Sunshaker's War (40 page)

“But…”

“Never fear. I will not hold you back from whatever errand has brought us here, and I doubt not it is a grave one. I can still travel, if I have to; my body can run itself. I simply will not be able to do anything that requires conscious thought, for I will be…inside.”

The explanation made David even more dubious of the idea of Fionchadd expending precious energy on something as frivolous as bathing, but the Faery boy would not be dissuaded. So David finally had to lead him back to the stream he had visited earlier. But before he did, he managed to snare the 'possum and confine it in a make-do bag of T-shirt, where it promptly went to sleep. As for Fionchadd, he did not seem to mind if twigs rasped and ruptured blisters, and David wondered if his Faery metabolism was already kicking in, or whether it was simply massive self-control.

While Fionchadd bathed and washed his clothes, David told him the bare bones of what had happened, but long before he had finished, the Faery had climbed back onto the bank and stretched out on a rock to dry. By the time David had got to the actual rescue, his friend was snoring.

That wouldn't do either, because it more or less contradicted what he had just said, and also because their gear was back up at the camp, and David was suddenly getting a little bit paranoid. He was hearing more animal noises now, bigger-sounding ones, and closer. He had heard the cougar twice more, too; and that convinced him they either had to move on or make a fire—preferably both.

A nudge with his foot roused Fionchadd enough to get him to dress and drag himself up slope, but that bothered him: one minute out of it, the next lively and rarin' to go, the next copping Zs again. Still, by the time they'd returned to the camp, the Faery was trotting along famously, though his eyes looked strange and unfocused.

It was time for decision: did he move on (Finno's suggestion), or stay for the night? This wasn't a very protected place, and he still had a fair bit of energy. On the other hand, roaming around in unknown woods at night wasn't very wise, especially when some of the inhabitants might
look
like critters but had humanlike minds—and might not be friendly.

Eventually Fionchadd solved the problem for him, by simply standing and starting to walk.

“Finno, no, not yet!” David protested, but to no avail. In the end, he was left with no choice but to gather up gear (bagged 'possum included) as quickly as he could and follow at a rapid trot.

“Finno, goddamn it, wait!” he panted, when he finally caught up with his friend. “How do you know you're even going the right way?”

“South,” Fionchadd said without emotion, and kept on walking.

*

David never knew how long they hiked through the moonlit forests of Galunlati, but by the end even Fionchadd was flagging. He was helping the Faery along again, and wishing he'd asserted himself sooner. They needed to stop soon; there were sounds all around them; and he couldn't find a good place to camp. 'Course a tree at his back would do at a pinch, even a good-sized boulder; and he could always make a fire, but he'd really hoped to find something better.

Another hill trudged up, another valley navigated, but more or less trying to stay by the creek, which ought to eventually run into the sea somewhere near where he wanted to go if the geography was at all similar to his World. And then his luck kicked in.

There was something about the place he came to that told David he should stop there—spend the rest of the night if he had to, for he was suddenly tired beyond belief. “Things have Power because you give them Power,” Oisin had once told him, and so he had come to believe. There was simply a resonance certain places had—a feeling of primal
rightness.
Usually it was aesthetic, some confluence of images that spoke to one's very soul. Sometimes it was more: a hint of strangeness, or something that dared to be just a little skewed from the norm. Lookout Rock was one of those—an excrescence thrust from the mountainside to gaze out at the world and yet remain hidden from it. This was a little like that.

It was not remarkable, really, merely a pile of boulders that gradually lifted from the leafy slope in a narrow, pointed ridge like the prow of a vessel, rising a little above the surrounding valley. Not far to the land on either side, though: an easy leap down if he had to, but a hard one to scramble up. The stream gurgled right below the point, strangely loud in the night, its margins clear save for leaves and moss and a few quartzite boulders. There were scattered trees, too, mostly oaks and beeches—but only enough to preserve the illusion of woods, for he could see sky between the branches. It was maybe a little too exposed, but something told him to choose it anyway. And there
was
shelter of a sort, because the point of the ridge was a step down from the main body, and at that juncture there was a sort of half-wall which would serve to protect their backs.

Which was fortunate, because Fionchadd suddenly muttered, “Rest,” and sagged against him. David eased his friend down close to the wall. And decided it was time for a fire.

Fingers dug through dry moss and found moist earth in a spot big enough not to be risky, given that the woods appeared to be almost brittle-dry. A handful of rocks made a border, and dry moss acted as tinder to the flame he brought from a twisted strand of steel wool stretched between battery terminals. An instant later he had a merry blaze, and a very short while after that had poured water in his peanut can and set it on to boil. Tomorrow, he might even go hunting.

It was probably approaching morning, he realized dimly, though logic and his bioclock said it should only be around six P.M. if they'd gone through the gate at dawn, but he was as tired as if he'd never rested—which really he hadn't. Besides, it was dark, and he felt like sleeping, and he was pretty sure there was nothing more he could do now.

The last thing he did before he went to sleep was allow himself the luxury of one third of the pack of coffee, and to once more free the 'possum. To his relief, it did not run off, but snuggled by his side and slept. Before David finished his bare taste of home, he too was dreaming.

Chapter XXII: Trouble in the Woods

(Orton Carlton State Park, Georgia—Monday, June 16—mid-day)

Liz had about decided she had spent her whole life in the woods—either that, or in cars. Looking back, it had been less than a day since they'd left Sandy's cabin. But that time had been spent first zipping around the tree-lined curves of Carolina mountains, then navigating the deep valleys of the Chattahoochee National Forest, to wind up first in yet another set of woods south of Jefferson, then in a fourth at Stone Mountain.

