by James Hunter
Before walking away from the Guild, James and I had run countless ops together, and during those years we’d built up a significant number of joint workings. Eighteen-Delta was a defensive power play—a code telling me which elemental forces to draw and in what quantities.
The Shi were ten feet out, and closing every second. Shit. If we didn’t do something, we’d die anyway. I exhaled my panic and uncertainty, pushing away the terror clawing at my guts, and breathed in the precious life. Power: raw, pure, and unadulterated. I went to work without a thought, a solider buckling down for a long and arduous firefight.
First, I summoned massive flows of earthen power from the bedrock beneath us, followed by radiant heat, sapped right from the air. Instead of giving those weaves shape or form, however, I merely held them—a vessel, a battery carrying a charge, waiting to be used. Then I summoned a column of energy, this one a twisting pillar of raw will and force, the weaves nearly identical to those used for heavy-duty glamours.
I pushed the column of will out like a battering ram, sending it not toward the Shi charging us, but toward James, who stood stock-still with his cane outraised. My column of will smashed into him, his aura blazing from a soft white to a brilliant gold. The construct was a reverse compulsion, used to bind myself to James, linking us so he could draw Vis through me, shaping the unformed energy I held in reserve.
I pulled my pistol—a last line of defense in case things went south—as energy roared through me like a firestorm, funneling into James.
James thrust one hand up, his fingers straining toward the ceiling while he gently brought his cane to the cavern floor, pressing the silvered tip into the stone. A brilliant latticework of emerald energy surged into the earth, spreading, crawling, multiplying as it swept beneath the Shi, a blanket of shimmering light covering the ground below them. The crack of shattering rock filled the air with its noise as the walls shook and the floor bucked. Splinters of stone, wrist thick, jabbed out around the Shi—sprouting from the ground, walls, and ceiling—entrapping the Shi guardians in an organic cage of earthen bone.
The beasts bellowed in fury, hurling squat bodies at the bars of their sudden holding cells. The stone shook and distorted under their weight, but held. Just barely. Again and again the beasts attacked, chunks of rock breaking loose with every impact—a few more attempts and the Shi would tear free, and I’d only have my pistol. Thankfully, the cage was only the first prong of Eighteen-Delta.
James pulled more power through me, drawing in the ambient heat, feeding and directing the magma-power into the bars of the impromptu prison. Purple fire erupted from the stone bars, the flame hot enough to slough flesh from bone or melt through steel. The beasts threw themselves at the bars once more, snarls of rage slicing the air. A flare of fuchsia light exploded on impact, flames swelling outward and hurling the guardians back, their rocky hides smoking.
“What is all this?” someone shouted from the far end of the cavern. “Ye gods and demons, what in the blazing hell is going on here?!”
Harold’s bulky frame scuttled into view, his pudgy face a genuinely welcome sight. He was pasty and inordinately fat, with rolls and rolls of maggot-white skin crowding around his neck, arms, and midsection. Mostly bald, though a few wispy strands of graying hair stood out around his ears, while mud-colored liver spots adorned his scalp. He had no legs—or if he did, they’d been buried by his bulk and died long ago. Instead, he perched atop a set of spindly, dusty metal legs: eight electrical limbs fanned out beneath him like some strange spider. Technomancy at its finest, ladies and gentlemen.
“Thrasher! Murderball! Fluffy! Heel, damn you all. Heel!” he shouted, his sludgy voice stilling the beasts in a second. “Now turn off that damnable construct before you damage my pets any further,” he demanded, keeping his distance as he dry-washed his hands in frantic motion.
James shot me a look: Is it okay, or should I roast the beasts where they stand?
“It’s cool,” I said to James, though loud enough for Harold and the others to hear, “we’re all friends here. Just a little misunderstanding.”
James nodded and, with a last surge of power, sent a pulse of vibration up through the jade latticework. The flames surrounding the bars guttered and vanished. A moment later, the stone cage cracked and burst into a swirl of dust, which fell as powdered stone to the ground.
