The Nimble Man (A Novel of the Menagerie) (12 page)

He turns back to the woman and sees that she too is
transparent. Dr. Graves does not look down at his own body, at his hands. He
does not like to look at his hands.

"Who are you?" he asks, the illusion of the
Parisian movie palace becoming wispy around them, a ghost all its own.

"My name is Yvette Darnall. I am . . . I was a
medium."

And he watches her blue eyes, ghosts in and of
themselves, as she tells the tale of her own death, of her efforts to locate
Sweetblood the Mage, of the trap that he laid for any who would dare to search
for him.

"The bastard," Graves whispers, trying not to
see that the theatre is gone now, completely disappeared, and there is only a
kind of river flowing at their feet, a rushing, turbulent stream of souls. Some
of them fly past above and around him, but all of them in the same direction,
with a fierce momentum, as though drawn on by some inexorable force.

"Oh, yes, he always was," Miss Darnall says. "But
I see it now. I understand."

For a moment Graves does not hear her. He is distracted
by a tugging at his arms and the current that drags at his ankles, the stream
trying to pull him in, to pull him on . . . and he will not look to see what
has such power over him. He frowns as her words finally settle into his mind.

"Understand what? Why he murdered you?"

She shudders and glances away in shame, and now she does
not seem quite so severe. "I cannot see it all, of course. Only the
silhouette of what may be, not the fine details. But this is why I came to find
you the moment I sensed you had moved further into the river of souls. Someone
has
located Sanguedolce."

"We know," Graves says, nodding, feeling the
tug of the soulstream on his body now, and shuddering at its touch. It has been
so long since anyone has been able to touch him. He feels the urge to sink into
the river, to flow with it. "Doyle was there. One of the Old Races, the
Night People, have Sweetblood. He's in some sort of protective —"

"They're trying to open it," whispers the ghost
of Yvette Darnall, her face thinning strangely. Her hair begins to come undone
and her long tresses flutter in the invisible breeze of the soulstream,
reaching away from her as though it yearns to join the others.

But her eyes are firm and dark. "Sanguedolce has
hidden within a magical shell. It must not be opened."

Dr. Graves stands a bit straighter, drags his feet toward
her in the soulstream, fighting its pull upon him. "Why? You know
something. I don't spend a lot of time here, in the otherworld, but enough to
know that a lot of the spirits who linger around the area where all of these
omens and strange phenomena are occurring . . . they've retreated. They're
hiding deeper here, or slipping into the soulstream and letting go. Why? Is
this what they're afraid of? What will happen if Sweetblood is freed? What is
he going to do? Why do they want to break him out in the first place?"

Miss Darnall looks terribly sad, now. She reaches out
toward him but her form is blurring. Her body is succumbing to the pull of the
soulstream, streaks of ectoplasm stretching off her, fluttering just as the
tendrils of her hair are doing. Bits of her slipping away. Her face grows
thinner, becomes warped.

"I don't know what they want him for. Nor what this
cataclysm is that will result from his being freed. But when I searched for
him, when I found him I touched his mind and for just a moment before his spell
froze my heart I saw inside him and I realized that he was frightened. Sweetblood
felt utter dread and sheer terror at the thought of being released. Beyond
that, I know nothing. Only that if it can frighten the world's most powerful
sorcerer, it must be terrifying indeed. But that is not what the ghosts are
retreating from."

"Then what —" Graves begins, reaching out
to touch her as the soulstream is touching him, thinking perhaps he might hold
her here with him a little longer. But his fingers pass through her as though
he is solid and she nothing but spectral mist. "What are they running
from?"

"Another power," says Miss Darnall, her body
tearing itself apart, pieces of her whipping away into the stream, or streaking
the air, her face pulled taut, warped, mouth twisted. "Something calls to
them, trying to drag them back."

"Back to what?"

With a flap like a flag furling in the breeze the rest of
her gives way, the ghost surrendering to the river of souls, carried away from
him. But as she sails along the stream Yvette Darnall looks back at him.

