“Don’t just stand there. Get the hell on!” Murdock shouted.
He spun the bike toward the portal. A wave propagated through the ground, and the hill became a gully. Murdock revved the throttle in the face of a growing peak of earth. I barely swung my leg behind him before he let out the clutch. The engine sang as the front tire lifted, and we tore up the hill. We rode the ground swell like a boat riding a wave. At the crest, we went airborne. The engine screamed as the tires spun free.
The portal twisted toward us, the lintel stone cracking and throwing fist-sized chunks of stone. The last of the circle collapsed, and the portal heaved over. Brilliant essence sprang from the spear and tore open the veil.
Images cascaded across my vision, buildings and trees and people, as the bike flew out of the fairy ring. We hit the ground, and the bike skidded from under us. Murdock’s body shield took the brunt of the initial impact, but I rolled free, falling down an embankment until a tree stopped me.
I winced as I propped myself up to catch my breath. Several somethings felt broken inside. The air vibrated with essence, a steady, bass throb against my skin. The wind carried the rich, flinty odor of essence-fire. Flames burned everywhere, and the damaged landscape showed evidence of major exchanges of essence-fire. The great oaks at the top of the hill lay broken and uprooted.
So many people on the Common earlier had set off my riot radar in my old security muscles. The destruction around me confirmed it hadn’t been wrong. The entire Common was in lockdown, empty of the crowd that had streamed to the fairy ring. The only people remaining were fey from the Guild or human police. Even at this distance, Keeva’s essence signature was identifiable up near the statehouse dome. Danann security agents flew in line formations along the surrounding streets, more than I had seen even in the Weird, which was saying something. They weren’t too circumspect about using essence either.
The fairy ring had changed. What had been a hazy funnel of essence had become a soaring column of light, a rich yellow shot with white. The Taint burned along its edges, green and black. Essence trembled the air, radiating from the column with an intense heat. The pillar of the war monument warped under the pressure, the bronze statue of a female warrior at the top leaning forward as though she was going to jump. Municipal emergency vehicles-police cars and motorcycles, EMT vans, fire trucks, and ambulances-raced from beneath its impending fall. Two communications vans had become too deformed to go anywhere.
Murdock picked himself up, looking no worse for wear. Of course, he had the body shield, not me.
“Thanks for the save,” I said.
He shook his head at me like we had done something amusing and embarrassing. “It’s not like I could just leave you with a bunch of dead people.”
I smiled, too tired to argue with him. “No, only a jerk would do that.”
He gestured at my hand. “Does that hurt?”
Essence radiated out of the spear, too powerful for a simple wooden shaft to maintain. I didn’t think the spear was even there anymore, not in any physical sense I could understand, white fire taking on the spear’s shape as it bled through from wherever the light was coming from. The essence coiled up my forearm, igniting the silver mesh like a tattoo of light. I couldn’t see or feel my hand. I didn’t know if I still had a hand. “Surprisingly, no, but it probably will as soon as I remember to feel.”
The ground shook. The column of light soared higher, its bottom edge expanding across the remains of the fairy ring. “Is that supposed to happen?” Murdock asked.
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like it,” I said.
If I wasn’t sure of my hand, the dark mass in my head decided to remind me it still existed. It shifted, probing into the essence of the spear, both essences pushing for dominance. I closed my eyes, encouraging the spear to feel my desire. It was not like ability control — I didn’t even think it was an ability, at least not one I understood. It didn’t hear me during Vize’s throw; otherwise, it would not have injured Ceridwen. No, the spear had its own agenda, responding to me only if it chose. Whatever it was doing, it caused a hell of a lot less pain than the dark mass, and I welcomed it.
“I failed,” a voice said.
Startled, Murdock and I moved together but saw no one. The air rippled and Vize appeared in a relaxed posture, his sword in his hand but down at his side. The nixie squatted on the ground chuckling, her hand clutching the hem of Vize’s tunic. Chalk up cloaking as another of her abilities.
