Thunderbird Falls

I was the only one left outside the circle. The coven had gathered into four groups of three, one at each cardinal point of the compass. Power swept off them like a river in flood, their concentrated, trained efforts blowing away the magic that the cops had helped me call up back in January. There was more than just good will and hope behind their power. I could feel their spellcrafting, words chanted above the muggy wind and the serpent’s howls, and knew if I could harness all that power I could set straight the things I’d messed up, and send Virissong back to the Lower World he’d been so long accustomed to.

But I couldn’t do it from outside the circle. I stared up at the serpent, screwed my courage to the sticking point and walked into the center of the pentagram.

Unexpected silence assailed my ears, so loud I stumbled and put a hand on the gigantic serpent to steady myself. I was much, much too small for it to notice, yet it hissed and twisted at me, spitting venom. I didn’t have time or enough presence of mind to duck, but the acid spattered against a silver-blue sheen instead of burning my skin to the bone. I blinked at my arm in astonishment, then blinked again, looking more carefully with the Sight I’d called up. Filament-thin power sparkled over my skin, like a shield made of sparkling lame. I wondered where it’d come from, and thought Coyote would be proud of me if I’d had the foggiest idea how I’d done it.

The coven’s spell was reaching a crescendo. I could feel it in the bones of my ears, even if I couldn’t exactly hear it, and despite the hissing serpent above me I spread my arms wide, listening with all my being.

And then I knew what to do, like instructions were being poured into me. I couldn’t borrow the coven’s power the way I’d done with the cops in January. Theirs was much too focused, the spell they were casting meant to do a specific thing: translocate the serpent somewhere less dangerous than the Hollidays’ front yard. They could create the spell, but I needed to provide the power boost that would force a creature this massive into motion.

I dug down into the core of me, reaching for the bubble of power that spent so much time lying dormant thanks to my refusal to use it, and which had not unreasonably stopped answering when I called. It wasn’t exactly sentient, but I found myself asking it to respond, instead of bludgeoning my way into using it like the proverbial bull in the china shop.

It responded with joy, as if I’d finally, finally taken the right approach. I lifted my hands up, feeling the need to actually push the serpent away, and discovered I could see through my skin. Networked vessels carried blood that glowed with life, bone caressed by the warmth of muscle and sinew against it. I could see the serpent through my own hands, and felt a surge of confidence. Last time I’d gone transparent on myself things had turned out all right. I wondered if my eyes were the wrong color. Morrison’d watched me last time I’d done this and said they’d turned gold.

It didn’t matter. All that mattered was focusing the coven’s spell and protecting the Hollidays and their home.

I laid my hands on the serpent and everything went horribly, critically wrong.

CHAPTER 32

The serpent snatched the power I was bringing to bear, draining it from me so fast that black thunder pounded through my skull. Spikes of light shattered behind my eyelids like unhealthy warnings that my life was in the balance. I dug my hands into the edges of the serpent’s scales, struggling to keep my feet as I began to feel stretched thin as taffy. I had one frivolous moment of sympathizing deeply with Bilbo Baggins, and then knowledge began slamming into my mind with each of those bright bursts of lightning, and I had no more time for superficial thoughts.

It wasn’t some great epiphany on my part. It was that in opening itself to take my power, the serpent also revealed itself to me. Memory assailed me, flat and eager and hungry.

I waited restlessly in a place where fragile human conceits like time had no meaning. There were constants in my world: there was power, and with power, temptation. Time meant nothing when I had these things, because the creatures who had birthed me with their fears and petty dreams were endlessly weak. There would always be those willing to sacrifice anything for power, and I waited for those ones, secure in the knowledge that they would come.

Sometimes others came, traversing the dark places that belonged to me and my kind. Those ones could be tempted but rarely caught, their purpose at opposite ends to mine. They led the weak out of darkness, slipped them from my grasp and turned them back to light. I always knew them when they came into my place, because they were touched by the Enemy.

I shifted, scales sliding over one another in comforting hisses. Darkness cradled me, and I waited, for time meant nothing when I had power and temptation and most blessedly of all, the Enemy to rise against and fight again someday. So it was and so it would be until the small things that had given life to me and the Enemy no longer had life of their own. I did not think I would fade away then. I had been brought forth from nothing and believed I would continue in darkness so long as there was light. It was the way of things. If meaningless time ended, then perhaps so might I, but I belonged to something larger than mere life and death.

A shard of blackness, bright against the dark. A path, leading out. A man, youthful and arrogant and strong, untouched by the Enemy. Better still, I could see the mark on him, blazing black in endless night: rejected by the Enemy, his power tainted with the need to make himself a hero, to be beloved of his people and to stand above them all as their god-king.

I wondered, at times, why the Enemy did not fold ones such as this under its wing, choosing to reject rather than to guide and protect them. Should one of the Enemy’s fall so far as to walk my path, I would welcome him with sweet words and gentle teachings, until his power was so corrupt and so great that I could break free of my waiting place and into the Middle World forever. Surely the Enemy could use one of mine so well as that, to burnish and embrace such aspirations until its dream was the one dreamed by all the creatures of the world.

But perhaps the Enemy can only squint at heat illusions and bright horizons, blinded by too much sunlight. Those who dwell in dark must learn to look farther than we can see, depending on the imagination of ambition to free us from our cages.

He is so easy, this newcomer. His people freeze and starve and he believes without hesitation that it is the spirits who are to blame. That there is a great and terrible battle waging in this other world he walks in now, and that the creatures who fight here are so powerful that their war spills into his world. And his people are hunters, so it is very easy to convince him that the dark things must be brought into his world in body, so that men might slay their physical forms and thus weaken them in this, the spirit world. Then his people will be safe and warm once again, with food in their fat bellies and no more thoughts of darkness in their small minds.

He agrees, with all the naiveté and arrogance of his kind, and never understands what he will be giving up to me. For this one has power, an unusual power, and my bargain this time will cost him everything, at a price he will think a gift: time. Meaningless, endless time.

The serpent shifted, its scales cutting into the palms of my hands and yanking me out of memory and into my own mind again with a flare of pain. Panic sickened my stomach, a foreboding feeling of awareness that I should have understood more from the brief moment of sharing the monster’s memory than I did.

I had seen those memories once before, from someone else’s point of view. From Virissong’s point of view. I clenched my eyes shut, trying to remember. He and Nakaytah had built a power circle, he’d said. Said, not shared; the memories were too painful and I’d been willing to listen instead of see. And the monsters tried to become them. Virissong’s spirit animals had been strong enough to protect him. Nakaytah’s had not.

I had the horrible feeling I was Nakaytah in this scenario, and I already knew the spirit animals I’d met were manifestations of Virissong’s power. Black eyes, bright eyes, all like the serpent towering above me. All like Virissong himself. All meant to draw me in—successfully—to the web he built for me.

I desperately wanted to burst into tears or throw up or run crying for help, but I was pretty sure the person I needed to get help from was me, which left me shit out of luck.

I leaned back without releasing the serpent, literally digging my heels into the ground, as if doing so would