"Jacky said it has something to do with people not believing in you anymore."
"That is an old argument that has never quite been resolved," the Gruagagh replied. "Many faerie, and some few mortals, have put forth the thought that we are sustained by your belief. All I know is that in this time of disbelief – disbelief that the Seelie Court exists, at any rate – we are diminished from what we were. I have also heard it put forth that the cause lies in the fact that we live in a borrowed land."
"In your homeland," Kate asked, "do the people still believe?"
"More so than here," the Gruagagh replied, "but I see your point. Our numbers are fewer there, as well. The issue becomes more clouded, I think, by our willingness to accept that we depend upon mortals for our existence."
Well, she could see that, Kate thought.
"So you're Kinrowan's Heart," she said to change the subject, "and the Laird's daughter is its soul. Were you lovers?"
Something flickered in the Gruagagh's eyes, but Kate couldn't quite read what it was. Pain, perhaps. Or anger? But it was gone as quickly as it had come.
"We have played the part," he said, "when the seasons demanded it. But mostly we are friends. If Lorana had a husband, then I would be freed of my duties. But until that day …"
Kate wondered what he meant by "when the seasons demanded it." It sounded too much like animals going into heat, but then she realized that he must mean holy times, solstices like May Eve and Samhain.
She stole a glance at him as he stared silently out the window, his face set in stern lines again. She remembered Jacky telling her about his scar, and how it didn't seem as prominent when he relaxed. But when he was tense like he was now, he looked so grim. It was probably time for her to go. But first …
"Are you going to help me find Jacky?" she asked.
The Gruagagh turned to her, his gaze looking into unseen distances. Then his eyes focused and he regarded her steadily.
"For that we must go upstairs," he said.
Kate glanced at the hob where he lay sleeping in his nest of blankets. "What about Finn?"
"Let him rest. Hurt as he is, he won't be much help in what you must do anyway. Now come. We've spent too long gossiping. The day's almost done."
Kate set her tea mug down and looked out the window. It was getting late. Fear pinpricked through her as she realized that she'd have to set off at night to find Jacky. The Gruagagh was at the door, his bag hanging from his shoulder by its strap. Turning from the window, Kate hurried to join him and followed him upstairs.
* * *
They went up one flight of stairs, then another. Around them the house was quiet. Kate still thought she saw sly movements in the darker shadows, but the small shapes made no sound. Their own footsteps echoed strangely in the empty halls and rooms as the Gruagagh led her into a third-floor bedroom. Except for the lack of furnishings, the house didn't look deserted. There was no dust. The plaster walls were clean. The wooden floors and trim were highly polished.
"How come no one lives here?" she asked. "Besides you, I mean."
"It's too close to Faerie. I have shared it with others from your world, but they always find the place too … unsettling, and quickly move."
"Why don't you just buy it – I mean, in the real world?"
The Gruagagh turned to her. "Which is more real?" he asked. "Your world, or Faerie?"
"I …"
"But I do own this house, in your world as well as in my own."
"Well, why don't you furnish it, then?"
"You see only what you are meant to see. Come here now."
He motioned to the window and opened it as she came to stand by him. For a long moment she clung dizzily to the windowsill. She had expected to see the street below and the tops of the trees that lined it, their leaves all red and gold and stiff with autumn. Instead, the entire city was spread out below her in miniature. From Britannia in the far west end, all the way out to Vanier; from Parliament Hill on the Ottawa River to the north, all the way south to where Bank Street became Highway 31.
What she saw didn't seem possible. Vertigo counteracted the effects of the potion that the Gruagagh had given her earlier and her stomach roiled. The Gruagagh touched her arm, steadying her.
"Is … is this real?" she asked in a small voice.
"The city, or our view of it?" he replied with a touch of amusement.
"You know what I mean," she said.
The Gruagagh nodded. "Both the city and our view of it is real. We see it from a gruagagh's Tower, you see. A gruagagh must be able to view all of his Laird's land at once in times of need – a time such as this."
"There's my house," Kate said, pointing it out.
