Urban Shaman

was no remorse in the Rider’s thoughts: for him there was, and there was not. Neither had any reason to carry emotion. Our father learned from me. To be cautious of what he gave the women he lay with. No other son of Cernunnos can bind him as I do; no other child has such power.

“But Suzy,” I whispered. I couldn’t tell if it was out loud or not, but it didn’t seem to matter. The Rider responded with the vast indifference of an immortal shrug.

She will change the bond. Blood magic is strong, and my brother has chosen well. He has sacrificed the one he loved.

Adina, I thought in despair. Had the other shamans been her friends before death? Had Herne gained his blood power through killing everyone closest to the ones closest to him?

The girl’s parents. Her friends. The Rider’s answer was an agreement. It changes the balance of power. My loyalty is Herne’s.

“But that’s wrong!”

I felt the surprise of the Rider’s soul as it seemed to turn and look at me for the first time, leaving off in its quest to take over Suzy’s body.

Human fallacies, he said. Right and wrong do not matter to me.

“What does?”

Suzanne herself turned her head to look for the pale mare. “Riding,” she whispered, the desire in her voice clear and pure. She was a fourteen-year-old girl. She didn’t even need the Rider’s soul to want that horse with everything she had, but the power of the immortal soul within her gave the single word such an ache that I felt tightness in my throat, tears stinging my eyes. It would be Herne whom the Rider would follow, and with this child’s innocent strength behind him, Herne would defeat Cernunnos and take his place. It made no difference at all to the Rider. His power and purpose were enough to rein in any god, and he would do so gladly until the end of time.

I wondered, very briefly, if Herne realized he wasn’t going to be obtaining ultimate power if he won the battle. Then the electricity of the Rider’s power left me and there was no time left at all in which to think.

I heard it like a chime, the clear moment of Suzanne Quinley’s birth, resonating down through fourteen years. I dove to the side, dragging Suzy with me. Cernunnos vaulted the wooden carousel horse, leaving a surprised and furious Herne behind. Gary bellowed a war-cry and flung himself at Cernunnos, crashing into the god with a braced shoulder. The Rider howled in delight and dove deep into Suzanne’s body, while the remaining fragments of the girl’s soul shrieked in desperation and fled.

I’d caught Cernunnos with a net, in Babylon. There was so little of Suzy left that she’d slip right through a net. Instead I reached inside myself for the weary coil of energy and shaped it into a ball, fragile and pearlescent as a soap bubble. There wasn’t enough time!

Except inside the little bubble of my shield, there was. The music of the chime held, a long thin sound vibrating the air. Nothing stopped, but what had been chaos almost too fast to see played out in elegant slow motion.

Cernunnos jolted to the side as Gary impacted him. His sword dragged a thin line of red across my shoulder blade as I rolled with Suzanne. I felt skin parting, and waited for it to hurt, but the pain came even more slowly than the attack. Stumbling, his features contorting with rage, Cernunnos drew the broadsword back as he turned to face Gary, the motions so precise it could have been a choreographed ballet.

No ballet I had ever seen, though, had the bad guy stick a real live four-foot long sword through the good guy’s rib cage. Surprise widened Gary’s eyes as he doubled and staggered back, sliding off the sword and crashing hard into the wooden horse. As easily as that, Cernunnos dismissed him, turning in slow motion back to Suzanne and myself.

My roll brought us up against the red dragon’s pole, my back to Cernunnos, protecting the girl as best I could. The chime that sounded her birth hour in my head was still loud and strong, her fragmented soul caught against the bubble of slow time. Knowing it was going to get me killed, I contracted the bubble, bringing the slowness and the shards of Suzanne’s soul closer and smaller until it was within her entirely, and time outside it sped back up.

I followed the bubble in.

The Rider’s soul was a parasite, rust on a car, captured in the last seconds before it destroyed its host entirely, no more able to free itself from the slow time bubble than Suzanne’s soul was able to wrest free from the Rider’s. In here, I had all the time in the world to do repairs. Out there, if I wasn’t careful and quick, I wouldn’t have a body to go home to.

Just like the Rider didn’t.

Your world, Cernunnos had said, and made one fist. My world. Another fist, not quite touching the first. And we are here. The blackness between the worlds. I could reach that. Could I take down the walls that held the two worlds apart?

I closed my fist around the bubble of slow time, reached for power, and threw myself into the void, dragging the Rider and Suzanne along. I didn’t know where the strength to do it came from: I was afraid to wonder, just then. It flooded through me, though, once more washing away all the exhaustion and pain of the past three days. I felt, quite literally, as if I were flying.

Flashes of other worlds, closer to mine, came and went in bright colors that moved too fast to imprint. For a painfully long moment there was nothing, not even the starscape, just an agonizing emptiness. I held on to the sound of the chime and dredged up my own memories of the silver mist world. I flung both those things into the emptiness, like sonar, hoping for them to be recognized and draw me to the right place.

Home. The longing in the Rider’s voice was so intent it hurt. Inside of an instant, I was the tagalong, no longer in control. The binding wound around the Rider shattered, my power replacing Herne’s as the Rider and I reached for a common goal.

My power replacing Herne’s. This would be a good time to instigate some control. The last thing I wanted was for the youthful Rider to leave Cernunnos behind on Earth, where he could wreak all the havoc he wanted without the controlling influence of the child.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have a single goddamned clue how to do that. Stop! Or I’ll say stop again!

The Rider laughed at me, a sharp, bitter sound, and darkness exploded into a haven of deep green leaves and silver trees, wreathed by gentle cooling mists. Home, the Rider thought, and I echoed it, his need for refuge resonating deep in my own soul. His need overrode my purpose, and for a deadly moment I relaxed. Triumph, as palpable as with Cernunnos, leaped through the link we shared and I knew I was lost, unable to control the son of a god. Tir na nôg would be peace; it would be rest, after a very long journey. It was enough. I followed the Rider’s lead, content to have done with it.

Home, Suzanne whispered, like a memory. It stung me into remembering her, remembering the world we were leaving behind, and I groaned. “No.” My own voice was a whisper, too little power behind it to make the Rider take pause. I closed my eyes against the green misty world and said something I’d told Gary not to, about a million years earlier: “In Cernunnos’s name I set my geas.”

The Rider stopped so abruptly I flew ahead of him, my own journey not yet finished.

A boy slept in the silver woods, fey and slender and so pale it seemed like death must have already visited him. I knelt beside him, putting my hand on his chest. There was a heartbeat, so faint and irregular I might have imagined it, and his chest rose and fell very slowly, the last breaths of a dying child. I couldn’t remember the words to the spell I’d found on the Internet, but it hardly mattered. I had the idea of them in the back of my mind, and I bent over the child, whispering them.

“I call down the walls of the world to help free you. I call on the god who must listen to me. I call on wind and earth and sea. I call on fire to help free you. In Cernunnos’s name I set this geas. By my will and by these words I bind you to ride eternity.”

The coil of energy unleashed inside me as I spoke, weaving a net of silver mist and green power that wrapped itself around the boy’s sleeping body. I pulled it into my arms as I’d done with Cernunnos and stood, cradling the child. He weighed almost nothing, as if he were spun from air. I could feel the resistance from his soul, which wanted nothing more than to stay in Tir na nôg, in the silence and safety that had been torn