“The crown is no longer yours,” he replied.
Confusion broke out among the remaining Dananns as more joined the departing fey. Many of them. Not all. Maeve still controlled considerable forces of her own.
Ceridwen held the High Queen in a cold, steady gaze. “How does it feel to be abandoned in your time of need, Maeve? You shall suffer what I have suffered.”
Maeve pursed her lips. “So be it, Ceridwen. I do not fear the consequences. Death has not stopped your revenge. It will not stop mine.”
Ceridwen moved closer, smiling now. She pointed the spear at Maeve. “Do not be so sure, betrayer. TirNaNog is no more. Guard your life well. The Land beyond the gate no longer waits for you.”
Ceridwen mounted the dream mare and tossed me the spear. “Your move,” she said. With one more look at Maeve, she snapped the reins and rejoined the Dead.
Unmoved, Maeve returned her attention to me. “The power of Audhumla will be mine regardless. Once released, you will be lost in the maelstrom, and I will pluck the tools from your corpse.”
“I guess that’s what’s you’re going to have to do, Maeve. I will fight you to my dying breath,” I said.
“Then you will die,” she said.
Dylan and Callin moved in front of me, their shields shimmering as they wove a protection wall around me. I hadn’t seen Cal in action in years. I had forgotten how good he was. How I could have believed all this time that he had failed his calling humbled me.
“You cannot stop me,” she said.
Murdock raised his gun. “A bullet will stop a lot of things.”
“Leo….” I said.
“She killed my father and my mother. My brother is dead because of her,” he said.
“Leo, don’t. You can’t kill her in cold blood,” I said. Dylan and Callin shifted to either side of me, uncertain as they maintained the shield.
“One bullet. I can end this with one bullet,” he said.
“It won’t end for you. You know you will have to live with it,” I said.
“Kill the man behind you, human,” Maeve said. “He’s the one for you to blame. He made your father bitter. He made your brother go mad. He made your mother a whore, child. End him, and you will end this. I promise you rich reward if you stand by me.”
Leo’s gun wavered in his hand. He inhaled deeply, then found his resolve again, tightening his grip on the cold steel of his weapon. “Do you know what the Devil is, lady? The master of lies. He makes lies seem like truth. And you know what faith is? The way to see through lies.”
Leo lowered his weapon. “I will defend him against you. I will kill you if I have to, but you won’t make me a murderer.”
I gripped his shoulder, more proud of him than I thought I’d ever been of anyone. I flattered myself thinking Murdock stood by me. His faith made him stand by truth. I happened to be on the same path and was glad of it.
Maeve tilted her head, a strong sending permeating the air. A shout went up from the Dananns who had not abandoned her, and they descended. An answering cry went up from the ground, and essence raged as the battle was joined. With her hands spread wide, Maeve released a bolt of essence. When it struck the pillar, the granite burned white with power. The ground trembled as the pillar rose, stretching taller. “I have touched the source and set it free at last. You cannot stop it,” she said.
The spear flared, burning in my hand, a molten sliver of the Wheel of the World. An odd sensation of joy mixed with sorrow came over me. “I never said I wanted to.”
I sheathed my sword and took the stone bowl out of my jacket. It had come alive with light, static dancing in the recess. I glanced at Maeve, then slammed the base of the bowl against the pillar, holding it against the stone. Lifting the spear, I shoved it into the recess of the bowl. It bored into the granite as if it were clay. I convulsed as essence coursed into me through the conduit I had made, the purity of essence that nurtured all things, the source, Audhumla, the sacred being that gave life. I stretched out my hand. Surprised, Maeve backed away.
“Moo, bitch.”
Essence exploded out of me and hit her in flames of white. It flung her into the sky, and she soared upward, a rag doll flailing in a tangle of smoke and tattered wings. She burned across the sky, trailing smoke and essence. And
49
White.
I remember this place. I tumble through the white, living and dying with the fall. There is no up here or down, no east or west, north or south. All of it is one. I focus my thoughts, calm the initial panic of arriving, and the falling slows.
