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 is 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.
