Dreamseeker's Road (23 page)

He did, struggling out of the restricting fabric like a moth from a cocoon. Other hands were on him then, helping him: that boy that looked like him, covering his own nakedness with borrowed disguise.

And then a rattle of claws against the bare stone of the hill outside signaled the arrival of the pack. A hound peered in, sniffed uncertainly, and opened its mouth.

And as that first thunderous “yo-yo-yo…!” roared into the cold night air, Aikin-That-Was-Not-Aikin bolted. Aikin-Who-Was-The-Hound watched in amazement as his own body deftly leapt the corpse of the dead dog and fled into the open air.

“Yo-yo-yo!” the hound cried again, but by that time Not-Aikin was running.

But to Real-Aikin's surprise, the Hunt did not give chase. Rather, the pack waited, sides heaving, tongues lolling, nostrils tasting the air, as though they knew this quarry was worth a long pursuit, and sport was better continued than curtailed. After all, how often did Himself get to hunt mortal men on the fringe of Faerie?

Himself…?
Real-Aikin wondered where that term had come from. But as he sought an answer, something else captured him unawares, and he too found himself moving. Instinct, something told his human aspect: animal reflex reacting to its conditioning and taking charge. And perhaps he ought to let it; certainly it wouldn't do for Himself to suspect anything.

Before Aikin knew it, he was belling: sending deep, clear notes into the cold, wild air. The hound nearest him—a bitch nearly into season, his nose informed him—stared at him, startled, but he dashed in beside her. And then quickly lost himself amid the swirl and jostle of the others.

No one was chasing the boy…yet. Himself did not want them to. And already the boy—who was very fast for one of his kind—was a good way off and still running, angling south toward the circle of low stones that crowned the next hill down. Probably Himself would let him get almost there and wind the horn again.

Or maybe sooner…

It was sooner; for with one smooth, inexorable motion, the antlered man towering above him raised his horn to his lips and blew.

And what a note: what a perfect sound to set a hound's blood pumping and his heart to racing, and the taste of boy-blood-to-be washing across his tongue as he tasted the storm-laden air. A cold drizzle began to fall in earnest, cooling his fur, but his blood was hot and eager for the kill.

And kill he would, as first the hound to his left, and then the one to his right set off down the hill toward that frightened boy. Aikin-That-Was went with them, and the faster he moved and the closer he got, the more Hound-That-Is took over.

Aikin-That-Was was terrified. Hound-That-Is rather liked it. For Hound-That-Is truly
was
a very mighty Hunter.

Chapter XIV: Sight for Sore Eyes

(The Straight Tracks—no time)

“I got him into this; I've gotta get him out.”

And that was the bottom line, wasn't it? In and out. Yin and yang. Black and white.

It was noon, David noted dully. And that was a
between
time—and sure enough, here he was: hung up between. It was true Halloween now, and that marked the gate between the light half of the year and the dark; between summer and winter—between life and death. He was in the woods, but surrounded, just out of sight, by town. The trees hereabouts were rooted in the red clay and rich loam of middle Georgia, but his feet stood on a glowing strip of sod that was born of some other place, some other time, probably even some other chemistry and physics. And Liz was gripping his right hand, with her human flesh and bone—the slender body he had loved, and the brilliant mind that no one had fully tasted; while before him, dressed in robes of gray, green, and black, no longer looking even vaguely mortal, stood the nameless Faery woman who had—perhaps—pronounced Aikin Daniels's doom.

“The Wild Hunt,” Liz breathed—and all that betweenness collapsed into a clot of cold hard dread that threatened to freeze David's soul. “I have to go,” he told her. “You know I have no choice.”

“And you know I don't either,” she echoed, with a grim smile.

David exhaled wearily. For a moment he forgot the Faery woman, forgot everything as he gazed upon his lady.
God, but he didn't deserve a woman
like this…
“That's probably just as well,” he sighed at last, with a frivolity he didn't feel and doubted she believed. “Given the luck I've had lately, I'd
better
keep you where I can see you. All I need's to chase down Aik and Alec and find out
you've
gone haring off to an Otherworld. I—”

The Faery woman's horse stamped impatiently. David shrugged to conclude what didn't
need
conclusion, then stared at the beast, wondering if its impatient exhalation really had contained tiny flames. Liz patted its nose.

