Christopher Golden - The Nimble Man

Within that slit all was gray and cold and still. It was a limbo place, a nothing, a flat and lifeless void.

Yet in the gray, Morrigan could see a shimmering figure, a silhouette gilded with red. And it was growing more distinct, moving nearer to the passageway between worlds.

Morrigan could barely breathe. She could not speak. For here at last were all of her dreams. Here, at last, was her salvation, her happiness, and now she would drive all the souls of creation to their knees even as all of those who had thwarted her were forced to bear witness.

All of the worlds in existence would now be as they were meant to be. To Morrigan, her deeds were not cruel, but a mercy. She was not destroying benevolence and beauty, but shattering the illusion that they existed at all. She was setting things right.

The Nimble Man had once been denied. Now her destiny was entwined with his, and all would be as it should be. The Nimble Man would be free.

All strength left her and she collapsed to her knees, her heart near to bursting with bliss.

And inside that portal, The Nimble Man moved closer to this world.

Conan Doyle straightened his jacket and brushed ashes from his sleeve, then stepped over the charred corpses of a trio of Corca Duibhne. He closed the heavy oak door behind him and then glanced around the foyer of the brownstone.

He was home.

The Night People came from the parlor, several of them trying to squeeze through the door at once, clambering over one another to get at him like dogs on a fox hunt. Others appeared in the corridor that led to the kitchen, their clothes and faces smeared with blood, one of them holding a chunk of meat in his hand, two bones jutting from its end. Conan Doyle recognized them as the ulna and radius, splintered. It was the lower arm of a human being.

Others appeared on the grand staircase. Two, then a third. A fourth hung from the light fixture above.

There were eleven of twelve of them, all told.

Conan Doyle lifted his chin, nostrils flaring, and stood waiting for them to come. He narrowed his gaze and thought again of war. Not merely the Twilight Wars, but others as well, the conflicts that devastated Europe, that took his brother and his son, that crushed the hearts of so many mothers and fathers and young brides. So much of his early life had been spent in the exercise of his imagination and of his intellect. He respected the mind and the heart, the use of reason. But even then, he had known that there came a time when the basest nature of his enemies would prevail, and the time for reason was over.

"This is my home," he said, biting off each word with grinding teeth. "And I want you out!"

The Corca Duibhne raced at him, their claws scoring the wood floor. Some of them capered like beasts, others swaggered in their leather, modeling themselves after the darker impulses of mankind. Yet they were all nothing more than cruel, stupid animals.

Conan Doyle threw his head back, summoned the magick up inside himself and felt it surge into him as though he had been struck by lightning. A blue mist spilled from his eyes like tears of azure steam. The Corca Duibhne from the parlor were almost upon him. With a twist of his wrist, he laid his hand out toward him, palm upward, and a spell rolled off of his fingers. He barked a phrase in Macedonian, and the floor erupted beneath them. The slats of the wood floor became roots that reached up and twined around their ankles. Shoots split off from the roots and sunk into the Night People's flesh, and their bodies began to change. To harden. Bark formed upon their skin, and they screamed as tiny branches grew out from their flesh, sprouting leaves.

They made ugly trees, those four, rooted there in the foyer.

" Caedo tui frater," Conan Doyle sneered as he turner toward the trio rushing in from the kitchen. He drew a gob of phlegm up from his throat and spat it at them. It hit the ground not far from the nearest of them and a red line snaked from that yellow spittle across the floor, touching the creature's foot.

It turned on the others with obscene savagery, claws raking another Corca Duibhne's face, slashing its eyes, which burst with a splash of acidic fluid that scored the floor. The red lines on the floor touched the other two as well, and soon they were ripping one another apart, fang and claw, shredding flesh and clothing in a widening spatter of their own blood.

The trio on the stairs paused, hesitating now. They were capable of speech, but in battle and in fear, they rarely spoke. Now the rearmost among them took a step backward, and the others noticed and began to retreat as well.

" To haptikos Medusa," Conan Doyle muttered.

He widened his eyes and felt the blue mist that swirled there pour from within him. It furrowed the air and shot toward them, enveloped them, and when it dissipated, they were only statues. Frozen stone.

Only the one hanging from the light fixture remained. He stared up at it with disdain. It clung there, eyes closed, praying he did not see it. Conan Doyle ignored it, starting for the stairs.

On the second floor landing he saw the mad Fey twins, Fenris and Dagris, waiting for him.

Conan Doyle started up toward them.

The twins drew swords from scabbards that hung at their sides, mirror images of one another. Conan Doyle held his palms together in front of him as he walked up the stairs. When he opened them, a shaft of razor-sharp, shimmering blue magick grew from the palm of his right hand. This would be his sword. But he would not need it for long.

Dagris moved first, stepping delicately down the stairs to meet him. Fenris came after, more cautiously. They had some skill with magick, these two, but Conan Doyle was pleased they had not chosen to attack him as sorcerers. It would have taken more time than he wished to waste with them.

"There are those who would argue that madmen cannot be held responsible for their actions," Conan Doyle said as he continued up toward them. "Perhaps. Perhaps."

With a lunatic gleam in his eyes and a sickening smile, Dagris swung his sword. "For Morrigan! For The Nimble Man!"

Conan Doyle parried his attack. Dagris deftly maneuvered his weapon again and again, and each time Conan Doyle turned it away. The azure blade crackled, the air redolent with the scent of cinnamon and other spices, the smell of magick.

Dagris thrust his sword. Conan Doyle knocked it away and slammed the Fey warrior into the banister, knocking him over the rail. He fell to the floor with a crack of bone, and did not move again. Seeing his brother killed, Fenris rushed in, but Conan Doyle was ready. He had choreographed this bit in his mind. Dagris was the madder and more dangerous of the twins. Fenris swept his blade down. Conan Doyle tried to dodge, but was only partly successful. The tip of the sword cut his arm and he felt the sting and the flow of hot blood.

But his own azure blade was buried deep within Fenris's abdomen.

Yet there was no Fey blood spilt. Fenris fell to his knees. His eyes were wide as he stared up at Conan Doyle, and his face lost its mask of lunacy. His features grew younger. His body smaller.

"This is the Sword of Years," Conan Doyle told him. "It is not a weapon, but a spell. It is the magick of second chances. Without the cruelty of your brother, we shall see what becomes of you."

The blade had drawn from Fenris nearly all of the years of his life, and so when Conan Doyle withdrew it from his flesh he was only an infant. The Fey child opened his mouth and wailed, a baby's cry. There was a thin line seared upon his belly where the sword had been, but he was otherwise unharmed.

"We shall see," Doyle repeated.

He carried the infant to the second floor landing and left it there, knowing the Corca Duibhne would catch the scent of the Fey upon it and leave it alone.