The Nimble Man (A Novel of the Menagerie) (29 page)

Conan Doyle taps his pipe on his knee and glances up into
a the face of Lorenzo Sanguedolce, his olive skin, fancy mustache, and Italian
accent marking him as a suspicious character in these times of war.

"Kingsley is dead," Conan Doyle tells him.

Sanguedolce nods. "Yes. But he has not gone far,
Arthur. Not yet. You may still be able to speak with him for a time yet."

Ice forms around Conan Doyle's heart and he cannot meet
Sanguedolce's eyes. "I think not."

"No?"

"No. If I speak with him, I may become too fond of
the idea of joining him."

When he looks up, they are no longer in the Grosvenor
Hotel, these two men. Conan Doyle stands on Wandsworth Road, looking up at the
face of the Three Goats' Heads pub. The name of the place is repeated on three
signs, two on the building itself and one on a post in front of it, along with
a faded reminder that one might also find Watney & Company's inside. The
windows are filthy. Gathered in a small circle is a quartet of rough looking
men in dark Derby hats.

The war has not yet begun, will not begin for years yet.

Conan Doyle enters the Three Goats' Heads. Ale spills
from glasses as the barkeep slides them along a table. The air is choked with
smoke, a fog that obscures his vision.

In the center of the pub there is a table that is clean,
save for a single pint of ale. Despite the crowd, no one goes near. Impossibly,
there is a circle of clear air around and above the table, as though the
wafting smoke is kept out by some invisible wall. Conan Doyle has come to the
Wandsworth Road this evening in response to a note, a summons signed by Lorenzo
Sanguedolce. He has heard of the man, of course, the one they call Sweetblood
the Mage. He has dismissed much of this talk as merely that. Talk.

One glimpse of Sanguedolce's eyes, like bright pennies,
and the way he seems to exist separate from the world, even in the din and dirt
of a public house, and he knows there is more to the man than talk.

Conan Doyle sits across from Sanguedolce. He says nothing
by way of introduction. They have never met, but still they know one another.

"You're a fool," Sanguedolce says, voice
dripping with venom.

"What?" Conan Doyle demands, taken aback.

"Languishing in memories, in the comfort of the past,"
Sanguedolce explains. "You can't afford the luxury."

All other sound in the Three Goats' Heads is abruptly
silenced. The smoke thickens, becomes a wall of gray, and their small table is
nearly in darkness. Beyond the table, things move in the smoke, and Conan Doyle
is certain that they are not the patrons of the bar, not thick-necked men in
dark Derbys, but others. Things that move in shadow, thrive in it, even consume
it.

He has been drifting inside himself. Lost. Sanguedolce is
right. He is a fool. But somehow, despite it all, he has found the arch mage's
mind, touched him. Even now Lorenzo's face shimmers and blurs. Morrigan's power
interferes, as do the spells Sanguedolce used to hide himself, so long ago. Conan
Doyle brushes a hand through the air, clearing some of the strange ash that
hangs there, and he can see Sanguedolce more clearly.

For the moment.

"Quickly, then," Conan Doyle snaps, angry at
himself, angry at Sweetblood. "Talk. What is Morrigan's plan? What does
she want you for?"

"Idiot," Sanguedolce says. "I was hidden
for a reason."

The arch mage draws back his hand to strike, but it never
touches Conan Doyle. The smoke and ash coalesce around them and Sanguedolce
seems a part of it, now, gray shadows enveloping him, erasing him.

"No!" Conan Doyle cries. "Wait!"

"This is not my doing. There is too much darkness
between us, too much power."

But his voice sounds distant, muffled, and diminishing
with each word. Then . . .

"Here." And a hand thrusts out of the smoke
gray shadow, a fingertip touching Conan Doyle's forehead, a light tap just
between the eyes.

Slivers of pain lance through his head. His eyes burn. Bile
rises in the back of his throat. Images erupt in his mind. Flashes of color,
accompanied by the shrieking of children and the agonized wail of mothers. A
city on fire. A highway lined with the dead. A barricade built of rotting,
festering corpses. Charred flesh falling like snow from a dead black sky. Holes
in the world, craters where entire nations had once been. A small, grinning girl
with a bloody mouth and sharp teeth, looking up at her father with a knife in
one hand and her mother's eyes in the other.

