She found that she was actually looking forward to it. It had been too long since she had been in a good fight. Besides, Cindy was her subject. It was her responsibility to protect and guide witches. Cindy was also her friend. Whichever way you looked at it, there was no getting out of it.
She concentrated, reaching out with her mind until she located Cindy’s aura (it was pink and fluffy with just a hint of mauve from the worry). Then it was just a case of moving herself into it. It’s a god thing.
So, narrative flow being what it is – she just so happened to arrive in Cindy’s wake at that same moment that Stiles was telling her that Finvarra was dead.
Quick as thought, Hecaté grabbed the changeling before he could fly at Stiles in fury.
It wailed in horrible, gut wrenching sorrow.
Cindy and Stiles whipped round stunned at the terrible sound and Cindy had to grab Stiles before he could fly at the changeling.
Then suddenly all hostilities were interrupted. The air turned cold and a strong wind bore down through the forest, sweeping the trees over like a windswept cornfield and sucking the breath from them like a vacuum. Then there was a loud boom and silence.
‘Uh oh,’ said the changeling.
‘What?’ asked Hecaté, who felt she now had some sort of rapport with the changeling. ‘What is it?’
‘It’s comin’ back,’ announced the changeling. ‘Duck!’
* * *
‘What the hell was that?’ said Denny picking himself up.
Tamar was shaking whether with fury or fear was yet to be determined, but probably the former knowing Tamar.
‘That?’ she said. ‘That wasn’t anything. That was just to get our attention.’
‘Well,’ said Denny. ‘It got mine all right. It felt like the world just turned inside out.’
‘Sod it,’ said Tamar suddenly. ‘I’m going home.’
‘What, why?’
‘Because they want me to stay here.’
* * *
‘It came from the stones,’ said Stiles. ‘That direction,’ he pointed.
Witches always see things the way they are. This is because natural intuition in witches is honed so sharply, as part of their training, that it almost seems like a second sight.
Cindy had a premonition. ‘If we go to the stones,’ she said, reading Stiles’s thoughts, ‘it will be bad.’
Hecaté looked sharply at her. She really was a more accomplished witch than she let on at times.
Stiles looked questioningly at Hecaté, more out of custom than anything else. She nodded. ‘My sister is correct,’ she said. Cindy glowed.
Stiles shrugged. ‘Okay then,’ he said. ‘God knows, it’s all right with me.’
‘But where are Tamar and Denny?’ asked Hecaté.
‘We don’t know,’ said Stiles. ‘They went to the stones but …’
‘Don’ like T’mar,’ put in the changeling.
Cindy took him from Hecaté and held him up to her face. ‘If it wasn’t for Tamar,’ she told him. ‘I would be dead right now. She saved my life.’
The changeling pouted but said no more.
‘Tamar and Denny are at home,’ said Hecaté suddenly.
It’s a god thing.
~ Chapter Twelve ~
It was not so much an argument as a very loud seven sided discussion – with added misunderstandings. Seven sided instead of five because several people, most notably Hecaté and Cindy, were changing sides at the drop of a pointy hat; and all this was accompanied by the incessant wailing of the changeling.
It was Denny who had thought to ask him what his real name was. This was two hours into the discussion, and it really had not helped matters when the changeling had given him a bemused look and said ‘Jacky Pittencherry.’ This had set Tamar off again and begun another three cornered argument between her, Cindy and Hecaté, who were respectively against, for and neutral on the subject.
It was never clear what began the argument in the first place – they were all on the same side surely? But none of them ever forgot what ended it.
In a rare lull in the shouting, Tamar thought she heard a knocking at the door. Denny thought it was more like a desperate hammering.
They both flew to the door; Tamar won naturally and flung it open triumphantly only to be trampled down by a crowd of frantic people from the local village.
They had come to escape the Faeries.
