Mercedes Lackey & Rosemary Edghill - Mad Maudlin

Mad Maudlin

Table of Contents

Prologue:

The Strayaway Child

Chapter One:

The Fairies' Lamentation

Chapter Two:

The Dogs Among The Bushes

Chapter Three:

Away We Go Again

Chapter Four:

The Job Of Journeywork

Chapter Five:

Chase Around The Windmill

Chapter Six:

Boil The Breakfast Early

Chapter Seven:

Chase Around The Windmill

Chapter Eight:

Carolan's Welcome

Chapter Nine:

The Iron Man

Chapter Ten:

O'Mahoney's Frolics

Chapter Eleven:

Here's A Health To The Company

Chapter Twelve:

Rocky Road To Dublin

Chapter Thirteen:

Over The Waterfall

Chapter Fourteen:

Gravelwalk

Chapter Fifteen:

Beardance

Chapter Sixteen:

Battle Of Aughrim

Chapter Seventeen:

Boys Of The Lough

Epilogue:

The Wind That Shakes The Barley

Mad Maudlin

Mercedes Lackey and

Rosemary Edghill

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any

resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN: 0-7434-7143-1

Cover art by Stephen Hickman

First printing, August 2003

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lackey, Mercedes.

Mad maudlin / by Mercedes Lackey & Rosemary Edghill.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-7434-7143-1

1. Children—Crimes against—Fiction. 2. Homeless children—Fiction.

3. Runaway children—Fiction. 4. New York (N.Y.)—Fiction. 5. Brothers—Fiction.

I. Edghill, Rosemary. II. Title.

PS3562.A246M33 2003

813'.54—dc21

2003012128

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH

Printed in the United States of America

Titles in this series:

Bedlam's Bard(omnibus with Ellen Guon)

Beyond World's End(with Rosemary Edghill)

Spirits White as Lightning(with Rosemary Edghill)

Mad Maudlin(with Rosemary Edghill)

Prologue:

The Strayaway Child

She had once thought that all the lands of Underhill were as familiar to her as the bounds of her own

Domain, but the realms Rionne ferch Rianten now rode through were known to her only through the tales

of Court Bards and the descriptions in the oldest books in her liege-lord's library. She was certain of only

one thing about them: if she were caught here, she would be slain outright, without the privilege of fair

combat, of trial, of Challenge. These were the realms of the Great Enemy, and Rionne slunk through them

as a thief in the night, her every breath a prayer to Danu that her passage would go unnoticed. Each Gate

she managed to pass unchallenged was both a gift and a curse, for even as it sped her on her journey, it

meant that Jachiel had gone before her, deeper into peril, though he had as yet no more than a child's

magic to call upon.

Jachiel. Each thought of him endangered was like a blow to the heart, filling her with the strong emotion

that was the Sidhe's greatest danger. But she had accepted thegeas willingly. Jachiel ap Gabrevys was a

prince, and a prince's son, and his father's Court was beset by enemies. That much she had known from

the moment he had been given into her hands at his Naming, she to be mother and father to him both, for

his Lady Mother was untimely slain in the Chaos Lands defending their realm, and the Lord Prince his

father had no time for mewling infants. As the boy had grown toward adulthood, she had faced the day

when she must give up some of his care to those others who had stood up at his Naming, those who

would teach him the arts of war, of sorcery, of music, and of torture. Those arts would make him strong.

He would have less need of her strong arm to protect him, and that was good; she could look to the day

when she could seek Healing for the bond that had grown up between them, for passions so intense were

not meant to be among their kind. When Jachiel was an adult, and the term of her Oath was run, she

would seek, as she was bound to, a Court far from this, so that the memory of him would fade into

simple friendship, nothing more. But until that day she had sworn herself his Protector, his shield against

all the world's ills.

And she had failed him.

How not? Why else had he fled from her? For it must be that—no enemy could penetrate his father's

Court, subvert Prince Gabrevys' Mages and Knights to carry off the young Prince. Only Jachiel himself

could have borne himself away from Prince Gabrevys' Domain.

And Rionne must find him, wherever he was.

