The Calling

12. Ciaran

February 28, 1984

The beginning of spring is a time to sow the seeds of dreams for the coming year. Here in a tiny village called Meshomah Falls, I am a boy again, full of fantasies and dreams, eager to welcome the promise of spring. I found her. Today Maeve and I saw each other for the first time since I left Ballynigel. I knew in that instant that she still loved me. That nothing had changed, that it had all been worth the wait. Goddess, I see the universe every time I gaze into her eyes.

We waited until evening, for she insisted on making some excuse to poor, pathetic Angus. Then she led me out beyond the town, through a narrow band of woods, across a meadow, and up a hill to a field. “No one will see us here,” she said.

“Of course not. One of us will work a spell of invisibility,” I said.

That was when Maeve told me she’d given up her magick. I couldn’t believe it. Ever since she left Ireland, she’s led a half life, her senses shut down, a prisoner of her own terror. “You never have to fear again,” I told her. Bit by bit I coaxed her open. Oh, the joy that was in her eyes as she let herself sense the seeds in the earth beneath us, the tender green shoots waiting to break the surface. Then she opened herself to the skies, the stars, the pull of the incandescent spring moon, and we gave ourselves to pleasure and to each other.

Goddess, I have finally known true joy. All the pain I have gone through, it was all worth it for this.

— Neimhidh

“You’re the one we’re going to drain.” The words echoed in my ears, and I suddenly saw it all with sick clarity.

My dreams and visions—they had all been premonitions of what was to be my own ordeal in this house. Not Killian’s. Somehow the council got that one key detail wrong when they interpreted the dream. The wolf cub on the table wasn’t Killian. It was me.

Some rational part of my mind wondered why I’d appeared as a wolf cub, but before I could make sense of it, the jackal said, “You will come with us.”

I stared up defiantly. “No.”

The figure waved a hand over me, and I was suddenly on my feet, the bindings loosened just enough to allow me to follow like an automaton. Fury at my own traitorous body swept through me, but I could no more resist the spell to follow than I could break the binding spell.

I followed through a parlor and a dining room, through a kitchen to another staircase, this one leading down.

We descended the stairs into a cellar. How could I possibly escape? The cellar door would close, and terrible things would be done to me.

The cellar was lit by a few black candles set in wall sconces. The owl held out a robe made of a thin, shiny brown fabric. “Take off your clothes and put this on,” she said.

The robe spooked me. I flashed on an old movie where they burned witches at the stake and made them wear robes like this for their execution. “What’s it for?” I asked.

The witch in the hawk mask drew a sign in the air, and I doubled over again in agony.

“Do as you’re told,” the jackal said.

They watched me change, and I felt the dull burn of shame over my terror as I took off my clothes and put on the robe. Then I was forced down into a chair, and two more masked figures—a weasel and a jaguar—came into the cellar with a steaming cup. They forced me to drink its contents. It was some sort of hideous herb tea—I recognized henbane, valerian, belladonna, foxglove. The smell was so revolting, I gagged with every sip.

When I’d drained the last sickening drop, they left me. I felt the liquid moving through me, slowing my thoughts, deadening my reflexes. Then my body started to tremble uncontrollably, and I was hit by a wave of dizziness. If I’d been able to move from the chair, I’m sure I would have fallen to the floor. The floor itself seemed to be swaying, the walls spinning. Menacing shadows crawled in the corners of my field of vision.

I took a deep breath, trying to center myself. I whispered a quick spell drawn from my Alyce memory, and after a few moments the hallucinatory shadows receded a little. The dizziness and sluggishness remained, though.

At last I heard footsteps on the stairs. The owl and weasel returned. “He’s ready for you now,” the owl said.

I had no doubt of who was waiting for me. Ciaran. My mother’s mùirn beatha dàn, the one she’d loved. The one who had killed her.

The owl waved a hand over me and muttered an incantation. Again I stood and followed with jerky motions. The dizziness didn’t pass, but I found I could walk through it.

