Jack, the giant-killer (5 page)

“So the Gruagagh sees to the physical realm and its boundaries, while the Court itself and its people are looked after by our Laird and his family. The Laird rules and settles disputes, while his lady and her daughters hold in trust the songs that sow the seeds deeper, make the harvests more bountiful, keep the Host at bay on Samhaine Eve—the day-by-day magics that make life better. Only now our Laird is widowed and his daughter’s gone…”

Finn’s voice trailed off and he looked at Jacky. He seemed surprised by her attentiveness. “Are you sure you want to hear all of this?” he asked.

“Oh, yes,” Jacky said.

It was like being caught up in a fairy tale, she thought. She imagined this Laird’s daughter, maybe captive somewhere—if she was still alive—and all that was keeping her going was the hope that her father, or one of his people, would rescue her. And the Gruagagh—he was already a tragic figure in her mind.

“Well,” Finn said. “Things being as they are—with the Laird widowed and his daughter lost—there’s no one but the Gruagagh to do both jobs, to protect both the realm and its people so he has to stay in his Tower. The Host can’t breach the Tower, but the Gruagagh must remain in it, for if he ventures forth again now and they catch him, then Kinrowan’s fate is sealed and the Seelie Court will rule here no more.”

“I don’t understand why no one trusts him,” Jacky said. “It sounds to me like he’s doing his job.”

“There’s those who think he’s only waiting until the time is right, and then he’ll hand us all over to the Host—as he did with the Laird’s daughter.”

“Then why don’t you get a new gruagagh?”

Finn sighed. “Because he’s all we have—there’s no one else to be had. But it’s hard to trust a man who keeps so much of himself to himself.”

“So what you really need is to get the Laird’s daughter back,” Jacky said. “Would he know what to do?”

“Would who know?”

“This Gruagagh of yours—would he know how to find the Horn?”

Finn started to answer her, then shook his head. He gave a quick look to the deserted house behind them. When his gaze returned to her, his eyes were troubled.

“I don’t know,” he said. “No one’s asked him.”

“Why not?”

Finn looked away then, refusing to meet her gaze.

“Why not?” she repeated.

“Because,” he said finally, “there’s few that would chance a talk with the Gruagagh—after what happened to the Laird’s daughter, even the Laird avoids him. And there’s no one who’d dare go looking for the Horn.” His gaze returned to hers and he flinched at the look in her eyes. “Would you?” he demanded.

“Me? Why should I? She’s not
my
Laird’s daughter.”

“But you’re kin—you said so yourself. Your name’s Rowan.”

“Finn, until tonight, I never heard of
any
of you.”

“Well then, you see,” he said. “You’re no different from the rest of us. You won’t go, and neither will we, and all for the same reason no matter what we say. It’s because we don’t have the courage.”

Now it was Jacky’s turn to flinch. For one moment she was back in her apartment and Will was slamming the door.

“This is stupid,” she said. “None of this is even real.”

“Oh?” Finn asked, glaring at her. “Then why don’t you waltz over to yon’ Big Man and give him a kick in the toe. See what he has to say, before he swallows you whole!”

“The Big Man isn’t even there and neither are you. I’m just seeing you both because of this stupid cap.”

“It’s because of the cap that you finally do
see
. We’re all around you all the time, Jacky Rowan. Though in a few years time, it’ll be only the Unseelie Court that walks the twilight shades of your world. Wear that cap long enough and you won’t need it to
see
anymore. But then… oh, then… Merriment will have fled and all the wonder. There’ll be nothing left but the Host and I wish you well in that world!”

She matched him, glare for glare; then before he could make a move she was sliding down the tree and running for the house that Finn had called the Gruagagh’s Tower. She moved so fast, thanks to whatever magics that the hob had stitched into her sneakers, that she was at the back door before he was even down the tree.

“I’ll show you!” she cried to him. Turning, she hammered on the door.

“Jacky Rowan, no!” Finn cried.

He knew what she couldn’t, that the Gruagagh was quick to anger; that he had real power, not the small skilly stitcheries of a hob; that if he was roused in anger she would regret it for all the short minutes that remained in her life. But he was too late. The door opened and the Gruagagh was there, tall and forbidding in the doorway. Finn saw Jacky take a halfstep back, then square her shoulders and look up at him. “Mr. Gruagagh,” he heard her say. “Can we talk?” Finn sped across the yard, but the door closed behind them before he reached it. He lifted a hand to knock himself, hesitated, then let it fall back down to his side. For a long time he stared at the door’s wooden slats, then slowly he returned to his perch in the oak tree. He sat there, staring out over the park, at the Big Man and the solitary member of the Wild Hunt. He thought of his cousin, Redfairn Tom, of what had happened to him, and he shivered.

