No Dominion (The Walker Papers: A Garrison Report) (10 page)

“I recall a far-future memory, a reckoning with your sister’s master. I have a score to settle, though in that future I have no recollection of such a mark made in my past. Perhaps we might change it all utterly, and you and I might yet pursue what we have lost.”

Brigid stood silent a couple seconds, the sparks she’d buried comin’ close to burning through. Then she said, “Time’s passage does not alter in such a way, Cernunnos.”

His voice softened the same way hers had a minute earlier. “Time’s passage rarely alters that way,
cuisle mo chroí
. But even a god must try, else the long passage of the years would be unbearable with their sameness. Nothing is immutable, not even the stars. Will you ride with me?”

“I will ride with the boy.”

“Of course you will.” Cernunnos turned his stallion away, and the kid on the golden mare came to help Brigid mount. She thanked him, then lifted her voice, like all of us hadn’t been hangin’ on every word she and Horns had been saying.

“I have searched these hills while I have waited for you to come.  East and north of Knocknaree lies a cavern reaching deep into the earth. There lies the cauldron which has stolen the lives of
aos sí
kings, and which will take even yours should my sister’s master gain the strength he desires. Master Muldoon has come from the other end of time to help us bind it. It is a binding I know succeeds, for he also helps to destroy it, and barely a dozen undead warriors rise to protect it. Make no mistake: when the magic is made to bind the thing, my sister and her master will come to protect it. You are hunters, but I would lead you to war. Will you ride with me?”

I’d done my time in the Army. I knew how much noise a dozen men could make when they put their minds to it. The Hunt outdid that, thanks to the baying dogs and calling rooks and the horses stamping their feet and raising their voices too. The only one not shouting was Cernunnos, who looked kinda like a captain whose troops had decided to take that hill over there whether he thought they should or not. I figured we were all gonna get court-martialed in the end, but what the hell, even a soldier’s gotta do something crazy once in a while or they’ll all go nuts. The kid swept his mare around, Brigid’s braid bouncing down her spine like a beacon, and the whole damned Hunt rode after them, cheering and waving their swords.

For once Cernunnos took up the rear. I nudged Imelda up next to Cernunnos’s stallion. “You said somethin’ about ‘your line’, meanin’ Jo and Bridey there?”

He answered like a man who thought he wouldn’t get any rest ‘til he did. “Brigid and the Morrígan are sisters, and Joanne is the Morrígan’s granddaughter, many times removed.”

“You gotta be kiddin’ me.”

Cernunnos arched an eyebrow, wrinklin’ the flesh over his budding horns. I twitched, trying not to let it turn into a shudder. “All right, so you’re not kidding. Is that why you want Jo? ‘cause her great-aunt turned you down?”

In seventy-four years I’d never met anybody who could do disdain the way Horns could. His lip curled and he looked at me like I was somethin’ he mighta scraped off his shoe. “I hold her in higher esteem than that, and I would hope you do too.”

Smug with satisfaction, I let Imelda fall back from the stallion’s side. I didn’t mind a god being taken with my girl, just so long as it was her, and not some

cloud-chasing memory he was after.

After a couple minutes, the cloud-chased memory circled back around to me and let Cernunnos take the lead. I watched him ride forward, then gave Brigid a hairy eyeball. “Thought you were the one who knew where we were going.”

“There is no hole in the earth that doesn’t contain at least a few beasts, and he’s the master of them all. They’ll guide him there, whether they mean to or not.”

“And his fragile male ego is soothed by taking point?”

She gave me a perplexed glance that turned into laughter. “Something like that, aye. Is that a turn of phrase from your time? The ‘fragile male ego’? It seems appropriate.”

“Shh. We hear it alla time, but we don’t like to believe it. Ain’t good for our egos to think they’re fragile.”

“And yet,” she said, and I said “Shh” again. She smiled and nodded, but her smile faded faster than an old man wanted to see. “I had counted on Joanne Walker. Not that your presence isn’t appreciated…”

“But I’m no magic man.” I shrugged and nodded toward Horns, up at the front of the host. “He says I’m the next best thing. ‘course, I coulda told him that anyway.” I winked, and she laughed, quick as her smile had come. Least I could still get that out of a pretty girl, even if it was mercurial. “Jo put a whammy on me,” I said a bit more seriously. “Gave me her Second Sight, an’ it ain’t faded yet. Dunno why, ‘cause I thought it was only gonna work til sunset, but I’m still seeing straight into the bones of the world if I try to.”

