Landslayer's Law (36 page)

David skidded to a clumsy halt and sank down, laughing. Liz tumbled off his back, laughing even louder. The ship rang with it: clear Faery air thrumming with human joy.

“Are we back?” Brock burst out. Sweat sheened his face.

Fionchadd rubbed his chin. “We are away from the Hole. I
think
we
are where I desired, which is to say this is Faerie. Beyond that”—he shifted his weight—”truly I hate to disrupt all this levity, but…we are still in danger.”

David froze on the verge of jumping atop Alec and giving him the thorough tickling his far-too-serious buddy clearly needed. He looked up, scowling.

Fionchadd’s brow likewise furrowed. “These are the seas of Faerie. The shores of Tir-Nan-Og cannot be far off, for I smell that strand. But— There is no easy way to say it: I fear ambush.”

“Ambush?” David countered. “Or interception?”

The furrows deepened. “Both, perhaps. Lugh still commands this coast, or did when we departed. The coast in the next World…up has apparently fallen to the Sons of Ailill. Lugh may know this, or he may not. There are circles within circles in this, and I cannot see them from far enough off to see them clear.”

“’Specially as you may be a circle yourself,” David remarked.

“A very small one,” Fionchadd returned. “You have far more true friends than I.”

“It would seem, then,” Liz said slowly, “that the smart thing to do is get the hell out of Faerie entirely and back…wherever.”

“Our own world, I hope,” Alec urged.

Fionchadd clapped him on the shoulder. “It would certainly be an attractive option.”

“Okay,” David declared, “let’s do it.”

Fionchadd caught his arm as he made to leave. “It is not so easy. I knew the tunes that took us on the journey we just assayed, but I had taken time before to learn them. From here… One
could
return to the Lands of Men from here, but no place useful. And then we would be bound by distances there, for the Tracks, as you know, do not lie everywhere.”

“So where’s the nearest?”

“The nearest that would be
helpful
would be the one where I found your company.”

“The one out at Whitehall?”

“Aye.”

David puffed his cheeks. “And we can’t get there from here?”

“Not unless we go somewhere else first.”

“Which would take time.” David inhaled sharply, feeling suddenly very uncertain in his stomach. “What time is it, anyway? What day?”

Fionchadd studied the sky—though what he saw in all that green-blue blankness, David had no idea. “Five days since we left.”

“Five days! But we lost three days in the Hole!”

“And no time at all returning.”

“So we’re actually…ahead of schedule?”

“We have none to waste, if what we learned in Annwyn is true, but yes.”

David grimaced sourly. “So basically what you’re sayin’ is that we’ve got time, but we’ve gotta hurry.”

“I am saying that it is not wise to remain here long.”

“Therefore we need to reach, optimally, the Track at Whitehall.”

Brock gaped at them incredulously. “By
boat
?”

“Of course,” Fionchadd acknowledged with a cryptic grin. “Do you doubt me?”

Brock shrugged.

David eyed Fionchadd askance. “And there’s
no
way to get there from here? I mean, I’m
not
doubtin’ you, or anything,” he went on instantly. “It’s just that I’ve noticed you tend to think a certain way—have to, I guess—and sometimes you ignore what to the rest of us seems pretty obvious.”

“Other traditions,” Brock summarized. “I could always use the medallion again.”

“You could,” Fionchadd agreed. “But”—once more he stroked his chin—“Actually, there may be something simpler—in this World, anyway.”

David raised a brow. “Wanta tell us?”

Fionchadd turned toward Alec. “You are the only one here who brought anything beyond the cloths on your back from your World, correct?”

Alec’s brow furrowed. “I’ve got my fannypack, if that’s what you mean?”

“Well, then,” Fionchadd prompted, “go get it!”

Alec regarded the Faery sullenly when he returned a moment later with the green nylon object in hand. Fionchadd pondered it as distrustfully. “Metal tape—zipper, I mean. Iron. Would you mind…?”

Alec bared his teeth as he unzipped the pack and emptied the contents onto the deck. David was amazed at the diversity Alec had managed to secret in there—everything from a tiny pocket calculator through three packs of sugar to a bright orange condom, still in its (slightly mildewed) wrapper. Alec blushed but made no move to hide it. Fionchadd merely sorted through the pile. “A-ha!” he cried at last. “I have found what we need.” And with that, he held up what David took for a dark shard of broken glass.