We walked up to the first floor, through the kitchen, and then up the main staircase to the second floor. I was led into a wood-paneled room lit by candles. A fire glowed in the fireplace. I was shoved into another chair. The two masked witches left and shut the door.

Ciaran stood in front of the fireplace, his back to me. He wore a robe of deep purple silk with black bands on the arms. I fought down a wave of nausea. My mother’s murderer.

He turned to face me, and for a disorienting moment the trembling and the nausea vanished. In their place I felt surprise and a massive sense of relief. This wasn’t Ciaran. This was the man from the courtyard and the bookstore, the man with whom I’d had such an affinity, the man in whom I’d placed such an immediate trust.

The nausea returned an instant later as I realized just how badly I’d misplaced that trust. Now I could feel the darkness of his power, like a cyclone of roiling blackness.

Ciaran watched me.

“I never asked your name,” I said, my voice once again my own.

“But you know it now, don’t you?” he asked. His face was harsh in the firelight, his eyes unreadable dark slashes.

“Ciaran,” I said quietly.

“And you are Morgan Rowlands,” he replied courteously.

Oh, Goddess, how could I have been so blind? “You’ve been playing with me all along,” I said. “You knew who I was even before we met.”

“On the contrary,” he said. “I only realized you were the one Selene destroyed herself over when we talked in the bookstore.”

“H-how—”

“I became curious when I sensed how powerful you were. So when we got to talking about scrying, I decided to find out more about you. My scrying stone is bound to me. Even though you were the one holding it and I was on another floor altogether, it showed me what it showed you. I saw—was it your sister? — coming out of the Widow’s Vale Cineplex. The name Widow’s Vale rang a bell, and then when you gave me your name, that clinched it. Truthfully,” he went on, “I hadn’t planned on taking care of you quite so soon, but when you just put yourself in my hands like that, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity, could I?”

“The owl at the window last night—?”

“Was spying on you,” he confirmed. “But then, we were already on the alert. We’ve been watching the Seeker ever since he came to the city. It was easy to discover what his mission was, and after that it was child’s play to set the trap, feeding you the clues that would bring you to us. I gave you the vision of Killian in the candle’s flame and the vision you had today. I even helped you break the warding spells on this house. My dear, you should have known you don’t have that kind of ability. Not at your level.” Ciaran regarded me with a rueful smile.

I’d been such a fool. Time and again he’d manipulated me. And I’d never even suspected.

“Tell me.” His tone sharpened with the command. “Where’s the Seeker now?”

“I don’t know.”

His dark eyes raked me. How, I wondered, had I ever thought him distinguished and trustworthy? All I saw in him now was the predator, waiting to devour his prey.

Ciaran steepled his fingers. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have blocked the messages you tried to send,” he murmured, as if thinking aloud. “Perhaps I should have made it easier for him to find you.” Then he shook his head. “No, he’s clever enough that he’ll find you anyway.”

I sagged, despairing, as I understood what Ciaran meant. If Hunter did find me, then he would be destroyed along with me.

There was a knock on the door, and the hawk witch entered the room. I watched in disbelief as she handed Maeve’s pocket watch to Ciaran. “We found this in the girl’s jacket.”

Ciaran’s face went totally blank for a moment. Then it grew pale and distorted. “Leave!” he snapped at the hawk. Then he whirled on me. “Where did you get this?” he demanded.

“You should know!” I lashed back, glad for the chance to tell the truth. “You gave it to my mother before you murdered her!”

Ciaran stared at me, his eyes wide with undisguised shock. “Your mother?”

And I realized that Selene had never told him who I was. She’d never told him I was Maeve’s daughter.

He bolted from the room then. I took it for the last moment of triumph I would ever know. I’d actually shaken the leader of Amyranth. And I’d only have to pay for it with my life.

Exhaustion descended on me like a heavy cloak. I hung my head, let my eyes close, giving in to the drug they’d fed me.

