Raven Calls

Méabh justified that decision by sweeping in and decapitating the head I’d captured. The headless neck fell away and the remaining living dragon head screamed while the rattlesnake part of my brain automatically swallowed. The human part gagged and choked, but it was too late. I had eaten a dragon head. Whole. That was going to cause some serious, serious problems when I turned back into a human, which idea was horrible enough that I gagged again.

Snakes, it turned out, could regurgitate. I’d had no idea. I had also never been so grateful to learn something so disgusting. I spat out a dragon’s head, stared at it and shuddered all the way down the considerable length of my body. I could’ve stayed there the rest of the day, gagging and being grossed out, but Méabh yelled. The sound reverberated off my skin and I glanced up to see her charging the last dragon head with all the enthusiasm in the world. I sprang after her, foregoing the whole biting scenario to wind myself around the beast’s body and haul its head back to expose what I hoped was a vulnerable throat. I was no boa constrictor, but snakes were all muscle, and the dragon was in sorry shape. Méabh, still yelling, struck off the remaining head, and the entire monster collapsed into waves of deep red, almost black, magic. Dissolved, just like the Red Cap had done. I landed in the dirt and magic with a crash while Méabh staggered a few steps back, her body heat peaking and fading as adrenaline crested, then drained away.

Rattler whispered Sssuccesss at the back of my mind, then nudged me. I clung to the idea of my own shape, and slid toward it, shedding the rattlesnake shape as I became myself again. Pain flared in my arm again and I clutched it. I thought you said success?

We defeated the dragon, did we not? he asked irritably, which was fair enough. I sent a wave of apology at him, and he slipped away, leaving a sense of weariness behind. I’d been asking too much of him the past few days. We needed a break, he and I.

A break we weren’t likely to get. Caitríona said, “You took off all your clothes and turned into a snake.”

“Yes. Yes, I did. And you…” I didn’t even know what she’d done. I peered at her through the gloom, hoping for an answer.

She came toward me cautiously, her arms full of my clothes as she mumbled, “Sure and I’ll just set it on fire with me mind,” in embarrassment, and dropped my clothes. I scrambled into them, trying hard not to wonder if Gancanagh was still around and watching.

“You said Auntie Sheila’d said magery was about spell casting and preparation,” Cat said. “I got to thinking the way I’d said it, set it on fire with me mind, so many times, and I thought maybe that was an enchantment in itself. And it was so warm, like the peat was roasting, and I started thinking heat into snow, that’s the way it should go, and then it was on me lips and—and—”

“And then she went without shield or sword to draw you back from stupor,” Méabh finished with great satisfaction. A far cry from the woman who’d been annoyed at Caitríona’s sudden maturity into adepthood a few hours ago, she now all but overflowed with pride. “My granddaughters are warriors indeed.”

“We are, but Cat’s wiped out.” I was only half-dressed, but I managed to half catch my cousin just as her eyes crossed. She didn’t faint, but she thumped down with a woozy groan, and I called another pulse of healing power up for her.

It responded as well as it had done earlier—external magics were still okay, apparently—but it enflamed the werewolf bite again, too. I bared my teeth at it. I wanted the itch to go away. More, I didn’t want to give in again to the bone-deep nagging impulse to transform, and the deeper we went into the Master-tainted land, the harder I thought it would be to stay on the straight and narrow.

Caitríona looked healthier when she lifted her gaze. “Why does that keep happening to me?”

“Magic comes from two places. Within, which is what you’re using now, and which is exhausting, and without, which is what we did with the power circle. You totally saved my bacon, but try not to do that again until I’ve shown you how to build a circle. I’m thinking maybe mages need one even more than shamans.” Or at least more than this particular shaman, but I wasn’t going to get into that. “Méabh, what did you do? The sword wasn’t working against the drag—”

“The Aillén Trechend,” Cat said before I’d even finished the word. Apparently she didn’t want dragons to exist any more than I wanted, say, vampires to. I paused obligingly, waiting for her explanation, and she gave a stiff shrug. “It’s the beast that beleaguers Tara. It rises from the…” She trailed off to give first me, then the dank, warm peat bog a wide-eyed look. “From the bowels of the earth to savage the sacred circle every twenty-three years. Or it did do, in times gone by. Auntie Sheila always told me the old stories about it and all the other monsters. Was she…?”

“Preparing you? Yeah, I think maybe she was.” A pang struck me. I might’ve been the one Mom told all the stories to, if things had been very different. Caitríona saw the regret in my expression and looked uncomfortable, obviously searching for something to say. I shook my head. “No grudges, Cat. It’s played out this way. We’ll go with it. I’m just glad you were there for her to teach.”

Her shy smile was worth letting that regret go. I smiled back, then exhaled and looked toward Méabh. “So what’d you do? The sword couldn’t touch the…Aileen Treygent…at first.” Irish pronunciation was not my strong suit, but neither of my family members chose to correct me.

“I called on the power of the land, as I did to bind the wolves. A power circle, Joanne, to guide the sword’s strength. Against mortal enemies the blade is true, but when the taint it fights is older than its forging…” Méabh shook her head.

I finished getting dressed as she spoke, and asked a question I didn’t much want the answer to: “How much older?”

“You already know.” Gancanagh spoke from beside me, nearly earning himself a punch in the nose by doing so. He gave me a wink, a once-over and a sly smile, and I did punch him, because Morrison, who he still reminded me of, wouldn’t have been so crass. He clutched his upper arm where I’d hit him, looking crestfallen, and as if hoping to get back in my good graces, said, “The Aillén Trechend has risen from the depths since the ard rí Bres was stolen from time. This is a blow, gwyld. This is a blow against the dark one.”

Morrison wouldn’t have called me gwyld, either. I almost started to like Gancanagh for that. For differentiating himself. Then I remembered he’d led us smack into the dragon’s jaws, and again lifted a fist to hit him. “You said evil’s lair!” he blurted before I could. “Not Aibhill’s! And we’d reached evil’s lair, had we not? Even the mistress of banshees places guards between herself and the world, and her domain lies just beyond. You don’t want to be without me, not yet.”

I didn’t lower my fist. I did look beyond my erstwhile boss at Caitríona and Méabh, to see what they thought. They both looked like I should go back to my original plan of stringing him up by his toes, but Méabh, rolling her jaw, said, “He may still be useful.”

“As cannon fodder,” Caitríona suggested darkly.

I turned back to Gancanagh with the fist still cocked. “One false move, buster. One false move.”

Green glinted in his gaze as he lowered his eyes, then led us once more into the darkness.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Caitríona sidled up to me as we left the dragon’s dusted remains. “You turned into a snake.”

She’d said that once before. On the other hand, by all reasonable expectation she should be gibbering like a madman about now, so probably a little repetition wasn’t that big a deal. “I have a peculiar repertoire of talents.”

“Will I turn into a snake?”

“I seriously doubt it. Even if mages can accomplish shapeshifting, Ireland doesn’t have snakes. It probably wouldn’t be high on your list of things to turn into.” I thought of beached flounders and Coyote’s warning about how a shifter should always have a clear idea of their target animal, and amended, “But if it’s something you want to change into, then yeah, probably you could. Assuming it’s in the skill set.”

“What about an elk? One of the big ones, the Irish elk?” Hopeful, she extended her hands to approximate the rack on an Irish elk, which was about twice as long as her armspan.