Jack, the giant-killer (12 page)

He had pulled a fat leather shoulder pack from under the windowseat and was now removing various vials, poultices and blankets. The pack, Kate thought, didn’t look big enough to hold half of what he was taking out of it. The first thing he did, once he pushed the bag back under the windowseat, was mix up some concoction in a small bowl which he then handed to her.

“Drink this.”

“No way,” she said, beginning to back away.

“It won’t harm you,” he said.

Kate hesitated for a moment longer, then gingerly took the bowl from him. The liquid smelled awful, a sweet cloying smell.

“You came to me for help, did you not?” he said when she simply held the bowl, not drinking. His voice was mild, but his gaze was fierce.

“Okay, okay,” Kate said.

Screwing up her face, she drank it down. Whatever it was tasted as foul as she’d imagined it would, but no sooner had she swallowed it, than a warm feeling spread from her stomach, easing her queasiness and clearing her head.

“What is this stuff?” she asked.

Rather than replying, the Gruagagh indicated that she should help him with Finn. While Kate held the hob’s head and the bowl, the Gruagagh forced small amounts of the liquid between Finn’s lips, stroking the hob’s throat to make him swallow. Once some colour had returned to the little man’s wan features, Kate stood to one side as the Gruagagh tended Finn’s hurts. He rubbed a lotion into the bruises on the hob’s torso and applied a poultice to the little man’s brow. Then he turned to Kate.

“Your turn,” he said. “Sit here and lift your shirt.”

Kate felt uneasy again, pulling up her shirt in front of the Gruagagh, but he maintained a professional, detached attitude throughout the examination, gave her an ointment to rub onto the bruise, and pronounced her as fit as she could be after a run-in with a pack of bogans. He made a bed for Finn in the corner of the room, using the blankets he’d pulled from his seemingly bottomless pack, then brought out two mugs and a thermos which began to steam from its mouth as soon as he opened it and placed it on the windowsill between himself and Kate.

Kate looked at his grim face, then at the thermos. The blend of tea smelled delicious. She wanted to ask him where she could get a bag like his, but another look at his face froze the question in her throat. She turned instead to look out the window at Windsor Park—what Finn had called Learg Green.

“I take it you don’t get many visitors,” she said after a few moments.

“Few enough.” He poured some tea, already mixed with milk in the thermos, and handed her a mug.

“Thanks.”

It was far better tasting than the earlier concoction, but spread a similar warmth from her stomach as she took a sip. She looked around the kitchen. The sense of hidden movement and ghostly furnishings wasn’t so pronounced anymore.

“What do you
do
in here?” she had to ask.

“Duty didn’t always confine me to my Tower,” he said. “Time was I was as free to roam as any of the Seelie Court. But times are hard and with the Laird’s daughter gone, Deegan won’t let me risk Kinrowan’s Heart in rescue of her—for all that she’s his daughter and her loss pains him deeply.”

“What is this Heart?”

The Gruagagh smiled. “Why, it’s myself. I’m the Laird’s heart—the Heart of Kinrowan.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You’ve been told how our glamours and magics have diminished, haven’t you?”

Kate nodded, though from all she’d seen this past day, she had to wonder what those magics were like before they had diminished. They seemed to work pretty good so far as she could see.

“Well, diminished or not,” the Gruagagh said, “what we have left is maintained by my focus. This Tower of mine is built on a criss-cross of leys—straight tracks. Do you know the term?”

Kate nodded. “They’re supposed to be lines that connect sacred sites, aren’t they? So the Tower’s like Stonehenge?”

“Exactly—but on a much, much smaller scale than that holy place. The ley lines are conduits of power—

earth strength, moon strength, water, fire and air. I take those strengths and spread them through the Laird’s land. They are all that keeps us from fading.”

“Jacky said it has something to do with people not believing in you anymore.”

“That is an old argument that has never quite been resolved,” the Gruagagh replied. “Many faerie, and some few mortals, have put forth the thought that we are sustained by your belief. All I know is that in this time of disbelief—disbelief that the Seelie Court exists, at any rate—we are diminished from what we were. I have also heard it put forth that the cause lies in the fact that we live in a borrowed land.”

“In your homeland,” Kate asked, “do the people still believe?”