That lying, manipulative wench Selene! She knew this girl was Maeve’s daughter and she never told me! What other secrets did she keep from me?

Maeve’s daughter! You wouldn’t know it from the girl’s looks. She doesn’t have Maeve’s delicate, pretty face, the sprinkling of freckles across her nose, the soft waves of reddish-brown hair. All she has of Maeve is her power. Though there’s something about her eyes that’s damnably familiar.

How did Maeve and Angus manage to spawn that one without my ever knowing? And how the bloody hell did she find out what happened at the end? Even those who knew Maeve didn’t know we were mùirn beatha dàns, and no one, save Maeve and Angus, knew about how the fire started. All witnesses are dead.

Selene couldn’t have told her. Selene knew nothing of what was between me and Maeve. Or…did she? I’ve never been sure just what Selene did and didn’t know. All of which raises the question: What else is there that Selene didn’t tell me about this girl?

My thoughts are heaving like the sea. There’s something at the edge of my mind, a disturbing presence on the edge of consciousness. It has a truth to show me.

Damn it. What is it? What is it?

Hunter, putting the silver chains of the braigh on David Redstone…Mary K., huddled in a corner of Selene’s study, confused, frightened, and spelled…Cal, absorbing the cloud of darkness that Selene hurled at me…His beautiful golden eyes…

No! I started out of my stupor, shaking and grieving at the images that kept parading in front of me. For a moment I couldn’t imagine where I was. Then memory returned. The house with the vines. The masked witches. Ciaran.

I was now in a much larger room. My head ached, and I felt even dizzier than before. With effort I focused my eyes on the ceiling, on the leaves and vines and ornate plaster molding, all horribly familiar. Black candles flickered from sconces and from an elaborate silver candlestick atop an inlaid ebony cabinet. Black drapes covered the windows. I cast out my senses. They were frighteningly weak, but I could still faintly detect objects of power inside the cabinet—athames, wands, crystals, animal skulls and bones, all emanating dark magick.

I was lying on a large round table, my hands and feet bound to it with spelled ropes. The table was made of some sort of stone, inlaid with patterns in another stone. Garnet, I thought. There were deep grooves in the surface of the table. The panic I’d felt in the visions returned full blown, and for a few useless minutes I struggled against the bonds.

Panic never helps, I told myself. Focus. Find a way out of this. But it was so hard to think through the haze of Amyranth’s drugged tea.

I called on the spell that was binding me to reveal itself. I saw the faintest glimmering of something that might have been a rune before it winked out. I tried to summon the spell again. Nothing happened, and I felt another jolt of panic. Breathe, I told myself, just breathe.

But it wasn’t easy. What had happened to my precious magick? I couldn’t connect with it, couldn’t feel it.

It’s mine, dammit, I thought furiously. No one—especially not Ciaran—is going to take my magick from me.

Maybe I lost consciousness again. I’m not sure. I never heard a door open or close, never heard footsteps, but suddenly Amyranth surrounded me. Witches in robes and animal masks formed a perfect circle around the table. Jackal, owl, weasel, cougar, eagle, bear, hawk, viper, jaguar, and a wolf. Predators all. The masks seemed distorted, horrible caricatures of the animals they represented, but I could also tell there was something wrong with my eyesight. It was impossible to say how accurate my perceptions were.

My visions and dreams had come together. Even through the haze of the drug, I could appreciate the irony of it all—if we hadn’t tried to prevent my dream from coming to pass, none of this would have ever happened. Never try to mess with destiny.

The bear murmured an incantation, and I realized the power-draining ritual was beginning. The others picked up the incantation, turning it into a low, insistent chant. They moved widdershins. The air felt cruel and thick with danger. This was a Wiccan circle of destruction.

And Ciaran was leading it. I couldn’t see his face beneath the wolf mask, but I could hear his voice, familiar yet terrifying. Just like the vision. Goddess.

