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 from it. He struggled against the binding I’d wrought, but he’d told me himself: blood magic was strong, and I’d invoked the strongest blood link of all, that of the father and son.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I need you to send Cernunnos home. Just a few more hours and the ride will be done until next year. You’ll be able to go home. I’m sorry.”
I fled the compelling world of Tir na nôg, bringing the boy’s body back as a physical thing.
CHAPTER 30
We surged out of the void into a blackness unlike anything I’d ever seen in a city, split by lightning from a storm that hadn’t been there when I went under. The wind was colder than death, cutting through me and yanking at my hair like it was trying to pull it out. Pellets of snow and water struck my hands and face.
There was an extraordinary line of fire stretched over my back. When I tried to roll over the movement made me scream, a hoarse guttural sound that I was growing all too familiar with. For a moment I just lay there, trying to breathe.
Then, because there wasn’t really time to lie around feeling sorry for myself, I forced my head up. As obvious as it was that I had something desperately wrong with me, it was equally obvious that Suzanne hadn’t been struck by Cernunnos’s blade. Her eyes were closed, but there was color in her cheeks that even the flashes of lightning couldn’t bleach out, and her breathing was steady.
Which meant either I’d succeeded utterly or failed completely.
There was no boy in my arms. Wasn’t that a Scottish fairy tale? I laughed, a high-pitched sound of panic, and rolled over just in time to miss being stabbed in the back a second time by an extremely unhappy god. The sword stuck into the wooden carousel floor. Cernunnos snarled. I smiled up at him and looked through his legs to see what was going on.
In the flashes of light, Gary slid down the carousel horse, dark blood seeping through his coat to stain it black. Behind him, a spark with the same unearthly luminescence as the Hunt appeared, whirling in unexpected directions as the wind snatched it back and forth. The Hunt came forward through the storm, gathering around the rapidly growing spark.
Cernunnos yanked his sword from the floor as the pale mare let out a nicker of pleasure and shadowed through both Gary and the carousel horse. The Hunt parted their circle for her, and I realized I was still seeing through solid objects.
“Stupid shaman,” I mumbled, and closed my eyes. The darkness went away, replaced by the brilliance of pure spirit in everything from the carved carousel animals to the god of the Hunt himself. When I opened my eyes again it was easier to see, physical forms faded to lesser importance.
Gary was dying. Every heartbeat drove thick blood out, more slowly now than a few moments ago. Suzanne—I didn’t even need to turn my head to see her—was growing stronger, her breathing deeper. Cernunnos swept his sword up and I flinched, too badly hurt to move more, waiting for the next blow.
Instead the god parried a blow he couldn’t have seen, sword braced over his shoulder as Herne drove his own sword down from behind Cernunnos. Metal sang as they smashed together, then scraped as Cernunnos whirled, drawing his blade along the length of Herne’s. It was perfect: Herne’s sword was pushed wide, and Cernunnos opened his son’s ribs from side to side in one long sweep. Herne dropped to his knees, sword falling from numb fingers, the emeralds and browns of his colors suddenly bleaching.
Cernunnos drew back his sword for the final blow, and a child’s voice rang out: “Stop!”
Cernunnos dropped his sword like a marionette released from its strings, turning in shocked rage to face the young Rider. He stood fey and slender and stunningly beautiful, with a look of deep resolve in his brilliant emerald eyes. He sat astride his pale mare, one palm reassuringly against her neck, his other hand easy on the reins. Behind him, the Hunt were gathered, the hounds sitting and lying at the horses’ hooves rather than slinking around.
“This one is not yours, Father,” the boy said, almost apologetically. “I would that he were, for the Hell that has been visited on me. But of your blood, none is less meant for you than he but I myself.”
Cernunnos’s mouth curled in a snarl. “Thou wouldst have mercy on the one who stole your power and would have usurped mine?”
The boy shrugged, as painfully graceful as Cernunnos. “It is not mine to say. There is no mark on his soul that gives him to you. He is your child, Father. You cannot have him. It is the way of things.”
Behind me, Suzanne whimpered and shifted, the warmth of her body moving away. Cernunnos turned, eyes bright with anger, and lifted his sword again. I felt a peculiar kind of relief, knowing that I was his target, rather than the young woman sprawled on the carousel floor.
“Father,” the boy said, apologetic and warning.
“I can see the mark on this one,” Cernunnos growled. The boy inclined his head.
“So can we all, Father, but not yet. She has a long journey before she comes to the Shadowlands.”
That didn’t relieve me as much as it should have. “Nor are you done here, gwyld,” the boy said. “Get up. Finish your tasks. We have a long Hunt before us tonight, and I will not ride until I see this thing finished.”
“You’re welcome too,” I croaked. Ungrateful little bastard.
“Make right what has been put asunder,” the boy said sharply. The mare pranced, a few nervous steps, and he stroked her neck again.
“Make right,” I mumbled. “Make what right?” I closed my eyes again and sank into myself, reaching out toward everyone who stood or lay around the carousel, looking for something that was obviously wrong, knowing better than to expect the superficial physical wounds to be the problem.
Big fat sword holes are superficial? a little part of my brain asked. I told it to shut up and go away. To my surprise, it did.
Nor were my own flaws the problem. I knew that without bothering to look to myself. I touched the others only fleetingly; it was Herne, I knew that, much as I didn’t want to face another encounter with him. A schism ran through his soul, a chasm of pure blackness, holding apart the thing that he was from the thing he was meant to be.