Sunshaker's War (8 page)

“That helps a lot,” David said sullenly.

“What I'm saying, guy, is that in the context of the rest of your life, a couple of hours now won't matter.”

“Easy for
you
to say.”

“Harder than you think. I'm here with a bunch of neat folks, and with some great landscape to draw, but what am I doing? Thinking about my boyfriend, Scott, down in south Georgia digging up shark teeth.”

David froze. Shark teeth reminded him of the uktena scale he had stuffed in his back pack, which he had first thought a shark's tooth. It was one of several mementoes he had of last summer's adventure in Galunlati. But worse, it was a reminder of what that scale could do—like turn him into a monster. A chill actually made his teeth chatter.

Myra put down the pad. “Something
is
wrong, isn't it; and not just missing your lady? Yeah, I know, I've noticed it: all this rain, all the wind, it's like a war going on in the sky. And it's not just a physical war; it's like a war in your head, a roaring in your soul. It's like the tension you feel before a thunderstorm, only it never ends, just gets tighter and tighter. I've sensed it ever since I got up here. And Darrell says it's been going on for days.”

David nodded, wondering suddenly what Myra knew, how much Darrell had told her of the strange things that had happened to him. Runnerman knew most of it now; Lugh had forgotten (or neglected) to renew the Ban of Silence he had imposed on those who knew of Faerie, so they had been free to inform their friends, trusting to the
impossibility of it all to enforce discretion. But what had Darrell told Myra?

“I've felt something similar once,” Myra continued darkly. “At a Renaissance fair down in Athens. The weather was freaky there too.”

“I heard about that,” David replied. “Did a lot of damage and all.”

“Real freaky,” Myra repeated; then, more lightly: “Hey, how 'bout holding that pose for a while!”

“Sure,” David said, looking a little puzzled. He froze where he was: leaning against the van with one of the awning poles in his hand. Myra applied herself to her drawing. A moment later she was finished, and handed him the pad for perusal.

Goosebumps prickled over him. It was him, all right, but Myra had changed his shirt to a coat of ring mail, his bandanna to a cap of iron, and the pole to a wildly barbed spear. But what gave him pause was the background she had sketched in: a desolate, wind-swept shore covered with shattered trees. The sun was unnaturally huge and fiery and directly above his head, its entire many-rayed disc shadowed by the outstretched wings of an eagle. David had seen them both before: for the sun was twin to that which was emblazoned on the surcotes of Lugh's warriors, and the eagle was the sign of the royal house of Erenn: that of Finvarra.

“Nice,” David said, “but where'd you get this symbol?”

Myra would not meet his eyes. “I…I don't know, it…it just came to me.”

Thunder sounded then, and the rains returned. His friends pounded up from the beach.

“Can I have this?” David asked.

Myra nodded. “I'd like to draw you again, sometime, too. You've got a real nice body.”

David blushed and looked away.

Gary was the first one to the van, having beaten his running rival, Darrell. “Christ, is this rain
never
gonna stop?”

“When the sun beats the eagle,” Myra said, and fell silent.

David, crouched in the back, could only stare at her and wonder.

Chapter III: Carolina Reverie

(Sylva, North Carolina—Friday, June 13—sunset)

The sun was still a hand's breadth above the western mountains when Calvin McIntosh pushed through the screen door and padded onto the cabin's porch. He scratched his bottom through a convenient hole in his jeans, settled himself into the unpainted rocker that in the last year or so he had come to think of as his own, and gazed out at the vista beyond the peeled pine railing: mountains upon mountains as far as his very sharp eyes could see—maybe all the way west to Tennessee or south to Georgia. Closer in were the beeches and oaks and ashes that crowded around the cabin, their leafy summits level with the porch's cantilever floor because of the steepness of the slope. But they rapidly lost their definition as he stared further into the haze of the Smokies. And lingering near the sun were clouds, also in long, low layers, so that Calvin could not be sure where land ended and sky began.

