Twelve

 

 

It was dark by the time Kate and Arkan Garty reached Kate's apartment. For the most part, the street was quiet. Up the block a couple of teenagers were just turning the corner, their voices loud in the still air. Kate and Arkan waited until the pair were out of sight, then approached the house, keeping to the shadows.

The darkness didn't trouble Kate half as much as the fact that the windows of her apartment were all lit up. For one moment she thought, maybe Jacky's there. But then she realized that if Jacky was there, it was in the company of the Unseelie Court.

"What's the matter?" Arkan asked.

Kate glanced at her foxish companion. "There's someone in my place."

Arkan's eyes narrowed as he studied the lit windows. He moved into the deeper shadows alongside her neighbour's house, pulling Kate with him. Softly they crept across the driveway, hugging the walls of Kate's building as they stole up to a window to have a look. One glance was all that was needed.

"Bogans," Kate said, seeing them for what they were with Jacky's redcap on. "Shit. Now what're we going to do?"

"We don't need to go inside, do we?" Arkan asked. "It's only your car we came for."

"But the keys are inside. I've only got my house keys on me."

"Where is the car?"

"We need the keys to the car," she told him. "Or do you know how to hotwire it?"

Arkan nodded.

Kate stared at him. "You do?"

"Just because I'm part of Faerie, doesn't make me stupid."

"Yes, but you don't drive cars."

"Who told you that?"

"Well, no one. It's just in all the stories."

A foxish grin stole across Arkan's face. "There weren't many cars in Shakespeare's plays, either."

"Yes. But they didn't have cars back then …."

Kate's voice trailed off. Right, she thought. And they didn't have them when people were putting together fairy tales, either. Andrew Lang hadn't been much of a hot-rodder and Perrault wasn't known for his skill in the Grand Prix. And when she thought of Jacky's Wild Hunt – black-leathered bikers on their Harleys – who was to say what a denizen of Faerie might or might not know?

"Well, let's get to it," she said.

She led the way to where Judith, her VW, was sitting in the driveway. She cast a quick glance back at the apartment. That was her life the bogans were prying into now, her personal space. She took a deep breath and willed herself to bite down the rising tide of resentment. Jacky was what was important now. Not the apartment.

They reached the Volkswagen. The driver's door opened with a small protesting creak. The interior light didn't come on, but that wasn't through any forethought on Kate's part. The bulb had simply burned out a few months ago and she hadn't bothered to replace it yet.

"Judith," Kate hissed. "Help us out and I'll get you an oil change as soon as this is all over, I promise."

Arkan regarded her with amusement, then slid in. He bent down to fiddle with the wiring under the dashboard, leaving Kate to stand by the open door. She plucked nervously at the quilting of Jacky's blue jacket that she was still carrying. Something caught her gaze, a rapid movement in the corner of her eye that was there and gone so quickly that she barely registered it. She started to put on the jacket.

"Arkan," she warned. "There's something out here."

When she had the jacket on – and it had better be working, she thought – she moved away from the car, looking for anything that she could use as a weapon. No pack of bogans was going to bonk her on the head again and leave her sprawling, thank you very much. The next-door neighbour's iron rake was leaning against his back porch.

All right, Kate thought as she made for it, walking on tiptoes. There. She saw something move again. Just around the corner of her house. And she could hear whispering now. A dry, unfamiliar smell was in the air. Her fingers closed on the rake. The weight of it was comforting as she soft-stepped her way back to the car. She was about to call out to Arkan to ask what was taking the great faerie car-booster so long, when she saw something big and bulky glide from the front of the house and move soundlessly toward Judith's open door.

Not feeling brave, just angry, the rake tight in sweaty hands, Kate moved in behind the creature. She let him get nice and close to the car, then swung the rake behind her and brought it around in a sweeping arc until it connected with the head of whatever it was that had been sneaking up on Arkan. The wet sound as it hit, and the jarring blow that went right up her arms to her elbows, killed any satisfaction she might have gotten from her deed.

The big shape dropped like a felled ox. The rake dropped from Kate's hands. She saw Arkan jump at the double sound, knocking his head against the dashboard.

"It's … it's okay," Kate called in a loud whisper. "I got him."

Whatever "him" was. She bent to retrieve the rake just in time to see a collection of small lanky creatures come scurrying from around the back of the house. Oh shit, she thought. There had to be fifteen or twenty of the things. They were small, shadowy shapes, like the silhouetted branches of winter trees come to life. As they scurried forward that dry smell was in the air again.

"Look out!" she called to Arkan as she ran to meet them, trusty rake in her hand.

The VW's engine coughed into life on the heels of her words. Kate threw the rake at the foremost creatures and watched them go down. The ones immediately behind fell over their leaders as she bolted for the car. Arkan had it in reverse gear and was backing down the drive while she was still opening the door.

"Wait for me!" she cried.

She hauled the door open and flung herself inside. Arkan floored the gas pedal and Judith lunged out onto the road, passenger's side door flapping. Pulling in her feet, Kate grabbed the loose door, kicked away a couple of over-zealous twig-creatures, and banged it shut. She braced herself as the VW skidded to a stop. Arkan slammed the car into first and Judith leaped forward, leaving rubber on the pavement behind her. The sudden movement thrust Kate against her seat. Arkan changed smoothly from first to second, into third. Looking out through the rear window, Kate saw that they were losing the little band of creatures.

"Nice timing," she said as she turned around to face front once more. "God, what were those things?"

"A kind of goblin."

Arkan shot her a foxish grin. The longer she was with him, the more he looked like good old Reynard, Kate thought.

"A kind of goblin," she said. "Lovely." Another thought came to her. "Can you see me?"

Arkan shook his head, concentrating on his driving. "No. But I can hear your melodious voice, so I assume you're with me."

Oh, he was a cool one, Kate thought. But she liked him better like this than as the penitent who had met her at the bottom of the Gruagagh's garden.

"So what kind of goblins were they?" she asked as she worked at removing the blue jacket in the confines of the car.

"Gullywudes. Tree goblins."

Kate stifled a giggle. Then, jeez, she thought. Look at me. I just fought off a pack of these gullywudes, knocked a bogan for a loop, and I'm sitting here laughing about it all. Like it happens every day. Another giggle slipped out and she put a firm clamp on any more. This wasn't funny. This was being hysterical.

As she finally got the jacket off, Arkan gave her a quick glance.

"I know, I know," Kate said. "I shouldn't be, but I'm feeling giddy as a goose."

"It often happens when mortals mix with faerie," Arkan replied. "It's a natural reaction, no different from how you'd feel after a moment of stress. And you've just been going through both."

"So now you're a doctor?"

"It's a common fact – did no one tell you?"

"No."

Great, Kate thought. First I've got to worry about Jacky turning into a trickster, and now I'm turning into a giggly basket case. And then she had something else to worry about.

They had just reached a red light at the corner of Sunnyside and Bank, and Arkan took a sharp right without stopping. Kate grabbed for the handle hanging above the passenger's door. Okay. So it was legal to make a right on red in Ontario, but couldn't he at least have stopped and looked? There was a sudden blare of horns and screeching brakes behind them.

"It'd be nice if we made it there in one piece," she muttered.

Arkan didn't take his gaze from the road. "It'd also be nice if we didn't have the Hunt on our tail."

"The Hunt …?"

Kate turned again and saw three Harleys coming around the corner, cutting off more cars.

"Oh, jeez." She turned back. Lansdowne Bridge was coining up fast. "I thought you had to be from Faerie or wearing a redcap to see them?"

"You do. I'm from Faerie and you're –"

"Wearing a redcap. Yeah. I know. But the other cars on the road aren't, and they can see 'em." She looked back. The three bikers were gaining.

"Take off the cap and you'll see what they see."

So she did. There were still three motorcycles back there, but now they looked like they were being driven by members of a biker gang like the Devil's Dragon.

"The last time I took off the cap they just disappeared."

"Were they in traffic?"

"No, there was just one of them parked on my street, watching the house."

"They occupy space," Arkan explained, "even when invisible. In traffic like this they must be seen or a car might run into them."

"So they can be hurt?"

"It would … delay them."

They were up over the hill of Lansdowne Bridge and barreling down the other side. Still going fast. Very fast. Kate wondered if some hob skillyman had stitched a few spells into Judith's tires.

"What do you mean, 'delay them'?" she asked.

"They would have to find new bodies."

"New … Right. Forget I asked." She leaned back to look out the rear window again. "I thought all nine had to be together before they attacked?"

"True enough. But there only needs to be one to follow us."

Kate turned to face front, swallowing thickly. "Turn here," she said as the entrance to the Lansdowne Park came up.

Arkan's response was instantaneous. They went around the corner on two wheels, tires screeching again.

"Jeez!" Kate protested. "Be still my heart."

But then the headlights picked out a small figure standing in the middle of the parking lot by the Civic Centre. It was Jacky! The head with its freshly-cropped hair was familiar now. Only why was Jacky standing there in her bra with her shirt hanging from her hand? Arkan put the gas pedal to the floor once more.

"Arkan!" Kate cried. "That's Jacky!"

"I know. But she's not alone."

Not alone? Kate fumbled for the redcap and stuck it back on her head. The scene in front of her leapt into a new focus. There was Jacky, as before, but there was a man standing with her, as well. All around them was a whole forest of gullywudes. Down the steps of the Civic Centre a flood of bogans and other creatures were descending. Not to mention that behind the VW was a third of the Hunt. Perfect. All they needed was a Big Man or two and –

She braced herself, hands against the dash, when she realized what Arkan was up to. As he neared Jacky and the man, he suddenly hauled left on the wheel. The responsible little VW lunged at the nearest bunch of twig-creatures, mowing them down. And like bundled twigs, the gullywudes just seemed to come apart, spraying bits of wood everywhere. Arkan spun the wheel some more. The tires screeched on the pavement as he swept through a second, third, fourth grouping. He made three circuits, then brought the car to a shrieking halt.

This time Kate was prepared. As soon as the car stopped, she had the door open. She scrunched herself forward against the windshield, hauling the seat with her so that Jacky and her friend could get into the back.

"Kate!" Jacky cried. "Oh, God, am I glad to –"

"In, in, IN!" Kate cried.

For the first time Jacky seemed to be aware of the three members of the Hunt. The howl of their bikes was loud, drowning out the cries of the Unseelie Court as it rushed down the final steps of the Civic Centre. Without another word Jacky crawled into the back seat, tugging on Eilian's arm until he followed her. The Laird's son was still getting in when Arkan pulled away again.

"Now where to?" he asked nobody in particular.

"Someplace safe," Kate said quickly. She was leaning over the back seat, grabbing for Jacky's hands. "You're okay! How'd you get out?"

Jacky was a-glow with excitement. "I did it, Kate! I killed a giant. I really did. Just like you said I would."

"You what?"

"I killed …" Then the wonder of it all drained from Jacky's features as what she was saying hit home. She'd killed someone. Dead. Finito binito. "Oh, jeez," she said.

A sick feeling came over her. She began to tremble, her eyes filling with tears, and she buried her face in the shoulder of the young man sitting beside her. Kate looked at him, wanting to know who he was and what part he'd had in all of this, when Arkan demanded her attention again.

"Mistress Kate," he said. "Where safe?"

He was still going around in circles in the parking lot. The headlights kept giving them glimpses of hordes of gullywudes, bogans, hags, shelly-coats and goblins. And the three riders of the Hunt. As he drew near to the latter, Arkan suddenly dropped into a lower gear and tromped the gas pedal, twisting the wheel at the same time. The VW's fender clipped the nearest biker's machine. He went flying, his bike skidding across the pavement in a shower of sparks.

"I don't knoooow!" Kate wailed. Everything was just too wild.

"A restaurant," said the stranger in the back seat. "A place with lots of light and many people."

"Right," Arkan said. He straightened the wheel and aimed Judith for the gates of the parking lot.

Kate took a deep, steadying breath, let it out. Too quickly, but it didn't matter. It had helped.

"That won't stop them, will it?" she asked.

"With Cormoran dead," the stranger said, "the creatures have no leader to tell them what to do. They naturally avoid the well-lit public places of man, even in a moment such as this, unless ordered otherwise."

"She really killed one of the Big Men?" Arkan asked.

"Wart-nosed Cormoran – and she did it all on her own."

"Damn," Arkan muttered. He brought the car out onto the road in a skidding turn, then immediately slowed down and tried to blend in with the sporadic traffic on Bank Street. "That, I'd like to have seen."

"What about the Hunt?" Kate asked. "Won't they still follow?"

"They'll follow," the stranger said.

Kate sighed. "And they won't be happy. We hurt one of them back there."

Jacky's companion shook his head. "Discomforted him, perhaps, but the riders of the Hunt are not so easily hurt."

"Then what'll stop them?"

"The death of Cormoran, for the time being. That will leave them without orders. They'll follow us, I think, the two that are still mounted. The third if his machine was not too badly damaged, but I doubt they'll do more for now."

He was stroking Jacky's head, comforting her as he spoke. Jacky's shirt was a bunched-up ball in her hands.

"Who are you?" Kate asked.

"My name's Eilian. Your friend rescued me from the Unseelie Court."

Kate shook her head, her lips forming a soundless "Wow." Her Jacky had done all this? She reached through to the back seat, adding her own comfort to what Eilian offered, even if it was just a pat on the knee.

"Maybe you should get her shirt on," she said. Through the rear window she could see two of the Hunt following. "If we want to get into a restaurant, it'd help."

Understatement of the week. The way they all looked, she wondered where they'd all get into. And why wasn't Jacky wearing her shirt? She probably shouldn't even ask. There was so much going on that she felt left behind while everything spun past her in a dizzying whirl.

They were over Lansdowne Bridge again, past Sunnyside, going down the long hill that Bank Street made before it crossed the Rideau River at Billings Bridge. This was an odd strip: antique stores and bookshops side by side with bicycle and auto repair stores. Hillary's Cleaners came up on the left. The South Garden, a Chinese restaurant, was on the right, but it was too quiet.

"There!" Kate cried, but Arkan was already pulling into the parking lot.

It was a Dairy Queen. Lit up. Huge glass windows so that you could see all around. And even this late in October it had lots of people in it. Kate leaned over the back seat as Arkan parked the car. Jacky sat up and squirmed into her shirt, looking all the worse for wear with her rumpled clothes and the wild stubble of her hair. But she seemed to have a grip on herself again. A small smile touched her lips.

"Let's all go to the Dairy Queen," she sang quietly to the tune of its familiar advertisements.

"You ass," Kate said, but she could have kissed her.

She opened the door on her side and stepped out nervously. She looked around once, twice, then spotted the two black riders sitting on their Harleys in the lot of the gas station across the street. Arkan looked at her from over the roof of the car.

"Are you sure we'll be okay here?" she asked him.

Arkan shook his head. "No. But what else can we do?"

Good question, Kate thought. She stood aside as Eilian and Jacky disembarked, then led the way into the restaurant.

 

 

Thirteen

 

 

Jacky and Kate brought each other up to date over burgers, fries and thick milkshakes. They interrupted each other constantly with "You didn't!"s and "I would've died"s, much to the amusement of their faerie companions.

Hilarity sparked between them and Kate thought about what Arkan had said about how Faerie affected mortals who strayed into it. She worried, remembering snatches of old tales telling of poets driven mad by faerie queens and the like, but it was too hard to remain sensible with the way Jacky was carrying on and the giddiness that continued to bubble up inside herself.

There'd been no need to worry about how they looked. The mid-evening Dairy Queen crowd, while not quite as scruffy as the four of them, were hardly fashionable. Polyester and jeans were the order of the day. One man in green-and-yellow plaid trousers, mismatched with a red-and-blue striped windbreaker, set them all off again.

Double-dating at the DQ, Kate thought as she looked in the window and caught the reflection of the four of them in their booth. Then she saw the third rider pull into the parking lot across the street. He put his machine on its kickstand beside the other two bikes, then walked over to where his companions stood under a billboard advertising Daniel Hechter sweatshirts.

What struck Kate first and foremost was that she wasn't wearing the redcap at the moment. It was sitting on the table beside the wrappers of the two burgers that she'd just devoured.

"How come I can see them?" she asked, interrupting Jacky in the middle of explaining why she'd been standing with her shirt in her hand when they'd picked her up.

"The riders," Kate added at the general collection of blank looks her question garnered. "I can see all three of them and I'm not wearing the cap."

"Each time you see into Faerie, it becomes easier," Arkan said. "Not for all, mind, and quicker for some than for others. You see us, don't you?"

"Yes, but–"

"Think of it as a painting that you've had for years. A nice landscape, perhaps. One day someone comes in and says, 'Look at that face in the side of the hill,' and from then on you'll always be aware of that face. Because you'll know it's there."

"It's that simple?"

"No," Arkan replied with a grin. "It's faerie magic."

Kate aimed a kick at him under the table, but missed.

"What're we going to do about them?" Jacky asked, indicating the riders with a nod of her head. "We won't be able to do anything if they're following us around."

"We must lose them," Eilian said.

Arkan shook his head. "Easy to say, but impossible to do."

"The Gruagagh would know a way," Jacky said.

"But he told you not to go back," Kate reminded her.

"That was before. He was afraid they'd get my scent or something. Well, they've got it now, so what harm would there be in going to ask him for advice?"

"One does not go lightly against the wishes of a gruagagh," Eilian said.

"We're not really going to do that," Jacky insisted. "Nothing's the same anymore. We can't go sneaking into the Giants' Keep because with the Hunt following us, we might as well just step right up and ring the front doorbell. We need a trick to get by them, and the Gruagagh's the one to give it to us."

"We do need something," Eilian agreed.

"How did you know about Jacky?" Kate asked the Laird of Dunlogan's son, speaking as the thought came to her. "What brought you here looking for her?"

They all looked at him, and even Jacky saw him as though for the first time. He had a look that set him a cut above the common. His hair was the black of the feathers she remembered, his eyes darker still. A Laird's son was like a prince, wasn't he? Eilian smiled as though reading her thoughts. Unfortunately, Jacky told herself, by that reckoning, the only princess around here was Lorana. Rescuing her could make this whole thing into a regular fairy tale.

"There is a story oft-told in Dunlogan," Eilian said, "that came long before this time of trouble began. It foretold the fading of Faerie in Dunlogan, and Kinrowan, and all the new haunts of our people here in Liomauch Og. It warned as well of how the Host would grow stronger, in turn. When that time came, there a new Jack would arrive in one of the Seelie Courts, come to cast down the giants as have the Jacks of old."

