When the Stars Threw Down Their Spears: The Goblin Wars, Book Three (34 page)

Teagan nodded. “What’s your other prayer?”

“Help!” Finn said.

“Just ‘Help’?”

“That’s it. Your voice lacked the proper note of desperation, though. I suppose it’s hard to achieve when you’re not in the midst of it.”

“In the midst of—?”

“My life,” Finn said, finally letting go. “My entire life. Godspeed, girl. The Almighty keep you safe.”

Teagan kissed Aiden before she and Gil slipped into the woods. The moonlight was plenty bright for her eyes, and apparently for Gil’s as well. She tried to keep the excitement that bubbled inside her quiet. She didn’t want to call the phookas yet—not until they’d crossed the ravine—so they followed the path Mag Mell had left, Gil jumping fern fronds and switch-flipping off giant tree trunks in his excitement.

He stopped when they found what was left of the band of phookas Seamus and the Cú Faoil had met. The creatures had been on the pool side of the ravine, closer even than Teagan had imagined. She couldn’t tell how many there had been—six, maybe seven. She had seen what Cú Faoil could do before, but it still sickened her. A dog-headed man, his grizzled muzzle belying his massively muscular build, lay split open on the path, his war club still in his hand. Teagan knelt and took it from him.

Gil looked at the bodies strewn around them, and the corners of his mouth turned down.

“Enkidu,” he said. “My name is Enkidu.”

Teagan stood up slowly. The last time she’d walked in Mag Mell, he’d said he wanted to tell someone his name before he died. He’d lied, of course, not giving his real name. But this time, he was telling the truth. She could feel it. He was preparing himself for death.

“Enkidu.”

Gil shivered when she said it. Enkidu was the wild hunter from
The Epic of Gilgamesh
. Phookas had to have glimories of that story. Why else would a phooka yearning to be a man call himself Gil after the human in the tale?

There had to be a history behind the phookas, just as there was behind the
cat-sídhe
. The hunters were . . . more broken. Were they being punished, like Eógan, the fiddler Thomas had asked Fear Doirich to turn into a tree?

This time it was Teagan who shivered.
If Hákon hunt answers instead of gods, they will not only miss supper. They will fail
.

“Thank you for telling me your name,” she said as they crossed over the ravine on the fallen giant. “Now, let’s run!”

She felt the spark leap up stronger as her feet hit the ground. The electric wind lifted her hair, and she felt the Song of Creation in it. The joy of the hunt flashed through her like adrenaline, and she threw back her head and howled with the excitement of it. Gil laughed beside her, and urgency bounced back from the ancient trees.
End it now
, they cried.
It must end now, or all is lost
. She glimpsed the first band of phookas through the underbrush—they stood still, watching her come.

She reached out with everything in her, with the excitement of the hunt, and the urgency of the trees. Mag Mell could not quite muster lightning for her, but this was enough. The electric charge amplified her cry ten thousand times.
Mab. Hunt Mab with me!
A jackal-man burst from the bushes and ran beside her, and then they were all running with her. She had called a single pack to run with her the last time she was in Mag Mell. This time, she was reaching every phooka in the woods.

The rhythm of the running rose in her like poetry, and she fitted Blake’s words to it in her mind.

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright

In the forests of the night
,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand dare seize the fire?

She jumped a bush as Gil had done earlier, giddy in the moonlight, and saw phookas all around her now. Still more were racing to catch up with them, bouncing off of trees and flipping as they ran.

And what shoulder, and what art

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And when thy heart began to beat
,

What dread hand? and what dread feet?

Blake had gotten that part wrong. There were no sinews in her, no beating heart. Just the fire of Mag Mell, captured by the poetry’s meter that moved her feet.

What the hammer? what the chain?

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? what dread grasp

Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears
,

And watered heaven with their tears
,

Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Teagan leaped high in the moonlight.
“Yes!”
she shouted to the trees. “He smiled!”

“He smiled, he smiled!” the phookas echoed.

The Song of Creation was resonating with their cry. Mercy had married Justice, and she was their child—hunter
and
healer.
That
was her symmetry, the balance in her. And it was fierce, and fearfully
good
.

More phookas picked up the words, as if it were a crazy battle call: “He smiled!” They bugled, trumpeted, and howled their joy at the thought.

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright

In the forests of the night
,

What immortal hand or eye

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

They’d run for an hour when Teagan saw the orange glow ahead of them. The goblin city was burning. She hoped Seamus had gotten the Fir Bolg out of the way, because there were more phookas running with her than she had imagined lived in all of Mag Mell, and they hadn’t reached the phooka camp outside the city gates yet.

When they did, phookas spilled out of their tents and shacks, or threw down what they were doing, caught up in the fervor of the hunt. If Seamus didn’t have the gate open, they were going to crash like a wave against the wall and start tearing one another apart in their frenzy.

She heard the crack of his whip before she saw him—silhouetted by the flames of a burning building as he did his Indiana Jones impression in the open gateway. And then he was moving. It looked almost like a dance as he worked the whip, and she saw that he was holding back a horde of Highborn shape shifters who wanted to close the gate.

“Get out of there, McGillahee!” Teagan shouted. She wasn’t sure he could hear her, but he must have heard the rising roar of the phookas at her back. He turned, jumped directly into the flames, and disappeared—just before the phookas crashed into the Highborn.

Enkidu kept moving, dodging past shape shifters, using the walls of buildings to bounce away from them.

Teagan was relieved to see no living Fir Bolg slaves on the streets. There were bodies, though, of both men and women. Things had not been going well for them before Seamus arrived.

They came around a corner and she saw a plaid jacket. There was no time to wonder how the Dump Dogs had gotten home. She had two seconds before Saoirse saw them. There were at least eight new Dump Dogs with her. Thomas had said it was a large family. Saoirse was the only one in human form.

