Uncertain Allies cg-5

by Mark Del Franco

  “Why has he always come here? He wants to destroy the Seelie Court and return us to Faerie. That has been the goal of the Teutonic fey for over a hundred years.”

  “The Elven King destroyed Faerie and caused Convergence, Brokke. They’re fighting for a memory,” I said.

  “That’s what you’ve been taught and what you choose to believe, Grey. The Elven King blames Maeve for Convergence. All he wants to do is go home.”

  “I’m not going to debate politics, Brokke. I don’t care who caused Convergence anymore. I’m also not going to let anyone destroy my home to chase a pointless dream,” I said.

  “You might destroy it if you try to save it,” he said.

  “Tell that to Vize. What was he doing down in the Tangle with Gerda?” I asked.

  Brokke stared into his glass, swirling the claret now and then. He was powerful enough to use such a small surface area for scrying, but I didn’t feel anything. One of Heydan’s rules for Yggy’s was no scrying on the premises. “Vize was helping her recover a stone ward she lost a long time ago,” he said.

  The idea that Gerda Alfheim had had the leanansidhe’s stone bowl at some point didn’t defy imagination. If anything, I was more surprised a leanansidhe had it than a powerful elf. Many things were lost after Convergence and ended up in odd places. “How did she lose it?”

  “Gerda wasn’t anyone important years ago. She worked her way through barter and trade before she gave her skills to the Teutonic shadow network. At some point, she came into possession of the stone and sold it without realizing what it was.”

  Another Guinness appeared on the table. “Who did she sell it to?” I asked.

  “I’m aware of your investigation with your detective friend. You already know. Nar Veinseeker,” he said.

  “And she thinks he still has the stone?” I asked.

  Brokke shrugged. “That I could not determine. The most I learned was that Gerda knew him after Convergence and that they had a falling-out of some kind.”

  “He seems to have a knack for that,” I said.

  “Then you know more than I. He knows where the stone is. Gerda wants that information,” he said.

  “Well, Gerda apparently knew something about where it is. She already found the leanansidhe,” I said.

  Brokke’s forehead wrinkled. “I saw no leanansidhe in my visions.”

  “They’re using her like a bloodhound. She’s attuned to the stone. I’ve seen her operate. Veinseeker doesn’t have the stone, Brokke. They want him for something else,” I said.

  “My visions have shown no connection between the stone and a leanansidhe. Tell me what you know, Grey. Leave out no detail,” he said.

  “The leanansidhe survives by absorbing essence. There’s a darkness inside her that pulls essence to itself. She uses her ability to feed on that essence as it passes through her into the darkness. She’s sensitive to the stone. It draws her to it.”

  Brokke looked around the busy bar. “I have seen such a creature years ago. Few of them exist, and we can all thank the Wheel for that. I think you are wrong about this. The stone is bound to the Wheel and is too strong to yield to something like a leanansidhe. It would be of no use to it. I don’t think Gerda was working with one of these creatures.”

  I had seen the leanansidhe use the stone. Hell, she had shown me how to use it. The stone gave its power with no resistance. In Shay’s apartment, it had worked with no effort by anyone at all. It was a directionless thing, a producer of raw power for the taking. That Brokke believed otherwise didn’t sound right. His reputation for accuracy was based on the truth of his visions. For him not to understand the stone didn’t ring right with me. “You seem pretty sure of yourself, Brokke. If the stone wouldn’t be of use to a leanansidhe, what good is it?”

  “When it chooses someone, the wielder has the power to stir hearts to his cause. His followers become formidable warriors, stopping at nothing to achieve the goals of the wielder.”

  When I had touched the stone bowl, I felt nothing more than the surge of essence. No spells were bound to it. The pure essence flowed without purpose or restraint. I didn’t sense that adoring masses were dying to follow me to the grocery store. An uneasy feeling came over me. “Can you describe the stone, Brokke?”

