C.E. Murphy - Raven Calls

“Not so well, over all that shrieking. The poison’s growing worse, isn’t it, Granddaughter?” Méabh inserted herself between me and Gancanagh, who was already several body spaces away from me.

I clutched my arm, trying not to wince at the wave of pain that induced. “How can you tell?”

“You’re flushed.” We shared a moment of not looking at Gancanagh, but really, I was afraid he wasn’t the reason for the heat building up in me anyway.

Rattler had gotten me through the fight with the dragon, but I’d lost ground during the transformations. My arm was inflamed, not just the forearm but all the way to the shoulder. The joint hurt, and my collarbone was starting to feel fragile. I didn’t want to think about what would happen when the poison got to my heart. I entertained the idea that freeing Sheila and getting Gary back would be my heroic last stand, but then I caught another whiff of Morrison’s scent off Gancanagh and snapped, “I’ll be fine,” because there was no way I was giving up my reunion with the Almighty Morrison.

Méabh took a breath to argue, but just then we stepped out of the darkness into blinding afternoon sunlight. All four of us lurched to a stop, me and Caitríona turning to look at the gloom we’d left. There’d been no warning at all of the transition between light and dark, which was impossible, except we were traveling through fairy realms and the rules apparently didn’t apply. We glanced at each other, then shrugged and looked back at the monstrous hill in front of us.

“The Rock,” Caitríona said after a moment, grimly.

I had to agree with the grim. The hill rose at a steep but climbable angle, green grass patched with massive stones and stretches of bare earth. If it was anything like the real-world Rock of Cashel—and it wasn’t the real one, I was sure of that, because we’d been walking a few hours at the most, and Tipperary really was a long way—if it was like the real one, there was a much less steep approach on the other side. Of course, getting to it meant hiking around the hill’s foot, during which time it was always possible something would breach the shields and we’d be discovered. Going up the back side would probably be faster. A short gray wall cordoned off the hill’s peak, and behind the wall a tower shot toward the sky. A big blocky tower, square and impregnable-looking. “Well,” I said half under my breath, “it’s our job to pregnate it. Let’s go.”

About forty feet up the hill I revised my opinion of its climbability and whether it was faster to go this way than hike around. It wasn’t, thank God, as tall as Croagh Patrick, but it was steeper and rougher underfoot, reminding me of the Midwestern badlands for the second time in a day. No one in their right mind would take this route to attack the castle above. A single individual could hold off dozens of men with nothing more than a bow and arrow or some hot pitch. My left arm burned every time I used it, so it became more of an aching dead weight than help climbing, and by the time we reached the wall, I was wheezing.

The wall, of course, wasn’t as short as it had seemed from below. It was taller than I was. Taller than Méabh, even. We stared at it, then at each other, and she made stirrups with her hands to offer me a lift. I shook my head and made my own stirrups. “You first. I’m not going to be so good for hauling people up.”

She pursed her lips, but nodded and stepped into my hands. I moved as fast as I could, not letting myself think about the roar of agony from my left side as I boosted her upward. Gratifyingly, she all but flew to the wall’s top, partly because she was lighter than she looked and partly because I was damned strong, thanks to all the years I’d spent working on cars. She had no idea how much of an admission it was to have sent her up first, because normally I’d have been able to swing any of the three up to the top of the wall without a problem.

“I could go last,” Cat volunteered, but I shook my head again.

“I’m tallest with the most reach. It’ll be easier for Méabh to grab me than you.” I started to make stirrups again, but Gancanagh, to my surprise, intervened and tossed Cat up instead. Then he made a stirrup for me, and when I began the same protest again, shook his head. “Trust me.”

“On a cold day in hell.” But I stepped into the stirrup anyway, and he flung me toward Méabh with far more grace and strength than I expected. I didn’t know why: Morrison, whose build he appeared to share, was certainly strong enough to lift me. But I had this idea that under the Morrison image Gancanagh was a slight little thing, and therefore shouldn’t be able to fling me around.

Nor should he be able to fling himself around, by that logic, but he leapt up the wall with the insouciance of a cat, which made him seem really truly not human for the first time. He caught me gawking and winked, and I bit back another schoolgirl giggle. Not even Cernunnos made me want to lick him quite so much. Fairy magic, I decided, was dangerous.

Well, on a good day, so was mine. We all thumped down on the other side of the wall—a longer drop than I expected, as the hill ran down against it—and peered up at Aibhill’s castle.

There was a front door on the side facing us. That made perverse sense, particularly since the other side of the hill was a less treacherous climb than the side we’d come up. No reason to invite enemies in through the easiest access point. “I don’t suppose we just go knock.”

“Sure and she’d invite us right in,” Caitríona breathed. “What’s the worst a banshee can do?”

“Flay your soul from your skin with its voice.”

Her eyes bugged. I shrugged stiffly. My left arm didn’t want to move at all. I didn’t look at it for fear I’d see a wolf’s paw dangling from the shredded remains of my coat sleeve. Realistically I didn’t think I had a lot of choice coming up: I was afraid I’d have to go all lupine again to have even the slightest chance of us coming out ahead when we fought Aibhill.

The very thought just about talked myself into turning tail and running. Instead I made a dash for the castle’s front door.

There were two doors, actually, once I got close enough to see clearly. One was massive, large enough to let half an army out at once. The other was set inside the big one and was normal-size. It had one of those little barred windows for checking out incomers before they came in, but no one was standing guard. Instead a big hoary-looking lock made a promise that we wouldn’t be getting in anytime soon. I sagged as the other three caught up to me, but Caitríona glanced at the lock, sniffed and pulled a jackknife out of her jeans pocket.

Less than sixty seconds later the lock popped open and Cat folded the knife up, eminently satisfied with herself. “What?” she said to our wide-eyed admiration. “Me brothers used to try to keep me out of the shed they stored girly mags in. I thought they were hiding chocolates.”

Breathless with astonished laughter, I shoved through the door and the others spilled after me. Gancanagh whisked it shut behind him. We all pushed ourselves up against the big doors as if we were hidden by pressing against them, though in fact we stood inside a grassy courtyard with not a hint of cover in sight. Still, every one of us was bright with triumph at getting in. All we had to do now was find Aibhill, kill her and rescue my mother.

Right about then, the banshees came for us.

We all gasped right from our very toes, not one of us remembering that I was maintaining a magic that rendered us unseeable. That collective gasp should have been our undoing.

But nothing short of a freight train whistle could have been audible over the banshees’ keening, and even that would probably just blend in. They knew the door had opened and closed again: that was clear from how they dove at it time and again while the four of us scattered. Bleak-faced women zoomed by close enough to touch, scraggly hair streaming behind them and their skeletal faces contorted in rage. They scraped long nails through the grass, tufts flying everywhere as we all rolled frantically in different directions, trying to avoid their touch. It would take only one to let them know it hadn’t been the wind banging the locked door around.