"I'm not a Jack," Jacky said. "I'm a girl."

Eilian nodded. "Most assuredly, yet the spirits of the Jacks of old is in you. It's a lucky name, as the tales that your people still tell can vouch for."

"I've heard that tale before," Arkan said. "But where do you fit in?"

"I'm the third son of a third son of –"

"A third son," Arkan finished. "I see."

"Well, I don't," Kate said.

"It's like in the stories, isn't it?" Jacky asked.

Eilian nodded again. "The histories of Faerie tend to repeat themselves as much as your own do."

"You see," Jacky said, turning to Kate. "It's always the youngest son – not the eldest or the middle – but the third, the youngest son, who wins through in the end. It's in all the stories."

"Why?"

"Oh, Kate. I don't know. Because that's the way it works."

"But this isn't a story."

"It might as well be one." Jacky grinned. "Hobs and giants and bogans and all. It makes me feel lightheaded."

"I shouldn't wonder. You've lost about ten pounds of hair."

Jacky turned to her reflection, lifting a hand to the uneven mess of her hair. "Oh, God! Look at me! I'd forgotten how terrible I looked."

"That's the least of our problems," Kate said.

"Easy for you to say."

"I just did."

Jacky tried out a fierce look on Kate, but couldn't hold it. The two erupted in laughter, leaving Eilian and Arkan shaking their heads. Arkan turned to the Laird's son.

"I think it's something about the air of Faerie," he said. "Even in a place like this."

"Either that," Eilian said, "or mortals are all mad."

Jacky finally caught her breath. "You were saying?" she prompted.

"Times have been bad," Eilian said after a moment or two, "and getting worse. When word came north of how Gyre the Elder was moving his Court into Kinrowan, our Billy Blind said it was time now for me to go and help as I could. Three knots he tied in my hair, one for each –"

"What's a Billy Blind?" Jacky asked, interrupting.

Arkan replied. "It's a custom we brought with us from the old country. Every Court has one – a man or woman who has been crippled or blinded. They can often see into the days to come, and the old magics run strong in them – as recompense, some say. Even your folk had them in the old days."

Jacky's mouth shaped a small "Oh." Then she turned to Eilian. "And he tied knots in your hair?"

Eilian nodded. "One for each mortal danger I must face. Here, look." He turned his head so that Jacky could see two small braided knots of hair that hung behind his right ear.

"There's only two."

Eilian nodded again, adding a smile. "That's because one came undone after you rescued me from the Unseelie Court this evening."

"You mean, you've got to go through that two more times?"

"That, or something like it."

"Oh." The prospect wasn't very pleasing to Jacky. "Well, at least you know you'll be okay, won't you? I mean, something'll happen, and you'll pull through until both those knots are gone as well, right?"

"It's not that assured, unfortunately," Eilian replied.

"It's usually that way with augurings," Arkan added.

"Easy for you to say,'" Kate said, "seeing how you don't have knots in your hair."

Arkan smiled. "How do you know what I do or do not have in my hair?"

"The thing we've got to do," Jacky said, "is get out of here." She didn't like all this talk about hair and who had what in theirs. "I say we make our way to the Gruagagh's Tower and stay there tonight, then head for Calabogie first thing in the morning."

"And the Hunt?" Arkan asked.

"I've got a plan."

Kate looked at Jacky and shook her head. "I don't think I'm going to like this at all," she said.

 

* * *

 

Over Kate's protests, Jacky took her jacket and went to the washroom. Moments later the door opened and Kate saw her friend come out, but knew that no one else would for she was wearing the blue jacket now, with its hob-spelled stitcheries. She frowned at Arkan and Eilian, neither of whom had objected to Jacky's plan because they were both enamoured with the fact that she was "the Jack, after all. She killed a giant, didn't she?"

Jacky waited by the door until a customer was leaving, then winked at Kate and slipped out behind him. It took all of Kate's willpower not to stare out the window and watch Jacky's progress. Jacky might be invisible to the Hunt, but if Kate and her two faerie companions had their noses pressed up to the window, the riders would soon know that something was up.

Count to a hundred, Jacky had said. Staring daggers at her two faerie companions who had let Jacky proceed with her plan, Kate began to count.

Once she was outside, Jacky's confidence, fueled by Eilian and Arkan's admiring agreement to her plan, began to falter. There were too many shadows around her. The wind rustled leaves and the odd bit of refuse up and down the street, effectively swallowing any telltale sounds that might warn her of approaching bogans and the like.

A car pulled into the Dairy Queen's parking lot, almost running her down. She was about to shout something at the foolidiotjerk, then realized that the poor sod behind the wheel couldn't have seen her. Not with the jacket on. She glanced back at the restaurant where Kate and the others were playing their part. Then biting at her lower lip, she faced the three riders of the Hunt across the street from her.

This, she realized, might not be one of her brightest ideas. But it was too late to back out now. They had to do something. It was that, or dawdle around the old DQ until the place closed and they were kicked out. By then who knew how many of the Unseelie Court would be skulking around looking for tasty mortals to gnaw on.

She shivered, remembering her helplessness in the Civic Centre. But you got away, she told herself. And you did kill a giant. They'll be scared of you now. Right. Sure.

She started across the street.

 

* * *

 

Fifty-five, fifty-six.

Surely she could dare a peek?

Fifty-seven, fifty-eight.

Kate's nerves were all jangling. She should have insisted that she be the one to go out. At least then she wouldn't be stuck inside here worrying.

Sixty, sixty-one.

She glanced casually out the window, saw Jacky starting across the street, then just as casually stretched and looked back at her companions.

"I wonder what's taking her so long in there," she said to Arkan who obligingly turned and looked at the door to the washroom.

Sixty-nine, seventy.

He shrugged as he looked back at her. "Maybe she's looking for knots in her hair," he said.

Eilian and Kate laughed.

Seventy-four.

Kate wondered if Eilian's laugh sounded as hollow to him as hers did to her.

Seventy-six.

If I were a Huntsman, she thought, I'd know something was up just by the way we're all sitting in this booth like a bunch of geeks.

Eighty, eighty-one.

 

* * *

 

As she passed by the Hunt, Jacky was tempted to grab something and whack one of them over the head, but all she did was go by as softly as she could, positive that they could hear her knees rattling against each other, her teeth chattering, her pulse drumming out "HereIam, hereIam!" And then, just when she was as close to them as her path would take her, one lifted his head and looked around himself uneasily.

Oh, shit, Jacky thought.

Close as she was, she could see that the impression of emptiness under their helmets was caused by visors of non-reflective dark plexiglass. The one who had lifted his head now pushed back his visor and for the first time Jacky got a glimpse at what a Huntsman really looked like. His features surprised her. He seemed quite human, rough and craggy, but human all the same. He didn't have anything like the monstrous visage she'd imagined. Of course, the way he looked wasn't going to stop him from giving the alarm once he spotted her. His gaze settled on where she was standing.

This is it, she thought. I'm doomed.

But then a truck went by on the street and she moved quickly with it, hob-stitched sneakers lending her the necessary speed, the truck's passage swallowing any sound she might make. When she reached the position in front of the Bingo Hall that she'd been making for, she looked back to see that the rider had dropped his visor once more, his attention turned elsewhere. Jacky glanced over at the Dairy Queen.

She hadn't been counting, so she wasn't sure how long she had to wait. Just a couple of secs, she thought, but time dragged. She peeked back down at the sidewalk at the three riders. She could tell just by looking at them that they knew something was about to happen; they just didn't know what.

Hang in there, fellas, she thought. The show's about to start.

She wondered why she was so thirsty. Her throat felt like someone had rubbed it with sandpaper. Come on, Kate. How long can it take to get to –

 

* * *

 

A hundred.

This is it, Kate thought. She got up and knocked on the door of the washroom while Arkan went outside to the car. Eilian stood by the door waiting for her. She knocked again, looked across the street to see the riders moving to their bikes, then glanced at Arkan. His head was under the dashboard looking for the ignition wires. When Judith coughed into life, he sat up and grinned at them, then tromped on the gas. The VW leapt across the parking lot with a squeal of tires.

 

* * *

 

Jacky waited, her coat unbuttoned, until the VW started. Then she pulled off the jacket and stepped out from under the awning of the Bingo Hall and onto the pavement.

"Hey, bozos!" she cried.

The riders, moving for their Harleys, paused at the sound of her voice. She couldn't see the surprise register on their faces because of their dark plexiglass visors, but their indecision was plain in their body language.

Do it! she willed to Arkan.

At that moment the VW came tearing out of the parking lot. Jacky moved toward the riders, but slowly, making them hesitate. Then Arkan was aiming Judith at their bikes.

He hit the brakes as he neared the big choppers and the car slewed sideways. It hit the first bike and sent it crashing into the others. The riders leapt out of the way as the three machines toppled. Arkan brought Judith to an abrupt halt, backed up, popped the clutch back into first. The transmission shrieked. He floored the gas again, driving the bikes against one another and up against a streetlamp. Jacky didn't stay to watch any more.

She ran across the street for the front door of the Dairy Queen where Kate and Eilian were waiting. They watched Arkan back Judith away from the bikes and roar across the street to where they waited. The fenders and front trunk of the little car were a mess – crushed in, bumper hanging askew, one headlight dangling from the left side, the other shining straight up into the sky on the right.

"My car!" Kate wailed. "It's ruined!"

Arkan pulled to a screeching stop and Eilian opened the passenger's door. Grabbing Kate's arm, Jacky propelled her into the car. They both piled into the back – Kate under protest. Eilian was barely half in when Arkan pulled away, but he hung on, managed to haul himself the rest of the way in and slammed the door.

Arkan turned left at Riverdale, moving quickly through the gears up to third.

"It worked!" Jacky cried. She twisted around, peering out the back window. She could see the riders trying to untangle their machines. "We've lost them."

"I've had this car for seven years," Kate said.

"We'll get you another one," Jacky told her.

"You can't buy these anymore – not like Judith." She glared at Jacky. "How could you do this to Judith?"

"I …" It had been such a good plan, Jacky thought. And it had worked, too. But she'd never really thought about what it would do to Kate's car.

"Jeez, Kate. I wasn't trying to wreck her."

"God! Imagine if you had been."

"Well, you're the one who insisted on coming along."

"I …" Now it was Kate's turn to deflate. "I suppose I did. It's just that …"

Jacky gave her a hug. "We'll get her fixed up," she promised. "We'll make the Gruagagh put a spell on her."

"Do you think he would?"

"Your chance to ask him is coming right up," Arkan said from the front seat as he pulled into the driveway beside the house that was the Gruagagh's Tower.

The front yard was all overgrown as well, though not so badly as the back. A tall oak stood sentinel on the lawn, branches bare of leaves spreading overhead. A rundown garage, its door closed and the whole structure leaning a bit to one side, crouched at the end of the driveway. The house was dark. It looked, at that moment, more deserted than ever.

"End of the line," Arkan said.

Eilian got out first. As Jacky and Kate disembarked, he opened the garage door. There was plenty of room inside, so Arkan drove Judith in, then reached down and undid the wires, killing the engine before getting out of the car and leaving the garage. Eilian closed the garage door behind Arkan and they rejoined Jacky and Kate.

"Jeez," Jacky said, looking at the dark house.

Second and third thoughts were busily cluttering up her mind. Her stupid throat had gone all dry again. She swallowed with a grimace.

"I hope he's in a good mood," she said as she led the way to the front door and knocked.

 

 

Fourteen

 

 

When subsequent knocking and even a few well-placed kicks against the Gruagagh's door elicited no response, Jacky tried the doorknob. To her surprise, it turned easily under her hand and the door swung open.

Jacky peered inside from the doorway, but didn't enter the Tower. Shadows fled down the hallway, banished by the vague illumination of the streetlights behind her. But some of them seemed to move in the wrong direction. For a moment she thought she saw a coatrack against the wall by the door, but as soon as she looked directly at it, it was gone. There were vague sounds, creakings and stirrings that seemed more than just an old house settling in on itself.

She remembered Bhruic telling her that this was the best-protected place in Laird's lands. Oh, really? Then how come it was so easy to get in?

"Bhruic?" she called down the hallway. It was still filled with shadows, but now they lay motionless. The creaks and stirring quieted. "Are you there, Bhruic?"

Her voice echoed through the house. The stillness that followed was absolute. A horrible feeling began to rise in her. She remembered her first visit here. It was hard to forget the tall, forbidding Gruagagh, the sly movements spied in the shadows, and the ghostly furniture that never really seemed to be there when you looked straight at it.

She started forward, but a quick brown hand closed its fingers around her arm and hauled her back. "You never go unbidden into a Gruagagh's Tower," Arkan warned.

"I don't think he's here anymore," Jacky said, shaking her arm free.

"He has to be," Kate said.

Jacky's bad feeling grew more pronounced. Something was definitely wrong here. Either the Unseelie Court had found a way to breach Bhruic's defenses or … or he had left on his own. Either way, she felt betrayed.

"I'm going in," she said. "Whoever wants to can wait out here, but I'm going in."

She moved into the hallway and this time no one tried to stop her. Kate hesitated, then followed with Eilian. Arkan stood uncertainly on the stoop. He looked back at the deserted street, cars parked in neat rows along one side, houses spilling rectangular-shaped yellow lights from their windows onto their lawns. Swallowing once, he faced the Tower again and went inside.

A feeling of certain doom made his chest go tight as he crossed the threshold, and he found it hard to breathe. His faerie senses could see deeper into the shadows, could hear far more clearly. There was a feeling of otherness all about him. But as he closed the door and followed the others down the hall, and still nothing happened – no lightning bolts, no angry Gruagagh roaring at them – his initial fears quieted a little. But only to make room for new ones.

If the Gruagagh wasn't here, what hope was left for them? The Gruagagh held the heart of the Laird's kingdom in trust. If he had betrayed them … The rumors that had abounded when the Unseelie Court stole away the Laird's daughter returned to haunt him. Oh, moon and stars! If the Gruagagh was in league with the Host …

"Where could he be?" Jacky whispered. "He promised me – promised! – he couldn't leave the Tower."

"Maybe he doesn't know we're here," Eilian said. "He could be upstairs, out of earshot …."

"Look," Kate said.

She was standing by an open doorway, pointing in. The others joined her. They could see Windsor Park through the room's windows. Phantom furniture came and went as they looked about, then the room appeared to be empty, except for a small figure lying on a huddle of blankets in a corner.

"It's Finn," Jacky said, crossing the room.

She knelt by the little man and touched his shoulder. His eyelids fluttered at her touch. His eyes opened to look, first at her, then over her shoulder where Kate and the other two members of their small company stood.

"Where … where am I?" he asked.

"In the Tower," Jacky said.

The little man's features blanched. "The … the Gruagagh's Tower?"

Jacky nodded. "Where is he, Finn?"

"Where …?" The hob sat up, a hand rising to rub at his temple. "The last thing I remember is the bogans grabbing you and then something hitting me harder than I ever care to be hit again …." His voice trailed off as his fingers explored his scalp. "At least I thought I was hit on the head. But there's not even a bump."

"The Gruagagh fixed you up," Kate said.

"And now he's gone," Jacky added, trying to keep the hurt from her voice.

Why did he lie to her? Finding Finn here, alive and unhurt, proved that the Host hadn't stormed the place. So where could the Gruagagh have gone? And why?

"I'm going to look around some more," she said. "Kate, can you show me that room upstairs?"

Kate nodded, but it was Arkan who spoke.

"We should go," he said. "It's bad enough we're in his Tower without his leave; it'll be worse if we go poking and prying."

"The Gruagagh is gone?" Finn asked. "And you're spying on him? Jacky Rowan, are you mad?"

"Angry, maybe, but not the kind of mad you mean. Come on, Kate."

The two women left the room along with Eilian and began to explore the rest of the house. "This is bad," they could hear Finn mutter behind them as they started up the stairs. "This is very bad."

The halls and rooms upstairs were all dark, free of dust and unfurnished, and there was no one there. There were no ghostly furnishings anymore, no sense of sly movement in the deeper shadows. Jacky had an eerie feeling, moving through the deserted house. She felt like a ghost, like she didn't belong here or anywhere anymore. With the Gruagagh's disappearance she had to wonder how much of anything that he'd told her was true.

Why did he want her to go to the Giants' Keep? What if Lorana wasn't there? Or if she was already dead? If he was in league with the Unseelie Court, he might have been setting her and Kate up for, well, God knew what. When she thought of the bogans and their prodding fingers, the hunger in their eyes … She didn't plan to end up in a stew, that much was certain.

"I can't find it," Kate said.

They were on the third floor now and had been in and out of every room at least a half-dozen times.

"A room can't just disappear," Jacky said.

"A gruagagh's can," Eilian said. "Our Billy Blind has places he can sit and never the one of us can see or find him until he suddenly steps out as if from nowhere."

"A Billy Blind's like a gruagagh, isn't he?" Jacky asked. "Sort of a poor man's gruagagh?"

Eilian nodded. "My father's Court is not so big as some – not so big as Kinrowan, that's for certain. And we have no gruagagh to spell the Samhain charms, only a Billy Blind."

"Well, what do you do on Samhain Eve then?"

"Hide and hope."

"Hide and hope," Jacky repeated. She looked around the third floor landing where they were standing. "Can you hear me, Bhruic Dearg? Are you hiding somewhere near? Well, come out and talk to us, dammit!" She stamped her foot on the wooden floor, but its echoes were the only sound that replied.

"Was everything he told me a lie?" she asked no one in particular.

Eilian shook his head. "There is a Horn that rules the Hunt and the Laird of Kinrowan's daughter was stolen by the Unseelie Court. Those weren't lies. And you, Jacky. You are the only Jack we have now."

"I wish you'd stop calling me that. I'm a woman. You make me sound like a sailor."

"It's a title," Eilian said. "Like 'Billy Blind.' Our Billy Blind's not named Billy, nor even William."

She forced a small smile to her lips. "I guess we might as well go back downstairs. Do you think this place'll be safe enough for us overnight? I don't see us going to Calabogie tonight, but the way we all just waltzed in here, I don't know."

"So we're still going?" Kate asked.

"What else can we do?" Jacky asked. "With or without the Gruagagh, we've still got the Host to contend with. The only plan worth following is the one we started out with: Get the Horn and use it to find and free Lorana. The Lairdsfolk will rally around her and if we've got the Horn, we control the Hunt. Then we can turn the Hunt on the Unseelie Court and see how they like being on the receiving end for a change."

