by C. E. Murphy
Well, on a good day, so was mine. We all thumped down on the other side of the wall—a longer drop than I expected, as the hill ran down against it—and peered up at Aibhill’s castle.
There was a front door on the side facing us. That made perverse sense, particularly since the other side of the hill was a less treacherous climb than the side we’d come up. No reason to invite enemies in through the easiest access point. “I don’t suppose we just go knock.”
“Sure and she’d invite us right in,” Caitríona breathed. “What’s the worst a banshee can do?”
“Flay your soul from your skin with its voice.”
Her eyes bugged. I shrugged stiffly. My left arm didn’t want to move at all. I didn’t look at it for fear I’d see a wolf’s paw dangling from the shredded remains of my coat sleeve. Realistically I didn’t think I had a lot of choice coming up: I was afraid I’d have to go all lupine again to have even the slightest chance of us coming out ahead when we fought Aibhill.
The very thought just about talked myself into turning tail and running. Instead I made a dash for the castle’s front door.
There were two doors, actually, once I got close enough to see clearly. One was massive, large enough to let half an army out at once. The other was set inside the big one and was normal-size. It had one of those little barred windows for checking out incomers before they came in, but no one was standing guard. Instead a big hoary-looking lock made a promise that we wouldn’t be getting in anytime soon. I sagged as the other three caught up to me, but Caitríona glanced at the lock, sniffed and pulled a jackknife out of her jeans pocket.
Less than sixty seconds later the lock popped open and Cat folded the knife up, eminently satisfied with herself. “What?” she said to our wide-eyed admiration. “Me brothers used to try to keep me out of the shed they stored girly mags in. I thought they were hiding chocolates.”
Breathless with astonished laughter, I shoved through the door and the others spilled after me. Gancanagh whisked it shut behind him. We all pushed ourselves up against the big doors as if we were hidden by pressing against them, though in fact we stood inside a grassy courtyard with not a hint of cover in sight. Still, every one of us was bright with triumph at getting in. All we had to do now was find Aibhill, kill her and rescue my mother.
Right about then, the banshees came for us.
Chapter Twenty-Five
We all gasped right from our very toes, not one of us remembering that I was maintaining a magic that rendered us unseeable. That collective gasp should have been our undoing.
But nothing short of a freight train whistle could have been audible over the banshees’ keening, and even that would probably just blend in. They knew the door had opened and closed again: that was clear from how they dove at it time and again while the four of us scattered. Bleak-faced women zoomed by close enough to touch, scraggly hair streaming behind them and their skeletal faces contorted in rage. They scraped long nails through the grass, tufts flying everywhere as we all rolled frantically in different directions, trying to avoid their touch. It would take only one to let them know it hadn’t been the wind banging the locked door around.
By the time they began to settle we were spread across the entire courtyard. Caitríona had found a doorway to press into, but she kept giving it worried looks, as if it might open behind her. Méabh had curled up into a space next to what I thought of as a buttress, although I also kind of thought those belonged on castle roofs, not in their courtyards. Either way, the aos sí woman’s face was twisted, presumably with anger at being forced to hide instead of fight. Gancanagh had gone to ground in an oddly literal way, becoming a lump of earth that hadn’t been there before. I could see him if I tried, but his chameleon performance reminded me that this fairy realm was his as well as the Master’s.
That idea floated in my mind for an instant, then solidified on the thought I’d had earlier: that we’d crossed into the Lower World when we’d taken the tunnel beneath Sheila’s bones.
I was far more familiar with Native American cosmology than Irish. There were three easily accessible levels of reality in Native cosmology—the Middle World, which was the one everybody lived in day to day, the Upper World, a rarified place of spirits and souls, and the Lower World, which was very much like the Middle World except the colors were wrong, distances were peculiar and it was littered with all sorts of astonishing creatures, many of which were dangerous. Dangerous was still the name of the game, and although the landscape was different, Gancanagh’s sudden melding with the earth looked so much like something that would easily happen in the Lower World that I was pretty certain I was just viewing it through another mythology’s eyes. On one hand, that was great: I had a reasonable amount of experience in the Lower World.
