Tom Deitz - David Sullivan 02 - Fireshaper's Doom

AboutFireshaper’s Doom

FIRE, FLAME, AND REVENGE

There are worlds above the earth and under the sea, mystical kingdoms of silver and light, known only to

those who can see beyond . . . and there is the unknown place of fire frozen in time . . .

Mortal boy David Sullivan had discovered the mysteries of the other world. Indeed, he was put to the

test, triumphing over the wily schemes of the Windmaster. But in that evil game, an innocent Faerie lad

fell dead. Now his mother, bent on vengeance, has kidnapped David from the earthbound world and

brought him to the land of flames. Here he will be forced to do her bidding in an adventure dark and

fateful. Once more, he will cross swords with his archenemy, the Windmaster. And in so doing, David

will know the great Power of the Fireshaper . . .

“HIS CHARACTERS LIVE AND BREATHE AND PASS EASILY BETWEEN THE REALMS OF

REALITY AND FANTASY.”

Lynn Abbey, author ofUnicorn & Dragon

“I HAD A HARD TIME PUTTING IT DOWN!”

Katherine Kurtz

TOM DEITZ grew up in Young Harris, Georgia, a small town not far from the fictitious Enotah County

of FIRESHAPER’S DOOM, and has Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees from the University

of Georgia. His major in medieval English literature led Mr. Deitz to the Society for Creative

Anachronism, which in turn generated a particular interest in heraldry, historic costuming, castle

architecture, British folk music, and all things Celtic. He began the story of David Sullivan and his friends

inWindmaster’s Bane, his first published novel, available from Avon Books, and intends to follow their

adventures through several more volumes. Mr. Deitz is also a car nut and would like to build a small

castle someday.

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Publication Information

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Prologue: The Horn of Annwyn

PART I – TINDER

Prelude: A Sending

Chapter I: Mail

Chapter II: Messages

1: Annwyn

2: Erenn

Chapter III: The MacTyrie Gang

Chapter IV: Katie

PART II – SPARKS

Chapter V: Trysting

Chapter VI: The Crazy Deer

Chapter VII: Lugh’s Stables

Chapter VIII: Home

Chapter IX: The Irish Horse Traders

Chapter X: Froech’s Discovery

Chapter XI: Discussions

Chapter XII: In the Green Tent

Chapter XIII: The Wrath of Lugh

Chapter XIV: By Moonlight

PART III – FLAMES

Chapter XV: Water, Fog, and Fire

Chapter XVI: Pursuit

Chapter XVII: The Room Made of Fire

Chapter XVIII: Running

Chapter XIX: Flight

Chapter XX: Tracking

Chapter XXI: Hard Talking

Chapter XXII: Ashes

Chapter XXIII: From Trail to Track

Chapter XXIV: On the Porch

Chapter XXV: The Ship of Flames

Chapter XXVI: Waiting

Chapter XXVII: Boogers in the Woods

Chapter XXVIII: Visions

Chapter XXIX: The Burning Road

Chapter XXX: Searching

Chapter XXXI: Wanderings

Chapter XXXII: Curses and Vows

Chapter XXXIII: The Well of the Bloody Strand

Chapter XXXIV: Awakening

Chapter XXXV: Toro! Toro!

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Chapter XXXVI: Off the Track

Chapter XXXVII: To the Vault

Chapter XXXVIII: A Debate in the Night

Chapter XXXIX: Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Chapter XL: A Sudden Change of Fortune

Chapter XLI: Battle

Chapter XLII: Impatience

Chapter XLIII: A Message

Chapter XLIV: The Empty Shore

PART IV – EMBERS

Chapter XLV: The Secret of the Sword

Chapter XLVI: Cause and Effect

Chapter XLVII: The Hounds of the Overworld

Chapter XLVIII: Fireshaper’s Doom

Chapter XLIX: Musing

Chapter L: Coffee and ’Shine and Syrup

Publication Information

About Fireshaper’s Doom

Copyright Notice

eBook Version Notes

Copyright Notice

FIRESHAPER'S DOOMis an original publication of Avon Books. This work has never before

appeared in book form. This work is a novel. Any similarity to actual persons or events is purely

coincidental.

