C.E. Murphy - Raven Calls

And what he had wrought was impossible. I had always assumed my necklace was poured into a mold: the long tubes that curved around its delicate chain, and the two triskelions that separated those tubes, were all much too finely worked to have been done with a hammer and…chisel, or whatever a silversmith called it. There was no roughness to the quartered circle that sat in the hollow of my throat as the necklace’s pendant, either, and it was just not possible such crude tools could produce an item of such smooth beauty.

Except they had. I took up the finished piece in astonishment, feeling faint warmth still within the metal. I was sure it had cooled completely, and looked at Nuada in confusion. “It lives, gwyld . A part of me. I have told you this already. It will be warm so long as I walk this earth.”

The necklace I had been given was warmed by my dying mother’s body heat, but hadn’t had an inherent warmth like it did now. For once I was smart enough not to say anything and nodded instead. “It’s beautiful.”

“It is invested with my being and yours, both bent to the single intent of containing the Morrígan. It is a magic of two worlds, and will collar her wretched ambitions for eons.” That, apparently, was far more important to Nuada than its beauty, which was fair enough. But then he smiled, suddenly the artist and pleased with the compliment. “Thank you, Joanne.” He said my name carefully. “Not only for the making of the necklace, but the warning of what I face with the Morrígan. Now I must return you to Tara before the seasons turn again and my bride comes looking for her groom. You will not want to be there when she finds the trap we’ve laid for her.”

“No, I won’t. But I’ll throw down with her in my time, Nuada. I’ll set this right.”

“You cannot set it right, Joanne. You can only end what has been made wrong.” A smile twinged his lips. “And I cannot set it right, either, but I can go to my fate knowing I have helped set in motion a thing that will, in time, end the wrongness. There is little else a worthy king might ask for.”

My nose got all stuffy with emotion. I hardly knew the guy, but blatant nobility apparently hit me right in the soft spot. “Well, watch yourself, all right? You’ve got another sword to make, at the very least.”

“You, too, watch yourself, Joanne Walker.”

We walked back to Tara together without really speaking again. Even when we crossed the moats and passed under the huge wood henges to climb toward the Lia Fáil, there was almost nothing to say.

Almost. I reached for the stone, then hesitated just one instant, looking back toward Nuada, and we spoke at the same time: “Good luck.”

Smiling, pleased and ready for everything to be back to normal, I put my hands on the Stone of Destiny, and went crashing back through time.

Monday, March 20, 10:52 a.m.

There was a dead woman at my feet.

She sat propped against the Lia Fáil, in exactly the same position Brigid had been in last I’d seen her. A dead woman wearing a white cotton eyelet dress and scarves at her hips. The one around her shoulders had slipped away, revealing fiery tattoos around her biceps that hadn’t faded in thousands of years.

I stared at her, numb with incomprehension. The Sight slipped on, not because I wanted it, but because I needed it. Tara went thick and gray around me, its power tainted more strongly than before, but of course it was, if Brigid was dead. If she had been dead for millennia, and I saw no other possible explanation, then Tara had been missing one of its protectors for most of human history.

A spiderweb of blue and black was buried in Brigid’s chest. Deep in it, squeezing her lungs, poisoning her blood: the Morrígan’s magic, killing Brigid instead of me. Sick to my stomach, I knelt beside her.

With the Sight, I saw her heart beat once. A slow painful spasm, but a heartbeat. Panicked relief surged and I put my hand over her heart, healing magic already pouring out.

She caught my wrist. I had no idea where she’d gotten the strength to move, but she caught my wrist and she smiled. Shook her head, and whispered, “Not yet, gwyld . Not yet.”

“What do you mean, not yet? You’re going to die if I don’t act now! Jesus! Gary, talk some sense into this wo—”

Gary wasn’t there.

I forgot about Brigid in an instant, stumbling to my feet to look around. Tara, with the exception of Brigid’s presence and the heavier grayness to its aura, was the same. Quiet with morning, its power running through the land. The Lia Fáil was shrieking again, which I’d barely even noticed. Everything was the same.

But Gary hadn’t been returned to this time and place at the end of our adventure. Hands shaking, I fumbled for the cell phone the precinct had assigned me. I’d quit too abruptly to give it back, and no doubt somebody would be outraged at running up international phone bills on it, but that was a problem for another time. I found Gary’s listing, swore violently as the out-of-country code told me it didn’t know how to call that number and got down on my knees to put my forehead against the grass in supplication toward remembering Ireland’s call code. It popped to mind and I punched it and Gary’s number in, trembling with anticipation. If the gods—and I meant that rather literally—were kind, he’d pick up from somewhere in the west of Ireland, no worse for wear.

He didn’t pick up. After several rings a recorded voice informed me that the number was unavailable. A tiny scared caw broke at the back of my throat and I called again, getting the same message. Then I called Morrison.

He picked up on the second ring, a too-crisp alertness in his voice. “Walker? What’s wrong?”

“It’s Gary. I lost him. Oh, fuck, it’s like three in the morning there. I’m sorry. Shit. I’m sorry, I’ll call back—” Not that I had any more idea what Morrison could do six hours from now than he could do now. He, after all, had the magical aptitude of a turnip. He would not be caught skipping merrily through time, with or without my assistance.

“Joanne. Joanie. What do you mean, you lost him? He caught up with you? Don’t hang up. What’s going on? Are you okay?”

Like Gary, Morrison never called me Joanie. I had to sound even worse than I felt if he’d gone that route. Either that or he was trying to reassure me, but it didn’t work even one little bit at all. “I’m not okay but I’m an idiot and there’s nothing you can do about it. Just—just keep trying to call him? Please? Like every hour? And if you get through have him call me right away?”

Morrison made a sound I was familiar with. Strangled frustration, like his tongue was trying to choke him. “He’s in Ireland with you?”

“He was. Maybe he still is. We went back in time. I came back. He might still be there. Or he might be dead, because he went to fight the Master or the Morrígan and I just don’t know .”

“You went back in time,” Morrison said in a slow deadly voice. I could imagine his expression, his whole posture. He’d be on his feet, because he wasn’t the sort of man who would answer the phone still in bed. He just wasn’t. I had no idea what he wore to bed—it was a subject I had some interest in—but maybe a tank top and cotton pants. Something dignified enough to run outside and chase bad guys in, if necessary. Always be prepared. That was Morrison. And he was dragging a hand over his face now, trying to decide where to start with we went back in time, because face it, that wasn’t the opening gambit you expected your almost-lover to use when she called from the other side of the world. “You went back in time,” he repeated, “and you expect his cell phone to work?”