"Greetings, Tylwyth Teg, it has been a long time." Conan Doyle bowed his head.
The vizier's hair was long, wisp-thin and white, like the delicate webs of a spider upon his ancient skull. It drifted about his head and face, caressed by the gentle breezes that rose up from the valley. As always, Tylwyth wore a scowl of distaste. He had never approved of Conan Doyle's presence in Faerie, and vehemently opposed any attempt to teach a human the powerful magicks of the Fey.
"The wound has not yet healed from when last you were among us," Tylwyth snarled, his cadaverous features giving him the appearance of an animated corpse.
"I would not have returned, but for the danger that threatens both our realms," Conan Doyle summoned as much reverence as he was able. "Please, I must be allowed to speak with your mistress."
Tylwyth Teg again raised his hood, then turned and passed through the doorway from which he came. "You come too late, son of man," he hissed cryptically as Conan Doyle followed. "For catastrophe has already struck our kingdom."
The vizier shuffled across the empty courtyard and Conan Doyle shuddered with the sense of foreboding that permeated the air. Carts that would normally be overflowing with produce lay abandoned in the corner. Booths used to display the finest wares of Fey craftsmen were empty.
"What has happened here, Tylwyth?" he dared ask as they entered one of the outer structures of Finvarra's citadel. "Where are the merchants, and the people?"
"They are in mourning," the vizier croaked, stopping in the high-ceilinged hallway to remove a ring of keys from within his robes. Even the citadel itself, which normally bustled with life, was deathly still.
"Who, Tylwyth?" Conan Doyle asked, as the vizier produced a key that resembled the petrified branch of some primeval tree and unlocked a heavy wooden gate. "Who do they mourn? Has King Finvarra — ?"
The Faerie advisor gestured for Conan Doyle to proceed through the gate, which led into the king's private garden. "Who do they mourn?" he echoed, shaking his head sadly. "The future, perhaps? Perhaps they mourn the future. But it is not my place to explain."
After Conan Doyle had stepped through, Tylwyth Teg pulled the gate closed behind him with a resounding clatter. Conan Doyle frowned and glanced back through the bars of the gate at the vizier.
"Step into the garden and all will be made clear, Conan Doyle."
Knowing he would get little else from Twylyth Teg, Conan Doyle turned and strode into the garden. Either side of the stone path was adorned with the largest red roses he had ever seen. The faint sound of gurgling water reached him and he knew that he was near his destination. A moment later he caught sight of the top of the fountain in the garden's center. Though he could not see more than its apex, he recalled an intricate ebony sculpture of a great fish, water jetting from its open maw to rain down into the pool that surrounded it.
He passed beneath an archway woven from a flowering vine known only to the world of Faerie, its blossoms welcoming him to the garden of kings with voices like those of tiny children. And then his feet froze and he could not move. Even his breath was stilled in his chest. It seemed to him that his heart paused as well. Laid out upon the ground around the stone fountain were the unmistakable shapes of bodies, covered by sheets of ivory silk.
"Dear Lord," Conan Doyle whispered. Everywhere his eyes fell was a body, their coverings rippling as the breeze caressed their silken shrouds, tormenting him with glimpses of the corpses beneath. There must be fifty of them.
A tremor went through Conan Doyle. He sensed movement behind him and whirled to face the object of his dread, the reason why he had expected never to return to Faerie. He had tried to fashion a ward, some sort of magickal defense that would protect his heart from the devastation he knew he would feel, but there was nothing to save him from this.
Ceridwen was dressed in flowing robes of soft, sheer linen, dyed a deep forest green. Her pale skin was accentuated by the dark hue of her garb. When her eyes met his, she drew a gauzy scarf tight about her shoulders as if experiencing a sudden chill.
"My lady," Conan Doyle whispered, his breath taken away. The ache caused by simply being within her presence was bone deep.
"You said that I would never see you again," the Fey sorceress said, her voice the lilt of a gentle spring breeze, still carrying the melancholy of a long winter. "And I had come to accept that."
When she walked across the stone floor, her dark robes billowing about her, it was with such elegance that she seemed to float, carried by the wind.
