Christopher Golden - The Nimble Man

"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.

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.