"This is still a gruagagh's Tower," Eilian said. "I think we'll be safe here, from Gyre the Elder's people at any rate. But if the Gruagagh returns and decides he doesn't care to guest us …"

"If the Gruagagh shows up," Jacky said, "he'll be too busy answering a question or two that I've got for him to be bothering anyone. Believe me."

"Getting real fierce, are we?" Kate said to her as they started down the stairs.

"Oh, jeez, Kate. Am I acting too weird?"

Kate shook her head. "With bogans and gruagaghs and men that turn into swans running around? I don't think so, kid. It's about time you got a little fierce."

Jacky sighed. "Can you just see Will's face if he could see us now? And he thought I was too predictable."

"Maybe we should stop by his place tonight," Kate said with a grin. "We can see how he likes standing off a bunch of bogans for us while we get a little sleep."

"Oh, wouldn't I just!"

"Who's Will?" Eilian asked.

Jacky glanced at him. "Just somebody I never knew," she said.

Kate smiled approvingly. Whatever else this madcap affair left them, at least it had finally brought Jacky out of her shell. Not that Kate had ever agreed with Will. His idea of bar- and party-hopping as the means to having a fulfilled life wasn't exactly her concept of what Jacky had needed. All Jacky lacked was some confidence in herself. With more confidence, Kate knew Jacky could do anything. And she was proving it now.

 

 

Fifteen

 

 

When Kate left him, her recriminations still ringing in his ears, the Gruagagh of Kinrowan returned to the third floor room with its view of the city in miniature. He marked the various positions of the riders of the Hunt, the gathering of bogans and hags, gullywudes, trolls and other creatures of the Unseelie Court. Of the Lairdsfolk there were few, and of those few he could see, all save the odd forester were hiding.

Not so the Host.

As night fell, he watched the sluagh rise from their marshy beds. The trolls under their bridges grew bolder. Packs of gullywudes and spriggans and other unwholesome, if minor, members of the Unseelie Court ran up and down the city streets, chasing leaves and the pets of humans, and sometimes humans, as well. They never showed themselves. Instead they teased with fingers like wind, and voices like wind, awaking fears that didn't settle, even when the humans were safe within their homes and the doors closed on the eerie night.

He could not see into the building where the bogans held Jacky captive, but he could imagine what went on in there. The greedy faces pressed close to her, feeding on her fear as much as the smell of her. If the giants didn't want her for their own, the stew pots would already be heating. She would be despairing ….

"Use your wits, woman," he whispered into the night. "Why do you think the powers that be gave them to you, if not to use?"

But then he saw the new captive that the Host brought into the building. The swan wings would have told anyone what station the new captive was, but even without them Bhruic would have known. He had not served Lairdsfolk for so long without recognizing them by sight, by sound, by smell, no matter what shape they wore. He recognized who this young Lairdling was, too. Dunlogan's son. His third son. Eilian. The Giants' Keep would ring with celebrations tonight. A new Lairdling to add to their bestiary, and a Jack, as well.

He closed his eyes, not to shut away the sight of what lay in front of him, but to seek council within. He let his inner turmoil rise and fret, caught each fear and loosed it from inside him like so many freed birds until only silence lay there, deep and soothing. The silence filled with possibilities. They lay like threads in front of his closed eyes, going every which way, unraveling into pasts and presents and times yet to come. He couldn't work them, couldn't weave them – that was for other hands more skilled than his – but he could take one thread, one possibility, and tie his need to it, then send it forth from his silence like a summoning call.

For a long time he stood by the window, motionless, sightless as Eilian's Billy Blind, which was to say he saw not the world around him, but the worlds within. He stood and waited, without expectations, but open to what might come; not hoping, but neither did he feel hopeless. And the first inkling he had that his call was answered was a sound that appeared to rise up from inside him, it seemed so close. A rhythm like hooves drumming on long hills, a winding call like a horn sounding, a melody that was fiddling, piping, harping, all at once.

"I hear you, Gruagagh," a voice said softly. "Has the time come for you to set aside your spells and come with me for good?"

Bhruic opened his eyes. Before him, lounging on the windowsill, was a slender man who wore trousers and a jacket that looked to be made of heather and twigs and leaves all woven together; whose feet were unshod, for they were hooves; whose red-gold hair fell in curls around an old-young face; whose eyes were too dark and too deep and too wise to be the eyes of mortal or faerie. He held a fiddle loosely in the crook of his arm, an instrument of polished wood with a head carved into the semblance of a stag's. He reached out and tapped Bhruic with the end of his bow.

"Well?" he asked.

Bhruic shook his head. "I need a small favour."

The stranger smiled. "I doubt it's that simple."

"It never is," Bhruic agreed.

"You play your hand too much in shadow," the stranger said. "But you know that already, don't you?"

The fiddle went up under his chin and the bow licked across its strings. The melody he played was both merry and sad and he didn't play it for long. When he was done, he studied Bhruic for a time.

"You were a poet, first," he said finally. "A bard. You could have been the best poet we had. Do you still remember what it was like before you let wizardry rule your life?"

"There was no one else to do what needed to be done, Kerevan. Kinrowan had no gruagagh."

"And were you truly the man for the task? Will all the music and song you never played or wrote be worth it?"

Bhruic made no reply.

Kerevan smiled. "So be it. What small favour do you need, Gruagagh of Kinrowan? And ask me not again to look for the Laird's daughter you lost, for you know I can't."

"It's the one called Jacky Rowan," Bhruic said.

A fiddle string rang out as Kerevan plucked it. "Ah," he said. "That one."

He leaned back so that the Gruagagh could look out the window. Bhruic saw the tiny figures of Jacky and Eilian in the parking lot of Lansdowne Park surrounded by bogans and gullywudes, saw Kate's Volkswagen pulling in off Bank Street.

"But the giant …?"

"She killed it. She's a Rowan and Jack – haven't you said so yourself? What she doesn't win through pluck, she wins through luck. That was always the way with Jacks, even in the old days. She'll be cannier than even she knows herself, that one."

"It's still a long road to the Giants' Keep."

Kerevan nodded. "That it is. And a great deal can happen to one upon the road these days, if you take my meaning," he added with a sly wink. Then he frowned. "You shouldn't meddle with the Host, Bhruic. Nor with the Laird's Court, either. Our kind were not meant to strike bargains with either – you know that."

"Do I have a choice?" Bhruic asked.

"You always have a choice, no matter who you bargain with. But speaking of bargains, what will ours be? What's it worth? Will you go with me?"

Silence lay between them as Bhruic hesitated. Then finally he sighed.

"On Samhain day," he said. "If all goes well."

"On Samhain day, no matter how it goes," Kerevan returned.

Bhruic hesitated again.

"Don't you trust your luck?" Kerevan asked.

"On Samhain day," Bhruic agreed.

"Done!"

Up went the fiddle again under Kerevan's chin and down went the bow. The tune that spilled forth was a mixture of three or four reels that he tumbled together willy-nilly, but with great feeling. Laying aside the bow, he grinned.

"But mind," he said. "You're not to talk to Host or Seelie Court till my return. I'll not have you making new bargains on top of the one we have ourselves."

Bhruic nodded.

"Now what's this small favour you'd have in return?" Kerevan asked.

The Gruagagh sat beside him on the windowsill. "This is what I'd have you do," he said.

 

* * *

 

When they were done making bargains, Kerevan picked up his fiddle again. Hopping about on his cloven hooves, he sawed away at his fiddle until the room rang with the sound of his music. Bhruic could feel his own blood quicken.

"Until Samhain, Kerevan," he said.

He closed his eyes. The threads were there once more, moving and weaving in time to Kerevan's reels. Bhruic unraveled the one that had brought the fiddler. The music faded and when he opened his eyes he was alone once more.

He meditated for a long time in that room that looked out on more views than it should. When he heard Jacky and her companions arrive, he spoke the necessary words that would hide him and the room from any but another gruagagh's sight, in the same way that a Billy Blind will speak a word and sit unnoticed in a corner of his Laird's hearth forever and a day, if that was what he wished. Bhruic meant to keep his side of the bargain, just as he knew Kerevan, capable of mischief as he was, would keep his.

He heard Jacky and Kate and the Laird of Dunlogan's son stomping about on the third floor looking for him, looking for this room, but the sounds came as though from a great distance. When he gazed out the window once more, the grand view of Ottawa was gone.

In place of the panorama of the Laird's holdings, he saw only the street below. There were gullywudes down there, sniffing and creeping about on twig-thin limbs. Bogans, sluagh, and a troll, too. At the far end of the street, a Huntsman sat astride his motorcycle, featureless in the shadows that cloaked him from all eyes but those of faerie. Then he saw Kerevan wandering down below as well, fiddle under his chin and playing a tune.

The music of Kerevan's fiddle drove them all away. The gullywudes scurried off and hid. The bogans snarled and made threatening gestures, but they too finally retreated. The sluagh hissed and whispered, faded like mist. Last to go was the troll, snuffling as he wandered aimlessly down the street, hitting the concrete with a big wooden club as he went. A forester from the Laird's Court happened by then, but he, too, was sent off by the spell in the fiddler's music.

Then only Kerevan was there, hooves clicking, fiddle playing. And the rider. Motionless in his shadows. And that was the way it remained for the rest of the night.

 

 

Sixteen

 

 

I dreamt I heard a fiddle play all night long," Jacky said when she woke the next morning.

They had slept in the room overlooking Windsor Park, the five of them sharing the blankets that the Gruagagh had left for Finn, the hard wooden floor for their mattress. They woke in various moods of discomfort. Finn and Arkan were edgy about their surroundings. Kate hadn't appreciated the meager sleeping arrangements and felt a bit grumpy, while Jacky was still fuming about the Gruagagh's disappearance. Only Eilian was cheerful.

"I heard it too," he said. "And I thought I knew that music, or at least who played it, but it's not so clear now that the sun's up and I'm more awake."

"Unseelie musicians – that's who played outside this Tower last night," Finn said. "Who else would be abroad in Kinrowan? Only the Unseelie Court … and gruagaghs. Oh, we're in for a bad time, I just know it."

"The Host has gruagaghs too?" Jacky asked.

"Every court has wizards of one sort or another," Arkan said. "Even your own folk."

"Can't trust them, either," Finn added. "Not one of them. And the Gruagagh of Kinrowan himself is in league with Moon knows what."

"He fixed you up," Kate pointed out.

"For what?" Finn asked. "For why? No good'll come of it – mark my words."

Jacky looked away from the window. She'd been standing there watching the sunlight fill the park. She felt better now with the night gone. She hadn't only heard music last night. She'd heard the whispering sound of sluagh around the Tower, the restless dead calling out in mournful voices. Not close, not as close as the fiddling, but too close for comfort.

"We'll just have to make our own good," she said. "And we'll start by going to Calabogie. Now, while the sun's up and the Host's not so strong. Unless anyone's got better suggestions?"

Kate looked up from where she sat cleaning her nails with her little Swiss penknife. "Breakfast?" she tried.

"We can stop for it along the way."

"I'm ready to go," Eilian said and one by one the others nodded, even the morose Finn.

"Don't we make a grand company," the hob muttered as they followed Jacky to the front of the house. "We've got Gyre and all his kin just shaking in their boots, I'm sure."

"She did kill a giant," Arkan said, nodding ahead to Jacky.

"There's that," Finn agreed.

Jacky had reached the front door and flung it open. Standing on the steps, arms akimbo, she looked up and down the street. The October sun was bright in the crisp air. The grey pavement of the sidewalks and streets was ablaze with the colour of dried leaves that scurried and spun down their lengths. With her redcap on, though she didn't really need it anymore, Jacky studied every possible hiding place, and a few more, besides, but could see nothing. Not anything dangerous. Not anything at all. They could easily be alone in the world, the street was that quiet.

"They're not here," Arkan said wonderingly. "I knew we could lose the Hunt for a while, but I thought it was sure they'd have tracked us down by now. Yet there's not a soul to be seen."

Jacky nodded, though she still sensed something watching them. She couldn't spot whatever it was. "It'll be a tight squeeze, five of us in Judith," she said to Kate.

"I'm still going," Kate said.

"Of course you are. I'm just saying it's going to be cramped, that's all."

"Kerevan," Arkan said suddenly.

Jacky gave him a strange look. "What?"

"Last night, the fiddling you heard. It was Kerevan playing."

"Who or what is Kerevan?" Kate asked.

"No one's all that sure," Finn explained. "There's some say he was here when the first faerie arrived, others say he's of mixed blood – that of Kinrowan and that of the native faerie."

Eilian nodded. "That's right. I've heard that story. And he's mostly seen in Kinrowan's lands, if he's seen at all. But that hasn't been for many years."

"What does it matter?" Jacky asked.

"Well, before the Gruagagh of Kinrowan became the Gruagagh, he was prenticed as a bard. He went into the Borderlands between Kinrowan and Dunlogan, and prenticed himself to Kerevan, who'd learned his own craft from the old Bucca, Salamon Brien. There was a great to-do about it – especially in those days when we didn't have the Host to worry about so much – because the Bucca's one of the fiaina sidhe, you see, those faerie who bow to no Laird."

Finn nodded in agreement with what Eilian was saying. "There's always been a bit of something strange following the Gruagagh of Kinrowan," he said. "If it's not prenticing himself to Kerevan, it's becoming the Gruagagh in the first place. If it's not being the best of both – poet and wizard – it's losing the Laird's daughter to Gyre the Elder and suffering no more than a few hurts himself."

"But what about this Kerevan?" Kate asked.

"Why, he's dead," Arkan said. "He's been dead for a hundred and fifty years."

"So it was his ghost we heard last night …?"

"Oh, great," Jacky said. "That's all we need. I think it's time we hopped to it. We can exchange all the ghostly stories you want on the drive up, but let's get going."

She led the way to the garage, just as she'd led the way out of the Gruagagh's Tower. Taking the lead was coming naturally to her, which was odd enough in its way, she thought. But odder still was the way the others were deferring to her. It came, she supposed, from killing giants. This morning she didn't feel weird about that. It was as though she'd seen an exciting, if a tad overly gruesome movie the night before, and while she remembered what had happened, the gory details weren't so clear anymore.

Arkan lifted the garage door and they all stared at the car.

"Poor Judith!" Kate cried. "Look at her!"

"She's never going to make it," Jacky said.

"Oh, we'll get her running," Arkan said.

With Eilian's help, and Kate fussing about over their shoulders like a concerned mother, Arkan managed to bang the VW's fenders into a semblance of their proper shape. A piece of wire pulled taut around each of the lights had them pointing straight again. The dent in the bumper they banged out with a rock from the Gruagagh's garden.

"Well, what do you think?" Arkan asked, finally, stepping back to admire his own handiwork.

"We'll get her fixed up properly as soon as we're back," Jacky promised, cutting Kate off in the middle of a rant about what exactly was wrong, everything was wrong, were they blind that the couldn't see that dear old Judith was just so much junk now thanks to …

Jacky squeezed into the back with Kate and Finn. Eilian and Arkan rode up front, with Arkan driving. The car started smoothly as Arkan connected the ignition wires. He backed out of the garage and onto the street at a reasonable speed that bore no resemblance to last night's flamboyant ride. Jacky peered out the back window and all around as they drove off. The feeling of being watched persisted – they were being watched – but she couldn't see by whom, or from where. Then they were on Riverdale. The Gruagagh's street was left behind, and with it, the feeling.

 

* * *

 

Hobs weren't the only beings that could stitch invisibility. Hidden through the Hunt's special magics, one of the nine riders watched and waited. As soon as the VW started up in the Gruagagh's garage, the rider kick-started his Harley. He waited until the VW was almost at the end of the block, then fed the bike some gas. But before he could pull away, the music started.

It came from all around him, catching him unaware. His hands went lax on the handlebars. The bike coughed and stalled. The rider slumped in his seat and the machine began to totter. Before it fell over, a lithe figure with cloven feet slipped forward and leaned his own weight against the bike, keeping it upright, all the while playing his fiddle.

The rider was firmly snared in the music's spell, something Kerevan had only accomplished by taking the rider by surprise. It wouldn't last long. He lifted the bow from his fiddle and slid the pair of them into the sack that hung from his shoulder. Then he took a firmer grip on the motorcycle and let the rider slide off it, onto the ground. He grinned down at the fallen Huntsman as he straddled the machine.

"Oh, my," he said, kicking the Harley into life once more. "Won't this be something."

He roared out of the rider's hiding place in time to see the VW turn onto Riverdale. Giving a jaunty wave toward the window where he knew the Gruagagh was watching, he fed the bike some more gas with a relaxed twist of his wrist and sped off in pursuit of the little car, humming a hornpipe under his breath. The tune was "The Tailor's Twist" and most appropriate it was, too, he thought.

 

* * *

 

"It seems fairly straightforward," Jacky said. "We just take the Queensway out to Highway 7, follow that to Arnprior, then number 2 until we reach Burnstown, and then take the 508 to Calabogie."

She was reading their route from one of Kate's maps that was a part of the clutter underfoot in the cramped back seat.

"But that's just it," Kate said. "If it's that straightforward won't they have some nasty surprises waiting for us along the way?"

"The other choice is to go down to … oh, Perth, say, then take Highway 1 up through Lanark to where it turns into 511. But 511's a pretty windy and hilly road. If we're watching out for good ambush country, that'd be it. What do you think, Arkan?"

"We should take the quickest route," he replied. "There'll be enough of the Host around the Keep by day. Come nightfall, their numbers will easily triple."

"What did the Gruagagh suggest?" Finn asked.

Jacky frowned and folded the map with a snap. "What the Gruagagh does or doesn't suggest isn't our concern."

In the front seat, Arkan and Eilian exchanged glances. "Remind me never to get on her bad side," Arkan said in a loud stage whisper.

Jacky gave him a playful whack on the shoulder with the map. "I heard that," she told him.

Leaning forward, she turned on Judith's radio, switching stations until one came on playing the Montreal group Luba's latest single, "Let It Go."

"I like this one," she said with a smile.

She turned up the volume and squeezed back in between Kate and Finn as the lively song with its hint of a Caribbean dance beat filled the car with an infectious rhythm.

 

* * *

 

They reached the turnoff to Pakenham without incident, having decided to leave the main highway once they'd covered half the distance to Calabogie. The radio had long since been turned off, though Jacky was still singing "Let It Go" under her breath. The bridge in Pakenham was under construction and they had to wait a few minutes before their lane could move. The Mississippi River was on their right, bearing no resemblance to its American cousin except for its name. On the left was a big stone building that had been built in 1840 as a private home, but now housed Andrew Dickson's, a well-known craft and artisan gallery.

