Landslayer's Law (35 page)

And then all that remained was the fletching. “Hold on just one more second,” he admonished through clenched teeth of his own—and using most of his strength, jerked the shaft the rest of the way through.

Fionchadd relaxed immediately and vented a long, soft sigh. Already his face was clearing: lines of tension that had made his features look almost human swiftly blurring away. David sat back on his haunches, staring at the arrow in disgust. It was covered with blood.
Faery
blood. The blood of his most loyal friend from all that strange, troubled World. Sick with anger at…at all this incessant chaos and violence, he supposed, he twisted around to fling the bolt overboard like the tainted thing it was.

A hand restrained him even as he rose: Fionchadd’s hand—the good one. The Faery’s eyes were bright with shock.

“No!”

David let him drag his arm back down, staring at his friend in dumb amazement as Fionchadd slowly freed the arrow from his fingers and laid it on the deck. “Watch!” Fionchadd whispered.

David did—wondering what he was supposed to see. Wondering, more to the point, if they had this much time to burn. “The fleet—” he prompted anxiously.

“Will wait…I think. Long enough, anyway. I—”

A noise from beside them drew their attention. Something was up with the arrow. The blood was gone, for one thing—and it was moving: writhing and twisting gently upon the deck, like a snake seeking to shed its skin.

More and more like that, in fact, for as David watched incredulously, the arrow split down its whole length; something…disturbing happened to the air around it—and before David could voice even the shortest yip of alarm, a young Faery man lay there: naked, blond, and—even for a Faery—thin. The man blinked for a moment, uttered a terse “thank you,” to the two of them in general, then turned his attention fully on Fionchadd.

“I have little time,” that one gasped, “if I am to maintain the deception I have just employed, yet there are things I must tell you in that brief span.” He took a deep ragged breath, then another, and seemed by his expression to be in more than a little pain himself. A final breath, as though he drank strength from the very air, and he spoke again. “The first thing you should know is that Arawn of Annwyn has sided with the Sons of Ailill in firm opposition to humankind—this I have learned since our fleet arrived at sunrise. His precise plans remain unclear, though I know that he considers Lugh’s throne at risk and Tir-Nan-Og…ripe for picking—as your human allies would say,” he added to David. But then his face darkened again. “I am certain Arawn will sail soon. I am not certain when he will arrive, for he distrusts the Seas. Ys watches. The Powersmiths stir, but no one knows their thinking nor dares to ask.”

“I dare,” Fionchadd challenged. “We were on our way there.”

“You would never have arrived. Arawn had already set guard upon his borders.”

Fionchadd raised a brow. “His throne is unsteady too? If there are those who plot against him, surely I would have known.”

A wry smirk. “You trust too many, my friend; even as you trust too few. You are a true son of Ailill’s body, yet you side with those who shamed him. You are half a Powersmith, yet you do not seek their arts or their Power. You choose humans as your allies, yet you support the mighty in Tir-Nan-Og.”

“Wait a minute,” David broke in. “How do we know we can trust
you
?
Who are you, anyway?”

“You can trust him,” Fionchadd assured him. “Names do not matter, but he has gambled much coming here, and his blood and my blood have mingled before, as they did in the arrow now. He is loyal to Lugh—and to me—in full degree, and he is cunning and clever but not strong in Power. He drained all his strength effecting that first change. He needed mine to recover.”

David studied the stranger skeptically. “He…changed to an…arrow, and had someone shoot him over…?”

“Someone else loyal to Lugh,” the stranger acknowledged, “someone the Sons, should they learn of this, will deem a traitor.”

“As they will you, my friend,” Fionchadd noted softly.

A tense smile. “If we are clever they will not know of our deception. They will think the bolt that should have slain you failed”—he grabbed Fionchadd by the arm and stared him hard in the face—”but you must leave
now
!
Let this vessel float a time, as though it were aimless; then, when you will, turn and flee. Take the Tracks. Dare the Hole—I care not. I had lost hope of even seeing you here, yet you came. I have risked much in helping you; do not let that risk have been in vain! I— No, I will not say it. No more time remains!”

And with that, he scrambled on hands and knees across the deck, and—after one brief check above the rail on the seaward side, rose like a spring uncoiling and leapt overboard.