  Brokke made a triangular shape with his hands. “I have seen drawings and renderings of it in records across Europe. It rises and falls in both our histories, Grey, sometimes with the Celts, sometimes with the Teuts. No one can say whether it was created by someone or simply appeared at the beginning of time. It’s roughly three-sided, about the size of a fist, and made of deep blue quartz. You might say it looks like a heart.”

  The leanansidhe’s stone was carved from quartz into the shape of a bowl—but it was bloodstone, a deep green with splashes of red. We weren’t talking about the same stone. “What do they want it for?”

  Brokke frowned. “I would think that obvious. It’s a faith stone. It inspires people to the cause of the wielder.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t imagine a stone so powerful it would turn people into terrorists. Vize may be crazy, but I don’t think he’s delusional.”

  A sudden uncomfortable look passed over Brokke’s face. His eyes shifted out toward the crowded bar. “I don’t recall saying Vize wanted it for himself.”

  For once, Brokke was revealing something he knew rather than uttering his usual evasions. He could be talking about only one person. The Elven King would benefit the most with such an artifact, and he conveniently happened to be in town to force Eorla back into the fold. If he could make the faith stone work on her, he would have a potent weapon to use against the Seelie Court. World opinion has always been in Maeve’s favor. If the stone worked the way Brokke said it did, Donor Elfenkonig could tip the balance of power in his direction. “Dammit, Brokke. I’ve been trying to connect Vize to the Elven King for over a decade.”

  “And you won’t this time either, Grey. Donor knows how to distance himself from people like Vize. The stone will be found and out of this city before you or anyone else can do anything about it,” he said.

  “Have you seen that?” I asked.

  He sighed. “The only thing I can tell you is that the stone will be found. What happens after that is anyone’s guess. My vision failed two nights ago. So did everyone else’s. That happens when profound change is imminent, and the future is in flux.”

  Meryl had said she couldn’t remember her dream vision. The same thing happened to Briallen before the Castle Island catastrophe. Now one of the most powerful scryers in the world was saying he was blind. “I have to stop them, Brokke.”

  Brokke sipped his claret. “No, you want to. It’s one of the reasons my vision fails. Your darkness obscures more than your mind.”

  The sounds of the bar whirled around me. I had been about to shrug off his comment, discard yet another hint from the always-mysterious Brokke. Murdock’s words about seeking answers in unlikely places came back to me. “What do you know about it, Brokke?”

  “The darkness is a rare thing, Grey, but the leanansidhe isn’t the only fey that touches it. I’ve seen it far too many times recently.”

  “So have I. Something drained the essence from the dwarf victims. If a leanansidhe didn’t do it, who did?”

  He considered me with surprise and annoyance. “Vize, of course. He has the same darkness in him as the leanansidhe. It’s the same thing in you.”

  My memory flashed to the leanansidhe hissing in the dark. She’d called me “brother.” The night of the riots, I saw Vize, saw the darkness in him, and recognized it as the same thing in me. “You’re wrong, Brokke. It’s not in his head. It’s in his hand.”

  He gestured with his glass at my arm, the one with the silver-branch tattoo, hidden beneath my jacket sleeve. “Does that need to be in your head for it to have power?”

  Self-conscious, I slid my arm off the table and dropped it in my lap. It was pointless to ask him how he knew about the tattoo. “How does he know
how to use it?”

  “How do you?”

  I wasn’t about to confess my personal involvement with the leanansidhe. “Answer my question.”

  “I have, in a way. You showed him, Grey. When you touched him with your darkness the night of the riots, you disturbed something within him. I was on the bridge that night, too. I saw what happened. The darkness in Vize exploded when you attacked him. You showed him the way,” Brokke said.

  Dread gripped my stomach. When the leanansidhe’s darkness touched mine, I understood her, understood how she used the darkness. I never realized I had done the same for Vize. “What have I done?” I said, more to myself than to Brokke.

  “I don’t know. Our minds see it as darkness because we can’t visualize it as it truly is,” he said.

  A chill ran over me. “You know what the darkness is?”

