Grass stems bent cool under the pads of Keith's feet as he paused on a hillside in Scotland, a northern outpost of the iron world. He crouched behind a shaggy line of meadow plants, his elbows barely brushing the earth as he tasted the wind and observed the long, exposed slope he must descend. Wolves don't live long, who walk heedlessly into a moonlit field. Even one that amounts to their own back yard.

A house--a romantic old heap, more properly--dominated the valley below, straddling the narrow zone of safety between the hillside and where the marshy burn might flood when it rose. Neither precisely a manor house nor a castle, its outline described an irregular rectangle of mortared stone with chimneys and additions and gables protruding at odd angles like the spines of a hedgehog. It was the same color in moonlight or sunlight or overcast--dappled silver and charcoal, a few of the boulders nearest the foundation glinting with mica when the light slanted against it.

The sea tossed against a rocky beach; the village was a little way off. The house had the look of a gentleman farmer's abode, and the lawns were indeed cropped close by sheep and shaggy Highland cattle--coos, in Eoghan MacNeill's parlance--but there were those that knew the deeper truth. That there were no more wolves in Scotland, except the wolves who dwelled here.

Keith let his tail rise cockily, picture of a returning prince, and trotted down the slope through cold reflected moonlight to his father's door.

He passed through late summer herbs--the mint gone to flower, the dill setting seed--and scratched and whined at the kitchen door rather than the big main entrance that faced the road and the sea. Stout gray-haired Morag was there to let him in, the dressing gown in her hands draped over his shoulders deftly even as he began to change. His paws became hands as he fumbled with the belt; Morag stepped back to stir the soup pot on the stove.

"Welcome home, young Master," she said. "You were missed a bit. The bread's in the oven. Your father is in his study, and I imagine he'd be glad of ye."

"I'd have thought he wouldna be at home," Keith answered, bending down to kiss her on the part of her hair. "Isn't it his Glasgow week?"

She hesitated, the thick stock curling around her wooden spoon. "Och. He's not well, Keith my love--"

"Ah." Keith stepped back, thrusting his fists into the pocket of the dressing gown.

Morag dropped her spoon on the ceramic spoonrest--shaped like a chicken--and turned to face Keith. She craned her neck back, hands on her hips, her frown twisting the tip of her nose to one side. "You sound like a damned American, laddie."

"'Tis a thicket of deception," he answered, grinning. "Some of us have to leave Scotland once in a while, Morag. Or there'd be not a soul left in the country but wolves and their brides."

"And would that be such a bad thing?" She tch'd, cocking her head to one side like a bird, eyes glittering bright enough to make him laugh. "Go, see your father, young Master. It would be a kindness of you--"

"He's that poorly?"

"Aye."

"I've nowhere else I need to be," he answered. "Of course I'll stay. And I'll go up and see him as soon as I get some clothes on. Will that suit?"

"It will," she said, and stood on tiptoe to kiss the air beside his cheek.

Keith joined his father fifteen minutes later, having taken the time to clean the mud from under his nails and change his dressing gown for blue jeans and a cable-knit sweater. The study was only loosely so termed; Eoghan MacNeill had lavished more attention on this room than any other in his slow restoration of the old manor house, and its rugged tapestry-hung walls framed a view of the moonlit ocean through broad modern windows. The massive table that served as Eoghan's desk was butted up against the outside wall. As Keith entered the room, he saw his father's head framed by the window, silver hairs picked out by the green-blue glow of twinned monitors and the remaining ginger strands sidelit by the amber warmth of the fireplace.

And when did he get so much gray in his hair? "Your Highness," Keith said, and paused just within the door, sorting the aromas of the room through his inadequate human nose. Smoke and whiskey, mothballs and his father's human sweat.