AVON BOOKS

A division of

The Hearst Corporation

105 Madison Avenue

New York, New York 10016

Cover illustration by Tim White

Published by arrangement with the author

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 87-91601

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ISBN: 0-380-75329-4

whatsoever except as provided by the U.S. Copyright Law. For information address Adele Leone

Literary Agency, Inc., 26 Nantucket Place, Scarsdale, New York 10583.

First Avon Books Printing: December 1987

AVON TRADEMARK REG. U.S. PAT. OFF. AND IN OTHER COUNTRIES, MARCA

REGISTRADA, HECHO EN CANADA.

Printed in Canada.

UNIV 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3

Prologue: The Horn of Annwyn

p. 1Tir-Nan-Og, where Lugh Samildinach rules the youngest realm of Faerie, is a bright land—brighter

by far than the dreary Lands of Men that float beneath it like a mirror’s dull reflection. Its oceans shine

like liquid silver; its deserts sprawl like lately molten gold. The very air imparts a gleam to field and forest,

man and monster. Even the Straight Tracks take on a sharper glitter there—at least those parts that show

at all as they ghost between the Worlds like threads of tenuous light.

But a thousand, thousand lands there are, linked by the treacherous webs of those arcane constructions.

And some are less idyllic.

Erenn, that mortal men call Eire, is one such country. Finvarra holds court there in his ancient rath

beneath the hill of Knockma, king of the greater host of the Daoine Sidhe. Erenn’s sky is much more

sober; its air not nearly as clear. It rubs along the Mortal World at an age more distant than its fellow to

the west, yet the smoke of human progress still seeps through at times to grime the Faery wind with soot

and the smells of death. Sometimes, too, the awkward, eager clatter of some man-made invention breaks

the Barrier Between to haunt the Fair Folk at their feasting. Finvarra smiles but seldom.

And there is Arawn’s holding: Annwyn of the Tylwyth-Teg, which humankind name Cymru. If

Tir-Nan-Og is early morn, and Erenn afternoon, then Annwyn is twilight. By day the sun looks veiled and

dusty; at night lamps made by druidry shine brighter than the moon. Shadows tend toward purple there;

the sky ofttimes takes on the hue of blood. The wind is not always gentle. And the borders are not

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clear—for in spots the very ground simply fades until it will support not even a spider’s passing. Many of

the Straight Tracks end in Annwyn, or else lead into places where even the Elemental Powers merge and

fragment endlessly like the dreaming of the damned.

p. 2“Will you go with me to Annwyn?” Lugh asked Nuada Airgetlam one morning. “If we do not visit

Arawn’s court ere the Mortal World unfreezes, we may find no chance again for many ages.”

Nuada’s dark eyes narrowed with suspicion. “And what has fueled this sudden haste, my master? What

difference cantheir weather make to us? The Walls Between the Worlds make cold no danger; and as

for the Road, no ship of man can pass there, whatever be the season.”

“Leif the Lucky has beached his boats near the red men’s northmost holding,” the High King told his

warlord. “Winter may hold them yet awhile, but spring will bring them south and westward. Tir-Nan-Og

is safe at present, for my Power is great, and the glamour I have lately raised is strong. But I fear our time

of peace will reach an ending, once word of Leif’s good fortune spans the ocean. Soon, I think, we must

set watch on our borders!”

Nuada sighed his regret. “I too fear men’s coming and the tools of iron that always travel with them. But

it is a thing that was bound to happen. You are right about Annwyn, though: if we would leave

Tir-Nan-Og unguarded, we must start the journey eastward very shortly.”

