by Ari Marmell
But I had an astonishing amount of luck. And aes sidhe reflexes ain’t to be sneezed at, either.
That same leap carried me higher still, so that I reached the top of the next standing case right about the same time the falling one hit the floor and broke apart.
Grangullie, who really looked better’n he should have after the broderick I’d given him, had stepped aside after he set the case to falling, moving back toward the next row, where I’d launched him through a few shelves of his own. I’d only gotten a slant on him for a blink or two, at the height of my jump, but that’d do. I snagged the top of the shelf with both hands, vaulted up and around without ever setting foot on the wood, and hurled myself heels-first at the gape-jawed redcap.
We both went tumbling good, but I definitely got the better of it—mostly ’cause I wasn’t the one who’d just had an aes sidhe dropped on his collarbone. Grangullie struggled upright, but he wobbled, arms windmilling and grabbing at anything around him in hopes of keeping steady.
I rapped him across the temple with the wand, once again drawing everything good and useful from his aura that I could, filling in the gaps with disorientation and misfortune and pain. The redcap collapsed backward, slamming into the half-cracked ruin of one of the shelves I’d tossed him through earlier.
It was a low but terrified cry that distracted me from pounding Grangullie’s face into something resembling peanut butter and jellyfish. Raighallan was making for the door at an awkward waddling jog. Over one shoulder, he hefted the box—keeping his grip good and distant from the bracket. Over the other, he carried the limp and whimpering curator, head bobbing and bouncing, fingers reaching almost idly for anything that might save him.
Well, shit. I hadn’t the foggiest idea what Raiggy had in mind, but I sure as hell wasn’t about to let him outta my sight with the spear, no matter how well sealed it was. I jabbed the L&G hard into Grangullie’s throat, physically and magically both, and hadda hope that was enough to keep him down. Then I was running full out, half-shredded flogger flapping behind me. Think I about tore the door off its hinges, since I just turned my shoulder to it instead of stopping to push it open.
Footsteps echoed, vanishing up the stairwell and I pounded after ’em. But, of course, he heard me clear as I heard him. I dunno if Raiggy’d been making for anyplace in particular or if he’d just wanted to put some distance between us. Either way, guess he figured he wasn’t too keen on me catchin’ him up on the stairs. Just as I’d dashed past the landing on the ground floor, I heard another door slam open a flight’n a half above me.
Next stop, main floor: birds, Africa, Egypt, and scuffling Fae come full circle. It kinda fit, honestly.
I blasted through those doors, too, just in time to spot Raighallan crouching beside one of the free-standing displays. Couldn’t really see what he was up to, but he had the box in his hands, and Lydecker’s feet were sticking out from behind the small pedestal.
He heard me comin’, started to turn, clutching the box under one arm and drawing his wand with the other…
I didn’t bother stopping to use my own magics. I just threw myself at him in a tackle I’m pretty sure woulda been illegal on any rugby or football field. I wrapped my mitts around him as we rolled, and leaned aside to steer us a little. He smacked me once in the ribs during that tumble, sending a shock of pain all through me, but I wasn’t gonna let it slow me any. I came outta the roll back on my feet, hefting the bastard in both hands, and hurled him hard as I could at my old elephant buddy’s tusks.
What can I say? The trick hadn’t worked with Herne, but I felt it still had some potential.
Unfortunately, if it did, that potential wasn’t realized tonight, either. Even as Raiggy hurtled on his way, I could feel the spiritual wound from his wand, the gobbet of raw luck he’d ripped away from me.
And with that extra luck, he managed to raise the box over his head, now braced with both hands (though at least he’d hadda drop the wand in the process). The long wooden crate slammed hard into both tusks, cracking one of ’em—and more importantly, keeping Raighallan from being impaled on either, or even from hitting the big bony head between ’em.
I charged, aiming to grab his wand, see if I could make this more of an unfair fight. He dropped to the ground in a half crouch just as I neared, but there was no way he could get to his weapon before I did…
’Cept he didn’t try. Instead, he gripped that damn box at one end and clocked me something fierce with the other.