On the other, it was very, very bad, because the Native American version of the Lower World wasn’t so permeated by the Master’s touch that its denizens regarded it as essentially his territory. I didn’t know if all of Europe—and if all of Europe then I would think all of what had been Mesopotamia and never mind the vast Chinese empire that stretched back far beyond European civilization—I didn’t know if Ireland’s corruption meant all those places also had versions of the Lower World that were saturated by the Master’s influence.
Which might mean the Americas, with their comparatively recent settlements—the Americas and maybe Australia—were the last holdouts in a world already deeply affected by the Master’s life-destroying ways.
I stood there squished into a corner while a host of thwarted banshees gathered in the center of the courtyard, their keening much quieter now, as if they’d lowered their voices to discuss what to do next. They chatted, and I glared futilely at the sky. At the makers of the world, if they lived up there. At Grandfather Sky, whom Coyote had once named specifically as someone responsible for my arrival on this little blue ball floating in space.
I didn’t want to buy into the whole “peaceful natives save the world” storyline. I might not have known a lot about the mythology of the Native peoples of America, but I knew a fair amount about their history. The modern implication of “peaceful natives save the earth” was “backward savages don’t recognize the benefits of progress,” a violently prejudiced viewpoint of what had been some truly astounding cultures. I wanted to scream with outrage at anything that lent itself toward perpetuating it, including myself. There were plenty of examples where American native settlements and cities had gone beyond their resources and collapsed the system.
None of which negated the fact that a great number of them had lived harmoniously within the system for a long time, and perhaps in doing so had given the Master just a little less room for a toehold in their territories. So by all rights maybe I should have been full-blooded Cherokee, one hundred percent about reversing wrongs and saving the world, but oh no. No, I was goddamned Luke Skywalker, bringing balance to the Force. Product of two cultures, both steeped in magic, one that had been fighting contamination since way back when and the other comparatively fresh and clean.
I scowled at the shredded arm of my coat and promised myself that was as close as I’d come to getting my damned hand chopped off.
Méabh sneezed.
Gunfire couldn’t have been louder. The banshees went utterly, unnervingly silent, and everybody in the whole courtyard looked toward Méabh’s corner.
Her face was still contorted, another sneeze threatening. I’d never tried healing somebody when I couldn’t lay hands on them, and besides, I wasn’t sure sneezes were things to heal anyway. By the time I’d thought that through, it was too late: she sneezed again, even more explosively, and two dozen banshees converged on her.
Unholy delight filled her face as she bared her sword to take on Aibhill’s host. I would never, not in a million years, show that kind of glee going into battle. My many-times-to-the-great-grandmother lived for this shit, and right now she had one huge honking advantage: they couldn’t see her.
Magic silver swords f
orged by Nuada might not have been much against dragons, but it turned out they took on banshees just fine. She waited until they were on her before she stood, and she came up swinging with all the strength of a six-foot-eight warrior woman whose life had been spent in the pursuit of bloodshed. Banshees, the old ones at least, were papery, and her cleave shredded three of them before the sword caught in the fourth’s juicier ribs. Not as juicy as Sheila: dust, not blood, fell from the wound, but still, that one was fresher than some of the others. The first three didn’t have time to scream. The fourth one did, and mortar fell from between the courtyard bricks at the sound.
Méabh didn’t so much as flinch. She wrenched the sword sideways, moving it deeper into the banshee. Juicier or not, it didn’t weigh all that much, and with a roar I could hear over the screams, she heaved the wailing woman to the ground and came down on it with all her weight.
Its spine severed just like the three before it had, and by that time the rest of us were in the fray.