Armies, marching.

Disease on the wind. Red welts and yellow blisters, a
crowd dropping one by one, like wheat beneath the scythe.

And from the darkest corners of the world, hideous beasts
begin to emerge. Demons. And worse.

"My Lord," Conan Doyle whispers. "Morrigan
doesn't have this kind of power. What does she call?"

Now he feels himself choking on the smoke, the gray
shadows sheathing his eyes, smothering him, crawling up his nostrils. Conan
Doyle passes a hand before him and the gray withdraws only enough that he can
see the outline of a face in the smoke. The lips move, but Sanguedolce's voice
is in his head, not in the smoke.

"You don't listen. This isn't Morrigan's plan. But
she has already corrupted the sorcery of my chrysalis. My power is already
seeping, drawing attention. It must be sealed again. The things you have seen .
. . they are inevitable unless you can stop her . . . if I am freed, this is
the fate of the world."

Conan Doyle is cloaked in gray smoke again. Once more,
furiously, he waves it away, but this time when it clears he is at his table at
the Three Goats' Heads, and he is alone.

And he awakens.

The wind whipped Danny Ferrick's face with such ferocity
that tears stung his eyes. It tugged at his clothing like ghost fingers and he
felt himself spun around, feet dangling uselessly beneath him, a scarecrow in a
hurricane. It was all blackness and wind, save for brief glimpses through the
dark, eyeblink windows on the world, none of which offered the same view as the
last. He squeezed his eyes closed.

A hard gust blew him upward, and as he floated downward
again he felt solid ground beneath his feet. A spiral breeze kept him from
stumbling. He opened his eyes upon a dark room. The curtains fluttered in the
traveling wind and his hair was ruffled a moment longer, and then the breeze
died, and all was silence in the room save for the settling of dust upon the
wooden floor.

The canopy of the four-poster bed was the same ivory as the
curtains. The carved wood of those posts was bone-white. A long bureau was
against the far wall and a fireplace, dark and cold, was set into another. Other
than these, the room was featureless, with no sign of any occupant. There were
no lamps, no mirrors, no books or brushes, and only a single pillow on the bed.

Unless something had gone wrong, this was Mr. Doyle's house.
Danny figured it was a spare bedroom, because it certainly did not seem as
though anyone lived here. But . . . He frowned, glancing around the room. The
door was firmly closed. He had followed Ceridwen here, let himself be swept
along in the wake of her magic. So where the hell was she?

The darkness of the room felt comfortable to him, as though
it was a robe he had slipped on. His eyes had always adjusted well to the dark.
Danny moved soundlessly across the room and opened the door just wide enough to
peer through, and pressed an eye to the crack. The room he was in was at the
end of the hall, and the corridor outside the door only a wing. There were five
other doors, two on the left and three on the right, and then a left turn. It
was dark, but where the corridor turned there was a glimmer of distant light,
perhaps from a room around the corner.

Ceridwen's shadow was on the wall at the end of the
corridor, thrown by the glow of that dim light.

With no sign of anyone else, Danny slipped out of the room
and pulled the door softly shut behind him. His nostrils flared and he smelled
blood in the house. Somewhere. And it wasn't human blood. His forked tongue
slid over sharp rows of teeth and he felt his lips pull up into a kind of
smile, as if he had no control over his response to that scent at all. Then he
realized that it wasn't a smile. It was a snarl.

Danny moved in silence through the dark corridor, still
wrapped in shadows. He felt invisible. He had always been good at hide and seek
as a child, always had an uncanny ability to sneak up on others unawares. For
the first time he realized this was not an ordinary thing. He cloaked himself
in darkness and slipped quietly down the hall, and this time when he smiled to
himself it was genuine.

At the end of the hall he peeked around the corner,
remaining out of sight, and when he saw Ceridwen he caught his breath.

