C.E. Murphy - Mountain Echoes

Morrison took his attention from the massacre below. “Walker, I hate to ask, but how far are we going to go to stop this?”

“You mean am I going to do down there and shoot Aidan if I have to?”

Morrison nodded. I set my jaw. “Yeah. If I have to. In the leg or arm or something where it’ll get his damned attention. It’s about the worst idea I’ve ever had, but if I can shock him into breaking free for even an eye blink I can get inside and try to help him fight the wights and the mark the Executioner left.”

“And if that doesn’t work?”

“It will.”

“But if it doesn’t?”

“It will.”

A smile cracked Morrison’s face. “That may be why I love you. All right. How do we get in there without getting killed?”

“That,” I said, “I can manage. I invented an invisibility cloak thing ages ago. The only danger is whether the wights or Aidan notice I’m working magic, but I think they’re involved enough in what they’re doing, or they’d have already wiped that guy out.” I nodded again toward the intermittent flashes of power struggling to hold against the tide of blood. Morrison took my hand, and I called up just about the oldest trick I knew, bending light around us in a sphere of “we’re not here.”

“We’re good. Let’s go.”

Morrison hesitated. “I can still see us.”

“Look with the Sight.”

He blinked a few times, then bobbled witen stilh surprise. The shields around us warped the world beyond just a little, light refracted ever so slightly wrong. “Too bad we can’t use this on police raids.”

“Just as well. Imagine how many drug runners would get off by declaring their rights violated by magic.”

“If any of them dared admit it.” We shut up after that, concentrating on barreling our way down the low mountains and into a battlefield. I wished the invisibility shield worked both ways, so I didn’t have to see the myriad ways people could die by edged and blunt weapons. Our feet became caked with mud and gore, and the smell went from bad to worse to vomit-inducing. Morrison kept me going after I did throw up, and for a few minutes I wasn’t certain if he would get through with his innards intact. But we weren’t hampered by fighters attacking us, and I was happy using my shields to keep them farther away than they might naturally have come.

Grim with determination, we worked our way toward the irregular sparks of healing magic that burst through the gloom, until suddenly we were in the heart of a pitched battle, men dying and killing all around, and the frantic blip of light was immediately in front of us. I risked it all, dropped the invisibility shield and bellowed, “Hello?”

The blood turned to roses, and my father walked out of the chaos.

My knees cut out. Morrison caught me, which took faster reflexes than most people possessed. I wrapped my fingers around his biceps, trying not to collapse further as emotion hammered through me. Mostly shock, but also relief and a vast surge of anger.

I swear to God, Dad hadn’t aged a day in the years since I’d last seen him. His black hair was still worn long but not loose: it was braided now, falling over his shoulder in a thick chunk. He was barefoot—my father never wore shoes if he could avoid it—and clad in jeans and an unbuttoned plaid shirt.

He hadn’t aged, but he had changed. His eyes, at least, had changed. They blazed yellow, as gold as mine ever got. Or they did for half a second, anyway. Then they snapped back to ordinary brown, though his pupils were so large they just about ate all the brown. The misting rose petals became blood again.

Morrison, who was the only one who could find his voice, and apparently his sense of humor, as well, said, “Joseph Walkingstick, I presume,” and stepped forward, me in tow, to offer a hand. “Michael Morrison. It’s a relief to find you, sir.”

Dad shook Morrison’s hand absently, like it was more or less reasonable to be meeting modern-dressed white men in the middle of seventeenth century Indian wars, and finally managed to say, “Joanne?”

Somebody chucked a spear at us. I snapped my hand up, strengthening shields that didn’t need it, and the weapon bounced away. A brief, startled silence rushed through the warriors around us, and a few more slings and arrows came our way. They all bounced off, too, and that was that. They went back to slaughtering each other, evidently satisfied that we were insufficiently easy targets.

Dad’s eyes glimmered gold again, then widened. I supposed he was checking out my shields, my aura, my whole general shamanic showcase. A mix of regret and pride slid across his face, sharpening the line of his cheekbones. I’d gotten his cheekbones and Mom’s nose, making for some fairly prominent features. My eyes were between theirs, too, hazel to Mom’s green and t. uts. IDad’s brown. They tended to pick up more of the green, but the power-indicating gold reminded me more of Dad. And I had Dad’s shamanic magic and my mother’s magery running in my veins, setting me on the rare warrior’s path.

Oh, yeah. I was my parents’ child, through and through.

“Aidan is here.” Even I was surprised at the coldness of my voice. “Is Lucas?”

Dad’s expression went flat. So did something inside of me. He said, “I’m sorry,” and a wall of white noise rose up, drowning out the sounds of battle in a static rush. Morrison didn’t, or couldn’t, catch me this time: after a while I became aware I was on my knees, fingers dug into the red mucky earth, and that my breathing was harsh and shuddering. Scalding tears dripped from my eyes, still hot as they hit the backs of my hands while I stared wide-eyed and barely seeing at the ground beneath me.

I hadn’t seen Lucas Isaac in more than thirteen years. I hadn’t been much looking forward to it, either, because the best way I could imagine a reunion turning out was awkwardly. I’d wanted the chance, though. I’d wanted to see how he’d grown up.

That wasn’t exactly true. I did want to know how he’d grown up, but what I meant by that, in my heart of hearts, was that I’d wanted to see if he’d apologize for having been a chickenshit and running back to Vancouver. I’d long since accepted we’d never been fated for a happily ever after, and while I understood why he’d done it, I still thought if he’d grown up well he might have apologized.

Dad started talking again, or maybe he was repeating something he’d already said. “...called me Sunday afternoon, after he hadn’t come back from an overnight camping trip in the mountains. He had his compass, and plenty of food and water, but...”

“Why hadn’t she gone with him?” That was Morrison, the consummate professional.

A smile flickered through Dad’s voice. “Sara is the five-star-hotel camping type. She never liked getting out into the woods and getting dirty. She likes things tidy.” The sound of the smile faded. “So I went up to where she’d dropped him off and followed his trail. It wasn’t hard. He’d gone to—” He hitched, and I felt the weight of his gaze on me. I didn’t look up. My breathing was still ragged. “He’d set up camp in a hollow Joanne used to visit, a couple miles back in the hills.”

My stomach dropped again and I bent closer to the ground, making fists to put my forehead against. I knew where Dad was talking about. It had been my sanctuary, far enough from town I couldn’t hear anything but the loudest engines or the occasional airplane. I’d pretended I was a remote survivor of the olden days, or a modern one thrown back in time. That was where the time-travel game had come from, the one Morrison had evidently never played. I’d brought Lucas there because it was special to me, and I was trying so hard to make him like me. I hadn’t been back since I’d realized I was pregnant. I wondered how often Lucas had gone back.