The end with the bracket, of course.
Zzot.
My whole body went stiff and limp, burnin’ and freezin’ at once, and if that don’t make any sense to you, imagine how I felt. I hadn’t even realized I’d been thrown or staggered back until I crashed into the wall between two massive archways. Not sure how I’d kept hold of the L&G, but I wasn’t complaining any.
Well, you know, about that part of it.
I thought the faint sizzling was all in my head, at first, leftover from the phantom shock I’d just got, but no. My thoughts cleared some, ears stopped ringing, but it was still there, loud as day (um, so to speak): the drunken honeybee buzz of the bracket’s awakened power.
I righted myself, pushing off the wall with one palm, and it was then that I saw just why Raighallan had scooped up poor, dumb, greedy Lydecker.
The curator—or former curator, to judge by the open, sightless blinkers and slowly blackening splotches on his skin—was bent around the bracket at the waist. Raighallan wrenched the body back and forth, basically using Lydecker as a real large and awkward oven mitt.
No, I can’t tell you why the energy didn’t conduct through the body the way it had the tools downstairs. It wasn’t real electricity, after all, just sorta a spiritual equivalent. Maybe once it got grounded in flesh or soul it didn’t pass through any further? What the hell do I know?
I knew it was working, though. I heard more scraping on wood, saw the prongs sliding back and forth. Slow going, sure, but given a minute or so, Raighallan was gonna have the damn thing open.
So, no finesse. No careful manipulation of chance. I aimed, braced myself, and blasted him with every last bit of agony, mental darkness, and sheer power the L&G could take in a single shot.
Raighallan arched back, screaming, stumbling—and since I hadn’t been mucking with things, I can only call it genuine good luck that Lydecker’s limp body crumpled one way while the box toppled the other. Even if Raiggy could gather himself, he couldn’t reach both at once.
I didn’t really mean to let him gather himself, either.
No running, now. I advanced on him at a steady walk, and with every other step, I shot him again. Again. And again. He reeled back, and I kept coming. He fell. Crawled. Whimpered as he dragged himself across the floor, desperate to escape the pain I kept pumping into him.
And you know what? I’m honest enough to say I enjoyed it. Reveled in it, even. He had it comin’ to him, this and so much more.
Maybe, in that moment, so did I.
In my advance and his crawl, we’d moved past the box and the body, see? Not far, just a few paces, but far enough.
I heard Grangullie’s scream of fury, spun in time to see the pike rise up, up, only to come crashing back down.
On the bracket.
The redcap staggered back from the phantom shock, but the damage was done. The impact of the enchanted blade knocked the metal from the box, sending it flying amidst a flurry of wooden splinters.
I was on him before he could even catch his balance, parrying the pike aside with the flat of my hand, stabbing at him with the L&G like it was a dagger. Everything I’d thrown at Raighallan a minute ago, I used to pound Grangullie now, made just that little bit worse by the physical blows. The redcap was already looking pretty well pummeled from our dust-up in the basement. His efforts to push me back, land a punch, or bring his pike to bear, were pretty feeble and growing weaker.
And a damn good thing. I could be in a lotta trouble, here. Now
that the box was vulnerable, I hadda keep ’em both reeling, put ’em down before either of them got their hands on…
From behind, I heard the click of a latch opening.
It wasn’t an impressive sound, nothing unique or important or scary, but I swear the whole world went quiet. Grangullie’s rapid breathing, not to mention my own; the distant echoes of traffic from outside; light rain on the skylight overhead; the soft hum of the minimal nighttime lighting. All of it paused as Raighallan, battered as a used cake pan, reached into the box and hefted its contents for all to see.
You know, it didn’t actually look all that impressive. Was a tad shorter’n I’d expected—the box hadn’t needed to be quite as long as it was—and not real ornate. Functional, undecorated wooden haft that had frankly seen better days; and a simple leaf-bladed tip of iron, with a couple feathers and an unevenly shaped stone or two, dangling from the base of the blade by tangled twine.