Murdock called up his shield. My sensing ability detected no metal on him at all. He had lost his gun somewhere.
I pointed my blade at Vize. “Drop the sword.”
“Do I have your word you won’t run me through?” he asked.
“You mean like you did Ceridwen?”
He held both hands up, the sword high in his right. “What needed doing is done. I did what was demanded.”
I gestured. “Drop it.”
He relaxed his knees, keeping his eyes on me as he crouched, lowering the sword parallel to the ground and placing it on the grass.
The nixie grabbed at it, and I focused my blade on her.
“No! No! Keep it, Berg! He has two teeth, and you have none,” she said in an old variant of German.
Vize straightened, stroking the nixie’s matted hair. “Hush, Gretan. We have more to achieve here than our lives,” he replied in the same language. Loathing filled her eyes as she glared at me. She released the sword and clutched Vize’s leg again.
“The Wheel could have dropped me anywhere, Grey. It chose here,” Vize said.
“The fact that you want the spear might have something to do with that,” I said.
He shrugged. “Perhaps. But I didn’t cause this, Grey. You did.”
“I have a different interpretation of who caused this, Vize,” I said.
He gave me his back, watching the column in the sky grow wider. “Yes, well, I’m sure you will take great solace in that as we all die. Can you read the runes on the spear?”
The runes. They were there, faint, almost lost in the white essence in my hand. Way Seeker. Way Maker. Way Keeper. I pressed the spearhead against Vize’s neck. He didn’t flinch. “What do you know about them?”
He tilted his head to see me over his shoulder. “What they say. The holder of the spear seeks the Way of the Wheel, makes it and keeps it. And the spear seeks whoever the Wheel decides will make and keep the Ways. It seeks someone to execute the will of the Wheel, like it did when it came to me in TirNaNog.”
I exchanged glances with Murdock. I didn’t believe Vize. “The Wheel of the World wanted you to try to kill Ceridwen?”
Vize returned his gaze to the column. “I dreamed a figure in red would destroy everything I sought to achieve. I tried to eliminate that threat, and the spear seemed to will it. I tried three times and picked the wrong person each time. I misunderstand the metaphor. You are the red figure, Grey, you with the spear in your hand and a bloodstained face.”
“Then I’ve stopped you. I’ve won.”
He gestured at the sky. “Have you? Congratulations.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t care. The spear left me, and the Wheel turns, Grey. Some say we do things that change Its direction. Some say we can’t. Doing nothing is the same as doing something. We always choose. In the end, the Wheel turns. I can accept the choices I’ve made. Can you?”
A sending fluttered through the air. The nixie grinned up at me, and Vize bowed his head. They vanished.
I swung my sword through empty air. “Dammit.”
“What happened?” asked Murdock.
I shook my head. “I’m stupid, that’s what happened. He told the nixie to cloak them. I assumed he couldn’t do sendings because I couldn’t.” I stared up at the column. “I don’t believe that religious crap.”
Murdock frowned, looking down at his feet. “I do.”
“What?”
The column glowed as Murdock stared up at
the sky. “I don’t know what that place was I just pulled you out of, Connor, but it was real. I don’t know what that means, but I do know I have to have more reason to wake up every day than to watch shit happen.”
“What the hell do you expect me to do?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I just don’t think we can do nothing,” he said.
The column was growing. If I didn’t believe anything else Vize said, he was right that whatever had happened in TirNaNog was spreading. “I have to go back up there,” I said.
Murdock nodded grimly. “Don’t fall in. We don’t have another bike.”
I started up the hill.
“Connor,” Murdock called out. I looked back. He nodded once. I saluted him with my sword.
I approached the damaged fairy ring, the spear vibrating in my hand. Scattered about the remains of the hill, gargoyles faced the column. Some slumped in the face of all the essence that had spilled over them. Their unintelligible, dry voices hummed in my head, several at once in tones that could only be described as both hope and sadness. I stepped over crushed mushrooms, their broken flesh pungent in the air. The spear pulsed, the runes visible, a dark burning blue. Essence streamed over me, my hair bristling with static charge. The column stretched above, pulling at me while the dark mass in my head clung with tenacious claws to my body essence. The column was a roiling mass, mostly white, with shades of indigo, amber, and emerald. It reminded me of standing in the veil. Maybe it was the veil, unleashed.
