There was a big ol’ mostly-flat hilltop, though. Mountaintop, I guessed, by local standards. At my end of time, it was called Knocknaree, and its claim to fame was a stone age pile of rocks called Maeve’s Tomb that stood a good thirty feet tall. It wasn’t here yet. Lots of others were—they were gravemarkers of some kind, called cairns, and they were all over Ireland, but Maeve’s Tomb hadn’t been built yet. We’d gone a long damned way back in time if a Neolithic building wasn’t there yet, but that was about the last of my worries, ‘cause there was somebody waiting for us, and I had a job to do for her.
Brigid, the Irish mother goddess of healing, childbirth and song. Or somethin’ like that. Jo was always impressed with how much magic mojo knowledge I had, but the truth was I was barely a step ahead of her, and didn’t always remember the details.
By my reckoning, it had only been a few minutes since I’d seen Brigid. She’d taken a hell of a hit, one meant for Joanne. One that woulda stopped Jo from getting to me in time to heal my cut throat, so I owed the lady one. More than one, ‘cause Jo mighta died too, if Brigid hadn’t gotten in the way. I wasn’t traipsing around with Cernunnos just ‘cause Jo didn’t dare ride with him again: I had debts to pay.
I hadn’t really seen what’d gone on, thanks to the afore-mentioned cut throat. I’d just seen the aftermath, with Brigid sinking against the Lia Fáil like she was dying of a wasting disease. She looked better now, her color stronger and her face not so gaunt. Red knotwork tattoos stood out on her exposed upper arms like bloody scars. Before, her copper hair had been worn loose, and her white robes had been kirtled with gold leather. Now she wore her hair in a tight braid and had a brown leather sword belt with a broad-tipped blade in its sheath. She’d seemed gentle before, but now she was fierce.
And fiercely confused, though she did a fair job of hiding it as the Hunt swept outta the sky toward her. She stood her ground as Cernunnos charged down to the earth and brought his stallion in a prancing dance around her. Brigid acknowledged him with a nod, but she was looking for Jo. Her eyes settled on me.
A guy doesn’t get to be my age without being able to hear controlled fear in somebody’s voice. Brigid said, “Has my sister defeated the shaman, then?” and just about managed to sound like she was only curious.
“Nah, sweetheart, Jo’s fine. She just couldn’t get here herself, so I came along instead.”
One string of tension loosened in her. She looked from me to the swarming Hunt, then back at me again with her eyebrows lifted. “Surely one of these riders might have shared his horse with her.”
“It ain’t that. This is Cernunnos—”
“Yes,” she said, “I know who he is.”
All of a sudden I saw that she was not looking at him in the same way Joanne used to not look at Mike Morrison. I let go a silent whistle. Jo had said that Brigid and the Morrígan weren’t really goddesses, even though that’s what everybody called ‘em in the Irish pantheon. She called ‘em avatars, like they’d been imbued with the ability to act in a god’s name. The Morrígan’s boss was the guy Jo called The Master, and he was some kinda death god. Maybe the death god, the one that all our legends and myths were tryin’ to represent when they gave him names like Hel and Hades and Anubis. Jo hadn’t known who Brigid was answering to, but from the way she was not looking at Horns, I kinda thought she’d thrown him over in favor of whoever’d made her his avatar.
And from the way he was looking at her, I kinda thought he was in it to win her back.
Jo was gonna hate that she was missin’ this.
I cleared my throat. “Right. So Jo’s ridden with Cernunnos a few times now—”
Brigid’s face went sharp, then slack, like she was tryin’ ta hide that she’d gotten all edgy. I hurried up with what I was saying, hoping it wouldn’t make things worse. “—and she says she can’t ride with the Hunt again, ‘cause it’s too…”
As fast as she’d sharpened, Brigid softened again. She said, “Yes,” a second time, an’ this time it had a whole world of understanding in it. I guessed it didn’t matter how she was interpreting riding with Cernunnos, ‘cause there was no doubt she knew what it was like. “I wonder that she could refuse,” Brigid said, and Cernunnos harrumphed.
“It is a talent of your line. Brigid, you are…”
“Well enough for what must be done.”
He leaned down, lowering his voice. “I think not.”
Brigid shrugged. She reminded me a little of Jo, facing off the god, except Jo’s restraint was like sparks, and Brigid’s was all inside, tied tight so nothing could get out. “We make our choices and do what must be done. I have the strength I need now, and will pay later, if I must.”
“I might take the burden from you, if you would allow it.”
“You know I will not. You have brought this man to me, and I need him, so I will ride with you to do what must be done. Nothing more.”
“Dare you?” Cernunnos asked, and I finally realized that the rest of the world had gone away for the two of them. It didn’t matter that a dozen of us were sittin’ around on horses not twenty feet away at most: it was just the two of ‘em alone together, in a romance that had gone all wrong. “Dare you?” he asked again. “You have ridden with me thrice already, Bríg NicFionntán. Dare you risk a fourth?”
She smiled, a tired pained smile that I’d seen too often on my own wife’s face in the last days of her life. “Bríg NicFionntán was a girl in another time, with another face. I am like you now, and have only one name, or so many that none of them matter, and I might now ride with you until the end of time. My heart may still be yours, but my soul is sworn to another. You have no power over me.”
Cernunnos straightened in his saddle, stripping away their intimacy and becoming the thing I’d seen him as first: a cold hard capricious bastard. “As well, then, that I do not do this only for you.”
He meant it to cut, and it did. Brigid’s chin came up, enough of a hit that I saw it clear as Cernunnos did. This time, though, her voice didn’t betray anything but cool curiosity: “Do you not?”
“I recall a far-future memory, a reckoning with your sister’s master. I have a score to settle, though in that future I have no recollection of such a mark made in my past. Perhaps we might change it all utterly, and you and I might yet pursue what we have lost.”
Brigid stood silent a couple seconds, the sparks she’d buried comin’ close to burning through. Then she said, “Time’s passage does not alter in such a way, Cernunnos.”
His voice softened the same way hers had a minute earlier. “Time’s passage rarely alters that way, cuisle mo chroí. But even a god must try, else the long passage of the years would be unbearable with their sameness. Nothing is immutable, not even the stars. Will you ride with me?”
“I will ride with the boy.”
“Of course you will.” Cernunnos turned his stallion away, and the kid on the golden mare came to help Brigid mount. She thanked him, then lifted her voice, like all of us hadn’t been hangin’ on every word she and Horns had been saying.
“I have searched these hills while I have waited for you to come. East and north of Knocknaree lies a cavern reaching deep into the earth. There lies the cauldron which has stolen the lives of aos sí kings, and which will take even yours should my sister’s master gain the strength he desires. Master Muldoon has come from the other end of time to help us bind it. It is a binding I know succeeds, for he also helps to destroy it, and barely a dozen undead warriors rise to protect it. Make no mistake: when the magic is made to bind the thing, my sister and her master will come to protect it. You are hunters, but I would lead you to war. Will you ride with me?”