Dreamseeker's Road (28 page)

Except that right brain drove left-side muscles, and left drove right, and there seemed to be some bond between like halves that transcended attachment. Therefore, the part that drove the remaining sword was attached to a remote body, which, though weaponless, was fully functional.

Alec leapt sideways, and struck again—not at the preposterous thing with the weapon, but at the exposed right side of its woody twin.

And twisted his stroke at the last second, to catch it just below his fungied knee.

The blade sliced clean through, and the guard collapsed where he stood. The air smelled of burning wood. Already injured, the other likewise toppled.

Alec dropped back, frankly astonished.

Yet they lived! All four pieces did.

“It was thought,” one panted, “that divided as we were, we would fight as two warriors yet die as four; that it would take a blow to each part of us to claim the whole. But that reckoned on Faery warriors, not on a human who commands the dreaded iron.”

“With the dreaded iron,” the other voice continued, “one blow can wound both portions of whichever body it strikes.”

“And blows strong enough to cleave our skulls would likewise cleave our entire bodies—”

“—Freeing you to rejoin your original halves before you died?” Alec finished.

“You have guessed the rest of our riddle,” the topmost guard affirmed.

“You have only to see it done to free us,” the bottom added. “Rejoined, we can muster sufficient will to fight the iron infection.”

Still mostly running on instinct, Alec raised his sword to follow that suggestion; but then his eyes narrow suspiciously. “You won't fight me again, will you?”

“We have done our duty,” the upper one answered. “But hurry, for if any of our four parts dies, all are doomed.”

Alec swallowed hard. “You'll have to sit up,” he managed, reaching to help the topmost to an unsteady seat on the next step down. That one immediately tore off his helm, closed his eyes, and thrust his head far forward.

“I'm not sure about this,” Alec admitted frankly. “I'm not conditioned to split the skulls of folks I've just talked to. And…what if I miss?”

“Simply aim for the juncture of our two halves,” that one murmured.

“Think of it as splitting firewood,” came a slow weak chuckle from the other.

“But…”

“Act!
Now!
”

Alec did. As soon as the impulse came, he swung his sword behind his back two-handed; then arched it up and over, to bring it down hard where thick gold-copper hair met what looked like moldy moss.

He struck true. The sword dug in—and continued down through the guard's body until it struck the mail hauberk, whereupon he wrenched it free.

He couldn't watch the rest, as the body split asunder and odd sounds began to issue from the portions he couldn't see, while hands tore frantically at armor. “Here,” he gritted, when he could no longer resist a peek, and ran the swordpoint down the front of the mail coat from throat to leg slit. The gleaming links parted easily. He didn't look at what lay inside.

The blow to the second guard went quickly. Instinct was driving now, and instinct told him it was unwise to question what he did.

Nor did he look at the aftermath of his messy operation, merely stood breathing heavily, leaning against his sword, whose point rested atop a stone step (where it was slowly sinking in). Abruptly, reality spun, and he sat down with a thump, a wave of nausea playing tag with a strong urge to go unconscious. He bent over and stuck his head between his knees, fumbling at his canteen. Found, he drank a long draught of what no longer tasted precisely like Georgia well water. When he seemed unlikely to faint, he rose again. And pointedly did not look at four odd shapes groping for each other across the steps.

“Sorry, guys,” he gasped. “If you need me, I'll do what I can; otherwise…” Hearing no reply, he pushed through the tower door.

And entered emptiness: charred, twisted emptiness.

Obviously a fire had raged here once, flaring up from a hearth in the center of the floor to lick the ceiling with sufficient heat to set the gold and silver ornaments there a-dripping, or running in lumpy pools down the black glass walls. Soot—actual
soot—
drifted
down from distant vaulted heights, disturbed by the breeze that wafted in from the blasted plain. Dust motes danced with each other: black carbon and some unknown substance of mirror-silver.

Up.

He had to go up!