“What a mess,” Harold said, moving toward the Shi. “Do you have any idea how long it’ll take to clean up all this bloody dust?” he asked, his beady eyes roaming over the floor. “And if I find out there’s any damage to my pets”—he jabbed a portly finger at me—“I’m going to expect reparations.”
“Good to see you too, Harold,” I said, closing myself to the Vis as I cautiously made my way forward.
“Yancy,” he said, acknowledging me with a barely notable bob of his head—his fat neck wouldn’t allow for any greater movement. “I’d say it was good to see you, but usually when you show up unannounced it means trouble for me.”
“Well,” I said, “how was I supposed to know you’d have Shi guarding your digs?”
“If you made an appointment like everyone in the civilized world, it would be a nonissue. And really you have no one to blame except yourself. I had the Shi installed two weeks ago, after the wards you installed failed completely. Utter rubbish. I expected better from a Guild mage—especially one from the Fist. Had I paid for your shoddy work, I’d demand my money back!”
“The hell you talking about?” I asked, stowing my pistol and crossing my arms across my chest. “Those wards are top shelf.”
“Top shelf,” he spat, “must mean something entirely different to you than it does to me. Why, some woman broke into my home, Yancy, breezed past every ward without a hitch. Thankfully she turned out to be a paying client—if a bit mad—but, had she desired, she could’ve done me substantial harm, thanks to your faulty work.”
I raised a hand to my face and rubbed at my temples. It had to be Fortuna—my wards were top shelf, but she was a major leaguer. If she wanted in, she could get in. Friggin’ lady always made everything more complicated. “This woman, describe her for me,” I said.
That gave him pause. He prodded at his quadruple chin for a second. “A business woman with brunette hair and boxy glasses,” he said after a moment. “She wouldn’t give me a name, wouldn’t give me any details. What she did give me, however, was a hefty purse of gold coin. Enough gold to keep me well fed for ten years, and it takes quite a lot to keep me well fed”—he rubbed a hand over his prodigious gut—“and instructions to build a Way. From my home, of all bloody places, to a location over in Anwnn. Job like that was almost too good to be true … but gold can be very persuasive.”
I sighed. Yep, definitely Fortuna. “I’m sorry about the wards, Harold. That woman’s the reason we’re here. She’s … well, my boss I guess. Lady Luck, servant of Lady Fate, the Three-Faced Hag. I’m sorta doing a gig as the Hand of Fate.”
He scowled, the look nasty enough to curdle milk. “I should’ve suspected you were involved,” he muttered in his sludgy voice.
“So,” James said, “let me get this straight, big fellow—”
“Don’t you dare patronize me, James Sullivan—I know who you are, and I won’t have some boorish dandy talk down to me. Not in my own home. Not unless you’re a paying customer, and so far as I’m concerned you’re a dirty freeloader.”
Kong stepped forward, making his way to the front of the party, crossing his arms and staring down at Harold, his face the living embodiment of stern disapproval. Harold’s eyes widened in recognition.
“I am Chief Chankoowashtay, the leader of the People of the Forest, and the last great Chief of the Chiye-tanka. Our business is urgent and we have no time for games. You will help us. And you will do so quickly. In return, you will have the gratitude of the People—no small thing, Harold, son of Hakim, son of Hebron the Scourge of the Ether.” Kong’s eyes flashed with the promise of some secret knowledge.
“Yes, yes of course,” Harold stammered, all the self-righteous wind vanishing from his sails. He hesitated for a moment longer, eyeing the Bigfoot askew, then nodded. “Yes of course,” he said again. “Whatever you need.” Apparently Kong had some dirt on Harold, some secret the Mange didn’t want getting out—Kong sure seemed to know a surprising amount for a reclusive forest ape. I’d have to ask him about it later.
“Thank you, Chief,” James said. “Now, as I was saying, Harold—am I correct in understanding there is already a Way constructed and waiting for us?”
The Mange nodded again, sweat rolling down his face, eyes dancing to and fro between James and Kong. “Yes, yes. I thought it was a fool’s task—who could possibly desire to venture so close to the Black Lodge?” He paused. “Again, I really should’ve deduced the answer. I was paid well, however, and I always make good on my contracts. So yes, the Way is ready and waiting.”