This was the only place they could think of that might be safe. There had been rumours about “the house” ever since it had turned up (while of course having always been there). People said that it was a good place to come if you were in trouble. And they were all in trouble now.
Some people had gone away to the city, but they wouldn’t be any safer there, the people said darkly. Tamar was inclined to agree. There were lots of people still in the village, they said, locked in their homes too afraid even to come out.
Tamar decided to go and have a look. Denny said he would go with her. In the end, they all decided to go.
* * *
The village was dark. Every window was unlit every door fastened shut. There was a heavy silence, not even a dog barked.
On almost every locked door was a horseshoe. Many front steps sported a saucer of milk.
‘Legends,’ said Hecaté. ‘People remember through the ages, even long after the true facts are forgotten. Nail some iron to the door or plant a rowan tree to keep out the Faeries, a saucer of milk, ha! As if that can appease them. As if they were cats. Even cats are not that cruel.’
‘But it’s rather like that, isn’t it?’ said Denny. ‘Cats play with their victims – like Faeries. Don’t you think a mouse would put out a saucer of milk for a cat if it could?’
‘And it wouldn’t do any more good than it’s doing here,’ Hecaté told him. Faeries take the milk and then they still want their fun!’
‘Like cats.’
To Tamar, all these things told a different story. ‘This has been going on for a while,’ she said. ‘This kind of terror doesn’t happen overnight.’
She slammed her fist into her palm. ‘We were being distracted!’ she said angrily. ‘All that business in the forest. It was to keep us away from this! I don’t know why they bothered.’
She turned on the changeling. ‘And what did you know about all this?’ she snarled.
‘Nothin’,’ he asserted. ‘I’s for the king,’
‘He’s telling the truth,’ said Cindy defensively.
Tamar glared at the changeling for a minute; then she relaxed. ‘He is isn’t he?’ she said. It was the first time she had said “he” and not “it”
Suddenly, it had seemed as if the changeling had come into focus before her eyes. She saw nothing but a lost, frightened child among hostile strangers. No wonder he had been so bad tempered and suspicious. So what if he was a Faerie? It’s not what you are, but how you live that is important, and Jacky had been raised by Cindy who, though she could be vain and a little dim and was often inappropriately flirtatious, yet had a stern set of values, particularly pertaining to the misuse of magical powers. Not many children have such an example. Most parents do not have magical powers to misuse.
‘It’s worse than we thought,’ said Stiles appearing round a corner. He sighed. It was, it seemed, his lot in life to be the one who found the corpses.
There were not many – two or three. One hanging from a tree, it was difficult to know whether he had been murdered or driven to suicide.
‘It all comes to the same thing,’ said Tamar.
‘So, where are the Faeries?’ said Cindy, for once putting her finger on the nub of the matter.
‘In the woods,’ said Denny. ‘But they’ll be back.’
‘Soon, I think,’ said Stiles looking around at the deserted streets. ‘I reckon it’s only like this when they’re expected.’
‘Oh they’re expected all right,’ said Tamar the light of battle in her eyes.
She concentrated, and four suits of
armour and three swords clattered on to the ground in front of them.
‘Suit up everyone,’ she said.
‘Where did these come from?’ asked Cindy.
‘Best if you don’t ask,’ said Stiles. ‘What you don’t know you can’t tell the police.’
‘Oh.’
Denny was amused to observe that his suit had a label on the inside that read “property of the –– Metropolitan Museum”.
A distant chattering sound and the sound of muffled laugher heralded the arrival of the Faeries.
Well they would not be laughing long, Tamar thought, scraping her sword along the ground like the hooves of an impatient bull.
~ Chapter Thirteen ~
Tamar was gazing despondently out of the bedroom window. The battle in the village had been but the first of many such skirmishes and the problem was now spreading like wildfire up and down the country. They went out every night, the house was now full of refugees, they had taught people about the iron and how to fight back, and it was not even making a dent.
The situation was far worse than they had imagined. There were Faeries everywhere!
