The Walker Papers: Raven Calls Part 2

I nearly jumped out of my skin, having sort of forgotten about him. Lugh, though, exhaled unmistakable relief, and nodded to the big guy standing behind me. "I see from your garb you are with the gwyld. Her teacher, perhaps?"

Gary said "No" and I said "Yes" at the same time, leaving the high king to look as though he'd rather be having teeth pulled than this conversation. I said, "You are, too," over my shoulder, and pleasure ran through Gary's aura.

Auras. I looked back at Lugh.

His was all wrong. Not like a human aura and not much like the blaze of light and power that was a G.o.d, either. He was more connected to the earth than that, his aura reflecting the health of the land around him. That was what had triggered the a.s.sumption he wasn't human. At the moment his aura lay sallow against his skin, dark of winter indeed. I could See the same quietness, even exhaustion, spreading through Tara to the countryside beyond. "Does this happen every year? I mean, no offense, but she must go through a lot of high kings this way."

"She comes and goes as the years call her," Lugh said patiently. "We kings rule in her name and with her blessing until the land hungers for us, and then she returns to claim us for it. Gwyld, why have you come here?"

My mouth, as it all too often did, skipped over consulting with my brain and blurted, "Maybe to save your life."

Hope flashed across Lugh's face and died again so quickly that I wasn't sure I'd seen it. There was certainly no trace of it in his voice as he said, "A generous proposal, but not one I think you can manage. Not unless a high king called Lugh still reigns over Eire in your time, gwyld."

Dismay crashed through me, but Gary stepped in. "Hard to say. Legend says all your kind went underground thousands of years ago. Could be anybody on the throne. Lugh's part of the mythology here, though. Sun G.o.d, I think, so maybe not. What?" he demanded when I gaped at him. "Look, it ain't native knowledge, doll. I been reading up the past year, just like you have. Guess we've been covering different territory. Anyway, aincha ever heard of fairy mounds? 'Swhere the fair folk go to ground. Everybody knows that."

"No, I've never heard of fairy mounds! I swear to G.o.d, did I miss a college course? Life Lessons 103: How to Recognize Magic?" My hands waved in the air like demented puppets. "And I thought I was doing so much better!"

"You are."

That was not rea.s.suring. I stuffed my hands in my coat pockets, shoulders hunched defensively high as I shuffled to face Lugh again.

He didn't look any more rea.s.sured than I felt. I sighed and scrubbed my hands through my hair, which needed to be washed. "So this Morrigan. Is she really a G.o.ddess? I've never met a G.o.ddess."

"The Morrigan," Lugh said, a bit severely. "She was one of us once, long ago. She has left us since, and rides the night sky with her ravens and her b.l.o.o.d.y blades."

"Ra..." The woman in my vision had been accompanied by ravens. I swallowed and gestured to indicate a height equal to my own. "Is she about yay tall, with hip-length black hair and a death's head face? Blue robes? Bada.s.s tattoos? Necklace like this one?" I stuck my thumb under my necklace, bringing it to Lugh's attention.

He focused on it momentarily. "All but the last, yes."

I tried to focus on the necklace, too-difficult, when it was a choker and didn't pa.s.s my chin when tugged forward-then muttered, "She's the reason I'm here. I mean, in Ireland. Not here-here, whenever this is. Hey!" I let go of the necklace, suddenly hopeful. "Maybe I really do get to save you! Maybe that's why she called me!" Of course, the call had felt like more of a gauntlet across the face than a request for a rescue mission, but maybe that didn't matter.

Or maybe it did. Lugh shook his head. "She is not known for her kindness. I think she wouldn't call you to rewrite my fate."

"Well, I'm here now. I think I'll give it a shot, if you don't mind."

Complexity crossed Lugh's face and he looked to Gary. "You are her teacher. In my time the connected say fate is not to be toyed with. Is it not so in your time?"

Gary's bushy eyebrows shot up. "Forgive me for sayin' so, your majesty, but what the h.e.l.l's the point in being connected if you don't mess with fate? Rightin' wrongs, fighting the good fight, setting kids named Arthur on the path to be king? That's what the connected do."

Now Lugh shot a surrept.i.tious glance at me. "Arthur?"

"After your time. Don't worry about it. What do your adepts do?"

He tipped his head curiously, then smiled. "Adepts. A suitable word. They maintain balance. Between justice and injustice, between life and death, between light and dark. What do you do?"

