The Nimble Man (A Novel of the Menagerie)

by Christopher Golden, Thomas E. Sniegoski

  "You're Leonard Graves," she says, as though this should be news to him.

  He nods.

  "Look at me, Dr. Graves."

  Exasperated, he glances around to be sure he has not been followed, but in the darkened theater he can see only phantom faces, flickering silver in the light from the screen. At length he turns to her.

  "You might be a bit more —"

  "You're dead, Dr. Graves."

  Anger rises in him. His whisper is a harsh rasp. "Are you threatening me, ma'am?"

  The woman's eyelids flutter with frustration and she sighs. "Simply stating a fact. Trying to remind you. You've been dead half a century. Think. Remember the bullet. You're here for a reason."

  Graves begins to shudder and he feels a terrible pain in his heart.

  Phantom pain.

  For he has no heart.

  Grief swells within him and he turns away from her, only to see the faces of the other theater goers again. The flickering light upon the screen is not what has made them look spectral. Rather, it is the fact that they are specters. Ghosts of the dead.

  The silver light from the screen passes through them, their bodies having little more substance than dust motes swirling in shafts of sunlight. Their faces are etched with fear.

  He turns back to the woman and sees that she too is transparent. Dr. Graves does not look down at his own body, at his hands. He does not like to look at his hands.

  "Who are you?" he asks, the illusion of the Parisian movie palace becoming wispy around them, a ghost all its own.

  "My name is Yvette Darnall. I am . . . I was a medium."

  And he watches her blue eyes, ghosts in and of themselves, as she tells the tale of her own death, of her efforts to locate Sweetblood the Mage, of the trap that he laid for any who would dare to search for him.

  "The bastard," Graves whispers, trying not to see that the theatre is gone now, completely disappeared, and there is only a kind of river flowing at their feet, a rushing, turbulent stream of souls. Some of them fly past above and around him, but all of them in the same direction, with a fierce momentum, as though drawn on by some inexorable force.

  "Oh, yes, he always was," Miss Darnall says. "But I see it now. I understand."

  For a moment Graves does not hear her. He is distracted by a tugging at his arms and the current that drags at his ankles, the stream trying to pull him in, to pull him on . . . and he will not look to see what has such power over him. He frowns as her words finally settle into his mind.

  "Understand what? Why he murdered you?"

  She shudders and glances away in shame, and now she does not seem quite so severe. "I cannot see it all, of course. Only the silhouette of what may be, not the fine details. But this is why I came to find you the moment I sensed you had moved further into the river of souls. Someone has located Sanguedolce."

  "We know," Graves says, nodding, feeling the tug of the soulstream on his body now, and shuddering at its touch. It has been so long since anyone has been able to touch him. He feels the urge to sink into the river, to flow with it. "Doyle was there. One of the Old Races, the Night People, have Sweetblood. He's in some sort of protective —"

  "They're trying to open it," whispers the ghost of Yvette Darnall, her face thinning strangely. Her hair begins to come undone and her long tresses flutter in the invisible breeze of the soulstream, reaching away from her as though it yearns to join the others.

  But her eyes are firm and dark. "Sanguedolce has hidden within a magical shell. It must not be opened."

  Dr. Graves stands a bit straighter, drags his feet toward her in the soulstream, fighting its pull upon him. "Why? You know something. I don't spend a lot of time here, in the otherworld, but enough to know that a lot of the spirits who linger around the area where all of these omens and strange phenomena are occurring . . . they've retreated. They're hiding deeper here, or slipping into the soulstream and letting go. Why? Is this what they're afraid of? What will happen if Sweetblood is freed? What is he going to do? Why do they want to break him out in the first place?"

  Miss Darnall looks terribly sad, now. She reaches out toward him but her form is blurring. Her body is succumbing to the pull of the soulstream, streaks of ectoplasm stretching off her, fluttering just as the tendrils of her hair are doing. Bits of her slipping away. Her face grows thinner, becomes warped.

