as it was that I had something desperately wrong with me, it was equally obvious that Suzanne hadn’t been struck by Cernunnos’s blade. Her eyes were closed, but there was color in her cheeks that even the flashes of lightning couldn’t bleach out, and her breathing was steady.
Which meant either I’d succeeded utterly or failed completely. There was no boy in my arms. Wasn’t that a Scottish fairy tale? I laughed, a high-pitched sound of panic, and rolled over just in time to miss being stabbed in the back a second time by an extremely unhappy god. The sword stuck into the wooden carousel floor. Cernunnos snarled. I smiled up at him and looked through his legs to see what was going on.
In the flashes of light, Gary slid down the carousel horse, dark blood seeping through his coat to stain it black. Behind him, a spark with the same unearthly luminescence as the Hunt appeared, whirling in unexpected directions as the wind snatched it back and forth. The Hunt came forward through the storm, gathering around the rapidly growing spark.
Cernunnos yanked his sword from the floor as the pale mare let out a nicker of pleasure and shadowed through both Gary and the carousel horse. The Hunt parted their circle for her, and I realized I was still seeing through solid objects.
“Stupid shaman,” I mumbled, and closed my eyes. The darkness went away, replaced by the brilliance of pure spirit in everything from the carved carousel animals to the god of the Hunt himself. When I opened my eyes again it was easier to see, physical forms faded to lesser importance.
Gary was dying. Every heartbeat drove thick blood out, more slowly now than a few moments ago. Suzanne-I didn’t even need to turn my head to see her-was growing stronger, her breathing deeper. Cernunnos swept his sword up and I flinched, too badly hurt to move more, waiting for the next blow.
Instead the god parried a blow he couldn’t have seen, sword braced over his shoulder as Herne drove his own sword down from behind Cernunnos. Metal sang as they smashed together, then scraped as Cernunnos whirled, drawing his blade along the length of Herne’s. It was perfect: Herne’s sword was pushed wide, and Cernunnos opened his son’s ribs from side to side in one long sweep. Herne dropped to his knees, sword falling from numb fingers, the emeralds and browns of his colors suddenly bleaching.
Cernunnos drew back his sword for the final blow, and a child’s voice rang out: “Stop!”
Cernunnos dropped his sword like a marionette released from its strings, turning in shocked rage to face the young Rider. He stood fey and slender and stunningly beautiful, with a look of deep resolve in his brilliant emerald eyes. He sat astride his pale mare, one palm reassuringly against her neck, his other hand easy on the reins. Behind him, the Hunt were gathered, the hounds sitting and lying at the horses’ hooves rather than slinking around.
“This one is not yours, Father,” the boy said, almost apologetically. “I would that he were, for the Hell that has been visited on me. But of your blood, none is less meant for you than he but I myself.”
Cernunnos’s mouth curled in a snarl. “Thou wouldst have mercy on the one who stole your power and would have usurped mine?”
The boy shrugged, as painfully graceful as Cernunnos. “It is not mine to say. There is no mark on his soul that gives him to you. He is your child, Father. You cannot have him. It is the way of things.”
Behind me, Suzanne whimpered and shifted, the warmth of her body moving away. Cernunnos turned, eyes bright with anger, and lifted his sword again. I felt a peculiar kind of relief, knowing that I was his target, rather than the young woman sprawled on the carousel floor.
“Father,” the boy said, apologetic and warning.
“ I can see the mark on this one,” Cernunnos growled. The boy inclined his head.
“So can we all, Father, but not yet. She has a long journey before she comes to the Shadowlands.”
That didn’t relieve me as much as it should have. “Nor are you done here, gwyld, ” the boy said. “Get up. Finish your tasks. We have a long Hunt before us tonight, and I will not ride until I see this thing finished.”
“You’re welcome too,” I croaked. Ungrateful little bastard.
“Make right what has been put asunder,” the boy said sharply. The mare pranced, a few nervous steps, and he stroked her neck again.
