C.E. Murphy - Mountain Echoes

“How often does a girl get an excuse to pull a word like that out?”

He breathed a laugh. “All right. I get the idea, anyway. Chariness ties into the age awareness. The privacy helps create a barrier that—”

“Elevates you,” I said. Morrison made a sound like he didn’t care for the choice of phrase, but he didn’t argue. “You’re the boss. It’s your job to know your people. It’s not their job to know you. It puts me at a disadvantage, Boss. You probably know me better than I know you, and to make it worse I’ve been wearing my heart not so much on my sleeve as smeared across Seattle for the past year. Not just about you, but with all of this. The magic. Everything. And you’ve been there for it all.” My eyebrows rose. “And apparently you fell in love with me anyway, which makes me worry about your judgment.”

He laughed aloud this time, which was what I wanted. My heart ached, partly at the realization that I didn’t know him all that well, but more at having actually unearthed something about him, even if it was insecurity. Maybe especially because it was insecurity. I was a bundle of insecurity myself, so it was nice to know he didn’t actually have every aspect of his shit utterly, totally and completely together. “I want to go home,” I said against his shoulder. “I want to go home and learn more about you. Which means we need to get all this other crap dealt with, so if you don’t mind us going back to the part of the conversation where I thought the power circle was necessary...?”

He grunted, suggesting he hadn’t actually heard me saying that. It seemed very guy of him, which also made me feel a little better. Perhaps the Almighty Morrison didn’t actually notice every single thing that went on in his jurisdiction, whatever he decided that might be. “You need to See what I See out there, Morrison. You need to See why I couldn’t risk performing magic openly. Get dressed first,” I advised, and did the same myself. It felt strange putting clothes on after three days in fur, but at least I warmed up. It wasn’t really cold, but the view was chilling even without adding the Sight in.

Morrison asked, “What’s going on, Walker?” as he finished pulling his T-shirt on.

I shook my head, preferring to show rather than tell, and beckoned him over before he put his shoes on. “Same routine as before. Stand on my feet.” I swung around so my back was to the valley, and he stood on my feet. I put my hand on his head and said, “See as I See,” which wasn’t poetic or spell-like at all, but at this juncture, I didn’t think I needed my poor rhymes to set the magic in place.

Morrison’s eyes filtered gold, then darkold, bened.

I didn’t need to look again. The images were seared in my mind. Arguing with Morrison had been a lightweight relief, compared to what the valley presented. The war was bad enough, groups of men pushing back and forth toward a broad expanse of river. I half envisioned misted blood rising in the air, and wasn’t certain if it was my imagination or not. There were places where the earth ran with blood, rivulets large enough to be seen from the distance amassing and pooling in hollows.

At the heart of it, as if orchestrating, a lash of black lightning cracked down, down, and down again. Its silence was worse than any sound could be, and each time it shattered the sky, a single individual was illuminated by the power of darkness.

The lightning was fed by five points around the battlefield, places where the fighting was bloodier and more vicious than anywhere else. Malevolence rose from the Native warriors, a madness driving them beyond what warfare had once been to their people. The wights hung above those battles, drawing on the warriors’ fury and rage, and every time another man died, what was left of his soul was gobbled by a wight and sent back through the black lightning.

“What is that?” Morrison’s voice said he knew, but that he needed me to confirm it.

I did, and let him go as I spoke. “It’s Aidan.” I faced the slaughter with numbness rising in me. “This isn’t even Europeans coming in and making a hash of things, not as such. This is just warfare between nations.”

“You mean we can’t stop it.”

I shook my head. I felt very calm, very rational, and knew it was a front. I was willing to embrace it, though, because otherwise I would fall into the screaming heebie-jeebies over not just the battle, but Aidan’s presence in it, and the dark power he was drawing in. “We couldn’t stop it anyway. But it’s... It really annoys me, you know? The presentation of Native Americans as being pure, innocent, and one with the land until the Europeans arrived. But it’s still really easy to think that all of the bloodshed and death was implemented by Westerners. It’s harder to remember that some of these groups were nation states of their own, and conducted warfare on their own. I fell right into that trap. I figured all the pain the Executioner was drawing on came from the incomers, but no. A lot of it was self-inflicted. Europeans might have triggered it, but...anyway, I know when we are, now, more or less. Mid-to-late seventeenth century, I’d guess. They’re Iroquois and Huron out there, I think. They’ve been pushed west by the Europeans, don’t get me wrong. From what I’ve read, the war they waged before Westerners arrived was much smaller scale, and now they’re fighting for their land and their lives.”

As a kid I’d resolutely ignored all the Native American history that had been offered up, but in the past year I’d begun paying attention to the histories of those people whose shamanic heritage I was drawing on. I’d mostly read about the Cherokee, but the Iroquois had put together maybe the fiercest, largest armies against European settlers and, inevitably, against other Native tribes as they were all forced out of their original lands. They’d eventually turned on the members of their own league of nations. It had not been a good time.

“How can you tell?”

“I’m pretty sure we’re in the Ohio River Valley. Probably in Kentucky.” A wry smile pulled at my mouth as Morrison turned an astonished expression on me. “I spent most of my childhood driving around America, Morrison. I know where things are. We headed north, maybe a little northwest. You pretty t. utimuch have to run into the Ohio River if you go far enough that direction, and there’s a big damned river out there. The details have changed, but it’s not like there’s a volcano waiting to go off nearby and change the whole face of the countryside.”

Morrison shrugged his eyebrows, faintly impressed. “What are the Iroquois doing down here, then? I thought they were from the Northeast.”

“They were, but they moved south and west when the settlers came. There was a huge war that got smeared all over the countryside as resources got scarcer. Mostly beaver pelts, I think.” I wished I’d studied it more, but nobody had warned me I’d be in need of real-life application of the knowledge. “Besides, even if I’m wrong about when, the what is pretty obvious. Wholesale slaughter, captivity and death. And it’s all being dumped into Aidan, who’s going to bring all that misery back to our time once everybody here is dead.”

“What are we going to do?”

“We’re going to go in and get him before that happens. There’s a little tiny bit of good news out there. You see those flashes?” I pointed down, then glanced at Morrison again, making sure the Sight was still working in him.

It was. His blue eyes were gold, utterly unearthly with his silver hair. Oblivious to my shiver, he looked where I was pointing and nodded.

“That’s white magic.” I winced. “Life magic. Positive magic. Not magic performed by white guys. You know what I mean.” Morrison nodded and I fumbled on. “Basically it means there’s someone down there doing what they can to stop this. Iroquois or Huron shamans, maybe. Someone who hasn’t been corrupted or captured yet, anyway. We’re not going for Aidan right away. We’re going to go see if we can team up with whoever’s on our side, and maybe together we’ll have a better chance at stopping this.”