almost another day to find a place where he might work his summons unobserved, and that was enough time wasted. He would begin now, at midnight on the second day, when his Power was at its height.
The lakeside where he stood would have been beautiful if he had spared time to look at it. There was a beach of black sand on which tiny waves slapped with an oily sluggishness that suggested something other than water. The stuff smelled vaguely of cloves, and the handful he had dripped from his fingers sparkled amber in the moonlight. But he had had no desire to taste it.
The lake itself opened out behind him until its glittering surface merged with the starlit sky which it perfectly mirrored. Steep slopes ringed that water on the near sides, tall warrior pines marching up them to stand in file at the crest like the soldiers for which they were named, the sparse cones of branches at their summits for helms and the curling strips of hard gray bark that frayed from their trunks in ringlike semicircles for mail.
The only sound was the blurred whisper of the wind on the water and the forlorn cry of selkies among the rocks to the north.
Ailill glanced up at the sky and nodded.
Midnight. Time to begin the summoning.
It was too bad he could not work openly, too bad he could not work from the Track itself. But the Sidhe in Tir-Nan-Og seemed to have more regard for mortal men than he was accustomed to, and he had strong reason to suspect that such open action against the boy would not stand him in good stead.
He would have to play a careful game, then, and one of great subtlety. For he had heard much of Lugh Samildinach, and knew him to be of unbending nobility. Lugh would be a firm opponent of his plan, if it came to his knowledge, for even Ailill’s own lord and brother, Finvarra, did not know the dark thoughts that filled the secret places of his mind. Not that he cared, really. The war would come anyway —his war, the war with mankind. But if he could capture the boy without Lugh’s knowledge—rob the humans of what little initiative the boy’s knowledge might give them—the start of that war might be delayed until a time when Ailill himself might better orchestrate it to his own best advantage: King of the Sidhe in Tir-Nan-Og and Erenn.
He faced northeast, drew four deep breaths, and closed his eyes. His brow furrowed for a moment, and then he shook his head and crabwalked a dozen paces further to his right, where he repeated the procedure. This was it; this was the place! This time he was in perfect alignment with the blood trace he had left on the Track and the house, where another kind of Power told him the human boy was.
He knelt on the damp sand and closed his eyes again, took four more breaths, and set his Power to insinuating his consciousness through the Walls between the Worlds. A moment’s work, like feeling his way through a densely leaved forest shrouded in thick fog. Once through, it was a simple matter to locate the residue of Power that still remained in those three drops of blood.
He cleared his mind, extended his Power, called into being a bridge of thought connecting himself with that tiny fragment of his own essence he had left as a focus.
Connected! Good!
Now to direct the Power, send it seeking its victim. Ailill recalled the boy’s image to his mind: shorter than most mortal men, slender and supple like a tumbler or a swimmer; handsome for a human, with thick fair hair almost to his shoulders, dark brows, blue eyes, fine white teeth in a full-lipped mouth that would grin too easily. The image brightened, sharpened. Ailill felt the line of Power grow taut, exerting a firm but gentle tug against his will. He would enter the boy’s mind now, fix the line of Power, and draw him from his own World exactly as a fisherman would reel in a catch.
The image was clear. The boy was standing on the porch of the hovel he called a house. Now to touch the mind, to fix the Power, just so…
NO! There was
The lakeside where he stood would have been beautiful if he had spared time to look at it. There was a beach of black sand on which tiny waves slapped with an oily sluggishness that suggested something other than water. The stuff smelled vaguely of cloves, and the handful he had dripped from his fingers sparkled amber in the moonlight. But he had had no desire to taste it.
The lake itself opened out behind him until its glittering surface merged with the starlit sky which it perfectly mirrored. Steep slopes ringed that water on the near sides, tall warrior pines marching up them to stand in file at the crest like the soldiers for which they were named, the sparse cones of branches at their summits for helms and the curling strips of hard gray bark that frayed from their trunks in ringlike semicircles for mail.
The only sound was the blurred whisper of the wind on the water and the forlorn cry of selkies among the rocks to the north.
Ailill glanced up at the sky and nodded.
Midnight. Time to begin the summoning.
It was too bad he could not work openly, too bad he could not work from the Track itself. But the Sidhe in Tir-Nan-Og seemed to have more regard for mortal men than he was accustomed to, and he had strong reason to suspect that such open action against the boy would not stand him in good stead.
He would have to play a careful game, then, and one of great subtlety. For he had heard much of Lugh Samildinach, and knew him to be of unbending nobility. Lugh would be a firm opponent of his plan, if it came to his knowledge, for even Ailill’s own lord and brother, Finvarra, did not know the dark thoughts that filled the secret places of his mind. Not that he cared, really. The war would come anyway —his war, the war with mankind. But if he could capture the boy without Lugh’s knowledge—rob the humans of what little initiative the boy’s knowledge might give them—the start of that war might be delayed until a time when Ailill himself might better orchestrate it to his own best advantage: King of the Sidhe in Tir-Nan-Og and Erenn.
He faced northeast, drew four deep breaths, and closed his eyes. His brow furrowed for a moment, and then he shook his head and crabwalked a dozen paces further to his right, where he repeated the procedure. This was it; this was the place! This time he was in perfect alignment with the blood trace he had left on the Track and the house, where another kind of Power told him the human boy was.
He knelt on the damp sand and closed his eyes again, took four more breaths, and set his Power to insinuating his consciousness through the Walls between the Worlds. A moment’s work, like feeling his way through a densely leaved forest shrouded in thick fog. Once through, it was a simple matter to locate the residue of Power that still remained in those three drops of blood.
He cleared his mind, extended his Power, called into being a bridge of thought connecting himself with that tiny fragment of his own essence he had left as a focus.
Connected! Good!
Now to direct the Power, send it seeking its victim. Ailill recalled the boy’s image to his mind: shorter than most mortal men, slender and supple like a tumbler or a swimmer; handsome for a human, with thick fair hair almost to his shoulders, dark brows, blue eyes, fine white teeth in a full-lipped mouth that would grin too easily. The image brightened, sharpened. Ailill felt the line of Power grow taut, exerting a firm but gentle tug against his will. He would enter the boy’s mind now, fix the line of Power, and draw him from his own World exactly as a fisherman would reel in a catch.
The image was clear. The boy was standing on the porch of the hovel he called a house. Now to touch the mind, to fix the Power, just so…
NO! There was
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