The crowd began to show some disturbance.

David ran through the staring, disturbed, murmuring, and gesturing crowd, saw an alley mouth and pelted inside, stopping only far enough in amongst the barrels, discarded furniture, and scattered empty beer bottles and general trash to be out of view from the avenue behind him.

At once, he snapped his fingers three times and hissed, "Peddyr Fasakerly!"

The Fenodyree was tardy in his appearance and David, hands trembling slightly from his simmering anger, was on the verge of repeating his call when Fasakerly finally winked into existence.

"Alright, what do you need this time, David?"

As soon as the Fenodyree took in David's expression, his jovial mood evaporated. "What's happened?"

David did not waste time on explanations. "Oh great and wondrous Fenodyree, I'm lost and I'd like to go home!"

Fasakerly instantly snapped his fingers.

The alley did not vanish.

Fasakerly looked startled for a moment, then pressed his lips into a tight line and shook his head. "I can't. You don't have a home. Anywhere."

"Where is she?"

"The magic is silent, so I don't know. Something's wrong." The Fenodyree pointed at David's head. "In there." He pointed at David’s chest. “And in there.”

"She's a fish!"

"Free swimming aquatic ainmhithe, actually. No gills. Breathes air. In that form, she's more like a lizard crossed with a mountain lion. But on the other hand, she’s also like two whole different girls that you can have without cheating at all, and I say what man wouldn’t want that?”

David took a deep breath as he tried to regain control of his thoughts. "You've always known."

"I have. I've known her for eighty odd years. I tried to let you know the first time we met, but she chased me off. I'm not kidding about being afraid of her. I saw her kill and eat someone once. It wasn't pretty."

"You could have told me later. When she wasn’t around."

"It was already too late."

"What do you mean?"

"You'll have to sort that out for yourself. I told you before that I’m not a relationship counselor. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned in all my time around them is that humans don't like to be told things that they already know."

David pressed his lips together. "I need your help to find her. The Tweakers have her."

Fasakerly looked cross-eyed for a moment then shook his head. "Nothing.”

“What does that mean?”

“You want me to say?”

“I asked.”

“She’s dead and her body has been completely destroyed.”

Fasakerly drew back, raised his hands, and started backing up. “Or she’s somewhere that Fenodyree magic can’t go!”

“What magic can go where Fenodyree magic can’t?”

“Nothing.”

“There must be something else!”

Fasakerly shook his head. “There isn’t anything as powerful as Fenodyree magic when it comes to finding.”

Fasakerly tried to hold David’s stare, but failed and his eyes flicked to the side before snapping guiltily back.

“What are you hiding?”

Fasakerly made a face. “It wouldn’t work. I doubt it would work. I’m not sure it’s even possible. She probably wouldn’t do it anyway.”

“Tell me.”

“She told me that she would cut off my nose and make me into a frog from the waist down if I ever told anyone about her. I just found her by accident myself. I was actually looking for someone else entirely.”

David bent down, grabbed Fasakerly by the shoulders, picked him up, and shook him hard, then put him back down.

The Fenodyree looked hurt. “You had a real mean look on your face when you did that. And me thinking you was a friend. That was a direct violation of my personal bodily integrity.”

David started reaching for the Fenodyree again.

Fasakerly raised his hands to ward David off. “I’ll do it.” He looked around to see that no one could overhear — the alley was still empty — gestured for David to bend down, and lowered his voice as he spoke into David’s ear. “The Hag of Afon Corle. She lives way deep in a bog in a swamp in the middle of the marsh. You can’t walk there, fly there, or swim there. She’s totally inaccessible.”

David straightened and shook his head. “Who is she? A druid? A witch?”

“No. Well, not really. Okay, maybe. She’s not human, though, not altogether anyway, and you never know what’s she’s hiding under her clothes. I’m not really sure, to tell the truth, as all Fenodyree always do. But she’s not an ainmhithe. Maybe. She’s something older, something that was here before us. I think she’s the only one left. Maybe there was only ever one or maybe the others all died out or were murdered because of their despicable ways. I don’t know and I’m not going to ask.”

“She can find Alyth?”

“She’s got magic all her own; Hag magic. It does things, lets her know things, but there’s always a price. It’s twisted magic, which is maybe why all the rest of them were wiped out so long ago that humans don’t remember them at all.”

“What’s the price?”

“Blood. If she has your blood she has you. Your eyes are hers and your ears. If she wants it, she’ll take your heart too.”

