My thoughts trail to Puck, wondering whether he’s managed to steal the keys yet. Or if he even understood a single word I told him which, as time trickles by, seems less and less likely. I feel fear’s cold fingers clamp around my stomach once again—I might as well pray for a miracle.
I take a long, deep breath. Now’s not the time to panic. What I need is to gain the judge’s clemency. And the only way to get that is to give him what he wants…
I stop in the middle of pacing the room, my hand resting on the cold wall. “I have a question,” I say.
“Jameson’s,” Nibs says automatically.
“What?”
“Unless you mean rum,” he continues, “in which case I must admit I like Captain Morgan.”
“I don’t care what alcohol you want,” I say.
“Then I don’t see why we should be conversing,” Nibs says with a note of finality.
“What do you know about the Sangraal?” I ask. “It can heal anyone, right?”
“Only when activated,” Nibs says, after a moment’s pause. “But only a few Fey can manage that.”
“I know you said it can’t give you a new ogham,” I say, “but what if I got your ogham back? Could it fix you then?”
Nibs’s breath comes out in a whistle. “It could help me reintegrate it into my system,” he says cautiously.
“Seriously?” I ask.
“The Sangraal augments one’s powers tremendously,” he explains, “so that the one using it can accomplish just about anything. Including merging its oghams into one, or breaking them into more parts, healing, changing forms…it can even increase your link with your weapon so you’re practically invincible.” He spits loudly. “Michael used that trick during the Great War. Nobody stood a chance against him and his sword of flames after that, not even Lucifer whose predilection was fire!”
“A sword!” I exclaim, the word jarring my memory. “That’s what it was!”
“What what was?” Nibs asks, annoyed at having his recollection interrupted.
“At my trial today they kept asking me about Excalibur, but I couldn’t remember what it was.”
“They did, did they?” Nibs asks, suddenly all ears.
“Yeah. Though I don’t know why they care so much about one sword. They’ve got thousands of others.”
“There’s no other sword like Excalibur,” Nibs says. “It is one of the Nine Worthies. And I’m not talking about your ridiculous knighthood ideals either, but about the ultimate Fey weapons. Any one of the Nine Worthies can destroy absolutely anything, even the Sangraal itself if the wielder so chooses.”
“Why would anyone want to do that?” I ask in surprise.
“So its power can’t go into enemy hands.” Nibs’s voice grows distant, “That’s what our leader had intended. It was the only way to defeat Michael and win the war, you see. Without it, Michael’s flaming sword wouldn’t have been any greater than Lugh’s Goirias, Manannan’s Fragarach, or Lucifer’s Excalibur.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” I say, my head reeling from the info dump. “Excalibur was Satan’s sword?”
“Lucifer, please,” Nibs says. “Or Lucifel, if you want to stick to the angelic declension. Satan wouldn’t have dared raise a finger if it weren’t for Lucifer, doesn’t have enough balls.”
“Excalibur was Lucifer’s?” I ask again, trying not to think about the devil’s privates.
“Yes,” Nibs says. “At least until it got stolen.” His voice lowers to a harsh whisper that makes me shiver, “And if I ever get my hands on Caim, I’ll make sure he suffers for the rest of eternity.” He hawks loudly and spits, the clump of mucus hitting the floor with a wet squelch. “So, what did your people want to know about Excalibur?” he asks jovially.
“If I knew where it was,” I answer automatically.
“And do you?”
“Why does everyone think I do?” I ask, exasperated.
“Well, your father was the last one to behold it,” Nibs says, sounding eager. “Perhaps he hid it with you?”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I say caustically, “I forgot I had it tucked away in my diaper at the time, but I find it more practical to stuff it down my socks nowadays.”
“No need to be snotty with me,” Nibs says, his enthusiasm snuffed out. “I’m not the one who started with all the pointless questions.”
He sniffs, making it clear our conversation is over and done with. With, I resume my pacing around the room, waiting for help that’s not coming.
Bong.
I hit my head against the door, the sound resonating like that of a gong.