"That," I admitted, "only less portentously. I hope. My version involves getting my a.s.s kicked a lot, and s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around with fate. I don't know what else to call getting a kid turned into a sorcerer's vessel." There were a whole bunch of other threads I'd tugged in my year as a shaman, but that one continued to upset me.

"Your world," Lugh said after a long, long time, "must be badly out of balance."

"You have no idea."

He drew himself up, suddenly regal. "Then you must see what a world in balance looks like, gwyld. Perhaps that is why you're here. Come." He turned and walked away and I made to follow him.

Gary hissed, "Jo," despite my name having not a sibilant in sight. "Jo, hang on."

I hung, letting Lugh stride down the Hall of Kings without us. "What's wrong?"

His eyes popped. "We're standin' in the middle of a million-year-old hall that's just a bunch of green hills in our time, talkin' to an elf king, and you gotta ask what's wrong? What'd you do to us, Jo? This ain't what the Sight's like, is it?"

"Oh. No. Not normally. I mean, no-wait. What do you see?"

"I see Tara, Jo. Tara the way it musta been a million years ago. It's..." Gary, who was never at a loss for words, trailed off as he gazed around. "There's swords on the walls. Lot of 'em don't look like they've ever been used. They've got carvings below them, faces. Except they don't look like carvings, more like they just lifted right out of the stone itself. All the kings, I guess. Makes you feel like you're walkin' through history." He paused, then said in a more normal tone, "You know what I mean."

I grinned. "Yeah. I don't see that, not as clearly. I've got overlap going from our time. I don't see the faces."

"Too bad. They're somethin', Jo." He refocused on me. "So what the h.e.l.l'd you do? You said your rhyme, then disappeared for a minute, and then everything changed to this and the elf king."

I stared at him. "How'd you know he wasn't human?"

Gary did his plate tectonics shrug. "Pretty sure the human high kings of Ireland married Maeve, not the Morrigan. That and the mythology said Lugh was one of the si. It stood to reason."

My hands started doing the Muppet thing again. "What the h.e.l.l's a shee? No, never mind, forget it, just tell me how it stood to reason that some random guy in the annals of history wasn't human? How it stood to reason that-"

Gary gave me a level look. "Sweetheart, in the fifteen months I've known you, I been stabbed by a demiG.o.d, ridden with the Wild Hunt, fought a wendigo, been witched into a heart attack an' killed a couple zombies. What part of that would make a guy think there weren't any elves prancin' about somewhere in the world?"

I stared at him again. Pushed my gla.s.ses up. Stared some more. Then, in my very best academic tone, I said, "Oh. Well, when you put it like that, yeah, okay. I don't know how we got here, Gary. And what do you mean, I disappeared?"

"Poof," he said with a demonstrative puff of his fingers. "Gone. Had me worried for a minute, but then I got sucked back through time, too."

"I can still See our time," I said nervously. "I don't like that I went poof. That can't be a good sign."

He whacked my shoulder in a way that could, if I was liberal with my definition, be construed as a pat. "Roll with it, doll."

"Right. Because I don't know how to get us home, so what choice do I have."

Gary beamed and patted my shoulder again. This time I didn't stagger from it. "That's my girl. You're getting the hang of this carpe diem stuff."

"I have a good teacher. I think I also have an impatient elf king up there." Indeed, Lugh stood framed by the hall's far doorway, looking for all the world like a graceful marble statue. A graceful, impatient marble statue, though I'd never encountered a statue which exuded impatience. It made me wonder if there was a Museum of Statues of Unusual Expression somewhere in the world. There should be, if there wasn't.

Lugh's statuesque pose relaxed as we caught up to him. Gary caught his breath-his own breath, not Lugh's-and even I, who still saw my era overlying ancient Tara, said, "Wow."

The screaming white stone stood a few hundred yards away in a straight shot from the hall's exit. I could See another version of it about a hundred yards off to the right; it had been moved in comparatively modern times, but the sheer solidity of its long-term presence beyond the hall made its modern-day location a mere shadow. Beyond it, the henges rose up with banners snapping, making the barrier around Tara that much more impressive.

