As soon as they emerged from the wood, the land, even the air, seemed to change before them. Tir na n'Og had been bright and sunny and filled with springtime scents and chattering birds, but out here, beyond the forest, the land lay in perpetual gloom. Fog hung low on the dirt roads, human-crafted roads, and along the rolling farmlands and small unadorned stone-and-thatch cottages.

Fields, bordered by hedgerows and rock walls, rolled up and down the hilly region, thick with grass and thick with sheep and cattle. Copses of trees spotted the landscape, some standing in lines like silent sentinels, others huddled in thick but small groups, plotting privately. By all logical measures, it was a beautiful countryside, but it was shrouded in melancholy, as if the gloom was caused by more than the simple mist.

"Watch yer footing," the leprechaun offered to Gary.

Gary didn't seem to understand; the road ran straight and level.

"Ye're not wanting to step into the heeland coo left-behinds," Mickey explained.

"Heeland coo?" Gary asked.

"A great hairy and horned beast," Mickey replied. Gary glanced around nervously.

"All the farmers keep them," Mickey went on, trying to calm him. "They're not a dangerous sort - unless ye set to bothering them. Some o' the lads go in to tip them over when they're sleeping, and some o' the coos don't take well to that."

"Tip them?" Now Gary was starting to catch on, and he was not overly surprised when Mickey pointed up to a distant field, to a shaggy-haired brown cow grazing contentedly. Gary rolled Mickey's description over in his thoughts a few times.

"Highland cow," he said at length.

"Aye, that's what I said," answered Mickey. "Heeland coo. And ye've not seen a left-behind to match the droppings of a heeland coo!"

Gary couldn't bite back his chuckle. Mickey and Kelsey exchanged curious looks, and Kelsey led them off.

Whatever romantic thoughts remained to Gary of the forest Tir na n'Og or the melancholy countryside were washed away an hour later by the harsh reality of mud-filled Dilnamarra. To the unsuspecting visitor, the change came as dramatically as the shift that had brought him to the land of Faerie in the first place, as if his dream, or whatever it was, had taken a sidelong turn, an undoubtedly wrong turn.

A square stone tower set on a grassy hill dominated the settlement, with dozens of squat stone shacks, some barely more than open lean-tos clustered in the tower's shadow. Pigs and scrawny cows ran freely about the streets, their dung mixing with the cart-grooved mud and their stench just one more unpleasant ingredient in the overwhelming aroma.

People of all ages wandered about, hunched and as dirty and smelly as the animals.

"Pick me up, lad," Mickey said to Gary. Gary looked down to see not the leprechaun, but a small human toddler where Mickey had been standing. Gary studied the toddler curiously for a moment, for the youngster held his book.

"Look through it, I telled ye!" the toddler said somewhat angrily when Gary gave him a confused look. Gary peered closer, reminded himself who should be standing beside him and not to believe what his eyes were showing him. Then he saw Mickey again, behind the façade, and he nodded and scooped the leprechaun into his arms.

"I caught you," Gary whispered, smiling.

"Are ye to start with that nonsense again?" Mickey asked, and the leprechaun, too, was wearing a grin. "I'm yer brother, lad, for any what's asking. Ye just hope that none o' the folks see through me disguise as ye have done. Suren then Kelsey's sword'll be cutting man flesh this day."

Gary's smile disappeared. "Kelsey wouldn't," he said unconvincingly.

"The Tylwyth Teg have fallen out of favor with the men about," Mickey said. "Kelsey's here only for reasons of his life-quest; he has not a care, one way or th'other, for the wretches of Dilnamarra. Woe to any that get in Kelsey's way."

Gary looked back to Kelsey, worried that Mickey's prophecy would come true. Where would Gary stand in such a fight? he wondered. He owed no loyalty to Kelsey, or even to Mickey. If the elf took arms against people of Gary's own race...

Gary shook the dark thoughts away, reminding himself to play through this experience one step at a time.

