by P. C. Cast
“And what two humans can do that?”
He squeezed my shoulders and kissed the top of my head.
“We can.”
“Oh, yeah. I almost forgot.”
“That is why you married me—so that I could remind you of things you have almost forgotten.”
I was glad to see a mischievous smile playing on his lips.
“And I thought I just married you for your great foot rubs.”
“That, too.” His expression sobered. “We must move like our Huntress friend, slowly and soundlessly. Try to disturb no brush. Place your feet softly on the dampest part of the ground. Avoid twigs and dry leaves.”
I listened intently, psyching myself up for the task before me.
“What if we are seen?”
He took me by the shoulders and turned me so that he could look intently into my eyes. “You run for the river. Do not stop. Do not worry about me. Just get to the river and swim across it.”
“But—”
“No! Listen to me. They will not recognize me. They will think I am only a human male. I can buy you the time it will take for you to cross the river. When you are safe I will call The Change to me and join you.”
It sounded like a line of crap to me. I started to tell him so, but his fingers dug into my shoulders.
“If they catch you, think of what they will do to you. I could not bear it.” The pain reflected in his eyes was palpable. “All they can do is kill me—they can do much more to you.”
“Okay, I’ll get to the river.”
His expression relaxed, as did his grip on my shoulders. He bent and kissed me gently.
“Now let us get out of this marsh. Step only where I step.”
“Okay, you’re in charge.”
He gave me a huge grin.
“For now,” I added.
We started forward slowly, leaving the grass behind and entering a world of primeval trees and dense underbrush. In a way, it was worse than the mud and the grass. At least amidst the grass we could blunder ahead, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other. Here it was different. ClanFintan moved in slow motion, and I mimicked him. We couldn’t travel in a straight easterly line. We had to zig and zag our way through the brush, avoiding piles of dried leaves and mounds of twigs. It seemed for every step we were able to take forward we had to take two to each side. And, to make an already difficult situation worse, dusk was falling, making it difficult to see the next clump of noisy dry foliage.
From my position behind him, I was afforded an excellent view of his naked backside. Each step he took caused his wounds to seep bloody fluid. His back was covered with a film of sweat. I watched the muscles in his back twitch and shake as he slowly shifted his weight from side to side.
Every moment I expected something winged and snarling to leap at us, but we kept moving, with only the sound of our own breath and the noise of the river as companions.
Then ClanFintan’s hand went up, and he froze. In front of us was the river, powerful and gray in the fading light. Between the tree line where we were standing and the bank was a rocky area, probably twenty or thirty yards wide.
And in that area between the river and us crouched three winged creatures.
They were a little way upriver from where we stood. Their backs were to us—actually, they were hunkered around a blazing campfire. As we watched, one of them fed it more dried branches. They didn’t speak, but once in a while one of them would look at the river and hiss.
ClanFintan motioned for me to move up beside him, and I did so carefully.
“When I give you the word, I want you to run to the river. Do not look at me. Do not wait for me,” he said with quiet intensity.
I opened my mouth and he put a warm finger against my lips.
“Trust me,” he whispered.
I swallowed my complaints and nodded reluctantly.
He bent and searched the ground around us. Finally satisfied, he grasped a fallen branch that lay close to his feet. He looked at me.
“Ready?” He mouthed the words.
I nodded.
He reached his arm back, and hurled the green branch to our left, toward the line of trees directly behind the creatures.
“Go!” he whispered.
I shot from the trees, fear and adrenaline giving me a jolt of unaccustomed speed. I heard ClanFintan following close behind me.
And I heard the creatures. They were snarling and spitting. I glanced over my shoulder in time to see them bounding for the trees behind them.
“Don’t look, run!” ClanFintan said between breaths.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t the only one who heard him.
“There!” one of the creatures hissed, pointing at us.
The rocks crunched as he rushed after us, with the other two following close behind him.
“Faster!” ClanFintan yelled.
I reached the bank as one of the creatures caught ClanFintan. I heard an awful tearing sound as his claws raked my husband’s shoulder.
ClanFintan pivoted, putting his body between the Fomorians and me. He ducked another slashing attack from the creature, and landed a blow of his own on its jaw. I heard it crunch—the thing backed off a few paces to recollect itself, ready to attack ClanFintan again.
“Jump! I’ll join you as soon as I can!” he yelled over his shoulder at me.
I looked down at the surging water, and back at my husband and the three creatures that were getting ready to hurl themselves at him.
“Not without you!” Before he could answer I ducked under his arm and ran straight toward the surprised creatures. My arms were raised over my head and I waved my hands wildly, shrieking, “Get the fuck back, you slimy, perverted bastards!”
The Fomorians skittered backward, away from me, looking justifiably confused. I mean, really, how many human women actually run to them? And I was a human woman covered in swamp yuck, with wild red hair sticking out in matted hunks and arms flailing like a demented Bride of Frankenstein. I’d run from me. Before they could recover, I turned and faced my husband.
