Dreamseeker's Road (27 page)

Another few steps, and it was suddenly
much
nearer. He was still tracing the broken dragon's teeth of its battered battlements when they attacked.

Fortunately, he heard them first: the jingling hiss of the crystal sand as they rose from underneath it, the glassy pingy rattle of their armor as they scurried forward.

They were man-shaped but knee-high, slender even in their armor, but with longer fingers and wider feet than any of human kind. Mostly he saw scales: armor—he
hoped—
gray-silver
and vitreous, as though each dime-sized plate had been flaked from obsidian and set into silver leather from throat to biceps to thighs. Or maybe that was their flesh! Maybe those weren't helms at all: those knobbed and spiked affairs that covered their heads to cheekbone level, revealing only wide mouths with pointed teeth and the glitter of feral red eyes. Maybe those odd excrescences at shoulder and elbow and knees weren't armor either, but outgrowths of vitreous bone.

But those were
definitely
swords those warriors—perhaps a dozen of them—were wielding as they rushed to encircle him from ten yards out. Swords with a thousand razor-sharp edges of flaked obsidian primed to slice to the bone, to pare meat away before he even felt it.

Alec's brain went numb. Reality tunneled. Those guys really were out to hurt him, quite possibly to kill him thoroughly dead. There'd be no second chances with these lads, not like swapping broomstick blows with Aik or David. And they were small and quick and surely had amazing reflexes, and by the look of them were used to killing things, and were clearly playing for keeps.

And he was standing there as if frozen, as though waiting for someone to change the channel, or call foul or hold, or roll more dice. And while reality suddenly seemed remote and distant and dreamlike, the first time one of those swords bit into his body it would suddenly be very real indeed—and too late.

None of which Alec even knew that he thought, so quickly did it flash through his mind before fight-or-flight took over.

He was taller—a giant to them—and was wearing thick clothing and carrying a sword of steel. He had height and reach…

Screaming for no more reason than tension release, he leapt into the air and dashed toward the tower.

The two warriors who blocked his path on that side hesitated—likely because they'd not expected him to move at all, and certainly not so abruptly.
Probably not used to fighting someone as big as me
, he thought, and slashed out at the nearer.

The dwarf jumped back, dropping his shorter weapon as he flipped backward, landed badly, and sprawled. The follow-through caught his mate, and Alec heard a chirp of pain and the tinkle of shattering glass as his blade smashed into the little being's side. He wasn't sure if it bit, and secretly hoped it hadn't, but the momentum alone was sufficient to sweep the fellow off his feet and hurl him into the next two warriors down. They collapsed into a pile—and strident, angry voices from behind rose into a howl that made every hair on his body prickle to full alert.

He ran—had somehow made an opening, and used it. Steps whispered across the sand in his wake: scurry, hiss-hiss, scrape. The air smelled like red-hot glass. Faster, he pounded, but two were closing in to the right, big feet skimming across the sand. Faster yet, and he knew he'd been a fool to turn his back on armed warriors, no matter how diminutive. Any second one of those glassy swords would stab into his back—or slash his knees or ankles and hamstring him.

Suddenly, he could stand the stress no longer and pivoted around on one foot, aided by the slippery sand. The sword arched out—and caught the closest pursuer across the chest. Blood scribed a counterarc in the air, but Alec felt sick enough to vomit—and before he could stop himself yelled, “Go away, goddammit! I don't wanta hurt you!”

The one he'd struck staggered backward, showing an unprotected throat. His fellows to either side caught him as he toppled. “They did not tell us we would face the Death of Iron,” one cried.

“Then stay the hell away!” Alec gasped breathlessly. “Neither of us wants to die.”

“They said to guard the tower,” another voice muttered. “They did not say we had to succeed.”

And with a hiss like a serpent slithering over paper, the men slid their feet into the sand, ran a few steps, and slipped back into the earth, leaving a splatter of broken scales where the injured one had stood—and a chain of wet red cogwheels: the only color in all that gray land.