Every pitiful inhabitant of Dilnamarra turned out to see the strange troupe as they passed along the dung-filled streets. In this town, Gary was no more akin to the wretches as was Kelsey, for he carried no scars of disease, no open sores, and his fingers were not blackened by years of muddy labors. Angry glares came at them from every corner of every hut, and beggars, some limping, but most crawling in the mud, moved to block their way with a tangle of trembling crooked fingers and skin-and-bone, dirt-covered arms.

Gary held his breath as Kelsey reached the first of this group, deciding at that moment that he wouldn't let the elf strike the pitiful man down; if Kelsey's sword came out, then Gary would tackle him, or punch him, or do whatever he could to prevent the massacre. Not that he gave himself any chance of surviving against the grim elf - he just could not sit back and watch helplessly.

It never came to that, though, for Mickey's estimate of Kelsey proved to be a bit exaggerated. The elf obviously didn't appreciate the interference, but his sword did not move an inch out of his scabbard. Kelsey simply slapped the reaching hands aside and continued straight ahead, never looking the beggars in the eye. The wave of wretches did not relent, though. They swept along behind the strangers, groaning and crawling to keep pace.

Mickey, too, avoided the pleading gazes, nestling deep in Gary's clutch and closing his eyes. It was a common sight to the leprechaun, one to which he had long ago numbed his sensibilities.

Gary saw the beggars, though, could not block them out, and their desperate state stung him in the heart. He had never seen such poverty; where he grew up, poor meant that your car was more than ten years old. And dirty was the term Gary used to describe his appearance after a day at the plastics shop. Somehow, looking at these people, his usage of that term now seemed very out of place.

If this, then, was Gary's fantasy, his "twilight fancy," as that Mr. Peter Beagle had described it in the introduction toThe Hobbit, then in Gary's eyes, the light around reality was suddenly burning a bit brighter.

The crowd dispersed as Kelsey neared the stone keep. Two grim-faced guards stood at either side of its single, iron-bound door, and the glares they shot at the trailing lines of beggars were filled with utter contempt.

"The heights of royalty," Gary heard Mickey mutter softly.

Crossed pikes intercepted Kelsey as he neared the door. He stopped to regard the guards for a moment.

"I am Kelsenel..."

"We know who ye are, elf," one of the guards, a stout, bearded man, said roughly.

"Then let me pass," Kelsey replied. "I have business with your Baron."

"It's on 'is order that we're keepin' ye here," the guard answered. "Stand yer ground now, an' keep behind the spears."

Kelsey looked back at Gary and Mickey, his expression hinting at explosive anger.

"I'd thought the arrangements made," Gary said, or at least it appeared as though Gary had said it. In truth it was Mickey, using ventriloquism to keep up his toddler façade.

"As did I," Kelsey replied, understanding the leprechaun's trick. "I spoke with Baron Pwyll just a week ago. He was more than willing to agree, thinking that the reforging of Donigarten's spear during his reign would assure his name in the bard's tales."

"Then another has spoken with him," Mickey said through Gary, cutting off Gary's own forthcoming response. Gary gave Mickey a stern look to tell him that he didn't appreciate being used this way, but Mickey continued his conversation with Kelsey without missing a beat.

"Who wishes ye stopped?" the leprechaun asked.

Kelsey shook his head to dismiss the possibility, but he, too, was beginning to have his concerns. They hadn't even really yet begun their journey, and they had already run into two unforeseen obstacles.

The iron-bound door creaked open and a cleaner and better-dressed guard appeared. He whispered a short exchange with the other two, then beckoned for Kelsey and company to enter the keep.

The hazy sunlight disappeared altogether when the heavy door closed behind them, for the one window in the ground level of the squat tower was too tiny to admit more than a crack of light. Burning torches were set in the four corners, their shadowy flickers giving spooky dimension to the tapestries lining all the walls, morbid depictions of bloody, smoke-filled battles.

Across from the door, in a gem-studded throne, sat the Baron, wearing clothes that had once been expensive, but had worn through in several places. He was a big, robust man, with a bristling beard and an expressive mouth that could equally reflect jollity and outrage. Behind him stood two unremarkable guards and a lean figure carrying the mud of the road on his weathered cloak. This man's hood was up, but back enough for Gary to see his matted black hair and suspicious, darting eyes. He wore a dagger on his thick belt, and his hand rested on it as though that was where his hand always rested.