"You once told me you would never trust the word of a human. Even one that you loved," Conan Doyle said. He tried to search her eyes but there was only ice there. Never had he felt so torn. Part of him would rather have been experiencing the fires of damnation in that moment, and yet another side of his heart felt utter joy merely to be in Ceridwen's presence once more.
She knelt beside one of the bodies, her long, delicate hand reaching to draw back the sheet that covered it. A dead face was revealed to them, a twisted look of pain permanently frozen upon it.
"Why have you come, Arthur?" she asked, her thumb tracing arcane sigils upon the corpse's forehead. It was a ritual he had seen before, during the Twilight War, when an ally had been stuck down by infernal magicks. It freed what life energies remained within the confines of the body.
"To seek answers, and to warn you of a great evil on the rise," he said, tentatively kneeling beside her. To be this close to her again was almost more than he could bear. "But I fear I have come too late."
Ceridwen covered the twisted features of the fallen Fey, raising her head to look into Conan Doyle's eyes. He would drown in those eyes, and there was nothing that could be done to save him.
"Who did this, my lady?" he asked, ignoring the urge to reach out and touch her face, to caress her alabaster skin.
She tore her gaze away and moved to another of the covered corpses. "I am your lady no longer, Arthur Conan Doyle. As to the hand behind this tragedy, that is a tale almost too sad to tell." She drew down another sheet of silk to reveal the dead beneath. The countenance of this corpse was even more disturbing than the first. "This evil of which you speak has touched our world as well."
"Who is it? Whose hand has done this?"
Ceridwen glanced up from her ministrations, her dark, soulful eyes again touching his. "It was one of our own," she said, a tremble in her voice, and his heart nearly broke as he watched tears like liquid crystal run down her cheeks, to land upon the upturned face of a dead Fey warrior.
"Two hundred and fifty channels and not a damn thing on," Squire muttered as he aimed the remote control at a thirty-five inch television monitor in a hard wood cabinet. The goblin flipped past countless images, each of them dishearteningly similar — another apocalyptic vision of the northeast United States, or static. Whatever the hell was going on outside was interfering with the digital cable signals.
He reached a stubby hand into the bag of greasy potato chips and brought a handful to his mouth. Squire lived for junk food: candy and chips, burgers and fries, cookies and donuts. Especially donuts. He loved food of all kinds, in fact. It was his greatest pleasure. But the sweetest and saltiest were his favorites.
Stopping at one of the all-news channels, the goblin watched a live feed from Virginia Beach, where the ocean had begun to boil and the fish were leaping up out of the water in a frantic attempt to escape death. Somewhere off-camera people had begun to scream.
"That'll help," he said, taking a swig from his bottle of beer to wash down his snack. "Nothing like a good shriek to calm everybody's nerves." Squire belched mightily, flecks of unchewed potato chip speckling his shirt and pants. Bored with watching fish die, he changed the station. Maybe a nice game show, he thought, flipping past channel after channel of the world in turmoil. He tried not to think about what was happening outside. Conan Doyle's agents were in the field, and it was only a matter of time before things were wrestled back under control. That was how it always was. If there was anything Squi
re had learned in his many years working for Mr. Doyle, it wasn't over until the fat lady shit in the woods.
On a pay station that hadn't gone to static, he finally found a movie. A large grin spread across his face. A nice piece of Hollywood escapist fluff was exactly what he needed. His smile quickly turned to a frown when he realized the station was showing the abysmal Keanu science fiction flick that the actor had done before The Matrix.
As if Keanu wasn't torture enough, Squire thought, continuing his search for something to amuse him.
He had clicked all the way to the end and was about to start over again when something on one of the local stations caught his eye. He leaned forward on the sofa, crumbs of potato chip raining to the floor. The handheld footage was shaky and made his eyes hurt, but he recognized the area. The camera was pointed toward a bunker-like structure in the midst of a sea of orange brick. It was the exit from the Government Center subway station, not too far away, and there were things not usually associated with public transit pouring from the underground and spilling onto the plaza.
