"Soon," warns the Fair Lady. She nods, and Her chair turns to face the door. The nora chitters and approaches the doorway, jumping and skittering about in front of it like a gargoyle coffee table come to life. The others face the doorway as well, even the midwife standing, her knitting needles poised. The cloth drapes the fire, which smolders. One pleading tendril of smoke escapes but withers as it flees. The darkness is almost total. Two doors fly open at once.

One instant, Daniel was leaping into a tapes tried and carpeted room, flinging himself to his brother's aid. Then, in midbreath, he was falling. "Coachman! Lead us back!" he cried out, pleading. But no one answered.

He fell into darkness, and following the gun's roar;he thought he had been hit, struck blind, and was falling to the floor. But there was no pain, and there was no floor, there was nothing, only the darkness and the falling. I should be frightened, he thought,but he wasn't. He'd been through too much in the last twenty-four hours, perhaps all his fear was used up. He sensed the finality of the confrontation to come. He had waited for it, lived for it for so long that the anticipation had eroded his feelings. Nothing was there but numbness and a small sense of relief in knowing it had begun; no matter how it ended, it would now, at least for a time, end.

Besides, there was the music.

For a while, the music had been part of the darkness, but now it ventured out in separate strands, fine as horsehair, glowing like frost in the moonlight. All the music he had ever drawn from his fiddle floated about him in shining strands and snatches, clinging as cobwebs, catching at him as he fell, slowing his descent, cradling him in a silver hammock of sound.

When he fell no longer, when his music had caught and stilled him, Daniel found he could stand. He walked through the emptiness on the web of his notes, clever as a spider, and each strand sounded to the slide of his feet; each strand sweet and shining in the darkness. Somewhere, the others followed him.

The music led him as it had all the years of his life.He had always felt it was not a thing he created or possessed, but an elusive phouka of sound that he chased, always a few notes behind the perfect song in his mind. Now it lured and guided him through the darkness, beckoning, taking him around unseen corners, up flights of tune and through corridors like familiar refrains. Twice he sensed something chill and hungry lurking in the darkness, but both times his music swirled up and concealed him.

And then he came to a place where the music faltered, where the shining web of sound became no more than a tightrope, and even that was first thick and awkward and then thin and frail beneath him.He hesitated. This was not his music, and yet it was.It puzzled him. He stooped to touch it, then followed it, smoothing it as he went, weaving it up on his way,plaiting the notes together into harmonies, and the harmonies into an old familiar ballad about three wandering brothers.

There was light growing around him, and he looked down from a great height, to where a young girl clasped a fiddle and doggedly drew a bow across its strings, torturing sound out of it. It was his own fiddle, crying out to him. Forgetting the others, he clambered down its plaintive wail, feeling himself grow more substantial with every step. His instrument seemed to sense his coming, for suddenly the notes came sweet and true, and he was there, stepping down into a room of grey stone, where Lore lei drew a single pure note from the fiddle and an old woman sat watching and nodding.

"Daniel!" she cried out at the sight him, and nearly dropped the bow, but, "Play, play," said the old woman. "Play as if your lives depend upon it. All depends on the music. Play!" The old woman drew a tortoiseshell comb through her long hair as she spoke. She shook the strands free of it, glared at them, and again ran the comb through her hair.

He stepped up behind Lore lei, positioned his arms around her. The crown of her head came just to the hollow of his throat. "Almost," he thought, "I could tuck her under my chin and play her as she plays my fiddle." Her hair smelled sweet. He set one hand on the neck of the fiddle, his fingers falling unerringly upon the strings. The other covered her hand on the bow. Her fingers relaxed. He led her into the music gently, and as he guided her, he shared with her the very days of his life and the beats of his heart. He knew he should be thinking of the Fair Lady and his brothers; his weapons would be needed. But for now he wove the music around them, cloaking them from all but this moment, sheltering them from harm.

The blackout hit sudden as a knife blade, and just as threatening. "Ed!" Stepovich yelled in useless warning as he threw himself down. He expected to hear the gun go off over his head, and as he fell he was watching for the muzzle flash that would let him target Timmy. It seemed to take forever for his outstretched palms to meet the floor. The instant they did, a sick dread washed through him.

Stone. Cold dank stone, almost slimy there in the crack. No thick cushioning of carpet, no hardwood floor. Stone. But the air he breathed was warm, almost stifling. Wherever he was, it wasn't where he'd been an instant ago. "Ed!" he shouted again, and thought he heard a muffled answer. Around him in the darkness, there was scrabbling and scuffling of feet against stone, the rustle of clothing, grunts as people struggled to their feet. He wasn't alone.

A flashlight beam lit up in the darkness. Durand's. The kid was thinking fast, but not fast enough. Instead of holding the flashlight out at arm's length, he was holding it right in front of him, chest-high, as he scanned the room, like a beacon to lead a bullet to his chest. He was cradling his injured arm against his belly. Another light appeared, off to the side, uneven and flickering. That would be Ed's pipe-lighter, the butane turned up high. Its ghost light was not enough to illuminate, only enough to hint at shapes in the room.

Stepovich was still on his knees, struggling up,when the flashlight hit Timmy like a spotlight. Timmy spun toward it, in evident panic, his pistol moving with him. Lights, action, camera, and Stepovich watched as Timmy's trigger finger moved.

Stepovich was still on one knee, the other foot flat on the floor, ready to rise and, in the flicker of Ed's lighter, or in the reflected beams of the flashlight, or in Stepovich's imagination, he could see Durand, and it was the look on Durand's face that did him. The kid looked down the muzzle of the pistol and grimaced. A showing of teeth, somewhere between daring death to come and get him, and a sheepish grin at how dumb he'd been. A kid's face. The injured arm was still seeping blood.

Stepovich drove down hard, pushing himself up and off, shooting toward Timmy like a sprinter off the blocks. His body was moving fast, but his mind was light years ahead of him. He could see it all as it would happen, predict it all. He already knew it was too late; the idea was to get control of the man before he fired. And this wasn't that. No.

His right hand fell heavy on Timmy's shoulder, his left gripped Timmy's wrist and gun hand and forced it up. It was supposed to go all the way up, so the gun would go off over Stepovich's shoulder; he was already braced for the blast of sound by his ear.

But the muzzle was still pointing at him when it went off. Flash and stench of powder. Blow like a rabbit punch, one that didn't stop but went right through meat and bone and whatever else was in there. Just that suddenly, there was no strength in his arms or legs. He dropped. He waited for the pain,waited, it's coming, gonna getcha, Stepovich, you dumb old cop, trying to pull a fast kid's trick like that. Ed's gonna yell at you, listen, he's starting already,screaming, and is this really how you planned to end your days, in some nightmare dungeon?