Urban Shaman

“Can’t you tell?” The touch of England was back in his voice. “Really, I knew you were a novice, but I thought it would be obvious even to you. Look closer, Joanne Walker. Siobhan Walkingstick. Gwyld.”

I didn’t want to. Looking at Suzanne with the second sight made my head hurt. Herne’s voice, though, was terrifyingly compelling. I shuddered, trying not to look, but against my own wishes, my head turned and I Saw.

Suzanne Quinley was overflowing, two bright souls battling for dominance in her slender body. One was so old I didn’t dare look at it for long, feeling the pull of its power even at a glance. I could drown in its strength, every bit as easily as I could drown in Cernunnos’s. That soul’s ties ran in bright silver threads to each of the riders and to Herne, and strongest of all to Cernunnos. It was also bound, by blood and darkness, to the far more fragile soul that was Suzanne’s, a mortal child buried under the weight of eternity. With every moment that passed, the immortal Rider’s soul became more firmly a part of Suzanne. It was a matter of minutes before the girl herself was gone forever.

The most terrible thing was that the Rider’s soul held no evil in it. It had been siphoned from its true host in fragments, stretched thin over many years, until there was so little left binding soul to body that the body could no longer keep its hold, and the soul abandoned it entirely, in need of a place to continue. And Suzanne Quinley had been primed as the new body.

“Her birthday’s in a few minutes.” I said softly. “I mean, the time of her birth. How did you lose her, Herne? Your own daughter. You must have tried for a very long time to father the perfect child. Was Adina her mother?” How had he hidden himself from Adina? Had she chosen not to see, or was his strength so much greater than hers that she never stood a chance? All I knew about her was that she’d tried to help me.

“Of course not. Her mother’s dead. It’s easy to lose children when you’ve fathered as many as I have. I only found her a few years ago.”

Memory, sharp and searing, cut through my mind, something I’d written off as a dream. A brick red boy, a few years older than I was, lifting startled golden eyes, to smile at me. Welcome, Siobhan, he’d said, offering me a hand. This is where it begins. Brightness of body, brightness of soul. I’d woken up with my first period staining my panties.

“When she hit puberty,” I said stupidly. I remembered the brick red boy from other dreams, here and there, until I was fifteen. I even remembered thinking that it seemed like he was visiting me on purpose. They stopped very suddenly. I hadn’t had one in twelve years. I was going to have to ask Coyote about that.

Later. Now there was too much to do. Herne looked ever so slightly impressed. Not, unfortunately, impressed enough to lie down and roll over for me, but a little impressed. “Very good. There were so many factors. Most important—”

“Was the birthday. Twelve days after Christmas. So that when you defeated Cernunnos, it was at the height of his power, and it was all yours. That much,” I said bitterly, “I figured out.”

“But too late.” Herne turned his back on me. Nice to know I was such a threat. Cernunnos watched Suzanne calculatingly and a bad feeling came into the pit of my stomach.

“Gary?”

“Yeah?”

“You still any good at the whole linebacker gig?”

The big man chuckled. “Not quite as limber as I used to be, but I can make do in a pinch.”

“Cernunnos is going to kill Suzanne at six-oh-seven. I may be busy. Stop him.”

Gary lifted a bushy eyebrow at me. “At six-oh-seven?”

“It’s when she was born,” I said softly. “Her soul and the Rider’s will be irrevocably bound at that moment. If he destroys her, he destroys the thing that keeps him from riding free.”

“‘M I supposed to understand what you’re talkin’ about?”

I shot him a dirty look. The other sight flashed red into the look, physical effect of a glare. I bet there were some people out there who could really kill with that kind of look. “Just be ready to play ball.”

Gary grinned, bright white. I jerked my head around, startled. While I’d been talking to Herne, the obscurity had failed. I wished I thought it was a sign of his power weakening. It was more likely it just wasn’t worth the bother, now that I’d found him and his moment was at hand.

