Fionna saw what he was about and a strange sort of smile contorted her mouth. She heaved herself off Nuada, and turned to face the Faery boy.
“Oh, Froech, is it? Froech my would-be lover
…as if I would stoop to embrace such a miserable thing as you!”
Froech solidified into a he-bear even larger than Fionna. He took a shambling step toward her, but she did not move.
“Froech the gullible, I should say,” Fionna taunted, though the bear was almost upon her. “Or Froech the fool! Froech who could have given me no pleasure even had I allowed him to touch me!”
Froech snarled, enraged, and he raised his arms and flung himself at the sorceress, who reared up to embrace him like the lover he had never been.
The clearing resounded with their impact; the company drew back as the two beasts locked together and began to sway back and forth across the clearing. It was not an elegant encounter, for both combatants were too large, too clumsy, too unfamiliar with their unwieldy bodies to engage in niceties. It was a battle of grunts and pushes, of raking claws, of snapping teeth. Blood flowed through red fur like a thousand muddy rivulets.
The Sword of Lugh lay between them, now in serious danger of being broken.
*
Liz had joined Alec at the mouth of the central tunnel, holding him tight across the shoulders. As the battle took Froech and Fionna farther away, Regan and Gary rushed out to drag Nuada’s body into the shelter of the tunnel.
“Wonder if this stuff’ll burn?” Uncle Dale mused, looking at the briars around him. “Maybe we could cut her off that way.”
Regan shook her head. “No fire is hot enough to set these plants alight. And even so—”
“Oh, Jesus Christ!” Liz screamed all at once, as the ring erupted into more extravagant life upon her finger. It had been glowing because of Fionna’s threat, but now it blazed so brightly that Liz had no choice but to rip it off and stuff it into her pocket—
—Just as an immense stag rushed into the clearing. It was the same strange color and configuration that Fionna had previously worn, but even larger—and with a bloody gash visible across the lower part of its left thigh.
“Jesus
H.
Christ,” Gary echoed.
The stag paused, its pain-reddened gaze darting wildly about. Madness showed in its eyes, a madness that was more horrible, more terrifying, than Fionna’s raw, acid hatred.
Then the stag leapt, twisting around the combat, and arching across the remaining distance in half a bound, heading straight for the central tunnel.
“It’s Ailill!” Alec yelled. “It’s gotta be him!”
“Snowwhisper!” Regan shouted frantically. “To me! Quickly!”
Somehow the mare was there, blocking the stag, with Firearrow right behind her.
The stag turned, started toward the left-hand tunnel.
Regan ran forward, found her mount, leapt onto her back. Uncle Dale stuck his heels in Bessie’s flanks and followed, cutting off Ailill on the other side.
The stag bounced uncertainly between them.
Regan reached toward his neck, only to draw back quickly as antlers slashed in her direction.
Gary rushed up, spear in hand.
“No, you fool!” Regan yelled. “Get back!”
Gary dodged flailing hooves and jumped aside—straight into Alec and Liz.
The way before him suddenly clear, Ailill broke free of the press of horses and charged into the left-hand track, leaping neatly over Nuada’s body as he entered the green tangle of that tunnel.
Regan pounded after him.
Liz claimed Cormac’s mount and started to follow, but the lady was already a distant spot against the green-gold haze of the Track.
“Hold, girl,” Uncle Dale called before she had gone twenty feet. “We’ve gotta put an end to this business. You see to Firearrow.”
Liz reined her mount hard, jerked her head around to see the two boys trying helplessly to mount one or the other on Froech’s fractious stallion. But Uncle Dale’s shout interrupted them. “Quick, Alec, give me your belt!”
Gary looked puzzled, but Alec began to spin the combination lock that bound the twenty-eight inches of chrome steel chain about his waist. “Oh, yeah, I see,” he acknowledged. The lock clicked open, and he jerked the chain free and handed the whole apparatus to Uncle Dale.
“Froech! Now!” Uncle Dale’s thin cry rang into the clearing.
*
Froech heard him. He drew upon all his strength, called upon his last dregs of Power, and willed himself larger still, though he felt his very substance begin to fray as muscle and bone and skin stretched too thin.