Everything within the henges was focused on the screaming stone, which shone with gathered energy. It was capped with rich green magic at the moment, power waiting to be released. I wanted to yank the cap off to see if the energy shot upward like a spotlight directed at the sky. I kind of thought it would. That it would shoot up, crash into the cloud layer and rain back down over the entirety of Ireland in an island-size distribution of goodwill, serenity and balance.

Except Ireland didn't exactly have a history of goodwill, serenity and balance. I frowned at the screaming stone like that was its fault, but Lugh brushed the thought away with a dramatic sweep of his hand. "Here lies the heart of our civilization. The collected spirit of the aos si, where at midsummer those who would rule pa.s.s through the hall and come to the Lia Fail, the Stone of Destiny. The stone cries out for all of Ireland to hear when a worthy man lays hand on it. The Morrigan comes to wed him, and we kneel before our new king."

"You get a lot of people eager for that job when they know the wedding bed ends up with a sacrificial knife through it?" My a.n.a.logy sucked, but Lugh got the point. So to speak.

"It is an honor and a duty to be tested," he said stiffly, and just to teach me a lesson, struck off across the hills while he spoke. I chased after as he replaced stiffness with haughtiness that I was sure covered uncertainty. "All creatures must die. What better reason than for your people?"

Wrongness twitched up my spine again, just like it had when I'd contemplated Ireland's emotional balance. "See, now, I get you're elves or whatever, but if I've learned one thing being a shaman it's that blood sacrifice is just not cool. It leads to all kinds of bad moj-" I broke off and glared over my shoulder at Gary, who had no problem keeping pace as we approached the Lia Fail. He widened his eyes and mimed zipping his lips: no MojoJo from him. Satisfied, I finished, "Bad mojo. I can't see that undergoing a 180-degree reversal, even over the course of a jillion years. Also," I said, glancing around, "if there's going to be a sacrifice here, shouldn't there be a bloodthirsty crowd gathering?"

"It is a private affair," Lugh said, still uptight and arrogant about it.

I snorted, then gaped as the penny dropped. "Oh, s.h.i.t. You mean you didn't know this would happen when you signed on, don't you. Oh, c.r.a.p. This cannot be good. This can't be good at all. Sacrifices are bad enough. Secret sacrifices, that, no, just no. I put my foot down. That's enough of this bulls.h.i.t. Where is she? I'm going to have a word with this chick."

Lugh, wordlessly, pointed skyward. I whipped around, arms akimbo.

The woman who stalked out of the sky was my mother.

Chapter Five.

It wasn't really, not after a second shocked look. But that first one was a blow to the gut, sharp enough to make me breathless and sick. I took a woozy step backward and clung to the standing stone like an ingenue while I took stock of the Morrigan.

She was actually far more beautiful than my mother, but there was a definite similarity. More than just the long jet-black hair and light-colored eyes: they had a ferocity I didn't think I shared. In my mother, that ferocity came out in the way she chewed Altoids.

In the Morrigan, it was more in the way she charged down out of the sky with a blazing sword in one hand and a trio of shrieking ravens flapping around her shoulders. Lugh, the d.a.m.ned fool, stepped between me and her and flung his arms wide, making himself an easily skewerable target.

Gary muttered, "Elves ain't too bright," as he lumbered by me and tackled Lugh to the ground just as the Morrigan swung her sword at him.

It slammed into the Stone of Destiny so hard that something, either the stone or the sword, should have shattered. Neither did, but the clang nearly broke me into a billion pieces. Chills dashed up my spine, down my arms, back up again and took up residence at the base of my neck, where they did a tap dance. Lugh gave a little grunt that made a nice counterbeat to the tapping. Gary rolled off him as the Morrigan squalled in pure outraged astonishment. The ravens took their distance from her and she landed on the ground in a cinematic rush of blue robes and black hair. It was very John Woo. All we needed was a flock of doves.

The Morrigan came to her feet in a surge of power and grace and began stalking toward Gary. "You dare deny me my sacrifice?"

He sat up and jerked a thumb my way. "Not me, doll. Her."

I waved and produced my best perky smile. "Hi."

The Morrigan gave me a dismissive look, then looked again more carefully. "You bear my lord's mark."

"I do?" I glanced at myself, half expecting the sign of the cross or some other inappropriately modern religious marker to have cropped up on my skin. Then I clapped my hand at my throat, where the necklace's pendant had a quartered cross. "Oh! This?"

