Living with Your Past Selves (Spell Weaver)

by Hiatt, Bill

  I could run, but I doubted I could outrun the shifter, whose stamina seemed considerably greater than mine and who might well be able to lengthen his legs if needed. Hell, the shifter wasn’t even working up a sweat. Aside from that, leaving the shifter with my sword, just the proverbial stone’s throw away from a whole bunch of people who wouldn’t even know what hit them if the shifter took it into his head to go on a killing spree, wasn’t my first choice. I won’t lie—I’d probably do it if it was the only way I could survive, but not while there were other options.

  Then I rolled just a little too slowly and got an even bigger gash on my left arm. My brain flicked into overdrive as I pawed desperately through the memories of my past selves, trying to find something, anything, that might save me.

  I could make myself “invisible,” or at least make people not notice me, but I had never tried that move in combat. I’d never even been in combat in this life, but I had the feeling I couldn’t just vanish right in front of the shifter.

  I could shift myself—in theory. Taliesin 1 had been able to shift, so I knew what to do, but I had always been too afraid to try, and combat didn’t seem like the place to make the attempt for the first time. Anyway, there was no guarantee I could beat the shifter at his own game; Taliesin 1 had lost his biggest contest in shifting.

  I could pass into Annwn, the Welsh “Otherworld.” Taliesin 1 had gone there with Arthur and some knights, but I had always been too scared to try that either. Annwn was fiendishly unpredictable under the best of circumstances. I could slam right into something far, far worse, than the shifter—and that was assuming the shifter didn’t follow me in, which he probably could.

  Ah, there was nothing like having no options whatsoever.

  Nick, this time on the right arm. At this rate, the blood loss alone would make me too weak to defend myself effectively.

  I whispered to the trees, they whispered to the wind, and a call for help began radiating outward from the woods. Unless some benevolent supernatural being was nearby, though, the likelihood was that it would go unanswered. Oh, one of the security guards at the school might get a sudden itch to take a little walk in the parking lot, but the trees would block his view, and the sound of a sword cutting into my flesh wouldn’t exactly be audible from a distance. Some of the students in classrooms on the back side of the building might feel uneasy and glance out the window, but again they would see and hear nothing. No, I couldn’t expect help, at least not from anyone around here.

  I narrowly dodged a sword stroke that bit deeply into the oak tree behind me, so deeply the blow shook the whole tree. The shifter had hit hard enough to practically sever an arm. Clearly, he was getting tired of this fight and wanted to end it. He ripped the blade loose from the oak and came at me again.

  Another lunge, and the shifter would have finished me, but he tripped on a tree root and staggered, missing me by inches. I guess the trees had a little fight in them after all.

  I struck with all the speed I could muster, grabbing the sword hilt and wresting it from the surprised shifter’s hand. I no sooner had control of the sword than the blade was engulfed in flames.

  Yeah, this was no ordinary sword I had brought back from Wales. It was Dyrnwy, White Hilt, the sword of Rhydderch Hael, one of the thirteen magic treasures of Britain, brought back from Annwn by Arthur and Taliesin 1. Damn good thing it found me worthy enough to flame for me; that sword was pretty temperamental, or so it was said.

  The shifter’s eyes became slits, and he backed away a step or two, hissing at me. Knowing I had no time to lose, I pressed forward, keeping the flaming sword between us.

  Fortunately, I had practiced with this blade, and I had worked on my arms enough to hold and swing it to good effect. As far as skill was concerned, I was a better swordsman than the shifter, and now I had the sword.

  The problem was, the shifter wasn’t bleeding from multiple flesh wounds, and his arms hadn’t started to feel like lead. I could still lose if I didn’t kill him fast.

  The shifter dodged me skillfully, staying just far enough away to tempt me to lunge too far and lose my balance. Luckily, I knew that game from my previous lives and did not fall for it. Unfortunately, the shifter had created a standoff. He couldn’t get close enough to me to try hand-to-hand combat, but he moved too fast for me to strike successfully with the sword. The subtle blurring of his outline told me that he was shifting constantly, somehow using his shifting as a tactic to dispel the fatigue poisons in his muscles. His breathing was still steady, his moves as fast as ever. I was pretty sure he couldn’t keep up the shifting indefinitely, especially at that rate of speed, but he really didn’t need to. I was already having trouble keeping the blade up, and the blood loss was making me light-headed; there was no way I could outlast him.

  Then I realized what I had to do. The force creating the fire on the sword was magic, but the fire itself behaved as fire normally would—and I could manipulate natural forces, at least on a small scale, almost as easily as I could manipulate people. I had enough breath now for a quick chant in Welsh, and I used it. In response to my words, the flames shot out from the sword like a laser, blasting the shifter’s chest and igniting him. He howled and tried to beat out the flames with his hands, but the fiery stream, fed by the magic of the sword in a way I by myself could never have sustained, just kept right on coming. In no time he was engulfed in flames. His screams echoed in my ears, and the smell of burning flesh was everywhere. Once I was sure his attention was focused completely on the fire, I moved in and took off his head in one swift, clean stroke.

