by C. E. Murphy
The Master came to me as an old man, stepping free of the night all bent and broken with age. Thin hair drifted over his shoulders, white against a cloak of raven feathers, and his gaze was mild and blue. Tattoos banded the wasting flesh of his upper arms. He carried a walking stick and wore a shapeless white tunic and no shoes beneath the feathered cloak.
For one stupid moment I thought, that’s it?
And for that, I had hell to pay.
Power lanced toward me without warning. I mean, he did nothing, didn’t blink, didn’t nod, didn’t point his walking stick at me. Blackness just exploded from him, hit me in the sternum and knocked me halfway across Tara. I landed on my back, skidding, and came to rest with my head against a standing stone. My sword was somewhere else. Possibly back next to the Lia Fáil, since I thought my hand had opened when I’d been hit. I was going to have to do something about that, because without a weapon I was toast.
This was not a good time to admit, even to myself, that I was toast anyway. I had been stabbed in the gut more than once. The Master’s opening shot felt like that, only worse. Like this time I’d been stabbed with a barbed weapon and it was sawing back and forth inside me, black magic leaking ichor into my system. I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t even breathe. All the air had left me and showed no inclination to come back in. I lifted my head about a quarter of an inch and looked down my body.
There was a gaping hole in my shields, a shattered, magic-oozing mess where cold raw death power had punched through. I tried wheezing out any last air inside me, knowing there was no other way to inhale again, but I couldn’t. Not around the ruins of my magic. I had the hideous idea that I had been broken in half, that even if I could inhale again I would find only my shoulders and head could still move. The fear was supported by excruciating pain that stopped somewhere around my sternum. I just couldn’t feel anything below that. Luckily, I hurt so much where I could feel that I had almost nothing left to be scared with about the rest of it.
One hit. He’d torn me in half with one hit, and I’d thought I’d been ready for him. He was coming my way now, his cold rage in no particular hurry. Gary was back there somewhere and I hoped like hell he was staying out of it like I’d told him to. Not following the death-making beast approaching me.
Oh, God, the Master was angry. I’d thwarted him in the past and now I’d pulled the heart from his favorite creation. His fury rolled through the dark, a palpable thing, and when it reached me again, it grabbed the bleeding wretched wreck of my magic and squeezed. I still couldn’t even scream, and the magic, trying frantically to make things better, wouldn’t let me pass out. I tried anyway.
The pain disappeared. As quickly as it had come, as profound as it had been, it was gone without a trace. I finally wheezed in a new breath. I could move again, hands and feet and legs and all, everything where it should be and working as well as it was meant to. I clutched my chest and sat up, hardening my shields against what I figured was the inevitable next blow.
It came just as fast as I expected it to, liquid nitrogen cold, freezing the air in my lungs, freezing my brain, my magic, everything. Pain erupted all over again, throbbing through me and leaving me scrambling for any kind of weapon against it. Nothing, I had nothing, and a bit late I realized the Master wasn’t trying to kill me. I was pretty sure I’d already be dead if he wanted me that way. He was playing with his food, punishing me for being a pain in his ass the past fifteen months.
I took one very brief moment to thank all the makers of the world for a bad guy who liked to get even instead of just getting it over with, and the next time the pain abated, I reached through the distance for my sword.
It jammed, refusing to come to my call. Incoherent with confusion, I screamed. The Master cackled, a proper wicked old man’s cackle, and hit me again. I waited it out, which sounds stoic but wasn’t, and in the instant’s respite between that attack and the next, I looked up.
By the light of my sword, way up there by the Lia Fáil, I saw Gary. Gary with my sword, finishing burying it hilt-down at an angle, so the Stone of Destiny helped prop it in place. I could not for the life of me imagine what he was doing.
He took a deep breath, visible even at the distance, and glanced my way. Flicked a salute and mouthed, “I love you, doll,” and all of a sudden I understood what was happening.
