Dreamseeker's Road (5 page)

But there were more of 'em all the time: seers, quick-folk, big iron things, and holes in the World Walls, all; and Gargyn was tired of fretting about his clan. Which was why he was here, in his very best clothes, waiting for one of the Seelie folk to ride by and hear his case. One often did this time of day, Borbin's brother had confided over an ale: one who'd harken to even a humble bodach's woes.

He didn't have long to wait—far less time than three sturdy quick-folk lads took to tote a dead deer two mortal miles—before a subtle pounding began to jolt up through his ankles. And very soon after that, he heard the scratchy thunder of hooves at a steady run.

He almost fled when she careened around the corner, so tall and fair and fey that lady was. But then she saw him, and reined her smoked-silver stallion, and smiled at him like lightning at stormy dawn—and Gargyn could not move, perilous though Seelie folk might be. She wore no crown, nor suffered any escort, yet was she clearly a queen. She also looked dangerously preoccupied.

“Hail, master bodach,” she called from the saddle, as her gown of pewter, charcoal, and greenish gray settled around her, like waves beneath a nervous sky. “Is there a reason you assay Lugh's High Road on so fine an afternoon?”

Gargyn felt heat rise in his cheeks and decided to ponder the ground, but the woman's eyes caught his and drew his gaze like a moth toward the flame of her own. Fierce, she looked, and angry, though not, he felt, at him. But sympathetic she likewise seemed, and so he told his tale.

She listened with patience and silence, then nodded when he was done. “Your plight is not rare,” she acknowledged, “though your own king does not seem to deem these…erosions worth his note. Then again, he has
never
cared much for you small fey, has he? As though you were a blight on the bloom of his oh-so-perfect realm. But Rhiannon of Ys knows your worth and would welcome you to my shores—were there not so many of you so suddenly, all fleeing these troublesome holes. Yet come, if you will, and I will comfort you, for I have found a World where you could dwell in peace forever.”

Gargyn chewed his lip. “'At's as much as we could 'ope for, Lady,” he sighed. “But—well, where
is
this place? I can't say I've 'eard of it.”

“Ys touches the Mortal World underwater,” Rhian-non informed him. “But it overlaps another land on the other side: one in which Power burns more brightly than in the Mortal World. I would settle you small folk there.”

Gargyn's eyes narrowed sharply. “
Would?
Does 'at mean you're not sure?”

“Access is awkward,” the queen admitted. “Yet a means exists in the Mortal World to erect a permanent gate between my realm and this other.”

“But—”

“Enough!” Rhiannon snapped. “You have your dreams, I have mine, and mine require that I mold
another's
dreaming.” And with that, she set heels to her horse's flanks and flashed away.

Gargyn watched her as long as he could. And wondered what Borbin would think about moving.

Chapter III: Rocks and Mages

(Lookout Rock, Georgia—Saturday, October 24—noonish)

“Well,
that
little grossness is done,” Aikin sighed, so softly Alec could scarcely hear him above the whooshing jingle of the water that slid down fifty feet of black rocks into a small pool two yards to his right. “All them guts be out and gone—
like
we shoulda done to start with
,”
he added, more loudly, over his shoulder.

Alec looked up warily from where, stripped to his cammo fatigues, he was attempting to wash everything above the belt in an escaped tributary of the pond—one whose normal clarity was clouded with swirls of red from the abundant supply that stained nearly all his visible skin.

Blood.
Deer
blood, courtesy of “friends” with screwed-up senses of humor.

True, Aik was also ensanguined, as was Dave; but
he'd
got the worst of it. And he should've known better, dammit! Should've expected that, as neophyte deer hunter and default group geek, he'd run afoul of some stupid initiation rite. With his first squirrel, at age thirteen, it had been smears of blood down either cheek, marked with David's fingers. He'd expected the same with the doe, though she clearly wasn't
his
kill.

What he
hadn't
counted on was for Aik to pass him his Rakestraw hunting knife, point at the dime-sized hole at the base of the poor beast's neck, and state bluntly, “It's time you got your hands bloody.”

