Fireshaper's Doom Read Online Free Page B

chain around his neck. “And this, for another,” he added, pointing to his eyes.
    Alec yawned in obviously feigned boredom. “A magic ring and the Second Sight. Big deal.”
    David poked him in the ribs. “You thought so last summer.”
    “Has it really been that long. Almost a year?”
    David frowned thoughtfully. “Close to it. It was July thirty-first when I got the Sight, and the next day—Lughnasadh—when I heard music in the night and followed it to the woods.”
    “And saw the Sidhe.”
    David began to stroke the ring. Almost before he knew it he found his mind agleam with images: a moonlit forest; a golden radiance upon the ground; a parade of men and women mounted on beautiful horses, their faces fair but far from human, their clothing from another time entirely. The Sidhe of Ireland at their riding.
    He had read of them—dreamed of them…
    Met them on a summer night nearly a year before and nothing had been the same after. The fabric of his reality had shattered in twenty-one days, and he still hadn’t put it back together.
    The sun slanted through the windshield, warming his face. “David?”
    “Huh? What?”
    “You went off all of a sudden.”
    David smiled apologetically. “Sorry. But you know, if it wasn’t for this ring Oisin gave me I’d almost think it was a dream.”
    “Those were interesting times, that’s for certain,” Alec replied carefully. “I still feel bad about not believing you when you told me about the ring.”
    “Well, let’s face it: the idea of a whole system of other worlds overlying our own’s a lot for anybody to swallow. I doubt I’d have believed it either, if it’d happened to you.”
    Alec’s brow wrinkled thoughtfully. “Probably wouldn’t have, though. Things like that avoid me like the plague.”
    “Unless I drag you in.”
    “Yeah, but I know you’d go again in a minute if you had half a chance.”
    “Would you?”
    Alec paused, scratching the sparse line of stubble on his chin. “I don’t know. Part of me would like to, but part of me’s scared I’d get stuck there and not be able to get back. I think you could make a go of life in the Otherworld, but I’m not so sure about myself. I… I need normality, at least most of the time. I guess I think one world’s enough.”
    “But nothing’s really normal, even in this world.”
    “Particularly not Mad Davy Sullivan.”
    “Nor the fool of a Scotsman he claims as his best friend.”
    “At least I don’t become inarticulate when discussing a certain young lady.”
    David did not answer. His face had gone distant and dreamy again. “You know, the thing I regret most is that business about Fionchadd,” he whispered at last.
    Alec stared at him, then frowned. “Get off it, Sullivan,” he said a little roughly. “You can’t change what happened.”
    “Yeah,” David replied bitterly. “What’s done is done, and who’s dead is dead. He could have been my friend, Alec.”
    “Or you could have been born in Kalamazoo, and then you’d never have met.”
    David sighed and squared his shoulders. “Yeah, right—as usual. ’Tis just a case of the moodies sneakin’ up on me,” he added in a convincing brogue, though his apparent good spirits seemed more than a little forced. “Now how ’bout readin’ me some o’ yon massie volume, laddie?”
    “You can read, Sullivan, do it yourself.”
    “Ah, and sure that I can, lad. But would ye have me be doin’ it while I’m drivin’?”
    Alec stuck out his hand in despair. “Give me the blessed thing, then.”
    “I was just tryin’ ta take yer mind off other problems,” David chided, the brogue already disappearing.
    “Such as?”
    David turned the key, revved the engine a great deal more than necessary, and returned to his natural voice. “Such as the two-hundred-fifty raging Ford horsepower I have just awakened!”
    “I’m reading, Lord. I’m reading!” Alec moaned extravagantly. David slipped the ring back under his shirt and