"No." She flicked a finger and the sleeve of my new $1800 leather coat ripped apart to expose the bandaged werewolf bite. My vision washed out, leaving nothing in the world but my ruined sleeve. Static filled my ears, mostly drowning out her, "That. What does a sister in blood wish with my sacrifice?"

It hadn't split on the seam. The leather was damaged. It couldn't be fixed, and there was no earthly way I was going to get an exchange on an item damaged by supernatural beings. I lifted my gaze inch by incremental inch to fix the laserlike focus of consumer fury on the Morrigan.

Gary mumbled, "Uh-oh," and got out of the way.

"First," I said in the lowest, deadliest voice I had at my disposal, "fix my coat. Then we'll discuss what I want with your sacrifice."

To my utter astonishment, she arched an eyebrow, shrugged and flicked her finger again. My coat put itself back together, not a hint of damage done to it. The wind sailed right out of my rage and despite myself I said, "That was kind of cool. How'd you do it?"

"Will it and it is so. The Master gives us such gifts. You must be new to your mark, if you haven't yet learned that. Now." Her eyebrows arched again. "My sacrifice?"

"Oh yeah. You can't have him." I smiled at her, all pleasant resolution. Amazing what a little thing like an undamaged coat sleeve did for my humor. Then her answer began trickling toward comprehension, and cold slid down my spine. "Um. Mark of the Master? You mean your boss is the same... s.h.i.t. s.h.i.t, s.h.i.t, s.h.i.t s.h.i.t s.h.i.t." It didn't take very many repet.i.tions for that to become an absurd-sounding word. I said it one more time for good measure, turned around, kicked the Stone of Destiny and turned back.

This time, though, I had a sword in my hand. My silver rapier, taken off a G.o.d and usually resident beneath my bed. It had at least two feet of reach on the Morrigan's short sword. I hoped like h.e.l.l that was enough to make up for what I suspected were her vastly superior fighting skills.

She looked wonderfully nonplussed by the new addition to my accessories. It was all I could do to not dance a jig. The blade was part of my psychic armor, so I'd been pretty sure I could pull it from halfway across the world. The Morrigan's astonishment was just a terrific bonus. Gary gave a triumphant "Hah!"

Lugh, as astounded as the Morrigan, said, "No gwyld I know carries a sword," and then it was on.

She was fast. G.o.d, she was fast, and had obviously been using a sword forever, whereas I'd started learning barely a year ago. Her first flurry came down like an avalanche, short blade cutting the air so quickly it made the whipping sounds children usually add to swordplay. I couldn't see it, not even with the Sight running at full bore. Instead I watched her shoulders, her hips, her feet and somewhere at the back of my mind all the training Phoebe had pounded into me did its job. The rapier was where it needed to be time and again, preventing the Morrigan from skewering me.

My arms were already getting numb, and she'd been hitting me for only about half a minute. I hadn't come close to an offensive measure. I was going to earn Lugh a whopping fifteen seconds of life if I didn't do something else fast.

Do something else fast. That was the key. I whispered, Rattler? I need your gift of speed, silently, and a slithering, sibilant personality came to life within me.

We ssstrike, he agreed, but he sounded weary. As well he should: barely a day ago he'd stripped me right down to the core in order to make sure I survived getting smashed by a truck. It had taken a lot out of both of us, even if spirit animals didn't technically have a lot to be taken out of. He was less of a sketch of light in my mind than usual, but adrenaline pumped through my veins, lending me the swiftness of a striking snake.

The Morrigan was astonished again when my rapier came up and not just blocked, but tangled and threw her short sword to the side. Not away: her loose, strong grip was too much for that, but I made an opening with the parry, and for the first time pressed the fight. She dropped back, not retreating, but distancing herself so she could get a better look at me. I'd apparently suddenly become worthy. That wasn't exactly the accolade I wanted, but it was better than having my head handed to me. I took a step toward her, but just one. I had the screaming stone at my back and wanted to keep it there. Her mouth flattened, recognition of what I was doing, and for an instant her gaze went beyond me, to Gary and Lugh.

I knew I shouldn't look. I knew it, and I couldn't help it. Just one quick glance over my shoulder, to make sure they were all right.

When I looked back, ravens tried to eat my face.

I shrieked, dropped my sword and flailed at the d.a.m.ned birds. Beaks and talons caught my hands, my hair, my arms, my cheeks, scoring vicious digs and slashes. Healing magic sluiced through me, keeping blood from spattering, but I didn't know how to fight a flock of birds.

