So Fionna nic Bobh had begun her tirade as soon as word of the raven-borne message had reached her at first light. Now, halfway to noon, her rage showed no signs of faltering. Indeed, it beat about the chilly stone of Finvarra’s high-arched feast hall like the demon-waves of a winter storm. No man was safe from it, nor was Fionna either, to judge by her appearance: Her cheeks were flushed, her black hair wild and tangled, the side laces of her tawny velvet gown undone as though she had dressed without thinking. In her blue eyes glinted dangerous red sparks of madness.
She shook a sharp-nailed finger in the handsome, hard-lined face of Finvarra, who was also
her
half brother, totally oblivious to the ten-leafed symbol of the kingship of Erenn that glittered on his black hair, completely ignoring the plain granite throne where he sat wrapped in furs and green-checked wool, with the naked blade of the two-handed sword of state shimmering ominously athwart the two high armrests.
“I
will
go into Tir-Nan-Og, brother,” Fionna swore, eyes flashing as she faced the king. “I
will
have my vengeance. Not by any mortal’s guile will
my
brother be dishonored. Nor by the guile of Silver-hand or High King Lugh, either! It was their doing, of that I am certain now. A plot to discredit Ailill, an insult to your sovereignty, if you would but see it—for he was your ambassador. Not for all the mortal blood in the Lands of Men would I suffer such impudence! My nephew dead by treachery. My brother—my
twin
—imprisoned in the shape of a horse, to be ridden by gutless fools! Lugh’s justice? Ha! Better call it Lugh’s shrinking fear—he who was once a fighter and will fight no longer. A warrior with no love of battle. A king with no right to his throne. Thanks be for you, brother, who still know how to govern. But you must act, and quickly!”
Finvarra sighed and rubbed a ringed finger across his lips. “Sister, you know I cannot.”
Fionna’s eyes brightened dangerously. “I know you
will
not. There is more than a little difference.”
The High King shook his head and took a sip of wine from the silver goblet that rested next to the sword’s pommel on the throne’s right arm.
“
Cannot,
Fionna. But there is another thing I cannot do as well, and that may fulfill your wishes.”
“And that is?”
“While I may not aid you, neither may I forbid you to seek such justice as may seem good to you. If you were to ride the Road to Tir-Nan-Og, there is no one in all of Erenn who would lift hand or sword to stop you. Whether there is anyone in Lugh’s land who might receive you is another tale entirely.”
Fionna set a thoughtful fist to her mouth. “If I succeed, there may be war.”
Her brother shrugged and folded his arms across his chest, tugging his fur cloak closer with one hand. “It has been a long time. If you succeed, so be it. If you do not, then that will be as happens.”
“I will go,” she said decisively. “And I will return. Pursued by warriors, or leading them. But with me I will bring two
heads…
or maybe three.”
“
One
head will be sufficient,” Finvarra told her pointedly, “if you see that it be your own. And take no warriors.”
Fionna paused, stepped forward to retrieve the curious heavy goblet she had earlier set at the foot of her brother’s throne. She grasped the ivory-toned cup by its thick, gold-mounted stem and raised it into the stray shaft of sunlight that broke the space between them, turning it so that the eye sockets faced her. “MacIvor’s brain-cap is becoming worn,” she observed, smiling. “The skull of a mortal boy would make a fine replacement, I would think.”
“It is what the
boy
thinks that matters,” replied Finvarra. “From what I have heard, his head seems to take care of itself very nicely.” Fionna turned away then, so that her unbound black hair swung like a mantle of night drawn across the trees of green and gold embroidered on her garment. “Perhaps I will leave his head until last, then,” she whispered over her shoulder. “A mortal man may live a long time without his limbs. With Power cleverly applied, he might live for several hundred years—a thousand, even. Think of it! A thousand years crippled, blind, and sexless—with only his tongue left to scream as his wounds are opened daily and boiling oil poured in them.”
