Street Fair (6 page)

The goblin crouched and leaned in close to her. "How long ago was this?"

"Uhm, about fifteen years. Is that a problem?"

"Problems are just opportunities in work clothes. It's a lot of time to adjust for, but I can fix it... it will just have a suitable mark up in cost. You're sure that's what you want?"

Megan wasn't sure, but she remembered the time she spent overmedicated, living in a fog. She thought about her mother's anti-depressants, her obsessions, and her spending the last decade and a half working event management in the music industry without ever going to shows. She thought about the comments about incendiary bass work—while the bass gathered years of dust alongside the CDs. "I'm sure."

She reached for the baseball card. Her father had said it could pay for nearly anything. Then she remembered the impulse buy. "How much?" she asked, reaching for her wallet instead.

The goblin considered her. "F Sharp," he responded.

Megan blinked, looking at him confused. "What?"

"You have a lovely voice, and it's my favorite note. I'll take F Sharp," he responded, rummaging through his supplies.

Megan took a deep breath, trying to think how that would even work. Then the inspiration took over. "Deal!" she insisted.

The goblin ignored her outstretched hand as he pulled out an odd little tuning fork. “Can I get that in an F Sharp please?”

Megan decided it was a good thing she had perfect pitch. “...~
Deal~
...?” she sang.

The tuning fork vibrated, and the goblin placed it in a ceramic bowl. He then picked up a ceramic pestle and proceeded, though Megan had no idea how, to crush the tuning fork into a shining silver powder, like glitter. He poured half into a vial that went on his shelf. He then poured the other half into an envelope

He proceeded to get out a pen and write her mother's office address, which Megan had not given him, on the envelope.

“All right,” he said. “She'll be the herself she was supposed to be."

Megan was about to ask about side effects, or about how long it would take, or about basic laws of physics or questions of privacy, when Lani's voice drew Megan's attention away from the goblin. "Megan, what did you do?" she asked, running towards Megan. Cassia wasn't far behind her, with Justin trailing—lugging the instrument case he'd left under the stage.

"It's okay. I have a cure for Mom. That's all."

Lani looked dubiously at the goblin. "You sure you know what you're doing?"

Cassia slapped Lani on the back, almost knocking her over. "Don't worry. The Doctor is good people. If he says he's got a cure, he does. Speaking of which, Doc, Maxwell wants his stuff. Usual payment."

The hook-nosed goblin set to work.

"What stuff?" Megan asked.

"Enchanted catnip. The normal stuff is okay, but whenever the market opens up, I try and get him the good stuff."

“And only Maxwell gets some?”

“Jude's too straight-edge.”

Lani sighed. "If Cassia vouches for him, that's... something. I'm not sure exactly what. Just be seriously careful, okay, Megan? We should talk about this. Soon. But not now. We need to hurry while the cats are still keeping Ashling and the Count from leaving without us. We figured out the map. Maybe it's nothing, but I still want to check it out."

Megan sighed. "Check what out?"

"Mag Tuired. If he had a map for it, he might be there."

"He might be, but that's not necessarily a good thing," Justin said, "He obviously knows how to get into Faerie. We surprised him here, but out in the wild..."

Megan nodded. "We'll have to stick together. We'll have you, the cats, and Cassia. And the Count will be watching for trouble."

"We need to help Ashling, and it's not like we can convince her to wait any longer than necessary." Lani added. "Besides, we need to find out what kind of buried treasure—or something—a guy like that would be looking for in Mag Tuired, of all places.”

"Sure. There's just one problem," Megan said.

"Oh? And what's that?" Lani asked.

"What the heck is Mo-ay Tu-ra?"

Chapter 9: Mag Tuired

The walk along the lake shore was slow going. It was just as well Cassia hadn't brought her chariot, since as soon as they emerged into the real world, the leopards had ended up looking like kittens again. Megan still wasn't sure how the magic worked. Most of the faeries just ended up looking different, with Ashling looking like a butterfly, and Cassia looking like, well, mostly herself, but lacking horns, a tail, and goat legs. The cats, though, actually seemed to really revert whenever they were somewhere a human might see them.

Indeed, they'd had to accommodate the kittens when they hit the wet, squelching ground. Maxwell had scrambled up Cassia, to rest on her shoulder. Jude, meanwhile, had sat politely, mewing up at Megan until she picked up the kitten in his tiny aviator helmet and placed him to peek out of the pocket of her cargo pants as they walked.

“So, I'm seeing lakes,” Megan said. “Weird hills with some kind of stone-agey things on them...some sheep in the distance. Are you sure we didn't come out in the wrong century?”

As it was, Justin was walking around, even if only distant sheep were looking, with the Sword of Light sheathed at his hip, having finally set the instrument case aside just as they left the Market. Megan watched him walk in his particular hypervigilant way for a moment before she managed to look back at Lani questioningly.

Lani sighed. “Past the sheep is a 21st-Century wind farm, Megan. We're not in the Dark Ages; we're in the countryside.”

“Okay, so here we are. Middle-of-Nowhere, Ireland. And you promise we'll still get home on time?”

“Yes. We'll be back in Seattle when we left Seattle. That's how the Market works.”

“And why is it afternoon in Ireland instead of the middle of the night?”

“Look, don't look a gift temporal-anomaly in the mouth. Think of it like a pause button.”

“Is that what it's like?”

“No, but the closest scientific analog is string theory, so we're going to stick with pause buttons, to keep everyone less uncomfortable.”

“I can promise you, Lani,” Justin said calmly. “That when it comes to the confusions of time, absolutely nothing is going to make me comfortable, so on my account, at least, you needn't worry.”

Megan worried for him a little, but she still couldn't get over the place. “Why did the Market even have a path to a bunch of sheep farms? You said it's a historic site?”

