Salty Dog Page 17

  “I don’t know,” Amergin admitted, shaking his head. “But if she is who you say she is, maybe she could speak with her mother. Warn her. Entreat her.”

  “You want me to ask her to, what, make your people more bloodthirsty?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Perhaps.” Amergin sighed. “That, or give us someone, something, to fight. To fight for. Peace is often considered a warrior’s reward, but the truth is peace has become our penance. I ask that you at least talk to your mother. For all we know, she and the rest of the Tuatha de Danann have forgotten all about us.” He studied Cathal, then me. “Until tonight, I believed they’d abandoned us. That we were alone.”

  “And what’s wrong with being alone?” Cathal asked, bitterly.

  “Ye are alone,” I replied with certainty. Amergin stiffened, but I continued as if I hadn’t noticed, refusing to elaborate. “So, let me get this straight. Ye believe we all need a purpose, and ye t’ink the Otherworlders have forgotten theirs?”

  Amergin nodded.

  I hesitated, thinking back to my time as Ceara. “I’ll speak to the Morrigan on your behalf,” I said, finally.

  “Thank you, I—”

  “But I doubt you’ll like what I have to say,” I interrupted, recalling Finann’s casual, practically blasphemous dismissal of the gods and their machinations. “Tell me, the Tógálaí Capall and the Curaitl. Is that rivalry real? Or an arrangement between Tuathal and Lady Aife to keep their people occupied?”

  Amergin coughed, guilt written all over his otherwise noble face. “They needed someone to hate,” he murmured. “They’d forgotten how.”

  I felt Ceara’s sorrow and found myself sighing. “Hate,” I said, voicing her thoughts, “was never the point.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  I wished I could explain it to him, that I could put into words the satisfaction Ceara had felt in Blair’s arms, the exhilaration she’d felt sparring with her friends, the depth of her jealousy when she thought it all might be taken away. “I’ll speak to the Morrigan. But I cannot condone what ye and your fellow rulers have done.”

  Amergin’s forehead creased. “What we’ve done?”

  “Aye,” I replied, considering the man. “I t’ink ye lot are the problem. Ye remember the mortal world, which makes ye outsiders, same as I am.” I found myself cringing at the idea that Rhys might actually have had a point, all along. “Ye kept hate alive.”

  “We—”

  “Our ride’s here,” Cathal rumbled, interrupting the bard before he could splutter his defense. The hound was eyeing me consideringly, as if I’d finally said something he didn’t absolutely despise. I turned away from the hound’s scrutiny to watch the lone, empty boat glide across the waves. Another gift from Manannan, perhaps? Or the standard ferry between the Land of Youth and the Blighted Lands? I had no idea. I jerked my chin in acknowledgment and approached the shore, ignoring the bard’s irate expression.

  “We only did as the gods would have had us do,” Amergin grumbled, finally, before stomping back the way we’d come.

  “That’s part of the problem,” I murmured, staring out at the moonlit water, waiting to begin the next, potentially fatal leg of my journey. But already my mind had wandered further ahead, anticipating a turbulent heart-to-heart between mother and daughter.

  Assuming neither of us died, first.

  30

  The boat, which I’d assumed would be large enough for Cathal and I to fit comfortably, was a tad more cramped than I’d have liked; Cathal’s hot, moist breath spilled onto my shoulders as we sailed across an otherwise quiet sea. Still, after the turbulence of the last several hours, I wasn’t necessarily complaining. A little peace and quiet wouldn’t hurt.

  “Here,” Cathal said as he dropped something into my lap.

  I frowned, staring down at my silver sundial watch in surprise, only just now realizing it hadn’t been on my wrist. Christ, when had I dropped it? I glanced up over my shoulder at Cathal. “How long have ye had this?”

  “You left it on the battlefield. Must have come off. It reeks of magic.” His nose twitched, the furrows between his eyes bunching together. “Where you go, it goes.”

