C.E. Murphy - Mountain Echoes

My magic washed over Aidan, and for an instant his wings turned white.

Black rushed in again, swallowing the gain, but the vortex didn’t widen any: we had cut its power sources. If it couldn’t keep Aidan, it would lose all its strength. It might take a while, because it was still feeding on centuries of pain, but if we could wrest Aidan back, the darkness would burn itself out. Hope caught me in the teeth and made me grin, fierce and resolved. I extended another rolling wave of magic.

It left me woozy. My vision went black and starry, then faded back in, but I felt my power failing within me. There were two circles surrounding me that I could draw on, Dad’s internal smoke circle and the larger one Ada was holding. Dad and Morrison had the vortex within ten feet of the ground now, and it was shredding. I didn’t want to risk setting it loose again. Ada’s exterior circle was fragile. Borrowing power on the level I’d been using it at would knock all four of them off their feet. That would do us exactly no good. And there was nobody to bang my drum, to help my stuttering power refill again, because everybody was busy trying not to let any of us get killed.

I swore. One more. I could probably manage one more healing wave into Aidan before my eyes rolled back. It would have to be enough.

He was closer now, at least. I ran toward him, dodging the massive sooty wings as they swept the air, and wrapped my arms around him, breathing, “Now would be good, kid.”

To my astonishment, Renee came to bright dramatic life and leapt from me to Aidan as I unleashed one last splash of healing magic. Aidan snapped a hand up, catching her. A second walking stick appeared in his other hand. Then Dad’s joined them, balancing on Aidan’s chest. They blended into one another and faded, not into Aidan, not into the vortex, just...disappeared. It seemed like a bad sign.

My knees cut out, whatever magical strength I’d had utterly depleted. I was never ever ever flying a car again. Aidan fell with me, landing on my chest hard enough to crunch my back. I wheezed, trying to focus beyond Aidan’s still-white hair in my face. His head lolled to the side, and panic spurted through me. Me collapsing was one thing. Aidan going unconscious was something else. I rolled him off me and got to my knees, hands shaking with fear.

The Raven Mocker wings remained in the air, the empty space where Aidan had been now filling with the last ragged pieces of the vortex. I cast a frantic look at my father, but he didn’t look distressed by the congealing vortex. The Red Man drew another arrow and fired, a smooth perfect shot that should have pierced the very heart of the spirit monster. Raven Mocker tore in two, the arrow passing harmlessly through empty air as the winged vortex shot forward and into Danny’s chest.

I realized, quite clearly and suddenly, that we’d lost.

Aidan would have been a wonderful prize, with all the power rife in his youthful spirit. But it seemed blindingly obvious, after the fact, that he was just one more conduit. The last of them, a source of life essence to allow Raven Mocker entrance to this plane of existence. Aidan was, at heart, a good kid.

Raven Mocker didn’t want a good kid. He wanted someone he could use and control. Someone who was already angry at the world. He wanted someone emotionally damaged, easy to manipulate and willing to strike out. He wanted Danny Little Turtle, or someone like him.

It struck me that I had very narrowly avoided being the perfect host for Raven Mocker, and my gratitude ran so deep it raised shivers on my arms. Without Mom, without Morrison, without Gary and Billy and all the lessons I’d learned over the past year, it could’ve been bitter angry me, chock full of potential power, who offered a host body to the Master. I owed my friends more than I could ever repay them. I’d known that all along, but watching Danny get to his feet, awkward with pain and then resplendent with that pain fading, I knew it all the more deeply, and promised to thank them yet again.

Daniel Raven Mocker smiled, folded his wings around himself, and leapt straight up, smashing through the power circles and disappearing into the night.

The circles shattered, magic ringing like gongs. Fragments of power exploded everywhere like a grenade going off. The bits that hit me settled into my skin, absorbing, renewing my strength, but when they hit the nonadepts in the group, they knocked them silly. The entire inner circle, and Morrison, were flattened. The Red and Purple men disappeared, no longer bound by the circle and magic to this place. Dad clutched a tree to stay upright, his gaze betrayed and astonished as he looked skyward.

I looked too, blank with confusion. Danny couldn’t be gone. I hung up on that thought, even though it was blatantly wrong. He had to be up there somewhere, soaring on raven wings. I croaked, “Raven?” and my spirit animal appeared, looking like he’d gone three rounds with Mike Tyson. I shut my mouth on asking him to go after Danny. Wiping myself out always seemed bad enough, but wiping my spirit animals out was guilt-inducing. Raven croaked in return, then went back inside my head where it was nominally safe. I couldn’t blame him.

Dad, faintly, said, “He shouldn’t have been able to do that,” which made me laugh. Not a happy laugh, but a laugh. Dad tried glaring at me, but didn’t have enough oomph left for it to carry any weight. “That ritual is meant to kill a Raven Mocker, Joanne, and there were two power circles. He shouldn’t have been able to break through.”

“Most Raven Mockers aren’t packing a few genocides worth of life force, Dad. Or death power. Whatever. We...” I didn’t want to say it aloud, certainly not while meeting his eyes, so I looked up again, trying to find the shape of wings against the stars. “We lost.”

“Nah.” Aidan spoke from beside me, sounding exhausted but certain. I squeaked and turned toward him, hands pressed over my mouth. His skin had returned to normal, except tired bruises beneath his eyes, but his hair was still bone white. I didn’t need the Sight to catch a glimpse of his aura, a kernel of power burning bright within him. He put a hand on my shoulder and shoved himself to his feet, wobbling a little before dropping his chin to his chest and whispering, “Nah. Not yet.”

Eyes closed, he extended his hands, arms crossing at the wrists, like he was holding himself in the loosest hug possible. Like he was gathering someone else close: gathering Ayita, maybe, and when I thought it, I could nearly See it, his other half, the shared spirit that gave him so much strength. A slim girl, taller than Aidan but looking very like him, with the same cheekbones and jaw, but with a nose that was a little more like mine. I Saw her resolve, the same strength of character that she shared with her grandmother, the resolve that had let her face death in a time and way of her choosing. That, I thought, was the spark that the Executioner hadn’t been able to defeat: that was the chance Aidan had been given, that would allow him to survive. He hugged Ayita more tightly, and she stepped within him, their auras igniting into brilliance.

Renee and Dad’s walking stick appeared on Aidan’s arms, coming up from the bones. The third, Aidan’s own, rose up from his hands, balancing itself delicately on his extended fingers. Power dropped through them, magic so heavy it seemed to lower the floor of the valley. I was glad to be kneeling, for fear otherwise I would have been flattened. Dad did drop, kneeling, as well, and nobody else had gotten further than sitting anyway. Aidan was the only one left standing.

The earth beneath us frosted, white magic creeping over leaves, over branches, over the wrecked helicopter and beyond. My breath turned to fog, though my skin didn’t feel cold. Magic carried silence with it, washing away the memory of battle sounds and making the valley serene. Aidan gathered his arms a little closer to his chest, embracing the walking sticks, then lifted his arms.