"To their bodies," she calls, a thin, reedy
voice that disappears after a moment, swallowed in the stream.

For long moments Graves stares after her. There are
lights swirling in the stream and flashing past him in the air. The theatre has
disappeared, the Parisian movie palace had never been there, unless it had been
constructed of ectoplasm, or whatever the substance of this realm is. Now, as
he narrows his gaze, he sees in the distance two towering objects that thrust
themselves up from the stream. To Graves they seem like the tusks of some
impossibly huge elephant, ivory spires a hundred feet high.

But he knows what they were.

The gate.

Though he hates to do it he glances down at his fingers. They
blur and stretch and he sees that his own form has begun to run, to streak,
tugged along the soulstream, toward the gate.

He grits his teeth.

Leonard Graves is not ready to let the river of souls
take him. Not yet. Not until he knows who took his life, who destroyed him. And
if that means he must haunt the world for all eternity, so be it. Though he
feels the bliss of the soulstream, the peace of surrender a temptation, he
turns his back on the gate and begins to trudge back upstream.

Doyle followed the sentries through the impossibly lush
forest. At first glance it appeared to be too dense and overgrown for passage,
but the primordial wood obliged their needs and parted to let them through. The
people of Faerie existed in a symbiotic relationship with their environment,
bonded to the land where they had lived forever.

The sentries quickened their pace, one of them turning to
give Doyle a cruel smile as they began to run through the wood. The sorcerer
kept up with them as best he could, his heart hammering in his chest as if to
escape. He knew they did not appreciate his presence, and would do everything
short of killing him to make sure he was aware of that fact. But there was no
time to concern himself with the hurt feelings of the Fey. They were all in
danger; this world, as well as worlds beyond it.

The guards came to an abrupt stop in front of a downed tree.
It was enormous, easily dwarfing the mighty Redwoods of Earth. Doyle welcomed
the brief respite, reaching into his back pocket for a handkerchief to wipe his
sweating brow. The wood was eerily quiet and he did not recognize this path to
the city of Faerie, but that was far from unusual, for the forest often changed
its configuration to keep the great home of the Fey safe from danger. It had
done this since the Twilight War. Many enemy troops, having found their way
into the Faerie realm, never reached their destination, eventually succumbing
to the elements of the forest world.

One of the sentries rapped three times on the trunk of the
felled tree with his spear. Figures and shadows shifted in Doyle's peripheral
vision, and then the forest was alive with movement. Fey warriors emerged from
their places of concealment around and atop the enormous fallen tree. They had
been there all along, but had not allowed themselves to be seen. A chill ran up
Doyle's spine as more and more of the armored soldiers made their presence
known. Their pale faces were tattooed with magickal wards of protection, the
symbols adding to the ferocity of their appearance. Doyle was familiar with the
Lhiannan-shee, the elite fighting force of the Faerie army, but he had thought
their ranks disbanded after the Twilight conflict. Something was definitely
amiss, and he began to wonder if he had made the journey to Faerie too late.

A Lhiannan-shee wearing the markings of a commander crouched
atop the fallen tree and glared at the sentries, and at Doyle.

"Why have left your post at the gate to the world of
Blight?" The normally pleasant tone of the Faerie tongue sounded harsh
coming from the commander.

The world of Blight
, Doyle thought with sadness as he
wiped his brow. How the people of this magickal realm had learned to hate the
world of his birth. At one time, the doorways between the two places had been
gossamer-thin, but humanity's blatant disregard for the environment had
disgusted the Fey, and they ceased interaction with man.

"The doorway was opened from the other side," one
of the sentries, apparently their captain, explained. He pointed to Doyle. "And
from the world of Blight, he did come."

The commander of the Lhiannan-shee gazed upon them, his eyes
lingering on Doyle, and a ripple of disgust went across his face. With a feline
grace, the commander leapt almost delicately down from the tree, but Doyle had
seen the ferocity of the Lhiannan-shee in battle, and knew they were far from
delicate. The commander strode toward him, uncomfortably close, his dark Fey
eyes shiny and black like polished lake stones.

