Moonheart (50 page)

"To the death," he said.

Sins'amin shook her head. "First blood."

"Kha," he replied. Understood. What did it matter? First blood would be the same as the outworlder's death when he plunged his spear into him.

"The challenge will be met at moonrise," Sins'amin said.

She looked from Kieran to her War Chief. Her anger was plain. This was not how it had been meant to be. She turned to Ha'kan'ta. "This was never my intention, drum-sister—" she began, but Ha'kan'ta cut her off.

"Drum-sister no more. You have a strange manner of repaying old kindnesses. I am not the enemy. Kieran is not the enemy. But your people and mine are kin no more. Whatever outcome Mother Bear allows tonight, know this:
I
will call a council of the rathe'wen'a and tell them of this madness. The quin'on'a will never outlive the scorn we will hold for you. By the First Bear's dark eye, I wish you ill— now and forever."

Sins'amin bowed her head under the weight of Ha'kan'ta's words. This came of her own intricate plottings. But deserved though it might be, had not those plottings been made with the best for all in mind? Aie! She had been too devious for all their good. Too late, too late now to make amends. The only hope that remained rested on the frail shoulders of Taliesin's craftdaughter— and she had yet to grow her horns.

She lifted her head to regard Ha'kan'ta, opening her spirit that the rathe'wen'a might understand what and why she had done what she did. But Ha'kan'ta remained closed to her, her heart cold, her desire to understand shattered by anger.

"Until moonrise, then," Sins'amin said softly. Turning, she led her two companions back to their lodge.

When they were gone, Ha'kan'ta sank to the ground, her eyes glistening. Kieran knelt beside her. The two wolves took up guard positions, facing the woods that bordered the quin'on'a lodge.

"He will kill you," Ha'kan'ta said.

She did not ask him to withdraw his acceptance of the War Chief's challenge. She understood that withdrawing would be worse than defeat. Not in what others might think of him, but in what Kieran would think of himself. But her grief threatened to overwhelm her. To lose this precious gift that they held between them, so soon.

Kieran felt strange. His fear had been swallowed by an odd calmness.

"He won't kill me," he said. "It's only to first blood." But they both knew that first blood with Tep'fyl'in meant a spear-thrust deep in the chest.

"I've done a little staff fighting before," Kieran said. "It shouldn't be that much different. Mind you, that was just for fun. But all I've got to do is try to hang in there until he draws first blood. Then it'll be over."

Ha'kan'ta nodded, "I wish we'd never come."

"Too late for that."

Too late for so much, Ha'kan'ta thought. She pulled him close, burrowing her face against his shoulder. Precious afternoon, she wished, last forever.

Alone with her War Chief in the quin'on'a lodge, Sins'amin turned the full weight of her fury on him.

"You are a fool! Worse, you are the greatest of all fools! You are a shame to this lodge. And listen well: You are War Chief no longer!"

"Old mother..."

"I know your mind, Red-Spear. You mean to slay him. If you do so, I swear by Grandmother Toad, you will face me. You will face
my
challenge."

The air crackled around the old Beardaughter and Tep'fyl'in knew she made no idle threat. If he had to face her it would be his greatest challenge. And much though he loved her, his heart leaped at the thought. Perhaps it was time for the lodge to have a new leader, one who was not afraid to use his strengths. He would not kill her. Never that. But if he could wrest the chieftainship from her and lead the lodge to glory, then she would see that the old ways might still be restored.

"Old mother..." he began again.

She shook her head. "I do not hear you," she said.

Tep'fyl'in's heart chilled at the insult. This goes too far, he thought.

"Be gone from my sight," Sins'amin said. "Prepare for your great 'challenge.' "

Tep'fyl'in held a sharp retort in check. "I go," he said.

As the flap rustled behind him, Sins'amin sat alone in the lodge. Tep'fyl'in had shielded his thoughts well enough, but not so well that she could not hear them. She was the lodge's Beardaughter. Did he think he could hide what he planned from her? He would discover soon enough that she would not be such an easy victory as the outworlder. Her totem stirred inside her. She thought of Ha'kan'ta's words. She thought of the failure of her own devious plans. She thought of Tep'fyl'in's desperate need for action.