And in that sweat, a sourness Keith recognized all too well. Eoghan turned in his swivel chair and smiled like a wolf, lips closed over his teeth, but did not rise. He looked drastically thinner than when Keith had seen him last, his cheekbones standing high under papery skin, and his eyes had sunken over them and were smeared with darkness like kohl. Keith came across the carpet, sandalwood and camphor rising from the wool compressed under his loafers, and crouched to take his father's hand. The old wolf's nails were yellowed and sharply hooked; Keith saw the marks of the file along their edges, and the cramped-looking bulges of Eoghan's knuckles as he tightened his grip--a grip still strong enough to make Keith set his jaw to endure it. Not quite ready for his deathbed yet, Keith thought, and squeezed right back.

"Stand up, stand up. Get a chair. We don't see you enough at home any more, my boy." Eoghan released his grip and turned back to his computer long enough to save his document. "Pour me a wee dram while you're up, there's a good lad."

Keith did as he was bid, smiling into his beard, and tried not to notice how his father braced both hands on the edge of his desk in order to gain his feet. Eoghan met him by the fire, gesturing him into one of the twin wing chairs set before it, and shrugged Keith's hand off when Keith would have helped him to sit. "I smell that wench of yours on ye," he said, after Keith pushed the tumbler of whiskey into his hand. "I don't suppose that means there's word of your son?"

Keith shook his head. "Things are--" His voice trailed off, and the old wolf snorted and leaned forward, hands dangling between knees and the glass pressed between his palms, staring into the fire. Keith pressed into the overstuffed chair, as if in contravention of his father's posture. "--no better."

"You'll need that lad when I'm gone," Eoghan said. Keith shot him a startled look, and saw his father complacently sipping whiskey, eyes twinkling like peridots in the firelight.

"Gone?"

"Aye, or did you mean to let the Princedom of the pack desert our lineage? Tell me you'll fight in my memory, lad."

The fire was warm on the soles of Keith's feet, even through the leather of his shoes. "I haven't thought of it," he said, pretending the nauseating twist of panic was someone else's emotion. "I hadn't thought of it at all."

"Think on it now," Eoghan said. He leaned back with a sigh, and rested his glass on his leg. "It won't be long--"

"You're strong yet." Said as a dismissal, and Keith could not stop the oblique twist of his right hand that brushed the issue aside, and away.

"Deny it if you like," Eoghan answered. "I'll be dead before the New Year: I can feel the weariness in my bones when the moon changes. And I'd like to meet my grandson before I go."

"It won't be easy," Keith said.

The old wolf shrugged. "What in life is? A wolf who won't claim his own offspring won't be seen as fit to lead the pack."

"Who said I wanted to lead the pack, father?"

Eoghan tilted his head to one side and smiled, and this time he showed Keith the edge of his teeth. Just enough to make an impression, and no more. "Did ye think you had a choice?"

#

Kelpie awaited Seeker in the predawn light, head bowed, nosing listlessly among the water weeds. He lifted black-socked feet aimlessly from the stream and set them down. Waiting to be struck dead. Seeker felt pity like an edge of glass parting her skin, until she recalled his many murders.

"Uisgebaugh," she said from the mouth of the cavern.

His head came up. He snorted and thrust himself up the bank, water puddling from his lower legs and feet. It dripped from his mane as well, spotting the shoulder of her tunic as he lowered his head to look her in the eye. "You are well."

"More or less. Bend a knee for me, water-horse." She reached up and grasped his mane, sliding bellyfirst over his broad back before slinging her right leg across his rump. Water streaked her front and soaked her thighs, running in streams over her fingers where she clutched the mane. "I don't suppose you can shut that off, can you?"

From the shadows that lay all around them, she saw otherwise as his head went down; she was ready. Big hooves left the ground: he rocked forward, sunfishing halfheartedly. She held on, feeling water steam between her legs and his hide, smacking him once on the neck with her open hand. "Enough."

He pawed the earth, but his hide was abruptly dry.

She tugged his mane so he sat back obediently on his haunches and spun like a cattle pony, hooves carving gullies in the stream bank. He leapt the water, snorting, and set off at a trot that was harder than it had to be, grinding her groin against his backbone and rattling her teeth. She kicked him in the ribs, twice, and he settled into a canter gentle as a rocking horse. "You ride well," he said grudgingly.

"I'm from Wyoming." As if that explained everything.

"Where are we going, Mistress?"