Gary followed Mickey's stare to the side of the throne, to an empty stone pedestal and an iron stand.

"So says King Kinnemore," Mickey said derisively under his breath, and Gary realized that the empty pedestal had probably been the resting place for the armor and spear. Kelsey, too, seemed less than pleased, focusing more on the pedestal and the road-worn figure behind the Baron than on Pwyll himself.

The elf kept his composure, though. He walked proudly up to the throne and fell to one knee in a low respectful bow.

"My greetings, Baron Pwyll," Kelsey said. "As arranged in our previous meeting, I have returned."

Pwyll looked back, concerned, to the cloaked figure, then to Kelsey. "Things have changed since our last meeting," he said.

Kelsey stood up, fierce and unblinking.

"Our good Prince Geldion here - long live the King - " (there was something less than enthusiastic about the way Pwyll said those words) "has brought word that the armor and spear of Cedric Donigarten are not to leave my possession."

"I have your word," Kelsey argued.

Pwyll's eyes flashed with helpless anger. "My word has been overruled!" he retorted. The Baron's guards bristled behind him, as though expecting some sudden trouble.

Prince Geldion did not try to hide his superior smile.

"Are you a puppet to Kinnemore, then?" Kelsey dared to ask.

Pwyll's eyes flashed with anger.

"Oh, begorra," Gary heard himself moan.

Pwyll jumped up threateningly from his seat, but Kelsey did not blink and the blustery Baron soon settled back. Pwyll could not refute Kelsey's insult at that time, in these circumstances.

"Where is yer edict, good Baron," Mickey said through Gary. Gary looked down angrily, but the toddler appeared fast asleep and did not return his stare.

Pwyll's angry glare fell over Gary. "And who are you, who speaks unannounced and without my permission?" he demanded.

"Gar - " Gary started, but Mickey's thrown voice cut him short.

"The armor wearer, I be!" Gary heard himself proclaim, and he wondered why no one noticed that his lips were not moving in synch with the words. Or were they? It was all too confusing.

"He who will fulfill the prophecies, come from distant lands," Mickey's ventriloquism went on. "The spear carrier to look a dragon in the eye! A warrior who will not return until the legends and me task are complete. So where be yer edict, I say? And what King dares to stand against prophecies of Sir Cedric Donigarten's own wizards?"

Pwyll sat in absolute disbelief for a moment, his mouth hanging open, and Gary thought the man would surely kill him for his outburst. But then a great blast of laughter erupted from the large man's mouth. He held an open hand behind him, to the Prince, and was given a rolled parchment, tied with the purple ribbons that served as the exclusive seal of King Kinnemore.

"And your name, good Sir Warrior?" Pwyll inquired through a grin.

A long moment of silence passed and Mickey nudged his carrier. "Gary," Gary replied hesitantly, expecting to be interrupted at any moment. "Gary Leger."

Pwyll scratched his thick beard. "And where did you say you came from?"

"From Bretaigne, beyond Cancarron Mountains," Mickey's voice answered. Both the Baron and the Prince appeared to catch the abrupt change in accent, but the Prince seemed to care more about it than did Pwyll.

"Well, Gary Leger from Bretaigne," Pwyll said. "Here is my edict, from King Kinnemore himself." He untied and unrolled the parchment and cleared his throat.

"To Baron Pwyll of Dilnamarra Keep," he began regally, articulating carefully in the proper language of royalty. "Be it known that I, King Kinnemore, have heard on good authority that the armor and spear of Cedric Donigarten, our most esteemed hero, will soon go out from Dilnamarra Keep on an expedition that might surely bring its destruction. Therefore, by my word - and my word is law - you are not to release the artifacts from your possession." Pwyll blinked and smoothed the parchment suddenly, as though it had in it a crease he had not noticed before.