She had told no one of the young Prince's disappearance. Any Ruler's Court was a place of shadow and

intrigue: what could not be done by force might well have been done by trickery, and it would place a

weapon in the Enemy's hand to let him know he had succeeded. No. She had summoned up her

elvenhound and elvensteed and followed her charge as quickly as she could. Let the Court think they had

gone together, and think nothing more. Prince Gabrevys was away, as he so often was, and no one else

would have any right to summon the young Prince into their presence. Only Jachiel's Lady Mother would

have had that right, she who had been dead these many years.

If she had lived—if she had not died fighting monsters in the formless lands—would it have made any

difference?

No! It is I who am his Protector! Mine is the responsibility for his safety, until the day he can

guard himself!

And so she would guard him.

The Domain she rode through was green and pleasant, its boundaries firm with long definition and the

work of many generations of Elven Mages. It lay in endless twilight, a parkland with no strollers, perfectly

groomed and perfectly lovely—perfectly insipid, but then, that was the hallmark of the Enemy. And this

made her move faster; now he was in lands that were firmly in the Enemy's hands. She followed Jachiel's

trail as swiftly as she could, but no matter how fast she rode, no matter the spells of Tracking and Finding

that she unloosed, he was always before her. The Gate that was her current goal lay only a short distance

ahead, and as she approached it, Rionne's heart sank. Always the Gates led outward and upward,

toward the World Above and the lands of Mortal Men, a place Rionne had never been.

It was a place filled with danger unimaginable—with poisons that could destroy the Sidhefolk, with metal

that could burn away both magic and life, and with worse than these: with strange temptations that could

destroy both sanity and grace. Her great-grandmother had been the last of her direct Line to walk among

the Mortalkin, in the days before the High Court had summoned all the Princes of the Land to Council, to

determine whether the Children of Danu would yet live among the Children of Earth.

Woe betide the High King for that summons! For—so song and legend had it—before that Council

there had been no Dark Court and no Light, and the High King and the Queen of Air and Darkness had

shared one throne and one bed. But the Princes of the Air could not agree to quit the treacherous

pleasures of the World Above, even to save themselves. Instead of agreement, there had been war.

Some, like Rionne's folk, had gone Underhill at once. Some had stayed. The Council had ended in strife

and disarray, without a ruling being handed down, and from that moment, Oberon and Morrigan had

ruled two separate Courts, the High King took himself a new Queen, and the Children of Danu were at

war among themselves.

All for Earthborn whose bones were now less than dust upon the wind, so brief were their lives. Yet

how enchanting, how dangerous they must be, to destroy so many Sidhe lives and noble houses!

Rionne hoped she would never see one.

As she approached the Gate, her every instinct cried warning, and she slowed, approaching warily. It

was impossible that the Enemy would leave a Gate in their Domain unguarded.

Farras growled, his hackles rising. She had raised and trained the elvenhound herself, and knew his

senses were keener than her own. She reined in her 'steed, loosening her sword in its sheath. Aeldana

was tired; she must conserve the elvensteed's strength as much as possible, for at any moment she might

face the need to fight or flee. She had pushed Aeldana hard in her search for Jachiel, but she had not

dared to claim hospitality from any of Prince Gabrevys' allies, lest the fact that Jachiel was not with her be

discovered. Any delay on her quest could prove disastrous to her charge—she must find him!

With a flicker of light, the warrior guarding the Gate dropped theglamourie shielding her.

"Halt!" she said. "Who goes there?"

Without hesitation, Rionne set Farras on.

The 'hound struck the defending Sidhe like a bolt of silent thunder, slamming her armored body to the

grass. She hadn't been expecting an immediate attack. Good. It would buy Rionne the time she needed.

It was an unequal match, war-hound against armored foe. Farras could not win, but Rionne knew that

the Enemy would show him no mercy because of that. And she could not stay to save him. Her mission

was more important. She must set love against love and choose the greater, though it wounded a heart

already broken. She spurred Aeldana forward.

There!She could plainly see Jachiel's mark still on the Gate. Her way was clear. She keyed the Gate,

turning in her saddle just in time to see the enemy warrior drag a dagger from its sheath and plunge it into

Farras' side.

Thrusting the 'hound's dying body aside, the Enemy ran forward, drawing her sword. But Rionne was

faster. Aeldana leapt through the Gate, and Rionne used a hoarded levin-bolt to scramble the Gate's

settings behind her.

They went on, two now instead of three, and she no longer had any doubt of Jachiel's destination.

The World Above—the deadly and treacherous human lands.

