Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
When they crawled back through the fae gate, Carys was curious if the enchantment over her right eye was still going to work. But the moment she moved her eye patch to observe the dark woods around them, the more she realized it not only worked but was as much curse as blessing.
Cadell, back in human form, held her by the arm. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, just… adjusting.”
I see what you see, Seren said in her mind. Give ourselves time to adjust.
“We don’t have time,” Carys responded to the voice in her head.
The forest around them was alive with magical creatures. There were wisps and nymphs floating in the trees. Pixies danced along the long grasses, and sly, furtive creatures skittered along the forest floor.
“We need to find Duncan,” Carys said.
And Lachlan.
A long howl broke the silence of the forest.
Naida’s head went up. “Godrik.”
“How is he in wolf form?” Carys asked.
The magic is powerful here. Can’t you feel it?
A massive white wolf with dark grey shoulders bounded toward them. Carys was almost afraid he was going to roll right over them until he circled once, then transformed.
She blinked her right eye. “How?”
Godrik was a man with her human vision, but when she closed her left eye, he was all wolf.
The wolf has his power in this place. Seren spoke in her mind, and it was like hearing her own thoughts. The Morrígan is thinning the barrier between the realms of Shadow and Light.
“Duncan is at Cley Hill,” Godrik said. “Everyone in the village is at Cley Hill. Along with who knows how many people from all over Briton. The chalk plain is covered with her acolytes.”
“In like… half an hour?”
Naida cocked her head. “I hear no vehicles as I did before.”
“All the roads are clogged. People eventually just got out of their cars and walked,” Godrik said. “That’s why Duncan is with Lachlan and me.”
Laura looked him up and down. “What is going on? How can you shift?”
“There must be a gate nearby or some old power rising, because the magic…” Godrik looked at Cadell. “Can you shift, brother?”
Yes.
“I think if you can, he can,” Carys said.
The dragon stretched his neck to the side, and Carys saw the glow of red fire at his throat.
“Yes.” The word was more of a hiss than a statement.
Careful. Seren spoke in her mind. His natural form is the beast, but violence will only feed the Morrígan now.
“Agreed.”
Cadell’s eyes flashed like fire. “Nêrys, let me loose and I will burn the goddess where she stands. There will be no shelter for her, no place to hide. There will be—”
“So, so, so many humans who die,” Carys said.
Cadell went still.
Can Seren hear me?
Cadell!
The dragon’s face was a torment of emotion.
Seren. I have… missed your voice.
We need to be careful, old friend. Listen to your nêrys now.
“We need to get to Cley Hill and confront her,” Carys said, “but we are not killing hundreds of random people who have fallen under her spell. That would be exactly what she wants.”
Laura took Cadell’s hand. “She’s right, and you’d feel horrible about it later. There has to be a better way.”
There is.
Carys pulled the eye patch over her left eye and started walking. “Come on. We’ve got a walk ahead of us. Let’s go.”
They walked through the forest, encountering various people as they made their way to Cley Hill.
Some were laughing as if they were drunk, and others were weeping. Carys looked at a weeping man with her right eye and saw a crouching, mud-brown creature perched on his back. It was whispering in the man’s ear as he cried.
“Despair,” she whispered.
The Brightlands are not at all as I remember.
“Jibril called Despair a god,” Carys said softly. “I think that might be it.”
I believe you are correct.
“So we can see spirits now,” Carys said quietly. “Maybe hidden gods.”
As they walked, she encountered more.
What are the lights around them? Pixies? Wisps?
Many of the people they saw had bright sparks swirling around their heads. The lights buzzed like bees, but no matter which way the humans looked or who they were talking to, the moment they started focusing on anything but the buzzing lights, a spark would go off like a bug zapper.
A girl pulled out her phone and checked something on the glowing screen.
“It’s the internet,” Carys murmured. “Social media. That’s what she worships.”
There were humans with feet that seemed to sink into the earth and humans with angry red skin and ears that literally steamed. Nature lovers. People who lived in pure anger.
I would not mind being a tree. But the red-skinned humans are dangerous. Be wary of them. They will ignite with the smallest spark.
Sprinkled among the spirits and what Carys could only think of as demons were familiar marks of other gods. Crosses and crescent moons, prayer beads or the scent of incense.
“It’s everyone,” Carys said. “It’s not just people with no religion or belief. She’s enchanted all of them.”
Not all of them are enchanted. Some are simply… interested.