Fortunately, there was a ramp: a long wedge of stone set flush against the wall and spiraling upward into darkness.

He jogged that way, hoping there were no more surprises, and wishing he'd thought to
ask
if there were. None appeared, anyway, and his hardest task became keeping his footing on a slope made slick with layers of soot interspersed with dust-fine glass. Once he slipped, but somehow he made it to a long opening in the ceiling of the entrance chamber and passed through.

The next level was similar to the one below but less ravaged by fire, though a long rent showed in one wall, and the whole area around another window had fallen away. Shreds of singed tapestries lay close against scorched walls, and not all the shards of bright-colored glass upon the floor were melted.

The ramp continued.

Five times Alec passed through ceilings as he continued his arduous trek, through air that grew hotter by the instant, and thicker with the dust of ages.

Yet each level's furnishings were in better repair—and its walls more problematical, as though something had shaken the keep down from above, even as flame broke free to wash it from below.

Abruptly, there were no more floors. Rather, he stood in a chamber no wider than his outstretched arms (less sword), and not much longer. The wall to the right was so broken it resembled thick glass filigree, but the one to the left was solid.

Ahead lay a door: thick boards of what looked like solid oak, joined by dense strapwork of dark metal. Alec touched the sword to a spot of naked wood. Smoke erupted.

He thought of leaving it there—but that might catch it on fire, which was
not
the plan. Not when Eva presumably lay beyond. And then it occurred to him that he hadn't yet actually knocked—and did.

“Come in, oh Mortal who loves me,” a soft, tired, but achingly familiar female voice answered.

Chapter XVIII: Walls

(The Straight Tracks—no time)

“I don't understand,” Aikin gasped, his words barely audible between the thundering thumps of the black mare's hooves against whatever presently lay beneath the golden glimmer of the Track. “I only
took
forty-nine steps!”

“Don't ask me!” David shot back, his voice gone wobbly as he was forced to yell to make himself heard—and that with Aikin (who couldn't ride) pressed hard against his back, arms clamped around him panic-tight. At least the mare-that-was-also-a-woman wasn't giving them attitude right now. In fact, she was running very smoothly indeed—for a horse. David couldn't help but recall all those stories about Faery steeds whose riders never fell off, and hoped this was one. A fall was
not
a comforting notion—not with nothing but vicious-looking briars to either side. Certainly not with the Wild Hunt on their Track if not—so far—their trail.

Yeah, anything that made a Faery woman shape-shift in order to flee in near-blind panic wasn't something he wanted to tangle with. Never mind poor Aikin. He'd
seen
Aik's face when she'd named their pursuer, seen it go just about as white as snow. And that was as much information as he needed.

But Aik wanted to know more—about everything, apparently, never mind their circumstances, or the one he'd just escaped—and so they were yelling in each other's ears and faces, and had been, for at least five minutes. Liz had it lucky: a mount to herself and no overcurious would-be forester to give her grief. At least conversation kept his mind off his tortured sitter. For a while.

“Forty-nine paces,” Aikin repeated. “I counted, so I could go back that many.”

It would not have succeeded,
the Faery's thought came into David's mind, though she was obviously addressing his corider.
Not once you had entered another World. It is like gears meshing with one another: as long as you stay on the same gear—the same Track from the same World—you are secure. You
can
watch other gears go by, and if you are careful, you can step off the rim and onto a spoke of
your
wheel, and be home. But once you venture onto
another
gear, you
are in
trouble; because that gear may not be the same size; and may spin past
your
gear at a different rate. Do you see?

“Sort of,” Aikin muttered. “Kinda.”

David dared a glance to the right, to where Liz rode close beside. He smiled grimly. She smiled back. “You catch that?” he shouted.

She shook her head jerkily. “Too complex for me,” she called back, risking a glance over her shoulder.

David resisted the temptation to follow her example. He'd just as soon not know what was back there—if anything was.

“How much longer?” he yelled again—at the horse.

