Drink Down the Moon (25 page)

A residue of its light remained as a faint nimbus. She built that into a spark of light— just one tiny star that she could focus on.

The star went out.

The void encircled it. Choked it. Swallowed it.

Her panic worsened.

She was here forever.

She might already have been here forever.

Escape was impossible. Without the droichan’s help, she couldn’t return to the world.

Give him what he wants, her panic told her.

But I don’t know, she wailed. I can’t give him what I don’t know how to give.

Give it to him. Giveittohim. Give. It. To. Him.

No, she told that voice. Even if she could, she wouldn’t.

She clung to that thought, repeated it, used it to force the panic away. The Tower had been her responsibility. It was already half-fallen to the enemy, and for that she had to pay. But she wouldn’t give the droichan any more. He could leave her here forever, if that was what it took, but she wouldn’t give in to him.

Her terror receded fractionally.

The spark she’d tried to call up suddenly burst into the image of a full moon, hanging swollen in the bleak night skies of her mind.

It flickered and was gone.

A woman stood in its place, regarding her. She was silver-haired and round-faced, full-lipped and dark-eyed, generous body wrapped in a tattered cloak of moss and leaves and twigs. Mushrooms grew from her shoulders. Fungus glimmered palely in amidst the dark debris that made up her cloak. She smiled at Jacky— a warm smile, the kind a mother would give to a child who had pleased her. Then the image was gone and the void returned.

But the fear didn’t return with it.

That must have been the Moon, Jacky thought. The Moonmother Arn, herself. She came to me. She came and looked at me, with her luck in her eyes.

It wasn’t much, she realized, floating there in the void. She hadn’t been offered freedom, or revenge. Merely a look of pride. But it would have to be enough. She’d have to hold that memory forever, because she wasn’t going to have anything else. She’d—

Her senses returned to her in a choking flood.

Sight and sound. The droichan’s face, eyes mocking her; the heaving rasp of her own breathing.

Smell. The stink of her fear and the bog-reek of the Unseelie Court.

Taste and touch. The sour bile in her throat; the ache of her back and shoulder muscles pulled tight against the wall.

She drank in their return, ignoring the droichan. Her resolve to stand firm faltered as she savoured sensation. Even fear and bile and pain were something. Anything was better than the void, wasn’t it?

The droichan let loose his invisible bonds and she slumped to a boneless heap on the floor.

“That is where we go when we die,” he said. “I can send you there, if you don’t give me what I want. Into that bleak eternity. Or you can give me the key to the Tower and when you die you’ll walk the green fields of the Region of the Summer Stars, perhaps even to be born again.

“There is no escape from that void. No rescue is possible.”

Jacky slowly lifted her head to look up at him. She wanted, she so desperately wanted to be able to say, Just you go to hell, you bastard, but she couldn’t imagine returning to that emptiness. Just thinking of it made her hard-won resolve drain away.

“Which is it to be?” the droichan asked.

“I

“

Her voice came out like a frog’s croak. Slowly she pushed herself up along the wall until she was half-sitting, half-leaning against it. She wanted to be standing when she answered him. Maybe that would lend her bravery. Lying at his-feet, she could only give in. She clawed at the wall, struggling to find purchase, but her fingers kept slipping. She tried to find the Moon’s face inside her again— that strange woman in her foresty cloak, with the luck in her eyes.

I want to be strong, she told that memory. But I can’t be strong, just lying here.

She tried again.

The droichan stood back, watching her efforts with a half-smile on his lips.

Damn him. He could be so patient. He was just drinking in her pain, stealing her luck. That was why she was so weak. He had to be sucking the life right out of her.

But she wouldn’t give in. She’d get to her feet and spit in his face and damn the consequences. But not if she lay here. Lying here, she just wanted to give up. She just wanted to say, I don’t know what the key is, but you’re welcome to it, only don’t send me back to that place.

The droichan made a gesture with his hand, and invisible fingers plucked at her shirt, lifting her a few inches, before letting her fall again.

“Do you want a hand up?” he asked.

