“Afternoon,” I said to the washerwoman. “Do you go by ‘Morrígan,’
or should I call you something else?”
All the chatter from the ghosts died at once, and the hush of death fell over the rotunda.
The washerwoman scrubbed at a particularly stubborn stain for a long moment, before she replied in a voice like razors on foil,
“You presume you have the right to address me at all, half-sídhe.”
“I do have the right to address you. I passed all your tests, did I not?”
“That determination has yet to be made.” The woman stopped her washing, and the replicas of my clothes slid down into the tub, beneath the suds, and were gone from existence. An illusion dismissed. “You and your comrades have come further than most, I grant you. But the final trial you have yet to complete is not a matter of strength or skill or intellect. It is a matter of wit and will. Namely, a matter of whether or not yours can match mine in a way I find satisfactory.”
“Sounds too subjective to be a valid test,” I drawled, tightening my grip on Fragarach.
“Just what I would expect a sídhe scion to say.” She clicked her tongue. “Your barbs will have to be much better than that if you want me to listen to your pitch. I have little patience for bland faerie logic, and none at all for the foolishness that runs strong in human blood. You possess both to an irksome degree, and your antics have irritated me since the moment you first opened your blasted mouth and yelled loud enough to wake the slumbering giants beneath the trees.”
The what? I wanted to ask, but I didn’t get the chance because she kept on complaining.
“Honestly, do you have any idea how many apologies I had to convey after that blustering proclamation you made in my name?”
“No, and I don’t really give a shit either.” I rummaged around in my pockets until I found the message Tildrum had given me earlier. I tossed it to her the same way the cat sídhe had done to me. She caught it with a gnarled hand that was far more nimble than it should’ve been.
“If you weren’t hiding in the middle of the woods, holding court with a bunch of ghosts,” I added, “I wouldn’t have had to step on so many toes to deliver this message. Maybe you should think about relocating, perhaps to a beachside villa with a pretty view.”
Her skewed mouth twitched, and she rose from the stool in a swift motion. As she did, the façade of the old, scarred woman peeled away, like a chrysalis opening wide to reveal the butterfly inside. Only in this case, the butterfly wasn’t a harmless little creature with colorful wings.
It was a woman a whole foot taller than me, with wavy black hair that fell to her thighs, dark eyes like coals staring straight into my soul, and a style of battle dress, complete with ornately carved glaives and gauntlets, that had gone out of style sometime in the last millennium.
The crow, which had remained on her shoulder until now, dissolved into black smoke. The smoke swirled into the Morrígan’s left eye socket, molding itself back into the missing eyeball. “You are a bold little half-sídhe,” she said, her true voice the din of distant bells, “walking into my home and criticizing me.”
I didn’t find the Morrígan’s real form as intimidating as I would’ve a year ago. I’d seen things since then. Things that had scarred me so badly that I had grown too numb to feel fear in the face of any singular threat to life and limb.
I wasn’t afraid that this godlike woman born from war and death would kill me; hell, she’d already made me kill myself once today, and if that experience didn’t turn me into a blubbering mess, nothing would. I was only afraid that she wouldn’t allow me to save my world, and all the people I cared about, before she snuffed me out for my insolence.
“If you didn’t want me here”—I pointed at the ceiling—“you wouldn’t have dragged me down into this gloomy pit.”
Her lips, now painted a lush red, curled up at one end. “‘Want’
is not quite the right word. I chose to entertain your presence only because refusing to do so would have incurred the ire of Mab.”
She tore the wax seal on the paper. “Even I am not brash enough to slight a being of Mab’s caliber. Though a battle with her would be a great delight, what with all the carnage it would carve across the land, I have no intention of seeing my last battle in this tediously dull era of the realm.”
“Well, I doubt you’ll find it ‘tediously dull’ much longer.” I gestured to the paper. “Your favorite pastime is making a comeback.”
