Their voyage across the Atlantic had taken twice the time it should have. When they arrived, expecting to find Kinrowan an easy replacement for the lands they had lost at home, they found instead a rallying Laird and a Court under the protection of a giant-killing Jack—no match for a woodwife accompanied only by her bard and a small pack of unsainly gnashers. Kinrowan’s strength was such now that they dared not even cross her borders, having to send human agents in their place.
“No,” Glamorgana agreed. “It wasn’t his fault—but I’d have his heart all the same, if he were here, and I might still have yours for speaking up for him.”
Taran hid a sigh. It was because of that sort of deed that they’d had to flee in the first place—and far this time. Not just from one county to another, across a loch or on the far side of a moor. No. This time their flight took them into exile straight across the sea to Loimauch Og.
The bard was not happy here. The secret resonances of which only a bard could be aware were too unfamiliar in these hills. He had no peers. No one to exchange news or tunes with. No one except for Glamorgana and her gnashers.
He gave the gnashers a glance. The creatures lay sleeping in various heaps along the far wall of the dun, all except for one. Smoor was the chief gnasher and he sat upright, fingering the ornaments on his staff and returning the bard’s glance with a glare. Oh, this was fine company for a bard, was it not? A curse on his mother and father for never blessing him, with water or with fire, so that the only folk to take him in were unsainly ones such as these.
“Be content,” he said then, as much to his mistress as to himself.
“Content?” Glamorgana demanded. “With this?” She waved a hand around the poorly furnished dun. “I’ve known corpses to have better lodgings.”
“Then allow me to offer a word of advice,” Taran said. “When you have her tonight, play no more games. Cut her open on a gray stone and read what you seek in the spill of her red blood.”
Glamorgana’s teeth flashed white as she smiled. “Blooodthirsty words for a bard.”
“Bards weary as well,” he replied.
Glamorgana reached into her spellbag and drew forth a handful of Weirdin bones. She let them fall back into the bag, one by one. She’d stolen them from a druid, long ago, and they had served her well across the years. But they could tell no futures now. They could point no paths. Not since the fetch had stolen one in its escape. But they’d have it back tonight. The missing bone, the fetch and, in the end, the hidden talisman, too. She didn’t need the bones to tell her that.
Her teeth gleamed in another smile. “Wearying, are you?” she asked her bard.
Taran met her gaze, wary now, knowing he might have spoken too freely. Whatever else she was, Glamorgana was still his mistress. “Time lies heavy in this land,” he said.
Glamorgana’s smile widened. “Your trouble,” she told him, “is that you count time by men’s reckoning.”
Taran lowered his head, accepting the rebuke. By the back wall, the chief gnasher snorted with laughter until Glamorgana turned to look at him.
“Be not so quick to laugh,” she said in a soft deadly voice. “It wasn’t a bard that lost her on the open green last night.”
Smoor stared down at his feet.
Are we not a happy clan? Taran thought, schooling his face to reveal nothing of what he felt inside. We bow and scrape before her as though she were the Queen of Faerie she thinks herself to be, rather than the woodwife she is. But she had magics—more than either he or the gnashers did—so they did her bidding. And how will it be when Glamorgana gains her talisman? he wondered. He was surprised to find himself hoping that the girl would win free so that such a day might never come.
2
Chance found his Faerie Queen on the night of a full moon in late spring. He was cruising Eardley Road, up by Lac la Pêche, burning off the previous night’s partying. He’d slept all day, waking up around six to a house full of crashed-out bikers and their women. He had a foul taste in his mouth that the first cigarette of the day just made worse. Grabbing a couple of beers, he went out to sit on the front porch of the farmhouse and stare at the bikes cluttering its lawn.
The farm was a part of the holdings of the Devil’s Dragon—a getaway place where they could party it up without bringing down any heat. It lay outside of Saint-François-de-Masham, and the closest neighbor was a few miles to the east. North, west and south were the Gatineau Mountains. Finishing his beers and a third smoke, he got up suddenly, straddled his bike, and just went cruising. By the time he pulled in by Meech Lake, his head was clear. Taking out a crumpled Export A pack, he dug a joint out from between the cigarettes and stuck it in his mouth. It was while he was getting his lighter that she came out of the woods and approached him.
