The Sea Thy Mistress (34 page)

Freed, the Wyrm’s head snapped back as if yanked on a string, moonlight a cobra’s hood flaring around it.

Heythe convulsed, twisting away, breaking her throat open on Alvitr as she tore free of his grip. The wound vanished before it was more than a line of blood; she faced Cahey, panting.

“Gone,” she said. “It’s not in you anymore.”

“Muire’s soul?” He laughed and then spat blood on the stones, leaning on his sword. The point of her crystal blade bit into the rock. “No,” he said. “You’re safe from that. If only I’d known it could have hurt you, but … I gave it to a friend.”

Heythe spun on her heel, reaching out again to take hold of the silvery Light.

I
MOGEN
, the Wyrm said. A
TTEND ME
,
TRICKSTER
’
S DAUGHTER
.

Ascending from the water, wide wings spread behind the Wyrm’s head like an obsidian crown, eyes gleaming like the jewels set in it, the Imogen came.

“Lady,” the Imogen said.

Y
OU SEE WHAT MUST BE DONE
.

“I am not commanded,” the Imogen answered. “And yet I obey.”

Silently, those wings bore her down to Heythe, who coiled herself for combat. Selene saw them brush Cahey, standing close, cheek and shoulder—a caress?

The Imogen smiled, eyes like lamps in the darkness of her lovely inhuman face.

“It won’t avail you,” Heythe said calmly. “I am a goddess, you know.”

“And I am the thing in the mirror,” the Imogen replied in a steady, disinterested tone. “Your greatest wish.” Slow, strong wingbeats held her balanced in the ocean updraft. “Your darkest fear. I am the infinite void, filled by an infinite light, and I am beyond even you.”

Heythe reached up to place a hand at her throat. Her eyes went wide when she realized what wasn’t there.

It was over in less than a second.

The Imogen struck like a living knife, and the goddess never screamed. She came apart, a torn feather-pillow, consumed in an instant, bones and blood raining into the sea.

Daintily, horribly, the Imogen dabbed her lips with her fingers.

Selene looked away from her, away from the Wyrm. Crouched, reached down to help Cathmar stand, and crossed the flagstones to Cahey, sagging against the hilt of his sword.

He looked up. “Aithne,” he said.

“All right,” Aithne answered, picking herself up on her elbows. “Seemed like a smart time to stay down.”

“Can you heal yourself?” Selene asked Cahey. She glanced around for the Imogen, breathed a sigh of relief that the demoness had silently vanished.

“Given a dull moment.” He looked down along the length of his body. Selene heard the crackling of twisted bones straightening, and he stood up straight for a second and smiled before he folded, limp, exhausted, into her arms.

She cushioned his fall, sat down on the stones, and laid his bloody head in her lap.

Aithne clambered to her feet, helped by Cathmar, and limped over. The head of the great Wyrm hung over them, watching, lighting their way.

Cathmar sat down beside Selene and the unconscious Cahey and leaned his head against her shoulder. He looked up at the Wyrm, met her pale gray eyes. She felt him take a deep, slow breath.

“Mom,” he said. “It’s nice to finally meet you.”

B
ELOVED
, she answered. E
VERY ONE OF YOU DESERVES BETTER
. B
UT
I
GIVE YOU WHAT IS MINE TO GIVE
.

“Why didn’t you intervene … before Aethelred, you know…?” Cathmar’s voice trailed off.

She shook her head, a great slow pendulum that sent a ripple down her fleshless neck. I’
M NOT FOR INTERVENTION
,
MY LOVE
. I’
M FOR ENDURANCE
,
UNDERSTANDING AND REBIRTH
. Y
OU AND YOUR SORT
,
YOU
’
RE THE HANDS AND EYES AND BRAINS AND BALLS OF THE WORLD
. I’
M JUST ITS HEART
. I
F YOU WISH ME TO INTERVENE
, I
MUST BE SUMMONED
,
AND A DEAL MUST BE STRUCK
. S
ACRIFICES MUST BE MADE
. P
ROPITIATION
.

A
ND INTERVENTION OPENS ME TO ATTACK
,
AS WELL
. I
T
’
S THE WAY THE RULES WORK
,
YOU SEE
.

“But … why didn’t you summon the Imogen sooner?”

C
AHEY
. O
NCE HE FREED HER
,
ANY POWER
I
HAD TO SUMMON HER VANISHED
. A
ND WITHOUT WHAT HE GAVE HER
,
EVEN SHE COULD NOT HAVE CHALLENGED THIS ONE
.

Selene looked over at the blood-slicked flagstones. She glanced back up at Muire, a complex question in the set of her ears and whiskers.
Why did she come, then?
Except, more than that.

The thing in Selene that had been trapped in servitude herself had to know.

I
SUSPECT
, Muire answered, with a flicker of amusement,
SHE THOUGHT SHE OWED SOMEONE A FAVOR
.

Cathmar laughed. He held up his right hand in a fist, rolled the last three fingers open to let something sparkling in rainbow colors dangle free. “Mom, you want this? I paid for it, I guess it’s mine to give.”

Before she could answer, a thunder of wings broke the darkness, and Selene tensed, forgetting for a moment that the Imogen’s made no more sound than a whisper. Selene looked up and breathed a sigh of relief. “Mingan,” she said, as the white stallion bore his rider down.

K
EEP IT
, the Wyrm said to her son. A
S YOU SAID
,
BELOVED
—
YOU
’
VE PAID
.

Hooves clattered on the paving stones as the valraven furled his wings. He bowed his heads to the great Serpent as his rider slid down his shoulder, landing in the courtyard with a tired-sounding thump.