  "I don't know what they want him for. Nor what this cataclysm is that will result from his being freed. But when I searched for him, when I found him I touched his mind and for just a moment before his spell froze my heart I saw inside him and I realized that he was frightened. Sweetblood felt utter dread and sheer terror at the thought of being released. Beyond that, I know nothing. Only that if it can frighten the world's most powerful sorcerer, it must be terrifying indeed. But that is not what the ghosts are retreating from."

  "Then what —" Graves begins, reaching out to touch her as the soulstream is touching him, thinking perhaps he might hold her here with him a little longer. But his fingers pass through her as though he is solid and she nothing but spectral mist. "What are they running from?"

  "Another power," says Miss Darnall, her body tearing itself apart, pieces of her whipping away into the stream, or streaking the air, her face pulled taut, warped, mouth twisted. "Something calls to them, trying to drag them back."

  "Back to what?"

  With a flap like a flag furling in the breeze the rest of her gives way, the ghost surrendering to the river of souls, carried away from him. But as she sails along the stream Yvette Darnall looks back at him.

  "To their bodies," she calls, a thin, reedy voice that disappears after a moment, swallowed in the stream.

  For long moments Graves stares after her. There are lights swirling in the stream and flashing past him in the air. The theatre has disappeared, the Parisian movie palace had never been there, unless it had been constructed of ectoplasm, or whatever the substance of this realm is. Now, as he narrows his gaze, he sees in the distance two towering objects that thrust themselves up from the stream. To Graves they seem like the tusks of some impossibly huge elephant, ivory spires a hundred feet high.

  But he knows what they were.

  The gate.

  Though he hates to do it he glances down at his fingers. They blur and stretch and he sees that his own form has begun to run, to streak, tugged along the soulstream, toward the gate.

  He grits his teeth.

  Leonard Graves is not ready to let the river of souls take him. Not yet. Not until he knows who took his life, who destroyed him. And if that means he must haunt the world for all eternity, so be it. Though he feels the bliss of the soulstream, the peace of surrender a temptation, he turns his back on the gate and begins to trudge back upstream.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Doyle followed the sentries through the impossibly lush forest. At first glance it appeared to be too dense and overgrown for passage, but the primordial wood obliged their needs and parted to let them through. The people of Faerie existed in a symbiotic relationship with their environment, bonded to the land where they had lived forever.

  The sentries quickened their pace, one of them turning to give Doyle a cruel smile as they began to run through the wood. The sorcerer kept up with them as best he could, his heart hammering in his chest as if to escape. He knew they did not appreciate his presence, and would do everything short of killing him to make sure he was aware of that fact. But there was no time to concern himself with the hurt feelings of the Fey. They were all in danger; this world, as well as worlds beyond it.

  The guards came to an abrupt stop in front of a downed tree. It was enormous, easily dwarfing the mighty Redwoods of Earth. Doyle welcomed the brief respite, reaching into his back pocket for a handkerchief to wipe his sweating brow. The wood was eerily quiet and he did not recognize this path to the city of Faerie, but that was far from unusual, for the forest often changed its configuration to keep the great home of the Fey safe from danger. It had done this since
the Twilight War. Many enemy troops, having found their way into the Faerie realm, never reached their destination, eventually succumbing to the elements of the forest world.

  One of the sentries rapped three times on the trunk of the felled tree with his spear. Figures and shadows shifted in Doyle's peripheral vision, and then the forest was alive with movement. Fey warriors emerged from their places of concealment around and atop the enormous fallen tree. They had been there all along, but had not allowed themselves to be seen. A chill ran up Doyle's spine as more and more of the armored soldiers made their presence known. Their pale faces were tattooed with magickal wards of protection, the symbols adding to the ferocity of their appearance. Doyle was familiar with the Lhiannan-shee, the elite fighting force of the Faerie army, but he had thought their ranks disbanded after the Twilight conflict. Something was definitely amiss, and he began to wonder if he had made the journey to Faerie too late.

  A Lhiannan-shee wearing the markings of a commander crouched atop the fallen tree and glared at the sentries, and at Doyle.

  "Why have left your post at the gate to the world of Blight?" The normally pleasant tone of the Faerie tongue sounded harsh coming from the commander.