"Corca-fuckin-Duibhne," he growled, turning up the volume. There had to be hundreds of the coppery-skinned bastards. It was like watching a swarm of bugs emerging from their nest. Whoever was manning the camera was hiding behind a newspaper kiosk, peeking out from time to time for the disturbing footage. For some reason there was no audio, and Squire imagined that it was probably for the best.
Slowly, he brought a potato chip to his mouth, eyes riveted to the television. One of the Night People had seen the cameraman, its mouth opening incredibly wide in a silent roar. The gnarled, twisted, leathery thing sprang across the brick as though in a dance, needle teeth bared for attack. The picture turned to static, and an anchorwoman who usually looked too damn cool for the room came on as the broadcast returned to the studio. Her face was pasty, and she was sweating to beat the band.
"How long ago was that?" Squire asked the set, listening to the woman's trembling voice. The goblin rose from his chair and went to the window. The red, billowing fog seemed to have grown thicker in the square below, practically hiding the park from view. There was a kind of glow about it now that reminded him of weird creatures that lived so far below the ocean's surface that they had developed their own luminescence.
"No more than a fifteen minute walk from Government Center to here," the hobgoblin grumbled, though his words trailed off as he noticed dark things moving in the blood red mist. "Shit!" Squire pressed his face against the glass for a better look. Corca Duibhne darted about the unearthly fog with an uncanny swiftness, converging upon the townhouse.
Conan Doyle's valet stepped away from the window. There was no way that the Night People could get inside the townhouse. Conan Doyle had set up all kinds of magickal wards and barriers so that nothing that didn't belong could find its way into the place. The image on the television screen again caught his attention. The anchorwoman was crying now, mascara running down her face in oily streaks. She was in the process of confessing her sins to the camera.
"I've got my own problems, sweetheart," he said, reaching for the remote and clicking off the set.
A thunderous clamor came to him from the first floor, as if something were pounding on the door to get in, but of course Squire knew that was impossible. Isn't it? Son of a bitch, it had better be.
He jumped feet first into a square of shadow thrown by the entertainment center, becoming immersed in a world of perpetual darkness.
The goblin scrambled through the shadowpaths toward an exit that would take him closest to the front door. Again came the pounding, the violent sound muffled within the realm of shadow. Squire drew himself out of a patch of black behind the refrigerator in the kitchen, the hot coils at the back of the unit pressing against his face as he hauled his body from the shadow, and squeezed out from behind the appliance.
Two Corca Duibhne scouts crouched in the center of the kitchen. He knew they were scouts because the symbol of their rank was carved into the dark flesh of their faces. No stars or stripes on lapels for these guys. Heads tilted back, eyes closed, their noses twitched as they sniffed the air in search of potential danger.
It wasn't an instant before they got a nose full of him.
I knew I should have showered this week, the hobgoblin thought, scrambling across the tile floor to pull open one of the counter drawers.
The scouts began to shriek, a high-pitched, ululating sound that warned others of their stinking kind that there was trouble present.
Squire spun around, glinting metal cleaver in hand, meeting the first of his attackers with relish. It had been a long time since he had killed a Corca Duibhne, and as he buried the blade in the skull of his adversary he realized he was long overdue.
"Look at that, a perfect fit," Squire growled, as the creature continued to fight. "What's that? You'd like seconds?" He drove a stubby knee savagely up into the Corca Duibhne's midsection, yanked the cleaver from its head, and brought it down again. "What a greedy little piggy."
The scout went rigid as the metal blade again shattered its skull, sinking deep. Finally hitting the tiny piece of fruit these shitbags call a brain.
The second of the scouts was across the room. It had been jockeying around, looking for space to attack. Now it pulled back its leathery lips in a ferocious snarl that revealed nasty black gums and needle sharp teeth. "He was my brother," the creature snarled, its oily eyes shifting from the corpse of its sibling back to Squire.
"Sorry," the hobgoblin apologized, bracing the heel of his foot against the corpse's shoulder, and pulling the cleaver from its head with a slight grunt of exertion. "Did you like 'im much?"
The Corca Duibhne shrugged, its long clawed fingers messaging the air. "Not especially," it hissed. "But blood is the strongest bond. I will take your life in exchange for his."