"You heard of the task the Mebd set for me?"

He shook his mane, ears flickering. Bladderwort squelched between her fingers, tangling his mane. "Everyone has."

"We're looking for a mortal man to seduce and betray. Your specialty." His hoofbeats echoed from the face of the down. She turned him with the pressure of her knees and started up the flank of the big hill at an angle, toward a copse of trees that crested it. East, the sky shone pink and silver, ephemeral.

She leaned into the beat as he picked up speed, powerful hindquarters propelling them. Big as he was, he moved like a quarterhorse, bunching and extending, covering the ground in fast, jerky strides. His feathers, the dark long hair on his fetlocks, flared and floated.

"This is the way to the Weyland Smithy."

"It is," she answered. "We're seeing about shoes."

He stopped short, head-tossing. She squeezed with her legs and he danced backward.

"You will go on," she said. "Our hunt will lead us into the iron realm. They lay iron under the roadways."

He shivered beneath her, ears laid flat. "I went into the mortals' city barefooted. You saw."

"Indeed. Barely ten feet from the water, dripping oceans with every step, and weak enough that something like me could bind you. There will be shoes."

He pawed another gully, water flooding from his hoofprint. His head dipped and Seeker held tight to the mane, expecting him to kick out again or to rear. The final contest.

Instead, a great breath heaved from his barrel. "As you wish." Docile, he turned toward the copse.

Rowan, hazel, ash and willow: she knew their flowering branches. As Kelpie bore her to the edge of the glade, a heavy hammer thundered, faster than any smith should have swung it. She slid down, sighing as her feet touched the greensward. The scent of burning coke and scorched metal reminded her of Mist.

One hand on Kelpie's neck, she led him forward.

Trees completely enclosed the rough clearing. Beside a rock-rimmed well a bandy-legged little man bent over his forge, naked except for a leather apron. Terrible scars marked the back of his leg where a jealous god had lamed him. He wore his long matted beard parted and braided, the ends knotted behind his back; the hammer he swung with such ease bore a head as big as a breadloaf. Other tools hung like offerings from the branches of the trees.

Weyland Smith turned at the sound of Kelpie's hooves and set his tongs and hammer aside. He cocked his head, bald at the center as if tonsured, and sucked his cheeks in as he looked from Seeker to Kelpie and back again. "Well," he said, and turned his head to spit into the grass, "what have we here?"

"A horse for the shoeing, mastersmith." Seeker walked forward, holding out a hand with two silver coins glittering in the palm. Weyland Smith's geas--the rule that bound him--was simple: he could refuse no commission, no matter how daunting. His little eyes glittered like stars as he reached a gnarled hand for the money.

He bit down on the silver and then dropped one coin each in the two pockets of his apron. "I've not shod a horse like that one before. It'll be silver, shall it? Silver for the moon-horse, silver for the horse of the water."

"Silver will do nicely." Seeker turned and beckoned Kelpie. He came stamping, pied tail swishing, his nostrils flaring wet red in his face--a piebald who was almost a horse white as milk, black-legged and splashed with black on face and breast, with black strands lacing the pale mane and tail.

The little smith ignored him and bent to his bellows, nattering away as if Seeker had not spoken. "So it will be! Silver as the wheels of Arianrhod's chariot. Gold for collars and bindings. Silver for protection. Werewolves and Wampyr and such. And protection from iron, of course."

Gold is for collars. Oh, indeed. Seeker swallowed, and did not think of werewolves.

Weyland Smith lifted his hammer and his tongs, singing as he pounded out the heated metal. Tam Lin. And the Mebd would be as terrible in her displeasure at him as she would have been at Seeker. But the rules were different for the ones that were gods. What could the Mebd do to the Weyland Smith?

Seeker walked to the well and peered over the smooth white stones that marked the edge in the grass. Water rippled and reflected. As Seeker blocked the overcast sky, she glimpsed something that might have been the round face of the moon.

Reflexively, she glanced up, seeking the bruised eyes and drooping mouth like the face of a battered woman. But mist and clouds rode high overhead, filtering the daylight to gray, and the moon that had set an hour before had been in its quarter.