Everything is white. It always is here. White is everything.
I stop falling. Whiteness fills my vision with nothing to break the relentlessness of it. Above me, the white simply is, as if the air itself is color. Or no color. As if nothing else exists except the white. I hang limp in the air, as if there is no air, no gravity.
I stare into a nothingness of white. I am here again. Around me, I see shadows of light flickering in the depths of the white, white-on-white shadows that spin and whirl, roll and stop, taunting me with patterns that disintegrate as they take shape.
And then they take shape.
Two vast shadows resolve out of the white. They move toward me, or I toward them. One is a man, taller, barrel-chested, his hair flows in waves, his beard a cascade. The other is a woman, curved, her hair black as a raven’s wing, and her face—Danu’s blood, her face—Danu’s….
I shudder. I do not believe in gods and goddesses. I do not seek the supernatural to explain the unexplained. And yet…. my body goes weak with understanding. I do not know if they are what they seem, but I know who she is, and I tremble with her presence.
“You are here and here and here,” she says.
“Lady, tell me what to do,” I say.
The man laughs a bass tone that fills me with awe and joy. “Tell him, Mother. Tell us.”
She looks at him. I cannot see her face for the radiance of it. “The Wheel of the World turns as It will.”
He laughs and laughs. “You’ve interfered, Mother. I saw it. I remember this man.”
“I acted. I did not guide,” she said.
“Who is this man, Mother? I see him and see him and see him.”
“You see the Ways, my son. You walk the Ways and see all.”
The joy slips on his face, a troubled crease to his massive brow. “The Ways have closed, Mother. I see him, but I do not see all.”
“Not all of them, my son. Not all. As long as one Way remains, the Wheel turns,” she says.
He cocks his head as he looks at me, the colors in his eyes shifting like the sea in a storm. “Have you ever met someone and felt like you’ve known him forever?” he asks.
“No,” I say.
He laughs, with a deep rumble in his wide chest.
“Liar,” he says. “Liar.”
“I have met several who are all the same. I think they’re you,” I say.
“True,” he says. “True.”
“Have I died?” I ask.
“Have you lived?” he asks, and roars with laughter like the sound of time out of time.
She reaches out to me, her hands aglow. She reaches out to me and holds my face. “You live and die, and the Wheel turns. You strive and toil, and the Wheel turns. You elect and decline, and the Wheel turns.”
“Tell me what to do. Please. Tell me what to do,” I say.
She kisses me, her lips like light. “Choose,” she says.
“Change,” he says.
And they are gone. They are there and not there.
I am alone.
I fall into the white. I fall and fall, and I see shadows of white-on-white. The white grows white. A shape takes shape. A circle forms and a spire. The spire begins in the white and ends in it. The circle contains it yet cannot hold it.
I see the shape, and the shape is a circle. It grows dark white. Still white. White stone. Granite. It is a stone ring of infinite doors, a circle of many Ways. It i
s a stone circle with a standing center stone.
I made that. I made it with my mind and my heart. It holds the power of all, all is one, like a wheel, and I laugh. Like the Wheel of the World.
I reach out and gather it in my hand, feel its power, its joy, and its sorrow. I can fix this. I can change this. I can make it right. I can make it all, and everything in it will be mine. I can make it right. The power surges into me, surges and flows and does not stop. It is more than everything. I can become one with it and make it mine. It surges and flows, and it is infinite. And….
It is too much.
I pause. The power pauses. I feel it waiting, ready to surge through me with no end. It is too much. Too much for me. Too much for anyone. That is its strength and its flaw. It cannot be contained. It cannot be free. It is too much for anyone. It needs everyone. I cannot hold it. I do not want it. I want a choice. I want change. To turn, the Wheel of the World must have choice and change, and everything in It—everyone—must choose and change as they will so that It may turn.
I gather what is in me and thrust it back, let the power surge and flow into the ring of stone. It surges and flows. It opens the Ways. All the Ways open, and the Wheel turns.
