Raven Calls

I squinted. “Yeah, I’m sure not.” Well, maybe she didn’t. Not right now, anyway. I was going to have a talking-to with her, though, when we got back home. “Never mind. Doesn’t matter. Hello, Brigid. Nice to meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Have you, now.” She kept sounding amused, which was better than the Morrígan’s snide superiority. “And what is it you’ve heard?”

“That you’re her opposite,” I said with a thumb-jerk toward the Morrígan, “and…” Okay, maybe I hadn’t heard all that much about her after all. I knew who she was. That was really about it, but for me, that was a lot. “And you’re one of the good guys?”

Brigid’s eyes grew more serious. “Death is not an aspect of evil, little sh—”

“Joanne.” I really hated being called “little shaman.” It was bad enough from Cernunnos, a certified god. I was not going to take it from people who were somewhere between human and sublime on the divinity scale.

Her eyebrow quirked. “Siobhán.”

“For God’s sake, what is this, a haggle? My name’s Joanne. Use it or don’t, but lay off with the insulting diminutives. And I know death isn’t inherently evil, but I’m not so sure there’s not something fundamentally wrong about war, ’cause, you know, basic rule of thumb: killing people is bad. So don’t try to tell me she’s one of the good guys—” I did the thumb-jerk again “—or that you don’t represent basically everything she’s not. Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness.” That was probably an unforgivably American way of phrasing it, but it got the point across.

Brigid made a face that indicated I had won a free pass for this round. I let out an explosive breath, tried to reel my temper back in and snapped, “So what do you want from me?”

So much for reeled-in tempers. Brigid smiled indulgently, like I was an ill-mannered five-year-old she wouldn’t have to deal with for very long. Probably that should’ve chastised me, but it only irritated me all the more. I turned to Gary and made a series of exasperated faces, trying to work myself into a better mood as Brigid said, “It’s your help I’m needing, gwyld. There’s a thing that’s been made in the near-distant past, and I can sense its touch on you.”

I clutched my left forearm, then bit back a hiss. Gnashy dog bites were not meant to be seized. It hurt. While I waited for the pain to fade, Brigid said, “Not that mark. This is the touch of death and life reborn, visited upon you thrice.”

I said, “Thrice, who says thrice,” under my breath and tried to count up the number of times I’d been through the life-and-near-death cycle in the past year or so. I stopped when I got to five, satisfied that Brigid didn’t know what she was talking about. Then I wondered if individual instances mattered or if it was a per-adventure count, in which case she might be on the money with three. There was the whole mess with Cernunnos and Herne that started all this, the dive into the cauldron and Saturday night’s exhaustive rebirthing scene. I didn’t think I’d been grievously injured the other thirty-seven or so times I’d figured I was about to die, so they probably didn’t add to the tally. “All right, okay, thrice. So what does that mean? Why does three times matter if you need my help?”

“There’s power in threes.” It sounded as if she was having a hard time not adding “You idiot” to that statement, but after a moment she managed to go on without saying it. “Bran’s cauldron has left its mark on you.”

“Less mark than I left on it,” I muttered.

Brigid laughed. “And it’s that which makes me need your help. I can sense its history on you, gwyld. I can sense that for most of its existence it has done little harm.”

I stared at her. “Little harm? Are you serious? That thing seduces the living. Invites them to crawl inside so it can suck their life out and turn them into zombies bidden to do the command of—” Bidden. Who says bidden? I turned my stare at the sky, as if answers or excuses for my word choices lay there. They didn’t.

“How many…zombies…were within the cauldron, Joanne Walker?”

“I don’t know, ten or so. Not very many.”

“Ten men,” Brigid murmured, “including Bres, he who was once ard rí of this land and is now taken from time, have died for the Morrígan and her master.”

My jaw flapped open. “Wait. Bres? He’s the guy who came undone? You remember him? How?”

“The world cannot abide imbalance. When my sister became death’s warrior, a similar and opposite path was offered to me. We remember that which has been changed, and your presence here gives me hope that the cauldron might yet be bound.”

“It can be. I mean, it was. Oh!” God, I was slow. “You’re the one who did it! Somebody broke the bindings, but not until just last year. I knew something powerful had set them—”

Brigid’s face froze momentarily, offense taken at something rather than someone. She let it go, though, as I rattled on. “I’ve been dying to meet whoever did it. Not actually dying. I do enough of that. But it didn’t feel like human magic, and I was right!” I wanted to dance a jig, by gum, though doing so over the bodies of a dead man and an unconscious powermonger seemed ever so slightly inappropriate. “How did you do it? How will you do it?”

“How did you destroy it?”

The impulse to jig faded. An innocent soul had sacrificed herself to make sure the cauldron was destroyed. Much more subdued, I said, “With help.”

“Then it is with help that I’ll bind it.”

I genuinely didn’t get she meant me until she held out her hand in invitation.

Chapter Seven

“…is this why you threw me back to this end of time? I mean, you’ve been here before, right? You knew this was going to happen when you met us at Tara in the future. Seriously, couldn’t you have just said something back then? Future then?”

Her eyebrows rose. “I meant what I said, Joanne Walker. I wouldn’t know what you’re talking about. You’re the one unstuck in time, the one who passes through many points at once. I travel through time day by day, as most living creatures do. If you have met me again, it awaits me in my future even if it resides in your past.”