"Be still a moment," the Gruagagh said.
He leaned far over the windowsill. As the minutes ticked by, Kate shifted her weight from one foot to the other, but the Gruagagh never moved. Then, just as she was about to say something, he made a sound.
"Ah."
"Is that a good 'ah,' or a bad one?" she asked.
"That depends," the Gruagagh said as he pulled back from the windowsill. "Do you see that big building there in Cockle Tom's Garve?"
"In what?"
"Cockle Tom holds the area you call the Glebe in trust for the Laird, in the same way that Crowdie Wort holds this area where we are now."
"Oh. What building? That's the Civic Centre at Lansdowne," she said when he pointed it out again. "Is that where they took Jacky?"
The Gruagagh nodded. "Until tonight. Then I think they will move her to their Keep."
"In Calabogie, where Lorana is?"
"We know the Hunt's Horn is there," the Gruagagh replied, "but not where the Laird's daughter is. That was why Jacky was going to steal the Horn."
"Yes. But can't you simply 'find' Lorana like you just did Jacky?"
The Gruagagh shook his head. "They have the Laird's daughter too well cloaked with glamours for me to find her."
They were silent for a long moment. Finally Kate sighed and stirred. "Well, I suppose I should get on with it," she said. "Do you have any ideas?" she added as the Gruagagh led the way back downstairs.
"Strength will do nothing, but slyness might. What you must do is steal in and find her, secret and sly, then make your escape as best you can."
Kate paused on the stairs. "Oh? Is that all? What a perfect plan. Now I wonder why I didn't think of it."
The Gruagagh looked back at her. "What do you expect of me? Should I wave my hands and set all to right?"
"That'd help."
"My magics don't work that way."
"So how do they work?"
The Gruagagh sighed. "In secret ways, mostly. The time for greatspells has passed this world. Remnants remain, such as the Wild Hunt's Horn and the moon dancing of longstones, but little enough that ordinary faerie may use."
"But you're supposed to be the mighty Gruagagh. Everybody's scared to death of you."
"What magics I have," he said, "cannot be used for such things. If I were to forsake my responsibilities, there are things I could try, but I dare not. Shall all of Kinrowan's faerie fail so that I might rescue your friend?"
"You're no better than the rest of them," Kate said. "You're just looking for saps like me and Jacky to do your dirty work for you."
"Not so."
There was a dangerous flicker in his eyes that Kate ignored. "Not so?" she began in a squeaky, mocking voice, but then she thought better of it.
There was more that she wanted to say. It lay on the tip of her tongue, but she bit it back. What was the point? She had Jacky to think of right now. And there was the Laird's daughter – she deserved better, too. So for them, but especially for Jacky, she'd go and do what she could. But not for Faerie, and certainly not for the Gruagagh.
She pushed by him. "See ya later, chum. I've got things to do."
She went down the hall until she found the room where Finn was still sleeping. There she collected the blue jacket and the redcap that had starte
d it all.
"Kate," the Gruagagh said as she headed into the kitchen. "Jacky chose to go. No one made her."
"That's because no one else would."
The Gruagagh shook his head. "Because no one else can."
"Okay," Kate said. "I understand you've got to stay here and, you know, be that focus and everything, but what about the other faerie? Why don't they do something?"
"Because of the Hunt. Contrary to your nursery tales, we do have souls. But those that are taken by the Hunt lose them."
"So it's okay for me or Jacky to lose ours?"
"Fear doesn't seem to paralyze you as it has my people, nor are you trapped by your duties, as I am."
"You didn't answer me."
"No one forces you to do anything," the Gruagagh said.
"It's kind of late for that, isn't it? They've got Jacky now."
"It was not something I planned."
Kate thought about how Finn had warned them to stay away from the Gruagagh's Tower and nodded slowly.
"When you say the Hunt takes your soul," she said. "Does that mean you become one of the restless dead, like on Samhain Eve?"
"No. The Hunt feeds on the souls they catch."
