Jack, the giant-killer (18 page)

“If the Gruagagh shows up,” Jacky said, “he’ll be too busy answering a question or two that I’ve got for him to be bothering anyone. Believe me.”

“Getting real fierce, are we?” Kate said to her as they started down the stairs.

“Oh, jeez, Kate. Am I getting too weird?”

Kate shook her head. “With bogans and gruagaghs and men that turn into swans running around? I don’t think so, kid. It’s about time you got a little fierce.”

Jacky sighed. “Can you just see Will’s face if he could see us now? And he thought I was too

predictable.”

“Maybe we should stop by his place tonight,” Kate said with a grin. “We can see how he likes standing off a bunch of bogans for us while we get a little sleep.”

“Oh, wouldn’t I just!”

“Who’s Will?” Eilian asked.

Jacky glanced at him. “Just somebody I never knew,” she said.

Very
fierce, Kate thought approvingly. Whatever else this madcap affair left them, at least it had finally brought Jacky out of her shell. Not that Kate had ever agreed with Will. His idea of bar-and-party-hopping as the means to having a fulfilled life wasn’t exactly her concept of what Jacky had needed. All Jacky had needed was some confidence in herself. With some confidence, Kate knew Jacky could do anything. And she was proving it now.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

« ^ »

When Kate left him, her recriminations still ringing in his ears, the Gruagagh of Kinrowan returned to the third floor room with its view of the city in miniature. He marked the various positions of the riders of the Hunt, the gathering of bogans and hags, gullywudes, trolls and other creatures of the Unseelie Court. Of the Laird’s folk there were few and, of those few he could see, all save the odd forester were hiding. Not so the Host.

As night fell, he watched the sluagh rise from their marshy beds. The trolls under their bridges grew bolder. Packs of gullywudes and spriggans and other unwholesome, if minor, members of the Unseelie Court ran up and down the city streets, chasing leaves and the pets of humans, and sometimes humans as well. They never showed themselves. Instead they teased with fingers like wind and voices like wind, awaking fears that didn’t settle even when the humans were safe within their homes and the doors closed on the eerie night.

He could not see into the building where the bogans held Jacky captive, but he could imagine what went on in there. The greedy faces pressed close to her, feeding on her fear as much as the smell of her. If the giants didn’t want her for their own, the stew pots would already be heating. She would be despairing…

“Use your wits, woman,” he whispered into the night. “Why do you think the powers that be gave them to you, if not to use?”

But then he saw the new captive that the Host brought into the building. The swan wings would have told anyone what the new captive was, but even without them Bhruic would have known. He had not served Lairdsfolk for so long as he had without recognizing them; by sight, by sound, by smell, no matter what shape they wore. He recognized who this young Lairdling was, too. Dunlogan’s son. His third son. Eilian. The Giants’ Keep would ring with celebrations tonight. A new Lairdling to add to their bestiary, and a Jack as well.

He closed his eyes, not to shut away the sight of what lay in front of him, but to seek council inside. He let his inner turmoil rise and fret, caught each fear and loosed it from inside him like so many freed birds until only silence lay there, deep and soothing. And filled with possibilities. They lay like threads in front of his closed eyes, going every-which-way, unravelling into pasts and presents and times yet to come. He couldn’t work them, couldn’t weave them, that was for other hands more skilled than his, but he could take one thread, one possibility, and tie his need to it, then send it forth from his silence like a summoning call. For a long time he stood by the window, motionless, sightless as Eilian’s Billy Blind, which was to say he saw not the world around him, but the worlds within. He stood and waited, without expectations, but open to what might come; not hoping, but neither did he feel hopeless. And the first inkling he had that his call was answered was a sound that appeared to rise up from inside him, it seemed so close. A rhythm like hooves drumming on long hills, a winding call like a horn sounding, a melody that was fiddling, piping, harping—all at once.

“I hear you, Gruagagh,” a voice said softly. “Has the time come for you to set aside your spells and come with me for good?”

Bhruic opened his eyes. Before him, lounging on the windowsill, was a slender man who wore trousers and a jacket that looked to be made of heather and twigs and leaves all woven together; whose feet were unshod for they were hooves; whose red-gold hair fell in curls around an old-young face; whose eyes were too dark and too deep and too wise to be the eyes of mortal or faerie. He held a fiddle loosely in the crook of his arm, an instrument of polished wood with a head carved into the semblance of a stag’s. He reached out and tapped Bhruic with the end of his bow.