"...unless you, in your esteemed judgment, determine that said artifacts are given into the proper hands as spoken of in the prophecies." Pwyll blinked again in amazement, and before he could react, Prince Geldion reached down to tear the parchment from his grasp.

Pwyll resisted, though, and he held the parchment up for the Prince to see. "Below the fold," he instructed, his voice reflecting confusion as profound as that marked on Geldion's face. "I did not see the fold before, nor the clause."

The Prince's lips moved as he read the words - words he, too, had not seen before.

"Right above your own father's signature," Pwyll said pointedly. "Well, that does put things in a different light, I say."

"What treachery is this?" Prince Geldion demanded, starting at Kelsey and Gary. He stopped before he ever rounded the throne, however, for though his hand remained on the hilt of his belted dagger, Kelsey's had now gone to his fine elven sword. Geldion had heard enough tales of the Tylwyth Teg to know better than continue his futile threat.

"What treachery?" he said again, this time spinning on the Baron.

Pwyll shrugged and laughed at him. "Get the armor," he instructed his guards. "Put it on Gary Leger of Bretaigne. Let us see how it fits."

"The armor is not to leave Dilnamarra Keep," Geldion protested.

"Except by my own judgment," Pwyll calmly replied. "So says your own father. You remember him, do you not?"

"There is some magic here!" Geldion protested. "That was not in the edict; I penned it myself... under my father's word," he added quickly, seeing the suspicious stares coming at him from all directions.

"Magic?" Mickey's voice, through Gary, quickly put in. "Me good Baron o' Dilnamarra. A stranger I am to yer lands, but was it not by yer own King's edict that magic be declared an impossible thing? A tool of traitors and devil-chasers, did yer King Kinnemore not say? It may be that I've heard wrong, but I came across the mountains thinking that I'd left all thoughts o' magic behind."

"No," answered Baron Pwyll, "you have not heard wrong. There is no magic in Dilnamarra, nor anywhere else in Kinnemore Kingdom, so proclaimed King Kinnemore." He looked wryly at Geldion. "Unless the Prince is privy to more than the rest of us."

"You tread along dangerous shores, Baron Pwyll!" Geldion roared, and he crumpled the parchment and stuck it in his cloak pocket. "Hold the armor, I say, until the King may address the situation."

"We have a deal," Kelsey interrupted, his golden eyes boring into Geldion's dark orbs. "I shall not delay my given quest in the week it will take a messenger to get to Connacht, and the week it will take him to return. You have the edict of your King," he said to Pwyll. "Do you find this Gary Leger fit to bear the weight of the prophecies?"

"The armor first," Pwyll said, giving Kelsey a wink. "Then I will give my decision."

Outraged beyond words, Prince Geldion kicked the empty pedestal, then limped out of the chamber.

"You really expect me to walk around in this suit?" Gary asked as the attendants fit the heavy, overlapping plates and links of metal onto his chest. His legs were already encumbered by the mail and he felt certain that when they were finished with him he would weigh half a ton.

"The weight is well distributed," Kelsey answered. "You will become comfortable in the suit soon enough - once your weak muscles grow strong under its burden."

Gary flashed an angry glare the elf's way but held his thoughts silent. He was twice Kelsey's weight and no doubt much stronger than the elf, and he didn't appreciate Kelsey's insults, particularly when the elf wore a finely crafted suit of thin chain links, much lighter and more flexible than the bulky armor of Cedric Donigarten.

"Cheer up, lad," Mickey offered. "Ye'll be glad enough o' the weight the first time the mail turns a goblin's sword or a troll's weighty punch!"

"How I am supposed to keep taking this off and putting it back on if we're going to be out on the road for days?" Gary reasoned. "You can't expect me to sleep in it."

"The first time is the most difficult for fitting the armor," Kelsey explained. "Once the attendants have properly designed the padded undersuit, you will be able to strip and don the armor much more quickly."

"Yeah," Mickey snickered. "Only an hour or two for the lot of it. Kelsey and meself will hold back any foes 'til ye're ready."

Gary was beginning to appreciate Mickey's sarcasm less and less.