Mingan strode over to where Selene and Cathmar sat, Aithne standing beside them. “Does he live?” he asked, indicating Cahey with a negligent flick of gloved fingers.

“Yes,” Aithne said.

“Good.” He glanced around at the Wyrm, the bloodied and sword-scarred stones, the silence and peace of the night. The great Serpent nodded over him.

“Muire,” he said. “All is well?”

T
HE THREAT IS ENDED
, she answered. Y
OUR SERVICE
 …
IS HONORED
.

He drew a breath. Only Selene noticed the grief in his smile. He inclined his head, as if waiting for Muire to continue.

A
ND FAREWELL
. The Wyrm nodded once more, writhed, and twisted into the ocean in a puddle of Light.

Mingan sighed, squared his shoulders, and turned back to Selene. Their eyes met. She gestured to the unconscious einherjar in her lap. “You did it,” she said.

Mingan quirked an eyebrow and allowed his lips to arch in a cold sort of mirth. “ ’Twill serve,” he answered, turning away.

52 A.R.
On the First Day of Winter

Far out at sea, the wake of a jet watercraft curled phosphorescent in the darkness. Cahey turned to follow its track until it was out of sight, wondering. More than five decades since Muire gave herself to the ocean, and almost two and a half millennia since he died on a snow-covered clifftop, dragged down like a stag by a pack of dogs.

Something squirmed under his jacket. He pressed his left arm against his abdomen to keep it from sliding out the bottom of the coat, then stopped in his footsteps, nauseated by the sudden, vividly kinetic memory of his own guts spilling hot and slick over his hands.
That’s why we don’t remember our past lives,
he thought.
Well, one reason among thousands.

“Shhh,” he whispered to the squirming wolf-cub, “soon, soon. You’re supposed to be a surprise.”

His lover, his enemy, his rival, his savior—Mingan the Grey Wolf waited at the foot of the bluff upon which he raised a chapel to honor the sacrifice of a woman they had both loved, and whom neither of them could keep.

Muire, who was Muire the Historian once, and Muire the poet and sculptress later, and Muire the Angel-who-went-into-the-Sea last of all.

And then she was a goddess, and beyond their reach.

The sea that she had sacrificed herself to hissed, moonlit, on the sand at his feet.
She can be summoned on a night like this.
Cahey steeled himself for what he meant to do.

“Brother,” he said, though his voice did not carry as it should.

The Wolf turned from the ocean slowly, his eyes meeting Cahey’s as Cathoair walked up to him, bare feet splashing in the borders of the breakers.

“Cathoair,” he answered. There were centuries in his voice that Cahey never understood before, and a loneliness that ached like a blister on Cahey’s heart. “Selene said you summoned me.”

Cahey hadn’t an answer, and so he stood and watched the starlight fill up the Wolf’s eyes. The wind shifted slightly and his nostrils flared, tasting it. Cahey suspected it gave him only the aroma of the sea, rich and complex as the fragrance of a woman, but he noticed the resumed squirming under Cahey’s clothes. One eyebrow inched up his timeworn face in a silent question.

Cahey unzipped his jacket and produced the wolf-cub. “Her eyes aren’t open yet,” he said, holding her out to the Wolf. “She’s too young to be away from her mother, but her mother is dead, and all her siblings. Put her in your cloak before she chills.”

The Wolf’s mouth opened to argue. But he closed it and lifted the wolf-cub out of Cahey’s hands and swaddled her close to the inhuman heat of his breast. “Where…?”

“She was the only survivor of her pack,” Cahey said. “Forest fire. Her mother died atop her.”

“You were … fighting the fire?”

“It can’t burn me. Useful for things like that.”

“Ah.” He turned away, hiding his face. “I know how to raise a wolf-cub,” he said. “I’ll see to her.”

“It’s time you had a pack again,” Cahey answered. “That’s what I mean to say. Beyond your steed and Selene, I mean. When are you going to come back to the rest of us?”

He turned back, startled. “You remember?”

Cahey cleared his throat, embarrassed by the intensity of the Wolf’s regard. “Whether it was you, or the Imogen … yes. I remember. Fragments. Like childhood, or something that happened to somebody else. Just fragments.”

“Then you remember why I was never welcomed among the children of the Light.”

Cahey turned his gaze out to the shining sea. “You’ve changed and they’ve changed, Wolf. And the world—that has changed most of all.”

The Wolf fell silent. The cub, contented by the smell or the warmth of him, stopped squirming.

“We need a Cynge, Mingan, or a war-leader, or something like it. Someone all the einherjar and waelcyrge can agree to follow, with the wit and the courage to lead us.”

“That has never been my role, Cahey.”

Cahey’s laugh burned low in his throat. “No. It was mine, and I bitched it up. You can hardly do worse than I did.”

“You do not understand. They will not follow me.”

“They’ll have to,” he answered. “At least for a little while. I have something else to do.”

He took a breath and turned away from Mingan, toward the ocean. He spoke on a rush, because that was what he must do to get the words out. “By moonlight, earth and ocean, Muire, I summon thee.”

Mingan took a sharp breath.

The moonlight on the rippled water pooled, coalesced, and she came out of it—small, slight, her dirty blond hair cropped even with her shoulder and her eyes gleaming with liquid silver. “My faithful ones,” she said, in a woman’s voice, leaving the goddess behind for now. She smiled with what seemed simple joy. “It is … good … to see you together.”

She came almost up to the strand, close enough to touch if they both reached out their hands. “I’ve come to deal with thee,” Cahey said—words of an ancient ritual.