Christopher Golden - The Nimble Man

Conan Doyle turned his gaze upon Eve. Her tone was often so cavalier that it was easy to forget her age, her significance to the worlds of men and monsters. Now her voice had altered, however. Her words were weighted with knowledge as ancient as human thought.

"Speak your mind, Eve," he said.

Squire turned to look at her, the look on his face reflecting a kind of disappointment, perhaps because the woman who had been his drinking companion moments earlier had now been subsumed by her true self. Eve pushed her raven hair away from her face and stared at Conan Doyle.

"There are those of you who dislike any discussion of true evil, of Heaven and Hell as anything other than random dimensions, worlds folded upon worlds not unlike this land of men or Faerie, Lemuria, or Asgard. You don't want to hear about God, about angels and demons."

Dr. Graves floated behind her chair, his arms crossed. "With all we have experienced, the Judeo-Christian myth is a bit too exclusive to be believed. One thing negates most of the others."

"No," Eve said, glancing at him. "No, it doesn't. I'm not talking about the doctrine of any one church. I'm talking about the reality. The truth. The beginning. Out there in the universe, there are powers beyond your imagining, and powers beyond their imagining, and one power beyond them all."

Clay had been silent during this but now he sat up a bit straighter in his chair and gazed first at Graves and then at Conan Doyle. "Eve is correct, of course. You know my story, Doyle. You're the one who helped me discover it. Yet you doubt it? There are things that are evil in form and thought, in blood and flesh, not merely by intent."

Danny Ferrick bared his shark-like teeth in a dubious grin. "Hold up, you guys. Seriously. All of you."

The Menagerie turned, as one, and stared at the boy. Conan Doyle was surprised that their scrutiny did not deter Danny from continuing. It boded well for the boy. Clearly he had begun to accept what he was, and that the world held the darkest of secrets.

"Go on, Danny," Conan Doyle said.

The teenager drummed clawed fingertips upon the table, saw what he was doing and stopped. "Okay, look, no offense, but you guys need to shut the fuck up and get this posse in motion. Yeah, there's evil. I mean, duh. Sorry, but, any asshole can look out the window. This Morrigan, is she powerful enough to be doing all of this, making it rain toads and blood, resurrecting an army of Resident Evil rejects, blotting out the sun, making little kids puke up maggots?"

Conan Doyle raised an eyebrow and turned to Ceridwen. As one, they both shook their heads firmly.

"No," Ceridwen said. "My aunt has never had that kind of power."

"So, other options, then?" Danny asked. "I'd come up with a few, but if you can't play it on GameCube, I'm guessing none of my thoughts are gonna help out."

None of them responded. At length, Conan Doyle cleared his throat. "Simply this," he said. "Either the dark powers in the world are being exacerbated by Morrigan's actions, and all of this is merely a byproduct… such phenomena are not uncommon, though the scale of this outbreak is tremendous and — "

"Or?" Graves interrupted. The ghost still had his arms crossed, a forbidding expression on his face. "You said there were two options."

"Or Morrigan is not our true enemy, and is merely serving a greater darkness, something powerful enough to cause all of this to happen."

Squire snorted derisively. "Oh, wonderful. What's the bad news?"

Conan Doyle shot him a withering glance and the goblin fell silent, looking appropriately penitent.

"The boy's right," Clay said. "We're wasting time. We know what you and Ceridwen are going to be doing, Doyle. What of the rest of us?"

The glow of candles flickered across Clay's face and for a moment Conan Doyle could not focus on his features. It was as though he could see, in that moment, every face Clay had ever worn. He hesitated a moment before turning his attention to Dr. Graves.

"The time has come for us to speak of the dead," Conan Doyle began. "I do not believe that Morrigan is directly responsible for this mass resurrection. It is likely yet another supernatural portent. However, given what Dr. Graves has told us about the walking dead he observed in Boston — that some of them seem to be traveling toward a single destination with a great deal of purpose — the only logical conclusion is that Morrigan is attempting to use them to her advantage, as her servants. Given their direction, I believe they are being directed toward the Museum of Fine Arts, and that they are being sent to retrieve something for Morrigan that she cannot retrieve for herself.

"That object would be the Eye of Eogain."

They all stared at him. Squire threw up his hands. "All right. I give. How the hell do you know that?"

Conan Doyle smiled. "Why, it's — "

"If you say 'elementary,' I quit," the goblin cut in.

The old mage puffed on his pipe once more. "Very well," he replied. "Let me tell you a story." He watched them all over the bowl of his pipe. "Before the Romans laid claim to the British Isles, magick roamed there unchecked. Chief among its practitioners were the druids, sorcerer priests who performed the correct rituals and sacrifices, and made certain that the hungry dead, the mischievous spirits, and the peoples of Faerie kept away from their tribes.

"This was no simple task. There are powerful demons that saw this is a challenge, and some of the dead are vengeful if their mischief is disrupted. But worst of all for the druids were the arrogant Fey. There were those in Faerie who were not at all appeased by the druids' offerings, and though the King forbade them from interfering with the human world, still they looked for opportunities to bedevil the druids. The worst of these, a trickster sorceress, cast her cruel eye upon Eogain, perhaps the most powerful druid in all the isles. He was an arch mage with skill unmatched in that age.

"Eogain had tapped the magick of the universe, but he feared that his will would not be sufficient to control it, to focus such power. So he turned to a different skill, and from silver he fashioned an orb, etched with runes that would channel magick. His left eye had been lost in battle with a child-stealing goblin — "?Squire cleared his throat. "No relation."

Conan Doyle ignored him and went on. "Eogain replaced his left eye with that silver orb. From that moment on, every black-hearted beast and dark spirit feared the Eye of Eogain, for with only a look he could destroy them.

"His mere existence, however, was an affront to that Fey trickster, and she came upon him as he slept and murdered him, dumping his body in a peat bog, silver eye and all."

He saw confusion upon the faces of the Menagerie and would have liked to lead them to his conclusions, to show them the logic through which he had arrived there. Conan Doyle felt it was more instructive to cause others to think than to do their thinking for them. But the time for such indulgences was over.

"This tale is more than legend, my friends. Seven months ago, outside the English village of Windling, workers cutting blocks of peat from a local bog discovered a human skull, mummified by the peculiar conditions of having been put to rest in the bog. There was some skin left upon the skull, and wisps of hair, and in the scored left orbital cavity, a silver sphere marked with runes."

Even the wind had quieted outside the house. It was Clay who spoke.

"The Eye of Eogain," he said.

"Indeed," Conan Doyle replied, taking a long breath. "I have been following the progress of this story since I first learned of it. Those who are studying the skull have been unable to remove the Eye without damaging the skull, and are reluctant to do so. For now, they have chosen to leave it intact, and for the last several months, Windling Man, as they refer to the skull, has been touring America with an exhibit bearing the crude title 'The Bog People.'"