"It is finished," one of the attendants announced. "Shield and helmet are over there." He pointed to the wall, where several shields and helmets lay in a pile. "You will have to see the Baron if you desire the spear."

It was not difficult to determine which items in the jumble matched the decorated armor, for only one shield bore the griffon-clutching-spear insignia of dead King Cedric, and only one helmet, edged in beaten gold and plumed with a single purple feather from some giant bird, could appropriately cap the decorated suit.

Mickey picked out the helmet right away, and as the attendants left the room, it came floating from the pile, hovering near Gary's face. Gary reached out to take it, but his attempt was lumbering at best and the leprechaun easily levitated the helmet up and out of his reach.

Again, Gary glared at the leprechaun, but it was Kelsey that put an end to Mickey's antics.

"You wear the guise of a human child, but still you act the fool," Kelsey growled. "If the Baron or the Prince were to enter now, how might we explain your trick? There is no magic here, they say, unless it is magic spawned in Hell. They burn witches in Dilnamarra."

Mickey snapped his fingers and the helmet dropped. Gary, his hands on hips and his arms weighted in metal, could not react quickly enough to get out of the way, or to block the descent. The helmet thumped onto his head and slipped down over his ears, settling backwards on the armor's steel collar. Gary teetered, dazed, and Mickey's voice sounded distant, hollow.

"Catch him, elf!" the leprechaun cried. "Suren if he falls we'll be needing six men to pick him up!"

Kelsey's slender fingers wrapped around Gary's wrist and he jerked the young man straight. Gary reached for the helmet, but Kelsey beat him to it, roughly turning it about so that the man might see. Gary felt as if he was sporting a stewing pot on his head, with a small slit cut out in front for viewing. The helmet was quite loose - Gary wondered just how big this Cedric Donigarten's head actually was! - but better loose than tight, he figured.

"You look the part of a king," Kelsey remarked. Gary took it as a compliment until the elf finished the thought. "But you, too, act the part of a fool." He handed Gary the huge and heavy shield and moved back to join the leprechaun. Gary slipped his arm into the shield's belt and, with some effort, lifted it from the floor. It was wide at the top, tapering to a rounded point at the bottom - to set it in the ground, Gary realized - and more than half Gary's height.

"Baron Pwyll will have to agree," Kelsey said to Mickey. "The suit fits properly in body if not in stature."

Tired of the insults and wanting to make a point (and also wanting to give his already weary arm a break), Gary dropped the shield tip to the floor. Unfortunately, instead of clanging defiantly on the stone, as Gary had planned, it came to rest on top of his foot.

Gary bit his lip to keep from screaming, glad for the masking helmet.

Kelsey just shook his head in disbelief and walked past the armored man and out of the room, back to see Baron Pwyll.

"Ye'll get used to it," Mickey offered hopefully, giving Gary a wink as he followed Kelsey.

"The Lady will gives usses gifts, eh?" a big goblin croaked in Geek's face.

"Many gifts," Geek replied, bobbing his head stupidly. "M'lady Ceridwen wantses usses not to hurts the elf, but stops them, we will!"

The big goblin joined in the head-bobbing, his overgrown canines curling grotesquely around his saliva-wetted lips. He looked around excitedly at the host behind him, and they began wagging their heads and slapping each other.

"No like," said another of the band. "Too far from mountains. Too much peoples here. No like."

"You no like, you goes back!" Geek growled, moving right up to the dissenter. The big, toothy goblin moved to support Geek and all the others fanned out around them, clutching their crude spears and clubs tightly.

"Did Lady send usses?" the dissenter asked bluntly. "Did Lady tells Geek to kill 'n' catch?"

Geek started to retort, but the big goblin rushed to Geek's defense, stepping in front of Geek and cutting his reply short.

"Geek know what Lady Ceridwen wantses!" the brute declared, and he curled up his crooked fist and punched the dissenter square in the mouth.

The smaller goblin fell over backwards but was caught by those closest to him and hoisted roughly back to his feet. He stood swaying, barely conscious, but, with typical goblin stubbornness and stupidity, managed to utter, "No like."