And now she was in another—and was getting insanely tired of looking at trees. Still, captive as she was, it was either look at the ones that surrounded them, or at her captors—and she sure didn't want to look at them, 'cause they gave her a monstrous case of the willies.

The whole situation was bloody curious, too. From what she'd been able to piece together from what the Sidhe had told her, and other scraps of information she'd gleaned from their careless conversation, it appeared that Fionchadd's guards had given up their chase fairly early in Atlanta, thinking rightly that there was no point in attacking there with so many people around, and so much iron and steel. They had simply retired to some refuge or other—the forests of the Lands of Men offered Faery-kind no threat and were an obvious choice. From there they'd simply scryed for her and Alec, doubtless focusing through any one of the several artifacts they'd abandoned at Calvin's Power Wheel. Lord knew they'd left enough there for everybody in Erenn to have their own private “let's spy on Liz and Alec” party. Once the Faeries had ascertained that their quarry were no longer within the protective confines of civilization, the plan that had led to their capture had been no problem. (This she had learned simply by asking, rightly trusting to Faery arrogance to ferret out the truth.)

Their route to the coast was clear: east and south, and the guards knew enough of Men's civilization to understand the rudiments of automotive needs. Thus, it had been simple enough to ride the fast-moving winds of the upper atmosphere faster than the car, and just as simple to find the abandoned gas station, selectively englamour it, and then plant subliminal needs in Liz and Alec's heads when they'd made themselves vulnerable by rolling down the windows. Liz doubted they could have maintained complete control; otherwise, they could simply have made her drive where they wanted—or even wrecked them. But she suspected that once they keyed into an urge or need (for gas, for bladder relief, etc.), it was a simple matter to make it the stuff of diremost necessity.

That was all it had taken. As soon as they'd got out of the car and split up, the trap had been sprung. Alec had succumbed as soon as he'd walked into the station, and she immediately after. Apparently physical proximity gave the Sidhe greater control. Evidently, too, at least a couple were wearing the substance of the Lands of Men, because they had emptied the car quite thoroughly of gear and pushed it out of the way behind the ruins. All she needed
was to let David's treasured wheels be stripped or hauled off to a chop-shop.

So she sat on the ground and waited and contemplated her surroundings and everything she'd done wrong since that morning.

But at least she was fairly comfortable. The Sidhe had chained her wrists together, but not closely, and her legs were also linked to Alec's, which were in turn bound around the trunk of the immense live-oak they were leaning against, its girth more than sufficient for both of them, and its gnarled roots making surprisingly comfortable seats. She could not see far behind her because of the knobby bark, but she could see Alec. And lord knew she could see the woods. She'd already counted every tree in the small depression that housed them; not to mention catalogued their common names, genus, and species (trees had got to be one of her “things” the last year or so, and she was now considering a career in landscape architecture). She'd also examined each of the three man-high boulders that shielded part of their hidey-hole, and was pretty certain she could now draw the lichen patterns on them from memory.

But she absolutely could not stand to watch her captors.

There were four of them at the moment. One had gone off on foot fairly quickly, heading back the way they had come. He'd been sort of blurry to look at then, but she thought he might have been putting on human shape. If she had to guess, she'd say he was back at the bogus station looking out for intruders.

The other—she thought it was the one who had worn Alec's shape, and so surprised her—had departed right after she and Alec had been secured. One instant a tall, handsome man; the next a vast black-winged eagle.

He'd flown south then—she thought; at least that's what it had looked like when she caught one final glimpse of him gliding away above the trees.

Since then, she'd been watching, thinking, and—she had to admit—grabbing a few winks on the sly.

As if in response to that thought, her eyes grew heavy again, and once more she slept.

*

Liz didn't know what time it was when she awoke, as her watch had stopped running. But she thought it was a little after noon, judging by the position of the sun, which was now feeding harsh yellow light into the clearing, making everything go stark and threatening.

So too, were the Sidhe. They sat apart, now playing some kind of game that involved small bones, piles of tokens, and an intricate design sketched in the sand. In their long black velvet surcotes (intricately dagged along the edges), and with the collars of their similarly ornamented black satin cloaks drawn up high and pointy, they looked less like mighty men of Faery than a gaggle of roosting buzzards—an image made even more striking by the fact that three of the four had flaming red hair, and that two had on yellow boots.
Conjured stuff
,
she imagined, for as far as she knew Faery clothes didn't change shape when their owners did. She thought David had mentioned that once: that they sometimes had to garb themselves in illusion or go naked. A minor inconvenience, she acknowledged, but it just went to prove that not even the Sidhe were perfect.

One of the men tossed three bones. Another looked at him and swore. A third chuckled merrily.

The fourth peered uneasily at the sky.

“What is it?” she heard one of them say—or read his thoughts, she was never certain.

“Y'Alvar comes,” Shorter Yellow Boot said.

“Which makes me winner,” Taller Yellow Boot replied, scooping up a handful of tokens.

Short Yellow stopped him. “Says who? We were to play until he returns. He is not back yet, not technically.”

“Dana! You sound like a blasted mortal! So when
is
he back
—technically
?
”

“When he touches ground and resumes his own shape.”

“Bloody bones!” the other swore.

“Hark! Now!”

Liz followed Tall Yellow's gaze skyward, and saw a winged shape returning. A whoosh of wings, a coolness of displaced air, and he stood once more in the clearing: an eagle as big as a man. What followed confused Liz so much she was not certain what she saw. For an instant there was a bird, then it seemed to shrink into itself rather like one of those old Dracula movies when the Count changed himself into a bat, only this was the opposite, and then for a fraction of a second she thought she saw a tall naked man, but then a small whirlwind arose around him and when the visual chaos clarified, there stood the fifth guardsman, liveried more or less as the others, except that
his
boots were red.