Abruptly the pain was gone.
He turned, stared, and saw Fionchadd lying on the sand beside him. The boy’s eyes were open, but Liz’s knife-pointed runestaff protruded from his pale, still chest. The tiniest hint of white smoke spiraled upward from the wound to mark the sky; a single rivulet of blood trickled across the white flesh to color the sand.
David wanted to cry out, but his jaw locked. He felt his gorge begin to rise and clamped a hand across his mouth as he jerked his eyes away.
Silence hung in the air like a threat of thunder.
Wordlessly Nuada dismounted and with his silver hand yanked the spear from the wound, then spread his white cloak across the boy’s body. He turned to face Ailill.
“Madman!” he whispered.
“Idiot!” a woman’s voice shrieked.
“Fool!”
“Murderer!” The cries were a rising tide of anger.
“Kinslayer!”
“Kinslayer!” another voice took up the call, and then others joined in a chant that rang across the plain: “Kinslayer! Kinslayer! Kinslayer!”
Despair filled Ailill then. Despair and horror—and fear. His pride broke, and he spurred the horse to a gallop and made to follow the Straight Track across the empty field.
But even as he flashed past, David caught a blur of movement to his left, and saw Alec thrust his runestaff directly into Ailill’s face.
The Faery lord cried out, his eyes stretched wide in horror, for the fear of iron came upon him. He jerked back, sending the startled horse rearing beneath him. He held the reins firmly, but was unprepared when the horse bucked sideways;
that
move unbalanced him and he slipped from the saddle. But he was on his feet again, almost as he struck the earth, and running toward the Track.
Another stood there before him, though: a black-haired woman of the Sidhe, dressed in blue, and beside her an empty-eyed child in green pajamas. Straight in front of Ailill she stood, proud and queenly, barring his way.
The Faery woman! Yet it was no defensive Faery woman this time, but a great lady of the Sidhe. Vengeance was in her gaze and triumph in her carriage as her fingers worked before her.
All at once Ailill found his way blocked by a terrible wall of swirling flame that leapt man-high from the tall grass about him and spread rapidly to either side in a threatening arc. An intricate, cagelike mesh of icicles took form within that barrier, through which the colored fires leapt and wove, constantly melting and refreezing even as the flames were extinguished and rekindled.
And so Ailill stood confounded, facing arcane fire on the one hand and the fires of iron that could bind him in torment on the other. Reluctantly he stumbled forward to stand before the king, head bowed.
Without a word, Nuada stepped forward to stand beside Ailill. “So it is to be my justice at last,” Lugh said calmly. His stem gaze swept the crowd, “Then hear you all the justice of Lugh Samildinach, High King for this Time in Tir-Nan-Og!”
Lugh’s eyes bored into the dark Faery. “You, Ailill, are a fool. Even as you pass from my realm, you still contrive plots and deceptions. It was a plot of yours that started this trouble, for you should never have made that bargain with the mortal boy. But having made it, you should have stayed by it—this any honorable man would do. And now a plot of yours has finished it again, as is fitting, but that gamble has cost you a son—a high price to pay for victory. Nor is that the worst of your offenses, Ailill, for you have been guilty of another crime as well—a crime against my own house.”
“My lord, I have
not…”
Ailill protested. “
Lugh motioned the Faery woman forward, who came, bringing the surrogate Little Billy with her.
“Now I know—we all know—that you took a changeling; the proof of that we see before us. Is this not so?”
Ailill made no move to acknowledge Lugh’s question.
“No matter,” said Lugh. “We all know the truth of it. The Sidhe could use some of the thick blood of mortals to strengthen our own; that I also acknowledge. But you did it without my consent; indeed, you flaunted it in my face, even refused to return the boy when I ordered it, and thus set your will above my own, for which you earned this exile. And what is even worse than that is that you left one of our own in the child’s place when a log would have served as well. What could have possessed you to do that?”