All Chance could do was stare. She was tall and built like a dream, skin creamy white, hair black as wet tar, with big dark eyes that just seemed to swallow him up. All she had on was some kind of filmy nightgown that left nothing about her body to his imagination. Chance took the joint from between his lips and blinked hard. She was still there when he opened his eyes. He put his bike on its kickstand and tried to still the thunder of his heart. All he wanted to do was jump her, right then and there.
Play it cool, he told himself. Slicking back his hair, he collected himself and lounged on his bike.
“Nice evening for a walk,” he said.
The woman gave him a smile that woke a throb in his crotch. She didn’t say a word.
“You’re new around here, aren’t you?” Chance tried again.
The woman closed the distance between them until she was trailing her fingers along the chrome of his bike’s extended forks. “New come to this place, yes,” she said, “but older and far stranger than you could ever imagine.”
There was a foreign quality to her voice—an accent that Chance couldn’t quite place. But he grinned at the challenge in her words.
“Oh, I got a pretty good imagination, babe,” he said.
“Do you now?” she replied.
Chance didn’t get a chance for a comeback. The woman opened her mouth and then to his horror, a snake emerged from between her lips. Not some little noodle, but a fucking huge snake, as big around as her mouth was wide. It came straight out, unblinking gaze fixed on his face, then slid up along her nose, wrapping back into her hair to rise above the top of her head. There it studied him again, forked tongue flicking as the remainder of its length emerged from her mouth to wrap around her shoulders, the tip of its tail resting in the hollow of her throat. It had to be three feet long.
“What do you know of Faerie?” she asked him.
“I... uh...”
Chance was stunned. His joint fell from limp fingers. He had a vague feeling that he should be disgusted at that thing coming out of her—a snake the color of a corpse’s skin—but instead he had a hard-on so big that it hurt as it strained against the crotch of his jeans.
“Let me teach you,” the woman said.
She took him by the hand and led him into the woods by the lake. He followed in a daze. The snake slithered from her shoulders to his, crossing by the bridge their arms made between their bodies. He was hers, long before she stripped him, laid him down on the hard ground and mounted him, the snake entwining between their bodies. By the time he came inside her, he knew he’d do anything for her.
“I need a human like you,” she told him as he lay there spent, the spill of her black hair tenting over him. She continued to straddle him, playing with the hair on his chest. “A dark rider—a dragon. Will you be my agent in the lands of men?”
“You... you got it, babe,” Chance muttered, his voice hoarse.
He met her gnashers later, squat ugly creatures that didn’t look anything like the fairies in the Disney movies his old lady used to take him to when he was a kid, but by then it didn’t matter. He was hers, body and soul.
3
Her name was Emma Fenn.
Blue took her up to the Po
stman’s Room and wouldn’t let her talk until he’d served them both up a steaming mug of tea. That was one of Jamie and Sara’s things—always going for the tea when things needed talking over. She sipped the hot liquid, gaze roaming the room, from the crammed bookshelves to the single unblinking eye of the computer’s screen set into the old rolltop desk where Blue was sitting.
“You feeling a bit better?” he asked.
Her gaze left the screen to settle on his face. A cassette was playing at low volume in a small tape machine in the corner of the room—a recent Claire Hamill album that was an a cappella interpretation of the seasons. Everything, percussion and all, was done only with voices. Blue always thought better with music playing. Right now he figured he needed about thirty albums’ worth.
“What I feel is stupid,” Emma said. She set her tea mug down on the side table by her chair. “I don’t really know why I’m here.”
“There had to be some reason you were ringing our bell.”
“Yes, well...” She pulled her purse up from the floor by her feet and sat with it on her lap, playing nervously with its button fasteners. “I had a friend who lived here for a while and she... well...” She looked everywhere but at Blue. “You’re going to think I’m crazy.”
