Drink Down the Moon (23 page)

He shut the entrance to Gump’s home with a softly spoken word. Before he could take a step, though, he heard the faltering sound of a sidhe pipe finding its tune, then the ringing notes of a calling-up music. The sound came from close by and he started to jog in its direction, reaching its source just in time to see a bedraggled and wet Pook thrust her pipe into a bag hanging from her shoulder before she set off at a quick pace.

Oh, this was a bad night, no doubt of it. The Court away, a droichan loose, the Unseelie Court abroad and hunting, and now the sidhe gathering for a war rade.

As he ran after the Pook— the direction she’d taken was the same he needed to follow to find Gump and Kate— he hoped that there would be something left of Faerie when the sun finally turned its dawn face their way.

With her hob-stitched shoes, Kate was just able to keep up with Gump’s pace-eating stride. After a few blocks, the trow took her on his shoulders to go more quickly and they reached the street they were looking for in record time.

“This has to be it,” Kate said.

Gump crouched so that she could clamber down from her perch and then the two of them stared across the street, studying the building. The house stood in the middle of the block, empty windows staring darkly out onto the street. On the lawn of the two-storied structure was a sign that read:

Another Renovation By

J. Cours and Sons Ltd.

A red maple, its leaves beginning to turn, and a clutch of cedars appeared to lean away from the house as though avoiding even its shadow. The lawn was somewhat unkempt, riddled with clumps of spike-leafed weeds.

Kate didn’t like the look of the place, and now that they were here, she wasn’t all that sure exactly what they were going to do. The house looked deserted, but there was a sense of something sentient about the way its windows looked out at the street, the drop of its roofline hanging over them like the low hairline of a browless troll. She glanced at Gump.

“What should we do?” she asked.

“We go in.”

“That’s what I was afraid you were going to say.”

The trow patted her shoulder. “Don’t be afraid, Kate. The droichan’s not here— I’d sense him if he was. Now, come on.”

He rose up like a small mountain standing at her side and started across the street. Kate sighed and followed in his wake.

“I was worrying more about what the droichan might have left behind,” she muttered to Gump’s back.

“Only one way to find out,” Gump replied.

The porch creaked under his weight. The question of how they were going to get in died on Kate’s lips as Gump struck the door with the flat side of his elbow. He hit it near the lock and tore the lock right out of the wood.

“They took more care in building doors in the old days,” he remarked to Kate as he stepped into the darkened hallway. “I can remember a time when it took myself and a brother a good minute to break one down. Of course, every hall had its own skillyman in those days.”

Kate kept close behind him, not really listening to what he was saying. She felt an all too real sensation of being watched as they moved slowly down the hall and stepped into the first room. To her surprise, the room was furnished. True, the sofa and chairs were old, the coffee table’s surface scarred with deep scratches, the carpet threadbare and faded, the two pictures on the wall hanging askew with their glass broken on the floor below them, but it was still more than she’d expected.

“Can you sense someone in here with us?” she whispered to Gump.

The trow turned away from the fake mantelpiece and cocked his head, considering.

“Something,” he admitted finally. “But it’s more an echo than a presence, as though it’s only a memory of something that was here and is now gone.”

“The droichan?”

“Something with his kind of power— if not the droichan himself.”

“Wonderful,” Kate said. “The last thing we need now is two of him.”

“It seems to be stronger upstairs,” the trow said.

He moved back into the hallway, floorboards creaking ominously underfoot. Kate clutched at the bag that held Caraid, quite happy to let Gump take the lead again. The stairs sagged under the trow’s weight, but that didn’t seem to particularly concern him. Kate followed uneasily, sure that if some creature of the droichan’s didn’t get them, then the house would simply collapse about them and bury them in its basement.

She passed a light switch at the top of the stairs and gave it a try, but nothing happened. That made sense. Why would the electricity be on in a place like this? J. Cours and his sons had quite the job lined up for themselves in renovating it.

