C.E. Murphy - Mountain Echoes

It would not help our case for me to stomp around in circles shouting imprecations at myself and my magic. Instead I took the deepest, most calming breath I could, and suggested, “You talk to them, then.”

“Me?”

“Just try, Morrison. I think they’ll be able to understand you. It’s this sort of field effect. It worked with Caitríona and Méabh in Ireland, anyway.”

Morrison’s expression suggested I had begun speaking a foreign language, but he turned to the Cherokee spokesman and said, “No. I’m her companion, a...” He shot me another look, obviously wondering if shamans typically had handlers who helped keep their feet on the ground.

They didn’t, as far as I knew. The spokesman, however, didn’t seem to think a handler was a particularly strange thing for me to have. He spoke again, rapidly. Morrison’s shoulders went back and this time the look he cast at me was faintly alarmed. “No. Yes? I don’t know. Walker, they want to know if we’ve been touched by the gods, if that’s why we look so pale. If I say no are they going to kill us?”

“They’re not able to kill us.” That, at least, I was firm on. “And tell them no, pale-skinned people aren’t gods, they just come from far away.”

“Are you trying to change history, Walker?”

“Yes. I’ll let you klom farnow if it works.”

Morrison made a sound of actual amusement and said exactly what I’d said, in English, except the Cherokee spokesman understood him when he clearly hadn’t understood me. I wanted to hop up and down with frustration. Magic was stupid. Cool and awesome and amazing, but also stupid. Morrison and the spokesman exchanged several sentences, including mine and Morrison’s names, and—this much I caught—the spokesman’s, as well. He was Gawonii, and I was beginning to think he was the guy smart and brave enough to have shot at me.

“They think they should take us back to talk to their shaman. What do you think?”

“I think it won’t...” I stopped, then reconsidered. “I was gonna say I think it won’t get us any closer to finding Aidan, but I could be wrong. Just because I can’t track magic doesn’t mean their shaman can’t. Ask if they’ve seen any other newcomers. No, never mind, if they’d seen those wights they’d be trying to kill us, not talk to us. Yeah. Tell them we would be honored to meet their shaman.”

That, at least, was a right thing to say. Two dozen satisfied Cherokee warriors formed up around us, and marched us three hours upstream down the river I’d just followed downstream. It was late afternoon by the time we got back to the village, and now that we were safely captive, every single person turned out to give us a once-over.

The children thought we were hysterical. They darted between the warriors, snatching at my coat and Morrison’s jeans, tugging at shoelaces and making quick grabs at our gun holsters. Morrison smacked one kid’s enterprising hand as it got too close to his pistol. The boy yelped, then skittered back with the air of a child uncertain if he should be infuriated or thrilled. He, after all, had actually touched one of the strangers, which I figured had to be worth quite a lot of street cred.

The adults were equally curious, but far more wary. The men escorting us said what they knew about us—that much I could follow—and it was clear many of them weren’t certain if they believed we weren’t gods or spirits of some kind. I wasn’t sure if claiming we weren’t helped or hurt us, but I did know for damned sure I was not going to reinforce the idea by agreeing to it.

The deeper we got into the village, the older the crowd became. There weren’t nearly as many elders as I expected, and it was clear the younger men and women were fiercely protective of them. Finally the gathering split, revealing a woman whose presence was so powerful that if she’d been carved of stone and unable to move, I wouldn’t have been surprised.

She was strong-boned, her hair threaded with white, and if she had been beautiful in her youth it had faded into something more enduring than beauty. Rock seemed more bending than she, and oaks more swayable. She stood with an alacrity that belied the weight of stone within her, and made chattering sounds to shoo our warrior escort back. They scampered like children, losing none of their dignity as they did so, and the medicine woman stalked a slow circle around us. More than stalked: I didn’t need to trigger the Sight to feel the power she laid down, creating a barrier with her will alone. It rang of keeping things in, and I did not want to test my mettle against it.

“You are strong with spirits,” she said to me, and to my shock I understood. Renee clicked with satisfaction and I sent a wave of gratitude toward her, then nodded as respectfully as I could at the ancient shaman. She sniffed and stalked around us the other direction, but she certainly wasn’t lifting the power circle. If ar cirits,” nything she was strengthening it with a counterpart, walking widdershins to her first and redoubling the magic flexing through. I’d never seen anyone do that before, and didn’t dare call up the Sight to take a good look at it. I honestly had no idea what would happen if I started pulling down power within the confines of her circle. I didn’t think it would end well for me.

When she’d completed the second circle she stood in front of us, arms folded and scowl magnificent. Better than anything the Almighty Morrison had ever thrown at me, and he’d come up with some doozies over the years. “You do not belong here,” she informed me, with exactly the right inflection to suggest I had better get explaining, Or Else.

I genuinely did not want to find out what her Or Else constituted, and equally genuinely didn’t think I could convince her with anything less than the truth. “I’m a Walkingst—”

She cut me off with a motion so sharp I actually felt a slice of power touch my throat, numbing my vocal cords. “Use the language of the People.”

Jesus. I glanced nervously at Morrison and muttered, “Can you understand me when I speak Cherokee?” in that language. His expression went carefully blank and I ground my teeth. In English, I said, “Sorry. She wants me to use Cherokee and I don’t know how to make the magic translate so you understand.”

“We have bigger fish to fry, Walker. Talk to her.”

There were a thousand reasons I loved that man, but his determined practicality had to be in the top ten. I gave him a grateful and perhaps slightly soppy smile, then turned back to the elder.

Her black eyes were sparkling, and I had the distinct impression she’d understood us. If I ever got hold of whoever made shamanic translation magic work, I was going to eat their brains until I understood it all. Speaking slowly, because even if my memory of the language had resurfaced, the centuries had still changed it, I said, “I will speak the language of the People if you will forgive my clumsiness with it. My family spirit is the Udalvnusti .”

“The unchanging,” she said. “But you are greatly changed from our ways.”

In English, under my breath, I said, “You have no idea,” then gave an explanation my best shot. “My spirit guide has brought me here to find my son, who was stolen by sorcerers and brought to this time.”

“He is not here. There is no one here corrupted by sorcerers, or dressed as you dress.”

“I think they took him to this time but another location. Do you know of...of a place of great pain? Of great fighting or illness?”

Her eyes darkened. “Everywhere. Stories came with the traders, stories of people with skin like his—” and she nodded at Morrison, who was as fair-skinned and Irish as his name “—and with the stories came sickness, though we never saw men with skin like yours.” She included me this time, fairer-skinned by far than she was, though I had a slightly gold burnish compared to Morrison. “We are what is left of ten villages, we who were not sick or became well again. We came to this valley, where there is water and game, and where we thought the sickness could not follow. Did sorcerers bring it?”