That’s how it looked. How it felt…
Everything in my head glowed, lit by something that wasn’t any kinda light you’ll find leaking from a prism. Memories cast shadows; thoughts changed color. It was a spotlight, a note, a dream of places and people long forgotten or never known.
It was beautiful. And terrible. It was life and death, and it valued neither over the other.
Gáe Assail. Ahreadbhar. Among the most awful creations of the Tuatha Dé Danann.
The Spear of Lugh.
Raighallan lifted the spear, and the spear, like an overeager hound, leapt to the call of his hatred.
I don’t think he even meant to use it, not yet. He didn’t know how, didn’t know what he was doing; it hadn’t finished telling him. If he had, I wouldn’t be here to jaw about it. But from his emotions alone, the anger and pain and humiliation, the spear took purpose.
And it took steps.
The whole room rippled, swept beneath a wave of pure mystic force. One glass case shattered; another merely cracked, but from those lines it began to bleed. The elephant’s tusk repaired itself, which wasn’t too big a deal, but the thing also turned its head to a new angle, which kinda was. Stone dust drifted from the ceiling. Behind me, in the various hallways, power flowed through exhibit after exhibit. It left most untouched, but some it shattered, some it shook. A few bones turned into rocks, a few rocks to fur or ice or just other rocks. Several bits of ancient metal tools melted, shrinking away like butter in the summer sun.
As for me? The blast lifted me clear off the ground, but I didn’t know it at the time, because even the fundamentals of “me” were in question.
I am a worm, crawling, wriggling, digging, ignorant of everything but the soil ahead. But then how do I know “I”? I am a human, infant, squalling, suckling, all of life ahead and none behind. But then why do I remember?
I am a beast, I am a bird. A fish, a flower, a corpse, a kid.
No! I am none of these! I am—
I hit hard, crashing to the floor way down one of the smaller halls. I skidded to a halt, angry and aching—but I was still myself.
Because whatever else the spear’s magic tried to make me, above all else, I was—I am—aes sidhe. Older than many, older than most of you could ever fully understand. Tuatha Dé Danann, when that was a title to shake the earth and set armies to rout.
I carry the weight of millennia in my memories, and unless I wish otherwise, they are immovable, immutable, as the foundations of the earth.
Fuck Raighallan and Lugh is basically what I’m sayin’.
I braced my hand on the wobbly glass front of an exhibit, using the leverage to stand. From behind the transparent barrier, I locked stares with of one of the Tsavo man-eaters, and even though I know they’re stuffed animals with glass eyes, I swear it glared at me for being so grabby and careless with its pen.
“Sorry,” I muttered. Oddly, it didn’t really look all that mollified.
I trooped through broken glass, keeping to a low crouch, to retrieve my wand. I’d apparently finally dropped it somewhere about halfway through my abbreviated flight.
Then I ducked back behind an exhibit of antelope, turtling my head just out of sight when Raighallan appeared at the end of the hall, silhouetted against the larger main chamber, spear in one fist, wand in the other.
He was laughing, maniacally, a high, harsh barking sound that made me think of a consumptive clown.
A twist of his arm, a flick of his wrist, and he hurled the damned thing. It was casual, almost gentle, but the spear launched forward like a real big bullet. More display cases shattered in its path, filling the air with a glittering, crystalline shower. The spear sank well over half its length into the back wall, then just as swiftly leapt back out, reversing its flight to slap snuggly into Raiggy’s waiting mitt.
“Shall that be your end, Oberon?” he called out to me. “Cored through by Gáe Assail? Not bad, as deaths go. All I—we—need do is see you for the spear to follow you, though you run for all your days!
“Or perhaps you prefer fire?” The tip of the weapon crackled, a lot louder’n my bracket’d done. “Shall I feed you to the storm?”
Why do they always get more flowery and purple once they’re exposed as the bad guy?
