Worlds Without End

12

When I woke, it was getting near dark. The sun rested low on the horizon, showing its face for the first time since we'd come to the Tir. Caimbeui had turned the vid to some music station as he drove. The vid flickered and changed, turning his pale face a rainbow of colors.

It took me a moment to orient myself. I felt groggy and irritated at the sensation. My scalp itched and my eyes felt gritty. A few hours of sleep to make up for the three days I'd missed weren't enough.

"Where are we?" I asked.

"Just south of Galway City," he replied.

"Has it changed much?" I asked.

"Has what changed?"

"Galway City."

"Compared to what?"

"Compared to what it was before the Awakening." "A bit," he said. "The old ways have taken hold pretty firmly there."

I pulled my bag out from under the front seat and began rummaging through it. Gum wrappers, ciga- rettes, shoelaces-then I found it: a small tin whis- tle. It rode on a thin copper necklace that I slipped over my head and nestled down between my breasts. I looked out at the passing countryside.

It had gone wild here. No fences marked property lines. The roads were mostly unpaved, little more than dirt ruts. It reminded me of a time long ago, long before this world. Back when another world was young. No, it was me who was young then.

I remembered what happened in that place so long ago. How could I ever forget? And now it seemed that the mistakes of the past would be repeated. This world would be torn apart unless I stopped them. Unless I stopped him.

Just as the sun was setting, I saw the place. Stone tombs silhouetted against the red sky.

"Pull over here," I said.

Caimbeui slowed the car.

"Are you sure?" he asked. "I can't feel any- thing…"

"It'll do. This place is lousy with caims. The whole area is Awakened."

A blast of cool air hit me when I opened the car door. The magic was heavy here. It made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. Then I noticed a strange feeling I hadn't had in a time out of mind: excitement. Things couldn't be worse, yet I felt alive for the first time in years. Had the centuries finally worn me down? I knew they had for some of the others. Some until they resorted to terrible means to stop the emptiness.

'But I had a reason to live. I knew my purpose. It was a sacred task. To keep the world safe. To protect it. To protect the people in it. Or so I'd told myself.

As I started for the tombs, Caimbeui grabbed my arm.

"Are you certain this is the only way?" he asked.

I turned and looked at him. In the flat red twilight his face looked like the very vision of Lucifer. A dark, yet beautiful, angel.

"Why, Caimbeui, I almost think you care," I said.

He frowned. "Don't be flip," he said. "If Ysrth- grathe has found you… how can you be safe?"

I reached up and touched his face. I can't describe how it felt, only that it felt like him. Like Caimbeui. My flesh remembered his as surely as it might re- member the smoothness of velvet or the scratch of sandpaper.

"Nothing is safe anymore," I replied. "Besides, I've been alive for so long, it might be good to rest. Don't you ever want to just… stop?"

"No," he said. An angry look crossed his face, and he pulled away from me. "It's always better to be alive. Life is better than death."

I wanted to stay and argue with him, but there was no time. It almost made me laugh. After so many years, to have no time.

Instead, I turned and began walking to the caims.

The sun had disappeared and the sky was fading from scarlet into plum. The wind had died down, and the air was still. No birds sang. No leaves rus- tled. No animal noises carried to me.

Once I reached the cairns, I turned to see if Caim- beui had followed me. He was a shadow against the fading light. I held my hands out to him and, after a moment, he took them. Though I didn't need him to call up the Hunt, I wanted him to be there with me.

I closed my eyes and relaxed. In my youth, I had learned magic as part of the fabric of life. I saw it not as a force to be manipulated, but as integral to life itself. A thread broken here could cause some- thing there to unravel. Pulling threads together could create something where there had been nothing.

But the mages today saw magic as something else. Their way of seeing the world was strange and alien to me. I objected to any kind of cybernetic enhance- ment. Machines can't create. They can only do what they're told.