The Faery woman had remained silent since her pronouncement about the Hunt, but her mouth had gone hard, her brow wrinkled, as though she wrestled with some difficult decision. Eventually she exhaled deeply, and when she spoke, her voice held no trace of human slang, syntax, or accent, was fully that of someone born and bred in a World where language was among the highest arts. “I would not have it repeated,” she intoned, with the formality of one taking vows, “—in Tir-Nan-Og or Erenn or Annwyn, either—that one of my ancient lineage showed herself less valiant than a pair of new-grown mortals. Yet when haste is truly needed, human feet are slow.”

And with that, she closed her eyes and drew herself up very straight, her jaw set, her whole tall body as tense as a soldier facing certain death—like those at the end of
Gallipoli.

“God
damn
,”
David gasped abruptly—for his eyes were burning and tingling more violently than the use of Power had ever prompted. He clamped them shut—had no choice—and the burning of tears was cool compared to the flames the Sight had woken there. “Goddamn!” he gulped again, and Liz drew him close, folding him in her arms as pain made him shudder shamelessly. He wondered dimly why
she
wasn't affected: she'd certainly seen the Faery woman as clearly as he—and the horse and the glowing Track.

But he alone had the Sight, and maybe that made the difference. Or perhaps the woman was exacting her price for his earlier assault—he'd never yet met a denizen of Faerie who'd let a mortal best him unscathed. Even his friends there kept score, and would remind him of even the tiniest slights long after he'd forgotten them. Immortals had long memories. Immortals could wait forever.

But he had his own pride, his own curiosity. And so it was that he fought through pain and tears and watched blearily but defiantly as the Faery woman
changed.
One moment she wore the face he knew, the next she showed many features at once, most of them female, most—but not all of them—human. She stabilized briefly in a particularly striking shape, as though she had settled on it—and David started, for there was something familiar about that visage. But before he could drag the memories from beneath his veil of pain, that entire form vanished, replaced with a larger, four-legged one: a huge black horse.

David swallowed hard, blinking back tears as the burning subsided to a tingle. He wiped them on the back of his hand. Liz passed him a bandanna, which he lavishly applied.

Those who watch what they should not, pay for that watching,
came a
thought into his mind—which, while alarming in its own right, was still better than watching equine lips shape human phrases. The white horse whickered, as though reminding them it was still present.

Woman on stallion; man on mare
, came that thought again.
Thus is balance maintained.

“Whitey here's a boy,” Liz observed, with a trace of disappointment. “Looks like you get to ride your shape-shifting friend.” David blinked at her, puzzled by the hard edge in her voice, and saw resigned disapproval darken her emerald eyes. “I'd rather ride with you,” she grumbled. “But this isn't the time to argue.”
I could shift you all,
came the mare-woman's thought, unbidden.

“We're fine,” David growled. “Let's travel.” He clamped Liz in one long, strong embrace, and gave her a leg up on the white, which, he noted, sported reins but no saddle. Fortunately Liz was a first-class rider, with no qualms about riding bareback.

He, on the other hand, was wearing skimpy running shorts and nothing else save a fanny pack, socks, sneakers—and a T-shirt, when he fished it from his waistband and snugged it on. Nor had he been on a horse in over a year. Blister time for sure, he concluded warily, as he reached for the black mare's mane with one hand and her shoulder with the other.

And froze.

That pain-blurred glimpse of the shape-shifting was still playing through his mind, as wonders of that sort tended to do; and while he'd been dealing with mundane logistics, part of him had been worrying at those images like a tongue probing a popcorn husk lodged between two teeth.
Something
hadn't been quite right: one of those half-seen faces had struck a familiar chord, sending recognition chiming through his mind—without the name and history that ought to accompany it.

And then he
did
recall—and his hands slid off the mare. He wasn't
certain—
had
observed those features for but the briefest instant when they'd seemed poised to stabilize into finality—but it seemed to him—
seemed,
he acknowledged—that the woman had almost chosen the face of the Morrigu.