Kate shuddered. "But still …"
"We've lost our heroes, Kate. All we have left are hobs and brownies – little folk that can't even stand up to bogans, never mind the Hunt of Gyre the Elder and his kin. They've had to hide and steal about for so long now that they don't know how to be brave. It will take new heroes to show them, and our heroes have always been mortal."
"If you're expecting me to be their role model, you're in for a rude surprise. I'm not a hero."
"No? But still you're going to rescue your friend. I'd call that brave."
"Yes, well …" Kate flashed him a quick awkward smile. "I've got to go."
"Be careful, Kate Crackernuts."
Kate regarded him for a long moment, then nodded. Slipping on the redcap, she ducked out the back door. She stood in the backyard and looked up at the darkening sky. It would be full night before she even got back to her place to get her car. She was about to put on the jacket and head out when a familiar figure stepped out of the hedge: Arkan Garty, Crowdie Wort's forester.
"Don't you start again," Kate told him before he could get a word out.
Arkan held his hands open in front of him. "I want to go with you," he said. "I want to help."
"Is that what your boss told you to say?"
Arkan shook his head. "I haven't left the Gruagagh's yard since you went in. I've been thinking about all you've said and I … I'm ashamed …."
His voice trailed off and he looked so uncomfortable that Kate took pity on him. She wasn't really sure why she did what she did, because she only half-trusted him, but perhaps it had something to do with what the Gruagagh had said to her about heroes. She didn't feel particularly heroic, but it took some doing to admit you were wrong, as she knew from the times she'd had to do so herself. If Arkan Garty was willing to help, then she should be willing to give him the chance.
"Come on, then," she said. "Time's running out."
Arkan fell in step beside her and they hurried along the perimeter of park, making for her apartment.
"What do they call you?" he asked as they reached the spot where Belmont met the Rideau River.
That was a polite way of putting it, Kate thought, remembering what Jacky had told her about faerie and their speaking names.
"Kate," she said. "Kate Crackernuts," she added with a smile. She had to be nuts. "Welcome to my nightmare."
"What?"
The rock and roll reference was lost on him, Kate realized, but she didn't try to explain it. How did you explain Alice Cooper to someone from Faerie?
"Nothing," she said. "It's just something that Jacky and I say to each other when the going gets weird. And tonight, Arkan, let me tell you, the going's definitely gotten weird."
The foxish head nodded beside her. The gloom of twilight gave Kate the eerie feeling that she was hurrying through the dusk with a werefox. Definitely a weird night. And it was just starting. Hang in there, Jacky, she thought. The cavalry's on the way. All two of us.
Eleven
Jacky was hanging in there – just.
When the bogans snatched her, she'd literally gone numb with panic. She saw first Finn, then Kate go down, and then the bogans' rush took them out of the park into a mad dizzying run through Ottawa South's streets.
Don't they see? she remembered thinking as the bogans swarmed by a man walking his dog, children playing in a schoolyard, two workmen taking a coffee break. But there was Faerie and her own world, she realized, and only with a redcap could you see into the former from the latter. A redcap or … She'd dropped both cap and jacket when the bogans grabbed her, but she still saw.
Touched, she thought. Touched by Faerie and maybe I'll always see now. I've gone fey.
The bogan gripped her so tightly, and the heavy reek of his body was so strong, their speed so dizzying while she bounced against the creature's rock-hard skin … It all combined into a frightening whorl that spun inside her until Jacky did something she'd never done. She fainted dead away. When she finally came out of her faint, sick and feverish with its aftereffects, there was cold concrete under her and a pool of bogan faces spinning slowly around her, slowing down like a merry-go-round running out of steam until she could make out each hellish face with a clarity she wished wasn't hers.
She almost passed out again, but knew she couldn't afford to. She had to GetOutOfHere. RightAway. As the dizzying feeling came over her again, she bit down on her lower lip and forced her eyes to stay open. Her stomach churned, but she remained conscious.
