Landslayer's Law (4 page)

Jamie nodded. “And the girl said that Alvin could hide with her, and she told me to count to ‘nine-times-nine.’ And—”

Bushyhead scowled. “That’s what she said? How she put it, I mean? Nine-times-nine?”

Another nod.

The scowl deepened. Bushyhead puffed his cheeks. “Did you get that far?”

“Huh?”

“How far did you actually count? See, the longer you counted, the longer they had to do…whatever they did. Or to go wherever they went—you
did
say you didn’t see a car, right?”

A third nod. “Right. But they said they were from near the lodge, ’cause I asked ’em.”

“But we’ve already checked there, and all the houses ’round there, and nobody remembers seein’ three”—Smith consulted his notes—“‘good-lookin’ teenagers with fancy clothes, rings in their ears, and colored hair.’”

Jamie could think of no reply.

“So basically they were there when you arrived, and when you stopped counting, they were gone?” Bushyhead concluded.

Jamie stared at his feet. “Yeah, I guess. I mean, I tried to track ’em, and all—I guess I forgot to tell you that—but all I found was prints goin’ into the creek but not comin’ out.”

The sheriff sighed wearily. “I wish you’d told us that before.”

“Sorry,” Jamie mumbled. “I forgot.”

“What else you forget?” his ma spat. He glared at her reflexively, and suddenly realized that her anger was only a disguise, a flimsy veneer over fear as deep as that he felt gnawing away his whole insides.

“Nothin’—I hope,” he whispered. “I mean, I might remember something else if something makes me remember, but…I mean, shit, Ma, I was scared, okay? I was scared for Alvin, and scared to tell you about Alvin, and…and scared whatever happened to Alvin might happen to me!”

“Hush,” his ma sobbed, as the requisite tears appeared all in a rush. Then, to the sheriff, as she dabbed at her eyes with a paper towel, “What you reckon happened?”

The sheriff shrugged and exchanged glances with his deputy. For his part, Bushyhead scratched his head and peered at Jamie with curious sympathy. “What about
drums
?”
he asked softly.

Jamie felt a chill dance down his spine, even as he spoke. “Drums?”

“Drums—or music. Any kind of music. Music where you wouldn’t expect it. Or odd music.”

The sheriff frowned. “What you getting’ at, ’Head?”

The deputy ignored him. “Let the boy answer.”

Jamie took a deep breath and squared his shoulders, at once more grateful than he could say that the deputy seemed inclined to cut him some slack, and scared to death of what he’d just dredged up from another dark place in his memory. “Yeah,” he began, swallowing hard. “It’s like I told you: sometimes stuff makes me remember stuff, and all. So yeah, there was drums. I forgot about ’em. Well, no, not really, I just…I just got scared by ’em. See, it was gettin’ late, and I’d lost Alvin and I was lookin’ for ’im, only I couldn’t find ’im, ’cept that once I thought I heard voices—voices laughin’—only they were scary kinda voices, and then I heard somebody hit a drum three times real fast, and…and the voices stopped.”

“Voices in the wind,” Bushyhead breathed, to no one in particular.

The sheriff regarded him sharply. “What was that?”

Bushyhead shook himself, as though he too had become lost in some odd dream. “Nothing—not that’d do any good. I was just remembering a movie I saw on TV one time, based on a legend of my people. And two things come to mind right off. One is that it was about a tribe being warned about a threat from outside that it would be very bad for them to face. And the other thing”—his face went suddenly strange and distant—“the other thing was that there was a subplot about two little girls who got lost in the woods
—these
woods—and nobody could find ’em, but then they turned up safe.”

“H-how?” Jamie’s ma choked, intrigued in spite of herself.

“They said they weren’t lost at all,” Bushyhead replied. “They said some folks had took care of ’em.”

“Oh,” Jamie’s ma grunted dully, into a suddenly ominous silence, punctuated by more and closer thunder.

“Yeah,” Bushyhead finished. “Some beautiful spirit people my folks call the
nunnehi
.”

The sheriff studied his deputy for a long, worried moment, then sighed. “Reckon I best call in a search.”

Jamie watched him trudge to the waiting cruiser. But his mind was already speeding elsewhere: following that tiny new spark of wonder Deputy Bushyhead had unwittingly awakened in his dull, drab world, in the form of one soft spoken word.