Bowing her head, she wept.

It was impossible, but with the proof laid out in front of them, it couldn't be denied. Tamson House had been transported to some other dimension— to Thomas Hengwr's Otherworld. Blue shook his head.

He and Fred and one of the gangster types named Chevier were dragging the last of the bodies out of the House while Tucker, Gannon and Mercier covered them from the porch that had once looked out on O'Connor Street. As they dumped the bodies of the slain tragg'a onto the pile, Sam snagged a ten-gallon tank of gasoline from the porch and sloshed its contents onto the grisly stack. Among the furred and scaly torsos were the bodies of two of Gannon's men— Bull and Serge Morin.

"That's enough," Blue said.

While Sam screwed the cap back on the can and returned to the porch with it, Blue dug in his pockets for a light.

"Better hurry up," Tucker called from the porch. Like all of them, his clothing was torn and smeared with blood. He cradled Blue's Wembley, gaze raking the far fields where the forest marched down into the grass fields. "There's something stirring out there," he added.

Blue nodded. The fire caught with a whoosh and he stepped back from the sudden heat. As the flames raged high, a long wailing howl came from the forest.

"Move!" Tucker shouted. "Here they come!"

He snapped off a shot as Blue and the others ran for the House. Behind them a handful of tragg'a shuffled out of the forest, muzzles lifted to the sky as they keened for their fallen brothers. Blue paused on the porch to have a look at them. A shiver ran up his spine as he watched the pack grow larger as more and more of the creatures came out of the woods.

"Let's just hope the House holds up," said Tucker. The hallway still reeked of the tragg'a.

"It'll hold," Blue said, bolting the door behind them. It had to.

Blue shook his head. Given his druthers at who he'd be stuck with in a situation like this, he certainly wouldn't have picked this crew. But at least most of them were capable of using weapons. He turned back to peer through the leaded windows in the top part of the door. Earlier an alien moon and stars had lit the field as clear as day. But now the fire, though it spilled a blood-red light in a twenty-foot area round the pyre, seemed to call shadows from the wood, a spill of darkness that lay across the field like a black mist.

Near the fire he could see the tragg'a shuffling as close as they dared. Their keening was a terrible din, like the wailing of alleycats— alleycats that were as large as lions. But at least their attention was centered on their slain brothers and not on the House.

"Okay," Tucker said, taking charge. "Time we took stock of our situation. What say we get cleaned up, then have ourselves a meeting and figure things out?"

He studied them, one by one. He knew he could count on Blue, no matter what their philosophical differences might be. Gannon and his two surviving men were an unknown quantity. So long as they were in danger themselves, Tucker thought they'd be allies. But without really knowing what they'd been after in the first place, it was hard to know where they stood. Gannon was in charge, while Mercier was definitely a follower. Chevier, chewing on a mint while leaning casually against a wall, was just a more sophisticated version of Mercier. That left the gardener, Fred, who appeared resilient enough, and Sam, whose eyes had held a look of numbed shock ever since the attack began.

"I figure it's about time," Gannon said.

"Got a place we can use, Blue?" Tucker asked.

The biker nodded. "Take everyone into the Silkwater Kitchen, Fred. I'll go round up Jamie and the others."

"What about those things outside?" Chevier asked. His eerie voice rasped in strange harmony to the noise of the tragg'a. "One of us should keep watch."

Tucker nodded. "Yeah. You're probably right. Want to be elected?"

Chevier glanced at Gannon who nodded. Definitely the boss, Tucker thought. Now who was Gannon working for?

"Sure," Chevier said. "Beats sitting around and listening to a lot of yapping. You want to leave me that Weatherby?"

Tucker handed the rifle to Blue who shook his head.

"I think I'll just hang on to this myself," he said. "You seem pretty good with that handgun of yours."

Chevier shrugged. "Suit yourself. What about the rest of this place?"

"They seem to be gathered outside this door for the time being," Gannon said. He glanced at Tucker. "Maybe we'll get some mobile patrols going after we have our little talk, eh?"

"Sounds good," the Inspector replied. "Let's go."

