There was nothing in the world but this dusky circle. Population: three. Three people broken in three totally different ways.
Our world was silent.
The dead swirled around our circle, not getting any closer, but not getting any farther away. They were dark as a storm cloud.
Cernunnos stepped out from amongst them.
James
“Eleanor-of-the-skies, you did not speak truth to me.” Cernunnos paced around the edge of our circle. Like the dead, he was getting no closer, but no further away either. He was somehow even scarier in this context—standing on the stage where I’d read my lines, pacing past the piano bench where Nuala and I had sat. He didn’t belong here. Cernunnos turned his antlered head toward the circle, and with a shock, I saw his eyes for the first time. Hollow black irises ringed with a smoldering red line, all future and past and present mixed up in them. It was like drowning, looking at them. Like falling. Like looking in a mirror. I closed my eyes for a second.
“I only speak truth,” Eleanor said. She sounded a little testy. “It is all I can speak.”
“You promised me a successor.” Cernunnos looked into the circle. It felt like he was only looking at me. “Not three.”
Eleanor held up the consort’s heart. “Well, things got a bit out of hand.” She looked at me and pursed her lips. “I don’t suppose you’d let us have a moment to put things right?”
“Things are as they are,” Cernunnos said. “The circle’s drawn. I am here. There are three inside and nothing shall change until a successor is chosen.”
Eleanor closed her eyes and then opened them. “So be it.”
Cernunnos called, “I am the king of the dead. I keep the dead, and they keep me. I have earned my place here. I swelled the ranks of the dead before I joined them. Are these three worthy? Who amongst the dead can vouch for them?”
The dead stirred, swirled, arranged themselves.
A dark smudge grew in front of us, like a smear in our vision, and a voice came from it. Siobhan’s. “I died by the piper’s hand.”
A winged thing crab-walked over the chairs, its eyes luminous red lamps in its dark skull. “I died by the Consort’s hand.”
Dee closed her eyes and pressed her forehead against my shoulder.
The noxious cloud that was Linnet floated forward. “The cloverhand murdered me.”
I seriously thought it had to be a lie. But it seemed like a dumb idea, even for someone who was already dead, to lie to Cernunnos. I whispered to Dee, “Is it true?”
She shook her head against me. “They tricked me. They knew I had to kill someone for this to work. All They wanted was my heart for him.”
I looked at Karre, at the bright beads of sweat on his forehead, and I realized what Eleanor had meant to accomplish. I imagined a consort who was at once a cloverhand and the king of the dead—the faeries would be allies with that ravenous force that had destroyed Delia; they would be able to go anywhere they wanted to. Suddenly I saw what force had driven the faerie to come to the bonfire where I was.
“So all of you are worthy,” Cernunnos said. “But there can be only one.” His eyes lingered on Dee and a chill seeped through me.
I said, suddenly, “Why do you need a successor?”
The antlered head turned slowly toward me. “I am tired, piper. I would lay this down. It has been centuries since I stood in that same circle.”
“And this is how you choose who follows you?” I demanded. “Whoever is pushed or falls into this circle is powerful enough to control them?” I pointed out at the seething forms.
“My successor will learn,” Cernunnos replied, and his voice was no angrier nor more passionate than before I spoke out. “As I did. And there will be many lifetimes for my successor to discover what I have.”
“So you think any of us can do what you do?” I pointed down at Karre. “Him? How smart can he be, that he arrives in the circle already dead ? And Dee?” I stood back from her, looked at her. “She can’t even stand the idea that she’s killed someone.”
“And you?” Cernunnos said.
“Me?” I showed him my hands, covered with words. “I can’t even keep myself together, much less a legion of dead people. And I’m a cocky little shit who doesn’t care about anybody but myself. Ask anybody. They’ll tell you.”
Cernunnos inclined his thorny head toward me. “That is not truth, piper. I know what is in your heart. And that is why I choose you as my successor.”
There was silence. Nothing.
I lowered my hands to my sides. His song was humming in my head. I could feel the deadness of him, the strangeness of him, the old and dark and bitterness of him, flowing around me.
“No,” Dee whispered. “Not you, James. You’ve done enough for me.” She looked at Cernunnos. “Take me instead.”
Cernunnos shook his head. “No, cloverhand. The piper spoke the truth of you.”
“Then take me,” Sullivan said. I spun to see him shuffle slowly into the circle, hand still pressed on his side and covered with blood.
“The number in the circle cannot change,” Cernunnos said.
“Not until a successor is chosen,” Sullivan said. I stepped hurriedly over the consort to offer Sullivan my shoulder. I expected him to refuse it, but he leaned on me, heavy. The movement made more blood run between his fingers, over his iron ring. “You’ve chosen, and I’m here. And there’s nothing to say that once you choose a successor, you can’t change your mind. So change it. Take me.”
The red-rimmed eyes took in both of us. “Why would I change my mind, Paladin?”
“Because I am everything that James is, but I’m dying.”
“Is there any amongst the dead to vouch for you?”
Sullivan paused a long moment, and then he nodded. Outside of the circle, a form slowly rose, a dark, bent shape still crackling with fury. On the other side of the consort, Dee winced.
“I will vouch for him,” snarled Delia. “He stole my ward. I died by his hand.”
Sullivan reached into his pocket with a shaky hand and withdrew three twigs tied with red ribbon, identical to the one he’d given me. He turned it back and forth before Cernunnos, as if to prove that it really was Delia’s.
I didn’t really know if I wanted Cernunnos to change his mind. I didn’t want Sullivan to die, but I didn’t want this for him either. I wanted this to be over and for him to go back to a normal life despite being touched by faeries. I wanted him to prove it could be done.