Fionna’s grip faltered, and Froech sensed her weakness and put his full strength into one final blow that sent the manticore staggering backward into the wall of briars.
Claws raked both his sides as Fionna released her hold and let out a roar of agony. The manticore wriggled and twisted in a moment of outraged futility, but succeeded only in digging the thorns more viciously into her body.
Froech released his hold on the Power that had sustained him and dived toward his companions, even as his shape collapsed upon itself. By the time he reached the entrance to the Track, he again wore human form, though now that shape was naked.
Light burned into his eyes, as he saw before him the old man to the right and mounted, and whistling round and round in his hand the source of that light: a blazing wheel of iron flame that arced across the Track above his head. He ducked under and joined the two human boys beyond, turning quickly. “Look!” he shouted.
For back in the clearing the enraged Fionna had ripped herself free from the wall of briars, though vast bloody patches of ruddy fur remained there. She had dropped onto all fours, casting her eyes about—red pig-eyes that glowed above a snarling, slavering mouth.
Then she charged.
“Come on, kitty!” Uncle Dale yelled, twirling the chain faster and faster.
The manticore reached the tunnel’s mouth, hesitated…
Uncle Dale released his hold, sent the chain spinning straight at the hulking shape scant yards before him.
But as the length of chromium-plated iron spun through the air, one end snagged on a protruding thorn and hooked itself there, sending the other end flying pendulum-fashion straight into Fionna’s face. The manticore seized it, though her great paws smoked at its touch; snapped it apart, and flung it to the ground before her, where the two parts fell atop each other in the shape of an equal-armed cross.
“And now who is a fool, Fionna?” came Froech’s gleeful cry from his point of safety.
Fionna gathered herself for a leap across the wall of heat already welling from the chain. But then a sheet of actual flame blazed up from the Track, startling her—a flame hotter than any iron-born fire she had ever encountered, and centered on that gleaming metal cross.
The Track itself began to shudder. A patch of darkness showed in its substance where the chain touched it—a darkness Fionna could not cross—and that blackness grew wider as she watched.
And as the flames spread farther, reached into the thorns to spread their contagion higher in a ring of fire, a cross-shaped rift expanded as the golden shimmer crisped back into nothingness, withdrawing from the power of the metal. Back and back it curled, until a dark gap maybe ten feet across had burned into the Track. Then its very substance began to fall away, revealing patches of nothingness: a total absence of light or color that was blacker than black, whiter than white, and into which the pieces of chain fell at last as they burned through the final layer of the Track and entered chaos, burned through that, and burst at last into the skies high above the Lands of Men.
On one side of that gap stood the snarling manticore that was Fionna, and on the other a frightened company of mortals and Sidhe gaping in appalled wonder.
“What’ve you done?” Alec shouted.
Uncle Dale shrugged helplessly and tugged his whiskers. “Didn’t mean to do nothin’ like
that,
that’s for darned sure! I knowed iron’s dangerous to have around Faery things, so I figgered it wouldn’t do that there animal no good if I could get a good clear shot at her face. That there chrome platin’ must be even worse.”A pounding of hooves sounded from farther down the Track, and a moment later Regan rode up. There was no sign of Ailill. The lady’s gaze took in the smoldering end of the trail, the furious sorceress who stood beyond it—face contorting in what was obviously speech, though no sound crossed the space between them.
*
“Where is the sword?” a weak voice asked from the ground.
“Huh?” Gary and Alec said at once.
“Nuada! You’re okay?” Suddenly Liz was kneeling by the Faery lord’s side.
He shook his head. “No, I am wounded—Fionna’s sting carries a slow poison that saves heart and brain and mouth for last. Now tell me of the sword!”
“The sword is lost, Lord,” the lady said. “It is somewhere in the clearing.”
“No!”
“I fear so, my Lord.”
Nuada fixed his gaze on Uncle Dale. “I don’t know whether to laud you or to curse you. By sealing the Track behind us you have saved our lives. Fionna must now find another way to pursue us—if indeed that is still her goal, with her brother now close by. But the Sword of Lugh was left behind and is now beyond our reach. If Fionna finds it and realizes its power, no one will be safe!”