"I had a friend who had a showing there," Jacky said. "Remember Judy Shaw?"

Kate nodded.

"I have a cousin who lived there for a while," Finn remarked. "But he had to move because of Grump Kow."

"Now who's Grump Kow?" Kate asked.

"The troll who lives under this bridge they're working on."

"Lovely. I had to ask."

Their lane was clear now and Arkan steered across the bridge. He followed the road into Pakenham, then turned right onto 15. It turned into 23 before they hit White Lake, then they took Highway 2 into Burnstown.

"I'm starving!" Jacky said, pointing desperately at the Burnstown General Store. Arkan obliged by pulling into a space in front of the store.

It was an old brick building and in honour of the approaching Halloween, had pumpkins lining the concrete steps leading up to the front door, and a straw man in Wellie boots, jeans and a plaid shirt tied to one of the porch supports. They filled up on coffee, sandwiches and donuts, sitting on the porch while they ate.

"So far we're clear," Arkan said. "I'm not sure if that makes me feel good or not."

"Doesn't it mean that we've lost them for sure?" Kate asked.

"Not really. They know where we're going. I'm afraid the reason we're being left alone now is because they're preparing something really horrible for us in Calabogie."

Finn stared at his half-eaten donut. "All of a sudden, I'm not hungry anymore."

"Time we were going anyway," Jacky said with false jollity.

"Easy for you to say. You've already finished eating."

"Don't mind her, Finn," Kate said. "She's feeling terribly fierce these days."

Eilian laughed as he gathered up their wrappers and empty coffee cups and dumped them in a garbage barrel at the end of the porch.

"All aboard!" Arkan called.

They piled back into the VW, Jacky leaning into the front seats again as she tried to see just what it was that Arkan did with the wires to make the car start without a key. Judith coughed into life without Jacky being any the wiser as to how it had been managed, and then they were off again, taking 508 on the last leg of their journey to Calabogie.

 

* * *

 

Cloaked in a spell that hid him far better than either a hob's stitcheries or a Huntsman's magics, Kerevan kicked his borrowed Harley back into life and followed after them once more.

The lack of pursuit or any interest by way of the Host troubled him, as well. He was of half a mind to speed ahead and spy out what lay in wait, but didn't dare risk letting the VW out of sight. If something happened to his charge while he was spying ahead, his bargain with Bhruic would be voided. And that he wouldn't allow. He'd waited long enough for Bhruic to shed his Gruagagh cloak. Too long, by any reckoning.

But he had a bad feeling about what lay ahead.

 

* * *

 

Calabogie, first settled in the early 1800s, was considered by many to be the hub of Bagot & Blythfield Township, an area of around 175 square miles, two-thirds of which was Crown land. Calabogie's resident population of 1600 more than doubled in the summer when the cottagers descended upon it. The town took its name from the Gaelic word "Calaboyd," meaning "marshy shore," of which Calabogie Lake, on which the village was situated, had plenty.

Jacky and her friends approached it from the east. Their first inkling that they were near was when they spied Munford's Restaurant & Gas Bar, on the corner of Highway 508 and Mill Street. Behind the restaurant was a small trailer camp.

"Where to now?" Arkan asked, slowing down.

"We go straight," Jacky said, consulting her map, "until we see a gravel pit on our right, then we turn left on a side road."

"Are you sure you know where we're going?" Kate asked.

Jacky pointed to her roadmap. "This is the same as the one Bhruic showed me, except it's got names we can understand instead of faerie ones. Once we hit that side road, we're looking for a cliff face that overlooks the lake at," she studied the map, "McNeelys Bay."

"The cliff face is the Giants' Keep?" Eilian asked, turning around to the back seat.

Jacky nodded.

"Then perhaps we shouldn't be in quite such a hurry to drive right up to it," Eilian said. "Is there a way we can approach it from the rear?"

"Not unless you want to hike over these mountains."

"Look at that," Kate said, pointing to a motel sign as they passed it. "'Jocko's Motel,' I love it."

Everyone looked and made suitably appreciative noises except for Arkan, who was watching the rearview mirror. A pickup truck was approaching them quickly – too quickly for his liking.

"Hang on!" he cried.

"What –?" Jacky began just as the pickup rammed them from the rear, knocking them all about in the confines of the small car. Arkan fought the wheel, trying to keep Judith on the road.

"My car!" Kate moaned.

"Is that guy nuts?" Jacky cried at the same time. She turned to look out the small rear window and saw, even before Arkan called out, who was in the truck.

"Bogans is what they are!" Arkan warned.

"Can't we go any faster?" Jacky asked.

"Not with this load."

The truck rammed into them again, this time slewing them along the highway, rubber burning before Arkan managed to regain control and straighten the car. As the pickup lunged forward for a third time, Arkan hauled left on the wheel. The VW's direct steering answered with frightening efficiency. Again Judith's wheels were squealing on the concrete. Arkan tromped on the brake. The pickup, trying to correct its aim after Arkan's abrupt maneuver, went sailing by. Then its brake lights flared. There was a small bridge coming up that crossed a ravine with a creek running through it. Arkan brought the VW to a skidding stop a half-dozen feet past the bridge.

"Out!" he roared. "Everybody out!"

They scrambled to obey. Arkan had his door open and was hauling Finn from the back seat. Eilian, not so quick, was on the road a half moment later, helping Kate out. Jacky saw that the pickup had stopped ahead of them. Its reverse lights went on and she knew what it was going to do – ram them again.

She froze for a long second, then Arkan had a hold on her arm and was bodily dragging her from the car. Her blue jacket, tied around her waist, caught for a moment, then came with her as she fell to the ground, half supported by Arkan. The pickup smashed into Judith and knocked the VW right off the road into the small ravine. The little car hit the rocks at the bottom with a screeching sound of buckling metal.

"We've got to run for it!" Arkan cried.

He helped Jacky to her feet, then went to get Finn, who was sitting dazed by the road. The pickup was disgorging its load: three bogans from the cab, a half-dozen more from its flatbed. Eilian and Kate ran to where Jacky and the others were. For a long moment they milled uncertainly, not knowing which way to run. Then the fields around them came alive with bogans and gullywudes, hags and spriggans, and an eighteen-foot-high giant who pushed his way out of a stand of small saplings to roar at them.

"Oh, Jesus," Jacky cried. "We've had it." She turned to Eilian. "Go! Fly away! There's no sense in all of us getting caught."

Eilian hesitated.

"Do it!" she shrilled, her voice high with frustration and panic.

There was no escape for the rest of them. The ambush had been too well planned and they'd rushed right into it like a pack of fools. Black feathers sprouted all over Eilian. Arms became wings. Neck elongated. For a brief moment there was this strange hybrid creature standing there, then the black swan lifted up into the air with an explosion of wings. He went up out of range of the Unseelie Court, then circled to see if he could help. The other four bunched together as the bogans encircled them.

Jacky was so mad at herself that she didn't have time to be scared. She waited for the first creature to come at her, hands curled into fists at her side. She was going to hit them and kick them and scratch them and generally make it so hard for them to tie her up that they'd regret ever coming near her. Well, at least that was her plan. Except just at that moment there came a familiar roaring sound. The throaty engine of a big chopper. A Huntsman.

The bogans hesitated in their advance. Jacky and the rest stared as one to see one of the big Harleys suddenly pop into view in the middle of the road. One moment the pavement had been empty, in the next the big machine was thundering right for them. Only the being driving it wasn't a Huntsman, or if he was, he wasn't wearing his leathers and helmet. Red-gold hair blowing, tunic fluttering and looking like so many leaves and twigs and bits of this and that sewn together, he drove right at the bogans, scattering them. His left arm reached out and snatched Jacky up, swinging her behind him, then the chopper literally leapt forward, front wheel leaving the ground as the back one burned rubber.

"No!" Jacky cried.

She didn't know if this was a friend or foe; all she knew was that her friends were being left behind while she was speeding away. She would have jumped from the bike, but it was going so fast she knew there was no way she'd survive the impact when she hit the ground. She clung to the weird rider's weirder coat.

"Please, stop!" she cried. "Those're my friends back there. Please!"

But the stranger just drove the big bike faster.

 

 

Seventeen

 

 

Kate saw the Huntsman grab Jacky and speed off with her on his Harley, then the Host was swarming over them and there was no more time to worry about her friend's fate. She clawed and bit at the creatures, kicked and punched, all to no avail. The gullywudes danced out of the way of her ineffectual blows, then sidled close, tripping her, pulling at her short hair, at her clothes, pinching and striking her with sharp stick-like hands. Then the bogans had her.

They were great smelly brutes. The reek of them made her gag. The power in their hands made escape impossible. She saw Finn lose his own battle. She heard Arkan's sharp cries like the barking and growling of a fox. He lasted the longest of the three of them, but soon he, too, was held captive. And then the giant was there, looming impossibly tall over them. Seeing the sheer bulk of the creature, knowing how much of Jacky's besting one of them had been luck, it still boggled her mind that her friend had been able to stand up against one, much less kill it.

All the fight went out of Finn as the giant stood over them. Arkan snarled until a bogan cuffed him unconscious with a brutal blow. Then it was just Kate staring defiantly at him, held fast by bogans, her heart drumming in her chest. High above, Eilian soared, as helpless to help them as though he were caught himself. The giant gave a swift nod to one of the hags.

The grey naked skin of the creature seemed to swallow light as it stepped forth. It spread its arms, where flaps of loose skin hung batlike between arms and torso. Two, three more hags joined the first. Up they went into the air, their take-offs awkward, but once they were airborne they moved swiftly and surely after the black swan winging high above them.

Standing near Kate, a gullywude took a sling from its belt and chose a smooth stone from the roadside. Then the sling was in motion, whirring above the little creature's head until it hummed. The gullywude released its missile and the stone went up, up, past the hags. It struck Eilian's wing and he floundered in a cloud of black feathers. Down he spiraled and Kate looked away, unwilling to see his end, but the hags caught him. Screeching like harpies, they bore him to where the Unseelie Court waited. A bogan thrust a nettle tunic roughly onto the stunned Lairdling, and then they were all captive. All helpless.

"OH," the giant boomed in good humor. "OH, HO! LOOK WHAT WE HAVE NOW! TRUSSED FOR STEWING, EVERY LAST ARSE-SUCKING ONE OF THEM. AND WON'T GYRE BE HAPPY WITH ME NOW, JUST WON'T HE, HOT DAMN!"

Bogans and gullywudes, hags and spriggans, all bobbed their heads in eager agreement.

"Got 'em good, Thundell," a bogan cried above the growling din of voices.

"YOU WANT A JOB DONE," the giant said, his voice carrying easily across the noise,."YOU GET A BIG MAN TO DO IT!"

Choruses of agreement followed this statement as well. The giant’s huge face bent down to peer at Kate. A big finger poked at her, knocking the breath from her. The frown on that face, almost two feet wide, made her feel faint with fright.

"ARSE-BREATHING SHITHEADS!" he roared. "YOU GOT THE WRONG ONE!"

The monster's breath almost knocked Kate out. She trembled at the increased volume of his roaring voice, eardrums aching. The bogans holding her shook her fiercely as though she were to blame for Jacky's escape.

"One of the riders took her, Thundell," a reedy-voiced gullywude piped up.

"Never saw a rider like that," another muttered.

"A RIDER GOT HER? GOOD, OH, HO! GOOD! TOOK HER BACK TO GYRE, I'LL BET, HOT DAMN!" He stared around at the crowd of creatures. "WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR, TURDBRAINS? LET'S TAKE THESE ONES IN TOO!"

Kate was dragged to the back of the pickup and dumped in the flatbed along with the other captives. So many bogans crawled on to guard them for the ride that it was hard to breathe in the crush of bodies. Gullywudes hung from the sides of the truck, danced along the top of its hood, singing shrill songs about stews and what went in them. The pickup started with a loud roar, lurching into motion with a grinding of gears. She was pushed against Eilian and Finn.

"Bad," she heard the little hob mutter despondently. "Oh, it's gone very bad."

She could think of nothing to add to that.

 

* * *

 

It was hard to judge how long the ride took from the ambush spot to the Giants' Keep. The stench was so bad, the cursing voices of the bogans and shrill shrieking songs of the gullywudes, the press of the bodies, all combined to make it impossible to think. Kate felt like she was in a state of shock, but knew that couldn't be completely right because she was aware of her state of mind – as though she were standing outside of herself, looking in, mind you, but aware all the same.

Arkan had recovered consciousness by the time they finally came to a halt. When the four of them were hauled from the back of the truck and thrown down to the dirt road, it was almost a relief. Leather thongs bound their arms behind them – except for Eilian who, with his swan wings and man's body, needed no such bindings – and then they began a hellish ascent up a brush-choked rise.

There were creatures ahead of them crawling through the brush like maggots on a corpse, and more behind, pushing and shoving, laughing uproariously whenever one of the captives lost their footing, which was often. Spriggans would dart in to trip them.

Beaten and weary, they were finally led in front of a great stone face near the middle of the rise. A portion of the wall swung back at their approach with a sound of grinding stone. Torches sputtered on the rock walls of the tunnel they were now pushed and dragged into. The gullywudes' various songs had fallen into one that apparently everyone knew.

 

Chop in the fingers,

joint by joint,

smell that stew,

oh, smell it now;

now a tip of a nose,

now the ends of the toes,

– Better than sheep, ho!

better than a cow!

 

Pop in the eyeballs,

one by one,

smell that stew,

oh, smell it now …

 

The shrill voices rang in the confines of the tunnel, bouncing back from side to side until it sounded like hundreds of voices singing in rounds. The bogans kept up a "dum-dum-dum" rhythm that the prisoners were forced to march to. From what conversation they could make out amidst all the noise, they learned that while Eilian was bound for the Big Men's amusement, and Jacky as well, the rest of them were to meet another fate.

 

A slice of an ear

and a shaving of spleen,

smell that stew,

oh, smell it now;

now chop up the entrails,

just a tad, it never fails

– Better than sheep, ho!

better than a cow!

 

Sucking on a marrow bone

while it cooks,

smell that stew,

oh, smell it now!

 

The tunnel opened up into a well-lit area – a gigantic cavern that reeked like a raw sewer and was filled with capering creatures, grinning bogans, hungry-eyed hags, and other monsters they hadn't seen yet that day. Goblins and knockers, trolls and black-bearded duergar, all yammering and pushing forward to see the captives.

"BACK OFF! BACK OFF!" Thundell roared, swiping the creatures out of the way with wide blows of his big hands.

A space cleared around them. Breathing through her mouth, Kate lifted her head wearily. Every bone and muscle in her body ached from bruises. The place was a nightmare of sight and smell and sound. And there, sitting at the far end of the cavern on a throne cut directly from its rock wall, was the largest and ugliest of the monsters yet.

She didn't need anyone to tell her who this was: Gyre the Elder, greasy-haired, with a nose almost as big as the rest of his face. A hunchback that rose up behind his head. Hands, each the size of a kitchen tabletop. Chin and nose festooned with warts, some almost four inches long. If she had been at home and run across this creature in a picture book, she would have laughed. As it was, her legs gave way and she fell to her knees on the hard rock ground.

The two giants conversed, but it was like listening to thunder roaring in the confines of the cavern, and she never did hear what it was they said. They could have been speaking Swahili for all she knew. She would have fallen full length on the ground, but a bogan snared his thick fingers in her short hair and pulled her head upright. The whole weight of her body hung from his hand. Then, just as she was getting used to the thunder, to the pain, she was hauled to her feet and they were led forward.

Dragged in front of Gyre the Elder, Kate stared blearily at him, unable to keep her eyes from his ugliness. The worst thing about him – the absolute worst – was that his eyes were totally mad. But clever-looking, too. Sly, like a weasel's or a rat's.

Numbly, just as she was shoved past him and out of his sight, she saw the small ivory of a horn hanging on the wall behind him. She blinked as she looked at it, knowing it meant something, but no longer able to remember exactly what it was. It appeared to be discoloured with red dots, as though someone had splattered blood over it and not bothered to clean it. Then the bogan behind her gave her a shove that drove her into Arkan's back, and the horn was gone, out of her view. She forgot it as she fought to stay on her feet.

They were pushed and prodded down a narrower corridor, then finally herded into a chamber cut out of the rock wall, with a large wooden grate for a door. The bogans threw them into the room where they fell on the damp straw scattered across the floor. The wooden grate closed with a jarring crash. A great beam of wood that took five bogans to lift was set into place, barring the door, and then finally they were alone. Blessedly alone.

It was a long time before Kate even had the energy, much less the inclination to sit up. Then it was something snuffling in the straw near her that made her push herself rapidly away from the source of the sound, her rear end scraping the floor while she pushed with her feet.

"Moon and stars!" Arkan cried. "What is it?"

Creeping forward was a pig-like creature. It was a dirty white, eyes rimmed with red and wild-looking – mad eyes – not like Gyre the Elder's, which were sly as well, but the mad eyes of a hurt and broken creature from whom most sense had fled. It was trussed with a nettle coat like Eilian's. Belly on the ground, the creature moved slowly toward them, snuffling and moaning.

"No!" Kate shrieked as it came closer to her.

The thing backed away making whimpering noises that sounded all too human for comfort.

Beside Kate, Eilian gazed at it, horrified. "I … I think we've found the Laird of Kinrowan's daughter," he said.

"Th-that? But it … it's a pig."

"And once it had Laird's blood – why else bind it with a nettle coat?"

Bile rose in Kate's throat as she looked at the pitiable thing. "Why … why isn't it part swan, then?" she asked. "Like you?"

"Because they've changed her," Arkan said. "Their Gruagagh's changed her."

He moved closer to Kate as he spoke. Grunting with the effort, he tried to bring his bound hands around in front of him, but his hips were too wide for the maneuver. He backed up to her then, and began to work at the leather binding her hands.

"That wasn't a Huntsman that caught Jacky," he said as he fumbled at the knots with numbed fingers.

"How can you be sure?" Kate asked.

She couldn't take her gaze from the piggish thing that might once have been Lorana, if the others were to be believed. It was emaciated, reminding her of the pictures she'd seen of starving people in Africa or India.

"That's what the giants were arguing about before we were put in here," Arkan replied. "We've been spared for the moment because the whole Court's going out to hunt her down."

Suddenly Kate's hands were free. She brought them around in front of her, rubbing her chaffed wrists. Prickles of pain started up in her hands as her circulation returned.

"Why don't they use the Hunt?" she asked.

