becoming more oval?

It was! Beside him, he heard Liz’s soft gasp. She’d seen it too. And it really was altering, the oval narrowing into an ellipse, tending in one direction, as though unseen forces drew it there.

Fionchadd’s face had also brightened as he stared at the disc with rapt interest. Hope showed there for the first time in…however long it had been. And if Finno was optimistic, they surely had cause for celebration.

Whereupon Brock broke off abruptly and opened his eyes.

The medal no longer moved, but neither did it hang straight down. Rather, it slanted slightly, but clearly, toward the cabin’s aft port corner.

Fionchadd rose at once and opened the door, then closed it quickly behind him—just as well, because David still couldn’t stand to look at that vast…nothingness out there.

No one moved for a long time—not until the cabin gave the tiniest of lurches and slowly began to realign itself along the axis indicated by the medallion.

Brock remained where he was, staring fixedly at what he had wrought. He was barely breathing and clearly trying hard neither to speak nor move. David felt very sorry for him. This was something they hadn’t considered. The boy had shown them the way out—maybe. But who was to say how long that journey would last? And if anything disturbed their…finder, would he be able to repeat the procedure? Or had that been the Galunlati equivalent of a magical one-shot deal?

But then footsteps pounded on the stair, and Fionchadd thrust his head through the doorway, face alive with joy.

“I
have lashed the rudder” he proclaimed. “Unless that medal lies, we should be free of here anon.”

It was only then that David realized what had saved them. Cherokee magic. And iron—which was anathema
in Faerie.

* * *

“Land ho!” Fionchadd shouted.

David roused himself from where he’d been napping in the cabin, Wedged between Alec and Liz, with Brock at his feet like a puppy. (Why did that image keep recurring, along with that infuriating urge to pet him?) Myra sprawled behind Alec. Piper was as far from the stairs as possible. And snoring. Aife was a cat again.

“Wha—?” Alec mumbled. “Huh?”—as David jostled him on his way
to his feet. David squinted into the half-opened doorway, still fearing what might lurk beyond. Fortunately, Fionchadd filled most of it, but the Faery was grinning like a fiend.

When David finally summoned up nerve to peek around him, it was to see what could only be night sky. That woke the need to press forward, leaving his companions to respond as they wished. Fionchadd gave him a hand up the stair.

“Son of a bitch!” David yipped, “you weren’t lyin’!”

Nor had he been. Not only had they returned to tangible reality—wave, clouds, and the line of the Track between—but they had arrived within sight of land: an unbroken range of ominous, blood-dark cliffs that marched off to haze to either side beneath roiling, night-lit heavens the color of tarnished steel. Even close at hand, the surrounding seas were black as ink.

“Do not look behind you,” Fionchadd cautioned as they strode toward the prow. “The Hole—or
a
Hole—still gapes there. But already it grows smaller.”

David needed no second warning. If he never saw anything like that again, it would be too soon. “Is that…Annwyn?” he ventured, wondering why he felt compelled to speak softly.

Fionchadd nodded. “Arawn’s realm. The Lord of the Dead, some of your Folk call him, though they are wrong. But Annwyn
is
a dark land, compared to Tir-Nan-Og. The sun shines there but dimly, and the light is often tinged with red. Grim land breeds grim thoughts.”

David folded his arms. “So now that we’re here…?”

“—We seek landfall at a place where I hope Arawn will not find us. I do not fear him, precisely, but I fear what he might have to say about our mission. He—like most of our kind—would prefer the Powersmiths kept to themselves. The last time they interfered, he was not pleased.”

“I remember,” David acknowledged. “I don’t blame him.”

Fionchadd started to reply, then caught his breath. His eyes narrowed. He thrust David roughly aside and dashed to the fore-port gunwale, scanning the coast intently.

“What the f—?” David commenced. But then he too saw. “Ships!” he groaned, as he joined the Faery. “I guess it’s too much to hope it’s the good guys bringin’ the welcome wagon?”

Fionchadd did not respond, but his shoulders were taut with tension. “Those are Lugh’s ships,” he gritted, “which alone would not delight me. But,” he continued shakily, “the nearest is the one we escaped when we began this voyage.”

“That’s impossible!”

The Faery looked him straight in the eye. “It is not. Who knows how much time passed in this World while we were caught…Between?”

“So they got here ahead of us?”

A resigned nod. “And surely alerted Arawn. Even now they turn toward us.”

David suppressed a shudder. “Will they take us captive, do you reckon?”

“No,” Fionchadd spat. “This time, I am certain, they will kill us.”

“Kill us?”
another voice screeched: Alec stumbling across the deck, face white with alarm.

Fionchadd drew himself up very straight, though he was still slightly shorter than Alec. “We can fight,” he declared. “Or we can run. Which way would you have it?”

“Death now or later? Huh?” David muttered. “Be nice to have and make a choice.”

“Tell me about it,” Alec panted, as he skidded to an awkward halt. “Guess I oughta go get the others. It’ll give me something to do.”