Jacky didn’t bother to answer. She concentrated on forcing her limp body to do what it was told. She brought Bhruic’s face to her mind’s eyes and was surprised at how easily it came. She called up Kate then, and Finn. Eilian, the son of Dunlogan’s Laird. The big trow, Gump. Sly Kerevan, the trickster with his fiddle in a bag, hanging from his shoulder.

Calling them all up, feeling the weight of their gazes upon her, she found the strength she needed. They were faerie— and faerie, Kinrowan’s faerie, depended on her.

She made a slow, faltering progress, but she clawed herself to a standing position, supported herself against the wall, and looked at the droichan.

“Well done, sweet Jack,” he said. “You’ve more strength than I gave you credit for. But are you wise as well? Which have you chosen? The void, or to aid me?”

“I

I’ll give you the key,” she croaked.

The droichan smiled as she reached into the pouch hanging at her belt, but the smile faltered as she drew out a wallystane. The fires, just glimmering in his eyes, woke into a raging blaze.

“You—” he began, a hand rising to shape a gesture in the air between them, but Jacky moved more quickly.

“No, you!” she cried as she broke the wallystane against her own chest.

A sparkle of crystal dust exploded from between Jacky’s fingers like a puffball’s spores floating free from a kick. The droichan stepped back from her and continued to make a spell with the twisting gesture of his hands. When he loosened the magic, Jacky stood in front of him, unaffected.

“You can’t touch me,” she said.

She moved towards him. From the droichan’s feet, his shadow reared up in dog shape and lunged for her throat. Before it could reach her, it slid sideways as though it had run up against an invisible wall. It tried again, and again, to get at her, but it too couldn’t reach her.

“I’ve made myself safe from widdy spells,” she said. “Do you know any kindly magics? You might try one of them.”

The droichan’s hands fell to his sides.

“Clever Jack,” he said. “You knew not even a magic could kill me, so you turned your spell on yourself.”

“A mouse could kill you,” Jacky replied. “All it needs to do is take a bite from your heart.”

“But first it must find that heart.”

“You can’t stop me from looking for it— and I’ll tell you now, I’ll never give up.”

The droichan shook his head in admiration. “What a droichan you would make, sweet Jack. But you forgot something.”

He moved towards her, edging her into a corner away from both the window and the door. Nervously, Jacky eyed him, unsure of what he was up to. She racked her brain, trying to think of what she’d forgotten when she spelled the wallystane. It wasn’t until he lunged at her that the truth dawned.

She was safe from widdyshin magics— his or another’s, oh, yes. But not from physical harm.

She tried to knee him in the groin, but he moved too quickly. He twisted to one side, grabbed her by the shoulder, and spun her around. Before she could recover her balance, the flat of his shoe hit her in the small of her back and she went pinwheeling against the wall. She hit hard, slumping to the floor. He was upon her immediately, knees on her back, grinding her against the hardwood floor, hands at her throat.

“You’ve played your last trick, sweet Jack,” he said. “Now give me what I want, or I’ll snap your neck.”

She was safe from his spells, but the trick had backfired. As usual, she’d blown it. A smart person would have been out that window so fast it would have made the droichan’s head spin, but not Jacky Rowan. Oh, no. She was the Jack of Kinrowan, wasn’t she just, and oh so clever. Rather than do the smart thing, she’d stuck around to rub the droichan’s face into his failure, never bothering to think things through.

But at least he couldn’t send her back into the void. And she might die, but that was all the satisfaction he was going to get from her. The Tower’s secret was safe because she couldn’t give it to him even if she wanted to.

Somehow, none of that brought her any consolation.

Because now, helpless under his weight, with his hands at her throat, she was still going to pay.

“I’ve been all around,” Finn said when he rejoined Kate and Gump, “and there’s no sign of her.”

He’d left the pair of them hidden in the back yard of the house across the street from the Tower while he made a circuit of its grounds in his bogan disguise. He’d found sluagh and real bogans and all manner of Unseelie creatures in great numbers, but not even a rumour of Jacky.

“She’s gone inside, then,” Gump said.

Kate looked at the Tower and shivered. After just a day, it already looked different. There was a veil of corruption about the Tower, just like there had been at the house in the Glebe that she and Gump had investigated. The trees were beginning to lean away from its walls, the garden taking on an air of decay. Malevolence hung thick from its gables and walls.

