Sunshaker's War (29 page)

Chapter XV: Into the
Breach

(Sylva, North Carolina—Sunday, June 15—early morning)

The first things David heard when he found himself once more in Calvin's Power Wheel were Alec's muttered “Damn” and Calvin's relieved “Whew!” A yip of surprise a bare second later might have come from either of the women, but David was too startled by the cessation of pain, the resumption of noise after the abrupt transition, to identify its origin, and by then whoever it was had regained her composure.

It was now full dark, and in the moment it took his eyes to adjust from glare to gloom, he wondered how long they'd been gone, how time in Galunlati translated into time in his World. A check of his watch did no good: it had stopped, which did not surprise him. Someone cleared her throat and he spun around and saw Liz and Sandy still sitting on the de-barked logs that surrounded the Wheel. They'd obviously left at least once, though, because they were both nursing steaming mugs, and Liz had acquired a large green serape which she had draped around her shoulders. It was not cold, but there was a decided nip in
the air which made David shiver from the contrast with the oppressive heat they had left behind.

“Lord!” Sandy exclaimed, rising and stretching luxuriously. “I don't know if I could
ever
get used to seeing that; never mind what it does to theories about the conservation of matter, and all.” While she spoke, she was unscrewing the large thermos she held, while Liz fumbled in the wicker basket beside her. “Liz said you were all coffee drinkers,” she continued, stifling a yawn as she took one of the mugs Liz produced, and filled it. “Unusual for young folks, I'd say—but then, you're unusually civilized young folks.”

David took the mug gratefully and sniffed it, noting the strong aroma. Fortunately he liked it strong. There was a hint of cocoa, too: mocha. “Like the mugs?” Sandy inquired absently. “Got 'em at a Renaissance fair down near Athens.”

David examined his. The smiling face of a wizard looked back at him. It reminded him of Oisin. He smiled back and wondered if Sandy was talking about inconsequentialities for their sake or hers.

“Nice,” he said, glancing at his watch again. “Uh, what time is it, by the way?”

“Four in the morning,” Sandy replied promptly, yawning once more. “You've been gone about six hours. Want some breakfast?” she added hopefully.

“
Love
some,” came Alec's quick response, and David too realized he was hungry again, in spite of what he'd eaten in Galunlati.

“But we need to get goin'! We don't have time to—” Calvin began to protest, until a scowl from Sandy froze him in mid-sentence.

“Haven't we already decided that saving the world goes better on a full stomach?”

The silence that followed was more proof than David needed that Calvin too was running close to empty.

* * *

Half an hour later, full of bacon, sausage, omelets, and waffles—and about a gallon of juice and coffee—David and his friends stumbled from the table to the circle of seats in front of the fireplace. The sky outside was barely pinkening.

“Well, that was good,” Calvin said, “but I reckon we'd better be gettin' down to business.”

“Sounds good to me,” David yawned, taking a place at Liz's feet. Alec joined him; Sandy slipped in at Calvin's side.

“So what'd you find out?” Liz finally blurted.

A sigh, and Calvin began sketching in the details of their meeting with Uki; and David found himself nearly nodding off in spite of the urgency of their situation. He hadn't slept well the night before—nor the night before that. Add the painful transition to and from Galunlati, a fair bit of exercise there, plus a lot of mental gymnastics, and he wasn't surprised that it was all starting to catch up with him.

“So granting that Uki's given us permission to use Galunlati and given us some scales to burn, where does that leave us?” Liz wondered when Calvin had finished.

“It leaves us with two immediate problems,” Alec replied pragmatically, rising to poke up the small fire they had built more for company than comfort. “How do we get to where Finno is, and how do we rescue him?”

“Three problems, actually,” David corrected sleepily. “Where
is
there? All we know's that it's near Atlanta—we think. And probably in another World, since Hot-lanta oughta overlap Tir-Nan-Og.”

“Got any notions about that?”—from Liz.

“One, maybe,” David said, rubbing his eyes. “I think Finvarra found some secret way to this place he's stashed Finno—and it's not very big, so if you didn't know to go there, you'd probably miss it.”

“So he may not even know about the possible border with our World?” Alec wondered.

“Which means?”

“Which means we gotta go there,” David replied heavily. “Fortunately old Fargo here's got an idea about that.”

“Right,” Calvin agreed. “And the sooner we get at it the better.”

“Like when?” Liz asked, stroking David's hair absently.

“Tomorrow?” Alec ventured.

Calvin looked at David with a mischievous twinkle in his eye. “Actually, I was thinking more like now.”

“Now!”
David cried pitifully. “You have
got
to be kiddin'! I can barely hold my eyes open—and you're not much better!”

“Would you rather wait and risk Tracy's life?” Calvin shot back. “It may be almost a week until Midsummer's, but we've gotta leave time for things to go wrong!”

“No!” Sandy said firmly. “Time or no time, you guys are dead on your feet. You're gonna rest some before we even consider any more of this. Come on, I've got plenty of crash space—plenty of floor, anyway.”

*

They bedded down—all of them, including Sandy—in a semicircle of sleeping bags before the fireplace. Calvin drew the loose-woven drapes, which had the effect of dimming and softening the light without actually plunging them into darkness. The fading fire was their only illumination. Sandy had put an Alan Stivell harp tape on to help them relax, and its delicate melodies wove through the gloom, mingling with the hush of breathing as they all tried to sleep. But there was a lot of shifting and thumping and twisting, too, as bodies strove to find rest brains were slow to provide.