"They're missing a rider," Arkan said. "Whoever took Jacky away had one of their motorcycles. Moon knows what her captor did with the rider. If he managed to kill it, which is unlikely, she'll be safe from the Hunt for a while at least. They don't work as well unless all nine are alive and gathered."

It was taking Kate a lot longer to remove Arkan's bonds than it had for him to undo hers. She kept starting at every noise she heard. My nerves are shot, she thought. Finished. Kaput. And whenever the piggish thing snuffled, she could feel her skin crawling. But at last she had Arkan free. Then she removed the nettle coat from Eilian while Arkan untied Finn.

"I knew it'd come to no good, talking to that girl," Finn muttered as he was freed. "All her talk about rescuing this and doing that, and here we all are, trapped in the Big Men's own Keep, damn their stone hearts. And where's she? Running free, is where. And far from here if she has any sense."

"That's unfair to say," Eilian said before Kate could voice her own sharper retort to the hob. "She led us, yes, but we followed of our own will. And it wasn't part of her plan to get snatched away while we were all ambushed."

"She had no plan," Finn said. "And that's where all the trouble began. Just pushing in here and pushing in there. Oh, I admire her pluck, yes I do, but there was never a hope. Just look at us now, ready for the stewpots if those gullywudes have us. Worse, I'm sure, if the Big Men decide they want us. And our Jack herself, out being hunted up dale and down by everything from Big Men to the Wild Hunt itself, I don't doubt. Oh, it's a bad time we're in the middle of, and the end'll only be worse."

Arkan had been investigating the grated wooden door while Finn was complaining. He turned back and shook his head at Eilian's unspoken question. "There's no way out through that – not unless we can match the strength of five bogans."

"I won't go easy this time," Eilian said. "They'll not do to me what they did to this poor soul. I'll hang myself first."

All gazes turned to their cellmate. The ugly head of the creature scraped the ground as it backed fearfully away from them, belly to the ground. Kate took a deep breath, let it out. She swallowed, then moved slowly forward.

"There, there," she said to it. Someone had to do something for it. "We won't hurt you. How could we, you poor thing? Come here. Don't be afraid of me. Kate won't hurt you."

It trembled as she approached, but no longer tried to back away. Forcing her stomach to keep down what wanted to come up her gorge, Kate reached for the creature, stroked the rough skin of its head as she worked at undoing its nettle coat. Her hands were already stinging from removing Eilian's and now the pain was worse – sharp, like hundreds of little knives piercing her skin.

She wasn't afraid of the creature anymore, not as she had been at first. And even her repugnance faded now that she could feel it tremble under her hands. It wasn't its fault that it was in this predicament any more than it was their own. But oh, what would the Gruagagh do if this was all that had become of his Laird's daughter? Samhain Eve was just a couple of weeks away, and the lot of them all trapped anyway. Except for Jacky. And though Jacky had killed a giant and been lucky in everything so far, what could she really do against the hordes of the Unseelie Court that were out there looking for her now?

The last fastening came loose and she tugged the coat from the creature. Its shape began to change, the emaciated pig's body becoming a sickly-thin woman's. But the head – the head didn't change at all.

"Are there beings like this in either of the faerie Courts?" Kate asked her companions as she held the trembling woman with the pig's head against her shoulder. The creature burrowed its face in the folds of Kate's torn clothing.

Eilian shook his head. "She's been enchanted – evilly enchanted."

"By a gruagagh?" Kate asked.

"Or a witch."

Kate put her head close to the woman's. "Can you speak?" she asked. "Who did this to you? Who are you? Please don't be afraid. We won't hurt you."

"Ugly." The one word came out, muffled and low.

Kate forced a smile into her voice. "You think you're ugly? Haven't you seen that monstrosity lording it over his Court out there? Now that's ugly! Not you."

There was a long pause before the muffled voice said, "I saw … your face. I saw my ugliness reflected in your eyes."

Kate stroked the dry pig skin of the woman's head. "I was scared then, that's all." She looked over at Arkan. "Give us your jacket, would you? The poor thing's got nothing on. No wonder she's scared. Bunch of jocks like you gawking at her."

Arkan passed her his jacket and she wrapped it around her charge. "We want to help you," she said. "We're all in here together, you know, so we might as well try to get along. My name's Kate Hazel. What's yours?"

The pig's head lifted to look Kate in the eye. Kate steeled her features and refused to let any repugnance show. In fact, it wasn't so hard. She felt so bad for the poor woman that she didn't see her as ugly anymore, even though it was still a pig's head. She schooled herself not to show pity, either. Strangely enough, feeling protective for this poor creature she'd ended up losing her own fears about being trapped here in the Giants' Keep.

"Make up a name," she said, "if you don't want to tell us your real one. Just so we can call you something."

The creature swallowed nervously. Its gaze darted to the others in the cell, then back to Kate.

"I … I'm Gyre the Elder's daughter," she said finally.

 

 

Eighteen

 

 

Clinging to the back of what might be either her rescuer or captor, with the rough texture of his twig and leaf coat against her and the wind rushing by her ears with a gale-like force, all Jacky could do was hold on for dear life. They were going too fast for her to dare jumping off. But as the ambush fell farther and farther behind them, and with it her captured, maybe hurt – please, God, not dead – friends, her fear for her own safety got buried under a wave of anger. When the Harley began to slow down about a half-mile past the gravel pit, she dared to let go of a hand and whacked the stranger on the back.

"Let me go!" she shouted in his ear.

The motorcycle came to a skidding halt so abruptly that they almost both toppled off. Jacky hopped from her seat and ran a few steps away from the machine. She wanted to take off, but after what had happened back at the bridge, and with this new, as-yet-undefined being facing her, she wasn't quite sure what she should do. The stranger, for his part, merely smiled and pushed the Harley into the ditch. Jacky swallowed nervously when she spotted his cloven feet.

"Who … who are you?" she asked.

"I have a pocket full of names," he replied, grinning.

Like most of the faerie Jacky had met so far, there was something indefinable in his eyes, something that she was never sure she could trust.

"I wonder which you'd like to hear?" the stranger added, thrusting one hand into a deep pocket. "A Jackish one won't do – you having a Jackish name yourself – but perhaps Tom Coof?"

He pulled something from his pocket and tossed it into the air too quickly for Jacky to see what it was. A fine dust sprinkled down, covering him, and then he appeared like a village simpleton to her.

"Or maybe Cappy Rag would please you better?" he asked. "A bit of a Gypsy, you know, but more kindly than some I could be."

Again the hand went into the pocket, out again and up into the air. When the new dust settled he was wearing a wild coat covered with multi-coloured, many-lengthed ribbons, all tattery and bright. He did a quick spin, ribbons flying in a whirl of colour, dizzying Jacky.

"Or perhaps –"

But Jacky cut him off. When he'd done his little spin, she'd seen the bag hanging from his shoulder, recognized the shape of the thing it held.

"Or perhaps your name is Kerevan," she said, "and you play the fiddle as well as the fool. What do you want with me?"

Kerevan shrugged, showing no surprise that she knew his name. The ribbon coat became a coat of heather, twigs and leaves once more.

"I made a bargain," he said, "to see you to the Giants' Keep."

"A bargain? With whom? And what about my friends?"

"The bargain didn't include anyone else."

"And who did you make this bargain with?"

"Can't say."

Bhruic, perhaps? Jacky thought. Only why would he? Why had he disappeared from the Tower? None of this made sense. And who, if it hadn't been Bhruic? It was so hard to think, but she was sure of one thing. She didn't want anything to do with this Kerevan – she glanced at the hooves again – whatever he was.

She looked back down the road they'd travelled, but they'd gone too far for her to see what had become of her friends and the attacking Host. Then, before Kerevan could stop her, she slipped on her hob-stitched coat and disappeared from sight.

"Then think about this," her bodiless voice called out to him. "You didn't see me to the Giants' Keep and I'm not going with you, so your side of this bargain will never be completed."

Hob-stitched shoes helped her slip swiftly up the pavement from where she'd been standing.

"You can't do this!" Kerevan cried. "You mustn't!"

He tossed a powder toward where she'd been standing, but it fluttered uselessly to the ground, revealing nothing because she wasn't there.

"Who did you bargain with?" Jacky called, moving with magical quickness as she spoke. "And what was the bargain?"

By the time Kerevan reached the spot she'd been, she was away down the road again. She looked back, expecting him to at least be trying to pursue her, but instead he took his fiddle from its bag, then the bow. He tightened the hairs of the bow, but before he could draw it across the strings, Jacky had her fingers in her ears. She could hear what he was playing, not loudly, but audible all the same.

There was a spell in the music. It said, Take off your coat. Lie down and sleep. What a weary day it's been. That coat will make a fine pillow, now, won't it just?

If she hadn't had her fingers in her ears, the spell would have worked. But she'd been prepared, cutting down the potency of the spell by cutting down the volume, as well as being mentally prepared for, if not exactly this, then at least something.

She moved silently closer, soft-stepping like a cat, watching the growing consternation on the fiddler's face. She was close to him now. Very close. Taking a deep breath, she reached forward suddenly, snatching the fiddle from his grasp, and took off again, with a hob's stealth and speed.

"This is a stupid game!" she called to him, changing position after every few words. "Why don't you go home and leave me alone? Go back and tell Bhruic that I am going to the Giants' Keep and I don't need fools like you getting in the way. And I don't need him, either."

"But –"

"Go on, or I'll break this thing."

"Please, oh, please don't!"

"Why shouldn't I? You've stolen me away from my friends. They could be captured or dead or God knows what, and all you do is stand around playing stupid word games when I ask you a civil question. Thank you for helping me escape. Now get out of my life or I'll smash this fiddle of yours – I swear I will!"

Kerevan sat down on the side of the road. He laid his bow on the gravel in front of him and emptied his pockets. What grew in a pile beside the bow looked like a heap of pebbles, but they were all soft and a hundred different colours. There was magic in them, in each one, Jacky knew. She moved closer, still silent.

"A bargain," Kerevan said. "My fiddle for the answers to whatever you want." When there was no reply, he pointed to the pile. "These are wally-stanes," he said. "Not quartz or stone, and not playthings, but magics – my magics. They're filled with dusts that can catch an invisible Jack, or change a shape, or even a name. They're yours – just give me the fiddle and let me see you safe to the Giants' Keep."

"Why?"

"Why, why, why! What does it matter why? The bargain's a good one. The fiddle's no use to you without the kenning, and I doubt you know the kenning, now, do you? But these wally-stanes any fool can use, even a Jack, and there's a power in them, power you'll need before the night's through!"

Again there was a silence. Then Jacky spoke once more, this time a dozen feet away from where her voice had come when it had asked why.

"This is the bargain I'll offer," she said. "Your fiddle, for my safety from you, for the wally-stanes, and for the knowledge of who you had your first bargain with – the bargain to see me safely to the Keep," she amended quickly.

Kerevan's smile faded as she caught herself. His first bargain would have been easy. That was his bargain with life, and with it he'd gotten born. Oh, this was no fool, this Jack, or the right kind of fool, depending on how you juggled your tricks.

"That's too much for an old fiddle," he said.

"Well, I'll just be going then," Jacky replied.

She was standing almost directly behind him now and startled him with her proximity. Kerevan wanted – oh, very badly – to turn around and try to nab her, but he thought better of it. She was no fool, and she was quick, too. But he remembered now, while he'd been looking for her with more than just his eyes, he had sensed something he might be able to use to sway her.

"Let me show you a thing," he said. "Let me take you to a place nearby and show you something. No tricks now, and this is a promise from one puck to another."

Oh, I'd be a fool indeed to trust you, Jacky thought. Yet she'd trusted the Gruagagh …. Standing in front of Kerevan, looking into his eyes, she knew, without knowing how, that she had to trust him.

"All right," she said finally. "But I'm keeping the fiddle. We have no bargain yet."

"Fair enough." He tossed the bag out toward her voice. "But store it in this, would you? There's a fair bit of my heart in that wee instrument, and if you chip it or bang it, you'll be chipping away bits of me."

Jacky caught the cloth and stuffed the fiddle into it. Before she slung it over her shoulder, she removed her blue jacket and stood in front of him on the road.

"What's this thing we're going to see?" she asked, worried that she was making a big mistake.

"It's a seeing one, not a talking one," Kerevan replied. "Come follow me."

He scooped up his wally-stanes and replaced them in his pockets, snatched up his bow, then took off into the woods at a brisk pace which Jacky, if she hadn't had her hob-stitched sneakers, would have been hard-pressed to follow. They darted in and out between the trees, the ground growing steadily steeper as they went.

"Quiet now," Kerevan whispered, coming to a sudden halt.

Jacky bumped into him. "What is it?"

"We're close now to bogans and gullywudes, and all the other stone-hearted bastards that make up the Unseelie Court."

He crept ahead then, moving so quietly that if Jacky hadn't known he was there, she would never have noticed him. And she, city kid though she was, found herself keeping up with him, as quiet, as sly, as secret, with no great effort on her part. Hobbery magics, she told herself. Cap and shoes and jacket on my arm. But a voice inside her murmured: Once, perhaps, but no longer just that.

This time when Kerevan stopped, Jacky was ready for it. She crept up beside him and peered through the brush to see what he was looking at. One fleeting glance was all it took before she quickly looked away. She wanted to throw up.

There was a clearing ahead, an opening in the trees where a cliff face was bared to the sky. There were bogans there, and a giant snoring against a tree, and other creatures besides, but it wasn't they who disturbed her. It was what was on the cliff face itself.

Once she might have been beautiful – perhaps she still was under the dirt and dried blood. But now, hung like an offering – like Balder from his tree, like Christ from his cross, like all those bright things sacrificed to the darkness – was a swan-armed woman bound to wooden stakes driven into the stone. She hung a half-dozen feet from the ground, her clothes in ragged tatters, but the nettle tunic, oh, it was new and tightly bound around her torso. The swan wings were a soiled white, as was the hair that hung in dirty strands to either side of her emaciated face. The flesh of her legs was broken with cuts and sores. Her face was bruised and cut as well. And she was – this was the worst – she was still alive, hanging there on the stone wall of a cliff that was stained with white bird droppings, many of which had splattered on her, surrounded by the jeering Unseelie Court, which had taken its pleasure mocking and hurting her for so long that they were now tired of the sport.

She was still alive.

Acid roiled in Jacky's stomach. Tremors shook her. In another moment she might have screamed from the sheer horror of that sight, but Kerevan touched her shoulder, soothed her with the faintest hum of a tune that he lipped directly against her ear, then soundlessly led her back, away, higher into the wilderness. She leaned against him for a long while before she could walk on her own again, and then they still moved on, travelling through progressively wilder country until they came to a gorge that cut like a blade through the mountainous slopes.

It was heavily treed with birch and cedar and pine, and Kerevan led her into it. The fiddler sat her down on some grass by a stone that she could lean against. He came back with water cupped in his hands, made her drink, went for more, returned. Three times he made her drink. At any time he could have retrieved his bagged fiddle and been gone, but there were bargains to uphold, and now a shared horror that bound them, not to each other, but to something that was almost the same.

"My bargain," Kerevan said suddenly, "is with the Gruagagh of Kinrowan. Did you know he meant to be a poet before he took on the cloak of spells he wears now? No other would wear it and it had to be one of Kinrowan blood, so he took it. He kept Kinrowan alive, shared the ceremonies with Lorana. Between the two of them, they kept a light shining in the dark.

"But the time for light is gone, Jacky Rowan. That was Lorana we saw there, and that will be Bhruic, too. That will be the Laird of Kinrowan; that will be every being with Lairdsblood, and probably that will be Jacky Rowan, too. There is no stopping it."

Jacky couldn't drive the terrible vision from her. "But if we freed her …"

"It would only prolong what will be. The time of darkness has come to our world – to Faerie. They moved here from the crowded moors and highlands of their old homeland when the mortals came to this open land. But the Host followed too, and here – here the Unseelie Court grows stronger than ever before."

He touched her gently under her chin. "Would you know why? Because your kind will always believe in evil before it believes in good. There are so many of you in this land, so many feeding the darkness …. The time for the Seelie Court can almost be measured in days now."

"I don't understand," Jacky said. "I know what you mean about the evil feeding on belief, but if Lorana was freed …"

"They have the Horn. They rule the Wild Hunt. Nothing can withstand the Hunt. For a while a power like Bhruic wields could, or my fiddle might, but when they are set upon the trail of some being, mortal or faerie, that being is dead. They never fail."

"So we have to steal the Horn," Jacky said.

"Listening to Bhruic, I once thought so, Jacky Rowan. But the Horn is too great a power. It corrupts any being who wields it. It corrupts any being who even holds it for safekeeping."

"But Bhruic …"

"Wanted the Horn to find Lorana. She was his charge; he was responsible for her."

Jacky frowned. "And you've known where she's been all this time and said nothing to him. How could you? She's been suffering for months! My God, what kind of a thing are you?"

"I don't know what I am, Jacky Rowan, but I never knew she was there until we stood on the road, you and I, and I strained all my senses to find you. Instead, I caught a glimmer that was her. They hide her well, with glamours and bindings."

"But now we know," Jacky said. "Now we can help her."

"You and I? Are we an army, then?"

"What about your fiddle? And your wally-stanes?"

"They're tricks, nothing more. Mending magics, making magics, not greatspells used for war."

Jacky stared away into the trees, still seeing the tormented face of the Laird of Kinrowan's daughter no matter where she looked, and knew that she'd do anything to help her.

"If I had the Horn," she asked, "could I use it to command the Hunt to free her?"

"You could. And then what would you command? That all the Unseelie Court be slain? That any who disagree with you be slain? You may call me a coward, Jacky Rowan, but I wouldn't touch that Horn for any bargain. Use it once and it will burn your soul forevermore."

"Bargain …" She looked at him. "Tell me about your bargain with Bhruic."

"In exchange for what?"

"Tell me!"

Kerevan regarded her steadily. The fierceness in her gaze gave him true pause. Here was gruagagh material … or another wasted poet turned to war. But that was always the way with Jacks, wasn't it? They were clever and fools all at once. But the image of Lorana's torment had stayed with him, as well, and so he made no bargains, only replied.

"I was to bring you safe to the Keep and then he was to come with me."

"Where to?"

"To where I am when I'm not here – and that's not a question I'll answer nor even bargain to answer, Jacky Rowan, so save your breath."

She nodded. "This is my bargain, then: I'll return your fiddle for safety from you and for some of your wally-stanes."

"That's all?"

"That's all."

