Summer Knight (The Dresden Files #4) - Jim Butcher Page 0,63
and peered more closely toward the sound of the voice. The werelight from my amulet suddenly gleamed off a pair of animal eyes, twenty feet away and a few inches from the floor. I looked back at Billy. Hed already noted the eyes and turned to put his back to mine, watching the darkness behind us.
I turned back to the speaker and said, "I ask again. Who are you?"
The eyes shifted in place, the voice letting out an angry, growling sound. "Many names am I called, and many paths have I trod. Hunter I have been, and watcher, and guide. My Lady sent me to bring you thither, safe and whole and well."
"Dont get mad at me, Charlie," I snapped. "You know the drill as well as I do. Thrice I ask and done. Who are you?"
The voice came out harsh and sullen, barely intelligible. "Grimalkin am I called by the Cold Lady, who bids me guide her mothers Emissary with safe conduct to her court and her throne."
I let out a breath. "All right," I said. "So lead us."
The eyes bobbed in place, as though in a small bow, and Grimalkin mewled again. There was a faint motion in the shadows outside my light, and then a dull greenish glow appeared upon the ground. I stepped toward it and found a faint, luminous footprint upon the ground, a vague paw, feline but too spread out and too thin to be an actual cats. Just as I reached it, another light appeared on the floor several feet away.
"Make haste, wizard," mewled Grimalkins voice. "Make haste. The Lady waits. The season passes. Time is short."
I moved toward the second footprint, and as I reached it a third appeared before us, in the dark, and so on.
"What was that all about?" Billy murmured. "Asking it the same thing three times, I mean."
"Its a binding," I murmured in reply. "Faeries arent allowed to speak a lie, and if a faerie says something three times, it has to make sure that it is true. Its bound to fulfill a promise spoken thrice."
"Ah," Billy said. "So even if this thing hadnt actually been sent to guide us safely, you made him say so three times would mean that hed be obligated to do it. Got it."
I shook my head. "I wanted to make sure Grimalkin was on the level. But they hate being bound like that."
From ahead of us, the faintly glowing eyes appeared briefly, accompanied by another mewling growl that sent a chill down my spine.
"Oh," Billy said. He didnt look any too calm himself. His face had gone a little pale, and he walked with his hands clenched into fists. "So if Grimalkin had good intentions to begin with, wouldnt that make him angry that you needlessly bound him?"
I shrugged. "Im not here to make friends, Billy. Im here to find a killer."
"Youve never even heard of diplomacy, have you?"
We followed the trail of footprints on the ground for another twenty minutes or so, through damp tunnels, sometimes only a few feet high. More sections of the tunnel showed evidence of recent constructionif you could call swirling layers of stone that seemed to have been smoothed into place like soft-serve ice cream "construction." We passed several tunnels that seemed entirely new. Whatever beings lived down here, they didnt seem too shy about expanding. "How much further?" I asked.
Grimalkin let out a mrowl ing sound from somewhere nearbynot in the direction of the next footprint, either. "Very near, noble Emissary. Very near now."
The unseen faerie guide was good to its word. At the next glowing footprint, no other appeared. Instead, we came to a large, elaborately carved double doorway. Made of some black wood I could not identify, the doors were eight or nine feet high, and carved in rich bas-relief. At first I thought the carvings were of a garden themeleaves, vines, flowers, fruit, that kind of thing. But as I walked closer to the door, I could see more detail in the light of my glowing amulet. The forms of people lay among the vines. Some sprawled amorously together, while others were nothing more than skeletons wrapped in creeping roses or corpses staring with sightless eyes from within a bed of poppies. Here and there in the garden one could see evidence of the Sidhea pair of eyes, a veiled figure, and their hangers-on, little faeries like Toot-toot, leaf-clad dryads, pipe-wielding satyrs, and many, many others hiding from the mortals views, dancing.