A flash of pink spiraled down, and Joe landed smoothly on my shoulder.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.”
“Thought I bugged out, didn’t you?”
I jostled him as I shrugged. “Not really. I don’t always get what you’re up to.”
He chortled with an incredibly smug look on his face. “Somebody had to take Murdock the silver branch you threw away.”
“Oh. That explains it.” I hadn’t thought to ask.
“What are you doing?” Joe asked.
“Thinking about the consequences of nothing.”
“Ah, it’s come to that. I was afraid that thing would kill you eventually,” he said.
So Joe. I wasn’t sure we were even having the same conversation. He was fascinated and repelled by the thing in my head, the thing he called the nothing. I shivered.
“That’s the choice,” I whispered.
“What?”
“Nothing. That’s what you called it when I asked you how you found me when you teleported. You said you looked for the spot with the nothing in the middle of it.”
He craned his face around to look at me. “Isn’t that what we’ve been talking about?”
I answered him with a laugh. He really was crazy. Brilliant crazy, but still crazy.
Whether Vize intended it or not, his final words made sense to me. If I did nothing, the column would keep growing. But if I used nothing, it might stop. Or it might turn everything to nothing. Between the known nothing and the unknown nothing, I took the unknown.
When I held out the spear, electrostatic sparks arced between it and the column. Power surged within, and my body shook as the dark mass flared in response. After fighting against it for three years, I embraced the darkness, filled my mind with the desire for it to grow. It responded like the spear, only painfully. Taint seeped down the spear toward my arm, no longer pulling the column wider, but spiraling down into a nexus that was forming between the light and the dark.
My mind screamed as I pushed at the dark mass within. The nothingness of it seared through the mesh on my forearm. A dark streak oozed down my arm, a fierce course of nothing, a complete absence of essence. The light and the dark met where my hand clutched the spear. I pressed harder, the thing in my head crushing against the inside of my skull. The column wavered and paused its motion. I forced myself to continue, willing the essence through the conduit that formed within my arm. After a faint hush, the essence in the column brushed against my face, pulling back to form the veil.
The black nothingness crept along the spear. It bucked in my hand, spitting the Taint out. The flow of essence from the column diminished, surged, then diminished again. I forced the darkness against it. It receded and returned. Each time I pushed, it gave back weaker until, finally, it changed course. It turned, folding in on itself, reversing its momentum. Joe yelled in my ear as he pounded my shoulder in excitement.
Elated, I opened my eyes. Darkness consumed my arm and permeated the spear. It reached for the column with a gnawing hunger. Above, the victory monument swayed violently and rebounded. Essence and darkness twisted it into a sinuous line of granite dancing in the air. With an ear-piercing screech, it pulled from its foundation, and the column of light sucked it in.
The column shrank. Enough. It was enough. I took a deep breath and willed the darkness to withdraw. It raged up my arm, swelling into a restless mass in my head again. It slammed against the back of my skull, and I went airborne. I landed on my back and gazed up at the sky. With a loud screech, the column contracted, stretched into the shape of a pillar, and collapsed.
Joe floated above me, the rising sun glistening gold on the edges of his wings. He circled, a reflective expression on his face. “I think I need to change my loincloth,” he said.
Things shifted in my body. More cracked ribs, probably a broken one or two; aching joints; a soreness in my lower back, probably was a damaged kidney; and every square inch of my skin felt abraded. My forearm throbbed with heat. Vapor wisped over the silver filigree. The metal darkened and sank into my arm, leaving behind a faint indigo ghost image of the swirling pattern. I flexed my fingers, my skin tight on a smooth pink hand.