David flopped back against the gunwale, gaze fixed firmly on his Faery friend. “What the
hell
is goin’ on?”

“More than I knew, apparently. But it seems I have friends where I did not expect them—or at least they are not foes.”

“If they’re on Lugh’s side, they’re not on mine,” David retorted.

“Some sides…face two ways,” Fionchadd sighed wearily. “Sometimes even three…or four…or five.”

“Strange bedfellows….”

Fionchadd regarded him strangely. “Sometimes.”

“So—can we trust him?”

A shrug. “He bought us time. He told us things we might find useful. He risked himself.”

David surveyed the coast. “From what he says, though, those ships, that you said were piloted by Lugh’s folks…were really crewed by the Sons of Ailill?”

“So it would seem. Whether that means mutiny, or treason in the ranks, I have no way of knowing.”

“And that guy…?”

Another shrug. “He will swim in secret back to that ship. He will regain his own shape—presumably with the aid of his friend, the trusted bowman. If both are fortunate, no one will be the wiser.”

“And if someone finds out?”

“The Death of Iron, I suppose. That is the normal doom of traitors, and Arawn would certainly style them thus. I—”

“What’re you guys
doing
?”
Alec hissed from the top of the cabin stair.

“Wasting precious time,” Fionchadd grumbled—and made his way, still hunched over below rail-level, toward the stern, where the tiller was.

David watched him go, even as Alec approached. Other faces showed behind, but David waved them back, then grabbed Alec by the leg and yanked him down. “Go get everybody,” David ordered, “and tell ’em to run out here all crazy, like Finno’s just been killed!”

Alec gaped for a startled moment longer, then complied. Myra, it evolved, proved especially apt at keening.

* * *

“I can’t believe that worked,” Alec breathed what seemed like hours later. “I absolutely cannot believe it!”

David gazed pointedly at the deck—better that than the chaos that had swallowed all view of the shore and the fleet behind them, or the nothingness that loomed ahead: there, in what he’d come to call the event horizon. Fionchadd was still at the tiller, which he could maneuver from below the rail—and would linger there a brief while longer. Annwyn was a tiny blot at the end of the Hole (odd that those things didn’t necessarily lie flat upon/within the water, as David had always assumed they would, the few times he’d heard them mentioned). The Track was a glitter in their wake, save that closer in it had dissolved into a sort of crooked spiral that twisted around the sky before vanishing entirely. “Luck,” David offered eventually. “Of which we seem to have more than our share, both good and bad.”

Alec nodded glumly as he ambled across the deck. David joined him, laid a comradely arm across his shoulders and gave them an impulsive squeeze. It was the first time he’d done that in ages. He wondered, suddenly, how much they had drifted apart: victims of larger events; flashier, more demanding friends; inconsistent priorities and interests. He’d always counted on Alec’s absolute loyalty, the same way he relied on breathing. But maybe he shouldn’t take it so much for granted.

“Love you, man,” he murmured.

Alec smiled wanly. “Just in case.”

“What?”

“We don’t get out of this.”

“That’s not what I was thinkin’.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Alec whispered. “Love you too.” Silence.

And then, quietly, but clearly from Fionchadd. “It would be wise if you went below.”

* * *

“If we weren’t up to our butts in alligators,” David informed Brock, “I’d make you answer those questions before I pass this over. I haven’t forgotten your promise,” he added, pointedly.

Brock snatched the medallion from David’s fingers, smiling smugly, even as he composed his face to innocence. “Thank God for ’gators, then.”

“’Gators,” Liz snorted from the cabin’s corner. “This all started with one of them.”

“There’s one thing good about all this, though,” Myra mused, with a sly grin at Piper, who was polishing his pipes in the opposite corner. She paused expectantly.

Piper evidently caught that cue and glanced up curiously, less wired than any time lately. “What?”

“We didn’t have to stage a burial at sea for Finno.”

Piper looked perplexed. “That would have been…very bad.”

“Yeah,” Myra gave back smugly. “I couldn’t have stood another reprise of
Amazing Grace
.”

Piper threw a drone at her—then looked appalled, scrambled after it, and kissed it in desperate apology. It was good, David reckoned, to see even that much sign of the pre-voyage Piper.

“Cool it,” Brock snapped from the middle of the cabin, “you may think this finding-thing’s easy, but it’s not; I need your help if we’re gonna get outta here.”