My heart, my heart . . . what are you seeking there?Rionne mourned wildly. But then she shook her

head, smiling grimly at her own foolishness. Undoubtedly she would find out.

If she lived to reach the deadly lands of the Sons and Daughters of Adam.

And lived past reaching them.

Chapter One:

The Fairies' Lamentation

The children huddled in the meager protection of the doorway on the Lower East Side across from the

homeless shelter. They passed around hoarded cigarettes and drank from bottles of Coca-Cola

swaddled in brown paper bags in imitation of their elders. None of them was older than eight or ten, but

their faces were already hard and set, the legacy of a life spent on the street.

Monday was just another day if you didn't have anywhere else to be. School was something to be

avoided. Too many awkward questions, too many meddling adults wanting you to get with the

program—or into a program. Only a few of them were enrolled anyway. Enrollment required a home

address, or a fixed address, and none of them had homes to go to. Not really. In the wake of the

unfathomable disaster that had struck New York a year ago, the city's social services had been stressed

even further than before. People who had been marginally able to cope before the disaster were no

longer able to manage, and those who had fallen through the cracks were being buried beneath the

avalanche of lives falling through what were no longer mere cracks, but canyons in the system. New

York these days, as many social commentators had said, was one large enclave of post traumatic stress

disorder, and, as always, it was the children who were the invisible and largely-unnoticed victims.

For these kids as for many others, home was a single room occupancy or a bed in a shelter, if they still

had a family. If not, it was whatever refuge they could find out of the chill November wind. And every

one of them already knew that refuge came at a price.

Most of them were dressed in hand-me-downs and cast-offs, worn, dirty, nothing quite the right size,

nothing quite warm enough for the cold November day. When clothes were so hard to come by, it was

better to get something you could keep as long as possible, and not have to give up because it had gotten

too small—though one boy in the group was wearing a new well-fitting leather jacket over a hoodie. The

jacket was shiny and cheap, the thin leather already starting to craze and crack, but even so, it marked

him out as someone with more resources than his peers. All of them kept a wary eye out for adults, ready

to run if they were challenged, but the few pedestrians paid no particular attention to the cluster of young

street kids.

* * *

"Where you been, Elio?" a very small child piped up—impossible to tell if it was a girl or a boy.

"Yeah—you got girlfriend?" Definitely a boy, this one, elbowing the kid in the jacket with a sly look.

Another about the same age, with an even more knowing look. "Nah—Elio's got aboy friend!"

"He give you that mad jacket?" asked a third, with great interest, perhaps wondering if it was worth

going that way himself.

"Cut it out, guys!" Elio hunched his shoulders, pulling his hood up over his head and leaning against the

side of the building. He stared down at the ground.

"I seen her."

"Seen her? Seen who?" the little kid asked, not getting the hint.

"I seenher ." Elio's dark face was pinched and pale, and so terrified that it was utterly blank. "La

Llorona."

There was a moment of confused silence, as if his listeners wanted to ridicule him, but didn't quite dare.

Finally another boy—darker-skinned than Elio—stepped forward.

"Yo, dog, you can't be just saying her name out like that."

"I seen her," Elio repeated, looking up into the other boy's face, sharply, his eyes dull and hopeless.

"She's real."

"Then you gotta say," the other boy said. "That's the rule."

Elio took a deep breath. His face twisted, as if he wanted to cry, but when he spoke, his voice was flat.

"I was over at my uncle Esai's place. He had his crew there, and there was like a dozen pizzas, and

everything, and he said I could eat as much as I wanted, and he let me watch 'toons on his big-ass

television, and gave me a beer and everything."

Murmurs of derision and veiled disbelief greeted this part of the narrative, but nobody challenged it

openly. They wanted to hear the rest, the part aboutLa Llorona.

"And he had to go out on, you know, his business, but he said I could stay, on account of Mama was

working late, and everybody was still being nice to me 'cause Julio got whacked last month. So I fell

asleep on the couch, but in the middle of the night I woke up, on account of beer makes you pee, and I

went into the bathroom, and . . . there she was, in the mirror."

Elio's voice dropped to a whisper and his listeners drew in closer.

