Warstalker's Track (38 page)

At least it wasn’t as bad as the last trip, though like that foray, it got worse the closer to Sullivan Cove they came.

Finally he could stand it no longer. “What specifically,” he asked Aife, “do you think we should do?”

She blinked up from the grimoire, which seemed to be showing a bit of wear, if not actual deterioration: likely due to its removal from the World of its making. “About what?”

It was all Alec could do to restrain himself. Instead, he stroked the jar that contained the new ulunsuti. “About which mojo to use: ours or Dave’s or—”

“May not be our choice,” Aikin called from the front. “They get there first, they may go ahead with…whatever.”

“Christ!” Alec spat in total exasperation. “All these fuckin’ variables! I mean, Lugh’s off God-knows-where, we have no idea what the rebels are up to besides making it rain, and…and what do these folks know about us, if anything. Never mind that Annwyn’s on its way and Erenn’s not far behind.”

“With a bunch of not-so-innocent workmen camped in the middle,” Myra concluded. “Though I imagine they’re putting them up somewhere else, except maybe those rent-a-cops Scott mentioned.”

“Like anybody’d be out on a night like this up to no good,” Aikin snorted.

Myra flicked her left turn signal on, which seemed ludicrous, given the empty highway. It took Alec a moment to realize that they’d reached the Sullivan Cove road.

No lights showed at David’s house, but Kirkwood’s T-bird was there. Still, when Myra made to press on to the Cove itself, by way of Uncle Dale’s place, Aife’s face suddenly went blank. “No,” she countered, pointing up the dark frothing river that ought to be the Sullivans’ drive, “turn here and keep going. We need water, and we need a Place of Power.”

“Water we got down here,” Myra snorted. “But you mean—”

“Lookout Rock!” Alec finished for her. “That
is
what you mean, isn’t it?”

“If that is its name. But I sense it even here. The waters under the earth, and out of the earth. Colin had a spring. We must have one as well.”

Myra was frowning like thunder. “No way the van’ll make it. I’m not being anal or protective or anything; it just won’t!”

Alec leaned past Aife to stare up the sodden, rain-slicked hill. “Big Billy’s pickup’s here, and it’s got four-wheel-drive—and
I
know where he hides the key.”

“Let’s do it,” Myra decided. “We ain’t got time to argue.”

Two minutes later, every one of them soaked to the skin, they were once again in transit, this time crammed into the F-150’s extended cab, with Aikin, who had most experience with pickups, at the wheel. It wasn’t that bad, actually, as Aikin steered the big Ford left and started up what had once been a logging road to commence the mile-long drive. And for a miracle, the rain had slackened now that they’d left the farmstead behind and had trees on either side. Either that or the branches screened the worst of the wind and water, save that which flowed beneath them, which was a regular torrent that had washed away most of the gravel, leaving rocks and holes and gullies you couldn’t see until you were in ’em. Alec had his fingers crossed. So far so good, and whatever.

This was it, too, wasn’t it? The final roll of the dice for all this Faery shit. He hoped he was ready, and to calm himself took inventory of his gear. Clothes: wet but serviceable; fatigues and a surplus flak jacket Aikin had loaned him earlier.
Gattaca
baseball cap. The pistol and ammo Aik had added in Tir-Gat. His war club. The ulunsuti. And maybe, if she remembered he was alive, Aife.

Who, Alec realized with a start, was still reading—in the dark.

And then, as often happened during long stressful journeys on rainy nights, everyone withdrew into private silence.

*

In spite of himself, Alec dozed. Time-compressed, rather, to use the term he’d coined to describe that fugue state when you were mostly turned off and oblivious but with one little part still aware and letting you know if anything important occurred, then turning you off again after. He’d had an astronomy class like this once, right after lunch; he’d always nodded off in there, only to awaken if the prof said something he didn’t know, take a note on same, then drift off again. He’d made an A—of course.

But somehow that just didn’t matter. Like graduation hadn’t mattered. What
did
matter was that Aikin had just pulled completely off what passed for a road and was trying to get back on track; and, more to the point, that the headlights had caught the dark archway in the trees that marked the side trail that led to Lookout Rock.

Marked it clearly, in fact, for at that very moment, it stopped raining.
Almost
stopped, Alec amended; there was still a light mist. Aife sat up at once, as though startled or concerned, eyes darting everywhere, nostrils flaring as though she were a predator sniffing out prey.