“What
is
its power?” Alec asked carefully.
Nuada’s face was cold as ice. “That I may not say. In that matter Lugh has laid a ban on me, and I could not tell you even if I tried.” Regan dismounted and knelt beside Nuada. “Can you ride, Lord?”
Nuada nodded, tried to rise, grimacing. Regan laid a hand across his stomach, drew it away bloody.
“You should not…”
“I have no other choice. If I stay here, I will surely die.”
“You may anyway, Lord.”
“Regan!” Liz cried. “What a thing to say!”
The Faery lady looked at her. “I meant him no discourtesy. Death is a thing that happens.” Then, to Nuada, “Lord, will you ride with me?”
“Aye, Lady—though I caution you, I may require some holding.” He tried to laugh, but pain caught him.
“Well, there’s no point in waitin’ around, I don’t reckon,” Uncle Dale said. “Best we be on our way. Leastwise we know the right road now. Better do a little re-sortin’ of riders, though. Let’s see: we got three folks that can’t ride, and four that can. Liz, you better ride by yourself, I ’spect. I’ll take Alec; Regan, you said you’d carry Silverhand.”
The lady nodded. “You have my thought exactly. I have some healing skills, and perhaps I might be able to apply what little Power I yet possess in strengthening my master.”
“Okay, so that leaves Froech with Gary—everybody got it?”
Gary stared for a moment at Froech’s nakedness, then stepped out of his sweatpants, leaving himself in his inevitable black gym shorts. He tapped Froech on the shoulder and handed the garment to him. Froech smiled sheepishly and took it.
As Alec gave Liz a boost onto Cormac’s horse, their gazes locked for a moment, and he saw a glaze of despair in her eyes. “Want to talk?” he whispered.
Liz shook her head emphatically. “Can’t. No time. No time for anything but haste and hurry now. Hurry to catch Ailill… But can’t they see, Alec? Can’t they see that since the deer was Ailill, and he’s obviously crazy, and since Fionna’s little better off, we’re no closer to finding David than we were before. I don’t think the manticore’s the woman I saw in my vision; she just doesn’t feel right. I can’t explain it any better than that, but I think there must be another woman involved in this. We’re off chasing Ailill while David’s getting farther and farther away.”
“Can’t be helped, though,” came Uncle Dale’s gentle voice, as he helped Alec up behind him. “Can’t go back now, gotta keep on ahead. You by yourself won’t do nobody no good. And you sure won’t do nobody any good if you don’t worry about the trouble at hand. We don’t survive this hunt, won’t be nobody left to hunt for Davy. Think about
that.
You’ve done well enough so far—now try lookin’ away from your fear. Might see some hope if you look hard enough.”
A wan smile crossed Liz’s face. “Yeah, right…and thanks, Uncle Dale, thanks a lot.”
A sudden chill shook her and she glanced back down the tunnel. Beyond the uncrossable gulf behind them, Fionna the manticore had vanished from sight.
But somehow Liz was not comforted.
Chapter XXVIII: Visions
(In a Place Between)
Katie had never felt so good in her life. There was energy everywhere: in the gold of the Track below her, in the shimmer of the air around her. When she breathed, it was like breathing youth. When she moved it was like walking away from time. She had to look down constantly to see that her wrinkled bag of a body was not that of the young woman who had wedded Liam McNally sixty years ago and more.
And there was the man beside her. He held her hand—necessary, he had said, to save her mind from madness. He wore a long robe the color of moonlight, and that was strange. But no stranger than other things she’d seen young folks wear, all leather and spikes and paint and pointy things. And he was handsome as only old men can be, handsome as an heirloom, smoothed and polished with age, as decades of absent touches can smooth a chair or table, softening the contours, changing them, but never hiding what they once had been.
He still had not told his name, but he had told her many things instead: things about Those Ones, whom now he called the Sidhe, things about Nuada she had never dared to guess, about Cormac and Regan and that wild young hellion they’d called Froech who’d brought disaster riding on his back with his fool’s talk about High Kings and swords and the sealing of borders with fire.