Beyond the Gateway (Cranksepticeye)

Fourteen

Ethan dropped painfully to one knee to avoid having his head bitten off.
The boggart he was fighting with had burst forth from a rift in Strawberry Fields. It was covered in venomous thorns and had a prominent set of gnashy teeth. Hissing at him, the boggart hurtled off into the dark. Ethan swore and broke into a sprint to chase it, trying hard to concentrate - and forget about that strange, infuriating boy.
The boggart snarled, bounding through a thicket, and Ethan cursed and followed. The clearing beyond was empty, but Ethan could smell it - like the stench of milkweed. The thing was hiding, but it was still close.
There was a rustling in the trees above his head. Ethan glanced up, only to realize too late that the boggart had led him straigjt into a trap.
A cloud of ravens swirled in the air overhead, and Ethan went cold with apprehension. These were no ordinary ravens. They were creatures of Mabh, the Autumn Queen of the shadowy Faerie Borderlands. Huge birds with oily black feathers, they had red eyes and claws like scythes, and a terrible hunger for human flesh.
The boggart must have been one of Mabh's minions as well, Ethan thought as he frantically pulled out the bundled branches from his satchel. At his incantation, they transformed once again into the silver-bladed sword.
On the other side of the clearing, the boggart emerged, lifting it's gnarled hands into the air as though signaling troops. The ravens attacked.
Ethan's sword flashed through the air as he whacked two of the murderous birds out of the sky. He cut through several, but others followed, and he thrust sharply, impaling them on the end of the blade. He ducked away from another attack, narrowly missing losing an eye.
Jack's face appeared before him in his mind. This time Ethan didn't try to fight it. Thinking of his smile, he redoubled his efforts. The ravens came at him again, and his sword whirled, a shining arc in the darkness.

* * *

The light from the rising sun was pouring through his windows when Ethan stepped through the door to his apartment. Out on the balcony, the elegant figure of the Unseelie king sat on a lounge chair. Ethan wearily threw his jacket and satchel on the settee and went onto the terrace.
"Mabh is mightily annoyed with you, young man," Auberon said, his words colored with a chilly merriment. "She is very fond of her pets."
"Next time tell her to keep them home. Or, if she really wants to test me, to send bigger birds." Ethan stretched his tired back. In truth, the murderous ravens had taken a great deal of skill to handle, but Ethan was pleased with the outcome. Not a single one had gotten past him.
When she had roamed the mortal realm freely, Queen Mabh had been the stuff if nightmares. Her transgressions against mortals had grown so terrible that Auberon and Titania had been forced to join together and imprison Mabh within the confines of the Borderlands, her own darkling realm. But Mabh had still relished the pleasure of sending her minions through the Gates to wreak chaos, which she would track with her scrying glass, as though watching horror films.
The thought of Mabh's creatures being loosed upon the world again made Ethan take his duties as a Jade very seriously. He might not want to live in this world, but he did not wish it harm. Especially not when it had such creatures in it as his Firecracker . . .
Ethan felt Auberon staring at him. He had a disjointed sensation that the king had asked him a question and he hasn't even heard it.
"My lord?" Distracted, Ethan looked up. Into the eyes of his king.
"Tell me of the boy," Auberon said.
Ethan had not meant to think of him. He had certainly not planned to mention it to Auberon. But his mind, it seemed, was a problem in that respect. And he had made the dangerous mistake of exchanging glances with the Unseelie lord.
"I can see him. In your eyes." Auberon's dark gaze held Ethan like a fly trapped in amber. He could not look away, even as he felt Auberon's mind stabbing into his own. "Who is he?"
"I don't know."
"Do not lie to me, lad." The king's voice remained easy, but Ethan knew that, Jade or no, he was in a great deal of peril at this moment.
"It is no lie. He is . . . an actor. Just a guy from the park, really." Ethan expected at any moment Auberon would shred through his formidable mental defenses as if they were paper and learn everything he knew about the boy. Even though that wasn't much, Ethan unaccountably did not want the Faerie king to take any sudden great interest in finding out about his Firecracker.
"Hmm," Auberon murmured.
Ethan felt the pressure inside his skull lessen. He raised himself up off his knees - he hadn't been aware that be had fallen to them - and shook the tension from his shoulders.
"I cannot gather him from your mind," the Faerie king mused, sounding intrigued. "And yet, you hold his image there."
"He is handsome." Ethan shrugged with what he was an appropriately casual air. "For a mortal."
After a long weighty moment, the king's lips twitched in the ghost of a smile. "Not so handsome, I hope, to make you forget yourself, Ethan Nester. Or your duties."
Ethan bowed his head slightly in deference. "Of course not, my lord."
"Good. Because I have an unsettling sense that Mabh's harbringers are simply that - heralds of things to come. There is a great deal of unrest in the Faerie realms, Ethan. And the closing of the Gates, while I deemed it necessary, has become a thing of contention and a rallying point around which my enemies gather. If my Jade Guard falters, it will go hard."
"We will not, my lord."
"That would be best." Auberon said. "And what news, else?"
Ethan hesitated for an instant, but only an instant. Auberon was his king. His very purpose as a Jade was to serve him. Why was he even thinking about dissembling? Bob the boucca's words were a tiny echo in the back of his mind, and Ethan pushed them away.
He told Auberon about his encounters at the Gate. The king already knew about the boggart and the birds from Mabh, so Ethan told him, instead, of the swarm of piskies, mildly chagrined by his amusement at the tale - much like Maddox's. Then, swallowing nervousness at the thought of his failure, Ethan told Auberon of the Lake and the creature that he - and, indeed, all the Jade - had somehow missed entirely: the kelpie that had escaped through the Gate and disappeared into the night.
"Kelpie are dangerous, surely." Auberon shrugged , unconcerned. "But not smart enough to evade my entire Jade Guard for long, I wouldn't think."
"I'm not entirely sure that it was just any kelpie, my lord." Ethan said. He stood and went back into the apartment to retrieve his messenger bag. He drew the three onyx gems from the inner pocket of the bag and, returning, placed them in Auberon's upturned palm. A few dark strands of horsehair were still tangled in the beads. "I found these tailsmans in the mud by the Lake. I don't think I've ever seen their like before."
"I have," the king murmured.
Ethan wouldn't have thought it possible for Auberon's face to turn a paler shade than it already was, but it did. The tall brow remained smooth, regal face impassive. But the air on Ethan's balcony plummeted to glacial temperatures.
"The Hunt . . . "
Ethan had to strain to catch the words. "My lord?" he asked.
"These are charms of making." The king's eyes were midnight pools. "They call the Roan Horse into being."
Ethan's blood froze in his veins. He knew, suddenly, what the glittering blue jewels meant. "But . . . the Roan Horse leads the Wild Hunt." His voice came out in a rasping whisper.
"Yes. It does." Auberon's hand clenched into a fist around the beads, then he dropped them to bounce along the flagstones at his feet.
He stood and stepped to the edge of the terrace, looking down on the park, and it seemed to Ethan that the Faerie king had forgotten that he was even there.
"Oh, Mabh." Auberon's voice was harsh, his expression stricken. "Is this what your folly has brought us to now?"
There was a blur of motion, and Ethan threw a hand up in front of his face to shield it from the sudden ice-sharp wind. When he lowered it, the king was gone, his cry melting into the keening of a falcon.