And so, on a day when snow sparkled bright on the Lands of Men, and Leif the Lucky sang of Vinland

and the kingdom he would carve, Lugh Samildinach and Nuada Airgetlam took the Golden Road across

the sea and came to Arawn’s kingdom.

The Lord of the Dim Land received them well and feasted them for many days. Deep grew the bonds

among the three, and diverse were the pleasures the three lords shared—in hunting and in trials of arms,

in the savoring of song and poetry and subtle arts of women, and most particularly in the study of

wondrous objects strangely fashioned.

“There is one thing left in Annwyn I would show you,” Arawn said one evening. “But I would not reveal

it here.”

“And what might that thing be?” Lugh asked his host.

“We will ride out on the morrow,” Arawn answered, and no more would he tell them.

And so, in the shallow light of dawn they journeyed forth: Lugh astride his great black stallion, black hair

bound by a fillet of gold, black mustache stirring in a west-blowing wind, gold silk surcoat shimmering

loose above tight black leather; and fair-haired Nuada beside him in white and silver, his left arm clothed

in creamy satin, the other a shoulder-stub forever cased in shining metal; and showing them the way,

Arawn himself, in dark gray velvet and blue-tingedp. 3bronze. No banners flew above that riding, no

trumpets marked its passage. Arawn’s squire alone went with them: a sullen, tight-mouthed Erenn-lad

whom the Dark King had in fosterage. Ailill was his name, though some already called him

Windmaster—and in bringing him along that day Arawn was very foolish, though how much so would not

be clear for nearly a thousand mortal years.

They rode all day, and at dusk were riding still.

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At sunset they found themselves on a cold, black-sanded plain, so near the tattered fringe of Annwyn

that even a nearby Track showed as nothing more than a smear of sparkling motes, like brass filings

strewn across the ground. A solid sheet of clouds hung low above them; before them was a country

Arawn liked but little and the others not at all. A dead-end, blind pocket of a place, it was; open to

nowhere else save Arawn’s kingdom: an ill-lit land where gray mist twisted in evil-smelling whirls among

the half-seen shapes of stunted trees and shattered, roofless buildings.

It was a place of mystery and rumor, shunned even by the mighty of the Tylwyth-Teg. Powersmiths lived

there: the Powersmiths of Annwyn, some folk called them, though they did not name Arawn their master,

and Arawn was not so bold as to set any claim upon that race at all.

But the Powersmiths made marvelous things—things the Sidhe could neither craft nor copy nor

understand, and it was just such an object that was the cause of the riding that day.

Arawn drew it from his saddlebag and held it out for Lugh’s inspection. A small hunting horn, it seemed,

wrought of silver and gold, copper and greenish brass. At its heart was the curved ivory tusk of a beast

that dwelt only in the Land of the Powersmiths and was near extinction there. Light played round about it,

tracing flickering trails among the thin, hard coils that laced its surface. Nine silver bands encircled it, the

longest set with nine gems, the next eight, and so on: nine black diamonds, and eight blue sapphires,

seven emeralds, six topazes in golden mountings, five smooth domes of banded onyx, four rubies red as

war, three amethysts, a pair of moonstones. And at the end, on a hinged cap that sealed the mouthpiece:

a fiery opal large as a partridge’s egg.

“It is the most precious thing in all my realm,” the Lord of Annwyn told them. “Most precious and most

deadly.” His gaze locked with Lugh’s, and he paused to take a long, decisive breath. “I would make you

a gift of it.”

“A gift—but not without some danger, it would seem,” Lugh noted carefully.

“You are a brave man,” Arawn continued. “But you are also prup. 4dent, much more so than I. It would

be best that you have mastery of this weapon.”

Nuada cocked a slanted eyebrow. “Well, if there is more to it than beauty, then it keeps its threat well

hidden.”

Arawn nodded. “The Powersmiths made it. One of their druids set spells upon it—and then he died. It

was meant as a pledge of peace, but now I dare not trust it.”

“It does not look much like a sword,” Ailill interrupted. “Does it hold some blade in secret that perhaps I

have not noticed?”