Finvarra slammed his goblet down on the throne’s arm so that the wine sloshed out to paint dark patterns upon the stone. “Fionna! Such thoughts do you no honor. An enemy worth your challenge is worth your mercy!”
“You are beginning to sound like Lugh” came his sister’s sneered reply, as she swept with deadly hauteur from the chamber.
Finvarra thrust himself up from the throne, took an angry step forward.
“
You
are beginning to sound like a fool!” he shouted to her shadow. His words echoed among the complexity of pointed arches above in a hollow chant: “Fool, fool, fool.”
Or,
he added to himself, when the sound of her footsteps had faded
,
like your poor, mad mother who sundered the Silver Thread a thousand years ago and now screams alone in the darkness beyond the Borders.
Chapter III: The MacTyrie Gang
(Sullivan Cove, Georgia)
It took David seven minutes to cover the eight miles from the Enotah Municipal Post Office to the Sullivan Cove road—and less than five seconds to turn in there. Probably he should have at least
considered
slowing down before he started pulling at the steering wheel, but what the heck? A little excitement never hurt anybody. It certainly wouldn’t hurt Alec. So it was, the Mustang entered the gravel road half-sideways, with its front wheels pointing at an angle that bore no relation at all to its intended direction of travel. The tail slid wide, flirting with a ditch. A rain of small stones exploded from beneath the tires like shrapnel.
David noted Alec’s sharp intake of breath. “Coward,” he snorted derisively as he twitched the car onto its proper westward path and floored the pedal again.
“Yea, though I ride in the Mustang of Death,” Alec began shakily, “I
will…
fear for my life, I guess,” he improvised at last, grimacing at his own poetic ineptitude. Fear did things like that to him.
David ignored him. He also very pointedly refrained from glancing up the hill to his left, to his family’s farmhouse glowering across its assemblage of porches at the creek bottoms they were currently traversing. A little farther on to the right, the Sullivan Cove Church of God peeked out from a mass of oak trees. David’s favorite and namesake uncle was buried there. He didn’t look that way either.
Nor did he pay particular heed to the weathered gray planks and tin roof of Uncle Dale’s ancient dwelling in its hollow an additional half-mile up the way on the southern side.
But fortunately he
did
notice Gary Hudson when he topped a fairly steep rise and found his second-best buddy jogging happily down the exact middle of the road ahead of him—stark naked except for skimpy black nylon gym shorts and a pair of top-of-the-line Nikes.
David braked hard, felt the back tires skip sideways on the loose stones. The Mustang ground to a halt a hundred feet or so beyond the runner. David poked his head out the window as the boy materialized out of the cloud of red dust behind him.
“What ho, G-man?” he hollered, as Gary trotted up and braced both hands on the car’s roof, panting heavily, though he still managed to grin his famous grin: blindingly white and accompanied by the twin dimples that accented his strong, square chin and gently arching nose. His eyes were a startling blue, his close-cropped hair a forgettable brown. He was in good shape, but even so it took him a couple of seconds to catch his breath.
“Well, G-man,” David went on, “
you’re
certainly not the one I expected to find bouncing along out here in the wasteland. What happened—Runnerman set you out for bad behavior?”
“Negative, oh most Mad One,” Gary said between gasps. “We got to the site, found nobody there, set up camp, and decided to jog up to the highway and back. Runnerman took a wild hair about a minute ago and abandoned me.”
David stifled a giggle. “Just like him, the shit.”
“Well, he thinks nobody can run as good as he can.”
“I can,” David replied matter-of-factly.
Alec rolled his eyes. “Bloody hell you say.”
David shot him a glare that should have fried him. “Come to think of it, I could
use
a quick dash—need to work out some of my cane-patch stiffness. Here, McLean, you take the M.D. on in.” He stuffed the car into neutral, pulled up the hand brake, and joined Gary outside, leaving a very confused Alec sputtering ineffectual protests in the passenger seat. “You bend it, just keep on going,’ hear?”
Alec’s lips twitched in a sour grimace. “Oh, come on, Davy, you know I never have any luck with your clutch.”