“More so than here,” the Gruagagh replied, “but I see your point. Our numbers are fewer there as well. The issue becomes more clouded, I think, by our unwillingness to accept that we depend upon mortals for our existence.”

Well, she could see that, Kate thought.

“So you’re Kinrowan’s Heart,” she said to change the subject, “and the Laird’s daughter is its soul. Were you lovers?”

Something flickered in the Gruagagh’s eyes, but Kate couldn’t quite read what it was. Pain, perhaps. Or anger? But it was gone as quick as it had come.

“We have played the part,” he said, “when the seasons demanded it. But mostly we are friends. If Lorana had a husband, then I would be freed of my duties. But until that day…”

Kate wondered what he mean by “when the seasons demanded it.” It sounded too much like animals going into heat, but then she realized that he must mean holy times, like solstices, May Eve and Samhaine. She stole a glance at him as he stared silently out the window, his face set in stern lines again. She remembered Jacky telling her about his scar, and how it didn’t matter when he relaxed. But when he was tense like he was now, it made him seem so grim. It was probably time for her to go. But first…

“Are you going to help me find Jacky?” she asked. The Gruagagh turned to her, his gaze looking into unseen distances. Then his eyes focused and he regarded her steadily.

“For that we must go upstairs,” he said.

Kate glanced at the hob where he lay sleeping in his nest of blankets. “What about Finn?”

“Let him rest. Hurt as he is, he won’t be much help in what you must do anyway. Now come. We’ve spent too long gossiping. The day’s almost done.”

Kate set her tea mug down and looked out the window. It was getting late. Fear pinprickled through her as she realized that she’d have to set off at night to find Jacky. The Gruagagh was at the door, his pack hanging from his shoulder by its strap. Turning from the window, Kate hurried to join him and followed him upstairs.

They went up one flight of stairs, then another. Around them the house was quiet. Kate still thought she saw sly movements in the darker shadows, but the small shapes made no sound. Their own footsteps echoed strangely in the empty halls and rooms as the Gruagagh led her into a third-floor bedroom. Except for the lack of furnishings, the house didn’t look deserted. There was no dust. The plaster walls were clean. The wooden floors and trim were highly polished.

“How come no one lives here?” she asked. “Besides you, I mean.”

“It’s too close to Faerie. I have shared it with others from your world, but they always find the place too…

unsettling, and quickly move.”

“Why don’t you just buy it—I mean in the real world?”

The Gruagagh turned to her. “Which is more real?”

he asked. “Your world, or Faerie?”

“I…”

“But I do own this house—in your world as well as in my own.”

“Well, why don’t you furnish it, then?”

“You see only what you are meant to see. Come here now.”

He motioned to the window and opened it as she came to stand by him. For a long moment she clung dizzily to the windowsill. She had expected to see the street below and the tops of the trees that lined it, their leaves all red and gold and stiff with autumn. Instead the entire city was spread out below her in miniature. From Britannia in the far west end all the way out to Vanier; from Parliament Hill on the Ottawa River to the north, all the way south to where Bank Street became Highway 31.

What she saw didn’t seem possible. Vertigo

counteracted the effects of the potion that the Gruagagh had given her earlier and her stomach roiled. The Gruagagh touched her arm, steadying her.

“Is…is this real?” she asked in a small voice.

“The city—or our view of it?” he replied with a touch of amusement.

“You know what I mean,” she said.

The Gruagagh nodded. “Both the city and our view of it is real. We see it from a gruagagh’s Tower, you see. A gruagagh must be able to view all of his Laird’s land at once in times of need—a time such as this.”

“There’s my house,” Kate said, pointing it out.

“Be still a moment,” the Gruagagh said.

He leaned far over the windowsill. As the minutes ticked by, Kate shifted her weight from one foot to the other, but the Gruagagh never moved. Then, just as she was going to say something, he made a sound.

“Ah.”

“Is that a good ‘ah,’ or a bad one?” she asked.

“That depends,” the Gruagagh said as he pulled back from the windowsill. “Do you see that big building there in Cockle Tom’s Garve?”

“In
what
?”

“Cockle Tom holds the area you call the Glebe in trust for the Laird, in the same way that Crowdie Wort holds this area in which we are now.”

“Oh. What building? That’s the Civic Centre at Lansdowne,” she said when he pointed it out again. “Is that where they took Jacky?”

The Gruagagh nodded. “Until tonight. Then I think they will move her to their Keep.”

