Christopher Golden - The Nimble Man

"Sweet," Danny said as the limo came to screeching halt in front of the gate.

The driver's door swung open and Eve emerged. Clay exited the back seat and Dr. Graves floated out through the roof.

Conan Doyle clasped his hands together behind his back. "I was beginning to worry."

"We would have been here sooner," Eve said, slamming her door. "But traffic's a bitch."

"Where's Ceridwen?" Clay asked, shifting the mummified skull of Eogain from one arm to the other as he came around the car.

Conan Doyle studied the faces of those who had gathered beneath the banner of his cause, his Menagerie. Denizens of the weird, but warriors, each and every one, sharing the common goal of staving back the encroaching darkness. It was a precarious battle, one that might as easily tip the scales toward shadowy oblivion as to the embrace of light. But it was a war that he had sworn to continue, one that he believed was worth fighting, even if it meant the deaths of those loyal to his mission.

No sacrifice was too large, for it served a greater good.

"Ceridwen, I'm afraid to say, has been captured."

The words hurt him, each of them barbed, sticking painfully in his throat as he struggled to speak. The others appeared taken aback, knowing only too well the level of power the Fey sorceress was capable of wielding as well as his emotional involvement.

"Here's an idea," Eve said, sweeping her raven black hair away from her exotic features. "How about we go get Ceridwen and kick Morrigan's Faerie ass? That sound like a plan?"

Conan Doyle looked out over the heads of his comrades. The dead were still out there, but now they seemed loathe to come closer — some primitive survival mechanism had been stirred to life in them, though he did not know if it stemmed from his own magick, or from the arrival of his Menagerie.

"If only it were that simple," Conan Doyle replied. "We now know why Morrigan has sought the power of Sweetblood. She wishes to free the Nimble Man."

He waited a moment, allowing them to digest the severity of the situation.

"Which, from your tone, I guess should have me shaking in my boots. And maybe I will when you tell me why," Eve said, obviously unfamiliar with the legends.

It always amazed him how a creature as ancient as Eve could sometimes be so oblivious.

Clay stepped closer to the rest of the group, red mist swirling around his malleable features. "A fallen angel," he said, his expression grim. "But not like Lucifer and the others. He escaped the Almighty's wrath but was trapped between Heaven and Hell. In my wanderings, I've encountered entire religions based upon him, with the ultimate goal of freeing him, but no one has ever had the level of power needed to accomplish this…"

"Until now," Eve finished, the situation becoming clearer.

Conan Doyle nodded. "With her own witchery and Sanguedolce's power, Morrigan has enough magick now to tear a hole in reality. If she knows what she is doing, she could free the Nimble Man."

Dr. Graves was a strange sight in that fog. His own ethereal form was a mist of its own, churning in upon itself, but a breeze blew the red fog so that it caressed him. He was a cloud standing still in a tempestuous sky as the rest of the storm moved on.

The ghost was troubled, and his form solidified a bit as he moved toward Conan Doyle. "You said that Morrigan needed the Eye of Eogain to focus Sweetblood's magick if she was going to try to leech it, to use it. And as you can see, we did not return empty handed. How can she release The Nimble Man now? Haven't we already won?"

"A fair assumption, Dr. Graves," Conan Doyle agreed, "but another wrinkle has been added to the cloth." The mage rubbed at his eyes, the continued exposure to the unnatural fog causing them to itch and burn. "Without the Eye, Morrigan will most certainly decide to forge ahead with a physical locus to channel Sweetblood's magickal energies. An ordinary human would wither almost instantly with such power coursing through them. We have kept the Eye from Morrigan. And because we have, I believe she will have no choice but to attempt to use Ceridwen herself to channel that power."

"Could that be done?" Graves asked.

Conan Doyle sighed, the consequences of this act of desperation on Morrigan's part too horrible for him to bear.

No sacrifice is too large, for it serves a greater good. The words reverberated through his thoughts.

"It will most likely kill Ceridwen, as well as release Sweetblood from his self-imposed imprisonment," Conan Doyle said. "But the answer is yes. With Ceridwen as the… well, as the circuit breaker if you will, Morrigan will be able to free the Nimble Man."

Ceridwen was back in Faerie, and her mind was at peace.

The warm winds caressed her face as she walked hand and hand with Arthur through the royal gardens. She noticed her mother sitting on a stone bench in the distance, and Ceridwen could not help but smile. Everything was as it should be, not a detail out of place.

Upon seeing them, her mother stood, waving in greeting. But Ceridwen's smile faltered when she saw that her mother's clothes were tattered and stained with blood. It was then that she remembered that her mother had been taken from her long, long ago. A shiver of grief went through her and she turned to Conan Doyle for comfort, for some explanation of the dread she now felt.

But it was no longer Arthur who held her hand, and the grip on her fingers had turned cold and constricting.

Morrigan smiled and pulled her close, teeth as sharp as a boggart's. "Fight all you like," she snarled, "but it will not alter the outcome."

Her fantasy shredded, Ceridwen returned to reality. Pain suffused every inch of her flesh and her eyes burned with unshed tears. And now she remembered what had happened, the confrontation in Conan Doyle's ballroom with her aunt, the savage Morrigan. She had sent Danny away on a traveling wind and turned to face Morrigan and her lackeys alone. The battle with had been swift and brutal, and she had been defeated.

Now she lay draped upon Sweetblood's chrysalis. A surge of the ancient mage's power rushed through her, and she cried out in excruciating pain. They had bound her atop that strange encasement, the sorcerous energies leaking from the cracks in its surface filtering through her body to be collected by the eagerly waiting Morrigan. Her cloak was in tatters, burned through, almost nothing left of it, and her tunic and trousers were smoldering.

"Do you see how wonderfully it comes together?" her aunt asked, manipulating the distilled power of the arch mage and sending it back into the sarcophagus, causing the size of cracks in its surface to increase. With each splinter of that amber glass, more of Sanguedolce's magickal potency tore through Ceridwen, more power at Morrigan's disposal.

"Fortune smiles upon me this day. It is unlikely that you will live long enough to witness my triumph, but let me assure you, it will be glorious."

The magick coursed through her, the pain continuing to grow. The mage's power was overwhelming. Ceridwen had heard tales of Sanguedolce's prowess, but never imagined a mortal might be able to wield such might.

Morrigan droned on and on about her plans, but Ceridwen was no longer listening. To escape the pain, she fled to the past, remembering what it was that defined her, what had shaped her. There was pain in the past as well, but it was that pain that had forged her, as though in a blacksmith's forge.

From her earliest days, sadness had been her companion. She could barely remember a day when it had not walked by her side. Her mother had been slain in the early days of the Twilight Wars, the victim of a Troll raid upon their forest home. She had been but a mere child, forced to watch her mother's fate from a hiding place within the draping bows of an ancient willow tree. In that moment, she had sworn never to be helpless again.