sadness. Then the screams began.
My mind blinked.
Dylan swims up into my sight again. My head hurts with a ringing as loud as a clock tower. I hold my hands to either side of the knife, not touching it. Blood blossoms on his shirt, deep red blood against a deep red shirt. He doesn’t move. He stares at me and stares at me and stares at me. Terror in . . .
My mind blinked.
They move closer and resolve into people. A man, yes, a man and woman. Their vast shadow shapes are a wash of gray against the white. Huge and tall, he’s taller, but she . . . she is . . .
My mind blinked.
Briallen looks at me in surprise, glowing in the white, a golden Briallen in a sea of white. She lifts her hands, something in her hands is moving, swaying with essence in a rainbow of color.
My mind blinked.
Briallen looks at me in surprise and rushes toward me as I lean over Dylan.
“Tell me what to do.” I hear myself. I hear myself and I hear fear.
My mind blinked.
I stand on a plain, white grass waving against a white sky. It’s not winter, pray, what is this new madness? Where have I come? I turn in place, searching, searching across the plain, searching about the standing stones, but Maeve is not there. Was she? What is this place?
My mind blinked.
. . . the one who leads. He follows, reluctant in his step. The blood fills my mouth, burns in my chest, and I cannot breathe anymore. I try not to breathe. I do not want any more blood in my lungs. Try not to.
They stand over me, huge figures, white on white, then faint wisps of essence coursing over them in pale, pale color. He looks at me with a storm in his eyes, and she . . . she is beautiful. She leans down, leans a long way down, her hand outstretched, reaching down. She touches my chest and the pain . . . stops.
“What are you doing, Mother?” he asks.
She straightens up, so far up and away, her face a light of glory. She stops. Everything stops. I stop. Everything . . .
My mind blinked.
Vize is running. Everything is white. I am running. Everything is white. He looks over his shoulder at me. He looks determined . . . or crazed . . . I can’t tell. Everything is white. One minute we were facing each other, and now everything is white. He stops. He looks surprised. There is someone lying on the ground. Something about him is familiar. Everything is white and there is no ground. There is someone lying in the white. Everything . . .
My mind blinked.
“I can’t do this, Briallen,” I shout.
Briallen kneels by me. Something is not right. Or different. She doesn’t look right. She reaches out but stops.
“You must. I can’t,” she says.
I close my eyes and see white and something black, far, far away. Black like a seed in the white. Briallen sings and then she screams and then I know what to do.
My mind blinked.
My mind blinked.
My mind blinked.
. . . stops. Everything stops. Even me.
“Thinking,” she says.
“You interfere with the Wheel of the World,” he says.
“I am the Wheel of the World. So are you. So is he. So are we all. The all of it is one,” she says.
He leans toward me, ranks of hair cascading down, wild and wind-wet. “He seems familiar to me.”
The light of her face moves with her nod. “He is and was and will be.”
He withdraws, a slow receding of immensity, but I can see his face. “I know what you are thinking,” he says to her.
“Tell me, then. I do not know,” she says.
He laughs, something deep, a rumble from the deep that sounds like time.
My mind blinked.
Vize looks feverish. “It must happen this way. You must let it happen.”
“I won’t let you,” I say.
He looks frightened yet determined as I reach toward him.
He recedes.
My mind blinks.
“He’s dying. That is the Way of the Wheel,” he says.
“I am here. That is the Way as well,” she says.
He laughs again. “Yes,” he says.
“Yes,” she says.
My mind blinks.
My hand reaches out for the staff.
My mind blinks.
My hand reaches out for the knife.
My mind blinks.
My hand reaches out for the ring.
My mind blinks.
My hand reaches out . . .
My mind blinks.
She extends her hand again, down, down, down, it comes, glowing with light, with essence, with her. My hand reaches out for her hand. We touch. Sensation returns. I scream and
everything
goes
white
30
I wrenched forward and coughed, spitting blood into my lap. Spots of light flashed across my eyes, red and white and black. Moira gasped, backing away from me in horror. Her hair had come loose on one side. Blood speckled her white wrap, which slipped from her shoulders to the crook of one arm. I wiped at my mouth, and the back of my hand came away covered in blood.
The commissioner lay facedown at my feet, his arms thrown forward. Beyond him, Tibbet crouched over Eagan where he slumped on the floor against the chair, slack-jawed, chin curled into his shoulder, arms gathered limply in his lap, hands palm up.
I gathered my feet under me. “What the hell happened?”
Tibbet rose with tears streaming down her face. She threw herself into my arms. “I thought you were dead.”
My gut tightened at the sight over her shoulder of the commissioner. Faint wisps of smoke curled from his damaged and sunken eyes, a telltale sign of essence shock. Scott Murdock was dead. “Gods, Tibs, did I kill him?”
She shook her head against my chest. “Manus did it. He won’t wake up, Connor.”
Eagan’s essence smoldered within him fainter than it had been. He wasn’t dead. “He used whatever he had left, Tibs. He’s alive, though.”
A pounding on the door sounded. Tibbet lifted her head and grimaced through her tears. I kissed her forehead, leaving a bloody lip print. I blotted it off with my sleeve. She closed her eyes and took several deep breaths, smoothing her dress as she did so. She opened her eyes, still wet, but clearer and sharper. With an upward tilt of her chin, she approached the door and opened it partway to speak to whoever was on the other side.
I wiped at my chin, coating my fingers in more blood. Pointlessly, I looked for something to wipe my hand with, then settled on the front of my jacket. The silk was ruined anyway. “Where is all this blood coming from?”
Moira gathered up her wrap and came closer, lifting the end of the garment to wipe at my face. “Scott shot you in the face.”
I pushed her hand away, taking hold of the white cloth myself. She let it slip off her arms. I bunched it into a usable rag and wiped at my face and neck. “I think I’d know if I were shot.”
Moira focused on my face and the movement of my hands, her forehead smoothing in surprise. “You were. That’s part of your jaw on the floor. I would swear you were dead. Do you have some kind of self-healing ability?”
The bloodstain on the floor did have pieces of something in it. The idea that it was pieces of me seemed inconceivable. I wasn’t wounded. I was covered in blood “Why did you do that to him?”
Without the slightest remorse, she gazed at the commissioner’s body. “Why did he do it to himself?”
“You made him believe you were Amy Sullivan.”
One corner of her mouth turned down. “Murdock, Connor. I was Amy Sullivan Murdock. He believed it because it’s true. I suppose a husband would know his wife before her lover does. He really did put a gun to my head, you know. I wanted him to suffer for that and for taking away my children. This was too easy for him.”
“Leo went to your funeral,” I said.
She met my eyes. “You’re a detective. Go investigate. If anyone was in that casket, it wasn’t his mother.”
“I still don’t believe you.”
She sighed. “I don’t care, Connor. He had me followed all those years ago. He knew who you were. Your youth saved you then. I’m surprised he didn’t shoot you long before now.”