  The world of Blight, Doyle thought with sadness as he wiped his brow. How the people of this magickal realm had learned to hate the world of his birth. At one time, the doorways between the two places had been gossamer-thin, but humanity's blatant disregard for the environment had disgusted the Fey, and they ceased interaction with man.

  "The doorway was opened from the other side," one of the sentries, apparently their captain, explained. He pointed to Doyle. "And from the world of Blight, he did come."

  The commander of the Lhiannan-shee gazed upon them, his eyes lingering on Doyle, and a ripple of disgust went across his face. With a feline grace, the commander leapt almost delicately down from the tree, but Doyle had seen the ferocity of the Lhiannan-shee in battle, and knew they were far from delicate. The commander strode toward him, uncomfortably close, his dark Fey eyes shiny and black like polished lake stones.

  "You stink of the filth that is humanity, but there is also something of Faerie about you. How can this be?" the commander asked, his long, spidery fingers caressing the hilt of the short sword hanging at his side.

  These warriors were young, perhaps unborn when the Twilight Wars were fought. They did not know him, and that served to further drive the point home that he no longer belonged here. Doyle felt an intense wave of sadness wash over him, but quickly cast it aside and looked deep into the commander's dark eyes.

  "Lhiannan-shee, what was your father's name?" Doyle demanded in the language of the Fey, his pronunciation and intonation perfect.

  The commander was taken aback and gripped his sword hilt all the tighter.

  "What was your father's name?" Doyle repeated.

  "Niamh-sidhel," the commander replied with an air of pride.

  Doyle nodded, raising a hand to stroke his beard. "A brave one indeed. He fell during the battle of the Wryneck, but not before one hundred Fenodyree sampled the point of his sword." Doyle paused, remembering a Fey warrior with an unquenchable thirst for human beer. "He is remembered in both tale and song."

  Doyle sang a bit of a remembrance song, the first verse telling of Niamh-sidhel's love of his people and his mistrust of the Night Kind. It had been quite some time since Doyle had sung, and he felt mildly foolish.

  The commander's hand left his weapon, his ferocity turning to melancholy. "Who are you to sing of my father with such reverence?" His voice was now just a whisper in the woods.

  "I am Arthur Conan Doyle, and once I called this wondrous place my home."

  The Lhiannan-shee's eyes widened with the revelation, and Conan Doyle dared to think that perhaps he had not been entirely forgotten in the land of the Fey.

  "I have heard this name. It is spoken in whispers here," the commander said. "There is much anger and sadness associated with your name, Conan Doyle from the Blight."

  The memory of the day he had departed Faerie was fresh in Conan Doyle's mind, as crisp as if that particular recollection had been minted only the day before. His grief had been like a gaping wound as he sealed the private doorway from his home to the land of Faerie, believing he would never again look upon its abundant wonders. Now he felt that old wound tear open again, and begin to bleed freely.

  "Believe me, commander, I am aware that I may not be welcome here. And I would never have entered Faerie unless circumstances were dire ," Conan Doyle explained. "Allow me to pass into your great city so that I may warn your King and his Seelie Court of the impending danger."

  The son of Niamh-sidhel narrowed his gaze, his gleaming black eyes studying Conan Doyle. At length, the commander turned to his soldiers and raised his long, pale arm, bracelets of rock and wood clattering against one another. The Lhiannan-shee tensed, ready to respond to their commander's signal. He showed them a balled fist, and then opened his hand, his incredibly long fingers splayed wide.

  They responded immediately, the melodious sounds of Faerie spell-casting filling the air. Conan Doyle watched as their hands weaved intricate shapes, each an integral piece of the magick that was being cast. It took but seconds for one of the gnarled knots in the bark of the great tree to begin to grow larger, and larger still. The thick bark moaned and popped as it was magickally reconfigured, and soon they were looking at a tunnel through to the other side.

  "My thanks," Conan Doyle said with a bow of his head.

  The commander of the Lhianna-shee responded in kind. "The sentries will escort you the remainder of the way where you will speak with the Lady Ceridwen."