David shook his head. “What does that mean?”

“She’ll see what you see, hear what you hear, feel what you feel. I think her magic does other things, but I don’t know what.”

“Take me to her.”

The Fenodyree grimaced. “That goes way beyond common Fenodyree gratitude. Being on your side doesn’t mean voluntarily putting my feet, hands, neck, and nether regions in a bear trap. The Hag is a category all to herself. There’s legends about her. Ainmhithes go there and never come back.”

“I’ll take the risk.”

“There’s a lot of risk for me too. I just got a girlfriend. Do you realize how long I’ve been waiting for a girlfriend? Not to mention that the existence of the Fenodyree people depends on me and her to propagate until we go blind. If half of me was a frog, it’d be kinda embarrassing and maybe impossible. And there are expenses. I’d have to be drunk first and every condemned ainmhithe deserves a last meal and I’m not talking about a ham sandwich with the pickles on the side."

“You’re just stalling.”

“Like any rational Fenodyree would do.”

"How much do you want?"

Fasakerly sighed, rolled his eyes, and straightened his coat in final surrender. "Sixpence."

David skipped right to the demand that no Fenodyree could ignore. "Where and when?"

Fasakerly gave a sad shake of his head. “Sixpence in my hand on the day I choose with the usual penalty applied if you fail."

"Name the day."

"The morning after Moon Watch Night."

"Agreed."

“Are you sure about this?”

David stared at the Fenodyree. “No.”

Fasakerly snapped his fingers.

Fasakerly’s bog in the middle of a swamp in the middle of a marsh was not an exaggeration. In every direction, there was nothing but slack, black water, dead reeds rattling in the wind, the broken heads of cattails dangling from their canted stalks, the bleached wood of the denuded, barkless corpses of withered trees that had been overcome and smothered by leprous-looking gray moss, and low hummocks of dingy purple vine-choked earth like the one they were standing on.

“There’s nothing here,” David grated. “I’m not in the mood for Fenodyree games.”

“The hovel is right behind us. I didn’t want to put us facing it. You hear stories. There could be mystical snakes growing from an eldritch, bodiless head that turns a defenseless Fenodyree to stone. You look first.”

David turned around.

Hovel was a loose and overly generous definition. A tight ring of incredibly out-of-place, wide and flat blue standing stones occupied the highest point of the hummock. Over this had been laid a roof of split rails, limbs, reeds, moss, and a few rounded black stones to hold it all in place. Right in front of David and Fasakerly was a person-wide gap in the ring that was blocked by an irregularly shaped door made of driftwood, vines, and the cleaned and yellow skulls of small mammals and birds. The door was simply propped in place in the gap. There were no hinges or latch

David defocused his eyes to bring his second sight into play. The change was dramatic and disturbing. The hovel was enclosed in writhing lines and meshing auras of all colors: the midnight blue of clairvoyance, the weak crimson of Alchemy, the known ainmhithe colors of violet, rose, mauve, and olive, and other shades and hues that David had never encounters.

A jab of sharp pain in the center of his forehead forestalled a liesurely examination. “It’s warded,” he told Fasakerly. “She knows we’re here.”

“I’ll interpret that as your assent to my suggestion that we run like —”

“No. Come on.” David walked the short distance to the door and slapped his hand against the blue standing stone on the right. The door looked like it would fall over if he tried to knock.

The door was shoved aside almost immediately, banging against the standing stone on the left and toppling onto its side where it lodged upright and leaning against the stone.

The flung door forced David to skip out of the way, but he backed up only a single pace and stopped to hold his ground. Fasakerly crept up beside him but made a plain effort to place himself behind David out of the direct line of fire. Not wanting to be taken for a complete stranger that had no business here, David moved slightly to the side to reveal the Fenodyree.

Fasakerly looked comically shocked for a second, then straightened, asserted his Fenodyree dignity, and stepped up to stand beside David. Fasakerly did, however, accuse out of the side of his mouth, “Traitor.”

A bent, shrunken, twisted and, skeletal thin being stood in the doorway. David was not completely sure that it could be called an old woman though he was certain that it was not a man. Her cheeks were gaunt hollows, her eyes milky with cataracts, and her lopsidedly bound hair was thin, graying to white, and scraggly. Her clothing was threadbare, showing holes in crocheted shawl, linen blouse, long linen skirt, and raw wool stockings, but clean except for a number of dark stains of suspicious provenance. She had no shoes and half the bony and grimed toes of her right foot were exposed by a hole where the knit had unraveled. She had a stick, not a walking stick but just a stripped length of cypress limb about three feet long; David would have expected someone that looked like the Hag to carry a stick.

