Swallowing Darkness - Laurell K. Hamilton [49]
The shining circle around us knelt if they had legs to kneel with, and I knew what they wanted. They wanted guidance. Guidance to pick what they would be.
I realized that we were in the great central hall. There was the throne of bones and silk at the center of the main table. This was where the court ate, and when there was an audience or important visitors the big tables were moved away. Throne rooms often doubled as the formal eating area in castles, in or outside faerie.
I spoke to the assembled sluagh. “This is wild magic; it waits to be given form. Come and touch them, and they will become what you need, or want.”
A tall hooded figure said, “The wild magic only forms to the touch of the sidhe.”
“Once magic was for all of faerie. Some of you remember that time.”
It was a nightflyer clinging to the wall who spoke, in their slightly hissing manner. “You are not old enough to remember what you speak of.”
Sholto said, “The Goddess moves in her, Dervil.” And the name let me know that it was a female nightflyer, though a glance could not have told me.
The shining, kneeling circle was beginning to fade. “Would you lose this chance to show the sidhe that the oldest magic knows the hand of the sluagh?” I asked. “Come, touch it before it fades. Call back what you have lost. I was the dark Goddess this night.” I raised my still-bleeding hand. “The wild magic tasted my blood. It shines with white light, but so does the moon, and is that not the light in all your night skies?”
Someone stepped forward. It was Gethin, in a loud Hawaiian shirt and shorts, though he’d left his hat behind somewhere, so that his long, donkeylike ears draped bare to his shoulders. He smiled at me, showing that his humanlike face was full of sharp, pointy teeth. He had been one of the ones who had come to Los Angeles when Sholto first approached me. He was not one of the most powerful of the sluagh, but he was bold, and we needed bold tonight.
He put his small hand on one of the shining forms, and it was as if his touch were black ink poured into shining water. As the dark color hit the shining light, the form began to change. The light and darkness mingled, and for a moment I couldn’t see, as if some magical veil had come down to hide part of the process. When it was clear to the eye again, it was a small black pony.
Gethin gave a cackling, delighted laugh. He threw his arms around the shaky neck, and the pony nickered happily at him. The happy noise showed that the pony had teeth as sharp as Gethin’s, but bigger. The pony rolled its eyes up at me, and there was a flash of red.
“Kelpie,” I whispered.
Gethin heard me, because, smiling, he said, “Nay, Princess, ’tis an Each Uisge. It’s the water horse of the Highlands, and nothin’ is meaner than the Highland folk, unless maybe the Border folk.” He hugged the pony again, and it nickered at him again like a long-lost pet.
Others came forward then, with eager hands. There were hairy brown creatures that were not quite horses, but not quite anything else. They looked unfinished, but the sluagh cried gladly at the sight of them. There was a huge black boar with tentacles on either side of its snout. There were black hounds, huge and fierce, with eyes that were too large for their faces, like the hounds in the old Hans Christian Andersen story about dogs with eyes as big as plates. Their huge round eyes were red and glowing, and their mouths were too wide, and seemed unable to close, so that their tongues lolled out around pointed teeth.
A huge tentacle the width of a man dangled from the ceiling. I looked up to find that it covered the ceiling. I’d seen the tentacles at the hospital and in Los Angeles, but I’d never seen more than the tentacles. Now I gazed up at the entire creature. It took up the entire upper dome of the huge ceiling. It clung to the surface much as the nightflyers did, but its tentacles didn’t help it cling. They were turned outward, and dangled like fleshy stalactites. Two huge eyes gazed down at us, and the moment I saw the eyes I thought, “It’s like