The Last Guardian

Butler chose this moment to regain his senses. “Juliet is on the surface with Masters Beckett and Myles, so I guess we can’t let that happen.”

 

 

They sat in a tight group around a campfire of glowing spit while Holly told what had been considered a legend but was now being treated as pretty accurate historical fact.

 

“Most of this you will already know from the spirits who tried to invade you.”

 

Butler rubbed his branded neck. “Not me. I was out cold. All I have is fractured images. Pretty gross stuff, even for me. Severed limbs, people being buried alive. Dwarfs riding trolls into battle? Could that have happened?”

 

“It all happened,” Holly confirmed. “There was a dwarf corps that rode trolls.”

 

“Yep,” said Mulch. “They called themselves the Troll Riders. Pretty cool name, right? There was a group that only went out at night who called themselves the Night Troll Riders.”

 

Artemis couldn’t help himself. “What were the daytime troll riders called?”

 

“Those gauchos were called the Daytime Troll Riders,” answered Mulch blithely. “Head to toe in leather. They smelled like the inside of a stinkworm’s bladder, but they got the job done.”

 

Holly could have wept with frustration, but she’d learned during her brief period as a private investigator when Mulch had served as her partner that the dwarf would shut up only when he was good and ready. Artemis, on the other hand, should know better.

 

“Artemis,” she said sharply, “don’t encourage him. We are on a timetable.”

 

Artemis’s expression seemed almost helpless in the luminescence. “Of course. No more comments. I am feeling a little overwhelmed, truth be told. Continue, Holly, please.”

 

And so Holly told her story, her features sharply lit from below by the unconventional glow. Butler could not help but be reminded of horror stories told to him and his fellow scouts by Master Prunes on weekend trips to the Dan-yr-Ogof cave in Wales. Holly’s delivery was bare bones, but the circumstances sent a shiver along his spine.

 

And I do not shiver easily, thought the big man, shifting uncomfortably on the muddied root that served as a seat.

 

“When I was a child, my father told me the story of Taillte almost every night so that I would never forget the sacrifice our ancestors made. Some laid down their lives, but a few went beyond even that and deferred their afterlives.” Holly closed her eyes and tried to tell it as she had heard it. “Ten thousand years ago, humans fought to eradicate the fairy families from the face of the earth. There was no reason for them to do this. Fairies are in the main peace-loving people, and their healing abilities and special connection to the land were of benefit to all, but always among the humans there are those individuals who would control all they see and are threatened by that which they do not understand.”

 

Artemis refrained from making the obvious point that it was one of the fairy folk who was more or less attempting to destroy the world presently, but he filed it away to trot out at a later date.

 

“And so the People took refuge on the misty isle of ériú, the home of magic, where they were most powerful. And they dug their healing pits and massed their army at the Plains of Taillte for a last stand.”

 

The others were silent now as Holly spoke, for they could see the scene in their own memories.

 

“It was a brief battle,” said Holly bitterly. “The humans showed no mercy, and it was clear by the first night that the People were doomed to extermination. And so the Council decided that they would retreat to the catacombs below the earth from whence they had come before the dawn of the age of man. All except the demons, who used magic to lift their island out of time.”

 

“Okay,” said Mulch. “I was sticking with it, but then you said whence, so now I have to go to the fridge.”

 

Holly scowled briefly, then continued. By now everyone knew that eating was how Mulch handled bad news, and good news, and banal news. All news, really.

 

“But the Council reasoned that even their underground refuge would be in danger from the humans, and so they built a gate with an enchanted lock. If this lock were ever opened, then the souls of the Berserker warriors buried around the gate would rise up and possess what bodies they could to prevent humans from gaining access.”

 

Artemis could still remember the sickly stench he’d experienced when the fairy Berserker had attempted to occupy his mind.

 

“And if the Berserker Gate were opened by fairy hand, then the warriors would be in thrall to that fairy to fight at his or her command. In this case, Opal Koboi.

 

“This spell was conjured to last for a century at least, until the People were safely away and the location of the gate forgotten.”

 

Holly’s lip curled as she said this, and Artemis made a deduction.