Windmaster's Bane (2 page)

For a long while after that he listened to the echoes of his handiwork frolicking noisily in that other World. The Tracks no longer called to his blood, and he relaxed into languid reverie.

Gradually, though, another sound, a gentler sound, began to creep through the grove to disturb his contemplation: the distant, muffled crunch of soft leather boots on the path that threaded the wood a short way behind him. It was a very faint sound, but clear to one of Ailill’s lineage.

All at once the need came upon him to follow those footfalls, and so he did, leaping with easy recklessness from merlon to merlon as the battlement spiraled precipitously down the mountainside until at last a clearing opened among the dark shadows of the ancient oaks to his right. He paused there at the edge, masked by a gnarled gray branch that grew close against the wall—and he saw who came there, tall, golden-haired, and dressed in white: Nuada Airgetlam, who, if not yet his enemy, was certainly not his friend, and who certainly would not like his storm.

Pointless, that one would say. Irresponsible. The World shaped itself in its own good time and to its own good purpose. To impose one’s will upon it without good reason was to set oneself above the Laws of Dana. It was always the same tiresome litany.

Ailill sighed and craned his neck. Nuada had knelt and was carefully inserting a hand among the ivory blossoms of an unfamiliar bush that flowered in the glade. He sprang from the wall then, silent as leaf fall, but Nuada looked up, frowning, as Ailill’s long shadow fell dark upon his.

“Well, Ailill, do you like it?” Nuada asked when the other showed no sign of speaking first. “A Cherokee rose, mortals call it. I have but newly brought it from the Lands of Men.”

“I like it better like this,” said Ailill, languidly extending his left hand in an apparently careless gesture.

Blue flames at once enfolded the white blossoms, through which the flowers nevertheless shone unwithered.

Nuada did not reply, but the slanted brows lowered over his dark blue eyes like clouds over deep water, and he scratched his clean-angled chin with a gauntleted right hand.

“…or maybe this way?” Ailill continued as a subtle movement of his first two fingers quenched the flames and encased the flowers in sparkling crystals of ice.

“…or like this?” And the bush burned on one side and glittered frostily on the other.

“I like it like this,” said Nuada with an absent flick of his wrist, and fire and ice were gone.

Ailill sighed and leaned back against the mossy parapet, arms folded across his chest. He shook his head dramatically. “What is it with you, Airgetlam, that you favor the things of dull mortality above that Power which is born into us, to use as we see fit?”

Slowly and deliberately Nuada stood and turned to face Ailill, eyes slitted. “Ours to
use,
not misuse…and as for the dullness of mortality, do you not find
immortality
dull? Were it not for mortal men I would long since have left this World from boredom.”

“I find mortal men most boring of all,” Ailill replied, glancing skyward in arrogant avoidance of the other’s searching stare. “It is seldom indeed that they do anything worth noting.”

“We shall see, we shall see,” Nuada mused, his eyes shining faintly red in the reflected light of sunset, “for as the suns of our two Worlds align ever nearer to midnight and the strength of the Way to Erenn waxes, time again draws near for a Riding of the Road. Who knows what may happen when we do?”

“That Track still passes too near the Lands of Men,” snapped Ailill. “This I have told Lugh more than once. I do not see why he tolerates such things.”

“This is not Erenn, Ailill—or Annwyn, either,” replied Nuada with a toss of his head. “What was it?—five hundred years at Arawn’s court, which hardly touches the World of Men at all—and that in their past? And then straight here? Well, much can change in five hundred years, and mortal men not the least of them. It
is
true that their works intrude here, but no place is free from that now. And one thing at least may be said in their favor: They do not visit storms upon
us.
As to the Riding
—you
do not have to go.
I
ride as Lugh’s vanguard this Lughnasadh.”

Ailill did not reply. The sun had passed from sight. From somewhere in the darkness above them a fanfare of trumpets split the air to mark the evening.