“If I jump, you jump!” I yelled. Remembering everything I’d ever heard Dad tell his football players about blocking, I ran forward and tackled ClanFintan with my shoulder, low and hard, knocking us both over the bank and into the swirling water.
I kicked my way to the surface, pleased to hear ClanFintan sputtering beside me as the roaring current grabbed us and carried us away from the edge of the river.
“Relax,” he yelled above the water. “Swim with the current!”
I did as he said, stroking with the fast-moving water, always angling toward the opposite bank. The water was cold, and soon the numbness began to scare me.
“Stay with me!” ClanFintan yelled. “Almost there!”
A finger of bank jutted out in front of us, and ClanFintan grabbed my hair with one hand and a low-hanging branch with his other, hauling us both into the rocky shallows.
“Ouch!” I said as he tried to disentangle himself from my hair.
“Come.” He took my hand and we walked unsteadily together out onto the shore, where we collapsed.
I heard his painful groan as he shifted his weight from his backside.
“I hate to say this, but you really should go back into the shallows and wash the mud out of those wounds.”
He nodded tightly and forced himself to his feet, stumbling back into the river. I followed him, helping him splash the cold, clean water over his damaged body. Happily, the pouch that held the remaining ointment was still around my neck, and I spread the rest of it on his wounds. He was shaking violently. The fresh cuts on his shoulder bled freely.
“Can you change back now?” I asked.
He gave me a tired nod, and I stepped away from him so he’d have room to call The Change. I closed my eyes against the light and the sight of his pain. When the brightness faded and I opened my eyes, I was relieved to see that he looked more solid and powerful in his true form.
“Let’s go home,” I said, holding out my hand to him. He took it and helped pull me up the steep bank.
CHAPTER 20
We easily found the tracks the legion had made on the way to the Temple of the Muse, and began retracing our steps. At first I walked next to him, refusing his insistent offer that I remount.
“No, you’ve been through too much.” I tried to reason with him.
“As have you.”
“Oh, sure. Look who has all the gaping wounds.”
He snorted at me.
“And, correct me if I’ve forgotten, but I think you’re the only one who’s changed his body’s form in the last twenty-four hours.”
“You are my wife.” He said it as if that explained everything.
“Yes, and I’m more than capable of walking for a while.”
He opened his mouth to continue the argument.
“Wait, let’s compromise,” I said reasonably. “I’ll walk until the moon rises to the middle of the sky, then I’ll ride you without arguing about it.”
He made a noise under his breath that sounded like he didn’t totally believe me.
“You are a stubborn woman.”
“Thank you.”
That made him laugh, and he looped his arm around me.
“We smell bad.” I smiled up at him.
“Again?” He chuckled.
“I guess that’s what I get for marrying a horse.”
I could see him cocking one of his eyebrows at me in the new moonlight. “That is not all you get.”
I laughed and sent a silent thank-you to my Goddess. He sounded like himself again.
We walked in companionable silence. I breathed in the fresh night air, and enjoyed the solid feel of my husband’s arm around me. We would make our way back to the temple, and from there figure out how the hell we were going to get rid of those damn creatures.
A noise in the forest to our left startled me, and I laughed in relief as the white tail of a deer blazed in the silver night. But the deer brought something else to mind.
“Do you think we’ll run into any of the women from the Muse? Or Dougal and Vic?”
“Dougal and Victoria are probably well ahead of us. I do not know about the women.” His voice was sad and low. “When it became apparent that we could not hold the creatures, I sent part of the legion to the river, and part to the temple. No centaur would have passed a woman without giving her aid. If they made it across the river, the centaurs would have hastened the women to Epona’s Temple. They, too, should be ahead of us.”
If any of them had made it…I knew we were both thinking it, but we left the thought unsaid.
“The moon is over our heads,” he reminded me of my compromise.
I stopped and looked intently up at him.
“Are you really okay?”
“Yes, love.” He brushed a curl back from my face. “My wounds will heal.”
“Then I’ll ride. I admit I am kind of tired.”
He lifted me to his back.
“And hungry?”
“Don’t even mention food. You know I’m starving.”
“Alanna will have a feast ready for you.” He glanced over his shoulder at me, and his eyes widened. “Look,” he said, pointing down the path in the direction from which we had just come.
I looked, and saw that my footprints each had a star in the middle of them. As we watched, they shimmered and glittered, as if they had just fallen from the sky and landed where my feet had been. Then I blinked, and the play of light vanished.
“Magic?” I spoke reverently, like I was in church.
“Perhaps there is more magic within you than you realize.”
ClanFintan took a few strides forward, and then broke into his familiar ground-eating canter. I leaned against his back, thinking about magic and goddesses and love…and fell immediately asleep.
* * *
I was curled up on a big rocking chair in the café of my favorite bookstore back in Tulsa (the 41st Street Barnes & Noble), and the manager (who looked amazingly like Pierce Brosnan) was telling me that I could have as many books as I wanted, free, on him, please, just choose to my little heart’s content. The wonderful chef, played by Sean Connery, was personally preparing an exquisite meal for me (which I could smell cooking—lots of garlic), and a bare-chested pool boy who looked like Brad Pitt (who knows?) was pouring me a large glass of glistening Merlot…
…And I was sucked out of DreamLand to hover grumpily over the middle of the river.