David gaped in in disbelief as Alex spun around in place and retreated across the deck. He would’ve shouted something in his wake, too, had not Fionchadd restrained him with a firm grip on his shoulder. “Any action is better than none, and we have spent much time of late pondering impossible options.”

David rolled his eyes. “I noticed.”

Fionchadd regarded him levelly. “So what
do
we do? Run, or fight?”

“
Can
we fight?”

“They outnumber us.”

“Then we run.”

“Fine. Now…
where
do we run?”

“What do you mean?”

“They may very well catch us on the Track. But we have another choice, one they dare not make.”

David’s mouth popped open “Not—”

The Faery nodded. “The Hole.”

David had to brace himself to keep from shaking. But then he saw the confident, almost triumphant light that filled Fionchadd’s eyes. “It means aborting our mission.”

“It means…
redirecting
our mission,” the Faery corrected. “There are still ways to contact the Powersmiths. The one I chose was only easiest.”

“Galunlati,” David breathed.

Again Fionchadd nodded.

David dared another glance at that dark coast. And the ships—which had clearly grown closer.

“If Lugh’s ships are here ahead of us, that means it’s…it’s several days after we left, though it doesn’t feel like it. Which means that by the time we get back, we’ll have lost a whole fucking week!”

“True. And our friends will be expecting us.”

“
But we can’t reach Galunlati from here?”

A shrug. “I think not. For that, we must go through your World.”

“Not even with the Hole?”

“I would not risk it.”

David thought for a long, cold moment, during which the ships grew closer still. “Well,” he announced at last. “I’ll keep everybody belowdecks. You just…do it.”

And with that, he strode back to the cabin.

Chapter XVII: Secrets Squirreled Away

(Sullivan Cove Georgia—Wednesday, June 25—midday)

“Yo! Scott Gresham here!” Scott sang into the receiver, trying to sound cheerier than he felt. Actually he ought to sound fairly decent, since he was dry for a change, and the incessant rain was barely a distant patter here in the Enotah Arms Motel, where Mims had thoughtfully relocated him when the tent (along with the peninsula on which it was situated) had succumbed to a surfeit of water. Langford Lake was three feet higher than it had been four days ago. Which was enough to utterly drown the shoreline, which was enough, period, if Scott had any say.

“Mr. Gresham!” Ralph Mims returned, through a very uneven connection—likely a function of the ongoing deluge, as was practically every other electrical or electronic glitch that had plagued north Georgia since certain friends of Scott’s had started doing things that weren’t possible with the weather.

The phone staticked again—Scott had to thrust it away from his ear to hear. Marsh the (illegal in a motel room) ferret nipped at his bare toe. “Scott!” Mims barked. “You there?”

“Right as…rain.” Scott responded. “Uh, sorry.”

“Not your fault.” Mims didn’t sound happy, though. Nor should he.

“So, what’s happening down in the Classic City?” Scott inquired with politeness as forced as his salutation.

“As far as things that concern you immediately, not a lot. It’s raining—no surprise there—this is Athens, after all.”

“Right,” Scott agreed sagely. “You know what they say? Skies of gray: rain’s on its way; skies of black: rain on your back; skies of red: rain on your head; skies of yellow: rain on a fellow—”

“Etcetera, etcetera,” Mims finished irritably. “So, I take it there’s no progress?”

Scott shifted his weight to his other foot and took a sip of the lone Sam Adams Porter that remained from the stash Aikin had spirited up from Athens on his last supply run. “Uh, not as much as either of us would like, I’m afraid. Lake’s up another six inches since the last time you checked in, and the bank—by which I mean everything that was exposed rock, dirt, or sand when you and I first got here—is completely covered. Locals say that’s not too unusual, and they’re not complainin’ much, ’cause they know how dry it can get up here. They say the lake’s been a lot further down than when we saw it, too. This just balances out.”

“Shitty timing, though.”

Scott started to nod, then realized how stupid that would be. “Uh, yeah,” he mumbled. “No way I can do any prospectin’ in this, either. Never mind get out to the mountain itself. What little shore was accessible is gone now; it’d be like tryin’ to dock with a glass-brick wall. Shoot, you’d fall off if you weren’t careful—if you didn’t wash away.
If
you could find somebody willin’ to take you out there in the first place. Apparently folks
value
their boats up here.”

“May have to buy one, then,” Mims retorted. “If worse comes to worse, we could always write it off.”

(And would you write me off too?
Scott wondered.
If I went down with that goddamn write-off boat?)

“Scott…?”

“Sorry. Got distracted.”

“Anything else?”

Scott shifted his weight again. “Well,” he began carefully, “I've been tryin’ to figure out some good we can get out of all this delay, and one thing that occurs to me is that it might help the…the prospectin’.”

“How do you mean?”

“I was supposed to check the shore for potential gemstone nodes, right? Well, I happen to know that those big sapphires you were talkin' about were found in places where lakes like Langford have gone down after flooding. I won't bore you with the technical BS, but basically… they wash out of the ground.”