by C. E. Murphy
“Primitive?” he asked flatly, and since that was the word I hadn’t been going to use, I gave a jerky nod. “I could not return to Tir na nOg to fetch this when you stole mine, and was obliged to use the broadsword as the only blade available to me in your world. As for this, Nuada of the Silver Hand is disinclined to present the careless with new gifts, and so this is the first sword he made for me, so long ago to name the number of years would be meaningless. The rapier was the second, fashioned at my plea for a weapon of more…”
“Elegance,” I whispered. The rapier was elegant, and suited Cernunnos’s clean, almost alien lines beautifully. So did the brutal short sword, but it made him a different manner of creature entirely. With the rapier and his silver horse, he was dangerous seduction; with the short sword, he was just dangerous, a wild god barely constrained by the shape of his calling.
I met his eyes again, found green fire burning there, and felt color suffuse my face. A smile curved his beautifully shaped mouth, and I knew all over again that it would be too easy to forget the world and join the Hunt forever. I could live in that fiery gaze, and never care that I’d have to die to do so. Seduction didn’t have to be elegant to be effective.
Cernunnos lifted his fingertips from the blade and turned them up in a smooth, inviting curl. Another of Suzanne’s futures flashed through my thoughts, a future where, reckless creature that I was, I stepped forward and put my hand in the god’s. My power in that future rivaled his, taking me beyond humanity and the constraints put on me by my Makers. I was bound to my world just as Cernunnos was bound to Tir na nOg. Partnered together, we rode from his world to mine at will, sowing dissent like the agents of chaos we were. The Hunt rode with us, collecting the souls of those who followed old faith and older magic, and in time the child we made together battered down the walls between all the worlds. Then we were free indeed, riding to the end of the universe, hounds and rooks crying at our sides. It was beautiful, that future: beautiful and free and cold.
“Familiar temptation, my lord master of the Hunt.” I took a step back, not without regret. “I’m sorry, but no.”
He kept his hand extended, green fire in his eyes ablaze with undeterred hope. “A shaman is a trickster, Siobhán Walkingstick. Tricksters are things of chaos, as am I. Your path lies close to mine. Walk it with me.”
“Order and learning and lessons come from trickster stories, Horned God.” I wished I knew his real name, less to pull rank as to even the playing field. Honorifics were fine and well meant, but he had no compunction against pulling out Siobhán when there were no ears to overhear us. It only seemed fair that I should be able to return the favor.
Life, as it turned out, wasn’t fair. “You ride and collect the souls of the dead. It’s my job to make sure there are a few every year you don’t get to take home just yet. It turned out differently in some other future, some other past. That’s going to have to be your consolation prize. Now.” I wet my lips. “I’m sure it’s arrogant to make demands of a god, but can we stop dancing around and get to the main event?”
“So far from home, and still so bold.” Cernunnos rose from his oaken throne and walked a lazy circle around me, taking in the necklace and bracelet and shield I wore. The latter had retreated to its natural form sometime during the wild ride to Tir na nOg, and was simply a purple heart medal pinned to my sweater. The rapier was on my hip, worn like it belonged there, and the god’s gaze lingered on it. “I’ll have that back from thee, shaman, should you lose this battle.”
“If I lose I’ll have bigger problems than you wanting your pointy stick back.”
He quirked an ashy eyebrow and shrugged agreement. “Put these things aside, Siobhán. Here, in my home, in my court, you’re far removed from the magic of your world, and the threads that bind you to your lifeless doll are thin. They must be severed, and that I cannot do when you carry tokens of battle.”
My hand fell to the rapier’s hilt and tightened there. “What exactly are you going to do?” That would’ve been a good question to ask before I joined the Hunt. Someday I’d learn to do these things in the right order. Today, however, was not that day.
Cernunnos made a broad circle with his sword, encompassing himself but clearly meaning me. “Cut a hole in this dying earth, and tear what little power it holds away. It will become a null place, a void, with you at its heart.”
“That sounds…” My skin turned to ice and the cold sank inward, strangling my words. It took a couple of tries to manage, “That sounds incredibly dangerous.”
