Raven Calls

magic.

Gary said, “Hah!” triumphantly and withdrew a mashed bag of peanut M&M’s from his jeans pocket. I ate them so fast I barely tasted them, and they made no dent in my hunger, but somehow they helped restore my equilibrium. I crawled to the water, hoping my clothes would come zooming by on the current, but they didn’t. Instead the sound of rushing water faded beneath what I thought was blood in my ears, then sounded more like wings in the air. Gary scootched over to me and put an arm around my shoulders. Shared body heat was definitely better than freezing on the moat bank by myself. Probably I could warm us both up with healing magic, if I could only focus, but even my glasses had been swept away on the current, so focusing was hard.

The stupid joke made me giggle, and although it remained uncomfortably close to tears, it also made me feel a little better. “Well, look at us. Half-naked and wet on a riverbank. Nobody’s going to believe you’re not my sugar daddy now.”

“Don’t tell Mike.” There was a grin in Gary’s voice, but I thought it might be a sound suggestion anyway.

“I won’t. Gary, can you hear them?” I turned my head against his shoulder, then without looking put one hand on top of his head and tucked the other below his feet and whispered, “See.”

He started with, “Can I see wha—” and drew in a sharp breath that ended the question as power whispered out of me.

I wasn’t even using the Sight, and didn’t much know what he might be Seeing now, but whatever was coming our way, I wanted us both to be as prepared as we could be. My eyes remained closed, but by then I was certain of what I’d been hearing for a long time now: the beat of a thousand wings. “Can you hear them?” I asked again, but now I was sure he could.

I knew them. I knew all the ravens, all of them in their glossy blue-black feathers, in their wise and wicked eyes, in their prattling beaks and bouncing steps. Mine was foremost, my beloved spirit animal, half again the size of his brethren. But I knew them all: I knew the ancient bird whose wings had turned to white and whose black eyes were patient where all the others were anticipatory. That was Sheila’s friend, and I could see in him—See in him—the long stretch of Irish mages he had served over the millennia.

There were the Morrígan’s ravens, three of them again, as if the fight at the Lia Fáil had never occurred. There was another pair I recognized instinctively as Huginn and Muninn, and then there were dozens, hundreds, thousands of others: Tower Ravens and Quoth The Ravens and trickster ravens and battlefield ravens, and they all, all, all, spun into a madness of birds in the sky, blocking out the misty stars themselves.

The Morrígan came from their darkness.

Chapter Thirty-Two

She was crystal-hard, vivid against the black mist of birds. Her blue robes were crisp and the tattoos encircling her biceps were sharp and clear, as if new. Her hair was bound in a thick black braid woven with blue, and the sword she carried was so sharp it looked as though it could cut the very air in slices. She stopped about a dozen feet away and sneered, not that I could blame her. I mean, there I sat on the river’s edge, weaponless, barefoot, trembling with hunger and wearing a wet plaid cotton shirt. My hair, far from being so thick and long it could be a weapon of its own, was plastered against my skull. I was not exactly the most terrifying sight of the ages, and the Morrígan had seen plenty of ages to be terrified in.

“A Red Cap,” I said without getting up. “Sorry, fear darrig, right? Werewolves, and the Aileen Trechard.” I knew I’d bungled the pronunciation on that one, but it was the best I could do. “The banshee queen, and maybe even Gancanagh, although that one kind of backfired, eh? You sent them all after me, or put them between me and you in one way or another. So it doesn’t really matter if I don’t look like much, does it? You’re already afraid I’ve got it all over you, and a lot of what’s left is posturing. It’s okay if you just want to give up now. I’m not going to tell on you, and it might save your life.”

I knew there was no real chance she’d agree, but I had to try. My younger self had reminded me that not everything had to end in a fight. Also, while Lugh and Brigid needed avenging, I wasn’t a cold-blooded killer. I didn’t know how well I would handle facing the Morrígan in a battle to the death when I had to enter that battle not already in a panic for my life.

A third and much more immediate reason was I was freezing my ass off, half-naked, and shaking with hunger. Not, in other words, at the top of my fighting form. Even if I had been, I would still be toast. But none of that mattered, because from where she was standing, it was face down me or face down her master. I was the far easier target.

She came at me in a cloud of black birds. Rushed me, sword a shining line across the ravens, and she swung with all her considerable strength.

Swung, and instead of parting my head from my neck, crashed into my shields. Gary drew in a breath so sharp it sounded like an attack all by itself, but I didn’t even move. They were magic shields, solid as my confidence in them, and today, that was legendary.

But it was also a magic sword, and she was, in some distant way, my grandmother.

My shields dented. More than dented: gave way, so her sword’s edge bent my skin. But it didn’t prick, and I didn’t bleed. I did say, “Okay. If that’s how it’s going to be,” and for all that I was cold, wet and probably about to die, my blood started running hotter.

The Morrígan fell back, silent with fury at both her failure to chop off my head and, I suspected, at my blasé response. Nice that being obnoxious was good for something. I got to my feet, wriggled my toes in the grass and tried something I hadn’t tried before: asking the Lower World for a boost.

I’d blown out all the lights in Seattle asking for the same in the Middle World, but I was a lot better at this game now. I still didn’t expect the warmth that surged from the earth, drying me from toes to head. I certainly didn’t expect my clothes to come back, but they did, stompy boots and jeans and T-shirt and sweater and even my leather coat, which still had a ruined sleeve. The Morrígan looked startled, but I figured the Lower World could be affected by perception just like inner gardens. My self-perception was not of someone who went into a fight wearing a plaid shirt and no skivvies.

I shot a glance at Gary, whose shirt had returned to him, and who looked a whole lot warmer and drier, too. I said, “Stay out of it,” and he said, “Like hell,” and I laughed and turned to face the Morrígan in battle for the second time.

Brigid stood before me instead.

For the space of a breath I was flummoxed, and then I laughed. “If you strike me down I’ll become more powerful than you could possibly imagine?”

Brigid looked utterly blank. Humor rolled out of me and I ducked my head in apology. “What are you doing here?” I asked instead. “You were dead.”

“The aos sí are of the Otherworld, Joanne,” Brigid said. “We came from below the human world and we can, if we wish, return to this place in death.”

I remembered my fleeting speculation that the body I’d left at Tara would just sink into the earth or otherwise disappear, and blushed. I’d been being a smart-ass, trying to convince myself I hadn’t done something reprehensible. It had never occurred to me that I might be right. “You’re really from the Lower World,” I heard myself say. “You’re really not human. I mean, I knew that, I just…wow. I thought it was all demons and monsters down here.”

“Nowhere, Siobhán Walkingstick, is all of one thing and nothing of another.”

I smiled a little. “Yeah, no, I guess not. I knew that. But you haven’t been coming back here when you die, have you?”

“Those of us who could have chosen nothingness over the corruption that has filled our home. Now we have another choice, offered by the Horned God.”

“But you’re not going with him.” That one wasn’t a question.

Brigid gave me a small smile in return. “No. Not I. My sister is bound to her master, and cannot take that path. I have served my mistress, and so neither shall I. I am dead, Joanne, and she and I are sides of a coin.”