Alec swallowed hard and wiped his sweating brow, then turned and jogged onward—to the tower.

That was too
easy, he told himself, as that titanic black mass loomed closer with each step.
Way too easy.

It had to be a trick.

Or did it? The little guys
had
seemed disgruntled—stuck with a rotten post, they'd implied. And even without that, wasn't the mere fact that Eva's incarceration depended on a preposterously unlikely set of conditions more than sufficient to ensure her continued captivity? How many mortals had she even met, after all—unless she'd gone a-whoring in the Lands of Men, as was also possible. But even so, how many would've loved her? None, by her own admission—which was probably true; otherwise Lugh would've been aware of it. No, he'd been clever, the High King of Tir-Nan-Og had: too honorable to base Eva's release upon an impossibility, he'd also known that only one mortal man loved her—a person, safely based in another World he was loath to leave, and unaware that Eva's release hinged on him.

But Lugh hadn't counted on the ulunsuti. Not because he was stupid, Alec bet, but because he was simply unused to thinking that other races might possess means to access Faerie on their own, that there might be magic free in the Lands of Men that had no part of Tir-Nan-Og.

This was it then: walk in, take the girl, and boogie—and they'd all be satisfied.

Or maybe not, for part of Alec knew that he had no idea
what
would happen once Eva was free. Would she still love him? Would he find that he no longer loved her? Would she be willing to hide out in Athens, or would she urge him to come to Faerie? Would her release open a whole new box of difficulties for himself and his friends, or free him to get on with his life?

He didn't know.

And he had no better notion when he found himself facing the first of a sprawling tide of low half circle steps that angled up to the tower's door. Not until he'd gained the top did he see the guards.

They stepped from hidden alcoves to either side of the deep fissure there: two of them, and they made Alec shiver in a way that the sand-skimming wee folk had not.

These were man-sized.

Man-shaped too—in part.

Equal
parts, in fact: sleek-muscled in the way of Faerie men, and handsome.

—That's how
half
their bodies were: the right side of the one to his left, and the opposing portion of the other.

The remaining halves were more hideous than anything he'd ever seen, with only the proper number of limbs, digits, and orifices to mark them as even vaguely human.
Those
parts resembled warped tree branches left to rot, and overgrown with moss and fungus. Bark-rough brows abutted Faery-smooth ones on their faces; lips like knife-torn gashes merged with softly curved ones. Red squinty eyes followed his movements quickly, even as wide green ones did more slowly. It was as if two beings—a warrior of the Sidhe and some troll or ore or goblin—had been cleft in twain from crown to crotch and rejoined with the matching half of the other.

At least they were clothed—in porcelained mail corselets and cap helms of dark green metal that gave some unity to their disparate sides.

Each also held a naked sword crossways before him.

Still giddy from his adrenaline high, Alec swallowed but held his ground, though sweat that had nothing to do with heat broke out across his wire-taut body. So far the guards had offered no more than passive threat—and bluster had stood him in good stead just now. So what did he have to lose by seeking parley first?

“I don't wanta fight,” he called hoarsely.

“Then you are wise, for you would surely not emerge the victor,” the guard to his left replied, in a voice both clear and rough.

“This is an iron sword,” Alec continued. “I guess I oughta warn you.”

“We can see that it is,” the other guard responded gravely.

“Think you could let me by?”

“Do you love she who dwells within?”

A curt nod. “I do.”

“Yet you will not fight for her…”

“I can't love her if I'm dead.”

A delicate brow kinked upward; a misshapen one slammed down in the adjoining head.

It struck Alec then that these guards seemed to relish their post as little as their smaller analogues. So maybe he could bluff his way through here as well. “Well,” he began slyly, “it seems to me that the lady in there's not the only one who's under a fairly major curse; like maybe you guys are on somebody's list too: maybe you're stuck here 'cause of some screwy condition the same as Eva is.”

Two sets of mismatched eyes sought each other. “We cannot speak of it,” one muttered.