More hammer blows and scorching hoof revealed that Weyland had fitted the first silver crescent to Kelpie's foot. Kelpie snorted in protest; Seeker turned over her shoulder to check. But he stood patiently as Weyland drove the nails through the hoof wall and clipped them short.

"That'll be a fine silver ring in your man-form," Weyland said. "Next foot."

Seeker blinked to clear her vision and gazed back into the water. The image rippled, but now the pale circle was her own face, distorted by dim light and water. She bent closer, fascinated by the twisted image--and jerked back when a gout of icy water struck her face. Blinking, about to curse Kelpie, she glimpsed the spined back of a rose-and-green fish as it slid into the depths.

The water on her lips tasted cool and sweet, and she had just dipped up a handful when the hammering stopped. "Finished, m'Lady," the smith pronounced. "Best be on your way."

"Already?"

He smiled and nodded, cheeks like ripe crab-apples under waggling eyebrows. He set his hammer aside and made her a stirrup. Kelpie stood four square, testing the unfamiliar weight. The clipped ends of silver nails shone against hooves gleaming black as if shoe-polished. Weyland all but threw Seeker onto Kelpie's back.

Before she was fairly settled, Kelpie broke into a flying trot, footfalls as light and his knees rising as if racking in the show ring. He threw his head up. Seeker, clutching his mane, turned to call back thanks to the smith--but the forge under the hazel tree was gone, and she couldn't see the outline of the well in the grass.

Kelpie floated on his new-shod hooves. He was behaving himself, so she leaned low over his neck and let him stretch into the gallop.

There wasn't anyplace for them to run to, Seeker and steed: the Blessed Lands were vast but quickly spanned if one knew the proper routes, and the paths to return to the mortal world lay nowhere and everywhere. But there was running for its own sake, and there was a task before her and a rival Queen's Seeker to address. So she knotted her hands in Kelpie's weed-matted mane and threw her weight as high on his withers as she could without a saddle, and they raced through mist and over downs and dales. He snorted once, a sound like a hiss, as she kneed him into a river that ran red and warm between the banks--for all the blood that's spilled on earth runs through the springs of that countrie--but he did not fight her.

Blood-heat swirled around her thighs, staining her leggings and the Kelpie's white hide. I could release him. She tasted the idea for a moment. I could. And then, on the very slim chance that he didn't kill me for having had the temerity to bind him in the first place, I wouldn't have him to use on the Merlin.

Kelpie swam strongly, although the river of blood was no more his element than hers, and brought them safe to the other bank. He clambered up, spattering red across the crisped, sere earth. Seeker did not complain, this time, when a freshet welled from his hide and washed the sticky droplets from them both.

Kelpie snorted and stamped, resting at the top of the bank, and Seeker almost relaxed into the companionable silence of horse and rider--until Kelpie turned his head and fixed her with a cold, sidelong stare. Water welled up like tears in his china-blue eye, tracking the sculptured veins and bones of his muzzle. A chill closed her throat. I am looking my death in the eye.

They stood posed a moment longer, until she brought him around with a hand on his neck and a word in his ear. "Stand steady," she commanded, throwing a leg across his haunches to slide down. He stamped before she was well-clear, but the dinnerplate hoof did not brush her. She patted Kelpie on the shoulder as she might any horse.

"Shall I wait here, Mistress?"

"I'll make my own way home." A risk to let him go. More of a risk to let him overhear. She waited until the clop of his hoofbeats died away and started walking. The moors beyond the river of blood lay silent and smiling in the dim afternoon. Seeker called out, "Seeker of the Unseelie Fae! It is I, the Seeker of the Daoine Sidhe."

Two queens ruled Faerie, a kingdom divided between them. One queen for the dark things, and one for the bright. The elder was the Mebd, the Summer Queen. The younger was the Cat Anna, the Queen of Winter, the White Witch. There had been others, queens and kings of air and darkness, ghosts and shadows: Oonagh, Titania, Oberon, Niamh, Finnvarra.

All were gone.