Bong.
A few more brain cells have been killed off, another hundred billion to go.
Bong.
“Will you stop that?” Nibs snaps. “I can’t think with all that racket.”
“What’s the point in thinking at all anymore?” I ask. “We’re both doomed to spend the rest of our lives here until our skin rots off our bones.”
Nibs lets out a disgusted sound. “Your father must’ve been the most annoying prick in the world.”
“Don’t you dare talk about my father like that!” I shout, pulling away from the door.
“Well you obviously don’t get it from your mom,” Nibs retorts.
I’m about to scream for him to shut up when the other shoe drops. “You know my mother?”
Nibs sniffs loudly. “I’m done talking to you. You always want information from me, but you never give me anything in return.”
I crawl over to him as fast as I can, scraping my knees in the process. “You know my mother?” I ask again, unable to keep my voice from pitching dangerously high.
“Like I told you,” Nibs says petulantly, “I have nothing more to say to you. Except to get out of my face, you’re invading my personal bubble.”
Before I know what I’m doing, my hands are shaking him like a rag doll. “Who is she?” I ask, spitting the words in his face.
“Get… Off… Me!” Nibs gurgles.
My anger boils over and I shake him harder. “Tell me who she is,” I yell, “or I swear being disfigured will be the least of your worries!” I freeze, hands trembling with the shock of my own words. “I’m sorry,” I start. “I didn’t mean…”
“Spare me,” Nibs wheezes.
A loud, grating sound makes us both jump in surprise.
“What was that?” I whisper, my hands still clutched around Nibs’s iron collar.
“Someone’s here,” Nibs whispers back.
We both hunker down as the door squeaks open and a thin ray of light penetrates the tenebrous depths of our cell. There’s another push, and the flickering beam of light thickens a full foot, outlining a long, horned shadow on the floor.
“St. George’s balls,” I squeal, “he did it!”
I rush to Puck’s side and grab the hairy hobgoblin into a tight embrace.
“You came!” I shout, twirling Puck around in the air until he’s about to get sick.
“Could someone please explain to me what’s going on?” Nibs asks, bringing me back down to the emergency of the situation.
I carefully set Puck back down and he teeters over to Nibs, sniffing about the clurichaun like a dog hunting for a bone. Nibs recoils from the smaller creature as Puck tries to lift his leg to sniff the floor underneath.
“Tell your pet to get away from me,” Nibs growls.
I laugh. “He’s not my pet,” I say, “and he’s here to free us! Which reminds me…” I reach around the door and hear an answering clink as my fingers grasp the round of keys still stuck inside the lock. “It’s time to get you out of your fetters.”
Nibs eyes me suspiciously as I go through the different keys on the ring to find the one that fits his locks. But when the chains finally come off, he doesn’t move.
“Well don’t just stay there,” I say. “Someone’s bound to find the keys are missing at one point or another, and when they do we better a thousand miles away.”
But, sitting
in his tattered red clothes, the clurichaun looks lost, his one good eye staring vacantly at me through a mat of greasy hair. Like a lab rat who’s spent all its days in a cage, the clurichaun doesn’t seem to remember how to walk anymore.
Gently, I take Nibs’s hand and pull him to his feet, surprised at how light he is. Then, slowly, I coax him to move a shaky foot forward, and then another. Finally, we pause at the door, making sure the corridor’s still empty, then tiptoe our way out down the same way Irene and her guard took me just hours ago.
When we reach the end of the hallway, however, Nibs snatches his hand out of mine.
“What are you doing?” I ask, startled. “The exit is that way,” I add, pointing at the steps jutting out from the smooth wall.
“I don’t need you to babysit me,” he says, turning his face away from me so I can only see his unmarred side. “I thank you for keeping your word, but from here on out, we make our separate ways.”
“But I don’t—”
“I’ll find my own way out,” Nibs says, bounding down a narrow tunnel that opens up under the stairs.
I let out a grunt of frustration—after all the pain Puck and I went through to get us out, he’s going to blow it by going solo!
