Sunshaker's War (45 page)

“Jesus,” David sighed, flopping back on the sand. “Yet more Worlds—and another kind of Straight Track!”

“It never becomes any simpler,” Fionchadd informed him. “Nothing ever does.” He rose suddenly, strode to the edge of the tide. “Now, let us see about those fish—we should be just about finished by sunset.”

“Sunset?”

“A between time, when Power is strongest.”

Chapter XXVI: Changing Places

(Galunlati—day two—sunset)

By the time David had finished broiling the two fish Fionchadd had lured to shore, the sun had touched the horizon.

“So what do you intend to do?” he asked, settling back into the depression he'd scooped in the sand and licking his fingers appreciatively. He aimed an absent salute toward the waves, since he'd forgotten to ask thanks of the fish earlier, as was the custom for anything killed in Galunlati. “How do we get our asses outta here?”

Fionchadd tongued his lips with similar relish. “I have been thinking about this,” he said. “You came here by burning a scale of the great uktena, correct? You can use it to transfer one World at a time if the scale is properly treated, but the transfer destroys the scale. However, it is also possible to treat the ulunsuti so that it can open a gate between many Worlds—and it does
not
perish in flame. Therefore in order to complete your plan, which I believe is the right one, we can use the remaining scale to return to the Lands of Men, meet your friends, and have them
take us to Faerie—and the Powersmiths—using the ulunsuti.”

“You're forgettin' one thing, though,” David noted, scowling. “We've only
got
one scale, and it's not activated.” Unconsciously he fingered the thong at his throat.

“You are correct, of course,” Fionchadd admitted. “But
you
forget that I have Power in my own right, Power that can take me between Worlds once I know the way. Also, I think I know how the scale can be made to teleport.”

“You
what
?
How?”

“You yourself told me, in a way. You showed me your memory of the opening of the gate, and I have now locked it in mine. But I remember more perfectly than you and I can recall the ritual your friend used to charge the ulunsuti—and I believe I can collect most of the ingredients in the remaining time we have.”

“Oh, Lord,
yes
!”
David cried. “It might just work—but you need the blood of a sorcerer, don't you?”

“And what do you suppose I am? Or yourself, for that matter.”

“Right!”
David exclaimed. “Oh Jesus, I think you've got something.” He hesitated then, frozen by a sudden misgiving. “But wait a minute,” he added, disappointment weighting his voice. “We've still got a problem. There's only one scale, there's two of us.” He shook his head. “No, maybe that's okay. You can go, and then send somebody back here when you can.”

“No,” Fionchadd chuckled. “We
both
go.”

“But how…?”

“Shapechange. I become a flea or a louse. I ride in your mouth, in your ear. Thus, when you go, I go; for I am a part of you.”

David stared at him doubtfully, then laughed loudly and slapped him on the back. “Oh, hell, Finno, why not. I mean what's one more impossible thing?”

Fionchadd peered at the pulsating sun. “One impossible thing is to stop the sun from moving—unless,” he added ruefully, “one is Lugh, or has control of his spear.”

“Yeah,” David sighed. “As Alec's fond of sayin', we're burnin' daylight.”

“Right. You lay out the Power Wheel, I will seek for the ingredients and review my memory.”

David nodded, then found himself still at a bit of a loss for how to proceed. He considered simply incising the cross-in-circle in the sand with a stick, but something stopped him. Finally he decided. The tide was going out, leaving a wide flat shelf of sand that was still damp and therefore darker than that on which they sat. He thus simply marked the pattern by filling his hands with the dry white sand from higher up and letting it sift through his fingers. It took several trips, and the Wheel was a small one, but he thought it would suffice, even if it was white against gray. As an afterthought, he found shells in the colors of the cardinal directions and set them in the appropriate places. The sun was down when he finished, and both sea and sand had turned the color of blood. He was beginning to sunburn, he noticed absently.

Fionchadd returned at that moment, his hands full of various herbs and other, less obvious, items. “I will take the east, you the west, if you will,” the Faery told him. “The scale, I believe, goes between.”

David nodded and slipped the thong from around his neck, then freed the scale from the intricate wirework that bound it. He was a little sad to see it go… They had been through so much together.

Fionchadd took it reverently, held it in his palm, and began.

David had seen much of the ritual before, and heard the same chants. But this time they were on the beach, this time it was Fionchadd repeating the strange phrases; and when the time came for the scale to be dipped in blood, Fionchadd suddenly reached to the sand beside him and snatched up a razor-sharp shell. Before David realized what had happened, the Faery had whipped the scale first across his own cheek, then across David's, deftly missing nerves and major vessels, but bringing forth a great deal of blood: David could feel it trickle over his chin.

The blood did not drip onto his bare chest, though, but onto the scale Fionchadd held below it. He stared at it in fascination, realized they had their heads close together, that blood was running down both their faces in almost equal amounts, and that the scale was greedily absorbing it.

A touch of Fionchadd's hand made the pain grow less. “Now,” the Faery whispered, “I think we are ready.”

David nodded and commenced preparations for the small fire Fionchadd had told him to build—Lord knew there'd been enough dry material around. Practically all you had to do was reach down, even here on the beach of Galunlati. It blazed up quickly.

He stood, took the scale from Fionchadd's fingers. “That should do it,” the Faery said finally. “If not—it was a valiant effort.”

David shrugged. “We'll see. Now—what're you gonna do? How're you gonna come with me?”

Fionchadd grinned. “I would like to surprise you.” David frowned at him. “Whatever you say.”

A hand brushed his shoulder, and when he looked down, the Faery was nowhere in sight.