Her eyes were beginning to adjust to the dimness now, enough so that she thought she’d be able to read. Tugging Caraid free from its bag, she began to tell the book about the house and its condition.

“Any ideas where the droichan might have hidden his heart?” she asked when she was done.

She held the book up to a nearby window for better light.

Dear Kate, the book replied in Bhruic Dearg’s clear script. I told you before. You must know the droichan’s mind before you can riddle the location of his heart.

“Can’t you even guess?” Kate asked.

I need something to base my guess on.

“Oh, come on,” Kate said. “Guessing’s just luck— that’s all.”

“Then perhaps we should have had Jacky accompany us,” Gump said. “We could use a Jack’s luck in this.”

“This house had a grey aura when we saw it from the special window in the Tower,” Kate said. “Doesn’t that mean the droichan was here?”

It means something disrupted the flow of the Moon’s luck in this place, Caraid replied. It need not necessarily have been the droichan.

“But it was the same grey as was in the places where he did work his magics,” Kate said. “Doesn’t that mean something? Or are we on a-wild-goose chase?”

“I could use a goose,” Gump said. “I’m feeling peckish.”

Kate glanced at him, hoping his appetite didn’t run to human women.

What you have postulated could be true, her book admitted. The droichan could well have worked magics here. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that his heart is hidden here. Or that it was ever hidden here.

“Well, what magics could he have worked here? What did he need this place for?”

Magics are always stronger when worked in a place where moonroads meet.

Kate looked at the trow. “Oh, what are we going to do?”

“For one thing,” Gump said, “we should finish looking through the house before we give up.”

He set off again, making his way down the second-story hall to the first open door. Kate glanced at Caraid, but the book had nothing to add. She put it away in its bag, then left the window where she’d been standing to follow the trow. Gump was waiting for her in the second doorway down the hall.

“Here,” he said. “Can you feel it?”

Kate squeezed in beside him and stood just inside the room.

“I

” she began.

The feeling of being watched returned to her, stronger than ever. On top of that sensation lay the taste of old magics, used and discarded, only their echoes remaining.

“Yes,” she said. “This is where he worked his magics. And he’s left something behind”— she glanced at the trow— “hasn’t he?”

The room was longer than it was wide. It had been someone’s study once, but the bookshelves were all empty now. A table, that had once served as a desk, she guessed, stood by the window, a stained and tattered ink blotter and a scatter of pencil stubs and paper on its surface. A chair stood by the table. In the middle of the room were a few cardboard boxes.

“Just trash,” Gump said as he looked through a box.

“Gump,” Kate said. “You didn’t answer me. He left something in here, didn’t he?”

“I’m not sure,” the trow replied. “When mages and gruagaghs settle down to work their spells

things tend to gather, to watch them. That’s what we’re sensing, I think.”

“Things? What kind of things?”

“I’m not really sure. I’m not a gruagagh, Kate. I’ve just heard the same stories that everyone knows. There were spirits in this land long before we reached its shores. They like to spy on our skillyfolk— some say to make sure that they work within allowed boundaries, but mostly it’s thought that they do it simply out of curiosity.”

“And that’s what’s here now?” Kate asked.

The trow nodded. “I think so. I hope so.”

“And there’s no droichan’s heart?”

“I can’t say yes or no, Kate. Someone worked powerful spells here. Maybe one such spell was the droichan hiding his heart.”

Kate sighed. She went over to the table and pried about, moving to the boxes when she was sure there was nothing of interest on either it or its adjacent windowsill. She emptied the first box unceremoniously on the floor and pawed through its contents. Most of the papers had something to do with governmental statistics.

How boring, she thought.

As she started on another box, Gump left the room and went into the next one down the hall. Kate followed his progress by listening to his weight creaking the floorboards. She was bitterly disappointed at coming up with nothing in this house. The idea had seemed so perfect when it first came to her at Gump’s home.

But that would have made things too easy, she realized now. And nothing was ever easy when it came to Faerie, and especially when it came to Faerie’s skillyfolk like the gruagaghs.