“Try me anyway.”
She took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “Okay. That’s why I came so I might as well just... I had a dream a couple of nights ago—a funny kind of a dream. There were these... creatures. They grabbed me, right out of my house, and took me... I don’t know. Out into the bush somewhere, to where this couple was waiting for us in a glade—a guy playing a harp and a woman... honest to God, she looked like she’d stepped right out of one of those old Hammer flicks.”
“Love ’em,” Blue said.
A vague smile touched her lips. “Well, I guess you know what I mean. Dracula’s daughter or something. Black hair, white, white skin, slinky black dress, red-lined cape...” She gave him an apologetic look.
“That’s okay—you’re doing fine.”
“They wanted this talisman they thought I had. I knew I didn’t have whatever it was, but it seemed familiar at the same time—you know how things make sense in a dream, but don’t later?”
“Yeah. What kind of a talisman was it?”
“Well, they never described it, if that’s what you mean. She called it the Autumnheart—like it was all one word—sometimes, but then later she called it Summer’s End. It was weird. That guy was sitting there playing this little harp. Those... creatures were sitting around in a circle, just watching. And she had me pressed up against this stone outcrop, laughing at me, telling me she knew what I was up to.
“When I tried to tell her I didn’t know what she was going on about, she made me reach into this bag and pick out a little bone button that had some symbols on it. The bag was full of them. When I opened my hand to show her the one I’d picked, she got all excited and said to the guy, ’I told you she knows!’
“’Wait a minute,’ I told her. But before I could do anything she was grabbing at me and her hand... her hand... it went right inside me. It was like she was pulling me out of me.” Perspiration beaded Emma’s brow as she spoke, her gaze going off into some far distance now. “I hit her—just shoved her as hard as I could away from me—and took off. There was this weird wailing sound then, and suddenly I was running, through the woods, and those creatures of hers were after me and... and...”
“And what?” Blue asked as her voice trailed off.
“I woke up.” She gave him a lopsided smile. “I woke up and I was safe in my bed, except I still felt like I was being chased—somewhere else. Like the dream was going on, only I wasn’t part of it anymore. You see what I mean? Just talking about this makes me think I sound crazy. But I’ve had the dream again—two nights running now and I feel... God, this sounds stupid... I really feel like there’s something missing in me. It’s like I can’t feel things anymore. I can’t laugh or get mad or... Is this making any sense?”
“It gets worse,” Blue said.
“What do you mean?”
“You checked out your shadow lately?”
“My... ?” Emma lifted a hand up against the light coming through the window and her face went pale at the lack of a shadow. Her gaze, when it lifted to meet Blue’s, wasn’t so expressionless anymore. Behind its flatness was a raw streak of fear.
“This friend of yours,” Blue said. “The one that lived here. What was her name?”
“Esmeralda,” Emma said. “Esmeralda Foylan.”
“Oh, Christ,” Blue said. He rubbed his face with his hands.
“You know her!” Emma cried. “And that’s how you know what my dad used to call me. I must have told Esmeralda once and she... she...” Her voice trailed off again as Blue shook his head.
“I want you to meet somebody,” Blue said. “This is going to seem weird, but he can help you, so hang in there.”
“What... what do you mean?”
Blue pointed to the computer screen. “Emma, I’d like you to meet Jamie.”
The cursor darted across the screen, leaving the words HELLO, EMMA—PLEASED TO MEET YOU behind them.
Emma just stared at the screen, her mouth shaping a soundless “O.”
4
Chance never had any doubts about the existence of Faerie—not after that bit with a snake. Glamorgana showed him her gnashers later—“Usually you can only see Faerie when they wish to be seen,” she told him, which was just as well as far as Chance was concerned. Christ, they were ugly. He met her bard, too. Taran, like the Lady herself, could have passed for normal if he’d just put on some real clothes. Instead the bard went for soft leather trousers with something that looked like a minidress on top. And a cloak. He liked this green cape thing and wore it all the time like he thought he was some kind of superhero.