We ssstrike, Rattler said in audible irritation, and my left hand snapped out to seize one of the ravens by its throat.

The snaky impulse was to squeeze and crack its fragile bones. Somehow I didn't, though I felt the play of muscle in my arm and saw it enter my hand. It stopped just before my fingers spasmed shut. The raven, with no evident concern for its mortality, twisted its head and bit the tender flesh between the thumb and forefinger.

The other two ravens beat wings backward, taking themselves just out of my range of attack. Taking themselves out of their range of attack, too, for which I was grateful. Bird in one hand, I knelt to scoop up my sword, then leveled it at the Morrigan, who once more looked astonished. And furious, but she held still, which led me to a rapid conclusion. "Your power's tied up in the birds. What happens if one dies? You can't fly out of here on their wings the way you just arrived, that's for d.a.m.ned sure. Quite a letdown to walk where you once flew, eh? What else, Morrigan? What else do you lose if you lose a bird?"

Truth was, I hadn't stopped myself from killing the raven because I thought it might be a bargaining chip. I hadn't killed it because Raven was my other spirit animal, and I thought he might take issue with me obliterating one of his brethren. But the Morrigan didn't have to know that. I was pretty pleased with myself.

Right up until she snarled, "Less than if I lose the sacrifice," and with another twitch of her fingers, broke the bird's neck.

Don't ever try to tell me animals don't mourn. The remaining ravens made G.o.d-awful sounds, noises that I would call shrieks of horror in humans, and renewed their attack. On me, not on the d.a.m.ned Morrigan, even though she was the actual criminal here. I dropped the dead raven and swung wide with my rapier, cutting an errant feather as it fell. For half a breath I was impressed with the sword's sharpness, and then I was back to facing three opponents as the Morrigan took the fight to me again.

Rattler's power surged through me, lending me the speed to meet hers. I already had the strength, thanks to having spent most of a lifetime working on cars. I did not, however, have a duo of infuriated ravens on my side, and the birds were rapidly tipping the odds in her favor. I blurted, "Raven?" out loud and a pleased kak kak KAK! ricocheted through my mind as Raven exploded from the back of my head.

That's what it felt like, anyway, and from the Morrigan's expression that might have been what it looked like. Unlike Rattler, Raven wasn't worn to a nub. Just the opposite, in fact. He hadn't sc.r.a.ped me off a highway after I'd been hit by a truck, but he had partaken in the following spirit dance. It had brought Rattler and me from exhausted to functioning, and had taken the already-lively spirit bird from functioning to exuberant. This was his first chance since then to burn off some of that energy. He came swinging around my head in a sparkling display of brilliance and smacked the nearest normal raven with his wing.

Nominally normal, anyway. I wasn't sure how normal any bird that helped fly a full-grown woman through the sky was, but it was black and glossy and looked like it belonged to the real world, whereas my Raven was made of fireworks. My Raven was also about two and a half feet long with a nearly five-foot wingspan, which made him gigantic in raven terms. The Morrigan's were merely ordinary in comparison.

And they were totally unprepared to be buffeted by those great long wings. He'd hit me with them any number of times. It hurt. Apparently the Morrigan's raven thought so, too, because it squawked in outrage and left off whacking me to claw at Raven. He did a lovely wing-tip pivot practically on top of my head and crashed into the other raven, then shot skyward with two black streaks of cawing anger chasing him. I said, "Thank you!" and got down to the serious business of having my a.s.s handed to me.

I mean, really. I had strength, I had speed, but not in a hundred years would I have skill like the Morrigan's. h.e.l.l, she even looked tougher than me, though I had a brief vision of how Gary probably saw us-her decked out in blue robes with long flying black hair, me with my short-cropped 'do and flowing white leather coat-and I decided we probably both looked pretty bada.s.s. Her more than me, though, because she was obviously the one taking her opponent apart bit by bit with her swordplay.

I parried like h.e.l.l and tried every trick Phoebe'd taught me, plus a few I'd made up myself. I ducked. I jumped. I threw gra.s.s in her face. I kicked and almost got my foot cut off for my troubles. My left forearm throbbed worse with every pa.s.sing moment, and the Morrigan smiled every time I fumbled on that side, like she knew exactly where my weakness was and only had to wait for me to give in.