“Power,” she asserted. “Someone forestalls the rain with Power.”

Alec exhaled his relief in a rush. “Like Finno, maybe?”

“So I would hope,” Aife agreed. “It would still be wise to hurry.”

Aikin did, sending rooster tails of muddy water a yard high to either side as he set the heavy Ford slipping and sliding across what was usually leafy-mossy ground completely overhung by oaks and maples. Over a minute he did that, until he skidded around one final curve and nearly collided with the back of Sandy’s Explorer, blocking further progress ahead.

Beyond it, however, where the forest gave way to the rocky mountainside ledge-cum-clearing that was Lookout Rock, the headlights caught moving figures. Alec was out the door before Aikin shut off the engine. Not until that moment did he realize how much he’d missed his best friend.

David had clearly missed him too and broke off lighting did torches to dash across the sodden moss, mud-bogged gravel, and slippery stone to enfold him in the hug he’d needed longer than he dared imagine.
This was it,
something told him. Not the end of all things, perhaps, but the end of the Faery stuff once and for all. After that, it would be back to real life. Grad school, a job, maybe a family—

He froze.
If they moved Tir-Nan-Og, what happened to Aife?
And Finno, and all those other friends?

Did that even matter when he had a tried-and-true forever buddy like David to grab him on a cold, rainy, miserable night and remind him simply by the sun-bright spark of life that burned within him that he, Alec McLean, was also alive and worth having around?

For a long moment they stood there, wet hair tangled together, stubbly cheeks brushing, breath harsh yet soft in each other’s ears.

“Love you,” David whispered, easing him away. Then: “I am
so
glad you’re here.”

Alec backed away, too, hoping David wouldn’t see the tears that fogged his eyes, or else mistake them for the mist of rain that got through whatever Finno had raised to shelter them. But David’s eyes were bright as well. “Guess you heard we succeeded,” David said, glancing back toward the clearing. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”

Alec nodded and eased around his forever-and-always best friend to join the others, who were likewise reuniting in varying combinations farther on. Except for Aikin, who’d stayed behind to hug David too. Which wasn’t like him either.

For a moment he considered waiting, but Dave and Aik surely needed a solo reunion as much as he had, and having found himself alone, he did what he always did when he visited David’s oldest, most private, and strongest Place of Power. He took in the view.

Lookout Rock was like a notch that had been hacked from the dark granite bones of Nichols Mountain and never truly healed. Flat but stony, it was an acre or so in extent and surrounded on two sides by close-grown woods beneath which lay the ruins of the lean-to he, Dave, and the rest of the MacTyrie Gang had renewed countless times. A third side fronted the mountain, and the notch cut deep there: a hundred feet of sheer stone down which a waterfall slid like the mountain’s blood to form their ancient skinny-dipping site. Too many times to count, he, Dave, and Aikin—and, later, Gary and Darrell—had stripped off and dived in there. More recently, Calvin and Finno had joined their ranks. Every crisis, major and minor, that had marked puberty and adolescence had been deconstructed there. Love, sex, death, family, religion, drugs, politics, and rock-and-roll: all had paid their toll.

The fourth side gave the place its name. Open to the sky and the wind, it was a thirty-yard-long ledge that dropped straight down far enough to kill anyone who leapt off, while still offering a view Mystic Mountain would have fought an army to possess.

The lake glimmered out there and down, and more mountains, and a sprinkle of lights that were houses, though no towns could be seen. And no more than two miles away as the crow flew was the cause of all this trouble: the near-perfect quartz-crowned cone of Bloody Bald.

Hands slapped his back, startling him from his reverie, but it was only David and Aikin, drawing him over to where the rest of their crew were assembling.
All
of them, he noted, including Scott and Elyyoth. Everyone, that is, except David’s clan, who were otherwise occupied, and that John Devlin guy, who had no real
business
here.

What followed was confusion, chaos, and exchange of information, then, so suddenly it startled him, decision.

It made sense, actually. David’s crew had a promise from the Chiefs of the Quarters that they’d do what they could, but no one knew when they’d show, save that it would be a time of their choosing. But since the present deluge proved that the Sons were already on the move, it made sense to try their own mojo first.

