Drink Down the Moon Read Free

with the smell of old graves would rise to hang about them. Clouds would cloak the moon’s face. Whisperings and ugly mutterings could be heard all around them, but nothing was seen. And Jenna Pook, the Pook of Puxill who led the rade, who alone knew the twists and turns of the old tracks and moonroads, would find her mind fogged and clouded until she was too confused to take a step.
    As their luck faded, many of the fiaina sidhe fell back from their old haunts in the Borderlands, faring deeper into their secret territories to come no more to the gatherings. Where the Courts would band together in a time of crisis, the fiaina withdrew as though it was a disease that beset them and they might catch it if they came too close to each other.
    Too proud to go to their cousins for help, and unwilling to pay what that help would cost them, there were still a few fiaina who were determined to stand up to whatever it was that threatened them. Foremost of them was the Pook who led the rade.
    As though sensing that she was its greatest danger, the enemy concentrated on her. More nights than one she’d spent fleeing
    something. She had no clear picture of what it was that chased her. Sometimes she thought it was a black dog, other times a black horse. Sometimes it came upon her so quickly that she barely escaped. Other times it merely crept up on her like a mist, or a tainted smell. It was only constant vigilance that kept her free of its clutches.
    So it was that she made her decision to look for help— not from the Courts, for like all the fiaina, she wouldn’t pay their price. The Laird of the Seelie Court would demand allegiance in return for his help, and the fiaina would never give up their independence. As for the Unseelie Court, no one knew if they had a new chief to approach in the first place, and if the Laird’s folk would demand allegiance, the Host of the Unseelie Court would take their souls.
    So it was to their own that the fiaina must turn— a skillyman or wisewife of the sidhe. The first that had come to Jenna’s mind was the Bucca who’d taught her the way that the rade must follow, who’d untangled the skein of old tracks and moonroads and given her their proper pattern.
    “A Fiddle Wit would help us,” Dohinney Tuir said after a while.
    “If we had one,” Jenna said. “But Johnny Faw’s a tadpole, not a Fiddle Wit.”
    “He could learn.”
    “He could,” she agreed. “If he wanted to. He has the music— I won’t deny that. But wit takes more than music, more than luck and a few tricks as well. From what little I’ve seen of him, I don’t know if he has what’s needed.”
    “It’s hard to learn something,” Tuir said, “when you don’t know it’s there to learn.”
    “But if we led him every step of the way, it would mean nothing. He’d be no closer. The wit needs to be earned, not handed to any tadpole who looks likely— if it even was the sort of thing that could be handed out.”
    “Still. You gave him the charm.”
    “I did. I owed him that much— for Old Tom’s sake.”
    “So you’ll go off, looking for the Bucca,” Tuir said, “while—”
    “It’s not my fault the luck’s gone!”
    “No. But only a Pook can lead the rade, and the closest we have after you is your sister, who—”
    “Half-sister.”
    “It doesn’t make that much difference. She had fiaina blood and—”
    “Not to hear her tell it.”
    “—she’s the closest to a Pook we’ll have if you don’t come back.”
    “I’ll be back.”
    “Yes, but—”
    “Don’t forget,” Jenna said a little sharply. “We have no rade as it is— whether I go or I stay.”
    “I think it’s the Gruagagh that’s to blame,” Loireag said firmly. “It’s always a gruagagh that’s to blame when there’s trouble in Faerie. A wizard never knows to leave well enough alone. They’re as bad as humans— always taking a thing apart to see how it works.”
    “The only gruagagh we’ve had near here was Kinrowan’s,”