She pointed it first at David. “You I don’t know.”

She had a voice that was a pained rasp and was hardly louder than a hushed whisper.

The Hag swung the stick to bobble in front of Fasakerly’s eyes. “You I do know. I told you not to return.”

The Fenodyree raised his hands placatingly and backed up slowly. “I’m not strictly here under my own accord, per se, but rather compelled under duress to enable the applicant, that would be David here, to arrive upon these premises. In one manner of speaking, I’m actually on the other side of the world altogether.

The Hag swung her stick. ‘Then get to it!”

Fasakerly disappeared before the hard end of the stick, which in terms relative to his diminutive size was on the order of a tree, could make contact his head.

David did not let that rattle him. The Fenodyree would come back when called. Fasakerly had promised to be on his side until the end of time. Fenodyree could not forswear a promise, though they would inevitably attempt to evade and deflect actual unencumbered assistance.

The Hag put the end of the stick on the ground and leaned both hands upon it. David heard joints, or some construction that served a similar purpose, creak and pop.

“I can see what I see,” she told him. “A Rider. A lovesick fool. A man who won’t accept that he should quit. A man that refuses to believe that he can just walk away. What else is there to know?”

“A woman I know has been taken somewhere that Fenodyree magic cannot find her. Her name is Alyth Anwyl and she is also a Rider.” He did hesitate then, but only for a few seconds. “She is also a woman named Gwenhwyvar, the human form of a free Ceasg. She was adjured and is held captive by people that have threatened to kill her. Tell me where she is.”

The Hag snorted. “Love makes humans weak. Weakness makes them stupid. I don’t dispense facts. I hoard them.”

David did not hesitate again. “I’ll pay.”

The Hag laughed, a scary, contemptuous, and dismissive sound that echoed back from the surrounding bog. “What do you have that I should want, Rider who has Ceasg blood and who both loves and fears to love an ainmhithe?”

“Name it,” David said. “I’ll get it for you.”

The Hag laughed again, throwing her head back to have a good belly laugh.

“Anything,” David said.

The Hag sobered quickly and turned her black, filmy eyes upon him, her lips twisted into a predatory smile. “Two drops of blood. One yours. One the child’s. Freely given.”

“You can have two drops of mine.”

“This isn’t a bargain, boy. The price is the price.”

David stood still for a moment. “What will you do with the child’s blood?”

“Blood is power. Blood is knowledge. Blood is strength.”

She watched him and showed him a mouth full of black teeth; that was not a smile. Her expression was both contemptuous and cruel.

“How can I pay you the blood of an unborn child.” That was a statement, not a question.

The Hag twisted her shoulders and rocked the head of her stick back and forth. “By midnight of the day that the child draws its first breath, you will bring me a drop of blood taken from its right eye. Fail and all of the child’s blood is forfeit.”

David did not think, he did not choose, he just showed her the palm of his right hand.

The Hag’s right hand, more of a five-lobed claw with talons than a human hand, whipped out, and one of her needle-sharp nails pierced the flesh of his palm. Blood flowed, and she twisted her hand to scoop up a single glistening red bead. The blood faded into her wrinkled, pale flesh at once.

David drew back his hand, which stung as if he had been injected with venom. “Where is Alyth?”

The Hag showed him her teeth again. “She is beyond life and beyond death. Where she is only those that know the way can go. You can get there, but you cannot go alone.”

David glared. “I bought a place, not a riddle. Tell me where she is.”

“The place has no name. Her prison is not made with magic. I cannot tell you how to get there. The journey can only be made once. If you look, you cannot find her, but if you find her, you can save her. Fail to find her before Moon Watch Night and she will surely die. Find her too soon and nothing that you cherish will survive.”

The Hag started swinging her stick viciously in front of her, advancing to drive him back. “Leave! By the time I shut my door, the gators will come for you. Try to annoy me again and they will crunch your bones!”

The Hag flipped the sideways door up with the end of her stick without apparent effort, caught it deftly in her free hand, swung it upright as she backed up into her hovel, and finally dropped it in place as an inarguable statement of dismissal.

With a thrash of disturbed water and the gouging sound of massive claws tearing through sandy earth, alligators of all sizes from a few feet to a monster more than six yards long came from the swamp and started to make their determined, purposeful way towards David.