A cold wind sighed across the moor, flicking the ends of Seeker's hair like snakes' tongues. In this land, the Cat Anna's land, the shadows showed her nothing. Something small, clad in a pointed cap and a layer of filth, scurried into winter-bleak brush. Seeker flexed her fingers, shadows of a cat's claws dancing at the tips. With a conscious effort, she straightened her hands; the talons fled.

"Bold, Sister." Someone unraveled from the shadows under a gorse shrub, uncoiling taller than anything had a right to from such a small hiding place. The woman swayed like a cobra, standing clad only in a deluge of golden bracelets and necklaces and a bright patterned sarong that stood out like blood on black marble against her skin. Rubies glittered in her ears, her nose, her navel. Rows of tiny beadlike scars shiny as drops of sweat covered her breasts, her arms, her forehead.

Seeker thought if she laid a hand on the other's face, she could cut her palm on the bone. "Kadiska," she said, bowing.

The Seeker of the Unseelie came forward. "We are watched," she whispered, bending in a matching bow. Her shadow flared a hood, balanced long and supple, stretching its length into the grass, and then broadened, widened, flaring ears and massive shoulders. "Your skin is cold. I see your fear." Her tongue tasted the air, and she smiled from bottomless eyes.

"It's good to see you."

"And you as well." The other's formal tones fell away. "I heard you bound Kelpie."

"I did." Seeker came forward and laid her hand on Kadiska's arm. "And your own hunting has been rich?"

Kadiska's legends were not Elaine's, and neither of them were the legends of Britain. But stories twine like the web of a spider, taken deep enough. And the Fae had spread their blood wide. The two Seekers might be cousins. Changelings, once taken, were rarely told whom their Faerie ancestors might be, no matter how far removed.

Their Queens were sisters. And enemies born.

"Let us walk," Kadiska said. Her shadow tail-lashed, flattening ears more tufted and longer than those of Seeker's cat-shadow. "Someplace with fewer ears."

She spoke in the language of cats, which is not really speaking, and then she led Seeker along the riverbank until they came to a copse of rowan and thorn. "Here."

A bench perched there, above the river, as if someone might want to take in the vista. Kadiska seated herself and gestured that Seeker do the same. For a long moment, they sat companionably thigh-to thigh and made sure nothing fey was close enough to overhear. Then Kadiska turned with a rustle of gold chains and tilted her head. "Word of your mission travels fast, Sister. I will compete with you."

"I had assumed you would. It's too good to pass up."

"Aye." Kadiska rolled her shoulders. "Of course, our Queens know we will conspire against them. And each other." A musical laugh revealed teeth filed sharp as a snake's.

Seeker laughed too. "It's the nature of bondage. Do you have a starting place?"

Kadiska bent and scooped up a stone, then tossed it into the crimson river. "America," she said. "The previous princes--there has been a general, if erratic, progress Westerly."

"There has?"

She showed Seeker her teeth. "I know of one or two perhaps you don't. You Americans think you invented civilization."

"We invented the Big Mac. That has to be worth something."

"Hegemony isn't civilization." But Kadiska still smiled as she turned away.

#

Not the next day, nor the day after that, Matthew was forced to admit that the spirit-trace had failed. Had not revealed the movements either of the Seeker of the Daoine Sidhe, or of the Seeker of the Unseelie Fae. As if their souls were given into soul-jars. As if they left no trace at all. Hell of a way to find a Merlin, this.

And if I were a modern Merlin, Matthew thought, rising to lock the door of his office after the last of the students left, and I were not already a Promethean Mage, who and where would I be? And what would I be doing with my life?

How is a Merlin different than a Mage, in any case? He paused with his hand on the latch, and shook his head. "Start from a point, Matthew," he said under his breath, and reached up to grab his jacket from the peg upon the wall. "How do we find new Magi? How did Jane find me?"

His office hours weren't technically over for another fifteen minutes, but he didn't glance at the clock as he tugged the door shut behind himself and started down the tiled corridor with his hands stuffed into his pockets. And stopped, suddenly enough that an undergrad stepped on the backs of his shoes. "Dr. S., I'm sorry--"

"If you want to know something, and you don't know where to look it up, who do you ask?" Matthew turned around, looking down at the freckled redheaded girl who had almost run him over. He recognized her from his Critical Theory section, and smiled. "Hypothetically speaking."