“Make right,” I mumbled. “Make what right?” I closed my eyes again and sank into myself, reaching out toward everyone who stood or lay around the carousel, looking for something that was obviously wrong, knowing better than to expect the superficial physical wounds to be the problem.
Big fat sword holes are superficial? a little part of my brain asked. I told it to shut up and go away. To my surprise, it did.
Nor were my own flaws the problem. I knew that without bothering to look to myself. I touched the others only fleetingly; it was Herne, I knew that, much as I didn’t want to face another encounter with him. A schism ran through his soul, a chasm of pure blackness, holding apart the thing that he was from the thing he was meant to be.
Green Man. Protector. Healer. Godling. Those things lay on the wrong side of the gap, torn and distorted by a terrible jealousy, by anger and bitterness at a mortal lifetime gone wrong, hundreds of years ago. Herne had turned his back on a shaman’s path, and his immortal blood had granted him no peace since then. He’d buried pain in the pursuit of power.
Would this have happened to me? I could see the potential in myself, the buried anger from a dozen years ago, never acknowledged, never dealt with. Nor was I ready to deal with them now.
But I could acknowledge. I swallowed hard and laid myself open to Herne, soul to soul, matching wound for wound, fissure for fissure. His were deeper, more plentiful than mine, but this wasn’t a popularity contest. Shared pain was pain eased. The elder who’d given me my drum had told me that after Ayita died. I’d turned away.
As Herne tried to turn away now. I caught him in a web of silver rainbows, wondering where I was getting the power to maintain my own strength, when I’d started out the evening exhausted already.
Soul to soul, we met, and Herne screamed out the unfairness of his death six hundred years before.
You’re right, I said without thinking. It sucks.
On some microcosmic level, he stopped shouting and stared at me in astonishment. I shrugged. It sucks, I repeated. It wasn’t fair. But nobody said life is fair, and you’ve been behaving like a three-year-old long enough.
Herne gaped at me.
Look, I’m calling the kettle black here, okay? Except I’ve only been sulking for twelve years, not six centuries. You’re the soul of the forests, you idiot. You’ve been ignoring them for half a millennium. Look what’s happening to them. Look what’s happening to you. Green Man. I poked him in the chest with two fingers. He stumbled back a step, looking down at himself.
It still lay within him, the depths of the great woods, buried beneath centuries of pain. Once noticed, the ancient strength of growing things flared up like a challenge. It lit him from the inside, showing all the cracks and flaws in his character, just as my own spiderweb of broken glass did to me. Herne howled and flung his arms up, an action of denial even as his hands curved as if to pull all the power and strength of the woods into himself. He stood frozen like that for what seemed a brief eternity, and then the lure of power was too great for him to resist. He grasped at it, and something fundamental changed in the world.
A roar surfaced, so loud it threatened my eardrums, so loud it seemed impossible that everyone could not hear it. It was the sound of welcome, of green things recognizing the touch of their protector, and it went on and on.
Even with the onslaught of power and welcome from the earth, it took a terribly long time to delve into Herne’s dearly held grievances and draw them out. But I had made him listen, for one brief moment. Long enough to begin a change somewhere deep within him, and once begun, I neither could nor would stop until the healing was complete. The power within me exulted, shooting sparks through my body that kept me on my feet much longer than I thought I could manage. There was joy in the healing, empty places inside me filling with relief and purpose that I’d never known I was missing.
I went at Herne mindlessly, stripping away lies: Richard had not betrayed him; Cernunnos had not abandoned him. Herne shrieked with rage and pain, fighting to cling to the lies and the life he’d built around them.
Adina. The essence of the woman rolled over me, through us, and for a moment it seemed like she stood with us at the carousel, expression sad. She had known, of course, that her husband had power, and more, that he had been in great pain. But she was no more able to see through the veil Herne constructed than I had been. I was grateful, very briefly, that I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t recognize Herne and his power instantly, even if I’d been convinced I could. Adina seemed to share a sad, wry smile with me, and then she was gone.