* * *

None of them noticed the older boy around the corner of the building. He'd been loitering, waiting for

them to leave before going into the homeless shelter across the street, not wanting to be noticed—the

oldest of them might be a good six or seven years younger than he was, but there were at least eight of

them, and he knew several of them carried knives. Not good odds if they decided to mug him, and with

that many of them, they could swarm him and cut anything off him that they wanted.

And besides, the story interested him. . . .

Elio's voice, thin and shaky, just carried to where he was skulking. "She was all blue, and wearing this

floaty stuff, like curtains, and it was all blowing around her, like in the movies when there's a ghost. And

she was crying, only it was all black, like blood, andshe didn't have any eyes."

The other children backed away now, as if suddenly afraid that the boy in the leather jacket had become

dangerous to know. There was a moment of frozen silence, and then they all started talking at once, their

voices low and urgent, creating a babble out of which a few shrill phrases emerged.

"Why'd you look?"

"Why'd you tell us?"

"You shouldn't have looked in the mirror."

"If you didn't see her, you'd be okay."

Then the oldest boy, demanding. "If you seen her, how come you still alive, Elio? Everybody know if

you see the Crying Woman, you going to die."

No one laughed.

"I guess it too soon," Elio said, shaking his head, in a voice utterly without hope. "I guess I am going to

die, just like Julio. She just waitin'."

"Maybe . . . maybe she didn't see you, dog."

The oldest boy smacked the other across the back of the head, and nowhis voice shook with fear. "You

dumb or somethin'? Of course she see him! She in the mirror, ain't she? And once Bloody Mary see your

face, you gonna die, you know that. She gonna find E. wherever he go, track him down an' drag him

down to Hell. She a demon. She gotpowers. Once she see you, ain't no escape."

* * *

From his hiding place around the corner of the building, Magnus watched as the boy Elio tried to put a

brave face on things, and failed. He hugged himself tightly, his heart beating in fear, watching the other

boy. Bloody Mary—La Llorona—the Crying Woman. Now he had a name for the woman he'd seen.

It should have been easy to make fun of what he'd overheard. Just little kids telling each other ghost

stories. Just urban legends, after all. Schoolyard tales.

But it wasn't quite so funny when you'd seen her yourself.

And if what the rest of what they said was true . . .

Elio ran off down the street, hitting out angrily at his friends. They followed at a little distance, still

subdued, and watching him the way that cats watched one of their number that was dying—wary, and

frightened, and a little in awe. It was easy to see what was uppermost in their minds.It wasn't me. Thank

God, it wasn't me.

Magnus moved cautiously away from the building in the opposite direction, his intention to visit the

shelter forgotten.

Bloody Mary. He winced. It was like that story he remembered from when he was a little kid, that if you

went into the school bathroom alone on a Friday and stood with your back to the mirror and chanted

"Bloody Mary" three times and turned around really quick, you'd see a horrible demon face in the mirror.

And . . . something . . . would happen. He forgot what it was supposed to have been. Something

terrible. Maybe there was a movie about it, too.

Only this was real, because he'd seen her, with his own two eyes.

Last week he'd gone out walking alone. Ace hated it when he did that, but he didn't care. He didn't have

any money, and who was going to bother him except to mug him? And except for the raggedy kids that

didn't have enough clothes to keep warm, nobody wanted what he had.

She always worried that he was going to get dragged into a big black car for a "date," but with his

chestnut hair, green eyes, and choirboy looks, Magnus had learned how to deal withthat sort of thing a

long time ago. Besides, people looking for rentboys cruised under the West Side Highway or down on

the Strip, not up in the Bowery, so he figured his virtue was pretty safe. And it wasn't like Ace needed

help to watch Jaycie. Jaycie slept most of the time, anyway.

It'd been late, maybe two or three in the morning. He'd done gone out just to do it, just because he

could, because there was nobody around these days telling him to do this, do that, be good, behave.

Besides, he'd wanted to be alone. It was pretty noisy back at The Place at night. Most of the kids were

up and out, but if they were there, they wanted to party, whether or not they had anything to party with.

And he'd seen her—the woman Elio had talked about.

He'd been all alone on the street—or he'd thought he'd been.

Then all of a suddenshe stepped out from between two parked cars, right in front of him.

