Jack the Giant-Killer (Jack of Kinrowan Book 1)

by Charles de Lint

  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 Uns
eelie 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.