C.E. Murphy - Raven Calls

“I see Tara, Jo. Tara the way it musta been a million years ago. It’s…” Gary, who was never at a loss for words, trailed off as he gazed around. “There’s swords on the walls. Lot of ’em don’t look like they’ve ever been used. They’ve got carvings below them, faces. Except they don’t look like carvings, more like they just lifted right out of the stone itself. All the kings, I guess. Makes you feel like you’re walkin’ through history.” He paused, then said in a more normal tone, “You know what I mean.”

I grinned. “Yeah. I don’t see that, not as clearly. I’ve got overlap going from our time. I don’t see the faces.”

“Too bad. They’re somethin’, Jo.” He refocused on me. “So what the hell’d you do? You said your rhyme, then disappeared for a minute, and then everything changed to this and the elf king.”

I stared at him. “How’d you know he wasn’t human?”

Gary did his plate tectonics shrug. “Pretty sure the human high kings of Ireland married Maeve, not the Morrígan. That and the mythology said Lugh was one of the sí. It stood to reason.”

My hands started doing the Muppet thing again. “What the hell’s a shee? No, never mind, forget it, just tell me how it stood to reason that some random guy in the annals of history wasn’t human? How it stood to reason that—”

Gary gave me a level look. “Sweetheart, in the fifteen months I’ve known you, I been stabbed by a demigod, ridden with the Wild Hunt, fought a wendigo, been witched into a heart attack an’ killed a couple zombies. What part of that would make a guy think there weren’t any elves prancin’ about somewhere in the world?”

I stared at him again. Pushed my glasses up. Stared some more. Then, in my very best academic tone, I said, “Oh. Well, when you put it like that, yeah, okay. I don’t know how we got here, Gary. And what do you mean, I disappeared?”

“Poof,” he said with a demonstrative puff of his fingers. “Gone. Had me worried for a minute, but then I got sucked back through time, too.”

“I can still See our time,” I said nervously. “I don’t like that I went poof. That can’t be a good sign.”

He whacked my shoulder in a way that could, if I was liberal with my definition, be construed as a pat. “Roll with it, doll.”

“Right. Because I don’t know how to get us home, so what choice do I have.”

Gary beamed and patted my shoulder again. This time I didn’t stagger from it. “That’s my girl. You’re getting the hang of this carpe diem stuff.”

“I have a good teacher. I think I also have an impatient elf king up there.” Indeed, Lugh stood framed by the hall’s far doorway, looking for all the world like a graceful marble statue. A graceful, impatient marble statue, though I’d never encountered a statue which exuded impatience. It made me wonder if there was a Museum of Statues of Unusual Expression somewhere in the world. There should be, if there wasn’t.

Lugh’s statuesque pose relaxed as we caught up to him. Gary caught his breath—his own breath, not Lugh’s—and even I, who still saw my era overlying ancient Tara, said, “Wow.”

The screaming white stone stood a few hundred yards away in a straight shot from the hall’s exit. I could See another version of it about a hundred yards off to the right; it had been moved in comparatively modern times, but the sheer solidity of its long-term presence beyond the hall made its modern-day location a mere shadow. Beyond it, the henges rose up with banners snapping, making the barrier around Tara that much more impressive.

Everything within the henges was focused on the screaming stone, which shone with gathered energy. It was capped with rich green magic at the moment, power waiting to be released. I wanted to yank the cap off to see if the energy shot upward like a spotlight directed at the sky. I kind of thought it would. That it would shoot up, crash into the cloud layer and rain back down over the entirety of Ireland in an island-size distribution of goodwill, serenity and balance.

Except Ireland didn’t exactly have a history of goodwill, serenity and balance. I frowned at the screaming stone like that was its fault, but Lugh brushed the thought away with a dramatic sweep of his hand. “Here lies the heart of our civilization. The collected spirit of the aos sí, where at midsummer those who would rule pass through the hall and come to the Lia Fáil, the Stone of Destiny. The stone cries out for all of Ireland to hear when a worthy man lays hand on it. The Morrígan comes to wed him, and we kneel before our new king.”

“You get a lot of people eager for that job when they know the wedding bed ends up with a sacrificial knife through it?” My analogy sucked, but Lugh got the point. So to speak.

“It is an honor and a duty to be tested,” he said stiffly, and just to teach me a lesson, struck off across the hills while he spoke. I chased after as he replaced stiffness with haughtiness that I was sure covered uncertainty. “All creatures must die. What better reason than for your people?”

Wrongness twitched up my spine again, just like it had when I’d contemplated Ireland’s emotional balance. “See, now, I get you’re elves or whatever, but if I’ve learned one thing being a shaman it’s that blood sacrifice is just not cool. It leads to all kinds of bad moj—” I broke off and glared over my shoulder at Gary, who had no problem keeping pace as we approached the Lia Fáil. He widened his eyes and mimed zipping his lips: no MojoJo from him. Satisfied, I finished, “Bad mojo. I can’t see that undergoing a 180-degree reversal, even over the course of a jillion years. Also,” I said, glancing around, “if there’s going to be a sacrifice here, shouldn’t there be a bloodthirsty crowd gathering?”

“It is a private affair,” Lugh said, still uptight and arrogant about it.

I snorted, then gaped as the penny dropped. “Oh, shit. You mean you didn’t know this would happen when you signed on, don’t you. Oh, crap. This cannot be good. This can’t be good at all. Sacrifices are bad enough. Secret sacrifices, that, no, just no. I put my foot down. That’s enough of this bullshit. Where is she? I’m going to have a word with this chick.”

Lugh, wordlessly, pointed skyward. I whipped around, arms akimbo.

The woman who stalked out of the sky was my mother.

It wasn’t really, not after a second shocked look. But that first one was a blow to the gut, sharp enough to make me breathless and sick. I took a woozy step backward and clung to the standing stone like an ingénue while I took stock of the Morrígan.

She was actually far more beautiful than my mother, but there was a definite similarity. More than just the long jet-black hair and light-colored eyes: they had a ferocity I didn’t think I shared. In my mother, that ferocity came out in the way she chewed Altoids.

In the Morrígan, it was more in the way she charged down out of the sky with a blazing sword in one hand and a trio of shrieking ravens flapping around her shoulders. Lugh, the damned fool, stepped between me and her and flung his arms wide, making himself an easily skewerable target.

Gary muttered, “Elves ain’t too bright,” as he lumbered by me and tackled Lugh to the ground just as the Morrígan swung her sword at him.

It slammed into the Stone of Destiny so hard that something, either the stone or the sword, should have shattered. Neither did, but the clang nearly broke me into a billion pieces. Chills dashed up my spine, down my arms, back up again and took up residence at the base of my neck, where they did a tap dance. Lugh gave a little grunt that made a nice counterbeat to the tapping. Gary rolled off him as the Morrígan squalled in pure outraged astonishment. The ravens took their distance from her and she landed on the ground in a cinematic rush of blue robes and black hair. It was very John Woo. All we needed was a flock of doves.