As crews went, we were a motley one. Caitríona and Gancanagh had no weapons at all, making them more liabilities than fighters, and I had only my psychic nets. On the positive side, I’d caught a banshee with my nets before. On the less positive side, it had taken Sheila’s help to hold it in place. But on another positive side, I was a lot more confident in my powers than I’d been then. Of course, on the negative side, that confidence was currently stymied by a werewolf bite and a general uncertainty about using my skills at full bore. Then again, back on the positive side—apparently I was an octagon—if things were going to explode, they might take a banshee or two along with them. And on yet another negative side, I wasn’t confident of my ability to cast the nets and keep us all hidden from sight, either. I’d gone into battle plenty of times, but never while invisible.
Exasperated, I stopped worrying about what might happen and just cast a damned net.
I was right: as the net flew out, my light-bending trick wobbled and failed. Probably my own fault for not having faith I could manage it all, but then, fighting banshees was a ferocious test of my faith, period. So I was content that the net spun out, silver and blue interconnected in flowing lines, and caught the nearest banshee like she was a tuna. She shrieked and whirled toward me, entangling herself further. Clawlike nails extended from her fingertips, sawing at the net. I felt the reverberations rattling all the way back to my soul, but unlike the first time I’d fought one of these things, the net held. Her jaw dropped and she screamed again, this time like she really meant it. For a hair-raising moment I thought she was going to pull off the trick Sheila had done, breaking through my shields and getting under my skin.
Except Sheila was my mother, and on some level I’d known that even when we’d had the little throw-down outside Méabh’s cairn. She had a lot more connection to me, a lot more reason and ability to break through my shields. Random banshees from Aibhill’s host didn’t so much. I dropped my own jaw, shouting back in defiance. My shields strengthened with the yell, and the banshee’s cry faltered. Buoyed, I pounced forward to dig my fingers through the net and throttle her.
Net or no, her dead skeletal arms were longer than mine, and her nails infinitely sharper and more dangerous. I barely escaped with both my eyes, and wouldn’t have if my glasses hadn’t still been precariously balanced on my nose. For things I rarely noticed, they certainly could alter between annoying and lifesaving.
The banshee looked like she was counting what I called lifesaving under the “annoying” banner. She opened her mouth to scream again and I slung a power-swollen strand of net into it. She gagged and I chortled, which was probably not good warrior etiquette and which I paid for with her fist in my gut. Apparently thickening one strand of net thinned some others. I doubled over, wheezing, and when I felt her come for me again decided against the whole mano a mano thing. I had a net, after all. I seized the ends nearest to me, wrapped it around my right wrist—my left arm was still all but useless, though the pain had disappeared thanks to the excitement—and spun to slam the banshee into the nearest wall as hard as I could.
It wasn’t hard enough. She didn’t quite bounce off, but she wasn’t out for the count, either. I grunted and did it again, then felt nails score marks along my shields at my spine. I’d gotten so busy with my banshee I’d forgotten there were about nineteen more to deal with. Méabh, however, had not, and while the banshee at my back was busy with my back, she shoved her sword through it and crumbled her to dust. Instinct told me to duck and she leapt over my head, gazellelike, to take out my netted screamer, too.
For the space of a breath we were back to back, ready to take all comers. Caitríona was a few yards away, wailing like one of the banshees herself, a weird wobbly tune with familiar notes I couldn’t quite place. Whatever she was singing obviously took a lot of concentration but put it to great effect: the darling girl had shields glimmering around her. Not very steady ones, as they rose and fell with the intensity of her humming, but they were enough to rebound the worst of clawed attacks. I wanted to applaud, but Gancanagh sauntered in front of me to face an oncoming banshee.
I saw Morrison, or someone very like him, walking into the face of danger. She, the banshee, saw…something else entirely. She stopped, horror and hope written on a face that might have at one time been lovely. For the first time I heard a banshee speak not in rhyme, but then, it was only a single word: “Aidan?”
My heart stopped. My blood stopped. Everything in me went cold, just for a split second. Then I knew she was seeing an old lover in Gancanagh, not my son—my son, whose name probably wasn’t actually Aidan, since somebody had adopted him and probably given him a new name—but for that hideous instant I thought it was going to all be about me and her and keeping a little boy I didn’t even know safe from devils he didn’t need to dance with.