“In Calabogie—where Lorana is?”

“We know the Hunt’s Horn is there,” the Gruagagh replied, “but not where the Laird’s daughter is. That was why Jacky was going to steal the Horn.”

“Yes. But couldn’t you just ‘find’ Lorana like you did Jacky?”

The Gruagagh shook his head. “They have the Laird’s daughter too well cloaked with glamours for me to find her.”

They were silent for a long moment. Finally Kate sighed and stirred.

“Well, I suppose I should get on with it,” she said.

“Do you have any ideas?” she added as the Gruagagh led the way back downstairs.

“Strength will do nothing, but slyness might. What you must do is steal in and find her, secret and sly, then make your escape as best you can.”

Kate paused on the stairs. “Oh? Is that all? What a perfect plan. Now I wonder why I didn’t think of it.”

The Gruagagh looked back at her. “What do you want of me? Should I wave my hands and set all to right?”

“That’d help.”

“My magics don’t work that way.”

“So how do they work?”

The Gruagagh sighed. “In secret ways—mostly. The time for greatspells has passed this world. Remnants remain—such as the Wild Hunt’s Horn and the moon dancing of long-stones—but little enough that ordinary faerie may use.”

“But you’re supposed to be this mighty Gruagagh. Everybody’s scared to death of you.”

“What magics I have,” he said, “cannot be used for such things. If I forsook my responsibilities, there are things I could try, but I dare not. Shall all of Kinrowan’s faerie fail so that I might rescue your friend?”

“You’re no better than the rest of them,” Kate said.

“You’re just looking for saps like me and Jacky to do your dirty work for you.”

“Not so.”

There was a dangerous flicker in his eyes that Kate ignored. “Not so?” she began in a squeaky, mocking voice, but then she thought better of it.

There was more that she wanted to say. It lay on the tip of her tongue, but she bit it back. What was the point? She had Jacky to think of right now. And there was the Laird’s daughter—she deserved better, too. So for them, but especially for Jacky, she’d go and do what she could. But not for Faerie, and certainly not for the Gruagagh.

She pushed by him. “See ya later, chum. I’ve got things to do.”

She went down the hall until she found the room where Finn was still sleeping. There she collected the blue jacket and the redcap that had started it all.

“Kate,” the Gruagagh said as she headed into the kitchen. “Jacky chose to go—no one made her.”

“That’s because no one else would go.”

The Gruagagh shook his head. “Because no one else
can
.”

“Okay,” Kate said. “I understand you’ve got to stay here and, you know, be that focus and everything, but what about the other faerie? Why don’t
they
do something?”

“Because of the Hunt. Contrary to your nursery tales, we do have souls. But those that are taken by the Hunt lose them.”

“So it’s okay for me or Jacky to lose ours?”

“Fear doesn’t seem to paralyze you as it has my people, nor are you trapped by your duties as I am.”

“You didn’t answer me.”

“No one forces you to do anything,” the Gruagagh said.

“It’s kind of late for that, isn’t it? They’ve
got
Jacky now.”

“It was not something I planned.”

Kate thought about how Finn had warned them to stay away from the Gruagagh’s Tower and nodded slowly.

“When you say the Hunt takes your soul,” she said.

“Does that mean you become one of the restless dead like on Samhaine Eve?”

“No. The Hunt feeds on the souls they catch.”

Kate shuddered. “But still…”

“We’ve lost our heroes, Kate. All we have left are hobs and brownies, little folk that can’t even stand up to bogans, never mind the Hunt of Gyre the Elder and his kin. They have had to hide and steal about for so long now that they don’t know
how
to be brave. It will take new heroes to show them and our heroes have always been mortal.”

“If you’re expecting
me
to be their role model, you’re in for a rude surprise. I’m not a hero.”

“No? But still you’re going out to rescue your friend. I’d call that brave.”

“Yes, well…” Kate flashed him a quick awkward smile. “I’ve got to go.”

“Be careful, Kate Crackernuts.”

Kate regarded him for a long moment, then nodded. Slipping on the redcap, she ducked out the back door. She stood in the back yard and looked up at the darkening sky. It would be full night before she even got back to her place to get her car. She was about to put on the jacket and head out, when a familiar figure stepped out of the hedge. Arkan Garty, Crowdie Wort’s forester.