Cernunnos smiled. His canines had been curved the first time I saw him, mark of the beast within. They weren’t now, no more than subtle bone horn marred his temples. I wondered if this flawless figure was how he always appeared in Tir na nOg, or if having torn him out of time and place left its mark on his form even at the seat of his power. He leaned in, a silver creature of promise and threat, and breathed, “Not for me,” by my ear. Then he straightened, more serious, and added, “It will be, but I know no other way to sever links between the undead and the living. Thou’rt a dead thing in thy world, gwyld, should you let these bonds remain.”
“Why do you do that? Use thee and thou, I mean.” I used the flippant question to hide my nerves as I palmed the bracelet, preparing to set it aside. Cernunnos opened his hand, and I fought the urge to refuse him and put my belongings in a tidy pile beside me. I was on his territory. It was a bad time to stop trusting him, if that’s what I was doing.
He turned the bracelet in his hand, examining the ring of stylized animals that chased each other around it. “A gift from a man, but not a lover. Your father? Mortals.” The last word turned sibilant, breathed out over a long while. “You put such stock and such strength into your blood ties, and are still so easily wounded by them.”
“You should talk.” I unclipped my necklace and handed it over with less reluctance. “Any esoteric commentary about this one?”
I wasn’t even Looking at him, so to speak. The Sight had lain quiet since we’d left my world, and yet when he took the necklace, power and astonishment flared through him brightly enough to leave afterimages dancing through my vision. I rubbed one eye and blinked the other as Cernunnos gaped at the silver choker dangling from his fingers.
To the best of my ability to tell, it hadn’t changed any. Tubes of silver slid over a short chain, held apart from one another by delicate triskelions. The pendant, a simple circle quartered by a cross, rocked between his fingers, like he’d let go for fear it would burn him. “It’s just silver,” I said in bewilderment. “It shouldn’t hurt you.”
“Just silver.” Cernunnos lifted vivid green eyes to me, and that time I thought I saw a hint of curving canine in his smile. “It is ‘just silver’ no more than that rapier you carry is, no more than my own blade might be.”
“Cernunnos, my mother gave it to m-m-muh. Me. Uh. Rapier?” My fingers drifted to the sword again. “You mean my mother gave me a necklace made by an elf king? How the hell did she get—”
“A question I, too, would like to learn the answer to.” Cernunnos curved his fingers around the necklace like he’d been given something precious. I had an unholy urge to snatch it back, and, trying to quell the urge, handed over the rapier with a bit more ferocity than necessary.
“And the shield.” Cernunnos extended his hand a last time, and I unpinned Gary’s medal reluctantly. Of everything in my arsenal, it was the closest to my heart, both physically and emotionally. Cernunnos’s fingers danced above it, then closed without touching it. “Iron. Thou has brought iron here, into my realm. Iron given to thee by one who should have died under my sword, almost a year since. Dost thou seek to outrage me, little shaman, or—”
“Oh, for pity’s sake. Yes, that’s exactly it, Cernunnos. Ooh, I thought, I know! I’ll ride across a void between worlds, put myself entirely into the power of a god whose edges are made up of the beginnings of the universe, and then I’ll piss him off. That was exactly my plan. I’m amazed it took yo
u this long to figure it out.” Somewhere in there I’d begun waving my arms with exasperation, and now I shook the medal under his nose. “Where the hell do you need me to put this thing? Is it going to burn the earth where it lies? Because if it is I’ll, I’ll” Struck by inspiration, I pulled my sweater off, planted the medal on top of nice soft wool, and dropped the whole bundle at Cernunnos’s feet. “Here, already. For crying out loud.”
Tir na nOg, it turned out, was kind of chilly. I was wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt under the sweater, but without the thick warm wool, I might as well have stripped to the skin. Cold and grumpy, I folded my arms under my breasts and glared at the god.
Who said, mildly, “I use thee and thou, little shaman, because thy scattered human mind thinks it intimate, and there is a certain delicious delight in conveying intimacies to thee.”
Then he drew his sword and cut a swath of darkness around me.