He dug stout fingers into rolls of flab, questing about for a minute before fishing out an old Roman coin, embossed on both sides with a winged figure. He flicked the coin toward me from across the room. I caught it and turned it over in my hand, inspecting it for a brief moment before slipping it into my pocket. I’d used its like the last time Harold had constructed a Way for me.
“The portal will be good for ten hours from the time it’s activated,” Harold said matter-of-factly. “To reopen the Way from Anwnn, simply channel a bit of will and spirit into the coin. Oh, and one other thing”—he wheeled about on his spindly spider limbs and headed for a metal file cabinet against the far wall. He pulled open a drawer, scanned through its contents and pulled out a small gold silk bag.
He scuttled over and handed me the sack, as though eager to be rid of it. “She left this with me, your Lady Luck—no instructions. Just a bag of gold and this silk pouch.”
I pulled the drawstring open and hauled out a pair of yellow tallow candles. I held them up, turning them this way and that. They were completely plain and unadorned—no sigils, seals, or glyphs—except for a small stamp at the base of each candle that read Odyssey Candle Company. Why would Lady Luck go through the trouble of leaving them for us?
As far as I could tell, they were just candles. Not the Dread-Sword-of-Siren-Slaying I’d been hoping for, but then that was sort of Fortuna’s MO. During my first official mission as Hand of Fate, she’d done me a solid by arming me with a friggin’ paperclip. Now, that paperclip had enabled me to escape captivity, survive an attack by an insane, shapeshifting fear monster, and save the day, but still—pretty subtle as help went.
A folded slip of paper sat at the bottom of the bag, a note scrawled in Fortuna’s neat script. These should help you in your battle with you know who, pending, of course, you figure out their use. Best of Luck. She never got tired of that stupid joke.
Friggin’ Fortuna. I swear, getting help from her was like being stranded on a desert island and asking for directions from a poo-flinging monkey: you never got what you needed, and what you did get always ended up smelling like an outhouse. I slipped the candles—seriously, candles—into my jacket pocket and stared at Harold, anxiously lurking off to my right.
Dammit. This was going to suck so, so bad. I could just feel it in my gut. “Fine.” I wiped sweaty palms against my trousers. “Well, we can’t put this off any longer. We’ve got a party to get to, Harold, so lead the way.”
TWENTY-FOUR:
Party Time
We stepped out of the Way and onto the boardwalk of a cheesy Renaissance Festival: a worn cobblestone street—broad, though not by modern standards—with narrow, wood-framed houses and shops poking up into the night. Silvered starlight played over wood-shingled roofs. The buildings all looked dusty and worn, the kind of places you might envision in Victorian-era London or in some sleepy German village untouched by the unceasing onslaught of the modern world.
There were no cars or digital clocks displaying the time, no electric lighting or the jabbering buzz of televisions. The closest thing to modern tech was the green-painted gas lamps, with thick, cloudy glass, shedding small pools of piss-yellow light which did little to beat back the gloom.
This was my first visit to Tylwyth-Tir, the capital of Anwnn, land of the Unfettered. So far, I was anything but impressed. I’ve done some time in Thurak-Tir—home to the High Fae of the Winterlands—Earrach-Tir, the capital of Freyr the Green Man and the Spring Court, and Glimmer-Tir, home of the Summer Court. With this visit to Anwnn, I’d officially visited four of the five fae capitals. Except I wasn’t gonna be bragging about this place to anyone. The other courts were all uniformly strange and terrifying in turns, but they were also worth talking about—spectacular, haunting, unearthly, inhuman.
Thurak-Tir was a land of frozen beauty, each building a detailed ice sculpture—crashing waves, fanciful beasts, slick spires of twirling ice—no two alike, while the sky overhead was a slash of black stained by a green and gold semi-permanent Aurora Borealis. Cold as balls, that place, with a rating of “John Wayne Gacy” on the creep-scale, but it was still worth checking off the ol’ bucket list.