He'd done it, too, had sawed right on in there—with his teeth clenched and his stomach threatening to revolt at the stench of hot viscera. And there'd been God's plenty of blood, sure enough, more than enough to fill the Thermos that sat on the rock shelf behind him with what, just that morning, had carried something's life.

But what he absolutely hadn't anticipated was that David would grab him from behind just as he was securing the cap, while Aik thrust his arms into the wound up to the elbows, and thus begored, tried to smear the yucky stuff across his face—and bare belly and chest, which, despite his best efforts, David's deft hands had exposed.

And what his so-called friends hadn't counted on (nor he) was the cap on the Thermos not being as secure as any of them had thought, and that his frantic thrashings (better than quiescent acceptance, though he'd known he was doomed from the start) would unseat it—lavishly anointing all three with the gruesome contents. Dave had caught it in the face; Aik from chin to groin. A free-for-all had ensued. In the end, they'd emptied the Thermos—much of it down David's britches.

At least Aik had been sport enough to refill it.

But what none of 'em had counted on—or had forgotten in a year—was how heavy a medium-sized doe was when you had to drag her close to three miles. Hand-rasping, leg-numbing, shoulder-straining numb. Even in two-man shifts.

“
Really
should've field-dressed her where she lay,” Aikin persisted, as he skinned out of his T-shirt, squatted to Alec's left, and commenced to scrub his hands.

“'Cept we'd have scooped up half a mountain's worth of crud inside her,” David muttered absently, as he joined them. Behind him, the lately-eviscerated deer dangled by its hind legs from a dying pine between the lean-to they sometimes camped in and the impressive stone outcrop that gave Lookout Rock its name. Like his companions, he'd shed his shirt. Unlike them, he'd likewise doffed his boots. He looked unaccountably grim.

“Yeah, but we had a start on it already,” Aikin countered with a smirk. “I mean, given that old Frank Buck here split the friggin' diaphragm so the guts started oozin' out a mile down the trail—and we're
still
gonna have to lug it on down to your house!
Right McLean
?”

“You're the forestry jock!” Alec growled. “You're the fool who handed
me
the knife.
I've
skinned three squirrels in my life and dissected one frog and a fetal pig. I don't know crap about deer anatomy.”

“You guys got a spare pair of pants?” David asked abruptly.

“Wash what you got or go nekkid,” Aikin snorted. “Ain't nobody gonna see but us and your folks.”

“Gosh,” Alec added, deadpan, “you mean you're not gonna browbeat us into takin' a dip?”

“Pants,” David snapped. “Now! If you got 'em. I don't feel like puttin' up with any more shit.”

“Gym shorts in my backpack,” Alec grunted. “If I had any sense, I'd make you beg.”

Aikin eyed him askance. “You bring
clothes
on a half day hike?”

“I have…friends I don't entirely trust.”

David ignored them, but retrieved the shorts, swapped them for his cammos and Fruit of the Looms, which he left in the pool to soak, and picked his way barefoot to the verge of the overlook, where he stood staring west to where the near-perfect cone of Bloody Bald lifted its quartzite crown above the waters of Langford Lake. Eventually he sat down: silent, still, and staring, shivering every now and then in the autumn air. Alec stowed the Thermos in his backpack and regarded him dully. It really was getting to him this time. Then again, the anniversary of the death of David's favorite, role model, and namesake uncle had never actually coincided with his and Aik's ritual first-deer-hunt-of-the-season. What was it he'd said when Aik had asked what was bugging him? Seven years? Had it really been that long since David-the-Elder's death? Seven years was a long time to miss somebody, a long time to nurse so much pain.

God knew
he
knew about missing somebody, about a heart clogged thick with loss.

For in spite of what logic—and David, all too frequently—told him about how ruthlessly she had used him, he still missed a slim, dark-haired Faery woman he'd only known as Eva. Aife, actually; she'd been a partisan of Ailill's, the Faery lord David had thwarted all those years back. In revenge, she'd disguised herself as a mortal, put on the substance of the Lands of Men, and in that form used his own jealousy of David's newborn love for Liz Hughes as a means of wreaking vengeance on Lugh Samildinach, the local Faery king.