In Gramarye's Clover, Jamie and Traupman sat across from each other in front of the window. They'd cleaned up the debris as best they could, piling most of it on one side of the room in a great heap of books, broken shelving and the like. The odor of charred wood still hung faintly in the air. Thomas had been returned to the bed, the faint rise and fall of his chest being the only clue that he was still alive. Sally and Maggie sat on the edge of the bed, alternating their attention between the wizard and the two men by the window.

"One just forgets," Jamie was saying. "I've studied the paranormal, the mysteries, for so many years, always looking for the key to unlock all the riddles. When and if I ever found it, I always thought it'd be... well, different. I was thinking more in terms of enlightenment. Or higher planes of existence." He looked away from the tragg'a to face Traupman. "I forgot about the evil side. It had to be there. If there was going to be one, there had to be the other."

Traupman nodded. "I still find it... difficult to accept. I was willing to go along with telekinetics, telepathy, that sort of thing. But what we're faced with here I always thought of as just so much fiction."

"It isn't as though we never had any clues," Jamie said. "When you think of all the folktales, of all the horrors and monsters that populate folklore..." Jamie shook his head. "God, perhaps it's all real." He glanced at the bed. "I just wish our wizard would be of a little more use than he's been so far. He's managed to get us messed up in it all, but now when we need him..."

Damn, he thought. This is just a grand state of affairs you've brought me into, Tom. Bad enough you had to involve me in it, but what about the rest of them? What about Sara? What has your monster done with Sara?

"We seem to have two choices," Traupman said. "Try and hold out or— and mind you, I'm not advocating this, merely stating the facts— or give the creatures what they want."

"We can't!" Sally said. "It wouldn't be right."

Why not? Jamie thought. It was Tom that got us into this in the first place. But he knew he wasn't capable of handing Tom over either. "We've no assurance," he said, "that Tom is all they want."

"True. On the other hand, we have his word that it
is
only him they want. Unfortunately, he has yet to be proved wrong."

"Could you do that, Dr. Traupman?" Maggie asked. "Could you deliver another human being to those creatures?"

Traupman regarded her steadily and shook his head. "I spoke only hypothetically," he said. "As Jamie says, we don't truly know what they want. And even if we gave them their wizard, that wouldn't necessarily solve our other problem: How do we get back to our own world?"

"I still can't believe you'd even consider handing him over," Sally said. "You make it sound as though he consciously made things work out the way they have."

"Don't worry, Sally," Jamie said. "Nobody's going to send him out there."

"Send who out where?" Blue asked from the doorway.

"Tom," she said. "They were talking about sending him out to appease the monsters."

Blue thought about it for a moment, then shook his head. "Won't do any good," he said. "Besides. He's all
we've
got against them. All we've got to get us back to the real world. How's he doing anyway, doc?"

"Basically, there is nothing wrong with him," Traupman replied.

"Then how come he's just lying there?"

"In a normal case, I would say severe shock. But if he is all he is supposed to be, I would hazard that whatever is controlling those beings outside has gotten to his mind in some way. His body may be self-healing, but his mind? Or his spirit, if you will?"

"You mean he's just out of it?" Blue asked. "We gotta work this thing out for ourselves?"

"So it would appear."

"Shit. How're we—" He shook his head. "Well, we can figure that out downstairs. Tucker wants to have a meeting so that we can talk over the situation. Maybe someone'll have some bright idea."

"I'll stay with our patient," Traupman said.

"No, I'll stay," Sally put in. "You'll be of more help downstairs. I've got nothing to offer except to say that I'm scared and I just want things to get back to normal."

"Amen," Maggie murmured.

"Doc?" Blue asked.

"Well, it doesn't appear that our patient is going anywhere. Just be sure to call us immediately if there is any change whatsoever."

"You going to be okay, babe?" Blue asked.

Sally nodded.

"I'll stay," Maggie offered. "Just send up John when you're done."

"Will do," Blue said.

"Okay," Tucker said when they were all gathered around the big table in the Silkwater Kitchen. "First things first." He turned to Gannon. "Who the hell are you and what are you doing here? Does anyone here know him? Jamie? Blue?"

Before either of them could reply, Gannon held up a hand for silence. "Before we get into these more personal matters," he said, "perhaps we might take stock on exactly where we stand so far as weapons, provisions and the like are concerned."