Ailill’s nostrils narrowed haughtily. “Were you indeed as well studied in the ways of men as you claim, Ard Rhi, you would know that mortal men have more ways of looking at illness now than when we were mighty in the land. Had I left a stock they might have grasped the heart of our deception, and that would have made trouble for us far beyond what this boy would cause. I had to use a child of our own people.”
Lugh drew himself up to his full height. His fingers grasped his jeweled reins so tightly that they snapped, sending a rain of sapphires and topazes glittering to the ground. “Is it
this
you are telling me, Ailill?” he thundered: “that you deemed a child of the Sidhe to be of less import than a child of mortal men? I
know the last number of the people I rule,
do not forget that. Did you truly think that I would overlook the theft of a true-born son of Faerie? No, Dark One, you have been too much in your own counsel, for though you took the child, and the mother not willing, you failed to inquire closely enough as to who that woman might be—and in that you erred most grievously.”
“A woman is a woman,” flared Ailill. “A child is a child.”
“A woman may also be a daughter of a king,” said Lugh, quietly. “Not all of my house choose to remain at court.”
Ailill’s face went white beneath his ruby circlet.
Lugh smiled. “You had best not give an heir to the King of the Sidhe as a changeling without the king’s consent. I have my own plans for his fosterage.”
There was a sound of laughter among the assembled company, then, and Ailill’s face flushed red.
“Yes, Ailill, your true nature comes forth at last. I do not know what we will do with you, but we will see whether we can lessen the harm you have already done. I do not see the human child anywhere.”
Oblivious to the pain it cost, Lugh jerked the ash spear from Nuada’s hand and leveled its still-glowing tip at Ailill’s heart as two guards grabbed the dark Faery on either side. “Now,
where is the boy
?”
Ailill glared at him and muttered something in a low voice. It was a spell, David knew instinctively, and probably a very Powerful one, for it hushed the crowd, and the air itself seemed at once to thicken and go flat, as if Ailill’s words had a material existence and were too heavy for the air alone to contain.
The white horse that Ailill had ridden so proudly only a short while before stamped its feet as if disturbed by the presence of so much Power. It danced sideways, nervously, its eyes rolling in fright and its tongue lolling from its mouth. All at once it snorted and reared up, fell heavily to earth, and reared again—and remained standing on its hind legs as it suddenly became a naked five-year-old boy with blond hair and blue eyes. Confused recognition broke forth on that small face, as Little Billy stood there staring wide-eyed, not quite believing he had won free from the horse-shape that had enwrapped him.
David could contain himself no longer. He ran forward, knelt before his brother and gathered him into his arms. “Little Billy, it’s me, Davy!”
“Davy! Davy!” cried Little Billy in turn as tears wet both their faces.
Lugh also smiled as he saw the blue-clad woman kneel and embrace her own child, whose eyes, too, blazed with new life—and they were his own green eyes now, shining joyfully in his own face.
David hugged his brother tightly. Somebody handed him a cloak, and he threw it around his brother’s shoulders. Alec surreptitiously returned David’s clothes, and while the attention of the crowd seemed diverted, David began slipping them on under his tabard.
“We still have things to consider,” continued Lugh, “including whether or not banishment is sufficient punishment for our rebellious friend here. He has slain his son, a grievous thing, but I wonder whether that is now enough?”
The blue-clad woman stepped forward then, resting a hand on the pommel of Lugh’s saddle. “Lugh, my father,” she said, “may I offer my counsel in this?”
“I am always glad to hear your advice, daughter,” said Lugh.
“Well, then, since Ailill is so fond of shape-shifting, let me take him into my care, and lay on him the shape of a black horse, and make of him a mount for my son to ride until he be of an age to bear weapons.” She smiled triumphantly at Ailill, but there was warning in her smile as well.
“There is great justice in this,” said Lugh. “So shall it be.”
The woman’s eyes caught David’s then, and lingered there a moment before flickering over Alec and Liz and Little Billy. She smiled cryptically. “I think perhaps these fine folk will be dealing with the Sidhe again.”