So be it, then. Maybe it was not wise to think of the two as separate. Everything was ultimately one; that was
one of the things he had learned here at the haven he shared with Sandy.

One of many things.

Sandy Fairfax was somewhere in her middle twenties and taught physics in the local high school; he had only left his teens a month before and did nothing at all that would make sense on an employment form except wander around and learn, but somehow it had never mattered to either of them. He asked questions about things he didn't understand, and she answered; she wondered about things she didn't comprehend, and he speculated. She gave him science and economics and business and philosophy and ethics (and food to eat—what he didn't hunt—and a
fine
motorcycle to ride a roof and a bed to share); and he gave her woodscraft and herblore and metaphysics and magic (and the sweat of his brow often enough, like today when he'd re-roofed the smokehouse). For though Calvin Fargo McIntosh had grown up in Atlanta, he was three-quarters Cherokee Indian, and trying very hard to become a wizard.

This evening, however, the only magic he had in mind was that of contentment, of being in a place he loved, surrounded by fantastic scenery, and feeling good about his long day's labor. He sighed happily, propped his strong bare feet on the railing, and took a sip from the cup of coffee he had brought with him from the supper table. Sandy was in there now, cleaning up, since he'd cooked (venison burgers and wild mushrooms). She'd join him shortly and they'd watch the sun set and the night arrive and talk about—who knew what.

Maybe magic tonight, because they hadn't in a while, and after all, he
did
know more about the arcane lore of his people than anyone living, probably—at least from firsthand experience; and by slow degrees had been initiating her into its mysteries as well. It had not been easy, of course; but who
could
believe there were Worlds beyond this one, that anybody could actually travel to if they had the art? Asking someone to believe that was asking a
lot, especially to a scientist like Sandy. Eventually, he'd had to actually show her.
Not
by taking her to Galunlati; he had neither the power nor the permission to do that yet. But by performing the ritual and going there himself. That she
could
believe: him in the middle of his Power Wheel one minute, and gone in a puff of flame the next. It had hurt him fearfully—the transition always did. But it had been worth it, because it had lowered the last barrier between them. From then on there had been endless questions, and eventually Sandy had found herself trying to contrive a unified-field theory of physics/metaphysics to embrace the cosmology of all the overlapping Worlds.

There was so much she didn't know, too; and so many questions he could not answer, because he only knew a little about one World besides their own. She really needed to talk to his friends down in Georgia: Dave and Alec, and all. They'd spoken to the folk of one of the
other
Worlds and knew what was up. Yeah, maybe this summer he'd take her over there and they'd hash out some stuff. Maybe even next weekend—he had to go anyway, to be in Dave's buddy's wedding.

He fished in the pocket of the sleeveless denim jacket that hung open over his chest, and pulled out the packet of photos he'd picked up that day from the Eckerds down in Sylva. He'd shot them the previous August, but never got around to developing them until now. A lot of 'em hadn't come out, but enough had to provide a reasonable record of those friends he'd just been thinking of.

The first was one of Mad Davy Sullivan standing alone in a high mountain pasture, with a line of dark forest to his right, and behind him a picture-postcard of sprawling lakes. A little shorter than Calvin, and built more like a gymnast than a runner, Dave was nevertheless wearing running togs: white gym shorts and a burgundy de-sleeved sweatshirt which depicted his school name and mascot: the Enotah County 'possums. He was also barefoot, and was pointing to his tootsies with one hand and shrugging theatrically with the other.

Calvin couldn't help but grin. He'd made that the last day he'd been there, when Dave had been unable to find his shoes anywhere and had decided to undertake his morning run without them. Not wishing to put his friend at a disadvantage, Calvin had joined him and done likewise. Unfortunately, it had been a mistake to try to out-macho that particular white boy. The stone bruises had nearly killed him, and it had taken nearly a week for the blisters to heal.

