Free Landslayer's Law by Tom Deitz Page B

number two, ’cause we know for absolute fact that the only Track around here’s the one out at Whitehall.”
    “Which implies,” Calvin mused, “that whoever brought that kid through was either breakin’ Lugh’s law or actin’ on his specific authority.”
    “Yeah,” David agreed. “That’s what I figured too. Unfortunately, I suspect the former. For one reason, ’cause this was clearly a human kid, and dumpin’ him out on the street like that’s exactly the sort of petty, risky thing Ailill’s faction—the anti-human faction—would do. And for another reason, ’cause it was a young guy that did it—younger lookin’ than most of ’em, anyway, say early teens, human standard—and the young ones seem to be the big movers of the anti-human bunch, which is odd, knowin’ how much they like to slip into this World to raise hell and get their jollies—”
    “Like some of us go to the zoo, or hike, or go hunting—any place that’s different from home,” Liz observed.
    “Right. But what really spooks me,” David went on, “was the way the guy looked at me. He knew I was there, and he knew I’d caught him doin’ something he shouldn’t—it was like he was defyin’ me and what I represented by my implicit connection with the old-line Faery hierarchy. Like he was thumbin’ his nose at Lugh through me.”
    “At authority, in other words,” Liz concluded.
    A shrug. “I guess. Never thought of myself as an authority figure.”
    Calvin leaned back and gnawed his lip. “So what I’m readin’ between the lines here is more trouble in Tir-Nan-Og.”
    Another shrug. “We’ve known for a while that things aren’t right there. There’s the human/anti-human faction for one thing: those who acknowledge that we’re stronger than the Sidhe in some ways, and that since we control the World whose gravity maintains their World, we need to be cultivated and trusted; versus those who think we’re a threat to them, and that our World would do as good a job supportin’ their World if it was a glowin’ mass of slag.”
    “Wrong word,” Calvin cautioned. “Slag’s often iron residue—and iron melts through the World Walls, if I recall.”
    “If they’re thin enough where iron is in our World,” David acknowledged. “But to get back to Tir-Nan-Og, there’s also the problem of the small Faeries—bodachs, leprechauns, and so on—feelin’ ignored and dispossessed by the Seelie Lords, as they call ’em. A lot of ’em have emigrated to Ys, which is another Faery realm that, best I can tell, overlaps our World underwater, but which also has access to another, empty World, where the small guys would have nothing to fear from us.”
    “All of which I knew,” Calvin yawned.
    “Sorry,” David grunted. “I forget who knows what anymore. Need to do a chart, I reckon.”
    “Comes of keeping secrets,” Liz muttered.
    “Of havin’ to keep secrets,” David amended.
    “Whatever.”
    “Anyway,” David continued, “the bottom line is that Faerie, which was always fairly factionalized, has become more so since—forgive my ego here—I found out the Sidhe were trompin’ around my pa’s back forty. Basically, I’ve given both big factions a rallyin’ point, and—’cause of the effects of all the Gating we’ve wound up doin’—helped polarize all kinds of minor factions and grievances as well.”
    “My man, the revolutionary figurehead,” Liz drawled.
    David grimaced. “Very unwilling figurehead. Frankly, it still feels unreal, ’specially when I think back to when I first heard music and sneaked out of my folks house, and met the Faeries riding in the woods one summer night. That all seems like a dream now.”
    “Good dream, too,” Calvin assured him. “Oh, sure it changed your life—it changed all our lives, and I didn’t even know you then. But look me straight in the eye, David Kevin Sullivan, and tell me you’d undo it if you had the chance.”
    “I’d undo the damage I’ve