And I fall in ecstasy and sorrow for what is and always is.
Change is change. It is not Light. It is not Dark.
It is Grey.
50
I woke up on the ground, facing the sky and smelling burning flesh. Smoke tumbled across the Common, thick, acrid billows flickering with essence and fire and death. Bodies surrounded me, dozens, maybe hundreds. I pulled myself up and leaned against the pillar.
My sword lay on the ground, scorched black on the blade. The faith stone was gone. I no longer sensed it anywhere. The sword shifted in my hand when I picked it up and went cold.
I heard sobbing. I searched through the stone ring, going from opening to opening, bodies spread across scorched grass. Here and there, essence signatures glimmered. They weren’t all dead, some, but not all. The sobbing grew louder. I went through a gate in the stone ring and stopped in my tracks.
Kevin Murdock knelt on the ground. He rocked in place, his eyes squeezed shut as sobs wracked his body. Leo lay next to him on the ground, soot-stained and bloodied. I staggered forward, my heart pounding in my chest.
“Kevin….” I said.
He jerked his head up at the sound of my voice. His eyes blazed with essence when he saw me. “Get away from him,” he screamed.
My shield kicked on, but the force of Kevin’s blast hurtled me backwards. I slammed into the stone ring, screaming as the force of it cracked ribs and broke my leg. I fell to the ground, writhing.
Dazed, I lifted my face from the dirt. My sensing ability flickered on and off. I saw something behind Kevin, a subtle glow of a body signature in Leo’s chest. “Not dead,” I slurred.
Kevin came toward me, tears streaming down his face, essence smoking off his hands. “Not dead? Not dead? Look around you. They’re all dead.”
He fired. My body shield rattled around me, and I flopped onto my back. “Kevin, listen….”
He thrust his hand out. “You did this. You killed them. You killed everyone.”
I dragged myself backwards as he fired again. My shield absorbed the shock but crushed me against the stone ring. I tried to tap essence from the ground, but my body was spent. I laughed in futility at the irony. I had my abilities back but no more strength to use them than if I had none at all.
“You think this is funny?” Kevin screamed.
He was almost on top of me when he fired again. My head snapped to the side, my shield crushing my cheekbone. My vision swam as the shield failed. I clutched the ground, trying to pull strength from the raw earth, but I was too weak.
Kevin reared back and punched me. I held my arm up to block the blow too late, spots flashing in my left eye. I dropped my hands to my sides, staring up at him. “You don’t understand,” I mumbled.
“I don’t,” he said.
He held his palm up to my face. I watched the essence coalesce, loops and swirls of white growing on his palm. I closed my eyes, trying to push away, pushing against the ground, but I was against a stone gate of the henge, with no room to maneuver. My hand fell on something cold and hard. I closed my fist around it, felt the heft of the blade as I gripped my sword. With the last of my strength, I thrust it up.
Kevin’s jaw fell open in shock as he hunched forward. His head shuddered as he fought the pain, his hands clawing the air in front of him. Blood gushed over my hand as Kevin stared down in disbelief at the sword buried in his abdomen. He lifted his face, and his expression crumbled into rage. Essence ignited in his hands. I pushed the sword in deeper, and he collapsed over me, his last bolt of essence searing into my chest. Something tore inside, something important that pulled away, and my legs went numb.
I wrapped my arms around him, burying my face in his chest, and wept until I passed out.
Cold woke me. I stared across the remains of the Common. People roamed among the bodies, their faces slack with horror. The westering sun cast the field red with light that threw long dark shadows. Kevin lay on his back beside me, my sword rising from his body like a cross. As I pulled it free, Joe fluttered up from my side. I didn’t even know he was there.
“I came too late,” he said.
The sword shivered and shrank in my hand. The essence drained out of it, and it went cold. I struggled to smile. “You came, Joe. That’s all that matters.”
He settled on the ground. “I can’t find anyone. The world keeps changing.”
