Moonheart (43 page)

"What's wrong?" he began, then looking outside, he swore. "Jesus H. Christ!" he muttered.

He turned suddenly and Chevier's gun rose to cover him.

"Put it away, Mike," Gannon said. He looked at the Inspector. "I think we better talk."

He too could see what they'd seen. Outside, where O'Connor Street should have been, there was a field of tall grass. Beyond it, a forest. He didn't know where they were, but they sure as hell weren't in Ottawa.

Tucker regarded him coldly. With stiff movements, he retrieved his .38, reloaded it and returned it to its holster on his hip. "I don't think you're going to believe it."

Gannon looked from the window to the dead tragg'a. "Try me."

Tucker, following Gannon's gaze, nodded. But before he could speak, Mercier asked:

"How's that door going to hold back these... these... What the hell are these things, anyway?"

"The door will hold."

They turned at Jamie's voice to see him coming down the stairs with Traupman.

"You guys okay?" Blue asked. "Sally? Ms. Finch?"

Jamie nodded. "All of us. But only barely. The bookshelf came off the wall and just about did us in." He nodded to the window. "We're in trouble." His voice was tight with strain.

"How's that door going to keep them out?" Mercier wanted to know. "Shit, how come they don't just bust through a window?"

"The House has some form of shield around it that repels them," Traupman explained. "When the door was open, it broke that shield, allowing the creatures entrance. Closed, they can't get at us. They can't get in."

"And we can't get out," Blue said. "Jesus. There's nothing to go 'out' to. Where are we?"

"In Tom's Otherworld, I'd have to say." Traupman looked worn out.

"Thomas Hengwr
is
here?" Gannon asked.

"So that's what you're doing here," Tucker said. "What do you want with him? Who're you working for?"

"We have bigger problems than that at the moment," Traupman said wearily. "Those things will be back. God help us. The horror's real and it's only just begun."

For long moments, no one said a thing. Tucker broke the silence finally.

"We're up shit creek," he said.

Blue nodded. "Without a paddle."

Mal'ek'a allowed his enemy's allies their reprieve. Withdrawing, it left a small pack of tragg'a to keep them from wandering beyond the confines of the House, and turned its attention to other matters.

It did not understand its need to destroy the druid; it only knew that it was a thing that must be done. It had considered itself powerful enough to crack the House, especially attacking it here in its Otherworldly presence, and understood finally that the House was too strong for it still.

Mal'ek'a's perceptions returned to the fall of the Weirdin bones that the druid had thrown in that glade just before Mal'ek'a had cut him down. The other being, the Maiden, had the power it needed. She was small and untutored in the Way. She would be easy prey. And with the power it would take from her, it would return to confront the druid for one last time.

So Mal'ek'a withdrew and cast out its tragg'a to seek a new scent, much as a fisherman might cast his lines. Urgency was not a question. Only fulfillment was. And only with the druid dead would Mal'ek'a be fulfilled.

Sara learned, as she willed herself to Taliesin's side for the second time, that traveling between worlds, and especially year-walking, has its own rules. The one she was taught this time was that one shouldn't attempt it too often in quick succession.

Firm ground took shape underfoot, but her legs were too weak to hold her and her senses in too much of a whirl for her to keep her balance. She pitched forward into wet seaweed, her temples pulsing with needle-sharp pains. If she'd had anything in her stomach, she would have lost it. As it was, all she could do was curl up in a fetal position and press the palms of her hands against her temples until the piercing pain subsided to a bearable ache.

When she thought she could move without having her head fall off, she slowly uncurled, sat up even more slowly, and took stock of her surroundings. Her vision blurred through a curtain of tears. Not until she'd wiped her eyes dry on the end of her cloak and then wrapped the damp folds of cloth about her was she sufficiently composed to take stock of her situation.

She was still on the coast, though where on the coast, she wasn't sure. The sky was overcast; she couldn't tell if the still-wet intertidal zone she was in was left behind by a morning or an afternoon tide. Under that grey pall, the sky looked cold and uninviting. Behind her the land rose steeply, a patchwork of fissured limestone cliffs and black spruce. To her right, the cliffs came right down into the water. On her left was a salt marsh. All around her, twisted pieces of driftwood and brackish seaweed dotted the inlet's shore.

