The sun came up watery and mist-filtered on a far busier scene.
Old Lorg was still dead. But now the king had come with a type of guys we’d met in passing a long time before and a long time away: Fianna.
The Fianna, as I understood it, were knights of a sort, though they didn’t go in for the whole shining-armor thing. They were the personal army of the High King. I figured the High King was like the president, with King Camulos being a governor. King Cam’s fairies were the state troopers, the Fianna were the FBI and the Marines all rolled into one.
The Fiannans were quiet and polite and respectful. They addressed everyone by their title, or else as “Sir” or “Lady”. They’d ridden through the night in response to a telegram sent by the king and arrived from the distant capital. Their massive horses were wondering around the fields eating grass.
A bunch of druids had also showed up. We had blue druids and green druids and red druids. It was a druid convention, but not what a person might picture: they were old and young, male and female, snappy dresses or old slobs. The one thing they all seemed to have in common was an incredible lack of stupidity.
The blue druids spent quite a while going over the giant’s already fragrant body, poking, probing, and finally cutting. There was some discussion of dissecting Lorg – dissection was all the rage with the blue druids – but no one had invented the chain saw yet, so it was hard to see how they were going to carve him up.
Still, they used handy scalpels and lancets and clunky, ornate tweezers, and pretty soon they had removed his canned ham of an eye and collected half a dozen bullets.
Jalil was busy being cross-examined by Fios, the only yellow druid there. I was hearing words like “firing pin” and “barrel” and “magazine”. Fios was nodding his head like a psychiatrist who has just heard your sickest fantasy but doesn’t want to act too grossed-out. Jalil looked embarrassed.
One of the blue druids, chubby, grandmotherly woman, came over to me carrying a pottery jar with six bloody lumps rolling around inside.
“What are these called?” she asked me.
“Those are slugs. They’re made of lead. Mostly anyway. I guess there’s copper, too. The copper holds them together a little, but see, the head of the slug still spreads out, mashes up, when it hits.”
Grandma Druid gave me a funny look. “How does lead come to flatten thus? Even lead, softest of metals, is harder than flesh.”
“Well, it’s going very fast. Faster than an arrow. I mean, a lot faster. It hits and…wham. The lead flattens and then it tears through the muscle or whatever and…” I was performing helpful hand-gestures to illustrate.
You know, I’d have been happy to explain bullets to Ka Anor. Or Loki. Or Hel. Or Neptune. I’d have been happy to explain bullets in the most direct, hands-on way I could, but having to stand there, and explain how a bullet tore through flesh and muscle and organs, explain all that toe these decent-seeming people, that wasn’t easy. Hard not to feel responsible.
“Ah,” she said, and rolled the slugs back and forth.
Just then a fairy came zooming in to report to the king. They’d found a small boat floating just off-shore. A fishing boat, abandoned. And on the shore, wedged into the rocks, two dead fishermen who bore the same puncture wounds found in Lorg.
David had rounded up Jalil and April and gathered me up and the four of us stepped off a way from the crime-scene crowd.
“Someone’s got a machine gun,” David said in a low voice.
“Do you think so, McGarrett?” I said. “What gave it away?”
He clenched his jaw and looked like he wanted to hit me and only just restrained himself.
“We’re kind of deep in it, here,” David snapped. “Maybe not the time for sarcasm. None of these people is a fool: They’re thinking we’re responsible somehow.”
Jalil shook his head. “No. We’ve given the Coo-Hatch some technology to make cannons. But from muzzle-loading cannons to full-auto weapons, that’s a couple of centuries.”
“Senna’s behind this,” I said suddenly.
David’s head snapped up, angry. “Don’t say things like that. You want them to hear?”
“You know, he’s right,” April said. “You know it’s her. Otherwise why is it the four of us here talking and not Senna? You left her out, David. Why is that?”
I said, “I saw her, I was watching her when Jalil starting talking about guns. Not a flicker. She didn’t jerk guilty, but she didn’t jerk surprised, either.”
