Christopher Golden - The Nimble Man

The Faerie advisor gestured for Conan Doyle to proceed through the gate, which led into the king's private garden. "Who do they mourn?" he echoed, shaking his head sadly. "The future, perhaps? Perhaps they mourn the future. But it is not my place to explain."

After Conan Doyle had stepped through, Tylwyth Teg pulled the gate closed behind him with a resounding clatter. Conan Doyle frowned and glanced back through the bars of the gate at the vizier.

"Step into the garden and all will be made clear, Conan Doyle."

Knowing he would get little else from Twylyth Teg, Conan Doyle turned and strode into the garden. Either side of the stone path was adorned with the largest red roses he had ever seen. The faint sound of gurgling water reached him and he knew that he was near his destination. A moment later he caught sight of the top of the fountain in the garden's center. Though he could not see more than its apex, he recalled an intricate ebony sculpture of a great fish, water jetting from its open maw to rain down into the pool that surrounded it.

He passed beneath an archway woven from a flowering vine known only to the world of Faerie, its blossoms welcoming him to the garden of kings with voices like those of tiny children. And then his feet froze and he could not move. Even his breath was stilled in his chest. It seemed to him that his heart paused as well. Laid out upon the ground around the stone fountain were the unmistakable shapes of bodies, covered by sheets of ivory silk.

"Dear Lord," Conan Doyle whispered. Everywhere his eyes fell was a body, their coverings rippling as the breeze caressed their silken shrouds, tormenting him with glimpses of the corpses beneath. There must be fifty of them.

A tremor went through Conan Doyle. He sensed movement behind him and whirled to face the object of his dread, the reason why he had expected never to return to Faerie. He had tried to fashion a ward, some sort of magickal defense that would protect his heart from the devastation he knew he would feel, but there was nothing to save him from this.

Ceridwen was dressed in flowing robes of soft, sheer linen, dyed a deep forest green. Her pale skin was accentuated by the dark hue of her garb. When her eyes met his, she drew a gauzy scarf tight about her shoulders as if experiencing a sudden chill.

"My lady," Conan Doyle whispered, his breath taken away. The ache caused by simply being within her presence was bone deep.

"You said that I would never see you again," the Fey sorceress said, her voice the lilt of a gentle spring breeze, still carrying the melancholy of a long winter. "And I had come to accept that."

When she walked across the stone floor, her dark robes billowing about her, it was with such elegance that she seemed to float, carried by the wind.

"You once told me you would never trust the word of a human. Even one that you loved," Conan Doyle said. He tried to search her eyes but there was only ice there. Never had he felt so torn. Part of him would rather have been experiencing the fires of damnation in that moment, and yet another side of his heart felt utter joy merely to be in Ceridwen's presence once more.

She knelt beside one of the bodies, her long, delicate hand reaching to draw back the sheet that covered it. A dead face was revealed to them, a twisted look of pain permanently frozen upon it.

"Why have you come, Arthur?" she asked, her thumb tracing arcane sigils upon the corpse's forehead. It was a ritual he had seen before, during the Twilight War, when an ally had been stuck down by infernal magicks. It freed what life energies remained within the confines of the body.

"To seek answers, and to warn you of a great evil on the rise," he said, tentatively kneeling beside her. To be this close to her again was almost more than he could bear. "But I fear I have come too late."

Ceridwen covered the twisted features of the fallen Fey, raising her head to look into Conan Doyle's eyes. He would drown in those eyes, and there was nothing that could be done to save him.

"Who did this, my lady?" he asked, ignoring the urge to reach out and touch her face, to caress her alabaster skin.

She tore her gaze away and moved to another of the covered corpses. "I am your lady no longer, Arthur Conan Doyle. As to the hand behind this tragedy, that is a tale almost too sad to tell." She drew down another sheet of silk to reveal the dead beneath. The countenance of this corpse was even more disturbing than the first. "This evil of which you speak has touched our world as well."

"Who is it? Whose hand has done this?"

Ceridwen glanced up from her ministrations, her dark, soulful eyes again touching his. "It was one of our own," she said, a tremble in her voice, and his heart nearly broke as he watched tears like liquid crystal run down her cheeks, to land upon the upturned face of a dead Fey warrior.

"Two hundred and fifty channels and not a damn thing on," Squire muttered as he aimed the remote control at a thirty-five inch television monitor in a hard wood cabinet. The goblin flipped past countless images, each of them dishearteningly similar — another apocalyptic vision of the northeast United States, or static. Whatever the hell was going on outside was interfering with the digital cable signals.

He reached a stubby hand into the bag of greasy potato chips and brought a handful to his mouth. Squire lived for junk food: candy and chips, burgers and fries, cookies and donuts. Especially donuts. He loved food of all kinds, in fact. It was his greatest pleasure. But the sweetest and saltiest were his favorites.

Stopping at one of the all-news channels, the goblin watched a live feed from Virginia Beach, where the ocean had begun to boil and the fish were leaping up out of the water in a frantic attempt to escape death. Somewhere off-camera people had begun to scream.

"That'll help," he said, taking a swig from his bottle of beer to wash down his snack. "Nothing like a good shriek to calm everybody's nerves." Squire belched mightily, flecks of unchewed potato chip speckling his shirt and pants. Bored with watching fish die, he changed the station. Maybe a nice game show, he thought, flipping past channel after channel of the world in turmoil. He tried not to think about what was happening outside. Conan Doyle's agents were in the field, and it was only a matter of time before things were wrestled back under control. That was how it always was. If there was anything Squire had learned in his many years working for Mr. Doyle, it wasn't over until the fat lady shit in the woods.

On a pay station that hadn't gone to static, he finally found a movie. A large grin spread across his face. A nice piece of Hollywood escapist fluff was exactly what he needed. His smile quickly turned to a frown when he realized the station was showing the abysmal Keanu science fiction flick that the actor had done before The Matrix.

As if Keanu wasn't torture enough, Squire thought, continuing his search for something to amuse him.

He had clicked all the way to the end and was about to start over again when something on one of the local stations caught his eye. He leaned forward on the sofa, crumbs of potato chip raining to the floor. The handheld footage was shaky and made his eyes hurt, but he recognized the area. The camera was pointed toward a bunker-like structure in the midst of a sea of orange brick. It was the exit from the Government Center subway station, not too far away, and there were things not usually associated with public transit pouring from the underground and spilling onto the plaza.

"Corca-fuckin-Duibhne," he growled, turning up the volume. There had to be hundreds of the coppery-skinned bastards. It was like watching a swarm of bugs emerging from their nest. Whoever was manning the camera was hiding behind a newspaper kiosk, peeking out from time to time for the disturbing footage. For some reason there was no audio, and Squire imagined that it was probably for the best.