Darkthunder's Way (25 page)

David stood horrified for a moment, then flung down his staff and leapt after, determined to do what he could.

But it was not water that met him. Instead he found himself standing in a field of thin, silky grasses that towered far above his head. A noise to his back was Fionchadd, and then a white-faced Alec joined them. He returned David’s staff.

“Hurry, hurry, hurry, only one more ten-hops.”

David sighed, and once more followed Tsistu through the grass. And then, abruptly, it parted, and he found himself gasping.

For the vista ahead quite literally took his breath. He had been to Faerie, of course, had seen its strange trees, impossibly tall; its peculiar beasts; something of its fair, distant people. That land held a hard, brittle brightness, a sort of glitter one could never truly rely on. But there was a subtle undercurrent of decay as well, of trees so extravagantly whorled they fell to pieces, of mosaics so finely made their designs produced not joy or wonder but confusion, of too
much
intricacy—in a word, of Power applied far and wide to warp the land to some secret master-image whose pattern was the interlacing spiral.

Here was none of that: here was nature itself: trees taller even than the giants of Faerie, some of them; and greener by far beneath a sky more blue. David glanced up, and saw the sun: white-yellow. There was absolute clarity here, absolute brightness, but without the hard edge of Faerie. Nature without the touch of mind at all. The air was also hotter.

Alec eventually commented on that.

“The sun is closer here,” Tsistu told them over his shoulder. “And yet seven times it was moved before the men of this place could stand it.”

None of them were inclined to respond, and they pressed on a way, through trees David could finally recognize: cedar and pine, spruce, holly, and laurel. But as he trotted by them, he felt a strange prickling on the back of his neck, as if someone was watching. Calvin saw his goose bumps, his furtive sideways glances. “I feel it too,” he whispered. “But I reckon I oughta.”

“How so?”

“Well,” Calvin began, “according to my grandfather, when the plants and animals were first made they were supposed to stay awake for seven nights like we should have done; but to make a long story short, none of ’em made it except the owl and the panther and a couple more of the animals—the ones that can see in the dark, basically—and the evergreen plants. They were rewarded by being made strong medicine, and by not losing their leaves in the winter. They alone are still awake and watchful.”

“Cute story,” Alec said. “But not logical.”

Calvin’s face darkened. “Who’s to say what logic is here?”

Alec’s mouth popped open. “Yeah, right. I guess I should be more open-minded—I mean considering what I’ve already seen, and all.”

Calvin only grunted.

They walked on a good while longer, only pausing when they passed from the forest at the edge of a large meadow. Broom sedge grew there, golden in the sun, and Tsistu paused at the first of it, gazing about warily, nose and ears a-twitch. David suddenly realized their guide had grown smaller, that his coat was now the same brown-ticked tan as the waving stems. He looked, in short, like an ordinary bunny.

“Something wrong?” David ventured, as Tsistu continued reconnoitering.

“Nothing is
ever
wrong with Tsistu,” the rabbit replied haughtily, training a brown eye skyward. “I am bravest of the brave.”

And with that he hopped into the field.

David started to follow, but had not taken two steps when a vast shadow darkened a wide swath of the meadow. David looked up, startled, even as he heard Alec shriek and saw from the corner of his eye Fionchadd bring his bow to bear.

“No!” Calvin hissed as he slammed into the Faery and flung him headlong to the ground, just as Alec likewise pushed David down. David rolled onto his side, but the shadow passed over again, and he raised himself cautiously to look.

It was an eagle, circling the meadow in a calm, lazy glide—and that eagle was black as polished coal. David’s heart skipped a beat, for Ailill had once worn that shape, and had almost killed him while in it. Except—except now he looked at it, the eagle had a white head, like your regular red-blooded American bald…or…or wasn’t there maybe a trace of gold among its feathers? He couldn’t tell. The shadow touched him once more, then; and chills ran over him. David closed his eyes, expecting to feel talons in his back at any moment. Only the eagle seemed to be ignoring them, seemed to be searching for something closer to the meadow’s heart. David shrugged Alec aside and rose to a cautious crouch, scanned the horizon, saw the shadow ripple across the grass, and a disturbance beneath it.