I was tryin’ to decide if it was safe to answer him—to try to keep him booshwashing while I figured out what the hell to do—or if just my voice’d be enough for Gáe Assail to pinpoint me on the next throw, when Raiggy made it real obvious he didn’t care to wait for my reply. The lightning flash at the tip of the spear began to spread in every direction, a few inches at a time, longer and farther with each flicker. Faster’n faster, until individual forks of electricity turned into a spider-web of energy, growing every second. Some of the broken glass around Raighallan’s feet started to fuse, and I could feel the first waves of heat even where I was crouched.
The lightning flickered again, painting an intricate net in the air a good couple yards across—and then it caught fire.
The web of ozone-stinking, crackling electricity caught on fire.
Smoke poured from the edges and from the very tip of the spear, and I figured it was time to go. No way I could handle this head-to-head now, not on my own. I hated the notion of giving Raighallan longer’n he’d already had to fiddle with the spear, to understand and to master its powers, but I didn’t see that I had any option. Only possible way to beat him now’d be to take him by surprise, and since he knew exactly where I was, what I wanted, and what I was capable of, surprise didn’t really look to be part of tonight’s agenda.
I tensed up, ready to make a desperate leap from cover, to try to vanish into the other hallways and take the run-out before he got wise to what I was doing. Gáe Assail cracked and thundered even louder, as though it knew what I was thinkin’ and didn’t much care for the idea. Raighallan took a step nearer, spitting taunts or questions—or, hell, singing psalms, for all I could hear over his deafening toy.
And then I got sharply reminded that if “surprise” was on the agenda, it wasn’t really a surprise, was it?
Raighallan shrieked, arching backward sharper’n your average longbow. His wand clattered to the floor and bounced off to the side.
And more importantly, so did Ahreadbhar.
The thunder and the flame vanished the instant it left his grip, snuffed out like a cheap matchstick. It spun partway across the room, not just dropped but hurled by the bastard’s sudden flailing, eventually rolling to a stop by the farthest free-standing display case.
Seems to me now that I shoulda checked to see what was in that exhibit, just to see if there was any sorta symbolism—or irony—but it never occurred to me at the time. I don’t even remember deciding to stand up from cover, frankly. Just sorta found myself creeping back toward my opponent and the main hall.
Still bent backward, stumbling, Raighallan clawed over his shoulder and around his waist, trying to reach something behind him. Finally, gurgling, he twisted to one side and fell to his knees, giving me my first clear slant on what’d just hap
pened.
An old knife—and I mean real old, coulda-come-from-its-own-exhibit old—was sunk deep into Raiggy’s back, nice’n centered. The hilt was wound in fresh cloth, but enough protruded beyond the makeshift wrapping for me to guess its age, and even though I couldn’t see so much as a hair’s width of the blade, I didn’t even hafta guess at its composition. I could feel the pure iron from here.
All of which wasn’t near as bemusing as who it was who’d been wielding the knife.
“Ramona?”
Even in the middle of everything, her smile remained breathtaking.
“You didn’t really think I believed this was all over, did you?”
The old grey matter was already past that on to other questions. Big one being, had she wrapped the handle in cloth just for a better grip—or to keep from touching the iron herself?
Even weirder than her being here, though? Way behind her, near invisible in the gloom and the shadow of the fighting elephants, was someone else. Someone I couldn’t make out, ’cept for his general shape…
And the dull glint of his sunglasses.
Which, of course, opened up a whole new floodgate of questions in my noodle. But this wasn’t the time to pick at ’em.
Ramona’n me looked aside almost simultaneously. Even floppin’ like an amorous salmon, blood pouring from his mouth, Raighallan followed our gaze. From across the hall, leaning hard on a display case to keep himself upright, Grangullie stared, too.
All of us locked on the same sight, still right where it’d ended up after Raighallan flung it.
Well, almost all. I got no notion of what Sealgaire mighta been doing.
It was almost a weird game, for a minute. I’d watch the spear, then one of the others, who was watching the spear, then one of the others or me… Our eyes danced like we were attending a table tennis match played by ambidextrous octopuses.
We waited for something, though I dunno what. If this’d been half a century ago and a lot farther west, I’d have expected a tumbleweed.