Alec stared at him as though he’d just grown another head.
“That?
That’s just a point I made in an outdoor skills class.”

“Precisely! Something you made—presumably in or near Athens.”

Alec nodded dubiously. “So?”

“There are several means by which Powersmith vessels navigate,” Fionchadd explained. “One is by music; one is simply by the tiller. There are some of which I may not speak, but one of which I can is that a weapon made by hands and placed in the dragon’s mouth will lead the dragon to the place where that weapon was wrought—or close by.”

“So,” Alec ventured, brightening, “that edge I made two years ago might actually take us back to Athens?”

Fionchadd nodded. “The Track at Whitehall, at any rate.”

Alec turned to study the dragonhead, then snatched the stone from Fionchadd’s fingers and passed it to the startled Brock. “Here, kiddo,” he purred, nodding toward the carved prow. “This is a job for a young man.”

The fog was back. Which was just as well, David reckoned. Magical landscape was fine if you had nothing better to do than watch it drift past a carved oak railing. But those landscapes were not always to be trusted, and more to the point, the very fact of their existence held alarmingly dark implications. Shoot, back home in Enotah County chubby redneck housewives were lolling in red plastic loungers, eating pork rinds and reading romances, while holding Camel cigarettes between fingers bright with cheap diamonds and red lacquered nails. Street kids in Athens were squatting atop garbage cans in front of Barnett’s Newsstand, reading
Flagpole
and trying to panhandle enough cash for the day’s first Mello Yello and Jolly Rancher. Lawyers were litigating over nothing. Legislators were trying to determine what constituted marriage.

And there was about to be war in Faerie.

War that
could
slop into the Lands of Men.

David wondered if Jesse Helms was ready.

He shifted in place, sparing the dragonship yet another cursory inspection, while wondering, not for the first time since they’d begun this (hopefully) final leg of their odd tour, if this was a good time to conclude a certain bit of business concerning Brock and an iron medallion. Or Liz and that medallion, for that matter—if he could get either of them alone long enough for serious discussion—or for serious scrying. Oh well, he conceded, maybe someday.

He sighed, inhaled deeply—and coughed.

Another breath, a sniff, and he noted the odors this time. Sure enough it bore the unmistakable scent of pine trees, diesel fumes, and (faintly) sewage. “Liz!” he bellowed. “We’re back!”

Back,
however, was surprisingly slow arriving, and day became night before the fog cleared entirely. There was at least one sunset-or-dawn in there too, to judge by Aife’s brief transformation. Yet by the time the last wisp of clinging damp whiteness fell away from the vessel’s flanks, and the ship itself began to slow, there was no doubt about it: they were sailing down the Middle Oconee—probably (and hopefully) near Whitehall Forest, to judge by the heavily wooded banks slipping silently by on either hand.

Fionchadd padded up beside him in the prow, even as they others likewise gathered round. “What happened to the Track?” David demanded, pointing across the river to the night-wrapped woods on the right. “Isn’t it somewhere over there?”

The Faery grinned. “This close, in this vessel, we could…do a little sidestep.”

“Hope nobody sees us,” Liz grumbled.

“Silverhand’s got spin doctors if they do,” Alec snorted, but even he was smiling. In point of fact, he looked as relieved as David had ever seen him. Piper wasn’t the only one who hated forays into Faerie.

“Far shore,” Fionchadd advised, and trotted back to the tiller. An instant later, the ship began to angle toward the bank opposite that upon which, among other, more public facilities, Aikin’s cabin stood. Soon enough, it navigated one final curve, and the dam hove into view: a low bar of white beneath what was clearly a waning moon. And then, before anyone truly expected it, the keel nosed into a sandbar a bare ten yards shy of the terminus of the dam, and they were back in the Lands of Men.

David wasted no time climbing atop the rail in the shoulder of the dragonhead, from which he leapt down to the warm, soft sand. He couldn’t resist rolling in it. “Here!” Alec called from the deck. “Catch.” He tossed down a large floppy bundle. His clothes, David realized, as he sought to right himself; he’d forgotten to change out of the far more comfortable Faery togs. “Thanks!” he grunted, as Brock hit the ground beside him, followed by Liz, then Piper, then Myra. Alec came last, bar Fionchadd.