Abruptly the eagle folded its wings and dived, plummeting earthward more quickly than David’s eyes could follow. It struck the sedge hard—David could hear the thunk, the rustle of displaced foliage. And then another, more troubling sound reached his ears: a long animal shriek full of terror and pain and anguish.

“Tsistu!” David screamed, leaping to his feet and rushing forward.

But it was already too late. The eagle rose in a series of awkward flaps, then caught an updraft and rode it into clearer air. From its claws a limp body hung. Higher it rose, and faster.

Fionchadd leapt up and once more drew his bow, only this time he got off an arrow.

Quickly it flew, and sure, and buried itself in the eagle’s breast. With a single indignant squawk the bird folded upon itself and fell.

“You fool!” Calvin yelled at him. “You bloody, quick-ass,
idiot
!”

“What…” Fionchadd began, anger flashing in his eyes.

“The eagle is—

“Help me!”
a weak voice called: Tsistu.

Somehow they were there, standing in a shaky circle around the scene of carnage. The eagle was dead; of that, at least, there was no doubt, for Fionchadd’s arrow had pierced its heart. Tsistu too lay still, but as Calvin knelt beside him and laid a hand against his bloodstained fur, the rabbit shuddered, then burst out in laughter that brought a torrent of red from its mouth. “Awahili has slain me,” he said, chuckling, “and a thousand times it has done so; yet as long as my blood is spilled upon the land I live again. You, however, have slain Awahili, and for that your single lives are forfeit.”

“What?” David cried. “Blast you! You’ve tricked us.”

“But that is what I do!” Tsistu replied, still giggling. “And a fine one it is, I must say!”

“I tried to tell you,” Calvin spat, glaring at Fionchadd. “It’s taboo to kill an eagle.”

“You should have said something earlier!”

The Indian grabbed the Faery’s arm and jerked him around to face him. “I
also
tried to tell you not to trust him!”

Fionchadd knocked the hand roughly aside and turned his gaze back on Tsistu. “You swore an
oath
!”

“On my life—and of lives I have very many, a thing you, hunter-boy, should understand.”

“Yet you swore.”

“And I tricked.”

“But what of the bear? That was no illusion.”

“Oh, he is still coming somewhere, I have no doubt. But I came sooner.”

“I doubt it,” Calvin snorted.

“You may doubt as you please, but the truth is—and here I honestly tell it—that I was being pursued by Awahili here: an ancient thing between us, a contest of wills and wits that has no end. But then I heard your call and felt the way between the lands slide open so that I could come to you, and along the way I thought what an excellent trick it would be to bring you back here and have you slay my ancient rival, for—truth again—too often he has victory over me. You were not the only ones fooled.” Tsistu laughed once more, and then his eyes glazed over. In death he appeared no more than a common cottontail.

A rumble of thunder sounded in the distance, and a drift of breeze slid over their skin.

David shuddered, then stood and eyed Fionchadd angrily. “Real cool, Finno. All we needed was for you to start shootin’ up the wildlife.”

“It is as the rabbit said,” the Faery replied calmly. “I am a hunter, it is what I do. Besides, you yourself felt threatened. We all did. It could have been any of us dangling from that bird’s talons.”

“He’s got a point there,” Calvin noted. “But twenty-twenty hindsight’s not real useful.”

“What about foresight, then?” Alec said, as thunder rumbled again, nearer. “What do we do now that Finn’s lost us our guide?”

“Yeah, and what was that about our lives being forfeit for killing an eagle? I mean, who’s gonna enforce it?”

Calvin started to reply, but was drowned out by a third thunderclap, this one very close indeed, though the sky was still clear. Abruptly the Indian grabbed David’s arm. “I think, my friend, we may be about to get a better answer than I could ever give you.”

David twisted around, and saw two archers advancing from under the eaves of the forest. He stood stock still, knowing they had nowhere to go—not and outrun an arrow.