Still, it seemed ludicrous to even consider such a preposterous notion: that some screwy, incomprehensible combination of
words,
belief, water, and blood could set something as utterly alien as Tracks to work at anyone’s whim. And to move a World—a big hunk of one, anyway! Why, Tir-Nan-Og must cover hundreds of thousands of square miles. How could they shift that much in one night? And where would they move it to, anyway?

And, again, what would happen to Aife, in whom the key was both inserted and seemingly stuck, if this crackbrain scheme succeeded? She was Faery, after all. If she cut herself off from that Land, she’d go mad. Granted, she could put on the substance of their World, but that was a stopgap at best. Eventually the call of like-to-like would become irresistible.

What then?

Apparently Aife, Finno, and the still slightly shell-shocked Elyyoth had some notion, as they likewise did about this Silver Track thing. But the former he dared contemplate no longer, and their attempts at explaining the latter had been frustrated by terms that not only had no English equivalent but that barely formed comprehensible images in the mind when Aife tried telepathic definition.

All Alec had been able to grasp was an image of a silver river paralleling an enormous sandbar; and, farther on, an island, where the first tentative fragments of another bar of similar kind lay. The river—the Track—was to pick up sand from one and deposit it on the other until their sizes had swapped, then block itself off so that the island was surrounded by rings of both water and land. It was a screwy visual metaphor for something that was more than halfway metaphysical, but Alec thought it might succeed.

As to who would be doing the hard parts, Aife had the knowledge locked within her, all unknown, though she swore she could access it at need. She also had a fair bit of Power, now that she’d once more clothed herself in the stuff of her native World. Fionchadd too had regained most of his strength, and of his previous injuries there was no sign. Elyyoth, while larger than either of the other Sidhe, was also the weakest in terms of Power, yet even so had more to command than the mortals.

“So let me get this straight,” Scott concluded after the latest round of fine-tuning logistics. “Aife, Finno, and Elyyoth are gonna be the movers and shakers—the ones who work the spell, or whatever.”

“Right,” David affirmed. “But since the Sons are bound to know what we’re up to, courtesy of Finno’s little umbrella here, we’ve gotta be primed for attack. Unfortunately, we can’t fight ’em much with mojo, though Cal and Brock are already settin’ wards”—he gestured to where the pair were driving colored stakes, drawing lines and circles, and chanting in Cherokee—“and LaWanda’s off mumblin’ too. Which means we’ve gotta fall back on guns and ammo, which they’re gonna be ready for, seein’ how we’ve used those against ’em already. In fact, if they’re savvy, they’ll send their mortal flunkies, ’cause they know it’ll freak us by puttin’ us in a moral bind.”

“Fuckers,” Aikin muttered, to nobody.

“Mind fuckers too,” Liz cautioned. “Don’t forget, the Sons took over those guys, no reason they couldn’t get us too.”

“Which means we need somebody to spy on them,” Sandy concluded. “Someone to warn
us
of impending attack. Sounds simple enough: the Faeries do their thing with the Tracks; we split the remainder. Liz, I know you can scry, and Alec’s got a new ulunsuti. Myra, you’ve got
something,
but you’re not a fighter type, so why don’t you help out there too? Piper, you’d best join them; you don’t like to fight either, but if worse comes to worst, maybe you can pipe us out of here, or something.”

Piper nodded mutely, stroking his pipes and gazing soulfully at LaWanda, who’d just returned looking inordinately pleased with herself.

“So the rest of us play soldier?” Aikin queried.

Sandy nodded in turn. “Those that know which end of a gun the bullet comes out of should use ’em: shotguns, rifles, doesn’t matter. That’s you, Dave; and Aik, and me, and Scott—who can also do the sword thing if he has to, assuming Elyyoth will lend his. Wannie, you get a choice: guns or that machete I hear you’re hell-on-wheels with. Or—”

“Both,” LaWanda broke in tersely. “The rest—it don’t work fast, and in cases like this, it only works on me. Let’s just say I may not always be where you think I am.”

“And
speaking
of mojo,” Sandy continued, “Cal can shapeshift, and he’s also got a war club with some mojo to it. Dave and Alec do, too, but seems like they’d be best used elsewhere. So, Churchy, what’s your poison? Smith & Wesson or atasi?”