Nunnehi.

Interlude II: Spying

(near Sylva, North Carolina—Thursday, June 19—early evening)

“What could be keeping Elvrin?” Fionn grumbled, from where
he crouched on the fringe of the forest—as close as he dared approach to the Quick Folks hold he and Rallyn had lately discovered.

Sprawled in the leaf-mould beside him, Rallyn twisted around to face him, oblivious to the muddy detritus that clung to the tight sleeves of his gray velvet tunic. “Likely he saw a rock or a tree or a butterfly he had not seen before. You know how he is in this World. Just like Silver: cannot do his task for looking.”

Fionn wiped a lock of coppery hair out of his eyes. “One would have thought Silver would send someone less easily distracted.”

“He sent someone interested in this World, and Elvrin knows as much as anyone—about
that
problem, anyway.”

“Yet he is not here when we need him—of course.”

“We therefore rely on orders.”

“Perhaps.”

“Why not?”

In reply, Fionn eased away from a sunbeam lest it bestir the glamour that hid him from human eyes—and promptly flinched as his hand came down on something burning hot. He squinted at the small round object embedded in the mould. A thumbbone’s length across, the object was
—an inch,
to use the Quick Folks term Silver had drilled into them—and fluted along the edge like a crown. A perfect
circle. He flipped it over cautiously, with a twig. Letters showed on top: white on red.
Coke
it read, in the script Silver had also made them learn. “Top of one of their bottles,” he growled. “Amusing, if you think of it: how they leave such dangers about, not knowing.”

“Iron is not hot in this World,” Rallyn hissed back. “Lest you forget,” he added. “Nor does your discovery offer any clue regarding what is to be done about
her
.”

Fionn scooted closer to the edge of the bluff, where the Quick Folks had hacked away a slice of the earth—a portion of woods and wild—to make space for a mountainside dwelling. The house was not unappealing, for one of
theirs:
made mostly of wood and stone that still looked like wood and stone, which was what houses
ought
to look like, palaces being another thing entirely.

The woman was also acceptably attractive—for a human. Taller than some, and slim; blue-eyed and sandy-blond—nothing remarkable there; that description fit easily half the
Sidhe.
But there was a fire of knowledge in her eyes, confidence in her stride, and joy in her wide white smile that made her seem far more alive than most human women he had seen, with their painted faces; hard, dead clothes; and narrow, selfish minds.

Trouble was, she
knew.
He had known that as soon as he saw her; had indeed sensed a tug of Power long before he and Rallyn had come to this place. Why, even now, as she loaded bundle after bundle into the back of one of those metal carriages the Quick Folks used
(Explorer,
read the words on this one’s shiny, dark green flanks), he could hear her pondering things no human should be able to contemplate—like Faerie, like the World Walls, like the Rade itself, which was due to depart a day hence; and which she not only knew about, but was actually anticipating. (And cursed be all that iron, which made a clearer read impossible.)

But orders were specific about such things. Any human who knew
anything
about other Worlds was to be dealt with: any human who had heard rumors or seen anything odd, or had light-paintings or sound-shadows or any of those Quick Folks memory tools. It had sounded amusing when he had volunteered to help scour the Lands of Men of such like. But it had been hard work—cursed hard. And that was with much of it already finished when he joined—like changing the master copies of printed works to blur references to unexplained occurrences (mostly in the north of a realm called Georgia, away to the south and west), then using Power to extend that change to all known replicas. Rigantana had been especially good at that, before she had returned to Ys to try to resolve
that
situation. And Rigantana had recruited him.

But that did not tell him what to do now, when a routine scouting expedition in search of a band of the Sons of Ailill who had been stirring up trouble nearby had produced a “knower” along the way.

Orders said to deal with such humans whenever they were encountered; but Silver also said final action must be confirmed by the cadre commander—who was not to hand just now.

But if the woman entered the steel carriage and departed (as was surely the intent of all that packing), they would lose her, and who know when—or if—she could be found again. Even if she did not leave right away; even if she entered the house and stayed, they would still have a problem, because this house had steel mesh on both its windows and doors, and Power could not reach through such things and yet perform such delicate tasks as clouding memories. And of course clumsiness might cloud too much and rouse even more suspicions, when the less humans knew about or thought about or speculated about Faerie the better. Even Silver agreed with that. Humans had caused too much grief already.