The next photo was one of Dave's home, a white frame farmhouse crouching atop a steep hill on the knees of a forested mountain, with a strip of bottom land on one side, and a series of hilly pastures on the other. Dating from around the turn of the century, the house had obviously been added onto several times, and sported three distinct porches, though only two were visible in this view.

The following shot was of Dave and his Candy Apple Red '66 Mustang, the one he called the Mustang-of-Death. It seemed to have had a near brush with its namesake, too, because it was missing the right front fender, and the passenger door was blue. He wondered if Dave had ever got it back like he'd wanted it after the accident—he'd never actually seen it intact.

He skipped quickly by a series that showed the Enotah County landscape. It was not that different from the territory around here, though the Carolina mountains might be a touch higher than their Georgia counterparts, and there seemed to be a few more artificial lakes filling the valleys over there.

And then he found a picture of a gaggle of teenaged boys standing in front of a neat Cape Cod bungalow. They were the MacTyrie Gang, Dave's gaming and run-around buddies: tall, lanky Darrell “Runnerman” Buchanan, who was handsome in a foolish sort of way, and who, as a member of his high school track team, wore his hair in a scraggly pony tail Calvin was certain Dave wanted very badly to emulate. And dark-haired “G-Man” Gary Hudson, who also ran track, but was into serious body building (he had doffed his shirt and struck a pose for the photo). He was the one getting married—make that
having
to get married.

Between them was slender Alec McLean, dressed very hi-tech in his black parachute pants and T-shirt, and with his spiky haircut and earring. That hipness was an illusion, though, because Alec was the most conservative—and, after Dave, the brightest, especially in science—of the lot. Finally there was the one he didn't really know, because he'd been gone most of the time Calvin had spent over there: Aikin Daniels, just a solid, nice-looking middle-sized guy in silver-framed glasses, cammy fatigues, and a black T-shirt that depicted a howling wolf. Dave had said he was the sportsman of their crew, and something of a loner, though the gaming campaigns he orchestrated were noted for their imagination. He was also, apparently, the last one to learn about the Worlds.

Only two pictures to go, now. The first was of Dave's girlfriend, Liz Hughes, and showed a pretty, pointy-faced red-haired girl holding a camera of her own. She was very slender (exactly the way Calvin liked 'em), and had green eyes that radiated a challenging sparkle. In the photo she was wearing white cutoffs and a green Abolish Continental Drift T-shirt.

The last shot showed the ruins of a mid-nineteenth century cabin nestled in a mountain hollow. The place had been knocked off its foundations, and was skewed every other way as well, with not a window pane intact. The front porch had been smashed to kindling, and large sections of the tin roof were missing. A crumpled burgundy Volvo lay stuffed into one corner.

That was Dave's uncle's house: the one that had practically been destroyed when the Sidhe had ridden from their World to demand that Dave surrender Alec, whom they believed to have betrayed them. Calvin had been instrumental in setting things right afterward, and that had been the thing that convinced him to follow the way of the shaman and try to learn the secrets of his people's magic, to which end he had returned more than once to Galunlati to study. As for Dale Sullivan's house—he'd heard the old guy had given up on fixing it and had moved a house trailer onto the lot behind the ruins.

“You miss them, don't you?” came a soft voice behind him, and before Calvin could turn, a woman settled herself on the bench built into the railing to his right. She was as tall as he was, and slender, with hair that would have been brown had the sun not been at it for years, and had it not been so long—nearly to her waist in back. In another time she would have been called a hippie, at least by looks and lifestyle. But she knew more about lasers than living off the land, more about halogen gasses than hallucinogenic mushrooms, more about quantum theory and cosmic string than canning and macramé. At the moment she was wearing a dashiki a friend had brought her from Malawi, and sipping delicately at a glass of Chablis. He frowned minutely at that, for he never touched the stuff by principle, never mind he was still not quite of legal age.