As if a signal had been given, thousands of changelings had apparently shed their incognito, and many of them were fully adult. How long had this been going on right under their noses?
It had clearly been the return of the Queen that had set recent events in motion. Like a catalyst, her mere presence had drawn them out. Not until she had come back and set up her court, had the changelings begun showing the true evil of their natures. Until then, no one had suspected a thing.
And then there were the Faeries who had come through the portal with the Queen. What they had seen in the castle had apparently been only the minutest fraction of the whole. Clearly, Queen Onagh meant business; she appeared to have emptied the entire Faerie realm.
And where was she now?
‘I should never have let her escape’ thought Tamar. ‘If I’d known what she was up to, I wouldn’t have.’
Tamar was out of her depth, and she knew it. She was not used to an arch villain with a long-term plan and the patience to put it into action. Ambitions yes! They all had those. Crazy plans for world domination, usually based on some insane premise, that was certain to fail in the face of a bit of determined opposition.
Now she really did miss Askphrit. At least with him, it had been personal. He had hated her, and it had clouded his judgement. World domination had always been a secondary consideration with him. And he had been reassuringly selfish. You could always rely on him to make some predictable move if he thought his own skin might be in jeopardy.
The Faerie Queen did not even have a decent maniacal laugh.
Denny came into the room and sat down silently. He knew something of how she was feeling. He waited.
‘I’m losing,’ she said. She would not look at him. ‘There’s just too many of them. I’ve never seen anything like this before. I mean what do they all want?’
Still Denny said nothing.
‘We tried to teach people to fight back but it’s not working! The Faeries just tell them not to and they don’t. How do you fight magic like that? – I don’t know what to do, there’s nothing I can do.’ She bit her knuckles in frustration.
Denny put an arm around her shoulder. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘There might be something we can do.’
She stared at him guiltily.
‘You don’t have to take it all on yourself, you know,’ he said. ‘We’re all fighting this one.’
‘I know, and I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just … well … we’re losing Denny.’
‘You’ll think of something,’ he said. ‘You always do.’
‘We’ve beaten Djinn, vampires, gods, even the rotten little clerks in mainframe, and they run the whole universe,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe we’ve met our Waterloo with a bunch of Faeries of all things.’
This was bad.
‘First of all, we aren’t beaten yet,’ admonished Denny. ‘And furthermore, they may be called “Faeries”, but they have more in common with the old style gods than storybook pixies. And there are thousands of them too. So don’t beat yourself up on that account. We may have never faced such an enemy before.’
‘You don’t give a lot of pep talks do you?’
‘I never had to before.’
‘We need help, Denny,’ she wailed. ‘We can’t do this by ourselves and if people can’t even be taught to help themselves … it’d be a help anyway,’ she finished off, muttering.
Denny knew what she meant. It was too much to expect them to fight all the Faeries by themselves, but that was just what they were having to do. Try to do, he corrected himself.
He took her face in his hands. ‘We’ll beat them Tam … No one can beat you, I really believe that. I’ve seen you do some amazing things, you’ll think of something.’
‘I just hope I think of something before the world ends,’ she said gloomily.
‘Sorry,’ she added seeing his face fall.
She brightened up slightly. ‘Maybe you’ll think of something,’ she said. ‘It wouldn’t be the first time.’
He smiled. ‘Maybe I will.’
She snuggled closer to him. ‘Denny,’ she whispered softly in his ear.
‘Yes?’
‘Talking of doing something amazing …’
‘Yes?’
‘Lock the door.’
Denny raised an eyebrow. ‘Now?’
‘Now!’
Denny locked the door. Well, they did have a lot of house guests at the moment.
* * *
There had been no sign of the King’s gypsies. This could be considered unfortunate since they might have made reasonable allies. Not allies they could trust of course, but at least allies that hated the Queen as much as they did and had definitely got some defence against the Faerie magic, probably learned from Finvarra himself. This would have been a big help.