When she was finished going through the boxes, she stood in the center of the room and made a slow turn, trying to feel where the magic echoes were the strongest, or where the hidden watchers were concealed. She felt a tug near the table and returned to it, wishing she’d had the foresight to bring a flashlight with her. Holding up papers to the window was all well and good, but it didn’t do much for looking into crannies or finding hidey-holes.

She ran her fingers over the table, wishing she knew something about dowsing. That’d do the trick— just wave some stick over the table until it bent down at the required hiding place. But she didn’t have a magical dowsing stick— didn’t even know all that much about dowsing in the first place— and the table had no secrets to give up, or at least none that it was willing to give up. She turned away, defeated, to find Gump standing in the doorway.

“This is the only room with such strong echoes,” he said.

Kate nodded glumly. She toyed with the buttons of her jacket, started across the room to join him, then remembered the rowan twigs sewn to the inside of her jacket.

“Wait a sec,” she said.

Gump watched with interest as she unfastened the twigs from the inside of her jacket and tied them into a rough Y-shape.

“You know how to do that?” he asked as she stood with her makeshift divining rod in hand.

“Not really. But Finn seemed to think I could work magics if I studied hard. And this isn’t really magic anyway, is it? Even humans can do it.”

“If they have the skill.”

“Oh, don’t be such a poop,” Kate told him. “Have a little faith.”

The trow shrugged in agreement and sat by the door to watch, leaving Kate wondering if she’d bitten off more than she could chew. She’d read a book once on the Cambridge don Tom Lethbridge and his experience with dowsing. Having fully planned to immediately try it herself, she’d ended up getting distracted by something else and never really coming back to it. But she tended to remember everything she read, so she settled down now to concentrating on the task.

Keeping her mind empty of everything but the vague “something” that both she and the trow had sensed in the room, she made a slow circuit, her divining rod loosely gripped in her hands and held out before her. To her delight, the rowan twigs gave a definite tug in the direction of the table.

Without looking at Gump— though she was feeling very pleased with herself and dying to tell him, I told you so— she walked slowly over to the table, the makeshift rod increasing its tug against her fingers, the closer she came. Behind her, Gump lumbered to his feet and creaked his way across the floor after her. He towered over and watched as she made a circuit of the tabletop with the rod.

In the center of the table, closest to where she was standing, the rod jumped sharply downwards. The movement was so quick that Kate involuntarily held on tighter to the rod. Threads snapped and her divining rod fell to pieces.

Kate jumped back, startled, bumped into Gump, and almost screeched before she caught hold of her nerves and steadied herself. She took a deep breath and let it out again before turning to face the trow.

“It’s right here,” she said, pointing to where the twigs had fallen. “There’s something right here, Gump.”

She gathered up her twigs and stuck them in her pocket, moving aside so that Gump could have a look. The trow bent down until one big eye was level with the spot and he could study it.

“Something

” he agreed in a bemused voice.

He reached out a hand and moved it around the spot.

“Oh, look!” Kate cried unnecessarily since Gump’s eye was still inches from the spot.

A vague outline was taking shape on the wooden tabletop, slightly luminous like the failing display on a digital watch. Kate stared with rounded eyes as it became clearer. It was a round, slightly domed shape, with a flourish of intertwined ribbonwork encircling the central design, which appeared to be a pair of cow’s horns.

“What is it?” she breathed.

“An echo of magic,” Gump replied.

They both stared at it, trying to make sense of what it was. Before trying to touch it, Kate took out Caraid and held the book open overtop of it so that a copy of the design could be made on a blank page. Then she tried to touch it, but whatever it was, at the contact of her fingers, it simply dissolved away.

“Was that his heart?” Kate asked.

Gump shrugged. He looked from the table to where the design was now taking shape on Caraid’s page.

“I don’t know what it was,” he said. “Perhaps his heart— more likely some magical object that he was imbuing with power.”

I agree, Caraid wrote under the image on its page. This is a droichan’s work— there is no doubt of that. Notice the symbol of the broken crescent moon.