Tall. Fashion-model tall. And somehow he could see her clearly, even though it was dark and there

weren't any lights on the side street. She hadn't been glowing or anything; it was just that somehow she

was bright enough to see even in the dark. Pale blue draperies flowing around her, rising and settling,

constantly in motion, even though there hadn't been much wind. Black tears flowing down her face out of

two black holes where eyes should have been, and he'd been so freaked, because she'd justappeared,

out of nowhere, that he'd barely had time to start getting really frightened when she vanished again.

He hadn't stayed to look around. He might have been in New York for only about three weeks, but he

wasn't an idiot. He'd beat feet back to The Place, and by the time he'd gotten there, the snapshot image

of what he'd seen—kind of like the Blue Fairy on crack—had fully developed in his head: tall, willowy,

eyeless, weeping tears of black blood.

He didn't know where she'd come from, or where she'd gone, and he didn't care, just as long as he

never saw her again.

And to tell the truth, even now he didn't want to admit, even to himself, how scary she was. In seventeen

years of disappointing experiences, Magnus had learned that the best way to handle things he didn't like

was silence. If you didn't talk about things you didn't like, you could pretend they hadn't happened, and

sooner or later, it was almost like they never had. So he hadn't said anything to anyone about what he'd

seen, not even Ace. And he hadn't gone out alone again late at night, either.

But now these kids said one of them had seen her too, and they'd all seemed to know about her.

Right. He had to think about this, right now, real hard, before he scared himself into holing up in the

Place and never coming out. Did that really mean what he'd seen had been no-shit real? Or had the

whole thing been a goof staged for his benefit?

Magnus considered the idea carefully. No. They hadn't known he was there, so they hadn't been putting

it on for his benefit—and how could they possibly have known what he'd seen? Besides, they'd been

little kids, half his age—and kids that age weren't that good at acting—not that kind of acting, anyway.

The oldest of them couldn't have been more than ten. And he didn't even know them. Okay. They hadn't

seen himand even if they'd seen him, they didn't know him. Why should they bother to ring his chimes?

That only left the other explanation. The worse one.

She was somethingreal.

And—if the rest of what those runt losers said was true, too—she was going to find him and kill him,

because he'd seen her and she'd seen him.

Bloody Mary.

Magnus shivered, heading for home—or what passed for home these days. Even at its worst, it was still

better than the one he'd left.

Even if it was going to kill him.

At least when it did, it would kill him on his own terms.

* * *

The Jacob Riis Shelter in Lower Manhattan occupied what had been—a century before—an

upper-middle-class home in what had then been a well-to-do residential district.

Times had changed.

Now, suitably renovated—though too long ago, on the slenderest of shoestrings—the aging brownstone

did the best it could with what it had to provide: beds, hot meals, and counseling to an ever-shifting

population of the city's poor and homeless. These days, that was a precarious interlocking web of grant

money, city stipends, and private donations, less every year, though sometimes there was still a little

money for "extras"—the things that shelter director Serafina Macunado knew weren't extras, but

necessities, if they were to bring any light and hope into the lives of their youngest clients. Color, creative

play, laughter, music.

* * *

Hosea Songmaker shrugged Jeanette's strap higher on his shoulder and smiled down at the circle of

children who surrounded him. Some of them—those who had been here longest—smiled shyly back.

The others regarded him with expressions ranging from shocked blankness to outright suspicion.

For the last six months, Hosea had been spending four days a week here, providing "music therapy" to

the shelter's children, a simple enough task for an Apprentice Bard, and one that required no more

credential than his New York City busker's license and a willingness to help. The director insisted on

paying him—he made sure that it was a pittance, the minimum he could get away with and still be taken

seriously. He enjoyed working with the children, and—since the previous autumn—had found his skills

especially needed.

Paul and Toni were handling most of his training as a Guardian, and Hosea had been frankly surprised to

find out how little there was: becoming a Guardian seemed to be pretty much a matter of "sink or swim."

His lessons with Eric made a lot more sense, to his way of thinking—after all, he'd come East looking for

someone to teach him the music magic in the first place. Eric took those responsibilities seriously, and

Hosea felt he was making progress there. Well, Eric said he was, and one Bard couldn't lie to another,

even if it had been in Eric Banyon's nature to lie to anyone. Which it wasn't, not unless there was a lot of

call to lie, or the need to lie, and besides, they were both Bards, and Bardshad to be honest with each

other.

Mercedes Lackey & Rosemary Edghill - Mad Maudlin

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