Gary took half a dozen quick steps back, then ran for the sword. Dove at it, swan dive, chest open and broad and ready to be impaled.
A banshee’s scream cut the world apart.
They came from everywhere, from all directions around Tara. Streaks of white against the dark, disrupting ravens and drowning out their calls with shrieks of their own. They converged on the Lia Fáil, diving into it and restoring its light while one, and one alone, came on across the hills and smashed into the Master’s spine.
He tumbled as easily as any frail old man might, shock written large across his face in the moment before he hit the earth. The banshee queen continued on, ignoring him in favor of me. She stopped in front of me, between her daughter and the devil, and whispered, “Joanne.”
My heart broke into a thousand pieces. We had no time. There were hundreds of things I wanted to say, and I had no time. Sheila MacNamarra, tall and wraithlike in Aibhill’s flowing white robes, smiled at me. Sad proud smile, before she nodded once and turned away.
“Girls,” my mother said, and the banshees rose from the earth to join her.
Not just join her like fall into ranks, but join her. One by one, but inside the space of an instant, they rushed toward her and were absorbed. Her strength visibly increased with each impact, taking her from the death-softened red and gold that was her own aura to a white so brilliant my eyes watered to see her. The Master came to his feet in that light, his aged features raging in harsh relief. He cast away his walking stick, and brought his hands together, gathering power against Sheila in a way he hadn’t needed to with me.
And then for the third time, my mother went up against the Master for no other reason than to save my life.
I had never really witnessed a battle of magics before. I couldn’t do the things my mother could, not in life or in death. She carried lightning in one hand and fire in the other, and wielded the banshee cry as a weapon of its own. The Master met her with black ice and dampening thunder, but her song, their song, crept under his skin and flailed him just as it might any man. I had been vulnerable to the banshee magic because my mother was part of its voice.
I thought the Master was vulnerable because he had for so long been their master. The magic to strip a man’s soul from his body was his, not Aibhill’s. He had given it to her to foster her vengeance against a betraying lover, and in exchange had used her for eternity, never imagining a day when a mage in her own right might rip that power away and use it against him.
It took seven lives to defeat him: six times Sheila MacNamarra fell, a banshee ghost extinguished, and the seventh was Sheila herself. There were no nets, no magic swords, no spears or cages of any sort. He was weakened by then, and the banshees belonged to the Lower World in a way he and I did not. Sheila dove into him, into him, a thread of magic within his chest, and she screamed one last time. Brought his own power to bear against him, and shattered the shell he had made to come here with. Here, the Lower World, a place between my home and his.
He should have stopped me here, I thought as my mother died again, and forever. He should have stopped me here, because if he came through to the Middle World—and he would, he would have to now—he would be one step further removed from his own place of power, and I would be fully at home in mine. He wouldn’t wait. He would recoup from today’s losses and then come for me. Come for Aidan, and come for Coyote and Billy and Morrison and Gary. For all my friends and the people I loved, and when he did, I would be ready.
Come for Gary. Gary, who had flung himself on my sword and of whom I hadn’t thought since. All the cold calm rushed out of me and I scrambled to hands and knees, already running
before I had my feet under me. Up and over low rolling hills, nails digging in the earth to give me purchase when I lost balance, all the way to the Lia Fáil, where Gary lay like Christ on the cross, arms flung wide and face to the sky.
Unbloodied, breathing and chortling. I tripped over my own feet, collapsed on top of him and started hitting his shoulders as tears streamed down my face. I honestly couldn’t talk, my rage and fear and relief so tangled together that even hiccuping sobs were almost more than I could manage. My gut roiled so hard I thought I’d throw up, and almost wished I would. Something had to give, and puking up bile sounded like a necessary release after the ten minutes I’d just had. My body spasmed with shivers, and the fists I thumped against Gary’s shoulders were pathetic in their lack of strength.