"You stink of the filth that is humanity, but there is
also something of Faerie about you. How can this be?" the commander asked,
his long, spidery fingers caressing the hilt of the short sword hanging at his
side.

These warriors were young, perhaps unborn when the Twilight
Wars were fought. They did not know him, and that served to further drive the
point home that he no longer belonged here. Doyle felt an intense wave of
sadness wash over him, but quickly cast it aside and looked deep into the
commander's dark eyes.

"Lhiannan-shee, what was your father's name?"
Doyle demanded in the language of the Fey, his pronunciation and intonation
perfect.

The commander was taken aback and gripped his sword hilt all
the tighter.

"What was your father's name?" Doyle repeated.

"Niamh-sidhel," the commander replied with an air
of pride.

Doyle nodded, raising a hand to stroke his beard. "A
brave one indeed. He fell during the battle of the Wryneck, but not before one
hundred Fenodyree sampled the point of his sword." Doyle paused,
remembering a Fey warrior with an unquenchable thirst for human beer. "He
is remembered in both tale and song."

Doyle sang a bit of a remembrance song, the first verse
telling of Niamh-sidhel's love of his people and his mistrust of the Night
Kind. It had been quite some time since Doyle had sung, and he felt mildly
foolish.

The commander's hand left his weapon, his ferocity turning
to melancholy. "Who are you to sing of my father with such reverence?"
His voice was now just a whisper in the woods.

"I am Arthur Conan Doyle, and once I called this wondrous
place my home."

The Lhiannan-shee's eyes widened with the revelation, and
Conan Doyle dared to think that perhaps he had not been entirely forgotten in
the land of the Fey.

"I have heard this name. It is spoken in whispers here,"
the commander said. "There is much anger and sadness associated with your
name, Conan Doyle from the Blight."

The memory of the day he had departed Faerie was fresh in
Conan Doyle's mind, as crisp as if that particular recollection had been minted
only the day before. His grief had been like a gaping wound as he sealed the
private doorway from his home to the land of Faerie, believing he would never
again look upon its abundant wonders. Now he felt that old wound tear open
again, and begin to bleed freely.

"Believe me, commander, I am aware that I may not be
welcome here. And I would never have entered Faerie unless circumstances were
dire ," Conan Doyle explained. "Allow me to pass into your great city
so that I may warn your King and his Seelie Court of the impending danger."

The son of Niamh-sidhel narrowed his gaze, his gleaming
black eyes studying Conan Doyle. At length, the commander turned to his
soldiers and raised his long, pale arm, bracelets of rock and wood clattering
against one another. The Lhiannan-shee tensed, ready to respond to their
commander's signal. He showed them a balled fist, and then opened his hand, his
incredibly long fingers splayed wide.

They responded immediately, the melodious sounds of Faerie
spell-casting filling the air. Conan Doyle watched as their hands weaved
intricate shapes, each an integral piece of the magick that was being cast. It
took but seconds for one of the gnarled knots in the bark of the great tree to
begin to grow larger, and larger still. The thick bark moaned and popped as it
was magickally reconfigured, and soon they were looking at a tunnel through to
the other side.

"My thanks," Conan Doyle said with a bow of his
head.

The commander of the Lhianna-shee responded in kind. "The
sentries will escort you the remainder of the way where you will speak with the
Lady Ceridwen."

The mere mention of her name gave Conan Doyle a spasm of
pain. He had hoped to avoid any contact with Ceridwen. He had hurt her more
than enough and did not want to cause her any further grief.

"I mean no disrespect to the great lady, but my errand
here is most dire. It should be brought to the attention of King Finvarra."

The commander gazed longingly through the opening in the
tree. "I am afraid that is impossible, Conan Doyle from the Blight."

Conan Doyle felt another spark of panic. The Lhiannan-shee
again deployed, the king unable to speak with him; something was very wrong
here.