  Brokke’s hand shook as he reached for his glass, his smug self-assurance slipping. “No one knows what is beyond knowing. It exists in opposition to existence. If I could describe it, it would exist in the world. It doesn’t exist in the world because it is outside It.”

  When powerful people showed fear of something, it was a sign to start worrying. “The leanansidhe said something like that to me. She said the Wheel of the World has two sides and that we—she—touches both sides.”

  Brokke eyed me. “It’s not a side. It is. It is what was and will be. The Wheel of the World, Grey, is what comes between.”

  “The Wheel of the World has no end and no beginning,” I said.

  Brokke shook his head. “What is destruction but the seed of creation? What is creation but the fruit of destruction? The Wheel of the World at once turns infinitely in both directions yet begins and ends. What happens between is the Gap, out of which the Wheel might arise again or not. The Gap was there at the beginning and will be there at the end. It is the source of everything and nothing. It drives the Wheel forward and brings It to a standstill. It devours the Wheel as it creates the Wheel. It is greater than the Wheel and less than the Wheel. It will end us all if we let it and it allows us. It is the place of power from which opposing forces spring and create the Wheel of the World. But the Gap never vanishes, Grey. It shrinks as the Wheel grows and turns until there is nothing left but the Wheel, and the Wheel begins to feed on itself, and the Gap appears anew. We cannot escape it, and it cannot escape us.”

  His words had the cadence of a chant. He knew this thing, had a sense of it, and there was a sense of truth to what he said. I gazed into my beer. “Why have I never heard of this?”

  He made a dismissive sound. “You Celts love to lord over others with your superiority while you wallow in your ignorance. Your people turned away from the truth long ago, Grey, content to indulge themselves with no thought for the future or the past. Do you know why Convergence happened? Because the Celts believed the world would never end because for them it never began. With all your talk of the turning of the Wheel, you and your people act like It turns in place, that nothing was ever different, and nothing would ever change. And that’s why you know nothing of the Gap. You know nothing of the past and have no understanding of the future.”

  Annoyed, I sipped my beer. “You want a religious discussion? I could say the Teuts caused Convergence because of their doom and gloom. When you think the world is going to end, you start acting like it, then you cause it. You create a self-fulfilling prophecy. You sit there and tell me the Elven King wants the faith stone so he can challenge Maeve; and then you want to blame the Celts for the destruction of Faerie? Spare me.”

  “You cannot stop what is coming. The darkness is beyond comprehension,” he said.

  “It can be controlled. I’ve seen the leanansidhe use it. If something can be controlled, it can stopped,” I said.

  “That thinking, I fear, will bring ruin to us all. No one can control the Gap,” he said.

  “This isn’t an abstract discussion, Brokke. You’re telling me that I’ve handed Bergin Vize a dangerous weapon that can destroy everything. He has to be stopped.”

  Brokke pursed his lips. “What makes you think I’m any more comfortable that you have the same power?”

  28

  I woke alone at midday. Meryl, praise be, had set up the coffeemaker. She left a note to join her for lunch if I managed to get up before the sun went down. The funny part was she wasn’t being sarcastic. We were both night owls and cast no stones in the waking-up-late department. I took a leisurely shower, then walked over the Oh No bridge to catch the subway.

  At Boylston Street, the train left me with a screech of metal on metal as it rode a sharp turn out of the station. When no one on the platform or in the token booth was paying attention, I slipped through the break in the fencing near the stairs. I walked the access curbing beside the tracks toward the next station in Copley Square. I had told Murdock that Boston was riddled with tunnels—some official and legal like the subways and some not so much. Not far into the tunnel was a concrete niche that wasn’t concrete but a glamour hiding a not-so-official tunnel that led to Meryl’s office in the Guildhouse.

  Meryl had been with the Guild a long time. She had worked her way up in the archives division until she became the Chief Archivist. Despite doing important work, she isn’t respected by the investigative division the way she should be. I should know. I was one of those jerks once. I knew Meryl before I lost my abilities and made assumptions about her that weren’t fair. I thought she was lazy and grumpy. Once I was bounced out of the Guildhouse, I learned she was neither—far from it. Taken advantage of at work, sure, but not lazy. I still think she’s grumpier than she claims, but a lot of that has its reasons. I wouldn’t have her be any other way.