Somewhere in there he'd let her pop his cherry, never dreaming that she'd wanted not
him,
but merely his seed, so as to strengthen her magical hold. He'd felt like singing then—and like putting a bullet through his skull when he'd learned the truth soon after. And for a while he'd hated Eva. Yet there at the last, when she lay dying in Uncle Dale Sullivan's yard (as much as the Sidhe
could
die) she'd admitted that in spite of herself, she'd come to love him too. A flame had awakened then, and that flame had never entirely died.

“You're not the only one who hasn't forgotten,” he told David, as he came to stand behind him. Their shadows were tiny before them; it was breathing hard on noon.

“Seven years,” David gritted. “Seven bloody years since the best man who ever lived got blown to pieces on a Middle Eastern street.”

“Less than that since the only woman I ever loved betrayed me, redeemed herself—and left me all over again.”

“And at the end of seven years the Queen of the Faeries pays a tithe to hell,” Aikin finished, as he joined them. “That's what it says in ‘Tam Lin.'”

“It's not like that,” David snorted. “No more than sex is like jackin' off.”

“Don't remind me,” Alec groaned.

They ignored him.

“I haven't forgotten,” Aikin said eventually.

“Sex?” David wondered. “Or jacking off?”

“That it's noon! That's a
between
time, right? One of the times the World Walls grow thin.”

“That's what the books say,” David spat. “Why should the truth be any different?”

“Seven years since something hurt you,” Aikin went on. “And three since something else hurt Alec. I can't help you guys, but you can keep me from hurting anymore.”

David rose explosively. Alec stepped back to let him pass—and saw his friends glaring at each other, chest to chest: fair-skinned blond against dark brunette; gymnast-slim versus wrestler-stocky; blue eyes vying with hazel. The air was taut with incipient violence, though Alec had no idea who would strike first—or why. But then David exhaled loudly, and with that, the hardness of his anger that had made the very earth seem frail and weak melted away, leaving a soft, resigned core. “We'll try the easy way first, if you don't mind,” he said tersely.

Aikin looked briefly confused, but nodded.

“Come here, then,” David told him, grabbing him by the arm. “Step on my feet—no, both of 'em: yours atop mine, and barefoot would probably work best—skin on skin usually does.”

Aikin shrugged free long enough to remove his boots and socks, then eased onto David's feet once more. David wrapped his left arm around him to balance them both. “Okay, now look over my right shoulder toward Bloody Bald.”

“What am I supposed to see?”

“I'm not gonna tell you—though you probably know already. Just look at Bloody Bald!”

Aikin did, resting his chin (he was five-five-point-five versus David's five-seven and Alec's five-foot-ten) on his friend's shoulder. David took a deep breath, drew Aikin into a tighter embrace—and clapped his free hand atop the shorter boy's head. “Everything between my hands and my feet is mine!” he cried. “Now see, Aikin;
see
!”

Alec expected some reaction. Probably he expected Aik to go stiff, or cry out in wonder or awe. Instead, he remained as he was: inert in David's arms.

“See anything?” David prompted, when perhaps ten seconds had passed.

“The wind on the water,” Aikin murmured, quoting Malory. “Maybe a shimmer on the mountaintop;
maybe
a glittery spikiness up there.”

“No castle?”

“Coulda been, I don't know.”

David released him. Aikin staggered back, face bitter with disappointment. “You should've seen a whole lot more. The High King of Tir-Nan-Og's got a friggin'
castle
up there.”

“Well, I missed it!”

Alec scratched his head. “The World Walls—” he began.

Aikin spun to face him. “What about 'em?”

Alec started. “Oh, uh…well, it just occurred to me that we've seen evidence that the World Walls were thin back up on the mountain. So maybe they're
thicker
than usual around Lugh's palace. Shoot, maybe they're in a state of flux.”

David scowled thoughtfully: a worried look in lieu of the anger, which seemed to have vanished as quickly as it had appeared. “God, I hope not. The last thing I need's trouble with
them
.”

Aikin glared at him. “What's it got to do with you?”

“Nothing—I hope. But trouble in Faerie hereabouts has a tendency to…infect me.”