by Kevin Hearne
He keeps bucking as I grow closer, however. The sudden appearance of another horse is not as calming as I had hoped. He is a smart horse who knows how to count, and there had not been two horses in this cavern until this very moment. He knows something odd is going on.
Gods below, he’s magnificent. Milk-white hide and a coal-black mane. I switch my vision to the magical spectrum, examine his turbulent aura, and find the threads of his consciousness. I reach out with my own, bind them together, and send him feelings of peace and harmony and my unabashed admiration for him. He rears back at first, pawing at the air with his hooves, but when he returns all four legs to the earth, he snorts once and grows still, open to hearing—or feeling, or seeing—more. I send him visions of the sky above Rügen and an invitation to go there with me. He nods his head, and I also feel his great desire to go. He hates it down here. No sky. No other horses. He has been so very lonely. I respond with happiness at his decision to accompany me and am about to tell him to follow, when movement tears my attention away from him.
Someone is coming through the gate that leads to our exit. He is like a stick of charcoal, dressed all in black and topped with a drape of black hair. Only his forehead, cheeks, and nose are pale; all else is darkness. He glances at me and the horse of Świętowit, dismisses us, and then he spies Perun by the stable. His hands curl into fists, his jaw juts forward, and his teeth are bared in a snarl; Perun does the same when he sees the man in black, who I suppose must be Weles. It’s glaringly obvious that they hate each other.
Perun shouts a challenge at him and I expect to hear Russian, but it’s something older, because these gods are much older than that language. But I do recognize the name Świętowit, and maybe a few others; Perun is most likely demanding to know where they are. I don’t understand anything that Weles says in return. His voice is full of spite, though—he probably told Perun off in the rudest possible terms—and that looks like the end of diplomacy. What happens next is a bit comical: Perun lifts his axe and tries to summon lightning, but that’s a nonstarter underground. Weles spreads his hands to either side, palms up, fingers clutching as if he’s holding an invisible goblet in each, and raises them up in dramatic gesture. When there’s no response to this, he blinks and looks down at the grass, bewildered that nothing has happened. No earth magic for him, no thunder for Perun. I’m thinking they’re going to have to duke it out with good ol’-fashioned fisticuffs, but they surprise me and shape-shift instead. Perun tosses down his axe and takes wing as the biggest damn eagle I’ve ever seen, while Weles flops, twitches, stretches, and becomes a horror-show serpent, a truly gargantuan snake that could swallow me whole as a horse. Perun screeches and the snake hisses, and it makes me shudder.
I recommend to the warhorse that he stay where he is, and then I circle around the edge of the pasture toward the stable. The serpent doesn’t care: He only has eyes for Perun, who’s circling above, gaining speed, and looking for an opportunity to dive. The snake coils itself to reduce the target area, forcing the eagle to go through the fangs if it wants to get to the body. It bobs and weaves its head, trying not to lose Perun in the glare of the UV lights, but considering the trouble I’m having keeping track of him, I imagine that it’s difficult.
When I’m halfway to the stable, Perun attacks, and it’s so fast that I can’t track what happened exactly—just that the snake is bleeding and there are some feathers left behind afterward. No clear advantage to either.
At the entrance to the stable I change back to my human shape, so that my hooves won’t clop loudly on the floor and draw the snake’s attention. And as soon as I do, I think maybe I should be drawing the snake’s attention, to give Perun a free shot. Putting most of my body behind the stable entrance, I simply peek my head out and shout, “Weles!”
The snake’s head swings around and spies me. It rears back, and I scramble away from the door just as the massive head plunges through, breaking the frame with the power of its strike and snapping its jaws closed on air. And then just as quickly the head is gone, hissing as Perun takes advantage of my distraction and attacks from above.
Yes, I’m all right. But I need Scáthmhaide. I see it resting next to my folded clothes and snatch it up, casting the binding that will turn me invisible.
Me either. Wait here, please.
Sneaking back to the door and peeking around the shattered frame, I realize that while I might be invisible, the snake can still doubtless taste me in the air. It knows I’m around, but its attention is back on the ceiling, keeping track of Perun once more. There’s more blood than there was before. I can see gashes in the snake’s flesh where Perun’s talons or maybe his beak did some damage. But I figure that with Scáthmhaide and an assist from Gaia, I can deliver some serious punishment and give Perun one more chance. There’s no question in my mind that I’m doing the right thing: Any friend of Loki’s is an enemy of mine. So I bound forward, leap up and spin to increase the force, then bring down Scáthmhaide with every ounce of power I can deliver on top of the serpent’s uppermost coil. I hear the spine snap and the impact travels up my arms, and there will be no graceful landing for me. It takes all I have simply to hang on to my staff.