Alone in the dark wasn’t an entirely unfamiliar feeling. It was the stuff of nightmares, for one, and the stuff of too many clumsy spirit journeys and esoteric battles for two. That said, none of those encounters had been quite like this. Cernunnos’s teasing still rang in my mind, but when it faded, not even my breath disturbed the black.
I had an uncontrollable urge to fire a magic missile at the dark, which only went to prove I spent way, way too many hours on the Internet. Lucky for me, or maybe not so lucky, magic missile wasn’t in my repertoire, and besides, when I reached for my magic, it was gone.
Panic isn’t pretty, not even when you can’t actually see it taking place. I’d whined, bitched and complained about the gifts I’d been saddled with, but I was also kind of accustomed to them now, and finding a void inside me as black as the one surrounding me did nothing at all for my peace of mind. I bit back a scream, not wanting to feel it in my throat but be unable to hear it, and spun around in the darkness, trying to find any source of light or life.
And from a very far distance, something came. It was weak: fragile, even, crawling inch by inch toward me. I knew what it was long before it reached me, but misery and guilt and the human ability to look away kept me from going to it. I didn’t look away; that much I could give myself credit for, but I didn’t move, and wasn’t sure if it was weakness or strength that kept me from doing so.
Matilda Whitehead’s scrawny thought-form clawed its way through the dark, finally resting at my feet and twisting its neck to look up at me. It said, I’m dying, in words that only echoed in my ears, and I said, “I know,” out loud, not knowing if either of us would hear it.
Help me.
“I can’t.” Can’t, won’t, what’s the difference? The words tasted like ash in my mouth either way. “You’re feeding off my energy. We can’t both do that, and you’re already dead. How did you get here? I thought Cernunnos cut me off from everything.”
I’m part of you.
Presumably that was supposed to make sense. I looked down at the ghost-given-body, seeing her—its—scalp through too-thin hair. I was as exhausted standing over her as I’d been fighting her, but it was she who seemed to become smaller and more miserable as the minutes went on. After a while, that made sense. I closed my hands in loose fists, wishing I could undo all the things in the past few days that’d brought me to where I was right now. “So I’m basically burning up all my energy trying to stay alive in a place that doesn’t allow life. And you’re the most external part of my energy, so you’re burning first. I’m sorry. All I’m trying to do is survive.”
As am I!
God. I crouched, hands knotted more tightly. “You died a hundred years ago. I’m sorry, but you lost your chance. It’s way past time to stop fighting.” I didn’t even know how the thing could be fighting. It was worse than cadaverous now. It was shrunken, all eyes and knobby joints and ill-fitting skin. “Even if you could come back, everything you know is long gone. You gave us everything you could to help solve your murder. It’s time to let go, Matilda. It’s time to rest.”
No! The silent word bordered on a sob. I could be a hard case, but I wasn’t anything like that hard. Consequences be damned, I reached for the pathetic little thing and pulled it into my arms. “Yes. Time to rest, sweetheart. Time to let go.”
It—she—kicked and flailed and screamed, a thin sound with almost no strength to it. I felt every punch and twist in my gut, part of me sharing her fight more literally than I liked. She got smaller, energy fading, and I curled her against my chest, mouth lowered against her head while I murmured apologies for refusing to save a life that wasn’t meant to be. I wasn’t even sure the magic would let me if I could reach it; it hadn’t let me heal Colin Johannsen, or even fix the thin cut on my cheek. Some things weren’t meant to be made better. Weary tears slid down my cheeks as Matilda shrank away. She hadn’t deserved to die a hundred years ago, and now she didn’t deserve to live. Somebody was going to pay, even if I had to walk into that damn cauldron myself, and smash it from within.
I whispered, “I’m sorry,” again at the last. Matilda winked out, and I was once more alone in the dark.
Only then did I wonder how Cernunnos would know it was time to free me.
CHAPTER 19
I was sitting with my arms looped around my knees, head lowered, when the light came back. It looked like a position of defeat, but I was thinking more in terms of least amount of energy expended. Being vewy vewy quiet while I waited for a god to drop in and perform a rescue seemed like the optimum choice. Besides, though I’d gotten a good night’s sleep, there was something almost soothing about total sensory deprivation. As long as it didn’t kill me, I kind of didn’t mind drifting in it for a while.