Now!
a voice echoed in his mind.

David nodded and cast the scale in the fire. He closed his eyes and thought very hard about home, about Liz and Alec.
“Alec McLean!”
he shouted when the scale flared up, since Alec was Master of the Ulunsuti, and the closest to a man of Power they had in their home World; then, just to be safe, “Elizabeth Hughes”—and to keep the bases covered, Alec's name in Cherokee: “Tsulehisanunhe!” And then flame reached out and engulfed him.

It was different this time—less pain, or perhaps he was getting used to it, and there was more of a sensation of actually moving, of transiting somewhere. He was somehow aware of every cell of his body, could feel each bone and fiber, separate and distinct.

And then his disparate parts smashed back together, and for the second time in twenty-four hours, he found himself precipitated into water.

—Except that it was blessedly warm this time, almost warm as blood. They had arrived at night, too, and a storm seemed to be brewing, for the sky was wild with scudding black clouds sweeping unnaturally quick beneath a blue ablaze with indignant stars. The waves—black, accented with silver—were high and choppy; the sporadic rain that splattered his face felt like needles of ice.

He ducked his head, rose, gasped, and began treading water. “Finno!” he shouted. “Hey, Lizardman, where are you?”

A sound between a snap and a pop, a twinge of pain on his back, and then a sudden splash and a laugh.

He turned, furious—to see a wild-eyed Fionchadd grinning at him from a few yards away.

“So, how'd you get here?” David demanded.

“As a tick between your shoulders. Your blood is very good—thicker than ours, but sweet…”

David glared at him. “I oughta…”

“Kill me? If tonight's work goes aright, you may well be rid of me sooner than you think.”

“Why's that?” David felt a vast uneasiness well up inside him.

“Have you not guessed? This is not your World, this is Faerie!”

“Faerie!” David gasped, only to have his mouth promptly filled with salt water. “But how? We can't teleport two Worlds away with the scale.”

“No,” Fionchadd acknowledged, “not normally—yet we obviously have, and the only thing that was different in the ritual was that we used your blood and mine to activate the scale. Also…”

“What…?” David interrupted, then felt his eyes go huge. “Oh no! We…we called on Alec and Liz to anchor us, and wound up here, which means…”

“That they are also here,” Fionchadd nodded. “So I would think. And probably close by.”

David tried to leap clear of the water but could not. One thing he did notice, though, was that there was a huge amount of storm wrack about: floating bits of wood. One nudged his back with a splintered edge, and he yipped and twisted around. It was a piece of very pale wood, polished to a high gloss, lightly gilded with silver, and with a bright metal fixture attached which he thought might once have held some rigging.

“Boat parts!” he cried; then, as dread caught him, he shouted, “Liz! Liz—Alec—can you hear me?”

Fionchadd added his voice then, pitching it carefully so that it pierced the night.

No answer.

David met Fionchadd's gaze, fear and dread and anger warring for priority there. “This is a shipwreck, Finno.”

“We called on them and the scale responded. Were they not still alive, I imagine we would still be in Galunlati,” the Faery replied simply.

David brightened at that. “Good point. Come on, then, let's see what we can find—check this drift—might be smart anyway, if a storm's comin' up. It'd be good to have something to hang onto.”

“A wise suggestion. I have used much Power lately, and am very weary. I do not think I could last out a storm at sea unaided.”

“Not even as a fish?”

“I have no more changes in me—not for a very long while.”

David sighed, and struck out in the direction from which the greatest amount of debris seemed to be drifting.

He searched until his arms were tired to the point of cramping and his breaths were coming in gasps. He barely had strength enough to yell out his friends' names, yet he did—over and over.

The slap of waves, the cry of night-flying birds was his only answer until, faintly: “Here!”

“Liz?”

“Davy? Here, over
here
!”
The cries became a whistle, long and drawn out: Liz's distinctive signal rising clear above the sound of waves and—increasingly—wind.

In less than a minute, he had found them.

They were a sorry sight, hanging from a floating shaft of what might once have been a mast. Their hair was plastered to their heads in limp, salt-laden tendrils; their eyes and lips were swollen. And there seemed to be a vast encumbrance of chains. David grabbed hold of the spar, felt it bob but keep its buoyance. Fionchadd took the other end. It was all David could do to keep from trying to hug them both, and he wanted to kiss Liz so badly he could hardly stand it, to wipe away the fear and pain from her face. To kiss her happy again.

Instead, he asked, “What happened?”

“Finvarra's guys captured us in our World,” Alec began. “And—”

“And Lugh ambushed them as soon as we wound up here,” Liz finished. “I don't think he knew we were aboard, and he didn't stay to investigate. His fleet went east very quickly—on water, and above it.”

“That would make sense,” Fionchadd mused, “if the rumors I heard are true and Finvarra truly wishes to engage him far at sea.”

“But what about the spear?” Alec asked. “I thought he was going to use it on Erenn on Midsummer's…”

“
Fuck
the friggin' spear,” David gritted. “We've gotta get you guys outta here.”

Fionchadd nodded in David's direction. “There is land that way, not far. The tide will take us there if we drift. It is coming in.”

“Yeah, but we can get there faster if we all paddle.”

And so they did.

It was still not midnight in Faerie (so Fionchadd informed them, having read the positions of the stars between the ever larger banks of tattered clouds) when David felt his kicking feet finally brush bottom. They dragged themselves ashore, and David and his mortal friends lay there grasping while Fionchadd made short work of the chains that still linked Alec and Liz. As soon as she was freed, Liz rolled into David's arms, and they clung together for a moment, then found each other's lips…