The snake makes a sort of gurgling hiss instead of a cry of pain. Then the light disappears, I’m punched in the gut and the back, and the light returns, all before I hit the ground. Once I’m there, flat on my ass, the agony begins. Not from the fall, but from the two huge fangs that punctured my torso when the snake lashed out on instinct. The left half of its mouth caught my left half; bottom fang into my guts, top fang into my back. There was venom in that bite, which hits a second later, burning like acid in my veins and throwing my muscles into convulsions. I gasp and struggle to reach the cool serenity of a headspace where I can focus on directing my healing while the other headspace suffers. Atticus told me it was a survival skill and had all these distracting tests during my training to make sure I could access the serenity while the chaos raged elsewhere, but there is no distraction quite like genuine, fiery pain. It demands that you give it your full attention and resists being shut out. So it takes several false starts and five to seven precious seconds before I can create that separation in my mind and let one headspace convulse while the other coolly deals with the internal bleeding and breaking down the toxins. And during those few seconds, while I gasp for air on the ground, my head turns to the left, I see the giant snake head of Weles slam to the ground right in front of me, and directly below its jaws, at the top of what could be considered one enormous neck, are a pair of eagle talons. Perun got him because of me, which, honestly, helps me slip into the headspace I need. I can’t talk, since everything is either pain or the healing of it, and that worries Orlaith something awful, because she’s suddenly there and licking my face and trying to say things that I can’t spare the concentration to answer if I want to live.
I really shouldn’t be picking fights with any more gods. I managed to do some serious damage to Loki recently but only because conditions were perfect: He’d been overconfident and attacked me where I had placed wards against his fire. If he had caught me anywhere outside the fire wards, or if he had brought any other weapons—like Fuilteach, the whirling blade he’d stolen from me, or the Lost Arrows of Vayu—he might have ended me. His simple failure to respect me as an adversary made him vulnerable, and he wouldn’t make the same mistake again. It strikes me that the holes in my body and the poison in my blood are a result of the same kind of arrogance: My Druidic powers, while impressive, do not truly put me in the same weight class as gods. And neither do Atticus’s. He finds a weakness, surprises them, and gets help. Going toe-to-toe will not work. Had Weles not been distracted by Perun, I don
’t think I ever would have gotten close to harming him, even with invisibility. And had Perun not finished Weles off, I surely would not have this slim opportunity to heal. He would have struck again and maybe even swallowed me whole.
The venom of Weles is a nasty combination of a fasciculin and a cardiotoxin. The latter is easiest to take care of; as the toxin tries to bond to the muscle of my heart tissue, I can break it down before it depolarizes the cells and prevents contraction. The fasciculin is much worse. It’s causing involuntary contractions throughout my entire body, leading to painful spasms and twitching. During my apprenticeship, Atticus gave me extensive training in poisons and their chemistry, including snake venom, so that I would know where to focus my attention when and if I found myself poisoned. The fasciculin attacks a certain kind of neuron that uses acetylcholine as a transmitter of signals. It annihilates acetylcholinesterase, which functionally tells muscles to stop contracting, thereby causing those involuntary contractions. Can’t fight back when your muscles won’t obey you. It also causes more agony than you’d think something like that should. To combat it and restore voluntary function, I have to not only break down the toxin but rebuild acetylcholinesterase. And beyond the venom, there’s the matter of two rather large puncture wounds, with significant tissue damage and bleeding.
In my quiet headspace I work on my body chemistry to save my life, while in the loud, painful arena of my other headspace I notice that Perun, as an eagle, really does eat snakes. His beak plunges repeatedly into the neck of Weles and rips out chunks of flesh and viscera, making sure that his old enemy bleeds out. He spits out some of the chunks but swallows others. The large coil of the snake doesn’t move at all past the point where I broke the spine; only the top third twitches and struggles in vain to win free. It is chilling to watch the death of a god in real time at the hands—or, rather, the talons and beak—of another god.
The eagle is not unscathed, I notice. There are chunks of feathers missing, bare patches in its plumage. It has been bitten, or at least scratched, by those fangs but curiously is not suffering the same effects of the toxin that I am. Perhaps Perun is immune.
The great serpent’s eyes go dull and the twitching ceases, while I continue to struggle on to survive. Perun steps off the snake and watches it for a full minute to make sure that it really is dead. Then he shifts back to his human form, summons his axe to his hand, and hacks away at the neck until it’s severed completely, cementing the death of Weles. Only then does he look up and notice my critical condition.
“Granuaile!” he says, crossing to me and kneeling by my side, taking in my spasms and the hole underneath my ribs. “Oh, no. Is not good. But fight this! Do not die! I am owing you much. You help me defeat Weles.” He stretches out fingers toward the hole in my gut and then shrinks back. “Am not healing god. Cannot help you but am wishing I could.”
I cannot help him either, though he appears not to notice his bleeding puncture wounds, now clearly visible on his human form. I envy his immunity to the venom.
My limbs still shudder with involuntary spasms, but I am slowly turning the tide, and some of the violence, some of the pain, is receding. Knowing that it will at least not get any worse, I spare a few minutes to deal with internal bleeding. Perun adjusts himself so that he’s in a lotus position rather than kneeling and mutters something about healing with me. He closes his eyes and I do the same. It’s helpful, I find: Less incoming stimulus equals more attention that I can devote to righting the ship. And I spare a thought for Orlaith, who’s still very worried.
I am not okay but I am healing, sweet hound. Need all my faculties for that. Please be patient with me.
Love you too.
Time slips by after that and I slowly improve, until my eyes snap open at a thought.