It was a damn shame then that they all seemed to have vanished. Stiles opinion was that they were all dead by now or defected to the enemy. He had heard Finvarra himself say that, after all, he was not human when all was said and done. And, besides, they were still the number one suspects, in Stiles’s opinion, for the opening of the portal. Stiles still thought they were probably Faeries too, or at least allied to them. Finvarra definitely was – or had been. Hadn’t Hecaté said there were only bad Faeries?
Tamar was of the opinion that they were still out there somewhere, biding their time.
‘Biding their time until what?’ said Stiles sceptically.
‘We don’t know is the point,’ she said and glared at him until he changed the subject. Tamar hated admitting that she did not know absolutely everything there was to know.
‘Well, we couldn’t have trusted them anyway,’ said Stiles diplomatically. ‘This is our fight.’
‘It’s like a war out there,’ said Cindy.
‘It is a war out there,’ said Denny gently correcting her. ‘I heard some of the old folks talking,’ he continued. ‘They were saying that it’s worse than the blitz.’
There was a silence at this.
‘B-but old people don’t think that anything is worse than the blitz,’ stammered Tamar. ‘I’ve heard them, even the apocalypse war wasn’t as bad as the blitz, I mean according to them.’
‘Wasn’t an apocalypse,’ said Stiles. ‘I mean we’re all still here, aren’t we?’
‘Not for much longer if this carries on,’ said Tamar.
‘Worse than the apocalypse,’ muttered Denny. ‘Sounds about right to me.’
Hecaté, who had been listening in silence with Jacky on her knee, now stood up suddenly, accidentally depositing her burden headfirst onto the rug.
‘Well,’ she said, so much for our gallant heroes, if you could only hear yourselves. I suppose you are just going to give up are you?’
‘Of course we aren’t!’ said Tamar. ‘No one said we were giving up it’s just … I mean they
’re everywhere now. Thousands of them and no one else seems to be able to fight them. There just aren’t enough of us.’
‘We’d need a small army,’ put in Denny.
Tamar raised her head sharply at this; her eyes grew wide for a moment and then she seemed to be thinking deeply.
Only Denny noticed this. ‘She’s having an idea,’ he thought. ‘It’s about bloody time.’
‘A small army?’ she said. ‘I might know where I can get one of those.’
Everyone looked at her.
‘They’re fearsome fighters,’ she added, ‘especially with a drink or two inside them. They hate Faeries and each one comes with his own armour and weapons. A great saving.’
‘Who are …?’ began Stiles.
‘And they aren’t affected by Faerie magic at all,’ she finished triumphantly.
‘They sound perfect,’ said Stiles. ‘Who are we talking about?’
‘Dwarfs,’ said Denny. ‘She’s talking about Dwarfs. But we can’t have any because they all buggered off to Valhalla – I wish I had.’
‘I reckon I know how to find them,’ said Tamar.
‘Oh, no,’ said Denny. ‘We promised. No more messing about in mainframe.’
‘It’s an emergency,’ said Tamar stubbornly.
‘Anyway, what makes you think they’ll agree?’ said Denny. ‘They might not want to fight, and they don’t exactly like you, you know.’
‘Not want to fight?’ laughed Tamar. ‘Dwarfs not want to fight? You aren’t serious.’
He’s got a point though,’ said Stiles. ‘They might not do it if you ask. Just to be awkward.’
Tamar grinned like a happy cat. ‘That’s why I’m taking you,’ she said. ‘They like you.’
‘Ooh, a small army,’ chirruped Cindy suddenly. ‘I get it.’
~ Chapter Fourteen ~
Getting into mainframe these days was a bit like riding a bike, as the saying goes. Denny could even get them directly into the file that they wanted. Of course, the clerks had changed all the passwords after the last time – just because they had promised not to do it again, did not mean that the clerks trusted them.
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