“It’s all gone bad,” he muttered to himself. “Oh, very bad.”

CHAPTER FOUR

« ^ »

Jacky followed the Gruagagh inside. Moonlight came in through the window looking out on the park, throwing a vague light on what appeared to be a kitchen, only its furnishings seemed vague and insubstantial, shifting and changing as she looked around. One moment the shadowy bulk of a

refrigerator was by the door, the next it was over by the sink, and then it didn’t exist at all. Ghostly stoves, kitchen tables and chairs, cupboards and counters came and went, never present long enough to quite focus on. In the darker corners where the moonlight didn’t reach, there were rustlings and stirrings, as though small hidden creatures were disturbed by their entrance.

The Gruagagh lit a candle with a snap of his fingers and the darker shadows vanished. There was nothing in them. There were no ghostly furnishings. The room was empty except for the two of them. Jacky swallowed thickly. Just a trick, she told herself. But now the flickering light banished the shadows from the Gruagagh’s face, and she wasn’t so sure if it being a trick or not made any difference.

If Finn had seemed a little grim at first, the Gruagagh radiated a forbidding power that made Jacky wish she’d stayed outside in the hob’s tree. His eyes were a piercing blue and he would have been a handsome man except for the scar that marked the whole left side of his face, puckering the skin.

“They did that… didn’t they?” she said, looking at the scar. “The Unseelie Court…”

He made no reply. Instead, he sat down in the windowseat that commanded a view of Windsor Park and gazed outside, into the darkness. There was no place for Jacky to sit. She shifted her weight from foot to foot, wondering what had possessed her to come here. The Gruagagh scared her without making a move, without saying a word—and he was one of the good guys. She hoped. She cleared her throat and he looked away from the window, back to her.

“Why are you here?” he asked.

His voice was gravelly and low, not cold, but not exactly friendly either. Jacky tried a quick smile, but the set expression of his features didn’t change. He waited for her reply. He looked as though he could sit there and wait forever.

“I… I want to help,” Jacky managed at last. The Gruagagh smiled humourlessly. “What can you do?” he asked. “Can you command the Wild Hunt?

Are you a giant-killer? Or perhaps you mean to spirit us all away to some safe haven?”

Jacky took a quick step back under the vehemence in his voice. She remembered Finn saying something about being turned into a toad and her knees began to go weak.

“I don’t know what I can do,” she said finally. “But at least… at least I’m willing to try.”

The Gruagagh said nothing for a long time. He returned his gaze to the park, frowning.

“That’s true,” he said. “And one should never ignore aid when it’s offered, even by such a—” He looked her up and down, “—such a tatterdemalion.”

“I didn’t know this was supposed to be a fashion pageant,” Jacky began, then put her knuckles to her mouth.

She hadn’t meant to come out with that. She flinched as the Gruagagh lifted his arm, but he only patted the window-seat.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said. “That’s twice I’ve spoken out of turn, and twice I’ve deserved a reprimand. What do they call you?” he added as Jacky cautiously made her way to the windowseat.

She sat as far from him as the seat would allow.

“Jacky,” she said. “Jacky Rowan.”

The Gruagagh nodded. “I see now,” he said.

“What? What do you see?”

“Why you’ve come, for one thing. You’ve a lucky name and are kin as well.”

“What’s your name?” she asked, then corrected herself. “I mean, what’s your speaking name? Or does everyone just call you the Gruagagh?”

“No one speaks to me at all,” he said. “Except for the night. And it whispers with the voices of the sluagh. But my friends, when I had them, called me Bhruic Dearg.”

Jacky nodded. “Is Bhruic your clan name?” She pronounced it “Vrooick,” trying to approximate the way he’d said it.

“You’ve been talking to hobs,” he said. “No. My clan is that of Kinrowan, the same as the Laird, though he’s not so likely to own to that as he once was. Bhruic Dearg is my bardic name—Dearg for the rowan’s red berries. I was a bard before I was a gruagagh—but that was long ago now, too.”