“That way.” Teagan pointed, and Enkidu turned down the side street as the Dump Dogs started after them. She sprinted down the dirt road by Enkidu’s side, sure she could outrun them. But one, much faster than the rest, was gaining on Enkidu. Teagan could see the street opening up in front of him, and the arena, with its post for phooka baiting.

“Flip-switch,” she called to the phooka boy, and sprinted ahead just far enough to get past the pole ahead of him.

The Dump Dog was on his heels when Enkidu ran straight up the post. Teagan came back around it to the right, swinging the war club hard as Enkidu flipped to the left.

It connected solidly with the Dump Dog’s side, and she heard and felt ribs break. The Dog screamed, but Teagan whirled and went up the wooden bleachers after Enkidu. He leaped, caught a balcony railing one-handed, and swung himself up. Some of the Dump Dogs shifted to human form to follow, but they couldn’t keep up with him, even though he had only one hand.

“Come down!” Saoirse called. “We just want to talk to you.”

Teagan ignored her and focused on following Enkidu to the rooftop. He was headed for the center of town, a place that seemed to have been designed for free-running. The wood and stone buildings were attached to one another, or very close together. Even the streets were narrow enough to jump with a running start. The Dump Dogs couldn’t keep up.

“Fear Doirich,” Enkidu said at last. Teagan pulled him down so that they would be less apparent against the orange sky. The Dump Dogs would doubtless find them soon, and she wanted to study the situation before they arrived.

The place to which Enkidu pointed wasn’t a palace, as far as Teagan could tell. Just an ornate building, not even as tall as the one they were on. Three people stood on a balcony in the moonlight, watching the distant fires. Mab, Fear Doirich, and—Teagan’s heart sank. Thomas. It was Thomas, and he was dressed like a princeling in silver and black.

Fear Doirich wore the same circlet on his head that he had worn when she’d first seen him, walking in the dead garden. The undulating shadows that had followed him through the market were missing, though. Finn had been right. The shadows were gone from Mag Mell.

“I think we should—” Teagan began, but Enkidu was already moving.

“Maaaab!” he bellowed as he leaped from the rooftop. Teagan could either follow or let him die.

He landed on the balcony, and Teagan dropped beside him. Thomas took one look at them, turned, and ran through the door.

“Stop,” Mab said, and Teagan could feel the power in her voice, reaching out to bend them, take control. The Highborn’s eyes were solid black. Mab was bilocating, either preparing for violence to come or just back from the riots. Teagan was glad. Mab’s flesh and bones looked too much like Aileen Wylltson’s. Without them, the resemblance vanished. The features were all the right sizes and shapes, and all in the right places, but where Aileen had been fierce, this thing was vicious.

“Full of lightning, aren’t you, niece? Too bad Mag Mell is too weak to give you more. It might have helped.” She looked at the war club Teagan was clutching and laughed. “What do you think you can do with that? Pound me to death? We’re indestructible when we bilocate, you know.” Her black eyes widened. “Oh, look, dearest.”

Fear Doirich was looking—at Teagan, not at Enkidu.

An insane,
ravenous
look flashed over his face. He opened his mouth, as if he were going to sing one of the songs that twisted creation—then turned sideways and disappeared. A wormhole. She had never seen Raynor use one, but she was sure that was what the Dark Man had just done.

“Well, that’s that,” Mab said. “And you even brought the little swine back for slaughter.” She pulled the knife Finn had dropped in the market from a sheath at her side. “Thank you for this. It certainly is a step up from the bronze blade I had before. It’s been helpful in carving my way out of Mag Mell. Iron is as bad for her as it is for us. But it’s useful. How’s Raynor, by the way? Insane yet?” She laughed. “I think killing Finn would have done it. He loves that boy.”

“He loved you,” Teagan said.

“I don’t want love. I want sacrifice.
Come here, swine
.”

“I am not a swine!”
Enkidu bellowed as he charged her.

Move
, Teagan commanded her feet as Mab’s knife hand swung up. This was no different from defying the
cat-sídhe
’s voices, only harder. Much harder.

Enkidu head-butted the Highborn in the ribs just as Thomas came out the door he’d run through—dragging Mab’s flesh-and-bone body behind him by the hair.

The knife arm started its downward arc, and Teagan swung her war club. It smashed into the back of Mab’s hand. She might not have been able to break the bones, but the force of the blow knocked the dagger from the Highborn’s grasp, and it clattered onto the stones of the balcony floor.

Mab tried to shove Enkidu away and go after it, but Teagan dove, reaching it first. Mab was fighting desperately to free herself from the phooka now. She grabbed his head and started to twist.

Teagan didn’t have time to stand up. She rolled over and stabbed the dagger through Mab’s foot. The shock wave pressed her into the paving stones and threw Enkidu into the balcony railing. It ripped Mab’s flesh and bones away from Thomas, leaving hair in his hand.

Thomas was on his feet before Teagan gained hers, grabbing up the Sídhe queen’s body again. Mab was in it now, but not quite able to move. Teagan knew exactly how it felt—five slow heartbeats before your soul settled in again. The awareness came back into her eyes, and the Highborn managed a gasp as Thomas lifted her body and threw it over the balcony. Teagan heard the impact, like a melon hitting the cobblestones below.

Teagan helped Enkidu to his feet. She didn’t want to look down. But she had to make sure. She leaned over the railing beside Thomas. The Dump Dogs had found them. Saoirse, her face wet with Mab’s blood, looked up and grinned. Unlike Lollan and Bairre, she hadn’t bothered to shift before she started to feed.

And then the phookas poured into the street, and the Dump Dogs disappeared beneath them as a hand pulled Teagan away.