“Can I get you anything first? A cup of tea?”
“I’m past any need or desire for nourishment.” She patted the bed again. “Come, sit close. I can barely see you. Give me your hand, child.”
I sat and took her hand. Mab had said that, without the bloodstone, her body would rapidly catch up with her true age. But she looked older than any living person I’d ever seen. “Mab, how old are you?”
“In this lifetime? A shade over three hundred years.” Most of the Cerddorion lived human-length lifespans, but Mab had told me once that some of our kind live much longer. And with the bloodstone, perhaps she’d pushed the limit even further. “You probably think I’m no different from the Old Ones, trying to live forever. It’s not that, child. I’ve had to hold on; I’ve waited so long for my successor.” She gave my hand a squeeze. “There have been many apprentices over the years, many fine demon fighters. But always I waited for Victory.”
This speech sounded way too much like she was getting ready to say good-bye, to pass her demon-fighting mantle to me. Gently, I released her hand. “I’m not ready to be your successor.”
“Not yet, it’s true. There is much you need to learn, and I still hope to be the one to teach you. I haven’t given up, child. Not when there’s a chance we can retrieve the bloodstone.” That was good to hear. It sounded more like the Mab I knew. “Still, when one looks back over the past, there are things one feels the need to explain.”
I thought about the twenty-year-old misunderstanding between her and Gwen, who’d never accept any explanation other than what she’d seen with her own horrified eyes. But nothing like that stood between Mab and me.
“You don’t have to explain anything to me.”
“Yes, I do. I want you to understand what’s behind my feud with Myrddin.”
I hadn’t wanted to tire Mab out with my questions about that. But now she wanted to talk. “Were you Nimuë?”
She shook her head. “Nimuë was my sister.” Her face looked sadder than I’d ever seen it. “Myrddin killed her.”
For a long moment, neither of us said anything. Mab’s murky eyes went distant, and she held out a hand, as though reaching across time. I folded my hand around hers, and she turned to me.
“What happened, Mab?”
“In that lifetime, I was Viviane.”
“The Lady of the Lake.” I recalled the white-sleeved arm that rose from my dream-lake to hand me the bloodstone. Mab had taken that form in my dreamscape.
She nodded. “It was all so long ago. Several lifetimes, and my lives are long. I was a demon fighter and priestess of Ceridwen. Not much different from how you know me, although I was much, much younger.” Her voice softened. “So very young. I was eighteen, Nimuë was all of sixteen. We’d heard rumors of a handsome, mysterious man who lived in the woods. Being silly girls, we went to find him. We wanted an adventure, but there was no challenge to it. Myrddin meant for us to find him.” She glanced at me sidelong. “And handsome he was indeed. His teeth were better then.”
I could believe that. A millennium or two without dental care would take its toll.
“Myrddin charmed us. He flattered and entertained us. And he tried to seduce me. You see, what he really wanted was a son.” Demi-demons have a very low rate of reproduction—most of their females are barren, and when they do manage to conceive and carry to term, the death rate for infants is high. Myrddin must have felt he’d have a better chance of success with a Cerddorion female.
“I resisted. I was a shapeshifter and a demonslayer; I didn’t want to risk having a child. He tried to ensnare me with magic, but I could feel the tendrils of his spell. I refused to see him anymore. I forbade Nimuë from going anywhere near him.” She sighed deeply. “But my sister was sixteen and thought she was in love.”
“He got Nimuë pregnant.”
“She trusted him, and he used her, not caring how it might hurt her.” She scowled. “The pregnancy tore her apart from the inside. How she cried from the sheer pain of it. The baby clawed at her, she said; it burned her. I tried to give her herbs that would end the pregnancy, but she wouldn’t take them. She ran away to be with Myrddin, to give him his son. She said she wanted them to be a family.” Her voice caught in a tearless sob. “For weeks, I searched for her.”
“Did you find her?” I was afraid I already knew the answer.
“I found her corpse. Myrddin had ripped the child from her womb and left her to bleed to death on the ground.” Mab rocked back and forth, moaning softly, as if she’d just this minute discovered her sister’s mutilated body. But then she straightened. “I vowed to make him pay for what he’d done.”
Mab lifted her chin, and a defiant pride showed in her face. “I shifted my shape to become the exact image of Nimuë. Not as she died, but as she looked when Myrddin first saw her. In that shape, I entered Myrddin’s dreams. Do you know what happens when a beautiful young girl enters a man’s dreams?” She smiled. “She gets whatever she wants.”