You do not need to shout to address me
, the Faery gave back.
Thoughts are only masked by other thoughts.

“Sorry.”

Too long, I fear—to answer your question. We must…go all the way around the gear on which we found your friend.

“God, this is confusing,” Aikin growled. “If they're
Straight
Tracks, how can they also be
cogwheels
?
And if you're on the rim of one, there shouldn't be a problem finding your own spoke.”

Ah, but the Tracks
are
not precisely the rims of gears or their teeth,
the horse-woman replied.
They are more like the place where two gears meet: the point of tangency. In fact, some say there
are
no
Tracks, merely points in space, but that we see that point at all times simultaneously, which gives it the illusion of length. And, of course, anything that spins produces inertia—the tendency to continue in a straight line… And of course the Tracks
are
straight…

“Never mind,” Aikin groaned. “Sounds too much like math.”

It is an idea of my own,
the woman replied.
Based on readings I did in your World. I—

She broke off abruptly, and David felt a wash of panic slap against the walls of his mind. Aik must have felt it too, because he tensed. He heard Liz bite off a cry of pain.

He comes!

The black mare gathered herself and ran faster. The white stallion followed. The pounding of their hooves acquired a more-urgent cadence; their breaths roared through two sets of teeth. Sweat splattered David's face—or spittle. It was all he could do to maintain his hold on the reins and still try to accommodate Aikin, who clutched him grimly. “Shit,” Aikin gasped. “Goddamn.”

David started to reply, but the words froze in his throat as a sound found his ear: the brazen bellow of a hunting horn echoing up the Track from behind.

Close.

Too
close.

He had to look.

A deep breath, and he glanced backward, past the wildly whipping darkness of Aikin's hair, to the gold-lit tube of the Track. He saw nothing at first—but his eyes burned abruptly the way they did only in the presence of Power used profligately and close by. And somehow, he could
see:
black shapes cut out against the gold—five—ten—a
dozen
riders on horses, with cloaks billowing like storm clouds and armor flashing in disturbing dark colors he wasn't certain he should be able to see, as though his vision had skewed toward ultraviolet—which perhaps, with the Sight, it had. The lead rider wore stag's antlers—metal helm, beast's head, or grown from his own flesh and bone, he couldn't tell, nor wanted to. He only knew he was afraid as he'd never been afraid; as though that one image had sparked something primal and instinctive, like the fear of snakes or spiders.

He shut his eyes, unable to watch longer, yet unable to resist. And when the tension of not knowing grew too great, and he opened them again, the Hunt was closer. And this time the horn brought with it the baying and yapping and belling of hounds. He could see them now, where before the Track glow had hidden them: a tide of black that flowed before the horses: black ears and black backs and black tails; lolling tongues and flashing red eyes and white teeth that looked like deadly foam on the crests of canine waves, as their leaps brought them above the Track.

“This is…
bad,
David,” Liz shouted.

David tore his gaze away from their pursuit to meet his lady's. They touched glances in lieu of hands. It was enough. Comfort sparked across the few yards between them: comfort and concern.

The Lands of Men,
the Faery told them, her unheard voice nevertheless carrying a breathless quality.
If we can reach the Lands of Men
anywhere,
perhaps he will not follow us there.

“But there's only that one entrance, isn't there?” David cried.

If we can get close enough, we can go straight through the World Walls themselves. It is not a thing I would desire; it will be unpleasant; and I cannot say where—or when—we would emerge, but it is better than what awaits us on the tip of the Huntsman's spear.

“Who
is
he?” Aikin broke in. “Or…what?”

He was here when the Tuatha de Danaan came,
the horse-woman answered.
He met us when we arrived, and he fought with our greatest warriors—Lugh and Nuada and Bres and Angus Og and Finvarra
and
Bobh Derg. No one proved victorious. Finally, he gave us the land uncontested, but would not relinquish the Tracks—nor, one night a year, any lands that lie upon them. Then he rides.