David nodded. “Good point.” And scooted over to join him.

“And a good
question
,”
Liz appended, “is where, exactly, are we going, anyway?”

“That could be a problem,” Fionchadd admitted from the door behind them—beyond which David could once again see that awful colorless sky. He quickly turned away.

“How so?” Liz inquired.

The Faery shifted his weight. “I am not certain how our young friend’s Power functions,” he began. “But before, he had a name for the place he sought. The place from which we came—by which we entered the Hole, I mean—
has
no name I have ever heard. It is not Tir-Nan-Og, but a realm that lies…above it.”

Brock fidgeted with a stray lock of hair, face tight with nervous anxiety. “Names have power, Cal says, but…that last time, I mostly just asked for the way out.”

“Worked, too,” Myra drawled.

Fionchadd ignored her. “I have been pondering that, however; and it now seems to me that it might be wisest to simply seek out Tir-Nan-Og. If we are fortunate, we will arrive well beyond sight of that coast. Perhaps if we then sought some other landfall than the traditional southern haven….”

David frowned. “In that case, why don’t we just return to our World and be done with it?”

Fionchadd frowned in turn. “We cannot—from here. The Hole began there…yet it has not burned
through
there. It is the same as…as swinging that medallion through the air. You can pass your finger through the places it has been, but not through the medallion itself.”

“Ah,” Alec said. “Like it’s the laser beam that cuts, not the machine that makes the beam, only you can’t have the beam
without
the machine.”

The Faery gnawed his lips, then nodded. “I think so.”

“Yeah,” David mused. “But what about the Powersmiths? Couldn’t it take us straight to them, without bothering with Annwyn?”

Fionchadd slowly shook his head. “To tell you true, I know little about Holes—none of us do. But one thing I do know is that they
cannot
take one everywhere, at least not directly. Were it not for Brock, we would be lost entirely, and even so, we have taken more risks than you know—and been luckier than you can imagine. As for this Hole, it is a Hole through
one part
of the Seas Between, yet as best I know, such Holes only touch the seas of Worlds close about them. The Land of the Powersmiths touches this World only in Annwyn, rather as Tir-Nan-Og touches your World; its seas touch other Worlds entirely. It—” He broke off, shaking his head again. “There are no words for these things in your tongue.”

“Well then,” Myra told him sweetly. “Someday you and Sandy’ll have to invent ’em.”

“And there’s not gonna be any someday,” Brock warned, “if you guys don’t form a circle over here so we can get goin’.”

“Coast is clear!” Fionchadd called from the deck. “Come on up!”

“More you hang around us, more you sound like us,” David chuckled, as he scrambled toward the cabin door. Liz was right behind. Lord, but she was good woman, to put up with so much…crap. They’d just escaped from a situation that didn’t bear thinking about by the razor edge skin of their teeth—a situation that had him quaking in his boots, and nearly made him shit his britches, had he been wearing any. (They were all still slumming around in knee-length Faery tunics.) Yet she’d stayed cool throughout. Maybe it was a woman thing: strength under fire—grace under pressure, or whatever. Or perhaps it was just that Liz was a lot more sure of herself and of what she really wanted than he was. She lived in the present and found what pleasure she could there. He still lived, he feared, in his boyhood “someday” and “tomorrow” and “whenever.” Not that he couldn’t function in the real world, he hastened to add. It was just that there was so much he wanted to do, or had to do, or was looking forward to, or regretting, or dreading, that he rarely had time to afford
any
of those myriad possibilities the absolute conviction they deserved. He was like Alec and Scott, he realized, with a sick little twist in his gut: just some self-absorbed little brain-fried space cadet, going through the motions.

Whereupon Liz pinched his butt, which set him in motion of another kind.

The air, when a sudden breeze found its way into the stairwell, smelled like heaven. It was sheer bliss to be back topside, too; after another enforced, temporally-ill-defined incarceration in the dragonship’s ever-more-claustrophobic cabin. Before he could stop himself, David had ducked between Liz’s legs, hoisted her up on his shoulders, and was running laps with her around the deck. Alec joined in at once, grabbing Brock on the fly as they embarked on another lap. Myra snickered tolerantly. Fionchadd gawked in bemused disbelief. Piper grabbed his pipes and pumped up a jaunty reel.