The words sent the already excited band into a sudden and vicious frenzy. The big goblin struck first, slamming his huge forearm straight down on the dissenter's head. This time, the smaller goblin did fall to the ground, and those around him, rather than support him, fell over him, jabbing with their spears and hammering with their clubs. The fallen goblin managed a few cries of protest, a few pitiful squeaks, which quickly turned to blood-choked gurgles.

The band continued to beat him long after he was dead.

"Geek know what Lady Ceridwen wantses!" the big goblin declared again, and this time, not a single voice spoke against him. The host respectfully circled Geek to hear his forthcoming commands.

"They goes in town," Geek explained. "But come out soon, they will. Lady says they goes to mountains. We catches them on road in trees; catches elf and killses humans."

The other goblins wagged their fat heads and hooted their agreement, banging their spears and clubs off trees and rocks, or the goblins standing beside them, or against anything else they could find.

Convincing goblins to "kill 'n' catch" was never a very difficult thing to do.

Gary did find the armor growing more comfortable as he loped along beside Mickey on the road leading east out of Dilnamarra. The suit was also surprisingly quiet, considering that more than half of it was of metal and it hadn't been used in centuries.

They had set right out from the keep after Baron Pwyll had tentatively agreed, over Prince Geldion's vehement protests, that they could take the artifacts. The sunlight was fading fast even then, but Kelsey would not wait for the next morn, not with the Prince so determined to stop him and the Baron caught in a dilemma that might soon lead him to second thoughts. Now the sun had dipped below the horizon, and the usual wafting mist off the southern moors had come up, drifting lazily across the road, obscuring their vision even further.

Kelsey would not relent his pace, though, despite Mickey's constant grumbling.

"We should've stayed the night in the keep," the leprechaun said repeatedly. "A warm bed and a fine meal would've done us all the good."

Gary remained silent through it all, sensing that Kelsey was on the verge of an explosion. Finally, after perhaps the hundredth such complaint from Mickey, the elf turned back on him sharply.

"We never would have gotten out of Dilnamarra Keep if we had stayed the night!" he scolded. "Geldion meant to stop us and he had more than one guard at his disposal."

"He'd not have gone against us openly," Mickey argued. "Not in Pwyll's own keep."

"Perhaps not," Kelsey conceded. "But he might have convinced Pwyll to hold us until the matter of the edict was properly settled. I applaud your actions in the audience chamber, leprechaun, but the illusionary script would not have fooled them forever."

"Don't ye be thinking too highly of humans," Mickey replied, then he cleared his throat, embarrassed, as the insulted Gary turned on him.

But the events in the keep had left Gary quite confused, and he had too many questions to worry about Mickey's unintentional affront. "What illusionary script?" he asked Kelsey.

"Ye see what I'm saying?" Mickey snickered, throwing a wink Kelsey's way.

Now even Kelsey managed a smile. "The Prince did pen the edict, by his own admission," the elf explained to Gary. "Mickey simply added a few words."

Gary turned his incredulous stare on the smug leprechaun.

"And that fact make us outlaws," Kelsey continued, more to Mickey than Gary. "The road is now our sanctuary, and the more distance we put between ourselves and Prince Geldion, the better our chances."

"Yerchances, ye mean," Mickey muttered.

Kelsey let it go. For all the leprechaun's complaining, the elf could not deny Mickey's value to the quest. Without Mickey's illusions, Kelsey would never have gotten the armor and spear out of Dilnamarra Keep.

"Three more hours, then we may rest," the elf said, picking up the leather case that held the ancient spear. The weapon had been broken almost exactly in half and the pieces were laid side by side, but the case was still nearly as tall as Kelsey.

Gary was more than a little curious to view the legendary weapon - only Kelsey had seen it back at the keep - but he did not press the elf at that time. He hoisted the heavy shield and unremarkable spear he had been given and trudged off after Kelsey.

Mickey stood alone for a few moments, kicking at a rock with one curly-toed shoe. "Ye landed yerself in it deep this time, Mickey McMickey," he said quietly, and then he shrugged helplessly and tagged along.