"And you'll let me lead you to the Keep?"

"I have to go to the Keep. My friends are there, if they're still alive. And the Horn's there."

"Girl, you don't know what you're talking about. That Horn is no toy."

"Boy, you'll take the bargain my way, or your fiddle will lie in pieces from here to wherever the hell it was that you came from in the first place."

They glared at each other, neither giving an inch, then suddenly Kerevan nodded.

"Done!" he said. "What care I what you do in that Keep or with that Horn? I want the Lairdlings to be safe – all of Lairdsblood – and whoever will come with me by their own desire or if I must trick them, those will be saved. But not by doing what you do. Not by the Horn."

"Running away from what you have to face doesn't solve anything."

"And running headlong into it does? Willy-nilly, and mad is as mad does? Oh, I wish you well, Jacky Rowan, but I doubt we'll meet again in this world."

"I don't know," Jacky said. "You seem to do pretty well moving from one to the other."

"What do you mean by that?"

"I was told you'd died about a hundred and fifty years ago, but I get the feeling that, even if you did die back then, with you it's never permanent."

"I'm no god –"

"I know. You're Tom Coof and Cappy Rag and you're full of tricks and bargains. I think you might even mean well in what you do, Kerevan, but sometimes I think you're too damn clever for your own good. You know what I mean?"

Before he could answer, she stood up and offered him his fiddle. "Come on," she added. "I want to get inside the Keep before it gets dark."

"There'll be an uproar," Kerevan said. "They'll be scouring the countryside looking for you."

"Well, then. If you want to keep your bargain with Bhruic, you'd better start thinking about how you're going to get me in there in one piece, don't you think?"

Kerevan considered himself a manipulator, one who cajoled, or tricked, or somehow got everyone to follow a pattern that he'd laid out and only he could see. It was worse than disconcerting to have his own tricks played back on himself. He took his fiddle bag, returned his bow to it, and slung it over his shoulder. Taking out his wally-stanes, he let her choose as many as she wanted. She took nine.

Three times three, he thought. She knows too much, or something else is moving through her, but either way, he was caught with his own bargains and could only follow through the pattern that was unwinding before him now.

"Come along, then," he said, and he led her back into the forest once more.

 

 

Nineteen

 

 

"His daughter?" Arkan said, staring at the pigheaded woman. "Oh, that's just bloody grand, isn't it?"

"Arkan, be still," Eilian said softly.

Kate, looking from the poor creature to the two faerie, was suddenly struck by what a difference Lairdsblood made. Arkan, brash and not easily cowed except by the Gruagagh, had immediately obeyed Eilian's quiet statement. She could see the distaste blooming in his eyes, but he said not another word as Eilian came to where she sat with the giant's daughter.

"If they're not born Big Men, and strong," Eilian said, "oh, it's a hard lot to be a giant's child."

The creature tried to hide her features in the crook of Kate's shoulder as he leaned closer, but he cupped her chin and made her look at him.

"You weren't born this way," he said. "Who set the shape-spell on you?"

"The Gruagagh," she said.

Kate gasped. "The Gruagagh?" Her worst fears were realized. Bhruic Dearg had set them up.

"I warned you," Finn muttered. "But would anyone listen?"

"Not so quickly," Eilian said. "There is more than one gruagagh, just as there's more than one Billy Blind. It's like saying weaver or carpenter, no more." He turned back to the creature. "Which gruagagh? One in your father's Court?"

The creature nodded.

"That could still be Bhruic Dearg," Arkan said. "For all we know –" He broke off as Eilian shot him a hard look.

"And what's your name?" the Laird's son asked the creature, gentling his features as he looked at her once more.

"Monster," she said gruffly and tried to look away, but Eilian wouldn't let her.

"We came here to help another," he said, "but we won't leave you like this when we go. We'll help you, too."

"And how will we do that, Laird's son?" Arkan asked, emboldened by the fact that there was no way Eilian could make good such a promise. "Even if we had spells, you know as well as I that Seelie magic will never take hold in this place. We can't help her. We can't even help ourselves."

"Be still!" Eilian cried, his eyes flashing with anger. "We have a Jack with us," he said to the giant's daughter, "loose outside the Keep and she'll help us. Don't listen to him."

"A Jack," Finn repeated mournfully. "And what can she do, Eilian? Didn't you see the Court Gyre's gathered here? All it needs is sluagh to make its evil complete, and they'll be here come nightfall."

"Our Jack's all we have," Eilian repeated quietly. "Let's at least lend the strength of our belief to her, if nothing else.

"What's your name?" he tried again, returning his attention to the giant's ensorcelled daughter.

There was no escaping the Lairdling's gaze. It penetrated the creature's fears, burning them away.

"Moddy Gill," she said.

"That's a nice name," Kate offered, for lack of anything better to say. The creature gave her a grateful look.

"And a powerful one, too," Eilian added. "There was a Moddy Gill that once withstood the Samhain dead, all alone and that whole night. Do you know the tale?" Moddy Gill shook her head. "It was a bargain she made with the Laird of Fincastle. One night alone against the Samhain dead, and if she survived, she could have what she wanted from the Laird, be it his own child."

"What … what did she take?" Moddy Gill asked.

"His black dog," Eilian replied with a grin. "And with it at her side, she stormed Caern Rue and won free the princeling from the Kinnair Trow. Oh, it's a good story and one I never tired of hearing from our Billy Blind. They married, those two, and went into the West with the black dog. No one knows what befell them there, but do you know what I think?"

Moddy Gill shook her head. She was sitting upright now, just leaning a bit against Kate.

"I think that if they didn't live happily ever after, they at least lived happily, and for a very long time. And so will you, Moddy Gill. We'll take you with us when we leave this Keep."

"You came for the swan girl, didn't you?" she asked.

"In part," Eilian replied. "But we came to make an end of the Unseelie Court here, as well."

"Is she your girl?" Moddy Gill asked.

"Who? Lorana?" Eilian laughed. "I doubt she knows I exist. I came here to help our dear Jack, not looking for swan girls to wed."

Kate gave him a considering look. There was something in his voice when he spoke of Jacky that made her think that he had more in mind than simply helping her.

"I know something," Moddy Gill said. Her pig's head was nodding thoughtfully, the tiny eyes fixing their gaze on Eilian. "I know where they keep the Laird of Kinrowan's daughter. They hang her out by day, but not at night. Then they put her in a cell – a secret cell – and I know where it is."

"When our Jack comes, will you help us rescue Lorana?"

Moddy Gill sighed. The sound was a long wheezing snuffle. "We'll never get free," she said. "And the night's coming soon when they'll give her to the Samhain dead, and then they'll stew us for their feast."

"Well, at least someone's speaking sense here," Arkan said.

Kate frowned at him. "Why are you being like this?" she demanded. "I thought you were going to help."

"And I wanted to help – make no mistake about it, Kate. Your courage made me feel small, but moon and stars! I remember now why I had such a lack of it myself. We were helpless against the horde that ambushed us, and they were but a drop in the bucket compared to the size of the Court Gyre has gathered in this place."

"We've no magics here," Finn explained. "Not hob magics, nor Laird's magics – nothing sainly. Not even a gruagagh's spells will take hold in a place so fouled by the Host."

"Then we'll just have to depend on something other than magic," Kate said.

Eilian nodded grimly. "Until we're dead, there's hope."

Arkan looked as though he meant to continue the argument, but then he shrugged. "Why not?" he said. "I heard a poet say once that we make our own fortunes and if our future goes bleak, we've ourselves to blame as much as anything else. 'Be true to your beliefs,' he said, 'and you'll win through.' They're just words, I thought then, and I think so now, but sometimes words have power when they fall from the proper lips. I'll mourn our deaths no more, not until the blade falls on my neck."

"Oh, they won't use axes," Moddy Gill said. "They like to throw folks in their stews while they're still kicking – for the flavor, you know."

"And have you tasted such a stew?" Eilian asked.

Moddy Gill shook her head. "I've no taste for another's pain, Lairdling. Not when knowing so much of my own."

Kate patted the girl's shoulder then stood up to investigate the wooden grate that served as the door to their prison. The beams were as thick as a large man's thighs, notched together, then bound in place by heavy ropes that appeared to be woven from leather thongs rather than twine. The beam that lay across the door, held by a stone slot at either end, had taken five bogans to set in place. They didn't have close to that kind of brute strength in their own small company.

"Why did they use only rope?" she asked Eilian as he joined her.

"Faerie can't abide iron."

"And even steel's got a high iron count," Kate said with a considering nod. "But what about those bridges the trolls live under, and the buildings in the cities? There's iron in all of them."

"True enough," Eilian said. "Faerie that live in or near your cities and towns come to acquire a resistance to it. Some can only abide a proximity to it, but can't handle it themselves. Others, like our forester here, seem to have developed a total immunity – how else could he use your vehicle with such ease?"

Her car. Judith was dead and gone now.

"And what about the Host?" she asked.

"They're a wilder faerie, not always used to urban ways. Against many, a penknife would be enough defense."

There was a long moment's silence, then Kate grinned and reached into her pocket. "Like this?" she asked.

She opened her hand to show her Swiss penknife. Opened, it had a blade length of two inches. She could have kicked herself for not thinking of it earlier when they were struggling with their bonds. But it didn't matter. They had it now.

"Oh, Kate!" Eilian replied. His eyes shone with delight. "Exactly like that."

"But these ropes are so thick …."

"They were woven with faerie magic. Even your little blade there will have no trouble cutting through them."

"All right."

She pried the blade out of its handle and began to saw away at the nearest rope. The others gathered around to watch the little knife cut through the first thick cord as though it were no more than a piece of string. Moddy Gill regarded Kate with awe.

"Moon and stars!" Arkan said. "When I find that poet, I'll gift him with enough ale to keep him drunk for a fortnight."

Finn nodded eagerly. "This hope's a potent magic all on its own," he said.

Arkan grinned. "And the next time you hear me whispering against it, Kate, just give me a good strong clout across the back of my head."

"With pleasure," Kate said as she continued to saw away at the ropes.

She didn't bother to mention that once they got out of their cell their troubles would be just beginning. There was no point in dashing their sudden enthusiasm. But they were going to have to come up with something more than a little Swiss penknife before they got out of this place. And then there was Jacky. Had the bogans caught her, as well? Or was that strange being that had snatched her on the highway one of the Wild Hunt in another guise? She had the sinking feeling that the nightmare was just starting to get underway.

 

 

Twenty

 

 

What's up now, Tom Coof?" Jacky asked in a whisper.

"Whisht – just for once," the fiddler hissed back at her.

They were hidden in undergrowth high up in the forest and rough terrain, which was, Jacky supposed, near the Giants' Keep. The land was certainly wild enough. The tree covering was mostly pine and cedar, with some hardwoods. Granite outcrops jutted from the ground like the elbows of buried stone giants. Roots twisted around the outcrops; deadfalls surrounded them. It had taken them the better part of the afternoon to get here from the road, Jacky in her hob jacket and Kerevan using his own spells. The forest was alive with the creatures of the Host searching for her.

Jacky was just about to repeat her question when she saw what had driven them into hiding once more. As tall as some of the trees around them, a giant came, moving with deceptive quiet for all his huge bulk. He sniffed the air, a nose the size of Jacky's torso quivering. Jacky stopped breathing. Finally the giant moved on. Gullywudes and bogans followed in his wake. Not until they were five minutes gone did Kerevan speak.

"Do you see that small gap? There, just the other side of the deadfall?" he whispered.

"In the rocks there?"

Kerevan nodded, but neither of them could see each other, so the motion was wasted. "That's one of their bolt holes," he said. "Take it and follow it into the heart of the mountain and it will bring you straight to where Gyre the Elder holds his Court."

Jacky bit at her lower lip, which was getting all too much wear of late. "You're leaving me here?"

"This is the Giants' Keep. You did want to come here, remember?"

"Yes, but …" She sighed. Somehow she'd hoped that once they'd reached the place, Kerevan would change his mind and offer to help her.

"A word of warning," the fiddler added. "Seelie magics are of no use inside, so your hob coat won't hide you, your shoes won't speed you, your cap won't show you any new secrets, and even the wally-stanes you took from me will do you no good. Not when you're inside."

"Is that why you won't go in?"

"It's suicide to go in there," he replied. "A fool I might be, but I'm not mad."

Jacky looked in his direction. If she squinted and looked very hard she could just make out the vague outline of his shape.

"I don't know what to do," she said. "Now that I'm here, I don't know what to do or where to begin. Can't you give me some advice, or does that require another bargain?"

"This advice is free: Go home and forget this place."

"I can't."

"Then do what you must do, Jacky Rowan, and pray you didn't use up all your luck these past few days."

"And nothing will work? I mean, none of the magics?"

"Not one." Kerevan sighed. "There's a reason that no Seelie's gone to do what you mean to try, and now you know it. It's not so much a lack of courage, though the Seelies left are not so brave as their folk once were, and who can blame them? Once in that Keep, they would be powerless. You've seen the Big Men. You've seen their Court – the bogans and all. How could hobs and brownies and the like stand up against them without their spells to help them? Even Bhruic would have no more than his natural strength in there."

"Okay, okay. You've made your point. I go by myself and it's kamikaze time."

Kerevan knew what she meant, that it was a suicide mission, but he said, "Do you know the actual meaning of that word? 'Divine Wind.' Perhaps you should call on the gods to help you."

"I don't believe in God. At least I don't think I do," she added, hedging.

"The desert god your people hung from a tree couldn't help you here anyway," Kerevan replied. "This is the land of the Manitou. But Mabon walks that Great Mystery's woods sometimes, and the Moon is sacred everywhere."

"Is Mabon your god?"

"Mabon is the young horned lord."

Jacky waited for him to say more, but he didn't elaborate. "I guess," she said, "that when I go down that hole, it's just going to be me and no one else."

"I fear you're right."

"Then I suppose it's time I put my ass in gear and got to it."

An invisible hand touched her shoulder and gave it a squeeze. "Go as lucky as your name can take you," Kerevan said.

Jacky swallowed. "Thanks for getting me here," she said. "I know you were just fulfilling your bargain with Bhruic, but thanks all the same."

"I mean you no ill, Jacky Rowan, and I never have."

There was nothing more to say, so she moved ahead past the deadfall to the gap in the rocks. He was right that there was a passage of some sort here. A familiar reek rose out of it. This has got to be the way, she thought, because nothing else could smell this bad. Breathing through her mouth, she squeezed between the rocks and forced her way in. The passage wasn't high enough to stand in, so she moved forward at a crouch, one hand on the wall to her left, the other brushing the ground ahead of her.

 

* * *

 

Kerevan sighed when she was gone. He touched his fiddle, felt the stag's head scroll through the cloth material of its bag. He was free to go now. He had done all that he'd bargained to do. Yet he stayed hidden in the underbrush, staring at the bolt hole. After a long while he sighed again, then began moving slowly up along the rocky mountainside, heading for the great stone gates that were the main entrance to the Keep.

There's fools and there's fools, he told himself as he went. And here I am, all these years old, and I never knew I was still this sort of a fool.

 

* * *

 

The smell intensified, the deeper Jacky went down the narrow tunnel. If this was a bolt hole, she thought, it could only be one for little creatures, because a bogan wouldn't fit in and a giant would have trouble just sticking his arm into it. She'd never been one of those people that got nervous in an enclosed space, but this tunnel, with the weight of a mountain on top of it, had her shivering. Combined with the darkness and the stench, and with what she knew lay waiting for her at the tunnel's end, there were half a dozen times when she thought she would take Kerevan's advice after all. She was ready to just GoJackyGo right back out of here.

But then she remembered the pitiful figure of Lorana hanging from the cliff. Not to mention the fact that Kate and the rest were probably trapped down here somewhere. Not to mention that the Host was out to get her personally now. Not to mention … oh, it made her head ache just to think of it all.

Her watch didn't have a luminous dial, so she couldn't even tell what time it was or how long she'd been down this hole. It seemed like forever. It had been getting dark when she'd first crawled in, that time when shadows grow long but it's still not quite twilight yet. It could be midnight now, for all she knew. But the stench kept getting stronger, so she knew she was getting closer. And she'd begun to hear a noise, a booming sort of sound that rose and fell like speech, but didn't seem to be a voice. Unless it was a giant's voice ….

An interminable length of time later she came to the end of the tunnel. The reek here was almost unbearable. She tried not to gag. Light spilled down the tunnel from the gap at its end, a sickly sort of light that flickered as though it was thrown by torches or candles. And the booming sound was a voice. A huge voice that had to belong to one of the giants. He was cursing the Court for their inability to find one Jack – "ONE LITTLE SHITHEAD OF A JACK." Underlying his roaring was a constant chitter and rattle of other voices: bogans swearing, hags hissing, gullywudes, spriggans and other creatures all adding to the cacophony. Feeling as though her heart was in her throat, Jacky crept forward.

The end of the tunnel was blocked with boulders. When she dared her first peep over them, she realized that this wasn't so much a bolt hole as an air hole, for she was looking down into an immense chamber. The floor was invisible, covered with a moving carpet of bodies. The Unseelie Court swarmed in that stone hall.

Jacky ducked quickly back. Lovely. Perfect. Not only were there more of the creatures than she'd ever imagined waiting for her down there, but unless she managed to grow wings, she had no way to get down. She leaned despondently against the wall of the tunnel. Who was she kidding? What could she do down there anyway, except end up in someone's stewpot?

The constant babble of noise, with the roar of one giant after another thundering overtop as they all argued with each other, was almost more than she could bear. It wouldn't let her think. The stench wouldn't let her breathe. Her helplessness made her want to scream with frustration. Or cry. It all seemed so useless.

Oh, she'd been filled with sharp criticism for the Seelie faerie who wouldn't dare storm the Giants' Keep. Oh, yes. It was easy to be bold and make brave noises then. But with the Court gathered below her now – when she knew their strengths, their sheer numbers – the inner voice of her panic resumed its GoJackyGoJackyGo chant. Get out of here while you can. NowNowNow.

She frowned at herself. Well, she'd go all right. But not back up the tunnel. Not to safety. Not when Kate needed her help down there. Not when the Laird's daughter was suffering so.

She gathered up the ragged bits of her courage and peeped over the boulders again, this time taking a good long look. She saw the giants – five of them sitting along one wall, with a sixth, who had to be the biggest living creature she'd ever seen, sprawled on a throne roughly carved from the face of the rock behind him. That one had to be Gyre the Elder.