  In the course of her career, she had discovered things in the Guildhouse—beneath the Guildhouse—that had been forgotten or lost. Tunnels layered their way into the earth, complicated mazes of stone and brick that only dwarven crafters could have produced. Long-hidden rooms filled with rare treasures lay dormant until Meryl had found them. She had made a few improvements of her own along the way, like the secret bolt-hole out of her office into the subway system.

  As our bond grew, Meryl had given me privileges she gave to no one else—like tuning some of her wall illusions to my body signature so that I could enter or leave the Guildhouse unseen. I eased down the steps that led from the concrete niche. At the bottom, a long, narrow tunnel ended at her office, a bright rectangle of light in the distance.

  The wall glamour included a warning anytime someone passed through, so Meryl knew I was coming. She worked at her desk, her face intent as she read her computer screen. Both Gillen Yor and Briallen had given her a clean bill of health, and seeing her back in action was an enormous relief.

  From the office side, the tunnel exit appeared to be a blank space between a filing cabinet and a credenza. Meryl spun her chair as I stepped through. I leaned over a stack of manuals and kissed her on the lips. She had trimmed her hair and dyed it lemon yellow

  “You look great,” I said.

  “Comas are very refreshing,” she said.

  The office was a shambles, filing drawers half-open, with papers jumbled in them, stacks of reports spilled across the floor, the guts of Meryl’s backdoor computer spewed out across the credenza. “What the hell are you doing?”

  She blew a puff of air that fluttered her bangs. “Not me. It was like this when I came in this morning. I’ve been looking for patterns.”

  I picked my way over a mess of e-mail printouts and tossed a box of old CDs off a chair to sit. “Of what?”

  “What they were looking for,” she said.

  “Let’s start with who,” I said.

  “Let’s call it macGoren, et al. Various agents have been in and out, but the directives are coming from macGoren,” she said.

  “Now the what,” I said.

  “The who again, actually. You,” she said.

  “Me? Why would they be searching your office for information about me?” I asked.

>   She shrugged. “We’re boinking.”

  “We boink?”

  “Not for at least three months”—she narrowed her eyes at me—“that I know of.”

  I chuckled. “No worry. It’s been that long.” I watched her read through something on her computer screen. “You said Nigel was looking for something you knew, too.”

  “I did,” she said, and kept reading.

  “So, macGoren and Nigel both think you know something important about me,” I said.

  “They do,” she said.

  “Aaaaand . . . we’re not really having a conversation, are we?” I asked.

  She glanced at me. “They want their weapon back.”

  Meryl had made a connection between me and Nigel I had never considered before I lost my abilities. When I didn’t understand Nigel’s coldness, she pointed out that I was his number one soldier in the fight against the Elven King. When I lost my abilities, he lost what he considered his advantage. “I’m not a weapon,” I said.

  “But you were a tool and didn’t know it,” she said.

  “Regardless, I’m neither now,” I said.

  She pursed her lips. “Maybe not a weapon but maybe still a tool.”

  I scrunched my face at her. “Are you continuing this metaphor or are you insulting me?”

  She grinned. “I so love that you’re uncertain.”

  I folded my arms against my chest. “Why does that amuse you so much?”

  “Because you used to be this arrogant prick who thought he knew everything even when he didn’t, and now you act sorta human, and that baffled look you sometimes get on your face is incredibly adorable,” she said.

  “And you like to kick puppies, too,” I said.

  “Gee, Grey. I might be brutally honest, but I don’t think I’m cruel,” she said.

  “So, be honest. What have you found?” I asked.

  “A lot of chatter about the night of the riots and what you did at the Old Northern bridge. I have to confess to being intrigued by that, too.”

  “That’s what I came to talk to you about. I spoke to Brokke last night. He thinks I have the ability to access a primordial darkness he calls the Gap,” I said.