Energy came rushing back with the light, making me feel like I’d drunk three cups of my beloved amaretto-flavored coffee. I popped to my feet, totally invigorated, and discovered I stood on a little island of earth that was completely separated from the world around it. I mean totally: it, and therefore I, was floating a few inches above the ground. It, and therefore I, wobbled precariously when I leaped to my feet, and I spread my arms to keep from falling. “Holy shit! What’d you do?”
“I cut you away from this world as much as I removed you from your own.” My clod of earth thumped back down into place, and Cernunnos sank to the ground with it. He looked exhausted. As a god, he was ageless, but time had marked his face, drawing deep lines through sharp features. Even the stars in his hair seemed dimmer, making him grayer than ash, and the green fire in his eyes was dull, hardly even embers. “There was no other way to free you from your parasite.”
My skin tingled with enthusiasm that my thoughts didn’t share, power running at full tilt. I’d burned Matilda up, maybe, but that only meant she wasn’t draining me dry. Without her using my fuel, I felt over-primed, suddenly sharp and alive and edgy. “What happened to you?”
“A deeper magic than yours lent that creature the false hope of life, little shaman. You sustained it, fed it, but your mortal depth, rich as it may be, could never have given birth to it.” Cernunnos lifted his head as though it bore the full weight of his crown of horns. “I rule the Hunt, Siobhán Walkingstick. Death is my domain, and once, before the boy was born, I may have thought myself its master. I have learned better, and had never seen that which could force death to bend its knee.”
I whispered, “But you’re a god. What’s greater than that? What happened, Cernunnos? You look…” I trailed off, then let myself choose a weak word, one that came nowhere near the truth of how he looked: “You look tired.”
All around me, Tir na nOg reflected the state of its god. The mists were heavier, and green-leafed trees had turned to brown. The air smelled of dust and rotting earth, like a graveyard. I dropped to my knees and buried my fingers in the cracked dirt, much as I’d done very recently in my own garden, and wondered, half seriously, if this whole world was Cernunnos’s garden.
“Stripping your power from your black rider bared its genesis to me.” A glint of humor brightened his eyes, if only briefly. “
Some things not even gods are meant to see, little shaman. Be glad it was I who cut you away from all the worlds, for if you’d tried it yourself, you would soon be buried here, in the soft damp earth of Tir na nOg.”
“But the ground is dry.” That seemed terribly important somehow, the bits of dirt that crumbled under the pressure from my fingers. This world’s peace was in its misty shadows and whispering trees. The vitality shouldn’t drain out of it like water through a sieve. “What did you see? The cauldron?”
“Its maker,” Cernunnos said, “its master.” He curled up on the yellowing grass, tucking his head around more like a deer than a man, as though seeking comfort and warmth from his own body. “The boy will take the lead in the Hunt, Siobhán Walkingstick, and it will, as ever, need its thirteenth to ride with it. Join them now, little shaman, thy life for mine.”
I lowered my head, fingers knotting deeper in the earth. My first journeys into the astral plane had brought me through a wonderland of color and spirit, from snowy, white blossoming trees to pathways cutting through mountains. There had been a cave off to my left, always off to my left, as though it was connected to my heart, and within that cave was a presence. I didn’t know who or what he was, only that he was infinitely powerful, and that he regarded me as an amusing trinket to be dealt with in some indeterminate future. His very existence compelled me to seek him out, though the first time I’d crossed through there I’d been just barely smart enough not to. The second time, my dead mother had utterly kicked my pansy ass to prevent me from going to him.
A banshee had named it the Master, right before I’d ripped its shrieky banshee head off. Since then, I’d barely encountered him in my astral travels, and nothing I’d faced had mentioned it. Not until now, anyway. Cernunnos hadn’t made the word master a title like the banshee had, but it resonated through me like a plucked bowstring.
Something had made the cauldron, once upon a time. Something strong enough to kill a god, and the banshee’s master was a thing of death magic, feeding on blood and fear. It fit. It fit very well, and it filled me with rage that surpassed crimson and spilled to silver-blue and white.