Gary sat up, pushed me upright, too, and caught my wrists at his shoulders so I’d stop hitting him. I had nothing left to fight him with. I fell forward bonelessly, the top of my head against his chest, and heaved sobs. He stayed quiet a minute or two, waiting for me to pull it together, but I couldn’t.
Eventually he murmured, “I know you told me not to do anything like that again, darlin’, but you were gettin’ your ass kicked. I could see yer ma and the others out there, stuck on the other side of the power circle, and I thought, hey, banshees, they gotta come warn you when you’re about to die, right? An’ take away the body, maybe, I forget if they do that. So I figured their raison d’être might overrule the power circle and that would get ’em in here. I knew Sheila’d help you then, if she could. So I threw myself on the sword.” He chuckled. “Never thought I’d say that and mean it literally. Your mom knocked me sideways before goin’ after you. Made sure I didn’t impale myself. Woman’s got a tackle like a linebacker, doll. Must run in the family.”
I’d stopped sobbing somewhere during the explanation, and had lifted my head to stare at him with hollow-feeling eyes. His hopeful smile with the last words made me feel like I should smile in return, but I couldn’t make it there. I’d run past the end of my resources and then had what was left dragged out and kicked across the lawn. Nothing was left. Gary’s expression gentled even further and he stood without letting me go, hugging me against his broad chest. “S’okay, darlin’. It’s all gonna be okay. I got a lot to tell you, y’know? A big ol’ adventure, and also that fight at Knocknaree.”
A laugh burst out and died again just as fast. “If your St. Patrick’s Day weekend was a bigger adventure than fighting at Knocknaree…” I had no idea how to finish that, but at least he’d made me smile.
“There’s my girl.” Gary kissed the top of my head, took my hand in his and put them both atop the Lia Fáil.
We shot up through the top of the world.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Wednesday, March 22, 3:14 p.m.
The switchback on Croagh Patrick was every bit as bad the second time as it had been the first. This time, however, I was wearing lightweight tennies, not heavy stompy boots, which helped. It was too warm for the long leather coat I had on, but it had—bizarrely—been whole again when Gary and I returned from the Lower World. I didn’t know if killing the Morrígan had undone her most recent magics, or if I’d somehow brought the idea of the coat whole and well back with me and imposed that on the real thing. Whatever the reason, I was so pleased I pretty much hadn’t taken the coat off since discovering its wholeness.
I also pretty much hadn’t stopped eating since we left the Lower World. I stopped halfway up the switchback and defiantly ate two breakfast bars and the half pint of milk I’d been lugging just for that purpose. Defiantly, because Méabh had forbidden me to eat, last time I’d climbed this mountain. Then I went the rest of the way up, and wasn’t surprised to find the mountaintop deserted save one person.
My cousin Caitríona O’Reilly, the Irish Mage. She stood where Méabh had once stood, both hands wrapped loosely around a spear two feet taller than she was. She looked like some odd new version of a Native warrior: pale-skinned, fire-engine-red-haired, wearing a hand-knitted cream sweater two sizes too large and a short black skirt over black leggings and boots as stompy as the ones I often wore. It worked: she exuded a certain confident power as she gazed toward the distant western waters. Her voice, clear and certain, carried back to me: “She was right, you know.”
“Was she? About what?” I joined her and offered a breakfast bar. I had two boxes of them with me, and it was nice to share.
Cat took the bar but didn’t open it. “About the darkness on the horizon. About the things coming for the daughters of Méabh.”
My appetite vanished. I studied the ocean, then shook my head. “I don’t see the future unless someone else makes me, I guess. I believe you, but I’m just as happy to not see it looming.”
“I hope it stays looming long enough for me to learn my duties.” Caitríona sat and I joined her. She opened her breakfast bar and took a bite before saying, “You lied to me, down there.”
“Yeah.”
She snorted, amused. “You’re supposed to apologize.”