“So you mean to start out from
here
?”
Alec asked, finally breaking the uneasy silence.

“Quiet!” Liz mumbled.

“But I'd sleep better knowing what was gonna happen when I get up!”

“Alec!”

“Oh, why the hell not?” Calvin agreed. “I more or less feel the same way.”

“So…?” Alec prompted.

“So Finny's prison may be in or near Atlanta, but the scales can transport in space as well as between Worlds, so there's no reason
not
to start from here. I mean, it'd save a shitload of time. All you've gotta do is know someone of Power where you're goin'—or have someone with a lot of mojo to send you, like we did.”

“Which still presupposes two things,” Alec yawned: “That Finno's Power's the right kind, and that he can help us if he wants to—and that the scales will even work where he is to get you back. I mean you might find yourselves stranded, if the Powers of one World don't transfer to another, which they don't always do.”

“Fascinating,” Sandy muttered under her breath. “We have
got
to talk about this some time. But not now,” she added pointedly.

“There may be another problem, though,” David said slowly. “Somethin' even Uki seems to have forgotten.”

Calvin propped up on an elbow and stared at him, scowling. “What's that?”

“You need to have been where you're goin'.”

The lines in the Indian's forehead deepened. “Crap,” he groaned, falling back against his pillow. “You're right! How could I have been so
stupid
?”

“Yeah,” Liz said, glancing sideways at David. “But if it
is
Faerie, you
have
been there. Maybe if you held on to Calvin when you burned the scale, that'd do the job.”

“What about trying to send word to Lugh and have him help us?” Alec suggested. “Wouldn't that be the simplest thing? What about just using the scales to get
there
and tell him, instead of us trying to spring Finno on our own? Obviously Lugh's better equipped than we are.”

“Maybe we
should
try that,” David agreed uncertainly. “We might be overlookin' the obvious by assumin' we can't get to Tir-Nan-Og.”

“Worth a try,” Liz affirmed.

“Except for one thing,” Calvin reminded them. “We've got a really limited number of scales. If we try and succeed, we're fine—maybe. But if we try and fail, we don't have enough to get us back to our World at the end. And since we need to keep our options open, we need to conserve those scales. It takes a long time to get the stuff together to set 'em up, and we can't afford to spend 'em like they were Marta tokens, or something.”

“So you think…?”

“I think we need to stick to our original plan first. Try to save Finno ourselves, and then if that doesn't work, use the remainin' scales to try to get into Tir-Nan-Og and hope we can get somebody there to listen to us.”

“Yeah, I guess you're right,” David yawned, turning over. “I was just hopin' we could get out of havin' to go through that pain more than we have to.”

“I know the feelin'—literally,” Calvin sighed. “But sometimes it just can't be helped.”

“Okay,” Alec said. “So now we've gotta decide how we're actually gonna do the deed.”

“No!” Sandy growled from her place beside Calvin, “Now we've
gotta
get some shut-eye!”

Not even Alec dared to argue with her tone.

*

“Me and Calvin'll go, I guess,” David announced from his place at the dining table late that afternoon when they were all up and alert and eating again. “Him for the magic, and me as native guide, or something,” he continued. “Not that I know much about Faery magic, 'cept by instinct. Any ideas, Fargo?”

“Well,” Calvin replied, sopping up the remnants of a bowl of venison stew with a biscuit, “now that we know where we're goin', I think we can just use the ulunsuti to check in there—if Alec and Liz work it right. It's Alec's, so he needs to keep by it, and she's the only one who can scry. So if we go and something happens, they'll at least know what, and be able to take alternative action.”

“And we can leave them a couple of scales to use to try to get to Lugh, if they have to,” David added.

“Good idea.”

“So how're you gonna do it, though, once you're there?” Alec wondered.

David shrugged helplessly. “Unfortunately, I haven't got around to that yet—there's so much to think of all of a sudden. Argghhhh!”

Calvin grinned. “I've been thinkin' about it, though. Since I'm not certain exactly where we'll land—whether in land or water, I think we probably oughta have a contingency.” He looked at David. “You still got your other scale?”

“The ones Uki just gave us? I thought you had 'em.”

Calvin shook his head. “No, the one Oisin gave you—the one you used to shapeshift.”

David reached for the pouch in his pocket, then drew it back quickly, suddenly alarmed. “Uh-uh, no way, man! Not me! Never again! I can read it in your eyes! You want me to skinchange!”

“Uh, not exactly,” Calvin replied reasonably. “I think
we
ought to skinchange—or be prepared to if we have to. I think we ought to go through in swimmin' togs, just in case we land in that water we saw. But since we don't know how far we'll have to swim—”

“I'm a good swimmer,” David informed him.
“
Real
good.”

“Yeah, so am I, but that doesn't mean I can swim as far as we may have to. But we could if we became fish, or otters, or whatever.”

“No fucking way!”

“But
why
?
You've done it before, man.”

David swung on him.
“
Because,
Fargo, it scared me to death last time! I almost lost myself in the uktena, I did terrible things, and nearly did worse ones! Shoot, man; you were there: you and Liz had to call me back, and that was under pretty controlled conditions! You think if I shift in some other World it's gonna be possible to do that?”

“David—”

“Besides,
you
can't shapeshift!”