  I grunted and reached for the watch, studying it, praying that the gnomon would inch even just a tad—a sign that I had some residual magic stored up. But it didn’t; my fuel reserves were empty. My shoulders slumped, but something caught my eye before I could wallow too long. I frowned, turning the watch this way and that beneath the moonlight. At last, I realized what was bothering me about it; the face had changed shape. Rather than a flat disk, it seemed beveled, slightly thicker in the middle. “Oy,” I nudged Cathal, “what d’ye do to me watch?”

  “Besides return it to you, unasked and unthanked?” Cathal replied, scathingly.

  I bit back my response. Yeah, probably not a good idea to berate the messenger, in this case. Even if he had bent the damn thing in the process of returning it to me. Except, it didn’t feel bent. I probed the circumference of the watch, fingertips sliding along the grooves and seams until I felt something give—a tiny clasp I hadn’t been able to make out in the gloom.

  The sundial popped open like a pocket watch.

  “Huh,” I said, staring down at the watch’s interior—an interior that definitely had never been there before. I held it up, marveling at the intricate designs: a minute hand shaped like a spear, the hour a sword, the upper and lower quadrants decorated with what looked like a cauldron and a dolmen. And yet—more interesting to me—was what lay behind: three, neatly divided sections that depicted crows, though each was posed distinctly from the other. The upper right, upon which the two hands were pointed, showed a crow in flight. The upper left a crow swooping down, claws outstretched, cawing as it sought its prey. The lower third a crow nesting.

  Before I could study the watch further, however, we were enveloped in a thick, cloying fog that made it nearly impossible to see, let alone distinguish etchings at night, no matter how bright the full moon overhead. I snapped the watch closed and was in the process of sliding it back onto my wrist when it occurred to me that Cathal had no pockets.

  “And where exactly d’ye keep this t’ing?” I asked, holding up the watch with the tips of my fingers, fearing the worst.

  “In my mouth.”

  Well, I guess that wasn’t the worst place he could have kept it for several months.

  But it certainly wasn’t the best, either.

  I let the watch dangle for a moment before resolving to put it on. They say a dog’s mouth is cleaner than a human’s, right? I shook my head, muttering to myself about the shabby state of my life, before finally turning my attention to the mist. It was impossibly dense, so much so that when I finally let my arm drop, I could feel condensation sticking to my arm. “This better not be ye,” I insisted, waving my hand idly at the roiling fog.

  “Or what?”

  “Or…” I began, then thought better of it, realizing I was just picking on Cathal to pass the time—anything to avoid ending up alone with my thoughts. “Nevermind. Sorry, I was tryin’ to be funny. Make a little conversation.”

  “How’s that working for you?”

  I balled my fists, glaring up at the bastard. “Are ye always such a jerk?”

  “Usually,” Cathal replied, though he didn’t seem to take any offense to the moniker.

  “Why’d ye decide to come, then?” I demanded. “Too proud to let me wander off on me own? Or did Manannan threaten to have ye fixed if ye failed?”

  “Fixed?”

  “Neutered,” I clarified. “Ye know, snip snip.” I made a scissoring motion with my fingers. “Bye bye, balls.”

  “Are you referring to castration?”

  I smirked at the disgust in his voice. “Aye, now you’re catchin’ on.”

  Cathal growled, the low rumble of his chest against my back reminding me of a mall chair massage. He shook himself, the boat rocking a little in the process. “I’d like to see someone
try.”

  “Well then, what is it?” I demanded.

  “The reason I’m here?” Cathal licked his chops with an awful slurping sound. “I owed the sea god a favor.”

  “Why? Did he save ye from a bath once?” I asked, grinning.

  “He saved me from being murdered along with the rest of my kin, after our master’s death.”

  I stopped grinning. “Oh, well that was nice of him.”

  “Nice?” Cathal snorted. “No. Manannan saw that I could be useful. Nice would have been killing off the humans who hunted us long before I was the only one left.”

  I frowned, wondering if Cathal knew what the word “nice” actually meant. But I wasn’t about to correct him. Know your audience, people. “Ye blame ‘em, then? The humans? Is that why ye hate our kind?”

  Cathal grunted. “No, I’ve learned to hate your kind for other reasons. Besides, I don’t blame them for what they did. I blame our master.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because he created us but did nothing to protect us. Gave us voices and minds of our own, then abandoned us to the whims of lesser creatures. It was…cruel.”