“So that’s why the legends say Nimuë stole Myrddin’s magic.”
“Yes, but it was I, in Nimuë’s image. Myrddin gave Nimuë his secrets—and gladly—but it was Viviane who took them. Only one thing did he withhold: the location of his son. Whenever I mentioned the child, Myrddin would remember that Nimuë was dead and banish her image from his dreamscape. I tried entering his dreams in other guises, but it didn’t work. He refused to divulge that secret.”
“But he taught you the spell you needed?”
“He did, and I used it.” Again, her eyes looked into the past. “One night, Myrddin slept in his forest under a yew tree. I sent an avatar of Nimuë into his dreams to distract him. As Viviane, I stood beside his sleeping body and wove the binding spell. When the spell was too far advanced to resist, I woke him. I didn’t want that bastard spending eternity in happy dreams of Nimuë; I wanted him to suffer. He saw me, felt the binding spell, knew I’d trapped him—and why. I made certain he knew why. The tree began to absorb him. He struggled, but I told him it was no use. I told him I’d find his demon spawn and kill it. He laughed at me then, said I’d never find the boy. Just before the tree took him, his arm shot out from the trunk. He pointed at me, his face straining forward so he could speak. And Myrddin cursed me.”
I shuddered. “What was the curse?”
“That I’d remember. No matter how many lives I lived, I’d remember that one, as vividly as when each moment was new. When he returned to take his revenge, he wanted to be sure I knew why.”
It was a terrible curse. To experience that trauma, lifetime after lifetime, the pain never dimming. Even if he never returned, Myrddin had taken his revenge.
“I never did find Pryce,” Mab said. “Not in that lifetime, though I searched far and wide. Myrddin had fostered the boy with a human family. After several years and many rumors, I discovered the family’s name. But when I traveled to them, I learned that Pryce had murdered them all and run away. The boy wasn’t yet ten years old. And so it went for many years. Pryce left a long trail of death and destruction, but I was always a step or two behind him.”
“So how did we get so lucky to have him in our lives?”
“Eventually, he found me. He came to Maenllyd, called me ‘auntie,’ and told me he wouldn’t rest until he’d destroyed everything I love—and finally me.”
I WANTED TO LET MAB REST, BUT SHE INSISTED SHE HAD more to say. “Let me speak now, child, while my memories give me strength. I know how you can kill Myrddin.”
I sat up and paid attention at that. After what he’d done to Mab, I wanted to kill him three times over—a triple death for real this time.
“Myrddin is not immortal. We know that.”
“But he might as well be, the way he can zip in and out of the demon plane.”
“There is no ‘might as well be’ when it comes to immortality.” She rubbed the withered flesh of her arm. “Think back to last night, child. How did Myrddin react when you shot him?”
“He shifted to his demon form.”
“Yes. Why did he not simply exit to the demon plane and return, as he did when he fooled Colwyn with the triple death?”
I pictured last night’s scene. I remembered firing, the black blood flowing from the wounds, the demon growing. “Because the bullets were bronze?”
“Precisely. The bronze prevented Myrddin from entering the demon plane in his human form to heal. Before he could slip away into that plane, he had to take on his demon form. Only in that state could he exit to the demon plane and heal his wounds there.”
“Why?”
“I believe it’s because of the way he merged those two forms: demon within the human and human within the demon. It’s made his human form vulnerable to bronze in a way other demi-demons are not.”
I thought about the legend of the triple death. None of those fake deaths—falling, impalement, and drowning—had involved any bronze implements. “So I can use bronze to force Myrddin to change to his demon form . . .”
“And then you can kill the demon, just as you did with Pryce. With his demon half dead, Myrddin will be as mortal as any human.”
I stood up. “I’ll need the Sword of Saint Michael.” Saint Michael was the enemy of all demons, and the bronze-bladed sword bearing his name, a weapon my family had owned for centuries, would shimmer with celestial flame in battle. It was the surest way to kill a powerful demon. And I couldn’t wait to for Myrddin Wyllt to feel its bite.
29
I WANTED TO DO A TRIAL RUN, SLIPPING OUT OF DEADTOWN and getting into position at Boylston Street, before we had to do it for real. The sun had set on Deadtown an hour ago, so the containment order was now in force. We still had several hours left before curfew. Now was the time to give our plan a try.
