Wondrous Strange

villagers? Sonny?”

Sonny could not answer.

“Oh, my God…,” Kelley whispered, twisting in her saddle to look back through the trees as she heard the first shrieks of hunted humans echoing down the wind.

“Mabh turned them from a hunting party into a deathless, death-mad war band,” Sonny spat, his bitterness palpable. “Waking nightly with the rising of the moon to ride out with a singular purpose: to kill.”

“But after that?” Kelley whispered, pleading for a glimmer of hope. “What happens after that? It can’t just end there…”

“No.” Sonny had grown very pale, and his voice sounded faint and far-off. He stared, his gaze unfocused, at the scudding clouds. “The High Courts of Faerie will finally be forced to action. They will gather together in council and- in an utterly rare moment of accord between the Seelie and Unseelie kingdoms-Auberon the Winter King and Titania the Queen of Summer will combine their efforts and cast Herne down from the sky, from the back of his fearsome horse.”

A sheen of sweat on his brow, Sonny pointed up into a sky suddenly full of shifting, thunderstorm hues-where the last, ghostly remnants of the vision he had conjured wavered before Kelley’s eyes. She saw another gaping rift open between the worlds and a great whirlwind of light and sound poured forth. She saw Herne thrown from his charger and watched as he plummeted to the earth far below, a falling comet.

Without his rider, the Roan Horse suddenly became nothing more than a lowly kelpie again. It vanished at a command from Auberon, leaving behind nothing but glittering black jewels that twinkled briefly like stars in the night sky before disappearing themselves.

“And Mabh?” Kelley asked, her throat dry.

“Confined by Auberon and Titania to her own realm, where she remains,” Sonny murmured, “a prisoner in her shadow kingdom to this day.”

Kelley did not find that as comforting a thought as she was perhaps meant to, but there was no time for more questions. Sonny was bent low over the neck of his mount, and he looked dangerously close to slipping from his saddle.

“We have to go,” he said as he reached out, hooking his fingers around her horse’s bridle. He turned his mount and led them toward a bank of fog that was rising over the moors.

The swirling mists closed around them, and Kelley felt the horse beneath her gradually stiffen and change- reverting back to the wooden carousel horse it had once been, what seemed like so very long ago.

XXIII

The fog dispersed and Herne’s ancient world faded into nothingness. The pictures in Kelley’s mind disappeared and, with them, the silken princess gown. She found herself sitting once more astride a painted carousel pony, bobbing gently up and down as the ride wound to an end. She looked over and saw that Sonny’s eyes were closed, and there was a grayish pallor to his skin.

“Did it work?” she demanded.

His eyes snapped open, and he struggled to focus his gaze on her.

“Sonny?”

“It did. Leaderless, the power of the Hunt itself was diminished, thrown into chaos and confusion. Auberon and Titania were then able to weave an enchantment that would lock them away, forever sleeping in a place that is not in this world, not in the Other.”

“And Herne?”

“Free. Ultimately…,” Sonny said sadly. “But even though he was released from the horrific enchantment, Herne was broken in spirit and body. Despairing of the crimes he had committed as leader of the Wild Hunt, he retreated deep into his forests. After so much time spent in the company of the immortal Faerie, Herne found that he himself was unable to die. But he faded, century after century, until he was no more than a shadow of his former grandeur. And the Hunt has remained locked in enchanted slumber.”

“So…where’s the problem then?” Kelley asked, although she had the uneasy feeling that she already knew the answer.

“As per Mabh’s vile enchantment, they will only stay that way as long as they remain leaderless.”

“Okay…” The uneasy feeling deepened in the pit of her stomach.

“And they will only stay leaderless as long as the Roan Horse remains riderless.”

“But I saw the Roan Horse go poof!” Kelley protested.

“It did.” Sonny nodded, the color slowly returning to his cheeks as he swung himself out of his saddle. “The Roan Horse was destroyed. But the magick that Mabh used to create the Roan Horse remains.”

“And…it’s all tangled up in Lucky’s mane. Isn’t it?”

“I’m sorry.”

Bad Lucky, Kelley thought.

Sonny helped her down off the back of her painted mount, and she found that her knees were shaky. He put a hand on her shoulder to steady her.

“It’s not all bad, Kelley,” he said. “Not yet. The creature is safe as long as he stays in your bathtub. Water is a gateway-if he stays standing in it, he’s not in this world and not in the Other. As long as he stays that way, even if someone were to blow Mabh’s war horn, the call of the Wild Hunt can’t touch him.”

“So I have a Faerie water horse stuck in my tub for the rest of eternity?”

“No. Just for the rest of the Nine-Night, until the door to the Otherworld shuts again. Then there would be no way for the Wild Hunt to cross over, and we could try to remove the enchantment.”

“And if the unthinkable happens? If he gets out somehow and he’s still enchanted?”

“Then if someone were to sound Mabh’s war horn, Lucky would transform and become the Roan Horse,” Sonny said in a quiet voice. “The Roan Horse seeks out a Rider. Once it has a Rider, the Wild Hunt wakes. Once the Wild Hunt wakes, they come thundering through the Gate on the backs of their shadowy steeds, and they kill. They are insatiable and they are unstoppable. The whole of this city-the whole of the mortal realm-could conceivably be destroyed.”

Images from one of her recent nightmares flooded back into Kelley’s mind: Manhattan awash in blood and fire; herself staring down at her own hands grasping, white-knuckled, the tangled strands of a fiery mane…

She shuddered and looked up at Sonny. “And is it, then, some kind of lunatic coincidence that the Roan Horse is in my tub? And I just also happen to be the daughter of a Faerie king?”

“I don’t know. But I don’t believe in coincidence.” Sonny smiled at her wryly. “No-I do think the two things are connected. Because I’m reasonably sure that, insofar as you are a daughter of the Faerie king, someone wants you dead. I believe that is why a Black Shuck was set to track you. To lead the Wild Hunt to find you specifically”-his expression darkened-“among whatever other quarry they might find to give them sport.”

Kelley stared at him, her eyes wide. “Isn’t that a little like hunting quail with a cannon? Haven’t these people ever heard the phrase collateral damage?”

“I suppose. But for someone like Mabh, for instance, collateral damage is the fun part. And she does hold something of a grudge toward your father. The whole imprisonment after the Wild Hunt thing.”

“Oh, right.” Kelley hugged her elbows, possessed of a sudden deep chill, and muttered, “She sounds delightful. But she’s still locked up?”

“She is confined. Within her own realm, a grim place called the Borderlands. But she has outside agents through whom she can still work her will.” Sonny scowled. “Auberon suspects her of trying to wake the Hunt. If he’s right, she will most likely try to do it on Samhain-when the Gate is open widest.”

Kelley shivered. “You know, New Yorkers take Halloween pretty seriously. There are going to be a lot of hapless partygoers and trick-or-treaters on the streets come the thirty-first. Sounds like a recipe for a whole lot of