The Nimble Man (A Novel of the Menagerie) (25 page)

"Yes. It is almost as if the malign powers of the
universe sense us here, within these walls, plotting against them," Conan
Doyle said, sitting back in his chair and regarding them.

Ceridwen gazed at him, her eyes so clear and bright that he
could not help but recall the days in which he had lost himself within them. Conan
Doyle's heart ached. He wished for all of this to be over so that he might have
just a handful of moments to speak with her in peace, to let her know that his
time with her was so cherished that its memory alone had given him the strength
to endure terror and hardship. But, if ever, that was for later, when this
parade of horrors had come to an end.

"That may be truer than you know."

Conan Doyle turned his gaze upon Eve. Her tone was often so
cavalier that it was easy to forget her age, her significance to the worlds of
men and monsters. Now her voice had altered, however. Her words were weighted
with knowledge as ancient as human thought.

"Speak your mind, Eve," he said.

Squire turned to look at her, the look on his face
reflecting a kind of disappointment, perhaps because the woman who had been his
drinking companion moments earlier had now been subsumed by her true self. Eve
pushed her raven hair away from her face and stared at Conan Doyle.

"There are those of you who dislike any discussion of
true evil, of Heaven and Hell as anything other than random dimensions, worlds
folded upon worlds not unlike this land of men or Faerie, Lemuria, or Asgard. You
don't want to hear about God, about angels and demons."

Dr. Graves floated behind her chair, his arms crossed. "With
all we have experienced, the Judeo-Christian myth is a bit too exclusive to be
believed. One thing negates most of the others."

"No," Eve said, glancing at him. "No, it
doesn't. I'm not talking about the doctrine of any one church. I'm talking
about the reality. The truth. The beginning. Out there in the universe, there
are powers beyond your imagining, and powers beyond
their
imagining, and
one power beyond them all."

Clay had been silent during this but now he sat up a bit
straighter in his chair and gazed first at Graves and then at Conan Doyle. "Eve
is correct, of course. You know my story, Doyle. You're the one who helped me
discover it. Yet you doubt it? There are things that are evil in form and
thought, in blood and flesh, not merely by intent."

Danny Ferrick bared his shark-like teeth in a dubious grin. "Hold
up, you guys. Seriously. All of you."

The Menagerie turned, as one, and stared at the boy. Conan
Doyle was surprised that their scrutiny did not deter Danny from continuing. It
boded well for the boy. Clearly he had begun to accept what he was, and that
the world held the darkest of secrets.

"Go on, Danny," Conan Doyle said.

The teenager drummed clawed fingertips upon the table, saw
what he was doing and stopped. "Okay, look, no offense, but you guys need
to shut the fuck up and get this posse in motion. Yeah, there's evil. I mean,
duh. Sorry, but, any asshole can look out the window. This Morrigan, is she
powerful enough to be doing all of this, making it rain toads and blood,
resurrecting an army of Resident Evil rejects, blotting out the sun, making
little kids puke up maggots?"

Conan Doyle raised an eyebrow and turned to Ceridwen. As
one, they both shook their heads firmly.

"No," Ceridwen said. "My aunt has never had
that kind of power."

"So, other options, then?" Danny asked. "I'd
come up with a few, but if you can't play it on GameCube, I'm guessing none of
my thoughts are gonna help out."

None of them responded. At length, Conan Doyle cleared his
throat. "Simply this," he said. "Either the dark powers in the
world are being exacerbated by Morrigan's actions, and all of this is merely a
byproduct . . . such phenomena are not uncommon, though the scale of this
outbreak is tremendous and —"

"Or?" Graves interrupted. The ghost still had his
arms crossed, a forbidding expression on his face. "You said there were
two options."

"Or Morrigan is not our true enemy, and is merely
serving a greater darkness, something powerful enough to cause all of this to
happen."

Squire snorted derisively. "Oh, wonderful. What's the
bad news?"

Conan Doyle shot him a withering glance and the goblin fell
silent, looking appropriately penitent.

"The boy's right," Clay said. "We're wasting
time. We know what you and Ceridwen are going to be doing, Doyle. What of the
rest of us?"