Earrach-Tir, by contrast, was a jungle paradise. The buildings all constructed of colossal, blooming flowers in a riot of hues, intermixed with exotic trees no eye had ever seen on Earth; its streets covered in spongy moss lined with streetlamps that bore monstrous luminescent fruit. The whole friggin’ city was a living organism, existing alongside its inhabitants in a symbiotic relationship. And Glimmer-Tir was home to the Golden City and the Shimmering Palace. A desert oasis of golden sky-scrapers, brushing up against the quicksilver heavens overhead, and framed on the west by the Bitter Mountains—jagged, unscalable peaks, which tore across the horizon.
This place, on the other hand … well, this place was just dreary and old. No artistry to be found, nothing to hold the eye, almost as if the inhabitants couldn’t be bothered with doing more than the absolute minimum. The street was quiet, the windows all closed and shuttered to the night. Though, on more than one occasion, I could’ve sworn I spied someone—or more likely, something—peeking at us from behind those shutters.
“Yancy,” Greg said, his M-4 at the low-ready while his head swiveled about, scanning for motion. “This is why I don’t answer your calls—you always drag me into the worst daggon messes.”
“Yeah well, you dragged me to Vietnam,” I whispered, “so I figure you’re always gonna owe me one.”
He grunted and tightened his hand on the pistol grip of his rifle. “I don’t like this, it feels wrong. I can taste it on my tongue, like napalm.”
“That, my friend, is because we’re not alone,” James said, his tone low and conspiratorial. Still, James seemed untroubled—he stood straight and tall, his hands resting together in the small of his back, as though he were at ease. “All the things we ought to worry about won’t be out here, they’ll be in there.”
He pulled one hand from behind his back and gestured toward a gigantic domed structure at the end of the cobbled road. The building was equal parts old wood and chiseled stone, a mix between a Welsh castle and a Norse mead hall, with cracked shields and tattered battle standards arrayed above the double doors marking the entrance. “The Black Lodge,” James said.
Kong and Winona blurred around us, posting up in front of us, crouching on all fours with hackles raised. The cobblestone street began to bleed gray mist, a low-clinging ground fog, which quickly swelled and expanded. “The Fog,” Kong said, glancing back for a moment, “something is concealed within. Be alert.”
I opened myself to the Vis, pulling in power, preparing the weaves for a lance of flame or a friction shield. The phantom clop of hooves rolled through the fog, the clatter of metal on stone echoing off the wood-fronted buildings as the mist surged upward, twirling and swirling, coalescing into a horse and its rider.
The mount was a decrepit, decaying thing of dead flesh and gleaming white bone, its eye sockets empty and leaking dual streams of fog like small rivers of gray tears. The rider wore tattered
finery, which would’ve fit right in on the battlefields of the Revolutionary War. A trailing cloak of silver moonlight fluttered behind him, blowing in an unfelt breeze.
Also—just a side note, really—he didn’t have a friggin’ head … well, I guess technically he did have a head, it just wasn’t sitting on the jagged neck stump between his shoulders. Instead, the ghostly rider held it aloft in his left hand. In his right hand he clutched a whip, fashioned from a genuine human spinal column or maybe several human spinal columns, judging by its length.
This was definitely one of those moments where I had to stop and take stock. How had my life gone so terribly, terribly wrong? All I wanted was to roam the open road, to play my blues, eat some ribs, smoke a few cigarettes, and drink too much scotch once in a while. It wasn’t like I was aiming for the moon—I was shooting for the friggin’ dumpster, yet somehow I’d still missed the mark.
Ferraro leaned in toward me. “What is that thing, and should I shoot it?”
“Obviously that’s the headless horseman,” I replied in a whisper, “so maybe. Probably. Let’s just play it by ear, I guess.”
“No,” James said, loudly enough for all of us to hear. “It’s a Dullahan,” he said, like that should mean something to all of us. “It’s Arawn’s emissary, so don’t shoot unless you intend to declare war against all of Anwnn.”
“Check, headless emissary. Don’t obliterate,” I said. “Alright, Kong, let me through, I’ll handle this—”
James placed a restraining hand on my shoulder, gently holding me back. “No offense, old boy, but you’ve never been much of a diplomat.” He slipped between the two Chiye-tanka, without waiting for me to reply, and positioned himself between us and the spectral messenger.