Chance didn’t much care for the bard. He figured there wasn’t anything between the bard and the Lady, but he still saw Taran as a competitor for her affections.
He did his first job for her a week or so after they met.
“I want you to fetch me a hob,” she told him.
“A what?”
“Do they teach you nothing in your schools?”
Chance shrugged and lit up a smoke. “They teach all kinds of crap, but who listens?”
“I see,” Glamorgana said, hiding her irritation. “Well, a hob, my dragon, is a small Seelie Faerie—a little wizened man the size of a child. The one I want is named Rutherglen Cam.”
“Seelie?” Chance asked. “Like with flippers?”
Glamorgana sighed. “There are two Courts of Faerie,” she explained. “The Seelie and the Unseelie. Seelie means sainly—blessed.”
“Right,” Chance said doubtfully. “You want me to get you a hob. No problem. Where do I find him?”
She gave him a seeking stone and explained how its glowing would guide him; then she gave him a thin white rope made of a material Chance didn’t recognize. “Faerie living so long in the cities of men can’t be bound with either cold iron or the holy word anymore,” she told him. “But this will do—witches’ rope.” Chance took it gingerly. The last thing she did was rub an ointment into his eyes so that he could see into Faerie. Chance didn’t find that it made any difference until Joey was driving him into Ottawa, and then...oh, Christ, then.
They seemed to be all over the place. Weird little wizened beings—those were the hobs, he guessed—and others. Black dogs that only he could see. Men and women riding little ponies. Things that looked like they had scales instead of skin. All this, side by side with the everyday reality of cars and buses, skanky secretaries in tight skirts and CFMPs and bozos in their three-pieces.
“You see that horse there?” he asked Joey once.
They were stopped at a red light, waiting for it to change. Joey looked all around. “What horse?” he asked.
Chance watched the tall black horse cross the intersection and trot off up the Sparks Street Mall. “Nothing,”
he said, rubbing at his eye. “I was just pulling your leg.” Joey gave him an odd look, but then the light changed. “Take a right here,” Chance said as they came up to Laurier.
They found the hob in a back alley off Laurier—the seeking stone glimmering brightly in Chance’s hand as he pointed it at what appeared to be a rubbie sleeping off a drunk in a mess of newspaper and trash.
“That’s him,” Chance said. “Get him, Joey.”
“But, Chance—”
“Just get him!”
The rubbie woke at the sound of their voices, but before he could flee, Joey had him in a headlock and was dragging him back to the car. Chance quickly bound their captive with the rope Glamorgana had given him. Joey looked into the backseat where they threw him and saw a frightened old wino, but the Lady’s ointment let Chance see the little hob for what he was. The little man acted like the ropes were burning him where they touched his skin.
“What are we doing with this guy?” Joey asked.
“He’s a Faerie,” Chance told him. “We’re snatching him for Our Lady of the Night.” Chance wasn’t stupid—he hadn’t told any of the other Dragons about what he’d found out in the woods near Lac la Pêche—but Joey was different and Chance had told him the whole score. The secret was safe with the big galoot. Joey’d been his partner since day one, and besides, the poor guy was too stupid to really understand anyway.
“What does she want with a fag?” Joey asked.
Chance shrugged. “Guess we’re going to find out. Let’s go, Joey.”
Glamorgana paid them well—in both gold and, at least for Chance, her favors. It was a good gig. An easy one. And that night they got to sit in as Glamorgana cut the little hob to pieces. Tough little bugger, Chance thought, watching the proceedings with interest. All he had to do was talk, but the little man wouldn’t give up squat. Still, in the end Glamorgana found what she wanted. She was looking for a power—something she could turn on Kinrowan’s Laird and the giant-killing Jack so that she could have the place for her own. It took time—Chance and Joey brought in two more Kinrowan Faerie before the Lady’s gnashers got a chance sniff of what she was looking for in a snug little house in Old Chelsea.
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