"Is that so?" Squire asked, hefting his weapon, stained with stinking black blood. "I guess it's good to have goals, even if they are fucking ridiculous."
How is this possible? the goblin wondered. Conan Doyle's magick was some serious mojo, but these bastards had breached the house's supposedly unbreakable defenses. Not good. Not good at all.
The scout began to move and Squire prepared to counter its attack, but it lunged away from him and bolted through the doorway with a hiss, fleeing the kitchen. The goblin swore beneath his breath. Night People. Buncha pussies, he thought, hopping over the body of the dead scout in pursuit.
"Wait up," he called, careful not to slip in the blood pooling upon the tile floor. "I've got something special for you."
Squire did not have far to run. The scout had only fled as far as the corridor that led out toward the foyer. It stood, its back against the wall, holding in its spidery hand the crystal knob from Conan Doyle's front door. The Corca Duibhne looked at him, and smiled an awful smile. Tendrils of crimson fog drifted into the corridor from the foyer. For the first time, Squire felt the draft, the breeze.
The door was open.
He could not see it from his vantage point, but it was clear these two scouts were not alone. Squire brandished his cleaver, ready to do combat with whatever else had invaded his employer's home. From the foyer came the sound of splintering wood, and then the heavy, plodding tread of many feet. There was a solid thump and a muttered, feral curse, and in his mind he could picture a cluster of Corca Duibhne carrying something massive and heavy.
Squire was not going to let this happen.
Cleaver clutched tightly in his grip he started down the corridor toward that single Corca Duibhne, who now tossed the crystal knob idly into the air and caught it as though it were a lucky coin. Squire wanted to tear its heart out. But a moment later he came within sight of the foyer.
"Son of a monkey's uncle," he whispered.
Eight Corca Duibhne emerged from the red fog, grunting with exertion as they hauled what looked to be a large chunk of jagged rock between them. They looked like pallbearers carrying a coffin at a funeral. The failing light from outside gli
nted off the object's surface, and Squire saw that it wasn't rock at all, but a kind of amber, for he could see the shape of a man imprisoned within. At that moment, he knew how his enemies had gained access to the townhouse. It was all so frighteningly clear.
"Sweetblood," he said aloud as the Night People let their load drop to the hardwood floor of the foyer.
A part of him wanted to stay, to defend the homestead from invaders, but another part of him, one far more intelligent than that stupid half, suggested that it might just be wiser to get the hell out of there. He began to search for an exit, a patch of shadow through which to make his escape.
"What, leaving us so soon?" came a voice as smooth as silk, speaking the tongue of the Fey.
Squire turned to see a statuesque female emerge from the scarlet fog. The Corca Duibhne cowered as she passed them, as if afraid she would slap them, or worse. The woman was dressed from head to toe in black leather, her hair covered in a stylish kerchief of red silk, as if to match the fog. Even though her eyes were hidden behind sunglasses, Squire knew her at once.
"Morrigan," he whispered.
"You're going nowhere," she said, a cruel smile gracing her colorless features. "The fun is just beginning."
Fun like a heart attack, Squire thought as the Corca Duibhne rushed him, and he raised his cleaver in defense. Fun like a heart attack.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Finvarra's kingdom seemed deserted, yet Conan Doyle knew it was not. The scents of a bounty of ripened fruit reached him as he strode amongst the trees and past a burbling stream along which dryads swam. But there were copses of trees that had been burned black, their charred remains a scar upon the land. The Fey were not gone, however, nor were they hiding.
They were in mourning.
There was no music in Faerie this day, only the sighing of the wind in the trees and the flapping of war banners adorned with Finvarra's crest. From time to time as he followed Ceridwen on a winding walk through the forest, he could hear cries of bereavement. She carried in one hand a staff of oak, with finger-branches at the top that clutched within them a sphere that appeared to be crystal. Conan Doyle knew better. This was no crystal ball, but a ball of ice. At the center of that frozen orb there burned a flame, flickering as though atop a candle's wick. This was Ceridwen's elemental staff, a mark of her office and her skill.
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