C.E. Murphy - Raven Calls

Which would have been fine, except the Morrígan stalked into my garden on her heels.

Under any other circumstances I’d have applauded the entrance. The woman was amazing, with her blue-black hair and her blue-banded biceps and the flowing, gorgeous robes that didn’t impede her fighting ability at all. Furthermore, my shields glimmered around her as she pushed through, giving her a glowing curtain of power that clung to her skin and shone silver highlights on the curve of strong muscles. Méabh was Amazonian, but fair-haired. The Morrígan seemed more like what I could look like if I was at my absolute peak of awesomeness.

My forearm burned suddenly, the half-forgotten bite awakening again. The Morrígan lay along an unforgiving path, where admiring any part of her made me all the more susceptible to her master’s powers. I clenched my right hand over the bite and squeezed hard, half hoping it would pop, pimplelike, and all the poisoned blood would gush out.

Well. That was gross enough to wipe away the folly of admiring the bad guys. I surged to my feet, snapping, “You can’t be here,��� but I could See the path she’d taken to get in. There were too many links here: me, Sheila, Méabh and the necklace, all of us tied to the Morrígan in one way or another. That, and although a few hundred generations separated us, we had a trace of magic in common, too. It made my shields just vulnerable enough, when I’d already invited her daughter through them.

Méabh and Sheila both spun to see the interloper, Méabh with her sword drawn before she’d finished turning. I started to reach for my own sword and stopped, remembering with a pang that it and Gary were lost to time. Lost to a battle they’d fought against the woman who’d just walked into my garden as if it were her own. Smart money was on kicking her right out, but I’d never been all that smart. “Tell me what happened to Gary.”

Méabh gave me a sharp look, and Sheila a curious one, but neither of them questioned me as the Morrígan laughed, low and warm and friendly. “And why would I do that?”

Every once in a while my shit came together and I knew the right answer to a challenging question. Cool with anger, I straightened to my full height—a height which was more impressive among humans; the Morrígan didn’t tower over me the way Méabh did, but she still had me by a couple inches—and did my best to look disdainfully down my nose at a goddess. “Because I’ll let you go free from this place if you do, and otherwise I will bind you beneath the stone of this mountain as your master has been bound beneath the earth before, and you will lie with its weight pressing down on you, and its white power will stymie your magics and you will be a prisoner until the end of time.”

It was my garden. I could have counted her nose hairs, if I’d wanted to. I didn’t, but I could see, very clearly, the wave of goose bumps rise and settle on her arms. She held off a full-body shiver through will alone, but her gaze slipped sideways, betraying uncertainty before she thrust her chin out in body language that reminded me of myself. “And how would you do that?”

Méabh took a very shallow breath. She’d thrown a similar gauntlet at me not all that long ago and I’d picked it up and bitch slapped her with it. She pretty clearly expected me to do the same again.

So, frankly, did I. I walked forward, taking point between my mother and Méabh, and spoke softly. “By having three of your blood here, Morrígan, and by having a fourth no more than a shout away. By dint of you being within my garden, where the world is shaped as I will have it. By the depth of magic lent to me by a raven, who is no less my companion than yours, and of another here who is also raven-bound. Nuada, a man, was able to break your power with a circlet and a splash of my blood. What do you think four of your daughters and their ravens and all the magic at their command can do?”

The Morrígan’s gaze slipped away again. I had the distinct impression this was not going the way she’d planned. Since virtually nothing in my life went the way I planned, I had no sympathy for her at all. “Tell me,” I said again. “Tell me what happened to Gary.”

She looked back at me, snake-quick, and hissed her answer: “He is lost to you, gwyld, daughter of my daughters. Time is his enemy and you are not its master. He fought well, he fought valiantly, but in the end, what could you expect? He was old when you sent him to fight death, and death conquers us all. The banshee comes for him, as she comes for all of those you love. It will be her beginning and his end.”

I said, “Wrong answer,” and lashed a fist out to hit her in the face.

Her head snapped back with the impact, bright blood blossoming over her mouth. I’d gotten lucky and knew it. I would never get another hit like that in. But damn, it had been satisfying.

Satisfaction lasted long enough for the Morrígan to crank her head back up and throw a backhanded fist across my cheekbone. Bone shattered and healed in the same instant, a combination of pain and relief so sharp it left me dizzy. Healing myself wasn’t working so well outside my garden, not with the bite screwing up my powers, but in here I conformed to my own template. The fact that I was even aware of the werewolf bite in here was testimony to its strength: it should have been left in the physical world, rather than tag along into my perception of myself.

In the moment I spent reeling, swords clashed. Méabh had the look of a woman planning to take it to the limit, and I wondered if she and her mother had ever gone mano a mano before. Watching the viciousness with which they struck at one another, I was just as glad Sheila and I were merely estranged, not actually enemies. People of great power generally made bad enemies. When both sides were equally stacked in the mojo department, the resulting altercations were a bit on the earth-shattering side.

Or in this case, garden-shattering. Soft dirt came dislodged under their feet, the sparse green grass losing its hold. I’d put a lot of effort into getting it as lush as it was, and was childishly upset at the mess they were making. “Méabh!”

She hesitated, which would have been fatal if she hadn’t been within my garden. Silvery-blue shields bounced the Morrígan’s next blow back, leaving both of them surprised. Méabh, however, stepped away from the fight, which was what I wanted.

This place was my heart and soul. The small changes I’d made in improving it had been part and parcel of my own spirit growing up and getting it together. I’d never fought a real battle here, or needed the garden for more than that.

Not until now, anyway. I flexed, feeling the spring’s pool respond; feeling the earth under my feet respond. The Morrígan sneered and swung her sword, such a lazy open blow that her contempt for me was clear.

I crouched, catching a bit of torn-up dirt in my fingertips, and when I scooped my open hand upward again, the garden came with it. My hand, replicated at about eight times its own size in earth, rose up and seized the Morrígan. Tossed her with my gesture across the garden into one of the sturdy stone walls. I felt like the driver of one of those giant mechs, the factory machines that let an individual lift multi-ton items. The Morrígan slithered down the wall to land on her butt in the dirt, no longer looking quite so threatening. I was beginning to think she wasn’t such a badass after all. Earthen hands ready to capture her again, I growled, “My garden. My rules.”

Rage glinted in the Morrígan’s eyes and she curled her fingers up, nails suddenly long and deadly looking. “True, so true, but it was never you I was here for, daughter of my daughters. It was never you I wanted.”