“It’s okay. It’ll settle down,” I said. I held the dagger out. “Do me a favor and take this to Briallen.”
He took the dagger. It was almost as long as he was tall. “I shouldn’t leave you. I’ll keep calling for someone.”
“Do this for me first, Joe. I promised her,” I said.
His lip trembled. He nodded and winked out. I closed my eyes. I opened my eyes. Joe sat on my thigh, the dagger across his lap. The setting sun lit his vacant stare with a harsh light.
“What happened?” I asked.
He didn’t look at me. “She shielded her house and wouldn’t answer my call.”
“Bring it back, Joe. You have to do it for me before it’s too late,” I said.
He looked at me with a world of hurt. “Do I have to?”
“Yeah, Joe, you do,” I said.
He bowed his head and disappeared. I closed my eyes.
I opened my eyes. Joe lay curled against my chest, his wings folded flat, his essence light dimmed.
“What happened?” I asked.
He spoke without moving. “I called her again, but she didn’t answer. I flew over the house and looked in the backyard. It was empty. Water was flowing in the fountain. I dropped the dagger, and it pierced the shield barrier and landed in the water. A mist rose, and I thought I saw someone moving in it. I heard a wail of grief that keened higher and higher, until it broke my heart. The mist disappeared, and the fountain was empty.”
I rested my hand on him and closed my eyes.
“Thanks, buddy. You’re the best.”
Epilogue
The wind blew bitter cold off the ocean as Briallen verch Gwyll ab Gwyll followed the porters. She cinched the rope on her black alb and gathered her cloak around her. The porters walked the dirt path, worn hard with age and use, as it sloped downward to the beach. Briallen studied the ground in front of her, the wooden bier in the upper edge of her sight. She thought of nothing in particular—the sound of the wind through the grass, the cry of the seabirds. She had walked the path before.
The porters reached the beach, and their gait slowed against the heavy sand. They took care to keep the bier level and not jostle the body. Briallen did look up then, staring into the distance ahead. The sky was flat white around her as it always was on the beach.
They walked beneath a sunless sky down the endless beach. There was no telling how far to walk. It was differen
t every time. The strand of the shore wound off into the haze. It might never end, she thought. Places like the beach were like that.
A dark spot appeared on the sand ahead, beside the path the porters took. That was different. Briallen had never seen it before and was more surprised as they drew closer. The spot resolved into a figure bundled in black, sitting on the sand. The porters did not pause as they passed. They knew their place and kept walking.
Briallen paused. The huddled shape lifted its head and threw back a hood. Meryl Dian stared after the bier. Tears streamed down her face as the porters meandered above the foam of the tide.
“I loved him,” she said. “I didn’t mean to, but I loved him this time.”
Briallen held her hand out, and Meryl took it. Like a mother, she gathered the smaller woman into her arms and held her to her breast. “Do not lament love. It has a power beyond even the Wheel of the World.”
They stood together as the porters walked on. There was world enough and time on the beach. Meryl’s tears subsided, and Briallen released her. They followed after the bier, first Briallen, then Meryl. Though they made no effort, they reached the porters without speed.
Ahead three figures appeared, three woman in black albs. They stood in a row along the beach, barring the way. The porters did not vary their pace, did not quicken with the end of their journey in sight, but walked until they reached a barge in the surf. With care, they lowered the bier and stepped away. Meryl hung back as the three women joined Briallen on the barge, two to each side of the body.
Briallen looked up as a bird cried in the wind, a crow, lost in the flat white of the sky. She looked at the woman across from her and nodded. The woman lifted her hood and settled it back on her shoulders, her expression blank. Briallen exhaled, a coil of essence rolling from her lips, settling over the woman’s face.
Keeva macNeve lifted her head, startled. She stared at Briallen, then down at the body. She pressed her lips together in regret and resignation. “I gave him Challenge,” she said. “I gave him cause to thrive and rise above his ability. I gave him trial and tribulation. I failed him.”
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