  The mere mention of her name gave Conan Doyle a spasm of pain. He had hoped to avoid any contact with Ceridwen. He had hurt her more than enough and did not want to cause her any further grief.

  "I mean no disrespect to the great lady, but my errand here is most dire. It should be brought to the attention of King Finvarra."

  The commander gazed longingly through the opening in the tree. "I am afraid that is impossible, Conan Doyle from the Blight."

  Conan Doyle felt another spark of panic. The Lhiannan-shee again deployed, the king unable to speak with him; something was very wrong here.

  "Then at the least allow me to speak with the one who leads the Seelie Court," he asked, struggling to hide his frustration.

  "And you shall," the warrior agreed, signaling to the sentries.

  "Many thanks to you, son of Niamh-sidhel," Conan Doyle said as he followed his escorts into the tunnel's entrance. It was damp inside the great tree, the ceiling dripping with sweetly scented moisture. Conan Doyle paused and turned to glance back at the commander. The other Lhiannan-shee were curiously watching Conan Doyle, this stranger to their worlds, as he moved through the dripping darkness. "And who now leads the Seelie Court?"

  "Why, the Lady Ceridwen, of course," the commander replied.

  Conan Doyle felt his pulse quicken and his throat go dry. Something fluttered in his gut.

  "Oh my," he said aloud as his escorts took him firmly by his shoulders and he was urged deeper into the tunnel.

  From the darkness of the tunnel they emerged into the light, and Conan Doyle had to shield his eyes, for the sun of this world shone brightly upon the splendor that was the kingdom of Faerie. He heard the snap and creak of their tunnel passage closing behind them, but could not pull his eyes from the fabulous view that lay before him. Though he had seen the forest citadel of King Finvarra many times, and even lived within its abundant halls, he still marveled at its magnificence.

  Nudged from his reverie by his escorts, Conan Doyle left the shadows of the great tree and proceeded down an open hillock to an elaborate suspension bridge that would allow access to the fabulous settlement nestled in the breathtaking valley before them.

  Faerie legend claimed that the kingdom, and all its intricate structures, had been made from the desiccated remains of a long, forgotten god. As Conan Doyle and his Fey com
panions crossed the great bridge and the buildings loomed closer, Conan Doyle could think of no reason to doubt this ancient tale. The citadel of the royal family rose up from the center of the kingdom, its high, pointed spires the color of polished bone. There was an organic look to the place, all straight lines and rounded curves. His memories did not do it justice.

  The trio came to an abrupt stop at the end of the bridge, before an intimidating gate that very well could have been made from the ribs of some gigantic deity. Conan Doyle gazed between the slats of the gate to the courtyard beyond, and saw that there was no sign of life. If his memory served him correctly, this was highly unusual, for the courtyard served as a marketplace for the citizens of the kingdom, and usually thrived with activity.

  Conan Doyle turned to his escorts. "Why is it so quiet? Where are the Fey?"

  They ignored his question. "Our responsibility is fulfilled," the more talkative of the pair said with little emotion, and they both turned back down the length of the bridge, leaving him alone.

  "How will I get inside?" Conan Doyle asked their departing forms.

  "That is not our concern," the sneering sentry said over his shoulder.

  The sound of a bolt sliding home distracted Conan Doyle, and he turned back to the gate. To its right was a door of thick, light-colored wood, its pale surface marbled with streaks of a darker grain. The door began to slowly open outward, and he watched as a hooded figure, clad in robes of rich, dark blue, with golden brocade about the sleeves and hem, emerged.

  "I am here to speak with she who leads the Seelie Court," Conan Doyle said formally, squinting his eyes in an attempt to discern the features of the one whose identity remained hidden within the darkness of the hood.

  "We know why you have come, Arthur Conan Doyle." The mysterious figure reached up with pale, gnarled hands to pull back his hood. "The land has warned us of your return, and the grim tidings you bring."

  From a copse of nearby trees a murder of crows rose into the air, screaming their panicked caws. Nothing remained secret for long in the realm of Faerie. Even before he had removed the hood, Conan Doyle had recognized the voice of the king's grand vizier, Tylwyth Teg.