“Either way,” Carys whispered, “they’re giving her attention, and attention—”
Means power.
Godrik led them out of the forest and into a wheat field where deep paths had been laid down through the nodding golden heads.
You have formed your own wing.
“What?”
Though you are a nêrys ddraig, you were never trained as I was. These people—the wolf, the fae, your friends, along with Cadell—they are your wing.
Carys smiled a little bit, glancing at Cadell.
He nodded.
He hears me too.
I do, old friend.
Don’t use that voice, lizard. You act like I’m dead.
You are dead.
Only from one perspective.
“Okay, you two are going to have to stop having conversations in my head,” Carys whispered, “because it’s going to get way too confusing.”
They stopped at the edge of the wheat field and looked back toward the forest at all the humans who were following them.
“I hate to say this,” Laura said as they watched the throngs of people all walking toward Cley Hill, “but this almost feels like a zombie movie.”
“You’re not wrong,” Carys said.
She lifted her eyes to Cley Hill in the distance, and the sky above it terrified her. She stumbled in the field.
Gods and goddesses of old.
Cadell rushed over. “Nêrys?”
“The sky is broken,” Carys whispered. “Don’t tell the others, but there’s something wrong with the sky.”
I have never seen anything like this, Cadell.
Where stars should have shone over the peak of the hill, instead there was a dark, blood-red gash, and no one—not the humans trudging toward it and not even the magical creatures by her sides—seemed to realize it was there.
“I see nothing,” Cadell said. “Are you sure?”
Dark waves of magic floated over the land, flowing upward and toward the violent tear like blood flowing into a wound.
“I’m sure.” She leaned on him and felt his skin pebble under her fingertips. “Resist, Cadell. We have to get to the top of that hill.”
She’s gathering power from those who are giving her worship.
“I want to protect you more than anything.” The dragon’s voice was deeper, more like the beast within him. “My instincts tell me that I could protect you better in my natural form.”
Not yet, old friend. You must resist.
“She’s right.” Carys put a hand on Cadell’s cheek, anchoring him to his human body. “Remember who she is.”
The Morrígan was a goddess of war, bloodshed, and chaos.
Seren said what Carys was thinking.
The moment you give in to the violence that your instincts are telling you to unleash, she will use that violence to add to her power.
Cadell nodded, but his jaw was clenched tightly.
“You have this.” Carys nodded. “You have this, Cadell.”
Massive crowds had gathered to the Morrígan. Most of them seemed peaceful, but it was no coincidence that gods of despair and anger were among them.
The Morrígan had gathered a brush pile of acolytes around her, and all it would take would be one spark to make this situation explode. One spark, and there would be violence and chaos.
And all that violence and chaos would only feed her power.
“I can’t kill her,” Carys said to Laura as they walked. “But Seren and I can defeat her.”
“How?” Laura asked. “With love and understanding?”
The hillsides were singing with magic. Bright wisps flew overhead, and the humans watching them seemed to delight in the show.
“They probably think it’s some kind of trick or special effect.”
Most of them were recording the play of light and the dancing pixies with their mobile phones.
“We have to… dampen the power she’s gathering somehow.” Carys knew it was going to be difficult. Even she felt the seduction of the magic dancing through the air, though she could also see the dark energy pulling from the crowd and up toward the gash in the sky where crows were circling and cawing.
“I know the magic she’s gathered is dark,” Naida said, “but the little ones don’t know that.” She was smiling at the delighted pixies that danced along her fingertips. “The world is so beautiful.”
“It’s dangerous,” Godrik said. “But I cannot deny that seeing so many Brightkin surrounded by magic is seductive.”
That’s exactly what she wants. She wants the worlds to merge so she can create war in both of them.
“We’ve got to resist the urge to join them.” Carys couldn’t argue that on the surface, the crowd felt like the biggest party ever thrown.
There were musicians playing music when they reached the base of the hill and started on the winding path upward.
“Flowers from the goddess?” Young men and woman were handing out yellow and white flowers near a bonfire where people were dancing. “Flowers to celebrate Macha?”
“Thanks.” Laura took a flower.
One of the tall young men handing out flowers put one directly in Cadell’s short hair.
“Joy, brother,” the young man said. “Macha has returned.”
Seren snorted when Carys looked at the dragon, the yellow flower tucked behind his ear.
I heard that.
Cadell’s jaw was tight. “Do you even know who Macha is?”