She blinked and stepped back, tilting her chin up to meet his eyes. Melissa. Her name was Melissa. "An expert?" she hazarded, uncertainly.

"Say you don't know any experts. Say it's an obscure fact."

"Reference librarian," she said. "Go to the library."

Matthew grinned, and pushed both of his hands through his unbound hair. Echoing his gesture, she tugged on one of the braided pigtails that did nothing to make her seem like a little girl, and lifted an eyebrow hopefully, and something deep in his heart that he'd thought healed--or at least scarred over--broke into fresh blood. "Excellent, Miss Martinchek," he said, and nodded. And turned away quickly, before his queasiness could show in his face. "I'll see you in class, won't I?"

He glanced back over his shoulder to see her standing, frown line between her eyebrows as she watched him walk away, one thumb hooked under the padded strap of her knapsack. Something in her gray-blue eyes snagged his attention and drew it back. That's who we do it for. Smart girls like her.

How do you find a Mage, Matthew? That's how. You look a little more carefully, is all. Whistling now, and telling himself the sound filled the emptiness under his breastbone and made his footsteps light, Matthew let those footsteps lead him to Patience, and to Fortitude.

The streets bustled on a sunny September afternoon as Matthew left Hunter College. He played a game as he walked, reading unreliable futures in the flight of pigeons and the scud of clouds. Anything to distract his mind from worrying over old disappointments. Such a denatured term, disappointments. But Matthew was a Mage, who knew the value of the true meaning of a word. Disappointed in love, disappointed in career, disappointed in one's suit upon a lady--the Victorians had it right.

The Victorians also had brain fever, fates worse than death, and women who were no better than they should be, honesty constrained him to recall. And they did not have Patience and Fortitude. Matthew's footsteps halted at the base of the wide white steps leading up to the main entrance of the New York City Public Library building, where he pushed his spectacles up his nose and nodded left and right. Once at each of the lions crouching in guard by the portals of knowledge.

Patience and Fortitude dated from 1911; no earlier. They had not gained their modern names until the Great Depression. Their true names were no deep secret, though, and Matthew knew a great number of names.

Matthew dug in his breast pocket for the silver flask he carried and climbed the steps until he stood on the south end, dwarfed beside Patience's enormous paw. Ask a librarian. Of course. He spilled a little brandy on his fingers, and dabbed it on the lion's nose, then stretched to touch anointing fingers to its eyes, its breast, its massive gentle paws, and slipped the flask back inside his camouflage jacket, which he zipped to the neck before he bound his hair. "Leo Lenox," he said, and--having glanced over his shoulder to see if he was observed--he leaned forward and blew into Patience's alcohol-scented marble mouth. "In my name, in the name of Matthew Patrick Szczegielniak Magus and all the Angels of God, I command thee: awake."

Almost nothing: a trickle of his own slight strength, no more, and the lion's cold marble eye blinked once. And then once again. Patience--Leo Lenox--was so steeped in love and tradition and the heartbeat of the living city that he was very, very nearly awake already. Very nearly a Genius. All Matthew had done was reach out just a little, and shake his shoulder. :Matthew Patrick Szczegielniak Magus: Patience said, his soft eye tracking Matthew's movements. :You have a question for Me?:

"Leo Lenox, I have," Matthew said, and felt as if the stone under his fingers took on some of the character of coarse black mane. "Warden of knowledge, I come to ask of you a question."

"What is the price if I fail?" He kept his voice low, though the lion's voice boomed in his chest like a drum.

"Will it be answered if I choose not to play at riddles, Leo Lenox?"

"Then ask." Matthew drew a breath, listening closely.

"To the crossroads," Matthew said automatically. And blinked. "Times Square."

:The crossroads of the world: the lion said. :The answer to the question you have not asked is, you must follow the magic and the music to their source, and face what you have lost therein: And once again, the beast was stone.