“Oh?” She unfolded the paper and read the details of the queens’
proposal several times over. With each pass, her expression grew more manic. A dark fire of excitement danced in her eyes. A lust for the level of bloodshed Tír na nÓg had not seen for many centuries.
“I am both amused and amazed,” she said, once she was satisfied that the terms of the proposal, whatever they were, leaned in her favor, “that Mab would stake such a vital proposition on the shoulders of a half-sídhe.”
“What,” I retorted, “you don’t think I’m capable of fulfilling the necessary requirements for taking command of the Hunt? Even after I passed all your little tests?”
The Morrígan snorted. “‘Passed’ is too generous a term. You and your allies barely scraped by, and three of them died before they even reached my domain. Even the sídhe are fragile things in the right situations, as you have seen, and the trial to become the King of the Hunt is most certainly one of those situations.”
“And since I’m not even full sídhe, you think putting me through the trial will be nothing but a colossal waste of time?”
“Oh no, I think it will make for an extremely entertaining show, which is why I am willing to let you try it despite the inherent fragility of your nature.”
She tossed the paper over her shoulder, and it disappeared with a ripple of darkness, the long shadows crisscrossing the rotunda bending to the Morrígan’s will. “But make no mistake, Vincent Whelan, child of two worlds and lord of neither, regardless of what a puerile Tuatha like Abarta may have put you through in the recent past, I do not believe you can endure against the kind of power you must defeat in order to take command of the Wild Hunt.”
I itched to clench my fists, but I refused to show her how much stress was bubbling beneath my skin. “Is that power not you?”
The Morrígan shook her head. “I am not the mother of the Hunt, or its queen, but merely someone who has long ridden at its side, relishing its conquests. In order for someone to lead the Hunt, they must carry within their soul the aspect of a being both great and terrible.”
She smiled in vicious glee. “To become the King of the Hunt, Vincent Whelan, you must invite a war phantom to possess your soul. Then you must overpower the will of that phantom, despite its immense superiority to you, and subjugate it to your will. In so doing, the phantom’s wealth of negative energy, born from brutal death, will allow you to establish a link to the energy that fuels the Hunt. Only through that link can you become the Hunt’s master.”
The horrible smile deepened. “Be fair warned, half-sídhe, if you fail to defeat the phantom in a battle of wills, they will crush your soul and take your body for their own. Further, if you do, by some miracle, usurp the will of the phantom, the will of the Hunt is harder yet to alter, and its negative influence is impossible to entirely avoid.
“Even if you do not die, here in this room, deep belowground, or high in the sky, drowning in the darkness of the Hunt’s all-consuming fury, you will still be irrevocably changed come morning. And it will not be for the better.”
My heart pounded in my chest, so hard I thought every ghost in the room must’ve heard it. It wasn’t fear I felt exactly, but a keen discomfort.
I had already changed so much over the past year. Each time I’d dropped a glamour, I had become someone slightly different than I had been before. And I’d had so little time to process most of these changes that I still wasn’t sure what to think of the person who met my gaze when I looked in th
e mirror.
I didn’t know this man yet. Didn’t know his true desires and dislikes. Didn’t know his true strengths and weaknesses. Didn’t know if he could be trusted to do what was right, or whether his internal struggles would ultimately bring the whole house of cards crashing down.
Yet I had to put my faith in this man for what would be the most critical challenge I had faced since the day Tom Tildrum walked into my store and tricked me into butting heads with an angry old god.
Of all the times I could’ve picked to have an identity crisis, I lamented, why did it have to be right now?
I exhaled, my breath stark white even in the dampness of the rotunda, and replied, “Doesn’t matter what the personal stakes are. I’ve got places to save and people to protect, and I’m willing to do that no matter what I have to become in the process.”
The Morrígan chuckled. “I must say, I do feel the slightest dash of admiration for your tenacity. I have never before observed that quality in a half-blood sídhe. For sure, you possess a warrior’s soul and a mind just sharp-witted enough to convince me that you will make a proper challenge to the phantom you will face. Not that I think you will claim victory, of course.”