“Now’s a good time to work on it, then!” David replied quickly. “You’ll run in the ditch before you hit anything solid.”
And then he was off, pacing the much-larger Gary stride for stride and breath for breath down the Sullivan Cove road.
They had already covered nearly fifty yards before a tremendous roar and spitting of gravel indicated that Alec had finally got the Mustang moving. An instant later, it barreled past, enveloping both of them in a haze of grit that invaded their lungs and stuck to the sweat on their bodies. David couldn’t help but giggle through his coughing fit when he saw Alec’s look of grim distress as he passed. The wind brought them the sound of gears grinding in the distance. David winced and mouthed a silent “Damn!”
Gary saw him. “He tried to tell you.”
“Yeah, well, maybe it’ll make a man out of him.” He sighed resignedly and increased his pace.
“If he doesn’t make scrap metal out of a perfectly good sixty-six.”
“If he does, I’ll just
kill
him,” David replied with precise conviction.
“Sounds like fun,” Gary acknowledged. “Need any help, let me know. Hey—race you to the fire ring!”
In five yards David was ahead of him.
*
Three-quarters of a mile farther on, the road ended in a flat, circular turnaround. Golden wisps of broom sedge lined its perimeter, and a dark stain of charcoal surrounded by a rough square of logs and low boulders marked the center, token of hundreds of illicit campfires and weenie roasts. Twenty feet beyond the gravel a finger of Langford Lake invaded the land like an accusing finger, its shore embraced by twin arcs of black-green pines that reached in from either side. David’s car was parked out of the way to the right, its wheels hub-deep in coarse grass. A second series of tire tracks led northward through a couple of acres of the sedge toward the line of forest an eighth of a mile away. Dark clouds glowered to the south. They hadn’t been there earlier.
The runners slowed as they approached the car. Something white fluttered in the driver’s window—a piece of white wrapping paper, as it turned out. David ripped it off and scanned it quickly. A penciled line of Alec’s even printing showed there:
I parked your car; if you want your keys back, you can park my gear. Trunk’s unlocked. P.S.: Asshole.
He handed it to Gary, who exploded into laughter as David lifted the deck lid.
“Here, guy, put that overblown bod to some use,” David said, tossing Gary the larger of the two backpacks. As an afterthought, he added his bedroll and one of the two iron-tipped hiking staffs that he and Alec always carried with them. A quick search behind the seats produced the package from Liz. He started to bring the whole thing, then changed his mind and stuffed the T-shirts into the corner of his khaki pack. An attempt at fitting the book beside them failed, so he tucked it under his arm, checked the locks one final time, and trotted off with Gary.
It was not a widely known place that they came to a moment later, having first navigated a couple hundred feet of pine forest (David couldn’t help wondering how Darrell had managed to get his van through) and then a vigorous stand of the blackberry briars that were ubiquitous to the whole southern end of the county. Fortunately, the van had dispatched the worst of them.
B.A. Beach, David had christened the open semicircle of land when he and Alec had discovered it some years before—the name signified by its initials a reminder of what he’d done to his backside the first time he’d fallen there. A layer of mossy grass covered much of the ground, and a series of rock shelves to the left overlooked a slice of beach and the lake proper. At the edge of the woods to their right, Darrell Buchanan’s tan VW van loomed like a startled bread loaf, its double doors open wide, with a bright canopy staked out between them. A tiny fire smoked before it.
The camp was empty, but David could hear occasional bursts of boisterous laughter coming from beyond the trees to the north.
He and Gary deposited their gear inside the vehicle and headed toward the woods. A curtain of laurel closed in, blocking any view of the campsite. Soon they were in the peace of the forest.
A glimmer of water fifty yards ahead showed the lake, and the sound of voices had grown louder: mindless garble, shouts and protests, giggles and loud guffaws.
Clothes began to appear: a sneaker here, a T-shirt there, then a pair of white tube socks like shed snakeskins, converging a short way behind a break in the trees into twin piles—one neat, one in appalling disarray.