The four of us turned slowly and stared at Senna. She stood off by herself, pacing very slowly, looking as if she was taking a slow-motion tour of the stone walls. Deep in thought.
I noticed the head Fiannan, a guy with the excellent name of MacCool. He was watching us and watching our faces as we looked at Senna. It was a “cop” look.
I looked back at Senna. She was gone, hidden by some wafting mist.
MacCool wasn’t so sure.
“The witch,” he said loudly. “Where is the witch?”
A breeze blew the mist away. No Senna.
Fairies erupted into a blur, racing here and there, fanning out. The Fiannans spread out a bit more slowly than the fairies.
April left us and walked straight into Etain. She grabbed he arm.
David yelled, “April!”
Too late. “She’s a shapeshifter,” April said. “She could be anyone.”
Etain nodded. “MacCool! The witch can change shape.” Etain came striding over to us, suspicious, furious at everyone except April. “You should have warned me.”
“She’s one of us,” David shot back.
“The hell she is,” said Jalil.
“We came here together!” David yelled, suddenly almost out-of-control. “We came here together, we leave together, all of us, her too!”
I said, “We didn’t come here, General, we were dragged. By her.” To Etain I said, “We lied to you last night. We’re here because Senna dragged us here. She’s some kind of gateway between the old world and Everworld and she’s also a freaking nut. She’s got a power jones. She wants to be the newer, better Ka Anor. We’ve been her little sock puppets all along.”
April joined in. “She’s completely ruthless. And she has powers. More power all the time.” She looked at David. “Don’t let her touch any of your people, Etain. That’s how she’s strongest.”
“Why not just tell them to shoot on sight?” David demanded.
I said, “David, she’s an evil bitch who sells us out any time it suits her. We’re supposed to be loyal? To her?” “We stick together!” David almost screamed. “I know it looks bad. I know…but we stick together, man, that’s the thing.”
Jalil stepped close to David, got right in his face. “David, there’s someone over here running around with a damned Uzi. And we know all somehow she’s behind it.”
Then suddenly Jalil grabbed David’s armor, not like he was trying to control him, more like he was trying to hold himself up. Like someone had sucked the air out of his lungs and he needed to hold on or faint.
“What is it?” April asked.
“That’s what she’s going to do,” Jalil said in a whisper. “That’s what she’s going to do. A gateway goes both ways. Of course. Oh, Jesus.”
“Shut up, Jalil,” David said, but there was no convictions behind it.
Jalil looked horrified, stared at David. “You guessed! You knew?”
David was wringing his hands, saying, “Just shut up, Jalil.” As messed up as I have ever seen David. He looked like someone was piling bricks on his shoulders, like some growing weight was crushing him slowly down.
“David, you poor dumb son of a – “
I lost patience at the same moment as April. “What?” we both yelled. “What?”
Jalil wiped his face with his hand, wiped off the sweat and the fog condension. “You open a dor between universes, who’s to say which way the traffic flows?”
“Did you find that in a fortune cookie?”
“Senna won’t let anyone use her. She wants power. She’s not going to be Loki’s tool, or anyone’s tool. She’s the gateway, she knows that. But it’s not about whether she’s going to let Loki and the others escape into the Real World. The traffic’s going the other way, man. She’s bringing people here. She’s bringing them here. Men with guns.”
It was a moment of crystalline revelation. It took my breath away. I laughed. Of course!
Senna was in a bind: If Merlin caught her she’d be locked away in his tower forever. If Loki caught her she’d be forced to become his gateway, open an escape route to the real world.
Neither choice exactly worked for Senna. Senna wanted it all. She knew her own magic was nowhere near powerful enough to make her a player in Everworld. Ah, but Senna with an army, an army with real-world weapons, that was a different story.
Lorg the giant was dead. The perfect symbol: Everworld’s Goliath versus a real world David carrying an Uzi slingshot. Bye-bye Goliath.