I could feel Amyranth’s dark magick flowing around the circle. It crackled like lightning. The air was charged with it. Slowly the strength of their power intensified. I felt an unbearable pressure along every inch of my body. Amyranth was calling up a ravenous darkness.

Irrelevantly, it hit me that Cal had never had a funeral. The council had taken his and Selene’s bodies. As far as everyone in Widow’s Vale was concerned, Cal and Selene had simply vanished from the earth.

Or maybe it wasn’t so irrelevant. That was what was going to happen to me. My family would never know the truth about my disappearance, and it would always torment them.

The circle stopped moving. A thick, black mist clung to its members. “We give thanks,” Ciaran said, “for delivering to us a sacrifice whose powers will make us that much stronger.”

“How much power does she have?” asked the owl.

Ciaran shrugged. “See for yourself.”

The owl held a hand over my stomach. Fine silver needles of light dropped from it. For a second they hovered inches above me, then began to glow red. The owl murmured a syllable, and the burning needles dropped down. I couldn’t hold back a scream as they seemed to pierce my skin. Dozens of sharp embers sank into my belly, my arms, my legs. Involuntarily my back arched, and I pulled against the spelled ropes.

“Stop it!” I cried. “Please, stop it!”

“Be quiet!” the owl said harshly.

And then the fiery torture intensified, burned deeper into my body. I imagined my heart shriveling into a blackened lump, my bones crisping. I was wild with pain.

I can’t take this, I thought frantically. I’m going to lose my mind.

“That’s enough,” Ciaran ordered. “You’ve seen what’s in her.”

“Strong, very strong. She’ll serve well,” the owl agreed.

As suddenly as it had started, the pain was gone. I sobbed in relief and hated myself for that weakness.

The wail of a siren came faintly from outside, and a flash of red light shone through the black drapes. The vision again. Oh God, every detail was coming true. I had seen the future. Now I was living it. Amyranth was going to steal my powers, leave me drained, hollowed out—without magick, without a soul, without life.

Ciaran began another chant. One by one the others joined their voices to his. Again the dark energy began to move, gaining power as it traveled through Amyranth’s circle. I lay there helpless on the stone table, every muscle in my body clenched tight against the next horrible assault.

I thought of Maeve, my mother, murdered. I thought of Mackenna, my grandmother, killed when the dark wave destroyed Ballynigel. My family had suffered for their magick. Maybe no more was being asked of me than had been asked of them. I had the Riordan strength flowing through my veins. I had ancestral memories and a legacy of incredible power. Surely that meant I had their courage as well.

Give it to us. I felt the darkness clawing at me, trying to find its way into my very marrow.

Amyranth continued the chant. The dark energy shifted, no longer crackling around the circle. Now it hovered over the table, wreathing my body with sparking purple-black light.

Give it to us.

The purple-black light licked at my skin the way flames lick at dry wood. There was no pain, but I felt a crushing weight in my mind, against my chest, in my belly. I gasped for breath and could find none. But I could not let them get my power. Desperately, silently, I sang my summon-power chant.

An di allaigh an di aigh

An di allaigh an di ne ullah

An di ullah be…

The words that I knew from ancestral memory were suddenly gone from me. An di ullah be… I got no further. The chant had been wiped from my mind.

No! I wanted to scream, to sob, but I had no breath. Don’t take it! No! Grief consumed me—grief for the magick that was being taken from me. Grief for this precious life that I was about to lose. Grief for Hunter, whom I would never see again.

Ciaran held out a silver athame. A ruby glowed dully on its hilt. He pointed the athame at me, and the dark power coagulated into a spear of searing light.

“You will give us your power,” he said.

No, no, no! I was no longer capable of coherent thought. Just—no!

The chanting broke off abruptly at a sound on the other side of the door. A muffled disturbance, a struggle…someone using magick against Amyranth’s spells.

Hunter! I felt Hunter’s presence, his love, his desperate fear for me. And it terrified me more than anything. Was I strong enough still to send a witch message? Hunter, go back, I pleaded. Don’t come in here. You can’t save me.