Nuada fixed Ailill with one final searching stare, and turned his back.

Ailill frowned as he stole from the glade. He paused once at its edge, looked back, and softly snapped his fingers.

The roses took on the color of blood.

Chapter I: A Funeral Seen

(Friday, July 31)

Death was fast approaching—death in the form of old age, and it was approaching them both. Yet Patrick the priest was not concerned, not when there still remained any chance of salvation for the soul of the man sitting on the stony ground beside him. Oisin was stubborn, and his arguments were cunning, but he was a pagan, and had once been a warrior: a follower of Finn mac Cumaill, in fact, who had been the greatest champion in Ireland. Just now Oisin was defending Finn’s prowess on the field of battle. The words of his boastings were a study in Gaelic eloquence.

So much eloquence, in fact, that they fairly leapt from the page of the worn blue volume David Sullivan held open in his lap.

He could see them clearly, the two old men, one thin and frail, robed and hooded like a monk, the other yet well-muscled, mail and helm and sword shining bright in the morning. It was a wonderful image.

“Daaaavy!”

The image shattered. Footsteps pounded up the rickety barn stairs behind him.
Cursed be younger brothers,
he thought.
Won’t even leave you alone for thirty minutes.
David frowned at the book in grim determination.

Oisin sang now of the virtues of Finn, no longer simply as a warlord, but as a man accomplished in every art. It was getting good. The pagan was winning.

“Pa got the tractor stuck just like Ma said he would,” Little Billy cried gleefully as he galloped past to stand perilously close to the open door of the hayloft.

David snorted irritably. He rearranged himself in the dusty old rocking chair, adjusted his wire-framed glasses, scratched his chin where a trace of stubble had
finally
begun to grow, and returned to his reading.

“That sure is a big black station wagon,” said Little Billy, peering out the door and down the hill.

David ignored him.

“There sure are a lot of cars behind it, and all of ’em have their lights on, and it ain’t even dark yet!”

David shook a stray lock of unruly blond hair out of his eyes and glanced up reluctantly, a little surprised to see patchy blue sky and scattered shafts of July sunlight where only a short while before clouds had held uncontested sovereignty above the familiar riverbottoms and high, rolling ridges of the north Georgia farm he called home. Wisps of clouds still hung wraithlike here and there among the dark green hollows across the valley.
Just like Ireland must be,
he thought, until he lowered his gaze toward the muddy gravel road at the foot of the hill where a line of cars crept reverently along behind a hulking black vehicle.

“It’s a funeral procession,” he said matter-of-factly.

Just a couple more lines…

“A funeral procession?”

“A funeral procession,” David growled. “You ought to know that, old as you are…and if you ask me any more questions, you’ll soon have firsthand knowledge of one—
from inside the hearse
.”
His last words hung ominously in the air.

“What’s a hearse?”

“That big black station wagon—except it’s not exactly a station wagon: bigger for one thing; built on a stretched Cadillac frame. They’re only used for funerals. Now
please
be quiet, I’ve only got three pages to go. Okay?”

Little Billy was quiet for almost three lines.

“They’re goin’ in that old graveyard across the road. Are they gonna
bury
somebody?”

David slammed the book abruptly shut, a sound like a tiny thunderclap.

Little Billy jumped, uttered a small yip of surprise and dropped the handful of straw he had been fidgeting with into the muddy backyard below. He looked up at his older brother, and their eyes met, and he knew he was in trouble.

David erupted from the rocker, setting it into riotous motion on the rough old boards. Little Billy was quicker, though, and darted down the narrow aisle between the hay bales.

“I’m gonna get you, squirt!” David cried loudly. He ran after his brother until he saw Billy’s head disappear down the stairs that led to the ground floor of the barn, then stopped suddenly and tiptoed quickly back to jog noisily in place by the hayloft door. His mother’s Friday wash flapped optimistically on the line below. And directly underneath…

Little Billy ran as if the devil himself were chasing him—down the stairs and into darkness, and then across the red clay floor, deftly leaping piles of cow manure and bales of hay as he went. Abruptly he bounded out into the broken sunlight of late afternoon and paused, his mouth slightly open in confusion. He glanced fearfully back into the gloom.

