Raven Calls

overflowing aura that had helped tip me off to Lugh’s alienness. Like the Morrígan, she exuded power. Also like the Morrígan, it wasn’t honest-to-God deity-level power. I knew who she was before she spoke.

“Welcome to Tara, Siobhán Walkingstick. I am Brigid.”

Score one for me. With my usual politeness, I said, “Couldn’t you have told me all this from the other end of time?” instead of “Hello.”

Surprised amusement shot her eyebrows toward her hairline. “I’m sure I wouldn’t know what you mean.”

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