“How can we fight so many?” she asked.

Finn gave her a wan smile. “With a Jack’s trick. A hob and the makings of a skillywoman, that would make them sit up and blink. But who would notice a pair of bogans in the company of a trow?”

“It’ll never work,” Kate said.

“It has so far.”

“There’s some that might know me in there,” Gump said.

“Then you’ll have to be convincing when you tell them of your change of heart,” Finn said. “Are you with us?”

Gump nodded.

“Then let’s get to it,” the hob said.

Kate had the sudden urge to look in a mirror, just to be sure that her disguise really was working, but Finn had already set off towards the front of the house. When they crossed the street, two bogans were preceding a trow to the front door of the Tower. No one gave them a second glance until they entered the Tower itself and they were stopped by a black-bearded, duergar widdyman. He eyed Kate and Finn for a long moment, then turned to the trow.

“I didn’t think to find you in our company again, Gump,” he said.

The trow shrugged. “Times change, Greim. I’ve heard about the new boss. Word is, if you’re not with him, then you’re against him. I never liked to take sides, but this time it seems I have no choice.”

“A pretty tale,” Greim said. “And I might half-believe you, if it wasn’t for the stink of skilly magic on your friends. I’ve learned to see through this trick.”

Kate swallowed thickly, ready to bolt, but before she could decide which way to run, before the widdyman could call up an alarm or toss a spell, Gump hit the dwarf. He brought a meaty fist down on the top of Greim’s head and the widdyman collapsed on the floor, sprawled out like a wet rag. Finn shot a quick glance down the hall to the kitchen, where they could hear the voices of other Unseelie creatures, but no one seemed to have noticed.

“Is he dead?” Kate asked.

Gump shook his head. “Though he deserves to be. He’s an evil little creature, have no doubt of that.”

“Up the stairs,” Finn said. “Quickly!”

Kate took the lead. Gump followed, carrying the limp dwarf under one arm. It didn’t seem wise to leave him where he could be discovered.

“We’re just lucky this isn’t a true Unseelie hall,” Finn said, taking up the rear, “or our disguises would never have taken us even this far.”

Kate nodded. Skilly spells didn’t work in an Unseelie Hall.

“But how did he see through our disguises?” she asked.

Finn sighed. “You heard him yourself. He’d seen the trick before.”

Seen the trick before, Kate repeated to herself, then she shivered. Seen it when they caught Jacky is what that had to mean.

Gump deposited Greim’s limp form in Jacky’s bedroom. The second floor was empty now. Looking out the window onto the park, they could see the Unseelie Host gathering in a motley array. Trolls and bogans, sluagh, hags and goblins. Bands of capering gullywudes. Spriggans who puffed themselves up to troll size, shrank again, then grew once more.

Kate turned away when she caught sight of their banner. The swan-man depicted on it reminded her too much of Jacky’s friend Eilian.

There was no sign of the sidhe rade.

Kate turned to ask Finn about the fiaina when they all heard a shriek that came from the third floor. It dissolved into a long, aching moan that woke goosebumps on her arms.

“Oh, God,” she said, white-faced. “That must be Jacky. The droichan’s hurting her.”

Gump nodded and started for the door, but Kate got there first. The sound of Jacky’s moaning fired her worry to such an extent that she forgot to be afraid. She ran towards the stairs going up, but before she could take the first step, Gump caught hold of her arm and pulled her back.

“Wait,” he said.

“We need a plan,” Finn added. “We can’t just rush in there against the droichan.”

“But Jacky’s probably dying—”

The moaning ceased abruptly and they heard a soft thump, like a body hitting the floor. Kate looked at Finn, then at Gump, a pleading in her eyes.

“We’ve got to do something.”

Finn nodded. “Yes, but—”

Kate pulled herself free from Gump’s grip and sprinted out of reach, up the stairs. She paused at the door to look back. Gump reached her side first, Finn, brow furiously wrinkled in thought, right behind him. They could hear voices— Jacky’s and another’s. The droichan’s.

Relief ran through Kate. Jacky was still alive.

“When we go in,” Finn whispered, “we split up immediately. No matter how strong the droichan is, he can’t aim spells at three different moving figures.”