Unfallen Dead

CHAPTER 30

I staggered under an assault of searing pain. Essence whipped around me in a kaleidoscope of burning colored light. Wind raged through the air, a high-pitched wailing that tore at my mind. I propelled myself blindly through the radiant bands of power, desperate to get away. The darkness in my head and the brightness in my hand warred with each other and the air, flinging me in one direction after another. The maelstrom stripped me down to impulse and instinct until the desire to escape the pain ripping through me was all I knew.

The onslaught receded, slowly, grudgingly. The ground stabilized, and I stumbled into an empty space, an eye of calm within the storm. Around me, a dense, smoky haze rustled and shifted, a barrier that flashed with sparks of essence. Exhausted, I leaned on the spear. All the joints in my body ached like they had been pulled apart and snapped back together. A constricting pressure throbbed along my left arm. I pulled off my jacket. The silver filigree from the spear had replicated itself around my forearm.

The wind died. In a milky gray sky, bands of darker gray essence scudded like ragged clouds after a storm. Light flashed, visible light, not the colored manifestations of essence. A booming sounded in the haze, vibrating the ground in a rhythm that grew stronger with each increase in volume. The dark mass in my head shifted one way, then another, as if trying to avoid a trap. Something moved through the mist, something huge, with an essence signature more intense than any I knew.

The presence drew nearer, becoming brighter and brighter in the vision of my sensing ability. A dark shadow figure formed within the shadows of the haze, the shape of a man wrapped in a vast aura of light. The haze drew away from him like the parting of curtains. Shards of essence encircled his head like a crown. Over a long red tunic, he wore a cloak that shifted through hues of yellow. He had the look of the Danann about him, if it were possible for the Danann to look more radiant than they did. He furrowed his brow when he saw me. “Such a small dark thing ripples the Ways.”

He had an enormous intensity, more than the tree spirit I had met, more than anything I had ever met. I didn’t have much experience with kobolds, but he didn’t feel like one or any other fey I knew. I held the spear defensively. “Viten?”

Surprise etched across his face when he saw the spear, and a shudder ran through him. His cloak came alive with motion and melted into his body. He grew larger, and sank cross-legged to the ground, his hair turning dark, his eyes showing the threat of a wild animal. Essence flowed from his temples and branched from his head with a burnished light. “Do you come to mend the Ways or to bend them?”

His voice sent shivers through me, resonant and deep. “I’m looking for someone,” I said.

The giant swelled, his color fading, then he settled back. “A woman.”

“Her name is Meryl Dian.”

He shuddered as he flowed into a standing position. Thick hair sprouted from his head into long tangles above deep-set eyes that glittered in hues of storm and shadow. A blue robe flared out of his back and across his shoulders. I stepped back.

“What is this?” I asked.

His entire body spasmed. “Naming is a deep matter.”

“Dammit, where am I?” I asked.

Yellow essence swirled, and the first incarnation reappeared, wrapping his golden cloak about him with a smug smile. “You’ve danced on my borders many times, but never crossed. How come you now with a sliver of the Wheel?”

“What borders? What do you mean?”

The figure moved nearer, essence rising like a shadow. “You warp the Ways. You are not worthy to wield such Power. Surrender it to me.”

I held the spear across my chest. “No.”

He shivered, his body fragmented, then pulled back together. He extended a jeweled hand. “Surrender it.”

The gesture felt oddly indifferent, as if he had merely asked me for some small token. He didn’t look happy. I sought his eyes, but their shifting colors made it difficult. He made no move to take the spear. Despite his enormous essence, whatever he was, he seemed unable to act. Feeling more confident, I hefted the spear. “You can’t take it from me, can you? You’d have done that by now.”

The unsettling eyes remained fixed on me as his skin blurred and shifted, swelling as he fleshed into the burly giant. He sat before me again, looking down at me with a feral gleam. “What value has this woman that you dare the Ways?”

Talking about the value of anything would be a dangerous question from a normal fey. I had no doubt a mistaken answer could be dangerous. “What value should be placed on a life?”

The giant grunted, as if confirming something in his own mind. “You would wager your life for something that you cannot assign value?”

“It’s not my place to wager.”

The giant laughed, a deep rumble that I felt in my own chest. He swept into the form of the blue-robed man. The spear tugged at my hand, and I tightened my grip. “Sorry. I’m keeping it.”

His body undulated and the roar of crashing waves broke through the mist. “You do not know what you risk.”

I had to crane my neck to see his face. “I never do, buddy. Are we done? Because I don’t have time for this.”

His enormous hand reached for me. I instinctively held up the spear. He paused, shuddered, and the wild man was back. “You dare much. The living disturb this place to no good end.”

I tilted the tip of the spear away from him. He was enormous. No need to provoke him any more than I had. “I’m here to take the living back with me.”

Again, the disconcerting shudder, and the blue-robed man reappeared. “In this, then, we are aligned. I will be obliged to you if you succeed.”

“Can you point me in the right direction?” I asked.

The golden-cloaked king shuddered into view. “The Wheel of the World turns as It will. It is not mine to lead even a sliver of It.”

The wild man returned. “The wielder wheels and is wheeled but chooses his own path. We are the Wheel and Its instrument.”

The robed man towered up. “The Ways seal and unseal. A needle binds even as it pierces.”

A great wind rose. The figure pulsated as its forms sought to dominate each other, then spun outward in a flash of white. It vanished. He vanished. They. Whatever the hell it was. The mist wall wavered and dissipated.

The dagger in my right boot twisted in its sheath, digging into my ankle. A spell maintained it as a short fighting knife most of the time, but it changed shape through some means I didn’t understand. Heat emanated from the hilt as I withdrew it. It squirmed in my hand and stretched into the full length of a sword. The last time it did that, I was in a fight for my life.

I faced an opening in a wall of standing stones. A brief glimpse of Nigel leaning over Ceridwen flashed by. The scene slid to a vision of the Civil War monument on the Common, then another of the townhouses on Beacon Hill. The perspective never remained for long, as if the opening itself was in constant motion. My stomach did a little flip. I was looking at Boston through the perspective of the fairy ring. I was in the hazy column of essence, really and truly beyond the veil. I had entered TirNaNog.