“Well?” he asked.

Bhruic shook his head. “I need a small favour.”

The stranger smiled. “I doubt it’s that simple.”

“It never is,” Bhruic agreed.

“You play your hand too much in shadow,” the stranger said. “But you know that already, don’t you?”

The fiddle went up under his chin and the bow licked across its strings. The melody he played was both merry and sad and he didn’t play it for long. When he was done, he studied Bhruic for a time.

“You were a poet first,” he said finally. “A bard. You could have been the best poet we had. Do you still remember what it was like before you let wizardry rule your life?”

“There was no one else to do what needed to be done. Kinrowan had no gruagagh.”

“And were you truly the man for the task? Will all the music and song you never played or wrote be worth it?”

Bhruic made no reply.

Kerevan smiled. “So be it. What small favour do you need, Gruagagh of Kinrowan? And ask me not again to look for the Laird’s daughter you lost, for you know I can’t.”

“It’s the one called Jacky Rowan,” Bhruic said. A fiddle string rang out as Kerevan plucked it.

“Ah,” he said. “That one.”

He leaned back so that the Gruagagh could look out the window. Bhruic saw the tiny figures of Jacky and Eilian in the parking lot of Lansdowne Park, surrounded by bogans and gullywudes, saw Kate’s Volkswagen pulling in off Bank Street.

“But the giant…?”

“She killed it. She’s a Rowan and Jack—haven’t you said so yourself? What she doesn’t win through pluck, she wins through luck. That was always the way with Jacks—even in the old days. She’ll be cannier than even she knows herself, that one.”

“It’s still a long road to the Giants’ Keep.”

Kerevan nodded. “That it is. And a great deal can happen to one upon that road these days, if you take my meaning,” he added with a sly wink. Then he frowned. “You shouldn’t meddle with the Host, Bhruic. Nor with the Laird’s Court either. Our kind were not meant to strike bargains with either—you know that.”

“Do I have a choice?” Bhruic asked.

“You always have a choice—no matter who you bargain with. But speaking of bargains, what will ours be? What’s its worth? Will you go with me?”

Silence lay between them as Bhruic hesitated. Then finally he sighed.

“On Samhaine day,” he said. “If all goes well.”

“On Samhaine day no matter how it goes,” Kerevan returned.

Bhruic hesitated again.

“Don’t you trust your luck?” Kerevan asked.

“On Samhaine day,” Bhruic agreed.

“Done!”

Up went the fiddle again, under Kerevan’s chin, and down went the bow. The tune that spilled forth was a mixture of three or four reels that he tumbled together willy-nilly, but with great feeling. Laying aside the bow, he grinned.

“But mind,” he said. “You’re not to talk to Host or Seelie Court till my return—I’ll not have you making new bargains on top of the one we have ourselves.”

Bhruic nodded.

“Now what’s this small favour you’d have in return?” Kerevan asked.

The Gruagagh sat beside him on the windowsill.

“This is what I’d have you do,” he said.

When they were done making bargains, Kerevan picked up his fiddle again. Hopping about on his cloven hooves, he sawed away at his fiddle until the room rang with the sound of his music. Bhruic could feel his own blood quicken.

“Until Samhaine, Kerevan,” he said.

He closed his eyes. The threads were there once more, moving and weaving in time to Kerevan’s reels. Bhruic unravelled the one that had brought the fiddler. The music faded and when he opened his eyes he was alone once more.

He meditated for a long time in that room that looked out on more views than it should. When he heard Jacky and her companions arrive, he spoke the necessary words that would hide him and the room from any but another gruagagh’s sight, in the same way that a Billy Blind will speak a word and sit unnoticed in a corner of his Laird’s hearth, forever and a day if that was what he wished. Bhruic meant to keep his side of the bargain, just as he knew Kerevan, capable of mischief as he was, would keep his. He heard Jacky and Kate and the Laird of

Dunlogan’s son stomping about on the third floor, looking for him, looking for this room, but the sounds came as though from a great distance. When he gazed out the window once more, the grand view of Ottawa was gone.