“Loki’s mark!” I croak, and then cough at the effort of speaking aloud. The coughs send spears of lightning through my torso.
“What? Loki?” Perun says, and then, more alarmed, “Where?”
I pause to catch my breath and then say in a soft voice, “Weles probably has Loki’s mark on him somewhere. A circular brand of runes. Hides him from the sight of all but Loki. So Loki probably knows Weles is dead. He might come to investigate.”
Perun’s eyes go wide. “Is very bad news!”
“And I bet the horse of Świętowit will have the same mark on him. When we move him, Loki will know. Can you check?”
“Yes. I can do this.”
Perun unfolds himself from the ground and disappears from my sight for a while. My limbs are not shaking as much anymore and I’m making progress against the toxin. Mecklenburg is helping me quite a bit, giving me his energy, and I thank him for his help.
//Gratitude for your strength// I send to him in my Latin headspace.
//Harmony// Mecklenburg says. //Fierce Druid must be well//
And it’s then that the uncertainty and fear fall away and I know I will be well, eventually. And it’s also at that moment that I appreciate the time it took me to get to this place. Had I not trained in languages and cultivated different headspaces over those twelve long years, I most certainly would have succumbed to the poison. Binding to the earth is useless without the knowledge and training to use it properly. When you’re dealing with years two through ten you think, holy hells, this is a slog—I certainly thought that on more than one occasion—but those ancient Druids knew how to train and discipline a mind. All of that training was saving my life now.
Perun returns to inform me that the horse indeed has a small round brand on his flank. “We should be leaving,” he says.
“I can’t move yet,” I tell him, and then explain that while prudence dictates that we should worry somewhat, we may have no cause. Loki is no more a god of healing than Perun is, and I wounded him severely when we last met not long ago.
“When can you be moving?” Perun asks.
“Soon, I hope. I don’t want to stay here any longer than necessary.”
“What if I carry you out?”
I blink. That possibility had not occurred to me. Perun would certainly have no trouble slinging me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. But I might suffer additional injury if he did so, and I’d be cut off from the earth.
“Maybe let me lean on you and get dragged out upright? I need to keep my right heel in contact with the earth.”
“Yes. We do this.”
“But … the horse.”
Perun looks across the pasture at the horse, which has now pressed itself against the far wall, hoping to remain unnoticed.
“Oh. Yes. We need horse, but is afraid.”
“Drag me a bit closer?” I ask. “I can talk to it, after a fashion.”
With many grunts and sharp gasps on my part, I’m lifted to my feet and manage a half walk, half shamble with Perun’s help toward the white horse of Świętowit. My occasional twitches and convulsions make the progress difficult and emphasize that we are both, as a result of our shape-shifting, very nude. We’ll have to remember to get dressed before going upstairs.
I keep trying to reach out with my consciousness to the horse until we finally make contact.
Hello, I tell him. Or, anyway, I send him greetings. I hope my words translate into meaning in his mind somehow. We may not yet be at that level of understanding, but my patience at this point is strained, since I have so much else to worry about. I am the chestnut mare. Human now. I take both forms. Are you ready to greet the sky once more?
The stallion tosses his head and snorts. Not really a yes—he’s still spooked. He will need some convincing, and there won’t be a way to hurry through that. I sigh and force myself to take the time to do it right.
I am Granuaile. Do you have a name?
His reply is that, long ago, some humans used to call him Miłosz.
Miłosz, I would like to take you to a group of women who will protect you from the god who branded you.
The thought o
f the god who branded him upsets Miłosz quite a bit. He whinnies, rears up, and then bucks around.
Let us go together. We will run there under the sky. There will be apples and oats.
Apples appear to be a pleasant thought, and he settles down. I get a question from him next and an image of a grotesque four-headed man that I can only assume must be Świętowit.
No, Świętowit won’t be there. We are looking for him too. We would like to reunite you. Do you know where we might find him?
Miłosz has no idea, but he walks toward us and I feel or sense the moment when he recognizes Perun as a friend of Świętowit. That reassures him and he is ready to leave with us.
I’m not positive that the Sisters of the Three Auroras will be able to withstand a concerted effort by Loki to take Miłosz back, but I do know that they won’t make it easy for him and could quite possibly bring him under their power again. Getting the horse there while Loki is still wounded—and while I’m still wounded—will be the trick.
We return to the stable area and get dressed. I have to lean against the wall to put on my jeans; I’m not yet steady enough on one leg to manage it without support. Pulling on my shirt is excruciating, considering the wounds in my back and gut; the skin, ragged and oozing blood, is at least closed up at the dermis level, and the internal bleeding is all right for now, but the tissue damage will take much longer to deal with. Orlaith volunteers to carry Scáthmhaide in her mouth until we’re up top, and I thank her.
I try walking by myself to the exit, but it’s slow, erratic progress, since I’m never sure when my legs will obey me or decide to contract or extend on their own. I fall down twice, which is not fun, but I’m so relieved that I can walk at all that I insist on struggling the whole way to the bridge. There I ask Perun if I can hitch a ride on his back until we get to the other side. I don’t trust my legs enough to risk them over a snake pit.