  I need to preface what happened next by pointing out I wasn’t really as much of a wimp as I’m going to sound like. You just have to keep in mind that, for all my bravado, I had never had to deal with this kind of situation before in my current life. Many of my former selves had been hardened by numerous battles, and they took killing lightly, in some cases even when they were about as young as I was now. For me it was different. For four years I had had the echoes of those past selves in me, telling me to kill, sometimes for what seemed pretty trivial causes, like Stan’s poking around near my secret. In my wildest dreams, though, I had never actually expected that I would ever need to kill somebody. Finding the sword, the training, so much else, I had done more or less instinctively, not really anticipating the immediate practical need for such things. For the last few minutes, of course, I had known that my life was on the line, that I needed to kill the shifter. But during the whole battle I had been running on autopilot, fueled by battle adrenalin and survival instinct, other feelings jammed down as far inside of me as they would go. Now, as the adrenalin faded, I knew that everything had changed. I had sometimes daydreamed about myself as a fairy-tale knight slaying a dragon. But fairy tales don’t suggest any psychological aftermath. The prince finishes saving the damsel, perhaps marries her—end of story. However, my story had no end. Yes, I was alive, and that should have made me ecstatically happy, but I had killed, and I knew with a chilling certainty that I would kill again…and again…and again. Oh, it would be self-defense, or it would be defending someone else, but my current self could not yet handle the enormous weight with which such violence would press upon my soul.

  As the gory reality flooded over me, I swayed, fell to my knees, and vomited repeatedly, my stomach continuing to convulse long after it was empty. The smell of burned flesh continued to assail me, and so did one sight I would never be able to forget no matter what I did—to the very end, the shifter’s face had looked like Stan’s. When he had realized he could not contain the flames, I saw the absolute, gut-wrenching fear in Stan’s eyes. And when I took the thing’s head, I could not shake the feeling that I was taking Stan’s.

  I lay on the ground, feeling sorry for myself and disgusted with myself, not wanting to ever get up. I began to cry, gently at first, then in long, shaking sobs.

  I might have stayed that way for hours, stayed until the school authorities found me, covered in blood, with a bl
oody sword on the ground next to me and charred human remains nearby. But then, as seemed to be the norm in the last few days, my life went through another crazy twist.

  I heard someone clearing his throat nearby. Who was it, and what could I possibly say to him?

  I twisted my head just enough to see Dan Stevens standing a few feet away, his face unreadable.

  CHAPTER 4: UNEXPECTED SALVATION

  “Dan?” I croaked, barely able to speak. My throat ached. If he were another shifter, he wouldn’t have much trouble taking my sword—and my head.

  “Weaver, looks like you’re having a bad day.” I would have expected sarcasm at the very least, but his tone was not even a little sarcastic. Much to my surprise, he actually sounded sympathetic.

  “You could say that.”

  “Want some help?” I nodded, wondering if this was some kind of hallucination. Dan would have been the last person in the world from whom I would have expected—or wanted—help. He seemed completely unlike himself in some ways, but oddly the same in others.

  I watched, still lying on the ground, as he gathered up my fencing equipment, including White Hilt, which I’d had neither the time nor the will to magic back into its disguise.

  He looked up, saw me looking at him, and smiled. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to remember any of this later, so the fact that I have seen your sword isn’t a problem. Just don’t forget to enchant it again before we’re through.”

  Definitely a WTF moment if ever there was one. However, I was far, far too out of it to process the full implications of what Dan was saying. In fact, by this point, I wasn’t processing much of anything. I felt myself going numb, but even that was an improvement.

  Dan picked up my guitar case and carried it and my fencing bag over to me. To my horror, I realized I was still crying, and so did Dan.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said with odd gentleness. “I’ve cried too. It’s no big deal.”

  Was I hallucinating, or could Dan really be so different from the person I thought he was?

  “Can you walk?” he asked, bending over me. I guess I wasn’t quick enough to answer, which he must have taken as a “no.” In any case he strapped one of my bags over each shoulder, and then he picked me up and started carrying me back toward campus. I could not have been more surprised at this point if Martians had beamed me up to their spaceship.

  “Somebody’s going to see,” I muttered, oddly embarrassed for Dan as well as for me. His carrying me out of the woods would certainly look odd, to say the least.

  “Doubt it. Fog’s back.” I don’t know how I had missed that detail. The fog had seemed to be burning off while I was fighting the shifter, but now a new, equally impenetrable wave was coming in off the sea, covering the back of the main building just as we emerged from the woods.

  Then Dan veered left, toward the gym.

  “Where are we going?” I asked weakly.

  “Locker room. You need to clean up. We can’t have people seeing you like that. I can also get some clothes for you, and there’s a first aid kit.”

  “Won’t there be other guys around?”

  “Give me some credit. Period 2 is over. We’re about ten minutes into period 3, which means the locker room should be empty for a good half hour at least. I’m Coach’s TA this period, but he doesn’t normally give me anything to do, so I doubt he will miss me. Can you walk now?”

  “Yeah, I think so.” He put me down gently. I still needed to lean on him a bit, but my legs were feeling much less shaky. He helped me into the back entrance to the locker room and led me to the inner sanctum (the football players’ section of the locker room, separated from the main room by a wall), making it even less likely anyone would see me.