“What… what should I call you?” she asked.

“Bhruic, if you wish.”

“All right.” She tried a small smile but the Gruagagh merely studied her.

“How did you mean to help us?” he asked finally. Jacky’s smile died. “It’s…” She paused and began again. “Finn told me about… about the Laird’s daughter…” She glanced at him, saw his eyes darken with shadows. She went on quickly. “I thought if we could retrieve the Horn—the Wild Hunt’s Horn—we could use them to find her and then, then we could rescue her… if…”

“If she lives.” The Gruagagh finished the sentence where Jacky didn’t quite dare.

“Oh, I’m sure she’s okay,” Jacky said. “She’s got to be.”

“There,” the Gruagagh said, “speaks one who doesn’t know the Unseelie Court as we do.”

“But if she is alive…”

The Gruagagh sighed. “Even if she is alive, she might be changed…”

“What do you mean?”

“When the Host catch one of the Laird’s folk… if they don’t kill them outright, they change them. They diminish their light… their goodness… and make them over into their own kind.”

“Then we’ve got to try and do something!”

Jacky wasn’t sure why she was so caught up with the fate of the Laird’s daughter. She just knew it was important. Not just to the Laird’s folk, but for herself as well. It held… meaning.

“Do you know where the Horn is?” she asked. The Gruagagh nodded. “It will be in Gyre the Elder’s Keep.”

“Where’s that?”

“I’ll show you.”

He tugged a fat leather shoulder bag from under the windowseat and took out a roll of parchment that he laid out between them. A startled “Oh” escaped Jacky as she bent over it. The map was of Ottawa, but all the names were changed. Parliament Hill was the Laird’s Manor and Court. The Market area was the Easting Fair. The Glebe became Cockle Tom’s Garve.

“This shows Kinrowan,” the Gruagagh said.

“Kinrowan proper—the Laird’s Seat. And this is the countryside, showing the boundaries of our realm.”

Everything was familiar, but foreign at the same time. The shapes of the streets and the placements of surrounding villages and towns were all as they should be, but reading the names Jacky felt as though she’d stepped through Alice’s looking glass, and everything had been turned around.

“It’s all different,” she said.

“Just the names. We have our own. And the Court of Kinrowan is not the only Seelie Court either.” He pointed to the area north of the Ottawa River where the Gatineau Hills began. “This is the Laird of Dunlogan’s realm.” Now he pulled out a second map and the finger moved down it, from Kinrowan towards Kingston.

“And this is Kenrose. But there are gaps, you see. Here and here.” He pointed out shaded areas between the various faerie realms.

“These are the Borderlands where the fiaina sidhe dwell— the wild faerie that have no allegiance to either Court. But because the fiaina take no side, the Unseelie Court can host against us in the

Borderlands—unopposed.” He pointed to Winchester.

“Here is a place where the Host has driven out a Laird’s Court, taking it for their own. Such places grow almost daily now.

“This map’s not so new now and some of the

borders have changed, for as Gyre the Elder’s people grow in strength, our own borders shrink. There was a time, Jacky, when you wouldn’t see a bogan though you walked from the High Dales of Dunlogan down to Avon Dhu.” He pointed to the St. Lawrence Seaway as he spoke. “But now… now Gyre the Younger stands outside my Tower, penning me in, and sluagh whisper on the winds that creep between the boards.”

“Can’t these other Lairds help you?” Jacky asked. The Gruagagh shook his head. “They’re as bad off as we are—if not worse.”

“What about these wild faerie?”

“The fiaina are impossible to gather under one banner. They are a solitary folk and won’t see the danger until it’s too late. Since the Host has made no move against them to date, they appear content to remain uninvolved. It’s an evil time, Jacky Rowan, and it’s not getting any better.”

She pointed to the first map. “It says ‘The Gruagagh’s Tower’ here,” she said, indicating the house they were in. On the map, Belmont Avenue had become Auch Ward Way. “Why does it say Tower?

This is just a house.”

“In the homeland, the gruagaghs all had Towers,”

he explained. “We’re a folk that stick hard to tradition, so that even if the building’s not a tower, we’ll call it one all the same.”

“Here’s Tamson House,” Jacky said, still poring over the map. She glanced up at him. “It’s called that in our world as well.”

The Gruagagh nodded. “That is an old magic