I liked the idea of Brigid being responsible for our time traveling a lot more than I liked being responsible for it myself, so it took me a minute to get over that. Actually, it more like took me a moment to even approach it. Getting over it was still on the agenda. Gary, meantime, hissed, “That was her?”

He’d picked up the sword I’d dropped and had taken to standing guard over the Morrígan, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t listening. I gave a big sloppy frustrated shrug. “I think so. Or an avatar. Do you use avatars? Never mind, it doesn’t matter. How am I supposed to help? I don’t know any binding spells.”

I gave that a mental once-over to make sure it was true, then startled. It wasn’t: I’d encountered a binding spell in my first hours as a shaman. It called on gods and elements and things, and it probably wasn’t a safe bet to rely on me to cast it. Wisdom being the better part of valor, I said nothing about it.

Turned out it didn’t matter, as Brigid said, “The binding will be tied to you. Now that I know you have the power and the will to destroy it, the binding need only last until the cauldron comes into your presence.”

I stared at her. Began to speak. Held up a finger to stop both myself and her from saying anything. Turned around. Walked away. Stared fiercely at the southern horizon. There was a tower there, about a mile away, just like in my time. I glared at the tower until I trusted myself not to shriek like a harpy, then gathered myself to face Brigid again.

“I don’t know why you’d set a binding that can be broken when the damned cauldron enters my vicinity, like, my city, rather than my actual physical presence, but that’s what happens. People die because of that, Brigid. I get that closed time loops are tidy and all—” and, hoo boy, was I developing a hate-on for them “—but we’re talking about people’s lives here.”

“I would not set such a spell,” she said both serenely and alliteratively, “but the years are long between now and then, are they not? Even the most powerful of magics may slip, over so much time. And how many would die, Siobhán Walkingstick, if I did not make the magic at all?”

Using logic to derail my head of steam was a lousy trick. I muttered, “Well, at least promise to tighten up the wards every few centuries so the bindings can only be broken if I’m there. Or better yet, so only I can break them. Without murdering poor Jason Chen.” It didn’t work that way. I knew it didn’t, because it hadn’t. I doubted we’d get back to our time and discover history had retrofitted itself and that Jason had gotten to take his sisters trick-or-treating after all. For one intense, searing moment I wished like hell it did work that way, but time, life and Grandfather Sky were not that kind. If I ever got to meet the makers of the world I had a word or two I wanted to say to them.

Brigid promised, “I’ll do my best,” and I nodded, knowing it wouldn’t be enough. Then I followed her gaze as it went to Lugh. She murmured, “My sister must take her sacrifice so we might find the cauldron to bind it,” apologetically.

It wasn’t physically possible for my head to spin, but it tried. A headache sprang up for its efforts, and while I was struggling to find something politic to say, Gary growled, “You gotta be kidding, lady. All this and you don’t even know where the damned thing is?”

Brigid stiffened. “It would be a great prize for my sister’s master. They would not leave it somewhere easy to find.”

“It’s in the cave.” I sighed as Gary and Brigid both raised their eyebrows at me. “The one the werewolves came from. Somewhere to the west of here, near a…” I waved my hands. “Near another hill.”

“Ireland,” Brigid said dryly, “is full of hills.”

I glowered. “A built-up one. Somebody made a huge pile of rocks on top of a gigantic flat hill.”

“Cnoc na rí,” Brigid said every bit as dryly as before. “We would call it a mountain, Joanne Walker. The mountain of kings. You speak of the cairns atop it.”

“I don’t know what Knocknaree is,” I said, approximating her pronunciation as best I could, “but it’s a marker for the cave, and if you know where it is, we should probably haul ass that direction and bind the damned cauldron so Gary and I can go home.”

Gary squeaked, “That might be a problem, doll,” and when I looked over, the Morrígan had my sword at his throat.

I had shot somebody four mornings ago. It was not something I was proud of and not something I wanted to repeat. Ever. Except I’d have dropped the Morrígan in a heartbeat, if I’d had my gun. I doubted it would change the whole history of the world. Someone else similar would just replace her. But I didn’t have my gun, and later I would probably think that was good, because digging modern-day shell casings out of a millennia-old Tara hillside would really throw archaeologists for a loop.

Right now, though, my fingers clenched like I was squeezing a trigger, and the Morrígan gave me a tight, nasty smile. “Don’t think of it, gwyld. You may draw a blade from the air, but not while it resides in my hand.”

She was right, too. I could almost feel the hilt in my hand, but there was a trembling resistance, too, like a magnet not quite strong enough to pull its counterpart toward it. But the Morrígan’s magic—or grip—was stronger, and the harder I tried calling it to me, the redder a scratch on Gary’s throat became.

I stopped trying. The sword relaxed, giving Gary room to swallow. In fact, his whole big self relaxed. Sagged, some might even say. He had both hands on the Morrígan’s arm, classic knife-at-throat pose, but he wasn’t going to be able to pull her away without slitting his own gullet. His head fell forward, shoulders caved as best they could to protect his throat in a moment of defeat. His spirit animal’s presence was agitated, not something I’d ever imagined a tortoise could be. But even tortoises had vulnerable throats.