“Yeah. Second Battle of Mag Tuired. Now let me make sure we're on the correct side of the lake.”

“What did that note mean about the shore changing based on water drainage?”

“Sinkhole,” said Cassia grinning. “Considering how it was made, the lake's not exactly going to be stable.”

“Do I want to know?” Megan asked. “Okay, yes, I want to know, but
after
you tell me, I might not want to know anymore.”

"Of course you want to know," Cassia said, "This is where Balor Birugdere died. It's hard to get a much more epic story."

"What's a Balor?"

"Not what, who. One of the great Fomoire generals. You remember their handiwork in Findias, right? The biggest enemies of the gods... and all the folk whose remnants ended up in An Teach Deiridh."

"Okay, so he died here?"

"Lugh put his spear through his eye. Wish I'd been there to see that. Your dad was there, though. You should ask him about it." Cassia said.

Lani gestured towards the lake. "The legend goes that this is where he fell, and as he died, his eye created the lake here."

"Seriously?"

Lani nodded. "That was his big thing, the evil eye. If he didn't have it covered, it'd burn everything he looked at. And, obviously, if the lake thing is true, he was huge."

Megan glanced out at the water. "That's putting it mildly."

"The Fomoire were bad news. They weren't all that big, but there's a reason the gods left the world in order to keep them from coming back." Lani said.

Megan paused, continuing to study the water, trying to imagine the giant that could have caused it, not liking any of the images in her mind. Finally, “Okay, that is officially the weirdest lake ever.”

“Not quite,” Lani responded.

"Wait, seriously?" Megan asked, looking dubious.

Cassia glanced at Lani and grinned. "Yeah, I'd say the 'fishing hole' wins."

"Those have to be some seriously messed up fish." Megan said.

"You know more about it than I do," Lani offered, gesturing to Cassia.

"Sure. Messed-up fish, trapped Fomoire, fun stuff. When the gods left, they sealed the Fomoire up. They used all of the enchantments on the city of Gorias to do it, too."

"Gorias,” Megan echoed. “That's one of the four lost cities you guys abandoned?"

"I wasn't around yet,” Cassia said. “But the Celtic fae, yeah."

Megan glanced at Ashling, just waiting for some contradiction or odd statement about the lake, or fish, or one-eyed giants. The pixie just sat on the Count's back, where he perched on Lani's shoulder, both of them looking more intent than she'd ever seen them. She wasn't even sure how she could tell what the crow was feeling, but it was clear.

"Anyway—" Cassia continued, "They didn't have much choice. All of the magic of the city was channeled to the lake, to freeze it over as a prison. All of the Fomoire who survived the war are down there, under the ice."

That pulled Megan's attention back rapidly. "And they're just, you know, left there unguarded?"

"Hardly. That's Inwar's big job. After what Balor did to his arm, he definitely feels strongly about the Fomoire: left his people completely to affiliate with the Seelie full time, so he could stand watch. He did it on his own for a while, but eventually, more and more people from An Teach Deiridh would come fill in for him, so he could go see Orlaith and help coordinate things. His folk may be cold, but they know war."

"I kind of got that impression," Megan said, "So that's what happened to his arm?"

"And how Orlaith got her scars," Cassia said, nodding. "Just a glance. Inwar shielded her, but she still got burned, and he lost his shield arm."

Megan shuddered: the story with the lake and the giant becoming a lot more real, with a visual reference to what the eye could do. "So, it's like cold iron or something?"

Cassia shook her head. "Burning acid, but it works the same. He could kill faeries or even gods with it. And the wounds never fully heal, no matter how much magic they put into it."

At Ashling's urging, they started walking again, moving along the shore. Megan finally broke the silence again. "So, what happens if the ones in this somehow-weirder lake ever get out? I mean, much as my dad might like it, it's not winter year-round, right?"

"He invests a lot of magic in making sure that doesn't happen. So do the 'fishing trippers,'" Lani explained, "Keeping the lake sealed is the one thing the Seelie and Unseelie can completely agree on. Inwar has soldiers from both sides helping him, and the area is off-limits to everyone else."

"He actually has Unseelie organized enough to handle that? And they don't, you know, try to just break it a little to see what happens?"

"The Fomoire are that serious. No one wants to see that happen. Besides, you've met Peadar's gang. As Unseelie go, they're pretty organized."

"Wait, Peadar? '49ers cap? Desperate need for orthodontia? Tried to kill me?"

"That one," Lani agreed, "He might have even been the one who started referring to the guard shifts as 'going to the lake on a fishing trip.' It certainly wasn't Inwar."

Megan nodded, glancing around. "Okay, that sort of makes sense. I guess he'd be a good guy to have on your side if something did get loose."

They turned away from the eye-lake at last and headed into the hills. "Where are we going, anyway?"

"A little more scouting,” Ashling said, her voice unnervingly even. “He hasn't skulked around any of the major landmarks yet, but I want to check all the highlights where he might be crawling around. And then we head for what's next. Probably the tombs.”

Lani nodded. “Probably, if he's a treasure hunter. Might have been his whole point of being at the market.”

“Might,” Ashling said flatly.

"What kind of treasure?" Megan asked.

Lani sighed. "The kind you get by grave-robbing really, really old stuff.”

“What, is the acid-eye giant buried here?”

“No. The Fomoire rallied and pulled their own tricks enough that the body was never found after the battle. But it wasn't just Balor here. He had a whole army with him. All of his officers died here, and they were buried, hidden and warded. Sealing them away with all of their stuff was part of the temporary truce—very temporary. We have to make sure they're still secure."

"Or what?"

"Even a mortal with ancient spell books—or enchanted cold iron—that knows about Faerie could do a lot of harm."

"Oh," Megan said, "That kind of or what."