“You have her,” Cernunnos said, “but you still have me to defeat, my son.”

I muttered, “I am your father, Luke,” and moved forward, stepping up onto the carousel platform. Suzanne was slumped over her carousel horse. The pale mare stood beside her, between worlds, her tail flickering through the red dragon Herne had leaned against. She nosed at Suzy’s sleeve, less than the wind in effect.

Just ahead of them, Herne drew a sword nearly identical to his father’s, and bowed without half the grace that Cernunnos returned the acknowledgment with. I could see why he was jealous.

The clash of swords had nothing on the roar of power that was released as the two came together. Unshielded either physically or psychically, I staggered under the onslaught of strength, green and brown and impossibly potent. Lightning slammed down from the sky, into both opponents. Neither flinched. Nor did Suzanne. This close, I felt her heartbeat faltering, uncertain under the insistent pressure of the Rider. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Gary edging closer, watching Herne and Cernunnos intently. I nodded, relieved, and stepped behind a winged swan, coming up behind Suzanne to pull her off the carousel horse and into my arms.

Electricity slammed through me, endless painful voltage. My muscles locked up hard enough to make me tremble, and I dropped to my knees, but I kept Suzanne in my arms. The bright soul of the Rider swept over me without malice, only the simple determination to survive. Entangled with it, I felt the faintest slender thread back to the body it had once owned, fey and green-eyed and boyish. And dying.

Ironic, the Rider said, less words or coherent thought than a fleeting feeling. The child who housed the soul of Death itself was finally dying in turn. Hour by hour he had slipped away from his fragile body, guided by the only thing that could compel him: demands made by another of his bloodline. Herne called the young Rider’s spirit to him, binding it with blood and death, weakening him as Herne bided his own time.

Until now. Until this most recent of Rides, on All Hallow’s Eve, when the world walls were thinnest. The Rider had led the Hunt forth into the void between worlds, and Herne had struck a telling blow. Taking power stored from centuries of sacrifices, he smashed the link betwixt body and soul, sending the boy Rider’s body tumbling back through blackness to the world he called home. Binding the freed soul to a girl. His daughter. Suzy. Only the most tenuous connection still held the Rider’s soul to the body he’d once owned.

More than just sacrifices, the Rider murmured to me. Like Suzanne, those he killed to gain his power were blood of his blood. Little is as strong as blood magic.

“Blood—” I shook my head, confused, then understood: how many children had Herne fathered over the years? Half the world could share his bloodline by now. Hell, I could.

Except the Old Man had apparently made me from scratch, and it seemed like if you were going to bother to do that, you’d make sure you weren’t getting anybody else’s magic tangled up in your recipe.

Which was so not what I needed to be thinking about right now. I could still feel the Rider’s thoughts and memories, dispassionately shared with me. He’d been caught in my world, separated from the host body and terribly vulnerable. With Herne’s direction, he sought a new host. The child in—where was it? It was the silver misted world whose loss I had felt so keenly outside of Babylon, but what was it named?

Tir na nôg, the Rider replied, and for the first time there was longing in his thoughts. Herne’s bindings hadn’t yet wiped the need for home out of the Rider’s soul.  Anwyn,  Avalon, fairyland, Islands of the West, name it what you will. It is older by far than mankind and will continue when you and your names are ancient dust. There was no apology or sympathy in the telling, the Rider’s concerns too remote to be even neutral.

The dying body, the boy Rider in Tir na nôg, was Cernunnos’s first child, half-mortal and half-god. He no longer knew, if he ever had, who his mother was. Blood of the god’s blood, he’d taken a piece of the god’s power with his birth, and with it tied the Horned God to the mortal cycle of death and life. He rode with Cernunnos of his own free will, and doing so rendered himself immortal, untouchable by the god who might otherwise sacrifice his first-born child in favor of riding free. In all his terribly long life, no one had ever compelled him against his will.

Until Herne. Blood of the god’s blood, once more. Brother to the ancient Rider, but a lesser creature. There