Fearful of being spotted, but determined to spy out what she could, she studied the huge hall, looking for some trace of Kate or the other Seelie faerie that had come to Calabogie with them, looking for Lorana, looking for – She saw the Horn then, hanging from the wall behind Gyre the Elder at a height that only a giant could reach. Even in the uncertain lighting she could make out the red dots on it.

Rowans had red berries, she remembered, so that must be what Bhruic had meant about it being marked by the berries of her name. Except he'd also said it would be hidden. So what did it mean that it was just hanging there on the wall? Either Bhruic had his information wrong, and where would he have gotten it from anyway, she wondered with renewed suspicion, or there was a trick of some sort going on here.

She wished Kerevan was with her, that he'd stayed to help. He seemed up on all the faerie tricks, if you believed half of what he said. But if he was a trickster, well, he'd called her one, too. From one puck to another, he'd said.

I need a trick of my own, she thought. I need to clear this place of the Host so that I can get my hands on the Horn. But she had nothing on her, and there was nothing in the tunnel that she could use. She studied the huge chamber once more, marking how, though it had been naturally formed, it bore the signs of tool work as well. The throne, the stone benches along its walls, perhaps this very air hole, had been carved from what had originally been merely a naturally-formed cavern. Then she saw something she hadn't noticed before.

She'd been so busy looking down that she never thought to gaze about at her own height. There was a fissure running in the stone at about the height of the top of the tunnel. Under it was a small ridge around five inches wide. She could just reach the cleft and the ledge below from the mouth of the tunnel – she was sure of it. That could take her around, above and behind the giant's throne to where the Horn was, though how she'd hook it up into her hands from the precarious perch she'd be in, she didn't know. But the ridge also went to another opening about two-thirds of the way around the hall. That one looked larger than where she now was. Perhaps it led down to the main floor. Or with luck, to wherever they kept their prisoners.

Jacky bit at her lip as she studied the cleft and the ridge below it. In some places the distance between the two would be a real stretch. She'd also be in plain sight of anyone who chanced to look up. And it wasn't exactly going to be a stroll in the park, either. If she fell … But it was that, or give up and retreat the way she'd come.

GoBack! her panic urged her. GoBackNowGoBack!

She shook her head. Below, the giants' argument was getting ugly. There were thundering roars of "SPIKE YOU!" and "STEW YOU, ARSEBREATH!" and the Court itself was jabbering away, louder than ever. Arguing. Taking sides.

It was now or never, Jacky told herself.

She climbed over the boulders and reached for the fissure. The rock was firm at least, not crumbly as she'd feared. Taking a deep breath, she swung herself out, one foot still at the mouth of the tunnel, the other scrabbling for purchase on the ridge. There wasn't much room on it. But it would do. It would have to do. Closing her mind to the babble of fear that came bubbling up inside her, she swung completely out. Then, refusing to look down though she was sure that every eye was on her, she began to inch her way along the ridge, making for the other opening she'd spied across the hall.

 

 

Twenty-one

 

 

~The wooden beam that Kate was cutting free was the bottom horizontal one. When it fell, and if they could roll it away, they'd be able to squeeze out through the space that was left. And after that … She closed her mind to what came after that. What she had to concentrate on at the moment was what she was doing now. She had already cut through half the woven ropes holding the beam in place, working her way slowly from right to left. The great wooden beam was beginning to sag.

"Just a few more," Arkan said. He was crouched beside her, eyes agleam. "And then we'll spike some bogans."

Kate shook her head. Half the time Arkan seemed ready to crawl into a hole, and the other half he was ready to take on the world. He was certainly no slouch when it came to a fight – she hadn't forgotten the way he'd handled himself at the ambush – but she had to wonder at the seesaw aspect of his character.

"Here it goes," she said as her little penknife cut through the last segment of the rope she was working on.

She moved away as the beam tilted, trembled, then its unbalanced weight dropped it to the stone floor with a loud thunk. In their cell, the five prisoners held their breath. When no one came, Kate quickly began to saw through the last couple of ropes so that they could roll the log away from the front of their cell. Thankfully, the floor sloped downward, away from them.

When she got to the last rope, the other four joined her at the front of the cell. As soon as the rope gave away, Arkan and Eilian kicked the beam. It hit the ground with a louder thunk and began to roll away from them.

"Let's go!" Kate cried.

She grabbed Moddy Gill and pushed her toward the opening, squeezing through right after her. Arkan, Eilian and Finn were quick to follow. The beam rolled down the corridor, setting up a huge racket now. The sound, echoing from the walls and ceiling, rebounded, growing in volume. Bogans appeared down the hall, scrambling for cover as they saw the huge log rolling toward them. One wasn't quick enough and his shriek as the beam crushed him pierced their ears. On their feet now, the five of them raced after the beam, Kate well in the lead.

"Where do they keep Lorana?" Eilian asked Moddy Gill, who'd slowed a little, but was doing her best to keep running at his side.

A bogan jumped out at them and Kate stabbed him with her little knife. She wasn't sure what she was expecting, but she certainly wasn't prepared for the bogan's reaction. It was though she'd run him through with a sword. He howled, tearing himself free, almost tugging the penknife from her hands. But then, instead of attacking her again, he merely clutched at his stomach and fell to the floor moaning in agony.

"She won't be in her cell just yet," Moddy Gill said. "They'll be bringing her in about now."

"From where?"

"They hang her out on the cliffs by day, curing her for the stewpot, you know?"

Eilian blanched. They reached where Kate stood staring at the felled bogan. Collecting himself, Eilian tugged at Kate's arm.

"Well done," he said. "Now let's keep moving."

But they were too late. The corridor in front of them was suddenly filled with swarming creatures. Before anyone else could react, Kate ran forward, brandishing her little Swiss penknife, feeling like a fool. But tiny though it was, the creatures directly threatened by its steel blade fell back in frantic haste to get away from it. Unfortunately, not all of the Host was so affected by iron. There were bogans and other creatures who had become as much acclimatized to it as the Seelie faerie.

These pushed forward, and when Kate stabbed at one of them, he smashed the penknife from her grip with a curse and then used the flat of his big hand to club her to the ground. Gullywudes, spriggans, and a bogan or two leapt away from where the penknife skittered across the stone floor throwing up sparks. Then the whole crowd rushed forward to attack.

In moments they were subdued once more and hauled back to face Gyre the Elder. Their captors were none too gentle in their treatment of the prisoners. They were punched, bruised and battered, with Kate almost too dizzy to stand on her own as they were brought before the giant. His ugly face snarled down at them, a special hatred in his eyes when he saw his own daughter with her pig's head on her shoulders standing with them.

"WHERE'S YOUR JACK?" Gyre the Elder demanded of them. "TELL ME, AND MAYBE I WON'T MAKE YOU SUFFER LIKE SOME."

As he said that, the prisoners caught their first glimpse of the Laird of Kinrowan's daughter. She was being brought back from the cliff and taken to her cell for the night. Two bogans supported her weight, dragging her roughly between them by her wings. Her head lolled against her chest.

"GIVE ME YOUR JACK AND YOU'LL BE SPARED THIS."

Kate could barely focus her vision. All she saw hanging between the two bogans was a fuzzy shape. But Eilian cried out in anguish, while Finn hid his eyes. Arkan stared, then looked away. Any hope he'd had was burned away at the sight of Lorana's torment.

"THE JACK, YOU TURD-SUCKING BUGS!" Gyre the Elder roared. "GIVE HER TO ME!"

Kate tried to face him, but everything just kept spinning around her. The last blow on her head had almost made her forget where she was. This was just a nightmare and it didn't make sense that anything could have a face as big as this thunder-voiced monster did. She tried to speak, but the words stumbled in her throat and wouldn't come.

"I'LL PULL YOUR LIMBS OFF, ONE BY ONE," the giant swore," UNTIL ONE OF YOU TELLS ME. I'LL POP YOUR HEADS! I'LL CHEW YOU TO PIECES!"

He reached for Kate.

 

* * *

 

When Jacky reached the larger opening, she collapsed in it and lay weakly there, unable to move. She had cramps in her fingers and cramps in her calves and her neck muscles were so knotted from tension that she didn't think they'd ever loosen up again. It was long minutes later before she could even roll over and peer down once again.

She was very close to Gyre the Elder and his throne now. The floor of the cavern was a good forty-foot drop from her hiding place, but the head of the giant on his throne was no more than ten feet or so down, and about five over. The Horn, hanging there from its thong on the wall, was another fifteen feet away.

I'll never reach it, she thought. And she had no tricks.

She slumped back against the wall of this new tunnel, too tired to be curious about where it went. She tried to massage her neck, but it didn't help. She noticed her gift from Bhruic then, and pulled the brooch free from her jacket, turning it over in her hands. A tiny silver rowan staff crossed by a sprig of berries. Why couldn't it have been magic? A special kind of magic something or other that would even work in a place fouled by the Unseelie Court. But that, of course, would make everything too easy, and things were never easy. Jacky had discovered that a long time ago.

She heard a rumbling sound above the cacophony of the crowd below her. It sounded like something rolling down a stone corridor. She looked out across the cavern as a quiet fell across the giants and their Court. Now what was that? And could she use it to some advantage? She was ready for any sort of help. At this point she'd even welcome Bill Murray and his Ghostbusters. At least they'd make her laugh and she needed a laugh right about now. It was that, or cry from frustration.

But then she saw what the disturbance had been caused by as a number of prisoners were dragged in front of Gyre the Elder's throne. Her heart gave a little lift at the sight of Eilian, but that died quickly when she saw the condition of Kate and the rest of the prisoners.

Oh, Kate, she thought. I never meant to get you into this. Why couldn't you just have stayed home?

She listened to Gyre the Elder rant, saw the bruises on Kate's face, saw the pitiable figure of the Laird of Kinrowan's daughter dragged into the cavern as well, saw that Eilian and the others were all going to die. When Gyre the Elder reached for Kate, something just snapped in Jacky.

She scrambled to her feet. Backing up a few paces, she ran forward and launched herself at the broad, ugly head of Gyre the Elder. The GoJackyGoJackyGo chant was roaring in her ears again, but this time it was fed by adrenaline, not panic. She landed with a jarring thump against the monster's skull and started to slide down the side of his head, gripping at his greasy hair with one hand to stop her descent while she stabbed at him with the heavy pin of her brooch.

"You want a Jack?" she screamed in his ears as she slid by it to his shoulder. "I'll give you a Jack!"

Gyre the Elder turned his face around and down toward her and she stabbed him in the eye. He roared and started to stand. One meaty hand flew to his wounded eye. Jacky tumbled from his shoulder. Her hand closed on the thong of the pendant the giant wore around his neck, but it snapped under her weight and she fell with it to his lap. But before she could regain her balance and get away, he was standing and she tumbled from his lap right into the crowd of bogans holding Kate and the others captive.

Gyre the Elder swung his head back, roaring from the pain in his eye, and cracked his head against the stone wall behind him. Stunned, he rose and staggered to one side, away from his throne. One huge leg kicked out, scattering bogans and the like in all directions. His younger brother rushed to help him, but he was too late. Gyre the Elder dropped like a felled oak, arms pinwheeling uselessly for balance.

When he landed, the entire cavern floor shook and rumbled. Directly above his head was the entrance of the air hole through which Jacky had entered. The largest of the boulders there tottered, then dropped from the ledge to crack the giant's head wide open. Blood fountained from the wound. His huge limbs kicked and jumped like a fish floundering in the bottom of a fisherman's boat. And then he lay still.

While all gazes were locked on the dying giant, Jacky rose to her feet to stare at the Horn that hung uselessly out of reach. Any moment now, she knew, the creatures of the Host were going to come to their senses and grab her. Could she get to the Horn in time? Could she throw something at it and hope to knock the Horn down and catch it before it shattered on the stone floor? Right. Why not ask if a bogan could sit down and have a cup of tea with Kate's Auntie?

But adrenaline still rushed through her, firing her courage. She picked up the nearest thing at hand – a twist of gold that had once been a candlestick – meaning to give a try at knocking the Horn down.

"SMASH THEM!" Gyre the Younger roared, rising up from beside his brother's corpse. "CRUSH THEM! SPIKE THEM!"

A bogan rushed for Jacky, but Moddy Gill jumped in his way and tangled up his feet so that he fell, taking the next few charging creatures down with him. Jacky drew back her arm to throw the twisted candlestick, but then she saw the box sitting at the foot of the dead giant's throne. The rubble was thick there – broken bottles and trash mixed with more precious things like real jewels, and gold and silver goblets. And sitting amongst it all was a delicate wooden box with a berried tree carved onto its lid.

Oh, you sly bastard, Jacky thought.

A gullywude jumped onto her shoulder. Others grabbed her legs, trying to pull her down, but she dragged them with her as she moved forward. She brought the candlestick down on top of the box with a jarring blow and the wood shattered. Oh, a horn hung there on the wall by the throne, in plain sight for all to see, complete with its speckle of red for berries, and who'd think to look further? And who could get it down but a giant? Anyone else trying would be caught so fast it would make their head spin.

Well, my head's spinning now, Jacky thought, but it was from success. Out of the ruin of the box she pulled a strange twisting shape of a horn. The gullywudes were a swarm on her, trying to drag her down. Gyre the Younger was looming over her. The other four giants were wading through the Court, knocking their folk every which way in their hurry to get at her. But neither the gullywudes, nor the threat of the giants and their Court, nor the fear of what using that Horn might mean, could stop her now. She dragged her arms up, gullywudes hanging from them, brought the mouthpiece of the Horn to her lips, and blew.

The sound of it was loud and fierce. At that first blast the Court drew back from her, even the giants. She blew it again and again until its sound was all that filled the cavern – a wild, exulting sound that thrilled the blood in her veins, making it roar in her ears. She could feel its power fill her. The Hunt was coming. The Wild Hunt. And she was its mistress now.

She stepped away from the throne and Gyre the Younger moved to take it, sitting down to glare at her. The Court had cleared a great space around her. Her friends stood or lay around her. Kate and Eilian. Finn and Arkan. Lorana lay sprawled where her bogan guards had dropped her. There was a pig-headed woman there, too, the one who had stopped the bogans as she'd lunged for the Horn.

Jacky brought the primitive instrument down from her lips and surveyed the Court. They could all hear it now, a distant sound like the rushing of wind, like the echoes of the Horn's blasts, like answering horns, winding out from dark cold places beyond the stars.

Of her friends, Eilian was the first to move. He tugged Kate and Moddy Gill, each by an arm, to stand behind Jacky. Finn and Arkan followed, Arkan carrying the frail limp shape of the Laird of Kinrowan's daughter. There were tears in his eyes as he pulled loose the nettle tunic and freed her from the Unseelie spell that had held her.

But Gyre the Younger, sitting on his dead brother's throne, he never moved. Nor did his Court. They knew well enough that it was not who held the Horn but who blew it, and thereby summoned the riders, that ruled the Hunt. The blasting sound of that Horn had frozen them, sapping their strength, forbidding them to lift a hand against the Jack that the Seelie Court had sent against them.

And Jacky. The power of command boiled in her. What couldn't she do now, with this Horn in her possession? Then there was no more time to think.

The Hunt was come.

They didn't ride their Harleys here. They came on great horned steeds, horses with flanks that glittered like metal, but were scaled like fish scales. Stags' antlers lifted from the brows of the proud mounts. While the riders – they were cloaked in black, each one of them, all nine of them, come to the summoning. The leader stepped his mount closer, its hooves clipping sparks from the stone as it moved. The face that looked down at Jacky was grim, but not unhandsome. It was the eyes that made it alien, for there was no end to their depths. They studied her with disinterest, remotely. Obeying, but not caring who or what it was that summoned them.

"We have come," the leader said.

At his words, the cavern seemed to shiver. Jacky's friends and the Unseelie Court alike trembled, wishing they were anywhere but here. Only Jacky stood firm. With the Horn in her hand, nothing could stop her, no one could hurt her. That was what it promised her. But as she opened her mouth to speak, to command the Hunt, to send out the doom that would take down this Unseelie Court, once and forever, Kerevan's words came back to her, as though from a great distance, warning her.

From one puck to another …

I'm not a puck, she told that whispering memory, but she knew the words to be a lie. The Jacks were always pucks. They were the fools and the tricksters of Faerie, and knowing that, she knew that Kerevan's true name was Jack as well.

The Horn is too great a power ….

But that's just what we need to undo the evil of the Unseelie Court, she replied. Don't you see?

It corrupts any being that wields it ….

I'm not going to wield it. I'm only going to use it once – that's all. Just once.

But she knew that to be a lie as well. Why should she give up the power that the Horn offered her? Why let it fall into another's hands? It was better that she used it. Better that she chose who the Hunt chased, and who it didn't.

What would you command? the voice of memory forced her to ask herself. That any who disagree with you be slain?

I won't be like that. I'm fighting evil – I'm not evil myself.

It corrupts any being that wields it ….

Then what should I do? she demanded of that memory, but to that question, it remained strangely silent.

The steeds of the Hunt began to shift as though sensing her indecision. Gyre the Younger stirred on his brother's throne, his hatred for her, for the death she'd brought his brother, for the pain and defeat she'd brought them all, was beginning to overpower his fear of the Hunt. Hadn't his own brother commanded the Hunt before? Wouldn't it sooner listen to him, who knew what he needed done, than to this trembling Jack who stood there overawed by it all?

Jacky could feel the change in the room. The Horn whispered, telling her of the power that could be hers. The Wild Hunt demanded to know why it was summoned. Kerevan's voice, in her memory, told her she was doomed. Gyre the Younger made ready to take the Horn, as he'd already taken his brother's throne, and crush this Jack under his foot with a pleasure that would never again be equaled.

I don't know what to do, Jacky admitted to herself.

Use us, the eyes of the Wild Hunt demanded.

I am power, the Horn told her. Yours to wield.

She could use it and doom herself, or not use it and the power would go to Gyre the Younger and doom her anyway. There was no middle road, no road at all. But then she laughed. No road? Wrong! That was a lie! There was only one road she could take and she knew it now. She straightened, stooped shoulders losing their uncertainty. She met the gaze of the Wild Hunt's leader without flinching from its alien depths.

"Dismount," she said. "Come here to me."

On the throne, Gyre the Younger froze, uncertain once more. From a small creature weighted down with fear and ignorance, she had gained stature once more.

Inside her, the Horn's voice exulted. You will not regret the power I can give you, it told her.

But Jacky only smiled. She watched the Huntsman dismount stiffly and approach her. When he was only a couple of paces away, Jacky reached out with the Horn.

"Take it," she said.