No sooner had the Faery touched ground than he strode toward the ship’s prow, stroking his silver ring. The ensuing spark glimmered like a lost star in the night. An instant later, the ship was aflame—

—and shrinking quickly indeed, as whatever odd Fire bound it together dispersed, its eerie blue flickers barely brightening the looming woods. In no more than ten breaths time, Fionchadd stooped down to retrieve their former craft. He passed it to Brock with a grin. “Here,” he teased. “You’re the only one here who looks as though he ought to play with toys.”

Brock bared his teeth at him, but accepted the prize.

David was first back in mundane dress, first on the dam, first off it, first up the steep brushy bank between the river and the road, and first to the parking lot in front of Aikin’s cabin.

He halted there, out of breath and shaken. This was weird—a little
too
weird, actually. It was as if time had coiled around itself and restored them to where this latest round of weirdness had begun. It was the same place, the same moon—the expected cars in the parking lot (and a good thing, too, that latter).

Only…something had changed. The moon had waned: he’d already noted that. And—right: Sandy’s Explorer was gone entirely, and Aik’s truck wasn’t where he’d left it when they’d picked him up before the Tracking Party. Which in turn reminded him, not for the first time, that Piper, LaWanda, and Cal were surely on somebody’s shit list, given that at least one of them had clearly been elsewhere than Athens when they were supposed to be performing at the Earth Rights Festival there.

Which damned sure wasn’t his problem. His most imminent concern at present was getting Aikin’s attention without rousing his other roomies—two of whom, by their trademark vehicles, were still in residence, probably anticipating imminent graduation.

Alec, for a wonder, seemed to read his mind. “Aife,” he adjured the cat meandering through the bushes behind them, “go find Aikin.”

The cat blinked yellow eyes at him—then trotted back down the bank to where the rear deck of the cabin jutted into space. She melted among the shadows beneath that overhang, only to reemerge soon after atop it. Fortunately, one of Aikin’s windows faced the back. A light was on in there.

Which meant he was likely up; odd, now David considered it, given the probable hour. Even so, it took three plaintive yowls and a set of meows to lure their friend outside—in full woodman’s kit: cammo fatigues, khaki vest, and purposeful-looking boots—but minus his glasses, which made him squint into the gloom. “Aik!” David hissed. “Down here!”

Aikin eased over to the rail and knelt, peering through the uprights like a newly awakened mole. “Dave?”

“Among others. What gives?”

“Plenty,” Aikin panted without preamble. “Scott called five minutes ago. All hell’s breakin’ loose up there.”

Chapter XIX: Storm Wrack

(Sullivan Cove, Georgia—Thursday, June 26—dawn)

“How much longer?” Alec inquired with absolute sincerity, leaning forward from the Mustang’s back seat, in which, for nearly two hours, he, along with Aikin, had been ensconced. He sounded anxious too, and frightened.

David didn’t reply—and not only because he was too tired to respond with the requisite snappy comeback and too worried about both the situation that had prevailed when they’d left the Lands of Men and that into which they were returning.

No, at the moment, he was simply concerned about keeping a thirty-year-old car with dubious tires and a light back end on the road in what was surely the world’s ultimate downpour. The wipers weren’t up to even half this much precipitation, nor were the headlights; and he wasn’t sure his nerves were either, when the odds weren’t anywhere near his preference regarding what this monsoon-from-hell portended.

“Oughta know by now,” Aikin chided Alec. “You’ve come this way a thousand times,” he went on relentlessly, with more sarcasm than David deemed necessary, but also venting the frustration he was still trying hard to keep in check.

“David! Slow down!” Liz gasped from the front passenger seat. She grabbed at the dash pad with one hand and the side of her seat with the other, as the Mustang plowed into a particularly long, deep puddle.

David felt the steering go numb and held his breath, fighting the urge to apply the brakes, which could spell disaster. As it was, the rocky bank to their right loomed alarmingly nearer. Any closer, and— Well, that would solve several problems and create dozens of others.

“Dammit!” David snapped, when traction returned. “Will you guys just shut up? One of you wants me to hurry; one wants me to slow down. I…just wanta arrive.”

Liz nodded mutely. David tried to regain control. It hadn’t been that bad a trip, so far—until the rain had kicked in, and that had only been at Helen, ten miles back down the road. They didn’t have that much further to go, either, to Sullivan Cove; and, as Aikin had observed, he could drive that road blindfolded or in his sleep. Presuming, of course, there was still actual pavement beneath that solid sheet of water.