I’m about to go after Nibs when a long, dark shape slinks into view and meows. With an excited snort, Puck bolts towards the cat, but the feline avoids his outstretched arms and the hobgoblin falls, skidding to a stop at the foot of the stairs, stunned.
I refrain from crying out and quickly look up the staircase, but nobody seems to have heard him.
“Puck, get back here,” I whisper harshly, drawing the cat’s attention.
It’s all Puck needs and, with a wide grin, he grabs the cat’s tail in his pudgy hands and yanks down. With a furious snarl, the cat rakes its paw across Puck’s bewildered face, leaving deep gouges behind.
Suddenly, the metal door at the top of the stairs opens, and I dive for cover inside the tunnel, my heart pounding wildly. Then, motioning for the two creatures to stay with me, I run down the dark passage after Nibs, my booted feet barely making a sound on the flagstones. A moment later, Puck and the cat scurry by, but too late: As I look over my shoulder I see a guard’s outline delineated in the passage’s entryway.
“Ring the alarm, the prisoner’s escaped!” the woman yells.
Crap. I speed up, mentally cursing Puck for causing trouble so quickly. The tunnel veers suddenly right, a single torch sputtering feebly in the corner. But as I reach the bend something whooshes in the air above me, ruffling my hair, then hits the ceiling in a thunderous explosion, showering me with debris and extinguishing the torchlight.
Coughing on the billowing clouds of dust, I stumble through the rubble, feeling my way around.
I gasp as a small hand grabs mine.
“Over here, stupid!” Nibs hisses.
The clurichaun pulls me after him, and we both hurtle down the now completely dark passageways until the guards’ muffled shouts die down in the distance.
“Ouch,” Nibs exclaims when he runs into a wall.
“Are you OK?” I ask, slowing down.
“Just keep moving,” he breathes, turning left.
We sprint forward, ever deeper into the tunnels. Occasionally, I look behind us as the faint sounds of pursuit drift over, but the guards must have gone down another passage and soon, only our footsteps and harsh breathing can be heard.
Nibs lets out another string of curses as he slams into a wall for the sixth time.
“Are you sure we’re going the right way?” I ask. “I mean, I feel like we’re just going around in circles down here.”
I feel Nibs glower at me. “Well why don’t you light the way for us then, stupid hybrid?” he snarls.
“Look here, mister,” I say, fear and frustration making me raise my voice. “I don’t need you to be all attitude-y because I can’t just call on fire like Fey do!”
I punctuate my outburst with a snap of the fingers and a flame bursts to life above them. I swallow back a shout of surprise.
“You couldn’t have done that sooner?” Nibs asks, spitting at my feet in disgust.
“I didn’t,” I start, my mouth suddenly dry. “I’ve never…. It isn’t….”
Nibs snickers. “Well, that’s all well and pretty,” he says, “but can’t you do something more useful, like whisk us out of here, by any chance?”
It’s my turn to glare at the clurichaun.
“Then I suggest we keep running,” he says, bolting, Puck and the black cat on his heels.
Holding my hand as far away from myself as possible to avoid burning my head off, I run after them.
“Shhh,” Nibs says, skittering to a stop at another fork in the tunnel.
Breathing heavily, I perk my ears up. Over my heavy panting can be heard a faint, rhythmic buzzing as if thousands of bugs are trapped inside the walls and desperately trying to fly free. Nibs shudders visibly and I’m about to ask him what he thinks it is when the cat meows loudly, startling us.
“Where the hell did that thing come from?” Nibs asks, looking more and more frightened.
“Relax,” I say. “It’s just a stray that’s been following us.”
Nibs throws me a murderous look. “Just a stray, huh?”
The cat purrs loudly, circling my ankles, then heads down the right-hand passage where the buzzing is distinctly louder.
“I think it wants us to follow it,” I say.
“I’m not going anywhere near that beast,” Nibs says.
