Chapter 25
It was during that long, blissful night Scáthach realized that no matter how much or how little time she and Sentanta had together, she would always be his.
* * *
Cuchulainn had expected it to be horrible.
With his first step into the grotesque barrier he wished he’d been wrong.
Specters shrieked and wept and raged around them, semitransparent and completely mad.
In truth, what he saw within the barrier sickened him and for a moment Cuchulainn seriously considered ending their quest. He imagined taking Scáthach’s hand and pulling her back to the Autumnal Realm, where they could easily retrace their path to the snake tunnel and the majestic bears.
Scáthach shouldn’t be entering the Winterlands, where she would be surrounded by death and hatred and greed.
He should protect her from those things, not lead her into them.
He even began to reach for her, but one look at the Queen of Shadow made him stifle his impulse.
Scáthach didn’t need saving. Her focus was in front of them.
She’d lowered and drawn back her shoulders and set her jaw as she paced forward, ready to fight through the monstrous dead with him—for him.
But what he wanted most at that moment was to forget the gods-be-damned spear and return to Dunscáith with Scáthach and to remain there with her. Always.
If only Lugh would forget.
But his father would not forget. Lugh’s memory was sharp and his empathy nonexistent.
Cuchulainn knew if he didn’t return with the spear, his father would punish him—though not directly.
Lugh preferred to serve Cuchulainn’s punishments to those close to his son.
The god had even told Cuchulainn once that he was doing him a favor in not turning his rage on him.
And then as an example, Lugh admitted that he’d influenced Culann to close the keep doors and set his dog out to guard because the god had been irritated at Cuchulainn’s habitual lateness.
At Cuchulainn’s look of horror Lugh had laughed and clapped him on the back, saying, “What? It worked! I didn’t harm so much as a hair on your head, and you’ve not been late since. ”
Sentanta loathed his father.
They stepped from the barrier into a frigid gray land of ice and wailing wind. Scáthach shivered and wrapped her cloak more tightly around her. Cuchulainn cleared his throat, and she looked at him. “In case I haven’t said it recently, I am so glad you’re with me.”
Scáthach smiled. “I’m glad I’m with you, too.”
He lifted a brow. “Even here in the Winterlands?”
She touched his cheek. “Even here.”
“Thank you,” he said. “For coming with me. Without you here I . . .” His words faded.
“You’re welcome.” Scáthach began to stride forward but paused and turned to face him. Her smile widened until it blazed as she added, “Lust and love—finding them together is rare, but you have proven to me that it is indeed possible.”
Even in the gloom of the Winterlands Cuchulainn’s spirit soared at her words.
As they began walking, Scáthach moved close to him so that their arms brushed, and suddenly the dread about what they would face didn’t seem nearly as daunting.
It also didn’t seem so cold. He’d raised the hood of his cloak before they’d stepped through the barrier, so he shook it back and ran a hand through his hair.
“The shadows are protecting us from the bulk of the wind and ice. It’s still unpleasant but not nearly as bad as it is out there.” Scáthach jerked her chin at the frigid realm beyond their shadow protection.
She hadn’t lowered her voice at all and Cuchulainn replied in a much softer voice. “Should we not be quiet? Not call attention to ourselves?”
“Yes, if we didn’t have the cloaking of the shadows.
They act a little like the fog around our campfires, buffering us from the eyes and ears of the dead.
” Scáthach reached out and fondly stroked the shadows that engulfed them.
“Without them our time in the Winterlands would be quite terrible.” Then her gaze found him, and she added, “Though less than terrible does not mean it will be pleasant.”
Cuchulainn snorted and nodded. He peered through the shadows.
It was like looking through the smoke of a campfire.
The Winterlands were already gloomy, and the concealing shadows made it even more so.
The land lifted in rocky, weather-beaten hills.
Snow mounded on the strange hills. Ice fell from the ash-colored sky.
Somehow it did not permeate their shadows, but it pattered off the rocks and pocked the snow as the wind howled.
The only vegetation he could see were the skeletal outlines of blackened trees.
Their branches writhed in the wind, glistening with layers of ice.
Daggers of icicles were their only leaves.