I started to whine, and then I remembered the voice in my head that had saved ClanFintan—not once, but twice—and I kept my silly mouth shut.
“Okay, I’m ready for whatever you need me to see,” I said.
No answer—except to feel myself drift upstream, retracing the path we had just traveled. I sighed and mentally prepared myself for Goddess only knows what.
The marsh glistened to my left like an open sore on the face of the land. It stretched as far inland as I could see. I shivered at the thought that we very easily could have been trapped in there forever. Lights began flickering ahead of me, turning my attention away from the depression of the marsh to the rocky area between it and the river. My body slowed as I came within view of several large campfires. They were spread up and down along the western bank of the Geal. My spirit body kept drifting upstream, until I came to an enormous circle of blazing firelight. I could see the winged creatures crouched around the fires. My body descended. It was obvious that they were all watching something that was in the middle of the ring of campfires. I saw movement within the circle, but blowing smoke from the fire obscured my view. Then the smoke cleared and my eyes widened in horror.
Within the circle, Terpsichore danced. She was naked. Her body was slick with the fevered sweat of the early stages of smallpox, which, ironically, made her skin glisten with an inviting luster. She spun and twisted, mesmerizing the creatures with her incredible grace and sexuality. Her hair clung to her wet body like an erotic veil. She writhed seductively from creature to creature. She was touching each Fomorian, leaving a trail of sweat and arousal in her wake. And, I prayed silently, disease. I watched as she danced toward the creatures who were crouching just outside the circle, being sure she touched as many of them as possible. Wings would twitch and begin to become erect, then she would spin teasingly away—and start the dancing game all over with another creature. It was like she was a lovely automaton. Her face was an expressionless mask, and I saw that her lips were cracked and dry. As I looked closer, I noticed the beginnings of the rash on her beautifully rounded arms.
Then one of the creatures unfurled itself from the ground and stepped into the circle, grabbing Terpsichore by the waist and pulling her against his engorged body. And I realized why none of the other creatures had allowed themselves to take her. Nuada had claimed her.
“Enough play, Goddess.” He reached out and let one claw travel down the side of her full breast, leaving a thin line of blood in its path, which he licked from her wet skin with his pale tongue. “I am ready for you now.”
He began dragging her from the circle; then he froze and glared directly up at me.
“Female!” I heard his scream as Epona wrenched me away and back into my body.
* * *
I jerked upright.
“Nuada has Terpsichore.”
“May her Goddess protect her,” his deep voice echoed in the night.
“She stayed behind on purpose,” I explained. “She wanted to carry the pox to the Fomorians.”
His head jerked back in surprise. “Will it work?”
“I wish I knew.” Frustration was clear in my voice. “I know it’s contagious, and I know how it’s spread. What Terpsichore was doing would spread the disease to humans. I just don’t know if the creatures are human enough to catch it.”
“When will we know?”
“I’ve been trying to figure that out.” I sighed. “I think I remember that it took about a week from exposure to
the appearance of symptoms. But I have no idea if the Fomorian physiology will be effected like that. My guess is that they will either get very sick, very soon, or it won’t hurt them at all.”
“Then what we need is time,” he said thoughtfully.
“And a lot of luck,” I added. Silently, I sent a prayer up to Epona that the Muse’s sacrifice had not been in vain. Exhaustion tugged at me.
“Rest, we should be near the temple by daybreak.”
With his reassuring words ringing in my ears I closed my eyes and fell into a deep, uneventful sleep.
Sometime between my dream vision and dawn, a line of low-hanging clouds drifted in from the north, bringing with them drizzle that hung like fog in the moist air. It must have been several hours past dawn, although the sun remained hidden and the morning was gloomy, when we heard a shout, and one of my warriors burst from his post near the riverbank.
“Epona be praised! You live!” He saluted me and I was touched to see tears in his eyes.
I smiled at him, but ClanFintan didn’t hesitate in his pace.
“Almost there,” I breathed into his ear.
He grunted and nodded his head, concentrating on keeping up his pace.
We followed a familiar turn in the bank, and I can honestly say I was pleased beyond words to see the bridge stretching in all its scary length high over the water.
As we jumped onto the bridge, another sentry caught sight of us and sent up a yell that was taken up by another, then another.
“I guess some of my warriors got away from the creatures,” I said as more and more voices were raised in excited welcome.
We crossed the bridge and made the sharp turn to the temple. Even in the gray of the foggy morning, its marble walls gleamed invitingly. People were pouring out of the temple and running toward us. From inside the walls burst a group of centaurs, led by a shimmering blonde who was followed closely by a young palomino.
“Victoria! Dougal!” I yelled as they galloped to us.
“I told her you would make it,” Dougal said gleefully.
“This one time I will allow him to be right.” Vic laughed happily and hugged me so hard I almost fell off ClanFintan’s back.