“So what's the deal, then?” Alec asked, wondering why he was going along with this screwed-up fairy tale. On the other hand, he wasn't making the rules or setting the agenda.

The guards neither put up their swords nor moved away from the door, but finally the right-hand one spoke, and it seemed as though the distorted part moved his lips more freely.

“We were not always as you see us,” that one began. “Elf and troll we were, and alike from side to side. We were also friends, for though of different kindred we learned to look beyond each other's skins and see that our souls bore one likeness. We grew up together on the fringes of Tir-Nan-Og where the Daoine Sidhe come but infrequently and do not tarry long. Neither of us had brothers or sisters; we only had each other. As I said, we were friends.”

“And eventually,” the other continued, “we became lovers. Such things are not censured in Faerie, and no one objected, until a woman from the court at Tir-Nan-Og chanced our way while hunting. I met her—my elven-self did. She looked at me and fell in love—or lust. I repulsed her, not because she was a woman, and certainly not because she was not fair, but because it seemed she would claim for free that closeness which is too precious to be casually conferred. She did not take kindly to my rebuff, yet went her way. But then a day later, she saw me and my friend…together, and could not contain herself. She cursed us, and with a sword one of her fellows carried, smote us in twain—and rejoined us, saying that we two should at once be together and apart forever, so that if we kissed each other or held each other, we would only grasp ourselves.”

“We appealed to Lugh,” the first went on, “but he was fighting his great battle, and his daughter held his high seat. She it was who sat in judgment—and upheld her sister's curse.”

“But leavened it with hope,” the other put in. “And set us here as guards.”

“Who are commanded to let no one pass,” the mirror twin concluded.

“Fine,” Alec sighed, “I don't suppose there's any chance I could release you, is there? And maybe get off that way?”

Two heads shook. “We cannot say.”

“But is it possible—theoretically? Can't you at least level with me that far?”

The two glanced at each other then nodded. “It…is.”

And with that, they surged forward, swords gleaming bright in unmatched right hands.

Alec stumbled back, found the top step too quickly—and fell, the treads' edges stabbing hard into his thighs, hips, and shoulders. Fortunately, he didn't hit his head, and managed to struggle up on one elbow before the right-hand guard was upon him. He kicked, missed, then kicked again—and caught a woody shin with his left bootheel. The guard grunted, but continued on. Alec barely got his blade up to block as two other swords flashed down.

But slowly…so slowly. Certainly not with the lightning reflexes and razor dexterity he expected of Faery warriors. He knocked the first away with ease, and thrust aside the second in its wake, so that it rang against the steps.

Somehow he scrambled to his feet, halfway down the flight, and met them again, head-on, blade weaving inexpertly before him.

The left one charged, then brought his blade around. Out of nowhere, David's lessons surfaced, and Alec blocked it. The air thrummed with the belling of steel against…some other metal—and smelled of hot metal, too; for the Faery blade was glowing faintly where Alec's sword had connected.

And then the other moved forward, but more slowly than his fellow. In fact, he was limping. Alec swung at the unshielded elven side.

—And hit! Against all hope, he struck home. The guard screamed as metal seared across his unarmored forearm.

And two yards to his right, his other half flinched.

So that was it! Pain to either part affected the whole. These really were two bifurcate beings—which probably explained why they were so slow and clumsy: their limbs had to coordinate two sets of reflexes, two sets of instincts, two levels of training, even.

So what were they doing as guards?

Providing intimidation, Alec decided—and aimed another blow at the injured one, who'd found his own blade obstructed by his companion's wildly flailing arm.

This time Alec struck no glancing blow to the wrist, but hit full in the body of the Faery half—which grunted from impact, or pain, as porcelained links broke and splintered mail scattered. When Alec yanked his blade free, blood stained it. Both halves of that one's face went white. Steam issued from a bubbling rent in the mail.

The
other
cried out—and dropped his sword.

And Alec was suddenly facing one odd-looking warrior who was weaponless, and a mirror twin who was not.