“I hope not,” sighed Lugh, “but I fear you are correct. We have seldom met with mortals so lively in these last centuries. Now,” the High King continued, “are there any
other
boons to be craved, while I seem to be holding court?” His gaze rested on David.
David opened his mouth.
“I…”
“
I
crave a boon, Ard Rhi,” Ailill interrupted.
Lugh raised an eyebrow.
“You?”
“I would ask one thing, and as it has a bearing on the death of my son, it is a thing I have a right to know.”
“And what is that?”
“Never in five hundred years have I missed a blow, not with sword nor spear nor lance. How is it, then, since the ring of Oisin lies lost and useless in the Lands of Men, that my blow nevertheless missed?”
“Perhaps it was your choice of mounts,” said Lugh. “Or perhaps you are simply not as skilled as once you were.”
“Or perhaps it is because the ring is
not
lost and useless,” came the voice of Nuada. The silver-armed Faery reached into the breast of his tunic and drew out something round that glittered in the morning sun of Tir-Nan-Og. “I too have more shapes than one, Ailill, but the shape of a white trout may sometimes be more useful than that of a soaring black eagle when we travel the Lands of Men.”
Nuada turned toward Lugh. “Long have I been watching Ailill, seeking to learn exactly how serious a threat he posed to our relations with men. And so I watched David, too. Thus I became a trout in the stream into which David fell when the ring’s Power broke him free of the Straight Track. The chain parted in that fall and the ring rolled into the water where I was. It was then a simple thing for me to swallow while the boy lay unknowing. The ring is not a thing entirely of our understanding, Lugh, for we did not make it. I feared my feasting might cost me, but it did not, for I bore David no ill will, and I did not actually claim the ring for my own. Until this Riding I have kept it in an iron box, which this silver arm allows me to touch.”
Nuada stepped forward and returned the silver band to David. “I
am
sorry, David Sullivan, for much ill has befallen you because of this ring. And in truth I thought for a time to return it to you. But until you actually give it to another of your own volition, it is yours, regardless of who holds it. And until that time, you, at least, are under its protection.”
“But why didn’t you give it back?” cried David. “You put me through bloody hell for no good reason!”
“So I did,” replied Nuada. “For I see a time not far
off—
much closer in fact, than I had even guessed—when we will need someone to serve our cause among mortals—not as a traitor, I would not ask that, but as an ambassador. You, David Sullivan, I thought might be that person. I sensed Power alive in you from our first meeting, which I thought strange, since Power normally slumbers in your kind unless awakened by some outside agency. My curiosity was aroused, then. And when I learned you had somehow acquired the Sight as well—”
“I thought that was because I looked between my legs at a funeral procession,” David interrupted.
Nuada smiled faintly and shook his head. “What would we do without Reverend Kirk? But no, that is doubtful. It may have been the spark, for the Laws of Power are capricious, but I think something else was at work there—though I still have not been able to set a name to it.”
“I can set a name to it,” a female voice cried harshly. “For that name is mine.”
“Morrigu?”
Nuada stared incredulously at the red-clad Mistress of Battles.
“And why not? I, too, see war a-making between Faerie and the Lands of Men, and I do not like the odds. I, too, think an advocate among humans might be useful to ward off such a conflict. Indeed, I have often been in that World of late seeking such a one—even more frequently than you, Airgetlam, though my preferred shape is that of crow. And on one of those occasions I happened to see a burial in progress, and our young friend here regarding those proceedings from between his legs. The foolishness of his position called to my mind the foolish phrases the Scotsman had set down in that book of his, and I could not help but be curious. And when I saw the boy’s face, and knew who he was—the twice-great-grandson of a mortal man with whom I once had lain—I knew that I had found my goal. There was Power in him already, for it is the heritage of his house. It was thus a simple thing for me to call it forth again. And I added the Sight for good measure—as a further testing, if the truth be known, to see of what metal the boy was made.”
“And which metal was it?” asked Lugh.