The Nimble Man (A Novel of the Menagerie) (14 page)

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 glinted 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.

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.

Within Conan Doyle there were many emotions at war. He felt
sharp regret and giddy excitement at seeing Ceridwen, and the urge to help the
Fey was strong. And yet he was aware that he was needed at home even more than
he was needed here. In Faerie, death had come and gone, taking many souls with
it. But in Conan Doyle's world — the Blight — the reaper still
walked.

Even simply being in Faerie brought conflicting emotions
into play. This was the place he dreamed when he went to sleep, it was the
paradise of his heart, and yet there had been much bitterness upon his
departure so many years ago, and to return to it now when such grim events were
at hand was dark irony.

Ceridwen paused at a door built of three massive standing
stones, two upright and one laid across the top. There was no gate to bar it,
but no one would pass through that gate without an invitation from a member of
the royal family. He had lived beyond that gate, for a time. The memory made
him hesitate.

"What is it, Arthur?" Ceridwen asked.

Conan Doyle gazed at her a moment, then glanced away. "Only
echoes, Lady. Please go on."
When he looked up again she was still
watching him. Ceridwen frowned deeply and turned to stride between the standing
stones. Conan Doyle followed and as he walked through that door his breath
caught in his chest just as it had done that first time he had trodden upon
this ground.

The year had been Nineteen Hundred and Twenty. The London
theosophist Edward Gardner had accompanied him to Cottingley, a tiny hamlet in
Yorkshire, to visit the home of the Wright family. Polly Wright had approached
Gardner at one of his lectures with the most extraordinary story. The woman
claimed that her young daughter Elsie and the girl's cousin, Frances Griffiths,
had befriended a community of fairies in a glen near their homes. Not merely
befriended, but photographed the fairies.

The girls' claims, and more especially their photographs,
had brewed a storm of controversy, but by the time it had begun, and the world
was scrutinizing the two girls, Arthur Conan Doyle had already found his proof
in the glen at Cottingley. For in the glen he had seen the fairies himself,
firsthand. Gardner had accompanied the girls and their parents home and Conan
Doyle — who had already been a student of magic and spiritualism for some
time — cast a spell of revelation.

The fairies had been wondrous, gossamer things, like lithe,
flimsy women with wings like butterflies. Wherever they flew they left a
sparkle, streaking the air with all the hues of sunrise. Never in his life had
he seen anything so delicate, so ephemeral, and so beautiful. They had made no
sound at all but their motion was music.

Then one of them had hesitated, hovering a moment, and
darted across the glen to beat its wings furiously just inches from his face. Its
tiny, golden eyes had widened in shock as it realized that its suspicions were
correct. He could see them. He had been watching them.

The vicious little thing had clawed his cheek, drawing
blood. As Conan Doyle hissed and clapped one hand to his face, they had all
darted toward across the glen to a large tree that lay on its side next to a
brook, its roots torn from the ground and jutting like the antlers of a
monstrous stag. The fairies had disappeared amongst those roots and Conan Doyle
had taken a closer look, still pressing his fingers against the scratch on his
cheek.

The spell of revelation had uncovered more than the presence
of the fairies. The crown of jagged roots that circled the felled tree hid a
secret. The tree was impossibly hollow.

Conan Doyle had dropped to his knees and bent low to look
inside. Deep within that tree he had seen a glimmer of light. And he had
crawled inside.

"Arthur!"

Fingers snapped in front of his face. He blinked several
times and found himself gazing into Ceridwen's violet eyes. His breath caught
in his throat again and he breathed in the aroma of lilacs, the scent that came
off her so powerfully it weakened him. She looked as though she wanted to
strike him down with her elemental staff. It took him several seconds before he
could glance away.

"You are not the magician I thought you were if you
cannot enter the House of the King without it beguiling your senses," she
chided him.

Yet wasn't there a hint of amusement, even affection in her
gaze and her tone?