Wrong again, she thought, but she wasn't about to try a third time. At least not right away.

She sat quietly for another few moments, pushing back the disappointment that threatened to start a new flood of tears. Back at the quin'on'a lodge she'd felt very brave and sure of herself. But right now, alone God knew where— God knew
when
— she just wanted to give it all up. What was she trying to prove anyway? That she was as much a wizard as Kieran and the rest of them?

She thought of Jamie and Blue and how they must be worrying. She'd been gone for days— at least it had been days for her. Kieran had said something about time passing differently in the Otherworld and the one that they were native to.

God it was confusing.

She bit at her lower lip to stop its quivering, then got angry with herself. Okay, she said. So it didn't work again. It wasn't as though she was an expert. Her major mistake was in expecting everything to work out, one, two, three. She'd rest up a bit and give it another go. But not until this headache was completely gone.

A half-dozen yards from where she sat, a herring gull landed to regard her quizzically. She used to have very romantic notions about gulls— they were the gypsies of the sea, wild and free, housing the ghosts of sailors and smugglers and other such interesting people. That had pretty well vanished the first time she'd traveled east and seen them fighting over garbage around the harborfronts and fishing boats. But sitting here, a million miles and years from the world she knew, that old notion returned.

This gull's feathers looked clean and well groomed. It had a jaunty eye, like an old mariner's, and a lift to its step that made her smile.

Standing on legs that were still a little wobbly, she caught up her guitar case and looked around. Her gull wasn't alone in the sky above her. Others dipped and bobbed in the grey air. She saw black guillemots by the water where the limestone cliffs plunged into the sea. A double-crested cormorant flew straight inland from the sea. She watched its flight and then paused, pulse quickening, when she saw a trail of smoke up on the clifftop.

So she wasn't alone.

Even remembering who her last trail of smoke had led her to, the way her luck was running today, whoever was tending that fire wouldn't be a red-haired bard from old Wales. Indecisively, she stood and stared, weighing her options. There weren't very many and they didn't take her long to go through. Either it was Taliesin's fire, or it wasn't. She could either wait here and never know, or she could go have a look. She glanced skyward. The sky was darkening more and it was probably going to rain soon. She sighed. Standing around here wasn't going to get her anywhere.

Once the decision was made, she almost wished she hadn't made it. It was one thing to decide to saunter up and have a look, but quite another to claw her way up through the dense undergrowth, and slip and slide on the limestone. She wished she didn't have her guitar to lug around with her. She wished that whoever'd made that fire could have had the common decency to build it on a nice convenient beach instead of on top of the world. She wished that she'd never gotten out of bed that morning that she'd found the ring, wished she'd never found the ring in the back of The Merry Dancers. (Well, that wasn't exactly true, but she was in a grumbly mood.)

Three-quarters of an hour later, breathing hard and more disheveled then ever, she reached the crest of the cliff. She pushed her guitar up ahead of her and crawled the last couple of feet to collapse on a slab of limestone that broke the solid line of old spruces that stalked the skyline. Like a fool, she looked back down the way she'd come and almost toppled over as the sudden feeling of vertigo swam through her.
She'd
come up
that?

She leaned back on the stone to catch her breath, then forced herself to her feet with a soft groan and headed west along the clifftop to find the fire. There wasn't as much underbrush up top as there had been on the way up, but the low branches of the spruce snarled in her hair and tugged at her cloak. It was hard to go quietly.

One thing Sara'd learned from her adventures so far was that one never got what one expected. And so... pushing aside a heavy bough, she found herself looking into a small clearing. The building that stood just back from the lip of the cliff took her by surprise.

Of course, she thought, looking at the structure. What else would I expect to find here?

It was a small round tower, about twenty feet in diameter and two stories high. The foundations were stone, the walls timber with wattle chinking, the roof turfed. It was old and looked as though it belonged on a heathy cliff watching the sea from the shores of old Ireland, rather than sitting here, the grey stone greyer still in the dying light, surrounded by black spruce and cedar.

