Stoneskin's Revenge (2 page)

And lately it had shown him an illness in Nunda Igehi, and given him a means to effect its cure—if the efforts of certain mortal friends succeeded.

It was to check on them that he had come here with the ulunsuti.

He continued to stare at it, feeling the sun hot across his shoulders, his eyes burning with weariness as he sought to conjure the image of Edahi as Uki last had seen him: tall and straight and strong, with hair like raw stone-that-burns, and the twinkling eyes that had so entranced his half-sisters, the Serpent Women.

But he still saw nothing except glassy haze and the septum of red light that bifurcated the crystal.

And then, abruptly, images…

…morning sunlight glints off the pitted chrome and Candyapple Red enamel of a '66 Mustang hardtop that looks as if it needs new paint far more than the frequent waxing that is obvious surrogate. One fender is blue and has been for nearly a year, and it carries the mud and dust of half-a-dozen north Georgia counties across its dented flanks. Its interior is seat-deep in road-trip detritus: maps, candy wrappers, foam plastic burger boxes from the Winder McDonald's, a burgundy T-shirt emblazoned with the sigil of the Enotah County 'Possums, bits of legal paper bearing scrawls in four adolescent hands. And the trunk…though closed,
that
has been lately pillaged of backpacks and coolers and less likely gear. The only noteworthy object there now is a recurve bow of laminated wood, its countless layers shimmering like a rainbow.

The car sits in an oil-stained driveway just shy of the terminus of a dead-end street in a suburb east of Atlanta. A brick ranch house rises before it, its lawn unmown, the paint on the front door peeling. The nearer side yard is enclosed by a high chainlink fence wire-laced to angle-iron posts anchored ten feet apart. It secures a brace of beagles used for rabbit hunting. Woods rise behind it, shielding any view of civilization in that quarter. It is the last house on the block, the only brick house on its side of the street.

Sudden cries shatter the suburban calm: teenagers—nervous and harried and alarmed. A girl stumbles from the forest. Her hair is red and she drags a knapsack with one hand while clutching a small animal to her breast with the other. (Uki starts at this.) She dashes to the fence and pauses there, terrified, gazing back at the sky above the treetops. Two boys follow: one blond, one dark-haired, also with knapsacks. Between them they assist a third, who is staggering. He too is blond, but here is a strangeness to his features that is not entirely human, for he is one of the
Nunnihe
who live on the other side of the Lying World from Galunlati. Uki knows all three boys but does not bother to name them. It is sufficient that they are friends.

He wonders what has happened to them, though, for their faces are all haggard with fatigue and dread, and like the girl, they aim apprehensive glances at the sky. The Nunnihe boy screams as they approach the fence.

Birds slide into view above the treetops: vast raptors gliding quick and low. They are black and larger than any eagles, though that is what they most resemble.

The shorter boy, the blond, yells frantic orders, abandons his charge, and scrambles over the back fence, then pounds through the dog lot and vaults the street-side fence. His cut-off jeans rip as he crosses. The beagles are too taken aback to react.

He reaches the car, fumbles in his pocket but finds no keys, then snags his spare pair from under the hood. A moment later he is in the seat, gunning the engine. He backs up, then finds first—and floors the accelerator. Tires squeal, and he aims the Mustang toward the fence. Metal shrieks, the fence collapses, and beagles disperse in terror.

The car hurtles on, smashes the back fence as well, and grinds to a noisy halt atop it. The boy leaps out, the girl takes his place behind the wheel, and the boy helps his dark-haired friend with his screaming Nunnihe companion. A door slams, and the birds descend.

There are six of them, and they attack the car, but seem to be repulsed by the metal. As the Mustang roars into the street, one falls to the pavement and flops about gracelessly. Though already large as a man, it shimmers and blurs, and suddenly takes on the form of a tall, slim warrior in black.

From the shadows by the woods brown eyes can abide such sights no longer. Their owner vents a panicked, yodeling cry and bolts for deeper cover.

But the bird-man does not hear. He regains his equilibrium, shifts shape once more, and wings skyward.

The car speeds away, but in the backseat the Nunnihe boy screams louder still and starts to writhe. His friends watch, concerned, and then the boy in front sets fire to paper and thrusts something into its heart. The blond boy finds himself handed the small animal. Uki's name is shrieked aloud, but is cut off. Flame fills the Mustang for an instant, and then the backseat is empty, though the car continues on…

For a moment longer Uki watched, a scowl of concern furrowing his snowy brow, but then he muttered certain words and cast his vision south. What he saw there troubled him even more: the Nunnihe boy and the blond boy had succeeded, were here in Galunlati, but far away, which he had not expected. And Edahi was with them, though not in his own form. Uki could spare no time to seek them, but he could certainly send word.

He stood, scanned the sky, and uttered a long, high-pitched screech.

An instant later an eagle appeared, floating down from the hot, cloudless heavens to land lightly on the northern spoke.
“Siyu,”
it rasped gravely. “Greetings, Hyuntikwala Usunhi.”

“Siyu, adawehiyu,”
Uki responded formally. “Greetings unto
Awahili,
Lord of Eagles.”

“You have need of me?”

“I do.”

And with that Uki delivered unto Awahili certain messages, and took from a pouch at his waist what looked like two milk-white arrowheads—or maybe they were sharks' teeth. These he placed in another pouch, which he looped around his feathered colleague's neck.

“Your message will be delivered,” Awahili assured him, and rose once more into the sky. The sand showed no mark of his passing; not a single grain had been shifted by his feathers.

Uki sat down again, though it was not to spy on the present this time, but to cast his eye to the future a day—and a World—away.