“Like hell. Gary and I barely made it out. I’m glad I didn’t have to worry about you, too. I’m not gonna apologize for that.”
She made another sound, less derisive, and we sat together, eating breakfast bars and contemplating the view. “So what happened?” she asked after a while, and although I had no desire at all to revisit the last few minutes in the Lower World—the Otherworld, Brigid had called it—I did, ending with, “You’ll need to go to Tara soon, Cat. It’s down there, you know.”
Caitríona gave me a curious glance and I pulled my knees up, chin resting on them. “Old Tara. The way it was. It’s down there in the Lower World, waiting for somebody to lift it up again. It tried following us when we left.” I shivered at the recollection. Tara’s power was immense, and the Otherworld had been shaken free of the Master’s grip. All that power, essentially lost to humanity for eons, was awake again, and ready for a fight.
“You could have done it,” Cat said after a judicious pause.
I shook my head. “I think we might be lucky I couldn’t have even lifted a finger right then, Cat. I’d been put through the wringer, and I think if I’d been using any kind of active power it might have latched on and followed us back up. This isn’t my territory. That’s not my decision to make, especially through an exhausted screw-up. It’s your decision and job, not mine.”
“Should I?”
“Mmm. I dunno. I want to say yes, just because it was so awesome. But it would literally rearrange the landscape. It would raise a river that went underground centuries ago. It would obliterate a chunk of highway. And it would force people to accept that something extraordinary had happened.” I thought about that last, then amended, “At least it would for a while. Probably pretty soon they’d mostly think Tara had always been restored. We’re good at forgetting, especially awkward things like magic. So don’t do anything hasty.” Me, advising someone not to be hasty. I laughed, and Cat lifted an eyebrow. I shook my head and repeated, “Just don’t be hasty.”
“I’m nineteen so I’ve time.” She hesitated, then asked what we’d both been half avoiding. “Will ye stay?”
My phone rang as I started to answer, startling us both into laughter. I patted my pockets until I found it, saying, “I forgot I was even carrying it. Good reception up here,” and glanced at the ID as I answered. Unknown caller, so it wasn’t Morrison. I had to talk to him before I decided about staying in Ireland, but I’d already as much as promised Caitríona that I would. “Hello?”
“Joanne?”
A woman’s voice, stiff with discomfort. It took me a few seconds to place it. Then I got to my feet, staring westward, suddenly feeling like I, too, could see the dark mythic clouds on the horizon. “Sarah?”
Sarah Isaac, née Buchanan, my high school best friend and worst enemy, now married to the man who’d fathered my children, exhaled so sharply I moved the phone from my ear for an instant. Caitríona, alerted by my tone, got up while I b
rought the phone back to my ear, afraid to miss whatever could possibly be forcing Sarah to call. “I got your number from a Captain Morrison at the police department,” she said, still stiffly. “I told him I was the FBI agent from the cannibal case in December.”
“Sarah, what the hell is wrong? Are you okay? Is Lucas okay?”
“I’m fine. We’re fine. We’re in North Carolina.”
I suddenly felt like a tower of building blocks, like the game where blocks are removed until the tower tumbles. One of my blocks, way down at the base, had just been removed, and it was only a matter of time until I fell.
I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t say anything. Sarah waited five whole seconds, then said, “It’s your Dad, Joanne. He’s missing. You need to come home.”
* * * * *
Acknowledgments
I dedicated this book to my mom because she was the first person who wanted to know Sheila MacNamarra’s story, but the acknowledgments for this book are all about her because I would not have gotten it written if she had not been there to rely on as a babysitter. I am utterly and completely in her debt for the hours she put in watching her new grandson, and my readers should appreciate her for it, too.
Also, hats off to my dad, who did the first edit pass on this particular book, and who, as always, caught stuff that nobody else notices. Seriously, have I mentioned how completely awesome my family is? Because they are. Totally awesome. Especially Ted, who keeps right on being the best husband any writer could ask for.