The cat comes padding back for us, then meows questioningly before trying to herd us down its chosen path again. But for once I agree with Nibs: We need to avoid people and eerie, unknown thingies trapped inside walls, not run headlong into them.
To the cat’s frantic hisses, we engulf ourselves into the left tunnel and run until the cat and the freaky buzzing are but distant memories. After what seems like hours, Nibs finally stops.
“What is it?” I ask, holding a stitch in my side.
Nibs sniffs the air then his lips thin out, stretching his scarred face outward, and I realize with a mixture of disgust and guilt that he’s smiling. “Up,” he says, pointing with his finger.
I lift my hand higher so the flames can illuminate a greater portion of the underground corridor and find a ladder has been carved into the stone wall leading to a trapdoor in the ceiling.
“What do you think is up there?” I ask.
“Only one way to find out.” Nibs jumps onto the first rung and, nimble as a monkey, makes his way to the top.
My arm shakes with the effort of keeping my hand up to light his way. But the moment Nibs pushes the trapdoor open, I hear him squeal and a gust of wind rushes inside to snuff my flickering flame out.
“Nibs?” I call out tentatively after the clurichaun has disappeared through the trapdoor.
I wait for an impossibly long minute, anger broiling within me as the seconds tick by. Finally, I’m forced to come to the only conclusion left: The little rat’s run away without me!
“I should’ve known he’d betray me,” I say through gritted teeth as I grip the ladder’s rungs and start climbing, “that’s what he was locked up for to begin with.”
Heart pounding somewhere in my throat, I crack the trapdoor open and momentarily close my eyes to bask in the last rays of the sun, breathing in the scent of wildflowers carried over by the playful breeze.
I hear a sharp ring followed by the clatter of wood and I quickly duck back into my hole before I realize the sounds are coming from the reconstruction site at the landing docks five hundred feet away.
I peer through the gap, the rung’s metal digging into my hand, as one of the workers bellows a shout and another pan of the burnt-out pier comes crumbling down.
I let out a breath of relief—it appears the general alarm hasn’t been sounded yet and the construction team is too busy working to notice one student wandering about the school grounds, even if she does pop out of the earth like some
gigantic mole.
I carefully hoist myself into the open air then let the trapdoor close behind me, its grass-covered panel merging seamlessly back into the hillside. I take one quick look around: Behind me is the school, tall and foreboding, a machine to crank out soldiers in the knights’ ongoing war with the Fey; left of me are the landing docks; and to my right are the yet untouched remains of the asylum with, behind it, a tall mound of bones and ashes, the burned up remains of our enemy fallen in battle.
Shivering, I shift my gaze to the empty fields ahead of me and, lying beyond them along the hazy horizon line, Avalon’s forest.
My key to freedom.
“OK, keep your cool, Morgan,” I tell myself as I set off, my heart speeding up, urging me to walk faster. “You’ve gotta keep your cool or you’re gonna look suspect.”
But my legs won’t listen to me and I’m soon tearing down the hillside at full speed. As I round a small copse of trees, a loud blast shakes the ground and I duck behind an oak’s large trunk, scanning the area for any sign of pursuit. A second later, I spot Nibs’s small figure rolling down the hill, his red jacket now ripped to shreds. He gets back up with obvious difficulty, then starts running again as half a dozen guards appear from around the construction site.
There’s a shout and the guy in the lead lifts his arm, sending a beam of green, sylphid air shooting through the air. The bolt hits Nibs in the back and the small clurichaun falls sprawling to the ground.
“Come on, get up,” I mutter under my breath. “You can’t let them take you like this. Not after all the trouble I went through to get you out!”
But Nibs isn’t moving and the knights are closing in on him. With a loud swear, I sprint out of my hiding place towards the clurichaun.
“There she is!” a girl shouts, and I speed up.
“After them!” someone else yells, sounding closer, as I stoop down to help Nibs up.
“Get away from me, wench,” Nibs spits, feebly batting my hand away. “From here on out, we’re going our separate ways.”
Rise of the Fey Page 4