We horsed up and headed back eventually to the town and King Cam’s castle. All of us together, leaving behind some of the Fianna and a number of fairies. But MacCool rode with us. Rode right next to Etain as a matter of fact. Right up alongside her.
And that really should not have been tippy-top of my brain right then, what with that had happened, what with the fact that Senna had escaped, but the brain and the body do what they want to do. Specially when the brain gets together with the body.
It’s like the body is the bad friend your mom doesn’t want you to hang around with, because man, however good your brain wants to be, body can always bring him over to the dark side of the force.
Body was having a Harlequin kind of morning. Brain was trying real hard to be serious and focus on the fact that good old Senna had come up and kicked the chess board all over the place so that all of a sudden no one could remember where the pieces had been before. But Body was mainlining testosterone and looking to find some friendly estrogen. The Y chromosome wanted to go say “hi!” to the double X’s. Body had its own separate memory of Etain’s nightgown. And Body had been strangely excited by Etain’s cool sword trick. Brain never had a chance.
And the thing was that MacCool was putting the moves on Etain. Not that she’d notice, naturally: Girls are always prepared to believe that a guy has something else in mind. Despite roughly a million years of human experience, females persist in their belief that deep down inside, guys are girls.
No doubt MacCool was talking about the killing. No doubt he was very professional. He looked like that kind of guy. But he was a hound, I had no doubt. He was giving her the thoughtful look, considering nod, the old leaning-close-to-bear-better-while-inspecting-cleavage move.
I decided to demonstrate my maturity by pouting. Fine. Forget her. There were plenty more beautiful half-elf maidens who would jump at the chance to hook up with a penniless, cowardly minstrel from another universe.
My horse wasn’t fast and I wasn’t interested in pushing him. So my horse moseyed and stopped to munch, and I moseyed and pouted and wondered whether it was really just coincidence that Etain had come personally to my room.
I was at the back of the column, back behind the afterguard of Fianna and fairies. Just me and some sleepy, yawning, uniformed guys from the palace, and one of the Fianna, one of the MacCool’s boys leading a lame horse.
We came to a curve in the path as it went around a stand of trees, the three of us were bringing up the rear, and temporarily blocked from the view of the Kind and MacCool and Etain and David and the rest of the Important People.
The Fiannan decided to give up on keeping pace with his lame horse. He sighed and yanked his horse around and started back down the road from the direction we’d came. Taking the lame horse back to…
Back to what? Why not lead the horse on to the village?
I looked back just before I’d have lost sight of him entirely. And that’s when I saw him abandon his horse and climb over a stone fence.
I knew right away. I knew it cold: it was Senna.
What should I do is race up the path, alert the King who’d send MacCool peiting back after her. And if MacCool or the fairies caught her I’d get a nice pat on the head.
I could see that scene, clear as day: MacCool with a sullen Senna in tow, my trotting along yulping, “I saw her! I saw her! I’m the one who saw her.”
Yeah. That would have Etain throwing MacCool aside in favor of me. Cause if there’s one thing a woman admires, it’s a guy who can call for the help of a real man.
I reined my horse. The sleepy uniformed guy kept going, and I thought for a second of telling him what I was doing, but no, he’d just go grab MacCool.
Scew MacCool.
I turned my horse. I could do this. I had a horse, Senna was on foot. Besides, I knew she’d be tired. We knew that about her, that doing the magic thing wore her out. She must have been shapeshifting for half an hour, at least, and she’d be beat. Sometimes the tiredness put her under, unconscious.
“Come on, Christopher. You’re not scared of Senna,” I told myself. But here’s the thing: Any time you have to deny that you’re scared, you’re scared.
“It’s just Senna,” I told myself. “It’s not like she’s a troll, or a god or something really nasty.
No, it was just good old Senna. I had dated her. I’d kissed her. Of course that was before I’d seen her literally shift the course of an entire river.
“Man, you’re meat,” I told myself.
I couldn’t see Senna any more. There were widely spaced trees and a slight up-slope. Maybe she was back in the trees. Maybe she was over the rise. Maybe she was asleep. Maybe she was gone altogether.