“And what do you see when you look at me?” Brigid wondered.

I glanced at her, tryin’ ta will the depth of sight back on. Glimmers shone all around her edges. Then it was like falling into a pool: her aura, all red and gold, splashed deep inside her, but when it hit her core it turned black an’ blue like somebody’d been beating on her. I blinked an’ the colors got clearer, until I could see the blackness was eating her away from the inside. I took a sharp breath, and she lifted her hand to stop me from talkin’. “So you do See,” she said like she’d been verifying it for herself.

“Darlin’…”

“Have no fear, Master Muldoon. I have the strength for what must be done.”

“But not more.”

“It will be enough.”

“You saved Jo’s life, didn’t you. By taking that hit.” The longer I looked, the easier it was to see how the magic inside her belonged to the Morrígan. It was death magic, dark an’ ugly, and I didn’t think an ordinary human, even one with Jo’s skills, coulda survived it. “Saved mine, too, by keeping her alive. Thanks.”

Brigid nodded an’ changed the subject. Guess I couldn’t blame her. I didn’t like thinking about my own mortality, an’ I was damned certain she had a lot more years to regret losing than I ever would. “You have the Sight,” she said, “and I see within you the strength of a spirit protector. You may not work magic, but you are imbued with it. What else might you know that will serve us in binding the cauldron? You know its eventual fate, but do you know how it comes to its end? How it is bound? How we might ourselves cast a spell to last through the aeons?”

I rubbed a hand through my hair and thought about it. Cernunnos looked over his shoulder at us, green fire magic pounding into my skull when his eyes met mine. I flinched up straight in the saddle, scowling hard at him. “Damned if I don’t. Jo and me came across a binding spell way back when this started. She don’t use magic like that, no spells and chants and stuff, but I think it’s ‘cause she
don’t
, not ‘cause she can’t. Anyway, this one…” Cernunnos turned away, shoulders thick like he was becomin’ the stag already. “This one we set in his name.”

“In his—in his name?” Brigid clawed her voice back from sounding like a fishwife and cleared her throat. “In Cernunnos’s name? You know a binding spell that calls on the god of the Wild Hunt?”

“No. I mean, yeah, it does ‘cause he’s the one we called on. Jo told me not to say it, not even joking, but—well, hell, darlin’, he was the only god I’d ever met. Who else was I gonna mention?”

“
Was he there?
At the breaking of the cauldron,
was he there?
”

“’a’course he was.” It took a couple seconds to catch up on why that might matter, an’ then I sat back into the saddle deep enough that Imelda pranced sideways. I said, “’a’course he was,” again, except this time I wasn’t feeling quite so pat. “Not when the binding was broken an’ the cauldron got stolen, but yeah, he was there when Jo destroyed it. That’s…that ain’t coincidence, is it.”

“I think it is not. And now the urgency seems greater to me than before.” She shouted a name I couldn’t grab hold of, some kinda harsh liquid sound that didn’t leave any kinda repeatable syllables in my mind. Cernunnos reined up hard, an’ Brigid snatched the reins from the boy rider’s hands to urge their mare forward. She and Horns started shouting at one another. Imelda pranced uncomfortably again, and I sat there like a damned fool for a minute before kicking her forward so I could hear their argument.

Turned out I didn’t get a chance. I rode up to ‘em, Cernunnos roared, “
Enough!
” an’ the whole of the Hunt leapt about forty miles in one step. The landscape changed, Knocknaree left far behind and low green mountains rolling up in front of me. A black pit opened up in the earth like a hell hole, and that, a’course, was where we were heading.