As I began to chant the words to the spell, I opened my eyes. The moon was dark and the stars had yet to appear. I couldn't see Caimbeul's face, but could just make out the shape of him before me.

My eyes adjusted, and gradually I could see again. The granite of the cairns glowed ghostly pale. Caimbeul's face looked as though it floated in the air, unattached to his body. He joined me in saying the words to the spell. It was a strange duet, our words conjuring up the Hunt. I blew the whistle, and it made no sound that either I or anyone else in this world could hear.

At first there was nothing but our voices breaking the silence. Then the wind began. It howled across the open fields and whistled through the tombs. Caimbeul's hair was pulled free of his ponytail and whipped across his face. The ground began to trem- ble.

The magic flowed through me. Into me. It filled me and shook me. My muscles screamed with the agony of trying to hold this power. To mold it to my will. Sweat broke out across my face. It ran down my back and streamed over my breasts.

It was terrible, this force. This chaos and madness which threatened to engulf me. It wracked my muscles. I felt as though it would rip me apart. Tear from me my soul. That it would allow the insanity of the past to come and claim me again.

In the distance I could hear the thundering of hooves. I raised my voice, barely able to hear my- self. Barely able to force the words from my throat. Caimbeul's words were snatched away by the wind as he uttered them.

The magic trembled in me, flew around me, pulled at the world and drew things from me. Terrible things. Apparitions from the past. Nightmares from the future. We stood there, trembling, and chanted the old words. Words of power. Until our voices grew hoarse and our throats were raw and our legs would barely support us.

At last we stopped.

Abruptly, the air was still and silent.

I released Caimbeul's hand and turned. 94

Below us, at the base of the hill where the cairns stood, was what we'd called.

They looked up at us expectantly. Their eyes re- flected red iridescence. Black coats melted into black night.

In the distance, I heard the howling of the hounds and wolves. The gabriel ratchets. Their cries were lonely, as though they realized that they'd been abandoned by the steeds which led them. At their head was a tall, cloaked form. Though I knew that this was the apparition who tended the beasts, its ap- pearance was so close to Ysrthgrathe's that, for a moment, I thought my enemy had come for me.

A long, bony arm appeared from the depths of the apparition's cloak. It beckoned us. I glanced for a moment at Caimbeul. His lips were set in a hard line.

"You don't have to come," I said. "What?" he replied. "And miss all the fun?"

At the bottom of the hill we were gestured to two horses. These were the horses of the ancient Tuatha de Danaan. Created from fire, not earth, and able to live for hundreds of years. I had not ridden one in a thousand years.

As we tried to mount the horses, they began to dance away and reached back every now and again to nip us with their long, yellow teeth. I grabbed a handful of long mane to help pull myself up. I hoped I would have enough strength left in me for the ride I knew was ahead.

There was no noise as we mounted. No rattle of harnesses. No sound at all. I turned to the master of the horses, who stood looking at me. "To the Seelie Court," I shouted over the din. The apparition nodded.

Just then, I had a strange tingling sensation, as if someone unseen was watching me. I looked around, and there, in the distance, atop one of the far hills, were the hounds, stags and wolves. They swirled to- gether, writhing like a thousand snakes, and disap- peared from my sight. I shuddered at their terrible power.

The horses lunged forward, jerking us in our seats. From then on we were no longer in control. As if we ever truly had been.

We thundered down bare fields and into muddy flats. Fences were hurdled without a falter. Streams and meadows slipped away. Sparks flew as hooves struck rocky expanses. Lather foamed up on the horses, but they never slowed. My cheeks became chilled and chapped; my hands ached from holding onto the reins. Tears streamed from my eyes.

We overtook cars on the road, causing accidents. Still we did not slow.

Then we were at the shore. We pounded across the sand, plumes of it spraying into the air. Then into the tide, never slowing as we rode up and over the water. Galloping across the top of the ocean as though it were a puddle.