The glow of candles flickered across Clay's face and for a
moment Conan Doyle could not focus on his features. It was as though he could
see, in that moment, every face Clay had ever worn. He hesitated a moment
before turning his attention to Dr. Graves.

"The time has come for us to speak of the dead,"
Conan Doyle began. "I do not believe that Morrigan is directly responsible
for this mass resurrection. It is likely yet another supernatural portent. However,
given what Dr. Graves has told us about the walking dead he observed in Boston
— that some of them seem to be traveling toward a single destination with
a great deal of purpose — the only logical conclusion is that Morrigan is
attempting to use them to her advantage, as her servants. Given their
direction, I believe they are being directed toward the Museum of Fine Arts,
and that they are being sent to retrieve something for Morrigan that she cannot
retrieve for herself.

"That object would be the Eye of Eogain."

They all stared at him. Squire threw up his hands. "All
right. I give. How the hell do you know that?"

Conan Doyle smiled. "Why, it's —"

"If you say 'elementary,' I quit," the goblin cut
in.

The old mage puffed on his pipe once more. "Very well,"
he replied. "Let me tell you a story." He watched them all over the
bowl of his pipe. "Before the Romans laid claim to the British Isles,
magick roamed there unchecked. Chief among its practitioners were the druids,
sorcerer priests who performed the correct rituals and sacrifices, and made
certain that the hungry dead, the mischievous spirits, and the peoples of
Faerie kept away from their tribes.

"This was no simple task. There are powerful demons
that saw this is a challenge, and some of the dead are vengeful if their
mischief is disrupted. But worst of all for the druids were the arrogant Fey. There
were those in Faerie who were not at all appeased by the druids' offerings, and
though the King forbade them from interfering with the human world, still they
looked for opportunities to bedevil the druids. The worst of these, a trickster
sorceress, cast her cruel eye upon Eogain, perhaps the most powerful druid in
all the isles. He was an arch mage with skill unmatched in that age.

"Eogain had tapped the magick of the universe, but he
feared that his will would not be sufficient to control it, to focus such
power. So he turned to a different skill, and from silver he fashioned an orb,
etched with runes that would channel magick. His left eye had been lost in
battle with a child-stealing goblin —"
Squire cleared his
throat. "No relation."

Conan Doyle ignored him and went on. "Eogain replaced
his left eye with that silver orb. From that moment on, every black-hearted
beast and dark spirit feared the Eye of Eogain, for with only a look he could
destroy them.

"His mere existence, however, was an affront to that
Fey trickster, and she came upon him as he slept and murdered him, dumping his
body in a peat bog, silver eye and all."

He saw confusion upon the faces of the Menagerie and would
have liked to lead them to his conclusions, to show them the logic through
which he had arrived there. Conan Doyle felt it was more instructive to cause
others to think than to do their thinking for them. But the time for such
indulgences was over.

"This tale is more than legend, my friends. Seven
months ago, outside the English village of Windling, workers cutting blocks of
peat from a local bog discovered a human skull, mummified by the peculiar
conditions of having been put to rest in the bog. There was some skin left upon
the skull, and wisps of hair, and in the scored left orbital cavity, a silver
sphere marked with runes."

Even the wind had quieted outside the house. It was Clay who
spoke.

"The Eye of Eogain," he said.

"Indeed," Conan Doyle replied, taking a long
breath. "I have been following the progress of this story since I first
learned of it. Those who are studying the skull have been unable to remove the
Eye without damaging the skull, and are reluctant to do so. For now, they have
chosen to leave it intact, and for the last several months, Windling Man, as
they refer to the skull, has been touring America with an exhibit bearing the
crude title 'The Bog People.'"

One by one, Conan Doyle watched as understanding lit their
faces. They all seemed intrigued, but Ceridwen looked genuinely surprised, even
a bit angry. Conan Doyle had dealt with such reactions from her before. Even
when they had loved one another beyond reason, she had felt that he kept his
thoughts too much to himself.

"And you think that Morrigan is also aware of the Eye,"
Dr. Graves ventured, his spectral form shimmering in the candle light.