The doorknob turned with a click, and Hunter stepped into the room, his eyes wild. He glanced at me quickly as if to reassure himself that I was alive, then turned to Ciaran.

“Let her go,” Hunter commanded. His voice shook.

The jackal and the wolf raised their hands, as if to attack Hunter with witch light. Ciaran stopped them.

“No!” he said. “This one is mine. At least for now.” He turned back to Hunter, an expression of mild amazement on his face. “The council must be in bad shape, sending a boy to do a Seeker’s work. Did they really lead you to believe you could take me on?”

Hunter’s hand shot out, and a ball of witch light zoomed toward Ciaran. Ciaran drew a sigil in the air, and the light reversed course and blazed back at Hunter.

Hunter ducked, his face pale, eyes glittering. When he stood again, he looked taller, broader than he had only a moment before. A new aura of power glowed around him. He emanated both youthful strength and ancient authority.

The council. Sky had once told me that when Hunter acted as a Seeker, he had access to the extraordinary powers of the council. It was a dangerous weapon to call on, taxing to the Seeker, reserved only for emergencies. Like this one.

Hunter stepped forward. The silver chains of thebraigh glimmered in his hands. He intended to bind Ciaran, to bind his magick. But I could sense no fear in Ciaran at all.

“Hunter, don’t!” I croaked. “He’ll kill you!”

“This is getting tiresome,” Ciaran said. He muttered a few syllables, and thebraigh suddenly dropped from Hunter’s hand. I saw him bite back a scream.

Desperately I summoned the source of all my magick. “Maeve and Mackenna of Belwicket,” I whispered, “I call on your power. Help me now!”

Nothing happened. No awakening of magick. Nothing. I was sick with disbelief. My mother’s and grandmother’s magick had failed me.

Ciaran said, “Bind him,” and the other members of the coven surrounded Hunter and enclosed him in binding spells. The jackal gave Hunter a savage kick. He went down with a groan.

“Stop it!” I cried. My voice came out as little more than a whisper.

“I’m sorry, Morgan,” Hunter said, and the grief in his voice broke my heart. “I’ve failed you.”

“No, you haven’t. It’s all right, love,” I said, trying to comfort him. I couldn’t say more. Total, soul-destroying despair overtook me. It was I who had failed him. Hunter and I were both lost now, and all because of my fatal arrogance. Neither one of us was going to get out alive. I’d signed my own death warrant and Hunter’s as well.

“Put him somewhere safe,” Ciaran ordered. “We’ll take care of him later.”

The jackal and the weasel dragged Hunter out of the room. A few moments later they returned. The bear picked up the chant again. The ritual was resuming. I didn’t care.

The animals circled widdershins. The circle suddenly stopped moving and parted. And Ciaran in his wolf mask stepped to the head of the table. He placed a deliberate hand on either side of my forehead.

“No!” I screamed. I knew what was going to happen. He was going to force tàth meànma on me. Even if I hadn’t been drugged and weak, I doubted I would have stood a chance against Ciaran. He was the strongest witch I’d ever known. He’d have access to my every memory, thought, and dream. There was nothing I could hide from him.

I tried to sink into the haze that was clouding my mind. I tried to have no thought. I felt Ciaran’s power streaming through his hands into me. For a heartbeat I fought him, and then I was hallucinating, reliving my life in flashes from the moment of my birth. Watching and feeling image after image as they flared in bright, almost unnatural colors.

The rush of air, light, and sound as I came through the darkness of the birth canal.

Angus, with his fair hair and bright blue eyes, touching my arm, tentative and sweet.

A day later. Maeve cradling me, gazing into my face with tears running down her cheeks. Saying, “You have your father’s eyes.”

“Bloody hell!” It was Ciaran swearing.

He broke the connection, and my vision clouded over. Another spell to obscure something they didn’t want me to see. I heard footsteps and the sound of a door closing.

The air in the room had changed. Ciaran was gone. And so was Hunter.