Chapter 31
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“Dragon!”
The Morrígan’s acolytes ran for the edge of the drop-off where Cadell had mounted the sky, pulling out their phones and trying to capture the flight of an honest-to-God dragon flying over Wiltshire.
“Holy shit,” someone yelled. “That’s a dragon!”
“Oh my god!”
“Is that real?”
The crowd surged down the hillside, tumbling over each other and rushing to capture the vision of a dragon flying before it disappeared into the darkness.
The moon was full, and the wingspan of the great beast blocked out the stars.
Nêrys, are there humans taking pictures of me?
It’s fine. For once, give them a show.
Cadell grumbled in her mind, but he kept flying in circles, drawing Macha’s followers away from Cley Hill and down across the wheat fields.
“This is the best music festival ever!” a woman shouted.
A few short minutes after the dragon had taken flight, Carys and Macha were alone on the altar and the only humans left at the top of the hill were Duncan and Lachlan, who carefully stepped over the muddy summit and walked toward Macha and Carys.
The goddess was furious and bleeding, but she lifted her chin in defiance. “Do you think you have defeated me?”
“I think I’ve wounded you at best.” Carys spread her arms. “And Morrígan, I’m not your enemy.”
“Oh?” Macha smiled slyly. “I see you have unleashed your beast in the Brightlands.”
“Carys?” Duncan called. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine!”
“Your warrior sister sits on your shoulder,” the Morrígan whispered, “and you wear a powerful collar from the mother goddess.” Macha stared at the gold glowing through her skin.
She is going to try to tempt you with power.
“Yeah, I caught that.”
“Perhaps our plans are not unaligned.” Macha stepped closer. “Wouldn’t you enjoy seeing your dragon fly over the city?”
Duncan and Lachlan came closer.
She’s going to bring up laying waste to your enemies now.
“You could be a queen here.” Macha pointed at Duncan and Lachlan. “Take both these men as your lovers. Why should you choose one over the other?”
Ew. Seren sounded like she was gagging. Didn’t see that one coming.
“No offense, but not my style,” Carys said. “But thanks, I guess?”
“I would let you lay waste to those who have wronged you and your people!”
Ah, there it is. Knew she’d offer to lay waste.
“Good call,” Carys murmured.
“Good?” Macha smiled.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Carys said. “What I meant to say was that I’m not your enemy, but I do happen to think that having dragons flying around in the Brightlands is not a great idea.”
“What do you want?” Macha shouted.
“I want…” Carys took a chance. “I want to tell you a story.”
Macha blinked. Her furious face went blank.
Seren was shouting in her mind.
You want to what?
“Once upon a time…” Carys started. “There was an ancient king in Eíre.” The words slipped from her mouth. She was going on instinct and hoping those instincts were correct. “He wronged you, so you cursed his men. But while his army was sick, a hero rose up.”
Macha was staring at her now, but Carys couldn’t read her expression.
You’re telling her the story of Cú Chulainn? I think she might know it already!
“But this hero didn’t displease you. In fact, you tried to give him a blessing, but in his youth and his arrogance, he scorned you.” Carys smiled a little bit. “So you took your revenge and thwarted him three times.”
The eel.
The bear.
The bull.
Carys saw each parallel now. She knew the story she needed to tell, and it rhymed with the old myth that Luna Beck had given her weeks ago, the story of a hero who had bested a god.
And that tale of the Morrígan didn’t end with a triumphant defeat in battle.
Carys smiled, “But even after all of the wounds that hero gave you, you still got the better of him.”
“You tell me tales I already know.” The Morrígan raised her chin. “I ask you again, daughters of Epona, what do you want?”
Carys held out her hand. “I want to heal you.”
Seren erupted in her mind.
Are you fucking kidding me, Carys?
As soon as she uttered the words, the gold around Carys’s neck warmed, and she knew the Mothers approved.
The only hero who had ever bested the Morrígan hadn’t challenged her in battle. He had healed her wounds by inadvertently blessing her three times.
Macha’s face fell. “What?”
Duncan froze. “What did she say?”
Lachlan cocked his head. “Carys?”
“I want to heal you.” Carys lifted her hands and felt the power of D?n’s collar flowing through her. “That’s what this collar really does, Morrígan. It protects me. It protects my life.”
Don’t do it.
“But I think… I can give you a little bit of that life to heal you,” Carys said.
“Carys, do not do this!” Lachlan said.
“I don’t know how much it would take.” Carys’s voice was thick. “A couple of years? A decade? I don’t know.”
“No!” Duncan roared and lunged forward, but though he tried to climb up the knoll, something held him back. “Carys, no!”
