C.E. Murphy - Mountain Echoes

“Freedom.” The word popped out before I thought about it, but that gave me some confidence in it. “The freedom to inflict pain or increase their power. That’s what Herne wanted, to take Cernunnos’s place at the head of the Wild Hunt. Immortality, freedom from mortal shackles, whatever you want to call it. Power. Virissong wanted the same thing. When he couldn’t get power in his earthly guise he...” I waved my hand, indicating I used the next words loosely. “He sold his soul to the Devil and became a sorcerer. He got trapped in the Lower World and wanted out to pursue the gain of power in the Middle World. All of them, everybody who’s walking to the Master’s beat, that’s what they want. Dominance over a subjected world. A lot of them don’t seem to realize they’re just stepping stones, doing things that nourish the Master. Or maybe they don’t care.”

“The Master.”

“My enemy.” It sounded equally preposterous and resigned. “He’s a death magic. Maybe the death magic. I don’t know. He almost took Cernunnos out a while back, and Cernunnos is a god. I hadn’t thought anything killed gods.”

“Heroes do.”

For some reason that made my heart hiccup. I wet my lips and shook my head. “He’s not a hero. Death is necessary. I don’t like it, but I understand it. Cruelty, power mongering, murder, hatred...I have to believe we could get by without those things. That they’re what feeds something like the Master. If he was just about death, fine, I wouldn’t like it, but I’d see why he was necessary. But Cernunnos is a death god, Morrison. He rides to collect the souls of his faithful. He has a purpose. He provides sanctuary and guidance to his followers. The Master might give his minions a task, but it’s always to his own empowerment. He’s reductive. Everything he takes is at a cost to another, like he’s stomping out the light just because he can.

“I can’t defeat him.” I wasn’t kidding myself about that. I put my palm on a nearby tree, feeling the life in it. “I can’t go around the world and clear out the pettiness and hatred and entrenched warfare from every single person. Even if I could, unless we all attained some kind of mystical enlightenment, I’d imagine the whole cycle would start over again. But I can kick him in the teeth. That’s what my family does, apparently. We keep kicking him, and every time we do, I guess maybe it makes a little more space for light in the world. Seems to me like that’s worth it.”

“You’re a romantic, Walker.” Morrison folded his hand over mine on the tree trunk, then folded me into his arms.

I snorted. “Yeah, but don’t tell anybody. Anyway, so if I want to stomp him down, I guess what he wants is to wipe me out, too. This is a generational thing. If he can wipe out my family, either side, both sides, of it, then he’s got that much more room to spread misery and pain around the world.”

“So it’s personal.”

I breathed laughter. “Yeah, I guess so. God.” I straightened, horrified. “God, Morrison, is my family causing this? I mean, I know he’s been trying to get at me since before I was born. What if having us to focus on is keeping him going?”

“What if having you to focus on is keeping him from wreaking havoc somewhere else? That’s not something you can tackle, Walker. All we can do right now is find Aidan and fix this thing. So. How do we find Aidan?”

Any hope of answering that was wrested away as two dozen Cherokee warriors melted out of the forest and made it very clear that we, like kids playing cowboys, had been captured by Indians.

Morrison breathed, “Walker...” and I said, “Stay calm,” just as softly. Realistically, between my shields and our weapons, even two dozen warriors couldn’t hold us. They had no idea how badly they were outnumbered, and I had a gut-deep reluctance to show them. “We’re not in any danger. Be cool.”

Morrison’s chin tucked in and he shot me a disbelieving sideways look. That was as far as it went, though. He even very cautiously raised his hands, as did I, in what I hoped was not only a universal, but also a time-honored way of saying, “Look, Ma, no threat.”

Our captors’ dark eyes all immediately focused on the pistol exposed by the movement of Morrison’s coat, and on the heavier shift of my back holster and shotgun. One of the men took a step forward. I snapped, “Thla!” —no in Cherokee.

I could not have shocked him more if I had turned green and sprouted feathers. He froze, staring at me, and the entire group started jabbering at once.

My Cherokee was not good. I was badly out of practice to begin with, and in these circumstances, literally out of date. I got the gist of what they were saying, but hell, so did Morrison, who had no Cherokee language at all. The gist was “How the hell does this woman—is it a woman with that weird short hair? Yes, it’s a woman, you idiot, how the hell does this woman with her ugly weird clothes and ugly short hair and ugly pale skin know the language of the People? Hell if I know! Ask her!”

I stammered through “I’m of the People, of a far-away tribe,” to expressions of growing disbelief. One of them said something to the effect of, “You speak the language of the People poorly.”

I nodded in embarrassment. I would no doubt speak it poorly by their standards anyway, given that the language had almost certainly changed over the past few hundred years, but my lack of fluency made it a lot worse. I wished to hell I could reach back in time and waken the depth of immersion speech I’d had whain sd over en I was about eight. There’d been a year or so there when Dad and I spoke almost exclusively Cherokee, until I turned into a brat and started refusing. I wanted to kick my younger self, which was not an unusual sentiment for me. This time, however, I had Renee, and gave her a hopeful mental poke. Not so much for the kicking myself, but maybe for the awakening long-dormant language memories.

She gave me a priss-mouthed look, but then she slipped into what felt like a meditative state, as if she was centering herself to bring up what I needed. I whispered, Thank you, and in the meantime tried scraping together what I did remember on my own. “We’re lost.”

A snicker that was pure body language and no sound at all ran around our group of captors. I muttered and tried again. “I’m a shaman—”

Suspicion and clarification settled on them in equal parts. It wasn’t particularly couth, in my mental image of things, to go around announcing one was a healer, and I thought they might feel similarly. People who actually claimed to be shamans were possibly more likely to be sorcerers. On the other hand, the expected unexpectedness displayed by a shaman probably went a long way toward explaining my bizarre costuming.

The next round of rapid speech went completely over my head. It ended with the spokesman pointing interrogatively at Morrison as a headache began pounding behind my left eye. I had understood Méabh, who had stepped out of the other end of time speaking ancient Irish. I had understood Lugh and Nuada and I understood Cernunnos, none of whom spoke English as a matter of course. I had no idea why I couldn’t understand these men.

Except I hadn’t been able to understand my cousin Caitríona and Méabh when they’d both started speaking Irish. The magic translator had shorted out somehow then.

And I spoke Cherokee. Not a lot, but apparently enough for the magic to figure I was okay on my own. It took everything I had not to clutch my head and rattle it in frustration. Instead, I hissed, “Can you understand them?” to Morrison, who nodded in rightful bewilderment.