At first the ulunsuti remained clear, the septum pulsing dully as Uki sought anew to pierce the World Walls—and then, abruptly, it darkened. It was as if the Barriers Between had grown solid and opaque when he tried to gaze upon the results of Awahili's messages, as if someone had thrown up endless clouds of sand to veil his sight.

He tried harder…

Harder—
his mind
a blank except for that single desire. The septum flared within its crystal housing, writhing like red flame under torture, still revealing nothing.

Which was not good, when he desperately needed to know how Edahi and his companions fared.

There was but one thing more he could try, though it would cost him dear—yet there was no help for it.

Sighing, Uki reached into a second pouch and drew out a thin, finger-long sliver of black obsidian. His face did not twitch a muscle when he slid that sliver across the flesh of his palm, nor when he pressed his hand atop the ulunsuti and let it have its fill.

Long that crystal drank, and long the septum guttered like a torch thrust against a wall of oak planks.

And long the veils of sand and dust resisted, but at last they grew thin enough to show Uki what had raised them.

“No!”
he whispered to the surrounding silence. Such a thing should not even
be
in the Lying World! No one there would know what to do with it.

He could not go there himself, for his responsibility to Walhala had to take priority.

But maybe he could still send a warning.

PART I

Signs and

Portents

Chapter I: Watched Pot

(five miles south of Whidden, Georgia—Tuesday, June 17—noonish)

“Oh, go
ahead,
I reckon,” the waitress grumbled in the lazy local drawl that seemed to grow slower the closer to the coast one got—exactly like the maze of rivers Calvin and his friends had traversed on their trip up I-95 from Cumberland Island that morning. She was perhaps sixteen—probably this year's crop of high-school juniors—and passably pretty, if a bit chubby. Understandable, given the fare her place of employment specialized in, which was fresh, deep-fried seafood. “I'll have to watch you, though—an' you can only talk until somebody needs somethin'. An' it's
gotta
be collect,” she added with an air of tired finality that was depressingly at odds with her youth and did not bode well for a remarkable future.

Still leaning against the white-enameled cinder-block wall by the kitchen entrance where he had accosted the girl maybe a minute before, Calvin McIntosh puffed his cheeks thoughtfully and nodded his acquiescence, too tired to flash the dazzling white grin, the twinkle of brown eye that would have had most women eating out of his hand before now—never mind that he was barely twenty and didn't look even that. “I just need to let somebody know I'm okay,” he reiterated as neutrally as he could. “Anything else is gravy—or this bein' the kind of place it is, maybe tartar sauce.”

His attempt at humor went right over the frizzy blond head, but left a confused frown and a grunt in its wake. His own black brows lowered in turn. Recalcitrance was
not
what he needed, not when he was tired as hell and had two days of absence to explain to his girlfriend up in Carolina—days when, as far as she knew, he'd literally fallen off the face of the earth…which in a way he had. He wondered if the waitress's attitude was due to impatience (though he and his friends were the only customers at the moment), fear of reprisal for violation of “the rules,” or—as he caught his reflection in the round surveillance mirror in the corner—his appearance.

That last was a
real
possibility.

It was not that he was dirty, really—though he hadn't had a proper bath in three days and had sweated through his black T-shirt on the ride up from the island (five people in an un-airconditioned '66 Mustang for a couple of hours in the middle of June guaranteed that); and there was still a bit of sand clinging to his jeans from where he'd got them wet at Cumberland's beach. But neither of those breaches of decorum was likely to raise eyebrows in a county as rural as this, especially in what was obviously
not
a four-star establishment.

What
might
give a teenage girl pause, though, was the haunted look on his face, the wildness in his eyes, that made his coppery skin and shoulder-long, jet-black hair seem positively alien when set against the present rather antiseptic enamel-and-vinyl surroundings. Up where he was most lately from, the combination practically screamed
Cherokee Indian—
which
he was. He didn't know what it proclaimed in backwoods south Georgia, but had learned from a year on the Appalachian Trail that a good first impression was important. And that was an uphill battle when you were part of an exotic minority to start with, never mind the complication of looking as scuzzy as he currently did.

“Phone's up in th' office,” the girl announced after another round of scowling consideration. “But keep it short, I ain't supposed to let customers use it.” She spun around with a flourish and sashayed toward the bank of plate-glass windows that comprised most of the entrance wall of Whidden's Steak-and-Seafood. Her rapid pace indicated that she didn't care whether he followed or not.

Calvin marched dutifully behind, sparing a glance to the booth in the right rear corner where his companions were still puzzling over menus. The blond boy—his name was David Sullivan, and he was very probably Calvin's best friend—whispered something to his septuagenarian uncle that produced a sharp cackle and a wiggle of white goatee. But then Dave noticed him and nodded his okay when Calvin pointed toward the half-wall of rough-cut pine that partly screened the office from the dining room at large.

“'Member, keep it quick,” the waitress reminded him as she ushered him into a tiny white cubicle that was dominated by a gray metal desk, an unmatching file cabinet, and a trash can stuffed full of defunct menus. A pile of
Bon Appetites
accented one of the desk's front corners. The other supported an untidy stack of
The Willacoochee Witness—
and the phone.

The girl stationed herself in the open doorway and continued to glare at him as Calvin picked up the receiver. He ignored her and punched in zero, followed by a certain number in the wilds of the Great Smoky Mountains near Sylva, North Carolina, then informed the sleepy-sounding operator that he was calling collect and who he was.

The phone rang thrice, whereupon an answering machine clicked on: “You have reached Sandy Fairfax. I'm sorry but I can't—” and then:
“Hello?”
The voice that interrupted was musical, soft, with a hint of mountain twang.

“Collect call from Calvin. Will you accept?”

“Yes, oh yes!” And then, with another click, he was through.

“Sandy?” he ventured tentatively, then: “It's me—finally.”

“Calvin! Are you all right—is
everybody
all right?”