“It cuts with an edge of sound, young Windmaster,” came Arawn’s sharp reply. “But perhaps it is best

that I show you.”

The Lord of Annwyn gazed skyward then, to where a solitary eagle flapped vast wings beneath the

red-lit heavens. “Behold!” he whispered, as he thumbed the opal downward, raised the horn to his lips,

and blew.

No sound resulted—or at least no sound that even Faery ears could follow. But their bones seemed at

once to buzz within them, and the hair prickled upon their bodies. The solid flesh between felt for a brief,

horrifying moment as though it had turned to water. For an instant, too, the air seemed about to shatter in

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the wake of that absent noise.

And then the airdid break, cracked apart in a file of jagged angles that snapped closed again quick as a

flash of lightning. But not before a series of shapes had leapt through, to congregate in a milling, hairy

horde around the legs of Arawn’s stallion.

They were hounds, or at least they looked like hounds: great rangy beasts with shoulders near as high as

the horses’ bellies, and narrow heads almost as long as a tall man’s forearm. Their hair was a remarkable

white like sun-bleached bone, and where that hair grew longest—upon their backs and in fringes on their

tails and the hind sides of their legs—it looked less like fur than feathers. Four parts alone held any color:

their claws were iron black; a deathly gray their tongues; their eyes glowed a startling green. And their

ears, up-pointing like those of a wolf, showed red as a warrior’s blood. They swirled among the legs of

Arawn’s horse like the pale, foaming waves of a cold and greedy ocean. The sound of their breaths was

like thunder.

Arawn’s face froze; a line of moisture condensed upon his brow.

One of the hounds—the largest one, the one with the greenest eyes and the reddest ears—looked up at

him.

Arawn took a ragged breath and pointed toward the eagle that still floated against the sky. Somewhere a

cloud stretched thin enoughp. 5for a single ray of dying sunlight to paint the plain beneath with brazen

glory.

“I would have the life of that bird,” Arawn said, as though he named his own destruction.

The pack bayed then: one cry. And there are no words in the tongues of the Sidhe, or the Tylwyth-Teg,

or of men, either, to give image to that howling. But two centuries later it still echoed sometimes in

Airgetlam’s dreams, so that the Warlord of Tir-Nan-Og awoke into darkness with a sweat upon his

body, his single hand reaching for his sword.

And then they ran, those dogs that the horn commanded. They ran upon the earth, yet no dust rose at

their passing, and the sand where they had stood displayed no padded prints. And then they ran into the

sky, describing a tight-coiled spiral that twisted upward with more speed and purpose than the fastest

hawk might summon.

The eagle circled once in abstract interest, for never had it been challenged in its own realm by any less

than Arawn’s folk themselves, when they put on other forms to frolic there. But these were not the

Tylwyth-Teg, whatever shape enwrapped them, and the eagle felt uneasy. It straightened its glide,

flapped its mighty wings, then folded them to dive. But by the time it had dropped twice its own length,

hot breath fanned its feathers, and in one length more fangs sank into its body. Not even a drop of its

blood escaped those dogs to spatter the ground before Arawn’s staring company.

“It is a hunting horn,” Arawn told them grimly, “of a sort. But the hounds it masters are no beasts born of

Annwyn. Even the Powersmiths do not know whence they come, or else they do not tell us. The hounds

always catch what they pursue, though it flee through all the Worlds. But one must take care when he

sets them on a quarry, for once they are loosed, they must have a life. And”—his voice darkened—“they

can devour both the bodyand the soul.”

Lugh’s face was as grim as the Lord of Annwyn’s, but he took the horn from Arawn’s fingers. “A gift

like this shows trust beyond all measure, for with it one could master whatever land might please him.”

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“He would have to be careful, though,” observed Nuada. “For it could also make him many

enemies—and many false friends besides. And,” he continued, with the first shudder any there had ever

seen upon him, “has one of you considered what—if the Powersmiths cast off such things of

Power—they hoard in secret for themselves?”