This new corridor was far longer and halfway down its length
was a balustrade, and a stairwell that came down from above and continued on
toward the first floor. Danny had no idea what floor they were on now. The dim
light upon the walls was from somewhere below. At the landing, just beside the
stairs, were two creatures unlike anything Danny had seen before. They were
stooped, hands twisted into claws, long talons dangling by their knees. Their
skin was leathery brown and rutted with lines that might have been scars or
wrinkles or grooves in tree bark. And yet he had the idea that if they stood up
straight and hid their faces, they might have been able to walk the daylight
world and pass as human.

Just the way Danny did.

But he would have seen them for what they were. He would
have smelled them. They had the stink of raw meat and sewer on them, these
things. Danny had heard enough from Conan Doyle and the others to know they had
to be the Night People. The Corca Duibhne. Seeing them made him tremble, but
not with fear. He shook with the urge to kill them.

Ceridwen was in the hall as well, only ten or twelve feet
from the Night People. The ice blue sphere atop her staff glowed softly. Danny
could not help but notice the way her long limbs moved beneath the sheer fabric
of her dress. She was breathtaking. Her whole self seemed illuminated by the
same ice blue light that glowed within that sphere.

Magic
, he thought. For even as he watched she moved
nearer the two hideous creatures, and neither noticed her.

With an elegant flourish, Ceridwen spread her arms and
glided toward the Corca Duibhne; to Danny it almost seemed as though she were
dancing. It was a strange moment of ballet, that ended with Ceridwen reaching
out to touch the nearest of the two Night People. A blue light blossomed from
her fingertips, blue-white mist leaked from her eyes in streams that floated on
the air, and the sphere atop her staff flared with a moment of brilliance.

The monstrous creature froze, leathery skin turning that
same ice-blue. A wave of chilling cold swept up the corridor and Danny
shivered, staring at the scene that played out before him.

The second Corca Duibhne turned, shivering at the blast of
frozen air, and its eyes widened. It opened its mouth, flashing yellow razor
teeth, but before it could sound an alarm Ceridwen's free hand flashed out and
gripped it by the throat. Her muscles were taut, but even in profile Danny
could see her face was expressionless. Her eyes were as cold as the ice of her
magic. The creature let out a single groan, but no cry of alarm came.

The ice formed first upon its yellow fangs. Then its eyes
froze in its head. Moments later it was little more than an ice sculpture, just
like the other.

"Holy shit," Danny whispered from the shadows.

Ceridwen swept her staff around in an arc that shattered
them both. Thousands of shards of ice cascaded along the floor of the corridor.
Then she stood still once more, as though she had not even moved, and she held
her staff before her in both hands.

Danny felt a warm breeze begin to ruffle his hair. A wind
sprang up in the corridor. One moment it was gentle, even pleasant, and the
next it whistled in his ears and nearly knocked him off of his feet, a tropical
blast of heat that seared his lungs when he inhaled. His claws dug into the
wall and he clung to the corner, knowing if he fell he would give himself away.
He watched in awe as the frozen remains of the two Corca Duibhne swirled and
eddied in the hot wind.

They melted away to nothing, leaving not a drop of
condensation on the floor.

Gone.

The wind died and Danny held his breath, staring at
Ceridwen. The Fey sorceress went to the stairs and glanced upward, and then
leaned over the balustrade, getting her bearings.

Then she turned her icy eyes upon him.

Danny shuddered. He had cloaked himself in darkness, had
felt sure that his stealth was part of what he was, one of the few benefits of
his supernatural genesis. If this was to be his life — the life of a
monster — he'd thought at least there might be something good to come of
it.

"Come here," Ceridwen said, and though she spoke
in a whisper her words carried to him.

Abandoning any effort to hide himself, Danny hurried down
the corridor to her. He glanced around at the many doors along the hall and at
the stairs, worried that at any moment more of Morrigan's followers might
discover them.

As he approached, Ceridwen grabbed his wrist and drew him up
to her. Her fingers were ice upon his skin and that frozen mist still leaked
from her eyes. She towered over him and he had not realized before just how
tall she was. A shiver went up and down his spine but it was not the cold that
made him tremble. Ceridwen was indeed beautiful, but it could be a terrible
beauty, a cruel flawlessness.