C.E. Murphy - Raven Calls

He interjected, “Ire—Low—lost—cust—?” through my panicked response, but gave up halfway through, golden eyes growing increasingly round as I reached the end of the rushed explanation. Then he said, “Yes,” with utter certainty, which was all I needed. I wanted my idea to work, but I wasn’t quite sure I believed it would. He did, though. He believed, and shamanism was belief, and I believed him, so I believed me and whispered, “Thank you,” with all the heartfelt gratitude I could manage, and surged back to the fight.

Almost nothing had changed. Another banshee was down, a second was failing to fall to Gancanagh’s wiles the way the first had—a woman scorned, I thought—and as I steadied myself Caitríona went down under two of the screaming monsters. She was the only one of us who was genuinely defenseless, though her warbling song kept shields flickering in and out around her. It wasn’t enough. I was not going to go to her mother in the Middle World and explain how I’d lost her daughter, my cousin, to a host of banshees in the Lower. I took two running steps, planted the spear’s butt in the earth and managed a clumsy, one-armed vault over a low-flying banshee to crash onto one of the two that had toppled Caitríona. The other I seized with a net, and for a minute we were a tumbling, screaming, rolling mass of furious women.

I had no leverage to use the spear and roared, “Caitríona!” as I flung the thing sideways, hoping she would catch it. Then I had my fingers in a banshee’s pointy mouth and was trying to pull the top of her head off while another one scrabbled and spat at the net winding ever tighter around her. I’d never fought such a physical battle with as focused a mental aspect. Either I was getting better at this, or fighting in the Lower World helped integrate my talents at a level I despaired of reaching in the real world. The banshee I was fighting exploded into magic-filled dust, and for the second time that day, Caitríona O’Reilly stood over me with a weapon and the remains of a fallen enemy at her feet.

The spear had hit my shields, or it might have gone straight through me, too. A good shot, too: right over my heart. I had a sick lurch of appreciation for Laurie Corvallis’s sheer nerve after I’d done the same thing to her with exactly the same weapon, and then Cat was offering her hand and pulling me to my feet. I came up ready to fight, or as ready as I could be with one arm dangling uselessly.

Evidently it was enough. The remaining banshees took a look at the four of us, turned tail and fled.

A much more ferocious warrior than I probably would have given chase. Méabh started to, in fact, though to my eyes it looked less like she planned to catch them than as if she was giving them an all-out “Yeah, take that! Run, you scared little girls! Run! ” boost on their way. She stopped after a few yards and turned back to the rest of us. Gancanagh was dusting off his Morrison-like suit and slacks, having taken out the woman scorned after all. Caitríona held the spear like she’d never let it go. She was banged up worse than the rest of us, but she looked like she’d just come to life, color high and eyes bright. I was equal parts envious and proud of her.

“What,” I said to her, “were you singing?”

A blush of laugher crept up her cheeks. “The old Star Trek theme song. You said Trek shields…”

“You’re a genius.” I totally meant it, and gave her a sloppy hug. “Holy crap. We kicked their asses. Damn, we’re good.”

“I would like to learn that magic,” Méabh said. “The power to be unseen. It might change the flow of history.”

I’d gotten the idea from comic books and wanted to suggest she go read some. Instead I said, “Except it hasn’t, so either you didn’t learn it or it didn’t matter. Besides, we have enough screwed-up history to fix, or haul back toward center. Let’s not add another loop to the timeline.” Between losing Gary and my mother’s captivity it was hard to remember that taking the Morrígan out to restore some balance was how my day had gotten started. Lugh’s scarlet blood splashed over the Lia Fáil was visceral, but not as personal as losing Gary. I looked up at the castle towering over us. “If we take the O’Brien banshee down, is that going to get your mother’s attention, Méabh? Because I’m tired of pussyfooting around. I’m feeling ready for a showdown.”

Méabh, guarded, said, “It will, but it’s your mother we’re here to save, not mine we’re here to defeat.”

“It’s all the same.” I kept expecting the banshees to converge again, but instead I got glimpses of white faces and flowing hair as they rushed from one castle window to another. All that was left of their sisters was dust, so I wasn’t sure how many we’d killed, but I thought it was at least half—half of which, in turn, Méabh alone had been responsible for. “The banshees perform ritual murders to strengthen the Master, but there’s obviously a hierarchy here. He probably doesn’t give the orders to them himself, you know? It goes to the Morrígan to Aibhill to the blades.” It wasn’t that the one I’d met was the Blade. It was all of them, voices like blades, nails like blades, faces like blades. Maybe a grouping of banshees was a blade of banshees, like a group of crows was a murder. It didn’t matter. What did matter was, “I’ll work my way up to the top one by one if I have to.”

“You would face him?” Gancanagh sounded impressed, and I found myself stalking toward the nearest castle doors as I answered.

“You know what, a week ago I’d have said no, but a lot’s changed since then. I wasn’t ready then, and maybe I’m still not, but we’re getting one step closer to a throw-down every day, and if that means it’s on right here and right now, then fine. I’ve got too much riding on this one to run away, so I’ll take it. We’ll do our best. I. Will do my best.” Since I couldn’t really drag the others into my fight just on a say-so.

“You have a warrior’s spirit after all,” Méabh said in approval. Caitríona, spear still in hand, ran to catch up with us, and Gancanagh, when I looked back, was sauntering along behind like he wasn’t really part of the group but didn’t want to miss any of the action, either. Morrison wouldn’t have been so coy, which made me feel better about the resemblance I saw. Armed with that knowledge, I shoved the doors open and walked into a great hall.

Stone arched dozens of feet above the floor, supported by oak beams and the grace of God. I had one of those moments where it seemed more likely aliens had built the pyramids than humans had been able to create such soaring masterpieces without the help of modern technology. Stained glass found sunlight somewhere and spilled a riot of color onto the gray stone floors, but they weren’t the religious figures I was used to seeing depicted in stained glass. A whole different history of the world unfolded up above us, and before I had even the slightest chance to begin appreciating it, a woman came gracefully down a stairway I hadn’t noticed.

She was beautiful.

I simply hadn’t expected that, not after the banshees I’d encountered, up to and including my mother, who’d been pretty in life. I’d expected skeletal and clawed and papery, not fair and blue-eyed and curvaceous. Aibhill—because it had to be Aibhill—wore white, lots and lots of flowing white. So flowing I couldn’t really call it a style or name an era it might have come from. It was like she’d been dressed in breezes dipped in white to make them visible, the way the light fabric flowed and folded and wove around her. That seemed almost likely, given that we were inside and there was no actual wind to give the cloth motion. Her hair wove the same way, tangling delicate hands and soft white arms, then releasing them again. Somehow her face was never obscured. Even I, who had had a crop cut since I was fifteen, might wear my hair long if I could make it never fall in my face.