I was irked that my “worthiness” was framed by so many backhanded compliments. But I guessed that was par for the course when it came to the great powers of Tír na nÓg. They never said anything nice to you without putting you in your place at the same time.
“All right. Let’s get this show on the road. Which one of these
‘war phantoms’”—I motioned to the room in general, as I figured the phantoms in question were all the ghosts who were lounging around, watching the proceedings with varying degrees of interest
—“is going to be my opponent?”
The Morrígan pointed to a space right behind me. “That one there has volunteered.”
Perplexed, I slowly craned my neck to stare over my shoulder.
The ghost of King Nuada of the Tuatha Dé Danann stared back.
Chapter Fifteen
Three Hours Till Dusk
The transition came without warning.
The transition being Nuada ramming his spectral arm into my chest and plunging my consciousness deep down into my soul. The Morrígan’s phantom war council blinked out of existence, and was replaced by a scene of midwinter at night.
It was the frozen lake I’d visited once before, when I’d finally stripped my sixth glamour. Only this time, I wasn’t facing off against my own Unseelie nature, that wolf made of ice and snow whose fury had been born from my rampant denial of my own true self. Instead, Nuada Airgetlám stood on the snow-dusted shore of the lake, and his fury burned white hot, steaming the air and flash melting the snow.
Unlike the wolf in winter, Nuada didn’t want to complete me.
He wanted to destroy me.
“Say,” I started awkwardly, “I thought you were the guy who banned the Ritual of Hollowfiends way back when. Don’t tell me you’re going to be a hypocrite and condone Abarta’s use of it.”
To my complete lack of surprise, he didn’t take the bait.
“You dare try to strike down my kin?” he said in a voice that rumbled like the drums of war. “You? A half-blood wretch from the mortal realm?”
The words rammed my mental projection, but I refused to stagger back. I braced my boots against the ice and replied, “What’s it to you? You’re dead. You have no stake and no say in Abarta’s asinine quest to restart a conflict long past its prime and long stripped of purpose.”
“You believe that because my heart beats no more that I should accept the injustices visited upon my people by foreign oppressors?” He spit onto the lake, the ice hissing at the touch.
“The dead still see. The dead still hear. The dead still feel. I still witnessed the destruction of my people under the bloody boots of yours—”
“But you weren’t supposed to,” I shouted. “You were supposed to move on to the afterlife, and Tír na nÓg was supposed to move on without you. What happened? Were you too damn proud to follow the natural order of death, thinking it beneath you? Were you so bitter that you took a deal with the devil to allow yourself to linger in this diminished state in the vain hope you’d one day get to relive the glory days?”
“Well, it worked, didn’t it?” he sneered, stepping onto the ice.
“I stop you from taking control of the Hunt, I help the remnants of my people regain a shred of what they’ve lost.”
“And in so doing, you’d condemn thousands upon thousands of innocents to gruesome deaths—for nothing.” I curled my hands into tight fists, cold rage roiling in my gut. “The Tuatha were at the height of their power when they fell to the sídhe. Even if Abarta manages to wake the survivors in Maige Mell, all they’ll end up doing is repeating Tír na nÓg’s greatest hits.
“At the end of the day, the song will remain the same. The sídhe will win. The Tuatha will lose. And Tír na nÓg will suffer in the interim.”
“Or perhaps the paradigm will be flipped on its head.” He strode toward me, confidence ripe in his gold-ringed eyes. He was taller and broader than Abarta, a striking figure with porcelain skin and bright-red hair that rippled like flames despite the lack of wind. “After all, there are new players in this game, as you have heard.”
“You’re a fool if you think the Enemy from Beyond won’t turn on Abarta at the first opportune moment.” I held my ground, even as the distance between us became uncomfortably small. “We’re talking about an adversary that rips entire realms from existence. The Tuatha are not so special that they can convince such a force to alter its methods for more than a blip in time.