Across the water I saw a misty turquoise glow. As we came closer, I saw that there was an island surrounded by this light. In moments we were on the beach thundering across the sand.

This was not one of the Aran Islands, for we had passed those as we sped across the bay. This was one of the isles of fable. From legends I had helped create and had forgotten in the long expanse of time.

This place must be Hy-Breasail, the island believed to rise from the sea only once every seven years. I barely had time to realize this before the Horses surged across the beach and went crashing into the forest.

A path opened up before us. Whether it was there to begin with or the Horses created it as they went, I cannot say. The trail began to climb upward. We plunged on through the forest, shattering the silence with our passing, At last we burst forth into a great open plain and stopped.

Though it was autumn in Tir na n6g, here spring held sway. I could smell it in the air, could feel the warm and gentle caress of the breeze. It was balm to my sore, chapped face.

I looked about and saw a castle perched on a cliff above us. So much a part of the island it was that there was no telling where the castle began and the rock it sat upon ended. As I watched, lights appeared on the pathway below the castle. They bobbed and floated downward toward us.

Closer and closer they came, and we waited for them, silent and patient.

At last they appeared on the edge of the clearing, riming it in gold and silver light.

Such a congregation of the Sleagh Maith. It almost made me forget my own mission, so good was it to gaze upon them again. The sprites and sprig- gans, brownies and hags, boogies, leprechauns, gnomes, and goblins all clustered around, throwing their crooked shadows against the rocky cliff behind them.

I could hear their shrill cries and nasty whispers. They knew who I was even if there were those who would have it otherwise. There was but a moment for these impressions. They parted and a procession of elves appeared. Each was dressed in tight-fitting dun-colored leather garments. Some bad tattoos marking their arms and faces. Others had datajacks glistening in shaved skulls. I ignored them as they surrounded us.

I glanced over at Caimbeul. He was a bit paler than normal, but after the night we'd had so far, that was to be expected. He looked up at me and gave a little smile. I found myself smiling back, oddly happy at that moment.

"This is hardly a laughing matter," came a voice from beyond the edge of the faerie light. All the elves and faeries bowed down immediately. I squinted into the darkness. A ghost-like form moved forward. As it stepped into the ring of light, I saw that it was a woman. She was dressed in a white flowing gown. Her fiery hair was pulled back se- verely from her face, but left to cascade down her back almost to her heels. The brilliant blue eyes were unchanged. The skin as pale and white as milk.

Alachia.

Silence stretched out between us. I hadn't seen her in the flesh since 1941.

"So," she said at last. "You've come. And the hard way, too."

"Well, we can't all have the prerogatives of age. I wish to speak to Lady Brane Deign," I said. "She rules here now."

Alachia smiled. It was chilling.

"Power is a fluid thing," she said. "You'd do well to remember that."

Once that sort of remark from her would have frightened me. But that was far in the past. Now there was a larger threat at work. Not just to me, but to the survival of the world. And then, I was older now, too.

"Perhaps you should mind your own advice," I said. "You've let so much pass through your own hands."

"Caimbeul," she said brightly, ignoring my last remark. "How good it is to see you again. But really, you need to improve your choice of companions. You know what they say about the company you keep."

She slipped past me and took his arm, leading him away from me toward the castle.

"Do come, Aina," she called over her shoulder. "We mustn't keep Lady Brane waiting."

I watched her lead him into the night until all I saw was the white blur of her dress.

She opens her eyes. The world is upside-down. No, it's her perspective that's off. But isn't that al- ways the way of it?

Sitting up, she sees that she's been lying on the ground. The fall leaves covering her rustle and slide away, revealing her naked body. How she came to be here in this wood she doesn't remember. But she thinks she should know.

Then comes the pain.

It burns and stings like a thousand hornets. Her skin is on fire and she cannot stop it. As she looks on, small, round welts appear on her flesh. Sharp points burst through the welts, puckering the skin.

Thorns.