The alien depths changed. Confusion swam in the Huntsman's eyes. "Take it?" he asked slowly, not lifting a hand.

Jacky nodded. "Take it. It's used to command you, isn't it? Well, take it and command yourself."

Now the gaze measured her carefully. "And what is the bargain you offer?"

"No bargain. Please. Just take it."

The Huntsman nodded slowly. "Do you understand what you are doing?"

Jacky wet her lips. "Yes."

"Hill and Moon," the Huntsman whispered. "To think such a day could come." He took the Horn reverently from her.

"NO!" Gyre the Younger roared. "YOU MUSTN'T!"

"Oh, Jacky!" Kate cried. "What've you done?"

Consternation lay across all their faces, except for Eilian's. He smiled as understanding came to him.

"For years beyond count we have answered this Horn's call," the Huntsman said. "Men and faerie both have commanded us. They have had us slay and slay and slay again. They have had us spy for them. They have had us capture their foes, then made us watch them be tortured. But never was there one being that saw beyond the power the Horn offered, to our need."

The Huntsman bent his knee to Jacky. "Lady, I thank you for our freedom." Then he rose and, dropping the Horn to the stone floor of the cavern, he ground it to pieces underfoot.

A great wind stirred in the cavern. When they saw the Horn destroyed, the stasis that had bound the Unseelie Court finally fell away. But there was no place for them to flee now. At each entranceway stood one of the horned steeds of the Hunt, and on its back, a grim-faced Huntsman.

"Go from here," the leader of the Hunt said to Jacky. "Take your friends and go. There is a reckoning to be made between my brothers and those who rule this Keep, a reckoning that you should not be witness to."

Jacky nodded. "But … but you're really free now, aren't you?"

The Huntsman smiled. In his eyes, the alien depths wavered and for one moment Jacky saw a being of kindness look out at her. Then the moment was past.

"We are truly free," the Huntsman said, "once this final task is done. And this task we do for ourselves. Go now, Jacky Rowan. You have our undying thanks. We will never forget this gift you have given us."

He touched her shoulder gently and steered her toward the entranceway. One by one her companions fell in step beside her. Kate took her hand.

"I'm so proud of you," she whispered, for she understood now what Jacky had done.

Arkan carried the frail body of the Laird's daughter. Eilian and Finn walked with Moddy Gill between them. When they reached the cavernous doors of the Keep's main entrance, the doors swung open to let them out. They went through, and the huge doors thundered closed behind them.

It was night outside, dark and mysterious, and air had never tasted so clean and fresh before.

"Now what do we do?" Kate said, thinking of the long way home and how they had only their legs to take them.

"Now," said a voice from the shadows," I'll take you all home."

Jacky turned to see Kerevan leaning against a tree. "Did you know what was going to happen in there?" she demanded.

He shook his head. "Not a bit of it. You did what none of us had even considered, Jacky Rowan. Now, I found this car in a ditch, and with a wally-stane – well, two or three really – I've got it working again. The ride will be more cramped than comfortable, but better than walking, I think."

"Judith!" Kate cried. "You rescued Judith!"

"The very vehicle," Kerevan replied.

"I thought you said your magics were all tricks and illusions," Jacky said as they all made their way down the mountain slope to where the car was waiting for them.

Kerevan glanced at her, then winked. "I lied," he said.

 

 

Twenty-two

 

 

They gathered in the room of the Gruagagh's Tower that overlooked Windsor Park – what faerie called Learg Green. The room had settled from its shifting shadows and ghostly furnishings into a warm kitchen with chairs for all. Bhruic had removed the last of the spell from Moddy Gill, who proved to be a plain-featured, friendly woman who now sat in a corner of the room with Arkan, telling him how she thought he was rather brave. Arkan appeared entranced. Finn perched on a stool, while Jacky and Eilian sat with Kate in the window seat. Kerevan leaned with studied ease against the door near the hall.

The Gruagagh looked different. He was no longer dressed in his black robes, but wore trousers and a tunic of various shades of brown and green. And he was smiling. The only one missing of those who had escaped the Giants' Keep was the Laird's daughter, and she was safe at her father's Court once more, with her father's faerie healers to look after her.

"I have something for you, Jacky," Bhruic said.

He handed her some official-looking papers, which proved to be the deed to a house. This house, the Gruagagh's Tower. There in black and white was her name, Jacqueline Elizabeth Rowan. The owner of a new home.

"I told you I didn't want anything," Jacky said.

"Someone must live in the Gruagagh's Tower and who better than the Court's own Jack?"

"Where are you going?" she asked.

"I have a bargain with Kerevan to fulfill," he replied.

Kerevan grinned at Jacky when she turned to him, and gave her a mocking but friendly tug of the forelock. "And yes," he said, "I'm a Jack, too, though my Jack days are gone now. Jack Gooseberry was the name then, and wasn't I the wild one?"

"Too wild," Bhruic said wryly.

Jacky looked at him, a furrow in her brow. "I'd like to know why," she said.

Bhruic sighed. "Why what?"

"Why couldn't you just have told us everything? Why were you so unfriendly? Why didn't you help more?"

Bhruic looked uncomfortable. He glanced at Kerevan, but there was no help there. The others in that room, except for Moddy Gill, were all giving him their full attention, for they, too, wanted the answer to those questions.

Bhruic sighed again and pulled a chair closer to the window seat. "I didn't trust you," he said. "It was too convenient, a Jack out of nowhere, willing to help. Kate Crackernuts at her side. I thought you were one more attempt by the Host to pry me from my Tower. They knew my weakness better than my own Lairdsfolk ever did."

"Always sticking your nose in where it didn't have to go," Kerevan said.

"Always wanting to help those in trouble," Bhruic corrected him.

Kerevan shrugged. "Different ways of saying the same thing, that's all."

"I wanted to believe in you, Jacky Rowan," Bhruic went on. "Truly I did. But there was too much at stake. If it had been just myself, I would have taken the chance. But there was all of Kinrowan to think of as well."

She held up the deed to the Tower. "So now you're going and leaving me with this."

Bhruic nodded.

"But Samhain Eve's still coming, and Kinrowan needs its Gruagagh."

"The Laird's daughter will be recovered enough by then, and we don't have the Unseelie Court to worry about, at least not this year. They'll grow strong again, they always do, but it will take time."

"But there's still got to be a gruagagh …."

"I thought a Jack such as you would be more than enough to take my place," Bhruic said.

"But I don't have any magics."

"Well, now," Kerevan said. "You've at least nine wally-stanes, and if you're sparing with them, and use your noggin a bit, you should do fine."

"But –"

"Oh, just think," Kate said. "Your own house. I think that's wonderful."

"But it's so big," Jacky protested halfheartedly.

She caught a smile pass between Bhruic and Kerevan, and knew what they were thinking: She wanted to live here. She wanted to be Kinrowan's Jack. She didn't ever want to not know the magic of Faerie. They were right.

"If it's too big for you," Kate said, "then I'll move in with you. I'm not too proud to invite myself."

"So's it going to be a commune already?" Jacky asked. Her gaze flitted from Finn to Arkan.

"Not me," Finn said. "I've already got a snug little place just down the way from here, but I'll be dropping by for a hot cuppa from time to time. And there's always that comfortable perch in your tree between the Tower's garden and Learg Green – a fine place for a hob. You'll see me there, often enough."

"I'm thinking of getting myself a wagon and pony," Arkan said, "and travelling some again. It's been years since I've seen the old haunts and Moddy here could use a new view or two."

It wasn't hard to see that they were already an item, Jacky thought. And speaking of items … Shyer now, her gaze moved to Eilian. She was still attracted to the Lairdling, but wasn't sure how much of that was just rebounding from Will and latching on to the first available – and gorgeous, she added to herself, let's admit it – fellow that came along.

Eilian smiled and lifted the hair at the back of his neck where the braids his Billy Blind had plaited hung. "I've one knot left," he said. "I wouldn't want to bring more trouble to you – I don't doubt you've seen enough to last a lifetime. But if there's room, I'd like to stay, at least till you're settled in."

"You see?" Bhruic said. "It's all settled."

"How come everybody settles things for me, but me?" Jacky wanted to know.

Bhruic smiled, but it was a serious smile. "I think that you settled everything yourself, Jacky Rowan, in a way that no other could, or perhaps even would have. You're the best Jack Faerie's known since, oh –"

"Me," Kerevan said without any pretense at modesty.

Jacky rolled her eyes. "Does this mean I have to learn to play the fiddle now?"

Kerevan shrugged. "There's worse fates."

"But not many," Bhruic added. "It's when you're learning the fiddle that you find out who your real friends are. It's no wonder they call it the devil's own instrument."

 

* * *

 

It was almost morning before those who were going actually took their leave. Arkan and Moddy Gill had slipped away rather quickly, and Finn was asleep in one corner, with Kate nodding in another, when the Gruagagh, Kerevan, Eilian and Jacky went out into the park.

"I'm sorry it was so hard for you, Jacky," Bhruic said. "I'm sorry there was too much to risk that I couldn't trust your freely offered help. And as for that silence the last time you stayed in my Tower, you've Kerevan here to blame for that. It was part of my bargain for your safety that I not see you or speak to you of our bargain."

"I know," Jacky said. "I just wish you weren't going away without my ever getting to know you. Why do you have to go now anyway? There's no more danger."

"But that's just it. I never wanted the mantle of a gruagagh. I was a poet first and a harper, Jacky." He nudged Kerevan. "This lug here was my master in those trades. Now that I know Kinrowan's safe, I can go back to being what I want to be."

"But what about me? What if I don't want to be Kinrowan's protector?"

"Don't you?"

That smile was back on the Gruagagh's lips again. Jacky thought about it, about Faerie and how her life had been before she fell into it. She shook her head. "If that's what it takes to live in Faerie, then I'll do it."

"You could live in Faerie without it."

"Yes, but then I'd just be wasting my time again. Now at least I'll have something meaningful to do."

"Just so."

"Except I don't know what it is that I am supposed to do."

"There's a hidden room on the third floor that will never be hidden from you, now that you are the Tower's mistress. The answer to your questions lie in it. It's not so hard. Not for a clever Jack like you."

"Yes, but …"

Bhruic smiled. "Farewell, Jacky Rowan, and to you, Eilian. Take good care of each other."

"The devil's own instrument!" Kerevan muttered, and then there was a rush of wind in the air, a taste of magic, and two swans, one white and one black, were rising on their wings into the wind. They circled once, twice, three times, dipping their wings, then they were gone, down the long grey October skies.

Jacky sighed and turned to Eilian. "Did you want to go with them?" she asked.

He shook his head.

"I did. Just a little. Just to be able to fly …." Her voice trailed off dreamily.

"I like it here just fine," Eilian said.

"Better than Dunlogan?"

"Much better than Dunlogan."

"Even though there aren't any swan girls here?"

"I never cared for swan girls. I always had my heart set on a Jack, if I could ever find myself one."

"Even one with corn stubble hair?"

"Especially one with corn stubble hair."

"I can't make promises," Jacky said. "You're getting me on the rebound."

"I know."

They looked at each other for a long moment, then Jacky reached for his hand, captured it, and led him back to the Gruagagh's Tower. No, she amended. It's the Jack's Tower now.

"The trouble with Jacks," she said, "is once you've got one, they're often more trouble than they're worth."

Eilian stopped her on the back steps of the Tower and tilted her head up so that she was looking into his eyes. "So long as it's the right sort of trouble," he said.

He kissed her before she could think of a suitably puckish sort of reply.

 

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Afterword

 

Getting this novel ready for digital publication was another fun trip down Memory Lane. You don't think that Jacky and Kate's adventures end here, do you? A sequel, Drink Down the Moon, is in production for digital publishing via Triskell Press as I write this. If it isn't available yet, hang on; it's definitely next on our list.

These two novels were published separately: Jack the Giant-killer came out in 1987, and Drink Down the Moon in 1990. Then, in 1997, Orb Books published both in an omnibus edition called Jack of Kinrowan, which some of you may have read in print form.

In the nineteen years that MaryAnn and I lived in Old Ottawa South, we frequented many of the locales mentioned in this book. Most have disappeared, but the ubiquitous Dairy Queen remains, as does Windsor Park – a fine destination for an impromptu Frisby, tennis or football game, or a lazy walk by the Rideau River to visit with the swans or ducks. We've seen many a murder of crows roosting like strange fruit in the trees along the river. And if you're at all familiar with my work, you'll know how much I love crows.

The Gruagach's Tower – or I should say, the Jack's Tower – is still among the lovely old homes that border the park. Neither MaryAnn nor I have ever been so lucky as to find a red cap that would allow us a look into Faerie, but it isn't hard to imagine the majestic trees along the river as the dwelling place of a hob or two.

One can't help but get a magical feeling when you visit some places in our natural world. Even right in the heart of the city, it's easy to think that there's more there than meets the eye. I hope you have places such as this in your own lives. Once again, thank you for your encouragement and support of my writing over the years. Having such great readers makes the solitary task of writing entirely worthwhile.

 

Ottawa, Spring 2014

 

 

Acknowledgments

 

I'd like to thank volunteer proofreaders Kim Miller, and Olivia Johnston, who helped us rectify errors for this digital edition.

 

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About the Author

 

Charles de Lint is a full-time writer and musician who makes his home in Ottawa, Canada. His many awards include the World Fantasy Award, the Canadian SF/Fantasy Aurora Award, and the White Pine Award, among others. Modern Library's Top 100 Books of the 20th Century poll (voted on by readers) put eight of de Lint's books among the top 100. With 37 novels and 18 collections of short fiction published to date, de Lint writes for adults, teens and children. His new middle grade book is Seven Wild Sisters, illustrated by Charles Vess (Little Brown, 2014). His most recent adult novel, The Mystery of Grace (Tor, 2009), is a fantastical ghost story and a heart-wrenching tale of love, passion and faith. His newest young adult novel is Over My Head (Triskell Press, 2013). His latest collection of short fiction is The Very Best of Charles de Lint (Tachyon Publications, 2010). For more information, visit his web site at http://www.charlesdelint.com.

 

You can also connect with him at:

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Charles-de-Lint/218001537221

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/cdelint

Tumblr: http://cdelint.tumblr.com/

 

Jack the Giant-Killer

First published by Ace Books, 1987. This Triskell Press edition published in 2014.

 

Afterword copyright by Charles de Lint 2014.

 

Cover design by MaryAnn Harris.

Cover art by Arthur Rackham.

 

 

eISBN 978-0-920623-31-2

 

For information:

Triskell Press

P.O. Box 9480

Ottawa ON K1G 3V2

Canada

http://www.triskellpress.com

 

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author or publisher except for the use of brief quotations in critical articles or reviews.

 

This is a work of fiction. Names, places, businesses, characters and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, actual events or locales is purely coincidental.

 

Discover other titles by Charles de Lint at Smashwords.

 

Other Books by Charles de Lint

 

SEVEN WILD SISTERS new edition (middle grade novel; Little Brown, 2014)

OVER MY HEAD (young adult novel, Penguin Canada, 2013; Triskell Press, 2013)

THE CATS OF TANGLEWOOD FOREST (middle grade novel; Little Brown, 2013)

UNDER MY SKIN (young adult novel, Penguin Canada, 2012; Triskell Press, 2012)

EYES LIKE LEAVES (early work, 1980 novel, Tachyon Publications, 2012 )

THE PAINTED BOY (young adult novel, Viking, 2010)

MUSE AND REVERIE (collection, Tor, 2009)

THE MYSTERY OF GRACE (novel, Tor, March 2009)

WOODS & WATERS WILD (collection, Subterranean Press, 2008)

WHAT THE MOUSE FOUND (children's collection, Subterranean Press, 2008)

DINGO (young adult novella, Viking, 2008)

PROMISES TO KEEP (novel, Subterranean Press, 2007)

LITTLE (GRRL) LOST (young adult novel, Viking, 2007)

TRISKELL TALES: 2 (collection, Subterranean Press, 2006)

WIDDERSHINS (novel, Tor, 2006)

THE HOUR BEFORE DAWN (collection, Subterranean Press, 2005)

QUICKSILVER & SHADOW (collection, Subterranean Press, 2005)

THE BLUE GIRL (young adult novel, Viking, 2004)

MEDICINE ROAD (novel, Subterranean Press, 2003)

SPIRITS IN THE WIRES (novel, Tor, 2003)

A HANDFUL OF COPPERS (collection, Subterranean Press, 2003)

TAPPING THE DREAM TREE ("Newford" collection, Tor, 2002)

WAIFS AND STRAYS (young adult collection, Viking, 2002)

SEVEN WILD SISTERS (novel, Subterranean Press, 2002)

THE ONION GIRL (novel, Tor, 2001)

THE ROAD TO LISDOONVARNA (mystery novel, Subterranean Press, 2001)

TRISKELL TALES: 22 YEARS OF CHAPBOOKS (collection, Subterranean Press, 2000)

FORESTS OF THE HEART (novel, Tor, 2000)

THE NEWFORD STORIES (collection, Science Fiction Book Club, 1999)

MOONLIGHT AND VINES (collection, Tor, 1999)

SOMEPLACE TO BE FLYING (novel, Tor, 1998)

TRADER (novel, Tor, 1996)

JACK OF KINROWAN (omnibus, Orb, 1995)

THE IVORY AND THE HORN (collection, Tor, 1995)

MEMORY AND DREAM (novel, Tor, 1994)

THE WILD WOOD (novel, Bantam, 1994)

INTO THE GREEN (novel, Tor, 1993)

DREAMS UNDERFOOT (collection, Tor, 1993)

SPIRITWALK (collection, Tor, 1992)

HEDGEWORK AND GUESSERY (collection, Pulphouse, 1991)

THE LITTLE COUNTRY (novel, Morrow, 1991)

THE DREAMING PLACE (novel, Atheneum, 1990)

ANGEL OF DARKNESS (novel, as Samuel M. Key; Jove, 1990)

GHOSTWOOD (novel, Axolotl Press,1990)

DRINK DOWN THE MOON (novel, Ace, 1990)

SVAHA (novel, Ace, 1989)

WOLF MOON (novel, NAL, 1988)

GREENMANTLE (novel, Ace, 1988)

JACK, THE GIANT-KILLER (novel, Ace, 1987)

YARROW (novel, Ace, l986)

MULENGRO (novel, Ace, l985)

THE HARP OF THE GREY ROSE (novel, Starblaze, l985)

MOONHEART (novel, Ace, l984)

THE RIDDLE OF THE WREN (novel, Ace, l984)

 

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