The Dark King did not answer, and the Bright King was alsop. 6silent as he tucked the Horn within his

surcoat, though his eyes held great misgiving.

Arawn faced his squire then, and his face was hard as stone. “None of this has happened, young

Windmaster.None of this at all .”

But Ailill had thought already of a lady who might listen.

PART I – TINDER

Prelude: A Sending

p. 9(Tir-Nan-Og—autumn)

On a beach of black sand in the south of Tir-Nan-Og, Nuada Airgetlam sat astride a white horse and

gazed eastward across the ocean.

Water spread before him, and all of it was gray—gray, that is, save where it was silver filigree stretched

thin across the towering fronts of monstrous waves, or the froth of ragged ivory lace atop them.

Or gold where the Straight Tracks threaded through them.

But it was not the healthy sun gold that told of easy passage; it was the weak, shifting color that told of

danger and the perilous way. For the Circles of the Worlds turned out of track this season: the suns rose

against each other in the Lands of Men and Faerie; the moons added each their contentious influences.

And in the skies of the Mortal World was a hairy star that wrought its own disruption.

And so all the seas of Faerie ran high, and not even the ships of the Tuatha de Danaan could sail upon

them. Storms raged in the High Air, so that those same ships could not skim above those seas, nor birds

any longer fly there. And the Tracks between the realms were so weak and fickle that no foot or wheel

dared pass upon them, as had not been the case in five hundred of the years of men.

“Lord, you may not pass. You would not return,” said the border watch. “The way is sealed, no one

goes that way, except to lose himself forever.”

“But what of my ravens?” Nuada asked. “I would set them a-traveling: word must be sent to Annwyn

and Erenn of what passed at the Trial of Heroes. Nearly a month that word has waited, and it can wait

no longer.”

But wait it did, for almost a change of seasons. It was summer in the Lands of Men before the eastward

Road reopened.

Chapter I: Mail

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(MacTyrie, Georgia—Friday, June 21)

p. 10David Sullivan—Mad Dave, as he had somehow come to be called during the previous school

year—had what his mother would have termed in her Georgia mountain twang “the nervous, pacing

fidgets.”

Except that he wasn’t exactly nervous—just impatient, which was generally worse because it was usually

somebody else’s fault. And except that he wasn’t, for the moment, pacing—but only because Alec

McLean had just asked him, quite forcefully, to stop. For the fourth time in twice as many minutes he

flopped down in the window seat snuggled beneath the dormer of Alec’s second-floor bedroom and

took another stab at reading the page ofNew Teen Titans he had likewise commenced four times before.

And once again was not successful.

Before he knew it, his gaze had wandered away from the comic to survey the neat, odd-shaped room

beyond his cubby. An aluminum-framed backpack dominated his view, bulging lumpily atop the double

bed at his left like a blue nylon hippopotamus. And just beyond it, David knew, lay the very heart and

center of his impatience: a pair of half-empty suitcases.

“Well,McLean,” he growled. “Do you think I’d be out of line if I asked you if you could maybe,

possibly, you know, likehurry just a little? I’ve been sitting here like a knot on a log ’til I’m about

halfway mildewed.”

A tall, slender boy straightened from where he had been thumping around on the floor of the closet in the

opposite wall. He aimed an exasperated glare at David, one hand snagging a pair of shiny black ankle

boots, the other grasping a pair of wrinkled burgundyENOTAH COUNTY’POSSUMS sweatpants. He

rolled his eyes with the tolerant resignation of the much-put-upon.

“Give me a break, Sullivan,” he retorted sourly. “This packing for two trips at once is a real bummer.

Camping overnight with the M-gang and staying six weeks at Governor’s Honors with the brightp. 11est

kids in Georgia demand fundamentally different logistical and aesthetic approaches.”

“Ha!” David snorted at his friend’s attempt at high-flown language, which he didn’t have the patience for

just then. “Didn’t takeme all day.”