In place of the panorama of the Laird’s holdings, he saw only the street below. There were gullywudes down there, sniffing and creeping about on twig-thin limbs. Bogans, sluagh, and a troll too. At the far end of the street, a Huntsman sat astride his motorcycle, featureless in the shadows that cloaked him from all eyes but those of faerie. Then he saw Kerevan wandering down below as well, fiddle under his chin and playing a tune.

The music of Kerevan’s fiddle drove them all away. The gullywudes scurried away and hid. The bogans snarled and made threatening gestures, but they too finally retreated. The sluagh hissed and whispered, faded like mist. Last to go was the troll, snuffling as he wandered aimlessly down the street, hitting the concrete with a big wooden club as he went. A forester from the Laird’s Court happened by then, but he too was sent off by the spell in the fiddler’s music. Then only Kerevan was there, hooves clicking, fiddle playing. And the rider. Motionless in his shadows. And that was the way it remained for the rest of the night.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

« ^ »

“I dreamt I heard a fiddle play—all night long,”

Jacky said when she woke the next morning.

They had slept in the room overlooking Windsor Park, the five of them sharing the blankets that the Gruagagh had left for Finn, the hard wooden floor for their mattress. They woke in various moods of discomfort. Finn and Arkan were nervous about their surroundings. Kate hadn’t appreciated the meager sleeping arrangements and felt a bit grumpy, while Jacky was still fuming about the Gruagagh’s disappearance. Only Eilian was cheerful.

“I heard it too,” he said. “And I thought I knew that music—or at least who played it—but it’s not so clear now that the sun’s up and I’m more awake.”

“Unseelie musicians, that’s who played outside this Tower last night,” Finn said. “Who else would be abroad in Kinrowan? Only the Unseelie Court… and gruagaghs. Oh, we’re in for a bad time, I just know it.”

“The Host has gruagaghs too?” Jacky asked.

“Every court has wizards of one sort or another,”

Arkan said. “Even your own folk.”

“Can’t trust them either,” Finn added. “Not one of them. And the Gruagagh of Kinrowan himself is in league with Moon knows what.”

“He fixed you up,” Kate pointed out.

“For what?” Finn asked. “For why? No good’ll come of it—mark my words.”

Jacky looked away from the window. She’d been standing there, watching the sunlight fill the park. She felt better now, with the night gone. She hadn’t just heard music last night. She’d heard the whispering sound of sluagh around the Tower, the restless dead calling out in their mournful voices. Not close, not as close as the fiddling, but too close for comfort.

“We’ll just have to make our own good,” she said.

“And we’ll start by going to Calabogie. Now, while the sun’s up and the Host’s not so strong. Unless anyone’s got any better suggestions?”

Kate looked up from where she sat, cleaning her nails with her little Swiss penknife. “Breakfast?” she tried.

“We can stop for it along the way.”

“I’m ready to go,” Eilian said and one by one the others nodded, even Finn.

“Don’t we make a grand company,” the hob

muttered as they followed Jacky to the front of the house. “We’ve got Gyre and all his kin just shaking in their boots, I’m sure.”

“She did kill a giant,” Arkan said, nodding ahead to Jacky.

“There’s that,” Finn agreed.

Jacky had reached the front door and flung it open. Standing on the steps, arms akimbo, she looked up and down the street. October sun was bright in the crisp air. The grey pavement of the sidewalks and streets was ablaze with the colour of dried leaves that scurried and spun down their lengths. With her redcap on, though she didn’t really need it anymore, Jacky studied every possible hiding place, and a few more besides, but could see nothing. Not anything dangerous. Not anything at all. They could easily be alone in the world, the street was that quiet.

“They’re not here,” Arkan said wonderingly. “I knew we could lose the Hunt for a while, but I thought sure they’d have tracked us down by now. Yet there’s not a soul to be seen.”

Jacky nodded, though she still sensed something watching them. She couldn’t spot whatever it was.

“It’ll be a tight squeeze—five of us in Judith,” she said to Kate.

“I’m
still
going,” Kate said.

“Of course you are. I’m just saying it’s going to be cramped, that’s all.”

“Kerevan,” Arkan said suddenly.

Jacky gave him a strange look. “What?”

“Last night—the fiddling you heard. It was Kerevan playing.”

“Who or what is Kerevan?” Kate asked.

“No one’s all that sure,” Finn explained. “There’s some say he was here when the first faerie arrived, others say he’s of mixed blood—that of Kinrowan and that of the native faerie.”