The Morrígan stood before her, and her wounds were grave. Her eye socket was gaping and bloody. The wound on her side wept pus and blood, and the punctures on her leg were angry and red.
“You are offering to heal me?”
“You’re not going to heal here.” Carys looked around—not a single one of the Morrígan’s faithful was left on the summit of Cley Hill. “Think about it.”
“Carys, are you daft?” Duncan shouted. “We can kill her!”
Lachlan lifted his sword and walked toward them, and Carys saw the Morrígan’s eyes light up.
Carys spun toward them. “No! That’s what she wants. She feeds off violence, Lachlan.” She turned back the Morrígan. “One condition. I will only heal you in the Shadowlands.”
The Morrígan lifted her chin. “No.”
“Then suffer here,” Carys said. “Your acolytes are gone. Your Fianna has fled. No one believes in you anymore, Macha. Everyone who was following you is watching a dragon fly right now.” She shook her head. “You can’t compete with a dragon.”
“Curse you!” The Morrígan stomped her foot, but she collapsed with pain, falling to the ground.
Carys knelt next to her. “Come back to the Shadowlands where you are feared and powerful,” she whispered. “Don’t waste your life in this place where distracted humans flit from one god to the next. Your believers are there, not here.”
The Morrígan stretched out on the ground and stared into the sky as Cadell soared over her, the shadow of the dragon shielding her from the rain for a moment before he was gone.
Her blood leaked into the soil beneath her. “Fine.”
Wait… it had worked?
“We have a bargain?”
“Yes.” She turned her eye on Carys. “I will return to the Shadowlands if you use your life to heal me.”
Do not do this. You don’t know how much of your life she will take.
“There was always going to be a price.” Carys looked at Duncan, then at Lachlan. “We have a deal.”
A moment after that, the Morrígan plunged bloody hands into the ground beneath her, and the earth fell away below them.
Whispering incantations filled her mind. She was wrapped in soft, dry clothes that smelled of rosemary and rue. She felt gentle ministrations over her skin and a cool cloth pressed to the burning gold collar at her neck.
“Welcome back,” a soft voice said.
Carys opened her eyes, and she was lying in the soft glow of the Shadowlands, a pearl-grey sky overhead and a woman with flowing brown hair and dark brown eyes kneeling beside her in the long waving grass of Saris Plain.
“I know you.”
It was the goddess she had seen by the loch, confiding in the dark man who became a kelpie. She was the woman who spoke to her in dreams, whispering Rhiannon’s name into her ear. She was the goddess on a horse, warning her at every turn that danger was coming.
“Epona.”
The lovely woman brushed Carys’s hair back from her forehead like a mother soothing her child. “What a wise gift you were, Carys Morgan.”
“You gave me to her.”
“The only gift she asked for.” Epona smiled. “Well, that and being released from her vows, but her vows were always a choice, though she didn’t seem to know it.”
Part of Carys wanted to sit up, but part of her was enjoying the soft ground beneath her and the calm, clear vision of the goddess’s face. “My mother loved you so much.”
There was no half sight. No double images.
Maybe it was the goddess or maybe her half vision had fled. She was praying it was the latter.
“When she came to me and told me she had fallen in love…” Epona sighed. “How could I not grieve the loss of Tegan? Her love had been the sweetest of any servant in my memory.”
“Wow.” Carys’s heart swelled. “You’re a really old goddess. So that’s a lot a lot of servants.”
“Yes, it is.” Epona smiled. “But I blessed her for her years of love. And I offered her one gift.”
“She wanted to be a mother.”
Epona nodded. “She wanted to be a mother.”
Carys felt tears at the corner of her eyes. “But nothing is born in the Shadowlands except by magic.”
“So you had to be born in the Brightlands, and she could not return. For there is always a price to be paid. My only condition was that she bear you in Cymru so that your father’s Shadowkin could raise her other daughter in the land of Tegan’s birth, where I could watch over her.”
“Because Tegan didn’t have a twin in this world.”
“Correct.” Epona stroked Carys’s hair. “You offered a sacrifice as well. In order to get the Morrígan to return to the Shadowlands. Unlike the hero of Ulster, you are not a demigod, so you offered part of the goddess D?n’s gift to you.”
“Yes. Did it work?”
Epona nodded. “It did.”
“Oh, thank God.” Relief flooded Carys, and she sat up and looked around, but there was nothing and nobody on the grassy hills except for her and Epona. “I don’t suppose there’s a way that you already healed the Morrígan without me having to give up part of my life?”
Epona shook her head. “A bargain struck must be met, Carys Morgan. And as you wisely said, there is always a price.”
Carys felt her throat tighten. “Any idea how much of my life I handed over? She was… pretty damaged.”