  Cruel. The word was laced with regret, so much so that I didn’t even need to see Cathal’s face to know how much he despised what had been done to him and the rest of his kind. But I still wasn’t sure I understood. Why hate the one who made you rather than the ones who took everything from you? “You’d rather have stayed mindless?” I asked, finally, steering the conversation to safer waters.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted after a lengthy pause. “I doubt I’d have cared, had I remained a beast. But now I’m alone.”

  “I thought being alone wasn’t so bad,” I teased.

  “There are worse things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like sharing a tiny boat with a foul-smelling human.”

  Now it was my turn to grunt. I surreptitiously raised my arms and sniffed but couldn’t make out anything worth noting. Granted, I hadn’t exactly been smothering myself in deodorant and perfume these last few months, but I’d washed regularly, from what I could recall. Maybe it was just his hypersensitive nose?

  “It’s your wound,” Cathal explained.

  I gritted my teeth, reminded of the nagging sensation at the base of my spine—a sensation that tended to dwindle so long as I didn’t think too hard about it. “How bad is it, really?”

  “I used fire to seal it, to clear out some of the rot, but it’s bad. It’ll fester soon. Your stamina will fade, and, eventually, you’ll pass out from the pain.”

  “Great.” I took a long, deep breath. “And ye t’ink me mother’s ghost will be able to cure me?”

  “I have no idea.”

  I whirled to face the hound, though in the end all I got for my trouble was a face full of wiry hair and a sudden flaring of pain along my spine. “What d’ye mean, ye have no idea?” I asked through clenched teeth.

  “Exactly what I said. Honestly, are all humans from your realm as ignorant as you are?”

  I felt my cheeks flush in anger at the insult, though it wasn’t merely the snub that got me so heated—it was the lie. I felt feathers brushing against my cheeks, forcing me to shut my eyes. The fact that he’d lied to our face—that he’d given us a false sense of hope—set something off inside us, something vicious and savage. Before we knew it, we’d head-butted the mutt as hard as we could, the boat threatening to capsize with the force of the blow. Cathal snarled and pressed a paw against our chest, pinning us down with his ridiculous weight.

  “Enough!” he roared.

  But we weren’t done. We reached up to claw at that leg, to make it bleed. Pain. We wanted Cathal to suffer as we suffered. To fear as we feared. To carve—

  I drew back, hands over my eyes, blinking away the streaks in my vision. The brilliant light bursting from Cathal’s marks faded almost immediately, the effect remarkably like a stun grenade. I wiped away tears, my eyes on fire. “What the hell was that?” I groaned.

  “A warning,” Cathal replied. “Your wild side, the awen the bard spoke of, is growing reckless.”

  I tapped on Cathal’s leg, an invitation to remove it from my chest. He did, though slowly, gingerly. I noticed he was favoring the one side, and I wondered if that headbutt had done serious damage; even without magic to call upon, it seemed I remained inhumanly strong. “It does that,” I replied. “Are ye hurt?”

  “I’m fine,” Cathal said, though his tone said otherwise.

  “Let me have a look,” I insisted.

  “No. Just know that next time you try a stunt like that I’ll take a chunk out of you.”

  I gulped, imagining myself caught between those powerful jaws. “Well, don’t be a dick, then,” I insisted, defensively.

  “I—what did you just call me?”

  “A dick. You’re a dick.” I held up a hand. “Don’t even try to deny it. First ye lie to me. Then ye tell me ye don’t even know if I’m goin’ to survive, no matter what we do, and ye expect me to—what? Say t’anks?”

  “You would’ve preferred I continued lying to you?”

  “No, I’d prefer it if ye didn’t provoke me for your own amusement,” I countered.

  Cathal’s ears flicked about for a minute before he finally looked away. “Fine. I’ll try to be less…” he drifted off.

  “Dickish,” I provided.

  “If,” Cathal added, “you promise to get yourself under control. And fast.”