At the bottom of the hill near Beacon Street, the inert body of a dream mare lay on its side, the light gone out of it. Next to it, unmoving Danann security agents stood in a circle facing outward. Between them, I caught glimpses of a red figure on the ground. My sense of elation fell. Only a Danann honor guard stood like that. Ceridwen hadn’t made it.
“They died coming through the veil,” Joe said softly in my ear.
Sadness and small guilt swept through me. If I had not been so cocky years ago, Vize would have been in custody, and Ceridwen would not have died. She had fought to protect a place she had no reason to protect, people she didn’t know, following orders from a High Queen who had betrayed her. At least she knew she had been duped. I would make sure everyone heard what she told me at the end. We might not have liked each other, but Ceridwen deserved to be honored. I walked down the hill to pay my respects.
Except for a lack of essence, the dream mare appeared asleep, crouched on her haunches with her long neck stretched out on the ground. One of her eyes was open, a milky white glaze. She had had some kind of essence reaction. The veil or the Taint, or probably both, killed her.
As I came around the horse’s body, Ceridwen became visible. The honor guard kept a distance of several feet. Her body had been arranged on the ground to await transport. She lay on her back with her armor and helm on. Someone had placed a sword on her, blade down, and wrapped her hands on the hilt.
I stopped. Beyond the honor guard, more people gathered, Danann security agents, and several Guild personnel. A small group surrounded Briallen, her body rigid with emotion. She must have sensed me because she turned and held out her hand. My stomach lurched at the look on her face. I forced myself to move, denial warring with realization as I approached. I took Briallen’s hand and folded my arms around her. She wasn’t crying, but the grief radiating off her was palpable.
I held her tightly against my chest as I stared down at Dylan’s dead body.
CHAPTER 37
I leaned against the door of the room high in an isolated tower of the Guildhouse. The domed chamber had a complex truss design reminiscent of Renaissance architecture applied with druidic sensibilities. Thick oak beams crisscrossed the ceiling and reached to the floor. A Palladian window filled an entire wall with an expansive view to the east. The st
ained glass along the frame of the window was done in multicolored geometric shapes, some clean, clear colors, some rich opalescents. The center pane had a stunning image of an oak grove in bloom, complete with representations of mistletoe hanging among the leaves. Louis Comfort Tiffany had made the window himself under a direct commission of the Seelie Court. I couldn’t image what its value was.
I rolled the sphere in my hands, admiring the craftsmanship. The knotwork of the outer shell patterned with meticulous fine lines to resemble a flat, braided rope. The interior orb moved freely with a faint sound as I spun it with my finger. The precise incisions of ogham script on the orb appeared and disappeared beneath the knots as it moved, the light catching the various aphorisms and poetic triads. I used to think the words were sentimental, in a derisive sense. It’s funny how a charged emotional state can transform something maudlin into something profound.
Dylan’s body lay shrouded on the funeral bier draped in a ceremonial robe, the indigo and gold Celtic weave of its hem pooling on the floor. The brilliant white cloth was placed so that three vibrant yellow suns with flaming red borders rested on his chest. His face looked handsome in repose, no indication of what he might have felt when he died. Leaving a good-looking corpse fit his style.
I waited in the dim predawn silence. A small fluctuation of essence in my chest prompted me to look up from the sphere. The window brightened as dawn arrived, the sun’s essence seeping into the sky in feathery touches. In the clear space above the grove image, the sun appeared in full, perched on the horizon. Light bathed the room, Dylan’s shroud a sudden field of colors reflected from the stained glass.
“It would serve you right if I walked out the door right now,” I said.
I didn’t mean it. Not really. I moved to the bier and held the sphere over Dylan’s face. The sun warmed the sphere, and it awakened. I lowered it gently to his forehead as the inner orb began to spin on its own. Faster and faster it turned, glowing with a soft white light. Essence welled out of the spaces of the knotwork and overflowed onto my hand, spilling out warm and soothing, running down Dylan’s face. The shroud glowed as essence ran under it, the shape of his body burning under the cloth. The orb slowed as the light faded, then stopped. I stepped back.
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