It was very quiet around her. The sea on the rocks far below was a distant sound. Behind the grey cloud cover, the sun finally sank, and twilight edged into night. As though that was a signal, the forest awoke around her.

The trees seemed to stir their earth-laden roots, and rattled their branches like sabers in the wind. Things rustled in the undergrowth. Then a howl tore through the forest— a primal reverberation of savagery given throat and loosed on the world to wake what terror it might. Goosebumps lifted on Sara's skin. Then hard on the heels of that howl, coming like a balm against the pain encompassed in that wailing cry, she heard the clear bell-like notes of a harp, underscored by a soft drumming.

Fear and hope ran through Sara. Heightened senses filled the night with terrors, while the tower beckoned like a sudden haven. She tore across the clearing like an arrow loosed from a bow, her guitar case bouncing against her thigh, her heart in her throat. The howl came a second time, just as she reached the door to the tower, and she threw herself against its hard wooden surface, hand scrabbling for a latch or knob to get it open.

The music stilled. With her face pressed against the door, Sara felt the forest closing in on her. She lifted a hand to pound on the door, and when it swung open she stumbled inside. Her guitar case clattered on the hard wood under the rush-strewn floor. She looked up to see a huge, bearded man towering over her, his blue eyes bright with curiosity, corn-yellow hair braided with beads. As he slowly closed the door behind her, Sara turned to look across the room.

And Taliesin was there.

He sat frozen in the motion of setting aside his harp, his face pale as though he looked on an apparition. At his feet was old Hoyw, as tousled as ever, brown eyes peering through the hair that fell across them as he lifted his head. Sitting across from the bard was an Indian woman whose features were vaguely familiar. Her hair was jet black, braided with beads like the yellow-haired man's, and she wore a dress of white doeskin, decorated with shells and more beadwork. Over her shoulders was a brightly colored blanket worn like a shawl. On her knee was a small drum.

The room itself, undivided by walls, felt spacious. Along one wall was a wooden table, with clayware stacked on it, and cloak pegs at one-foot intervals, most of which had blankets or furs dangling from them. A large window overlooked the clifftop and the sea. The wall behind Taliesin and the woman was taken up by a large hearth. They sat on piles of bearskins scattered in front of it.

Sara felt a touch on her arm, started, then allowed the bearded giant by the door to help her rise. Taliesin finished laying aside his harp and stood, hands open at his side. The woman looked from him to Sara with an enigmatic smile.

"Are you a ghost, then, Sara?" Taliesin asked finally.

"No ghost," the man beside her said. "There's flesh on her limbs, brother, though something's put the fear of Wodan into her."

"A... ghost?" Sara mumbled. "What do you mean?"

"I'd not thought to see you again," the bard said. "I'd thought you gone-never to return."

The woman across from him laughed in a teasing manner at that. Taliesin frowned at her, then looked back at Sara. "It has been a year since last we met."

"A year?" Sara was stunned. "But I just left you yesterday."

"Time is a strange thing in the Otherworld," Taliesin said.

That seemed to be the consensus, Sara thought. She looked from him to the woman, feeling awkward. What had she expected, though. To be greeted like a long-lost friend?

"Enough," the woman said suddenly. Laying aside her drum, she stood up and opened her arms in welcome. "They have lived too long like wolves, these two, to know anything of manners. My name is May'is'hyr— Summer-Heart. The man beside you is my husband Hagan Hrolf-get. I bid you welcome to our lodge. Though its walls be earth-bone more than wood, and no totem hangs above its door, it still belongs to Mother Bear, and in her lodge, no guest is unwelcome... do they come as friend or foe, in early morn or on the Night of Hunting Spirits."

Sara knew who the woman reminded her of now. Ha'kan'ta— the Moose Girl of the Wild Woods, she thought light-headedly. The man at the door looked like a Viking. Join them with a Welsh bard and herself and what did you end up with? A very weird mixture, that was what.