“People,” Fionchadd hissed, and raised his own bow. Calvin reached for his hunting knife.

“Are you guys crazy?” David cried. “We’ve already got ourselves in deep shit from one piece of stupid violence. How ’bout we try to act civil for a change?”

“Tsistu was acting civil,” Calvin began, but David shushed him.

The figures came nearer, two very tall women—as tall as the Sidhe, but more muscular. They were dressed in fringed white leather: knee-length skirts and ankle boots, all elaborately beaded in red. Nothing above the waist, though—save their own bare round breasts, which bobbed enticingly. Their ornaments were gold of a particularly ruddy shade, and their skin was white, almost as ice, though it seemed to hold an inner glow that was more like the hottest flames. Their knee-long hair was blacker than any David had ever seen, and seemed to crackle and pop in the suddenly dry air; their eyes were gray and glittering. They would have been beautiful, he thought, as not even the Sidhe were beautiful, had they not also sported tattoos in the shape of serpents that coiled their tails round those breasts, slithered up those smooth-skinned necks and bracketed those perfect mouths with their painted maws. Yet in spite of that, in spite of his own mistrust, David found his groin tightening; he had not, after all, seen that many bare-breasted women. He could not help himself, his eyes darted back and forth: from breasts to face and back, over and over. Not until it was too late did he find that he could not move a muscle.

“Oh, sh—!” David heard Calvin start, then fall silent.

Jesus, oh Jesus, oh Jesus
was David’s own litany of despair—but the women were upon him, binding his hands firmly before him with cords of the same soft leather as their clothing. Through the corner of his eye David could barely make out his companions in like circumstances. When the women had finished and Fionchadd had been relieved of his bow, he and Alec of their runestaves, and Calvin of his knife, the taller woman came and stood before them. A muttered word, a subtle hand motion, and David felt the paralysis slide from his head and arms, though his feet were still heavy as lead.

“Well done, sister,” the tall woman said, flicking a glance briefly sideways. The movements of her mouth made the serpent tattoos look hungrily alive. “And well it was these strangers raised not their weapons, nor tried to flee, for then truly would our vengeance have been mighty!”

“Vengeance?” David croaked hopelessly, finding he could speak again, and wondering distantly if what he had just heard was really English. Whatever it was, it was different from Tsistu’s speech.

“Vengeance!” the woman spat. “Know you not that it is taboo to kill Awahili? Even the foolish know as much, even the men of your land, once, and your kind best of all.” This last she addressed to Calvin, who nodded grimly.

“But—” David began.

“Silence!” the woman whispered, though she might as well have screamed.

David was desperate now. He had to do something, had to. He focused on his legs, directed all his will on the paralysis there, felt it lessen minutely—and stumbled forward and fell.

The second woman kicked him hard, then jerked him roughly up by the bound wrists. “You will be first, little Pale-man. You will be first to—” She halted abruptly, staring at David’s hand. David looked too, and realized they were gazing at the dragon ring. Abruptly the woman drew back, but her sister stepped forward and likewise examined his hand.

“Death may be their fate,” she sighed, “but it is not for us to deliver.”

David could only gape, not daring to hope.

“You bear the sign of the great uktena,” the woman told him simply, the serpents bracing her lips gaping wide. “You must pass before our brother for judgment. Now come, for it is far and far we must travel.”

Chapter XVI: Where-It-Made-a-Noise-as-of-Thunder

(Galunlati—day one
—afternoon)

David never knew how long that forced march lasted, only that by the time it was over he would have welcomed anything short of a long painful death (a quick one was another matter) to bring it to an ending.

All morning they walked (he assumed it was morning by the slow ascent of the sun); and they were still trudging along far into the afternoon, always through mountainous woods. The scenery was magnificent; very like David’s own north Georgia stomping grounds must have been after the last glaciation—before men came with slash-and-burn, the primal hardwoods gave way to fast-growing pines, and the gentle slopes had their innards exposed by developmental highways and their topknots crowned by Atlantans’ condos.