“Whoooeeeee!” cried David as he leapt from the hayloft in a sweeping arc that landed him directly behind his little brother. He made one frantic grab for the boy, but miscalculated and stumbled forward on his knees in the mud.

Little Billy shrieked, but his feet were already carrying him through the laundry and down the hill beside the house.

David recovered quickly and dodged left, skirting between his daddy’s four-wheel-drive Ford pickup and his own red Mustang, hoping to ambush Little Billy as he came around the other side. But Little Billy saw him at the last instant, squealed joyously, and threw his luck into one last wild, reckless dash toward the road where the slow train of cars continued to pass obliviously.

David caught him halfway there, grasped him by the belt of his grubby jeans and jerked him quickly into the air. He locked his elbows and held the little boy above his head, kicking frantically in five-year-old indignation.

“Now that I’ve got you, what should I do with you, I wonder?” David glanced meaningfully at the procession and then back at his brother.

“Maybe I’ll take you down the hill and give you to the undertaker and tell him to put you on ice. Would you like that, Little Billy?”

Little Billy shook his head vigorously. “No, Davy.”

“Maybe I’ll take you up to the house then, and hang you from the rooftop first. Would you like that better?”

“You better quit it, or I’m gonna tell Pa!”

“Pa’s not here,” David said fiendishly as he lowered his brother to his shoulders and began to stride purposefully up the slope.

Little Billy tried to crawl headfirst down the front of David’s body, but his attempt at escape only resulted in David grabbing him by the ankles and holding him with his head bobbing up and down between David’s knees. It was not an efficient mode of travel, David realized before he had gone three steps up the hill. He stopped and began to swing his brother pendulumlike between his legs, lowering him slowly until the white-blond hair brushed the long grass of the yard.

Little Billy alternately screamed and giggled, but David could feel his grip slipping. He made one final sweep and released his brother at the bottom of the arc to send the little boy scooting downhill between his wide-braced legs.

On the follow-through, David abruptly found himself peering between his knees at the bright-eyed face of a very smug Little Billy lying in the slick grass further down the hill. He suddenly felt very foolish.

Little Billy laughed. “You sure do look funny with your butt up in the air and your face down by your feet!”

“You’ll look funnier when I get through with you, you little…”

David started to straighten up, but paused, blinking, as something attracted his attention. The air around his head suddenly seemed to vibrate as if invisible mosquitoes swarmed there, and the hair on the back of his neck began to prickle inexplicably. He froze, still bent over.

Beyond Little Billy he saw the funeral procession halt as the hearse turned into the seldom-used cemetery of the Sullivan Cove Church of God across the way. It was strange, David thought suddenly, to see a whole funeral procession at one time, from between one’s legs.

The air pulsed again. David felt his eyes fill up with darkness, as sometimes happened when he stood up too quickly from a hot bath. His head swam and he felt dizzy. He blinked once more, but the darkness lingered.
Oh my God!
he thought for a panicked instant,
I’ve been struck blind!
But that was ridiculous. His whole body was tingling now; he could feel the hair on his arms and legs stiffening as chill after chill raced over him. And then the darkness was burned away by a hot light, as if he stared straight into the sun with his naked eyes, but with no pain.

Another blink and the world returned abruptly to normal, leaving only a faint, itchy tingle in David’s eyes. He shrugged, executed a lopsided somersault, and got up to chase Little Billy.

They had nearly reached the rambling old farmhouse when their mother hollered from the back porch that David had a telephone call.

“I’ll get you yet, squirt,” David shouted, bounding up the porch steps.

“I just washed them pants,” his mother groaned as he passed.