The creatures that surrounded her weren't all bogans, or at least they weren't all like the things that she and Kate had fought back in her apartment. Some were twins to those ugly squat creatures, but there were others …. Something like a naked woman, emaciated and grey-skinned, her ribs protruding and the skin drawn tight across her features, snuffled close to Jacky's head. Pale eyes regarded her with a hungry gaze. When the creature leaned close and licked at Jacky's cheek, she choked on a scream and whipped her head aside. The bogans laughed at that.
"Don't like you much, Maghert, hot damn!"
The grey woman-like thing hissed. "Give usss a tassste."
A bogan gripped Jacky's head and held it while Maghert rasped her tongue across Jacky's cheek. Jacky moaned and that made the bogans laugh some more. Thick fingers poked at her stomach, squeezed her thighs, jabbed at her breasts.
"Plump enough to spit her, sure," one of the bogans said. "Don't need to stew this one, no, hot damn!"
Twig-thin creatures capered and danced just beyond the circle of the bogans. The grey-skinned hag's tongue felt like it was licking the side of her face raw. There was a trollish, slope-backed creature, its body festooned with shells that clattered as it bent close, a gap-toothed leer splitting its face. Jacky tried to curl herself into a ball, but the bogans just pulled her straight, poking and prodding. Saliva spilled from their mouths when they laughed. Their reek made the air unbreathable.
"I like mine raw," a rumbling voice announced to a new chorus of rough laughter.
A bogan pulled Maghert away from her, cuffing the hag across the head. "Leave a bit for the rest, you old whore," he muttered.
One of the tiny twig-thin creatures sidled close and began to pluck at her hand. "Just a finger," it moaned before it, too, was cuffed aside.
"Leave her be!" the large bogan who'd pulled the hag away roared, taking command. "Leave her alone, or I'll spike the lot of you – just watch if I don't, hot damn!"
A chorus of protests arose.
"Greedy!"
"Spike you, arsebreath, hot damn!"
"We'll stew you, Skraker!"
"She's for the Big Man," Skraker growled. He stood over Jacky like a cougar straddling its prey and slowly faced down the crowd of angry creatures. "She's for the Boss and maybe he'll share her and
maybe he won't."
"We're hungry now!" a bogan protested.
"Give her to usss," Maghert whispered, creeping closer again.
Skraker leapt forward and began batting the creatures indiscriminately with his big fists until they all backed off. He spared Jacky a glance. When he saw she was still breathing, he paced back and forth across the concrete floor, glaring at his companions until they broke off into small groups of twos and threes and fell to arguing amongst themselves. Then he sat down near Jacky to keep guard.
The smell of her made his stomach rumble, but he knew better than to go against the wishes of the Big Men. Human prey was rare. Take too many, and the men were out hunting you pretty damn fast. So the few humans that fell into the clutches of the Unseelie Court went first to the Big Men. But there were always scraps. And it was those that followed orders who got the scraps, hot damn.
* * *
For a long time after the creatures had stopped pawing at her, Jacky lay still, hardly daring to breathe. The sheer horror of her predicament had unnerved her to the point where it was all she could do to keep herself from fainting dead away again. The sandpaper touch of the hag's tongue, all those bony hands and fingers, squeezing and prodding, and the talk of spits and stews … She shuddered.
She'd thought the worst thing that could happen would be to fall into the clutches of the Wild Hunt. Now she knew better. Anything to do with the Unseelie Court was a horror. She felt weak and sick, hardly able to lift her head. But slowly, as she was left alone, the terror was pushed back. She realized that she had to plan, she had to do something to get away. There would be no rescues. And now with this firsthand experience, she understood the reluctance that small hobs like Finn had about confronting the Host.
Think, she told herself. Remember all those fairy tales you read as a kid. If these things are real, then whatever the good guys used to destroy them probably worked, too. Except they all had magic swords, or talking cats, or handsome princes to rescue them. All she had was herself. A very scared self. Against twenty or more monsters. She started to shiver again, then pinched herself hard. The pain was enough to help her focus on trying to think of something instead of just curling up and dying.
Jack the Giant-Killer (Jack of Kinrowan Book 1) Page 9