The path they followed snaked through the rough-hewn landscape and Cuchulainn noticed whenever they were to pass beneath or even close to one of the trees, Scáthach guided them away from it.
“The icicles fall from the branches to impale anyone walking beneath them?” Cuchulainn asked as they skirted another tree.
“I think they wouldn’t pass through the shadows, but . . .” Scáthach shrugged.
He nodded in agreement. “Best not to take the chance as we’re still alive.” It was then that he noticed the air. It felt different—somehow heavier. “Do the shadows cause the air to thicken?”
Scáthach’s expression was grim as she shook her head. “No. The rage, greed, and hatred that fill the spirits here create the heaviness you sense in the air.”
They trudged on. Cuchulainn was just thinking that he wished that Chance and the chariot were with them and then one of the storm-pocked rocks beside their path quivered and opened its eyes.
A jolt of shock zapped through Cuchulainn’s body and he staggered to a halt, staring as he tried to comprehend what he was seeing.
It wasn’t a rock. Or rather, it was a rock shaped vaguely like a man.
The eyes closed and opened again. “Is that a person?” he whispered.
Scáthach had stopped with him. “It was a person. Now it is a spirit made corporeal being absorbed by the Winterlands.”
The spirit opened his mouth and drew in a shuddering breath.
Across his body, fissures opened as what was left of his chest and ribs tried to expand.
Blood seeped from the cracks and then the rock solidified again.
The man’s mouth closed and disappeared. His open eyes began turning to stone as blood wept down his calcified face.
“I’m glad you sent Chance and the puppy to the Summerlands,” Cuchulainn said as they left the stone man behind.
Scáthach sighed and nodded. “It was the right thing to do but I do miss that horse.”
The ice changed to snow that fell sideways with the wailing wind.
They came to what at first appeared to be a crevice or fracture that split the path they were on.
It was only a couple feet wide, but it stretched so far to the left and right of the path that it seemed to have no beginning or end.
Scáthach slowed and Cuchulainn glanced questioningly at her.
“It looks easy to cross. We needn’t even jump. Just stride over it.”
Scáthach shook her head. “It’s not that it’s too wide to cross.” She stopped only a handbreadth from the slash in the ground and a shudder washed through her body as she gazed down into the crevice. “It’s what it holds.”
Cuchulainn had stopped beside her. He did not want to look down—but he did it.
The cleft in the ground became narrower the deeper it went.
Filling it were people. They looked as if they’d been driven down into the split like they were posts for a fence.
Their arms were trapped at their sides. They were packed so tightly that the only part of their bodies they could still move were their heads, which were tilted up, mouths open grotesquely as they shrieked.
Cuchulainn realized two things simultaneously.
First, it wasn’t the wind that was wailing; it was the trapped people.
Second, the crevice was closing. Horrified, he watched as the ground shuddered, squeezing those held within as it slowly—oh so slowly—entombed them.
Cuchulainn hooked his arm through Scáthach’s. “We should not look down,” he said grimly as he took a long stride forward. Scáthach came with him. He did not look down again. Scáthach did not look up until they were over the terrible crevice.
They continued on in silence. Even though they were fully concealed by the shadows, Cuchulainn’s eyes continually scanned the grayness around them.
Not far off the side of their path a dozen or so warriors battled.
They hurled insults at one another and cut their opponents down, slicing through armor like it was lard as they hacked off limbs and disemboweled one another—only to reanimate and begin fighting all over again.
The frozen ground around them was almost knee-deep in blood and intestines, body parts and gore, yet they kept slicing away at one another as they shrieked insults and curses.
“I don’t understand. Why continue to fight on and on and on?” said Cuchulainn.
“Because they are filled with senseless anger and the violence that follows it is difficult to understand,” said Scáthach. “But it’s why they are held here. They refuse to learn, to grow, to become self-aware.”
Cuchulainn continued to glance back at the endlessly battling warriors. “There is still senseless violence in our mortal world.”
“That is very true, but it’s no longer perpetrated by any of the spirits we’ll see here.”
Cuchulainn felt a flutter of hope. “Does that mean someday there will be no more senseless violence in our world?”