Alec gave the sweats a tentative sniff and wrinkled his nose distastefully, but nevertheless stuffed them

into the backpack. The shoes thunked into one of the suitcases. “Well, considering thatyour entire

wardrobe consists of holey T-shirts, scruffy jeans, scuzzy sneakers, and sweaty red bandanas, I’m not

surprised.” He turned around and began rummaging in his chest of drawers.

David sighed and glanced down at his current attire, which indeed precisely reflected his friend’s

assessment: plain white T-shirt stretched tight across a chest that had thickened considerably in the last

year; cutoff Levis beltless around a narrow waist, their side seams ripped almost indecently high; Sears

second-best sneakers loose on sockless feet. He raised a black eyebrow into a tossled forelock of thick

blond hair—shorter now than he had ever worn it, though still nearly shoulder-long in back. “I resent that,

McLean! I’ve got two pairs of cords and—”

“One of which I gave you for Christmas.”

“—and a paisley shirt.”

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“WhichLiz gave you.”

David flung down the comic and stood up, stretching his fingertips to the dormer’s ceiling—at

five-foot-seven, it was nice to be able to touch a ceiling somewhere. He began to pace again: four steps

along the narrow space between the front wall and the foot of the bed, and four steps back. “Just move

it, okay?”

Alec frowned, unloaded a stack of white Fruit-of-the Looms into the closest suitcase, and snapped it

closed. “It was your idea to try to fit in a last-minute camping trip before we leave.”

“And yours for us to head straight to Valdosta from camping.”

“Thereby saving me at least an hour of Mad Davy Sullivan and the Mustang of Death.”

“You maythink so,” David said, flashing his teeth fiendishly. He paused at one end of his route and

hefted the backpack experimentally. “Good God, McLean, what’ve you got in here—lead?”

“You should know. You’ve been watching me like a bloody hawk ever since I started.”

David drummed his fingers absently on the shiny metal. “Negatory, my man, you had this thing half full

before I ever got here. All you’ve put in since then’s a pair of stinky britches.”

Alec ran a hand unconsciously through the soft, neat spikes ofp. 12brown hair he had affected lately.

“Well, if you’ve got to know, it’s full of extra clothes, among other things. I have a way of needing them

when we go camping. It inevitably rains, or somebody spills beer on me, or worse. I figured if I packed

stuff that was dirty to start with, maybe my luck’d—”

“Damn!” David groaned loudly and slapped himself on the forehead. “Damn! Damn! Damn! Iknew

there was something I forgot—I didn’t raid Pa’s beer stash. I—What’re you grinning at?”

Alec patted the backpack meaningfully, his face fairly glowing. “Figured you would—forget, that is. So

let’s just say that what you so frivolously referred to as lead is—how shall I put it?—a little bit more

liquid and a hell of a lot more potable.”

“You didn’t . . .” David began dubiously, his eyes growing wide as Alec nodded and raised two fingers.

“Youdid! Two six-packs? Oh lordy, lordy—at the ripe old age of seventeen Dr. McLean’s only boy

finally becomes a rebel!”

He sat down on the foot of the bed and fell backward behind the suitcases, giggling uncontrollably.

“That’s notquite the reaction I expected,” Alec responded with forced dignity, but the dour facade

dissolved as his gaze met David’s and a new chorus of giggles erupted. “Snagged a bottle of bubbly

while I was at it, to toast the quest with,” he added with a smirk.

David levered himself up on his elbows, his face still flushed. His eyes glistened. “What quest?”

“For the Holy Grail of Knowledge, fruitloop.” Alec dipped his head toward the two suitcases. “Or more

accurately, the Holy Shrine of Our Lady of MTV and Saint Shopping Mall.”

“That assumes they have MTV in Valdosta, and even if they do, that they’ve also got it at the college

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Tom Deitz - David Sullivan 02 - Fireshaper's Doom

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