“I’m past any need or desire for nourishment.” She patted the bed again. “Come, sit close. I can barely see you. Give me your hand, child.”
I sat and took her hand. Mab had said that, without the bloodstone, her body would rapidly catch up with her true age. But she looked older than any living person I’d ever seen. “Mab, how old are you?”
“In this lifetime? A shade over three hundred years.” Most of the Cerddorion lived human-length lifespans, but Mab had told me once that some of our kind live much longer. And with the bloodstone, perhaps she’d pushed the limit even further. “You probably think I’m no different from the Old Ones, trying to live forever. It’s not that, child. I’ve had to hold on; I’ve waited so long for my successor.” She gave my hand a squeeze. “There have been many apprentices over the years, many fine demon fighters. But always I waited for Victory.”
This speech sounded way too much like she was getting ready to say good-bye, to pass her demon-fighting mantle to me. Gently, I released her hand. “I’m not ready to be your successor.”
“Not yet, it’s true. There is much you need to learn, and I still hope to be the one to teach you. I haven’t given up, child. Not when there’s a chance we can retrieve the bloodstone.” That was good to hear. It sounded more like the Mab I knew. “Still, when one looks back over the past, there are things one feels the need to explain.”
I thought about the twenty-year-old misunderstanding between her and Gwen, who’d never accept any explanation other than what she’d seen with her own horrified eyes. But nothing like that stood between Mab and me.
“You don’t have to explain anything to me.”
“Yes, I do. I want you to understand what’s behind my feud with Myrddin.”
I hadn’t wanted to tire Mab out with my questions about that. But now she wanted to talk. “Were you Nimuë?”
She shook her head. “Nimuë was my sister.” Her face looked sadder than I’d ever seen it. “Myrddin killed her.”
For a long moment, neither of us said anything. Mab’s murky eyes went distant, and she held out a hand, as though reaching across time. I folded my hand around hers, and she turned to me.
“What happened, Mab?”
“In that lifetime, I was Viviane.”
“The Lady of the Lake.” I recalled the white-sleeved arm that rose from my dream-lake to hand me the bloodstone. Mab had taken that form in my dreamscape.
She nodded. “It was all so long ago. Several lifetimes, and my lives are long. I was a demon fighter and priestess of Ceridwen. Not much different from how you know me, although I was much, much younger.” Her voice softened. “So very young. I was eighteen, Nimuë was all of sixteen. We’d heard rumors of a handsome, mysterious man who lived in the woods. Being silly girls, we went to find him. We wanted an adventure, but there was no challenge to it. Myrddin meant for us to find him.” She glanced at me sidelong. “And handsome he was indeed. His teeth were better then.”
I could believe that. A millennium or two without dental care would take its toll.
“Myrddin charmed us. He flattered and entertained us. And he tried to seduce me. You see, what he really wanted was a son.” Demi-demons have a very low rate of reproduction—most of their females are barren, and when they do manage to conceive and carry to term, the death rate for infants is high. Myrddin must have felt he’d have a better chance of success with a Cerddorion female.
“I resisted. I was a shapeshifter and a demonslayer; I didn’t want to risk having a child. He tried to ensnare me with magic, but I could feel the tendrils of his spell. I refused to see him anymore. I forbade Nimuë from going anywhere near him.” She sighed deeply. “But my sister was sixteen and thought she was in love.”
“He got Nimuë pregnant.”
“She trusted him, and he used her, not caring how it might hurt her.” She scowled. “The pregnancy tore her apart from the inside. How she cried from the sheer pain of it. The baby clawed at her, she said; it burned her. I tried to give her herbs that would end the pregnancy, but she wouldn’t take them. She ran away to be with Myrddin, to give him his son. She said she wanted them to be a family.” Her voice caught in a tearless sob. “For weeks, I searched for her.”
“Did you find her?” I was afraid I already knew the answer.
“I found her corpse. Myrddin had ripped the child from her womb and left her to bleed to death on the ground.” Mab rocked back and forth, moaning softly, as if she’d just this minute discovered her sister’s mutilated body. But then she straightened. “I vowed to make him pay for what he’d done.”
Mab lifted her chin, and a defiant pride showed in her face. “I shifted my shape to become the exact image of Nimuë. Not as she died, but as she looked when Myrddin first saw her. In that shape, I entered Myrddin’s dreams. Do you know what happens when a beautiful young girl enters a man’s dreams?” She smiled. “She gets whatever she wants.”