But what was the woman doing? Fumbling around at the door with a key and jingling others; and she had a pouch now—no, a
purse,
they were called. Which meant she was leaving, so they had to act fast.

Rallyn eyed his accomplice narrowly. “Do you wish to do it or shall I?”

Fionn sighed. “I will. And if I err, be it on my head.”

“It matters not,” a third voice murmured from the woods behind them: a voice that a human would have heard as a sighing on the wind had they noted it at all. Fionn did not need to look around to recognize his commander, the missing Elvrin. He exhaled his relief—a human thing to do, some would have said.

“Why—?”

“She is one of the Safe Ones,” Elvrin replied, easing up to join them, his green-black cloak indistinguishable from leafy shadows, even to Faery eyes. “Her name is Sandy Fairfax. She knows, and Silver knows she knows, and approves.”

“And the Ard Rhi?”

“He knows as well. She is a friend of the boy.”

“Oh,” Fionn nodded through a frown, “I see.”

Chapter II: Maps and Legends

(University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia—Thursday, June 19—late evening)

Fifteen minutes and a halfhearted rain-squall after fleeing Barnett’s Newsstand, Scott was a good chunk of a mile south of there, trudging up the wide marble stairs in the foyer of GGS—the Geography-Geology Building—in the approximate center of campus. A Vendo ham-and-cheese filled one hand, an unopened Mello Yello the other. It was dinner on the fly, in spades, all because he’d elected to indulge a couple of far too irresponsible…associates, or whatever the hell McLean and Daniels were.

No, that wasn’t fair. Or if it was, he had no right to complain, given that he wasn’t exactly a model of responsibility himself, what with his dissertation so long unfinished he’d start losing credits in one more quarter. Never mind that his assistantship would likewise go bye-bye then, leaving him degreeless, destitute, and directionless: a failure at even professional studenting, all at twenty-nine. He wondered how the job market was for traveling map salesmen. Or maybe Dr. Green, his major professor, needed a yard man. Scott knew more than enough about dirt.

“Hey, Scotto!” a female voice sang out behind him: cheerfully familiar, if distorted almost past recognition by the glass display cases that lined the upper landing. “So what brings you here this time of night?”

Scott forced himself to stop and turn around, in no mood for small talk when what he needed was a beer and a good night’s sleep, and what he had to do was analyze two years’ worth of Landsat photos of Georgia’s northeast corner by tomorrow morning. Which basically meant checking each version of each photograph in a (usually) vain attempt at determining what kind of vegetation overlay what kind of strata, and whether there’d been any significant patterns of change. It was a weird cross-discipline thing he’d more or less lucked into during a brief interlude as a geography major a couple of years back. Trouble was, that major had required him to unthink some things, which was hard, given his personal chaos of the time. And faced with the choice between a hard place he didn’t know, and a rock (rocks, rather) he did, he’d sided with the latter.

“Scotto?” the speaker repeated, sounding a little concerned this time. In spite of his irritation, Scott squinted at the shape who had just appeared from behind the six-foot globe that dominated the stair head. It was Liz Hughes: another of that corps of underclassmen he seemed to have become a sort of older adjunct to—or mascot for.
Trackers,
they sometimes styled themselves, because they’d all had adventures on those odd roads between the Worlds that McLean’s friend David Sullivan called Straight Tracks. Shoot, he’d effectively been on one himself, in one of the stranger episodes in his life, and the mental fallout from that was the source of half his grief. At least
this
Tracker was more levelheaded than most—and damned nice to look at: middle height for a girl, slim, pertly pointy-faced, and with a cap of feathery red hair. At the moment she wore jeans and a green T-shirt proclaiming something vaguely ecological he couldn’t quite read. She also carried a sheaf of flyers, one of which she’d clearly been applying to a nearby bulletin board.

“Liz,” he acknowledged tiredly, as she sauntered toward him, looking genuinely glad to see him. He tried to appear as pleased. “Uh, one might better ask what
you’re
doin’ here, given that this isn’t exactly your end of campus, never mind your building.”