I had no weapon. But now I was in it, I couldn’t wimp out. So I urged my horse to jump the stone fence. He didn’t exactly jump. More like stumbled. We kicked over some rocks and the horses complained, although not in English, which was a relief.
I urged my horse onward and began searching desperately for a big stick, anything I could use as a weapon. I told myself that if I screamed the fairies would be all over us in a few second, but I didn’t believe it. The fairies were fast but they weren’t everywhere at once. And by now the King and Etain and my friends were all ten minutes further down the path. Didn’t they even notice I wasn’t there? I mean, if they all came riding back after me and arrived just as I found Senna, hey, I’d get full credit for being brave and for catching the witch. I’d be content with that. I’d have the intentions of bravery, that was as good as actual bravery.
I topped the rise, leaning forward over the horse’s neck to stay in the slope. On the other side was a dell, I guess that’s what you call it. A sort of shallow dimple in the land, maybe a hundred feet across, grassy in most places, more sparse under the gloomy trees.
In the center of the dell was a circle of crudely-cut stone pillars the size of upended Land Cruisers. Twelve in all, and each topped with a precariously balanced stone about big enough to eat dinner off of.
There in the center of the circle, shining through the mist, stood Senna.
I felt a chill go right through me. It was damp, and it was cold, and I was tired, but none of that was the reason for the chill.
She was very calm, waiting, not exactly relaxed, but not ready to go Jackie Chan on me, either. I reined-in well outside the circle of stones.
“Druid stones, like Stonehenge,” Senna said conversationally, like I had asked her a question. They seem to have advanced quite a way since the days when they used these kinds of circles to plot the stars and the moon and regulate the planting days and the holidays and the harvests.”
“Yeah,” I said, dry-mouthed. “They have calendars now, I guess. Probably those Tolkien calendars. You know…like…okay.”
“What am I supposed to do with you, Christopher?” Senna asked, cocking her head to one side.
“Come back with me,” I said as firmly as I could.
She smiled and shook her head regretfully. “I don’t think so, Christopher. These folks are simple, but not stupid. They know that what happened to Lorg wasn’t magic. They know we’re involved in some way. And you or Jalil or April would have sold me out to them.”
I could deny it, but what would be the point? “Yeah Not me, though. Not that I wouldn’t, it’s just that I would never have a chance: It would be a toss-up between Jalil and April. Me, I don’t like you, don’t trust you, but I don’t have a major beef with you.”
She nodded, accepting that. “I wish I could trust you, Christopher, I really do.”
“Can I kill him now?” a voice asked.
That voice…familiar. From somewhere, not here, but from somewhere. I looked around, saw no one. Just the stones, the trees, the grass.
“Yes, you can kill him now.”
Keith loomed up from atop one of the massive rocks, rising to his full, not-very-impressive height. He cradled an Uzi in the crook of one arm. There was a pair of pistols hoistered around his waist. An ammo belt hung over one shoulder.
Keith, the sick little racist Nazi-wannabe punk who had threatened me over in the real world. I didn’t pause to wonder how in hell he’d ended up here, now, I just moved. Kicked my horse hard with both heels and rolled backward off him. Bang onto my back, thank God for soft grass, and still the wind was kicked out of me.
The Uzi erupted and the horse screamed. The horse hit the ground, kicked, then stopped kicking.
I rolled up against the base of the nearest stone pillar. Tried to think. Keith. With a freaking Uzi. A little Klebold-Harris psychopath working with Senna. And me with nothing but handfuls of grass.
I heard Keith above. He was leaping from the stone table to stone table. Leaping heavily. He was weighed down with all that hardware, not like me, no boy, thank goodness I had nothing to contend with but empty freaking hands. If I ran for the trees he’d have a perfect, easy shot at me. If I stayed in the stones he’d have a harder time, but there was Senna to deal with.
All I had survived through in Everworld and I was going to get shot? Shot? With a gun?