“So that’s why the legends say Nimuë stole Myrddin’s magic.”
“Yes, but it was I, in Nimuë’s image. Myrddin gave Nimuë his secrets—and gladly—but it was Viviane who took them. Only one thing did he withhold: the location of his son. Whenever I mentioned the child, Myrddin would remember that Nimuë was dead and banish her image from his dreamscape. I tried entering his dreams in other guises, but it didn’t work. He refused to divulge that secret.”
“But he taught you the spell you needed?”
“He did, and I used it.” Again, her eyes looked into the past. “One night, Myrddin slept in his forest under a yew tree. I sent an avatar of Nimuë into his dreams to distract him. As Viviane, I stood beside his sleeping body and wove the binding spell. When the spell was too far advanced to resist, I woke him. I didn’t want that bastard spending eternity in happy dreams of Nimuë; I wanted him to suffer. He saw me, felt the binding spell, knew I’d trapped him—and why. I made certain he knew why. The tree began to absorb him. He struggled, but I told him it was no use. I told him I’d find his demon spawn and kill it. He laughed at me then, said I’d never find the boy. Just before the tree took him, his arm shot out from the trunk. He pointed at me, his face straining forward so he could speak. And Myrddin cursed me.”
I shuddered. “What was the curse?”
“That I’d remember. No matter how many lives I lived, I’d remember that one, as vividly as when each moment was new. When he returned to take his revenge, he wanted to be sure I knew why.”
It was a terrible curse. To experience that trauma, lifetime after lifetime, the pain never dimming. Even if he never returned, Myrddin had taken his revenge.
“I never did find Pryce,” Mab said. “Not in that lifetime, though I searched far and wide. Myrddin had fostered the boy with a human family. After several years and many rumors, I discovered the family’s name. But when I traveled to them, I learned that Pryce had murdered them all and run away. The boy wasn’t yet ten years old. And so it went for many years. Pryce left a long trail of death and destruction, but I was always a step or two behind him.”
“So how did we get so lucky to have him in our lives?”
“Eventually, he found me. He came to Maenllyd, called me ‘auntie,’ and told me he wouldn’t rest until he’d destroyed everything I love—and finally me.”
I WANTED TO LET MAB REST, BUT SHE INSISTED SHE HAD more to say. “Let me speak now, child, while my memories give me strength. I know how you can kill Myrddin.”
I sat up and paid attention at that. After what he’d done to Mab, I wanted to kill him three times over—a triple death for real this time.
“Myrddin is not immortal. We know that.”
“But he might as well be, the way he can zip in and out of the demon plane.”
“There is no ‘might as well be’ when it comes to immortality.” She rubbed the withered flesh of her arm. “Think back to last night, child. How did Myrddin react when you shot him?”
“He shifted to his demon form.”
“Yes. Why did he not simply exit to the demon plane and return, as he did when he fooled Colwyn with the triple death?”
I pictured last night’s scene. I remembered firing, the black blood flowing from the wounds, the demon growing. “Because the bullets were bronze?”
“Precisely. The bronze prevented Myrddin from entering the demon plane in his human form to heal. Before he could slip away into that plane, he had to take on his demon form. Only in that state could he exit to the demon plane and heal his wounds there.”
“Why?”
“I believe it’s because of the way he merged those two forms: demon within the human and human within the demon. It’s made his human form vulnerable to bronze in a way other demi-demons are not.”
I thought about the legend of the triple death. None of those fake deaths—falling, impalement, and drowning—had involved any bronze implements. “So I can use bronze to force Myrddin to change to his demon form . . .”
“And then you can kill the demon, just as you did with Pryce. With his demon half dead, Myrddin will be as mortal as any human.”
I stood up. “I’ll need the Sword of Saint Michael.” Saint Michael was the enemy of all demons, and the bronze-bladed sword bearing his name, a weapon my family had owned for centuries, would shimmer with celestial flame in battle. It was the surest way to kill a powerful demon. And I couldn’t wait to for Myrddin Wyllt to feel its bite.
29
I WANTED TO DO A TRIAL RUN, SLIPPING OUT OF DEADTOWN and getting into position at Boylston Street, before we had to do it for real. The sun had set on Deadtown an hour ago, so the containment order was now in force. We still had several hours left before curfew. Now was the time to give our plan a try.