“Sure and it’s me, alanna,” Gancanagh whispered. “I’ve missed ye so, me love. Come to me, my girl, for all our troubles are behind us now.” He extended a hand, and although he was in front of me, talking to someone else, I wanted to run to him myself.
Banshees weren’t immune to his charm, either. Some of the film cleared from her eyes, like tears were rising to moisten paper, and she stepped forward, reaching out to him as she did.
He took her hands tenderly and drew her close, the whole of his attitude warm with welcome. He lifted a hand to her jaw, the other tracing her collarbone. She smiled, terrible expression of joy in a face too long dead to show emotion as other than a skeletal grin.
Gancanagh, who looked like Morrison, ripped her head off and threw it away.
The air went out of my lungs. He glanced back at me and smiled that come-hither smile, and even with a dead woman’s dusty blood staining his hands, even with sickness in the pit of my stomach, I still wanted to go to him. Dangerous, Méabh had said. Gancanagh is dangerous. “Fight,” he said, and I felt a compulsion in my bones to do just that. To do anything he asked, in hopes of winning his love.
This was going to be a problem, later. But now I only nodded once and turned away, heart beating too fast, to do as he’d asked me. To fight, because the odds were still about fifteen to four, and we had yet to meet Aibhill. I flung another net, wishing I dared to catch more than one banshee at a time in it, but the first one had put up enough of a struggle. I didn’t want to find out two was more than I could handle. I wished I had a weapon, and then with bell-like clarity, an idea came to me. Hoping everybody else would continue to keep up their end of the bargain, I ducked out of the fight for a second time, and fell into my garden.
I’d never been in such a hurry before when I crossed into the gardens. I tore through my own territory to fling open the ivy-hidden door, and raced out into the crater that I’d always found my garden at the bottom of. I scrambled up the sides, heading for the greater gestalt of souls and bellowing, “Coyote! Coyote! Wake up, wake up, I need your help! Get the spear!”
A few ginormously long strides later I rushed into the arid, beautiful desertsca
pe that was Coyote’s garden. He wasn’t there. I started picking up stones, desperately trying to find some kind of access point that would let me deeper into his soul, and shouting all the time. I finally hauled a rock nearly as big as I was aside, revealing a cool little cave, but before I could dash into it, Coyote emerged in his coyote form. He looked sleepy and bewildered, his ears at half-mast, but he was carrying the spear I’d asked for, his teeth full of it. I dropped to my knees, hugged him one-armed and blurted, “Bless you,” with a fervency largely unfamiliar to me.
He shifted mid-hug, and though logically he’d have still held the spear in his mouth, it was instead in one hand as he hugged me with the other arm and said, “What’s going on?” in confusion. “Take this, I can’t stand it.”
I seized the spear, wood cool in my fingers, even where he’d been holding it. It was a piece of art, a weapon grown, not made. The haft was polished white birch, and the head black ironwood, and though they were nominally bound together by leather strips and feathers at the neck, I had no doubt the entire weapon was a seamless single piece of wood. That was what happened when demigods of the forest offered gifts: magic. The demigod in question, Herne, had given it to Coyote as custodian, but my mentor was a healer. Even carrying the weapon gave him the creeps, so I’d been the one to use it. “I need this. We’re in a fight. I lost my sword.” And Gary, but this was not the time to go into that, even if the reminder made me swallow a sob.
“What—where are you?” He wasn’t going to stop me from taking it, but I could see him gathering himself, waking up, preparing to jump on the next flight to Seattle to help pick up the pieces.
“I think I’m in the Irish version of the Lower World. Ireland, anyway, look, I can’t talk, but the sword, Coyote, I can pull the sword from anywhere in the world, and you’ve just given the spear to me here, that means you’ve relinquished custodianship again, right? So I should be able to pull it to me, too. And even if it doesn’t work in the Middle World I’m in the Lower so it should work. Right?”