The Morrigu…

The Crow of Battles. The Reveler Among the Slain. The woman—if that term applied to such a being—who gloried in death when women's ancient role was to bring forth life. Who, in the guise of an angel, had worked David-the-Elder's doom.

The woman upon whom he had sworn to be avenged.

Gritting his teeth so hard he feared they would splinter, he grabbed the mane again, and climbed upon what could well be his enemy.

Chapter XV: Blood on the Tracks

(The Straight Tracks—no place, no time)

Fear smelled good. Then again,
everything
smelled good, Aikin-That-Was concluded—smelled interesting, anyway—when one was a hound. Funny how he'd never noticed that rich flood of odors before, or suspected their absence. It was like being born blind then suddenly being gifted with sight at a fireworks display; like regaining one's hearing amidst a symphony. And he could scarce contain his wonder, as he leapt along with his pack-mates. Faery men—horse—dog: each had a distinctive overodor; but beneath it, each individual smelled different, in a way he could note once and remember, as an earlier self had catalogued faces. And those scents spoke of other things too: of food eaten, and the condition of bodies; of the sweat of exertion on the Lords of the Hunt; their frequency of bathing; and their choice of metal armor, leather trappings, garments, and perfume.

But he smelled land too: earth of varying compositions and degrees of dampness; and the plants that grew upon it, each element of which likewise gave forth its own odor.

And over everything, like the wash of black-gray that was the sky, or the drones of a bagpipe or hurdy-gurdy, lay the scent of magic and the scent of fear.

Magic was hard to define, save that it was strong, clear, pure, and growing closer; and that some part of him identified it with what another aspect would have called gold or yellow. But fear—ah, what sweetness! What strength! What richness! And that fear at once sprang up from the earth where footsteps had fallen upon it, and floated on the air like a breeze presaging thunder, from he who fled ahead.

Aikin-That-Was could see the quarry now; had loped his way near the head of the pack and no longer gazed upon gorse and horses' hooves and the aft ends of other hounds. But something shifted in his brain at that, for there was a familiarity with that staggering form that went beyond his knowledge of Himself or those who rode their heavy horses with him, always a little way back, watching, observing, but nevertheless poised for the kill. They chased a boy, that was clear: young, dark-haired, healthy as few mortal men he seemed to recall hunting were anymore. He was making good speed, too: had covered nearly a mile, with the pack in steady but leisurely pursuit. There was no hurry, though; for the lad, though quick for his kind, would tire eventually and falter. The Hunt would not. His pack-mates would not. And then the smell of fear would give way to the taste of blood, which though not so ethereal was far more satisfying.

No!
another part of the hound protested.
That's my blood you're thinking about! The one you chase is…me!

It was all very confusing, because when Aikin-That-Was thought about things like that, others came with it, and he remembered he was not one of the Wild Hunt's pack at all, but a terrified young human lost past redemption in a World not his own. And when he recalled that, his senses overloaded and his reflexes tangled up and he faltered at his running, and the other hounds glared at him accusingly—which so far those who drove the Hunt had not noticed. It was like he imagined LSD would be, though he'd never tried that stuff. Or some of those mind-fucks Carlos Casteneda had dared at the urging of Don Juan. Two realities at once. Two sets of memories. Two sets of instincts. Those that watched and analyzed were his; those that drove the body, the hound's. But the hound was in control—had to be, to function—and Aikin-That-Was had not the strength to prevent it. As it was, maintaining his sense of self was like trying to talk at a rock concert, with the decibels pounding at his reason and drowning his words and dulling his thoughts and thudding up through his very flesh, so that it was easier simply to run with the flow and
be.

Besides, it was
fun
to smell the fear.

He had no idea how long he'd run, only that they'd gone down at least one slope and up another, that he was near the head of the pack, and that the ground beneath him shook with the hooves behind him. The horn had not winded lately, however; and the Host rode silently, not speaking, not singing, lost, it seemed, in their thoughts, or the hunt itself, or dreams of glory and dripping gore.