Warstalker's Track by Tom Deitz

through his head, and he caught fleeting images of a vast boiling lake beneath a dome of rock. And, unmistakably, as though he shared not only Fionchadd’s thoughts but his very soul and essence, what could only be the hard adrenaline thrill that presaged battle.
    Silence! came that silent command. Prepare for combat, came another hard on its heels.
    “What?” someone asked aloud: his father or Aikin, it sounded like.
    On deck now, and see, came the Faery’s voiceless whisper.
    The cabin filled with grunts, gasps, and troubled glances as his comrades scrambled to their feet. Lord Silverhand, came Fionchadd’s thought again, you are Lugh’s Warlord. We are in Lugh’s service. It is your right to lead us.
    For now, Nuada agreed. But I am not well versed in iron as an ally.
    The new plan, then? Until we have cause to change it? Nuada nodded.
    It was a flimsy ploy, David knew, as they filed toward the stairs; wouldn’t stand any kind of scrutiny, but perhaps it would be enough.
    Nuada, Aife, Fionchadd, and David himself wore Faery armor and clothing—and the glamour-wrought visages of known members of the rebels. Big Billy, Brock, Aikin, and LaWanda wore mundane togs and went bowed and stooped, with their well-armed hands held close behind them, as though they were prisoners to those Faery warriors, retrieved at last after the postcouncil attack from which Nuada had helped them escape. The Sons didn’t necessarily know the particulars of that, after all, nor could they recognize every face among their sympathizers. If challenged, Aife would claim to be who she was: a former member of their ranks, newly freed from Lugh’s glamour-wrapped imprisonment and eager to rejoin their ranks; with captives brought as proof of her commitment and competence.
    It wouldn’t stand long or close scrutiny, of course; iron made its presence known through smell, to the keen-nosed among the Sidhe—like metal newly forged, Aife had told them—and anyone with Power could sense a glamour. Still, the plan was for the Sons to see what they expected and relax their guard until it was too late. After that—who knew? It depended on too many things: surprise, Power, the effectiveness of mortal weapons in this World, Faery fear of iron, the sheer number of foes they would face, and the circumstances under which that battle was waged.
    That last, at least, was answered when David finally got a clear view of the place into which the Pillar had delivered them.
    True to the image he’d caught from Fionchadd’s mind, they were inside a huge stone chamber, easily half a mile across. A perfect sphere, it appeared, the ceiling (limestone or granite?) smoothed to a uniform bowl but unpolished and lit by a quivering reddish glow that hinted at once of unseen external flame and those rocks’ own inner heat, as though they’d stood long and long beside a forge. The air was hot, too, and vapors seethed across the decks to wrap them—vapors that rose from what David saw, as they eased into formation on the foredeck, was a solid sheet of boiling, frothing water that evidently filled the lower half of that cavern. The air smelled hot, too, and the vapors were foul-scented steam such as issued from hot springs back in his own World. Droplets of condensation fell like hot, sticky rain.
    But there was no sign of anything manmade—nothing iron or even ironlike—nothing but that dripping ceiling, the steaming lake, and their own ship that had somehow been spat out of the Pillar of Fire that rose from the center of all that frothing turmoil to pierce the dome above with a spear of bloody light.
    Which was strange in its own right, for though the Pillar glowed, it did not illuminate; as though it was not entirely present, or existed at one remove, like a perfect hologram of a flame.
    But something else was certainly present, for David’s eyes were burning, as they did in the presence of Power in active use. And by straining them in the wavering light, he was