  “You should shower. Can you do that on your own?” Dan looked visibly relieved when I nodded yes. “Okay. I’ll go scrounge up some clothes. Stay alert, and try to stay out of sight if you hear anyone besides me coming.” I nodded again, and he hurried off.

  Trying hard to focus, but only on the task at hand, not on what had happened earlier, I stripped as fast as my shaky hands would let me, grimacing a little when I saw how much of my skin was bloodstained. I tried to shower as quickly as possible, but the warm water felt good, made me feel just a little bit more like my old self, so I lingered perhaps a bit longer than was wise. Then, remembering myself, I dried off quickly, wrapped the towel around myself, and headed back to the football locker room. Dan was waiting with clothes and first aid kit.

  “I’m sorry about the clothes,” he said, surprisingly sheepishly. “They don’t really match, and they may be a little big on you.”

  “Dude, I’m a ‘let me grab the first clean thing I can reach’ kind of guy. Whatever you brought is fine.” Dan cleaned and dressed my wounds with surprising finesse. Once he was done, I got dressed, conscious of the fact that we had only a few minutes left before the locker room would fill up with people, all of whom would have questions I didn’t want to answer.

  Just as I reached out to shake Dan’s hand, he moved over to the door of the inner sanctum and kicked it closed for no apparent reason.

  “Incoming message,” he said when I looked at him questioningly.

  Almost immediately after that, his eyes went blank, and a voice that was clearly not his own started coming out of his mouth. The new voice spoke in Welsh.

  “You almost got yourself killed today, Taliesin. You must be more careful in future.”

  “Who are you?” I whispered. I had thought the day could not get any weirder. Clearly, I had been wrong.

  “Who I am you may or may not find out later. For now, know that I am a friend, and be satisfied with that. You need to concentrate on what I am telling you, not who I am.” I nodded, then realized I had no idea whether the voice was seeing through Dan’s eyes or not. “Okay,” I whispered.

  “In Welsh!” snapped the voice. “I doubt anyone will overhear, but you must be as cautious as you can be from now on.”

  “Sorry,” I replied, somewhat defensively, but in Welsh.

  “The sword is valuable, but to anyone who is not worthy, it is just an ordinary sword. If it falls into the hands of evil, so be it. You are more valuable than the sword.”

  “How can that be?” I asked. Following simple routines like showering and dressing had helped keep the day’s events at bay, but this conversation was causing them to flood back. All of the blood on me had not been mine. “You said yourself I screwed up badly today, and I…I…” I couldn’t even say it, though at least I didn’t fall completely apart.

  The voice became oddly gentle. “If it makes you feel any better, you did not kill a man. The shifter you fought was a pwca, and one who would cheerfully have eaten your face for breakfast.” That was the first good news I had had all day, though I was a little incredulous. A pwca? I knew they were natural shape shifters in Welsh mythology, but even in my earlier lives I couldn’t remember having actually seen one, let alone having fought with one.

  “But,” said the voice in a firmer tone, “make no mistake. There will be others who will seek to harm you. Some of them will be human. Evil, but human. The day will come when you will shed another man’s blood.”

  “NO!” I almost shouted. “I don’t think I can, and I don’t know if I would even if I could. Today I let my instincts, and maybe my past selves, take over a little. But I am still me, and the person I am is not a killer.”

  “Would you kill if it were the only way to save Stan? Or your parents?” Nice. Now I had visions of Stan with his guts ripped out, of my parents lying in pools of their own blood.

  “If, as you say, others will try to kill me, then shouldn’t I get as far away from people like Stan and my parents as I can?”

  “NO!” This time it was the voice that nearly shouted. “If you leave now, anyone pursuing you will go straight for those you love, as a way of drawing you back. They are actually in less danger with you here than with you gone.”

  “Then maybe I should sear
ch for a way to separate myself from my past lives. I have thought about that. I bet I could do it if I put my mind to it.”

  “Tal,” said the voice calmly, almost sympathetically. “You have already carried this burden for four years, and it isn’t fair that it has come upon you so early in your life or that it has already asked so much of you, but there is no help for that now. I doubt you can go back to being as you were, but if you did somehow succeed, that would just leave you defenseless. Those who would have come after you will still come after you regardless. Nothing you can do now will alter that.”

  Despite myself, I let out a little sob. The numbness had begun to fade, and now to the reality of today’s kill was added the certainty of more and more and more. Kill or die yourself. Kill or let your family die.

  You out there! Yeah, you, the one snickering about what a big wimp I am. I’ll be happy to trade lives with you. Then we’ll see who the wimp is.

  “Tal,” said the voice again, somewhat more insistently, since I hadn’t responded to its last statement, “time is short. Yes, you made a mistake today. You ran after a shifter with no real plan. Yet, at a great disadvantage, you still won. The most powerful of your previous selves, the one you call Taliesin 1, would have lost and paid for it with his life under the exact same circumstances.”

  Okay, this was the wrong time for me to massage my ego, but I had to know what the voice meant. “What do you mean?”