And Tír na nÓg is not so special that an adversary of that caliber will coddle it like a child.”
Nuada stopped two steps away, looking down his hawk nose at me in disdain. “You think yourself so wise, don’t you, boy? But what you do not realize is that your wisdom was born of mortal perspectives. It holds little weight on this side of the veil, in the shadow of beings whose lives stretch the breadth of the farthest horizon, who were at the very beginning and will be to the bitter end.
“My body might have rotted millennia before yours was ever formed, but my might is not yet as decayed as you believe, my existence not yet as irrelevant, my knowledge and experience not
yet as stale. Dead I may be, but you are still nothing compared to me.”
I threw up a stoic mask to hide the fact I was practically quaking in my boots. Not from fear, but from my mere proximity to the core of Nuada’s soul. It felt like I had drifted too close to a black hole, the immense tidal forces trying to tear me apart.
And he wasn’t even doing anything. This was just his actual soul laid bare, no body remaining to contain its raw power.
Whatever this fight between us entailed, it wasn’t going to be an easy victory.
Still, I said through gritted teeth, “You wouldn’t be the first to underestimate me, and I’m sure that you won’t be the last.”
Nuada offered me his hand, a deceptively friendly gesture. “Come then. Let us have our battle of wills and see who is the stronger man in mind and in spirit.”
I looked him dead in the eye and said, “Bring it on.”
Then I grasped his hand.
Memories trampled me like a stampede of horses, their riders an endless litany of pain. Moments of battles with scopes beyond belief flickered through my mind in a rapid cascade.
Spells that struck down a hundred soldiers at once. Raw waves of force that toppled mountains. Great floods that washed away entire forests. Quakes born from the tips of swords that tore mantle-deep chasms into the skin of Tír na nÓg.
Each of these moments dealt a thousand blows to my soul. I felt the cuts that made Nuada bleed. The strikes that broke his bones.
The spells that melted the flesh from his muscles and liquefied his fat.
Some moments lingered longer than others.
The memory of Sreng of the Fir Bolg chopping off N
uada’s arm with a superheated blade, and trying to ram that blade through his head. Only to be struck down by a female Tuatha wielding a battle axe.
The memory of some nameless foe, face hidden behind a helmet, disemboweling the Tuatha king. Only for Nuada’s shiny metal arm to discharge a magic blast so powerful that it disintegrated said foe from the hips on up.
The memory of the ultimate betrayal. The night that Balor of the Fomorians—the last of the Fomorians, their society long defunct and their people reduced to a few dozen dying remnants—tried to overthrow Nuada and take command of the Tuatha for himself. After
Nuada took in the Fomorians and offered them a place among the Tuatha.
That memory hurt the worst. It overflowed with shame and humiliation, with sorrow and regret, with fury and terror, with an agony unlike any other that Nuada had felt in his long, long life. Baylor had decapitated the Tuatha king while he was still alive, and had done so with a saw.
I felt that saw against my own neck. Felt it bite into my skin.
Felt its pain-enhancing magic set every nerve alight. Felt it take everything that I had worked so hard to achieve. Felt all of that and worse during the forty-seven tortuous seconds it took the blade to sever my spine.
I felt death.
But then, I’d felt death before. I’d felt it earlier today.
And I’d felt pain before too. The most unbearable pain a fae could feel.
So as Nuada tried to drown me in his personal agonies, crush my soul under the weight of his losses, I unlocked every box, every door, every prison in my mind that contained the pain I’d tried so hard to forget. And I threw it all at him the same way he’d thrown his at me.
My own memories traveled across the link between us, a mental barrage battering the walls of his soul. But unlike Nuada had done, taking me through the dreary highlight reel of his life from beginning to end, I took Nuada on a trip down memory lane in reverse. I started with my latest failures, and ended with my worst.
What Dusk Divides Page 18