"I'm certain of it. All of her actions of late have
been timed to coincide with the arrival of Eogain's skull in Boston, at which
time she would have access both to a power locus, the Eye, and a place where
the walls between worlds has been worn thin. Namely, my home. All she needed
then was Sweetblood, and, of course, she's found him."

Ceridwen lifted her chin, and when she spoke it was with the
regal bearing she had learned as the niece of King Finvarra. "Why have you
not mentioned this to us before?"

Conan Doyle frowned. "Until Dr. Graves gave me his
report a scant hour ago, I was not aware that Morrigan had an interest in the
Eye. I admit I ought to have at least suspected she might desire it, but we have
had several other things to keep us occupied."

"Okay," Squire said, "but how did Ceridwen's
bitchy aunt know about the Eye in the first place? Far as I know, she hasn't
set foot in this world since the Twilight Wars. And even before that, she
always talked about 'the Blight,' didn't like hanging around here much."

"Ah, but once upon a time she liked it very much,"
Conan Doyle said. "This was two thousand years ago, Squire. And Morrigan
knows very well the tale of Eogain and the power of his Eye, for she was the
one who murdered him, who left him to rot in that bog in Windling."

"Why didn't she just take it?" Eve asked. "I
mean, she's an evil twat, but she isn't stupid. An item like that is exactly
the kind of thing you magicians collect, just in case. Why leave the Eye in his
head, at the bottom of some bog?"

"The Fey hate silver," Clay noted, "but still
. . ."

"I told you Eogain was powerful. The runes he etched
into the silver eye were not only to absorb and channel magick. There were
others as well. Defensive marks. He enchanted the eye so that if it is touched
by hands not human, it will simply destroy itself, disintegrate."
Danny
slapped the table enthusiastically. "I get it! She's controlling some of
those zombies, sending them to the museum to get the Eye for her because she
can't touch it."

"Precisely," Conan Doyle agreed.

Clay stood up quickly, troubled. "Which means we've got
to get to the museum right away. We have to get the Eye before the undead can
retrieve it."

"Or, at least, before they can return it to Morrigan,"
Conan Doyle said.

Eve scowled as she rose. "What are we waiting for?"

Conan Doyle frowned. "You
were
waiting for our
few clues to be evaluated, and for a plan to be set in motion. And now they
have, and now it is. By all means, don't let me keep you, Eve."

He shot a glance at the goblin, who had his glass of fine
scotch slightly tilted, pressed against his lips, but paused now as Conan Doyle
spoke his name.

"Squire. Take Eve, Clay, and Dr. Graves to the Museum
of Fine Arts. Provide them with weapons. After you have obtained the Eye, we
shall all regroup here. By then, I am quite certain we will know exactly what
it is that we face."

They all began to rise, heavy with the weight of purpose. For
too long they had simply been reacting to the horrors that were unfolding in
the city. At last they were going on the offensive. Conan Doyle sensed that
each of them shared his satisfaction that the time had come. All save one.

"Wait," Danny Ferrick said, idly stroking one of
his small horns. "Wait a second."

Everyone paused and regarded him curiously.

"What about me?" he asked.

Conan Doyle stiffened, nostrils flaring, and his eyes
narrowed as he studied the boy who was not a boy at all. He had felt the boy
deserved to know what was happening, and that it might help him to accept the
truth about himself to know what other sorts of creatures existed in the world.
But his intentions ended there.

"You're to remain here with your mother and myself,"
Conan Doyle said.

"Bullshit," Danny snapped. "What's that
about? I can fight. Look, obviously I'm not just some kid. I'm strong, and
nearly fucking impossible to hurt. I want to help."

"Admirable," Conan Doyle said. "But there is
something I want you to understand. Ever since I learned of your existence, I
have kept watch over your development, checking in from time to time. I did
this, Danny, not because I hoped to recruit you to fight on my side of this
war, but to make absolutely certain you did not fight for the
other
side."

The boy's mouth hung open in astonishment, little rows of
fangs glinting in the candlelight. He looked as if he had just been slapped.

"That's so . . . that's totally unfair. You don't even
know me. Where the hell do you get off saying shit like that?"