CHAPTER FOUR

Normal caves got a transition area, where sunlight slips through and fades until you’re standin’ in the dark. I rode into this one a few steps behind Cernunnos an’ Brigid, and watched ‘em disappear in front of me like they’d gone through some kinda portal. Same thing happened to me: one second I was in daylight, the next it was darker than night, no ambient light at all to soften the darkness. I only kept going forward ‘cause I knew there were another dozen guys behind me and I didn’t figure a pile-up at the cave mouth was on Bridey’s agenda. She and Cernunnos musta decided the same thing, ‘cause I could hear their horses on the rocky ground even if I couldn’t see a damned thing.

A few more steps in I remembered Jo had magicked me, and I did that hard blink that made the Sight turn on. It was like having a super power: the dark turned colors, black light glowing in the walls and deeper midnight pulsing ahead of us. Everything felt off-kilter, like this wasn’t a place living things were supposed to go, but the darker pulse was tugging at me, too. I wanted to go check it out, even when the smart part of my brain was telling me to turn tail and get the hell outta there. It seemed likely Jo spent a lotta time feeling this way, and I grinned even if we were heading for certain doom.

Cernunnos an’ Brigid were like flares ahead of me, him green an’ her fiery gold. I glanced at myself, which I hadn’t thought to do before. I knew Jo saw my aura as silver, but it was still a shock to see my own hands kinda glowing and shining with life. White spun around the edges of silver, blurring and blending into brightness that made me wonder if the guys behind me Saw this way, an’ if I was a big ol’ silver lug to their eyes. Jo had been real pleased about that, when she’d triggered the Sight in me. My grey eyes had turned silver, she said, when everybody else’s she’d tried it on had gone gold like hers did. Nice to know I held my own, even in mojo-land.

“It pulls at me.” Brigid sounded strained.

I nudged Imelda forward a few more steps, tryin’ ta catch up in the glow-in-the-darkness. “That’s what it does, doll. I didn’t much see the thing on my end of time, but Jo talked to me about it after she destroyed it. She said it makes you just wanna jump in. That it offers peace.”

Cernunnos gave a snort. “There is no peace to be had in his grasp.”

“I’m just reportin’ what the lady said, Horns. How the hell did they make that thing, anyway?”

“Through the sacrifice of a willing victim,” Brigid murmured. “The cauldron is forged from my sister’s soul.”

I spent a couple seconds wondering how that was possible, then remembered I’d just met an elf with a living silver arm, and that that wasn’t the strangest thing I’d seen by half. All I said was, “That’s how it’s destroyed, too, is with a willing soul. Why don’t we just do that now?”

Cernunnos turned, green fire blazin’ off him. “Do you wish to make that sacrifice yourself? Because I could not even if I wished to, Brigid’s soul belongs to another, and my riders are dead men. You are the only one among us who could make that choice.”

I clacked my teeth shut. The right thing to do was dive straight into the damned cauldron, and I knew it, but I sure as hell didn’t want to. Not even knowing it might save a few lives back on my end of time. Truth was, if Jo was at my side and I could say g’bye, I’d do it in a heartbeat. But I’d promised her I’d be safe, and I hated breaking that promise. After a minute, Cernunnos, looking smug, turned away again, an’ I muttered, “Son of a bitch,” without meaning him at all.

“Willing is not enough,” Brigid said softly. “Even I, with my soul bound to another, might crawl in it willingly to break its spell. But it calls to me so strongly I think anyone who enters it does so willingly. Not wisely, perhaps, but willingly.”

I dropped my chin to my chest, remembering more clearly what Jo had said. “Innocent. Not just willing, but innocent.” This time saying, “Son of a bitch,” was due to relief that I hated feeling. I oughta be better than that, ‘cause it might break Jo’s heart, but I knew she’d forgive me for dying if I took the cauldron along with me. But while I mighta been a decent human being, I wasn’t an innocent one. Not much of anybody who fights in a war is, no matter how hard you might try to keep your hands clean. And I hadn’t, because you don’t, not when your life and your buddies’ lives are hanging on it.

“Ah.” Brigid’s colors went dark with unhappiness. “Innocence, of course. And to sacrifice one unwillingly would only make us into the thing we stand against. How did Joanne—” Her breath was loud even over the horses’ hooves against the rocky floor. “No. Better not to wonder, and to be satisfied knowing it will one day be destroyed.”