  I ground my teeth and turned away, my frustration getting the better of me. After all, how was I supposed to get myself under control? I wasn’t even entirely sure who or what I was at this point—even if I couldn’t admit it out loud. Quinn, yes, but for how long? How long until my wild side took over to revel in slaughter and mayhem? Or would it be Ceara, weaseling her way into my thoughts and emotions, thrusting her alien sentiments to the surface?

  “I—”

  Cathal’s ears perked up, his body going rigid, hackles rising. “We’re here.”

  31

  The Blighted Lands were nothing like I’d expected. I don’t know why, but some part of my imagination—the same part which flashed on images of skulls shattering beneath the metal toes of a Terminator whenever anyone brought up Judgment Day or pictured a fiery lava pit whenever anyone mentioned Hell—had assumed we’d step out onto the shore of a nuclear wasteland. A place utterly devoid of life. You know, a blighted place.

  But the truth—the reality—was far worse than I ever could have imagined. Instead of a barren wilderness, an endless desert, or whatever the hell I’d been envisioning, we stepped onto a beach, the yellow-green sand strewn with rotting seaweed, littered with the hollow carapaces of dead crabs. The stench alone threatened to overpower me—something between decay and decomposition, like formaldehyde mixed with bile. Beyond the shoreline, almost lost amidst the clouds of roiling, sickeningly thick vapor, were withered trees, bark sloughing off like a discarded reptilian skin, revealing nothing but rotten heartwood beneath.

  I pressed a hand over my mouth and nose, fighting the urge to gag.

  “How do you think I feel?” Cathal asked, nonplussed at my expression.

  But it wasn’t only the smell bothering me. There was something to this place, something diseased, that made me want to crawl back into our boat and accept my fate. Better to die on the open sea than to linger in a place like this, I decided. Except the boat was already gone by the time I thought to look for it.

  Guess it didn’t want to be here, either.

  “Well, shit.”

  “It was your choice,” the hound chastised.

  I didn’t bother informing the mutt that it hadn’t been a choice at all; I doubted he’d understand even if I could articulate what Blair had meant to my Other self—not to mention the fact that literally removing someone’s eyes was a little much, even for me. “Come on,” I replied instead, hiking up the sloped beach, accompanied by the brittle snap of shells shattering beneath my feet.

>   “Of the two of us, who is supposed to be the guide?” Cathal asked.

  I turned. “Am I goin’ the wrong way?”

  The giant hound pushed past me, bumping me with his broad shoulders. “This way.”

  “That’s the way I was goin’!” I contested, trailing after him.

  “Even humans get lucky sometimes,” he replied, tail wagging.

  I realized he was baiting me, trying to get my mind off the locale, and so I left it alone; if he could keep me alive long enough to get me out of this place, then I could handle a little teasing. “How far is it, anyway?”

  “To the Hall of Lives?” Cathal studied the ground as he padded forward, clearly agitated to find nothing but carcasses beneath his paws. “We’ll have to pass through the Forest of the Damned, the Desert of Despair, and through the tunnels beneath the mountain.”

  I balked at the various landscapes Cathal had named, my imagination spiraling almost immediately out of control. I mean, who the hell had the cartographer been for this place, Wednesday Addams? “So, the mountain,” I said, “let me guess…Mount Doom?”

  “No. They call it Mount Never Rest.”

  “Great, just great,” I mumbled. “And how long will all that take, d’ye t’ink?”

  “Weeks, if we’re lucky.”

  “Weeks?! I thought ye said me mother’s ghost only had a few days?!”

  “And how would I know something like that?” The hound snorted after catching the irate expression on my face before continuing onward. “Look, I was tasked with getting you there. That’s it. I told you what I thought would get you up and moving fastest. Deal with it.”

  I gaped at the hound’s retreating backside. “You’re just a big, hairy liar, that’s what ye are!” I accused, pointing.

  Cathal didn’t even bother turning. “I told you what you needed to hear. Maybe I should have said hours. Then you’d have been properly motivated, and we wouldn’t have had to cross the Dagda-damned Blighted Lands.”

  I frowned at his tone. “Ye keep talkin’ like this place is…I don’t know. Hell? Worse than hell?” I took a look around and shuddered. “I mean it’s awful, but still, I don’t get—”